#It’s like you guys don’t even know she talks to minecraft mobs she is so disney princess

[memryse]

been thinking this extra hard lately fanon gem characterisation is so different to how gem actually is. it is so obvious who watches her and who doesn’t

[strawberrymilkgeorge]

Part Three. Ex-boyfriends and Mr. MoneyBags

warnings: ex-boyfriend is a dick, mentions of emotional and mental abuse, swearing word count: 933 (not including pictures)

behind the screen (irl dream x reader) series masterlist ultimate masterlist

edit: omg the dates on the dms between dream and yn are SO wrong just don't look at them lol

edit 2: added another photo for Karl/yn conversation two days after posting bc I forgot it

**********

.

A wave of discomfort washed over Y/n as it alway did when talking about her ex-boyfriend. It gave her an ominously unsettling feeling in her stomach that she was not fond of. She shook her head and pretended like she couldn't hear his voice in the back of her head as she fixed her hair in the mirror. Healing, she reminded herself. Not perfect, but healing.

"Y/n?" Naomi called through the house.

"In my room!"

Naomi appeared moments later at Y/n's door. "Hey, I'm getting food, do you want anything?"

"I'm okay, thanks."

"Oh, hey, I watched Karl's stream from a few days ago earlier. You were so good."

"Thanks," Y/n thanked as she sat back down, forgetting all the disgust she felt moments ago from thinking about her past. Naomi sat on the corner of the bed. "Could you tell I was nervous?"

"Not at all. You were so funny. And George is so sweet. If only I had a friend who could set me up on a date with him..."

"Naomi!" Y/n laughed. "I've never even met him in person, how would you go on a date? Fly to England?"

"Yeah. He and I could work all those details out if you gave me his number."

"He'd fly here just to kill me if I gave anyone his number."

"Fine," she sighed jokingly. "Are you still going to Karl's later?"

"Tomorrow."

"Oh. Well.... I'm hungry soooo I'm going to go get something to eat."

"Drive safe," Y/n ordered as she turned back to her computer and Naomi left the room.

"I will. Love you!"

As Y/n looked back at her computer to figure out something to cure her boredom, her phone lit up with a DM from Twitter.

She giggled to herself as she set her phone down and opened up Minecraft. She had nothing to do all day so she decided to start a stream, titling it "chill minecraft?? if any mobs ruin the chill ill actually cry??"

Y/n laughed to herself even though she knew it wasn't that funny. She didn't even bother to start with her usual "starting soon" screen, jumping right into playing.

"Hello, hello everyone," Y/n greeted vaguely as she opened the survival world she usually streamed. She had made decent progress on it, but it hadn't been long since she started it. "Hello. I'm super bored so I figured I'd stream and we can all just hang out and chill out. Is the music too loud? Can you hear it? Everyone type yes if it's good..." she paused as she waited for responses and adjusted the volume of the music accordingly.

She tried to not think about how much larger her viewer count was than usual, figuring it was probably mostly because she had been on Karl's stream not long before.

"Welcome, if you're new! Sorry if you don't find house building exciting, usually I do a lot more chaotic things but I'm determined to get my base done today. I can't keep coming home to a dirt shack."

Her chat started spamming one thing, making her roll her eyes slightly, a smile on her lips.

user3: DREAM HELLO

user6: Dream's here!!!!!

user7: DREAM

Y/n couldn't help but see the few negative comments that passed, calling her a clout chaser.

"Judging by everyone saying Dream's here, I assume Dream's here?" she said with a laugh as she continued collecting dark oak wood and making sure to replant the saplings. "Hello, sir."

user10: are they finally actually friends??? not just Twitter friends????

user16: Dream just lingering we see you sir

"Chat, should I make my real home first or the treehouse? I'm thinking the treehouse but I don't really have an idea for how to do it yet."

user1: TREEHOUSE

user2: treehouse treehouse treehouse

user4: do a cottage!!

user6: treehouse but make it on multiple trees and connect them with bridges

user11: it's so funny seeing bugsy just peacefully building bc usually I only catch her chaos streams

"Okay okay overwhelming amount of treehouse answers," she breathed out with a laugh as she looked around the forest for a good tree. "Thanks sarahnotfound for the ten gifted subs!"

A donation lit up in the corner of her screen and she read it out loud. "Face reveal when? Thank you, Jasmine, um..." she paused, thinking. "I don't know. I do want to eventually but I have no plans to or anything. I'm not ready to right now so it'll still be a while before I do a face reveal."

Donations and gifted subs continued, Y/n expressing her gratitude for each one of them. She had the base down for her treehouse as a large one came through.

"Dream!" she yelled angrily, a laugh bubbling behind it before sighing. "Thank you Dream." She looked away from the amount and read his message, which read, save some of that building for the smp. "DREAM! Why would you give me– ohmygosh. Is this your way of announcing to everyone that I'm joining the SMP? By giving me $100? I can't stand you." Her words were no threat since you could clearly hear the smile in her tone.

She glanced at chat before talking again and continuing her house. "Yeah, yeah, everyone, I'm joining the Dream SMP. But considering I'm fantastic at PVP, I'm not going to be doing much building. Sorry," she said now directed at Dream. "Maybe you can hire me to build something but I don't work for free."

A few minutes passed before a second donation from Dream came through.

yes I did announce it by giving you money and I'll do it again, under another $100 donation

"DREAM, I SWEAR—"

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behind the screen (irl dream x f!reader) series masterlist ultimate masterlist

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A/N: part 3 pog! lowkey don’t really like the chapter because it’s mostly a filler but i hope you guys do!! i needed to get a lil bit of background about y/n’s ex but we’ll get deeper into it later on!

let me know how y’all like this chapter!! do you prefer parts like this with mostly social media or do you like the previous ones better when there’s a lot more written??

also thank you thank you thank for all your continuous love for this series!! it seriously means so much to me and i love y’all so much lol 

taglist: OPEN (at the time) @hydrate-tion @loraleiix @tinaswagbd @charsdummb @smileyyuta @1ghoste1 @cerberus-hellhound @gaysludge @queestionmark @carnations-red @letsloveimagines @the-fictionwriters-hairdo @boiled-onionrings @a-cryptic @fee-btheweeb​ @letsloveimagines @erwinss @just-a-stan @axths @kayleigh2703 @furiouspockettoad @sometimeseverythingsucks​ @powerpuffyn​ @itshaileyn @millavalntyne

[elbowreveal]

I will now introduce you to my cats because I don’t blog about them here much

This is Peeko. Peeko is like a mob boss and he’s built like one too. 19 pounds of extreme attitude. He slaps you if you walk by without saying hello. He bites the houseguests. He bites us. He cries and screams if he’s alone for longer than one hour. He runs away if there’s a mouse. He snores so loud you can hear him two floors away. Even if he wasn’t overweight (yes he’s on a vet orders special diet!) he would still genuinely be a huge cat. He has a massive forehead to store all of his evil plans.

This is Peeko’s brother, Charlie. Charlie has never bitten or harmed a soul. He drinks water with his feet and eats goldfish crackers out of the trash. He watches Minecraft YouTube videos by tilting his head sideways and follows me around close to 24/7. Charlie is built like a bag of raw chicken breasts in marinade. He is a homosexual.

This was Oscar. Oscar was an old stray we fed for 3 or so years and took to the vet when he needed a checkup. He drooled whenever you pet him and he had the funniest croak for a meow. He would bring us mice in exchange for his food. We didn’t see him much but I still consider him my cat. He vanished a long time ago but was a good boy! (I personally couldn’t do much because I was literally a child) RIP Oscar

This was Korra. Korra loved EVERYONE she ever met, it was amazing! She would run to the door to greet every person joyfully, friend or foe. Her favorite thing in the world was to be pet. She could see invisible dragons and was obsessively clean. She was an uncommon color: long haired dilute tortoiseshell. Sadly she unexpectedly passed away this April. She was a rescue so we never knew her full story. RIP Korra miss you!

This is Marvin (tentatively). I met him two days ago but he is my third kitten (after Peeko and Charlie) and my first tabby. I don’t know what evils he will commit but I hope his list of future crimes is extensive and remarkable. He is already very friendly and brave!

Marvin is seven weeks old at the time of this post and Peeko and Charlie are currently almost 13.5 years old.

And those are my cats! I don’t blog about them as much as I used to due to my situation right now but I will occasionally talk about the little guy probably!

[thefanficmonster]

Time And Time Again

Dream x Reader (Female)

Warnings: Swearing

Genre: FLUFF, Romance, Humor, RPF (Real Person Fic)

Summary: Basically a rundown of some of the most recent cute moments brought to you by the most adorable will-they-won’t-they couple: Y/N and Dream.

Requested by Anon. Hi dear! Thank you so much for your wonderful request, it really made my day when I received it! I hope I captured what you wanted and what you had in mind in the fic and I hope you enjoy the read! This is my first time writing for Dream so I hope I don’t mess it up hehe. Love, Vy ❤

“I don’t wanna go in the cave!“ Y/N squeals in terror when she realizes that in order to make progress in the game and continue moving onward with the story, she has to walk Blake through the dark, dingy and danger-ridden cave in Outlast 2. The gang’s all there with her on a Discord call to keep her company, knowing she’s a scaredy cat underneath that tough girl exterior. And being the scaredy cat she is while also having a preference for horror games has made Friday nights very interesting for her and her friends: her, Clay, George and Sapnap sit on a Discord server while she streams whatever horror game she had planned for the evening to her close to her thousands of viewers. 

“Don’t worry, Y/N! I’ll come with you, imma hold your hand the whole time.“ Clay volunteers wholeheartedly without a second to waste.

Much to his disappointment, however, Y/N’s reply to that is: “Not until you go wash off all that cheeto dust that’s all over your fingers.“

Clay gasps dramatically, “How DARE you? I offer you help and comfort and this is the thanks I get? I hope one of those heretics in teaches you a lesson!”

While the pair are now in a full-on ‘heated’ dispute on their manners and politeness, bringing back things they did wrong as far back as three years ago, George and Sapnap are just connecting the dots silently.

“Wait, Y/N...“ George is the one to finally speak up, “How’d you know he’s eating cheetos?”

Taking a momentary break from the bickering, Y/N reassumes her more sweet tone of voice as he addresses him, “He freaking raided my cabinets and has eaten all my snacks already! He’s only been here for two hours, damn it!”

“Don’t make it sound like I inhaled a mountain of snacks in two hours! You literally had only two bags of snacks - meant for one person, mind you!“ Clay argues back, neither him nor Y/N realizing that this accidental outing will send their fandoms in a fit.

Of course, people hang out at their friends’ all the time, nothing weird there. This wouldn’t have been such a big deal to anyone if Sapnap didn’t say:

“How come Clay has the privilege of coming over to place and George and I don’t?“

Oh boy...

                                                             *  *  *

“Hi everyone! I know you guys couldn’t care less for an intro so Imma get right into it...“ Y/N says, all seemingly in one breath, “You see this masked man next to me? This tree of a man right here? Yes? Good, well judging by that poorly made cardboard mask he’s wearing - curtsey of yours truly - you probably already know who he is. If not, meet Dream, aka Clay, aka the raincloud above my parade.“

That specific laugh echoes throughout the room as the said tree-of-a-man wraps an arm around the significantly smaller girl’s shoulders, pulling her closer till their sides collide, “She loves me, trust me, she does.”

“Only when you bring me food though.“ She corrects him, wiggling his shoulders to see if she could set herself free from his grip but relaxing in his embrace when she realizes she won’t be going anywhere unless he willingly lets her go.

Clay tilts his head to the side to look at her through the holes poked into the mask before lifting his free arm to reveal the plastic bag he’s been holding all this time. “Oh, well then I wonder what I’ve got over here...”

“Oh my God, Panda Express! You’re the best, Clay.“ She squeals, grabbing him by the collar of his hoodie and pulling him down while she simultaneously pushes up on her toes to place a kiss on his cheek which is a tiny bit exposed to her between the mask and the hood he’s got over his head.

Before the man could even recover, he finds himself empty handed, having lost the girl and having lost the bag of food to the girl.

That kiss was worth it though.

                                                             *  *  *

“Ok, so I’ve seen this ‘my girlfriend does my makeup’ challenge going around and since I’m single as all hell, I got my best friend Y/N here to do my makeup.“ Clay points to Y/N who’s holding a makeup bag in one hand and is giving him a very disappointed look, “Judging by the look on her face, she’s not at all impressed but I promise to make her a bit more excited to be here in editing.“

“Of course I’m unimpressed, this is the troll video of troll videos!“ She complains, throwing her arms up, “Sure I’ll do your makeup and get a kick out of it myself but none of them will see it!“ She points to the camera, “None of them will know what amazing makeup artist skills I’ve got.“

This leaves Clay speechless for a moment, uncertain of how to reply to her statement before just deciding to say: “Well, at least you’ll be getting a kick out of it, that’s all that matters to me.”

“Aww...“ Y/N bats her eyelashes at the camera as her bottom lip forms an emotional pout, “Please don’t be so sweet to me after I just verbally kicked your ass. You always do that and make me feel like the meanest person in the world.“

“Aww Y/N, I’m so sorry.“ He says, sounding genuinely apologetic as he wraps his arms around the girl that’s tiny in comparison to him, bringing her closer to him with his tight hug.

“YOU’RE DOING IT AGAIN!“

                                                             *  *  *

“Hey Clay, I bought lunch on the way so I hope you’re-” Walking into her friend’s recording room abruptly, Y/N finds herself face to face with his webcam, the light next to which is glowing, suggesting the device is on and she’s currently on the screens of the thousands of people watching Dream’s stream. His mask is on - the one she made for him - of course, but she can still feel the aura of him smiling, relieving her of the worry that he’ll be irritated by her walking in like that - unannounced and without knocking. To be fair, they never announced to one another when they’d be stopping by and by this point in their friendship they have also stopped knocking too. “You’re streaming, huh?”

“Yup!“ The word is said in such a teasing manner she almost allows herself to blush, “What you got there tho?“

“Chipotle.“ She answers shortly, “And I’m starving so can we please turn your stream into a Mukbang?“ She furrows her brows as she inspects what’s on his computer screen, looking at a comment section instead of the usual screen of a game she’s used to seeing. “What are you doing, anyway?“

Looking back at his screen for a brief moment before turning back to her, Clay replies, “Oh, just reading mean comments, as one does to boost their self-esteem.”

The flash of anger he sees on Y/N’s face is most certainly not what he was inspecting to see. Mockery, yes. Humor, yes. Faux sympathy followed by some mean comments of her own, definitely. But he anger he did not see coming at all.

“Who’s talking shit about you? I’ll end them!“ Putting the plastic bag of delicious food aside, forgetting all about it in the process, Y/N grabs a chair and drags it over next to Clay’s so she too can look at his screen.

And that boy has never felt so much adoration for his best friend. Their fans - and especially their shippers - would’ve lost it if they had been able to see the look he was giving her.

                                                             *  *  *

(back to the ‘girlfriend/best friend does my makeup vid’)

“Ok, so what kind of look do you want me to give you?“ Y/N asks as she sits down on the stool in front of Clay, her makeup products placed on the dining table which is to her right.

“You ask me as though I know what I want.“ Clay laughs, the sticker of his mask floating above his face, following his movements as to keep his features hidden, “Just do the look you do on yourself everyday. It looks really cute on you, who knows, I might be able to pull it off too.“

“Sure thing.“ She smiles at her friend’s compliment, “Just stand still, ok?“

“Yes, ma’am.“

                                                            *  *  *

“Y/N, no! Stop!“ Clay warns her via the Discord call while the two are streaming Minecraft together alone for once, “Not another word!“

“But I really do feel bad!“ Y/N whines in response, “Why don’t you allow me to apologize?“

“Because there’s nothing to apologize for!“ He says, clearly done with the conversation, “I willingly gave you my jacket, you didn’t ask for it.“

“And now you’ve got a cold because of it!“ She continues arguing her case, “The least I can do is come over to take care of you.“

“I don’t need a pity nurse, thank you very much.“ Clay bites back, “But your company would be nice. Though I don’t want you to catch whatever cold I have.“

“I’d catch any cold for you, Clay.“ She replies teasingly - with a ton of honesty underneath that teasing.

Honesty both her and Clay are aware of. As well as the mob of people watching their streams right now.

                                                             ~  ~  ~ And so the snowball effect continues with little moments sprinkled throughout their online presences that make the snowball of shipping get bigger and bigger. Every now and then, both Y/N and Clay let little bits of their true adoration and admiration for the other slip through. And time and time again do those moments send their fans in a frenzy. 

Rightfully so.

@kia-isabelle

[owaowabetch]

Minecraft pt. 1 (Sykkuno x F!Reader)

Oneshot (maybe part of a series??? idk we’ll see): Even though you’ve never played minecraft, you still manage to build a great house with your basement buddy. Friendship with a hint of romance. This is season 1 of the OTV ftb server (Pre-relationship; part of Uh-oh & Impasta)

“Ok guys, so today’s stream is going to be a lil different” You chat to your stream “We are going to be playing Minecraft with the OTV gang and other people we’ve played among us with!” Waiting for Minecraft to load on your pc, you continued on chatting “We will be playing GTA later on in the stream, we have a few jobs lined up with some people, so hopefully we get a lot of money from that” 

You minimized your face cam into a corner as your character appeared in a random spawn area near quite a few people. You saw multiple boxy players run around and hitting each other. So, you walked around picking up flowers  and with the help of some members of your chat, you managed to collect wood.

“OH! HEY Y/N!!” A loud crunchy voice yelled terribly into your ear causing you to cringe visible and immediately start hitting them with the wood in your hand.

“Your mic is dank man” You continue hitting them, which turned out to be Leslie and she starts to hit you back with a laugh. You guess her flowered hand overpowered your wood and hungry state, because you died and respawned to where you first showed up.

“Ah fuck” You complained before another boxy figure showed up infront of you and you recognized the blue shirt and green striped scarf, so you cheered. “Sykkuno!”

“Hey, Y/N!” His character moved his head up and down “What happened? How did you die?”

“Leslie’s mike was..crunchy?? And then she killed me!” You jump around

Sykkuno laughs “What? I’m surprised mobs havent got you. I’ve been killed many times by them” and in comedic fashion poki ran by screaming for help as she was being chased by a giant spider. You both watched as she would turn and hit it before continuing on her run.

It killed her. She puffed into smoke and in her place was a grave.

You both laugh as Sykkuno gasps out her name and you both run to her grave.

“Is this part of the mod? Or is it part of minecraft” You ask crouching on her grave and read her name.

He jumped around you with an answer “ Uh no it’s a mod that abe put in. If you break it the stuff you died with will spawn out”

“Oh” Continuing the crouch and uncrouch “What now?”

“Well i was going to find some of my graves, but I’m gunna find wood to make tools and find food” He answered and with that you decided to follow him

You collect the fruit from the near by trees and kill some of the animals with an axe that Sykkuno made you. Along the way you collected flowers and wood.

“We should find a house before it gets dark and more mobs come and kill us” Sykkuno walks to you then throws a stack of wood on the floor “Or maybe you build us a house. I’m not good at that type of thing”

You stare into your cam and do the debbie ryan “Oh my god, living together?” You pick up the stack of wood and start building a small house “Is that good?”

“Ya, that’s great! I’ll put the door down and I got us some beds, so we now have a spawn point. So when we die we just end up here” He explains doing so

Nodding along to what he said, you start putting the flowers you collected around the house before entering the house. He put the beds down next to each other. Making sure to mute yourself, you do the finger point and with a ‘tch’ sound you smile “ Oh my God Chat! Our beds are next to each other !?! How crazy. Heehee”  

The house was lit up with torches. “Click on the bed” He tells you and you do so. Your characters laid there side by side and your chat was hearing you make embarrassing noises. “Chat better not be telling him how embarrassing I’m being please. This is a desparate plea for you guys not to tell him!! Like Im joking guys please” With a laugh, your character gets off the bed and you walk out.

“Oh!” In Sykkuno’s hand was a flower “I noticed you picking up flowers and I know that [Flower/Name] is your favorite, so i picked some up for you”

You can’t stop the smile that appears on your face nor the flush on your cheeks “You are so fucking cute”

“Wha-?” You interrupt him “This is so sweet, honestly Sy.”

He throws them on the ground “It’s no problem. Just saw them and remembered how much you liked them “ and you pick them up, putting them at the entrance of the door “I love it!!! Thank You Sykkuno!!”

He hums and jumps around. You check chat, when a donation comes in telling you to check it, and read that he was purposefully was looking for the flowers because he knows how much you would’ve loved them. You don’t believe them at first, telling them that while he is nice, going around looking for a flower doesn’t seem like a productive thing to do. So, someone from your chat sent a clip of him telling his viewers that he was looking for your favorite flower to give to you. His excuse was that this as your first time playing minecraft, so he wanted you to enjoy it and thought it would be a great present until he can find diamonds.

“Guys! No!! That is so sweet!” You cry out blushing even further

“Hey guys!” A voice called out. A voice you immediately recognized to be Liliy’s “Come look at my house!” Looking up you see her stood further up from the both of you. She started making her way down and gasped “Are those [F/N]!?! Where did you find these! The look so pretty!”

“Yea” You jumping once more “Aren’t they cool?”

“YES! Can I have one?” She asked standing next to them “Is this your house? I love the flowers around them”

“I guess this is where we live now” You respond

“Both?” Lily questioned “You and Sykkuno are living together!?!”

“Yea! He actually gave me the [F/N]s, so you can’t..have them..” You respond to her awkwardly

Lily turns to Sykkuno and hits his character “You fucking simp”

He gasps “Lily” but she ignores him “I’ll take a different flower as a housewarming gift. Now follow me!”

“Y/N, why don’t you go see it while I gather up more materials” Sykkuno told you

You follow her up the small mountain? And there laid her pink house and you gasped “There is pink wood!?!”

“Yea, you just need pink dye. I have a bunch left if you want some” She offered you

“I don’t know if Sykkuno would want to live in a pink house” You enter her house and notice chests and peak into them

“He’d want what you want so just go for it.” She places the flower she took from your house next to hers. “Those chests belong to other people, but here’s mine.” She hits the chest in her house “I think i have like 20 of the pink wood left, so you can just take the rest”

You took the stack from her chest “Awesome! Your house is nice! It’s big too! I’d have to remake our house into something bigger”

“Yea, it’s kinda ugly since it isn’t pink” She tells you causing you to laugh

“It was a last minute thing to hid in during the night” Holding the pink wood in your hand “I’ll probably look up some building tips and stuff later to make a cool place, but thanks Lily!”

You hung out in her house talking with people as they came and went as Lily went to find more flowers to surround her house in. Though someone interesting came in, wearing the generic steve skin with a slightly creepy face.

“Hey Miyoung!” Lily called from out her house

“Hi Lily” She responded “I’m just letting you know I’m putting a death trap in your home. Please don’t tell the victims”

You snorted in amusement “Can I help with that?”

She moves towards you in her crouched state, so you respond in kind. You both just stared at each other in your crouched position circling each other “Okay, so I have a bucket of oil, so I want to dig a hole in the ground and push people into it”

Nodding your head “Clean, my chat was telling me that there is a trapped door, so why not put one on the ground above it and just have people walk in it?”

“We should also put a sign down there, so as they’re slowly sinking to their death, there’ll be a sign that mocks them” Nodding her characters head “I have some signs already, I’ll make the trapped door”

Taking a shovel from your hotbar, you dig a hole 6 blocks down, digging the other side as you make your way down. You then walk to the other side and start to make your way up.

“You should leave an open space for the sign, maybe 2 blocks open?” Miyoung tells you as she eyes you from above. You jump out of the hole you created and shovel 2 dirt blocks. She places a sign down and covers it up with a wood plank that matches the floor of Lily’s house “Wait I need to put the oil down”

So, she breaks the floor once more and jumps in to put the oil in before making her way back up. “I just put RIP on the sign, I think it’ll help them realize that they will die, so..”

“Alright clean clean” You jump around and watch as she places a trap door on the floor above it and placing a sign in front of it.

“We should probably look for victims” Miyoung tells you

You make your character swing their arm around towards the chests in Lily’s home “Well people have stuff in here, so maybe we should wait for someone to come in to grab something and lure them”

“Sounds good” She says and as she says this Sykkuno comes barging in.

“Hey y/n!” He cheers “Oh hey Miyoung! Lily told me that she has a bucket in her chest that she’ll let me borrow. So, I’m just trying to find her chest. Don’t mind me” He rifles through them “Can’t seem to find them “

You open the trap door and look at him before he turns to you two “Oh is it in here?” and down he goes. “Oh!? IS THIS A TRAP”

You start giggling as he starts to panic laugh “y/n? miyoung? Help!”

You both just crouch above him and stare as he slowly sinks “Guys, any help? please? y/n?”

Miyoung just closes the trap door and walks away and in the little chat says that Sykkuno died in due to [Sticky Dipping], so you type in an apology as you make your way back towards the house. You meet him and apologize to him once again.

“It’s no problem. It was actually kind of funny, but check in the chest I have in the house. I got some more stuff for you for the house” He tells you  “I’m gunna go back to get my stuff and the bucket, so i’ll catch you later!”

“Alright, see ya Sy!” You cheer back to him and make your way into the house.”Alright chat, let’s see what he gave us! I’m not reading what you guys, say so no spoilers~”

You open the wooden box and inside were more pink wood planks, glass, stairs, torches, other house materials to make building easier, and some more of your favorite flowers.

You feel your chest tighten as the butterflies appear in your stomach. You smile largely and giddy, opening and closing your mouth trying to gather the words to express how you felt, you were pleasantly surprised by the things he left you.

You wanted to squeal at how nice he is. It is hard to come across a genuinely nice guy that wanted nothing but friendship with you. So, it was easy to fall for Sykkuno; but it was hard to admit to yourself your growing feelings for him, because love is scary and being in love with your friend is even scarier. Once those feelings come out, you can’t take them back and things just become different. So, it is safe to say that you’ll be keeping them to yourself.

“By the way” Sykkuno starts causing you to jump in real life, as you were sat pondering to yourself “The server is making a town square a few blocks away, so why don’t we move the house there?”

You start collecting the items in your inventory “Yea! Are you going to need help carrying the rest of the stuff there?”

He starts breaking the items in your old home “If you have the room for some that’ll be great! yea!”

Once you both gathered the things you wanted to take, you guys bound towards where the Town Square was being made.

“Oh! By the way, can I request you build a basement for me in our house?” Sykkuno asks

The thought of him referring to the house as ‘ours’ made you smile “Yea, but can I ask why you want one?”

“Don’t worry. I won’t build anything that’ll blow up our house” Sykkuno dodges the question

‘Our’ house. Maybe one day that can be a real life possibility. You couldn’t contain the smile growing on your face even further. Maybe one day you’ll have the courage to tell him how you feel.

As you start building near Leslie’s house, a thought suddenly pops into your head ‘Sykkuno there is a girl into you’

[kikoqueenofrats]

Alright so, I’ve been working on these pictures for the past few days. I’ve created an ava au, inspired by minecraft roleplays. So basically the “sticks” replace the players in minecraft, being able to store items in a sort of hammer space, though that space is limited. The sticks of this universe are like normal human beings, so they have parents, grow up like normal humans and only have one life. Though the one life rule doesn’t apply to a handful of sticks. The other mobs are considered inferior to the sticks, I’m mostly talking about the villagers, pillagers and piglins. that’s mostly because they speak in a different language to the sticks and aren’t as advanced civilization wise. I thinks that’s most of the world building done, if you have anymore questions feel free to ask in the ask box or dms. I’ll get into the character specific info now. TW death, injury, kidnapping and shipping  

Red,Green,Yellow and Blue don’t remember much from their past life, only really remembering that they had to flee from their homes and ending up in a forest. Since they all were only about five years old they don’t remember knowing each other, only really vaguely remembering their short time together. They were separated during their flee, resulting in them only growing up with one of their old friends each. Red and Blue spent most of their childhoods in the forest, learning how to survive on their own before running into a village. They remained there for a while until Blue discovered a nether portal when he was about 12yrs and proceeded to get lost in it, Red went in after he found out what had happened from one of the villagers. Yellow and Green managed to run into a pack of pillagers, who raised them up until they were 14yrs when a group of sticks killed them during a raid. Yellow and Green swore revenge on the sticks in that village and did so by blowing the entirety of it up. They’re now both on the run from the group of angry stick figures, only really having each other for company.

After wondering the nether for a good while Blue managed to find another nether portal, only this one didn’t lead home, it lead to a swamp bio. He was about to turn back when he was grabbed by the resident witch and turned into a piston, forced to work as her netherwart harvester for a few months before being turned back. She used this to make him stay and work for her, forbidding him to help with the potions to prevent him from trying to escape. Though that doesn’t mean he didn’t try to learn from her, every time he was caught making a potion she turned him a piston for a few months. He is yet to be deterred, the punishment only resulting in him becoming more careful in his self-taught potion making. He wishes he could see his friend Red again but knows the consequences of leaving could be much worse than being turned into a piston, so he stays put.

Whilst searching for their friend Red ran into a bunch of piglins like o.v Blue did in ava 20. The events following their first journey were similar to o.v Blues in ava 20 apart from it taking a lot longer for them to get to the portal Blue went through, since the group went through a lot of portals trying to reach the right one. Red ends up taking 8yrs to find Blues portal, resulting in them becoming incredibly attached to the piglins that were helping them. especially to the smallest one they had risked their life recusing.

After running around the forest for a few years the duo finally managed to shake their perusers off. Settling down inside an abandoned pillager base next to another village. Feeling petty they both attacked, though it was more lighthearted than what their other family had done, terrorizing the village by stealing their stuff and blowing up their houses. They were nervous of the sticks living their at first, but after their first attack and the eventual confrontation they realized that the duo living their weren’t so bad (Green even took a shine to the Orange one...for some reason). They proceeded to begin messing with them more, though they didn’t blow up anymore houses, creating a somewhat “playful” rivalry between the two duos.

Orange does not have any memories past 11yrs old due to a head injury. He woke up in a forest, scared and confused he wondered it for a few days before stumbling upon a village.  This village was run by Purples parents and upon finding the injured 11yr old they quickly brought him into their home. After not being able to find Oranges parents or anything about them due to Oranges memory loss Purples parents decided to raise him. When Purple was 17yrs and Orange was 15yrs Purples parents were killed by pillagers during a raid, Purple and Orange managed to defend their home however the loss hit them hard. They only spent a few hours grieving before having to deal with their new responsibilities. Purple tried to deal with it all at first, though that quickly became overwhelming so she asked for Oranges help. Orange obliged and they’ve both been looking after their village ever since.

There is a city of stickfigures in the middle of this world run by a stick with magical powers given to them by the gods of this world, It used to be led by a kindly king, with three princes, All of them were part of the magical linage. Unfortunately the king and two of his sons were killed, no one is sure how as there are two stories. Some believe the middle child and his personal guard conspired against the king and his eldest brother, killing them both with a poisoned arrow before killing the youngest as they fled the city as he witnessed the death of his older brother and told their uncle. Others believe the eldest sons death was an assassination paid for by the kings brother himself and the youngest died when the other nephew and his guard fled the city. Though people who try to spread the second story are quickly silenced. Alright that’s it for now, may post more if inspiration hits me but for now I hope you guys enjoy my little rant.

[talvin-muircastle]

Am I Queer? It’s Controversial.

This is going to be long, and it’s going to cover a lot of ground, so please bear with me.  

Recently, this article came to my attention:

https://www.healthline.com/health/gender-nonconforming

I have spent a fair amount of time questioning my own sexuality/identity, and having it questioned by others.  Now approaching five full decades of life, I feel comfortable saying:

I identify as Male, and Straight.

I am Gender Non-Conforming by the standards of the culture I come from.

But I am not comfortable saying this qualifies me as “Queer” or otherwise under LGBTQIA+.   

That article (which is by no means the Last Word on the subject) identifies several areas where I do not conform to my AMAB status as culturally defined:

I have long hair.  But I also have a thick beard and moustache, and I like that combination.  Still, I grew up in a place where long hair on a guy meant you were A) Queer or B) into Heavy Metal.   Even though my teen years saw me sporting a military-style buzzcut more often than not, I tended to hang out with the Metalheads.  My long hair continues to be a point of contention with my conservative relatives and in-laws.   Some of them think I am a Hippie, which is funny because I am allergic to Cannabis.  Wanna watch me fight for breath and puke?  Blow weed smoke in my face.  

I am a Stay-At-Home Dad and Homemaker.  I have been the breadwinner for this family, but that is not part of my identity.  I am quite content to let my wife handle that part of things, and so is she.  I have been a Dad longer than I have been a father, in fact:  for most of my life I have been mentoring teenagers that find their way to me seeking advice, comfort, acceptance, and guidance.    I spent a lot of time worrying about what career should I follow, and it took me far too long to understand and accept that Dad was what I was after.  A woman seeking motherhood as a career is validated, a man seeking fatherhood in the same context is not conforming.  

When I was younger, I got hit with one hell of a double-standard: while wanting to be a Dad as a goal is not acceptable, I was supposed to go out there and sow my wild oats.  OK, I wasn’t really supposed to get girls pregnant, but I was supposed to try.  Wait, what? Try that again?  OK, if you were a teenaged boy in the 80s and 90s and I am pretty sure before that (not sure after, AIDS changed a lot of thinking all around), you were not supposed to get a girl pregnant, but you were supposed to make an attempt as often as possible, in fact you were supposed to score but fail.  If you are confused, don’t feel bad: I was living steeped in this paradox 24/7/365 and came out of it real confused.

Meanwhile, I was looking for a long-term, meaningful relationship with a woman who could be a partner in my life, and avoiding the one-night stands I was supposed to be after according to the standards of my culture, and so many of the people around me—parents, teachers, peers—decided that I must be Queer.  And that was Not A Good Classification To Find Yourself In in Rural Tennessee of the 80’s and 90’s.   Lacking real support, I entered adulthood like a trainwreck still skidding down the tracks, confused as hell and desperately trying to please people whose opinions mattered to me far more than they should.  I did finally find that relationship, and we celebrate 21 years of marriage this month.  Meanwhile I can’t keep track of who has gotten divorced and remarried from that crowd anymore.   

I am not a fan of American Football.  (I am not a fan of soccer, which is football to the rest of the world, but that’s not going to get you labeled Queer in the USA as yet.)   Even so, I got recruited to be the Football Manager for my high school football team, and then I spent several years studying to be an Athletic Trainer in college as an add-on to my English and Education degree.  The fact that I spent 7 years of my life on the sidelines of football games (and basketball, and baseball) and still do not really understand the rules of those sports should have been a clear sign to me that I was trying to conform and failing badly.  An American Male of my generation is supposed to like these things, he is supposed to scream at the television or scream from the stands when watching a game, he is supposed to have a Favorite Team and Wear Their Stuff.

Yeah, that’s not me.  I don’t like combative sports.  I like things that involve grace, beauty, and art.   Figure skating (either gender, singles, but especially pairs) is fun to watch.  The more artistic of gymnastics events are nice (uneven bars and vault are kinda boring, but I love watching floor exercise.)  Watching someone do tricks on a skateboard is more interesting to me than an MMA bout.  I enjoy the art of it.   I used to watch WWF Wrestling as a kid, but I found I enjoyed the “story” more than the violence.  Martial arts practice that is done like a dance is more interesting than watching two people try to kick each other in the face for real.   

I’m told I am supposed to like these things.  I am told that not liking them makes me less masculine.  

This extends into online gaming as well.  Oh, I like some combat games.  We aren’t going to talk about how many hours I have played the XCOM series.  But…I don’t like PVP or multiplayer. I like the story arc, and accomplishing things.  Minecraft?  I like building, and killing mobs is very secondary to that.  In single-player I usually just go peaceful mode and explore the world, build grand railways and tunnels, create comfortable houses or make a home under a lake with a glass roof under the water.  In World of Warcraft I spent more time exploring the world and getting cool screenshots than worrying about getting Phat Loot and XP.  I would take a whole afternoon just to escort a couple of new players through dangerous territory so they could find their friends.  

I have gotten a lot of grief over that.  I am supposed to go out and kill kill kill stab stab stab get the loot!  

And I am supposed to get more than the other person.  It’s competition.  Men are supposed to compete.  And if you can’t get more than the other guy you go dump buckets of lava on his house and laugh at the noob.  

I hate that.  

By the standards I was raised with, I am gender nonconforming.  I most definitely do not conform to the expectations that were laid upon me from my youth.

Does that make me Queer?   I am not comfortable claiming that.

The standards I was held to can also be considered Toxic Masculinity.  They hold that Queer==Less Of A Man.  “Queer” is not “Less.”  I was raised to think it is, but I have learned, and grown, and I know that it is not.  I also do not accept that I, myself, am Less.  The very premise of me being labeled Queer by those people is wrong on all counts.   I am different. I have always known that.  I believe that “Man” and “Male” can encompass more than violence, bullying, and competition.  I also know full well that many who identify as “Woman” and “Female” embrace those as ideals as well.  

I am no stranger to violence.  My life has often been violent.  I have fought off muggers who were armed with knives, I have stared down the barrel of a gun, I have been beaten because someone else wanted to establish himself as the dominant male in our school just after he moved there.  I am not a pacifist: the only reason I have not killed another human being in self-defense is because I was outnumbered.   I just don’t feel that defines my gender, and I have been told it should.  I fight to survive and to protect others, not to prove that I can.  

Others who look like me are guarding statues of Columbus with their Assault Rifles because they feel their masculinity is threatened.  This is another area where I do not conform to my expected gender roles.   Not only do I not feel my masculinity is threatened by BLM, or Pride, or the existence of Trans folks, I no longer feel my masculinity can be threatened.  I spent so many years under attack from “my” side, and gotten so much support from “their” side, that I now understand that my gender is not about what THEY think.  It is MY identity. I OWN it.  I am who I am regardless of their perception of me. Nothing someone else does can take that from me. 

And if anything about me is Queer, it is that: the understanding that my identity belongs to me and not to those who seek to mislabel me.  

I have been told by some in the Queer community that I am welcome among them, and I am grateful for that.  So, so many of my stories can be prefaced with, “There I was, the only Straight Guy in the room, when:”  I am proud to be an Ally.  

But calling myself Queer?  I’m not comfortable doing that.  I could, and I know some who would accept it.  But I feel it is more important to me to break the toxic definition of Masculinity and show that things like nurturing, caring, creating, dancing, loving, uplifting, and oh yes parenting, these ARE Male Qualities, always have been, and should always be.   No criticism of GNC folks who take the Queer label intended or implied: they are not Less, they own their own identity, they are valid.   They are themselves, and have a right to be. 

I am me.

I am a Man.

I will never be the Man they wanted me to be, and I am PROUD of that. 

Happy Pride Month.  

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

[jcmorrigan]

Blakeworther (and maybe some other people like Zalmona and Winston) playing Minecraft

Okay, it’s TIME FOR TACKLING THIS

A warning is that I...have even less knowledge of Minecraft than Among Us, so I’m just Googling stuff about survival mode/SMP and if I get details wrong I’m sorry in advance but this prompt was gold

-So normally, Vincent/Victor/Albert play competitive SMP where they just...try their best to kill each other ASAP and see who’s the last standing. One day, they agreed unanimously to try a collaborative effort. The three of them will work together to attempt to reach the Ender Dragon, and they’ll have the server open so other people can just come mess around in their world without having to be part of their specific quest.

-Albert, this is a collaborative attempt. No murder.

-ALBERT THIS IS A COLLAB CAMPAIGN

-So after a couple false starts, they finally spawn on the first night! And they need SUPPLIES

-Now, they aren’t allowed to kill each other, but other players are free game. So Albert decides to solve the problem by offing Zalmona and raiding her stuff.

-Vincent and Victor start out by trying to forage and say that they didn’t take the easy way out until they’re like “Raiding a village is still a challenge. Let’s do it.”

-All right! They’ve got enough stuff to build a small house!

-Vincent does not want the SMALL HOUSE.

-Albert gets to come on the next village raid and now they can build something a little closer to a mansion

-Vincent starts in with his usual flirt-fighting of “Victor and I will sleep in the same room; Albert’s bed is in the attic” but after some teasing broke out, Vincent then decided “Actually, MY bed is in the attic. I don’t want anywhere near you two.”

-The crafting table looks suspiciously like a bar.

-Time to go ORE HUNTING!

-Once again Albert is trying to just kill other players and take their ores

-Meanwhile, Vincent and Victor go mining together and happen upon a diamond deposit! Vincent says the sensible thing to do would be to gather enough diamond to craft one sword/suit of armor at a time, and craft it, then move onto the next. And those tools should go to Vincent because that’s obviously the objective best person to give them to.

-Victor argues that as a CIO he already knows that is NOT how we do business. We divide the diamond equally or not at all. And by “not at all” he means “If we can’t play nice, VICTOR makes the first suit of armor for himself”

-They have an argument for about thirty minutes until Albert shows up with the spoils of a hundred poor victims and there’s enough here for everyone anyway

-(The one thing I don’t even know how to Google is if you can even take supplies off murdered teammates in SMP. I don’t even know if that’s a thing.)

-Victor, what do you mean you found Obsidian by ACCIDENT. For what reason were you just pouring water on lava? Why were you that close to the lava?

-They contract Winston to do most of the work building the Nether Portal.

-You know, since Winston helped us out, we should repay him by at least NOT killing him and taking his sup - ALBERT THIS IS A COLLABORATIVE CAMPAIGN

-So Winston’s dead and respawning by now and we’d better run because he’s going to make us pay hell for that. Thanks Albert

-Taylor’s already in the Nether somehow and puts in the chat “I like it better here than the overworld. Can I just build my house here instead?”

-Albert: “CAN we build our house here instead?”

-Vincent: “If we have enough to make a DECENT house”

-Victor’s already trying to see if the Nether materials will stack together into a nice wall

-There’s waaaaaay too much time wasted on trying to build a frickin mansion in the Nether

-Then the monster hordes show up

-Albert: I WANT. TO BEFRIEND THE MONSTERS

-Victor is just like FINALLY. NOW IT’S MY TIME TO BE THE MURDER MANIAC ON ALL THESE ZOMBIE PIGMEN

-Vincent: “Let’s just avoid them like normal people”

-They don’t ignore them like normal people.

-Oh but then they hit the Nether Fortress and all ideas of building a mansion are discarded because we can just take over THIS place. It’s big, it’s fancy, it’s filled with random monsters and that’s how we all live

-So they pick up not only several Blaze Rods but also a new base of operations. Just put a frickin bed in the middle of the Blaze mob spawn area

-It takes them a while to actually go back to the overworld. Vanora shows up at one point like “Do you guys live here or what”

-Winston attempts to launch a raid on the Nether Fortress because they murdered him after his help on the Nether Portal earlier, and it fails spectacularly because Vincent, Victor, and Albert now perfectly co-exist alongside the natural threats of the Fortress and Winston never stood a chance. The worst part is he roped Zalmona into it and now they’re both dead

-For the record, Winston just happened upon Zalmona in the Nether and she had no idea how she’d even gotten there but proclaimed that she must’ve pulled off an epic feat in order to do so. Also she does a lot of bragging about the minerals she’s got and how amazing she is for collecting them. They’re actually all fairly common stuff but Winston hypes her up anyway

-Eventually Vincent kicks them all into gear because they have a campaign to finish. They can come back here later after endgame. Victor digs in his heels because he wants to chill in the Fortress and make more furniture but the other two leave and he has to catch up

-Enderman invasion time. “Hey, Albert! We’re collecting EYEBALLS!”

-Vincent and Victor can kick back and look for ores while Albert goes ham offing Endermen and racking up Ender Pearls

-Except he then asks why he should even give any of his Ender Pearl stash to the other two. Vincent is livid, but...

-Victor: “Okay. Keep your pearls. And we’ll use the ores we found to make cool things but you can’t have any. We’ll be making new weapons, actually. Better than yours - “

-They split the pearls. This is why the CIO is in charge of supply distribution

-All right, they’re on their way to the End Portal! Thankfully, they don’t need to rope Winston into building it because, uh, he’s still mad and out for blood

-Ender Dragon fight goes well enough, and the guys spawn back in the Overworld so they can go back to their house in the Nether and continue nefarious schemes

-Speaking of nefarious schemes, though. Winston and Zalmona have rallied everyone in the server to go kill Vincent, Victor, and Albert. REVENGE HOUSE HAS BECOME THE REVENGED-AGAINST

-Vincent is just like “Okay, let’s just talk things out and apologize. Come to our fortress for tea.”

-And everyone rallies to hear what explanation Vincent has for this because IT BETTER BE GOOD

-Vincent and Victor play gracious hosts, finding everyone places to sit, chatting about small talk. It’s obvious something’s...off with the two of them, but then again, when do Vincent and Victor not seem off

-Finally, they gather everyone in one room

-Wait. Isn’t one of them missing?

-In the basement, Albert puts the last block on the WITHER and bolts

-Vincent and Victor run once he gives the signal. The Wither bursts through the floor and attempts to murder EVERYONE who they invited over

-They’d planned this together from the very start and the three of them are laughing like idiots

-Now Vincent just wants to go back up to the Overworld and make as big of a mansion as possible, with custom architecture. Victor agrees that sounds like a nice idea.

-THIS IS STILL A COLLABORATIVE CAMPAIGN ALBERT -

[justphilia]

Mob Psycho Characters Playing Minecraft (Headcanons)

Shigeo

He starts with creative mode, just to get the gist of it, before finally heading into survival but on peaceful. Then he’ll do survival easy mode and just stay on that tier forever, until he feels more confident to up his game a little higher.

Only played because Telepathy club was playing and he heard the word “Mob” and was like; “Did you call me?” and the club goes “nah fam, it Minecraft.” “what’s Minecraft.” Boom he plays.

Most likely to have a farm with a lot of cows

Has a dirt house/villager’s house on the first night and stops at just that.

Not much of a great builder

Takes forever to get diamonds

Dies often, but not too much. Just often enough for him to lose a few good iron pickaxes.

Always goes to bed once it’s night.

Most likely to have a pet cat

He just plays for fun, when he’s bored and stuff. So he doesn’t go as far as to defeating the ender dragon. He’ll travel to the nether though, just for potion making

But he does play a heck more when Teru’s around, or when the Telepathy club invites him.

He awaits for a frog update

Reigen

Jumps into survival hardcore right off the bat after watching one play through

Most likely to have a villager colony and farm

Makes a wooden house with windows and stuff on the first night with a furnace and a crafting table and a bed. The essentials. But he won’t stay in one house often and will move a lot

He can build, but he’s pretty amateur at it, he’s a fast learner though so he could easily replicate houses he see online

He’s the type of guy that never stops mining until he finds diamonds, which means he makes sure he’s at 13-11y in coordinates, has a shit ton of extra pickaxes, and stacks upon stacks of torches. Once he finds them goodies, he heads on home and repeats the cycle

He’ll defeat the ender dragon if he’s bored enough or when someone challenges/pays him to.

Same goes with The Wither

Will skip Minecraft sleep very often and will only go to bed when the phantom starts attacking

Most likely to have many many pet dogs, each one of them have name tags.

When he dies, he gets mad for a few hours, then jumps right back in. He doesn’t die all that often though, so he won’t rage quit.

He gets the minecraft books later on and you can see him reading it under his table time to time

Ritsu

He starts off with easy or normal without much knowledge on the game, probably only played because Shigeo introduced him to or Shou bugged him about it.

He’ll have a farm, but just for resources. Won't have much animals, mostly crops. He’ll live next to a village if there is one.

His first house will also be a dirt house, he’ll improve it overtime and add more levels and decorations. It can get very pretty in the end and he’ll be content to just stay and keep adding more to his house.

Not the best builder, but good enough for people to compliment it. He feels especially proud when Shigeo likes them, so he’s keen on building better and more.

He plans before he mines, calculates how many torches he needs and plans out what he’s exactly looking for, even calculates how many hunger bars each food item will fill before taking it with him.

If he gets really into the game, he’ll defeat the ender dragon, wither and head on into the nether. Not in that order though.

Will sleep if he doesn’t need to do anything

Most likely to have pets, perhaps a cat, or a dog, or a parrot. Only one though.

When he dies, he accepts it and moves on. Though, that would rarely happen.

Recently got into a forced Minecraft marriage with Shou. Is it forced if he enjoyed it though?

Teru

This bitch really just gonna jump right into survival just to flex on Shigeo.

Duh, of course he’ll have a farm. Will probably talk to the animals.

His first house is either borrowed from a villager or built with wood, but it’ll definitely not be a simple ass wooden house. It will be a nice fucking mansion, just watch him, he will. He’ll fight all the mobs he needs to just to built this mansion right off the bat, doesn’t even care if the first night he sleeps roofless.

Really good at building, because he wants to compete with Ritsu for fun and boast about it to Shigeo. Shigeo would just clap and be like “Wow so cool.”

“Thanks, made it myself, I can make one for you.” Shigeo declines, he’s an independent man, which makes Teru a mixture of disappointment and oh-my-god-you’re-adorable???

He doesn't plan when he mines, he just estimates and half ass some stuff before he struts into the cave. Sometimes he gets lost, but that’s perfectly fine.

Will defeat every mob boss and mob ever to show Shigeo he’s very powerful.

Doesn’t sleep, fights the phantom instead. Will sleep if Shigeo asks him to.

Most likely to have a pet cat, but he doesn’t mind dogs.

When he dies, he’s an angry baby and makes up some excuse as to why he’s dead. “I was distracted, didn’t see the lava. Whoops I guess ha ha no big deal.” But it is a big deal, he lost his diamonds, he wants to give it to his boyfriend but he cannot. Because he died.

Has yet to marry Shigeo in Minecraft.

Shou

Plays because he is a gamer. Survival hardcore ftw. He only plays multiplayer with Ritsu these days, never single player because he has been playing Minecraft his whole childhood and it gets boring on his own.

What’s a fucking farm? I take my food from my Minecraft husband.

Sleeps in a cave, but if Ritsu’s done with the house, he joins his bed with him and sleeps under a roof.

But he’s really really good at building, probably the best next to Serizawa. If you gave him the resources and time, he can recreate Seasoning City.

A concerning miner, jumps in with just torches and a pickaxe and somehow still survives (mostly because Ritsu always goes looking for him)

Could probably easily defeat the bosses because he has already done it so many times

Will only sleep when Ritsu is, which is almost all the time.

He owns every kind of animal.

He dies too many times because he really doesn’t mind, it makes Ritsu mad and that’s what keeps him going.

Shou was suffocated in sand.

“S H O U.” Ritsu yells at the boy next to him.

Was the one that proposed to Ritsu, invited everyone to the wedding; including Serizawa and Reigen.

Serizawa

Played while he was still hiding in his home, so he knows everything about the game when he finally played it with Reigen or the kids.

He loves farming, even the animals, it’s oddly calming to take care of something that won’t die unless he hits em.

He always collects resources first before he actually starts building a home, so he always sleeps in a cave or a villager’s house.

After years of experience, he became really good at building, he use to spend time recreating maps from other games. But he says Shou is better than him, the boy disagrees.

Yeah he mines, but he’s wary of dying when he heads into the cave, so he always brings too many torches. 

Makes sure he is very very prepared before defeating bosses

Always sleeps in time, because Reigen said so. Well, because Reigen advised it, what a hypocrite am I right?

Doesn’t have pets, and even if he does, he always make them stay put at one place.

Doesn’t die all that often, almost not at all.

He pretends to not be good at the game when Reigen’s around, he mostly lets the other do what they wanna do because he loves watching his husband play.

“Serizawa! Look, I made the zombie villager back into a villager!” Reigen pointed, Serizawa smiles and nods. He already knew how to do that, but Reigen’s discovery makes it feel he discovered something new himself.

Tome

Bro this woman is so experienced to a point everyone consults her for tips.

She’s building up to find aliens in minecraft, even though they don’t exist, but she’s convinced they’re an easter egg or something.

No, she doesn’t farm. She takes em from the villagers, but she has a few beehives here and there.

She’s only mining to find diamonds as a peace offering to minecraft aliens.

One time she thought the Wither was an alien.

One time, she thought the phantom was an alien.

One time she thought the ghast was an alien.

Has died multiple times because she is careless, but she is never upset about it. Always jumps right back into the game immediately.

Parrots are her pets, because they f l y and d a n c e.

One time she thought the creepers were aliens.

She has this summoning circle made of redstone and torches in case there really are aliens.

She believes in herobrine and sometimes tries to summon him.

She thinks the aliens made the temples in minecraft.

Other Characters

Minegishi has so many bees and flowers and crops it’s almost covering the whole map.

Takenaka plays because it’s very quiet and calming

Shimazaki cannot play. He is blind.

Shou’s old resistance team use to play with him, now they sometimes play together as a trio when Shou is playing with Ritsu.

Mukai and Tsuchi play because Mukai wanted to, she has a lot of armor stands in her house.

Tsubomi does not play, she played once and didn’t enjoy it all that much, but she’s perfectly happy watching her friends play.

Emi roleplays in minecraft.

Mezato doesn’t play, but she likes watching minecraft videos on youtube, mostly the theories.

Everyone in the awakening lab plays, Kurosaki is fantastic at mining because she always knows which way are the mobs and which way are the diamonds. Asahi is an arsonist.

Minori once got invited by Shigeo to play, then she proceeded to buy minecraft and everything in it to impress him. Shigeo only congratulated her once. Contemplating buying the whole of Mojang, but she’s a good girl now so she won’t.

Hoshida plays to impress Tome. Too bad, son, she’s not into you.

[somniumoflight]

Crossover Idea #11 – My Hero Academia/Minecraft

Izuku has a Quirk that lets him transport himself back and forth between the real world and the world of Minecraft.

So, I’ve been on a Minecraft binge for a week or so at this point. I was bored and I was suddenly struck with the urge to re-watch an MC role-play series I haven’t watched in literal years, and then I started watching Game Theory’s newest Minecraft theories, and later, somewhere in the middle of building something in Creative, my brain suddenly spat out the idea of hey what if Izuku had a quirk that let him enter the MC world?  Like, you don’t need powers to be a hero there, you just need to know how to learn/craft.  This was the result of that thought spinning wildly out of control.

So, here’s the idea I’ve got in my head so far.  Somewhere around, oh, the ten-to-twelve-year range, Izuku’s getting really depressed.  The bullying he’s dealing with is worse than it was ever shown to be in canon, the teachers are even worse, and he’s just having a generally hard time.  After a particularly bad day, Izuku doesn’t feel like watching any hero vids for once, and instead looks around for some other vids to watch for something to do, and finds a Minecraft YouTuber in the process and falls in love with the game.  It basically becomes his second major obsession, and his mom gets him a copy of the game for his birthday (secretly glad that Izuku is interested in things other than Heroes now.)

When Izuku installs the game, though, and goes to make his first single-player survival world, the Quirk he never knew he had activates, and he’s dragged into the computer screen and dumped straight into the MC world – or, rather, a real world similar to the game, complete with the same game mechanics but a lot more meat to its lore and history and the creatures living in it.  This is no longer just a game, it’s a real world he can explore in all its blocky glory.  Izuku ends up surviving on his own for several Minecraft days, slightly terrified but able to hide from the mobs well enough, and when his Mom comes in to tell him dinner’s ready and finds the game apparently running on its own, she pauses it and the screen spits a shocked Izuku right back out at her.  

So yeah, Izuku’s quirk is Minecraft-based.  He, personally, thinks this is really cool, but since all he can do is jump back and forth between IRL and the world behind the screen, not even take anything with him as he comes and goes, it’s pretty useless for Hero work, and the people in his school still treat him the same because they’re stupid and prejudiced.  He retreats into MC more and more as time goes on, because after the initial scare it became hella fun to live out a life there, and its a good way to escape his normal life’s torment.  He meets Villagers, who are actual people capable of speaking and being friendly to newcomers and stuff, and makes a few friends in the first village he finds.  He explores a LOT, and encounters Illagers as well as normal unfriendly mobs.  He starts learning how to sword-fight, because clearly he needs to lessons after that encounter with Illagers.  He starts getting more and more invested in the MC world, but is conflicted about it, because he still has dreams of being a Pro-Hero.

Then Izuku meets All Might, and has his dreams crushed.  He doesn’t get a chance to impress All Might by saving Bakugou, because instead of sticking around he just goes straight home immediately to dip back into the MC world, as its his go-to-comfort at this point.  At that point, his Villager friends help him finally figure out that his world really isn’t a good place for him – and so he talks to his mom, and they make a deal.  If Izuku can’t find something he feels is worth sticking around in their world for (other than his mom, of course) by the time he finishes high school, Inko’s okay with him basically moving into the Minecraft world full-time if it will make him happy.

So, while Class 1-A at Yuuei gets into villain-related disasters and misadventures, Izuku’s having his own misadventures, both in the MC world and his non-Yuuei high school.  In the high school, he’s mostly trying to find something he wants to do with his life that isn’t Hero-related, and trying to make new friends.  In the MC world, though, he’s helping his Villager friends and getting into misadventures that would probably make class 1-A balk, even while slowly building up that world into something magnificent without realizing that he’s sorta become a hero in his own right.

Details for this Crossover include:

Izuku’s quirk basically works by taking him through the screen into whatever Minecraft world he previously logged into.  This does work on servers, btw, though Izuku avoids almost everything to do with PVP once he figures out that shit hurts for real and leaves him with injuries irl.

He mostly prefers to stick to his first survival world as a result, or to do stuff in creative in a different world.  He may or may not sometimes dive into multiplayer servers, though, mostly minigame servers, and in the process accidentally make friends with some of the regulars there.  (He also may or may not sometimes encounter the Minecraft-playing Class 1-A members and the occasional villain from the League that way, not that he realizes it until Bakugou of all people turns up and one of the villains, Toga, tells him cheerfully who she is.)

Izuku gets turned into a blocky version of himself while in MC, mostly because Izuku’s freak-out about turning into an MC player character would be fun to write, but also because there’s no way that the Illagers wouldn’t do something to him if he was walking around as a normal human AND as a Player.  See MatPat’s vids about them, and assume the Illagers are up to that kind of shady shit.

At first Izuku just explores the world and wanders between villages once he finds them, helping people out (he’s useful!  He’s not useless here!)  Up until All Might crushes his dreams, though, that’s p much all he’s doing.  He’ll, like, fight off mobs and save villagers, and make friends in the process, but his mind’s still set on being a hero while MC is… possibly a way to go about being one?

He makes friends with several Villager children/teenager equivalents in the process, and this friendship with them makes it clear to him that his “friendship” with Bakugou is pretty fucked up.  It takes a while, but he gets there eventually!

When his dreams of being a hero are crushed and he doesn’t get One for All, Izuku ends up spending more and more time in MC when not in school or working on school stuff, because the “real” world just doesn’t seem like a good place for him.  He starts helping the villagers fortify their villages against mobs and Illagers, helps traveling merchants, and starts learning more about the history of this world in the process.

After an incident in his new school leads to him begging his mom to let him be homeschooled or do stuff online, he starts getting more ambitious.  He starts building cities for the slowly growing Villager population of the world, fighting off hordes of mobs, exploring ancient ruins Indiana-Jones-style, and starts helping the Villagers deal with the Illager threat for good.

He goes on that whole “defeat the enderdragon” quest and may or may not end up hatching a baby ender dragon as a pet by complete accident.  (I like the dragon rider mod in MC ok, and come on, Izuku’s slowly turning into an MC badass, he NEEDS a pet dragon like I need to breathe.)

… He also may or may not encounter a very unusual stranger in the wilderness, one that almost looks like another human, who helps him out during this time.  (He SAYS he’s Steve, but there’s something a little off about him, and he’s not too keen on interacting with other people for some reason?  And doesn’t seem to understand them all that well?  And seems to like acting like a bad guy, to an extent?  Izuku clues onto the fact there’s something p weird about him soon after meeting him.  But hey, he’s not going to judge, and isolation can really mess with your head, right?  He read that somewhere.)

… Steve may or may not be possessed.  By someone who is supposed to look very similar to him. (Wink wink.)  Who may or may not be intrigued by Izuku when he first meets the kid, because this kid is clearly incredibly smart, and he’s bored and kinda wants to see what this kid will grow into before he tries messing with him.

Izuku catches onto these shenanigans eventually, but the person that Steve may or may not be possessed by is trying to be subtle, and Izuku can be kinda oblivious sometimes (not to mention he’s always been interested in playing Minecraft and has read about Herobrine’s lore like, once, and since “Steve” never has white eyes he never really figures it out.)  He DOES catch onto his pseudo-villainous attitude and general dislike of “Players” though, and is suitably wary of him as a result.

… Izuku may or may not also figure out that at least part of the villainous attitude is because H just doesn’t understand people in general.  The dude’s a former computer virus who got into Minecraft and accidentally became a part of it.  There’s no way he knows about emotions in the same way that humans/villagers do.

Years pass in the game very quickly (I mean, dude, one Minecraft month is like, 10 hours.  The days are 20 minutes long, he’s in there for a VERY LONG TIME) and Izuku’s basically considered a hero by the villagers, something which makes him very happy because hey, it’s almost like he’s fulfilled his original dream, even if it’s not in a way he would have expected.  He’s also got some p good friends in other servers he dives into sometimes after visiting his mom, and of course, the H-possessed Steve who pops up sometimes. (His relationship with HIM is complicated.  Like, almost as complicated as his relationship with Bakugou was before he graduated into full-on bullyhood.  He considers the guy a tentative friend, though.)

Then a new patch comes out, complete with a “Removed Herobrine” line in the text, and things go to shit, because the MC game can affect the real MC world to an extent, but H is kinda there for good.  And he’s sick and tired of having his code/existence torn apart with every update, and oh would you look at that, there’s a player he can take the blame out on right there, along with entire cities of his villager friends.  

Cue a sudden war as the mobs in the world go crazy under his influence, and Izuku and his villager friends are suddenly in for a fight for their lives.  It’s practically a full-blown war, and it may or may not follow him to a server he retreats to to try to get some advice from his online friends (friendly reminder that at least a couple of them are Heroes or Hero students, and at least one of them is probably a villain.  He’s got a wide range of advice.)

Izuku does eventually figure out that at least part of the problem is that Herobrine is sick of being removed, and makes a deal with the guy – if he leaves people alone, then Izuku will find a way to contact the game developers and force them to stop removing him from the game.  H doesn’t accept this at first – but then Izuku leaves the game long enough to talk to his mom, and send the MC game developers an email explaining his quirk, and what’s going on, and can they please stop removing Herobrine from the game, even as a joke?  It’s hurting him every time they do this and he’s trying to take it out on Izuku and his friends.

… This actually works, to Izuku’s shock.  The game developers contact him about this whole thing for more details a couple IRL days later, and though they’re extremely uncomfortable with the fact that Herobrine exists, they’re also decent enough people that they don’t actually want to hurt someone, even if that someone is digital and only able to be talked to through Izuku’s quirk.

(Izuku tells H this the next time he sees the dude, and what the fuck, Herobrine wasn’t expecting the kid to be SERIOUS about this. He may or may not calm down a bit after that, and stop warring against Izuku and Co. though his relationship with the kid stays very firmly in the “complicated” category.)

This event, however, leads Izuku to realize that hey, the “real world” can still affect MC even if he lives there full-time, so he should probably stay in the real world so he can keep an eye out on the developers.  After all, he can still visit his friends in MC.

… may or may not include bonus content after the main story where Izuku starts recording what he does in MC for other people to see. Not sure.  But I kinda like the idea, so it might be a thing, just a post-canon thing.  It would also probably be excessively shenanigan-y, by complete accident, because it would be funny (and I DID say Izuku’s relationship w/ Herobrine would be complicated, right.  Yup, I did.  Couple of times.  Well, that’s VERY IMPORTANT okay.)

[365daysofsasuhina]

[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day Two Hundred Eighty-Three: Mining ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: Best Years of Your Life ] [ AO3 Link ]

It’s fast becoming an after school tradition. As soon as he gets home from classes, Sasuke makes his way up to his room and powers up his PC, saving his homework for as late in the evening as he dares. Even his mother has noticed his change in behavior, staring with a puzzled expression up the stairs whenever he goes flying by.

A few months ago, Sasuke wouldn’t be caught dead playing a game as old and ‘childish’ as Minecraft. But the game’s resurgence in popularity means it’s no longer that niche piece of nostalgia that only some people refused to stop playing. Now, it’s once again something acceptable in social spaces. And Sasuke has joined a server put on by someone at his school.

So far, no one is aware of who he is. Well...except one person. While beginning his base back when the server first launched, he found himself approached by another player, who left a simple sign saying, “Hinata was here”. He found out the next day that Hinata was a friend of a friend of a friend, hence the name ringing a distant bell. A few questions later while logged on, and they’d both pretty much figured out who the other was.

But otherwise? Sasuke acts none the wiser regarding the game at school. Naruto is still adamant it’s a kid game. Sakura isn’t one to play games in the first place. But any time he and Hinata cross paths, there’s a brief exchanged look with a smile.

She ended up building a base not far from his own, promising to teach him - as a diehard fan who carried on during the dry spell - everything he’d missed during his years off from the game.

“What even is the point of this stuff?” he complains over Discord one evening, nose wrinkling as he has to mine through yet another vein of diorite. “It looks like bird poop.”

In their voice chat, Hinata can’t help a soft laugh. “Honestly, I don’t know. Most people don’t really like the new stones. I guess they were going for variety…? But...I think they’re all pretty ugly…”

“They’re obnoxious. Keep taking slots in my inventory! I’m trying to go mining for diamonds, not...this crap.”

“Just t-toss it in some lava next time you find some.”

Sasuke grumbles into his mic, carrying on silently for a while before asking, “...what’s the level for diamonds?”

“...eleven, I think? That’s where I go, anyway. It might be a block up or down, but that works pretty well. Going strip mining?”

“I found a pretty good cave, but...ugh, I might as well. I need some better gear!”

“At least we’re far out enough it should be untouched. I bet spawn is already completely dug up.”

“Well, I’ll report back if I find anything,” he sighs. “...what about you? Up to anything interesting?”

“I found a jungle temple!”

“Oh yeah? I...think those were a thing last time I played. Anything cool in it?”

“I’m trying to do the puzzle by hand rather than just...mining into it.”

“I’m not patient enough for that stuff.”

“Remind me to never have you play a puzzle map with me,” she laughs.

“If I want to have to think about stuff, I’d rather just do my homework.”

Hinata bursts into more giggles, and Sasuke can’t help but grin to himself.

There’s some radio silence for a time, and then Hinata gasps.

“Huh? What?”

“I found pandas!”

“Whoa, really?”

“Yeah! Aww, one’s rolling around on its back, that’s so cute!”

“Man, I wanna see!”

“I’ll try to bring one home! It’s actually not too far, I think I can get one in a boat...I’ll have to make a pen…”

“You can just...have a pet panda?”

“Well sure! I mean...you don’t tame it or anything, but you can have them around.”

“Oh...so like a cow or something.”

“Mhm.”

“Well, you get that panda, and I’ll get us some diamonds.”

“You’re gonna…? You’re gonna split your diamonds with me?”

“Well sure, why not?”

“...are we teaming up?”

“...I guess so. Is that bad?”

“No, that’s fine! I just...w-wasn’t expecting it.”

“Why not? We’re neighbors, aren’t we?”

“...I guess so.”

“What’s with the hesitation?”

“Nothing! Nevermind. I’ll go help you mine next time. For now, I’m panda wrangling.”

For a moment he considers asking her again, but...well, she’s avoiding it for a reason. Did he...do something wrong? Well, there’s no real way to know unless she fesses up, so...in the meantime, he goes back to his mining.

By the time it’s late evening, he’s actually found a few veins of the gems, coming back up triumphantly to the surface. “I got thirteen!”

“Nice! Look, I got the panda in a pen!”

Not far from his jungle treehouse is indeed a junglewood pen, complete with a little house with leaves for the roof. A panda sits upright munching on bamboo.

“...dude…”

“What?”

“...I think that’s my new favorite mob.”

“Right? They’re so cute! This is just a normal one, but they come in different personalities! I’ll try to get more to spawn tomorrow. For now I need to get my homework done…”

“Yeah, me too. Here, before you go though…” He gives her six of his diamonds. “You can make a pick and a sword!”

“Oh...thanks.”

“...do you not want them?”

“No! No, I appreciate it. I just didn’t think you’d, um...want to give them to me.”

“I mean, yeah...we’re friends, aren’t we?”

“...I dunno...are we?”

Sasuke blinks at his screen. “...we’ve been playing this after school almost every day for a week. Does that not make us friends?”

“Well...on here, sure. But…”

...but what, he has to wonder.

“...I mean...we haven’t really t-talked outside of here...have we?”

“I’m talking to you right now.”

“I mean in p-person! At school! When we’re there, it’s like we’re strangers…”

So that’s what this is about? “I...wasn’t sure if you wanted me to!”

“Well...neither did I!”

“I’d be cool with it!”

“...you would?”

“Yeah! Why not?”

“Well, because I...I’m not…”

“Not what?”

“...cool…”

After a pregnant pause, Sasuke can’t help a laugh. “And, what? You think I am? Or that I’m like, the...the cool police?”

“Well...Naruto thinks I’m...weird.”

“Yeah, well...Naruto’s an idiot.”

“...I had a really big c-crush on him when we were little, and...I think he’s still kinda...w-weirded out by me. I didn’t...w-want to make things awkward. I mean, you guys are best friends, and -”

“My friends don’t dictate who else I can be friends with. You’re not weird, Hinata. You have interests that are maybe a little atypical, but that’s not weird, that’s just...being a person. If you wanna talk at school and hang out or whatever, just...do it! Like I said, we’re friends. Doesn’t matter if we really met through a game, we still talk and communicate and, like...know each other. It doesn’t have to be different in person if you don’t want it to be. I just...since the server started as anonymous, I wasn’t sure if I should say anything.”

For a long moment, Hinata is quiet...but Sasuke waits patiently, knowing she likes to think over her words.

“...o-okay…”

“Okay?”

“Yeah, I...I’m okay. Um...I’ll...talk to you tomorrow. I need to...do my homework.”

“...all right. If you don’t come talk to me tomorrow, I’ll go find you instead.”

She manages a small laugh at that. “...okay.”

“Good. Good luck with your work.”

“Yeah, you too. Goodnight.”

“...night.” He watches Discord as she leaves the channel, and then heaves a small sigh, mic muted. He had no idea she wanted to bridge things from in the game into stuff at school...he figured most would want to keep that separate. And how could he know unless she said something?

He’s really enjoyed getting to know her over the course of the past week. She’s easy to talk to, really charming in her own way, and has proved to be really interesting. It makes him sad he never really talked to her before.

...they’re definitely friends. At least, in his eyes. Still...he can’t help but wonder about her history with Naruto. He has called her strange whenever Sasuke brings her up. Is he really so hung up over that? That was forever ago! And if anything, he’s constant pining over Sakura is just as weird, right? Like he has any room to talk.

Powering off his PC, Sasuke leans back in his chair, thoughts a bit jumbled. Well...for now, nothing left to do but finish his coursework. Tomorrow, he can hang out with Hinata.

And if Naruto says anything stupid (and, let’s face it...of course he will), then Sasuke will just tell him to piss off. Simple as that. Of course...he’s a bit more blunt than Hinata with her soft-spoken manners.

...she’d be wasted on someone like Naruto.

...where’d that thought come from?

Shoving it aside, Sasuke pulls out his calculus textbook, willing himself to think about something else for a while.

                                                           .oOo.

     (This is a sequel to day 253!)      More very random Minecraft stuff xD Not, uh...much more to say than that? I'm not feelin' too well, and had a v long day, I'm exhausted lol - so uh...think I'll call it there~ Thanks for reading!

[myfriendpokey]

zine thoughts pt 2

where do you sell videogames? zine fairs, children's book stores, used record marts, from the trunk of a car like rudy ray moore, on etsy or on craiglist, with flyers on the wall of the local chip shop or library. through awkwardly hammered-together handmade electronic systems or the reverse, turning your game into a jumbled set of paper text and graphical fragments which can be sold in boardgame stores as some kind of reconstruct-the-narrative puzzle. you could make one-off bespoke games or game simulacra for movies that want to depict some kind of videogame being played onscreen without having to go through the licensing rights. you could ghost-develop games for wealthy people to put their names on ("american mcgee presents my life with princess diana by donald duck"). you could develop training games for the military-industrial complex, ha ha ha ha. you could get funded by the CIA to ensure the medium of videogames remains sufficiently arty and rehabilitated to function as propaganda for capitalism... i mean we already know they were involved with the paris review and iowa writer's workshop and all that jazz so they gotta have least a couple people on the payroll already, right, and we will all be treated to some very entertaining revelations following the inevitable freedom of information act request 15 years down the line. you could try connecting with the little self-contained fan communities for things like touhou, fnaf, undertale, m-minecraft, like those renaissance artists who had to drop their patron's face in the background of some religious scene except in this case it would be one of the homestuck guys. you could make "trainers" for more popular games, or demos that could show how they "feel" without a $60 investment. you could sell small games as assets for larger ones that want to have some kind of in-universe  playable arcade system without having to invent a whole new game from scratch. you could just make extremely specific forms of pornography, maybe not the worst option even, just make sure the very artistic sequences of the protagonist remembering his dead wife are broken up every now and then with scenes of him unhinging his jaw to swallow and slowly digest another, smaller sad games protagonist whole (with rumble function for controllers!!!). you could make games for all the people who are still on windows xp or earlier or have some kind of arcane video card setup that prevents them playing anything other than that one preinstalled pinball game. you could try selling them at street vendors. you could try learning another language and making games for non-anglophones that don't sound like an english-written game that was localised without much thought after the fact.   you could make games for kids in the hopes that they sexually imprint on them enough to support your erotic oil paintings of the characters 10 years later, just like nintendo. you could make an extremely interesting and thoughtful videogame and then offer not to release it if the donation threshold is met, thus sparing people the emotional obligation of having yet another thing on their should-play-this-eventually list. you could develop games with some bewildering system of in-game and real-world currency interactions and then sell it to the mob as a way to launder money. you could make videogames that robots record themselves playing to upload en masse which are then watched by other robots as part of some weird, ungraspably abstract SEO economy, or better yet make robots to make the videogames as well. you could make virtual cemetary plots either private (downloadable exe) or public (hosted on the server) with their own customisable mood-themes and weather settings (dark, stormy, remember-you-will-die; sunny, quiet, circle-of-life etc). you could make prosperity orbs. you could make games for office workers or call center staff which resemble excel documents or phone system frontends from a distance. you could make games which really ARE excel files, some dense collection of interlocking hidden formulas that change to display text and ascii characters as you tab your way through. you could probably talk your way into "adapting" any of those old IPs that still float around long after anyone stopped having any particular thought or feeling about them at all, like the flintstones or ziggy or something, maybe do like those 1960s superhero cartoons where they just filmed panels from the comics - just break a 2d flintstones cartoon into constituent elements and have them hover around in a little cutout diorama that you fly thru, possibly explained in-universe as representing the 4-d vision of the great gazoo. you could make games that play themselves, for the depressed. you could become a ghastly serial m**derer where after each crime you upload a new game to itchio which will reveal the  name of your next victim, and costs only $9.99, and of course everyone buys and plays it because the police have put up a reward for solving the crime because they can't get past the dinosaur on level three, and all seems lost until some plucky young computer student who found the game on a friend's hard drive manages to solve the riddle hidden within the game's structure, following the clues, to an old castle, she knocks on the door, it's opened by, yes, it's will wright, wearing a wizard outfit, who tells her that by dint of solving all the puzzles she is now invited to join that mysterious organization known as "The Elect" which is assembled from the finest minds in all game design with a view to secretly controlling the world economy (via "werewolf blood", somehow), that she need only complete the ceremony by sacrificing one untutored soul, he holds out an ornate knife, she hesitates........

the question is where to sell videogames rather than how because for the most part we already know how - there are a million more or less instructive articles out there about hitting up conventions or talking to the press, and it's not that they're wrong, exactly, more that they expect to be applied in an environment that no longer exists. but what should preface and qualify the idea of sheer volume swamping the indie games market is that, outside of a few small pockets, there never really was an "indie games market" to begin with - indie games drew and mostly still draw on the existing videogames market, rather than constituting a new one. it's telling that the glory days of indie games were just the ones where they were able to draw upon some of the same privileges larger titles already had in the ability to access that same audience - being frontpaged by steam, say, or making it onto a comparatively closed console platform, or generating earnest thinkpieces... you could say that they were tapping into structures the industry had already built but had not yet occupied to full capacity.

of course there are exceptions and various efforts to set up new economies for small weird interactive things (like patreon, or game bundles), and some efforts to reach outside the existing games audience likely were successful - but when we think of indie games "functioning" economically, whether that means supporting a small team, a single person, or just hitting minimum wage per hours spent, i believe we're mostly still talking about ones which are built around the existing games economy. which is fine, but i think it's also intrinsically precarious in ways which maybe get glossed over in discussions of the "indiepocalypse" - are all those new steam releases really causing a problem or are they just exacerbating a structural limitation which was already always there, a reliance within the indie game economy on a certain lucky-few-ism which just became grossly more noticeable the more disproportionate it got?

of course it's easier to be dismissive after the fact, and my fantasy about "where" to sell videogames is partly a fantasy of them having a location to begin with - of attaining something of the grounded and immutable appearance of the non-digital, as though brick and mortar stores  don't have a relationship to the likes of amazon as basically precarious as any online storefront. and there are also real and obvious reasons why the various videogame audiences all tend to clump together - similarities in terms of the hardware required, the inputs allowed, of visual and cultural reference points, to say nothing of the personal / professional histories of the people involved in each. we are all contained within "the medium"...

so maybe it's also a fantasy of starting to pick apart that conception of the medium. i think small game developers already have more in common with artists or musicians working on the fringes of their respective industries than they do with even moderately successful teams within the same format, and use similar language, engage in similar forms of practice - particularly as near everything  comes increasingly mediated by the digital these days. i think they already ARE working in similar spaces to some extent, whether it's social media sites or digital storefronts or meatspace stores pushed by necessity not to specialise. and without wanting to be paranoid (or moreso than the CIA thing, at least) i think we should be cautious of the way a certain focus on mediumicity can obscure these overlaps.  a "new medium" is one which inherently pushes against the image of one as grouded ahistorically in some eternal human verity or other (where each medium supposedly embodies some different mode of perception / medieval humour / ninja turtle etc) - it is to see firsthand the way in which supposedly eternal, neutral qualities are materially constructed, which includes seeing forms of social organisation and usage become mystified into extrahuman conditions.  and given their basis in technology that includes drawing from wider trends in the use of that technology as a whole - which specifically, in tech circles, can mean more and more tightly interlocking systems of proprietary knowledge and speculative capital, as well as "new mediums" constructed so as to be inseperable from some storefront, website or monitoring technology. i don't think anybody will necessarily break even taking their games to a zine fair (not that they're breaking even now). but i do feel like trying to build networks across those medium boundaries could be more valuable in the effort to build some sustainable environment for these things than any amount of reform within the house that tech built.

[PS: it occurs to me that you could plausibly argue that the very bagginess of medium-centric formulations is what makes them valuable, in forcing many different groups to butt against each other on one platform rather than just disperse into echo chambers. but i think exactly the reverse is the case: nobody really engages with each other's work in artgames because the stakes are simultaneously too small and too large. they're too small in that however much i might be picky about another person's work - and i think it's this vague pickiness or sense of not-quite-right-ness that drives the most searching critiques - it still feels pointless to pursue that instead of the glaring, omnipresent faults of the big AAA players, which means more complaining about far cry for all eternity. and they're too large in that most small game development is so precarious that it's not really worth the risk of knocking someone out of the circle over penny-ante shit. only with both economic security and broad similarity of outlook can a truly vital,  human culture of spiteful cattiness begin... our day will come]

(image credits: Eco Fighter, World Heroes 2 ,The Space Adventure, Nancy)

[shielddrake]

Rebel of Sky City Ch. 22

So, here’s a little tidbit I meant to include in the last chapter post, but little scatterbrained me forgot. I just wanted to share part of a review from chapter 20 written by TheAmberShadow, in regard to Ivor’s apparent fall from the palace after the explosion in his lab:

 “Ivor’s going to fall screaming past them at any moment and that mental picture is hilarious!”

 The idea of Ivor falling past Lukas and Isa as they tower back up to the city had my sides hurting from laughter! I wish I had included that somehow! It’s much more creative than what I ended up doing. Unfortunately, I needed Ivor to show up at the big meeting with all the other characters. There should be a Minecraft: Bloopers Mode and include that somehow!

I’m still looking for input on my next project. The updated choices are in chapter 19.

Chapter Twenty-Two

To Lukas’ surprise, he found himself staring at the hilt of one of Isa’s swords.

They had positioned themselves all around the outer perimeter of the palace. This was where most of the traitorous guards remained. They threw spawn eggs to create monsters whenever they felt like it. Ghasts seemed to be their favorite. Despite that, there were plenty of zombies, skeletons, spiders, and creepers around to make everyone nervous.

 The only good thing about the rubble around the city was that it provided plenty of cover for them to hide. They still had to beat a few mobs every now and then, but for the most part they were able to reach the large crevice that surrounded the palace entrance. Had it been filled with water, Lukas would have called it a moat.

 Still, he didn’t expect to be in this situation. The group was waiting for one of Aiden’s henchmen to show up before they sprung their plan. In the meantime, Lukas stared at Isa with a perplexed expression as she pointed the hilt towards him.

“Really?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

 “Aiden has access to all the resources we had in the palace, including the weapons stash for the Guard,” Isa explained. “No doubt he will have found the diamond swords by now.”

 “Swords made of diamond?” Olivia repeated. “Really? You have those?”

 “They were only for Jesse, Reginald and me to use, but I’m sure Aiden will be keeping one at his side,” The Founder continued. “It would be foolish to think otherwise, and a diamond sword lasts much longer than your iron one. If you end up fighting him, you’re going to need a weapon that can match his.”

 Lukas looked down from her face at the sword for a moment before slowly taking it. He couldn’t argue with her logic.

 “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Lukas said. “Hopefully Aiden will be willing to listen to reason.”

“What are the chances of that?” Petra asked him. “He’s way beyond reason by now.”

 Lukas shrugged. “Guess Jesse’s optimism has rubbed off on me.”

 “Looks like some of the guards are patrolling again,” Milo whispered, looking over the pile of blocks. “Philippe and I are going over to the other side. We’ll lead the distraction from there. Split their forces in half, so to speak.”

 “Good idea, Dad,” Lukas agreed. He reached over and gave his father’s shoulder a squeeze. “Be safe, okay?”

 “And you as well, son.” Milo returned the gesture and smiled. “I will see you on the other side.”

Milo and Philippe took a group of the rebels and headed off to the other side of the palace. Lukas turned his attention to Ivor, who was now without anything to defend himself, having given his last three potions to them. Not wanting to leave him unarmed, Lukas pulled the iron sword Axel had given him and passed it to Ivor.

“You think I know how to use one of those things?” the older man said deeply.

 “Yeah, I don’t think this guy does much fighting,” Petra joked, at which Ivor glared at her.

 Lukas shook his head. He could tell Petra was teasing, but he wasn’t sure if Ivor would take it that way. And now really wasn’t the time for them to start going at each other. Lukas only just got his father and Isa to agree to disagree long enough go through with this plan. He didn’t need another argument on his hands.

 Thankfully, Axel hushed them for him. “Guys, check it out. Gill and Maya.”

 The little group looked over their shelter. Sure enough, Aiden’s two little flunkies were walking around, swords in hand, and looking around. They had a couple of other guards with them, and they each sported bags and belts full of eggs. The guards were clearly being more vigilant than either Maya or Gill, who were chatting with each other without a care in the world.

 “Look at those jerks,” Olivia commented. “Acting like the city isn’t falling apart around them.”

“Time to take the fight to them,” Axel said, punching one fist into the opposite palm.

 Isa stood, pulling out her remaining diamond sword and twirling it in her hand. “I swear, I’m going to tear these traitors limb from limb.”

 “Take care of yourself out there, Isa,” Lukas warned her.

 “And to you as well,” Isa answered him. She nodded to Ivor. “Let’s go.”

 Ivor followed her across the yard and into position. Axel rolled his neck and stood.

“Time for a little payback.” He was stopped by Petra’s hand on his. His eyes went wide for a moment before he lifted his gaze to hers. “What’s up, Petra?”

“Just…be careful, okay?” She rubbed the back of her neck, which was starting to turn a little pink. “You never know what new tricks Gill and Maya have up their sleeves.”

“You don’t need to worry about me. I’ve dealt with them pretty much my whole life,” he insisted. He let out a single laugh. “And you’ve kind of helped me be more confident around people who talk down to me. I can handle any monster they throw at me…no pun intended.”

 Petra still didn’t release his hand. Axel glanced back and forth between her face and their clasped hands.

 “Uh, Petra? Are you okay?”

 She squeezed his hand, ignoring him in favor of glaring over at Lukas and Olivia, who were watching them intently. She crinkled her nose at them, apparently rather annoyed at the presence of an audience. Finally, she threw up her hands and turned back to Axel.

 “Screw it,” she said, and then reached up to pull the tall man down and crashing her lips to his.

They remained like that for a good minute or so. Lukas and Olivia stared with wide eyes, eyeing each other uncertainly. The kissing pair ignored them entire. Petra kept her eyes close, while Axel’s seemed to take over his entire head.

Finally, she released him. Axel stared at her with a rather stupid smile on his face. He continued to watch Petra as his body tried and failed to turn around. He stumbled over some debris as he moved to follow Isa into the courtyard. His normally deep voice was pitched to a higher octave as he chuckled nervously. He cleared his throat and headed off.

Petra watched him go and place himself in front of the patrolling guards. She glanced over at Lukas and Olivia. They were giving her an expression that was some sort of mixture of amusement and surprise. Olivia kept her hand over her mouth, trying to stifle giggles, while Lukas held his sides in a silent laugh.

The redhead scoffed at them. “Don’t say it. Don’t even chuckle. Especially you.”

 Petra pointed a finger at Lukas, who only barely managed to control his laughter. He did remain quiet, as commanded.

 “Hey, Maya! Gill!” Axel shouted. Lukas looked over the barrier to see the tall man waving his arms around. “Bet you’re feeling on top of the world right now!”

To no one’s surprise, the commotion got their attention in no time at all. The brunette pair’s gaze immediately snapped to him, and both Gill and Maya smirked at him. Gill stepped forward and put a loser sign on his forehead, using his thumb and index finger.

“Too bad you didn’t choose the right side, huh?” he mocked. “Loser.”

 “Yeah, maybe you should’ve tried harder to get on Aiden’s good side,” Maya joined in. “But big surprise, you’re not smart enough to have figured that out.”

“Brilliant comebacks from these guys,” Olivia muttered.

 “I think that’s the longest sentence that’s ever come out of Maya’s mouth,” Petra added.

 Lukas had to bit his lip to stop himself from laughing again, and thus give their position away.

 Axel, however, wasn’t perturbed at all, which Lukas had to admit was a bit of a surprise, but in a good way. He flexed his arms, making himself look even bigger.

 “But I’m still here though!” He announced. It would seem that Axel felt more confident and loud after receiving Petra’s attentions. “You’d think you would’ve caught me already, if I was such a loser!”

That simple taunt got under Gill’s skin, and he pulled his sword out and waved it in a threatening manner. “That can change real quick!”

“Even if he has reinforcements?” Everyone’s heads turned to see Isa walking up to the crevice, with Ivor right behind her. She glared at the pair and the guards standing with them. Lukas had to look closely, but he could see their knees shaking. “I do not take kindly to traitors. Stand down now, or I will show you how I deal with people like you.”

Gill’s mouth dropped open while Maya started stuttering. “You’re, you’re, but you’re dead! Aiden threw you off the island! How is this—”

“Perhaps I am more resourceful than you expected,” Isa sneered, flashing her blade against the rain. “Now it’s time to see if you will follow through with your threats.”

 Gill shook his head and snickered. He looked over his shoulder at the other guards, who were simply staring at The Founder with disbelieving eyes.

 “Don’t just stand there!” he commanded. “Get them!”

“Boom!” Maya shouted, throwing an egg at Axel’s feet, instantly spawning a spider. “Egg!”

 A fight broke out in no time. Isa maintained the line the most, being the most experienced fighter there. Axel and Ivor were able to hold their own fairly well, even against the skeletons being spawned in front of them. Ivor seemed more anxious about the whole thing, but that didn’t stop him from giving a few blows to the nearby creeper. He jumped out of the way of the imminent boom, shouting as he covered his head.

 “I don’t need any more explosions!!” he hollered. “Thank you!”

 There was the sound of another bang in the distance, far enough that no debris showered the group but still close enough that they felt the swell of the explosion. Lukas took a glace in the direction it came from. He could hear screaming in his father’s voice, but it wasn’t a painful scream. It was one of releasing pent up rage and frightening the enemy. Lukas smiled at his remaining two friends.

“That would be Dad,” he said. “And that’s our cue.”

“Remind me to congratulate Axel on his standing up to his bullies,” Petra said. “They’ve been jerks to him for long enough.”

 “I think he’s fine,” Olivia stated, shrugging one shoulder and listening to Axel continue to taunt Gill and Maya. “That little public display of affection gave him the boost that he needed.”

 “Yeah, you should do that more often,” Lukas suggested, smirking at his best friend and ignoring how her face began to match her hair. “I think you’re getting a little soft, Petra?”

“Oh, shut it.”

Giving them one last glare, Petra quickly drank the light blue potion in her hand. Having the Potion of Swiftness, neither Lukas nor Olivia saw her sprint out of their sight, leap over the crevice, and head straight for the front gates of the palace. They did feel the gust of wind that went with her, but beyond that it was as if Petra just disappeared into thin air.

 Olivia smiled and drank her own potion. Hers was the Potion of Leaping. This gave her the ability to leap from her hiding spot straight over not only the crevice, but also over the guards, rebels and monsters standing in her way. She landed with a boom, and for a moment Lukas was worried that she would be spotted and attacked. He needn’t have worried though, as Olivia immediately jumped again. She was able to bypass the fighting by staying airborne. Soon enough she was also at the palace gates, standing right next to Petra.

 “Guess it’s just me now.”

 With that Lukas closed his eyes and downed his grey potion in one gulp. It felt like he had swallowed a large bug, or maybe a spider, along with soggy carrots and some kind of plant his tongue didn’t recognize. He grimaced at the taste and nearly spat it out. It was only the knowledge that he really needed the Potion of Invisibility’s effects that kept him from doing so.

 Half a second later, Lukas looked down at his hand. He knew he was moving his fingers and he could feel the air around them, but he couldn’t see them at all. Glancing down at the rest of his body, Lukas could see, or rather, not see himself at all. His body was completely gone!

“Now that’s more like it,” he whispered, trying to keep his voice down to maintain the illusion of having disappeared.

 Lukas probably had the hardest time getting over the crevice. He thanked the stars it didn’t go all the way through the bottom of the island. He was able to slide down it, reach the base, and then slowly and carefully climb up the other side. The stones and dirt that were displaced by his steps weren’t invisible, but that was part of the reason his friends and family were acting as a distraction. Once Lukas reached the top of the crevice on the other side, he looked over his shoulder at the battle. Everyone was too busy to even notice that anything had gone amiss. He smiled and waved at Isa, but then remembered she couldn’t see him. He turned back to the palace.

“Only three minutes,” he reminded himself, and he took off running.

 Of course, Lukas was the last one to arrive at the palace gates. By this point, Petra’s potion had worn off, which meant that Olivia’s was not far behind. They were already waiting for him at the palace entrance. Petra had her sword out and Olivia had an arrow drawn in her bow. Lukas waved his own weapon.

 “Ready, ladies?” he asked. They both nodded. “All right! Let’s go!”

 With that, the trio found themselves in the perpetual labyrinth that was the Sky City Palace. The outside of the palace was so precise and so immaculate on the outside, with its bright gold blocks and perfect dome. Truthfully, Lukas never thought it would be such a mess inside. Halls and rooms weaved each and every way imaginable, including up and down a few small flights of steps. The worst part was that, to him at least, it all looked alike. The few paintings and tapestries hung on the walls didn’t help him familiarize himself. Everything looked the same to him!

 “Who’s bright idea was it to make this place so complicated?” Lukas couldn’t help but groan. “Why isn't this considered an ‘egregious waste of resources’!”

“Good thing you’ve got me, huh?” Petra joked.

 Lukas chuckled. If Petra hadn’t joined the Guard and become accustomed to walking about the palace…well, that was just luck on their part.

 “Think we’re going to run into any monsters in here?” Olivia wondered aloud.

 “Keep your eyes peeled,” Petra replied. “Just in case.”

 Almost as if on cue, when they arrived at a four-way intersection, Lukas saw the flash of a swinging sword from a side hall. He lifted his sword in time to parry the attack, but he stumbled back from the blow. The sword came down again, but this time it was Petra’s sword that blocked it.

 “Look out!” she yelled, a little too late, but Lukas was unharmed and that was all that mattered. She looked up from the hilt of her sword into a pair of dark eyes covered by pale cyan hair. “Mevia?!”

“And here I thought you wouldn’t show your face here again, Petra,” Mevia replied, a smirk scribbled across her face. She jerked her sword, forcing the redhead to step back. “We’ve got some fighters here, Hadrian!”

 “Aiden warned us about keeping intruders out of the palace.” Olivia spun around, aiming her bow down the opposite hallway as Hadrian walked into view. He held his own sword made of diamond, jutting it towards Lukas. “Can’t say I expected to see you again, chump.”

The blonde narrowed his eyes at the older man. “You were hoping I was dead, weren’t you?”

“You’ve made life very difficult for us, buddy,” Hadrian answered with a snarl. “But you know what they say: revenge is best served cold.”

With that, Hadrian drew up his sword and rushed at Lukas. He held up his own sword in preparation to deflect the attack. It turned out he didn’t need to worry about it. Just moments before Hadrian reached arm’s length, there was a whirl in the air. Hadrian screamed as an arrow embedded itself into his arm. Lukas jumped back, out of range of Hadrian’s sword.

Rather than continue his assault on Lukas, Hadrian snapped his gaze to Olivia, who was preparing another arrow in her bow. She drew it back and fired again. This time, Hadrian dodged, but the arrow still forced him to step back, or else he would’ve gotten an arrow in the knee.

“That’s for my glowstone dust!” she hollered, in a rather non-Olivia-like way. She readied another arrow and glanced at Lukas over her shoulder. “Keep going! Find Jesse!”

 “She’s right!” Petra called, swinging her sword against Mevia’s and talking to Lukas with perfect multitasking skills. “We’ll take care of this!”

“Aw, isn’t that cute, Hadrian?” Mevia mocked. “She thinks they can take us on.”

 “Time for a wake-up call, kiddos.”

Hadrian ran for Olivia this time, but she was too quick for him. She dodged out of the way and leased another arrow, this time aiming for his chest. He had to press himself against the wall to avoid it. Petra, meanwhile, saw an opening in Mevia’s defenses and gave her a solid kick in the chest, knocking her back.

“What are you waiting for, Lukas?!” Petra shouted at him. “The throne room is down that hall! Alternate left and right until you get there!”

Lukas glanced back and forth between the two women. Between Petra’s swordsmanship and Olivia’s aim, they seemed to be able to hold their own.

He nodded before taking off down the fourth hallway. “Take care of yourselves!”

 Lukas’ steps echoed in the palace halls. As the echo faded, Petra dodged another of Mevia’s swings. The older woman’s sword became embedded in the wall where two of the hallways met. This bought Petra a little time to regain her footing.

“You doing okay, Olivia?”

 “I’m having a blast!” She shot another arrow, forcing Hadrian to jump back again. With each arrow she fired, he was forced farther and farther down the passage. “I’ve got years of frustration to work out! Hadrian’s not going anywhere!”

Petra couldn’t help but let out a snigger and faced her opponent again. “Hear that, Mevia? It’s just you and me!”

Lukas could hear Petra’s telltale battle cry as he sprinted down the halls, trying his best to stay oriented in relation to the throne room. A few more hallways later, Lukas felt he was no closer to it than he was when he was separated from Petra and Olivia. He looked around, taking in the same bland walls, same straight corners, and same egg paintings everywhere. Although the egg theme made since in relation to the Eversource, Lukas felt like he never wanted to see an egg again.

“Isa, if we get through this,” he grumbled, hoping he didn’t go in a circle and end up meeting his friends again rather than the throne room. “I’m never letting you build anything this big ever again without supervision. This is absurd!”

 He kept going left and right as Petra instructed, and after several twists and turns he slowed his dash to a stop. Before him were the double doors that he now recognized as the ones leading to the throne room. Lukas let out a huge sigh of relief before he pushed them with all his might, opening them as quickly as he could.

Made it, he thought. That was lucky!

 “Back down and get out of my face, Reggie!” Lukas instantly identified Aiden’s distinct tone, and he readied his sword. “I won’t tell you again!”

“You’re delusional, Aiden!” That was Reginald. “The people of Sky City will never bow to you! You killed The Founder!”

Once inside the room, Lukas spotted Reginald sitting on the floor next to the throne. His hands were tied behind his back, while he looked up at the seat with a snarl. Of course, it was obvious why he was doing that. Aiden sat on the throne, leaning back with his feet propped up on the left armrest. Next to him, tied on a leash and held down with Aiden’s foot, was the Eversource. She clucked helplessly as she flapped her little wings. Lukas’ eyes narrowed at the scene.

“Yeah?” Aiden barked. “Well, you’re going to be next if you don’t shut up!”

“Now you listen here!” Reginald protested, still yelling. “I’m the Captain of the Guard! You can’t just talk to me that way!”

“I’ll talk to you however I want, Reggie!”

 Aiden stood and gave Reginald a good kick in the side, knocking him off the steps leading to the throne. The Eversource clucked as Reginald grunted from the impact of his shoulder against the floor. Aiden’s foot lifted off the chicken’s leash, allow the Eversource to flap away from the throne.

 Lukas has seen more than enough, and he took a step forward. “Hey! Leave him alone, Aiden!

Aiden jumped at his voice, his eyes shifting from Reginald to Lukas. He stood at the top of the throne, his eyes wide and his nostrils flared. His hands balled into fists and he lifted them as if he was ready to punch something.

“Lukas?! How can—” Lukas could hear him practically hissing through his teeth. “I saw you fall! You went down!”

 Reginald looked up from his place on the floor and gasped. “You’re alive? You’re alive! Is The Founder with you?”

Aiden finally decided to take his rage out on Reginald. Pulling a green and black egg out of his inventory, he tossed it right at the back of the Captain’s head. Being on the floor with his hands tied behind his back, Reginald wasn’t able to move away in time to avoid it. Reginald yelped as the egg cracked against him, spawning a black and green creature on top of him. Lukas recognized it as the one Aiden had spawned in the basement, and recalled Jesse’s words about it.

 “Creeper! Lukas! Watch out! They explode!”

 He didn’t have a chance to react however. The creeper exploded a mere second later, knocking him farther from the giant chair. The Eversource scampered over to him and pressed her beak against his cheek in an attempt to wake him up.

“Reginald!” Lukas cried. His attempt to go help the older man was halted by Aiden’s next yell.

“Not one more step!” Lukas narrowed his eyes at his former best friend. Aiden bared his teeth, and Lukas felt like punching them out of his mouth. “How in the world are you still alive? No one survives falling into the Void!”

 “Guess I’m full of surprises,” Lukas announced. He took a few steps towards the throne. “Where’s Jesse?”

Aiden let out a howl of laughter. “Like I would let you anywhere near her now.”

He doesn’t know, just like Ivor said, Lukas thought. He shook his head and pointed his sword towards his ex-friend. “Aiden, you’re done. This is where it ends.”

“I killed you once, Lukas,” he screamed, bringing out his own blade. “I can do it again!”

“Not this time!”

 Aiden leapt down from the top of the throne, bringing his sword down towards Lukas from above. Rather than try to block the attack, Lukas rolled out of the way and counterattacked. Aiden easily blocked it, forcing Lukas to take several steps back. With another push, the brunette was able to push Lukas farther until he was pressed against a wall. Aiden’s sword came down again, and Lukas was barely able to duck away. The diamond sword let out a reverberating clang that flew through the entire room.

 Lukas was on the defensive. The only experience fighting he had was the occasional sparring he did with Petra, and even then she would always win. She was the one who should be fighting this battle, not Lukas. He couldn’t recall a time Aiden got any kind of training, especially enough to be pushing Lukas as much as he was. When did he learn to fight like this?

“Give it up, Lukas,” Aiden mocked. He sideswiped his sword, cutting Lukas at his chest. “I’ve always been the better fighter—no, the better man than you!”

 The sword ripped through Lukas’ shirt, superficially slicing his skin underneath. He hissed at the feeling. Putting his hand up to his chest, he felt a small amount of blood smear onto his palm. It distracted him long enough to allow Aiden a chance to swing up and practically throw his sword down on him. Lukas watched as the blade came down…

But instead of feeling a sword crash onto his head, Lukas heard the sound of a pig squealing.

[aquaticsmoresblocksaboutmcsm]

In which I finish posting episode two screenshots before going to jail.

Ooookay, I finished episode three the other day and I wanna post screenshots of that, but I’m trying to be good and finish the rest of episode two.

I really should do another playthrough and see what happened with Petra and Jack. I think it’s an escape the room puzzle?

I know how to do those! Try everything on everything until something happens!

Now that’s what I call timing.

......... Well...

Being a hero means you gotta save people who you want to strangle.

And winners are supposed to win, right?

Well, a team is supposed to team up. Eheheh.

Well, I mean, he still has a ways to go, but Radar has been making good progress so far!

DREAM TEAM!

He soars.

Now that I think about it, how short is Radar compared to everyone else? I mean, I know he uses the Alex model and that’s why his arms are so scrawny, but is he shorter than, say, Olivia?

And here we have the synchronized triple blink.

*Record scratch* *Freeze frame* Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.

... Huh, now that I think about it, can cacti in Minecraft burn in lava?

LET’S FIND OUT!

The answer is kinda. They just turn into items to pick up the moment the lava flows next to them and then immediately burns up in the lava if you aren’t fast enough to pick it up.

Aw crud, I missed the part where they get pistoned to the ground.

I need to spam the screenshot button more during action scenes.

But at least this screenshot looks cute.

When in doubt, think outside the box!

Literally in this case. :D

Lluna, I have several questions and none of them will be answered.

Last I check, even with a pickaxe it’d still take forever to get through a block with mining fatigue on.

WELP, BACK IN MINECRAFT I GO!

The Elder Guardian has been placed.

And the fatigue has been gotten.

One minute in with my fist and there’s not even a mark on the block.

One minute in with a pickaxe and there’s an actual dent.

Three minutes later and I’m half-way there!

It was at that point that the Elder Guardian gave me a jumpscare and I moved my mouse away from the block kfjlglsflaksjfl.

But you get the idea. Even with a pickaxe, it’d still take forever (and by forever, I mean over six minutes) just to get through one iron block. Jesse had to mine a whole bunch of them.

Who knew the Admin was so patient? xD

Yeah, I would have fallen asleep by the time Jesse was done too, Petra. xD

HELLO!

They rise!

The clock. So close and yet so far away.

Screw the rules! This is Jesse the rebel we’re talking about! >:D

Yay! The cinnamon roll! :D

Also Stella’s there too, I guess.

Snow Endercreepers. That’s a new one. I can’t even think of a mod on the top of my head that would have something like this.

Say ‘Ah!’

*SCREEEEEEEE~!*

Eh, close enough.

Same.

I do think Stella cares for Lluna in her own way... it’s just she needs to learn to see past herself first.

Ah yes, this choice.

*Ba-tum-tish*

‘Let Petra go get it,’ I thought. ‘She’s having her existential crisis thing so maybe this is what she needs,’ I thought.

Aha... hahah... HAHAHAHAHA!

Ooooooh, I am sooooo naïve sometimes.

Aw snap! Lukas throwing dat shade!

And the realization is going to slooooowwwwly set in.

... I’m actually curious about these dreams. Does Jesse come in riding a majestic stallion and rescue a trapped Radar from an evil Enderdragon? Does Jesse fights mobs upon mobs trying to get a poor, defenseless Radar? Does Jesse come in and rescue Radar from the dreaded paperwork monster and fill it out like it was nothing?

The world may never know.

At this point, I was pretty much all ‘stop being full of yourself, please. There are bigger things to deal with than your ego.’

*Closes eyes, takes a deep breath, and counts to ten*

There she is! The cute lil’ llama full of love and-

... Oh. I see how it is. She just likes me for my stuff. ;_;

The sun will come out~ tomorrow~!

A+ on the look of this shot and room. :3

Even Lluna is amazed!

Petra, you deserve all the crushing hugs you can get! :D

Ow...

That’s incredibly sweet of Lukas, but ow.

Knowing what happens next episode... ow...

It was at this point I had a bunch of alarms going off in my head.

Well, you just lost the staring contest, Admin. I WIN! :D

Somebody got shot with a spectral arrow.

SUDDENLY EVIL TRON APPEARS!

This guy doesn’t even have to try hard to look and sound evil.

Aw, poor Jack. He just can’t catch a break. D:

Yeah, the whole ‘I survived off a stack of porkchops’ thing was extremely suspicious, but seeing as it was Minecraft logic, I let it slide.

LESSON LEARNED. DON’T LET IT SLIDE NEXT TIME.

This guy has some serious delusions on what friendship is.

If there’s one thing Stella is good at, it’s schmoozing.

... And looking at herself in the mirror. xD

Listen, Admin, that’s... uh, flattering, but Jesse never asked for all this.

‘Wah wah, you like your friends more than me and you want to go with them instead of being my Champion, wah.’

Okay, maybe antagonizing an all powerful Admin might not have been the best idea...

Cue the ‘OH SHI-’ moment.

Welp, that’s the end of episode two. Hope people like my unnecessary commentary! 

I’ll post episode three screenshots eventually. 

For now... UNTIL NEXT TIME!

[weirdponytail]

A musing on past experiences: How I contributed to the rise and fall of one man’s gaming operation/scam and learned to be myself (Pt 1, Rise)

LONGASS POST AHEAD!

About a year ago, I impulse-bought the game 7 Days To Die via Steam. It was on sale, and I had been itching for a game similar to The Long Dark. For those of you who don’t know either of the games, they both have an element of survival, though The Long Dark is in a league of its own. 7DtD, however, is an alpha stage game that mixes zombies with exploration (the main reason why I got it really. Exploring wastelands is a big draw for me), minecraft-esque building (blegh, not my cuppa), and ‘survival’ via hunger, thirst and medical requirements for day to day life in-game. 

I’d like to tell you all a story of how I went from casual player to head admin of a server to head admin with a possibility of developing and selling logos and merch for said server to quietly horrified head admin watching the server owner lose his mind to quiet saboteur and finally to a non player with a whole new heap of experience on how the world can work and, the best part, all the confidence I now show. 

I played single player for a few weeks, getting the feel for the game and picking up the console commands (’cheats’ using inputted codes and such into a nice little text line that can also read you various things...it’s hard to describe for someone as code-stupid as me) fairly quickly, as it was at least familiar from my years of playing and cheating in Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. I finally got bored and ventured into the online multiplayer option, despite a deeply ingrained hatred for ‘real time’ online play where you can log out after completing a massive build/project and then come back the next day to EVERYTHING destroyed because someone found your base and raided it while you were gone. 

I puttered around a few servers, popping in and out, until I came across a server that was called (for privacy and to prevent anyone from looking them up incase they’re active again I’ll be using all fake names of servers and groups. If you find a group with these names, I assure you that they are NOT who I’m talking about!), for lack of a better fake name, ‘DedHeds.’ DedHeds, to be refered to ask DH from now on, was run by a guy who was renting several servers, used DH for early stage/newer players, and ran it all from a group/pseudo company type thing that we’ll just call ‘A Little More Grave’, ALMG. I didn’t have contact with him for a good while, but I did have contact with the Admin that he set in charge of DH, who ran the day to day stuff in game and basically made sure the rules of the server were followed while helping new players and providing a fun experience. 

Skipping over a lot of stuff, I ended up acting as a mini-admin for a while. I did my best to enforce the rules and explain the added things that we had on the server (a bot to help you teleport to and set a base location, automated protection bouncing away from player bases to prevent griefing/raids, ect) to new players, all without the tools that the bot provided to the actual admins. Right around Christmas, after I had known the head admin on DH as well as been introduced to the ‘Server Owner(SO)’ for about a month, SO told me that if I wanted to take over as head admin/Team Captain on DH, since the original one was moving to a diff server of SOs, then he’d love to have me on the ALMG team. I was ecstatic, and I eagerly accepted.

DH became my baby. I could add or remove some rules, add ‘homemade events’ to draw in players, add my own admins to help me run things, explore the bot’s available commands and limits, and punish rule breakers and griefers to my heart’s content. My main ‘job’ was to monitor players and make sure they weren’t doing things they shouldn’t that would impact the actual performance of the server, ie destroy buildings and cause them to collapse and fall which would destroy the framerate and lag the server literally into oblivion, requiring us to start from scratch at times and rebuild our network of safehouses and dole out materials to players who had been established. I was also in charge of restocking said safehouses, reading the rules to the new players on the server and providing them with basic gear to get them started.

Let me tell you. I loved my admins. I’m still friends with quite a few of them, especially after the clusterfuck of an ending went down. They all worked hard, and many times they came up with innovative solutions to problems we were having and made life so much easier. We had an easy rapport with each other, as well as our players and anyone who came in to check out our server. I had a second in command, who we’ll call M, and two 3rd in commands, V and Z. We were all also good friends with the amazing W, the main bot tech all ALMG servers used, and with the young-but-brilliant main tech, D. 

To show what kind of stuff we got up to, here’s a snap of one of my favorite moments of W introducing an unsuspecting me to a player new to the DH server:

As you can see, I wasn’t exactly the most...serious admin when it came to certain things. Apparently that was part of my charm. I was known for my sassy responses, and I eventually became known as ‘the salty one’ when it came to nicknames. At one point the password to access DH while we were rebuilding after a wipe was ‘passthesalt.’ I treated everyone fairly, as best as my obviously biased memory can recall, and often encouraged battles of wit and words when things seemed slow.

The DH staff became a mini family. I listened to the suggestions of anyone on the team, tried to implement them wherever it was feasible, gave them all leeway to deal with problems as they saw fit, and tried to treat it all as more of a group effort than a leadership-with-lackies. We all had respect for each other. We even made up a little mascot for DH, after M’s obsession with somehow combining zombie bears and snakes into a terrifying creature called a ‘bearsnake.’ We came up with a little story of M finding a ‘bearsnake cub’ called Ulysses, and built a little doghouse with his name on it and an placed one in every safehouse on DH. Using snapshots of the game environment, I did my best to ‘bring Ulysses to life’ by drawing M, who always dressed in the game’s orange rad suit, finding the little cub.

This family dynamic, I think, played into part of what happened later, and without them and their support I wouldn’t be the person I am today.

I also absolutely looooved catching people in the act of purposeful rule breaking. The collapsing building thing? That was a particular incident I won’t forget. We were mostly East Coast, so when people on West Coast or in different countries would log in while we were away they could sometimes collapse buildings like that, and we had a group that was doing it on purpose just to...I dunno, be dicks? We got very tired of it, but our bot commands weren’t working, so we just had to delete the damage where we could to try and prevent a total crash. 

It came to a head when one of my sweetest admins found that they had also been painting swastikas around the areas where they were collapsing things. While she repainted them over with flowers and choice words for them, me, M and V schemed on how to catch these fuckers. 

We eventually did a stakeout. No joke. I took first shift, from 12pm EST to 3am EST, hovering underground using our admin anti-physics to watch the area where the group had been messing with stuff. M took second, from 3am EST to 6am EST, and V took 3rd, from 6am EST to 9am EST. We all shared a discord server that we set to alert us on our phones if one of us saw something, so that we could mob them, strip them of their gear, and teleport them into a pit full of zombie bears and zombie snakes before banning them. 

We were...creative...when it came to punishments.

It was the most fun I’d had in ages, and we caught the guys at about 5am collapsing a fucking skyscraper. I even made a drawing commemorating the occasion.

We had a lot of fun. Everything was going great! 

Then we started noticing some things...and it was all a rollercoaster from there. 

I’ll have to put the rest of this in another part or two. I know it isn’t what I usually post, but I wanted to get this down before it fades away even more. Lately I started realizing just how much this experience helped me build my confidence and become comfortable with who I am and with standing up for what I believe in.