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writingoddess1125 · 6 months

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HI I LOVE UR EVERYTHING AND PAPA BUGGY WAS SO CUTE AND IF YOU CAN DO ONE WHERE HE HAS BABY FEVER PLEASE 🙏🙏 I'M ON MY KNEES 🙏🙏 (I love ur work it's so cute and sad, funny)

Lucky Winner to get Part 2!!

Fever pt. 2

Buggy x Femreader + Buggy Twins

Also PSA everyone Wrap it before you tap it!

Support me on Ko-Fi ☕️

Check out the rest of the Old Men series

"YOURE PREGNANT!!"

Buggy shouted in total joy, Jumping around the room as his body looked almost like an accordion at his odd movements- you sitting there in total shock.

You'd expected that the twins would be your first and last, not that you would accidently get pregnant again especially by the same idiot who had done it by accident the first time.

Your hands went over your face as the reality of 9 months of this set in- For Fuck sakes... You could t help but giggle and hug Buggy there in the doctors office, Both happy and in total shock by this all.

After this things moved all too quickly it seemed. Of course you two told the boys who had been both excited and apprehensive- Like most kids worried the new baby would replace them or take the father they just gained from them, which had to be explained wasn't the case and you and Buggy created a gameplan to help the biys adjust. Then came the crew, who decided to have a 3 day celebration and get absolutely shit faced- Buggy included.

Why you were indeed happy, incredibly happy infant you knew what was about to come. HORRIBLE PREGNANCY SYMPTOMS! WONDERFUL-

Your first trimester was filled with morning sickness, Poor Buggy being as kind as possible as he helped clean you up and find foods that wouldn't make you puke your guts out. The twins even doing their part to find nice teas and things that smelled nice for you to also not throw up.

During this time Buggy bought so much stuff- Most likely boosting the economy of the village single handedly as he had the nursery built in the cabin and on the ship, You and the boys having a fun few weeks decorating both areas.

By your second trimester the hormones kicked in horribly, that and cramps. However that's when something magical happened as well-

Buggy and you were laying on the bed, both of you quite exhausted. Buggy was tired from dealing with the twins all day while you were tired from the baby and fatigue that was hitting you like a fleet. Since the start of your second trimester when your baby bump had become far more noticable Buggy always has his hand somewhere on your stomach rubbing the growing bump.

"I need to find a better way of tiring them out..." Buggy grumbled, You nodding in agreement leaned against the man and truthfully you both without single damns. Buggy in some pink boxers while you leaned against his naked chest in a large shirt rolled up over your stomach and underwear.

"They are still worried- Maybe take them out sailing or something? I'm sure they would enjoy tha- Oof!" You yelp as a sudden jolt hit you, clearly aimed right under Buggys palm which make both of you jump in surprise.

"What the hell was that?" He questioned as he pulled his palm away from you quickly and looked at your stomach. You shifting and rubbing the exposed skin smiling at him.

"They kicked, ive been feeling 'em move but not kick yet. Here I'm sure they will give you another little kick" You say calmly. Buggy sitting infront of you quickly and placing his palms back on your skin, You shifting his palms to the perfect spot before another jolt ran through you and Buggy giggled like a child at this.

"Thats so weird feeling!"

His eyes sparkled at this as he sat infront of you rubbing your stomach and feeling his child move under his palm and occasionally kick. It was a truly precious moment for the both of you.

As for the final trimester... Pregnancy was never too kind to anyone- Especially you. It wasn't with the twins and it sure wasn't now-

Leaned against the counter you glared hard at Buggy- 60 damn days you're ass! Try 8 fucking months trapped in this God forsaken cabin with your mentally unstable partner, two 12 year old boys and your bladder being utterly destroyed by little feet.

Oh and of course- THE GOD DAMN CREW THAY DECIDED THAT THEY WANTED TO STAY WITH THEIR FEARLESS CAPTIAN TILL THE 'VACATION' WAS OVER!

"Why are you staring at me like that?" Buggy questioned feeling the heat of your glare on his skin.

"I-..." You wanted to start Biting his head off but truthfully he had done nothing, you figured you were just emotional to the max at this point and the cramping didn't help.

"...I'm in pain-" You admit with a sigh, Buggy setting down his drink and walking to you calmly as he looked you over like he could spot your pain.

"Your stomach looks different" He said calmly, You shooting him a warning look.

"No shit it looks-" Buggy shook his head to stop you, "No its lower I mean, I think it's best we call the doctor" He said calmly, A shot of embrassment going through you at this point. Buggy truly had been giving it his all and learned from the doctor. With a chick trip from the Doctor and Midwife they confirmed you were in labor and got you set up to give birth in the cabin, The twins being taken to the Big Top with Cabaji while they waited for their siblings arrival.

"How are you feeling?" Buggy asked, Gently rubbing your back as you smiled.

"Not to bad actually- I'm glad you're here with me.." You say softly as another contraction shot through you.

At first it was fine- You'd been through this before. So it should be shorter and less painful this time around- Yeah No. You went from fine to screaming in pain very very quickly. Buggy sitting next to you trying to comfort you and get you through it- However the last thing you wanted was him there..

Which landed Buggy outside the house awkwardly, his crew also seated on different patches of grass as they flinched at every cry and scream that echoed out from the house and into the silent garden outside. You had kicked out Buggy 20 minutes ago, clearly just in too much pain to handle him at the moment and the doctor recommending him to try to return in 30 minutes. Which he did.

Truthfully he handled it like a champ once back in, holding your hand despite feeling like you were crushing it into dust and wiping the sweat and tears from your eyes. After a seven exhausting painful hours a shrill cry cut through the air as you slacked onto the bed. The doctor happily placing a little girl on your chest, now tears of joy running down your cheeks.

The doctors starting to clean her up as you admired her, looking to Buggy who was also crying.

You held the little girl in your arms, seeing her pink little face she had your facial features and (Y/H/C) hair like you but a bright rounded cherry nose/cheeks and ocean blue eyes. She was the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen. You saw Buggy stare in only awe as he felt tears hit his cheeks and he smiled.

"Shes.. shes.."

Your hand reached forward, Buggy thinking it was to caress his cheek or something gentle but instead you grabbed his neck in a iron grip- He squeaking in surprise as you pull him close.

"Buggy- This is the last... do you understand? Cause if the words 'I want another child' come from your lips ever again I am going to cut your dick off and throw it into the deepest part of the ocean. Do. You. Understand. Me" You said in the softest and kindest voice Buggy had ever heard, fear going through his system as he could tell you were dead serious.. maybe it was the lack of oxygen going to his brain or still the euphoria of the moment but he swore he saw literal hell flame in yours eyes.

"Clear- Crystal Clear" He wheezed, you releasing him so he could scoop up his daughter. He genuinely looked giddy at this point as he cuddled her close to his chest, you saw the anxiety just below the surface of his face as he stared at his daughter more her nose-

"Shes beautiful" You say softly staring at her from Buggy's arms.

"I won't let her go through what I did- I want her to feel special and perfect" He admitted, your eyes softening at his vulnerability as he kissed his daughters cheek.

"Im sure they will kn- Oof!- Fuck" You hissed in pain and flinched. The doctor peaked under the blanket quickly and called over the midwife who did a quick check. You wincing in pain as Buggy stared at you panicking and holding the now fussing newborn.

"(Y/N)?!" He said softly as another groan of pain left you. The midwife and doctor conversing quickly before beginning to prepare once again.

"It seems you're still in labor- Looks like another baby" He said proudly, Your eyes widening as you look at Buggy like you were prepared to kill him. The clowns face as white as snow making his face paint look dark at the realization of 2 sets of twins kicked in.

"Holy shit-"

"GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!!" You yelled as Buggy kept his daughter and rushed out quickly to show off his daughter and avoid your wrath of damning you to another set of twins.

Eventually he would return with your guys daughter and sat through another broken hand created by your labor. That night another little girl was brought in this world, the little girls being 8 hours apart and identical to her sister.

It was later decided after you had properly been cleaned up and not ready to murder Buggy their names. Buggy coming up with the names Ali and Ari respectively for his daughters.

Tag List-

@alastorhazbin @yuriwk

#x reader #one peice x reader #one piece #one peice live action #buggy one piece #buggy the clown x reader #buggy x reader

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ronearoundblindly · 2 months

Text

Hideout (3.1)

touch-starved!Nomad Steve Rogers x motel employee!Reader

Sensitive Boy, part I (see previous or series)

Summary: Steve surprises you with help at the perfect time.

Warnings for light smut (I have to split this chapter or it's just suddenly twice as long as the last, but really there's just massage and an implied orgasm in this half. You know me: too many feels and too much development...) MINORS DNI. This series is 18+ only. If you are underage or simply enjoy lighter content, there is plenty for you to read on my Light Masterlist, but this post is not for you! WC 3.2k

With so much on your mind, scaring the crap out of you is not difficult, so his strong hands hold you upright.

“Don’t do that,” you shriek, barely glancing at Steve’s face. You startled so suddenly your housekeeping cart is left rolling away at a snail’s pace.

“Sorry, I—“ long arms abandon you and reach to stop the bin “—it said on your website you were closed for renovations, and…”

You look him up and down. You were sure after he left two months ago that you’d never see him again. You’d gone too far. You’d pushed him too hard. He wasn’t ready.

Steve adjusts the strap over his shoulder. “I thought maybe I could help out…if you want?”

The last guests checked out a half-hour ago, and you readied to spend the whole week meticulously refreshing each room with your parents. The list of what needs done, however, doesn’t only include the motel. There’s a bunch you all had let slide up at the house. Help would…be extremely helpful actually.

Steve pulls a paper bag out of his knapsack. “Or I brought you some lunch if you just want a break or something.”

“It’s okay,” you rush out. “More than okay. Thank you, yes. We’d love—I’d love that.”

No one else can know it’s him-him there though. You’ll have to think of a way to keep your parents and St-‘Grant’ as far apart as possible, and how long you can manage that is…questionable.

If Steve’s not worried though, you’re okay.

Turns out, keeping your family up at the house is easy. Your mom shouts down the phone with relief that she can tackle the fridge, and you hear your dad mumble something about ‘the garage in daylight.’ You can enjoy a sandwich in the office with Steve in peace, explaining what all needs done before the electricians show up Friday afternoon.

The closure hasn’t been planned for a long time—not even before Steve and ‘Tom’s’ last visit—hence why you just painted Room 8, 5, 2, and 1 since March, but doing all those is how you and your parents really noticed that the light fixtures from the ‘90s were not only dated but very worn and that the same color layered over and over again for twenty years was, well, getting old.

Warmer months are better for the work. Pipes won’t freeze while you air out paint fumes, etc. The week after the gigantic, city festivities of Independence Day is notoriously dead. Since there were no reservations this stretch as of April, the family jumped at the chance to fix it all in one big, daunting go.

Saying you’d looked forward to this is a wild overstatement. You’ll be glad when it’s finished, and that’s the bulk of your excitement.

With his assistance though? Hope soars.

Steve will help you take down the sconces, the hanging lamps, and the panels above the vanities, then you both can—

“Where’s the paint?”

He’s very intense with the gameplan. Three guesses why.

“Dad’s gonna pick it up today. Probably. I’ll text him.” You whip out your cell again. “We didn’t think we’d get that far by evening.”

Steve nods.

“We also need to move all the furniture away from the walls and drape plastic to protect the carpet. Oh, and put tape along the trim and doorframes, ya know.”

Steve nods again. He wads up the wrapping from his sandwich and casually asks, “are all the doors open?”

You only just get your finger in the air to point at the desk.

“Master key is—“

But Steve is observant and has clocked everything about his surroundings each time he’s stayed, apparently. He stretches over to the wall beyond the counter, snatches the (correct) unmarked key, and heads out the door.

The service bell rings gently to emphasize the conversation is over.

All furniture in every room is pulled away by the time you finish sanitizing the one guest room he interrupted.

He asks where you keep the ladder, not that he’ll need it, but you will for reaching some of the lights.

You don’t know whether to be in awe of or exhausted by his efficiency.

He’s rigid and militant—go figure—until these few moments he suddenly can’t be.

As you toss plastic over the last bed to move, Steve yanks that sucker across the floor so fast, you roll off. His eyes are saucers as he apologizes, but you get the giggles and pick yourself up.

His fingers can’t separate thin layers of the plastic at one point, and he throws a minor fit until three rip apart together. Steve frowns at you and grumbles that he’s only ever used cloth for this before. It seems to take everything in his power not to say “back in my day,” but you can read between the lines.

Years of crusted paint makes the removal of some fixtures tricky.

Steve rips out one stripped screw with needle nose pliers, squeaks in alarm at the hole left behind, and then quietly asks if you have patch paste.

You call your dad before he’s left to buy paint. He adds spackling to the list.

The closest Steve comes to telling you anything specifically about himself is when you struggle with a stuck bolt.

“Just a little trick I learned when I was—“ Steve wraps his big hand around yours to pull the wrench instead of push from the other direction “—smaller.” He huffs out a laugh, adding, “when I couldn’t, ya know, ‘put my weight into it’ because a feather could’a knocked me over.”

As you relish the simple contact of his fingers, you smile, too.

“Hmm. I heard you got into back alley scrapes.”

“If you heard that I won any of those, you were lied to.” He patiently waits for you to finish removing the bolt before he pries the aged metal and glass away from the old paint it’s stuck in. Steve sighs dramatically.

“Shoddy education these days…”

“I…” You tap his bicep with the claws of the wrench. “I can’t argue with that. We hear only what they tell us about…heroes.”

You should have known he’d shut down at that word, but it’s the truth. Even with him right in front of you, the only things you know about Steve Rogers are from books, newspapers, and the internet. At face value—looking directly into the face of this man—all of what you’ve been told is hogwash. It’s insufficient. It barely covers 1% of who this man is.

He teaches you tricks of the weak man’s trade because it helped him once, too. Today, he’s friendly. Not that he was unfriendly before, but Steve is so reserved he never reference the past, in general, i.e. that there was a past existence of like the planet much less him.

It’s the number one rule of Fight Club: you don’t talk about Fight Club.

If there was ever a real fight club, it’s the Avengers.

You have no official rules for what this is between you. You don’t have to to know that is the most important one. You do not talk about Fight Club. Steve isn’t afraid of silence, that much is clear, but he isn’t a fan. He tries—he is trying—to connect and relate. He can’t be a man of the people, however, if he can’t talk to the people.

It’s important: connection. You know with every fiber of your being that Steve deserves it, but even with unlimited, super-human strength, he cannot get himself out from between this rock and that hard place.

You do not talk about Fight Club, especially when you’ve been kicked out of Fight Club.

Today, though, he’s a little different, a little softer. Perhaps it’s knowing there are no other people in the building, perhaps he is truly more comfortable with you, but either way, Steve is not flat or off-putting.

His organized persona, his focus on the work, his indirect interactions and practical touch; they all fit here while he has a project. It’s the closest he can be to his old self, maybe even his real self, without mentioning the past—the fighting past—at all.

“You’re really good company,” you tell Steve, “even when you make holes in the walls.”

He tilts his head down and blushes. He shrugs as he takes the sconce out to the dumpster. Although he didn’t say it, you hope this is okay.

Either way, you relish it. The help. The touch. The silence. All of it.

You relish Steve.

Your dad brings by the paint, spackling, and a surprise of pizza for dinner while Steve is taping the baseboards in a corner. You introduce ‘Grant’ from afar and haul the cans and boxes from the car to the room, cataloguing all you two have finished to this point and what you’ll do before stopping for the night.

Dad is impressed. He’d suspected the three of you—you, he, and Mom, that is—might settle for slapping some paint up around where the electrician would install the new lights. No one planned on getting this far in one evening.

He won’t stand in the way of progress, so your dad simply calls out, “bit of an artist, are ya?”

Steve looks up, confident with only the side table lamps plugged in, he can barely be seen. “Just want to be useful,” he mutters.

You wink at your dad as he heads back to the still-running car. “Grant is a jack of all trades.”

You’re sure to thank him for the food and let him know all the motel stuff is completely covered for tomorrow, too. You’ll work as late as you can and start as early as possible.

Dad says your friend has gone ‘above and beyond.’ You agree wholeheartedly.

‘Grant’ would more aptly be described as a machine.

All the furniture moved, all the lights taken down, all bordering taped, and now all blemishes in the walls smoothed, your impromptu contractor finally calls it quits when he’s forced to watch stuff dry.

You’ve kept the air conditioning going in one room.

Steve tentatively asks if he should walk you up to the house, but you counter with “it’s not any less dangerous for an average guy alone to return” and a cheeky smirk. Besides, it is very late. You let Captain OCD keep going; you tapped out a while ago.

He puts his hands on his hips, arms akimbo, thinking of a comeback that never manifests. After giving up, Steve takes his tiny bag into the bathroom and brushes his teeth.

You can faintly hear it over the murmur of the TV.

You aren’t really watching. It’s background noise to your general exhaustion.

With only a side lamp and the screen as light, Steve’s bare feet crumple over the discarded plastic sheet on the floor. He falls into one side of the bed, fully-clothed and (finally) tired.

Though productive, the day has been a distant one, working in different rooms for most of it and tiptoeing around real conversation. You want him to feel appreciated, not pressured, so you ask if he’d like the TV on for a while or would rather quiet.

Steve just grunts with his eyes closed.

Gently, you place a hand on his chest to steady you, leaning to kiss his bearded cheek.

“Thank you, Steve,” you say softly. “Good night.”

He hums when you say his name, and before you can lift your hand away, he captures it under his, holding you in place.

His eyes aren’t open. He can’t see you smile wider.

“Okay.” You tuck yourself into his chest as he raises his other arm out of the way. “Okay.”

Your ear sits in the dip beneath his collarbone, listening to his steady heart, his thumb sweeping back and forth over you knuckles.

He smushes you closer to his side. You toss your leg over his.

You forget to turn off the TV.

He’s sanding the spackled spots by the time you wake, so you rub across his back and dismiss yourself to get breakfast up at the house.

Steve makes no effort to go with, which is fine. You assumed as much.

Your dad calls Grant a ‘magician’ over the pop of oil in the skillet and insists you give your friend whatever he needs to keep working so fast. You are only half-joking when you admit the key is staying out of his way.

Bonus: the exchange reinforces your parents simply leaving the two of you alone down the hill, and you proudly tell Steve that when delivering him an enormous plate of scrambled eggs.

He jumps right back into planning-mode and orders you to roll the first coat of paint onto large areas. He’ll follow, completing the edges and corners.

It’s such a domestic thing to do. There is no one in danger, there are no bodies piling up if he makes a wrong move, and he can go faster or take his sweet time. Steve breaks when he wants or needs to. He sits outside and listens to the birds in the sunshine. No one is around to question him, not even you. You are only there to encourage.

You realize he was looking for a project. He’s used to—and likes—being busy, getting his hands dirty, producing results.

It’s a long, messy day where he becomes more serene in spirit the more intensely he works. You reward him with gentle sweeps of your hand down his arms, pats on his shoulders, and brushes at the small of his back.

Despite the almost constant movement, the day is over before you know it, earlier than yesterday, but it’s too hot to go on.

All the windows stay open to air out the fumes.

Though it won’t stop you from sweating, you both shower off as many splatters and flecks of paint as you can. You insist he goes first so there’s plenty of hot water.

He’s sitting on the bed, shirtless, checking his phone when you come out of the bathroom, but he immediately squirrel the device away in his small bag. Not much to carry around. Not much to leave behind. Steve can’t leave a trace of himself anywhere.

Hunched over and fatigued, he flashes a polite smile your way and blinks heavily.

He deserves the world.

You grab the small bottle of lotion from the countertop and playfully jump onto the bed behind him.

“How about a massage, yeah? You much be aching.”

Honestly, you don’t mean for it to sound sexual, but the phrase comes out downright dirty, making Steve awkwardly chuckle.

“You don’t have to,” he placates.

“Nonsense, I want to. It’ll make the air feel cooler.” That’s as good of an excuse as any. Who cares when the rippled expanse of his back flexes wildly in your touch?

His breathes are audible from the beginning.

You dig at his traps, his leg bouncing as he tries to relax. You use your thumbs, the flats of your hands, and your knuckles.

He shoves his fist in his mouth when he starts to moan, covering the move with a cough, but muffling the noise is abandoned in favor of clasping over his lap. He’s intent on hiding his hardness this time. There’s nothing you can say to truly lessen the sting of needing more. You can’t simply tell him he’s allowed to desire this; you have to ignore his misplaced shame.

But you can take pity on him.

“If you lie flat—“ you step off the bed to give him privacy “—I’ll have more leverage.”

You hear him crawl and adjust on the sheets. “Unlike the torque on a wrench,” you add, just to show you’ve been listening to him.

More lotion is needed for the surface area.

You turn up the TV, feining interest in the late night show so any noise he makes is not as obvious. What the speakers can’t cover, however, is Steve’s involuntary thrusts when you rub the heels of you palms up and down the sides of his spine. If you prop up on your knees, he has more range of motion and doesn’t obviously rock you while mindlessly humping the bed.

His sweats are slung low on his hips, two darts of muscle prominent above his ass.

They are irresistible, the perfect grooves to target and roll into, and he immediately mewls long and deep into the mattress, fingers curling and relaxing while his body seizes.

He hasn’t even finished coming, you think, before he taps at your leg and races to the bathroom.

You hope you didn’t push too far. You hope he’d tell you to stop if he needs more space, more time. Mostly, you hope he knows you’d give him every conceivable pleasure, just because he is him.

The water runs a long time, continuous splashing in the sink, and then nothing.

He didn’t bring much because he doesn’t have much. Your heart sinks, realizing you’ve made him soil one of only two pairs of pants he has here.

He cracks open the door, muttering, but you can’t make out the words.

You turn the volume back down. “What?”

“It pretty hot.” He clears his throat. “Would you mind if I sleep…without…?”

“Naked?” you squeak before composing yourself. “That’s fine. Whatever’s comfortable.”

You shuffle up the bed to click off the lamps. This man isn’t the type to strut around in the nude—yet, anyway—so in the faint and ever-shifting glow of the screen across the room very little can be seen.

‘Little,’ however, can’t describe anything that is visible about the man emerging from the bathroom.

You have to make a point not to stare, but no skit or commercial on the channel promises the same level of entertainment.

Steve slides himself beneath the sheet, sitting near the headboard.

You hold up the remote. “On or off?”

“Off,” he says, “please.”

You’ve certainly done enough for one day. You won’t push your luck, so you hit the power button, toss it on table, and snuggle into your half of the bed, facing away.

“If it’s too hot for any covers, that’s okay, too.”

A rustling interrupts the rhythmic whir of crickets in the night until you feel a warm hand lightly mold to your waist.

This should be encouraged. This should be rewarded.

“Hey, Stevie,” you whisper, waiting for his hum, “happy belated birthday.”

At most you expect a grip of notice, but instead, the big hand snakes across you and hauls you into his chest, his long legs bending to match the crook of yours, his nose and forehead tucked against your occipital.

“We did okay today,” Steve mumbles into your shirt.

You walk your hand over your stomach to find his, lacing the fingers together. “Yes. Yes, we did.”

Steve got to be useful today. He had a partner today. He will tomorrow and the day after, for as long as he stays, for as long as you’re alive. Nothing can change that.

Maybe he can’t talk about Fight Club, but he connects with you anyway.

A/N: Whoopsy. Didn't want to make y'all wait for a 6k+ chapter, so here's the first half! I am DEEP in the feels of this one. So, so many notes have been taken. The brainrot is real, and I fucking love it!!!!

[Next: Sensitive Boy, part II]

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flightfoot · 9 months

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I know a lot of the fandom are angry at Marinette for not telling Adrien about his father/the rings at the end of season 5 and I get it. She should tell him eventually. But people say it proves she hasn't learned anything from Season 4 and... I feel like what happened in Season 4 and what happened in Season 5 are two very different scenarios?

Like... in season 4, she's keeping technical secrets from Chat Noir- that Rena Furtive is active and several gameplans including her Ephemeral plan, Hack-san and the Sentibubbler one. She's holding her cards too close to her chest out of fear of losing control and not delegating enough. Once Alya is in the know, she has a new, closer partner in her and unintentionally neglects Chat, forgetting to include him in technical aspects that he should be savvy on. She needs to relinquish control and trust more, needs to keep her team in the loop on necessary knowledge. Chat Noir may have still been upset that it wasn't just the two of them anymore, but he'd feel better if he at least felt included as a partner.

The biggest indicator that she actually did learn something from this is her decision to no longer keep each miraculous at the end of Season 5. She relinquishes them to each holder. There are also small examples like her entrusting Chat with the rabbit miraculous early on, going along with his plan without a good explanation in the switcheroo episode and accepting Nino's lead without boggarting, being overbearing or trying to shut it down when he starts The Resistance. As in real life, character flaws will always pop up every now and again and while it's true that she is pretty much forced to work with Chat alone in Season 5, the evidence of her change is there. Chat is a bit of an afterthought in Season 5, but that's more a crappy narrative decision than Ladybug avoiding him.

Some have said she hasn't changed because Chat still doesn't know the other holders' identities, but that always confuses me because since when has that been a problem, for him or otherwise? There was a popular misconception of his line in Strikeback that he was demanding to know other identities when he was actually asking why she couldn't know HIS identity. Maybe that's where it comes from, but Chat has always been primarily concerned with the two of them sharing their identities.

My point is that Marinette learned a lesson about not holding her cards too close and trusting her partners. The climactic discussion was lacking but it's dishonest to say she learned nothing. She's changed her approach accordingly.

What's happening with Adrien at the end of Season 6 is different. This isn't some gameplan aspect that she needs to communicate to keep her trusted partner in the loop. This is a series of soul crushing truths that she has been saddled with communicating to her new boyfriend who just lost his mother and father within a year of each other. Like hey I know you're an orphan now and you're still dealing with that, but you should also know your dad was evil and victimized you and your friends continuously to bring back your coma mom. Not to mention, they were both controlling you from birth with their wedding rings. Because you're a sentimonster. You're not a real boy! Nathalie, your only trusted remaining guardian, was in on it before making a sharp heel faced turn at the tail end. Felix knew too and he told Kagami, but not you. Your dad asked me not to tell you right before he died so not sure if I should be betraying an evil dying man's wishes like this.

Not defending this choice. There's info in there that Adrien needs to know to protect himself. He needs to process his trauma- much of which she has no idea about. Just from a narrative standpoint, it's almost criminally disappointing and a failure to his character to keep it from him.

I also get why it's not at all easy. I get why the lessons learned in Season 4 finale do not help with this. Season 4 secrets were about controlling or withholding all the variables and information to avoid a technical failure and learning to trust others judgement. Season 5 secrets are about the moral dilemma of lying to spare someone emotionally. This is "I'm going to withhold this logical info for logical reasons without considering the emotional damage of keeping my partner out of the loop." VS "I'm going to withhold this emotionally charged info for emotional reasons without considering the logistical problems of not telling a sentimonster they're a sentimonster wearing their life on their ring finger." Sharing something that you know will crush someone inside out, that irrevocably changes all they know about their existence, that you cannot take back... is not the same as letting someone in on your gameplan.

It's a bad call and if this show has any wits, it will examine that. But it's easier said than done and not as "OMG DUH!" as people make it out to be. I can't even completely consider the urge to want to "protect" him insulting to Adrien because honestly, this would fuck anyone up. A secret like this is liable to land any kid in a facility for a bit for an existential meltdown. People have cracked over less. She doesn't even know how strong Adrien is. She doesn't know he's Chat Noir, who she's been through thick and thin with. The idea that what she's doing is a kindness, while flawed, is not unfounded.

Her lesson here should be 'Brutal truths are better than pretty lies' or 'Lies are not a kindness, they're a disrespect." Imo, very different from the motivations and the lessons learned in Season 4, even if the core of them both were withholding information. It's like...if you learn that a type of vodka makes you sick, you're probably not going to stop drinking it altogether. Lessons are complex. It's not going to be "I'll never keep a secret again." It's "I'll never keep a secret in this type of situation again."

Marinette hasn't learned the brutal truth lesson yet. Yeah, she did this small scale with the scarf in Season 1. That worked out for her, right? Even if you count Chat Blanc as a comparable secret (I've never really understood people who are mad about this. It's not like she knew what specific events led to it and it has no bearing on events in their current, future or past timeline. I mean I'd love if she mentioned it for drama. I just don't think she's obligated to?), sparing him the knowledge of it also has worked out in keeping him ignorantly content? Most of the more damning Season 4 secrets were oversights, technical planning and things that he was going to discover anyway that she just neglected to tell him. Emotionally inconsequential things that he wasn't made blissful by not knowing- quite the opposite- and were not lies told on his behalf.

So yeah. 2 different situations, 2 different motivations, 2 different lessons. One improved on, hopefully another to be considered and not swept under the rug.

The real question is: Will she tell Chat Noir? If she doesn't tell Chat Noir because she doesn't trust HIM with this information then I take back this entire ask. I admit defeat. Miraculous has made a clown of me once again. But I can't judge her on that considering she and Chat have not interacted since before it happened? We actually don't know how the writers are going to spin that yet.

So just some housekeeping to start off with, the situation in Ephemeral is very different from the ones in Sentibubbler and Hack-san. In Sentibubbler and Hack-san the plans were very last-minute, and Marinette was unable to communicate or even MAKE a plan in Sentibubbler, and for Hack-san, she didn't have an opportunity to talk to Chat before giving the earrings to Alya, and didn't seem to think of what his reaction would be to seeing a new Ladybug Holder out of nowhere.

Ephemeral, by contrast, had Ladybug deliberately lying to Chat Noir, saying that she wanted an identity reveal because it would make them stronger, in order to manipulate him into unknowingly revealing his identity to a third party, because she didn't want to risk him potentially not agreeing to reveal his identity to someone else. Very different situation.

I do agree that Marinette seems to have learned something from season 4 at least, in terms of relinquishing control and telling people need-to-know things about gameplans, with giving the Miraculous out to their wielders permanently helping to show that.

And the truths she's keeping from Adrien ARE more of the soul-crushing variety (or well, at least of the "likely to severely mess you up" variety). I do see why this would hit Marinette as a different sort of thing to keep from Adrien, since she's not telling him everything because she doesn't want him to get hurt, and he's dealing with a lot as it is.

The main issue is... why wouldn't she tell CHAT NOIR about this stuff? I mean, I could maybe see not telling him the Senti stuff under the premise that that's a private matter, but there's no reason not to tell him that Gabriel was Monarch.

I'd love if Season 6 ended up conveying to Marinette more of the "she needs to be open and honest" message, with brutal truths being better than pretty lies, though I'm kinda doubting it'll happen.

#ask #miraculous ladybug #ml analysis #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste

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literaticat · 2 years

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Could you explain the drama with Barnes & Nobles? How will it affect MG and YA (marginalised) authors??

I have gotten A LOT of questions about B&N "rumors" -- like, a LOT a lot. So I'm going to endeavor to answer questions as well as I can here, and delete the other ones, just because they are substantially the same and would have the same answers.

The B&N drama, as I understand it, is that they have made a policy to not stock MG hardcover books, except the very tippy-top bestsellers (ie, the new Rick Riordan or something at that level). I have not heard that this is the case with any other category of book -- only MG -- but I don't know that for sure. That's just the only category I have heard confirmation about.

This has been a policy for a bit actually (I heard about it from a sales rep a month or so ago), but I guess the news just broke to the twitter-sphere yesterday, hence all the questions today!

I have a lot of conflicting feelings about it, actually, and zero data or facts, so ... take all this with lots of grains of salt, I guess:

MANY books were already not being bought by B&N. I would go so far as to say that the majority of my author's books, I never saw at B&N -- certainly not at my small local one, maybe more at the larger locations. Getting picked up by B&N has never been a guaranteed thing by any stretch.

From B&N's perspective, it sounds like they want to make more room for paperbacks, because paperbacks sell better. I saw a tweet somewhere yesterday, anecdotal of course, but basically it was a B&N bookseller who said that hardcover sales for them are very slow -- and so they did a 50% off all hardcover books sale -- and hardcover books STILL didn't sell at a significantly higher volume. Whereas a paperback sale resulted in books absolutely flying off the shelves. (The bookseller in that tweet went on to say that they wouldn't be surprised if the mandate came to pass for other categories of book, too, for this reason.)

We can't force a bookstore to carry books they don't think they can sell. Like - they are a business, not a public service or a charity - they will do what is best for their bottom line, and they can buy and stock whatever they want.

We can be disappointed! We can express that disappointment! We can support indie stores instead! Or order the hardcover from B&N so they'll know people still want to buy them! But we can't make them make choices that they don't feel are good for their business.

I'm guessing, if there is demand for a certain title, individual B&N stores WILL carry it. So if you / your community are super passionate about something, let your local store know.

The reality is: Paperbacks DO often sell better. We make hardcovers for two reasons aside from tradition -- for the library market, and so that the publishers can charge more for books and make more money. In, say, the UK, the VAST majority of kids books are paperback first, because that's what the majority of their customers want. The CEO of B&N is James Daunt, who also runs Waterstones in the UK, and saved that company from ruin. I daresay he's thinking, hey, these are some things worked to save Waterstones from ruin - let's try it at B&N - hence many stores closing and re-opening in much smaller locations that look more like indie bookstores, changing the way buying is structured, etc.

We need B&N to keep existing. That's by NO means a sure thing. Remember Borders? That can happen again, and if it does, I shudder to think how that would impact the landscape. So -- YES, I personally think they should keep buying hardbacks, but also, if it affects their bottom line so badly, YES, I think they should do what they need to do to survive. Maybe that is promoting and selling the hell out of PAPERBACKS. If that's the gameplan -- ok, let's see it; maybe that will ultimately be a good thing.

Hot take: I think more publishers should publish paperback originals or PB/HC simultaneously, hardcover for the libraries and paperback for trade, the way they often do for chapter books and graphic novels. People LIKE paperbacks. People can AFFORD paperbacks. Unfortunately, because they are less expensive, authors make less money on them. The good thing though is that they tend to sell more, so ideally that is made up in volume.

All of this might affect authors (marginalized and otherwise) because it might mean fewer sales for their hardcover books, fewer sales means it's harder to earn royalties and get that next book deal, etc. But actually -- it might also NOT mean that, because again, many hardcovers already weren't being stocked by B&N, or were being stoked but ultimately returned to the publisher; many people DO wait until paperback to buy things, order online or from Indies, etc.

It will be interesting to see actual numbers on how (or IF) this truly has a huge impact on book sales -- or if, in fact, sales of hardcovers stay relatively steady, returns on hardcovers go way down, and sales of paperbacks go up.

TR;DR - I have no answers, just a lot of questions and comments I guess. I would urge authors to not catastrophize, though. Like, does this suck? Yes for sure. Will it ACTUALLY affect you, personally? Maybe, but maybe a lot less than you think. I don't think any publisher is making decisions based on this decision at this point, we are not really in charted territory. I'm sure that both publishers and B&N will analyze how their sales are affected, and adjust accordingly, which MIGHT mean backpedaling on this mandate, or who knows, time will tell. But worrying about what fallout MIGHT occur from business decisions we have no control over is not helpful or conducive to happiness or productivity.

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prancingintheshadows · 13 days

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I've just finished FFVII Rebirth and RWBY's back with new content, so obviously those two things are the only thing on my mind right now. So of course with my brainrot I have to imagine and conceptualize what the RWBY characters would play like in FF7 rebirth. Especially since Monty was a fan of Final Fantasy.

For people playing Rebirth, there's not going to be any story spoilers, but this will go into gameplay and talk about certain abilities in the game as comparison.

This is mostly just 'how would these characters be designed in this gameplay?', so I'm not really making any big changes to Rebirth's systems to account for RWBY's in-universe mechanics. While Dust is similar to materia, there's some notable differences but I'm ignoring those differences for the sake of this. So these characters will all use Dust/Materia the way the game does, using mp or something rather than having dust be like ammo. And speaking of MP, same case. Aura is both HP and MP in RWBY, but for the sake of this, everyone's having separate bars for those.

My plan is to generally talk about the overall gameplay identity of each character, along with specific details like if they have attacks after dodging worth mentioning or holding square produces a unique attack or such. I will not be talking about synergy, at least, not in this post. Maybe in a future one if I have the attention span.

For the first of these posts I'm tackling everyone's favorite blonde brawler

Yang

Basic Idea

I'm starting with Yang because... she was the easiest. But not too easy. It's not like we can slap on Tifa's moveset and stats and call it a day. Tifa's combo focused gameplan is fun and fitting for a martial artist, but it lacks the defining features of Yang's semblance. Yang's the toughest member of her team by a long shot and her semblance builds up as she takes damage, so it's instead easier to take inspiration from Red XIII's Vengeance Mode. However, not everything of Red's is usable. Red features a lot of supportive moves that apply buffs or healing and that's not really in line with Yang's straightforward, frontline fighting style, so I'd ideally take a mix of Red's ability to turn defense into resources as well as Tifa's explosive damage potential.

In keeping in line with this mix of tank and damage dealer, ideally Yang would have comparatively high health and defenses, though I can see magic defense being noticeably lower, along with good attack and low 'magic' or whatever the dust equivalent would be. Controversially though, I'd put her speed rather low. Yang's not slow, but everything's relative, especially in video games and video game balance. Comparing to everyone else on Team RWBY, Yang's slow. I'm not too sure on luck, but I'm leaning more towards low. Yang strikes me as doing a lot of damage raw rather than relying on situational damage like crits.

Yang, like Tifa, uses martial arts, so she has a short attack range that doesn't have much spread. As such, when coming out of a dodge, Yang will do a spinning kick. I get she's a punch girl, but she's not exclusively using punches. Holding square has her do a close range shot gun blast that can push enemies back. I'd also say Yang's dodge is only average. Again, relative speeds. She's got Ruby and Blake on her team, Yang has to be average at dodging at best by comparison.

Burn Mode

We gotta talk about Yang's unique mechanic. As stated earlier, I think elements from both Red XIII and Tifa work, so I'm trying to mesh them together. At the fundamental level, it works like Vengeance where blocking builds up a meter. However, this meter has several levels, much like Tifa's Chi or Cait Sith's moogle stuff. Obviously, building more levels increases the potency of the Burn Mode, which is functionally a super mode. I'm thinking maybe 3 levels? Like Red, Yang's attacks get a massive boost and increased range and the button used to transform is replaced with a new attack.

Unlike Red, this attack will drain the form's meter, similar to Tifa using up levels of Chi and falling to the lower level. Also, these levels drop quicker than Tifa's Chi or Red's Vengeance. This is just a byproduct of what I'm trying to achieve with Yang. While being a tank/dps hybrid can be a rather simple character, I want to give Yang's fighting game plan depth and complexity. Have her be able to fight smarter like in the show. It's why I want a healthy mix from both characters. Tifa's chi is cool, but you ultimately just spend all of it on a staggered enemy and there's no other uses for it as the buffs it gives you passively aren't enough to be worth considering, so Yang's Burn Mode needs to have passive benefits closer to Red's Vengeance than Tifa's Unbridled Strength. But it also needs to run out in a decent time frame to make spending Burn levels acceptable. I want that conflict of deciding whether or not using a level of burn for a potent attack is worth it. And similarly to Red, I want a lot of interplay between Yang's super mode and her abilities.

Abilities

I'm not going to make enough abilities to match the Rebirth characters. They have 10 abilities, which is an insane amount to be doing for 4 characters for a 'for fun' theory craft. There are certain requisite things Yang needs for abilities. For one, a rather standard damaging ability. You know, your Bravers, Divekicks, and Sidewinders. Likely some sort of punch. Easy enough.

Second thing, Yang's very block heavy, so like Cloud and Red, she gets an ability that puts her in a guard stance that builds up meter faster and is functionally a better guard. I call it Block Party, and no, I will not be using puns this entire section.

Most of Yang's abilities I want to play with Burn in some way to create that possibility for smart play while staying true to her fighting abilities. Dragon Throw is probably the ability that I've best made to fit this mold. In base, Yang grabs an enemy and chucks them at another enemy. In Burn, Yang instead grabs the enemy, and in true FF fashion, leaps into the air and comes crashing down on a different enemy. This gives Yang a repositioning tool without detracting from the brawler fantasy. I think this is also not out of the question as there's a few abilities in Rebirth that bring enemies closer, so I don't see any problem with just straight up manhandling them like this.

Meteor Impact is Yang's basic AoE attack where she slams the ground. It interacts with Burn the same way Dragon Throw does. While out of Burn, it's decent, but in Burn, it's range and power increases. It would be a simple and effective tool for people who like using Burn in a straightforward manner.

Bombshell is an ability that uses Burn meter the other way. You don't have to be in Burn mode to improve the move, the move will simply eat meter from Burn by default. Yang attaches sticky bombs to the enemy that go off the next time they're hit with an ability. The amount of stickies attached can be increased by holding down the command and spending meter. It's a move that has some thought that can be put in it. It doesn't deal immediate damage, so you have to either be willing to wait or have resources left over to set them off. You could attach bombs to an enemy and then Dragon Throw them to make them a living bomb. You can set them up when the enemies stagger is nearly complete so you can rebuild your ATB and resources and go for a truly devastating combo. You can go full throttle on the bombs or hold back so you can still enter Burn.

The next ability is one I really wanted to make once I had the concept of Yang down as a fighter with a lot of variability. Golden Glow takes inspiration from Unfettered Fury being a side grade to Unbridled Strength. It's an alterative to Burn. While Burn quickly burns out and has potent offenses, Golden Glow is a mode that lasts longer but instead focuses on Yang's defenses. While Yang mostly uses her semblance to attack, she's also used it a few times to take hits. An ability like this has lots of synergy with Yang's abilities that want her to be in her super form, but doesn't play as well with moves like Bombshell that prefer having meter being quick to build and spend rather than something long lasting.

Limits

Limits aren't hard to do, but I should still talk about them anyways. A solid chunk of Rebirth's cast has a basic Level 1 Limit, a Level 2 that increases stagger a lot, and a Level 3 which just does tons more damage. That's not to say all of them are like that. Red notably gets healing from his LB1 and a longer lasting mode from his LB2.

LB1 I'd make a basic damaging limit. It'd be just one big strong punch, like the one used against Junior in the Yellow Trailer, to mirror how quick a lot of the other LB1s are.

LB2 would put Yang in Burn with 1 extra level. If used while you have level 3, this would put you in the otherwise unreachable level 4. Because of course there's 4, this a RWBY character, I can't not slap the number 4 on things. I'd probably use a scene from the JL movie part 2 actually. The one where Yang activates her semblance, jumps up, and starts peppering the battlefield with gunfire. I just think it's good to have a little bit of variety between all the melee combat.

LB3, due to being a whole process to get up to, would be huge stagger increase and huge damage. It's meant to help end the fight, regardless of how the enemy is currently looking. I actually think I'd like her to do something new for this attack honestly. LB1 already uses something from the early RWBY days and LB2 uses more recent stuff, so there's a good spread of representation.

#rwby #ffvii rebirth #yang xiao long #This has been living in my brain for like 3 weeks #I definitely put too much thought into this

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titleleaf · 1 year

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Early Victorian Skincare: Experimental Archaeology For Dorks

I am coping with work stress in a very normal and healthy way, which is to say, I have begun my Unnamed Terror Fandom Beauty Project. My aim in this project is to make some of the historical grooming and beauty products I researched for my 1840s Hygiene & Personal Care For Cold Boys meta, document the process, and share the results. My biggest concessions will be sacrificing the whale byproducts that were dead common in 19th century cosmetics, but this was the kick in the butt I needed to finally buy one of the lab-created ambergris alternatives. I hope to recreate the fully meat-based versions of these products, but my gameplan is also to sub all that lard and suet for stuff I can send by mail without feeling like a ghoul. (The marrow-based stuff like the fluide de Java... we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.)

Currently I'm planning to recreate a hair pomatum, a skincare pomatum that's more like a cold cream, a lip salve, and two perfumes. (Are they Fitzjames and Crozier-themed? Maybe.) Time will tell how this thing progresses.

#unnamed terror fandom beauty project #amc the terror #leave otto alone...

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prettycottonmouthlamia · 9 months

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Pokemon Emerald Ralts Only Part 4: Fish and Magnets

So this one took a lot longer than I had expected it would and was a lot harder. Ultimately I'm a rather methodical player so sometimes when I have to reset I'll just jump back in and see whether it was just bad luck, or whether there's a different strategy I could be using, instead of just resigning myself to having to grind a little more. I really want to avoid just grinding and overleveling whenever possible, in part because I want to create strategies that are reasonably quick to execute and reproducible. But I'm not perfect, so expect the reset count to climb pretty high this update.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

At least the start isn't too bad. We're still in Dewford, so make sure to deliver the letter to Steven, which just involves some stumbling around in the dark. Thankfully Flash feels really optional in Generation III.

As an aside, a truly baffling number of TMs we get early on that Ralts just simply cannot use. It's a bit depressing but at minimum its a bit of extra cash in our pocket. There's a good reason we might want to have this extra cash on hand, but it won't come up for a while so I won't bring it up.

Moving on to Slateport, I elect not to fight too many additional trainers yet. We're reasonably overleveled now and I am starting to form a gameplan for Watson which I think will allow us to beat him at a lower level than you might think! We do the fights that get us the Soda Pop though, since its free healing items. After that we go to deliver the Devon Goods.

It's here we get our first actually usable Ralts TM: Thief. Thief is a 40 base power Dark-type move that also steals our opponent's item. It might be one of the most underutilized moves in a challenge run, but I don't want to teach it just yet. We only get one of these TMs, so I want to make sure we use it at the right time. So now we go upstairs to fight the Aqua Grunts.

Right. They start to have Carvanha here. Let's just quickly teach Thief since Carvanha are pretty frail and see how well it does.

Well that's not good, since it also triggers Rough Skin, but I wouldn't say its that poor damage. We even get to Trace Rough Skin for this fight, and besides, its Carvanha. This is a Pokemon literally no one remembers. You probably couldn't tell me what the Pokemon even does. It's base stats? You don't know them.

If you've caught onto this being a set-up for an ironic joke, how dare you.

Yeah so in my defense, I've literally never used Carvanha ever. It comes smack in the midgame of RSE and its showing in these games is pretty pathetic. I didn't know it had Bite at Level 1, and this changed Carvanha from incredibly annoying into a legitimate roadblock.

Let's discuss our options here: Option 1, we level up until we learn Calm Mind, and then we use Calm Mind and Thief to defeat the Carvanha. The problem with this strategy is that we definitely are going to need to grind on wild Pokemon in order to get the bulk we need to get past just this one Carvanha. Put a pin in that.

Option 2 is that we drain all of our PP and use Struggle. It's not pretty and takes a buttload of time but it does give us an unresisted damage dealing option. Route 110 even has some helpful Poochyena for us :)

Option 3 is...something I'm not sure many people remember about Pokemon Emerald, which is that Pokemon Emerald has Move Tutors scattered about. Most of the moves that don't require you to go to the Battle Frontier are pretty bad, but the tutor in Slateport has...

Swagger might seem like an odd choice for a strategy, but if we take a minute to look at Carvanha's stats:

Carvanha's sky high Attack stat and its absolutely ridiculously paper thin bulk make it a very prime Swagger target. Maybe if we're lucky we can even OHKO it. But Swagger by its nature is inconsistent: Swagger can miss, Confusion only has a 50% chance to work, and Carvanha does have a physical move (albeit: its Rage) to hit us with. We can use Double Team to try and shore up a bit of the luck, but it's a strategy that's prone to getting resets.

Reset Count: 9

Let's get the Thief reset out of the way quickly. It's not pretty, Carvanha pretty easily cleans our clock.

Next up is the Swagger strat and you might notice something: this Carvanha is a lower level. This is because this part of the game has two mandatory fights that come simultaneously with no time to heal in-between. We got past the first fight and the first Carvanha, easily OHKOd the Zubat with Confusion, and then lost to the second Carvanha. The Swagger strat has a lot of promise though.

One self-inflicted Confusion hit is enough to deal an incredible amount of damage to the Carvanha. I want you to keep this damage range in mind for later when I get past this.

Reset Count: 10

Next up is Struggle, and...

This is definitely not the play. Struggle at Level 20 is only a 2HKO to the Carvanha, and it triggers Rough Skin. If we could heal in-between the fights, this would maybe be an okay solution. But we likely won't OHKO the Zubat either, so this is a strategy that would require grinding.

Reset Count: 11

With these three on the table, I make the choice to go with a moveset of Confusion / Swagger / Double Team / Teleport.

Reset Count: 13

Ultimately its a very luck-based strategy. We take a couple of resets, but it doesn't take us that long until we push through and win the fight.

Now I have to come clean. I said there were three options, but that was only due to the fact that I hypertunneled on a reasoning mistake. I thought that these strategies were mutually exclusive. The best way to get this past, imo, is with a moveset of Confusion / Swagger / Double Team / Thief. If you remember when we tried Thief, it was a 5HKO unboosted, but the damage it did was more than enough to finish off a Carvanha that had hit itself in Confusion. Ultimately, using Thief to finish off weakened Carvanha could have prevented all of these resets had I considered it early on. But I only realized after I started looking through my screenshots again. That's an actual mistake I made in routing.

Getting past this fight opens up Route 110 to explore, and we have the next Rival battle, right? We even pick up Calm Mind at Level 21, which is an extremely powerful boosting move that we'll make a ton of use out of.

So I do win the fight, but I accidentally misjudged its trigger zone and went in without saving. That would have been pretty embarassing, just throwing more mistakes after each other. :V Calm Mind is just very good and the entire reason we do well.

Up the route however is two trainers who attempt to try and double battle you if you go to take the hidden Revive. One of them is the Pokemaniac who has a Lombre and a Nuzleaf, and unfortunately, while I do beat the Nuzleaf thanks to Swagger, I get paralyzed from Nature Power. I realized I was out of Paralyze Heals and I didn't want to use my Cheri Berries for that purpose since they're valuable as held items, so I go to make my way back to the Pokemon Center in Slateport. At this point I've replaced Teleport with Calm Mind, since I leveled up on the first Carvanha and needed Double Team for the second. So what happens?

I get stopped by a trainer that I had previously avoided, and my Ralts was both weakened and paralyzed, so the Aron really easily KOs it.

Reset Count: 14

This is a phenomenon I call "post-bottleneck play", where you get past a really tough obstacle and you're feeling good and off the hook, and as a result your play gets really sloppy. Big throwing good money after bad money here. We avoid making the same mistake in the future and arrive in Mauville City.

At this point I begin to think about what I want to do about Watson.

I was the most concerned about his Magneton, which is a Pokemon that has the potential to hard stonewall runs. It's bulky, incredibly strong, and loves to status you with Thunder Wave. It's one of those Speed control AI quirks, so while it's very predictable, it also makes Magneton extremely annoying.

I'm pretty confident that Confusion isn't a move that's going to be cutting it, so I decide to take the extra EXP in Watson's Gym and learn Psychic, replacing Double Team. This move has honestly really lived past its usefulness, and its extra bad against Watson since all of his Pokemon know Shock Wave.

The plan is simple. I'm going to set-up with Calm Mind, preferably once, and use Psychic to OHKO the Voltorb and the Electrike. The Magneton will likely be a 2HKO, and since it almost always uses Thunder Wave Turn 1, I can equip a Cheri Berry to recover from paralysis and get by scott free. Then I will hopefully also 2HKO the Manectric before it KOes me.

I run into a problem pretty quickly though.

Voltorb is actually faster than me at this level, so it can do a lot of damage with Spark and Shock Wave.

Reset Count: 15

An additional really frustrating complication is that it can damage me with Spark or Shock Wave, and then Turn 2 just decide to use Self-Destruct to KO Ralts. Out of all the Pokemon in the world I would ever expect to give me trouble, Voltorb was not it.

Reset Count: 16

I decide to do a little bit of optional trainer battles to the East to get up to Level 28 and try again. At this point it's a good time to bring up how the damage formula works briefly. Higher level Pokemon do more damage, but because of rounding errors thanks to Pokemon always truncating the decimal, the only levels you notice that level based damage boost are ones ending in 0, 3, 5, and 8, so when you're training to get past a powerful fight, these are the levels you want to aim for by default.

This time thanks to a lucky critical hit on the Magneton, we're able to get all the way to the Manectric, but it just KOes us with Quick Attack since we're at low HP.

Reset Count: 17

Unfortunately, as you can see from this earlier attempt, the Voltorb is just brutal. We need to set-up on it, but that allows it to do a ton of damage, and we're not getting past this fight on 25 HP. This is also ignoring that Static can paralyze you and eat your Cheri Berry, which is almost always another reset point.

With this in mind, it's time to train up to Level 30. If I was evolving my Ralts this playthrough, Gardevoir would easily handle this gym. Alas.

Also if you were worried about the lack of sloppy play, don't worry, we take a reset on Cycling Road to some really bad paralysis luck. 8)

Reset Count: 18

After getting to Level 30, we return to Watson. At this point I had high hopes because of Calm Mind, I was sure that the extra grinding would allow us to succeed.

So the game responds by handing me not one, but two resets caused by critical hit Sparks, which is really aggrevating. These type of resets suck because they don't really give you much information, they're just the game trolling you.

Reset Count: 20

This reset highlights what may be the actual most frustrating part of this fight though. If the Voltorb decides to start with Selfdestruct, and you try to use Calm Mind, Selfdestruct ends the turn after its used, and you lose your Calm Mind. It's really, really frustrating.

Reset Count: 21

Sometimes you get past the Voltorb with so little HP you know the fight can't be won anyways. This was a fight where I attempted a different strategy of using Psychic instead of trying to set-up on the Voltorb, and at Level 30, Psychic does not even OHKO. It's tragic.

Reset Count: 22

This was the farthest I got with Level 30: I found out that at +1, Psychic is not a 2HKO against the Magneton, and I'm not exactly finding the wiggle room for a second Calm Mind. It's time to take a minute and re-strategize, because this isn't working.

Reset Count: 23

No this strategy won't include you Imprison! Begone from my movepool!

Let's take a moment to actually learn what Voltorb's Speed stat is, shamelessly stolen from a Scott's Thoughts video (although this data exists elsewhere). 49 Speed would be a benchmark most reasonable Pokemon could easily hit with a Speed boosting nature, but Ralts is not most reasonable Pokemon. At level 30, we have 45 Speed, so we're going to need at least 2 levels I think to outspeed the Voltorb, and that's if we get a bit lucky with our Speed growth.

While there is maybe some discussion to be had about checking if the Voltorb is a roll with Psychic at Level 30, the simple matter is that Voltorb outspeeding us just introduces too much volatility. It can paralyze us with Spark or use Self-Destruct and do ridiculous amounts of damage, or it can even just crit us and do enough damage we won't have the HP to make it through the fight.

After absorbing the souls of every available trainer to this point, we hit level 32 and have 49 Speed. It's that blessed Slow growth rate coming back to haunt us yet again :D

We're going to need to grind up an additional level, a speed tie might work but I really want the damage rounding threshold that Level 33 provides just to make absolutely sure we don't miss OHKOing the Voltorb. Since we beat the Winstrate Family, we have access to the Macho Brace, so it's time to start thinking a little bit about of EVs.

....or well, it would be. But as a result of this project I've learned that tumblr posts have an image limit! So next time!

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brehaaorgana · 8 months

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24 and 26 for the weird questions for writers meme

24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

Oooh this is one of those things where like, I'm not sure? I think some of my most successful writing has been done with a plan and outline and I certainly did some research, but I tend to have the writer's flaw of spending too much time planning and prepping and not enough actually writing.

Or rather, I do the wrong kinds of in-depth prep like "oh I'm going to download 30 articles/stories/books related to x or y topic that is going to appear in this story," instead of like...writing an outline and gameplan, and then maybe choosing one or two things to reference to start and THEN going and writing the rough draft so that I can decide if I really need to keep prepping or worldbuilding or whatever.

It's very dangerous! I'm definitely the kind of person who can pick up dozens or hundreds of books/articles/etc and maybe write a paragraph which is actually detrimental to the actual writing. Lol.

26. How do you get into your character’s head? How do you get out? Do you ever regret going in there in the first place?

I think it's important to spend time thinking about how other (real) people think/react/navigate life and then try to understand how/why they did something or said something. It doesn't have to be a full psychoanalysis or anything like that, but like, looking at people around you and seeing what they value or don't, how they tick — that's how you can approach exercising your character writing skills.

It's also a good way to...how do I put it ...? — it's good to look at other people (especially strangers) in the world and consciously acknowledge their humanity to yourself, and consider what shaped them. They're not just a cast extra or a backdrop in your life for 5 minutes! They have massive internal worlds too. It's a sense of people-mindfulness. In the same way it's good to like, go out in nature and contemplate some real nice flowers or hear a birdsong and be fully in the moment, it's also good to casually people watch and be aware of fellow humans. (Not all of them will be great people. Sometimes someone is a total jerk in public and you gotta be like "what made them do THAT?" Lol)

And then once you've just observed people only by as they present themselves, you can go ahead and imagine more details about them, changing things as you go to practice character building. I think about central values & motives, but also speech style and how they carry themselves. I don't base original characters entirely on any person I've seen, but I use the same thought process as the exercise to flesh a character out. Y'know what is obvious about this character they show to the world? What is buried more deeply? Why do they act the way they do?

Once you have some of those ideas, then you use that to guide your character writing to "get in their head." Whatever their internal logic is, that should guide the character's actions. If you struggle with getting out of their head, it's usually a) you're writing a different character and need to better understand their internal compass/differentiate it more clearly, or, more frustrating, b) you might need to think about your own internal compass / how you tick and think more. I think knowing yourself helps you "get out," — I'm sure actors have probably written and made great advice for character bleed for this reason.

I don't tend to have the second problem though (where I'm unable to get away from a character's head). I don't think I've ever regretted a character headspace either. Maybe it's because I'm already used to thinking things that I know I don't actually feel or that I distance myself from? Like "that's not me, that's my Anxiety Brain talking. That's depression voice. I don't really feel x or y, that's an intrusive thought, and I can acknowledge I wouldn't do that thing." Lots of boundaries in my brain already, the fiction doesn't hold much ground lol.

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unitedbydevils · 8 months

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Match review: Tottenham Hotspur 2-0 Manchester United

Another game, another struggle, only this time we got the defeat we deserved.

Last time we played, we beat Spurs 2-0 in a performance that was one of the most controlled I've seen from a United team in years. It was clinical, efficient, and assured. Yesterday we saw quite the opposite.

United started brightly and were fair for the first 30 minutes, but as the first half wore on the tactical discipline - or perhaps just comprehension of Ten Hag's tactics - fell away.

Garnacho played like a youth prospect; without discipline or focus.

Antony was incredibly wasteful and drifted inwards so often it forced Bruno to move out wide right.

Casemiro and Martinez seem off the pace still.

Rashford does not want to be CF, for all he says he's happy to do it. He does not have the discipline or know-how.

Mason Mount - what he do?

The second half saw Postecoglou's Spurs sharper, and United fall away. The midfield battle was a whitewash, which put the defence on the back foot and left the forwards unable to have any impact.

Subs of Sancho, Eriksen and Dalot helped matters a little, and late additions of Martial and Pellistri didn't get much chance to impact, but all in all it felt like the end of the road for Erik Ten Hag's current strategy with this first XI.

Midfield cannot control a game at present. Amrabat, or even McTominay, might bring some balance to proceedings. The problem is Mount; he's an ideal rotation with Bruno, or a 10 if Bruno's an 8. We know the captain CAN play as an 8, so why is ETH not pushing that matter?

Beyond that, a lack of a CF is criminal. Greenwood shouldn't return but United also have an injured Højlund who's yet to make his debut (and is 20) and an Anthony Martial who is seemingly fit? but also as reliable as a Tory MP. Rashford is being asked to lead the line as a wing forward who likes to stretch a defence. Two different styles.

We face Arsenal soon but Nottingham Forest are next. Rashford left, Sancho right, Martial no9. Lets see how that works for us. Similarly, fucking buy Amrabat already. He's cheap. We're just bad at sales. Van de Beek's sale is dragging. Bailly is still here despite his fee being £0 for prospective buyers. Williams and McTominay might go. These are all tasks for the pre-season, not post-kick off. We should have the funds from these sales to bring in Amrabat and maybe Pavard. It's frustrating that we're still seeing shortages in the team.

I know, I know, Mount was £60m, you get Amrabat and Pavard for his fee. It's true. I still think he has a lot to offer though and needs time to bed in, to understand. He tries hard, has good technical skill, and I think will perform better than Antony's first season. Pressure is far higher at United than Chelsea though, especially after a tough year with injury, Chelsea's managerial merry-go-round... it's hard to settle mentally.

We're only two games in. This isn't disaster territory. It isn't as bad as last year either. Both our opponents had new manager bounce too. We just have to fix up quickly and click, because Arsenal and Brighton are in better shape than Spurs and will do a number on us. Maybe the old baptism of fire might galvanise the squad, but I don't back these lads under the cosh too much. Plucky game vs Barca? Sure. Underdog vibes, shit's exciting. League vs Brighton, who constantly trouble us? We'll panic or get frustrated and sulk our way out of a gameplan and into a 3-0 panning.

#manchester united #man u #man united #man utd #manchester reds #erik ten hag #marcus rashford #casemiro #lissandro martinez #antony dos santos #jadon sancho #tottenham hotspur #spurs #mason mount #bruno fernandes

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alexbkrieger13 · 1 year

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Definitely a weird 45'.

At first, it was very much a high-press by both teams aided by the long-ball. The midfield wasn't used much on either side. The gameplan was essentially to put the game away by a high press and breaking through the backlines. Both defenses have done a great job of falling back and cutting off any attack through 1-on-1 and help defense. The Magdalena and Mjelde CB duo have been outstanding in aiding this. Their clearances also have been great and they've saved our bacon way too many times to count.

Around the 33' is when AVWFC switched to controlling the midfield and there's when it really changed. Dali and Staniforth have done an excellent job in cutting of Cuthbert and Cankovic, forcing the pace to be at Villa's preference. They've done a great job of pushing forward from their back and midfield, which has forced Leupolz back and prevented her from being a true pivot. This has led to Kerr/LJ/Reiten being taken out of the game as we can't feed them from the midfield.

Lehmann and Nobbs have been really good today. Lehmann has been causing problems on the RW, but Magda did a fantastic job of cutting her off one-on-one and using Jess as her front and backing up Carter. Mjelde's help on the other side has allowed them to shut down the wings, Magda also has been helping in coverage.

It was like two games in one half. Chelsea was the first 30ish minutes. AVWFC the last 17 minutes. They're pretty much dead-even statistically, but when you watch, you can see that AVWFC is now targeting the weaker Chelsea midfield since the long-ball game wasn't working for them. Ward is very good.

Chelsea desperately needs a goal to allow them to continue to push and hide the midfield holes.

Yes again that's just been kind of stuck in the midfield maybe some change in the second half might help that I don't know but maybe but yeah a goal from Chelsea would really just settle things down I think because they know they need to go and you can see that in the end of the first half they were trying to do what they could but nothing thinking property about it so hopefully now so second half they do with the need to do and get it over and done with and not take this extra time or penalties

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captainericvgc · 1 year

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EPISODE II: CAPTAIN ERIC VS THE RUINOUS RULESET

I’d been planning to write about my thoughts about the Global Competition I that happened last weekend only for another GC to be up next weekend. This article also got eaten by when my computer restarted without my permission so thanks for that Windows update. The Team For the GC I used Clover Bell’s BaxBalance team. The only difference is Baxcalibur actually has Icicle Spear instead of Icicle Crash and I actually played a few games on Showdown with the team before I realized the mistake. I’m not going to go too much into detail about the team like a normally would because I didn’t build it! Credit goes to Clover Bell and you can check his explanation of the team here. I will say what drew me to this team as opposed to the other ones featured was Palafin. I’d seen Gavin Michaels use it to some success and it had been doing work in online tours. I never thought to use it because I didn’t like how telegraphed you had to be switching it out to bring in the Hero form but having watched EUIC, I could definitely stand to use Zero form more for damage. Results I went 10-4 in the GC which wasn’t bad and honestly if I did get so completely bamboozled by a Crabominable in one game and if Baxcalibur gets hit by Heat Wave instead of dodging it forever (which would’ve given me a Thermal Exchange boost which would have secured a knockout) I probably could’ve gone 12-2. Between friends having birthdays and meeting with my family for Easter I didn’t play all 45 matches which is kind of disappointing. I don’t think I would’ve been on Three Things 1. Practice Practice Practice I just straight up do not play enough Pokemon Showdown to be successful consistently at a high level. I did maybe 15-20 unfocused matches with the team before the GC. I won all but maybe 2 or 3 of them but I can’t tell you what my gameplan was on Team Preview or what my endgame plans were. I just was winging it way too much. I need to have the team flowcharted better especially since it seems like the core this team is built around is going to be dominant format in Reg C for a while. 2. Need More Damage One thing I really like about this team is that it is really hard to OHKO any of them and with even my average positioning skills, I always felt I had good options in the mid-to-end game to pivot too. That said the draw back to this is I felt like dealing damage was pulling teeth. Flutter Mane missed a KO on an enemy Flutter by maybe 2hp that could’ve cost me a match if the opponent didn’t time out. Palafin hits way harder than I thought it did and would and I don’t mind that Arcanine doesn’t hit so hard because it’s more of a support mon anyways, but I need more out of Flutter Mane and Baxcalibur and that’s something I’m going to test before this Global Competition which leads to... 3. Is Bax Him? I don’t feel I bring or use Baxcalibur that much anyways and I wonder if something better would go into that slot. I’ve considered Roaring Moon, Iron Hands and Kingambit for possible swaps. To be fair, Baxcalibur is great because of the immunity to burns keeps his attack rocking. It may be worth it to switch Loaded Dice for Clear Amulet and make a Dragon Dance and make him more imposing that way. Iron Hands can buy me turns with Fake Out and a slow Volt Switch to get Palafin in quicker and safer than having to do two hard switches or wait for a KO and then I can bring it back in immediate. Roaring Moon as an option would give me a faster attacker and the Protosythensis/Booster Energy/Acrobatics combination deals alot of damage. It could also in theory provide speed control with Tailwind or Damage mitigation with Breaking Swipe. Kingambit is a solid defensive Pokemon and would discourage opposing Intimidate users which would help make Palafin’s job easier and helps with enemy Flutter Mane. Up Next I’m competing in BauerdadVGC’s weekly tournament on Tuesday April 18th to close out my 32nd year on this planet. Then it’s gonna be a mad dash to trying to confirm my team for the GC on April 21-23.

#pokemon #vgc #vgc23 #vgc2023 #baxcalibur #flutter mane #amoonguss #arcanine #ting lu #palafin #iron hands #roaring moon #kingambit #article

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paganminiskirt · 2 years

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I'm sure you're going to get Joseph for the character bingo so......Swamp Rat Frankenstein Magneto?

……I will be wearing the fact that I knew exactly who that was without clarification like a badge of shame.

Okay, so. Heisenberg Resident Evil.

Free Space: NICK LIGHTBEARER MY BELOVED! He shares a VA with a character from We Happy Few! I feel like I should’ve guessed that, honestly; when I saw him in the trailer, for some reason I expected him to have a really thick western or southern accent, maybe because of the hat. But that voice actor does have a real talent for emotive, theatrical dialogue, which made the Lightbearer DLC one of the most memorable in the retinue and gave Heisenberg a believability that wasn’t guaranteed by his writing itself.

Heisenberg looms in the background of theoverarching narrative of RE8 very perceptibly, pulling strings behind the scenes throughout all three preceding regions. That in mind, I felt there was some wasted potential in terms of his contribution to the endgame narrative. For all the buildup around him and his role in the family, I think the story would've benefited from Heisenberg having a more significant role in the final arc of the game. There was something interesting going on with his whole revolutionary schtick, but after his boss fight he disappears from the narrative entirely. (Unless I’m mistaken, it’s been a while since I played.) Maybe the DLC will improve on that.

Maybe the DLC will also expand on the weirdness around his gameplan re: overthrowing Miranda in general. What the fuck does “use Rose’s power” mean, Karl? Are you gonna hook her up to your Chevy and run Miranda down with it? Stick her under an electric chair?

On that note: I love how hammy his dialogue is. "Let's settle this, mano e mano.” Fucking dork.

Also his model Joel Hicks is really hot. Like hideously. Profanely. Absurdly.

Minute character details are like catnip to me, and Heisenberg has them out the wazoo. The laziness reflected across the board, from the way he stands in the background smoking as his men dig up bodies in the concept art to the way he uses his magnetic abilities for everything, even things he could do easily. He stands like he’s half falling over from the effort. Love it.

His factory is one of the most well-designed sets in the entire game. It’s utterly disorienting, a maze of parts and creatures that blend into each other & overlap, but it also gives the appearance of being designed with a plan in mind; like it’s actually being used. The assembly line corpses, the vaulted ceilings, the x-rays on the walls, the red lights everywhere, the bodies of water interspersed with everything. “Dilapidated factory that’s been repurposed to produce mechanical zombies” is a very particular aesthetic, and RE8 made it work very well. I wanna run around touching everything.

#asks #margridarnauds #resident evil 8 #karl heisenberg

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happy-tori-friends · 16 hours

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As promised, here are our four main mascots! Is the art good? Absolutely not, I don't know how to anatomy. Is it better than my average art? Maybe, because I didn't rage quit. As for the bunny's name, not counting my own vote but counting a vote from a twitter poll, Buttercup is the winner.

After this my current to do list is to reblog platonic / familial prompts, do some tag organization and add a link to the tags list to my pinned post, do the prompt in the inbox (and anymore prompts/asks that may come before I finish it), finish the next part of Backyard Bonds, another check of the inbox if anything is there, and then get to work on one more aspect of magical warrior AU, whether it be transformation trinkets, transformed names, or like an actual plot (I thiiink I've decided on them being in high school, though with Disco and Pop being older family friends that Flippy confides in a lot + he babysits Cub. This is tentative. Do not bank on this). This may take me two days. It may take me a month. My priorities might even change. But for now, let's get into our mascots.

Lucky

Lifty and Shifty's mascot, a fox fairy. A fairly laid back genius who can be very sneaky and sly at times. His motivation for finding heroes was mostly because he thought he could get something out of it, though saving the world is a pretty good bonus too. Lucky is willing to bribe and trick people, and prefers to laze around all day. He also likes shiny things, and has a tendency to pull things out of thin air, as well as taking things he likes. He tries to hide his true feelings behind a cool and collected mask, especially when he actively tries to help others, but he can be quite obvious when hiding things so he often gets caught.

(Don't ask about the logic of a medallion on his scarf. I don't know why I did that. Also the clovers in his eyes suck.)

Sky

Splendid's mascot, a dog fairy. A high-energy and loyal companion who is enamored by the very concept of being a hero. This love for heroics was what spurred her to take on the duty of finding people to help defeat the monsters plaguing the world. Sky is very excitable, and can be a bit of a blabbermouth. She is very affectionate, though she has troubles with boundaries at times, getting caught by her own excitement. She enjoys cheering others on and being encouraging. Sky can also be a bit of an airhead at times, and when she has free time, she loves to play.

(NOOOO THERES AN UNCOLORED PIXEL THAT I CAN'T FIX *DIES*)

Ember

Splendont's mascot, a cat fairy. A stoic and cold type that usually moves with calculated and graceful movements. His motivation for finding heroes is simply because he wanted to help in some way. Behind his cold exterior, he has a warm heart and cares greatly for those around him. Ember isn't very confident in himself, and struggles with expressing himself. He harbors a lot of self-doubt, and is very pessimistic, worrying that the battles will never end. Despite everything, Ember is a caring companion and, even with his struggles, a sharp mind that can help to come up with a gameplan.

Buttercup

Flippy/Fliqpy's mascot, a rabbit fairy. A gentle and caring sweetheart, she can be absolutely vicious when it comes to getting revenge, especially when a friend is hurt. Her motivation for taking on the duty of finding heroes was the death of her friend at the hands of the mastermind behind the evil plaguing the world. Buttercup is usually sweet and kind, always checking up on others and maling sure they're okay, but she tends to hold grudges for a long time. She is also willing to protect and defend others with everything she has, and will stop at nothing to get revenge when she or her friends are hurt or wronged.

#tori talks #magical warrior au #tori art #the eyes kinda bug me a lil but thats okay #im gonna go reblog some prompts and then play video games for a bit yippee #i will do tags after dinner #this is scheduled btw #uh. so the uh. prompt reblogs are already done #lucky 🍀#sky ⭐️#ember ♦️#buttercup 💛

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