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cobiehill · 2 years

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Lights Dim While We're Dancing

pairing: wanda maximoff x natasha romanoff x famous!reader

warnings: 18+!!! top!wanda, top!natasha, tiny bit of praise, soft with smut at the end, minors dni!

w/c: 2244

summary: based on this request! sorry it took so long, however this is my longest work yet so hopefully that makes up for the wait

masterlist

a/n i have barely proof read this so i'm sorry for any mistakes :)) i'll go through and delete any i find!

“Hey Nat, come see this” Wanda calls, eyes fixed on the phone screen in front of her. She’d been scrolling through twitter for the past five minutes, giggling to herself when she’d stumbled across a certain corner of the internet.

“You found more?” Natasha asked, a look of amusement creeping onto her face as she leans over the back of the couch where her girlfriend is sitting. Wanda nods, holding up her phone.

“Has everyone seen these new pictures of Y/N. I need her to rail me so bad.” She reads, her voice completely deadpan causing Wanda to let out another laugh.

“Yeah right. Like she could rail anybody.” Natasha continues, dodging a smack that Wanda had aimed at her.

“You’ve gotta give her credit Tasha, these pictures are hot”

“I’m not saying she doesn’t look hot, I’m saying I’ve seen her in bed.” Natasha says with a smirk.

“You’re terrible” Wanda scoffs, curiosity getting the better of her as she continues to scroll down her feed.

“Hey, I’m not the one publicly tweeting about how much I want our girlfriend to rail me” She shrugs.

Wanda stops scrolling and her face harderns as she reads another tweet that had captured her attention.

“Hey Y/N are you single?” She reads, sarcasm dripping from her voice “No she is not.”

Wanda uses one finger to stab at the screen a couple of times.

“Don’t reply to it!” Nat scorns, attempting and failing to snatch the phone out of Wanda’s hand.

“I’m not replying!” Wanda whines “I’m reporting it.”

“You can’t- You can’t just report her fans because they think she’s hot” Natasha bites back a laugh.

Wanda clearly just missed you, since you’d had to leave them for a couple of weeks to tour with your band, however she could not shake off the jealousy she felt upon discovering your online fanbase. Wanda had trouble sharing. You were theirs.

Although Natasha found your fans wildly entertaining, she couldn’t pretend like all these tweets and posts weren’t getting to her too. She hadn’t felt particularly possessive over the thirst tweets - she knew how fiercely loyal you were. Instead they made her long for you even more.

The girls were your biggest fans, and had it not been for their missions, they’d have been right beside you on your tour.

All the pictures and videos were a reminder of what they were missing. They wanted you back and home and back into their arms.

They’d never admit this to you but they’d spent an embarrassing amount of time watching videos of you perform together. Only last week Wanda had given Natasha a very informative lesson on what a fancam was. Every spare minute between missions Wanda had been glued to her phone. If she wasn’t texting you sweet little messages of how proud they were, she would be creeping on your fan tweets and refreshing youtube for new concert videos.

“You wanna call her?” Nat asked, noticing the subtle switch in her girlfriend's demeanour.

“You don’t think she’ll be busy?”

“If she’s busy she’ll call us back later.”

Wanda hesitates for a couple of moments before switching to the facetime app. Still standing, Natasha leans her elbows on the back of the couch, adjusting herself so her face can be seen on the call.

It only takes three rings for you to pick up, your pixelated face on the screen causing your girlfriend’s to light up.

“Hi baby!” Wanda says, her face breaking out into a grin. “Where are you?”

“You caught me at the perfect time, I’ve literally just come offstage” you respond, an equally enthusiastic smile taking over your own features.

Even with the buzz of people in the background, it’s apparent that your voice has become slightly raspy from singing. You always worked hard, but since the tour was nearing a close you’d found yourself pushing even harder, savouring every moment. Both women practically melted at the sound of you. When you were home, you’d usually find yourself losing your voice due to other reasons. It was almost always their doing.

“You look incredible Y/N” Wanda responds, completely mesmerised by how perfectly intact your makeup had remained, despite having just performed for hours. “Tasha certainly thinks so, you should hear how loud her thoughts are right n-“

Wanda is quickly cut off by a soft fist landing on her shoulder.

“Ignore her, she’s being dirty.” Nat cuts in. “You look beautiful Y/N, we really miss you.”

Your face softens and Natasha quickly regrets her previous words. She wanted you to enjoy your time, not pine over them the way they had for you.

“I miss you most” you say, having similar thoughts yourself. It wasn’t their fault they couldn’t be there and the last thing you wanted was for them to feel guilty. “I’ll be home soon, I promise.”

“You’d better be. Wanda’s gonna start coming after your fans if you don’t.”

You laugh, slightly confused while Wanda shoots daggers at Natasha.

“My fans? Have I done something?” you ask, concerned.

“Just the army of people asking you to rail them online” Wanda says with a pout. You refrain from telling her how adorable she looks when she’s sulking.

“Army” Natasha mocks “It was one tweet.”

“I can’t help it if I'm so irresistible!” you bite back with a laugh, enjoying how easy it was to wind Wanda up. You knew she’d get you back for it soon enough, and to be honest you were looking forward to it.

One of your bandmates calls your name and begins to shout some words that your girlfriends can’t make out from over the phone. You groan, returning back to your phone with an apologetic look.

“I’m in high demand today.” You attempt to joke. The pair smile, trying to hide their disappointment. They knew the call was about to get cut short, but they didn’t complain. Seeing your happy little face had drastically improved both of their days and they’d have felt selfish trying to hold your attention for any longer.

“I’ll call you back tonight, promise. I love you both so much.”

“I love you more honey, talk to you later.” Wanda says with a wave. Natasha blows you a kiss and you throw in a couple more ‘love you’s’ before disconnecting the call.

Following the brief facetime with your girlfriends, you struggle to pay any attention to the voices in front of you. Your bandmates discuss a technical mishap from tonight’s show and you nod along, slightly frustrated that the smallest inconvenience had interrupted your precious time with the girls.

The second that things seem to be wrapping up, you excuse yourself to head back to your hotel room, mind plagued with thoughts of the two women.

As you flop down on your bed, your heart begins to thump while you play the video call over and over in your head. You only had another week and a half until you’d see them again, but it was a week and a half too long.

You tried to ignore the heat rising inside of you as you pictured the look on Wanda’s face when she’d spoken about your fans. The hint of jealousy had made her look absolutely hungry for you. You made a mental note to rile her up even more next time you spoke, knowing she’d make you pay for it when you finally returned home.

You slept easily that night, and the next show went smoother than the last. Your energy had felt particularly good the next day, and you were practically vibrating as you came off the stage.

You hurried past the crew, keen to get somewhere quiet so you could facetime your girls again. They’d texted you that morning to say they’d been given the weekend off work, and you were more than keen to make the most out of that time.

Eventually, you burst into your dressing room, the phone already dialling before you’d got the chance to sit down.

They didn’t answer.

After calling Wanda twice, you switched to Natasha’s phone. It was usually easiest to get hold of Wanda, you never usually had to resort to calling Nat.

You frowned, a little irritated that you’d rushed past everybody with the intent of speaking to them, and neither of the girls had bothered to pick up.

You tried Natasha once more, groaning loudly when somebody knocked on your door.

“I’m busy!” you shouted, your tone coming out a lot sharper than you’d intended. You sighed when you realised you’d probably scared the shit out of some poor runner.

The door opened anyway, and you sat up in your chair, ready to apologise for your rudeness.

“Too busy for us?” a familiar voice responded, and you leapt to your feet as the door cracked open.

You were in their arms before they had a chance to shut the door, practically jumping at them the second you had registered their presence.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” You almost shrieked as Wanda took your face in her hands.

“I missed my baby too much” she responded, peppering kisses over your face. You giggled, the mix of shock and excitement causing your heart to pulsate.

Natasha’s arms snaked around you from behind, squeezing you close to her despite the fact that Wanda’s hold on you wasn’t going to be broken anytime soon.

You melted into your girlfriends, tears threatening to spill. You had missed them unbearable amounts, and had to stop yourself from begging them to come and visit you the past few weeks. Everything you had wanted was right here in your arms and you were ecstatic.

“Did you really get the weekend off?” you asked, turning to face Natasha.

“With a little force” she whispered, lifting your chin so that her lips met your own, which you accepted happily.

You noticed Wanda’s hands begin to wander as you were pressed against Natasha and you jumped at the feeling. It had been weeks since you’d been touched like this.

“In my dressing room?” You hissed.

Wanda just chuckled.

“You kept us waiting” She responded innocently.

“I don’t think I-“ You were silenced by Wanda’s mouth once again reclaiming you, biting down slightly on your bottom lip.

“She’s been a fucking nightmare” Natasha whispers in your ear, sending a tingle down your spine. You don’t have time to collect yourself as

you feel your back collide with the wall, Nat’s grip gentle yet firm on your shoulders.

You allow yourself to go limp, eager to comply as Wanda started to undress you. Your body was beyond tired from the constant stop start of performances you’d been giving and you almost cried in relief when Wanda’s mouth latched onto your clit. After spending so long apart, none of you had the patience to wait any longer. You jerked your body towards her, but Wanda forcefully pressed one hand against your hips, holding you somewhat still as she brought her fingers up to your entrance.

The sensation caused your knees to weaken, and you wrapped your arms around Natasha to steady yourself, her lips connecting firmly to your neck.

Although she initially hid it better, she’d been left equally as hungry as Wanda.

“Fuck” you gasped, as she bit down on your pulse point, soothing it immediately with her tongue. You shuddered hard, knowing she’d have left a mark that’d be a bitch to cover, but you didn’t care enough to stop her.

Your body turned to jelly beneath them, your soft moans growing loudly as Natasha reached under your shirt, goosebumps forming as her nails grazed the skin of your chest, eventually toying with your hardened nipples.

From below you, Wanda could feel your legs tremble, she pushed her slender fingers deeper inside of you, relaxing the grip on your hips and allowing you to buck against her. You were very quickly approaching your climax, and you’d have been embarrassed if you weren’t so touch starved.

“You’re doing so well baby, you can come for us” She mumbled, barely moving her mouth away from your core as she spoke. You rode her fingers desperately, chasing the friction you’d been craving. She sucked down on your clit with a harder pressure, not slowing down her movements as you came undone.

You whined loudly, feeling overly sensitive from your recent high. You remained limp against the wall, steadying your breathing while Wanda removed her fingers, her tongue still slowly circling your clit, leaving you jolting slightly under her touch. Natasha placed softer kisses across your face, watching you in adoration. She had missed this so much.

Eventually Wanda freed you from her grasp and stood to face you, smoothing down your hair as you smiled softly, your mind still in a haze.

“Poor baby” she whispered “You look so tired.”

You nodded, blushing furiously while you struggled to find words.

Natasha pulled away from you, her eyes still dark.

“I hope you’re not too tired though, I still haven’t had my turn” Her voice was barely a whisper, sending a surge straight back to your lower stomach.

You let Natasha pick you up and carry you over to the dressing room couch. As she placed you down on your back you reached up for her, noticing how she kissed you so much more gentle this time. You knew you’d never be able to leave them for this long again.

#wanda maximoff x reader #natasha romanoff x reader #wanda maximoff x natasha romanoff #wanda maximoff x natasha romanoff x reader #wandanat x reader #smut

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lacunafiction · 11 months

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How would the ROs react to someone asking for their number when they are dating the MC?

Hi Anon,

I hope you’re doing well.

For this ask, we are going to pretend cellphones are common in Fernweh despite the lacking signal. :D

B: I feel like B might actually almost give it before realizing this was meant in a romantic way. Let the backpedaling begin! “Oh yeah, I'll add you too. My partner has all the heart emojis though. They are also, like, my emergency contact, so... What's your name again??” Hopefully, their sheepish flush isn't misinterpreted as a blush. It was an accident! They are going to tell you once you come back and/or rescue them.

S: “I’ll pass, but thanks.” Polite, nonchalance helps to soften S's rejection, although any persistence/insistence from their admirer will cause S's sharp wit to leave a mark. They will likely try to create some distance after that answer, walking away or going back to reading, etc.

R: “483-003-21—My partner will kill you." 🥴 No hesitation with shutting the person down with a slightly playful edge to it. Yes, they would say this even about the sweetest and shyest MC just to make it clear that they aren't available or interested. R doesn't understand how the person missed the hint from earlier, but they are willing to remind them.

J: “...I don't have a phone.” 😐 Very calm, possibly too calm, and neutral. Before the person could even ask for their number, J was starting to look for you since they lost interest while still not yet cluing into their admirer's infatuation with them. If the person insists, J leaves. They don't have time for this and would much prefer finding you again. (Also, yeah, J has a phone, only very few people know their number.)

Mal: “Now why would you want my number when your phone's broken?” The admirer might grow confused, lighting up the screen of their phone to prove a point, just in time to see Mal's polished smile turn sharper. They get the hint and back off, possibly backing away. Zero tolerance from Mal, especially since this person must have timed asking them this question given how busy our enigmatic server can be.

I hope you all have a lovely week ahead! 💚

Book One Launch Post💚 |TFS Patreon🌲

If you enjoyed your time in Fernweh, please consider reviewing/rating it. 🥰

#interactive fiction #reader interactive #romance games #fernweh saga #asks #reese verner #ruby verner #james corvin #jane corvin #silas dorran #sofia dorran #beckett warrick #becca warrick #tfs mal #the waitress #the waiter #who do queue think you are?

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olderthannetfic · 7 months

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hii! does anybody have any advice on how to feel okay with not having friends? i spent years abroad, so in the meantime my irl friends from hs found other friends to hang out with who they seem to like more than me or else are very busy with work and uni and such. which is cool, good for them for having such a vibrant social life, but it feels like they have no room for me anymore and i'm a person who can't make friends that easily. i don't drink or smoke, and i feel uncomfortable in big gatherings and feel better getting to know ppl one-on-one over a longer period of time, but that makes it hard for me to connect to ppl bc most irl people don't have much patience or already have their own established friend group and little old me doesn't hold their attention.

i'm starting a new job in a couple of weeks, so hopefully that will give me the necessary social interaction plus i have a great family, so i'm not going stir crazy, it just hurts a little that my friends don't bother to text me for days if i don't text them first or invite me out to places. and i'm trying to make new friends, it just doesn't come that easy and in the meantime i wish i could just feel at peace w being alone instead of questioning why people don't want to hang out with me or why i don't feature into their leisure plans. (not that i'm blaming them, it's just that it's hard not to feel inadequate.)

so yeah, anyone have any advice on how to feel at peace w being alone? like, maybe i'll never manage to make new friends or make new connections, maybe through lack of trying, maybe through lack of luck, idc, i just want to be enough for myself, but i don't know how.

so any wise words are appreciated and thank you, OTNF, for letting me vent in your inbox :)

Well... those feelings are pretty common and a natural reaction to the situation. You may not really get rid of them entirely, but you can accept them as a natural part of things and not a sign that anything has gone wrong.

HS friends rarely stick with each other even during college, let alone after, so you would likely be in this same boat regardless. Making new adult friends can be a pain, but it's something most of us face multiple times even if we luck into some good friend groups at points and even if we're more social.

The thing to do for many people is to keep busy with hobbies. A crafting meetup or book club isn't usually massive. I know you don't like groups, but nobody is going to go off one-on-one without meeting you in a group context first. Finding some more manageable groups to meet people casually and see if you click is how most people do it. The only way to get to know people over time is to show up in the same places with the same people a lot.

Another important thing to realize about adult friends is that many of them won't be good about texting you or inviting you because they're all out of energy for doing that with anyone. Maybe all of their energy is reserved for a job. Maybe for a child. Maybe for a romantic partner.

Even if you're their very best friend, they may still not respond much at certain times in their life. If you guys are just post college, maybe that's not the issue yet, but it will be at some point.

Every single book about the plague of loneliness and how people suck at maintaining core friendships outside of their household is fixated on this. People suck at recognizing when they aren't putting enough energy into maintaining relationships.

I would axe that hangdog attitude about little old you not holding people's attention. They probably just aren't allocating time to building friendships at all.

Liking being alone has a lot to do with loving yourself in general and having hobbies and things you want to have time for that are solo pursuits.

It's also about not waiting to do things like go to a restaurant you want to check out. Go alone. Go with a book. Anything can be a solo activity unless it literally mandates 2+ people. Missing out on friend time shouldn't mean missing out on everything else, but a lot of people let it become that.

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moonshine-nightlight · 5 months

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2024 Writing - Plans

similar to last year, i wanted to post a little look forward at my plans for writing this year are. the necessary disclaimer: this is 100% high level, optimistic, ideal situation and subject to change but i still like thinking about it and posting for anyone who's interested. see this post for last years!

so, i like separating things out it mini goals/sections so see below:

Nothing's Wrong with Dale: with DSM self-published under my belt, I'd like to focus on the NWWD publishing journey next! The main obstacles/costs are time and money. Hiring an editor and a cover artist are the pricey-est part of the process but my own edit (first to convert everything from 2nd POV to 3rd POV and then another high-level edit/revise once i've got it in the right POV) will take the most time and needs to be done before i hand it over to an editor. Then after the editor takes their time (and NWWD is much longer than DSM), and finally i need to process all of their edits as well. And i need to do all of this while i do my day job lol.

i've already converted the first 11 chapters to 3rd POV (i hav some IRL friends/betas who only read that version, so if u feel like the tumblr version took a lot of time lol). the timing of being able to publish this year will all end up depending on how quickly i can do all that and kick off the part of the process that depends on outside parties. Even if i manage to self-publish in this year, i don't expect it to come out until lik December and even that's ideal, super best case scenario.

Long Stories: I want to outline both A Perfectly Ordinary Research Position and Shadow Diplomacy and then pick one to be the new long story on here. I do what i call a chapter outline and a scene outline, which is confusing to not!me because the scene = a chapter on here. i should probably rename that process lol. (NWWD was 11 'chapters' and 35 'scenes' for reference).

once i pick a project, i just hope to post as many chapters as i can. Since this will be new, long, and likely just building steam, i actually think it'll be my lower priority after the Short Stories and NWWD publishing, but we'll see. i'd like to start putting that up in June, according to my tentative 2024 schedule.

Short Stories: Since i didn't get as many of these done in 2023 and they've been haunting my brain longer, i want to for sure get some of these shorter stories done. learning from last years overestimation lol, i plan to post 3 short stories: Courtship Confusion, Feral, and finish Free Piano: Haunted, in that order. i'm excited about all these stories and will let me cover 3 different types of pairings (although technically all are Reader) which is fun. All have been outlined and have parts and pieces written. I wish Feral and FPH could both happen in the fall but the timing just doesnt work out so summers gonna b a little spooky lol.

The schedule i worked out makes it so all this will be possible, but also basically has no breaks in sunday postings after my haitus which is beyond optimistic but i lik to start overly confident lol

Hiatus: this is also your reminder that my work has a specific Busy Season which honestly started already (lucky me) and i will b beyond busy Jan-March at a minimum. i hav more projects than ever with my promotion, a lot to learn, and a lot to juggle so minimum 6 day work weeks will be the name of the game - but hopefully all goes well and i'll get a nice bonus i can feed directly to my editors lol

anyway, that's where i'm at right now and I'm looking forward to all the exciting writing and publishing to come in 2024!

Feel free to send in any asks about upcoming/current stories!

Thanks again for all your support in 2023 and Happy New Year!

#my writing #writing status #2024 plans #yearly overview #story status #nothing's wrong with dale #courtship confusion #feral #free piano: haunted #self-publishing #editing #lov to shoot high lol #rly rly thank you for all the support you've given these past few years #i'm still so excited to be doing so much with my original works #:D

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neorukixart · 7 days

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Hi! Text post jump scare (?) Apparently I ran out of my queue reblogs of my things, the proof? is this very post that is the last thing on the queue.

As I'm typing this, by the time this gets posted it might have been a month, or 2, or 3... idk I forgot how many posts the queue will cover but it will probably be a while so I don't know if I'm already able to use nightshade to continue posting my art here; I also don't know if I'm doing more stuff but I did promised I will be posting watermarkless and unglazed illustrations and rkgks on my ko-fi for you to see so you can totally keep an eye on there (can't access to old illustrations, so can't guarantee ALL my illusts will be there as those have been posted here already).

I want to thank you guys for following me all these years, I don't know if by the time this gets posted I will be freed from the 4k followers and if I hit 5k but decided that I want to make something for those tiny users that are still active and no, I'm not deleting my blogs. I might want to do something big or tiny things for you so I would like it if you could help me decide.

This is your chance to request something!

Go to my ask box and tell me what you want! It can be a character, ship art, group art, silly crossovers... anything you would want me to draw (you can send more than one)! Then I will choose the requests/prompts I like or the most requested ones and put them in a poll for you to vote and the top 3 will get done and arranged for you to download a HQ watermarkless version of them! (finished pieces will be posted glazed and hopefully nightshaded in SNS but you will be able to download the clean files via ko-fi)

It's been a while since I "opened" my ask box like this so a part of me is anxious if I will get flooded or not, hopefully I will get enough to have a poll with 12 options xDD.

As I'm lazy to calculate when I'll stop accepting prompts, I will leave this poll do the math for me meaning I will be receiving prompts for a week so, go go!

If you choose the third option, first auch, second, let me reintroduce myself: I'm Greissel, neorukix (signing art as GREiMらくがきズon the works!), a freelance digital artist who draws stuff for my different daily hyperfixations; Digimon, Gintama and Dragon Ball being a constant presence living rent free in my head but have space for other freeloaders. Lately I don't have the energy to spend time on SNS and am busy in real life but I try to do my best. To this day, idk what I might be most known for but yeh, I draw and I have a neat pinned post with things I've drawn so please check it out if you are still confused why you followed me.

Thank you for your attention, have a nice day/night/week/life m(_ _)m

#queue to make it look like i'm still here #sorry this is queued because now you'll never know when I was online or not muahahahaha #update

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inventors-fair · 6 months

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2023-wind Rewind!

Oh here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again.

It's the kinda-almost last contest of the year, at least for a full week of 2023, so we have a tradition of going back and letting folks finish up what they couldn't get around to in the year prior. If you liked a contest, but didn't submit or weren't satisfied with your entry, or maybe you didn't know about the fair until midway through the year, now's the chance to get a card in. So—

Design a card for any previous contest of 2023!

You can find all the rules and parameters in those contest posts, which are under "#announcements" on the blog. This is probably easier to do in the archive, but hopefully Tumblr will do that special feature where it functions no matter where or how you access it.

Please, please state the name of the contest and about what part of the year it came from, just so I know what parameters to look for.

This week is going to be a busy, busy week for me, but I'll hopefully be able to finagle everything I need to for posts and commentary. Maybe even a reflection or two, we'll see.

No matter what, thank you all for your support and submissions through this year. It's had ups and downs and many cards to go along with it. Custom design is an eternal feature of the Magic community, and we're proud of your contributions.

—@abelzumi

Be kind and submit >> HERE! Wind up in Discord >> HERE!

#mtg #magic the gathering #custom magic card #announcement #2023 rewind contest #inventor's fair

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melodygatesauthor · 11 months

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Weekly Update - 07/09/2023

There's a LOT to cover this week but it's all REALLY important so please read <3 (below the cut) ~

Announcements

~ Cruise ~

I'm going on a cruise from 07/15/2023-07/23/2023! I really shouldn't have, but my family peer pressured me into it and now I can't get my money back if I back out so I'm going anyway lol.

I paid extra to have WiFi in my cabin, however I don't know how good it will be. I refuse to pay the ridiculous amount of money to use the data on my phone out there. That being said, my online time will be limited.

If for any reason I cannot access my internet or have issues getting on Tumblr @whatthefishh will give you all an update letting you know. (She hasn't confirmed this with me yet but I assume she will lol)

I'm going to be trying to get some works written ahead of time and scheduled to post while I'm away so it will be like I never left! (except I won't be able to respond much).

~ Masterlist ~

My masterlist is ALMOST complete. Once I'm done with it this time I will NOT be changing it again (unless my aesthetic changes but that will only be a cosmetic update). I'm happy with the way it's organized right now and I don't think it can get any better than it is personally lol. (I'm very proud of it please praise me)

~ FAQs ~

I'm working on an FAQs list to hopefully mitigate some of the repeat questions I get, or so I can just link them instead of having to respond to each individual question.

~ Thank You ~

The biggest thank you possible to those who sent in tips this week. I can't thank you enough. I added the tip thing without the expectation that people would actually use it so to have so many of you this week blew my mind. I love you, and I appreciate you more than you can know.

Disclaimer - I never know which way the winds of inspiration will blow. Timeframes aren't a promise/guarantee, they're a goal.

Fic Updates Legend:

Blue - should be posted this week

Pink - In progress actively (working on but will not be posted this week)

Red - Backburner Fic (will work on later. See WIP list for status)

Long/Chaptered Fics Updates

A Bit Dodgy - This fic is currently on hiatus. The plan is for it to return 07/31/2023. Things may change and if they do I'll let you all know! Thank you for bearing with me. More detailed explanation here.

Always Yours, Never Mine - Chapter 2 is coming right up! Just a couple scenes to add and it will be good to go. I'm thinking I'll be able to churn out one chapter a week but don't hold your breath please haha, things are getting really busy, but this fic is at the front of my mind right now for sure. - New chapter this week

The Fractured Moon - currently working on These Fractured Knights (TFM Bonus Chapters) 🫣😏 - Hoping to have the next chapter out this week. This has been moved to "longfics" since it will be at over 40k words upon completion. - New chapter this week

Mini-series Updates

Feeling You Can't Fight - New chapter coming out this week.

Not a Doctor - Part 2 coming soon - not for a while though.

Worth the Risk - taking a small step back from this for now. It’s not at the top of my inspiration list so I’m moving it down the line temporarily. - will work on a later date

The Good Doctors - idea by @burnincrown - Dr. Marc Spector - It's going to be a long time in the works, and it will probably replace TFM when that one is done. In development - Work on it a different week

Requests Updates

There are 4 ficlets left for my 1k follower celebration. Finally getting them done (I'm almost at 2k now lmao but won't be doing a celebration until a different milestone).

As a reminder, once these requests are finished, my requests will be closed for good. You can see the post explaining that here. Thank you again for the support and understanding!

Moon Boys X f!Reader by @simpforbritgents

Asking for something like Feeling Flustered where the moon boys are doing guided phone sex.

Marc Spector X f!Reader by @blueflowerhat

Marc shower sex based on AI prompt.

Nathan Bateman X f!Reader by @campingwiththecharmings

This is the prompt that hit me like a Nathan-shaped mac truck! -> “if you don’t like my teasing why are you moaning”

Nathan Bateman X f!Reader by Anon

Cam girl reader x Nathan - Nathan turns to a cam girl, he's been kinda stalking her. (Excited hehe)

That's all for now guys! I love you all and thank you so much for all the support you continue to give no matter what. You're amazing <3

#melody gates updates #moon knight #across the spiderverse #miguel o'hara #marc spector #jake lockley #steven grant #santiago garcia #triple frontier #ex machina #nathan bateman

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woltourney · 1 year

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ROUND 3 / SIDE B / POLL 4

Naru (@blucifer08) v. Vastha Mhakaracca (@incense-and-iron / @wanderer-of-light)

Naru:

q. What is your WoL name and pronouns? a. Naru, she/her

q. What is your WoL's species? a. Xaela

q. What is your WoL's class? Or classes? a. Reaper

q. What data centre/server are you on, if you want people to find you? a. N/A

q. Tell us a bit about your WoL! a. Naru became a hero in search of a missing piece of herself! She never felt satisfied in her home of the Steppe. She was an orphan, and although she had an adopted family, she sought out more from beyond the Steppe. She enjoys helping, but I don't think she likes the word 'hero.' In her free time she paints environmental paintings, tries out her bartender friend's drink combinations, and sunbathing :)

q. Why should YOU win? (Answer IC!) a. "Ah… I'm not too sure. I suppose I'll win if fate chooses me. I'll accept failure, no matter how bitter… Though I don't see it as likely."

q. Anything else you wanna add? a. In my canon, she got fully turned into a sin eater and she uses light instead of void powers as a reaper :)

Vastha Mhakaracca:

q. What is your WoL name and pronouns? a. Vastha Mhakaracca [He/They]

q. What is your WoL's species? a. Miqote - Keeper of the Moon

q. What is your WoL's class? Or classes? a. Main classes: Dragoon, Dark Knight, Monk, Reaper, Dancer

q. What data centre/server are you on, if you want people to find you? a. N/A

q. Tell us a bit about your WoL! a. I'm a happy guy! Like to entertain my friends and put a smile on other people's faces. I ended up becoming a hero after following (partly) in my mother's footsteps-- she was a lancer and gave me her old lance when I wanted to leave home to adventure. It kind of broke ages ago… but I still have it! So she shouldn't be too mad about it. Hopefully, heh. Uh, anyway, I enjoy dancing and have tons of experience in managing and entertaining people since my family runs a small inn on the side of some nameless road. As for liking being a hero… it's complicated; as much as I really wish it wasn't that way. It use to be so easy and fun. Simple, even. There was still danger of course, but… I dunno. Fighting five giant ladybugs doesn't really match up in danger levels as the types of things I've been up too as of late [[<-- post EW content]]. Not to mention all the worst parts of having so much on your shoulders, things I really don't want to get into for such a fun event. B-But, don't take it as if I don't want to be a hero!! I can do it, so I want to do it. And it's not a 'If I don't do it, no one will', either. I think there are people who definitely could and would. People who have pulled way more weight through all this than I have. Even so, with all the pain and trouble I've been though, it's worth it at the end of the day. Knowing that I've helped so many people, that I have the power to keep the worst at bay, that I can make a change in the world and have that change try and be something good and positive and kind: that's what makes me like such a dangerous and oftentimes thankless job. Free time? Well, there's: dancing, cooking [[Culinarian is at level 90]], tending to my new island hangout, I've been doing LOTS of sightseeing-- Oh! I LOVE taking pictures and doing photography. Mostly of landscapes, they're just easier for me to work with than people; not to say I don't snap pictures of my friends now and again. What else… Oh! I've been taking up other crafting jobs as well since I have the spare time. It gives me something to keep my hands busy and lets me go out and collect more plants and rocks. I always liked going out to collect random stuff, but some of my older sisters, who I ended up bullied into hiring on as retainers so they could keep tabs on me away from home, got tired of me dumping popotos and iron ingots onto them to figure out how to sell en mass every week. I saw nothing wrong with it, but it really just must be me. Hmm… A lot more stuff about me is kind of personal. While I'm a rather open guy and like to chat, there's even some stuff I don't like talking about too casually or with strangers, sorry! Maybe we can be friends? I'm always open to new friends! Let's talk more sometime, okay?

q. Why should YOU win? (Answer IC!) a. Why should I win? Oh man, I just think it'd be neat! "Vastha Mhakaracca, winner of the…" uh, what was this called again? Oh, right! "winner of the WoLTourney 2023!" Could even put that on my little adventure card thingy just for fun.

q. Anything else you wanna add? a. Some other facts about Vastha he didn't get to cover himself: Transmasc [he/they] and gay (despite all the handsome bachelors in game, he hasn't fallen for more past a short lived crush or two.) He has 4 older sisters, making him the youngest in the family He use to be more meek and shy, which turned to 'all talk no bite', which turned out to now where he's more mellow and friendly but will not hesitate to throw hands if someone starts something He actually likes to do fetch quests because it lets him explore local areas to take more pictures Vastha comes off as a bit of a dunce and a ~stoopid widdle catboi~ to people because he likes to have fun and goof around like he use too (before all the horrors (tm) of being an adventurer). He notices, but doesn't comment on it. He'd rather people keep thinking it and underestimate him so he can prove them wrong through action. And with so much life experience now, he really doesn't care what others think of him anymore; he knows himself and that's all he can control in life. Despite being so giddy and friendly, the man does have some things he dislikes a normal degree, and other things (and people) he hates with the rage of a thousand suns-- which upon mention of will immediately switch his mood to more sour and serious. It's rare to stumble across such topics, thankfully.

#💎 shout #💎 round three

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loveroftoomanyfandoms · 8 days

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Every Little Thing She Does is Magic, Chapter 3

Pairing: Platonic Steven Grant x Reader (for now)

Rating: T

Word count: ~2600

Story Summary: Steven meets a beautiful woman in the Egyptian exhibit at the British Museum...

...Too bad she's his new boss.

Tags/Warnings: Canon Divergent since Steven still works for the British Museum post-canon, No Jake Lockley, developing friendship, boss/employee relationship (of sorts)

A/N: Here's chapter 3! I'm still not quite sure how long this will be, but hopefully I'll have an idea soon since I know where the plot's going.

If you'd like to be added to the taglist for this or any of my stories, please let me know!

Title from the song of the same name by The Police.

“...So, what do you think?”

Steven turned as Christina walked up next to him. He had been in his new position for a few weeks and was attending his very first members-only museum gala. “There's quite a lot of people here, isn’t there?” he replied.

Christina shrugged. “Usually it’s the same bunch of trustees and benefactors wanting to brag about their ‘generous’ donations while simultaneously making sure of where said donations are going, but yeah, there’s definitely more members here than usual.”

“Have you seen Dr. Y/L/N yet?”

Christna shook her head. “No, but I’m sure she’s around here somewhere.”

She waved at someone. “Oh, if you'll excuse me, I just saw one of my old professors from uni. I'll catch up with you later, okay?”

Steven nodded. “Yeah. Laters, gators.”

Once Christina had left, he continued looking around the room. Maybe I should walk around, see if I spot her.

Good idea, Marc replied in his head.

Steven took a single step before someone moved out of his line of sight, revealing Dr. Y/L/N.

She had traded in her usual business attire for a silky floor-length purple dress with a shimmery beaded bodice and a pair of high-heeled shoes. On her left wrist was a wide, flat, silvery bracelet that reminded Steven of the bangles that Egyptian queens were frequently depicted wearing while a double-layer teardrop diamond necklace rested at her throat.

Steven’s breath caught. Gods, she’s beautiful.

Stunning, Marc agreed.

Dr. Y/L/N was engaged in conversation with an older gentleman that Steven vaguely recognized as one of the museum's trustees -- or from what Steven could tell she was actually being talked at while she discreetly looked around for an escape route.

She smiled as Steven caught her eye, then while the man speaking to her was briefly distracted by a passing waiter she made a face before quickly schooling her features back into a blank mask.

Steven chuckled and shook his head as the man turned back to Dr. Y/L/N and began speaking again while she pretended to be interested.

Go help her, Marc said.

How?

I don't know, make something up. Say you need to talk to her about something important.

Steven downed the glass of champagne he had been holding just to have something in his hands and set the empty glass down on a nearby table. “Right, off I go then.”

He walked over towards Dr. Y/L/N. “Dr. Y/L/N, there you are!”

“Ah, Steven!” Dr. Y/L/N replied, looking relieved. “Cohen, this is Steven Grant, our absolutely brilliant Visitor Engagement Specialist here at the museum. Steven, this is Cohen Robbins, one of the museum's benefactors and member of the board.”

“How do you do,” Cohen said, shaking Steven's hand.

“Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Steven replied.

“Steven has been instrumental in improving the museum's visitor numbers,” Dr. Y/L/N continued. “Just in the past month that he's been in the position we've more than doubled our guided tour numbers and increased memberships by 20%.”

Steven’s face flushed at the praise. Dr. Y/L/N had loved his revamped tour and had approved it as the new standard as soon as Steven could train the rest of the Programming staff.

“It's all been thanks to Dr. Y/L/N’s incredible leadership,” he replied. “I'm just grateful that she's given me the opportunity to show her what I can do.”

He cleared his throat. “In fact, I actually have important museum business to discuss with her now, so unfortunately I need to steal her away. Quite urgent, you see, can't wait till tomorrow.”

“Apologies, Cohen,” Dr. Y/L/N said. “I'll see you at the next board meeting.”

Steven began to lead Dr. Y/L/N away. “I was thinking about what you said regarding our next special exhibition and I've come up with something that I really think you'll --”

He dropped the act as soon as they were out of earshot. “Everything okay? You looked like you were in need of a bit of a rescue.”

Dr. Y/L/N nodded with a smile. “I was, actually. I knew that events like this require a lot of schmoozing benefactors and listening to them talk about their art and car collections, which totally isn't my scene but unfortunately came with the job description, but I swear if I had to listen to Cohen blather on about his prized Vermeer painting for one more minute I was going to go insane. You're a lifesaver, Steven, thank you.”

Steven huffed out a laugh. “Happy to help, ma'am.”

“Are you enjoying the gala so far?”

Steven nodded. I am now. “Yes, ma'am.”

He had been surprised to see the invitation to the gala in his email inbox a few weeks before and in questioning Christina, he had learned that while the galas were open to all staff (which he never knew since Donna had never bothered to let the gift shop staff know) the Curation and Programming department heads in particular were encouraged to attend in order to show solidarity and support for the museum -- and to be on hand to answer any questions about the exhibits. It's not actually required, she had said, but we get overtime for it so it's worth it.

Dr. Y/L/N smiled. “Good. I'm glad.”

Steven gestured towards the table that was acting as a makeshift bar. “May I get you something to drink?”

Dr. Y/L/N nodded. “Yes, a glass of champagne would be lovely.”

“Be right back.”

Steven walked over to the bar and requested a glass of champagne and a bottle of water, then headed back over to Dr. Y/L/N once he had received them.

He handed her the glass of champagne. “Here you are, ma'am.”

“Thanks so much, Steven.” Dr. Y/L/N grinned. “The one upside to these parties… getting paid to dress up and drink fancy champagne.”

Steven took the opportunity to admire her once again. “You look lovely tonight, by the way. Very reminiscent of an Egyptian goddess.”

“Thank you.” Dr. Y/L/N briefly glanced down at her outfit. “That's actually kind of the look I was going for.”

She paused. “You look really nice as well.”

“Thank you.” Steven had "borrowed" a tux that Marc had stashed in the back of their closet after a mission. It had been a bit wrinkled when Steven had pulled it out but luckily there were no bloodstains, so after a bit of dry cleaning it was as good as new.

Dr. Y/L/N took a sip of her champagne. “Oh, I meant to tell you, that teacher from the school group you gave a tour to on Wednesday emailed me this afternoon and absolutely raved about you, said it was the most engaged she's ever seen some of her students and that they were still talking about it yesterday in class.”

Steven grinned. “Oh, they were a fun group, asked some good questions.”

“She also wanted to know if she went ahead and booked another tour for next term if she could request you as her class's tour guide.”

Steven nodded. “Yeah, that's not a problem. I'll make a note when she sends in her tour reservation to schedule myself for it.”

“Okay, I'll email her back on Monday and let her know.”

“Okay, great.”

“You know, that was actually the fourth message we've gotten about how great your tours in particular are just in the past two weeks alone. I need to watch out -- another museum might get wind of how amazing you are and try to steal you away.”

Steven grinned and shook his head. “No chance of that, ma'am. I plan on staying right where I'm at.”

Dr. Y//N nodded with a smile. “Good to know.”

“--Ah, Dr. Y/L/N, there you are!”

Dr. Y/L/N turned as Helen walked up. “Good evening, Helen.”

“‘Evening, ma’am. ‘Evening, Steven.”

“Good evening,” Steven replied.

“Sorry to interrupt, but it’s time for your welcome speech, Dr. Y/L/N.”

“Oh, it is? I'm sorry, I had no idea of the time.” Dr. Y/L/N turned back to Steven. “Would you mind holding my champagne for me, please? I'll be right back.”

Steven nodded and took her glass. “Absolutely, ma'am.”

He watched Dr. Y/L/N head over to a makeshift stage and clear her throat as the music that had been playing softly over the museum's intercom system faded into silence. “Hello, everyone,” she said. “For those of you that don't know me, my name is Y/F/N Y/L/N and I’m the director here at the British Museum. On behalf of myself and the entire museum staff, I'd like to welcome you to this evening's members’ gala.

“For years the museum has been the cornerstone of enlightenment and knowledge and it is only with your continued support that we are able to present such a large and wonderfully diverse collection of artifacts for exhibition. It's an honor and a privilege to be part of the growth and development of the museum and its collection, and from the bottom of my heart I thank you all for being here. Enjoy your evening.”

Steven politely applauded along with the rest of the crowd, then watched as Dr. Y/L/N made her way off the stage back towards him.

He handed her her glass of champagne. “That was a lovely speech.”

Dr. Y/L/N smiled. “Thank you.”

“It really is fascinating, though, innit? I mean, the history of the museum.”

Dr. Y/L/N nodded. “Oh yeah, very. And to think it started with someone's private collection.”

Steven took a sip of water. "So you never did say what brought you to England, if it was strictly for work or..." He trailed off.

Nice segue into finding out if she's single, Marc said in his head.

"Well, the short answer is strictly work," Dr. Y/LN replied. "But the long answer is that I got a dual Master's degree in history and linguistics before getting my doctorate in Archeology and had originally planned on being a real-life Indiana Jones, but then the university museum offered me a position as their director and I almost had to take it. I enjoyed it immensely but I’d always wanted to come to England, and a couple of months ago a museum job board I’m part of had posted that there was an opening for the director of the British Museum, so I figured why not at least apply? Honestly never thought I'd actually get it, although I'm really glad I did."

Steven gave her a small smile. “I am too.”

Dr. Y/L/N shook her head. “Sorry, I’ve been blathering on about myself for too long. Tell me about you.”

“Oh, er, well…” Steven licked his lips nervously. “There’s not much else to know besides what you’ve read on my CV, really.”

“Nothing? You don’t have any family? Friends? Things you do for fun?”

“Well, there was my mum, but she’s…” Steven trailed off. “She’s gone now.”

Dr. Y/L/N gasped softly. “Oh. Oh, Steven, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright. It was a while ago.” Steven shrugged. “I’ve got a goldfish, at least. Gus. Gus the goldfish.”

“Gus the goldfish…” Dr. Y/L/N nodded with a smile. “I like that.”

Steven took another sip of water. “I don’t suppose you have any pets.”

“No, I considered getting a pet of some sort, but my hours at the university museum were always so long that I would’ve felt bad leaving whatever sort of pet I chose to get home alone for hours on end.”

Steven nodded. He wasn’t exactly sure which iteration of Gus he was on thanks to Marc. “That’s understandable.”

“Maybe one day. We’ll see. So, what do you do when you’re not working?”

“Actually, I’m studying hieroglyphics at the moment.”

“Oh wow, that’s so cool!”

Steven grinned at Dr. Y/L/N's enthusiasm. “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to see if I can translate whatever’s on Akhenaten’s coffin so I can add it to the information on the display placard, although it’s probably just something like ‘here lies Akhenaten, who died from eating spoiled lentils’.”

“Want to go find out?”

Steven blinked at Dr. Y/L/N in surprise. “What, really? Right now?”

“Yeah, why not? I don't think anyone will even notice we're gone.” Dr. Y/L/N gave him a cheeky grin. “Come on, I promise I won't tell the boss.”

Steven chuckled, then nodded. “Okay then. Let's go.”

They quietly made their way upstairs to the 3rd floor and into the Ancient Egyptian hall.

Steven crouched down next to Akhenaten’s sarcophagus so he could read the inscription that had been etched onto the side. “Alright, let's have a look.”

“Well?” Dr. Y/L/N asked. “Does it say he died from eating some bad lentils?”

Steven chuckled. “Actually, no. It says ‘Here lies Akhenaten, beloved of the Aten, great of kingship in Akhetaten, who has elevated the name of the Aten, the perfect one of the manifestations of Re, who is beneficial to the Aten.”

Dr. Y/L/N crouched down next to him. “So he was a sun worshiper.”

Steven nodded. “Specifically the sun disk, Aten. He tried to force monotheism and make Aten the only worshiped god, which backfired spectacularly. He wasn't very well-liked and is sometimes referred to as the ‘heretic pharaoh’.”

Dr. Y/L/N winced. “Ouch. No wonder his sarcophagus isn't as nice as some others.”

“It appears that it wasn't even made for him originally -- it was made for a woman and was either second-hand or retrofitted to him.”

Dr. Y/L/N turned towards him. “So what happened after his death?”

“Polytheism was slowly reintroduced, and he was largely forgotten about until the discovery of his tomb in 1893.”

Dr. Y/L/N shook her head. “Geez. Imagine going from being an all-powerful pharaoh to getting stuffed into a second-hand coffin upon your death and left to the annals of history.”

Steven nodded as he stood. “Yeah.”

Dr. Y/L/N went to stand as well, but wobbled as she straightened.

Steven instinctively grabbed her hand to keep her from falling. “Woah there. Are you alright?”

Dr. Y/L/N looked down at their joined hands then back up to Steven’s eyes, an unreadable expression on her face.

She blinked a few times then nodded. “Yeah, yeah I’m okay. Thank you.”

Steven was filled with relief. The last thing he needed was to have Dr. Y/L/N be hurt, especially while they had snuck off to go look at an exhibit. People would talk. “Oh, good.”

He let go of her hand and took a step back. “We should um, we should probably get back downstairs, yeah?”

Dr. Y/L/N cleared her throat. “Right, yes. Yes, of course.”

They headed out of the Ancient Egyptian exhibit and back down to the gala on the first floor.

Dr. Y/L/N paused at the foot of the stairs. “I um, I probably should go speak to some of the benefactors since the gala is almost over, but just so you know, I really enjoyed our conversation tonight.”

Steven smiled. “I did too. Enjoy the rest of your evening, ma’am.”

“You too, Steven.”

Steven watched as Dr. Y/L/N walked away. If he got to spend every gala like he did this one… he definitely wouldn't mind having to attend.

#lotmf writes #ELTSDiM Masterlist #steven grant x fem!reader #steven grant x female reader #steven grant x f!reader #steven grant x reader #steven grant fanfiction

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immortaldesiresproject · 2 years

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Hello friends!

Welcome to update #2! I’m very excited for this one. I’ve worked very hard for the past couple of weeks and been busy with both this project and one (not related to ID whatsoever lmao) for administration at work!

Before getting started, I do want to apologize for the inconsistent updates and posts. Please bear with us, as we’re now a small team of four; Mir: @timetravesty, our new writer Ava: @buttercup--bee (we’ll have her introduction for ya’ll soon), Ally: @marcolinfanmarcooo, and myself, Dev! We are working hard behind the scenes and trying to get the ball rolling a little faster for all of you wonderful people!

One of our members, Ally, is taking a step back due to the tropical storm Nalgae that hit the Philippines on October 29th. Please check out Ally’s page to learn how to support or donate. Her family was heavily affected and they deserve all the help that they can get.

I also want to let you all know that I’m not going to be answering certain questions that come into the ask box. Reason being is… We don’t have the answers for some of them quite yet. I don’t want to answer anything and give false promises! While there are things that are subject to change during the writing process, we haven’t quite started on the scripting yet. We’re getting there though! I’ll still be answering questions, but it’ll just be the ones that we’ve been able to answer behind the scenes. However, we won’t give specific spoilers!!

For general and writing updates:

As soon as I have all of the primary assets ready to go, I'll be ready to start building the UI! I'm aiming to get a character creation menu done to showcase what the general layout of the game will look like. Maybe ya'll might even see a mock scene from us in the future, if the UI is strong enough ;)

We are piecing together the direction of the story right now and we’re heading in a wonderful direction. We’ll have more updates for you soon in terms of story progression and the general completion. One thing I can tell you is that vampires aren’t the only spooky bois in this world…

For asset and character updates: I’ve been working on new MC sprites between F!MC’s and M!MC’s, new clothing, and new hairstyles. I took some time to evaluate how I felt about the original F!MC’s I had finished. I initially created just one new sprite sheet, and the rest looked, well, boring. I started from scratch for a lot of them, and while it takes forever, I’ve been having fun! Quite a few of the M!MC sprite sheets are done, but there are tweaks I’d like to make before releasing them to all of you. You’ll get to see the new M!MCs soon, I promise you!

Admittedly, I have more erm -- edgier clothing because I'm an edgelord. One of the things I've been working on is making other style and varieties of clothing to ensure it's inclusive to everyone and their preferences. Another fun addition I'm aiming to add are accessories, much like @itlivesproject. Hopefully this is exciting news, but I have two new body types for both F!MC and M!MC. They vary from: fit, thin, and thicc. There are also eight different sprites for both F!MC and M!MC!! I was very excited to see that both the MC Sprites and the new outfits tied for first place in the poll a couple weeks ago! New hair/hijabs was a close last second/third(?) place, so naturally, I’m gonna show ya’ll a few of those too!

Thank you all for your support! It's meant the world to us and we're so thrilled for this project to continue progressing.

Ya'll just make me wanna

#immortal desires #idfp update #immortaldesiresfanproject #immortal desires fan project #choices immortal desires #choices stories you play #fan project #pixelberry studios

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destinyc1020 · 7 months

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I have an unpopular opinion about Timothee: I dont really feel the same outrage as most fans to his recent comments or that poor snl hamas joke anymore due to his last gq interview. I am a fan of him as an actor but dont really care about him as person.

Back in 2017 - 2019 I was the biggest Timmy fan. I deeply connected to him as an introvert and anxiety and really believed that the person he was in interviews and public events was a really him and not a curated persona to generate a fandom. Post 2020 I rarely put any celeb on any pedestal or really except maybe Tomdaya because I really believe they are authentic individuals. (Maybe I'm delulu for thinking that but they haven't disappointed me yet so).

In his last gq interview from my perspective really opens up the struggle of having instant fame and also growing up as an adult with all these hats of personas he puts out to the public whilst still holding on the notion that he's not gonna change for hollywood. But the reality is the more famous you are the more you change. Timothee changed and that's not my business anymore.

I just don't believe ppl trying to cancel him or outrage because in a few weeks when wonka comes out and ppl will forget. It's kinda like Doja cat. Her antics are annoying but her music is great. There's always gonna be a grey area when it comes to ppls fav. I don't agree personally but I see ppl flip flop over things their favs do like a krabby patty.

Hopefully this doesn't come out like I'm a disciple of clubchalamet but I feel like sometimes in stan culture nuance is lost.

Thanks Anon for your input and comments. 😃 You've brought up a very interesting discussion, so I'm going to try to address the things you said one by one.

I didn't read the entirety of Timmy's GQ interview (I'll have to get to that later), so I might be lost on the context of your sentiments, but all I'll say is this: You can feel however you want to feel. You can be outraged, or you can not be outraged. Nobody can really tell you how to feel. It's your own personal opinion. 🤷🏾‍♀️ Many people (including myself) on the other hand, felt as though that particular joke on SNL last night was in poor taste, and quite insensitive. 🥴

This is tricky, because on one hand, I kind of feel like whenever you're in the public eye, you kind of DO have to wear various different personas in a way, because you're working in the public eye, you have to maintain certain boundaries, and you also want your private life to be sacred as well.

It doesn't mean you're being "Fake", it just means that the more famous you become, the more and more you may have to juggle various different demands, and put on different "faces" to the public. Sometimes, let's face it, you just don't want to be on that red carpet. But you suck it up, smile, pose, and get on with your job because that's your JOB. You're getting paid. Same with us regulars who have a 9-5 job. I'm still myself at work, but in a professional setting, I carry myself a certain way. You think I always want to wake up early and go to work? PLEASE. 😅 It doesn't mean I'm "fake", or that I'm not being myself, it just means that I'm putting my "professional" self out there in the forefront, and dimming down my "home self" while at work in the office.

I think most people are multifaceted actually. I don't think people are as black and white as some fans make celebrities out to be.

Post 2020 I rarely put any celeb on any pedestal or really except maybe Tomdaya because I really believe they are authentic individuals. (Maybe I'm delulu for thinking that but they haven't disappointed me yet so).

This might sound crazy but......Tbh, I don't put ANY celebrity (or ANYBODY for that matter) on a pedestal. No, NOT even Tom and Zendaya lol. 😅 (*gasp! Shocker... I know lol) It's not because I think they'll disappoint me one day, it's more so because I just wasn't raised to put anyone on a pedestal or to idolize people. 🤷🏾‍♀️

I actually don't think idolizing people or worshiping them is healthy? 🥴 And I don't think humans were meant to be worshipped or heavily idolized, and I feel like that's one of the reasons why some celebrities (especially music artists) end up having mental breakdowns, go off the rails, or struggle with fame. I think it's unnatural. 😔

Don't get me wrong! There are celebrities who I love very much, and I love their work, I love watching them, I enjoy them, I think they're pretty/handsome/funny/talented/charismatic, etc. and I LOVE them! 😊😃 I'm a HUGE HUGE fan!

BUT! I never idolize them, or think they can do no wrong, because to me, they're just human and can make mistakes just like me, and just like 100% of the other humans out here. That way, if one of my faves DOES seriously disappoint me one day in the future, I may be sad about it, but I'm not devastated, because I never put them high up on a pedestal to begin with. I just viewed them as a regular human being. 🤷🏾‍♀️

I kind of feel like some fans actually put their faves up on too HIGH of a pedestal tbh, and then they become super angry or annoyed when their faves don't do/act/behave/say exactly what they want them to...and my thought is, "Well, you're the one who thought they were ABOVE reproach and were 'perfect', so that's probably part of the problem right there..." 🥴 (I'm talking about fans complaining about minor things regarding their faves, not major offenses or crimes)

I kind of like to view my faves (and other celebrities) as actually very human, and probably under a LOT more stress than I realize. That industry can be very unforgiving, stressful, and kind of crazy....

So, I actually think it's a GOOD thing that you don't put your faves on a pedestal tbh. 🤷🏾‍♀️

(I still need to read the entirety of that GQ article)

Like I said before, I do think that humans in general DO wear different hats. We're complex individuals. It doesn't mean someone is fake, it just means they have to be different in different scenarios. A man may go to work and have to put on his "CEO" hat. But when he comes home, he's putting on his "husband" and "father" hat. He's the same man, but he just has different duties, ways of being, and things he needs to attend to in different scenarios.

I think that large amounts of fame (especially if it's overnight) DOES change everyone actually... But maybe not in the way you might think. Whether it might make an actor more of a recluse because their privacy is constantly being invaded, or maybe makes an artist more aware of different worlds/people/walks of life due to traveling and touring several different places around the world, or whether it's just viewing things differently from a different perspective because you've been BURNED in this industry... I def think it's inevitable that fame will change you on SOME level. It doesn't mean you change into being a mean/entitled person or anything... But more so that your life has undoubtedly changed, so how could it not affect you on SOME level.... Ykwim? Some celebrities never used to suffer from anxiety until they got super famous, and now they suffer from anxiety, depression, paranoia, etc. Like, YES...fame can change you. And sometimes the changes are sad. 😔 I've seen some of my faves change over the years due to the wear and tear that fame put on them. 😔 They used to be so happy-go-lucky, trusting, open, and innocent at first, but then after years of massive fame, they became depressed, anxiety-ridden, distrustful, shut down, super private, and burned out due to all of the pressure of fame. 😭 So yes, in a way it changed them because of the demands. Maybe even because people around them changed.

It also changes how people interact with you. Some celebrities have said that they would just like to be treated like a normal human being. I believe some when they say that. But it's hard because people DON'T treat them that way most of the time. Do you see the never-ending cycle?

Fans/the general public definitely have selective amnesia lol 😅🤣 I don't think there's anything wrong with expressing disappointment if one of your faves does/says something you didn't like. But this whole "cancel culture" thing when someone in the public eye does something you didn't like is a bit much for me. I think it depends on what it is. Not every mistake or action is on the same level imo. Whether a fan chooses to get over the SNL jokes or not is up to that fan. 🤷🏾‍♀️ Some may choose to never like or support Timothee ever again, while another fan may post angry tweets about it, but will move on and be SAT for the Wonky Movie next month. 🤷🏾‍♀️ Each fan can decide what they feel is the "last straw" for not supporting their fave or some celebrity in the media. I think that should be a personal decision for each person? Maybe it's not so much that people "forget", but more so that they have allowed this disgrace some mercy, but will still support his work unless he does something worse in the future.

Hopefully this doesn't come out like I'm a disciple of clubchalamet but I feel like sometimes in stan culture nuance is lost.

LOL! No, not in the least 😅 I totally understood what you were trying to say. I just think that fandom/stan culture is pretty complex and isn't always black and white.

Plus, I feel like you can like someone as a person, but not like their CHOICES...yet still feel like deep down they're overall still a decent person.

The flipside is also true... You can like someone's WORK, but not necessarily care for them as a person. It happens all the time. 🤷🏾‍♀️

#warning: long post coming through #sorry for the long dissertation

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canmom · 10 months

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Das Abenteuer der Canmom in Köln (zur Gamescom)

It's time for canmom to have another adventure! What will that wacky lil porygon do next?

[you may be wondering, whatever happened to the plan to transfer l'aventure de canmom à Annecy to the main site for easier reading? that's still planned to happen, hopefully pretty soon! I've just been very busy.]

So: I work for a small VR games company called Holonautic. I've been working for them for around four months now (time flies)! This week some of us were in Cologne, Germany, attending Gamescom. Until this trip I hadn't met any of them in person, and indeed only had a vague idea what they looked like, because the modern world is wacky that way.

What's Gamescom? It's a major industry expo where game devs show off their games to the public and journalists, and otherwise have various industrial sorts of chats. The event fills a massive convention centre (the Kölnmesse), similar to the Excel Centre in London. Thousands and thousands of gamers enter in massive queues, and once inside, they queue up some more to get a chance to play some work in progress games at massive display booths.

Or maybe they go to the indie room, where there are hundreds of tiny desks just wide enough for a dev to set up a computer with a demo... or the retro games area, where various old consoles were set up for people to play... or one of the zones set up for laser tag or something like that. There was a lot going on!

Even Cthulhu came down to check out the games.

My own experience of Gamescom involved very little of that. With my Trade Visitor badge I could skip the queues, but most of my time was spent in a corner of the Business Area demoing our game to influencers, other devs and members of Meta and Unity, and then heading out to restaurants to have dinner with other VR devs in the evening. I had a good time though! It was great to meet the rest of Holonautic in person, and get to see the sights of Köln a tiny bit. And it was a very rewarding feeling to see other people enjoy the game I'd been working so hard on.

So in this post I'm going to talk about my trip, do a bit of amateur sociology, think about the place of videogames in the world and all that - and also talk a little about how the game sausage gets made - at least as far as I can without breaking NDA. Sadly, the game I spent most of the weekend demonstrating remains under wraps, so I'll have to tell you about that another day. I didn't get to see a ton of games but I'll also talk about the handful of indies I did see!

This time I travelled by train (non-transport nerds, feel free to skip this paragraph), taking the Eurostar from St. Pancras to Brussels, and then the ICE 19 to Cologne. Although it was slower and a bit more expensive than flying, once you factor in the time it takes to travel out to the airport, and the security generally being much more straightforward, I think I much prefer the trains. I spent my journeys drawing other passengers (coming soon to @canmom-art) and reading Osamu Tezuka's manga Ayako (which will be its own post). It was all told very straightforward and comfortable.

[minutiae: I thought I was clever by getting an Interrail pass instead of just buying tickets the usual way, but I didn't realise that you also have to pay for seat reservations, so in the end the Interrail probably cost about as much for a 'there and back again' type of trip.]

By far the most expensive part of the trip was the hotel room. We stayed in a hotel pretty close to the centre of Cologne, but it turned out that its proximity to be about 15 minutes walk from public transport, so we didn't end up saving that much travel time. Since I ultimately spent almost no time in my hotel room, I think if I go next year, the call will be to stay at a hostel. But anyway, let's talk games.

How a game gets released on the Quest

So, Holonautic specialises in VR games. I wrote about our previous games in this very nerdy post, but in brief, there are broadly two major types of VR game: PC VR and standalone VR. For PC VR, the game runs on a computer, and the headset just contains a screen and something that can be tracked. For standalone VR, the headset is essentially a powerful Android smartphone with a custom OS; it uses the headset's cameras for tracking and does all the computing on the headset.

With the success of the Oculus/Meta Quest series, standalone VR became really, really popular - much more so than PCVR ever was. It makes sense: for native games you don't need a powerful gaming PC and there are no cables to trip over or expensive base stations, but you can still play PCVR games if you want to. Almost all of Holonautic's games are Quest-native.

For PCVR games, you can use one of various APIs, such as OpenXR, to wire up your game to VR tracking and input. Moreover, Valve built pretty good VR support into Steam, and since Steam is pretty much anything-goes, it's pretty easy to release a PCVR game in a way people can get it - but marketing is all on you, as with any Steam game.

The Quest is a different story. Compared to other consoles, Meta (which absorbed Oculus a few years ago) occupies a bit of a strange position in this industry, simultaneously the hardware manufacturer, the only publisher, and also a developer of first-party titles.

I don't have any good pictures for this part so here's me in a massive cathedral. Metaphors? No no. It's just a holiday photo...

There are two ways that games can get released on the Quest. There's the store, which is heavily curated: here, Meta acts as a publisher, releasing only games they think will sell, but they also put games through months of QA and handle all the marketing for you (i.e. putting it in front of people when they boot up the Quest). To get on the store, you basically need to have an in at Meta - there's a whole process, I'll talk about that in a moment. There's also 'App Lab', which is much less heavily vetted - but also it's a lot harder to get an audience on App Lab. If a game is particularly successful on App Lab, Meta may end up promoting it to the store. But a lot of games just languish there.

Of course, just because you have a liaison at Meta does not mean you have a free pass onto the store. There's a whole series of stages you have to go through: first you write up a detailed pitch, then if approved (based on what else may be in the works, Meta won't approve two overly similar games), you have a few months to make a 'Minimum Viable Product' prototype of your game and show it to Meta. I joined the company about a month before the MVP was due on our game.

Assuming your contact at Meta likes the MVP, you get a few more months to make a 'Vertical Slice', which is essentially a small portion of your game that's more or less complete. (For example, a single level.) Then, you show this to Meta again. If you make a good impression, they'll give you the go-ahead to finish the game and release it on the store.

Here's another random picture of Köln from the famous Hohenzollern Bridge. Are you saying this wall covered in padlocks is symbolic of something? Overactive imagination, I tell you.

So if yo uwere wondering, the last few weeks of intense work were all about making that vertical slice be as good as possible (and it got pretty clutch at the end). Since we were all going to be at Gamescom, we agreed with our guy at Meta that we'd demo the game in person.

The upshot of all this is that selling a VR game is heavily heavily shaped by Meta, and specifically the individual at Meta who makes the call. Holonautic has a longstanding contact with a laid-back American guy I'll call W.; he has in the past championed some of our games like Hand Physics Lab that left other Meta staff unconvinced. (As it turns out, W. was right and Hand Physics Lab was successful.) But he's not shy about saying that a game doesn't make the cut and should go to AppLab instead. Our game would live or die based on W.'s opinion.

But not just W.; Meta itself as an organisation is also looking for certain things, shaped by its internal politics. They have new features they want to tout - so if you can come up with a game that uses mixed reality, hand tracking and shared anchors that's probably going to count in your favour. And they have certain directions they are keen to push: sporty exercise games are in favour at the moment.

What does this mean for the evolution of the medium? Well, of course people will make the games they want to make, and just because Meta likes an idea doesn't mean it will sell. But Meta does have a lot of power to dictate the general direction of VR games - and if the Apple Vision Pro takes off in a few years, Apple will no doubt end up with a similar role.

It's been interesting to see the forces that shape a game up close: our ideological desire to make things that are new and different and meet our personal tastes, balanced against the need to have successful games to keep the company afloat (good old M-C-M'), and the need to satisfy Meta; all of this leaves its fingerprints on the game.

To not keep you in suspense, I think the demo to W. went pretty well; I can't really say more than that. It was also a good chance to tell the Meta guys about the parts of their APIs that are jank and hard to use - and to their credit they were apparently rather desperate to get feedback and I feel hopeful that they'll make it better.

It's hard to talk about Meta, because it's just such a massive organisation. We can talk about massive erosion of privacy, enabling genocide in Myanmar, and so on - but we're dealing with a small sub-corner of this huge beast, which is less a social media company and more of a games publisher and console manufacturer. But I definitely understand why someone wouldn't want to let a Facebook device loaded with cameras into their house! I could go more into privacy and the Quest 2 but it would be way too long a tangent. Ultimately this is probably a 'no ethical consumption'/'we live in a society' type of deal - one day Meta's domination will erode and we'll have to deal with a different superpower.

Whatever happens, we can continue to explore what's possible in this medium! I think of all the ethical bargains that must be made with the tech industry, I have done OK.

What Cologne is like

On Tuesday, I arrived in Cologne Central Station (Köln Hauptbahnhof) and walked over to my hotel, where I met my colleagues. Most of them looked fairly similar to how they'd set up their VR avatars... but none of them had realised I'm super tall. surprise, bitches ;p

We went out to an Indian restaurant where we all ended up ordering biryani. This being Germany, the portions were massive, so I asked for mine to be in a box to finish later, forgetting that my hotel room had no fridge or microwave and I'd have zero time to eat it (rip). Overall I think I hit it off pretty well, and we chatted for a while about games we liked, the mess that happened at Za/um, movies and the like - it was good to get a chance to interact more casually in person instead of only ever talking about work stuff. Everyone was exhausted from travel so we turned in pretty early, though probably not as early as the restaurant would have liked...

The thing that surprised me most about Cologne is how much it didn't feel strange or unfamiliar. If not for all the signs in German and cars driving on the right, you could drop me in an area of Cologne and tell me it's an unfamiliar part of London and I'd easily believe you. The parts of the city that are filled with business parks and glass-fronted chain stores could exist almost anywhere on Earth.

That said, there are some ways the Germans do things differently! One is restaurants. I visited three different restaurants and two of them worked on a 'self-service' model. Essentially, you order your food at the bar, and they give you a little buzzer device. When it buzzes, you go back up to the bar and collect your food. Nobody would wait tables, there would just be one person behind the bar taking orders and such (though someone would still have to clean your table).

Restaurants also close very early in Cologne. I think a couple of times we put staff in an awkward position of wanting to go home but having to sit around until our party was done. That said, at one point I walked through a riverside area with a few dozen steakhouses, and that seemed to stay open a lot later.

Köln has a decent amount of graffiti, a surprisingly large portion of it in English. Under most bridges there's usually a good number of tags. I didn't manage to get any good photos but shout out to the person who wrote something like 'this world is too damn loud', which is a big mood for autistic girl walking away from a convention centre lmao.

Wednesday: in which our heroine finds out what an influencer is

The next morning we all went down to a German bakery (pictured above). According to my colleagues, the thing to get is a Bienenstich, or 'Bee Sting', a kind of cake with crispy honeyed almond flakes on top and cream in the middle. Here's a really bad photo:

It was pretty tasty!

We scooted over to the convention centre on the metro, and made our way in. I started getting used to navigating the Messe. Our company didn't get our own booth this year, but XR game devs are pretty tight-knit, and Niantic, creators of Ingress and Pokémon Go, there to promote their new phone-based AR Monster Hunter game - lent us some space in their booth to do a demo to the popular VR influencers Cas and Chary.

We headed over to Hall 8 and none of us could find the Niantic booth. Eventually we figured out why: the Niantic booth was outdoors. On a very bright summer day.

The Quest 2 has a bit of a finicky relationship to light. If it's too dark, the cameras can't pick up anything and tracking can fail - hand tracking is especially susceptible. But bright sunlight is also a problem. Essentially, the controllers on the Quest 2 contain small infrared LEDs, which are tracked by the headset's cameras. This works very well, in general - but in the sun, the background infrared radiation can completely overwhelm these LEDs and the controllers become essentially unusable. You also have to be very careful never to let the sun shine through the lenses inside the headset when you take it off, or the focused sunlight can destroy the screen.

So, an outdoor demo was a problem. Luckily, Niantic had an air-conditioned tent in their little zone. We all filed into the tent and started testing the headsets. Even inside a tent, it was too bright for the Quest 2 hand tracking... but we managed to figure out the Quest Pro still worked (since it uses cameras in the controllers for tracking), and rushed to test everything would work. Before long, Cas and Chary arrived, and we demoed the game. Look mum, I'm in a tweet:

Before this convention I had very little knowledge of the whole world of VR influencers, and honestly I still don't, but it seems to be a big thing - a good word from an influencer is a massive boost to a game's chances. I'm still not entirely sure what the difference is between an influencer and a journalist; both are in the business of reviewing new tech and games and rely on a reputation of unbiased analysis for credibility, and both are courted by devs hoping to promote their games. I guess an influencer is like a fully independent journalist? In any case, Cas and Chary were really sweet in our extremely brief meeting, and it was amazing to see the first people from outside the company having fun with our game.

We got word that bHaptics, a Korean company which makes haptic suits and gloves for use with VR devices, had some space in their booth and were willing to let us do some demos there. So we set off back down the entire length of the convention centre to go into the secret Business Area.

Wednesday at Gamescom is restricted to trade visitors, meaning it's much less crowded than the later days. On those later days, that restriction only applies to the three halls designated as the Business Area. Like regular Gamescom, these halls are divided into flashy booths trying to sell you stuff, but in this case it's mostly companies trying to sell services and tools to developers: backend services, special 3D pens, anti-cheat... also a bunch of stands selling merch and figurines for some reason (maybe because they want to manufacture tie-in merch for your game), as well a bunch of national organisations promoting the game development scene in xyz country.

The Belgian stand functioned as a meeting spot, and they were also handing out vouchers for free beer. A strategy that seemed to be quite effective, judging by how crowded their booth became that evening.

We tested our headsets in the bHaptics zone, and discovered DOTS Netcode's prediction/rollback is good enough to make the game feel smooth even on public convention centre wifi, which was rather satisfying - so you know, good job Unity! Unfortunately the Shared Anchors continued to be a pain. We briefly ran into the head of DOTS at Unity and arranged a demo, scooted off to meet W. from Meta who bought us drinks, scooted over to Niantic again to meet some members of XR Bootcamp (a training course in XR game dev, whose cofounders Ferhan and Rahel seem to be the glue that holds the whole XR dev scene together), and at last wandered back to the Belgian zone...

...and then I went back to bHaptics to have a go at their gear. I didn't take a photo (rip) so here's a photo by CNet showing the full bHaptics getup, which in combination looks... kind of like you're the member of the SWAT team on washing up detail...

(source: Scott Stein/CNet)

I had never gotten to try any sort of haptic suit before this, so it was quite novel. Essentially the vest contains 40 (or 16) vibration motors; the gloves contain further motors on the tips of each finger, and there's another motorised ring between you and the headset. There are also motorised wrist bands, motorised ankle bands...

The first demo was designed to showcase the features of the suit and wristbands, so you could try out various actions like shooting guns or putting stuff in a backpack with and without haptics. A second demo focused on manipulating objects: no wristbands, just the glove and hand tracking.

Of the various devices, the most convincing was probably shooting with the haptic suit. Vibration motors are well-suited for brief, intense pulses, and firing guns definitely felt more impactful with the suit on - not a perfect simulation of impact, but a strong effect. The backpack demo was especially impressive: it really felt like dropping heavy objects into a backpack. You also got to shoot at your own mirror image and feel the bullet/laser impacts, which felt like a rather roundabout way to give myself a back massage, but I could see it being effective in the right game.

The hand demo convinced me less. The problem is that vibration is a poor simulacrum of pressing against a solid surface, so it just felt distracting to have a vibration pulse when i grabbed an object - and you still had the usual physics jank associated with manipulating objects in VR using hand tracking. The final section of the hand tracking demo was social interaction: you were faced with rotated clone avatar, and you could shake your hand, punch or slap yourself, or give yourself a hug. As someone who lives half a world away from most people I love, I think giving someone a hug in VR would be a fantastic use of the technology, but sadly this hug was... not entirely convincing. It is very hard to simulate a steady touch with vibration motors.

Ultimately I think the best use for this haptic gear may not be simulation fidelity, but more abstract: similar to the haptic suit used in certain public demos of Rez Infinite, pulsing in time to music. Such uses are mentioned on the bHaptics site, and I'd love to have been able to try that kind of demo. (And yeah, I'm sure you could hook it up to the other kind of remote-controlled vibrating devices if you so desired, though you'd probably have to do a bit of work to wire everything up.)

It was really cool to finally get to experience haptics, and I was very grateful to the bHaptics members for taking the time to show me their gear.

After I'd satisfied myself, I caught up with the gang; we went out to dinner with other XR devs at a Turkish restaurant called Bona'me near the river. (The food was tasty and had a decent amount of vege options, once again in huge portions but this time we split them between the table. ...and once again we were the last table to leave by a long way, and I feel bad for the staff who had to sit around waiting for us.)

There, I met a solo dev called Ben Outram, who's spent the last three years working on a game called Squingle, a fascinating psychedelic game about manipulating bubbles in a world of DMT-core abstract visuals. (Honestly, check this game out, it's nuts. Meta are sleeping on it, it should absolutely have a full store release.)

Thursday: chaos reigns

On Thursday it somehow ended up that in the space of an hour, we would be demoing our game to the head of DOTS development at Unity (whose name I somehow never managed to catch), demoing our other game Cybrix to Cas and Chary, and then doing the big important demo for meta. Then it turned out that our metro line was blocked by an accident up ahead. We hurried out to get an Uber, and our driver gave us a rather... exciting ride; he rolled down the window to argue with another driver and dropped us off in the middle of the road while we waited in traffic. Rather harried, we arrived back at the bHaptics corner and set up for the demos in an unused area of floor nearby.

I'm not sure if I can say too much about how our demos went, but unfortunately we ran into some versioning issues and were not able to show Cybrix to Cas and Chary before they had to rush off (we weren't the only one to face transport issues that morning). Lesson learned: test everything, not just the part you're worried about. It's not the end of the world, though, and we all headed over to W.'s hotel, into a swanky suite with a nicely laid table for the most important demo of the week. We had the room for maybe 20 minutes, then we were out the door again to the lobby of another hotel to talk it over.

After that... suddenly the afternoon was free, ish. We went back into Gamescom and ate some very expensive ramen. Then, word came that some more influencers wanted to try out our games, so it was back to bHaptics and well, the story gets a little repetitive at this point :p I can't say much more than that without talking about our game, so I will just have to say that the demos went well.

This was my view for most of Gamescom.

At the end of the day, I had a couple of free hours to scoot over to the indie games area and try out some games before everyone went home. At this point my social batteries had run very dry indeed so I was glad to get some time to just play games.

The indie zone was divided into lots and lots of small booths, typically just wide enough for one computer. And even late in the evening, it was very, very busy...

This is just one small corner of the indie area.

Not really knowing almost any of these games, my 1337 MLG Pro Gamescom strat was to wander around until I spotted an empty chair and then play whatever game was going and chat with the dev if they were around. This worked out pretty well! I'll write up the games I played in a moment, but first I'm overdue to wax philosophical.

What was really striking about walking around the indie area is just how many games there are. Wandering around you can pretty quickly spot patterns and influences just by glimpsing at screens (here's a combat tutorial, there's a crafting/survival game, and yonder a narrative game that's borrowed the entire interface of Disco Elysium).

I've seen, up close and personal now, just how much fiddly effort and dedication it takes to make a game. There's something kind of strange and alienating to me about encountering all this creative output in a massive aggregate, where you can only give it maybe half an hour in a noisy room, surrounded by a dozen more or less similar games, in a way that kind of demands you rapidly assign it into a broad, combinatoric category: x art style, y core mechanic, z emotional register. Presenting this game this way really seems to file them all down to Content, which can be boxed and tagged and matched to a consumer with the appropriate set of subculture flags.

One thing that is distinctive about games as a medium to me is the very strong separation between 'mechanics' and 'presentation'. To produce a game you don't just need a system to manipulate, but also associate it with a narrative to make it comprehensible and lend it some sort of affective impact.

So you could theoretically make a game with the exact same mechanics as, say, Half-Life 2 - the same movement, the same enemy hitboxes, the same collision geometry and shooting mechanics and progression - but a completely different presentation style and telling a completely different story. Indeed, a typical early stage of game development has placeholder 'programmer art' and 'greybox' levels.

Equally, you could lift the iconography of a game and drape it over a completely different mechanical substrate - and indeed, it isn't at all uncommon for major franchises to launch spinoffs in different genres.

So games as a medium consist of all these different pieces which you can attach in various ways to define a game which you can name. And once this is done, that game becomes in a sense 'concrete': we act as if Half-Life 2 is an object with a distinct existence. It's a powerful social construct. Then, a successful game is then one which manages to unify all these disparate elements into some sort of whole that feels coherent. Game development sees all the possible elements of a game gradually collapse into whatever gets released. It's highly stochastic: an arbitrary decision by a tired dev, or even a glitch, might later become fixed as one of the core icons of the great 'Franchise'.

When there were less games around, and it was a lot harder for people to get their hands on dev tools, it made sense to think of games as solid, discrete things. Whatever you got on the cartridge or disc was pretty much immutable. Now, though, most major games operate as a 'service' that is constantly modified, and it is not uncommon either for players to mod a game, on a continuum from small changes like injecting shaders or changing music, to total conversion mods that are a 'whole new game'.

And indie games, then... you've got a subculture which heavily emphasise sharing techniques, and it's just as beholden to genre as AAA games. The existence of all these games side by side, even though each one has its own name and identity, seems to further break up "games" into combinations of pieces. When I encounter a new third-person action game, it's as a variation on a kind of broader, abstracted super-game. My first task is to discover the particular quirks of this manifestation of the third person action game. The days when we had a shared culture of 'games everyone has played' are basically already gone, but we still have a certain degree of shared context, because each game is a probe into that constantly evolving game-space, which someone has gone to the trouble to fish out and decorate...

I suppose this is all coming back around to the otaku database thing, isn't it? Or just semiotics in general...

Anyway, here's what I found on Thursday:

I played an FPS called Serum, in which the core conceit is that you inject big syringes into your arm to give yourself powerups. Otherwise, it seems to be a game about gathering and crafting. Sadly the demo computer didn't have headphones, so I was missing sound, and seemed to be a bit underpowered for the game. Nevertheless, I walked around a bit, manufactured a healing serum, and shot some wolf and rabbit monsters with a bow and arrow.

I feel like I was rather ruder than I intended to be, because in talking to the dev afterwards, the first thing I mentioned was the performance issues and he had to apologise like, yeah, we're running it on a laptop (it sounded like he said with a 3070? but I must have misheard him, unless he has very high standards for underpowered), it does run better on a proper computer. The environment design in this game was definitely really strong. Not quite sure how the serum mechanic would work in practice - it sounds quite like Bioshock's plasmids, but the demo didn't really give the opportunity to try out the different options.

I played Dead Pets Unleashed, an adventure game about a demon girl in a struggling punk band. One of the devs was hanging out with this one and generally had a great vibe, joking about how almost nobody picked a certain option and suggesting the route that would get the most out of the demo.

The game uses a sidescrolling perspective with hand-drawn sprites. The art style is very consciously flat, its population of monster people allowing an impressive variety of colours. It broadly alternates between conversations with choices that adjust stats (e.g. +punk, -social) and a variety of minigames - there was a music minigame of course (the conceit being chasing away intrusive thoughts), but I also washed a dildo, constructed a hot dog, and waited tables. Generally it oozed style, absolutely nailing the punk vibe, and had a bunch of cute features like changing your character's outfit. You can play the same demo on Steam. I think this is one I might well get when the full release comes.

And then I played... a game I can't even find now! I really should have made a note or taken a picture or something. It was a kind of Amanita-like point and click game in which you play a tin can person, manipulating objects as you try to rescue your can dog, descending into a city made of cardboard boxes. The puzzles were occasionally a bit obtuse, but the cute style really carried it. The devs weren't on hand for this one, but they did have a wall where you could leave postit notes with your comments on the game, including one with a fairly essential hint for the first puzzle. It was called something like 'can world' or 'box world', but at this point, I can't find it anywhere. It's a shame because I thought it was neat.

That was all I had time for on Thursday: I zoomed off to another restaurant by the river to eat some more falafels. Someone let off some fireworks for some reason.

We started to make our way back, across the famous Hohenzollern Bridge, which is one of those bridges with a tradition that lovers will attach a padlock to the fence to symbolise how long their relationship will last.

At this point the padlocks have started to resemble kudzu, hanging down in strands of linked padlocks, or even growing up onto the superstructure of the bridge on chains. Questionable symbolism or not, it all makes for a fantastic textural effect, especially since it maintains the sheer density of padlocks for the entire length of the bridge.

While we were crossing, a boat passed under the bridge carrying some kind of a party. From a distance, all you could really see was a mass of glowsticks, and all you could hear was the ghost of the beat. It was a cool sight.

At this point I was pretty much completely exhausted so while there was some kind of industry party I definitely could not handle the crowds and walked home past the cathedral for an early night, eager to head in early to Gamescom tomorrow with a good night's sleep...

Friday: just like in my Bloodbornes, amirite gamers?

Predictably I overslept. Since I'd only get a few hours at Gamescom, I decided to visit the famous cathedral. I took that photo that I posted earlier, where somehow my little phone camera absolutely nailed the lighting, even if the cathedral is severely out of focus...

I headed inside the building too.

Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) is a bit of an oddball, historically. While it wasn't uncommon for cathedral-building projects to last a century, after working on this thing from 1248–1560 they downed tools, leaving the city with a half-finished cathedral for about 300 years.

They had the front and back of a cathedral, with a big crane on the front part.

In the 1800s, the middle ages were in and the state decided it would be a good idea to have a big cathedral - both to make their new Catholic subjects happy and a symbol of THE NATION. After raising a stonking amount of money with one of the world's first NGOs, they built the rest of this thing, which briefly became the tallest building in the world. Hooray, said Emperor Wilhelm I. I love being a big strong nation with a big cathedral dick.

The cathedral survived the first world war, but got hit by a lot of bombs in the second - though the towers remained standing. After the war, they put it back up again. Now, it's a tourist attraction. Transsexual atheists can walk in and turn their phone to funny angles to try and capture the ceiling...

You can call this a Deutsch angle, because... ok whatever guys they can't all be winners.

They've got some old school Christian-style guro in here.

The interior is pretty cool: huge vaulted ceiling, massive stained glass. The stained glass unfortunately photographs really poorly on a phone, the colours washed out pretty much no matter what. They did have this funky ladder contraption, which I assume is probably used for maintaining/washing the windows...

After a little while in there I decided this was pretty neat but I'd go to Gamescom, to say goodbye to everyone and maybe get a glance at some of the mainstream game zones. As it turned out we had another demo lined up, so we went back to The Corner Near BHaptics and did the routine. This time the audience was mostly other VR devs so I got to have some nice technical discussion.

At last, I had about an hour before my train. I thought about exploring the indie game zone some more, but decided I should really at least take a glance through the other halls. What I discovered was... queues! Many many queues. And various elaborate dioramas.

Sometimes they had actors to go with them. I decided to include the people taking the photo because... I don't even know what I was going for with this one to be honest, it seems kind of banal.

Here's a queue of people waiting to play Rogue Trader, which boldly tells you it's the first(!) CRPG in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, hopefully not also the last. 'Warhammer CRPG' is a concept that 16-year-old Bryn would have gone completely insane about. 31-year-old Bryn was still a bit curious, but not enough to wait for a sitting down queue with less than an hour left at the con.

I didn't take a lot of photos of the Extremely Gamer Shit, but for a taster, this lady was DJing a set on something called the 'Leet Desk', which appears to be a desk with built in RGB lighting, billed as 'the desk for gamers', because we can no longer contain the rainbow puke. When I walked past, she was playing an EDM remix of a tune that I vaguely recognised from a movie or a game but couldn't place specifically, which felt about right. Maybe it was Skyrim?

A lot of people walked around with the Hoyoverse bag, Hoyoverse being the collective term for the games of Chinese developer miHoYo such as Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact. Their slogan was 'tech otakus save the world', which thanks to their cunning move of handing out large bags, was soon paraded all over the convention. I feel like the jury is still out on the impact (ha ha) of tech otakus on the world...

In the end, the last hour was spent briefly walking around to see the halls and then I left to say my goodbyes and hop back on the train. The journey back was totally straightforward. I finished reading my manga and drew some more train passengers, who were generally pretty happy to be drawn.

Cosplay

It's a con, there's gotta be cosplayers right? Sure enough, the crowd was peppered with stormtroopers, kitsune, army men, luffies and various spooky skull guys... I didn't get many photos but here's a couple.

Obligatory stormtroopers. Luckily, the inside of the con was airconditioned, those suits look toasty.

These three kindly stopped to pose for me. I don't know what game they're doing, Dead by Daylight maybe? DbD girls, tell me ^^'

This robot-girl cosplayer's costume is neat: when you look close you see it's made of old PC parts. Or at least the casings of them. I spotted a graphics card and an old VR headset. She also has built-in stilts so she towered over everyone, big respect. She was hanging out in the hall on Wednesday, so she might have been there in an official capacity, but I didn't get a chance to talk to her.

Observations of demographics and stuff

It's been a good long while since I've been to any sort of nerd convention. Mostly I've been to scifi/media fandom cons like Nine Worlds and Worldcon, or general nerd-shit cons like MCM Expo, and in the old old days, Warhammer cons like Game Day. But this event being specifically a gaming expo was pretty new to me.

Predictably the demographics skewed male (but not overwhelmingly) and white/East Asian (almost without exception). The various national organisations present were primarily European (which tracks for an event in Germany) but there were large stands e.g. promoting Korean game dev or the Guangzhao region of China. In the indie zone, there were a good handful of Japanese devs, and I spotted one game that was fully in JP. Here and there, you'd spot banners promoted other gaming expos - a lot in Europe, but also there is apparently a Gamescom Asia in Singapore, and a Tokyo Indie Games Summit which sounds pretty fun. By contrast, while I don't have any real stats to substantiate, I would say I saw very few organisations were promoting game devs from South America, Africa or Oceania.

Beyond that... this is very definitely a place for nerds, but there's a lot of different varieties of nerd you can be now. So sure, T-shirts with slogans and cargo shorts for many, but equally you could dress super goth, you could show off all your tattoos, you could go in your colourful coordinated kitsune cosplay or just wear some bright hair die. I'm confident I saw a few other girls from the isle of 🏳️‍⚧️, but 'hello I clocked you let's be friends' is not the best introduction even from another trans girl lmao - in general I didn't really talk to people besides the group I had arrived with. I think if I'd gone alone, it would not be the sort of con where you make a lot of friends, but who knows?

All in all, a solid adventure. I'll probably go again next year, if I can find somewhere cheaper to stay. I never did get to see the chocolate museum.

ok, story over - thanks for reading, nerd ;p

#gamescom #computer games #adventures of canmom

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