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regallibellbright · 1 year

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[ID: Five pictures of a crocheted amigurumi doll of Namine from Kingdom Hearts. The first shows her full body. The second shows a closeup of her face, while the third and fourth show embroidered and crocheted four-pointed stars on the straps of her sandals. The fifth shows her sitting on a bookcase next to matching dolls of Lea and Xion, in their outfits from the ending sequence of Kingdom Hearts 3. End ID]

All right, I like doing full writeups, so even though I detailed a lot of how I made Namine already, I wanted to put it all in one place and include some detail shots I took. I'd decided back at the start of this project somewhere between February 2019 and summer 2020 that I wanted to make a doll of Namine as part of the set, which is why my standard tag is "Twilight Town Amigurumi" instead of something ice cream-related. I didn't think too much about when I would do her - Roxas's difficulty intimidated me, so he'd be towards the end, Xion I knew would be first because she's my absolute favorite (by which I mean, I made her IMMEDIATELY after we finished 3 and planned the rest after,) and Isa would go last because I don't have as strong feelings about him, but Lea and Namine were both sort of nebulous timing-wise.* Well, I ended up doing Lea second, and then I got tendonitis for the next two years and couldn't crochet nearly as much as I had before. But I wanted and fully intended to get back to this project eventually. And finally, last year, the time felt right. Semi-technical details under the cut!

* Sorry to Hayner, Pence, and Olette, but I only have so much space and these dolls take MONTHS to make since I'm doing their patterns from scratch, so I have to feel REALLY strongly about a character or their design to commit to it. Honestly I'm probably going to do some other stuff between Roxas and Isa just for variety.

I completely understand the desire for Namine to have a new outfit that's not a very simple sundress which she's been wearing since 2004, but also, this was very fortunate to me specifically, getting back into the swing of things. Her design is so simple that I could get used to making things again and then decide to get more complex as I went - her sandals, for example, were originally flat, before deciding midway through that no, heels would be doable, and I wanted the challenge. I completed one version of her hair entirely before getting a better idea that I wanted to test out before trying on Roxas and his VERY nice yarn. I knew going in that they'd be the hardest parts - the only question with her dress was how I'd attach it, really - so I let myself do a lot more experimenting as I felt up to it.

Both of those also include a LOT of sewing. For her sandals, for example, the sole of the shoe is actually the base of her foot, with a color change after the first few rounds done in back loops only. Once the legs were done, I added a border around the front loops to cover that they're all one piece, and that ended up being my attachment point for the three straps, each of which had its own yarn ends to weave in at the end. Plus two more for the heel, attached via the same method and surface crochet. And THEN, finally, you get to the stars. The crocheted pair were made with a very small hook and embroidery floss, and then the same embroidery floss was used to make the embroidered stars on the straps.

Her hair's made up of something like eight different sections sewn overtop a circular yellow "cap" sewn to her head. Each of the long sections (the one behind her back and the one over her shoulder) is its own distinct piece, and then the three central strands of her bangs are another, but virtually everything else is a separate piece from the others. It was a lot of work to make and even more to assemble, but I'm glad I did - it looks fantastic, with much more depth and messiness than it would have as a single piece, and I'm going to be using the same strategy for Roxas's spikes not too far down the line. Good to know it works. Also, in the process I picked up half-treble and treble crochet firmly.

I'd noticed some oddities when I was making her body and legs with how many rounds things were taking relative to the old notes I'd taken on the first two dolls, and the shape of Namine's shoulders in particular, but I figured it was a side effect of me taking VERY makeshift notes on Xion (as I hadn't planned on setting the project aside for two years and had only vaguely planned on making other dolls at all) and Lea's proportions being a bit taller and thinner. It wasn't until I tried to make ears, followed the pattern exactly, and realized they didn't look right that I realized what had happened - I'd been making Namine on a 4 mm hook, when the past two dolls were made on a 3.5, and this difference in gauge changed the size and shaping by extension. This made for a little trouble with the dress - what I'd planned for a more rounded body was trickier with the teardrop-shaped body I had. Fortunately, this proved to be a fairly easy adjustment in the end. Were I not telling people on the internet, no one would know that that dress gets wider a few rows in, and then widens again towards the bottom.

The dress is also where one of the coolest ideas I had paid off, and where the only real idea I had for detailing didn't quite work. I'd vaguely been hoping I could do picots to add further scalloping to the shell stitches at the bottom, which didn't work at the scale I was doing given it would be my first time trying picot. In the end, looking at it, it wouldn't have gotten me the proper shape, either, so I skipped that one.

On the other hand, I'd had a couple ideas from the start about how simple that dress is, and wondered if I couldn't attach the main part AFTER I'd sewn her arms on, and then use the straps so I wouldn't have to sew the dress to her. (For those reading a "how the sausage gets made" post who don't crochet, most amigurumi - the others included - have the clothes on the body attached before attaching the arms and any sleeves overtop, rather than having to account for armholes and the like.) What I ended up doing wasn't QUITE the same, but it was very close - I essentially sewed it partway so I could get her into it, since the top is narrower than the lower portion of her body, then sewed her in the rest of the way and the width difference kept the dress on. Then I made the first strap over her shoulder the same way I had for the sandals, crocheted across her back because the back of her dress is higher in-game than the front (look this thing's so simple that even the seam placement is a detail,) and did the same process with the other.

This took an oddly large amount of trial and error, but it was late when I realized I could be done if I could get the straps tonight, and things like "how many stitches will it take to go from the front of her body to her back" are always a little bit guesswork. In short, despite being a simple-loooking design, there's a surprising amount of work that went into this particular doll. But I'm happy with the end result, and realized the scaling issue just in time to account for it in her arm length and ears - while she's still a bit larger than Xion and Lea on the whole, it's not so noticeable that's unintentional.

As is standard for this group, she has a wire skeleton in her legs, arms, and up and down the back of her torso, in an attempt to make her head a bit less floppy with that hair weighing down a pretty flimsy neck. In the end, that's reasonably successful, and she can sit up with her arms pushed back same as the others without being propped up further. (Their heads are just the nature of the beast, especially with hair like that.) She also has eyebrows, though they're hard to see under the bangs, made of two shades of light yellow embroidery floss to approximate her hair color. It looks good, for all that it's a minor detail that doesn't photograph well.

In all, I'm super happy with how she did. Going to finish my first knitting project (I'm currently trying to figure out purl stitch) before moving on to the one they've all been waiting for for quite some time.

The good news is, changing my phone background today for reference material, I officially feel I have Ideas for how I'm going to do Roxas. I'm still going to be nervous doing some of the detailing - it's going to be tricky ensuring those checkerboard patterns show up at the scale I'll be working at - but while he's going to be a VERY intensive project, I now feel pretty ready to take him on. SOON.

#long post #crafting with Regalli #Twilight town amigurumi #Twilight Town Amigurumi: Namine edition #last post for that tag!#at least until and unless she gets a new outfit I suppose

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hideyseek · 2 years

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11.27.2022

ITS DONE AHAHAHAA GOD ITS DONE!!

the NUMBER OF TIMES i had to stop and set my laptop down during this writing session just to tell myself OF COURSE THE READING EXPERIENCE IS JUST OKAY. OF COURSE THERE IS NO PACING AND TENSION. THE STORY DOESNT FUCKING EXIST YET and i simply DO NOT HAVE THE SKILLS TO WEAVE IN PACING AND TENSION WHEN I AM DOING A ROUGH DRAFT which is a NORMAL FUCKING EXPERIENCE TO HAVE JESUS CHRIST. LOL!

ok putting the rest under a readmore bc it suddenly occurs to me that these are really fucking long lol sorry guys

WHEW i will say the main thing i learned from this experience is that word count really doesn’t do it for me. having a roughly 250 wordcount expectation each time i sit down is helpful, but reaching a total wordcount is not nearly as much a feeling of accomplishment for me as i expected / as i think “drafting a full arc” might be. but also!!! it is NOT BAD to gently train myself to recognize and accept markers of progress that are not just “a completed and perfect longfic” bc hello i would only get one milestone at the end and would that sustain me? no!!!!!!! lol i accept that i must constantly fight my brain’s tendency toward perfectionism in every aspect of my life but god its annoying in this one

but it’s DONE and somehow with 150 words to go i suddenly sat down and drafted two full scenes??? well. whatever it’ll be useful. i’m remembering why the birthday party scene isn’t part of the first draft and it is because oh my god i sure do try to shove five or six different plot-relevant scenes into the span of what is probably a two hour event lol. WHATEVER IT IS FINE. I WILL MOVE THEM AROUND TO A LESS INSANE ORGANIZATION IN REVISIONS. WHICH I AM NOT AT YET. BC I AM DRAFTING. GOD.

but yeah if i could just GENTLY ENCOURAGE MYSELF TO ACCEPT that the first draft WILL BE ALL OVER THE PLACE PACING-WISE EVEN THOUGH I AM WORKING WITH A PRETTY DETAILED OUTLINE because IT IS A FIRST FUCKING DRAFT AND IT IS ACCOMPLISHING WHAT THE FIRST DRAFT NEEDS TO DO WHICH IS GODDAMN EXIST ONLY. anything else like characterization or coming up with a plot point or figuring out beats of a character arc or identifying a location for something IS ALL FUCKING BONUSES!!! hidey its BONUSES!!!!

godddddddddddddddd. anyway this is like. completely stream of consciousness this is just how i fucking think btw if u were curious. possibly this is also what the experience of talking to me is like but i wouldnt know

ANYWAY this has been exciting. i was kinda fucking going through it irl this month so only ended up writing maybe half the days? but it’s really encouraging to still have hit my wordcount goal and even if i don’t remember anything i wrote, at least to know the writing exists! i can’t revise nothing after all!!!

ok i am CLOSING THE DOC bc i am FORBIDDEN FROM FUCKING WITH IT but i DID read TWO SENTENCES that seemed like genuinely interesting and functional sentences that conveyed events happening! hurrah! what the fuck is even metrics for good writing? who KNOWS! ok no more looking at the doc however i CAN OPEN A NEW DOC for DECEMBER DRAFTING MATERIAL bc this month by month thing seems GENUINELY DOABLE!!!! GENUINELY SO.

WOW what a relief to have figured this out! of course it might not last which is totally fine but like FOR NOW IT SEEMS DOABLE. AND THEN WE WILL SEE!!!

i definitely leaned a lot into just uh, supplying haiji my direct internal dialogue for several of the scenes from today. what is a scene who FUCKING KNOWS i am just calling it a scene WHO KNOWS OK WHATEVER. french scenes if its a new guy its a new scene WHO KNOWS ok! and i definitely have been leaning A LOT into “telling so goddamn much about haiji’s internal state rather than just showing it” bc i have NO IDEA HOW TO FIGURE OUT THAT BALANCE. how is the reader experiencing it i wonder!! IDK BUT I WILL JUST WAIT AND READ IT OVER AND THAT WILL SOLVE MY PROBLEM GRRR genuinely this advice helpfully stops my brain in its tracks so consistently

ok!!!! yes! its done!!! it is done! i will worry about pacing and foreshadowing and consistent motifs and metaphors and imagery and canonical characterization and ALL THAT STUFF LATER which is NORMAL AND FINE bc those are THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT IN REVISION ANYWAY. first draft just needs to EXIST!!!!!!!!!!! AND IT KIND OF DOES!!

i do think i will want to do a few more things: set up a longer doc to collect all this draft material in order as i create it month by month (reminding myself the goal is semi-consistency and NOT setting a really high bar i cannot meet! 7k mercifully seems to have been a good estimate and yes my brain does want to be a stupid gremlin and say i should shoot for 10k but NO once again we are looking for CONSISTENCY which means it needs to be DOABLE WITHOUT RUINING MY LIFE!), i think i want to organize that doc / my draft material in general by “arc” lol whatever that means, and also paste in the rest of the scenes… actually i wonder if a notion doc would be better NO NO NO MORE FUCKING PLATFORMS GODDAMN JUST GSUITE FOR NOW. lol ok so maybe a doc for the “pre-aotake” section, one for “the bit between that and the birthday party” (?? this section is SUPER LOOSE IN MY MIND), one for “birthday party” if only bc that has like seven scenes in it. lol god i wish there was git diff for google docs …… i KNOW i have a few different versions of a couple scenes and it would be really useful if i could stash them somehow next to each other… OK nevermind just ONE DOC to fit everything together, its not long enough to break google docs yet, i don’t need to make arbitrary buckets when i haven’t even looked at the material. i can trust that the buckets WILL COME and become sharper and more clear in my head over time!

IT IS OKAY FOR ME TO BE IN THE TREES AND NOT LOOKING AT THE FOREST RIGHT NOW SO TO SPEAK. THAT IS WHAT DRAFTING FUCKING IS! aaaaargh!!!

ok i actually think next month i want to have 5k as my goal bc holiday obligations PLUS i will be writing for inception secret saito (!!!!) and relearning how my revision process works at a smaller scale so that will take some time. yeah that seems good!!

ok! and YES i feel like i could keep working THIS IS THE PLACE TO STOP. AND ALSO THE FEELING TO STOP ON. i need to practice NOT DIGGING MYSELF INTO A PIT JUST TO FEEL LIKE I “ACCOMPLISHED SOMETHING” there are already things that got done!!! if i end eager to keep working that will possibly carry over into my next session and make everything pleasant and energetic instead of a big fucking drag!!!!

ok GOODBYE this is the longest fucking update in the whole wide world im gonna have to go on desktop to add a read more. if u are still reading here hi mwah i love and appreciate you lets be friends

#hidey does nano 2022 #WAHEY ITS FUCKING DONE

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keefwho · 2 years

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October 12 - 2022

3:04 PM

OKAY how am I feeling right now? I’m still stressed, but about things that could still happen. I’m mostly completely spent. I even decided to postpone commissions for today. I should be fine if I finish the next comm over the next 2 days which seemed doable. As long as more shit doesn’t go wrong on those days.

Now I’m trying to figure out how to relax. It actually felt good having to put up with shit for a little bit, it gets me in a no bullshit work attitude. Even sorts my tummy out in a kind of way. But now it’s mostly over and my life is in my own hands again. And I’m still unsure if my water is safe. Supposedly it is but its something I don’t KNOW. I guess the only thing bothering me about it right now is how brown my water filter is. I know it’s job is to get dirty over time and it’s getting kinda old but like, I USE the water that goes through that thing. That don’t seem right. My dad is going to help me replace it tonight but I’ve already been using the water. I never got a good look at the filter before this ordeal and it was probably just as dirty. But what if the broken pipe is what ruined it with stuff getting in the water. Also unlikely since it was constantly flowing OUTwards from the pipe but I’m no plumber. Or what about when the leak was fixed and the water out of my sink came out brown for a second. Why didn’t the filter catch whatever that was? I DONT KNOOOOW

All I can do to feel better is get some perspective. No one else is worried about it. I already try to follow the idea that nothing is as dangerous as I make it out to be. How dirty could it even be? Its not like it’s getting sewage in it. Just some dirt from deeeeep underground. And before I used any of the water after they fixed the leak, I let that shit run for a looooong time.

In other news I sucked my own dick so fucking good for the first time in awhile. I’ve cut down on how much I do it a LOT, for my tummy’s sake. So now it’s like a treat when I do it.

God I’m goofy aaaaaa

6:52 PM

I’m so STRESSED AAAAA Why can’t I just stop? I’m supposed to be taking the evening EASY but all I can think about are social obligations and the stuff I have to do tomorrow and how I do not have enough energy to push through much more right now. I have rules for this kind of thing. FOCUS on something, as hard as that is sometimes. Or do things in 30 minute or 1 hour segments. That helps me focus since I don’t feel bad dedicating small amounts of time to anything.

8:32 PM

I feel bad but I scrubbed all my plans tonight because I just can’t take any more right now. I’m doing my best to commit to a cozy stream and a game that I don’t give too much thought. I really need to relax. Tomorrow I should be better, I hope so because I want to buckle down and get things done real early.

9:22 PM

Now I’m just sad that I’m missing out on fun times with friends.

Its been a stressful day and a depressing night. I give up for now. Ill recuperate later.

11:15 PM

I feel like a BITCH. I know if I just buckle down and draw, it won’t be so bad and I’ll feel soooo good when I’m done. Tomorrow will be another attempt to live up to that idea.

I’ve been making things too complicated in my own head all around. Its easier said than done, and easy to forget, but I can choose to sit back and take things as they come. I can choose to give something my full attention because ultimately anything I have to think or worry about is not that important. The world isn’t going to crumble because I’m not always 100% on top of everything.

I’m clearly in some kind of cycle where my fear spawns in the afternoon/evening. I kinda know why, it’s mostly boredom. I don’t have enough distractions so I start overthinking, or at least thats how it started. Now it feels like it’s built into my body’s clock. Something has to change so I can stop this from happening.

I still feel bad about tonight. I wish I could have kept my cool and spent time with people I like. Looking back it seems like it should have been easy. But I know how I felt at the time. I felt really bad. I just hope my friends actually understand and aren’t silently frustrated with me. I want to stop this behavior of mine. I’m trying very hard to do something about it.

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sounmashnews · 2 years

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[ad_1] It looks as if simply yesterday that Elon Musk ushered a gig worker in a spandex suit onto the Tesla AI Day 2021 stage and told us it was an robot — or not less than in all probability could be one ultimately. In the intervening 13 months, the corporate has apparently been onerous at work, changing the squishy bits from what crowd noticed on stage with correct electronics and mechanizations. At this yr's AI Day on Friday, Tesla unveiled the following iteration of its Optimus robotics platform and, properly, not less than there is not nonetheless an individual on the within? Tesla Tesla CEO Elon Musk debuted the "first" Optimus (once more, skinny man in a leotard, not an precise machine) in August of final yr and, true to his nature, proceeded to set out a collection of more and more unimaginable claims in regards to the platform's future capabilities — similar to how the Cybertruck will have unbreakable windows. As Musk defined on the time, the Optimus will function an AI just like the corporate's Autopilot system (the one that keeps chasing stationary ambulances) and be able to working safely round people with out intensive prior coaching. Additionally, the Tesla Bot would perceive advanced verbal instructions, Musk assured the assembled crowd, it will have "human-level hands," be capable to each transfer at 5 MPH and carry as much as 45 kilos regardless of standing underneath 6-feet tall and weighing 125 kilos. And, most extremely, Tesla would have a working prototype for all of that by 2022, which brings us to right now. Tesla Kicking off the occasion, CEO Elon Musk was joined nearly instantly on stage by an early growth platform prototype of the robotic — the very first time one of many check items had walked unassisted by an umbilical tether. Lacking any exterior panelling to disclose the Tesla-designed actuators inside, the robotic moved at a halting and ponderous tempo, not not like early Asimos and positively a far cry from the deft acrobatics that Boston Robotics' Atlas exhibits. Tesla The Tesla staff additionally rolled out an additional developed, however nonetheless tethered iteration as properly, pictured above. "it wasn't quite ready to walk," Musk mentioned, "but I think we'll walk in a few weeks. We wanted to show you the robot that's actually really close to what is going to production." Tesla "Our goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible," Musk mentioned. "And we've also designed it using the same discipline that we use in designing the car, which is to say... to make the robot at an high volume at low cost with higher reliability." He estimates that they might price underneath $20,000 when constructed at quantity. The Optimus shall be geared up with a 2.3 kWh battery pack which integrates the assorted energy management techniques right into a single PCB. That must be ample to get the robotic by way of a full day of labor, per Tesla's engineering staff which joined Musk on stage throughout the occasion. Tesla "Humans are also pretty efficient at somethings but not so efficient at other times," Lizzie Miskovetz, a Senior Mechanical Design Engineer at Tesla, and a member of the engineering staff defined. While people can maintain themselves on small quantities of meals, we can't halt our metabolisms when not working. "On the robot platform, what we're going to do is we're going to minimize that. Idle power consumption, drop it as low as possible," she continued. The staff additionally plans to strip as a lot complexity and mass as doable from the robotic's legs and arms. "We're going to reduce our part count and our power consumption of every element possible. We're going to do things like reduce the sensing and the wiring at our extremities," Miskovetz mentioned. Tesla What's extra, costly and heavy supplies shall be swapped out with plastics that commerce slight losses in stiffness with bigger financial savings in weight. "We are carrying over most of our designing expertise

from the automobile to the robotic,” Milan Kovac, Tesla's Director of Autopilot Software Engineering mentioned. To allow the Optimus to maneuver about in actual world conditions, "We want to leverage both the autopilot hardware and the software for the humanoid platform, but because it's different in requirements and inform factor," Miskovetz mentioned. "It's going to do everything that a human brain does: processing vision data , making split-second decisions based on multiple sensory inputs and also communications," due to built-in Wi-Fi and mobile radios. "The human hand has the ability to move at 300 degrees per second, as tens of thousands of tactile sensors. It has the ability to grasp and manipulate almost every object in our daily lives," Kovac mentioned. "We were inspired by biology. [Optimus hands] have five fingers and opposable thumb. Our fingers are driven by metallic tendons that are both flexible and strong because the ability to complete wide aperture power grasps while also being optimized for precision, gripping of small, thin and delicate objects." Tesla Each hand will provide 11 levels of freedom derived from its six devoted actuators, in addition to "complex mechanisms that allow the hand to adapt to the objects being grasped." Kovac mentioned. "We [also] have a non-backdrivable finger drive. This clutching mechanism allows us to hold and transport objects without having to turn on the hand motors." "We're starting out having something that's usable," Kovac concluded, "but it's far from being useful. It's still a long and exciting road ahead of us." Tesla engineering plans to get the enclosed, manufacturing iteration up and strolling round and not using a tether within the subsequent few weeks, then start exploring extra real-world purposes and tangible use circumstances the Optimus would possibly wind up in. "After seeing what we've shown tonight," Kovac mentioned. "I'm pretty sure we can get this done within the next few months or years and maybe make this product a reality and change the entire economy."All merchandise really helpful by Engadget are chosen by our editorial staff, unbiased of our father or mother firm. Some of our tales embrace affiliate hyperlinks. If you purchase one thing by way of one in every of these hyperlinks, we could earn an affiliate fee. All costs are right on the time of publishing. [ad_2] Source link

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pailneon3 · 2 years

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gb-patch · 3 years

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Ask Answers: August 8th

Well, doing big posts all together worked for a while but lately I’ve been putting it off because it takes a long time to get them done. I think I’m gonna try switching back to answering asks whenever I can fit it in and posting them one at a time instead of waiting until I’ve filled out one of these major collections.

But for now, here’s more ask answers! Thank you for the questions and for all the kind words along with them ^^.

Hello!! I'm here to ask if its possible to get the game and its dlcs on steam and play it on android?

I’m afraid not. Steam doesn’t have Android builds on their own site and Steam is not cool with keys for other sites being given out for Steam purchases, so you don’t get the Itch version from buying on Steam.

Hello! Sorry to bother you but, I had a question, if we buy the Game on itchio do we get steam keys or would we need to purchase it twice?

You would have to buy it twice if you want it in both places, I’m sorry. To repeat myself a little, Steam doesn’t like the key trading thing. Itch may support giving keys for another site, but the reverse isn’t doable with Steam and Steam doesn’t even really want you to get a Steam key for buying somewhere else either. So we just don’t mess around with that.

hey, sorry if this is frequently asked, but is step 4 free dlc or paid for? some of your sources are contradicting each other.

It’s free! There’s a paid wedding DLC, but Step 4 itself is entirely unpaid.

Hello! I just had a quick question, for the Baxter and Derek DLC's will we be able to confess our feelings to them or let them confess to MC? or will it only be one way? (they confess to MC)

Both type of options will be available!

Hey there! I wanted to ask whether or not the Derek DLC is still on track to be released in August since on the steam discussion board it says it will be released mid 2021. I totally understand if it isn't, I'm just really looking forward to it! If you answer then ty! And keep up the amazing work :D

It’s not, aha. Unfortunately, 2021 wasn’t easier than 2020 as we hoped so things are still slower than planned. It’ll come out late 2021 or early 2022.

Hi! Firstly I just want to say that I LOVE Our Life. I have played a bit of similar games but this one instantly wins for the best one! Everything about it is amazing! I just wanted to ask if Derek would ever lose feelings for MC, like if they make the deal and then MC gets with Cove would he move on? and even if you don't, after "losing contact" would his feeling fade or would he still like MC?

If you don’t really keep in touch with him and clearly move on with your life, Derek will too and he’ll be over it. But if you are still close as best as you can be, he’ll still think the MC is special. Though, he’ll always support your relationship with someone else if that’s what’ll make you happy.

Hello! Sorry if you've answered this before but: 'How's Lee related to us? Though which momma? And does she share our player-chosen last names? Also, do you know if Noelani took Pam's last name or did it happen the other way round?

She’s related to Pamela and Pamela’s last name is the one they use, so the MC has the same last name as Lee.

Will we be able to choose which (they or he) we tend to call Qiu by more often, or will it randomly change depending on the moment?

Qiu knows which pronoun they’re comfortable with at a time and you’ll call them what they’re happy with. And it doesn’t change between lines, it takes multiple scenes or even full Steps for it to switch. So for extended periods Qiu will be totally a guy or fully agender.

Will Step 4 of OL2 have moments?

It’ll be an epilogue like it is in OL1, so it won’t have a bunch of different Moments.

Hello! Just a quick question, is Sunset bird from OL1 based on a real location? If so what's it called? I wanna visit it +_+

ps i love your games so much <3

It isn’t based on one specific town you can go to, but there are a lot of little coastal towns in Cali that have a similar vibe!

Heyaaa ( I hope you're all well ), umm… it might seem kinda stupid to ask but did Patreon members can have a key for the dlc's ( all the steps-released dlc ) even if they became a member this month or later ? (me? saying this cuz it's my case? maybe ;-;), and once again thanks for absolutely all the amazing works on all the games ! u-u

You wouldn’t get the DLCs for backing there. The Patreon is for extra bonus content/early access, rather than being a storefront to purchase the normal DLCs. Rarely we give them out as a side gift, but it hardly happens and if what you want is the DLCs it’s best to ignore the Patreon and buy keys for those directly from Itch or Steam. I’m sorry for the confusion.

Hey y'all, love what youre doing w/Terry. Trans rep outside of player customization is so rare and important to see more of so thank you so much. I do have a question and its that does he have a canon sexuality? I know Miranda was said to be straight ace but I dont believe anything was stated for Terry probably because he wasnt revealed to be a guy which changes things. Im also curious if well get answers on how long hes liked Miranda since he may have liked her in step 3 before she liked him

Terry likes women and Randy likes men! And he did like Miranda back in Step 3.

Will the Wedding Dlc release at the same time as Step 4?

They’ll come out separately with Step 4 releasing first.

I really love Our Life so much! I've spent over 20hours playing it even though I only got it a week ago! I was wondering if I could make a fangame for Our Life with a different love interest but same plot. Next-door neighbors romance, multiple steps, etc? I'll probably make it on Google Slides though-

Sure! I hope you have fun with it and I’m glad you love the game.

How does Cove feel about poly relationships?

He’s got nothing against them for the people they work for, but he’s 100% monogamous and would only be comfortable with a partner who was willing to be monogamous with him.

Idk if this has been answered before but will Step 4 include the option to advance your feelings towards Cove?

Yep, you’ll be able to determine your feelings and what your relationship is.

In step 4 will there be a chosen to say we live with Cove even as just friends?

Yeah, you can choose to live with Cove and that can be done when you’re friends.

I just played the game with the MC and Cove being best friends and omg it’s still so damn cute like the wholesomeness of it all is too much for my heart I swear ^.^ Now with that all said I was wondering can we still marry Cove? if we only love him as a friend like let’s say we’ve made deal with him similar to the one we can make with Derek because let’s real no one could compete with what the MC and Cove have even if they aren’t in love.

It’s great to hear you enjoyed the friendship story! You can live with Cove, but you can’t marry him platonically. Cove has familial affection for the MC if they’re best-est friends. He wouldn’t think to marry someone he loves like family and even grew up with as though they truly were siblings.

Are you still going to be making a DLC for XOBD? :]

Yes! We’re slowing adding voiced lines and fixing errors.

It makes me laugh that Shiloh's last name is Fields because that's what I put as my last name! So in Our Life when he talked about "Ms. Fields" picking him up I was extremely confused, lol. That dude mimics personalities so much that he stole my surname!

Oh, wow, that’s a very funny coincidence, haha.

hi !! i cant seem to be able to get the scene where mc is able to propose to cove despite being at the 'love' stage and telling him i'd want to get married, are there any other details that im missing out on? the options just dont appear at the end...

Maybe you missed telling Cove you were in love with him even if you mentioned wanting to get married or you might’ve accidentally said earlier in the game that you don’t want to progress your relationship further with Cove. We haven’t removed them, so you can get the scene again. It’s just kind of easy to miss since there’s multiple requirements. You can read a little guide in the FAQ.

wait what di you need to do to be able to propose to cove? I've been trying but haven't had much luck

You can check out the FAQ linked above!

does cove only develop a crush on the mc if the mc is also at crush/in love with him?

Technically, yes. We treat the non-romantic relationship options as truly non-romantic since we don’t want to bait and switch people. But there’s nothing wrong with headcanoning that Cove does have feelings developing for the MC even before the MC has.

Is there a way to make/allow Lee and Baxter to date?

No, they just don’t have enough time together.

We also got a group of asks related to Tamarack in OL2, but I’m afraid the way they talked about people with larger bodies made me not want to post their words, even if the person didn’t say they’re trying to be hurtful. I will separate out the core question and answer it though, so people can know that info.

Does Tamarack lose weight in later Steps?

No, she doesn’t. As for the other questions included, to be honest, I don’t have to explain/defend having romance options of different sizes. I’m sorry if you’re dealing with unhappiness that’s connected to body image, if that’s where the negative emotions are coming from, but even so I can’t meet you on that level and pretend it’s a problem that needs an answer. A girl who simply isn’t thin being a main love interest is just not an unreasonable concept. Also, Tamarack isn’t a lesbian. Yes, she can date a female MC, but that doesn’t undo her actual sexuality, so I’m not sure where that one part at the end was coming from.

I wonder... can we "fight" with Qiu over leader status? 👀

Not really, haha. No matter how cool your MC is, they’re never gonna replace Qiu for the other kids around. So you can either partner up with him, follow him too, or not be a part of all that group politics stuff.

So when I play the game, sometimes I mentally call Cove “Covie/Covey” and that made me wonder, how does Cove feel about being nicknamed? Not like Romeo/Space Cadet/etc. but like pet names relating to his actual name

It’d depend on his age, personality, and your relationship with him! When he’s younger he’d probably be embarrassed, when he was grown he’d probably be more casual or happy about it.

will you be able to date baxter in step 3 while at crush with cove (but not dating him ofc) sorry if this has been asked already. i really love baxters step 4 design btw!!

Yeah, you can be crushing on Cove and date Baxter if you weren’t already dating Cove. You just can’t be truly in love with Cove and then switch to Baxter.

I just got my friend into our life, and they adore shiloh and derek sooo will there be more of them in the second game?

I’m afraid not. But you can see plenty more of Shiloh in XOXO Droplets/XOXO Blood Droplets, haha.

I see you haven't gotten any xoxo droplets asks recently but I'm still obsessed with these boys!! I was just wondering if Nate would curse under any circumstance?

Yeah, Nate does use certain swear words (damn, hell, bastard) on very rare occasions.

Hi there! I have a question about the wedding dlc. Will we be able to plan a honeymoon during the planning stages of it or would it be something that Cove and the mc would rather plan later on? Thank you! Absolutly love the game by the way, definitely one of my favorite games!

The focus will be on the wedding day itself. The topic of the honeymoon might come up a bit, but there won’t be any choosing of the exact location and such.

Hi! I have two questions and it's completely understandable if you only answer one/neither and I'm sorry if you've already answered either before! First, is there a set year in which OL:B&A takes place (ex: Step 1 being set in 2010 & Step 2 being set in 2016, etc.) or is it simply up to interpretation? Second, have you guys thought about doing a coming-of-age game where the MC has a tough home life or upbringing? (like one of their parents is an addict, a parent being transphobic whilst the player has the option to be trans, or having friends that are influencing them to do drugs, etc.) That's all! Thanks for making beautiful games. <3

There is a set timeline!

Step 1: 2006 Step 2: 2011 Step 3: 2016 Step 4: 2021

And we don’t currently plan on making a game like that. The Our Life series exists to be a safer environment for people to play around in and if we did do a brand new series that was harsher edged it’d be something more fantastical and/or plot-driven instead of a different type of modern day slice-of-life growing up story. I’m sorry.

i don’t know if you’ve already answered this, but do you have a guess on when phase 4 will come out? as well as ol2? i’m so excited for both of them, the inclusivity in this game is amazing, you guys should be really proud of it!

Step 4 will be coming out very soon! OL2 is gonna take until 2023 to be anywhere near completion. But we might episodically release the Steps one at a time as they get done instead of waiting for three to be finished before launch like we did with the first game.

Hello, I was curious if there was an official or unofficial discord server for the game?

We do have a discord! You can join by clicking this link HERE.

how long do you plan to keep ol's patreon running?

Hopefully for at least a few more years.

Are you considering ever making merch?

Yeah, but I don’t know when it’ll happen or what exactly we’ll make, aha. It’s something we want do, just nothing is set.

hi! i just found out about your game a couple of days ago on tiktok (so sorry if you’ve already answered this question) and i was wondering if y’all are ever planning to release it on iOS?

I have no idea. It’s hard for a small group to get Apple approval and I honestly can’t say if it’ll ever happen or not. Maybe someday, though!

Hi, I love the art style of Our life and I would like to know if the artist has a Twitter? Also, could it be possible to fund more CGs for the game from him/her? So many times, I wish there was one like when the cutscene of the sunshower.

That’s nice of you to offer. He doesn’t have a Twitter, at least not one that’s public enough to be shared with me. And I’m afraid not. The issue is that the CGs take huge amounts of time rather than there not being a budget for it. He’s gotta make CGs for Step 4, the DLCs, and new character sprites, too. There isn’t space in the schedule for even more. Sorry for that.

Hi, how are you?!

Are you planning on accepting new writers or is it always the same people who write your stories??

Thanks!!

Our Life: Beginnings & Always won’t be getting new writers, but we will be hiring a new team of writers for Our Life: Now & Forever eventually!

perhaps this counts as nsfw and I'm sure it has been answered before but what does Cove prefer, chests/boobs or butts? or perhaps both :3c thank you for this wonderful game (and the patreon bonus moment, it was worth all the waiting and more ♥)

He’s a “chests of all shapes and sizes” kind of guy, haha.

i was wondering- did any of the writers actually grow up by the beach? as someone who's lived in a beach town all their life it really did feel nostalgic to play through our life 1

I was born and raised in Cali! Though, not right by the beach. We still had to make trips out, but the setting is based on my own childhood memories of small beach towns we went through.

In Derek’s upcoming DLC, will we be able to reference the pact we made as teens? (love olba and xod/xobd so much btw you’re literally amazing)

Yep, you will be able to talk about that!

Oh, sorry about the Cole being secretly L ask, then!

If you wanted context: Death Note is about this one guy who finds a notebook that kills anyone who you write the name of in there. The guy eventually develops a God Complex and starts mass killing criminals and stuff. L is the one trying to find out who is killing all these people.

Me and my sister first joked about it because I couldn't remember how to translate a word about the way Cove was sitting, so I just did the pose, and it looked a lot like how L himself sits! Then we just snowballed from there, with more and more nonsense connections.

That’s okay! Thanks for explaining. I’m sorry I didn’t know what you meant.

#our life #ask #gb patch #gb patch games

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mageofseven · 4 years

Note

Uhm.. I really love the pregnant MC kind of series.. and uhm May I request the undateables version when the baby is born?

sorry, I'm nervous. am still a shy blob (///▽///)

Thank you both! And no need to be shy, First Nonnie~ *pets the cute, shy blob* 🥰

Oh! And just so you know, Imma split this up into two parts for space reasons, this part containing Diavolo and Barbatos' sections.

Unlike when I wrote for the Brothers' sections, I am only writing happy endings for the Undateables. However, the pregnancy and birth still won't be easy for MC so keep that in mind.

Brothers | Solomon & Simeon

Diavolo:

The first trimester was relatively easy for MC, simply going through the standard pregnancy issues, like morning sickness.

However, even during this first trimester, the couple was given a little hint of what was to come.

MC quickly developed a belly. Actually, the woman already had a small pouch formed by the time the royal physician was called and told the prince that his Sweetheart was pregnant.

Her growth stayed at this strange, quick pace.

By the end of MC's third month, the woman looked as if she was finishing her sixth.

This was alarming to the couple, who deferred to the royal physician about this.

The two were so sure that MC must be having multiples, but the physcian insisted that there was only baby and that it's development was normal for a child within the royal family and would still be born after the full nine months.

Diavolo didn't know this. The man knew that he himself was a big baby when he was born, but never knew it got this bad. He didn't have anyone to ask either. He never met his mother and his father spoke very little about her in general, let alone about when she was pregnant with him.

The man was anxious, to say the least. Would his queen be able to carry his child to full term? It seemed as if it would be too much for her.

Still, MC insisted she could handle it and Barbatos reminded him that he is prepared to navigate the woman through this tough time.

Diavolo stuffed his emotions down in favor of trusting his friend. Barbatos was actively using his future vision to help them and the butler confirmed that there is a possibility to make it through this

And so he gave free reign to Barbatos to whatever he needed to do.

The butler used the information from his vision to set up a schedule for the woman to follow and a diet plan to keep her as healthy as possible and avoid the common mistakes made in the timelines that they need to avoid.

At first, it was doable for the woman. MC wasn't a fan of having each day planned out for her, but understood it was important and listened to Barbatos.

As the pregnancy progressed though and she got bigger, it was so much harder to keep her moving.

By her sixth month, the woman's body was in a lot of pain from the weight of her belly. MC looked overdue with twins, but again, only one child.

It wasn't just the baby giving her big belly its size however. The baby was larger than usual of course, but there was also a concentrated amount of magical energy building up in her womb too. The royal physician insisted that it was also normal for a bloodline as strong as Lord Diavolo's.

MC was so exhausted from all of the excess weight and just wanted to rest in bed, but Barb always came and forced her feet so she could do her walking.

Being so achy, heavy, and emotional as she was, the woman broke down crying one day, refusing to leave her bed.

The butler had to pull the prince from his work so Diavolo could comfort the sobbing woman. Afterwards, the two walked around the garden together.

Mid way through that sixth month, a new problem occured.

The couple was preparing to have dinner at House of Lamentation with the brothers, something MC had been looking forward to all week.

The woman was checking her hair in the mirror when suddenly she saw stars in her vision and passed out. Luckily, Diavolo was already approaching her to ask his Queen if she was ready and was able to catch her, stopping her from collapsing head-first onto the dresser.

The prince quickly carried her over to the bed and had Barbatos call for the physcian.

Apparently the issue was with her body's rapid collection of dark spiritual energy. Her body has been absorbing this energy at a very rapid rate during this pregnancy because of the magical strength of the baby, but the speed of the absorption is far too quick for her human body to handle. This is what caused MC to suddenly pass out.

The physcian warned that this would probably happen more till the end of the pregnancy and that there was really no option that was safe for both mother and child to help the situation.

This is when Diavolo's anxiety got so bad that he simply defaulted into his composed expression, locking all of his feelings within him.

The demon was naturally such an expressive man, but when under great stress, he often locked down his emotions as a kind of defense mechanism.

MC hated this and always has. The woman knew it usually wasn't a conscious thing on his part, not something he purposely did, but it still hurt. It always felt as if he was hiding himself from her and it killed her inside.

The prince tried to fight it, tried to smile more for his Queen because he knew he was only bringing the woman down when she was already struggling to remain strong, but it was difficult for him.

He was afraid. He was afraid of losing her and their child. He was afraid that despite all of their hard work and all MC is suffering for that...it might all be for not

And instead of showing this fear, it was simply a lot easier to shut down all emotional expression.

There were some moments however where he could bring himself to smile genuinely

Like the first time he felt his child kick.

He and MC were having tea out in the garden. The woman was feeling extra anxious that day and asked her boyfriend if the two of them could spend sometime outside that day, which of course the prince agreed to.

The man was watching his girlfriend relax and enjoy the nice breeze, which calmed his own anxiety to see her find a bit of peace

Then he saw eyes go wide and hand flew to her massive belly.

"D-Dia!"

The prince jumped from his seat and rushed to her side. Still hiding his emotions within himself, the only hint of his panic was the speed in which he did this.

"What is it? What happened?"

MC started crying a bit and the man's heart sank. Before he could ask anything else however, his girlfriend took his hand and placed it on the area of her belly that her own hand was a moment before.

That's when he felt it. A kick. His child was kicking. This was the first interaction the man was having with his child and it caused the soon-to-be dad to tear up too.

"This--our child is greeting us." The prince smiled as he looked up at his Queen, who nodded and continued to cry her own happy tears.

Diavolo spent the next few minutes just gushing over their child's movements. He'd rub and kiss MC's belly as he talked to the baby within, greeting them back and telling them just how incredibly loved they are and how their mama and daddy can't wait to meet them.

Barbatos, who had been on standby near the couple in case they needed assistance, smiled at the scene before him.

The pregnancy didn't get any easier for the woman, but both her and her boyfriend were able to endure it more here on out because now they had a reminder of what it was they were fighting for, who they were fighting for

And so they were happy whenever their child would kick and remind their parents of this.

During the last the two months of the pregnancy, the woman had more fainting spells, but since she always had Diavolo or Barbatos with her, MC was always caught before she hit the ground.

What was more concerning was the bone breaking.

During MC's last month, the kicks that the couple got so excited for got a little too...rough.

It only happened twice, but twice was more than enough to scare the couple.

The baby was already positioned upside down and ready for the birth, meaning that its legs were now positioned upwards

So when they kicked, they would sometimes hit their mama's ribs

And twice it caused the bottom of her rib to fracture.

The woman was healed up via a spell each time, but it still wasn't a pleasant experience.

Still, this was just a taste of the pain that MC would face when she gave birth.

The Birth:

Out of all of the births I've written for MC in past, this one was worse for her just based on her child's size. Though a lot of her belly's growth was due to the concentrated magical energy that built up within her, there was also no doubt that this baby was much bigger than any human baby.

It started when MC was doing the walking scheduled by Barbatos for her. Diavolo was home, but in a meeting with the Devildom's Elder Council, basically a group of powerful aristocratic demons whose interests the prince had to balance delicately to keep peace in his kingdom. Which is why it was Barbatos with her, holding onto the pregnant woman as she walked and held her up as she suddenly stopped and bent forward in pain, hugging her stomach. The butler quickly brought the human to her room and called for the physcian, not leaving MC's side. The woman cried and begged for her boyfriend, but the the man only shook his head. Though Barbatos stayed calm and composed, he truly did feel bad for MC. He could not inform his lord about the sudden turn in events because of the importance of the Elder Council. If Diavolo left the meeting, it would just cause a lot of issues for him later on, some that he might not be able to mend. The butler told the woman that the meeting should end in about three more hours and promised that the prince would be there for their child's birth.

The meeting went in over time and lasted about four hours. Unable and even unwilling to leave MC alone, Barbatos sent a Little D to send word to Diavolo the very moment he left the council room. Upon hearing the news, the prince rushed to the other side of the castle and practically slammed the door open. Once at her side, he grabbed her hand apologized profusely for his absence. Though he understood why, the man was still angry with his butler for keeping this from him and Barbatos knew it, but did not comment on it.

The labor was a long one, lasting a little over thirty-five hours. It wasn't as bad as that makes it sound though. Diavolo had talked with the royal physician ahead of time and had a variety of potions and creams ready for her, all working together to essentially give the same effect as an epidural. The physcian had MC take them now that the prince was there to give him permission and they eased most of the pain she felt within ten minutes. Still, it did nothing to help the unbearable pressure she felt within her. With the pain managed though, the woman wasn't forced to be confined to their bed; she could also sit on the couch in their room or walk around a bit if her leg muscles insisted that she should move, which was good for her since the physcian said walking could help progress the labor.

When things progressed enough for the woman to push, she was brought back to the bed. Diavolo more wiped the sweat from her forehead and gave her a kiss, telling his Queen how well she was doing and that he won't leave her side. The woman pushed for hours and when the baby started crowing, she could still feel the burn from it despite the potions given to her. After a certain point, the woman stopped making progress. The physcian checked her and it seemed the baby was stuck. It's size was too big and the baby was stuck on her hip bone. He told the prince that no progress could be made unless he fractured the bone just enough to let the baby through.

The man's heart sank and he looked to his girlfriend, who was starting to feel the pain of the labor once more now that the potions were starting to wear off. He apologized to his Queen, but promised that he'd have the doctor give her more of the potions before he allows it to be done to her and that he'll make sure that she's healed up afterwards.

Suddenly, the woman shrieked in pain. During just that small amount of time that the prince took to make the decision and apologize, the baby had decided to break it for them in order to continue their way. The problem was solved, but in a very painful way. Even so, it took another half hour to for MC to bring her baby into the world.

It was a boy, with his father's eyes, skin tone, wings, and horns; he even had a similar golden pattern on his arms just like Diavolo did in his demon form. The boy also had MC's hair though. The doctor handed the baby to Diavolo and the man stared down at his son, tears of joy filling his eyes. He looked over to MC, who was also crying as she watched her boyfriend hold their son.

The prince leaned in a kissed the human, telling her how amazing she did and how proud of her that he is before thanking her for all that she did in order to bring their son into the world and make them parents.

The two name their son Ashur and he is spoiled with all the love he could ever need from day one.

Barbatos:

The first few months of MC's pregnancy was rather peaceful.

Barbatos went back and forth from his duties at the castle to taking care of his girlfriend, who still wished to live at House of Lamentation at this time.

The butler had no issue with this; he simply wanted his Love to remain as happy and comfortable as possible during this pregnancy, though he was prepared to move her into the castle at any point if issues arose and made it necessary, something Barb had already discussed with Lord Diavolo of course.

Which was good, considering what transpired during MC's fourth month.

Barbatos was tending to his duties at the castle when he received a call from Lucifer. Apparently his Dear was in the library getting help from Satan with her homework when suddenly the woman started shrieking and sobbing uncontrollably.

When Lucifer himself heard and rushed in, he found MC curled up in a ball and her eyes glowing green. The two men tried to calm her and ask what was wrong, but it was as if the human could not see or hear them.

Once the strange episode was over, MC continued to sob and beg for her boyfriend

Which of course resulted in the butler dropping everything in order to rush to his girlfriend's side.

When he arrived at House of Lamentation, he found his Love in the living room with Beel, curled up and hiding in the big demon's embrace.

Upon his entrance, the redhead wordless tapped the human's shoulder, causing her to raise her head and see her boyfriend entering the room.

Beel let go of the woman and nodded in greeting to the butler before stepping out to give the two time to talk.

Taking the other demon's seat, Barb sat down next to MC. His Love clung to him, burying her face in his chest.

The man didn't say a word, just held the human close and waited till she was ready to speak.

"Barbie...I saw myself die...I saw our baby die."

Barbatos frowned. He suspected as much when he heard that her eyes glowed green, the same color as his own eyes.

The woman talked about seeing herself die in childbirth, about seeing their daughter die before even entering the world, and her boyfriend's only response was to tighten the embrace and stroke her hair.

This...the man had been studying this timeline in depth since he discovered MC was pregnant. However, this was not something he that he foresaw.

If he was correct in his assumption, the only way MC would be able to see such a vision was if she somehow gained access to such power and since that was not a power of her own, the man knew what the only explanation could be; their daughter had inherited his power and has projected such a vision onto her mother.

How and why, the butler wasn't sure, but what concerned him the most was that his review of the timeline originally never included his daughter inheriting his gift and torturing her mother with with its visions.

Something must have changed, something small and easily overlooked, causing another tinier branch of time to split from the already small one they were on originally.

Now Barbatos was...well, not blind per se, but he had certainly lost his previous advantage. Months of studying every little detail of the previous timeline was now rendered useless and now he needed to start from scratch to make sure he knows what to expect and keep MC safe during this harsh pregnancy.

The demon originally wanted to keep the truth of the dangers this pregnancy poses to himself; he never wanted MC to worry, but since their daughter seemed to have different plans, the butler must be flexible.

"I'm sorry, my Dear. I should have foresaw this issue, but I failed to do so for you."

The man explained what he had been hiding from her. He told her what he foresaw the day he found out she was pregnant and admitted he knew before she even took the test.

He explained that because he knew from multiple timelines that she'd choose to risk her life for the sake of their child and he didn't want her to worry, especially since he was so sure he could use his gift to keep her safe, he had decided to keep all of it to himself.

However, he also explained that the vision she saw was likely from one of the obsolete timelines (though he will thoroughly check through their current one to make sure) and that it was their daughter who showed her it.

Barbatos knew if it happened once then it would likely happen again and did not want his Dear to see such an awful sight again.

This is was why he requested for her to move into the castle with him; by doing so, he could use his own power to disrupt their daughter's to end such an episode when it occurs.

At first, MC fought the idea. She said House of Lamentation was her home and the brothers were her family; she simply did not want to leave them.

Barbatos apologized for the trouble, but told her this would be for the best and promised that she could move back in with the brothers after their daughter's birth if she so chooses and if Lucifer was okay with it.

The woman was hesitant, but agreed after hearing this

And so MC moved into the castle with him that day. Once again, the butler already had everything prepared so it was as simply as packing up her things and using magic to teleport them to the castle so the two could walk there comfortably.

Barbatos had a different room for them both to sleep in as opposed to his own room. The man had worried that his bedroom would be a bit...unsettling for his Dear and did not want her to think about the first time she saw his room, back in her first year at RAD when she used it to go back in time and had technically died from such a decision.

The man wanted to avoid anything that could bring bad thoughts to his sweet human's head and ultimately keep her spirits up.

The first day, MC felt a bit out of place in the castle, but when the night came and she got to sleep in her boyfriend's arms, she found a sense a peace that she did not often get to feel outside of his embrace and so she slept comfortably.

Her days were filled with being by Barbatos' side as he worked. He wanted her close in case an episode should occur and he was correct that more were to come.

Each time one would occur, the demon would carefully lead his distraught girlfriend to a seat, slip off his gloves, and place one hand on her bare belly and one on her forehead, pushing his own magick into her to disrupt their daughter's magick flow.

When the vision was brought to a halt, the woman's eyes stopped glowing and she fell forward, her face falling onto his shoulder.

It always went like this, Barb dropping everything to end it for her and then holding the human close for as long as she needed.

Outside of these episodes, the woman would help her boyfriend as he worked. Though it wasn't necessary, Barb acknowledged that MC needed to fill her time in some way and enjoyed helping him.

However, he still restricted his Dear with what she could help with. If it require heavy lifting, chemicals, or magick, he would have her step back and let him handle it. Though disappointed, MC would do as she was told.

Months went by and things with her pregnancy were manageable.

The brothers were a constant presence within the castles, always checking up on the human and wanting to spend time with her. The butler did not mind this and knew that this was good for his Love's spirits.

Still, he was always displeased when Mammon stopped by because he knew he had to balance his work, taking care of MC, and keeping an eye on the second brother to make sure he didn't try to steal anything. Again.

It was half way through her sixth month when a new problem arose.

The butler had left the room for just a moment to deal with some work while MC chatted with the Avatar of Greed, only to be called back by the other man.

"Shit! Barbatos!"

The butler quicken his steps and turned back towards the room

And found MC on the floor of the parlor, green glow of her eyes flickering on and off as she seizured on the floor.

Barbatos sprung into action. He did not understand what brought this on so suddenly, but handled the situation as best as he could for now.

He had the other demon stay back as he turned MC onto her side and pushed the funiture away from his Dear so she didn't hurt herself during this. He took off his jacket and folded it up before placing it behind her head. He took out his phone to time it, just in case.

When it finished, his Love looked up at him and asked what had happened. Her boyfriend finally let himself release the breath he had been holding.

"You're fine, my Dear. You're laying down in the parlor right now. Please just relax for a bit."

Barbatos had requested for the Brother to return home for the day before calling in a doctor for MC.

That's how the couple discovered the new issue; MC wasn't handling the new power well. The foreign magic was like a shock to her system. It could handle the magick in certain doses, but too much had lead to this seizure.

The doctor said she should able to tolerate it on a physical level when their daughters activates it, but MC likely won't survive if Barb keep forcing his magick on her or at least cause her health to take a permanent nosedive.

Each time a human has a seizure, it becomes so much easier for their body to it again. If this keeps up, it will become a health problem for her even after the pregnancy.

Basically, the couple was stuck with the choice of whether MC's physical health or mental health was more important.

The butler kept composed at this news, but in reality...he felt like he was failing her. It was his responsibility to take care of her, but he felt as if things were slipping out of his control.

Still, he did what had to be done. From then on, he never interfered when his Love had one of her episodes. When their daughter forced a horrible vision onto MC, all the man could do is bring her to a seat and hold onto his girlfriend as her mind was being tortured by vivid experiences.

They never took long, about ten or fifteen minutes each time, but MC was always left shaky and emotionally fragile. Barbatos made sure to never be the first to break the embrace, even if he had a long list of work he needed to get done.

The rest of the pregnancy was very difficult for the woman. Barb and the Brothers did what they could for her, but it was obvious that her spirits were low from then on.

The Birth:

The stress that the visions put on the woman caused her to go into labor early. Luckily, not dangerously early, just about a week and a half so.

MC was having tea with Lord Diavolo, something the prince purposefully set time aside for each week. He knew how difficult of a time this was for the human and his friend and wanted to play his part to ease their nerves a bit. Barbatos was able to leave his Dear's side without much anxiety and MC could chat with him as she enjoys some tea. Tea time with Diavolo had become something the woman looked forward to each week. The prince's cheerful attitude really did a lot to lift her fragile spirits.

It was during such a tea time when MC started feeling some minor contractions. They were small and far apart at first so the woman simply chose to ignore them at first. It was still a bit early so she really didn't think the pains were really the start of labor. If anything, she simply thought they were more so Braxton Hicks contractions, basically small practices ones that women can feel towards the end of their pregnancy. They don't lead to labor; they're simply uncomfortable. Thinking this was the reason for her pain, the woman said nothing and continued to chat with the prince. However, the pain slowly built up and she found herself wincing mid-sentence.

"Are you alright?" Lord Diavolo watched the woman closely.

"Oh yes, sorry." MC smiled anxiously at him before looking down to her belly and giving it a gently rub. "I've been feeling a bit of pain, but I'm sure it's nothing."

The prince rose from his seat.

"Then I'll go retrieve Barbatos for you--"

"No, please sit." The woman insisted. "It's nothing. It's too early for it to be a real issue and besides...I don't want Barb to worry. He's so good at hiding it, but I know he's been stressed out these last couple months. He needs this. He needs some time to himself where he doesn't feel as if he needs to hover around me, even if he's still working."

The prince watched the woman for a moment before lowering himself back into his chair.

"Alright. Please let me know if it gets any worse for you."

MC nodded and the two continued talking, though now with the man being extra observant with her.

A couple minutes later, Barbatos had rushed in.

"Barb? Is something--"

He was at her side in an instant.

"My Dear, you really shouldn't keep such a thing from me for my sake."

The woman stared at her boyfriend, confused. He explained how he had paused his work to look into his vision (he was feeling anxious about leaving her side, but of course, never mentioned this) and saw that this was going on, but discovered that her hypothesis was incorrect; this was in fact the very beginning of labor for her. Its bareable at the moment, but as he has already seen, this will change very soon.

"I already called the doctor so please follow me so you can go lay down."

MC stared at him eyes wide.

"I...is she going to be okay?" The woman asked, eyes tearing up a bit. "Barb, it's--"

"My Dear, it's alright." He took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Our daughter will be fine. Please don't worry."

Suddenly, a new pain hit her and her boyfriend was right that they were getting worse.

"Gaaaah...Barb..."

"Shh. Its alright." The butler waited for the pain to settle before helping her out of her chair and turning to Diavolo. "I'm sorry, my lord. Please excuse us."

"Of course." The prince smiled at the two before adding. "You'll be fine, MC. Just do your best and trust in my friend, yes?"

The couple thanked the prince before retreating.

Thanks to Barbatos catching things as soon as he did and calling the doctor when he did, things went smoothly. It was still a painful experience for his girlfriend, but the demon stayed by her side the whole time and never let go of her hand.

A few hours later, the couple was graced with their daughter's cries as she entered the world. Once the baby was cleaned up and wrapped in a blanket, MC brought their child into her arms, hold her close. Barbatos watched the scene and started tearing up. It was over. His Dear's suffering was over and now his daughter was here in her arms. It was...all worth it.

MC stayed in the castle for a few more days to recover before moving back into House of Lamentation with the Brothers, taking their daughter with her. It was for the best. After all, Barbatos had promised her such when she first moved into the castle that she could move back after the birth.

Besides, MC can't stay by his side every second of the day like she did during the pregnancy. It simply wasn't fair nor healthy to expect that of her so she'd just be on her own with their child in the castle and that would be a very lonely way for her to live. MC living in House of Lamentation, surrounded by those she saw as her family while receiving their help and support...that was what she deserved; it made her happy.

Still, the man was constantly visiting her and their daughter. Just because they weren't a traditional family who lived together didn't mean he loved his girls any less or that he'd give them any less than his best. He'd even stay the night once a week and help with the baby during the night, even though he had to wake up early to return to the castle the next morning.

Barbatos did not mind it though; he handled it all in stride and found this new life to be much more fulfilling. Being a father was never something that the man gave any thought to in the past. While many beings aimed to continue their lineage, Barbatos was never one to put importance on such a thing. Regardless, now that he has his child, the demon knows he will always treasure her and her mother above all else in this world.

The couple named the girl Vaermina, though MC often liked shortening her name to Mina. She had her father's eyes, horns, and tail, but MC's hair combined with a teal streak just like his, strangely enough. One look at her face and the man knew she'd grow up looking just like her mother; he didn't need his vision to know this.

If he was being honest...the man didn't want to use his gift at all in regards with his daughter. Mina...he knew she'd have a tough go of things. Barbatos knew better than anyone the fear that their gift can promote early in life. To not have much control over the sight and see so many outcomes that could lead to yourself or those close to you get hurt was not an easy thing.

Still, he was determined to teach her when she's old enough to control her power so such visions are not thrust upon her. Whenever he looked at his daughter, still young and bright and unaffected, his heart filled with so much love for her, but also ached in response to the trouble he knew was coming for her eventually.

#obey me #obey me otome #obey me diavolo #obey me barbatos #obey me mc #obey me pregnant mc

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raibebe · 3 years

Text

Neo CreaTures

Hello and welcome to my first ever collab call to celebrate me hitting a huge follower milestone! This is dedicated to everyone who loves the supernatural – like me – and enjoys writing a little more interesting creatures than just vampires and werewolves – which of course are still lovely. Under the cut you’ll find a list of awesome creatures to turn our favorite boys into – or even the reader if that’s the route you want to go. Our main theme is it to have some fun and post a variety of different spooky or not so spooky fics throughout October to spread our love for the supernatural. To claim a spot, simply dm me @raibebe your member and creature of choice and I’ll add you to this post as long as the spot is still up for claim.

Reblogs are appreciated even if you chose to not enter the collab to reach a wider audience!

rules

As always: First come, first serve

The fic has to be about the chosen member, meaning he is supposed to be the main character, you’re of course allowed to add in as many of the others as you want

You can bend the lore/appearance of your creature of choice how you may seem fit. Just don’t start telling me dwarfs turn into wolves every full moon.

Deadline is October 31st 2021

Minimum word count is 2k. This should be doable, it’s a lot of time until October. If you choose to write it in multiple parts, just send me the part you want to have linked on the masterlist.

No timestamps/drabbles, bullet points, social media AUs or reactions. Fics. That’s it.

Open to all genres, it doesn’t have to be horror or gory but I would love to read some darker pieces that are perfect for the season

If you want to include smut in your work, you have to be of age. No exceptions.

Even though all NCT members are of age, please refrain from writing smut for Jisung, Chenle and Sungchang, since otherwise Jisung will call the police on us.

Tag your work accordingly if you have potentially triggering stuff in it. When in doubt – you should probably tag it. But you can always ask which brings me to the next point:

Joining the discord is not mandatory but I’d encourage you to because it’s a great way to get to know your fellow writers and maybe ask for advice or just to chat about our boys.

That’s also where I’ll post announcements and stuff

Please tell me if you’re changing URLs or want to step out of the collab or can’t meet the deadline, which is both fine and can be negotiated

Please reblog this post after getting accepted so we can reach a wider audience.

For further questions just dm me!

Members

Taeil - @fan-but-no-art | Angel

Johnny -

Taeyong – @ncteaxhoe | Fairy

Yuta – @sly-merlin | Naga

Kun - @moonctzeny | Succubus

Doyoung - @just-come-baek | Mermaid

Ten - @jaesqueso | Werecat

Jaehyun - @127-mile | Ghoul

Winwin -

Jungwoo - @heejinnien | Elf

Lucas - @justonedaywithmysunshine | Genie

Mark - @alreadyblondenow | Zombie

Xiaojun - @key201303 | Guardian Angel

Hendery - @soliverse | Witch

Renjun - @moondustaeil | Kitsune

Jeno - @sparklysung | Incubus

Haechan –

Jaemin - @raibebe | Demon

Yangyang - @yangyanghater | Yokai

Shotaro - @chittapornswife | Nale Ba/Nishi Dak

Sungchan - @sichengscult | Warlock

Chenle - @flowerboykun | Merman

Jisung - @armysantiny | Shapeshifter

List of creatures to choose from.

Some creatures are fairly similar but I wanted to give you as many choices as I could come up with without having to choose absolutely crazy creatures. As said before you’re free to bend the lore of the creatures, this is just a guide – mostly off of Wikipedia – to some of the lesser known creatures. Warning: Some creatures are darker and more gore-y than others. The descriptions are as ungraphic as possible.

Vampire: A living corpse that feeds on the blood of the living to survive

Werewolf: A human with the ability to shapeshift into the form of a wolf

Werecat: A human with the ability to shapeshift into the form of a feline

Angel: A pure, benevolent intermediary between humans and god, protectors and guiders for humans, servants of god

Guardian angel: Godsend protector and guider for humans

Fallen angel: Angel that has become tainted by sin and fell from heaven

Devil: Ruler of the underworld, personification of evil and temptation

Demon: Supernatural creature usually associated with evil and sin

Incubus: Male demon that gains his energy from engaging in sexual activity

Succubus: Female demon that gains her energy from engaging in sexual activity

Yokai: Spirits and monsters in Japanese folklore, ranging from mischievous and malevolent creatures believed to cause misfortune and harm to some that are considered to bring good fortune

Ghost: Soul or spirit of a dead person that can appear to the living

Poltergeist: Type of ghost responsible for physical disturbance, often bound to the places the soul died in

Warlock: Male practitioner of witchcraft

Witch: Female practitioner of witchcraft

Necromancer: Practitioner of magic involving communication with the dead

Genie/Jinn: Neither innately evil or good spirit

Shapeshifter: A human possessing the ability to physically transform their body

Ghoul: Demon-like creature associated with graveyards and consuming human flesh

Zombie: Undead revenant

Siren: Creature half bird and half woman who lures sailors by the sweetness of her song

Mermaid/Merman: Aquatic creature with an upper body in human form and the tail of a fish

Nymph: Minor nature deity, generally regarded as personifications of nature, tied to a specific place or landform

Dryad: Tree nymph

Fairy: Magical creature with human appearance, magical powers and a penchant for trickery

Elf: Beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty, ambivalent to humans, capable of either helping or hindering them

Gnome: Diminutive spirit that typically lives underground

Dwarf: Entity hat dwells in mountains and in the earth, associated with wisdom, smithing, mining and crafting

Satyr: Bawdy male nature spirit with horse/goat like legs, ears and horns

Centaur: Creature with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a horse

Naga: Creature with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a snake

Harpy: Half human, half bird personification of storm winds

Dragon: Large, serpentine creature that breathes fire

Kitsune: In Yōkai folklore, all foxes have the ability to shapeshift into human form they have the ability to trick others but are also portrayed as faithful guardians, friends, lovers, and wives

Phoenix: Long-lived bird that cyclically regenerates or is otherwise born again, often through burning his body and being reborn from the ashes

Basilisk: Legendary reptile reputed to be a serpent king, who can cause death with a single glance

Unicorn: Beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead, often portrayed as horse-like

#nct #nct 127 #nct dream #wayv #collab call #nct collab call #nct collab #nct fic #wayv fic #wayv collab call

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everlarkficexchange · 3 years

Text

On the Hunt

Author: @hutchhitched

Prompt 39: Katniss has been bumping into the same stranger (Peeta) for months. When they get stuck in an unfortunate situation together, she decides to be the first to say hello. [submitted by @eiramrelyat / @taylerwrites]

Ratings/Warnings: T

The first time Katniss sees him, he takes her breath away. It’s from afar. He probably doesn’t even catch a glimpse of her, but her whole world tilts off its axis.

She’s not sure why he stands out to her. There’s nothing particularly unique about him. He’s not short or tall or big or small. He’s not drop-dead gorgeous or ugly like a troll. He doesn’t move like an athlete or sparkle with the magic of a performer. He appears normal in every sense of the word, but that doesn’t mean she can’t see how special he really is. At least she thinks he might be—if she had a chance to actually speak to him.

That doesn’t happen, though. She’s too far away when she sees him picking up a loaf of bread, and she can’t seem to move once he’s left her line of sight. She stays frozen in the freezer section (the irony!) for several minutes. Hopefully, everyone else thinks she’s considering her options in breakfast burritos, but she’s actually involved in an out of body experience that follows the young man from the back of the store to the registers, out the door, and into the parking lot where he must load his groceries into his car and drive away. His life is no different, but hers will never be the same.

It has to be because she’s lonely. It’s been a very long time since she’s been in a relationship. In fact, it’s been so long since she’s kissed a man, she kind of wonders if she’s forgotten how to do it. Katniss has never been that popular, but she’s enjoyed her fair share of attention. She tries really hard not to spiral out in the freezer section, but Christ on a cracker! Something about that specimen of manhood has made her question her life’s choices. Why hasn’t she run into him before now? Clearly, she’s been living wrong.

Except, she hasn’t. She’s done absolutely everything she knows to do to be a good person. She supports her little sister and sends money to her mother who needs every speck of help she can get. She has a best friend who’s been by her side since they both lost their fathers when they were barely teenagers. She helps out at a shelter and donates money to the food bank because she knows way too well how hunger can impact a person’s life. In other words, there’s no reason her weekly grocery trip should result in an upheaval to her world. It’s simply not fair, and she plans to file a complaint to who it is that runs fate and destiny. She has a bone to pick.

Somehow, she finds everything on her list and heads to the front of the store. When she gets there, she unloads her groceries and watches as the cashier scans each item. Digging into her wallet, she’s stunned to find she only has a twenty and the total keeps rising. Mortified, she watches as the number climbs to $34.15.

“I don’t have… I mean, can you take off the…”

Trying to figure out what she can live without until her next paycheck, she surveys the food and toiletries. Almost in tears, she stammers for a few seconds before the cashier speaks.

“Don’t worry. Another patron paid it forward. He left a twenty and asked that I use it if anyone needed help. Looks like you could use some.”

“I— I couldn’t. It’s not right.”

“The guy seemed pretty adamant that I only offer it to someone who could use a break. It seems like that could be you today.”

Katniss nodded slowly. “Do you have any idea who it is? I’d like to thank them.”

The cashier shook her head. “Young guy. Stocky, medium height, ashy blonde hair, blue eyes. Very polite. Named Peter, I think. Something like that.”

It’s got to be him. The description’s too similar to be a coincidence. It seems the guy that froze her in place with his looks is as kind and compassionate as he is special. Now, he’s even more intimidating.

She nods her thanks and takes the change and her purchases. The five in her pocket gives her a little joy, but the feeling of not having money still bothers her. Maybe it’s time to get a credit card. She’s been warned off them for so long that she never applied for one, but now, it might be something she should do. Maybe. It makes her nervous to think she could get in financial trouble with it. She’s been poor her entire life. It might be too tempting to resist.

When she makes it back to her apartment, her attempt to unpack her groceries is interrupted frequently by long pauses in which she fantasizes about finding the guy who’s rocked her world and given her daydreams about all the ways she needs to thank him (appropriately and not so much) for the rest of her life. It’s not unrealistic at all. Totally doable, she decides. After all, how hard can it be to find him again? They live in the same town.

****

The answer to that question is that it’s very hard. Difficult isn’t even the word to describe the problem she has in trying to find the Boy With the Bread, which is what she calls him even though he’s definitely an adult. The person she saw from afar was all man if the stretch of his shirt across broad shoulders was any indication. Still, the alliteration makes her smile, so she continues to refer to him as such.

It shouldn’t take so long, but it does. Months pass, and she wonders if she’s made it all up and imagined the creature that changed her life. She keeps her eyes open in public, scans the local news and social media sites, and seriously considers setting up an online dating site just to see if he’s looking for someone. She’s getting desperate, but then fate smiles on her again.

She’s sitting in a coffee shop, something she hardly ever does, when he walks in the door. She doesn’t normally have time for such a mundane, normal activity that other people her age seem to enjoy all the time. She’s usually working during the day, and she has no desire to consume copious amounts of caffeine after 5 pm when she gets off work. Today, though, she has time. She’s taken a half day to run errands and go to the dentist, and she needs the jolt the espresso will give her to survive her reduced shift.

He ducks through the doorway just as she’s taken a sip of her hot beverage, and she almost chokes on the liquid. He shakes the umbrella he’s holding just outside the door and shoves a riot of blonde curls off his forehead that have shrunken up and frizzed from the rain. It’s adorable.

He’s wearing an emerald Henley and faded jeans that hug all the right places. The sight of him freezes her in place, but that doesn’t stop her from tracking him as moves past her. She’s close enough to see his eyes are blue before he marches across the café and approaches a man sitting alone in the corner. They clasp hands and grin at each other, and the vision in green heads to the counter to order.

She’s dumbfounded. Here he is again after so long, and she can’t think of a single thing to say to him or how in the world to actually approach him without making her look absolutely insane. She racks her brain trying to think of an intelligent topic, but she’s jolted from that when the barista walks to the end of the bar and calls a name.

“Peeta! Chai Latte.”

That’s his name, she realizes, and it’s like the sun’s broken through thick, heavy clouds. It’s just unusual enough to fit him and still feel familiar. He smiles at the woman behind the bar and takes the cup from her. He ordered chai, and she files that information away for future reference. He might not like coffee, which seems important.

She’s pondering a trip to the bathroom just so she has an excuse to pass by him when she suddenly understands that he’s leaving. He and his friend are talking as they walk to the door, and she catches the sound of his voice.

“—we can change that, the numbers will—”

His words are swallowed by the rush of traffic outside, but that silky tone she hardly had a chance to listen to has already taken up residence in the part of her brain that creates unrealistic fantasies. She daydreams for longer than she should. In fact, it’s only the vibration of her phone against the table that reminds her she has to get to her job. What a chance encounter, but now she has a name to go with that face.

****

She’s tried to find him again. She’s googled and returned to the coffee shop when she’s had a spare minute or two. She’s asked around and continues to check dating sites. Nothing. She’s found absolutely nothing. Without a last name, she has very little idea how to find out anything else. Frustrated, she goes about her daily life with a weight on her shoulders that shouldn’t be there. He’s a stranger she’s glimpsed only a couple of times.

Frustrated and full of pent-up energy, she joins a gym. There’s nothing quite like working up a good sweat to ease tension and kickstart her brain, so she spends her free time running the track, lifting, and participating in every hot yoga class the establishment offers. After a month, she’s leaner and stronger than ever, but she hasn’t managed to come up with any ideas that might help her find the guy she desperately wants to thank for saving her when she wasn’t sure how she’d eat for a week.

She’s two laps into her normal ten when she glances down from the elevated track and spots a pickup game of three on three basketball on the far court. Three blonde men face off against three with dark hair, one of whom looks remarkably like her best friend Gale Hawthorne, who she hasn’t seen since he left town for a job almost a year ago. As she jogs closer to the court, she realizes it is him teamed up with his brothers. The blonde men look like siblings, too, but she doesn’t spare them much of a glance. She’s got more laps to go, and she doesn’t want to draw any attention to herself. Gale didn’t bother to tell her that he’s in town, and she’s a little miffed by that.

It’s another three passes by the court before it hits her that the blonde men look familiar. She puts on a burst of speed to get back to where she can see the men closeup and almost trips over her own feet when she spies him. It’s the guy. THE guy. The cashier had said Peter, and the barista had called him Peeta. She stops in her tracks and grabs the railing when someone bumps into her from behind.

“Watch it!” he yells as the jogger passes her. “You’re not supposed to stop on the track!”

She dismisses him with a wave and sprints to the nearest stairwell. If she can just catch them… She bounds down the stairs, three at a time, and bursts into a bustling walkway. She dodges and shoves her way free and streaks around the corner to find—

“Catnip! What are you doing here?”

“Gale!” Sweat drips down her forehead and stings her eyes. Cringing, she swipes her hand across her face and tries not to cry. “Where are—? I thought you were playing basketball.”

He throws her a bewildered look and nods like she’s lost it a little. “We were.”

“You’re done?”

“Yeah? We’d been at it for a while. Are you… Have you been watching me?”

Katniss rolls her eyes, although that’s not really very fair. She had noticed him. It’s not like that’s not the case. “Who were you playing with? I saw Vic and Rory, but the blonde guys… Who, er, who were they?”

The expression on his face would be priceless if she weren’t so desperate to find out the information. He looks like he’s swallowed something very, very distasteful, and she tries hard not to snort with laughter.

“Why?”

She takes in his narrowed eyes and realizes she’s going to have to lie to get what she wants. Part of the reason they haven’t been as close since he left town is due to his sudden confessions of feelings toward her. She’d let him down easy, but things have been strained since then. There’s no need to rub that in his face when all she wants is to find out about Peeta. With a straight face and innocent eyes, she explains, “I think one of them door dinged my car a couple of weeks ago. The gym won’t give out membership information, but if you know who they are… Well, I’d be really grateful, Gale.”

He falls for it when she bats her eyelashes at him. She should feel terrible, but all’s fair in love and basketball. Of all people, Gale should want her to be happy, no matter if that means she’s interested in someone else or not. She’s no damsel in distress, unless she can’t pay for her groceries or something. However, her simpering works, and that’s really what she needs.

“Mellark is the last name. They all have bread names. It’s weird.”

She rolls the name around in her head for a bit. Peeta Mellark. It’s a nice solid name, and now she has more information to help her figure out how to find him. Almost giddy with victory, she stretches up on her tiptoes and kisses Gale’s cheek in gratitude. Backing away before he can reciprocate, she hears him as the distance widens between them.

“Do you want to grab dinner sometime? Maybe?”

“Sorry, Gale! Got to go. Really good to see you!”

With that, she turns her back and slips down the hall to the women’s locker room. She doesn’t bother to shower before grabbing her bag and heading to her car. She’s barely closed the door before she’s on her phone and typing in the name Peeta Mellark. She has a thank you to deliver.

****

Surprisingly, it’s not much easier to find him now that she knows his full name. She unveils a lot of information about his family, but not him. Apparently, they own a few local bakeries that she tries out and loves. Still, Peeta’s family is not the same thing as Peeta, who is remarkably absent from social media and with no online presence. She’s willing to admit, she got cocky, and now she can’t figure out how to recover from it.

“Where the hell is he?” she mutters as she comes up empty. Again.

Frustrated, she runs over all the data she’s gathered about him. He’s kind, compassionate, and thoughtful; all of those qualities were on display at the grocery store. He drinks tea and has a very good-looking friend who he talks to about numbers; that she learned at the coffee shop. He’s athletic and has two brothers he likes well enough to exercise with them; that information, and his last name, came from the gym. It should be enough to go on. It’s not.

She’s at home on her couch and paying bills when it suddenly hits her that she may never see this guy again. Peeta Mellark seems to be a figment of her imagination for all the good it’s done to try to find him. That and the small number in her bank account are both so unpleasant that she decides she’s going to have to break down and do something she’s been avoiding and delaying for a very long time. She’s going to have to open a line of credit. She’ll only use it for emergencies, but she can’t rely on the kindness of strangers to bail her out the next time she doesn’t have money for groceries, let alone car maintenance or an unforeseen medical crisis. It’s been months since Peeta saved her, but the humiliation of not being able to take care of herself still hasn’t faded. Before she can change her mind, she grabs her purse and heads to the bank. The time is now.

“Can I help you?” A bubbly blonde teller named Delly asks, and Katniss takes a deep breath to fortify herself.

“I’d like to open a line of credit. Can I talk to someone about that?”

“Sure!” she practically squeals. “Let me just call someone to help you.”

She’s led down the hallway and past a few desks to a small office. Once ushered inside, she sits and raises her eyes to view the person across from her.

“Oh…”

The man before her is stunning—green eyes, bronze hair, a swimmer’s build. It’s the guy’s—Peeta’s—friend, the one he was with at the coffee shop.

“Ms. Everdeen. I’m Finnick Odair. Want some sugar?” he asks and nudges a candy bowl toward her.

“No, I’m fi—.”

“Hey, Finn. Can you— Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were with a customer.”

She jerks at the sound of his voice. Peeta Mellark is standing in the doorway, and her heart is in her throat. She has a sudden flashback of the coffee shop, when the two of them walked past her discussing numbers… Now, it all makes sense. They work at a bank together. Of course they do. Peeta turns to leave, and she calls out.

“Wait! Stay with me.”

She claps her hands over her mouth and wills herself not to blush, but it’s no use. She’s just asked a perfect stranger to stay with her, and her invitation sounds much more intimate than she means it to. He must think she’s insane. Maybe she actually is. She pushes down a sudden urge to flee the situation and escape to the safety of her apartment.

This is out of her wheelhouse. Shy, introverted, and intensely private, Katniss worries the end of her braid and bites her lip. Every instinct she has tells her to run, but the temptation of him before her is too great. Rising, she crosses to him and holds out her hand.

“Hi. My name is Katniss. You saved my life once, and I’ve been on the hunt to find you for months. Thank you.”

Peeta and his friend exchange looks, and she fights the urge to shrivel back into herself. Finally, he looks directly at her and takes her palm in his. With a smile so disarming she nearly faints, he answers.

“Peeta Mellark. It’s nice to meet you.”

The touch of his hand on hers melts her insides. She dreads when she finally has to let go, but maybe she won’t have to. With a shy smile, she cocks out her hip and looks up at him through long lashes. Her flirting may be a disaster, but it’s all she’s got.

“It’s so nice to meet you, too.”

The flicker in his eyes makes her knees weak. An hour later, she’s left the bank with a line of credit, a phone number, and a dinner date. The hunt is finally over.

#hutchhitched #eiramrelyat #prompt 39 #Springtime Edition 2021 #submission

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veliseraptor · 3 years

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AU where Xue Yang noticed that Xiao Xingchen was picking up his sword and managed to stop him before he killed himself so XXC is alive but things are still very bad

I love this one because there are so many ways for it to be horrible! and everyone involved is going to be miserable at least for a while. And there is every possibility that ‘a while’ is going to be ‘forever’ were it not for my urgent desire for fix-its. (I mean, that was more or less the eventual thrust of this fic, which would’ve ended in probable murder-suicide if I’d kept going.)

but!!! let’s do a take on this one that I didn’t already write!

One of the things I love about this is the sheer contrasting energy between where I think Xiao Xingchen is in this AU and where Xue Yang is. like, Xiao Xingchen is in a state of despair. His life is in shreds, he murdered his best friend, his house-husband is a notorious murderer, he’s been tricked into killing a whole lot of people - Xiao Xingchen isn’t in a good place! He is, I would imagine, borderline catatonic. With his desperate attempt at escape (as he felt it was) thwarted, I think he’d just shut down and utterly cease to function.

Xiao XIngchen is not at home, please leave a message.

Meanwhile on the other end of things there is Xue Yang! Who, faced with the imminent possibility of Xiao Xingchen being actually dead discovers that he doesn’t actually like that! It turns out! But that is fine, he stopped XIao Xingchen from doing something stupid and now they can go back to being normal. Right? Right??? Except obviously that isn’t going so well and okay, yeah, makes sense that Xiao Xingchen is upset so just have to figure out how to cheer him up which is totally doable. Of course he’s stubborn so it’s not going to be easy but--

Basically, slightly panicky Xue Yang vibrating with nervous energy and consequently about three times as intense and volatile as usual! Scrambling for a way to deal with an entirely foreign situation because Xue Yang is, generally speaking, accustomed to walking away from the disasters he creates! He doesn’t fix them. And what does Xiao Xingchen want, anyway, what’s he think Xue Yang should do, huh?

(Die, Xiao Xingchen says, when Xue Yang asks, which, obviously that’s not what he meant, why do you have to be so dramatic, Daozhang, he is not genuinely upset by this at all.)

A-Qing is here, by the way. Xiao Xingchen tries to get her to leave but she refuses, and Xue Yang can’t/won’t kill her because Xiao Xingchen would just get upset about it. In the very grim version of this AU Xue Yang does kill her and makes a conscious fierce corpse out of her, but let’s hold off on that for the moment.

So anyway, Xiao Xingchen is effectively ignoring Xue Yang, and part of that is because he’s in full shutdown and part of it is because it’s the only revenge he can take right now. He’s staying alive because he knows a-Qing is doomed if he doesn’t. And even if that wasn’t true...he’s not sure that he could actually summon the energy or drive to do it.

And after a while of this Xue Yang is like. okay. fine. drastic measures it is.

He didn’t want to bring the dead best friend/ex into this, Been keeping him tucked away out of sight if not mind where he can’t cause any more trouble.

but, well, you use what you have, right? He can totally make this work.

#blackteaaddict #conversating #xue yang #xiao xingchen #xuexiao #aggressively headcanons #the sad queer cultivators show #five headcanons meme

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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"Canon” and “not canon” in the Adventure/02 universe

This is something I want to talk about, because it has a certain degree of relevance to the question of what I choose to take into account in my analyses and what I don’t. I write a lot about Adventure and 02 because both series are ridiculously consistent over their 104-episode runtime, but there are times when things contradict or don’t quite track together, and I have to figure out how to best rationalize them -- which means I need to make arbitrary decisions on what to count and not count, and when one does make those kinds of decisions, you’re very liable to get the complaint: “but that’s not canon!”

Which always makes me think: who decided that? And in the end, this is something that I think extends beyond just Digimon; every fanbase for everything always wants to believe there’s a clear-cut answer to things that everyone’s supposed to follow in a canonical timeline, and things that fall outside it. And sometimes, for some franchises, that is doable, because official staff will actually say outright that “this counts, and this doesn’t.” But that’s not how Toei and Bandai work, and their modus operandi has always been to toss a bunch of often-contradictory stuff at everyone and go “figure it out yourself,” and I think at some point the fanbase really needs to acknowledge that this so-called clear-cut boundary of “canon” and “not canon” doesn’t actually exist at all. Or in other words, any assertion of something being “canon” or “not canon” in the Adventure and 02 universe is purely something arbitrarily defined by fans, and was never determined by official - which, conversely, has actually encouraged you to take as much as you want and figure out the rest yourself.

Before we begin, I do want to make clear that this is not about one’s personal canon based on one’s own preferences -- that is to say, if you’re going “I don’t consider this canon because I don’t like this/don’t want to work with this,” then that’s entirely your right, especially if you’re doing creative work and need to decide what to apply and to not to apply. (Although, as always, one must be conscientious and respectful of those who do like it and consider it canon, because everyone’s going to differ on this.) What I am talking about is when people take a substantial part of the franchise that they otherwise like, such as a movie or drama CD, see one detail that’s contradictory in terms of the timeline or lore, and take that as evidence of “yep, the entire thing’s not canon. We’ll just throw the entire thing out, then.” It just makes me think -- you threw out a perfectly good work for that?! That’s such a waste!

First of all, Toei and Bandai don’t work that way

In general, a lot of the contradictions in the series have a “right hand is not talking to left hand” problem, because as much as we would like to believe that a Digimon series is written by a single consistent entity, the franchise itself is a huge trade-off between Toei and Bandai, and a lot of things from Bandai -- spinoffs, crossover material, games, what have you -- don’t exactly have a stellar track record of being vetted by Toei anime staff. It’s pretty well-known that game portrayals of certain characters can be really off or have misleading info, and even V-Tamer’s somewhat guilty of it. So this is going to happen no matter whether you like it or not, and it happens with any long-running kids’ series that involves a collaboration between multiple companies like this.

Moreover, the traditional custom for Toei “side movies” (in this case, meaning things like the original movie, Our War Game!, Hurricane Touchdown, and Diablomon Strikes Back) is that they’re produced with minimal involvement from the original series’s core staff -- at most, the producer is lightly involved -- and are sometimes even worked on simultaneously with the start of the original series, so you often end up with a movie that’s impossible to fit anywhere in the series timeline because there wasn’t any communication with the two sides. And for that, it’s all too easy to dismiss those movies as “non-canon”, with the fanbase arbitrarily deciding that canon ones are canon because they fit -- but Toei itself has never taken this stance.

The other thing is that, given that Adventure/02 is famous for its ridiculous level of worldbuilding consistency thanks to its director Kakudou’s conscientious efforts on it, it means that as a result, anything not made by him was prone to running afoul on it, and it’s not like the stance back then was to just reject all of it wholesale. “Doesn’t comply with the lore” is so often equated with “not canon”, but Kakudou, the author of that lore, not only made no indication of invalidating or disliking those non-compliant things, but also conversely made an active effort to make those things relevant in spite of that! (See: Our War Game! below.) The official stance is to not deny those works for being noncompliant -- it’s just that Kakudou seems to be the detail-oriented kind of person who personally prefers to work with things that have a high level of consistency (he’s very quick to say “I wasn’t involved on that” whenever someone brings up something from said external materials, not in any condescending way, just “I wasn’t involved, so don’t attribute that to me”). In fact, one of the reasons there wasn’t initially a third Adventure series was that he had difficulty finding a way to adhere to the higher-ups’ pressure to keep all of these contradictions consistent -- so the official stance itself is to try and maintain all of those side works, and that it would be better to end the series itself than to have to do something like deny them.

Which makes things very frustrating for the fans, of course, but nevertheless, that’s how it is -- even back in 2000, the right-hand-not-talking-to-left-hand phenomenon was this significant! And it would have been easy for official to step in and go “okay, we’ll put a statement out here that these don’t apply,” but no, the stance was be that it would be better to stop dragging it out longer and cancel a whole series than to deny those works, which leads us to the current situation. (Plus, think how insulting it would feel from a PR perspective if someone got attached to one of those “non-canon” materials only for official to come out and outright say “yeah this doesn’t count anymore”; we can name examples of this happening in other franchises that have understandably gotten a lot of people upset, and it would be especially offensive to do this right after said material had been released.)

Bolstering the concept of official staff’s very loose opinion of “canon” are the Adventure novels, which were supervised by Kakudou himself and written by Digimon episode screenwriter Masaki Hiro, and are non-compliant with Adventure timeline by design, because it’d be bad for the format to try and depict every single detail in the anime in the form of three novels. Several events are condensed or shuffled out of order, or even sometimes completely different (Koushirou’s incident with Vadermon goes very differently from the anime version). Despite that, this is said directly to be intended as a series of novels to help people understand Adventure and 02 better, and several details in Two-and-a-Half Year Break and Spring 2003 are incredibly consistent with it (namely in the sense of details meant to retroactively connect Adventure to 02, and other background details like Daisuke’s backstory). So you are supposed to do some kind of mental leap where you don’t take the contradictions around the actual events too seriously, but still accept the spirit and the background information you learn from it and retroactively apply it to Adventure and 02 -- and, presumably, that’s probably what you’re expected to do with everything else, too.

And this isn’t even getting into the fact that the anime itself has occasional contradictions and errors due to things like animator error or simply different writers writing different episodes -- the Adventure and 02 staff were certainly very detail-oriented, but they are human and of course inevitably slipped up here and there. How seriously do you take honorifics shifting from episode to episode in ways that don’t seem intentional, or the fact every background material refers to Osamu and Ken having a bunk bed and yet the actual episode with both of them fails to depict it? How do you deal with the fact that the Animation Chronicle is one of the most extensively useful post-02 reference materials with tons of production background info not revealed in the anime, and yet is infamously full of suspected typos that would cause some pretty massive implications if true, or all of those other Bandai and Shueisha-commissioned “side books” and other pieces of media meant to entertain the kids while the series was airing but clearly had no input from Toei staff whatsoever?

In the end, frustrating as it is, the answer seems to be the same as ever: figure it out yourself.

The standards for what’s “canon” and “not canon” are way too arbitrary

Let’s look at a handful of things that have been historically dismissed as “non-canon” by the fanbase:

The Adventure mini dramas and Armor Evolution to the Unknown: Drama CDs that were generally dismissed as non-canon because they’re “too crack” to be canon (their writing style is of the “it’s okay to push the boundaries of characterization for the sake of comedy” sort, and it wouldn’t be until later when we finally got some more serious drama CDs). The latter is full of honorific inconsistencies, most prominently Daisuke and Ken still being on surname basis at a time they’re not supposed to be (due to the fact that it was released while the series was still being produced). But official word is that you’re still supposed to consider them canon -- and yes, that’s Kakudou himself giving official sanction to a drama CD that involved a massive amount of fourth wall breaking and a completely unexplained reunion between the Adventure kids and their Digimon sometime between 1999 and 2002 (apparently this wasn’t the only one, either). How is this supposed to work? Figure it out yourself.

Hurricane Touchdown: The funny part is that up until Kizuna validated Wallace’s existence, there was no actual consistent agreement on why this movie shouldn’t be canon (the Western side being “evolutionary form timeline violations”, the Japanese side being Wallace’s status as a Chosen Child prior to 1995), which really goes to show you how arbitrary all of this is. It also has a sequel drama CD in the form of The Door to Summer, which is also contradictory with Hurricane Touchdown’s ending, so we’ve got two layers of “it can’t be canon because...” -- and yet it has a lot of interesting Daisuke characterization, and, heck, the whole character of Wallace himself, that would all be rejected if you throw this out wholesale. Then Kizuna came along, and there’s a general sense of hesitation against easily denying officially-sanctioned “main” entries like that, which retroactively forced people to somehow skip past all that and accept it, just for the sake of Kizuna’s notability.

Diablomon Strikes Back: Similar to the above, it used to be constantly dismissed as “a non-canon fun movie” because of the evolutionary forms that appear in it, despite the fact that 02 itself established that it wasn’t that hard to restore evolutionary forms if you figured something out. Somehow, a ton of people treated it as such an impossibility that “they figured it out in the first three months of 2003″ would be a viable explanation, and yet official word is that of the second through fourth movies, this is the one that had the most amount of initial consultation with the TV anime staff! And then tri. and Kizuna came along and clearly had high-level evolutions in play too, and dismissing DSB on these grounds meant dismissing those by proxy, and a lot of people were too intimidated to do that and decided to retroactively validate DSB instead, after years of having dismissed it for this reason. Again: look how arbitrary this all is.

The tri. stage play: Mainly because its timeline of events doesn’t fit tri. at all (in regards to the reboot and part 5). This is a fair assessment to make in light of the fact that it doesn’t seem to work very hard to be compliant with the very series it’s branded with, but, funnily enough, it’s actually more lore-compliant with the original Adventure and 02 than the tri. anime series is, and yet the few minor contradictions it makes with the tri. anime series are sufficient to consider it completely kicked out of canon, yet those same people who declare it so aren’t as willing to hold the anime to that same standard just because it holds a more prominent “main” position.

On the other hand, let’s look at some of the things that have been more likely to be accepted than the above:

Our War Game!: Reading this is probably going to make everyone go “whaaaaaat?”, but yep: according to Kakudou, the second through fourth movies were all made without his supervision or involvement and thus have lore contradictions (although he also made sure to say that they’re very fine movies, too). We still haven’t figured out what the lore contradiction is, and so the fanbase considers it canon, and even 02 itself makes multiple references to “the Diablomon incident” in 2000, so you can’t consider this non-canon in the slightest...but yes, according to the official side, it’s actually got a contradictory incursion somewhere in there. There is one hypothesis as to what it is, and it’s such a minor thing that no fan or even official member of staff would dare deny the movie for it, but it still contributes to how arbitrary this entire concept is: Kakudou didn’t want to give anyone (except Miyako, who’s based off a real person) canonical birthdays or blood types for the sake of preventing horoscoping, but Sora’s birthday is portrayed as being around March in the movie. And yes, Kakudou himself refers to this as being something that only happened because he wasn’t involved. (Remember what I said about him historically being quick to disclaim involvement on anything he wasn’t involved on, regardless of how much of a minor detail it is, yet doesn’t necessarily intend to deny the work entirely due to it?)

Tag Tamers: A very vital part of Ken’s backstory that establishes a lot of context behind the Dark Seed and the elusive Akiyama Ryou, which also does not make sense with 02′s timeline and characterization at all, presumably because Bandai and Toei weren’t properly communicating on what kind of details they needed to iron out for this. But of course, all of us would like some explanation to Ken’s backstory, and we have to apply some kind of logic as to how that makes sense, and I’ve yet to see people declare Tag Tamers (or any of the other WonderSwan games) as entirely non-canon as a result.

tri.: For obvious reasons, it’s a “major entry in the franchise”, so people are generally more averse to dismissing it so easily (or, at least, for reasons that aren’t related to pure preference), but I find it rather ironic that Kizuna’s the one that got all the attention for apparently being lore non-compliant, when the exact same lore points mentioned in Kakudou’s reasoning as to why it’s non-compliant (along with a ton of things that actually were in Adventure and 02′s text) are gone against even more regularly and prominently in tri., whereas Kizuna still goes out of its way to adhere to most of these and only seems to have incurred a contradiction in terms of originally intended ideology, and, possibly, its extensive use of the aforementioned movies. (Recall that this got brought up for Kizuna specifically because Kakudou was initially consulted for it; he wasn’t involved in tri. to begin with at all.) See above on how people’s unwillingness to write this one off so easily despite everything ended up retroactively dragging DSB into “accepted canon” territory; that’s how arbitrary this entire thing is.

Then, tied to all of this and making it even more confusing is Kizuna, which, again, putting all issues of personal preference aside, is basically being torn back and forth between all of these whenever you try to apply one of the above arbitrary standards. It’s allegedly lore-noncompliant with Kakudou’s lore and thus lacks his involvement, but it does have the involvement of original series producer Seki Hiromi who was known to be responsible for the series’s original human drama themes (including the premise of 02 itself) and personally vetted the scripts so that everyone could be properly in-character and the original themes still intact; it’s supposedly a “main” entry to the point where people will stop denying older works’ canonicity because of it (see Hurricane Touchdown above), but, legally speaking, is actually classified in the same “gekijouban” category that the first four movies and things like the Tamers through Savers movies are; the staff will say to hell and back that the 02 epilogue still holds (and the movie makes abundant retroactive references in both worldbuilding and themes to it), but many people out there will still insist that the movie ending that way means that (like with DSB above) “they figured it out” between the movie’s ending and the epilogue is apparently some kind of impossibility, and either the movie is non-canon or the 02 epilogue is invalidated now. (My personal stance on this is that the epilogue itself provides the answer to how they figure it out if you look closely at the movie’s themes, but that’s a tangent.)

The point I’m trying to make is that regardless of whatever stance you take on all of the above points, this is all extremely arbitrary, and these fanbase rationalizations on why this and that isn’t canon are constantly contradicting each other, shifting, and occasionally based on really meaningless things. And, again, it’s fine if you’re saying that you don’t consider this or that canon because you personally dislike it or where it went, or you find it difficult to work with, or between two contradictory things you prefer one or the other (I certainly have my fair share of strong opinions in this regard) -- but it would be better if we all admitted this and went “I just don’t consider this canon” instead of acting like there were ever some universal consensus or official backing.

"It didn’t happen this exact way, but something resembling it still happened”

So, we’re in this uncomfortable situation where we’ve been handed a ball of knots and have to work with it (a very frustrating situation especially for fanfic writers), and I have to personally say that I think all of this comes from people having far too inflexible of a concept of “canon” and “not canon”, especially to the point of rejecting a full-on perfectly fine entry just because of one timeline issue. I honestly think it’d be better if we could rather take a certain stance close to the Pixiv dictionary wiki’s view of how Wallace can appear in Kizuna: “(some version of) Wallace exists in the timeline of the main story.”

Right, so: Hurricane Touchdown is contradictory. The evolutions don’t work at that point in timeline, and Wallace shouldn’t be able to be a Chosen Child from before 1995. Those things don’t work with Adventure and 02′s timeline and lore. However, let’s look at the following story: let’s say that, between 02 episodes 14 and 15 (when the movie first screened), while school was on break, Daisuke and his friends went on a summer adventure to the US and met a boy named Wallace, who had a struggle regarding one of his partners losing his sanity, and bonded with him and helped put his partner to rest. No part of this contradicts 02 at all. There we go! So we can safely say that some story that mostly resembled Hurricane Touchdown happened in the canon timeline. Some of its details weren’t exactly the way they happened in “the movie we, as the audience, saw” -- but something that substantially resembled the movie still happened in the universe of Daisuke and his friends. And you can apply that same logic to Tag Tamers, or any other vital canonical but ostensibly contradictory material -- the media that we as the audience got may not accurately reflect the events in universe, but there’s absolutely nothing saying that some more timeline and lore-consistent alternate version didn’t happen in canon instead.

Moreover, even Adventure/02 itself gives you a bit of precedent for this concept -- namely, the fact that the final episode of 02 reveals that the entirety of Adventure and 02 is part of Takeru’s novels. It’s a pretty common theory that there might be differences in the way “the story we got” was presented, versus how they actually happened in the world Takeru lived in -- of course, Takeru certainly went out of his way to remove as much bias from the situation as he could, but you can hardly say that he, as a human, would be completely free from it, and he himself even admits that everyone he consulted had differing opinions on the events in question. And not every single piece of Digimon media has the Hirata-Hiroaki-as-Takeru narrator, which means that perhaps it’s not entirely out of the question that the different takes on the stories that the Tokyo Chosen Children went through in their youth would not be entirely consistent with each other, depending on who’s telling it. But that doesn’t mean that those events necessarily didn’t happen at all, just that some of the details were different from what we as the audience saw.

In the end, I leave the rest to everyone else to figure out -- as I said, I think this is a decision everyone will have to make for themselves, whether they’re a fanfic writer picking and choosing what to include for the sake of a coherent fic, or whether they’re just expressing a preference to not have to think too hard about or work with something they’re turned off by. (And in the case that there is someone who expresses their dislike of working with something and doesn’t want to consider it canon, I think it’s very rude to give them grief for that, and conversely, if you don’t want to consider something canon but encounter someone who doesn’t have as much of a problem with it, it’s very rude to try and expect them to change their opinion to yours.) But I do think it would do well for all of us to have a bit more of an open mind and a creative attitude towards these kinds of things before trying to shove everything into a “fully canon” and “fully not canon” binary.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #shihameta #kizuna spoilers

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alexiessan · 4 years

Text

The brother you never asked for - One Shot

AO3

@neakco asked: "I saw an ask for prompts so I would like to request a sibling Jasonette where Jason is in Paris trying to win a bet with Dick over who can find the best pastries, which is how he finds/meets Marinette. Everything else is open to the freedom of your imagination."

Here is Jasonette Siblings :)

@justafanwarrior @animegirlweeb

Why was Jason running in the streets of Paris at seven in the evening again?

Ah, right. To win a bet against Dick.

The two oldest adopted children of Bruce Wayne had agreed to accompany their father on a business trip to the French capital. Damian still had school to attend and Tim was to manage the company while the CEO was away.

He didn’t really need any of his children to accompany him, but who would say no to a trip to Paris?

Bruce had a lot of meetings planned for the two weeks trip, and it took only two days for the two men to get bored. Paris wasn’t new for them and they’ve already seen all the touristic spots.

And so, they were just watching some movie in Richard’s hotel room when he had a craving for pastries.

“Let’s go to Ladurée! They have awesome macarons!” the oldest exclaimed, his mouth already watering at the thought of chocolate macaron.

Jason frowned. “Eh, really? It’s overpriced and overrated there.”

“But they are the best I’ve ever had.”

“That’s because you didn’t try to find the very best. It’s France, there are bakeries in almost every street. There must be one that makes better pastries than Ladurée.”

La maison Ladurée was a famous bakery in Paris, known for its macarons. Every tourist always ended up going there at one point or another during their stay in Paris.

While their macarons were good, it was too much of a tourist spot for Jason’s taste. There probably was a bakery out there that sold better macarons than the famous Maison Ladurée.

Urgh. Even the name sounded made him want to cringe. Snobbish much, huh?

“Then, let’s find it,” said Dick with a serious voice.

Jason looked away from the TV to face his brother. “Huh?”

Richard rolled his eyes. “Get your ass up this couch and let’s go find the best bakery in Paris!”

The second oldest of the Wayne siblings raised an eyebrow. “Do you realize how many bakeries there are in just Paris? We can’t possibly try them all.”

“You’re right. That’s why,” Dick paused, showing Jason his smartphone, “I’ve researched the best bakeries of Paris. I found two lists with a top ten of the best bakeries of Paris, and they don’t have one in common with the other!” he grinned, “so, I suggest we each take a list and try them all, and come back with a box of macarons from the one we thought was best!”

Jason looked at the list. If he tried them all and figured that the best one was one of the first he tried, it would mean going back there to buy a full box of macarons. It would be annoying to go back there again, but doable.

“What does the winner win?” he finally asked.

“Eh… Bragging rights?” at Jason’s expression, he tried again. “We’ll figure it out later.”

“Right. Then, may the best man win.”

They shook hands and were off in a matter of seconds.

This is how Jason found himself in front of the last bakery of the list — the one ranked second in the list, but it was the one the farthest from their hotel, and thus, the last one he tried — hoping it was closed yet. He really hoped this one would be the best because he wouldn’t have the time to go back to one of the other bakeries before closing time.

When he opened the door, he was met with a lot of pink. It was a cute and cozy bakery, making you want to find a seat, drink hot chocolate, and read next to the window while it was raining outside.

At the desk was a teenage girl around Damian’s age — sixteen, seventeen-year-old top — who looked visibly upset over something on her phone. When she heard him enter, she put the phone away, blinked several times to get rid of the tears that had gathered in her eyes, and smiled at him.

“Welcome to Tom et Sabine boulangerie pâtisserie! How can I help you?” she greeted him in French.

Jason made his way to the counter, looking over the different pastries. He glanced at the girl, patiently waiting for his order. She had black hair and blue eyes, half French and half Asian he guessed. She had a smile on her face, and not just a customer one, giving that she was visibly upset when he arrived, but a genuine one.

It made him want to ask her if he had to go and threaten someone, but he didn’t know the girl, and she didn’t know him, and what right did he have to ask?

“I’ll have a chocolate macaron, please,” he answered in French but with a heavy American accent.

She noticed and switched in English, which he was grateful for. He could speak French, but since he didn’t have the opportunity to practice it often, he was a bit rusty in the language.

“Of course, a big one or a small one?”

“A small one, please.”

She put the small macaron on a towel with a clamp and put it on the counter. “It will be one euro, please!”

He thanked her while paying and wasted no time in eating the small treat. The teen girl laughed when she saw him eat it in one bite.

“You know what?” he began after swallowing, deciding that this was the best one he had in his search. “I’ll take a whole box of these. I’ll even take two big ones!”

“Alright! That will be nine euros and fifty cents, please!” she said with a smile before preparing his order.

“Thanks again!” he said while handing her the money. “If the other pastries are as good as the macarons, you’ll see me again.”

She laughed. “I’m not exactly impartial, but the pastries are really, really good! So I guess I’ll see you again.”

He barked a laugh. “You can bet on it then!”

“Have a good night, sir!”

“Thanks!”

When he got back to the hotel room, Dick was already there with his own box of macarons, and they didn’t waist one more second before tasting the other’s finding.

Jason won, of course, and demanded fifty bucks as his reward.

And wasn’t it good to win a bet against his brother.

Just like he said he would, Jason came back to the bakery, with Dick with him. They tried all sorts of pastries, and even some quiches for lunch and everything was delicious. Dick made sure to note the name of the bakery somewhere on his phone so they could come back the next time they would come to Paris.

The teenage girl was still there, managing the desk and talking with the two of them when they stayed a bit longer to enjoy their food.

They learned that her name was Marinette and that she was seventeen — making her Damian’s age, just as Jason thought — and that she was the daughter of the owner. Since it was summer vacations, she helped her parents since they had more clients than ever thanks to tourism.

They learned that she was a fashion designer and that she learned English because of it. Since she wanted to start her own business one day, someone recommended that she learn English if she wanted it to be international. Speaking only one language wouldn’t do well, she explained.

While she was still in school, she had a small customer base already and did everything that needed to be done for it to be legal, and thus, was a freelance in fashion design. She was still in high school, entering her last year in September. She even expressed her desire to go to University in America, in a double major — fashion and business.

They visited the bakery every day for a week, learning to know each other a bit, but never once did she tell them anything that was upsetting her.

And Jason couldn’t help but wonder what could bring such a cheerful and positive girl like Marinette so close to tears.

It was on their last week in Paris that Jason found out.

He was on his way to the bakery to get his daily dose of pastries when he saw Marinette sitting on a bench in the park near her family’s business and home.

And she was crying.

He didn’t think about it as he made his way to Marinette and sat next to her.

“So, tell me, whose butt do I need to kick?”

She almost jumped, not having noticed him.

“God,” she breathed, “you scared me, don’t do that again.”

“My bad,” he apologized. “But tell me, what’s wrong?”

She let out a joyless laugh. “It’s okay, I don’t want to burden you with my teenage drama.”

He playfully elbowed her. “Now, now. I’ve been a teen too, you know. And I know all about teenage drama. And I know that it’s not just nothing to you, right now. Maybe, later on, you’ll think so, but it matters to you now, so it’s important, you understand?” she nodded. “Just because you’re a teenager, it doesn’t mean your problems are meaningless, alright? I know adults tend to downplay teenager’s problem, but not me.” he ruffled her hair. “Now, tell everything to your big brother.”

She laughed and shoved him playfully. “You’re not my brother!”

“Well, now I am! I’m the brother you never asked for but got anyway. Deal with it.”

She laughed again, and he felt like he succeeded a little in cheering her up. “Alright, ‘big brother’, I’ll talk.”

She took a deep breath before facing him.

“It’s my boyfriend. He canceled on me. Again.” she laughed. “I know I shouldn’t be upset to be stood up, and I wasn’t the first time. Or the second. Or the third. But I’ve lost count of the times he ditched me for his friends, or for an event that just happened. And I tried to be understanding at first. It’s just… I’m doing everything to make our relationship work. I plan dates, even double dates because I know how much he loves his friends — our friends. But it feels like it’s one sided,” she paused, taking another deep breath. “But I haven’t properly talked to him in months because he keeps standing me up. I just… Does he want to break up with me? Is that what’s he’s trying to do, but is too much of a coward to do it properly? I… I guess I’m just realizing now that we haven’t be fine for months now.”

Jason sighed. “I can’t tell you what he’s thinking, and what is his reasoning behind his behavior because I don’t know him, but I’ll tell you this: it takes all the people involved in a relationship for it to work. If the other doesn’t put any work in it, it can’t work. It can be fixed, however, but you already tried, didn’t you?”

She nodded.

“Then, since you already try to fix your relationship, you have to ask yourself this question: are you happy with him?”

Tears gathered again in her eyes and she shook her head. “No… No, Jason, I’m not happy anymore.”

He opened his arms, inviting her in a hug, and she immediately threw herself in her arms.

“Then, I think you know what to do.”

They stayed like that for a few minutes, until Marinette stopped crying.

“I’m sorry, I barely know you and I just dumped all my problems on you.”

“Hey, when I said that I was now your brother, I meant it. I take my duties as a big brother very seriously.”

The fashion designer laughed. “What, you just picked people on the street and claimed they are now your sibling or something?”

“No, you’re just special.”

She laughed. “I’m nothing special, but thank you. For listening to me and offering me friendship. I really appreciate it.”

He patted her hair. “Anytime, chouquette.”

They exchanged numbers before parting ways, this time without any pastries with him.

The next morning, Jason received a text from Marinette, stating that she broke up with her boyfriend. He asked for details, and she explained that he has been oblivious to it all and didn’t understand why she was breaking up with him. She said that she gave up on explaining anything and that they were just over.

He and Dick spent the last week at the bakery, trying to cheer Marinette up, which was not as hard as he expected it to be. While Marinette was sad that her relationship was over, she was also relieved. She had been hurt too much, and it was a good thing that she wouldn’t be hurting anymore.

Their two weeks stay unfortunately came to an end, and it was time to say goodbye to Marinette.

“Say, what do you think about going to Gotham for university,” he asked her with a grin. “We could see each other much more then.”

She snorted. “Yeah, right. Going to the most dangerous city in America. No thanks, I think I’ll pass.”

He pouted. “But I would protect you.”

She laughed. “I have no doubt you would, but I think I’ll go to New York. I have an internship offer there than I can do alongside my studies,” she paused. “But hey, Gotham and New York are pretty close, no? We can still see each other.”

“One of my brothers is actually going to university in New York too next year! I’ll tell him to look after you!”

“What?! Come on Jason, I don’t need anyone looking after me!”

“Tutututu! Let your big brother handle it!”

“But you’re not my brother!”

#maribat #jasonette siblings #ooc characters i guess #ml x dc #mlb x dc #miraculous x dc

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gemsofgreece · 3 years

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Which places (famous and not so famous) do you recommend to visit in Greece to experience what is the Greek culture

Thank you

Hello, friend! The answer is easy in theory but hard to execute: pretty much everywhere! You might be downsizing Greece in your mind, especially if you ask non famous places too. First of all, it depends on what you mean by Greek culture: some regions had glorious days in antiquity, some reached power in the Byzantine and medieval times and others played a key role in Modern Greek history (i.e Greek revolution). Many of them have many attractions that cover several eras.

I got a tag mention from @greek-mythologies and I am almost certain you are that Anon (epic facepalm if I am wrong) but I think you are most interested in Greek mythology, right? Taking this risk, I will give you some options based on locations having some significance in the Greek mythology and the ancient epics, in an attempt to narrow it down. Because in truth, Greece has more than 100 archaeological museums - I can’t really narrow it down much! So I’ll go very specific and there’s no chance I will say all of them:

On the steps of myths and legends

Options in Sterea Hellas

You’ll go to Parthenon. Correct, Athens is a good choice. You can also see there the temple of Hephaestus, the temple of the Olympian Zeus, the Athens Academy, the Acropolis Museum, the National Archaeological Museum and a load more if you also want ancient historical sites. A little out of Athens, you can visit the temple of Poseidon in Cape Sounion.

In the region of Phocis, you can visit the Oracle of Delphi in Mount Parnassus. It has many ancient sites, most are dedicated to Apollo. 2h 40m W of Athens.

The region of Boeotia is associated with many ancient legends and literary works, such as that of Oedipus. It saw power throughout Mycaenaean and classical times. That’s where Thebes is. Nice museum and other stuff i.e the Lion of Chaeronea. 1,5 hour W of Athens.

In Aegina island you can see the temple of Aphaea and the ruins of the temple of Zeus. Touristic place, also has medieval and modern attractions. 1,5 hour E of Athens by ship.

Options in the Peloponnese

The Peloponnese is full of history but I will only mention the more mythological ones.

Corinthia is a living museum. You probably have heard of the name. A highlight will be the Temple of Apollo in the mountains. Many museums, many sites i.e Ancient Corinth. Nemea where Hercules fought the lion is there. Visiting the Corinth Canal is a must. 1h 45m S of Athens.

Lake Stymphalia, Northern Arcadia. That’s where Hercules shot down the stymphalian birds. Other than that, Arcadia is mountainous and very beautiful and has HUGE significance for Modern Greek history, because many heroes of the Greek Revolution were from there. Has lots of folk and modern history attractions. 2h 20m S of Athens.

Ancient Olympia in Elis. The location where the ancient Olympic Games took place, many monuments (i.e the ancient wrestling school) and sanctuaries to Gods there. 2h 50m SW of Athens.

Options in Thessaly

The region of Magnesia has a lot of mythological significance. Its capital city Volos is technically the expansion of the ancient city of Iolcus and that’s where Jason and the Argonauts began their journey. The symbol of the city and an attraction in its waterfront is Argo, his ship. Volos is built on the foot of Mount Pelion, which is where the Centaurs originate from. Pelion took its name from King Peleus, father of Achilles who was born there. It is also renowned for its beauty, combining forests with beaches and traditional architecture. Magnesia also has two of the most ancient settlements in Greece (from 6000 BCE), a nice archaeological museum, ancient tombs etc. Lake Karla in the lowlands is mentioned by Homer with its old name Boibeis. 4 hours N of Athens.

Just north of Magnesia, there is the region of Larisa, half of Achilles’ kingdom. The capital city has both ancient and medieval sites but the most important site is in the borders of Larisa with Pieria, where Thessaly and Macedonia meet: Mount Olympus. On the foot of Mount Olympus there is the archaeological site of Dion. Summer hiking in Olympus is stunning and you can easily reach the peak of Skolio. The two biggest peaks Mytikas (Pantheon) and Stefani (Throne of Zeus) need expertise, light equipment, summer conditions and please don’t do it unless you are an experienced climber. Climbing Olympus takes about two days in a normal pace. 6 hours N of Athens.

Options in other regions

In Epirus: the Necromanteion of Acheron. Acheron was the river where Charon took the souls of the dead and led them to Hades. The Necromanteion, the Oracle of the Dead, is located close to the mouth of the river in the region of Preveza. The whole of Epirus has breathtaking scenery. 5 hours NW of Athens.

On Crete island: The Palace of Knossos and all associated ancient sites in Heraklion. Sites of the Minoan civilization and connected to myths such as that of Theseus and the Minotaur and Daedalus and Icarus. All of Crete is stunning but there are too many things to see in just one trip. 9 hours S of Athens by ship but you can go by airplane.

In the Cyclades islands: Delos is the most important island from an archaeological and mythological standpoint, the whole island is an archaeological site and is uninhabited. Usually people visit it from the famous island of Mykonos. Naxos island has the Gate of Apollo. Milos is where Venus de Milo was created. Milos has outstanding landscapes. 5 - 6 hours E of Athens by ship. You can take the airplane for Mykonos.

In the Dodecanese islands: Rhodes and Kos islands have ancient and medieval sites of major importance like the temple of Athena Lindia in Rhodes. They are also very beautiful and big. 10 - 14 hours SE of Athens by ship. Both have airports.

In the Islands of Northeastern Aegean: Samos island with its very important sanctuary of Hera. Icaria island nearby is close to where Icarus fell when his wax wings melted from the sun. Both very beautiful and verdant, Icaria is also known for the longevity and lifestyle of its people. 9 - 10 hours E of Athens by ship.

In the Heptanese islands: Ithaca island, the birthplace and kingdom of Odysseus. Very beautiful and ideal for seclusion and peaceful vacation. Ruins of an ancient palace are being unearthed. Imagine if........! 6 hours W of Athens, with a combo of car and ship.

In Thrace: Samothrace island, far from everything and everyone, ideal for seclusion and great scenery. That’s where you can see the Sanctuary of the Great Gods and where Nike, the Winged Victory of Samothrace was sculpted. More than 11 hours NE of Athens, needs a combo of car and ship and you would probably need to throw an airplane connection with Thessaloniki in there to make it more doable.

I give you all these ideas to check photos of them and decide. You can see many in my blog too. I take Athens for granted for you and I recommend two - three of these destinations MAX. If you choose a place far away then just do Athens and that place. Don’t overdo it, it will be exhausting and you won’t get to enjoy the places and experience them properly. Good luck and happy travels x

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