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hotchocolatefanfics · 5 years

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PoTA: Test The Relationship

Hi guys! So this just came to me a couple of days ago and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head so I wrote it out.

Basically, it’s a PoTA-based relationship test. The idea is you imagine your favorite PoTA characters/PoTA shippings (canon or not) in these scenarios and, based on their personalities, backgrounds and actions in the books and movies, imagine what they might think, say or do in them. These scenarios can also be used to explore your PoTA OC’s character and expand on their personality and relationships.

Some of the scenarios are based off of things that happened in the movies and books and by the actions of the characters (both the good guys and the bad guys) and some are real-life based and others don’t follow the PoTA mold at all (so some are serious, some are romantic/comfort, and some are just random and silly).

Types of couple that can be used in these scenarios:

Canon

Made-Up Shippings

OC Shippings/relations

Crack Couples

Ape x Human

Ape x Ape

Human x Human

OC x Canon

OC x OC

Gay or Straight Shippings

Literally anything you want!

Subjects included in (some of these) these scenarios:

Character Death

Divorce/Breakup

Government Corruption/Propaganda

PTSD/Past Trauma

Self Harm/Suicidal Thoughts or Actions

Abuse

Drug Addictions

Alcoholism

Cancer/Serious and/or Fatal Illness

Miscarriage/Infant Death

Adoption

Betrayal

Seperation

Depression/Anger problems

Birth Defects/Disability

Murder/Attempted Murder

Homophobia/Harassment/Bullying

Oppression

Ape-Based Polygamy (where they have multiple mates)

If any of these subjects trigger you or make you uncomfortable, don’t read the scenario and don’t do them! I could personally direct you to the scenarios that DON’T have that particular subject but please be aware that a good 80% of these scenarios cover these things and the whole point of them is to test how the characters handle them and the relationship of the said couple. It’s all meant PURELY for fiction and character exploration, not in any way shape or form meant to encourage or glamorize these subjects. As a precaution, I may repost this on my DA incase this is taken down.

PoTA Movies/Books that (some of) these scenarios are inspired by:

Rise

Dawn

War

Firestorm

Revelations

Original PoTA Movies

Tim Burton’s Remake

While these scenarios were made up based off of the PoTA universe, some of them CAN be used for other franchises you’re interested in. The scenarios are primarily romance-based but there are a few that are based on friendships, parent to child relations, and spouse to in-laws.

The scenarios are all open ended. You choose the couple/the characters in them (the “you” refers to the character you chose to be that role), how far it goes and how it ends (This ______ means fill in the blank! LOL). You can use these scenarios as prompts for drawing, one-shots, discussions, or role-plays.

This is not a contest or a challenge! If anything it’s just something I made up for fun and maybe others may find fun in it to. There’s 100 scenarios on this list but you don’t have to do ALL of them if your don’t want to!

Sorry that my description has taken up more room than I thought it would but have fun! Happy character exploration and relationship testing! XD

1 - 10: Falling in love

1) You have been captured by apes/cruel humans. You just met a/another ape/primitive human. Is it love at first sight?

2) You see your companion being abused/tortured/whipped by your captors. Do you intervene?

3) Your companion makes a flower crown for you. How does this make you feel? Do you make one for them?

4) You’re in love. However, the person you love will never love you back due to your species/different opinions on humans. What is it about them that you love so much?

5) You and your companion are not the same species (one is ape and the other is human) but you have feelings for them. Do you hide it? Do they feel the same?

6) You want to impress your companion by________. It goes horribly wrong and you end up embarrassing yourself. Do you laugh it off? Do you hide your head in shame?

7) You want to give your companion a gift. After much consideration, you decide the best gift would be________. How do they react to the gift?

8) You’re about to be killed by______. Your companion saves your life and in doing so, gets hurt themselves. What do you do?

9) Your companion suddenly disappears as you’re traveling. Do you search for them? Or go get help?

10) You and your companion are alone together. You catch each others eyes and gaze at one another. Your heart is pounding. Do you kiss them? Do they kiss back?

11 - 20: Something Cute

11) You feel like making cookies. You invite your love to join you. How do you know they aren’t going to eat all the cookie dough first?

12) It’s your love’s birthday. It’s as easy to celebrate these things anymore, but you think you can make it work. What do you get for them? Do you attempt to bake a cake?

13) Halloween is coming up. Your love has never celebrated the holiday. Do you dress up in costumes? Go Trick or Treating/eat candy? Watch horror movies and stay up all night?

14) You and the group you’re in are all bored. You decide to play Truth or Dare. You’re group includes apes and humans, some having done wrong in the past and others had gone from friends, to enemies, to ‘not really friends but we can tolerate each other now’ kind of relationship. What can go wrong? And what is the craziest dare you can think of?

15) It’s summer! You decide to take your love on an adventure. Where do you go?

16) You feel lonely but your companion can’t talk. Do you try to teach them how to communicate?

17) Apes can’t swim. Yet, they see you playing in shallow water. The water isn’t deep and only goes up to your waist at most. Do you invite them in? Do you all end up having a splash-fight?

18) It’s Friday night. That means no council meetings, no hunting, no fighting, no war, no killing, no nothing. You and your human and ape friends know what that means…Party time!!! During the party, you notice your love interest is there. Do you ‘play it cool’ and approach them? Or do you keep rocking out with your friends?

19) Your love is feeling blue. It doesn’t appear to be anything serious, but you don’t like it. What do you do to cheer them up?

20) Your love is having trouble sleeping. You decide to do something sweet and silly for them! Do you sing them a lullaby? Read/tell a bedtime story? Or do you do something else entirely?

21 - 30: Opening Up

21) Your love has always been secretive and extremely hateful towards (other) humans. One night, you confront them about it. Are you prepared to hear about the abuse and torture your love was subjected to?

22) You came from another planet/the past. Everyone you’ve ever known, your friends and your family, are gone. Leaving you homesick for them. You feel all alone in this new, strange world with seemingly no one to talk to or no one who cares. Still, not all apes in this world are ‘human haters’ and the humans here are good listeners. What’s the harm in seeking company from them?

23) Being locked in a cage for so many years does things to a person. It caused you to have depression and anxiety problems, and caused you to fear humans as well as hate them. It’s hard to talk about these things, even if you weren’t the only one to experience it. Sometimes you cry yourself to sleep, thinking about it. One day, another ape approaches you and asks if you’re ok. Do you let them in? Let them be the one to free you from your cage?

24) Your love suffers from PTSD, due to all the abuse and trauma they’ve endured. They have good days and bad days, but it’s never easy. All you can do is be there for them and help them in any way you can. What happens when a particularly bad flashback leaves your love in tears and you holding them as well as crying with them?

25) Your love tells you a secret. A secret so shocking that, if it ever came to light, it could ruin your love’s life. But keeping it a secret is also dangerous, as it threatens their life too. You don’t want to destroy your love’s trust, but there’s no way you can keep this a secret either. What can you do?

26) You lost your parents when you were young. You don’t like talking about it, not even to your own love. What happens when they find an old picture of you and your parents? Do you tell them how you lost them?

27) You have been made to do horrible things. Things that you never want to remember or speak of again. But one day, something from your past resurfaces and your love demands explanation. Do you lie to protect them from the truth? Or tell them everything?

28) There are certain subjects your love noticeably avoids. Mostly its small things: handling knives, refusing to look at blood, covering their ears at loud noises. You don’t think anything of it until one day…What happens that makes you rethink this behavior? Do you try to find out the source of these problems?

29) Ape Law has always been flaky at best. You never gave it much thought and preferred to live about your daily life as if nothing is happening around you at all. Trouble is, your spouse works very closely with Dr. Zaius and the orangutans. It’s normally uneventful, but lately weird things have been occurring in the village and your spouse is either denying that it’s happening or trying to hide it. You’ve never been interested in this subject before, but you cannot ignore that somethings not right. What is your spouse hiding? What do you do to find out what it is?

30) You decide it’s time to profess your feelings to your love and take the step from friends, to lovers. How do you do it?

31 - 40: Marriage

31) You and your partner love each other. You live together, eat and sleep and even go out in the forest and Ape Village together. You want to ask the big question, but you’re so nervous of what the answer will be that you keep putting it off. Your partner finally notices and asks about it. What do you do?

32) You and your partner have been through a lot. You’ve survived a virus, dangerous humans, and your spouse has survived abuse and neglect by them. You have your differences and neither of you are perfect, but you love each other all the same. If they were to ask you to marry them, would you say yes?

33) Despite everything that you have done, your partner still loves you and lets you know that everyday. As much as you feel grateful for them, you can’t help but feel guilty for all you put your partner through during the war and the events leading up to it. You secretly wonder if they also resent you for what you did, like everyone else. So how do you feel when your partner, despite all your mistakes, asks your hand in marriage?

34) It was obvious for years that you two were a couple. The entire village knew of it. Not even Dr. Zaius bats an eye when you two announce your engagement. Problem is you have friends who are apes who you want to invite, but you also have human friends too…This wedding is going to be very interesting.

35) You are ape and your partner is human. Your love is forbidden, and seen as a betrayal to many with both sides outcasting you. Fed up with the constant harassment, your partner decides to leave the village and asks you to go with him-as his spouse. This is a hard choice to make. There’s not much left for you if you stay but leaving would mean you’d have to leave your home, your family and all you’ve ever known behind. Will you say yes and go with him? Or will you stay in the village with a ruined reputation?

36) Due to war, you and your spouse have to be separated. The timing is horrible as you have just gotten married and were just about to settle in as spouse and spouse. You talk to each other as often as you can, but it’s just not the same. Can your marriage survive this long-distance relationship?

37) Being an outcast by your own people is hard. Everyday, you put on a brave face and tell your spouse that you’re ok but they know when you’re lying. They know it’s unfair and awful how the village treats you just because of your species. You think it’s just you who they oppress, but it turns out your spouse is also a target. How does it effect your relationship?

38) Some apes have multiple spouses. There are no laws against it and it isn’t seen as cheating or anything wrong. Still, you weren’t raised with it. Your father only had one spouse, and that was what you wanted. One, and only one, spouse. But you have fallen in love with another ape too. You know you won’t be judged for having two spouses and your current spouse wouldn’t mind either, but do you really want this? Or do you ignore it and stick with what you’ve originally wanted?

39) Your parents are cruel to your spouse. They don’t accept them and constantly tell you that you should leave them. Your in-laws (your spouse’s parents) are the most nicest, most caring people you’ve ever met and you are honored to be part of their family but it also makes you feel horrible about your own parents behavior. On your wedding day, they ruin it by throwing _________ at your spouse and yells at them. This is the last straw. What do you do?

40) It’s your wedding day. The day where fantasy and day dream become reality, and it’s almost mystical. Straight from a storybook. As you and your spouse hold each other, is it everything you’ve ever dreamed of?

41 - 50: Building A Family

41) You want to have kids but your spouse doesn’t want to talk about it. The subject appears to make them angry and depressed. One night, you decide you have to ask. Would you be prepared for what you hear?

42) You and your spouse are unable to have children. One day, you find an abandoned child while at the Market Place. This child is malnourished and appears hungry. Would you Adopt this child? How would your spouse feel?

43) You and your spouse never thought having children together was possible but it turns out, your spouse is pregnant! Are you shocked? Scared? Happy? What about your spouse?

44) Your child is an outcast, due to you and your spouse being a human-ape couple/past choices made by you or your spouse. One day, your child asks what an ‘abomination’ is. What do you tell them?

45) You and your spouse are currently wanted fugitives and your child is being hunted. If you are captured, your child will be murdered. The only way to protect them is to give up your child and then you and your spouse will have to flee. Who do you leave your child with? Do you fully trust them?

46) You and your friends aren’t related by blood, but you are the closest thing to family that you have. You’re all different, some are apes and some are human, but you stick together as if you were all brothers and sisters and you never let anyone, human or apes, hurt you. How far does it go?

47) You and your spouse find out that your child has a birth defect/has health problems. In a post-apocalyptic world, not much can be done to help your child live a normal life. There is also a possibility your child may die. How do you and your spouse cope with this?

48) You now have two children. As you and your spouse watch them play, do you two worry about their futures? More specifically, if they’d be accepted as equals by the apes and by humans?

49) Your spouse is pregnant and it hasn’t been easy. As you talk about it together, you find that both of you are afraid. Not just for weather or not your spouse and the baby will survive the birth, but also the child’s future as a whole. You try to be strong for your spouse, but can you be strong for yourself too?

50) Your spouse is in labor, and it’s worse than you imagined. You’re scared but you’re more concerned for your spouse than anything else. The baby is finally born. How is your spouse? Are they going to be ok? But then, as you look at your child for the first time, what are you feeling?

51 - 60: Problems

51) Your spouse has a history of treachery, deceit, murder, attempted murder and manipulation and is outcasted and disliked by many in the colony. It has also put a strain on your relationship, as it makes it hard to fully trust them. Do you ever talk it out with your spouse? Does your spouse regret their past actions?

52) You do not wish harm on humans, but your spouse does. Its to the point where your spouse wants to kill them all. You love your spouse, but you do not like where this is going. Do you try to reason with them?

53) War has taken it’s toll on your spouse. They no longer seem as confident and powerful as they used to be. In fact, your spouse looks like they’re about to crumble and break before your eyes. One night, they do. They need you to be their strength for the night. How strong can you be for them?

54) You drink your pain away with alcohol. It’s not healthy, but it’s the only thing that gives you peace. You know your spouse hates it, but you’re honestly sick of their nagging. They’ll never understand how bad it hurts. How bad everything hurts…But would you give them the chance?

55) Old mistakes from the past and continued bitterness over them has made their way into your marriage. Now you and your spouse fight constantly, to the point of yelling and shouting at each other, only to end with one of you leaving and slamming the door behind them and the other to go bed to scream into a pillow. Why is this happening? And how can you and your spouse fix it?

56) Your spouse finds out that someone at work has been mistreating you and they are not happy about it. One day, they show at your work place and beats up the guy that had been bullying you. Did you know it was coming? Were you shocked to see it happen?

57) You decide to do a harmless, non-aggravating, prank on your spouse. The prank you have in mind is suppose to be confusing rather than to make it’s victim angry and upset or cause damage. One of those ‘wholesome and innocent’ pranks. You pull the prank and-!…It’s not your spouse you’ve just pranked…It’s your spouse’s mother!!! How do you get out of this awkward situation?!

58) Your spouse has an awful fear of the dark. It’s so bad that they need a nightlight, something to hold and you to be in the bed with them before they fall asleep. One night, they wake you up and say they think someone/something is inside the house/cave. It could be nothing, but do you really want to take that chance?

59) Your child has a friend who is a bad influence on them. This friend is shady, secretive and always has an answer to everything. You have a bad feeling about them but no evidence to prove anything. You talk it out with your spouse and they too feel something isn’t right with this friend. Then one day your child comes home, badly beaten and bleeding. When it becomes known that the friend did it, you decide then and there that you are going to make them pay for this. What do you do?

60) Homosexuality is not uncommon in Ape Society. In fact, it’s almost as common as heterosexuality. You are perfectly fine with this, as some of your ape friends are married to other apes who are the same gender, however you also have human friends find it ‘unnatural’ or ‘disgusting’ or ‘sinful’. You have been very careful to avoid those friends and keeping them from meeting your ape friends but of course, they eventually find each other. The ignorant friends realize they are looking at two male apes kissing and start harassing them, calling them horrible names right in front of you. That’s it, any feeling of friendship you had with these people dies at that moment. How do you intervene? Do you use just words to stop them or do you have to use physical force?

61 - 70: It’s A Matter of Life and Death

61) Your spouse has a disease that could kill them. Thankfully, there is a cure that can save them, but this treatment comes with serious consequences. Would you save your spouse’s life? Do you value their life enough to make sacrifices?

62) Colonel McCullough has kidnapped your spouse! Problem is, he also has the entire colony in the base too! Do you save your spouse first? Or your people?

63) Your spouse and your child are both in serious danger, having been kidnapped by the enemy and are now about to be killed by them/inflicted with a fatal illness. Despite your best efforts, you could only save one of them but not the other. Who do you save? The love of your life? Or your child?

64) Your spouse is an experiment in a laboratory. Every second they are in that cage, their life is at risk. You need a plan but it’s hard to think of one when there’s so little time. What are you feeling? How do you try to rescue them?

65) Your spouse has been acting strange lately. You try to ask them what’s wrong but they wouldn’t say. One night, you catch them with a blade in their hand. You stop them just in time but it leaves you shaking as you now know your spouse has been harming themselves and may have suicidal thoughts. What goes through your mind as you realize this?

66) Your spouse is an addict. One day, you find them passed out and not breathing. You rush to get help, but is it enough to save them? Is it too late?

67) The village has deemed your spouse to be a murderer and a traitor. They were banished and is now locked away forever. But your spouse is innocent. You don’t have proof that they didn’t do it, but the Orangutans don’t have evidence against them either. Suspicious, you do some detective work of your own. No one believes you and Dr. Zaius is determined to silence you, but you don’t care. You’d stop at nothing to save your spouse’s life. But if your spouse is innocent, who is the actual murderer? And what is Dr. Zaius trying to hide from you?

68) Your in-laws died recently. Your spouse tells you that their parents have told them something about the apes history. Something that should have been buried centuries ago. What did your in-laws tell your spouse? How do you console them?

69) Your spouse had a miscarriage. You take it hard. Everyone knew the pregnancy would be difficult, but you never thought this would happen. Your spouse blames themselves despite you telling them it’s not their fault and you both fall into a deep depression…What now?

70) The forest is on fire and your family is trapped inside! You race through the flames, desperately yelling out their names but their voices seem to come from all directions. The smoke is getting heavier, harder to breathe as the air seem less and less. You refuse to give up, you’re either going to save your family or die trying! Do you get burned? And if you do find your family, which one do you save first?

71 - 80: With or Without You

71) Your spouse has started a war. You always knew they hated humans, but never dreamt they’d actually do this. When you find out that your fellow apes are also being threatened, and some have been killed, you confront your spouse. Do you try to stop them? Or is your life also at risk?

72) You are finally getting revenge for all the pain humans caused you. Sure a couple of apes died on the way and a couple of them refuse to follow you, but you see no problem with it. But then, your spouse shows up and demands you stop it. It’s getting on your nerves, and you decide you need to make another choice. Do you love your spouse enough to spare them? Or would you choose revenge over their life?

73) You don’t know what the heck your spouse is thinking. They’ve taken control over the remainder of the colony and now some are dead and others are held captive. Your spouse is talking about killing the queen and they’re convincing other apes to help carry it out. What do you? Get answers from others? Or reason with your spouse and try to stop them before this goes too far?

74) Your spouse has enslaved the entire ape colony. Even Caesar is locked up and chained, reduced to another slave. You know why this is all happening, but it just seems so wrong. So against everything that you stand for and believe in. The more that happens, the more you hate it. Do you go against your spouse’s back and help the apes? Or do you confront them yourself?

75) Your spouse has gone off to exterminate the human race. You can’t stop them, and you both know it. Their hate has made them mad, to the point of no return. Do you say goodbye then and there? And as they leave, for what feels like the last time, what are you thinking and feeling?

76) Your spouse has been banished by the colony for their crimes. As of right now, you’re the only one who still cares about them. Do you go looking for them to join them and start a new life somewhere else with them? Or are you so angry with what they did that you just want to forget about them?

77) Your spouse has joined the enemy and is now seen as a traitor to the colony. How do you feel when you find this out? Are you angry with them? Or do you plan to try to change their mind?

78) You have a chance to go back home. Back to your own world, where humans rule the world. But do you really want to go? And leave behind your new friends here in this ape planet? What does your heart say?

79) You want revenge for the murders of your family but your friends are in the way. To you, they are just waisting your time and slowing you down. You know they mean well and they’re worried for you but it doesn’t make you feel any less angry at them. Do you continue to travel with them? Or do you push them away and go down the rhode of vengeance without them?

80) Your spouse is on the verge of curing a disease that has hurt millions of lives and threatens even more, but is it worth it? Finding this cure means using innocent apes as lab rats and playing with nature…One of the victims trapped in all of this is your spouse’s own adoptive child. Not even they are spared from this. You understand why your spouse is doing this and you know their heart is in the right place, but you cannot agree with any of this. Do you try to convince them to stop? Even if this is wrong, how can you tell then to give up something they have worked so hard on?

81 - 90: I’m Sorry

81) You had no choice. Your spouse has become a monster. You didn’t want to do it, but you had to. It was the only way you, your family, your friends and your colony would be safe. You had to kill your own spouse…How did it come to this?

82) Your spouse has sacrificed themselves so you live. You never asked them to do such a thing, but they did and it seems they would have done it even if you begged them not to. Wrecked with survivor’s guilt, all you can do is cry for your brave spouse. If you had known that day would be the last day you’d be with them again, what would you have said?

83) Being an astronaut came with consequences. You have left your spouse and children behind on Earth, your home planet. All you want now is to see them again one more time and tell them how much you love them and how sorry you are for leaving them. If you had the chance to do just that, would you?

84) You took part in creating the virus that’s whipping out the planet. Everyone is blaming the apes for this, but you know that’s not true. It’s your fault, and the fault of Gen-Sys for doing this. You say your sorry as your spouse and children die before your eyes, but there aren’t enough sorries in the world that can save them. How can you live with yourself now?

85) You really did it this time. You are now a traitor to the colony and will never be able to return to them. You have no one to turn to and no where to go. Worse of all, you’ve left your beloved all alone. Abandoned them. That was never part of your plan and never what you wanted, but your spouse is now paying the price for your treachery. If you got to see them again, what would you say to them? Do you think they’d still love you and forgive you?

86) Your actions cost the lives of several in the colony and has hurt many others. What you regret the most is how much it has hurt your spouse. You never talk about it with them but you see the hurt in their eyes. You used to have a loving and trusting relationship with each other, now it just feels like your spouse has given up on you. How can you show them how sorry you are?

87) You are haunted by the faces of the people who have died because of you. There are too many to name, some are ape and some are human, but they all form this mob of angry ghosts wanting revenge for their murders. You may not have killed all of them, but you did cause their deaths. How can you put these demons to rest? In fact, are these ghosts real? Or are they just figments of your imagination created by your own guilt?

88) You had to do the unthinkable. You had to kill your own loved ones and friends to save your species. The virus that threatens to destroy your very existence is everywhere you look. In the faces of the people you kill, in the eyes of your enemies, and even in some of your own ‘pets’. You are meant to save and protect your species…But in doing so, you are also killing them…Who do say your sorry to? To those you kill? To all who oppose you?…Or to yourself?

89) You and your spouse had a fight. It was a over something stupid and small, but it got ugly really fast and now neither of you are talking. Who started this fight? And how do you make it up to each other?

90) You have an anger problem and it’s caused a lot of problems between you and your spouse and you with your children. It gets particularly bad one day when your oldest lies to you about where they had been. You get into a fight with them and, in a rage, you smack them. Your spouse intervenes and starts a yelling match with you too. It ends with your children avoiding you for the rest of the day and your spouse giving you dirty looks. Is this enough for you to admit you have a problem? Why was your oldest child lying about their whereabouts anyway? How do you try to make amends with them and your spouse?

91 - 100: The End

91) Your spouse is dead. Killed by Caesar for their crimes. Despite the chaos that had just happened, and the impending danger caused by your spouse, do you still mourn for them? Do you give yourself a chance to say goodbye?

92) Your spouse has suffered a fatal wound and is about to die. You have just enough time to speak them one last time. You don’t want them to go and leave you, but there’s nothing you can do. What do you say?

93) You’ve had enough. You’re tired of the bullshit your spouse has started. Your marriage may have been beautiful at first, but now it’s toxic and lethal. Threatening your own life as well as the humans/apes that are imprisoned here. How do you plan to escape?

94) Your spouse has sacrificed themselves/died during the war. Now you’re at the Oasis, the ape’s new home. As much as you miss your spouse and mourn for them every day, you know one day you’ll have to move on. When will that day come?

95) You and your spouse both have the virus. As you lay dying, the two of you stare at each other in silent sadness. All the things you could have done you never did. Your dreams never came to be. As all this goes through your mind, what do you regret the most? The things you never got to do? Or the things you could have done differently but didn’t?

96) You had cancer years earlier, now it’s come back and it’s worse than before. You have been given less than a year. Within that time, what do you want to do? Rekindle old friendships? Spend time with your family members one more time? Tell your spouse how much you love them?

97) It’s not working out. It’s not your fault or your spouse’s, but you just aren’t close anymore. The spark that brought you together has died out and your marriage is falling apart. You both know it’s over, but neither of you want to admit it. What do you say to each other? Are you ready for a divorce?

98) Your spouse is abusive towards you. You don’t know why they do this to you, but overtime they hurt you, your heart breaks a little bit more. Don’t they love you anymore? Finally, you decide it’s over and start thinking about escape. Do you reach out for help? Who do you turn to?

99) It was an accident. Neither of you saw that car/bear as it came after you. Regardless, it has taken your beloved spouse. Now you’re all alone, despite the constant wave of support and sympathy from your friends and family and nearly everyone in the village. Then, you are confronted with the being that caused the accident. How does looking at them make you feel?

100) You and your spouse have lived a long life together. You have survived war and oppression, been part of creating a new era of human and ape-kind and have had children, and now grandchildren. All your hopes and dreams have come true and all is well in the world. The only problem is, you’re both dying. Your old bodies are falling apart, no longer strong enough to fight. The good news is, it will be a peaceful death and you’d died together with the one you love. As you and your spouse lay in your bed, waiting for death to take you, what do you reflect on? If you got live your life a second time, would you do it all again? Would you change anything at all?

#pota #POTA OC #planet of the apes #Rise of the Planet of the Apes #Dawn of the Planet of the Apes #Warfortheplanetoftheapes #prompt #what if this happened #test the relationship #it's basically a create your own adventure thingy #Tim burton's pota #i hope someone likes this #Damn this thing is long! X'D

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doumaistrash · 2 years

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Ruined Childhood AU

A/n: So since I follow @my-gunpowder and @papermachette and @lethalamigos I thought: "Why the hell don't I create my own AU, but with my OCs in the mix with Chepe, José and Bruno." Welp so here we are. I've decided that I'm gonna do something productive once in my life and practice my writing/drawing skills. Soooo this is happening huh? Note that this one shot and the ones that follow after them are only drabbles or previews of the fanfiction that I'm gonna write soon. They are practice for the relationships and what a character thinks of the other. Also i hope i don't write them too ooc (i'm to scared to ask T-T) Defenetly not nervous about that at all (also me hiding behind a wall anxiously). Ahem anyway take this first drabble(?) And sketch of Emiliano. This is an angsty one shot between him and José wich also takes place in the rough love au. Soooo yeah.... I hope you enjoy it....

Warning!: since i seemingly can't do a read more thingy here i'm just gonna say there are a few trigger warnings: chocking, death threats and some more

First Drabble: Emiliano & José

"Well if it isn't the homewrecker." José looked up from his task that he was doing. There he stood, the towering Emiliano Madrigal, in all his angry glory.

Emiliano was one of Brunos children, the other being Javier Madrigal, and was known for his strong temper and brash personality. His reputation was pretty much in the negative, because unlike his older twin (god bless that kind soul) Emiliano had a scary scowl on his face 24/7. A shame really. José thought. Because his late mothers genes were the most prominent on him. His seemingly soft delicate features being ruined by his angry grimace, his long black hair that was soft to the touch, looked like a birds nest most of the time, even if he put it together in a half ponytail.

It also didn't help that he was a towering 200 cm. He even made his príma Luisa look like a small child. This combination of his appearance made him earn the name 'The Boogieman'. A man that haunts your dreams and makes your worst nightmare real. And it fit Emiliano, if his gift had anything to say about it. But José shook his head. He had to focus on the matter at hand.

"Excuse me?" José knew that Emiliano was... not a nice person. He wasn't stupid. He heared the rumors on the street and in his past interactions with the young man he could tell that Emiliano hated him with his whole being. He was only ever polite, because he wanted to make his Papá and hermano happy. And José understood that, he could sympathize with that. But this. This was new.

Emiliano's scowl deepend at Josés question. This was not good. "Don't play stupid on me! Don't even dare to pretend like we don't know what you do behind Papás back!" Josés eyes went wide and he froze, his whole body going stif. How did he know about that? Emiliano narrowed his eyes. This reaction was all he needed. "You know when mí hermano came and told me about your... little adventures. I first didn't believe him. But then he showed me..."

Javier Madrigal, the other half of Emiliano. His gift allowed him to travel through time, show things that already happened or will happen. Him and his younger brother had many differences but one thing they had in common since their birth was, that they are both deadly protective of their Papá. Hurting Bruno was a basically a death wish in their eyes. It wouldn't be suprising that Javier showed his hermanito that he and Chepe... José snapped out of thoughts as Emiliano continued to speak in a flat voice, his green eyes were staring blankly at José. Like he was staring into his soul. José felt a shiver go down his spine.

"You know... I actually quite liked you. I thought: 'Maybe. Just maybe José isn't as bad as he seems. Maybe he can take care of Papá afterall.' But then this? How low do you have to fall to do this? And with Tío Chepe no less." Josés eyes were wide, he was in shock. He never knew that Emiliano would begin to like him. He thought that the boy would never accept him. But he proved him wrong. So José tried to apolegize.

"Emiliano." The young man clentched his hands so tight that they began to shake. "I know what I did was wrong." José saw the boy bite his lips in anger. So much that they started to bleed. "But you have to understand that that it was a mistake and I'm sorry. Could you give me a second chance?" José smiled a gentle smile but he wasn't ready for what came next.

"A second chance? A second chance?!" Emiliano began to laugh hysterically. "A second chance fOR WHAT?! TELL ME! WHAT?! SO THAT YOU CAN HURT PAPÁ AGAIN?!" José took a step back. At first he was suprised at Emilianos outburst but the he looked on in worry as fat angry tears rolled down the boys face. "DO YOU HAVE EVEN THE SLIGHTEST IDEA WHAT YOU'VE DONE?! DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW MUCH PAPÁ WOULD HURT FROM THIS IF HE FOUND OUT?! FOUND OUT THAT YOU LEFT AGAIN?!" José flinched. "LEFT HIM AGAIN?! DO YOU?!" The tattooed man looked ashamed at the ground. "No. I don't-" "OF COURSE YOU DON'T! YOU DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH PAPÁ CRIED AFTER MAMÁ DIED! YOU DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH HE CRIED EVERY NIGHT FOR HER OR YOU TO COME HELP HIM! HOW HE HAD TO HIDE IT FROM US WHEN WE WERE NEAR! HOW TÍA PEPA AND TÍA JULIETA HAD TO HELP HIM CARE FOR US BECAUSE HE COULDN'T LOOK US IN THE FACE! BECAUSE IT WOULD REMIND HIM OF HIS MISTAKES! HOW AFRAID HE WAS TO LOSE US TOO! HE COULDN'T EVEN LEAVE US ALONE FOR ONE SECOND BECAUSE HE WAS SO SCARED! ALL BECAUSE YOU LEFT!"

José couldn't move. The whole world seemed to stop and slow down. The only thing moving was the young boy in front of him. Screaming at him and waving his arms around in anger as more tears escaped his eyes. Eyes that held so much hurt for his father. A father who had to hide that he was hurting himself, so he could watch over the only important people that were left in his life. Josés eyes began to water themself as he took a few steps to stand in front of Emiliano. God where did they go so wrong?

"Emiliano... I..." "-You deserve everything that's happened to you..." José stopped in his tracks shell shocked. Did he hear that right? Emiliano with tears and snot running down his face, as if he read his thoughts, repeated with a scratchy voice. "You deserve everything that's happened to you." José began to breathe faster. "Above all your daughters death and your ex-wife leaving you." Shut up. "Someone like you doesn't deserve happiness." Shut up! "People like you should always suffer." Shut up!! "You should just kneel over and die... Maybe join your daughter in hell were you both belong." "I SAID SHUT UP!" José saw red as he grabbed Emiliano by the front of his green ruana. The boy letting out a choked noise of suprise but José couldn't care less. His gaze was dark and deadly. "If you ever talk about Sasha like that again. I swear that I'm going to kill you." Emiliano let out a wheeze as José squeezed. He began to claw at the hand that held his ruana. He was scared but José didn't let go. "I'll make your life a living hell-" A scared whimper.

Papá!

José, with wide terrified eyes, looked at the scene infront of him. He was holding Emiliano tightly by the front of his ruana, grabbing it so hard that the fabric dug deep into the boys neck. So that he couldn't breathe. Emiliano with scared bloodshot eyes looked at him with fear. Clawing at the hand that held him, trying desperately to get free. Choked off sobs and whimpers left him.

José quickly go and Emiliano doubled over. He began to cough and gasp for air, while wrapping a hand over his neck protectively. The older man looked at his shaking hand. What has he done? He hurt the son of the person that he loved. He was a monster. The boy looked at him one more time with wide eyes and then turned away running. José wanted to call out to him but stopped himself. It was too late. He hurt a boy.

A boy that just wanted to protect his father.

#encanto oc #encanto #fanart #art #bruno madrigal #fankids #jose/chepe #my art #oc x oc #jose/bruno #ruined childhood au #rough love au #chepe oc #jose oc #bruno madrigal x oc #bruno madrigal x child oc #i'm actually really scared to post this #still i hope you guys like it #because i love your ocs and your aus

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dutchforstrangers · 3 years

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Digimon Astrology Journey - 'Head first' buddies: Koushiro & Taichi

So I’m back with some headcanon Digimon Astrology and I’m diving into it head first! Something fierce leader Taichi would do, however he needs his loyal ‘brains’ there with him and that will be Koushiro. Where Koushiro is a thinker, analytical in every way due to his pragmatic Sun and Rising, Taichi is one of action due to his Moon and Rising (and Mars!). However don’t underestimate them, they have some serious airy energy going on, making them vocal, diplomatic and charming in their own individual ways.

These boys are so different, yet work together very well. They just have a hard time… talking to others or each other about… the complicated, personal specific stuff feelings. Must be the stars, right?

It’s been a while, but you can read back all things Astrology (basics, background, etc.) in previous posts Part 1 | Part 2. Furthermore, exploring Taichi and Koushiro’s birth charts is part 2 of this series, you can read the exploration of Sora and Mimi’s birth charts here.

The important stuff

Koushiro Izumi, August 26th 1989 (around 05.30AM)

Sun: Virgo (earth-mutable)

Moon: Gemini (air-mutable)

Rising: Virgo (earth-mutable)

Taichi Yagami, October 15th 1988 (around 5PM)

Sun: Libra (air-cardinal)

Moon: Sagittarius (fire-mutable)

Rising: Aries (fire-cardinal)

Warning: IT’S VERY LONG! I’m sorry in advance…

A little disclaimer before I start rambling: These are headcanons! Their given birthdays are not canon at all, but just me having fun combining my love for Digimon and my love for Astrology. It can be highly self-indulging, but maybe you can find some truth in it as well! If you want to know how I calculated their birthdays, read my previous posts as stated above. I use these birthdays in my own fanfiction, but feel free to use them as well. Some credit in the form of a reblog, like or mention of these posts and/or my Tumblr would be highly appreciated! See something you want to discuss? I love to learn and talk! As said these are my headcanons, but I’m not afraid to change my mind or to defend what I have if necessary.

Everything charts and the why under read more!

Koushiro Izumi - August 26th 1989

Assigning the Virgo Sun to this boy was the first thing I did, because I myself am convinced Koushiro Izumi is the embodiment of a true Virgo. I could be wrong, as I did not study Astrology and am a simple hobbyist, but everything I read about Virgos always lead me back to this particular maroon headed anime dork for years now. Hence why I gave him the same Sun and Rising sign, because Koushiro is who he is. Anyway, let me try to convince you.

For starters, here are a few (or actually all the) things about Virgos in general, for both Sun and Rising. Virgos are bright, practical, pragmatic, orderly, respectful, critical, perfectionists, security driven, communicative, tidy, nervous, detail-oriented… Can I stop already? Okay, now pick one of the above and tell me it’s not fitting for Koushiro.

…

Hm, I know. It’s hard, isn’t it?

Maybe his tidiness is questionable depending on the situation… But the guy is orderly and the chaos only exists in times when his perfectionism takes over. The nervous part from the Virgo can be seen in shyness or even being obedient. All of that makes Koushiro a dedicated friend who would do anything in his power to make everything work for you. Danger is that he will efface himself, thinking he’s not worth as much as the others. This is what happens in Adventure episode 28 right after he solved the card riddle. On the top left corner either the Agumon or the Gomamon is right, but he doesn’t know which one and he apologizes, which is not necessary at all, with: “I’m sorry I couldn’t live up to your expectations,” which is such a Virgo Sun/Rising thing to say..! The Virgo dynamic is alive and kicking.

It’s even more alive and kicking in his other strong Virgo placements: Mercury and Mars. With Mercury in Virgo, Mercury is in it’s sign of its rulership, making it a strong placement. And precisely that planet is the planet of thoughts and knowledge! The combination of his Sun, Rising, Mercury and Mars in Virgo makes him be, engage, think and act like a true Virgo. Detail-oriented, thoughtful, respectful, orderly, practical and curious!

The hardest part for his birthday calculation was his Moon placement. The Moon is all about emotions, needs, wants, behavior, responds, et cetera. I first gave him a Capricorn Moon, but my boyfriend is such a Cap Moon and it didn’t fit the bill for Koushiro in my opinion. So I read and searched and eventually came to the conclusion it had to be an Air sign Moon, simply for the fact that our boy Koushiro is the bearer of the crest of Knowledge and Air signs can be seen as the intellectual ones of the Zodiac! Eventually I went for the Gemini Moon and I’m going to explain why exactly.

One could say Gemini is the bearer of Knowledge just as much as Koushiro is. Gemini LOVE to know things! They are naturally curious and are great communicators, when it comes to knowledge (pun warning if you’ve seen the reboot: they love to bring joy to their knowledge). Gemini tend to be a bit superficial when it comes to having and sharing knowledge and of course we know that’s not the case with our Koushiro here, due to his many Virgo placements, making him more observant and inward. What the Gemini Moon DOES to him is making this boy very talkative! He likes to spill what’s on his mind, he likes to share what he thinks, he likes to ramble and rant. It’s something we see him doing in Tri a lot, especially that one scene in Reunion part 3 (episode 3) where he keeps on rambling about all the strange events and he misses the first part of the conversation between the other DigiDestineds (about the news and Jyou’s ‘girlfriend’ poor guy no one believes him). Koushiro misses the conversation because a) his Gemini Moon likes to ramble and keep rambling, and b) because his Virgo placements can make him a bit unaware of his surroundings quite the time…

That’s not a bad thing per se, Koushiro is just very much focused on his work and d e t a i l s, which is a VERY Virgo-ish trait. But lets not forget that his priority is to help others with that knowledge and that the combination of his Virgo placements with his Gemini Moon makes him a great mentor. Brings me to his role throughout the entirety of Adventure 02: The Mentor. You’re welcome.

Another Gemini Moon thingy is rudeness. Now we know Koushiro is the most polite person out of ALL DD’s, always using honorifics, even saying Hikari-san instead of Hikari-chan, because Koushiro IS respect. But Koushiro is not afraid to tell you what’s at stake in times of ‘danger’, he’s not afraid to tell the truth. There are a few examples for that in Adventure, Adventure 02 and in Tri, but I’d like to refer to one of my favorite moments in whole Digimon Adventure history. Because Koushiro x rudeness brings me back to Diaboromon strikes back when he’s obviously so done with everyone, then Mimi enters the scene and he doesn’t even care. In the English dub she literally says “How rude”. Ooooohhh Koushiro, you little rude demon… It’s not the biggest proof it’s a simple one and my personal favorite.

All of the talkativeness and rudeness is something we mostly see Koushiro doing when he’s most comfortable. So we won’t see him being all talkative all the time -sharing more than just plain, superficial knowledge and instead more personal helpful knowledge- with everyone, but we do see him being talkative and speaking up to certain characters he’s most comfortable with. Now name one boy he’s very talkative to compared with literally all the other characters… You know what? Scroll down.

Last thing and then I’ll stop rambling about this beautiful and lovely nerd. His Venus, planet of values (and love…) is in Libra. What does that mean? Well, I’ve seen quite some fans type Koushiro as a bi-sexual, or something in that direction. Or even better a ‘disaster bi-sexual’. I already agreed on that, but when I saw this birth chart… IT’S (HEAD)CANON! Seriously, Libra is the zodiac sign of doubt, decision making (or actually no decision making, but I’ll get there with the next boy) and relationships and if you have your Venus placed in Libra you’re doomed to be a disaster when it comes to making decisions in your love life both romantically and platonically! Venus in Libra creates the desire for a good and loving relationships, but Koushiro’s Virgo Sun/Rising makes him more shy, his Virgo Mars makes him hold back. Once again, the Virgo Sun/Rising-Libra Venus dynamic lets him efface himself in relationships, thinking they have nothing to offer, but they have!! And so Koushiro gets left behind with his unresolved feelings… the boy has a hard time in love, let’s give him all a hug!

Taichi Yagami - October 15th 1988

The protagonist. Okay, let me compare this goggle headed protagonist to another goggle headed protagonist outside the Digimon franchise: Naruto. This is probably more interesting to people who have watched and know Naruto, so you can skip the part. To me Naruto is the classical protagonist type; bold, adventurous, playful, (a little) obnoxious at some times, hot headed… These are traits we easily assign to fire signs in the zodiac, especially Aries. So I would immediately give Naruto the Aries Sun placement. However, when we see Naruto grow up, his behavior and the way he speaks and leads grows up with him as well. That’s only natural. And based on those changes I wouldn’t necessarily give Naruto the Aries Sun placements, although the Aries placement or another fire placement is very likely to be present in his chart.

Now I could go even further, explain the development from child to adult through Jung’s theory about cognitive functions, but that’s incredibly complicated and a looooong stretch I won’t be making here today. In short, Jung’s development theory is interesting, because it shows how we first see the obvious traits in a child which are the traits the child engages (Rising sign) the world with before it develops the other functions showing the person’s true identity (Sun sign). So we could say we first see someone’s Rising sign more clearly before the Sun comes shining through. Like with Naruto. And the same could be for Taichi in the case of this headcanon.

To tackle his birth chart and big three, I’ll be starting with explaining his Rising Sign before his Sun sign. And the Rising sign I assigned him is Aries Rising.

Like I said above, Aries is bold, adventurous, playful and above all: courageous. Especially the Aries Rising placement which is more courageous than its Aries Sun counterpart. Aries are born leaders, can be extremely competitive, are somewhat restless and desperately need to move. In Taichi’s case with the above birth chart, that urge to move is magnified by his Aries Mars placement. The dynamic of his Aries Rising and Aries Mars makes Taichi a mover, an adventurer, and incredibly determined. This could be both positively, always wanting the best (especially for yourself, as Aries is a pretty selfish sign), and a tad negatively, always going and going and going. In the Adventure series this could be the reason why he makes Greymon dark-evolve, because he wants things too bad and too fast. Aries are hot headed and can grow impatient if things don’t go the way they want. And the Aries Rising and Mars dynamic makes Taichi a very physical guy. Mix that with the impatience and he is not afraid to pick fights and use his fists.

All of this can make Taichi a very stormy and reckless boy (boundaries? What’s that?), but also a fearless leader. The exuberance, the impatience and restlessness comes back in his Sagittarius Moon placement as well. This Sag Moon in combination with his strong Aries placements in Rising and Mars makes Taichi a sportive, physical, optimistic and forward leader that is incredibly courageous and adventurous, which could make him a bit ‘superficial’ as a protagonist. But the Sag Moon also deepens and strengthens his leader skills.

Sagittarius is a sign pictured by a centaur with an arrow and bow. The centaur’s horse legs make the Sag want to move and be free, but the arrow aims in a clear direction and aiming takes knowledge and focus. Sagittarius thus is an adventurous fella, but also a philosopher. Taichi’s Sag Moon placement makes him a pro in seeing the bigger picture and connecting dots next to his never ending energy. He will make sure we’re going in the right direction by overlooking the whole situation. So we absolutely shouldn’t forget Taichi is a true strategist! He sees, understands what’s at stake in a situation, connects the dots, comes with a strategy and like a true leader knows his team and can place everyone in his right spot to get through the toughest of situations (once again referring to Taichi asking Koushiro to pick the cards in Adventure episode 28). Speaking about a great leader, gosh, Taichi, you’re truly amazing! <3

However, it’s his Aries Rising and Mars that often make him act before he thinks, preferably alone (Taichi is a teamplayer, but the selfish and reckless Aries in him makes him act alone. And the sum of teamplayer + acting alone = self-sacrifice mode… which happens ALL THE DAMN TIME). Or actually makes him act while thinking without doing a short reflection beforehand. Seriously, I’m convinced that this reflection in advance could have saved him a lot of trouble throughout Digimon Adventure. Let’s blame it on (t)his (headcanon) birth chart…

Also, all of the above vouches for Taichi having an amazing intellect, but the guys needs to be challenged… Hence why he’s always staring out of the window during classes in Tri, daydreaming away to where the adventure is. He feels trapped, needs to be outside and should use his intelligence for things he finds important (like saving the digital world, soccer and saving friends and the world). The daydreaming could also be his Libra Mercury who can make Taichi lose his focus and could make him lazy. Luckily Taichi has a very active Aries Mars in opposite aspect from his Libra Mercury that neutralizes that lazy and dreamy Libra Mercury.

Okay, back to topic. Now you maybe think: But if Taichi is good in knowing where to go, being the fearless leader, also an intellect who has the knowledge to aim straight and shoot… then WHY is he so lost, down and in doubt in Tri and so unknowing of his future in Kizuna…??!! I have an answer to that. And that answer is his Libra Sun.

I know I know, this is a very VERY unpopular Sun sign to give this goggle leader, but please hear me out. For starters, Libra is the sign of diplomacy and if we believe the 02’s epilogue what’s Taichi’s job? Right, a diplomat. We also know he studies something like political sciences in Kizuna (which I think is AMAZING and vouches even more for Taichi’s intellect! Politics is a tough study…) and to make it in the political field you really do need diplomacy and charms.

Taichi is an absolute charmer, in my eyes at least. I mean, look at his 02 self! He’s such a smooth charmer in every way… The way he sends off Sora to Yamato while acting all cool and collected, phew, that requires some serious smoothness. And still we often see Taichi depicted as a down and broody boy besides his energetic and bold (sometimes indifferent…) character, especially after Tri. That too could be due to a Libra Sun placement.

Like Sagittarius is depicted by a centaur, Libra is depicted by scales and those scales are all about harmony, balance and justice. Libra is the opposite of Aries in the zodiac, but also about weighing opposites in the sigh itself. When we look at the Aries/Libra opposite placement: where Aries can be quite selfish, Libra as an opposite is the people’s pleaser. Where Aries is reckless and impatient, Libra is thoughtful and patient and one could say that an Aries acts where a Libra waits. Where Aries makes the impulsive decisions, Libra keeps deliberating leading into constant doubt and confusion. And how do we see Taichi in Tri? Ah yes, in doubt and confused.

A Libra Sun desperately wants to bring peace and harmony, driven by justice, in a diplomatic way. Libra Suns are deep thinkers which can make them very doubtful, making them spiraling down into a hole of overthinking and doubts. The Libra Sun-Sag Moon dynamic makes this all even more deep and almost philosophical in a way there will always be more and more questions, but never answers because Libra simply can’t make choices. All while being solution-oriented!

As Taichi grows up from a middle schooler to a high schooler, it’s that doubt coming from the Libra Sun that kicks Taichi hard. It conflicts with his carefree and bold Aries Rising nature and as that Libra Sun comes shining through, we see Taichi becoming more cautious and reserved compared to his younger self. The guy has a strong inner dialogue always looking for the best solutions to please everyone and bring harmony (I wanted to say ‘balance to the world’, yes to all the avatar the last airbender cameos) to the people and world(s in case of the digital world) around him he so desperately wants to protect. This is what we see happening in Tri, where he can’t choose what’s the right thing… Most of the time that inner dialogue is hidden behind his Aries Rising (and Aries Mars and Sag Moon).

So under that tough and courageous Aries Rising demeanor (remember that a Rising sign is all about engaging and how you come across to others) is a very soft, sweet, friendly and overall smart Libra Sun boy who has troubles expressing himself because the boy is in conflict with himself (which we see in the Dark Master’s arc in Adventure where he expresses his concerns towards his sister to Koushiro… it’s so hard for Taichi to let it all out, even when he needs it badly). It’s so sad, he’s such a complicated character, but that’s also one of the most beautiful things about Taichi. He’s layered af. He could be the best listener (Koushiro’s feels this, that’s why Koushiro can talk so open and freely to Taichi, because Taichi lets him thank you Libra Sun) if it weren’t for his strong fire placements opposite from his airy Sun sign. But give the boy time and space and he can show you his charms in a way no one else owns those charms.

So Taichi’s Libra Sun is hidden away most of the time due to his strong Aries placements. Usually his Rising and Sun sign being in opposite aspect from each other, should neutralize the placements, but Taichi’s Aries Mars placement makes the Aries Rising overrule the Libra Sun. Still, we shouldn’t forget Taichi is a softy with a big heart. He just needs the right people around him to get his charm on and Taichi definitely has some great people collected in his life who can help him think and make decisions.

A few things I want to point out before I stop rambling, because this analysis is already WAY too long.

Taichi’s midheaven in Capricorn in combination with his Libra Sun and Aries Rising makes him very ambitious on the intellectual side! Directly aiming for the UN and quickly climbing up the promotion ladder (and being successful like a true Cap, let’s not forget that).

His Mars was in transition from Pisces to Aries during his birth. Which means his Aries Mars is highly influenced by Pisces which could also explain why he spirals down as Pisces Mars has a lot of stormy energy on the emotional side (whereas Aries Mars has stormy energy on the physical side). When this emotional energy comes out negative, it can lead to mental health problems (!!! TRI DEPRESSED!TAICHI), especially when close friends and family (can you feel it coming? The whole Hikari-trauma is a thing) are involved.

His Libra Sun makes him in need of a group of friends and he loves being surrounded by them! Though he doesn’t like to admit that due to his Aries Rising. Taichi is such a conflicted boy…

An end note on these two boys: A heart to heart/hard friendship with a lot of mutual understanding and support <3

#DFS Digimon Astrology Journey #head-first buddies #Koushiro Izumi #Taichi Yagami #Digimon #Koushiro #Taichi #Izzy Izumi #Tai Kamiya #Izzy #Tai #Astrology #Reference post #Digimon adventure #Digimon tri #Digimon kizuna #Digimon adventure: 2020 #LONG POST.#Digimon headcanons

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queenlua · 3 years

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hey, i started following you recently and ur bio says ur a hacker? any tips on where to start? hacking seems like a v cool/fun way to learn more abt coding and cybersecurity/infrastructure and i'd like to explore it but there's so much on the internet and like, i'm not trying to get into anything illegal. thanks!

huh, an interesting question, ty!

i can give more tailored advice if you hit me up on chat with more specifics on your background/interests.

given what you've written here, though, i'll just assume you don't have any immediate professional aspirations (e.g. you just want to learn some things, and you aren't necessarily trying to get A Cyber Security Job TM within the next three months or w/e), and that you don't know much about any specific programming/computering domain yet.

(stuff under cut because long)

first i'd probably just try to pick some interesting problem that you think you can solve with tech. this doesn't need to be a "hacking" project at first; i was just messing around with computers for ages before i did anything involving security/exploitation.

if you don't already know how to program, you should ideally pick a problem you can solve via programming. for instance: i learned a lot back in the 2000s, when play-by-post forum RPGs were in vogue. see, i'd already been messing around, building my own personal sites, first just with HTML & CSS, and later on with Javascript and PHP. and i knew the forum software everyone used (InvisionPowerBoard) was written in PHP. so when one of the admins at my RPG complained that they'd like the ability to set multiple profile pictures, i was like, "hey i'm good at programming, want me to create a mod to do that," and then i just... did. so then they asked me to program more features, and i got all the sexy nerd cred for being Forum Mod Queen, and it was a good time, i learned a lot.

(i also got to be the person who was frantically IMed at 2am because wtf the forum is down and there's an inscrutable error, what do??? basically sysadmining! also, much less sexy! still, i learned a lot!)

the key thing is that it's gotta be a problem that's interesting to you: as much as i love making dorky sites in PHP, half the fun was seeing other people using my stuff, and i think the era of forum-based RPGs has passed. but maybe you can apply some programming talents to something that you are interested in—maybe you want to make a silly Chrome extension to make people laugh, a la Cloud to Butt, or maybe you'd like to make a program that converts pixel art into cross-stitching patterns, maybe you want to just make a cool adventure game on those annoying graphing calculators they make you use in class, or make a script for some online game you play, or make something silly with Arduino (i once made a trash can that rolled toward me when i clapped my hands; it was fun, and way easier than you'd think!), whatever.

i know a lot of hacker-types who got their start doing ROM hacking for video games—replacing the character art or animations or whatever in old NES games. that's probably more relevant than the PHP websites, at least, and is probably a solid place to get started; in my experience those communities tend to be reasonably friendly to questions. pick a small thing you want to do & ask how to do it.

also, a somewhat unconventional path, but—once i knew how to program a bit of Python, i started doing goofy junk, like, "hey can i implemented NamedTuple from scratch,” which tends to lead to Python metaprogramming, which leads to surprising shit like "oh, stack frames are literally just Python objects and you can manually edit them in the interpreter to do deliberately horrendous/silly things, my god this language allows too much reflection and i'm having too much fun"... since Python is a lot of folks' first language these days, i thought i'd point that out, since i think this is a pretty accessible start to thinking about How Programs Actually Work under the hood. allison kaptur has some specific recommendations on how to poke around, if you wanna go that route.

it's reasonably likely you'll end up doing something "hackery" in the natural course of just working on stuff. for instance, while i was working on the IPB forum software mods, i became distressed to learn that everyone was using an INSECURE version of the software! no one was patching their shit!! i yelled at the admins about it, and they were like "well we haven't been hacked yet so it's not a problem," so i uh, decided to demonstrate a proof of concept? i downloaded some sketchy perl script, kicked it until it worked, logged in as the admins, and shitposted a bit before i logged out, y'know, to prove my point.

(they responded by banning me for two weeks, and did not patch their software. which, y'know, rip to them; they got hacked by an unrelated Turkish group two months later, and those dudes just straight-up deleted the whole website. i was a merciful god by comparison!)

anyway, even though downloading a perl script and just pointing it at a website isn't really "hacking" (it's the literal definition of script kiddie, heh)—the point is i was just experimenting a lot and trying a lot of stuff, which meant i was getting comfortable with thinking of software as not just some immutable relic, but something you can touch and prod in unexpected ways.

this dovetails into the next thing, which is like, just learn a lot of stuff. a boring conventional computer science degree will teach you a lot (provided you take it seriously and actually try to learn shit); alternatively, just taking the same classes as a boring conventional computer science degree, via edX or whatever free online thingy, will also teach you a lot. ("contributing to open source" also teaches you a lot but... hngh... is a whole can of worms; send a follow-up ask if you want that rant.)

here's where i should note that "hacking" is an impossibly broad category: the kind of person who knows how to fuck with website authentication tokens is very different than someone who writes a fuzzer, who is often quite different than someone who looks at the bug a fuzzer produces and actually writes a program that can exploit that bug... so what you focus on depends on what you're interested in. i imagine classes with names like "compilers," "operating systems," and "networking" will teach you a lot. but, like, idk, all knowledge is god-breathed and good for teaching. hell, i hear some universities these days have actual computer security classes? that's probably a good thing to look at, just to get a sense of what's out there, if you already know how to program.

also be comfortable with not knowing everything, but also, learn as you go. the bulk of my security knowledge came when i got kinda airdropped into a work team that basically hired me entirely on "potential" (lmao), and uh, prior to joining i only had the faintest idea what a hypervisor was? or the whole protection ring concept? or ioctls or sandboxing or threat models or, fuck, anything? i mostly just pestered people with like 800 questions and slowly built up a knowledge base, and remember being surprised & delighted when i went to a security conference a year later and could follow most of the talks, and when i wound up at a bar with a guy on the xbox security team and we compared our security models a bunch, and so on. there wasn't a magic moment when i "got it", i was just like, "okay huh this dude says he found a ring-0 exploit... what does that mean... okay i think i got that... why is that a big deal though... better ask somebody.." (also: reading an occasional dead tree book is a good idea. i owe my firstborn to Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development, as outdated as it is, and also O'Reilly's kookaburra book gave me a great overview of web programming back in the day, etc. you can learn a lot by just clicking around random blogs, but you’ll often end up with a lot of random little facts and no good mental scaffolding for holding it together; often, a decent book will give you that scaffolding.)

(also, it's pretty useful if you can find a knowledgable someone to pepper with random questions as you go. finding someone who will actively mentor you is tricky, but most working computery folks are happy to tell you things like "what you're doing is actually impossible, here's why," or "here's a tutorial someone told me was good for learning how to write a linux kernel module," or "here's my vague understanding of this concept you know nothing about," or "here's how you automate something to click on a link on a webpage," which tends to be handier than just google on its own.)

if you're reading this and you're like "ok cool but where's the part where i'm handed a computer and i gotta break in while going all hacker typer”—that's not the bulk of the work, alas! like, for sure, we do have fun pranking each other by trying dumb ways of stealing each other's passwords or whatever (once i stuck a keylogger in a dude's keyboard, fun times). but a lot of my security jobs have involved stuff like, "stare at this disassembly a long fuckin' time to figure out how the program pointer got all fucked up," or, "write a fuzzer that feeds a lot of randomized input to some C++ program, watch the program crash because C++ is a horrible language for writing software, go fix all the bugs," or "think Really Hard TM about all the settings and doohickeys this OS/GPU/whatever has, think about all the awful things someone could do with it, threat model and sandbox accordingly." occasionally i have done cool proof-of-concept hacks but honestly writing exploits can kinda be tedious, lol, so like, i'm only doing that if it's the only way i can get people to believe that Yes This Is Actually A Problem, Fix Your Code

"lua that's cool and all but i wanted, like, actual links and recommendations and stuff" okay, fair. here's some ideas:

microcorruption: very fun embedded security CTF; teaches you everything you need to know as you're doing it.

cryptopals crypto challenges: very fun little programming exercises that teach you a lot of fundamental cryptography concepts as you're going along! you can do these even as a bit of a n00b; i did them in Python for the lulz

the binary bomb lab is hilariously copied by, like, so many CS programs, lol, but for good reason. it's accessible and fun and is the first time most people get to feel like a real hacker! (requires you know a bit of C beforehand)

ctftime is a good way to see when new CTFs ("capture the flag"s; security-focused competitions) are coming up. or, sometimes CTFs post their source code, so you can continue trying them after the CTF is over. i liked Stripe's CTFs when they were going, because they focused on "web stuff", and "web stuff" was all i really knew at the time. if you're more interested in staring at disassembly, there's CTFs focused on that sort of thing too.

azeria has good ARM assembly & exploitation tutorials

also, like, lots of good talks out there; just watching defcon/cansecwest/etc talks until something piques your interest is very fun. i'd die on a battlefield for any of Christopher Domas's talks, but he assumes a lot of specific x86/OS knowledge, lol, so maybe don’t start with that. oh, Julia Evans's blog is honestly probably pretty good for just learning a lot of stuff and really beginner-friendly?

oh and wrt legality... idk, i haven't addressed it here since it hasn't come up in my own work much, tbh. if you're just getting started you're kind of unlikely to Break The Law without, y'know, realizing maybe you're doing something a bit gray-area? and you can cross that bridge when you come to it? Real Hacking TM is way more of a pain-in-the-ass than doing CTFs and such, and you'll learn way more with the latter, so who cares lol just do the fun thing

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whoovesnassistant · 3 years

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A Hello, A Thank You, And A Brain Dump.

Dear PwPP team,

I am a recent fan, and I am quite an odd one. I am a lover of everything Doctor Who, so much so I have memorized everything about the Doctor and his interactions during the 2005 revival. Yet since I have watched basically all the doctor who media I had access to (Excluding the most recent season because it does not interest me in the slightest, no offence to 13’s actor) I was without any Doctor Who content that actually interested me.

Well until I made a discovery. You see, when I was moving to a new house, I found a figure I did not remember owning. It looked like a My Little Pony version of Doctor number 10. It fascinated me because It was officially licensed! So, I went down a rabbit hole, and found a whole new Doctor Who community, lost to YouTube, or even, Internet time entirely.

That’s a little bit of a dramatization, but the point still stands that I discovered something that a lot of people forgot. The thing is, I know nothing about the My Little Pony area of fandoms, but I found this new world of Doctor Who so fascinating. Not only that, but it was a whole community!

It was intoxicating! Doctors that I’d never dream of! And actually seeing the doctor see something he truly did not know! But most of all… people who understood what made Doctor Who, Doctor Who.

I’m not a My Little Pony fan, not in the slightest, but as a Doctor who fan, your series is beyond stellar! I know when people understand Doctor Who or not, and you all did know on a level I don’t even thing some real Doctor Who show writers do! Also, your adaptation of the doctor feels so real, it is just stellar!

So, now I have to thank you, all of you. You gave me hope about the future of Doctor who will be bright and full of life! You let me see a new world of story telling. I never saw audio plays used like a legitimate series to such effectiveness and its truly brilliant and has inspired me to try to work on something similar, in due time.

Yet, lastly, thank you so much for the pure, utter joy your work emanates. Yet again, I’m only a Doctor Who fan, but this series has genuinely gave me more enjoyment that some Doctor Who episodes. It is just, raw, stupid, enjoyable, and oh so timey-wimy fun! Even with some real Doctor Who-esc dark/sad moments that makes it feel like I’m listening to a real BBC and Hasbro collaboration!

In fact, the work of your team gave me a Idea for a episode I just couldn’t keep in my head. I know you most likely have plans for all the future audio plays, but I am a story teller through and through, so consider the last part of this letter like a pitch. Yet again, I’m not trying to be entitled and be like “Here’s my idea, Now make it!”, no I literally have no other living soul to share this idea with and its killing me.

Now if I had to title it, it would be a two part play called “Turn Timer” and “Pestering Past”. “Turn Timer” would start with the Tardis crew just bumbling around in time and space. Maybe heading from or to an adventure. Yet when the Tardis enters modern times, it gets thrown off course due to a temporal blackhole (Or something?) making the Tardis materialize in front of a mansion that should not exist, that stands right dead center in the Evergreen Forest (if I got it wrong don’t kill me). The master of the house would be a unicorn named Turn Timer, and would be letting any travelers stay.

Yet when the Doctor reluctantly stays in a room, they discover that some of the travelers have been seeing a hairless ape-like creature attacking residence, even Turn Timer who would have been attacked, saying that they just popped up a few months ago and he’s been trying to cover it up for business.

Soon, after the Doctor and Tick Tock (Sorry but I have to say this here, that name did NOT age well) go off without Derpy who does not quite trust Turn Timer because…. well I made the name reverse Time Turner for a reason. Yet both the Doctor and Tick Tock does not notice the clearly weird name, so that means duel plot! Yay!

Eventually the smart duo would figure out that these creatures are just human like Autons. Yet, since humans, or even humanoids, don’t exist in this universe, this is extremely odd (at least I think, I still know jack about My Little Pony). Also Imagine this would lead into some funny jokes about how the Doctor needs to explain what the hell a human is, and I just imagine Tick Tock confused Autons being exactly like humans and not just modeled by them.

Meanwhile, Derpy would be grilling Turn Timer (Also again, only a Doctor Who fan but I can just imagine the Donna theme here and it makes me smile) and I Imagine that 70% of this second plot would be jokes. Until before the Auton realization, where Turn Timer makes the mistake of saying Doctor instead of Time Turner (Which I assume he would sign in as) and would be forced to knock out Derpy. Now, after they figure out the Autons are Autons, and the jokes are done, I’m guessing that Turn Timer would project some sort of communication hologram or magic thingy to the Doctor so they can have an exchange that goes along like this.

TuTi “Hello Doctor! Sorry but i did not expect for your assistant to be able to see past my perception field.”

Doc “ What did you do to Derpy Turn Timer?”

TiTo “and what perception field?”

TuTi “ Oh don’t be daft, Doctor! I swear ever since you regenerated you have become so thick! you can’t even see what is so clearly obvious! You only know one person who would know the correct configuration for a humanoid Auton, and be smart enough to do it! ”

Doc, in his serious voice, “ Who are you?”

TuTi, Outraged “Don’t act like you don’t know! We are best friends! The bestest of friends that have ever existed. Long before you started taking your pets onto your Tardis. You know deep down, and you are running away from it! Like you ran away from your universe! Our Universe! I am tired of seeing your adventures in this world like you did not live in another.”

TiTo “Who are you then?”

Doc, still serious “Don’t humor him”

TuTi “ Oh Doctor….Can’t even ask your own questions anymore can you? How far you have fallen from what you once were. You once could snap your fingers and make army’s turn and run away. Now you can’t even keep your pets (Companions) on a tight enough leash anymore.”

Doc “ Wait, fingers? how did you-”

TuTi “Oh now you are getting it. Finally, we are getting back the Doctor that counts. My Doctor, The Oncoming Storm! The Great Exterminator! The Destroyer of Skaro! And lastly, The Timelord Victorious!”

Doc panicked and angered yelling (Probably) “Who are you?”

TuTi “ Finally…. Well… I am the master of the house.. the Master! Of the house.”

That is where “Turn Timer” would end and go into “Pestering Past”, which would pick up with the Master finishing his evil monolog and him and Derpy being in some sort of cave with the Masters Tardis being rigged as a paradox machine. Derpy would probably be in some sort of status field but still being able to interact with the Master.

I am sure they would discuss why the Master was so obsessed with getting the Doctor to recognize him. The fact that in the Doctor Who universe, The Master was so utterly empty without his “Best Friend” he could not stand to exist in a world without him, So he tracked the Doctor down, even through different universes just so he could have fun with his “Best Friend”.

Also probably telling Derpy more about the Doctor than he has. And most likely telling stories about when the Doctor was very angry, and why he is the last of the timelords. I thought this would be a very interesting thing to pop up later on, a Derpy is wondering if the Doctor is worth being around if they could do such a thing then turn around and say its horrid.

On the topside, I’m imagining the Doctor more scared and upset than seen in your audio plays. The fact that he came to a whole new universe, a place to make a new start and have less weight to carry, has been shattered by probably the only person that could have followed him. And to make it worse, it was someone who knows almost as much as the Doctor without his self control, and knowledge of his past life.

When the Doctor and the New Master meet face to face, I imagine it would be a battle of chaotic personalities on each side. Also, In my characterization of the Master, I think he would be sarcastically energetic to counteract the Doctors normal energetic craziness. Also, for the hell of it, let’s make the Master obsessed with pegasi instead of unicorns because narrative symbolism.

Lastly, we would learn that creatures that don’t belong in the world of My Little Pony (Cybermen and Terror are my best examples) where caused by the Masters Paradox machine. This gives a reason why they appeared and connects things in a neat little bow. Also gives a reason for Tick Tock to be mad too, due to the fact that the Master indirectly fueled the war he lost his family and time period for.

And that’s all I have. I don’t know how it would end except I think the Master would snatch Derpys Tardis key to use it to make something to keep tabs on the Tardis crew.

I’m sorry that half of this thank you and appreciation letter was more about my ideas than how I adore yours. Everyone on the PwPP crew to me is absolutely stellar! You all have made something truly amazing from a Doctor Who story telling standpoint. Lastly, please have fun making your audio plays or whatever you go on to do. It breaks my heart watching people create and have no fun in it.

With love and appreciation,

Raven.

We’re happy this show has brought you plenty of Doctor Who entertainment, even if you’re not an MLP fan. It’s always fun to learn about people who are generally a fan of one but not the other, who are still big fans of our series.

We aren’t really taking any ideas since we have a solid outline of what the rest of the episodes will be, and we can’t really reveal what characters might be appearing later. Your idea was a fun take on the Master though, perhaps consider writing a fanfic, as I’m sure people would enjoy it and we’ll be willing to post fanfics here.

#long post #submission

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keplercryptids · 4 years

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how I organize my DM notes using OneNote

a few people said they were interested in seeing how i organize my notes for the games that i run, and let’s be honest, that’s all i need to make a huge informative post. (to my players, you can look! i’ve crossed out info you shouldn’t have lol)

i use OneNote, which i *think* you can use for free online even if you don’t have microsoft. could be wrong on that though. anyway, details and screenshots are under the cut!

here are the sections i split everything into:

[ID: a menu bar showing different tabs that say Players, NPCs, World, Calendar, Sessions.]

“Players” is the least completed session for my online game because my players have uploaded their character sheets to Roll20 so I got lazy about copying that info over. but normally, this section is split into different pages for each of my players, and will have the player’s contact info, as well as their character sheet, etc. but really, the only important part of the character sheet, for my purposes, is their backstory and passive perception and insight modifiers. I will also note their relationships with NPCs here (as you’ll see in the NPC section), and keep track of their renown with various factions (i do a homebrew renown-tracking thingy to keep track of friends and enemies of the party).

next is NPCs!

[ID: a screenshot of a particular NPC’s page, Z’ress Matyl. A lot of it has been blacked out lol.]

I used to keep track of EVERY SINGLE NPC this way but it got overwhelming fast, so I only put notable NPCs here (either famous ones, ones that i expect will be around a bit, or ones my PCs will fight/fight with). i use this section to quickly remind myself who the NPC is, their class/race/alignment, what they look like, their personality and a short backstory if applicable. you can also see the little table where i keep track of relationships, and that’s how I track PC relationships too. if relevant, i keep the NPC’s statblock here as well. once i’ve created more NPCs for this campaign, i’ll organize the pages into subpages by family/faction, but i’m not quite there yet with this one!

now onto World!

[ID: a screenshot of the World tab, which includes sections titled: Sirona history, Pantheon, Dal Z’har, Iesma Empire, and World notes along with a lot of town names for each of the areas. The main text on the screen is about a small town called Sweetvale.]

as the name suggests, i keep most worldbuilding info here, including detailed info about the towns and cities the PCs visit or have been to. some towns (like Sweetvale!) have more detail than others. i also keep larger world info in this section: world history/conflicts, the pantheon and origin stories of the gods (i have a homebrewed pantheon so that’s why it’s necessary), and overarching themes and shit that are relevant to the campaign. this is also a place where i’d keep maps for my own reference if i were more organized. “World Notes” is where i furiously type ideas as they pop into my head, to later develop. i wish i could show you that section, it’s buckwild and has a lot of exclamation points, but it’s very spoilery.

onto the calendar!

[ID: the calendar tab, showing pages for the months Gelus, Tabeo, Imber, Flos, Lux, Sol, Ardor, Messis, Folium, Stella, Nox and Hiberius, all in 52 AC. The main text on the screen shows the days of the month in a table with notes of what happened on each day. The days of the week are Moonday, Treeday, Waterday, Thunderday, Fireday, Starday and Sunday.]

as you can see, i use a homebrewed calendar because of course i do. full disclosure: i stole most of those week day names from another DM because i love them. but basically the calendar for this world is a 12-month year, 28 day-month, 7 day-week, so it’s kept similar to our IRL calendar. this is where i keep my primary notes of what happens in each session. they’re brief, because 1) i have a pretty good memory for the hijinks the party gets up to, and 2) i put a lot of detail into the plans for each session so i feel like i can go more minimalist here. the most important things i note for each session are: where the party went, if they met any NPCs, the fights they had and if they obtained any special or magical items. i also use the calendar to keep track of full moons, world events and holidays in the world.

next up is Sessions!

[ID: The Sessions tab, showing a page titled “Adventures” with links to three adventures listed. On the side panel, there are sections called Adventures, Current Adventure, Campaign Notes, session ideas and Tech shit.]

“Adventures” is where I keep all the notes for past adventures (See below). I link to each paragraph (a feature of OneNote) so i can easily click and get to what i need to see. the “Current Adventure” page is where i keep notes for, you guessed it, the current session, just to minimize how much i need to scroll, and at the end of the session i cut/paste everything that we got to into the Adventures section. Campaign notes and session ideas are, again, where i furiously type notes that make no sense and need to be edited and expanded upon, haha. And Tech shit is where I put the order of stuff i need to plug in for my online sessions. i’m kind of a dummy.

below is an example of my session prep notes:

[ID: a screenshot of text showing detailed notes of Adventure 1.]

this is just to give you an idea of how detailed my notes are. they are typically this detailed, if not more so. but i know lots of DMs will basically type out a hook and a resolution and leave the middle blank for notes. it’s really up to you and how you best prep and run sessions. i err on the side of over-preparing because it’s who i am, and when i try to go into a session with less preparation, i feel overwhelmed lol. i occasionally add a few notes here and there as we play in this section, but as i said, keep most of my notes to the Calendar section.

you can also see above how i list NPCs that i expect my players to only briefly interact with. Name, age, appearance, a few notes about personality/motivation, and that’s it. OneNote is cool because you can search for specific words and phrases and it’ll search the whole notebook, so i can easily find these NPCs again if i need to. (note: normally my notes wouldn’t be this....structured? as in, they’ll be less linear than this typically, but this was for the first session where i knew which PCs i’d be introducing first, etc. don’t want you to think i’m a big old wet blanket DM.)

and that’s it! hopefully this is useful for some of you, or at least gives you ideas for how you might organize your game moving forward. IMO the most useful sections are the World, Calendar and Session sections: they’re what i reference and add to the most. let me know if you have any questions!

#dm tips #dm advice #Dungeons and Dragons #dnd #campaign notes #dm stuff #jd&d

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bedazzlecat · 4 years

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My ideal #TheSims5 would be...

Create a World is base game included. It has fail safes and error guards to prevent causing problems with routing. You can shape the landscape with mountains, trees, rocks, bushes, landmarks, etc, and be able to place as many lots as you need. Would require a better program that Sims 3 CAW.

It comes with 3 basic built worlds like Sims 4

It's completely open world like Sims 3

Cars and boats and other vehicles are DLC options. If there are horses, we should be able to buy a wagon or carriage.

It comes with cats and dogs do start with and you can have DLC to add other animals if you want them. And if you want wild animals (to wander your world or to live in a preserve) this should be an option too. You should be able to choose only the items you need for your style of play.

Hunting should be an option. I don't even care if it's a rabbit hole like the bear hunt in sims medieval. I like there were steaks in Sims 3. Not everything has to be cute in the Sims .

Some grit and hardship without dying from embarrassment from peeing your pants like a toddler is required. Give the sims some dignity. Hypothermia? Fine. Drowning when you're so tired you pass out? Fine. Laughing yourself to death, stupid.

Gardening plants should have unique meshes that look like real plants. Dragon fruit does not grow on a bush and corn doesn't grow on a vine. I want to utilize all of my ingredients in something. It took several packs before I had a use for bluebells in my game other than simoleons. That's not acceptable.

Off the grid options should exist in base game. Roughing it in all forms should be base game. People love rags to riches challenges. Being poor should be base game, not take 10 packs to get a bush to pee in, an option to make candles, and live off the grid. Mansions should take 10 expansions. Cities should take 10 expansions Capitalism should take 10 expansions.

The ability to make swimmable water features that are not pools, like lakes, rivers, and waterfalls.

Lots of DIY activities for the sims, especially survival related. The woodworking table was good but it had so few items. The eco fabrication thingy was cool but big klunky machines is what I hate about sims 4. Like the telescope and microscope.

Population control. If I want an uninhabited island, I should be able to have one without mods.

Cars are DLC options on an individual basis. Otherwise you have to take public transportation. I hate yellow cabs in sims 3. A public bus, train, or subway. A transportation career should be an option.

There's like 10 different cars in sims 3 I didn't use because I prefer horses, broomsticks, boats, and motorcycles and the occasional cc car. It really bloats the game to have so much unusable stuff. Maybe an option to hide objects you don't use.

Variety in community lot types.

I love the lot traits in Sims 4.

I love the changing lot types like the seasonal community lot in sims 3 and the eco living community lot. More of that!

Sims should be able to join a religion as in sims medieval. Custom religions would be interesting, which would influence sim behaviors and feelings.

Babies grow into toddlers, grow into children, grow into tweens, grow into teens grow into young adults, adult, middle age, and elderly. Ghosts are optional.

Supernatural/occult sims should be DLC on an individual basis. If I want witches and ghosts but not aliens, it should be so.

Time periods in history can be adjusted in options. It limits what sort of items you can use or clothing.

Be able to change colors and textures like in sims 3.

Bunk beds are base game.

Weather should be base game.

Illness, injuries, and cures should be base game.

Individual adventure options should be DLC. Individual careers should be DLC.

So say I have base game, my sims can take plant remedies to get better, which requires a skill, but to get "better care" you have to buy the hospital expansion that comes with the career, but also can be adjusted to some kind of economic heathcare system that you can choose. Taxes vs deductables.

User created custom content can be part of the game. People can get paid and EA can get paid for making crazy good custom content.

Self employment should be base game.

I don't want to sell on plopsy. I did like selling on the market tables on sims 4 but it doesn't always work the way I want it too.

Risky and autonomous woohoo should be a thing as should birth control without an expansion. Like even, say my sim can eat a plant and have all the woohoo she wants without pregnancy. Moodlets can be like a honey moon period, or there could be conversational based moodlets. A couple could have a conversation to "try for baby" and they get autonomous action moodlets to encourage this behavior until pregnancy is achieved. A "fertility treatment" should be a temporary moodlet from a hospital, not a trait.

Recycling should be base game. Especially breaking down recycled materials such as metals, glass, and plastic for home building materials or diy materials (like bits and pieces from sims 4 eco lifestyle)

Lots of slots for clutter. I don't like having to cheat to place objects closer together or on top of a shelf.

Wall height adjustment to any size. Auto roofs, custom roofs curved roofs, different textures. stairs of all types including spirals and ladders included in base game. Free window and door placement. Clear roofs, clear floor tiles should be available if wanted. Ceiling tiles should be a thing.

Have a full range of gender expression and sexual characteristics.

Hide /unhide mailbox to have bills and items automatically delivered to your inventory. The ability to auto pay,

Cell phone should have an option to turn it off. Turn it on, get lots of calls, invites, opportunities, etc. That's fine. But the Sim gods give and take away when it's their game.

Consequences to your actions. Don't have a criminal career without crime and punishment in the world. And yes this should be a playable career.

Don't have fires without firefighters ever again.

Have the option to turn off public services like police and fire department if desired.

I hate rabbit hole careers but some people prefer them. Jobs should have all have rabbit holes and all have options to follow to work. Even school.

Pristine graphics.

A meaningful emotional/mood/trait system.

Favorites: music, color, genre (movies and books), food.

Custom music could tie in with a service like spotify.

Game music (build/buy, maps, and loading screens) is obnoxious. I like how in sims 4 you can turn it off.

I understand fish go bad but don't let me forget to put thing in my fridge. Store all harvestable and fish at once in a fridge.

Little pop ups that tell you about a book the sim is reading would be a nice touch. You should be able to buy books your sims wrote and edit these text pop ups so that they can be shared with the gallery.

Speaking of the gallery, there should be a Sims 5 gallery.

There should also be a virtual real time sims online community. Add friends and visit each other's houses, world, etc. Your sims social media account is on there too. You can share what your sim is doing with their blog posts, followers, videos, etc. Subscribe and let your sim watch them on any screen in the house or get updates on what they are doing or if they're throwing a party which you can be invited to or hear about later. It's all built into the game seamlessly. (I know. But... This is my fantasy sims game!)

I love what they did with the inventory in sims 4 with one of the updates. Keep that.

Every expansion should come with a world. And the builds should be worth buying the world. Otherwise give us the power to create and share our own so that people who can't build or don't want to spend the time can have access to quality creative content.

I know I'm kind of all over the place but this is the kind of game I want.

#Sims 3 #Sims 4 #Sims 5 #ea games

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teal-deer · 4 years

Text

Everquest Next, Matrix Online, and some rambly thoughts about the next big MMO thing

Man. Just. Thinking today about a very long discussion I had with @obscuritory about how video game archival work is already an insanely difficult task, and games like The Matrix Online are quite literally impossible to archive in a playable state. For those that weren’t around when TMO was a thing, it was unique among multiplayer games in that admins actually played the NPCs. If you talked to Morpheus, you were talking to an actual human, not a generic script. In turn, this meant that there were live ARG like events in game where individual players really could shine, in a way that didn’t feel like “ugh so and so got the cool thing and we missed out!” but instead “holy shit, did you see what so and so ran into!?” It’s what Guild Wars 2 really wanted to be in its early stages of development, which you could still kinda see in the initial attempts at Living World stuff like the Karka Invasion, but couldn’t quite get to because they’d already hewed too hard into the Everyone Is The Main Character thing.

The problem in the end with Matrix Online is that kind of curated, individual experience isn’t monetizable, and MMOs require so much massive server upkeep and infrastructure that you kinda *do* need to make money. It doesn’t matter how passionate you are about your unique MMO if you can’t afford the server capacity to handle that much stuff going on (MMORPGs are honestly some of the most complex pieces of programming on the planet right now, it’s silly. so many moving parts). If you have a million players, even if you have a rotating team of people playing only a few major NPC roles (Matrix Online’s very premise made this doable, because tons of NPCs in the open world were, in universe, just programs!)... you still get overwhelmed. There’s only so many unique, curated experiences a team can keep coming up with to feed the appetites of such a large audience.

And that brings me to Everquest Next, or, more importantly, Everquest Landmark’s promises. Basically, Everquest Landmark was a content creation tool that let people do kinda Minecraft Creative Mode-ish building, with the idea that the “best” content would then be put into Everquest’s proper MMO mode. And that in turn just... I’m just rambling this into Tumblr right now, this isn’t a formal essay, but I just keep thinking about this particular Holy Grail of an online multiplayer *thing*, this thing I think companies keep seeking after and never quite get to, which is a fully realized world where players can create their own content and storylines, while admins still have some degree of control and can still sculpt an overall narrative. So, not quite SecondLife, which was a total free-for-all. Something a little closer to MineCraft, but bigger in scope and ambition. Something that evokes the best stories I hear about stuff like Star Wars Galaxies, where people reminisce fondly about just being a bartender and not some adventurer, just... running their cool little bar. I genuinely think that’s what the original designers behind Fallout 76 wanted, but the corporate guys at ZeniMax Media (the company which owns Bethesda Softworks, Id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, and some other stuff I forget about) both went “Hey isn’t that Fort Night thingy popular with the kids” and “We can’t figure out how to squeeze money out of players with this.” And I think that last bit is the problem with that kind of ambition right now. As nostalgic as some of us get about things like Matrix Online, SWG, and even Everquest Landmark... that group is a niche audience to begin with. The game design challenges behind this kind of project alone are enormous, this balance of like... how do you give people simple tools to use but don’t overwhelm them but also maintain a consistent universe that isn’t just a free for all build whatever skyscraper sized dongs you want but isn’t tedious but doesn’t dissolve into fighting but ---- and that’s before you even get into the difficulties in programming it, or the server architecture required to handle it. Every monetization scheme I can think of besides a flat sub fee would just poison the well with the kinds of players you’d want, and a sub fee probably wouldn’t be enough in this day and age. ‘

mumble mumble.

#rambling #video games #mmos #stuff #thoughts #nonsense

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classysansypansy · 5 years

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Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph 1 (My Theory)

Okay, so before I begin my theory about Wreck-It Ralph 1, let me say something about Wreck-It Ralph 2. Disney had so much potential derived from the content of the first movie, and they threw it in the garbage with the second movie. That’s all I wanted to say about Ralph Breaks the Internet.

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!!!

Anyhow...okay, so you remember Turbo from Wreck-It Ralph 1, correct? Good, ‘cause if you don’t then watch the movie because it’s freaking amazing.

Well, I have a theory about him. First off, let me explain who he is. I’ll take mercy on those too lazy to watch the movie to find out. lol

Turbo was a character in the fictional retro video game ‘TurboTime’, his in-game catchphrase being ‘Turbo-tastic!’. His racing game was the top dog for awhile, but quickly got pushed aside for a new racing game called ‘Roadblasters’ in Litwak’s Arcade. This being a Disney film, the character of Turbo got jealous of the new game, so he left his own and went to Roadblasters, causing the game to glitch, go out of order, and get unplugged.

So that’s the end of Turbo, right? Nah...thank Disney for that. Instead, he recoded another racing game called ‘Sugar Rush’ so that its Princess (later revealed as Vannelope von Schweetz) would disappear (at least he tried that part), and would no longer remember she was the ruler of its candy kingdom...along with all of the other subjects. Then, to top that, he recoded his own avatar, dubbing himself ‘King Candy’, his catchphrase being ‘Have some candy!’. For years, he was the king of Sugar Rush and nobody suspected a thing...Vanellope was dismissed as a glitch in the game and forgotten, stuck inside the game console for life...maybe.

Now, on to the juicy stuff.

So, yanno how I mentioned unplugging? No, it’s not an innuendo. Well, thing is, if a character is still in the game when it’s unplugged, they will die. This is how Wreck-It Ralph truly starts, with Vanellope stuck in her game because of being a ‘glitch’.

Aside from that, there are other metta details mentioned throughout the movie, one of them being an arcade rule; If you die in your own game, you will respawn. If you die in a game that isn’t yours...you simply die. No coming back, ever.

This is how Disney might’ve thought they could trick us into thinking Turbo died during the climax of the movie. Sure, we found out he wasn’t supposed to be in Sugar Rush, that he had just recoded it so as to seem like he was an official part of it. Logic states he wasn’t in his own game when he died.

But logic is wrong, in this case.

First- If you think back, the code of Sugar Rush that Turbo created included him, his face and name being in the actual database as a large, glowing...thingy. Just like any other official code. Think about it. A game developer for...let’s say Xbox...can add updates to the game...updates that are new and that are now coded into the actual system each time a player runs the game. Turbo basically just added his own DLC, in hindsight. Thus...he WAS part of Sugar Rush as King Candy, even after he glitched out at the end and was turned into a freakish Turbo/King Candy/Cybug hybrid. Wait, you don’t believe me? Well...

That brings me to my second point- Vanellope was supposed to cross the finish line to reset the game, right? Most people overlook this while talking about King Candy, thinking Turbo’s demise was his final bow. But since he WAS part of the game, and he died before she could even get close to the finish line...he died while he was still part of the game, before he reset. Yeah, he was a glitchy hybrid, but the King Candy part (and thus Turbo, too) would’ve still lived on. He would’ve respawned as King Candy, somewhere. He didn’t actually die, only the Cybug part of him died. And when she reset Sugar Rush, his King Candy guise would’ve/might’ve vanished...but Turbo, himself would still be out there. STILL don’t believe me?

Alriiiighty, well you’ve forced me to come to my third and final point- I have evidence he’s still alive, and it’s in the movie’s end credits. The credits are around 25% pixelated animation, with the animation being set AFTER the events of the actual movie. It follows the lives of our favorite Wreck-It Ralph characters: Ralph and Vanellope have a great old time, game-hopping everywhere, and Calhoun and Felix Jr. are now married and love to adventure in Calhoun’s game...among other events. During transitions and name titles, we briefly see inside Sugar Rush’s game code, with a code plate-thingy as a name holder box thing. Now...this is set AFTER the movie’s events, correct? Then why would King Candy be touching that plate to transition to the next credit? Okay, so if you look really hard or pause it at the PRECISE frame, there’s a moment...a millisecond where you can see a cartoonish hand with a ruffly, purple sleeve reach out and touch the code in order to flow to the next credit in the animation sequence. Not a pink sleeve, like Vanellope’s royal princess dress...but a purple sleeve, like King Candy’s dress-coat. This is set after the movie, so this has to mean something...and it means my theory is right, and Disney is hinting that he’s still out there, based on the logic I mentioned.

My theory in full: TURBO STILL LIVES!

Prove me wrong.

#disney theory #disney #wreck it ralph #turbo #king candy #disney villains #theory #fan theory #video games #disney movies #animations #cartoon villains

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lynxgriffin · 6 years

Text

Straight Outta Monster Narnia

HEY HEY I WASN’T EXPECTING TO DO THIS EVER AGAIN BUT WE’RE BACK

I’M GONNA PLAY ME SOME DELTA RUNE HERE

THOUGHTS AS I GO! ARE UNDER THE CUT!

Here we GOOOOOOO~!

Survey Program! Nice! Ominous!

I am here yes!

Truly excellent dude

OH MAKING A VESSEL NOW what are we Xehanort

NEATO I can pick Chara or Frisk heads or others…

Let’s do someone new. This kinda longish hair head.

STRIPES FOR DAYS! Longish sleeves, methinks

The legs are almost all the same LMAO

This is so friggin creepy I l OVE IT

Favorite food is PAIN nah it’s soft

BLOOD TYPE D. D for DOGGO

You have been gifted with kindness, not-XionFrisk

Pain AND seizure. Kinda wonder what happens if you say no tho…

But I don’t want to start over so let’s go with yes

OH FRIGGIN BUUUUURNED BY THE GAME, HAHAHA

Hi Toriel, you’re looking nice!

That’s a lot of friggin trophies over there

Also Kris, you need some eyes

RELIGIOUS SKA

So we have overachieving perfect child and sad boring child, okay

Awww Gerson wrote a book! How neat

It’s only you…..FOR NOW!!!!

It just isn’t home without white fur stuck in the drain, is it

CHAIRIEL’S RETURN!!!!

Also there’s some weird graphical flicker going on when I move and I wonder if it’s not because I’m playing full screen here

“Spray For The Boys, Flamin’ Hot Pizza Flavor” Damn Toby I missed your incredible sense of humor

DOES TORIEL USE PET SHAMPOO please say yes

ASRIEL’S AT COLLEGE AND UNDYNE’S A POLICE MONSTER, PERFECT

PROFESSOR ALPHYS IMMA GET AN A+ IN ANIME CLASS

DAMN who do I pick as my partner

Like…I really want Temmie…but also Snowdrake…

Random snake is also very good…

Ahhh I see this is gonna be pre-determined

HAHAHAHA FUCKIN BURNED AGAIN BY THIS HORRIBLE BLUE DUCK

Thank you cool snake I love your origin story

Oh this reindeer girl is very cute

MOTHA. FOKKIN. SUSIE

I instantly love her, goodbye

Oh Alphys you’re so not good at putting anyone in trouble

I JUST REALIZED TEMMIE HAS HER EGG ON THE DESK

Susie are you eating chalk

Oh sheet I like Susie less now

GAH DAMN THIS ESCALATED QUICKLY

Susie, Kris doesn’t even HAVE a face

Haha totally cut off my answer there

Hmm. I sense…a theme here.

Wow this really is putting on the restrictive aspects here

Now that’s a spooky face

Oh it ain’t gonna be that simple, mean girls

Well, this sure seems like an underground! Also…Kris is green now, okay

Hi there creepy waving things!

To reiterate: this is soooo creepy AND I LOVE IT

Puzzles! We got puzzles again! CREEPY PUZZLES

Whelp, we found Susie, just kinda hiding out in a…dead dust bunny thingie

LOL so much for a party member following you around

Well this is a new and interesting take on the bullet hell mechanics

Such interesting and different architecture

THE KINGDOM OF DARKNESSSSS

Yes let’s take a sudden HARD SHIFT into Final Fantasy

THE QUEST OF THE DELTA KNIGHTS that was an MST3K ep you know

About like…Leonardo da Vinci actually. Except he was a whiny bitch

LMAO Susie just “nah destroying the world sounds neat”

JOKESTER SANS GLIDES IN A FLAMING TRICYCLE SURE WHY NOT

VERY DIFFERENT COMBAT SYSTEM

“Dunno how I got an ax but like, that’s cool”

CAN’T WAIT FOR THE REMIXES OF THIS BATTLE MUSIC OKAY

Dunno if there’s a pacifist version of this game but I stick to tradition so I’m gonna try it

RALSEI. I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE

THE POWER OF FLUFFY BOYS SHINES WITHIN YOU it sure as hell does, game

The heckin heck Ralsei is so cute

Yup yup we gonna try pacifist this first time!

“If you’re reading this…I guess you’re dead.” Fair enough.

Gaster noises when trying to use the cell phone, hmmmm…

It’s an inverse papou fruit!

Susie just up and attacks this cake, all right

Battle is cool but it’s gonna take some getting used to, think I accidentally used both of my items

YOUR SENSE OF DIRECTION WON’T SAVE YOU NOW

“It’s like a dinner made out of three glasses of milk” Ralsei you’re SO CUTE

Now to see if TP stays leveled between battles…

“I thought you were running away.” / “Yeah, I finished.”

Fugdamn I want —pictures of Spiderman— remixes of this music ON MY DESK TODAY

FRIGHTENING FANFARE

Damn that puzzle still is tricky

Gah damn that was hilarious but also terrifying

We have the power of FLUFFY BOYS and MEAN GIRLS we are UNSTOPPABLE

Ohhh so that’s what the heart outline does!

Now that is a coooool cat and I like him already

Awww I don’t have enough money for the spooky sword

Susie just roastin’ everybody left and right

THEY GOT BARRY

These mechanics continue to be interesting and a bit more complex

“Damn, didn’t get to impale myself” I’m sure you’ll get your chance Susie

It’s really interesting how we’re basically group-battling to PREVENT the tank from beating the crap out of everyone

Oh now that light trick is weird

They keep throwing the usual chess and playing card guys at us and somehow I’m Suspicious

Is that a bucket. ARE Y’ALL HOMESTUCKING AT ME AGAIN

LMAO did Susie call us the Fuckboys or something

Oh, the Shit Squad, I guess!

THE POWER OF THE SHIT SQUAD SHINES WITHIN YOU HECK YESSSS

“I, Mr. Society, am far too intelligent to ever bow down to such a tyrant!” Hmmm.

Oh, it’s Sir Lion Plateface again

L E G S

THE BOSS JUST DRINKS A GALLON OF MILK THAT’S FINE

Well Ralsei got kinda junked there but WE DEFEATED SIR LION PLATEFACE

Cakes…are also my enemy…

Yeeeeah kinda saw that one coming

Susie I get the feeling you’re not going to enjoy being a bad guy either

Dang son I have no clue what’s going on anymore WE JUST HAD SOME SALSA IN A TREE STUMP

This jack’s got my number

That sure is a three-eyed three-headed cat thingamajig

Awww I like Clover

“All proceeds go to kicking your ass” CAN I USE THIS LINE IN REAL LIFE PLEASE

Hot damn we just squeaky hammered our broken cake into ULTIMATE CAKE

Why does a sweet little boy have a mustache indeed.

Create a machine to thrash your own ass, nice

It’s my beautiful death laser duck! Tops in GUN’S

Man Susie and Lancer are just having the time of their lives here

Finally, respect for pinecone-eaters!

Awww Susie, are you actually starting to worry about someone who respects your eating of chalk and pinecones

Oh thank goodness, got through that maze thing

Yes, finally, it’s our DUCK TANK LASER

Why does it say Tuna on it

“Your design sucked so we blew it up” This is like that one Berlin tour guide I had

GANGED UP ON THEM WITH KINDNESS, HA

Whelp, back to telling enemies that Susie will kick them in the shins I guess!

YES LANCER JOIN THE SHIT SQUAD

OMFG THAT FAAAAACE WHAT IS THAT FACE

Hey we’ve got a full Final Fantasy team now! Neat

STOOL FORME

I like how Lancer just sliiiiiides around outside the party instead of walking with

Hmmm well that friendship feeling didn’t last long

You done got locked in the dungeon

Yup sure did eat that jail moss two minutes in

HUH, we’re controlling Susie now

In which choices do not matter…

SUSIE’S FOKKIN PISSED

And we can’t control her actions…but why controlling the human soul?

A pair of eyes got arrested?! What IS the world coming to?!!

Oh dear, we found a bunch of kings in baby jail

Why are these filthy cages so happy-looking

Awwww Susie joined the party for realizes!

So, this about final boss point for this business?

Why are you guys just sitting on a pile of loot

And just who is this sassy lost child?

BAAHAHAHAAA

HECK YEAH WE GET TO FLIRT AGAIN

I am now BED INSPECTOR yes

Hello again fancy blue boy

“Can…can we see it” / “No.”

This sure is a jammin party with CLUB MUSIC OH HO HO HO

Awww he put his bicycle to bed

‘Welcome to my shop, you ungrateful worms” HELL YEAH

I do not wisheth to hear your MP3s! I would rather listen to the sweet song of Death!

Prepare for a battle with…WHATEVER THIS IS!!!!

JUST FUGGIN CHUCK RALSEI AT SIR LION PLATEFACE, I LIKE IT

Six dollars, for all of that?! Geez

WHELP this looks like final boss time…

Hiiiii there Lancer

Oh dang is gettin serious now

Oh woooow that’s…someone’s fetish right there

HOKAY that was tricky but! Having the defense abilities certainly helped with pacifism through that…

Despite ending this peacefully, I don’t think this scene is gonna end on a happy note…

W H E L P

DAYUM that face from Susie!!

Awwww poor Ralsei

We only have BAD-byes WUAH WUAH WUAAAH

DAWWW lil’ Asriel-lookin dude with glasses (and YES I see that anagram there)

LMAO Susie’s face

EPIC ROCK MUSIIIIIC

Also I’ve really been enjoying the color effects

Awww look at this epic adventure you two had in the closet

So basically we went to Monster Narnia, neat

Awww Susie likes Monster Narnia

Oh no we worried Toriel! THE WORST

LIBRARBY

YOU STUDY THOSE HOT DEMON COMICS FOR COLLEGE, TEMMIE

Hiiii Toby you busy makin’ something!

ALPHYS NO, YOU BETRAY MEW MEW KISSY CUTIE

OFFICE UNDYNE, DOn’T ARREST ME

I like reindeer girl’s rowdy hospitalized dad

PARTY ANIMAL TORIEL CONFIRMED

I like how there’s just a poster on the wall in this room that reads PAIN

The police tape simply reads NGGAAAAAHHHHH!

Good grief there’s SO MUCH STUFF TO EXPLORE HERE BUT I HAVE TO KEEP GOING

Snowdrakes don’t have arms, oh no!!!

“Does it hurt to be made of blood??” ….Yes. Yes it does.

HIIIIIIIII SANS

Woah woah woah WOAH WOAH SANS

Everyone is here! Even Ice Wolf!

Yes I’ll take a Double Ice Pizza you weirdos

OH MY GOOOOOOOOOD IT’S BURGERPANTS

10 OUT OF 10 GAME NOW

HIS FACES!!!! “C H I C K S”

That was brilliant, Burgerpants, thank you for existing

Catty!!! Hey where’s Bratty!

Noooo you gotta be besties with Bratty!

Brother Doug…?

Oh no, Mettaton, come out and talk to us!

ASGORE, HELLO

OMG Asgore hugs

Soul flowers….???

Awwww got some flowers for Toriel

THE GAY GUARDS IN THEIR GAY FLANNEL, YAY

It’s so late but I can’t stop until I’ve talked to LITERALLY EVERYONE

Thaaaat’s politics! …Rarely.

Comes to church for the fruit juice, sounds about right

DOG GRAVE, NO

Let’s go into the woods…what could go wrong…

Why can’t I get into the creepy shed…

Well, I think I got everything, so let’s go home now…

ASRIEL MAINS YOSHI IN SMASH CONFIRMED

Awwww Toriel is not big on Asgore’s bouquet!

OKAY decided to go to sleep here.

…Well that didn’t work out great

UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

UUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

WHAT??????????

WHAT????????????

WHAT?????????

HAHA I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THE FUK HAPPENED IN ALL OF THIS BUT UH. WHEN’S CHAPTER TWO??

THAT SURE WAS A HELL OF A THING

No really Toby please WHAAAAAAATTT

OKAY I HOPE I DIDN’T MISS ANYTHING IMPORTANT BYYYYEEEE

#undertale #delta rune #lynx plays delta rune #lynx plays undertale #undertale spoilers #delta rune spoilers #scheduled this so it posted after the no spoilers rule so hopefully that works out #NO PLEASE WHAT HAPPENED HERE I STILL HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS #also I NEED MUSIC REMIXES NOW #also also so uh #EXPECT ART IN THE FUTURE #SORRY I CAN'T HELP MYSELF #including doing the running commentary thing!

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edenfalling · 5 years

Text

[Fic] “Frog Hunt” -- Homestuck

Summary: SBURB is not turning out anything like you'd hoped, and your game session may be broken. Which is a problem, because you can't go back to Earth -- last you checked, it's busy being an apocalyptic wasteland -- and judging by your most recent dreams, the rest of the Medium beyond your little Incipisphere is an equally apocalyptic wasteland of ghosts and horrorterrors. The only way out is through. You have to win the game.

Winning SBURB requires frogs.

Note: I started this fic way back in 2012, hit Jade's horrorterror dreams, and had no idea where to go from there. Last week it occurred to me that actually the horrorterror dreams made a perfectly reasonable ending, provided I filled in a missing middle scene, established an emotional/thematic through-line, and tweaked stuff until the new parts played nice with the old ones. So I did. :) [2,325 words]

--------------------------------------------- Frog Hunt ---------------------------------------------

SBURB is not turning out anything like you'd hoped. You wanted to see your friends in person, go on cool adventures, and save the world. You guess technically the cool adventure part is happening? But it turns out that being in the middle of an adventure is mostly very upsetting and dangerous.

Also your game session may be broken. Which is a problem, because you can't go back to Earth -- last you checked, it's busy being an apocalyptic wasteland -- and judging by your most recent dreams, the rest of the Medium beyond your little Incipisphere is an equally apocalyptic wasteland of ghosts and horrorterrors. The only way out is through. You have to win the game.

Winning SBURB requires frogs.

You have a lot of pointed questions to ask whoever designed the symbolism behind this process.

You also have no idea what you're doing. Zoology is not your thing! Botany and rocket science are your things!

But you've done crazier things in the name of friendship than breed magic universe-creating frogs. And this time you'll have Dave by your side, even if all he can help you can do is win the Olympic gold medal for synchronized flipping out, which might as well be a thing now since Earth is gone and if anyone ever reestablishes the Olympics it will be you and you can stick in any sports you feel like.

That analogy may have gotten away from you a little. You decide to preemptively consider it Dave's fault, and send him another message asking for an ETA.

"Kanaya says we won't have enough time to collect all the frogs, let alone raise them and do the breeding and mutation stuff. Not even if we yank Rose and John into the project, and especially not with just you and me," you tell him when he shows up in person, popping out of nowhere with two discs floating at his side. They look a little like Grandpa's old vinyl records, but with red gears turning underneath them. "Not that you aren't helpful! But there's only so many seconds until disaster."

Dave arches the backs of his hands, fingertips still ghosting over the ridges of his floating record thingies. "Harley, c'mon, work with me here. What's my aspect?"

You blink. Oh. Time travel, durr. Okay, possibly your flipping out was a little premature. "Whoops, forgot that! Potentially infinite seconds, yay recycling. So how are we doing this?"

Dave shrugs, letting the records vanish back into his sylladex. "We have limited absolute time, basically from when I got your house up to reasonable height to, let's say, an hour before whatever runs us off the rails goes critical. So we have to maximize our use of space -- duplicate this ectobiowhatthefuck setup and run an assload of slime zapper tadpole tanks at once. I'm thinking one on each of the top ten floors of your house. We'll do one floor on each master loop so we don't keep running into each other. Mark the space and time coordinates for each croaker we target, then head out to poke them or whatever literally the second after we zap them, take notes on any other frogs that look useful, and move down a floor and back in time to start again."

"What about breeding?" you ask.

You think Dave frowns. It's hard to read his expression behind his shades, but he doesn't guard his posture as much as his face. "Whoops, forgot that. Uh, let's say every third floor and third loop is for breeding and mutation games. Shouldn't be too hard, especially if we whip up a regular appearifier. They don't have these bullshit temporal lock restrictions."

"Sounds like a plan," you say. "Let's get everything set up and start breeding!"

Dave's discombobulated expression is so faint and brief that if you'd blinked, you would have missed it. Hmmm, you think to yourself. Maybe...? But no, you probably just reminded him of something one of the trolls said. They can be so bizarre sometimes.

"Time to rock and roll," Dave says, and you shake off your daydream and get to work.

---------------

It turns out that ectobiology is actually very simple! You don't need to know genetics or metaphysical zoology, which you were a little worried about. You just need to zap frogs and run their ghost slime through the game-provided machines until you hit a gene combination that pings a little automated reward mechanism. Scanning for useful frogs is a little trickier, since you get the reward ping for any potentially useful gene sequence even if it's one you already have on file -- you have to weed out the duplicates manually, which is time-consuming and a total pain.

Creating hundreds of potential paradoxes to make sure the appearifier grabs slime instead of actual frogs is also time-consuming and a total pain.

It would be simplest to just shoot the frogs, but first of all, that's mean, and second of all, it would probably screw up LOFAF's ecology to storm around wiping out its native fauna less than an hour after thawing them out in the first place. If you had a dart gun you could trust not to mangle the frogs on impact, maybe you could stun them for a few minutes. Unfortunately, all of Grandpa's guns (and by extension, all of your guns) are designed to shoot projectiles straight through solid objects and totally fuck up their day. Which means that instead of perching in a tree like a cool and sexy sniper, you are galumphing around on the ground, hot and sticky and covered in a gross combination of mud and panicked frog secretions. Ugh.

"I look like a swamp zombie, don't I?" you say before you can think better of the words.

"Yeah, but in a cute monster-girl way," Dave says. "I'm just a scarecrow that got left out in the rain and turned into a mold sculpture."

You look over at him just as a clump of mud and moss slides down the left lens of his shades. "Um. No comment." You are determinedly not noticing that he said you're cute. Nope. Completely thought-free zone over here, nothing but genetics and logistics, which everyone knows require no brain power at all.

Dave shakes his head in faux solemnity. "Tragic. Faced with the death and destruction of my awesome good looks and you can't even dredge up a "That's sad"? I am betrayed. I am devastated. I am--"

"--still cute underneath the glop, stop fishing for compliments," you interrupt, and are furiously grateful for the mud hiding your blush. Stupid Dave and his stupid... everything. Why do you even like him? He's such a butt.

Of course, all your friends are kind of jerks. Possibly there's something miscalibrated about your friend-finding radar. Or possibly you're also a jerk? Hmm. That's something to ask Rose about, whenever you finally get to see in her person.

You will get to see her in person. You refuse to acknowledge any other possibility.

"Ouch," Dave says, but the corner of his mouth quirks up just a degree. "Damned by faint praise. I guess I'd better step up my frog-napping skills, can't let my dashing good looks outweigh my knightly swag. Speaking of which, have we been standing still long enough for that little orange fucker to stick his head out?"

You glance around, then down, then up. There's a tiny flash of color just over-- you shift slightly-- yep, right there on the tree by Dave's shoulder. "Um. Yeah. Just... keep standing still. Really still."

"Making like a tree, yes ma'am Sergeant Harley ma'am," Dave says as you inch slowly toward him through the muck between the tree roots. "It's right behind me, isn't it? Getting all ready for a jump scare, gonna leap out and poison me to death with its slimy frog toes, alas, Horatio, here dies a fellow of infinite memes, taken from us too--"

You lunge.

You catch the frog.

You also knock yourself and Dave flat into the muck. His shades knock into your forehead. Your own glasses skew against his nose. Your left knee is jammed between his shins and his belt buckle is digging into your stomach.

Your mouth is right up against his chin. If you moved just an inch or two...

"Ooh, Miz Harley," Dave says, somewhat breathless.

"Oh, shut up," you say, and shove the frog into your sylladex as you scramble back to your feet. "Look who's talking, Mister Swamp Thing."

Then you bend down to yank Dave up, too, because fair is fair.

---------------

By the fourth loop you're ready to drop from exhaustion and the weird, indefinable tension of actually being around one of your friends in person instead of getting to mediate your interactions through computers. "I don't care how tight the schedule is. I'm starting to see double and I'm taking a goddamn nap," you tell Dave as you drop to the floor and lean back against the wall. You lay your rifle across your lap and keep your hands carefully away from the trigger. You know your temper sharpens when you're tired, and Grandpa taught you never to take chances with guns.

Dave frowns, and you know he's tired too because this time you can see his mouth curve downward to match the annoyed set of his shoulders and the fuck-you shove of his hands into his pockets. "The more loops we run, the harder it is to keep shit from falling apart," he says. "You that eager to trip into a doomed timeline? I can go back and hit reset anytime, easy as cake and pie and banana splits, but every screwup costs one dead Dave and one Jade abandoned in a dead-end universe. I don't even know if that you would get erased or keep on living until you go shithive maggots."

He's been talking to the trolls too, you remember, especially the teal one who uses l33tsp34k. He says her name is Terezi. She's been running time loops with him too. He likes her a lot.

You are not jealous. That would be stupid. You are not stupid; therefore you are not jealous. QED.

"The more tired we are, the harder it is to keep from screwing up," you say. "We're creating a whole new universe and we'll have to live there after we win the game. It's kind of important, Dave!"

Dave presses his back against the wall and slides down to join you on the hard tile floor. "We're not gonna win the game, you know. There is literally no way to do that. The game was borked from before the word go was a twinkle in its druggie teen mom's eye."

"Maybe this session's broken," you agree. "But that doesn't mean we can't find a way to cheat, and even if we lose, I'd rather lose trying my hardest instead of half-assing shit because I was so tired I fell asleep while operating complicated machines."

Dave sighs. "Yeah, okay. Naptime. But not here. This is a work floor; we've gotta keep it clear for work loops. We'll go crash further down." He taps your shoe with his own. "Up and at 'em, Harley, let's go hit that transportalizer."

You groan and haul yourself to your feet.

The obvious place for a nap would be your bedroom, but then where would you sleep on the next loop? Anyway, you only have one bed and it'd feel... presumptuous? pushy? maybe just go with awkward. Yeah. It would be awkward to share it with Dave, especially without John and Rose there as well to clarify that it's strictly a friend thing.

So you alchemize an armful of blankets and pillows and make a little nest in one of the hundreds of blank, identical stories Dave copied from the real-world part of your house. It's still a little weird sharing the space -- Dave is so close you can feel him breathe, every exhale stirring stray wisps of hair over your ears -- but you think you could get used to this.

You think maybe you want to get used to this.

"Sweet dreams, Jade," Dave mutters as he flops over onto his side, one hand curled loosely around the hilt of his sword.

"You too," you tell him, before you remember he's just going to wake up on Derse as his dreamself, still stuck in this stupid, lying, Möbius tangle of a game. And you're going back to those weird bubbles in the monster-filled void. Neither of you can get free until you finish Frankensteining your magic frog and beat an unwinnable game.

"Heroes always beat million to one odds in stories," you say to nobody in particular. "Why not us?"

Dave mumbles something unintelligible in response, already mostly asleep.

You wiggle sideways until your shoulder brushes up against his, so the warmth of his body radiates through the thin blanket onto you and your warmth feeds back into him. He's alive. You're both alive. Somewhere else in the Incipisphere, John and Rose are (you hope) also still alive.

You would do anything to make sure your friends make it out of SBURB, to a new world safe from meteors and monsters and predestination. Anything.

You dream of bloody, mangled ghosts, groping desperately toward you for salvation while you stand frozen under the horrorterrors' incomprehensible regard.

In the dream, you imagine yourself reaching for Dave's hand. You imagine him weaving his fingers between yours. You imagine Rose and John standing beside you. You imagine all four of you stepping through a door into a new universe.

If you imagine something with all your heart, that makes it a tiny bit less fake, and being less fake means it's at least a little bit real.

The pressure of the horrorterrors' attention attenuates, just that vital fraction.

You turn away from the ghosts and think of frogs.

---------------------------------------------

End of Fic

---------------------------------------------

If anyone has constructive commentary, I am all ears! Also I am going to bed soon, because being awake is overrated and also I took a Benadryl in order to eat a BLT for dinner, so, you know, probably better to lie down than to slowly drift off in front of my computer. *wry*

#liz writes stuff #homestuck #jade harley #dave strider #generalized content warning #to about the same level as canon anyway #does homestuck count as its own warning by now?

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seriouslyhooked · 6 years

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Lost Souls and Reveries (Part 2)

18 part AU written for @cssns. Part 1 Here. Story available on AO3 Here and FF Here. Banner created by the amazingly talented @shipsxahoy!!

Killian Jones is a wolf shifter without roots, without plans, and without a pack. He’s a rogue, someone humans should avoid and shifters should be wary of given his lineage. But one night years back set him on a path he didn’t realize he was taking, a path leading to a future he is destined for. That future is tied up in one woman – a human named Emma Nolan. Together Emma and Killian will find not only answers, but a love that’s truly fated. But will love be enough to set them free, or will past demons win out in the end? (Answer: love always wins – I am writing this so despite some tiny pockets of angst it’s basically a fluff-filled insta-love fest). Rated M.

A/N: Hey all! So first, thanks to all of you who have shown this fic love and who are joining me on this new adventure. This chapter we will pick up from Emma’s POV and we’ll establish more of Emma’s story along with more of what the CS relationship might look like in this kind of AU. Fair warning that the heavier themes that we saw in Killian’s past have similarly sad shades in Emma’s. As with the last chapter though, I am trying to shy away from anything like graphic sadness. If you’re worried about it (and keep in mind all angst is in the flashback) feel free to message me. Also know that it’s all in the past and that this fic WILL be a certified fluff fest. Anyway hope you enjoy and thanks for reading!

How can something so dark be so beautiful? It was the first thing Emma thought when she looked at the man she knew had to be from out of town standing there on Main Street.

He was hardly dressed for the June weather or the Storybrooke style of living. Dark jeans, a dark shirt, and a black leather jacket gave him an edge that only accentuated the midnight color of his hair and the stubble of the beard he had along his handsome face. The clothes were well fitted and Emma couldn’t help but take him all in, noticing the hard lines of muscle that spoke to a physique she desperately wanted to get her hands on. The attraction that she felt was too fast, too potent, and then she caught the intensity of his blue gaze and Emma lost her breath. A purer color she had never seen, not even on the brightest of summer days in the ocean she’d grown up on. It was intriguing and perplexing, and in the light of this fading day Emma wondered if there were actually gold flecks among the blue or if she just imagined them. Either way his eyes were only one part of a perfectly potent package.

Holy crap! This guy was… lethal, deadly, and totally and without question consuming her. The few seconds they’d been looking at each other felt simultaneously all too fleeting and like a small eternity in themselves. Emma couldn’t tell if she wanted to bolt under the intensity of his stare or if she wanted to run towards him. It was the strangest sensation, but it was no stranger than the thought that rang out in her mind at first sight: Mine!

“Emma, honey, you doing alright?”

The question from her mother pulled Emma back to the reality of the morning she was actually living in, and it mirrored the moment last night when her mother appeared and broke the trance between Emma and the enigmatic new arrival to Storybrooke. This time though, Emma wasn’t spacing out in public. She was in her childhood home enjoying a weekly breakfast with her parents. She felt herself begin to flush with embarrassment, wishing she hadn’t just been fantasizing about some hot guy in front of her Mom and Dad. She really needed to get herself together, impossibly handsome man or not.

“Yeah, sorry. I’m just tired.”

“Sounds like someone needs more coffee,” her father said with his usual chipper tone. He got up to refill Emma’s mug and her Mom put more pancakes on her plate, which made Emma smile. This was so like her parents, to be totally in sync with each other and to have one guiding motivation of making their kids happy.

Emma had been on the receiving end of even more of their love and attention than usual lately because she wasn’t splitting the time with her younger bother Neal. Instead, her brother was off enjoying his summer in Boston with some of the world’s smartest teenagers at a camp designed for young geniuses. It was an honor, but not surprising that her little brother would get to go on such an adventure, because Neal had always been the smartest kid she’d ever known. All the same, Emma realized it was difficult for her parents to let him go away for such a long stretch of time even if he was thirteen. But after years of his early childhood when he’d had no choice but to stay cooped up inside and sheltered from other kids, they couldn’t deny him the chance to branch out. It was time for her brother to spread his wings a bit, if not leave the nest fully.

“Are you sure you’re getting enough sleep, Emma?” Her mother asked. Emma quirked a brow up in question and her mother qualified the statement immediately. “I just ask because I know there’s a lot on your plate. Your Dad’s told me how wonderful you’ve been and how much work you’re taking on at the clinic. I want to make sure you aren’t pushing yourself too much.”

“I’m fine, Mom,” Emma assured her, thinking that if anything the closeness to animals and the feeling that she was doing good works always boosted her morale. “It was just one restless night. It’s nothing to worry about.”

Any other parent would have been appeased by this kind of admission, but Emma’s mother remained tense even in the face of Emma’s promise. Mary Margaret Nolan’s blue eyes took in Emma as if studying for signs of an underlying struggle. Emma felt on the spot, but she willed herself to portray a sense of calm even if she didn’t fully feel it. Without her mother even having to ask, Emma knew the fear that both of her parents developed when Emma’s sleep was troubled. They were worried that the dreams were back, or rather one dream that had plagued Emma on and off for years.

“Why don’t I just give Doctor Hopper a call?” Her Mom asked, moving towards the phone. “You know he’s always so good at helping you. I’m sure he has time this week. Let me just -,”

“Mom!” Emma said, in a louder sterner voice that still tried to be courteous even in its forcefulness. Her mother looked at her again and Emma stood up and took her hand, trying to really make her see that she was making too big a deal of this. “I promise you I’m okay, and if I thought I had to go back to Archie you’d be the first one I told. It’s fine – trust me.”

Finally her Mom exhaled a breath and Emma knew the worst was over. The sudden bought of worrying had now mostly passed, and things could return to normal again. The three of them sat back at the table together, and though there was a kind of quiet that settled all around them, it wasn’t thick and tense in an uncomfortable way. Thank goodness for that. For now Emma had gotten away with her little white lie, but to ensure they didn’t go down that road again she needed a distraction. She jumped on the first one she could think of that had the highest chance of success.

“So have you heard anything from Neal?” Emma asked, switching over to something she knew they’d love to fill her in on. “How’s he liking MIT?”

“Oh he loves it,” her mother replied excitedly. “You should have heard him when he called yesterday. He was so excited about this flying contraption thingy. Goodness, he said the name about a dozen times, but I just can’t remember - what was it again David?”

“Drone Day,” Emma’s Dad filled in with a smile. “They had to design and build their own drone and whoever’s could complete the most tasks won.”

“Let me guess, his was the best?” Emma asked, already knowing the answer.

“Mhmm,” her mother hummed proudly.

Emma felt a similar surge of pride for her little brother, knowing Neal was a remarkable kid with an amazingly attuned brain. He was truly brilliant, but he was also kind as well. Neal wasn’t awkward or secluded from the rest of the world despite his talents; he was just a regular teenage boy with a unique ability to remember all kinds of things and answer problems faster than anyone she knew. He’d actually been told a number of times that he could test out of his grade early and head to college in just a couple more years if he so chose, but he didn’t want that. Despite his gifts, Neal had always wanted to be normal, and after everything her parents were more than willing to give him that.

“When are you guys going down there again?” Emma asked, knowing that since they dropped Neal off last week her parents had been counting down the hours until another family visiting day would come.

As expected, her parents prattled on about the mid-summer check in that would arrive in a few weeks, and her mother mentioned that there might be some need for her to go down to Boston in the meantime. If that happened, she might get the chance to see Neal then.

Emma bit back a laugh at the thought, knowing there was no real reason to get down to the city in the coming week, but she took comfort in the overwhelming love her parents had for her brother. Neal had always been there little miracle baby, born after ten years of trying to give Emma a sibling when all hope was relatively gone. When he’d gotten sick it had nearly killed her parents, but hope, and belief that things had to get better, along with some kick ass advancements in medicine, had cured Neal of the disease that threatened to take him far too soon. Having gone through all that with him, it was understandable that Emma’s parents would be so protective and fierce in their love for their youngest child, and Emma had learned a long time ago that it didn’t mean they loved Neal any more than her. There was more than enough love to go around in the Nolan family, of that she was totally sure.

“We’re thinking of having a big end of the summer cook out,” her mother said at one point, drawing Emma’s attention. There was no exaggeration in her mother’s world. If she said big, she meant big, like the whole town of Storybrooke big.

“Oh really?” Emma asked, already picturing it in her mind and knowing her Mom would find some way to top the dozens of other parties she’d thrown through the years. How she’d do that, Emma didn’t know, but the last summer party they’d had there were bouncy castles for the kids, elaborate lantern lights spanning the woods in the back of the house, flowers covering every corner of the grounds, and water fixtures just for show. Her mother had actually had a hedge maze put into the backyard. To be blunt, it was completely over the top.

“We figured it would be good to welcome Neal back home again and to celebrate your working with Dad. You know you never let us throw the graduation party I was planning last year.” Emma laughed at her mother’s slight pout. It was a well known fact to everyone in town that Mayor Mary Margaret Nolan hated to be denied a celebration.

“That’s because you started talking about hiring entertainers and acrobatic performers. I went to vet school, Mom. I didn’t join the circus. It was a lot.”

“It wasn’t -,” her mother began to say, but Emma watched as her Dad wrapped his arm around her mother’s waist and heard him murmur words of correction. This led her Mom to sigh and admit the truth. “Okay, maybe it was a little much, but I was just so proud of you. We’re both so proud.”

“I know, and I love you guys for that,” Emma admitted freely, standing up and giving them both a hug. “So if you want to throw the party that’s fine – just promise me you’ll try to keep it low key.”

Her mother replied that she would try her best at the same time that her father said ‘not happening,’ and the three of them shared a laugh together. But at that moment Emma realized her time with her parents was also running short. She had plans to meet up with her best friends Elsa and Anna today and if she left now she’d be there just in time to not get a scolding about being late. Emma made her goodbyes to her parents and headed for the front door, smiling to herself about the time she’d just had and how lucky she was to have her family.

By the time she was outside Emma was totally at peace, loving the warmth of the sun on her skin and the beautiful day that had settled into town, but just as she was about to head down the front path of her parents’ house and out into the world again, something caught her eye on the ground. Whatever the object was it was metallic, reflecting light where nothing should be at the edge of the emerald green lawn. Emma didn’t know what it was at first, but when she pulled it from it’s hiding place, half buried in the dirt, she was dumbfounded. It couldn’t actually be… could it?

Wiping the brown topsoil off of the pendant that hung on a simple white gold chain, Emma felt her fingers trace a design she’d studied for years. It was an unusual style of carving, but after close inspection it was clear this was supposed to represent a compass. North, South, East, and West were all represented, but the etchings in the middle were swirls that seemed almost ancient in their design. Emma had never seen anything else like them before, but she found this on that night – the night that could have very well been her last– the night that plagued her dreams for years. Seeing the amulet now, she felt the memories sink into her consciousness, as if she couldn’t control her own mind now that they were here again.

Sitting with Neal as he lay sleeping in the hospital bed, Emma tried to ignore how pale he looked and how weak he appeared. Her brother had always been a small boy, but now he was identifiably sick and it tore Emma up inside to see him this way.

Despite everything she felt though, Emma never ever let her brother know her pain. It was so hard, but every moment she spent with Neal she stood as strong as she could. Emma was seventeen and Neal was only seven, and where a few months ago she had thought he was often annoying and always under foot, now she realized what a gift it was to have him. Her little brother was the best kind of person, and she couldn’t even imagine him not getting to grow and to thrive and to put his stamp on the world. She had to believe he would get better. She just had to.

“Doctor, there has to be something else we can do.”

Emma heard her mother’s voice from where she stood in the hallway with her father and the doctor, and the frailty in her Mom’s tone cut Emma to the core. Here was a woman who always had hope, but right now her mother sounded like she had nothing to cling to anymore. She was starting to lose her faith, but she couldn’t do that. They couldn’t give up on Neal, not when he needed them more than ever.

“I know it seems bad, Mrs. Nolan -,”

“Mary Margaret,” her mother corrected, and Emma almost smiled, knowing that her mother was always trying to remind the staff at the hospital of their first names. She believed that by building a bond it would improve Neal’s chances of getting better, and Emma knew all of them would give anything and do anything to help her brother now.

“I know it seems bad Mary Margaret, but this is just the first step of the treatment. When you came to me I told you that the cocktail he needs of medicines are hard on any body.”

“You did,” Emma’s father agreed. “But we didn’t realize… he’s just so…”

“Weak. I know. This round of treatment is grueling and harder than anything he’s ever had to fight before. It’s a tougher combination than nearly anyone in this hospital will ever have to take, but it’s the only way we know how to maybe kill the disease. If he makes it through to stage two -,”

“When he makes it,” Emma said out loud, knowing she wouldn’t wake Neal who was still sleeping soundly.

Rising from her spot where she’d been perched beside her brother, Emma walked into the light of the hallway to see them. Her parents looked forlorn in the moment, and Emma could see the trail of tears that stained her mother’s cheeks and the welling up of unshed one’s in her father’s eyes. They were both at their breaking point, filled with despair and with guilt. The genetic nature of Neal’s disorder made them feel like it was their fault but it wasn’t. They weren’t seeing clearly because they were feeling too much. Emma, however, would not yield to the sadness yet. She had to believe that this would work, and if everyone else was too scared to be strong, then she would be strong for them.

“Neal’s going to make it,” Emma stated with conviction. “He’s stronger than you all think.”

“Emma, honey -,”

“Don’t!” Emma said forcefully, holding her hand up. “I don’t want to hear anything from any of you if it’s not agreeing that he will get better. He told me himself today that the pain wasn’t so bad. He just needs a few days rest and you’ll see. He’s going to be okay. He has to be okay.”

Before anyone could contradict her, Emma turned around and headed down the long hallway, running when it was strictly forbidden in the hospital. She knew she wouldn’t stay gone for long, but the harsh glare of the hospital lights and the dizzying, claustrophobic feeling that facing all of this caused in her needed some kind of relief. Emma had to get some air and some space, if just for a little while, and she moved down the stairwell and out into the side alley of the hospital. She had found herself out here a time or two before, usually during the day, and she was glad that tonight there was no one else around. She needed to be alone. It was the only way she could let the tears that had been building fall.

But in the instant that her eyes began to really blur with her emotion, something moved in her peripheral vision, causing Emma’s senses to go on alert. That was strange – since she’d just checked both directions and there was nothing there, but Emma had found in the months since they moved here from Storybrooke that wildlife wasn’t unheard of. There were raccoons in the city, and the occasional possum too. Emma assumed whatever it was would be something like that at worst, or maybe just a rat – which while gross was nowhere near threatening – but when she wiped her eyes and looked at the figure that stood in the shadows of the dumpster across the way, it made her blood run cold.

The shape of the beast before her was obviously canine, but it was way too big to be any kind of dog that she knew. The one’s her Dad had worked with all her life looked nothing like this massive, hairy, beast. Emma swallowed harshly just at the imposing size of this animal, trying to convince herself it was just some lost freakishly large golden retriever that meant her no harm, but then its eyes flashed red and Emma knew this was a real predator, and not some passing, unthreatening being.

Okay, Emma, don’t panic, she said to herself as she crept back to the door. Nice and easy, don’t freak out. Don’t freak out.

After a few seconds, she was back within arm’s length of the door and as she reached out for the handle Emma felt the tiniest surge of relief. There was enough space between her and whatever this animal was for her to get inside before it got to her, but then she went to turn the door and it was locked. Shit! Shit, shit shit! Emma’s eyes went to look for another place to run, but the beast was blocking the entrance to the street and it chose that moment to step further into the light.

It’s a wolf, Emma thought to herself, but it was hardly a coherent thought. The musing was just the product of a brain rocked by fear trying to make sense of the impossible.

How could there possibly be a wolf in the city? And since when had wolves gotten to be so large and so menacing? With the adrenaline spiking in her system, Emma’s vision began to haze around the edges. Her breathing became shallow, her palms sweaty as the emotion coursed within her. She heard a shrieking cry, only to realize it had come from her as the animal moved forward. It was a last ditch attempt instinctively to save herself, for there was nothing here in the alleyway to try and fend off a demon wolf.

The next few moments were packed with a flooding sense of fear, but just as Emma thought her final seconds on earth had arrived, another wolf jumped into the fray of things. It was crazy to see, watching the lighter wolf that was hunting her be tackled by one that was a shade of midnight black. It didn’t make any sense, and the strangeness of it kept Emma spellbound. She watched in a sick kind of fascination, but her instincts never told her to run, not after the new wolf arrived. For some reason she felt safer, as if two huge animals was somehow better than just one, and then the tussle was over and Emma discovered the black wolf had won out in the end. He looked to be similar in size, if not a bit bigger than her attacker had been, but Emma noticed the difference in the eyes of this animal. Instead of red irises, his were gold – at least Emma assumed it was a he. It just kind of felt that way as she stared at the mammoth creature that had saved her life.

“You saved me,” she said aloud, and then in the weirdest twist (likely brought on because she was fully crazed from what had just happened) she longed to reach out to this wolf. She felt the need to thank him, to be closer to him, but before she could get the chance the wolf sprang away, heading back down the alleyway and into the night...

The laughter of some of the neighborhood children pulled Emma back from the remembrance of that evening. She took a steadying breath, trying to remind herself that it had all just been a dream as she tucked the medallion in the pocket of her dress.

After years of working with her therapist, Doctor Hopper, Emma realized that whole incident had likely just been a mental break. The stress of her brother’s illness had pushed her mind to see impossible things, and in the light of the next day Emma found there was nothing in the alleyway to corroborate the story. It could not have been real in the end, and she’d resigned herself to the fact that though she’d never had a moment vividly captured in her mind, it couldn’t be the truth. This compass was the only thing that seemed to not belong in the light of day, and Emma had taken it with her only to lose it again years later when she was going off to college.

Finding it now felt like some kind of sign, a sign Emma didn’t know exactly how to read. She tried to piece it together as she moved through town to get to her date with Anna and Elsa, but it was all for nothing. There was no real way to know what anything meant, and for all she knew it was just a coincidence. The world was filled with them, after all, so reading too much into this would likely do her no good.

“Emma, you made it!” Elsa said by way of greeting as Emma walked through the door of the town’s tiny café.

It was a relief to Emma to see her oldest and dearest friend after a few days apart. Elsa was always so bubbly and kind, and the two of them, along with Elsa’s sister Anna, had been through everything together. Their mothers had been pregnant with them at the same time, and it was a long standing joke that Emma was just as much a sister as Elsa and Anna were. When Neal was sick Elsa and Anna were her rock and safe place. Elsa had even taken the bus a few times from Storybrooke to Boston during that terribly unsure time to see Emma and make sure she and Neal were okay. Then when tragedy struck and Elsa and Anna lost their parents in a car wreck just a year later, Emma tried to return the favor. She was diligent in making sure she was there for Elsa and for Anna, but even though she loved them to pieces, she wouldn’t call herself a particularly affectionate friend. As such it was a surprise to Elsa when Emma gave her a huge hug, trying to wash away the last of the emotions that the remembrances had caused.

“Okay, Emma, what’s going on with you?” Elsa asked, sounding almost like a mother instead of a best friend.

“Nothing,” Emma said. “What, can’t I give my best friend a hug?”

“Of course you can,” Elsa responded with a softer look. “But I know you and I know when there’s something up, and something is definitely up.”

“I bet I know what it is,” Anna proclaimed gleefully as she appeared as if out of thin air, giving Emma a hug of her own before leading them all to their seats and diving right into the conversation. “You heard about the new guy, didn’t you, Els?”

“The new guy?” Elsa asked as Emma blushed, thinking back to the stranger she’d encountered last night and not having the power to shut off the way her heart skipped a beat at the mere mention of his existence. She should have known that somehow Anna would be aware of him. If there was even a whiff of gossip in this town, Anna was undoubtedly in the know.

“His name is Killian Jones if my intel is correct, and you know it always is,” Anna filled in with the same sass and silliness that she always had in spades as she flipped one of her braids over her shoulder and continued on. “He’s renting Mrs. Hubbard’s cottage down on the beach for the summer, he drives a red pick up truck, and he has a bit of an accent but other than that there’s not much to know yet. Tiana said he just came into town to pick up his keys at her office and then immediately left. I asked around the diner and it turns out he hasn’t been seen since.”

“Well to be fair he only got here last night,” Emma replied as she digested the news.

Despite doing her best to seem unaffected, Emma was ravenous for more information about the town’s newest arrival. This was already more than she’d known previously, and truth be told even knowing his name felt powerful. Killian Jones – that wasn’t a name that you heard every day. It was strong, and admittedly sexy, and when Emma compounded that with the fact that Anna said he had an accent she was intrigued. There was no telling where the man was from just by appearances. All Emma knew was that he wasn’t from anywhere near here.

After a beat of silence fell between Emma and her friends, Emma realized she’d just stepped into a trap. Elsa, for her part, looked shocked at Emma’s added bit of news, but Anna only grinned as she took Emma’s opening to get more information.

“And just how did you know he arrived last night, Emma Nolan?” Ugh, she was so busted. Oh well, better to just tell Anna what she knew instead of trying to draw it out.

“I may have seen him for a second on my way to dinner with Mom,” Emma answered, hoping beyond hope her tone of voice wouldn’t give her actual feelings about seeing him away. Unfortunately with her best friends, escaping notice was impossible.

“Oh my God and you didn’t even call me?!” Anna practically yelled as Elsa asked, “Really? What was he like?”

“There isn’t really much to say,” Emma assured Anna, “I only saw him for a moment. We didn’t even talk or anything.”

“But he made an impact,” Elsa said resolutely, in that almost prophetically accurate way she tended to have.

“I guess,” Emma hedged, even though she knew for sure that he had.

“So you saw him. There must be something else you noticed. Spill it,” Anna begged, looking like a kid awaiting presents on Christmas morning.

“He’s different,” Emma said immediately, and before she could think the better of it she gave a better sketch of him. “I’ve never seen anyone like him before. He stood out, but in a good way. He kind of looked like he should have ridden into town on a motorcycle with the shades and the leather jacket -,”

“Oh Tiana told me about that,” Anna replied gleefully. “She said it was hot, hot, hot. Like James Dean in his prime only better.”

Emma didn’t understand the flare of something like jealousy at Tiana’s characterization. After all she wasn’t wrong. The man – Killian, Emma corrected herself mentally –was more than attractive. His aura had pulled her in more than any other man ever had, but Emma didn’t love the idea of other women noticing him. It was weirdly territorial and very unlike her, but Emma couldn’t deny the feelings as much as she might like to.

“He seemed kind of… intense,” Emma admitted, remembering the way it felt to be caught in his gaze and the way the look he gave her felt like a physical caress against her skin. “But I could just be reading into it. I don’t actually know him.”

“You will,” Elsa asserted suddenly, taking both Emma and Anna by surprise. The certainty in her friend’s voice caused Emma to shiver slightly, for in all the years of their being friends Emma had never known an Elsa prediction or insight to be wrong. Still it was strange. How could Elsa be so certain when she herself had never even seen Killian before? As if she could read Emma’s questioning thoughts Elsa qualified. “I just have a feeling about it.”

“Ohh an Elsa feeling!” Anna clapped happily, bringing attention to them from the other people in the café. “This just keeps getting better and better!”

From there Elsa and Anna began bantering back and forth over their tea and scones about what the future might hold for Emma and ‘her mysterious match.’ They went on and on, mostly teasing as they built out a whole trajectory for Emma and Killian’s relationship, but eventually Emma pleaded with them to have mercy. Much as she wanted to laugh along with the over the top theatrics and not think too much of this, it was harder than expected. What was meant as teasing somehow felt more powerful today, and Emma was sitting there yearning for all of these milestones to be real even though she didn’t know the man in question. The only way to shut it down was to do what she’d done with her parents earlier – and thankfully she succeeded, switching their conversations from chit chat of her would-be love life to other talks of the town and updates from Elsa and Anna.

Soon enough the afternoon get together with her friends drew to a close. Even though it was a Saturday, Emma still had errands to run and people to see. Right now there was a book on hold for her and her Dad at the library, and though Emma knew her friend Belle would be there a bit past closing time, she didn’t want to take advantage of the town librarian’s devotion to her job. Instead Emma took her leave from her friends and she hustled out the door and towards the library. The brisk pace she set herself was the perfect kind of distraction from her own wayward thoughts, but just when she believed herself to be in the clear, she turned the corner and walked right into a hard body.

The impact of the collision was harsh, with her hands hitting a hard chest first and her whole body following thereafter, but before Emma could stumble, two firm, warm hands reached out to steady her. The zing of awareness Emma felt at the contact should have been warning enough that this wasn’t an ordinary person she’d just met with, but she couldn’t believe that it could possibly be her newest neighbor until her eyes moved up her assailant’s body and her eyes clashed with the same stormy blue ones she’d seen yesterday.

Dear Lord, this man was handsome. Emma had known that after seeing him yesterday, but standing this close did nothing to dull the fierceness of her want for him. If anything she was more enchanted than before, having the benefit of his hands on her and the most alluring scent that seemed to cling to him wafting over her. His whole energy was this fascinating thing, sending little bits of shock coursing through her system. Her heart beat out in a frantic rhythm, but weirdly she felt more settled than she had all day, as if her body was taking comfort in all this awareness that she’d never experienced before.

“Are you all right, love?”

His words melted into her as she luxuriated in the gravely tone and that subtle lilt Anna had mentioned. It was intoxicating to be so close to him, and Emma was so wrapped up in it, she hardly knew how to form words to respond. In fact she forgot to do so until he repeated the question.

“Yeah sorry,” she said, wetting her lips and pulling his eyes to her mouth in the process. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“Do you make a habit of such accidents?” Killian asked, his blue eyes shining with a playfulness that threw her for a loop. Was he flirting with her right now? Emma found herself wishing that he was even as she stepped back out of his hold. It wasn’t polite to stand there cuddled in his embrace, but already she missed the feeling of his skin on hers.

“No. I mean not really. Not more than other people anyway. I mean sometimes there are hiccups at the clinic when the animals get checked in and… you know what, I’m babbling. I’ll shut up now.”

“Don’t stop on my account,” he replied, sounding genuinely interested in hearing whatever inane word vomit had been close to getting out seconds before.

“You’re Killian, right?” Emma asked, unable to help herself even though she was making it abundantly clear that she’d been talking about him.

“News travels fast in small towns,” he said, as if he knew first hand the dynamic of small villages like Storybrooke.

“You could say that. I’m Emma by the way.”

“I know,” he replied honestly, surprising her completely.

She must have shown the shock on her face because his smile grew wider in return, sending her heart fluttering again like she was some silly schoolgirl. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask how he’d already picked up that little piece of info, but just as she was about to Killian shook his head and muttered something like ‘damn interruptions.’ She was perplexed for half a second before the library door swung open and Belle appeared.

“There you are! I was starting to wonder if you’d be getting here today,” Belle’s eyes shone with delight at Emma’s visit, but when she spotted Killian they went wide and Emma could see her regret. “Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Belle this is Killian, Killian this is Belle. Belle’s the town librarian and Killian is…”

“Whatever you want me to be, love,” he replied, looking only at Emma and lacing his words with a delicious insinuation that she felt down to her core. It was without a doubt the sexiest thing a man had ever said to her and Emma was speechless in the face of it. After a few moments of fantasizing about what exactly she wanted from him, Emma tore her gaze from his. She felt the flush hit her cheeks as she looked at Belle who was a bit more composed but also totally amazed at the interaction. “Now, if you ladies will excuse me, I’ll leave you to it and be on my way. It was good meeting you, Belle.”

“You too,” Belle replied.

And me? Emma thought to herself, but the look on Killian’s face told her that she might have just blurted that mortifying question out loud.

“There are no words, Emma,” he assured her as he took her hand in his and brought it to his lips. It was a totally unexpected move. Both torturously tame and incredibly hot. “I’ll see you soon, love.”

With those final words he walked away, looking far too good for Emma’s sanity and making her wish there hadn’t been an interruption. She could only imagine where that would have gone if they’d had more time together. She had a hundred different questions and this indescribable need to just be close to him, but alas, now was not the time. She had things that needed doing, and by the look of the face on Belle’s expression she had a bit of explaining to do too. Before she did though, she wanted to be sure of something.

“That just happened, right? I didn’t dream that up?”

“Oh honey, that definitely just happened, and by the looks of it, it’ll probably happen again too.”

One can only hope.

Post-Note: When I was first asked to do CSSNS a few months back, my immediate thought was that this had to be a shifter story because every one I have ever read has the love at first sight, true-love element that I just LOVE writing for CS. Because it’s Once though, I also had to have the interruptive elements. That show was constantly making these two wait, and while I’ve done that (and will do it a few more times in this story), rest assured that there will be a big, beautiful pay off. Anyway I hope that you guys enjoyed seeing Emma’s POV and getting some of her back story. Let me know what you think and as always I hope you have a great rest of your day!

Tag list (if you’d like to be added just let me know): @jennjenn615 @winterbaby89 @kmomof4 @teamhook @coliferoncer @ultraluckycatnd @resident-of-storybrooke @snarkycaptainswan4 @nikkiemms @artistic-writer @allofdafandoms-blog @eastside-divebar @snowbellewells

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meetmetotheriver · 6 years

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Sims Meme!

I was tagged by @mikexx2, like, weeks ago. (Thanks for thinking of me!) So I thought I'd try to answer one of these for once, this is pretty broad and generic.

When did you start playing Sims?

It must have been in the year of 2000, not long after it was released, that I first tried it out. I played TS1 sporadically, typically being obsessed with it for a few days, then not touching it for weeks and months. I never played any EP after Unleashed. The game was fun, but the lack of progress (read: aging) always sort of left me hanging - it was like a fancy electronic doll house, but it lacked an important element of purpose to me.

I semi-intentionally avoided TS2 for a while after it came out, and part of the reason was that I was afraid I'd get hooked. Then I finally gave it a go at the end of 2006. And well, here still I am, 11 1/2 years later. I should have listened to myself, I guess. :P

Have you been playing consistently or do you have breaks inbetween?

I have been playing fairly consistently. There's been small breaks here and there, and a few big ones, but I keep coming back. Even though I haven't been actively posting much over the past few years, I've still been playing. But granted, considerably less than I used to. Funny how having children means you have a lot less spare time, huh? :P

Do your family and friends know that you play The Sims?

Well, Mr. Meetme (my SO) most certainly knows. Haha. Other family members sort of know? But not to what extent, that I'm part of an online community, and so on. I don't think they'd "get" it. My friends/colleagues, no - haven't felt the need to elaborate on it. It goes under the general "video game" category.

Do you spend more time in build or live mode? Why?

I think it's pretty even? And it varies a lot. Sometimes I just want to focus on playing, sometimes I just want to build. I dunno. I enjoy both aspects equally, and they tie in to each other - playing out sims' lives inspires me to create their homes and towns, and creating their homes and towns makes me want to play them living there. ;)

Do you play with supernatural creatures (like Vampires, Werewolves etc.)? Why/why not?

Rarely. Most of them don't interest me that much, I guess. Most of them feel too easy, or too same-y, to play. Vampires, plantsims and witches (when maxed) don't need to sleep or eat and are incredibly easy to care for, with just small effort (keep those vampires out of the sun - but then they'll live forever...). Zombies don't really appeal to me on any level (I never watched The Walking Dead, either). Werewolves are sort of neat, though it sucks a bit that over time they all get the same personality. Bigfeet and Servos aren't "full" sims. Having one special creature here and there is okay, but I'd never want a 'hood full of them.

Aliens are my favourite, honestly, and they don't even have any special powers. Haha. But they DO have special genetics, and I'm all about the fun genetic mixing. It's one of my favourite aspects of TS2. (And the removal of recessive genes is one of my major disappointments in later titles.)

Do you have one specific family you play with all the time (like a legacy of some sort) or do you rotate between a couple of households?

I can never stick to just one household - then they would literally have to be the only household in the neighbourhood. It's not so much that I must have a grand great number of households (although I do think I'd get bored with just one or two, either way, in the long run), but I'm obsessed with keeping the passage of time synced. I want to play neighbourhoods where everyone interacts and age at the same pace, not one where your "main" household is on generation 5 while your sim's great great great aunt is still a teenager in another household. D:

Do you like to create your own neighborhoods or do you play with the existing families? Tell us about your progress :)

It's been all about the premades for a very long time for me. Sometimes I've had adventures of making my own, sometimes they've even been pretty successful, but I've always come back to the premades. I dunno. Familiarity, I guess? They're like old friends by now. And the community sense of it, seeing what others do, being inspired (or anti-inspired) by it, that part is fun.

I also can never stick to a thing for more than a year, maybe two or three at the very most, and I restart and reset and restart over and over again. As much as I like the "breeding" part of the game, I have to admit it is a lot harder for me to connect with the sims born from premades in my game, than the original premades.

Do you create custom content? If so, what keeps you motivated? (If not, would you like to? What stops you from learning it? For players that don’t use mods, why do you stay away from CC?)

Well, I made those template thingies. I also share lots I build every now and then. A whole neighbourhood once. But CC as in CAS and buy/build mode stuff or mods, no. I guess a big part of it is that I feel like someone else has already made pretty much everything I could possibly want, and the few things they haven't I haven't wanted enough to invest time and effort in learning to make it myself. If I did end up learning to make something, it'd most likely be game mods (as in hacks, not CC in general - why have we started mixing those terms now? A chair or a lipstick is not a mod). I've dabbled in modifying a couple of existing ones a couple of times.

If there was one piece of CC or (if you play without mods) one piece you wish the developers implemented, what would it be?

"One piece". I'm not sure how to answer this one. There's no single little thing, like a piece of clothing or whatever, that I depserately want and that doesn't already exist. As for bigger stuff, such as a whole extra aspect of the game, like body sliders or farm animals (that are household members and not just objects) or whatever, I would always rather have those as actual implemented parts of the game than as CC, you know? Because the possibilities for adding cool stuff is obviously a lot greater with the actual source code for the engine instead of modding stuff in. But that's not gonna happen.

Modders have made a ton of cool stuff and keep doing it though, so props to them. I don't have the creativity to come up with a good idea for something for them to make, nor the knowledge to say what would be realistic, and I guess I'm too boring for pure wishful thinking, so have a block of text saying basically nothing instead!

What other expansion and/or accessoires pack do you wish the developers would have come out with?

I don't even know anymore. I can think of several improvements to the existing ones, but I feel like what we got was pretty good, overall. I'm also drained from typing now, haha.

Tagging anyone and everyone! Especially @strangetomato. :D

#sims 2 #sims meme #text post

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tumblueberry · 6 years

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Okay guys buckle up because I forgot to update Serena’s adventures last week and this one’s game has been amazing too. It’s three pages in word worth of text, you’ve been warned.

Last week:

We got to the nearest town in our way north to a Baroness' lands. Royce the human warlock knows her and apparently has some kind of deal (and respect to a point) this woman. The plan is to go there so they can do their business, tell her about the giants and dragons we saw and then continuing our quest to recovering his and our cleric's lost years of youth.

We arrive, a guard from a prominent order greets us and points us to the two inns in town. After chatting a bit about how things are here, we go to the good inn. There, we find our new bard YAAASS. His name is Justin Keis. Read it again. Yes. It's a pun. I love him already. Justin was talking to the bartender and she was being racist, so Nayah the human paladin stood up for him, and then the rest of the party just came down to the woman. Justin is a tiefling, btw! So, we obviously decided she didn't deserve our money! We went to the bad inn instead xD It smelled bad, everything was sticky and the bartender was an asshole, but at least he was like that to everybody and not just the weirdly colored, horned ones. There, we find our other new companion. His name is Elarel and he's a sea elf? Or something like that? An elf but like... green xD

Somehow we end up telling the man about what happened, he runs outta the place and we're left there with our super awful stews while we hear how people are freaking out. Of course, the boss of the previous guard enters the inn shortly after and we tell him again about the giants in the sky. Bit of time passes, we go to the small market and learn about ships not being able to go fishing because of the pirates. They have to buy food from nearby towns and everyone is misserable. I bought and stiletto though B) and Molk the lizzardfolk bought a big fish just to use the bone. Uro, his caracal companion, had a feast xD Then Royce bought some new clothes for the visit to the Baroness and I can't remember what else.

Anyway, we then go the beach and of course it turned into an anime beach episode. But like, with nudity and obscenity. First of, we made a little fire and Justin started playing his lute. Alana the half-elf clerid took off her clothes and ran into the water after a bit of meditation. Royce took off his clothes, swam and then started running after Uro with no success. But just imagine a 60 year old man, naked, running after a fucking caracal in a beach xDDD Meanwhile Molk was enjying some scuba diving and seeing THINGS, but we don't know what. Nayah joined us later in the water and Alana used thunderwave to create huge waves! It was cool, Serena swam along with the big wave and then did the little mermaid with her hair, looking just like one. I'm very proud of that. I also used shape water to create penises and boobs in the air with water xDDD After that I ran out of the water and rolled over the sand until I reached Justin and joined him with my flute. It was all very chill then. Last thing we did was making our own stew with potatoes and fish, not very good but better than the inn's lol. Then went to said inn, drank a bit, saw Royce having a fight with a random dude and then basically going to bed!

THE NEXT DAY aka today's game:

We wake up, take our horses and head out of this town promising to our dear Nayah we'll come back to help with the pirates. We also heard there were some trouble with missing people and attacks in the road we had to take up north, so we tell her we'll investigate. Later that day we set camp and look around for clues on big animals or something that could be attacking travelers... turns out, a fucking undead demon thing shows up. I don't know the name of the creature, but it was like a skelleton dog with fire instead of meat or furr. He saw Nayah, so we had to fight. During the fight we got lucky and the thing didn't touch us. We could destroy it and see how the palading precisely got the HDYWDT and it was awesome, she sank her axe into the creature's skull, it broke in half and then the entire thing turned into ashes. From them, we found a medallion with the symbol of the Lord of the Hells or something like that. Royce wanted to keep it but Nayah talked him into not wearing the symbol of a forbidden and perverted faith that was based in hurting others. So, we decide to not tell this to anyone, unlike the giant-dragons thingy in the previous town, and maybe only tell the mayor/person in power in the next place. We agree to shut our mouths and go to sleep.

Next day, we take our things and horses and ride to the next town, a happier, richer place. Less inhabitants but many farming lands. A guard stops us to say hello and ask our business and we're told they only had problems with outlaws. And something about the mayor but I didn't really get what's the deal with that woman :/ Anyway, the guard kindly points us towards the two taverns in town and we go to the less expensive one. Still kinda expensive for our little money looool. There, Royce tries to pick a fight with another random man but the owner of the inn was there and threw a dagger to the table where they were almost getting into the fight. They stop, obviously, and we go talk to the woman. She was an adventurer too once, and she sees us as adventurers to be. The woman asks us what we want, we talk about drinks and rooms, and then Royce asks for rumors. Justin said he wanted to play in the little scenario so I told the woman we would perform the greatest show she's ever seen! So, while Royce and Alana kinda exchange rumors with the owner, I start thinking about what the hell I will do. Now, I'm very sorry for myself, Serena and you guys, because I was NOT paying attention to them talking. My anxiety went over the roof and all I could do was trying to plan a good show by myself. The thing is, Justin's player was trying to get wifi from a plaza outdoors because he doesn't have it nstalled in his new students' rooms yet! So we could only communicate during his turns very briefly and through text, that made it more difficult to share info and plan shit. WELL, I can only remember that at some point Nayah and Royce were talking about the Baroness and gods and being a good person?? Oh, and that this woman apparently may have deals with pirates, yes, that's why Nayah was kinda angry and wanted to really talk to the Baroness. If this woman has a lot of farming land, produces a lot of food, and then has deals with pirates to prevent other towns from fishing aka getting their own food and way of living... they'll depend or her and her product, thus making her more rich sinc they have to buy food from her lands.

That's all I can gather :/ I may ask in private another day...

After that, more people arrive to drink after the day’s work, including the mayor and some friends of the innkeeper!

When they all had their talk time, the DM gave us bards the chance to describe what we do. And here goes our performance, I'm very proud of it, I had ideas and the dice really blessed us tonight :__) First, Justin starts playing the lute from the bar where we were drinking. I follow him for a few steps and then rise my voice so I'm heard “Ladies, gentlemen, dear audience here in our beloved Chatty Troll (the tavern lol)! Tonight you'll be witnesses of a very peculiar performance from the hands of the most singular Justin Keis – give the man an applause!- and yours truly, Serena of Shalesteps!” /applauds to herself as well. The people were responding but not too interested yet. “Look closely, and don't miss a thing... WATCH THIS!”. I start tapping the scenario at the rythm of Justin's lute, clapping to encourage the audience to do te same. When I'm sure I have their attention I grab my two daggers and brand new stiletto, I play with them, throw them in the air, juggling while tapping the floor. Justin's music gets more intense, and so I conjure and illusion of an extra dagger right in the air. The tavern was IMPRESSED, people started cheering and clapping on their own. Justin made the music go more and more intense, and reaching the climax I put the blades away, put out my flute with some accrobatic moves and start playing with my companion. Then, I cast cloud of daggers and the audience GASPS, everyone surprised, applauding, going crazy for us! A kid tried to touch the daggers but I stepped in front of them and just started walking around the area to prevent any other curious hands that would probably be chopped off :) Justin decides to stop the intense music, so I puff away the daggers and let him do his more peaceful, quieter melody now. He starts playing something soft and beautiful, singing along, then I accompany the melody with my own flute. We play a bit more and when he signs me with his head, we both stop at the same time and bow.

EVERYONE WAS GOING CRAZY ABOUT IT. We had such good luck with the dice, dudes, some nat20s, some beautiful high rolls, we were LIT SHIT this evening. The people at the inn threw us money to the scenario, we got asked things, the innkeeper invited us to drinks and we could stay there for free, FREE! Yassss I'm so proud of us :__) This is a fucking dream, you guys.

The best part is, Serena saw two kids trying to play with knives and she went there and taught them things, just like when she was a little rascal of a girl and some circus guy taught her about throwing daggers ;__;

After that, Royce got into a fight, lost, we drank aaaaand end of the game! Most of us got drunk and woke up with a hangover, but that's a problem for next Tuesday. Aaaah I'm so hyped I can't sleep xD We had a BLAST! Bar fighting, performance, an undead demon dog thing from hell!

Best party ever, guys, I'm thrilled.

More next week! Sorry it's such a long read lol. Love you guys <3

#Serena the Bard #serena got her alcohol FINALLY #we got rum bless the inkeeper

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