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txttletale · 2 months

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Can you elaborate on what you think would be the minimal needed changes to fix what you see as an issue in Civ? Civ has done fairly large shifts in some mechanics before, and "civ like" is still an interesting game space that can scratch certain itches

yeah i mean as i said, the baked-in racism arises from a certain set of core assumptions that i think lock it into that position, which are that civ is a

1) symmetrical

2) 4X

game about

3) 'real world civilizations' (deeply loaded terms ofc but that's how civ envisions them)

4) trying to 'win the game'

5) with a global

6) and transhistorical

scope

so, in its role as a symmetrical (1) game with victory conditions (4), civ as a text has to take positions on what constitutes a 'successful civilization'. as a (2) 4X game this definition also has to include some variation on the profoundly loaded eponymous Xs, 'explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate'. furthermore, as a (1) symmetrical game with a global, transhistorical (5, 6) scope, it has to necessarily create a model of what 'a civilization' looks like and apply it to every 'civilization' it wants to include, at all points in their history.

this all kind of naturally leads into civ being a game in which the colonial european imperialist powers are the default 'civilizations' and all other cultures are basically just like them -- a game where technology progresses linearly and innovations are made in the order they were in european imperial history -- a game where all cultures fundamentally work in the same way and hold similar values, a game where all religions are based on christianity (i mean, just look at civ vi's system, where every religion has a 'prophet', 'apostles', 'missionaries' and 'inquisitors'), a game where not only do cultures have teleological overarching 'goals' but where these goals are shared and these goals are fundamentally based on imperialist visions of 'victory'.

to drill into some specific examples: you can't play a game of civilization without founding cities. you will constantly be founding cities. when you're playing as 'the mongols' or 'the cree' or 'scythia', this makes no sense! these were peoples who historically had rich culture, science, arts, and certainly a notable military history, but were (to varying degrees, at varying times in their history, i don't mean to create a new and similarly heterogenous absolutist category here) nomadic!

similarly, to advance in civilization you must invent 'the wheel'. 'the wheel' is necessary to many later innovations, while of course the andean peoples represented by the playable 'inca' never made significant use of the wheel because the lack of suitable pack animals and environmental factors meant that it did not, in fact, prove a suitable tool for transporting large quantities of heavy goods. for an even more glaring example, a lot of early military technology is locked behind 'horses', which is pretty absurd considering that several of the game's playable civilizations, in the real world, developed plenty of military technology despite living on a continent without any horses!

so having established what i mean by 'the issue', which is that the game's core assumptions lock it into imposing a eurocentric, imperialist vision of 'civilization' onto cultures where it doesn't make sense, here's a few different jenga blocks you could pull out to resolve it:

SID MEIER'S EUROPE

the pillar you knock out here is #5. keep the game engine and core assumptions just as founded on eurocentric imperialist societies as they are now, and just make it about european empires doing imperialism. now, i think we can immediately spot some problems in there -- how are we going to represent the rest of the world? after all, this kind of just creates a situation where, either as NPC factions or as outright exclusions, all other cultures in the world are deprived of any meaningful agency in "history". this one just kind of gives you a new problem and also from a gameplay standpoint results in a game that just Has Less Stuff On It. i think this is a bad one

SID MEIER'S ELYSIUM

now here's one you can get if you knock out pillar #3. keep the same assumptions and gameplay and transhistorical global narrative scale, but remove the 'real-world' aspects. you can get real silly with it and add fantasy stuff to it, or you can be a relatively grounded 'our-world-but-to-the-left' situation. now to some extent this already matches a lot of the features already in civ games: after all, unless you specifically load in a 'true start location earth' map, you're usually playing on a strange parallel world with semiplausible but wholly original continents! now, you also need to get some fucking Nerds and Geeks working at your company to build out your fictional world, or you'll just end having pointlessly pallette swapped a bunch of factions that are now just Schmance, Schmina, and the Schoman Schempire, and not really have avoided the issue. but if you do that, and invent a deep and rich fictional history to riff on, then you could create something really cool and incorporate alt-tech or fantasy or retrofuturistic elements or all sorts of cool shit.

the downside of this is that it makes your game less accessible and appealing to a lot of people. a big part of (at least the initial) appeal of civilization is pointing at the screen and saying 'hey i recognize that thing!'. it is instantly more accessible to someone who isn't super invested in strategy or fantasy dork shit to say to them 'you can be BRAZIL and nuke FRANCE while at war with CHINA and allied to BABYLON'.

more importantly than that, i think some parts of the historical theming (because let's be honest, it is ultimately theming, i don't think civ is interested in 'history' in any serious way) serve a pretty load-bearing role in the game's information economy. it's a pretty tall order to ask a player to remember the unique abilities of dozens of factions and unique wonders, and the historical background makes it a lot easier. e.g., it is a lot easier for a player looking at wonders to remember 'the pyramids need to be built on desert' or 'broadway will help me make more culture' than it would be for them to remember the requirements/effects of 'under-eusapia' or the 'wompty dompty dom center'. i think this is one of the number one things that, if subtracted, would meaningfully create something that is no longer 'sid meier's civilization'.

SID MEIER'S ALPHA CENTAURI

now if you cut out #3 and #5 and #6 on the other hand... sid meier's alpha centauri is not technically an entry in the civilization franchise, but i think most people correctly consider it one. it has similar 4X gameplay to the series, and its (very bad) spiritual successor beyond earth was an official entry. instead of 'civilizations', the playable factions are splinters from a colony ship that fell into civil war as soon as it landed, each one representing a distinct ideology. now, y'know, this doesn't mean it's free from Some Problems (the portrayal of the Human Hive in particular is some of the worst apects of 90s orientalism all piled together) but i think they're problems it's not at all locked into by its design!

SID MEIER'S THERMOPILAE

by cutting out #5 and #6 -- making a civ game about a particular time and place in history you could achieve something much more richly detailed in mecahnics while also being able to handwave a lot more homogeny into it. giving the same basic mechanics to, say, every greek city-state in the peloponnesian war is far less ideologically loaded than giving them to every 'historical civilization' someone who watched a few history channel documentaries once can think of. it also lets you get really into the weeds and introduce era-and-place-specific mechanics.

the scale needs to be smaller conceptually but it doesn't really have to be smaller in terms of gameplay -- just make maps and tech trees and building more granular, less large-scale and more local and parochial and specific. this also gives you the advantage of being able to do the opposite of the last two options and really lean hard into the historical theming.

if this sounds like a good idea to you, then good news -- old world does something pretty similar, and it's pretty good! worth checking out.

SID MEIER'S LOVE AND PEACE ON PLANET EARTH

what if we take an axe to #2 and #4? instead of putting all these civilizations into a zero-sum game of violent expansion, make it possible for several civilization to win, for victory goals to not inherently involve 'defeating' or 'beating' other factions. now, that doesn't mean that the game should be a confictless city-builder -- after all, if you've decided to be super niceys and just try and make your society a pleasant place to live, that doesn't mean that the guy next to you isn't going to be going down the militarist-expansionist path. hell, even if all you want to do is provide for your citizens, a finite map with finite resources is going to drive you into conflict of some kind with your neighbours in the long run.

to make this work you'd have to add a bunch of new metrics -- 'quality of life', for example, as a more granular and contextual version of the 'happiness' mechanics a few games have had, or 'equality', game metrics that you could pursue to try to build an egalitarian, economically and socially just society where everyone is provided for. after all, why shouldn't that be a goal to strive for just as much as going to mars or being elected super world president or whatever?

SID MEIER'S DIVERSE HISTORICAL CONTEXTS

ultimately, all cards on the table, if i was made god-empress of The Next Civ Game, this is the option i'd go for: jettison #1 as much as practically possible, introduce as much asymmetry into the game as you can. some civilizations keep the established settler-city model -- others are nomadic, building their units in movable 'camps' -- maybe the 'colonial' civilizations, your USA and Brazil and so on, can be like the alien factions from the alpha centauri DLC, only showing as NPCs at the appropriate point in the timeline when other civs are colonizing other continents, or putting you into an accelerated-forward version of the game if you choose to play as one.

you could combine this with a more interesting version of humankind's civ-choosing system, where you lock certain civilization choices behind specific gameplay events. this would let you do crazy shit with the balancing -- imagine an ostrogothic kindgom civ with crazy strong abilities and units that you could only choose to play as if your capital is overrun by barbarians, or a hungarian civ that requires you to have started as a nomadic civ and invaded somewhere, or a soviet union civ that requires you to lose a revolution, or a usamerican civ that requires you to split off all cities on a foreign continent from your original civ -- you could add so much variety and so many new and bizarre strategies into the game with this!

as for the universal aspects of tech and the narratives of linear progression contained within, there are lots of approaches that already solve this! stuff like stellaris' semi-random branching tech paths, or endless space 2's circular tech web, could allow civilizations to take tech paths that make sense for them, rather than imposing one single model of 'technological progress' on the wole world.

obviously there's limits to this, right -- civilization isn't going to be a detailed historical materialism simulator any time soon. but i think abandoning the idea that every faction has to play fundamentally the same and introducing some severe asymmetry as well as choices that you can make after starting the game would work wonders to wash out some of the racist and colonialist assumptions built into the game's foundation, while also (imo) creating a more fun and interesting game.

#ask

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catgirltoofies · 10 days

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here's a few dwarf fortress adventure mode tips if you're struggling at all!

1. play a goblin. the mode is unfinished and there's no way to get food except what you start with, so play as a goblin so you don't have to deal with food and water (still need sleep tho). the downsides to playing a goblin, for the record: you're smaller and weaker than the other races. this can make it hard to wrestle things that are large, and makes you very frail under your armor - so don't fight big things without good armor.

2. don't bother with specific weapon skills at the start. my primary suggestions for skills to start with are Novice Reader, so you can read books and/or become a necromancer (if that's your groove) and, importantly, if you don't start out able to read, you can never learn to read. aside from that, my only suggestion is to take at least two levels in Observer. this will let you see how an opponent is attacking so you can counter effectively - you can't parry a dragon's fire breath, but you can block it. back to my initial point - the weapon you start with is not going to be a good weapon, and you should be seeking to replace it as soon as you can.

3. due to how combat works, your first medium-term priorities should be getting ahold of an iron chain shirt, an iron helm, two iron high boots, and two iron gauntlets. this will give you full coverage across your body. for embark, start with a copper chain shirt - cheap and plenty effective for early on, especially against animals. in addition, you want iron or silver weapons, or if your world is more developed, steel. this is why weapon skills don't matter on embark - you're not going to be able to put a ton of points into it anyways, and being a Proficient Swordsman won't help you when you find a masterwork silver whip in the hands of a random goblin.

4. NEVER sleep in the wilderness, if you can help it. you will be attacked and you will be killed. find a nearby civilization that isn't hostile to you, ask anyone in a building for permission to stay the night, and sleep there. you'll be safe from the boogeymen that way, but you're not necessarily safe from random attacks on the village you're staying in. those aren't your fault, though, and are totally random.

(boogeymen no longer attack outside of evil regions, but sleeping in the wilds still leaves you susceptible to predators - not nearly as dangerous, but still a potential threat.)

5. don't interact with elves unless you have a plan. starting in an elf civ has one big disadvantage and one huge potential advantage. elves don't use metal at all, so your only weapon and armor choices will be grown wood, which is an extremely ineffective weapon and armor material. even as ammo, wood is bad. however, if you start in an eleven civ, you have access to giant animal companions. your weapon doesn't matter when you have a giant lion on your side.

6. while in combat, don't be afraid to flee. sometimes you get in over your head. it's important to know when you're in trouble and getting out of dodge before it's too late. most importantly, if you're fighting something that gets cuts in through your armor, you need to leave. if its attacks are stronger than your armor, that means that you can get severed nerves, and those are permanent damage. when you go to the travel map and move a tile, all of your wounds are healed, except for permanent damage - it doesn't matter if you're bruised black and blue and your legs are broken, if you can get to the travel map, all of that goes away. but one single severed nerve in your ankle and you become permanently disabled and need a crutch to walk anywhere, severely hampering your ability to fight. even worse in the arm!

7. train! fight weak stuff before trying to take on strong stuff. run around the woods and chop the wings off of birds. wrestle crabs. get into fistfights with drunks. getting experience from things does not scale with difficulty, only repetition, so it's perfectly viable to pick up a rock and throw it at the floor for three hours and become a legendary thrower capable of splitting open a goblin skull with a hummingbird beak from 30 meters away, or fistfight drunken dwarves for weeks on end to become a legendary striker and punch a dragon's eyes out.

8. for early equipment, scout out camps. there tend to be some nearby any settlement, and the residents might not even be hostile to you! don't pick up everything, just things that are better than the stuff you have. it doesn't currently have an indicator, but carrying too much stuff WILL overencumber and slow you down, which can be deadly in a fight. i look for iron or silver equipment, especially whips. don't take the money, it's useless.

9. what's the best weapon? whips. due to the complex mechanics of combat, whips are basically able to totally ignore armor and simply break bones. secondarily, spear-type weapons are decent against armor, as they can punch through and cause bleeding, while blunt weapons like maces can break bones through the armor. swords and axes are not going to be useful. against unarmored things, though, swords and axes will be much, much stronger - a heavy sword swing can pretty handily sever limbs, which is an EXTREMELY effective tactic, if you can pull it off. blunt weapons will still be able to break bones, but it'll take quite a bit longer to kill an unarmored target with a war hammer than with a greataxe.

10. be patient! both in the game itself, and with the development process. this beta is very incomplete, missing extremely important content like crafting and trading, leaving you somewhat limited in what you can do. they're working on getting it finished, and what's currently available is still a whole lot! as for the game itself - sometimes it's good to take things slow. don't just wildly auto-attack things, sometimes taking a look at your attack options and potential "crits" can create an opening for you to turn a losing battle into a winning one. you can take a step to reassess and get a new accuracy roll if none of your options are good - just be careful not to leave yourself too open to counterattacks!

#dwarf fortress

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kyriat-stories · 3 months

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- Did you hear him, Noor? "Hope you continue your science career, even though you are now married" and yadda yadda. He is such a hypocrite!

The families had come together to celebrate Mezamura's wedding, and Teteriu had just finished his speech for the bride.

- I'm sure he meant well, Eira. He wants what best for his sister doesn't he? And Aurelio seems like a decent man.

- Yeah, it's nothing wrong with Aurelio, he is fine. But Teteriu just say things he doesn't live by. Pretending to be something he isn't. If he really meant what he is saying, why didn't he let me continue my studies? And this big party... giving them your old house... he is just showing off.

- The party is great though, and we all needed something to celebrate after this terrible summer.

- Oh sweet Astanna, yes! First uncle Itaja, then Telamon, and Nashuja wanting to leave Manthos for good. It sure hasn't been joyful.

- Well uncle's death wasn't that unexpected, he was getting older, and I'm just grateful Nashuja was still here when he passed. But Telamon...?! Did you learn exactly what happened?

- Not really. They just told me he was found dead outside the shelter where he lived. From what I've heard he had stopped drinking, but maybe he had a relapse? Or maybe he was robbed? Or struck by lightning? I don't know. I'm still in a bit of a shock, because deep down I did hope to see him again.

- So how is aunt Simadhne coping? Is she feeling better now?

- Well you know. Since we moved in after uncle's death she's been kind of busy with helping with the children and cooking for us all. But when Nashuja is leaving... I fear she will fall apart. We will all miss him so much. And knowing we will never see him again... It is unbearable!

- And Pamesijos? Will he go with him?

- Not if I can prevent it, Noor whispered. How can I loose them both?

- Really makes you think about the sacrifice they made, doesn't it?

- What do you mean? The war?

- I mean our parents Noor, when they let us both go. We were so young! About Khará's age actually! Can you imagine how it must have been for them?

- Well it was different. They wanted to keep us safe.

- Yes, exactly! Not so different from this situation, when you think about it.

- I've never thought about it that way, but you are right.

- But I'm not sure if I ever could have let Khará go, under any circumstances, so I totally understand your reluctance to let Pamesijos go with Nashuja.

- You will have to let her go some day anyway...

- What?

- I mean, she will move out, get married, have her own household. All of our children will. It is terrible, but true!

- Noor! Do you have to talk about such excruciating future visions? Can't we just enjoy this party and have some fun?

- ♫♫ Ναι, να ζήσουν, ευτυχισμένοι για πάντα! ♫♫

Previous (Ch 9) | Index | Character overview | Next

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mistydeyes · 8 months

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HI😽 kind of hard to explain, but what about like civ!gn!reader x gaz and it’s pretty early in their relationship and the reader meets 141 or his friends or are at some sort of outing with other people or something and like it’s so obvious how smitten reader is with him and it’s noticeable to everyone whereas kyle doesn’t notice much or at all, and is pretty much oblivious to it? like they’re pretty much enchanted by him yk?

like for example; kyle is casually talking about something with the group, reader is sat next to him and he isn’t looking at her as much (bc he’s engaged w what he’s saying and the conversation) but reader is just totally admiring him, starstruck by him. an enamored, infatuated look on their face. just staring at him, not listening much just because they’re just so captivated by him? idk i hope this makes sense!!

maybe during or afterwards, someone lets him know their observations (i can totally imagine it being soap or alex lol, or price in a fatherly kind of way [if it’s 141])

feel free to ignore this especially if it doesn’t make sense! i wasn’t sure how to explain or if it did correctly but i hope i did! THANKS!❤️❤️💕 (sorry if this is long😭😭)

thank you so much for requesting this anon! i feel like this it totally possible for him because while he may be a genius on the field, he gives a lil clueless vibe w relationships

┊ ⋆ ┊ . ┊ ┊┊ ⋆ ┊ . ┊ ┊┊ ⋆ ┊ . ┊ ┊┊ ⋆ ┊ . ┊ ┊┊ ⋆ ┊ . ┊ ┊┊

summary: Despite being such an intelligent and observant soldier, Kyle can be a bit dense. After a chance meeting, you two have been dating casually but you are left wanting more. You think it’s a big step when you meet the 141 but the night goes for the worst. Can someone talk some sense into him?

pairing: Kyle "Gaz" Garrick x civilian!gn!Reader

warnings: swearing

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“Are you sure this is okay, Kyle?” you asked as you adjusted your jeans and black shirt. “Mhmm” he replied, without giving you a second look. You tried to hide your nervousness behind a smile but your hands gave it away. You were meeting Kyle’s teammates for the first time and wanted to make a good impression. Despite him reassuring you it would be alright, you still had butterflies in your stomach at the thought. What if you weren’t good enough? You were meeting his captain for god's sake! As you scanned the crowded pub behind him, you hoped you would make it out of this date alive.

“They should be here somewhere,” he reassured, taking a look above the conversing heads and cheers of drinks. “Ah there they are!” he said finally locating the high top at the corner of the busy bar. Without a second look, he maneuvered to the table and you attempted to follow his long stride. You managed to dodge the splash of beer as you reached behind Kyle. “Took us a minute to find you,” he said breathlessly, “Like I said last week this is Y/N.” He gestured to you and you gave a small wave to the group.

“Y/N, our person of the hour!” one of his friends remarked, you assumed it was Johnny based on his thick accent. “Nice to meet you all,” you smiled and you took a free seat beside Kyle. “Mind reminding me of your names again?” you asked politely, It’s not like you didn’t know who they were but you appreciated the clarification. In fact, once you differentiated Simon and Johnny, the entire group and the stories Kyle had told you fell into place. “Gaz, you want to do the honors?” one of them asked but he was already diving head first into the drinks menu.

“Ah I guess I’ll do it,” Johnny said as he cleared his throat. You crossed your hands, preparing for this presentation. “Well here we have Simon,” he said as he gestured to the quiet man who took up a majority of the corner with his broad frame, “doesn’t say much so don’t be bothered.” You nodded as he pointed to the older man who sat drinking a scotch that looked more than your paycheck, “I’m sure you’ve heard of our Captain Price.” Again you nodded and Price stuck out a hand for you. “You can call me John.” “And finally,” Johnny said bringing the attention back to him, “I’m Johnny Mactavish.” You gave a round of applause to his fantastic introductions.

“Well I think you deserve a round for that,” you smiled and Johnny’s eyes lit up, “plus I’m sure Kyle knows what he wants by now.” You smiled at him but his gaze was plastered to the decorations on the wall. “Yeah, and you?” he asked and you smiled at the brief acknowledgement. “Just a rum and coke, my typical order.” You gestured the bartender over and ordered everyone a round of drinks. Your ears rang from their jeers and words of gratitude. “Anything for those who keep Kyle safe,” you smiled as you looked back at him but once again, his eyes were looking somewhere else.

Sensing the lull in silence, Soap spoke up. “So uh did Kyle ever tell you why we call him Gaz?” You shook your head as the bartender returned with your drinks. “He hasn’t actually,” you smiled, “heard he had a fun nickname.” “It’s more of a call sign for us but ever since he joined he’s been Gaz to us,” Simon spoke up as he sipped his chilled bourbon. “Well it all started when I finished basic,” Kyle began and you looked at him. You loved when he spoke about something, especially when he talked to an attentive group. He was a natural storyteller and captivated his audience.

He took a sip of his pint before he started his story. “A buddy of mine said that it was a tradition, something your platoon decides on and he threw a few out there,” he continued and laughed at the memory. He could tell you the most mundane instruction and you loved the way his lips curved into a smile after every statement and how he held eye contact with those who were listening. You could completely drown out all the other extraneous noise and just tune in to the Kyle Garrick radio. “Anyways what started as Garrick turned into Gar and eventually a Lieutenant passed by and just said to call me Gaz,” he concluded and Johnny laughed at the ending.

“And we thought it was more than that,” he joked and everyone joined in. Kyle’s laugh was infectious to you and you suppressed your giggles with your hand. He smiled at the slight jab, sipping out of his glass that was collecting condensation. “Not everyone can be called something like ‘Soap’” he shrugged. You noted to yourself to remember all of these silly little names that were such a foreign concept to you. You’d have to circle back to Simon and John. As the two continued to trade insults and laugh, you finished your drink. You were happy because Kyle was happy. You hoped this wouldn’t be the last time you would be meeting such an interesting group.

Eventually, Simon put an end to their banter and the conversation moved on. “So are you two a couple?” John asked and before you could reply, Kyle beat you to it. “Just have been dating a month or so, nothing official yet,” he replied casually. “Five months,” you mumbled and under the roar of the bar, only Simon heard you. Maybe that was the best way to put it but you wanted something more permanent. Something less fleeting and unemotional. You tried to suppress your disappointment but the tension in the air was evident. You tried to think of an escape route. “I’m gonna go get another drink, I’ll go to the other end of the bar,” you said as you glanced at the swamped counter, “they look busy.” You grabbed your wallet and hopped off the stool, mingling through the crowd.

When you left, Johnny immediately attacked Kyle. “Okay Gaz,” he said calling the attention to himself. “What the fuck are you doing?” he asked suddenly and Kyle turned to him, surprised. “What do you mean?” “That ray of sunshine is clearly into ya and you’re like a sheet of cardboard,” he boasted and the rest of the table nodded. Kyle turned to see you trying to make your way to the bar amongst the crowded room of patrons. “We’ve been dating for a month, I don’t want to make things too serious,” he replied as he turned back to the group. “You should see how they look at you,” Price began, “it’s like you created the stars in the sky.” Despite his efforts on the field and in recon, Gaz strained to remember those recent moments. “I’m just saying,” Price lectured, putting a hand on Kyle’s shoulder, “they’re someone worth putting the effort into.”

As Price loosened his grip, Kyle turned to see you struggling to get the bartender’s attention. “Listen to us, a table of a bunch of single blokes,” Johnny said with a laugh. Kyle laughed along nervously but got up from the table. “I’ll be right back,” he said and his departure was met with hollers from Johnny. As you sighed in defeat as the bartender helped another patron, you felt Kyle hold your waist from behind. “Over here!” he called and in a few moments, the bartender returned to take your order. “They’ll have a rum and coke,” he ordered and you couldn’t help but smile a little wider at his good memory. “This one’s on me, love,” he said as you looked up at him.

“Thanks, Kyle, I appreciate it,” you replied with a slight smile. Before you could turn to get your drink, Kyle placed a hand on your cheek. “Hey uh would you want to be something more permanent?” he questioned and you couldn’t help but be surprised. “Oh Kyle, if this is something your buddies said then–“Before you could finish, he interjected. “No,” he said with a smile, “actually I’m glad you get along with them, they’re a bit of a mixed bag.” You looked over to the group and let out a laugh as Johnny tried to get Simon to take a shot with him. “They’re great, real good people you work with,” you pursed your lips before replying, “but I think I’d like that.” He kissed you softly and you swear you could hear your table cheer. “I really like you, Kyle,” you giggled, almost as if this was a school crush confession. “Good, I don’t know what I’d say if the person I fancied said no,” you both shared a laugh as you returned.

As Kyle checked his phone quickly, Johnny shot you a quick wink. You didn’t know what happened when you left but you were glad that this group looked out for Kyle– not just on the field. As Simon and John held a drunken Johnny up and helped him into an Uber, you felt Kyle interlace his fingers with yours. “Not too early for some PDA?” he questioned and you shook your head. “Never.”

#kyle gaz garrick #gaz x reader #kyle garrick x reader #task force 141 x reader #task force 141 #cod x reader #call of duty modern warfare #cod mwii #modern warfare 2 #call of duty #mw2 imagine #madebyizzie #gaz imagine #kyle garrick imagine #mw2 #izzie is writing

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disneyhistorychallenge · 1 month

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Another 1000 simoleons, Rhodopis smiled while crafting jams from her crops. It was hard managing the garden and crafts while still keeping the villa running smoothly so Lady Tremaine didn't notice.

But Charming was becoming a big help and she would soon reach her goal of 200,000 simoleons. Then they could leave and it would help eliminate any issues with Charming marrying her!

"Rhodopis my love!" Charming was overjoyed with the birthday cake and intimate celebration. "These last few weeks have taught me that my life will only be complete with you, when you reach our goal I want to make you my wife!"

Meanwhile far across the dessert in a small cottage Anastasia had married her love Theokritos and they were now expecting their first.

#ts4 history challenge #sims 4 disney #ts4 disney #sims 4 history challenge #gen 1 early civ

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therealdisneyfan2319 · 1 year

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The Spider and The Witch Chapter 1: The Experiment and The Flu

Summary: Peter Parker and Y/N L/N are junior biochem majors at Empire State College. Peter needs a volunteer for his research project, and a series of events leads Y/N to come down with the flu...or does he?

Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x Male Reader

Warnings: Language, blood, needles, description of medical procedures

Word Count: 3.6K

Series Masterlist | Masterlist

“I don’t know how I managed to let you talk me into going to the lab with you this early.” You stretched your arms out as you yawned, keeping your arm just so to keep your coffee upright.

“Dude. It’s 10 am,” Peter chuckled.

“These good looks don’t just happen, man. I need a full nine hours.”

“Maybe if you went to bed before 3 am-” “Now wait a minute. You’re lecturing me about going to bed early when you used to pull all-nighters slinging webs around Queens?”

“Shut up!” He swatted your arm before you had the chance to pull away. “At least I was doing something productive with my life, not playing Pokemon-” “Completing the Pokedex is extremely productive. Now it might not be the same kind of productive as extracting the Spidey mutation from your genome sequence, but categorizing all the Pokemon from the Galar region is an important, time-consuming task.”

Peter rolled his eyes as he rolled down the sidewalk next to you. You chuckled, taking a sip of your coffee as you shook your head. This sort of banter was typical of your friendship. Peter was one of your closest friends and easy to joke with, but you also worked well together. It didn’t hurt that you were both biochem majors and had the same sort of scientific mind. Since you met in world civ last fall the two of you had been as thick as thieves. It didn’t matter that he was three years older than you, a grade above you, or that he used to be Spider-Man. Finding out that the guy in the Stark tech wheelchair who loved Led Zeppelin and Star Wars was once the friendly neighborhood superhero was not what you expected when you went over to his dorm to hang out for the first time. Peter was used to people freaking out when they found out and was thrilled when you shrugged it off.

“So what exactly are we doing today?” you asked. You had volunteered to help him out with a research project he was working on. He hadn’t told you much about it, only that it was being funded by Tony Stark and dealt with genome sequencing.

“Nothing too crazy. I need to take samples of your blood. I’ll use those as test subjects against my blood. That’ll be the control sample.” He punched in a sequence on the keypad on the arm of his chair. Tank tracks dropped down from the bottom of the seat as the chair began to climb the stairs to the science building.

“You know how to take blood?” you asked, holding the door open for him as he wheeled into the building.

“Yeah, well…yeah. I mean Sam taught me how to start an IV and drawing blood is the same principle, right? You gotta find the vein.”

“Oh my god I’m gonna die,” you mumbled as you turned down the hall toward the lab Peter worked out of. It was one of the newest labs on campus. Tony Stark had donated a sizable amount of money toward the Empire State College science and research division with the provision that all the money go toward funding better facilities for students. The new building had just opened at the beginning of the semester. Peter was more than excited to have a space stocked with the latest Stark technology to work on his newest endeavor. It was more convenient than trying to head upstate to the Avengers Compound a few times a week.

“I won’t let you bleed out on me, man. Worst comes to worst we’ll just throw some webs on it and send you to New York Pres.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better about all of this? Because it’s totally not.” You hated needles. You hated doctors. The thought of someone who was decidedly NOT a medical professional fishing around your elbow for a vein made your stomach flip flop. Maybe a large coffee wasn’t the best idea for breakfast…

The bright fluorescent lights in the lab snapped on as you opened the door. They seemed unnecessary as sunlight flooded the windows that took up the entirety of the easternmost wall. The overhead haze added to the sterile feel of the room: the latest in Stark Technology, ranging from microscopes and test tubes to autoclaves and fabricators, shone brightly against the lights. It was nerd heaven, stuffed to the brim with everything anyone could ever need for any experiment they could dream of. You threw your backpack on a lab table adjacent to where Peter was setting up his laptop. Once you were done helping him out, you figured you’d swing by the library to start cracking on the paper for your art history course.

“So I already took my own samples earlier this week,” he explained. “I’m storing them in the fridge over there. Mind grabbing them for me?” He motioned with his head to the mini fridge that sat next to the sink. You walked over to the fridge, seeing a rack of blood vials sitting on the bottom shelf amongst the Petri dishes of spores and sole can of Coke. “Don’t drop it,” he cautioned as grabbed a ziploc baggie of medical supplies out of his bag.

“Whoop.” You fake tripped, stumbling around and swinging the tray to and fro aimlessly. He shot you a somewhat serious glare. You returned a toothy grin.

“Dude if you drop that-”

“Relax, Pete. I’ve got steady hands.” You placed the tray on the table in front of him with the grace of a swan. “See?” You raised your hands up defensively. “Steady hands. I should be a goddamn surgeon.”

“Ah yes, Dr. Y/N L/N, the surgeon who hates blood.” He dumped the contents onto the table. Out fell some rubber gloves, a rubber tourniquet, needles, tubes, alcohol wipes, and cotton balls. You gulped at the sight of the paraphernalia. “So why don’t you just sit there and roll up your sleeve so we can do this.”

“Are you sure you can’t just, like, prick my finger?” Plopping onto the stool you rolled up the sleeve of flannel.

“Do you want to sit here and fill up these tubes one drop at a time?” Peter asked from the sink. The tray of tubes, empty ones and ones full of his blood, sat next to him as he washed his hands.

“Good point,” you muttered. It felt like you were chewing on the flannel from your shirt.

“Just relax, I did it on myself the other day and I turned out just fine.” There was a slight waver in your friend’s voice as he spoke. Try as he might to hide it, Peter was nervous, too. He snapped on the baby blue gloves. You turned your head away, refusing to look until he was done. “Can you just make a fist for-good okay, yup, I see the vein.” The sudden coolness of the alcohol against your skin made you shiver, but you refused to look. Even as you felt the slight prick of the needle against your skin you kept your eyes firmly shut. “Told you I wouldn’t let you bleed out,” he chuckled, replacing the now full vial with an empty one.

“How many vials do you need?” You strained your neck as you tried to look as far away as you could from the scene unfolding in front of you.

“I don’t know, I did six of my own. That should be enough,” Peter shrugged.

Six vials of blood? Why did you even decide to do this in the first place? You could’ve been back in your dorm in the comfort of your bed, sleeping the morning away, instead of having your blood forcibly removed from your body. Peter definitely owed you big time.

He removed the tube from your arm, handing you a cotton ball to stop the bleeding. “That should be it. Mind putting those back in the fridge for me?”

The second your feet hit the floor your knees wobbled. It was probably psychosomatic, but the sight of all your blood sitting inches outside where it should be made you the slightest bit queasy. “Yeah, no problem.” You shook your head quickly. There was no way you were going to let yourself puke or, even worse, drop the vials and have to do it all over again.

It took all your effort not to look down at the plastic tray in your hands. You concentrated all your effort on staring down the refrigerator. That ultimately meant neglecting your untied shoelace. Before you realized what was happening you found yourself tripping over your feet. While you managed to not lose your balance completely, the sudden jolt sent two of the vials crashing to the floor.

“Shit,” you mumbled as you set the tray on the floor. There were shards of glass and blood splattered across the marble tile. You quickly glanced over your shoulder, hoping Peter hadn’t seen your mistake. Much to your relief he was engrossed in his notebook. That bought you some time to quickly clean up the mess. You looked around for a roll of paper towels, spotting the roll next to the sink and tearing off a few sheets. The crimson puddles looked like they’d be easy enough to clean up. Not thinking too much about it, you knelt down and started blotting at the spill. A sudden stab caused you to recoil from the ground in pain. As you examined your hand, you noticed a small scratch on the pad of your thumb.

“You good?” Peter’s voice broke you away from staring at your hand.

“Yeah. Dropped one of the vials and cut myself. I’m good.”

“Was it one of mine or yours?”

“Uhh, mine.” Truth be told you had no idea if it was yours or his. There was no way to know which vial was which. Peter knew. He probably had it marked down in his laptop or something. But you remembered that his vials were facing you when you pulled them out of the fridge. That meant yours were away from you and there was an empty spot there. Yeah, it’s mine. “You need me for anything else?”

“Nah, you’re good,” Peter focused intensely on his laptop, typing away as you finished cleaning up your mess and putting the samples away. “Are we still on for dinner tonight? Ned’s dying to try out that new Thai place on Watts Street.”

“Yeah, shoot me a text. I’m headed to the library for a bit.” You slung your backpack over your shoulder as you headed for the door. “See you.”

“Thanks again, Y/N.”

******

You spent the rest of the day in the library researching and typing and revising your paper. The minutes ticked by as you lost yourself in the endless barrage of Western paintings you thought looked all too similar. Yet as the day passed you found yourself feeling strange. At first you thought you had been studying too long. The words on your laptop screen seemed fuzzy and you found yourself re-reading the same paragraph on Donatello about a dozen times before anything seemed to click. Then the library seemed to drop ten degrees before abruptly shooting up another twenty. Sweat on the back of your neck ran down your shirt and chilled you as fast as it cooled you off. The lights were suddenly too bright and even the silence was too loud.

Shit, you thought to yourself as your felt heat radiating off your forehead. It was probably the flu. It had been making the rounds through campus for the better part of a month, so you weren’t completely surprised. Closing your laptop and shoving your books in your bag, you texted Peter as you left the library:

Got the flu. You and Ned go without me. I’m gonna go to bed.

The walk back to your apartment wasn’t long, but it was a near-impossible task in your ever-worsening condition. Every step felt like you were trudging through molasses. Your legs were as heavy as cement and you prayed you wouldn’t trip because you weren’t sure you’d be able to get up again. Tears clouded your vision. Rubbing your eyes didn’t help. The only thing on your mind was downing half a bottle of Nyquil and passing out as soon as you got back to your room.

Much to your relief you walked into an empty apartment. Peter and Ned must’ve already left for dinner. You kicked your shoes off and dropped your bag at the front door. There was no doubt in your mind that this was the flu: you felt like absolute garbage as you shuffled to your bedroom. As you flopped on the bed, clothes and all, your body felt like it was made of lead. Bone-crushing fatigue consumed you as you shivered on top of your bedspread. You prayed that you’d be able to get a little bit of sleep to help dull the pain.

When you woke the following morning, you were surprised to find that you didn’t feel sick at all. In fact, you felt better than you had in a long time. There wasn’t any evidence that you felt so poorly only a few hours ago. You swung your legs around to the side of the bed and stared at the floor as you thought about what you were going to do all day, but when you tried to stand up something was off. As you stretched your arms above your head, you felt something engulf you: it was your blanket. It was stuck to your hands.

Did I spill Nyquil on my hands? you wondered as you tugged at the fuzzy fabric. No, I didn’t take any Nyquil last night.

It took a considerable amount of effort to tear just one of your hands away only for it to stick on the wall as you balanced against it for support. Paint flaked away as you ripped your hand away. At that point you weren’t sure if you were still asleep or not. Squeezing your eyes shut, you reopened them to find flakes of drywall still attached to your fingers. What the hell? You shook your hands, trying to free yourself of the debris, but as you flicked your wrist downward, you heard a loud thwack. The sticky white residue covered Marty McFly’s face on the Back to the Future poster that hung next to your bed. That same white residue balled up on the inside of your wrist. When you tried to pull it off, a long spindly web came with it.

Oh fuck.

The implications of what just happened were huge to say the least. The vial you broke yesterday wasn’t yours: it was Peter’s. His blood contaminated yours when you cut yourself and now you had…spidey powers? It couldn’t be. This all had to be some sort of nightmare. You were just a normal guy trying to make it through college relatively unscathed. Sure, your roommate was an Avenger and that was a little weird, but other than that your experience was pretty normal. You had no interest in having superpowers or saving the world whatsoever.

“Everything okay in there, man?” Peter asked as he rapped on your door. It momentarily snapped you out of your panic.

“Uhh yeah, yeah. I’m good,” you hollered through the door, still looking at the web in your hand.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m okay. Just, uhh, knocked my blankets off the bed.” You wiped the web up with a tissue, praying that it wouldn’t stick to your hand, too. It didn’t, much to your relief.

“How are you feeling?” he called as you started taking off your clothes from the day before. A long shower would help you figure out what your next move was.

“Good. Great actually. I feel fine,” you responded, throwing your dirty t-shirt on the ground. “How was dinner?” “It totally sucked, man. You didn’t miss much,” Ned’s voice was faint as he yelled from the kitchen.

“Bummer. I told you that you should’ve done Indian instead.”

“Well hey if you’re feeling better why don’t we go for lunch?” Your stomach grumbled at the thought, but images of getting stuck to the subway pole loomed in your mind. “Yeah, sure,” you responded absentmindedly while kicking your pants off and grabbing a clean pair of sweats off your bed.

Wearing nothing but your boxers, you opened the door fully intending to go straight to the bathroom. The second Peter and Ned saw you their jaws dropped.

“Dude!” Peter exclaimed.

“Wha-?”

“Woah! Y/N, when did you get ripped?” Ned asked. You were thoroughly confused. None of your hobbies included going to the gym or working out. What were they talking about? The lights came on in the bathroom and as your eyes adjusted to the brightness you were shocked. It was like someone took a chisel to your body overnight. There were muscles in places you didn't know there could be muscles. The reflection in the mirror showed you defined pecs, swollen biceps, and the faintest outline of a six pack.

“What the hell?” you mumbled in disbelief. Your fingers traced over your chest, taking in the new body you’d inadvertently fallen into. It was a surreal experience seeing an unfamiliar body in the mirror. It was almost like you were watching someone else live your life while you watched from outside yourself.

“Are you sure you’re alright, Y/N?” Peter asked as he wheeled himself in front of the bathroom door.

“Yeah. I’ve just got spidey powers now.” It didn’t even feel like you were the one saying those words. Haze clouded your periphery, forcing you to focus on the newness of your body. It was an out-of-body experience in every way. There was no way to really process the profundity of the situation.

“You WHAT?”

Time stopped. Everything stopped. Peter’s face contorted with dozens of emotions in the blink of an eye. Glass shattered on the kitchen floor as Ned’s glass slipped out of his hand.

“Umm, yeah I guess. I’m starting to think that was your blood that I cleaned up yesterday.” You half expected Peter to be furious at the truth, but the beaming grin on his face told you otherwise.

“It worked! Holy shit it WORKED!” He spun his chair around excitedly, whooping all the while. “Mr. Stark, oh man, he’s gonna be so excited! He’ll want to meet you. Man, now he doesn’t even need to look for someone to be the next Spider-Man because…oh this is great, I can teach you everything! That way you’ll be WAY ahead of where he thinks you should be and he’ll let you onto the team fas-”

“The next Spider-Man?”

“I mean yeah, Mr. Stark will definitely want to talk to you about it,” Peter replied.

“Dude, I’d kill to be Spider-Man!” Ned added, sweeping up what remained of his glass.

“No way, absolutely not,” you groused as you stormed out of the bathroom. “No offense, Pete, but I don’t want to be an Avenger.”

“You don’t have to make a decision now. I don’t even know if he’ll ask. I mean he probably will but that doesn’t mean anything. He might just want you to come in to do, like, more testing or something.” Peter gingerly walked back his excitement. The prospect of training the next Spider-Man brought a sense of optimism back into his life that had long been forgotten. Losing his identity as the local neighborhood web slinger stripped away a core part of his identity: Peter Parker and Spider-Man were one in the same. Sure, he still used his powers and webs when he could, but it wasn’t the same. Tony had offered to make him an exosuit after the accident, but he knew that he couldn’t do it anymore. One close brush with death was more than enough for him.

“Look,” you sighed, “I’m not you. I don’t want to go out and swing through Manhattan and stop burglars or fight weird lizard things. I just want to be a normal guy doing normal guy things with my normal guy friends if I can even call the two of you normal.” Peter chuckled half-heartedly.

“Wait, can you stick to the ceiling?” Ned suddenly asked. You sighed again, shaking your head as you extended your arm up and jumped: you stuck. “Woah! That’s sweet!”

“Yeah, it is kinda cool I guess,” you chuckled as you watched your fingertips completely suspend your dead weight from the ceiling. Getting used to your new body was a curious sensation. Everything felt sharper. Colors were brighter and bolder. You saw incredibly small movements even from the corners of your eye. Your body felt stronger and faster and more agile. It was strange, spending your entire life as a regular human being and then waking up one day twenty years later with these weird spidery feelings tingling inside you.

“Do you want one of my web shooters?” Peter asked as you dropped down.

“Web shooters?”

“Yeah,” Peter replied questioningly as he raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think I can actually make webs, do you?”

You responded by mimicking the hand gesture Peter frequently showed you, flicking your wrist downward as a raveled strand of webs flew out of your wrist. Peter ducked his head out of the way in the knick of time while Ned’s jaw dropped in amazement.

“Didn’t see that coming, did you?”

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tanadrin · 4 days

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i fired up civ 5 recently bc i wanted to see how it compared to my memory of it, and if anything it's actually much, much worse.

one unit per tile just... does not work with the idiom of the civilization series! units are not like armies in a GSG, they're like units in an RTS game: grist for the meatgrinder. you build them and throw them at your enemy and if they lose combat, they die. they don't retreat and recover morale, you don't get a chance to reposition and try again, they just go poof. but now in addition to that, you can only fit one unit of a type on a given tile, which means combat is forcibly spread out over a huge space. it's slow, slowed down further by the fact that it now takes a couple turns to fully resolve a fight--i guess the idea is that you can have your injured units fall back, except because of the way units get blocked in now, no you can't!--but you still need tons of units to take cities.

which means they didn't get rid of doomstacks. doomstacks are still logistically necessary to win wars! they just made them really fucking annoying to move around the map.

and on top of that, because OUPT applies to all units, it means you are also constantly having your scouts and workers and other civilian units being blocked in by your own units of the same type, or other players' units of the same type, meaning if you sign an open borders treaty with the AI you are frequently signing up to having your own units' movement being jammed up in the worst way by computer players. and on top of all THAT the units cancel their movement orders if the destination tile is blocked, even if the destination tile is on the other side of the map and you can't see it--which means, basically, any long-distance movement order is liable to be randomly canceled if an AI unit ends its turn on your destination tile.

it feels janky at every single level. the worst possible fix to something that wasn't even really a problem--and if they really wanted to they could have implemented some kind of very basic attrition mechanic. or some other kind of soft cap.

and and and on top of all that, it makes roads and railroads substantially less useful, bc frequently you cannot actually fit all your guys on one road or railroad--but you can't just carpet your territory in roads now like you used to do, because roads cost maintenance per turn. just. ugh. fractally bad decisionmaking! like different people were working at different ends of the design doc and not communicating at all!

the global happiness system means expansion is soft capped early in the game, which makes it feel less like an empire management game than a game of managing four to five cities. since very many units are now hard capped by resource availability now, and expansion is limited, AFAICT in most normal games this means you get like.. two swordsmen? ever? mainly it's strong attack units that are capped in this way, but their defensive counters are uncapped, which means actually playing strategically with your army composition is more annoyance than it's worth. in practice, what this incentives is just building the best trash unit you can afford en masse and throwing them at the enemy, but, of course, see the problems with OUPT.

they took out civics and replaced them with Social Policy trees. but everybody has the same set of social policy trees. and there's a bit of a tradeoff here in which trees you choose to fill out first, but you never then switch those old trees out for new ones like civics. they're just permanent bonuses. so there's no sense of, like, choosing your government type.

and then in BNW i guess they realized people missed that, and created Ideologies, which are just a bonus extra-big social policy tree where you get to pick between liberal democracy, communism, and fascism. but of course there's only three. and this isn't unlocked until the late game.

what they really should have done is added more civics and rather than just having you progress from early game civics to late game civics made all civics contextually useful. and maybe given you some extra civics that were unlocked early in the game so you could strategize around them.

as a part of this change culture is now more load-bearing, but cultural victory is just... weird and stupidly complicated. you have to build tourism, and do archeology, and build wonders that provide slots for great works that your three different kinds of great artist create, and all this other crap. versus domination, where you just conquer the other guys. or science, where you just build your spaceship. it's dumb and bad and awkward.

there's no conquest victory now. only domination. but because of the way domination works, it's now not possible to move your capital manually. this is awful and i hate it! let me move my capital, damn it!

buildings no longer go obsolete, which means that if i am founding a city in the year 1973, i still need to build a City Walls in it before i can build a Military Base. this feels ridiculous. and the series already kinda has this problem where it feels like late game it takes forever to get a city really up and running--don't make it even worse by making me build shit from classical antiquity before i can build modern facilities!

the AI is not very bright. they don't expand very much. on big maps, most of the map will remain empty most of the game, at least up through mid-level difficulties i usually play at (that are supposed to be "standard", so I assume the game is balanced around them)

diplomacy is irritatingly primitive. there are few ongoing agreements. declarations of friendship all last a fixed amount of time. the AI is constantly interrupting you to tell you it doesn't like you or it does like you or you and another AI player all like each other. just expose an opinion modifier and be done with it! harun al-rashid and i don't need to pass notes like it's grade school!

they nerfed the range of air units and especially nukes. which feels really weird. the 20th century saw the invention of strategic bombers that had a range of thousands of miles. why can mine only reach cities right next to my own? why do my nuclear missiles have a pathetic range? sure, sub-launched nukes are a thing, but they're only one part of a proper nuclear triad. there's no MAD anymore!

especially because the world congress can order you to stop building nukes and there's nothing you can do about it. you can't defy world congress bans and suffer a penalty. international law has some kind of magical force that even if you are the undisputed hegemon you cannot help but obey. this is very stupid! especially because they could not think of anything interesting for the world congress to do, so it's all shit like banning random luxury goods.

all the stuff i do like--the city-states, the hex grid, the core idea of the trade route system--is swallowed by annoying bullshit. to take the trade route example: you can make money by setting up trade routes. it can be quite lucrative! and you have to protect your trade routes from bandits and shit. but the menu for issuing trade route orders is a mess--way too much scrolling, you can't sort by lucrativeness of destinations, you have to constantly re-issue trade route orders, and the last trade route a unit was on isn't highlighted, or sorted to the top or anything like that. so it's lots of scrolling around, it's very annoying, and it's repetitive as hell.

the real stick in the eye is that this game was not only reviewed well, it was reviewed glowingly when it came out. which is bizarre to me! yes, it looks nice. the art is good and the music is pretty. but it feels awful to play! it is on almost every single metric less fun than civ 4! civ 3 is more fun, and civ 3 was terrible. i hope to god firaxis was bribing people left and right for good reviews because the only alternative explanation i can think of is that everybody who was reviewing strategy games in 2010 was also in the grip of a brutal glue-sniffing habit.

#allegedly there are mods to fix OUPT #but i couldn't get them working #and also apparently the game doesn't support modded multiplayer at all?!#jon shafer were you kicked in the head by a horse #why did that sound reasonable to you?!

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