#and now I’m just working to recapture that glory | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

de-profundis-ad-astra · 4 years

Text

Let’s Get Something Straight

Pairing || William Miller x Reader Rating || E (18+ ONLY) Warnings || Sex in the great outdoors, sex on Will’s car Word Count || 4.1k shut up Prompt || Anonymous Request: Will and the reader have a fight that ends with them having rough makeup sex. Taglist || @firefeatherx @goldenhour-goldenboy @mandoplease @mylifeliterally @phoenixhalliwell @havenforafrazzledmind @living-reminder @beatriz-silva-00 @pascalz @worldominatorx @givemethatgold @agirllovespancakes @lilacyennefer @dignityneeded @veuliee @briskywalker @the-bird-suit @mapache-lector @skylyknightly (let me know if you want to be added/removed!)

You decided a long time ago that the worst thing about text messages is that they line up on your locked phone screen and you end up reading them without even wanting to.

What was the name of your contact in Germany?

Lost the password to the bus station locker in Boulder. Help?

Are you still alive?

William Miller has the best memory out of any person you’ve ever met. There’s no way he lost the name of your contact or, god forbid, forgot a four number combination for a locker when that man keeps track of every damn thing in his life. He’s just trying to get a response out of you.

However, there was something even worse. When the text messages….

Stop.

The emptiness of your phone screen is agony, but you can’t seem to stop checking it. After about a month of this, you’re sitting, feeling bruised, at the window of a coffee shop. Your phone is face down beside your mug and your laptop. On the other side of the window, a fall rain shower sweeps down the small town street. it wets down the leaves on the sidewalk and fills the shop with the crisp scent of wet pavement every time a patron bustles in or out.

You respond to Will’s requests for help. Just because things hadn’t worked out between you doesn’t mean you had to become an asshole. You had gotten through a month on your own; you were doing well without him.

As well as could be expected.

You’d run and gunned, fought, and made love with the adamant, selfless, hedonistic man who was William Miller for a year and a half. It had been a time of soaring, you realize, and golden, flying time full of freedom to touch, snuggle, fight, endure. You hadn’t fully realized this until it all went south–when a mission had gone wrong and Ben had let it slip that William had tried to do it on his own and that was the top of those other three botched missions and the time Will said:

No, not gonna go back through that. It’s better to move on.

Move on? How delusional are you?

You can’t escape the furious pain in Will’s eyes when you left, after he tried to kiss you like that would change your mind. Despite the ugliness of the past year, Will, in all his tall, deadly, blunt, powerful glory, made parts of you hum with contentment and warmth–something you still don’t now how you’ll survive without.

You gulp down some coffee to force back tears. You’ll survive, anyway.

And that’s when you see his car roll right past the window.

You choke, eyes fastening on the passengers–it’s them. Will driving, Ben riding. You shrink down as if you can hide behind your mug.

Oh no. Your own car is parked right in front of the shop. The Millers don’t miss a thing, but you desperately hope this one time–

Ben’s head swivels, his eyes locked onto your truck. Will notices and cranes his head back to stare at your truck, too.

Then they’re gone, and you’re sitting there, heart racing.

Well, shit.

–

“Feel like I’m in freaking high school again! Ooh, better take a different way to class so I don’t pass his fucking locker!”

Your falsetto fills the cabin of your truck as you navigate the town’s main drag. You’re talking to yourself.

Again.

“Well is the whole country going to be a high school now?” you continue. “Or… no, I’ll go be all mature and woman-power-ish, and I’ll just stick it out and pretend they’re not here–SURE, NO PROBLEM, LET ME JUST WALTZ AROUND LIKE I’M NOT A FUCKING MESS… godDAMMIT!”

And now you’re crying because dammit, you fucking miss William Miller and his fucking car and his fucking smile and the way his hair sticks up in back in the morning and the look he gets when he knows you’re bullshitting him and the way he’s never cold and the way he gloats when he makes you scream in pleasure, like he just invented the fucking wheel.

You bounce and splash through a few blocks of neighborhood, glaring furiously. The sun is cutting through masses of gold leaves, turning the streets into shiny, steaming lanes out of a storybook, and you fucking hate it.

And then, in your rear view mirror, you see the flash of a grille and the gleam of black paint. William’s turns onto the street behind you.

There’s only one person riding in it now.

A barbed-wire spasm of pain draws a gasp from your lips. “Oh fuck, that’s it. That is it.”

And then your foot stomps on the accelerator and you are getting out of town; you’re not coming back. You can’t handle this, and if he’s gonna follow you, screw him; you’re not gonna stop. The two-lane country road you’re on goes somewhere you don’t know, but you haul down it anyway, jaw mulishly set as you blow through stop sign after stop sign.

Will doesn’t stop, either.

You’ve learned several reasons why the boys call him Ironhead. This one takes the cake.

He follows you. And keeps following you. Soon, you’ve been going about three miles, and you’re starting to get more worried than angry. What if he’s off his rocker?

Suddenly, he starts to fade back. You let off the accelerator a bit as he fades back more… and then he fades so quickly, he has to be stopping.

He pulls over to the side of the road: I’m done.

Good! You keep going, William shrinking into the sunset…

… for about a hundred feet.

You curse and slam on the brakes. You wrench your truck into park and sit for a moment, gasping.

“What the hell?” you breathe. When he pulled over, you had felt pain worse than anything you felt yet.

You open your door, and cool air full of fields and trees and rain washes over you. The setting sun lays down a warm blanket as you slam the door shut behind you. You walk to the tailgate of your truck and stare down the road.

The car slowly returns to the road and crawls toward you, lurching over potholes. Your eyes devour Will’s silhouette as his car comes to a stop and falls silent about fifteen feet away. The door screeches open, and his workboots hit the pavement.

He looks pissed.

Well, you’re pissed, too. You wipe your eyes and meet him halfway, not a step more, not a step less. It’s like charging a lion. You cross your arms. It feels as if you’re seeing him for the first time all over again–it’s overwhelming how good he looks-stubble, tired eyes and all.

“Cryin’ over me, sweetheart?” he asks, feet wide, chin up.

Just the sound of his rough baritone makes you melt, but you fight it. “Following me like a stalker?” you retort.

He gives you the bullshit look and closes in a step. The setting sun catches half his face, and the light pools in his gold-brown right eye as he raises his eyebrows. “You’ve got nothing, sweetheart.”

You shove your face toward his. “Neither do you, buster.”

The two of you stare at each other, and the temperature between you shoots up. Will’s generous lips part and he starts to angle his head-

You recoil. “How many girls have you slept with since I left?”

His eyes go cold, his expression ugly. “I’ll tell you if you tell me how many guys have gotten into your pants.”

“Fuck you! Nobody’s gotten anything from me, you bastard!”

“Well the last chick I touched was you, you bitch!”

And then you’re just glaring at each other.

“Why did you lie to me about those missions?” you demand.

“I didn’t lie exact-”

“It’s called lying by omission, Will! Maybe if you’d-”

And then he’s in your face again, teeth bared. “I wanted to keep you safe, dammit, but I’ve realized I can’t–fucking helli–I realized it, but you were too busy packing up and not listening!”

You blink at him. “Say that again?”

He closes his eyes and sighs, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “I get it, okay? I get it. And really, I don’t want to have a girl who’s just something I need to protect; I want one who kicks ass. Who I can still protect. A little.”

Unconvinced, you squint at him.

“Come back with me.” He blurts it quickly, only briefly meeting your eyes.

There are crickets singing in the long grass. The sun is halfway beneath the horizon. Most of you is screaming yes and snuggling into his strong chest. A fraction waits and doubts.

“I’m not asking again,” he says more softly, and he meets your gaze, straightening his shoulders. “I’m not gonna beg.”

“You shouldn’t have to.” The words exit your mouth, and with them goes the cold tightness that’s been clutching your chest for a month. Loose warmth fills you up instead. “You don’t have to.” You step into the tall sturdiness of him, tucking your head into his shoulder. His powerful arms encircle you tightly and he tucks his face into your neck, a tremor running through him.

You stand like that for a long time, breathing against each other, squeezing tighter and tighter and tighter. The sun slips behind the horizon, leaving a hollow sky dotted with orange clouds. You can hear traffic on bigger roads, but it’s all far, far, far away.

Soon, you can’t breathe, he’s squeezing so tightly. Your lips start to smile without your permission. “God, you’re such a-“

He pulls back. His mouth crashes into yours and it feels so soft-wet-familiar-hot-delicious, your knees give a little spasm before giving out. You quickly grab him around the neck and hang on, overwhelmed by how deeply you missed this. If his urgency is any indication, Will missed it just as much. He buries his fingers in your hair, pressing you closer as he slants his mouth over yours, first one way and then the other, filling you with his taste–taste that floods you with wet heat all the way to the core.

He breaks away, and you moan a protest, trying to recapture him, but his breath fans over your face. “Hey.” His voice is gruff. You can barely open your eyes, but when you do, you stiffen.

This is an expression you’ve never seen before. Eyes narrowed, jaw clenched, nostrils flared … somehow he looks ravenous and vulnerable at the same time. And somehow, it makes you want to flee and pounce all at once. “W-Will-“

He takes your wrist and pulls you toward his car. You follow him through the deepening blue, the crunching of your boots almost too loud in the dusky hush. He pulls you around, and the backs of your legs hit his car. His big hands fall to your hips, massaging as he grinds into you, breathing faster. He’s hooked his thumbs into the side belt loops and he’s tugging down.

You gape up at him. “Will–wait, Will, you can’t –“

He presses his forehead to yours and you almost lose your balance; only his grip on your hips keeps you upright. His nose brushes yours, smooth and warm. “You tell me flat-out no and we’ll do this somewhere else,” he growls. “Otherwise, we are going to get something straight, right here, right now. Got it?”

“… Yeah? …Wait. Get what straight?”

“And there’s why I’m doing this.” He rises, and, staring you in the eyes, unbuckles your belt.

You have never, ever been naked outside a bathroom or bedroom. You grab his wrists, trying not to fall back onto the car’s hood. “Will–W-Will –“

“The deal is you tell me no, remember?” His hands keep moving despite your grip on his wrists. The rasp of your zipper coming down is loud in the wide silence, and you squeak when he twists free of your grip. He slides his hands in between your jeans and panties, his fingers digging into your ass as he pushes your pants down around your thighs.

“Oh, I missed this.” He pins you to his chest with one arm while his other snakes down over your ass and burrows between your legs from behind. You squirm as his fingers stroke up and down your pussy, your hands fisted in his red and black flannel. Making a rough sound deep in his throat, he presses one finger in deeper than the others and opens you through your panties. You bury your face in his shirt now, overcome by embarrassment and a roaring tsunami of please yes!

He withdraws, and you peek out as his chest expands. His eyes are closed and he’s pressing his fingers to his nose, breathing deeply. He opens his eyes, and your lips part when you see the quicksilver gleam of liquid over his lower lashes.

And then he’s moving fast. You shiver as he rips off his flannel and spreads it on the car’s hood behind you. Then, clad in a t-shirt, he pushes your jeans to your ankles and lifts you onto his flannel. He pulls off his t-shirt and now you’re almost crying; the familiar planes of his chest unravel all the barriers you’d built the last month to remain upright.

He grabs your shirt, and, frightened, you clamp your arms to your sides. Unstoppable, he slides his hands up your back and unhooks your bra instead.

His hands are splayed over your back…

… now forcing themselves under your arms…

… under your bra –

You keen and arch. He grins like he always does when your breasts are in his hands, and squeezes. You melt backward, knees falling open. The car creaks as he pulls you to the edge and settles into the cradle of your hips, wriggling to press flush against your core. You shudder when you feel how hard he is. “That’s better,” he murmurs. And then he makes rings with his thumbs and forefingers, tightly frames your nipples with them, and nuzzles into your breasts.

You toss your head back, nails digging into his shoulders. “Oh god–oh g-g-god Will!”

He bites and tongues your nipples slowly through your shirt and bra, so the damp heat of his mouth soaks through to your prickling skin. You squeeze your eyes shut, face burning. And then, with one deft movement, he’s got your shirt and bra over your head. You gasp as he yanks to loosen your hands - and then both your shirt and bra are flying off to join his shirt.

“Will! Will, no-Will!” You start to sit up, trying to track your clothing, but the cool air on your bare back frightens you into lying right back down. The feeling of the open on your skin is terrifying. It’s not just air; it’s distances; it’s the world. You cover your chest with a curse, glaring up at Will, who looms against the fiery clouds wearing a smirk.

“Was that an official no?” he asks, gyrating his hips the tiniest bit.

You groan at the sensation. “Nnn-no, no, but Will, what if someone comes?”

He hums deep in his chest. “Well I think two people might be–”

“No!” Irritated, you shove with your legs, pushing him back a step so you can bend your knees and press them together. “You know what I mean.”

He stands where you shoved him and lifts his hands in surrender. “They’ll see us lying on a car. Y’know,” he adds, belt clinking as he undoes it, “they’d see less of you if I’m on top of you.”

You don’t open your legs and keep glaring. The sky is so big. What if some pervy farmer is watching from that copse over there? Teens out on a romp? Your teeth start to chatter.

Will drops his pants to reveal his straining boxers. He steps up to your fused knees and leans against your shins, hands flanking your hips. He takes in the sight of your naked body lying on the hood of his car and curses through clenched teeth before taking a deep, steadying breath. “You’d feel better if you’d let me in, sweetheart. Let me show you.”

He runs his hands –they are so, so warm- up your shins, over your knees, down the backs of your thighs. His fingers hook into the flesh on either side of your pussy and pull it wide open so your panties cling to the sensitive skin. You gasp, squeezing your legs tighter together.

It does nothing.

He grins wolfishly and his fingers slither into your pussy, skin to skin. You jump with a bleat, fingers digging into your upper arms. His fingers delve deep, all the way to your opening, where they swirl in the thick wetness. His breath hisses through his teeth. “So fucking wet.” Your toes curl as he gently swipes upward to your clit.

Abruptly, he whips his fingers hard over your entire pussy, forcing it open with every pass. Your entire body goes taut and you moan through clenched teeth as the sensuous heat in your belly skyrockets. He grinds his finger down on your clit a few times and you throw your head back with a strangled cry. “Will-Will-please!”

He doesn’t stop. You fight to keep your legs together as the fire between them tries to spasm them apart, but it gets harder and harder. And Will knows exactly what’s happening.

“When you come, your legs always open up,” he says breathlessly. “I’ll get you either way. Come on. You let me in now, and I’ll cover you when you lose it.”

With a desperate squeal, you open up, reach up, grab his shoulders, and pull him down. He lets you with a chuckle, planting his left hand by your head to support his weight. “There we go,” he gloats, pulling his hand free of your panties so his boxer-clad erection can nestle into the wet heat of your core. All he can do in the moment is moan as he settles against you

He is so warm. He leans down and kisses you deeply, slowly, while his hips languidly rock into yours. You whimper into his mouth; your clit is sparking and tingling under the sliding ridge of his cock, and you feel frantically hollow.

Will breaks away. His cheeks look darker. He lays his head on your chest and lifts his hips, using both hands to free himself from his boxers. As he pumps his cock a few times with his hand, his stubble bites into your sternum, and he knows it; he lifts his head by dragging his cheek over first one nipple, then the other. You choke, hands white-knuckled on his shoulders.

“So.” He stares you right in the eyes. “We gotta set something … straight … for the future.”

“Huh?”

He breathes through pursed lips for control and slides a hand between you. He fists the crotch of your panties for a second and you freeze, waiting. “From now on,” he says roughly, “whether I make a mistake or you make a mistake-“

He wrenches your panties to the side, and the head of his cock is immediately against your opening. You stiffen, the hollowness inside you yawning unbearably deep.

“Or you’re… pissed or… I’m pissed…” he struggles to continue. A drip of sweat lands on your neck. “No …matter what,” he gasps, “I’m … y-yours.” And he shoves deep into you–stretching and filling your hollowness at last. Both of you cry out at the same time, melting into muffled curses.

Then Will grasps your chin and looks you straight in the eye. “And you’re … mine…”

“Y-y-yours,” you breathe, throat closing up with tears.

His entire aspect loosens. He buries his face in your neck and starts rocking shallowly into you. Your entire body lights up all the way to your fingertips. Sweat blooms all over you, chilling the skin that isn’t sliding against Will’s. You wrap your arms around his neck, wishing you could wrap your legs around his hips, but your jeans keep your ankles trapped beneath him.

Then he slows almost to a stop, and you squirm. Slowly, he pulls almost all the way out. Then –

“Mine.” He slides in deep.

You gasp for breath, holding perfectly still, eyes huge as his breath fills your ear.

He pulls back again, leaving you hollow. He pauses, and you wait, not even breathing –

Any second now…

…How long is he going to-

“Mine.”

You cry out as he thrusts deep again.

… And then pulls back again. Your nails are starting to dig into the soft skin of his back. Then-

“Mine.”

“God, Will!” you wail, arching desperately. And then you wait…

“Mine.”

Your eyes are leaking and you don’t know if you’re sobbing-crying or just struggling for breath-

“Mine.”

You shriek, writhing-

“Mine.”

“Please, please, plea-“

“Mine.”

“WILL!”

And then he picks up the pace a little, his voice a low, low force in your ear. “Mine … mine … mine … mine … mine … you’re mine …”

It’s if he’s pushing the word into you. You tremble around him, trying to open up further, to stretch absolutely wide.

His voice hardens and his thrusts sharpen. “Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine-”

Every time he thrusts… every time he fills you… to the fullest

“Mine-”

When the tip of him penetrates the deepest, that one word floods your ear

“Mine-”

Pulses of electric heat ratchet you tighter each time, until you’re shaking, head thrown back, pinned open–

“Mine-”

With no choice but to accept the humming tide rising between your legs.

“Mine-”

All of this, after so long, feels so GOOD. o

“Mine-”

So GOOD. His voice is just a growl now. Getting faster and louder.

“Oh god!”

“Mine!”

“Please!”

“Mine-mine-”

“W-WILL PLEASE-”

“MINE-MINE-MINE-”

Then he swells and cracks the last barrier between you and the maelstrom –

-and you scream WIIIIILLLLLLLLLL—! clenching down on him and writhing, and it’s the best, oh it’s the BEST—

He grabs your hips, pulls back, and then thrusts so hard it almost knocks the air out of you, penetrating your spasming pussy deeper than he ever has before, which just shoves you further into orgasm.

As you try to scream, he rasps, “M-mine … oh-f-f-f-f-uck!” And then he bites into the thick muscle at the base of your neck and snarls, twitching against your fluttering walls and flooding you with burst after burst of wet heat. He grinds into you, pressing and rubbing all the rawness inside and making you clench as it comes in waves.

It stretches on-

And on-

And on.

You end up gasping the cool, fragrant air together, riding out the last of the storm. And then he rests for a minute, almost all his weight on you. You try to relax even though you can hardly breathe, stroking his hair.

When he lifts up and pulls out, you moan. It aches, but worse than that, you feel empty again. He replaces your panties over your pussy. Then he shakily wraps a tanned arm around your waist and levers the both of you upright with his free arm.

He cups the back of your head and pulls you into his still-heaving chest. You wrap your arms around his waist and nuzzle his flushed, slick skin. You breathe together until your sweat chills, and then he helps you off his car, catching you when your legs almost give out.

You both dress again in peaceful silence, laughing as you try to retrieve his shirt from a bramble bush. By the time you’re dressed, it’s hard to make out his features in the darkness.

You almost ride back into town with him in his car. But he raises his eyebrows incredulously and leads you to your truck, where he opens the door for you and smacks your ass as you get in.

“Follow me back?” he asks.

The smiling warmth in his deep voice almost makes you tackle him. After dinner, you promise yourself.

“Right behind you,” you say.

You see his teeth gleam in the shadows, and then the two of you close the truck door so slowly, it doesn’t latch, and you have to snort and do it again.

#triple frontier #triple frontier fanfiction #william miller #william ironehead miller #william miller x reader #charlie hunnam #charlie hunnam fanfiction #i recall a certain anon inquiring after this fic #if you're out there.... here u go #i hope it feeds you well #this was supposed to post like half an hour ago #but when I checked back it was just gone?#idk #i hate tumblr kjfdslafjd;lkfjds'

97 notes · View notes

real-jaune-isms · 4 years

Text

RWBY Volume 8 Chapter 10 Review/Remix

WHAT the ever loving FUCK was that just now RT?? You give us several great answers and scenes we really wanted to see, and then rip all that joy away in the last 3 minutes!!! I want to sue for emotional damages, but I really can’t be mad cuz it’s very masterful writing on their part. After years of shows doing redemption arcs we finally have it... the bastardization arc~

We open, perhaps to the disappointment of some, on Ironwood staring out the windows of his office at the battlefield and city in turmoil below. He’s being given a situation update on the destruction of the cellblock two episodes back, and he takes the news a little differently than might have been expected (read: worse). Jacques apparently stayed right where he was and let himself be put back into custody, while Qrow avoided much harm by being a bird and ending up in a spot where the rubble wasn’t landing directly on him. Robyn was only slightly lucky, she was under some large debris but doesn’t seem terribly hurt and is actually conscious when Atlas soldiers uncover her and say she’ll be moved to a new cell elsewhere. Qrow isn’t about to be put back in a cage though, and flies right at the soldier who finds him. Behind a conveniently placed piece of wall he turns back and, as I was somewhat praised for phrasing it in a discord chat, he tackled that man as a man. We can assume he knocks out the guy about to apprehend Robyn, and the two make a getaway. Ironwood doesn’t like this news one bit, though he focuses more on recapturing the two huntsmen he had arrested on paranoid treason charges than the actual war criminal he lost an arm catching whose dangerous work on the city of Mantle still hasn’t been undone. Not cool, dude. He yells at the soldiers who had come to report this, and they leave to try and find the jailbirds. He stares out the window again in contemplation and tries to calm down a little before turning on his earpiece to get an update on the status of some thing or another, probably the bomb, when something massive happens.

With a blinding flash and an array of gold and green, Oscar’s staff goes off with whatever he was charging up. It’s as bright and forceful as you’d expect a nuclear bomb to be, and it knocks Winter and the Ace Ops off their feet as they were heading towards Monstra lugging their own bomb. Weiss and Nora see it from Schnee Manor, and it seems to do a real number on the Grimm around Monstra and in the city. Rooster Teeth had to give a flashing lights warning at the start of the episode for those it would adversely affect, and I can totally understand why after the crazy display this gave us. When the light fades and the noise settles, Monstra has been snapped and is fading away to dust, and in that dust cloud we hear and barely see Neopolitan skipping away with the Lamp in hand. What a little punk... Winter gets back on her feet and is quick to ask her squad for their status, she doesn’t want to have lost anyone or suffered serious wounds from whatever the hell they just saw/felt. No one is hurt, though Elm’s ears seem to still be ringing. But Marrow is very distressed, realizing they still hadn’t heard back from Jaune and the others and they may have been killed in that blast. Nobody has anything to say that would appease him, so they stay silent. Vine tries to put a reassuring hand on Elm’s shoulder but she brushes him off. Guess after they got called out by Ren she wants to show even less emotion and sentimentality than before. Ironwood contacts them under the false assumption this was the result of their bomb, and requests they return to HQ for an update on the new problem he wants to deal with. Marrow naturally points out that the destruction wasn’t their doing, and Winter decides that will be news best delivered in person, so they load the bomb back on the airship and take off.

Cutting into the city, we see Watts and Cinder viewing the destruction of their mobile HQ from a distance. Nobody is returning Cinder’s calls but they know Salem will be back so Watts suggests they come up with a plan in the meantime. But Cinder is fully confident that they can still do what they originally intended, that being having her kill Penny and take the Winter Maiden powers after Watts brings the synthezoid to her. But this was a plan made under false assumptions, because apparently she misunderstood the terminology in his message and thought he could puppeteer Penny to go wherever he demands when really he just laid a new prime directive to send her straight to the Vault as we saw two episodes back. Hearing this pisses Cinder off immensely, especially the part about Penny being set to self destruct as soon as the Vault is open since that means the next recipient of the powers will be randomized again and she’ll have lost her chance to yoink them. Watts is too busy grumpily musing to himself about Penny having free will and a spirit that doesn’t want to succumb to his leet hacks to notice Cinder growing more and more enraged, until he turns around and she pulls him in close to yell at him. But Watts is having none of that, he works for Salem not her, and his plans weren’t made to give this flaming whining goth what she wants every single time. He’s just supposed to get the Vault open for Salem, and this is how he’s doing that. This is not the kind of answer Cinder wanted to hear, and she stretches her arm out to shove Watts to the edge of the roof and leave him on the verge of falling over to his demise. He doesn’t seem terribly fazed, calling her bluff and saying her mission was to bring him back and Salem won’t be a bit pleased if he dies. But you know what Salem is not? Here right now to stop Cinder from dealing with this arrogant self righteous prick once and for all. So she fully intends to drop him and then tear up Atlas on a fiery path to the Vault where she can intercept Penny and steal the Winter powers before tearing her to pieces herself and being the triumphant follower getting everything done that Salem really needed. And Watts just... laughs. Chris Sabat must have had a great time in the VO booth for this one, because he gets to have an absolute roast session the likes of which he hasn’t delivered since Majin Vegeta tore that clown Kakarot a new one. Naturally Cinder’s plan would be to brute force her way to victory and get glory for none but herself with her every whim satisfied along the way. Because that’s always her plan. And it always fails. She tried to storm Fria’s hospital room like that and got her ass handed to her by some teenagers and a dying woman before Penny took the powers before she could. She did the same damn thing 2 Volumes ago when she tried to massacre all her enemies under one roof in an alliance with a woman she thought she could outwit, but ended up blindsided by a surprise Maiden reveal and almost died while her outnumbered forces were on the verge of surrendering without her. And did anyone warn her not to do that? YES! WATTS DID!!! WATTS IS ALWAYS RIGHT, YOU FOOL!!! Well, okay, he’s really not. But he’s more clever and meticulous so he saw the flaws her arrogance left her blind to. And then Watts really tears into her by saying she isn’t smart, she isn’t worthy, and she isn’t entitled to what she wants because she’s suffered in the past. The one thing she is is a goddamn migraine. I’m a little mad Tyrian stole the show’s first cuss 4 years back cuz I really would have liked for Watts to cap this off by calling Cinder a bitch. This roasting literally lights a fire under Cinder and she seems ready to snap and kill Watts here and now, but instead she pulls him back onto the roof and stares off blankly into space before her fire fades and she walks off to sit on the ledge of a different side of the building to really think about his harsh words and shed a single tear. It’s a little unclear if she’s just feeling sorry for herself and realizing she’s more of a failure than she wanted to admit, or if she’s just overwhelmed by Watts reminding her of her childhood trauma. Maybe she’s realizing how powerless she’s truly remained all this time after fighting so hard for her own freedom and independence, and crying at the fact that she seems unable to escape that role she hates so much. Whatever the case, it’s real rough for her but I don’t feel like shedding any of my own tears for her sake. She doesn’t seem like she’s gonna change her allegiances so I don’t feel much need to cheer for her, but maybe she’ll reevaluate her strategy and become a force to be reckoned with as a villain because of this. I wouldn’t mind that. We’ll have to wait and see.

Back in the ruins of Monstra, we see Yang Ren and Jaune are all doing alright, and Oscar seems to be as well. Jaune is using his Semblance to help Oscar heal up quicker so that’s good to see too. Yang answers a call and sees Blake anxiously hoping she’ll pick up. The biggest smile comes to her face when she does, and the two halves of the group are ecstatic to hear the other is still alive and well. Neither are quite ready to tell the full tale of what they’ve been up to, but Weiss pulls up a map of the city and lays out a safe route through the subway tunnels that will take OYRJ straight to the mansion so they can actually reunite. Oscar isn’t about to leave Emerald behind though, and we see her knelt in the chaos holding out her hands as if hoping to catch some of the dust that was once her father figure. Yang is vocally against the idea of bringing Emerald with them, but Oscar advocates for her being every bit against Salem as them so the enemy of their enemy should be their friend. Emerald actually doesn’t seem to want to keep hanging around them and says they should just part ways, but Jaune isn’t about to let her walk free without facing any kind of justice for her past crimes. Ren thinks they need to be able to see past their emotional hang ups and consider the value in having her as an ally, and Yang is quick to remind them all that Emerald is part of the reason she lost her arm. Technically that is true, Adam was working with Cinder and if Yang hadn’t been framed as a brutal criminal she would have been around the rest of the team when everything popped off so maybe that first fight would have gone differently. But I do feel like it’s a bit of a stretch. Yang keeps going about why she can’t just forgive and forget when Em had been such a snake in the grass back at Beacon, but that’s not what Oscar is asking of her. He just wants her to try and give the girl a second chance to be better. He gets a little cryptic about how they’ve already gotten help from someone they haven’t had the best track record trusting, and Ren perfectly guesses he means that Oz has reemerged in his mind. This takes the blondes by surprise, and Oscar stands up for the old soul by saying he took the brunt of the beatings and told him how to impede Salem like he did just there. Turns out we’ll be finding out the secret of Ozpin’s cane today: It’s been made into a magical repository for kinetic energy stored over dozens of past lives to be made into a sort of bomb to set off when needed. I don’t know quite enough about physics to describe how exactly that would work, but it seems to make sense that it does. But the blast that took out Monstra used up the majority of what was in there so he can’t rely on it for that kind of attack again. It seems likely that was what Ozpin used against Cinder in the Beacon Vault, but didn’t use very much of it, and again what Oscar used to bust a hole in the bottom of the pit Ironwood shot him into. Oscar finishes making his case that Oz really does want to aid them, and the others seem convinced. What’s worth noting is that all eyes had been on him during this, but Emerald made no attempt to run away or even lower her hands. Guess she might really want to stick around after all... The moment is interrupted by the not so distant sound of a crying baby, and they all run further down the tunnel to find a subway station where the people of Atlas are taking shelter on Ironwood’s orders. Emerald starts to feel the weight of her action and those she used to side with, especially when she sees kids scared and hungry like she was before Cinder found her. They continue past the station on their way to the manor, and Oscar offers some encouragement to Emerald that they need her help in this war considering what she’s capable of. Considering the feats she performed under stress back in Volume 5, I’m inclined to agree.

We fade away from that scene to Ironwood’s office and the camera rises up the stairs as if being held by the Ace Ops as they and Winter come through the still broken doors to give their report to the general. He’s looking at multiple holographic screens projecting from his table: one with graphics telling him the status of all the airships mechs and soldiers, one pulling up news articles and any other info they can get on Monstra presumably for the purpose of cataloguing it in case they ever need to worry about another one, the third seems to be a map of city to monitor the damage so far, and the last is all the info they have on Cinder. He congratulates the team for their work destroying the Grimm, but Winter admits it wasn’t their bomb that did the job, they still have it intact for him. This confuses Ironwood greatly, but he sees an opportunity in this twist of fate. Penny hasn’t come to the Vault like he wanted her to be programmed to do, so he assumes Watts did a shit job of reprogramming her or just intentionally screwed them over. Yet the truth is something he can’t seem to imagine, she has free will and doesn’t want to do as she’s told. Who’s the real tool now Jimmy? He informs them that Cinder broke Watts out, and he seems to consider Qrow and Robyn escaping to be an even worse consequence. Harriet seems ready to sprint out of the room and haul them back here herself, but Ironwood stays her hand... or foot in this case. With Salem temporarily halted, now is the best time they’ve got for him to have the Winter Maiden open the Vault and use the Staff to lift Atlas higher than she can reach like he wanted so badly. So he wants Winter to bring him Yang Jaune and Ren. Winter doesn’t see the purpose of that, or she does and hates to imagine it’s truly what he intends, but either way she knows she can’t do what he’s asking. He plans to make full use of the lives they hold in their hands, and he’s going to use Jaune and the others as leverage to make Penny do what he says. He acts as if he’s actually proud of himself for realizing this is an option available to him, and I think it’s his Semblance that’s partially blinding him to the moral reasons why it should not be an option worth considering. Winter is left wilting under his unaware and proud gaze, and then Harriet pipes up to tattle on her commanding officer. Winter gave the kids a chance to try and rescue their friends from inside the whale(they don’t mention that friend was Oscar so he still doesn’t know the kid survived his attempted murder), and they weren’t seen exiting before it blew up. I want to say I’m shocked and disgusted that Harriet snitched on Winter just for the brownie points of being honest and taking Winter down a peg, but I’m really not. She’s been a loyal bootlicker since this time last Volume, and this feels like payback for that whole “I outrank you so you can’t stop me from giving them a chance” thing in chapter 7. Ironwood removes the proud and probably intended to be comforting hand he had placed on Winter’s shoulder, as if ashamed to be touching her after she let him down like this. This was his last plan for his definition of success, and now it’s ruined so he can’t do anything. In a fit of rage he smashes his table like the goddamn Hulk and the Ace Ops are left to watch and wonder just how in his right mind he actually is. As he tries to catch his breath, the general gets an urgent transmission that dozens of non-military aircraft have shown up on radar. I and probably a few dozen other people watching this hoped this was an Avengers Endgame moment of tons of allies coming to the rescue of the down and out heroes. But no, its the Schnee Dust Company ships Whitley sent out. Almost forgot about that plan, whoops. Ironwood immediately recognizes this as Weiss’ handiwork for the sake of saving Mantle, because nobody would have guessed Whitley would show some humanity and make this plan himself. Winter immediately shows attentive concern hearing her sister has done this, and Harriet gives her a look as if to say “you are such a bleeding heart for these little criminals...” Ironwood makes the very one dimensional assumption that everything Ruby and the others have been doing is simply to protect Mantle, as if they didn’t have a serious conversation with May about helping Atlas as well as Mantle 3 episodes back. With that knowledge in mind, he decides he needs to make a call.

Speaking of phones, Cinder gets a cheeky text and an accompanying selfie from Neo revealing she has the Lamp and she knows Salem will tear Cinder to pieces if she doesn’t bring it back to her. So she’s proposing a trade; Cinder gets the name to activate the Lamp, and in return she has to bring Neo to Ruby for the revenge she so deeply craves. Watts can’t see Cinder’s screen so he wonders who among their comrades has survived. Unclear if Cinder is going to tell him.

At last, we see Ruby throw open the front doors of Schnee Manor with Weiss and Blake flanking her, to see Yang and the others on the front steps. The sisters immediately embrace and Ruby sheds a tear of relief and joy that they’re all okay. Yang tells her she missed her too, and that seems to be that for the distrust and argument they had back in chapter 1. Ruby goes to greet the guys, and Yang gives Weiss a nice hug too. Then she sees Blake has taken a few steps away from the group and seems ashamed or embarrassed, unable to even look in their direction in Yang’s direction. Yang puts a hand to her cheek, her thumb softly stroking up and down as she turns Blake’s head to meet her gays gaze. Yang blushes and smiles, Bake returns the smile, and the two softly press their foreheads together. The intense sapphic energy of this deeply intimate moment was almost overwhelming, and many couldn’t help but adore it. I know I couldn’t stop myself from being a little giggly. Ren notices Nora isn’t there to greet them, and Weiss seems like she’s going to bring him up to her room and possibly even explain what happened along the way. Ruby takes this chance to go and greet Oscar with a hug, but stops short when she sees Emerald behind him. She seems real mad and is about to go on the attack, but Oscar steps between them and insists he can vouch for her, or maybe he’s saying he can explain? We don’t quite know because they get cut off by the sound of Ruby’s Scroll ringing. May is calling from the crater to say that the SDC freighters aren’t the only thing in the air right now, and she seems very panicked by what she sees. She yells for everyone to run into the mines for shelter, and an explosion is hear before the call is cut short. Before anyone has time to try and puzzle out what they just heard, a loud alarm tone goes off on all their Scrolls. It’s a fun detail that as a Faunus Blake covers her ears cuz the loud noise is especially bad for her. An emergency CCT broadcast is coming in for everyone in the kingdom, and Ruby magnifies her Scroll’s playing of it to be projected into the air for all of them to watch. The cargo ships are shown being shot down by military ships, and then the feed cuts to Ironwood standing ominously under a single light to deliver a downright villainous speech. He claims he has been trying his best to protect the technology and future of the kingdom from those who would do it harm, but I think it is VERY telling he never mentions protecting the people. Because that’s not what matters to him anymore. Not really. He says the only person stopping him from finishing his plans of making sure the currently crippled Salem can’t hurt them anymore is Penny. So he has an ultimatum for Penny and her friends, because he knows they will be listening right now. Either she turn herself over to him so he can have her do her “duty” and save as much of the Kingdom as possible and forget about trying to save Mantle, or he will nuke Mantle as punishment for her selfishness. The more he talks the more angry Ruby and the others get, and we are right there with them. He somehow thinks that if Mantle is destroyed then Penny will be free to only care about Atlas and its protection and will gladly work with him to do so. What a delusional bastard. And if anyone tries anything other than what he has said to do, he will use the bomb. 1 hour to decide how they will respond, and a hell of a lot riding on that choice.

There can be absolutely no question now, Ironwood will be the villain for the rest of the Volume and Salem will probably return at the end to ruin whatever hope putting him down will have raised in our heroes... And I’m kinda excited for how that’s gonna play out. Let’s see how team RWBY get out of this one~

10 notes · View notes

yukiobeyme · 4 years

Note

Hi! I saw your hc of the brothers reacting to a mc playing the harp. Do you think you could do hc with an skilled painter mc too? I study art, but due to a depressive episode i stoped painting, i started painting again a few days ago and remembered how much i enjoy it. Maybe due to the studys of the devildom she didnt have time for a while? Its ok if you dont want to or feel uncomfortable:)

Sorry, it took forever but hopefully, this suffices. It’s the longest thing I have ever written for Obey Me (5.6k words) The picture that is included is drawn by me, which is a painting that is featured in Detroit Become Human. It was in chapter 6 for Marcus, and the painting is human- hope. So, yea I hope you all enjoy and it’s just as good as the harp fic I did.

This is also like how the brothers try to help you with depression too because I need it lol. The first half is them noticing that you aren’t doing art anymore then you randomly paint then its the brother’s reaction though I don’t know if their reaction is long enough.

I am behind on requests but feel free to send stuff, I’m doing online classes so I have more free time and on my computer constantly. I think I’m finally gonna catch up on everything.

Trigger Warning for Depression and not necessarily Eating Disorder Otherwise Nonspecific but MC struggles to eat while depressed.

Art was something you always did. It was started as an innocent hobby, then you started to doodle on your assignments and notes. If there were paper and pencil around, there was bound to be one of your drawings on it eventually. In high school, you decided to take Art as your elective of choice, and during that time you learn what your favorite medium was and what your art style is. You found out you like paints the most; acrylics were the easiest for you, it was the most forgiving of the paints, watercolor you loved but it took work and concentration to do, and oil paint you practiced loved to hate. Oil was always so hard to work with, at first you always overworked the paint and left it looking dull and sad looking, but you were determined to get it right. Your final project was a huge oil painting, you took your time to plan and layout that painting. The topic you chose was the fall of angels, which you didn’t know much about. You knew about the Celestial Realm and Devildom, everyone does but it’s not like humans can walk freely in either of the realms. You debated back and forth if you should do a generic angel or if you should have more fun with it and recapture the fall of a true angel. Your research led you to learn about six brothers that fell around the same time. You recognized the first name easily, Lucifer; he was prideful and what everyone refers to the most powerful demon. He fell from Heaven after he became so impressed with his own beauty, intelligence, power, and position that he began to desire for himself the honor and glory that belonged to God alone. This pride represents the actual beginning of sin in the universe—preceding the fall of the human Adam by an indeterminate time. The other names, Mammon, Leviathan, Asmodeus, Beelzebub, and Belphegor didn’t seem to ring any bells, but you took the time to try and research each on. You decided to capture all their falls in one painting, they fell in the order of power. Lucifer would be the furthest one down the canvas and that’s why Belphegor would be at the top still within the clouds. The painting ended up looking amazing and still hangs on the wall in your living room, it was the first decoration piece you ever put up.

Fast forward to when you were whisked away to Devildom to be an exchange student. They were nice enough to give you time to pack things, only 15 minutes to pack a year's worth of things. You grabbed random clothes and stuffed them in a bag, you grabbed your favorite stuff animal and went immediately went to your desk where you kept all your painting supplies. You made sure to grab as many different colors as possible, all different brush sizes and your two sketches that could handle the paint medium. You decided to grab your phone and its charger though you knew it probably wouldn’t work in Devildom. With one last glance around your house, you paused and looked at the oil painting before telling the demon that you were ready to start this adventure.

Much to your surprise, you were met with faces that were familiar. Though it wasn’t because you had met them before rather it was because you studied their faces and bodies to paint them. You were flushed the whole time they introduced themselves and was even more flustered when you realized you would be living with them for the next year. If they noticed, they didn’t say much about it. You knew they noticed your stares though. You were studying their faces, trying to recall if you captured them right, if your references were accurate or not.

You tried to do some form of art every day, from doodles or painting. Usually, you would sketch something during your breaks and paint them once you were back at the House of Lamentation. The brothers knew you painted but you always requested to be left alone. This was the time you played the music you wanted and get lost in the brush strokes. It was your stress release, something you found joy in, the way you reconnected with your body.

But within a month of being an exchange student, your RAD work piled up and instead of sketching during breaks you had to start studying and doing work to ensure you stayed on top of everything. The mix of stress and not taking care of yourself led you down a spiraling depression. You gave up painting and daily self-care was sparse and very little. You stayed up late and woke up early to get as much work done as possible, food was on the small side and on the go food.

You had gone shopping with Asmodeus and grabbed canvases, the now gathered dust in the corner of your room. Somewhere still blank and others left unfinished, but you could never push yourself to pick up your paintbrushes. Sometimes you would pull out all your material and just sit and stare at the canvas until you gave up and left it alone. Soon the brothers decided to make a schedule so that you never alone and offer you different types of support that were unique to them. They never pushed you to pick up painting again, though they tried to encourage it and encourage you to take care of yourself.

Lucifer:

Lucifer noticed how your habits changed, while he never saw your finished art pieces, he saw bits and pieces. He noticed that you like to draw what was around you, he had seen you draw the RAD, the House of Lamentation, and even sketches of his brothers and himself. When you stopped drawing in the morning, he just figured you weren’t as inspired, but then the dark circles under your eyes formed, skipping meals or eating too little, and how you sometimes drifted in class.

He thought it should be his job to help you, but he didn’t know how. For the first time in centuries, he felt powerless. He decided whenever you skipped meals, he would find ways to get you to eat. In the morning if you skipped breakfast, he grabbed a fruit and a granola bar to hand to you. Or when you skipped dinner, he brought the food to wherever you were studying. He made the time to sit with you, while you ate, bringing work of his own to do. He would try to brush off as he simply wanted to work in a different area when in reality, he wanted to make sure you ate.

Finally, Lucifer would ask if you had drawn or painted recently. Your grimace told him everything, “No, I haven’t been inspired recently,” you shrugged it off hoping he would drop it. But instead, he poked and tried to get more information from you. You broke after a while spilling all the struggles you have been facing and how the stress-induced depression, you assured him you been through it before and you would be fine but right now it just felt like loneliness and darkness.

While Lucifer didn’t show it, it broke his heart to hear you say that. He figured you were stressed, and you seemed down, but he didn’t know it was too this magnitude. He did his best to support and encourage you in any way he could, hoping that it would help somehow. He offered to tutor you and help you with homework in hopes to lighten your load. He knew he should tell Diavolo, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. This felt too intimate to disclose to him, he felt happy and privileged that you shared it with him, and he didn’t want to break that. At least you were talking to someone.

Mammon:

Mammon was oblivious to how your schedule and habits changed. It wasn’t until Beelz mentioned that he hadn’t seen you eat yet today during lunch. Then it clicked how he hadn’t seen you as much or rather how he had to seek you out constantly to get the attention he deserved from you.

He started to pay more attention to you and something seemed missing from your stack of books but could never place it until he came to your room and say your sketchbook on the floor under all your books. It clicks he doesn’t remember the last time he saw you drawing or doodling.

He then noticed your tired eyes, your slow-moving, and you did skip a lot of meals or at very little. He totally increased how much he spent with you, even when you claimed to have too much work to do. He would simply sit at your feet and lean against you. You would occasionally drop your hand down and play with his hair. You noticed the increase of affection and time he spent with you and at first, you were annoyed with it but soon you enjoyed the quiet company. Once Mammon saw you were happy to have him around, he started talking to you about his random schemes; which never failed to make you smile and laugh. He soon made it his goal to make sure you were always laughing and smiling, he never wanted it to stop.

You didn’t disclose everything to Mammon, but you talked about your feelings to him. In some ways it was hard not too, having him so close but you couldn’t help but feel vulnerable. He comforted you to the best of his ability, sometimes he said the wrong things, but he tried and attempted to fix it.

He would surprise you with small gifts, one day at lunch he managed to get a yakisoba bread and you were surprised when he offered you the whole thing instead of just wanting to split it. You offered to split it with him and you wouldn’t take no for an answer. You both ate you halves outside, and you couldn’t help but cuddle up against him. When you finished your food, you gave Mammon a peak of the cheek. He flushed immediately and you hooked your arms together and walked to class with him. Needless to say, he bragged about it to the brother’s group chat and he was made fun of because of how he blushed for the rest of the day.

Leviathan:

Noticed the symptoms immediately, he had been through similar things. That there were times he stopped video games and anime or stopped finding the enjoyment from it. Though because he was constantly in his room, no one would notice.

He simply offered you silent support, making sure you were never alone or in one place for too long. He would try to drag you away for a quick game or anime or watch him play a game. You finally asked why he was spending more time with you and he would bashfully say while he didn’t know how you felt, he felt like he had been through similar things. It broke your heart to hear that and you pulled him into a tight hug. Later that night, you went to his room bringing tea for both of you and you both stayed up way too late talking to each other. It seemed like talking about it help life some of the pressure off you.

He said his door was always open to you, and while you didn’t always take him up on it, you occasionally when to study and watch him play whatever game he was currently playing. It was nice to have his company, even if you didn’t talk, it was comforting to be in the company that understood your feelings.

During class, he sat to your left while Beelz sat to your right. Levi made sure to nudge you if your attention seemed to diverge from the lecture and always offer you his notes if you missed anything. He also showed you places to hide in RAD, if you wanted to hide during lunch but his only request was you took food and ate it. He said he would prefer to hang out as well but respected your privacy if you truly wanted to be alone.

Would try and encourage you to paint or draw again. Asking you to draw him some character from his games or anime. You occasionally you would indulge in drawing whatever he wanted. Overall, Levi was your quiet support and you were grateful for it, to be able to sit in quiet and not to be asked what is wrong or must talk was a perfect escape sometimes.

Satan:

He was worried about you, he offered to take you to the library for a new place to study. He would read your textbooks to you. He would read it whether you were in his room, the library, or curled up on his bed. Though most times if he read to you on his bed, you would drift off to sleep listening to his voice. He would always smile whenever you managed to fall asleep, it comforted him that he was able to help you fall asleep.

Satan would find books about depression, but he was uncertain because it sounded to clinically and he doubted that it was really like how the book described. Though he continued to research, trying to find out ways to support you. Online forums and talking to the brothers about the things they were doing and what seemed to help you.

He would stumble sometimes but you couldn’t help but feel touched he tried so hard. When you say the help guide and books he had, you cried. You couldn’t believe someone would care this much about you and want to help you. He was there to comfort you and once you calmed down you thanked him and laugh, “I was wondering why your actions seemed straight from a self-help book, Thank you,” you kissed him on the cheek and gave up studying for the day to hang out and cuddle with him. He would ask what he could do to help, what things he did that helped or hurt you. You would drift off to sleep with a smile on your face.

When you weren’t reading together and Satan would play drama, especially Korean Dramas, something you introduced to him. He would play your favorite one, the one you have already watched together and that you have seen a million times, but still loved it and reacted to the story every time. Sometimes Satan would quote the show and act dramatically to make you smile and laugh.

But there were hard times with Satan, he was the Avatar of Wrath, after all, he would get annoyed at the situation, but never at you. He always made sure that you knew that, though occasionally he would say something that he would immediately apologize for it. He tells you; he feels worthless and helpless. He wanted to help you and make it all better, but he knew that isn’t how it works.

Asmodeus:

Much like Mammon, offered you comfort and affection. Whisking you away to get the newest coffee or tea at the café, shopping, bubble baths, and doing skincare with him. While you tried to protest, he was consistent, and most times was a success. He starts to offer to go the café to study for a change of scenery, offering to quiz you while you took the bubble bath, or doing face masks that you could put on and study for a bit while it dried.

“Stress isn’t good for your skin. Neither is not sleeping,” Asmodeus would tell you pointedly.

Never directly asked what was wrong, but constantly reminded you he was there for you if you ever needed him or wanted to talk. While you didn’t to it often, instead of talking to him you would seek him out to cuddle and of course, he never denied it. It was a guaranteed break for you and most times you fell asleep.

Whenever he took you shopping, he would drag you to the art store encouraging to buy art supplies, he ended up buying you new paintbrushes, paint, and canvas. Telling you there wasn’t any rush to paint anything, but it would just be there in case you hit inspiration. He would always joke that you could paint him or “paint him like a French girl,” and would flash you a cheeky grin. You would laugh and shove his shoulder.

Sat behind you in most of your class and whenever he had the change, he would give you affection. He would pass you notes constantly, sometimes it was drawings of his own. Sometimes they were beautiful and amazing other times he drew funny sketches. You quickly found out who drew Lucifer riding the unicorn and Diavolo in the dress. The funny sketches also included exaggerated drawings of the teachers or his brothers, which was so hard not to laugh in class so you could only turn around and glare at him, that didn’t last long before you broke out into a smile and shook your head at him.

Beelzebub:

Noticed you lack interest of food and lack of eating immediately. Was constantly bring you snacks and sharing them with you. He sometimes was sneaky with it, dropping it off fruit slices and sitting it beside you and leaving. Then coming back later to see the empty plate and he was beaming. Would study with you and sat near you in class, whenever he pulled out a snack, he would set it in between you, in hopes you would snack on his food.

Whenever it was his turn to cook, he would find out your favorite comfort food; whether it was something from Devildom or Human food. Trying to make sure the food was as appetizing as possible and mouth-watering in hopes to entice you.

Would always be proud whenever you ate and encouraged yourself to be a glutton sometimes. Beelzebub was also your teddy bear, always down to engulf you in a hug and study with you occasionally. He would also tell you stories and memories about Lilith, times in the Celestial Realm, or random memories that were simply used as a distraction or calm you down when you got too tense about your schoolwork.

Beelzebub would also be the one that read you bedtime stories when you couldn’t sleep, it always made you laugh. He would do the voices and everything, as you cuddle against him. It became a normal thing to wake up to see Beelzebub leaning against you bed, he would admit he was checking on you during the middle of the night and decided to stay just in case you needed him.

He always checked up on you and while he was the Avatar of Gluttony, he indulged you in other things than food. He gave you a lot of praise and even small trinkets he found while he was out shopping.

He was just always there for you and he had his alerts on specifically for you. He would always reply with lightning speed. He was also the one that came up with the idea to not let you be alone too long and create the shifts between the brothers. While it was annoying in some ways you couldn’t help but feel touched by their efforts

Belphegor:

Consistently offered and told you take a break and naps. He would drag you to the planetarium to study and while he offered to study with you, he would end up dozing off at some point. It always made you smile. You would go snag his blanket and tuck him in.

He would constantly wrap you up in blankets and cling to you like a koala, trying to make sure you were as comfortable as possible as you study. He even would offer you to use his pillow that he carried around. While you were hesitant, but you adored how Belphegor smelled and often found comfort in that. He would be able to help you learn about the stars and constellations. He could talk forever about it and often did. He knew all the stories behind them, what they looked like and could point them out.

Sometimes you would count the stars with him to fall asleep. Belphegor was known to tuck you in, he would kiss you on your forehead and whenever he found you asleep, he would join you. It was the simple things that made you feel a little better and loved. Never forced you to talk about anything, but whenever he noticed you were staring off into space, he would begin to ramble about everything and anything. Trying to ground you and bring you back to the present.

He knew where to find you whenever you couldn’t sleep, and you weren’t in your room and he told the other brothers but always told them he would go and comfort and hang out with you. You were in the planetarium, it where he went when he couldn’t sleep or felt restless. He would sit beside you and sit in silence, he usually had a blanket to drape over the both of you. You would lean again him and rest his head on your shoulder, bringing in his smell and feel some of your tensions melt away.

Finally, one random day, you had inspiration hit you. Asmodeus had bought you a canvas and it was huge, and you knew the painting had to be just right. You decided to paint it outside, thinking maybe getting some vitamin D would help as well. You gathered your art stuff before you headed out. You ran into Satan as you made your way outside, you flashed him a shy smile and he offered to help you carry out your things. You were in the garden and you slowly set up; Satan helped you set up before disappearing. You grabbed your pencil and started to sketch out your painting. You heard someone approaching you and it was Satan though he was carrying a book before finding a place to sit near you in the shade. You gave him a soft smile before you went back to work. Before you knew it, you were loaded up your pallet with all different colors and started to paint. You allowed yourself to get lost in the painting. Letting your mind go blank and allowing your hand to take over the paint strokes. You didn’t notice the crowd that gathered behind you, you were completely lost in the joy of the painting. Your smile only continued to go the more and more you painted, you remembered how much you loved painting; the tension in your shoulders started to release and you felt renewed. Once you were finished you stepped back to see the painting in the full picture. You looked behind you to see all the brothers behind you, looking at your painting.

“It’s beautiful,” Satan said setting his book down and the other brothers nodded in agreement.

“Thank you… for everything,” you started and continued when you saw the brothers confused looks, “For supporting me and reminding me to take care of myself,” you flashed all of them a small smile.

“It’s inspired by all of you. That you reached out to me and reminded me of the hope that it gets better, even if it takes a while or doesn’t feel like it ever would.” All the brothers looked touched, but your words and it was Beelz that pulled you into a hug first. Soon you were getting hugs from all the brothers except Lucifer who gave a nod, you knew that later in private you would get a quick hug from him later.

Lucifer:

Lucifer had a sense of pride in seeing you paint again. Seeing you so engrossed in your work and how confidently your paint strokes were. He loved watching how the colors swirled together and how the painting slowly came to life. He realized he could watch you paint all day; he would later ask if you were willing to paint him something for his office. He would let you in his office and look around to get an idea of the mood of the room and how much space you had to work with. When you finished the painting, Lucifer hung it up almost immediately. He whenever he was stressed and tense, he would find himself looking at it, following the swirls of the colors to calm himself.

He also adored to indulge you in more expensive paints, which always took your breath away. He would allow you in his office to paint if you wanted. Most times Lucifer was working on papers, but occasionally he would play the piano, soft melodies that were soothing. It became a tradition that once a week, you would go to his office to paint or draw. Asking his opinions on sketches and if you should follow through with them or change it up.

Mammon:

He was taken back by how beautiful you looked as you painted. You were so carefree and happy; it took his breath away. He watched how your body moved as you painted, how smooth and elegant it looked. It was angelic, he was the only brother that dared to approach you; he would sit down on the grass and watch you.

He never formally requested any paintings from you, but you ended up painting him something anyway. You bought a copy of the magazine he was on the cover of and recreated it for him to hang up in his room. He was speechless when you gave it to him, you decided to do it more of an abstract with lots of colors. He hung it up on his wall and whenever he looked at it, he would smile and blush, it seemed so intimate that you painted him. That you probably spend a lot of time looking at his face to recreate it. He was greedy and craved watching you paint; for some reason, it was soothing for him and it made you happy so in turn, it made him happy.

Leviathan:

He watched in amazement, seeing you so shy and in a shy to being confident and standing tall. HE was in awe; his mouth fell open at some point. He felt like a child again, recalling how he has memories of having similar reactions when Lucifer did things. He followed you paint strokes, watching the painting come to life. When you turned around, he gave you the biggest smile, he was so happy to see you so passionate and happy with your work.

Even though the memory of being chased by Henry 1.0 was fresh in your mind, you decided to recapture him for Levi. So he could always have him hanging in his room. Levi was speechless when he saw it, he would whisper thank you to you. His smile made it so worth it.

Satan:

He found it super important to text his brothers that you were painting in the garden or about to start. The chat blew up with excitement. He grabbed a random book; he had no intention to read the book, but he didn’t want you to think he was staring at you. He sat underneath the trees near you and opened the book and started to pretend to read. He was amazing and honored that he could watch the full process of watching your painting coming to life. From the rough sketch, then the base paint, and then watching you add more and more color. When he saw his brothers come out, he raised one finger to his lips, to ensure they stayed quiet.

He didn’t ask you to paint him anything but asked if he could watch you occasionally. Which you mostly agreed to, though with more intimate projects you would tell him next time. You ended up painting himself something anyways. It was an old-world map, Fra Mauro map. It was made in Italy and even included the Garden of Eden. When he first saw it, he was speechless, he was excited though. This painting would go so well in his room, it matches the old-world library setting he had in his room. He was even more excited because he has a book about old-world maps that Fra Mauro is featured in it. The hug he pulled you into took your breath away, but you felt so happy because of his reaction.

Asmodeus:

Asmodeus was excited to see you painting again. He would be lying if he said it wasn’t attractive to watch you get lost in your art. While he was watching you paint, he couldn’t stop thinking about what other things you could paint and wondered if you would be okay with painting him like a French girl. Soon he disregarded the thoughts and simply appreciate the art in front of him, though he decided that you were really the masterpiece here.

Instead of painting Asmodeus a picture on canvas, you asked him to take off his shirt and lay down on his bed. You had brought your paints and paint brushed, while he was confused, he complied.

“This is going to be cold, sorry,” you gave him a heads up before you painted the stroke on his back. Asmodeus love it, you were turning him into a piece of your art. It felt intimate and precious. Though it was cold, and he complained and shivered, he was excited to see the final product.

Once you were done, you took a picture of your painting on his and yours D.D.D. You told him you combined two of your favorite paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night but instead of the yellow stars, it was Van Gogh’s sunflowers.

Beelzebub:

He was the most excited out of the brothers, he was so happy to see you painting again. Seeing it come to life right in front of him, gave him a new appreciation for art. He could have watched you paint forever, you looked so carefree and relaxed. He didn’t know how much he missed your smile. After you were done and the painting was dried, he would ask if he could trace the colors. He would pull you into a huge hug and spin you around, making you cling onto him and laughing.

Beelz would ask instead of painting him something if you could have a paint night with him. You decided to pull up a Bob Ross video and follow it together. The results were dramatic, yours look close to Ross’ but had your unique style, while Beelz tried his hardest and it did resemble the reference paint. You started to giggle at his painting and before you knew it, Beelz took his extra paint and flung it at you. You let out a shriek before joining in, in the end, you both ended up covered in paint and laughing at each other.

Belphegor:

Belphegor was napping when his D.D.D started going off like crazy, he was annoyed until he saw that it was about you were about to paint. It gave him a jolt of energy to rush out to the garden. He was the last brother to get there. Standing behind you, he watched how your brush danced across the page and how your body swayed. You seem in your element and lost in your work. It was so relaxing to watch you paint, how the colors swirled together and just seeing how relaxed and happy you were seemed to rub off on him.

You knew you didn’t have to paint Belphie anything, but you couldn’t help yourself. You knew exactly what you wanted to draw anyways. You set up in the Planetarium and went to work to capture the sky above you. Belphie ended up joining you, he grabbed his blanket and sat behind you before curling up and watching you paint. It wasn’t long before you heard his soft snores behind him. You chuckled at him before going back to work. When you were finished you saw he was still asleep, you couldn’t help yourself. You crept near him with a paintbrush in hand and touched his cheek with it. He woke up immediately due to the cold paint, you soon were fighting over the paintbrush. You didn’t stand a chance against him, once he had the paintbrush in hand, he gave your cheek the same treatment. You both began to laugh and once you had calmed down, you showed him the painting you did for him. He pulled you into a hug, rubbing his painted cheek against yours to smear the paint even more.

When it was time for you to leave Devildom, you gave the brothers the painting. They tried to refuse but you wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“Please, it’s a way for you to remember me. You inspired me to do and it’s a reminder to have hope that I’ll be back soon,” you told them a little teary-eyed. You knew you were going to miss all of them so much, but you had a renew sense and passion for painting and the brothers and Devildom has inspired a lot more pieces as soon as you got back to Earth.

#obey me lucifer #lucifer obey me #mammon obey me #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #leviathan obey me #satan obey me #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #asmodeus obey me #beelzebub obey me #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #belphegor obey me #Yuki Writes!#yuki writes

90 notes · View notes

fanficfreekmcu · 4 years

Text

And Balder Makes Three (41)

ᚳᚻᚫᛈᛏᛖᚱ ᛚᛁᛋᛏ, ᛋᚢᛗᛗᚫᚱᚣ, & ᚹᚫᚱᚾᛁᚾᚷᛋ

Finna ducked in time to miss taking an arrow to the head as Thor swung his hammer over her and killed the marauder she had been fending off. She turned and nodded to him with a smiled before thrusting her right hand into the air and zapping two more that were running straight for him.

They worked quite well as a team, they discovered, on the field as well as in bed. The longer the recapture of Alfheim took, the closer they became. Weeks turned into months and soon it was winter, but still they fought; each day winning a little more ground in the name of Asgard.

Finna had just thrown her dagger into the heart of a particularly evil looking being when the heavens opened and the Bifrost appeared. She shielded her face before looking over to Thor.

“I’m sure he figured we were having too much fun to keep to ourselves!” he elbowed an attacker in the throat.

Balder stepped out and immediately went to work on marauders.

“Looks like you two might need a hand!”

“We are doing fine without you!” she screeched as a cottage exploded behind them.

“I see that!” he smiled.

It took only an hour to reach victory, to which Finna replied by punching Balder in the side and grinning.

“I missed you too, Finn,” he kissed her forehead before looking her over. “You look like hell.”

“I am fine,” she growled before grabbing onto a marauder and pushing him toward the line in which to shackle them.

He frowned and turned to his brother.

“She’s determined to kill herself,” he answered matter-of-factly. “But then again, what’s new?”

That night, Thor took food and drink with two of his Deputy Commanders for the first time in two seasons.

“Nidavellir is secure. Volstagg is in Niflheim helping Sif and Hogun to wrap things up. I’m here to help you finish up and then, my siblings, we can officially announce that the Nine Realms are secure,” Balder explained

Thor bit into his meat and chewed. “We’ve won most of the outlying areas and are planning to move into the capitol by the end of winter.”

“You’ve arrived just in time to take all the glory,” Finna smarted as the table quieted.

“That is not my intention, Finn.”

“We’ve done all the hard work and now you show up?”

“If you’d rather I sit this one out…”

“No, no… we can’t have a Prince of Asgard sitting out on a battle, can we?” she threw her food down and walked off to her tent.

Thor stared at his plate as Balder watched her walk off.

“What was that about?” Balder took a drink of his wine.

“Honestly? I’m not sure she wants to go home.”

He waited for him to elaborate.

“She feels responsible for Loki’s imprisonment.”

“Loki is the only one responsible for his situation,” he shook his head.

“Yes, but she’s the only reason I caught him,” he nodded.

“What are you saying, Brother? That she supports him? Does she agree with the madness that Loki should be King of Earth?”

“Honestly? I’m not sure she cares either way so long as they’re together.”

He rubbed his finger across his bottom lip while thinking. “I know you’ve become lovers once more.”

He slowly nodded his head. “We’re not exactly keeping it hidden.”

“And what happens once we return home? Legally, she is our sister.”

“We haven’t discussed it,” he frowned before taking a drink.

He smacked the table and nodded before walking off to Finna’s tent.

Finna sat at her desk and looked over scouting reports as Balder arrived at the opening of her tent.

“Come in,” she growled.

He walked in and looked around. “You know, Sif wasn’t exactly happy about this either.”

“Mmmm hmmmm,” she kept her back to him.

“You’re sounding a lot like him, you know. It’s almost like he’s possessed you.”

“No. Loki has not possessed me,” she answered.

“Then talk to me, Finna.”

“I’m tired, Balder.”

“Go home, I’ll take care of this.”

“No,” she laughed before turning to face him. “Not of battle.”

“What of then?”

“Of hiding.”

He stared her down for a moment.

“If Odin knew that I was more than ready to become the Queen of Earth… if he knew that I’d concocted the perfect plan to break him from the dungeons… how many times I’ve defied his direct orders not to visit him…”

“He knows, Finn,” he whispered.

Horror filled her eyes.

“He adopted you to keep you close, to keep you in the palace.”

She felt as though her guts were ready to fall out.

“You’re here… away from your son for months… for a purpose. A purpose with which Mother and I do not agree.”

“I’m to join my husband in imprisonment, aren’t I?”

“You’re to be tried for treason and executed,” he dropped his eyes. “He has no evidence, but the first time he does…”

“And you?”

“I don’t agree with my father.”

She shook her head and looked around. “I thought that when I married Loki that I was somehow taking control of my life,” she closed her eyes and laughed. “I left an arranged marriage for… this.”

“If father were to find out about your affair with Thor…”

“Odin’s in the midst of a dozen or more affairs this very minute.”

“Aye, but you’re not the King of Asgard, you’re their Princess… and despite your relationship before, you are now our sister.”

“So let’s add incest to it just to spice it up,” she spat.

“What can I do?”

“Nothing.”

He dropped to his knees and pleaded with his eyes.

“We will finish our task here and return home. I will do better to be the Princess Asgard deserves,” she placed her hand on his shoulder.

“You could do so much better than Loki, you know.”

“The choices I’ve made have led me to where I am today. He is my husband,” she nodded. “We can’t change the past.”

“No,” he agreed. “We can’t.” He rose to his feet. “I’ll let you prepare for tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” she nodded.

As he turned to walk away, she reached for his wrist. He stopped and turned to her.

“Thank you.”

“Be safe tomorrow,” he nodded before walking off.

➵➵➵➵➵➵➵❂➵➵➵➵➵➵➵ 42

#fanficfreek #fanficfreekmcu #Marvel AU #MCU fic #mcu smut #thor fanfiction #thor smut #loki fanfic #loki smut #odinson bros #dyrfinna #thor and loki #mcu series #vanaheim

3 notes · View notes

shy-violet-soul · 4 years

Text

The Hunting Incident

Summary: Alpine brings home a gift. It doesn’t go over well, with anyone - including the ‘gift’. Characters: Alpine the cat, Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov, Tony Stark Rating: E for everyone Warnings: allusions to injury to animal; bad language words; snort-inducing giggles

A/N: I have watched this video no less than 6 times, and each time, I laugh until my tummy hurts. Then, I wondered - what would Bucky do in this situation? (already cackling as I turn to the keyboard…)

Beta’d by the incomparable @pinknerdpanda & the stupendous @thesassywallflower. Thank you, darlings!

This is a work of fiction based upon characters owned by the MCU. Please do not copy without my written permission.

((A/N 2: you need to watch this video first!))

When 5:00am had glared at him with red, beady eyes from the clock on his night stand, Bucky refused. Nope. Run with Steve was cancelled. The punk could damn well run by himself. Or get Sam. Yeah, please wake up Sam. Memories of Steve coming to wake him up were hazy, and must have involved a dagger because his third favorite was currently embedded in the bedroom door frame. However, he had a sparring appointment at 7:00am with Natasha - she wouldn’t wait, and her coming to wake him up would involve creative forms of punishment. So much NOPE. At 6:45am, Bucky shuffled his way into the common area kitchen, still rubbing his eyes, when a cheerful little mert caught his attention. He blinked sleepily at the scene before him.

Nat. Natasha Romanov. Black Widow. Natalia Romanova. Assassin. Decked out in her black, weaponized glory.

Alpine. The Cat. Pain in His Ass. Ignorer of Expensive Cat Food. Shedder upon Stark Suits. Sitting proudly in his fluffy white innocence.

Blue-eyed gazes stared back at the other, and Bucky didn’t know what the hell was going on.

“What the hell is going on?”

Nat didn’t so much as blink.

“Your cat.”

“Yeah, he’s my cat.” A beat passed. “Wait - what did he do, first? He might be Sam’s cat.”

One eyebrow arched primly at him as Natasha pointed to the floor just passed Alpine and a bit beyond Bucky’s line of sight. He leaned to the right, peering around the feline, and tried to catch his jaw before it hit the floor.

A brown, limp, slightly damp but very dead duck lay on Tony’s clean kitchen floor.

While the two assassins watched, Alpine sauntered over and lolled out luxuriously beside his kill, the tip of his tail twitching happily.

“Oh, my...oh, my God,” Bucky croaked out, his hand coming up to cover his mouth. “Oh, shit!”

“Mmmhmm.”

“I mean - seriously?!” he hissed at the cat, who simply blinked impassively. “Alpine, you stupid cat!” His heart thudded sickly with dread. “How did he kill it?”

“I don’t know.” Natasha hadn’t moved, just stood there with crossed arms, one eyebrow still raised, gaze clearly unimpressed.

“How did he get it IN here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it...is it really dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, hell, Nat, what do you know?” Bucky demanded as he craned a lean closer to try and see if the bird was breathing.

“I know you better get that thing out of here before Tony shows up.”

“Mert.”

“Shut up, Alpine!” Bucky barked, dragging his hands through his hair. Down the hall, the elevator dinged, echoes of star-spangled voices echoing their way. Bucky felt his throat sticky-squeeze shut as Steve and Sam appeared, sweaty and wheezing. Well, Sam was wheezing. Wimp.

Both soldiers came to a halt as Bucky snapped to attention, trying and failing to look innocent.

“You okay, Buck?”

“Uuuhhh…”

Ding. Shuffle, shuffle, and Clint appeared. The other four watched him slog to the coffee maker, pull a silly straw out of thin air, and claim the nearly-full pot as his own. After four long drags on his straw, he finally noticed everyone staring at Bucky.

“What’s up, Buck?”

“Meow.” Steve just barely kept himself from flinching.

“What’s he doing up here?”

“Uuuhhh…” Bucky couldn’t come up with anything else to say.

Sam clapped a hand on Steve’s shoulder, grinning at him. “Captain America. Afraid of a cat.”

“I’m not afraid,” Steve was quick to assert. “He just...hates me. With his claws.”

“Why’s there a dead duck on the floor?” Heads swiveled at Clint’s query, staring at the vanquished fowl in question. Sam and Steve immediately stepped closer, and Bucky’s eyes closed as he waited…

“Did Alpine kill that bird?” Steve whispered, horrified.

Sam cackled, bent over and hands propped on his knees. “Your cat’s an assassin, man!”

“Shut up, birdbrain! Steve, get me a blanket,” Bucky implored as he also turned to look at the poor critter. Steve turned huge eyes to his friend.

“Where?”

“I don’t know, get a towel or something so I can cover it up!”

Steve strangled out another question. Bucky hissed out another answer. Sam kept on cackling. Clint sat on the counter with his feet in a bar stool, still slurping his coffee, and Nat leaned against the counter near him, watching the scene with a near-bored expression.

And then the dead duck woke up.

With a frantic flap of his wings, he floundered his way off the floor. Alpine leaped after him with abandon, claws outstretched gleefully. Steve screamed like a little girl when the duck flailed in his direction, bouncing off of Sam before diving to the floor. Bucky zigzagged after the bird, then after Alpine, then back after the bird before he tripped tail over tea kettle over super soldier legs. Alpine, great hunter extraordinaire, was not about to be denied - he somersaulted into Clint’s lap in a vain attempt to recapture his prey. Clint, unprepared for the attack, tried to dodge out of the way and dodged himself right off the counter in a tidal wave of coffee.

Natasha simply blinked.

The resurrected fowl took shelter on the other side of the couch, and Bucky scrambled after him.

“Somebody hold onto that stupid cat!” Silently, the Winter Soldier skulked onto the couch and peered over the edge.

“Quack.”

“I know, man. Bad day. Sorry my cat tried to kill you.” He looked over his shoulder. Sam was snickering his way to him, Clint was cussing about the coffee, and Steve was hiding behind a loveseat. Punk. End of the line, my ass.

“Sam, help me out here.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Speak bird to him. You’re family.”

Sam’s eyes rolled so hard, Bucky was convinced the man saw the inside of his own skull.

“Still with the bird jokes. Ha ha.”

“Quack quack.”

“Yeah, yeah, quack quack yourself. Hang onto your tail feathers, dude, we’re trying,” Sam groused. “We need to catch him first.”

Bucky mulled that over before Clint chimed in.

“We’ve still got that electrified net in the armory.”

Murder Glare arrowed onto the archer. “Jesus, Barton, we’re trying to free him, not flambe him!”

“Get a laundry basket,” Nat suggested blandly. The duck waddled nervously away from the voices, quacking as he went before he flapped his way onto the arm of Tony’s recliner closest to the window.

“Oh, God, get it off Tony’s chair!” Bucky begged. Sam snorted, snagging a nearby throw pillow and stepping closer to wave it in the duck’s direction.

“Come on, Donald. Off the furniture, man. Thank you, I knew you were a gentleman,” he praised when the bird hopped off in alarm at the motion. Bucky’s head hurt, his gears were spinning so frantically. His gaze hurried around the room and landed on Clint; the fool was using his straw to try and sip the spilled coffee off the tile.

“Barton! Why aren’t you over here helping? You’re part bird!”

Straw gurgling sadly, Clint tossed it away with a curse. “Hawkeye, Barnes. Hawk. I’m up high, not some puddle dweller.”

Ding. The familiar sound of an Iron Man suit came clomping down the hall. Tony appeared, battle-ready, and raised one hand, repulsor firing up, and Bucky knew he was truly screwed.

“Where’s the unfriendly?!”

“Quackquackquack!”

The formerly-dead duck, freshly frightened by the sound of the repulsor, rushed desperately at the window, crashing into the glass. Iron Man didn’t hesitate and fired, sending shards exploding in all directions. Wind from outside the tower gusted inward, swirling papers and other sundry items up and away. Formerly-dead duck fled the chaos happily, kamikaze-diving out the now open window.

Sam belly laughed at the poor bird’s relieved quacking, waving a cheerful good-bye after him. “You go, duck! Go find you a pretty lady, hatch you a bunch of babies, and watch out for Alpine the Assassin!”

The face plate on Tony’s suit opened up, his harassed gaze taking in the carnage. Bucky sprawled face down on the floor, liberally sprinkled with bits of glass. Steve peeking out from behind a loveseat. Clint laying in a puddle of coffee clutching an empty pot. And that stupid cat was sitting on the Weiner Soldier’s ass.

Natasha just looked at him, leaning casually against the counter.

“What the hell was Darkwing Duck doing here? FRIDAY said there was an attack.”

A sad, pathetic little groan croaked from Bucky, blending with a pleased little meow from Satan’s hairball. Natasha smirked as she strolled over to Bucky, scratching behind Alpine’s ears as she cooed to him like a proud mama.

“A hunting incident, Tony. Just a hunting incident.”

#the hunting incident #shy vy writes #bucky barnes #Steve Rogers #natasha romanoff #clint barton #sam wilson #tony stark #alpine the cat #marvel #marvel fanfiction #bucky barnes fanfiction

77 notes · View notes

sondepoch · 4 years

Text

XX: Saeran's Route (Y/N)

Where Futures Begin

Life used to be simple for you. Peaceful. But the Savior had other plans for you, and in moments, she ruined what you thought was your one shot at happiness. Blinded by anger, you escaped the Mint Eye, but that triggered a series of events that would bring you further into the world of brothers Saeran and Saeyoung. And further into the twisted world of your love for them.

Neutral Route: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | ✔

Saeyoung’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | ✔

Saeran’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | ✔

MASTERLIST

Was it kindness that compelled Rika to throw you in the same cell as Saeran? Or cruelty?

You turned your gaze to the broken boy lying in your lap, unable to even utter a word.

Was she telling you to enjoy your final moments with the boy you'd come to love? Or perhaps she was trying to make your end as miserable as possible, forcing you to sit and watch as he slowly died in your arms, suffocating under the weight of his own skin.

You gazed into Saeran's open eyes, cupping his cheek. Was he alert? Did he see you? Was he even conscious?

You couldn't bring your other hand away from his chest. The slow pulse of his heartbeat under your warm hand was the only thing keeping you sane—the only verification of his life. But how much longer could he hold on?

You pulled your gaze back up to his eyes, staring at the blue-green irises that had once seemed to hold the entire sky in them, though now it looked like the cloudiness was setting in. "Saeran?" You whispered, praying for a response. Anything would do. A groan. A frown. A twitch.

Nothing.

"Saeran, you have to throw it up, okay?" You pulled the boy up by his arms, awkwardly rolling him onto his side so that his mouth was tilted toward the far corner of the cell you were both in. Never did your hand leave the spot where his heart kept beating. Never did you let yourself forget that there was still hope, dwindling as it was.

"Are you ready, Saeran?" You cooed into his ear, trying to give him time to prepare himself even though you doubted he was sentient enough for it to help. "Get ready on...Three, two, one."

You pushed his stomach in, earning a choke from Saeran. You hesitated and waited until you felt the familiar thump thump of his heart before a second attempt, then a third, a fourth, and before you knew it you were pressing on his stomach with all your might.

More choking sounds.

But you couldn't stop. You had to do this. You wouldn't let the Elixir sit in Saeran's stomach.

Rather, forcing him into the pain of vomiting it all back up was his best chance at survival right now.

You leaned Saeran forward, adding your knee to the pressure on his abdomen, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Within seconds, mint-green chemicals were spilling forth from his mouth, the contents emptying into the corner of the dungeon, like a tiny lake of death.

"More, Saeran. Please, just a little more." You pushed harder and the boy's stomach responded, more fluid emerging from his mouth until he was pushing himself off the ground: awake, alert, and alive.

"E-enough," He sputtered out through coughs. Saeran was on his hands and knees, clutching his throat as the remnants of the Elixir were expelled from his body. "I-I'm good now."

A smile bloomed on your face as you leaned backward in your position on the ground, relief flooding your senses like a tidal wave of happiness. You couldn't stop tears from forming in your eyes when Saeran finally regained enough strength to look at you and throw himself into your arms, giving you the first hug in what felt like an eternity.

"You're okay," You murmured in disbelief, tightening your arms around his slender frame.

"I'm okay," He responded, nuzzling his head into the crook of your neck. You could feel a wetness spill from his eyes as he clung to you, unwilling to let go. Though, in the moment, you were just as reluctant to leave the comforting embrace.

"I-I called Luciel. And Vanderwood. The Mint Eye's security defenses are completely down. They can literally walk in and—"

A blaring alarm interrupted the two of you from your momentary reunion, causing you both to further bury yourselves in each other's arms in an attempt to hide from the sound.

There was only a second before Rika's prerecorded voice played out over the speakers, and after that brief moment of calm passed, only chaos followed.

The booms and crashes and screams coming from up above were distant but loud, and there was no question in the fact that the duo that had come to rescue you and Saeran was not trying to be subtle about it.

"That must be them," Saeran thought out loud, looking up. The two of you had been settled in the central dungeons, the most secure part of the Mint Eye but also the part directly beneath the main entrance. Without a doubt, if Luciel and Vanderwood were the ones who had caused that alarm then they were directly above you: 2,000 feet up.

"Why'd you leave th-the alarms on?" Saeran asked, coughing in the middle. It seemed that the effects of the Elixir were still taking their toll on him.

"So that Rika wouldn't realize that I'd disabled everything else," You responded before shushing the boy. "Don't talk. You'll make it worse."

"Th-there's something I need to tell you, though," Saeran whispered, pulling back from the hug. You wanted to admonish and quiet him, but he began speaking before you could intervene. "I know you don't want me to apologize. But I'm sorry, (Y/N). I'm so fucking sorry. These past two months, I've treated you like shi-"

You brought a finger to Saeran's lips, silencing him with a shake of your head. "That's in the past. I forgive you."

"But you shouldn't forgive me! I've been so awful to you!" Saeran continued rambling, lost once more in one of his long apologies.

You almost laughed.

In all this time, after everything that these past two months had put you through, nothing had truly changed in your relationship. He was still the apologetic teddy bear you cared for. No, he was the apologetic teddy bear you loved.

"Shh," You whispered to Saeran once more, a tiny smile on your face as an idea popped into your head.

"But-"

There it was.

The apologetic teddy bear had spoken once more, another 'I'm sorry' about to roll off his lips when you silenced him with a sweet and chaste kiss.

You smiled into his lips, still young and inexperienced. The only other man you'd kissed in your entire life had been Saeran's own brother, Luciel. But with Luciel it had been different. Hot and passionate, but lacking love.

And so this kiss with Saeran felt as novel and foreign as the future that it would trigger between you two, one filled with happiness and hope and life.

"I don't need you to apologize for anything," You murmured. "Because I love you despite it all."

Saeran hesitated for a moment, before everything holding him back vanished. He leaned forward to recapture your lips, and you felt his shoulders shake and his cheeks grow wet once more as you two basked in the sweet glory of simply being together. It made you smile, to know that something simple as a kiss could bring him such emotion. It reassured you. Deep in your heart, you'd known of your affections for Saeran for years. The implication that he wouldn't feel the same way would have been too much for you to handle.

"But I have one more thing to apologize for," Saeran whispered, bringing his lips a hair away from yours. You were about to tell him to shut up and kiss you again, but as usual, he continued before you had the chance. "This wasn't our first kiss."

You looked up into his eyes, startled.

Had you two kissed before? After so much time together, the idea wasn't that absurd, but you were certain you would have remembered something so important.

"It was during your Secondary commitment. That was the first time. And...despite everything that had been going on, you trusted me. And that was the moment when I realized that I loved you." Saeran leaned forward and met your lips again, unwilling to lose the contact for more than a second.

"I love you," He repeated, kissing your cheek, as if testing the words.

"I love you." He kissed your neck with newfound confidence.

"I love you." He kissed your jaw.

"I love you." Your shoulder.

He traced your entire body like that, sending shudders down your spine as his lips ghosted over every bit of exposed skin, leaving nothing unclaimed with another whispered 'I love you' so that every part of you knew it for the truth.

You could only repeat it back to him when he finally moved back up to your lips, and by then the entire world had stopped for you two. The sound of alarms upstairs in the Mint Eye was like background music, edging the two of you on as Saeran pressed your back to the cell wall, deepening each kiss with his tongue.

Even the sound of bombs seemed far away as his hands made contact with your skin, one resting on your thigh and the other on the small of your back as he pressed your body closer to his. And the sound of screams faded into an off-tune melody that enveloped the two of you as you wrapped your arms around Saeran's neck, a quiet beg for more.

All around you, there was chaos. Mayhem. Havoc.

But your quiet cell was the first glimpse of true paradise you'd seen since your arrival in the Mint Eye so many years ago: and it was a pale-faced paradise with short, white hair, and mint green eyes.

It was a paradise that you'd spent years befriending and loving, a paradise that would be with you no matter where you went.

It was a paradise you loved, and a paradise that loved you back.

It was true paradise.

MASTERLIST

Neutral Route: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | ✔

Saeyoung’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | ✔

Saeran’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | ✔

Word count: 1.7k

Notes: Owowowow im on spring break but this is the week that all the textbooks i ordered in preparation for my exams have arrived T^T wish me luck i get to work out and then do 80 pages of math! how exciting.

Comment & Like

Next Update: 4/09/20

I do not own the rights to Mystic Messenger or any of the characters within it.

41 notes · View notes

scotianostra · 4 years

Video

youtube

The Gaelic singer Calum Kennedy was born on June 2nd 1928 at Orosay, Isle of Lewis.

Calum spent his early years in a remote community without electricity or running water. But music and dancing were strong features of his upbringing with villagers regularly converging for ceilidhs and informal music sessions.

His father ran a bus service to and from Stornoway and the family became quite a focal point of the local community and not merely for the sound of melodeon and fiddles regularly heard in their home. When Calum was 10 they acquired a radio - "the first in our village" - a novelty that attracted many visitors and opened his ears to the wider musical world around him.

He regularly sang in church, but attributed his unusual range and powers of projection to wandering on the moors near his home and singing to the cows and sheep as a way of calling them home from the hill.

At this time he had no thoughts of a career in entertainment and moved to Glasgow to work on Clydeside as an apprentice plater. He didn't last long there and went through a series of abortive careers, including a brief period training to be a doctor, a spell as an accountant and three and a half years in the Army.

His sister then suggested he try his luck singing at the Glasgow Mod, a competition-based annual festival of Gaelic arts. Victory qualified him to compete in the National Mod held in Dunoon. He didn't win that year but it inspired him to take his singing much more seriously and resurrect the songs of his childhood, which he performed with rare zeal and passion.

In 1953 he met and married Anne Gillies, herself a fine Gaelic singer, and they started performing together. Calum took the gold medal at the National Mod in Aberdeen in 1955. It was a triumph that launched him to stardom.

Concerts followed in London and elsewhere, and his first recordings. He broadened his repertoire from Gaelic ballads and mouth music to incorporate English-language material and, with his mop of curly hair, boyish looks and dramatic sense of delivery, he caught the imagination of the public at large.

In 1957 he travelled by train to Moscow with another would-be singer and actor, Richard Harris, to compete in the World Ballad Championship, during which the two became good friends and Kennedy acquired a taste for drink and a reputation as a party animal. It proved to be a momentous trip as Kennedy beat 500 singers from all over the world, was presented with a gold medal by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and got to perform at the Bolshoi Theatre. He returned a hero and his subsequent recording career included many orchestrated populist songs, with material ranging from "The Skye Boat Song", "Bluebells of Scotland", "The Whistling Gypsy", "Ae Fond Kiss" and "Amazing Grace" to "Keep Right on to the End of the Road" and "Donald Where's Yer Troosers"? His most famous and most acclaimed interpretations, though, were the Gaelic love song "Peigi a Ghraidh" and Byron's tribute to his childhood in Aberdeen, "Dark Lochnagar". Later he composed his own material, like "No No Geordie Munro" and "The Skyline of Skye", though the best-loved was probably the sentimental evocation of his own roots on "Lovely Stornoway".

As powerfully emotive a singer as he was, however, it was his engagingly forceful personality that won the hearts of the public and his escalating fame throughout the Sixties was largely built on regular television appearances. He hosted the first live show on Grampian Television and also starred in his own variety show on STV, almost inventing the template for the archetype Scottish performer of the day with his quips, kilt and irrepressible beam presenting long-running series Calum's Celidh and Round at Calum's.

He lived an expansive life, making big money selling out venues all over the country with his own travelling show, while also leading a busy social and family life, with five daughters. Anne and the girls all featured in his television show Meet the Kennedys and for a while performed on stage as a family group, the Singing Kennedys.

However, luck turned against him in the Seventies. His wife died suddenly in 1974 at the age of 40 after being admitted to hospital for a routine operation. AIt him him really hard and about the same time he was afflicted by throat problems, he didn't sing for two years and when he did return he found that his theatrical approach had lost favour with a public that now saw his robust, kilted persona and sentimental singing as representative of a one-dimensional, stereotypical image of Scottishness. He diversified and became an impresario, buying Dundee Palace and Aberdeen's Tivoli Theatre, bringing Shirley Bassey, Frankie Vaughan and the Billy Cotton Band Show to Scotland.

He was never again to recapture his glories of the Fifties and Sixties, but continued to perform. In 1985 he was the subject of an unintentionally funny BBC documentary, Calum Kennedy's Commando Course, which followed him on a disastrous variety tour through the north of Scotland. In 1986 he married his second wife, Christine, and they had a daughter together, but divorced.

Despite persistent health problems that resulted in a heart bypass operation, he made a stage comeback in the 1990s and was still performing at the age of 70. He suffered a stroke in 2005 but there was a continuing awareness of his work through a couple of compilation CDs, The King of the Highlands and Sailing up the Clyde, of tracks recorded in his heyday.

His eldest daughter, Fiona Kennedy, has taken on his mantle as a television presenter and singer of Gaelic songs, she continues to tour and sing, her latest album coming just a month ago.

There are so many songs I could have chosen to post to celebrate Calums birth date but as it's my birthday today I have chosen my favourite song from him, The Skyline of Skye, the lyrics are below.....

The islands are calling me back home again And I long for the skyline of Skye. A lassie is waiting, sweet flow'r of the glen, 'Neath the beautiful skyline of Skye. I left her one springtime; oh, I loved her so! The blue mountains whispered, "You're foolish to go." As I sailed with the tide, something died here inside. How I cried for the skyline of Skye! In mem'ry I'm hearing the ghost of her tune That keeps haunting my heart with a sigh. It tells of her parting that sad afternoon. It's the song of the skyline of Skye. The road to the islands comes down to the sea, And that's where my love will be waiting for me, And together we'll stay till we're both old and grey 'Neath the beautiful skyline of Skye.

#Scotland #scottish #singer #gaelic singer #Isle of Lewis

12 notes · View notes

duhragonball · 4 years

Text

[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (137/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation. This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

[15 November, 233 Before Age. Nagaoka.]

Less then six hours ago, King Rehval III Trismegistus had prevailed against all of his enemies and united the Saiyan race under his rule. An invasion fleet led by the Super Saiyan Luffa had tried and failed to destroy his stronghold on Nagaoka, and he boldly commanded them to choose surrender or death. The Federation ships withdrew, while those of the Saiyan Free Company landed on Nagaoka to join him. For Rehval's followers in the Jindan Cult, this was cause for a great celebration. The festivities were carefully regulated by the priesthood, but the mood was still very joyful within the subterranean compound where they all lived.

Treekul was the only sapient being on the planet who wasn't a Saiyan, and so she didn't understand the importance of this victory until someone else explained it to her. The Saiyans were all very powerful, but their population was small, with current estimates at less than fifty thousand. There were some neutrals scattered throughout the galaxy, but the bulk of their species had been divided between Rehval's cult and Seltiss' Saiyan Free Company. With Seltiss' capitulation, King Rehval could rule the Saiyan people unopposed. And once the Free Companions were formally initiated into the cult, the Jindan potion would bind them to Rehval, body and soul, for all time.

"What about the Super Saiyan?" Treekul had asked. "Did she surrender too?"

"Hah! The minute she saw her fleet break apart, she turned and fled!" That was the way one of the acolytes had explained it. Treekul had asked others, and they all interpreted it the same way: Luffa was no longer a threat. Her power was no match for Rehval's alchemical bond with Planet Nagaoka, and he held too many other planets hostage for her to oppose him anywhere else. In time, he would brand Luffa an outlaw, and it would be a crime for any civilization to assist her in any way. Luffa would have no choice but to roam the stars as an exile until her ship ran out of fuel. Or she could settle down on some uncharted world. Or she could return to Nagaoka and beg to be admitted into the cult, but no one seemed to take that possibility very seriously.

Treekul saw it differently, since she had never intended to join the cult. She had only accompanied a group of Saiyans as a consultant, but Rehval had taken a liking to her and made her an official priestess, and his apprentice in the alchemical arts. Despite these lofty titles, and the privileges that came with them, she knew she was little more than a plaything to him. She had managed to avoid his romantic advances so far, but this was becoming increasingly difficult, and now, it was beginning to seem like there was no point to resisting him. Before, his claims of becoming an invincible ruler of the universe sounded like the ravings of a madman, but now it looked like he had been right all along. She hadn't learned much alchemy from him, but he had shared enough of his secrets to prove that he knew what he was doing. He had real power, and he seemed willing to share a portion of it with her.

Since arriving on Nagaoka, Treekul's only objective had been to escape, but she was finding it harder to want to leave. Where could she go? And even if escape from the cult was possible, what would be waiting for her on the outside? In Rehval's new dominion, all power would flow from the ranks of his followers. As a civilian, she was nothing but a minor archaeologist, roaming the stars for academic glory. Here, she was respected and feared. She had the ear of the most powerful man in the universe, and maybe a little more than just his ear, if she wanted. Would it be worth running away from all of that, just to try to go back to her normal life? A life that might not even be possible under Rehval's New Order?

Despite her dilemma, Treekul still searched for ways to leave the planet. It gave her something to do in her downtime, and knowing more about her surroundings gave her a feeling of control over her predicament. The ongoing celebrations allowed her to trespass into places she normally wouldn't have dared to explore. An overeager cultist actually took her to the surface for the first time. They all wanted to watch the SFC ships that flew in from high orbit, and Treekul was able to sweet talk one of them into bringing her along. Then she excused herself, and scouted around for a while on her own.

Treekul had learned about "the junkyard" some time ago, but never had a chance to visit it until today. Access to the cult's shipyard was nearly impossible for her, but the junkyard was less secure. None of the ships here were spaceworthy. Freighters without engines, shuttles with broken hulls, cruisers without life support. For a time, Treekul had considered the possibility of cobbling something together from these pieces, but she needed a technician from the cult to do the work, and the one she had been grooming for the job had been sent off to die in Rehval's war with the Federation. At least now, she could see the wreckage for herself, even if she wasn't sure what to do with it.

The thought had occurred to her that she might not need a life support system. In recent lessons, Rehval had mentioned ways of keeping a living subject in tact through otherwise fatal conditions. If she could learn those techniques and apply them to her own body, then it might be possible to travel to another planet without air or water. But how long would that take? And if she was willing to wait that long, was it even worth trying to escape at all?

On some level, she had to admit, she liked the challenge of it. When she first met Rehval, she wrote him off as a madman with an inferiority complex. But now that she had seen his plans come to fruition, she began to respect his sanity more. Matching wits with him seemed more like a friendly game than a struggle for survival. As she climbed into the cockpit of the damaged shuttle to study its controls, she considered that the real appeal of her scheme wasn't the escape itself, but the thrill of imagining how Rehval would respond. He wouldn't just let her go. He was far too possessive for that. She pictured a desperate chase, with her trying to stay one step ahead of his minions, only to be recaptured and brought back before him. And then he would lecture her on the futility of escape and order her back to his laboratory to resume her lessons.

A year ago, she would have thought such a game would be terrifying, but now it seemed almost romantic to her. Treekul knew that this should bother her, that it was a sign that life among the cultists had taken a toll on her mental health. But she couldn't find it in herself to care. Too many things made sense on Nagaoka now, and even the longing to escape seemed to be just one more parlor game in Rehval's menagerie.

Satisfied with today's outing, Treekul left the yard and started back. Even the grey clouds in the sky seemed cheerful somehow. Knowing that Rehval had merged his consciousness with the planet had given her a new perspective on it. She wondered if he could see her now, or if he could feel her feet treading across the fields that surrounded the compound. And if he couldn't sense her, how long would it be before he could...?

*******

Much of Rehval's settlement on Nagaoka was a network of underground carvers, some natural, with artificial tunnels branching off from these. This living space resembled a vast catacomb, and the cultists accepted this gloomy dwelling as part of the price for their enhanced power. There were, however, more technologically advanced parts of the complex. The command center overlooking the shipyard looked as though it had been transplanted from some bustling metropolis on a major hubworld. Rehval himself spent little time here, preferring the sanctity of his bedchamber and laboratory, but he occasionally paid visits to the command center, if only to check on things and to remind the crew what they were fighting for. Today, he was giving his daughter a tour.

"Endive is one of my finest Executants," he said, careful to qualify his praise. She stood at attention while he presented her to his guests, and he noticed the slightest wince in her expression when he used the words "one of my finest."

"Right, I'm sure she is," Seltiss said without even looking at her. He didn't need mystic powers or alchemical wisdom to sense the bitterness in her voice. Days earlier, she had believed herself to be a successful leader, commanding a free company of Saiyans, and a reasonably strong warrior in her own right. Now, she had submitted to the inevitability of his rule, and she was surrounded by his followers, whose powers dwarfed her own.

"You can learn a lot from women like Endive," he said. "She resisted me once, too, much like your 'free companions'. But she's turned away from her wickedness, and now she prospers under my new order."

"As if. She looks terrified, dad," Seltiss said to him. Then to Endive, she asked: "When's the last time you got any sleep?"

"Two days ago, my lady," Endive replied, but only after glancing to Rehval first for approval to speak. This was not lost on Seltiss, who snorted with contempt.

"Is this what I'm supposed to learn?" Seltiss asked. "To know my place?"

"That's right," Rehval said. "I know this is a difficult time for you, Seltiss. You grew up believing you would inherit my throne. And now that I've... evolved, I no longer need a successor. Hm. I've never tried to put it into words before. Somehow, 'evolved' seems like too small a term."

Physically, he looked no different than before. Since completing the ritual that connected him to the planet, he decided to dispense with the flowing red robes, and walked around in simple cotton pajamas. No physical connection to the planet's surface was necessary. He only had to stay within its atmosphere to make it work, though he did enjoy the peculiar sensation he felt when he walked barefoot through the caverns. Even the artificial tile of the command center interior was pleasing, as the facility was rooted to the ground, and the geomantic energies conducted through it. Rehval had privately decided that he would never wear shoes again. There was nothing that could hurt him here. He was the planet, and everything and everyone on it belong to him. Even his daughter's insolence seemed cozy and soothing somehow.

Seltiss groaned with embarrassment as he put his hand on her shoulder.

"The point I'm trying to make," Rehval continued, "is that I still need my daughter, even if I don't need an heir. There's a lot you can do for my reign, Seltiss. You and your children, and your children's children..."

She reached for his hand and removed it from her shoulder like it was a dead rat. "That's all you want from me, isn't it?" she asked. "Xibuyas and I are nothing but breeding stock to you. Just like your 'finest Executant' over there, I'll bet."

"Don't be ridiculous," Rehval said. "Your pedigree puts you on a higher level than any Saiyan on this planet. Far above Endive or anyone else. Your offspring will be the provincial governors of my eternal empire."

Seltiss didn't understand, and perhaps she never would, but she had already been extremely useful to him by assembling the Saiyan Free Company in the first place. As his enemy, she had assembled and delivered to him thousands of Saiayans who would have been his fiercest opponents. As he led her on the tour, his priests were processing her followers as they arrived. The ones who still had their tails would need to remove them as a show of loyalty, and then later they would receive the Jindan potion and be formally inducted into the cult. It would have taken decades to gather these loose ends, and Rehval had been willing to spend those decades, but his daughter had completed the task for him in less than a year. And that was Seltiss being his foe. How much more she could do for him as an ally! He could only imagine the sort of wonders her great-grandchildren would be performing for him in a century or two.

"A puppet is still a puppet, dad," Seltiss said. "No matter how many crowns you put on its head. That's what you used to tell me."

"You still think of me as mortal," he said with a laugh. "It's true, you'll forever be second to my glory, but that's how it is for every temporal king. Even the grandest of rulers know better than to envy the heavens."

"Like you, dad?" Seltiss asked.

He laughed again. "It's good to have you back at my side, Seltiss. I look forward to many more of these spirited debates. What about you, Xibuyas? Don't tell me you're going to be a sore loser about all this."

The young Saiyan had remained quietly by Seltiss' side from the moment she disembarked from her command ship. Rehval had considered Luffa's son to be a useful catspaw, until the boy's failure at Pflaume City. Meeting Rehval again seemed to remind the boy of his shortcomings, and so he had been very pensive during the tour.

"I only want to know when Luffa dies," Xibuyas said. "You say you have the power. Why did allow her to leave the system?"

"Because I'm in no particular hurry with her," Rehval said. "Not anymore. With your group now added to my own, I can afford to take my time. The galaxy will surrender to me whether she interferes or not. Eventually, she'll die in isolation, or she'll make some mad attempt to go down in a blaze of glory. Personally, I hope she comes back groveling for my forgiveness, but it doesn't make much difference anymore. Now then, I think we've seen enough of the command center, so let's move on to the aqueducts, where--"

"Master!" cried one of the cultists sitting at a tactical station. "There's a ship entering the system! It's headed for the planet!"

"Hm? That's odd. Maybe they were part of the Federation fleet and got lost," Rehval said. "Oh well."

"You aren't going to scramble your fighters to intercept it?" Xibuyas asked.

"Whatever for?" Rehval asked. "Or did you already forget how easily I repelled the last attack on this planet? Dozens of warships, including your own, Xibuyas. They couldn't scratch Nagaoka. What can one cruiser possibly do?"

"Even so," Seltiss said, "it would be foolish to, like, ignore it--"

He sighed. "I get it. I really do. You were both always so stubborn, even as children. You still haven't accepted what I've become, so you probe for weaknesses, vulnerabilities that you can exploit later. 'Did you notice that? He doesn't intercept ships that stray into his system. We can use that somehow...' Is that what this is? Fine."

He turned to Endive, who somehow stood even more rigidly at attention than before. "Go," he said. "Handle this."

"At once!" Endive said with an eager smile. She turned to the tactical station and asked for a full report. Rehval spared a moment to admire the fit of Endive's Executant armor. He almost regretted poisoning her father all those years ago. How it would have pained him to see her like this, a devoted soldier of the Saiyan King.

"I'm picking up only one life sign on board," the soldier announced. "It's a Saiyan."

"There, you see?" Rehval said to his guests. "Another lost soul seeking to join my fellowship. You thought he was a threat, but once he's initiated in our fellowship, he'll only make me stronger. Now that Guwar has told the outside universe where to find me, I guess I'll just have to get used to Saiyans seeking me out directly from now on--"

"Master," Endive said. "The ship isn't slowing down! If it hits the field at this speed, the pilot will be killed!"

"Curious," Rehval said. "Now what could be the point of such a stunt? My power shields the planet from any bombardment, whether by conventional arms or ki blasts."

"That energy," Xibuyas suddenly said. "Do you sense it? That's no Saiyan... it's her."

"What are you talking about?" Rehval said, more annoyed than concerned.

"The ship has collided with the Jindan field surrounding the planet, Master," Endive announced. By now she had simply shoved the soldier away from the tactical station and had taken his seat for herself.

"Yes, I just felt the collision," Rehval said. "Let's not forget whose field it is, after all."

"Forgive me, Blessed One," Endive said, "but... I show something has broken through!"

Rehval was about to ask what it was, and then the ground shook beneath their feet.

"It's Luffa," Xibuyas said in a low voice. "She's returned."

He was right. Rehval could sense the ki now. Earlier, when the fleet's attack had failed, Luffa had managed to penetrate the clouds of Nagaoka with a focused ki blast. Her attack had done no damage, and in theory a vessel could have slipped through the hole she had briefly opened up, but there was no point in sending a single ship to attack the planet, so he hadn't worried about it.

Rehval still wasn't worried, though he was perplexed.

"It doesn't make any sense," Seltiss said, apparently reaching the same conclusion. "She couldn't put a dent in that field when she had the whole alliance at her back, so why come alone?"

"She knew she couldn't disrupt the entire field, so she passed through it," Rehval said. "The ship was just to get her close enough to it so she could force her way through. Interesting."

He could feel the impact Luffa had made. Miles away, a grassy field had been reduced to a large crater. The damage would have been much worse than that, but Rehval's power over Nagaoka had absorbed the brunt of the attack. At best, an enemy could only hope to damage the biosphere of Nagaoka, but nothing below the surface.

"Why would she come here? It's insane!" Seltiss said. "She can't fight all of us at once, and with her ship destroyed, she's given up her only means of escape!"

"She didn't come here to escape," Rehval said. "No, I think young Luffa came here to die. How very noble. She's so humiliated by the last defeat that she's chosen to end her life in a hopeless battle rather than live with the shame. Endive, let's do what we can to grant Luffa's wish."

"Yes, Master," Endive said. "A hundred of our warriors should be more than enough to defeat her."

"I agree," Rehval said. "Well? Does this satisfy you, Xibuyas?"

"Let me go with them, Your Majesty" he pleaded. "I want to see her death with my own eyes!"

"Ah-ah!" Rehval said. "You already had your chance on Planet Pflaume, remember? I think denying you here would be good for your character, Xibuyas. Besides, you need to learn the importance of delegation. You're going to be a very important provincial governor for me some day, and it would be inefficient for you to handle all the busywork personally."

The boy fell silent, and Rehval decided to pause their tour while they waited for the hundred to report in. He ordered a meal to be served in the main conference room, so his family and the S.F.C. generals could watch the crew of the command center as they followed the battle. They were barely into the main course when Endive relayed the report from the field.

"I sent my troops to the impact site as ordered," she said. "They searched, but found no one... dead or alive."

"What?" Rehval gasped.

"Hah!" Xibuyas laughed. "Just like a woman! The coward ran away!"

"Be quiet," Rehval snapped. He hadn't been taking this seriously, but Luffa had his attention now. "She didn't maroon herself behind enemy lines just to hide. She's up to something, but what? She can't be planning to attack our stronghold. She'd be walking into tens of thousands of cultists instead of a mere hundred. And there's no other strategic objectives on the planet."

He couldn't sense Luffa's ki either. His bond with the planet had enabled him to sense things all over Nagaoka, but the footsteps of a single woman were too subtle. It was like expecting to notice motes of dust landing on one's skin. His ki senses had increased dramatically, however. And yet, he found nothing, until suddenly, for only a moment...!

A split second later, they heard an explosion outside. One of the other crewmen reported the damage. "It's the spaceport," he called out. Someone's taken one of the ships!"

They could all sense her now. Earlier, Luffa's ki had seemed to vanish, but now she was acting with her full strength. This time, Rehval was provoked enough to want to see for himself what was going on. He rushed to the door, and levitated himself to an altitude that offered a view of the shipyard. For a moment, he saw the hijacked cruiser floating over the the other ships, firing its guns as it circled the yard.

And then, just as his followers began to converge on the location, the cruiser exploded in a ball of yellow fire. Even at this distance, he could hear laughter. That maddening laugh.

Luffa only attacked once, firing a thin crimson beam into the mass of warriors that converged on her position. Then, with blinding speed, she turned and fled, retreating into the thick grey clouds like a bolt of golden lightning.

Rehval made his way to the shipyard, where he bade his followers to stand down. Soon enough, Endive, Seltiss, and Xibuyas joined them. The entire hardstand was in flames, with secondary explosions going off as the heat ruptured volatile components in the wreckage.

"Only one casualty," Endive reported. "Her beam went right through his heart."

"What is she doing?" Xibuyas asked. "First she destroys her own ship, and now all of these! What good does it do her?"

"Look!" Seltiss called out. She was pointing at a section of the hardstand that hadn't been burned. "She left... a message."

Rehval had already spotted it as he descended, but he let the others see it for themselves. It looked like Luffa had carved it out of the pavement by hand.

NO ONE LEAVES

"She means to destroy us all," Rehval said.

"But she can't destroy the planet," Seltiss said. "You already proved that. Your power makes it impervious to that sort of damage."

"Yes," Rehval said. "But I lack the speed and offensive power to catch her. She's seems to think she can pick us off, one by one if she has to."

"Impossible," Endive said. "She may be powerful, but she can't possibly hold out long enough to win a war of attrition."

"I agree," Rehval said. "Either way, it looks like we're going to find out. But it's brilliant, in a way. By infiltrating this planet, she's removed my earthen avatars from the equation. I placed them on planets all over the galaxy, so that if she dared to interfere with my plans, I could destroy a few billion people to punish her. Only now, I don't dare carry out that threat, because I need to focus my energies here. I could use my avatars here, of course. Summoning a few dozen on Nagaokan soil would be child's play for me now, but they're much too slow. She can simply outrun them, and attack me where I'm vulnerable. So, if nothing else, she's saved the galaxy... for the time being, at least."

"I can send out search teams," Endive suggested. "We can track her down--"

"No, my dear, spreading out our forces will only play into her hands," he said. "We need to approach this very carefully. Luffa's brilliant, yes, but this still smacks of desperation. She has nowhere else to go, and I have already proven myself as the conqueror of the universe. This planet and its people are all extensions of my power. She won't last long. For all her power, she's just one woman."

NEXT: One Against All

#dragon ball #fanfiction #super saiyan #luffa #lssjluffafic #trismegistus #xibuyas #endive #treekul #seltiss

3 notes · View notes

chillax-kass-w · 4 years

Text

After All | RM2

[Reiner Braun/Reader]

Happiness seems impossible for Reiner, but he may get there after all.

Read on AO3

[As a note, the format of this story is as follows: chapters actually titled “Chapter _” are current to the Marley Arc, chapters titled “M_” are Reiner’s memories in succession, and chapters titled “RM_” are the Reader’s memories in succession]

The evacuation bell rang, and (f/n) couldn’t help the relief that overcame her. They’d been in the fray for what felt like hours, narrowly avoiding death time and time again. She barely had a grasp of her kill count; she could care less. All she knew was that she yelled for her comrades to follow her over Wall Rose, and she focused on nothing else. They’d been lucky to have conserved their gas so well. She’d always had a knack for it in their training, so she’d berated her friends when they were wasteful. It all paid off in the end, and they crossed the Wall with little to no interference.

But was it enough?

They were put on standby, the chance of heading back into the fray higher than ever. One order and they were put in front of Death’s door again. The anxiety was palpable in the air. Her group was silent, either staring at the ground or straight ahead in what could only be dissociation. (f/n) had no idea what she could say to them; no words seemed appropriate. She didn’t want to open grief’s door, not until they were truly out of harm’s way.

She couldn’t bring herself to think about anything but the look in Sarah’s eyes as she ceased existing. She wasn’t particularly close to the girl, only being tasked with cleaning and other odd jobs with her, but she knew the blonde was a happy-go-lucky girl who’d do anything to put a smile on someone’s face. They’d usually banter back and forth about their respective friend groups, training, and any other thing that seemed noteworthy. That morning, she’d been so caught up in her thoughts about Reiner that she hadn’t even greeted the girl properly.

And now she was gone.

That smile was gone.

Before she could continue her depressed thought process, the unmistakable sound of cannon fire broke through the air, and she scrambled off the steps to stand with her comrades. All eyes were turned to the plume of smoke rising far above the Wall, and words were thrown around in fear and confusion.

“Cannon fire?”

“That was inside the Wall!”

“Just one shot?”

“Has the floodgate been destroyed?!”

“Nah, that’s the most fortified spot. There’s no way… I’m sure someone just dropped an explosive…”

“Still, what’s with all that smoke?!”

“Could it be… steam coming off a Titan?!”

“Reiner?!”

At the name, (f/n)’s eyes shot to a familiar blonde figure propelling himself onto a nearby building. Other familiars were following after, and she decided to be one of them.

She had to know what was going on.

She arrived in time to hear Reiner voice a collective question. “What the hell’s going on down there?” His eyebrows were furrowed, and his voice was almost new to her. She guessed that came with being apart for three months, give or take a few days.

However, what was truly new was the deformed Titan body leaning in the southern corner of the Wall. It had no skin, no lower body. It was just muscle and bone, only rib cage and skull. A couple of figures stood within the billowing steam, but (f/n) couldn’t make out any identifiable features. Nonetheless, she felt fear for them.

Why wasn’t it attacking?

The steam was disappearing slowly, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. She couldn’t even take her eyes off the thing, slowly vanishing into hot air. What could have created it? Why were there people inside? Why weren’t Reiner and the rest saying anything?

Then, as if that wasn’t enough, a figure slowly emerged from the clouds of steam, and she couldn’t help the gasp that left her lungs at the sight of Armin. He was so small in comparison to the wide array of weapons pointed directly at him. So small from her view on the roof. But he looked so powerful.

“You! Stop right there!” yelled the Garrison captain. His voice was harsh, threatening.

“He isn’t an enemy of the human race!” Even Armin’s voice was powerful, a strength she’d never known in the boy on show in what could be his final moments. Her hands balled up into fists at her sides, the tension carrying through her entire body. “We wish to disclose all the knowledge we’ve acquired about the Titans!”

“It’s meaningless to beg for your lives! He revealed his true form before our eyes! There’s nothing left to be said! If you claim he’s not a Titan, show me proof! If you can’t do that, I’ll eliminate the threat!”

If possible, Armin’s voice grew in volume, the sheer resolve felt through every vibration. “First of all, how we see him isn’t the issue! You said everyone saw him! In that case, they must have seen him fighting the Titans! And they must have seen all the Titans in the area ganging up on him! In other words, the Titans saw him as prey, just like us! No matter how long we think about this, that truth still stands!” (f/n) had no idea what he was talking about, who he was talking about, but she could take a guess. There was a person in that dissolved Titan, and that person was Eren. But why? How? How could Eren be in such a situation? She looked beside her to find Jean and Reiner with fear ringing true in their expressions. Had they known?

The captain raised his arm, a call for attack, and (f/n)’s breathing stopped ragged in her chest. “Prepare to counterattack! Don’t be taken in by this clever trap! Their behavior has always been beyond our understanding! I’m saying they could have the ability to turn into humans! But we can’t let them get away with it any longer!”

In defiance, Armin placed his fist over his heart, the perfect salute. His voice stayed loud, proud, determined, even in the face of death. “As a soldier, I vowed long ago to dedicate my heart to the recovery of the human race! If my life ends while keeping that vow, I have no complaints! But, if you combine his ‘Titan Power’ with our remaining military force, it might even be possible to recover this town! For the glory of the human race, I beg you! In the moments I have left before I die! Let me explain his strategic value!”

Despite Armin’s rallying words, the Captain’s arm remained upright, falling forward to signal life’s departure. Yet, another arm caught his, and the Commander of the Garrison made his presence known.

“Stand down,” even upon the rooftop, (f/n) could clearly hear his voice. She guessed even a dropped pin could be heard in that moment. “You never change. For a man your size, you’re as delicate as a fawn. Can’t you see how magnificent that boy’s salute is?”

“Commander Pixis-!”

“I just arrived, but the situation was relayed to me by a rider. As of this moment, I’m putting you in command of the reinforcements. I have a feeling it would be worth our while to listen to what these kids have to say.”

With that, he motioned for them to follow him. The baffled stares of every soldier present were not heeded by the Commander as he led the trio toward an elevator. (f/n) turned toward her friends to ask what in the world was going on, but their blank stares were turned toward the ranks still standing in the streets. Without a word, they jumped from the roof to rejoin their squads, and (f/n) followed behind wordlessly as well. She just wanted to know what was going on, but she knew she’d get no answers out of her friends.

Gordon and the others were still standing where she left them, and they were even more confused than her. She didn’t think it wise to spread misinformation, so she stayed silent, only shaking her head when Sandra asked what was wrong. They remained as such until Pixis’ voice rang from atop the Wall.

“Where’s my council?! Let’s work out a strategy!”

That caused everyone to erupt in questions and shouts.

“A plan to take back Trost?!”

“Now?!”

“You gotta be kidding! How can we when we don’t even have the means to seal that hole?!”

Her group started to panic, Floch and Keno falling to their knees in terror. Sandra tried to comfort them, but her hands shook as she reached for their shoulders. Gordon could only look upon them in shock. Keno was the first to speak.

“I can’t go back out there! I don’t wanna die!”

Before a superior could hear, (f/n) knelt down beside him. She knew the same fear shone in her eyes, but she couldn’t let him panic so.

“Keno, I promise you won’t die.”

Disbelief looked back at her. “How can you even say that?!”

She steadied her voice, quelling her fear at least enough to quell his. “Because I won’t let it happen. I don’t break my promises.” She hoped her determination was audible. She supposed it was, because he looked down without a word, his hands still balled up in his trousers. She looked to the rest of her squad, their faces full with that same fear and disbelief. “I promise all of you, I won’t let you die. So don’t worry. Just do your duty and—“

“Attention!!!” Interrupted the Commander, his voice seemingly breaking the laws of sound. Commanding was an understatement. “I will now explain our strategy to recapture Trost! The goal of this operation will be to plug the hole in the broken gate! We have a way to seal the hole, but first I want to introduce you to Eren Yeagar of the Training Corps!” (f/n)’s heart dropped, as she was sure everyone else’s did. “We’ve been conducting top secret experiments on Titan transformation, and this soldier is our first success!” They’ve been experimenting on him? “He is able to summon the body of a Titan and control it!”

“What?!”

“He will turn into a Titan, pick up the boulder near the outer gate, carry it over, and use it to block the hole! Soldiers! Your task is to protect him from the other Titans while he’s carrying the rock!”

“Lift up that enormous stone?! Is that possible?! Can humans finally control the Titans?!”

“It’s a lie! You expect me to give up my life for some nonsense like that?! What do you take us for?! We’re not some disposable blades!”

“Wait, deserters are killed!”

“I’m gonna spend Humanity’s last days with my family!”

“Me too!”

With that, many soldiers made to leave, pushing past (f/n) and her crew and causing such unrest she half expected her crew to leave as well. That was until the Captain brandished his sword. “I hope you’re prepared to die, traitors!” He walked with quick steps toward the retreating cowards. “Right now! I’ll cut you down before you take another step!” Before he could make good on his word, though, the Commander interrupted her again.

“Upon my order! Anyone who leaves right now will go unpunished! If you have given in to your fear of the Titans, you will never be able to stand against them again! Anyone who has succumbed to the terror of the Titans should leave here! And, anyone who wants their parents, siblings, and loved ones to feel that same fear for themselves should leave as well!!” Those words appeared to rally every deserters’ last ounce of determination and perseverance, as they all turned back and joined the ranks again.

“Let’s talk about what happened four years ago! About the operation to reclaim Wall Maria! I don’t think I need to remind you of it!” Oh, she remembered it well. She’d been so ignorant at the time, but she now knew how absolutely inhumane the whole ordeal was. It was the one time she was glad her parents were gone. “‘Operation to reclaim’ sounds good, doesn’t it? But it was really just a way for an overburdened government to reduce the number of unemployed they had to feed! What no one dares to say is that we’ve been able to survive within the Wall’s narrow confines because your brothers and sisters in arms were forced to go outside it! That sin belongs to all of Humanity, including me! The residents of Wall Maria were a minority, so war never broke out. But what about next time?! If Wall Rose is breached, it won’t be nearly enough to sacrifice twenty percent of the population! Behind our final barrier, Wall Sina, we could only afford to feed half of the world’s surviving human beings! If Humanity does out, it won’t be because the Titans devoured us! It will be because we annihilated each other! We cannot die inside yet another Wall! Given the choice… Die here!!!”

With that, everyone resounded a collective “Sir!” and listened to their orders. (f/n)’s squad was sent to lure the Titans away from Eren, a fact she was glad for. Technically speaking, they were not required to engage with any Titan. They only had to lead the Titans to the opposite corner of the district from the gate, that being the north west corner. Many died on the way, but she made sure their numbers didn’t include Gordon, Sandra, Floch, or Keno. She’d made a promise on their lives. She wouldn’t allow herself to break it.

Once they had lured the majority to the corner, all soldiers were tasked to remain stationary upon the Wall, only able to look down at the insatiable mouths below.

She hated the view.

Those Titans had killed many men and women, many of whom she’d been acquainted with. She felt sick gazing upon their faces. To make it worse, many of them were smiling up at the many soldiers on the Wall. She had to look away to stop the ache in her stomach.

A red flare could be seen in the distance, and she felt dread creep up her spine. The mission had failed. She knew it was too good to be true for a human to control the power of the Titans, but she’d put every shred of hope in Eren’s ability.

Even so, the Commander refused to back down. He sent no orders to retreat, no orders to change the course of the mission. Everyone was forced to wait in anguished patience for another flare. That is, if anyone on the other side of the town survived.

(f/n) thought back to training, to those days when Eren and Jean fought over their ideologies like bickering brothers. Eren would be disappointed to know that he was given such a power and didn’t use it to change Humanity’s course. She knew he absolutely wouldn’t let that happen. Perhaps Pixis had seen that drive, that insatiable hunger for revenge and knew now to give him every chance possible.

It was all they had left.

She hated having to watch and wait. After experiencing battle, she knew she wouldn’t force the experience on anyone. She would rather it be her in harm’s way than her comrades, but she had to follow orders first and foremost. She had to stay stationary. She had to put all her hope in Eren. She had to believe her hope would be returned.

A yellow flare…

“The operation was a success!”

“Send in reinforcements now! Rescue the Alpha Squad!”

A beacon of hope.

#reiner braun #reiner braun x reader #reiner braun/reader #aot #snk #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin

6 notes · View notes

blessuswithblogs · 5 years

Text

The Best Games of the Decade, By My Estimations

With only a good month (ACTUALLY LIKE A GOOD 24 HOURS HA HA I WROTE THIS BACK IN NOVEMBER) or so left of the 2010s (we are regrettably not quite far along enough to really start giving them jaunty names like "the Roaring Twenties" yet, but soon we will be free of this chronological no man's land) I find my thoughts turning to my enduring hobby slash interest slash everlasting shame: video games. While a decade is ultimately a fairly arbitrary point of reference, in the business of video gamesdom, ten years is a small eternity and some very significant games have graced us since the clock struck midnight on January 1st, 2010.

I might still be too young for this kind of nostalgia, granted, but I can't help but think about the game experiences I've had in the last ten years that have been altogether Important to Me. I am less interested in ranking these titles than I am in exploring why they made such an impact on me, and why, if we were to borrow the esteemed verbiage of one Sid Meyer, they stood the test of time. ...or less so, if they came out more recently. Sometimes on these lists I sort of scrimp and scrabble to actually fill it up with enough games and I have to sort of cheat and put things on there I haven't really played, but fortunately I am not so destitute that I have only been able to play one new game a year since this decade began. To that end, this is more of a personal list than usual, that will have less to do with "well the game was kind of a Big Deal........" and more to do with "well the game was kind of a Big Deal to ME."

Dark Souls The First:

This game will likely find its way onto many such lists in the coming days, because it is such a singular thing. Honestly, I would put Demon's Souls on here too, but that was actually like. 2009ish? At any rate, its spiritual successor was a marked improvement in most ways, expanding upon the core design tenets that made the unassuming FROM software ps3 title such an unexpected success: deliberate gameplay that demanded players go slow and respect both enemies and environment until they were sufficiently skilled and experienced, boss fights against extremely memorable monsters and also sometimes trees, strange asynchronous multiplayer that worked in spite of itself, and a meticulously designed world filled with oddities, grotesqueries, mysteries, and tragedies. Dark Souls was a phenomenon. "The Dark Souls of _____" is dig at gormless games journalists that endures and is relevant to this day. It created a whole subgenre that remains fairly untapped because of how much of a gamble it is to really go in on what made Dark Souls good in a game without that kind of name recognition and marketing blitz, and it changed the way the zeitgeist thought about video games in a lot of ways.

Inscrutability is an incredibly important part of the Souls experience. Abandon all hope of transparency, ye who enter here, because you're not getting it. The games were designed with the intent of being a sort of collaborative community puzzle, where players who stumbled on secrets and treasures in the game could leave down messages for others to alert them to hidden prizes - or just try to bait somebody to jump down a bottomless pit. Patches does that. A lot. It's kind of this thing. There is a very specific mood and atmosphere that Miyazaki and company were going for with these games that creates a sort of artistic catch-all for complaints I would level at basically anything else. "These weapons are poorly balanced." Yep. It's not really trying to be balanced. "Half of these systems are unexplained and nonsensical." Oh boy are they ever. "A giant man-sized baby just invaded my world and tried to kill me with a ladle." Yes, yes he did. The bizarre, fever dream ambiance of Dark Souls is enhanced by all of this. It will put a lot of people off and I can't really say "oh you just don't get it." because like no in any other game this would be bullshit nonsense for idiots. Souls just kind of makes it work by being compellingly baffling.

This murkiness also serves to highlight one of the core conceits of the game: the simple joy of greater mastery. Dark Souls starts you out with very little. You have nothing, know nothing, are nothing, and all the npcs you meet are pretty sure you're going to fuck off and die pretty much as soon as you break line of sight. On your first time through, that's probably true, too. The skeletons in the graveyard are infamous. As you claw your way through the game, as you learn more about it, you start to see measurable progress getting made. What was once a bunch of very tired men in armor giving you unsettlingly sinister laughs is now the outline of a story, vague but extant, with more waiting to be discovered. Where you used to flail around and die to random hollows in the undead burg, now you dance circles around them and paste them in one or two hits with your fancy weapons (or enormous wooden club, depending). A world that was once borderline impossible to actually traverse gradually opens up and becomes more familiar. In Dark Souls, death serves a purpose, and that purpose is not actually to block your progress. Its purpose is to get you to learn the game and get better at it. It's actually very player empowering in a way a lot of 'press F to pay respects' theme park rides are not. I'm probably treading a very thin line between thoughtful analysis (ha) and "you cheated not only the game, but yourself." here, but I'm going to stand firm in my belief that the way Souls games endeavor to make you improve yourself over time is a legitimate and meritorious way to design a game.

Of course, Dark Souls the First is very rough around the edges in spots. The second half of the game is somewhat infamous for being unpolished and kind of slapdash. The online was questionable, the PC port was laughable until the community went in and fixed it, Lost Izalith is a whole fucking thing, the works. The fact that it's so good in spite of the rough spots is, I think, what made it such a singular game. I'm one of those hopelessly sentimental idiot bitches who thinks that things that are imperfect are kind of charming and compelling in ways that very cookie cutter, by the book, technically competent but aesthetically bankrupt things are not. Miyazaki had a vision when he made this game, and that vision created an enduring legacy. That's worthy of respect in a way not many games are. It's messy and flawed but those flaws are just kind of endearing because they're proof that the developers were trying to push boundaries and be ambitious and make something new and interesting.

Dark Souls The Second:

Dark Souls 2 has a kind of weird reputation in the online net-o-sphere. There are as many opinions about this game as there are people who have played it. Sometimes more, honestly. I spent a lot of time kind of convinced it wasn't that good until some things clicked and I realized it was HELLA good. That you kind of need the DLC to get the whole picture is... unfortunate, but such is the age we live in. Going into this game, I thought that a second Dark Souls was unnecessary. The first had ended satisfactorily, and I had no desire to see FROM get tied down to the world of Lordran. The quote B Team unquote that developed 2 seemed to agree with me, and created what is one of the most metacognitive games I have ever played. Now, let's not get ahead of ourselves. When I say metacognitive, I do not mean it in the usual facile sense of, say, whatever Jonathan Blow has churned out recently that beats you over the head with the fact that you're playing a video game and you should probably feel bad about it or the way Doki Doki Literature Club does the Epic Subversions! of visual novels by trying to convince you that the game knows it is a game, but failing because it cannot overcome the limitations that it has as a static, unchanging lump of code. Dark Souls 2 aims higher. And you know me - I always try to aim high.

Dark Souls 2 deals with cycles. Most notably, cycles of futility. Cycles that are so enduring and perpetual that it matters not how you choose to resolve it, it will simply keep going no matter what you do. Drangleic is a hollow simulacrum of Lordran - and that is exactly the point. The familiarity and design consistencies between the two games is intentional. The curse of life is the curse of want. It took me a long time to really understand what Dark Souls 2 meant by that. The World of Dark Souls 2 is a sort of unending purgatory. Thousands upon thousands of undead have made the journey, linked the fire, perhaps chose to become the Dark Lord instead, only for some other undying fool to go and light it anyway. Each time, a new order is built upon the bones of the old, and in time, joins its forebears in the ashes of history. When I beat the game the first time and felt that the ending was unsatisfying, I failed to realize that was, again, the point. If the game had shipped with all endings in it, I think I would have been less miffed, but, well, the curse of life is the curse of downloadable content. If you choose to take the throne, link the fire, you have essentially accomplished nothing. Another age of Fire will begin, and then end, and so on and on into the ages, an unending litany of suffering and violence, because people cannot let go of what once was. They seek and scrabble to claim scraps of glory in a systemic nightmare of self-fulfilling prophecies and false dichotomies. When Aldia eventually arrives with the DLC packs, things really start to take shape.

Dark Souls 2 is a commentary on itself. An admission of the futility of trying to recapture the unique spark of the first game, and the necessity of doing something -different-. The playerbase hated it on release. It was both not enough like the first game and too much like the first game. It wasn't like, reviewbombing on metacritic hate, but the consensus rapidly became that 2 was just worse than the first game and kind of a bummer, a half-hearted cashgrab by a "B Team" while the really talented developers worked on Bloodborne. So, basically, they proved 2's central thesis completely correct. A hollow cycle of just repeating and iterating on what has come before serves nobody. In the words of Straid of Olaphis, "it is all a curse." That is the true curse in Dark Souls 2. An undead might link the fire to try and preserve their fading sense of self and memory, but it is but a temporary measure, a prolonging of greater suffering by bowing to an order designed to oppress. Before the Ringed City was ever a thing, Agdyne and Vendrick were here telling us about how Gwyn was so covetous of his own perceived right to rule that he cursed all of humankind into a twisted state of mutually exclusive ideas. Die as a mortal in the flame, or endure as an undead husk in the darkness, bereft of heart and soul. Or... does it even matter? All of this has happened before. It will all happen again.

Those who slave away eternally under this paradigm are doomed to never find peace or fulfillment, because it was not designed that way. Gwyn's fear was so great that he got entangled in his own karmic vortex, reincarnating over and over again with his other lord friends in slightly different forms and circumstances that would continue, eternally, to make the same mistakes in the pursuit of the same misguided goals. Aldia, the Scholar of the First Sin, is presented as one of the few beings in this entire misbegotten affair with an inkling of what is really going on. Both he and Vendrick knew that Drangleic was destined for the same dreg heap as every other civilization built upon the power of the soul, but all of their efforts to prevent this fall were for naught, because they were all confined by the same twisted system in which there can be no change or joy. It is only after Vendrick loses his nerve entirely and fades away into a mindless hollow and Aldia loses everything in his increasingly unhinged and ethically questionable experiments that he realizes that they were doing it all wrong.

I think I've probably gone on too long at this point so I'll try to be brief: the "true" ending of the game, made available after all 3 DLCs were released, involves gathering the power of truly mighty souls in a crown and using them as a sort of... loophole. The empowered crown does not cure the curse of undeath. What it does is prevent -hollowing-. The degradation of heart and mind. And after the final battle, you leave the throne behind. But there is a very important difference here from the Dark Lord ending of the first game. By finding this loophole, and rejecting Gwyn's order entirely, you and you alone have broken free from the endless cycle of suffering, and by doing so, perhaps gained the knowledge necessary to take the first steps into forging a new path entirely. Beyond the reach of Light, beyond the scope of Dark.

So yeah basically it's like Dark Souls the First, with some improvements and changes and what have you, so it's got the same fun to play deliberate explorey dark holey kind of thing going on, it just takes the concepts and runs with it to places I never would have expected a game to ever go. It is legitimately one of the only metanarratively aware games I have played (that I can remember, anyway) that sticks the landing, because it is not obnoxiously explicit about it. Undertale was fun and a worthwhile game by any reasonable metric, but it falls into the same trap as all the others: when you are acknowledged as the player of a game in anything more than a briefly comedic bit of 4th wall breaking, any hope of cleverness or thoughtfulness goes out the window, because it brings to light an ironclad truth of the medium: you, the player, are just as constrained in what you can do as the NPCs in the game, who are also fake. When they start haranguing you about about brotherkilling or being a cheating visual novel boyfriend or possibly girlfriend or what have you, it's just. Meaningless. It is a contrivance of the developer, specifically included in the game as a programmed possibility designed to be experienced.

Dark Souls 2 gets around this by not engaging with the player on that level of metanarrative. It deals much more in metaphor and allegory. It's not, like, especially subtle, but it is subtle enough to let your mind draw parallels without immediately blaring at you in comic sans "THIS IS A VIDEO GAME, KID" and taking you out of it entirely. It's a fine line to walk. A barrier between worlds has to be maintained for these stories to work. I'm the kind of player who will never do a renegade run of Mass Effect because I hate being mean and nasty for no reason, even to bits of code in a game, because I try to engage with it all in good faith and do my best to let myself buy into the illusion that these bits of code are characters with thoughts and feelings. When an angry flower man pops up and says "OOHOOHOO LOOKS LIKE YOU JUST RELOADED THE GAME BECAUSE YOU KILLED SOMEBODY" my first thought isn't "wow fucked up..." it's "oh well there goes my suspension of disbelief" because like. If you're going to call me out on that then fuck I can just go into the code and make you say "there is a frightful hobgoblin haunting europe, and its name is ligma" and like. Yep. Bow before my mastery. I guess. I don't want to get into a slapfight like that with Toby Fox. He seems like a nice person.

I don't know maybe this is just something unique to me, and other people can deal with these stories without immediately becoming depressed by the deeply artificial nature of it all. It's complicated. I will say that I like Undertale a lot, but the reasons that I like it come very much from the character interactions, spritework, and music, and not the time Flowey closed my game. It's just the same pony island bullshit as its always been. "OooOOoOOoh uninstall the game or you're actually just going back and messing with events for your own perverse satisfactionNNNnNNnN" fuck off dipshit it's all fake garbage for idiot children and I am not causing a cartoon skeleton existential agony by considering that maybe I could play this fun game that I liked and payed cash dollars for again. Now, all this considered, my next game on the list might be surprising...

Nier: Automata

Okay so let's just get this out of the way. Nier does a very famous thing at the end when you get the true ending where you are given the choice to forfeit your saved data in order to help another player get past the final boss, which is... the credits. So how is this different? Well, for one thing, it's not like the central narrative conceit of the game. The sexy android psychodrama functions perfectly well without it. It's kind of its own thing. It's... an expression of hope, kind of. An admission that you -care- about the fates of these characters, in spite of being bits of code, because their personalities and their world and the way they interact are all compelling and endearing, and you would give up something of tangible worth and importance to maybe give them a chance for a better outcome in somebody else's game, too. It's a very strange thing that I can think of no real equivalent for. You even get to put a little personalized message on the extra shmup ship you send over to help some other player get through to the end. It's an act that... kind of exists outside of the story, but also kind of in it. I think the important thing here is that the conceit is that you are making this sacrifice to help somebody else, not because a small goat child said something Foreboding. It's a confirmation that if a game makes you feel things, makes you think, maybe it wasn't just a waste of time.

So enough about that. What about like the other 99% of the game? A lot of people in my peer group are super sweet on the original Nier: Gestalt game. I played through it. It was... okay. Like it absolutely had very charming characters and story and all of that but it was just kind of a slog to play through and I kind of wished the entire game was just that segment where you're playing a text adventure. Automata continues to have very charming characters and story and all of that, but it also actually like. It's fun? To hit the buttons? Like, that Platinum pedigree isn't just for show. It's not the most technical game they've ever made, but it's fun and varied (shmups! shmups!) and there's some fun character customization and you even have a self-destruct switch which is always hilarious. The real attraction is the narrative, visuals, and gorgeous music, but it's also just a solid swordswingy dodgy robot smashy time irrespective of that. So like. Yeah.

The story and characters are very interesting and well done and goes to some very dark and uncomfortable places sometimes about the nature of memory, artificial intelligence, the often arbitrary labels we give ourselves, and the implications of sexy robot men with no junk. The nice thing about Nier Automata is that the events in game are fairly straightforward and relayed in a way that people who don't compulsively watch lore videos can understand without too much difficulty, so I don't really need to go into a detailed summary of why it's genius because of tHe AlLeGoRy. It kind of speaks for itself, for the most part. Does 9S want to fuck 2B or destroy 2B? Maybe some other verb entirely! We may never know. Well, I do know. He wants to fuck her. That is obvious. But it does not preclude the other, which is a salient and disconcerting point the game tries to make with that whole sequence. 9S has really had a rough time of it, you know? All that stuff in his own game and then he pops up on the First only to get his face caved in by the Warrior of Darkness. Rotten luck.

Basically, Yoko Taro sets out to say some things with his strange brainchild about androids with very big butts, but when you think about it, the attractiveness of the YorHa androids is also kind of a statement, too. If you're building something in your image, wouldn't you want to make it as sexy as possible? I would. Like, if you could make your machine children smoking hot, why wouldn't you? It's only polite. Nobody wants to be an ugly robot. Maybe the machine lifeforms would be having a better time of it all if they weren't put in categories like "short stubby." Anyway. Saying things. He says things. The game is thought provoking and evocative and at times very very sad. I love to cry. More on that later. I feel like I'm coming up a little short on this after my small dissertation on Dark Souls 2, but sometimes you need to fuckin. Get that kind of thing off your chest. Automata is challenging, but not Souls 2 challenging, where you kind of have to look in all the nooks and crannies and paid DLC packs to really get what it's trying to say. Though I think you fight the president of Square Enix in one of the Nier DLCs. That's pretty intellectually formidable.

Bloodborne:

It is no secret that I love the Bloodborne. It's very fun, very tight, usually works right most of the time, blood vials are shit but what can you do, and is one of the most visually arresting games like, ever. Ever ever. Behold! A Paleblood Sky! indeed. It's got the Souls pedigree to make combat fun and challenging, but its also very squishy and visceral and kind of grody in a good way because it ties in heavily to the themes of what really separates people from "beasts" and how more often than not we're just fooling ourselves. We're all rancid beasts. Hunger makes monsters of us all. It is this thematic strength, and the uncommon aplomb with which the game takes a hard left turn into "wait what the fuck???" town, that I regard it so highly. It's a game with a lot to say, especially about our narrow view of "intelligence" and the imagined "right" it grants us to subjugate and victimize those we deem inferior. The Victorian setting is no accident - a lot of the horror in the game draws heavily from classic colonialist sentiment and the erroneous conviction that all things are there for the benefit of Mankind (Glory to them, see previous) that commonly defines that era. Also that architecture is some spooky shit I tell you what. Even when there isn't a large spider man with a brain for a head hanging off of it. There are those, in this game, by the way. You thought you were gonna deal with werewolves? Bitch your eyes have yet to open, strap the fuck in.

Bloodborne is the coveted "what a twist!" game I so laboriously search for. A game that expertly leads you to believe some things, then gradually shows you that you are a fucking wrong idiot baby and now there are mushroom men from mars running around casting magic missile at you. It gets this right in part because the clues were there all along, if you bothered to search for them. The first part of the game is fairly expected of what the promo material was all about, save for some weirdness with dreams and cryptic mutterings of "Paleblood." Then, you know, some shit starts getting wacky. You start running into giantass monster men clad in the trappings of the church. The NPCs you talk to start becoming more and more unhinged. Sometimes you will be randomly lifted bodily into the air and die and it is fucking alarming the first time I tell you what. Strange men with bags start appearing in random spots, and if they kill you, they don't actually kill you - they put you in the bag and kidnap you, the only way to reach a certain area of the game early. This hidden area is filled with more bagmen and some very angry giant pigs, because those are in this game too. Then you finally enter the big cathedral at the center of town and its lined with really odd looking statues of aliens and you touch a weird skull and you get a vision from the Mothercrystal about how to progress, and you tell the password to the gatekeeper, and he's like "ok cool get in here" but actually he is a fucking dessicated corpse and this isn't Dark Souls there ain't no undead here. Maybe. Are there?

Then you get into the Forbidden Woods and there are like, the weird mushroom men, if you go looking for them, and snakes, and really BIG snakes, and men who are made out of snakes and kind of give you weird nostalgic memories of Resident Evil 4 and the las plagas sphagetti heads. And there are more statues and giant fucking gravestones? That are really unnerving? And also if you went poking around you might have also met Patches again, who is back, but also a spider, and he'll show you how to get into college, except the college is in a nightmare and full of slime people, which is actually pretty normal now that I think about it, and then you can go out into ANOTHER nightmare, which is just another obnoxious poison swamp but the winter lanterns live there and those things are a fucking trip. Anyway you get to Bergynwerth eventually and there are weird insect guys and weird disheveled looking fellas that literally eat your brains if they get close and this awful npc hunter (the real horror of the night i tell you what) who casts fucking megaflare and you FINALLY get to the center of it all and jump into the lake except it's not the lake, it's actually like a fucking pocket dimension and there's just a big spider chilling out. You have to kill it to progress. And then when you do things just REALLY go to hell. And this is to say nothing of the Old Hunters DLC. This game is a fucking nightmare and it's great. Easily one of the scariest games ever made, genuinely frightening and weird and it doesn't just lose its edge when you realize the monster is a big goofy man with a flappy jaw. You are the monster, and that monster is a tiny squid baby. You're a squid now! Because you ate umbilical cords! Why!? I DON'T KNOW! INSIGHT, MOTHERFUCKER!

So what I just described is probably sounding completely absurd, random, and borderline early 2000s era monkeycheese style humor, but you gotta believe me, it is only absurd. It's actually very deliberately absurd. A lot of people will say that Bloodborne is one of the only games to get Lovecraft right, but I have actually read some of that dreck and I will say Bloodborne really only shares some aesthetic DNA and nomenclature with the racist tentacle man who ate nothing but canned beans. The themes are actually very different. Lovecraft wrote of a paradoxical contradictory world where Unspeakable Elder Things lurked behind every shadow, ready to emerge and destroy everything, but they were also very apathetic and noncommital about the whole thing. They didn't actually care that much either way, but they were still Bad, because they were weird and alien and inimicable to human life because of that foreign aspect. Like Nyarlathotep was originally envisioned as a travelling black guy who would go from town to town and show people some awesome inventions and shit and that was supposed to be evil. The dude's neuroses about race permeated -everything- he wrote.

On the other hand, Bloodborne takes a different tack. One of the central theses of the game is that the Great Ones are -not- evil. In fact, they're rather sympathetic by nature and will do what they can to help, if asked. The horror of the game comes not from the actions of the alien monstrosities who are actually nicer than most of the humans, but from what the human characters do in the pursuit of knowledge and power. Atrocities are committed by the dozen in some vague pursuit of higher understanding, against both the citizens of Yharnam and the supposed cosmic horrors themselves. This point is driven home by the fact that a number of the more alien entities you encounter in the game aren't actually hostile at all. Rom, the Vacuous Spider, will just chill out with you indefinitely at the Moonside Lake if you don't strike the first blow, and doesn't even really begin to actively defend herself until you prove yourself to be a determined murder machine. Ebrietas, the Daughter of the Cosmos, is found minding her own business in an out of the way corner of the Upper Cathedral Ward, mourning Rom after you, you know, killed her in cold blood. Again, she is completely non-hostile until you start shit. In the Old Hunters, Kos (or some say Kosm) is actually benevolent sort of mother goddess to the people of a small fishing hamlet. ...until the "scholars" of Bergynwerth murder her in the name of science, too.

All of the evil and horror and stomach-turning cruelty in Bloodborne comes from corrupt systems of power run rampant, not something as facile as the supposedly intrinsic malice of beings different from us. The terrors of the cosmos are nothing before the vile, willful depravity of mankind itself. That's the idea at the heart of it all. The Great Ones, who exist on a higher plane of existence, seem to have largely left this cruelty behind. Even the Moon Presence, the principle cause of the Hunter's Dream, is trying to help Laurence and Gherman - it's just that it's so different from humans, its idea of helping is a bit. Strange. It's this really fresh and unique take on the genre, this byzantine tragedy of miscommunication, good intentions, and mortal greed, that creates one of the vanishingly few games at are actually frightening. It doesn't even have to sacrifice being a good game to do it! No hiding in closets from the scourge of screen blur and heavy breathing here. In terms of gameplay, it's probably the most refined of quintet. I'm unsure if I should count Sekiro with them or not. It's a much different thing. Trick weapons and hunter's garb are iconic, extremely stylish, original, and honestly just fucking dope as hell. You've got a hammer that explodes when it hits things, a giant pizza cutter, a katana you coat with your own blood to empower, a gunrapier and a gunspear, a giant... wagon wheel... because Miyazaki just really likes those I guess, a bow that is also a sword, a giant fucking ship's cannon you just carry around with you, a portable flamethrower, an... eyeball, that shoots space rocks, for some reason. Like the weapon design and selection alone is worthy of considerable accolade. Bloodborne is fantastic, play it if you can.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I was a little bit kinda wishy washy on putting this on here, but I think overall that it deserves a spot. In terms of story and themes, it's honestly a bit whatever. It's Zelda. Don't be an asshole to your genius daughter who knows like ten times as much as you do about everything I guess. Prince Sidon is a nice fishman. Link is like, distressingly, "this is a kids game!!" hot when you put him in certain outfits. I'm pretty sure every configuration of sexuality interested in the act of boning probably at least went "hoo boy" when Link put on the gerudo outfit. That is, of course, not really enough to qualify for such a prestigious position as one of the best games of the decade. Where Breath of the Wild shines is its world design, music, and the masterful layer of melancholy it drapes everything in. The ruined land of Hyrule is beautiful and sad in equal measure, the vistas enhanced by a fantastic soundtrack with an incredibly rich personal voice. It takes a very certain kind of design philosophy, in my opinion, to create an open world that is actually meritorious and worthwhile and not just an excuse to spend a lot of time hoofing it through vast expanses of nothing interesting. There is enough raw Stuff in the land of Hyrule, from enemy encounters to happening upon NPCs to just finding something really weird and inexplicable that you feel compelled to check out, to justify the massive open world.

I think the enemy design in particular is worthy of some praise. The game gives you a whole lot of tools to tackle any given fight. Sometimes you can just whack something with your sword until either the enemy or the sword breaks and that will work fine. Other times, you can literally do the Tao Pai Pai thing from Dragonball and launch a treetrunk into the air, surf on it, and land it squarely in the face of some unsuspecting moblin. This is a very popular speedrun strat. The sheer amount of Weird Stuff you can do in the service of ultimately saving Hyrule is a lot of lot of LOT of fun, things not many other games would let you do. There's also something to be said for the moments where you're exploring, minding your own business, and find yourself face to face with something fearsome and big and dangerous, like a Lynel in the frozen north or one of the big cyclops guys. It's heartpounding and exciting and really hits that "oh hell yeah let's fuckin FIGHT" button. And fighting in Breath of the Wild is a hell of a lot of fun! Probably the most its been in any Zelda game. Skyward Sword please go away you're drunk this was never a good idea. To me, Breath of the Wild is kind of the platonic ideal of an open world fantasy fuck around game. That used to be Skyrim, but BotW sort of made me realize you can actually have a functional game on top of all the aforementioned Fucking Around, too, and that sort of enhances the experience.

This might be a little weird and personal and I apologize, but I think the one thing that really sealed this game as something very special and significant to me was the moment I entered the Rito village for the first time. I was greeted with an utterly gorgeous piano melody that gradually unfolded into a soulful, excruciatingly bittersweet arrangement of the Dragon Roost Isle theme from the Windwaker. I admit that I was not in a good place in my life when I was playing Breath of the Wild. I was still reeling from some bad brain stuff. Be that as it may, Breath of the Wild is the only game I have ever played - hell, the only piece of art I have experienced - that has brought me to tears with nothing more than a song. When I realized what I was listening to, when the memories of a time when I was still a child with hope and trust and innocence and any faith that life would ever be something more than cruelty and suffering came flooding back, I had to put down my switch, go lay down, and just ugly cry for a while. It's honestly making me a little misty-eyed just thinking about. It was such a personal, intimate, keening feeling of... I don't really know. Nostalgia? Longing? Melancholy? Now, believe me, I love to cry. I am a crybaby. Things make me cry all the time. But not like this. This was something else. Something I still don't really understand, or can explain. All I know is that if a game can do that to me with just a few notes, it deserves to be here.

Salt and Sanctuary:

This is probably the most niche game for me. Even people who share some of my more eclectic tastes and sensibilities didn't like this game that much, but there was just something about this Metroidvania mashed with a Soulslike that hit some very primal notes in my soul. The art style, a weird mix of cartoony and utterly deranged, the enemy design, the bizarre way the world is put together, some extremely creative boss battles, and above all, some masterfully done atmosphere dripping with poorly understood dread and a sense of complete disorientation combined to create an experience that seemed to be made for me, and possibly me alone. It's not a flawless game. The music is fine, but somewhat lacking in variety. The character progression system is a good deal more complicated than it needs to be by any stretch of the imagination, as is the weapon upgrade system. The difficulty curve is uneven, and the raw inscrutability of the whole enterprise can make progression difficult in ways that it never really was in Dark Souls and Demon's Souls, which at least had the courtesy to point you in the right direction from time to time. The ending is a bit on the weak side.

Even now it feels difficult to really like. Elucidate on why I like this game so much. Maybe it's because it was the heartfelt effort of an extremely small team with more passion than experience? Because it's so unique and bold in ways other games are not, even while being a self-admitted derivative of Souls games? I just don't know. It's just such a fun and plucky thing, even if parts of it are kind of bad. It's not like, Deadly Premonition or anything where the badness is also the primary attraction. It's like, overall a good game? I believe? It's just that if it wasn't also kind of weirdly flawed and broken in some ways I don't think I would like it as much. God, I don't know. Just. Play it if you get a chance and see if any of this makes sense. One of the weapons you can use is a giant ass ship anchor, which is just fantastic, and you can start out as a chef, complete with a goofy hat and an extra helping of salt. Salt is important. Gotta keep those electrolytes up. You can also put a pumpkin on your head, and there's a boss called the Tree of Men which is just this giant torture machine that hates you and everyone else. It's so weird! The lighting is so moody and unsettling! The Queen of Smiles doesn't have a jaw! You have to brand your ass with a metal iron to double jump! ...hand, not ass, to be fair. But ass would be pretty funny. And horrifying. If you join the Iron Ones religion your healing item is just bread. And that is a fucking mood.

Super Mario Galaxy 2:

This one barely makes the temporal cut, but it was 2010 when it came out, I'm pretty sure. As a Mario game that doesn't have paper in its name, it's also going to be a bit fluffier and lighter on actual substance than pretty much every other game here, and I don't have that much to say. It's just this gorgeously realized and scored platforming adventure that's so tightly tuned you could play Smoke on the Water on it. It is the still the best traditional jumpy wahoo boing boing Mario game I have ever played. It just makes you feel good about space, and going to space, and seeing all the wonderful things in space. Though there most likely are not charming little obstacle courses themed around bees and and toy trains in space, the various cosmic phenonmenon on display on the map screen and in the background of some galaxies are close enough to what you might expect to inspire a sense of wonder and awe. SMG2 is like the purest expression of Let's Just have a Good Time design in games I have ever seen. It induces good feelings. Not everything has to be deep and troubling and thought provoking. Like, I tend to prefer it when they are, but there's always rooms for exceptions like this. Just fantastic. And the music though holy shit. Honestly I think the only game on this list that doesn't have a fantastic OST is Salt and Sanctuary, but it's still like. Serviceable.

Darkest Dungeon:

Let me start off by saying that Darkest Dungeon doesn't always hit the mark with its central conceit of stress management and the importance of mental health in your small army of adventurers. Nobody is going to start screaming abuse at their comrades or start stabbing them to death in a fit of paranoia because a skeleton spilled some cheap champagne on them. That said, I think that it -tries- to address these things is admirable, even if it is fairly easily boiled down into a simple matter of resource management and cost/benefit analysis. The reason I like Darkest Dungeon so much is that it is a game that excels at emergent storytelling. In terms of actual plot progression and character development, there is very little. You can have a party of four Occultists, each with the exact same backstory and with the exact same pact to the exact same eldritch entity, killing the exact same boss several different times. If you want. The dungeon crawling primarily serves as a vehicle for two things: the first and most obvious, the primary gameplay experience where you command your brave or at least foolhardy group of heroes to engage the ancient horrors of Grandpa's Party House. By itself, this is compelling and demanding. A bit like Dark Souls, Darkest Dungeon is a game that is fairly exacting in what it expects out of you, and it will not let you make mistakes without slapping you on the wrist and saying "no, bad." Similarly, it is a game where mastery is rewarded, but both in somewhat lesser degrees because DD is much more random and capricious in nature. The difference between a new player and an old hand is obvious, but sometimes even veterans can get completely dicked over by things out of their control.

That leads us into the second purpose: having the Ancestor narrate your constant struggle against Murphy's Law while completely hilarious bullshit conspires to send all of your highly trained and well equipped adventurers to the grave. Let me tell you a tale. I was fighting the Countess, the extremely powerful and dangerous final boss of the Crimson Court DLC. Everybody was afflicted with some manner of madness, and things were looking grim. She had shuffled my party around into a formation wherein some of them couldn't act without switching places. I ordered my vestal to switch places with Dismas, my highwayman. Dismas, however, was currently under either "selfish" or "abusive" status and simply refused to move. This meant that my vestal could not actually act that turn, and simply doing nothing incurs a penalty of stress damage. This stress damage was enough to put her gauge to the maximum, give her a heart attack, and kill her. Dismas literally murdered the healer by being too much of an asshole. I was beside myself at the time, but make no mistake - it was fucking hysterical. I later fed him to the final boss as penance for his crimes.

Darkest Dungeon is a grindy game that takes time and effort to complete. This is one of the biggest complaints leveled at it, and it's a fair one. On normal mode, though, you are more than capable of going at it inch by bloody inch, throwing corpse after corpse at the eldritch monstrosities until they at last drown in the blood and give up. No matter how grievous the setback, you can come back from it, unless you're playing on stygian/blood moon mode, which adds a fairly strict time limit and a hard cap on how many hapless adventurers you can send into the meatgrinder before the Nameless Thing That Ends The World wakes up and gives you an auto-game over. It's designed to be a long, bloody slog where shit goes wrong. Hopefully, in the upcoming sequel which I am very much anticipating not being able to play because I am poor, Red Hook can perhaps find a better balance with this. I am, for my part, fairly forgiving of grindy games, and at times even enjoy them. They were going for something with the way they designed DD, and I respect that. If you have the proper mindset of "whatever will be, will be" and learn to embrace the senselessness of death, your adventures in the Darkplace Estate will be both rewarding and oftentimes absurdly funny because your Arbalest was too depressed to eat anything, took more stress damage from starving, and then died of a heart attack, which then further stressed out the rest of the party. If that sounds more "oh my god that's awful" than "hahahaha you fucking dipshits" to you, DD might not be up your alley. But if it is, it -really- is. It's sort of the Dwarf Fortress principle, though Darkest Dungeon is far more user friendly and nice to look at. ...you know if you payed him enough the narrator voice actor would probably do a dramatic reading of Boatmurdered. Just saying.

Stellaris:

Stellaris is kind of the odd spaceman out on this list for a variety of reasons, but it shares the same kind of compelling emergent storytelling that Darkest Dungeon has. It's just less likely to be about how your alcoholic bounty hunter missed every hit against a fishman and went insane, and more likely to be about how you found this really cool Orb in space but it was in another empire's territory so you basically fabricated Space World War 1 to take it for yourself. Maybe that was just me. Much like the many habitable planets in any given Stellaris game, Paradox's grand strategy space game falls in the Goldilocks Zone of "accessible for mortal minds" and "satisfyingly complex." I'm not a huge fan of most Paradox stuff because I don't really give much of a fuck about kings and their crusaders one way or the other, but I respect them for what they are. Stellaris was kind of a proof of concept for me for that - given subject matter I actually liked (space!!!!), the various nitty gritty systems of planetary management and fleet organization and robo-modding and gene templates became compelling rather than overwhelming. They were, granted, still pretty overwhelming at first. The game still receives robust free updates and DLC even as of this writing, sometimes drastically changing the way the game is played (alloys! consumer goods! aarrrggh!) and making my 500ish hours of playtime seem a little less nonsensical. Look, a lot of that time was idling on the galaxy map while I did something else.

It's just really polished and technically competent and -enormous- and there's space dragons and sometimes you get to fuck a black hole. Stellaris doesn't really have a narrative, per se, save what you ascribe to any given game, but that doesn't mean the game doesn't have writing. A lot of very interesting, well written, and sometimes really funny flavor text can be found in the various anomalies and in-game events your science vessels will encounter as they uncover more of the galaxy, or sometimes a planet will have a mysterious portal to Hell on it, or maybe it's actually just a huge egg for a terrifying voidspawn. The game also navigates the usual 4X/strategy game dilemma of securing an early lead and just kind of chilling for the rest of the game by introducing midgame and lategames crises. It's not a perfect fix, but the ever-looming threat of a khanate space uprising, an AI uprising either from your empire or another, or ravenous space bugs from beyond the cosmos ensures that you have to keep at least a little bit on your toes. The presence of spaceborne aliens that range from "a nuisance" to "well gosh that thing is actually eating that sun this could be problematic" also ensures that you need to pay attention to both military and domestic aspects of governing. Stellaris happens in real time (though you can thank god pause whenever you want to issue orders) so there isn't really a Civilization equivalent of "oh the tiny pissant nations are declaring war, time to buy seven tanks with my enormous hoard of gold and run over their medieval knights" in Stellaris. Stuff always takes time to make, and it takes time to get in position, too. Space being exceedingly vast, and all that.

The lategame can get simultaneously get very overwhelming and very boring, but there are systems put in place to help automate the process of ruling a huge interstellar empire and one of the nice things about Stellaris is that you can kind of just. Stop whenever you want. There are technically win conditions, if you're into that sort of thing, but a lot of the time I will just play it through until I'm like "hmm okay im good" and then just either start a new game as an extremely different kind of empire or play something else for a while. It's kind of nice. The idea of "winning" in these games is always so weird to me anyway. I kind of like the framework where it's just kind of like. You tell a story, rather than try to win a game. Recent changes have made it much easier to actually achieve victory, however. Part of the thing that kind of encouraged my "eh i'll stop when i wanna" approach in the first place was how unreasonable some of the old victory requirements were. Occupy sixty percent of the galaxy? Excuse me???? Fuck off. Also, it's not like. A really salient part of the game like it is for most other games on the list, but Stellaris actually does have a pretty nice soundtrack. It's much more ambient in nature and there's not really enough of it for the amount of Game there is, but what's there is nice, even if you will probably end up turning it off and listening to your own music instead eventually.

============================= =Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers= =============================

Alright so if you've like actually looked at my twitter or talked to me or to someone about me for more than two minutes, it's probably pretty obvious that I really like FFXIV. An unhealthy amount. I will cop to that. FFXIV is an MMORPG. Let's start with the basics. I enjoy the game's gameplay a lot. I would not have put 6 years of my life into playing it if I did not, I'm not a Dota 2 player, for Christ's sake. I like to raid, and have actively done it in every wing except for the Sigmascape. I even managed to beat the final encounter of the current Edengate raids! I'm currently sort of gathering my courage to try the latest Ultimate Raid, the Epic of Alexander. Ultimate Raids are fights that are absurdly difficult by any reasonable standard and further winnow the playerbase from "hit level 80->does endgame stuff->does savage raiding->clears savage raid tiers->does Ultimate Raids->.00000001% of the player base that clears ultimate raids". Ultimates are for a very specific kind of player. I'm just sort of mentioning it for context purposes, it doesn't really factor in to my overall evaluation.

Now, despite the fact that I personally enjoy the gameplay a great deal, it is not actually why I think this game is so good. This might puzzle you. What else is there to an MMO? Is the sense of community especially great? Well, I would say that I really enjoy the community of people I play with, but on the whole, XIV's community is about. Standard, really. Which is to say "a fucking dumpsterfire" by any human metric, but just par for the course for online video games. What keeps me coming back to the game is that in between all the endgame stuff and grinding and crafting and going to die in Eureka, there is a bafflingly compelling and superlative singleplayer experience. The game is actually like unironically the best mainline FF title since at least XII. I would personally say it's on par with IX as a narrative experience, which is no faint praise because i fuckin luv me some ffix. But how can an MMO have such a compelling story? It's kind of complicated.

History lesson for the ten people who still don't know: FFXIV actually launched way back in like. 2011 or some shit and it was -arrestingly- bad. "Embarrassment to the franchise name" bad. So bad that they decided to literally drop a meteor on the game world, bring in a new director, shut the whole thing down for a year or so, and then relaunch the game as A Realm Reborn in mid 2013. People really liked this version. It was nothing short of a miracle. It also layed the groundwork for something important: a real and genuine dedication to worldbuilding (and worldending, too). The destruction and rebirth of the realm of Eorzea is metanarratively (theres my favorite non-word word again) baked into the very DNA of the game as it is now. Learning about the people who lived after the Calamity and how they survived is a direct parallel to how the dev team had to survive and adapt to make this complete boondoggle of a game into something presentable. A lot of heart and soul went into the bones of the world the game takes place in, because it's an expression of that dogged determination to make it work. Yoshida and his team probably crunched like hell to get it all done, and that makes me really sad, but what's done is done. I wish it didn't have to be that way, but it is, and all I can do at this point is praise the team's hard work and vision and try to support them as best I can.

So there's this really weighty sense of reality to the game world, and all of 2.0 is basically spent just establishing Eorzea and how it works. If you were an early adopter of ARR, like I was (2.1 is early right. it's gotta be.) then you grew to genuinely care about the place you spent so much time in and looked so pretty and was kind of obnoxiously laid out but don't worry there will be flying in the expansion. The longrunning nature of the game sort of necessitated a sort of serialized story. It had much more in common with an episodic TV Show than a usual Final Fantasy story, which for better or for worse are usually self-contained little things until somebody decides its fuckin Nova Crystalis time. It created a really unique sense of anticipation and participation in an ongoing story and evolving world. I think this is where a lot of people find their attachments to MMO style games, why people are still faithfully playing World of Warcraft 15 years on.

So FFXIV gets two expansions, Heavensward and Stormblood, and they were very Good, and added lots of neat things to the game and advanced the story and introduced new and beloved characters and also Zenos yae Galvus I guess and the long-running nature of it all started forging a kind of personal narrative of necessity, if that makes sense? Like, your own protagonist, who is mostly silent, who you created and customized and further customized and maybe turned into a lalafell once just to see what it was like to be so short, has been an important part of this world for so long your brain kind of just fills in the gaps in spite of itself. What would my character think about this? What would she do? Why would she do it? That kind of thing. The Warrior of Light, as one is called, has had a leading role in the game's story since pretty much day one, but one of the things that compels me about the character is how much work it took to get where she is today. Like, it's not a Diablo 3 style "hmm well you killed those zombies really good so i guess you're basically stronger than god and also satan put together" affair. You start out as a newbie adventurer, you do newbie adventurer things, like helping orange pickers keep the orchard clear of bees or deliver packages for guilds or whatever sufficiently adventuresome task needs doing. You gain notoriety for doing things that are, well, worthy of notoriety. You really get noticed when you defeat the primal Ifrit in a pitched battle, get recruited by some organizations, and you keep steadily working your way up from there.

As of Shadowbringers, the warrior of Darkness is kind of stronger than god and satan combined, but it took a fucking -lot- to get there. One base game and two expansions worth of life or death battles against utterly intractable foes and also Zenos yae Galvus I guess. It is beyond the scope of this piece to just give you a full plot summary of six years worth of storytelling, so I will just cut to the chase and try to explain what I'm taking five million words to say. Shadowbringers did something I thought heretofore impossible: it made me care about my tabula rasa cipher avatar as a character in a story and not just as an expression of digital self that I had grown fond of. Don't get me wrong - Dazzlyn Reed the adventurer is absolutely an expression of digital self that I have grown -disproportionately- fond of. I figure I'm a few more patch cycles from becoming that girl in the Jack Chick tract about Dungeons and Dragons who had a psychotic break because her DnD character died. However, for the most part, that affection was more of... kind of taking pride in her appearance and the outfits I put together and the achievements I had accomplished with her and stuff like that. Shadowbringers made me care about her as a character in her own right, which seems borderline miraculous to me.

It's sort of hard to explain without totally spoiling everything. And even with spoiling everything. In vague terms, I'll try to express it this way: the game put Dazzlyn in a situation where she had failed. Like, spectacularly. Everything she had done in the course of the expansion had gone up in smoke, and her own life was in real and severe danger. When you play these kinds of games, your first instinct when things go wrong in the story is pretty much always to just flippantly say to yourself "okay okay just calm down and let me fix it i'm like level a billion it's fiiiiine". Shadowbringers turns that on its head. You went to fix things... and you couldn't. Despite good intentions, it's arguable that you only made things worse. Everything you worked for since arriving on the First was just utterly undone, and the game lets you see the toll that has taken on your character. It's weirdly heartwrenching in a really uncommon and compelling way. Dazzlyn had been on the outside looking in at this kind of situation plenty of times before, and she had always had a nice and encouraging thing to say as she helped shoulder the burden and get things back on track for Alphinaud or Lyse or Cid or whoever. The game has, since antiquity, given you much appreciated little dialogue choices that don't really matter much in the scheme of things but let you kind of carve out your own characterization, and the way Dazzlyn turned out was somebody who just really cared way too much about all of her dumb stupid impossible friends who kept fucking up.

One thing that longtime players of the game have complained about quite a bit over the years is that your NPC friends never seemed very. Like. Personally close to you, with a couple of exceptions like Alisae. Shadowbringers both fixes that by introducing the Trust system, which lets you take your Scion buddies into dungeons with you instead of other players, if you are so inclined, and sort of turns it back around to be a kind of poignant narrative point. After everything she had done for them, unconditionally and with a smile, none of the Scions could actually find a way to help Dazzlyn when she finally ended up being the one who needed it. And this -fucks them up-, emotionally. Like, bad. Alisae nearly has a crying fit over it in one of Shadowbringer's more affecting scenes. And just watching the whole thing unfold fucked me up, too. Like, I hadn't signed up for this. I was (relatively) safe in the knowledge that they would not have the gall to actually kill off the player character in an ongoing MMO, but it wasn't necessarily the fear of something happening to her that was getting to me. It was more just this feeling of "god, she deserves better. this isn't fair." The emotional pain that, well, everybody involved is going through is extremely real, even if the threat of genuine death is not. I know (mostly) (please god) that Dazzlyn is going to be okay, but she doesn't. Her friends certainly don't. And even when she does miraculously pull through, it's not like all of this grief and fear and anxiety is going to just vanish like it never happened.

I really have to stress how completely and catastrophically wrong this could have gone if the writers responsible weren't sufficiently skilled. I'm pretty sure if I idly suggested a BFA era World of Warcraft storyline like this to somebody who still plays they would have an apoplectic fit. It would have been so easy for this kind of exercise to ascribe character traits and emotions to a very personal interpretation of the Warrior of Light that they would never have, for any one person's vision of them. The FFXIV writing team avoided this issue entirely, probably because they knew if they didn't people would go ape, by focusing the brunt of the expressed distress on your friends and just leaving you yourself some time to take in the enormity of how badly things have gone wrong in customary silence. A subdued facial expression here, a dialogue option there. No more than strictly necessary. The game encourages you to draw your own conclusions about what your Warrior is feeling, how they're coping, if they even have any hope left, but it does not overstep its bounds and do it for you. It's just... really masterfully done. The overall arc of Shadowbringers can be described as "intriguing, well realized, and competently done." The overarching ideas presented aren't like, groundbreaking or anything. What is groundbreaking, at least to me, is this miraculous giving of life to a character that was originally intended as as simple player avatar.

At the end of the day, everybody rallies around you, as they usually do, but it is markedly different this time. It isn't some facile repetition of the idea that the Warrior of Light/Darkness/Pants-theft is this focal point of hope given form and life to everyone. Instead, it's this... oddly touching expression of friendship. Commitment. It's all probably going to end in tragedy. There's nothing anybody can really do. But they're going to stay with you until the bitter end anyway, because they care about you. If nothing else, they can't bear to think of you dying alone and in agony. Even the citizens of the Crystarium, with whom you do not share a bond that goes back literal years, show up to give you some words of encouragement. They show up to tell you that it's okay that you failed. It's okay that you got hurt, it's okay that you're in pain, that you're scared, that you're vulnerable, that you don't know what to do. After spending such a long time in the game's lore as being kind of invincible and infallible except for the occasional matter of pesky Imperial Viceroys and Old Kung-fu Men, it's just... affecting. It's not often done in games, at least that I have played and seen.

Does this one story moment justify making Shadowbringers the game of the decade? Honestly? Kind of. To me, art has always been about emotional reaction. This kind of reaction is something special, even for a crybaby idiot bitch like me. Moments like these are what make or break truly fantastic experiences. Finally finding Vendrick in the Tomb as that haunting, off-key melody starts playing. Realizing the true nature of the Upper Cathedral Ward. Hearing a beautiful piece of music in Rito Village and thinking about what that song means to you. Admitting that you care about your Warrior of Darkness more than you thought. They're all quite different, running the gamut from existential despair, stomach turning fear, a deep and abiding nostalgia and longing for what used to be, to a sincere, melancholy affection for a game world I've been a part of for almost six years. There's one unbroken thread: a cascade of genuine emotion. Something that goes beyond the simple pressing of buttons and jolts of serotonin as the numbers go up or the bad guys die.

Fortunately for my general credibility, Shadowbringers is also just really good in general. Soken's soundtrack is, as always, kind of spooky in how high quality it is. The presentation is top notch as usual. Encounter design is probably the best its ever been in terms of balancing accessibility and challenge and having mechanics that actually Work As Intended and not nightmarish garbage like Digititis and Black Hole Walking. Royal Pentacle! Server ticks! Server ticks! Uh. Sorry. Going slightly feral there. Anyway. Overall, I think Shadowbringers is the most polished expansion so far, in all respects, and its narrative quality in particular is kind of transcendent because of what it accomplishes in regards to how players see themselves in relation to an unfolding story. Also, it has an unfair advantage, because it's also a continuation of Nier Automata now! That's two games of the decade in one! Now, due to the serial nature of it all, I will allow that if something goes... like, inconceivably, catastrophically wrong with 5.2 - 5.5 I might be a little premature in my assessment. That said, 5.1 was just as fantastic as 5.0 and I don't see a reason to assume that the quality will so drastically drop in the coming months.

If you're somebody who really likes Rankings, here is a pretty noncommital list of them going from least good to best good but they're all special damn it.

10. Super Mario Galaxy 2 9. Breath of the Wild 8. Stellaris 7. Darkest Dungeon 6. Salt and Sanctuary 5. Dark Souls 4. Nier Automata 3. Bloodborne 2. Dark Souls II 1. Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

And here's a couple of Honorable Mentions just because!

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

To be honest, this easily could have taken the place of like. Breath of the Wild or SMG2 if I was just a little bit more into Sekiro's aesthetic. It's easily the most technical and best-playing game that Miyazaki's team has put out so far, with a very simple to learn, difficult to master system of fighting based more around swordfighting than "shove large axe into monster butt" its predcessors liked so much. It also has a well-told story about a fairly down to earth conflict between an independent fiefdom and Japan's internal ministry trying to conquer it, with a splash of supernatural weirdness to give it some spice. There are monkeys with guns. Sekiro is just fantastically put together, and I really did end up loving Wolf as a main character, despite my initial misgivings about one of these games without a character creator. Wolf is kind of a lovable chuuni dipshit who tries his best in completely unreasonable circumstances and having him as an anchor lets Sekiro's story be more personal and self-contained in nature than the heady cosmological epics of the Souls games, which was a nice change of pace. Ultimately, though, I just find ineffably weird nature of the earlier titles to be a bit more interesting than shinobi and samurai, which is why Sekiro gets an honorable menchie and not a top spot. Don't get me wrong though shinobi and samurai are dope and Sekiro is not a -worse- game for their inclusion. It's just a matter of personal preference, and I could easily see this game taking a top spot on somebody else's list.

Pokemon X and Y

I am a Pokemon bitch. I play all of them, except for black/white 2 and ultra sun/moon, which seemed too similar to their predecessors to really justify spending my precious, jealously guarded money on them. I feel that in general, X and Y has overall, the best mix of available pokemon, world design, music, Fun Little Things, and general game flow of all of them. Sword and Shield excepted I am still in the middle of that one. Pokemon is absolutely kind of video game comfort food, and its kind of just. There's not a lot to it emotionally, though it does have some fairly in depth mechanics and shit if you want to look into it. I don't know I just really liked X and Y. I felt like it deserved mentioning.

Blade and Soul

This game is awful I'm pretty sure but I have so many fond memories of playing it with people I love and creating a ridiculous titty oil monster and having adventures with her sorry i'm trash

So there you have it. A very personal (sometimes maybe probably too personal) look at the ten games that I found to be the best that came out in the last ten years. Now, I usually consider my opinions on these things to be fairly well reasoned, but in this case, I did rely a lot more on the touchy feely qualitative things that are really important to me over the necessary but lamentable "yes i suppose this game is technically competent and plays extremely well" considerations a more objective list of this kind would entail. So you're free to disagree and think I'm stupid and wrong. I would prefer it if you did not think I was stupid, though, but the fact of the matter is I cannot stop you. Here's to another ten years of wonderful games that make us feel things.

#game of the decade #ffxiv #dark souls #bloodborne #botw #darkest dungeon

9 notes · View notes