#but making them fetch quests in dai sucked so much as if that game needed more padding

[dragonologist-phd]

Man I miss the DAO specialization methods, I hope they bring back that type of thing in DA4. I wanna become a blood mage by making a deal with a demon. I wanna become a reaver by joining up with a dragon cult. I wanna become a duelist by meeting a pirate in a random brothel.

Even the less wild ones are really good! Getting close enough to your companions that they teach you their unique skills? I love it!

It’s just so much more interesting and engaging than doing random fetch quests or being purely mechanical

#I get da2 was a rush job and dai did at least include companion reactions #but making them fetch quests in dai sucked so much as if that game needed more padding #I just love when the mechanics are incorporated into the story and it feels like an actual character choice #it’s neat #this rambling brought to you by me remembering how much I enjoy Isabelas cameo in dao #dragon age #q

[certainempatheticturkeymuffin]

Age of Calamity Review

Hey! I wasted three hours of my life writing this in Arlo's comment section and part of it had to be cut out because of Youtube's word limit, so y'all get to suffer with me.

Here's the video that I wrote this on, give him some love, his opinion is a great juxtaposition to my own!

There are a few weird formatting errors because tumblr wants me to make new paragraphs, but there's no missing words as far as I can tell.

_

I like it, but I like the first one better, mainly for the appearance. I don't know why, but the pop ups are hard for me to see (by pop-ups I mean the challenges and weak point meters, the out of battle menu is actually pretty good, though I admit the text is a little small on the opening screen), and the lack of saturation makes it hard for me to see. Actually, that might be it, I just don't like the paler color palette in this context, since for a fast paced game I kind of need to be able to see, which I can't because I'm partially blind, and glasses have a glare that's an annoying trade off. Compare that to the original Hyrule Warriors, the weak point meters are brightly colored and change color the more you damage it, which is good for those with visual impairment who need some extra feedback to judge their next actions. The menu was also this aged tan color which provided a great contrast that wasn't the blinding white on top of dark blue, which wasn't bad at all, but the buttons and text were always big enough for those with visual impairment to see, though I will admit that the little pop ups with all the people crying out for help have a bit of the same issue as AoC. I think I just like the more vibrant colors of Hyrule Warriors in the context of a faster game, rather than the pale beauty of BotW, since my eyes can't really see what's going on if the colors aren't at least comparable to what you'd find in Minish Cap or Triforce Heroes. I can see fine in BotW during the day time, but at night, well, I just run and hope for the best, trying not to get killed by an electric keese, which is also a problem in AoC, mainly Zora's Domain; I could barely see a thing and it negatively impacted my experience.

I've got hundreds of hours in HW, and maybe five or ten in AoC. It's mainly because I just don't like how it looks. I've heard a lot of people say that it looks pretty much exactly like botw and...I have to disagree. A lot of areas are pretty perfect, but some, like the tower, are just a little off in a way I can't describe. That's a personal irrelevant nitpick though, but it negatively impacted my experience, so I thought it was worth a mention, the tower on the opening screen always annoyed the crap out of me, every time I see it I just want to exit the game because ew.

The gameplay is fine, and thank goodness for the addition of the meditation room, there's not a feature like that in the original, so I had to play the first stage over and over again to figure out new combos, I think Mipha is my favorite hero that I actually unlocked (though I've been wanting to play more just to see if I can control Revali and Teba like I can Fi (which makes her insanely good since her wide area of movement is the only thing you need to account for)), and I think Zelda is my least favorite, since she's a little clunky for my taste (Daruk is too, but his rolling makes that more bearable). I was a little disappointed with Impa, but her seal thing is kinda like Zelda's and Fi's thing in Hyrule Warriors (there are probably stronger connections, but I'm not experienced with every single hero), and I think it was just the hype that she got. She's not the type of character I like to play, since Zelda and Fi are my favorites, speedy and nimble area clearers (Sheik and Marin are cool too, I just have less experience using Marin, and Sheik is always a B pick since I find them a little harder to control with less area of impact), which meant that Mipha, a character I admittedly was never attached to, became one of my favorites in the game. Impa wasn't an area clearer for the most part, she had a few moves that could do that, but she was mainly a boss-killer to me, Mipha though? She's great, set up a few waterspouts and everything dies.

I do like that they've lessened the kind of ridiculous amount of items that were in HW, and that they didn't try to strong arm fairies in, because that system was the most annoying thing in the world and so poorly explained that I had to watch the same tutorial three times over about once a month because it was so convoluted.

I do hate the runes though, I just, couldn't seem to use them right. It might just be me, but I found trying to use them weird. It's a little hard to explain, but it's probably just a me thing. Not only that, but I found the inclusion of the rods on top of the runes annoying. The rods were entirely unnecessary if you were going to use runes. They just added another layer that was thin at best, not to mention that I found them hard to use as well. I hated the weird controls of the targeting system. I don't think there's anything wrong with a basic hack and slash, and if you're not going to have the excessive amount of items, runes were a good idea i think it might've been a me issue, but rods? It seems a bit excessive. It's probably just a "you'll get better with practice" kind of thing, which, fair, most people can't use Fi like I can, so that makes sense. I figured it was worth a mention anyway since the runes were a constant source of annoyance and I used the rods twice before never bothering again because I hated them so much.

I do like the addition of healing from food drops whenever you want though. In the original if there was a dropped heart but you were at full health, sucked to be you, going back for it when you need it would waste time. The plot is still as weird as ever though (from what I've heard from other videos and such), which is fine, since I tend to play my favorite levels over and over rather than actually do anything plot relevant (can you believe that it took me over a year to finish the story of HW because I kept getting distracted by letting Fi and Zelda mow down everything in the Adventure maps and challenges? I literally got the boomerang like six months after

getting the game. It's perfect for people with ADHD I swear) though I am extremely disappointed with the fact that they took the cheap way out, it's a kid's game and a nintendo game, what did I expect? For them to let everyone actually die? Nope...though honestly, I can't comment on the overall amazingness of the plot they went with because...er....I only did Mipha's and Daruk's stages before just losing interest, so I'm not the person you want to ask about any story criticism, because that would be pure conjecture and utterly pointless.

The customization of heroes, now that's great. It's a weird system that I needed to google a lot for, but it's absolutely brilliant and I love it. Sure, getting the specific seals I want is a little annoying, but it's a great mechanic and I love it.

I probably should've said this earlier, but I'm comparing it mainly to Hyrule Warriors rather than BotW because AoC's a Warriors game and thus plays more like Hyrule Warriors than BotW, and BotW has a different set of standards due to being an open-world game. I'm still salty about the plot though, so I guess there's your comparison.

Also, I absolutely ADORE the fact that you can track materials. Not having to google which stage gives me which material is just the best. And the fact that the side quests have little blurbs, absolutely fantastic. We didn't get that in HW, but then again, once you finished the main story, the rest was just, Have Fun and Kill Everything, which is great, and I love it, but adding in a weird ingredient fetching quest with a nugget of lore is kinda cool. I don't wish we got it in HW though, since, as aforementioned, there was no way to track which material came from which stage, so that would've made it a nightmare.

The Divine Beasts....I hated them, they were literally just time wasters, and, granted I only did Rudania and Ruta before dropping the game, I just hated them. The UI was horrendous and even Ganon's Fury was better, and I absolutely DESPISE Ganon's Fury. Once I finished them, I was just happy for them to be over and never bother with them again. I hated their controls, I hated the cramped paths, I hated how I couldn't really turn and see anything, and honestly, I commend the champions for being able to control these bulky slow and absolutely horrible machines.

On the music, I think it's good. I loved BotW's soundtrack, I loved Zelda 2's soundtrack, I loved Wind Waker's soundtrack, I loved Cadence of Hyrule's soundtrack, I loved Hyrule Warriors's soundtrack, I loved Minish Cap's soundtrack, Triforce Heroes, Spirit Tracks (you're lying if you say otherwise, this soundtrack is a bop and I will actually fight you), etc etc, and this one is no different, though I will admit it did a pretty good job of having me ignore it, though that may have been more due to my frustration at the rods and runes and Zelda and Daruk more than actually having an unimpressive soundtrack.

Personally, it didn't do much for me, I can't get over the color palette, the mechanics, the divine beasts. I had pretty average, maybe a bit high, expectations, but they weren't quite met. I played it for a few hours one day, dropped it, picked it up again a few months later, then remembered exactly why I dropped it. I think the original Hyrule Warriors is just better visually for me, even if the plot isn't great or it's a bit fanfictiony, it had depth in combat that didn't absolutely annoy me, and the annoying battles were usually optional, and the bosses had variety, which is a fault mainly of BotW and was just an inherited problem for AoC, and I'm not a completionist, I don't want to have to complete anything with Darunia or Cia, so I don't unless I have to to progress something, which means that I don't stress about the gargantuan amount of content in HW.

IN SUMMARY: I've never had problems with frame rate (though I play docked due to visual impairment), and if you're visually impaired, wear anti-glare glasses because the pale colors aren't going to help much. I haven't found an option to make text bigger. The soundtrack is good,

there isn't much boss variety (not AoC's fault, but it's still there), the meditation room is great, the runes take a bit of getting used to, as do the rods(i never got used to them), Divine Beasts tank performance in all aspects and are just disappointing, you actually know which stage drops which item, and there's no My Fairy (which is definitely a positive).

To slap on an arbitrary rating that only means something to me: 4.5/10

It's a good game if you can get passed the issues that bug ME to no end.

And there we have it. There goes....holy crap I spent three hours on

I wanted to like this, I really did, and I'm glad others enjoy it, but as it stands, I'll let y'all move on to Age of Calamity, and I'll stick to my handy dandy Hyrule Warriors ice cream with a dash of Breath of the Wild, a sprinkle of Cadence of Hyrule, and a Zelda 2 cherry on top. It's not like I have to wait long for Subnautica; hopefully that doesn't disappoint me too much, I preordered this one. Actually, I get Pokemon Snap today too, hopefully it isn't a SwSh level disappointment, AoC is magnitudes better than SwSh at a 4.5

this????? Three hours of my life. Gone.

#age of calamity #loz #hyrule warriors #review #game review #zelda botw #age of calamity review #hw aoc #aoc #botw #aoc spoilers #legend of zelda #breath of the wild #late review #like several months late #who cares #visual impairment #gaming

[suffering-and-happy-about-it]

Nicole's Rambling: The Avengers Problem (for PS4)

Let's start with the usual chanting: ❗this is my opinion, it's biased as hell (since I grew up with Marvel comic books and movies) and you don't have to agree❗

I was wondering why Avengers game gets so hated... So I took a look and I played it myself. Let’s have a look.

SPOILERS AHEAD

First off: the game isn't in any way horribly bad. It's just a button smasher with a story that has its good and bad beats. It's not memorable at all, but it could've gone way more downhill in my opinion.

At the start of the game, you meet the mighty Avengers through child fan's eyes - it's pure fanservice and let's be honest, it's dope. It was sweet, but pretty dragged, to be honest. I really didn't need to play as all five Avengers (HAWKEYE IS MISSING, AGAIN) in the first hour of the game, but sure, why not?

For the most part, you see the squad through Kamala Khan's eyes. For those who might have not a clue who the hell Kamala is; I am not wondering about why you don't know who the hell she is. She's a Marvel heroine who outed in 2013 and who will have her own spinoff on Disney+.

And again, Ms Marvel is fine, but not memorable at all. I've never, until this day, met anyone who would say that 'Ms Marvel is my favourite superhero'. I was halfway through the game before I even realized it's Ms Marvel - AFTER SHE PULLED HER DAMN COSTUME OUT. That can be due to my utter ignorance or because I heard of her so little that I can count it on my fingers. In all honesty, I loved Kamala as the story progressed, the gal's not bad at all - but as the whole game, she had good and bad beats. There were times where I wished to play as Iron Man and the game forced me to play as her... Whatever.

Let's look at the three problems I have with this game and three positives I found in the game:

0. (Technically zero since it's a personal problem of mine) The soundtrack and the voice actors:

By any means, I am not trying to say they should hire RDJ for the role of Iron Man and Mark Ruffalo for the role of Banner... But it was so hard to distinguish the voice of Nolan North (For example: Nathan Drake x Iron Man) and Troy Baker (Samuel Drake x Bruce Banner). For me, as for a PS4 gamer, it's annoying to hear the same voices again and again in every game I am genuinely excited about (Idk how Xbox players are familiar with them). Of course, there's even Laura Bailey as the Black Widow; I feel like these are the three only people who do voice acting for games these days and sure, I should've seen that coming.

Side note: Nolan North is not a good fit for Iron Man in the slightest in my opinion, but if you like his Iron Man, that's cool as well!

The soundtrack... M A N, the soundtrack. When I heard Marvel gave a green light to the Avengers game, I expected to hear at least the iconic Alan Silvestri's 'The Avengers'. Problem with this is simple: Marvel had spoiled its consumers with good and memorable soundtracks (don't you tell me you don't remember as they all gathered for the first time). Since it was Marvel itself who gave the green light for this project, which was supposed to be based loosely on the movies' and comic book success, I hoped to get all of it.

It's not Iron Man when AC/DC song isn't playing in the background as he flies through a canyon for his life. I mean, Iron Maiden are fine; but come on. COME ON. It's not the same. It's not the Avengers (WITHOUT HAWKEYE) without their significant theme.

1. IT. BUGS. ALL. THE. TIME and the combat is incredibly repetitive:

When I was little, I was a rage gamer. I could barely play Crash Bandicoot or Rayman without losing my cool. Since then, I grew up, skilled and etc. I try not to rage when playing games since it's simply not worth it.

But when you're replaying a boring mission for the tenth part and you're almost over and SUDDENLY, the game bugs out and you lose control over the character (it starts running in circles, etc.) it sucks shit. And don't let me start on the minor bugs. Like when you don't cross the platform by one pixel and the game doesn't let you make combos when you're in the air and bug into a tree when you bug into a wall, a rock, fucking nothing... Bruh. It was released in August, shouldn't these bugs be fixed by now? The game is fucking broken, hoes. It barely feels like a game ready to launch at times.

When you're so lucky that you don't bug out in the middle of doing something, the combat... It isn't bad. It's not terrible, but the Avengers deserved something better. It didn't deserve mediocre combat that repeats itself in every level. Once you find yourself good combo, you're done for. You can use it to finish the game if you will.

2. There's too many missions, too much information and too much things player has to understand if he wants to play the game properly:

Okay, this might seem to be a little confusing; I didn't understand the game system at all when I first ran it on my PS4. There's story missions, HARM training sessions, daily missions for particular heroes, faction missions (SHIELD, Pym, Stark, etc.) and character-side-story missions, and a lot more.

Trust me, it doesn't sound that hard, but once you open the map menu for yourself... Oh boy, that's a different story. And if it only was the map menu. The inventory and such aren't too collected all together either. Before you can safely tell what is what, it will take you at least a whole afternoon. Also, the fact that game just spills it on you just like that, one thing after another, it doesn't help the overall feel.

On top of that, there are MULTIPLE currencies in the game; some even involve microtransaction. It mostly is involving the customization of the Avengers, so it's not THAT big of a deal; you can get one currency by collecting boxes and stuff, but it takes ages before you can buy one single thingy.

Also, if you would like to get stuff (very useful stuff) from factions (SHIELD and Pym mainly), you have to do in-factions daily quests, which usually require to do a certain amount of things as a particular hero (you can do some quests with Ms Marvel only, some with Black Widow, it usually involves the damage dealt while playing as a character etc.). And if you forget to fetch these minies? Well, no faction points for you, bucko.

The system feels overall too complicated in the begging and even after finishing the game, I am not certain by some.

3. The gameplay of the one and only... Natasha Romanov, and the entirety of Steve Rogers:

Right off the bat: IT. SUCKS. SHIT.

This was your shot in opening our mouths and showing why Black Widow BELONGS to the Avengers in the first place. Like, sure, storywise you proved the point, but gameplaywise... That's a different story.

Out of the bunch, Natasha feels the slowest, most clumsy and overall not too pleasant to play as. Mainly is because her attacks do... Nothing. The gun reloading is basically constant when I have to put it simply and it takes about 3-5 seconds for her to even reload; which can be a matter of life and death inside the game. Sure, she can make herself invisible; but that's like... It. It's not that it would be suffering when you are forced to play as Nat... But not a pleasant experience either.

On the other hand, maybe it's just me. I have friends who told me the same about her gameplay, but maybe there's someone who enjoys the Black Widow. It's my personal with the entirety of the gameplay.

Steve, on the other hand, isn't hard to play as. It's just fucking boring. At the start of the game, I couldn't wait to play as Steve's character. He seemed to be awesome - Jesus fuck, how could I be so wrong? As I said, he's incredibly boring and dry, his skills would do the same amount of work if they even weren't there. I think that Rogers is there just for the shock value (as a value that doesn't even work in the slightest) and nothing more.

As you learn to do the tricks and combos with them, it gets slightly better and skill tree and equipment upgrades can help almost unnoticeable... But really, Steve and Natasha are the absolute worst.

Now the reasons why the game convinced me it isn't a hot mess as I initially thought:

1. The characters, dynamics, chemistry and the overall story:

Sure, it is mainly a basic plotline, a cookie-cutter one, full of cliché - Avengers have to regroup after a traumatic event and you're the one who has to find them and bring them together.

Yet it is quite interesting; the game leads you to believe that Steve Rogers is dead after an event called the 'A-Day' (which you won't believe even if the game does the hardest to make you to, constantly remaining you that 'Oh boy, Cap died, did you know that?') and the Avengers had left to exile because they were considered as big bad for the people and the country. They have their emotional baggage and the banter between Banner and Stark (though it ends too soon), is just the thing that makes them human and relatable.

Even the villains are quite compelling; not like ultra super convincing, but the game can turn around when you least expect it to; which is definitely a huge plus.

The characters were done GOOD. The dialogues are full of personality and jokes you'd expect from each one of them; Banner is a wallflower cutie, Tony fishes for compliments all the time, Natasha is the big independent woman she always was and Thor? CHEF'S KISS, I swear. It hits the Shakespearean vibe perfectly and at the same time, he still is charming and quite funny to hang around.

Every time you can listen to a chit-chat between two characters, it is a great pleasure for you as a Marvel fan. Also, I need to say that regardless of my personal issue with the dub (regarding Tony and Bruce; since they're the people you spend most of your time with), the dialogues for these two characters are on point without a doubt. And I kinda grew fond of the in-game Bruce Banner throughout the course of the game, to be honest.

There are references, jokes, inside jokes, one-liners... The dialogue was done amazingly and that's a huge   T H A N K   Y O U  to the developers.

2. The mind-blowing gameplay of... Tony Stark and Thor and AI, while not being too bright, getting stronger as you do:

In what the Natasha gameplay lacks, these two give you exactly what would you expect and way, way more than you'd ask for. Again, it mainly reflects the personal gameplay preferences of the player; let me tell you why I think these gameplays are, in my opinion, the best.

a) Tony's gadgets and weaponry: The suit itself is bloody brilliant. Once you master the ability to attack and fly at the same time, you have the moments when you can not only feel like Iron Man - but really be Iron Man. It's not even that your gameplay would suddenly become 10x easier; it significantly becomes funnier.

b) Thor's heavy fist-to-fist and Mjolnir preferences: the Mjolnir is bloody brilliant as well. Thor's combat is mainly physically based, but when you want to throw the hammer around like the madman you are, you can suit yourself. You can use the lightning if you please and you can fly if this style of combat suits you. It's all in your hands. Thor can take quite a bit of damage, which is significantly supporting you in this style. If you accidentally drop Mjolnir? Well, call it back and smash them!

Also, regarding the AI... As I said, they're certainly not the brightest sparks in the flame; yet thanks to the power getting bigger as you level up and continue with your story and a huge variety of enemies - from turrets to flying men with flamethrowers. It is just button smasher, but a pleasing one in this regard, I must say.

3. The fanservice to comic book fans, movie fans and loyalty to the property:

As one IGN review once said... "This game makes you feel like Batman." And this game more or less accomplished it as well, but diluted and stripped down. Of course, in no way I can compare this to the masterpiece to the Arkham saga; these games are brilliant.

But there are moments when the game can just drag you inside the story and tell you: "You're Iron Man now, boss. It's in your hands." And it's there. I think the only issue was that the team of devs just took too big of a bite. I wouldn't mind stand-alone titles emerging into one and big Avengers game. That would be fun as well and I would spend my time with it gladly.

To end it: it's a mess, but a good mess you might like. If I was to rate it, would be 5.1/10 Wait until it is on sale, don't rush it. I'm overall disappointed and I most likely will forget I have ever played it.

#avengers #marvel's avengers #avnegers ps4 game #avengers game #black widow #captain america #iron man #ms marvel #the incredible hulk #nicole's rambling #thor #WHERE DID YOU LEAVE CLINT #WHERE IS HE #Marvel Comics #why the fuck did you do

[the-baticeer-extraordinaire]

The Last of Us Part 2

So, I finished it a couple of days ago, and I’ve been thinking a lot about it. I spent about three days playing, and I plan to play it again soon. I have some Thoughts ™ about it that I decided to share, but be aware -- there are major spoilers all throughout this post! You’ve been warned! 

It’s broken into three sections: what I loved, what I hated, and what I’m mixed about. Discussion is welcome. :)

What I Loved:

In the first game, you get to see Ellie's experience with the world outside of the QZ - and most of it is new to her. She grew up in the QZ, raised by Fireflies. She doesn't know much about the world before the outbreak, but you get to see her learn about it. You see her grow up and mature in this new, violent world and the toll that it has on her. In TLOU2, she's an adult now with friends who all grew up in this new world - they don't have the experience with the old like Joel or Tommy or Maria, so they are learning as they go. They've only experienced THIS world. I really enjoy listening to their conversations about what the world is like to them, trade stories about their wildly different experiences, and point out things they find odd about the old world. For example:

Ellie grew up in a QZ, but Dina did not. They trade stories about what it was like - particularly, the horrors of living in a QZ.

Ellie and Dina comment on Joel's love for coffee, saying they didn't "get it" as it tasted awful.

Ellie and Dina discuss the first time they killed a "non-infected" and the circumstances that caused it; it's clearly something very emotionally important to them, especially as they were young. It's also likely that this is the reality for all kids growing up after the outbreak. They don't get the privilege of knowing a life where they don't have to kill others to survive.

When Jesse and Ellie stumble upon a bookstore with a kid's section, Jesse can't believe they decorated the kids area with mushrooms. Ellie says that they must have had a different meaning to people before the outbreak, and in her journal, she notes that people used to think that mushrooms were cute.

Lev points out that a kid's bedroom is painted to look like nature but that it isn't realistic, and Abby tells him that it's more a "dream-like version" meant to be cute and commonly painted by parents for their kids. She tells Lev that her own father painted her a jungle.

The uncertainty of knowing whether or not Ellie knew that Joel had lied. I had always hated that Joel chose to lie to Ellie, but I had always suspected that Ellie must have some idea. I liked the gradual revelation that she did know, that Joel had finally fessed up. There were moments when someone would ask her if she had any idea why that group would kill Joel, and I'd be saying, "Because Fireflies" but then I would have to think "Ohhh, but Ellie doesn't know that!" Because you couldn't be sure that she did until the flashback reveals.

I felt like the strained relationship between Ellie and Joel resulting from the lie makes perfect sense; Ellie placed all value of her life on being the cure, and it must have been devastating for her to hear that she could have lived up to that perceived value if it weren't for his actions. Shitty actions of the Firelfies and the unrealism of a mass cure aside, Ellie must have felt insanely betrayed by the person she trusted most. The growing gap between the two of them and her pushback against his helicoptering makes absolute sense, even if it's sad. If Ellie had just blindly accepted it without some kind of anger or betrayal, I'd have been really disappointed.

Despite the lie and knowing what he had done, she still felt a sense of injustice enough to pursue his killer. In her journal, she notes that she had suspected Fireflies all along, so she knows why they came and why they killed him.

At first, I really hated playing as Abby. I knew immediately from Abby and Owen's conversation on the cliffs that she intended to find and kill Joel, and I wasn't surprised because even though I hadn't seen any spoilers prior to playing, I fully expected Joel to die in this game. It just made sense to me that Ellie would be on a violent rampage to avenge Joel, so it wasn't hard to connect. But playing as Abby, ESPECIALLY after Joel's death, was really hard to swallow. I couldn't really get behind playing as Joel's killer, as I adored Joel as a character and I had a lot of hate for her. As I played through her scenes, I started to realize that Abby and Ellie are kind of two sides to the same coin. Both grew up in and are navigating this "survival at all costs" kind of world, both are the sort to go to the extreme to seek revenge, and both are deeply hurting from the loss of their fathers. I was slow to really appreciate seeing Abby's perspective, but in the end, I got to see qualities of Abby that I liked, even if I didn't care for her overall. It reminded me that people aren't all good or all bad - they're more of a mixed bag.

Ellie is a child in the first game, and so it's not really surprising that she doesn't really make a lot of life-altering decisions for herself. She goes with Joel and Tess because Marlene says so, and she goes with Joel because what other choice does she have? And in the end, neither Joel or the Fireflies give her a choice in her situation - she's just dragged along to whatever they think is best for her. The sequel is different - Ellie is an adult who lives on her own and makes her own decisions. She pushes back when she feels Joel meddling, and it makes sense considering how he took control of her situation before. So, Ellie's actions have a lot more weight, and she's actually responsible for them. What I love is that Ellie is unquestionably herself - even when I, the player, felt like she was doing something wrong, it was her choice to make. It makes her character all the more human that she's not some righteous saint getting revenge for Joel's death. She makes mistakes and does things that are morally questionable. It makes her like everyone else - someone who has both good and bad.

Lev. All things Lev.

Through Ellie's perspective alone, you don't get much insight about the conflict between the Wolves and the Seraphites in Seattle. Abby's perspective offers more, and it makes sense. Ellie is a visitor and unfamiliar with the territory, but it seems Abby has been a part of the Wolves for a while. It's clear that the tension has grown increasingly more violent recently, and you get to see all of that erupt with Isaac ordering an attack to wipe out the Seraphites. What's interesting to witness is that as you progress through Abby's story, you get to see the flaws of both groups and the atrocities committed by both. The real tragedy is that neither of the groups can set aside their differences to say that it's okay to live differently - instead, they constantly fight and kill each other. The Seraphites are convinced that the Wolves are sinful and need to be put down. The Wolves say the Seraphites are freaks and need to be culled. Neither side is willing to try another truce - instead, they subscribe to the "survive at all costs" idea, and the cost is the other side - who they clearly don't see as human. This is especially clear when you see how quick they are to turn on each other for "stepping out of line" like when Lev shaves his head, Danny attacks Owen for not being able to kill an old man, and Isaac is willing to kill Abby for trying to stop the Wolves from killing Lev.

Once Lev and Abby start running together, Lev constantly corrects Abby's use of "Scars" - the name that the Wolves call the Seraphites. This seems very important to Lev, and once you run into Seraphites with him, you understand his insistence as they continuously deadname him. Lev didn't give up his beliefs when be fled the Seraphites, and it's important to him that Abby not disrespect him in that way. Even more telling is that while Abby continues to use Scars for a bit, she eventually becomes more respectful and uses Seraphites instead - something that his own tribe couldn't do for him.

Holy fuck, I am in love with the aquarium. When playing as Ellie, the place had a super creepy vibe, so I wasn't feeling it. But I was genuinely excited every time I got to visit it as Abby because I LOVE that place. Except for the last time. That sucked.

Not only could you pet dogs, but you could play fetch with them, too. That's fucking awesome. 

I went into the game expecting an established relationship with Ellie and Dina, but I'm really glad I got to witness it blossom. I actually really loved how playful they were with each other, but also how comforting they could be for each other. All the little looks and touches filled my little bi soul with all sorts of warmth and happiness.

Ellie's inability to sleep, her flashbacks, and the note she makes in her journal about finally having a day that she forgets about Seattle all point to the traumatic damage that Joel's death and her revenge quest did to her. When Tommy confronts her about pursuing Abby again, Ellie seems to completely shut down at the idea, and Dina has to take control of the situation. I like the fact that they show the cost of Tommy and Ellie’s vigilante justice, like Ellie’s PTSD, Dina having to take care of Ellie on top of taking care of JJ, the failure of Maria and Tommy’s marriage, or Jesse’s parents having to live with the loss of Jesse. Similarly, Abby sees the same kind of consequences to her pursuit of revenge: she sees the loss of her Firefly friends -- something she clearly hadn’t expected to happen.

For the most part, I didn’t care much about Abby’s friends. I got pretty into Owen’s story, until he was perfectly okay with leaving Mel and his unborn child and running off into the sunset with Abby. I’m not sure how I felt about Mel in the end, and I hated Nora and Manny. However, I really did like to see their perspectives, and I especially liked seeing how much some of them struggled with Abby’s vengeance and torture of Joel. I felt like it gave me a bigger picture of the consequences of Joel’s actions at the end of the first game (and we all had to know there would be SOMETHING).

All of the cutscenes showing Ellie and Joel’s relationship over the years were an absolute delight (even the not so nice ones) because I fully expected to be able to have more Joel and Ellie interaction before his death. I’m sad we didn’t get that, but happy that I could still explore their dynamic through flashbacks. Don’t even get me started on the birthday flashback because I have so much love for that entire scene and will probably replay it more than any other part of the game.

The attention to detail in the environment was so stunning. In one the of the apartments in Seattle during Abby’s playthrough, I saw a tabletop RPG set-up and immediately screenshotted it and sent it to my gamer friend group. All of the lore notes you could pick up and read through with stories about FEDRA, Seraphites, or Wolves really hammered home the idea that each group was at fault for their predicament and contributed to the overall tension and bloodshed. I love the theme that no one is blameless, because in the post-apocalyptic setting, you really wouldn’t expect anyone to be completely innocent. Even going to view the models in extras, you can zoom in and see the level of detail they added -- like JJ actually has blemishes on his face in the one where Dina is holding him. I fucking love it, man.

What I Hated:

When you play through Abby’s story and finally get to the confrontation, the player actually has to continue to play as Abby and attack Ellie. This seemed like a particularly cruel set-up, given that most of the player base is playing this game because they loved Ellie and wanted to continue playing her story. I’ve seen comparisons of the encounter to that of Ellie and David in the first game, but I don’t feel like it’s the right comparison. The mechanics were the same, yes, but the situation is completely different. Yes, in Abby’s story, Ellie is the villain. Ellie murdered her friends. But in the case with Ellie and David, Ellie was a prisoner who then had to fight to get free of him -- Abby is not a prisoner and sought out Ellie on her own.

I understood the chronology of the story, and I enjoyed having the “so she DID know” moment after the game reveals that Ellie knew that Joel had lied before she went to Seattle, but I think that the way the game switched between Ellie and Abby felt very weird. I didn’t exactly rush through Abby’s scenes, but the cliffhanger between Abby pointing a gun at Ellie and then switching to Abby’s story years before felt super jarring, and it made me more resistant to trying to understand Abby at first. I think the switch between perspectives could have been set up differently for a more satisfying playthrough.

I swear to you, I hated the rat king with every fiber of my being. I was already so creeped out by exploring ground zero -- the sheer amount of anxiety I had as I was searching for those damn supplies was intense, and then having to constantly run from the rat king or be killed felt like complete insanity -- and I played on the easiest setting! I wish they had some sort of way to opt out of those things for those interested in seeing the story play out. I know a lot of people who struggle with the combat mechanics but who want to see Ellie’s story.

In fact, slogging through all the infected in general felt really tedious. 

Yara’s death felt like it did absolutely nothing for the plot and only served to further the pain of Abby and Lev. We had already seen how vicious both the Seraphites and the Wolves could be -- the point didn’t need to be driven home by such a senseless death. Even though I also hated Mel’s death, I could see how it played into the confrontation with Abby and Ellie -- why should Abby care about Dina’s pregnancy when Ellie hadn’t extended the same mercy to Mel? Abby couldn’t have known that Ellie didn’t know. But Yara’s death served no good purpose, and I’m still pissed about it. Also, why the fuck would you kill her after the HELL the players go through to get the supplies to save her and actually have Mel be able to save her only to kill her off shortly after? It makes zero sense.

I also really hated Jesse’s death. He seemed like such a good person and his death was so unnecessary -- especially since Tommy got to live. His family and JJ and hell, Ellie and Dina, even, didn’t deserve to lose him, especially as he hadn’t even done anything to Abby. Ugh.

When Tommy pulled out that map and started talking about having a lead, I felt every bit of Dina’s outrage at the situation. Their need for vengeance had already cost everyone so damn much, and it seemed absolutely bonkers that Tommy wanted to go after her again -- especially when he had seemed perfectly okay at the theater to pack up and go home with Abby still alive. He went from “Are you good with that?” about leaving Abby alive to “You made me a promise” to Ellie when Ellie says she won’t. Ellie had Dina, a baby, and some serious PTSD -- she had no business being set back on that path, but Tommy didn’t seem bothered by any of that. 

Was it not enough to make Ellie lose her family, but make her lose her fingers, too? I appreciated the game’s constant insistence on the consequences of your actions in this survive at all costs kind of world, but it seemed like a lot for Ellie to wind up losing her fingers in the end. Blah.

What I Have Mixed Feelings About:

I was not as upset about the ending as most people seem to be. I think it says a lot that Ellie went all that way to Santa Barbara and in the end, spared Abby’s life -- in the same way that Abby initially refused to fight Ellie. It felt like they were both fighting someone else’s fight and were finally tired enough to let it die. It did feel pretty frustrating that she went all the way out there, nearly died, and lost two of her fingers to kill Abby, only to not end up doing it and thus negating the whole damn trip, but I also feel like Ellie needed the sort of closure that trip brought. In the end, it was her decision to let Abby live -- a choice that had not been given to her years prior, when Joel took her from that hospital. I like to think that she finally understood Joel’s decision.

When Dina refused to support Ellie going back after Abby, I wasn’t surprised, and I didn’t really blame her. I was even pissed that Ellie chose to go after what had happened last time, and I couldn’t really understand why she’d be so willing to leave her family behind when this had already played out so poorly for her before. I also wasn’t surprised when Ellie returned to find an empty house -- I’d imagine that taking care of a farm and a baby at the same time would likely be too much for Dina, and I just assume she moved back to Jackson, where she’d have help. Either way, I’d love to know if Dina was fully done with Ellie for good, or if she’d accept her back if Ellie went to find her. I know that the loss of their relationship is a direct result of Ellie’s actions and the fact that she prioritized killing Abby over staying with her family, but goddammit, I just want a happy lgbt ending for once.

I was genuinely excited to have a trans character in the game. I cannot express enough how much I adore Lev. In a way, his and Abby’s relationship reminds me a lot of Joel and Ellie’s in the first game. They depend on each other, and they obviously really care about each other. One of the things that super bothered me was the storyline with his mother. We already know that he’s pretty much cast out and hunted for being trans -- so we can see the horror of it. It was rough enough to know that his own mother could turn away from him and condemn him like all the rest, but having her attack him and forcing him to kill her in self-defense felt like a lot. I just can’t imagine how triggering that might feel for trans people playing the game.

#tlou #tlou2 #the last of us #the last of us part 2 #spoilers

[blackjack-15]

Puttering Around — Thoughts on: Secret of the Old Clock (CLK)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: CLK, CUR.

The Intro:

In our next Jetsetting game, Nancy travels back from Modern-Day England and straight into 1930s Titusville (aka River Heights 70+ years ago) to help an acquaintance who’s in the middle of two unrelated plots to turn Titusville upside down.

A game famously reviewed as “pleasant but inconsequential”, Secret of the Old Clock tends to be passed over for both praise and censure, famous for two minigames (the sewing minigame and the mini-golf) but otherwise overlooked. It’s a shame, really, that it’s sandwiched in between two much flashier games, as CLK is a wonderfully solid entry into the Nancy Drew series. It pioneers the two-culprit variation on the standard Nancy Drew plot, tackles a new time period, and includes dozens of in-jokes towards the Nancy Drew books.

It’s also the first introduction of Carson Drew as a phone character, which is a lot of fun, and makes sense that he’d show up in the game that includes nods to all things canon. He doesn’t show up again until much later in the series, so it’s nice to introduce him here after hearing about him for 12 games.

As opposed to CUR right before it, CLK takes care to ground itself in a linear plotline, handling its story with relative ease and taking care not to reach too far out of the box. This is one of its greatest strengths, and provides a much better game overall because of it. It’s a simple story, pretty well told.

Though it doesn’t stand up to other more “simple” games before it such as CAR or DDI, it never reaches any of the lows of SCK, FIN, or CUR, and allows the player to be sucked in to its fantastic facsimile of life in the 1930s for teen sleuth Nancy Drew — blue roadster and all.

The Title:

As CLK is a mixture of the first four Nancy Drew books, it retains the title of the first book. As a nod to the history of Nancy Drew, it’s a great choice for the title.

Unfortunately, though the Old Clock does appear and hold secrets, it’s just not prominent enough to deserve the title that it holds. The other three books — The Hidden Staircase, The Bungalow Mystery, and The Mystery at Lilac Inn — are other options, and The Mystery at Lilac Inn would have been the most appropriate title. It doesn’t have the immediate name recognition, which is why they didn’t pick it, but it really is much better and encapsulates the game much better, as the game revolves around the Mysteries that are tied to the Inn.

That’s all I really have to say about that, so onto the mystery!

The Mystery:

Nancy Drew is summoned to the Lilac Inn to help Emily Crandall, the friend of Nancy’s friend Helen Corning, who needs to put her recently deceased mother’s jewelry into a safe, and figures that Nancy’s father would have one.

If it sounds to you like a simple, if slightly contrived premise, then you’d be right.

Once Nancy gets there, however, she finds out that Emily is cracking under the pressure of running an Inn, that her guardian Jane Willoughby isn’t as much help as she should be, and that Emily and her mother were depending on money from Josiah Crowley’s will, which mysteriously only included his recent ESP teacher, Richard Topham, rather than the Crandalls and the local banker.

From there, things go from bad to worse as the inn’s kitchen catches fire, Emily’s jewels are stolen (and partially returned), and voices in the walls start manifesting — not to mention the fetch quests around Titusville that Nancy is sent on and the ridiculous Richard Topham hiding everything about himself other than how pompous he really is.

Nancy soon figures out that this mystery is two-headed, with one side revolving around the Inn itself and the other around Josiah Crowley’s real — and missing — will. Our villains catch on too, however, and Nancy has to race against their suspicion to expose the frauds, discover hidden secrets and identities, and solve the Secret of the Old Clock.

As a mystery, this one really is quite good for its time. Dual villains, each unconcerned with the other, hidden inheritance, Shakespeare references — it’s got it all. Though Jim Archer lets it down a bit in his sheer nothingness, and it functions as a howdunnit with a weird whodunnit beginning, CLK is solid ground after the incredibly shaky mystery in CUR, and it’s a lot of fun to play through.

The Suspects:

Emily Crandall is our protagonist and resident watering pot of CLK who spends the game moping and being Generally Unhelpful. Her mom’s death notwithstanding, Emily’s stressors are the Inn, her lack of money, and her fake-guardian making her think that she’s crazy.

So maybe her total lack of common sense in wanting to call in Nancy because Nancy’s bound to have a safe at home is a result of copious amounts of mental stress. One can only hope so, as by her next birthday she’s the legal owner of the Inn.

Emily actually would have been interesting as a villain, but she, like Jim, just isn’t enough of a presence in the game — which stands out since she’s the closest we’ve got to a main character! She cries a lot, she sits a lot, and that’s about it. She would have had to be a misguided villain, convinced that her guardian (who would have had to actually be Jane Willoughby) is after her fortune…but HER still isn’t up to that level yet, and it’s probably better that they went with a story they can tell wholly and mostly convincingly.

Honestly speaking, Emily, being as she is, is a more successful Linda Penvellyn, which I don’t actually think is unintentional. She’s being harassed and abused by someone who’s basically a family member but is still largely unfamiliar to her, the tie to her remaining family is gone (though Emily’s mother is dead, unlike Hugh Penvellyn), and she is being gaslighted to believe that she’s crazy.

Emily was allowed more agency, more screen time, and more pity by the writers and creators, and because of that, her situation with her Evil Jane is far more obvious to the average player, and she’s treated with far more sympathy than Linda historically has been by the fandom (though recent fan discussion has begun trending in Linda’s favor, which I think is wonderful and fantastic).

Jane Willoughby is, of course, not Jane Willoughby after all, but actually Marion Aborn, proving that identity theft in the 30s was as easy as…well, saying that your name was someone else’s name.

An acquaintance of the actual Jane Willoughby and a petty thief, Marion intercepted the letter about Gloria’s death and Jane’s status as Emily’s guardian and decided to try to cash in on potential cash by tormenting Emily until she signed over the Inn. Exploding the kitchen, stealing Emily’s jewels, and attempting to make the girl think that she was crazy to make her sell the Inn before her 18th birthday (after which Marion would receive no profits).

As one of two culprits, Marion is the more “subtle” culprit and has the more complicated background, but is also the one you have to deal with the most, and thus suffers slightly from being in the spotlight (and thus showing the obviously evil side of her) a little too much. As this game isn’t really concerned with its culprits as a centerpiece, however, Marion’s antics fit right in.

Marion also gets points for being a much more intelligent abusive culprit (contrasting Jane), working hard to make Emily think she’s crazy with a clear goal in mind and even going as far as stealing, then partially replacing, Emily’s jewels to really hammer home the idea that the girl wasn’t mentally well to others — and to Emily herself.

Richard Topham is a self-proclaimed ESP expert and everyone-else-proclaimed dick who ended up somehow being the beneficiary of Josiah Crowley’s will, despite his spoken intentions to leave it to the Crandalls and Jim Archer. He also has a very obnoxious cat named Uri, voiced by a lovely cat named Carl (though I bet you were expecting me to say Jonah Von Spreecken — never fear, he shows up as the Tubby Telegram guy!)

Richard is our other culprit, guilty of falsifying Josiah Crowley’s will when no one could find the original, leaving most everything to himself rather than to the Crandalls or Jim Archer as Josiah wanted. A slight throwback to the 1920s obsession with spiritualism that itself was a post-war reaction to massive death, Richard is as sleazy as they come, testing Nancy for an “inferior mind” and taking advantage of every situation in order to come out on top.

As a culprit, Richard’s technically the one with the bigger crime, but is overshadowed by the plotline with Emily and Marion and is thus a little forgettable, even though it was his actions that started this whole mess in the first place.

Finally, Jim Archer is the local banker who’s not having too good of a time during, well, the Great Depression, where hundreds of banks (and dozens of bankers’ hearts) failed. Promised a boon by Josiah Crowley, he, like Emily, is left in the lurch after the false will was presented. Jim was also a fellow student with Carson Drew at law school, but turned to banking as a career instead.

Despite his office being the location where Nancy finally figures out the mystery of the titular Old Clock and where she discovers that “Jane” is actually Marion, Jim really doesn’t have much to do in this game. He gives Nancy the dreaded sewing minigame and reminds the player that the stock market crash was a recent event, but other than that has very little impact.

Jim would have been a poor choice for a villain — he just doesn’t have the personality or impact necessary — as the only storyline readily available would have been him doing Dirty Deeds to keep his bank afloat…except for the fact that if he were a villain, his bank would have been doing fine, with no need for the will anyway.

The Favorite:

My favorite moment in the game, odd as it might seem, is the CB radio conversation-slash-puzzle. It’s so rare in these pre-Nik games that we actually get to see the lives of those not really related to the case/mystery and get a sense for the world spinning on despite the incident, and this is a great example of that done right.

Like the “freezer moment” mentioned in my Danger on Deception Island meta, this moment where Nancy can see how Josiah Crowley’s life has impacted people for the better, rather than the main game where so far his death has made everything worse. It’s a wonderful moment, and honestly the game is worth replaying on the merit of that alone (though there are many wonderful things about it).

My favorite puzzle is getting down into the secret passage (and all of the puzzles within the passage). It’s a ton of fun to find hidden passages that aren’t full of Deadly Traps or human remains, and the whole Creepy’s Corner puzzle is delightfully campy and awesome.

The best location in the game by far is the carriage house, where the aforementioned conversation takes place. Beautifully lit, nicely hidden away in stages, and the only place that doesn’t feel like a 1960s set of a 30s period piece.

I love this game as homage to the original Nancy Drew titles; though they’re changed somewhat to suit both a video game style and the take on the original canon that the video game universe took (such as making Nancy’s mother’s death at 10 as it was originally, which was the smartest move they’ve ever done).

Video-Game-Style Nancy’s far more like her original 30s version than the sanitized, “fashion-ized” version in the 60’s rewrites — a fact that becomes more and more clear as the series goes on — and it really does show here, as cowboy-cop Nancy wrangles not one but two crooks.

Speaking of, the last thing that I’ll mention in this section is the fact that there are two different culprits, each uncaring of the other. In a game series that was originally only supposed to be 12 games long (meaning CLK would be the last one), this is a delightfully fresh take and it makes untangling who did what a lot of fun and makes CLK different from most games before it.

I’ll talk more about this in later Nancy metas, but the shift from “one crime, one culprit” to a more “spread the guilt” approach really makes the games go up a level or two in enjoyability and in complexity, and CLK is a great example of how just having two culprits really makes the game much more fun to play around with.

The Un-Favorite:

All of that being said, there are some things in CLK that I really don’t love.

The sewing puzzle is honestly the worst; it’s hard with a mouse and nearly impossible with a trackpad, it’s tedious, and it doesn’t matter for the rest of the game, which is probably the worst part given how much effort it takes. It’s a puzzle for a puzzles’ sake, and doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know (we know Jim’s not doing well; we know it’s the Great Depression, etc.), not to mention not rewarding the player nor Nancy for the effort.

My least favorite moment in the game would have to be Nancy’s first encounter with Richard Topham. Nancy’s autonomy is usually respected in both the 30s original drafts (less so in the 60s re-writes) and in the games, and Richard’s comments about lesser minds and his little test are, even with Nancy’s snarky comment about him in her diary, frankly out of place.

They don’t serve as a “relic of the times”, they don’t make us hate Richard more than we would have for stealing money from people who are literally drowning in bills and debt…and as much as the Nancy Drew books and character are feminist rather than Feminist, it’s honestly not great to have both his ‘clients’ during the course of the game be women that he treats the way he does.

It wasn’t necessary to have him behave the way he does, it contradicts the Spiritualist movement (which was most popular among women to a startling degree, and male Spiritualists tended to treat their female clients very well because that was the bulk of their clientele), and it doesn’t tell us anything new about him, because Nancy and the players already know he’s a fake and a blowhard.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Secret of the Old Clock?

The first and biggest fix I’d make is to include a strong storyline about Spiritualism. As noted several times above, Spiritualism was a huge force in the 1920s, and a period piece set in the year 1930 should necessarily reflect that. Quite frankly, all the nonsense about Jim Archer’s wife should just be cut and replaced with a big Spiritualism puzzle of some sorts.

I’m not saying a séance — no need to retread MHM — but an actual nod to Spiritualism (and through it, the first World War, which given Nancy’s age of 18, would have happened when she was a child) more than just “and this character is a psychic of sorts, don’t really think about it” would improve the game and ground it in its time period. Other than the references to money troubles and the ease of identity theft, there’s not much to ground CLK in its period, and I really think a Spiritualism storyline would aid that.

And if Spiritualism is involved, Richard becomes a more present, more serious character — and a more serious threat. It also opens the opportunity for the two plotlines to intersect — is Emily being driven crazy by stress, an enemy, or a malevolent spirit (which could even be supposed to be her mom, should they want a slightly darker turn)? Richard might visit the house to ensure there are no ‘malevolent presences’ around — and ensure that Crowley didn’t hide his will there.

It wouldn’t become a ‘haunting’ game; it would instead work on the aesthetic of familiar spirits — something that would be explored more fully in the next game.

I know this has been said, but I can’t emphasize enough that the sewing puzzle should be cut, even if there’s nothing to take its place. It’s a perfect example of the wrong puzzle, the wrong controls, and the wrong side-quest at the wrong time. I’m also not sure why they made Jim Archer a middle-aged banker rather than Helen Corning’s fiancée, but that’s too small a change to really bother with.

The other important change I would make is to change CLK from a weak whodunit — our culprits are already clearly the culprits — to a strong howdunit, which is what it really wants to be.

The beginning can stay the same — Nancy’s journey, Emily’s mother’s death, Richard’s faking of the will, Josiah Crowley’s death and promises, etc. — but introducing Richard Topham at the Inn, there to ‘visit’ and offer condolences and because he sensed Heavy Psychic Energy and wondered if it was coming from the house or from Emily. Have Emily tell Nancy in confidence that the other reason she called her in was because she’s either going crazy or being attacked on all sides, and the game can proceed on from that point.

Because the villains aren’t secret or even quasi-hidden in plain sight — save for Marion’s identity theft — it’s a much more natural shift to a howdunit than other games. Emily’s living in fear of Marion, running the Inn, and the possible Malevolent Spirit that may or may not be her mother haunting her through the Secret, Secret Passageway in the Inn, and Nancy’s suspicious of Richard Topham who inherited all of Crowley’s wealth, of the ‘hauntings’ of the Inn, and of the missing will and the gifts Josiah left behind.

Those two plotlines alone are enough to carry the game, especially including the Edutainment section on Spiritualism that would tie in with Richard Topham (and possibly include Emily’s mother having an interest due to her husband dying in the war), and so Jim Archer just isn’t needed as much. Whether he stays in the game in an even more reduced role or whether he’s replaced by a ninth-hour character in the form of Emily’s actual guardian, the real Jane Willoughby, is up to personal preference (though I personally like the second option).

Like all the Jetsetting games, CLK begins with a small problem that snowballs into larger and larger consequences. By emphasizing a Spiritualist plotline (culminating with the technology-based ‘encounters’ Josiah had with his CB radio friends), trimming down the fat with Jim Archer, and selling CLK from the beginning as more of a howdunit than a whodunit, CLK would improve enough to be more than just a good game, and become a standout of its era — as befitting the start of the titular teen detective.

#nancy drew #clue crew #secret of the old clock #nancy drew games #CLK #nancy drew meta #long post #my meta #video games

[sick-raven]

Aftermath - Jill/Female OC

Inspired by RE3 Demo and Jill’s note.

After Spencer mansion incident, Jill has trouble sleeping and she has nightmares about being infected. She just wants to rest for one night and get away from the all Umbrella problems.

Situated between the incident and Raccon city outbreak.

Warnings: It’s porn, as always.

You can also read on AO3

Aftermath

The streets of Raccoon city smelled of decay, smoke and gasoline. Jill Valentine ran through, dodging zombies and other monsters, looking for her way out of this hellhole. She was on another fetch quest to progress in breaking out of this concrete prison. Escape routes were blocked by barricades or monsters, changing once living city into undead one.

Streets she walked every day became unrecognizable. Places she shopped at now looked eerie with blinking lights, mannequins in the windows, glass broken as monsters broke in to eat whoever was hiding among the shelves. What she once knew has become just a ghost.

So did people.

God so did people.

Brad dying in front of her brought back memories of Spencer mansion. She could take those. But others – civilians, friends, people she met once – those hurt her more. Officers went into their jobs knowing the dangers, but these people? She hated Umbrella for what they’ve done. She needs to survive only to make them pay.

But seeing them rotting, decaying…

She entered some building. Just few days ago it was bakery, today it was smelling mess of blood and moaning. Normally she wouldn’t risk getting into tight spaces with zombies waiting behind doors and in dark corners, but she could cut most of the way going through. Plus, she still had that giant stalking her, it’s better to get out of plain sight.

The smell in the backroom was terrible. Just few months ago she would joked: “Something died here or what?” She knew better since the mansion incident. She knew better since the virus spread through the city. Her heart was racing, but her movements were precise and calm. She was glad – she didn’t want to get used to this. She felt like she would lose part of her humanity if she did. She can be professional and still hate this and be sick to the bones.

Shuffling. Jill turned her light to see in the darkness. Back there, behind table with moulding bread, dead lady was walking. Jill aimed. She learned to not hesitate – there was no help for these people. Only thing she could do was either avoid them or shoot them. If she had the means, she would kill this whole city just so the people stopped suffering, their bodies stopped doing this!

But this time, she hesitated.

It hurt her when she saw friends walking dead.

“I’m sorry, Rachel.”

***

Being in Raccoon city after the incident was hell. Not only did nobody listen to the surviving S.T.A.R.S. members, they did everything to shut them up. And to all what was happening, Jill still had trouble sleeping, waking up several times every night drained in sweat, heart beating and the fear that this is it. She is turning. She will look in the mirror and see her face, decaying. Her skin always itched like crazy and she regretted the minute she read the diary of one of the mansion workers. The itching was just her brain playing tricks on her.

Unless it wasn’t. And she will scratch her meat off and go wandering to the city in search for snack.

She needed break. Leaving her apartment now when they suspended her felt like playing with fire. They never approached her, but she saw them – people watching her closely, checking whether she is causing trouble for Umbrella again. She and Brad investigated what they could, but since the start of the August she was never alone for a minute. If her flat was wired, she would just shrug and say: “Oh, I thought so. They are following me all the time and they think they are being subtle.”

No investigation today. No care for people on her back. She was on the case daily, worked hard to the point of regretting being so thorough. No, she needed to ease up, get few drinks, meet new people. Free evening. She just wanted to forget everything for at least few moments. And if the jerks Umbrella set on her want to stop her, she will get mean.

She got to the bar without interruption, however, she saw two men watching her suspiciously. Normally she would think they were checking her out, but at this moment, the world had zero perverts just many stalkers. She sat at the bar and ordered beer. Getting out of her apartment felt good, even though her brain kept going back in loops to the incident.

She didn’t know how long she was sitting there contemplating, but it took her one and half beer when a woman sat next to her. “You know, hon, if you plan to drink for sadness you need something better than beer.”

“It’s that visible?” she asked.

“If your face was any longer, it would touch the floor.”

Jill laughed shortly. The woman dressed in short dress was nice, with long hair slightly darker than her face. She had a cute smile. “And to think I came here to have fun. I’m doing terrible job.”

“The pool table is empty right now.”

“Is that invitation?”

“Sure thing. I’m Rachel.”

“Jill.”

When was the last time she just went out to play pool? She realized it was too long. Since July she was on her feet dealing with Umbrella’s shit, she didn’t even consider just having fun. So now, playing with Rachel, finally made her stop thinking about all of that and she just relaxed.

“See, that’s better, now you are smiling,” Rachel noted after few rounds.

“Yeah, I had few rough weeks,” Jill smiled.

“Drinking your problems away here?”

“Never,” Jill scoffed. “That’s what men do when they can’t deal with their shit.”

“And what do we do?” asked Rachel curiously, while focusing on her next strike.

“We deal with the problems; we think them through and then we need to just turn off for one night. Like a weekend, except it’s one day in very long time. Drink, fuck, wake up with regrets.”

“Amen to that. Aaaand that’s three for me. You suck at this game.”

“I’m rusty.” That was a lie. She was the worst pool player from S.T.A.R.S. Even Rebecca kicked her ass. When they went out to play, she played one round to make everyone happy and then just drank at the bar or danced. Jukeboxes all over the Raccoon city knew her name.

“Well, Rusty, you are buying the drinks. Again.”

“Are you going to bars kicking peoples’ asses just to get free drinks?”

“All the time.”

Rachel drank gin so Jill joined her. It wasn’t her favourite, but currently, she didn’t care. She forgot all about her trouble for a minute, was already a bit tipsy. When the bartender gave them the glasses he winked at Rachel. “You behave, young lady.”

“You come here often?” asked Jill.

“My parents used to bring me here for lunches when I was a kid. We have a bakery just two streets away. This old geezer works here whole life and loves to make fun of me,” Rachel explained looking into the glass. “And his gin still sucks!” she added louder, and bartender answered with laughter while attending to other customers. “What about you?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t. I am a bar traveller; I just enter whatever building strikes my interests while on a walk. But I think I came here before.” Jill looked around. Most of the bars looked the same in the long run. Tables, menus, pin-up girls on the walls. “Maybe, I really don’t know.”

“Sad and mysterious,” Rachel joked.

“No, I am not. I just don’t have favourite bar,” Jill smiled. “I just go where my co-workers go, and when alone, I avoid those places like plague. I don’t need them to know what I am doing when drunk.”

“Oooh? What do you do?” Rachel leaned bit closer.

“You really want to know?” teased Jill.

“I am all ears.”

Jill leaned to her. “I cry a lot,” she whispered.

Rachel burst out laughing and Jill joined her. It felt good to just joke around, no care in the world. When the laugh stopped, she opened her eyes. Rachel was still there, leaning so close, and closer, Jill’s heart almost stopped.

“No, wait,” she drew back away just a second before a kiss. Rachel straightened up now looking surprised and maybe a bit hurt.

“Ah, sorry, I thought… I don’t know what I thought.”

“No, no, it’s, uh…”

“I get it, there is someone waiting for you at home, that’s fine.”

“No, no,” Jill breathed in and waved her hand. “It’s just that… I think I am sick.”

Rachel raised her eyebrows. “So, you have germs down there or what?” she asked silently.

“No,” Jill smirked partially amused. Germs from what? The last guy she fucked tried to kill her by sending goddamn monster on her. Oh, she hoped Wesker is roasting in hell. “No, I think… I think I have a cold; I don’t want to spread it, you know.”

Rachel drank her gin looking suspiciously at her. “You don’t look ill. Maybe except those bags under your eyes.”

“I don’t sleep well.”

“I can tell when someone has a cold, you are lying,” Rachel smirked and asked for another glass. “I am a doctor you know.”

“I thought you worked in bakery.”

“I am a bread doctor.”

Jill laughed again, running hand through her hair desperate. “I think I am sick; I don’t know. It’s uncommon cold.” She couldn’t say anything. Rachel would call her crazy and then, as she would leave this bar, Umbrella employees would catch her and take her away because she knows too much.

“So what? Your head hurts?”

“Yeah. May be the lack of sleep though.”

“Do you cough or have fever?”

“No.”

“Runny nose? Sore throat?”

“Neither.”

“So how can you tell you are sick?”

Jill shrugged. She couldn’t. She just had that feeling, the fear that soon, very soon, she will wake up destroyed. She will shuffle around, meat barely holding on her bones, muscles so shortened she won’t be able to walk stairs without falling. And for the worst of it, she will be aware – aware of everything, her behaviour, her helplessness, taste of the blood in her mouth as she kills.

“When did you catch this uncommon cold?”

“Like a month ago.”

“A month!” Rachel said louder than necessary. “You are a hypochondriac.”

“I just…” Just what, Jill? “I am cautious.”

Rachel had to notice the tone of her voice, or maybe her face again showed how horrible she feels about everything that happened. Her friends died. The survivors left. She was alone in this, sure, she had Brad, but let’s face it. He was worried too much, afraid of everything. In Raccoon city she was the one with target on her back, she was the one fighting, and the constant fear on her shoulders didn’t help anything. How many times has she woken up in the middle of the night from the dream where she ate Kenneth alive? Where she tore the meat from Forest’s bones? How many times was the blood actually Chris’?

“Hey, you know what helps against germs?” Rachel asked.

“No?”

“Vodka. Hey, Timothy, can you give us two?” she finished the new glass of gin in one swing and then slid vodka in front of Jill. “This shit kills everything. Trust me.”

“Trust you as a bread doctor?”

“Trust me as a germ killer, once you drink this, you are healthy. Not even those herbs people chew here are so potent.”

Jill smiled a little. “Sorry if I made this weird. It’s all getting to me.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Yeah. But I can’t. Let’s just say I had rough month at work and with friends and all. It’s all horribly shitty, I hate my life and if I continue, I will actually cry, and we don’t want that.”

“I’ll drink to that. I hate seeing beautiful ladies cry.”

Jill emptied the glass and gasped. “God, I hate this, that’s strong. How many of these do I have to drink to take back control of my life?”

“For germs? One. For control? At least three,” Rachel grinned.

The simple joked made her realize a lot. Yeah, she felt her life spun out of control. She could deal with stress, tons of cases, paperwork… but this time around, things got destroyed, world turned against her and she felt she is losing the firm ground under her feet. She was not in control. And that stressed her more than anything.

“Three would kill me,” Jill shook her head. “I know better ways to take back control.”

Rachel rested her head on her hand looking curious. “Care to tell me?”

Jill knew she shouldn’t do this. She is supposed to be the responsible one. The cautions one. But maybe she really is just stressed. There was no evidence of her being infected, just the horrible dreams and fear. She was fine! That’s why she is here, right? To fight that fear for one day and then regret. She is not sick! She will think different tomorrow, but right now, she is good old Jill Valentine, ass-kicker, officer and good-looking at that!

She leaned right next to Rachel’s ear. She didn’t even have time to become nervous, she was too drunk and too self-loathing for that. “You will now go to a toilet; you will take down your panties and you will come back here, and we will just continue our talk.”

Rachel was taken aback by this request. She didn’t say anything, just tapped the glass slightly. “Excuse me,” she mumbled and got up. Now there were only two choices and Jill watched her. Either she will go out of the bar and they will never see each other again and Jill will become weird story for Rachel’s friends, or…

Rachel went to the bathrooms.

Jill smiled shortly and ordered new drinks. She also moved her stool closer to Rachel’s. Now she just waited, smiling to herself, because this felt good. This is what she was looking for when she left her apartment today.

Rachel came back after a while. She sat at the stool, uncomfortably tucking her short dress. She shuffled a bit and looked around in fear someone watches her. Jill loved to watch her suffer like this. It was adorable.

“This is…” Rachel said and grabbed her glass. “Weird.”

“This is hot,” Jill said still looking at Rachel. The dress hid everything just fine, but the knowledge, the little secret between them, made it that much more fun.

Rachel gave her sheepish look. “You do this to all people you’ve just met?”

“To be honest, it’s very hard to pull this on guys,” Jill grinned. Then she lay hand on Rachel’s tight. The skin was soft and warm. “You often go around just kissing strangers?”

Rachel shuffled again but leaned closer. Jill felt the hem of the dress and fought the urge to slide her fingers under. “They call me the best kisser around here.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You lost your chance,” Rachel grinned teasingly.

“Is that so?” Jill moved her hand to caress the inner thigh. Rachel shivered a bit and looked at the bar quickly. Nobody was watching them. Timothy was dealing with drunk guy talking about his divorce. Everyone else cared about their own conversations. Jill used this hesitation and moved her hand deeper under the skirt.

Rachel caught her wrist with both hands, looking around nervously. “Stop,” she whispered. Her voice sounded serious. Jill backed off, back to her drink, still amused by all this. Rachel next to her tucked her dress again and straightened her back.

Jill felt Rachel’s hand as she took her chin and pulled her in. Then they kissed. Jill felt the little fear inside her, but it was too late anyways. She shunned it and enjoyed the moment. Rachel was hungry, she tasted of alcohol. She didn’t hesitate to use her tongue and Jill appreciated the force. She ran her fingers through Rachel’s hair, so soft and nice smelling.

Rachel pulled away, but stayed close, Jill felt her breathe on her face. “You know, I have keys to the bakery, it’s just five-minute-walk.”

“I don’t know I can wait five minutes,” Jill grinned.

“Hey, I want to come back to this bar,” Rachel stood up, carefully, so her dress doesn’t roll up. Jill loved every careful movement she made. “You coming?”

Jill paid Timothy extra and walked after Rachel. She was standing out, enjoying August warm weather. Once Jill got out, Rachel welcomed her with another kiss, this time deeper and more passionate than before.

“You will make that walk much harder,” Jill said.

“We better hurry then.” Rachel took her hand and lead the way. Just by corner of her eye, Jill saw a shadow watching her. Well, have a good show, assholes, she thought.

They got to the bakery in less than five minutes. Rachel opened the glass door and locked firmly behind them. She didn’t even turn on the light, in the dark she walked to another door behind the counter. “This way.” Backroom was the real bakery, with ovens and big tables and fridges. Rachel turned the light here and looked at Jill. “Welcome to my humble kingdom.”

“Is this hygienic?”

“I will clean here tomorrow, don’t worry,” Rachel grinned happily. “So…”

Jill was faster, this time she grabbed Rachel by the chin. “So now, let me see.” She ran her fingers on Rachel’s thigh while keeping eye contact. Up, under the dress, to the sweet spot. Rachel gasped, but this time, she didn’t protest. Jill teased her a bit, caressing her legs and her crotch. “I see, you didn’t want to ruin the stool in the bar, did you?” Jill commented feeling the wetness.

“M-maybe.” Rachel bit her lip, she tried to avoid the eye contact being a bit embarrassed and Jill enjoyed that small hesitation. The purity was always fun to watch. And even more fun to break.

“No, Rachel, look at me,” she said while sliding her finger on Rachel’s clit. “Come on. That’s a good girl.”

Rachel had beautiful brown-green eyes and her gaze said everything. How she loved to be touched, little flickers of eyelashes showed when Jill hit the sweet spot. She moaned only a little, but her expression revealed everything. Her skin was hot and wet. Jill stopped and took a step away from Rachel. Her hand was wet, and she licked the sweet juice, making Rachel more flustered.

“Mmm, you taste great,” she concluded. “I bet you look even better.”

“You think I’m pretty?” Rachel asked and she sounded innocent, but her face showed anticipation.

“You are very pretty,” Jill answered. She found a chair and she sit on it comfortably, watching Rachel.

“How pretty?” Rachel asked running fingers on her cleavage.

“You have beautiful eyes and soft lips. I could kiss you whole night and never have enough. Your skin is flawless and so nice to touch. But…”

Rachel stopped. “But?” she repeated.

“I still can’t praise the body I can’t see.”

“Clever,” Rachel concluded and walked to Jill. “But you have to help me, nice stranger.” She turned around. Jill unzipped her dress slowly as if opening a present. She ran finger on Rachel’s spine, and she shivered.

As the dress was on the floor Jill enjoyed Rachel slowly turning at her. She was beautiful. Small breast, nice hips and wet thighs. “Wow,” Jill commented. “You didn’t tell me you are a queen.”

Rachel chuckled. Jill reached for her and pulled her closer. She kissed the naked skin on her stomach, traced every inch with her tongue. Rachel gasped and this close Jill could hear her heart beat faster. She ran fingers on her back, touching her butt. Then she moved to the front and squeezed Rachel’s breasts.

There is something fascinating about women’s bodies. Jill loved to play with them. With men, the only thing she wanted was to get fucked fast and hard and she enjoyed that too. But with women, it was different. She wanted to touch them, play with them, tease them until they go crazy and beg her for releasing them of their tension.

She rubbed Rachel’s nipples and Rachel sighed silently. Looking up at her, Jill saw her eyes looking down, still biting her lip. Yes, just keep watching. See what I can do.

Jill pulled Rachel down to sit on her lap. Like this he had those beautiful pointy breast right in her face. She traced her tongue between them to Rachel’s collar bone. Then she teasingly licked around her nipple. When shivering of Rachel’s body got stronger, Jill finally took the nipple into her mouth and sucked. Rachel covered her mouth as she moaned. Jill sucked and licked the breast and played with the other, squeezing and rubbing. Rachel moaned some more. “Jill,” she pleaded.

Jill looked at her with smile. “Yes, Rachel?”

Rachel had begging expression on her face, hand still over her mouth. She just whimpered like a puppy.

“What do you want me to do? Tell me,” Jill said running her fingers around the hardened nipple.

“Come on,” Rachel shuffled the wetness on her thighs flowing stronger.

“I don’t understand,” Jill kept smiling and pinched Rachel’s nipple.

“Ah- finish me.”

“I see. What’s the magical word?”

“Y-you…”

“Hm?”

“Please,” Rachel said her voice shivering with embarrassment and need.

“Why didn’t you say so?” Jill said innocently and slid her fingers to the wet pussy without any hesitation. Rachel moaned loudly, biting her fingers. Jill ran her fingers on the inner walls, feeling the warmth, slipping deep, while teasing her clit with her other hand. Rachel was shaking, she bended down for a kiss. Jill obliged, but she felt how hard it is for Rachel to stay still. The need for moans stopped the kiss.

Rachel hugged Jill tight, kissed her neck and rubbed herself on her hand. Jill fastened the tempo as Rachel hungrily moved her hips. With every stroke her hold became firmer, as she was reaching the climax.

“Y-yes, more, please,” Rachel begged moving faster and faster. Jill moved her fingers just slightly adjusting the spot and Rachel screamed and shivered all over her body, clenching her fingers to Jill’s shoulder, biting her neck to silence pleased screams.

Jill froze, teeth clenched. She fought every inch of her body not to shake the woman off. Rachel’s wetness spilled all over her hand, but the bite, ever so small and gentle, awakened the memories, the fear, everything. Jill swallowed, carefully removed her hand and ran her fingers on that perfect skin. Rachel, breathing heavily, let go and slowly straightened up.

“That was amazing,” she gasped and caressed Jill’s face. Then she frowned. “Are you okay?”

Jill forced a smile. “Yeah, of course. I was taken aback about how wild you are.”

Rachel smirked; she obviously didn’t believe a word. But what could Jill say? “It’s fine, I was just worried you will eat me.” Try again, Valentine.

“It’s the same expression you had in the evening. I know how to get that off,” Rachel smiled.

“More alcohol?”

“This is bakery, not liquor store.” Rachel grabbed Jill’s boobs. “See, better.”

Jill sighed, comforting herself again, but it felt hard. Rachel kissed her shortly again, moved to her neck and cleavage, giving her kissed everywhere. Jill started to relax, but then stopped Rachel by touching her face.

“Just no teeth, okay?” she said.

“As you wish, princess.” Rachel focused on her cleavage. She slowly took down her shirt and bra. Jill enjoyed the touches and teasing, she let the soft kisses bring her excitement back slowly.

“That’s better, you know how stiff you were?” Rachel said massaging the boobs. Jill smiled and nodded, she had nothing more to say, she just wished to get away, be washed by pleasure.

Rachel stood up and Jill took the time to get out of her jeans and panties. Rachel got on her knees and slowly, carefully and nicely she licked Jill’s thighs. She caressed her body and skin with soft touches. Jill watched Rachel tasting her skin and wetness off her legs and she smiled. This is what she wanted. Just relax and enjoy pretty lady.

Rachel moved to her crotch and sucked her clit, looking up to see Jill’s reaction. Jill closed her eyes to enjoy most of the sensation. The tongue on her sensitive places, licking, moving up and down teasing every nerve on her body. She sighed pleased, played with her own breasts as Rachel slid inside her vagina and rubbed the walls with her fingers, while still sucking. Rachel was pleasing her slowly, with long strikes and care she hasn’t felt for a long time.

Jill relaxed completely and let the waves of pleasure ran through her, purring, enjoying what was going on. Rachel took that as a sign, she licked the clit harder, started moving faster and sucked like a goddess. Jill moaned ever so slightly as the waves got faster and stronger.

“You are so beautiful and so good,” Jill whispered. “I could look at you whole day.”

Rachel flustered and that was the last drop. Jill moaned loudly as the pleasure caught with her. She felt her crotch get wetter, making Rachel’s face even more beautiful with all her juices. Jill grabbed her breast harder as the tremble went through her body. And then she sighed, released.

Rachel caught her breath and tried to clean her face with just as wet hand. She grinned. “So, what do you say, am I good?” she winked.

Jill laughed. “You are great.”

Rachel stood up, no shame in her naked body, and she leaned in for the last deep kiss. When she straightened up, she looked Jill in the eyes. “Hey, Jill. You will be okay.”

“Thank you, Rachel.”

***

Jill Valentine wasn’t okay.

But Rachel was dead.

What in all hells brought her this way, Jill could only guess. She was too tired to look where she is going. She never forgot their meeting, but it was long in the past by this point. Almost a month and the stress grew only worse.

But she remembered the good lady. She said Jill will be okay.

Jill pulled the trigger. With loud bang body of Rachel fell on the ground, not moving anymore. She released the poor woman from the prison of her own body. Jill felt her hand tremble.

It’s good she will never get used to this.

But once she survives, Umbrella is going down.

And she will be fucking okay.

#resident evil #resident evil 3 remake #jill valentine #writeblr #fanfiction #sick raven writing #one-shot #I just needed to exploit all the possibilities of Jill having PTSD #and dealing with it like a champ

[smilesthroughfandoms]

Every Single Star vs. the Forces of Evil episode in one sentence or less

I’ll probably post a more in depth-review later this week, as I have opinions literally no one wants to hear but I will proclaim anyway, and then I’ll probably also due a revision of my ‘Past Queens Connection to Star’ post from way back in season 2. Cause that needs an update.

Anyway, enjoy!

Star Comes to Earth: Princess Cinnamon Roll that Could Kill you comes to earth and meets Misunderstood Safe Kid.

Party With a Pony: Spoopy Wardens hunt for the glitter pony while Star gets ice for Marco’s sweaty back.

Matchmaker: In which we learn it was probably a bad idea to give Star the wand in the first place.

School Spirit: Star misunderstands football and Marco tries to get Ferguson to blow his whistle not in that way.

Monster Arm: “Not my bowels! I love my bowels!”

The Other Exchange Student: Star is jealous of the meatball man from Bakersfieldville.

Cheer Up Star: “It’s supposed to be ironic!”

Quest Buy: Very accurate depiction of what it is like to work in retail.

Diaz Family Vacation: Both Marco and Star see new sides of their dads but that’s not necessarily a good thing

Brittney’s Party: Star and Marco party on a bus that Ludo hijacks

Mewberty: Star gets horny and snares boys in her web but not in that way

Pixtopia: Marco messed up and Alfonso marries Ferguson’s rebound

Lobster Claws: “… You can’t eat children.” “Really? Not even the annoying ones?”

Sleep Spell: “Camera Phooone!”

Blood Moon Ball: We’re suppose to ship them now, right?

Fortune Cookies: Love is never the answer kids

Freeze Day: Father Time offers Star and Marco some mud before riding away on his wheel-mobile pulled by giant time-hamsters I am not making this up.

Royal Pain: King Santa Claus destroy mini-golf

St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward Princesses: Princess Prison sure is a nightma–OH MY GOD ARE THOSE CLUBS?!

Mewnipendence Day: No wonder monsters hate Mewmans so much.

The Banagic Wand: Star still doesn’t get Earth and like all of us, Marco is always hungry.

Interdemensional Field Trip: Miss Skullnick fears the “Big Change” while Marco sends Jackie cat memes

Marco Grows a Beard: Ludo is out, Toffee is in, and Marco will probbaly be terrified of beards forever

Storm the Castle: “SURPRISE!”

My New Wand!: DIP DOOOWN

Ludo in the Wild: Wait, since when did Ludo become badass?

Mr. Candle Cares: “Star and I have recently become smooch buddies… On the lips.”

Red Belt: Marco searches for a meaning in life and Star searches for hammer.

Star on Wheels: *epic remix of Marco saying Star is in trouble*

Fetch: Marco can’t open juice and Star runs away from her problems and sending thank you cards

Star vs. Echo Creek: Star gets high and destroys a police car

Wand to Wand: Both Ludo and Star are terrible at magic also major ship tease

Starstruck: Star and her idol Sailor Super Saiyan destroy a park and Marco is 100002% done with this shit

Camping Trip: King Butterfly has a mid-life crisis and tries to control an eagle

Starsitting: They’re gonna be great parents some day.

On the Job: Buff Dad is best dad and buff babies are adorable

Goblin Dogs: “You might think this line is long, but listen to my goblin song!~”

By the Book: Ludo and Star still suck at magic and Glossaryck is a bigger troll than Alex Hirsch

Game of Flags: And I thought my family was dysfunctional...

Girls’ Day Out: Janna is back and is still awesome btw

Sleepover: “TRUTH! STAR HAS A CRUSH ON MA–” *cue fandom freakout*

Gift of the Card: R.I.P.  Rasticore Chaosus Disastorvayne… He couldn’ get his fucking chainsaw to work

Friendenemies: Star becomes one with Christmas tree while Tom and Marco go on a date and sing a romantic pop ballad.

Is Mystery: Meatfork is apparently a family name and Ludo is really starting to freak me out tbh

Hungry Larry: “He’s still hungry…”

Spider with a Top Hat: He tries and he is awesome and that’s all that matters

Into the Wand: SPAAAAADESS!!!

Pizza Thing: Marco is OCD about mushroom and Pony Head buys skinny jeans

Page Turner: Moon, how did you miss Toffee in the orb he was right there!

Naysaya: Marco is a mood in this episode

Bon Bon the Birthday Clown: Honestly my favorite episode overall

Raid the Cave: Glossaryck is the true neutral asshole.

Trickstar: Weird Al is a treasure and I’ll mes up anyone who makes Marco cry!

Baby: Aw, look at the little deadly baby, I love her!

Running With Scissors: Marco gets a new edition to his shipping harem and she is so cute!

Mathmagic: Why did the chicken cross the road?

The Bounce Lounge: Marco is definitely the mom friend.

Crystal Clear: The Chancellor guy is amazing and Rhombulus just needs a hug and wAS THAT ECLIPSA IN THE BACKGROUND?

The Hard Way: “SURPRISE!” 2.0

Heinous: Oh, so that’s how Marco got all that money.

All Belts Are Off: This is the negative side of “Pro-tag teen hangs out with older adult figure” trope done splendidly

Collateral Damage: Marco how do you not know what a possum is?

Just Friends: I’m fine! *blows up sign to prove just how fine I am*

Face the Music: This song is actually a banger

Star Crushed: Looking back, I’m starting to think the writing peaked at this episode....

BATTLE FOR MEWNI EDITION!!!!!

Return to Mewni: This is… just an exposition filler. Not much else to say….

Moon the Undaunted: B4! B4! B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4!

Book Be Gone: Seriously, did Glossy take trolling lessons from Alex Hirsch this is hilarious!

Marco and the King: This is the  “Pro-tag teen hangs out with older adult figure” done slightly better

Puddle Defender: Aw, look at the little buff babies, they’re getting so big!

King Ludo: The mime stole the show.

Toffee: Yeah, I think the writing peaked somewhere around here...

Scent of Hoodie: Huh, so Ponyhead can be written as likeable, who would’ve thought?

Rest in Pudding: The colors are not doing the censors any favor here, huh?

Club Snubbed: I literally yelled “Phrasing!” whenever they dropped the title

Stranger Danger: Is she the new antagonist of the series? I can’t tell

Demoncism: Tom is a wonderful baby boy and Ponyhead is written as likeable, part 2!

Sophmore Slump: *sobbing* Jackie deserved better, dang it!

Lint Catcher: I’m starting to wonder if there is any competant authority figure in Mewni

Trial by Squire: I think the writers were all like” You think these guys will ship anyone with Marco?” and decided to test that theory.

Princess Turdina: I got more lore out of this episode than I thought I would.

Starfari: Welp, she makes me uncomfortable.

Sweet Dreams: *Sailor Moon-ing intensifies*

Lava Lake Beack: Proof that this fandom will ship anyone with Marco at the slightest inclanation

Death Peck: Rich Pigeon is my new favorite birb and Ponyhead is written as likeable for the third time

Ponymonium: Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Night Life: The writers made so many new ships they had to get rid of an old one!

Deep Dive: “Chicken butt”

Monster Bash: Well, that explains the cheekmarks.

Stump Day: I think they just made an episode based around a picture from that bookcover.

Holiday Special: *insert every cheesy Christmas/Holiday episode trope here*

The Bog Beast of Boggabah: The title is fun to say and the episode is average at best.

Total Eclipsa the Moon: Seriously, I’m supposed to think she’s an ultimate villain.

Butterfly Trap: In which we are all Sean, don’t lie we were all him at the end

Ludo, Where Art Thou?: Dennis is best brother, hands down.

Is Another Mystery: *sniff* I got more emotional over this episode than anyone else did and I’m not sure how I feel about that

Marco Jr.: I… I just… Why? What’s the point?

Skooled!: Epic advertisment fakeout combined with wonderful character development and lore with a shock ending makes a 8/10 episode.

Booth Buddies: Old Man McGucket ships Starco, proceed to react accordingly

Bam Ui Pati!: Ponyhead is kinda likeable in this episod–nevermind she’s back.

Tough Love: Oh man, it’s happening! It’s happening guys here we go!

Divide: We are going to war everybody–And they’re all dead. That was quick.

Conquer: They should have paid Alex HIrsch to voice Glossaryck at this point, it’d be more in character for him.

Butterfly Follies: Proof that someone will always complain about politics no matter what.

Escape from the Pie Folk: Is anyone else disturbed by the fact that he kinda resembles Eclipsa more than Festivia?

Moon Remembers: I was expecting a freakout but was pleasantly surprised

Swim Suit: I’m starting to get a bad feeling about Rhombulus

Ransomgram: Why is everyone in this dimesnion hot?!

Lake House Fever: She’s a good mom

Yada Yada Berries: They missed an opportunity to have a Seinfeld actor guest-star, just saying

Down by the River: I’m glad that she can relax

The Ponyhead Show!: And Ponyhead is offically no longer likeable, can someone toss her into an abyss please?

Surviving the Spiderbites: SpiderSlime is canon proceed to react accordingly

Out of Buisness: How did this place go out of buisness???

Kelly's World: Man, they’re really setting these non-Starco ships up to fail, huh?

Curse of the Blood Moon: Pfft, yeah, sure, Starco won’t be canon at all!

Princess Quasar Caterpillar and the Magic Bell: I think Ludo has the most consistent character arc out of the entire show’s history.

Ghost of Butterfly Castle: Moon, Star is your daughter and Star supports Eclipsa, why would you not tell her?

Cornball: This episode has a heartwarming lesson that I hope more people come to realize

Meteora's Lesson: I’ll take any Toffee scenes I can get

The Knight Shift: I honestly don’t remember what happened n this episode

Queen-Napped: Seriously, can someone please dropkick Ponyhead into an abyss?

Junkin' Janna: The JanTom interaction I’ve been waiting for

A Spell with No Name: These types of episodes stopped being charming awhile ago

A Boy and His DC-700XE: I think Tomco has more ground to stand-on then Starco at this point

The Monster and The Queen: Don Panchito voices Globgor! There’s hope for this show yet!

Cornonation: They’re the best couple/parents/anything around!

Doop-Doop: I honestly think Rick just put Morty through some flux-capacitor or something

Britta's Tacos: Hey, remember these people that we suddenly brought back? No? Me neither!

Beach Day: This feels like a Season 1 episode and it’s nice

Gone Baby Gone: I want a TV show aout them now! Disney, please!

Sad Teen Hotline: Mr. Diaz is way to invested in Star’s love life.

Jannanigans: Hello last minute Janna character development!

Mama Star: So that’s how Mewni came to be--and I don’t care anymore

Ready, Aim, Fire!: Let’s get that finale ball rolling people!

The Right Way: Ok, that spell is actually pretty badass.

Here to Help: There, Starco’s finally canon will you guys just shut up now!

Pizza Party: Moon you idiot you ruined everything!

The Tavern at the End of the Multiverse: Toffee was right all along... I think we all knew that in some way

Cleaved: I expect nothing substanial and that’s what I got

#star vs the forces of evil #svtfoe #svtfoe2 #svtfoe3 #svtfoe4 #battle for mewni #smilesthroughfandoms #Don't repost without my permission #seriously don't #these are my opinions #scary i know

[ghostmartyr]

Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke [Part 10]

Welcome back to the tenth part of me trying to beat Fire Red doing a Nuzlocke with no grinding! That’s right, no grinding! The only experience allowed is against other Trainers!

Where are we in this harrowing journey now?

Aheh.

To heck with it, I’m naming myself Blue this time.

Do you know why?

I’m blue, if I were green I would die (da ba dee da ba die).

Oh yes, we’re doing this.

My ID # this time is... 50685. Which means...?

Bulbapedia says 4-6 is Fire.

Uh.

You know what. It’s hard to tell because this is done through text posts that are not posted when they are done, but I just did everything up to Brock with a Charmander an hour ago.

But okay! We’ll do it again! But better this time!

I will name you... Left.

Cool.

Left is Rash, so we should get along great.

Fetch quest? Complete.

Pokedex? Get.

Route 1 Rattata? Get.

Her name is Down.

Route 2 Pidgey? Get. Sidey.

Viridian Forest Caterpie? Get. Nalley.

Viridian Forest? Get wrecked.

Route 22 level 2 Mankey? Get. I dub thee Weast.

Green, whose name should be Blue except our name is Blue?

Get. Wrecked.

Now Brock’s Gym, where we shall be punished for our arrogance.

First and only trainer? Done.

Brock?

Eeeeeeeh.

Geodude goes down to a few Metal Claws, one of which raises Left’s Attack. But Geodude wasn’t the issue last time. Accuracy concerns, using Ember, and Onix being Onix were the main problems in that very near past.

Metal Claw doesn’t really uh. What’s the word... help. So. uh. now we. hm.

Yeah, now we be horrible. Weast, you are sacrifice the first. Down, you next. And if you live long enough, maybe you can use Sand Attack!

Or you can die.

Left, you’ve had your Potion. Get back out there!

For future reference, Ember is useless, stop trying to make it happen. You are not going to get the burn. Suck it up and cry when Metal Claw misses.

Okay! So Left is down to 13 HP. But Rock Tomb hasn’t missed yet! So!

Hey, it missed.

Now it just needs to like. Do that again.

It did.

.

.

.

See, the problem here

is that now I have to live with actively killing Weast and Down.

Look.

Guys.

I’d say I’m sorry, but I don’t have to fight Brock again until something else goes horribly wrong, so we’re calling this a win for our team! Everybody cheer! You supplied your friend that you knew for like maybe ten minutes a serious victory with your deaths!

My brother called me a horrible person for what I did to Tarle in the round of this that made it to the Elite Four.

Gotta say.

I get that.

But more importantly, I get Running Shoes. Life is okay. Not that Weast or Down will ever know that again.

Then Left tries to die to a level 9 Pidgey that knows Sand-Attack. He doesn’t. But he really does try. Then hits level 16, and just like Heero before him, becomes a Charmeleon. Oh happy day.

.

I miss Heero.

I don’t think I went over it extensively, because the horror of doing exactly what I am now was setting in worse than grief, but Heero and Allenby and Sprinkle and Zaft and Po... they were a good team. Left has got some gigantic shoes to fill. He’s alive, and that’s a great start, but. Oh. The pain of not being able to say that it’s Heero time anymore?

That will endure.

Time to see if we’re catching something to throw into the rotation or not. Route 3 option, show me what you’ve got.

Gee. no. really.

My Pidgey’s actually still alive, even. Caught and not dead. Like a pro.

Okay, found a Spearow.

Now we find out if Left (level 19) can kill a level 6 Spearow with Scratch. Let’s watch.

Yes. Yes, he can.

Route 3 is as dead as that Spearow.

Compensation for killing the route is 49 exp.

I can’t remember if I’ve brought it up before, but for the purposes of this playthrough, accidentally killing things is fine. Losing the Pokedex slot is punishment enough. This is hard enough without going out of my way to be mean to myself.

Intentionally killing things for exp is very much not allowed, though. If I don’t want the thing, and can’t catch it, I run. Snorlax, looking at you, bud. I don’t have high hopes for you not killing my entire team when we reach you. Catching Po was my one miracle, I think.

I still really enjoy the art done for the different tourist traps across the map. v pretty.

Sigh.

And we lose out on catching Zubat.

...do I need things in my Pokedex to get Flash? I think I do.

Left, you’re way too strong for something that will die if Misty blinks in your direction. It’s a problem.

Add on 54 more exp to the illicit gains pile. I think after this if there’s not a level jump (I think there’s a small one before the next patch of grass), I have to start throwing a ball first thing. I probably should have done that with the Zubat, but. optimism.

Optimism has gotten the grindlocke into heaps of trouble, when you stop and think about it. It will continue, but oh dear yes, we see how this happens.

Hey, Ember finally burned something.

A Clefairy.

Thank goodness. Much danger. Such fear. Wow.

I still don’t really dispute this. Poor guy.

Grabbed the Helix this time. I don’t think there is a way for it to matter less, but there we go.

Made it out of Mt. Moon! Hark and rejoice!

Now we’re going to start breaking out speedrun strats. In slow motion, so obviously mine will work out better. You might recall, if not from this experiment then from others, that there are two Move Tutors outside Mt. Moon.

Mega Punch and Mega Kick.

Mega Punch does 80 Normal, with 85 accuracy.

Mega Kick does 120. 75 accuracy.

So the reason we’re doing this is that we’re about to come across the areas where I have a chance to get an Oddish. If I end up with an Oddish, all will be well with Misty (hopefully). If I don’t, my options become majorly limited. Left will be the One True Starter and Finisher. He needs to be able to down the Starmie in one hit.

It will come down to luck, so we’re going to maximize the possibilities of that luck.

Mega Kick. Welcome. Later, Scratch.

Okay. Bought some more poke balls in Cerulean, also bought some Repels to see if a thing works. If it doesn’t I will avoid further comment on it.

Route 4, SHOW ME AN ODDISH POR FAVOR.

A Mankey is not an Oddish. And we already killed one, so next.

Spearow. Well, we killed the last one, so sure.

If it could use Growl a few more times, Metal Claw would become an option... Yeah, it’s an option, let’s go for it.

Yay, Spearow’s not dead!

.........

I forgot I was playing a Nuzlocke. Did not nickname the Spearow.

Damn it, Spearow.

Invalid pokemon go in the box.

So with no Oddish, Left is going to have to tackle our rival and Nugget Bridge all alone. Yeehaw. Then we can hit grass that might possibly have an Oddish. We want to do that first after the bridge, because there are enough trainers to make the Oddish a real asset in the Misty fight if it’s allowed the exp.

Assuming we get an Oddish.

First thing’s first, though.

Tiny things continue to amuse me.

Left is level 23 now. Pidgeotto’s Sand-Attack is honestly the largest threat. ...Not that Water Gun isn’t making a show of it. Geez, I’m going to have to buy Potions after this. If there is an after this. I missed Mega Kick every time except the last time, and since Squirtle was busy Withdrawring all through that, not only did I miss the chance to do useful damage, when Mega Kick finally hit on the last shot, it did not help.

So now we’ve used Smokescreen a few times in an attempt to even things out.

...

I think I’m about to lose.

Crap.

Uh.

I have to be the worst again.

Left needs his accuracy back.

Um.

Nally... would you uh. mind uh.

Nally the Caterpie is now dead, continuing this run’s trend of being inexcusably awful.

WELL UNLESS OUR LEVEL 3 SIDEY (PIDGEY) CAN WIN, I’D SAY IT’S RESTARTING TIME AGAIN.

She can’t.

She dies.

Welp.

Our name is GM this time.

Our rival is NPC.

This time our ID number is............ 59916.

-looks up-

Bulbapedia says 4-6 is Fire.

OKAY THEN.

Maybe I’ll just lose against NPC. That would keep the restart time down.

For now and forever.

His name is Scyther.

Scyther gets to stay for a little while longer. He’s Sassy. Great.

Fetch quest done.

Ugh.

I almost universally dislike the beginnings of Pokemon games. Unless nostalgia is kicking in, or the game is completely brand new. Being back at the beginning is very much Not Great.

Though this time I learned that you can choose to leave home without talking to your mother. Wow.

First encounter is Rattata. Rattata’s name is Pidgey.

Route 1 done.

Route 2 gives us a Pidgey. Its name is Rattata.

Route 22 has a level 3 Mankey. Now named Machop.

I think. Sigh.

I think that no matter what starter I end up with, my strategy for this is going to be to have my starter handle the first Gym. If I keep getting Charmanders, that will mean a lot of fails before luck goes with me, because luck was the only way we made it through Left’s run.

...

Damn it, Scyther.

No Viridian Forest catch.

May the +30 exp somehow help.

Through Viridian Forest, which means it’s back to Rival-san.

Rival-san is defeated. That’s probably going to be his actual name next time.

We doing this?

Yeah. Sure.

Hey guess what. That +30 exp means Scyther is level 15 instead of 14! Yay! Does that mean anything?

Why did Onix use Bind.

(Better question, self. Why did you use Ember. Your optimism is killing all your pokemon.)

Rock Tomb. After lots of Binds.

Why is Onix killing the rest of my team in slow motion. Stop using Bind. stop stop stop. just kill them.

Thank you.

FUCK YOU, THAT’S MY NAME THIS TIME.

YOUR GRANSON’S NAME IS ALSO OAK.

ID NUMBER.

WHAT HAVE WE GOT.

26268.

HELLA.

BULBAPEDIA SAYS “7-9 is Water type” SO FUCK YALL WE’RE GETTING A SQUIRTLE.

HELL YEAH.

ITS NAME IS OAK.

GOOD JOB OAK.

GO CATCH A PIDGEY ON ROUTE 1.

ITS NAME IS OAK.

RATTATA ON ROUTE 22. ITS NAME IS OAK.

CATERPIE ON ROUTE 2. ITS NAME IS OAK.

o shit.

His name’s Acorn.

Squirtle learns Bubble at level 7. AKA the most useless Water move ever. I suppose I finally understand why Rival-san was using Tackle instead.

Hi! Oak!

Bulbasaur is going to be a pain. Oak learned Water Gun at 13, but. that doesn’t really help.

Bulbasaur is only using Tackle. That helps greatly, and we’re done.

So. ARE WE DOING THIS THIS TIME?

YAAAAAAAAAAAY.

YAY.

Oki doki.

Now I have to think.

Is Acorn a real teammate, or not?

Rival-san having a Bulbasaur means that he’s going to end up with a Gyarados. Electric moves are very, very useful against such horrors. Electric moves are also very useful for, say. Misty.

I think I’m going to give Acorn a shot. Maybe I’ll have to shove him out into a box in the end, but there are enough useful points in his favor to train him up a bit. All the Speed EV pokemon are going to Acorn. When safe.

!_!

!!_!!

My Route... 4? I think 4. Route 4 catch!

His name is Tree.

And he is actually from Route 3.

Here’s where things (already) get a bit sad, I think. I have limited resources. I do not want to devote time to training something I don’t think I can use. Nidoking is a fantastic pokemon, and in a normal Nuzlocke, I would be so happy to have one.

However, his move pool is not going to help me enough, I don’t think. Maybe my mind will change. Maybe I’ll be wrong. But each member of my team needs to have a specific relevance.

...Maybe that relevance will turn out the be the reminder that I can’t count on getting a Snorlax this time.

Uggggh.

Fine, I’m digging up the pokedex.

I already know that Lapras is out. The leveling process is too painful. Hitmonlee or Hitmonchan can be options, because I think by the time I have access to them, they’re at a level that I can make use of. Eevee is technically an option, but. Flareon isn’t the best. I have a Water pokemon. I have Acorn.

If I don’t take the Eevee, that leaves room for something else from Celadon. If I catch a Magikarp sometime before Celadon, I can guarantee having a Grimer, which has the kind of move pool I think I want for a run like this.

Brute force is my usual tactic, but brute force only works in a run like this if I’m working with things that excel in force.

Other Celadon pokemon include things from the Game Corner. Pinsir has zero naturally learned Bug moves in this gen, so no. ...Oh. It’s also only an option in LeafGreen. Dratini takes too much exp to train into usefulness. Clefairy and Abra are too underleveled. Porygon is too laughably expensive. Scyther is hypothetically very useful, but doesn’t learn a Bug move until level 46. The main benefit until then would be Typing aid. A damn good one, and if it lived long enough, I could certainly make some magic happen.

The one thing I know for sure I want right now.

is a Diglett.

So assuming everything magically works out the way I’m intending, our future team has a Blastoise, a Raichu, and a Dugtrio. The question is what, out of my limited options, best adds to that.

...Tree. I don’t think this is your run, friend.

We soldier on.

Our Mt. Moon is a Zubat again. Yay. ...Oh, whoops. Huh. I only have one Poke Ball. Hope it catches our new friend.

It does!

Zubat’s name is Oak.

Oooooh, Oak learned Bite.

The Squirtle Oak.

Now Wartortle Oak.

Bite at 19.

One arduous Mt. Moon later, Acorn is at level 13, and Oak is at level 21. Now before we do anything else, we’re running to the Pokemon Center for healing, and then the Mart for Poke Balls. We’re clean out of those, and I refuse to go through caves without Flash. I refuse, I tell you.

No Mega Kick of Punch this time. Oak and Acorn should be okay to handle Misty. ...I think.

Route 4 gives us an Ekans.

Its name is Oak.

LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN.

Acorn tries to deal with the level 17 Pidgeotto because we’re all about risk now. He gets it to orange and paralyzed. Hopefully that’s enough for Oak to clean up.

It is! yay.

He sends out his Bulbasaur next, and with any luck, Bite over and over will handle any and all problems.

Wow. Lots of luck. Poisonpowder misses, and Bulbasaur just keeps flinching. Sorry about your luck, Rival-san. I’m taking it all hostage.

I don’t think Abra has an offensive move, so it’s all Acorn’s.

Only a Rattata left, and...?

Thank fuck.

So since we finally hit one, let’s end this on that high note.

Next time, Nugget Bridge awaits.

#Pokemon #Nuzlocke #Nuzlocke Challenge #playthrough

[theonyxpath]

Since next week we’ll be going into full New Kickstarter mode for the Pirates of Pugmire KS, let me catch up on a few things we talked about in the Monday Meeting today, and expand on our thinking about attending conventions.

First, thanks to everyone who sent in questions for my interview with the Onyx Pathcast! We had a great recording session last week that, no surprise, ran extra long. So many things to cover, and I wanted to go into enough detail to deliver more than a corporate sound-bite.

Next, yes, I’m still all fuzzy-headed from pollen allergies. Thanks to all who asked, or provided solutions – medical or otherwise!

And, as far as I’ve been informed, all the backer rewards for the Scion Kickstarter should now be out in the trucks/planes/tricycles of the shippers our fulfillment shipper works with. USPS and Fedex mostly, but these days it is hard to pin that down as they all seem to subcontract with each other.

V5 Chicago art by Amy Wilkins

In a little over two weeks, Eddy, Mighty Matt McElroy, and myself, will be flying over to Merrie Olde Englande for UK Games Expo! This is going to be extremely cool for me, as my family pretty much all came from that part of the world, and I’ve never visited before.

Plus, we’ll be hanging out with Matthew Dawkins, and meeting Steffie de Vann, John Burke, Chris Allen, and Klara Herbol face-to-face for the first time! We are good at using other methods of talking together like Skype, and generally love the virtual office thing, but hanging out and getting to know our creators is still the best way to really understand each other.

But our kumbaya moments aren’t all we’ll be doing at the con! The gang are running all sorts of demo games, including a Chronicles of Darkness tournament where they’ll be running games for the CofD game lines and one player will advance to a special session of the Contagion Chronicle run by developer Matthew Dawkins!

This is a kind of connected con game we’ve never actually done officially before, and we’re really looking forward to how things play out! Plus, the are a lot of other demo games going on including Fetch Quest and Prince’s Gambit, for those who need a card game break from their roleplaying sessions.

I’ll be in meetings and podcasts and other interviews, but hope to get a chance to sit near, if not in, and enjoy the fun. So if you’re going, and want to chat, you can stop by the Onyx Path booth and find out where we all are if you can’t find us there.

One thing you won’t find there will be us selling games and books at the booth. We’re stepping away from making the booth a sales venue at UKGE, and we’ll be directing folks who want to buy our stuff to our friends at Leisure Games! In fact, here’s a handy map now of the exhibition floor:

Now, UK Games Expo is not the only convention we are trying out this new booth strategy with. In fact, we are going all in at Gen Con 2019, this year, and we’re not having any booth at all there.

Instead, we have pretty much doubled the number of demo games that will be run there, we’re still having our Onyx Path panels, and you’ll still be able to buy our games and books and stuff at the Studio2 and Indie Press Revolution booths.

Unsurprisingly, we have a map for that too!

But Rich, why? Why not carry on the tradition of the Gen Con booth? You guys have made a big deal out of your Gen Con planning every year since Onyx Path started (even a few years before that, actually).

The answer is in the question really. It has been a big deal. A huge deal.

One that sucked up our time, effort, planning, attention, and cash. Gen Con exerted a disproportionate gravity every year for the effect it had on our company and community. As a chance to see the same folks year after year, the booth was a great focal point – one we are going to try and move to the panels and demo tables.

I never saw the booth as a “sales venue” nor wanted us to drive it in that direction. That’s just not how I’ve thought of our presence there; it was always more of a communications opportunity. But what we’ve seen these past few years is that the need for the booth to be our big chance to talk to folks has really been left in the dust by our online presence.

For example, all last year at Gen Con, I heard from both new and long time members of our community how they love the Onyx Pathcast, or chatting with Dixie on Slack, or Matt and Ian on our Facebook pages.

And this hasn’t just affected the booth. For example, we used to get a huge reaction when we released the new Onyx Path Brochure at Gen Con – now folks have told us that they already know most of what’s in there because of our social media and these very Monday Meeting Notes blogs, so we’ll be debuting a new kind of brochure at the Mid-Winter Convention this year.

Shunned By The Moon art by Jeff (Silver Fox) Holt

Once we looked at all that; really went into the different ways that folks are getting info and a chance to connect with the company, we could see that the booth was a massive drain on our time in terms of running it, and a pretty big drain on cash that we could use in more proactive ways, and that there were better ways we could use to communicate.

Put that all together, and we’re going to try doing things sans booth this year and see what happens. Maybe it is a horrible idea. We’ll see. But if we just “do what we’ve always done” without examining those strategies to see if they are effective, we’re headed for the tar pits.

And nobody wants that. We want to evolve so that we can continue to deliver you:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

KICKSTARTER:

Our Pirates of Pugmire Kickstarter will be starting at 2pm Eastern US time on Tuesday, May 21st!

ONYX PATH MEDIA

Illustration by Charles Bates

On this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast is a special Pirates of Pugmire Design Diary pretty much totally by Eddy Webb, who has been recording sessions all through his process of developing PoP: https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

And Here’s More Media About Our Worlds:

No Onyx Path News from last week as Matthew was away, so expect a special edition this week to make up for the gap! As for actual plays, it seems to be a Scarred Lands-focused week! Please let the Gentleman Gamer on the Onyx Path Forum know if you have an actual play or review you’d like us to profile, new or old!

Onyx Path‘s YouTube channel has however gained an additional two parts of the Scarred Lands actual play Matthew is running for Red Moon Roleplaying. Check it out if heists, dragons, asaathi, and slitherin are your thing! https://youtu.be/cjbkpGHZhVM

The Story Told RPG Podcast have reached episode five of their Dragon-Blooded actual play, so if you’re interested in Exalted, please give it a listen: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/fall-of-jiara-episode-5-a-dinner-to-remember

The latest episodes of Occultists Anonymous, the Mage: The Awakening actual play (with crossover elements are synopsised as follows: Episode 11: Across the Abyss. Half the cabal, twice the fun. They attempt to summon a Supernal being… Without any research! https://youtu.be/3y3ws45deyw AND Episode 12: Magical Girls’ Night. The conclusion of the summoning, and new plans are laid to develop tools to spellcasting. https://youtu.be/VgaxzDivbMc Give them a watch!

Back to Scarred Lands now, and Caffeinated Conquests‘ actual play of the Gauntlet of Spiragos continues (and they completely off-track from the published scenario): https://youtu.be/haNoWVTBjLc

Returning here to Scarn with Travis Legge’s Myths & Matchmakers, which has reached its 20th episode! If you enjoy your actual plays, please do check this channel out. Also, Travis really knows his Scarred Lands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYIfQKyR5Vs

Devil’s Luck Gaming are always worth checking out for their fantastic Scarred Lands and Chronicles of Darkness actual plays, streamed live: https://www.twitch.tv/DevilsLuckGaming

The Keeper of the Archive (a new show on YouTube) has recently made lengthy strides into covering the Traditions of Mage: The Ascension (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAmGl_jV_qwLk33I706Dfxg3RTqPd6YGz) and Tribes of Werewolf: The Apocalypse (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAmGl_jV_qwKLTkw8JkX02zkOMzbtrS8k). It’s a new channel and they’d greatly appreciate your support

One of our frequent Mage freelancers, Rachelle Udell, was recently interviewed by Mage: The Podcast on the subject of the Mage Cookbook and other subjects! It’s well worth a listen, and an excellent channel in general: https://anchor.fm/mage-the-podcast/episodes/The-Mage-Cookbook-and-the-Ahl-i-Batini-with-Rachelle-Udell-e3tr3g

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

ELECTRONIC GAMING:

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is now live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is both rolling and rocking!

Here’s an update from the App devs:

We’ve been having trouble fixing the android bug that messes up the resolution for newer phones. I think we have a fix for that.  It was also brought up that the store display is wrong on most tablet devices, so that is getting fixed too. That should all be soon!

ON AMAZON AND BARNES & NOBLE:

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue you bought it from. Reviews really, really help us with getting folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

OUR SALES PARTNERS:

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the Screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio 2: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can now order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=296

DRIVETHRURPG.COM:

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we’re putting up a ton of stickers on our RedBubble store! Symbols and logos and art and all sorts of stuff- but as stickers!

CONVENTIONS

UK Games Expo: May 31st – June 2nd From the US comes Eddy Webb, Matt McElroy, and Rich Thomas to join with Matthew Dawkins, Steffie de Vann, John Burke, Chris Allen, and Klara Herbol! Gen Con: August 1st – August 4th Save Against Fear: Oct 12-14 GameHoleCon: October 31st – November 3rd We’ll also be back at PAX Unplugged later this year.

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM FAST EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Geist2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Redlines

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Second Draft

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aeon Ready Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Heroic Land Dwellers (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

DR:E Threat Guide (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

DR:E Jumpstart (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Development

Hunter: the Vigil 2e core (Hunter: the Vigil 2nd Edition)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Memento Mori: the GtSE 2e Companion (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Creatures of the World Bestiary (Scion 2nd Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Let The Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Manuscript Approval:

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Pirates of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Blood Sea: Crimson Abyss for 5e (Scarred Lands)

Editing:

Spilled Blood (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)

CofD Dark Eras 2 (Chronicles of Darkness)

Distant Worlds (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Scion Ready Made Characters (Scion 2nd Edition)

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Post-Editing Development:

M20 Book of the Fallen (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

V5 Chicago By Night (Vampire: The Masquerade)

V5 Chicago By Night Screen (Vampire: The Masquerade)

CofD Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Witch-Queen of the Shadowed Citadel (Cavaliers of Mars)

Indexing:

Trinity Aeon

ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE:

In Art Direction

Ex3 Monthly Stuff  

Chicago By Night

They Came From Beneath the Sea!

EX3 Lunars

Hunter: The Vigil 2

Contagion Chronicle

VtR Spilled Blood – Contracted.

M20 Book of the Fallen – Contracted.

Dark Eras 2 – First set of sketches in.

CoM – Witch Queen of the Shadowed Citadel – Sending back feedback on sketches.

Pirates of Pugmire – KS art contracted, sketches and finals coming in.

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant – KS art started contracting.

Scion Ready Made Characters – Contracted.

TC Aeon: Distant Worlds – Reading through artnotes.

Marketing Stuff

In Layout

Dystopia Rising: Evolution – With Josh.

Shunned By the Moon

Trinity Continuum Core – Index is in.

Proofing

The Realm – At WW for approval.

Book of Oblivion – At WW for approval.

Signs of Sorcery – Dev comments back to layout.

Aeon Aexpansion – In 2nd Proof.

C20 Cup of Dreams Novel

Scion Jumpstart

At Press

Scion Hero – Shipped to backers, PoD proof ordered.

Scion Origin – Shipped to backers, PoD proof ordered.

Scion Dice – Shipped to backers.

Scion Screen – Shipped to backers.

Fetch Quest – Waiting for PoD proofs.

In Media Res – PDF out to backers, gathering errata with new sheet.

Geist 2e – PDF out to backers, gathering errata with new sheet.

Adventures for Curious Cats – PoD proof ordered.

Tales of Excellent Cats – PoD proof ordered.

Dragon-Blooded – Deluxe at printer. Signed off of Press Proofs.

Dragon-Blooded Screen – At printer.

Trinity Core and Aeon Screens – Files at printer.

TODAY’S REASON TO CELEBRATE: 

Today in 1964 a great nerd was born: Stephen Colbert. The man argues Silmarillion lore facts and kept a replica of Captain America’s shield on set. He drops references to his D&D game characters. Why are we in a golden era of “nerd culture”? Well, his overt love of our stuff has certainly helped!

#Onyx Path Publishing

[ericdesmarais]

2018 Resolution Mid-Year Review

2018 Resolution Mid-Year Review

Hello My Imaginary Friends,

I made some resolutions in January about my year. I made them to push myself and encourage improvement.

Let’s have a look at them and how I’m doing.

Write 2000 words a week for The Mystery of the Dancing Lights (Failing)

This was an extremely ambitious goal. I was hoping to have 52000 words by this point but I’ve only managed 23000. It’s still writing but it’s not as much as I’d hoped. I’m averaging under 1000 a week, mostly due to the weeks I haven’t or just didn’t write.

I’m hoping I can increase my speed but we’ll see how it goes.

Pitch Everdome and the Super-Secret Project (Succeeded)

I pitched to Renaissance Press and they’re currently deciding on Everdome, if they don’t take it I’ll shop it around and maybe make the plunge and self publish it.

The pitch for the Super-Secret Project went well and everyone was excited but due to everyone involved being really busy it’s been put on the back burner.

I’ll hopefully have news by end of year.

Write a Monthly Serial Story (Succeeding)

So far Devices of Desire has been going strong and I haven’t missed a month. I’m really enjoying this story and I hope you are too.

Continue to ensure there’s content 5 days a week on JenEric Designs (Succeeding)

So far so good… I’ve had a few days where I was too sick or tired but I managed to put something up. Yay!

Read 30 books (Succeeding)

So far this year I’ve read 12 books (13 if you count beta-reading). I’ve been trying to challenge myself to only read books by people I have met or interacted with online. I’m a little behind but I should be able to catch up by end of month. Thank goodness for audiobooks and graphic novels.

Finish the new content for FADDS and playtest it (Succeeding)

I’m currently running a rag tag group of misfits through a fetch quest in the world of Everworld (precursor to Everdome) and it’s going well. I’ve managed to fix and write all the content I wanted and a little more. I still need to keep making monsters and see how the playing goes. So far so good.

Test, Design, and Produce 2 new coffee flavours (Succeeded)

A dark roast without flavouring

A medium roast with peppermint flavouring

A mixed roast with Canadian maple and banana flavouring

I have successfully developed the above 3 flavours and I’m testing 3 potential flavours. Yay coffee!

Edit and send Dinosaur Road Trip to a willing betareader (No movement)

I haven’t even looked at it since the Weditor sent it back to me. I’m nervous that it sucks. I don’t think it’ll be a book I pitch. I might get a few self published copies for myself and family.

Start getting a short story collection together (Succeeded)

I’ve picked the theme, and the stories. I just have to write the middle parts and book ends. I’ll hopefully have them done by year end. So I consider this done.

Play more Videogames (Succeeding-ish)

I’ve played a lot of mobile games lately. I’ve really enjoyed SIMS Mobile as a time waster and I’m still in love with both Ticket to Ride Mobile, and Civilization Revolution 2.

Besides that I’ve maybe played an hour of FFX and a couple of hours of the new Lego Incredibles. I need to do more but Keladry still attacks the remote. I’ve tried to teach her what to do but she’s not getting it yet. I’ll keep trying.

  So not bad, I’m currently succeeding at 6.5 out of 10. I guess that means I need to add more but that will be another post.

How are your resolutions going?

Éric

Please follow and like us:

#Books #coffee #Dinosaur Road Trip #dragon #Elizabeth Investigates #Everdome #FADDS #Keladry #New Years #Resolutions #Tags 2018 #The Mystery of the Dancing Lights #video games #Éric Desmarais - Aspiring Something

[morfinwen]

28, 37, 41, 43, 44, and 50 for all OCs :)

RIP anyone on mobile, here’s a “read more” for the rest of you:

28 - What are some of their guilty pleasures?

Reagan - Dumb phone games, some she’ll download just to play once then remove forever.

Chris - Action paperbacks, the kind with paper-thin characters, plots that fall apart if you think about them for more than two seconds, villains as realistic as a Saturday morning cartoon, etc.

Angie - Her abiding love for the Disney movies she watched as a child goes beyond what most adults will admit to. She wore out her old video cassette of Cinderella, and takes very good care of the stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh bear she’s had since she was a baby.

Neal - There’s this one soap opera he’s kept up on since he was nine years old. No one can know.

Elarin - She loves cheesy pop love ballads. No matter how ridiculous or sappy they are, if it's got a catchy tune, she’ll be humming it under her breath for weeks. HK-47 confirms this was a trait she had even back in her “terror of the galaxy” days, which has led to some interesting mental images for both Elarin and her friends.

Meaghan - She has a collection of various animal figurines she’s collected from all over the place, from all different manufacturers and planets. Most of them are brightly colored and made of cheap materials, almost none of them are realistic. About the only thing all of them have in common, besides being goofy imitations of animals, is that she likes the way they feel in her hands.

Leah - Fancy Lads Snack Cakes. So sugary you can feel your teeth rot when you bite into one. So packed full of preservatives they’ve lasted as long as she’s been alive (which also means most of them are at least slightly irradiated). Whenever she finds a box somewhere, though, she’ll pick it up and hide it somewhere, for when she’s having a bad day.

Avery - There have been various incidents across Kirkwall that have occurred suspiciously close to times and places Avery and Varric were left unattended for lengthy periods of time. Avery doesn’t regret a single shenanigan, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to admit her involvement to Aveline.

Ash - If, hypothetically speaking, Ash ever watched a romcom or chick flick -- which, given the general low quality of many of those types of films, he is definitely not likely to ever do -- he would only do it somewhere private, where if some part of the movie might by happenstance make him tear up, he could keep his emotions to himself and not have to deal with the judgment and opinions of others. All purely hypothetical. You have no evidence.

Lanzo - Reality TV. It’s ridiculous and melodramatic and over the top and not realistic in the slightest, but he can get sucked into watching it for hours. What else is he going to do during the daylight hours?

Connie - Chasing sticks. It’s not fetch, it’s more like catch. With himself.

Aidan - Musicals. Even the silly ones with pointless plots and unbelievable characters.

Nate - He used to love Skittles.

Q - Some animated show that he watched a lot of when he was a kid. Absolutely refuses to speak of it to anyone. He has copies of his favorite episodes saved on his laptop in a password-protected folder with a misleading name, just to make sure no one learns about it.

Niner - Yarn. It’s not that werecats have anything against yarn -- many of them are just as entranced by it as Niner -- but batting a ball of colorful yarn around on the floor is not part of Niner’s image.

Amanda - Self-describes her drinking habits as a quest to replace all internal fluids with Coca-Cola.

Ian - Twinkies. He knows they’re terrible for him, but it’s a road trip necessity. He had a minor freak out when Hostess went bankrupt and they stopped being sold for several months.

Lauren - The occasional cigarette, when she is extra stressed or angry and nothing else will calm her down. If she's particularly self-controlled, one pack will last two weeks. She is usually not quite that self-controlled.

Kira - An older teen romance werewolf movie. She knows it’s dumb, but the lead male is just. The cutest. The dreamiest eyes. His smile. His hair ... 

Darcy - Chocolate covered marshmallow cookies. Dipped in peanut butter.

Susanna - Susanna is too young to have guilty pleasures. If she likes something, she likes it, and refuses to be ashamed about it.

37 - Do they like glitter?

Reagan - It doesn’t bother her, but no.

Chris - Giving someone a card with glitter on it is one of Chris’ ways of getting petty revenge on people who haven’t done anything bad enough to merit serious comeuppance. He’ll always add a little extra, in such a way that the recipient won’t notice beyond “wow, there’s a lot of glitter on this card”.

Angie - Not particularly.

Neal - No.

Elarin - Not usually, but sometimes a girl just needs to feel sparkly.

Meaghan - Doesn’t care either way.

Leah - Sure, in small doses.

Avery - I don’t think they have glitter in Ferelden. If they did, she’d love it, but mostly for petty revenge like Chris.

Ash - Ugh. No.

Lanzo - He has a glittery tiara that says “DIVA” that he wears sometimes when he's drunk. When he’s sober, its tendency to get everywhere irritates the heck out of him.

Connie - No.

Aidan - Eh.

Nate - No.

Q - No.

Niner - Won’t ever admit it, but has a certain fascination with anything shiny or sparkly.

Amanda - When she was younger, she did. Nowadays she’s just slightly more likely to buy a glittery card than the average person.

Ian - He would, except he seems to have extraordinarily bad luck with it.

Lauren - With as many siblings as she had, there was always something leaving glitter everywhere when she was growing up, so she’s developed a dislike of it.

Kira - Yes.

Darcy - No.

Susanna - No interest.

41 - Have they ever broken a bone?

Reagan - Once, broke her arm falling out of a tree.

Chris - A few, while playing sports.

Angie - Never.

Neal - If asked, Neal might talk about the one time he got his collarbone broken while playing football in junior high. He will not mention the other times he had a broken bone in his childhood. His parents get angry with him when he talks about those. 

Elarin - Considering all the violent conflicts she’s been involved in, she’s suffered serious injury on multiple occasions, but even without amnesia she couldn’t tell you offhand how many of them involved broken bones.

Meaghan - Same.

Leah - Pre-War, she broke a couple fingers playing sports. Post-War … she lost count a long time ago.

Avery - A few. She also leads a conflict-heavy life, but she keeps to the back and lets her better-armored friends take the charge.

Ash - Slipped and broke his ankle one winter. Most boring winter of his life.

Lanzo - Not since becoming a vampire. Vampires can break bones, but it’s significantly less likely.

Connie - No. Werewolves are also tougher than humans.

Aidan - Phoenixes, on the other hand, have light bones that break more easily. The longest he’s gone without breaking something is eight months. (Fortunately, phoenixes also have methods of healing faster).

Nate - Broke his left arm once, and his left leg on a different occasion. The latter event was the one that put an end to his skateboarding/rollerblading days and kickstarted his interest in video games.

Q - He’s suffered a lot of batterings, thanks to riding a bike professionally -- mostly scrapes and minor cuts, but also more than his fair share of broken bones, he’s sure.

Niner - Probably not? When asked, she claims not to know what bones are, and shows no interest in learning. Q is 88% sure she’s joking, but … it’s Niner.

Amanda - Once, broke her leg very badly during an investigation.

Ian - Once, in college. He got lost on his way to class, and thought he was walking down a different set of stairs on the other side of campus -- ones that didn’t require you to be as mindful of where you put your feet.

Lauren - Answered.

Kira - Broke her collarbone once.

Darcy - No.

Susanna - Two fingers, one toe, her ankle, and one hairline fracture in her arm. Considering how much energy Susanna puts into doing everything, it might be a bit surprising she hasn’t broken more.

43 - Have they ever drunk underage?

Reagan - As a small child, she wanted to try her aunt’s wine. Janet figured allowing her a taste would put her off of it for a while, and it did. Reagan never drank again for years, until some very determined coworkers convinced her to accompany them to a bar after work.

Chris - He was at a few parties in high school where there was drinking going on, but he never had any himself.

Angie - Nope. No interest, no opportunities.

Neal - His dad’s idea of “male bonding” was making his twelve-year-old drink an entire can of beer while watching old videos of him playing high school football. Neal threw up shortly afterward, which did nothing to improve his relationship with his father, but it did mean he never “wasted” his beer making Neal drink it again.

Elarin - Never really had the opportunity, and wouldn’t have taken it if she had.

Meaghan - Ditto.

Leah - Someone spiked the punch at one school party Leah attended her sophomore year of high school. Before she’d had more than half a cup, her not-yet-boyfriend Nate warned her about it, and offered to see her home, as the friends she’d come with were not put off by the spiked punch.

It was a warm spring evening, so they walked home very, very slowly, talking about everything going on in the world and what they hoped to do to change things for the better.

Avery - I’m not sure if Ferelden has a drinking age. If it does, then no, but not for want of trying -- so many adults seemed to love alcohol so much, young Avery just wanted to know why, but the mean bartender never let her try any.

Ash - Nope. His dad took him to his favorite local pub shortly after Ash’s twenty-first birthday, and gave him a lot of advice on the topic.

Lanzo - If the concept of minors even existed when Lanzo was born, it was a very different understanding. He grew up drinking alcoholic beverages with pretty much every meal.

Connie - Disliking the taste of alcohol and/or being more susceptible to it are not so common among werewolves as to be a distinctive trait, but for some reason are more likely to be true of the average werewolf than the average human. For this reason, among others, there wasn’t much peer pressure or opportunity for underage drinking.

As an adult, Connie’s tried a variety of different drinks, all of which taste vile to him.

Aidan - No underage drinking, though he did visit a couple speakeasies during Prohibition.

Nate - A little in college, mostly just a friend offering him a taste of theirs. Once at a party he picked up someone’s mixed drink by accident and drank the entire thing. Apparently, Nate’s a great dancer once he loosens up a little.

Q - Not by British standards.

Niner - Werecats leave their immediate families when they reach physical maturity, usually in their early teens, and will travel for a while with others of the same age. One of the other werecats in Niner’s group discovered an abandoned bottle of whiskey on the side of the road, and gave it a try. His reaction was so strong everyone else in the group had to give it a try as well. None of them liked it.

Amanda - For a short period of her teenage years, Amanda rebelled against the strict rules and high expectations of her mother by engaging in various transgressive acts, such as sneaking into bars with fake ID and attending parties where alcohol was available. She was very careful never to get drunk, as she knew there would be serious consequences if her mother ever found out.

Ian - He accidentally drank some of his dad’s beer once as a kid. Like Reagan, it was enough to put him off of it for years. He tolerates some mixed drinks, but he’s still not super-fond of alcohol.

Lauren - She was raised Catholic, so she had wine with her first Communion in grade school. Apart from that, her parents permitted their children to have a single glass of wine at dinner on certain special occasions, once they were double-digits. Like most of her siblings, Lauren didn’t like the taste of it, but it made her feel very grown-up to ask for some. There was also a lot of competitiveness between the siblings, so once one had a glass, all the rest had to have it too, lest they be “shown up” by the others.

Kira, Darcy, Susanna - Nope.

44 - What is the first thing they do when they wake up?

Reagan - Check her phone.

Chris - He has a whole system that starts with getting up, making the bed, getting dressed, brushing his teeth, making breakfast …

Angie - Opens a window.

Neal - Wakes up gradually to the smell of coffee -- sets his coffee maker to start automatically in the mornings.

Elarin - Goes back to whatever she was doing before someone made her go to bed.

Meaghan - Meditates.

Leah - Helps whomever is making breakfast, or starts it if no one else has.

Avery - Mornings are difficult for Avery, so once she’s awake she just lays in bed for a while, until she feels better or something forces her to get up.

Ash - Makes tea and goes outside to watch the sunrise.

Lanzo - Has a drink.

Connie - Showers, if he has to work. Picks up the nearest book and leafs through it until he's fully awake, if he doesn't.

Aidan - If it’s rainy, and it usually is, he’ll get up, get dressed, and find some breakfast. On the rare occasions it’s sunny, goes outside, climbs onto the roof, and watches the sunrise for as long as he can.

Nate - Doesn’t sleep anymore. Back when he did, he would check his phone first.

Q - It takes him a while to fully wake up, so some mornings the first thing he does once he’s awake is make tea, other mornings he’s halfway on his way to work before he can be considered “awake”.

Niner - Food is the only thing on Niner’s mind when she wakes up.

Amanda - She uses the radio for an alarm, and her preferred daytime radio program starts a half hour before she has to get going, so she’ll lie in bed and just listen, letting herself wake up more gradually.

Ian - Wakes up to his alarm, hits the snooze button one too many times, gets up in a panic and drinks as much coffee as he can before leaving for work.

Lauren - Takes a cold shower.

Kira - Bury her head under her pillow, groan, then very reluctantly get up.

Darcy - Get dressed.

Susanna - Run downstairs for breakfast.

50 - Are they good at remembering significant dates? Anniversaries, birthdays etc?

Reagan - She’s not terrible at remembering. Whether she’ll do anything for it is a different matter.

Chris - Yes, but he’s not above getting it wrong or ignoring it if he feels it’s called for.

Angie - Always. In fact, there have been occasions where Angie has recognized a significant date for someone in her social circle and honored it appropriately without that person having any recollection of telling of her that such a date even existed, let alone when it was.

Neal - For the people he cares about, yes. Otherwise, probably not.

Elarin - Dates of personal importance, to her or those close to her, yes -- though mostly by setting up alerts to remind her and other, more subconscious methods. Otherwise she has trouble remembering what day it is.

Meaghan - She’s pretty good at remembering, unless something very serious comes up to distract her.

Leah - She’s good at remembering the actual date, but between all her responsibilities, the incredibly low likelihood of coming across any accurate calendars, and the fact that the Commonwealth’s weather patterns have changed a lot since she was growing up, she might not realize an important date has come up.

Avery - For Avery, recognizing the occasion is more important than getting the date absolutely right, but she is decent at recalling dates, and she makes a point for those to whom getting the date right is important.

Ash - As soon as he learns about an important date for someone who’s more than a casual acquaintance, he writes it down in his personal calendar/address book. You would really have to work to aggravate him enough not to send you a birthday card, once you’re in the book.

Lanzo - Yes, but after this much time, he occasionally mixes up what day is important to what person. Especially awkward when he confuses someone in the house’s birthday with the birthday of, say, one of his wives.

Connie - With a little effort, he can. He has a calendar with every important birthdate written down on it.

Aidan - Nope!

Nate - He remembers all important dates for his immediate family, and a few for his extended family. Otherwise, not really.

Q - Yes. Not really a benefit to him at present, seeing as most of the significant dates he remembers are for his ex-girlfriend and terrible aunt and uncle.

Niner - Vaguely aware of approaching holidays. Otherwise, can’t even tell what day of the week it is, or even what the days of the week are. She’s almost certain “Wednesday” isn’t a real word.

Amanda - She tries, but she gets so involved in her work that it can slip her mind until it’s too late. She really does put in an effort for her closest friends and family.

Ian - Answered.

Lauren - The only important dates she can really remember are those of her family and Ian’s family.

Kira - She only has to hear it once to remember it. Now if only that worked for her history tests …

Darcy - Has been known to forget when his own birthday is, so that would be a no.

Susanna - Not particularly, though she has on multiple occasions surprised people by remembering an important date they were sure she’d forgotten.

Long enough for you? Thanks for asking, though! Still fun working through these. Most of these, anyway. (Poor Neal ... )

#it's a long one guys #ask #answer #OCs #reagan travers #christopher hardie #angie mckendrick #neal fairchild #elarin (knights of the old republic) #meaghan caoilfhionn (knights of the old republic 2) #avery hawke (dragon age 2) #leah tolkien (fallout 4) #ash jackson #lanzo ramsey #connie lowell #aidan michaels #nate vasquez #q free #niner #amanda wheeler #ian grayson #lauren winston #kira raines #darcy raines #susanna raines #ioannemos

[mythicnoir]

Gatekeeper Session 1-3

Decided to share some recaps I wrote on the last few sessions of the current adventure in my campaign. The writing style is a bit more casual than I usually go for, but I think it sums up stuff well.

This’ll be under a readmore, because it gets long.

Session One:

It is the Waithdyd, the fourth day of Khelek, the month of Ice, in the year 1550 Anni Zylla. On the island of Ludum, a nation torn and divided, deep within Vindred Forest, three destinies slowly intersect. Two months since the adventuring family called Thunderclan lost one member to a life of piracy and another member to a life of performance, Equaarion Tarkus the druid and Rae the elf sought out answers within Simona Village. They've heard a call for help, a unique one that piqued their interest. From here, they will encounter new allies, new enemies, and new adventure.

For the uninitiated, Ludum is an island within my campaign setting of Yalda, and it's a nation in crisis. The royal family and their Hallow Knights vanished from the capital city of Hamlet mysteriously almost a year and a half ago, and since then, the nation has been in chaos. Brigands have run of the woods, evil creatures close in on unguarded villages, and a host of ambitious nobles seek a claim on the throne. Within this chaos comes Thunderclan, a group of mercenaries.

The group was originally Equaarion Tarkus, the human druid folk hero, played by my friend Cam... Rae, the elven ranger, played by my friend Michaela... the half-elf eldritch knight pirate Salty Martine, played by my friend Cal, and the human bard Sasha Sabotage, played by my friend Jacque. But Cal and Jacque had to go and study abroad in Prague, so a newcomer has joined our D&D group, and you'll find out who that is in a second.

The heroes are all about mid-level now, which means that they've been through the shit, they've made some friends, made some enemies, seen stuff that gives them new perspective, and they’re approaching infamous status, which is pretty much what every player wants, imo.

But on with the story.

Rae and Equaarion approach the gates of Simona Village. The rain has drenched them completely, and the guard is delaying opening the gate as he waits for a new figure to roll up.

The two heroes are eager to get inside the village walls, find warmth, and a place to sleep, but they turn to meet the figure joining them.

Standing three and a half feet tall, clad in a noblewoman's dress and walking with a long staff, ankle-deep in mud, comes the next part of their adventures. Freesia Flores is her name, and she is a halfling warlock of the archfey.

The heroes introduce themselves politely to their diminutive friend as the guard exits the gate to check them in. The players are anticipating a quick pat down and an interview, but that's not what they get.

Dunstan, the guard, needs to take a blood sample. The town has been plagued by demons and fairies in disguise in recent months, and local superstition holds that if you bleed red, you're the real deal.

The heroes are confused but comply, hoping to avoid making a big deal of it. Their blood is taken and their eyes are examined and they're asked their names and motivations. Dunstan shrugs, figures they're fine, and lets them in. Freesia immediately races off for the tavern while Rae and Equaarion help Dunstan get the gates shut through the mud and rain.

Within the Blue Vine Tavern, Rae examines the letter that summoned her and Equaarion to Simona Village in the first place. It's from a logger named Elsha, who nervously talks about the predicament the village is in. Bandits from the south calling themselves the Redhoods have set up camp outside the town. Word is they're looking for an artifact in an ancient Wengwith ruin called Tir Dyffryn. Elsha is afraid that with enough time, the Redhoods will get bored and just ransack the town, killing and stealing whatever they find.

On top of that, there's the demon problem. Demons have been spotted in the woods, upsetting the status quo of fairies and neutral beasts.

Freesia Flores, meanwhile, didn't come here for that. She came separately, she came with her own motivations. She's a warlock, she's on the search for knowledge and understanding her pact, and fairies in particular.

In time, Elsha meets up with Rae and Equaarion in the tavern, and Freesia Flores begins to sidle up, hearing word about fairies and the Black Thicket tribe, a group of druids that may know a thing or two.

As they discuss the bandit situation, Michaela, as Rae, asks, "Well, do you want us to just go into their camp and kill them all?"

But Elsha says no, they can't do that. "If you kill the Redhoods, their allies will hear of it, and take vengeance on the town, you'll only cause more problems."

The solution, Elsha posits, is for Thunderclan to go and search for the artifact themselves, stealing it from underneath the Redhood's noses.

This is appealing to Rae and Equaarion, because the artifact that's being discussed is a celestial artifact of tremendous power. This artifact alone is believed to be an egg that could transport people across dimensions.

Also, they’re playing Dungeons and Dragons and who doesn’t want to go looking for treasure?

This is appealing to Rae and Equaarion, because they're hot on the trail of Rae’s missing girlfriend. Her name was Emilia, and she was a Hallow Knight of Hamlet. After some scrying and investigation, they've realized that the Knights, including Emilia, have become trapped in another dimension.

So they are VERY interested in getting this artifact.

Meanwhile Freesia is interested because this is an opportunity for more knowledge, and the three of them are each aware that if they split up and adventure around these woods, they are most certainly dead.

So the heroes, having talked with Elsha, get the picture. There's a band of Redhoods, they gotta get away but we can't just kill them. There are demons and fairies in this neck of the woods, and our best bet for more information on the location of the artifact and the supernatural stuff going on is the Black Thicket Tribe of druids. Got it.

So the heroes thank Elsha, finish their drinks, eavesdrop a bit, and head out.

It’s a lot of information but who gives a shit, fairies and demons and bandit rings are all cool and it’s my personal philosophy when running a game that players should at least know what sort of stuff they can get up to.

The heroes exit the tavern and are about to look for the Black Thicket encampment when they see an old man in a hood and robe moving a wheelbarrow and calling out for help. Everyone in the street seems to ignore him, but the heroes approach regardless and start asking him for help because they’re oh-so-good people.

This conversation ended up being hilarious, because the man, who was Obviously evil, the halfling could see up his hood and see his pitch black eyes, kept on making absurd lies and speaking in a ridiculous old man voice. The heroes are rightfully super suspicious of this guy and as he reaches out for Rae's shoulder. She jumps back and discovers that he has black claws.

Eventually Freesia decides to use a warlock ability to make him Frightened of her, and he casts away his cloak, revealing horns and a little tail, as he sprints away. He manages to escape, but the heroes all suddenly aware of the shit the town could be in.

But from the shadows comes a voice. "You shouldn't do that in public."

This is Ragweed, the halfling elder of the Black Thicket tribe. He brings the heroes back to his encampment with the rest of his tribe and hears their concerns. Ragweed is essentially a short freckled mess of ginger hair and an eyepatch.

The Black Thicket tribe have agreed to help the Master of the Town in these trying times, defending them and serving as guardians, so they're definitely good guys, they have the interests of the villagers at heart, but they've got their own issues.

The heroes want to know more about Tir Dyffryn and this mysterious artifact. Ragweed tells them that they don't seem like they're going to run over the town and kill everyone, but he's the keeper of this secret as to where Tir Dyffryn is and he's not just going to give it up for free.

So Ragweed tells them, "My tribal brethren lost something very precious to her in a battle with demons. Maybe if you retrieve it with her, I'll trust you a little more."

This is a super classical fetch quest, it's a little gamey, but this session to me was just about simplicity and defining the new group dynamic, so I'm fine with some basic stuff.

The tribal brethren in question is Poppy, an earth genasi woman. She's friendly and sweet and has a little bit of a slow and nice friendly voice.

The heroes head out, but before they go, Rae uses her ranger abilities to sense the woods around her, and detect what kind of creatures are out there.

I describe the normal souls and presence of various civilized races, or kith, as they're called in my setting. But at the end of her abilities range I describe a pure unfathomable darkness and boiling hatred. I call it 'necrotic rot', which Michaela really hitched on to. I think she repeated it a couple times, it was pretty descriptive.

So they know they're gonna fight some demons. 

Sure enough, the heroes end up at Pwigra Pass, where Poppy tells them she lost her Codex Terragnosis, a sacred text detailing the beasts and fairies and interplanar travel of this setting.

And pretty much every single person in the party wants to see that book.

I could describe the fight that they had at Pwigra Pass in an attempt to retrieve the book, but overall it was pretty easy. They faced off against some demons. They were ram skulls with spider legs, but those spider legs could suck up into themselves and become bat wings. Freaky stuff,

Rae is a hardcore as fuck ranger that never misses and never does minimal damage.

Meanwhile Equaarion is a conjuring and shapeshifting druid. He recently got a hold of a figurine of wondrous power of a Griffon that he recently named Honeyduke, and in this fight, he detected the enemies, summoned the griffon, and jumped off of a 60-foot high bridge to be caught by the griffon. Which is fucking awesome.

Freesia Flores is the newcomer and is pretty much totally decked out with weird fairy warlock powers. So far she’s pretty much a generalist that can shore up all of the group’s weaknesses.

Anyway, they win the fight, grab this arcane book, and begin to head back to Simona Village. But more adventure awaits.

Session Two:

The characters returned to Simona Village to find that Ragweed had departed to meditate. The heroes chose to find Ragweed first before looking at the book.

The heroes visited Ragweed, in a meditation spot he fancied in an abandoned tower, and had an insightful conversation about Wildshape. It was really about Equaarion. Just about his aims, how he felt that adventuring was the natural choice for him. 

It’s the age old compulsion for adventure, the feeling that there’s nothing for you but the road and the desire to seek more.

Ragweed is a good man and while he's a bit eccentric, he really does love the world and wants to protect the life within it. So Ragweed shares with the heroes the location of Tir Dyffryn and the Angel Egg, this mysterious celestial artifact that may allow the heroes passage to the realm of Concord, where the heroes believe they will find Emilia. Ragweed warns them of the dangers, pointing out that the Wengwith heavily trapped and guarded their buildings with constructs. Instead, Ragweed asks them to stay in the village and help out. The elven ranger Rae knows, even as close as she is to Emilia, that she cannot abandon these people in their time of need, and solemnly nods.

Rae heard a voice call out in Wengwith, asking whether they were friendly. After a brief deliberation, Rae invited the voice up. The group discovered he was a tiefling clad in all sorts of trinkets and fine robes and jewelry, but as soon as the tiefling saw their map, Equaarion got antsy and said that they needed to kill him -- in Common, which Chem couldn't understand. Freesia says that's absurd and barbaric and they don't need to do that. I'm feeling like between Sasha and Freesia, the charismatic ladies are always going to be the voices of reason in Thunderclan.

Eventually the heroes had a weird conversation with Chem of Longquest about his travels, the dangers of the woods, and a strange obsidian idol Chem of Longquest had in the shape of a bat before they decided to head back, whereupon Equaarion heard a slithering liquid-like sound coming from outside of the tower. Rae moved to inspect the sound, bow drawn, and Chem of Longquest strokes the obsidian idol, tosses it to the center of the tower, and punches Rae in the head.

It's initiative, and already the heroes have problems. The black idol is in the center of the tower and it starts leaking out black gas that deals poison damage to the heroes. Chem of Longquest begins using his spider-climbing magic item to attach himself to the inside of the wall and get a good vantage point on the heroes.

They manage to deal some damage to him, but soon enough a shadow demon answering to Chem slithers in and the situation gets more complicated than the heroes would like. Equaarion orders Honeyduke, the griffon, to carry the idol out of the tower, but the poison cloud still lingers for two rounds. The heroes break out of the tower and into the open meadow, followed by the shadow demon.

The heroes struggle, and Rae goes down, but Honeyduke carries her to safety and Ragweed's healing word brings her back up. Freesia and Equaarion battle the shadow demon while Chem of Longquest hides out of sight, uncovering its many resistances and immunities before Rae puts the final nail in the coffin and kills the demon. Freesia charges back into the tower and with two swift eldritch blasts knocks Chem unconscious.

The interrogation of Chem begins. The heroes strip him down and tie him up, only to find that he is a demon worshipper and a bit of an edgy creep. He's forthcoming about information. He serves She-Who-Walks-Away-Alone, the Crimson Bat, a demon slain by Prince Laurence that now slumbers and regains her 'flame' beneath the Tomb of the Ancients -- the undead city of Necropolis. Chem also says, very plainly, that "my master answers to the one you call King."

The heroes look at one another. King Ezra? What's going on? Could these be the answers everyone is searching for? Chem states that Ezra abandoned his family to seek greater power with demons and dragonkind in order to further advance his own nation. Meanwhile, according to Chem, Queen Rosaria's hubris dragged the Hallow Knights of Hamlet into a harrowing nightmare (Knightmare), in a bid for her children to become more powerful.

This is big news, and it only makes sense for a demon worshipper to be clued into these sorts of things. But these answers are only revealing new questions. When did this schism happen? Where is Ezra? Who's the bad guy in this situation? We know more about what Ezra's up to and this is in line with what Agrippa or Rend said a long time ago, but all this news about Rosaria is very opinion-based and unclear. Was she trying to cure her son Ludwig's sickliness or ascend them to Godhood? What's going on?

In the end this is a huge moment for the heroes, but they still are wondering why Chem of Longquest is so forthright with all this information. And the answer is very simple. Chem of Longquest points out that this information is meaningless to him because in the end, the strong will rule, and he believes that his mistress, the Crimson Bat, is the most powerful. So these secrets are really meaningless to him. Meanwhile, why isn't he afraid of Rae holding a bow and arrow up to his head? Simple, he's in service to a demon queen. Death is also meaningless to him. He states very plainly, "Upon my death I will rejoin the Abyss, and I will be taken through the Wheel and reborn." Which is at least partly true. Freesia basically raises an eyebrow at this and correctly observes that while he's right about eventually being reincarnated... the rest seems like religious belief.

Rae says, "Give me one reason I shouldn't kill you."

And Chem replies, "Only your own weakness."

And the arrow is loosed, Chem of Longquest is killed.

The heroes and Ragweed agree to return to Simona Village to rest up and look at the book in the morning. The heroes are a little shaken by all this information, but rest will do them good. The heroes rest in separate rooms, Equaarion and Rae in one and Freesia in another, and in the morning they examine the Codex Terragnosis with Poppy.

The heroes learned all sorts of things about the other planes of existence, fairies and their origins, angels and their search for the true meaning of life, the universe, and everything, and a ton of beasts, including the Aguila Thunderbird, a legendary storm phoenix.

After geeking out over books, though it's mostly nerd warlock Freesia geeking, they decide, based on Poppy's advice, to tell the Master of the village, Pickford Pine, about them clearing Pwigra Pass. So they go, and they have a really pleasant conversation, mostly thanks to the heroes having a good reputation all around, but also definitely thanks to Freesia being super charismatic and very honest about everything. She didn't sugarcoat why she was in town, no pretenses to coming just to help with the struggle, which actually made Pickford Pine happy. He's a no-nonsense kind of guy, he's 34, married with two kids, he's a master of a small village and a proficient hunter, so he just says, "You adventurers have a good reputation in this forest, so as long as you're not making friends with the bandits, then I won't have you arrested and run out of town."

He offers them a gold ingot as a reward for clearing out the demons at Pwigra Pass and tells them that there's more where that came from if they manage to keep things peaceful in town and use that goodwill to improve relationships between the Black Thicket Tribe and the villagers. If that happens, and the village is unified and strong together, then Pine is less worried about the Redhoods ransacking the town, and Thunderclan will be good people in his eyes.

So the heroes decide to formulate a plan, a creative solution to the problems plaguing Simona Village, that doesn't involve bloodshed and drawing the attention of the Redhoods allies. And also hopefully doesn't get them run out of town.

Equaarion observes that he's both a druid and a civilian in many senses, and his reputation as a folk hero may allow him to serve as the bridge between those two peoples and to solidify that and maybe strengthen the town through peace and diplomacy.

Meanwhile, Freesia is wondering whether the Redhoods could be tricked into believing that Tir Dyffryn and the artifact isn't anywhere near Vindred, and get them to depart the village and give the townspeople time to prepare and defend themselves, or maybe just permanently mislead the Redhoods.

Rae, meanwhile, just wants to find her girlfriend, but her heart knows that sometimes what you want and the right thing is not always the same.

How will these plans be enacted? Will the heroes run into trouble? Will they uncover more secrets about the Royal Family soon? Will I ever remember to make a concentration check without being reminded? Probably not.

Little Moments from this Session:

Freesia being adorable just constantly with a little fear of animals and being super haughty and highbrow about everything, while still having this insatiable thirst for knowledge. But she's a warlock. So of course.

Equaarion saying some really deep shit about his character and his motivations for becoming an adventurer. Equaarion basically became a hero and learned to be at peace with nature not for any desire for power or because it was his tribal identity, but simply because it was the right thing for him, purely as an individual.

Rae reminding everyone that while she's absolutely a badass that will kill at a moment's notice, her character is fundamentally motivated by love.

Session Three:

Last session one of our players was forced to be late so we opened with just Freesia and Rae planning. Equaarion had gone off into the woods to 'meditate', which (comically) nobody believed.

The two of them rolled over possibilities in their minds for how to trick the Redhoods into leaving Simona Village alone. They poured over a number of possibilities and ended up deciding that the best solution was to forge a map that indicated Tir Dyffryn was elsewhere in the woods, leading the Redhoods astray just long enough for Thunderclan to scoop up the artifact and get out of dodge.

Wandering a bit, they found Elsha and talked details and specifics with her. Apparently Elsha isn't too popular around the town, what with her trying and failing to sneak up on the Redhoods and possibly drawing their ire even more. Thunderclan (or at least the two lesbians) did get some more pertinent information though: the trade route to the east that has been patrolled by bandits since the crown left.

...It's a strangely cold day outside.

They decided that it'd probably be best if they tried seeking out somebody who could actually help them with authentic mapping skills. The two of them don't have proficiency with cartographer's tools or anything of the sort, so they were just wandering back to Rae's room when Rae hears a noise on the other side of the door. Marble footsteps and ocean waves.

It's Chess.

Chess, the black and white dragonborn wizard and scientist, professor of the Brigmore Institute at the Academy up north. He's surprised to see Freesia, whom he's never met before. As she moves to shake his hand, his hand passes through hers. "I'm not actually here," he says. Project Image, a high level spell. Pretty useful.

This is one of those things that wizards just do in fantasy. They show up for weird reasons out of nowhere, have cryptic things to say, and disappear after sending their love.

Chess is here to check on Thunderclan, tell them that their old partner Salty Martine sends her regards, and fails at concealing a bit of secret information from Freesia: the immortal warlord Vander Coil has returned from the World Below to rejoin Chess and his husband Set on their mission to restore independence to Ludum.

Chess and Freesia basically stare each other down and pick apart everything the other says. So by the end of the conversation, these two genius scholars have pretty much totally figured the other out. Chess is a revolutionary and a bit of a prick, Freesia is a witch. The basics.

After Chess gives them some advice about Wengwith ruins and fails to conceal important information, he disappears without a goodbye.

The adventurers agree that Ragweed is the best bet for making a good convincing map, and they pawn it off to him as Equaarion arrives.

They notice a small druid boy, about a teenager, shivering neurotically. His name is Osvyn, he's mute, and a little asocial. Equaarion is kind enough to summon a black bear to keep him company in his discomfort, though.

Equaarion is prickly and stubborn, but these are the moments that endear him to everyone.

The temperature in town is steadily dropping.

The plan is formed: They're going to wait for the town to be occupied at a local temple tonight, then they'll sneak off and drop the map near the Redhood's camp. They do this by summoning a giant eagle and having it leave the map, like a fairy omen. Ludum, and anybody who's spend serious time in Vindred, is aware that fairies often do weird stuff like that, but it's pretty weird one way or the other. But the heroes don't want to leave it up to chance, so Equaarion turns into a cat and dashes toward the Redhood camp to see their reaction.

Ludens know that cats are supernatural creatures, and that hurting them is horrible luck, so they greet Cat-rion and allow him to dash around the camp, figuring him feral. He explores a bit and gets a good look at the leader of the Redhoods - a drow woman, but he doesn't get her name.

The group heads back to the town, where Osvyn is panicking outside the temple. After some debate, the heroes open the doors -- cold to the touch. The inside of the temple is freezing, all the visitors are shivering and yawning.

Osvyn bursts through the doors to the temple and begins barking and panicking, trying to push people out of the door. There's a violent burst of snow and ice and a creature appears in the center of the temple.

It wheezes, "Deshperim..."

Freesia casts mage armor. Equaarion turns into a dinosaur. Rae is guiding the villagers out of the temple.

The villagers are screaming, crying. "The druids have brought the Abyss upon us all!"

Maybe the whole 'improving relationships' thing has a ways to go.

The battle is an uphill climb from the get-go. (But honestly, have I ever run a serious combat that’s been perfectly straightforward and not at all immediately harrowing?) The demon's weakness to fire is clear immediately, and the heroes are pumping tons of damage into it. But the snow and pure aura of despair the demon gives off makes all melee attacks at disadvantage. Equaarion has to drop his dinosaur form and switch to conjuring fire. Freesia casts Blink and begins phasing in and out of reality, popping off fire bolts whenever she can.

But the demon launches a lightning bolt into the crowd, and five villagers go down. The demon begins to fly away.

Oh fuck, right?

Equaarion immediately runs to the villagers, where Ragweed and Osvyn are trying to help them get up. Freesia follows the demon and sees the cellar door of the temple flung open, a trail of ice leading within.

Rae, recalling the cold of the Deep that struck her down months ago in the Bullroarer's Ritual Room, barely has the strength to go on.

Equaarion saves the lives of five villagers, a task they'll never forget, and chases after the rest of the party, who have descended into the cellar to find a rift in the stonework leading to inky blackness.

The two of them are transfixed by the rift. Freesia makes her save thanks to her Lucky feature as a halfling, but Rae, corrupted within by the Abyss, falls into the darkness.

Equaarion drops down. Freesia is panicking.

But Equaarion would never abandon his friends.

He summons Honeyduke, grabs Freesia off the ground, and they all dive into the rift.

They fall for minutes, and land in snow.

They are at the top of a tower, ruined, overlooking what appears to be thousands of structures all collapsed on top of one another. Below that, a black and endless sea. There is no light in this horrendously cold place.

In the distance, a giant red bat shrieks into the perpetual night, and flies through a portal. The party has followed the demon to its home... the entropy of the waking world, that which all shall fall to in time. The very base of the Abyss. The source of Rae's trauma.

Welcome to the Deep.

#the ludum campaign

[ask-keystar]

Legends of Equestria review

quick thoughts before I get into detail. Good game, 2nd best mmo I see, needs allot of improvment but overall a good game a 3 / 5

now into the more drtailed thoughts of the game. (lots of text to read, you been warned)

Controlls suck. let’s get that out of the way first. sure you can remap the controlls, witch is good cause who would want the movent maped to the left side of the keybord? that makes no sence. sadly if you try to map it to the correct keys, they arrow keys you quickly find out that it’s hardwired to use the arrows as camera contrills and theres no way around that sadly. a really bad thing to do so I had to put movment into the keypad instead. Also if you have a pegasus pony you can’t turn in the air with your normal movment keys. 

nope, gotta use specificly mappedkeys for that, those are by default on the left side of the keyboard so you have to reach to the other side while still using the up for movment normaly but left and right in the air is compleatly differnt then on the ground for some reason. also there is a menu key mapped right between the 2 arial movment keys so you will be brining up that allot while you try to move. also there is no controller support so that makes things a little harder.

The camera is a real pain to use becasue it has no auto follow feature so you will be constently controlling the camera around your pony as you move becasue it doesn’t follow your pony at all. it is mobile but it only moves when you make it so you will find yourself confused and turned around in small spaces becasue the camera won’t adust automaticly when you need to go around a corner or adust for a wider view ect. it does have a snapback feature when a pegasus is flying but even that is weird becasue it won’t snap back to normal untill you stop moving. turning in the air works well but it tilts the camera so it is rather disorenting at times,

The quest system is lacking quite a bit, there are no markers over the quest givers head to show they have quests for you so finding them can be a bit of a challenge, and when the marker does apeer it doesn’t really stand out a whole lot. There also seems to be to manny quests as well.There seems to be no limit to how manny active quests you can have plus there is no way to turn the markers on in off in the journal so you have quest markers everywhere all over your map and no clue what goes to where so often I tam trying to do one quest  and end up getting confused and lost becasue I am trying to figure out wich marker goes to which quest.Very fustrating when you just want to do the one quest and you don’t know wich way it is.

I would talk about combat but I don’t have any clue how it works. theres no need for it mostly. so far 90% of the quests or so I taken are simply fetch quests or go here and do this and come back. There is no combat training where it teaches you how to attack so I am left clueless on what to do. But the enimies I seen anyway will kill you pretty fast anyway so you won’t be getting much any chance to fight for long anyway. Especaly true in the mines where you have Diamnd dogs, manticors and some other odd entity all gunning for you at the same time. The only enemy I have managed to get a level off of is a diamand dog that was in the mid 20′s.

Witch is a rather big problem for a pony who isn’t even level 10 so defeating the enemy without knowing how to fight against enimes that are far higher in level than you are seems like a no win senerio.Fortunitly all of the enemies you fight outside of the mine are easly avoided, at least for a pegasus pony. just fly over them and they never bother you.

The minimap is a nice feature but it also llives up to it’s name. it’s really tiny and I know of no way to make it bigger so I can get a better sence of where I am going. There is also a lack of a world map so trying to find your way around can be rather difacult unless you already have everything mapped out in your head. Plus as I mentiend ealier trying to deal with all the quest markers all over your minimap makes finding anything a chore.

There are some odd bugs I have seen as well, npc’s floting over the land and water or sinking into the ground as well, they also have been known to just disapeer suddenly as well. Putting on a helmet you get from a quest makes your pony go bald. You also end up with allot of usless items from quests that I have yet to fure out what to do with. they just clog up your invatory mostly.

There seems to be another bug that closes chat windows from npc’s rather quckly as well. So you are trying to read the dialog and suddly it closes on you or switches to the next page, Very fustrating since I am not a speed reader. I take my time to read things and don’t like to feel like I have to rush through things to make sure the dialog doesnt switch on me and I miss something.

I can’t say anything about the audio as I don’t use it. there isn’t any need for it to me. so I just don’t bother, the world chat is something else I don’t use but I can say like the minimap it’s jjust to small to be of any use and you have to scroll down manualy to keep up with the conversation as it defaults to the top and stays there unless you manualy scroll it to the bottom. Very fustrating so I just hide it.

The last annoying thing I can think of is being made to switch “Rooms” suddly. your doing quests and whatever and then boom! the server moves you to a new room and you end up back at a certian spot and not where you where before. thankfullt it doesn’t reset your quests but it is annioying to suddly be moved to a new “room” out of nowhere.

The game is very nice but there is allot of work to do on it. I do enjoy it but there are just parts like the camera that fustrate me to no end. After all this time you think they might have fixed that camera but it doesnt seem to be a problem to them.

That’s my thoughts on @legendsofequestria day 1. This opinioln is subject to change later on. This is just my thoughts on it. Feel free to tell me what you think and mabey I missed something or whatever. I klike the game and will keep playing it.

#loe #legends of equestria #review #game review

[nomanicsdak]

New Post has been published on https://manicdak.com/picnics-and-pirates/

Picnics and Pirates

Neverending Isles

Well, we’re back at it, here in far away, long ago Greece, where I start the game after a long hiatus playing Anthem (don’t @ me). I am finishing up an ice cream sandwich IRL while waiting for things to load up and get immediately assassinated by some bounty hunters, because as it turns out, I am still standing over Podarkes dead bod. When I return from being unsynchronized, I pay for my bounty because I don’t want them hassling me. Now it’s time to get down to business and reacquaint myself to the controls. I still have a gazillion points on the map to explore!

What I remember is that I think I have finished with the Silver Islands, which have lost their sheen after I found out that they don’t let you die there, and I am on a quest to defeat a cult and find my mom so I can find out who my dad is. 

Let us now seek a new side quest so I don’t have to do any of that!

Here we go, I meet up with my pal, Barnabas and he’s giving me the update on Kyra! So they didn’t just fade off into the sunset without saying goodbye after all. I feel better about that since I put all that time in here. She is putting her traitorous dad to rest and is grateful I haven’t told her secret. (The secret of her dad being a murderous traitor thief.)

My Alexios’s opinion is that Podarkes should rot, but that the troops deserve a good story, especially Thaletas who is waiting up the stairs I am told. Barnabas bids me good night as he tells me to relax and party it up for a minute, and now I have a quest called a night to remember. 

I will never be done with the Silver Isles, also, I’m not hookin’ it up with Thaletas, game. You better not still be trying to make that happen!

First, I’m led to Kyra as she lights dad’s funeral pyre. She has complicated feelings about this whole situation, but I encourage her to stay strong and help her peeps so a new Podarkes doesn’t crop up. We head back to the party now.

The bear smuggler is there all touching up on Barnabas’s face. She calls him Barny which is a good nickname for him that I didn’t even think of, because I couldn’t remember his name for several days after I met him. I’m going to steal it. They have bonded over their opposite missing eyes. How nice. Apparently they are in love now. What the hell? I spent so long wandering around these dumb islands that my boat captain has acquired a girlfriend. I can invite her to join the crew, so why not. Everybody wins? Maybe we could use a smuggler.

Once we are done with that love story, I can now breath a sigh of relief, because Kyra and Thaletas are together for reals, and he is no longer awkwardly hitting on me. Yay! Also, he’s over here turning down Spartan generalship in order to settle  on the islands with Kyra. This is quite a thing for a dude who wanted to fight me to prove my Spartaness. Good for them, for now!

I decide to bow out quietly and leave the rebels to their islands without speechifying about it, despite Barny’s wishes. Of course, I can’t leave without Sokrates showing up to say goodbye and philosophizing at me. Until next time, Sokrates! 

But I see new quests…what? I am determined to finish these silver isles though, so I’m heading back across the way to Mykanos now.

Psych! Apparently you can create your own levels in assassin’s creed now, and these silver exclamation points are user created. It’s been so long since I’ve been here there are new game mechanics. Of course in the first one I pick just to see what they’re like, my “one true love”, Thaletas, wants me to assassin someone for him. Even random internet strangers want me to hook up with this dude! Sorry, video game gods, it’s not gonna happen!

I move back to that blasted pirate island with the dagger lady that I attempted earlier in the game and spend the entirety of my gaming night trying to beat it. I KNOW I’ve faced dual wielding rogues before and beat them. This pirate lady is two entire levels below me, so I don’t know why this is so difficult! Bah. One bonus to this location when I finally beat her, is that there is a cultist here! I wasn’t even looking for one! So we get to cross another of those dudes off the cult family tree.

Since we’re laying siege to pirate islands tonight, let’s go find another one. There is a huge one to the west of me, so that is where we head! First a quick stop off at this little nothing island called Lestris. There is a quest item here though. Let’s see if we can find out what quest it belongs to… Huh. Artifact fragments it looks like??? Maybe I should upgrade my spear instead of going to pirate island. 

Just kidding again! I travel all the way back to spear island to find out I need seven artifacts for the next section, but I only have four. Damn. Back to Pirate island I guess.

Yo-Ho-Ho

This place is literally called Pirate Island this time. I thought it might end up in another silver isles situation, but this one only has a couple of quests that don’t lead on an endless string of other quests. It is however, filled with bobcats jumping on my back. Which sucks, because I’m not about killing bobcats, but if they’re going to attack me…

Our first quest is for a little girl. She’s gathering clay for her friends and wants to make them some jewelry, so she asks Alexios if he will go find some pearls and shiny rocks. Sure thing! Helping the children of Greece free of charge are my favorite tasks.

I return to her shack on the hill expecting some more kids, but instead find three huge lumps of clay, and these are her friends. <Insert distressed smiley face here> I was not expecting this innocuous quest to turn tragic, but then again, I never do. Turns out her mother decided to go pirate to get some money and make a better life, but returned with a stab wound. Her last words to her daughter were to be good and make friends. The kid has literally made friends. Out of clay.

All my friends are clay.

I don’t really have the heart to tell this lonely child that her friends are clay lumps and she is delusional and needs to go out and meet real people. I choose to tell her that anybody can be a friend. My bestie is an eagle after all. She thinks that’s pretty cool. Maybe I can inspire all the young girls of Greece to become falconers? (I return a bit later and find her crying, because the rain has washed her friends away, but we cannot interact anymore. Did I do the wrong thing? )

Alexios, Blending right in

Second quest is some dude’s wife picking ceremony. The woman I talk to insists that she loves this man and he loves her. Apparently I get no choice but to think she is a gold digger. Is she? Who knows? An acolyte of Hecate approaches us and offers to make her a love potion. I and Alexios think this is a ridiculous farce, but agree to help anyway. I fetch some shrooms and some some wine and hand it over to the ‘witch’. All she needs now is a lock of the woman’s hair. 

A love potion that causes hair to fall out, but not at the root– The mysterious ways of Hecate, I guess.

I return the next night and our friend is bald! Turns out the witch was merely a rival for the rich dude’s affections, and she has tricked this woman into drinking a sort of poison. It was only supposed to give her a rash, not make all her hair fall out. As to the why of the situation, the witch thinks she deserves this dude because they’ve known each other since childhood, and was just playing the game. The other woman is distraught, obviously.

the witch is way too pleased with her plan

But the show must go on! — This whole prank has rubbed me the wrong way and the ‘witch’s maniacal laughter is really not helping much, but I don’t get many options in the way of a peaceful resolution. It’s either, So sorry about your luck, bald lady, or kill the witch! (My true choice would be to tell the bald woman to forget about the rich dude; he’s not worth it and then hightail it out of there.) I call the guards on the ‘witch’ and hope she’ll just get arrested or something. Naaah. With that choice I get an update to the quest for witch killing. Damn. 

I just stand aside and let the guards do it. 

And that’s everything of note on pirate island! A short and sweet one with surprisingly few pirates! Maybe tomorrow we’ll hunt some cultists so I can upgrade my spear!

I do find one short quest somewhere along the way, but I forget where it was. A woman instructs me to go to a cemetery to find out which God is the most powerful: Apollo (I think? Or was it Ares? Something with an A. I didn’t write this one down!) or Posiden. “A” god has lions which are pretty powerful, but Posiden has like…sharks and krakens. Choices, choices. While I’m figuring this out some dude comes up to me and is absolutely convince I’m going to kill him. Huh? I tell him all is cool, bro, but then he comes after me anyway, because Athena told him it must be.

I didn’t get this memo

Back to the old lady who gave me this dumb quest, and I tell her Athena is the most powerful, because she got this dude to commit suicide by mysthios without lions or sharks. The lady thinks this is all amusing and I don’t even remember if she got the answer she wanted, and I don’t even know if I got any drachmae for it, but there you have it! Moving swiftly onward–

Wading into the Deep End

Update: So it turns out that I didn’t find an artifact on that island, just a clue to find one, which is good, because I need three more to upgrade!  It has led me Achaia and now I can’t find the letter with the clue so… great. Am I even supposed to be here? I guess I’ll go search the coves and see what I can find!  

 I find many enemies that are at least ten levels above me, so–I definitely am not supposed to be here yet!  Also, I’m level 30, how long is this game??? Before I move on to easier targets, I find the sunken temple of Demeter and some Ares boots that I can sell later.  Maybe I’ll tackle the cultist in the arena? I have an actual quest for that, so maybe I’m not too weak for that one? It is in Pephka, and I get to reveal a whole new section of the map if I go there.  So, let’s go!

Ouch!

First, I stop off at an underwater cavern to get some loot and fight some sharks.  Turns out the quest item on that island was not the cultist letter, nor was it an artifact…it was some bricks.  Do I have a quest for bricks??? What? Forget it. I’m going to the arena and resisting the temptation to stop at every island along the way.  In keeping with the theme somehow…it is at a place called Pirate Point.

  Ahh, turns out this is all Barny’s doing.  He thought I should give this arena thing a try, because, obviously, I have nothing else to do.  I talk to a guy named Skoura. I guess I’m here to inspire the crowds to believe in heroes again. I’ll do it!

It’s Skoura!

 Well, I’ll do it up until the point where these other dudes are a higher level than me.  There is a guy at level 50. Damn. Hopefully the cultist makes himself known before then.  Is it Skoura??? I hope not, I kinda like the old dude. Also, I’m going to have to question this whole operation…

 Like, why does Alexios, a single human person (or Demi-god?), have to fight like 20 dudes before I get to my opponent???  He only has to fight me. How fair is that? (I’m just complaining, because I am not good at this, and also this sucks and is no fun, but I won’t rage-quit just yet.)  At least not until–yes, that did it–some upgraded gear did the trick. It is always my downfall.

 After I win my first bout, some dude named Maion approaches me and Skoura.  He’s all about the drachmae, so I don’t trust him.   Hmm. Maybe he’s the cultist? I just want to find him before I get too deep in this arena business. Is that too much to ask?  But there are only two out of five guys at my level or below.

Yeah, the one guy is going to be it for the arena for now.  Excuse me while I go grind, thank you very much.

A Tale of Two Brothers

Here’s a novel Idea–Let’s get on with the story.  Did I say I was going to investigate Alkibiades clue?  Let’s do that! Off to Korinth we go! There are lots of undiscovered locations here. *rubs hands together in anticipation*

First thing I find is a bandit camp, which I think is going to be a simple affair not worth mentioning, but instead there is a quest there.  I rescue some dude named Lykinos who has no idea why these bandits were shaking him down. I have to carry him to get him away. Let’s return him to his dad before I accidentally kill him trying to put him on the ground (I forgot which button puts people down!) and see what journey I have to go on now. 

Okay, dude is an Athenian poet.  When we get him home safe, and sound, it turns out that the bandit’s killed dad!  Sad. We find this out because Lykinos’s brother–some call him Tim–shows up to tell us. He’s all aggro about it, probably because Lykinos has been swanning around Athens writing poems instead of being there at home / fighting wars. Now I get to do favors for both of them.

Lykinos cannot believe this shit

Tim wants me to get some Athenian armor from a vendor, and this can’t possibly be as easy to do as it sounds.  Lykinos wants revenge. Even Alexios sounds weary with that idea, because he’s trying to convince Lykinos nobody wants any more bloodshed. He agrees, that’s why he’s hiring me. Gee, thanks, fella.

  I go to the merchant and it turns out that that dad sold his armor, or maybe this guy is trying to cheat me? Whatevs. Buy all the armor! I only spend money on upgrades (if I remember to) and paying off my own bounties anyway.

  Armor in hand, I head off to dispatch the bandits.  When I get to their camp, I find them besieged by a pack of wolves.  Maybe if I sneak hard enough, the wolves will do all the work for me???  All right, I am not that lucky or good at sneaking, but these dudes aren’t that difficult. I find a letter in the camp that says dear old dad owed these bandits a lot of money. Loan sharkin’ it up again, I see. I wonder if there’s a bigger badder shark behind these guys? 

Spoiler: There is not. I’m always overthinking these sidequest plots.

 What I do know is that I’m apparently staying for this funeral even after revealing the truth of dad’s shady business dealings.  Tim wants me to get oil for an offering, and Lykinos thinks I should get some wine. He seems confused about what the oil’s for though, and there’s a lot of tension between these bros. We shall see! I get both offerings and complete a location.

  When I return to my friends, they are having a brotherly blow up, like brothers do. After I give them a pep talk about being there for one another, because they’re all they’ve got left, it is time to go. Or is it?

Now Hug it Out!

 Because, are these bros vibing on Alexios, or is it just me?  Well, Lykinos wants to meet up with me later anyway. Winkity, wink?? Like, the last dude that wanted to see me after a quest was complete, I ended up with a bed of rose petals.  

  Aaahahah.  Lykinos wants to make me dinner.  I TOLD you. First I have to hunt down some deers, and when I meet him it’s on this picturesque overlook at sunset. Geez. Well, played, poet man. Dinner and a view–I think this hits the sweet spot right between a overly-sentimental bed of rose petals and goat orgy. I actually like this guy, so let’s do it! 

But first a chat about Lykinos being a lying liar who lies. See, turns out he didn’t come back just to visit the fam. Actually, he just failed at being an artist in the big city. He didn’t want to tell his family so as not to disappoint them, and he didn’t want to tell me, because he was trying to impress me. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do know, because he’s not exactly the fighting type. I tell him he should become a cook because this venison meal he’s made is A+++

Are You serious right now?

Alright! Heart to heart over; we fade to black and return the next morning with Alexios all by himself again.  Such is the life of a mercenary! It’s on to the next quest I suppose.

#assassin's creed #Games #Assassin's Creed #Odyssey

[worksofphiction]

prompt#2(inspired from pinof)dan really likes being a gross bf& picking phil up and carrying him places and pulling things out of his reach bcz of the few inches he has on him& basically being really cheesy& annoying p &making p blush& giggle but one day he doesn't realize that p had been in a vbad mood and keeps teasing him till he bursts into tears& when d apologizes& tried tocalm him p simply puts his arms up silently asking to be carried& d just picks him up n rocks him,sorrys n sleepycuddls

Phil Lester and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

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Summary: Phil has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day and Dan makes it all better.Genre: Fluff, Hurt/ComfortWord Count: 3,398Reading Time: 00:12:33Disclaimer: Characters are works of fiction and no copyright infringement is intended. I do not own Dan or Phil and as far as I know, this never happened.

Dan Howell loved everything about his boyfriend. Absolutely everything. Phil was his perfect compliment and he wouldn’t trade his best friend, lover and second half for anybody in the world.

When Dan was getting to know Phil, he looked up to him. Both figuratively and literally. Phil used to have a couple inches on Dan and at the time it was perfect. They were the perfect height for those romantic kissing scenes that were in the movies, they fit together perfectly when snuggling in bed and they could hold hands with no strain on the other person. Ever since Dan went through his growth spurt at 20 however, he caught up to Phil. So much in fact, that he gained a couple inches and surpassed his boyfriend’s height. This was no problem. Now Dan would be the bigger spoon and when they kissed, Phil would angle his head up a little bit. It didn’t change their dynamic, it only made it better.

One of Dan’s favorite things about being taller than Phil was his ability to hold things just out of the other boy’s reach. This was a game that Dan liked to play a lot when they were lounging about. Dan would offer to grab something for Phil and then hold it above his head playfully, making Phil jump to grab it. Sometimes he would set things on the top shelf in their kitchen where Phil would have to ask Dan to lift him up to fetch whatever it was. Dan would always snicker behind Phil and right when Phil was about to grab the object, Dan would step back a couple steps and put it out of Phil’s reach once again. When he put Phil down after finally letting him grab the object, Phil would chase Dan down the hall with it, yelling about wanting to kill the younger boy.

But of course, he never did. Phil would just chase Dan to his room and they would collapse onto the bed together, giggling and heaving from their tiny bit of exercise. Dan would kiss Phil on the nose and tell him that he loved him, followed by a million more kisses on his cheeks. Phil would blush and turn his head to hide it, only causing Dan to squish his cheeks and kiss him sloppily on the mouth.

This was Dan’s favorite past time.

And things were perfect. They always had been.

That is until one afternoon. Dan was sitting in the lounge playing around on his phone and deleting apps that he didn’t use anymore when he saw the Pokemon Go app that had been collecting dust since his Farfetch’d quest. He chuckled a little as his thumb hovered over the little X in the corner that, if pressed, could delete the app and all its data in one go.

“Hey, Phil?!” Dan called, knowing that the other boy was just around the corner in the kitchen. Phil didn’t answer, so Dan used his voice and called louder. “Phil!”

“What what what?” Phil came in wearing two blackened oven gloves and a sour expression. Dan glanced at his flour covered self and shook his head, choosing to ignore the frazzled state his boyfriend was in.

“What are you doing today?” he asked casually as if Phil wasn’t smack dab in the middle of something.

“Um…well I was just about finished with my-”

“Great! Want to go on an adventure with me?” Dan interrupted, hearing just about finished and deciding that was enough. Phil answered with a skeptical look and he glanced back in the direction of the kitchen.

“Um…sure. What for?” Phil shifted on his feet.

“Well, Pokemon Go came out about a year ago now, right? I was just about to delete it but I was thinking we should give it one last horrah? You know…for old times sake?” Dan said all this in an enticing tone, so Phil wouldn’t be able to say no.

“You wanna film it?” Phil suggested, shrugging. That was all the confirmation Dan needed however and he quickly stood from his chair.

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” He gave Phil a tiny kiss as he snatched on of Phil’s oven mitts.

“Hey!” Phil fought, running after Dan who was, as usual, holding it above Phil’s head. Phil jumped a couple times before being able to grab it, shoving it back on his arm and giving Dan a chuckle. Dan rewarded Phil with another kiss on the cheek as he ventured to his bedroom for something to wear. “Be ready in ten!”

“Can we make it 30?” Phil responded, his voice barely audible from where Dan was now.

“25!” Dan shouted as he locked himself in the bathroom to do his hair.

When Dan left his room so many minutes later, totally ready to go, he got a whiff of something super strong coming from the kitchen. He covered his nose with his sweater paw and grimaced.

“God, Phil. What is that smell?”

When Dan entered the lounge, he was greeted with Phil trying to tie his laces with a pout.

“I burned my cake.”

“You what?” Phil didn’t usually cook many sweets. Dan would know, the bought sweets were coming from their joint bank account. They were Phil’s weakness. Plus, neither of them could bake for shit.

“I was making a cake and it burned.” Dan noticed that Phil was having particular difficulty with his shoelaces, seeing as one was much much shorter than the other.

“Come on, Phil! We have to get going or we’ll lose daylight!” Dan tugged on his boyfriend’s arm, yanking him out the door. Phil sputtered a little but he eventually just tucked in close to Dan as they walked out of their apartment and into the real world. “I was thinking maybe we could get some dinner while we were out. What do you think?”

“Sure,” Phil answered, the idea seeming to spark interest in the other boy.

“What are you in the mood for then?” Dan asked, bumping his hand against Phil’s, this being the only way they could act close in public. It sucked sometimes not being out to everybody, but it was worth the privacy in their relationship.

“Maybe Chinese?” Phil suggested with a small smile on his lips. Dan knew that was his favorite. And he knew just the place to take him.

After walking a few blocks away from their place, Dan pulled out the camera and decided this would be a good place to start filming. He passed the camera to Phil and told him to start it up. This was a pretty common procedure and because the game was Dan’s idea, Phil would film him first.

“Dan…” Phil mumbled after messing with the buttons.

“Hm?” Dan was working on fixing his hair, not trying to look like a rat for the entire internet.

“The battery isn’t charged,” Phil said. “We didn’t charge it after the last time we used it.”

“What? Lemme see that.” Dan grabbed the recording device from Phil’s grasp and inspected the flashing light on the side. He sighed. “Fuck.”

“That’s okay. We don’t need to film today. We can just-”

“Weren’t you the last person to use it?” Dan turned to Phil, his eyes landing on a shocked expression painted on his boyfriend’s face.

“I mean, maybe…I don’t really reme-”

“Phil! You have to remember to charge it!” Dan whined as he bumped into Phil’s shoulder with his own. This happened every now and then, especially with their profession. Usually, they take it pretty light heartedly but Phil looked pretty guilty so Dan just dropped it and sighed, opening up his app and beginning to hunt for the little digital creatures without the audience. He might catch more without it anyway.

They were hunting for a few hours when Dan’s stomach started to growl. He consulted Phil and they decided that they should start heading for food. Luckily, they weren’t far from Phil’s favorite Chinese place and when they arrived, Phil reached for the door.

Except it didn’t open.

Because they were closed.

“What?!” Phil exclaimed, his whole body slumping. “They’re closed?”

“Aw man. I was looking forward to the dumplings as well!” Dan whined, a hefty sigh leaving his throat. He put his hands on his hips as he scoured the street for something else while Phil just stared painfully at the closed sign above his head. “Wanna do pizza instead?”

“I guess,” Phil responded, his voice quieter than anything now. Dan felt bad but there wasn’t much he could do about it now. He was hungry and they needed to eat something.

The pizza took thirty minutes to finally arrive to their table and in that time Dan had caught 15 Pokemon. Phil was clicking away on his phone with a bitter frown while Dan was mildly distracted. And once the pizza was placed in front of them, Dan excused himself to the bathroom to wash his hands without even noticing that the toppings were incorrect.

-

When Dan excused himself to the bathroom, Phil put his head in his hands. This had been the worst day that Phil Lester had had in a long time.

He woke up at 7:00am to an angry phone call from his brother, something about the website and a glitch in the system. He got up to take care of that and he stubbed his toe on the bathroom sink while he attempted to put his contacts in, but when he lost a contact in his eye, he decided to just go with glasses which were for some reason giving him a headache. He traveled into the living room where he messed around with some website settings to make his brother happy, ultimately curling up on the couch to catch a couple more ZZZ’s. When he woke up a couple hours later, all he wanted was some chocolate and luckily they had some chocolate cake hidden in the back of the pantry. Phil decided he would try to make it, however, he must have accidentally hit the oven’s temperature knob with his hip while he was mixing because it got way too hot and the entire thing burned in minutes. He stained his corgi shirt with chocolate batter and then while he was trying to tie his shoe, his lace snapped and he couldn’t get a proper loop. He just tucked the lace in which had fallen out thrice since, causing him to trip. Their camera battery was dead and it was probably his fault, his favorite Chinese place was closed, his brother sent him another angry email and now their pizza had come with the wrong ingredients and he couldn’t find the energy to care.

Obviously, none of this was Dan’s fault and he didn’t want to inconvenience the other boy with his own problems, so he had done his best to keep his mood neutral, but when Dan returned and didn’t even notice that the pizza hadn’t come with their specific toppings, Phil was just about ready to go back to bed.

“Hey, you okay?” Dan asked, probably at this point, picking up on Phil’s sour mood. He wasn’t doing much to hide it anymore, to be honest, and his frown was probably noticeable. That and he wasn’t even eating the pizza. “You have to eat, Philly.”

The endearing nickname was something Dan used to make him feel better on a day where maybe things were slightly off, but today was a lost cause. The nickname only irritated Phil because he wished it would work like it usually did.

“I’m not hungry,” he mumbled, giving his best attempt at a smile and Dan just shrugged, grabbing another slice.

“Hey, didn’t we order sausage on our pizza?” Dan asked, his mouth full of cheese and pepperoni. Now it was Phil’s turn to shrug, his eyes focusing on the waiter who was coming over with their bill.

It wasn’t long before they were en route to their place again. With only Dan eating, the pizza was boxed up rather early and now Phil was carrying it as Dan was catching another Pokemon.

All Phil could think about was getting home and ending the day. He wanted to climb into their bed and pass out, starting over the day and hoping it went better than this one. But of course, they still had a mile to walk and there was a group of girls screaming and coming right for them.

Great.

Just what he needed.

He put on his friendliest face and sighed when Dan kinda stepped away from him in an effort not to out them. Phil knew it was protocol, but he still felt a little sting. He wanted Dan near him, now more than ever.

“Hey guys!” Dan spoke, pulling them into a giant group hug.

“Oh my God! I can’t believe it’s actually Dan and Phil!” One girl exclaimed, her smile spreading and her nose poking into Phil’s rib cage.

“Yupp! That’s us!” Phil said, his eyes glancing over at Dan, wishing that Dan could read his mind and hurry this up.

“Do you guys want a photo?” Dan asked, gesturing to one of the girl’s cellular devices. They all nodded and handed Dan (who had the longest arms) the phone to take the picture.

For some God forsaken reason, the photo kept turning out blurry and it was forever before they were able to shake the girls that seemed to be freaking out a little. They kept asking why the pair was outside at all and Phil was in no mood to deal with it. He tried his hardest to seem kind, but it came off as being short and he actually received a glance from Dan because of it.

“Wow Phil, what, do you have to pee or something?” Dan commented on Phil’s shortness, prodding at Phil as he usually did. Phil said nothing and shook his head, Dan just laughing a little.

They finally walked through the front door of their apartment and Phil literally slumped. He kicked off his shoes and started for the bedroom.

“Hey, where are you going?” Dan asked, grabbing Phil’s arm.

“I’m really tired. I think I’m just gonna head to bed,” Phil was salty but he wasn’t going to take it out on his boyfriend. Dan did nothing wrong. It wasn’t his problem. Plus, if he brought up how terrible his day was, he would have to relive it. It was better off he didn’t talk about it. He tried his best to be calm and collected as Dan came closer.

“Not without a kiss you aren’t,” Dan threatened playfully, closing in and wrapping his arms around Phil’s slumped body. He went in for a kiss, like usual, and then without any warning, picked up the older boy and started shuffling towards the lounge.

“Dan!” Phil yelled, flailing a little, trying to process what on Earth his boyfriend was doing. “Dan, put me down!”

“Make me!” Dan giggled, picking up speed and going towards the sofa. He threw Phil onto the furniture and started to tickle him, Phil’s legs kicking and his arms trying to push Dan off.

“Dan! Please!” Phil couldn’t help but laugh, he was really ticklish, but this was not what he wanted. He appreciated the effort, Dan clearly picked up that something was wrong, but he had no idea how bad of a mood Phil was in.

Suddenly Phil was thinking about his whole day all over again and how he just wanted to sleep. He thought about his yelling brother, his failed cake, the restaurant he just wanted to eat at and now this? He couldn’t help but close his eyes and start to cry. His cheeks flushed and then tears were rolling down quickly, as he just gave up.

Dan wasn’t stupid. He looked up to see Phil’s smile and was greeted with tears that alarmed him immediately.

“Oh God, Phil! Did I hurt you? Oh my God, I’m sorry! What did I do?” Dan stopped and scooted back so that Phil had plenty of space, just in case Dan had hurt him in some way. Phil just shook his head and rolled over so that his face was inside the couch. His body racked with sobs, Dan sitting behind him with no clue what to do. “Phil?”

Dan reached forward and rubbed Phil’s back gently for a few minutes, saying nothing and Phil appreciated that. That was what he wanted. Silence and comfort.

“Baby, I’m so sorry. Did I do something wrong?” Dan said meekly, a guilty tone laced within his words. Phil knew he would blame himself and that’s not at all what Phil intended. He shook his head. “Well, then what’s wrong? Talk to me.”

Phil took his tear streaked face from the nook it was in and he took a deep breath. He looked into Dan’s eyes for a long time, taking comfort in the big brown orbs that had always soothed him. He glanced at his lap and then he sighed, doing something he had never done before. He raised his arms into the air and bit his lip.

-

Dan stared at Phil while he sniffled, noticing how blue Phil’s eyes got when he cried. Dan felt sorry and he wasn’t even sure what had happened. But then Phil was doing something he’d never seen the boy do before. He was lifting his arms up. Like a child did when they wanted to be carried.

“Phil?” Dan asked hesitantly while Phil just looked at him silently with his arms in the air.

Dan contemplated what to do. He was pretty sure Phil was asking to be picked up, but he didn’t want to screw up again and hurt his boyfriend who was already in an emotional state. Phil was staring at him with those big blue eyes and suddenly Dan couldn’t help himself. He stood up and walked over to his boyfriend, who seemed extra small right now, collecting him in his arms (who knew he was this strong) and carrying him to his bedroom. Phil didn’t fight in, only hummed gently into Dan’s chest when he made contact, sending butterflies to Dan’s stomach. Phil had never looked this vulnerable.

Dan placed him gently on the bed and looked down at the boy who suddenly looked the most tired Dan had ever seen him. Dan couldn’t remember if he had looked this way all day or if this was after the tears.

“Phil, want me to go to bed with you?” Dan offered, wanting to wipe away the sad in any way he could.

Phil just nodded, curling into himself on top of the duvet and Dan sighed happily, already excited to cuddle up around his boyfriend for the night.

He gently pulled the duvet from underneath Phil and shed both of their clothes, climbing into the bed and around his sulking boyfriend.

“Would you like to tell me what’s wrong?” Dan suggested softly, letting his body heat soak into Phil’s usually cold body under their blankets. Phil nodded and wiggled his body to make himself comfortable against Dan.

“I had a very bad day,” Phil mumbled, his eyes shutting and his heart rate slowing.

Dan nuzzled into the back of Phil’s neck, the feeling of Phil’s skin was always comforting, even when he didn’t have any problems of his own. He hoped the same was true for Dan’s skin on Phil’s.

“I’m sorry, Sweetheart. I shouldn’t have dragged you out of the house.” Dan realized his mistake, going over the facial expressions Phil had made a few times that morning. Maybe he should have paid a little more attention or asked Phil for his opinion twice. “Can I do anything to help?”

Phil shook his head and just mumbled, “wanna sleep.”

“Alright.” Dan wrapped around his beloved even tighter, after reaching and turning out the light. He rocked Phil gently as they lied there for a while. Phil’s sniffles got less frequent and soon his breathing had slowed. “Sleep well, Philly.”

“I love you,” Phil said in the most quiet of voices. Dan would have squealed it was so cute, but Phil’s ear was right next to his mouth and that wouldn’t have been pleasant. He just kissed the other boy’s earlobe and whispered,

“I love you too.”

#phanfic #fanfic #dan and phil #fluff #hurt/comfort #love love love #worksofphiction #merrydith #fic request

[smilesthroughfandoms]

Star vs. the Forces of Evil episodes in One Sentence (Season 3 edition)

Star Comes to Earth: Princess Cinnamon Roll that Could Kill you comes to earth and meets Misunderstood safe kid.

Party With a Pony: Spoopy Wardens hunt for the glitter pony while Star gets ice for Marco’s sweaty back.

Matchmaker: In which we learn it was probably a bad idea to give Star the wand in the first place.

School Spirit: Star misunderstands football and Marco tries to get Ferguson to blow his whistle not in that way.

Monster Arm: “Not my bowels! I love my bowels!”

The Other Exchange Student: Star is jealous of the meatball man from Bakersfieldville.

Cheer Up Star: “It’s supposed to be ironic!”

Quest Buy: Very accurate depiction of what it is like to work in retail.

Diaz Family Vacation: Both Marco and Star see new sides of their dads but that’s not necessarily a good thing

Brittney’s Party: Star and Marco party with someone who hates them while Ludo hijacks a bus

Mewberty: Star gets horny and snares boys in her web but not in that way

Pixtopia: Marco messed up and Alfonso marries Ferguson’s rebound

Lobster Claws: “… You can’t eat children.” “Really? Not even the annoying ones?”

Sleep Spell: “Camera Phooone!”

Blood Moon Ball: We’re suppose to ship them now, right?

Fortune Cookies: Love is never the answer kids

Freeze Day: Father Time offers Star and Marco some mud before riding away on his wheel-mobile pulled by giant time-hamsters I am not making this up.

Royal Pain: King Santa Claus destroy mini-golf

St. Olga’s Reform School for Wayward Princesses: Princess Prison sure is a nightma–OH MY GOD ARE THOSE CLUBS?!

Mewnipendence Day: No wonder monsters hate Mewmans so much.

The Banagic Wand: Star still doesn’t get Earth and like all of us, Marco is always hungry.

Interdemensional Field Trip: Miss Skullnick fears the “Big Change” while Marco sends Jackie cat memes

Marco Grows a Beard: Ludo is out, Toffee is in, and Marco will probbaly be terrified of beards forever

Storm the Castle: “SURPRISE!”

My New Wand!: DIP DOOOWN

Ludo in the Wild: Wait, since when did Ludo become badass?

Mr. Candle Cares: “Star and I have recently become smooch buddies… On the lips.”

Red Belt: Marco searches for a meaning in life and Star searches for hammer.

Star on Wheels: *epic remix of Marco saying Star is in trouble*

Fetch: Marco can’t open juice and Star runs away from her problems and sending thank you cards

Star vs. Echo Creek: Star gets high and destroys a police car

Wand to Wand: Both Ludo and Star are terrible at magic also major ship tease

Starstruck: Star and her idol Sailor Super Saiyan destroy a park and Marco is 100002% done with this shit

Camping Trip: King Butterfly has a mid-life crisis and tries to control an eagle

Starsitting: They’re gonna be great parents some day.

On the Job: Buff Dad is best dad and buff babies are adorable

Goblin Dogs: “You might think this line is long, but listen to my goblin song!~”

By the Book: Ludo and Star still suck at magic and Glossaryck is a bigger troll than Alex Hirsch

Game of Flags: Queen has no patience and legs.

Girls’ Day Out: Janna is back and is still awesome btw

Sleepover: “TRUTH! STAR HAS A CRUSH ON MA–” *cube gets crushed*

Gift of the Card: R.I.P.  Rasticore Chaosus Disastorvayne… He couldn’ get his fucking chainsaw to work

Friendenemies: Star becomes one with Christmas tree while Tom and Marco go on a date and sing a romantic pop ballad.

Is Mystery: Meatfork is apparently a family name and Ludo is really starting to freak me out tbh

Hungry Larry: “He’s still hungry…”

Spider with a Top Hat: He tries and he is awesome and that’s all that matters

Into the Wand: SPAAAAADESS!!!

Pizza Thing: Marco is OCD about mushroom and Pony Head buys skinny jeans

Page Turner: Glossaryck is awesome and how did Moon miss Lizard-Loki in the orb?!

Naysaya: Tomco friendship confirmed and Marco finally asks out Jackie while Star the supportive noodle armed friend cheers on

Bon Bon the Birthday Clown: Starco fans cry, Jarco fans rejoice, and Ludo now has the book god dammit Nefcy

Raid the Cave: Glossaryck is the true neutral asshole.

Trickstar: Weird Al is a treasure and I’ll mes up anyone who makes Marco cry!

Baby: *glances around nervously* So… Star is similar to Eclipsa, huh? *Nervous laughter* Great…

Running With Scissors: Marco gets a new edition to his shipping harem and she is so cute!!!!!!

Mathmagic: Don’t worry Star, I can’t math either.

The Bounce Lounge: Marco is definitely the mom friend.

Crystal Clear: The Chancellor guy is amazing and Rhombulus just needs a hug and wAS THAT ECLIPSA IN THE BACKGROUND?

The Hard Way: “SURPRISE!” 2.0

Heinous: Oh, so that’s how Marco got all that money.

All Belts Are Off: “Jermey is the biggest dick…. around!~”

Collateral Damage: Marco how do you not know what a possum is?

Just Friends: I’m fine! *blows up sign to prove just how fine I am*

Face the Music: Moon=Badass, Star=Why?, River=Loving Husband, Marco=Shocked, and we got to meet Ludo’s family so pretty cool episode overall.

Star Crushed: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH–remember when we though Bon Bon the Birthday Clown was the end of the world?–AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

BONUS ROUND! BATTLE FOR MEWNI EDITION!!!!!

Return to Mewni: This is… just an exposition filler. Not much else to say….

Moon the Undaunted: B4! B4! B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4 B4!

Book Be Gone: “I hate that fucking book!” -Ludo, at some point probably.

Marco and the King: *Party music intensifies… and then slowly dies down*

Puddle Defender: They’re bonding and getting so big and I am so proud–Star you idiot don’t go alone!!!!!!

King Ludo: The mime stole the show.

Toffee: I can’t…. I just… how do you want me to react?! To much happened and I mean…. what do you want me to say? I’m still processing just…. What do I say? *slowlys ponders how I will survive until November*

Scent of Hoodie: Huh, so Ponyhead can be written as likeable, who would’ve thought?

Rest in Pudding: Ish da Glossaryck! And he’s Globgoring all over da place!

Club Snubbed: I literally yelled “Phrasing!” whenever they dropped the title

Stranger Danger: "Something like that” whY WOULD YOU SAY THAT IF YOU WERE ON THE SIDE OF GOOD?!?! SERIOUSLY GUYS THIS BUGGED ME FOR WEEKS--

Demoncism: Tom is a wonderful baby boy and Ponyhead is written as likeable, part 2!

Sophmore Slump: *sobbing* Jackie deserved better, dang it!

Lint Catcher: Introducing a Lavaboe! He’s pure and wonderful and deserves a raise and did I mention I love him?

Trial by Squire: I think the writers were all like” You think these guys will ship anyone with Marco?” and decided to test that theory.

Princess Turdina: I got more lore out of this episode than I thought I would.

Starfari: Welp, she makes me uncomfortable.

Sweet Dreams: *Sailor Moon-ing intensifies*

Lava Lake Beack: Proof that this fandom will ship anyone with Marco at the slightest inclanation

Death Peck: Rich Pigeon is my new favorite birb and Ponyhead is written as likeable for the third time

Ponymonium: Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Night Life: The writers made so many new ships they had to get rid of an old one!

Deep Dive: “Chicken butt”

Monster Bash: ........ Well, that explains the cheekmarks. 

Stump Day: I think they just made an episode based around a picture from that bookcover, not that it was bad.

Holiday Special: *insert every cheesy Christmas/Holiday episode trope here*

The Bog Beast of Boggabah: The title is fun to say and the episode is average at best.

Total Eclipsa the Moon: Seriously, I’m supposed to think she’s an ultimate villain.

Butterfly Trap: In which we are all Sean, don’t lie we were all him at the end

Ludo, Where Art Thou?: Dennis is best brother, hands down.

Is Another Mystery: *sniff* I got more emotional over this episode than anyone else did and I’m not sure how I feel about that

Marco Jr.: I... I just... Why? What’s the point?

Skooled!: Epic advertisment fakeout combined with wonderful character development and lore with a shock ending makes a 10/10 episode.

Booth Buddies: Old Man McGucket ships Starco, proceed to react accordingly

Bam Ui Pati!: Ponyhead is kinda likeable in this episod--nevermind she’s back.

Tough Love: Oh man, it’s happening! It’s happening guys here we go!

Divide: We are going to war everybody--And they’re all dead. That was quick.

Conquer: So Glossaryck has upped his trolling antity and turns out Eclipsa’s probably evil, Meteora’s a baby again, and Globgor is her husband and imprisoned in crystal... Idk about you guys but I’m going to go scream into the void...

#star vs the forces of evil #svtfoe #svtfoe2 #svtfoe3 #battle for mewni #updated #don't repost without my permission #after ultron #sorry this took so long