#OH that reminds me i need to work on getting some stuff into this vault im gonna pick a prompt and then work on moving info

[pyrriax]

hi tumblr im back on my bs today i have GOTTA start picking prompts at the start of the day again i had to speedrun one last night bc i . forgot.

[sofiareidings]

I Can See You

Summary: You and Spencer are in a relationship but have to keep it a secret from the rest of the team. Spencerxgn!reader Warnings: fluff and swearing

A/N: This story is loosely based off of the song I Can See You by Taylor Swift. If you want a really good fic based off the song you should check our @reiderwriter 's masterlist!

Word Count: 0.8k

Song Suggestions: I Can See You (Taylor's Version) (From The Vault) by Taylor Swift

Three months, six days, four hours, twenty-seven minutes, and five seconds. That's how long you'd been dating. But no one knew about it.

Three months was a long time though. In the first couple weeks it wasn't too bad, looks from across the room and nights together were enough. But as the weeks turned to months it wasn't nearly enough anymore, you two were getting more and more desperate and risky.

It was killing both of you more and more everyday. You just couldn't risk it. The need and want for each other was crippling.

***

The team had been in Austin, Texas for two days now, investigating a string of murders. The station was crowded and hot, recycling bins filled to the brim with plastic water bottles and a dozen fans.

Because of how hot it was and the case you and Spencer had barely even talked. Walking down a somewhat empty hallway of the police station you felt a tug on your arm.

"Hey, come here." Turning your head and smiling when you saw who it was. Moving closer while smiling you squeezed yourselves into the small broom closet he had been hiding in.

"Why are you hiding in a broom closet?" You laughed, "And how long have you been in here?" Smiling he ran his hand through his hair, bumping his elbow off the wall.

Spencer went to try and pull you closer but while doing that he smacked his hand against a shelf making things tumble down. Both of you went out of the closet at different times and back to work. Sneaking off as much as possible.

"Way too long." He smiled before leaning in and kissing you, after a couple seconds you were reminded just how long since you two had been like this and the kiss became more passionate.

***

It was late at night and everyone was back at the hotel getting their rest. The team had presented the profile that evening so you all were feeling pretty comfortable.

There was a knock on your hotel door and you ran over, looking through the peephole you grinned and opened the door. Spencer took a quick peek around the hallway before stepping into the room, immediately cupping your face and kissing it softly.

"I thought you didn't get my text." You whispered, stepping back for a moment.

"I have barely seen you these past two days." He said before hugging you tight, kissing the top of your head. "I wish we weren't hiding like this."

"I know, soon. Only a little longer." You assured him while running your hand up and down his arm.

You continued talking until the words were replaced with kissing. You pulled back and started to unbutton his shirt when there was a loud knock on the door.

"Shit, that's Emily." You mumbled and pushed Spencer into the bathroom. Accidentally pushing too hard and he hit his side against the counter. "Be quiet, I'll talk with her quickly."

Opening the door Emily looked around the room, seemingly a little suspicious. "What took you so long to answer the door?" She walked past you and noticed a knocked over bottle. "Did you fall or something?"

"Uh, yeah…" You trailed off as you eyed Spencer's watch on the ground. Moving closer to Emily while kicking it under the bed. "What did you need, Em?"

"Oh, I was hoping you had some eyeliner. Is it in your bathroom? Can I grab some?" Her hand landed on the handle and you ran in front of the door laughing out of nervousness. "What are you doing?"

"It's just, I have some stuff in there. Private stuff, let me get it for you…" She raised her eyebrows, not believing a word you said.

"No, don't worry about it, I won't look at your things." She smiled and opened the door. "There he is, hi Spencer." He was tucked into a corner or the room, hair dishevelled and shirt half on.

"Uh, hi Emily." He stuttered, "Wait, how'd you know I was in here?" You turned to her too. Realising what he meant.

"I mean, was it a secret?" She laughed and held onto the counter for support. "W-wait, you're telling me you didn't know?"

Met with two confused looks, she had her answer.

"You guys aren't as secretive as you think. We've all known for like a month." She stopped laughing and frowned. "Shit, I owe Morgan twenty bucks now."

"Are we the dumb ones?"

Once Emily had enough teasing she grabbed her eyeliner and left. You turned away from the door shaking your head while laughing.

[alasse-earfalas]

Some ideas I have about some of the Links and their brains.

This will not include all of the boys, as most of them (Time, Wind, Twilight, Four, and Hyrule) I see as being in the same basic camp when it comes to smarts and stuff, so there's nothing really for me to address there. I'm just going to point out some interesting quirks I've noticed / hc with the other four.

Warriors

It's easy to jump to the conclusion that Wars is the stupidest Link, since his game has no puzzles. I disagree. While yes, he is laughably terrible with puzzles, he is a strategic and tactical genius with a powerhouse, rapid-fire brain that can parse out an entire battle's worth of information in an instant and come to a decision in a flash. Traditional puzzles may not be his thing, sure, but that is not where his genius lies. His brain thrives on cutting through chaos with decisive action, and that is where he shines.

Sky

Has ADHD (inattentive type). Like, really, really bad inattention. Constantly spaces out and forgets things. There's a reason Fi pops up like, every half-second to remind him what he's supposed to be doing. Hylia knew what she was dealing with and planned accordingly. He is the most space-cadety of space-cadets. He'll be going along like a normal person with a normal train of thought and then he'll see a leaf floating by and completely forget what he's doing because the leaf is pretty and isn't it interesting how it moves with the wind like that and I wonder where it's going hey wait get back here—

But. Sky's mental superpower is that he is the fastest dang learner in the entire Chain. Not just with weapons or items or music like the rest of 'em, but everything. Wild's unable to cook but has all the ingredients for something he's made before? Sky watched how he did it once while helping him dice the veggies, so he'll just throw that meal together real quick. Wild let him flip through the "Ingredients" section of the compendium once, and now Sky can identify all the edible plants it listed by sight. He learned how to carve by watching Jakamar repair a couple of wooden structures one day. Sky may be a space cadet, but he's also the most potently absorbent practical-knowledge and information sponge you ever did meet.

Wild

Also has ADHD (combined type). There are literal "ooo shiny" mechanics in the freaking game. Koroks? ooo shiny. Shrine quests? ooo shiny. Every single item that Wild can pick up in the game literally sparkles. Everything about the Sheikah Slate is designed to account for this: scope pins, map stamps, inventory organization, Hyrule Compendium, Sheikah Sensor, photo album, a journal which he uses to take fastidious detailed notes of all the crap he needs to remember because he knows he'll forget all of it otherwise. He struggles to sit still for extended periods unless he is asleep or gazing into a pretty fire.

Wild is also the creative genius out of the bunch. He has the most robust understanding of fundamental physics out of the entire Chain. His visual thinking and creative problem-solving skills are off the charts. The rest of the Chain may be able to navigate with maps and compasses, but Wild can navigate foreign terrain using nothing but the environment itself. Present him with a problem and he'll think of fifty different ways to address it and all of them will usually work. He is an all-around genius problem solver and astoundingly creative thinker.

Legend

Mind like a freaking. Steel. Trap. Nothing slips past his awareness or gets forgotten. Ever. Journals are pointless because his brain is an information vault. Oh, and any puzzle he's handed better say goodby to its loved ones and make sure its will is in order because this lad will solve it before it has a chance to defend itself.

Let me just, give you an example. Just one. You see this here?

How long do you think you could remember this random character vomit without writing it down? A few minutes, maybe? Maybe a couple hours, or a day or two if you took the time to memorize it?

Try an entire journey to another country after hearing it only once.

Oh, but that's not even the most impressive part! You see, Legend didn't just hang onto one of these memorization nightmares for an entire extended trip to another land, oh no—he remembered several of them. Perfectly. As if that wasn't enough, y'all remember the item swap quests? Yeah, without notes of any kind, this Link remembered who needed what in every single one of those convoluted trading chains. All while he was busy saving the world.

The downside is that Legend's thinking is not very flexible. He operates best when there is a single correct solution to a given problem. He much prefers having concrete information to work with, rather than a vague scenario with a shrug and a, "idk, figure something out". Being dropped into a massive open world with no information other than, "alright here ya go, here's some basic abilities and a light dusting of backstory, now get out there and save the Princess!" would be an overwhelming, anxiety-riddled nightmare for this dude.

[frenziedslashers]

oh I want to send the entire A-Z headcanon list for Tim but...uh, maybe B, C, E, S, Y, and Z? please don't feel the need to do them all if that's still a lot -❆

Hope that you like these!

Here is the ask game these are from. Feel free to send some in with a character from Borderlands, The Walking Dead, or a Slasher!

NSFT UNDER THE CUT - MINORS DNI!!!

B - Bondage (do they like it? do they not? do they prefer to be the one being tied or the one doing the tying?)

Personally, I think Mr. Timothy is really into bondage. I like to think that he learned it from the videos Jack made him participate in and they sort of stuck with him. He will be too nervous to bring it up with you at first, but after a while he might work up the courage to be all "Ropes?" If you bring it up first he's DEFINITELY agreeing to it.

He's down for being tied up, or tying you up. He truly doesn't have a preference. He feels like with both situations he is truly winning. He does like looking into the cooler bondage knots and ropes to use on you. If you already know how to do the cooler stuff he is not complaining if you offer to do that on him. He just thinks it's truly erotic and sexy.

C - Crying (is it a turn on? a turn off? do they cry during sex? have they cried during sex? what was the reason?) 

If you make him cry he's not in the mood for anything sexual anymore. He hates crying in front of people, especially you. He feels too vulnerable and he feels like a baby and he hates that feeling. Plus, the only way he could really cry during sex is if you hurt him. Typically it's if you hit him or degrade him too much. It'll send him into one of his episodes and he'll end up having a panic attack if it's enough to do so. I truly feel like he has really bad PTSD so any form of hitting or degradation might make him feel like he's not really there anymore if that makes sense? Plus, if you bring up him looking like Jack, definitely a way to make him super upset and hurt his feelings. If you keep going at it he might cry a bit.

The only time he really cries during sex and keeps going is if one of you nearly died and he's emotional, he's overstimulated, or if you make him particularly frustrated (such as orgasm denial,) or if he's just feeling particularly sappy. He won't full-on sob in any of these situations, but there will be tears.

If you're crying he might freak out a bit. It'll make him panic and stop everything that he's doing. Unless he knows that you're okay he will not continue what he's doing. Timothy isn't a big fan of seeing his partner cry, either, so this isn't really a turn on for him.

E - Extra info (any other fetishes? feet? leather? role playing? blood? fantasies that they might want to experience not on this list?)

He tries to be the macho man that knows everything in bed to keep up his reputation, but truly. He'd just love to be taken care of. He doesn't entirely know what he's doing. Yes, he knows the basics, but he gets a little intimidated and is grateful if you give him some guidance the first couple of times you guys do stuff together.

He gets jealous easily. I really think he's made jealous easily. He doesn't want to be, he hates it, really. He just can't help it. He'd never tell you to stop hanging out with some one, or take this frustration out on you by arguing with you, but he might fuck you a little harder that night. Just to remind you both that neither of you are going anywhere.

If you're a Vault Hunter or something along that line and say you work with him on something he does find it incredibly hot when you fight with people. When you get done with your fight he's making sure the blood on you isn't yours, and if it is he's worrying over you. But after he knows you're okay, he's staring at you with this look that screams 'God, just fuck me already.' Depending on how down bad he is for you, which is pretty likely, he might even say it out loud. He's pretty good at blurting out his thoughts to you. Even if the two of you are in a relationship when he does this, he's super flustered.

S - Sleepy sex (do they give oral to wake their partner up? do they like receiving oral to wake up? do they like fucking their partner awake? being fucked awake? how about being fucked to sleep at night? do they have lazy morning sex?) 

He enjoys waking you up with oral or sleepy sex ONLY if you are okay with it. It might take a few times for him to hear you say it before he goes on with the act. When you do wake up he's looking at you with eyes that are asking if this is okay. All you have to do is roll your hips and grab him for him to continue.

He LOVES waking up to morning head and being fucked awake. Something about it truly puts him in a mood that morning. He's all whiny and sleepy while trying to wake up enough so he can focus on you more in the given situation.

He prefers fucking/being fucked to sleep since it gives you both more time to do stuff together in the bedroom. You both have jobs during the day, and people are primarily snooping around Sanctuary during the day. So during the night is the best time. Plus, I think Timothy finds the night more romantic and intimate, and I truly believe he is a romantic. Plus, I feel like he's also more of a night owl. I don't think he wakes up too well in the morning, so night sex is better since he's more aware and awake. Rather than morning sex when he's all lazy and groggy.

He isn't against sleepy morning sex. He loves it, too. How domestic and soft it feels. Both of you slowly wake up while holding one another close. Soft murmurs and kisses while his hips roll against your own. Able to bury his face in your neck while murmuring a soft "'Morning to you, too, baby." He loves how precious those moments are and wouldn't trade them for the world.

Y - Yes, Master (what kinds of names are used during sex? do they like being called master / mistress, daddy, etc…? what names do they call their partner?) 

I think he loves it if you come up with a specific name for him. Such as "Big Bear" or some cheesy shit like that. He thinks they're cute and they feel unique. He is pretty fond of "Sir" and "Mr. Lawrence." He prefers sir more though. If you say it to him during the day when he can't do anything to you he's going insane. He knows what you're doing, and hell is it working. He's gonna go absolutely crazy on you that night, too.

He likes calling you "Honey", "Baby", "Flower," "Pumpkin", and "Sweetie". He's very domestic when it comes to pet names. If you ask him to call you something or to not call you something he'll do so, though.

Z - Zones (what are their erogenous zones? what spots on their body should be touched, bitten, kissed, when someone wants to get them in the mood?) 

His hair. He goes insane when you touch his hair. Something about your fingers running through his hair while tugging lightly lets off something primal in him and he HAS to have you underneath him ASAP.

His jaw. He loves it when you trace his chin with your finger or you kiss on it. He's going crazy if you're both somewhere public and you kiss his jaw. He's squeezing your hand and fighting the urge to pick you up and carry you back home.

His chest and shoulders. He loves it when you pay a little extra attention to these areas when the two of you are in the heat of the moment. Touching, kissing, biting, whatever you prefer, he's eating up.

Even outside of the bedroom, he loves it when you pay attention to these spots. When he's especially anxious if you rub his shoulders and chest while placing soft kisses on his jaw, throat, chest, or shoulder. It calms him down and allows him to recollect his thoughts and prevent himself from having a panic attack - in some cases. Sometimes it doesn't always work and you have to lie your entire body on top of him since the weight of your body helps him relax and calm down.

[nyotasaimiri]

Arc Two (redux) 67

Arjun sipped at his second cup of coffee and studied the assembled crew. It was rare for them all to eat together. Well, almost all. Hadley’s place at the table sat painfully empty, a reminder that they were probably walking right into danger.

“So, Captain, we’re all here who can be here,” he said as the sounds of eating died down. “You had something to tell us?”

“Ask,” Nyota corrected him. “I have something to ask, not tell.”

She collected the empty plates and took them over to the sink. SAIL could handle the rest for once. “I’m going into the Ancient Vault soon. I don’t think I can do it alone. I don’t have the expertise to even understand what I would be looking at in there, and Esther needs someone who can know what is important.” She sighed and sat back down. “All I can do is fight.”

Namina hissed sadly. “Floran iss only good at fighting too. Floran will sstay.”

“I’d offer, but I ain’t keen to leave our firebrand after the knockin’ she got,” Lumen said. He tucked one hand under his elbow and fidgeted with the blue ring that kept his corona tame and tied back, a rare moment of visible anxiety. “Ain’t keen on lettin’ ya go in there so soon after ya get off ‘medical leave’ either, but I guess ya don’t plan to wait.”

“We do not have the time to wait.” Nyota nodded, toying with her sleeve cuffs. “We still don’t know who made the drone that attacked Hadley. It didn’t belong to the gate. It might have been abandoned, if we’re lucky.”

Arjun shook his head. “We aren’t that lucky.”

“That’s right.” Nyota leaned forward, making eye contact with him. “So we will move fast. Arjun, Esther recommended you specifically for this. She said you ‘know your stuff’ well enough already, even before you started working with her. Will you come with me?”

“What?” Arjun almost snorted his coffee. Esther had recommended him? It was a huge compliment, but…

“Nervous. May I come too?” Arrowmail’s voice cut over Arjun’s thoughts. The glitch’s LED eyes blinked quickly. “I could be of some use, I think. I was studying the gate with Arjun and Sonny.”

“If Arrow’s goin’, I’m goin’,” Sonny declared. She put an arm around his shoulders, which made his eyes flare bright with a sound not too far from Sonny’s teakettle imitations.

Nyota smiled at them. “Thank you. Arjun?” She turned back to him.

Arjun huffed and finished the dregs in his mug. “Well.” He set it down with a thunk. “Guess I’m going too. Someone has to keep an eye on Sonny.”

“Hesitant. I could?” Arrowmail offered.

Arjun fixed him with a dry stare. “Oh I’m sure you would. You’d have eyes only for Sonny.”

The others started laughing as Arrowmail followed Arjun’s point and mumbled a “Flustered. Oh dear.”

Arjun’s eyes weren’t the only ones that drifted to the empty place at the table, and his ears weren’t the only ones to catch the silence where the loudest laugh belonged. “I’ll get my things,” he said, standing up. “When do we go?”

“When you’re ready,” Nyota told him. “I would rather go sooner than later, but make sure you have everything you need. Last time…” She took a deep breath, and Arjun leaned forward in spite of himself. She never talked about what happened when she went through that Gate in the Ark.  “SAIL was not able to reach me well, last time I went beyond a gate. I could not teleport out.”

The mood sobered again. “That’s why…” Lumen murmured.

Nyota didn’t answer. She just put a hand over her heart.

“Good thing we’ve got Sonny,” Arjun said. It sounded gruffer than he’d meant, and softer somehow. Felt… odd, to think about three months ago. He took another drink and let the bitterness chase the thoughts away. “She’s catching up to Lumen fast.”

Sonny blushed bright and hot. “Shucks. I ain’t that good.” She nodded a bit when Lumen gave her a supportive pat on the back. “Well, I can sure keep you in one piece. Guess we better go get the field kits done.”  She hummed, whistled, and nodded again. “Just try not to get into too many pieces…”

Nyota touched her hand as the novakid pair passed her. “We’ll be alright, Sonny.”

Sonny glowed warm, close as she ever could get to a smile. “Glad you say so, ma’am.” She curled her bright fingers around Nyota’s. Her hand almost vanished in the apex’s huge palm. “Means a lot, comin’ from you.”

Arjun watched them over the rim of his mug, quiet and thoughtful. Sonny trusted her. That said a lot, too. He couldn’t shake his unease, watching their Captain… Knowing what she could do. And seeing how she had changed. But Sonny’s inklings were never really wrong. Well, one way or another, we’ll put that to the test, won’t we? He got up to go collect his things.

[reliquiaen]

(from arisenreborn) Pawn #3, Arisen & Pawn #15, World & Story #3

thanks so much for asking !! ♥ took me a bit to get to it because work this week has been UGH you understand?

questions are here.

Pawn #3: If they were infected with the Dragonsplague, are there any specific ways they would act differently? 

oh so when tarbh gets dragonsplague, vashka can basically tell immediately because she’s suddenly so much meaner than usual? like her sass just SHOOTS off the charts and there’s much less of her charming labrador energy. suddenly tarbh is back chatting. “tarbh will you do this” “oh of COURSE arisen it would be my PLEASURE arisen may i clean your boots arisen???” and vashka just. ok. stop that. vashka is normally in a state of Vague Annoyance at how devoted and wholesome tarbh is so when she stops doing that and starts advocating for walking past old ladies in need or homeless people begging for charity because it’s “a waste of time and resources” vashka right away starts plotting how to push her off a ledge to cleanse her of this evil.

“yes of course i'll set up the tent this evening arisen, heaven forbid you should trouble yourself after i did all the heavy lifting in that fight earlier, wouldn’t want you to strain a muscle, perish the thought”

A&P #15: Do they have a favorite place in the world; be it a town or a particular area or view they’re fond of?

vashka's favourite place is pretty much wherever there’s not a lot of people to bother her. she loves the ocean, rivers, lakes, etc, so anywhere she’s got a nice view of some water that’s perfect. if it’s isolated AND near water? she’s definitely there somewhere. if you want specific to dd2, then harve village. when they passed through there for brant hunting saurians she was instantly enamoured with it – reminds her of her hometown, which, admittedly, doesn’t have LOADS of particularly fond memories, but it’s the general vibe and that salty tang to the air that hit her in the nostalgia.

it's extremely cheesy, but tarbh’s favourite place is wherever vashka is. i am not kidding or being hyperbolic when i say that tarbh is just exactly like a loyal puppy dog. she gave up a lot to join vashka and it fills her with such hope that they can make things better. she also finds a certain peace in churches; something about the high, vaulted ceilings and the colourful stained glass windows, and the smell of the incense, the soft rustle of robes… sends her back to her childhood when things were simple and good and evil were easy to delineate and she misses that. even vashka can’t be easily pigeonholed into Good or Evil and that was confusing for tarbh for a long time, and while it makes sense NOW, there’s just… a comfortable familiarity in churches.

W&S #3: Regardless of whether you adhere to the in-game counter or not, how long do you think their journey took? Did they book it with a sense of urgency, or did things get drawn out - and why? 

vashka ALWAYS strives to be efficient in any task she sets her mind to, so while she would like to complete her quest by beelining it to the dragon so she can stab him in the eyeball or whatever, there’s always red tape. always. she knows this. which is why she likes having tarbh around: to down obstacles when they arise, it’s generally faster than talking things out or… you know… politics and stuff. (she hates politics). assuming they take a bit of time to help people when it seems beneficial to do so (does vashka get something out of this? no? then goodbye) and for stopping to smell some metaphorical roses (which is to say: tarbh is too large to be physically moved by vashka and too pure of heart to be bullied when she takes it into her head to help someone), i'd say it takes them between one and three months. vashka is the opposite of savan: she takes a wagon because it’s faster and she shows up WILDLY underlevelled to her boss fight lmao

[talenlee]

Game Pile: HitchHiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Did you know that one of the funniest English language authors in history wrote a bunch of videogames, and they’re really funny? Well, you probably did, because Terry Pratchett made that huge Oblivion mod, but also, his peer Douglas Adams also made stuff, though on earlier, clunkier, uglier hardware.

Yes, once more I delve into the infocom vaults to talk to you about a game that is, primarily, just text, almost as if I have some kind of bias towards that kind of media for some reason.

Anyway, I’m going to complain about Twine briefly.

Sometimes I feel like the web browser is the wrongest way to do a text adventure. I’m not against Twine, don’t get me wrong. Parser games are understandably, less accessible and they’re famously hard to make comprehensively responsible to how you

It sometimes reminds me of how I frame poker. Poker is a game where you and the other players spend enough time with one another to create a common language – how you bid, how quickly you bid, all that stuff – and then see how you can use that language to lie to one another. Parser videogames can kinda do something like that too, but all of that language is set up ahead of time and a little remotely. It had opportunities to create interesting tension, such as if a developer didn’t consider a particular word that could be a noun or a verb, as in the famous Put Bag Bottle problem from Leisure Suit Larry 2 –

What?

oh okay, so in Leisure Suit Larry 2, you have to hastily construct a molotov cocktail (kinda) with a bottle of fuel (kinda) and a paper airsickness bag from an airplane. There’s a bug? of sorts? in the late stage of the game where most people are typing phrases like PUT BAG BOTTLE or USE BAG BOTTLE. Normally, if that doesn’t work, the game will just say something like ‘I don’t understand,’ which is a good way the games handle a lot of their error states, but in the case of this little bag and this little bottle, instead, Larry does something else entirely with its own animation and puts the game into a failed state: he chucks the bottle down into the volcano you’re standing over.

It makes sense at the time.

Thing is, what was going on there was that the parser could interpret the word ‘bag’ as a verb. The way the parser worked to tidy up commands was to consider the first verb and the last noun – because that’s usually all it needed, which helped clean up when players were using unnecessary adjectives that might accidentally confuse them. If you were in a room with four phones and one was ringing, ‘answer phone’ was functionally the same as ‘answer the yellow phone in the middle’ because the game would happily recognise that ‘in the middle’ wasn’t a noun and since only one phone was ringing, knowing you meant the yellow one didn’t mean anything. You could use this to weird results in speedruns of some games, where you could type an extensive list of commands nested inside one another like USE HAT SCREW FLUFF BUG POTION and then just delete the words at the end each time you repeated the input.

In the case of the Leisure Suit Larry bug, the way around it was the use of the word ‘the’ – you had to PUT THE BAG IN THE BOTTLE, but also not PUT BAG IN BOTTLE because it’s missing the word ‘the’ that indicates it’s a noun and a noun.

Parsers are hard, and all of this predicates on the idea that you’re a person who looks at the word ‘bag’ and thinks of it as a verb before you consider its applications as a noun.

Text Parser games introduce ways that you can be wrong, and it introduces ways that you can be frustrated, and those two elements were definitely part of Douglas Adams’ vision of games in Beaurocracy. That game has a limited number of inputs you can make – a typo for example, uses up one of them. If you check your inventory because you’re stuck, that uses up one of your inputs. You ultimately need to only ever make correct, non-frustrating inputs to get through that literally and deliberately kafkaesque form input system of a game, and that means you need to know how all the puzzles are solved ahead of time. The only way to do that is to do the puzzles, note how you did it perfectly, then restart the game to do it again. This is before widely distributed cheat code or walkthrough websites. This game was explicitly, deliberately, inconveniently difficult, and it was trying to manipulate you and how you interacted with it.

Basically, you should hate Beaurocracy because it was trying to make you hate it. I know I’ve never finished it, even if I’m very impressed with the dedication to, as it were, the bit. Douglas Adams would have killed on Tumblr is what I’m saying.

Okay, but what about Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.

I assumed I’d written about this in the past, a long time ago, and over ten years the words flow to me like I’ve probably told it in little bits and pieces, but Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is a text parser game that really leant against all the surfaces of the kind of game it was. First of all there are just some deliberate uses of a turn based timer to fuck with you.

There’s this puzzle early on, where, in order to unlock access to most of the rest of the game, you need a babelfish to stick in your ear. These are super common in the lore of the world, so much so that there’s a vending machine you can get one out of. In the book series, and radio play, the babelfish is added to Arthur’s life by Ford helpfully jamming it in his ear after getting it from a vending machine, but in the text parser game, you have to retrieve it from the vending machine yourself.

It’s a pretty neat little puzzle; you press a button to get a fish, and then immediately find a problem with how it’s dispensed. So you solve the puzzle of how it’s dispensed and press the button again. It dispenses another one, but your solution breeds a new problem and now it falls down a grate. So you look at the grate and you devise a solution and you press the button on the vending machine and get another fish which now goes from solution one to solution two to problem three. You solve problem three, press the button, and if you’ve done it like this the vending machine is now out of fish. But it doesn’t matter, because you’re also out of time and get dragged off to solve another puzzle, which you can’t, because you can’t understand any of the text being spoken to you.

The only way to solve the puzzle is to know at least one of the steps ahead of time, and then you need to pick up all your guff you put down in the process because you need it later.

The game even asks you, as you’re putting the pieces down, hey, do you know what you’re doing or are you winging it?

It’s mendacious but also it’s deliberately trying to engage you, the player in a particular way because I feel like this whole genre of game expected you to play with the whole of its text. That there was a reason every word was put in a description and it was to make reading it and engaging with it interesting. That’s pretty cool, and the HTML-ification of interactive text (which isn’t a problem per se, but it does present a sort of ‘first point, easiest point’ for the genre of interactive fiction it creates) does kind of lose some of this just because it needs to make its point of interface pretty evident.

(Not that you can’t get sneaky with it!)

(You can make twine games that notice when they’ve been rolled back, like ‘remembering’ something is a chance to change the past.)

(This is an idea we talk about in game studies as ‘hypertext,’ where text you can experience multiple times in different ways does not present a dozen readers a dozen paths but rather, all twelve readers experience the same path, which is to say, they go back and play all of them.)

Anyway, this isn’t the real thing in Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy that I love beyond meaningful words. What I love is that at one point, you have to demonstrate a capacity for abstract thought by showing an NPC that you are holding both tea and not tea.

And like obviously, when you think about it for a moment, of course you are, right? Like if ‘tea’ is an inventory item, any other inventory item is ‘not tea.’ But that’s not it – you have to specify that you show someone both tea and the absence of tea, as a way of representing that you aren’t just treating the objects in the game like entities in a parser.

Which you are.

Because when you do this, in your inventory, you get ‘no tea.’

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[jnixz]

OBDLC. Another reason the Psychic 7 go on that trip post-ending. Otto's not feeling comfortable having Gristol on Motherlobe grounds. (And neither do the others.)

Oh even just after pn2 they definitely don't like him around. Not one bit haha

Although I imagine if they think about him they’d be feeling all kinds of angry than uncomfortable since Gristol isn’t in the areas they would be, nor does he have any power to do anything to them. Psychonauts know what’s up so he is under watch. 

So really, we’d have to stop a couple of people from the temptation of throttling him and cause more legal headaches.

I’m not really sure what would happen to him, other than mentioned Sasha Experiments/Tests (to which I think won’t all be that bad, I mean the ones we’ve seen are psyche exploring stuff. I even take the ‘mostly harmless’ as getting his ass-kicked by mental constructs and getting headaches but anyway)

In my own ideas of post-game, I'm still unsure what to do with him. Although part of me definitely wants to have him do some humble work to make it really stick that life is more than being a entitled rich asshole. 

Where he would work would be in question, though if it is still in HQ then yea that WOULD turn for a more uncomfortable presence for people who got dragged onto the consequences of his actions (Read: Mal Whirlpool Tornado) 

Beh, I cannot put into words what I’m trying to get at what with how chances for change are given in Psychonauts. Still though I can understand not wanting to due to his disregard for all those who perished in Grulovia and the entire events and intent of the scheme in pn2. Another person we’d really need to punt is Theodore. Anyway this paragraph is steering off-topic on stuff I’d really have to reflect on about psychonauts code of ethics and morality and all that life narratives could call to question *handwaves*

SO even without speculating on game aftermath or obdlc, there are many reasons why they wouldn’t like him around. 

Interrupting their efforts of finally being able to help Lucy. That very chance they would have wanted to do back then in Grulovia. They weren’t able to think of it back then since many things were still unclear, things they didn’t know, and also because Maligula was very aggressively fighting them that they weren’t sure if Lucy could really be brought back. 

Said interruption ruined that entire happy reunion into a reminder of the trauma they had the first time (Maligula wrecking everyone with water, but now a bit worse because MAN, they weren’t prepared for that to happen again at all). 

Having the intention of using Maligula as a weapon again (Lucy, their dear sweet Lucy, a good person forced into this) just like his father had done (not like he could would have been able to do it but still, the intent. Absolutely rancid)

While a memory vault implies a bit of awareness of his father’s attempt at Maligula's execution, I wonder if he ever knew Theodore’s bomb threat to Lucrecia before she broke with the Valermo Dam Incident.

Makes me wonder if the rest knew Otto had the Malik Bomb displayed near him, constantly nearby to remind him of what the Maliks have done. 

So I suppose this brings me back to the point of reaction being more on anger for their friend than discomfort for themselves, just even more emphasized and reminded of in the OBDLC

Also, in the process of spinning this in my head to give a more substantial answer, I got this answer to the actual question that is a bit more general thoughts on what the Psychic 7 could think about Nick | Gristol not limited to OBDLC but does have a sprinkle of that here. 

Gristol is currently being held in the Psychoisolation Chamber. I imagine it’s not actually Compton’s Office Chamber they put him in but another room that is completely empty save for maybe a bed in Psychoisolation as pseudo-jail. Just like how it is implied with Terryl offering a room to Raz, I imagine that space actually has more than what we see in game. Also like it’d be a waste game-development wise to make a separate room for that post-game information, so this is a pretty good reuse of assets. Point is, don’t let this man touch Compton’s stuff, like seriously theres a lot of stuff in there --that’s a bit of security risk. 

Even though Compton still works in the Psychonauts, his isolation wouldn’t really give him much other than possibly just getting his mail delivered to him by Nick from the mailroom. Interactions are few and if there were more it’d probably be like maybe buttering him up like the media which is eugh go away please, also please don’t talk to me you might get hurt if I get overwhelmed but politely of course. 

Afterwards though given the concern Compton feels about lives in general, the psychic accidents, deluge and the whole spy stuff, one of the things he would dislike about Gristol the most is Gristol’s blatant disregard for life of others. That family is not fit to have the responsibility of a ruler to care for its people. The one thing that would bring discomfort to him is the knowledge that Nick | Gristol could have been around his family and grandkids what with the letters Dogen sends to him and Sam interning at the Motherlobe. 

Given what we see of Cassie's past of being forced to work as a counterfeiter, she'd want some justice done right this time. However possible that is while keeping the Lucrecia | Maligula thing a secret to keep everyone involved in the truth of that safe. So like -- Oh the Maliks that made her stay in Grulovia so they could take advantage of her? To keep their riches to themselves and subsequently took the kind and lovely Lucy away from us and forced her into being Maligula? The man who just attempted to do the same thing again just so recently? BEES! BEES FOR GRISTOL.

After having the whirlpool experience quite possibly sending Helmut into a Panic Attack, he’d definitely want to get out of the body that only knows the taste of caviar. Just like Compton, he'd be uncomfortable that this man does not understand the consequences of Maligula's power, being a direct victim of it in the battle. He has so much to catch up on though so I doubt he would think of that guy so much. Maybe whenever he learns of the aftermath in Grulovia and when Raz tells him stuff about Gristol’s brain level.

Bob has only ever heard of Nick the obsequious lickspittle from Truman so his impression is already low, but that's irrelevant anyways because Gristol's actions just reminded his husband of his ‘death’ -- prepare to be swung around by vines and peppered by plant-bombs. Get wrecked dumbass, this is what its like. Not that this would actually happen bc legal reasons but just know that the forest would watching, and it would be tripping this man up if he ever tries to escape.

Lucy would tell off Gristol that even though he is now an adult, he still the same spoiled little rich kid just as she remembers in Grulovia. He’d just be as horrible as Theodore, but worse even. I imagine she got all kinds of thoughts about the Malik family. Channel that energy from this dialogue in this cutscene to the right person this time. Also her own family is definitely better than his. Better at doing stuff for themselves, better flips, better at loving each other and hell better at managing money. Aquatos roasts Maliks time when?

We definitely know the events of Grulovia has been something Ford has been thinking of for a long time, whole or otherwise. Given his discoveries with Lucy’s memories, the time spent in Grulovia searching for Helmut’s body and the bomb threat that was found, the letters and the orders and all kinds of info to stir on. There’s a big scope to this and man it really does get personal. Even his separated fragments knows a bit of what’s up with the Maliks during his little dialogue when he was reconnecting with those aspects. His experience as leader he’d be really appalled by the way the Maliks disregard their citizens, and more importantly how they used Lucy to do that, so this is real personal right from the start. A very heavy topic for this old man to think about, especially if we take in how the thoughts he would have on this are also thoughts affected a certain someone has had a better condition to stir on.

Speaking of, Otto! Now here’s someone who could really stir on his thoughts about the whole thing for the last 20 years. Just a lot of thoughts on the whole thing, including the ones I manage to type up on the others. It’s a deep train of thought one can get lost in when one is alone or is staying up late at night *stares at own clock*.

The beginnings of things going wrong in Grulovia, starting with the War that Lucy left for to help, all while in a vulnerable state. The news of Maligula. The aftermath of the deluge with all the refugees, the personal trauma, death and all the loss. The everything afterwards with the Psychonauts and the drifting apart of the Psychic 7 6. The discoveries in that time span about the Lucy’s letters and the Maliks rule. Just everything we could think of being pondered in those years before canon game starts. So much things one can think about if one isn’t too busy thinking about work as a distraction. Just. Continue on move past that. Try to do better. Can be quite a build-up of anger I’d say ;) Obdlc aftermaths or other character developing moments wise, Otto can share more openly about it to his friends this time, knowing they’d be open to hear him about it after the years of keeping it in or keeping it light and vague for others.

Oh right Gristol, uh yeah Ford is very allowed to be his intimidating authorative self and Otto is going scrutinize and upgrade the Psychonauts Security so much so that this doesn’t happen again. Those thinkerprint system definitely had a bit of a hole that needs patching. These two are people who take actions that are needed and man can they do it.

So like yeah uncomfortable? Sure, just a tad. But these old folks are powerful individuals, and they are together now and man can they can mess him up if Gristol tries anything. If anything, them taking that vacation is keeping him safe.

Anyway the Psychic 7 are going on a vacation, they deserve not thinking about all that stuff for a while, or at least not worrying about it. They can have contemplative sharing with each other regarding the events that has happened, I think. Get those bonds repaired again by understanding each other again just like the past so that they can move in the future together this time around.

[nightingaelic]

could you do Fallout New Vegas companion’s reactions to a Courier Six who is also the Lone Wanderer telling their stories from their time in DC? (bonus points for Arcade’s reaction to them hating the enclave, and if that would make him decide to keep his past hidden even longer, or if he would still tell them?)

The logistics and implications of this make my head spin. This is also super long, honestly I should just quit writing reacts and start writing fics OH WAIT

Getting the courier talking was a tough thing to do, but on nights where the moon was full and the coyotes' howls were miles away or at least behind some stout walls, on nights where they were a few beers in and they hadn't seen another living soul in a few days, that Mojave Express deliverer started to reminisce. That wasn't really the surprising part, though. No, the surprising part was what they would remember, fondly or not-so-fondly: A world apart from the desert, a continent away on another coast, and stories of life in a vault, a missing father, pure water and a Brotherhood divided.

Arcade Gannon: Arcade didn't mind these moods, at least when they first cropped up. He nodded along as the courier talked about living in their father's shadow, about feeling cornered by their own family's legacy. He hung on their words about living in the cradle of America's history, about Project Purity, all of the gritty details of modifying a GECK to bring water to a devastated wasteland.

Eventually though, the courier's memories soured, with the arrival of Enclave remnants in their life. Arcade folded into himself with every harsh word, every jolt of plasma that had disrupted his friend's world relived in horrific detail. They gestured angrily as they described their newfound purpose, their battle for power with the fractured Brotherhood of Steel at their back, and their smug satisfaction at the moments they were able to crack open Raven Rock and the Enclave's mobile base crawler and lay waste to their tormentors.

It took a few rounds of these stories before the courier noticed he shrank and grew quiet whenever they neared the end of their story about breaking into another vault to find the GECK. They stopped abruptly one night. "What's up with you?"

"Um..." Arcade scratched the back of his neck and looked away. "Nothing. Nothing, I just... have some personal experience with the Enclave, myself."

The courier sighed. "Yeah, there's a few people walking around the West Coast that have similar stories to mine. Arroyo's full of them, for one. Is it something like that?"

Arcade took a deep breath. "I feel... well, it's a lot closer to home, for me. Close enough to raise questions, so I don't talk about it much."

"Close enough to..." The courier twisted their face up in confusion for a moment, before realization set in and their eyes grew large. "You were... your... oh."

"Mmm-hm."

"Well, fuck me." The courier smiled and popped a cap off of another beer. "I've been doing all the talking, haven't I? Let's hear your story about working with the guys in power armor who ruined my life, right after dad did."

Craig Boone: Whenever the courier started up like this, Boone couldn't help but notice a familiar twinge of regret and self-doubt in their voice. It shone through most clearly when they spoke about their time with the Brotherhood of Steel, the men and women they'd fought alongside and lost during their struggle against the remnants of the Enclave. It was there, too, in their story about returning to the vault they grew up in, setting the chaos that had arisen in their wake to rest, but not being able to go back to the way things were.

Boone didn't pry. He knew that feeling well. Instead, he cracked open bottles of beer, liquor, soda, whatever they had on hand during their nights in the desert, and just listened. He'd done the same for Carla, when they were younger and new to each other and he couldn't get enough of her voice and how it flowed endlessly, easily, the way his never could. He absorbed it all now as he did then: The joy, the pain, the loss, the fear, the triumphs and falls and abandoned dreams that filled the courier up and drove them to travel west, beyond anything they had ever known.

That last part stumped Boone a bit, though. "Why didn't you stay?" he finally asked one night.

They looked surprised. "Stay? Stay where? I didn't have a home anymore."

Boone shook his head. "With the Brotherhood. Or some other settlement."

"Like Megaton?" The courier sighed. "I thought about it. Close to the vault, friendly people, easy work... I guess I just didn't want to wind up... stuck."

They flushed red and looked away from him. Boone knew why they were embarrassed, but he also knew the truth in their words.

Sometimes the courier cried after they had finished, though they did their best to hide it. Boone pretended not to notice. He was pretty sure they knew he was pretending, but he was also pretty sure that pointing it out would be worse than just letting it be an open secret between them. The silence between them endured, but something grew inside it and flourished. Some kind of deeper understanding.

Lily Bowen: The more the courier spoke, the more Lily made connections in her muddled mind. Of course they knew the basic layout of most vaults, they had grown up in one. Of course they were extra-sensitive to the Mojave heat, they had come to the desert from the cooler of the two coasts. Of course they'd been extra-wary around the super mutants or nightkin of Jacobstown, they had only known angry super mutants looking to grow their own numbers through any means necessary.

Their shared experience of growing up inside a vault reminded Lily of happier days, and she often asked questions about Vault 101 during the courier's stories. "Were you sweet on anyone inside your old home?" she asked, with a big smile befitting a proud grandma.

The courier blushed. "That's not very polite, Lily."

"Oh, I'm sorry, dearie."

"No, no it's okay." The courier smiled. "There was a boy who picked on me a lot, but I never figured out whether he did it because he hated me or liked me. His name was Butch. And there was Amata, my childhood friend. She was the daughter of the Overseer."

"Daughter of the Overseer?" Lily grinned. "I'm sure she was a lovely young woman."

The courier looked a little misty. "Yeah. She was. Probably still is."

Lily pulled a handkerchief that used to be a small tablecloth from inside her overalls and handed it over. "Maybe we can go back there together, pumpkin," she offered. "I always wanted to travel to the capital. We can visit your friends, see the sights."

"Yeah, maybe someday." The courier accepted the gift and blew their nose. "I've got some things I need to finish up here before I even think about wandering back east, though."

"Then let's make a list and do our chores," Lily said happily. "Number one?"

"Ohhhh, man." The courier smiled up at her. "I wouldn't even know where to start."

Raul Alfonso Tejada: Raul got a faint smile on his face whenever the courier started up like this, as if their memories reminded him of another place he had come from, another time. While they couldn't have more different backgrounds, pasts- hell, he had several hundred years on the courier, even if they shared the same road today- there was something in the description of the other roads they had walked that made him feel warm on a cold night.

"What's on your mind?" The courier asked him one night, when Raul's smile grew larger than usual.

"Nada, boss," he reassured them. "You're just a good reminder that I can change my mind about the future anytime I'd like. Tell me the one about that radio DJ again."

"Again?" The courier rolled their eyes. "Why? I could tell you a million stories about Underworld and all the ghouls that lived there, but all you want to hear about is Three Dog. You'd probably have more in common with the Underworld folks, honestly."

Raul nodded noncommittally. "Sí, but my favorite stories are about people who had to rise above bad situations and become someone uncommon. Anyone who's able to do that is either fighting for something great or running from something terrible. Sometimes both."

The courier shot him a skeptical look. "Three Dog's holed up in his radio station 24/7, he's not running from anything or out fighting for anything. All that stuff about 'the good fight' is a load of bull."

"Now, now, Six," Raul chastised. "Just because he looks like your average pendejo doesn't mean he isn't doing his part. You even told me his radio show is inspirational for the Capital Wasteland folks."

The courier held their hands up in the air and bobbled them, as if balancing an invisible scale. "The duality of man. Being an average pendejo, or convincing everyone around you that you aren't actually an average pendejo and can pull off miracles."

Raul laughed. "And which one are you, boss?"

"Eh, I'm still figuring it out."

Rose of Sharon Cassidy: Cass was never one for fixating on her own past, but she couldn't help but sympathize with the courier whenever they deigned to add onto their unbelievable story. It was hard enough for her to navigate her own damn life: She couldn't imagine being called upon to steer an entire area's destiny.

After another night of recalling their life inside a vault with their dad, then their unexpected loss of him right after being reunited on the surface, the courier stopped suddenly. "I'm sorry," they said.

Cass paused her swig of precious whiskey. "What?"

"I keep going on and on about my dad, and here you are not knowing what happened to yours."

"Eh." Cass took her drink and waved her hand around until the burning swallow made its way down. "S'loads of people in the wasteland without a clue what happened to their pops. I'm not special. In fact, I'd say it probably hurts a bit more, what happened with yours."

"Well, all the same." The courier sank deeper into their seat and examined their own bottle of spirits. "I feel like an open book, tonight. Anything you want to know about where I came from that I haven't already spilled?"

Cass thought for a moment. "Tribals."

"What about them?"

"Does the East Coast have them? You're not the first traveler I've met from there, but none of you have so much as mentioned any tribals out east."

"Mmm." The courier looked thoughtful. "I guess we do have them, though maybe not in the traditional sense. There's a mess of them in Point Lookout for sure, and at least one tribal group in the Capital Wasteland outright, but beyond that things are more... loose. Fewer intact families, fewer intact homes."

"Huh." Cass took another drink. "Maybe that's where my dad went."

She let the courier stew in the awkward silence for a bit before she grinned and reached out to smack them. "Just kidding. Keep going. I want to hear about that giant robot again."

Veronica Santangelo: Veronica usually sat and listened, spellbound, picturing a chapter of her order that had realized the very thing she kept trying to tell the Elders and made the ultimate sacrifice to follow their hearts anyway.

Well, maybe Elder Owyn Lyons hadn't come to the same realization as her, but he had had a change of heart that split his company and cut them off from almost everyone they had ever known. It had been five years since the High Elders had instituted radio silence toward their East Coast chapter, and so far there had been no attempts to re-establish contact.

Veronica prodded the courier for any info she could get about the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel. The courier let slip pretty early in their friendship that Elder Owyn Lyons had passed away, which wasn't unexpected. The man was 76 years old, after all. She learned on one particularly emotional night that his daughter, Elder Sarah Lyons, was also dead, something she wasn't sure even the Western Elders were aware of. That memory was clearly painful for the courier though, so Veronica didn't press for details.

"And the Enclave?" the Scribe asked one night, arms wrapped around her knees. "Are they completely gone?"

The courier grew cold. "Yes. I made sure of it."

"Right." Veronica nodded. "So the Brotherhood took over the air force base they were at. It must have been chock-full of tech and resources, if it was the Enclave's last stand."

"It was." The courier sighed and shifted in their seat. "And it woke up some of our brothers and sisters to their original mission in the Capital Wasteland. I thought maybe that selfishness had died with Liberty Prime, but... well, I didn't like it, so I left."

"Mmm, yeah." Veronica nodded again, sympathetically this time. "I know how you feel. Felt."

"Feel," the courier agreed. "I just wish there was more I could've done. Maybe there wasn't anything else, short of seizing power."

"You'd definitely get pushback for that in the Brotherhood," Veronica agreed. "But you might get that chance out here in the broader Mojave."

ED-E: At first, ED-E enjoyed the stories, trumpeting and cooing various beeps at the appropriate moments for emphasis. The one time the courier began badmouthing the Enclave, however, the eyebot waited until they had finished before playing back the first tape that Dr. Whitley had recorded before its trip.

The courier listened to the scientist's words from years ago, deflating slightly as it played out. When the tape had finished, they stood up and checked the eyebot over. "He sent you toward Navarro, huh?"

ED-E beeped affirmation, and the courier sighed. "But Navarro was already gone. I'm sorry. I guess I'm... well, me and the Brotherhood of Steel back east are responsible for your previous master's decision to send you away. Might be responsible for more, too."

ED-E beeped sadly. The courier pressed their forehead against the eyebot's metal dome in apology.

Rex: Well, surprising for most. Rex was not most. As soon as the courier got really into their recollections, Rex usually yawned and went to sleep. He stirred when he felt their hand reach down to scratch the ruff of his neck, or pat the glass dome that held his brain.

"Good dog," the courier said, through the veil of sleep. "You remind me of another pup that used to follow me around."

[charliesinfern0]

i would like to hear about your aus

alright, so you already know about citrus (homestuck but my ocs are in it). very standard for what i normally do, but then i finished reading homestuck and was liek, "..... what if it was good?" (/j i am joking) but i had some ideas of how canon could have gone differently and then homestuck='citrus' was made (originally it was called homestuck='fruit' and...... hm. i mean. yeah??) i also wanted to expand on the trolls' session so hivebent is now called hivebent='blood' because wyllin is a thief of blood. and despite everything........................................ hm wait i dont know if i want to spoil this AAAAUUGGGGGHGHH sometimes i am an open book and i just say whatever but sometimes i think. no i dont want to reveal this bc it would be so cool they wouldnt see it coming. shit. you know what whatever uncle cambell (paul) doesnt get do be an alpha kid because the alpha kid dynamic is already complicated as it is there does not need to be another person in there also hes a thief of doom (he used to be a bard of doom and maybe he still is im not sure actually but hes one of the two) because i had 4 aspects (doom, blood, mind and rage) and 4 classes to pick from (mage, sylph, theif and bard) and i had made page a mage of rage and she COULDVE maybe been a mind player maybe but she wasnt, if she was shed probably be a witch of mind, and wyllin couldve been almost ANY aspect, there are some that i didnt want to touch bc i though they were too important, but i made her a thief of blood despite me now thinking that blood mightve been too important. doom is also a too important aspect but it doesnt matter for paul. (also i came up w other stuff for paul like his chumhandle (cardinalAdrift because fisherman and the cardinal directions and also cardinal as in bird which is like a direct contridiction like what thats not a fish) and his planet (land of vaults and radon (LOVAR)) and his strife specibus (crowbarkind (which is kind of why he died he wouldve broken the session also vaults and crowbars and thief and LOVAR rhymes with crowbar)

anyway i gave page her own classical element (lightning) and associated item (gold) bc im a nerd about that kind of stuff, i came up with a rage denizen for her (marsyas) and her own consorts (chameleons) and also her exile is White King/Writ Keeper because it fits its perfect and he shouldve had more relevance. also that reminds me that on the strife album theres a song for each of the kids (heir conditioning, dance of thorns, time on my side, atomic bonsai) and theres a song on there called Stormspirit and pages whole thing on her planet (land of nod and thunder (LONAT) (nod like sleep because uhhh................. actual spoilers <_< >_> and thunder bc storms)) is that theres a huge storm/tempest thing happening, it just fits.

(and wyllin's planet is the land of pillars and crowns (pillars like the architechture but also like capillaries and crowns because treasure and..... thief. and their denizen is talos)

also its an everybody lives au, i was very much inspired by the crow strider au lol

oh yeah also i wanna do just a bit more with the dancestors' session bc i think it looks cool

also im thinking of changing how the retcon works, like instead of it working like time travel where if you travel back to a time where you exist there will be two versions of you, its more like youre rewinding time from where youre standing, so youre still you but in the past

(also im goiung to do an epilogue because i wanna write everybody living on earth c and just being together and working through things together and being there for eachother and stuff becaus im a sap. yes its called the pumpkin epilogue because i am not original we know this to be true)

[seyenna]

Philza and/or Techno and/or Ranboo fic recs

just some of my fav dsmp fics, mainly phil, techno or ranboo bc i’m biased but also a bunch of sbi and others

this one goes out mainly to zablr discord my beloved

pls tell me if the links don’t work

all of these are on ao3

rating\status(complete/ongoing)\warnings\word count\misc tags

ichor flows free amongst the iron by summer_rising

T\o\violence\13k\series\gods AU

Summary:

A gods and goddesses AU of the Dream SMP, dramatized for all our benefits.

First work:

  "Two gods meeting on a mountaintop overlooking the stormy sea? Very classy, Dream, I appreciate your taste."

  Dream didn't turn to look at him, but the faint shake of his shoulders let Techno know he had heard.

  "Scar's healing up nicely, I see," Techno mumbled with a light nod of his head.

  "Mhm. Cut nice and clean. Not that I expected any less from you, of course."

   ~~

   The god of power and the god of luck meet on a mountaintop to discuss Luck's standing in the ongoing political disaster.

We're Only Young by ImperialKatwala

G\o\-\66k\series\Dream & Technoblade

It's easy to forget amid the chaos and bloodshed how similar - and how young - Dream and Technoblade really are.

And when the sun comes up, you'll find a brand new god. by SkyboxZoo

M\o\violence\19k\gods AU

Summary:

The wounds from the fight had healed nigh instantly, but the golden blood still soaked Techno’s shirt. His cloak had gotten torn off and his hair had fallen out of its pony-tail. Ichor pooled in his boots. The man left a trail of golden, bloody footprints in his wake.

old gods (new gods) by WriterWinged

T\o\-\9k\series\gods AU

Summary of first work:

Survival, Blood, Madness. Philza, Technoblade, Wilbur Soot. Three gods who have never cared for mortal life, who play with them when they want to, who kill their toys just as easily. How, then, did a mortal end up in their hands?

This House Is A Fucking Nightmare by SilverWing15

T\c\-\17k\series\sbi

Summary:

AU Where Phil isn't quite as willing to stand by while his sons drop like flies

Summary of third part (my fav):

Does lingering too long in the shadow of a god make you a god? The voices in his head seem to think so.

His brothers know he's older than them but they don't know how much

OR: Technoblade doesn't think his brothers realize how different they are from ordinary men. After all, ordinary men may fight the gods, but they don't win.

It's been a long day. by BecausePlot

G\c\-\3k\Philza & Ranboo

Summary:

Sides are bad: he knows that much. He’s seen it tear people apart time and time again, so when he decided to separate himself from Tubbo and keep his distance, he knew he was in the right.

Well. He thought he was in the right, at the time. Sitting all by himself on the steps to the Prime Path, he’s not so sure anymore.

Yes, the sides might have torn the others apart, might have made them so weak that they have no choice but to fold under Dream’s hand, but at least they aren’t lonely.

So are sides bad?

‘I don’t know.’

~*~

Or, Ranboo looks out at the ruins of L'Manburg, feeling more lost and lonely than he ever has.

But, as he soon finds, he's not as alone as he thinks.

the voices in my head, they say a lot of things by rosyasteria

-\c\violence\1k\Technoblade-centric

Summary:

Some days the voices didn’t listen. They didn’t let up. They screamed instead of whispered, relentless, assaulting his ears until they bled.

tell them i was the warmest place you knew and you turned me cold by rosyasteria

-\c\-\2k\Techonblade-centric

Summary:        

Technoblade cared. But in the end it just fucked him over.

For the majority of his life, Techno felt like less of a companion, less of a family member, and more like a weapon to be wielded. 'The Blade' they called him; never 'friend'.

It Leaves Little Time for Anything Else by mirandible

M\c\-\1k\part of series\Dream & Technoblade

Summary:

   A young man aims for the top, but fate has other plans for him. So does Technoblade, apparently.

   (Or: answering the question of “Why does Techno hide his scars if they’re supposed to be some sort of trophy? Why keep your point of pride a secret?”)

the best requiem is a bar of silence (and I'll sing it, even if I must hold back my tears) by jello12451

T\o\-\10k\Philza & Technoblade

Summary:

   He can’t help the noise of celebration that escapes him. Techno- this means that Techno’s free, and he got his horse back, and everything is alright-

  Tubbo, filled with rage at Phil’s cheers, turns and impulsively shoots an arrow.

   He doesn’t expect to hit his target.

---

  Alternatively: What if Phil didn't have a bucket of water when Tubbo shot him?

Change fate by being aggressively kind by sircantus

T\o\-\13k\sbi, Philza-centric

Summary:

   “You do understand that you’re caring for the thing meant to bring destruction and chaos to our world, right?” The woman asks, Phil looking behind him fondly as Techno grabs at the ends of his wings.

   “He’s just a child.” Phil answers distractedly, humming as his wings get gently yanked at.

   “He’s the first of three to destroy life as we know it! Shouldn’t we, well, get rid of him?!”

   “Oh, no.” Phil raises his eyes with a sharp glare. “Believe me, I have my own way of preventing the apocalypse.”

   ---

   Or, Techno, Wilbur, and Tommy are basically chaotic forces of nature, destined from birth to end the world and bring destruction. Most who hear of the tale of them are trying their best to track them down, and to end the monsters while they’re still young, still just children.

   Phil has a different plan.

   (In which Phil raises the minecraft equivalents of the anti-christ with love and support, so much so to the point where the world ending is really just a funny thought, and Phil has three kids who casually have powers that are bit more extreme than anything else in the world)

I promised you that everything would be fine by findingkairos

G\c\-\6k\Technoblade-centric

Summary:

   manifestation: (n.)

1.     an event, action, or object that clearly shows or embodies something abstract or theoretical;

2.     a version or incarnation of something or someone;

3.     an appearance of a ghost or spirit;

4.     the Blood God.

When he's young and still alone, still establishing his reputation as the immortal warrior, Technoblade makes up an imaginary friend.

Years later, the blood god is very real and very much a god: one that is prepared to do anything for their first and only friend.

the inner mechanism of a black box by Bee_4

T\c\violence, self-harm\Technoblade-centric

Summary:

   Technoblade lets himself get imprisoned for Philza’s sake. He doesn’t plan on being there long. Unfortunately, he’s underestimated Pandora’s Vault.

   There are things that will make even the Blade fall apart in due time, as it turns out.

carry all my sins by BananasofThorns

T\c\-\4k\Ranboo-centric

Summary:

Ranboo swallows. “All my armor and weapons and stuff are missing. Fundy and I were gonna go looking for them after the festival, I think.”

“I see.” Tubbo smiles again, but this time it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Well, I’m sure it’ll be fine, it’s just a festival. We could probably find someone to lend you a sword or an axe or something.”

He starts towards the stage, waving at people when they call his name, and Ranboo follows. The original panic has dulled to a cold buzz in his chest, but apprehension still wraps itself around his body like chains. He doesn’t like being without his armor and tools; he feels too exposed, and if something happens, he’ll be helpless.

“Ranboo?” Tubbo calls, glancing back.

Ranboo shakes his head and hurries to catch up. “Yeah, it’ll be fine,” he repeats. “Everything’s gonna be fine."

Tubbo grins. “That’s the spirit.”

Rule 5: be loyal. L'manberg doesn't do well with supposed traitors. Ranboo deals with the consequences.

Sojourn by Lacy_Star

T\o\-\13k\Ranboo & Technoblade & Philza

Summary:

“Well…” Ranboo started slowly, “You see, uh… I kinda… don’t have a house anymore, obviously. Um… Phil found me in—“ He paused, cutting himself off and squinting at the floorboards— very discreet, “Phil… found me. And… um… He said I could stay by you guys. Like, um, by the dog house he wants to build?” He paused, then began to ramble, “But, uh, if you don’t want me here, I understand— and I’m sorry for coming in your house when you weren’t here, I swear I didn’t touch anything— it was just cold outside and—“

Techno just stared at him. And how, how was this the second time this had happened to him? How was this the second time he returned home after battle to discover an injured teenage boy waiting for him, seeking assistance with nowhere to go? And how badly had that ended last time, in nothing but betrayal and insults?

---

AKA: Phil drags a half-enderman home after Doomsday, and Techno decides that they can keep it. For now.

can an axe count as rent? by aboutfivebees

T\c\-\4k\Ranboo & Technoblade & Philza

Summary:

Ranboo’s struggling to settle into his new life on the Arctic Anarchist Commune, but at least he’s got bread.

or the struggles of an enderman hybrid to come up with a housewarming gift to give to his friends, who are just trying to adopt him

The Caged Bird Sings of Freedom by StarPrince_Punk

T\o\-\25k\Ranboo & Technoblade & Philza

Summary:

The Blade's stance was still tense, his body prepared to fight at a moment’s notice if need be. “What’s your name?” Phil asked “My… name?” The Blade asked. “Yeah. Your name isn’t actually The Blade, right? That’s like a stage name?” Phil tried to keep his tone light. “What’s your real name?” The Blade hesitated. “No one… No one’s called me by my name in a long time.” ------- When Phil comes across Ranboo in his panic room after L'Manberg's destruction, it reminds him of when he first met Technoblade. And just like when he met Techno, Phil's first instinct is that he has to help this kid. While living together, Techno and Ranboo learn that they're much more similar than they had previously thought, and Phil learns that it's not too late for him to be a better dad.

This already feels like more of a home by H3118ENDER

T\o\violence, death\18k\Ranboo & Technoblade & Philza

Summary:

As the ashes of L'Manberg settle the conflict continues to come to life setting the stage for a new wave of blood shed. Stuck slam in the middle of past and present friends Ranboo is coming to learn that even without nations to their names feelings and feuds don't die but people, people do.

A Shadow of a Shadow by unappetizingegg

T\c\-\4k\ Ranboo & Technoblade & Philza

Summary:

There were a few beats of silence, and then- “What are your plans, now? Do you need a place to stay?”

That caught him off guard. Surely he’d heard incorrectly. Phil was offering him a home, right after he’d orchestrated the destruction of his past one? It didn’t make any sense, none of it did. Why would Phil say that?

Then he remembered, he remembered Techno stopping him in the fight. He remembered being handed his book, the question in Techno’s gaze. He swore, in that moment, Technoblade, the Technoblade, had been worried about him. He remembered that he had been told to leave, to run, to get away and preserve himself. He had spared him, he remembered that Techno had spared him.

Techno had helped him. Phil had tried to protect him, to get him away from the danger.

They were there for him.

 ---

alternatively:

Ranboo is alone. But he really isn't.

Meritocracy by oddsbodkins

G\o\-\18k\Dream & Technoblade, sbi, medieval AU

Summary:

Dream is more successful than he'd ever imagined - but there's one thing that's been bothering him. Technoblade, his biggest rival, the Acolyte of the Blood God and King of the Arena, went missing last spring, just before Dream got the chance to duel him. Without that one achievement to pave his way, all the following victories have felt cheap.

So, Dream hired some goons to dig Technoblade up and pester him into coming back to the Capitol, for one last showdown. Easy enough, right?

Interlude I: "Promises to Keep" by Ozzyyy

T\c\-\1k\part of a series\Technoblade & Philza

Summary:

These woods are lovely, dark, and deep But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep And miles to go before I sleep.

--

Techno has a plan. It's crazy. It's insane, it's actually just batshit bonkers. But if chaos cannot be enjoyed together, then what's it worth, yeah? There's a certain beauty in watching the world burn from the center of the flames. Phil intends to be there.

I Don't Want To Start A Fight (wouldn't you rather start a riot?) by KryOnBlock

T\c\violence, death\15k\Technoblade & Philza & Ranboo

Summary:

An universal ping rang out from behind him, the third and final he knew, and Phil sobbed, clutching the body tighter.

Techno didn’t move.

It always has been Technoblade and Philza, Philza and Technoblade. Take on half, and you shall never go back.

Sheltered by Lulatic

G\c\-\6k\Ranboo & Technoblade

Summary:

It was cold outside. But Techno never heard Ranboo complain.

That was the best excuse he could muster to keep him out.

Antarctic Princes 'verse by BirchWrites

T\o\-\15k\series\sbi

Summary:

Loosely-connected one shots set in an AU where the Antarctic Empire and the Dream SMP are in the same world. Ordered chronologically, but each fic can be read as a standalone thing

Summary of first part:

Oh shit. Forget arrested; Dream’s going to have to tell Wilbur that he watched Tommy get stabbed for being terminally stupid.

May we cross paths again by QueenLunaFreed

G\c\-\1k\Dream & Technoblade

Summary:

“Even if tomorrow it’s just us versus the entire server, Dream, I’m telling you right now - I have confidence.”

---

Dream couldn’t comprehend the pacing contradiction in front of him, the weakness he could clearly see, but would never comment on. Because this man has been defying Dream's expectations since they first met, because despite them not being friends and having no reason to trust each other, Dream knew that Technoblade is the only person who he’d trust to do this right. To destroy L'Manberg alongside him yet again, this time for real.

leave me your starlight by findingkairos

T\o\-\18k\Technoblade & Philza

Summary:

For you the world, Phil.

Once upon a time, Philza Minecraft is the only person who does not shy away from the bloody teen that regularly turns the tide of war.

This cements a friendship that will last wars, empires, worlds, and lifetimes.

 ---

(Featuring: Back to Back Badasses, healthy relationships, accidental deification, intentional world domination, and Phil's past coming back to haunt his best friend.)

[bitchassbucky]

.zip

Word Count: 2k

Warning/s: toxic/abusive relationship dynamics, gaslighting and manipulation, abduction, injuries were mentioned, stalking, dark!bucky x dark!reader, emotionally/mentally unstable!reader, dismemberment (not gore-y but still), three very special character mentions, shady corporate stuff, career sabotage?, food mention, sedation/drugging, f-words.

A/N: oh my god, this is the final chapter of CTRL. to all who read from the start, thank y'all so fucking much - from the bottom of my big-ass heart, thank you so much for coming along with this journey. this is my first FINISHED series, oh my god. to @babyboibucky (CTRL's number one fan), @sarge-barnes-sir, and @borikenlove thank you so much for indulging my inner degenerate GHJSDFG and for screaming (affectionately) at me when i first let y'all read the finished draft.

BUT THIS IS NOT THE END (just yet), i will be uploading TWO epilogues very soon: the explicit version and the not-so-explicit version. stay tuned!

follow the CTRL series:

i - .exe

ii - .avi

iii - .raw

iv - .png

v - .zip

epilogue:

.eps (explicit)

.eps (cut)

CTRL playlist CTRL moodboard

Your demeanor, character, even tone, changed.

Calculated, cold, unnerving.

But you sat there like a housewife in front of her husband, eating spaghetti and meatballs. Acting all dandy like there isn’t a man strapped onto the chair four feet away from you.

“C’mon, darling, eat! I made your favorite,” your eyes twinkled as Bucky helplessly tugged on his restraints, “oh, sorry, you’re tied up.”

Hm, sick in the head, bad for the heart.

“What do you want?” Oh, wow, even talking hurts for him. His throat is all dried up, he tasted something bitter under his tongue.

You chuckled, moving half a meatball around your mostly empty plate, “for you to stop treating me like I’m stupid.” You spear the meat with your fork, swirling it in the sauce, “I know you’ve been… checking in on me, Bucky.”

Oh, fuck.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I was-- I mean, look at you--” He’s making it worse. You’re mad. You’re angry because he was being a good friend.

He only did that because you were lonely and he’s right: you are lonely.

So lonely that you’re willing to kidnap a grown man to keep you company, “I’m so sad for you.”

“You’re aware you’re the one’s been tied up, right?” You’re curt as you should be, scooting over near Bucky to feed him.

“I can’t eat that—” If he wasn’t sitting down and tied, Bucky would’ve vaulted over you and called the neighbors, she’s fucking crazy!

You giggled, rolling your eyes as if he had the freedom to make a choice right now, “if you’re thinking of screaming… More than half of my neighbors are felons or on parole, I doubt that they’ll call 911.”

Jutting forward the fork, you let the prongs gently touch Bucky’s lips, “now, eat! We have so much to talk about.”

“No. I don’t-- I’m not hungry.” He shakes his head, the fork hitting his chin and clanking down the floor.

“Just eat the fucking food, Steve!”

Bucky flinched at your sudden outburst. The words—the name—seeping in a moment later. Steve? Who the hell is Steve? Was he your husband? Boyfriend? His head throbbed again, his mouth filling with saliva like he’s about to throw up.

You kneel down, pulling a napkin from the table to wipe the meat and the sauce from the floor.

“This better not stain.”

—

He promised thrice.

Once over pasta and meatballs, once over dessert, and once when you were clearing the table.

You relented, of course. Half because you love him and half because it’s getting annoying.

“As long as you don’t leave me, okay?”

“Yes, I promise. I won’t leave you.”

Bucky’s still seating on the dinner chair, slightly slumped without the ropes holding him up, “look, I’m really sorry about the anesthetic, I went overboard with it.” You look over to him—at least he’s regaining his fingers and arms again.

“It’s okay, babe, I wouldn’t trust me either.” If he could stand up, he’d go over and hug you. Helping with the dishes, peppering you with sweet kisses.

A genuine laugh slips out of your lips, “ugh, still… I’m really sorry.”

The last of the plates were neatly stacked, cups and cutleries were placed gently on a drying rack. It was getting late, you could tell.

“I’m not mad, by the way.” You muse, prompting Bucky to lean forward, listening to you.

“What do you mean?” He takes your hand into his, ever so gently.

“You did that,” you squeeze his hand back, gazing into his soulful eyes, “because you love me.”

Did you know that some people could read microexpressions well? Bucky went through a whole lot of them before answering, “of course, I do.”

Contemplating whether you call him out on it or not, you hum, placing a gentle hand on his jaw, “it’s okay, you’ll learn how to love me.”

He has to. He has no other choice.

Bucky clears his throat, “have you seen my phone?” His tone was hopeful, upbeat, maybe he can reach out to someone, anyone, before you can do any more damage.

“Yeah, ‘s on the couch.”

He tried to move, he really did. Bucky’s fairly strong, he can bench an easy 140 on a good day. But even the beefiest motherfuckers have no match for Propofol.

“Don’t worry about your friends, they’re not worried about you, Buck.” The coolness of your tone sends Bucky into a panic—again. “D’you wanna check your messages though? There’s a lot of ‘em.”

Grabbing his phone, you asked Siri to read him his latest notifications.

Urgent: Notice of Immediate Termination

From Joaquin: Where are you, man?

From John W.: Do you have copies?

Urgent: Notice of Immediate Termination

Urgent: Gross Misconduct

From Joaquin: Bucky, what the fuck?

From Samuel Wilson: Pick up the phone, Barnes. You’re fired.

17 missed calls from an unknown number

From John W.: I knew you were a freak but holy shit, dude!

72 text messages from an unknown number

Bucky never really liked horror movies. It made him jumpy and anxious. Too paranoid, even. But now? Now he’s sure that people have never experienced sheer fright before.

His toes cramped inside his boots, his feet were cold, sweating. The little hairs on his legs stood up, goosebumps littering the entirety of his body. If he held his breath, he’s sure he could hear his heart hammering out of his chest. The blood rushes past his ears and onto the base of his skull—he’s gonna be sick.

“What,” he gulped back the saliva pooling in his mouth, “what did you do?”

You’re irritatingly calm, “well, I mean… We’re already together, what do you need those for, right?”

Putting a warm hand over his forehead, you cooed, “poor thing, you look sick.”

—

Bucky thinks it’s well past midnight when the anesthetic wore off.

His limbs were heavy, he had to lean on the wall every couple of steps to regain his balance. Helpless. He’s helpless and you both know it. As if it’s a bear trap, Bucky carefully took his phone from the coffee table.

Why would you leave it unattended?

The screen lights up as soon as he picked up, his lock screen littered with ‘fuck yous’, ‘sicko’, and his personal favorite, ‘motherfucker.’

Ignoring the glaring messages, he went straight for the emergency dialler and—you took out his SIM card, snapping it into two neat pieces, placing it beside the phone.

Bitch.

The golden surface of the card was scratched too, he can’t do anything, use it as a toothpick, maybe? His phone was just as good as a paperweight.

He looks out of the window, limping towards it. Even if he could climb over, it would take him forever to get onto the street. Your neighbors would probably think that he’s just on a bad trip.

“It’s bolted shut. Perks of living alone as a single female.” Your voice made him flinch back, like a kid whose hand was halfway down the cookie jar.

Bucky plays it off with a cough, he can’t be weak now, “no, babe, I was checking out a noise. You ready for bed?”

You smiled softly, taking his hand and draping his arm on your shoulders as you prop him against you, “almost, big guy. Gotta get you settled in bed first. Are you tired?”

Nodding, Bucky kisses your temple, “yeah.” He just needs to play with your sick little games until he regains his strength.

Where would he go? His reputation and his job are besmirched, his apartment is probably crawling with forensics too.

“You fell down and banged your head earlier. Nasty cut on your head too. I told you to not tire yourself much.”

You hit and drugged me but I digress, “Yes, darling. ‘M sorry.”

“You scared me, Buck. I thought you were dead.” Are these tears forming in your eyes?

“I’m not leaving you, not by any chance. I promise.”

He promises a fourth time.

—

Your bedroom was bigger than he thought. But of course, he only saw your desk and your bed through the webcam.

Save from the Ted Bundy-esque corkboard you have in front of your workspace, he feels weirdly at home. You tucked him in, reminding him to wake up every two hours for the painkillers.

“You’re not going to bed?” He muses from behind you, all cocooned in your blankets.

“Just need to take this phone call real quick, babe.” Your back was turned from him as you work on your company laptop. He noticed that the webcam is covered with white tape.

The sound of an incoming call filled the room before you quickly answer it, your voice turning hoarse and raspy as if you’ve been crying.

Hi, Mr. Wilson. I’m so sorry for the late call. Do I- do I need to come in tomorrow? I just... I don’t feel comfortable facing everyone—I used all my home hours this week and—

Miss L/N, I’m glad you reached out to me. Is it okay if I record this call for security purposes? It’s just for you, me, and the HR department.

You turned to Bucky, your face is stone-cold but your voice belonged to someone so utterly helpless.

No, you don’t have to call into work tomorrow… Or any other day.

A dainty gasp and a fucking sob comes out of your mouth, your eyes were telling a different story.

Am I fired?

God, no. Please, Miss L/N, don’t worry about that. We want you with us through this entire debacle. We want you to take some time off—paid. We’ll also grant you… a grievance package.

You could almost hear what he would say next.

As long as you don’t talk to any members of the press or any journalists until our friends in the PR department can clean this up.

A triumphant smile creeps on your bare features, putting a finger in front of your lips, you mimic a ‘shh’ gesture to Bucky.

You round up another mirthless sob as the CEO drones on about the bureaucracy of this whole thing.

He was really nice to me, you know? He took me out on dinners and lunches. He even brought me to his place and I– nothing happened but I can’t stop thinking about it.

I’m really sorry, Miss L/N. I thought he was…

A good guy? I really thought so too.

Please stay offline for a bit, just for the weekend, alright? Someone from the HR department will be in touch with you for the process. We don’t wanna be a hassle more than what Barnes is. On our behalf, please accept our deepest apologies.

Jesus, this guy had the PR department cook up an apology letter.

Thank you—thank you so much, Mr. Wilson. I’ll keep in touch.

You burst out in laughter a second after the call ended. Hearty laughter, the one where you can feel your belly tightening.

“Did you hear how good I was, baby? Oh my god, we had them fooled.”

We? Fuck your ‘we.’

You slide over the covers, propping up yourself with your elbow as you turn to face Bucky, “don’t worry, you don’t need them anymore. You have me, yeah? We have each other.”

—

Out of the most bizarre things that happened to him last week, finding dismembered fingers in the fridge was the least of his concerns.

“Honey!” Bucky calls out, holding the ziplock bag with a pair of tongs.

You bound down the stairs, your laptop in hand as you squint, “what am I looking at?”

Bucky hesitated, maybe he’s going insane too, “fingers. Dismembered fingers—are these yours?”

Setting down the laptop onto the table, you peck him on the cheek, smiling as if him holding a baggie with human remains is just your Sunday normal, “god, I hope not. I need my hands to do things.”

As soon as you look back at him, you dropped the facade: “those are Steve’s. Well, used to be.”

Bucky’s afraid to ask the question where’s the rest of him?

“You know the term pinky promise, right? Well, it has a dark origin.”

Just as fast as a bustling train, Bucky rakes his brain for all the times he promised you something. Hoping that he won’t end up with a stump for a hand.

One vividly bright memory is seared into his brain though, the days blurred together with sharp edges and mismatched colors: we love how we were taught to love.

So, who taught you how to love like this?

[findingjoynweirdstuff]

Dream SMP Recap (January 30/2021) - Bad's Visit, Ranboo’s Confrontation

The day has come. It’s time to visit Pandora’s Vault again.

The first visitor after Tommy is Badboyhalo, whose visit with Dream leaves him a bit uneasy, conflicted about how he feels about the living conditions of Dream’s cell. 

The second was Ranboo, though his visit wasn’t exactly what it seemed at first...

---

Here is the link to Badboyhalo’s VOD

(I’ve been a lot more specific with the details of what happened in this stream since the VOD is unlisted, but I figured I’d also just link the VOD here as well)

This post is pretty long, so I’ve only recapped the two very lore-heavy streams today to keep it from being even longer.

---

Also note (CW/TW):  Today’s streams had some heavy themes, including derealization. 

---

- Badboyhalo goes to visit Dream at the prison.

- Awesam asks him questions. This will be the first time that Bad has visited Dream at all. He resides at the Mansion. He hesitates a little at the question of whether Dream deserves to be locked up, saying an uncertain “yeeeeesss?”

His prior relationship with Dream is that they were friends. Were friends before he chose to destroy L’manburg. Maybe not 100% not friends, but...neutral.

- Sam directs him to the lectern with the waiver. Bad signs it. He places his valuables in the locker room.

- They start heading through the security measures of the prison. They make it to the lava wall and wait for it to drain. Bad is nervous.

- He turns to face Dream. Dream says he hasn’t had a visitor in a while.

- Dream starts spinning the clock.

Dream: “I used to write, but I...burnt a lot of my books.”

Bad checks the chest and sure enough, many of the books are missing.

Dream would try to get out, so Sam disallowed visitors for a few days.

Bad: “I bet you have a lot of time to think about what you did.”

Dream: “Yeah, I do...It’s a...think and think and think.”

- Dream asks Bad about how George and Sapnap are doing. He says they haven’t visited him...

Bad says he’s sure that George and Sapnap miss him.

Bad: “You’re telling me they haven’t come by at all?”

Dream goes over and starts spinning the clock again.

- Dream asks Bad about what’s been happening outside. Bad tells Dream about how Tommy is starting a hotel. 

Bad: “I’m sure a lot of people miss you!”

- There’s still a giant Crater where L’manburg used to be. Nobody’s tried to clean it up. 

- Bad also mentions the Egg. Dream remembers Bad showing him the Egg a while back. Bad says that it’s spreading Vines across the server.

Dream: “That’s interesting...”

- Bad asks if Dream’s named the clock yet. Dream says he has, but he doesn’t want to say what...

- Dream writes up a thank-you book to Bad for visiting him. Bad wouldn’t be able to take it with him on the way out, so he puts it in the chest.

- Bad asks how long his sentence is. Dream says forever. 

- Dream says he likes to watch the clock, and when it hits halfway...he’s happy. They watch the clock hit halfway. That was awesome.

- Dream asks Bad how long he’s been in there. Bad says...a couple weeks, he thinks? A week? Two weeks?

- Bad asks who else has visited. Dream says Tommy. The only one until Bad. Bad is shocked that no one else has visited, but Dream explains that there are limited visiting hours, and people have to schedule. He’s sure they will.

- Dream says he sometimes plays a prank on Sam by burning the clock so that he brings a new one, so that he can see Sam and say hi.

Dream: "He comes over." 

Bad: "I mean, you don’t get in trouble for doing that, do you?" 

Dream: "...Not yet...Sometimes he'll give me less potatoes, but--" 

 Bad: "Oh, so he starves you." 

Dream: "...No, I’m not saying -- I dunno, I wouldn’t say I’m starving."

Bad: “Do you have three square meals a day?”

Dream: “...”

Dream: “I have potatoes!”

Bad: “Yeah, potatoes are good!”

...

Dream: “He’ll do it later.” (chuckling) “Later he’ll come and he’ll say ‘why did you do it again?’ And then he’ll look at me and say ‘don’t be so dumb, Dream!’ And I’ll laugh at him, and I’ll say ‘oooooh, I -- I got you though!’”

- Dream tosses the clock into the lava and laughs. 

- Dream says Sam is making a system soon so that he can just drop the potatoes down so that he doesn’t have to visit Dream to give them. Bad doesn’t like the idea of this and says Dream should encourage Sam to continue visiting Dream in person.

- Dream sniffs a bit, but tells Bad he’s happy there.

- Bad will become a guard soon, and says he might be able to suggest giving Dream new things. He suggests a plant. Dream likes that idea. 

- Bad asks who Dream wants to visit. Dream says he wants George and Sapnap to visit him. Bad says he’ll go and talk to them about it. They probably already want to come and see him! Maybe they just need a little reminder.

Bad: “Yeah, and if you keep up -- I assume you’ve been maintaining good behavior, right?”

Dream: “...”

Dream: “...Yeah.”

Bad: “Okay, ‘cause like you gotta maintain good behavior, ‘cause if you. maintain good behavior --”

- Dream suddenly runs into the lava. Bad is freaked out, but Dream says he swims there sometimes. That’s just how it works. It’s a way to keep entertained.

Sometimes he likes to touch the lava and burn for some time, only extinguishing himself at the last second. He laughs a bit. Bad asks if this is another way to prank Sam? Dream just keeps laughing.

- Dream says Bad’s time is probably up. 

- Dream asks Bad if he knows how long each block would take to break? He says he’s sat for twenty minutes once trying to break the blocks. 

He helped design it, though, and knows that there’s an observer behind the blocks that will teleport the guards. Maybe if he wants to see Bad sometime, he can break it and teleport him over.

- Bad says maybe he’ll visit soon again, but with George and Sapnap. Dream says there’s only one visitor allowed at a time.

- Bad says his goodbye and exits the cell.

- Sam asks how his visit was. Bad says it was good, but Dream needs a new clock. Sam is exasperated -- this was the fourth/fifth (hard to hear) time already -- and says he might not get a new one this time...

He’ll give him a new clock, but Dream’s on thin ice.

- Bad tells Sam he needs a clock! Sam asks why he would need one. 

- Sam asks Bad what Dream said. Bad said they just talked about stuff, and that Dream jumped into the lava. Sam says he does that a lot, that “usually he just wants attention.”

- Bad exits the prison, thanking Sam. Sam says goodbye.

- Bad says he doesn’t know how he feels. It’s a lot to take in. On the one hand, Dream did plenty to land himself in the prison, but on the other hand, the conditions of the prison are horrible. 

- Bad says there’s no way he could ever be broken out, and he doesn’t even deserve to get broken out anyway. He was going to kidnap Skeppy! 

But at the same time, a part of Bad can’t help but feel a bit sorry. 

It’s not too much to feel a bit sympathetic about the conditions, and hope that they can be improved a tiny bit. Maybe giving him a plant! Or a pet!

- Bad plans to become a guard to incentivize better conditions.

- Bad thinks Dream deserves to be in there, and he doesn’t want to free him, just provide better conditions. He was spinning a clock just for entertainment! 

Even prisoners deserve good living conditions. 

(To paraphrase) He totally deserves to be in there! But the conditions are awful. There’s no reason why being there needs to be torture. And having more friends coming to visit him is good, providing a positive influence. 

- Bad was a little horrified. He didn’t know what to say when Dream started spinning the clock. He named the clock! Pretty soon he’ll be counting up the bricks in his cell and naming them, too. 

He thinks a pet, a potted plant, something like that would be a good start. Something for Dream to take care of.

- Bad was a little unnerved about how Sam was acting in the prison, like he didn’t care or was apathetic. 

- Dream belongs in the prison, but there’s a difference between torture and just locking someone up. Dream is in there because he’s a danger to others, but his stay there doesn’t have to be torture. 

What else could they get him?

Maybe...a jukebox and some music discs? Bad has music discs he could gift him. Maybe music can lift his spirits.

Or perhaps some paintings to lift the spirit of the room.

- Bad examines the growth of the Vines. He’s noticed that the Vines aren’t growing past the border of the Holy Land. 

- Bad speaks with Quackity. He asks about Dream being in prison -- question, would it be too much to ask about improving the living conditions in the prison?

Quackity says maybe they could “improve his living conditions” by building another wall or bullying him. 

- Bad says Quackity should go and visit him. Quackity is planning to. Maybe then they can discuss it. 

Quackity says that now he’s thinking about it...they do have quite a bit of leverage. Maybe he could reconsider it...a plan to provide him with more comfortable living, but any comfortable living comes with a price...people would owe him.

Bad doesn’t like that idea. It sounds manipulative. 

Quackity: “At what point has Dream given you anything? At all? Has he ever helped you? Exactly. So listen to me, okay? What we need to do is get something out of comfortable living. I’m sure he’d love comfortable living, Bad. So that is why we need to go to him and strike him a deal...”

Bad: “What can he give us? He’s imprisoned.”

Quackity: “I know exactly what he can give me.”

- Quackity leaves the call. 

- Bad wasn’t sure if he should’ve told Dream about the Eggpire so he didn’t, because he was worried it would make Dream more sad.

--- From here on, all of this takes place on an alternate server ---

- Ranboo starts off in the panic room, looking at his sign. Today’s the day.

“After today? He’s gonna know who I am. He’s gonna know exactly who I am.”

- Ranboo starts heading over. The construction sign at the hotel site is completely blacked out.

“Dream’s not the one in danger here...so I could get rid of him if I wanted to...I could get rid of him if I wanted to. But then other people couldn’t come back...No, I couldn’t do that.”

- Ranboo goes in through the portal. He comes out into the Nether in an area not within the prison’s Nether chamber. Ranboo comes through and gets teleported to Sam for a moment.

- Sam asks him the questions. Ranboo says this is the first time he’s visited and Sam accepts his answer with no hesitation. He’s talking with a very cheerful tone of voice.

- Ranboo tells him he lives near Techno and Phil, and that he thinks Dream definitely deserves to be locked up. With regards to prior relations, he actually hasn’t spoken to Dream before...

- Ranboo needs the Memory Book with him. He gives it to Sam to inspect. Sam says he can allow it in, but Sam will have to transport it for him.

- As they go through, Sam notices that Ranboo is nervous and reassures him that everything’s fine. He is also always holding a clock in his offhand.

- Ranboo signs the waivers, the first as “Ranboo” and the second with “Ranboo2.”

- They make it to the lava wall and Sam gives Ranboo his Memory Book.

- Dream’s surprised Ranboo didn’t come sooner. They’re best friends, right? Ranboo says they’ve barely spoken. Dream says he’s probably talked to Ranboo more than anyone else on the entire server!

- Dream asks why Ranboo’s acting different? He then realizes. But he’s still glad to see Ranboo. He’s been a good helping hand, after all.

“You did do those things. After Dream told you to do them.”

- Ranboo points out the clock. Dream says he doesn’t really like it.

- Dream asks if Ranboo would like to see what he’s been writing, and hands him a book labelled

Do not read.

- Ranboo looks through the chest. Not only is the chest completely filled with books that weren’t there earlier, but every single one of them is labelled “Do not read.” They are all unsigned and unfinished, and there are no anvils in Dream’s cell.

Every single one of them is the same, 17 pages long unlike the 4-page book in Ranboo’s hand. 

“I know what I went through because I’m you!”

“Look, you’ve been helping Dream! The only reason you haven’t been talking to me recently is because you can’t picture what he sounds like...he would tell you thinks to do, you were like his little...servant!”

- Ranboo asks how it’s possible that he could help Dream so much and not remember any of it. 

“You do! You do because I’m you.”

 “I’m...I’m not even real.”

Dream disappears. The screen goes black. The white smile appears without the crown. The crown flashes in code:

“Not free yet.”

---

Upcoming Events:

- The next Tales From the SMP episode

- Tommy’s next visit with Dream

- Bad wants to visit Dream again in the future

- Tubbo’s possible visit with Dream

- Quackity’s possible visit with Dream

- Puffy’s visit with Dream

- Ponk’s visit with Dream

- Punz’s visit with Dream

- Jack Manifold’s visit with Dream

- The Eggpire possibly speaking with Technoblade

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S5 Ep 18: A Series of Ecological Disasters

Booting up ye old Yugioh, booting up a new aesthetic playlist to type to. (today’s playlist is webcore, which would feel like such a damn fake aesthetic, if it weren’t that every single one of these -core aesthetics are pretty damn fake and everyone knows it.)

Anyway, it’s been so long that, I’ll be honest, I thought I booted up the wrong episode:

I usually skip the anime intro, but I try to watch it once each arc, cuz the intros change, and this arc was like “screw it, here’s all the other villains, just pretend this arc isn’t happening.” They had Pegasus, they had Marik, they have Bakura (who is kind of in this shot as well, you can see him phasing in there.) And like...I guess they’re hiding the villain of this arc or something because that was it. Alexander the Great got just nixed from this villain list and that’s a shame.

Just a real weird choice, but since apparently this arc didn’t air in Japan they probably had to outsource this anime intro and whatever studio in charge of it just cobbled together stuff from every other season and then a couple of shots of capsule stuff.

Speaking of capsule stuff: get a load of how many freakin lines the animators have to deal with every time they draw Grandpa.

Bro saw this and was like “oh yeah, this is a Shonen Jump” and yeah. The hair does give those vibes. We got a good look at what Vegeta would look like if he really let himself go.

(read more under the cut)

Sorry, my playlist started playing a song where every single line of the song is “Adrien Brody” and it took me like a few minutes to realize I was listening to “Brodyquest” completely seriously.

Damn it, webcore, don’t betray me like this.

Anyway, this arc does something super surprising: Yugi actually hugs somebody and doesn’t look like he’s going to pass out standing up.

It is pretty fitting that the good Yugi hug would go to Grandpa.

And, as night falls, Joey Wheeler has gotten hungry, and there is nothing to eat but his new best friend and spirit animal, baby dragon. Unfortunately he shares life points with the dragon, and I think if you eat it that just instakills you.

And directly underneath him--since this world is like 100 feet wide and things just conveniently happen--Tea has told everyone that they needed to stop worrying about Joey. Which is a lot coming from Tea, because her worrying about Yugi/Yami getting hurt is most of what occupies her headspace in this series.

But even Tea was like, screw Joey, I guess.

Who kinda just falls directly into them upside down, and shows us what Joey’s hair looks like when it’s sticking straight up.

For reals, admire how long Joey Wheeler’s hair is. If Tea were upside down, she would have the same length of hair.

Also speaking of Vegeta, I am low key concerned that Joey has what appears to be a significant amount of male pattern balding going on for a teenager.

Apparently getting set on fire many, many times did have an effect on Joey, and this massive pompadour he wears is a combover. Poor baby.

Holy crap, if this is what card stress and getting killed multiple times did to Joey Wheeler, can you imagine what’s going on under Seto’s bangs? That’s probably why his bangs ride so low, Seto likely wears a freakin toupee.

Guys, Joey’s gonna lose his hair at 25 at this rate. Those locks just aren’t long for this world. Poor baby.

After Joey rejoins the party, he immediately eats all of their food. Not sure why they can’t just have Baby Dragon eat like...whatever Baby Dragon naturally eats...and then transform that into shared Joey Wheeler life points, but it’s not clear exactly how much of a life-connection they have with their Yugioh monsters. Not like it matters because Joey Wheeler is default starving all the time anyway.

Tristan has decided we should start laying blame, I guess because Duke Devlin isn’t here anymore to be the local kill joy. This doesn’t seem to be important at any point, and most of the characters are just ignoring Tristan because like...once you’re in the haunted game in a haunted tomb in a random part of India--it’s kind of moot to argue about who’s fault that is, youknow?

Joey reminds us that he found this quest item in a treasure chest under a secret waterfall. No one says “that was convenient that you landed there after getting chased through a ravine by man-eating birds after you got your dragon from when you got your crotch injury from getting spliced by that tree.”

Which is when Tea says “Wait! We haven’t had a plot thing happen in like 4 seconds! Wait!”

Hey what degree of “I don’t trust nature” do you have to be to assume that all the flowers are trying to eat you?

Like what level of anxiety is Tea where she not only is like “pretty sure the flowers are going to destroy us?” but also...she’s correct? Like she’s not wrong.

They set the dog flowers on fire, but unlike the Jungle Book this doesn’t solve any problems (which apparently got taken off the Disney+ kid’s menu so...yet again, I make a Disney reference in these recaps that future generations will not understand because so much of the Disney library has been banned from the vault. It’s almost like Disney should let go of that copyright they held on for like a hundred years, because what they’re holding on to is only going to get more racist with time. But nah. Gotta hold on with their greedy mickey mouse gloves.)

So instead of using fire, Tristan used his monster to electrocute the air (?) and blind the dogs. Wisely, the animators quickly jumped to this other scene so we wouldn’t have to analyze why it’s suddenly daytime or why that plan would even work.

Joey and Tristan do a lot of buddy buddy stuff this arc. Usually we see a lot of Joey and Yugi’s bottomless friendship, but we don’t get this much Tristan/Joey love. So shippers rejoice, these two seem to have several coordinated dances and songs...and I’d say that teens don’t typically do that, but I went to summer camp, there are situational places where teens will sing the entire vacation and make coordinated dances.

Weirdly, since Joey and Tristan share so much time together, this also means Tea and Yugi actually sit next to eachother for a lot of this arc, almost as if they were a couple. Mind you, they’re chaperoned closely by Grandpa, but youknow...that’s a different energy than I’m used to seeing.

That and like, they can’t have Tea dance with them because last time she did a dance, it was like a DDR fight and she elbowed some guy like it was a fisticuffs situation. Like there was some sort of dance war going on behind the scenes of Yugioh’s card war, and it came up once and I guess Tea resolved it and the dance fights haven’t come back since.

Overall, if they did a dance with Tea, they would get kneed in the face, so that’s probably why they insist on doing cancans as a duet and not a trio.

After Joey and Tristan freak out over having no food, Tea decides to just start eating in front of them.

and like...didn’t Joey eat that food yesterday? Like last night? The short term memory loss on all these fools.

Immediately after this we realize something weird in the water. That’s right, it’s a massive head.

Yugi seems to have forgotten they lit this turtle on fire and electrocuted the entire sky the night before. Not that it mattered.

There were like...nesting birds on those trees on that island. What the hell? They just killed so MANY of those man-eating dogs that are flowers.

Seriously are land turtles allowed to just...dive underwater for long periods of time? How does that ecosystem even work? It’s like...That’s wild to think about.

Inside the temple, they have to fight a genie or something.

In case you were wondering, the only reason Tea and Grandpa got iced is because they were the closest to the door. The two who were actually standing out of harms way were the closest to harm the whole time.

Bro tells me this is also what will happen to you if you are in the front or the back of the party while playing Cthulu D&D

Anyway, Pharaoh decides to disclose that his big problem of feeling guilty all the time and taking all the blame, which he did all of last season...is still a huge problem he will probably never tackle.

Straight up, don’t be fooled by my caps, everyone else has completely forgotten about Alex, who is still running around that temple up there. They haven’t even asked Grandpa “hey is this your protege? Is this your mentee you never told us about?” Nah. They already forgot. 

How wild is it that Pharaoh thinks this is all his fault when he was the only one who was like “YUGI IT’S A TRAP DON’T GO IN THE- well...OK I guess we’re doing this, fine.” Is he upset he didn’t take control from Yugi and walk back to the plane? Because that’s the only way he could even be partially responsible, He was the only guy who was like “I see the end from the beginning on this y’all, and it’s the massive pyramid in India.”

Speaking of forgetting, they came across this language Pharaoh has decided to have nothing to do with.

This was actually a riddle and it was like...it was a riddle, sure, I guess.

And so Joey Wheeler does not hallucinate his dead wife from a previous incarnation and get on the back of his Baby Dragon to sail away into the sunset. Instead they’re just gonna walk.

Too bad Tea’s orb covered in wings only seems to hover a bit. Every single wing on that weird orb is absolutely useless.

And then Pharaoh’s pokemon is just a fire--which is hard to sit on--and Celtic Guardian...who would allow it, sure, but probably doesn’t fly (I think. He might fly)

And then Tristan’s Pokemon kinda seems like if you sit on it, you will get electrocuted. It can probably fly though. It’s very round. Seems like an anime thing that the more round your mascot character is, the more likely it can at least bounce a good distance.

So, next time, I’m just going to assume that we are going to do even more camping. And youknow, if you told me exactly HOW MUCH CAMPING was in this card game show with super future tech, I would not have believed you. But like...a lot of this series is set in the woods right? Like a lot a lot? I have grown to appreciate the woods.

Anyway, as always, if you just got here, this is a link to read these in chrono order:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

See you next time!

[i-dont-want-your-hysteria]

Highlights from the “All I’ve Got Is a Photograph” live stream with Phil, Joe, and Ross

DISCLAIMER: towards the end in the last half hour, my computer was lagging a lot, so I probably missed up to a solid five minutes in total. That being said, some things on here may or may not be clarified.

Joe is VERY TAN HOLY SHIT it is very attractive

Phil getting Mike Wazowskied by the chat when he first came on

all the implications that Joe is not in Dublin right now

“My name is Ross Halfin and I’ve been photographing Def Leppard for about... oh, five minutes?”

people cutting out, leaving an awkward silence, and Joe giving a solid English “Wot?”

the way Joe pronounces the word “mosquitos”

in Holland 1984 Joe left his window open and when he got home there were mosquitos all over the fucking ceiling, so he had to vacuum them off and put the trash bag like 4 blocks away so they wouldn’t come back

Joe saying that Heinz baked beans are an “English delicacy”

^^Furthermore, saying he’s eaten cold baked beans sandwiches on butter bread before

literally all three of them PLUS THE GUY WHO WORKS FOR THE VAULT seeing a photo from Euphoria era and collectively agreeing it’s from the Slang tour and no one corrected them

^^meanwhile everyone in the chat is ripping their hair out saying “IT’S EUPHORIA OMFG”

As per the infamous story where their plane dropped 2000ft in 3 seconds: there was an ashtray floating right in front of Sav, and when the plane got back to normal, it smacked him in the face

^^Joe and Phil laughing a lot at this

Joe saying he loves the bathtub photos of himself: “the shot of me in the bath has always been one of my favorites because it’s just so goofy and it sums up my personality”

Ross’s small black fluffy dog on the couch in the background

Ross saying the bathtub photos had a purpose because Joe was “hunk of the month or something”

^^ Joe laughing at that

I have yet to find out if this is true but- Joe said Slash is Bowie’s godson...??

Joe further regretting his early 90s outfits

Joe being embarrassed by this photo:

^^ (while trying not to look embarrassed) “there’s not a lot you could say about it”

^^^ furthermore explaining he was only doing that because Rik Mayall from The Young Ones was in the pit at the foot of the stage doing that at him during a rehearsal, so Joe did it back to him “sadly, Ross just so happened to be there and captured it”

Ross being the mom friend, trying to get them to behave and pay attention in order to take photos

Rick being the worst one to pay attention during photoshoots

Sav taking the longest to get dressed before a photoshoot

Phil talking about how his pants ripped onstage on the Hysteria tour and “stuff” was “hanging out”

me being once again reminded that that iconic photo of all of them in their Union Jack booty shorts and tank tops was taken less than hour away from me ;-; (not important but anyway)

Joe saying he would wear the Union Jack shorts again next year

Ross getting overly excited whenever he remembered when/where/why something was taken

Joe’s memory still being super accurate and oddly specific

Joe has one of Phil’s old guitar straps and it’s rusted from sweat, plus it’s in a drawer in his studio in Dublin

Joe retelling the story of how they met Brian May:

“hi boys, I’m Brian from Queen :D” Joe, right into the camera: NO SHITE, M8

Bri in ‘83: *plays the opening riff to photograph* Joe, internally, watching him from afar: *level up* :o

Joe- “I will forever go down in pub quiz history as the first person to sing with Queen after Fred died”

Joe eating “a bunch of greasy vegetarian food” then traveling with Robert Plant on his private plane, then “going through the most horrendous turbulence, then about ten minutes before we landed, I just BARFED all over the place”

^^Robert laughing because Joe puked everywhere and all over himself

^^Robert giving Joe one of his shirts to wear instead of the barfy one

^^It’s a black long sleeved illuminati shirt

^^Joe still has it

Joe said he recently had a knee replacement and will “probably have to get the other one done soon”

^^He blames his constant air splits for his knees being fucked up now

Joe reenacting neutral photoshoot poses and staring right into your soul through his camera

Ross confirming the “pissing into the sink” story from ‘79

Joe saying they can’t afford Ross anymore and that he needs to lower his prices and Ross cackling at this

Phil recalling a photoshoot where a seagull shat on his head and he had to go wash it off

^^Joe absolutely fucking LOSING IT it at this. I’ve never seen him laugh so hard I swear he was almost CRYING with laughter it was so adorable

Joe acknowledging how tan he looks because “I’ve been spending a lot of time in the sun these past few months- as you can tell”

^^Joe brushing his hair back so you could see his tan face

Joe saying they (the band) were “fortunate enough to avoid the virus”

Joe stole the “don’t forget us and we won’t forget you” line from (big surprise) Ian Hunter

we ALMOST got through this hour and a half live stream WITHOUT Joe advertising Mott the Hoople we were SO CLOSE GUYS

Joe blowing a kiss at the end of it

Phil thanking the fans UwU

Joe waving goodbye as the Vault closed and sounding sad when he said “cheers, see ya”

ENORMOUS thank you to @ballistic-lipstick-dream-machine​ for paying for a ticket and letting me watch it in real time even tho she couldn’t ilysm ;-;

[luminouspoes]

For the ♛ prompts: 43 and/or 48, pretty please? 😊

prompt: “you’re lucky you’re cute”

warnings: fluff...lots and lots of fluff. no pronouns used for reader.

read on ao3 | drabble list

“There’s one thing I hate more than the First Order,” Poe murmurs as you both take in the scene before you: golden floors and walls, people dressed in gaudy outfits that you can’t begin to imagine how they got into, and the sound of slot machines running wild. “Places like this.”

You’re keen to agree as you tug self-consciously at your own outfit. It was a deep red suit and was the least flashy thing you could find to wear. It hugs you nicely, but you’d forgone the tie or ascot that was supposed to go with it and keep the top few buttons undone so you can breathe. 

Meanwhile, beside you, Poe looks - well, not to borrow a page from Maz’s book, but he looks dashing. He’d dragged out the tux he’d worn to that party he’d crashed with Finn and Suralinda back while you were on Ryloth with the others. He looks good in it, but it’s also surreal to see him in something so fancy. You’ve known him for years, and seeing him out of a flight suit or his favored tunic and leather jackets is a mind-trip.

It’s not a bad different though, no....not at all -

You snap your gaze away from him, cheeks warm. It was an annoying different though. “I don’t like this any more than you do, but...all we gotta do is find the central terminal here, let me do my thing, and then we’re out.” You whisper back to him; another reason for your choice of outfit was the set of slicing tools you needed to hide. You couldn’t take BB-8 on the mission with you, he stood out too much and was too easily recognizable, but you weren’t one of the Resistance’s best hackers for nothing.

“Right,” Poe mutters, splaying his hand on the small of your back as you move through the crowd, “In and out.”

You try to focus on the fountain of champagne you pass, or the dazzling chandeliers or even the catchy song that the live band is playing, but instead all you can focus on is the warmth seeping in through the fabric of your suit as Poe continues to guide you along, not dropping his hand from your back.

It’s your own fault really. The only identification you and Connix had time to whip up for the mission was that of a married couple, so the closeness was necessary. It wasn’t unusual for the two of you to lack personal space - Poe was a generally affectionate guy, and you enjoyed the attention - but there was something different about this. You were both away from the Resistance, looking like neither of you usually did, hiding behind guises that were married.

“Over there,” Poe’s voice is barely above a whisper, breath fanning along the shell of your ear as he leans in to avoid being heard by anyone. You follow his line of sight and see a doorway just behind where the live band is playing. It isn’t guarded, but it’s going to be difficult to get in without being spotted by anyone - which would raise some questions.

Your gaze slides back over to Poe, eyes raking over his suit, and you remember your cover story. Or maybe it wouldn’t. You offer him your hand with a flourish, “Dance with me, love.”

Poe’s brow creases in confusion, so you shoot him a go with it expression, and he slowly takes your hand. You lead him to the dance floor, just in front of the stage the band is standing on, and turn to face him expectantly. When he doesn’t immediately move, you lean in and whisper, “You do know how to dance, right?”

He almost looks affronted, “Yes, I know how to dance, but -” he cuts himself off, clearing his throat as he finally settles his hands on your waist. He won’t meet your eyes, which is problematic for your plan, but you swear you see his cheeks darken. Maybe it’s a trick of the light? “What is it that you’re thinking of because you’ve got that look on your face.”

You lean back in mock offense, “What look?”

His eyes finally meets yours and oh the way they make you melt: there’s so much softness in the way he’s regarding you, a light twinkling in those dark eyes that reminds you of starlight. “Like you’re about to drag me into trouble.”

“I do not drag you into trouble,” you protest as Poe finally relaxes a little and you begin to more than just sway to the music as the band revs up the tune. Within seconds, you’re circling each other, holding on by your fingertips, never breaking your gaze, “If anything, you drag me into trouble. It’s practically your thing. I don’t engage unless I’m provoked, y’know.”

You both step back into each other’s gravity. Poe’s eyelids are lowered as you stare up at him, chin up as you silently challenge him to argue the fact. “You’re lucky you’re cute,” he tells you with a laugh. Your jaw goes slack but before you can say anything more, he’s twirling you away from him in time to the music.

When he pulls you back in, you’re not quite ready for it and you stumble into his chest. He catches you gently, one hand on your waist, the other on your shoulder. Maybe it’s because none of this feels real, but you fix him with a smirk, “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because you and I both know that’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told.” 

“Are you saying I’m full of it?” You retort, smiling.

Poe shakes his head, looking heavenward. “What’re you thinking?”

You quickly relay your plan to Poe, chewing nervously on your bottom lip while he takes it in. After a long pause, he nods once, “Alright. If you’re sure about this.”

“I am,” you say, and something burns in the starlight in his eyes.

A few minutes later, the two of you are stumbling through the crowd, laughing and unable to keep each other’s hands off each other. His hand slips inside your jacket, pulling you flush as you walk back towards the door you need, and you begin to question if this really was a good idea because you’re finding it really hard to breathe and your heart feels like it might burst out of your chest -

And then you’re out of view of the dance floor and Poe draws back immediately, leaving you feeling bereft. He looks breathless, but motions at the hallway in an ‘after you’ gesture. You nod shakily, heading off in the direction you assume the control terminal will be. Poe’s one step behind you the entire time, looking behind you every few seconds to make sure no one’s followed you.

The control room is at the end of the hall and the door’s locked. You whip out your set of tools from inside your coat and begin to work on fixing that. It’s so easy you don’t have to think about what you’re doing, muscle memory quickly taking over, and you can’t help but think back to what it was like to have Poe that close, to have been flirting easily with him on the dance floor…

The door slides open with a shick but you don’t put your tools away; you’ll need them to retrieve the data the Resistance needs. You step inside and are surprised to find the room empty. “One locked door is all these guys keep on this stuff?” Poe asks, entering behind you. “With all the credits they’re sitting on?”

You’re already set up at one of the terminals, searching for the records you need. “They probably weren’t expecting their records to get broken into, Poe. Most of their efforts would be centered on a vault...got it!” You quickly transfer the data into a chip and show it to Poe with a flourish, grinning widely. “What’d I say? In and out.”

Poe hums in acknowledgment, offering his hand for you to take. “We’re not out of the woods yet, sweetheart. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” 

“Sweetheart?” You question as he leads you out of the room. He throws you a smile over his shoulder and counters with, “‘Love?’”

You start to reply but you crash into Poe’s back before you can, since he stops abruptly and you hear him mutter, “Dammit.” You can barely get a look around him to catch a glimpse at the approaching guard before he’s pushing you the opposite way, past the records room and further down into the twisting hallway.

Which, of course, leads to a dead end.

“Great,” you say, throwing your hands up. “Any other ideas?”

Poe looks around, but there aren’t any rooms around for you to hide inside. Then he goes still and slowly turns on his heel to face you, expression apologetic. “Just one, but you’re not gonna like it.”

You narrow your eyes, “What are you - oh,” you choke out when he very pointedly looks at your lips. You fix your mouth wordlessly a few times, but the growing noise of the guard’s footsteps snaps you out of your trance, “Do it.”

He crosses to you quickly, but as he moves into your space, Poe hesitates a little. Then, he’s cupping your jaw with one hand and the other is on your hip pulling you close, and his mouth meets yours. 

You slide a hand around his neck, pulling him down closer to you. He guides you backward til your back presses against a wall, and he draws your bottom lip into his mouth. You respond by tugging lightly on his curls, which draws out a low hum from him that sends goosebumps along your arms. He squeezes your hip, fingertips meeting bare skin from where your button-up had ridden up from stretching up to meet him, as he aligns your bodies better together -

“Hey! This corridor’s off-limits, find somewhere else to do that.”

You break apart, but Poe doesn’t step back from you as he twists to nod at the guard, “Sorry, man. We’ll just finish this up back on our ship. C’mon, sweetheart.” His voice is rough as he proffers you his hand. You take it, managing to fix the guard with what you hope is an apologetic smile.

As you dart around the corner, you hear the guard mutter something about lovebirds, but you do your best to ignore it, even though all you can focus on is how seconds ago, you were kissing your best friend - and how real it felt.

Without meeting his gaze, you say, “You were wrong, by the way. I did like it.”