#i will definitely try to get this dungeon done by the end of the month!!! :D

[crest-of-gautier]

2 hour session of pq today!!! went from 38% -> 89% done with the third floor of the 2nd labryinth! (i just need to open the door that was locked...)

today was a short session but i really enjoyed it! (some screenshots of transcriptions of my related favorite events under the cut)

i think the highlight of what i saw today was aigis :) the way she responds to things is very humorous to me. she doesn't always realize how her words come across but thats ok i still love her regardless. i just think the way that aigis has a continual work in progress of her understanding of the world is nice :3

there was also a thing about a love potion and rei goes:

Rei: Wait, they don't exist!? But it comes up in so many stories!

and i am!! once again!! reiterating my tags from my previous pq posting.

like all of the stuff i said here still stands... i think her line about the love potion just cements to me that rei is.. so very young. she's like a twelve year old to me. maybe younger. i don't know how old she is and i don't want to know until the game tells me what's bonking with zen and rei's identity...

i think in a previous pq post i had... some kind of spitballing about zen and rei with respect to the mechanics of persona q and subpersonas... it was mostly me wondering if their skillsets alluded to anything, but... lately i've been thinking about how rei takes up the bottom part of the 3ds screen in the same manner a subpersona does... and i'm like... trying to look at that and think about what that implies.

so you have me asking questions to myself, including, but not limited to: would this make rei a persona? how is she in that state? what caused that to happen? and if so where/how did she acquire abilities that are reminiscent of a subpersona? is it tied to whatever zen is?

there's definitely a part of me that leans into zen specifically being an entity of sorts, in the same vein of ryoji and marie- idk something about his skillset just makes me lean into this idea of him being a fragment of a powerful deity. god knows who what that deity's name is. but anyway. maybe if we operate under the assumption that zen is in an amnesiac state of an deity/entity whatever, this could mean that rei having abilities like a subpersona is because of him??

i dont fucking know man!! i'm spitballing based on what the game has offered and similar threads/themes i've seen from the persona games i've played/watched. groans. i'm fucking insane and it's going to take me forever to get answers because i'm a small little worm who's inching through this game and probably won't finish it until next year.

anyway. good game session. zen and rei make me crazy with conjecture (i would like to say that i can reach the boss of the group date cafe soon bc i want to see what zen and rei have to say about it post-boss fight so that i can spitball even more nonsense. but it'll probably take at least two sessions...? these floors sometimes take awhile). and i really enjoy how certain characters are highlighted through this game's interactions (aigis for today specifically). i love persona :D

[jihyoruri]

What's the story behind Karina and Paranoia!yn. How'd they meet? how long did they fool around? Would any of them be up to a 2nd chance?

The answers may or may not dictate whether I start campaigning for paranoia!yn x Karina🫣

well first let me explain paranoia’s origin story for the people that don’t know.

they’re childhood friends who loved music, especially making it so they were constantly playing their instruments together and singing, then when they were like 16/17 they auditioned to sm as a joke but actually got in, sm quickly realized that they definitely can’t shape these three into idols LOL ( asked them to dance once and it was a disaster) but they knew that couldn’t let these music prodigy’s go SO they kept the three in their dungeon to make music for other sm artists while also training them to perfect their vocals, rap and stage presence skills so while also making songs for sm artists they three would make their own little projects and covers so they can get evaluated and after one of their projects sm as a whole was so amazed by the three that they decided to debut for first REAL BAND.

now with THAT karina and yn obviously know each other because of them both being under sm entertainment and yn making some songs for aespa.

karina always thought yn was a cool girl, very rebellious and creative but it wasn’t until spicy era that she actually felt attracted to yn, yn had made multiple songs for aespa in the past but ig this era yn just had something different about her to her, she was still technically a trainee (paranoia didn’t debut until like six months after) but there was just something about the way she held herself that was really catching karina’s attention.

yn always thought karina was pretty but she felt like she would never have a chance she’s like 2-3 years younger than her so she felt like even trying to talk up to her like she has done to other people that she found an interest in was never gonna happen (and she honestly had a lot of respect for karina and felt like having a fling with someone like her would be beyond disrespectful in her mind she felt like karina deserved a real relationship.

but BOOM after working with the girls for unhappy karina reached out to her asking if she wanted to hang out, yn was hesitant but she did, and once she realized that karina might mean this romantically she told her that she’s a person who gets pretty uncomfortable when it comes to relationships and karina said and I quote “that’s perfect I’m an idol I don’t need the weight of a relationship either.” and that’s how it happened.

and this went on alllllll the way until paranoia officially debuted so they had a fling for about five months because sadly karina was catching the feels like some realllll feels but she knew what yn told her and decided to not take the chance of telling her to ruin their relationship because even if they couldn’t have their fling or date she still wanted to be friends with yn so she ended the fling.

what’s so tragic about this is the fact that yn was lowkey catching feels too but not as much as jimin so as soon as jimin ended it her feelings went away very quickly.

jimin would definitely be up to a second chance because there are times when she completely regrets not telling yn when they hang out as friends.

yn on the other hand would have to put a lot of thinking into it.

[fanfiction4sooya]

i’ve had this misana x reader that i was supposed to continue with but never did…but it’s so fucked up. and i mean very fucked up. airing out my thoughts atp.

basically you, the maid, is working for empress mina. she’s got shit ton of concubines but her eyes lay on you and you’re pretty much done for. you just don’t know it yet. but she makes you fall in love with her, even having your first time with mina. when you meet the girls who are also empresses, sana of course the flirt she is, she flirts with you which already sets mina off the wrong way. but sana is just being playful…partially anyway. sana sees how mina doesn’t like this. she can sense something is off with mina already. mina always had this look in her eye that was just deadly as some people would say.

if i remember correctly, my friend and i thought of this a long time ago, but mina had gotten jealous from a man in same ranking as her trying to flirt with you. she didn’t like this one bit. long story short, she kills him, but of course it’s hidden. she has power. but news gets around that the man has become missing and you ask mina if she had seen him last because she was the last person to speak with him. she doesn’t end attempt to hide it because “now i don’t have to worry about anyone taking you from me ever again.” her words. you’re disgusted by her actions and tell her off for it. saying how she’s no fit to be an empress. she committed murder for crying out loud. she only defends herself saying it was for you and her. you yell at her, saying that she does nothing but think about herself, and that she’s undeniably selfish and controlling. that you hate her. this sends mina over the edge and she is seething. she’s no longer the sweet mina you knew.

mina slaps you harshly. the first time she’s ever hit you. she decides to lock you in her dungeon. she says if you hate her, she’ll give you a reason to hate her now. months and months you spent in the dungeon. she’d only come down to give you food and ask that same question: “are you ready to love me, again?”. she asks this because from the way you spoke to her, she’s convinced you’re the one not right in the head. being locked in the dungeon for so long, you’ve truly lost your mind, becoming mute. her brainwashing you into thinking that only she loves and cares for you. the final day when she finally asks that same question, you respond with a yes just wanting to get out of the dark dungeon.

mina’s finally happy! she’s happy that you love her once more and she’s ready to give you everything you deserve…only thing is, no one knew. she ordered everyone in her palace to not utter a single word about what she did you, or else they would meet the same fate as the man she killed months ago. they didn’t utter a single thing. well, except for this one maid who sent a letter off to empress sana who explained the horrible things mina did to me. one night, as mina is helping me get ready for bed, she says “i’m so happy you love me again.” sending you into a breakdown, all while mina only smiles and stays creepily calm. you cling onto mina, now having Stockholm syndrome, you’re ready to be with her forever. not wanting anyone else but her. because only mina can love and protect you. it’s only until minatozaki sana comes to your rescue not ready to give up on you.

i would write more but i’ve already written so much 😭

Damn... what??? It's been a long time since I've read something angsty and well, this one made me do it.

Specially the psychology behind the way she repeats the words over and over again, engraving her false protection on your mind.

I love it, really. And I think you should definitely give it a shot!!!! Honestly, this is very good and I'm pretty sure your followers would love to see more of it. (And me and my followers too, love 💖💖💖)

[kedreeva]

i don't know if this could be your kind of thing, but something about steddie + halloween?

(Taking ST prompts!)(previous prompts)

Steve likes to watch Eddie work. They're on the couch at Steve's place because Wayne's home for once. Steve's got his toes tucked under Eddie's warm thigh, stretched out so he can lay his head on the armrest. Eddie's got a pile of fabric in his lap, his tongue poked out the corner of his mouth, and a needle and thread in his hands.

He's sewing. Or stitching or something. Steve's not really sure about the distinction, as he's never done either.

Doesn't matter. He's making things out of fabric, and he is quiet and focused and adorable when he does it, and Steve is thoroughly enjoying watching. It's different from watching those fine fingers dance over guitar strings, this slow and careful intricacy. Creating something tangible, something that leaves evidence of his existence.

"What are you making, anyway?" Steve blurts, because his brain to mouth filter shuts off when he's this sleepy.

Regrettably, the comment chases Eddie's tongue back inside his mouth and Steve's not close enough to follow. "Costume," Eddie says, glancing over with a smile. "For Halloween."

Steve snorts. "That's like two months away."

"Yeah, and it takes a long time to put this shit together by hand," Eddie says, rolling his eyes through his smile.

With a yawn, Steve closes his eyes. "You could get something already made. Way less work."

"I like the work, thank you very much," Eddie scoffs. "And I can make stuff better than the store can. More personal. Better quality, too."

"So you can wear it once?" Steve grins, not opening his eyes because he knows the offended look Eddie is giving him.

Eddie pinches the meat of his calf and Steve jerks his leg back with a yelp. "I'll have you know, I can wear it for campaigns. The club's dressing up as their characters this year."

Steve wriggles his foot back under Eddie's thigh, looking at the fabric in a new light. "Really? I thought you... aren't you the leader, though?"

He understands a little more, these days- he'd sat in on a few games trying to learn, and Eddie had taught him a little bit when he'd asked. He knows the kids and Eddie's friends are player characters, and he knows that Eddie is the dungeon master. He'd thought that meant Eddie plays the non-player characters, which is confusing because Eddie is then a player, and those characters would then be played characters, but everyone had assured him that's not how it works.

"Does that mean you're, like... dressing up as a barkeep or something? Or uh... an innkeeper?"

Eddie laughs softly, not a mean laugh. Fond. He's always fond when Steve tries, and it makes Steve want to try more, even though none of this is really his thing.

"I have a few characters," Eddie explains. "I don't always DM. Mike and Will both like to run stuff sometimes."

"How come I've never seen that?"

"Because you and Mike would spend the entire time picking on each other so nothing would get done, and if I'm left to my own devices for longer than a few minutes, I'd probably end up in your lap," Eddie says simply. "Then we'd have to explain that, and Mike would really never forgive you for ruining me."

"Mm," Steve hums, trying to keep a straight face, which is very hard when he can't stop thinking about Eddie in his lap. Least straight way for a face to be, really. "You have a point."

Eddie coughs, poorly hiding his laugh, and finally sets the fabric aside across the arm of the couch. "It's getting late. You wanna go upstairs? We can talk about my point some more."

Steve breaks first, laughing, and definitely doesn't scramble to his feet, but it's not graceful either. He holds out a hand to help Eddie up as well. "I would love that, c'mon."

Eddie takes his hand, warm and comforting, and they don't exactly race up the stairs, but it's close enough.

[sincerely-sofie]

Check-in for October 24, 2023

I'm planning on doing regular check-ins that peeps can read or skip as much as they please. If you want to see behind the scenes of my projects or get to know me a bit better, feel free to peek below the cut! If not, just look at this color palette I made for my web dev class and admire it:

I know green and pink are my favorite colors, so I may be just a tad biased, but look!!! Look at how pretty it is!!!

I plan to use the palette for a website that is basically a guided tour of a fictional town that's populated by bug people, and while the colors used in the initial character sketches are still my preference, I don't think they look too bad in this proof of concept image! They definitely need some tweaking, and some details in the art itself need correcting, but all around it's not too shabby :>

I also made the logo for the website which, while uninspired, doesn't look that bad. I'm not in a logo design course, so I can't be too upset about that. I made two versions--- a light and dark one--- so that I could have it appear on most colors of background.

Also, I've printed off tons of art and stuck it on my walls over the past few days to inspire me. The art wall has been very successful in beautifying my space, but I've been a bit too worn out to draw much other than the start of a project where I draw individual generations of pokemon by memory. Venusaur looks exactly like I remembered it, but also nothing like that at all. Charizard's line only looks halfway decent by virtue of Twig existing.

I must say, though, that I am charmed by these drawings' doofy lil grins. Just look at Bulbasaur. He is raring to go! Charmander is ready to shake your hand! Look at these lads!!

I've been trying to learn Clip Studio Paint by drawing a new The Present is a Gift comic in it, but I cannot begin to explain to you all how intimidating of a program it is for me. I'm a Procreate gal, y'all. I have a conniption whenever I look at the Photoshop interface. When I look at this:

I am desperate for the cozy white space of this:

I spent over an hour struggling to draw a simple piece for Instagram, admittedly while desperately trying to get OBS to not give out on me while I recorded my screen, but I think that I'm slowly learning how to not faint whenever the Paint window boots up.

Anyhoo--- enjoy the WIP teaser for the upcoming comic featuring a chat between Dusknoir (piloting a KO'd Twig) and Darkrai amidst a cave-in. If I am found dead, know that said comic worked alongside Clip Studio Paint to kill me.

As an update for The Present is a Gift in terms of the fanfic, I recently broke 6,000 words for the first draft. I haven't been writing too regularly--- when I do, it's usually to just sit down for 30 minutes max to try and get a little bit of a head start on NaNoWriMo coming up--- but whenever I do, the words come in batches of 400-700+ at a time. My dudes, I used to take a week to reach the lower end of that amount. I've been beating perfectionism back with a stick while sobbing "Quantity begets quality! Quantity begets quality!", but since I've set myself a challenge to write as many garbage words as possible without editing them until the first draft is done, I've been writing--- and enjoying the process of writing--- more than I have in my entire life.

I've been trying to win NaNoWriMo, a challenge where you write 50k words in November, for the last 7 years. I resigned myself to being a NaNo rebel and trying to write just 15k words next month. But if I keep cranking out 1,500 words in under two writing sprints per day--- without properly trying to eliminate distractions--- I think I could actually win for once??? I didn't think Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fanfiction would be what gave me a fighting chance at winning NaNoWriMo, but here I am. PMD brainrot truly is a miraculous thing, but I'll have to see exactly miraculous it is on the 1st of November.

So... yep! I probably should have figured out a way to sign off on check-in posts before deciding to publish this. Oops. Welp. Um. Thanks for reading?

Sincerely, Sofie

[ciaossu-imagines]

Dayyyyyyy twooooooo: what would they be streaming on twitch and what would their twitch handle be? (Khr or K Peoject, I'll leave it up to you)

Okay, so I’m not going to lie here. I have just the bare fucking basic idea of what Twitch even is or how it works or any of that so these headcanons were hella hard on me and I don’t think they’re my best work, but I hope they make some semblance of sense!

Look, it isn’t that Mikoto is dumb. It isn’t that he’s not technologically literate. It’s simply that pop culture and such along those lines really doesn’t hold his interest. He just doesn’t care about it. He might have heard about Twitch, but he really doesn’t know what it is fully, and he really doesn’t care to learn so I can’t see him as someone who has a Twitch account, let alone someone who would stream things on there.

Kusanagi is another one who is completely uninterested in Twitch. He’d know what it is more than Mikoto would, just because Kusanagi likes to think of himself as a man of culture and knowledge and does keep up to date on things. He just doesn’t much see the point of it and it’s not for him, so he’s another of the HOMRA crew who wouldn’t have a Twitch account.

Totsuka did go through a phase where he was really into video games, and I could see that leading into a whole ‘I’m going to make create a Twitch channel and do all these live-streams and it’s going to be so much fun’ phase. So I do think Totsuka has a Twitch channel and that he was active on it for a couple of weeks, religiously live-streaming whatever game was holding his interest (I could see him really liking a lot of small indie games and streaming those most often) at least twice to three times a week. I think after those couple of weeks though, maybe even a month, he really got over that itch to try it out and kind of abandoned his Twitch channel. He’ll go months without ever thinking about it, though he does randomly get the urge to use it to live-stream video games again, though those urges are short lived and he’s never consistently on more than a week before he’s done with it again. I do think he kept his Twitch handle very short, something punchy but memorable and since he was always getting told, growing up, that he was kind of an ‘odd duck’, that’s what he used – OddDuck.

Anna was allowed a Twitch account, though only for watching and chatting. She went under the display name ‘ʕPrincessÂedʔ’. However, since she used her account mostly to follow and watch the channels of the other HOMRA members, this only lasted until Chitose ended up dabbling in streaming playthroughs on his Twitch channel and one of the other guys caught Anna watching it…somehow, her Twitch account ended up being deleted and the website blocked on the computer she uses. Just mysteriously happened.

Shouhei really only has a Twitch account to follow the other HOMRA members, and a couple friends, Twitch channels. He honestly doesn’t even use it that often, since he is a pretty active, social guy and doesn’t play a lot of video games, I don’t think. But he’s definitely the guy who likes to help and support his bros whenever he can, so the least he can do, he figures, is follow their channels and occasionally watch and chat when they do live-streams and such. His display name is probably something really generic or even just his first name because he’s definitely not the greatest at coming up with snappy or witty names right off the cuff. He’s never actually streamed anything himself, but he has appeared on Bandou and Eric’s streams before once or twice, either as a second player for a two-player game or just accidentally strolling across the screen because he didn’t realize they were streaming.

Bandou definitely has a Twitch channel. His Twitch handle is definitely dorky and silly and way too edgy sounding; it honestly is either named after one of his MMORPG characters or an old Dungeons and Dragons character he had and it sounds like a super-edgy teenage boy game up with it but he loves it. He streams a lot of different things, but I could see him really being big into fantasy or more action-packed games. I do see him being pretty big into the Assassin’s Creed franchise, a lot of multi-player online games, definitely big into GTA and he did have a spell where he was really into Call of Duty, though that was thankfully very short-lived. He doesn’t have a lot of people who follow his channel or watch his streams, but he really does put a lot of work into his channel and his streams anyway.

Chitose honestly didn’t have a lot of interest in Twitch to begin with because he doesn’t play a lot of games. However, between the other guys talking about it, and a girl he’d hooked up with having a huge thing (and talking about it quite a bit) for a Twitch streamer, he figured he’d figure out what the big deal was about it. So, he set up a Twitch channel, using the name Charisma…too bad the only video games that hold much interest for him are H-games, so that’s what he streamed, keeping up a pretty steady (and honestly, quite educational) stream of chatter on the game and everything happening in it. How was he to know that went against the terms and conditions and rules and regulations of the stupid website. His Twitch account is currently suspended.

Dewa doesn’t have a Twitch account, not even to support the other guys. He really has zero interest in Twitch, isn’t huge into video games in general, and thinks the whole thing is a little stupid.

Surprisingly, Eric actually does have a Twitch channel. He’s not great at naming things, so he let a name generator pick out his Twitch handle for him, but he does stream gameplay pretty often. His channel is almost completely dedicated to horror games. Indie or big commercial games, it doesn’t really matter to him, he’ll play any horror-based game and the real hook for his channel isn’t even so much the gameplay itself. It’s that Eric has the most fun just absolutely tearing apart these games, just insulting or making snarky and sarcastic comments about everything he can because horror movies and horror games are normally just so dumb to him, and he enjoys making fun of them.

Fujishima has a Twitch account and most of the time, it’s only used to watch streams and chat. He’s only ever done one stream himself – Stray. The amount he got really invested in that game is honestly a little scary. His Twitch handle is ‘Inugami’, for those curious.

Fushimi honestly does have a soft spot for video games. He hardly ever plays them anymore, because playing them does take him back to all the carefree happy days with Yata so he kind of has a love-hate relationship with playing them. When he does play them, he just kind of wants to lose himself in the game and enjoy his time without thinking about having to talk or explain things or entertain, so the thought of having a Twitch channel or having to stream his gameplay just is so annoying to him.

[pikespendragon67]

AND NOW, Time for Another Pikes Check-In Update Thingamajig!!!

Basically this is just where I post current interests/events in life to see if other people are currently sharing the same interest, or if people just wanna catch up on things.

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO:

What I'm Watching

Seasonal anime: Summer season's just starting so of the ones that caught my interest at the moment are the following

Might see if Helck is good when it airs

I'm getting tempted to reactivate my Netflix account for My Happy Marriage but ehhh maybe when Beastars airs again. I do like stories where characters go through absolute shit but get better lives and heal from their experiences

Undead Murder Farce: I really like the character designs, and I love the snark of the protagonists. Hopefully it's like Appare Ranman but with Victorian England instead of 1910s-1930s America

Jujustu Kaisen season 2: Sucks that the airing schedule seems to be whack (first 5 episodes will be normal, but then it's gonna be on hiatus until like. October) but I love the OP, ED, character interactions, and the Digimon joke.

Bleach TYBW: Bleach was my choice of shounen as a youth and it's got me in an iron grip of nostalgia. Is the writing terrible at times? Yes! Do I still love it? Yes...for certain characters nowadays

Apparently Nier Automata's making a comeback? Hope so. It was hinting at big stuff when it last got hiatus'ed

MAL says Dungeon Meshi is gonna air this season but I doubt that

I'm also gonna watch the new Superman cartoon since a friend's letting me borrow another friend's Max account (I COULD technically reactive my account, but I hate how WB cut most of their projects & library for tax write-offs). And I'm 2 episodes away from finishing Iruma season 3, so once I'm done with that, it's onto Saiki K to watch during my lunch breaks when there isn't a seasonal anime to watch. ...Though I'm kinda wondering if I should swap it for Nanbaka now... Eh I already had the poll, so might as well stick to the poll until I finish Big O

What I'm Playing:

Just finished the 2nd labyrinth of Persona Q. I'm not really looking forward to replaying the 3rd labyrinth since it's horror themed. (Plus this was around the time I actually had to start playing with a guide because of a few FOE puzzles. Gonna be distracting to do so as I play). That being said I love that this combines EO dungeon exploration with Persona combat. Makes me wonder if I should try to get back to EO4 or see if I should get EO3 on modern consoles

Other potential interests: Ghost Trick (got the special edition right when I was in the middle of my Persona Q replay), 999 on Vita (solves the issue of not being able to play the updated version at work), possibly get back to Personas 2-5 (after I read the manga for the first game; keep forgetting to do that), maybe explore my Steam library since I have a few games there now thanks to the summer sale, maybe get back to playing Fantasy Life until I get to Al Majiik (though I forgot how tedious it is to grind for jobs). Just man. While I'm sad there's no FEMC for the P3 remake, I'm still super excited for it

Though with that being said it feels weird to buy games I already own just on different consoles. It'd be one thing if there were remakes/reboots, but nah. I just have Nier on both PS4 and Steam now. Game collecting's a weird hobby, but one I enjoy nonetheless

Other Stuff:

Anxiety spiked a bit today after seeing discourse start to pop up here again & cringing at past mistakes I've made, hence the checkup post you see now

While I'm cool with my job, I don't like how it consumes so much of my free time/energy. If I can get paid enough to work 4 days without me having to do 10 hour work days, that'd be pretty neat

Barbie movie's in a few weeks oh boy

Another con's happening at the end of the month, but it will be like 3 hours away. Gonna go with a friend then but hopefully my car sickness doesn't kill me.

Then the next con I definitely want to go to is in September

And after that I'm gonna see Hadestown with another friend

Not sure what to do for a Halloween shindig with friends. And it might be the brainrot talking but I kinda wanna go as Shinjiro from Persona 3? Though I also want my coworkers to recognize my costume, so I might need to start looking for Vampire Hunter D attire now.

THUS ENDS THE CHECKUP!

[asleepinawell]

possibly a controversial opinion and absolutely not trying to take a shot at anyone who disagrees, but I think having portraits show up for comms at the end of a dungeon/raid is a terrible feature. great in theory but terrible in actuality. I don't care about my comm count (and couldn't tell you what it is) but it was always nice to get some in instances where I knew I'd done a kick ass job supporting the team (as a healer or rdm usually). it was people saying thank you

I'm a really average player but there's some content I know very well and can help other players in. I love helping people and it's just a good feeling when you get thanked after. like hey, I was useful! I made a contribution!

that vanished completely when portraits came out (I've done roulettes almost every day for the last 8 months due to leveling all the jobs and just enjoying it, so it was really really easy for me to track the change...there were a few exceptions but overall it was like night and day from before). (and yes, people could obviously see your glam before but having it directly in the comm ui is different)

I got a trickle back when I put some effort into making fun portraits (something I personally don't enjoy doing but felt obligated to do), but I don't play a cute cat boy or a lady with big boobs (two things I've actually seen people online say tempt them into giving comms) and my portraits are definitely not as fancy as a lot of people's and more than that it just feels like that shouldn't matter

so yeah, not a fan. actually turned them off for myself the first time they popped up because it just felt strange. leave them at the start and take them out at the end would be my best solution since, like I said, really neat idea in theory and I think people should be proud of their cool glams and show them off. but it also really sucks to be in what feels a lot like a beauty pageant

[sunshinemoonrx]

Starhound: April Devlog

I've mentioned the RPGmaker game I'm working on a bit before, and since that's always gonna be pretty slow with me working full-time, I thought it'd be good to keep track of my pace with end-of-the-month progress posts. So! Here's what I've done in April.

(For the record, at the moment I'm actually planning on calling the game "Star Hound Vega", as the [Thing] [Descriptor] [Name] pattern is venerable among tokusatsu and mecha type heroes, but "Starhound" is my name for the setting and stories generally.)

Finished the first dungeon! It took more passes than I thought it would, as it always does, and I'm sure there'll be more tweaks in future, but I have now got to the point where I'm able to play through it and go "wow! that functions as intended without breaking! no notes"

2. Updated some sprites! Previously Vega's and Nemea's were just placeholders, but I've arrived at some that I feel pretty good about and represent them much better. Placeholders on the left, final sprites on the right:

I ended up using the "male" creator for Vega, which I think works great for creating butch women. (I have hemmed and hawed a bit over if I'm being Problematic by doing this as she is also the main trans character, however: I am a trans girl and I can do what I want. In seriousness, it is a bit of wish-fulfilment for me--I wish I could be more butch and masc-styled and be read as "a handsome woman" and not "a man", so Vega's living that dream for me. She's a hunk you get it)

I will definitely still need some kind of custom visuals for Vega's henshin hero suit, and Nemea (and her boss, Princess Ascella) when she appears as an enemy.

3. Diversified the music! So a fun thing about RPGMaker is you think you know the small selection of default assets it gives you, but if you dig around in the installed files there's actually a lot more free assets you can transfer in--from walk sprites and portraits from older versions of RPGMaker, to a whole bunch of extra enemy graphics, to a lot more music. In particular, I found some pretty sweet battle themes so now each boss can have its own! (This all mixed in with something I already grabbed right when I started making this--a pack of specifically old toku style music, which is really great for making it feel appropriately flavoured.)

4. Added a town area! The overworld is pretty limited in this, it's not so much travel as using a small consistent hub/base to rest between dungeons (if sequels happen they'll probably be bigger but I'm trying to keep a lid on the minimum viable product scope ykno), but there are a couple additional areas, so...now we have that!

Got to have some fun populating it with cute characters, which was nice.

5. Started the second dungeon! My main goal this month was to finish the first one, so it's nice to be ahead of schedule.

I've also figured out some really fun gimmicks for this one, so the first dungeon will serve mostly as a backdrop while you're introduced to the game's core mechanics, then this one will step it up and be more showy in its own right. Figuring out stuff like "oh you can have specific enemy encounters only happen on certain regions of the map" and "oh you can totally hide one-off boss fights inside random encounters" has got me to a concept I'm real happy with.

So yeah, that's where the game's at right now! For May, my main goal is just to finish the second dungeon, but we'll see where that goes. I plan on making a prototype build to toss at some friends once I've done a pass on the third dungeon (the total plan is for five, plus a final area after), but the third one is very short so I might even be able to do that in May too. But no pressure if the second is all I manage, that's the goal.

[starlight-time-machine]

Week in Review

08/04/2024 – 08/10/2024

Sunday

Week 26 of missing Cipher Academy

Undead Unluck was super cute…I teared up a little, to be honest. To see Fuuko demonstrate her dedication to Tatiana as a show of her friendship was so sweet… I’m glad they worked something out for Tatiana in the wardrobe department, but judging from the line about the time limit it seems like it won’t be an everyday thing. Now that we’re wrapping up the final recruitment, it feels really exciting to have no idea where the story’s going to go next.

Monday

Listened to the first half of He Who Drowned the World while I got some work done, and they weren’t kidding when they said that this book was darker than the first. I don’t mind it, though – I love seeing all of these toxic relationships play out as each character tries to further their own agenda through the power they wield. It’s very Succession-like in that way, which I’m always happy to see. The relationship between Wang Baoxiang and the Third Prince is a level of toxic straight yaoi that I’ve never even seen before, so I really have to commend Parker-Chan on both their willingness to go there and their restraint. Seeing Zhu Yuanzhang and Ouyang slowly bond over their likeness is also great – their relationship was so central to the first book, but here we finally get to see them interact as two individuals rather than the ideals they were upholding as commanders before. I even like the Madame Zhang bits, with her doomed het and seeing her trying to scrape together what power she can as a woman. The payoff for Wang Baoxiang’s posters was so good…I love seeing him strategize and orchestrate movements behind the scenes because he can see the bigger picture – when I’m reading from Zhu’s perspective, there’s a fun irony in watching Wang Baoxiang’s machinations inch ever closer. I’ve heard some people say that this series goes downhill, especially after the 50% mark of this book, but I don’t know, I’m still having fun watching these terrible people destroy the world for their ambitions.

Tuesday

No entertainment today, but I did go out and buy some manga. Got Dungeon Meshi volumes 13 and 14 (I just need 12 to finish my collection…) and Undead Unluck volumes 7 (for my wife Feng) and 15 (for obvious reasons).

Wednesday

Too swamped with work to do anything, but did have a bit of energy left to catch up with Dandadan. Once again, Tatsu’s illustration work is just gorgeous to behold. Plotwise, Dandadan probably would’ve tired me out by now, but seeing the inventive designs and action panelling coupled with the perfect touch of pathos always keeps me energized for chapters of fights on end. I’m glad to have caught up now, when the story has seemingly (and finally) started to show its hand as to what all of these paranormal and fantastical and alien encounters were for. Count Saint Germain is an interesting antagonist – I like that he just seems to have his own goals with no ill will towards the protagonists, but if they get in the way of his ambitions then I’m sure he’d have no problem cutting them down. I’m definitely ready for the story to take a more focused direction, and I’m hoping that that’s what we’ll get after the month-long break.

Thursday

Work

Friday

Work

Saturday

Work… The worst part about this kind of work is that I can’t listen to or watch anything else while I do it.

[accountingacademic]

Another Two-Day Reflection

Daily Reflection Thursday, 21 December 2023

Highlights:

I finalized my resolution and morning/evening routine checklists, and added them to my planner for next year.

I got talked into joining another D&D game, but this is a short-term one while a player in one of the DM's other games is away for a month on vacation.

I got a couple more of the Guardian Rank challenges done for Destiny. I found a Lost Sector I could solo on Legend and did that five times for one challenge, and then one of those runs was Flawless so I got the other one I needed. Now it's just raids, one of the dungeons, and the Commendation score. I can get a couple of my friends for the other dungeon at some point (one is having laptop issues at the moment though), and the Commendation score will come in time as I just keep playing. Not sure how the raids will work though, since it's a struggle just to get six people, let alone six who are actually competent enough for a raid. There's one I know really wants to do it all with friends, and while I don't have the same reservations myself, I don't want to upset him by going and doing them with randoms. If those are all I have left at some point, then I'll probably end up explaining the situation to him and hope he understands it.

Challenges:

The first session for that new game got pushed back again, because the DM didn't have power. We might be down another player through, because he has a really stupid take on spell components and refuses to use them, even when the DM tells him to follow the rules. I keep playing with him because the DM is a friend of mine, and other friends are playing too. I try not to let his cheating (because that's absolutely what it is) ruin the experience, but god it's difficult sometimes. He's choosing to die on his hill though, so honestly, there's a feeling of "good riddance" from me on the matter.

Emotions:

I'm really not looking forward to Christmas, honestly. My family likes to talk about stuff I did as a kid, but I can never remember what they're talking about. It's extremely frustrating, and they can't seem to get it through their heads. If Canada had Thanksgiving in November like the US does, I definitely wouldn't be doing both. Honestly, both already feels like too much most of the time. And since I don't have classes I can't use schoolwork as an excuse to skip Christmas. I'll probably do it next Thanksgiving if I remember, though.

Lessons Learned:

Tomorrow's To-Do List:

Go through that goal-setting course I signed up for.

Deal with the garbage and dishes in my room.

Clean up school and D&D binders.

[gatedelvers]

Devlog 1 - The Cursed Update (is still coming, we're not dead)

(Read in Steam) The latter part of this post will talk about upcoming content in patch 0.2. The early part here is a chronicle of the Fun Times we've had working on patch 0.2. If you want the latter, scroll down until you see a small crab face.

The Fun Times aka Why Isn't There New Stuff Yet

Around the start of July, someone on the Steam forums asked us when the major content updates were coming.

I, foolishly, answered along the lines of "1-2 months, unless something goes wrong :)"

This was not meant to be a challenge to existence as a whole to take every measure possible in order to stop the patch from being finished. I apologise to existence for the misunderstanding, and would like to clarify that I actually just want to make games.

To keep a long list short, in the last bunch of months our 3-person dev team has enjoyed exciting activities like: - Various health issues! - Losing a pet! - Mold poisoning! - Losing a home to a mold infestation! (i'm writing this from my mom's basement, like any self-respecting game developer) - Being harassed by fire alarm malfunctions! - Water damage scares! (unrelated to the mold thing, somehow)

At least we dodged the Unity Situation. Game's in Unreal. Thankfully. Condolences to anyone stuck dealing with that.

As it turns out, weekly disasters combined with a vague sense of time pressure do not for a good game development make. Things seem to have calmed down a bit, and we've been getting work done again, but at a slower rate (and we're still looking into that new, less poisonous apartment thing). I humbly request we be allowed to keep not getting wrecked.

That's enough venting, let's talk about the stuff you're actually here for: more roguelike dungeon crawly things!

The Major Update: 0.2 - Fairweather Fleet

Everything promised for the update in the little box on the main menu is still very much coming, but we've got a lot more details and some extra goodies packed into there! We're looking at:

- The new world, Fairweather Fleet. - A new playable character. - 9 new items, 7 of which are chest loot. - Seals, a new difficulty progression/challenge run system. - Scrap has been removed. - Lots of adjustments (spell rebalancing, new Librarian passive) and fixes to a lot of things.

The patch has definitely gotten a bit bigger than intended, but I'm pretty happy with the additions!

To elaborate on one of those, the removal of Scrap: Scrap as a resource added a lot of busywork before the game would let you stack infusions on your stuff, and the choice of throwing away a cool item to get the scrap necessary to make your other items more cool was never a particularly fun one. Neither was having to pass up on infusions so your co-op partner got to use more of them, and it's not great for a co-op game if having more players reduces the amount of fun stuff the game lets you do.

Infusing things is the fun part. Dealing with scrap costs was generally not. So we decided to remove Scrap entirely and add a simpler restriction to infusion stacking: All items now start with 1 infusion slot available, and each time you defeat a boss, all items everywhere gain 1 more slot for the rest of the run.

We also added gold, because vending machines need something you can pay with. The Scrapper makes gold now. Don't think about it too hard.

So far the results of the change have looked promising (mostly positive feedback from playtesters with a few valid complaints we're working to iron out), and a simpler system is easier to get into. Infusing is one of the cooler parts of the game, so we want everyone to get to play with it! To which end, we're also adding Un-Infusers that let you undo infusions and get all the material items back. They can be found at fountains, so feel free to try that infusion you're not sure will work out! ...After the patch. Not yet.

Thanks for reading, and playing :)

- Kalle-Eemeli "Mag" Paananen Game Designer/Programmer/Multitool Person

[ajthinks]

Royal Road in Review

Ok, I've definitely learned some things during this month of posting Dungeons of Danrya to Royal Road.

Rapid posting gets your fiction seen by more eyes. This is kinda obvious.

Community engagement raises the rating on your fiction, which increases how many people see your fiction. Again, sorta obvious.

Review swaps are somewhat essential if you don't have a reader-base to pull from elsewhere.

Ok... 2 and 3 kinda go together. The more you hang out in a community, the more people will poke around your profile and see what you write. You can talk to people who read and write similar things and get some good readers that way. Obvious. But the biggest boost to Dungeons of Danrya ranking has been reviews.

And the quickest way to get reviews is to swap reviews: I review your fiction, you review mine. I've stuck to honest reviews so far, because I'm nice enough as is to sugarcoat shit. I don't want to promise 5 stars and then end up hating the story or characters or grammar. If I rave about your story it'll be because I actually love it and nothing less.

The good news is most people take the little niggling things you write in reviews and try to figure out what they can change to make it better. You can chat with other writers about how you write vs how they write, what works for their story and what doesn't, what's a personal taste and what's off. Which is really cool! It shows a willingness to learn and grow as writers, which makes for a healthier community overall (imho).

But (and you might have seen this twist coming a mile away) some people don't like when you give them less than 5 stars or mention the less-than-stellar qualities of their writing. And then they review your fiction and bomb it to high hell. Hmm, yes, very mature. It wouldn't bother me so much if such reviews actually had any usable criticism or the reviewer was open to clarifying what didn't work for them.

So, Royal Road's ranking & review swappery isn't a perfect system by any means, but it works decently well for what it needs to do, which is raise the likelihood that readers will find your fiction on Royal Road.

As far as community engagement goes, it's definitely not enough to throw up your story and sit back. Humans are social creatures. So you kinda have to do the social thing. But the RR forums are pretty chill, safe places to find readers and fellow writers. I found some new favorite stories knocking about too.

There's also the official RR discord server. I'll admit, I'm not as active on there as I probably should be. But at this point I have my favorite writing discords that I spend a lot more of my social time on. And they're specifically 18+, so I don't feel weird about others complaining about their teachers when I myself teach for a living. ^^; YMMV

Now, let's get into something more enjoyable: statistics!

This is the rating for Dungeons of Danrya, from first published chapter to present day. It's done pretty well so far, aside from a brief dip down.

And this is the current standing: ranking, rating, follower count, etc. I'm not gonna lie, I found it stupidly easy to obsess over this line this entire past month. Lesson learned, now I only let myself look on the weekends.

So, in summary, what have I learned that could be potentially passed on to some newbie just starting out on Royal Road?

Don't start posting until you have a backlog.

And when you do have a backlog, don't post it all at once. One chapter a day seems to be the ideal, but only if your backlog's big enough.

Keep up with your backlog. You want to aim for consistency more than anything else, which means you need to keep writing. For me, Arc 1 is complete, so I'm good there, but I'm actively working on Arc 2.

Engage with the community: Ask questions at the end of chapters for readers to answer and add interactive polls every now and then.

Community engagement: For writers, read others work. Participate in review swaps and celebrate others' successes. This'll make it more likely for them to read and celebrate you too.

I might do another month of rapid posting at some point. Maybe when I release Arc 2? That might be a nice "and here's the new book" kinda thing.

Well, bye for now!

[harperthejay]

Hullo!

I wanted to share a bit of what's going on behind the scenes for me at the moment. I always talk about how I get distracted by projects, so I wanted to do two things: figure out exactly how many projects I have going on right now; and let people know what I've got in the works!

After the Great Beast has already been released, but I'm working on a decent sized update to it. This is very similar to what I did with Substitution; I released it as a one-page game to get it out there, then updated it with more detailed rules, progression systems, and lore. That's what I'm doing with AtGB; new rules, expanded weapon and armor mechanics, progression system, bestiary, lore, the whole kit and kaboodle! AtGB: Expanded Edition is getting very close to completion, and I'm super excited for this one.

Minted in Blood is my largest project to date, and one I've been working on for many months. It's made with the Charge system, a personal favorite, and it's meant as an homage to games like Final Fantasy VI; fantastical stories, personal drama, character driven plots, oppressive empires, plucky heroes, and of course, magic and magic-powered technology. I'm really stoked for this one too, folks. I plan on itchfunding this project when it gets closer to completion, and while that makes me really nervous, it will also let me create what I hope to be an awesome product. I've already reached out to an artist to get some prices, so I can start budgeting! It's still a ways out, but I hope you're all gonna like this one as much as I do.

The Church Sucks Because They Won't Let You F*** Dragons started out as a silly little game, and ended up turning into a pretty cool punk story about fighting against an oppressive church for the rights and lives of dragons. Development has paused for the time being, as I got distracted by the projects above, but I definitely wanna come back to it soon. One note about TCSBTWLYFD; while it started as a LUMEN project, I think I'm going to be moving it to Hopes & Dreams. This isn't anything against LUMEN (as you'll see below), but more that I was trying to force that system on to my game, instead of letting the game breathe in another system. I'll release info about the switch when I start working on it again!

The Neverending Dungeons of Chaos is one of my earliest games, and much like AtGB and Substitution before it, I've been wanting to go back and rework it for a while. It was initially created using Caltrop Core (a fantastic system!), but I realized earlier this year that LUMEN is perfectly suited to the game. As with the above projects, I'll definitely make some announcements when I start working on it again.

The other four projects that are on the backburner and/or in the conceptual phase right now are: Octomech, Superhero Robin Hoods, Vitrification, and You're Never Alone in the Hundred Acre Wood. The first two are very very light concepts at this point, but with the other two, I've started making some preliminary notes on possible systems and details. Vitrification is actually a sequel game to Substitution, taking place in the 2300s. It will be a kind of cyberpunk game about inventing time travel to avert the apocalypse - I promise it'll make sense! Substitution is a game about time travel, and Vitrification is a game about making sure the Substitution Initiative comes to fruition. I'm pretty stoked about this one. AND FINALLY, You're Never Alone in the Hundred Acre Wood is something I've been working on here or there for months now. Ever since Winnie-the-Pooh has entered the public domain (just the first book!), actually. Details are light, but think Winnie-the-Pooh meets Mickey Mouse Clubhouse; players will be animals, stuffed animals, or maybe other things, helping out Pooh and Piglet and the others with tasks that need done, before sitting down to have nice chats with friends. It's gonna be wholesome and warm.

WHEW. That was a long post, folks! Thanks for hanging in with me, and I hope you found something to be excited about. I'm always happy to answer questions, so please, feel free to ask if you have any.

Happy Holidays, and I hope you're all doing well!

Harper

[hyukabean]

hwang hyunjin as your bf (headcanons)

req – for my youth pastor simp <3 @yejiimg

nana's notes – speed wrote this cause inspo <3 all my other wips are… eh not happy with them yet

warning(s) – does jealousy count??

unedited.

how you met .｡.:*☆

i feel like you’d meet through lily, hear me out

nmixx is still a rookie group, and the budget is definitely a lot lower than some of the big names under jype

they can’t really afford to always pay staff full time, so they decided to hire a bunch of interns, for much less pay ofc

being a college student though, you don’t mind, and decide to take the job!

being able to speak english with lily would definitely make her feel more at ease when she’s stressed and so on

with time, y’all become besties~

you’ll wait for her after she’s done working, and sooner rather than later, you become a known face

felix invites her out for boba one day, and she takes you with her cause why not?

a few months in, i can also see you getting close to the skz aussie line, even if you don’t constantly hang out (cause jypapi’s got chan in his dungeon-)

hyunjin needed inspo for his new painting, and so felix is, “hey, meet my friend, they’re kinda cool”

and hyunjin’s like?????? no???????????

but ofc he end up saying yes anyways

ngl bby would be hella awkward and shy. but not like the stuttering mess, more like the o-o, i’m watching you

lily would just laugh awkwardly, and continue speaking to you

trying to “ignore” him, you do the same

but then he’s like !! woah. they’re kinda pretty… and look at their shiny eyes… oh and the lines when they smile

jinnie would def start drawing without even noticing.

by the end of it, you all just kind of part ways, not having gotten much closer

he’d ask felix for your number though, and send you the sketch with a lil, ‘sry about last time… but, can i draw u again?’

ofc you’re super flattered and agree *cue felix and lily evil chuckling*

it would take a long time for him to trust, and get close to you, but after your there, you’re in

it would genuinely just be friendship at first, but when your birthday rolls around and he sticks a letter and a painting of you in your hands before leaving?

yeah, you’re definitely in-in now. (that’s what she said-)

pros .｡.:*☆

okay, 100% the pet name privileges

he’s not suuuper affectionate with the other members, save for felix, so when he starts doing little things like: calling you princess, feeding you, actually texting you back, no one knows how to respond

hyunjin is definitely a secret hopeless romantic, and so it’s no surprise that he draws inspiration from romantic things, aka, you <3

def has lil sketches of you laying around

constantly takes secret candid pictures of you, and re-drawing them, knowing full well he’ll never be able to encapsulate all of your beauty

free dance lessons. he would offer to teach you anything.

loves seeing you have fun <3 loves seeing you (full stop)

tbh he’d cringe a bit if you’re awkward, but would also lovingly guide you, recounting all the steps for you~

by far the #1 hyunjin bf privilege is getting to back hug him and getting forehead kisses as a thank you

no matter who’s around, how tall you are, how much you weigh, if you’ve got acne or not, none of it matters.

tldr. bby’s a major simp for you <3

last but not least, you get all of his hoodies. it gets to a point where, if you’re not wearing something matching, he straight up just makes you wear his clothes, no questions asked

but don’t you dare tease him about it, he’ll ignore you for a solid 3 hours straight

affection gets it’s own section muahahah

cons .｡.:*☆

jealousy. though it’s not allllways a bad thing. it can get pretty rough. essentially, there’s two types:

1) the ‘cute’ jealous

hyunjin’s english is pretty good, but his confidence isn’t always the highest (which it definitely should be wtf-)

so he does get a bit :< seeing you and felix, or lily talk so freely with each other

and though, again, he understands, he can’t always respond

so, whenever he’s put in that situation, he sulks and goes to his room

which in itself isn’t reeeaally an issue, but communication definitely something he needs to work on in a relationship

anyways, you sneak after him one day, and find him studying english using text books:(

ofc you confront him and you’re like ??? why didn’t you ask me:(( and he’s like :(((((( sry bby

2) the ‘not so cute’ jealous

as mature as i think hyunjin is, he’s not always open to talking about what bothers him

this would often lead to petty arguments, empty but hurtful words, or just radio silence.

often the members would try and help, but controlling his jealousy when he sees you with someone else, or doing something, whatever it may be, is something he should fix

and he’s well aware of it.

this wouldn’t be a problem too too often

but once it’s there, it’s there

once you reassure him over and over and over again, and he realizes it’s really his insecurities that fuel this arguments, he’d better himself

getting there takes a while though

affection .｡.:*☆

as for affection..:

i think it’s goes one of two ways

either his s/o is also a ‘tsundere’, or they’re super affectionate

if they’re the former, he’d would 100% get along with them

they’d get the feeling of not wanting to be touched 24/7 but not minding it from time to time

though if they’re equally as prideful as his is, you’ll need to compromise on who asks first

overall though 10/10 would love someone similar to him

if they’re suuuper affectionate… they’ll need to tread on eggshells for a while

not because he doesn’t love them, but just because he’s someone who doesn’t feel the need to be touchy all the time

when he’s in that mood, he’s 1000000% going at it, kisses hugs everything

but when he’s not, he needs space (back it up bestie)

again, you’ll need to compromise

either way, you’ve seen him around felix, he wouldn’t ever leave you touch starved;)

habits / miscellaneous .｡.:*☆

playing w/ your fingers cause they’re pretty

giving you head pats cause he likes telling you you’ve done well without actually having to say it

would give you a promise ring <3

hyunjin would love having you sleep over

it’s here the affection side of him would come out the most

he’d leech on to you, and just mwahmwahmwah in his sleep

also would watch you sleep if he woke up first (…that sounded a lot less weird in my head-)

over all, 10/10 would recommend to a friend;)

© hyukabean all rights reserved. - do not translate my work, claim it as your own, and/or repost on any platform

[ttuesday]

It’s a Date

Summary: As one of the jocks pesters you to go on a date with him, Eddie intervenes and finds out you both have more in common than he expected.

Word Count: 2.2k

Disclaimer: Reader identifies as female and goes by she/her pronouns!

“How about Saturday? Are you free then?”.

You would prefer to step on one hundred pieces of lego than go on a date with Andy, one of Hawkins High’s basketball players and faithful minion to Jason Carver.

“I’m busy Saturday” you say blankly, not even glancing his way as you open your locker. You hope if you continue to act uninterested then he’ll leave you alone. 

“Friday? I have practice but I can pick you up afterwards,” he suggests, winking as he adds “we could go to Lover’s Lake”. 

Ew. 

This is the third time Andy has tried to ask you out in the past month. No matter how many times you reject him, he comes crawling back and starts the same routine of pestering you until he gets bored or you hurt his ego.

Although this time you’ve noticed he’s more persistent than usual. Normally he takes your initial rejection as a sign to fuck off but today he’s not getting the hint, going through each day of the week to see when you’re available.

Sometimes you wish you would just shout at him to leave you alone and to use his brain for once to realise you’re not interested but that’s easier said than done. After your interactions with Andy, you always come up with the best one liners and comebacks but when he appears and starts badgering you to go out with him, all of the witty quips you’ve thought of suddenly vanish and you go blank.

“I have plans on Friday,” you reject before quickly mentioning “And I’m busy Sunday too”. You pay no real attention to Andy, instead you concentrate on cramming another book into your already overflowing locker. 

Andy huffs loudly, leaning back against the surrounding lockers. “Can’t you just cancel your other plans?” He rolls his eyes as if the answer’s that simple. Giving you a patronizing smile, Andy jeers “You know, guys like it when you prioritise them so maybe it’s time you start doing that for me”. 

You clench your jaw, his unsolicited advice making you dislike him even more. “Well I can’t do that so maybe you should go ask out someone else” you shrug, hoping he’ll finally get the hint and leave. 

Andy thinks for a moment, trying to figure out some other way but he shakes his head. “Fine, I guess that’s it” he carelessly throws his hands up in the air in defeat, a scowl starting to form on his face as he turns to walk away.

You exhale deeply, grateful he’s finally gotten the message. But you celebrate too soon. “Tonight,” Andy stops, slowly turning back to you with a cunning grin plastered across his face “you have to be free tonight”. Shit.

At the end of the corridor, Eddie comes into view, chatting with Dustin about their upcoming Dungeons and Dragons session. As he approaches, your eyes quickly flick to him. For a brief moment, your gaze meets his. Unfortunately it’s only for a few seconds, Dustin nudging Eddie to get his attention again as he reluctantly breaks your eye contact.

Eddie doesn’t know when it started but he usually scans whatever room he enters at school now, wondering if you’re nearby. He likes it when you’re close, mainly because it means he has an opportunity to impress you.

One time, while he was loudly monologuing in the cafeteria, Eddie saw you smile at one of his taunts aimed at the jocks. Seeing your smile made it all worth it but it definitely feels strange to see you speaking to one of these jocks now. 

Eddie hasn’t spoken to you yet but he thinks about it. Usually he finds it easy to speak to people. Sure, they might find him weird or call him a freak but interacting with others isn’t something Eddie struggles with. So he doesn’t understand why it’s different with you.

The furthest he’s gotten to actually interacting with you is whenever you’d both make eye contact with each other in the hallways or at the end of lunch when everyone is leaving the cafeteria. Sometimes you’ll both give a small smile to one another but other times your glances are so brief that there’s no time to. 

Andy huffs again, this time more dramatically to get your attention back on him. “So?” he prods you for an answer.

“I have plans tonight” you lie, refocusing your attention on cramming this damn textbook into your locker. 

“Seriously? Come on, just go out with me instead,” he needles “my parents are working late tonight so we’ll have the house to ourselves”. You suppress a shiver in response. It’s like you can practically feel your skin crawl with each word Andy says. 

“I told you, I have plans tonight” you repeat, weary of this conversation. Never mind walking on one hundred pieces of lego, at this point you’d walk over hot coals if it meant Andy wouldn’t bother you again.

Andy persists, his tone becoming sharp with annoyance “Well then what are you doing? I can give you a ride and we can go back to mine afterwards”. 

Eddie hasn’t heard all of your exchange with Andy but he overhears the last part, zoning out what Dustin’s saying to him as he walks past you. What he’s heard so far paired with the uneasy look on your face tells Eddie everything he needs to know.

“She already has a ride,” Eddie intervenes “she’s watching me play with my band tonight so shoo, the lady’s busy”. Dustin shoots Eddie a confused look before deciding it’s best to sit this one out and goes to his own locker a few paces away.

Your eyes go wide as Eddie steps beside you. You stop trying to jam your book into the locker, his quick instinct to help you completely surprising you. Holding your book close to your chest, you watch on as Eddie and Andy glare at each other. Eddie tries to keep his expression calm, though that’s hard to do whenever he has to interact with morons like Andy.

“Yeah right, freak,” Andy says sarcastically “as if she wants anything to do with you”.

Eddie grimaces for a moment but not for the reasons Andy thinks. “Wow, it actually amazes me how ignorant you are” Eddie smirks.

“What’re you trying to say?” Andy puffs out his chest, balling his hands into fists “Now me and her are trying to make plans, so stop trying to interfere and fu-”

Speaking over Andy, Eddie simply says “Well how about we ask the lady, hm?”. Andy goes to say more but he stops himself, feeling confident you’ll pick him. 

Both men look at you, awaiting your answer. 

“Yeah, I have plans with Eddie tonight” you play along, nodding your head as you look to Eddie for reassurance. 

Eddie smiles, relieved he read the situation right.

“You know I really tried to give you a chance,” Andy scoffs “but if you want to hang around with the freaks then fine, you’re loss”. Giving Eddie one last look of disgust, Andy leaves, muttering some choice words as he pushes himself off of the wall of lockers. 

“Thanks for that” you breathe a sigh of relief as Andy marches down the hallway, feeling as though you can finally relax.

“I’m glad to be of service,” Eddie’s gaze slowly trails downwards and he gestures to the book in your arms “you need help getting that in there?”. He points to the book and then your locker, an amused smile tugging at his lips.

“Oh! Yeah if you wouldn’t mind” you reply, moving to one side as you give your book to Eddie.

Repositioning himself in front of your locker, Eddie begins pushing some textbooks to one side until he finds a big enough space for your book. “Usually if you hold the book really tight and slowly ease it in…” Eddie concentrates as he applies more pressure on the books, shoving them against the wall of your locker so he has more space for this textbook.

His tongue pokes out of his mouth, brow creasing until finally the book slots into place. “And voila” Eddie takes a step back so you can inspect your locker. 

“Thanks… again,” you say, bashfully “you’re like my knight in shining armour today”.

“Well whenever you need rescuing from a goblin, I’ll be there, princess” he promises. God, Eddie hopes he’s not coming across as being cheesy. He never over-analyzes his words but he can’t help wondering how you might react to each thing he says. Why does he even care so much? 

The corners of your lips curve as you giggle, finding Eddie completely adorable. A wave of relief washes over him, thankful he didn’t mess up his chances with you so soon. 

Finally closing your locker, your t-shirt catches Eddie’s eye. The large Metallica logo in the centre of your top makes him raise his eyebrows. Eddie didn’t think you’d be into metal but it’s a pleasant surprise.

“Nice shirt,” he hums approvingly “have you listened to the new album?”. 

“Yeah, I have” you glance down at your own t-shirt, your cheeks turning a faint red at the amount of attention Eddie’s giving you.

“My band does covers of some of their songs and I gotta say, I seriously shred on the guitar for Master of Puppets” Eddie replies, debating whether or not he should take this one step further.

Although you’ve just rejected Andy, he wonders if he’ll have more luck. Even though this is the first time Eddie has properly spoken to you, it feels as though you’re old friends, a natural chemistry between you both.

“Is that so?” You prod, your smile brightening at his humble brag. 

“Oh yeah, the drunks where we usually play really love it,” Eddie boasts, an undertone of playfulness in his voice “One time a drunk thought we were a Kiss tribute band without the make-up…I’m not sure if it was a compliment or an insult but I’ll take it”. 

Squinting your eyes to get a better look, you jokingly say “Hmm, yeah, I can kinda see the similarities”. 

“What? Similar nose? Eyes?” he plays along “because I know it can’t be the hair, right?”. Eddie swiftly flicks out some of his hair, feigning confusion. You laugh again, feeling completely at ease in his company.

As your laughter dies down, Eddie seizes his opportunity. Clearing his throat, Eddie lowers his voice to a more serious tone “I know we were only making that stuff up so that bozo would leave you alone but… I do actually have a gig tonight if you’re interested”. 

Out of fear of coming across too strong, Eddie stutters, his words starting to fail him as he backtracks “I-I just mean, since you like Metallica too, I thought you’d enjoy it but if it isn’t your kinda thing then that’s totally cool”.

“It sounds like fun,” you assure him “Think you could pick me up at seven? I would bike there myself but I have no idea where it is and I’m terrible with directions”.

“Yeah, seven,” he nods “I can do seven”.

Hoping to assess if Eddie could possibly be interested in you romantically or if he’s just being friendly, you casually reply “Perfect, it’s a date”. 

You hope that by saying it so nonchalantly, it wouldn’t be such a big deal if he doesn’t feel the same way. You’ve had a thing for Eddie for quite some time now, wondering if the lingering looks he often gives you mean anything.

Eddie’s chest tightens as you say ‘date’. He can’t believe this is happening. Trying his best to play this cool, Eddie ignores his racing heartbeat. 

“Yeah, a date,” he confirms “I’ll see you then”. With a small bow of his head, Eddie walks away. You walk the other way, hoping you're not too late for your history class.

Dustin, still pretending to be busy searching through his locker, wiggles his eyebrows up and down when he sees Eddie approaching. 

“What was that all about?” he asks, shutting his locker “and how the hell did you get a date with her?”. Dustin couldn’t help but overhear what you were both saying, his curiosity getting the better of him.

“Shut it, Henderson” Eddie replies, not wanting to make a big deal out of this.

“Oooh I could help! I can tell you all my tips and tricks that helped me win Suzie over,” Dustin continues, ignoring how Eddie exhaustively throws his head back “she really loves it when I-“.

“Dustin,” Eddie groans “the day I take advice from you and your imaginary girlfriend is the day I truly give up hope”.

“Hey! Just because she lives in Utah doesn’t mean she’s imaginary,” Dustin protests “besides when was the last time you were on a date? You need advice from the love guru”. Dustin makes a purring noise as points to himself with both of his thumbs… though his purring sounds more like a loud gurgling noise.

Eddie groans again but lets Dustin continue with his advice. As much as Eddie hates to admit it, maybe he will learn something from the self proclaimed love guru. 

Eddie doesn’t understand the effect you have on him or why he already has an excited yet nervous feeling in his gut about tonight. It’s intoxicating to be around you and now to go on a date with you? Eddie has no idea how he got so lucky.