#vague allusion to spreadsheets

[yuzepi]

yeah whatever I’ll repost everything in the main tags I guess. yes 100% of my free time is dedicated into elias Bouchard milfification. sorry

no genderbend I just need that tmasc hag to crossdressing or I’ll die

[wannab-urs]

Pedro Pascal Character Fic Recs | Vol 45

AO3 | Kofi | Main Masterlist | The Spreadsheet Masterlist

Howdy folks,

Time for another spreadsheet digest! I read a fuckload of Joel this week but there's plenty of other boys in there as well. Also ran the DMAMC this week so there's several subby pedro boys in here.

Tag me in your fic or send me a message if you'd like to appear on the Digest <3

Letting Go - Dave one shot by @auteurdelabre

Dave meets his match in more ways than one.

subbish!Dave, scenes of violence (guns, blood), descriptions of alcohol, Dave fights the sub life, edging, oral (f receiving), Dom/sub dynamics.

Fairytale of Dieter Bravo - Dieter series by @schnarfer

Dieter Bravo is fresh out of rehab and spending Christmas 1987 with his cousin Declan in the Cotswolds.

Lots of flitting between Dieter/reader POV. Heavy on the 80 references, drugs, alcohol, rehab, so much smoking and swearing. Allusions to smut. A kiss. Reader is married so… infidelity. Reader is a horse girl with strong thighs, but otherwise minimal physical descriptions. A lot more pheasants than I was expecting. Always somehow Fleabag coded. // part 2: it’s just smut. Big snogs, unprotected p in v, fingering, pussy eating, squirting, infidelity (reader is married). We flick between reader and Dieter POV.

Held by the Moon - Dieter/Dave one shot by @gasolinerainbowpuddles

Dieter is determined to prove his dedication to the film consultant on his latest project. Dave is determined to not cross any professional boundaries. Only one has the mental fortitude to see their intentions through.

dommy daddy subby baby vibes, "is somebody gonna match my freak?" is the main theme here, drugs/sobriety, Dave is uptight, Dieter is a silly goose, brief film industry stuff, heavy flirting, Dieter is on some Esmerelda shit and Dave is lusting bad like Frollo but without the attempted murder and self-righteous religious stuff, drug testing but make it erotic, this pairing made me insanely horny

Bedroom hymns - Din one shot by @saradika

You’d liked this, when you first got together. His desire. How much he wanted to consume you. To take - the weight of his armor pressing into your back, as he drove you into the thin mattress of his bunk. // But this is what you like more. The leash he offers so willingly to you. Eager to obey, even as the collar tightens. Following at your heels. // After all, his duty is to his people. But it’s you that he serves.

mand’alor!din, sub!din, soft dom!wife!reader, breeding kink, beskar cock cage, reference to needles & birth control, enthusiastic oral sex, dirty talk, unprotected sex, creampie, references to pregnancy

Serpentine - Javi P one shot by @pedgito

Authority looks good on him, but you think he'd look ever better on his knees.

sub!javier, dom!reader (but lbr, they’re both switch) obviously. reader has vague backstory (related to work), enemies to fwb, they fuck a lot oops, unprotected piv, oral (f receiving), restraints, brat!javi as god intended, choking, coming untouched, edging for the greater good, amen.

Ain’t shit sweeter - Javi P series by @encasedinobsidian

In the late 1990’s, Javier Peña transfers to the DEA field office in Chicago, finally given a long-awaited opportunity to spend more time with his son while he adjusts to life post-Colombia. But in the midst of it all, he falls in love with the woman who resents his very presence in her life; his own daughter-in-law.

Father in law Javi, Enemies to Lovers, Dad Javi but honestly absent dad Javi, dick from a man you wish was your father, Drink every time I say the word father, keep your friends close but your enemies closer, Smut, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Angst, Size Kink, Size Difference, age gap, Daddy Issues, References to death of a parent, Secret Relationship, Infidelity, I am not spoiling the nature of the ending, No that does not automatically mean there's an unhappy ending, But I'm keeping it a secret for once sorry, Grown ass adult man fuckboy Javi, slightly toxic relationship, Daddy Kink

Through the Glass Joel one shot by @murder-wife

Your neighbor, Joel, seems to have a revolving door of dates. He also doesn't seem to have a taste for keeping his curtains closed. You can't help but watch when it feels like he wants you to see what he's doing to them.

Neighbor Joel, voyeurism, exhibitionism, literally no plot here, S M U T, masturbation, oral sex, cumshot, unprotected PIV

Me and the Devil - Joel one shot by @gracieheartspedro

joel seeks out revenge on the man who stole from him. he finds you in the process.

mdni!, dark content, DUBCON, joel is a bad man, no mention of age (but joel is older than reader), murder, weapon use (g*ns), mentions of drug and alcohol, excessive alcohol consumption from reader, nicknames for reader (sweetheart, little one, etc.), stockholm syndrome, forced withdrawals from alcohol, mentions of non-con, forced proximity, physical violence/assault, reader is freaky and insane, reader has a vagina and boobs, sub!reader, dom!joel, orgasm denial, masturbation, unprotected p-in-v, oral (m receiving), fingering, throat fucking, cumplay/cum eating, dirty talk, name calling, spanking.

Hotline to Heaven - Joel one shot by @chaotic-mystery

An inquisitive man gets more than what he's used to when he pushes the wrong number on a phone sex hotline.

dom!reader, sub!joel, pre outbreak, empty house means he's up to no good, porn connoisseur, phone sex, dirty talk ( i mean duh) mutual masturbation, swearing, orgasm denial, safeword mentioned but not used, talking him through it this time, a little aftercare, slight mention of one of my favorite movies bc I know Joel would've liked it too.

Change - Joel one shot by @pedgito

Joel hates change, but you introduced the idea that letting someone else take charge isn't always bad.

sub!joel, no outbreak, power dynamics (he's your boss), age gap (shocker), lots of open communication, vague plot, oral (m & f receiving), unprotected piv, creampies, cum eating, restraints, joel eating the puss with no hands, use of a cockring, joel's a real good boy, open-ended

Mile High Club - Joel one shot by @maiamore

Joel has to fly out of state for the first time in his life and his nerves are frayed. Luckily, he finds a good distraction. You.

m!receiving oral, deep throating, public indecency, mention of drug use, blowjob on a plane basically, alcohol consumption, nervous old man joel

Guilty Pleasure - Joel series by @for-a-longlongtime

You're home from college for the summer, staying with your parents in Austin, TX. So is your dad's best friend, Joel Miller.

Age gap (reader is 22, Joel is 43), masturbation (f), use of sex toys, oral sex, PiV, anal, hair pulling, dirty talk, getting caught, playful use of 'daddy', outrageous flirting, groping, reference to m/m, Joel's arms should always come with a warning. No outbreak!AU.

Frostbite - Max Phillips one shot by @brandyllyn

By all that was holy in the world, you were going to slap the ever-loving shit out of this man.

This is romantic and sweet and I make no apologies for that. Max being Max, however.

Good Pup, Bad Pup - Pero/Javi G one shot by @crowandmousewritingco (mouse)

You give your subs exactly what they deserve

Pup play, spankings, praise AND degradation, strap ons, dildos, Javi's genitalia is referred to as a T dick, pet names, and other debauchery.

Cuffed to the Grind - Tim Rockford one shot by @whocaresstillthelouvre

You're working late 'cause you're a detective.

Oh Tim looks so good handcuffed to a chair. smut, unprotected p in v, riding, handcuffs, domming the detective, vag badge, commingled cum, fucking your boss, panty gag, holding on to holsters, whiskey, cop stuff

Happy Reading!

[mrfancyfoot]

Raphael x Evie (f!OC)

Fic Rating: E/Varied | Chapter 1: AO3 + Tumblr | Master List

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Chapter 13: Excel-exual "Raphael takes a peek into Evie’s precious journal."

< Previous Chapter: Ch. 12 Friendfiction | Next Chapter: Ch. 14 Scarlet >

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❤️ Thank-you for reading!! I adore all of you :3 ❤️

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Ch. Rating: M-ish / NSFW-ish Ch. Word Count: 4.5k Ch. Tags: POV Raphael; Haarlep; Character Analysis; Schemes; Unreliable Narrator; Raphael Approves

Ch. Warnings: Sexy, sexy spreadsheets; Mentions of Drug Use (medicinal, experimental [Do not try at home, never eat unknown mushrooms!]); Mentions of Alcohol and Dub-Con; Raphael’s Obsessed; Mental Health (Stress, Anxiety, ADHD Allusions, Fixations); Questionable Poetry

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Read under the cut or on AO3-

Loose pages threatened to flutter to the floor as Raphael carefully scanned the open spread of the fox’s journal with a burning curiosity.

It was brimming with notes, drawn maps, charts, musings, strategies, doodles…  Stuffed with found letters and scribbles from her travels.  Torn excerpts from books.  A deep look into the mind of the little fox sleeping away.

Her quill had been dropped between two pages, marking a thought interrupted when she had been summoned.  The Moonrise Towers.  A collection of found information and intelligence.  Their current strategy and goals for what they believed was upcoming.

He flipped to the beginning.

Entries began as daily reports and morphed into pages tracking various quests and wants and goals with reports moved to a set of pages carefully ruled into weekly sections.  Each page diligently numbered.

A pair of hand ruled calendars ticked off the days and tracked events.  Translations of dates, measurements, et cetera, between the Faerûn standard and her own.

She had a small, careful hand hidden by her admitted inexperience with a quill - it shed the shaky, uneven lines, blots, and strikes through the dated entries, gaining a smoothness with the repeated practice.  There was little flourish behind her pen, the writing appearing crisp and utilitarian in later areas.  Impeccable spelling and grammar, an advanced vocabulary - proof of the higher education he suspected despite her casual manner of speech.

The journal had seen better days and ink, dirt, and other unknown substances were smeared and spattered across nearly every page…  Some required peeling apart.  It smelled vaguely of Evie though mostly of a roil of scents from her travels.

A section was dedicated to inventory - the pages divided up into neat columns and rows with name and count meticulously tracked.  Items sorted by type with a wealth of other information noted.  When space ran out, new pages had been glued, bound, and folded onto the end.  Subsequent iterations showed changes over time, indicating what had been deemed important to her to track.  Food stores had their own section similarly formatted.  He recalled that Korrilla had made note in a report that Evie could be frequently seen taking stock of inventory.  Had she performed similar work in her past life?  This level of organisation spoke to experience he had not gathered from conversing with her…

According to her inventory, they held a few rare items of interest.  Perhaps she would be amenable to parting with them following the conclusion of this saga?

Pages here and there torn out.

Pages of recipe and document titles with-

Well, be still his infernal, bloody heart…she used reference and change codes.  From the number of them, she kept many separate, feasibly in some other journal or collection.  Noted page numbers called back to relevant inventories, reports, musings…and information she had compiled about various individuals.  What a trove!

Leading a claw down the document list, his eyes fell on one of interest: the copy of the first Soul-Sworn contract he had offered.  It was found folded at the back of the journal, as indicated, along with a few other documents that he set aside.

He knew she had made changes prior to stating her rejection but had never seen them.  A blue ink was stark against the black used for the copy.  The top right was dated and twice coded for the corresponding document number and change number.  She had struck through the signature lines at the bottom and written ‘REJECTED’ atop them.  Each strike, note, and change was initialed - EV.

He passingly pondered what the ‘V’ represented.  That could not be how she actually spelled her name…could it?  While he doubted, it was not a quirk he could put past the fox.  It was also possible that she lived by her initials.  They had gleaned no information on possible family ties through their efforts to verify her identity.

Thoughts were able to be plucked from all save the little fox.  Music.  All he and his warlock could ever hear was strange music that they had been unable to pierce through.  Some individuals were expected to have mental fortifications to protect against such intrusions, however, there was no reason to believe that Evie, who hailed from a plane where magic is foreign, would have had any such learned protections of that caliber.  An early annoyance he had to work around.  Was it a product of her tadpole?  He knew hers projected that music of her mind to those also infected - a frequent complaint within the group.  Was it attempting to transmit something else?

The more revealed of her, the more evident it became that she was abnormal in more ways than one.  An ever growing, ever morphing puzzle.

It was difficult to believe that this was the same fox who would routinely need to be reminded of the topic of discussion while they spoke if, by the Hells, anything happened to distract her.

Without her presence to distract and cloud his mind, his thoughts revisited her use.  Caging her away, while tempting, would be a waste of her skills.  It would serve well in both the Gate and his court once his takeover of the Hells was put into motion.  True talent that shared his love for order was so difficult to find!

Although…there was little need for one to leave the House for most administrative tasks, and for the ones that necessitated doing so…well, that was the job of a courier.

From this, he had to ask himself how much of the chaos surrounding the fox was of her own doing?  She had eccentricities aplenty, yet how would her group of blighted companions have fared without her reining them in and tracking all of this information?  Would they have lost their way or separated to the winds?  Would another have stepped up?  Perhaps this degree of detail was gratuitous relative to what was needed at the minimum, but she was flourishing in her role as their leader despite her flaws, as he knew she would.  Much was shouldered on this little fox.

He took up his own quill once more to add to the night’s notes, starting with her numerous contract complaints.

Finding the dossiers she kept on individuals, he scanned through them.  Much she had written was already known to him and she kept personal thoughts here to a minimum.  More reference numbers dotted the pages.  Karlach’s had notes about the infernal engine within her.  The Archdruid…the wizard…Lae’zel…Wyll…  To be expected, Astarion’s was more detailed than most.

‘Scars - written in Infernal per A.  Ask R?’

He grinned.  This gave him an edge.  They intended to ask him - for who else could she mean? - about Astarion’s scars.

His satisfaction then turned sour with disappointment and confusion.  The page reserved for himself was entirely blank.

He had almost flipped past it as the page was entitled with a sole ‘R,’ to which she had amusingly added horns.

Unlike others that she saw as outsiders and enemies to her group, there was no physical description.  Nothing to identify him explicitly as a devil.

Korrilla had more written about her.  He suspected the fox had known of his warlock’s presence well before official introductions and learning that she worked for him.  The very few references to him were marked with a simple ‘R’ and kept brief.

She referred to his House of Hope as simply ‘the House.’

Was she withholding writing down information about him?  An interesting notion.

Referring to him not even by full name anywhere - the only such individual treated so vaguely - led him to believe there was a purpose.

Haarlep, however - or ‘Harlep’ as she had spelled it - had been written about at length.  He felt a twinge of bitterness that he was able to read her thoughts on his incubus but not himself.  Her dislike of them was palpable even in ink, breaking the rule of other dossiers that were free of such biases.  Since their first tumultuous encounter, she had not cared to see the fiend again - which Haarlep had taken to moaning about around their attempts to steal glimpses and engage her in salacious conversation.

‘Won’t fucking take no for an answer.’

‘Charm effect with gaze?  Don’t think that affects me?  They’ve implied they have other means of control/coercion, though - avoid being near.  -Not touch -Effect or spell from kiss? (ew)  Maybe venom?’

‘Incubi feed off of sexual energy and probably souls.  Not keen on finding out what would happen if they got their way.  This one has some degree of transformative ability (R) - idk if all do.  They’re sparkly, so glamour?  When they have a form, that person can feel what they do (???).  How do they get the form?’

Spatters of ink dotted the page in what appeared to be areas where she had stabbed at the paper with her quill.  Her feelings towards the incubus stood out to him.  Her frustration was palpable and no other he found had earned animosity.

‘Mfker’s relentless.  Now being gross from the pool/boudoir.  Idk how they found out abt hearing.  [forceful scribbles]  Lucky guess?  R told them?  Something I did?  Refuse to give them the satisfaction of a reaction.  No reason to trust anything they say.  Hoping they just get bored and fuck off.  Or drop dead.’

‘Bastard’s lucky they get hot water ._. ’

‘What’s their purpose @ the House?  Not treated or behave like one of the servants & seem to get far more leeway.  Not like K, either?  Def some degree of antagony b/w Hr and R, though.  Contract terms?  Just a really annoying guard?’

Ah…Haarlep had discovered her heightened hearing, taking advantage of it by teasing her from afar with, no doubt, ‘inappropriate comments.’  How naughty.  The fox, however, made no mention of this behavior to him nor had he witnessed any indications of such distractions - yet it bothered her enough to write down. She was prone to distraction, however, so would he have been able to distinguish?  How would she look with lust and obscenities whispered in her ear?

Why not tattle on the incubus and tell him of her discomfort?  She had hesitated earlier in saying that her visits were relaxing - was this why?  Certain precautions had been taken due to that hearing of hers, but it was clear now that he had not gone far enough.  It appeared Haarlep had revealed part of their arrangement.  Perhaps she was simply too embarrassed to risk revealing what she had learned?

Though…there was a thread of envy here that he was sensing.  Was the little fox covetous of what she saw as special treatment afforded to the fiend?  A new light was cast on her resentment of them.  Perhaps in denial over her desires?  Was claiming his chair due rather to feeling…territorial?

Despite her earlier words, she may be more open to his newer thoughts on an arrangement than he was led to believe.

It would seem Haarlep had a use here, after all.

On a whim of inquisitiveness, Raphael flipped back to the page about Astarion.  Nowhere was it mentioned that he was a vampire spawn.  She had not physically described any of her companions.  And now that he was deliberately seeking, he noticed there was obvious information missing throughout many of her entries.  Even Astarion’s links to Cazador, and vice versa, had been muddied through a use of misleading references.  Cunning, little fox.

The journal was a wealth of information, but she had taken care not to reveal certain identities and information.  Feasibly in the event that it fell into another’s hands - such as now.  He understood Astarion, but to include him in such care meant a greater degree of sympathy than he had expected at this juncture.  Or perhaps she did not wish for another to know a devil reserved her time?

The last section of her journal was dedicated to her personal entries.  

Pages filled with doodles and affirmations.  Lines of poetry and song.  Scores of melodies.  Her thoughts and reminders on this and that.  Her voice was more casual here than in the rest of the journal.

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‘I am Evie.

I am the beat of the butterfree’s wings.

I am the dandelion on the wind.

I am the howl of the storm.

I am the erosion of rain.

I am the flower blooming in concrete.

And I am magnificent.’

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As quaint as she.  ‘Magnificent’...a lofty word.  One that spoke of a dazzling pride, unrelenting ambitions, feats of splendor, and realised dreams.  A word that played prettily on his tongue.

The magnificent little fox.

Were you truly, little fox?

He would look forward to her magnificence.

He took notice of her name written here - so the V was a separate initial…

‘Plan A: Yank It Out’

A diagram of an eye, where she believed the tadpole was, and the various detailed steps she would take to remove it.  Her thoughts on this sprawled across a full spread of pages.

‘I think DV is connected more to the slug than they have shared.  I don’t like that they are encouraging its use.  Why?  Protecting me/us from its influence - how?  Something is off about them but I can’t put my finger on what.  An uncanniness.'

An arrow was drawn from the word ‘uncanniness’ to where she had written:  ‘Like the incubus!  Glamour/fake projection?  No sparkle bc dream?  But why?’

‘Why does mine project?  If not for the mash of music, would it be my thoughts?  Still does that force connection thing to other slugs sometimes - thoughts/memories/feelings - though the others have said mine are hazy (?).  Doesn’t seem to do anything else (for the others given powers, I can see why its use is tempting).  O said mine seems weaker than others, though.  Maybe not meant to be constantly broadcasting?  Has it weakened?  Or it came damaged?  Or it just isn’t compatible with my weird brain? lol’

‘DV visiting more often.  They said my slug is weak bc I don’t use it and removing it would kill me (X to doubt).  They don't like that I'm trying to get rid of it.  They don’t like my meetings with R.  They are def reading my thoughts.  G & R couldn’t manage that.  Via slug?  Doesn’t seem to be all the time.  Can’t trust something reading my thoughts.’

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‘I don’t like things in my head,

I said.

I don’t like them red, white, purple, green.

I don’t like them when they come by dream.

I have my music, my radios of thought.

I have a crowd thinking I can be bought.

Power, protection, glory.

Trust me!

‘I can remove it!*’

Trust me.

Trust me.

I miss the quiet,

The safety of my maze.

Instead I’ve a riot,

And can’t focus for days.

It’s enough to scream,

‘Save me, o’ dextroamp-amphetamine!’

*For a fee.’

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How insightful!  Her worries, her fears, and the meandering paths winding towards the truth.  He was quite satisfied to read of her distrust in their dream visitor.  His was the only voice she should be heeding.

She ‘missed the quiet’?  Was this in reference to her music or to another force invading her mind?  Or perhaps merely to a ‘riotous crowd’ of companions demanding so much of her attention that she had none left to focus on anything else?

The last line referred to what read as a chemical compound - an amphetamine stimulant of sorts.  No addictions and perhaps not illicit where she was from - by her words - but what of medicinal use?  Korrilla had reported that the fox drank an ‘alarming’ amount of kaeth, especially for someone who outwardly despised the taste.  Perhaps caffeine was a circumstantial substitution?  Another note to research…

‘Plan B: Wait ‘n See

Why be hasty?  It’s different and there for a reason.  I don’t think ceremorphosis is it.  Or why mutate/modify it?  Unless…Super Illithids!  Not the hero origin story I wanted…  XP’

‘Plan C: Dumb Luck

Maybe it’ll just…resolve on its own.’

Raphael scoffed.  ‘Plan: Accept the Devil’s Bargain’ was nowhere written - except coded within poetry.

What hubris.

Pages of thoughts and diagrams for inventions and innovations.  A list of ‘modern’ amenities she missed so much she would find them or a way to recreate them here.

‘Self-inking pens

Stretchy hair ties

Deodorant

Bug Repellant

Hoodies

~The Internet~

Computer

Digital Archive

Phones

Vibrator

Pizza

Pasta

Ramen

Vanilla Coke

Chocolate

My teeeeeea

Penicillin

Blood Bank

A gun’

She had spoken of her plans for the pen, and it seemed she was already crafting and testing parts.  A ‘communications and archival device’ commanded the most pages.  An advanced technology for which he could see numerous benefits…should she be successful.  She frequently alluded to a device in their talks that he presumed was much like this one.

Ideas for an energy source to power the device.  A battery created from crystals that could be recharged by the user’s energy.  

‘Sounds safer than me trying to 1. find, 2. fuck around w/ nickel, lithium, etc…’

Ideas for computational coding models.

‘Hybridized model - replace mag components where possible’

‘Build in encryption.  Per G, magic comms. signals can be intercepted easily. idk if that applies to radio freqs tho? - test’

She had more than simple passing knowledge of all these components - this was an ability to replicate and create.  An ability, if proven, significantly increased her value.  It did appear that she had an aversion to magic-based components, though no notes provided explanation as to why, and she was, at the very least, consulting the wizard…  Perhaps a simple preference for that which she was most comfortable?  A device for communications that could not be intercepted by magic would be highly sought after.

Her silly idea to go the path of manufacturing goods may deserve more consideration than he had initially allotted…

Innovation created technology, advanced efficiency and order.  In the right hands, technology was power.

His confidence grew, feeling increasingly vindicated in his choice to focus his efforts on her.

The final set of entries continued in a similar vein of oddity - not surprising in the least at this juncture.  An ongoing experiment.

‘Got hit by spores from weird blue mushroom in Underdark.  Made others act odd - energetic, snappy, restless.  Made me sleepy.’

‘Collected several specimen - took precautions.  Likes to grow along the river bank and damp areas.  Seems to stay small and low-growing.  Ventral side has dark violet gills - same color splotches appear on cap after harvested when it loses glow.  H not familiar.  See if O knows more?’

‘O said no known use yet and toxic (but not deadly to their knowledge) for many to eat - stomach issues, headaches, increased aggression, blurred vision, jitters, muscle cramps.  Would that occur with microdosing?  The others did complain of aches and upset for a bit after it wore off before but they were hit by more than I was.  Use for spores vs meat?  Fresh vs dried?  Maybe G will help me test :3’

Detailed pictures of this mushroom and a small map of where she had found them.  A grid where she had begun tracking exposure, amounts taken, side effects, dates...  

A list of observed growth conditions.

So keenly interested in this mushroom - for what cause?  He considered the side effects she observed in herself thus far - drowsy, calm, headache, alert, moody…  What was it that she sought?  There were many notes but no goal stated.

A sleep aid, perhaps?  Did the little fox have trouble sleeping?

Her words before of ‘missing the quiet’ came back to mind.  She did fall deeply asleep here while left alone.  He knew her camp to be rather undisciplined.  Was she unable to block out excessive noise with that hearing of hers?  He recalled in another report that the fox had started constructing her tent further from the others…

The rest of the pages were blank but as he paged back through the journal, a note scrawled on the inside of the cover caught his eye:

‘If you are reading this, you’ve found Evie’s journal.  She acknowledges that she left it somewhere stupid, again.  Please return it.’

A laugh seized him.

A common occurrence, dear fox?

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Raphael didn’t look up as the incubus sauntered in, their nose in the air.  “Your office is beginning to smell of the fox.”  They draped themself over the back of his chair, running a claw down the ornate wood as they eyed his work from over his shoulder.  “Did she visit?  Is that what has you so worked up?  What did she do?  You have not even come to bed!”

He continued to ignore them.

“Ahh~”  Haarlep held up their fingers, pinching several strands of red fur with a grin.  “What evidence!  Now, I truly must know!  Perhaps you had her strip and touch herself here, hm?”  They loudly sniffed at the chair.  “Yet I smell nothing of her arousal,” they added with exaggerated disappointment.

Sliding a finger down his arm, they leaned closer to his ear.  “Or are you to tell me that the little vixen got a free pass to seat herself upon your chair?  She certainly made herself at home with all this fur left behind.  Or perhaps you disciplined her?  Laid her over your knee and-”

“Must you disturb me?” Raphael sneered, in no mood for their antics.  Exhaustion was closing in on him and yet he had work to complete before succumbing to its call.

They flicked away the fur and began unbuttoning his doublet.  “Must you torture me so by getting all hot and bothered and doing nothing about it?  From what I felt, she must have practically pranced around you naked!”  He shook off their wandering hands.  They gasped, “Was she naked when you summoned her?  Caught at an inopportune time?  Or may it have been…with purpose?  Is she a little seductress, after all?  Simply begging for you to take her!”

He knew it would be worse to admit that the fox had truly done nothing save place her trust in him with her vulnerability.  And he was not about to tell the incubus that she was tucked away in the House asleep.

“Just a few minutes with me and I’ll have her mewling like a kitten.  You desire her, don’t you?”  Not giving them the response they wanted, they unlatched themself from the back of his chair and rounded the desk to throw themself into the chair opposite.  “I do not understand this game you insist on playing with this one,” they whined.  “Why not just take her?  She has listened to an absurd amount of your prattling on about the history of Cormyr and Calimshan without falling asleep or begging you to stop to find it disagreeable.  I’ve seen that fluffy tail wag quite often - that means she is happy in your presence!  Flirty, even!” they pointed out as though he was unaware.

“The game is patience, Haarlep!  She is on a path towards completing the goals ahead of her.  That is the priority.  Should the opportunity for a contract present itself once more, I shall most eagerly take advantage,” he emphasized, pausing in the middle of his writing.  “Barring that, before the dust has settled after this saga, the curtain shall rise for the next.  Rest assured, the fox will be mine.”

They hopped to their feet and flung themself forward to rest their head on their elbows atop his desk, grinning ear to ear.  “Does this mean you are getting me a playmate?  You wouldn’t be going through all this effort if you intended her as just any silly little toy to break in and toss aside once you are satisfied with their image alone.”

Haarlep needn’t know that he had no intention of allowing them to have her in the way they most wanted.  “Toys have significantly less use once broken.  With the proper care taken, the fox will be tamed and under my control.  She would make a far less entertaining pet without that tongue and brain of hers.”  

“Mm…  She said she liked your poetry, did she?” Haarlep teased.  “So disrespectful, though…  But I can help tame her!  How about starting with how one must always respectfully greet their betters?  And no pets on the furniture unless commanded?  Though she can sleep with me, of course, and I can ensure that she is always-”

“Cease your attempts to interfere.  Or has Mephistopheles instructed you to sabotage this, as well?” Raphael hissed in accusation, cutting off their spiral into fantasy.  He would not put it past his father to order his spy to get in the way of something else he desired.  

With a smirk, they gave a half-hearted shrug as they flicked away dirt from under their claws.  “It's not like he would care.  After all, what's more distracting than a brand new pet to break in?”  They fell against the desk dramatically as they continued whining, “I just want to play~  Such a stubborn little foxy.  She does remind me of-”

“Hold your tongue,” he demanded.

They chuckled and looked up at him.  “Oh, Master, it has been weeks since you’ve so much as mentioned the birdie in the dungeons.  All I hear now is how the fox has done this and done that and said~  Are you so afraid that she, too, may reje-”

“Should the stubborn little fox inform me that you continue to be a nuisance, I shall honor any desire of hers to have nothing to do with you,” he threatened.  He may be unable to do away with the incubus at present, but he could certainly withhold something they saw as desirable.  And the protection from or threat of Haarlep would be quite the carrot and stick for the fox should any behavioral adjustments be needed.

They jerked up with a pout.  “Then she would hardly be a playmate!”

“Then I suggest, Haarlep, that you be on your best behavior.”

“Properly seduce her and she’ll sign anything - they always do!” they attempted to argue.  Haarlep lacked the nuance and patience for long term plans, preferring to opt for whatever was most convenient to them regardless of the end result being less than optimal as long as it was good enough.  But he strove for nothing short of perfection!  “She strikes me as a ‘cutesy romantic dinner’ kind of woman.  Go take her to one of those plays first and then a walk beneath the stars!  Sit close and whisper sweet nothings as you feed her delicacies.  Ply her with a bit of wine and she’ll be all blushy and giggly when you whisk her away to our bed!”

“Yes, a fine date…,” he drawled, “for after her current work is complete.”

“But that’s taking so looong!”  He smacked away their claw shredding the corner of his paperwork.  “Tell her to hurry up!  I think we would both much rather a cute, little, fluffy foxy than a slimy squid.  Although…I have never been with that tentacled sort…”

The very notion filled him with disgust.  He was not about to arm Haarlep with such a body in their repertoire.  “Of that, we are in agreement.  Now, away with you!  I have work to complete.”

“Mm, what tedium.  There is forever work to complete,” they sighed as they turned and slipped from the room.

❤️ Thank-you for reading!! Please consider liking & reblogging.❤️

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Coming up next: Evie has an interesting dream

[jiajia-binks]

My Mentor Poet

When I first opened the spreadsheet of mentor poets, I had no idea where to start. Of course, I decided to use a mathematical method to go through the extensive list of poets, so I clicked the link of every sixth poet, starting from a random poet. Brandon Amico was the second poet I looked at, and I was immediately intrigued by his poem “Ode to the Charging Cable.” Here is a short excerpt from this poem:

Persistent whisperer, beginning

of many ends & end

of the diaphanous trek of electricity

through wave & turbine,

fiber & ground & up

through the home’s flooring;

yarn-spinner, enabler, life-

preserver in the ocean of codified air

we’re apt to drown in...

His vivid imagery of the unseen and creative word choice creates a whimsical, otherworldly atmosphere around a mundane household object. This atmosphere was exactly what I wanted to create in my poetry. However, since he was the only the second poet I explored, I decided to keep going down the list.

I also looked at the poems written by Tina Chang, Louise Glück, and Safiya Sinclair. Tina Chang has a very similar racial/ethnic background, but an entirely different life experience. Her poems hummed with a darker energy, especially her poem “Origin & Ash”. My voice usually doesn’t carry that kind of intensity, so I kept going down the list. 

One of my favorite poems by Louise Glück is “The Evening Star”. It is romantic yet wistful reflection on Venus, one of the brightest objects in the sky. She subtly hints at her feeling of being wronged by Venus, the goddess of love, which is what many of her other poems are about. Her reflections on divorce and heartbreak are beautiful, but rather inaccessible to me and my experiences. However, I did like that she was quite literal in her poems and less vague than some of the other poems I have read.

I chose to explore the poems of Safiya Sinclair partially because I liked her alliterative name. Her poems also have a darker atmosphere like Tina Chang’s poems, often in a sexual nature. She created amazing allusions to Greek mythology, but I preferred Amico’s lighter, witty style. 

Amico writes about a variety of topics, from guns to euphemisms to student debt. He also varies his formatting, from line breaks to stanzas to indents. Sometimes just one of his lines can inspire many more questions and thoughts. One such line that really stood out to me is from his poem “Gift Tax”: “Entropy crafts us the finest ghosts.” Something about the reference to one of my favorite scientific concepts-entropy- and the haunting tone really made Amico’s words stand out to me.

[the-desolated-quill]

Mechocracy - Red Dwarf blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

In the wake of my less than flattering views on Siliconia and Timewave, I’ve actually received a lot of kind messages from people telling me that I was really going to enjoy Mechocracy and that they were really looking forward to my review. Thanks guys! That really means a lot to me :)

So what did I think of Mechocracy? Um... yeah, it was okay. Not great, but it was alright.

Things go off to a really strong start with Rimmer teaching Kryten the art of patience in his own impatient manner, which leads to Kryten delegating the task of mopping B deck to Rimmer as part of the course. I chuckled somewhat at this, but then when they revealed that this was all a massive deception engineered by Kryten in order to master the art of manipulation, I nearly wet myself laughing. Look how far he’s come since the Nova 5!! He did so well! Definitely deserved a round of applause that!

It’s also an excellent way of justifying Rimmer’s behaviour as the episode goes along. Is it me or is Rimmer being just a little bit more malicious than usual? Blackmailing the Cat over his reading glasses. Promoting Lister and then demoting him again whilst using the memory of his gran as an emotional ploy just as a further twist to the knife. This is downright cruel and I would argue takes Rimmer a step too far down the antagonist road, but you could interpret it as being his petty and spiteful revenge for this opening gag. It could also be partly what motivates him to run for Machine President, as a way of getting his own back, and it also makes his ultimate punishment at the end, trapped in the garbage hold with Talkie Toaster, that much more satisfying.

The whole sequence with the SOS virus is great and feels like classic Red Dwarf in a way Series 12 really hasn’t up until now. The lifts, skutters and snack dispensers all get angry that the Dwarfers were just going to leave them to die and decide to go on strike. That is actually a genuinely good idea that you really could develop. It’s funny how Lister has put all his time and energy into getting Kryten to break his programming, but he has never done the same for the snack dispensers or any of the other various machines on Red Dwarf. How come? Is it because, unlike the other machines, Kryten looks vaguely human and therefore it’s easier for Lister to anthropomorphise him? One could argue that it would be impractical for Lister to sit down and give each electrical appliance on the ship the same attention Kryten gets, but don’t the other machines have a right to receive that same quality of care. They all have personalities of their own. They’re all clearly capable of independence. The reason why Lister hasn’t extended his ‘mechanoid development program’ to include the other machines is because he views them as just tools for his benefit. And the fact that none of them look as human as Kryten actually makes it easier for Lister to view them as such.

Also the machines going on strike helps to highlight just how dependant we are on technology and how utterly powerless we’ve become. People fear that one day machines will take over the world, but as Kryten points out, the machines have already taken over. At first it seemed like this episode was really going to delve into the rights of AI and its many implications. Does a snack dispenser have the same rights as Kryten? What about the lift? The skutters? Even Holly? And what would the consequences be if all machines were given equal rights and no longer felt obligated to perform the tasks they were originally programmed to do? Could the ship even function? Unfortunately Doug Naylor never fully capitalises on this brilliant, and some might say long overdue, idea, instead taking the episode in a much more unorthodox direction.

It’s decided that the machines need a President to represent their needs, and Rimmer and Kryten put their names forward for the election. At this point I had to let out a groan. We’re really going to parody the 2016 US election?

I have multiple problems with this. First, one of the things that sets Red Dwarf apart from other sitcoms is its timelessness. Because it’s set far in the future, the show doesn’t get bogged down in pop culture references or other such things that would often horribly date other shows. So while otherwise great sitcoms like Only Fools And Horses and Fawlty Towers are starting to show their age, Red Dwarf remains just as funny and relevant as it did way back in 1988. It’ll be interesting to see how well Mechocracy will stand the test of time, considering it’s based partially on current events, because I’ve got a nasty feeling this episode won’t hold up in 10 or 20 years time.

Second, it’s such a crying shame that Doug Naylor has thrown away a legitimately fascinating idea in favour of a wafer thin satire. Rimmer is clearly supposed to be a figure akin to Donald Trump, who lies constantly and makes false promises in order to appease the voters, but the episode never actually does anything with that. They just make the comparison. In theory this could be a great episode for Kryten, giving him the chance to put all of Lister’s teachings into practice and finally put Rimmer in his place once and for all, but the episode never really explores Kryten’s character. He’s basically there just to not be Rimmer and when he does win at the end, I honestly didn’t feel a single goddamn thing because it never felt like he earned his victory and we never got a sense of just how important the presidency must be to him.

Third, this whole election doesn’t really make sense even in the context of the episode. Why would the machines even consider Rimmer a viable candidate? They all know what he’s like. Surely they must know Rimmer doesn’t give a single shit about them. The fact he callously rejected them in the first half of the episode should have given them a little hint. Then there’s the smear campaigns. Why would the machines care that Kryten looked after a bunch of skeletons on the Nova 5? Why would they care that Rimmer killed the crew of Red Dwarf in the radiation leak? Neither of those incidents really concern them because both negatively impacted humans. The snack dispenser couldn’t care less about a radiation leak, and the skeletons just demonstrate what a caring individual Kryten is and how he’ll go above and beyond to do a good turn for his crew, alive or dead.

Last but not least, Doug Naylor is so fixated on his spoof election that he ends up forgetting arguably the most important characters in this episode. The machines themselves. Considering that a lot of this plot hinges on the rights of machines, it’s funny how none of them seem to get a look in during the second half. All this talk about equal rights and so on, and all they ever come to in the end are a bunch of numbers and statistics. And yes, you could argue that that’s one of the unpleasant results of politics, reducing people to numbers on a spreadsheet, but the point is the episode never addresses that or does anything with that.

It’s such a pity because the thing is I don’t hate Mechocracy. I don’t even dislike it. As I said at the beginning, I thought it was okay. What’s frustrating is that it could have been so much more. There’s a really strong idea at its core that you really could have had fun with. But while the first half is really good, the second half is where the episode just falls apart because Doug Naylor seems more concerned with making shallow allusions to recent events rather than telling an interesting story.

[vrheadsets]

Eerie Bear Games Steps Out of its Comfort Zone Creating Fruit for the Village

This week indie developer Eerie Bear Games launched its second virtual reality (VR) title, Fruit for the Village for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. A kind of gardening strategy experience that involves players trying to feed a hungry village in a future destroyed by climate change and war, VRFocus spoke with the team via email to find out how the videogame came about and what the team are planning in the future. 

Formed by Noah Rojahn and Joe Radak in early 2014, Eerie Bears Games’ first title was Light Repair Team #4, a puzzle experience for the launch of HTC Vive in 2016. Wanting to push their own creative boundaries the pair came up with Fruit for the Village after several iterations.

“About a year ago, Ryan Evans put together the “Click Click Click” game jam on itch.io. The premise of the game jam was to create a ‘clicker’ game; games similar to something like cookie clicker, and others. At the time, Joe was thinking about making a game based on gardening or farming for VR. Game Jams are a good excuse to prototype out games, so he mashed them together to see what came out,” said Rojahn.

“The first version of the game was a basic farming game; wide open field, different types of seeds, freedom to move around and create a garden/farm however you want. Kind of like a VR Farmville. It was enjoyable, but didn’t do what we like to do with our games, which is to twist the genre onto its head. It had been done before. So, we put the game in space and added a timer that would count down that would require the player to gain a certain amount of resources in that time in prevent losing the game. Think of it like time-trial mode in racing games where you need to complete a lap in under X amount of seconds. In this case, you need to get X amount of credits in a constant number of minutes.

“In thinking about what this timer could represent in the game, we decided to it turn it into a food supply gauge. This tied into the idea of growing plants and give the player a sense of pressure to perform and reach these milestones.  Clicker games usually also fall into the genre of ‘idle’ games �� relaxing games you can just [mess] around [in] and let them play themselves. The timer (food supply gauge), flips this on its head and gives it the twist that we like. (At this point, we moved away from the farm and put the game on a space station where you were growing food to send down to a super populated planet below. The milestones were your food quota. We obviously didn’t keep this idea.)

“And since this was the first time we’ve made a game like this, we decided to try more new things – layering in a story. We looked at how stories are told in VR, what roles the players play and then decided how we wanted to do that for Fruit for the Village. Is the player going fill in a premade characters shoes, or are we just going to give them little bits of their history and let them fill in the rest? We thought about the tone of the story and thought, “hey, we normally try to think comedic or optimistic things, lets try something else and just continue to move out of our comfort zone.” So we wrote a story that’s outside what we’ve normally done. Fruit for the Village has been all about pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone. It’s there we feel that we really start to learn new things and can really create some interesting stuff. Basically Fruit for the Village is a first for us in terms of genre, gameplay, story, narrative delivery, art style and more.

“Finally, we didn’t really like the Sci-fi space aethestic so we put it back on earth, in the same region as Light Repair Team #4. There are small allusions to Light Repair Team #4, but it’s not mentioned directly outside a line or two of dialogue.”

VR has come on leaps and bounds in the last couple of years, especially when it comes to content development. Most VR studios started with something small and had to learn from their mistakes, with subsequent projects that evolved from this learning process, and Eerie Bear Games being no different: “The biggest thing was the physical limitations of both players and the VR tracking systems. Light Repair Team #4 highlighted the range of movement the player could have. In LRT4 we had a lot of places where the player would have to place things low to the ground where tracking was poor, or way up high where people who aren’t tall couldn’t reach (Noah and Joe are both 6ft+),” the team explained. “This was early on in VR, so we didn’t really consider the diversity of the physical size of players, their play space and their tracking quality. We made sure to keep that in mind with Fruit for the Village. Interactable objects are placed in a way that makes it easier for more people to reach, there’s no need to reach down on the floor, etc. We’ll be keeping an eye on this too after launch and make adjustments as needed.

“We also learned that if we want to tell a story, then we just need to tell it and not really hide it. We had a background and narrative in mind for Light Repair Team #4, but we didn’t really explain any of it. We couldn’t figure out how to do it right, let alone well. Fruit for the Village is our first attempt at telling a story and integrating the game mechanics with that story. We’re proud of how it came out.

“Game difficulty was something we learned from Light Repair Team #4. Light Repair Team #4’s curve was really shallow and never really got super difficult to figure out, we were worried that it was too hard, and so in trying to avoid that, we made it too easy. With Fruit for the Village, we did a lot of testing and literal calculations via spreadsheets, timing players to figure out what the max amount of credits they could get in any given timeframe. We then used that data to set the rate of change of the prices of objects to fit within that curve. Then we tested some more, refined, etc. etc. Fruit for the Village is much more challenging, especially starting out compared to LRT4, but we feel it is fun to master. There’s a lot of combinations that players can do with the fruit growing pots and auto growers to help hit the maximum level of profit. They’ll have to put in some work themselves too by manually “clicking” the plants to grow them.”

Going on to explain a bit more about Fruit for the Village Eerie Bear Games said: “It’s hard to really say what they’ll expect without dropping buzzworlds. We’re pretty sure that Fruit for the Village is the first (or close to the first) VR ‘clicker’ game. The story we created has two “endings” and a third “second ending” or true ending as some may call it. It’s kind of like a smaller version of Nier: Automata’s ending system (admittedly, we were inspired by it) where a choice you make can either keep you going in the game, or end the game for you right then and there. Beyond that, the endless survival mode will test you against the clock to see how long you can go before you can’t keep up with the costs of sending fruit to the village. Maybe we’ll be adding leaderboards in the future.

“For those who might be struggling or are interested in cheat codes – we do have those programmed into the game. They were originally debug commands, but we modified them to work in the game itself. We’re not sure yet how we’ll tell people what they are, but we hope that people will keep a look out for them.

“We designed the game to be intentionally vague about the player as possible. The only thing that the player sees of themselves in the game is their hands. We really tried to make everything as generic as possible when it comes to address the player. So we never call the player he or she. Additionally the players have a chance to change the skin tone of their virtual hands to a variety of skin tones to better match what they are in real life. We really tried to make sure that we aren’t putting the player into some fictitious persons elaborate life. We gave them a short backstory for narrative and say how they got into the cave and then just… let them fill in the rest themselves based on what they’re hearing from the village. The story mode is interesting and again, something that hasn’t really been done yet within VR – or if it has, we haven’t really seen it done like this.”

With both a single-player campaign and survival mode to play through Fruit for the Village has a reasonable amount of hours in it. When asked about further expansion the team said: “Yes, we do, but how much is added depends on reception of the game. As bad as that sounds, it’s just the nature of things for us right now. If we do add more content, it will probably be for the endless survival mode. I’d like to add more tools for the player to use and maybe expand the size of the cavern with different environmental effects, or something like that. Adding to the story is also being considered, but that would take a lot more work, so might not happen as often.

“We’ll also be working to refine some things in the game in order to make future updates easier to add. And will be considering adding more platform based features like achievements, trading cards, etc.

“It is our intention to bring Fruit for the Village to the Oculus Store. We originally wanted to launch Steam and Oculus Home simultaneously. Due to our small team size (All 2 of us) and very limited resources, we weren’t able to produce a Steam and Home version. We decided to move forward with Steam first, as it supports both Vive and Rift, and we had previous experience with launching on it. We don’t have a timeline for the Oculus Home Release yet, but expect it before the end of the early, probably early fall.”

As Rojahn and Radak are both focused on VR development VRFocus asked them what type of VR videogame they’d like to make or see made, to which they responded: “We’re big fans of strategy games like Civilization V and VI and Endless Space 2, so something like that would be cool to see in VR. Games like XCom, Into the Breach would also be cool. We have this kind of policy for projects where both Joe and Noah just tinker on whatever they want, and whenever one or either find a game that seems good, they push it to publishing. So maybe our next game will be an RPG, or another Light Repair Team game, or something small or big. Who knows. Joe’s a huge fan of RPG’s so it wouldn’t be surprising if he does something with those.”

On Eerie Bear Games’ website there’s mention of another VR title in development, Pulse.Beat Virus, so VRFocus found out a little more: “So Pulse.Beat Virus was a puzzle game where you would solve puzzles in a non euclidean space. We thought it was pretty clever. However! It caused discomfort in a lot of users, despite the safeguards we put in place to prevent discomfort. We believe the discomfort is caused by how the levels can fold back onto themselves and that our brains can’t seem to really process the idea of that yet when it’s presented to us in Virtual Reality. It sounds really weird, but we have to overcome the human brain before we move forward with that project. It’s not a canceled project, we just plan to return to it when we can solve the discomfort problem.”

To find out more about Fruit for the Village read VRFocus’ review. And as Eerie Bear Games continue developing for VR VRFocus will keep you updated.

from VRFocus https://ift.tt/2GIYuvE