#i just logged on through pc after like.... ..almost half a year

[inavagrant]

I have been off tumblr for 20 thousand years...

How does one go about roleplaying on here anymore, this is a cry for hel p awraxa.

#out. #i just logged on through pc after like.... ..almost half a year #and everything looks so different #my xkit is gon e #wher e am i awraxa

[laurieelaurel]

Brothers reaction to hearing vocalist MC singing Fallen Angels from Within Temptation after they got back from a student council meeting. detail they don't know this band and they think mc wrote this song for them.

Brothers reacting to Mc singing about angels

Vocalist!Gn!Mc x reader

Warnings: slight angst in Belphie's part

Decided to make this a bit more broad because I don't want to make a habit of taking a bunch of niche song reqs - It's a nice song tho, haven't heard it in like 5 years so that was nostalgic

The brothers had just returned from the impromptu meeting only to hear a quiet humming in the living room...

Lucifer

He wasn't planning on intruding but your voice was very soothing to his tired ears

Decided that he would at least pay you a compliment before retreating to his bedroom, he made his way towards the living room

As he got closer and closer, he started to make out the words to the song you were singing

It was a simple song, but... did you know what you were doing? Singing a song about angels here in the devildom?

Well you've got a wonderful singing voice, he'll give you that

Not exactly happy about it though in the back of his mind he knows its not new for humans to write about things they couldn't begin to understand

When you tell him you were just singing a song, he kind of just stares you down disapprovingly

What kind of band is this

Does not approve

Why not expand your taste in music Mc? You're free to join him in the music room tonight. Your beautiful voice would better suit much more... cultured lyrics

Mammon

Hey who's talking to themselves in there?

Grumpy boy's just finished listening to Lucifer lecture for over half an hour, he just wants some peace and quiet at home

Marches on over to tell you to quiet down

Ears twitch as soon as he hears any mentions of angels

Throws open the door, scaring the crap outta you

"Huh? why'd you stop?"

As if he didn't just barge in

Would very much like to hear you singing (something else)

Not that he's upset or anything, it's just kinda embarrassing that you'd think of him that way and to even write a whole-

wait what do you mean it's just a song from the human realm

In an attempt to pretend he knew all along he only makes it that much more obvious he had no clue

Doesn't know much technical stuff about music but damn you've got some voice there

Levi

It’s been a long day for pretty much all the brothers, how do you think the resident shut in feels

Wants nothing more than to log onto his pc and not see the sun for a day

Hearing your hauntingly pretty voice through the vents he almost shudders

Did Lucifer leave one of his vinyls on?

After waiting a few minutes to see if it stopped, he decided to actually go down and check it out

As he gets closer to the room he’s confused as to why this kind of music is here at the HoL 

Prolly the most unfazed by the lyrics

Can you imagine the amount of edgy content this guy sees on a daily basis?

That doesn't mean he's not surprised it was you singing

That was YOU Mc? Why didn’t you ever mention you could sing?

Gushes about how nice your song was, blushing as he compliments you

Wait a band? Which one?

Would definitely check them out just because you seem to like them

Satan

Made a beeline towards where the singing was coming from the moment he came home

The cursed record was only supposed to play when Lucifer got here damnit!

Assumed the lyrics had something to do with the curse but

Oh wait it's you

well

wait it was you singing?

His plan to make a fool out of Lucifer has to be put on hold because this has just gotten a lot more interesting

Has a million questions for you, the most pressing of which is why the hell have you never showed off this talent?

Oh and I guess as a demon he should be concerned about all this about fallen angels

But really, Satan's the one with the least amount of connection to anything related to angels

Finds it amusing more than anything that you'd be singing about his brothers like that

Laughs when you tell him it's from a human band

He's always been curious as to why humans have had all these preconceived notions of beings they've never seen before

But hey, if you're curious about (fallen) angels then he wouldn't mind trading some info in exchange for hearing you sing some more

Asmo

He was wandering around, looking for a distraction after being told quite harshly by lucifer to finish his work

But he didn’t want to :(

Hearing such a lovely voice sing out to him, how could he not go investigate?

Very, very curious

The voice sounded like yours but he’s never heard you sing before?

Gets excited over catching you “in the act”

The lyrics don’t bother him much either, though it’s been a long while since he last heard anything like them

He and his brothers have heard plenty of praises and songs in their name back in their time in the celestial realm and it’s kinda weird to hear them now that they’re demons

weirder still coming from you

well, he’s got to at least pay you a visit and some compliments if you’ve gone out of your way to write a song in his honour, no?

Walks into the living room smugly, showering you in compliments as he takes the opportunity to get closer

That was quite the song you’ve made there

Oh, it’s by a band?

Well that’s a disappointment

Then, pretty please, mc why not sing your own song about him?

Beel

Yes he hears it but he’s gotta satiate his hunger first

Sorry mysterious voice, but he’s starving after being stuck in that meeting room for so long

Is off to pillage the kitchen once again

He hasn't even started to enjoy his latest conquest when he hears a faint voice ring out

Walks over to where you are with only a handful of cookies

Goes from curious to unsettled real quick

Almost accidentally crushes the poor cookies in his hands

That voice is most definitely Mc right? Why are you...

Hurriedly stuffs what's rest of the cookies in his mouth in an attempt to free up his hands

Swallowing nervously, he walks even faster until he's standing outside the living room

Feels awkward just standing out there, and it's not exactly nice to be eavesdropping

Polite and is the only one to actually knock on the door

Peeks his head in, making eye contact, looking like a kicked puppy

Asks meekly about the song you're singing, genuinely a bit upset

Assuring him quickly that it wasn't meant to be about him or any of his brothers, you tell him about the band

Oh... I see... But maybe you can sing something else? Belphie said that listening to lullabies can help when you have trouble falling asleep...

Belphie

Who’s stealing his job as the resident bodiless voice

Mc? Is that you?

Waddles his way towards the living room

stops short of opening the door, listening intently to your voice

Might be the most affected by it

Hearing you sing about angels + the fact that you're a descendent of Lilith

Brings some unwanted thoughts to mind

While Beel might get sad thinking of it, Belphie's feeling something a bit closer to anger

Can't exactly be angry at you though

Eyes boring through the back of your head, he stands in the doorway for a second, listening to your quiet humming

Waits for you to finishing singing to yourself before getting your attention

You turn around to be met face to face with a deadpan Belphie standing three feet away from you

???Since when

He stares at you and it only takes a few seconds for you to realize the reason why

Feeling a bit flustered, you explain it was just a song from the human realm

He doesn't seem to react much, only showing that he's heard you

Give him a second he's just feeling some feelings now

Would definitely ask you to sing him to sleep one day because he's a spoiled baby

#obey me satan #obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me swd #obey me beelzebub #obey me leviathan #obey me mammon #obey me lucifer #obey me asmodeus #obey me belphegor #obey me headcanons #obey me x reader #obey me x mc

[blueeyedgeorgie]

Cancelled-Dream Was Taken

A/N: Surprise bitch. Weren’t we expecting for me to release mcyt fanfics soon? If I didn’t tag my usual @‘s it’s because idk if you’d like to be tagged for mcyt content.

Pronouns: she/her

Word Count: 2.3k+

_________________

"You're so harsh on him!" Her hands sat on the keyboard, staring at the green human that stood on Y/n's computer screen.

She needed to be careful. While this was a heated moment, she couldn't let herself get too loud for multiple reasons. If she got too loud, Dream's stream viewers would be able to tell she was in the next room or they would just receive noise complaints from their neighbors.

"No Y/n! You're too soft on him! He needs to learn that he can't get away with everything. You're setting him up for failure." As the h/c girl listened to her roommate speak, she had to remind herself over and over again; 'This wasn't real.' Dream was mad, not Clay.

This had all been arranged as roleplay. Y/n would be leaving in a few days to go visit some of her family for a reunion, so Wilbur had been the one to think up the brilliant idea of what was playing out now; an argument between Y/n and Dream. The plan was to have Y/n get so upset she didn't log onto the SMP for the next few days, only to come back with a master plan to backstab Dream.

At first, Clay wasn't really on board with the thought of him getting angry at Y/n. They had been together for a little over a year, there wasn't a single moment they had gotten upset with one another. But surprisingly, Y/n had been the one to convince Clay it was a good idea.

The fans knew Dream and Y/n had a close friendship, Dream had always been so protective of her. But when this was going down, they didn't know how to act.

Every time Y/n would glance at her chat, she'd see thousands of comments rising up as new ones appeared. Comment after comment, it looked like the fans were shocked by the way this stream was turning out.

"I'm not setting him up for anything! He's a kid, Dream!" Y/n glanced from the chat,  back at the screen showing her PC game. Standing on her screen was Dream and Tommyinnit, she had accompanied Dream to visit Tommy.

"You're just babying him! 'He's a kid!' Well, he needs to learn to grow up eventually," his voice had been filled with such spite. It felt weird to hear Clay speaking to her like this in such a tone.

For a moment, she stared at the green man before a short scoff escaped her lips. "I can't believe you." With that, Y/n had pressed a few keys, turning her character towards the nether portal a couple of yards away. Before Dream had gotten the chance to speak again, Y/n began to move away.

"Y/n! Come back here!"

She flicked a few buttons, taking a moment to look behind her character to see Dream following. Good, everything was going according to plan. Within the next few minutes, she'd be able to log off and she'd be on vacation for the next few days.

The h/c girl ignored the green man as she stepped through the portal, taking her to Minecraft's version of hell. Almost done, she just needed to find a good spot to stop as she listened to Dream continue to speak.

"You can't keep ignoring me! You know I'm right in this. You know you can't keep defending Tommy. You know Tommy is driving a wedge between us-"

Perfect. Y/n had stopped just on the edge of a bridge, molten lava sat feet below them. If she fell, she'd surely die. "No."

"No?" Dream was a bit surprised to hear Y/n cut him off, but he stayed silent as he was prepared to listen to what she had to say.

"No. No more. I don't wanna hear you blame Tommy for us breaking apart. I want you to listen to me. You've been acting like much more of a dick than usual and I hate it. I despise it. You've changed for the worst because you think you can step on everyone. At this point, everyone fears to tell you the truth-except me. I'll be a hundred percent honest with you, you've been so egotistical, it's really pissed me off. This is your fault, Dream. Not Tommy's. You exiled a child for pulling a prank on a vacation house! Not even George's real house!"

"But-"

"Shut the fuck up. I'm done, but I don't wanna hear you bullshit me. So shut the fuck up."

A moment of silence passed between them as Y/n stared at her screen. Just a few more steps.

And within seconds, Dream had pulled out his netherite sword. With one hit, she was falling back into lava. Y/n glanced at her chat, a look of shock on her face as she read over what a few comments said. A moment of silent tension had passed before Y/n had finally spoken up, removing her from the voice chat she was in.

"Alright guys, I guess that's enough for the day. I'll see you all... later." With that, she had clicked a few buttons, raiding Dream's live-stream as she ended hers.

For the next 20 to 30 minutes, Y/n knew Clay would be busy streaming. So she had decided to take a bit of time to wind down and think to herself.

Get a glass of water.

'Are the fans harassing him in his twitch chat?'

Sit down on the living room couch.

'The SMP fans were always so protective of me.'

Pet Patches.

'Was I too much when I snapped at him?'

It didn't seem like 30 minutes had passed when Clay had walked out of his streaming room, only to find Y/n on the couch with Patches in her lap. "Hey, N/n." "Oh, your stream is already over?" Y/n smiled, pulling herself out of her thoughts as she scoot over, giving Clay room to take a seat right by her.

"Yeah, did you lose track of time or something?"

"I must've. How did the chat react after I 'died'?" She smiled up at her boyfriend as he wrapped an arm over her shoulders, pulling her closer into his embrace.

"Everyone was filled with joy that you died."-Y/n playfully swatted at him. "Okay, okay! I got a few chat messages of people bashing me for it, but it's fine."

"Well, it's a good thing the chat wasn't completely littered with hate. How was it after my raid?"

"Honestly, not that bad as you expect. Like I said, just a few comments. Nothing bad, I just ignored it." Clay placed a hand on Patches's head, gently scratching her, followed by the animal beginning to purr.

"Good to hear, anyways... I'm not ready to pack. Do you think we can procrastinate?" The h/c girl let out a huff leaning against her boyfriend. "How?"

"I was thinking a bit of movie binging, cuddling, and ordering dinner?" A cheeky smile spread on her face as she spoke.

"It's like you read my mind."

The couple had made it through three movies, by now it was later at night. The sun had set and they had already door dashed some food. By now they were in the middle of watching 'The Empire Strikes Back.'

'I love you.' 'I know.'

The iconic moment between Hans and Leia had been interrupted by the sound of Clay's phone buzzing. "Why is George calling?"

"What?" Y/n was a bit curious herself. Considering the timezones, George should be asleep right now. Pausing the TV, she turned her attention to her boyfriend's phone.

"Hey Clay."

"What's up, George? Isn't it like early in the morning for you?" Clay raised a brow, moving his phone so Y/n would be able to see George as well.

"Yeah, I had to stay up to fix a YouTube video I need to get out today. I was about to go to bed and I checked Twitter-"

"Oh no." Clay made a short joke, only to be cut off by his friend.

"I don't know if it's trending for you in America, but you might as well look."

"What's going on?" He swiped up, taking him to his home screen so he could click on the little blue bird app. Y/n had grabbed her phone from the coffee table, opening up the app as well. "#Cancel Dream... #Y/n... #Dream SMP"

"Is... is Clay getting canceled for killing me in Minecraft?" Y/n scrolled through the tweets involving the hashtag 'Y/n.' She could see plenty of people defending her, but making it much bigger of a problem than it actually was.

"Oh, hey Y/n. But yeah, he is." George chuckled awkwardly, scrolling through his Twitter app as well.

"This is so fucking stupid."

"It really is. So we might as well get this cleared up with the fans as soon as possible. Do you want me to tweet something, or do you want to?" Y/n looked up at her boyfriend, it looked like he was thinking.

"Yeah, I'll tweet it. Don't worry about this, Y/n."

"Alright, whatever you say," she replied, pulling a blanket over her as she waited for Clay to finish typing his response.

"Here's what I'm gonna say: 'I can't believe you guys actually think me and @(y/n) are in an actual fight in real life. We have been good friends since forever, the fight was only roleplay. I love that you guys are so protective of Y/n, but no one's actually upset.' How's that sound?"

"I think that's good," George hummed softly.

"Yeah, I doubt you'll stay 'canceled' once you've explained to them it was all part of the SMP lore." The h/c girl smiled up at her boyfriend with a small nod.

"Alright, I'm gonna post it. George, I think you should go to bed because you're half asleep already."

Y/n turned, looking at her boyfriend's iPhone. "Go to sleep, Gogy!"

"Alright, alright... I'll talk to you guys later." The call had ended with Clay and Y/n saying goodbye to their friend while George simply yawned to them as a response.

As soon as the call was over, Clay looked at the response to his tweet. It didn't seem to be going too well. There had been a few fans who understood what was going on and responded with a paragraph as an apology for the misunderstanding. But most replies had been telling Clay he was bullshitting the fans or that he wasn't being honest.

"I'm sorry, Clay," his girlfriend had huffed as she read through the responses to his tweet.

"Honestly I'm just a bit pissed off. Literally, any time someone tries to 'cancel' me, it's over something stupid. I'm not a bad guy, it just feels like some people just don't want to see me succeed." Clay had excused himself to grab a glass of water from the kitchen.

It hurt Y/n to hear how upset her boyfriend was. He never got too upset over things, but seemed to take a small toll on him. "Hold on. Let me say something." The h/c girl couldn't be asked to post multiple tweets of her response to hate sent towards Clay over the internet. So what was better than a short video that could be posted to the blue bird app?

"Um, hey guys. I'd just like to make this quick. Stop sending hate towards Dream. The fight was roleplay and nothing more. I'm gonna be busy for the next couple of days so Wilbur thought of a good idea to help build SMP lore with me and Dream and we both agreed to the argument. Now stop sending the green man hate, or I'll commit war crimes or something-"

Y/n had been interrupted by the sound of Clay letting out a small giggle. "What? What did I say?"

"Nothing, just keep going with your video."

"Whatever, I'm cool. No matter what Dream says. Anyways, I'll speak to you all later." Y/n had hit the red button again, ending her video. Within seconds, the video had been uploaded to her Twitter account.

Placing her phone back down on the table, Y/n approached her boyfriend, wrapping her arms around his torso. "I'm really sorry about the hate, Clay. I love you."

"Don't apologize for something you can't control. I love you more." The brunette held his partner close, accepting her hug. Y/n always loved his hugs, she always felt so safe in his embrace.

The rest of the night had been spent with more cuddling and more Star Wars movies. Hours had passed before Y/n had even thought about the Twitter situation again. But for some reason, she had decided to look at the app again tonight.

It was 2 in the morning by now, Clay was half asleep. His head laid in the h/c girl's lap as she brushed a hand through his hair, her free hand opening up her Twitter app once again.

It had been a bit of a surprise to see a couple of trending hashtags had changed so quickly. What was trending now was #Dream, #Y/n,#(ship name), and #Dream's Laugh. This had to be about Y/n's short clip she posted. And by the looks of it, people had stopped acting so harsh towards Clay. But instead, they had decided to focus on the fact Dream and Y/n were hanging out together. Not to mention the fact Dream and let out a stupid little giggle because of Y/n. People had been apologizing to him through Twitter for being so hard on him.

"Babe."

"Hm?" Clay mumbled, not bothering to open his eyes.

"Pretty much everyone is apologizing to you over Twitter for being hardasses."

"Hm, that's good to hear."

"You're really tired, huh?" Y/n paused her scrolling to look down at her boyfriend.

"Yeah," He continued to mumble, followed by a short yawn.

"Alright, time for bed, babe." Y/n smiled to herself, beginning to carefully move away from Clay. "I can pack tomorrow and we can laugh over the stupid bird app tomorrow after you've gotten a good amount of sleep."

"I still can't believe Twitter tried canceling me over roleplay."

"I can't believe you got uncancelled by shippers."

Taglist: @notphilosopherstudentblog

#dreamwastaken #dream was taken #dream was taken x reader #dreamwastaken x reader #dream smp #mcyt imagine #mcyt x reader #dream was taken imagine #dream was taken one shot #dreamwastaken imagine #dreamwastaken oneshot #dream smp x reader #dream smp imagine #dream smp oneshot

[forever-rogue]

Step Into the Daylight - Part 7

Summary: After being reunited with your Mandalorian and little green friend, you find that it’s time for the next part of your journey. You’re just not so sure if you’re ready, but as Din reminded you the strongest stars have hearts of kyber.

A/N: Thank you guys for all your love and support, I love all of you!! I hope you enjoy this part, it’s a lot of sweetness and fluff, but you know, it’s Din, so yeah. Enjoy some fluff! Taglists are open, and as always feedback is welcome! xx

Pairing: The Mandalorian (Din Djarin x Reader)

Word Count: 5k

Warnings: none

Main Masterlist

Mandalorian Masterlist

SERIES MASTERLIST

»»————-　♡　————-««

"Ilum?" you sounded the name out slowly, testing it out on your tongue. You'd never heard of such a place before, despite how well versed you were in different parts of the galaxy, "I've never even heard of it before."

"Are you suggesting it's not real simply because you've not heard of it?" Jeele asked as she looked at you from across the fire you had lit. You immediately shook your head and leaned back in your makeshift seat on the old, fallen log, inadvertently leaning further into Din. You quickly looked at him and gave him an apologetic look. A quick throat clear recaptured your attention and you turned back to your master who looked between between you and your Mandalorian.

"No, Master," you reassured her quietly, "I'm just curious. Traveling to a place I've never heard is a bit intimidating."

"You've survived this place," she pointed out and you shrugged lightly, looking over at the Child playing with PC. The Child was cooing happily, and PC was beeping just as fervently as they chased each other around. The Child has been so happy to see you, as you had been him, holding onto you tightly for a long time before quickly becoming enamored with his new droid friend.

"I've survived worse," you sighed lightly, "as most people have."

"Enough," she insisted firmly, "you cannot downplay all of your accomplishments constantly. You have survived a great deal, but there is still so much ahead of you. Trust only in the force. And yourself."

You were suddenly hyper aware of how close Din was to you, how his leg brushed against yours, warm and comforting. You trusted him with your life; as he did you with you. Nothing would change that. A small smile tugged on your feature at the sheer thought, "yes, Master."

"Ilum has been a special place, a sacred place to the Jedi for ages. It is our planet, our place. No one else knows about it," of course. More illusive secrets kept between the mysterious brotherhood, "it is a right of passage to go there for every Jedi. It is one of the homes of the Kyber crystal."

A sharp inhale of breath next to you, cause you to turned your head to Din. He turned to you and shook his head lightly, giving your leg a light squeeze, "you know of them, Mandalorian?"

"I have heard of them," he said quietly giving her a soft nod, "just stories I heard in my youth. I never thought much of this to be true."

"I'm sure you're heard many things you thought to only be legends in your life that have come to be true," she insisted and he let out a small sound. You looked at him and gave him a small smile. You liked to think that he had one on his face too.

"What am I going to do with a Kyber crystal?" you asked and Jeele looked to Din, raising her eyebrow at him as she sought to know if he could explain.

"At the heart of every weapon wielded by the Jedi is a Kyber crystal," he explained as realization hit you. Something had to power the beautiful and elegant weapon after all, "there was an old expression I've heard...the strongest stars have hearts of Kyber."

"You're very attuned, Mandalorian," Jeele smiled at him, as you did your best not to completely beam at him. You wanted to maintain somewhat of a layer of subtly, even if one wasn't required at that point. Another six months had gone by, and while you had missed him terribly, now that he was back, it was like no time had passed at all, "and you, young one, must surely understand what this means."

You gave her an innocent look as you slowly shook your head. You thought you knew what she meant, but you didn't want to just shout out an answer and have it be wrong. Din seemed to lean closer almost as if he was trying to radiate the answer to you. Despite the cool beskar, you could feel his heat flowing towards you. It was comforting; warm. It always felt like you were home when he was close by, even if he wasn’t physically touching you.

“I...” you channeled off, gnawing on your lower lip, “I don’t know.”

“It’s time for you to find your own crystal,” she explained as your face lit up with a mixture of fear and excitement. You had thought living on this deserted planet was an adventure? Hunting down an illusive crystal was a whole different story, “and then you will construct your own saber. It is a time honored tradition; a rite of passage for every Jedi. I crafted my own many years ago, when I was much younger. Now, it’s your turn.”

While the prospect of such sent a thrill running throughout your whole body, a pang of loss settled into your bones. Barely reunited with your Mandalorian and your small, sweet green friend, and it was apparent you would have to leave them. Once again. You weren’t sure if your heart could handle it; the continuing back and forth of having them in your day to day life and then being separated for long, bleak stretches of time was wearing heavy on your heart. You knew this was important, that this was worth it....but it didn’t make the decision any easier.

“They will join you on this leg of your journey,” Jeele’s voice was barely above a whisper as she looked over at the foreign child playing with the droid, seemingly have no cares in the world. You wished you could give him this simple life, such saccharine pureness everyday; but even you knew that it was not the life any one of you were destined for. But, you had vowed it upon yourself, you’d give him a tranquil life, some sort of stability. Him and Din. You looked back at Jeele, giving the aging woman a small smile, “but they cannot join you in your pursuit.”

“I...don’t understand,” tilting your heard to side, you were, once again, confused by her words, “they can come with me...but they can’t?”

“They can make the journey to Illum with you, but once we arrive, you must go on alone. It is a solitary journey, and everyone must go through it by themselves,” she explained as Din sucked in a long breath. Even though he was well aware of the fact that you could handle yourself in combat, or anything that came your way, he still loathed the idea that he wouldn’t be able to protect you. There was something about you, no matter how competent and talented, that urged him to protect you. 

Every day of the six months you had been separated his thoughts had drifted to you; wondering if you were safe, if you had a comfortable place to rest, enough to eat, something or someone to keep you company (although he hadn’t expected a droid), and if you were okay. There were times, often in the dead of night, he felt something, a weird tugging in his heart as the vision of you flooded his mind. It was comforting in an odd way, and but it soothed his nervous and reassured him that you were okay. Despite how much he ached and yearned for your company, to have you present at his side, he would wait. And he knew he’d do it over and over and over again, even if he only got to gaze upon your exquisite beauty one more time.

“Without you?”

“Without anyone.”

“And how am I supposed to know what exactly what to do?” you mused as you tried to imagine what the mysterious planet even looked like. Would be a desert terrain much like Tatooine, or Jakku? Perhaps it would be lush and forest like? Maybe it would a spot hidden in a crowded city like Coruscant? 

“Just the same as you knew you exactly what to do here,” it was a simple statement and while it frustrated you to no one to get these half answers, shrouded in mystery, you were beginning to see it was very much the Jedi way, “you listen, you learn, and you do. The answers are right in front of you.”

Currently right in front of you was the Child, climbing onto his new friend, giggling and cooing in delight as PC rolled around slowly. Whatever strange vendetta Din had against droids, you hoped this would help to quell his nerves. 

“So, I’m going to go there and...figure it out,” you asked quietly and she gave you a quick nod, “okay, well, let’s hope I don’t screw this up.”

“You won’t,” two voices insisted at once; a small smile crept onto your face at the realization. You didn’t looked over at Din, but you could feel his gaze intently trained on you. 

“Well, I thank you both for the vote of confidence,” you said quietly, letting out a long sigh, “I suppose only time will tell.”

“We shall leave in the morning,” standing her to full height, which was not much, she stretched before beckoning for PC to follow her. The droid obeyed immediately, turning gently to let the small child slip to the ground, landing on his bottom with a small plop. He cooed as he watched the droid roll away, lifting his small hand in a little wave, “I’ll remain on the ship and get the droid acquainted with it. You will remain in the hut. I shall come for you when it is time.”

You opened your mouth to say something but decided not to bother; when her mind was made it up, it was made up. There were still many things to learn about Jeele Takar, but you knew you would get the privilege of knowing more when the time was right. 

“You trust her on your ship...alone?” you stood and stretched as well, shaking off the stiffness in your bones before feeling a small tugging on your leg. Looking down, your heart instantly melted as the sweetest eyes looked back at you, silently pleading for you to pick him up.

“I have no reason not to,” Din stood to his full height as he started to put out the fire, and you nodded. What a change of pace from the man who had meet well over a year now. He’d always been so guarded and in many aspects he still was; but slowly, piece by tiny piece, his walls were wearing down and he learned that it was okay to trust in others.

“Come here,” you scooped up the small bundle and clutched him in your arms, pressing him as tightly against your chest as you could without completely squeezing the life out of him. He made a few soft sounds, and you felt yourself overrun with emotion. Whatever bond you had with him was strong, inexplicable even, but it was a beautiful thing. He looked back at you, reaching his little arms up and resting them on your cheeks, letting out a string of small sounds, “I missed you too, buddy. And guess what, I’m not leaving again. Not matter what.”

It was a bit of a hollow promise, considering you didn’t know what could possibly be coming up. But you vowed that if you had any control over it, you wouldn’t leave them again anytime soon. 

An idea struck you so quickly, causing you to hand the small child to Din, surprising the two of them.

“What’re you doing?”

You shook your head but reached around your neck, quickly untying the necklace that had lived, nestled just above the swell of your breasts for months now. Din watched in silence, trying to figure out what you were doing, but he quickly put two and two together. Reaching over, you tied the sacred necklace around the child’s much smaller neck, adjusting the cord before securing it. He burbled happily he instinctively grabbed it with one and stuck it into it his mouth, sucking on the cool metal.

“Now we have to stay together, my little aliit” you gave his ears an affectionate scratch, and you swore that a small sound emanated from deep within the Mandalorian’s throat. Turning to move into the small hut, you motioned for him to follow inside, “it’s not much, but it’s served me well.”

You held the door open for him and he stepped inside, dwarfing the small space with his height and the bulk of the beskar. It was a sight you hadn’t expected to see, and it made you giggle slightly; it somehow made the place you had called home for so long truly feel like home. 

“What?” he asked with an upward lilt to his voice as he set the child down, watching him waddle around and try to explore. You leaned against the door frame and shook your head, unable to keep the grin of your face, “you’re thinking much too loudly, mesh’la.”

Mesh’la you noted, that was a new one. 

“It’s just...I never thought I’d see you here,” you gestured around the modest little hut, “I wasn’t sure when I’d see you again. I wish I had more to offer, but unfortunately this is it.”

“It’s wonderful,” he said quietly as he took off his gloves and trailed them over everything he could touch as he studied everything closely. He had wondered what your space looked like, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but this was very much like you. Warm, inviting, and it felt like home, a sense of calm washing over him.

“I...I’m glad you’re here, Din,” you said softly as you picked up your small friend and set on a chair near the table, quickly busying yourself with finding him something to eat, “I’ve missed you.”

Your last words were a rushed whisper, barely audible to yourself, but to Din, they were loud and clear, not just due to the his modulated helmet. A warmth spread throughout him as he watched you work; it felt like no time had passed at all. Quietly, ever so gently so only you could hear, he repeated the sentiment, “I’ve missed you terribly.”

A flush spread across your face, and you were thankful that he wasn’t facing you. You knew you wouldn’t be able to hide your true emotions from him. He’d had years of practice when it came to reading people, and you were no exception; he was even more attuned to you than anyone else. Instead, you focused on chopping some bits of vegetables and scooping them into a bowl. 

He watched you worked with such precision, and a sense of comfort settled into his bones; it was almost like a domestic dream. Maybe one day it wouldn’t be a temporary reality, but an everyday affair. He vowed to do everything in his power to make it so - maybe not next year, or even five years from now, but one day. One day was enough to make his heart content.  

“Hungry?”

“Starving,” feeling like you might combust completely, you decided to focus on cutting the vegetables into small, even sized pieces to toss into some soup. If you didn’t, you were sure that the buzzing deep within you would take over and you’d lose control of all your senses and act only with emotion. You weren’t sure if you were ready to cross that bridge just yet, although you were sure you were inching slowly closer everyday.

»»————-　♡　————-««

“Here you are, my little love,” pressing a kiss to his forehead and followed by each of his large, soft ears, you tucked the child into his makeshift bed for the night. You could tell he was trying to stay awake, but his yawns and drooping eyes gave him away, and he didn’t end up fighting too hard when wrapped him up in a few soft blankets. He cooed quietly, one hand wrapped around the metallic mythosaur as he slowly drifted to sleep. 

“He’s glad to see you again,” Din had busied himself with cleaning up after the quick meal you had prepared, despite your protests that you could handle it, “he’s been missing you.”

“And just how can you tell? He doesn’t exactly speak Basic, and I’m going to go on a limb and say that he hasn’t grasped Mando’a either,” you nudged him lightly out of the way as he let out a small laugh. It was such a lovely sound, one that spoke directly to your soul. 

“I can tell,” he insisted, “I know.”

“Hmm,” you mused as you washed the few dishes for maybe the last time in your small home. You wondered if you’d be back, if you’d ever get to see it again. It had become a place you loved, but your true home was wherever Din and the Child where. It was then that you realized there was one little problem, eyes glued on the bed in the corner, “umm, there’s only one bed...you can take it though. I’m sure you must be exhausted.”

“Don’t be silly, mesh’la,” he insisted softly, “it’s yours, and therefore yours to sleep in. I can rest on the floor. You’ll need sleep before we leave tomorrow.”

“Din,” you turned to him and put your hands on his shoulders stared straight into the black T of his helmet, “I insist. And technically you’re my guest so you should listen to me.”

Tugging off his worn leather gloves slowly, he set them on the counter before putting his warm, tanned hands to the sides of your face. The flush that rose up was instant, and part of you wanted to look away, but your gaze was firmly locked onto his. Instead, you brought your hands to his wrists, giving them a soft squeeze before resting them on top of his larger ones. 

“I won’t do that,” you knew he wasn’t going to make you sleep on the floor; it would be a cold day in all of the hells before that happened, “but...we can share?”

“Share?” you repeated and he slowly nodded, almost as if he was trying to make sure he knew what he was saying. In reality, to most, it wasn’t that big of a deal; but with your Mandalorian, you knew just how much it meant. You dropped your gaze but quietly agreed, “we’ll share.”

You dropped your hands from his, taking a step back and moving to turn off the lamps you had scattered around the small space, shrouding the room in a veil of darkness. Taking his hand, you slowly led him towards the bed, having memorized your way through the space in darkness. After pulling back the soft blankets, you looked at him before gently reaching up and starting to unclasp his armor, slowly pulling it off his body, piece of piece, setting it down in an organized fashion near the foot of the bed. 

He was silent the entire time, as you were, taking a moment to soak everything in as you relished in the intimacy of the act. For a mere outsider, this was normal, this was nothing special. But you knew how much mutual trust and respect the act required. When you were finished, you gazed up at the helmet and gave him a small nod, hoping he could see; but you knew he could through the helmet. A small part of your heart ached to take the helmet off as well, but you’d never dare - no, that would have to come from him of his own volition. 

Instead, you settled for climbing in the bed and snuggled under the covers as he followed suit. You faced the wall, unsure of what to you; did you touch him? Hold him while he fell asleep, or would he hold you? Did he even want that? Or were you to remain apart, facing separate ways and not touching? The questions in your mind were almost too much, and but like Din could read them, he whispered, “c-can you see?”

The question surprised you at first, but you soon followed his line of reasoning. You felt him close to you, his body radiating his natural warmth onto you. If you’d had him next to you all those cold nights, you wouldn’t even have needed a blanket. Holding your hand up in front of your face, you checked to see how much you could actually make out; it was faint, only a silhouette, “a little. Only faint outlines.”

He was silent for a moment as a soft, modulated sigh escaped his lips, but after that he remained silent. You knew he was just contemplating his next move, but it was his to choose, and his only.

A few moments of silence passed before he spoke again, his voice, unsteady and unsure, “I...trust you, mesh’la.”

He didn’t need to expand. You knew what he was referring to. After a few beats of silence, you felt him move slowly, but you were quick to through your hand behind you and grabbed his wrist, quickly stopping him, “Din...I... can wearing a covering or, or, something. Just in case.”

He gently pulled out of your grasp and went on with removing his his helmet. You’d never seen or heard him do it before, but you instantly knew what the small hiss meant. With silent hesitation, he set the helmet on the floor, and it clinked lightly. Your breath hitched as you realized what this meant; you were sharing your bed with Din, just as he was, just him. Not the Mandalorian.

“I trust you,” his voice, pure and unfiltered was so soft, and warm, almost enough to bring tears to your eyes. You had thought it was beautiful with the helmet on, but this? This was on a whole different level, “Y/N?”

“I’m here,” you answered quickly, trying to keep your voice from cracking altogether. He scooted closer to you and with only mere inches between your bodies, your heart was racing, stomach erupting in butterflies.

“C-can I...may I...”

“Yes,” you answered as a small smile crept onto your face as you realized what he was asking. Slowly, almost timidly, he inched closer to you, until he was at your back, his body pressed against yours. You knew he’d had women before, that he’d known them intimately, but this was different. This wasn’t just about getting out carnal desires and having it be done within five minutes; no. This was gentle, sacred, personal, this was...love. 

You’d never admitted it out loud to yourself before, barely even to yourself in your mind, but you just..knew. You’d always known. 

Din slowly brought and arm and wrapped it around your waist, pulling you tightly against his chest. He was warm and...firm, but still managed to be soft at the same time, a combination that you found to be perfect. His legs found yours, and his much longer limbs quickly tangled up with yours. Putting your hand on top of his, you slowly, almost as if testing the waters, laced your fingers together, taking it so far as to bring his hand to your lips and pressing a soft kiss to his palm. He made a soft sound from behind you, mere centimetres from your ear. 

Soon enough, you felt him rest his head against your back, and you were sure that you had never experienced anything better. And you laid like that for some time, breathing in sync as you tried to capture every moment as best as you could. 

“I can hear your heart,” his voice was slightly muffled from how he had it pressed into the soft fabric of your tunic. You wondered if he could hear just how rapidly it was beating. Unable to stop yourself, you reached back and ran a hand gently through his hair, touching it and trying to memorize it all; how soft it was, how it seemed to have a slight curl to it, how a few pieces seemed uneven. But it was all Din, and he seemed to enjoy the touch, something that had become so foreign to him over the years, and a faint mesh’la left his lips.

“Do you hear it?” you asked softly as he clutched you tighter, almost as if he was trying to meld you into his body. Taking his hand, you brought it up higher and held it against your heart, against the strong beat you felt, “do you hear how it beats only so for you?”

Din remained silent as his throat welled up. In reality it was such a small thing, to feel the heart beat of another, but to him it was so much more. He’d felt the life leave many bodies before, he’d felt the life faint in creatures, but he’s never felt this. 

"It beats for no one else like this," you whispered, almost as if speaking too loud would cause you to wake up and realize this was all a sweet dream. If this was somehow a dream, made in your mind due to the strong yearning, you hoped you would never wake up, "do you feel it? How it speaks to only you?"

Din remained silent as a stalking loth-cat as he listened to the steady rhythm of your heart, each beat like a part of a song, a song only meant for him.

Eventually he let out a slow exhale, his warm breath fanning over your cheek before he rested his face in the crook of your neck. You relished in the feel of his naked skin on your, unobstructed by the layers of armor and tradition that normally created a barrier. How soft, how human he felt, how his light stubble scraped deliciously against your skin. There was a sense of urgency to his motions almost as if he was afraid to lose you, when in reality he never would. Not if you had any say it. You closed your eyes and held onto him tightly, trying to convey your every thought and feeling flowing through your body, "I am yours."

"As I am yours," he breathed out in response, almost as if relieve was washing over him. How easily the words came out of his mouth; how truly he meant. 

"Din?" you desperately wished you could roll over and face him, to grab him and claim him as yours with your touch, not just words. He mumbled a soft response, his lips ghosting over the bare skin of your shoulder,  "I...I like to think you have dark eyes, the warmest of ambers, so sweet and honeyed in the sunlight. Dark hair that you've deemed unruly, that you cut but no matter what there's a few pieces that betray you, the ends curl slightly and sometimes it sticks up everywhere. Am...am I right?"

His heart panged with such a sense of warmth that he found himself dumbstruck and unable to speak for a few moments. You knew him, so well, and you'd never even truly laid eyes upon him. But you also him; you’d always seen him. 

"Yes," it was soft and faint, but brought a smile to your face nonetheless. Slowly, still testing the waters he pressed his lips to your shoulder, a soft, gentle kiss, “how...did you know?”

“I just...know,” you sighed contently, wishing that you could never move, that you could remain like this forever. It was the most comforted you had ever felt; the most loved and cared for you had felt since you were just a child, “I know you’re beautiful, Din. I’ve always known that - from the day you saved me when you didn’t have to. Can...I ask you something?”

“Anything, cyar'ika,” you could feel his every movement against your bare skin, his lips soft and surprisingly delicate against your skin.

“When Jeele...decided it was time to come back for me-”

“I asked her every day if it was time,” he confessed quietly, “I came to her every afternoon. I’m sure she must have grown sick of me. But I had to know...I wanted - needed - to come with her. When she was finally ready, she found me and that was that.”

“You waited for me?” it was more a croak than anything else, and the familiar stinging had appeared at the back of your eyes, as you realized what he was saying. Din reached up and wiped away the single tear that had run down your cheek before nestling further into you.

“I waited every single day,” he promised, “and I would do it again. In every lifetime if I had to.”

»»————-　♡　————-««

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#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #din djarin x reader #reader insert #star wars #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #dyn jarren #dyn jarren x reader #step into the daylight series #the mandalorian x you

[soap-stains]

/rp- this is all just their characters! No ill will to any creators themselves.

This is just my reaction to Tommy's stream "I can't any longer."

FUCK FUCKING FUCK WHAT A GOD DAMN DICK c!DREAM IS

SPOILERS UNDER CUT

DID HE JUST SAY "THAT WASN'T IN THE SCRIPT" lol

WHAT A B I T C H HE BLEW UP TOMMY'S THINGS

I'M SO ANGRY ABOUT THIS

NOOOOOOOOO DREAM NOOOOOO

"No one can come and visit you, until you learn to listen."

GHOSTBUR BUILT THIS ALL, NOT TOMMY, YOU DICK

"Tommy, you would never, actually... You know. You're here for a very long time, Tommy."

I wanna hurt character Dream so much

Drista gave Tommy those tags and they're gone ;w;

At least he still has the photos/compass

The animatics after this are going to be so fuckin scary/scary good

.......and now he's gone. tommy's left with the rubble.

THE WAY HE WALKED THROUGH THE BROKEN PORTAL NO TOMMY

"I said I was sorry... I meant it..."

THE LAUGHTER AT THAT PHOTO OF TUBBO LMAOOOOO

"Happy memories..."

"Jump in the- no, no..."

TUBBO FELL LOL

Tommy, Tommy what are you

TOMMY

TOMMY STOP

NO NO NO NO NO HE'S GONNA JUMP

WHY IS TUBBO DYING?

GUYS STOP IT STOP STOP STOP STOP

"My only friend, Dream- Is gone."

TOMMY STOP PLEASE STOP

please tell me someone is gonna join please please please

Please someone help him, don't let Tommy die

I know i thought the idea of GhostInnit was interesting but i don't want this

TOMMY PLEASE STOP

PLEASE

GOD, THE PICTURES--

"He'd come to watch me."

Looking over Logsted

please please stop no he uncrouched come on tommy

TUBBO STOP DYING

i just saw people spamming flipinnit in chat

Tommy's realizing Dream isn't his friend

HE JUMPED- INTO WATER

Tommy!!! To your senses Tommy!!!!!!!

"He wasn't here because he was my friend"...

The chat's going god damn crazy

"I almost said 'It's only a disc.'"

HE'S BREAKING THE TREE? GIFT UNDER TREE?

OH SHIT HE DIED OOPS NOW HE'S AT SPAWN LOL HAS TO CALL DREAM

"My bed seems to have been destroyed..."

"This blooper reel is getting longer and longer."

let's pretend this didn't happen <3

I'm not going to forget Dream's death though that was hilarious, he's never gonna live that down

Who named this disc Mellohi lol

What the fuck are Ant/Ponk talking about

If I could sub I would </3

"No one [...] no one came here. And everyone left me."

"I'm the only one Dream's scared of. And he almost had me, for a little second there."

"We don't have to stay in this shit hole."

Heyyy found a chest with cool stuff!

Ooooooh he joined a VC, is someone going to pop in later? IS HE GOING TO GO FIND TECHNO???? TECHNO RETCONNED TOMMY FINDING HIS BASE BECAUSE IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN YET IS IT GONNA HAPPEN

"Die, pig. I fuckin' hate pigs." okay, well.

"No one's gonna know!" "Dream's not gonna fuckin' know, is he?"

"As soon as I get back my disc, everything ends."

"He won't be able to find me." I mean yeah, technically not ig

I just realized how much I've calmed down haha

He's heading into the snow 👀

"I'm not like Dream."

YEEEEE THE LOG AND BELLLLLLL

"No one on this entire server knows where I am, now." THEY WILL IF YOU LEAVE HALF TREES DIMWIT

"Even Ghostbur left me." Oh yeah, where'd he go lol

Is he. Is he going to try and rob The Blade.

"Surely I remember..." Tommy you're not supposed to remember, idiot-

LMAO SOMEONE IN CHAT SAID "Tommy, did your balls just drop man"

Holy shit I forgot those weird ice skeleton mobs were still in the game I haven't seen one in years

"When have I ever done the work myself?" tommy hhhhhhh whyyyyyyyy

"we are smol and confused" - awesamdude

"I'm at Techno's house right now" "He commissioned a bee Farm" - Phil 👀

YOOOO ARE WE GONNA SEE PHIL HERE? no? ok

Techno what the fuck is in your basement

tommy you idiot lmao you're fuckin' dead

"Exile is awesome"

Chat is saying run????? IS HE GONNA LIVE UNDER TECHNO'S BASE?????

raccooninnit & dumbassinnit haha

Heyyy Eret joined! And Dream's gone! :D

"It would be nicer just to be home. No, no, no-"

Fundy is live ayyyy

THE BOY IS BACK AYYYYYY I haven't typed in a while trying to put MC on my brother's pc

WE'RE ENDING STREAM BOYS TIME FOR ME TO STOP TYPING AND DO THINGS

"I think shit's gonna get crazy from here."

#orange speaks #mcyt #dream smp #dream smp spoilers #dreamsmp spoilers #tommyinnit

[dra-aluxe-oldblog]

I'm moving to another blog, please follow me here:

Definitely, this year has been really messed up for everyone. Personally speaking, despite the quarantine, the first half of the year was okay? But after July, a lot of fucked up things happened to me and right now I'm in a low mood, almost done with everything. Sadly, one of those shitty things concerns this blog. 

Back in August, my laptop started to fail and it was impossible for me to work on it. I took it to the technician, and almost three months later, he hasn't found a solution, so we could say my laptop is technically dead… (and I don't have money for a new one hehehefuckingyear)

The problem is last year I activated the Two-factor authentication option (TFA) for this account. Tumblr sent me 10 security codes I saved in a note on my desktop and nowhere else. When my laptop started to fail, I saved all my documents in a hard drive for safety, but I was stupid enough to forget to save my desktop notes, including my tumblr's security codes 🙃 So when the technician had to format my laptop, the codes were erased too, and without them, I can't access my blog from another device but the app on my phone. I tried to generate more security codes and deactivate the TFA using the app, but it's impossible. You can only do that in a web browser (pc or phone). I also asked tumblr's staff for help, but they told me they can't deactivate the authentication feature for me or send more codes, only I can do it in my dashboard from a web browser. But, how the hell will I do that if I can't even log in??? 

In others words: I can't access this blog anymore.

Only through the app. But, what would happen if I buy a new phone?? Or if it breaks or someone steals it from me?? This is my only access to this blog right now 😥

As a result, the only solution left was to make a new blog.

For now, all my previous art will stay here but I'll stop using this blog from now on, I'll only reblog all the stuff I post in the new blog (don't expect new art soon tho. No laptop=No digital drawings, and I don't feel like drawing anything at all anyway). If I ever change or lose this phone, I'll post all my drawings and comics again in there, and this blog will probably be abandoned/erased forever. 

So, whether you follow me for my art, my X-Hand comic, my Coco drawings, or whatever reason, and you still wanna see more of my work,

Please follow me now on my new blog: Dr-Aluxe

(Yeah, the name is technically the same, I just translated it from spanish to english. It was really hard as you can see xd)

In addition, here's a little advice: if you activated the Two-Factor Authentication, take good care of your security codes and log in via browser on another device, so you could have a way to generate new authentication codes if you ever lose your computer. Sadly I'm not the only one with this problem and Tumblr doesn't have a solution yet (what a surprise 🙄). And in case you don't have TFA activated yet, think carefully about it or try another alternative. 

Or if you have a solution, please let me now. I will thank you forever 🙏

Anyway, this is sad, and I'm a little angry too, but hey! The year is almost over!! Let's hope 2021 be better for everyone :'D

All in all, follow my new blog, beware of the TFA, wear a mask, stay safe, keep going no matter how awful this year is and don't yell at eggs, cuz that's rude, but more importantly:

Thank you so much for your support!!

Bye ^u^/

#new blog #draluxe #this is so depressing #stupid year #you will burn #the hardest part of end is staring again

[riverboundao3ff]

Riverbound, Chapter 6

Your name is TYZIAS ENTYKK and you have had a long fucking six perigees.

It’s not like it was all terrible, because it wasn’t; a lot of it was actually super thrilling and dangerous enough for your matesprit to ask you, on several occasions, if you’re suicidal. You’re not, thankfully. However, your life has been, for the lack of a better term, apeshit crazy.

You are currently sitting in a loose circle with your coworkers and the jades, the alien sandwiched protectively between Stelsa and Tagora. Daraya had told you that they had two broken ribs and were severely underweight, but you’re still stunned by how frail they look. Had they been like that before they went missing? They’re strangely tangible now, like you’re truly seeing them for the first time. It haunts you.

“What’s the last thing you remember before you were kidnapped?” you ask.

The alien and Lanque exchange glances.

“I was coming back from a party Lanque invited me to,” they begin. “I was just walking down the street and… boom, next thing I know I’m up in Scratch’s mansion-dimension-hell.”

That’s what the jadeblood told you six perigees ago, but you just wanted to make sure everybody’s timelines were in order. “Right. After you disappeared, we all did a massive search party, and I’m assuming your other friends did the same. That went on for like, what, two and a half perigees? After that, I… well, we came to the conclusion that you got culled.”

They nod.

Your throat feels tight, but you continue. “Of course, we were all devastated. Nobody wanted to believe you were really gone, but… there wasn’t a trace of you left. So we decided to do the next right thing.”

“Oh boy,” Tirona mutters.

You ignore her. “Daraya and I kept in touch after you introduced us that one time. We kept coming back to what you would always tell us about making the world a better place, even if we were just talking about random shit. So eventually I was like… hey, fuck it. Let’s start a rebellion. Tegiri thinks we’re all gonna die and wants nothing to do with it, but that’s his problem. What have we got to lose?”

“Your lives,” they point out helpfully.

“True. But yeah, that’s how this whole thing got started. It took a bit of convincing, but we finally got some other people to join.”

“More like dragged us kicking and screaming into it,” Tagora mutters under his breath.

“So far we blew up a hangar full of rockets, hacked the government a few times to delete cull-on-sight lists, beat up a purpleblood, vandalised some stuff with Trizza’s face on it, uh… what else did we do, guys?”

“We organized a rescue for Outglut after a drone raid basically burned the place to the ground,” Stelsa added. Yeah, that had been one hell of a wipe. You guys had helped out a lot of survivors, but sometimes even sopor couldn’t keep away daymares of burning flesh and lifeless eyes. Saving everybody wasn’t an option, but you tried your best. That’s what was important.

“I saved a grub who was gonna be culled because he wasn’t as big as the others,” Wanshi mumbles shyly, kicking her feet against the log she was sitting on.

“Honk!” Karako adds.

“And Karako helped!”

The alien’s eyes twinkle with utter delight. “That’s amazing, Wanshi. And holy moly, dude, who blew up the hangar?”

“I think his name is Azdaja? He and his partner Konyyl absolutely destroyed the place,” Tagora explains shrewdly, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“Azdaja and Konyyl? They’re in this too?” they exclaim, getting even more excited. “Oh my God, I can’t wait to see them again. But who the frick hacked the government? That sounds pretty damn dangerous.”

Tirona clears her throat. “A mutual friend of ours is responsible for that. You knew Mallek Adalov, right?”

The goofy smile on their face falls away. “Mallek? Of course I know Mallek! How is he?”

“Hanging in there. He does his own thing, really,” Tirona says with a shrug.

“When’s the last time you saw him? Does he know I’m back?” they demand.

Lanque smirks. “Somebody’s eager, huh?”

Your friend splutters and shoots him a look like, I’ll kill you later, bitch.

“Well, I saw him a couple wipes ago, and… no. He doesn’t know anything. Should I call him?” Tirona asks helpfully, understanding dawning on her grub-round face as she and Lanque lock eyes. He nods eagerly, and the alien shrieks in protest and then clutches their side.

Tagora catches them as they faint, and together he and Stelsa carefully lay them out on the ground. Daraya’s eyes flicker between the alien and Lanque and Tirona, who are animatedly discussing whether or not they should call Mallek, like she doesn’t know whether or not to yell at them for making her beloved friend pass out from pain or join in on the fun.

You roll your eyes. Great, even more drama. “Jegus, just call Adalov and tell him his bag-of-bones flushcrush is half dead on the forest floor.”

“I thought this was supposed to be a business meeting?” Tagora snipes.

“Business can wait. I want to see where this goes,” Stelsa giggles. “Besides, they’re his friend, too. He deserves to see them again!”

In the dirt and dead leaves, the alien groans. “What…?”

“We’ll take care of everything, dear, just take deep breaths,” your matesprit promises sweetly. She pats the alien’s forehead and scooches over so Daraya can sit down with her and Tagora. Your bloodpusher warms at the sight.

Tirona’s palmhusk is cheerfully trilling, going through one, two, three cycles of that damn noise. You need to get that kid to change her ringtone, seriously.

Just when you think Adalov’s not going to answer, there’s a sharp click at the other end. “Yeah?”

“Mallek, hi!” Tirona sings. “What are you up to?”

“Re-wiring my PC so it stops overheating every time I try and play Mineclaw. Look, if you’re gonna ask me to hack anything again, it’s a hard no. I already risked my ass once so you guys could dick around in a major government server--”

“No, we don’t need you for that. Just get your blue butt down to the base of the jades’ mountain. There’s somebody I think you’d like to see,” she insists.

“I’m busy. Tell Tyzias to suck a fat one.”

“Okay, but seriously! Mallek, you need to come here, it’s important.”

“I already told you, I’m done doing stupid shit.”

“We both know that’s a lie, but okay. Please, dude, you won’t regret it--” Tirona pleads, but gets cut off by Lanque swiping the palmhusk from her hands, growling in exasperation.

“Adalov. It’s me, Lanque. Come here now. They’re back, they’re a little injured, but they’re alive and that’s what’s important. Don’t you want to see them?”

Dead silence.

Then, a low beeping as Mallek hangs up.

Lanque’s fangs glint as he grins in satisfaction. “He’s on his way.”

“You sound like you know him,” you state.

He shrugs. “Old hookup.”

“Ah.” That makes sense.

“Gimme my palmhusk back,” Tirona demands, grabbing for the device. Lanque obliges before bringing out his own and fiddling around with it. On the adjacent log, Wanshi and Karako start talking about some story they’re coming up with together.

Another groan reaches your ears, and you look down to see the alien pushing themselves up on their elbows. “Aw, crap. Did I pass out?”

“Yeah, you did. Also, Tirona and Lanque called your cerulean boyfriend. He’ll be here in a bit” Daraya explains dryly.

“You… oh, geez. He’s not my boyfriend!”

“I can help with that. Consider it your welcome-back present,” Lanque offers, smugness radiating off every pore.

“I thought you were on my side!”

“Darling, I’m on no side but my own.”

“I despise you.”

“Oh?” You almost burst out laughing when you see the bit of interest that sparks in his eyes. Good fuck, this alien had all of Thrashthrust wrapped around their little finger.

Their face burns bright red. “Not like that, you horny Onceler headass--”

Tagora tries and fails to cover both Wanshi’s, Tirona’s, and Karako’s ears at the same time. “Stop saying those things in front of the kids!”

“Gor-Gor, until somebody helps peel my injured self out of the literal dirt I’m not doing anything for anybody, okay?”

“So much for business,” Daraya huffs. You know her well enough by now to see that she’s amused by all of this. It’s in the slight narrow of her shadowed eyes, the tilt of her head.

“That’s what I just said-!”

Your fellow rebels’ bickering is abruptly cut off by the sound of a revving hoverboard engine somewhere above you. Karako yelps and slaps his hands over the sides of his head. The alien stops cussing out Lanque and looks up at the sky, pale face shining in the light of the moons. Despite Stelsa’s protests, they push themselves to their feet with a grimace. A fierce determination lights them up from within.

Could you convince them to use that strength for the rebellion?

“That was fast!” Wanshi notes cheerfully.

A lean figure blurs through the canopy and swoops down to land on the path outside of the clearing you guys are in. Any other time you’d start ragging on Adalov about him and his stupid pretentious rich-boy hoverboard, but you keep your mouth shut once you see the desperation in his wide blue eyes, and also because the little insect instinct that’s survived billions of years of evolution cringes away from the color. Only adult trolls have color in their eyes, and adults are bad news.

It’s a lot less dramatic than you thought it was going to be. Mallek steps off his hoverboard and kicks it up into his waiting left hand, opens his mouth to say something, and then his eyes fall on the alien.

Something incredibly sweet and vulnerable softens his face behind the obvious shock that makes him stiffen up like a corpse. He hardly looks like the tired, emotionless punk you had the misfortune of meeting once or twice since your mutual friend disappeared.

Mallek says their name, a perfect mixture of a question and an exclamation. The alien smiles, still holding their side, and limps over to him with their other hand reaching out to him. Something in your guts twist around when he hesitates, before slowly taking their pale, bony hand in his own, like he’s not believing what he’s seeing. You hear him inhale shakily when they finally touch.

“I was hoping we’d be able to do this a little more gracefully, but my friends are assholes,” the alien jokes feebly.

The cerulean shakes his head in disbelief. “How… how are you alive? I thought… we all thought--”

“I know. I’m so sorry.”

Out of the corner of your eye, Tirona sniffles and wipes her nose with a handkerchief. She looks like a proud lusus.

“I’ll explain everything, I promise,” the alien vows. “Wanna sit down with us? Tyzias is filling me in on everything I missed.”

Mallek opens his mouth like he’s trying to speak, but then he just nods and follows the alien back to your little friendship circle group. The poor bastard still looked like somebody had slapped the thinkpan cells from his skull.

He doesn’t get the chance to join you, though. A low hum of another engine reaches your ears, deeper than that of a hoverboard and more guttural. Lanque shoots to his feet, pointed ears sticking straight up.

“Drones!” Stelsa cries.

Your digestive tract drops down and out of your ass. No, no, no, not now! The government was getting an idea as to who you are, and once they see you and a bunch of other trolls meeting up in a fucking forest of all places-!

You’re on your feet and ready to bolt, but before you can go anywhere the alien reaches out and pulls your arm.

“Everybody hold hands!” they shout.

Tagora whips around to stare at them. “What?!”

“Just do it!”

They look deadly serious. You squeeze their wrist and wonder what your life has come to. Daraya and Lanque grab Wanshi and Karako, who grabs Tirona, who clings to Tagora, who holds on to Stelsa. Mallek grabs Stelsa, still hand-in-hand with the alien with his hoverboard tucked underneath his arm.

Three drones whiz by over your heads. Your blood turns to ice inside of you. Weirdly, the only thing you can think of is if you told Bearmom you loved her before you left.

“Okay, guys, this is gonna be weird. Brace yourselves!” The alien grits their teeth, looking like they were concentrating. Something in their strange hazel eyes flashes bright green.

One second you’re standing in a clearing in the woods, holding hands with your weird friend and some punk, and the next everything is pitch black.

Not black like a moonless night, but black like nothing you’ve ever seen before. It was the darkness of space, the endless void every living thing is subconsciously terrified of. You’d written a paper about the fear of the unknown when you were six sweeps old. It lasts for less than one beat of your bloodpusher, but it felt like an eternity in your panicked mind.

All at once the abyss goes away, and you and your group are in somebody’s messy apartment.

You and Tagora stare at each other for the time it felt like you were in the void. Tirona is holding his hand in a white-knuckled grip so intense you’re surprised somebody hasn’t broken a bone.

Wanshi is the first to speak. “Holy shit.”

“Wanshi,” Lanque hisses.

Slowly, Daraya lets go of his and Karako’s hands. “... Well. You weren’t lying about the whole space-time thing after all.”

Your alien friend snorts. “Nope.”

“We just teleported,” you realize.

“Yep.”

Mallek breaks away and sits down heavily on the loungeplank. It looks like you’re in the living room, except there’s computer parts littered everywhere.

The alien looks back at him, guilt evident in the way they hold themselves. “Um, sorry. This was the only place I could perfectly visualize for some reason.”

“... You need to be able to visualize something or somewhere to travel to it?” he asks.

“Yeah. Space-time travel is weird like that.”

He nods.

There’s another long break of silence.

This time, Lanque breaks it. “Adalov, why is there a crusty grubcake stuck to the ceiling of your kitchen?”

#hiveswap #Hiveswap Friendsim trolls #riverbound #pesterquest #c6 #jadebloods #teals #AND MALLEK #The Guardian #MSPA reader #homestuck #the guardian's friends are assholes

[somethinglacking]

Shooting For Stars: Chapter 1

Summary: 

Hyuna Lee just started college, and while procrastinating decided to give a popular MMO called LOLOL a try. Here she will meet new friends, battle monsters, part takes in epic quests, and potentially find love!

Most of this will take place in LOLOL at the beginning.

This takes place a year/ year and a half after Seven's good end, and the secret endings. Yoosung x OC

**Update's once a week**

Smut in later chapters, of course ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Hyuna groaned as she sat staring at her computer. Her assignment was to draw something that inspires you, some sort of introductory assignment for the Professor to get to know her small class of Art Student Misfits. Nothing seemed to inspire her as of late, and no matter what she did manage to sketch out onto screen seemed to call her out: The Un-Inspired Art Student with no muse or motivation. Her fingers ran the length of her caramel brown locks, and her nails lightly scratched her scalp trying to ease her growing frustrations. Hazel glared at the taunting screen before her, daring it to keep on challenging her. 

After what seemed like an eternity, the artist sighed in defeat. Nothing was coming to her, and the lines she had managed to get down didn’t seem to be coming together as anything. Annoyed with herself and lack of a muse, she set her tablet to the side and opened her social media. Not much was going on, and she didn’t really have any friends anymore. Her sister posted a photo of her and her little class of second graders. They were cute and her sister looked happy. Smiling at the photo she offered it a thumbs up. 

When she was done scrolling her newsfeed she opened boogle. Bored she searched for fun things to do on the internet. The search results varied in interest, but an ad on the web page she was on showed a popular MMO and a free trial. Curious she clicked it and went to the homepage of the game. She read of the spec’s and nodded noting it would work on her pc. She clicked the download icon and downloaded it. 

Hazel eyes read every bit of detail the game had to offer her as it booted up the character creator. Feeling a little nervous, having never played an MMO before and unsure if she’d actually like being in contact with actual people. Logically she knew she could just play solo and ignore the events, or even delete her entire account after the free trial ran out and simply say she tried it. Biting a plump bottom lip she was greeted with page after several final updates. 

First, she selected her gender debating on being a boy, but ultimately settled for female solely because she knew their armor would be cuter the further she got into the game. She clicked through the races and settled on an elf. She smiled customizing the hairstyle and making the hair a lovely hue of blue. The eyes matched her avatar's hair. Hyuna chooses the least appalling beginner to wear praying she would be able to get something that wasn’t such an eyesore to wear easily. Overall the artist was pleased with the look of her new online persona and moved onto the next page.

Here she had to choose a username. Chewing on her lip she knew she go to Sapphire would be already taken in such a massive game, but gave it a go anyway. Slightly disappointed when it was already taken she contemplated what to use. She typed in several weird spelling of the name before Sapfyre worked. Making a surprised and pleased noise, she made haste to click the arrow button that would take her into the game. 

The screen loaded and she took her time going through the tutorial and getting the hang of the world, and command functions. Hyuna watched as her pretty avatar moved about doing little missions and basically busy work with prompt boxes explaining the gameplay.

 Soon enough she had completed her ‘training’ and was warped to a busy square full of other players. Hyuna blushed feeling slightly overwhelmed by the sheer number of avatars on the screen. She had picked one of the busier servers, but she hadn’t imagined it’d be this popular. Chewing her lip she ran around getting used to the shops and how the currency worked. Hazel eyes scanned the screen and took notice of where the world chat was, besides it was a little icon that lights up red with a little 1 beside it. Curious she clicked it and noticed it was the private messaging system. 

SupermanYoosung★: Hey you look lost ^^ SupermanYoosung★: You must be new! SupermanYoosung★: If you want help doing some quest or anything let me know. Hyuna tapped the pads of her fingers against her lips reading the message over and over again honestly wanting to take them up on their offer. Yet, she also felt rather shy about it too, it was strange. It wasn’t like it was a real interaction with someone, just two gamer bros going on a digital epic quest, so to speak. That being said, the artist wasn’t really a people person. Taking a moment to think about the other player's offer she opened the tab at the top that showed the servers rankings and who was online at the moment. Hazel went wide as she stared at the first couple name’s noticing the friendly strangers rank. They where rank number 2, basically LOLOL royalty. Hyuna let out a girlish giggle in disbelief. She clicked back onto her private messages and re-read the person’s name. It was for sure rank #2 SupermanYoosung. Before her brain could catch up to her fingers the typed with speed across her keyboard. 

Sapfyre: Oh wow! Sapfyre: I just check up on you, and it says your rank #2 ^^; Sapfyre: You must have better things to do than help a little noob like myself!

Before she knew it an impressive tank build avatar ran towards her. Hyuna bumped her forehead lightly with her fist watching as he positioned himself next to her Hobo of an Elf avatar. What a contrast that was to behold. However, if he did have time to waste with her, she almost wanted to beg him to help her get something more suitable for her avatar to wear. Something less beggar and painstakingly noob. 

SupermanYoosung★: Hahaha Yup! That’s me, I’m pretty awesome, huh? 

Hyuna couldn’t help but roll her eyes as a smile played at the edge of her mouth.

SupermanYoosung★: I’m also pretty free at the moment. I have no issue bussing you through some dungeons and helping you get some decent equipment.  SupermanYoosung★: Plus once you get passed level 20 you can join guilds! SupermanYoosung★: If you want, I can invite you to mine, haha!

This person seemed pretty nice and welcoming, Hyuna mused smiling to herself. She didn’t want to get his hopes up, nonetheless. Still unsure if she wanted to pay for the month to month subscription, or would even bother logging in again once she decided she had procrastinated enough for the evening and got back to her assignment. Best to play it coy. 

Sapfyre: Well alright then!  Sapfyre: Lolol can you add me to the party, I have absolutely no idea what I am doing  SupermanYoosung★: Oh! Sure thing!

The notification of a party invitation popped up. Hyuna clicked it and accepted. Soon there was an Icon over the two opposing in style avatars linking them together. 

Sapfyre: Wow they really go out and show you who you're with, huh? Sapfyre: We should get out of the public eye, haha… Someone like you hanging out with a LOLOL hobo can’t be good for the reputation! ^^ SupermanYoosung★: lol naw, it’s fine, I’m buying potions. I’ve got a feeling you’re gonna need them at the start ^^ SupermanYoosung★: I know just the Dungeon that shares exp! It’s pretty high rank, but I can handle the monsters myself. You can just sit back and enjoy the show! Cheer for me too! Sapfyre: I might be a noob, but I do freelance as a cheerleader on the side Sapfyre: It’s not much, but it’s honest work~ Sapfyre: Go! Yoosung! GO!  SupermanYoosung★: Haha! I didn’t expect you to actually cheer for me >_< SupermanYoosung★: Now I definitely have to help you get to at least level 20!

Hyuna’s character automatically followed the party leader’s avatar about the busy town square. There was an option to turn it off, but she didn’t feel like it. It was fun watching the two of them run around side by side as this Yoosung got the supplies she would most likely need to brave the dungeon. The artist clicked on her avatar and gasped in surprise. 

Sapfyre: There are little social action commands! Sapfyre: Ooooh~ 

She made her Elf do a little tribal type dance around Yoosung. She giggled as he made his brolly tank dance with her in the middle of the square. That was cute! 

SupermanYoosung★: Hahaha >_< SupermanYoosung★: They do! And some of the actions are special to race, gender, and class. SupermanYoosung★: Oh! You get to pick a class at level 10 SupermanYoosung★: Any ideas on a build you want to make? Sapfyre: Thank you for the dance Monsieur~ Sapfyre: I dunno what build to make??? Sapfyre: I guess I want something ranged so I can hang back. 

A box popped up on the screen declaring that SupermanYoosung would like to item share with her. Hyuna clicked yes and his inventory opened along with her own. She flushed when she saw all the cool things he was carrying and how she only held a level 2 stick from one of her tutorial missions at the beginning. She watched as Yoosung threw 99 potions, and 99 mana restore potions at her along with a level 2 wooden helm. She giggled equipping it to her Elf. 

Sapfyre: Now my look is finally complete. What a sexy helm! SupermanYoosung★: lololol, sooo sexy~ SupermanYoosung★: Back on the topic of builds SupermanYoosung★: Ever consider being a support healer? SupermanYoosung★: It’s sooo hard to find a decent one D:

Sapfyre: I dunno if I’d make a good support ^^; Sapfyre: If they are hard to find there must be a reason right?

SupermanYoosung★: They just don’t know how to build themselves, and/or try to fight when the tanks have the situation covered and die, SupermanYoosung★: I never built a healer before, but I do know a few things. I could help you if you want?

Sapfyre: Welllllllll Sapfyre: Sure why not~~! Sapfyre: Since you’re helping me out so much already, I don’t mind trying to be a healer for you.

SupermanYoosung★: Thank you! SupermanYoosung★: Rest of the guild will be so jealous when I show off my own personal little healer~ haha~

Sapfyre: >_< lololol I’m shy~

Hyuna bit her lip re-reading the messages. It almost felt like this guy or girl or whatever they are was flirting with her. They couldn’t possibly know she was a girl. She assumed many male players would make a female avatar, let's be honest, the higher rank armor leaves little to the imagination. She wrote off the interaction as this Yoosung being friendly and excited to help her create a healer support he seemed to need desperately. 

SupermanYoosung★: Haha that’s okay! SupermanYoosung★: Do you have a headset, it’s easier to chat that way while in dungeons.

The artist flushed again at the thought of letting a stranger hear her voice. She could see why it would be more convenient. Seeing as she had never played an online game, and preferred solo JRPG’s or Horror survival-

Sapfyre: I never required a headset before

SupermanYoosung★: It’s okay, it just means we are gonna crawl dungeons a bit slower since we’ll have to type to one another. 

Sapfyre: ^^; I’ll look into investing in one in the future. Sapfyre: I’m on a college student allowance, it’ll have to be a cheap one.

SupermanYoosung★: Haha, I’m a student too. I get what you mean. SupermanYoosung★: No shame in having an off-brand HS since you’re just starting SupermanYoosung★: I’m gonna teleport us to a level 30 dungeon. Keep your guard up

Sapfyre: Sure thing ^^

They were off, the screen turned into a load for a moment before both of them spawned in a dungeon. The artist smiled as she watched the other player navigate the surrounding area. She was careful to fall back when zombie looking monstered spawned and swarmed them. All level 30, which made sense, Yoosung had stated it was a high-rank dungeon. Turns out level grind was a bit of a grind, even for beginners. Luckily it was a shared exp dungeon and since there were only two of them in the party it got split in half. Slowly where minimal communication since she lacked a headset they crawled through the Dungeon. Yoosung was kind enough to allow her to loot the corpses and the treasure chests. 

They had even run into some other players who would say hello to Yoosung via the world chat. They had custom speech bubbles, and Hyuna was interested in obtaining some of her own. It was impressive how immersive this game was. You could build sperate skills like smithing, mining, fishing, cooking, act. It was super customizable. Yoosung had rattled off about how there was an event boss just recently and the cool stuff he got for himself. Hyuna smiled, sometimes even giggling to herself as she read Yoosung’s messages. 

Even though she had gotten some pretty decent armor and weapon’s they couldn’t be equipped before she was level 30. It was probably a power scale to disallow players to equip armor so far above themselves early. Yoosung assured her in a few sessions he would have her beefed up and ready to stand on her own in no time. Hyuna despite herself agreed to meet up tomorrow evening and found herself genuinely enjoying the game. Maybe she was just enjoying Yoosung’s company, who knew. 

Once they finished the dungeon, Yoosung warped them back into the town square and sent her a friend request. Hyuna didn’t even think twice as she accepted it. 

SupermanYoosung★: This way we will get notifications when either of us logs on, and it even shows where we are on the map.  SupermanYoosung★: I’m gonna be on a little while longer, you good?

Hyuna looked at the clock and gasped blinking, unbelieving what she was thinking. Had she really wasted three hours? Was it really 1 am?

Sapfyre: OMFG!!!! It’s 1 am!!! I have an assignment due tomorrow morning! SupermanYoosung★: It’s 1 am for me too, we must be pretty close. Lolol SupermanYoosung★: You should go get the project done SupermanYoosung★: Guess I’ll see you tomorrow~ ^^

Sapfyre: Ya tomorrow! I’ll be off! Sapfyre: Enjoy ruling the online virtual world!

With that Hyuna was quick to log off and sighed to herself. It had only meant to be an hour break, and somehow she got so caught up in it she was looking at either failing her first assignment or not sleeping. Looking at the clock she grabbed her a tablet and the pen and looked at whatever these lines she had drawn were suppose to be. Deciding to delete all the progress she had apparently made, she settled herself in for a long night of drawing her assignment for her 8 am class. 

#Yoosung #Yoosung Kim #Mystic Messenger #mysme yoosung #yoosung x oc #Mystic Messenger FanFiction

[hermannsthumb]

Okay, but if Newt's the sexy mechanic, then Hermann's the sexy tech guy. Newt will come up to Hermann like "Dr. Gottlieb, my laptop is having some issues. Could you maybe take a look at it, please?" "Newton, I know full well this is a problem you can fix easily." "PLEASE, Dr. Gottlieb? I'd just feel SO much better if someone like ~*you*~ would look at it."

see i saw this ask and automatically decided you meant “tech guy hermann au that’s not even sexy” and ran with it so thank you for enabling me :)

Hermann is not officially campus technology support, nor, technically, is it something he’d even supposed to be consulting in without the proper university-sanctioned credentials, but the technology support they used to have was so bloody awful that half the time computers came back in worse shape than they were going in, so around six months ago Hermann simply...decided to take matters into his own hands. A coup d’état, so to speak. When he’s not lecturing on astrophysics, or lecturing on advanced mathematics, or holding office hours, Hermann’s consulting in technology services and training the undergraduates there via workstudy how to properly do their jobs. 

They’ve had a marked rise in consultations since Hermann took over, which Hermann supposes is to be expected as a side effect of competence.

They’ve had a marked rise in consultations with one man in particular.

Dr. Geiszler is the head of the biology department, lectures in both biochemistry and engineering, and--if rumors are to be believed--completed grad school in his teen years and has at least six PhDs to show for it. By all accounts, he’s a veritable genius. It’s why, for the life of him, Hermann cannot figure out why Dr. Geiszler has come to technology services more times than Hermann can count in the past three weeks.

The first time was understandable: Dr. Geiszler burst into the office shouting, frantically, about how his computer crashed and he lost nearly twenty-five student assignments, so Hermann--pitying him, one educator to another--sat him down and took care of it himself. After that, it was less understandable. Dr. Geiszler’s computer was making a weird noise and he didn’t know why. Dr. Geiszler somehow managed to uninstall his trackpad. Dr. Geiszler accidentally deleted all of his shortcut icons for applications. Dr. Geiszler was sure his wifi was broken, until Hermann pointed out he’d merely turned his laptop’s internet connection off. Dr. Geiszler forgot how to change his desktop background.

Today, when Hermann sees that familiar, scruffy, bespectacled head poking over the counter of the front desk, he does not even bother logging Dr. Geiszler into their appointment system, just sighs and motions him back.

“Hiya, Hermann,” Geiszler says, dropping into the swivel chair next to Hermann but refusing to sit in it properly, simply straddling it backwards. “How’s it going?” Hermann does not, truthfully, mind Dr. Geiszler’s complete lack of professionalism, nor the fact that he bypasses titles and simply calls Hermann by his first name, but Hermann feels as if he ought to put up a front and makes a face every time anyway.

“What have you done today?” Hermann says, and Geiszler laughs weakly before pulling his laptop out of a tote bag that’s more enamel pins than fabric.

“Would you believe it?” Geiszler says. “I managed to delete my email account.”

Geiszler did not, actually, delete his email account--he’d merely logged out of it--and once Hermann shows him this in five minutes Geiszler shakes his head in amazement (like Hermann cured cancer on the spot and not, in fact, merely entered “gmail” into the search bar). “Wow, Hermann,” he says. “You’re so good with computers. I wish I could be that good.”

“You have a doctorate in engineering,” Hermann says.

“And you’re still better than me at this shit,” Geiszler says, and then pats Hermann’s arm like he’s congratulating him. “Congratulations. That’s pretty impressive, dude.” He does not remove his hand. Geiszler has tattoos, Hermann notices. Geiszler also has very strong hands.

Hermann clears his throat. “Dr. Geiszler,” he begins, and Geiszler shakes his head and smiles.

“Just call me Newt,” he says, and squeezes Hermann’s arm lightly, companionably.

“Newton,” Hermann corrects (because he refuses to use that nickname), face heating up for unknown reasons, “I have another appointment, so if you would--”

Newton drops his hand. “Right,” he says. “Sorry.”

Hermann finishes up for the afternoon at one so as to be on time for the lecture he’s got to give at one-thirty, but he’s stopped by the sophomore Physics major who works the front desk on his way out the door. “Just so you know, Dr. Gottlieb,” she says, and Hermann swivels on his cane, “Dr. Geiszler’s almost exceeded his maximum allotted amount of appointments for the month.”

Hermann pulls his glasses up to peer over her shoulder at her computer screen, where she’s pulled up Newton’s data profile; sure enough, Newton has stopped by tech services ten times since January. Eleven times, if Hermann would’ve logged him in today. The maximum they allow per month is twelve, but Hermann can’t remember the last time they had someone make more than four. Newton is a special case. “Should I send him a warning email?” the sophomore says.

“No,” Hermann says. “Don’t bother with the limit for Dr. Geiszler.” He doesn’t imagine Newton’ll pay much attention to the warning, anyway, just plead with Hermann for an appointment until Hermann finally caves in. “You can simply automatically assign him with me.”

A new email pops up in the corner of the front desk’s PC; it’s from Dr. Geiszler. After Hermann nods at her, the girl opens it. “Dr. Geiszler’s requested another appointment with you tomorrow,” she says. “He says...his speakers aren’t working.”

Hermann narrows his eyes. “He requested me?”

“He usually does,” the girl says, and scrolls through the tech services email inbox until she finds a folder marked ‘Dr. Geiszler’ (made at Hermann’s behest). At least eight emails, all after that very first appointment with Hermann, all requesting an appointment with--at first--the full honorary title Dr. Gottlieb, and then devolving into Hermann. “I made him an appointment with someone else one time and he cancelled it.”

“I see,” Hermann says, frowning and--to his surprise--mildly embarrassed. “Yes. Ah. Thank you.”

He hurries out.

When Newton shows up for his appointment the next morning--“I don’t know what I did, Hermann, but the sound just stopped working!”--and it turns out to be yet another easy fix (he had his computer on mute), Hermann decides he’s had enough. “Newton,” he says. “I know full well this was a problem you could’ve fixed easily. All of your problems have been problems you could’ve fixed easily.”

“Yeah,” Newton says quickly, “but, uh, I just feel better having someone like you look at--”

Hermann holds up his hand and cuts him off. “Why are you really here?”

He expects Newton will make some elaborate excuse, but to his surprise, Newton quickly drops his clueless act, shrugs, and grins. “You wanna get dinner?” he says.

“Dinner?”

“With me,” Newton adds. “And on me. If that wasn’t clear.”

“That is,” Hermann splutters, because his first instinct was to give an enthusiastic yes (Newton is messy and scruffy and infuriatingly attractive) but he thinks, reasonably, he should play at least somewhat hard to get, “I don’t. This whole time--?”

“Yep,” Newton says.

“That’s a horrendous abuse of campus resources,” Hermann says, though the past month suddenly makes a great deal more sense, and then, to Newton’s obvious glee, “Oh, yes. Alright. Dinner.”

Newton continues making appointments, but he and Hermann usually spend them in far more conductive ways after that: Hermann’s office is private, after all.

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag #this is the kinda corny romcom shit i love.... #Anonymous

[slinkerscribble-blog]

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is great because of the multiplayer.

Originally posted  4/25/18 on Kotaku’s community blog “TAY”. Posting it here because of TAY’s uncertain future as a way of preserving some of the stuff I wrote there.

https://tay.kinja.com/neverwinter-nights-enhanced-edition-is-a-great-remaste-1825288724

These days we so often see remasters or other ports of games that people can sometimes question the necessity of releasing them at all. Other than for the cash. At first glance developer Beamdog’s Enhanced Edition of Neverwinter Nights doesn’t really seem that spectacular compared to the cheaper old version available at certain digital stores. Just a few months ago I replayed Neverwinter Nights single player campaign after I got a free copy on GOG, and it worked fine playing on a modern PC. Even if it has always been a unpleasant game to look at.

The Enhanced Edition does little to improve the games graphics other than making it possible to play in higher resolutions. But beyond than that it’s hard to find any differences that stand out. I know I read somewhere the lightning and shadows are much better this time around. But I can’t say I notice this while playing. So if you already have a working copy of the old game I would seriously question why you would need this version.

That’s it, of course, if you are only interested in playing it single player.

What made me instantly buy the new version of the game was the news that the multiplayer will once again fully work and with it any mods and player made levels from the old game. (I suspect this is a big reason why improved graphics are so limited) That means any server still running Neverwinter Nights can become available instantly in this new version.

When the original game came out in 2002, it was originally developed as a toolkit for anyone to create and host their own D&D adventures and then make them available for people to join online, or to write your own single player adventure. The toolkit was rather easy to learn but complex enough that you could recreate Baldur’s gate completely if you wanted to. This spawned a large community of different servers with their own lore, rules and settings. Many of them felt like their own MMORPG where the players base controlled what happened in the world. A large part of these communities were also strict on roleplay, meaning that you have to act your character. While Neverwinter Nights is far from the only game that players have roleplayed in, few other games have successfully grown such a large community around it. Rather, in many games offering the possibility of roleplaying it feels like a minor part of the online community. In Neverwinter Nights it is a huge part of the game’s overall design.

One of the types of servers I enjoyed playing on was Zombie Survival. It turned the D&D-based game into a zombie survival simulator. Deaths were often a permanent affair, meaning that your character, which you might have spent plenty of time creating could disappear instantly. The highest level you could achieve on these servers was often around 5. By D&D standards this meant you would always be a scrub. Besides, reaching the highest level wasn’t an easy task because you could only gather significant experience points by exploring the world and gaining certain items. This was extremely risky, because there were few areas that were safe from the undead and healing yourself was always limited. In many regards these servers were unbalanced and could be extremely hard for new players, but once you learned where to find certain items you could become hard to kill. This also lead to interesting scenarios where players were roleplaying desperate characters of whom a great many died, but a few grew into veteran survivors.

Although as the years went by and the multiplayer communities decreased in player numbers, NWN always managed to keep a dedicated player base and a few strong servers running. Eventually Gamespy, which hosted NWN’s server list, closed down. After that you could only join a server by typing the IP address yourself. Which to many felt like the death of the multiplayer. This is because the lack of a server list made it almost impossible for any new server to make themselves known and even if the game was still being sold, very few of those new players would go through the effort required to find a single active server.

So for me, the old version of Neverwinter Nights being sold today is half a game. Even if you technically could play the online multiplayer, it was so inaccessible it was probably completely unknown to most people.

Which brings me back to me buying the Enhanced edition the day it launched: Even if the game is now 16 years old and considered dead by most, a few servers have stayed alive for all this time. Most of them were instantly accessible to log into from the Enhanced edition’s new server list, though many of them required mods. This was not much of a problem though, as the Developer had made many of those mods easily available with the addition of Steam workshop support. Small things like installing these various mods and packs could be a hassle even at Neverwinter nights’ prime time and doing so has never been as easy as it is now. This has made a lot of old players and servers return to the game, and to my pleasant surprise, among the servers was Zombie survival.

It’s hard to describe how nostalgic all of this has made me feel. Imagine if a game you loved that has been completely unavailable to you for 12 years suddenly came back. When I saw that a Zombie Survival server was available to play I was so excited to experience it again that I instantly gifted a copy of the game to an old friend to join me. A friend I met online 15 years ago in the very same game on a similar server. Once we logged onto the server, we had a discussion about if we should roleplay at all or just try and avoid other players and stick to ourselves. As soon as we were there though, we had automatically slipped into our old comfortable roleplaying habits. One of our first meetings with other players was running into two self appointed “knights” who were a bit too nice. They started by offering us some aid in finding food and asking if we would like to go exploring with them.

“So you guys are friends, huh?” My character asked them.

“We are comrades in arms” One of them replied. We quickly started to suspect they were more than just comrades though, as they kept flattering each other constantly.

Afterwards we met a party consisting of an female Druid, a rogue and a paladin so full of himself that we all secretly hoped the zombies would get him. Together as a big group we came to a particularly dangerous cave unavailable to players most of time as accessing it required a certain rare item. Once inside though, we knew we had a higher chance of grabbing some better items. If we could survive the zombie hordes filled in the tiny hallways of the cave. After we finished looting and were about to get back to a safe location the following discussion broke out:

The Druid started the conversation: “I hope we can get out of here.”

“As long as I am here we’ll be fine.” Harold the paladin answered confidently.

“If you fight like that, you’ll die sooner or later. Probably sooner.” I replied.

Larry the rogue was not having it: “Don’t be so pessimistic lass”

“I’m a realist.” I responded.

Unfortunately for all of us my character’s instincts were right and several of our group died on this adventure.

As I kept playing, I realized how long it has been since I was able to engage in this sort of immersive, in character communication with other random players. For me, it’s less about acting the role of a character and more of a chance to be creative with your writing among other people. While I recognize that this kind of exercise can often end up being silly or immature, few games that I have played make something like this work so well between random players. That was a large part of why I spent so much time playing the original Neverwinter nights, and it is something that I’m so happy to be able to experience once more.

None of that would be possible if Beamdog hadn’t put their effort into creating a new version of the game, complete with a fully functioning multiplayer mode that supports old content from the community. To be honest, I think they could have probably gotten away with not touching the multiplayer at all, and focused solely on providing access to the single player campaigns on modern PCs. Playing this new enhanced edition I realized that the remakes or other forms of rereleasing old games that I feel are the most important, are those of games that isn’t available anymore. Even if Neverwinter Nights has, in some form, been available to play this whole time, it is only now that you can experience the actual full game again.

Thank you for reading! I’m a swedish dude by the name of Joakim Jonsson who enjoy playing and analyzing all sorts of games, but perhaps the most with RPGs. If you wanna read more stuff by me I have an article about Witcher 3, and every Tuesday I host TAY’s Open Forum. If you wanna send me an email go ahead at: [email protected]

Also a large thanks to Jussi liimatainen who spellchecked and edited this.

The screenshots in this article are slightly modified to make the chat between players more visible.

#neverwinter nights #kotaku #tay

[lindoig4]

Across Canada

I will try to post a little more text today, but the internet service here is pretty poor so I will leave posting of any more photos until we get home.  We leave the US this evening and arrive back in Melbourne before dawn on Wednesday, having missed an entire day along the way.

We took a cab to Union Station to catch the VIA Rail across the country.  We have usually paid cab fares by card, but Heather used cash this time.  The cabbie gave her a few coins as change and when Heather said that there should have been some notes, he said he was keeping that as his tip - about 50% of the fare.  Heather argued, but he bullied her and insisted that he was keeping it.  Had I been closer instead of getting our bags out of the boot, he may not have been so demanding, but it left a sour taste in our mouths as it was.

The train is by no means luxurious, obviously oldish, but it is quite functional and we are comfy enough in our little cabin.  One good thing is that the bunks are bigger and much more comfortable than on the ship or the other trains we have used.  We have both slept well.

On the other hand, there is no WiFi at all, only an occasional phone signal and although there are 110-volt power outlets, they won’t charge my PC - so once again, the technology has failed us.  Maybe I am naive, but we are now in the 21st century and I reckon basic power and signal issues should have been sorted out years ago.  As it is, the battery in my PC is flat and there is no way I can use it until we reach Vancouver at best.  That means I can’t look at my photos or do much with my blog other than draft bits on my iPad.

Canada is exquisitely beautiful.  It is an absolute picture postcard, full to bursting with trees and lakes.  The overwhelming colour is green, with literally billions of tall skinny pointy trees.  Actually, they are not that tall. We have seen very few trees more than 8-10 metres tall, but there are zillions of them, mostly densely packed with both understory and overstory.  In some places, it is a bit more open, but still usually gloomy and mysterious, inviting us to explore - if only we were out there in the bush.  Aspen, larch, spruce, alder, birch, pines and firs, conifers of every description, millions of stark white trunks, black trunks, all sorts, drowning in a thousand shades of green, leaves shimmering in the breeze, gleaming in the sun, with just a smattering of autumn tones starting to appear here and there.

Then there are the thousands of lakes.  We must have traversed 1000 kilometres of marshy land with water shimmering through the low vegetation as far as we could see.  But there are thousands of open lakes as well, from just a hectare or two to those speeding past the train for kilometre after kilometre.  Did I say picture postcard?  We have seen them all. The little ones that look like they came out of a cutesy 50s or 60s movie, with the summer camp atmosphere - a few canoes tied up to a little landing, a pontoon and shallow diving board, a short rowing course, maybe a pathetic little waterski-jump and a collection of quaint little huts that are probably family holiday shacks.  Then there are the more remote ones, some with a tiny island or two with just 2 or 3 perfectly conical fir trees on them and a kayak tied up to a partly-submerged drowning landing that defies imagination about how one might access it - not even a hiking track, much less a road, in sight.  Then we have the larger ones with a couple of small tinnies out there, each with a fisherman or two, sound asleep with their rods dangling limp over the side, or perhaps the ten deserted sheds, some literally falling down, and only a tiny Cessna anchored to the shore to suggest that anyone might occasionally visit them.  We are not talking upscale Hillbilly country.  This is magically picturesque country that should warrant criminal charges if anyone but us invades it.  Add your own superlatives, but for me, I have run out.  Simply stupendously glorious!

Later.  We have just crossed the border from massive Ontario into Manitoba - after more than 20 hours heading west.  Slowly, the trees and lakes seem to be getting slightly larger, the terrain is a little more open, the trees a little lighter green and the wildflowers more profuse and colourful - mainly white, yellow and mauve/purple.

For the entire trip, there has been a line of telegraph posts and cables beside the train: around 20 cables, but obviously long defunct.  Thousands of the posts have simply sunk into the boggy earth or fallen over or submerged into the lakes, and many of the cables are broken or hanging limp and tangled.  I am amazed that nobody has attempted to salvage the hundreds of thousands of dollars of copper out there.

As we went west, it became a little hillier and we even went through a couple of short tunnels.  We also went through many cuttings where the rock had been blasted away for the track.  There was a lot of red in the rocks and it is likely that some sort of algae was growing on it to make it that colour.

It was getting dark when we rolled into Winnipeg, but we had an hour and a bit stopover, so we went into the station and used the WiFi to download our email - alas, mostly more bills to pay!  I had prepared a few emails to send, but they were all on my PC and inaccessible due to the flat battery!

It was a very rocky night, but we were up early for showers.  I raised the blind just a centimetre or two in our cabin and could see everything there was to see.  The landscape was entirely in landscape.  Flat, flat, flat - all the way to the horizon. Everything looked manicured as if the farmers had risen early and swept or ironed their paddocks to welcome us.  A bit later, we saw patches of forest and lots of neat (or sometimes sprawling) farmhouses, often with 2 or 3 little cottages and a barn or two, and mostly at least a field-bin or ten (or 30) and a tractor parked nearby.  Many farms also have a machinery graveyard, usually at a distance from the house, with rows of rusty tractors, trucks, cars, pick-ups, ploughs, harvesters, caravans, campers and who knows what, all lined up in their final resting places, slowly sinking into the landscape.  The houses all have pitched rooves, presumably to avoid too much snow collecting on them in the winter.

The paddocks are mainly cropped with wheat, barley, oats and canola, but there is also a lot of uncropped land, mostly looking too boggy to crop.  Quite a bit of the uncropped land is still productive though, with miles of road and rail verges being harvested and baled for silage.  It is obviously harvest time over here with quite a lot of crop already cut, but with plenty more still to go.  We haven’t seen much actually being harvested, but plenty of hay bales in neatly shorn paddocks.  There are a few cattle but no big herds.  Also a few horses, half a dozen goats, a donkey, a young deer standing beside the track staring at me - and at least one fox scampering across the prairie with four magpies harassing it.  It was nearly two days later before we saw any sheep: about 20 near one house and 3 at another – then none through to Vancouver.

There have been a few shallow lakes, mainly fairly small and at last, a few birds.  We crossed one wide river, very shallow with flat mud islands and hundreds of birds: all gulls and Canada Geese as far as I could see.  It is very frustrating not having any internet because I can’t identify the birds conclusively without my favourite Merlin app, but I am taking photos and making notes and hope I will be able to tie some of them down later.  It is even more frustrating that Heather can sit there posting to Facebook and her blog almost any time when the SIM we purchased for me doesn’t work in either my phone or my iPad!

There were a few places along the rivers and nearby lakes where I suspect beavers were at work.  A couple of creeks appeared to be dammed and there was an area near one suspected lodge where a whole lot of smallish trees had been felled – all with pencil-sharpener bases.  And I saw a few flat conical structures a metre or so above the water level – again with a collection of pick-up-sticks pencil-ended logs embedded in the structure.  I could be just imagining it, but the indications seemed to be there that beavers could have created the dams and underwater pyramids.

It is strange that we rocketed through the night, speeding along much faster than anywhere to date, making for a very bumpy ride - then arriving in Saskatoon where they said we were way ahead of our timetable so there would be a two hour stopover to get back on schedule.  Go figure!  The track we are on is apparently owned by a freight company and freight trains always have priority.  This means that we frequently need to stop at sidings or on branch lines, often for half an hour or more until a freight train passes.  The freight trains are massive, up to about 3 kilometres long and mostly double-deckers that roar along carrying hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cargo across the country day and night.  They are not as bad as in Russia where a few kilometres of freight barrelled past us every time I raised my camera for a shot, but there must still be at least several dozen here each day.

Next time we woke up, we were in Saskatchewan and the terrain slowly became more varied, with lumpy low hills, uneven ground, more diverse vegetation, taller trees and in due course, we had an hour or so stopover in Edmonton and next morning we rolled into Jasper in the Canadian Rockies.  Our Edmonton stop was marked by the start of a dramatic electrical storm. It was really ferocious with lightning flashing brilliantly around us every few seconds.  We went to dinner as it was getting dark and the lightning outside the dining car was tremendous.  We were soon locked up, cosy in bed, but several other passengers said the electrical storm was amazing and followed us for hours.

[isolated-loser]

Log 0017, 8:18am, 14/5/2019

 Long time no type…

So, thing have been, thinking, pretty good actually.

I started going to the nerd shop on Mondays for some of that good DnD. I co-DM-ed  in queen’s campaign last week, though my PC, a tiefling ranger-lv11/bard-lv1, was there to sort of.  That was fun, tbh.

Today, I played in a new friend, Presh’s campaign, because Queen and her DM couldn’t/didn’t come today, plus she plans on running a campaign soon. Note, calling her Presh, cuss Precious. XP She’s so sweet. I played as a lv4 wood elf, rogue. Which was fun as hell! Not gonna lie. I’m definitely going to play rogue again. plus I saw Artson today and was able to give him back his minis. It’s cool knowing he’s not dead.=)

I don’t like my family/people I don’t know/like/trust touching me. And my mother walked up behind tapped me during the game and shoulder to tell me she was there, full well knowing how much I don’t like that I don’t like her touching me, she’s known that for years. Which started a panic attack that I was able to hide, until I got to the bathroom where I almost had a full on mental breakdown.

Later, when I had to leave with her, thought I really, really didn’t fucking want to. I told her again, I don’t fucking like being touched, because If I don’t she going to do it again. Then she started crying at me, which made me cry, because I hate making people cry. And she was because she thinks, I hate her and that I think she’s dirty. Which is not the case, and I’ve told her that dozens, dozens, dozens, of times.

Not like hating her is not warranted consider that, she’s complicit in 18 motherfucking years of mental abuse at the hands of my goddamn father, which would have been more if the motherfucker didn’t die, semi constant lies, not telling me we had to move until 3am day of, 5 months after she made us lose the last place we lived, that was full the fucking brim of her fucking horded crap to the goddamn point we had to walk though motherfucking trails, that were full of dog piss and shit, oh and don’t forget she pulled me out of school when I was 11, because school in my district was full of black people, and then didn’t even teach me basic math, or take me anywhere there were other kids so I was alone, oh yeah and the drug runs she had been taking  wither on since I was 8 goddamn years old, note she been arrested twice for those, can’t forget the time I had to call 119 because she ODed, so a 16year old had to watch her mother almost die, than shake, and twitch, and scratch, and scream and piss herself, when the goddamn EMS people got there, on the day she didn’t tell we had to move till 3am that morning mind you, plus not only did she do that to me she did it to my baby bother too. I should fucking hate her, she deserve far worse than to be hated, she should have done that to us, we were fucking kids. Kids shouldn’t be put through shit like that.  

Gods, I’m crying again. I need out, I need away from these people.

Something happier now, I plan to, like, run a campaign on Mondays. I’m going to make it like underwater, cuss, like, fuck it, I can, plus it’s cool.

So, I’m still in Lash master’s campaign. It’s been wicked; I’ve loved playing my sweet Danny. He’s been described as a Great Dane who still thinks he’s a puppy. He’s a drop dead gorgeous half orc bard, who was raised by Halflings in a traveling circus. He’s a fucking weirdo, but I love it.

I’m kinda sad about Nymph going home for the summer, tbh. Note hanging with her has made me a lot more huggie.

So, Crush-Kun is soooo, fuck, cute, and nice. ^//////^ Like, I, saw him in his kilt a few weeks ago, he look really hot, tbh. I think he might actually like me, btw. Like, sometimes I catch his eyes, when I look at him, and we always say hi bye to each other, and he’ll make funny faces at me, and generally act playful. Plus when I was hugging when I was heading out a week or two go after I had hugged some other people goodbye, I was had to walk past him, and he put his arms up for a hug without prompting, plus when he did that he told me my stocking were hot. 0/////0 after, when I was literally walking out of the door, cuss I’m a wuss, I told him he looked pretty adorable himself. Like a minute or two later when I was getting in the car, he walked out, cut the store was pretty much closing, we had some more playful banter.

And then last Thursday, when I was walk with Presh out to her car, note Presh is friends with him, I did ask if he was her “boytoy” and she said she wasn’t in to him, then I confect to having a crush on him she thought that was funny btw. Then like a minute later, Crush kun and Bird san were walking out and a yelled out to bird san he can just leave without getting a hug. And Crush kun was all like so I don’t get hug then, then I told him to get back here cuss he did get to bitch about not getting a hug. And he hugged me really tight, his a lot more muscular then I thought he was >/////<, and it was one of thought spiny lifty hugs, high key, I felt super embarrassed about my weight, btw, then he hugged Presh, it was a lifty but not a spiny hug, if that mater. And we all walked towards Presh’s car, and all chatted for a minute, then me we hugged Presh a couple more time before she left. Then Crush-kun and I walked back over to the nerd shop, chatted on the way, and then he asked if I was dating Lego, he said the bearded guy, he didn’t use his name cuss I doubt he knows it, and I told him I wasn’t and people were wondering the same thing about Lego and Nymph, before everybody known about Nymph and Ranger, he said something about rumors and kinda laughed.

But like why would he ask me that? Like, I’m friendly with Lego, laugh at his jokes a lot but there vary, very punny. But like why the fuck would Crush kun ask if dating Lego. It’s possibly, I’m reading in to nothing, but eh………

 Signing Off…    

Favorite song today:  Still Feel – Half Alive

Mood: Generally good,with bad.                  

#personal #dnd #Dungeons and Dragons #trauma #crush #life #bipolar #intp #D&D #dandd5e

[syncogon]

[QZGS Fic / NaNoWriMo] Pokemon Myriad: A Thousand Chances to Save Them All

Because I hate myself I love writing, I’m attempting NaNoWriMo this year! Although I don’t expect to win, I’m using it as a chance to finally work on this long project that’s been brewing in my mind for over half a year now. It’s what it sounds like: a crossover AU between QZGS and Pokemon.

Eventually, what I have will go up on AO3, but because NaNo doesn’t exactly lend itself to... quality... that won’t be until after the month ends and I have a chance to finalize what I want to happen in this story. This is, for me, a relatively ambitious project that will require a lot of worldbuilding and plotting.

In the meantime, please enjoy this synopsis and prologue. As always, thoughts appreciated. Happy November, and good luck to everyone else attempting the challenge!

SYNOPSIS

For over a decade now, the Pokemon Trainer known as Ye Qiu has dominated the League Tournaments with his trusted battle partner, a Dragonite named One Autumn Leaf. But in a single night, in a clash of dragons under a moonless sky, everything he’s earned is brutally torn away.

Ye Xiu is beaten down, but not yet broken. Cast down from the summit, he’s determined to find a new way to the top, with a Pokemon left from his old friend. There’s no rest for the weary; as Ye Xiu embarks on a new journey, whispers of trouble stir across the region. And this strange Eevee named Lord Grim has plenty of mysteries of his own…

PROLOGUE

"Hey, little brother, I need a favor."

"That's it? No hi, how are you, good to hear your voice, I hope you're doing well these days, I'm finally giving you back your name-"

"I'm finally giving you back your name."

A very, very long pause.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Ye Qiu," a shaky breath, "I need your help. Right now. Please..."

"...Where are you? I'll be there in two minutes."

***

"They're taking care of One Autumn Leaf now," said Ye Qiu, once they were back in the security of the Ye family mansion. Ye Qiu had inherited it a few years back, when he formally took on the role of head of the family, as well as all the other things that came with the title. "Skilled doctors, trustworthy ones. He'll live, but..."

"But he'll never battle again," said Ye Xiu quietly. It was frightening, to Ye Qiu. He had never seen his brother's eyes so bleak, nor heard his voice so flat. It was as though he had aged years over the course of this one night - but who could blame him?

"Nothing's for sure yet..." Ye Qiu protested, but it sounded weak, even to his own ears. Pokemon healing technology was a miracle nowadays, but it still had its limits, and both of the twins had seen the state the Dragonite was in.

Ye Qiu looked at his older brother. "Do... you want to talk about what happened?"

"No," Ye Xiu said shortly. He'd blocked the past two hours out of his waking memories. He knew he'd relive it in his nightmares often enough.

"Okay," said Ye Qiu. "...What are you going to do now, then? Without One Autumn Leaf..."

Without One Autumn Leaf, the Pokemon partner that was registered to him, all of the accomplishments he'd earned with the Dragonite were gone. Badges, championships, everything. After all, these were all earned by two: the human trainer, and the Pokemon partner. In the eyes of the system, without his One Autumn Leaf, he was as good as a non-trainer.

"...I don't know," Ye Xiu admitted.

"You're not giving up Pokemon training, are you? The League?" Ye Qiu said. "That's been your whole life for so long now..."

"I know," Ye Xiu snapped, harsher than he intended. At Ye Qiu's flinch, he winced and softened his tone. "I know. But I don't have any Pokemon of my own now, they were all Excellent Era's, and now that..." He trailed off into silence.

Ye Qiu rarely got to see his brother anymore, but he knew that thinking face when he saw it. He opened his mouth, hesitated, then pushed through anyway. "We have plenty of Pokemon here, you know," he said, glancing at his own partner Pokemon, a Metang named Returned Night hovering in the air. "I'm sure any would be overjoyed to partner with a trainer like you?"

Suddenly, Ye Xiu blinked, snapping his head toward Ye Qiu. "Do you have a PC here?" he asked, abruptly.

"Of course." Ye Qiu led him down the hallway to a side room, where, sure enough, there was a PC. "Did you remember a Pokemon you have left?"

Ye Xiu's fingers danced over the keyboard as he logged on. In another universe, he might have made a career out of these nimble hands, but here, he was only bringing up his Pokemon boxes. He was already locked out of the Excellent Era ones - those people sure moved fast, didn't they - so all he had were the Pokemon directly belonging to him. Which, as expected, meant he was staring at page after page of empty boxes.

Except, if his memory served...

He flipped through the pages, and there. Right where he remembered.

Without a second thought, he selected [Withdraw].

[Lord Grim]

Pokemon: Eevee

Level: 5

OT: Su Muqiu

"An Eevee?" Ye Qiu asked curiously.

"Yeah," said Ye Xiu, turning over the newly-withdrawn Pokeball in his hands. "From a friend. He gifted it to me way back, but I ended up keeping it in the box all this time..."

Because it still hurt, even now, after all these years. And Ye Xiu allowed himself this one area of selfishness. But now...

"It's just a new start," Ye Xiu said, almost to himself. "Nothing more than a new start."

His golden eyes sharpened, narrowed. "I'll register with this Eevee, take on the Gym circuit again. Re-earn the badges, re-qualify for the Glory Tournament, then go from there. Join another Gym, I don't know, anything. But I'm not giving up on the trainer world.

"And don't worry," he added, glancing at Ye Qiu. "it'll be under my own name this time. Now that you're head of the family, I don't need to worry about hiding anymore, right?" And for the first time this night, Ye Xiu smiled at him. It was weak, and strained, but it was a smile nonetheless.

"You're such an idiot," Ye Qiu muttered. In his heart, though, he couldn't help but feel a slight bit of relief. This was a horrific blow, but Ye Xiu wasn't broken.

Far from it.

#quan zhi gao shou #qzgs #the king's avatar #mine #fanfic #pokemon #nanowrimo

[story-and-song]

Betrayal

a short story (that turned out to not be so short whoops) about my d&d character, izara, and everything that happened with quaro, an npc she thought of as a friend and a brother, after the single most intense session i’ve ever played. for context - rhea, scorch, alix, and clov are other pcs, arutha is the black dragon we somehow befriended, and philial is the leader of the resistance in iralos, the city we were essentially starting a slave rebellion in. quaro killed her brother, halsen. nilfa is the woman who izara recently learned was responsible for burning her village and killing her family. yikes.

Of all the things that Izara was expecting the leader of the resistance to do when they returned triumphant with the body of a dead tyrant, slapping her across the face was not one of them.

“Your friend killed my brother.”

Izara took a step back, holding a hand to her stinging cheek. “What the fuck are you talking about?” she growled, indignation warring with genuine confusion. After a long, ridiculous, incredibly trying day, an accusation like this burned. They had taken the city. The high councilor was dead. Iralos was free. Could just this one thing be easy, for once?

Of course not.

A moment later, realization broke over her like ice water flooding her veins. Shit.

Quaro.

They hadn’t seen him since that morning. She’d tried not to worry too much; he was an adult, and perfectly capable of handling himself in a fight. But why had he disappeared after the execution? Where had he gone?

What if he’d -

No. He wouldn’t.

Would he?

When the high elf guards dragged him forward in chains, the world faded to distant ringing in her ears accompanied by the thundering of her heartbeat. Her vision swam, and a black fury that she hadn’t felt in years rose in her throat like bile.

She strode forward, shoving blindly past the guards and leveling one sword at his throat. With his face tilted up towards her, she could see how bloodied and bruised he was. She ignored the twinge of sympathy in her chest.

“What did you do?” she hissed.

He turned to her. “I only followed my mission,” he said, with a voice turned to gravel from the pain.

“What fucking mission?” Fear prickled at the back of her neck. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be. Not after everything, not after she’d saved his life, not after he’d helped them, not after all that they’d been through.

Not after she’d finally started to feel like she had a family again.

~

When a strange man threw an arm around her shoulders in the bar in the Underdark hideout, it took every ounce of Izara’s willpower not to flip him over her shoulder and attack. Before she had the chance, he whispered, “Please, just go with it.” There was a desperation to his voice that intrigued her, and though she wanted nothing more than to throw his arm off, she gritted her teeth and played along.

When the slavers arrived a few minutes later, she was glad that she had.

Between the two of them and some help from Rhea, they made short work of the slavers. Tensions were understandably high in the tavern after the bloodshed, so she pulled him outside for an explanation. He introduced himself as Quaro Misthos. The slavers had been chasing him through the Underdark for miles, he said. He’d been desperate for anyone that could help fight them off, and she’d looked capable.

Her instincts screamed at her not to trust him, and she didn’t. Not fully. But there was something about him that reminded her of some of the kids she’d grown up with, or some of the little ones that she’d sometimes watched over when their parents were busy. He was a wood elf too, and there was a clumsy sincerity in his voice that made her heart ache for simpler times. It made her want to trust someone for the first time in over twenty years.

Well, she could at least see how this would play out.

“You’re free now,” she’d told him. He had been found a room, and that was that.

A few nights later, she knocked on his door just after midnight.

“Do you want to help us kill our boss?” she’d asked. He’d hardly even hesitated before agreeing.

She knew she’d liked him for a reason.

~

Trying to get into her homeland was proving much harder than it had been to get out. Their plan to bypass the guards on the way in was flimsy at best, but weirder plans had worked.

Quaro took his place at her side, and she gripped Alix’s hand tightly as they approached. Pulling this off would be nothing short of a miracle.

“Are you sure about this?” Quaro whispered to her.

“Absolutely not,” she replied. He shrugged, and they kept walking. It wasn’t like this was the first stupid thing they’d done.

They introduced themselves to the guards as a young family, a husband and wife with a young child that definitely didn’t look suspiciously like a disguised gnome.

In the end, Izara was just surprised that they got as far as they did before everything went sideways.

They ran down the path into the forest kingdom, disguises and pretenses long since abandoned. It was all she could do to keep a running count in her head - is this everyone? Did we all make it through? Between racing forward at breakneck speed and dodging arrows, she was several dozen yards away before she realized that Quaro had gone down. Surprisingly intense fear flashed through her, and she doubled back for him without a second thought.

She healed him as quickly as she could, dragging him to his feet and continuing down the road. By the time they lost sight of the guards behind them, everyone was exhausted - none of them had escaped without wounds, and they’d nearly lost Rhea. She took a moment to study the forest around her. With a start, she realized that she recognized it.

“I… may know a place where we can rest undisturbed for a time,” she offered, excitement and sorrow and an old, familiar anger battling for control of her heartbeat.

Quaro smiled at her. “Lead the way.”

~

Izara had tried to brace herself for the sight of what remained of her village. Still, a spike of ice seemed to lodge itself in her chest the moment she saw the burned-out shells of tree trunk homes and blackened bones half-buried in the grass. She drifted forward, almost subconsciously, walking the familiar path to her parent’s house. Even with all the old landmarks gone, she knew the way. She’d walked it for over a hundred years, after all.

She was only barely aware of Quaro following not far behind her when she stopped to pick a few vibrant wildflowers bobbing in the breeze where they’d grown over a scorched log.

At least something had started to grow here again.

There would be more, she knew. They were always the first ones to come back after a fire. Taking a few would not harm them.

It took a conscious effort not to crush their stems in her hand as she approached the remnants of her childhood home. She took a deep breath to stop herself from shaking. It didn’t quite work.

Most of the enormous tree that had watched her grow was long since gone. All that remained was a few sections of rotting, hollowed trunk and blackened roots. But she could still see where the door had once been, and caught glimpses of the space inside through twisted holes that had once been windows…

No. Better not to look too hard at whatever was left inside.

From just behind her, Quaro let out a low whistle.

“Gods, it’s even worse than I’d heard,” he said softly, gazing around at the rest of the village.

Izara laid the wildflowers carefully on the ground in front of her house before responding. “What did you hear about what happened here?” she asked eventually.

“I heard that it burned down about twenty years ago,” he started. “That everyone that lived here was killed. Well, except for one. I heard that it was one of the residents that started the fire - when they found her here, she ran, and they never caught her.”

“You heard wrong,” Izara snapped. She could feel heat rising to her face and ears along with a wave of frustration. She knew that they’d placed the blame on her, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

Quaro took a step back, eyes wide. “Are… are you okay?” he asked.

The gentle concern in his voice deflated her anger like a popped balloon, and her shoulders slumped as she sighed, rubbing at her forehead. “No. But perhaps I will be, someday. I’ll tell you what really happened here later; I’m hoping to find more information about it once we reach the city. Maybe you can help me.”

“If I can, I will,” Quaro said. “After all, you’ve already saved my life twice. It’s the least I can do.”

He gave her a reassuring smile, and though she hesitated, she returned it.

~

At the very least, Izara thought, they weren’t trying to make her bluff her way past the checkpoint this time. The wood elf guards wouldn’t question her and Quaro. Let the others come up with their own lies to get inside - she wasn’t any good at lying directly to people anyway.

As the two of them approached the gate, Quaro leaned over to whisper in her ear.

“What are we going for this time? Couple, siblings, friends?” The ease of the question startled her; this was becoming familiar much more quickly than she’d realized. Despite her shortcomings as an actress, things like this always seemed to go so much more smoothly with him to play off of. He was just easy to work with. It felt like they’d been doing this for years.

The thought warmed her heart in an unfamiliar way. It reminded her of the shenanigans that she and the few other children in the village would get up to when she was young; she’d never had siblings, but she might as well have. Half-forgotten laughter rang in her mind. She could picture the edge of a conspiratory smirk, could remember pieces of an elaborate distraction to break into stores of sweets in the elder’s house, could feel the heart-pounding rush of wild adrenaline as they raced into the woods with their prizes after being discovered.

For the first time in a long time, the memories didn’t leave a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Siblings, I think,” she replied. He nodded, and they fell easily into step as the gate loomed before them.

Dangerous as it was, she could get used to this.

A small part of her whispered that she already had.

~

When the two of them had accompanied Clov into the forest in search of the dragon, Izara had assumed that if anything were going to attack them, it would in fact be the dragon. This, she hadn’t expected.

The strange hairy creature in front of her giggled wildly as it dashed around the clearing, its rock monster launching boulders at anyone nearby. It still had Arutha lassoed in place. There wasn’t much that she could do; between the restraints and the wounds she’d sustained from attacking the city, she wasn’t going to be much help.

So much for having a dragon on their side.

She slashed at the creature again, and it yelped as one of her blades connected. It was starting to look hurt. Her next swing went wide, and it scurried away from her. She took the moment to look around, and her heart leapt into her throat.

Quaro was facing down the rock monster alone, and it had a boulder hefted in one massive hand, ready to bring it down on him. She was already moving when it hit home and Quaro collapsed.

She shouted for Scorch and Clov to keep them busy and laid a hand over Quaro’s mangled shoulder. His breathing was fast and shallow, but it steadied when she sent a pulse of healing magic through him. His eyes blinked open, and Izara let out a relieved sigh. Quaro surveyed the ending of the battle around them with a wince.

“Looks like I owe you another one,” he muttered, letting her help him to his feet. “Sorry about that. Where would I would be without you to save my life?”

She shot him a quick grin. “Dead, probably.”

He chuckled at that, picking up his staff from where he’d dropped it when he fell. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” he admitted.

“Don’t worry, I’ll always be here to keep an eye out for our resident damsel in distress,” Izara said, patting his cheek. He rolled his eyes, but when he followed her back to the rest of the group, he was smiling.

~

“You’re doing great, you know,” Quaro said quietly in the predawn gloom of the rented tavern room. Izara turned to look at him with an eyebrow raised.

“What?” she asked, mindful of Scorch still snoring a few feet away.

“These guys, the Bozos. They’re lucky to have you.”

“I don’t know that I would say that…” Izara muttered, feeling an echo of the frustration of wrangling unruly party members into a cohesive unit if only for the sake of keeping them all alive. They looked to her, sure, but she hadn’t even wanted that much. All she did was nag them. She doubted that “lucky” was a word that any of them would use.

“No, really,” Quaro continued. “Without you, I think they all would have died a long time ago.”

“Well, you might be right about that. Still-”

“Hey, listen. I might not have been here for long. But over this time I’ve seen how well you all work together. They give you a lot of shit, but I think that they really do respect you. And I think that they know that you’re doing your best with what you’ve got.”

Izara sighed. “I… appreciate that. All I want is to keep us all together and alive. They don’t make it easy.”

At that, Quaro laughed. “No, they certainly don’t,” he said. “But you’re doing well anyway, for what it’s worth. They need you.”

“Thank you, Quaro,” she whispered after a moment. She wasn’t entirely convinced, but it was certainly nice to hear that someone appreciated her desperate attempts to keep the group from tearing itself apart.

Quaro leaned back to peer out the window at the nearly deserted cobblestone streets below.

“Do you want to go take a walk?” he asked, glancing over at Scorch’s sleeping form.

Izara smiled, and the perpetual tension in her shoulders seemed to ease just slightly.

“Yeah. That’d be nice.”

~

Flash after flash of lightning seared the night sky, and the pouring rain left Izara’s hair plastered to her skin. She swiped impatiently at the water running into her eyes, but it didn’t help much. The ground beneath her feet was slick, churned to thick mud by the rain and panicked feet. There were still screams from nearby; she had no idea what was happening. Another flash made the blades in her hands gleam. It was followed instantly by a sizzling crack of thunder that all but shook the ground.

“What’s happening?” she shouted over the noise of the storm and distant combat. Scorch shrugged helplessly, her fiery hair nothing but steam. Izara glanced around, squinting into the darkness. Nothing. Not even her eyes, accustomed to the Underdark and nighttime forests, were much use on a night like this.

Cursing, she turned back to Scorch. “We have to find the others! We don’t-” She cut herself off as a familiar face, wild-eyed with panic, came sprinting out of the gloom towards them. Quaro skidded to a halt, slipping a little in the mud and reaching up to steady himself on her shoulder. She grabbed his elbow, and he looked up at her, gasping for breath.

“Izara! Listen, I-I need your help. There’s not much time to explain, but I just-” The crack of a whip echoed over another low rumble of thunder, and he spun around to face it.

Emerging from the shadows was an unfamiliar elven woman in a dark cloak, a long, curled whip held at the ready. She sent Quaro a cold smile, and raked her gaze over Izara and Scorch. They didn’t seem to be her targets - she turned back to Quaro and raised her voice over the storm.

“There you are. You’ve led me on quite the hunt - Lady Nilfa won’t be pleased.”

Izara’s blood seemed to freeze in her veins.

Nilfa.

The name she’d been searching for since they’d arrived. Her heartbeat stuttered in her ears, and a vicious sort of excitement flooded her mind with a rush of adrenaline. Her only thought was that she needed answers, and she would do whatever it took to wring them out of this woman.

“Quaro, what is she talking about?” she growled. “Who is this?”

Quaro shook his head frantically. “I don’t know! I - I knew her once, but I haven’t seen her in years! I don’t know what’s going on! She’s trying to kill me!”

Izara’s grip tightened until the leather-wrapped pommels of her swords were digging almost painfully into her palms.

“Then we’ll just have to kill her first.”

~

The nice thing about not needing sleep was quick reaction times, Izara reasoned when she was startled out of her trance by a knock on the door. It took her a moment to remember where she was. Stone ceilings, rickety wooden door - for a slightly panicked moment, she imagined that she was back in the Underdark.

After a moment, she remembered the events of the previous night - the group tracking down one of Iralos’s five councilors, then killing him and dragging his unconscious wife back down here for the rebellion to deal with. Right. The underground tunnels. The hidden resistance. That was where they’d decided to spend the night before the planned excitement tomorrow.

She stood silently, taking the hilt of one of her swords without a second thought as she crept towards the door. It wasn’t likely that a potential assassin would be so bold as to knock, but you could never be too careful. She still didn’t trust these people.

The door was rough beneath her fingertips as she eased it open. It creaked, and she winced a little at the sound. Outside, the stone hallway was dark. She could feel the chill of the underground prickling at the pack of her neck. Gods, but she was tired of caves.

She pushed the door open a bit wider and peered around the frame; her shoulders slumped with relief when she saw the face behind it a moment later. Quaro, looking nervous and confused but none the worse for wear, gave her a small wave.

“Finally,” he whispered. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you guys.”

Izara raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, we’ve been looking for you too,” she said. “Where did you go?” She stepped forward to glance down the hallway. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around.

“It’s, ah, a long story. And I’m honestly not sure? It was, um, weird. Really weird. Can I come in?” he asked, voice still hushed. She stepped aside without hesitation, swinging the door shut behind him. Much as she didn’t want to admit it, she’d been worried about him. She was just glad that he was alright.

“Well, it seems we both have some updates, then,” she said, sitting back down on the mat spread over the floor. “The revolution begins tomorrow, at Halsen’s execution. Before that, we’ll be accompanying Rhea to the morning’s council meeting for a bit of information-gathering. One of the councilors ran into a bit of misfortune tonight. But with the help of magic, he’ll be showing up as normal tomorrow. At least, that’s what the other councilors will think.”

Quaro sucked in a breath, eyes glinting with a hint of anxiety in the low light.

“Tomorrow, then. It’ll all be over.”

Izara nodded. She could feel it too, an unease gathering like a storm in the pit of her stomach. Whatever happened tomorrow would determine the fate of the city and their entire mission.

They’d made it this far. They could win.

They had to.

“We can do this,” she said, hoping that her conviction was convincing. “We’ve done all we can. All that’s left is to free this city. Besides, we have a dragon on our side, remember?” He cracked a smile at that, and she smiled back. She’d protected him this far. She could keep him safe.

One way or another, tomorrow would have victors.

She was going to do everything in her power to count them both among them.

~

“Was all of this - did none of this mean anything to you?” Izara hissed. There was no concealing the way that the point of her blade trembled; she could barely feel her hands through the buzzing numbness of shock. She was many things, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew what this meant, even if he wasn’t talking.

He looked up at her with a cool, flat gaze and said nothing. She gritted her teeth. How dare he sit here, calm and collected, like he had nothing to answer for? How dare he act like he hadn’t just betrayed her, betrayed all of them, after everything that they’d done for him?

How dare he?

A tidal wave of fury rose behind her eyes, and she dug the edge of her blade deeper into his skin. A thin line of red wound its way down his throat, and she swallowed hard against the twinge of guilt in her chest.

“You worked for her, didn’t you. You worked for Nilfa. I asked you about her, more than once, and you said nothing. After everything that she’s done to me. After you saw what happened to my village, after what I told you. And you - you fucking said nothing. You pretended to feel sorry for me. And the whole time, the whole fucking time, you were lying. You foul, heartless bastard, after I decided to trust you-” She turned away, eyes stinging, and let the tip of her sword drop into the dust.

“Was it worth it?” she asked quietly, voice shaking. “Was it fucking worth it?”

He remained silent.

Izara took a deep breath. She could practically feel the worried eyes of her friends on her, and oh, but that was not something she was prepared to deal with. This could not continue. She refused to be made more of a fool than she already was. Stupid of her to have shown him compassion, to have allowed herself weakness to begin with.

Her fault for trusting him, in the end.

“Where is she?” she growled, leveling him with a glare. “Where is Nilfa?”

He stared back at her for a long moment.

“I know you think you’ve won a victory here today-” he started, in that croaking, damaged voice, and she almost laughed. None of this was anything but hollow, now.

“There is no victory until she is dead.” Her voice was flat, cutting him off. She had known for the past twenty years that she would not find rest until whoever had killed her people was dead. It had been foolish to allow herself to stray from that path, especially now that she had a name and a face.

It would not happen again.

“One last question, then,” she said, forcing her expression into a mask of calm, even as her hands still shook. “Was it worth it? Lying to me? Lying to all of us? All of those innocent lives, a peaceful village full of civilians - I hope that whatever you gained was worth the slaughter of more than fifty people.”

“Casualties of war,” Quaro croaked.

Izara saw red.

There it was. An admission. He’d never cared - of course he hadn’t. He’d known, and he’d never once felt even a flicker of guilt.

“Casualties of war?” she whispered. “What war? You self-righteous bastard. They were civilians. None of them deserved to die. We didn’t know of any war; you would try to justify burning a village full of people - and my family - for the sake of a war that they knew nothing about?”

“You don’t know what traitors your parents were.”

“Don’t you dare.” Hearing him speak of her parents sent fire through her veins. “Don’t you speak of them. You have no right.”

She took a step back, barely feeling the impact of her foot on the ground. Yesterday, she would have killed to protect him - had even done so.

Today, she wanted nothing more than to bury her blade in his heart.

Abruptly, she spun around to face Philial, who had been watching the whole exchange with an unreadable expression.

“Would you mind if I killed him here and now? He is your prisoner, after all.” Part of her mind screamed that she didn’t need permission; he deserved to die for this. But even now, even with rage coursing through her and his betrayal plain as day, some small part of her hoped that she would say no.

Philial glanced at Quaro, the lines of her face hard with exhaustion and grief. “We will kill him tomorrow, together,” she said finally. “A public execution, along with the last of the councilors. He does not deserve to be spared that humiliation.”

Izara gave her a single sharp nod, stepping back and sheathing her sword without looking at him. No more weakness. No more vulnerability. No one would ever do anything but exploit it. She should have learned that lesson long ago.

Rhea stepped forward, almost uncertain. “Do you want me to…” she gestured at Quaro, and Izara knew that if anyone could drag information from him, it would be her.

“Do whatever you want,” she said, waving Rhea off. A bone-deep ache of exhaustion seemed to have settled over her all at once. She could no longer bring herself to care.

Izara trudged away, barely able to keep her chin raised. The battle was over. They had taken the city. Fighting alongside her team had never felt more natural. Iralos was free, the high elves were slaves no longer, and they were a step closer to saving the world.

They had won.

And she was still alone.

#bailey writes #dnd #d&d #dnd stories #dnd character #dnd shenanigans #my characters #izara barlanti #wood elf #ranger #dnd 5e #5e #dungeons and dragons #rpg #dnd fic #dnd writing #betrayal #npc #dnd party #d&d stories #d&d 5e #d&d character #d&d shenanigans #d&d party #d&d writing #d&d fic

[tina-incambodia]

Service Interrupted.

I have so much to say but I'm not sure I could put it into words that would successfully complete the journey from my mushy brain to my shaky finger tips. I wasn't planning on ever having a "Part 2." I planned on an 11 day vacation in the 9th month of my service. Instead, I left my home for about 8 weeks. Home? What's home?

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”

― Miriam Adeney

June 14, 2018

I'm sitting in the airport. The same one I sat in almost one year ago to leave the first time, but it couldn’t feel more different now. I have people, whole families that love me on both sides of the planet. I have two bedrooms, thousands of miles apart. I am welcomed at countless dinner tables and patio chairs, yet I couldn’t feel more lost or, most of all, homeless. So I'm back on a plane to search for a feeling and chase a dream. It is a wonderful yet painful experience to have a heart so full yet stretched so, so thin, 8,671 miles to be exact. 

So, 8 weeks is a long time to be home… or be away from home…? It’s a long time to be so unsure of and have no control over what comes next. Limbo, as I like to refer to it. With Peace Corps as the facilitator, I've spent many, many months of the past few years in limbo. And the answer to most questions during those times is, "I don't know." Not "I don't know," because I don’t want to tell you, but because I truly don’t know. I don’t know when I'm leaving. I don’t know if I'm staying. I don’t know what I'm hoping for either. That is one real thing I've learned. When Peace Corps used the word, "flexible," years ago, I can say now that I had absolutely no knowledge of what that word actually means. To be flexible with coming or going, and staying or leaving, in regards to home…. And to know and understand that hoping worrying for either end is, to be frank, useless. To reach a place in your mind where either and any option will be okay for you. On small scales this is simpler; having flexible eating habits, for example comes more easily. Sure, I won't be happy about eating my 536th bowl of rice this year but hey, I'm flexible. This is the definition of flexibility I expected when I signed my name in the little box 2 years ago. 

The universe throws you for loops, and through hoops, under falling rocks, and over oceans. "It doesn’t get any easier along the way, it just gets different." I had been looking forward to my  April vacation to the US for about 8 months. At the beginning of September, not even 2 months into my service, my nephew Camden Jorge was born and it broke my heart to miss out. I was determined to visit home the first chance I had so I could meet this gentle bundle of joy before he took his first steps. And my niece too; we had countdowns and plans far in advance to bake a cake and have a sleepover. I had 11 days home and every moment was precious. That was the plan. 11 days, 1 family party, 1 sleepover, a trip to Boston, and a lot of pizza and buffalo chicken. I had been dreaming about the damn buffalo chicken… I got to have it many, many more times than I had expected, because instead of a short 11 days, I was home for 8 weeks: 2 weeks of vacation and 6 weeks of medical evacuation…. 

August 17, 2018 

To cut to the point: I was knocked to the ground and stepped on by an elephant. Yup, you read correctly, an elephant. I was traveling alone to a sanctuary and reservation in Modulkiri, a province in northeast Cambodia, for what I hoped would be a peaceful and adventurous retreat before I went back to the states. There were 9, lucky for me, very kind helpful people on our tour and we had just taken a crazy ride in the back of a pick-up into the jungle and met the first two elephants of the five we would see that day. My fear and apprehension in the face of the gentle beasts had worn off in time to meet Lucky, a 72 year old female who likes to live alone across the river from the others. I was the last one to join the tour group when we found her thanks to a young woman dressed more for a picturesque summer pool party than a trek in the Cambodian jungle. Needless to say, she had a little trouble keeping up in her Forever 21 flip-flops and I was stuck behind her for the walk. By the time I arrived, Mr. Tree, the guide and owner of the sanctuary, had already finished his introduction to Lucky, which apparently was very important to hear as this elephant is especially particular about how she is fed. I asked a young French woman who I had spoken with earlier to take a few pictures as I fed Lucky.

We were in a tight space surrounded by tall grass; the 9 of us just fitting into the nooks and crannies of the paths created by the elephants and their trainers. I stood about a foot from Lucky as I fed her and touched her truck. In the next moment, she turned towards me and rammed the strongest part of her against my chest and neck. My head whipped backwards and I fell to the ground away from her but my lower extremities were still in her reach. The knock to the ground scared me but didn’t hurt just yet. It was the excruciating pain I immediately felt in my right foot. As I shot up, pushing the branches of the bush I fell into out of my way, my thoughts were racing and I expected a bag of bones for a foot. Luckily, (no pun intended) my foot was still in the shape of a foot. From what I could see, my first and fourth toenails had bent all the way back, and my third toe was unmistakably dislocated. I have never had any broken bones before but some sort of instinct kicked in and I fixed what I could; maybe thinking it would help the pain subside. I pushed my toenails back down and popped my dislocated toe back into place. I cringe thinking about it now, even after telling the story hundreds of times. Mr. Tree sat down in front of me and asked if I was okay. "This has happened to four girls before you," he said. Searching for some comic relief, I responded, "Oh, you don’t put that on your website do you?" He didn’t think the comment was so funny. I could tell from his wide-eyed worried face, probably thinking what would happen if I was the next review on TripAdvisor. I winced as he tried to pull all my toes into the right place, just like you do when you might be trying to crack your knuckles. I had to get up and out of the bush and get to some place of comfort. An older Canadian man traveling with his wife helped me to a small clearing. I grabbed my makeshift med kit, which I would later learn, didn’t contain even half of what I needed to care for an actual injury, from my backpack and popped three Peace Corps issued Ibuprofens.  My fellow tourists gave me clean wipes, elevated my foot with their backpacks, and sat by me while I processed the trauma. The Canadian woman sat by me and rubbed my shoulders, breathed with me, and talked me through my fits of sobbing, laughing, and complete and utter disbelief. "What the actual fuck?!" I kept repeating. “How could this happen? How did I just get attacked by an elephant?” I didn’t know it then but, for the next two months family, friends, and strangers would try to answer these hypothetical questions with such wise words, “Well, at least it’s a good story.” I can’t count how many times I’ve heard that one. I sat on a log and waited for a truck from in town to deliver the stretcher I would involuntarily be carried out of the jungle on. Usually, when I'm hurt, I try to act tough, I don’t ask for help, I hold back the tears and carry on. This time, I wanted to do all those things but absolutely could not. I tried to walk and crumbled in the pain and as we sat and waited the adrenaline and shock wore off and the pain only got worse. So, four Khmer men lifted me up and I was dubbed, "Queen of the Jungle."

We returned to the lodge perched above the jungle and the girl I had asked to take my picture helped tape my toes and as the rest of the tourists continued on with the planned excursions for the day, I sat looking out at the Cambodian canopy skyline all afternoon ruminating over my recent trauma and convincing myself the injury wasn't that bad. At least I had a great view. They don’t do anything for broken toes anyway, right? (wrong) In addition to a hammock for the night, the tour provides a traditional Khmer dinner and rice wine too. I didn’t want to miss out on any of it. I waited till the next morning, said good bye to my helpful, kind fellow adventurers, climbed up a big hill to reach the tuk-tuk and returned to the lodge in town. Cutting my peaceful adventure a few days short, I called PC explained the story and was delivered to the hospital in Phnom Penh, a 6 hour long car ride. 

The doctors in Phnom Penh showed me my X-rays and the breaks, gave me a huge ugly boot, and 3 prescriptions. I couldn’t process how real my injury was, even if it was just broken toes. I would be spending my much treasured time at home in a big boot and on anti-biotics. I was devastated and, aside from the amazing PC Medical Officer, alone in Phnom Penh. I didn’t even tell my family at home. I didn’t want them to worry about me traveling home. And I mostly didn’t want to have to tell my story again and again before I had even processed it myself. I spent the next 3 days in a hotel room ordering delivery, binging netflix, soaking my swollen purple foot in ice cold water, and crying. It sounds dramatic, I know. It could have been much worse, I know. 

I tried to mentally prepare myself for the next 25 hours of traveling, which is something I would, in a normal state, enjoy. Traveling alone gives me a sense of independence and maturity. I like to explore airports, drink bloody marys at whatever time I damn well please, and if I'm in the right mood, talk to some strangers. I had even considered leaving the airport during my layover in Dubai. But this time, I was dreading it; dressed like a bum with swollen, "I've been crying for days," eyes, lugging around bags much too heavy for broken toes, and stuck in a bulky plastic boot. I didn't want a bloody mary, I wanted a hug and my bed. I had to ask for bulkhead seating so I could elevate my foot during the flight and get up and walk often to avoid blood clots. I didn’t think about how hard this might be on a full 16 hour flight from Dubai to Boston sitting in a window seat next to a very nice, but very sleepy, couple. 

So, I went home for vacation, arrived at the airport with a great story for the family and then did all the things as planned. I finally met my nephew, I had a sleepover with my niece, ate food I had been craving with the people I missed, and on the 8th day home had one little party so I could see my whole family before heading back. I saw a podiatrist the day after to make sure everything was healing correctly. It was healing... but nowhere close to where it needed to be for my main form of transportation to be a bicycle. The doctor said, "Your big toe is in 5 pieces...there is no way you are going back in 3 days. I'll see you in 3 weeks.” My jaw dropped, I hadn't expected this at all. When I was in Cambodia PC had already seen the x-rays and ruled I'd be just fine to come back. Turns out the expert podiatrist thought differently. I called PC. I’d be home for 6 more weeks.

An extended vacation, you say? Oh! How wonderful! More time to spend with family and friends, more buffalo chicken and quality beer, maybe even a beach day? Great point. The thing is, my partner planned to leave for Cambodia the following week. In the most romantic and wild gesture, he quit his jobs, tied up loose ends and we planned spend the next 3 months in the same country  figuring out if we could make it work after spending the last year on opposite sides of the world trying to move on and failing at it quite miserably. It was a crazy thing to even think about. I had left for Cambodia almost a year ago and now he would be coming too; for us. We had been planning this for months now and we were so close, but the universe doesn’t care about your plans! So now, with flights booked already, he would leave for Cambodia and I'd be home. And we would be on opposite sides of the world, yet again all because of this elephant ironically named, Lucky. If I believed in signs like I say I do… I think this was one for the books. The universe with all its magic and power was pulling us apart once again. Writing this now, 4 months later, I still can't believe it all happened. I'm not sure Hollywood or even the infamous Lifetime could write this story. 

Before I was assigned medical evacuation status, I thought of it quite romantically; that'd be nice… six weeks home. I could use an extended vacation from bucket showers and rice. And it was nice. It was great to have so much extra, unexpected time with family and friends. I was home for mother’s day and my brother’s college graduation (peek my big ugly boot in the pic).  I even fit in a beach day. But I really didn’t expect all the mental and emotional challenges that come along with living in such a state of limbo for 6 weeks, in which I had no control of the outcome. Did I want to return to PC? Yes. Was I completely sure of that answer? No. But was I ready to quit? Hell no. Was it even in my hands? Nope. If I wasn’t healed in 6 weeks, I would be "medically separated," essentially ending my service unless I wanted to apply to return at a later date. If my foot didn’t heal correctly, I would need surgery, which would most definitely exceed my six week limit. The podiatrist explained where he would stick the three metal pins in my big toe if the 5 puzzle pieces weren't agreeing with each other.  I can’t count how many times or how many people, relatives, friends, old bar customers, and strangers, I told my story to. But I can say that my answer to their follow up questions was usually, "I don’t know." I had no clue when I was going back. I had no clue even if I was going back. And while I tried to swim in this state of uncertain limbo, I felt that I really didn’t have a place at "home" anymore. My friends were busy with jobs, boyfriends, and moving on with new cars and apartments. And although time with my family was great, many times my mind reminded me that this is what I was missing out on as I struggled to teach English and drink a gallon of water a day to make up for all the sweating on the other side of the world.  It had been years since I first decided I wanted to join PC, and I was facing the decision again, and it was harder than ever before.  I didn’t expect anyone's life to stop while I went on my big adventure, but I also didn’t expect to feel so lost and out of place when I returned. I loved eating chips and salsa on my couch alone, it was something I had been looking forward to, but I never expected to feel so lonely doing it. Yoga had become my saving grace throughout the past year of ups and downs and with 3 broken toes I couldn't even do that. And other activities I would have found peace in, hiking mountains, dancing, walking through parks, were all impossible for me. I felt the universe was giving me a big middle finger. Self-pity, I know, but that’s how I felt. I had waited almost a year to spend time with my partner again and he was traveling Thailand and Myanmar while I sunk into the couch. For a few weeks I really had no idea how to deal with all of these emotions. They say you are never alone but had this ever happened to anyone else in the history of the world? This crazy, unbelievable story of mine truly started to weigh me down. And having to tell it over and over again only to get the same advice or laughs or looks from each and every person was draining. All of my plans were crumbling in front of me and I had no control over what would happen next.

A long six weeks and several doctor appointments and x-rays later, I received medical clearance just in time. Leaving the second time was much harder than the first. The excitement of the unknown was lost and I knew I was going back to a challenge, one that I wasn’t even sure I wanted to take on again. After three long flights and two treacherous and stressful layovers, one of which if I hadn't been flying the same airline, I would have missed my next flight, I arrived in Phnom Penh close to midnight on June 17th. Two of my closest friends here surprised me at the hotel with a bouquet of freshly picked flowers and a few beers. We stayed up late catching up on the balcony overlooking the city. And just like that, I was back. It is months later now and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. Just last week someone said, "So happy you came back." I had heard that so many times since I returned. This time, I finally replied, "Me too," without the guilt of lying. I am happy I came back. It was a strange transition. It still is. I returned towards the end of the school year with energy and motivation dying down on the parts of both students and teachers. I hadn’t spoken any Khmer in 8 weeks. I felt, and still feel, such a loss of fluency, and more emotionally, a loss of belonging. I went home to America and didn’t belong there. I came back to Cambodia and didn’t belong here either. It was a tough and painful and at times still is, but all in all, home is where you make it; it just takes a lot of effort and time.

My partner was here for my first five weeks back; we spent our weekends together as planned, finally on the same side of the planet and in the same country. It was wonderful. We visited some of the most beautiful spots in Cambodia. My family here, in addition to welcoming me back after 8 weeks, also made him feel at home as well. It was heartwarming to witness my two worlds meeting. He left at the beginning of August. School vacation began at the same time and now I'm left with a crazy amount of free time which I'm hoping to fill with productive and fulfilling activities. I’ve been getting back into yoga, reading some good books, and prepping some eager 12th graders for their exam. All in all, I guess I’m pretty lucky to be here considering I was attacked by a 6,000 pound beast. So begins part 2 of my service. I am left with the task of jumpstarting my heart and mind to be fully here; committed and happy. 

#cambodia #peace corps #peacecorpscambodia #asia #elephants #medical evacuation

[singstall]

THIS KILLS THE GAME: The Armada/Hungrybox Rivalry (part 1)

Hello, and welcome to Singstall, a site whose primary function is serving as a compact, chronological, searchable history log of competitive Melee. I’m still working on that. You can find the prototype here.

When you ask people their favorite Melee rivalries, you’ll probably hear about Mango and Armada, the two players that clashed at Genesis and have since defined Melee. You might get Armada and PPMD, who played three set classics at three of the most important tournaments of all time and gradually forced each other off their mains. There’s Mango/Leffen, Mango/Mew2King, even Ken/Azen and Ken/PC Chris if you want to take it back...but I contend that the best rivalry in Melee history is a matchup that has become a punchline: Armada/Hungrybox.

Long before seemingly every grand finals ended in a Fox/Puff showdown between the two best players in the world, Armada was arguably the best in the world and Hungrybox was just...a god, yes, but until relatively recently he was a lesser god, truthfully not much of a threat to take huge tournaments. But though he wasn’t exactly a demon, Hungrybox made himself the ultimate thorn in Armada’s side.

While Mango and Armada play a matchup they’ve both refined to perfection, this is mostly an extension of them being wonderful players against anyone. Armada and Hungrybox have always needed to dedicate a certain amount of headspace specifically to each other, which at some points led to them playing a game that barely resembled the Melee we thought we knew.

It’s all the more remarkable that the players involved in the game’s most infamous matchup are now the two best players in the world. We’ll explore their rivalry in six chapters, with the series hopefully concluding around Evo 2018.

Today, we begin with by far the shortest chapter, spanning only two sets. But it’s a great prelude to chapter two, which is something like the main event in this series.

I imagine that as the character matchup that we’ve become more familiar with emerges in chapter three, I’ll have less to say about moment to moment minutiae. But for now, I’ll likely squeeze out every fascinating bit of Peach/Puff, Young Link/Puff, Peach/Fox, and the rest.

Hopefully, instead of just telling you what happened, I can spin a good yarn.

Chapter 1: No One Wanna Hear Her Sing

It was a tale of Peach and Puff.

In July 2009, Armada, having toppled Amsah in two large tournaments earlier that year to establish himself as the best player in Europe, traveled to Genesis, a tournament name that would prove prophetic. Some didn’t expect him to even finish top 32.

But he kept winning and heads kept turning. He beat Lucky.

Then he beat DaShizWiz.

Then he beat Mew2King.

And then, he beat Mango.

Just like that, Armada had established himself as one of the greatest players on the planet. At times, commentators Phil and Waffles sounded resigned to his victory.

But a wrinkle quickly appeared: Mango dropped the Falco he’d played for most of winners finals and switched back to Jigglypuff, still his best character at the time. Just when it looked like Armada, up 2-1, would win the tournament in the first set of grand finals on Battlefield, Mango read Armada’s roll to the center and ended the game with an iconic rest.

Armada got rested so hard that we saw visions of the distant future. First, of Armada losing a lead on tournament point to a rest on Battlefield at the biggest Melee tournament to that point. And then, with Mango making Peach/Puff look as tragic as it feels today, of Armada trying out Fox against Puff, an idea he wouldn’t revisit against Puff until over five years later.

Armada had shocked the world, but immortality had just eluded him thanks to Jigglypuff. Like Bombsoldier before him, he destroyed expectations and instantly reinvented the character, but he would need to return to the United States again to cement himself as something more.

Armada’s second tournament in the United States, January 2010′s Pound 4, was an aberration, the very last time he would lose to anyone outside of an exceptional group of six players.

SilentSpectre upset him in winners, and to this day the only Falcon to defeat Mango remains the only Falcon to defeat Armada. Amsah upset him in losers, leaving Armada in fourth place, outplaced by another European. He would not get his rematch with Mango.

Had Armada defeated either SilentSpectre or Amsah, though, he’d have run into another headache: Hungrybox.

Half a year later, he’d finally run into that headache.

Though Armada’s and Mango’s Genesis sent shockwaves through the Melee community that we’re still feeling today, a much quieter success story would prove just as important: Hungrybox finished third, losing in each bracket to the eventual champion (after all, Mango would be his demon for the next roughly six years).

Hungrybox had been climbing already, finishing seventh at Revival of Melee, but Genesis was so much on another level that Hungrybox broke down crying when he upset DaShizWiz to make top 8.

Little did he know, he wasn’t even close to done. He tore through Darkrain, Scar, and Zhu before finally falling to Mango a second time to finish third.

The top three finishers at Genesis were all future Evo winners. To date, the only future Evo winners.

Hungrybox would continue ascending, double eliminating Mew2King at Tipped Off 5 and then winning Revival of Melee 2, his first major tournament.

Hungrybox was in the middle of a very successful year when Apex 2010 rolled around, and with his demon Mango sandbagging and exiting the tournament early, it would have looked like an obvious win for Hungrybox.

But Armada was there for his third American tournament. And, my goodness, Armada hated Jigglypuff.

No one wanna hear her sing.

Apex 2010 (August 8, 2010)

Still on a meteoric rise to godhood, Hungrybox began his bracket tearing through Tec0, Kage, and Vanz.

Armada returned after his disappointing Pound 4 performance, and was ready to make up for it and maybe, especially with Mango playing Mario during his “Scorp” phase, win his first American tournament. He made his way through Lucky, Axe, and Zhu to make it into top 8 on the winners side. The puffiest Puff and the ultimate Puff hater finally were to meet.

Winners Semis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4PDR98Y_FE&list=PLWE8jJxz4TmhZLIdUzY7BOphfbiWCTsRz

This was the only set between the two to not be accompanied by commentary.

The pair struck to Dream Land, and the tone of helplessness was set early on. On the very first stock, Armada shielded a strange rest from Hungrybox, but it was suddenly clear that the risk/reward in this matchup would be rather kind to errant rests, with Armada only putting on 28%. On Armada’s second stock, Hungrybox found a quick up-tilt into rest, and though Armada lived easily and punished the rest by taking Hungrybox’s first stock with down-smash, the 36% seemed almost worth the stock loss given the pace of the match.

Just think, using rest just to get some extra credit, giving up a stock. That’s the matchup’s struggle, right there.

Despite a solid game plan from Armada, namely walling out Puff’s back-air by frequently pulling turnips, he needed some luck to keep it competitive. Armada was fortunate enough to pull a Bob-omb, and fortunate that after a Puff up-air the bomb dropped directly onto Jigglypuff, taking a stock at 70% on an enormous stage and giving Armada a brief stock lead.

But it quickly evaporated, and though he was able to bring it to a last stock situation, a string of back-airs sent Armada into a pretty solid deficit. He managed to pull a beam sword, but didn’t do anything with it. Eventually Armada found himself offstage, floating back and getting hit off again and again until Hungrybox took the game.

Armada counterpicked to Final Destination and harshly accelerated his turnip pulls, going out of his way to find space to pull them safely before letting them rip. But this game was a lot less eventful than the last. On his last stock, Armada jumped out of an up-tilt rest setup, and though Armada found a much more optimal punish (turnip to charged down-smash) without platforms, Hungrybox connected a successful up-tilt to rest almost immediately after to finish the set 2-0.

Armada ran through Axe, PPMD (still Dr. Peepee, until April 2014), and Mew2King (a thrilling set in its own right) to make it back to Hungrybox in grand finals.

Grand Finals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoaIEuRlOYs&list=PLWE8jJxz4TmixkNzfDupiYbi2oDEWhS3C

“I really love up-air, it looks like Jiggs waving to the crowd, yo.” “It’s the ‘olé.’“ “Heh. ¡Olé!”

After striking to Final Destination, Armada began building a lead after Hungrybox missed another rest (strangely not noticing that Armada DI’d his up-tilt well) and eventually led by about a full stock, curbing Hungrybox’s aerial punishes and up-tilts with turnips. Over two minutes passed before Armada lost his first stock.

Thanks mostly to his improved use of turnips, which even covered a likely rest setup at one point, Hungrybox was still nearly at kill percent as Armada began his final stock. Armada’s constant projectile attack was a success (even if he again had no use for a beam sword), and it had shades of what their sets would look like for the next four years.

But Hungrybox finally found an up-tilt rest, immediately erasing the lead Armada had amassed and ending the game in devastating fashion.

Armada ran it back to Final Destination, and things immediately began terribly when Hungrybox, still only at 14%, hit a jumpless, recovering Armada offstage with a well-placed down-smash, taking a full stock lead crushingly quickly.

Peach doesn’t have any easy answers for that kind of lead in the matchup, but a missed rest (”that doesn’t matter”) and a turnip to charged up-smash punish quickly killed Hungrybox off the top (”It mattered!”), leveling the playing field when things could have been dire.

Armada kept it close for the rest of the game, lagging slightly behind and keeping up his turnip game as Hungrybox tried to constantly pressure Armada, frequently weaving in with neutral-air. We got another pretty tense game. But Hungrybox’s finisher fit the commentators’ narrative: up-air.

The third game would be both the last of theirs without commentary and the last of theirs on Kongo Jungle 64.

Hungrybox responded to Armada’s campy turnip game by taunting four times, perhaps as a nod to Peach’s infamous history on Kongo Jungle. But again, Hungrybox found an early kill, this time with up-tilt to rest. But again Armada answered without taking much damage.

Particularly during this match, both players showcased Melee at some of its very most evasive and defensive, something that would characterize their matchups to do this day. But the gap kept widening. Puff pulling ahead, as always, felt like an inevitability.

After bringing Hungrybox to his last stock, Armada was on his last legs with 119%, but managed to pull a stitch. Alas, he’d never get to use it. Hungrybox back-aired Armada off the stage, and Armada would never make it back.

With just over a minute left on the clock, Hungrybox won the third game, winning Apex 2010, winning all five matches against Armada’s Peach. It was so decisive, that in his post-tournament interview (which featured a surprise guest), the fact that he missed Mango seemed to loom larger than Armada.

Interviews: Hungrybox Armada & Aniolas (part 1) (part 2) Melee Singles Champion Hungrybox

But he couldn’t have known that it would be over four years before he’d win another major tournament – in fact, that was the next time we’d see Armada’s Peach against Hungrybox’s Puff.

He couldn’t have known that the era of Peach/Puff was over before it began.

Armada couldn’t finish Apex 2010 without creating a now-infamous clip.

Chapter Recap: Apex 2010 Winners Semis (Hungrybox, 2-0), Apex 2010 Grand Finals Set 1 (Hungrybox, 3-0)

Chapter Set Count: Hungrybox, 2-0 Running Set Count: Hungrybox, 2-0

Next time, The Kokiri Sword.

#armada #hungrybox #melee #ssbm #jigglypuff #peach #young link #puff #apex #apex 2010 #d1 #dogysamich #mew2king #mango #scorp #r/smashbros #ppmd #smash #super smash bros #homemadewaffles #phil #doyouphilsme