#I can organize my thoughts easier typing something out but then that’s not faster than speaking | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jhalakseo · 2 years

Text

Assignment Writing Help: It's Not as Difficult as You Think

Introduction

The world of assignments is a scary one. You're not sure what to write about, where to start, or even how to do it. Luckily for you, we're here with the assignment writing help you need! Here are some helpful tips on how to write an assignment:

How to Write Your Assignment

Before you start writing, it's important to know what you need to do. Here are some tips for how to write your assignment:

Make a plan of attack. Before tackling any task, make sure that all of your ducks are in a row and everything is ready for action! Use this time to outline your project and think about how it should be structured.

Use the library or online resources like Google Docs as needed during this process (and don't forget about collaboration!) If possible, try not waiting until the last minute—you'll find that mistakes will happen much easier if they're caught early on rather than later in the process when things get more complicated (or worse yet, completely forgotten). Don't forget proofreading either! It's easy enough just sitting down with something else while working but sometimes we forget our own work because we assume everyone else will catch any errors first so why bother checking?

Choosing a Topic

Before you can begin writing, you'll need to decide what kind of assignment you want. It is important that the topic be one that interests and excites you. If it doesn't, then your writing will be lackluster as well!

If your course is focused on a career path, then choosing an interesting or relevant topic will help make sure that students retain what they learn in class by giving them something useful for their future careers. For example: "How do I get from point A (my current job) to point B (my dream job)?" Or perhaps this question: "What are some tips for finding jobs in my field?". Of course there's no limit on what type of question could be asked here—just make sure whatever issue comes up during class discussions seems like something worth exploring further down the road when it comes time for writing assignments or projects later on down the road after graduation day rolls around."

Pre-writing

When you are starting out, it's important to start with a pre-writing process. This will help you get your thoughts organized and make sure that you don't forget anything important. You can use any method that works for you, but here are some suggestions:

Research the topic thoroughly before writing about it—this includes reading blog posts, books, articles and anything else related to your assignment topic. Make sure that all of this information is accurate so when writing about it in detail later on in the assignment process; everything stays consistent with what was already known before coming up with ideas or concepts related to this particular subject matter area!

Organize Your Data

When you’re organizing your data, there are a number of ways to go about it. You can use a table, spreadsheet or mind map (which is helpful for visualizing the information). For example, if you have 20 students and five different teacher grades for each student:

Table: This would be easy to read and understand at first glance. It gives an overview of all 20 students and their grades by teacher.

Spreadsheet: This type of spreadsheet makes it more difficult for someone who doesn’t know how to read information from this type of format because they have less context with which they can interpret what they see on paper or screen (iPad/Smartphone). However this could also be helpful if someone wants something more compact such as reviewing class grades over time or comparing them against others within their department or school district!

Structure and Outline

Your outline is a great way to organize your thoughts and get them down on paper. It also helps you write faster, which means that you can finish assignments faster. This will save time and make sure that the professor doesn't have to keep checking back with you after class or at home to make sure that the assignment was done correctly. That's one less thing he has to deal with!

Another benefit of having an outline is staying focused on your topic while writing—you'll know exactly what needs addressing in each section so there's no guesswork involved when it comes time for revision later on down the road (if needed). By following along with a structured outline, it becomes easy for us writers not just because we know where we're going but also because we remember why we're going there in our own minds first before starting any actual writing tasks - thus ensuring even better results than those achieved by simply winging things off without any structure whatsoever."

Compose a Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement is the main idea of your paper. It should be clear and concise, and it should be a single sentence or two sentences at most. The thesis statement should be in your introduction, at the very end of that section when you talk about what's going on in your paper and how it relates to other things you've written about before (or not).

If you don't have a good one yet, write down some ideas! You can look back over old papers or even ask friends for their opinions on what they think the topic would be—they might even tell me!

Write the Body Paragraphs

The body paragraphs are the meat of your essay. They should be between 4-6 sentences long, and they should focus on one specific topic. Your body paragraphs will have a topic sentence, supporting details, and a concluding sentence that sums up what you've said in each paragraph.

It's important to remember that when writing an assignment that requires more than one paragraph, it's okay if some of your paragraphs don't have much content or aren't written as well as others because they're just examples of how to write other points in this section (not necessarily because they're necessary).

Write the Introduction and Conclusion

The introduction and conclusion of your paper should be relevant to the body of your work. If you're writing an essay, then this is especially important because these sections will serve as hooks for readers who want more information on your topic.

The introduction should be an overview of what you're going to discuss in the rest of your paper; it should also include some way for readers to get involved with what they read next (for example by stating key points). In order for this section not only ensure relevance but also explain how those points relate back towards one another--you don't want them just sitting there without any kind of connection! So make sure everything flows together well before moving onto other sections like body paragraphs or headings later down there where people might start skimming through pages quickly trying not miss anything important that may come up later down there if need reading material required."

Editing and Proofreading

Find a friend to proofread your work.

Read the assignment out loud to yourself, and then read it again with the extra eyes of someone else. This can be very helpful in catching mistakes you may have missed on your own (or even grammatical issues).

Avoid using contractions like “I” or “we” when referring back to something that has already been said; instead, use “he/she/they” or just make sure everything is spelled correctly before submitting your assignment!

Spell check! You don't want any typos in there making people think there's something wrong with what they've written because of bad spelling or grammar choices."

Assignment writing help can seem daunting, but with these helpful tips your next assignment can be done in no time.

You might be thinking, “I can do this by myself.” The truth is that it's easy to underestimate how much time and effort it takes to write an assignment. It also helps if you have a good idea of what type of assignment you need to be written, but even then there are so many options available!

Assignment writing help can seem daunting, but with these helpful tips your next assignment can be done in no time:

Use the right tools for the job—if your school has a writing center or tutoring department, ask them about their services and see if they offer any discounts or other incentives for students who use them regularly. They may offer classes where students learn how best to revise their work before handing it off as well as other helpful tips on improving their grammar skills overall.

Don't forget about plagiarism! If you're using someone else's work as part of yours (even if it's just some notes), make sure everyone knows what constitutes proper citation style before submitting anything back into class

Conclusion

These tips will go a long way to helping you write your next assignment. Remember that writing is a process and it can take some time before you’re completely comfortable with it, but if you keep practicing every day then don’t worry about being perfect right away! If you feel stuck or have questions about how to get started, don’t hesitate to contact us for assistance.

#assignmentinneed #assignmentwritingservice #assignmentwritinghelp #assignmentwritinghelpinlondon #assignmentwritinghelpinaustralia

0 notes

demonslayedher · 3 years

Text

How Does Eating Humans Work?

Hello, Gotou here. We’re shamelessly borrowing from the format of a KnY Fanbook #2 comic to launch an investigation into demon metabolism and development by crossing the Sanzu River again to interview demons in the underworld. While we’ll be using canon materials as a base, the analysis and conjecture herein is personal, so we ask for your understanding. Also, please note that consuming any food in the underworld will make you unable to return, and we cannot promise your safety even though the interview subjects are dead, so please come along at your own risk.

Some of the questions we’d like to answer are, why do demons need to eat humans? How much do they need to eat to survive? Are there factors that influence how eating humans makes them stronger? If they don’t want to kill humans, what are their other options? We’ve rounded up some special guests below the cut (hidden for length and grossness), everyone from the lowly Temple Demon to the lovely Tamayo, to see what their actions in canon might tell us.

First, a review of what canon tells us, mostly as summarized in Fanbook #2: 1. With one exception named Yushirou, all demons were created by Kibutsuji Muzan, for his own purposes. They all have some amount of his blood, and can be divided into four classes depending on how powerful they are. From top to bottom, the Upper Moons, the Lower Moons, demons with special abilities, and other demons without any special characteristics. 2. Demons may be stronger depending on how much of Kibutsuji Muzan’s blood they have. Most beings’ cannot handle a large amount of his blood, and it will rupture the cells and that being will die, but there are demons who adapt well to it. 3. Typically, sunlight is the only way to kill a demon, by either bathing them in sunlight or cutting of their head with a Nichirin blade. However, there are powerful demons for whom chopping off their head does not work, and if it’s strong enough, demons can also be killed by wisteria poison.

4. Demons eat human blood and flesh. The more they eat, the stronger they become, and the faster their regenerative abilities become. Some humans have “Marechi,” a rare blood type, which is especially nutritious to demons, and eating one Marechi is the equivalent of eating several humans.

That’s an interesting thing we’d like to come back to, especially since we’re looking for quantitative information about how demons gain nutrition (though I have my doubts we'll get enough for statistical analysis). As an interesting note, Fanbook #2 also tells us that if demons try to consume the same edibles humans do, they’ll vomit it back up.

I’m told that Miss Tamayo drinks tea, though. That’ll be an interesting question for later. In my notes, it seems she’s also explained to Tanjirou back in Chapter 15 that demons will normally go berserk if they go a long time without consuming any blood or flesh. Berserk is one thing, but I wonder if they can starve to death? We’ll see if these canon clues will lead us to anything. We’ll begin now in an interview format. Hopefully this will go smoothly, but I’ve got a feeling it won’t. First up, we’ve the Temple Demon.

Temple: Who were you calling ‘lowly’ just now? Up there, above the cut?

Gotou: That was in a literal sense, not having Blood Techniques means you’re in the bottom common tier of demons.

Temple: Argh. Fine. What do you want to know?

Gotou: In Chapter 2, you were spotted with three human victims. However, it seems you left their bodies mostly intact and only ate small parts instead of consuming one full human at a time. Could you comment on this?

Temple: I’d have gotten to more later if that whelp with the strong legs didn’t interrupt me! Who’s got time to eat entire humans anyway? I went for the easy stuff first.

Gotou: I see. It appears you might had focused on key organs, like the heart and the liver. Would you say these are especially nutritionally dense?

Temple: I guess. If I’m going to eat humans, I’m going to start with what’s worth bothering to digest. Blood’s easier on the stomach, so that’s what I was busy with on the lady there.

Gotou: Then it takes effort to digest? Hmm. Let’s come back to this later. How many humans would you say you consumed, including these three?

Temple: Not a lot… I tried to get a variety so I could get stronger faster, but…

Gotou: I’ll put down a guess as ten or less. Let’s move on to someone who has a sharper memory for numbers. One of our longer-lived guests at Mt. Fujikasane for 47 years, the Hand Demon. While most of the demons on the mountain had only eaten two or three humans, you’ve eaten a whole 50 of the children who headed into the Final Selection, didn’t you?

Hand: Yes, that’s right. It was hard at first since I wasn’t very strong, and the demons usually all went crazy there eating each other, just like that one brat who got away in Chapter 7 said. If you could manage to kill any of the kids, you had the other demons to fight off to even get a piece to yourself. That was enough to get me by, and stronger, little by little. Your body learns to make your meals last, and make the most of what you can get. I usually only had a bite of one child a year, can you imagine how horrible that was? Most demons who survive usually figure out some way to develop and survive better, and once my cells found something that worked for me, I kept doing it. I got really good at snatching away prey from other demons, and soon enough I was a bigger threat than any of them. None of them could, you might say, lay a hand on me.

Gotou: That’s an interesting point about self-development. A demon named Nezuko was spent two years doing that in her sleep.

Hand: She must have had a big meal before that!

Gotou: Well, anyway. It seems that in near starving conditions, your metabolism made the most of what you had, leading to the most efficient use of whatever food was available to you.

Hand: That’s right, I got really good at it. Wasn’t always pretty, but I made it work. I got to a point where I could go two years without eating and still keep my wits about me while the other demons were going mad. But I chose to eat. I liked to keep my appetite for specific children.

Gotou: That smile is not reassuring. Some humans taste better than others, I guess?

Hand: That’s for sure. This one kid tasted awful, like rust and man sweat! I still don’t have that disgusting taste out of my mouth! But he was one of my more satisfying meals, so I ate more of him.

Gotou: Then why would you… nevermind, I don’t like that smile, no further questions. While I had hoped to keep these interviews focused on quantities of humans consumed, it does seem personal taste is worth asking about. I had tried to invite a Swamp Demon from Chapter 11, but it kept arguing with itself and it felt like I’d be wasting my time. The one definite thing I learned was that this demon is picky, with a distinct preference for 16-year-old girls. Based on the number of trinkets he kept, it seems he had consumed at least seventeen of them, including several in one town. Sheesh, that’s sort of a rough mission to send a first-timer on. I’ve got a more cooperative guest here to discuss her tastes, a Snake Demon who, according to Chapter 188, has a special taste for baby flesh.

Snake: Thank you for having me here. It’s good to be appreciated again.

Gotou: Did you only eat babies?

Snake: Goodness, no. Babies are delicious, but they aren’t very nutritious. And their skulls certainly aren’t that big, the ones I lounged around with were from the people whom I killed and stole from. But you know the nice thing about baby skulls? They’re still soft. They take a long time to digest, but I can swallow them whole.

Gotou: Like… like a snake, then. Sorry, I’m a little ill hearing that. Let’s back up, were all those skulls the remains of adults you ate, then?

Snake: Meh, I ate some of them of better-looking ones, but most of them I only killed. I could usually kill a lot more at a time than I could bother eating, my killing record was fifty women all at once.

Gotou: And you didn’t find that wasteful?

Snake: Wasteful? Not at all. I wasn’t exactly in dire straits, I lived a more luxurious life than most demons do. That meant I could afford to wait for a truly delicious meal, like how you humans might leave something in a slow-cooker to enjoy the perfect combination of doneness and tenderness, plated in the most appetizing of ways.

Gotou: I guess demons and humans are similar in that regard.

Snake: I’m so glad you can relate! Then you understand the frustration of a meal you’ve be preparing for years opening up the slow-cooker and running away right when they were just about done.

Gotou: I have never had that experience.

Snake: I’ll get you, my pretty. And your little snake, too.

Gotou: I think we might have gotten a little off-topic here. It does seem digesting humans comes with some difficulty. I’d like to invite the Drum Demon in next. Your name is Kyougai, I hear?

Kyougai: !!

Gotou: Kyogai, right?

Kyougai: You’ve heard of me! You know my name!

Gotou: I happened to, yes.

Kyougai: What have you heard???

Gotou: That you were kicked out of the Lower Moons for being unable to consume enough humans.

Kyougai: Oh. ……..yeah, that’s me.

Gotou: I thought demons go berserk if they go a long time without consuming humans. Wouldn’t that make an inability to consume them problematic?

Kyougai: It wasn’t that I couldn’t eat them! Like I said in Chapter 24, I had to in order to sustain myself, just like any other demon. But, at some point, I couldn’t eat as much as I used to. That happens to humans too, doesn’t it? When you just can’t stomach anymore?

Gotou: You mean like when you’ve overeaten? In a human’s case that feeling may go away within a few hours.

Kyougai: Sort of like that, but you know, humans reach a time when nothing is appetizing or the thought of eating makes them feel sick, right? Isn’t that the human condition?

Gotou: …uh… maybe if they have a medical condition? Or anxiety? Do demons get anxiety? Or eating disorders?

Kyougai: I… I don’t know. I just wasn’t good enough.

Gotou: I think it’s plenty good if you stopped eating humans. Though to have developed Blood Techniques and been a Lower Moon in the first place, you must had eaten a great number of them.

Kyougai: You think I’m great?

Gotou: What?

Kyougai: No, sorry, I was getting ahead of myself. It’s true, I used to be able to eat as many as the other Lower Moons always consumed. Our stomachs were stronger, you might say. Demons got strong by eating humans, and then the more you did that the better you usually got at it, so the strong ones would eat more and more and keep getting stronger and stronger. At least, that’s how it usually worked. I’ve seen other demons below me reached that point too, where they feel the drive to eat, but then they have trouble digesting it for a long time, so they don’t wind up eating that many people.

Gotou: Then it would make sense to eat the most nutritionally dense parts first.

Kyougai: Or a Marechi.

Gotou: Yes, or a Marechi.

Kyougai: It was a great idea, wasn’t it?

Gotou: I cannot condone any consumption of humans as a good idea.

Kyougai: I knew it. I’m nothing. Go ahead, stomp all over everything I ever tried to accomplish.

Gotou: I think I’m going to move on to my next interviewee now. It looks like we’ve got… oh, would you look at this? Lower Moon One. Enmu, I believe.

Enmu: You can believe whatever you want. I’m happy to help.

Gotou: I don’t need any help, thanks. I’m curious, since you were one of the stronger demons out there, it seems you had a stronger capacity for consuming humans.

Enmu: I did, I was always careful and paced myself so the Demon Slayers wouldn’t notice me. I took my time. I liked to enjoy e-e-e-a-c-h one.

Gotou: Then you had tastes too? Like babies, or 16-year-old girls?

Enmu: I could season any human to my liking. They’re all very easy to prepare.

Gotou: I’m still trying to get quantitative data. Can you tell me at least a rough estimate of how many humans you consumed?

Enmu: I told this more precisely to that boy with the earrings back in Chapter 59, and I can tell you this too. At my best, I could had eaten over two-hundred people at once if I took my time.

Gotou: OH MY GAW----sorry, I dropped my pen. Two hundred, at once?

Enmu: Yes. If I had just. Had. A little. More. Time.

Gotou: Clearly there is a huge difference between what common demons are capable of and what the Twelve Moons are capable of.

Daki: Psh, those were all any random common people. That’s nothing to brag about.

Gotou: Excuse me, and you are?

Daki: Daki, Upper Moon Six. You want something really impressive, you talk to the Upper Moons.

Gotou: I’m sorry, I don’t see you on my list.

Daki: What! Your list is stupid. Look me in the eyes, I’m Upper Moon Six!

Gotou: Very well, then. What can you tell me about your diet, Miss Upper Moon Six?

Daki: That’s more like it. It’s true that digestion takes a while, and takes some effort. Even though we Upper Moons may have eaten hundreds of people in our lifetimes, it’s not as if we gorge ourselves. The clever ones among us save prey for later to eat when we feel ready for it.

Gotou: Food storage? How do you keep them fresh?

Daki: You leave them still alive, numbskull. Nobody wants to eat something cold, that’s gross.

Gotou: I see, so that’s why demons prefer to go after new kills instead of saving what they’ve already managed to kill. That also might explain why the demons on Mt. Fujikasane wouldn’t had eaten many humans, if they found long dead ones in edible.

Daki: You want to know the real secret to eating humans? You can eat what you find tastes good, sure. But to get stronger, you eat strong people. Like your Corp members, the ones besides chumps like you? Using all that Breath makes their muscles really lean and potent, it’s like they come offering themselves as protein bars for us.

Gotou: You make them sound like a fad diet…

Daki: The real secret is eating Pillars. Besides Marechi, they’re the strongest meals out there. Guess how many I’ve eaten?

Gotou: I don’t have the data to make an educated guess.

Daki: Then get educated! Look back at Chapter 88! I’ve eaten seven Pillars, and my brother has eaten fifteen!

Gotou: Your brother? Who is he, then, Upper Moon Five?

Daki: What? Ew. Gross. Gross! No way, ew!

Gotou: Hmm… eating Pillars, huh? Well, I can think of one Pillar who was…

Douma: Me too!

Gotou: Speak of the devil.

Douma: Actually, we Upper Moons can! And he's not Satan, that's not how this works. But I guess Muzan-sama’s curse doesn’t effect us now. Ask me anything you want!

Gotou: That Chapter 143 reference was such a rude entrance. I understand that Pillars are particularly nutritious—

Douma: Oh, please don’t misunderstand! I don’t even eat all the Pillars I’ve encountered. There was the one Flower Pillar who got away from me, but some of the boy pillars I just leave around. What’s really the key to consistent nutritional intake is women! It’s really unhealthy for a demon not to get enough women in their diet, that’s why even if you’re only looking for Marechi or Pillars, your metabolism is going to get thrown out of whack with sudden big meals. You grow a stronger metabolism with consistency, I believe!

Gotou: If I could stop you there, I had an image from Chapter 142 I preferred to focus on for this case study. I see you keep a wide collection of skulls, from victims whom I assume you ate.

Douma: Yes, they all stayed together inside me for eternity, but the room looked lonely without décor.

Gotou: It seems other demons usually go for nutritionally dense organs like hearts or livers, or easy to digest parts of the body, perhaps just blood sometimes. Eating the entire victim, bones and all, doesn’t seem to be the norm.

Douma: Bones are organs too, you know! That’s where blood is made, at its freshest. They do take more practice in learning to digest, and I had to find a way around not having to chew them, but the bone marrow is very, very good for you, so I make sure to consume it frequently. It may take more time and it causes some of my followers to panic more while they wait, though, that’s a bit of a downside. Oh, and I guess bones can make good storage for some sneaky poison. Even fingernails and hair follicles, who’d have thought?

Gotou: I don’t think hair would have much nutritional value in the first place. In all my years, I can never recall seeing a victim with their hair eaten.

Douma: Tsk, tsk! Clearly you haven’t done much metabolism research in advance. I was really impressed by how well Shinobu-chan understood how my digestion would work. Eating hair can do amazing things! Isn’t that right, Genya-kun?

Genya: ?????????

Gotou: Genya-kun!?

Genya: What am I doing here?

Gotou: I don’t think you’re supposed to be here. Isn’t there, you know, another side? The other direction?

Genya: What are you doing here? Did you die?

Gotou: I’m here doing research on demon metabolism and how they get stronger by consuming flesh.

Douma: What can you tell us about what up with having your friend feed you hair you found on the floor in Chapters 170-171, Genya-kun?

Genya: I’m not a demon!! Why the hell are you asking me?

Douma: ‘Hell’! Haha, good one!

Gotou: How do you even know about that? You were dead almost a full volume before that. And Genya’s different, he’s not a case study in how demons consuming humans works!

Douma: Are you certain?

Gotou: I hear the term get thrown around a lot that he’s ‘half-demon’, but—

Genya: I’m not a demon!!!

Gotou: --how would that even work? That would imply that one of his parents had to be a demon, and that—

Genya: What did you say about my mother!?!

Gotou: What? Nothing—

Genya: You say that to my face! You just trying saying something about my mother to my face! My mother never actually ate any flesh, you got that? She doesn’t deserve any of this!

Gotou: Genya, calm down, what—

Douma: I see we’re learning nothing about hair at all. Maybe Kokushibou-dono would provide better commentary on that?

Genya: Mom? Mo-o-o-o-m? Are you down here somewhere?

Gotou: And there he goes… wait, did you say Kokushibou? Upper Moon One? Oh no—he—he didn’t want me bothering him, he did not agree to another interview—

Douma: He-e-e-e-e-y, Kokushibou-dono! How did that work with Genya-kun eating your hair? Hair can be nutritious, right?

Kokushibou: You would gain… nothing… from consuming human hair… it’s not… flesh… you wasted your energy digesting it…

Douma: Aww, cutting it off them would had been sad, though.

Kokushibou: Demon hair… like demon weapons… is made… from our unique cells. It’s not dead… like human locks. Because that boy ate my live cells… it affected him…

Gotou: Yes, because he had a very, very unique metabolism, analyzed separately in this post. To be perfectly clear, Genya is completely human with cells that could temporarily transform, and he never consumed human flesh.

Kokushibou: He… vexes me…

Gotou: Um… while I’ve got you here, you’re one of the longest lived demons, clocking in at over three, maybe four centuries. Do you have any estimate of how many humans you’ve consumed?

Kokushibou: ……I see in… Chapter 100… that you are 23 years old?

Gotou: That is correct.

Kokushibou: Do you bother… remembering how many meals… you’ve had in a mere 23 years?

Gotou: I’m very sorry to have bothered you.

Douma: Kokushibou-dono’s ancient compared to the rest of us! But if I tried, I could probably recall. Let’s see. One, two, three, four…

Gotou: Is that? Your finger in your brain? Oh—ohhh—that is disgusting---I really don’t need to know numbers that badly, please stop. Is there maybe just some average you can give me for the Upper Moons instead? Like how many you’d eat in a month?

Douma: I wish I could, but a certain someone was an annoying outlier and didn’t like to eat so many humans. He made me worry all the time about his health.

Gotou: Really? Who might that be?

Douma: Hello-o-o-o-o-? Akaza-dono? Yoohoo! He spends all his time with his wife now and never answers when I call, it makes me so sad. Akaza-dono did eat humans, plenty of strong ones, but any time he wasn’t under orders from Muzan he liked to spend his time training instead of eating. Fanbook #1 says he did that way more than eating!

Gotou: Training? What sort of training?

Douma: Similar things to what your Corp members did, I imagine. Doing squats, throwing punches, things like that.

Gotou: Then demon muscles had similar function to human muscles, and could be strengthened through hard work? That’s surprising.

Douma: I know, right? I’ll let you in on a secret, I don’t think it was the physically repetition that did anything. I think it was his willpower getting honed and shaping his muscles.

Douma: I had to focus when I acquired new skills too, like breaking down poisons. A lot of sad, lowly demons, like that Hand Demon fellow? They focus as hard as they can in their desperation, or focus on some strong emotion or attachment or whatever, and they grow and develop because of it. Sometimes all their weak bodies can manage is an ugly mutation, but that’s proof enough of how much focus they had.

Gotou: That sheds a lot of light on Nezuko, actually.

Douma: Shed “light” on Nezuko-chan, hahaha! Sunlight! You humans are all so witty!

Gotou: Speaking of willpower, I’ve got one more interview I need to get to down here. Of all the demons I have records of, only Nezuko went her whole time as a demon without consuming any human flesh, although she did go through moments of berserk cravings for it. It’s possible that other demons were killed before they could consume anything, but typically they will consume flesh as soon as possible, which is why its common for their family and close relations to be among the first ones killed. Tomioka-san even mentioned in Chapter 1 that these close relations are especially nutritious.

Gotou: A demon about as old as Kokushibou, if not older, is a special case of her own. She was one of the only demons we know of to have escaped Kibutsuji’s curse and acted in dependently of him, including having created a demon of her own after two hundred years of trying. Most notably to our purposes, she trained herself to subsist on small amounts of blood, after having survived on corpses and wild animals for a time, according to the extensive Taisho Secrets at the end of Volume 21.

Tamayo: I explained this in more detail to Tanjirou-san in Chapter 15, but I went on to purchase blood from poor people, and extracted it in ways that wouldn’t be harmful to them. The one demon I created, Yushirou, could subsist on even less. I gained enough self-control that I could treat injured humans without feeling tempted into a berserk state.

Gotou: I was just talking to Douma about willpower making demons capable of accomplishing new physical developments. Was that how you were able to gain this state? I heard you even enjoy a cup of tea now and then.

Tamayo: Yes, I’ve taken a liking to it. I’d offer you some if not for this, you know, being hell. It’s nothing like the hell I went through when first resisting consuming humans, though. My demon body refused to take anything but fresh human flesh at first, but in the hardest moments, I always remembered a kind demon hunter who said he believed in me and my desire to defeat Kibutsuji Muzan. I believe Nezuko may have summoned her strength to resist the call of her demon cells in a similar way; she knew she had her brother there to rely on. Once she mastered something as remarkable as resisting the need for human flesh, it gave her the freedom to prioritize other developments.

Gotou: You spent centuries researching demon cells, especially how demons may break down and metabolize poisons.

Tamayo: I had not studied the metabolism of poisons until working with Shinobu-san. The medicine we concocted for Kibutsuji was only possible thanks to her work, and I couldn’t had worked with many of those wisteria-based substances on my own. I feel I was only there to fill in the gaps of her brilliant understanding.

Gotou: You’re very humble. I would pass along my thanks and compliments to Shinobu-sama too, but I’m pretty sure she’s not down here. On that note, did Genya-kun go back home?

Tamayo: He did after a nice reunion with his mother just now, it was very sweet. Shizu-san and I get along well, after all, we both carry similar guilt.

Gotou: Wait, was his mother a demon? That means Wind-sama’s mother was too? Wait?? What??

Tamayo: The worst hell I went through, or that any demon has gone through, is to realize what you’ve eaten after the hunger-driven madness clears. Being similar to your own cells, they’re easy on a volatile new anatomy to break down and digest. That’s why many demons may have driven themselves to forget everything all over again, or to twist their personalities to justify the horror, saying that because they ate the hearts of their loved ones and because demon flesh can live forever, then they never truly killed them. The truth always remained untwisted for me, and to this day, it torments me more than anything in this underworld can try.

Gotou: …

Tamayo: You should wake up now, Gotou. You’ve been through a lot; the nightmares must be taxing on your health. Please remember to eat well.

#kny fandom theories and meta #too many characters to tag #I wrote this draft early last week and only this morning had time to edit it but it took foreeeevvvverrr on my slow computer #now off to work #eat well everybody #I'm off to work #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer

203 notes · View notes

lazzledazzler · 3 years

Text

Lazzle's Rune Factory 5 Review

Alright so here are my thoughts and experiences with RF5! This is a big boy so buckle in earthmates...

Obviously this review will contain spoilers, read at your own risk.

Initial thoughts upon playing...

Great opening! I enjoyed the jazz music~ I did feel like it leaned a bit more towards the male player though. It definitely feels like a rune factory game. It's familiar, and controls are easy to get accustomed to for the most part. The mold is there and rf5 doesn't stray too far from its predecessors which is comforting for veterans. That being said, I'm not going to pull any punches and will critique this game harshly. Keep in mind as updates for the game are released not all things discussed in this review will be as relevant overtime!

Let's hear some thoughts on...

The story/plot. The plot is enjoyable overall. I'm not crazy about the whole Seed organization thing but it was a neat idea. They address the Sechs Territory and it is confirmed that the game takes place some decades after RF4. But by the end of it, I didn't feel like I really accomplished anything because it felt like I barely did anything really. Also they left a lot of stuff unanswered. I'm not even sure I understood the message they were sending, if they were trying to send a message at all. The main story is too short, and it doesn't involve enough of the townsfolk. You're basically doing everything yourself in secret the whole time and the townsfolk barely know what's actually going on. Out of the love interests, Lucas plays the largest part in the story, followed by Priscilla and Scarlett. The story feels targeted at male audiences--at least that's how I felt. You, the player, have a larger role in the game, much like in RF3 and I was glad to see this. As of right now there are only two arcs. Praying for DLC 3rd arc...!

Protagonists. The latest protagonists to join the crew of Earthmates are...decent. Their designs are nothing special unfortunately, though I appreciate Alice's more than Ares's. Appearance-wise they lack personality and creativity. Personality wise I am pleasantly surprised with how sociable they are. They're not exactly quick witted and sassy like Lest/Frey were in rf4, or as endearing as Micah in rf3, but they have a certain realness to them that makes their reactions to things believable. I'm certain Xseed will see to making them a bit more sarcastic in their localizing efforts, so let's all look forward to that. Overall though, while I appreciate their mannerisms, they don't really measure up to all the previous amnesiacs we've grown to love over the decades.

Characters. Overall I enjoy all the characters introduced in Rune Factory 5! I feel like there is someone for everyone in this game on some level. The voice acting was pretty good for every character. The designs are very much Rune factory. Like OG runefa, compared to rf4 ( 4 kind of strayed from their usual style) which I like. Characters still have their own signature quirks that you find endearing. Although I would have liked to see more variety? Like we've had mermaids, univir, half monsters, vampires, etc in previous titles but rf5 only gives us the usual (half) elf, dwarf, and then a succubus (physically she doesn't have unique features aside from the ears and heart eyes), and some were-people. I was hoping for something more unique to really give that classic runefa vibe.

Dungeons/Battles. I'm pretty split on this one. On the one hand, the dungeons have more depth due to the 3D aspects. They've included more contraptions that are very fun to see even if they aren't executed that well. So I'm grateful for that. On the other hand, the dungeons are insanely short imo. It doesn't take long at all to get to the boss. The puzzles are also pretty subpar and few compared to RF4. Fighting monsters is similar to the other games. You can lock on now but I only use it when I'm trying to use my Seed Circle. The lock on feature is actually counter-intuitive and makes it harder to dodge. Weapon mechanics have shifted a bit. There’s a feature that makes you invincible to damage if you time the R button dash correctly. Axes and Hammers are significantly slower than in older games? Like. I thought I was in slow motion it was so slow. Lances are also harder to use as well? I'm questioning my sanity here. I don't know if it's a bug or intentional either.

Farming. Not much has changed from previous games mechanics wise. They added new types of special crops which is neat. The camera view changes to overhead when you go near your fields though, and it can make you dizzy/uncomfortable. It actually makes it a bit difficult to see at times so I wish there was a way to adjust the angle. If you are tilling corn or dried weeds to improve the soil, you need to place them separately if you don't want to use the entire stack. Otherwise, it will till the entire stack on the land if you place them all down at once. The flower shop is unlocked late in the story. Weird thing to do considering you need flowers to make medicine. Not to mention the fact that you wont have access to the fertilizer that increases defense against typhoons? During typhoon season? Thinking emoji...

The town. I have to say Rigbarth's design is poor compared to Sharance, Selphia, etc. It's too big and it takes too long to get around. Everything is too spaced out and there aren't enough warp points to make it easier on players. I don't want to walk an entire mile up a hill to talk to one person and then walk all the way down to the beach to speak to another. It doesn’t really feel like a ‘town’.

OST/BGM. Music was good, though nothing really stood out to me where I'd go "damn this slaps" or something. I think they might've had some old soundtracks from rf2 or something because it felt really nostalgic at times.

We need an exterminator. (Bugs Bugs Bugs)

Marvelous, I don't know how to tell you this buuut...your customers are NOT your testers. When you release a game, you need to make sure it's not littered with glitches because customers don't enjoy dealing with them and will drop the game!

Here are some of the types of glitches I encountered:

Crashing. Game would randomly crash or freeze and close at any moment. Sooooo frustrating! Sometimes you get lucky with the autosave feature, but the autosave only activates every morning at 6am in your room and then when you warp to a dungeon level/floor. So when you're in the middle of your daily tasks in town and it crashes, you have to start all over. Marveloussss no one enjoys losing their progress in a game I promise you that much.

Lag. The dialogue bar is seriously slow, especially after loading your file. Crafting/Cooking screen lags. When you press the Y button to skip through dialogue it lags like hell. Pretty much after every time you load the game will lag, the audio will lag if you're in a battle, everything is just. so. slow.

Repeating dialogue. So if you close your game entirely (or if it crashes) naturally you'll reload your file to continue where you left off. There's a bug that will cause all NPCs to repeat the last dialogue that occurred from whatever plot related thing you did last. So for example, if the last thing you did in the story was unlock Ludmilla, everyone in town will naturally have some dialogue about her. But even after seeing all this dialogue and even saving, if the game is closed and reloaded you'll have to read all that dialogue again from townsfolk. It got really annoying after a while.

Monster taming. One time I tamed a monster but once I named it and hit 'ok' the monster never showed up in my barns? Just. gone. Okaaaay then...? Additionally, I expanded one of my monster barns but all of the monsters I tamed wouldn't appear in the added room. You get 4 monsters for each room but the monsters I tamed would show up in the original room. Meaning I had like 7 monsters in one room! I tried to bring them into the newly added room but they would just warp back to the other room. Sad.

Pond Glitch. I fished in the pond located in Sasayaki Forest and left the fish I caught but didn't want laying around the water's edge. If you leave fish around the pond's edge and go to sleep, the next morning you will be teleported to the pond and trigger the fairy dialogue as if you had thrown all of the fish into the pond??? So the dialogue of her telling you she wants 'X item, not this!' will trigger over and over for all of the fish you left at the water's edge. RIP.

Party member Bug. I had Martin in my party and I made him leave. Then when I went into my monster barns to get a monster pal to join me instead it showed me Martin's portrait???? Also I've encountered a bug where I can no longer ask anyone to join my party for some unknown reason. The R &L button prompt was just gone when I reloaded.

Errors. When cooking or crafting, the dialogue box shows up sometimes...

Typos. Random average typo here and there. Not a real biggie but there is one instance where the heroine will use the japanese male pronoun "boku" instead of "watashi" which really convinced me that this game was completely intended for men lol.

Let's talk about Pros

The good stuff. The stuff that makes you all warm and fuzzy inside.

Plot Advancing. Now I'm gonna put this as a pro because I'm certain the average player will enjoy this even though I do not. There are now markers on the map to show you where to go to advance the plot. This is all well and dandy, but it also made the story less appealing for me because you don't need to go around town and speak to residents for clues or assistance to advance anything in the story.

3D Graphics The 3D models are all amazing. The interior designs of the houses/buildings are also incredibly detailed and realistic.

Collecting items. Now there's a feature that will allow you to collect items into your inventory just by walking over them. This is pretty neat and welcome for the most part. Once the item is sparkling, you can walk over it and it'll go into your rucksack automatically. This also makes lumbering and mining go much faster. Yay!

The miraculous L pocket. Now you can customize the categories that appear in your L pocket by going to the rucksack tab in the menu. This is a super neat feature that makes things easier on players who want to manage their items in a format that suits them.

Weapon/Tool Toggling. You can now toggle between your equipped weapon and tool by pressing the left or right buttons on the trackpad.

Collecting lumber/material stone. Oh lord this is probably the most welcome improvement moving forward from the previous game. You can now put all of the lumber and material stone from your inventory into its storage at once. This also applies to fodder for tamed monsters. Well done Hakama.

Autosave. This feature is a welcome addition to the series. The game will save your data every morning and every time you enter a dungeon. Autosave has really saved my ass a few times when I made a huge error in judgement so I'm incredibly grateful for this feature. And it doesn't save over your actual save file--there's a separate autosave file at the very top. So if you messed up something but already saved on your main file, you can still salvage your mistake by reloading the autosave! I just wish it activated a bit more often sometimes.

Warping. Now we can warp to each level in a dungeon as well as certain places on the map in town. It's pretty convenient for the most part.

Increased party members. Now you can have up to 3 members in your party! Hooray! Party members act more intelligently than in older games. Scarlett can use the Seed circle to assist you in fights. I think she also tosses healing potions at you occasionally. So far, no one has tossed a dish at me if I haven't eaten like Kiel and Clorica did in rf4. But I have been hit by a failed dish (from reinhardt?) and a healing potion (from scarlett). Scarlett, Priscilla, and Reinhardt are the most helpful when dungeon crawling in my experience. Some of them however, (looking at you Doug) don't shut the hell up with their one line of dialogue they have and repeat it constantly.

Seed Circle. This neat feature allows you to capture monsters. By charging it and releasing you can capture monsters for the bounty system or add them to your party temporarily. If you throw it without charging it, you can stun monsters in place momentarily or grab things from far away. When stunning monsters, it can also give you the monster's drop item occasionally. Unfortunately it uses a lot of RP so it can be difficult at times.

Combo attacks. This is a neat feature that I appreciate and use often for boss fights. They do some serious damage so it's good to save them for the bosses. The actual cutscenes aren't that impressive, and feel kind of subpar when you get down to it but I think it's a start in the right direction.

Farm Dragons. I'm listing this as a pro although I really just see it as a new feature. Farm dragons have fields on their backs that you can place monster barns on and farm on. Giving them certain crystals will give your fields boosts in certain criteria, like length of growth, soil quality, you get it. I personally don't use the crystals because I couldn't give a shit lmao I have men and women to woo here. But if you're into this kinda thing then it's a pro.

Storage. When opening your storage box, fridge, etc. you can actually hit the R & L buttons to switch between ALL of your other storages. Looooove thissss. Great addition. So much faster to put items away in their respective places.

Crafting/Forging. Now we can also use the R & L buttons to alternate between the different weapon types/accessory/gear types instead of having to exit the menu and going back in each time you want to make something different.

Cooking. More recipes have been added. Yay!

Days are longer now. More time to get shit doneeeee ayyyy

Fishing. They've added many more fish to the game! Now the player will shout something when you get a bite, making it easier for you to hit B at the right moment. Nice. Also if you fail or press B too early, the fish doesn't vanish most of the time. Also nice. There is now a feature to fish with another person's assistance. Once a day you can investigate the sign near the fishing station and someone might offer to lend you a hand. Press the B button at the right moments on the slider and you can get a rare fish that can't be caught normally.

Monsters. New types of monsters! Love the designs. Even the monsters that are the same but just have different skins are really neat. They look great in the 3D format too. You can even ride with up to two people on certain monsters! Some bosses had awesome designs while others...were bad.

New Types of Furniture. The carpenter store has a wide arrange of furniture you can buy for your home. It also has wallpapers and stuff which is really neat. Though unfortunately you can't even sit on some of the furniture so that's a shame.

Events. Now there is a system where events are triggered by approaching an icon on the map. This is probably an improvement to RF4's randomized system, though personally I found it annoying because it meant that I had to see the events before I could just enter a building normally. Sometimes I just wanted to get shit done and not have to read through walls of text for someone's love event when I just want to buy something.

Voiced Lines. The protagonist seems to have more voiced lines, as do other characters. Good!

Let's talk about Cons

Not including glitches. Oh boy. So many cons. Where do I start?

Dialogue. Probably the most notable con in the entire game. The dialogue is drastically minimal in comparison to previous games, especially rf4. There is probably a quarter of the amount of dialogue compared to rf4's insane amount of content if not less. Townsfolk repeat themselves. Often. Too often. Am I playing Harvest Moon? Originally I thought it was because the dialogue is randomized, but I think it's actually because more dialogue is unlocked as you raise townspeople's FP. Despite this, there's no linear build up where you start off as acquaintances and eventually become very close like in rf4 because of how sporadic the LP/FP is. Townsfolk don't even talk to each other. One of the greatest perks about runefa is the conversations townsfolk can have with one another. Residents randomly gathering in small groups to talk about anything. Previously you could add someone to your party and sometimes a dialogue will occur if you speak to the right person at the right time with that person in your party. This is nonexistent now. The only time they do this in rf5 is during the festivals. But, it will only trigger if you have unlocked all the characters in each marriageable lineup and they can't be in your party. The residents will talk about one another but that's pretty much it outside of town events. They got rid of all the minor dialogue that occurs too. Trying to sleep in someone's bed while they're right there? They wont comment. Inspecting objects in stores while the shopkeeper is present? Wont say anything. Take a character with you to a dungeon/boss fight? Their lips are sealed. Where's my sense of community? :(

FP/LP This ties into the dialogue issue. The rate at which LP/FP increases is sporadic as hell. You can go from 1FP/LP to 4FP/LP just by giving a gift sometimes. I wouldn't even speak to people and their affinity increased by like triple for no reason. Then it increases by like 2% for the longest time. Argh!!!

Graphics. I don't consider myself very picky when it comes to graphics. I don't really mind that the foliage and scenery are at the level of a ps2 game at best. I tried playing on my television initially, but the lag and camera operability was too much so I fully switched (haha puns) to handheld. One thing that sucked is that I literally cannot tell the difference between medicinal herbs, antidote grasses, and green grasses without the captions because the graphics are so indistinguishable. So when you're trying to pick up multiples of those items by holding the A button, you're just randomly walking over anything green in the hopes that you'll get the right ones...

Lack of Sound Effects. Something I noticed is they got rid of the sound effects that will play when you complete a puzzle or add someone to your party. When you try to brush a monster there's no sound for the '♪' they make when you successfully brush them. So it was hard for me to tell if I had actually brushed them or not. I was a bit saddened by the lack of cute sounds.

Too much free range. From the very beginning of the game, you're allowed to go pretty much wherever you want when leaving town. It was too easy to stumble into high enemy level territory without knowing, so when I was like level 5 so I got KO'd immediately.

Artwork. The portraits seem to be lower in quality somehow. Runefa has always had shitty portrait art imo but this time it's even worse. Many character's eyes looked fucked up. Though the 3D models are insanely good for mostly every character except Terry. Terry's 3D model looks Terryfying and I prefer his portrait.

Festivals. They've added some new festivals. Some I enjoy. Some not so much. They changed the format of the eating contest. It's horrible. Good luck with that one.

L pocket + R button? They got rid of the feature that lets you skip to the other end of your items when opening the L pocket by pressing R button. I really liked that feature because it made it faster to reach my items so I was bummed that they got rid of it.

Gotta go fast. Now when you speak to someone, it doesn't 'stop time' as you might say it did in previous games. So people are still moving about as you speak to someone, making it harder to catch up to people! Annoying!!!

Catch and release? Not in my farming simulator! Say goodbye to being able to toss a fish you caught back into the water. In fact, say goodbye to tossing anything you don't want anymore into the water. Now you just have an army of fish flopping on the ground around you. And with the auto pick up feature, they're probably going to end up in your inventory anyways once you try to move. There are still certain ponds with fairies that you can toss stuff into, but you'll have to deal with the fairy harping at you for giving her something she doesn't want.

Shop Hours. Oh god. The shop owners don't even open their stores at the correct hours? It says open at 9am. If you speak to them they won't open their store until like 9:07??? But Priscilla and Lucy will show up to work their part-time jobs at around 8:30am and you can buy stuff through them before 9am. So the actual shop owners (for the bread shop and general store) are pointless usually. Additionally, if the store is empty (but open) you can no longer add a shopkeeper into your party and then enter their store with them to buy things from them. Why. Just why. When you want to buy something that only a specific person sells (Only Hina sells fish, only Heinz sells misc items) you have to wait for them to finally decide to work in their own store. Wonderful.

Monster Item drops. Maybe I'm crazy but the monster drops are seriously a lot harder to get than in previous games. Especially boss drops. It's almost impossible to get the rare drops now. I don't even want to try anymore. And as far as I know, the only place to buy monster items is through Heinz, but his items are actually misc. items, not specifically monster drops. So you'll be lucky to check his store (whenever tf he decides to actually work) for any monster items you might want instead of farming for the drops. Sighs.

Difficulty. This game is too easy. There is little to no challenge whatsoever. I had to increase the difficulty setting to hard mode and it was still too easy. I beat it at level 139, never once did I need to grind or level. In fact, your character levels up way too quickly for the pace of the story. I had zero trouble with any of the bosses and even the final boss was a breeze. Quite sad. Though because I am not new to the franchise, it's likely that newcomers would have some trouble in the later parts of the story.

Fishing cons. Idk how you fck up fishing but they sure did. You have to stand further back now because the pole is so long that you'll miss the fish you're aiming for. In fact, it's seriously hard to aim period. You'll end up recasting more often than not. Fish come in the various sizes but they don't seem to have the darker or faded characteristics that can indicate whether it's a rare fish or not. The graphics make it hard to tell. The pros that i've already mentioned are welcomed but it doesn't negate the fact that I do not enjoy fishing like I did in previous games.

Mining/Lumbering Cons. You can no longer strike three times consecutively when mining/lumbering. This sucks lol. Even when you upgrade your axe or hammer, powering up the tool does nothing for getting wood and material stone--it only expands the area of your strike. So it takes longer to get wood/stone from stumps and rocks now since you have to strike the full 9 times but it's not too bad. It's also harder to aim now as well so that's also unfortunate.

Seasonal Fields? Kiss them goodbye! That's right, there are no seasonal fields in rf5 because devs are insane! You instead have the farm dragons that seem to look seasonal based on the fact that they are designed after elements like earth, water, and fire. But no, these dragons are simply extra fields for you to use. Here's a spoiler: you're not going to use those fields. You're just not. They're kinda useless unless you're obsessed with farming. Now you have to grow your crops out of season like the sad farmer that you are.

Farming cons. Seeds no longer tell you how long it takes to grow the crop. Why. As of June 29th, they fixed this with an update. But I still had to play the whole game without it so fuck you marvelous. The joystick is really sensitive? So when you're trying to use a fertilizer or something on your field you're likely to place it on the wrong 4x4 tile, wasting your fertilizer. So it’s best to hold down the R button when farming. Also the crops look uglie as hell.

Sleeping and warping cutscenes. Just like in rf4 there's a cutscene when you go to sleep that can be skipped easily by pressing A. In rf5, there's a cutscene to sleep and a cutscene when waking up. It takes a bit more than a second to skip these scenes so it gets annoying after a while. Warping is this new feature that replaces our beloved escape spell. Overall I appreciate the feature but I hate it for two reasons. One: there's an annoying ass cutscene for it each time you use it that could be much shorter. And Two: townsfolk now use warp even when inside the town. In previous games, someone exiting your party in town would just manually run to wherever they need to be. So you could easily chase after them if you need to talk to them or give them something. Now, party members use warp regardless of where you are at the time. So say you have someone at 7 hearts and you want to try confessing to them. You would have them join your party, save your game, and then have them leave your party and immediately speak to them and confess before they can run off. If it doesn't work you reload until it does. In RF5 this wouldn't work anymore because they will warp. Now you would have to save, run around town trying to find this person and hope they accept the confession. Otherwise you'll have to play hide and seek again because reloading your file will randomize the resident's locations (if they are not working in a shop)!!!! I often just waited until a festival day because then they will be at the plaza for most of the day and it has a warp point there.

Crafting/Forging/Cooking. They've removed the feature where you can press Y on the ingredients in the menu to add more of that particular item. I miss this feature :'(

Lacks incentive. There is no trophy room from my knowledge. The final dungeon that is meant to be like the sharance maze/rune prana isn't that hard to beat for skilled players and is only 20 floors. After you beat the main story and this dungeon there's not much else to do really.

Request Board. Unlike in rf4, you need to make sure you have accepted requests before you complete them or else it will not count. Previously, you could complete all sorts of tasks and Eliza would still recognize your work even if you accept their request after the fact. ie, shipping goods, harvesting crops, etc. So make sure you don't harvest your special crops before accepting the request it's for!

Return of the "Loli" Dragons... Yeah you read that right. We got more dragons in children's(???) bodies with skimpy clothes. I don't know anymore????¿¿¿

Can't marry the Milfs or Dilfs. Tragic.

Still no homo. Grow up Marvelous.

Reverse Proposal? Reverse Uno card-- Laid low by the patriarchy. You now have to buy the double bed and craft an engagement ring to propose to your man if you're playing as Alice. Marvelous this isn't what we meant when we said we wanted equal rightsssssss This can be seen as a pro if you're a softhearted babey who doesn't like rejecting bachelors' proposals because you feel bad :'( But this is a con for me because I don't want to spend money and materials on a double bed dammit!!!

Misc. Still can't stack dishes or fish. There's no green elemental fairy???All the other elemental ones are there except the green one? why??? Still can't tame the giant Wooly. Some bosses that have insanely awesome designs cannot be tamed and makes me wanna eat glass.

Let's talk about Love~

Relationships. We want them. And half of us only play these games for them. I've only played as the female heroine so far but I'll be updating this review as soon as I finish with the bachelorettes as the male hero.

Confessions

As usual, we must raise the love points of our beloved to 7 hearts before we can attempt to date them. However unlike in rf4, if you fail at a confession once, you will need to raise the LP up an entire level before you can try again with any chance of success. It's imperative you save before attempting a confession now.

Love Events

Each love interest has two love events that must be seen before you can date them. They're reminiscent of older game's style but I felt they could have been a biiiit more interactive or so? Or involved the town a bit more for some of them.

Dating

Once you get your honey to be your bf/gf, you get to choose the nicknames as usual. Then you can go on dates. The first three (non-festival) dates are actually events. You need to see all three events to get married.

Marriage Event

The final event you need to clear before you can marry your sweetie. In my honest opinion, so far for the boys, these events were rather disappointing. They lacked the drama and angst that sort of 'test' the love between the two when compared to rf4. Also this is a huge con for me personally and a minor spoiler but there are no special cutscenes at the end of the marriage event like in rf4. Instead, the cutscene takes place during your actual wedding. I was saddened by this because it took away the depth from the marriage events and the actual character? As it is just a cut and paste type of thing instead of an original cutscene for each person. They lack individualism this way. Also it kinda felt like a way for devs to avoid gay relationships and cut corners :^/....sus.

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes...

Children!!!!!! This is actually one of the coolest additions in the game. Just like in rf3, you can have up to 3 children again! Your first child will resemble you, and you will have the option to choose its gender as well as its personality. There are 6 different children, (3 boys and 3 girls), all with different hairstyles, mannerisms, and seiyuus. Your answers will determine which child you get. A year after your first child is born, you will get the option to have a second child. You'll end up with twins, both resembling your partner. You won't get to choose the genders (it will be a boy and girl) but you will get to choose the personalities once more. The children all have canon names too and each kid is incredibly cute. And of course, you're still able to take your kid with you in your party~ ...Though you can only take one kid with you at a time.

So is RF5 good?

Yeah it's a fun game! My theory is that Marvelous forced the devs to release the game earlier than they were ready for, and that's why it's so lacking. But that doesn't mean it's not worth playing! I'd rate it 3.5/5 stars hehe. Not nearly as good as RF4 (full stop 5/5), or RF3 (4/5) but enjoyable nonetheless. I wouldn't recommend it as a first game to play from the series for newcomers though, I feel it's best for vets who can overlook all the cons thanks to loyalty and nostalgia. By the time it’s released in the West, the bugs should all be dealt with too.

So! Definitely buy this game! We want the series to continue and we want RF6 to be better than this--and hopefully Marvelous will make sure of that next time. If you're not a picky person I think you'll enjoy rf5 a lot. If you're like me and have high standards then, well, still pick it up and let it run its course. Then dust off rf4sp and cleanse your gaming palette >;^)

#rune factory 5 #rf5 spoilers #rune factory #rf5 #spoilers #review #rune factory 5 spoilers

90 notes · View notes

bookwyrminspiration · 3 years

Note

hello! just curious, how do you plot out your stories? (for example, what have you done to plan out the wings au? do you have it all in your head? do you plan it out on paper or in a doc specifically for it? do you just go with the flow? sorry if this is a lot of questions lol i'm just trying to convey my point-)

hello, synonym!! lovely to see you again! I'd love to share my process!

as I explain my personal methods (again, personal, just how I do things!), I'll use the wings au as an example because i know you've read it and it'll just be easier over all. but essentially, yes to all of the above, just with different parts of the story!

my progression is: chaotic doc, background (as needed), basic written plot, expansion on the plot, any other details needed, and then just write things! but don't worry, I'll provide more detail, i say as if i'm capable of being concise

(putting below a readmore for simplicity)

chaotic doc: so, the very first thing I do when i have a story is open up a doc, and write down everything i know about it in little bullet points and rambling sentences, just basic information with no organization. the organizing can come later, right now I just want to get as much of what's in my head onto the paper as possible.

I type out the basic premise of the story or the few things I know about how I want it to go, the things I know I want to remember later, things I'd need to think about to set it up, etc. for the wings au, this was details like everyone's wings (things to remember later), how they got those wings and a sentence or two about what the world was like now (things I needed to think about to set it up), a little blurb about where the story would start. this is less writing details about the story, and more noting down the details I want to figure out later in the expansion. i find it works best to type this out because i'm a much faster typer than I am at physical writing, which allows me to follow the flow of my thoughts a lot better and go back and change things.

background: background prepares me for the next step, but the amount of effort I put into this section depends on how complex my story is. it basically means write down (we've moved to pencil and paper now, but this could be digital too if you prefer) anything you need to know in order to set up the rest of your story. what do you need to know in order to tell the story you need to and to get you where you want to be? for the wings au, the background was that the world had been overrun with monsters and everyone was living underground now. the neverseen had been defeated, or so they thought, coming back later. all these things that essentially prepared me to get to the plot. it told me where the story was happening and the emotional/physical environment everything else would happen under. if you have a more worldbuilding heavy world, this step might be a little more complex, or if there's something very specific with the characters you need as context beforehand.

sometimes the readers will be aware of pieces of the background, and it's even necessary for them to know--for example, you all knowing the elven world is in the middle of a monster apocalypse and living underground; if you didn't know, the rest of the story wouldn't make any sense. but there may be things you write down that are just for you to know, personal notes. for example, I have notes written about how the monsters came to be, more specifically, that you all haven't been made aware of and may never be. planning this out is for you, so if there's something you want to remind yourself to keep in mind while writing, this could be a good place. but now that we know the world we're writing in, we can move on

basic plot: for me, I struggle to figure out where to take a story, and if I don't have the basic concept laid out before I start writing, I ended up with really weird stories that completely deviate from what i wanted (I say this from experience). so I break it down into the bare essentials. literally as basic as I can be. there are five crucial parts of a plot: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. just those five. for each of those, i write--writing, because it takes more time (allows me to think) and feels more organized to me, but you can do it differently--just the general idea I have for each section. just as few words as possible. detail comes later. for the wings au I literally wrote "they get wings" for rising action. having read the wings au, you know just how simplified that is.

one things that might help is consider how you would explain this idea to someone in one or two sentences. you just want to make sure you have a beginning, middle, end, and the transition between them. from there you've got the skeleton of your story, and everything else can fit itself into this idea.

expansion: now that you have the skeleton, it's time to fill in some of the more essential anatomy. this is where you add the specifics. for me, i write this physically in bullet points in a journal of some kind. I take the first section, and write down how the story is going to start. where am I going to begin this journey. for the wings au I wrote "beginning: sneaking into breeding facility to destroy monsters. problem: caught/monster breaks loose." if you remember this is essentially the events of the first chapter but in two sentences. I'm giving enough detail that I know what I'm going to write, but not so much it's going to be stifling to follow my exact notes when I actually get to writing. this will be different for different people, so you may want more or less detail than I provided, I'm just giving an example of how I did it.

I continue this for the rest of the plot, but that doesn't mean every single little detail that will ever happen is planned out. I'm not patient enough to be super thorough with every little thing, so I go long enough until I have a solid understanding of what I'm going to start with when I'm writing, or just until I'm bored and can't deal with planning anymore. for me, that meant I was more detailed when planning from the mission in the facility to them getting to the abandoned gnomish village, as those would be some of the first things I would be writing about. after that, I got more vague and just touched on some of the key part of each of those five sections. I take those two/three words and turn them into two/three bullet points. I also didn't want to be too specific with the later details, because I knew i'd be influenced by things as I wrote and would be inspired to fill that out.

any other details: this is kind of any afterthoughts you might have or details you need to keep i mind that aren't necessarily plot. you may have a lot of these, or you may have none. for me, this was where I wrote down what kinds of wings and other animalistic traits each of the characters had (yes, I wrote them down again). it's not strictly plot, but it does affect the rest of the story. this is also where I write anything I forgot to when going through the first time, and then i can draw a little arrow pointing towards where it fits in to the rest of the story or is relevant (which is part of why I like the writing aspect, but this is entirely achievable on a doc). another example from the au is me writing "domestic" to the side and pointing it back to my notes about the gnomish village, because while it wasn't essential to moving the plot forward, i wanted to touch on some aspects of domestic live with the ten of them while they were there.

just write things: now that you have all this planning done (good job, you!) you can get into the writing aspect. you've already decided your beginning and know where you want to go, so this is the part where you just starting putting words on the page. it can be pretty daunting to just look at a blank page, so if you'd like, start a paragraph in. skip the first paragraph and just start in the middle of something else--you can add back what's missing later. I personally note things that I want to come back to inside [brackets like this], and that can be words, sentences, entire paragraphs. i use the square ones specifically because I don't use them in my writing unlike (these parentheses), and then I can search the document for them all at once and see all the places I need to go back.

this is also where the "just in my head" and "make it up as I go" part comes into place. you have a pretty good idea of what you're doing, but you're going to have ideas as you write, so sometimes you just follow the flow of your brain and write things you could've never even planned for. and if you're interacting with others as you're going (like I'm talking about theories with you all while writing future chapters) then you may be inspired by them to add things to the story. originally, I wasn't going to even have any messages from Bronte or Oralie, but now because I saw what some of the people reading it were picking up on, I realized the potential there and added them in on a whim

and sometimes when you get stuck, the best way to get yourself out of that is to just add something random, which can spiral off and affect the rest of the story. I've said it before, but the dragons were not planned. I'd actually seen a piece of writing advice months ago that if you're stuck, change the weather. so I was stuck and made a sudden rainstorm, but then I needed an explanation as to how things got so wet so fast because I'd mentioned clear skies earlier. so in my attempt to explain it, dragons came to exist. writing is a process, so don't limit yourself to everything you've written. you'll be inspired along the way, so try to take it in stride.

one final note: as much as you plan, this is not going to be a definite map for how the story will go. maybe something makes sense as you're planning it out, but when you get to actually writing it makes no sense as all and you need to change things. that's fine! this kind of a plan is just to get you prepared and keep you afloat amongst this ocean of words trapped in your head that you want to transcribe. if something isn't working, change it! in my original written plan for the wings au they weren't going to run away for a few weeks, instead sneaking out for an hour or two at a time over those few weeks because they couldn't stand being underground anymore, until Linh was actually the first one to make contact with a creature and realize it didn't immediately want to kill her. but because she's not the narrator of this story, I couldn't write it the way i wanted, so I gave that to sophie in the tree.

this is just my approach to my more complicated stories! for some of the really quick ones, I just open a doc and start going. this kind of thinking keeps me organized so that I'm doing the idea the most justice. but just because it works for me doesn't mean it'll work for everyone. if it does work for you, great! but if there are parts you need to modify for yourself, you are more than encouraged to do so. personally, if I could only chose one part of this process to rely on, it would be the basic plot. that's the key to everything for me, but for others it might be something different.

I hope this helps with whatever it is you're writing!! I wish you luck and look forward to seeing whatever it is (should you chose to share it, no pressure)!! if you'd like more of my process on how I write it consistently and update on a schedule, I'd be more than happy to talk about that too!

#all of this took up about three pages in a 4.25 by 8.25 dotted journal #but I have very small handwriting so keep that in mind #also you might just be more/less detailed then i am!#this is just the framework I use #so use it if it helps!#this is also usually spread out over multiple days so I can think about the idea in between #and also because i don't want to do this much work all at once #I get distracted #but i did have a very specific approach when writing the wings au #so I'm very excited to get to talk about it!#i have written several other stories without planning and they always end up veering off into random things #like 'what happened. to the original plot. of the movie??' vibes #ah seli (an oc whose name I might change yet again)...I did you so dirty...#kotlc wings au #writing #writing advice #story planning #quil's queries #synonymroll648 #writing tips

25 notes · View notes

quenchiestcactusjuice99 · 2 years

Note

8 22 26 <33

8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go?

Oooh, tough choice tbh. My first thought was that it would be tough to do without action, because I like to pepper action into the dialogue so it's not just a page of speaking. But I've been reading more published novels lately and it's helping me realize that I don't actually have to do that.

And then I remembered that I've been really wanting to try to tell a story like it's been transcribed from audio recordings, so.... I'd probably pick without action! And the story would be something similar to a post-apocalyptic version of The Martian, where a survivor is recording audio logs of daily activities and stuff. I think it'd be cool!

22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe to me your organization method, if it exists. What tools do you use? Notebooks? Binders? Apps? The Cloud?

Lmaooo I am... not very organized. I used to be!! I used to sort all my notebooks by color and binding, which doesn't sound very helpful, but it's how my brain categorized them. I'd think, 'what notebook is that in?' And my brain would go, 'a yellow spiral-bound one'. So it worked for a while. But then my memory started to get worse and I'd get the colors mixed up, so I just shoved them all into a bookshelf and tried to move all the stories I wanted to keep onto Google Docs aksgfkag.

But there's still an element of 'which account is x story on' because i have like, three or four of them lol. Much easier than 40 notebooks tho.

As for how I write... if I'm starting something new, I write the first draft on my Notes app because it's like I'm giving myself permission to make it silly. Very helpful for writer's block. If it's a WIP, it depends on how I feel about it. If the words are absolutely flooding out, I use Google Docs, because I can type faster. If the words are slow going, I use one of my many notebooks, because it gives me more time to think when it takes longer to get my thoughts down.

26. How do you get into your character's head? How do you get out? Do you ever regret going in there in the first place?

Excellent question! I don't usually have difficulty getting into a character's headspace because of how my brain already works. I am constantly imagining scenarios and running through future conversations that might happen so I have sort of a script to follow, or going through old ones to make sure I didn't say anything weird or that could be misconstrued in some way (I think it's an anxiety thing). So I find it very easy to nudge my thoughts from trying to guess what other people are thinking to what my characters are thinking. Because of that, it's also pretty easy to get out.

Unfortunately, I am a big fan of very messed-up characters like Hidan from Naruto, Maul from Star Wars, Dabi from BNHA, etc. So sometimes I get a wonderfully messed-up scene from their perspective and while I am always very proud of capturing their... 'essence', maybe? it can get pretty weird pretty fast, so I try not to write from their perspective too often lolol.

#i'm actually fairly certain i have an incredibly unhealthy hidan/dabi oneshot wip somewhere in my massive hoard of fics #cactus answers

4 notes · View notes

dustofbrokenheart · 4 years

Text

The Covenant: Tech Guy

Reid Garwin x Reader

Word Count: 3,826

Summary: After renting a laptop from your campus library, you run into a download problem. A call to Library Tech Services for help introduces you to Tech Guy. Good at his job, but with questionable people skills, you learn to work with him. It certainly helps that he has an attractive voice.

This was not good, not good at all. It was less than an hour to midnight, the sun long since having set, and time seemed to pas faster, not slower, the later it got.

Now, you considered yourself to be pretty good with technology, perhaps not a computer genius but good enough to be able to troubleshoot most of your problems. It was pure bad luck that the night your capabilities failed was the night before you had an assignment due in Graphic Design.

Your own laptop had been ruined after an accident in the library had left the screen nothing more than a web of shattered fragments, but thankfully the library also carried laptops for checkout which saved you from having to fork out money that you didn’t have to buy a new one. You thought that checking out a laptop would be a quick fix to your problem, but you underestimated how high their demand was.

The librarian you spoke with at the circulation desk put you on a waiting list much to your disappointment and you left the building empty handed, unsure when one would become available.

The answer was six days later, the night before you had something due.

When they left a voicemail on your cell phone around seven o’clock to tell you that it was ready for pick-up, you immediately hopped on a bus bound for the library. The anxiety should have been somewhat alleviated because you could actually start to work on it now but when you got back to your dorm room and opened it up, another problem presented itself: the program you needed wasn’t installed.

Bad luck 1 – You 0.

Every time you tried to install it a message would pop up prompting you to enter an admin username and password in order to start the process. You had never seen that message before and innocently tried your own username and password. When that didn’t work, you tried three more times just to be sure.

Next stop was the internet, everyone’s favorite place to ask questions. You ran a quick search describing the problem and read through a couple of chat room threads. Disappointingly, nothing really applied to the situation at hand.

In hindsight, you shouldn’t have spent so much time trying to fix it because all that came of it was a lot of wasted time and you still hadn’t installed the program. You really didn’t want to take another trip to the library tonight if you could help it.

Frustrated and stuck you opened up the library’s webpage to see if there were any answers to be found. They didn’t but you did find the phone number for Library Tech Services, which was miraculously open even this late in the night.

Punching in the numbers you dialed and waited for someone to answer and when they did, it was short and to the point. “Library Tech.”

“Umm, hi… my name is y/n and I’m having an issue installing a program on my laptop rental.”

“Hmm. What’s the problem?” Again, not much to go on but the you could admit that tech guy’s voice sounded attractive.

“Well. I clicked on the install button, but as soon as I did a message telling me that I needed admin permission to continue flashed on my screen.”

“Did you try your university username and password?”

“Yes.”

“Did you double check that you typed everything correctly?”

“Yes.”

“Did you try Google?”

“Of course, I did,” you answered with exasperation. He snickered and you felt your hackles rise. You called the number to get helped, not to get laughed at. Attractive voice be damned.

“I promise I exhausted every trick I know, I’m not stupid. But I do have something to finish tonight so if you can help me out here, that’d be great.”

For a split second you felt bad for being short with him but the aggravation was quick to return. He was the one providing terrible customer service… why should you feel bad calling him out on it?

He must’ve gotten the hint because he cleared his throat and started being serious. “The library puts restrictions on its laptops because they don’t want people downloading stuff willy nilly. What do you need to install?”

“Just Adobe Illustrator.”

You heard him typing on a keyboard in the background. “Sounds okay to me. I’ll just give you the admin credentials so you don’t have to make a trip over here tonight.”

You started to say thanks until you processed the end of that sentence. “Wait, what do you mean by that?”

“Normally we require people to come in person to fill out a form. Once the request is approved, a person is supposed to enter in the admin stuff, but I’m going to give it out over the phone to save you some time.”

His words left you speechless. You had no idea there was a whole process to do something so simple as install a program; you should’ve asked more questions before you walked out with it. It was a good thing to remember for next time. And the earlier guilt returned, too. He was being so nice now, bending the rules so you didn’t have to make another trek on the bus, which was quite frankly a gamble after dark.

You thanked him profusely, the tension draining from your shoulders. Once you told him the laptops id number and he was able to confirm that it was rented out to your account, he shared the username and password with you.

With baited breath, you typed in exactly what he told you to and couldn’t help the happy noise that escaped you when it worked. It was impossible that tech guy saw your chair dance through the phone but he laughed again, making you question if he somehow knew anyway.

“Thanks, you’re a life saver!”

He cleared his throat and said “Glad to be of service.” Then he hung up without another word.

You pulled the phone away from your ear and looked at it blankly. What the heck was that about? Thinking back on the conversation left you feeling very confused but you threw yourself into getting your images drawn up on Illustrator and soon lost yourself in the work.

You ended up staying up late well past your normal bedtime but the deadline was enough motivation for you to push through the drowsiness and yawns. Around 3:30 you finally finished and emailed it to the professor so you wouldn’t have to worry about it in the morning.

Sleep came easy that night and you vaguely remembered dreaming about tech guy’s voice which was utterly ridiculous. He hadn’t even mentioned his name, for goodness sakes! Plus, he was so hard to read, bouncing between jerk and nice on a whim. Nope. You were not going to stoop to finding out who he was. Not a chance.

After yesterday’s incident, your first course of the new day was to go grab a cup of coffee. You weren’t an easy riser on a good day, even less so after being up until the wee hours of the morning and caffeine was going to be essential for powering you through your classes.

Your go-to place was a campus coffee shop two blocks down from your dorm. It was still winter but you found that as long as you bundled up, the walk over went quickly and the cold air worked wonders for organizing your thoughts. But the real reason it was your favorite was not its closeness, it wasn’t even for the coffee; it was because of the heavenly pastries they made daily. The croissants, the eclairs, the danishes… they were all excellent. None was above their banana chocolate chip muffins.

A little bell chimed as you opened the door and the blast of heat from inside the shop felt nice against your chilled cheeks. The familiar worker at the register looked up and smiled when they saw you. “Hey, y/n! Should I start working on your cappuccino order?”

“Yes, please!” You approached the counter, removing your gloves to make it easier to take out your card from your wallet. A gleaming dessert case also caught your eye and you tried to glance over discreetly. As subtle as you tried to be, the cashier knew you too well after serving you for the past couple of years.

“Oh, sorry. We’re out those again.”

“Again?” you questioned sorrowfully.

He gave you a sympathetic shrug. “They’re very popular, they always go fast.”

It used to be that you could get your hands on a banana chocolate chip muffin whenever you wanted one but the secret must’ve gotten out to the rest of campus because you’d struck out for the past weeks. With a dramatic sigh, you settled for a chocolate croissant. It was no muffin but it was something to tide over your stomach until lunch.

“You know,” you started conspiratorially, “How can someone be so talented yet stupid simultaneously? If that no-good-baker bothered to make more of them knowing how fast they sell, this wouldn’t happen.”

You had never actually met the baker that was the source of the yummy pastries. In fact, you’d never even seen him and only knew that he was good at what he did and that he never came out to the front of the shop. There was really no reason why you ragged on him that morning other than you had major plans for that muffin that now had to be put on hold.

The cashier chuckled as he rang you up and looked back at the door to the kitchen for a moment. “I’ll pass along the message.” He slipped the croissant in a brown paper bag and handed it, along with the travel coffee cup, over to you. “Have a good day. See you next time.”

You accepted it with a “You, too,” and were out the door to catch the next bus to your class.

***

Later that week, you ran into a familiar problem with the laptop. This time you needed to add Photoshop but figured that it shouldn’t be an issue now that you knew the password. So when you typed in the exact same thing as last time and the computer told you it was incorrect, you dragged a hand down your face and groaned. Well, you weren’t going to make the same mistake twice.

Swiveling around in your chair you grabbed your phone and called the Tech Services line again. The only thing that would make this even better would be if tech guy answered again, that’s how your luck was going that week. And sure enough, “Library Tech Services.”

You refrained from groaning again. Out loud anyway. “Hi, it’s y/n again. I was the one who called about the admin credentials Monday night?”

“What’s up?”

“I’m trying to install Photoshop right now and it’s telling me the username/password is incorrect, which is impossible because it’s what I used the last time.”

“Right. We had to change the password for our monthly maintenance, it’s a security thing.”

“You’re kidding,” you said surprise coloring your voice. “Any chance you can share the new one with me?”

“Technically, I wasn’t supposed to give that to you last time.”

It was time to turn on the charm and convince him like you managed to previously. As you pleaded with him to do you this favor he interrupted you.

“How bad do you need it?”

What was wrong with you that hearing him say that put your mind in the gutter? He definitely hadn’t meant it that way when he said it! He was much chattier this time around so you were able to appreciate his voice better and his voice just did it for you.

You cleared your throat. “It’s not an emergency this time, no impending next-day deadlines, but I do want to get working on this new assignment…”

“Okay, okay. You’re lucky I like you.” That was news to you because you didn’t get that vibe based on the last call. It was nice to hear though. Some clicks sounded from the other end of the line and you waited silently for a few moments before he was ready to say the new password.

“Whew, we’re good to go,” you updated him as the Photoshop installation started. Another moment of silence passed.

Finally, he said a quick, “Good.”

You weren’t caught off guard when you heard the click that signaled he had hung up. Unlike the last call, he hadn’t seemed rude and he did mention that he liked you. Maybe he was just an awkward sort of guy, despite his killer voice. That might explain why he worked an IT job, weren’t those kinds of guys supposed to have terrible people skills?

You worked with Photoshop for a bit and when you reached a good stopping point, you got ready for bed. That night you laid awake for a while, unable to drift off to sleep. Instead, you replayed the conversation with tech guy over and over in your mind.

He was very helpful when he wasn’t giving an attitude and he this was the second time he had bent the rules for you. That pesky word ‘like’ kept rattling in your brain and you started to wonder if that nice voice belonged to a nice face. Furthermore, was there a chance that he found your voice attractive as well?

***

Sunday morning on a college campus seemed like a smart time to visit the coffee given that most of campus wasn’t up yet, which increased the chances of you getting your hands on a banana chocolate chip muffin. Maybe even two or three if you were honest, to make up for the past several failed attempts.

The sun hadn’t been up long when you opened the door, the little jingling bell announcing your presence. A barrage of delicious aromas caressed your nose and to your extreme delight, one of the scents you detected was a banana-chocolate combination.

You walked up to the counter and the cashier smiled as he told you good morning.

“So… can I get three banana chocolate chip muffins?”

He merely smiled and started working on your cappuccino. “Of course. Reid just finished them so they still in the kitchen, piping hot.”

Reid must be the baker that was responsible for the muffins as well as responsible for never making enough. “Finally! This is a long time coming for me.”

“I passed him your message, I think he took it to heart.” He handed over the drink and turned to go to the kitchen. “I’ll be back with the muffins.”

He pushed the door open and for a split second you caught a glimpse of a side profile belonging to a blonde guy. He was too far away to distinctly make out any facial features but he had nice shoulders framed by his black tee and obvious blonde hair that was hard to miss. He looked cute to you, at least from a distance.

Those two details were the only things you took note of before the door closed, effectively blocking you from more staring. Too bad. It was totally ridiculous to think about but tech guy’s voice would be a good combination with baker guy’s looks.

You picked at the lid of the coffee cup while you waited for the rest of your order already anticipating how they would taste. Your plan was to only eat one this morning and to ration the rest, but you were honest enough with yourself to know that you might enter a feeding frenzy and have all three finished by lunch.

When the door opened up again your eyes searched for the seemingly cute baker but there was no sign of him. There wasn’t a chance to get down about it, however, because a smile lit up your face as soon as you saw the medium sized brown paper bag that held the muffins.

“Reid says these are especially for you,” the cashier said as he lifted the bag over the register.

You were quick to raise your hands to take it from him and made sure to thank him as you left, not questioning why Reid, a person you’d never met, would make a comment like that, figuring that he was referring to how you complained that the muffins were always sold out.

The morning air was especially cold as you trekked back to your dorm, your breath condensing into a fleeting, frozen cloud around your face and the only thing keeping your hands warm was the cappuccino you held between gloved hands. Still, the trip to the coffee shop was definitely worth it and you were hoping that it was a good omen to start the day off with.

***

Perhaps you were still experiencing the high of the morning victory at the coffee shop, but later on that night while you were working on homework once again, you started thinking about tech guy again. There wasn’t any need to call him; you now had both Illustrator and Photoshop on the laptop and there wasn’t anything else that you needed to install.

Still, you debated calling him. Not because you needed to but because you wanted to. Which was weird, even to you, but you had missed him the past couple of days, bad people skills and all. After the second call, you felt even more confident that he wasn’t as condescending a guy as you had first thought him to be. And you wouldn’t mind getting to know that awkward version of him better.

The hard part was you literally knew nothing about him other than he worked the night shift at the library. You didn’t have a name, a face, not even a work schedule to confirm whether he was working tonight or not. Reid must’ve been serious when he told the cashier those muffins were made especially for you because there had to have been a secret dose of recklessness mixed in there. How else would you explain this strange, and potentially creepy, call you were about to make?

The dial tone rang and you took a deep breath, not sure how this would turn out. On the fifth ring, someone finally picked up. “Library Tech Services.”

You laughed in relief. Tech guy was the on the other end of the phone. “Hey.”

“Hey, y/n. Having another crisis?” On one hand you felt a little embarrassed that you no longer had to say your name for him to recognize your voice but on the other, the possibility that he enjoyed talking with you, too.

“It may come as a surprise but I can get through a day without having a tech issue that needs solving.”

“Oh, really?”

“I swear.” You crossed your heart even though he couldn’t see you.

“Well, what do you want then?”

Time to be brave. “Actually, I called for you.”

“I would hope so, I’m the only who works this shift meaning I’m your only option.”

“No, um, I meant I wanted to tell you thanks for helping me out with installing that stuff on the laptop. You were a lifesaver.”

“I try.”

“Seriously! I definitely would’ve missed one graphic design deadline, potentially two if you hadn’t come to the rescue.”

That seemed to get his attention. “Is that your major? Graphic Design?”

“Yep. Don’t I give off bumbling artist vibes?”

“Hmm you seem pretty confident to me but there’s nothing wrong with that. My grandma was—” He started that sentence but abruptly cut off and you couldn’t help but laugh.

“Are you saying I remind you of your grandma?”

“Shit,” he grumbled. “My friends told me to stop bringing her up when talking to hot people.”

“Don’t sweat it, she sounds like she was awesome so I’m honored. But back to the part where I’m hot… do you really think so?”

“Obviously. Do you think I hand out library secrets to every person who calls? Your voice is strong and you sound super smart so I tried my best to be cool with you.”

“Okay but future tip: hanging up on people and not telling them your name is rude, not cool.”

His embarrassment was tangible through the phone and you let him sweat momentarily before speaking. “Luckily for you, I like dorks such as yourself and am willing to look past it as long as I get your name.”

“It’s Reid. Reid Garwin,” he rushed to say.

Now that was interesting. You fell back on your bed, your brain trying to make connections. The name while not super common, wasn’t rare either and what were the chances that you met two of them on the same day. If Reid with the nice body and tech guy, er, Reid with the nice voice were one in the same, you wouldn’t be upset. Quite the contrary.

“Reid as in Reid who bakes my favorite sugar fixes on campus?”

“One in the same. You seen me there before?”

“Only once,” you reveal. “When I went to pick up some muffins this today.”

It was his turn to laugh. “Wait. Are you saying that you’re that customer who called me stupid the other day?”

“…Maybe.”

“They don’t let me out front cause I’m ‘too much’ for people but rest assured that the door isn’t that thick. I feel like an idiot for not recognizing that it was you though.”

The revelation that Reid was baking a tech hero, a winning mix by the way, thrilled you all the way from your head to your toes. At the moment you didn’t even care that he heard you calling him names at the coffee shop although you were sure the mortification would set in later.

“Would you like to go out sometime—”

“You do want to go out with me sometime—”

The two of you spoke at the same time and when you realized that the other had read your mind, you both giggled.

“After you,” you assured him.

“Shit, would you like to go out sometime? There’s a restaurant downtown that’s really good and I promise not to bring up grandma Garwin again.”

The plan was to pretend to think about it but your excitement overrode your brain and you said, “Deal as long as you promise to tell me more about her, not less.”

He started to answer you but stopped suddenly and you could vaguely hear him getting scolded by someone, reminding you that technically he was still on the clock.

“Sorry,” he grumbled, “The librarian on duty told me to stop flirting and get back to work. Stop by the coffee shop tomorrow though and we can talk more.”

You said your good-byes and rolled around your bed, the comforter thoroughly rumpled by the time you stopped. It seemed that your luck may be turning around for the better.

_______________

Thanks for reading my most self-indulgent piece to date. Also my longest! Reid may consider himself to be mister cool, but he is also an awkward bean who would make a great tech guy. It's also my first time experimenting with moodboards, let me know what you think :)

#the covenant #reid garwin #reid garwin x reader #imagines

66 notes · View notes

alittlewhump · 3 years

Text

Unbidden - Act 3, chapter 8

Masterlist | Previous | Next

Content warnings: minor body horror

As directed, Morgan took his time. It gave him the opportunity to start getting used to controlling the golem. Blaise watched quietly as he ran through some exercises with both arms, working out the mental shortcuts he would need to get used to. Large motions involving the shoulder were the hardest to manage, having to coordinate the golem with the organic. He also had to concentrate harder than he'd expected on the elbow. There was a greater range of motion at his disposal now, but taking advantage of it made him feel nauseated. Bodies weren't meant to bend in certain ways, and it brought his mind back to a place he very much did not want it to be in. Eventually he settled on a basic system of mentally narrating his movements in a way that could easily be accompanied by the necessary push of will to command the golem. It could always be refined later.

The finer motions seemed to be working well, though the lack of tactile feedback made it harder to tell if they would work equally well if he wasn't watching so closely. He fished a length of leather cord out of the bottom of his potions bag to test. His injury had made it painful to grasp anything small and to raise his arm above shoulder height for any length of time, both of which were required to tie his hair back. He didn't often wear it that way, but it was useful to have it out of the way every now and again. It took several attempts, a great deal of caution after the first accidental pull, and some intense concentration, but at the end of it his efforts bore fruit in the form of a lopsided bow. He gave a small hum of satisfaction, pleased with the progress, and let the arm fall back into his lap to rest.

"That looked hard." Blaise was still watching him, idly picking a leaf into tiny pieces. There was a growing pile of shredded greenery in front of her.

"I can't really feel it," Morgan said. "I tried earlier, but it was... I got something wrong with the command. It didn't focus correctly."

"Can I help?"

"I don't know how you would."

"I don't know," Blaise echoed. "Maybe I can do something to help you focus." She reached forward, then paused. "If it's all right." At his bemused nod, she gently took his left hand and turned it palm up. "Close your eyes," she suggested. He did. "All right, now I'll do some shapes. And you can focus on guessing what they are, maybe."

It was an interesting approach. Morgan started slowly, more prepared for the sensations this time. The power draw was less uncomfortable now that he knew to expect it. It was something almost like a pinch, but still a marked improvement over the type of pain it had been before. This, he could acclimatize to. He catalogued the gently persistent throbbing around the connections, reconciled it with the beating of his heart, categorized it as ignorable and tried to let it fade away into the background. It worked reasonably well, which was a pleasant surprise.

Next he eased his focus over to the intermittent touch moving down the inner forearm to the palm, then going back up. There was so much information in each small interaction that he'd always taken for granted - pressure, temperature, texture. The golem helpfully provided all of that information with force, an insistence that almost felt like alarm. Morgan asked it to quiet down, please, and it slowly ebbed into something that didn't set him on edge quite so badly. It would be ideal if he could figure out how to make it trigger only when touched, instead of having to give it commands to turn on or off. He toyed with that for a little while, getting used to the way it lit up his awareness.

"Anything yet?"

Morgan's eyes opened in surprise, which quickly gave way to embarrassment. He'd all but forgotten Blaise was even there, lost in the intensity of his focus. "Ah. Yes. It's helping a great deal. Thank you."

Blaise looked pleased. "Good. You're so quiet, I wasn't sure. I know you don't like touching, I was - what? Don't look so surprised, I'm not completely oblivious, you know."

"No. You're very observant. I appreciate it," he said quietly. It was something he'd never really realized until just now. She paid attention to him. Enough to notice the way he avoided physical contact. And she respected that unspoken boundary without questioning it, even though that meant she had to make a conscious effort to treat him differently. It was... nice, to be accommodated. Of course, it was probably nothing out of the ordinary for Blaise, just a natural extension of the kindness Morgan had identified in her long ago. Still, he let himself enjoy the revelation briefly before turning his attention back to the golem.

It was so tempting to do everything at once. There was a lot to modify, to adjust, to improve, to learn. But now that he'd been pulled out of his reverie of exploration once, it was easier to remember that he was not at his leisure. And Blaise had been so patient, always so patient with him. Because she knew he needed it, because she cared about him. Morgan reluctantly subdued the happiness bubbling in his chest and tried to focus on the task at hand, on what still needed immediate work. For now, the foundations of motion and feedback were in place. He allowed himself a little more fine tuning and decided that he could stand to leave it inert when he needed to use his magic elsewhere. He'd already gotten used to not using the limb, so it wouldn't be too much different.

"All right," he said eventually. "I'm done. For now. Thank you for your help. We can pick up where we left off yesterday, by the fountains." Blaise released his arm and stood in a fluid motion, stretching before she reached out a hand to help him up. Morgan took it, closing his eyes briefly against the wave of dizziness that washed over him as he stood. He blinked to clear the lingering reds and blues from his vision. When they faded, Blaise was making a displeased face.

"Doesn't look like you're ready."

"No, I'm fine," he assured her. The dizzy spell had passed, as they always did. She did not look reassured.

"Don't tell me you did all this on an empty stomach, Morgan. I've barely seen you eat since-"

"I ate before I started." A few hours before, in case the potions disagreed with him. And not very much, because eating was still unpleasant and he'd wanted to be able to focus. But he didn't want to talk about that, so he dug a piece of flatbread out of his bag and took a small bite. It seemed to pacify her.

Morgan chewed slowly, making sure his feet were firmly planted before he raised a golem from the earth outside the building. It was no different than it had ever been. Two skeletons followed. No noticeable problems with capacity, then, and with the arm inactive it felt like he was maybe even recovering his energy very slightly faster than usual. He allowed himself another small, satisfied smile as he stepped out to join the constructs.

"Hey!" Telash jogged towards Blaise and Morgan as they returned from the jungle. "There you are. I need you to show me what you taught Phaedra." Morgan glanced at Blaise, who shrugged. Telash seemed to be talking to him, anyway. "She won't tell me how she does it."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't taught her anything. Our magic isn't the same."

"She's been showing off all day. Look." He brandished a bottle towards them. It was luminous, blue-white and flickering.

"Oh," Morgan said, reaching out. Telash jerked the bottle away.

"Show me. I want to do this with fire. There's got to be a trick to it, I'm just breaking the bottles when I try on my own."

"I... can tell you what I told her the last time we spoke, but I don't think-"

"Give us half an hour to unwind first, you insufferable prick. Some of us have actually been doing work all day." Blaise brushed past him, making him stumble half a step back to avoid a collision. He rallied quickly, springing into step beside her.

"I can help you unwind," he suggested with a leer and a wiggle of his eyebrows.

"I guess that would still leave me with twenty-eight minutes to relax properly," she replied. Telash made a choked sound of indignation.

"I'll have you know my skill as a lover is legendary!"

"That's funny. You don't hear a lot of legends about disappointment."

"You'd be singing a very different tune if you just-"

"Maybe that's your problem. If you're doing it right, your partner shouldn't have the breath to spare for singing."

"Oh, I could leave you breathless."

"With laughter, maybe."

Morgan split off in search of Phaedra. Blaise and Telash could enjoy their banter, or whatever it was they were doing. The words they were exchanging sounded rude, but they seemed to enjoy butting heads. It was just another thing he'd resigned himself to never understanding.

The search didn't take long. Phaedra was leaving Alkor's hut, struggling with a large basket laden with empty bottles of various shapes and sizes. She gave her head a little toss when she noticed Morgan, lifting her chin. "Little help here?"

He raised a golem without a second thought, its arms extended to accept the weight of the basket. Phaedra gave a grunt of effort as she shifted it over, then dusted off her hands. "Thanks. That's heavier than it looks. Has Telash found you yet?"

"Yes."

"He's persistent, you have to give him that. I'll show you what I figured out, but only if you promise not to tell him how to do it."

Morgan hesitated. He was so curious it almost felt like a physical itch, but at the same time he didn't want to antagonize the volatile fire mage. "I already agreed to repeat our earlier conversation," he said cautiously.

"Why did you do that?"

"He... asked." It had been more of a demand, really, but a request was a request.

"Hm. He's an ass, but he isn't stupid. Hell, he might be able to figure it out faster than me. Don't want that." She eyed Morgan appraisingly. The weight of her gaze was uncomfortable.

"Why do you want to keep this to yourself?"

Phaedra flashed a quick smile before turning to walk down toward the fire pit. "I don't, not really. That's why I've got all these bottles. I was planning to see if I can teach the others tonight."

Morgan followed with a confused frown. "Then why are you keeping it from Telash specifically?"

"For fun," came the breezy answer. "It's so easy to rile him up. Set those down on that bench?" The golem lowered the basket obediently. Phaedra watched it, her head slightly tilted. "Movement still eludes me. I tried with some old gauntlets from Hratli but I didn't get so much as a twitch in the fingers."

"Were you able to keep it contained?"

"Yes, eventually. It turned out to be better inside an insulating material. Leather gauntlets, glass bottles. It really wanted to spill out of the gauntlets, that's why I tried the bottles in the first place."

"Telash showed me a bottle. How long does it last, once it's contained?"

"That depends. Little ones, maybe five minutes. Big ones, about half an hour."

"Can you feed it to make it last longer? Do you need to unseal the container first? Could I-" he bit off the last question, remembering that she'd already laid out a condition he couldn't meet. And he was being too eager, rushing through his questions like a child instead of waiting for answers.

"Haven't tried, and don't know. What an interesting idea." Phaedra slipped a hand into the pockets of her robes and produced a glass vial about the size of her fist. It flickered softly. She popped the cork and slid the palm of her hand over the mouth of the bottle in one smooth motion. Half closing her eyes, her eyebrows twitched down in a brief frown of concentration. The light in the bottle grew brighter. Phaedra replaced the cork, holding the bottle up in front of her face with a smile.

"Well, there's one question answered. I think I'll wait on the other one. I want to give it some thought before I try it. I've already broken a lot of bottles. Here, catch."

She lobbed the bottle towards Morgan in a soft underhand throw. He fumbled it badly, nearly dropping it first in surprise and then again because that surprise delayed the response of his golem arm. Phaedra snickered behind her hand as he recovered. He ignored that, holding the bottle up with both hands to peer at its contents.

It was beautiful. Blue-white lightning crackled around the inside of the bottle, branching and converging in an enthralling display. It was almost like a living thing curling over and around itself. His skin tingled where it was touching the glass, and the golem arm thrummed a warning at the unfamiliar magic. Morgan could have examined it for a very long time, but he forced his gaze back over to Phaedra.

"This is amazing," he said earnestly.

"Useful, too," she replied. "It should stay bright even in the rain, and if I can get more power to fit in the same space it could have some real potential as a weapon. I just have to figure out how. Don't suppose you have any insights on that?"

"In some cases I'm limited by what the carrier will bear," Morgan offered, his eyes drawn back to the bottle as he turned it over in his hands. "Some materials take magic better than others."

"Oh, I was focused so hard on getting it to stay somewhere, I didn't even think... hmm, yeah, that's worth trying. I'll be right back." Phaedra picked up a few small bottles from the basket and set off purposefully toward the docks.

Morgan sat down on the bench, bringing his golem over to sit beside him. He touched the bottle to it experimentally. It did not react with a warning like the arm had done. There were plenty of potential reasons for that, though. Possibilities drifted across his mind as he watched the lightning circle around itself inside its glass prison. He slipped into something like a light meditation, the rest of the world falling away as he admired its beauty.

The sound of breaking glass brought Morgan back to full awareness with a start. His golem informed him a second later that it was under attack and had sustained some damage. A bottle had shattered across its broad back, sending sparks crawling over its surface. They lingered at the point of impact where the earth had been dampened.

"Well, that's promising," Phaedra said. Morgan turned to see her hefting another bottle. "Water's heavy, but it definitely holds more. I like where this is going. You can keep that, and don't worry about Telash. He'll figure out how to get what he wants one way or another."

Morgan wasn't sure what to make of that comment at all, so he thanked Phaedra and took his golem to the hut he'd been staying in. He watched the bottled lightning a little more. When it started to fade, he held it up to the golem and suggested it take. It accepted the bottle gently into its mass. There was a muffled crunch, followed by another warning that the golem had been damaged. That was slightly disappointing, but not wholly unexpected. It had just been an idea. It would have opened up enormous opportunities, but asking a construct to incorporate two different types of magic without the stabilizing element of an enchantment was obviously too much. Morgan set the golem down into the earth and relaxed into meditation, turning his attention back to his left arm instead.

#my writing #story: unbidden #body horror tw #food tw #eating tw #not particularly long or graphic but just in case

9 notes · View notes

quickspinner · 4 years

Text

Guard My Heart - Ch 2 Bright as Ever

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Read on AO3

“It looks so great, Marinette!” Tikki squealed and Marinette sat back on her heels and looked up, smiling as she rubbed a forearm across her forehead.

“It really does,” Marinette agreed, her voice slightly muffled by the mask she was wearing to filter out some of the paint fumes. She laid her paintbrush carefully aside and looked up. “How’s it going up there?” she asked, and dodged a glob of black paint just in time. “Careful,” she scolded, scrubbing at the spot with a rag even though she had a drop cloth on the floor for just this reason.

“My apologies,” Wayzz said above her, moving so that his paintbrush was hovering over the paint can and not Marinette’s head. “You startled me. I am almost done.”

“Good,” Marinette smiled, and resisted the urge to tell him to hurry up. Wayzz was careful, which was why she had selected him to help her with this final stage, filling in the last of the narrow curlicues and flowers she had roughed in days ago. His care came at the price of speed, though, and sometimes his slowness made Marinette want to scream.

It was still more efficient to have Wayzz filling in the upper portion than for Marinette to get up on a ladder to do it, and the kwami was so happy to be helping that she didn’t have the heart to rush him, so she throttled down her impatience and walked out to the middle of the room to spin a slow circle and take it all in. She’d had most of the kwamis in here helping at one time or another, because this would be their home as well and she wanted them to feel some ownership and investment in it. The walls that surrounded her were now a soft pink, with her signature flowers in darker pink and black at all the corners and coordinating scrollwork anywhere that seemed too empty. Framed photographs from her portfolio were stacked in a corner and covered with a cloth. She’d hang those tomorrow, once the paint was dry. The back wall that they were finishing up now had her flower design on a much larger scale, framing the little sales counter. Fixtures and clothing racks were all shoved to the center of the room at the moment, but now that the painting was done, she could start getting that arranged. She wasn’t ahead of her plan by any means, but she was on track.

She noticed a shadow against the paper covering the shop’s front door just before there was a rap on the glass. Marinette waited for Wayzz and Tikki to zip out of sight, and then went to answer it. She was pretty sure she recognized the silhouette, and sure enough, Luka’s friendly grin greeted her as she opened the door.

“Hi,” he said, a little sheepishly. “I’m trying to move a table and I could use a hand. Would you mind coming over when you have a second?”

Marinette smiled. “I have a second now,” she said, stepping out and checking her pocket for her key before she let the door close behind her.

Luka chuckled and tapped the mask Marinette was still wearing, and she blushed beneath it. “Oh. Right.” She took it off, embarrassed as she rubbed at the lines she was sure it had left on her face. She opened the door again and dropped the mask back inside, knowing that one of the kwamis would retrieve it for her.

“You could just prop the doors open,” Luka suggested as they walked over to his space.

Marinette huffed. “I don’t like being watched while I work,” she replied, which was only half a lie. It was true she didn’t especially want people looking in on her while she was contorted around, potentially with her ass in the air, trying to find a good position to do what she needed without leaning into wet paint. Mostly, though, she didn’t want the kwamis on display for any passers-by.

She smiled a little as Luka held the door of his own shop open and motioned her inside. It had a more industrial warehouse feel, with exposed beams in the walls and ceiling, and low voltage lighting strung over the crowded space. Marinette wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find out the multicolor slat wood flooring had come from the Liberty (it hadn’t, Luka had laughingly assured her when she asked, but he had picked it because it reminded him of home). Really, the whole place felt like the Liberty, and Marinette loved it, right down to the friendly, grinning cement turtle statue sitting by the door. The thing was knee high to Luka and while one couldn’t exactly call him pretty, his shell twinkled with embedded pieces of mosaic tile in many colors, and there was an air of mischievousness in his grinning face that made Marinette smile back every time she saw him. He looked exactly like the kind of thing Anarka would go wild for, regardless of the fact that he was incredibly, impractically heavy. She couldn’t imagine what shipping him had originally cost, and Luka’s story of actually getting it to its place by the door had left Marinette giggling uncontrollably. She was positive from the look on Luka’s face while he told the tale that it was never moving from that spot unless someone both bought it, and was willing to carry it away.

The whole shop was full of fun, eclectic things like that, as well as some more valuable antiques. Marinette loved it, and could picture in her mind the type of customer Luka was likely to bring in. She hadn’t told him that she’d already started a few sketches for his branding, based around a stylized boat. It had taken her a few days to get over the fact that he’d named his shop Second Chance Antiques and Curiosities . She had nearly laughed in his face when he told her, and that would have been really hard to explain. She’d managed to hold it in until she was alone, and then she and Sass had had a good laugh over it.

“Sorry I have to keep asking for your help,” Luka grunted, as they both took an end of the table he needed moved and shifted it. “I thought I had a plan, but there’s just so much stuff, I keep having to rearrange.”

“It’ll be easier when you get some customers in here and get some of this stuff—oof—out of your hair.” Marinette sighed as they set the table down in the area Luka had cleared out for it. “Maybe if you used the bigger pieces as sort of...display cases for some of the smaller stuff?” she suggested, stretching her back slightly as she looked around.

“Yeah, maybe,” Luka sighed, giving her a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually.”

Marinette put her hand on his arm and rubbed it gently. “You will. We’ve both got a lot of lessons to learn, but we’re both adaptable. We’ll make it happen.”

Luka made an affirmative noise, but sighed again.

“Luka,” Marinette said gently, and he looked at her with that same not-quite-there smile.

“I’m okay. Freaking out a little, but I’ll manage. I’ll be fine once the shop opens and things start happening, it’s just...the waiting is getting to me, I guess. It’s not like I don’t have a thousand things left to do to get ready, but...I don’t know, I’m not explaining myself well.” He looked away from her, and ran his fingers through his hair. It was hanging loose today, and the blue looked bright and fresh. He must have done a touch up for opening week, she thought absently, reaching up to tuck a lock behind his ear. His eyes darted to her with something like surprise and she drew her hand back quickly, self-conscious.

“You won’t know what the right choices are until you can get people in and see their reactions,” Marinette suggested, and the smile he gave her was real this time, real and grateful, and she smiled back. “You’re better at reading people in the moment rather than predicting people you don’t know—o-or at least you used to be—so I can see how you’d be frustrated trying to do this without any way to get feedback.”

“You’re not like that,” he muttered, smile falling as he looked back at the shop and sighed. “You’ve probably had a vision and a plan since before you signed the contract.”

Marinette bumped her shoulder against his. “You’re not me, though. It’s okay to do things your way, and not mine. Opening week is important, but it isn’t everything.”

Luka grinned at her, and Marinette felt her shoulders curl under his knowing look. “It caused you physical pain to say that, didn’t it,” he chuckled.

Marinette scoffed and folded her arms, and then muttered, “Maybe.”

Luka laughed and put his arm around her shoulders, giving her a little squeeze before letting his arm drop. “Thanks for the pep talk, Marinette.”

He was smiling now for real, and it didn’t fade, and Marinette felt unreasonably proud about it. She opened her mouth to say something, though she had no idea what, when Luka’s phone beeped a familiar tone. He frowned and pulled it out of his pocket, checking the akuma alert. Marinette leaned over without thinking to look as well, dread curling in her gut even as her heart pumped faster.

“It’s not nearby,” Luka assured her, and Marinette sighed, and then her eyes widened and she jerked back a bit as she suddenly realized how she was crowding him.

“Well, that’s a relief,” she said, quickly, backing up. “I should—”

“Watch out!” Luka was lunging forward before she even registered her calf hitting something hard, and he grabbed her arms just as she pitched backwards with a yelp. “I got you,” he said breathlessly, as he braced his feet and pulled her upright. “Sorry, that scared me,” he said, letting go of her quickly, his hands moving to tug the tail of his shirt nervously and nodding at the glass-top coffee table she had almost fallen into. “You could have really gotten hurt. Please be careful.” He grinned sheepishly. “At least until I get this place a little more organized.”

“Luka.” Marinette stepped forward and hugged him, and though his arms wrapped immediately back around her, she felt herself blushing, the feel of a man’s body against her instead of a half-grown boy’s suddenly forcibly reminding her that they weren’t teenagers anymore. “Couffaines don’t do organized,” she teased, keeping her head down so he couldn’t see her embarrassment. “Stop trying to make it look like you think it’s supposed to, and do it your way. It’ll be fine, and you can adjust from there.” She let go quickly and straightened without looking at him.

“I have to, um, go finish my painting before it all dries out or...something,” she said quickly, making sure she watched where she was going this time as she walked away from him, face burning. Stupid, why had she done that? Sure, they were friendly, and yeah, they’d fallen fairly easily into something like their old friendship. Luka had clearly meant what he said, about the way friendships come and go, and he seemed perfectly ready to let her take back her place in his life, and it was so easy to just go with it...

Not exactly her old place, she reminded herself firmly. That was hardly to be expected. He’d always been touch-oriented though, and had been touching her shoulder or her arm or her back just as casually as he ever had, so maybe the hug wasn’t a big deal to him. He probably hugged his friends all the time, and it’s not like he knew that she didn’t. Besides, she used to, and she probably would, if she still had friends—real friends. And Luka was a real friend, so there was nothing wrong with hugging him, especially when he was clearly so worried about whether he could pull off this new business venture. She was freaking out over nothing, surely. She could comfort him; he’d do the same for her—he had done the same for her, so it was her turn , after all, especially being the more experienced when it came to business and marketing, so...

Marinette rushed through the door of her shop and locked it quickly, and then put her hands over her face and shrieked into them.

“Marinette,” Tikki said sympathetically, flying up from her purse to pat her shoulder.

“I know,” Marinette mumbled. “Okay, um...I don’t think I can leave in spots just now without being seen so...let’s go out the back and try that alley a couple blocks over.”

Transformed and with her mind focused on the goal, she followed the general direction of the alert, and then the screaming, to a fancy restaurant on the roof of a high-rise. Chat was already there, crouched in the remains of the outdoor dining, clearly regrouping.

“What’s up?” she asked, landing next to him.

“This restaurant’s nearly impossible to get a table at,” Chat said grimly, with none of the joking humor he would have used once. “Big snob energy. Guess they snubbed the wrong person today. Best guess is the akuma’s target is the maitre’d or the manager, unless there was some random civilian that was especially rude. Looks like your standard entitled rich lady to me, though, so I’m betting on a beef with the restaurant.” He glanced at her. “You got here pretty quick today.”

“I’ve made some changes in my personal life,” she said carefully. “I’m hoping it’ll give me a little more freedom and you won’t have to wait for me so often.”

“Not like I have anything better to do, but I’m not complaining,” Chat grunted. “Give me the plan and let’s go.”

Ladybug sighed to herself. She had always wished he would take this job more seriously, but something had changed in Chat when they took Hawkmoth down, and while he had improved somewhat since then, clearly he’d been having one of the bad days before the akuma struck. Grim and cynical wasn’t an especially good look on him, and it worried her.

No time to worry about that now though. “Distract and evacuate,” she said. “We need to get the civilians out of there. Hopefully in the process we can figure out which one it’s specifically targeting.”

“Works for me.” Chat launched himself forward, ready to go as always, and Ladybug moved only an instant later.

The akuma was obnoxious and destructive, with heeled shoes that could shatter concrete and a banshee-like scream that left Ladybug’s ears ringing even after the cure. Ladybug winced as she looked back at the trail of destruction. Chat just flopped on his back on the rooftop.

“Could’ve used some backup for that one,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry, there was no opening,” Ladybug panted, putting her hands on her knees. “I was afraid to leave.”

“Not blaming you,” he said, with a hint of his old humor in the half smile he managed as he turned his head to look at her. “Just saying. We could really use a hand more often.”

Ladybug made a neutral noise. She didn’t disagree with him, but…

But, but, but. There was always a but. But the rules . But identities . But it was her responsibility.

“Ladybug,” Chat said, the smile falling away as he watched her expression. “I really didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know,” she said, her voice coming out a tad too high. “It’s fine.” She held out her fist to him and he rolled over on his side to bump his against it. “I gotta get back.”

“I’m just gonna lay here for a while,” he muttered, and Ladybug sighed, reaching down to ruffle his hair affectionately.

“Don’t stay out too long, Kitty.”

“Yeah, yeah, beep beep. I got it.” He waved his ringed hand at her and then flopped back down to the roof. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan on getting stuck on top of this building.”

Ladybug huffed a laugh, and tossed her yoyo.

She transformed a couple of streets away, and glancing at the time, she went up to the apartment instead of back into the shop. Several pairs of large eyes in small faces peeped out as soon as they were sure it was her, and came to circle around her.

“I finished the pieces you asked me to,” Wayzz told her

“We cleaned up the paint and sealed the cans that were left,” Pollen piped up.

“That’s great,” Marinette said with a tired smile, giving them each a cuddle. “Thanks so much. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“It is the leassst we can do,” Sass observed mildly, bringing a damp cloth to her. Marinette took it gratefully.

“Where?” she asked, and wiped at the spot Sass patted. The cloth came away smeared with flecks of half-dry pink paint. Ugh, did she have that on her face the whole time she was talking to Luka? How embarrassing. She handed the cloth back when Sass nodded that she was clean.

“I should go finish,” Marinette sighed, but instead she sat down on the couch.

“You should eat first, Guardian,” Pollen told her, hovering. “And rest. There isn’t much left to be done. You can finish it tomorrow.”

“She’s right, Marinette,” Tikki piped up, perching on Marinette’s shoulder. “You can finish the paint in the morning, and it’s on the other side from the dressing area, so it won’t keep you from getting the curtains up over there or any of the other things you had planned.”

“It’ll just delay everything by a couple of hours,” Marinette sighed, slumping on the arm of the couch. “I’ll see how I feel after dinner. I’d rather finish it tonight if I can.”

“Then you’d better go make dinner before you fall asleep on the couch,” Tikki giggled, and Pollen agreed, tugging at Marinette’s fingers.

“It won’t do for you to be skipping meals!” Pollen scolded.

“All right, all right,” Marinette giggled, getting up. “I’ll make dinner.”

The kitchen in her apartment was separated from the living room by a small but usable breakfast bar, so Marinette hadn’t bothered to get a separate table. Instead, she lined up the kwami’s plates on the inside edge and pulled up a stool on the other side of the counter to sit at her own plate.

She was just finishing up, her thoughts already running on the next things she had to do, when she was distracted by the muffled sound of...a guitar. The kwamis paused in their chatter, and Marinette sat with her fork halfway to her mouth, listening. After a moment she smiled. “It’s Luka,” she murmured. “His apartment probably mirrors ours, so his kitchen and living room must be on the other side of this wall.” Her eyes widened slightly in alarm. “If we can hear him, he can probably hear us if we get too loud. I can pass some noise off as the tv or the radio, but we’ll have to be careful.” The kwamis nodded, but Marinette shot pointed looks at Xuppu, Orikki, and Ziggy in particular. They all made faces at her, but nodded along with the others.

Everyone was quiet as she finished her meal, smiling as she listened to the wandering guitar. “It’s nice,” she observed to no one in particular. “It’s been a long time since I heard Luka play.”

It was funny, the effect it had on her. She could feel her shoulders sliding down, and a pleasant calm seeping into her. Had he really made such an impression all those years ago, that she responded so easily to the sound of his guitar even now? She took her dishes to the sink and stood a moment, laying a hand over her heart, and for a moment she heard a different song,

When she took a breath, though, instead of the scent of metal and river wind, the scent of lemon dish soap filled her nose and brought her back to the present. She smiled at the kwamis, who had busily stacked their little plates next to the sink and were filling it with water and soapsuds.

Right . All of that was a long time ago, and they were different people now. Still, maybe sometime soon she could come to one of his gigs and hear him play for real, and not through a wall. Though...it was kind of nice, knowing she was the only one who was hearing him right now. She wondered if he knew she could hear him.

The tune changed, took on a little more purpose, and Marinette smothered a giggle. No, she doubted he realized she could hear, because he probably wouldn’t be caught dead playing Love Me Like You Do with an audience, even if he did give it a bit of a metal makeover.

She’d have to let him know. Eventually. When she could think of a way to tell him that wouldn’t make him think he had to stop.

She hummed quietly along as she and the kwami finished washing the dishes.

“Are you going to go back downstairs?” Tikki asked, tilting her head.

“Mmm...no,” Marinette decided. “There’s still plenty to unpack and put away up here, and you’re right. I can finish the shop in the morning.”

The next few days were a blur of hard work as opening day got closer and closer. The shop was coming together, and Marinette took comfort in, for once, being able to get everything just right, without anybody telling her it should be different, or complaining that she was too fussy.

It was exhausting, though, and led to some pretty silly late night giggling with the kwamis as they tried to get her to rest before she made herself totally delirious.

The day before opening, she walked into Second Chance with a box in her hands, trying not to giggle openly.

“Hey, Marinette," Luka greeted, looking up from where he was loading up some display shelves near the counter.

“Wow, Luka, it looks great in here,” Marinette said, looking around.

“You were right. When I stopped trying to be strategic and just put things in where they felt like home, it all came together. I’m still not sure it’s the best arrangement, at least it feels comfortable. ” He looked much more relaxed, and his smile was easy and true.

“I think that will work the best for you in the end,” Marinette smiled. “The right customers will like it, and the ones who don’t, well.” She patted the big cement turtle on the head. “Probably aren’t looking for the kinds of things you’re selling anyway.”

Luka chuckled. “Fair enough. What can I do for you, Marinette?” He slid the case closed and stood, turning to face her.

Marinette bit her lip, and then held up the small box in her hands. “Well, I...maybe stayed up a little late last night, and I got kind of loopy, and then instead of going to bed like a smart person, I...did something silly. And if you hate it you can say so and I’ll walk right back out and we don’t ever have to speak of this again.”

Luka raised his eyebrows. “That sounds a little dramatic. What, did you make me a lace nightie with matching slippers?”

Marinette burst out laughing. “Okay, you’re right, that would be sillier,” she giggled, setting the box down carefully on a nearby table. “No, it’s not for you actually.”

“Not for me?” Luka put his hand to his chest. “I’m hurt.”

Marinette giggled again, pulling some things out of the box and turning away from him. “You might not be when you see it.” Impulsively she added, “Turn around.” Luka did, and Marinette hurriedly went to work.

“Okay, you can look now.” She was barely holding back laughter, and when Luka turned around his mouth dropped open.

“You’re kidding me,” he said, covering his mouth with one hand as he approached, trying to smother his laughter. “Marinette. Oh my God.”

The cement turtle now sported a pair of Eiffel tower sunglasses the exact match to the ones Marinette had made for Jagged years ago. He had a choker of studded leather around his long neck and another cuff around one ankle, and Marinette had hung a guitar made of cardboard and purple glitter on him as well.

“Tada!” she said, throwing out her hands. “He’s a rock turtle, Luka. Because he’s, you know, rock, I mean I know he’s concrete but it still counts. So now he’s a rock turtle for real.”

“I think those paint fumes are getting to you,” Luka laughed, and then threw one arm around her neck and kissed her forehead before letting her go. “I love it, thank you. It’s amazing.”

“He can be your mascot,” Marinette giggled, unreasonably pleased and trying to resist the urge to touch her forehead. He’d done that the way he used to do it to Juleka, after all, and how touch-starved was she, that she kept dwelling on every little gesture of affection he made? It was Luka, after all, and he was just like that.

But he was smiling, wider than he had in days, and it gave Marinette a sense of accomplishment that more than made up for her tiredness.

“Ready for the big day?” Luka asked as he crouched to examine the turtle’s new guitar.

“I think so. Yeah, I am.” Marinette brought her hands up and rubbed her arms. “It feels like I’m going to jinx it, saying that. Like one of those dreams I’m always having where I walk into a class or a client meeting and realize suddenly that I forgot to cover half of what they asked for in my presentation, and I forgot my bra on top of it.”

Luka laughed, rocking back on his heels to look up at her. “Seriously?”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “All the time. Even my subconscious won’t cut me any slack.”

Luka shook his head. “Marinette, if that ever happened to you in real life, by the end of it you’d have them convinced that they didn’t need all that stuff anyway and wearing bras would immediately go out of style.”

“What,” said a dry voice, “the hell did I just walk in to?”

Marinette’s head whipped around to look at the door, and her mouth dropped open at the sight of the tall, slender woman standing there with her arms loosely crossed and an amused smirk on her face.

“Hey, Jules,” Luka said, getting up and turning towards her with his arms out. “You made it.”

“Of course I did, idiot,” Juleka mumbled, but Marinette saw her hide her smile in Luka’s shoulder as she hugged him back. Then, to her mild surprise, Juleka peeked over his shoulder. “Hi, Marinette.”

“It’s really good to see you, Juleka,” Marinette said warmly. “You look fantastic,” she added, as Juleka came to take her hands and exchange a bise.

“I have good stylists,” Juleka shrugged. Her hair was still long, but the purple was gone and it was pulled back into a shining French braid, leaving both her amber eyes bare to stare at Marinette. Her makeup was perfect and Marinette remembered that Juleka was a cosmetics model now. Of course she always had to look her best in public. “Luka told me you were opening your own place. I can’t make the opening, but maybe...maybe I could make an appointment to come take a look?” There was something in the old Juleka in the way she asked that question, a slight curl of her shoulders and drop of her head, and the way she pinched one thumb and forefinger tightly together at her side.

Impulsively Marinette said, “Why don’t you just come over now? Everything’s set up and you can get first pick if there’s anything you like. Not that you should feel like you need to buy anything,” Marinette added hurriedly. “Just, if anything catches your eye or—okay I’m shutting up now, you probably don’t even have time, it doesn’t have to be now—just, whenever is good! If you want.” She closed her mouth abruptly before she could trip into another line of babble.

Juleka smiled, her head tilting slightly as if she were still peeking through that curtain of bangs. “I’d love to come over now, if that’s okay.”

“Really?” Marinette brightened, embarrassment forgotten. “Awesome! I’d love to have your opinion on—well, everything, to be honest.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

“Oh sure,” Luka mocked, and Marinette jumped a little, looking at him. “You said you were coming to see me, but really you just wanted a sneak peek at Marinette’s clothes. I see where I rate.”

“As long as we’re clear,” Juleka huffed, and walked out of the door. Marinette stood gaping like a fish for a moment, and then followed her, shooting Luka an apologetic look over her shoulder.

“I’m sure it won’t take long,” she said, but Luka, smiling, just rolled his eyes and waved her on.

Juleka didn’t exactly gush; she was too collected for that, but her quiet smile and nod of approval as she looked around was more encouraging than a flood of compliments. “It has good energy,” she murmured. “Very you. Gives a sense of your brand from the beginning. I like it.”

“Thank you,” Marinette smiled, sincerely grateful.

“It looks like a lot of work.”

“It was,” Marinette sighed, “But it’s so worth it to see it come together. It’s scary to be doing this all my own, but at least I can make things exactly the way I want them.” She pointed out the curtained dressing rooms, and the pedestal in front of the (very expensive, even second hand) full-length three-way mirror. “I’m planning to do alterations and fittings as well,” Marinette explained, “On anything, not just my clothes. In a limited capacity, of course, so that I still have time to keep the shop stocked. I’m actually hoping to bring in lines from a couple of other independent designers—people I met in school that have an aesthetic that will fit in with mine, just to broaden the range of what I can offer, but...well, I kind of wanted to open with my own things first.” She smiled ruefully and wrinkled her nose. “I don’t want to drag anybody down with me if I go under in the first month.”

Juleka laughed, and Marinette smiled at the sound of it. “I’m sure that won’t happen,” Juleka assured her, still smiling. “These pieces are gorgeous,” she added, motioning to the photographs on the wall.

“It’s nice to see you happy,” Marinette said without thinking, and then bit her lip.

Juleka seemed to freeze for a long moment, and then she took a long breath that reminded Marinette of Luka. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, hasn’t it,” Juleka said quietly, that slight curl in her shoulders again. “I—I’m...sorry, that we gave you such a hard time back when we were kids. I...understand better now. This is a tough industry and you have to be dedicated and motivated to succeed. I’m sorry that we...well, I don’t think any of us meant to be holding you back, but I understand how it might have felt that way to you.”

“Oh…” Marinette said lamely, looking away and moving to fiddle with the nearest garment rack. “I didn’t—I mean, I felt bad that I had to bail on you guys so much, but I didn’t feel that way. I just thought, you know, you guys were right and if I wasn’t being the kind of friend you needed...it was okay. You’d have every right to be just as mad at me for choosing my career over you even at such a young age. I was ditching you a lot, and...I could have done things differently. Handled it better.”

“You had a life beyond school and beyond us,” Juleka insisted, folding her arms uncomfortably. “It was wrong of us to try and take that from you. I don’t know, maybe we felt guilty that we weren’t working as hard, or something, but...we could have made it work. We always made exceptions for Adrien because he was working a career outside of school. We should have at least extended the same courtesy to you. Especially when it was obvious even then how talented and driven you were. You’ve got what it takes to really make it, and it was wrong of us to get in the way of that when we should have been cheering you on.”

Marinette’s hands stilled for a moment, and it was her turn to take a slow breath. She felt a twinge of guilt, because Juleka of course didn’t know the whole story. It hadn’t been wholly for the sake of her future career that she’d bailed on her friends so often, and it hadn’t been determination to drive forward at all costs that had caused her to stop trying so hard to meet her friends halfway. Her reasons had neither been selfish nor noble. She just hadn’t had the energy to keep up the front any longer.

But she couldn’t explain it now any more than she could then, so all she could say was a quiet, “Thank you, Juleka.” She took another breath and lifted her head, trying to smile. “You really don’t need to apologize, though. I never held anything against you guys. Besides, we were kids.” Juleka relaxed a little, though she still held herself a bit stiffly.

Time to change the mood. Marinette rallied her spirits and put the most genuine grin on her face that she could muster as she faced Juleka. “Come on,” she said brightly, moving over to one of the other racks and gesturing enthusiastically for Juleka to follow her. “I have some things that I bet will look great on you.”

They already had several outfits laid aside for Juleka to purchase when Luka knocked and came in the door, the little bell Marinette had hung over it chiming cheerfully.

“Hi Luka,” Marinette smiled, looking up from where she was laying another dress across the sales counter. “Sorry, I guess we took up more time than I realized. Did you get bored?”

“Just wondering if my sister is still going to buy me dinner,” Luka grinned. “I’m starving here.”

“Then hurry up and die so we don’t have to listen to you,” Juleka called from the dressing room.

“I’m wasting away slowly ,” he called back. “I’ll continue to exist on spite until you feed me.”

“Do you need any help, Juleka?” Marinette asked, trying to keep her giggles out of her voice.

“No, I think I’ve—there. Oh, I like this one, Marinette!” Juleka pushed the curtain aside and stepped out.

“Hm, needs a little tailoring, but only a little,” Marinette said, eyes fastened on the garment, as Juleka made a slow turn. “Let me just—” She stepped over with a couple of clips in her hand and took the slack out of the dress in a couple of key places, clipping it in place. “There. And of course I can adjust the hem if you need it, but I think this length is pretty good on you actually. What do you think, Luka?” She turned and blinked at the look on his face as he stared at his sister. He looked...happy, but his face was crinkling up in a weird way that she didn’t understand.

“You look beautiful, Juleka,” Luka said, and had to clear his throat.

“Don’t you dare,” Juleka warned, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes. “Don’t you dare get mushy on me again.”

“Better,” Luka continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “You’re poised and confident and...I’m just so proud of you. Five years ago that dress would have overpowered you and now look at you.”

“You’re not going to cry again, are you?” Juleka asked, rolling her eyes.

“I might,” Luka said, and his voice did sound a little thick. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I swear he’s cried at every single one of the photo shoots I was dumb enough to bring him to,” Juleka grumbled, giving Marinette a look of longsuffering.

Marinette giggled as she stepped close again and adjusted a clip. “He loves you.”

“He’s a sap,” Juleka groaned.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Luka and Marinette said in unison, and Juleka snorted.

“You two are made for each other,” she muttered, and then looked back with concern when Marinette somehow got the web of her thumb pinched in the clip and yelped.

“Fine, I’m fine,” she said hurriedly, fixing the clip. “There. Take a look.”

She helped Juleka up onto the pedestal in front of the three-way mirror, and Juleka sighed. “I love it,” she said, glancing at the two dresses and the suit that were already on the counter. “I better not try on anything else though. It’d be a pain dragging Luka’s corpse out of the shop, and I’m going to go broke if you pull out any more perfect outfits. Can you check me out for these, and we can make an appointment for the tailoring later?”

“Sure! Give me just a second.” Marinette gave her a sheepish smile. “The POS system is new and it might take me a minute to figure it out. Actually you’re doing me an extra favor by letting me try this thing out before I put it through its paces tomorrow.”

“Hey, can I take a look?” Luka asked, moving around the counter at her gesture. “I still haven’t settled on one yet. I’ve got some ancient thing a buddy loaned me, but I’m hoping I can upgrade in a few months.” He leaned on the counter next to her and grinned. “I’m not above profiting from the months of research I’m sure you did before settling on one.”

Marinette giggled, shoving him with her elbow. “Off the counter,” she ordered. “You have no idea how many practice runs I had to do with the resin to get good enough to do a project this size.”

“I can tell,” Luka said, straightening. ”It looks really cool.”

“You’ve really made the shop yours in such a short time,” Juleka said, looking at the countertop. “Everything about it just screams Marinette.”

Marinette blushed, and picked up the tablet, tried to focus on walking Luka through the steps of the POS system, explaining the features that had made her go with this system as he leaned close to watch. He smelled different than he used to, she thought absently. Not so much sunscreen and fresh air and teenage boy. He wore cologne now, pleasantly subtle, and only noticeable when he was close like this. It was a more mature scent but it suited him.

“And then Juleka can put her card in here,” Marinette said, pointing to the slot in a stand on the counter. Juleka did so, and after a moment the machine beeped. “And...there we go.” She showed Luka the screen.

“Huh. Do you use it for inventory management much?” Luka asked, leaning one hand on the counter next to her as he watched her navigate the menus. She jumped a little when her shoulder brushed his chest, but he didn’t seem to notice.

Marinette cleared her throat. “W-well like you, I don’t really have standard inventory, everything is unique, so it’s a bit more work to keep the system updated, but—uh—” He was looking at her and not the screen, attentive, and Marinette’s thoughts began to scatter.

“Shameless,” Juleka sighed, shaking her head, and they both looked up at her. She smirked at Luka, and Marinette felt her face redden though she couldn’t have said why.

“Me?” Luka said innocently, straightening away from Marinette and putting his hand on his chest. Marinette was surprised to see his ears were red, and it only made her feel more flustered.

Juleka snorted. “I can’t believe you’re taking advantage of Marinette like this, you lazy jerk. I bet you cheated on your tests at school too.”

“I sat next to Dingo ,” Luka reminded her, rolling his eyes. “Believe me, I wasn’t the one cheating.”

“Whatever,” Juleka rolled her eyes. “So can we go now? I thought you were so—” Her lips curled in a smirk. “Hungry. Or was it thirsty?”

“I’m ready when you are,” Luka said quickly, coming back around the counter. “Thanks, Marinette.”

Marinette moved quickly to get a garment bag and package up Juleka’s purchases. It was Luka, though who took them from her with a warm smile. “Congrats on your first sale,” he told her with a wink, and Marinette felt that blush again.

“It’s hardly her first sale,” Juleka pointed out, picking up a small stack of Marinette’s business cards from the holder on the counter and slipping them into her pocket. “She’s been selling since collége.”

Luka rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “First sale from your first shop—first brick and mortar shop,” he hastily corrected, when Juleka opened her mouth again. “Juleka, you’re such a pain.”

“I’m just saying, if you’re going to compliment a girl, you need to be accurate,” Juleka smirked, as Luka began shoving her toward the door. “Good luck with your grand opening, Marinette,” she called back. “I’ll pass your info around the next time I’m in the studio!”

“That would be great. Thanks for coming by, Juleka!” Marinette called, waving.

“Why do you have to make everything weird?” she heard Luka mutter as he pushed the door open for his sister and nearly shoved her out of it.

“It’s not my fault you just are weird,” Juleka retorted, and gave Marinette one more wave before the door closed behind them. “Especially around—” The door cut her off, and Marinette turned and buried her face in her hands, not at all relaxed by the giggling that began in several hidden corners of the shop.

“Traitors,” she mumbled, and took a deep breath.

“It’s okay, Marinette,” Pollen said kindly, coming to light on her arm. “You should be proud!”

“Yes!” Tikki agreed, popping out of Marinette’s purse and coming to sit next to Pollen. “That was your first client consult for your brand new shop! And it went amazing! Four outfits!”

“And you impressed Luka,” Mullo pointed out, emerging from one of the garment racks. “He seemed to think you were very knowledgeable. ” The kwami giggled and poked Marinette’s blushing cheek. Marinette swatted at him, pouting, but he just phased through her hand with a toothy grin.

“Luka just needed some information,” Marinette countered, ignoring the snorting giggles that came from all three kwamis. “And Juleka was just being nice. “Though...I suppose she could have been nice without spending quite so much money,” she conceded. “It’ll be great for business if she wears the clothes, too...she works in exactly the kind of circles where word of mouth will be really valuable.” Marinette picked up her tablet and smiled as she punched up her sales history, and looked at the transaction there. “Well...I guess this does make us official, doesn’t it.” She held out her fist and Tikki, Pollen, and Mullo bumped it all in turn. “Come on, let’s get back to work and see how much we can finish up. I want to try and take it easy tonight. I can’t show up at the big opening looking like death.”

Fiction Master Post | LBSC 2021 Exchange Collection

#quickspins #guard my heart #lukanette #endgame lukanette #lukanette endgame #luka couffaine #marinette dupain-cheng #miraculousladybug #miraculous ladybug #lbsc 2021 exchange #rated: m

31 notes · View notes

leavesofolive · 4 years

Text

🌞🧹🌻Hearth Witch Tips!🌻🧹🌞

04: Your kitchen eats with you!

Just like with the rest of the house, what you put into the kitchen also heavily affects its energy. When you treat the hearth in certain ways, it reacts in certain ways. Your relationship with any room in the house is give-and-take. That means that if you don’t give back occasionally, the room will grow cold and stop appreciating your presence. But there are plenty of ways to mend your relationship! And the first step is to identify the problem!

From my experience, there are three main reasons why the kitchen stops being a warm and inviting place: 1) You are filling the cupboards with too much toxic, processed foods; 2) You aren’t spending enough time in that room; 3) Or you aren’t keeping the room clean enough.

When there’s a problem in the hearth, it’s always either one of these things or some combination of them. We’ll start with number three since it’s the easiest to explain. The kitchen should be anyone’s top priority to keep clean. It’s where all of your food, the nutrition and fuel of your physical and spiritual bodies, comes from! What you eat is your first defense against illness, injury, and your mental health. If the kitchen is filthy, then the food you take into your body will also begin to develop the same properties.

To keep the kitchen clean, I always start my day by washing last night’s dishes and give the counters a quick wipe. Once a month, I take stock of what’s in the fridge and freezer and scrub them out to prevent bacteria build-up. Sweeping the kitchen floors happens once a week and takes me all of three minutes to complete, tops. Once per season, normally at the beginning, I scrub the floors with soap and water, descale the coffee maker, wipe down the other appliances, and clean out the cupboards. So the only true “cleaning days” for the kitchen is four days out of the entire year. The rest of the time, the chores only take me about 30 minutes. As a quick tip, rinsing your dishes before setting them in the sink speeds up the dish washing process a ton! I’ve personally never trusted dishwashers since they don’t clean stuff well enough and it’s easier, faster, and far more cost effective to do it by hand.

The next problem the kitchen’s energy might be suffering from is how much time you’re spending there. First, spending a lot of time in the kitchen is a great thing! It absorbs the energy you feed to it, so when you don’t go in the kitchen very often or just don’t spend much time in there to begin with, the kitchen grows darker and colder. It loses the warmth and emotion and love that would’ve been sinking into it when you aren’t there.

The way to fix this problem is actually really easy! Cooking your own meals ensures that you are in there for a good amount of time each day because of the prep work and meal planning, etc. Plus, you get healthier, tastier food that way too! If you can’t cook all that well yet, don’t worry! Just like any skill, there’s no talent involved in learning something. It just depends on how much effort you apply to it. Another way to boost the hearth’s energy is to just hang out in that room. Invite some friends over, set out a snack tray, and just chill in the kitchen. Of course, since it’s pandemic right now, it’s best to wait until that’s over with to try this approach. But you, yourself, can still hang out in the kitchen!

The last problem, and a very, very common one in this day and age, is the influence of toxic food. Just like how your house absorbs energy from the land its on and what its built with, the kitchen also absorbs energy from the ingredients you keep within it. Toxic foods include anything processed or with a bunch of added sugars, and even GMO ingredients to some extent due to the trace chemicals that are still on the crops. These kinds of foods, if that’s the only thing in your house, will rot the energy. Not to mention, easy to grab snacks also end up causing you to spend a lot less time in the kitchen if that’s all you eat. Needless to say, no one eats healthy all the time. I don’t either! But having only toxic food in your kitchen isn’t great for you or the hearth.

Once again, cooking comes to the rescue! Even if you’re bad at it, it’s the thought that counts and little by little, as your skills grow and improve, the kitchen will learn to help guide you. There have been many times where I’d be stuck on how to fix something and a bottle of spice would fall of the shelf right next to me. If you listen to the kitchen, it will listen to you, too! Even if you don’t have time to cook, snacks like apples, berries, seeds, nuts, and dried meats are all healthy alternatives! I usually keep kale chips in the house for some yummy, salty crunchiness!

------------------------------

If you are worried about cost with this approach (believe me, due to my own situation it’s been a struggle at times), I’ve found out several tips and tricks to significantly lower the grocery bill. Anymore, my bill would actually be bigger if I bought crap food instead! Here’s my advice:

☀ Plan your week ahead! I always plan four meals a week that I’ll cook, and three days that I’ll scavenge for snacks and leftovers. I also stick to the rule of “one simple, one chicken, one meatless, one freebie” to remain more cost effective! The “simple” meal is just something I can make quickly if I know I’ll be short on time. The reason for have one of the meals be chicken is because it’s a much less expensive meat than beef or pork, and it’s a little better for the environment. The meatless meal is for the same reasoning. Meat is expensive and commercial brands are horrible for both the environment and the animals themselves. When I do buy meat, I make sure to buy local, grass-fed, organic meat as often as I can afford to. Keep in mind that every time you purchase anything, you are casting your vote for what is acceptable for society to continue. The “freebie” meal is just whatever I’ve been craving. If I want some kind of beef, I wait until this day.

☀ Learn to bake your own bread! For those of us with the time, this is a great way to save money and to stay healthy! Basic, white bread is actually pretty easy to make and only uses a couple ingredients. Those ingredients also go a long way. It costs me about 24¢ to make one loaf of bread because things like flour, sugar, salt, butter, honey, and yeast are all things that you buy once and can use for several loaves before you have to buy them again! It’s also not as time consuming as you’d think. Yes, it takes about 2 hours, but most of that time is proofing so you can easily be running around doing other things in between.

☀ Grow a garden! Even if it’s just a small, window herb garden, it can take the edge off of your overall food cost. Portobello mushrooms are also super easy to grow inside with minimal effort and equipment. If you have outdoor space, planting a small garden with the ingredients you use the most can help immensely!

☀ Only buy what you need! I know those sales look crazy tempting, but most of them are actually bogus and don’t actually save you any money. Think about what you are actually going to use before it goes bad and stick to your list. The bottom shelves at the store, aka the ones not in your direct line of sight, are usually where the grocery stores hide the better priced goods. At the back of most stores that have bakeries, there’s also usually a spot to get baked goods left over from the previous day for a slightly cheaper price. Day-old baked novelties like bread, cookies, and cakes are still perfectly good, and much easier to enjoy where you don’t have to spend as much!

☀ Check what’s already in your fridge before making your list! This is a huge one, since it prevents food waste, which in turn prevents money waste! What can you make during this week that can use up some of the ingredients leftover from last week? You’ll be impressed how quickly your food cost drops when you aren’t throwing things away. Waste not, want not! This trick also applies in another way, as well. When making your weekly meal plans, what types of foods use similar ingredients? If one meal calls for a slightly pricier ingredient, what other food can you cook with that ingredient to make the cost worth it? This also ensures that you get full use of things without wasting them. For example, this week I bought some fresh mozzarella cheese. Because this item is a little more expensive, I’m using it to make both the tomato mozzarella sandwiches and the beef wellingtons I’m making this week!

☀ Buy mostly produce! One of the best ways to lower your bill while still eating healthy is to simply add more fruits and veggies into your diet! There are so many tasty recipes that call for these babies that you’ll never run out of options, and there’s several things out there for everyone! Because I deal with sensory issues, I had to experiment a lot with what textures and tastes I could handle, especially on the bad days, but even still I found an over-abundance of things I love to eat. Fresh produce is way less expensive than meat, and much less expensive than many of the more mainstream snacks like chips or other processed foods.

------------------------------ All in all, taking care of your kitchen will also end up taking care of you, as well! Spending time there, actually using the kitchen the way it’s supposed to be, and just keeping it clean can work wonders in opening up your home and making it ten times warmer and more inviting! Trust me, your health and home will thank you for it!

#witchblr #hearth witch #pagan #witchcraft #cottagecore #writeblr #daily care #housecare #kitchen #hearth #positive vibes #know your home #healthy eating #health #naturecore #natural living #goblincore #home #kody

28 notes · View notes

transhoverfish · 4 years

Note

What are everyone's "abilities" in Survivors? Ryley has good hearing and Milo glows but what do the others have?

!!! YOU HAVE ASKED ME ABOUT MY AU !!! THE FLOODGATES OF YELLING HAVE OPENED!!

OK SO. as u mentioned ryley has good hearing and milo glows. basically,

ryley = good hearing

milo = glowy boy

emily = electric detection (cooler than i describe rn my vocabulary is small)

danby = like emily's but reverse. controls electromagnetic things

roman = night vision

jochi = the most superpower like one, he got quick regeneration.

avery = telepathy!

bart = also kind of telepathy but more like future telepathy. he has future vision.

and i. never thought of one for ozzy actually and at this point i have no idea what to give them that wouldn't have been brought up prior so. u know genetics are weird! they just dont have anything ig. nobody look at me LABDKABDLABD

AND ALSO paul and marg have powers! paul got that peeper enzyme carrier thing, and marg got the very funny power of feeling others emotions. yes that includes the fish. yes this is one of the primary reasons she didnt kill paul over a decade of dealing w him. yes she hates it.

and the vesper haven't been sick long enough to develop anything! or at least thats what im going with bc i havent thought of anything for them yet 😔

AND NOW: LONGER EXPLANATIONS. IM GONNA GET CARRIED AWAY SO ITS UNDER A READ-MORE.

first off on the list: bart! so bart.. kinda has futuristic visions?? but the things he sees are not set in the stone,, as in if he dreams about smth (a lot like ryley can!) it is possible to change those events! most of these visions/telepathy type stuff were bc of the emperor and warpers, and also al-an! once the sea emp died and the warpers all calmed down his powers kind of go away a bit. i think i wrote al-an sort of mentioning it in one chap of awa?? but its only kind of implied. so he has rlly similar powers to avery except he can't tell what others are thinking and he can only kind of tell how his closest friends r feeling. so right now bart pretty much doesn't have powers! he can communicate w the warpers and sea emps much easier than the others tho (he's the only one that can talk to warpers! im not sure he'd get along w them after being hunted down by them for like 12 years though KABDLSBRLSHD)

avery has telepathy! this is because when he first shows up he jokes about having telepathy and i was like "haha. WAIT." and then he got telepathy! i realize its a bad idea to not come up with their powers until as im writing but uhhh well. i never said i was a fantastic writer who's smart. KANROSHROSBF.

he also kind of had marg's empathy ability but wayyy dialed back. he can only tell how other humans are feeling and he can only vaguely understand it as opposed to feeling the emotions himself like marg does. so he can kind of tell how others are feeling and he can tell what theyre thinking about! unless of course for plot convince he can't. strong emotions, especially strong negative emotions (ie. fear) can overwhelm him and makes his powers stop working. and if someone is convinced they're right then he wont b able to tell they're lying/hiding something! yay plot convenience!!

roman has night vision. i have no way of making this sound cool he just straight up can see really well in the dark. like a cat. most of the powers were based off where they originally landed and what would help them in that area! and roman landed in the sparse reef, which is so dark all the time i cry thinking about it. so he has night vision! his poor eyesight is probably all kinds of fucked up now tho.

jochi has regeneration abilities! now i know this might sound a bit much but he just heals from cuts and stuff faster and like. he bones heal fast. and he's more likely to survive smth that might usually kill someone, but its like a 10% higher chance of living nothing too much. he doesn't rlly get scars as much as the others, and its healed his old ones a bit more! this is by far the most unrealistic power of them all, but ya know its alien fish planet game who cares. basically bc his life support systems failed his spine got all fucked up and he got infected faster bc he was barely alive for the first few days and spent a lot of time w bart who was looking after him. power helped fix his back, but he still has a rlly bad limp and pretty much constant pain. big mood there khasar 😔✊

emily can detect electromagnetic waves! works best underwater. kind of like ryley's, but instead of hearing noises she can only hear anything electric, like vehicles or ampeels or heartbeats. gets all fucked up during thunderstorms though sadly. she's the only other one that can kind of hear warpers and can tell when ones about to warp around but she cant actually talk back to them. pretty sick if u ask me tho.

danby has p similar powers to her bc ampeels also spawn in the bulb zone. except he can sense them at a much smaller distance, cant hear warpers, and can control the waves around him! mostly just his own tho. so like, he can quiet his heartbeat or make it stop all together. scary power that he does not know how to control. uh oh. but he can also control other creatures a bit! he's very good at hiding bc of this, which is nice bc he loves to hide from scary things. very big mood once again.

milo is glowing powers! looks a lot like the transparency of a ghost levi or a crabsquid, although he isn't as see through as them. you can def make out like veins but not bones or organs. his powers are activated by touch, the more force behind will create more glow and more transparency! a poke = goes away within a few seconds, a slap = stays for a minute or so. instead of bruises, he just glows until the bruise would normally go away. he's basically a living glowstick. i have another joke for this but i cannot physically convince myself to type it bc its some shit emily would say to him and i cannot embarrass him like that LABDLABDKABAKD

andd ryley's super hearing! can hear basically everything within a mile radius at all times. im bad at math and i don't know the metric system but i think that's like around 1k meters. wait does the metric system use mile already. no. ONCE AGAIN NEVER SAID I WAS SMART.

OK ANYWAYS back on track! this means he can hear about half of the crater at all times. he's gotten p good at blocking out background noise and anything far away. typically only hears everything within like 300 meters of himself. so when he does get back to just hearing everything its like. u ever take out headphones in a busy place and everything kinda hurts for a few seconds bc its so much noise. yeah like that but 500x worse. he's able to concentrate on specific areas within this 1 mile field but if its far away it fucks him up good for a lil while. sorry ryley :(

and then the other two degasi! as mentioned before, paul can carry enzyme like the peepers, but he also can kind of make some himself! only small amounts and it works a bit less than the peeper enzyme does. he does not have to cough it up though thankfully it just like. idk how to describe this idea it can just kind of leave through his skin?? he has like no control over his power at all it just kind does its own thing and he deals w it. this is primarily how he and marg survive for so long w/o dying to kharra!

and finally marguerit! highly empathetic abilities that allow her to feel the emotions of anything around her! i thought it would be funny as hell to give MARGUERIT of all ppl Big Emotion Disease. this is a big reason why she has had yet to murder paul and why she's a lot less murderer like in the au. its hard to kill someone if you. you know. can feel exactly what they are. probably the reason she adopted Dog Bart/Legally Preston Emotionally Not. saw sad puppy and felt too bad to leave him. like paul, she has basically no control over it and is one of the reasons she does NOT want to go back to the survivors base and be around so many other ppl, she'd be feeling like, 13 ppl's emotions at one time. all these powers have fucked up drawbacks dont they??

once again sam, robin, jeff, maxim, and ozzy are (for now at least) not gonna have any powers! mutations are weird and ozzy just didn't get anything, and the vesper haven't been sick long enough for any yet!

OK THATS ALL. HOLY SHIT SORRY FOR YELLING FOR 15 MINUTES. GOT CARRIED AWAY. hopefully that explains everything tho OABEOABROANRJS OK BYE MY PHONE IS ALMOST DEAD

24 notes · View notes

thekitchnpro · 3 years

Text

Dumbbell Water Bottle - Keep up Your Hydration

New Post has been published on https://thekitchnpro.com/dumbbell-water-bottle-keep-up-your-hydration/

Dumbbell Water Bottle - Keep up Your Hydration

A dumbbell water bottle will keep you hydrated and fit. You know that type of workout where you don’t want to stop because it feels like you’re flying! Yeah that’s what it feels like now and it all started when my gym buddy told me about his new favorite item: The DUMBBELL WATER BOTTLE.

Cool Things About Dumbbell Water Bottle

Keeping fit and healthy is extremely important. The trouble, though, is that it can be easy to forget about health when life gets busy. And it’s even easier to not drink enough water every day. Thankfully, we’ve got a solution: dumbbell-shaped water bottles! Yes, we thought we’d be able to make working out and staying healthy more fun and easier than ever before – and we succeeded! These awesome products look like real dumbbells – but they hold all sorts of tasty drinks inside.

They’re sure to get your mouth watering even if you didn’t feel thirsty before now. So grab one of these awesome Dumbbell Water Bottles today and enjoy what hydration feels like! Forget about dry lips or stuck-up hair. Drink up and focus on what matters (like work!). Keep things light with one of these fun bottles by your side. Are you going to let us have all the fun?! No way! We want everyone in our great nation to have access to these amazing wellness accessories. Don’t settle for a boring old plastic bottle again. Feel energized with an awesome Dumbbell Water Bottle in hand ! Throw away all those plain old boring water bottles.

Gym Dumbbell water bottle

This cool water bottle is designed to remind you to stay hydrated. When you’re at home, it looks like a dumbbell sitting on your countertop. But when it’s time for work out, just twist off its top cap and reveal a drinking spout that’s fitted with a screw-on lid to help prevent spills. The extra layer of security means no more sloshing drinks in your gym bag!

Workout Dumbbell water bottle

Our skin is our biggest organ, so keeping it hydrated is really important. Drinking water is not only essential for our organs to function properly but helps with our metabolism, too. Drinking at least eight glasses of water a day will help us stay healthy and look great! Keeping yourself adequately hydrated throughout each day can be difficult. It’s often easy to forget, especially if we’re working long hours or are busy doing other activities away from home.

Why is this Bottle so Special?

It’s simple, it doesn’t leak and it makes sure that you drink enough throughout your day. We all know how important it is to be properly hydrated! All while using our Dumbbell BottleTM, we’ll not only look like a pro while hitting our exercise goals but we’ll also be able to hit them faster! Get yours today because once people start seeing how cool it is they won’t be able to resist. Make sure that doesn’t get left behind because these bottles are hot sellers! After seeing what people think of their Dumbbell Water Bottles they say I never leave home without it. Also useful for keeping track of whether or not you drank enough water today or did any form of exercise. Whether it’s lifting weights, cardio exercises, or even just normal daily activities at work, etc. This helps me stay on top of my fitness game every single day! And if you’re wondering why The Workout People® decided to make one of these bottles in particular? Well for starters its attractive-looking design appeals to many different types of people including fitness enthusiasts, athletes, gym-goers who love working out at home as well as teachers who want something special/personalized just for them.

How Do I Use It?

Simply fill it up with cold or hot drinks, attach it to a keychain, and take it wherever you go. Keeps your drink at the optimum temperature all day long. It is perfect for outdoor activities like running or walking or even when you are in traffic. The bottles are BPA-free and FDA approved, making them safe for your health. It’s easy to clean too! Just rinse under running water after every use. If necessary, hand wash with warm soapy water. Do not put it in a dishwasher as there may be corrosion issues resulting from extreme heat. Avoid using detergents containing bleach or chemicals because they could damage its color and make it less resilient over time. Its compact size makes carrying a breeze; pop into your handbag or hangs from keys or backpack! To carry around conveniently, simply attach any kind of carabiner to the loop located at one end of each dumbbell flask.

Why Should I Get One For Myself?

Why is it important to stay hydrated? The easiest way to figure out if you’re hydrated enough is by looking at how much your pee looks like. If it’s clear, then it’s a good indication that you’re drinking enough water. It also helps alleviate headaches and constipation. Not to mention that staying well-hydrated will help boost energy and improve concentration and overall performance. Getting into a routine of staying well-hydrated is easier than you think, but having a reminder can be just what we need sometimes! Here’s why our brains aren’t made for remembering everything, and taking care of ourselves isn’t always first priority (hence: distractions). Putting something as simple as a bottle in our field of vision every day might become the motivation we didn’t even know we needed—especially when every time we go to grab a drink, there’s that one thing that reminds us to take care of ourselves. One problem easily solves itself after another with one simple fix! Isn’t life great?

As an added bonus, these dumbbell bottles are BPA-free so they’re safe to drink from! What else makes them cool is their dual function: they come with a handy built-in timer so you can watch your fitness goals roll right along.

#best dumbbell water bottle #dumbbell bottle #dumbbell water bottle

0 notes

inkribbon796 · 3 years

Text

Lost in the Lightning Storm Ch. 1: Lightning in a Bottle

Summary: Henrik is a naturally curious person, and with there being something between him and Anti, he just wants to know what kind of person he’s dealing with.

Chapter: 1, 2

Henrik had more than a bit of a problem.

Anti had stopped making his presence so apparent, almost like he was trying to avoid Henrik but still watch him. It gave Henrik time to think about a lot of things. About what he wanted, and if even pursuing a relationship with him was even remotely a good idea.

The glitch demon was angry, violent, prone to random fits of destruction, and left gifts outside of Henrik’s office like a deranged cat. But he also saved Henrik from fights, wasn’t attacking him, and it was clear that although he left organs and teeth for Henrik that he meant for Henrik to actually like the gifts.

So Henrik was unsure of what to do about Anti. He was mostly curious about how a relationship like that would progress. But Anti had a history with the Septics that reminded Henrik that this tepid infatuation could end with Henrik’s blood and guts smeared all over the walls.

Henrik had spent a lot of time thinking about it as the gifts and stalking kept coming. So to clear his head, he headed towards the base.

The German doctor meant to find Logic, ask for some surveillance equipment, but when he walked into the comms room the Side wasn’t alone in the room. He was with Tubbo and Nate.

Logic was busy managing several different screens as the situation was calming down as Tubbo was holding some remote and shouting information into a headset. Both of them were on their feet. Nate was next to them, looking braced to rush out of the room.

Henrik paused as Logan fell back into his chair and let out a sigh of relief.

“Holy shit,” Tubbo commented, and started to drive his remote again. He was bringing his little bee drone back to him. What came back faster to him were three little bee familiars which buzzed around his head and settled into his suit. “That was ridiculous.”

“Now do you see why I keep you away from the Duke, his particular breed of unpredictability makes him exceedingly dangerous,” Logan explained.

“Is everything alright?” Henrik asked as he walked in.

“It is now,” Nate answered with a sigh of relief.

“Vat[1] happened?” Henrik looked at the screens.

“The Duke decided to live up to his title of “Intrusive Thoughts” and terrorize a baseball stadium full of people and make them hallucinate,” the logical Side explained. “At the most inopportune time, of course.”

“Of course,” Henrik rolled his eyes. Then he turned to Nate, “Ahhh, Nathan, it is so good to see you. It is a rare thing to see you in ze base zese days.[2]

“Been busy,” Nate commented. “Just wanted to meet the new guys, they seem alright.”

“Damn straight,” Tubbo smiled back at him, before continuing to pilot his bee drone back to him.

“Heard this place was haunted now,” Nate smiled.

“Ahh, yes,” Henrik smiled. “Big Man has a bro’zer currently viz Marvin. He calls himself Ghostbur und can phase z’rough valls.”[3]

“No shit, he like Big Man?” Nate smiled.

“Nein,”[4] Henrik smiled. “He vas[5] much calmer, und[6] quieter.”

“Really? That’s hilarious.” Nate laughed, but he was just staring at Tubbo, he seemed to be studying the young apprentice.

Henrik was about to leave and give up on his questions for another day. But Nate got up.

“Coffee?” Nate smiled.

Shrugging, Henrik followed but they didn’t go to the common room area for coffee, they left the base entirely.

“I like researching demons,” Nate told him, their topic veering to what Nate had been up to since Henrik had last gotten to sit down and talk to him, “and glitches have always been interesting to me. Even more so after I found out that Logic was a demon. I used to think they were all chaos incarnate, and they are, but they’re more than that. Logic is a way different demon than Anti, and both of them are different from the Jims, who I’m fairly certain are just super weird glitches.”

“Really?” Henrik asked, confused.

“Yeah,” Nate smiled as they kept walking down the road to this little coffee shop. “Makes me really glad I started distancing myself from the hunters. The only research they care about is if it makes killing demons easier or safer for them.”

“So you wish to become a university professor on ze[7] demons?” Henrik smiled.

“Dude, if that was possible, I would,” Nate promised. “The process from a human soul to a demon one. What they lose? What they gain? Can you predict who’s actually going to turn into a demon? What type of demon are they going to turn into?”

They took the time to get their coffees and take their seats outside the coffee shop as Henrik thought about Nate’s words. “I assume zat[8] you have taken copious notes about ze[7] demons already in Egoton?”

“Course I have,” Nate smiled. “As much as I was able.”

“Vat[1] do you know about Anti?” Henrik asked. “I know vat he is now, but vat about before. Vho vas he before he vas a demon?”[9]

“Huh,” Nate let out a loud puff of air and tapped his fingers to his coffee mug. “Never tried to look him up that far back.”

The singer looked down at his coffee before looking back up in thought. “I think Mare said something about Anti being a little over a century old. That’s probably just in demon years, so who knows how old he was when he actually died. But he’s a glitch demon so . . .”

Nate let out another pensive breath of air, rubbing the inside corners of his eyes, “He was probably killed by lightning. But that was around the same time as an industrial revolution so he could have died in a factory accident and still turned into a glitch. His turning would have probably been sometime in the early 1900’s, late 1800’s maybe.”

“Und[6] could he be found?” Henrik asked.

Nate looked a little concerned, “Maybe, finding him would definitely be easier than finding Dark or Mare. They’re older than him and Anti is also a glitch so that narrows it down. Even if he did die in a factory accident.”

“I cannot imagine a vorld vere he did not get into some type of trouble viz ze law,”[10] Henrik commented, pushing up his glasses.

“Yeah that might make it easier,” Nate agreed. “Usually a soul doesn’t change too much from how it used to be in life. There’s some drift but not too much.”

“Yes, but—” Henrik thought out loud before Mare seemed to appear out of nowhere and turned over a bag of cookies right into Nate’s lap.

“The fuck are you doing?” Nate shouted.

“Shut up and eat them, you still reek,” Mare spat at him, digging some loose cookies still in the bag and pushing them into Nate’s hands. “Anything’s better than how you smell right now.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Nate tossed the cookies back in Mare’s face so hard they bounced off his face as they crumbled.

“I don’t like that kid’s aura,” Mare crossed his arms. “He smells weird.”

“Which kid?” Nate argued loudly, Henrik was watching Logan leading Tubbo down the street, the two obviously coming from the base and going out on a patrol. When Tubbo spotted Nate and Mare arguing the two stopped to watch them cautiously from across the street.

“The little goat demon with the bee theme,” Mare slapped down a hand to hold it about at Tubbo’s height. “I didn’t know you guys were picking up spawnlings off the street. I thought that was Dark’s shtick.”

“Bomble? What do you mean he smells?” Nate demanded. “What does he smell like?”

“How are you still alive?” Mare let out a frustrated sigh. “You know how toast smells when it gets burnt?”

“Yeah?” Nate agreed.

“Okay so imagine that burnt toast also set the toaster on fire, and that’s pretty much it,” Mare told them. “Anti doesn’t smell anything, but I can. I don’t know why! I checked with Dark, he can smell it too. But he doesn’t think he smells like toast.”

“Vat[1] did Dark say he smells like?” Henrik questioned.

“Death,” Mare told him. “At first I thought he was joking, like he was just being overdramatic, but then he told me he smells like a village that was on the verge of death from illness. Like a household taken over by the Plague. And after thinking about that, I’m inclined to agree. He kinda does smell like sickness. More like the burnt toast and toaster thing, but I get it. Dark is really old and he would go for that explanation. Don’t know how Anti doesn’t smell it, but he smells like bad news.”

“Zat[8] is very interesting,” Henrik hummed, everyone in the Coalition knew that Tubbo was a bomb expert and that the Coalition had some samples of a couple of his projects under lock and key so no one else could use them.

“Doesn’t help that everything he comes into contact with also winds up smelling like him,” Mare complained. “I thought Pixels had had something blow up in his face because he smells like him, all the time now.”

“Did you tell Logic about it?” Nate asked.

Mare huffed out, “Yeah but he had no idea what I was talking about, couldn’t stand to be in the base because the kid’s got the place carpet bombed.”

“King und[6] Host do not seem to have a problem viz[11] it,” Henrik thought out loud.

“Then their noses are broken, or maybe they have a tolerance to it, I don’t know,” Mare threw up his hands in defeat. “Point is the kid reeks, where’d you dig him up from? He die in some kind of explosion or something?”

“Not zat ve know of,”[12] Henrik sighed. “But he does have an affinity for explosives und bombs.”

Nate looked confused, “Does a person’s death influence their aura?”

“Kinda,”[13] Mare shrugged. “Sometimes it’s a little weird in how it manifests. I can tell if a demon was splintered from another demon, or came from a human soul. Wil probably became a demon in some insane asylum. Dark, it wouldn’t surprise me if his ringing is tied to how he died.”

Mare’s nostrils flared as the direction of air changed and the demon turned to glare at Tubbo who was quickly buzzing across the street and Logan yelled after Tubbo and raced to keep up.

The older demon hissed and took a step back. Logan physically put himself in-between Mare and Tubbo, physically baring his arm in front of the young man to keep him back.

Tubbo just nonchalantly hovered in the air as his wings buzzed. Mare wrinkled up his nose and glared at Tubbo, who was looking quite smug.

“Hey,” Tubbo smiled. “Heard yeh we’re talkin’ about me, mate?”[14]

“You smell,” Mare spat.

Tubbo finally touched his feet to the ground and leaned over to smell his arm, but his helmet shield was still down, so all he did was uselessly shrug. “I showered this mornin’[15].”

“Not what I meant, your aura reeks,” Mare told him. “What’d you do to it?”

Shrugging again, “Just me, bossman.”

“I’ve never,” Mare looked personally insulted. “I’ve never smelt a glitch aura like yours, you must have done something to it.”

“Huh,” Tubbo thought on that before he realized something, “interesting, so I don’t smell like honey anymore?”

“How the flying fuck do you smell even remotely similar to honey?” Mare demanded, almost sounding angry.

“Dunno,”[16] Tubbo shrugged. “E’eryone in the Server always said I smelled like honeycombs. Why do yeh think I started goin’ with the bee aesthetic?”[17]

“Yes, I was wondering how you arrived at the theme you did,” Logan commented.

“You’re lucky I’m in your territory or I’d take your face off,” Mare snarled and he disappeared into a puff of dark black-purple smoke.

“Nice ta[18] know I’m a natural demon deterrent,” Tubbo boasted proudly.

“I don’t think you smell bad, you smell like any normal person,” Logan commented.

“Maybe it’s a glitch thing, then,” Tubbo shrugged.

Logan was quiet at that.

“So I was right, you are a glitch then,” Nate commented.

“If I’m not a glitch, then I don’t know what qualifies, big guy,” Tubbo chuckled.

“Fair, but you and Big Man came from the same gang,” Nate was just watching Tubbo, the young man’s wings buzzing nervously. “How many glitches does the Server have?”

“Like, still? Or before me an’[6] Big Man left?” Tubbo’s tone sounded extremely guarded.

“Not including you two,” Nate qualified.

Tubbo paused to think, “Uhmm. Skeppy, Foolish, Sam, Karl . . .” He kept silently counting for a little bit. “Seven? Eight? Dream is really big on collecting glitches an’[6] empaths. There are even more empaths.”

“Did he ever say why, specifically?” Nate asked. “Glitches are really territorial, so are empaths for that matter, I wouldn’t think it would be so easy to have so many close together.”

“Well, yeah, it was hell,” Tubbo agreed. “But it helped that a lotta us were turned demons, we always kinda existed in the same type ��a space e’en before we turned so we would have less reason ta kill each other.”[19]

“Yeah but people don’t just collect demons because they can,” Nate told him. “Do you know why he’s doing it?”

“I dunno[16],” Tubbo shrugged. “I always figured it was some kinda[13] power trip thing.”

“I think we should keep moving,” Logic interjected, he’d been watching Tubbo get more and more fidgety and nervous so he stepped in and whisked the young man away from Nate. They went off to go meet up with the other Core Sides and survey the damage that Remus had caused.

Nate and Henrik watched him go.

“That huge pact Dream has really bothers me,” Nate admitted. “Seven or more glitches all in such a tightly packed area, with that many empaths thrown in as well is a recipe for disaster.”

“How so?” Henrik asked.

“Anti and Dark are at each other’s throats and they’ve got different territories the size of cities,” Nate reminded. “By my research, Dream’s got a couple dozen young demons all in an area the size of three football fields and they haven’t all slaughtered each other. You don’t get that without a lot of coercion. It just . . . I don’t like it.”

Henrik thought about that, “Are you still going to do more research today?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Nate shrugged. “Write some music too.”

“I vill[20] join you,” Henrik offered.

“Sure, but why? If you don’t mind me asking?” Nate gave him an odd look.

“I vish to find Anti, und figure out exactly vat type of person zat I am dealing viz,”[21] Henrik explained.

“If you start knocking on that door, just know that demons don’t like talking about what turned them into demons. Some demons are too traumatized by it, others see their old human selves as weaklings. Anti is probably going to fall into the second category. You are going to start a shitstorm.”

“Zat[8] is alright,” Henrik dared as he stood up. “Anti und I already have been on bad terms, und zis vould be no’zing new.”[22]

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Post A/N: Tubbo’s familiars are named Spinz, Spunz, and Spoonz. His bee drone is named: Bee Innit. (Named after the canon bees Tubbo had in his New L’Manberg apiary.)

Tubbo’s aura actually smells like radiation, with a thin honey undercurrent, but demons older than the 1960’s can’t place specifically what his aura smells like and the radiation drowns out his original aura too much.

Accessibility Translations:

1. What

2. Ahhh, Nathan, it’s so good to see you. It’s a rare thing to see you in the base these days.

3. Big Man has a brother currently with Marvin. He calls himself Ghostbur and can phase through walls.

4. No

5. was

6. and

7. the

8. that

9. I know what he is now, but what about before. Who was he before he was a demon?

10. I can’t imagine a world were he didn’t get into some type of trouble with the law

11. with

12. Not that we know of

13. Kind of

14. Heard yeh we’re talkin’ about me, mate?

15. morning

16. Don’t know

17. Everyone in the Server always said I smelled like honeycombs. Why do you think I started going with the bee aesthetic?

18. to

19. But it helped that a lot of us were turned demons, we always kind of existed in the same type of space even before we turned so we would have less reason to kill each other.

20. will

21. I wish to find Anti, and figure out exactly what type of person that I am dealing with

22. Anti and I already have been on bad terms, and this would be nothing new.

#Superhero AU #Masks and Maladies #birthday post #footnotes #henrik von schneeplestein #antisepticeye #Logan Sanders #tubbo underscore #Nathan Sharp #Natemare #Antistein #Doctor Glitch #Tubbo's bees #magic #overprotective Mare #Tubbo is a natural anti-demon repellant #because he smells like radioactivity #Henrik are you dealing with your emotions in a healthy way?#what story do you think you're in?

5 notes · View notes

rpgmgames · 5 years

Photo

March’s Featured Game: acai cOrner

DEVELOPER(S): moca & Mitty ENGINE: RPG Maker 2003 GENRE: RPG, Adventure, Surreal SUMMARY: acai cOrner is about Mizuki, someone who has fallen into the sewers and who happens to find their favorite electric guitar! Upon obtaining the guitar, Mizuki turns into a magical girl who must defend herself against spooky sewer creatures using the guitar's magical powers.

Download the game here! Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! *moca: Hi, I'm moca, a Starbucks barista aspiring to be a writer and game developer. I have been making RPG Maker games for about six years now, with my first two projects being a Pokémon fan-game and a Corpse Party fan-game. Those two happen to be my two favorite franchises as well! I have also created the RPG Maker game MOMOKA (IGMC 2018). I have founded a group called 'Team Shibu!' dedicated to making horror games! Our current project is a RPG Maker survival horror game named 'Katharsis'.

*Mitty: Hey there, I'm Mitty! I've been working with Moca on several games for a while now, helping with mostly graphics! Please support him, as he is very kind and hardworking!! I'm also the main developer of a game called "Marinette", so I hope you'll check that one out too, when the demo is released!

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *moca: acai cOrner is an experimental spooky RPG Maker game that only uses 4 colors! You are a magical girl with a just-as-magical electric guitar that you use to fend off spooky sewer slimes and other weird enemies you find in the surreal sewer system. It's half exploration and half RPG battles. What inspired me to create acai cOrner initially was to actually get myself back into the groove of making games again. I had just recently came back from a hiatus and found myself having trouble getting back into the development of 'Katharsis'. That's when I decided to make a short, experimental game to get the juices flowing.

How long did you work on your project? *moca: acai cOrner was finished in just about under a month!

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *moca: I had always wanted to make a Yume Nikki-like game and thought this was the perfect opportunity to try. So for the more surreal parts of acai cOrner, I took inspiration from Yume Nikki and a Homestuck random planet generator. Gameplay wise though, I took inspiration from a RPG Maker game called Ghost Suburb 0! I really loved how unique it was, especially with the timer and no dialogue aspect. I knew I wanted to do something with a timer, so I tried a rogue-like approach with the gameplay.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *moca: If you played any of my previous projects, you know that acai cOrner is vastly different than anything that I have ever done. I'm so used to using words to describe the violence in my games, so when it came to making the story, I had a lot of trouble. It wasn't until I looked deeper into why people like these types of games that I had realized that people like to interpret the story on their own, guided by exploration, to enjoy these games. After that, I let loose a bit and made something more open-ended. Another challenge was the difficulty. I was the only one playtesting the game, and since I knew the game front and back, and had no trouble getting the ending. That's why when I sent out demos to friends, I was really discouraged to hear that the experience was mostly frustrating and rage quitting-inducing haha. I worked closely with their feedback and made changes accordingly to make the experience less frustrating but still difficult. *Mitty: I think I was going through a weird artblock during the development of the game, so for some of the illustrations and backdrops for each area's fights, Moca sketched out the basic idea of what it could look like, and I just put my spin on it! It made the work much easier and faster!

Did any aspects of your project change over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *moca: Well, the game was meant to be short so there wasn't room for any big changes. Sure there are a couple gameplay changes and enemy tweaks, but not anything mindblowing. I added in the idea of making four surreal worlds kinda last minute, if that counts, haha.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *moca: In the beginning, it was just me! I didn't think I was gonna need any outside help since this was supposed to be a relatively easy project to release, but the further in development I got, the more I realized the game needed pizazz. The four color limitation wasn't enough for my lack of graphical talent. That's when I contacted Mitty about helping with the games battle backdrops and sprite animations! She is also a member of Team Shibu!, but we have collabed together even before that. Her art really made the project shine and I enjoy working with them on games! *Mitty: Moca contacted me, and I wanted to help! We are working together on another game called Katharsis, so we are quite familiar with each other. I like working with other people, especially if I'm not in the lead, it releases a bit of the pressure I feel sometimes ahaha

What is the best part of developing a game? *moca: To me, it's seeing everything come together and just... working exactly the way you envisioned it. As a game developer, you section the game off into parts to make development much more organized and faster but seeing it all come together in the end. Pure bliss *chefs kiss*. *Mitty: I like a bit of everything, but currently I've been enjoying animating and spritework, as well as map assets' designs a little more than usual!

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *moca: Mm... not really! I have an idea of what the engine can do, so when I do go out of my way to player other RPG Maker games, it's usually for writing inspiration rather than gameplay inspiration. Ghost Suburb 0 is something that I accidentally stumbled upon and immediately fell in love with it the minute I played it haha. (Fun fact: the developer of Ghost Suburb 0 is apart of Team Shibu! and is in charge of monster design!)

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *moca: There is a rat in the game that is internally called 'Ratthew' who leads you into a funky room. I relate them the most. *Mitty: I relate to the land sharks the most on a spiritual level. They are pretty much confused beans, and that's very relatable.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *moca: I wish I added more random spooky events and trap rooms. But the game was also supposed to be short and I knew that if I kept adding more and more things, development was never gonna end haha.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *moca: Well, by the time this interview comes out, there should be a new update for the game. The update should include 100% custom music by a talented composer, and a nerf in difficulty. As for sequels, who knows! The next time you see acai cOrner may be in 3D.

What do you most look forward to upon finishing the game? *moca: Definitely the fan reaction! The satisfaction of seeing your work being noticed by people and actually enjoying makes me happy. It's also the relief of just... finishing something! *Mitty: For this particular project I was obviously looking forward to seeing what people said about the little animations and such ahaha! I also was curious about the reaction to the timed difficulty mechanic, I had never seen anything like that before Moca presented it to me, so I had no idea on what people's feedback would be.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *moca: How people will handle the difficulty. The game isn't supposed to be completed on your first playthrough, but in 2-3 playthroughs. There are rooms and places that are meant to waste your time that you should ideally skip the more you play. By later playthroughs, you should be shaving time and be better. I understand that it's not handled as best I could, but I think the experience should still be challenging and hopefully fun! *Mitty: I was a little conflicted on the timed mechanic, I loved it because it's pretty original and helps set an interesting athmosphere of worry and unease, and also seems to tell a bit of the vague story; and at the same time I don't like it much because I prefer more story-driven games and the vagueness mixed with the mechanic feels different from what I'm used to playing! I think it's more of a personal taste kind of thing, it was an experimental jam game, after all!

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *moca: Take it easy! Take short breaks throughout development. And most importantly, have fun. If it's a hobby and it's making you overly stressed, just take a step back!

Question from last month's featured dev @ressurflection: What would you say is the weakest part of your game development? *moca: Procrastination. I'm so bad at sticking to my own schedule, it's something that I try to keep in check when working with a team especially.

We mods would like to thank moca & Mitty for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out acai cOrner if you haven’t already! See you next month!

- Mods Gold & Platinum

#rpg maker #acai corner #acai corner game #rpg maker games #pixel games #indie games #gotm #game of the month #march #march 2020 #2020 #moca #mitty #interview #needles

273 notes · View notes