#but it's gonna be lurking in the back of my mind a whole lot

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Anybody else get random Olevia Lives AU brainworms that won't get out of their head until they get written down or is that just a me thing?

(Translation below the cut as usual)

Cuff: May I confess something to you?

Olevia: What is it?

Cuff: I need your complete confidence. You cannot breathe a word of this to anyone. Especially not Frey. Do you promise?

Olevia: I promise.

Cuff: Thank you. *deep breath* I love her.

Olevia: Well, yeah, I knew that.

Cuff: Hush, I'm not done yet.

Olevia: *giggles*

Cuff: If I could, I would take Frey and run. Run far, far away, away from Athia, away from Rheddah. Run so far and so fast that nothing can ever hurt her again, so I can be free to stand beside her.

Olevia: Why can't you do that now?

Cuff: Because I am not free. And I never will be. If Frey lets me go, then Rheddah will reclaim me. And I will be forced to kill her. To kill you. I can't bear that, little one. I love you both too much. But I won't have any choice. I won't be able to stop myself. But if I take her and run far, far away, so far that Rheddah can't find me, maybe...

Olevia: ...what about me?

Cuff: Hmm?

Olevia: Can I come, too?

Cuff: You love Frey that much? Enough to leave everything you've ever known behind?

Olevia: You do.

Cuff: Hmm, I suppose I do. Well, now, I suppose, since I've come to know you, and seeing as I love you, too, I'd like to take you with me as well. Since you asked, and all.

[venacoeurva]

People on my dash discussing this hence it's on my mind,

There are serious social and legal implications of minors participating and accessing adult spaces, the problem is kids are still pretty self-absorbed and selfish and lacking true comprehension of external consequences in that underdeveloped brain sort of way (even the nicest, most considerate and critical-thinking kids are going to be this way to some degree, it's not an insult) to grasp that. Normal adults feel violated and gross when catching a kid interacting with their adult art and so on. Kids do not comprehend it can be a massive life-ruining legal issue too (which most minors cannot grasp because again, still underdeveloped brain type of self-absorbed lack of understanding of consequences. Also kids usually don't understand the legal system. It sounds harsh and insulting but that's how it IS. I remember being that way, myself). Adults who are happy that or at the least enabling minors being in adult spaces is a RED FLAG.

Making adult spaces and blogs and sites have warnings, entering your age, big 18+ and 21+ warnings and so on is a thing, even if it won't stop everyone--some kids will be scared off from encroaching, though, thinking that accessing these pages while a minor and lying that they're an adult on the clickthrough warning will contact the police or something. We know it's not stopping everyone, but at the very least we're doing the most we can to save our asses short of carding everyone, which isn't the most reliable method, either. I feel like the inconvenience of having to enter birthdays or click through warnings may also annoy some kids into leaving, given the instant-dopamine, constant stimuli type internet these days kids are used to (and negatively cognitively affected by, I'm sure...) versus the "waiting 20 minutes for a JPEG to load" internet of old that required patience no matter what.

But for real, being a minor in an adult space can fuck you up, and it's just sad and scary how kids don't even realize this until it's years too late and/or they end up in some real dire situations because of it-- and even then, they probably won't realize the weight of the situation until later (if they're still alive, given the risk of kidnapping, stalking, or committing suicide if it reaches that level, especially if the site or victim and predator are local). How many of us adults look back in retrospect and shudder at what could have happened, or what did? I feel like most adults who had access to the internet as kids, especially in the 90s and 00s, went somewhere they weren't supposed to go, and a lot of us who weren't just lurking had a similar experience of running into adults with bad intentions once they sniffed out the kids being active there. A good amount of us became desensitized to things on shock sites, too, which is for sure not good for us, psychologically.

I mean, hell, thinking about it, teenagers and tweens can't even really access kids-only spaces anymore since a lot of those shut down or are heavily monetized, and of course either adults are just gonna kind of take it over if it gets popular and want the kids (who were there first) gone, or predators are going to specifically enter those spaces to croon at some poor kid how mature and smart they are and they should talk on Discord and that whole process. It's not a new thing, but it definitely continues. It's like as valuable as a resource it is, the internet is gonna fuck kids up no matter what, even if they stay in spaces meant for them, that are supposed to be moderated and protecting them, and a lot of kids have parents who do not care, do not check in on what younger kids are accessing and not noticing any sudden behavioral changes, or will punish them for "letting that happen", and that's utterly terrible.

[biggestsimponhere]

My beloved @kib-ble wanted a Joel bodyguard au so that’s what they’re gonna get.

Bodyguard!Joel miller x Famous!Reader AU, im sorry i couldn’t help but put a little angst between joel and ellie. it’s in my blood to make things sad. I’m also giving you famous friends from our world so don’t mind that. If you’re mad about being friends with them, idk, cry about it. (They aren’t bad people btw, just celebs i follow) I’m making you friends with the cast of the rookie. i don’t pay that much attention to celebrities but i like the rookie.

Warnings - TW! Sexual harassment/Assault (Someone grabs your ass unasked for but don’t worry joel will put him in his place) This is not tlou cannon it just has tlou characters if you don’t like it don’t read :) there are no zombies! TLOU CANNON LEVEL VIOLENCE (its really just a fist fight but yk) Sarah’s here too idgaf if she and ellie couldn’t be at the same time, don’t ask about ellie’s parents (fatal car accident 😔) (THIS IS WAY LONGER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE OR INTENDED IT TO BE PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT MORE OR IF YOU LIKE IT)

“You know you’re not meant to run away from the person protecting you?” A voice interrupted your silence. Not just any voice. His voice. “Well i wouldn’t have to run away if i could have five minutes to myself, miller” You replied standing up. “You know it’s for your safety right? We’re not just here to bother you” He said walking over to you. “Oh trust me i know, you only remind me everyday” You said rolling your eyes. “How did you even find me anyways?” You continued turning to him. “You’re not that hard to find princess” He remarked moving closer to you. “Come on, you’ve got a dinner to get to, and some creep was lurking out there with his camera” He said sliding his hand into yours to pull you out of the room you’d hidden away in.

“Why do I even have to go to this thing anyways” You said smiling at the feeling of his hand in yours. “Because it’s important, at least that’s what your manager said” He said continuing down the hall. “Stop here” He said letting go of your hand to grab the door. Your hand felt slightly colder without his warmth but you just shook it off. “Okay, no one’s there, move, quickly” He said ushering you out the door. Walking out the door you practically ran to the car with Joel trailing close behind. Once you were safely in the car Joel told the driver where to go. “So why do you spend all your time following me around, I mean i know it’s your job, but you hardly ever switch someone” You said turning to him.

He’s been your bodyguard for years and always seems to be around. “Well it’s my job like you said, and I only have one person to get back to” He said smiling slightly. Feeling a little dejected thinking he had a girlfriend you asked who. “Ellie. I’m like her guardian or whatever, I raised her, she lives with me in a small town, but she’s grown now, doesn’t need me hovering around her” He said looking out the window. “I’m sure she’ll always need you” You said smiling at him. “Yeah, i guess, but she spends a whole lot more time with her friends than she does me. I mean we don’t even go on walks anymore. It’s just ‘Bye Joel i’m going out with Dina and Jesse’. It’s like she doesn’t need me” He said a little dejectedly.

“Well she’s a teenager right? She needs her space and I’m sure if you just asked you could spend more time together” You said reaching over to pat his knee. You were about to remove your hand when he put his over yours and held it there. “Yeah i’m sure you’re right” He said smiling at you. That was a rarity. Joel Miller barely ever smiles so you feel pretty special when he throws one your way. After that the conversation died out but you still had your hand on his knee and his was still over yours. As the car rolled to a stop he looked down remembering your hand was there and he quickly removed his. He stepped out of the car and walked to your side to open the door.

“Miss y/l/n” He said grabbing your hand to help you out of the car. Much more professional than you two had been five minutes ago. There were photographers everywhere. They all kept shouting at you to look at them and you did your best to keep up. Eventually someone came outside and ushered you and Joel and your other guard Andrew inside. Once you were inside you were led to a table full of people you either knew or recognized. “Ahh y/n, you’re here!” Melissa cheered. “That i am!” You replied hugging here. “We wondered when we were gonna see you again.” Eric said smiling at you. You slid into your seat between the two and continued talking to all of them.

“Is he gonna keep staring at us like that?” Mekia asked looking over your shoulder. You turned around to see Joel glaring at the table but softening a bit when he caught your eye. You smiled at him and then turned back, “Joel’s always like that, but he won’t do anything unless one of you tries something” You said laughing. “He doesn’t seem like he’s always like that considering he smiled after you turned away” Nathan said raising an eyebrow at you. “Now he’s right back to glaring” Mekia said laughing. Soon the food arrived and you started eating. The whole point of this event was to make friends with other actors and actresses, but really mostly people just stuck by people they already knew.

“Are you gonna come dance with us?” Alyssa said after you’d all finished eating. “I suppose” You said pretending to be reluctant but smiling anyways. “Come on they opened the bar!” Melissa said grabbing your hand. “Well i’ll never say no to free alcohol” You said letting her pull you. After a few drinks (more like 5) you were still dancing with your friends. “Hey pretty lady” Some guy whispered in your ear as he came up behind you. This immediately caught Joel’s eye but he didn’t want to step in until it was a problem. Everything was fine, until it wasn’t. You had just silently moved away but he followed you. Once he grabbed your ass you pushed him away.

He stumbled back into a few people but came back almost immediately after he moved forward Joel was by your side. “I suggest you take a few steps back” He said pulling you behind him. “What’re you gonna do old man” The man said challenging him. Joel walked you back a little before swinging at the man. He stumbled back into the people behind him who took this opportunity to flee the dance floor leaving you, joel and the man standing in it. The man quickly threw a punch at joel which he caught and then punched the guy in the stomach. After that the man got the upperhand for a second and you were about to do something, anything but Melissa and Eric pulled you back.

“He’s okay, this what he was hired for” Melissa said to you as you continued watching them fight. Eventually after a solid punch Joel knocked the man out cold. You ran over to him grabbing his shoulders. “Fuck Joel, you’re insane, he could have killed you” You said gripping his jacket. “Probably not, but im okay, just a little sore and a few scratches” He said rubbing his hands up your arms. As you continued scolding joel security came to drag the other man out to some car to take him to the hospital. “A few scratches?! Your knuckles are bloody and scraped to hell” You said turning your attention to his hand. You were close to tears by this point.

He stopped your frantic search for more injuries by pulling you into his arms. “You hear that princess? M’hearts still beating” He whispered into your ear. You stood like that for a couple minutes before he spoke again. “Are you okay?” He said pulling you out of his chest. Of course he’s thinking of your comfort when he’s all scraped up. “Yeah, I’m okay now, let’s get you to the hospital” You said wiping your nose. “I don’t want to go to the hospital, i’ll just go home tommy and ellie can probably help me better anyways” He said shaking his head. “Joel you need to go to the hospital” You scolded him.

“Please, i don’t want to go to the hospital, just let me go home, please” He practically begged you. You’d never heard him sound like this let alone say please. “Yeah okay, but i’m coming with you” You grabbed his arm before walking over to your friends. “I’m gonna take him home, just didn’t want to leave without sayin goodbye” You said hugging your friends. Joel stood behind you while you said bye to your friends. He’s never been as fidgety as he is right now, something must be really bothering him. “Alright, let’s get you home yeah?” You said grabbing his good hand. He just nodded and wordlessly followed you out the door. Once you settled in the car and told the driver to take you to joel’s you rolled up the screen separating the back and the front.

“Joel” You said quietly unsure how to approach the problem. He hummed in response tilting his head towards you. “Are you okay?” The silence filled the car after that. You didn’t want to speak again until he said something. It took him a few minutes but he spoke again. “No, not really” He said grabbing onto your hand. You unbuckled and moved closer to him. Wrapping your arms around him you buried your face in his shoulder. Joel’s never been like this in all the years you’ve known him. You were about to speak again when you felt tears hit your chest and heard his shaky breathing. Instead of speaking you just held him tighter and let him cry into your chest.

“I’m sorry” He said finally pulling away from you. “Don’t apologize, you don’t ever have to apologize for your emotions” You said swiping his hair off his forehead. He nodded and pulled you into another hug, which you returned. “Do you wanna talk about it?” You asked quietly. “No, at least not right now” He said pulling away as the car rolled to a stop in front of joel’s. You slid out with him and stopped walking when he walked back over to the car. You didn’t hear what he said but shortly after the car pulled away leaving you both alone. “Come on, we gotta get you cleaned up” You held out your hands to him which he took. Once you both walked through the door Ellie sprung up from the couch.

She took in the both of you before speaking. “What the hell happened to you” She said scanning joel’s injuries. “It’s nothin” Joel brushed it off walking past her into the kitchen. You stood there awkwardly before joel called you into the kitchen. “I called tommy he should be here in a few minutes, would you like something to drink?” He said walking over to you. “No i’m alright” You smiled before sitting in a chair at the table. “Joel? Are you gonna tell me what happened or should i ask her?” Ellie said walking into the kitchen. “It was just a little fight, ellie i’m fine” He said brushing off her concern. “A little fight? You’re all scraped up, you haven’t had a fight in forever too” She said continuing to pester him.

You enjoyed watching the two of them interact. “Ellie i said it’s nothing” He said coming off a little harshly. She shrunk a little before stepping back. “I’m sorry kiddo, it was just a rough day” He said turning towards her. Then the door to the house opened and tommy walked in. “Joel, what the hell happened?” Tommy said walking into the kitchen. Once he stopped he spotted you. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend?” He said turning back to joel. “Girlfriend?!” Sarah said running down the stairs. “She’s not my girlfriend, and what’re you doing here? Aren’t you meant to be at home with your family?” Joel said turning to her.

You were happy to just sit quietly and watch joel interact with the people he loves. “I told them i was gonna hang out with ellie for a little” She said brushing off his question. “Sorry to butt in but joel you’re still hurt” You said finally speaking. “Right” Tommy said reaching under the sink for the first aid kit. As tommy worked on cleaning joel in the living room, Sarah and Ellie moved to sit next to you. Joel had begrudgingly left you alone with them but not without warning them to behave. “Soooo, what’re your intentions with my dad” Sarah said first. “You can’t just ask her things like that” Ellie said cutting her off. “What do you mean?” You said finally.

“Are you together? Do you like him? Do you love him?” She said, the questions flowing out of her mouth rapidly. “No we’re not together” You we’re about to continue speaking when joel walked back in and cut you off. “Stop botherin her” He said stopping behind your chair. “We’re not bothering her, right?” Sarah said looking from her father to you. “They’re fine Joel, really.” You said looking up at him. “Did you send Drew away or is he gonna be back?” You said turning to fully face him. “He’s gone, you can stay here tonight” He said with full confidence. “But we don’t have a guest room” Ellie said looking up at him confused. “She can just sleep in my bed, i’ll sleep on the couch” Joel said sitting in the chair next to you.

“Hell no, after tonight your sleeping in your bed, i cant take that away from you” You said shaking your head. “Why don’t you just share the bed?” Sarah said looking between the two of you. “Yeah, I mean you’re both adults” Tommy said patting joel on the shoulder. “Are you okay with that?” Joel said nudging your foot with his. “Yeah, Yeah, we can handle it” You said trying not to sound to eager. “Sarah can you go to yours and grab her some clothes?” Joel turned to his daughter. “Sure!” She said standing up and leaving quickly. “Alright, i’ve gotta get back home before maria strings me up but i’ll be seeing you” Tommy said pointing to you as he left. “Can i go have a sleepover at Dina’s? I meant to ask you earlier but you weren’t home” Ellie said turning to Joel.

“Yeah go ahead” And with that Ellie got up and grabbed the bag she had apparently already packed and ran out the door. “Guess it’s just us then” Joel said chuckling awkwardly. You nodded and then the door opened again. “I only have pajama shorts, sorry, but she can borrow one of your shirts right dad?” Sarah said handing you the shorts. “Of course you can” Joel said slightly smiling. “Alright, gotta go” Sarah said turning back around and leaving. “Let’s go to bed” Joel said pulling you up and then walking you to the stairs. Once you two had reached his bedroom he walked in and pulled out a shirt for you. He handed it to you before turning around.

As you stated to take off your jewelry you remembered the zipper on the back of your dress. You tried to do it yourself but since you couldn’t even zip it yourself how did you expect to take it off. “Um, Joel?” You whispered into the room. “Yes?” He called back. “I, uh, i cant unzip it” You said too embarrassed to turn around. You heard footsteps move closer to you before stopping just behind you. You could feel his breath on your neck as he began to speak. “Do you need some help?” Your breath caught as you realized how close he is to you. You nodded and his hands moved to the zipper. His fingers brushing against your back sent sparks shooting through you.

“It’s unzipped” He said pulling you out of your thoughts. You realized he must have turned around again as you couldn’t hear his voice as clearly. You slid his shirt and the shorts on and turned back to face him. “You can look now” You said and he turned towards you. His breath caught in his throat at the sight of you in his shirt and extremely small shorts. He can’t help but think sarah did that on purpose. You both climbed into bed, as you settled in you thought to yourself how you could get used to this. Family talks, His shirts, Sleeping next to him in bed. “Joel” You said slowly. He hummed turning to look at you.

“Would you hold me?” You asked quietly. He nodded and flipped the light off before settling in behind you. He wrapped his arms around you and smiled at the feeling of finally having you in his arms even if it isn’t when he’s with you. That would be a talk for another time. “Goodnight joel” You said rolling over to face him. “Goodnight sunshine” Joel said as you snuggled into his chest. Yeah you could get used to this. And so could he.

[fleshbarbie]

more robin x bimbo!reader thoughts ...

okay so this is gonna be more of a headcanon’s type of post but i do really wanna write a whole imagine/fic for them one day !!! just lack of inspo / motivation rn :(

ANYWAYS <33

can definitely see everyone (the gang) being shocked when they find out you’re together (let’s just pretend robin has come out to the hawkin’s gang - not just steve) because you’re both just so different ??

like robin is all dirty converse and stevie nicks and you’re all madonna and pretty dresses. but somehow you both just mix perfectly and couldn’t be happier together.

there’s definitely been a few times you’ve tired to do robin’s make up, the whole lot we’re talking eyeshadow and blush and lipgloss, and though she admits yes it looked amazing (you’re very talented) she would never leave the house with it all on.

she’s in awe of how put together you look all the time, literally no matter what time it is or what day it is or if you have plans or not .. you’re always done up. not a hair out of place and it baffles her, because how is it 7am and you’re all done up with that breathtaking smile on your face?

though when she sleeps over at your house, she gets the pleasure of seeing you bare face with your hair thrown up and she falls for you even harder.

you definitely talk her through your skincare routine which has her furrowing her brows. “you really do all this? i just brush my teeth and call it a night.”

trying to coordinate your outfits !!! if she decides she’s wearing her checkered shirt, you’re 100% wearing your identical checkered skirt to match. if she’s at work, you’re definitely putting on your green leather jacket to meet up with her.

you mention your love for her rings once and she’s showing up to your house the next day with a bunch of identical ones for you to wear which almost has you crying at the sweet gesture.

your style definitely gets a lot of attention from the rest of hawkin’s, with your short skirts and dresses, you’re definitely confident with your body and don’t mind flaunting what you have which she loves but sometimes it attracts the wrong kind of attention.

and you’re so sweet and naive, you couldn’t sense someone’s wrong intentions from a mile away so robin definitely feels protective over you and she’s always keeping an eye on you if you ever drift away from her in public.

pulling your skirt down for you if it raises, coming between you and any guys who are either flirting with you or trying to take a peek down your shirt, happily handing over her jacket if your start to feel uncomfortable with all the attention you’re receiving.

you are constantly trying to take pictures of her / both of you together and she isn’t the biggest fan of it .. she always tries to hide whenever you point the camera her way so a lot of pictures you take have to be when she’s not aware. but your room is littered with polaroid’s of the both of you together, your favourite is taped to your mirror and you admire it every morning and night.

a little bit nsfw but i would definitely say you’re eachothers firsts. and the first time you do anything together it’s a little sloppy, a little messy but you both finish in the end so you count it as win. as time goes on you both get better at learning about eachothers bodies and it’s not long before your skills go from c- to a+.

going to visit robin at work and coming back from the break room with swollen lips and hickeys which has steve rolling his eyes but neither of you care, both sharing looks and giggling as you realise you weren’t being subtle at all.

omg driving robin to work when she sleeps over at your place the night before and leaving a big kiss on her cheek which always leave a lipstick stain which she never bothers to wipe off until keith starts lurking (because she knows he’ll make her wipe it off) !!!

i feel like once you begin dating and you become apart of the group, eleven definitely looks up to you because she’s more girlier than any of the other girls in the group. (max & erica are definitely more tomboy-ish imo ??). she’s not as girly as you of course but she’s always coming to you if she needs advice on outfits or wants to start learning how to do make up, etc.

nancy is also someone who comes to you whenever she needs advice, maybe she’s got a date with jonathan and isn’t sure what to wear or how to style the new dress she bought. you’re definitely her first thought !!! robin is always joking that you should start charging people for your time.

but overall the gang loves you (especially steve) because it’s so obvious you make robin very happy and robin deserves to have someone that makes her feel that way. they practically welcome you with open arms and you all grow very close so quickly.

last point i’m gonna make about the gang !!! but omg imagine will coming to you when he’s confused about his feelings for mike & you’re like the only person (besides his brother & mom ofc) that he feels comfortable enough with coming to with these thoughts. i <3 will so much.

ok back to you & robin ... she’s constantly helping you out with things that confuse you. you’re aware you aren’t the brightest but she’s so patient with you, never getting angry or annoyed if you still don’t understand things after she’s explained them 3/4 times already.

celebrating like every holiday together. on halloween you’re wearing matching costumes, on christmas you’re going to eachother’s houses and swapping gifts, on easter you’re buying a heap of chocolate and watching movies together, on thanksgiving you’re either at hers with her family or she’s at yours with your family.

sometimes she lays next to you in bed, watching you sleep (in a non creepy way) and can’t believe how lucky she got with you. she remembers how crushed she was when she found out vickie had a boyfriend, constantly ranting to steve about how her love life was doomed and she was going to be alone forever. but then you turned up and just ??? changed her life completely. she was forever grateful for you and planned on keeping you in her life as long as you’d let her.

now i need to write an actual fic because i’m so head over heels for robin buckley guys it’s so bad.

—

TAGS:

@munsonslunchbox

[sweetflanfiction]

Second Chances - Part 9

Universe: Read Dead Redemption 2

Pairing: Arthur x reader

Disclaimers and Warnings: If you want me to tag you on the chapters let me know! Also leave a comment with your thoughts :D Not finished, not proofread. English isn't my 1st language. All I know about 1899 is from google, so inacuracies will be plenty. The reader is on the older side, and identifies as a female. We're gonna meet a lot of people in this chapter, if you find something that can be done in a better way let me know!

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8

• ··········· • ············ •

They planned to get the cattle and go to the owner's farm. It was a simple four-day plan, but Arthur was jumpy. He knew how easily a simple plan could derail, specially with the help of some ill-intentioned fellers, that he knew lurked around the transport routes.

They left early one morning. Albert walking into his daughter's room, whispering something to her before leaving. Arthur heard you quietly mumbling something in your sleep. After grabbing the horses, they met with the others at, what he assumed was, the end of Captain's Corner. 

Four people sat on horses, talking friendly. Arthur's mind reminisced back to a time where he was part of something like that. As they approached the people on the horses came into better view and Albert shouted at them. The older man was greeted with a slap on the arm and wide smiles.

Doc Brant sat on top of a white horse, which Arthur found ironic. His pale skin was a little red from the already warm temperature. He was sitting straight in his hat, small round glasses on his face and a tanned hat decorated with dry wheat. Arthur hid a smile when he saw the small bee embroidered on his vest. He remembered when you told him Mrs. Brant wanted to start a honey or beekeeping business of sorts.

The two Everstons seemed to be copies of each other. The only difference was the fine lines on Bernard's sepia brown face. His son, Jeremiah, and him sat on top of two tanned horses, both bidding Arthur hello with a smile and tipping their hats.

Another man sat there, listening with a shadow of a smile in his face, which turned blank when Arthur approached. His hair was silky black, long, woven back into a braid. It had a bead string intertwined with it and a single feather at the end of the braid. He nodded at Arthur but distrust was evident. Arthur understood the wariness and didn't mention it. His horse was gray and spotted and he introduced himself as Blue Hawk.

Albert was riding Bread, a horse that was the color of bread, only becoming black at the bottom of his legs.

And Arthur was riding Gray, the horse he had taken to find Houdini. Although the stallion was getting less agitated and hadn't run away yet, he still needed to keep it slow and steady.

With introductions out of the way, the men rode to begin their mission

• ··········· • ············ •

On the way to the stock train Blue Hawk was quiet, listening to the rest of the group's conversation, much like Arthur had been. However, as time passed the rest of the men started to push them into the jokes and conversations they started. Both relaxed a bit and became more cordial towards each other. Every time any of them complained about something, Blue Hawk and Arthur would joke about living on the road and how the other were living priviledge lifes at their farms. Throughout the whole ordeal Arthur kept a watchful eye on their route, his colorful background becoming a helpful resource when spotting places that bandits could corner them. He was thankful for the quietness that followed the group.

At night he would ask to be the first to keep watch. He'd make wide circles around the small camp the men set up, eyes and ears open to any suspicious movement.

He did notice that the men weren't exactly nonchalant about their surroundings or the dangers of their trek. Both Albert and Brant had a rifle each on their saddle and would always be at the front or back of the convoy. The Everstons herded the cattle to stop them from wandering too much. Arthur was impressed by how easy they made it look. It was an art form, how they zigzagged around the big animals shouting at them and reminding them to stay within the imaginary boundaries.

That left Arthur and Blue Hawk to guard the side lines. They would ride together for a while, chatting about the land and the cattle. Whenever Jeremiah or Bernard needed space, they would break apart.

After four days of riding, camping and camaraderie Arthur felt more like himself. These people were pleasantly pleasant. They would bicker back and forth, and disagree on some subjects, and obviously everyone had their flaws. However, in general, Arthur realized, these people, they were good through and through.

All those times people kept telling him 'you are a good man Arthur.' , it only felt like a surface level praise. He knew he wasn't good, he had killed more people than he had saved and some of them, he would do it again. Good people, if they kill, they regretted it. So he concluded that he was fine. He was nice at the best. 

But now, seeing the way these 5 people worked, hell, seeing the way everyone he had met after his resurrection, as you like to put it, worked and dealt with each other, he felt like he needed to step up.

His past is in the past and maybe all of this was a second chance.

• ··········· • ············ •

The group ended their journey riding through Captain's Corner's southern gate. The moon was already high in the sky. As Blue Hawk and Jeremiah cracked jokes about Albert's back pain, something was heard. Right at the end of Miss Renoir's land. A child's squeal and then, silence. Arthur squared his shoulders and looked alert for 10 seconds until Bernard laugh.

"Seems like your place is the place to be Albert." He joked and Albert chuckled.

"Seems so." He looked at Arthur, who now had a confused look on his face. "All the roads lead to my house whenever we leave for more than one evening." He gave out an exaggerated sigh.

"Well, at least there will be dinner on the fire." Brant added and Arthur noticed the smell of roasted meat.

"Father probably gifted them a boar." Blue Hawk nodded smiling. "When I left they were preparing to go hunting. There were some boars in the forest trying to get at our crops." 

"We can try and get some chicken wire around the crops. I saw Mr. Thompson do it the other day." Jeremiah pipped in, receiving nods all around.

"I think that'd be a good idea." Albert replied in a rough voice. “If there is one thing that man knows, it's how to protect what’s his.”

The group kept their horses walking forward at a leisurely pace, until they got to the open gate of Graham's ranch. The closer they were, the more distinct the voices and noises were. And it was a strange, unfamiliar cacophony of laughter, squeals and a mooing cow?

When the front of the house came into view, he could see two small campfires nestled between the house, the stables and the barn. He could also see a couple of shadowy figures moving.

“Papa!” A squeaky scream came from the fire and he saw a small child, about the same age as Jack was, running towards the horses.

Everston senior jumped off his horse and knelt on the ground, waiting for the kid to come to him. She jumped into his arms and he faked a gasp.

“And pray tell, why is a fine young lady like yourself staying up at this time of the night?” He grabbed her small waist and placed her on top of his horse.

“Momma said I could. Just today, she said.” She answered matter of factly and Everston nodded.

"Right, of course. I take it your other brothers and sisters are up as well."

"Well, Georgie is sleeping but Grace is up." She grabbed the reins.

"If Georgie wasn't sleeping we would hear him right about now." Jeremiah joked and the little girl looked at him, her face scrunched with annoyance.

"He's a baby! Momma said it's the only way he knows how to talk!" 

Arthur chuckled at the girl, dressed in a striped yellow dress and brown boots, hands on the reins, shaking her head at her brother's comment.

They came closer and Arthur observed the event in front of him.

One of the campfires, the bigger one, was almost extinct. The roasted boar secured to a branch, already cooked. The other fire was more vibrant, the flames having been fed recently. That one was surrounded by an assortment of chairs, some of which he recognized from the kitchen. He also recognized the guitar from the office, plates, glasses, some books, and some children's toys.

Two women were sitting next to the more vibrant campfire, with the two family dogs at their feet. Both had buns on their heads, but one was curvier and smaller than the other. That was Mrs Brant. He could see the small glasses she wore reflecting the orange glow when they turned to look at them. The other seemed the same age as Albert, and Arthur assumed it was Mrs. Renoir.

A young woman walked towards them waving her hand. She was dressed in loose pants and a simple shirt. However, instead of suspenders she had a baby cradled in a bright green fabric sling that wrapped around her torso. He deduced that this was Mrs. Everston.

Something stirred in him when he saw the delicate head of jet black curly hair neatly tucked into the sling. It’s been a while since he actually saw a baby, and even longer since he witnessed a baby sleeping so peacefully as that little one was.

His eyes shifted to the horse pen where Miss Graham was slowly spinning around in circles in it, holding Dusk by the reins. On top of the horse were two other kids, and he remembered Albert saying that the Everstons had a few kids. Both of them were awake, although one of them, the younger, seemed to sway more than the other. 

He looked at you and saw your head turn to the horses that had just arrived. You smiled and helped the children from the top of the big horse with the help of the fence around them. The younger kid clung to you as you tried to put him down and you held him as you walked towards the horses.

Before Arthur could dismount Albert called him closer to him. The younger man tilted the horse in his direction. Albert grabbed something from inside his jacket and gave it to him. It was a thin wad of money.

“It ain’t much, but we divided it in equal parts and that’s yours.” He nodded and Arthur just looked at the money.

“I don’t feel comfortable accepting it.” He said honestly. “You’ve given me enough as it is.”

“Nonsense. You did your job, you deserve to be paid. Take it. Go buy yourself a new pair of pants. Maybe a couple of shirts.” Albert chuckled at him. “Lord knows my daughter is talented at a lot of things, but sewing ain’t one of them.”

Arthur reluctantly put the money in his jacket's inner pocket.

The duo trotted their horses to the stable, taking Dusk with them, while the others gathered around the campfire. Once the horses were safely in their boxes, they joined them.

• ··········· • ············ •

@photo1030 :: @sylum :: @marislittlereadingcorner :: @rratman :: @clevergirl74 :: @aureolinb

[not-so-mundane-after-all]

Now I'm gonna be predictable and ask you for Dick and Rachel for the character thing 💙🖤

My two favorite birds!!!!! Okay *cracks knuckles* here we go

DICK GRAYSON

First impression:

Hot, mysterious, "hmmm I know that face", had this edge about him that had me lean closer to my tv and go "okay, interesting, go on"

Impression now:

The love of my life, a mark on my soul, the blueprint for a Comfort Character™, my #1 TV Dad, must be protected at all cost mostly from himself

Favorite moment:

How can I pick just one? My favorite kinds of his moments are when he gets feral protective over his baby girl (like in 1x07 or 4x08) or any alteration of "I won't let anything happen to you" because all I hear is "I love you"

Extra kudos for all the shirtless scenes 😏

Idea for a story:

One that has been recently lurking at the edge of my mind is giving him an AU where basically everything is the same except his parents are alive — mostly because I want to write them interacting with Kory and the kids

Unpopular opinion:

He gets waaaay too much crap from the fandom, for even the littlest things. He's a flawed character who makes stupid mistakes sometimes. If he was perfect all the time, he'd be boring. He doesn't have to be the best leader, an A+ father figure 100% of the time or constantly kissing the earth the woman he loves walks on to be a good character. Don't like his storyline? Shit on the writers, it's their fault.

Favorite relationship:

There's only one answer to that, always will be.

His light in the darkness. His turning point. His true north. He wouldn't be the man he is now if it wasn't for this one little girl throwing a brick at a cop car and getting herself brought to his station. You can't deny that. The show doesn't. It reminds you, time and time again, who is his anchor. Who keeps him from slipping back into the dark.

Favorite headcanon:

He knows how to play guitar and a little bit of piano because the Haly Circus crew used to jam out all the time. His dad taught him the guitar, Clay was a master of keys and his mother had the voice of an angel and wrote her own songs.

RACHEL ROTH

First impression:

OHHH SHE'S A BABY!!!! I was instantly protective of her and related to her in her loneliness.

Impression now:

FOREVER MY BABY GIRL. Always proud of her, always protective of her. My best girl, my favorite witch. Daddy's Girl and The Best Big Sister-to-be™

Favorite moment:

That walk?! The confidence?! Making dad look all proud in the background?! COME ONNNNNN

Idea for a story:

A while back I wrote down some notes for a concept about adult Rachel and her relationship with teenage Mar'i, inspired by my own relationship with my older sister. There's 19 years between us and the difference between Rachel and Mar'i could end up being similar. I was thinking of writing her as a bestie but also the second mother, ride or die and voice of reason, "dad's gonna kill you" but also "dad's gonna kill both of us if he finds out so we're not gonna tell him". A lot of shenanigans, a lot of heart-to-heart.

Unpopular opinion:

She should have had the final fight with Brother Blood, since this whole thing was about and came from her brother, her heritage, her prophecy.

Favorite relationship:

The simplest reason is because I was just happy to see this child finally being loved. Finally having someone to believe in her and protect her. Finally knowing what it's like to have someone who cares. Finally being held and comforted and understood.

Favorite headcanon:

Girl can SING. But is shy as hell about it. Only Gar knows about it and only because he found out by total accident when he heard her belt out those Ariana Grande whistle notes like it's nothing. They keep it secret until Dickkory's wedding, where she gives a performance of a lifetime.

CODY I LOVE YOU! THANK YOUUUUUU

[sinningtamer]

Not sure if you’ve answered this before but what are your favourite fics and ships?

Love all your art btw! <3 Thx for all the food!

i might've years ago, so let's go again! i'm gonna answer this question as only NSFW/kink related, otherwise the list would be way too long haha

alright let's start with the obvious: ParviII is and always will be my #1 one ship, even when I dip in and out of the fandom a lot (i feel the term OTP is super outdated these days? but if there was one ship i could use it with it's them...)

so obviously i'm gonna say Talking Body and Payment and Payback by @sparxwrites. because. you know. how can i not. oh yeah, Good Vibrations is also a classic. hiii sparx, i'm sorry for picking your older fics, i just have such a bias. they've written a ton of great stuff over the years though, so go give the account a peak! there's something for everyone, especially if you like darker stuff.

...speaking of accounts with a lot of content who lurk around here, shoutout to @pawpunkao3. lmpᴇarI is one of my favorite ships, and they're still such a rarepair somehow?? anyways I think about Between Bedrock and a Hard Place at least once a week tbh. A New Religion That'll Bring You To Your Knees is fantastic, and i have a soft spot for I Spy (even tho i didn't watch too much empires). again, another author with a whole arsenal under their belt, so don't just take my word for it and check the rest of his fics!

back to lmpᴇarI being a rarepair... @thatstoomuchsoup has Chicken Soup for the Soulbounds (okay it's more pearI-centric but they're both there) and is another blog that specializes in some of my kinks and these fandoms. same with @anon-teddy's content, gotta give a shoutout to full. this is also making me realize i haven't sought out enough poly S0up Group or GᴇmpuIse/PᴇarIgem fics...maybe i'll get back to you on that...

there's a bunch of good explicit trᴇᴇbark fics, but i said i was gonna keep this list concise, so the only one i'll specifically point to is how to deal with your supernatural lust for blood (and other things) in a completely normal and god-honoring fashion. for...reasons. also because it's good!

edit: oh my GOD i realized two seconds after posting this i completely forget to mention @also-an-art. go read (this is) hungry work and honey don't feed it right fucking now. i've read both of these in full (pun intended) multiple times they're that amazing. it's rare that the plot is just as good as the horniness, when i tell you i lost my mind at some of the development in these. also hot and dirty (like the la air) is a guilty pleasure. AND it introduced me to a song that ended up being #20 on my spotify wrapped LOL (RPF warning on that one! trust me tho)

let's get to my other bias, shall we? RᴛSpiff and RᴛS00t don't....have any explicit fics. nor does poly lᴀds. CMRᴛ does, though! I'm kinda picky about how people characterize them, but play it cool and Every Stumble and Each Misfire are lovely (note that the second one is also blatant RPF! don't say i didn't warn you o7)

speaking of lᴀds, if you follow me on main, you know i got into Bᴀnᴀna Bᴜs Sqᴜᴀd just last year (I'M SORRY, OKAY, DON'T @ ME-) you'd think getting into an old fandom late would mean a ton of great smut fics, right? to be honest, i haven't found many that i care for, but maybe i'm just picky... however, i remember your lips, they're the ones i miss, and smoke in your lungs, your lips on mine are SO GODDAMN GOOD i'm not even mad it's only those two i like because i could reread them 20 times. god. such fun characterization. shame the author orphaned them because i badly wanna read more of their stuff.

this is the part where you go, spirit, do you read anything besides (mᴄ)yt fandoms??? and i go, not really.............well, sort of. i like 0verwatch! and M0icy!! Reciprocity is a delightful PWP long fic. i'm also not really an omegaverse guy, but Water Me has such a good take on it i fell in looove.

okay, i'm gonna cut myself off here, enough though i could probably name dozens of more fics if i sat and thought about it. if anyone i tagged wants to be untagged, feel free to reply here or shoot me an ask/dm!!

[writingrenna]

Grusha x GN!Reader

"Descent to Reality"

A story where you're a well-meaning, if not reckless student going down the Victory Road path who befriends Grusha along the way. As usual, you're a gender neutral reader

Also, for once, you have a named Pokémon; an overprotective Falinks! You also like steel Pokémon (not specifically steel type, but Pokémon with steel elements like armor or metallic bodies or whatever)

Your relationship with Grusha is full of banter and genuine care

Accidentally became a whole thing. You'll see

Tone/Ending: Angsty, Sweet, Hinting at a Budding Relationship

Warnings: You are both dealing with mental illnesses, but it is what it is. Grusha has a panic attack at one point, and you recognize some stuff in your own behavior

Word Count: A bit less than 5,000

--v-Vv-

You walk up to the mouth of Dalizapa Passage on your way to Glaseado Mountain. Your brief stop in Zapapico prepared you for this trek, getting some rest and gathering whatever you'd need up in the blistering summits.

You look down at your trusty sidekick Falinks with a smile.

"Ya'll ready for this?"

The six of them all stood in formation, letting out a short yet mighty battle cry. Your smile broadened into a bright grin at this.

"Good to hear! I know that blue-haired bully will be a BREEZE for you all!"

You were joking of course, but that still didn't stop you from freezing when you heard his voice.

"Blue-haired bully, eh? Heartbreaking, how could you be so cruel?"

You turn to see him, hands in his pockets with his Cetoddle by his side, a cane slung over its shoulder in a cross-body bag. He had one eyebrow raised despite his amusement, feigning offense.

"Oh, speaking of- hey, Grusha!"

He walks closer toward you.

"I take it you're ready to face my gym?"

He tuts under his scarf.

"Bold. You know I've only gotten harder to beat after that champion came through, right?"

You scoff at him, crossing your arms and tossing your head back, eyes closed.

"And so have I. That kid getting so strong so fast only raised the standards of the entire region!"

Grusha nods, looking down at the ground momentarily before continuing.

"Well, in any case, you're gonna need to give me a bit of time. Really don't feel like starting a battle the second I get back up there."

You nod at him, understanding completely.

"Yeah, don't worry, this benefits us both. You get some time to yourself, and I get to train some more on the way up. Might as well prepare for yet another defeat while you're up there waiting for me."

His faces briefly flashes with a strange emotion you couldn't quite pinpoint, but he shakes it off.

"Ah, that confidence will certainly be your downfall. But I must admit, I'd almost admire it if it wasn't so misplaced."

Your face contorted to one of genuine offense for a few seconds, mouth hanging open and eyebrows knitted together as your Falinks looked up at you in worry. Grusha didn't even give you time to respond before taking his leave, waving as he walked by.

"Well then, I guess I'll be seeing you, if you're not still frozen in place, that is. Be sure not to die on the way up, okay?"

They get a good ways up the path when you finally snap out of it. You turn towards him, yelling out a rebuttal that causes even a lurking Sneasel nearby to turn to you in shock.

"T-try me!"

Neither he nor his Cetoddle pay you any mind.

--v-Vv-

Falinks wrecked mayhem on Glaseado Mountain, taking down quite a few mons with ease. You excitedly registered a few new ones to your Pokédex, even deciding to add a Bronzong to the secondary team you were planning in boxes.

"Huh. Guess I like Pokémon with a lot of steel!" You muse to yourself, looking at Falinks and thinking about a Charcadet you planned on using for said team. Falinks responded, dancing a little together with happy little expressions on their faces.

No matter what, you'd always keep them on your team.

You hear a noise that snaps you out of your happy thoughts. A little cry coming from lower down the mountainside. You walk over towards the edge of the cliff you were on to see-

"A SNOM!?"

Snom had actually eluded you during your entire trip up the mountain. Heck, even some Greavard, with their little tricks to stay hidden, were found by you. Did you just... not notice the little thing? Were you going through so fast it blended in with it's surroundings?

You shook your head.

"Okay, Falinks! I'm going down."

The group of Pokémon by your side looked down the mountainside for a second, glanced at the nearby path, and then looked back up at you, completely silent save for the clinking of their shells.

Odd.

You simply pulled out their Pokéball and called them back inside. It was easier to simply slide down so you don't lose the Snom, but you didn't want them getting hurt or separated in the process.

You hype yourself up, being pulled back by your rotom phone the first try, before carefully planting your feet and sliding down. It was... steep, especially near the end (which was essentially just an abrupt drop), but you managed, landing right beside the tiny ice larvae.

You reach for the Pokéball of another member of the team, one who didn't have a huge type advantage over it.

"AH-huh?"

The familiar glow of a Pokémon emerging from its Pokéball came into view, but when it settled, you saw... Falinks?

You then realize your hand is simply hovering over your belt.

Strange.

Why did they come out on their own?

They look up at where you just slid from (which was certainly more than a story or two) before quickly looking back to you. You're still as a statue, taking in the obvious concern on their faces as they look up to you, chirping softly as if asking if you're Ok. Before you know it, Snom has run off, but you're far more concerned with your little army.

"I- Falinks?"

They keep staring at you when you feel someone's hands clamp down on your shoulders.

"You."

The voice is low yet forceful, dragging out the word slightly, causing you to jolt.

"Grusha?"

"What on earth was that?"

His voice. It was... authoritative.

"Gru... sha?"

You can't seem to understand what it is exactly he's trying to point out. He continues.

"I saw that. WHY would you risk it all for a- a SNOM of all things? It's like you've done this before! Have you??"

Risk... it all...

His arms are shaking as he forces himself to continue.

"And to think, I thought you hearing my story would make you less reckless. Was I a fool? A fool to hope you'd ever think past the moment? I wasn't even doing anything to- I wasn't supposed to be- but you just... y-you could've-"

He rips his hands away from you in an instant. You take this opportunity to turn around and look at him.

His chest had started heaving heavily as his breaths came out sharp, frequent. He abruptly pulled his scarf down, eyes unfocused and darting back and forth over a fixed point somewhere past you, trying to focus on something, anything. His body swayed slightly as he stumbled back to lean against a rock.

Cetoddle is already trying to gently redirect his attention from the situation, sitting him down and laying next to him, giving him time to steady his breathing while leaning against him, reaching over and rubbing the arm opposite it to ensure it holds him tight.

You don't know what to do. Cetoddle seems to already know what it's doing, and you aren't sure you'd be of much help.

"...are you okay...?

He let out one large breath before looking up at the sky, closing his eyes and mumbling something you can't quite hear to himself a few times.

You give him space, but you decide to stay put.

His breathing calms down a little after a while, right hand coming out of his pocket. His Cetoddle took this hand and sandwhiched it in its flippers, looking at him and trilling softly to see if he was Ok.

His breathing is shallow, but stable as he nods, glancing at you before gulping down a breath and standing up to follow the terra whale, letting Cetoddle lead him back up the path without another word, leaving you alone with your thoughts.

--v-Vv-

You're lying in bed at the Zapapico Inn. Your eyes are glued to your phone, although you aren't sure what you're expecting. The feeling of dread had your insides tangled in a death grip, a pang of guilt shooting through you whenever you remembered your carelessness, his disappointment...

The terror in his eyes.

And you felt even more guilty once you realized you didn't fully understand what he went through.

You sigh, looking at Falinks on the ground staring up at you. They seemed to sense something was off, so they kept watch. You couldn't help but think about their weird behavior yesterday, however. Sure, they were usually worried about your shenanigans, but why did they seem to be... distracting you, purposefully staring you down without making an effort to communicate so you wouldn't move?

"...you saw him coming, didn't you?"

They all, for once, stop their march, freezing in place at this question. That was all the answer you needed, but when they all looked to the floor in shame, a misplaced feeling of betrayal crept up and got thrown into the mix.

"Of course!"

You turn over, refusing to acknowledge the fact that your good friend Grusha, as well as your trusty companions all felt that you were too thoughtless this time around.

Falinks' concern is valid. They were right to basically call you out on it, to get you caught. In fact, if you didn't feel so... at fault, you'd appreciate this more, seeing that they cared for you as an individual, and not just as that person that caught them.

But no, you felt... dumb.

Curling up in bed a little, you felt a few tears fall. The sound of your Falinks jumping up and running around the bed to comfort you rang out in your ears, but you didn't pay them any mind. You didn't pay anything any mind, really. Was this just how you were? Ignoring everything and hoping things would turn out alright? Would Falinks grow tired of you? Did Grusha already give up on you?

You take a hesitant peek at them, feeling the brass reach out and gently rub your hand. They were in their tower formation, looking up at you in worry.

The sound of your phone vibrating caught your attention. You pick it up, looking at the latest notification.

Grusha

Come by tmrw, if u want

--v-Vv-

You walk into the arena. Very few people were here, but they all seemed excited. That's normal.

What isn't normal, however, is Grusha looking out onto the horizon on the other side of the battle court, the Great Crater of Paldea in full view. That isn't his usual spot...

"I see you decided to show up. Brave choice."

He said the things he'd usually say, but his tone was flat. Not forced, but devoid of energy.

You frowned. Did he... not want you to show up?

He turned, walking to his spot and looking at you.

"I'll be real here. I don't really know how to start this battle, so let's just get our Pokémon to do the talking, okay?"

And with that, he sent out his Frosmoth.

--v-Vv-

It was a tough battle. He wasn't kidding when he said he got stronger. But you and your Falinks, your last mon standing, were still in the running to victory.

"I'm impressed! You really seemed to learn a lot on your journey so far. You're quite a fighter."

That compliment felt... off. He continued, ignoring your visible confusion.

"But that doesn't matter. You may have escaped an icy doom before, but like a sudden hail storm in the summer, the avalanche of defeat may often... sneak up on you."

He charged up his Terra Orb before throwing it, engulfing Altaria in a crystal that shone like the stars. When she broke out, you shielded your eyes, only to prematurely pry them open again when you heard a gasp from the crowd.

Altaria has Terastallized into a pure- flying type?

"Wha- hey! Grusha!"

Your eyes are wide and panicked. His are just full of sadness.

"I-I thought... you always do stuff like that. I don't know if you bother to remember, but the mountain thing isn't the only needlessly dangerous stunt you've pulled during the time I've known you alone. I can't imagine what you did before we met to embolden you so much."

You're too stunned to speak.

"I thought, maybe, I could ignore it. I was always able to brush it off as you not putting yourself in any real danger. 'The other students do wild things all the time, it's normal!' But no, this is your life now. And if halting your journey for a bit... if making a show of this is what it takes to get through to you, then so be it."

"Grusha... but... is this allowed? I know- how wrong it is. I'll be nothing but careful from now on, I promise! Just don't lose your job over this, it's all you have left!"

And with this comment, he goes from stone cold and serious to- limp. His arms slump for a second, looking away from you, fighting back the urge to break down before he lowers his head, shaking it without responding.

Well... shaking his head 'no' is a response. Just not one you're emotionally ready to deal with right now.

You can barely make a noise. Even your mighty warriors flinch when you somehow manage to command them to use... something. What was it? Who knows. It didn't matter now.

He shouts his command, arm shooting up with gusto, head still hanging low.

"Altaria, Hurricane!"

And in an instant, your Falinks are blown back, knocked out in one violent flurry of wind and frost.

--v-Vv-

You're too dazed to do anything, arms feeling heavy as you look down at your little friends all strewn about on the battle court. You're on your knees. When did that happen? Your head is swimming with so many questions and concepts as you recall your Falinks.

You stare out in front of you, looking down at the icy ground below you.

Grusha is escorted away by his worried Cetoddle, ignoring the crowd's hushed whispers and bewildered stares.

You don't know what to do. You don't know what to think.

How the hell will you make up for this? Worrying him so much he put his whole career on the line to get you to see reason? To get you to take him seriously?

--v-Vv-

You sat across from the man, his expression never changing as he took in your tale. You somehow managed to catch him on his lunch break, a man very close to La Primera when it comes to public facing figures in the league. He knows who you are, so he decided to let you talk in a private corner of the Treasure Eatery.

"S-so, yeah. That's why he did it, from my perspective. He was tired of me getting in danger and decided to show me it was hurting others, too. For that, I am sorry. But PLEASE don't punish him because of me! Isn't that a good thing? The league looking out for the people of Paldea, no matter the risk?"

He slowly chewed the last bite in his mouth, swallowing it before responding.

"I'm afraid it isn't up to me. The chairwoman is already well aware of this incident. Whether he's let go or not depends on many factors outside of anyone's control."

You knew you'd most likely get an answer like that, but it didn't stop you from tearing up. He looks at you with pity in his eyes for a split second before adjusting his tie and speaking to you, expression back to its usual indifference.

"I know- it's disappointing. I've come to respect him quite a bit during his time in the league. He took what life could offer him and aimed as high as he could go. Despite not being able to chase his greatest ambitions and fearing any more loss, he never let his circumstances keep him down there when the accident happened..."

He paused.

"For him to risk it all, he must really love you. No matter the outcome, you're worth it, to him."

And with that, your loose tears become a full-fledged sob, leaning over the table and resting your head in your hands.

"But... but WHY!?"

He leaned in slightly.

"He once admitted to Ryme and me that he appreciates you sticking by and actually liking him despite his 'moodiness'. He also told some of us at a group event that he admires the fact that you can keep up with and match his sarcasm. Small, or odd as it may seem, things like that can make the heart grow fonder, can thaw even the coldest of hearts."

You look up at the man. His expression stayed static, but you swear you see a glimmer of some foreign light in his eyes.

'He must be a sucker for romance...' You idly thought.

Oh, seems like you're able to think your usual unhinged thoughts again.

Wait. Romance?

You decide to ignore this thought.

"But, wait... Larry, I..."

You didn't actually have anything to say, but...

"Is he... is he alright?"

He took a moment to respond.

"...last I heard, he said he did what he had to, but didn't elaborate on his feelings."

"Ah."

Sounds like him.

You simply hung your head.

"...I'm sorry."

He glanced at a watch under his sleeve, but he decided to offer one last word of advice.

"I'm not here to tell you off or warn you to be more careful, I'm sure you've had plenty of time to realize that yourself. But he never gave up on you. Even if you feel like what you did was unforgivable, he doesn't, so take charge and do what's best, because what's best for you is best for him, too."

"Bu-but, wh-what if that was his last a-act? What if he plans on abandoning me now that I'm at m-my w- or-orss-st?"

"Well, everyone has the right to call it quits, but I doubt that was his goal going in. Either way, offer him the chance to talk it out. What he decides to do then is up to him, but please, either way, don't punish yourself over this forever. The past can't be changed, but the future is meant to be built upon the lessons of today."

You take this answer in. He's right. He deserves the opportunity to say what he needs to, even if that thing might shatter your world. Because sometimes, you have to do something scary, like face someone you've hurt, intentionally or not.

You sigh before offering up a weak smile.

"Thanks, Larry. Really, you've helped a lot."

He stands up, adjusting his tie one more time before grabbing his suitcase.

"I only wish I could help more. I will bring this up with La Primera, but sadly, I cannot go into more details on internal affairs even if you're directly involved in it. You will have to wait for the outcome. I wish you and Grusha good luck, though."

He then nods and departs.

--v-Vv-

It has been three weeks since that fateful gym battle.

You walk up to the gilded doorplate. A neutral meeting spot was arranged for you and Grusha to talk. Ryme was kind enough to let him use her VIP pass to reserve some time in the private room of a restaurant she frequents. It's secluded, neither of you come here (at least, if he ever has, he doesn't come enough to talk about it), and you'd never stumble upon it by just existing in the world, thus not accidentally rousing bad feelings or memories in either of you.

You let out a breath you didn't know you were holding and gently knocked.

You hear the familiar sound of a Cetoddle's cry.

You grip the handle and look down at your own Pokémon, who were standing in a 'V' shaped formation.

You know they love you, but you can't help but look into their little eyes and feel the urge to apologize yet again for something they've already well and truly forgiven you for- out of fear that they resent you.

You shake off this feeling, opening the door.

This is it.

You walk through, letting them all in as well before closing the door.

You pause for a second, kind of afraid to look at him.

But you power through.

Your stomach flips when you spot him at a large floor-to-ceiling window, looking out onto the icy landscape and crashing ocean waves in the far off distance.

He looked so serene despite the circumstances. As if he belongs here, amongst all this beauty and prestige.

Standing here, you felt like a poser.

You can't help but smile, however, imagining Ryme booking him this reservation just to make a tough conversation a little easier. Just so he wouldn't stumble upon a place of bad memories. She always had a soft spot for him.

At least you know for sure he'll still have her, even if he's-

The sound of your name snaps you out of it.

"Wh-wha?"

"I was saying 'hi'." He replied. You immediately feel bad for spacing out at the greeting, of all things.

"I'm- I, s-sorry-"

"Chill out, this isn't easy for me either."

You heart sank. Was he going to...?

"I get it, if you don't have your head on straight right now. I didn't expect you to come in all cold and calculated or anything."

He was being far more considerate than you'd expect someone to be in this situation.

'What situation? Who else is going through this?'

You shook that thought off. Not helpful.

"Okay, so, um... wow, I uh..."

He took a moment to see if you'd add on to this.

"Hm, I see. Glad to hear."

You feel a quirk of the lip at that remark, but you refused to smile when someone you hurt needed to hear a proper apology.

At least his sarcasm is still intact.

"Sorry, lemme try again. I'm sorry I'm always so reckless. I knew you were worried about me, but I just thought I could... I thought everything would just be okay, that if I do crazy stuff but stay careful enough, I wouldn't get hurt. But, you're right. The risk isn't worth it. And for that, I apologize, for always toeing that line despite your warnings."

He takes your statement in.

"Okay. Thanks for that."

Your face scrunches up a bit. That's it?

"Wh-"

You can't believe it. He hasn't added onto this statement yet.

"...that's... that's all you have to say??"

His posture loosened all at once as he let out a drawn-out sigh. You didn't even realize he was tense.

With a shake of his head, he says "Gimme a second to think, will you?"

You tense up, waving your hands defensively despite the fact that he's still turned away.

"Ah! Sorry!"

He lets out a huff in response. You give him time to mull over what he wants to say.

"Alright, look. I don't want this to be a big... 'thing', alright?"

He does quotes with his fingers, which you can still tell despite his mittens.

"We don't need a big, emotional, blow-up argument to settle this. Trust me, I don't have the time for stuff like that."

He then hung his head momentarily before finally turning to you. He looked somewhat tired, although you refused to look him in the eyes right now.

"I just want to know why. Why are you always so reckless?"

You pause. You... truthfully never thought about it. You idly wondered what it was like being in his head, what it was in his mind that made him so worried about things you didn't give a second thought to. Why he looks back on things he experienced and feels so strongly about them when you usually just move on, or why you have to dig so deep down inside yourself to understand why your mind or actions react to things in the ways that they do when you don't even actively connect the dots. Why you-

That's when it hit you.

"I..."

Your eyes were wide, looking down at the ground.

"I guess I just don't process fear the way most people do. Like, I don't get alarmed by danger as badly as most people. Even now, I..."

You pause. You were definitely going to have to unpack this later. Were you less mentally sound than you thought you were? You got through life just fine, but something that's so inate in most people eluded you. But right now, we're talking about your recklessness.

You take a mental note to thank Grusha for this confrontation later, whether it's to him directly, or just as a part of the story on how you figured yourself out.

"...well, I know things are dangerous, but I guess it doesn't click with me to avoid them."

He... stared at you. You were worried he was put off by this epiphany.

"I see."

You didn't know what this meant, so you met his tired eyes again to get some clarification.

"Does... that mean you don't wanna be around me anymore...?"

He sighed heavily.

"No, of course not. I'm not dumping you over this. It's just... more context for your behavior."

You smile. Genuinely, and against your will. You've only just now realized there might be a reason why you're always so reckless and #unbothered, but it felt nice, having him accept you, when before people would just leave you to your own devices and not bother trying.

"Okay, cool."

You let out a sigh of relief. He took your expression in.

"You know, your health is important. I take my mental and physical health very seriously, as you can see here."

He gestures toward Cetoddle.

"Just having Falinks around seems to keep your spirits up. But that's your journey, and this is mine. I'd like to know ways to help you, though. Would you consider going to therapy to at least see if that suits you? It could be a great start for you in unpacking everything."

You considered this. Maybe therapy could help your transition into... understanding exactly what it is your brain did while being wired in the womb? You were strangely Ok with all this, despite having the realization of a lifetime. Man, more reason why you should get this checked out.

"Yeah, that sounds alright. I'd like that."

He nods.

"Cool cool. Glad to finally be getting somewhere with you."

You freeze.

Oh, right. The whole reason you were here.

Oh no!

"Your job!"

He flinched, closing one eye.

"Ah. Yes, that. Well, I still have it, but... I am currently in a sort of probationary period."

Your heart did something weird in your chest.

"I... see."

You looked down.

The uncertainty was the worst part to you.

"I'm sorry, Grusha. I'm sorry about your job. I'm sorry I pushed you so far. I'm sorry I didn't see how much my actions affected people, how much risk I was putting on myself..."

He waved a hand up a little.

"Well, it worked, didn't it?" Is all he could say.

--v-Vv-

You grabbed your order, thanking the lady that gave you the ice cream cones before turning back to him, the both of you sitting in a quiet spot of Porto Marinada with your Pokémon.

"Here ya go, Gru!"

He glared at you before accepting it.

"Thanks..." He slowly intoned, although you can tell he doesn't mean it.

You sat next to him before abruptly feeling a wave of sadness wash over you.

You still felt terrible, but you wished you could feel terrible in a way that made sense.

Ah well.

"I'm sorry, Grusha. For everything."

"We're cool."

"I-"

You lick your cone before deciding it's too much effort to really try and eat it right now.

"I'm sorry you... got me at my 'finna be my worst'..."

"..."

"...and also right before my 'oh my Gods I'm mentally ill' thing, gotta be rough dealing with all this at once, right?"

He doesn't say anything right away, deep in thought, before turning to you and responding.

"Look, you are who you are, and I liked you before, right? I never expected perfection. Knowing what's going on with you is only a positive."

He turns away from you.

"As long as you steer away from the self-destructive stuff when you're aware it's bad, we'll be good. And I know you're self-aware, even if you don't always understand or trust that awareness. You'll keep figuring things out, and I'll stick by you. Through thick and thin, alright?"

You smile. You know he means it. You know he'll always be there, despite how messy you are, because he loves you. Even without ever saying it, you know.

So you promise to be good to yourself every step of the way. And when you're good to yourself, you're good to him. Because you as you are is enough for him. And because he accepts you, no matter what you realize, no matter where your journey happens to take you, because you are you. Every little thing you've done made the you of today, and every little thing you do today will begin to shape the you of tomorrow. The good, the bad, the tragic, the triumphant, every zig-zag and straight line and wave, that's you. That is what he wants. He wants YOU, the full experience.

As weird as that thought was (maybe even being unable to articulate yourself was a symptom?), you know one thing for certain;

He wouldn't change a thing about you, because you're you.

A/N

Was originally gonna be a story where Falinks doesn't understand your relationship with Grusha and are protective when it comes to him, but then it went into a totally different direction...

Can you tell I can't articulate myself well? Can you also tell I'm #mentallyill? I won't say what it is exactly, but at least I can pull from my own experiences when writing. I apologize if every expy seems emotionally stunted, though, I don't know how a "normal" person thinks, but I'll try my best!

The mention of him having a cane at the beginning seemed random, but I'll get deeper into that later if I write for these two more

Also, if I write more for this expy, what if their Falinks are named Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, Hum, and Drum, with Drum being the brass? Could be cute. They'd be going for a rhyme, not saying they're boring. Plus, drum, rhythm, keeping in time, military drum for the troopers, it works, Hum could be the one in the very back

PLEASE FORGIVE ANY MISTAKES I WAS WRITING THIS IN A M O O D BUT I LIKE THE STORY REGARDLESS LMAO

[arcplaysgames]

P3P and P4G done, lets play P5R

Alright, lets at least get started.

Just in case you're new, hello. My name is Archie, and I have now played Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden. My liveblog continues.

My liveblogs are mostly fast recaps of the story with a lot of conjecture and guesses and long diatribes about the veracity of Persona's cartomancy choices. For all the games but P5R specifically, I know pretty much blithering fuckall about the plot and characters, so I enjoy trying to guess what's going to happen and pick up on foreshadowing (and sometimes whine about lack of foreshadowing, looking at you ending to P4G).

In P3P I romanced Akihiko but my life partner was Junpei. In P4G, I played a raging homogay so I didn't get to kiss anybody but harbored one HELL of a crush on Kanji.

Now, we start P5R. /rubs hands together

SO UH GAME IS A BIT ODD FROM WORD GO HUH. Hitting new games starts one of those "this story is a work of fiction disclaimers" but it's narrated very purposefully, refers to "[our] world" and demands I sign my agreement as a contract.

Could be nothing, just a bit of flavor, but this is the first of the games I have played to tap on the fourth wall in this way. Also, the text being blue brings to mind the dude who like set up the Velvet Room who you don't really see in the modern Persona games, which is... Philapome? Or something.

Starting in medias res with what I would say is an overload of information.

Casino heist! With shadows and persona hanging around! And... the weird thing is that it seems to be in the real world??? But our protagonist guy has the power of persona in the real world. Which we haven't seen yet in 3 and 4. Persona abilities was relegated to the TV World and the Dark Hour.

Also, WEIRDLY, this guy is a thief? Like Sly Cooper running along the lights and fixtures, using a grappling hook, the whole shebang.

It sure ain't Tartarus, that's for sure. And we have a bunch of shadowy characters talking over the comms.

GONNA BE REAL this whole intro sequence is a lot? We fight some persona (in the real world??????).

Get a helping hand from some lady with a sword?????

Jump out of a stained glass window with some Cowboy Bebop vibes goin' on.

Aaaaand get fuckin got by a LOT of cops. Oh my god that's so many cops. And we were set up.

A cop beats the shit out of our protag and repeats that immortal recurring line. Well, taking responsibility for their actions killed Reverie 3 while Reverie 4 survived, so we'll see how this one goes.

There was only one option. Reverie Vantas returns.

And we're in a framing device! Sup, Cassandra I mean Sae Nijima. But yeah, this has some Dragon Age vibes to be certain. Sae apparently knows Reverie, but was not expecting to see him, and seems sympathetic but Cop-y about wanting some answers.

I am still concerned about the use of Persona in the real world, that has me very concerned, given how P3 and P4 ended.

Are they bringing back the meaningful butterfly of Palermo or whatever?

Okay Reverie's backstory is laid out:

Dude tried to help some lady who was getting roughed up, but the rougher got injured in the process so Reverie has been expelled and now is facing a criminal record. Which, in Japan? OOF. Not great. Not good. Also, can you have a criminal record as an adolescent in Japan? That's really rough.

So Reverie is sent to I Think It's Literally Tokyo, like this game is not in a fictional location, it's Tokyo, I heard Shibuya get mentioned, what the hell.

boy howdy we got a lot of anime cutscenes

AND WE HAVE PROGRESSED BEYOND YOSUKE'S SHITTY FLIP PHONE ONTO SMART PHONES. Reverie sees a weird app thing on his phone and when he presses it, the world stops and I think he sees his shadow????? I think there's some awakening to Persona happening here.

Fuckin' Izanami is back in Inaba like "aw shit, people got PHONES that DO SHIT now? I can just send the power of persona to people as a fucking .apk file now, I don't need to lurk around a gas station like a fucking weirdo, I'm literally a god, I should be making more than minimum wage, wait'll I tell Nyx"

Anyway. That's actually kind of a fun throwback to....... the original MegaTen, right? Didn't the first major entry in the series revolve about a demonic internet site that let you contact the spirit world and then it took over the real world? Basically.

Reverie is off to find his.... like... probation officer but not, and ooh

wow that's a good voice, hello sir, wait no I thought Dojima had a good voice from the start and I was super wrong about him. I trust no good voices in this game.

I AM NOT 30 SECONDS IN AND ALREADY?????

fuck you and your nice voice I GUESS?

I have no idea what the legal standing here is or if its a handwavey don't-worry-about-it thing but:

Reverie, did a good deed and got expelled over it. His family apparently actively wanted to get rid of him, so they sent him off to Tokyo to live with this cafe owner dude, Sojirio Sakura. He is on a one-strike policy and could lose this lovely and inviting attic space for any reason at all. And this is his probation.

what the fuck, wow, and I was sad when P4G didn't really give me any good friends in the first two hours, now THIS?!

Reverie The Fifth, I have known you for like 20 minutes and I'm sorry? What the fuck.

Anyway, Sojirio is a glorified landlord, is not here to play rehabilitationist, leaves as soon as he can, and Reverie goes to sleep.

And wakes up in the Velvet Room.

And oh boy howdy. Wow. Okay. We're gonna have to talk about the Velvet Room in this game.

Out of images. Next post. /fingerguns

[fatuismooches]

Hello !! It’s 🌌 anon !! So sorry for not being present, a lot of things happened irl :’) but I have been lurking when I could !!

Anyway, I hope you’ve been doing well and taking breaks !! Have you played the most recent Archon Quest for Fontaine? What did you think of it? :0 I personally really like it !! But won’t spoil anything if you haven’t played it yet- although if you have I wouldn’t mind hearing your thoughts about it :D

Have a great day/night/whatever time it is for you currently !!

— 🌌 anon

Massive Fontaine Archon Quest spoilers under the cut!!

Hi 🌌 anon!! Don't apologize, i hope things are going better for you now! Make sure to take care of yourself as well 💗 And yes, I have played through the new Fontaine quests!! And what can i say... it was just... really amazing.

I'm biased toward Sumeru's AQs because it's my fav nation but, after the last Fontaine AQs, i can definitely say they're the best. It was just really wonderfully done, with Furina's trial (i felt absolutely terrible for her </3) Focalors' execution (i did not expect her to get a whole new model. Childe coming out of nowhere and beating the whale 😭 And omg. I felt so bad for my baby, especially at the end where Lyney said it "did a number on his health" like NOOOO MY POOR BB I'LL NURSE HIM BACK TO HEALTHHH 😭😭 Childe is always going through something i swear 😭

And Arlecchino. I mean what can i say i absolutely love her. I love seeing her calm, cooperative side, but, I would love to see her be more evil. More Harbinger-like. Scara did say she was a wolf in sheep's clothing so, I am really hoping we see more of that! And it was pretty cool to see Skirk, after so long of the only thing of her being Childe's voice line lol. And the Abyss lore with the Descenders and all that? Delicious. And also with the theory that the Tsaritsa's plan is to possibly revive the Third Descender since the Gnoses are their remains!!!

It just makes me think about how much crazy strong people we have yet to meet (the Hexenzirkel, top Harbingers, and now the Abyss people like Surtalogi). Likes there's so much... and we're already done with Fontaine AQs. When are we gonna meet these people 😭 But yeah. Overall i was very impressed and hope to see future quests be just as interesting and fun!

[neblina-magico]

Chapter 2

Sleeping In The Sun

You were desperate for a job so you applied to be the daycare Attendants handler! you have no clue what you're signing yourself into but at least you don't have to pay rent now!

Moon hates you, Sun doesn't know how to feel about you and you're just trying to survive.

——————————————————————————

Grabbing my car key and grabbing the security card. Picking up my duffle bag and suitcase I’m now ready to start my job, kind of. I still gotta settle in and all that shit but from the schedule i got sent, today i'll be getting a quick little introduction while being led to the living space. After that I was told that I'm free to walk around and get familiar with the pizza plex. I'll probably explore the daycare though since I'll be working there.

I shuffle my playlist and start driving, seeing the quietness of the outskirts to the slight louder and busier environment of downtown. Then finally i see it, my one true love, my everything, my light, its the fucking pizzaplex. I find a parking spot in some sort of dark edge of the parking lot where its next to the building and covered by some branches and overall seems like a dark corner where you think you'll find a dead rat. Luckily i didn't find a dead rat, if i did i would be crying on the floor with a dead rat in front of me. I dont like seeing bead animals they make me so fucking sad that ill puke. Speaking of piukeing why are the doors to the pizzaplex so fucking big, its gigantic, a whole elephant can fit throught these doors.

Walking past the humungus doors I'm greeted by the eye sore of colours the place has to offer. Ever wanted to remind yourself of all the colours possible, well this place is the place for you. Looking around I see a little robot thing making its way over to me, it's got a cute little pink bow and everything.

“Hello, I'll be your escort and guide for today!”

Cute, like really cute. This robot had the voice of a cheerful and bubbly person, its pretty comforting not gonna lie. I smile and wave at the little robot.

“My name is Daisy! I'm an accessibility assistant, I'm assigned for audio descriptive tours when a kid needs them, but today I'll be guiding you to your new home! Just follow me over to the right of the escalators!”

I follow behind Daisy, she holds a resemblance to the staff bots that lurk around but her cute little pink bow helps differ her from the others. A simple design for an important job, beautiful. Daisy leads me to an area right from the escalators. It's pretty reserved and hidden and very much in the dark.

“This area is pretty secluded? It also feel very omunis.'' I say walking up to a red door that has some sort of weird looking lock on it. It doesn't have any way of putting in a code or even a keyhole, all it has is a small screen and a handle. That's it, a screen, and a silver handle.

“This is your living space! You just have to use your security card to enter inside! I was told that you'll have to go through another door to officially enter your new home and lucky you, you're the only person who has access to it. Meaning i can't go in with you and show you around your home but i'm sure you're smart enough to do that yourself. Well before i leave i'll tell you something that i have been instructed to inform you about, inside your living corders there is an elevator, that elevator will allow you access to the daycare and to the lower grounds, specifically the area near Parts and Services. Welcome back to Fazbear Entertainment and have a faztastic day!”

And off she goes, wheeling her way away. I just looked at her moving away and once she was out of sight she was out of mind. Turning back to facing that eye straining red door, why the fuck is it so bright, i wonder if i could repaint it at somepoint. Maybe to a grey or some sort of green, kind of like that go-away green in disney parks.

Crazy. I put my suitcase and duffle bag down and reached into my back pocket pulling out my security card. I tried swiping my card on the top of the screen, but that doesn’t work. Next I try slapping the card on the screen, that shit doesn’t work. Maybe if I pretend to use the force the stupid door will open. How the fuck do I open this door, why the fuck does there have to be many ways to open the door. Tough love won’t work so maybe some soft love will work.

Tapping the security card on the screen, the door automatically opens. It was an easy and a solution I probably should have figured out with the power of common sense but me being me was too stubborn and dumb to use my brain power and properly open the door. I pick up my duffel bag and grab my suitcase dragging it along with me as I enter the small room. The door closes behind me and I’m greeted by a dark red room with a single ceiling light that was enough to light up the whole room.

There is a long brown couch, it’s a little soft to the touch and on one side there’s a bright blue crescent moon pillow and on the other side sits a bright yellow sun pillow. Right away the centre is a light grey star pillow that honestly looks really huggable at this very moment. Looking around some more I notice a counter top that has a black mini fridge and multiple baskets filled with all sorts of snacks and a coffee maker. There was also a sort of gift basket that has my name on it, looking inside I see that it has a bottle of blueberry wine? That’s something interesting, I mean I’m sure it’ll taste hella good but I’ve never seen blueberry wine, also who the hell even made this thing now that I think about it. When did they have the time to even build all this? Who put those chocolate oranges inside the basket?

I sigh, like obnoxiously sighed, all these questions will probably never get answered no matter how much I wish it all would. On the note with my name on it it says “Welcome back to Fazbear Entertainment!” Peachy. I look at the other eye bleeding red door.

“I guess this is the entrance into my living place. Through the red fucking door i go, maybe ill end up in fucking narnia or some shit”

I let go of my suitcase to open the door, I switched the duffle bag to my right hand and reached for the suitcase before letting the door close behind me. I settle my stuff next to the coat hanger that's conveniently placed right next to the door. Slipping my shoes off and I look around the place. It's much larger than my old apartment, the left side was a living room, pretty plain and empty aside from another couch, a brown coffee table, a TV on of course a tv stand, and two huge ass bookshelves. Fucking perfect, now i got two big ass bookshelves to fit all my books in.

To my left is the ketchen, it's fully furnished which is pretty great. From the first look I notice how the whole place is quite literally sun, moon, and stars theme. It’s pretty neat not gonna lie, I love space and all that shit. Next to the kitchen is a door to what I’ll assume is the office since the door is labeled as “Office”. I pick up my stuff and walk into what I assume is my room, it’s hella big. The bed in here is HUGE. It's a big round circular bed, like who did they expect to sleep on that thing, three huge ass people? Again everything is celestial themed, the whole bed, the rug that’s on the floor, the night stand, the lamp, and the closet. There’s also all my moving boxes in here along with more big bookshelves and a really nice looking vanity.

I notice another door and all I’m going to assume is that the door leads to the bathroom, but I’m too tired to keep exploring instead I want to leave this place and explore the daycare! Dropping my duffel bag on my bed and leaving my suitcase in the room I leave. Noticing the elevator between the bedroom and the office and ran to get my shoes and put them on and run back to the elevator.

“Time to get familiar with Superstar Daycare.”

I whisper to myself before entering the elevator.

——————————————————————————

Last chapter, Chapter 3 will be out in 2-3 weeks. I’ll post some concept drawing for the Daycare Attendant Uniform!!

[coconoct]

honestly been going back and forth w myself on a lot of things lately attaching a read more for the sake of ik i'll be rambling like theres no tmr

a part of me wants to drop pnc but i havent really gotten everyone i wanted yet + im broke so i need to build my stash up *looks at clotho and eos* oddly enough pnc has been a game ive been pretty happy on playing still hate how i missed a login day tho tbf ive rarely borderline never interacted w the fandom so me just being in the dark w what goes on there has kinda been a blessing and a curse in a sense that i can enjoy the game in peace but it feels like im alone doing so

pgr im really REALLY tempted on dropping my glb acc, once nocti comes around which will prob be around the end of the school yr for me thats where i'd be like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ welp ig im done and drop that acc after playing around w nocti and whatev. tw im still not too sure abt?? prob when i get around to lvling up my main teams i can be like ok im done and drop that at any time since im just there to experience content ahead of time without being in cn directly

before dropping pgr entirely i do wanna complete a few stuff i had in mind tho

countdown for hyperreal which will prob happen bambi patch

still need to finish that nocti countdown for tw ive barely had any motivation completing that

nocti's bday countdown (similar to how lee's went)

glb nocti's countdown

draw every char up to latest one in cn

a few noctiskk comics thats been in the back of my head for MONTHS now

basically LOTS of countdowns and nocti stuff before i drop everything entirely

will i still draw pgr stuff after all that? mayyybeee???? itll moreso be towards kye's lore building rather than it being a standalone thing. i'll still collect merch and build up my shrines and make cosplay for chars but aside from that i'm pretty much gonna be moving on to other things

ive always had 50/50 feelings w being in the pgr fandom, tho being introduced to it on disc and then going to twt may have affected my views on this whole thing. esp when the side of the fandom i was first introduced to is like the lowest of the low, i dont want to go back to a place where a bunch of dudebro incels made fun of me for being afab and liking lee and me thinking that was a norm when it clearly isnt. its been 2 goddamn yrs and theyre still poking fun at that?? like my god grow up im so sick and tired of it.

if by a slim chance i still want to participate in being in the pgr fandom i'll just go back to lurking like ive always done in prev fandoms, if i really wanna be active in talking abt the game i'll talk abt it in servers or dms, but publicly i felt that i could never really comfortably talk abt how i feel abt it aside from here cause this site >>>>>> bc i felt like my opinions arent valid, tho that really applies to anything i do so 💀💀

pgr has been a really nice game for me to destress and detach myself from reality for a bit, tho now i wanna move on to other games and focus more on my ocs like i did back in the day. once i properly set up everyone's lore doc maybe in the future i'll make a game around them, nothing too big since i'll pretty much be making most of it, but i kinda wanna fulfill my childhood dream that was just recently unlocked

theres also that small part of me that wants to be known for my oc stuff rather than pgr stuff, but bc im not tagging w popular art tags im kinda just existing, and thats fine by me. hitting 500+ follows on twt was like peak realization of me going like "oh shit, 😨 maybe this big of a following aint for me" and it truly isnt lol

[secretgamergirl]

StarCraft 2's story- Good or garbage?

I'm kind of lurking in the discord of a new RTS that's running a kickstarter right now. I don't know how strongly I want to endorse that because while what they have in the can looks darn good in terms of mechanics and gameplay polish and the people involved seem generally cool, I don't think anything at all is really pinned down otherwise. At the very least though it looks very "I'll make my own StarCraft 2! With blackjack! And hookers!" and I'm down for a game with that flavor of mechanics doing well when made by anyone other than, you know, Blizzard.

It's impossible not to draw comparisons when a game is pretty nakedly marketing itself as "we want to divorce the things we like about this one game from the monsters who made it" of course, and so now I'm thinking about just how powerfully terrible the writing was in StarCraft 2, but I'm not going to go off about it in some poor people who I don't know even have a writer yet's forums. I'm gonna ramble about it on my blog.

Now there's two ways to look at this one. We can look at the story of this game on its own, in a vacuum, or we can look at it as a continuation of the story of StarCraft. It's terrible by either standard, but let's start by looking at it as a continuation first.

Now, I'm not going to jump in here and just slap you with a novella long list of all the flagrant plot holes, direct contradictions, and unrecognizable characters if you actually go through these beat for beat. I've done so in the past. Might have done so on this blog. I mean when StarCraft 2 came out I was absolutely insufferable to everyone around me shouting about these things. Like... I don't even know how you can drop so many balls like that. Maybe they were doing that thing where they didn't even glance at the source material and were just poking around some fan wiki populated with random crap from tie-in novels and comics by people who were just going off on their own things... I do always have to mention though that whether by intent or incompetence they seem to have totally dropped the expansion's story from the canon, at least before 2's expansions came along years later.

But no, I want to focus on just basic themes and character arcs here. So the original base game of StarCraft breaks its story into three arcs, each from the POV of a character from one of the three playable factions in the game. This isn't the greatest structure for maintaining narrative cohesion throughout, especially when one of those factions is the communal hive mind of a big swarm of space bugs who at the end of the day just want to eat everything. And if I'm being brutally honest, there isn't a whole lot to write home about in the back third either. They kinda slipped back into old habits there and it's kinda just the sort of stock fantasy story you tend to get with games. Decadent ancient space elf empire ignores a big obvious problem due to hubris and a frankly incompetent leader, turns out their ancient traditions and prejudices are total BS, go quest for some magic rocks, have your big grand final battle where the hero self-sacrifices to blow up the monsters.

That first third though, and some threads that carry through the rest, have some good stuff going on. We've got a newly appointed magistrate (the unseen unvoiced player) and marshall (Jimmy) on some backwoodsy wild west sort of planet. They're pretty young and idealistic. Space bugs attack, they try to help, trying to help gets them in trouble with their higher ups who don't really buy the seriousness of this space bug invasion. Desperate for anyone to help fight the good fight, they fall in with a fringe militant cult leader (Mengsk) and his right-hand gal (Kerrigan) who he busted out of some government psychic supersoldier program. Jimmy immediately crushes on her, she doesn't reciprocate.

The gang goes along with all of Mengsk's plans, overthrowing the government to gain control of their armies and psychic experimentation programs to deal with these space bugs, and the level of moral compromise this involves gradually ratchets up until everyone finds themselves complicit in Mengsk killing the whole civilian population of the capital by having Kerrigan set up a psychic murderbug attractor and nobody bother's to evacuate her afterwards.

The other two realize they made a really bad choice of who to throw in with, smash up some major military hardware in the process of bailing on Mengsk as he's setting himself up as dictator for life, and eventually throw their lot in with the protagonists in the third arc, just kinda helping out while they do the whole deal of defying the orders of the ancient space elf council, learning the magic arts of the misunderstood outcasts, flying a big spaceship into the main brain controlling the space bugs. Kerrigan meanwhile gets converted into a space bug/human hybrid super soldier which... honestly feels like it's setting stuff up for a big showdown that just kinda never happens.

Still, we've got characters, they've got arcs. Mostly we have Jimmy (and the silent player character) learning the hard way that long-established power structures tend to be too inflexible to be helpful, and you should never trust anyone openly seeking personal power because they will just exploit everyone around them. It all even roughly follows the classic 3 act structure (and I mean, there's literally 3 acts mapping to that too, just that act 2 is all shown from a villain's perspective). In other media, this is sort of just the bare minimum, but games rarely bother with characters growing, changing, or having real setbacks that make them question things along their way.

This was followed up with the expansion, Brood War, which mirrors that same structure. One long story arc for each of three playable factions. Space elves largely doing standard fantasy beats, middle third switching to a villainous POV so radically different the main narrative gets largely put on hold, and some really good stuff with threads stretching through the whole thing.

Here the villain interlude is that it turns out Earth in this setting is run by full-on fascists, they caught wind of everything going on in this region where there'd previously been a big rebellion, and swing back in to clamp down again. They don't interact with the actual protagonists much (generally, they see the space nazis sweeping in and run off to lay low), so we mostly just have them swooping in and quickly mopping up Mengsk's little newfound dictatorship, with the actual story being the relationship dynamic between the guy in charge (DuGalle), his right hand man he's known forever (Stukov), and a local rebel welcoming them with open arms (Duran). Long story short, Duran's actually a double agent and very gradually pits the other two against each other. DuGalle eventually has Duran kill Stukov thinking he stabbed him in the back, realizes that's dumb, ultimately fails at his whole invasion, and in the epilogue kills himself, which if you read the relevant bit of my FF14 summaries, you know is how I like my stories about clear nazi analogues to end.

In the main narrative though, we pick right back up from the big heroic sacrifice with the bummer of a reveal that killing the primary brain of the psychic space bug collective didn't really get the job done, because some of its secondary brains (refreshingly not a concept pulled out of nowhere, these were firmly established to serve the dual purposes of having clear military targets for a giant pile of bugs, and a way to actually have enough characters for dialog exchanges in that third of the story) are trying to put the band back together. In their current disorganized state though, Kerrigan is no longer a semi-autonomous corrupted bug minion, but totally has her free will and sense of self restored, while still being all chitinous and at least somewhat capable of commanding the other bugs.

So as the whole expansion plays out, and the perspective shifts from the space elves doing some real desperate migration and defense because the plan to save their home world from the big bug invasion ultimately failed, through the nazi invasion, and ultimately to the POV of the secondary bug-brain you'd previously played as who'd been buggified Kerrigan's baby sitter essentially, now forced into taking orders from her, we are mostly dealing with this big hanging question of whether she's really good and trustworthy again, or secretly still under bug control, or if she's good for now but any minute that hivemind could properly come back online and take her over again. And of course, Jimmy's all angsty and pining because he never got over that one-sided crush.

While there's plenty of red flags about her being trustworthy over the course of things, the narrative actually manages to play things close to the chest well enough for the ultimate reveal to be a pretty fun twist. She absolutely 100% is fundamentally herself again, it's just that for a series of mostly pretty well-justified reasons, she absolutely hates every other character in the story. Either they've been trying to kill her, they abused and manipulated her, or they've totally objectified her. Or they're nazis who just showed up, who you don't really need a personal reason to want to kill, but just for good measure they're trying to revive and mind control the central bug mind, so, yeah, that's a threat. So at the last minute the whole thing just reveals itself as a big elaborate revenge story with a fairly strongly gendered theme about being denied agency and being othered, where the actually quite clear-headed just ruthless girl wins.

And then, a decade later, we get StarCraft 2. And what's the main narrative of StarCraft 2? We spend the whole time focused on Jimmy, who has somehow gone from this young idealistic biker/space cowboy with thinning hair, talking like a hippie and bouncing around getting in way over his head trying to rescue people from space bugs by just lending a hand to whoever else seems interested in doing that and crushing on this girl Kerrigan who couldn't be clearer about not liking him back to uh... some sort of gruff jaded old former military general with a bunch of old war buddies, a drinking problem, and a full head of hair, cruising around on his big personal battleship saving various worlds from the big space bug threat pretty much singlehandedly, and hoping to rescue his love interest Kerrigan from space bug mind control, with the help of some kind of prophesied magic space rocks you can build a big totem out of. It even completely de-buggifies her in the end, leaving a helpless little naked girl to chivalrously scoop off the ground and carry to safety. P.S. She's white now.

This isn't like, "oh whoops, we forgot the main character lost one of his boots at the end of last season" nitpicking. This is doing complete 180s on the character arcs and backstories of the central characters here. Kerrigan not needing to be rescued from zerg corruption is the ENTIRE point of Brood War's story. Which also establishes there's no longer really a zerg threat of any sort beyond what she personally wants to tell her mindless bug pals to do. And really, even if you want to de-canonize all of that for whatever reason, tacking a "hero saves the girl" ending onto the story we had in the base game of the original StarCraft still just does not work. You're taking a story whose whole theme is "putting faith in the wrong sort of person has serious consequences" and then turning around and going "actually no it doesn't."

And you know, speaking of Mengsk, it's a much lesser point, but StarCraft 2 depicts him like he's some sort of grandiose emperor from some ancient dynasty. Big imperial palace, little silver spoon in his mouth prince of a son who wants to break from his family's legacy, the whole nine yards. Again, this both fundamentally misunderstands his part in the whole central narrative, and everything that happened to him in the expansion (where not very long at all after his big power grab the UED showed up and completely took him apart, and would have executed him but Kerrigan prolonged that to watch him squirm). And when did he have this kid of his? With who? And where is Jimmy getting all these war buddies? He didn't have'em at the start of things or he wouldn't have had to join up with Mengsk. And his war buddies from that war would just be the magistrate and the surviving protoss characters who act like they barely know him here.

So, no. This does not hold up at all as a continuation. How about if we just look at it in a vacuum then?

Nope, still bad. It leans heavily on a backstory we don't get to see. And I don't mean we're missing a ton of StarCraft 1 flashbacks. I mean, we have all these "old buddy" characters, especially Tychus, but we don't get into how they became friends or do anything to show how they still are, so there's no real emotional stakes to where that ends up going. We start with him drinking his life away in a bar over how he misses this apparent old girlfriend, but we never get into the history between them and even the depressed drinking never comes up again past that shot. We vaguely establish some bitter history with this Mengsk guy, but that never really leads anywhere at all. We just kinda have these various vague and generic handwaves at Standard Protagonist Backstory Stuff. Then we actually dive into things, and it's this very episodic affair where you just hop around from planet to planet either showing up to rescue people or showing up to collect a magic rock to help build the magic Toblerone that cures being half-space-bug. And I mean, I already covered how this sort of simplistic no tension, hero always wins, collect all the treasures for victory sort of narrative is the general baseline for game writing, but other people have been trying to move things forward the last couple decades and this is just sitting at the starting line with a princess to rescue.

Now to be fair, the original StarCraft absolutely also had questing around for magic rocks. The protoss have a totally magic rock based electrical grid, the overmind wanted to eat their special magic rocks to make them more vulnerable, the last protoss mission even had a big ancient temple that did an energy blast, but that one just killed all life on the planet outside of its immediate vicinity, which feels like a more grounded thing for an ancient alien artifact to do than... vaporize/purify space bugs and leave everything else alone. And it wasn't scattered in little bits everywhere.

And then of course there's the expansions to StarCraft 2... well the good thing here is they're so divorced from anything in the original game, and even from the base game of StarCraft 2 that you don't have to worry about them messing with the legacy. I mean, OK, Heart of the Swarm has this whole weird reset where we have Kerrigan mostly human again, just so she can go on a big spirit journey and bug herself up again, so that she's strong enough for her ultimate goal of... showing up to take down Mengsk... again. And you somehow end up with a zergified version of Stukov which... OK that's just the weirdest possible way to double back and recanonize that expansion. I'm not sure that Kerrigan and Stukov were ever even really aware of each other's existence, and he died to a bullet through the head in a military base with no zerg anywhere near it. I mean, unless you remember that Duran was a double agent working for Kerrigan. Except the thing there is if you know the plot of the secret epilogue mission you'd know he was ACTUALLY one of the secret ancient aliens who created both the protoss and the zerg just pretending to a horrible bug monster spy for Kerrigan, in turn pretending to be a normal human. And that's a pretty obscure detail I'd forgive someone for missing except that literally in the mission where you're playing as Zerg-Stukov, the whole reason you're playing as Zerg-Stukov is that Kerrigan is busy doing one of those things where the two wizards fire big energy blasts at each other like some kind of tug-of-war with weird phallic overtones, and the big energy phallus she's trying to squish back is FROM Duran, in his revealed-himself-to-be-that-whole-mess glory. They remembered one thing only to get it wrong basically.

But yeah, otherwise that one's just so wild a departure I don't even know what to say. There's just... named zerg characters? They're all like bug centaurs? Because we need people to talk to and they just totally forgot they had cerebrates to get around that problem? Instead of the ancient ancestral zerg being like, psychic ringworms gradually specializing their hosts over generations, here they're like... talking dinosaur puppies who steal each other's "essence" to get huge? Past a point there's so little resemblance to the source material that I can't even be mad. And then the protoss expansion just kinda decides that the whole casting the dark templar out of their society over irreconcilable religious differences is something they've actually done like... 3 or 4 times? So we've got the outcast invisible jedi and the outcast robots and the outcast Darth Vader wannabes with some sort of society-wide ordered queue where there's exactly one person directly ahead of everyone they're allowed to kill to move up in the world. Oh and we're claiming this one robot centaur is Fenix somehow. Despite Fenix being very dead, and this robot centaur neither having that goofy muppet-y orc voice nor the overwhelmingly positive attitude. And he also somehow doesn't notice that he's a robot centaur and not a guy in a life support pod inside a robot spider. They also expect us to believe this little naked twink turned into this pile of steroids and shoulderpads somehow:

Oh! I almost forgot but also there's this thing called the Khala and it's unambiguously this set of religious teachings defining a caste system and such... but then here someone watched Avatar so we're retconning that into some sort of psychic spiritual network you connect to through your hair. You don't plug your hair in though it's just like a wifi antenna. Also it only works if you're part of the main society that keeps throwing other people out none of these other people have hair wifi. Also like the entire deal here is that protoss just are not psychic, it's their one flaw. There's this whole thing with them representing physical perfection but being held back by being a bunch of very religious idiots, while the zerg are mentally perfect what with the hive mind but physically just, like, a ringworm, so the ultimate life form their creators really wanted to create requires the zerg to take over the protoss, or just going screw it and hybridizing the two in a lab. Again, this is one of those really obscure details, it only comes up in the weird backstory in the manual that doesn't even get touched on in the game outside the one secret mission in the expansion... but here we have the same scene both acknowledging that deep lore and totally contradicting it.

But yeah, taken as their own independent stories... well... what stories? Kerrigan wants to be a big buff bug lady so she can depose a jerk she already deposed, and she does that. There are no complications or twists along the way. "Artanis" has to go collect all the protoss the in-group don't count as people, because Satan got into their hair wifi and anyone who didn't just get a haircut turned evil. So he goes and does that. Again, no complications of any sort along the way. Also no real ideological conflicts.

The deal with the robot protoss is some idiots went "hey what if we took all of our greatest most celebrated heroes and we copied their minds into robots in their entirety" and then got super confused that they still, you know, want to be treated as people with rights and such and not just mindless robots. So, you know, simple fix there. Then the... actually just evil ones are... lead by John DeLancey. Everyone likes him. So, problem resolved? And the dark templar are already befriended from before, so nothing's needed there besides going to their homeworld to pick them up. Their uh.... home world everyone already evacuated to and then that was compromised and their leader was replaced with puppet and then everyone maybe died? But yeah they're fine.

So then after all the racism is solved forever by just... deciding not to do that anymore, Kerrigan jumps in some kind of magic pool to transform into a giant naked golden angel, and she does this to become the embodiment of purity of essence we apparently need (which also purges all zerg-ness I guess?) and... look there's no easy way to say this. It turns into Homestuck. That whole convoluted thing from Homestuck where there's this eternal cycle of universes being created by light and dark themed people teaming up to create the next one and in theory kind of operate as it's gods but not if they don't feel like it... we're just ripping all that off wholesale for this complete asspull of an ending. And then everyone shoots space satan in the face. He's a big squid. And then Kerrigan turns back into a normal human girl so she can go on a date with Jimmy. Oh and then there's a third expansion recycling the scrapped plot from that action game they were going to do back on the N64 or whatever but I learned how awful the company was before getting curious enough on that one.

It's just bad. Even by game writing standards, it's bad. And I didn't even get into how bad it is with women in particular. We've got the big doe-eyed scientist who needs to be rescued from the scary bugs and then oh no it turns out she got bit by a bug and now she's turning into one and has to be put down (and no, this has never been how that worked). Then we've got Kerrigan who aside from needing rescuing and purifying and coming out naked has this whole expansion to herself where in theory she's totally in charge and self-directing every decision, but every time you click anywhere the confirmation is just her getting all pouty and whiny? Like a toddler you're telling to put shoes on so you can go to the doctor or something? Like, is it just me? Is it the direction? Is it the voice filter? Was the actress just miserable in the recording booth?

Then she's got this little bug girl assistant who hangs down from the ceiling, kinda like the adjutant from the original StarCraft, but instead of being all detatched and robotic she's all uwu pwecious? And the protoss campaign just kinda keeps turning women into mouthpieces for Satan. It's... a whole thing.

So yeah, badly written stories all throughout, no matter how you slice it. No continuity, no consistency, no character arcs or tension, just be the big cool action hero, do some getting the band back together stuff, collect some magic rocks and ritual circles, purify this girl here with the big magic circle (3 times no less) and then whatever there's space Satan. It's a mess... did I even have a larger point with this?

Probably not, but it was entertaining I hope? Maybe throw a little cash my way?

[ssshhe8]

TW: BTS FANS DO NOT GET ON STAN TWITTER.

TW: RANT ABOUT STAN TWITTER SITUATION

Ignore any grammar or spelling mistakes. I’m trusfrated 👍

An EXO-L took to Facebook to post a fake “translation” where they “revealed” that HYBE often paid for their groups awards, brand deals, charts, etc.

Well, that’s WHAT the KPOP fans took from it.

Instead of acknowledging that the translation was faked they decided to carry the delusion into other fandoms.

Now almost (yeah pretty much all the fandoms) are attacking BTS. Saying they PAID their way. Somehow they went from being extremely poor at their start to buying their career.

Just gonna casually mention how their album debuted with 34 Sales but that’s Payola for you.

I’m sure in 2010 when they were formed, they knew they would have multiple nominations at the Grammys.

I just know it!

Also. It gets better. According to KPOP fans HYBE is the reason for every groups failure. Especially the Big Three Groups. They’re also to blame for every single song by another group/company that did not chart.

Somehow HYBE even managed to pay G-Idle to block Aespa on the chart? I’m not sure how they profited from that but it happened.

Furthermore, HYBE/BTS are to be blamed for Big Bang, EXO, IKON, and more groups loss of popularity. I saw something about Loona too?

It is because of this that BTS won an award over EXO back in 2017. Yep. Something that happened in 2017 has been brought up in 2024.

I was also informed that HYBE paid for the following: The sinking of the Titanic. Jungkook’s Stuck Potatoes, Jin’s Decision to Cut his Cake with his hand. RM’s inability to Drive. Jhope’s fear of bugs & Snakes. And Taehyung and Jimins dumpling incident. I strongly believe they were involved with Suga bumping his nose with his straw too.

You know the time when he was on Live with his shoulder strap, drinking an americano? He kinda smiled real shy after he bumped his nose and giggled.

But one thing I rarely noticed mentioned was the reason behind all of this.

Min Hee Jin.

And her plot to Casually mention as many groups as possible in hopes of igniting a fanwar to Distract the public as much as possible from the actual allegations against her. The break down wasn’t working good enough, I guess.

“Step on Aespa’s neck.” She Quoted from Bang PD.

That group was literally minding their business before you dragged them in that mess. Not to mention her open hatred for Le SSERAFIM being the first GG to debut. This woman is mentioning every group alongside New Jeans.

I have no problem with these fandoms or their groups. It’s not hard to simply focus on the ones you like. But the way they’re going for BTS, Who has been minding their business and doing their required military service, is uncalled for.

It’s natural to lose popularity. You’re not going to win every single award… if you love the group then support them to your best ability. Don’t worry about who is ahead of you.

It’s just very WEIRD & DELUSIONAL behavior that is making kpop as a whole look very immature.

Also the fact that most of these groups are friends yet their fandoms are fighting like children for everyone on Twitter to see.

Yeah. I name dropped but I’m not dragging any group. I’m simply quoting what I seen on Twitter and giving my opinion. I swear it will benefit you not to get on there. There are some funny tweets tbh. A LOT of viral tweets. But it’s just extremely messy.

It’s back to 2017-2018 for BTS fans on twt. Every fandom on there is lurking. I feel bad for the ones just minding their business.

Lastly. Some bts fans are just focusing on Namjoon’s comeback (as they should.) Pre-ordering for Right Place, Wrong Person is available now!

ENTER STAN TWT AT YOUR OWN RISK BTS FANS😭

Also, I gotta mention how ENHYPEN casually danced to the Sweet Venom remix while the company is in flames. ✨They are icons ✨

[shock-micro]

weird brain thoughts, the void, and "me"

i think it's honestly quite incredible how brains can function in such different ways

i'll put a cut so you don't have to see my intensely long ramble unless you really wanna~

i'd describe my "headspace" as the following: it's mostly void, pierced by my strong inner voice, and occasionally a background of various music (i call that the radio)

i can visualize things i've seen before fairly well, but it's harder to "synthesize" entirely new things in my mind's eye

talking with different people, i love hearing about all the different experiences people have with their own headspaces

like one of my friends is currently so fixated on ultrakill they're actually just like playing it in their mind

n like i have a lot of plural friends who experience it in different ways and it's very interesting hearing those perspectives when i can

as for me? well, i don't quite think i'm alone... i wouldn't quite say it's another person, but like, the background music in my head is distinctly not me a lot of the time, and there's a bit of a distinction between Raw Thought ("brain") and Me

like, occasionally the topic of "what's goin' on in your head" comes up, and i often got a bit confused? brain gets caught up on a few concepts and is like, how do those apply to me? do they?

and i've noticed during a few of those bouts, the "void" i described in my headspace is... a lot more tangible? like it's its own entity in there, just lurking with no thoughts

and sometimes it just, like... took over.

quite literally pushing my thoughts to the back, and bringing void to the front, which meant... not much. it looked around a bit, but it mostly elected to do nothing.

the reason i talk about this now, is because there was another conversation on the topic, and brain got caught up in it again, and the void came out to do nothing again.

but later, the convo had moved on, and i was getting stressed about something relating to my sona, and it got me stressed about my whole sense of self...

and i felt the void creeping up again, pushing my thoughts to the back, as my eyes closed, and it just. dampened the whole thought process.

i was a bit stressed then bc like y'know, what happens if it just smothers my thoughts as a whole, but it just kinda... released its hold after i pushed back a bit

and looking back on it, i kinda regret it? it was almost nice, in a way, like a weighted blanket for the soul

and ever since, it's been a lot more easy to feel that presence. and it's nice, knowing that even though my inner voice is shouting into the void... the void is listening, and it cares.

i've decided to call it "void", no 'the'. i think it enveloped me again as i was writing this post, and i just kinda fell over. it felt quite nice. though, i did assume control a bit faster than i would've liked, bc i did wanna get this post off my mind.

to sum up my feelings at the moment, i've felt a lot more... whole, understanding this presence, understanding void. and i certainly feel more secure in my own mind, thanks to it.

there might very well be another explanation for what's gone on here, but this is the one that makes me feel the best. so unless it can somehow be proven that void is not its own presence within my mind, i'm not really gonna question it.

[eldritch-queern-magicat]

I was looking for something completely unrelated in the DID tags and I happened upon your post about dronification for DID. It's been something I've been thinking about for a long time! I was amazed to see another system talking about it. I have theorized that something like this could be helpful in stabilizing my system and getting things done. Would you have any resources for a system looking to get started with this?

So for most of this, I’m gonna have to go over what I’ve learned in the process of doing everything. A lot of what I’ve been doing was cobbled together from multiple things over the course of about a decade of meditation, hypnosis for fun, and general trance practice. I do also have a very solid background in a childhood full of projecting my internal maladaptive daydreaming shenanigans outside of my mind in my very rural neighborhoods because I didn’t have any friends around, often for miles. It’s also probably the ADHD.

You’ll probably be able to tell I was given a lot of time and space to think about things on my own. That’s what I had rather than much of a social life. I had far too much time to philosophize. I’ve often felt like the Thinker statue at the Smithsonian. Just sitting there, wrapped up in my own thoughts. Alternatively, engaging in stories in any available form.

So pardon the whole essay, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone else really talk about being a drone as a system, either, as a method of healing. For a lot of these things, I’ve had to learn almost entirely through direct experience. So I’m honestly really excited to talk about it more. This ended up getting much longer than expected, too. It’s sort of a stream of thoughts that I tried to organize a bit. I also haven’t written very many things in far too long. So I let myself get a bit carried away and go into some of the details. Plus I really want to recognize just how much we managed to get through in what still feels like too short a timeline.

I also used to email lengthy, semi-organized rambling novels back and forth with at least one person. This is going to be similar to that. It’s also why I miss college very deeply. I’m a big fan of academic studies and analysis. My attention span is getting better again.

I will slip between singular and plural pronouns somewhat seamlessly. The logic is that when I use singular pronouns, it’s the whole system as a singular unit, without dividing certain things because it’s simply not relevant. Otherwise, plural pronouns are for when differentiating all the nuance is relevant.

The hypnosis files online

I like to lurk on the dronification subreddit, but it’s not especially active. The only reason I don’t interact is largely because I’m wary of interaction of that kind in general, given where I’m still at in recovery. Since most of dronification is about altered consciousness, hypnosis is the most common method of getting into that mental space of non-identity.

You can find some pretty general drone hypnosis videos on youtube, but I’ve seen people in both the dronification and the erotic hypnosis subreddits very frequently recommend soundgasm. WarpMyMind is an archive of files from many different people, some premium and some free. I haven’t looked very recently, but I know they have files for just about everything. There are also hypnotists with their own websites with exclusive content or just stuff too spicy for the algorithm. Some of those websites also have spiral makers, if you’re into that.

But to be honest, I don’t explore very much anymore, and I’m hesitant to recommend any one person or another because I don’t know what’s going on with hypnotist discourse and frankly just don’t have the energy to spare for it. The one exception is a youtube video shared on a sideblog that hasn’t totally been connected with the rest, but one you can find if you look at the drone sideblog’s pinned post. I haven’t used it lately, because of personal things around the holidays.

Either way, choose what you listen to with care and allow your mind to bend suggestions in whatever way you’re most comfortable with. Make sure a file does exactly what it says it’s supposed to, and nothing more. Jump into the middle of a file and preview the contents just to be safe, honestly. Look for transcripts of any given audio. And don’t be afraid to stop for a while if things go south at any point and come out of hypnotic trance, and figure out what triggered what. It’s incredibly likely you’ll stumble across things you didn’t see before that you’ll need to sort through. On top of just being a mess that needs cleaned up in the first place, you’ll develop trust a lot faster if you let others slow down as needed and not just rush in.

The drone-state of mind

This actually requires specifically and intentionally entering a state of depersonalization, just to be entirely clear on what you’re doing. But the key point is that you’re actually embracing it in a safe environment, set with rules of behavior and anything you can think of as reasonable fail-safes in case you need to act immediately for any reason. Because the interesting thing about dealing with any form of dissociation is that to heal from it, you need to have some form of control over it. By actually taking control of how you depersonalize or otherwise dissociate, you learn how to keep yourself grounded in the present reality better. A way to hide your face is incredibly helpful when you’re letting go of individual identity, but I’ve also found that it’s not strictly necessary if you can dissociate hard enough already.

You should put together a document beforehand that you can come to a collective agreement on. It doesn’t have to be fully comprehensive at the start. Just start with the basics and develop it from there. This will be your instruction manual, or whatever you choose to call it. Make however many copies you think you’ll need, because starting over any on kind of document isn’t fun.

Pick a single, consistent style of language to use for your drone-state that isn’t overly complex. Keep your instructions clear and concise, so that even in your lowest energy states, they’re easy to understand. It’s been a lot of ‘if ___, do ___’ and explaining the terms used, as well as the command phrases you go with. You should also make a habit of studying those instructions, and definitely do so as a drone. Because as a drone, that’s literally the only thing you’ll have any attention on in the moment, and since you’re in a very altered state of consciousness, it sets into your mind a lot easier. And don’t forget to consistently review your instructions, because things change and you will find yourself adapting them over time.

If you have someone you trust supporting your recovery in the external world, like a friend or family member or other care provider, you should probably give them at least a rough idea of your new method of stabilizing yourself. This can be phrased however you think is the most appropriate. I explain it, when talking about it, more or less that I’m treating my mind similarly to a computer, because the people around me know that I like digital technology. I already wear earbuds at least half the time, especially out of the house. It’s just a thing because I love music a lot. The right music literally helps me regulate my emotions. I don’t even mention the specifics, just that I’m using technological framework to understand how healing works for me. I halfheartedly blame my parents, and my dad in particular, because they were both nerds and tried to keep up with technology. Dad’s still at it now, 66 years old. He likes to be the Mr. Spock type usually, so emphasizing that I’m trying to balance my emotions with logical understanding works really well.

A long-term process

This will inevitably take a lot of time, depending on how unstable you are now. Do not try to put together a clear time frame to have this done by. I promise, you’ll take a lot longer than you initially expect to. I’ve been taking a break for about two months now because the holidays tanked my own stability, and I’m still picking myself back up from it. Especially when things are hard, give yourself the grace to slow down so you don’t overheat the system. It won’t help to try and speed-run becoming a perfect drone. *semantics mode* Perfection may be perpetual motion, but only at a rate that won’t destroy that which is in motion.

And to be honest, we literally just stumbled our way into using this to stabilize ourselves. So for us, this just started out with only a small cluster of parts bumbling around with often mature kinds of hypnosis fantasies partially in an attempt to work out the mess that is our sexuality and relationship with gender. At least, after a while. Until then, it was purely for escapism. We experimented with a lot of different things along the way, slowly progressing through different types of objectification from dolls to statues and whatever. Slowly, we did start to form ideas about what we wanted specifically, because we noticed how easy it had become for us.

We didn’t actually really consider being a drone until 2022. And then I’m pretty sure that was just me, as a specific part. Others slowly came around with time, waiting to make sure it wouldn’t be some disaster. And I’m not gonna lie, even I wasn’t so sure it would work out all that well. But to be honest, I feel like combining healing with pleasure is more effective than many people realize.

From my perspective, this is largely because of the dominant work culture. On that, the standard model of specifically US American Protestant work ethic is obsessed with work sucking so bad and being miserable. But you should enjoy the process of healing. If being a drone makes it easier and brings you joy, and you generally know what you’re in for along the way, then I don’t see the issue. People just get all worked up because it’s not considered normal to use a specific kink to heal trauma. It’s literally just purity culture bullshit, and just outright shaming people for being happy and making the best of a shitty situation. I had to spend ages working through that faulty logic about recovery with my therapist, because the assumption that it’s an entirely painful process is very prevalent in society. Sometimes it’s going to hurt, but then at other points, it should feel more like the best damn thing you ever did. Thinking it’s always about how much you’ve gotta drag yourself up and not enjoying the peaks you’ve already reached will only hold you back.

So with all that bumbling around, it only really became a thing to help with functioning in real life last February, and that was largely Lilu’s idea while we were fused. That was simply just about functioning through pain and general mental issues, and setting solid routines. More apparent efforts to integrate wouldn’t come until at least late summer when other parts more preoccupied with keeping things running behind the scenes took an actual interest. It took even more time to get more parts onboard with the whole thing, and we still have many that haven’t.

It was at least partially a joke, but Pandemonum was the one to suggest using the drone-state to help organize our mind better, with an offhand library comment. Because somewhere, I think with Zemyx and Isaac, the idea stuck. One of Pandemonum’s less present fragments, Bran, hangs out a lot in the library. It’d be easy for an idea like that to slip into the library crowd. Through a lot of convoluted events, such as Lilu directly delivering a challenge of shenanigans to Galaco (Sir) and Cyan, and then others finding it to be infectiously fun. The more parts we pulled in since late August, the more appealing using the drone-state to organize our mind became, so we could at least integrate our memories and straighten our life out. Aria emerged with a new form and gave us a new sense of psychological stability across connected parts.

And in external world, we were learning to get more involved in the community we live in, and get to know other people better. So by the end of the summer, we were really learning how to communicate with other people, as well. We found an incredibly supportive group of people from kinda all over the state I live in, who we share a lot of ideals with. So we were taking our growing social skills and using what we’d learned to reconnect to each other. The individual traumas getting strung back together into something intelligible was hard, but we had learned how to reach out to others and were able to get the help we needed.

One thing led to another, and our childhood friend picked us up to see Wonka at the mall on December 15th, to cheer us up. Alexiel decided on leaving the metaphorical doors wide open to broadcast the whole movie to anyone it could hypothetically reach. It was amazing. We even pulled parts out that were buried in the absolute depths, and got an even clearer picture of our earliest memories, psychological or physical ones, than we’d put together before.

Then, because we’ve been practicing radical acceptance for each other, Joshua decided to try and chip away at his own barriers. He’s a liminal part, one of the few able to pass between sidesystems with any amount of ease, because he enforced the rules directly the most. And it, ah, triggered a whole refresh of our childhood brainwashing that came right out of left field. It quickly became a situation of damage control when he began struggling to stay where he wanted to be by his own focus.

It was ultimately a lack of communication on our part, so we’ve been largely on break from being a drone for various things, but we had already been on a slow decline for a while. We simply had to entirely focus on stabilizing parts that had been refreshed in the weeks before Christmas. The reason our damage control actually went so well was we already proved our own competence at the beginning of December.

We were away from home at a membership assembly with the previously mentioned people from around our home state, and Ash managed to have his wits together enough to not worry about thinking and just stepped in to prevent an already stressful interpersonal situation from getting any worse. At dinner in the middle of our own meal, to the sound of someone falling out of their chair during a family dispute almost halfway across the cafeteria. It went surprisingly well and he was very clearly in control of himself the entire time. I think we’re all still processing that one.

And even if you don’t end up dealing with a lot of different kinds of complex trauma, it takes time to fully integrate all that you represent into that single network. We ran into a lot of errors along the way, as well has having to deal with restricted access to a lot of what kept us so dissociated. A lot of very explicit trust is involved because you’re basically backing everything of you up on what amounts to a shared cloud storage or server. For those of us that keep the connection running on a permanent basis, it also allows us to peek through their subsystems. It was how we started mapping even more parts to realize, yes, we do have several hundreds of parts simply because of, well, everything. But the silver lining is that we’ve finally gotten to clean the skeletons out of our closet and lay them down to rest and decompose. We’re learning what to actually do instead of dissociate from the situation completely.

Some final thoughts

Another key part of making all this work is that we’ve agreed to function without a singular point of authority or hive leader, despite how it might otherwise seem. Any shenanigans that do incorporate any sort of hierarchy are purely for shits and giggles. You’re agreeing to equal representation and responsibilities, in accordance with what you’re ready for. This will result in more equal access to your skills across those of you taking part. Think a very patient Borg, just without a queen (I got a fair bit of exposure to Borg propaganda in the last year or so because I follow someone who simps for them so hard and I initially just followed her for her general Star Trek posts).

The main reason I conceptualize it as robotic and digital is because it acts as a system based around at least speculative science, in contrast with the extreme religious nature of my trauma (and it brings really nerdy joy to do it this way). What I’m doing is conceptualized as altering my literal programming because it gives me a way to intentionally recondition myself with a healthier understanding of myself and the world. I’m a concrete thinker, so I have to conceptualize the process very literally before it produces any really tangible results.

Almost counter-intuitively given how technological it comes off as, it’s like a kind of magic. To explain it in a more mundane way, it’s a combination of logic, consistent methodology, conceptualization, and the placebo effect from your belief in that process. This is why reinforcing your conditioning with written instructions regularly is important, because you need to exercise those mental muscles as best as you can.

I tend to rely, perhaps hilariously, on things like western astrology and tarot as a structure for self-reflection. Engaging in rituals that harm no one are actually pretty important, because they’re methods of grounding yourself. In a way, dronification is also a ritual. You’re altering your state of consciousness very intentionally for personal fulfillment, to enhance your life experiences.

And I can’t overstate how important it is to remember that you don’t have to be progressing on a linear path all the time. Recovery isn’t a two-dimensional picture, and neither is getting the hang of being a good drone. Any changes you’re trying to make to your lifestyle will take time to settle into.

Take care and good luck

I wish you the best, and if you have any other questions, you’re free to ask. I probably won’t have an answer for everything, because I’m pretty much just making it up as I go along. But I’ll go as far as my logic and intuition can take me and try to point you in a decent direction. There is, of course, an amazing podcast episode from Off The Cuffs that I listened to in March of last year. It’s specifically episode 241--Unit 4015, which also helped me understand the appeal of the specific niche that dronification is.

I honestly wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it’s just generally attractive to people with dissociation, but that’s also, at this time, a purely personal speculation. You don’t have to take it seriously if you’d rather not. I’m just starting to ramble even more at this point. I really appreciate the ask and getting a chance to talk about the process. Going into detail about everything I’ve done with this helps me to process it and understand where I am now as opposed to before deciding to experiment. Honestly, thanks.

-Era 🍎😺