#posting it here first because i don’t have to play games with an insta level algorithm here!

[limitile]

GIRLIIIIEEEEESSSS‼️‼️

#jojo’s bizarre adventure #jojo fanart #jjba fanart #jjba #stone ocean #jolyne cujoh #jolyne kujo #ermes costello #jojo foo fighters #stone ocean anime #art #lilyfloraart #posting it here first because i don’t have to play games with an insta level algorithm here! #holy trinity of girl bosses

[astroluvr]

Can u do something based off baxter avenue by jack harlow? Like something based off the lyrics

"My main thing shall remain nameless

Know they ask about her often but I ain't sayin' shit

There's a level of discretion that I'm maintaining

She don't understand it but she ain't famous

We gon' see who's still around once the game changes

She's a business woman but I got her playing favorites

You ain't rooting for me then I gotta make changes

Ex girls watchin' with a lot of fake pages (a lot of fake pages)

My OG showed me what a Plain Jane is

And a bust down is, now I got a hankering to spend a few thousand"

This would be soooo good!

this is my very first attempt at a lyric fic and i have like zero experience with them in general, and i interpreted this prompt as what the inspiration behind this verse was! i so hope y'all enjoy!

***

“So, Jack, we know you’ve been caught out with a girl a few times since the last you’ve been here.” Max, the interviewer said into the microphone and Jack chuckled.

“Wait a minute, don’t say caught like I’m not supposed to be with her, man.” Jack exclaimed, a smile taking over his face.

“Oh, so y’all are a thing? Because if so, you got to tell a lot of girls that you aren’t with them anymore.”

“I don’t have to tell them anything.” he spoke smugly and leaned back in his chair. “I can’t just chill with a girl, man?”

“I’d love to chill with a girl like that.” his co-host laughed. “She looks like an Insta model.”

“I’m sure you would, brother.” Jack said before clapping his hands. “Let’s talk about the album before you get to thinking about it too hard.”

Jack returned to the hotel he’d been staying at for press and found you laying in the hotel bed, giggling at the video released from his interview. You were more than welcome to go with him, but you preferred going shopping.

Jack kicked his shoes off and hopped on the bed next to you, causing you to squeal in surprise. His heavy body covered yours as he kissed along the side of your head as you stuffed your head into the pillow. Jack laughed and rolled next to you after leaving a loud kiss on the side of your face.

“Jack, you are so annoying.” you grinned, and he smirked. “I’m going to let your other girlfriends have you.”

“Yeah, I want to see you try and find out who they are behind those accounts with random letters and posting their nails to my song on their story.”

“They’re all going to jump you.” you mumbled, turning your phone off and giving him your full attention.

“And you won’t fight for me?” you laughed loudly at that and Jack’s face fell. “You seriously wouldn’t?”

“No, Jack. I know your type.” He rolled his eyes and sat up, pulling you up to his lap with a kiss. “Your interview went well.”

“You’re not upset they bought up those pictures?” he asked you softly, dreading the question.

The two of you had been dating for well over two years after being on and off when Jack was still in Louisville full time. You were one of the first people to ever show your full support, one of the first people to ever attend a show. It wasn’t until he got big and all kinds of girls were showing him ‘what he was missing’, ultimately leading to the end of your relationship. It wasn’t until he hopped off Cloud 9 and asked you to go out to lunch with him. You were hesitant at first, but when he genuinely expressed how much he needed someone like you, you realized how great of a man he could be.

“You handled it well. If you could keep my hands off my ass, it wouldn’t have been bought up at all.” you pointed out and Jack chuckled.

“Why should I?”

“Because you don’t want people to know about us. Don’t give them evidence.”

“I don’t owe anybody answers and I don’t owe anybody secrecy when it comes to what I do with my girl. I don’t care if we were doing way worse. It’s nobody’s business.”

“I know. I just thought it might be easier to avoid that kind of stuff in public.”

“Unless you want me to, then I’m not.” he said finally and you shrugged. “I’m a public figure, I get that, but I don’t have to give them every part of me.”

“You’re right, baby. You have all the discretion.” you told him in full support and Jack leaned forward to kiss you.

“What’d you buy today?”

“I didn’t get anything, but I stopped by this pizza place some people in the lobby were talking about, and it was disgusting.” you laughed and stood from Jack.

“Can’t eat pizza from everywhere, I told you that.”

“Yeah, well, they were hyping it up so much I had to. After tasting how bad it was, I got you a slice, too.”

“I’m not eating that shit, Y/N.”

“Why? You might like it.” you came back from the small kitchenette and unwrapped the pizza slice in front of him. You smiled as you held it at his lips.

“It’s just pepperoni and cheese.” he shrugged, looking at you as if you were insane. “I think you’re being dramatic.”

“You’re confusing me with your Insta model girlfriend.” he glared at you and you laughed before pushing the slice closer to his lips. “Taste it, J!” you told him, laughing even harder when he made a face at the greasy slice.

“Okay!”

He groaned and took a big bite, your hand cupped under his chin. You watched and waited for his reaction. As much as he wanted you to be the dramatic one, he was even worse. The slow grimace over his features was all too rewarding as you snickered.

“Babe, it’s fucking gross.” he mumbled, spitting it out onto a napkin and frowning. “Why would you give me that?”

“I warned you.” you defended yourself and threw the pizza slice away. “Maybe tomorrow, we can meet up for lunch at a better place. Or we can find a bunch of shitty spots and eat there.”

“Whatever you want to do.” he agreed, a dopey smile on his face.

As he watched you crawl back into bed next to him, he couldn’t help but wonder what kind of girl he’d be with if he would've fallen into the traps all around him. Would he be in a hotel room alone eating something expensive? Would he be trying out a green smoothie he had to pretend to like unless he wanted the model he was hooking up with to blast him? Would he be avoiding pictures to keep his internet exposure somehow intact?

Jack’s thoughts were interrupted softly when you started playing with his hair and muttering about a movie to watch. He couldn’t stop thinking about how lucky he was to be beside a woman who wanted nothing but the best for him, who just wanted to see him succeed and be happy for the ride. He didn’t want or need to imagine a life without you, everything was right in front of him.

#jack harlow #fan fiction #jack harlow x reader #jack harlow blurb #jack harlow fanfiction #bf!jack

[ckret2]

meta about Vox & abuse with a side of Angel

Posting about Vox today reminded me of the thoughts I had a few days ago when the Insta accounts first posted those pics of Val smashing Vox’s face for getting his drink order wrong. So here’s a post mainly about Vox but a little about Angel.

So we've got confirmation that Val has shattered Vox's screen multiple times at this point. But there's been no evidence of violence from Vox toward Val, has there? I think it's all been one-sided. Think mention was made that Vox broke Val’s TV at one point, but as far as I can recall that was a one off—whereas Val has threatened to beat Vox’s face in more than once and done so more than once.

Cut for length but also for mentions of abuse—mainly just about how that abuse could affect the narrative/character arcs rather than discussing it in detail.

We might find out later that Vox, Val, and Vel’s dynamic is intended to be read as three goofy roughhousing villains who beat on each other as slapstick comedy and don’t really suffer any long-term physical/mental consequences—Vox & Val’s shark attack on Vel sure suggests that possibility—but the fact that Val’s violence toward Vox appears to be much more frequent and significant, plus the fact that Val is already being characterized as a very scary very real abuser, definitely leaves open the possibility that we’re supposed to take the actions between VV&V more seriously, too.

And it’s definitely easy to take it seriously. Like, looking at this post:

Look past the “haha TV face man got his TV broke, like a TV” visual gag, and this is a some guy taking a selfie of the black eye/broken nose his boyfriend gave him.

But it would be easy to see even these posts as "cartoony jokey violence" unless you stop and remember oh yeah this cartoon plays closer to real world rules rather than bugs bunny rules. There IS still a chance they could play it off as looney toons violence where we're supposed to go "lol look how awful VV&V are toward each other”—but I'm hoping that they do play it as an actual abusive relationship.

Maybe have them treat it like cartoony funny violence. Maybe have them telling themselves that this is all funny, it’s all games, if you’re tough enough then a little thing like a broken screen doesn’t REALLY hurt—and you ARE tough, right, aren’t you Vox?? Aren’t you some big bad overlord?? You’re not some fuckin loser who gets butthurt over a broken screen, are you?? It’d be really easy for the three of them to tell themselves/each other that how they treat each other—especially how Val treats Vox—is fine... and then for the show to peel off the surface layer of their clowning around and point out the damage that’s really being done.

As far as what this means for Vox’s character, I’m interested in the possibility. Vox is currently slated to be an endgame villain for the series. I'm liking the implication that Vox can be this big powerful nigh-unstoppable villain... but is also still just as vulnerable as anyone else to being suckered by an abuser. That's an unexpected but intriguing avenue for character depth.

And if they're willing to give Angel an in depth character arc over being abuse at Val’s hands, then it would feel really weird if they don’t give Vox the same treatment. Not necessarily an arc that ends in character growth, not necessarily one that that concludes with him getting free and/or getting on the road to redemption—particularly if he’s gonna be an endgame villain—but at least one that takes it seriously and explores how that abuse affects his character. It could even make him a good foil for Angel, showing how the two of them handle it/are affected by it differently. (And if canon doesn’t give us that arc, I’ve got two hands and a keyboard and an AO3 account, and that is a threat.)

Saw a theory that this is recent treatment, that Val’s moved on to a fresh target now that Angel is out of reach—but I don’t think he is out of reach. Val is still demanding money from Angel at the start of the pilot episode; and it’s hard to tell from the “Addict” video what’s present day and what’s flashback, but between the insta posts around its release and the video itself, it seems like the dance is definitely present day and the abuse/assault is probably present day. So Angel isn’t out of reach, so Val didn’t “move on” to another target. Which probably means this is just how he always treats Vox.

tbh I’m, like, immediately ten times more invested in Vox/Val than I was before these posts solely out of a desire to get Vox out of that relationship lmao. And/or the desire for Vox to pull his big square head out of his ass, look at Angel, and go "oh wait I've been looking down on him but I should probably be, like... empathizing with him."

I mean you've gotta figure. They move in close enough circles that they've GOT to have seen the results of Val's treatment on each other.

But they apparently haven't ended up allies because—what reason? Maybe Vox looking at Angel and going "Well it doesn't matter what happens to HIM, he's just Val's pet stripper. Our relationship is different, Val and me are equals. We just roughhouse. That's all it is." Maybe Angel looking at Vox and going "Well he's on the same power level as Val, he could obviously just leave if it was bothering him. But he doesn't act like he's bothered, so he must not be," coupled with maybe not even consciously recognizing shattered screens as, y'know, an injury.

Or maybe they’re jealous of each other because they don’t see the full extent of how Val treats them. “What’s Angel complaining about, at least Val doesn’t beat his face in.” “What’s Vox complaining about, it’s not like he’s gotta dance for Val to pay rent.” Either because Val keeps them from getting to know each other too well, or because they’re both currently too emotionally immature to work out how to empathize with each other.

Or maybe Angel does recognize Vox’s situation but doesn't feel like he's got room to reach out when it's VOX, who oozes power out of every port and who gives off the impression that he would be violently offended rather than grateful if someone suggested he's any sort of victim.

Maybe part of Angel’s redemption arc is going to involve recognizing how bad Vox has got it, deciding that even a douchebag like Vox deserves the same chance at salvation that a douchebag like Angel got, and trying to invite him into the hotel to get away from Val.

And maybe part of Vox’s trajectory toward becoming the final villain will be rejecting Angel’s compassion, because he’s clinging so hard to this idea that he’s only “safe” as long as he’s the most goddamn powerful sinner in hell that he can’t bring himself to let go of the lie he tells himself about his own supposed invincibility, even when somebody’s reaching out and offering to help him.

(... All that said, I’m still waiting on standby with my keyboard and my AO3 account, fully prepared to write that “Vox goes to the hotel and now the healing can begin” fic.)

#(*puts Angel and Vox safe in a cardboard box and fills it with pillows and blankets*) #(*but also hangs up a blanket between the two of them so that they don't interact*) #hazbin hotel #vox #angel dust #valentino #meta #abuse

[dulcetgames]

About our Discord Server

Hello everyone!

It has come to our attention that we haven’t been clear enough with our community management vision. Therefore, I’m going to address the big talking points one by one.

1) The moderation team + Negative criticism claim

For all of our server’s existence, I have never seen a mod abuse of their power or shut down negative criticism. Ever. I’ve asked around plenty and have confirmed with our discord members that this is, in fact, a false claim. Nobody has been able to provide proof of this so far.

It’s important to note that mod team’s job has been and will continue to be the safety and well-being of this server’s members. These people have put themselves on the frontlines of so many things to keep you guys safe from doxxers, racists, and general unsavory people. They’re not perfect, but they’ve been doing their job spectacularly well so far.

On that note, this is why when a mod tells you to drop something, they have their reasons. But I know for a fact that you giving negative feedback is not one of them. In fact, multiple people have given us negative reviews here, and none of them have been reprimanded. Why? Because the one and only rule is to keep it civil and constructive. If you do that, then there’s no problem. If you’re being rude, then yes, of course, the mods are going to come after you.

That being said, if ever you spot an issue with a mod, you think they’re being too harsh, toxic or abusing perms, then please contact an Admin. Admins are here to deal with this behavior and stop it. We’re here for you. 

2) The switch from Tumblr to Discord for interactivity

Our discord server has been created by fans to facilitate interactions with each other. Recently, it got given to me in order to make this server into an official community server. That being said, the purpose stays the same: this server is meant for fans to interact and engage with them in a more efficient manner, as well as for us, the devs to do so. The point of this is to grow the community.

Our social media accounts are the window by which the outside world sees us. They’re here to give announcements and get traction to our games. Those two platforms are extremely different, and it is nearly impossible to re-create the same vibe and environment of discord on our SM platforms (and vice-versa).

Furthermore, with Dulcet about to host three games made by three different creators with three different release schedules, conducting events on our Tumblr and Insta is pretty much a logistical nightmare. For now, it’s a lot more efficient to do so on Discord.

That being said, with the addition of our new community manager, all of our social media platforms should be a lot more active. In fact, I’m sure you guys saw this already with our launch campaign for Black Tarot. We’re not abandoning our outside social media guys. But if it happens that our get a lot more engagement here (and we do), you can’t blame our content creators for the next point…

3) Discord exclusives + Celebrity cult (???)

Let’s get something clear: If any, and I mean any (yes, that includes me) Dulcet creator involves themselves in this kinda celebrity worship cult behavior as claimed, I will be the first to nip it in the bud. But to be honest? I haven’t seen it happen so far. All I’ve seen is people uplifting each other, and that is regardless of whether they are devs or players. If you pay a little bit attention, you’ll see that people get complimented left and right on this server. That’s just the nature of this (incredible) community.

Furthermore, I know that @the-andy-world @zenothemanager and I gone out of our way to treat you guys like our friends and stay approachable to the fans. It’s important to us that everyone is treated equally.

On that note: None of our creators are obligated to give you exclusives. They’re human. They’re doing this out of the joy of their hearts, and they’re doing this for free. Literally all you need to do is be slightly active here in order to reach level 1, and you get access to exclusive stuff. I’d like to point out that other developers will literally only do this through Patreon… and even then. I understand that you guys want content, but please, let’s not get entitled towards to people who produce that content. Especially when they don’t have to do it.

4) Fandom content creators

Fandom content creators do not owe you anything. Fanartists and fanwriters do not need to post their content on Tumblr or any other platform. They don’t even need to post it on our discord. It’s their content, their time, their effort… and they’re sharing this from the heart. Please be thankful for that, because I know I am.

If they decide to be active here. That’s their choice. If they decide to only be active on social media? Also their choice. It’s in no way Dulcet Games’ responsibility as to where they post their stuff. Just like we don’t have the right to tell them what to do, please know that you don’t either.

Also, if a fan content maker decides to post here but not on social media… They most likely have good reasons for that. Please consider that.

Lastly, I want to re-iterate that everyone here is open to your opinion, as long as it is said respectfully. Feel free to DM me, the mods or the admins for further clarification.

Thank you all for reading and happy playing!

Love,

Serena

#dulcet games #sweet elite #black tarot #kortia #official update #fandom #discord

[rainofaugustsith]

Rain Plays SWTOR: Macrobinoculars Solo (most of it) - Imperial Pt. 1

Buoyed by Viri's success soloing the Seeker Droid questline, I decided to tackle the Macrobinoculars.  Please note: THE END OF THIS MISSION IS STILL NOT SOLOABLE. There is apparently one sequence in the final H4 where you need several people to click all the panels. However, the rest is soloable. If you want some challenging gameplay or something new to do in the game, there's still a lot to do here without tackling the final H4.  Also note that even if you do not finish the final H4, as long as you do NOT abandon the quest, you can keep using your macrobinoculars. In fact, you can do that as soon as you pick them up in the beginning of the quest line. There are other quests and achievements you can do with the macrobinoculars, such as scanning all the MCR-99 droids on each planet, scanning the temples you can see from the Yavin 4 stronghold and doing GSI dailies on several worlds. 

If you enjoy puzzles, you will love this questline. If not, there are thankfully several guides that can walk you through each puzzle. If you remember one thing, it's that everything can be a trap, you need to check the walls, ceilings and anything around for clues/clickables to proceed, and the solution that appears straightforward probably is not.  Once again, I defer to Dulfy for walkthroughs and videos on how to beat the puzzles, and give you additional suggestions.  This is Part I of the guide, and it is specific for Imperial-side players.  Your first task with the macrobinoculars is to scan the Shroud's monitoring devices around the galaxy. It's far easier than the Dread Seeds search. If you've played the Ziost daily area, the Ossus daily area or some of the Onderon quests, you've already used macrobinoculars.  If this is your first time with the macrobinoculars- right click to activate the binoculars (they are in your mission items tab. You can also drag them to a quickbar, which is a good idea to get to them quickly). Once you activate the binoculars, you can scroll around to survey the area. Targets that are scannable will light up yellow. Left click to zoom in and scan. Click again to zoom out. ESC to put away your binoculars. 

You’ll start by being asked to scan several locations marked on your map. Move your camera around until you see a yellow blinking item (it may or may not look like the example) and then zoom in to scan.  Dromund Kaas - scanning - QT to Tempest. One objective is down at the Unfinished Colossus and the other is on one of the nearby lightning spires. - QT to the Spaceport.  - QT to the Nexus Room cantina, and then walk over to the launchpad for the nearby taxi. You'll get a good view from there.  Shroud of Ruin temple How to get there: Pick up the Shadow Spawn heroic and use the provided shuttle/QT. The temple you need is all the way in the back of that heroic area. There are a few jumps to get to the right level of the temple but they aren't too bad overall. There's no threat of death or even damage if you fall and have to try again. 

There are only two obstacles in this temple but the first can be frustrating. After you click a rock on the ceiling (mouse around to find it), some of the grids will periodically blink off and on (this is very slow- they don’t blink rapidly, if that is a concern. They go off, stay off for a few beats and then go back on). Make your way through the grid to get to the other side without touching the lasers. Touching the lasers is insta-death. Fortunately the respawn point/ medical droid is just upstairs from the grid so you don't have far to go if you get zapped. Tips: 1. Send your companion away. Put them on a crafting mission for ten minutes or so. They will not be able to follow you through the grid at your pace, so they'll just hit one of the lasers and die.  2. No fancy jumps, no rocket boost, no flair. Do NOT get too close to the lasers, and watch where you are running and jumping. 3. In some places, only one or two lines of the grid will flicker off. Be really careful walking through.  4. Once you finish the maze, you can turn it off completely by smashing the console you will see, but it’s really not necessary because you are almost done. It’s still cathartic to smash it.  

The droid you have to face at the end of the hallway should be a snap. It's a garden variety NPC that doesn't seem much more complicated than the average silver, and he's on his own.  You will then be sent off to scan targets on two more planets.  Ambush Warning:  After scanning targets on any of the planets from this point onward, you may be ambushed. It could be a droid and an enemy NPC that is found on that planet (rakghouls on Taris; a Wampa on Hoth). It could also be a gold-level droid, IR-77. I don't think it's a jump scare, but it's very sudden, so I'll mention it here. 

Taris scanning: 

- QT to 75th Legion Forward Camp. - QT to Crater Command Base. You can get to both of the targets in Olaris from here.  - QT to Toxic Lake Garrison. This is the base you start at when you land on Taris so you shouldn't need to QT there, but it has a quick travel point in case you've done the others first.  Tatooine scanning:  A few of the target points are challenging to get to for Imperial players.  - Mos Ila, relatively close to the taxi. There's a QT point there if you need it.  - QT to Outpost Varath or Outpost Rennar, it's about halfway between the two, near the area with the Tusken Raiders and Mandalorian corpses.  - QT to Mos Anek. Very close to the Lady of Pain area from the Bounty Hunter's class story.  - QT to Outpost Zaroche. Unfortunately, the next target is in the Outlaw's Den. There's no way to see it from outside this area. I've read more than once that if you are on the PvE server, nobody can hurt you in the Outlaw's Den. Your companion will go away, but there's apparently no PvP. Still, I have had no way to confirm this firsthand, so I'd get in and out.  - From there, continue through the Outlaw's Den to the north side and follow the road (filled with hostile NPCs unfortunately) to the mining company for the northernmost target.  - QT to Ridgeside Sentry Post. You have a ways to go from here, but it's the closest Imperial travel point. Take the righthand road north at the fork. The lefthand side is more straightforward but goes through an area with a lot of Twin Suns enemy NPCs. The target is under the rock bridge near the Twin Suns.  Quesh scanning: Quesh is small enough that you don't have to travel long to get just about anywhere, but here are the QT points in case you need them.  - QT to Imperial Garrison OR Imperial Outpost. The target is about halfway between them in an area where a lot of the Imperial Quesh quests happen.  - QT to Imperial Outpost.  - From the second target, you will see a very small dotted line path that goes through a power plant. The first section has Republic hostile NPCs but the second section is friendly. This will take you to the other side of the map to get the third target.

Scratch the Surface - Quesh How to get there: As Dulfy notes, the map may be bugged. This is the map I got. As you see, the entrance is indicated all the way over on the far right. It's not there. QT back to the Imperial Garrison. The map should change. You need to climb the hill just outside the Garrison and follow the narrow, maze-like path through the stone walls to reach the instanced area. 

Wrong map: 

Here is the CORRECT map. 

Once inside, remember everything is a trap and the solution usually is not straight combat or avoidance. There's always something clickable around that will help you get past each obstacle. 

To throw the fruit at the Lurker, click on the gate panel.  The key to getting past this electrified floor is to hit the panels on the ceiling that light up as clickables. After that, the floor will still electrify, but in a very predictable order. 

This is the only panel on the first section of grid that will not be electrified. It's easy to spot because of the debris on it. Follow the electricity's pattern so you know when it's clear to run. Once you're there, mouse around the ceiling again for the second clickable panel.

This is the panel on the second section of the grid that is not electrified. Again, it's easy to spot because there's stuff on it. After this, you will need to follow the pattern of the electricity and make a break for the hallway. 

You need to shut down the grid to proceed. However, if you step on the platform, you'll get shocked. Walk around the room to the back, where you will see a way to get under the panel. DO NOT WALK ON IT YET. Mouse around and you will find there's a panel that is clickable. Clicking on it will cut the electricity on the floor, allow you to walk in and shut down the second panel. Now you can go on the platform and shut down the grid.  Pictured is STEP THREE. Do not go on this platform until you cut the power from underneath!

Then, it’s off for more scanning.  Corellia - The first two are close to the spaceport and Incorporation Islands QT point.  - QT to Axial Park South.  - QT to Imperial Central Command (two are here) Hoth  - Very close to Dorn Outpost, where you start out on Hoth. - QT to Thesh Outpost.  - QT to Imperial Garrison.  - QT to Jagged Hills Imperial Garrison, which is the northernmost Imperial travel point. From there, go left until you get to the Drift Hills Republic base and then north along the path. It's close to Republic Aurek Base.  - From the point above, go to the right on the marked path. You want to be heading toward Outpost Cresh. When the road has a fork on the righthand side, take that, going south. The point you're looking for is under one of the bridges. 

- QT to Frostwake Outpost and then go to the Starship Graveyard.  - QT to Leth Outpost. It's very close to the base.  Belsavis - QT to Imperial Frontline Camp.  - QT to one of the outposts close to the Rakatan Transport network (Frontline Camp and Imperial Deep Launchpoint both work). Take the Rakatan Transport to the Imperial Power Center Transport.  - From the point above, after you scan, go right back to the Rakatan Transporter. Take it to the Lower Prison Magma Transport stop. Follow the circular path to the Tomb and then find your path to the target from there. You want to do the Lower Prison Magma Transport target scan last because it will place you in just the right area for the next part of the questline. 

#swtor #swtor solo #rain plays swtor #swtor macrobinoculars

[hanniiesuckle17]

i would like to bless your followers and dash, sooo can you give me a crash course in noir 😊😊

OMG YES OFCCCCCC💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖

OKAY SO HERE IS THE DEAL

NOIR is a nine-member boy group under Luk Factory

(Not really pleased with how they are promoting my boys but imma get over it one day!)

Our fan name is Lumiere (or Lumi) and we don’t have any official colors or a lightstick yet.

Noir debuted on April 9th of 2018. With the mini-album Twenty’s Noir. Their title debut song was Gansta (SUCHA GOOD VIDEO) 

They also had a predebut song called As a Star and it makes me so soft.

Their next comeback is on the 27th (THIS MONDAY!!!!!!) The album is called Up the Sky and the title track is called Lucifer

IM SO FUCKING EXCITED YOU HAVE NO IDEA

MEMBERS 

Shin Seunghoon

Shin Seunghoon is our precious leader!!!! 

(He was what got me into Noir. I saw a video about the best leaders in kpop and I was like)

He is 27 years old. His birthday is May 30th, 1993 (He is a Gemini)

Boy is tallllllllllllllllllllll

like he’s 5′10.

but in pictures by himself he for real looks like he is 6′2

istg he is like 65% legs.

ALSO MAN AS A RIPPED CHEST SORRY BACK TO REGULARLY SCHEDULED NOIRING

He is the leader, main rapper, and also sometimes a vocalist (but the rappers in this group pretty much fo everything)

HE SPITS FIRE when he wants to. 

Really good at freestyling 

He makes mixtapes on youtube on Noir’s channel. (I think he has 5 out now)

He is a college-educated man!!!! (He went to Korean National Open University

He took taekwondo when he was younger

The man trained for 8 years

He and Hoyeon compose and format a lot of their songs with a team of producers from LUK

(I often think he and Chan from skz are really similar.)

Seunghoon is legit a father of 8 soft crackhead kids. istg he is so done with them most of the time

We call him our koala because he looks like one <3

Seunghoon is obsessed with accessories and wearing them to the point where stylists literally have to take them off of him. (I have never not seen picture of him not wearing jewelry. )

he is actually in the military right now and i miss him so fricking much TT

All in all hot boy on screen and soft dad in real life

Kim Yeonkuk

this boy I cant

Kim Yeonkuk. Damn.

he was on Produce 101 season 2

he was eliminated on ep.5 :(

He is the lead dancer and a vocalist

Yeonkuk is 25 years old. His birthday is February 8, 1995 (An Aquarius)

is totally the aegyo king but denies it

he seems cold at first but has a big ass bright personality its so freakin adorable

my personal favorite clip of him is and the boys dancing around on vlive to big bang and him saying fantastic baby (its sounds so cute when he says it)

He is also a 5′10 tall boy

he trained for 3 years

THIS BOY IS SO FREAKING SKINNY SOMEONE PLEASE EGIVE HIM A HAMBURGER OR SOMETHING TAKE HIM TO TACO BELL

not kidding

his waist is so fucking small its scary.

Yeonkuk=stringbean

literally a walking meme.

pause in any interview and he is pretty much gonna give you a memeable face

this boy is so loveable and goofy 

also if this boy doesn't post like 8 photos of him doing something on insta im convinced he thinks that it just didn’t happen

he never posts just one photo its always like 6-8

also I was highkey afraid he was gonna go bald last comeback when they legit turned his hair into smurfs pubes

Lee Junyong

Lee Junyong. When i say i love this man with my whole heart

also 25 years old

his birthday is March 1st 1995 (Pisces)

another 5′10 king

Main vocalist.

he is a former member of INX

his brother is Seungyong from N.CUS

he trained for 4 years

THIS MAN IS TOO ATTRACTIVE FOR THIS EARTH

vocals for days. VOCALS.FOR.DAYS.

Did a cover of BTS’s The Truth Untold with Siha and literally gives me chills.

He has little crooked front teeth so when he sings he has this tiny little breath in some of the words so his voice is even more distinct

BUT LIKE JUNYONG HAS THE CUTEST SMILE EVER (I love his teeth in that's a weird thing to say but i think they are so cute)

he is 1/2 of the Highnote Belting Club

talks. all. the. freaking. time.

he goes live alot

boy is obsessed with Yunsung someone save yunsung from him

total crackhead when not doing real interviews

never fails to make me smile

he is said to be the moodmaker of the group

APPARENTLY HE WAS IN ONE EPISODE OF MY FAVORITE DRAMA AND I HAD NO IDEA

he was in episode 6 of The Liar and His Lover

overall he is just so sweet and funny and its so easy to love him

Nam Yunsung

Yunsung is the Lead vocalist and Visual

24 years old His birthday is August 29, 1996

He is a virgooo

MAN IS 6FT EVEN

lead vocalist and LOOKS IT

he is the king of intense eye contact with the camera 

he looks like legit prince charming

2/2 of Highnote Belting Club

weird af

istg he is the biggest crackhead

very extra. (as you can see in gif)

he calls himself a vampire because of his super pale skin

he trained for 4 years

he raps part time

HE ACTUALLY ENJOYS EXCERCISE

he hides snack between his bed and the wall but apparently daewon and junyong steal them

I think he rooms with junyong? not sure

Someone save him from junyong. boy is going to be smothered to death

ngl their relationship is really cute

he was also in Produce 101 S2 but left bc of health issues.

cutest thing ever and then turns into a devil onstage

a literal puppy

he is big fan of ateez and he and another member actually went to the groups first concert in korea

he is just so precious and weird 

Kim Siheon

oml this smol bean

Kim Siheon god damn

He is 23 years old

Birthday is December 23, 1997 (Capricorn like meeeee)

also 5′10 babyy

Vocalist but also a rapper (he rapped suga’s part in their remix of BTS Fake Love)

LIKES TO BIAS WREKC FREAKING EVERYONE

Beware the Siheon

He has a hot older sister, Hanbit, from a group called Hot Place (Their debut song is called TMI and its pretty good.)

HOTNESS RUNS IN HIS FAMILY

he trained for 5 months

he really likes drawing and does caricatures of his members

he is the eyebrow king

idk his eyesbrows are just.... 

stylists do things to his eyebrows anf it just fucks everyone up

high key has the best fashion sense

others boys willshow up to vlive in like hoodies and he is wearing a freakin casual suit

BOY PLAYS TO WIN’

he is like a boss at every kind of game

claims himself to be sweet like “Heonie”

“Hi! I’m siheon! Heonie Heonie Siheonie!”

he is a litter quieter than the other guys 

BUT he is so funny 

he doesn't like spice on his food for some reason

yeah he's crazy

he trained for 5 years

he's just precious and hot and hot and really hot

Ryu Hoyeon

THIS MAN HAS GIVEN ME SO MANY PROBLEMS

Ryu Hoyeon.

So he is my bias wrecker. Boy climbed up my bias list so freaking fast

He is the main dancer, vocalist, and a rapper (he also composes and arranges with Seunghoon)

He is 22 years old

His birthday is February 6, 1998 (Aquarius)

anontherrrrr 5′10 babbyyyy

cheekkkkkbooonnneeeessss

SHARK BOYY

He says he looks like a shark and i agree

HE HAS A NICE FUCKING TORSO

There was a predebut photo of him half shirtless it was awesome

he was also on Produce 101 S2 

eliminated on ep.5 :(

he trained for 2 years

He, yeonkuk, and seunghoon were in the Japanese tour of the musical Altar Boyz with Teen top’s Niel,2PM’s Chansung, and many others

he has a semi viral video of him

when he was a trainee / on produce 101 he was dancing to nct127 cherry bomb and had an unfortunate but quite hilarious accident (just look it up its funny)

sucks ass at games. every game. ever.

he is a low-key crackhead. he is a calm crackhead lol

VERY ATTRACTIVE

he used to have a youtube channel

you can still see his insta (leaderyoo) its so freaking cute and has predebut stuff of all the boys

he made their entire remix of fake love

he choreographed their song Diamond and also their cover of Taki Taki (which was very hot)

becomes a beast when dancing

he has an original chore to WEight in Gold that is very.......(insert eyebrow wiggle here)

has that dorito torso

(tiny waist and broad shoulders)

also thighs god damn

He is also a HUGE Vixx fanboy

Alter ego is DJ Ironman

He is very close with Siha, Siheon, and Yeonkuk

they turned him into a traffic cone for the Doom Doom comeback

he speaks a little bit of English (just a little bit)

all in all I'm completely in love with this man

Yang Siha 

THIS MAN IS SO FINEEEEEEE (he's my bias btw I have never been so in love with a man other than jisung)

Yang Siha is just uugghghhh god damn

22 year old babyyyy

Birthday is March 9, 1998 (Pisces)

Lil baby is 5′7″ oml i love him

MAIN VOCALIST AND DESERVES IT

he likes watching youtube videos and anime

He trained for 1 year and 1/2

looks good in every freaking hair color

his voice does NOT MATHC HIS FACE 

but not like in a Felix level way

He says his most attractive features are his “feminine features” (he says his unpronounced Adams apple and his small noes and doe eyes

HE HAS SMOL EARSSSS and i lovethem

close with Hoyeon and Siheon

but like his voice though

its so freaking pretty

it gives me chills

everything about him is perfect

he has tiny lips lol

he can play guitar

legit i swear his entire closet is black he rarely wears color

legit EVERYONE LOVES HIM

if someone is hugging anyone in a vlive or something

its siha

its always siha

everyone cuddles siha

i wanna cuddle siha. fuck.

for some reason I've just noticed this

the boy likes to wear long sleeves idk why

he also always seems to wear this one necklace Idk why but its so pretty and i really love that he does idk

he says his favorite song by NOIR is Travel (its also my favorite. its on their debut album and omg his part <3)

he is just so pure oml everything he posts on insta just makes me so soft

he is just so freakin cute and makes me switch lanes so fast

Kim Minhyuk

ooooof this cutie

Kim Minhyuk is something else

i just don't know what he is lol

Lead rapper and lead dancer

22 years old

His birthday is March 18th, 1998 (Pisces)

5′11 boy yes sir

ALSO A COLLEGE EDUCATED MAN

He went to Seoul Arts College

he has an older brother

apparently he cooks in the dorms

he trained for 1 year

he likes to play basketball

he really loves taking photos on his camera

he HATES bugs. its kind of funny ngl

he also is deathly afraid of balloons (i will not apologize for laughing at this one)

He and yunsung loooove ateez. they went to their first concert.

HE SERVES LOOOOKKKSSS

I think he is the most versatile member (look wise) because sometimes its hard to recognize him with each comeback because they change his style

he has these really cute big circle glasses he wear and just uwu

he kinda looks like Simon or Theodore from Alvin in the chipmunks in the best way.

he has a thing about jumping

like whenever he gets excited or happy he just starts jumping

he smiles like sunshineeeeee

even though he is the second youngest a lot of the members say that they go to him for advice 

(probably cause he has permanent hold of one of the 3 braincells noir has)

he looooves girl group dances 

especially twice 

TIKTOK KING 

He owns Noir’s tiktok pretty much. also their insta

he's a precious chipmunk

Kim Daewon

Thhis baby oml

Kim Daewon is the cutest thing since that fluffy little dog whose name i cant remember

20 years old 

Birthday is April 18th, 2000 (Aries)

Lead Dancer, vocalist, maknae

PROTEC THIS BABY BOY

In pictures he looks tall af

actually...

5′7″ but looks like 5′4″

the cutest thing everrrrr

HIS CHEEEKS

the biggest fluffiest cutest cheeks

everything about him is smol except for them thighssss

trained for 1 year

he has one older sister

THE BOY NEEDS MORE LINESSSS LUK FACTORY GIVE HIM MORE LINESSSSSS

he goes off in the chorus of their b-side track “Between” though like fuuuuuuucccckkkk (lowkey one of my favorite songs by them)

literally one of the funniest people you will ever see

extra crackhead energy

makes all the boys laugh

he loves chicken and snacks (gotta keep those cheeks in top shape)

literally the softest boy

he's good at everything i swear

he likes to shimmy.

has a cute butt lol

he talks in tiny

literally the cutest maknae ever oml

I hope this helped guys!!!!! I really hope you can stan noir and support them in their comeback this Monday! I hope this helped @distrikt9 if you need videos or anything feel free to ask! I love sharing my boys. They really are so underrated. I did this so fast ngl. I've never typed so fast

#noir #noir imagines #intro to noir #kpop intro #kpop groups #noir reactions #noir members #noir comeback #noir up the sky #noir lucifer #noir airplane mode #noir doom doom #noir gansta #noir kpop imagine #noir kpop #shin seunghoon #kim yeonkuk imagines #lee junyong imagine #nam yunsung #kim siheon #ryu hoyeon #yang siha #kim minhyuk #kim daewon #new kpop groups #introducing new groups #get to know noir #get to know kpop #noir preferences #noir oneshots

[casualotptrash]

Why the Persona 3 FES vs Portable Debate Makes Me Want to Fly Into the Sun Pt. 1

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Yes, this is an emotionally fueled rant about Persona 3. No, this is not meant to send hate at those who enjoy Persona 3 FES or dislike Persona 3 Portable.

That being said, this discussion mentally pains me. I won’t go into all of my opinions on the matter here (I’ll probably go into it later with more posts), but I will be talking about one of the most prevalent “points” that I see being brought up every time the comparison between FES and Portable is made:

“Just play FES with the controllable party members mod.”

This point, although it doesn’t say so directly, essentially sends the message to anyone who doesn’t know the differences between the two games that the only thing Portable has to offer (besides the obvious changes to the game) is controllable party members. For the sake of this post, I won’t be going into the obvious changes such as having cutscenes and The Answer in FES compared to no cutscenes and a FeMC route in Portable. Instead, I’m going to rant about every other positive change I can remember that no one seems to talk about.

1. Jealousy Mechanic

Unlike in FES, the jealousy mechanic is completely erased in the Male Route. The dialogue/warning will still show up after hanging out with multiple female social links, but the social link will never reverse or break because of this. Social links are already a pain to try and max out in a run, even on NG+ without a guide, so the fact that you don’t have to stop seeing a social link for awhile or focus on just one girl at a time means this will at least be marginally easier in Portable. For those who don’t care about maxing out all of the social links, it’s still a relief because you can hang out with whatever social link you want without any penalty. This doesn’t apply to the Female Route as there isn’t a jealousy mechanic even implemented into that.

2. Fatigue Mechanic

For the pure amount of people I see complain about Tartarus, and don’t get me wrong I’m one of them too, I cannot comprehend how they fail to mention this change. In Portable, the fatigue mechanic is totally gone. Much like the jealousy mechanic, the text is still there where the navigator will say you’re getting tired, but no one actually gets the tired effect until you leave Tartarus completely. This means you can bust out a whole block in one sitting, if you so choose. I found this extremely useful because I hated being in Tartarus and this allowed me to just get it all done quickly instead of having to go back and forth from the Dark Hour multiple times.

3. Various Battle Mechanics

In addition to adding the “direct” command to the tactics menu (allowing controllable party members), Portable also adds the “defend” option. This is akin to the “guard” option in the other games where you use your turn to gain more defense. The combat system has also been improved to function more like P4′s in the way that you can get a 1-more from knocking just one enemy down, it no longer takes a full turn for a party member to get up after being knocked down (so you can stand up and immediately do your turn), party members can follow up with a co-op attack if you knock an enemy down, and after a certain social link event for the team social link party members can take a fatal blow for the MC. Again, I don’t know how people are not talking about any of these changes besides the “direct command” addition while also complaining about how Tartarus is a slog. You know what makes it less like a slog? All of these additions.

4. Equipment Menu

Many of the changes not talked about are tweaks to Tartarus/battle gameplay, and this is another one of them. Although more of a small quality of life change to save some hassle, I personally appreciate any change that makes Tartarus easier to get through. In FES, if you wanted to change your party member’s equipment, you would have to talk to the party member who you wanted to change the equipment for. That means if you wanted to change your whole party you would have to do your own first and then talk to your three other party members individually. Portable changes this so that there is one overarching equipment menu that you can access (like in the future games) and change their equipment there.

5. Fusion skills being items + Personas giving you skill cards

This is probably one of the smaller changes, but it can still be really useful. First off, fusion skills in FES are activated when you have two specific personas needed for the skill, but in Portable fusion skills can be bought as items from a store. They cost “gems” that are collected in Tartarus and I think some can be acquired as rewards for quests. This can be useful if you want to use a fusion skill without needing to have the two specific personas taking up slots. Additionally, every persona now gives the player a skill card once they reach a certain level with them. Skill cards can also be bought for gems in the same store that fusion skill items can be bought from. With how fusion works in P3, in which skills are unable to be specifically selected to pass onto the persona being fused, having skills cards is a pretty good change.

6. More Tartarus events/anomalies

Sometimes when going into Tartarus, “anomalies” can occur. This ranges from entering a floor and having your whole party be separated or entering a floor and having no shadows present. Portable adds four new anomalies, and although they may not add much sometimes they can be pretty helpful. The four new events are experience gain will increase on the floor, enemy items drops will increase, the floor will become dark and the auto-mapping feature in game is temporarily disabled, and upon entering the floor it can be fully mapped by the navigator. I specifically found the increased experience gain to be useful because that really boosted the experience cards and could easily level you up without having to grind for hours.

7. Two more added difficulties + Vision Quest

With the new changes to combat, some people dislike how easy the game can seem. To counteract this, or for people who really just want to play the game for the story, two new difficulties were added to Portable: Beginner and Maniac. Beginner is below Easy and significantly toned down enemy damage, and the player has 30 plumes of dusk (opposed to 10 when starting on Easy). Maniac is above Hard, and it adds a heap of new things to make the game more difficult such as enemies deal 2 times more damage than normal, can gain a higher chance of Enemy Advantage when not taken by surprise, and certain weapon fusions cannot be performed. If this still isn’t hard enough for you...I’m sorry, or something? I personally played on Easy because I was working my way through the Neo-Persona (3-5) games and didn’t want it to take ten years.

If you still want more of a challenge, or a fun time-killer, Portable also added Vision Quest. Like the Monad Depths, it’s accessible through Tartarus. Upon entering there are is a door corresponding to each Full Moon boss (besides the Magician) and five special doors. Each Full Moon boss door can be fought with any party members, but the bosses are much stronger than when they were originally fought. For example, the Hanged Moon boss (last one fought) is level 54 in the base game. In the Vision Quest, the Hanged Moon boss is level 95. I did complete all of the doors in Vision Quest (on my NG+) and this one took me almost as long as the final boss of the game to beat, because of the level and the fact that is has 18,000 hp. Yes, I was around level 95 at the time too because I wanted to fuse Messiah. For reference, the final boss has around 25,500 hp in total and is level 76. The five special doors are more so puzzles rather than standard fights in my opinion because you’re forced into the fight with specific party members and stats. Each special door also has its own strategy to beat it, which is where the puzzle part comes in. An example of what these doors offer ranges from having three strong enemies you can only hit with physical attacks that consistently switch between nulling, being weak to, and absorbing all three kinds of physical attacks (and the three enemies switch at different rates/patterns) to fighting an enemy one on one that you need to kill in a certain amount of turns before they insta-kill you (and there is also a pattern of what these enemies are weak to/null/etc.) If you even try looking up what the Vision Quests are you’ll likely to see a plethora of guides because these fights can be very frustrating if you can’t get the patterns down on your own. However, that’s still good for a challenge. In addition to all of this, if you beat all of the doors you get the option to fight a second secret boss: Margaret (from Persona 4).

8. More part-time jobs

One of the more minor changes, but in Portable there are more places where you can work at for part-time jobs. I don’t know if it follows the same system as FES, but generally the longer you work at a job the more money they will give to you. This can be helpful in the early game if you want to raise a stat by working and gain money at the same time.

9. Soundtrack 

This one is tied in directly with the FeMC Route, but a whole new soundtrack is available in this game. You are able to hear almost the full Persona 3 FES soundtrack in this game with the Male Route too, so if you play both routes you won’t miss out on a majority of the songs. Personally, I like a lot of the songs from both soundtracks (and the P3 soundtrack is one of my favorites, if not maybe my number one favorite, of the 3-5 series). I believe it is also widely regarded as a solid soundtrack, and some even like it more than the Male Route one. You could just listen to the soundtrack without playing the game, but again this list is just going through changes from FES to Portable that people don’t often mention.

10. Extra scene at the end of a NG+ run (Spoilers for those who do not know the end of the game)

For everyone out there who likes the dating sim portion of Persona and a heaping of heart-breaking angst, this is for you. On a NG+ run of either route, in the final scene before the credits roll you are able to spend your last moments with whoever you romanced. They each have their own personalized little scene, that is beyond adorable and sad, and the game ends with one last loving comment/sentiment from them before you fade away and Memories of You starts playing. In my opinion, it’s a great little addition, especially for those who like to play multiple runs.

And that’s the last of it I suppose, although there are some other minor changes I probably missed because they’re too small or probably can’t be considered either a “good” or “bad” change. Anyway, asking others for their opinion on the two games is obviously fine, but if you’re someone who boils down the situation with providing the input “Just play FES with the controllable party members mod.” ....don’t. Please :)

#persona 3 #persona 3 portable #p3 #p3p #please god can you all stop saying that phrase #even a simple search on the wiki has most of these changes #im going to quit my major and go into aerospace engineering so i can build a rocket and fly into the sun at this rate

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

so i’d really like to finish my guardian takedown lore analysis, but honestly the game isn’t really fun to play at the moment anymore (even with the health debuffs they added) so I think im going to be taking a break for now because I’m just not having fun anymore.

this game has a lotta mechanical problems i think need to be addressed so im gonna summarize it as bullet points below. I’ll play the new dlc when it drops, but idk if i’ll be on more than that (grinding, end-game stuff) until they make some serious changes. I’ve been playing (near) daily since launch, followed the patch/hotfix notes every single week, and my patience has finally, FINALLY run dry, especially with that really disappointing Phase 1 Patch and then the hotfix this week not adding anything else. What is the balancing team doing??? 😩

tl;dr: FIX THE VAULT HUNTERS!!!!

anyway. That’s all I needed to get outta my system. I might log on to this blog every now and again to post some random shit that pops into my head (probably with regards to my AU), but I’m not going to be actively playing and posting for the time being. Goodbye (for now), and here’s hoping the new DLC is good!! 

guardian takedown only problems:

there’s a lot of waiting around, and sometimes it’s not explicitly stated that you’re waiting for something, so you’ll be lost on what to do next (not sure if that’s a dialogue glitch or not)

the crystal charge insta-death is bull. just. what the hell. at least make it so you just have to start over. killing ur players for failing a “puzzle” that they then have to fight all the way back to is so infuriating.

dying because you fell off a platforming puzzle is also bull. 

i remember playing the first DMC on my playstation in middle school and having a conniption over the part in the observatory(? it’s been a hot minute since I played DMC 1) with the disappearing/invisible platforms. I h a t e jumping puzzles. why are they in a section of the game where death is semi-permanent and a detriment to your teammates. i tried the takedown 2x with friends and both times one friend didn’t make the first big jump to the temple and had to wait for our inevitable deaths. that’s so unfair to them.

there’s absolutely no reason for a boss to have 12 fuckin immunity phases. 4 per health bar with 3 health bars? Who the fuck designed this? *pumps shotgun* i just wanna talk. 

i appreciate a tasteful immunity phase every now and again (the ones in the Valkyrie fight are actually p reasonable), but christ. that is overkill. I don’t mind the main boss fight, since u can end those early through certain actions, but jesus. the mid-boss fight is annoying as hell. you spend more time running from the immunity phases and finding the damn boss than u do actually shooting it.

drop rates are crap, which I guess should be expected given what happened with the Maliwan Takedown and the handful of months it took for them to fix that, but also you think they’d have learned.

in the maliwan takedown there’s a sense of progression thru the facility after you kill each area’s batch of enemies, but in this one it’s... dampened by the crystal charging sequences. you kill all the enemies in an area, press a button, and now you have to kill 3x that number of enemies in the same area, expect you’re just standing there motionless. It’s not fun.

the crystal charging stuff is just not fun in general. standing in a square is not entertaining. it’s worse that it was clearly designed for 3+ players when a majority of people play/grind solo

i gotta admit the boss fights just aren’t as fun as the Maliwan Takedown fights overall. I felt like a real badass fighting Wotan for the first time, but the main boss for this Takedown is kind of a bitch. Wotan’s fight is chaos, there’s so much shit happening at once and you don’t really have time to process everything and I love it. This one is p meh...

This would be fine and I’d 100% not care that much if there weren’t all these OTHER problems

General Issues with the Game

There’s no endgame stuff to play outside of the takedowns. 

I assume they’re working on the first raid given some stuff I found in the Guardian Takedown files, but I really wish they’d keep the seasonal events/areas. They give us the option to disable/enable them while they’re ‘active’, just give us the ability to do it whenever we want.

when i hop on i either run through Athenas (my favorite map), or farm a boss or two. I have all the loot i really need from the maliwan takedown/elsewhere, and the guardian takedown just... isn’t fun atm, so i have nothing to do.

I’ve reset my playthru multiple times to play the main story at m10, but u can only play it (and the dlc) so many times

Mayhem levels and modifiers are a hot m e s s

a majority of the modifiers just aren’t fun to play with

they incorporated like 2-3 fun modifiers (from the community), then added a bunch that straight-up aren’t. I’m fine with the game being more difficult, but at least give us modifiers that make it more entertaining to play at a higher level instead of more annoying. I like the ones that have trade-offs or add new ‘enemies’, but I hate the ones that just straight up reduce your damage output.

a majority of the weapons with the mayhem 10 anointment (scaling) do not work on mayhem 10 (we’ll go more in-depth with this later)

Player Characters (Vault Hunters!!!) are also a hot mess and a lot of problems plaguing them haven’t been fixed SINCE LAUNCH

theyre literally the basis of the game and its balance. why havent you guys fixed them yet. stop adding new content until they’re fixed. no new skill trees until the base 3 trees work ON EVERY CHARACTER.

seriously. Why is amara p much limited to using Phasegrasp. Why does Iron Bear not matter to Moze except to proc anointments. MAKE ALL ACTION SKILLS EQUAL AND HAVE HEFT.

i wrote an essay here about it bc i feel that strongly about this

SERIOUSLY FIXING UR VAULT HUNTERS WILL MAKE BALANCING SO MUCH EASIER PLEASE IM BEGGING YOU THEY ARE THE BASE OF UR BALANCING WOES

ZANE IS STILL UNUSABLE WITHOUT THE SEEIN’ DEAD CLASS MOD!!!!!!!!!!!

MOZE IS SCREWED BC HER DAMAGE IS TOO RELIANT ON ASE ANOINTMENTS!!

AMARA DOESN’T HAVE A FUCKING MELEE BUILD AS THE ADVERTISED MELEE CHARACTER???

FL4K’S HEADCOUNT SKILL IS S T I L L BROKEN EVER SINCE THE RELEASE OF THE MALIWAN TAKEDOWN

ARE YOU GUYS LISTENING TO THE COMMUNITY *PLEASEEEEEEE*

BUFF AND FIX THE GODDAMN VAULT HUNTERS

Anointments were a mistake. Damage end-game is wayyyy too reliant on them

anoints should have a maximum of, like, a 20% damage bonus. the damage necessary to kill enemies *should be coming from the VHs themselves*. i don’t care if you have to revamp every single Vault Hunter’s skill trees and buff them all by 9000%. THEY DESERVE IT AT THIS POINT

at the moment in m10 there really isn’t much build diversity *even between Vault Hunters*. We’re all using the same 5 guns (OPQ System. Kaoson. idk. fuckin brainstormer? is that still a thing? jesus fuck) with the same 3 anointments (100% on ASE, cryo while SNTL, and 300% while 90%).

you want to diversify builds like you said during the gameplay reveal???? you want our choice in Vault Hunter to actually fuckin matter???? FIX THEM!!!! THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO DEAL DAMAGE WITHOUT STUPID POWERFUL LEGENDARIES AND ANOINTMENTS!!!

Anoints also shouldn’t be common. At all. They should be, like, Pearl rarity. To let that happen, their damage needs to be tuned way the fuck down (again, 20ish % bonus MAX) and ALL ANOINTS NEED TO BE USEFUL IN SOME WAY

NOBODY IS GOING TO USE THE AIRBORNE OR SLIDING ANOINTMENTS JUST REMOVE THEM ALREADY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

obviously these changes can’t happen because they fucked up and buckled down with everything being anointed in m10, but still

imagine a world where the VHs actually did damage on their own without anointments and the damage buff from them was just an incentive to grind for the 100% perfect weapon and NOT A REQUIREMENT TO DEAL DAMAGE

>:(

A majority of gear is borderline worthless at M10

I’m fine with the difficulty of M10, i should let it be known. The enemy health isn’t really the problem IF ALL GUNS ACTED THE SAME AS THE OPQ SYSTEM

ffs.

you know, if you fixed ur vault hunters so they all did damage with just purple weapons (abt the same damage as legendaries w/o special effects) and removed the anointment requirement from late-game play, balancing your guns would be sooo much easier. you know. just saying.

right now only 10% (im being generous) of guns in the game are viable. 90% are worthless. We need AT LEAST 60-70% viable at M10. WHERE IS MY BUILD DIVERSITY. WHY ARE ALL LEGENDARIES NOW JUST “HEY THIS GUN IS STRONGER THAN THE LAST 4 WE RELEASED. HAVE FUN”

how to fix this problem? do as above: BUFF YOUR PLAYER CHARACTERS. MAKE ANOINTMENTS LESS STRONG.

then, at least the 10% already strong weapons would be stupid strong and OP as fuck, BUT AT LEAST WE COULD HAVE BUILD VARIETY!!! I don’t care if other people are dummy strong one-shotting everything in sight. I don’t! so long as they don’t play with me, I couldn’t care less!!! I want to be able to play with the unique, interesting legendaries. instead of the OPQ System. which, by the way, I dislike compared to the normal Q-System. let me use the frozen heart shield and the infiltrator mod. I don’t wanna be chained to the Seein’ Dead anymore :(

honestly at this point im starting to think removing slag was a mistake bc then at least we could use guns that aren’t solely damage-based guns. you know how fucked up you’ve got me that im thinking maybe slag wouldn’t be so bad this time around??? YOU GOT ME FUCKED UP B A D.

FIX THE GAME

IM TAKING A BREAK

MAYBE I’LL BE LESS UPSET WHEN I COME BACK FOR THE DLC BUT HOT. DIGGITY. SHIT.

#borderlands #bl3 #whelp #i needed to get that out #still frustrated... #just... fix the game #please #its so disheartening to see this STILL going on #like i know bl2 had the same problems #with the balancing #remember when they nerfed zer0 and buffed salvador? #but like christ at least they were messing with the vault hunters #now they're trying to brush their problems under the rug and it's really sad to watch #you would think they'd have learned from bl2

[bltngames]

SAGE 2020: Fan Games

I’d hoped to have this article out a little bit sooner, but I overestimated how long it would take to write about some of these games. Whoops! Like I said when I outlined the posting “schedule” on the first day, we’re playing it fast and loose, so this is just what you get.

Today is the day I talk about fan games! And even though SAGE has “Sonic” right there in the acronym, it’s always hosted fan games from all types, so today we’ve got Mega Man, Mario, Rayman, and even fan games of fan games, if you can believe it.

Sonic Pinball Panic!

Pinball is one of those things where I’ve always been obsessed with it, but never very good at it. And now, with access to digital pinball collections like Pinball Arcade and Pinball FX, I don’t actually find myself playing as much pinball as I thought I would when I was 14 years old. Still, I find myself fascinated by a good pinball table, and this honestly caught me off guard. This could very easily be an official DLC release for one of those aforementioned pinball collections and I wouldn’t even bat an eyelash (in fact, if you ask me, this is better than Pinball FX, which has always had weird ball physics). This looks, sounds, and functions exactly like a real pinball table should. My complaints are minor: for starters, the table feels kind of easy. I’ve never been a pinball wizard, but I was losing balls left and right here and it still took a good 15 minutes before I finally got a game over. Score accumulation is also pretty slow; most pinball tables will dump millions and millions of points on you, but here, it felt like a struggle just to reach the 379k I finished with. Both contribute to the fact that the table feels a little flat, like it’s missing a spark to really put it over the top. And, third, it would be nice if it had controller support. The keyboard works just fine, here (it’s just pinball, after all) but I find that the triggers on a controller feel really good with pinball flippers, and mapping the plunger to the right stick is great, too. This is a Unity game, so I wouldn’t think it’d be that hard to hook it up to the controller mapper. Still, I came away impressed.

Mega Man: Perfect Blue

There are two things out there that always give me pause: fan-made Doom level packs, and Mega Man fan games. Fan made gaming content generally has problems when it comes to difficulty balancing anyway, but these games have earned a certain reputation for their difficulty, which creates a problem when you have content made by fans, for fans. This insularity means these things are usually way too hard for what I would consider “normal” people (read: casual fans and outsiders). Add on to the fact that I’d even say that there are official Mega Man games with bad difficulty balancing, and you have a recipe for frustration. Sadly, this is how I’d characterize Perfect Blue: though this introductory level isn’t impossibly hard, it’s definitely pushing that edge where it’s not very accommodating to someone who hasn’t played and finished every Classic Mega Man game ever made. It almost immediately throws you into scenarios where you have jumps you can barely reach, insta-kill spikes, and enemies that not only actively dodge your shots, but invincible enemies that launch counter attack homing missiles. And then it starts making you juggle all of this stuff, together, at the same time. None of this is insurmountable as long as you’re paying attention, but as a very casual Mega Man fan, it’s an unfriendly first impression and makes me worried about what the rest of the game is going to be like as the challenge naturally ramps up. For those hardcore Mega Man fans among you, the rest of this is solid, at least. The presentation and controls are excellent, and the new sprites are beautiful. It’s a game I’d love to enjoy when it’s done… but I’m assuming I’ll be left out in the cold. A shame, really, because there’s so much promise here.

Sonic and the Mayhem Master

There’s a lot to like about this game, but there’s a part of me that really wonders if this should even be considered a Sonic fan game. Mayhem Master’s depictions of Sonic and Amy Rose are atypical to put it mildly. Here, Sonic seems to be a bookish nerd of sorts, a sidekick to Amy Rose, who has been turned into a burnt out, cigar-smoking detective. Most of the game plays out as half an adventure game, half an RPG, where you roam around the world talking to NPCs and gather clues while being assaulted by random battles. The battle system is super off-the-wall, too, perhaps taking inspirations from games like Mario & Luigi and Undertale. This means that battles aren’t passive -- you spend most of each fight dodging or nullifying incoming attacks with simplistic action-based commands. It’s weird, and different, and occasionally even a little bit overwhelming. That’s kind of the whole game, really. It’s the sort of thing that really doesn’t feel like a Sonic game at all, but it also doesn’t feel bad. The artwork is very charming, I’m interested in seeing the characters develop, and there’s plenty of worldbuilding and mystery. Would this still be as intriguing if you removed the Sonic connection, even if it’s so threadbare? That’s a hard question to answer. I know that some of my interest in this game is seeing how it spins more familiar Sonic elements into something that’s completely different. Worth checking out, for curiosity’s sake if nothing else.

Sonic and the Dreamcatcher

This is a fairly brilliant little game with two unfortunate quirks. If you didn’t know, the special stages in the original Sonic the Hedgehog were inspired by an arcade game of the era called Cameltry, published by Taito in 1989. Now, Sonic’s special stages were different enough from Cameltry that it wasn’t a case of Sega outright stealing the gameplay, but there’s a clear lineage there, and it only becomes clearer when you compare the special stages in Sonic 4 Episode 1 to Cameltry (spoilers: in that game, they’re nearly identical). Dreamcatcher is also from this lineage, but is infinitely more charming than either Sonic 4 and maybe even Cameltry itself. The idea is that you must collect a specific number of blue spheres in order to reveal the Chaos Emerald, after which you have a limited amount of time to find and collect it. It’s very simple, but the presentation really sells the game’s charm. It’s just a game that looks good and sounds good, with an interesting premise executed very well. Also, you get a dedicated “& Knuckles” button to spawn infinite Knuckles to help you collect blue spheres and bash enemies. Being able to have unlimited numbers of these guys sounds like it would break the game, but once that countdown clock begins, the last thing you need is 20+ echidnas clogging up the route back to the emerald. The first quirk this game suffers from is that there’s only two levels. Parts of this have a very “game jam made in a weekend” vibe to it despite the rock-solid music, sound, and gameplay, and only having two levels contributes to that. Hopefully more are coming in the future. The other quirk? You can’t actually download this game -- it’s embedded in a webpage. I’m sure this is to make it easy to play on any platform with a web browser (phones, PCs, etc.) but I find myself greatly desiring a hard copy of this game that can live on my computer forever.

Sonic Galactic

Now here’s just a good old fashioned Sonic fan game. Though it clearly takes inspiration from Sonic Mania’s aesthetics in some places, it’s clearly doing its own thing, featuring not just the core cast of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, but also Fang the Sniper, and even a brand new character named Tunnel the Mole. Unlike a lot of Sonic fan games at SAGE, this appears to be using something besides Clickteam Fusion, Game Maker, or Unity. Here, it’s the “Hatch Game Engine,” whatever that is. Whatever the case may be, the game runs very well and is basically indistinguishable from just playing Sonic Mania. Visuals are sharp, music’s good, the two included boss fights are surprisingly fun to fight -- everything seems to be in order. As a result, there’s not really a lot to say. This is just a good, fun game. Anything else I’d say would come off sounding like nitpicks. For example, there’s no way to set graphics options yet, so the game is stuck in 2x Windowed mode. Fang and Tunnel are cute additions, but I wonder how much utility they have as characters. Unless I missed something, Fang’s pop gun is mainly for a weak double-jump ability, and Tunnel’s ability to dig and ricochet off floors, walls and ceilings is cool, but it doesn’t have quite the universal utility of Tails’ flight or Knuckles climbing and gliding. It’ll be interesting to see how or maybe even if their abilities have a chance to grow into something special. Anyway, like I said, those are nitpicks, so try to give this a shot if you can.

Sonic Robo-Blast!

Remasters seem to be a bit of a theme this SAGE, between Sonic Triple Trouble 16-bit, Sonic 2 SMS, Sonic 1 Revisited, but this is perhaps the most surprising of them all: a loving remaster of the original Sonic Robo-Blast. SRB1 was perhaps one of the first true “landmark” fan games, given that it was basically a whole entire game that people could play. It's not a stretch to say that SRB1 probably helped kickstart the fan gaming community that still survives to this day -- I certainly owe my involvement in the community to seeing SRB1 for the first time. The problem is, as historically significant as the game might be, it’s nearly impossible to go back to nowadays -- it’s much, much too dated to be any fun. This remaster completely re-envisions SRB1 as a regular Sonic game, while also pulling in gameplay elements from Sonic Robo-Blast 2. It’s a bit of a time paradox mindwarp, but it helps give it a bit more personality than just making a bog-standard 2D Sonic. It works, aided by the fact the sprites, music and overall presentation are fantastic. The only downside is the Act 2 boss, which commits the cardinal sin of taking away player agency and making you wait around far too much. Here’s hoping this gets finished, because it’s definitely on my radar now.

Super Mario Flashback

This has been floating around for a few years now and I’m glad to see it’s finally starting to get some more substantial content as it moves towards becoming an actual game. That being said, this is also one of those games that’s kind of hard to talk about because it’s just… really polished. The art is incredible, it controls exactly like a Mario game, and there’s already a decent mixture of ideas at play in the demo. Anything else I’d say would sound like nitpicking -- like, for example, the backseat game designer in me wonders if maybe the game is prioritizing aesthetics a little too much. This is a wonderfully animated game, absolutely gorgeous, but some actions, like the butt-stomp and the wall kick, feel a bit sluggish, and I think it’s because they show off fancy animations. Even if it’s a split second, waiting for Mario to attach to a wall to kick off of it feels slow. Really, though, that’s an insignificant complaint. This demo is still well worth checking out.

Sonic Advance 4 Advanced

This game seems like a greatest-hits of Dimps best ideas, spanning the first Sonic Advance all the way to Sonic Rush. There’s just one problem: the game seems broken. Now, my desktop PC is starting to show its age. I built it four and a half years ago, and though it can handle game like Gears of War 5 on high settings at 60fps, slowly, newer games seem to be leaving it behind. That being said, I don’t think a game like Sonic Advance 4 here should be running at what appears to be half its intended speed. It also originally launched in a teeny-tiny window (we’re talking, like, smaller than a postage stamp) and even though the options menu has a toggle for full screen mode, it doesn’t want to work. Something about this game under the hood seems to be struggling very, very, VERY hard. It’s a shame, because if this actually played at the proper speed, it seems like it might actually be an alright game, if a bit complex and busy.

Sonic 2 SMS Remake

Here’s a game I was all buckled in expecting to enjoy. Like it says on the tin, this is a remake of Sonic 2 for the Master System (and Game Gear), but with wide screen visuals and huge expansions to the mechanics, roster of playable characters, and levels. On the outside it seems really impressive, and to a certain degree it is, but something about the controls feel a little off. Sonic’s heavier here than he is on the Master System, perhaps to simulate “real” Sonic physics a little more accurately, but you can also pretty much stop on a dime, and the combination of the two feels awkward. The camera also needs a lot of work, as it’s basic at best and does a poor job of letting you see what’s below (to the dev if you’re reading this: there’s actually video tutorials out there on how 2D scrolling cameras work, it might be worth looking a couple of them up). It also leans into some of the tech limitations of the Master System, like how you aren’t given any rings for boss fights (and even hiding the HUD, a move done to save on resources for the large enemy sprites). I could be picky on a bunch of other little stuff, too, like how the flight mechanics feel, but there are other games to play at SAGE and I’ve got at least two more articles to write. Needless to say, this is a solid (impressive, even) foundation but it’s missing a lot of late-stage polish to clean up the tiny little rough edges.

Rayman Redemption

I tell this story every so often, but it was about three quarters of the way through Rayman 2 on the Sega Dreamcast when it struck me, suddenly: I love this game. I was being chased by a pirate ship through some rickety bridges and even though I was dying over and over and over again, I realized I had been enjoying Rayman 2 enough that I might put it in my top ten Dreamcast games. But that was 2002, and the years haven’t been so kind to ol’ Rayman. From the strangely celebrity-infused Rayman 3, to the tragedy of Rayman 4 (eventually becoming Raving Rabbids) to the endless, careless ports of Rayman 2 to every platform under the sun, one gets the impression Ubisoft maybe didn’t know what to do with Rayman. Especially now, when most of Ubisoft’s games are some form of online live service or cookie cutter open world experience (or increasingly both). But the fans know what they want. Rayman Redemption takes the original 1995 Rayman game and lovingly gives it a fresh coat of paint. The results are akin to what Taxman and Stealth did for Sonic CD in 2011, with wide screen visuals, improved controls, touched up level design, but gameplay that still feels faithful and accurate to the original experience. Except that Sega charged money for that, and here, fans have released this for free. Ubisoft’s loss, I guess. I didn’t play Rayman 1 until well after I’d finished Rayman 2, and I’ll admit, I kind of bounced off of it back then. It felt slow, and awkward, and when the difficulty ramped up, it got very hard, very quickly. Now, admittedly, I’ve only put about 30 minutes into Redemption here, but just the addition of a run button is incredibly welcome, and the retooled level design and powerup mechanics helps the game feel way less obtuse overall. It’s just a cleaner, tighter, more accessible and more polished version of Rayman.

Stay tuned for the next article: Indie games.

#sage #sonic amateur games expo #writing #review slew #rayman redemption #sonic pinball panic #mega man #perfect blue #mayhem master #dreamcatcher #sonic galactic #sonic robo-blast #super mario flashback #sonic advance 4 #sms remake #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #review

[otonymous]

Your Gavin NSFW HCs!! So good so good so good! The game hasn't been out long but all of these boys are already near and dear to my heart. I wreck myself thinking of your HCs for the other three if you wrote them 💦 For now, may I humbly request some NSFW HCs of my (potentially/somewhat) shady sunshine Kiro if you're willing to bless us with trying him out? No worries if you're not taking requests/busy! Just slid in to let know your Gavin HCs lit some fires 🔥🔥

Hello awesome Anon! 💕

Thank you so much for your lovely comments and your incredibly polite ask! 😍 It totally brought a huge smile to my face to know that you enjoyed my Gavin NSFW HCs!  Sorry for the long wait in answering your Ask - I hope you’re cool with Kiro’s NSFW ABCs!  Thanks for reading, and hope you enjoy them 😉

Warning: NSFW/18+: Explicit/graphic language - reader discretion is advised.  TRIGGER WARNING: mentions of smothering & breath play (can be incredibly dangerous - please take a moment to read up on it if you’re curious and practice safe sex in more ways than one!!)

The ABCs of Kiro (MLQC Headcanon - NSFW)

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)

This sweetheart has already raided the convenience stores beforehand for your favourite snacks and will lay them before you while you’re still wrapped up in his sheets

Enjoy feeding each other Pocky and chips, laughing and getting to know one another in your post-coital bliss

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

He loves your ears: loves to nibble and suck on the lobes, run his tongue over the shell of your ears, softly serenade you with the sweetest love songs just to watch the tips grow red

Kiro is particularly fond of his lips: he loves licking the salt of potato chips off them, loves using them to feel the heat of your skin as he peppers your body with kisses, absolutely adores it when you come undone from his mouth alone

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum)

Kiro loves to come in you, but he also loves pulling out to lay the head of his cock on your trembling folds just watch his cum paint your pussy; reach a hand down to gingerly smear it all around and Kiro is insta-hard again

He also loves to take you from behind so he can cum on your ass and watch it drip down the curves of your cheeks and onto your thighs

Kiro has a hard time keeping control when you look up to meet his eyes as your tongue peeks out to taste that drop of pre-cum on the head of his cock

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

He may or may not have a couple pairs of your clean underwear that he buries his face in while he’s jerking off, thinking of you

They definitely come in handy with his crazy busy schedule and all the traveling he does for work (see “Jack Off” below)

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

Kiro is quite experienced (especially when it comes to certain kinks)

Prior to meeting the love of his life (i.e. YOU) he has engaged in meaningless sex here and there with some groupies, some members of edgy underground organizations (one of whom introduced him to his kink - see below, under K)

F = Favourite Position

Hands down, 69 is Kiro’s favourite position because he likes to give and receive at the same time

The superstar will keep pulling down on your hips and thighs, trying to get you to rest more of your weight onto his face (see Kink below)

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc.)

There can be a lot of jokes and laughter leading up to the moment, but you can bet that once Kiro gets down to business, he’s never been more serious about anything in his life

Boy can be INTENSE and seriously driven to give you as much pleasure as possible

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)

Like Victor, Kiro is completely bare (in case the superstar has any wardrobe malfunctions on stage)

But if you MUST know, Kiro is a natural blond

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…)

Kiro is a romantic at heart: he firmly believes in love at first sight, the red thread of fate and the concept of soulmates

From the very moment he laid eyes on you, he knew you were the one and hasn’t looked at anyone else since (and never will)

Even still, he cannot help but feel insecure at times, hating himself whenever he questions whether or not his Evol had any influence on your feelings for him

Hence, sex with Kiro often takes on an incredibly intimate tone and can be more properly referred to as lovemaking: his cerulean eyes will be searching yours as he buries himself deeply inside you, laying his soul bare with every tender word he whispers in your ear, each burning press of his body against yours — he’s expressing the depths of his love and seeking confirmation that you love him as Kiro the man, not Kiro the superstar with his overwhelming charm

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

Kiro masturbates quite frequently, close to daily, depending on how tired/busy he is — he finds it hard not to, since you’re never far from his mind

His insane work schedule unfortunately translates into a lot of time away from you, so he often has to rely on himself to release his pent-up energy

Also expect to engage in some mutual masturbation over FaceTime

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

Kiro has an oral fixation and lives for you to sit on his face

He’s even cool if there’s a bit of smothering - VERY MILD breath play is something he’s into

He won’t do it to you unless you request it yourself, Miss Chips! (you can bet safe words/gestures will be in full effect)

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)

Anywhere he can get you alone: with his jam-packed schedule, Kiro has to take advantage of every hour, every minute, every second he has with you

You guys have gotten busy in a variety of places: in his dressing room, a variety of broom closets, hidden behind clothing racks backstage, inside a parked van with tinted windows, in bathroom stalls, on a deserted beach in the middle of the night, etc. — anything goes

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

While Kiro loves everything about you, he especially loves the sound of your voice, and finds it absolutely irresistible when you sing a song he penned himself (he’d wonder whether his Evol rubbed off on you)

The man melts to hear you moan with pleasure, so feel free to be as loud as possible whenever you have the luxury to do so

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn-offs)

I’m just gonna keep it real here: none of the MLQC boys share.  NONE.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

This boy likes giving and receiving equally (see Favourite Position above)

Very skilled at eating you out and can happily do so for HOURS (this superstar has had lots of vocal training, including tongue stretches 😉)

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)

If time isn’t an issue, Kiro tends towards slow and sensual because he wants so badly to prolong the moment of physical and emotional intimacy with you

When you’re indulging in a quickie though, the man can snap his hips as fast as a jackhammer and with almost as much force

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)

While Kiro doesn’t view quickies as ideal, it’s much better than nothing and beggars won’t be choosers

It’s pretty much guaranteed that sex is gonna happen anytime you and Kiro get the chance to meet up in person

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

Kiro is totally game when it comes to experimenting (except no additional partners!)

His kink game is strong to begin with: anything you mention he’s likely already tried, so feel free to ask him anything

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)

With all the recording/filming/concerts/TV appearances/promotions, etc., Kiro has even longer work days than Victor.  You best believe he has the stamina to keep up

He’s also a younger guy and is super fit from rehearsing dance routines all the time, along with his usual sessions at the gym (he’s gotta work off all that junk food after all)

So, if given the time and opportunity, Kiro can go many rounds and doesn’t require much recovery time in between

But don’t worry, the boy’s EQ is so high he would never push you past your comfort level; you wouldn’t even need to say anything and he can read you like an open book

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

Kiro doesn’t have any toys for his own use, but as mentioned in Dirty Secret above, he does keep a pair of your panties around to assist him in fantasizing about you when he’s stroking himself

The superstar does have a collection of costumes from movies/dramas he’s filmed in the past and took a particular liking to.  Feel free to peruse and let him know which one you want him to wear 😉

LOVES using toys on you, and is quite open to you using toys on him 

U = Unfair (How much they like to tease)

Kiro likes to tease his lady when she loses at video games, not when she’s in the bedroom (unless you explicitly ask for it)

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

Kiro, the singer, can get incredibly loud during the act when he doesn’t have to be discrete

His moans and groans are made 100000000x more irresistible by his beautifully sensual voice

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)

You’ve inspired every love song he’s written since meeting you

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words)

Kiro has a nice cock, average girth and slightly above-average in length

He is cut and curves very slightly to the right

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

Kiro had a high sex drive to begin with, but it has shot through the roof since meeting you

His mind can’t help but drift to more sensual matters whenever he sees you or even thinks of you 

Much of this is tied to the strength of his feelings for you; oftentimes he finds that words just aren’t enough to express how much he loves and desires you so he tries to show you with both his words and actions

The man does try to suppress his thirst, as he doesn’t want to scare you off

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

Kiro tends to pass out immediately after sex, but only for 5-10 minutes before he’s completely energized again and ready to go, as if he took a power nap

If you’re up for another round, so is he!  But if you’ve had enough, Kiro will break out the post-coital snacks (see Aftercare above) and maybe toss you a gaming console controller, smirking as he climbs back under the sheets with you

——————————————————————————————-

Thanks so much for reading!  Check out more of my work here! 📚

#q&a #anonymous #all request line #mlqc #mr love queen's choice #love and producer #mlqc kiro #mlqc smut headcanon #mlqc smut #my writing

[suchalilyofthevalley]

Hi! 3rd year marketing student here- I’m taking a PR class now which I’m loving so I’m actually considering this as a career post uni!! Any tips for getting started in PR and what kind of skills or connections can help you further your career?

That’s AWESOME. Welcome to the neighborhood. I can’t see myself doing anything other than PR. I totally love it. Every day is different and you always get to be creative. Diving in...

Skills:

Communication in all forms is key - writing, speaking. Even at a high level, I’m still writing strategy documents, press releases, pitches, emails to execs or media. It’s all so key to be able to clearly and concisely articulate. First impressions are truly everything, even in emails.

Become a media JUNKIE - you can’t guide clients unless you know the landscape. Read everything you can, watch tv for what news/shows are covering, listen to mainstream radio, subscribe to newsletters, follow media folks on twitter and insta. See what the media is interested in, how they cover things - it makes you better prepared to speak on strategy and pitch media better!

Learn the art of relationships and building authentic ones - most of this industry and the success truly revolves around who you know and how well you know them. I was able to get a client and his pet project a massive interview with a high tier level A media outlet that included an on-site, in-person chat along with an exclusive portrait sitting because not only was I pitching something good, but I had a fantastically great relationship with the writer. It’s never always what’s in it for me - never. I always check-in just because. I don’t just reach out when I need something or have to pitch a placement. Talk to them. Ask what else they’re working on, get to know them as people outside of work. Grab coffee, drinks, dinners, invite them to events if you can just because - not because you need something from them. Be authentic, be yourself. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. I am NOT the typical bitchy NY PR girl. That ain’t me. I’m not shady with folks, I’m not playing games. I’m honest, I have integrity and I truly care about the people I’m working with on the front lines of media. Do I need to gatekeeper for clients? Absolutely, but I’ll never lie to media. Ever. My blackbook is as stacked and deep as it is because I’ve never been anything other than myself. I liken myself to a concierge to media - my job is to make THEIR jobs as easy and as seamless as possible while serving to the best of my client.  

Connections:

Start networking ASAP. Ask for informational interviews with PR professionals, with media - especially within the discipline of PR you want to get into. Get internships and experience as soon as you can. Ask to shadow folks if you can’t commit to a full internship time. Volunteer on campus to do PR/marketing for events there: music, sporting events, performances, guest speakers. 

My first ‘gig’ was when I was in college - I help put myself through school as a sportswriter (a magazine and a website!) because I wanted to know what it was like on the media side of things so I could service media the best I could when I got into PR. It also gave me a massive network of connections as soon as I walked off campus and into my first PR gig, which happened to be in sports. 

I hope this helps! Please always feel free to hit me with other questions or message me at any time. I’m a huge proponent of paying it forward with younger PR pros - I wouldn’t be where I am today without the help of some amazing people along the way who helped foster my skills and teach me the ropes.

#answers #getting on my PR soapbox #cause publicists don't stop working #lakeside-fog

[blackreesemajic]

Social Distancing with a New Flame

         ✨💕 You just met a new boo and just when the vibes started flowing boom* 💥 💥 the world shuts down and quarantine is turned on. The honeymoon phase should be the time you and your person are going on dates, boo’d up in public, holding hands, and sucking each other's face every second of the day.  😘😘😘

Your mind is filled with a plethora of in-person activities y’all can be doing during this time to make the butterflies in your stomach flutter like they just popped a perk.

If your situation is anything like mine, You may feel like your coochie was just put on 90-day probation without your consent. Thank you to the reviews of Steve Harvey’s, “Act like a Lady, Think like a man.” And his toxic masculinity perpetuated in his book,  I would have read it and MAYBE had been better prepared for THIS situation. 

Remember, although times are hard right now it’s not always about sex! Your peach  🍑 may be yearning for that eggplant  🍆 but 30-90 days is not. that. long... of a wait to be intimate with someone. 

You could be like one of those people who wait until marriage…

No shade, but I am not one of those people.  

I’m the, “Bring that ass here boi!” type of people. 

The CDC recommends that we “Stay Calm” during this time quarantine.

 It sounds unrealistic to me.  😒

 How can we stay calm when our sexual desires are all over the place. 

There are three things we are ALL doing during this time if we are not daydreaming about the outside land. 

We spend all day bouncing that ass from Insta to Facebook, Twitter to Tumblr then back to Insta again…

 Log on to our ex’s Netflix account and be entertained by the white Trashery of Tiger King and then see the same trashery in the White House to remind us the world has gone straight to SHITS... 

Lastly, switching to Private mode on our phones and visiting pornhub.com or xvideos.com to see who is offering the best free subscription. 

 Trust me, I’m right there with you! 

 Just because social distancing is in effect does not mean you have to distance your heart. 

Let’s use this time to get to know each other on a personal level. 

Isolation could be causing your energies to yearn for one another louder than ever. You may even have a heightened craving of intimacy during this time. This time in quarantine can be beneficial to your dating life if you consider yourself someone who is, “Shy or Introverted” or are attracted to people who are. Many people with introverted personalities would prefer getting to know each other over the phone or on a virtual date. This is the time to bring back genuine connections, open and honest conversations, and my ALL TIME FAVORITE… Falling asleep on the phone. 

[[Pieces of Reese: If he in quarantine at “his crib” but can only talk to you during certain hours or when he steps outside… He in quarantine with someone else, sis. LET HIM GO! ]]   🔑 😒

Here are some tips to keep the flame lit, tea hot, and coffee dripping down your lips. So that when you and your new boo do get back together the connection is stronger than ever!

1.     Self Healing and Reflecting: I know. I know. You were so excited because you feel like you could have finally met your “PERSON”. And now, You can’t even see them in-person. Your mind starts to ponder so many “What the fucking Ifs!” “What if they get bored with me?” “What if they lose interest?” “What if they have multiple quarantine boo’s”  “What if they catch corona and die?!!!” I know it sounds fucking crazy but its a real fucking fear.  You must remember that FEAR stands for False Evidence Appearing Real!

I NEED YOU TO IMMEDIATELY; Reset your mind and Refocus yourself. 

Now is the time you must remind yourself that “YOU ARE THAT BITCH!” Use this time to get to know you. Get healthy Physically, Mentally, and Emotionally... If being in a relationship/ situationship is what you desire at the end of all of this. Use the time to make yourself WHOLE. Thou can’t pick up broken glass without cutting the hand that is trying to put the pieces back together.  

[[ “We don’t fear being alone. We fear getting to know the parts of ourselves we didn’t know before.” - Pieces of Reese ]]

 Pick up a pen and paper and write: Write a letter to yourself. Write in your diary. Write to your person. Write your feelings. Write yourself daily affirmations and post them on your bathroom mirror so that you see them every day. Get connected with the feelings behind your everyday thoughts.

Set a routine; Whatever the routine looks like to you, set it! There is no amount of work you need to force yourself to meet society’s sense of productivity. The routine is only in place to keep your body prepared for what the universe has to offer you once this is all done.

2.       Virtual Dates: It seems crazy but having a virtual date can be romantic and is also cost-efficient. If you or your partner want to be extravagant you can rotate turns ordering the other person a meal (Be sure to leave your delivery person a decent tip for working through these hard times). You can both go into your own kitchens and cook each other your favorite meal. Make something you will want your person to try when you are in one space. Try describing the taste of the meal, who taught you how to make it, and why it is your favorite. Adding wine or alcohol loosens things up and being alone could make you more comfortable with being yourself on the date. A great website to get the conversation going: www.goalcast.com/2018/04/19/deep-questions-to-ask-your-partner/amp/ 

3.   Share what you see: If you are a lover of music, videos, Memes, or GIFs, Do NOT be afraid to share it with your person. With everything that is happening in the world currently, Now is the perfect time to make someone smile and laugh. Remember that MENTAL HEALTH is real! For people who suffer from Mental Health Illness, forced isolation calls for undesired thoughts of not being wanted. Show your person they are the first person you thought of when you have seen or heard something. Make them feel like, you couldn’t wait to send it to them. Let them know they are not alone during this time. You are their person   

4. If you are adventurous: Video or Phone sex has never got anyone left on READ. It actually gets you a callback.

 It's safe, sexy, and Kinky AS FUCK! Call your friends who love BDSM to teach you a thing or two. Virtual sex allows you to push the boundaries between you and your partner. It makes each person excited for what's to come when you are in one space. 

You can set the mood for your virtual hook up by lighting candles, having your space neat, camera angles must be on point,  and start off with a striptease to get the eggplant ripe and keep the peach juicy. 

Playing a ”If I miss, I Strip. If you miss, You strip.” [if you know, you know ❤️ + 🏀 ] type of game may relax you and your partner. Of course, Make it specific to you and yours. Don’t forget to have your #BlackReeseMajic music playlist ready. If you don’t have a music playlist visit my apple music/ Spotify to follow any of mine  

5.    Lastly, Optional, and specific for my Spiritual Souls who believe in the power of Manifestation: ✨💕✨💕✨💕

[You do not have to have a person already to do this step. If you are someone hoping to find your quarantine boo or keep the one you have then this is for you]

 Step One: is to start by writing out everything you want in your person. Qualities, Attributes, Values, and Looks (if you believe in detail). Remember to write out how you want to be treated by your person. If you want to go the extra step. You can write what ‘You’ will be able to offer to your person. Once you have produced the person you desire in the concrete sense,

 Step Two: is to call on your spirits guides, ancestors, and higher power to bring forth your ask. Some things you may need to connect with the spiritual realm but are not required are 1.Pink Candle (Pink candles personify the purest form of love, a love without selfishness with selfless emotions, are ideal for the beginning of a relationship), 2. Herbs or Essential oils [if you have] have a centuries-long history of symbolizing love and devotion (Lavender, Rose, Basil, Calendula...etc). 3. Sage: “Sage is known to have healing properties and with the power of intention and spiritual connection with the source of all existence, the burning of Sage assists with healing and clearing.” 4. Offering: Clean and freshwater is the simplest form of offering. You can also offer coins, jewelry, fruits, anything appealing to the spirits. 5. Bell or anything that makes noise (can be your voice) 

And Step Three: Have a table or space specific for intentions or manifestation. With a clear mind, body, and soul begin my thanking creation for all that you already have. I like to place my “person desires” list under my pink candle. I sprinkle my herbs around and inside my candle. I  use a couple of drops of my essential oils for fragrance (Spirits love good smelling things). I make my spiritual space as pretty as possible (Glitter is enticing to spirits and crystals deepens the vibrations). I give the offering (usually freshwater, money, or coins). I chant (Chanting is specific to you. If you need help with a chant I usually say, “All praises to the most high. God, Spirits, Creation, and Ancestors, I thank you for everything you have done and everything you continue to do. I offer you my purest self and this alter to bring forth my ask…”  I burn my sage (smell, clarity, and guidance to myself and spirits), and finally, I light my pink love candle.

 I let my candle burn for a whole day or I light it every day for a few hours then blow it out.   

I hope this tea has filled your soul the way writing it has filled mine. Stay at home if you can and stay safe during this time. 

If you are someone who lost a loved one from complications of COVID19, I pray for healing and peace over your life. I am sending EACH and every one of you Light and Love from the depths of my soul. 

Spread Light and Love Every day! ✨💕

PEACE & Be The.      

    Sincerely, Pieces of Reese

Sources: 

https://www.miracleswithinus.com/the-spiritual-side-of-sage.html

https://dontmesswithmama.com/essential-oils-for-romance-love/

https://www.thespruce.com/herb-meanings-in-love-and-romance-1761964

https://www.sisterlove.org/post/keeping-it-safe-and-sexy-covid19

#Blackreesemajic piecesofreese

[bryyo-data]

What if Samus had Metroid powers: design for a hypothetical game

I got this ask the other day and my answer was a bit of a ramble, but I've come back to it with a clear head. I decided to have a go at hypothetical game design, for a Metroid title set post-Fusion in which Samus Aran gains Metroid-like abilities due to her DNA changes! Some of the stuff below is rehashed from the ask reply itself.

Be warned! Bit of a long post, and I apologise in advance for mobile users for whom readmores don't always work.

Premise

I tried to stay vague with the story details because I was more interested in writing about the gameplay, but I failed at that and wrote a lot. Story has it's own section at the bottom. However, the basic idea is that Samus, now an enemy to the Federation and probably on the run, ends up on a world where the environment triggers the manifestation of strange powers. Metroids are known to adapt when introduced to new worlds, and Samus is essentially doing the same- her Metroid DNA, previously doing little more than sparing her from the X, is now active and granting her abilities.

New abilities

This isn't solid ideas so much as a brainstorm, but I tried to come up with a few ideas for what Samus might be able to do with Metroid DNA. None of it has any scientific basis but that's okay, there's dragons in this franchise.

ENERGY DRAIN: This is the first ability you learn, perhaps one you start off with. Samus starts the first area trapped, maybe after a ship crash, and is told how to shoot and jump etc. by the game. Or alternatively, maybe she doesn’t shoot. Let's say her weapon is down for now, hence being more trapped than usual, and she's stuck using a melee move to break through the surrounding rocks. While doing this, she comes across a biological barrier. But as she goes to use her melee attack, something unusual happens... The barrier turns to dust, and the health she lost during her crash-landing is replenished.

Henceforth, that melee thing becomes a drain attack. This power allows Samus to drain energy, killing a foe quickly and restoring some of her own health, but it isn't unlimited or easy to perform beyond the starting portion of the game. With mobile and aggressive enemies, it requires very precise timing to pull off. I would personally make it so that the game relies on this move much less than Samus Returns relied on the melee counter, but have it function in a similar way. Samus can still blast quickly through enemies like she could in Super Metroid/Zero Mission/Fusion, but if she wants to absorb health she can coax enemies into a specific position and with the right timing, perform a drain move.

If the move is a success, it will insta-kill a low-level enemy and is more rewarding than a standard kill. This might even replace normal energy drops from shooting, or at least would give much more health back than a standard drop. If she fails, she opens up to the enemy attack and risks taking more damage than usual. So if a skilled player is at low health and might die, they can take the risk of draining from an enemy. They may either stabilise themselves, or take double damage and die instantly.

If we don't replace normal energy drops altogether, this becomes less of a thing. In fact for the sake of health grinding and general convenience it's probably better to keep regular drops in- this would just become a fun extra which allows you to get past certain points in the game, like barriers, and can let you heal up quicker if you've learned how to pull it off without fail.

Regardless, this allows for OPTIONAL bullshitting past segments and sequence breaking; for example, you might be able to just get past a standard too-hot-without-Varia region by energy draining the whole way through.

Most bosses would have opportunities to use this if you position yourself right, but I'd personally cut down on flashy cutscenes when it happens. They're fun but I don't want to sacrifice the flow of the game for cinematics too much. Just a quick draining move, steal a bit of health. This move wouldn't work on mechanical enemies, because it relies on life energy specifically.

As you go along, this ability might power up, perhaps triggered either by the environments Samus moves into (since Metroids introduced to new environments will alter accordingly). Perhaps there are ways to power up every Metroid ability, or even an item that allows you to enhance one at a time by channelling your energies-something like that. An enhanced Energy Drain may steal more health and even fuel your weapon ammunition or something like that. Plus, it would make it easier to insta-kill some stronger enemies with the move.

I kinda like the idea of using an item to power up one Metroid ability at a time. To add a bit of challenge to the game, so you can't just switch to the most convenient one at any given time, maybe have it so that you can only change your powered-up ability in certain areas? Special Chozo statues? Interfacing with the other half of whatever this technology is, maybe a computer system found in a couple of rooms across the planet (with all except the first one or two being in hidden and slightly hard-to-find locations? Is that being too mean?)

(Btw just to get retro, we're giving this hypothetical game cheats- one of which is the ability to switch power at any time. Among others like immortality and fun suit colour changes.)

One thing I considered is that, similar to Aeion, Samus might have a power meter for using other Metroid abilities. This would give more function to the draining move outside of just health, and could explain some of Metroid biology too. It would imply that they specifically have to feed on life energy in order to do the things they do, and normal food wouldn't power them up the same. For that reason, Samus could power up her energy meter by draining. The amount of power she absorbs would be proportional to the enemy difficulty.

This could make certain segments trickier; for example, if there were a region similar to the end of Metroid 2 (not Samus Returns) where Metroids have killed off most of the life in the area, Samus would have to use her powers sparingly. The player might find it a bit trickier to traverse the area if they run out of power. Enemies here might be easy to kill and give a lot of power back on easier modes, but harder to kill and less rewarding on hard difficulty.

An alternative is that Samus's powers are fuelled directly by her own life energy, i.e. her health. This would essentially work like Phazon, but not in bursts; each time Samus activates a power, she sacrifices a bit of health, either continually or at once (again, same as how Aeion works, but depleting the health meter instead of a separate one). This makes it vital to locate energy tanks, which could prompt more exploration and may lead Samus to interesting locations that have hidden lore and such (see the section below for more on that). This might also be interesting from a lore perspective because it explains why Metroids are so aggressive as predators- they waste so much energy on simple things like flying, it means they have to near-constantly feed.

Which brings me to the other power-ups. I imagine Samus wouldn’t pick these up traditionally like items. There would still be items in the game, including several brand new ones not directly comparable to those in previous games in the series (obviously we can bring back some old favourites but copy-pasting the exact same items over and over again can get a bit dull even with new abilities). Most normal items would play to the normal Metroidvania game design, of “can’t access area -> locate pickup -> move to new area. These abilities might be triggered by moving into new environments, or if Samus is under stress i.e. during a specific boss fight. So you wouldn’t necessarily be hunting for them, but they could still let you get to new areas or items.

FLOATING: Samus floats, draining power continually until she stops or runs out. This one would require significant limitations; for example, perhaps as you move further away from the ground, you drain SIGNIFICANTLY more energy. This means you are welcome to try and sequence break, or get an item that you were meant to get with grapple beam, but you're wasting a LOT of energy doing so. Maybe gravity is still trying to pull Samus down once you lift off, so you have to actively fight it, and each ascent drains energy faster the higher you go. Sort of like a built-in jetpack. With that said, this would have interesting applications in world traversal.

An enhanced float may have a significantly lower cost for ascending or just maintaining the float. Because we all love some Aesthetic(tm), maybe Float+ gives Samus a faint wing-like aura when she uses it- especially if we go with the above idea that Samus uses Chozo tech to power it up. Imagine the sick fanart that could come out of that.

SHIELD: A fairly standard one ripped off of Samus Returns' lightning sheild. By sacrificing some energy, Samus can temporarily keep up a shield that will mean she takes less damage. If we go with the function of sacrificing health for Metroid abilities (rather than a separate power bar) it would require some careful balancing as well as player learning- for example, trying to ensure that (at least for stronger enemies) it's worth turning it on at all, and that the energy loss to create the shield is less than the theoretical energy loss if you took hits from the enemy.

Maybe this would be a pulse thing rather than an ongoing one; you activate it, and it lasts maybe 10-30 seconds, taking a defined amount of energy. During that time, you get an opportunity to pummel the enemies around you while not being knocked back or stunned when they hit (though you might still take e.g. 1/2 or 1/4 damage from incoming attacks). Of course, it could also function to protect Samus from things like lava, allowing her to access subsurface items if the game never gave her a Gravity Suit or equivalent.

A powered up version would obviously be something like a stronger shield, or a less costly one, or longer lasting if it's activated in pulses. Or a mix of them all. Maybe even a lightning shield effect where things that come into contact with Samus take damage, possibly even feeding her a bit of health (in TINY amounts, not comparable to the drain ability). Visually, so it looks as pretty as the powered-up float, it could maybe have an effect similar to the traditional big-shoulder Varia suit (assuming Samus is still in some form of the Fusion suit by this point).

SENSE/METROID VISION: I'm ripping this one off Samus Returns as well, but I'd change it. This would allow Samus to detect the life energies of all creatures in the area by focusing. It would also indicate how the larval Metroids, lacking eyes, locate their prey. Sensing would either come as a pulse like in Samus Returns, or a toggle on-toggle off ongoing thing, which you can't keep up indefinitely due to energy waste. Like in Skyrim where you can use the Aura Whisper shout or Detect Life/Undead etc.

Key differences include that this ability doesn’t show you hidden entrances by default; it would just indicate that "something is living in this wall" and you have to make judgements based on that info. Is this an enemy that will jump out and kill you (hence, you can avoid it)? Is it a hidden room with enemies in, and an entrance nearby? Thus, it keeps in a little challenge and exploration work.

A powered up version might be able to show other things too, including nearby items, entrances, or breakable blocks- like scan pulse from Samus Returns. That would make it useful for players who don't want to spend hours bombing every wall, or 100%ers like me who are at the endgame and getting frustrated because they can't find the last two missile upgrades. Obviously it's offset by the aforementioned fact that if you choose this ability, you can't choose another without going back to one of the set locations.

TELEPORT: I'm hesitant to include this one because it was fairly signature to Phazon Metroids, but I guess it could be passed off as "a hidden Metroid ability that Phazon unlocked". This would allow Samus to do short-range teleports for an energy cost. I dunno who's played Axiom Verge here, but there's an item which (spoilers if you haven't played it) lets you teleport through walls, and once upgraded it lets you go through bigger and bigger gaps. Samus's teleport would be more instantaneous than that one, and available to use from any position, but costly to perform.

The teleport could help her dodge enemy attacks (though like energy drain, success would rely on timing, and Samus might still take damage just before she teleports assuming there's a slight delay from inputting the command to actually jumping). It would also allow Samus to get through certain walls, though there may be some which are inpenetrable due to the material they're made of. I don't know how it would work in terms of control schemes, but maybe the player could choose their jump distance, with smaller jumps needing less energy.

A powered up version might be able to take Samus further or even have her emit an energy burst when she leaves/emerges from the jump, damaging nearby enemies- though with a greater energy cost.

METROID COMMAND: I can't think of a lore reason why this one would cost energy, unless it's some weird energy psychic thing that specifically resonates with Metroids. Anyway, let's assume Metroids aren't unique to the end-game Tourian-esque area in this game, and there are several locations where you can encounter them throughout the world. This ability would allow you to communicate with them, actually stopping their attacks and saving yourself or other nearby innocent creatures.

Maybe these Metroids are communicating with a "parent" who is actually an evil enemy (i.e. intelligent species that bonded parentally to them- see lore section below) which may result in more co-ordinated attacks than you see from wild roaming individual Metroids. But Samus can use this ability to stop their coordination, or even turn them on their handlers!

An upgrade of this... Maybe Samus turning the Metroids on their allies, including each other and the enemies commanding them? Keep it up long enough and you might be left with just one Metroid standing for you to take out. That could lead to some dark stuff as well. I can imagine Samus needing to be ruthless by using this ability for survival, but feeling baaaad about it.

The upgrade may also include things like asking local Metroids to affect the environment; bringing inaccessible power-ups to Samus, such as ones on high ledges (if she doesn't want to waste energy floating up there) or opening new passageways that Samus herself couldn't get open, either via draining or using brute strength, depending on the Metroid form.

SOMETHING TO DO WITH SHAPE CHANGING: This is one that, cool as it would be, would be REALLY hard to implement because I cannot think of an idea for how it would work. Especially because Samus is in the suit, and we're presuming that the suit itself can't really change shape along with her. But the basic idea is that Metroids famously mature and change, so what if someone with Metroid DNA could undergo controlled, temporary form changes? Or just change certain body parts? I'll come back to this one in the plot section but I'm not convinced Samus could use it herself, though it would be really cool, if potentially OP. Why have a Metroid Vampire when you can have a METROID WEREWOLF kinda I guess.

Just going for bullshit here, perhaps Samus could unlock this one close to the end in a Zero Mission-esque sequence where she's parted from her suit. She seems vulnerable and really has to rely on her Metroid abilities while being extremely energy-conscious, because she's no longer got extra energy tanks to keep her alive (going by the life=power method anyway; slightly less relevant in the separate-energy-bar method except for the fact that energy refills require enemy draining, and that move is much riskier without the suit, since it already increases damage if failed.)

At the end of the segment, she starts growing claws and being able to slash through thick wires or whatever un-drainable thing is in her way. Then she grows bigger and gets more hunched, scaled, and armoured, until she's starting to look like a warped variant of an Omega Metroid. Maybe even a Queen. Luckily she gets under control of it and reverts when she finds a power suit to fit into, something most Metroids can't do but luckily she's a humanoid protagonist and can't stay monstrous forever. Also gives a reason for her to replace her Fusion suit with a cooler classic Chozo suit!

(For real, would Nintendo even do that? Use their sex-sells tiddy out game section as the scene where Samus becomes the most un-fuckable monstrous body horror dragon alien in the game? Probably not but I can dream.)

Maybe the player can't really control this one, or there's a huge cost to doing so but when you do you become SICK AWESOME POWERFUL and take up half the screen and the final boss attack that should've one-shotted you just slides off your back. Maybe. Maybe I just think monster aliens are cool.

Ideally I would like to have maybe 4-5 unique abilities in the game. With drain as one and four others, it would be fairly similar to Aeion and could act as an off-SR388 Aeion replacement. The above ideas are by no means the limits of what could be done, but I can't think of any others at the moment. To work nicely with the game lore, ideally there would be some powers that Samus hasn't seen Metroids use before. Not only does she learn to use them herself, but the Metroids on this planet start using them too, making for some new and unique Metroid battles.

I would leave as much leeway as possible- there's a lot of ideas here, and while new abilities are fun to play with, I don't want it to be over-complicated or inaccessible. This is very much just a brainstorm! If this were a real game, the most important things would be letting the player have fun, feel badass, and tackle challenges their way so they can feel a sense of achievement from finding items or beating puzzles.

Plot

Okay I wasn't originally going to go into plot, but I got carried away. Because this is a sidescroller in particular, you don't have the advantage of Prime's scan system to pile on lore. I wouldn't do too much heavy plot and dialogue, at least not more than Fusion. If anything, LESS than Fusion to decrease dialogue time. But I might adopt Prime elements, specifically stealing the idea of scan downloads from Another Metroid 2 Remake. These would activate at key times, including new boss encounters, entering new regions, or when the player stumbles upon something interesting. In that regard, I'd hide secrets around the world; little rooms which may or may not contain items, but which add an optional lore entry to your logbook as you enter.

Some plot/gameplay stuff I would include:

So this post-Fusion game would probably be where you'd pick up the thread hinted at by Samus Returns' Chozo memories- there are evil Chozo, and either they still exist, or have left a dangerous legacy of bioweapons and robots. Perhaps there's only one or two commanders left alive, and they will stop at nothing to stay that way.

Adam exists, but his dialogue with Samus is limited. This is intended to create isolation, but also hope. When all feels down, you might stumble on a way to communicate with your ship and with Adam again, getting a bit of reassurance. Adam may be able to help direct you during these moments, but I wouldn't go to the same extent as Fusion itself (or Zero Mission's Chozo statues). He might not be able to point out direct target locations, at least not later in the game. Regardless, I don't want to totally sideline him in the title where, post-reveal in Fusion, his character really ought to be emerging properly.

Metroids have new, previously unforeseen abilities locked into their DNA. The planet this game is set on is a Chozo haven with a perfect atmosphere. It has been selected by the evil Chozo for Metroid breeding in order to bring out their full potential. As Samus arrives here, the environment starts affecting her DNA as well, and she begins unlocking her own hidden abilities, one by one.

She runs into evil Chozo, most of whom are hostile to her. If we permit some dialogue at designated points (otherwise implying that Adam and Samus's communications are largely disrupted, keeping the isolated feeling in place) she might confess to Adam that she feels horrible killing what might be the last of her kin. Though I wouldn't write a plot around pushing a theme, there may be an underlying theme of identity, with Samus's human vs. Chozo vs. Metroid identities coming into conflict. The conclusion of which might be "actually, who cares, I'm just Samus. And whatever Samus is, she's an awesome galactic saviour who won't ever be truly alone in the universe."

The main boss Chozo are not initially hostile- they may coax Samus in, pretending to be her ally until it becomes apparent that they want to use her as a pawn for their greater plans. Again, I'd minimize dialogue here. Instead, Samus's communications with these Chozo may be through things such as wall scrawlings or messages left on abandoned computers (readable through the logbook). When she actually meets them, the dialogue would be vague as to whether she read those lore snippets or not, but the players that did read them will have a deeper connection to these mysterious Chozo and greater understanding (though it may be a completely false one) of their motivations.

Adding to that, there may even be a good Chozo among the ranks, one whose wall scrawlings etc. are harder to find, implying they have to hide them. Maybe even taking the Axiom Verge route of having them in an untranslatable language, until Samus picks up a required cipher and can go back to her logbook and read them. But they give Samus reason not to trust the others. You may or may not ever meet the individual(s) leaving these messages, implying they have been taken care of since you arrived but before you met them.

This could actually give the players plot advantage- maybe at some point, Samus is offered a choice of direction. Evil!Chozo says "Meet me at the pool where we will perform the ritual to revive all the dead Chozo." but Good!Chozo's scrawlings said "If he tries to take you to the pool, you're gonna die and the Metroids will be unleashed again. Sneak in via the overhead pipe and drop some bombs on his machine, destroying it before he even gets a chance to start it up." (Something you could optionally do anyway, if you the player finds the pipe entrance and decides not to trust this Chozo. It gives you a bit of free reign to interpret the characterisation of Samus and what she would do.) In the latter case, it might prevent you from taking some initial surprise damage from the boss, or let you skip sections of the boss fight.

Evil Chozo are breeding Metroids, and forging parental bonds to them. This means the Metroids will defend them to the death just as the baby Metroid did for Samus, and also they have trained them to follow commands, mostly battle-related ones. Maybe they have figured out what SR388's Chozo could not- how to remain friends with Metroids after puberty. Thus allowing them to use matured Metroids. It would be lazy to include Alpha-Gamma-etc again because this isn't SR388, so I'd design new Metroid forms, which in-lore are supposed to be upgraded and more powerful according to the design of the Chozo that bred them here. They might superficially resemble Alphas etc. at first, but their developmental pathway ends up very different and unique.

The big ending twist is that the final boss Chozo is modified like yourself- you couldn't have guessed! Lore-wise, perhaps they were one of the ones who originally created the Metroids, not starting as one of the murderous Chozo seen in the Chozo memories. They knowingly turned on the other SR388 Chozo in order to side with the bad guys, and worked their way up the ranks once that trust was earned. Their Metroid DNA could then be explained by them having, like Samus, come off SR388 with an X infection that needed curing. Or maybe they just happened to be an expert in Metroids and thought it would be awesome to use Metroid DNA to get stronger.

Gameplay-wise, this means they can use powers like yours, but also a variety of others because they're a final boss. One of these might be a refined form of the shape-changing that I'm not convinced Samus could use. Metroids mature into new, bigger forms, and perhaps our villain has figured out how to do this in a controlled manner.

Remember the Chozo tech Samus might use to power up her Metroid abilities? Our villain upgraded theirs so all their abilities are powered up. But you're Samus Aran and you're still winning. In desperation, they use it to mutate into a giant monster, like some kind of weird bird-dragon-alien with hundreds of eyes and bioluminescence. Awesome! This is their final form, but it's not as brief as the mutant SA-X's appearance; maybe you defeat their normal Chozo form in the penultimate boss fight, then have to go up against this version of them at the very end.

Of course, they're still a Metroid-based monster. They have VERY potent draining abilities, which they will use more often on , so you have to use a combination of items you've picked up on your adventure, and your Metroid abilities, to prevent them from making the fatal strike, because if they hit you with that attack you're gonna lose between 1/2 to a full energy tank and they're gonna gain a chunk of health back. It's a mean boss design, but on lower difficulty settings it would be toned down.

Sequel potential

I’ll give this one it’s own section to break up the text walls a bit.

The idea behind having this SR388 traitor Chozo character in particular is that they are NOT the initial wave of evil Chozo. This means that whoever "turned them to the dark side" might STILL be out there. Thus, the plot is not over yet, and there's even more sequel opportunity to be had! It could essentially begin a new arc. I wonder how the next game's final boss could compare to "giant intelligent bird-alien-dragon-lamprey" though?

The game discussed so far might make no mention of the Federation at all, because that would overcomplicate things when the plot focus is on Samus, Chozo, and Metroids. A sequel could easily reunite Samus with the Federation, and let trust be regained on both sides as she saves them from the evil Chozo that are now trying to destroy and dominate everything for evil reasons.

Though we don’t want to sacrifice too much traditional fast-paced Metroid sidescroller gameplay time on plot stuff, maybe have a sideplot where the corrupt parts of the Federation are cut out? No doubt those who wanted to breed Metroids, no matter how pure or evil their intentions, are the most likely to accept help from a band of evil Chozo who have lots of Metroids and need help breeding and improving them. It could end up being a dialogue-heavy thing but it would be fun to see this subplot played out without any dialogue whatsoever; Samus just doing her thing behind-the-scenes to stop or expose these people, while they send threats after her.

One reason why I bring up sequel potential at all is because Samus is now part Metroid and the Federation know it- but they don’t know about her abilities. Now she’s saving their asses and they’re gonna have to learn about it. That might lead to a whole bunch of new conflict potential, which could either be explored in-canon or by fanfic writers afterward. Fun either way. May even lead to MORE sequels where the Feds are creating superhuman bioweapons because they learned it worked with Samus.

What happens with Samus's powers between the two games? Will she go into the next game being super OP? Probably not. So how will that be resolved? Theoretically this first game in the “arc” could be the only one, and could actually end the timeline, but it would be a bit of a shame to do that.

One possibility is that Samus has to suppress or lose her powers. Maybe they start getting out of hand, beyond her control, especially if the shape-changing thing comes into play. She may use a reverse form of the power-up technology to tone down her abilities to nothing for safety reasons. She may even use the final-boss-guy's DNA modification equipment to strip herself of her Metroid DNA. Perhaps she decides that it's not something she wants to be a part of herself any more, and takes it out.

Here's a fun tangent off the last one- what if the DNA mod goes wrong and she does something else... Like damage her Chozo DNA? What implications might that have for a future game, and for Samus's own perception of herself? What if we were left on a cliffhanger, where Samus knows she has to rush off to her next battle with the evil Chozo but when she steps into her own suit, her own second skin, it rejects her?

As an alternative, maybe something off-world- or even just the act of BEING off-world- means she loses her abilities because her body "settles down" and suppresses them outside of that world's environment. While this may seem like a cheap ending, it depends on how sequels go. Because in theory, Metroids adapt to their local environments, which means Samus might be able to unlock a plethora of brand-new and previously unseen abilities in the next game owing to her arrival in another new environment.

Conclusion? I have too much time on my hands. It's been an interesting one to think about. Aside from "Chozo will return as villains" I couldn't really speculate what will happen in Metroid 5 at this point, though I'm very tempted to say it will be made eventually. Unfortunately, word-of-god says that Metroid Fusion's ending rectified Samus's DNA and took out the Metroid stuff (hence her losing cold weakness at the very end) so it's unlikely that any of this kind of thing would make it to canon, unless they're happy for to retcon what was already a fairly unclear thing in game.

#Metroid #Game Design #Chozo #Metroids #Samus Aran

[thelazyeye]

oh okay, internet famous Losers, like they're all youtubers and insta famous kids doing really different stuff around the nation, what do each of them do? who connects with who and how?

Ooff I love this idea. I used to be moderately into youtube people. Mamrie Hart anyone? She cracks me the fuck UP. Anyway this got super long so its under the cut. I hope you enjoy anon! Thanks for sending something it!!

Okay. Here we go. 

Richie 

is a youtube personality. Duh. He started out vlogging and his Voices and somehow his channel picked up. He writes comedy bits, does personal blogging, and tests his voices. 

When he was starting out he had a bit where he was a weatherman that had multiple personalities (Voices) and it got insanely popular. He received some backlash due to the offensiveness of the bit and has since retired it, but references it from time to time to credit his fame. 

Now he focuses a lot on his comedy routines and improv acting with other members of the community. He does challenges from time to time as collabs as well

People are super invested in his personal life (bc people seriously get like that with youtube people) and started speculating about his sexuality. It took him a few years to address all the rumors that he wasn’t straight and how he was probably dating this youtuber or that youtuber. 

Eddie 

is an LGBT Activist that has a youtube channel as well (think Laci Green but LGBT and not sex ed, though he does do sex ed work)

He got his start when he was in college. He became the president of the LGBT club. He wanted to reach a large number of students and he figured the best way to do that would be youtube

The entire club helped him out. Every week he would have another club member on the channel to talk about their sexuality and experiences

It didn’t get big at the school but he got lowkey noticed by the HRC after about 6 or 7 videos. He was contacted by a social media manager on the team to commend him on his work

From then on out he started to work harder on his videos, including more in depth information and he included links to more resources

Eventually, his videos started to rack up views from young LGBT kids thanking him for his channel

He started to collab with famous LGBT youtubers (troye sivan, hannah hart) and that’s when he really blew up 

Bill 

actually got his start on Vine. He mastered the art of the 6 second story and when the platform went down he migrated to youtube, snapchat, and twitter. He’s got profiles on almost every social media platform and he’s written a couple of webseries, as well. 

His first webseries (pre-vine) focused on comedy. He and some college friends got together and wrote the script/acted it out. It wasn’t very big but the following for it had a cultish feel. 

It blew up after he became famous on vine

After that, he started writing more webseries and partnering with other youtube actors

He wrote and completed two successful comedy webseries before he got bored of it. He decided to make the jump to horror work 

Think Marble Hornets

He ended up getting a scholarship to a film school and has been working on becoming a movie director ever since

His youtube work is on a hiatus but he still posts blogs and updates of his life. He’s active on Snapchat and Twitter the most. He still does dumb, funny shit from time to time and tweets out very random jokes

Stan 

is an adventure youtuber. He travels all over the world, seeking thrills and exploring nature. His videos usually have some kind of educational component but they’re always entertaining. Stan has explored the Savanah and Rain Forrests, he’s sky dived and scuba dived. He’s done a lot

He has a side channel for his love of birds because how can I not throw this in here?

When Anti semites started showing back up in the world Stan started to dedicate more of his channel, and his other platforms, to Judaism. He’s uses his popularity and fame to educate people and create awareness around the issues Jews face

As a result, he blogged his Birthright to Israel. It was a weeks worth of videos, some candids that he just uploaded on the whim, and some he took the time to edit. They were adventurous, educational, and full of his personal journey

Stan has also faced a lot of backlash for his involvement with the jewish community. He voices this in his videos. To combat the threats against him, he recruits other members of the youtube community to collab with and talk about issues. He makes it fun. He’s cooked Jewish foods, celebrated Jewish holidays, and had fun discussions with other personalities. 

Bev 

is a famous fashion designer and makeup artist. She got her start on Instagram, posting her designs and outfits that she created. Sh started young. Like 15 years old. As she grew up and went to school, her fashion instagram grew. People got to see her skills improve and they watched as she turned into a teenager designing clothes in her bedroom to a design student to a professional

She gives fashion tips to people and her favorite hobby is making posts that help girls and boys create fun, new, and exciting clothes out of what they already have in their closet

She firmly believes that you don’t need to have money and status to dress well. She wants fashion to be accessible. 

She started a youtube channel out of request from her followers. She got a lot of comments about her makeup and she started to do makeup tutorials there (Think Sailor J)

People really started to see how funny she was, then. She would always throw little bullshit videos onto her story but this was the first time she posted video content that didn’t disappear after 24h

Her youtube is not nearly as active as her instagram. That’s where you can find all of her content

She is also a vocal activist against child abuse on her insta. She frequently donates to various organizations and she does it very publicly. She runs clothing drives for those in need and has even hosted makeover days for young girls whose families can’t afford good clothes/makeup. 

She has recently expanded her fashion designs to male clothing, promoting Non Binary, Trans, and other identities in her lines. She says “Clothing has no gender” and pushes that despite advice to lay low on the issue. 

Mike

is a super unlikely case of internet fame. His instagram is composed almost entirely of his farm animals. He really didn’t think he was going to get famous from it. He just loves his farm so fucking much

The first half of his internet fame just consisted of pictures and videos of his animals. Namely, his dog Mr. Chips and his cow, Barely. They were best friends and Mike posted pictures of them napping together, playing together, and helping him run the farm

Once he started to gain an unreasonable about of followers he would pepper in posts that were educational. He talked about the importance of farmers, the work that he does, and how he maintains his animals. He worked to debunk a lot of myths about farming and really promote the work that he does. 

He still posts a lot of videos of him with his animals being all cute, but he uses his activism to reach large numbers of people at a single time. 

He also promotes healthy eating on his instagram. He talks about balanced diets and how to moderate sweets intake. 

Eventually he talks about working out (because Mike Hanlon is ripped sorry I don’t make the rules) and helps build an all around healthy lifestyle for his following. He kind of accidentally becomes a life coach of sorts. Motivation, healthy living, and cute animals. 

He has no idea how it happened but he doesn’t regret a single minute of it

Ben

is a singer! This sweet old mother fucker started out on youtube when he was 16. He bought a Ukulele and started writing love songs for the girl he was pining after

We all know that one mother fucker who owed a Ukulele in high school

His voice was like velvet, though. He wasn’t popular enough for anyone to really see it so he didn’t get teased in high school for it. His first couple videos got only a handful of views

What kick started his fame is a cover video. When he decided he wanted to do an acoustic cover of Lady Gaga’s Love Game

He did it on Ukulele

It ended up being such a fun and unique cover of such a popular song that he got noticed. Like. The video fucking blew up. He ended up getting over 5 thousand views overnight and the number just kept growing

Ben ran with it. He covered other popular songs (I Kissed a Girl, Viva La Vida, So What, etc) 

He blew up so hard and fast that people started to notice his original works

He got noticed by a label and signed the summer after he graduated high school

His first album was a love album because it’s Ben come on

He doesn’t have much of a social media presence after his youtube channel. He has the mandatory instagram and twitter that all famous people seem to have but they’re fairly inactive

Collabs

Richie and Bill

Richie and Bill were the first to collab with each other. Richie acted in Bill’s first webseries and it built a friendship that lasts a lifetime. 

The two of them do stupid youtube challenges with each other whenever they’re in the same city

Bill used to guest on Richie’s channels and play improv games to help both of them work on their comedy. They always turn out ridiculously funny and normally involve some level of alcohol

When Bill lost his younger brother in a car accident (sorry georgie dies in like every single universe) Richie flew out to see Bill and spend time with him. The two of them filmed a vlog together where they talked about the loss and then they both donated to anti drunk driving campaigns and urged their followers to do the same and never drive drunk

Richie and Eddie

They met for the first time at vidcon when they were first starting out. Richie was already pretty big but Eddie was working on his following. They hit it off immediately and they filmed a video for Eddie’s channel that focused on Eddie debunking stereotypes surrounding the LGBT community. Richie added a tasteful comedic flair that brought in views and he taught Eddie that things don’t always need to be serious 100% of the time

They kept in loose contact after that, always meeting up at vidcon and filming a ridiculous video for Eddie’s channel

2 years later, Richie reached out to Eddie and asked him to film a video for Richie’s channel

He wouldn’t tell Eddie what it was until they were in front of the camera, but Eddie readily agreed. He loved working with Richie. He thought he was fun and witty

When they got in front of the camera Richie revealed that he was bisexual and that Eddie’s videos helped him learn about bisexuality and come to terms with it

They spent the video talking about Richie’s journey to self acceptance, why he decided to come out, and Eddie’s knowledge surrounding sexual identity development. The video ended up being 15 minutes long and had the highest comment numbers Richie had ever seen. Not every comment was positive, but he took the experience in stride and started doing little bits of advocacy here and there for his and other channels 

Richie and Eddie end up dating, but not for a long, long time after that video when they’re both living in LA and well established in their youtube careers. 

Bev and Mike

An unlikely combo for an unlikely youtube star! Bev and Mike do a collab that focuses on self esteem and loving yourself!

Mike gives health tips and Bev gives fashion advice, but both of them talk about the importance of self worth and how external image means nothing if you don’t love yourself first. They both talk about their own journeys. 

The collab starts because Bev finds out about Mike through insta and she ends up contacting him about wool. They partner up business wise and Mike helps provide wool for her fashion line while Bev promotes his farm work. 

They don’t do many intentional collabs after they one, but they do show up on each others stories and in pictures together very frequently. The two become best friends

Ben and Bev

They don’t collab. But they do get married. 

They meet through the fame and bustle of L.A. Ben’s music career makes him end up at the same Gala as Bev, where they’re introduced to each other. They hit it off immediately, connecting with their childhoods and such. 

They date for 3 years before Ben proposes via Flash Mob and song written just for Bev

Bev loves the song so much she insists Ben release it. It becomes a Billboard hit

Eddie and Stan

Stan finds himself in NYC where Eddie lives and he reaches out to do an educational collab on LGBT politics in the Jewish community. 

He takes Eddie rock climbing and the two film the video with go pros. 

Eddie is terrified at first and it makes for a funny introduction but he eventually gets his bearings and the two of them scale a cliff together, talking about issues and getting to know each other. 

Stan and Richie

Eddie introduces them after the Coming Out Video. 

They collab as frequently as they can

They do ridiculous shit and Stan films Richie’s commentary. Its hilarious

They have a natural chemistry and they feed off of each other. Stan didn’t know he was a funny guy until he met Richie. Then it just kind of came out of the woodwork. Richie really highlighted Stan’s eccentric sense of humor. 

Everyone

Richie and Bev are childhood best friends

Eventually, they all end up meeting. They don’t really film videos with each other. Sometimes there’s a vlog that includes more than two of them but very rarely are they all in the same video at the same time. 

It happened intentionally once. It was chaos. Everyone was drunk. The video had to be edited so severely that it was only 1 minute and 30 seconds

They do however show up in snapchats, insta stories, and pictures as a group. By the time they’re all 30 they’re very, very good friends

#richie tozier #eddie kasbrak #mike hanlon #beverly marsh #stan uris #bill denbrough #ben hanscom #youtuber au #headcannon #hc #my writing #this is unedited and unproofread please go easy on me #Anonymous #Em Answers #reddie

[365daysoftododeku]

19th February 2019

Author: Kenyoda

Admin’s Note: The following work was written by @ebonyphd, inspired by one of @crzangel’s headcanons. You can find the headcanon here if you want to know more!

________________________________________________________________

Candid Shoutos

Izuku bit his lip as he tried not to laugh. How anyone had found a copy of Vib Ribbon and an emulator for it, Izuku would never know. But Todoroki’s absolutely perplexed expression was one for the books. He discreetly took a picture with his phone. The teen eventually gave into his urge when Shouto’s face morphed into horror when the stick figure rabbit squealed while demonstrating what happened when you missed a combination. As the others chattered around Kaminari’s emulator running laptop, Izuku pulled up the PlusInsta page on his phone and logged into the page that he ran for Todoroki. He quickly uploaded the photo with the caption:

#his face #he looks so lost #lol

Almost instantly, the like counter started climbing and comments starting flowing about 5 minutes after. They ranged from: ‘he’s so adorkable’ to ‘what is he even looking at?’ Izuku fielded a few of the questions as he chuckled at other comments. Eventually, Shouto gave up the computer after playing a few levels. The game was passed around to several of their classmates until someone suggested a new fighting game and the TV became the main source of entertainment. They both watched the tournament and both cheered when Yaomomo won. After a fuming Bakugou stormed off muttering halfhearted threats under his breath, the class dispersed.

Izuku remained parked on the couch with Todoroki right next to him. He continued to watch all the reactions to his newest post. He had been running candid_shoutos for about six months. Actually, the silly little side project had actually gotten Izuku a boyfriend. He looked over to his right to see said boyfriend had conked out on his shoulder.

His hair had fallen over his face casting a red haze over his pale skin. Shouto’s glasses were precariously hanging onto the end of his nose. Izuku’s heart melted at the sight. He was so cute. The teen took another picture. He did not post it though. That was for him alone. Izuku finally chanced waking Shouto up and removed the glasses from his nose. Shouto wrinkled his nose and muttered some garbled protest at being disturbed. He sighed and snuggled deeper into Izuku’s shoulder. Izuku flushed. Adorkable, indeed. He remembered how it had all started quite fondly…

Izuku had started the whole silly page because Shouto was convinced he wasn’t attractive. Izuku and majority of his classmates had protested vehemently that it wasn’t true. Shouto would only scoff and claim they were biased.

So, Izuku bet Shouto a favor that he could prove Shouto wrong. Ashido, who was in charge of the Class 2-A social media pages, suggested that Izuku start a PlusInsta account and post pictures. It would be simple to post things and let other people decide. Shouto agreed to the page idea with the caveat that the pictures are only candid shots, with no explanations, and that only Izuku could take them. This way the bet stayed among the three of them and Izuku couldn’t doctor the photos. They decided that they would give it two weeks. Ashido also promised to reblog the page link on the Class Insta once Izuku had it up and running.

So the following Monday, Izuku started snapping photos of Shouto doing various activities during the day, save for bathroom activities. Once classes were over, he shifted through the shots and picked the very first picture for the blog. It had simply been a picture of Shouto working on some homework during study hall. He had been perfectly poised at his desk, almost statue-like. But Izuku had zoomed in on his face, you could see the shadow of his hair on his cheek and the determined set to his eyes and jaw as his hand flew elegantly across the page. He had posted the picture with the caption:

#hard at work #go Todoroki

The first picture had gained 100 likes in an hour after Ashido had reblogged it. The blog itself had 30 followers. Izuku had posted another picture before dinner time, this one of Shouto leaning over and holding his knees after he and Izuku had come back from a run. His hair had begun curling at the ends from the sweat and his face had been flushed pink. He ended up looking at Izuku in surprise right as he had taken the picture. The number of likes it got was tripled what the other one had. The blog had a hundred followers by the time Izuku had gone to bed. The blog had also received some of its first comments. Some of them had Izuku laughing out loud:

Dear Lord! That should have come with a health warning!!! *fans self*

*sees curly ends* Omg! Todoroki has curly hair! I wonder how long it takes him to get straight?

Those eyes… just… sigh

Dude… I am kinda questioning my sexuality…

I have been questioning mine since he set himself on fire in the Sports Festival during my first year! #TodorokiShoutocausedmygayawakening

Same.

Praise whoever captured such a blessed image!

He had gleefully shown Shouto the page during breakfast the next day. The gob smacked expression on his face had left Izuku in stitches and feeling light as a feather. As the two weeks wore on, the comments and likes kept coming and Izuku kept supplying pictures. Around day 8, however, Izuku hit a bit of a snag. He was beginning to notice that he was taking far, far more pictures of Shouto than was warranted for the 2-3 random posts he made in a day. And many of those pictures remained in his phone after he deleted all the ones he didn’t like or need.

Izuku was no fool. He was well aware of his feelings for Todoroki. He just wasn’t sure how and if he should act on them. But he was forced to make a decision when he posted a picture of Shouto smiling. It had not been a huge one. A small part of his lips and his eyes squeezed shut. He had been mid-chuckle at a bad pun Kaminari had told. The comment section lost their collective minds. To this day, that photo was one of the most liked pictures on the blog.

At the time however, the picture’s popularity had left Izuku feeling sick and cold. It had occurred to him that if people loved Shouto when he was scowling, sweaty, and flat faced; they would be besotted with him when he smiled. Just like Izuku. He had spent some time looking through some of the pages that were following the blog. There were so many beautiful people on the site. People that weren’t too afraid of taking the chance to ask that beautiful boy out. People that Todoroki might say yes to. Finally, in the midst of his jealous fit, Izuku decided that once the dare was over he would make that favor count.

So, he still posted candids of Shouto like always, however, there was only that one smile picture for a long while. But as soon as the two weeks were up, the two friends had met up in Izuku’s room to discuss the outcome.

“Well…” Todoroki had said, “you won. I never realized that people actually believed that I was attractive.” He had then hung his head between his hunched shoulders. Izuku felt bad. He hadn’t thought about how weird it may have been for Todoroki, who was an intensely private person despite his tendency to be forthright and brutally honest.

“I am sorry if any of this made you uncomfortable, Shouto. Eek! I mean, T-Todoroki!” he blurted out. Shouto’s head snapped back up. His mismatched gaze pierced Izuku and made his chest tighten.

“I wouldn’t call it uncomfortable, just surprising, I guess? And no need to apologize. I agreed to the terms too after all. So, don’t worry about it… Izuku.” Shouto said after a moment. Izuku’s eyes widened. He knew that Shouto expressed a lot of himself through his actions. Izuku could easily read the permission in the use of his own given name. Izuku’s heart began gallop giddily in his chest.

“Ok, Shouto.” Izuku said with a nod.

“So, I owe you a favor now. Do you need time to think about it?” Shouto asked. Izuku hummed thoughtfully. His eyes were drawn to his desk where there was a pair of tickets to a single day pop up hero convention. It was the following weekend. Izuku had been wanting to ask Shouto to go with him but he had been too timid to do so. But now that such a gifted opportunity had presented itself…

“Nope. You’re going with me to this!” answered Izuku. He picked up one of the tickets and handed it to Shouto with a flourish. The other teen pulled his glasses from his hair and shoved them on his face. Shouto took the ticket and looked it over,

“A hero convention?” he asked. Izuku nodded nervously.

“Yeah, it’s a small one day thing. I won a pair of tickets from a podcast.” Shouto blinked at him. He then nodded.

“Ok. But are you sure you want to waste your favor on this? Wouldn’t you have more fun with Kirishima or Uraraka? They seemed to love this kind of thing.” Shouto said uncertainly. Izuku’s heart clenched. Despite being shown that he was attractive, Shouto was still a horribly insecure teenager. Much like himself.

“Well, I kinda wanted to ask you from the get go… I just didn’t want you to be weirded out or anything,” Izuku admitted quietly as he scratched at his cheek. Shouto’s confused expression turned concerned.

“Why would I be weirded out that you wanted me to go places with you?” he asked.

“W-well. I mean, you are not really a fan of crowds and I know you have some—issues with the hero industry… and I really like you and wanted to- eep!” Izuku blurted before clamping his mouth shut. Dread spread through him like tar, thick and sticky. Why did he have to ramble so much?!

“You, you like me?” Shouto breathed after a moment. Izuku looked skyward for divine intervention. But when no lightning manifested and struck him where he stood, Izuku just nodded his head meekly. He knew his face was red. After several agonizing moments, Izuku heard a quiet, “I like you, too.” His heart went wild. He stared at Shouto, trying to decide if he were kidding or not. The only thing reflected in those gem colored eyes was affection and some bashfulness.

“Oh,” he breathed giddily. “Well… how about we hold off on the favor and you just be my date instead? I’ll even buy food!” Shouto’s face turned pink and small tongues of flame shyly came to life on the tips of his red hair. Izuku wanted to die. He was so cute! So very cute.

“Um… ok. I would, like that.” He replied softly, a half smile curling at his lips. Izuku beamed back. This only caused the flames to grow. Now his entire red half was engulfed in flickering flames. It was probably warm enough that Shouto could tell the temperature change. The fire user squeaked in embarrassment before he used his right side to extinguish the flames. He groaned softly as he buried his face in his hands. Izuku could only laugh in response. He was punch drunk on affection, relief and happiness. So much so that he had no fear over going over to Shouto and prying his fingers away from his face.

His friend’s face was still pink and his eyes were wide and sparkling. His lips were twitching as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to scowl or laugh. Izuku cupped Shouto’s face and pulled him closer. He pressed his forehead and nose against the other boy’s as his chuckles dissolved into soft giggles. He rubbed against Shouto’s nose affectionately, reveling in the ability to touch him. A soft swooshing sound brought Izuku out of his happy high. Izuku took a step back from Shouto and gasped in awe.

Shouto’s hair had turned into wreathing flames and dancing flurries. One side white and the other a deep red. The two spectacles danced around Shouto’s head like a living halo. Izuku could only gape wordlessly. Shouto’s eyes were glowing, too. He looked like a God or a spirit. Devastatingly beautiful.

“Izuku?” Shouto called worriedly. The God comparison wouldn’t leave especially when his named sounded heavenly coming from Shouto’s lips. Izuku tried to answer but words continued to fail him. Almost robotically, Izuku withdrew his phone and snapped a picture. When Shouto gave him a mildly irritated look, he just turned the screen around. Shouto’s jaw dropped…

Izuku chuckled quietly to himself as he finished revisiting that old memory. Shouto did eventually get the flames and snow to go away and thankfully his hair just returned to normal. That was how they had found out that Shouto could turn parts of his body into flames and snow. Izuku had a field day helping Shouto master this new part of his quirk. The two had actually ended up going on a small dinner date a few days before the convention. Shouto had claimed it was a thank you for helping him with his Quirk. They had been together ever since. Their relationship was a quiet one. It was not hidden amongst the class, but it was a secret to anyone outside of the dorm. Maybe one day it could be public. Izuku grinned to himself at the thought of the collective mayhem that would ensue on the candid_shoutos page when they did.

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[nowatmuseclip-blog]

Eventually they came.

Eventually they came. My chat room began to fill up and I started talking to a few guys in the group chat. I only typed at first: At the time I lived in a sharehouse with only guys my age and really wasn’t interested in them finding out about my moonlit habits.Today, things are different. After saving money and learning enough savvy to avoid continued exploitation, Anna is done with money-sucking studios, and so she works only about five days a month, from her own home. Five days of camming per month allow her to match the Romanian per capita income of roughly $US12,000 per year with a minuscule fraction of the labour. If she wants more money, she works more days.If abuse were such a big problem, Anna says, then why would any Romanian girls bother with it at all? Why wouldn't they just find some other job? In a country whose GDP only stopped shrinking two years ago, with 20 per cent of the population living below the poverty line and personal income levels far below Kazakhstan, Iran and Gabon, that question answers itself. There's a reason Anna's so happy to be independent from her former employers, a status she equates with nothing less than her "freedom".A lot of their clients are really freaking mean for no reason. The downside to raking in that sweet cash is that a lot of people can be really mean for no reason. She says a lot of guys can't even sit there and watch her without saying mean things to her, and many of them don't tip either. Granted, that happens in minimum-wage jobs too, but I'm guessing what guys say to her is probably way worse than what people say to fast-food employees.

The important thing is to keep a paying client online for as many minutes as possible.The important thing is to keep a paying client online for as many minutes as possible.What I found out was a self discovery as much as a way of sticking it to my friend. It was something I had always known, deep down, but perhaps had never quite put words to, as I had never felt that it had come into question. And here it is: When I am working, I am portraying a sexual stereotype, but how I am using that stereotype is a point of difference. When I am working, I am consciously becoming that stereotype and so I, in a sense, own it. I am taking it from the man, because yes, he created it, but when I dance, I have the power. I am subverting and I am reclaiming that stereotype for my own personal and financial gain.How did you get into webcamming?

The basic premise of the cam girl game is a simple one: You pay a girl for her time, and in exchange, she'll take off her clothes, talk to you, play with herself (and others), or any combination thereof. When your money is up, so's your time — the two of you part ways until you've got the cash and willingness to go at it again. And when that time comes, you'll have thousands upon thousands of girls ready to swivel and smile for you in real time. It's a massive catalogue of preening women of every variety: big, skeletal, black, white, Asian, American, Greek, Czech, etc. To find them, look no further than the Big Three of cam girl delight: Streamate, LiveJasmine and MyFreeCams. These three mega-networks advertise across the mainstream porn tube sites of masturbating ubiquity — PornHub, ClipHunter, etc — but are shells and shadows themselves. So how do you get in?Youd think that all an Insta celeb has to do is look hot, but its actually a full time job. Ona Artist posts new photos every day and does a week of photoshoots every month. She manages all her social media and built her own website. The way her business model works is that she advertises on Instagram and from there, people can go to her private site and cam with her naked. On Instagram, because of censorship restrictions, you cant see her nude. So, the more you want from her, the more you pay, and the more explicit it gets. It's just like any other online business, really.She started as a nervous 18-year-old girl and cashes in on her signature 'innocent' look – pulling her hair into pigtails before she heads online to meet her guests.On her end, the website looks like this. This is where she sits and waits. CONTINUED BELOW...