#like just full on goblin mode at all times

[amplebreastedgothicpartner]

Get you someone who looks at you like my kitten looks at my bangs before he swats at them and hits me directly in the face

[paarthursass]

Decided I'm done being nice about this btw

I like the rewrites and I like the version of Wyll we got in full release. But the Wyll we had in early access was not a lesser version of the character. He was not poorly written. And I think Larian was being far too generous to the fans when they went "Something about him isn't clicking with players so we need to rewrite his entire character."

That "something" was racism, plain and simple. That's why players weren't connecting with him like they did Astarion or Shadowheart or Gale. I'm sure Larian got complaints about Lae'zel as well - since she's probably the only character I can think of who's just as divisive as Wyll - but they stuck to their guns and trusted that the story they had written for her was a good one. And I wish they'd done so with Wyll, too.

Are there parts about Wyll I prefer in full release to EA? Yes! I'm glad he's less overt about wanting to kill all the goblins, but toning down something like that wouldn't require a full rewrite. Gale was a lot more pompous in EA, and he didn't tell the PC about Mystra and the Netherese Orb until after sleeping with them - both things Larian changed for full release. Making Wyll a little less trigger happy with goblins would not require a full re-haul of his character. I also quite like how he's chasing a fairytale romance now, and how he wants to properly court the PC. But his original romance scene at the tiefling party wasn't in opposition to that in any way, and no one's to say the Wyll we had in EA wouldn't also have had wonderful romance scenes like the dance in Act 2 or the proposal in Act 3.

I do like the Wyll we got in full release, but the fact that he was rewritten last minute shows.

So, yes, I am going to be constantly bitter about people complaining about how Wyll is "boring" to them. People didn't trust that he was going to be a fleshed-out character in early access because he wasn't their white fave, they complained about him so loudly that Larian decided he needed to be rewritten, and now he feels under-developed compared to the other companions because he IS. And yes a good part of the blame falls on Larian for not giving the game the time it needed, for forcing the writers into crunch mode.

But a not insignificant part of the blame also falls on the fandom, because the rewrites were specifically made in response to the fans deciding their least favorite character was the black man.

[alicelufenia]

A Guide To Keeping Wyll And Karlach After Siding With Minthara In Act 1

Or as I like to call it, how to permanently recruit Karlach and Wyll (because I have yet to complete a full playthrough with both of them)

Ever since Larian added a way to legitimately recruit Minthara by knocking her out, I've wanted to help the community be more successful in their efforts to give my favorite drow yet another concussion. Because like all things related to Minthara, the KO method was buggy as hell, non-intuitive, and metagamey as fuck. I wrote multiple guides on it, to the point where I made the master post my pinned for a while. You may have seen it at some point, but here it is again for reference [x]

As happy as I am with the success of those posts, it's time I revealed my true alignment. I'm actually one of those scary Minthara stans who has killed the grove more times than siding with the tieflings. I know, you'd never guess by looking at my blog (don't look at my blog) I did it my first playthrough and it's only gotten easier since. And while I stand by it as the single best way to experience Minthara's character and story arc, I'm not so cold-hearted as to deny that it's a shame we miss out on Wyll and Karlach in the process.

So rather than play the villain, what say we have them stick around by taking on the REAL villains of Act 1:

The Druids

To start off, you'll want both Wyll and Karlach in your party, and Withers in camp. I've had him show up upon crossing one of the bridges in Act 1, either to the blighted village or the goblin camp, I forget which, or you can bust him out of his Dank™ crypt. Proceed through Act 1 as normal. To be safe I got as much approval from them as I could in early game, but that may not be necessary. Offer to kill Kagha for Zevlor.

Now, both of them need to die, and preferably not by the hand of your party members. I had them suicide charge the gnolls and get wrecked, as on Tactician mode they'll attack downed party members until they're dead. I don't know if having them jump off a cliff works, but it might. We need to entrust them to Withers by asking him to look after their bodies instead of reviving them. Their bodies will then appear in camp by their tents.

Now go kill Kagha without revealing the shadow druid conspiracy. This should trigger the Druids to start fighting the Tieflings, which will happen off screen as you deal with Kagha and the few druids inside with her (killing Nettie earlier might make this easier in case she joins in. She tried to poison you, so serves her right.)

Steal that idol! I'm not 100% sure this is required, but it takes no effort at this point and you need to sit tight for a minute, so might as well.

Also if you thought you could return the idol to Mol, no luck, she won't accept it until the fighting ends. Unfortunately all the tieflings need to die for this to work, so rip Ring of Protection. But not exactly rip the tiefling kids, more on that in a minute.

OOF, rip Dammon (and most of Karlach's questline. Don't look at me like that, it's Larian's fault for tying her entire story onto one npc and giving nothing as an alternative)

I'll give the tieflings credit, they did not go down without one hells of a fight. This bear was found burnt to death, probably due to Zevlor.

Damn, they really killed all of them. I wanna point out this can happen even on a good playthrough with the best of intentions.

In the end, only four(!) druids survived. I don't know how they'd fare with Kagha fighting too, but overall I'd say the druids talk big for doing this badly against a bunch of unarmed civilians. We kill the last four of them, then get ready to move on.

With trepidation, I go to check on the kids. Not recommended if you raid the grove for real, but here:

It's just... empty. No bodies, no npcs hanging around, they completely cleared out.

I like to headcanon that Mol followed through on protecting her kids, and they escaped down this hole. I'm still very early in this run used for testing, so I have legit no idea if they show up later. But this is good enough for me to include them all in my fanfiction so :D Congrats, the only tieflings with rights (sorry Karlach!) are gonna be alright (because if we don't see a body it doesn't count)

Next step is to just... keep going. Sazza can get you into the goblin camp no problem, and if you play a Drow or have Shadowheart use disguise self, you can gain entry without any checks or dialogue. My half elf needed to talk her way in (or just use AUTHORITY)

best goblin btw

MOMMY

Lookit how happy she is after Sazza has brought her the grove's location! A lead on the weapon AND another True Soul AND she's concussion-free? Everything's coming up Minthy!

It's at this point things get a little weird (I did warn ya), as the game now has flagged the grove as "raided" even though we haven't done an actual grove battle, which is a different thing (as I'll demonstrate later), so Shadowheart has her "post-raid" dialogue when we wake up on the next long rest. The Raid The Grove quest is also marked as Completed, but still has a marker on the map. Have patience, return to the grove and walk through the (destroyed) gate, and suddenly:

The quest will update, and direct you to speak with Minthara in the secluded chamber where she normally is at when the raid is finished. There's also goblins milling about the grove now, same as the post-raid grove.

Get someone who looks at you the way Minthara looks at a cave full of dead druids and tieflings.

"No Minthara, I never meant for any of this to happen. This was all my fault, I shouldn't have gotten involved, they're all dead because of me-"

"Nevermind I am no longer morally conflicted about all this."

To the goblin party!

LIES. He never mentions it again lmao. C'mon patch 7 fix this! (you won't)

Why we're all really here 🥰

The next morning, speak to Withers and ask to collect your dead party members. He will have you confirm payment for their resurrection.

And it works! Karlach and Wyll are back, they can rejoin the party, and their approval is Unchanged!

Since I was on a roll, I went ahead and checked a few other scenarios: what happens if we don't start a fight with the druids and just raid the grove directly, with Karlach and Wyll dead? Well you can revive them afterwards, but...

Dang, Wyll still leaves (he's still so nice about it though! Even wishes you well!)

Meanwhile Karlach: Feck off, cunt.

Well, she's not leaving, but she's never been this blunt or cold towards me before. I wonder how much-

Damn, -49?! That's literally one away from leaving permanently! She started at 50, which means Karlach looses 100 approval from raiding the grove, and being dead doesn't change that. I think the only reason she's at -49 instead of -50 is due to that +1 from reviving a party member. So, she's grateful for being brought back to life, but not happy about anything else. You know what, that's fair.

One last thing I tested (and no pics for it cause this post has reached its limit! But those extra pics of Sharp-Eye Sluck are important, so I'll just write this next part out) I wanted to see if it was even necessary to finish off the remaining druids after they killed all the tieflings. So I left the grove (manually, you have to journey quite a distance before it lets you fast travel, almost all the way to the first bridge) and headed to the goblin camp to start the raid as normal.

Like our first time, we arrive at an empty grove. Even the druids we left behind are gone, meaning you can safely headcanon this method as joining up with the goblins and Minthara to take revenge on the druids. The game still acts like you killed the tieflings though, down to Gale's threatening to leave.

But Karlach and Wyll still get brought back without a problem! You can even revive them DURING the goblin party and they'll act like nothing's happened!

Wyll And Karlach Recruited Alongside Raiding With Minthara: Success!

So Baldur's Gate 3 community! I now implore you to put down your Pommel Strikes, switch off that Non-Lethal toggle, and stop giving poor Minthara even more brain damage than the tadpole and the Absolute already gave her!

And when you reach Moonrise Towers to rescue her, for the love of Selûne, when the guards are torturing her in the prison, don't just swing on them. Agree to enter her mind first. You'll have a dicey roll to deal with, but trust me, it's SUPER worth it!

As for the whole process, well. Despite the clunky way quests update after you start the grove civil war, the resulting lack of direction and narrative inconsistencies in the dialogue post-goblin party, this still feels like a more immersive way to recruit Minthara on a run with both Karlach and Wyll still present, than the KO method, in my not-so-humble opinion.

Consider this: You've got a major twist in the Act 1 plot now, with the Druids turning on you and killing the tieflings you were trying to help, leaving your party dispirited and lacking direction, other than to continue their search for a cure, which leads them to meet the Absolutists, the goblins, and the drow commander leading them and looking for the druids' sanctuary. And in the midst of your grief and anger, you side with her, both to get close to the source of the infections (as the Dream Visitor suggests) but also to take your revenge out on the druids.

You can feel conflicted, regretful even, but the context has changed enough that I think even a good-aligned Tav with no qualms about methods can live with this result. It just takes a bit of filling in the gaps (do you simply point the goblin army at the druids and look away, or lead them yourself by Minthara's side? Either way works for the results)

The only real downside is, again, Karlach's story just sorta ends here, until the confrontation with Gortash. I personally think this is a problem with Larian's writing for her, and at this point fanfiction is about the only solution in sight. But if you don't mind her not getting the chance to touch others again, you really have nothing to lose here

Besides, were you really going to pay Dammon for that act 3 armor? Of course not, you steal it every run and don't pretend otherwise, "hero."

[cruelfeline]

So, for all of y'all who aren't familiar with Dwarf Fortress, I'm going to explain why it's such a phenomenal game.

Dwarf Fortress is a colony simulator that's been developed by two brothers since 2003. A few weeks ago, it finally released on Steam with a UI that even i can understand. It is the grandfather of things like Rimworld and Minecraft.

So what makes it different from all of the other games in the genre? What makes it different is that it simulates a world beyond your colony. A world with gods, monsters, civilizations... a whole history outside of your colony. A real, living world for you to play in.

I can better explain this by showing y'all what happened to my latest fortress. The one that experienced Wereanteater Armageddon.

My dwarves were having a nice time. I'd just figured out how to build instruments and was outfitting the new tavern properly when-

Surprise! Wereanteater.

Said wereanteater eventually turned back into a goblin and ran off-map, but not before infecting some of my dwarves. Which led to... well...

Absolute massacres every month. With more wereanteaters each time. Which eventually led to...

One lone dwarf, haunted by the ghost of one of the many slain, sitting next to the werecorpse of his last companion. They'd fought to the death the moment they'd last transformed, and he was the survivor. But, of course, he couldn't move.

So! That was that. Fortress destroyed, time to move on. I abandoned the fortress and decided to start anew.

But! Where did our wereanteater come from? What was his story?

In Dwarf Fortress, everything has a story.

So before starting a new fortress, I went ahead and checked the Legends mode: the mode that has the whole history of everyone and everything written out for the player to read.

First, I found my fortress' record, and I scanned down to where the deaths began.

There we go... the attack started with a goblin named Azstrog Terrorhymed. Who is that? Why does he turn into a monstrous anteater?

Here he is, in his entry, biting my dwarf. And... actually beating her to death with Sensedterror Explained, which another entry says is a book he wrote. About some sort of horror-pit he had a nightmare about. Huh.

And looking further back, we can see that, about twenty five years before he came to my fortress, he profaned the Abbey of Shafts in a settlement called Gearedopened. Possibly due to having some bad experiences with gambling and false friendships. This resulted in someone called Ngalak cursing him to become a wereanteater every full moon. And who is Ngalak?

Ngalak is apparently a dwarven god associated with caverns and mountains. And also:

Azstrog wasn't the only creature he's cursed with wereform for profanity! There are at least two others potentially running around. So that's... comforting.

And as for Azstrog? His entry says that he settled in the Fair Mines after dooming my fortress. Checking that entry, we find it to be a lair. A lair that now contains a wereanteater. A wereanteater who was once a goblin who seemed down on his luck and, in a moment of forgetting himself, ended up the object of divine wrath. Which in turn led to the violent deaths of about fifty dwarves in the fortress of Knowring twenty five years later!

This is why Dwarf Fortress is so amazing! There are plenty of games that will introduce an obstacle for your characters to face, but how many will ensure that that obstacle had a whole life of his own prior to ever meeting you?

On second thought, I think I'll reclaim Knowring, rather than starting a new fortress. And I'll bury its many dead, take over its workshops, and see if I can find the Fair Mines.

See if I can find Azstrog Terrorhymed again. See if he's still alive, or if he's met his end one way or another.

But first: time to build dozens of tombs!

[draco-after-dark]

Captured and contained

Little info dump on the whole diamond prison thing with regards to my Feral JD AU

So basically what happened when Velvet and Veneer first captured JD in my au is Veneer is always looking for more animals for his little side zoo project. They happened to be doing a photo shoot outside in the woods for a new album cover. Veneer went on a walk to have some alone time and stumbled across a little goblin boy. Aka JD.

"Oooo aren't you a cute little fella, You would be perfect as desk decoration!"

*JD gets snatched*

Later when Veneer tells Velvet he got a new pet and reveals JD. Her initial reaction is "Okay, but where did you even get that thing it's disgusting." JD proceeds to bite Veneer (multiple times) and wriggle himself free from his hands. He then runs rampant through their dressing room until they manage to contain him in a crystal bottle. The only thing they thought was strong enough to hold him. Later down the line when Velvet captures Floyd (basically the same sequence of events as the movie from here) and starts using him for his talent. That's when they realize that JD is actually a troll as well. JD being JD though is as Velvet described "uncooperative" and "savage" so she refuses to use him for his talent and instead tells Veneer "That one can be yours. You're that one that found that thing anyway." So Veneer does end up using JD for his talent just not nearly as often as Velvet does Floyd. JD does still get hit pretty hard by the whole draining thing considering he is grey and unlike the average troll has in a sense "forgotten/lost" his talent. That doesn't stop him from unleashing hell on the twin every chance he gets. Goblin man will do goblin things

Then things follow the movie pretty much the same except Bruce and Clay end up getting captured when they all break into the dressing room to rescue Floyd. Poppy and Branch end up escaping into the rafters. Velvet ends up sticking Clay and Floyd in her shoulder pads and Veneer gets Bruce. Veneer leaves JD behind in his dressing room because he feels guilty and doesn't want to hurt him any more than he has to.

Fast forward to the family harmony scene where although they are technically down a brother and Floyd is still trapped in Velvet's clutches the 3 brothers and pop sisters sing on anyway. The family harmony DOES end up working to free Floyd and also JD. I'm playing this off on the idea that despite JD not being present physically he could feel the connection to his brothers and their desperation to help Floyd. JD wants the same thing, to free Floyd and that is what connects them all together. It's like Branch said "We don't have to be perfect to be in harmony, We just have to be as we are." (just go with it ok IDK) Once the diamonds are shattered JD is pretty worst for wear, unlike Floyd he doesn't have anyone to support him right off the bat. He is used to being on his own at this point tho and only cares about getting Floyd out. He tucks himself away into a corner of the room behind some furniture to hide and rest up till he can get the both of them out of this hell hole.

Mind you only Floyd knows that he's also being held captive somewhere backstage when all this is happening. So once Floyd regains consciousness and has a chance to take a moment with his brothers. he then immediately goes into full anxiety mode well explaining that they have to get to JD. The others confused about what he's talking about don't believe him at first, but do end up helping Floyd backstage since he keeps insisting that JD needs them. They do end up finding JD and that's where the real story begins.

:D

Hopefully this makes sense? I ain't no writer sorry people

Little bonus scene

"Hey Vel does this look infected to you???"

"I can't believe we're related... CRIMP SCHEDULE A HOSPITAL VISIT BECAUSE MY IDIOT OF A BROTHER GOT BITTEN BY A FUCKING RAT!"

[dullgecko]

TWO HEADCANONS!!

Riz, like a cat gets the zoomies. But He also will blue screen if you pick him up by the back of his neck or shirt (which is less welcomed because he will immediately perceive that as a threat.)

The first time it happened it was Fabian trying to get The Ball to stop running around, this was met with Riz just staring off into space with dilated pupils and a thrashing tail.

It’s a goblin thing, Neither Pok or sklonda ever picked him up like that. Nobody knows, including Riz why he does it.

Now it’s plan c if they can’t get him to calm down from the zoomies or in general.

Gorgug loves children, unfortunately most of them are scared of him, especially gnomish or small folk children. The few that do get to know him, love to climb on him. He is a jungle gym and he loves it, he will gladly play pony for a bunch of overexcited 6 year olds, and yes he will weld each of them a little metal flower and tell them to give it to someone they want to be friends with.

Fabian was the first person to accidentally scruff Riz when he made a grab for the goblin to get him to calm the fuck down and accidentally grabbed his skin AND his shirt at the same time. Riz didnt like it at all but he couldnt bring himself to be mad at Fabian because neither of them knew that would happen. Fabian is also the only person allowed to pick Riz up without warning due to best-friend priveleges, so despite Riz's general dislike of getting picked up without warning he just let it go.

Riz is fine with getting picked up but only if he's given a heads up. He grew up around people who were almost always BIGGER and STRONGER than him and there have been too many incidents of people grabbing him without warning and causing harm on purpose for him to be totally chill about it.

Out of general curiosity they even tried to recreate the reaction but it seemed like Fabian grabbing JUST the right spot had been a total fluke and they just moved on with their lives.

The second time Riz was successfully scruffed led to an /incident/ that almost fully banned the practice except in dire circumstances. Kristen had been purposefully antagonising him for a week by picking him up without notice and, after Fabian mentioned the whole limp-kitten reaction to her, had done some research to figure out how to do it successfully.

Turns out there's a specific spot of tougher skin just above a goblins shoulder blades that covers a cluster of nerves that if pinched will fully paralyze them from the neck down. It's a biological reaction so that goblin parents can carry their children without them squirming and being accidentally dropped while cimbing (you're supposed to bite the spot so that your hands are free).

Riz had already been ticked off about being constantly picked up, so when he was scruffed on PURPOSE this time it flipped a switch and he was fully /enraged/. He may have looked totally spaced out, but the aura he was emanating was goddamed terrifying. They had to disarm him while he was still paralysed and have Gorgug pin him down so that Kristen could release the hold and escape.

Picking him up by the shirt is a LOT more dangerous, because it will not paralyse him and he will maim indescriminatly. It happened way too many times when he was a kid and now he flips to full murder-mode without thinking whenever it happens.

When someone outside the party grabbed him by the back of the shirt once, they witnessed him twist around fully so that he was upside down and had the guys lower arm in a bear hug. The goblin making a noise that could only be described as 'pissed off feral cat' as he bit out SEVERAL chunks of the guys forearm and didn't even let go when the guy released his hold on him. He simply used the oportunity to bite off a couple fingers as well for the insult as he was flailed about to try and dislodge him.

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

When Gorgug and Fig start getting famous the kids become a lot less scared of him, often coming over to oggle at him whenever he's hanging out on the front lawn of the Thistlespring tree. He's always happy to play with them if they ask, or even sit still and listen to them chatter about whatever as they climb all over him while he works on his artificer homework.

[euopligue]

Them playing Minecraft

Modern Au | pls don't repost | srry if there's any spell/grammar errors | Warnings: swear words

___________________________________________________________________

☆Rengoku

• he would eat the bread he had in his inventory even if his food bar was all the way up

•  I could imagine him greeting the villagers and introducing himself to them even though he knows for sure they won't introduce themselves back.

•  He would be the type to make a house inside a mountain

• I'd imagine him having a pet chicken 

• He'd have a farm full of carrots

• when yall would play together he be the type to give you a whole ass tour of his farm

☆Giyu

• his number one goal is to find diamonds and make a full set of  armor with them

• Ngl idk how he does it but  he can take down a skeleton whitout any damage 😱

• he would have 1 pet dog just so he doesn't feel lonely

• Istg every time his dog would die he would start blaming himself

•" See giyu first your sister than sabito then your own Minecraft dog and yet you couldn't protect them" would be the words  going all over his mind

• when yall play together it be kinda chill ngl

• yall would go everywhere together

• he would be the type to make a house next to a river or a stream of water

☆Muichiro

• he always forgets that a creeper can blow up

• Once he was fighting a creeper and BOOM he died

• that's why he has a cat with him at all coast

• he would be the type to steal the stuff from the villagers while not giving a sh!t

• hes the kind to try and tame a fox

•he finds Minecraft foxes cute

• he would also be the type to spawn iron goblins as body guards

• number 1 thing yall would do together is go mining

• like he would go for the diamonds and you would  go for the coal and iron

• He gets RAGED once he dies to an enderman like he keeps forgetting to put his pumpkin mask on

• he has this thing when yall would do a competition of who can steal the most stuff from the villagers

• he finds those little slime blocks adorable

• fvck houses he would have a tree house 

☆Genya

•Nah this bro LEGIT wouldn't be scared to take down any monster mobs that in his property

• He'd be the type to rage everytime he dies

• Nah cause when he goes to a  village and steal some of there suff and the villagers replies with a "üHhh" bro will start cussing the whole alphabet at them 💀

• he goes for the gold

• He'd be the type to have around 5 horses in his little barn

• idk I feel like he would hate spiders just because of the sounds it makes

• when yall play together it's kinda interesting cause like yall have this thing that's like "who can kill the most monsters"

• he would have abt 3 dogs i guess

• he likes showing off so he would try and defeat an iron goblin to impress you

• so pretty much  he takes Minecraft seriously

☆Mitsuri

• she can't stand survival mode

• like shes scared of the monster mobs

• so she goes for creative mode

• she loves all the animals in Minecraft and finds them cute

• she would have a beehive for the bee's

• and an army of cats 💀

• when yall play together you guys would try to make houses

•  not any other house but a mansion of a house

• ofc she would have a lil garden

• and yall would be gossiping gurly stuff while playing Minecraft

Was playing Minecraft to the thought of this hoped yall enjoyed <3

[insertyourselfhere]

Anomaly

Description: You’re doing your usual thing running around saving people, being the friendly neighbourhood Spider that people expect you to be. When you stumble across a goblin that is definitely not from your world. Characters: Gwen Stacy, Y/N , Your Aunt (A/N)

It was another day for you as you swung around, everybody down below yelling out waving at you as you slipped pass them. You stopped suddenly at a water tower and crouched down ready to eat the lunch you had pre packed yourself and stuck to the water tower once you returned from chasing down some bad guys who decided to rob a bank in broad daylight. You had to give it to them for attempting to do that knowing full well you would show up and take them down as you always did.

You sat down on the edge of the water tower legs daggling, with your mask half up as you took a big bite of your sandwich. You watched the kids in the street below playing soccer in the middle of the road baron and empty, the train went by your head as you took in the familiar sounds smiling to yourself. What wasn’t familiar to you though was a loud beeping going off next to you. Springing into action you leapt from the water tower with your back pack and sandwich still in hand taking another bite. A green man wearing a suit on a hovering machine was in front of you cackling as he prepared to throw another bomb.

Taking one more bite of your sandwich you pulled your mask down, threw your bag to the closest wall again sticking it as you dodged another one of those bombs. Your Spidey sense ringing as it missed you but started to fall below to the children who had now stopped playing their game and were looking up towards you and this masked man in front of you.

Your web flew down catching the bomb, using your momentum you threw it back towards the goblin who hit it up towards the sky another eruption going off.

“Look I don’t know who you are and I’ve got to say I wasn’t expecting to see this today, but I have to get back to my studies and I really don’t have time for this today” You said as stood tall on the water tower, or what was left of it.

“Where am I?!” He screamed at you, you were taken back by what he said.

“What do you mean? This is New York?” You said shooting him confused looks under your own mask.

“This looks nothing like New York, is this a joke?” He said, with a step on his glider he took off towards you, spikes coming out of his glider at the front, you leaped up once again avoiding his glider, you shot a web between his legs sticking as he dragged you behind.

“That was a much better idea in my head” You said, he flew over a flock of pigeons and you already knew what was coming.

“Oh no” Sure enough the pigeons all stuck themselves to you, one landing promptly on top of your head leaving a nasty surprise for you later which you watched drip down your spider eyes.

“Ugh gross” You said throwing the rest of it off. You shot another web and pulled yourself closer to the man hitting his back and knocking him off his glider. Before he managed to hit the ground you shot another web saving him in the process and then landing next to him.

“Stop please don’t hurt me” He said cowering in the corner, his demeanour changed, no longer did he have that evil aura about him. You crouched down next to him gently placing your hand on his shoulder.

“Woah hey sorry about that, look you were trying to kill me so my Spidey fight or flight mode switched. Let me help you what’s your name?”

“Norman Osborne” He said looking at you with fair stricken in his eyes.

“Norman Osborne, the billionaire scientist?” You said, he nodded his head agreeing. You let go of the mans shoulder and stood up facing out of the alley you guys had landed in.

“Norman’s been dead now for 5 years, there’s no way this mans…” before you could finish your sentence you felt a sharp pain between your ribs and strong arm wrapped around your neck.

“You’re just as weak as the other Spider-Man I’ve fought” Other Spider-Man? This man had experience, so he must be from another dimension your eyes go wide. You grabbed his hand wrapped around your neck and threw him over your shoulder down the alley, he went to grab his glider a few feet away, you tried stopping him and shot your web but your vision became hazy. You looked back down at your side and saw a knife sitting out of it.

“that’s not supposed to be there” You said, you knelt down to the ground feeling weaker every second, before you passed out though you saw a figure land in front of you, and all you could think of was teal ballet shoes.

You began to gain consciousness once again. You were no longer in the alley but in a strange room you had never seen before, you sat up slowly taking in your surroundings. You were bare from the neck down noticing your mask was still on but the rest of your clothes had been taken off. As you started recollecting your memories you remembered the guy in the alley and went to stand up only to take a fall.

“woah there soldier stand down” Came a soft sweet voice, you looked up and saw the same ballet shows you saw before you passed out completely.

“It was you” You said gesturing to her shoes, she lift her legs gently staring at her shoes with a small smile on her face.

“I don’t know what that means but yes here I am” You sat up on the ground wincing and holding your side, you looked up at your saviour only to see a spider-woman? Her white suit looked amazing you had 50 million questions coming through. Before you could ask any of them your stomach grumbled and you remembered you only had a quarter of a sandwich before that guy came over at attacked you.

She giggled a little and you knew you wanted to hear that sound again. She handed you your bag which had the other sandwiches and you began to scarf them down.

“Nsh to bef rufe buf whf are yof” She looked at you and you could imagine a confused look under the mask, you swallowed down your food, took a massive chug of water and looked back at her.

“Sorry, what I mean to say was do I get a name for the person who saved me?” You asked standing up gently, winching again at the throb that was coming from your side.

“Ahhhhh my name is Ghost Spider, but I guess you can call me Gwen” She took off her hood and you were not expecting her to look anything like that under her hood.

“Gwen, hey, I’m y/n” You took off your mask and watched her face look shocked, she tried to compose herself quickly but it was too late you had noticed.

“Okay well since your much better now, I have to go and catch this guy” She put her mask back on and flew out the window thwhipping away. You ran towards the window about to run after her but looking back down at your ribs you noticed your super healing hadn’t kicked in just yet.

You made your way back home on foot, as it hurt to use any of your limbs. You slid up to your apartment and were greeted with your Aunt.

“Where have you been!?” She yelled as you walked in the door. You gave her a sorry look and walked over to her.

“Sorry A/N I got held up doing some Spider stuff” You said throwing your back pack on the couch and sitting down, another twang of pain going through your body, you lift up your shirt and she gasped.

“Quick to my lab” You ran towards her lab she had stashed in your apartment, one thing you loved about your Aunt apart from the fact that she knew and was so supportive of the Spider-Man stuff was that she was an expert in the health department, which she tried teaching you so you could pick up her mantle. As soon as you entered the lab she pushed you onto the bed and go to work.

“This isn’t good Y/N” She said as she looked at the wound, your body not healing was the biggest red flag for her.

“Okay I’m going to get some of the Spidey serum we have at the moment, hopefully that will multiply your Spidey cells and kick them into over drive to work and start healing you” You nodded as she ran over to her makeshift fridge and pulled out a serum that was a mixture of blue and red. She walked over to you, with the serum in a needle ready to inject.

“This is highly experimental I don’t exactly know what’s going to happen” You nodded at her.

“I have full faith in you A/N” You said grabbing her hand, you laid flat on the bed, she grabbed the needle and plunged it into your arm. As soon as she injected it you began screaming.

“I am so sorry Y/N it should be over soon” As soon as the vial was done she pulled out the needle and took a couple of steps back. The wound on your side healed almost instantly but you were still crying out in pain. Your senses were overloaded, your body convulsing. Until all of a sudden it came to a complete stop and you just laid there motionless.

Your Aunt ran up to your bedside and saw that you were conscious and attentive but was just laying on the bed breathing heavily.

“Gwen’s in trouble” You said as you quickly got off the bed, grabbed another signature Spidey suit and headed out the closest window you could find. As you shot your web out you thanked your Aunt.

“I am so sorry for leaving so quickly but a friend of mine is in trouble…” She kissed your forehead and you swung away.

As you felt the cold air brush against your skin you noticed all your senses were kicked into hyperdrive, you knew exactly where Gwen was and what was happening, long story short she was losing to the Goblin. As you began swing you felt your arms were a bit bigger, you leaped from a tall building and felt your strength much stronger than what it was before. Carrying you a couple more blocks than usual.

“Whatever that stuff was that A/N gave me I feel much stronger, I don’t know what the side effects are but I don’t care I need to save Gwen”

You came up to the docks and heard bombs going off left right and centre, you swung down to the roof trying to keep the element of surprise and saw Gwen shoved against a wall, her mask was half burned off, her body was sliced, battered and bruised. She looked so tired and out of breath. Without even thinking you swung down and kicked goblin off his glider which caused him to drop Gwen. As she dropped you shot out your web catching her hang and springing her back up to you catching her in your arms.

“Sorry I’m late” You said getting her to safety.

“What are you doing here? How did you find me?” She said looking at you.

“I am here to help since you helped me and I could hear where all the fighting was coming from” You said placing her down on the ground, you heard Goblin’s glider start up again and decided to take care of him.

She grabbed your hand before you could take off and pulled you back towards her.

“Be careful please, I can’t lose you again” She said sadness evident in her voice, you looked confused under your mask but gave her a thumbs up as you swung back down.

“Hey Goblin, lets finish off what we started” You yelled out trying to get his attention. His evil maniacal laugh came from the shadows.

“Poor little Spider caught in a web I set” His glider came out from the corner of your eye towards you with no Goblin, you jumped dodging it and shooting a web into one of the shadows. The laugh game again.

“You are all so weak, too busy caring about people and your feelings” You hear him spit out those words with venom etched in his voice.

“Everyone has a weakness Goblin, yours is that ego you have thinking your stronger than everyone because you care about no one” You said shooting your web towards another shadow, once again coming up empty handed.

He laughed once again and you closed your eyes, taking in your surroundings using only our Spidey-Sense to guide you through this fight, the glider started up again and you heard him jump on top of it. Before he could prepare his next attack you had shot your web at him on his glider, pulled yourself towards him and hit him hard. He fell off his glider and slid backwards a few feet. You webbed him up enough that he wouldn’t be able to break out of it, grabbed his glider and split it in half.

“You won’t be hurting anyone else any time soon” You said to him, you saw an orange bracelet out of the corner of your eye, you shot your web towards it and pulled it closer to yourself.

“Gwen are you okay!? Can you hear me?” You ignored the voice but made your way to Gwen who was still in the same position you left her. You sat down next to her an she let out the biggest sigh of relief when she saw you.

“This is yours by the way, I’m not too sure what it is or who it is but they really want to talk to you” You said handing her the bracelet, as you did a face appeared and they looked relief.

“Jess sorry about that he was a bit more than I could handle and he took my watch”

“That’s okay I’m just happy to see that you’re okay”

They spoke for a bit longer but you tuned them out finally taking in the day you had. You could guess from the watch who she was talking to, there’s more of you out there you thought. You smiled and stood up, Gwen watched you intently and you picked her up again.

She pushed shoved your chin causing you to drop her, you looked at her like she grew a second head. Her face was red as she stood up herself.

“I don’t need you to carry me” She said placing her hood over her face, you rolled your eyes.

“I just saved you?” She poked her tongue out at you and started to thwip away.

You followed suite catching up to her.

“Come over to my apartment” You said swinging next to her. She shot you with a web. Causing you to lose your balance and fall. You managed to get a hold of what you were doing and caught back up to her.

“Not like that! My Aunt is big on health stuff she might be able to help with your wounds and that!” You said giving her a look.

“Fine but only because his glider had some weird stuff in it and I’m not healing as quickly as I would normally”

You nodded and took the lead towards your apartment, once you arrived your Aunt was in the kitchen preparing dinner. You slid through the window into the lounge room, Gwen looked at you like you grew a second head yourself and you walked right up to your Aunt and gave her a hug.

“I’m back from saving my friend” You said grabbing some bread from the counter, your Aunt slapped your hand and you skulked away. Gwen made her way into the apartment giving you a confused look.

“She knows about me, its cool, she’s helped me out so many times” You said grabbing the same bread but with your web.

“Hey Honey! You look a bit beat up lets see what we can do for you” Your aunt said grabbing Gwen’s hand and heading towards the Lab.

“Although your wound isn’t as severe as Y/N’s this should help out slightly with the toxins in your body” She gave Gwen a drink, it looked a lot less intense from the one you had. Gwen drank the contents of the vial and immediately her wounds began to heal.

“Thanks’ A/N” She said with the biggest smile on her face, her face was immediately replaced by sorrow. Your Aunt looked at her.

“I’m assuming you already knew me before our little encounter today” Gwen nodded her head.

“In my world where I’m from we were very close” Gwen said looking at your Aunt. At this point you had headed towards the Lab to see what was taking them so long and didn’t expect these turn of events.

“I lost both of you to a freak accident, it was Prom, we were going, you were our chaperone, me and Y/N were going together” She blushed as she mentioned this, you were still hanging back wanting to leave so you didn’t over step your boundaries but you needed to hear this story. You folded your arms leaning against the wall with your eyes closed.

“One of my other friends Peter had been bullied his whole life, create a serum that turned him into a lizard to get back at the bullies. He went to attack them, and I had to go into full Spider mode. I didn’t know it was him but I stopped him, as soon as the commotion was over the roof had collapsed and it trapped us all in it. Peter didn’t make it, I went searching for you both in the rubble and saw that you both were under the rubble, no movement no nothing. My Father is the captain of the police force and tried to arrest me, ever since then I’ve just been hurting and now you’re both here” But you’re not, you’re completely different people from the people she knows. You pushed yourself off the wall and headed into the lab watching your Aunt and Gwen stand there both.

Your Aunt pulled her into a hug seeing the hurt she had been carrying all this time, you stayed back not wanting to interfere again because once again this girl you had just met this morning and she had a whole history with you.

While they were hugging a portal opened up next to her, out come Jessica Drew, the lovely lady you heard on the other end of the watch.

“Mission successful, I just snagged the Goblin from the port thanks to Hobie’s help.” Gwen looked surprised to see Jessica.

“What are you doing here!?” She asked confused, Jessica smiled and threw something towards you.

“We can always use more Talent” She said, with a smirk. “Miguel was impressed with your work and wants you to join, I wouldn’t say no by the way it’s a little hard to convince him to get people to join” As she said that a face appeared in her watch.

“No it isn’t , I took no convincing to let Y/N join, the clearly had the skills…” As Miguel kept going on about his decision Jessica disappeared into her portal and it closed.

You looked confused but Gwen held her arm up towards you and smiled. You looked towards your Aunt who rolled her eyes and pushed you towards Gwen, Gwen opened a portal and held her hand towards you.

“Y/N, You got a minute” You grabbed onto it and she pulled you through the portal.

[moxpunk]

Moxie's Big-Ass Retrospective on Games She Played This Year

There's going to be a lot of games under the break, and I'm going full-hog on spoilers. Honestly, I'm going stream-of-consciousness with these, so there's not going to be a clear point made for some of them. Just how I remember them and how I feel now looking back.

Final Fantasy XIV This is my current MMO of choice, and it's been this massive part of how I spent my time this year. The patches and content continue to be great, even if I breeze through it all in a few days after the patch when plugins/mods are back up. I've definitely noticed a dip in my interest lately. I think it's because we've hit a good stopping-point for the plot and junk, so most of us are just waiting until the pre-patch of the new expansion next year. RP continues to get fucking worse and worse for someone that plays a lalafell, since the community at-large (especially the modding community) is actively hostile towards lalafells and their players. Having to check every single venue to see if my middle-aged potato is going to be treated like a child by the hosts gets exhausting after the umpteenth time. Still love the game and I poke at it on a regular basis.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom One of my favorite games I've played this year, but also one of the most frustrating in hindsight. There was a ton of lost opportunity in multiple aspects in this game, and it's sorta the thing I keep coming back to in my head. I loved the exploration and fucking around with physics and just getting to play around in Hyrule. It's a magical experience that I think transcends the fact that 2/3rds of the map is essentially re-used. The Underground was a missed opportunity to shove lore of ancient civilizations in there, Ganondorf was a missed opportunity to finally depict him as a tragic hero with Hyrule being the villains for once, and no plans for DLC or even a Hero Mode is a massive miss for me wanting to return to the world.

Baldur's Gate 3 Hands-down my favorite game of the year by a massive margin, but like TOTK, an immensely frustrating experience. The game is half-cooked in so many areas, and the bugs are plentiful to the extent that they can't really be ignored. The pathing system continues to be the Larian Special of being jank as all hell, with my characters running in the opposite direction of the path it lays out for them. I played this one on stream, and I cannot remember a single stream where I didn't have at least a handful of frustrations with the combat system. Hell, I had to completely restart my file in the middle of Act 2 because Karlach's romance bugged out. I continue to be very upset and frustrated at how goblins are treated, doubly so since in order to pursue the Good Route with Halsin, you have to attack fucking children. I don't care if they're goblins, they're kids. Also very disappointing we don't get a single short-race origin character, meanwhile half of the cast is some form of elf. At least it's nice letting me be full-on cock-out trans. Despite that, the writing and characterizations in this game are unparalleled. It's immensely refreshing to finally have a RPG where you fucking roleplay, after years of it being dialogue that doesn't matter in the slightest other than "points towards the good/evil ending". I love the Brain Slug Squad immensely. This game is probably going to become part of my "play this every year" list because there's just so many different ways to play through this game.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk Been waiting for this game (or a game like it) for fuckin' years, and it's everything I wanted and expected. I know a lot of people went into the game expecting some massive thing that lasted hours and hours, but my memories of JSR/JSRF was a game that I could reasonably beat in an afternoon or two because I just get into the flow and know what I'm doing. Cyberfunk is the purest successor to JSF that I can thing of where it just adds to the fun formula of the past. Incredible game, love seeing the mods coming out for it, hope we get another game in the universe since Team Reptile said they aren't doing DLC.

Pizza Tower Love this game, adore the movement and the music, absolutely fell off at about the halfway mark. I think it's because a lot of stuff was coming out at the time, and I just kinda played those instead. One of these days, I'll beat it and be very satisfied, but for now my gremlin-brain that demands collecting every single collectable and getting at least an A-rank on every stage gets exhausted just thinking about it.

Elden Ring Opened the game up after upgrading to a new PC, marveled that I could run it on Ultra with the game keeping a smooth framerate, killed a few enemies, remembered about the fucking giant ants in this game and how there are zero mods to remove/change them, and then turned the game off and uninstalled. Begging someone to make a mod that gets rid of the fucking ants. Please. I've already gotten every trophy in the game last year, so any incentive I have to return is predicated on that.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty So, I'm going to give my thoughts about the base game and the DLC, since I played both. The base game continues to be this utter fascination to me where my brain adores just existing in the cyberhell future of nonstop advertising (if I have to hear YO YO YO MY CHEWERS SHROOMERS AND FUMERS! one more time I'm going to fucking strangle someone to death) and ultraviolence. The game continues to ride that weird line of "might as well do every side-quest because they're quick enough to get to and there's hardly any compared to Witcher 3" and "oh my god I do not care about these fucking sidequests other than I have gremlin-brain". Doing anything with sniper rifles or heavy machine guns is an exercise in frustration thanks to there being zero silenced sniper rifle until late-game and there being no unique HMGs.The DLC is... fine. It's fun antagonizing Idris Alba, it's not fun that the DLC is based around a stealth build, it's extremely not fun that the changed ending is deeply unsatisfying from a narrative standpoint.

Pseudoregalia An adorable little game that I enjoyed quite a bit for the very short time I got to fool around with it. Love the movement, love the style of the graphics, love the little pieces of story. Game doesn't get enough love, so here's me giving it some more.

Potionomics I fucking adore this game. I think what helped endear me was getting to do all the voices on-stream, but who cares this is my retrospective and I get to be biased. Loved the romances and characters in there. I absolutely headcanon Xid as being trans, Roxanne turns me into a babbling idiot, and I relate to Luna so hard it almost hurts. I enjoy that characters remain your friend if you already picked a partner, and you have to have a conversation about "hey, you were kinda flirty for a while and I feel a little weird about that now" for each of them. Breaking the economy by the third competition was immensely satisfying.

Paradise Killer I slammed through this game over the course of a single sleepless night thanks to Super Depression. Love the character designs and how bold they are, love the lore behind the world, got kinda sick of it taking so long to travel from place to place, gremlin-brain refused to let me part with the game until I collected everything. Hope to see a prequel/sequel of some sort, because Lady Love Dies is such an interesting character and I liked the bugfuck-weird world.

Peglin It's Peggle, you're a goblin, you get funky ball powerups, adore playing this game on my phone in short bursts. Not much more to say, it's my potato-chip game.

Rimworld Friend gifted this to me and I got horribly obsessed for like a week. It's a lot easier to grok than Dwarf Fortress thanks to the UI and information being easier to comprehend. I never know how to do the crazy shit in these games, I usually peak at having a little self-sustaining settlement with like 4 characters that live their little lives until a plague or bandit raid sweep through and kill everyone.

Halo: Master Chief Collection Another series of games I got obsessed with and pounded out before dropping it. Halo 1 is like twice as long as I remember, Halo 2's remastered cutscenes are fucking gorgeous and it continues to be my favorite out of the series, Halo 3 I'm lukewarm on it's whatever, Halo Reach is... eh I don't care, ODST I petered out of thanks to playing it with an ex that does not understand videogames, Halo 4 is a slog. Didn't do any multiplayer.

Helltaker Finally played it, beat it in like 2 hours, thought the puzzles were fun and the art continues to rattle around in my noggin.

A Hat In Time Another game that I finally beat after owning it for like the better part of a decade. Cute little game, I don't have a clue what any of the updates and junk do these days. The big mountain level is a fucking nightmare to navigate and explore and that's why I fell off last time.

Puzzle Agent Played this one on-stream because I'm Minnesotan as all fuck and I enjoy Professor Layton puzzles. It's just as good as I remember, even if it's incredibly short.

Kingsway Love the premise, adore that it takes me back to the Windows XP era of using my parents' computer. I had like one good run that died in the middle of things, and I never really went back. I should do this game again at some point.

Loop Hero Another procedural game where progress is usually bottlenecked by gathering base resources in each run so you have a fighting chance. All my runs sorta ended up the same by a certain point and I wasn't really having much fun anymore.

Lethal Company Game scares the absolute shit out of me, I cannot play this game for extended periods because I get heartburn from fear. Excellent experience with friends.

Super Mario RPG I didn't have a SNES growing up, so I never got a chance to play the original. So far, I've been greatly enjoying the remake! I don't have much to say because I've only played like four hours of it on stream.

Katamari Reroll Just beat this game again on stream last week. Extremely fun, extremely short, Lonely Rolling Star continues to make me get emotional and cry, my memories get mixed-up with We ♥️ Katamari when it comes to the final sequence of levels.

World of Warcraft I made the return, and holy shit have things changed in-game. The UI actually looks like it's part of a cohesive artstyle, catching up with the story and questlines after bouncing in the middle of Shadowlands is honestly kind of exhausting, and the RP community is still splintered and fractured between Retail and Epsilon. Controller-support has been my biggest gripe since XIV's is fucking stellar and I do not have the wrists/hands for putting my abilities on the keyboard anymore, I either have to use my janked-out mouse buttons or a controller using ConsolePort which is... serviceable but nowhere near good. Uh, I don't particularly care for the dragon-stuff in WoW's lore, and I still haven't done a single dungeon since I play Brewmaster and I'm so out of whack with WoW tanking that I just don't bother. I'm usually doing RP on my endless ranks of characters if I'm not playing with my girlfriend. Season of Discovery has been a fun thing to do with my friend and our guild, it's sorta what I wanted out of Classic when they announced it. The "No Changes" thing was stupid because we'll never get back the lack of information and endless time we had back then, so I'm very happy to have World Of Warcraft Chopped And Screwed Edition. As much as I still have massive, major gripes with Blizzard and ABK in general... Azeroth is still home for me. It's been important to me as a person. Wouldn't have realized I was trans or poly without it.

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT My thinks and feelings on all the games I played this year in 2023. I guess to sum up the year in general? It's been a real shit year for me. Went through like three big breakups, my art output's been dogshit in quantity thanks to mental-health issues, and for the first half of the year people just sorta generally treated me poorly which exaserbated a lot of problems. I'm recovering, but I've noticed it's been a lot slower than it has been in the past. Games are a huge hobby of mine, so I'm glad I've gotten to play some bangers this year. Being more active on Tumblr's been good for my mental health, since I finally feel like I've got a community again after not really feeling like I've had one in forever. Love you guys, stay weird. 💖💖💖

Sorry not sorry for this being so long.

[neutronice]

Timid Yuuri? I Think Not!

I can’t tell if this is an unpopular opinion or not, because even 6+ years later, the Yuri on Ice fandom is rich and wonderful. It’s a fandom where there seems to be something for everyone.

But one thing I do see a lot of, and at least if @rikeijo​‘s takes are correct (and given her translations, I believe them), there is a rabid subset of YOI that firmly stand in the uke!Yuuri and seme!Victor camp, to such a degree that there was backlash about seeing long-haired young Victor because it did not fit the mold of perfect masculine boyfriend assertive Victor and soft feminine timid Yuuri.

Which... <points to canon> Yuuri has something to say about that.

When we first meet Yuuri, he’s a ball of anxiety and self-doubt. He’s had a horrific debut at the GPF, and his dog has died.

Yet, his first encounter with Victor Nikiforov, his idol, is him turning away from an offer of a commemorative photo. Turning down and walking away are already not behaviors of someone who is timid. Ashamed and depressed that his idol didn’t even seem to recognize him as a competitor? Yes. Timid and uke? Nope.

I often wonder if the timidity idea came from the other first encounter, yes, that one. Naked-and-confident Victor in the onsen declaring himself Yuuri’s coach. Yuuri shell-shocked and overly accommodating. On top of that, Yuuri lets Yurio bulldoze him, lets Victor set the terms of the Onsen on Ice, and goes along with it all with nary a complaint.

At least at the beginning, we know Yuuri thinks of Victor as a god. We see him do a dogeza for being late, see him flustered with the touch and attention that Victor gives him, see the way his face goes moony each time Victor speaks.

And then... as Victor is telling Yuuri to remember sometime how it felt being with a lover, Yuuri reacted like this:

Yup. That is the face he made as he shouted “huh?!” at Victor, before he came back to himself and apologized profusely. That “huh?!” is not timid.

Personally, I think this Yuuri, the “huh?!” Yuuri is the real one, sliding behind the mask of deference because his idol is coaching him, scared that Victor might lose interest and abandon him.

And from that “huh?!” moment onward, we get more and more of the real Yuuri.

We get eye rolls when Victor changes into a suit for the regional competition.

We get full on insubordination when Victor says to cut some of his quads.

We get battle-mode Yuuri letting Victor apply his lip balm.

And it all goes downhill from there.

In Beijing, Yuuri scolded Victor for interrupting his interview to talk food. He refused the food that would turn his stomach (as well as the alcohol), and finally... when Victor totally fumbled on coaching Yuuri through his panic attack, Yuuri... unleashed.

(gif source here)

You know who acted like the experienced and assertive one after this conversation? I’ll give you one hint. It wasn’t Victor.

Yes, Victor absolutely was the one who initiated that kiss. But even Yuuri’s reaction to it (after the initial shock of kissing Victor on live TV) was “oh!”

Yet, these moments are not even the cream of the crop. There is one moment that stands above them all. Yes, I am referring to the tie.

Victor is hamming it up for the audience in Russia. He is not paying all of his attention to Yuuri. Yuuri takes issue with this.

There is nothing timid or uke about that tie tug. That is the type of tie tug that awakened something in Victor Nikiforov (if it had not already been awakened by his gorgeous chaos goblin boyfriend already.)

This is not to say that Yuuri has no shy and tender moments, he absolutely does. This is not to say that Victor is actually the uke, he absolutely is not.

This is just to say that the thing about Yuuri and Victor that make them compelling and wonderful is that they cannot be fit into obvious little boxes like uke and seme.

It’s what is so wonderful about Victor and Yuuri. That we can imagine them in whatever configuration we want to, and it works!

It means that I cannot wait for Ice Adolescence, with that soft and sweet Victor. Because Yuuri Katsuki was not an uke seeking a seme, he was nuanced and confident and sweet and chaotic, and absolutely perfect for Victor Nikiforov.

[bettsfic]

it took 140 hours, but i finally finished my first playthrough of baldur's gate 3. overall i'm insane about it but there are a few things that really pissed me off. my (many) thoughts in no particular order under the cut.

i forced myself to play the full game totally vanilla, no mods even though i'm so bad at games i usually need cheats to make it to the end. not to mention i've hated inventory management in every game i've ever played (except genshin. love u, hyv). but i was patient, and i played on explorer mode, and i savescummed the hell out of it (hence 140 hours). but as SOON as i finished the epilogue, i turned around and installed 30 mods, most of which are QoL things that shouldn't even need to be modded (vertical camera pitch, WASD option, stackable items, sortable inventory, highlight ALL interactable objects).

i decided i wanted to play both a Dark Urge playthrough and an I'm Just Ken playthrough, but after making two new characters and, through my endless youtube diving, accidentally getting spoiled on what i think is the major durge reveal, i decided simply to make Ken the Dark Urge.

every other minute he goes, "Hi! I'm Ken," and then thinks about murder. it's great.

obvs he's going to romance Shadowheart (although i may download the poly mod and romance everyone).

MAJOR SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

here are my Thoughts, in no particular order, because i don't know where else to put them:

i didn't enjoy romancing Astarion as much as i thought i would, because i came to see him less as a romantic interest and ended up identifying with him more than my Tav. that said, i'm very excited to do Astarion's origin playthrough

i ended up enjoying my Halsin romance more, because it was a more traditional slowburn, and Halsin's quest was totally external conflict. on one hand, that made me less interested in him as a character overall; on the other, it was SO SATISFYING to find out he had been Pining for me the whole time. sometimes i just need a little bodice-ripper content, as a treat

obviously i'm also into Astarion/Halsin and Astarion/Halsin/Tav

however the only viable fic idea i have is Astarion/Shadowheart? i blame this fanvid

no, really, what was so different about Early Access that OP got this much Astarion/Shadowheart material? the description in the video says they were disappointed by how their dynamic had changed for full release

okay, time or my biggest beef:

Haarlep pissed me off almost enough to stop playing the game. not in a purity way, but in a "this is just bad writing" way

i mean, your options are to kill him or fuck him. that's not consent. and when you agree to fuck him, you have to roll several checks to keep him from killing you. then he steals your likeness so that whenever he has sex with someone else, you have a spontaneous orgasm

i wanted to dismiss it as dead dove, but the point of dead dove is that 1) it is labeled, and there was no indication whatsoever i was about to walk into this, and 2) dead dove implies the creator is aware that the content is filth for filth's sake. i saw no evidence that that quest was anything more than the sniffing panties buff of D:OS2

the sadist in the goblin camp? that's good filth. you have a little public BDSM demo that you can easily nope out of, and if you finish it you get a permanent buff. your companions have fun things to say. and there's no major quest attached to it, so you can completely walk past it. and the Drow twins were the same. and Mizora. just horny content for players who enjoy that kind of thing, and easily disregarded for players who don't. i don't understand why Haarlep had to be different

like, you're looking around for the hammer. you come across Haarlep, who is bored and wants to have fun with you. maybe he offers the promise of a buff that will help in the coming battle with the Absolute. if your romanced character is in the party, you have a dialogue option to talk to them about it first. maybe in parting, he gives you a hint about where to find the hammer, and it's in a completely different room

but no, you *have* to interact with him to advance the quest, can't talk your way out of it, and it leaves you with a skeevy pseudo-debuff

when i went to look it up, i saw so many forum posts of people being like, hmm this made me really uncomfortable, and (presumably) men responding, it was consensual! you have the option to kill him! and it's frightening that so many people think that way

also when you have a female Tav and you choose a male Haarlep, the animation doesn't change to account for the position. Haarlep straddles you the whole time. and that just made me interpret the scene as a male succubus rape fantasy

and your companions have to WATCH. and they don't intervene or even say anything about it. if you've romanced Astarion and he's in your party, you get one point of disapproval and that's it. like he wouldn't have an Opinion over that kind of coercion? i saw some youtube videos and know that he says something about it much later when you spontaneously orgasm, but that's it

i hope there's something i'm missing, and someone will come into my ask and go "ummm actually" and tell me some important factoid of game development that will make me interpret the scene differently

i ended up resetting and just not doing the House of Hope questline. i didn't bother with the hammer, either. honestly the whole Githyanki plot confused me and i was more invested in my conflict with the Emperor. i ended up siding with him and killing Orpheus so that no one would have to turn into a mindflayer. i was expecting to have to persuade him out of taking the crown himself, but he just noped off for some reason

this is another thing i wonder if i missed. i never understood his motivations or goals beyond "protect you" and "manipulate you." so he's Balduran and he killed his dragon and...what else? to what end? it would have been more satisfying to me if he planned to take the crown for himself but decides not to because of the bond he's forged with you. but maybe i can interpret it that way anyway

yes i fucked the Emperor

but i fucked him in Guardian form

like a COWARD

i was very torn about all the characters' final decisions. in the end, i kept Jenheart and spawn Astarion. i let Wyll and Karlach choose for themselves (and loved their ending together). i couldn't prioritize Gale or Lae'zel this playthrough because i was focused on too many other things, and i got their bad endings (although i ended on good terms with Lae'zel despite killing Orpheus?)

i played as a beast master ranger (i mained a beast master hunter in WoW for years) and i've seen in several places on the internet that it's supposedly the worst subclass, but let me tell you...

the bird companion. nobody is talking about the bird companion. by the end, it has two actions, the ability to blind, and your bird can call in two more birds. you can have a total of FOUR BIRDS

the red dragon in the final battle? couldn't do shit. it spent the entire time blinded by my bird. nearly everyone on the battlefield was dead by the end, but my bird still had over 50% of its HP. the bird is BROKEN

in my I'm Just Ken playthrough, i'm going to multiclass Shadowheart into a raven girl. the birds spoiled me and i can't imagine playing without them now

it's weird to me that there's penis physics but no boob physics. did anyone else notice that? you wiggle the male avatar and the dick moves. you wiggle the female avatar and her boobs are like rocks. even when she's lying down, the boobs stay exactly as they are

listen, i have a lot of complaints. the bugs made the game nearly unplayable for me. i know they're putting out patches fast, but i think it'll still be years before i would recommend this game to someone who is on the fence about playing it. if you're not immediately dropping everything to fuck the hot sad vampire, you might as well wait until the game is cleaner at like hotfix 856

BUT

i've never experienced anything like this game. every decision matters. every character has a story. there are so many potential paths and opportunities that it's literally impossible for the fan wiki to be completely accurate. i cried at least 4 times, and by the end, saying goodbye to Karlach, i was actually sobbing. i'm old enough now to know that these states of immersion into fictional worlds are rarer than they used to be, and i'm so grateful to this game for giving me so many hours of fun and escape

unlike books, movies, and tv, where i get invested and move on and rarely read or watch anything twice, video games are always such a learning curve for me that when i get into a game, i stay there. i have thousands of hours into Genshin and SDV, and i have a feeling BG3 will be the same. this game is so, so flawed, but it's ambitious beyond any narrative i've ever encountered, and i really admire it for that

i would love to find a Discord server for it that's not overwhelmingly huge, just the people writing fic and making art. it's been a long time since i've been involved in a fandom and i really miss it

[the-zapped-part-timer]

Penn Zerothon Day Ø

Piløt

My Ramblings: Starting with the lost and then found pilot! A nice little treat for us this year, huh?

We start off in World 0072, aka Galaxy World. I wonder if we would've had that little numbering system and have it announced every time?

We get a scene that appears later in Number One Number Two; Rippen delivering a banger line and about to blast Penn to smithereens until Larry accidentally messes it all up, the inciting incident for that episode.

How the Trio are zapped back is different from how we're used to seeing it, starting off as like an actual screen with them being pulled through. Maybe this is how it normally it and I just miss that. It looks different here for sure. A "mission failed" is played when the Duo are zapped... I would hate hearing that everyday.

The pilot's iteration of the intro is cute at the start with his parents. It explains the concept pretty well and what happened to his parents. Little goblin mode Rippen with his witchy laugh in during sequence is interesting. In the show, we didn't exactly know how he did until Mr. Rippen, I believe. In this, it shows him messing with some wire in the Odyssey. Which I'm glad wasn't the case in the show. It seems way too easy here. But again, I'm happy with what we got, I mean, I don't know if this was gonna be the intro for every episode or a special one just for the first (pilot).

The character title cards are neat! Seeing them zapped in and see how they operate. But Boone's is the worst, like just showing him eat... classy. Also, just hearing Rippen being called Mr. Reap is so funny to me. It's like, "Hey guys, this is the bad guy! He's evil!"

I adore Sashi and Penn's dynamic here, it's so sweet. She's so supportive of this untrained noodle. They feel like good friends... unlike Boone. I'm sure that during this iteration, maybe he would have lightened up more towards Penn, but I don't know.

I love the classroom scene so much. Mr. Reap acting like he's top dog and that he doesn't still lose every day to children. He's full of confidence for a losing man. I like the way he walks over to him, his little leggies, I'm sorry! His face drop is good. Also Penn? He's already got lady eyes, beautiful puppy eyes. Reap is so needlessly much in this situation, I adore everything that comes out of his mouth. Then Larry popping in, playing the xylophone is great. Why is he? Because he can and again, such smooth animation! I'm sure Reap is annoyed to no need that he isn't the principal. We see what he would've been like as principal later on. Anyways, Larry pulling Reap away from class by his shmock always gets me, I wish Larry drove his little vespa with Reap all the time.

The Knight world, also known as dimension 0073. I like that Penn is so happy that he knows the sword and the stone. I like the rock bit. It's funny how Boone is like "this guy is always gonna be one step ahead of us" and gives up, did you not beat this man multiple times at this point? Boone... go die. I'm sorry but please... go die. How does Reap seem more nicer than you?

Hmmm, this catapult scene looks familiar.

"It was you?" So either Phyllis didn't feel the need to tell Penn or maybe she didn't know it was Reap, which I doubt.

"It's more me, wouldn't you say?" Stop good evil sir.

Every time Penn arf arf's during his little unprompted beat boxing solo I think of beat boxing puppy! And Reap getting beaten and burned by the dragon was a lot. Like damn, kinda feel bad. He cries out for Larry!

Boone possibly being a cannibal is interesting to say the least. Any who, Sashi and Penn playing around with magic is fun, they deserve it.

Boone getting smashed by the door by Reap is just the cherry on top, I still like the idea that Sashi saw Reap heafing towards the Odyssey and just kept going. Not her circus, not her monkeys. She off the clock.

Mr. Reap does talk a big game for a guy who just got his butt baked. I agree, Penn. But also, yeah, he got burned alive. I like Penn standing up to him and then just skateboarding off, very cool. Reap looks so lost in the background.

I think this is a pretty good pilot. But there is one massive issue I have... Boone. I'm happy with what we got and I think Zap One is better.

~The Characters~

Penn Zero: I can't say much for Penn at the start that isn't his design... I don't mind it, but I'm happy with what we ended up with, our dear cotton candy-head noodle boy! I will never understand why Boone had the zero on his shirt instead of Penn... Zero...

Penn has so many pictures of his parents by his bed... my heart.

Boone Wiseman: I hate him... he's not funny or helpful. Like get out of here! You're so mean! You're not our Boone!

Sashi Kobayashi: Our first time with is Sashi, her absolutely annihilating all the robots and then saving Penn, establishing her as a badass.

Training with Penn is fun, I bet half the time this happens it's out of nowhere and she just appears to attacks him. Maybe while doing homework, gaming or at more inopportune times. Although something that's always confused me in the show is, Sashi basically trained her whole life to be a sidekick. How? Her parents don't know about any of this! I wonder if this iteration they did, like in the flashback of her being a baby, they had to... right? Anyways, what an exit, huh?

Sashi kicking and punching Boone was therapeutic.

Rippen Mr. Reap: His performance is so over the top and delightful! In the Galaxy World, the classroom and the Knight World, everywhere! He's just gotta be extra

Larry: Let's blow up Mondays with him everybody, come on! Larry is as Larry as all ways starting the running joke of "if I had blank, you know what I'd do?"

I like him just landing directly on to Reap's head without a care in the world while Reap looks like a flatten cat man. His animation is delightful. Why is he given such smooth animation? Because he deserves it is why.

I can listen to him go and on and on about whatever the hell he's currently rambling about. Although realistically? I might not. Sorry, Larry.

Phyllis: Is Phyllis.

[deadmomjokes]

Betwixt Christmas gift cash and Steam Family Sharing workaround shenanigans, the husband and I have finally started Baldur's Gate 3.

Went in basically blind except for knowing the names of the companions and the fact that Astarion is a vampire (couldn't miss that cultural osmosis).

We also came in on two different meta-levels as players.

He is very familiar with D&D, D&D-based games, computer games in general, and these sorts of games specifically. He's also that kind of person that plays things on Extreme Difficulty Mode for fun. He quits when something isn't challenging enough. His idea of relaxing, rewarding gameplay is ultra-hard-mode Elden Ring and Dark Souls.

I, on the other hand, am bad at games. Full stop. I have lost Wii Mario Kart to a 6 year old, repeatedly. I get hopelessly lost even when there's detailed maps, trackers, compasses, and flagged waypoints. I also panic in combat situations and have no strategic ability aside from "stand there, hit it, and hope it doesn't move." I'm more of a low-stakes visual novel sort of gamer. Stardew Valley is as intense as I get.

He is playing a Seldarine Drow warlock in a pact with an archfey. She's a noble with a ridiculously high Charisma score, a perfectly balanced spell loadout, and an even more balanced overall stat build. She's DPS without being totally squishy and helpless, and has advantage to almost everything. She also has an impeccable fashion sense and always looks put together, even when on death's door to a brain worm. Or, to put it in a way my husband would loathe, she got that drip.

I am playing a ginger himbo of a high elf fighter with -1 to Charisma and a -1000 to common sense. He's an impulsive maniac with, somehow, a +3 to intimidation despite being a truly gentle soul that believes every sob story he comes across. He's a sweaty, dusty, grubby little feral child (outlander background) with the world's messiest ponytail and greasepaint-turned-eyeliner that a 90s ex emo kid would be proud of. And that's him trying to look presentable. Despite having an impressive dexterity score, my natural disadvantage to dexterity (and Wisdom and Intelligence) as the player makes it so that this man bumbles his way into everything and only gets out by making horrifying threats he has absolutely no intention of following up on, or by being forced to stand his ground and take it on the jaw.

So this was going to be An Experience no matter what. And boy, it sure has been.

Thus far, we have:

Accidentally pacifism'd our way into every Goblin/Absolute aligned settlement we've encountered on the pure luck of husband's choice to play a Drow because he thought it would add an interesting dynamic. That interesting dynamic, he thought, would be difficulty. He thought being a Drow would make it harder because of the general hatred toward them. He's technically good-aligned, but, y'know, planet-of-hats racism means he was expecting it to work against him, which he likes because he likes when things are hard. Only now it's basically a free pass into all the areas we'd normally have to fight or sneak into. Great for our shared pacifist tendencies, but LOL

Lost a full hour of progress because my computer screen is tiny and bad at graphics and I hadn't learned all the controls yet, so while trying to investigate a hole in the floor of an abandoned church I tripped in face-first and got us into an unescapable, imminent-TPK situation, whereupon the game immediately autosaved for the first time since waking up on the beach. We have since learned to spam the quicksave button liberally.

Accepted a ton of mutually exclusive quests, half of which we have no intention of doing, just to try and get out of situations without combat, so now the mini map now looks like a cubist rendition of a simple sun drawing and I'm SO worried it's going to come crashing down and get us shanked in our sleep.

MET BEST BOY DOGGO I WILL DIE FOR SCRATCH 😭

Discovered husband's character is, build wise, a carbon-copy of Wyll. This was 100% unintentional and he's BIG mad about it LOL RIP

Impulsively pushed a button in a crypt without saving and woke up a bunch of skellies we weren't prepared for, but were somehow also saved by that same impulsivity because I had previously run around the entire area and looted every single skeleton no matter how useless it was to my character, so they all woke up without their weapons so HAH take that I TOLD YOU being a klepto would pay off

Immediately after this fortuitous stroke of fate, having learned exactly nothing, my impulsive maniac opened the shiny sarcophagus before consulting anyone or healing. Luckily it wasn't cursed or trapped or full of enemies (it was Withers, and I'm love), but I'm now not allowed to open or interact with anything bigger than a crate without announcing it first so husband has the chance to go NO WAIT LET ME SAVE FIRST

Sneaked into a secret underground passage, whereupon my husband sent his invisible'd familiar around to carefully scout the area, discovering the button that would turn off the overpowered guardian statue. My character then readied a crossbow shot to hit said button, but in trying to move out of the way of the other party members, stepped right into the statue's attack circle. I panicked, tried to move, but couldn't figure out how to unselect the attack I could no longer use, and tried to fix it by pausing. But all of that just resulted in me standing there, doing nothing, until I finally dropped dead. Luckily I passed my saving throws, and more luckily still, my husband managed to stop laughing long enough to eldritch blast the statue to pieces and come get me.

So anyway, we're having the best time. I know we're late to the party, but it really is so good. I may have even teared up a little during the dream sequence with the psychedelic neon light guardian warriors. This is going to consume my brain for the next few months, and I'm happy to have paid for the privilege. 10/10, absolutely deserves that GOTY and the $60 price tag both.

No spoilers please, we're only level 3 and just encountering the Goblin Camp. (We've met everyone but Karlach, I believe.) But rest assured, as we learn and discover more I will come yelling and seeking those who will screech with me. Probably mostly about my new sons that I've acquired, namely the lying purple sadsack trash wizard with some horrifying kind of chronic illness and/or addiction, and the prettiest most specialist murder machine who definitely won't admit it but is definitely gonna need a hug when I finish breaking down those obviously performative emotional walls.

Also, Lae'zel scares me. Please stop yelling at me, you cranky fish woman, I'm trying my best here 😭

[peach-the-owl]

Cuddles

Mighty Nein & Child!Reader (Child of the Nein)

*Crawls out of the void* I still live… *drops post and crawls back into the void*

Jester

You are always eager for cuddles and Jester is just as eager to return them, sometimes the two of you smiling goofily at each other while trying to see who can squeeze the other the tightest (usually Jester wins, but you get a victory every now and again). Other times you both just snuggle together, enjoying the moment of relief from adventuring.

On days when you’re usual enthusiastic attitude is nothing but a distant memory, so to speak, is when extra special cuddles are needed the most. Jester will sit with you, slowly bringing you closer to her as a way of asking if you were okay with it. When you lean in accepting the hug she’ll pull you onto her lap and hum a tune her just like her mother used to while gently petting down your hair in a comforting way, this usually leads to you falling asleep to which Jester will give a kiss to the top of your head.

Nott/Veth

It’s not that you don’t like cuddles, it’s just you’re not used to them, especially when you first met Nott. She was very understanding of this and took the time to help ease you into the feeling. Even now after all this time you’re still slightly hesitant about it but defiantly more eager to curl up next to her for some R&R.

There are days where even though your past is behind you and you’re a brand new halfling, you still feel like that icky runt of a goblin you used to be. Veth is quick to catch you when you’re like this and jumps right into mom mode, letting you curl into her for extra comfort while she makes sure you know that despite everything she still loves you for who you are. Her comfort and reassurance always helps ease your frantic mind.

Caleb

You love hugs and cuddles, Caleb does not, or at the very least he’s not the most open to them. There were two great ways to get them from him though, the most common was to steal Frumpkin as a substitute, the cat purring and rubbing against you while you happily snuggled into his soft fur. The other way was when Caleb polymorphs into an animal, giving you the chance to still snuggle into warm and fluffy fur while also enjoying Caleb’s company (he’s also extra protective of you like this but shhh, that’s a secret 🤫).

The rare off days where you’re the one feeling down are different. At first Caleb just lets Frumpkin handle it, after all the fey cat has helped him through many tough spots. With time and the more Caleb opens up he’ll approach you himself, offering to read stories to you or use Dancing Lights as that’s your favourite spell and especially the way he shifts the glowing orbs around easily helps brighten your mood once again.

Caduceus

Who were you if not usually soft and gentle, figuratively and literally, so naturally you’re always one to enjoy a comforting cuddle and Caduceus is always happy to share a cuddle with you. You’ll sit together and lean your head against his chest, smiling up at him while he contently smiles back, most of the time you’ll have a nice warm cup of tea to go with it, just adding that much more to the comfortable atmosphere between you.

It happens more often then you’d like where your thoughts will sour your mood, locking you in the past and spiralling into what if scenarios. A gentle hand on your shoulder pulls you away from it, and a comforting squeeze fulling brings you back to reality where Caduceus is waiting with a fresh pot of chamomile tea for the both of you. You don’t say much as you sip on your beverage, you don’t have to, he understands you need that space for yourself. He’ll offer you reassurance while you snuggle into his side, wrapping his arm around you that, in a way, helps protect you from those sour thoughts coming back.

Fjord

You’re not one to jump at an opportunity for cuddles but you don’t mind them either. Fjord would argue you actually very much enjoy cuddles, but it’s usually when you’re sleepy but feel too stubborn to fall asleep right away. There are multiple times you’d force yourself to stay awake so you don’t miss something important with the Nein, only for you to curl up against Fjord and end up passing out anyways. He doesn’t mind in the slightest, he likes that you feel safe enough with him to fall asleep.

When you’re having a bad day you’re not exactly willing to say something right away, you’ve gotten better at it over time but there are still days when you just get really quiet and standoffish with everyone. Fjord will almost immediately catch on to what’s happening and check on you, if you need a bit of space but don’t want to be alone, he’ll sit with you until you’re feeling better, if you’re looking for some comfort Fjord will happily lift you into his arms and hold you in a safe and secure grip until you’re back to your usual self again.

Beau

You’re indifferent when it comes to something like cuddles, you don’t hate them but you don’t care much about them either. What you usually do is give Beau a gentle punch to her arm as a sign of affection, she’ll do the same back at ya and you both call it a day.

It’s rare but there are days were you just feel down, your mind almost forcing you to wonder if you were ever good enough for anyone, you usually try to take your mind off it by distracting yourself with training. It’s not long for Beau to notice you’re quiet and sad demeanour, she’ll get you to sit next to her when you take a quick break, wrap an arm around your shoulder and gently pull you into her side. Depending on how upset you are will depend on if you’ll get Beau to also draw small designs on your arm too, defiantly helps you feel better after some time.

Yasha

You’re not the most open to touch, maybe the occasional hug here and there but you don’t initiate it. It’s not that you don’t like them, you’re just so used to keeping your distance with people that you almost feel a bit uncomfortable with it. Yasha doesn’t mind this, of course, she’s about the same when it comes to hugs and cuddles but with time and lots of patience you’re both more open to it, you still don’t seek it out for yourself though.

More often then not you’re caught up in your thoughts, part of you wanting to seek out Yasha for a bit of comfort but the other part of you doesn’t always know how to go about it. Thankfully Yasha has become very good at reading your emotions and is understanding when you need to work things out for yourself, she knows you’ll come to her when you’re ready and even though you fumble through your words she’ll wait for you to finish explaining yourself before offering you the comfort you’re looking for.

Molly

You love cuddles, simple as that. Someone wants hug, you’re happy to offer. There are times you take a running start towards Molly, making him drop whatever he might be doing at the time to catch you when you jump at him for a quick cuddle before letting him finish what he’s doing. It never bothers him when you “sneak attack” him like that, he finds it fun and great for keeping himself aware of his surroundings, win-win all around.

The literal second your emotions get you down Molly notices, your usual upbeat attitude suddenly disappearing never sits well with him. It’s one of those rare times where the Nein, aside from Yasha, will see Molly’s softer, more caring side show itself. The normally eccentric tiefling now calmly and quietly holding you, brushing a hand through your hair to soothe away the bad thoughts that dare tired to enter your brain.

[miloscat]

[Review] Antonball Deluxe (NS)

Wario meets Arkanoid meets Punch Ball Mario Bros.!

Having wrapped up my Wario Land fest, I picked this out of my backlog due to it taking some inspiration from the big goof. Summitsphere had previously published Annalynn, which models itself on arcade classics of the early 80s, and this likewise remixes ideas from retro games both popular and niche. Their next game is actually a direct Wario Land homage, but it's not out yet!

Antonball started as a pair of Game Boy homebrews made in just a few days: one a mashup of brick breaking platforming, and the other an expansion on Hudson's Punch Ball Mario Bros., which is itself a neat little remix of Mario Bros. but with a ball projectile. Antonball Deluxe fleshes both of these out, and adds a head-to-head brick-breaking Pong-esque multiplayer mode reminiscent of one of the faux-retro games in the underrated Game Center CX 3. All in all it's a nice package.

The Wario inspiration comes in the design of the main character Anton and the general tone, as well as a shoulder-barge attack that can be used in mid-air. You can also do a high-jump that looks a bit like the backflip in Donkey Kong 94 (you see, this game is very citational!). In the primary game mode, you use your moves to platform around the single-screen stages in order to body block the bouncing ball and break all the bricks. Sometimes there are enemies or hazards to avoid, and powerups to claim. There are 30 stages but I wasn't able to finish them all, as it gets super hard and it's all too easy to let balls slip past you.

I had a better time with the Punch Ball mode, whose story focuses on Anton's coworker Annie. Annie was specifically added as an equal but feminine counterpart to Anton's Wario-like depravity and goblin charisma, something the Wario series itself has always lacked. There are actually a bunch of unlockable characters, by the way, that you can freely use in any mode including the Waluigi-esque Danton, versions of Anton in different art styles, Anton's dog and Annie's cat, guests from other indie games, and—my favourite—the punny "Ant on Ball". It's an ant on a ball.

Punch Ball by its nature is less twitchy and more about carefully manoeuvring and stunning enemies with the ball so you can knock them out, with a variety of foes with different behaviours, some even interacting with the ball in interesting ways. Some clever level design gives you another 30 stages of fun in a quite different format, even though it uses the same movement engine and controls. The Switch version I played also comes bundled with what was DLC on PC, with two extra joke characters and level packs based on the original Game Boy homebrews.

Silly designs and jokey art permeate this collection, and the interstitial cutscenes add a lot of character to this wacky little world and its denizens. Full disclosure, the illustration and some cutscene art was done by my friend Cameron Reigle (hire him! commission him!), but even if I didn't know him I would be in love with the art in this game, from the goofy cutscenes to the moody backgrounds to the chunky pixel art. It's actually a shame for me that the sequel is going in a slightly different direction artistically, because the look of Antonball is so much fun (there's a grid filter on by default, but it looked better to me when I turned it off)!

I'm impressed by how Antonball was able to hone in on specific mechanics from retro games and remix them in such fun ways. It comes together really well in this package, even if I think the progression in the Antonball mode could have been a bit more merciful. I couldn't engage much with Vs. mode on my own, but I have no complaints for Punch Ball mode, it's great. Actually speaking of multiplayer, both of the solo modes can be tackled in simultaneous co-op with up to four players, which is nice. What else can I say? Check it out!

[siriannatan]

Sheriff's Day Off

It's all @joifee fault I wrote this (thank you 😺).

Also, I wrote this on my phone so I couldn't put it through my usual grammar check so sorry if there are mor e mistakes than usually.

It was a peaceful day in the Empires Server. As peaceful as one can be when less than twenty hours ago a bunch of players from a different Server suddenly dropped by because of a weird portal. fWhip was giving a tour to Al the Hermits who missed the initial one and those who wanted another one. Tango chose to come alone since Jimmy was apparently busy today.

It was weird seeing Jimmy on his home Server. On Life servers and literally everywhere else Tango has ever seen him he was so different. Much more shy and withdrawn. Here he seemed both aloof and constantly vigilant at the same time. He was still very nice to Tango and offered him a place to stay at in Tumble town.

Tango felt only slightly weird about accepting a job in Gobland. But Jimmy didn't seem to mind it when he told him about it. Just said something vague about the place being grate and moved on to being busy the next day.

Tango guessed head some ruler stuff to do and just joined the second tour. There were places he hadn't seen on the initial one. And fWhip was fun to be around. Very different admin form Xisuma but that's good. There's only one X after all.

He was a bit sad all the other emperor's/ rulers were too busy to join. Mostly by making accomodations for the Hermits. So colour him surprised when an annoyed looking Scott landed next to fWhip. "Would you happen to know where's Jimmy?" He asked his admin. Tango could only hope it wasn't about him.

"No. And your pokies are sticking out," fWhip shrugged, at all not bothered by rainbow crystals sticking out of Scott. Tango was pretty sure they weren't there yesterday. "What do you even need the sheriff for anyway?"

"Well, he promised..." Scott started but was stopped by the Sheriff landing behind him and, completely unborhered by the crystals, wrapping him in a hug. Using his height advantage to easily rest his head in Scott's cyan, unprotected by his hat on account of crystal horns, hair.

"There you are," he grinned like Tango never saw him grin. Mouth full of sharp, needle-like teeth. Hi fWhip, we might make a mess somewhere, sorry in advance," he shot the goblin a wink.

fWhip just sighed. "It's sooner than I expected," he hummed, visibly relaxing. Tango totally missed when he tensed up. "Anything I cal help with?"

"Sorry, you're a bit too squishy at the moment," Jimmy sighed, a hint of sadness in his voice. Not that Tango had time to dwell on it.

"Sorry I'm noth a half-dragon anymore," fWhip's annoyed reply had him even more shocked.

And Jimmy just giggled. "Maybe another time you can watch," he grinned as Scott, who was so far suspicious silent started to wriggle and growl. "I think that's my cue, time for Sheriff's vacation," he hummed and suddenly wasn't a human but... An undead part-fish? And like seven feet tall. And somehow enen more handsome. And had fWhip whistling and if Tango was correct blushing... And Jimmy was suddenly off, with Scott still in his arms.

"Have fun," fWhip waved him off. "Anyway, where were we?" He turned to the Hermits. There was definitely some blush still on his face.

"What. The. Hell. Was. That?" Grian was first to speak and asked what all the present Hermits were thinking.

"Result of botched server reset, we didn't really have much of a choice but rush it.I will spare you guys the details but it did mess up some code and Pearl split in two, and she Joel and Jimmy got god powers and Scott's got a demon in him... Or is part one? We're still unsure but Jimmy has to occasionally go Death God mode and beat that side of him up," fWhip explained as if he were talking about weather. "Don't worry, they'll be fine," he assured with a wide grin. It was just then that Tango noticed he had a lot pointier an sharper teeth than other goblins... Remnants of his old code?

"How does that explain anything?" Grian was clearly not satisfied with how little fWhip seemed to care about the whole situation.

"It is what it is, now back to Stratos..." The goblin king easily returned to the tour to Grian's dismay. Tango would have to ask either fWhip or Jimmy... Or Scott but he was Franky the most terrifying option...

Especially considering that when Scott and Jimmy marched into the Drip at a late evening hour as Tango and fWhip were discussing Gobland's transport systems, the king of Chromia was looking fresh as a daisy while Jimmy. Still in his half-dead-fish form looked a lot closer to dead. And unabashedly cuddled fWhip, while quietly complaining about Scott 'dragging it out'. Tango guessed It was that fight to push the crystal demon back...