#like they truly changed the game in such a massive way and yeah i would LOVE to read something up on this in the future with proper research

[birb-boyo]

LU BACKROOMS???

This is basically me describing backrooms based on the Chain, one on the safer side and one deadly and how to survive them :]

@trippygalaxy @vio-starzz @mushr0oms-and-m0ss @shadowlinktheshadow @raven-does-artstuff-894 @treasure-goblin idk who cares about this but I spent all day on it-

Time

His first liminal space is fairly safe. You can’t die unless you do something diabolical.

His safe room like would be basically like this

You fall down somewhere, probably on your walk home, but you pick yourself up and see that this is very much not the side of the road. This is a grassy field.

There weren’t many grassy fields where you lived. And even those fields were no where near as expansive as this one.

Upon looking around, you see a giant wall and a drawbridge. You start walking to it, thinking that you somehow fell hard enough to pass out.

You reach Castle Town and get weird glances from many. While you’re scouting the area, you spot a little boy in green picking up random dogs. You look at him weird when he puts one dog down and chases after another one.

The boy catches you staring and with one glance, you’re suddenly in that big grassy field again

So yeah, if bro looks at you, you get set back. After a while, this space will easily drive someone insane. This is because no matter what you do, you will meet him, and you both will meet eyes, and you’ll be sent back to the beginning.

So in a way, Survival Rate: 98% but it’s gradual and you might get out of there before you go insane

For his “You’re most likely gonna die” room

I wanted to incorporate Majora’s Mask into it, saying that the masks are hunting you.

There goal is to capture you and bring you to Fierce Deity. He thinks that you killed Link.

But you didn’t because this little kid who told you that he was who the deity was looking for is literally following behind you-

This kid could be regular young Link or Ben Drowned, though it would change the survival rate massively

Survival Rate for young Link: 67%

Survival Rate for Ben Drowned: 15%

This is because the only way to stop being hunted and/or not die is to present a piece of Link to the deity when you’re eventually caught

If it’s Link, he’ll accept it and call the masks off and you’ll be free to move on to the next hell or, if god loves you, you’ll go home

If it’s Ben, you better be fast on your toes because you’ll be hunted until you die or get out of there.

I want to also want to add that the masks don’t just pop up out of no where when they find you.

You know how you have to follow the music in order to learn Saria’s Song? Don’t do that. You’ll be caught

When they emit the Song of Healing, run, Link/Ben will be right on your trail and even if he wasn’t when you stopped running, he’ll always find you even if he leads a mask to you

I forgot to mention that Link/Ben will give you hints as to how you need to give Fierce a piece of his tunic or hair or something close to it

Also that Link/Ben physically can not get close to FD as they are, as the boy says, “part of the same soul”

Twilight

Idea given from @tiercel13 and @link-posting

That whole game has this unsettlingly warm ethereal quality where it's like- you're comfortable but uncomfortable at the same time and it's so weird

But basically I would say somewhere like a large field that's in perpetual twilight. You've never seen it before but it feels safe and familiar, like you've been there a thousand times. Still, there's something just slightly off, and it prevents you from ever being able to truly relax

It’s a village, deserted in the canyons, it’s wooden houses crumbling with time and weathering

Survival Rate: 100%

I think we all expected this one but you’re being hunted. It’s just you, the flora, the fauna, and a big wolf trying to kill you

It’s Wolf Twi but it’s not wolf Twi. Like, that’s the Blue-eyed Beast alright, but that’s definitely not Twilight. That’s a Wolf hardened by the need to survive. A need to eat.

The thing about this room is that it’s very survivable, but only to a select few people

For people who know how to manage in the woods, who know how to make fires without lighters, who know how to properly cook wild animals without utensils and iron, for those who are experienced in the wilds, they have a much easier time surviving this

But for those who are always inside and have little to no outside knowledge, you’re cooked almost immediately

This is a genuine hunt. This wolf can hear god knows how far, this wolf can track you with even the faintest scent

The only reason why the survival rate is as high as it is, is because it hesitates.

That’s how many survive their first encounter with the wolf, the wolf hesitates to take that final bite

I feel like the only real way to get out of here if to survive for a certain amount of time

Survival Rate: 52%

Warriors

Another idea by @tiercel13 because they are so big brained

For safe it's the castle barracks but they have a completely nonsensical layout

there's random doors where they shouldn't be and some of the actual ones are gone, there's things in the rooms like it's just been vacated but a layer of dust covers everything

It must be vacant right? Those shadows that lurk behind the corners are just you going crazy right? Nobody is here. Nobody is here. Nobody is here. Nobody is here-

Survival Rate: 87%

Idea given by @hyrules-feral-hero

You got claustrophobia? That’s too bad, you’re stuck in a fairy bottle now

You don’t get ripped apart or anything like that

Your death will be slow and painful

Conserve oxygen? There’s no reason to, you’re not going to be set free :)

Survival Rate: 0%

Sky

I feel like being blunt with this one

Safe space is just a vacant Skyloft

No one is around, just the occasional keese and Remlits and rapid Loftwings flying about so watch your head!

It’s peaceful and welcoming and airy but empty.

I imagine that this would bring about some sort of uncanny valley feeling, but that is probably the wrong word for it. Because who lived here? Why are these birds so big? Why are these raccoon cats so aggressive at night?

Survival Rate: 100%

Get Silent Realmed😌

Basically just that. If you don’t know what the Silent Realm is, it’s basically a thing you do in SS where you have to get 15 tears

You have to get 15 orbs, if you step into waking water or a spirit’s light or take too long to get one of the orbs, the guardians will be after you

The guardians are what make this space dangerous. If they catch you, no matter how insignificant the gash was, you will die

You can get these guardians off of you when you get the next tear, but until you get all of them and retreat back to where you started, you are at the mercy of the guardians

Survival Rate: 73%

Wild

Picture this, you just woke up in this weird place so naturally, you ask someone where you are.

“This is Faron woods, are you a traveler?”

“…sure…?”

“Great! I can’t really leave this stable with my condition, so could you do me a favor and give this to my wife?” The old man asked

“…what?”

“She lives over in Hateno, up passed the Dueling Peaks!” He shoves a note in your hands

“Sir I-“

“Thank you so much! Here’s your pay for your kindness!” Upon inspecting what he had given you, you see that this is a bare diamond

You were bringing this man’s wife this letter.

Survival Rate: 85%

Evermean forest, good old homicidal trees, need I say more?

Survival Rate: 95%

Wind

Imagine chilling on a boat with your grandpa but your grandpa is the boat.

Yes, the waters are expansive, you haven’t seen an island in days if at all, but this boat is keeping you company, telling jokes, soothing your nerves

Maybe you should be freaking out that this boat is talking, but his voice is nice so what can you say?

You start to joke around, singing dumb sea shanties, he chuckles with your antics, but keeps moving forward.

The sea is vast, but at least you’re not alone

Survival Rate: 98%

Imagine this: You’ve just been dropped in this random place. Now you’re on a random raft in the middle of the sea

Suddenly, the wind isn’t strong enough to push you forward and you’re on top of a tidal wave

Your raft finally gets back on steady water, but now there’s a shadow looming over you

You turn around and you can even comprehend how big it is

It’s probably the Kraken btw

Survival Rate: 0%

You’re cooked 100%

Hyrule

I’m realizing that a good bit of these rooms are in the woods, well, Rulie’s is no better🤷🏽‍♂️

Except these woods don’t have anything trying to actively murder you and eat you

These woods have things trying to help you

Little floating glowing grandmas if you will😌

As soon as you fell into these woods you smelled sugar and sweets, you were still very discombobulated from your fall and now you were suddenly in woods?

Soon enough, you’re swarmed by lights of different colors, they ask you if you’re alright, if you’re ok, what is someone like you doing here

Then they guide you out of the Fairy woods, whether that means that you end up in another room or go home is up to god

Survival Rate: 100%

Idea given to me by @tiercel13

A neverending cave slowly circling further and further down. The deeper you go the more it seems to close in, the air seems thicker, and the voices of people you almost recognize begin to echo off the walls, crying for help

This room, similar to Time’s “safe space” is mostly a “you’re going to go insane” rather than “that thing is gonna fucking kill you” :)

Survival Rate: depends how sane you were when you entered

Four

Imagine going on a wild goose chase for coins kinstones in a field with all the pieces hidden in tall grass

Survival Rate: 100% but it’s hell

This is gonna make some people mad but let me cook rq

You guys know Poppy Playtime? The Smiling Critters that chase you? That one clip from the Hour of Joy when they were eating that one guy alive?

That, but Minish :)

Survival Rate: 0%

As you traverse these woods, you realize that there are no animals in the wake. No rabbits, no mice, not even a wolf.

But this forest is littered with the bones of those lost animals.

So basically for backstory, minish got overpopulated and that meant they ate meat religiously. It was enough to feed, but soon enough, they ran out of food and now they’re hungry again

There is no survival here

There are too many Minish and you are locked in their woods

You can here their chittering and chatting, but if they spot you, you’ll only know by the dead silence of the forest

You can try breaking the bones you find on your path, opening the middle so they can smell the marrow rather than your flesh

But you only have little time and some bones are thick

And- wait…who’s bones are these? These are Hylain bones-

Legend

There are so many choices with Legend…

For his safe room, you’re just chilling on the walls. Not in the walls, on them. Your image is planted on the wall. You can move freely, you’re just glued to the wall, 2D

You’ll probably use this to scare the weird people who live around the house who’s walls you currently inhabit.

Survival Rate: 99.9% (Someone played too much and the family who lived there destroyed the house)

You guys no the movie Us? It’s basically that

There are different versions of you running around and they kinda really want you dead-

Survival Rate: 65%

[caelesblues]

across the universe (part 2)

⋆｡°✩ what it’s like to love a member of the astral express, even when you’re universes apart ⋆｡°✩

c.w./t.w. fluff with bits of angst, lowercase intended, intense word vomit, an attempt at comedy at march's part

word count: 2057

characters: march 7th, stelle, caelus

gn!reader, title is inspired by “across the universe” by baek yerin, notes at the end

part 1 (with welt, himeko, dan heng)

10 photos were sent 

2 videos were sent

the date-able lady: looklooklook! this is the new planet we’re stopping by! we finally had some time to just kick back, relax, and finally do some sightseeing! 

seen: 12:22 pm

15 photos were sent

the date-able lady: ugh it’s so pretty here! the food is also really good, we had lots of fun trying out the different cafes they have here! also do the photos look good? i tried some new settings to make the photos really pop!

seen: 12:30 pm

3 videos were sent

the date-able lady: you gotta see some of the shenanigans dan heng and our newest member got into! although it’s kinda concerning how they seem to have an affinity for trashcans….

seen: 12:46 pm

the date-able lady: hey! why are you ignoring me!?

seen: 12:47 pm

annoying person (affectionate): oh sorry i was taking a shit

the date-able lady: what the? so this entire time you were just sitting down on the toilet!?

annoying person (affectionate): yeah pretty much, but i also got sucked into the gaming hypothetical’s video explaining the lore of 6 nights at bobby’s

the date-able lady: …..why are you the way that you are?

annoying person (affectionate): you love it though

the date-able lady: you’re right  (•̀⤙•́ )

annoying person (affectionate): ( ˘ ³˘)♥︎

being with someone like march is like going on an adventure without really going on one yourself. surely it would feel that way if your partner was an intergalactic traveler, who liked to constantly share about her journeys with you all the time. her trusty camera and phone will always be there to capture various moments of her adventures with her fellow crewmates, ranging from the mundane to the absolutely wild (the amount of photos you’ve received wherein it was apparent they were in the middle of a mission, it’s astonishing).

video calls were also a common occurrence as well, sometimes as a means for her to play as a virtual tour guide for you or  just catch up with her during downtimes. either way you always look forward to these moments.

you truly appreciate the effort march always puts into making you feel included in her adventures, getting to see even just a glimpse of the vastness of the universe you’ve also longed to see. you’ve even become acquainted with the other members of the astral express, becoming familiar and friendly with all of them to a point they’ve considered you an honorary member of the crew (they also promised that you’re always free to join them if you so choose to partake in trailblazing as well).

and so through your lover you also get to be a part of their missions, be embroiled in the numerous intergalactic gossip, meet new people along the way, and feel as though you’re never really apart.

being with march also meant that there is a comfortable sort of stasis encompassing the relationship. stasis in the sense that no matter how far apart you’ve been from one another in such a long time, the very nature of your relationship, how you interact with one another, and how you’ve come to know each other does not change whatsoever. it is a testament to the strength someone like her possesses, not letting things change between you just because she’s no longer beside you.

it’s evident in the way you still go about your interactions, almost as if you aren’t galaxies apart. the initial insecurity of how such a massive distance will change you both and the relationship was quelled just as easily as it had formed in your mind, with the both of you just as naturally going about everything just like how you both easily fell in love. 

people always warn you that lovers who stay apart from one another are an easy breeding ground for them to become strangers eventually, but it’s not like that with march. there is no room for either of you to become estranged, not with the constant updates, efforts to always include one another in activities, making time for little virtual dates, and never once changing in spite of the distance that people said will break you apart.

and although she may have left your home planet a long time ago already, only making the occasional stops when they can, it’s never felt like she was ever gone in the first place to begin with. 

it isn’t easy being born yesterday, abandoned by your mom, be found by strangers, said strangers then inform you that you have the cancer of all worlds implanted in you, and now you join said strangers to travel across the stars-and oh yeah you’re hailed as the savior of an entire planet, and you’ve become an esteemed personality aboard a starfaring ship. well for most normal people the aforementioned things definitely are not an easy feat to accomplish, and that’s without taking into account that those things aren’t so far apart in the timeline of someone’s life. but stelle isn’t just anyone, if you weren’t paying close attention she’s somewhat of an anomaly but also a bigshot already. 

somehow preternaturally gifted in combat, has a knack for getting into mischief, already finding themselves in world changing events, and being the talk of the town wherever she goes-that’s your stelle for you alright. a lot of people are awed by her, either by her talent in fighting, the ability to say the wrong things at the wrong time, or by just being the gremlin that they are; stelle is never without some admirers (and detractors) along the way. 

being such a hotshot would surely get in someone’s head, no? not her though, no one can really quite grasp what’s going inside their head (except you). always sporting a cool and indifferent look on her always-even when in the midst of imminent danger-stelle is able to keep her composure in check. never letting nary a speck of emotion taint their visage, thus never giving others an insight to what they may think or feel.

it makes them seem like that she’s unbothered by everything that surrounds her, but you most certainly know that that isn’t the case. it’s quite evident to you how much is brewing inside stelle, but can’t really let them out one way or another. with news spreading of how immensely capable stelle is, it’s no surprise that people have sought her out for whatever they need help with. running from one point to another, shouldering other people’s workload, getting caught up in others’ personal affairs; it’s a daunting task for someone who’s already carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

“oh! you’re that trailblazer right? can you help me with something?”

“it’s the savior of belobog! just in time, come help us for just a bit”

“is it true that you’ve been helping the seat of the divine foresight with the issue about the ambrosial tree? that means you must know your way around the artisanship commission, correct?”

“trailblazer, over here!”

“honarary member!”

“stelle! do you have a minute?”

“hey youngster, you’re not just gonna stand there let them get away with it!”

“stelle, stelle, stelle, stelle, stelle, stellestellestellestelle-“

“breathe in, breathe out. slow and steady breaths, count to ten then name ten things you can see around you. you’re ok, you’re going to be just fine.” these words are what stelle keeps replaying in her mind, a reminder and comfort from you that has helped her in moments wherein she feels like slipping away.

she wonders how you do it, how you’re able to tell so easily when she’s starting to get bogged down with everything. be it through messages or calls you know when to help her calm down, soothing her frazzled state with gentle reminders and helping her get grounded again. 

in stelle’s eyes you’re basically an aeon, with your supernatural ability to always be a stable presence for her even if you’re both so far away from one another. even if she’s seen as someone who is cool and aloof (even being called a menace), you see pass through those and see someone who is still trying to get their footing in this world, and you’re willing enough to stand by her and be the unchanging pillar she can always rely on.

no matter the immense changes she’s constantly facing, stress she’s undergoing, or the turmoil that finds her, you’re an unfaltering constant in her life that she desperately needs.

wonderkid, the boy from beyond the stars, the savior of belobog, general jing yuan’s esteemed guest, the underworld’s boxing champion.

those are just some of the many nicknames caelus has collected across his adventures, always seeming to pick up some more along the way. he is never short of admirers whenever the astral express stops, people instantly in awe of his innate martial prowess, his rather unique (for a lack of a better term) personality and charm, as well as his admittedly good looks.

they cannot help but stop and marvel at the grey haired man, drawn in by the various situations he always seems to find himself in and the sheer aura of confidence he exudes (not to mention that he has an affinity for…being a gremlin that may or may not dig through dumpsters and wayward packages). 

without a doubt caelus has become some sort of celebrity in the places they go to, with some even saying that his name recognition alone can rival that of super popstar ast rickley. even his haters cannot deny that that man can talk the talk, never one to just brag about things but not deliver.

it’s why even his enemies have decided not to take him head on, unless they really had no choice but engage him in a fight-although it isn’t really a surprise that caelus would come out unscathed each and every time. the boy from beyond the stars truly is out of this world (get it?), shaking up the systems of the places he touches upon.

even as his lover you are not immune to gushing about caelus, taking every opportunity to shower him with praises and affection (also because that boy is so easy to fluster, which is just the cherry on top). i mean how can you not? there is so much to him that just warrants all your attention, from his insane fighting skills to how utterly loveable he is.

don’t get him wrong though, caelus loves the fact that you’re not exactly shy with your love for him, but he also feels like he might just explode from all of your loving (not to mention the teasing he gets constantly from march and sometimes himeko). 

but for caelus that isn’t even the best part of being with you, even as fantastic as it is to constantly be showered with your love, his favorite part of being with you is how he can just be himself. no more is he the savior of belobog, the luofuo’s most important guest, the undisputed boxing champion-he can be just caelus, not some kind of otherworldly being that just sprung up out of nowhere, going on fantastical adventures and building up a reputation across the stars. even if you tease him from time to time about this very fact, he knows that deep down to you he is just your precious caelus, the boy you fell in love with when they happen to stop at your home planet.

with you caelus feels like he doesn’t have to be anything that anyone wants him to be, he just has to be your lover, your best friend, and your biggest supporter. it’s possible for him to just be another guy that’s deeply in love, with his significant other that makes him feel like he can take on the entire galaxy (he can’t but he’s getting there). your love does not require him to do anything for you to see him as something worthy of such affections, no need for him to wow you with anything to receive even just an inkling of your warmth. 

so while caelus will be constantly be collecting new nicknames, continue to outdo himself with each new adventure, and ultimately become some sort of celebrity across the universe, with you he’s just another boy in love.

AAAHHHHH part two is also here now! i can finally put this piece to rest ಥ◡ಥ idk if you can tell but i definitely ran out of juice writing these part, since i was already so tired and brain dead writing everything. likes, comments, and reblogs are highly appreciated!

caelesblues @ 2023 | do not steal, copy, plagiarize, or repost on any other platform

[random-senpai]

Y'know I joked about Fuuko getting a harem this timeloop but the more I think about it the more I think it's actually plausible. Tozuka loves to explore different genres in Undead Unluck. And with the popularity of the Harem genre he could easily play around with it. Fuuko and Andy's meeting was a twist on the classic "fateful encounter" in Shoujo manga where the female protagonist accidentally bumps into the male lead. So what if Andy's return is finding out that this time he has love rivals?

With most people he wouldn't have to worry because thanks to Fuuko riding arc she's unable to age so not many people would be able to be with her long term, but the people she's been getting vibes this loop with are able to be with her thanks to their negation abilities. With her completely changing the trajectory of their lives.

Feng - Unfade literally prevents him from aging and keeps him at his physical prime since it manifested earlier this loop. Thanks to Fuuko beating his ass he hasn't killed in decades and has grown embrace his role as a father (in a tsun way) instead of the messed up relationship he had with Shen the last loop.

Gina - Unchange prevents things from changing. In the previous loop she used it to make an unchanging shell of makeup to hide her age, but with the emphasis of growth of abilities this loop she might be able to prevent her cells from aging by making her own body "Unchanging". This loop instead of lamenting her role as a member of Union, she takes incredible pride in it. She's Fuuko's right hand woman, her closest confidant, her silly rabbit.

Billy - Unfair has changed massively this loop and is the most broken thing ever. Thanks to Fuuko he's taken a much more healthier outlook on life and allows him to express his true kind nature without being so self sacrificing. All he has to do is adknowledge one's strength and it lets him copy their ability. He can copy Andy's Undead without the convoluted backstab this loop, can copy Unfade whenever, and has already been shown to have copied Unchange this loop.

Hell they're even built like Otome Game routes

Andy is the fun flirty one that never really means anything at first and changes when he actually gets serious. Has (or had depending on when he comes back) the most screentime and is obviously the main route.

Feng is the tsundere that's reluctant to admit how he truly feel. Who also never leaves the MC alone and makes excuses instead of admitting his real emotions.

Gina is the bestie gal pal. She supports the MC no matter what and is the go to for infro. But she also has feelings deeper than just a friend and is the sole (barely hidden) Yuri route in the game.

Billy is the funny aloof older man (in concept. Fuuko is waaaay older than him this loop). He jokes around and acts like a dummy, but hides a tragic past and huge amounts of trauma behind his easy smile. Comes complete with the dead wife that 80% of rare Ossan options in otomes have.

I'm gonna throw this out there, but I think that when Fuuko gets to Unruin and saves him from his tragedy this loop, he's going to become obsessed with her and worship her like he worshiped God in the previous one. Maybe being like a messed up Yandere secret route.

So yeah good luck Andy. You're gonna need it when you come back to your girl.

[zeravmeta]

You know now that you brought it up multiple times: how would FGO work as a console game? You think they would add/change some stuff in the story? And how would they progress along with the events?

My main fear is that, Nasu being Nasu, the moment he tries to or even have inkling of an idea to do a port, he'll rewrite the whole damn thing, dragging Higa and Sakurai with him.

fgo as a console release would be laughably Easy: Bread and butter standard type moon visual novel

Like i feel it bears repeating but for as used to FGOs gameplay loop that we've gotten, would anyone really say its actually... good? fun? maybe sometimes during challenge quests or grail fronts (fgos best gameplay innovation tbh), but overall it's not exactly fulfilling the way other gachas may entice people with their gameplay (see my other two gachas Arknights and Alchemy Stars) A console port of FGO as a proper visual novel would be spectacular, and moreover, your point on rewriting? I would 100% take a remastered streamlined experience. IF and honestly WHEN there are rewrites, Id suspect they would only change out some of the early game stuff (and also agartha) to actually have some substance (see. boudicas interlude voted Worst In Game and Artemis having 3 [count em on your fingers] interludes that are all basically the same interlude). Were there certain advantages to the experience of FGO being a gacha? i would say yeah, I think there are absolutely memorable moments as a community experienced where all players contributing to things like raids or the mad dash of spoilers to parse what the hell happened on a different server were all fun, but an FGO reconceptualized proper vn release would be just that: reconceptualized. it would be done after the fact, a remaster taking the best part of fgo from the past decade

Would there be a non visual novel gameplay element to it? MAYBE, in a game this extensive I would not be surprised if there were equally extensive cuts made to the roster for the conceptualized console release (this is in part what I suspect that FGO arcade may have existed to test), but i dont think it would be impossible, as other visual novel series' like Danganronpa or 999, Ace Attorney and the like all have other gameplay elements integrated as part of their visual novel experiences. for a game with like, what, 400+ playable characters each with their own profiles, event appearances and (mostly) unique interludes per character? YEAH, that would be a truly herculean task to port, so I would not be surprised if there were character cuts or massive downsizing, which would also mean your special scrimblus blimbos doesnt get in. However, I do think it would ultimately be an improvement

Overall. Yes. ive psychically brainwashed nasu with my mystic eyes to give the go ahead on mahoyosweep and tsukihimesweep to bolster the visual novel audience across the globe and prepare the perfect stage for the fgo console release

[jorvikzelda]

Also, I think one really weird part of SSO marketing themselves as a "girls' game" and sticking to that really really hard is their rock hard refusal to let the player character be a boy.

TL;DR because this got long: It is not progressive to, in a game about horse riding (a very stereotypically girly hobby), exclude boys.

(Spoilers for Saving Concorde and the Light Ride, but only in the first paragraph.)

We all know SSO's decision to only allow for girl player characters isn't about being Aideen reborn or the game being about sisterhood or only women being Soul Riders. Had that been the only problem, it would've been solved the second Rhiannon explained how Concorde could've been reborn as a mare - I quote, "A soul is not defined by the gender it's born into".

I absolutely do not mean to through this post make it seem like boys' inclusion in SSO is a priority over gender equality in gaming, and obviously I understand that women and girls have historically been excluded from gaming and have not had games catered to them. However, a) (as other people have pointed out) that isn't even NEARLY as much the case today as it was 10-15 years ago. b) I would honestly argue that not allowing the player character to be any other gender than a girl in SSO furthers that inequality. Also, this post doesn't even really touch on the full consequences of not having truly diverse body shape options and some variety of pronoun customization in a game that's "for girls", but in short: if you exclude all non-girls, you also cannot include all girls.

I've seen the (mostly community, to be fair) argument that "boy characters would lead to more problems with romancing", and that's bullshit. People already do that. Start reporting the daily weddings happening in Silverglade if you're seriously concerned about that.

I've seen SSO's argument that "in many games, girls are forced to play as boys", and I would really buy that argument if this was a single-player game with a premade player character, but do you know what games never ever do that except for SSO? Massive-multiplayer online games. That's right: that thing SSO is (or at least calls itself, but that's a topic for another post).

I've seen SSO's argument that boys can play Star Stable, they can play with the girl avatar just fine, but do you know which demographic of children interested in horses isn't going to look at SSO's website and go, "oh, that's all right, I'll play as a girl and it'll be fine and fun!"? That's right: preteen boys.

That's where we get to the next part of this conundrum: there are horses involved. Yeah, you know, that hobby that boys have never been shamed or bullied for partaking in! /sarcasm, obviously. If a boy is interested enough in horses to want to play a video game centered around them, it is more than likely he's been mocked and more than likely that mocking included insults aimed at his perceived femininity for partaking in equestrian sport and/or insulting him for enjoying a "girly" hobby. No 12 year old boy, especially not if he is being bullied a little bit, is going to look at SSO's character creation screen and go, "Oh, what a great feminist initiative! I feel just fine and dandy leaning into the perceived traits that I am being mocked for".

Horse riding is not traditionally seen as a "boys' hobby", and SSE is only furthering that perspective by actively choosing time and time again to not allow SSO's player characters to have physically masculine attributes or for SSO's players to choose their pronouns in game.

It's weird. I don't understand why they're doing it.

Part of me earnestly suspects it's a coding limitation: if SSE wanted to properly include non-girls in SSO, they would have to work for an amount of time ranging from many months to several years to change the way quest text and pronouns work.

I never truly expected them to care about true inclusivity enough to do that. I shouldn't be disappointed. It's easier to keep up the image of this being a grand feminist mission than to say, we would like to do this but our code is flawed and it would take so long and it's just. not. important. enough.

[larsnicklas]

I'm glad the Draisaitl contract negotiation is over even though the aftermath leaves me a bit baffled.

All the talk about him taking a team friendly deal and then he takes a front loaded 14mil deal to become the highest paied player. Could he have made a bit more open market? Probably. Would the world have seen that he's not*that* good of a player without 97 and the powerplay if that had happened? Also probably. I doubt He wants the world to see that. Is this really a teamfriendly deal and, in his own words, "all about winning and not selfish like in the past"? Absolutly fucking not. The difference between 13 or 14 or 15 million isn't life changing in the way a raise from 1 to 3 million would be but other players were crucifiate for disloyality for that. Draisaitl took everything he could moneywise from Edmonton and good for him, but the audacity to make it look like he somehow cut a teamfriendly deal because he cares more about winning with the team than getting his bag is truly baffling. He's not even their best player, he's just their 2C, and he's slowly aging out of his Prime. Maybe three more real good years? Edmonton has to pay him for 8. Plus how good is he really when he can't deliver in high stake games like against Florida? When he can't control his temper and reverts to dirty plays like against Barkov?

And i really don't want to start what it says that he happily plays for a pos like Bowman. That they all do, but especially 29 and 97 who would have had the power to do something about it like the bruins did back then.

guys i don't know what you want me to say 😭 i don't have leon d.raisaitl's ear, i can't give him a piece of your mind 😭😭😭 i agree that people like b.owman shouldn't be allowed back in the nhl, but despite what we may want to believe about how influential players are, they're not the ones holding the checkbooks or the real power in the league, and while i'm not going to absolve any part of the machine wholly i think the blame should fall heavily on the owners and board of governors much more than players or other staff re: reinstating b.owman/q.uenneville/etc.

as far as team friendly goes, the friendliness is that he stayed in e.dmonton ;aklskljsdafladkjsf. he was one of the most drastically underpaid players in the league this past contract so the massive hike was both expected and understandable imo! i won't ever be actually mad at players getting all the money they can even if i complain about it when it's my team paying, and the players' association is most definitely happy with this deal. realistically speaking i don't think he needs cmd to be a star player, i just think he and cmd amplify each other's effectiveness. and yeah, i'm not fond of edm's playing style, and i don't like the cheap shots that whole team seems to like to take when the going gets tough, but i don't think it's truthful to say d.raisaitl isn't a good playoff performer when he and cmd are always dragging that team along year after year. he wasn't good this postseason but he was battling injuries that really hindered how effective he could be so i would consider it an outlier and not the norm.

anyway tl;dr: i'm glad mr d.raisaitl got his bag and i hope he never ever wins as long as he's playing for the blue and orange 👍

[lake-archive]

Everywhere I Go

AO3 Link - A Shared Love Between Our Posse (Masterlist) - CATZ Discography

Fandom: Hypnosis Mic

Characters: Ramuda Amemura (mentioned) , Ann Wolf (OC)

Synposis: No matter where, no matter when... Ann does not seem to get a rest from Amemura. To the point they seem rather tense...

Words: 921

They wanted to return home, they really did. And yet, they had a hard time doing so. How come? Was it because they had lost their way when wanting to return home, literally? As in ‘I forgot where I was so I try to guess how to get home’? No, nothing like that. At least they had hoped not. No, it was not even close to that. Nothing close to that at all. 

After all, they were hiding in every possible corner. Left, right and center, wherever they could manage to hide at this point before they could be spotted. But why would they hide? For what reason? The streets of Shibuya were always full, always crowded. There was no chance in anyone spotting them, or them spotting anyone in particular… Right? Well, more or less. Yet they had refused to take any risks. After all,  you never know where the Chuohku were lurking and what orders they had been given. And yet, they would take such desperate measures. Ever so desperate ones…

Or had that been his order? After all, Ann was more than aware of his true nature… Or rather of his entire being… Ramuda Amemura. Only if you were somewhat involved in Chuohku’s mysteries and the organization as a whole would you have a good idea what and who he really was. A secret kept within the circles of the organization, under wraps due to him having become a public figure. Then again, even if he had not gotten that far in his career, they would have kept it a secret either way. So rarely anyone knew about this secret and most would most likely not know to begin with. Ann had been filled in as a result yet recently that had also put them on alert. 

They were unaware of a lot of things, truly, and perhaps they were just paranoid. Yet who knows if the mind has not been changed, if they weren’t fair game to hunt down. And them using Amemura for these errands… Or rather Amemuras. One could never be too careful… Or something… Hah, this was all just a mess of its own, wasn’t it? Maybe they were just a laughing stock at this point. In fact, they had thought about sharing this worry with their teammates. Yet… Would any of the two believe them?

Ole maybe yet he could do little… And besides, he had his own troubles. Ann did not want to worry the old timer. Eli however… 

“ Muda? You act as if he’s gonna kill ya at any moment Sis. He couldn’t even lift ya up, could he? Stop panicking. Maybe he likes you? … Hey, just kiddin’, don’t give me that glare now. ”

Yeah no, that would not be a reassurance. Not for them at the very least. Oh if Eli had an idea what Ramuda was capable of. If given the order to kill someone, this man would not hesitate. He looked and acted innocent… Yet he was anything but if the reports had been correct. 

And yet… To be fair, nothing of note had happened to Ann. Maybe they were really taking things a little too far in their head. Maybe this was safer than first thought… Is what they would like to say yet in this world no one could be certain of anything, could they now!? This was way easier said than done after all! 

Ah, their head was spinning just thinking about all of this. Spinning and spinning, always going through the same thoughts. It was a never ending circle, really. For now they may as well just have been let off the hook with a massive amount of luck. 

Ah, this wasn’t just because of his clones seeming to roam the streets, pass by them and not spotting them by a sheer amount of luck, no. Weren’t they just hiding overall? Oh geez, this was slowly becoming pathetic altogether. Come to think of it, ever since that date their mind had been just on that thought alone. Ah, they should just bas their head in at this point.

This was no use… They had taken note several times that people had eyed them weirdly, claiming to see a ‘woman’ tip toeing around the streets of Shibuya. Of course they took a sharp glare when hearing the word ‘woman’ yet they left it be, at least for the time being. After all, they were just sneaking around the Scramble Crossing. Or hiding behind the Statue of Hachiko, all while praying that Amemura would just take his leave. Or their leave?

Actually, now that they thought about it… Wait, were there even clones deployed? Or did they have some type of terrible luck to always bump into him from afar!? Ah yeesh! What stupid story have they been written into here!? This was all unbelievable, overwhelming, too much to take in! 

No use to think about it with their head filled with all of this nonsense. Yeah, they were literally not in the right mind to keep calm and collect their thoughts. They had to think about something else entirely for now… 

Maybe they should just take their mind off things and unwind instead. The usual café should be nearby, at least where they were sneaking around right now. 

And all the time they prayed that Amemura would not spot them in any way… They just didn’t want to deal with it right now, deal with him… 

Why does everything just have to be so complicated?

[spinningbuster98]

I love this game

I REALLY love this game

If I had to choose a favorite game of all time then I feel it would come down to either Sonic 3 & Knuckles or this one, the former shaped my gaming tastes during my childhood while the latter did the same for my adolescence

I have a lot of great things to say about this game, but also some negatives as well because no game is perfect and this is very important to remember especially in the case of games that have become so universally beloved that people have come to believe they have no flaws or areas to improve, which is never truly the case

I think the first thing to note about Super Metroid, and one of its most beloved aspects, is its atmosphere and general aesthetics

It's often said that Metroid has a dark and foreboding atmosphere and nowhere is this more evident than in Super Metroid

This game's spritework is detailed, grotesque at times. Its locations dark, eerie, grimey, organic. The colors are dark yes, but not washed out, in fact I'd say the color pallette is rich just enough to keep the game from looking dull while not compromising the element of general creepiness and darkness

The music is booming, melodieìc, creepy, cavernous, everything in this game is meant to make you feel like you really are going deeper and deeper into the inner bowels of an alien planet

I especially love how the overall artstyle feels like an evolution of Metroid 1's: the old Tourian looks like an SNES upgrade from the original, as does the beginning of Brinstar and the returning enemies from that game, though of course guys like Ridley and Kraid have been given massive redesigns. It really drives home the idea that this is Metroid 1 but MORE, it tells you "hey remember this place on the NES 8 years ago? Yeah here it is now like you remember it but looking better than ever". It truly is SUPER Metroid. Just compare this with how Zero Mission just completely altered the artstyle for something much more stylized and cartoony

The beginning acts are just a masterclass in atmospheric setup: from Samus narrating the prologue while mostly encased in shadow while the game's unnerving theme plays, to the Ceres Colony being all dark and lifeless with only the low humming of machinery keeping you company, to how deserted and foreboding Crateria looks at first before springing to life. A true masterpiece

I mentioned before that no other game after the original trilogy managed to truly recapture this kind of atmosphere and I believe it's true: no other game feels this ominous, so foreboding, so cavernous, so....dark. All the other 2D games after this usually go for a more....generic kind of atmospheric feel, the kind that checks a box off a list

Fusion can be creepy and unsettling yes...but the actual areas themselves are pretty standard

Zero Mission barely even tries to feel atmospheric, mostly just being really energetic and adventurous

Samus Returns and Dread, again, are a bit generic in the atmosphere department, save for specific moments such as the EMMI zones.

The Prime games on the other hand are indeed very atmospheric, even more than Super, but they mostly go for a different kind of atmosphere than that of the OG trilogy, which is all fine of course

I think a good way to illustrate what I'm saying is to compare the various versions of the Theme of Super Metroid that have been made over the years: they're all good versions in their own right, but none manage to capture that sense of pure menace, of sheer foreboding that the original has, rather mostly focusing on the more upbeat parts of the track

To change the subject: poor Kraid. He was the toughest of the two main bosses in the original game but now, despite having received a literally colossal redesign and looking more menacing he's actually much easier now and has been reduced to "first boss bitch". Unfortunately for him this is only the start of his misfortunes :P

[jeweledstone]

More vaguely Pizza Tower related bullshit with everyone’s favorite yandere twink cunt bitch god I hate him

DATE: 10/31/2023 - 11/1/2023

Oh boy, it’s that time again folks! Time for some unhinged self-insert fan fiction-esque nonsense that’d make a wattpad user shudder in fear.

So basically, more shenanigans with Pizzahead/Totino from the hit indie game Pizza Tower and his attempts to kidnap me and turn me into Peppino cause the REAL Peppino doesn’t love him back or some shit like that. For the hopelessly confused, here’s a link to the previous dream post I made regarding this particular plot point. For everyone else, click the read more for the rest of this recounting :)

So, despite my hoping he’d just give up and start stalking someone else, ya boi is still being haunted in his dreams by the cartoon pizza man. RECENTLY he’s even gone as far as BREAKING INTO MY ACTUAL HOUSE to try and abduct me (in-dream of course, not in real life lmao)

One of his more recent appearances happened in a dream I had on Halloween night that was honestly, kinda Halloween themed outta sheer coincidence.

In it, me and my family were camping (a common theme/trope in my dreams for some reason) at this national park of sorts that was famous due to this massive cave it had in it that was EXTREMELY haunted. Like, it was very common for visitors to encounter at least one ghost (or phantom as they were called in-universe) while exploring said cave. My family was stopping to visit said cave before going home when The Bastard™ showed up. I remember he had on this sorta human disguise so my parents wouldn’t recognize him (cause again, mf tried to break into my house in previous dream). He somehow convinced them to let me go in the cave alone with him, claiming we were friends or some other bullshit, and that’s when the shit show truly began.

Now, first thing you need to know about this cave, is how massive it is. At its deepest, the cave went down to about 5000 meters (16404.2 feet for my fellow Americans) below the earth. Naturally, park guests weren’t allowed to go that deep in, you could only go about 10 meters (100 if you’re over 18) before there was some kinda blockade keeping you from going further. Aside from the obvious safety protocol stuff, another reason was because the deeper you went into the cave, the more ghosts you’d encounter, and the more aggressive said ghosts would be.

Either the ghosts or the cave itself also had these strange, reality-bending properties to it that would affect guests who stayed in the cave for a prolonged period of time. One way they liked to fuck with people was by transforming them in ways that often depended on said person’s most prominent personality trait (often causing said trait to be exaggerated as the person’s mental state changed along with thier body). Said changes were reversed once the person affected left the cave.

And…

Guess what happened to my anxiety filled ass when they got a hold of me!

Yep, back at it again with THIS BULLSHIT. Idk if this happened because of PH was there or what, but yeah. Now here I am, once again tf’d into Peppino against my will, trapped in a cave with someone who’s been obsessively stalking me for months now, and one wrong move away from a full blown panic attack. Said panic ended up happening when, at a really deep point in the cave, me and PH were cornered by some really large and threatening ghosts who were definitely planning on not letting us out of that cave alive.

I kinda-sorta blacked out around this part, but from what I could figure out, it was about then that Pep kinda… “took over” and beat the shit outta the ghosts (apparently killing a few some-fucking-how) before making a break outta the cave. I remember “waking up” outside the cave, having already changed back to normal.

After that…incident… life mostly went back to normal after my family went back home, save for some supernatural entities (which were commonplace in this verse) becoming afraid of me due to the whole killing an unkillable entity thing that happened in the cave.

So that’s basically it. I haven’t really seen much of PH since then, but I know he made it outta the cave and is still out there (unfortunately). So, yeah, that’s all folks. See ya.

[neoriots]

are you still gonna consume dteam content while taking a step back from the fandom or are you completely breaking with it? just out of interest

im gonna be honest, this is a really hard question to answer. im gonna drop a cut bc i’ll probably ramble for a moment.

okay so i think for dream specifically, i don’t think i could go back to consuming his content to the level i was before like, ever. i think this was a rude slap of the rose colored glasses off my face that i can just.. never reconcile with, at least for like.. many years. i think i could stand to see him around, i think i could look at smth he’s posted and see it as i see Any person on the internet but i think that Connection with him is personally severed. i think most of that is less what Happened and more his reaction. i think it was irresponsible at best, gross and manipulative at worst.

i unfollowed his accounts, his notifications are off, i just cant let myself be part of His community that allowed a situation like this to even happen in the first place yknow? especially the reaction from the twt community at large, i just cannot support that. it disgusted me and it still Does disgust me. i think he needs to either completely step back from his community or massively rework it to fix some of the glaring issues in it because the way it runs is not healthy or normal at all anymore and i only realized that truly once i stepped back myself. i think a big part of being in his fandom Is defending him, justified or not, and i just can’t look at the past two years and the past week and do that anymore. i cant.

i think for snf i still have an attachment to them, that unless something drastically changed (god forbid.) i think i will continue to consume them but more casually than i did before. they are, as always, tied to him and its delusional to think i could completely support them and be in their fandom without being tied into dreams fandom as well. so i think i will consume their content and whatever else they do, but i wont be engaging in the fandom aspect as i did before publicly. it just seems irresponsible for me and i stand by that still.

i’ve been in the mcyt / gaming creator scene for over a decade now and it would be silly of me to act like i haven’t watched creators who did bad things in the past or even were friends with ones who did (not to drag him but markiplier is my boy and his relationship with pdp Still weighs on me sometimes—and im a rtah watcher and have been for a long time, have you seen the shit thats come out abt them every couple years? yeah.)

the truth is we don’t know these people, they are people on our screens making entertainment and you can never truly know whats going on behind the scenes and as a single person i know my opinions will never change anything so it’s stupid for me to pretend i have some moral high ground for being aware of glaring issues when theres millions who will move on in ignorant bliss of anything going on with their faves, but were watching it just the same. and its always been this way, its just easier to see the problems now with the connection social media gives us.

tldr; yes i will to an extent, but that could change as things change and develop and id be a hypocrite to act as if i wasn’t going to.

[a-student-out-of-time]

If any Human ever gained immortality, I feel like they would either get extremely bored and caused mischief on mortals for fun, get extremely depressed because everyone they know and love is dead, or just goes insane and gains a massive god complex. Either way, not good.

//Yeah, that's often how it gets portrayed, but that tends to be because we're talking about individual immortals within a mortal society. If everybody became immortal, that would be a paradigm shift in the way everything worked

//17776 examined the concept in a very interesting way, where humanity spontaneously all became immortal in 2026, and we solved all of our problems, except boredom

//Fast forward 15,000 years and, in the U.S., they play enormous games of football that take years to complete, with entire states serving as the fields and end zones. They also have the technology to make everyone's lives safer and easier, but people prefer to keep those at the necessary minimum to avoid things being too easy

//It's also why, even millennia later, the world looks very similar to what it does today, save for higher sea levels. I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't, since it's a really interesting storytelling experiment all on its own

//As for us getting bored of everything? I feel like that comes from our inability to truly comprehend the scale of things. I mean, have you ever thought about how big the world is, how many things there are to do, how many people you can meet and how many stories there are to know?

//And if you're immortal, you could live to see humanity conquer the stars, and thus have even more places to go, people to meet and things to do. Repeat that ad nauseam for however long you care to imagine.

//We're just not very good at imagining the true scale of big things, like forever, and I think that's a big part of why we get so many stories about why it wouldn't be all it's cracked up to be, and why i think we need to change a few things about ourselves in terms of biology and psychology before we should even consider it. The first being expanding our memory capacity

//Some of those would be beneficial in their own right, like expanding our Dunbar's Number; the number of people your brain is physically able to maintain close relationships with, which is around 150. Expand that and you could have thousands of friends

//I dunno, I just think that would be neat ^^

[glamphantasm]

Prompt 7

MC accidentally touches a book in Satan’s room that casts an illusion over them both that shows MC’s greatest dreams coming true. What are they, how does MC react, can MC get out?

(because I'm a massive d&d nerd, i changed the book up. 1d10 scenes/moments relating to what would be MC's best life/greatest dream. can be activated 1x/day, if it was truly an item in a tabletop game, i'd probably put it as like a DC18 wisdom save.)

Kai shot awake in a bed that was not his own, heart galloping in his chest as he muffled a yelp of terror into the pillow. Eyes wide, he scrambled into a sitting position, trying not to hyperventilate.

(i can feel silk against my legs. i can see a partially open closet. i can smell - )

The process was interrupted as a figure appeared by the divider, dressed casually and holding a cup.

(i can smell coffee)

"Hey, you're awake. Welcome back.", the voice was strangely gentle, lacking its usual brassy bravado. Mammon offered the cup. "Thought you could use this."

Kai offered a hint of a smile as he tried to piece together his fuzzy mind. He cupped the mug in both hands, the porcelain hot enough to burn his palms as he closed his eyes, inhaling deeply before taking a long drink. The liquid seared a path down his throat, heat pooling in his stomach. The coffee was bitter, but not overly-so.

"Thanks, Mammon." Kai looked up at the demon through his lashes, taking stock of the situation. "Did...?"

A rapid shake of his head made Kai laugh softly. "N-no, no. I slept on the couch.", he stammered, blushing.

"You didn't have to."

A gentle scoff. "You made that pretty clear."

Another sip of coffee. "Next time you can believe me.", he raised his eyes, waiting for the reaction.

Mammon's mouth worked soundlessly, opening and closing a few times. Kai put the cup down, rubbing his heated palms over his face. As he pulled them away, he was surprised to see no trace of the heavy makeup he wore last night staining the skin. "Thank you. For not making me go back -", Kai's throat closed, refusing to utter the word home. "There."

"Y-yeah, ya seemed pretty stubborn about it. I dunno what's goin' on, but uh, you can always hang out. Or whatever."

Kai relaxed back against the headboard, nodding. "Okay. What time is it anyways?", with no windows in the room, it was always impossible to even guess.

"Almost 3. Humans need a lot of sleep, huh?"

"After a long night we do. Last thing I remember was...

(swirling projected lights, music loud enough to vibrate bones, dancing between the brothers sandwiched tightly, smoke and glitter caught on the air, hope, elation, want, desire, need)

the three of us dancing together."

Mammon nodded. "Yeah. We, all... we left a bit after that.", averted eyes, deeply flushed cheeks.

"So what did happen?", Kai brushed his fingers along Mammon's arm. He didn't flinch away, but didn't get closer. Net zero, no damage done.

Mammon looked down, words tumbling out quickly, in a single breath. "So, we got out to the car. You were all over both of us pretty fast. Ju- just like in the club, you were between us. You started talking, not like dirty talk or nothin', but you kept saying how much you missed that, missed us, begged us not to stop, and then after a few minutes broke down crying, saying somethin' like it didn't matter?", he shrugged, confused. "You sobbed the rest of the way home, and that kinda was that. We got you here, got you changed, and in to bed. I sat up with you for a while, you know, to make sure you didn't die or nothin', but you passed out pretty fast."

"Ah.", Kai stared down at his hands, pulse skyrocketing. "Fuck. I'm sorry. I need to apologize to Asmo too... really didn't mean to get sloppy last night. It just...," he broke off, sighing. "Fuck."

A long stretch of silence was broken only by the muffled sounds of the TV on the other side of the wall.

Mammon took Kai's hand in his own, squeezing it gently in lieu of a response.

"You know I wouldn't have been upset if everything had continued, right?"

The grip tightened, became almost painful. "We ain't been demons that long."

Kai made a sound intended to be a laugh, that came out entirely too choked. "LOT of demons in the human realm older than you then."

He was pulled into a tight embrace and simply held, wordlessly.

Kai slowly wrapped an arm around Mammon, leaning in to the hug. The silence this time was comfortable as it stretched. Kai pressed his forehead into Mammon's shoulder, grounding himself a bit more, waiting for the uneasy tremors to fade. There was a familiar buzz on the nearby table, and he flinched away from it with a groan.

"D'ya want me to get that?"

"No. Yes. No. Who is it?" Kai disentangled himself from the demon, reaching again for the coffee.

Mammon picked up the DDD, looking at the missed messages. "That one was Satan, says to stop by an' see him today. And... four from Solomon since about 10 this morning.", the demon's eyes grew wide as he skimmed over them. "Jeez, he think he owns you or what? Wait, who's Vyleon?"

Kai made a face over the rim of the cup. "Vyleon is the incubus who I assume is one of Solomon's 9000 pacts that he decided to send to the club last night to tell me to come home when I ignored his messages."

Mammon whistled low, "Yer shittin' me."

Kai shook his head. "Wish I was. Almost worked too."

"What stopped you?"

"Couple things - It was a big night for Asmo and I didn't want to vanish on him, and when Vyleon referred to the two of you as 'The Angels'. The disrespect pissed me off."

Mammon quirked an eyebrow in faint surprise. "Yer so loyal already." Kai gave a good-natured grumble as his hair was ruffled. "How come?"

The human lowered his eyes. "Same thing I said the other day. You're all like family to me. Know it sounds dumb, but," he paused, voice barely audible. "This is the only place I've ever felt at home."

"You really would stay forever, huh?"

Kai bit the inside of his cheek hard, nodding, not trusting his voice.

"Would be pretty great. Too bad you can't just..."

Kai shook his head. "Not allowed, for some stupid reason. Besides, Simeon & Luke are in the guest room."

Mammon sighed, flopping down across the foot of the bed.

"So, aside from you and Asmo, does anyone else know I'm here?"

"Not that I've heard. Wouldn't be surprised if someone saw us all come in though."

Kai nodded. It wouldn't be a surprise, somehow every moment in the house made the rounds. Grabbing his DDD, he tapped out a quick message: "Asmo, I'm so sorry for the way I ended up last night. Hope that I didn't wreck anything. I'm sorry. Please don't hate me."

The reply came quickly. "I'm not upset, nothing happened? You do need to take it easy though, darling~ visiting your housemate, talk later."

(that can be unpacked later)

After a quick shower and borrowing a clean shirt from Mammon,

("Yer swimmin' in that, but I got nothin' smaller.")

Kai texted Satan back.

"On my way, 20 minutes?"

That long? You're literally down the hall.

Well shit.

"Fine. Five."

I've waited this long. What's a bit longer?

Kai wandered over to Satan's door after a few minutes, knocking lightly.

The door cracked open, and the demon within gave a half-scowl before stepping aside with a gesture.

The biggest change was the lack of books piled along the floors, though the stacks of floor to ceiling shelves were nearly filled to bursting.

(look impressed, you haven't seen this, remember)

Kai gave the room a long appraising look, giving a soft smile. "This is fantastic. If you need more shelf room, I bet you could get a loft alcove up there." Kai pointed up towards a window in a high corner, where he knew that one day a very secluded nook would be.

"That's not a bad idea." Satan held himself tightly wound, arms crossed over his chest.

Kai offered a slight smile. "So, you needed your Attendant?"

"When did you start spending the night?"

Ah, direct as always. "Just last night. Got a bit too drunk at the Fall, they wanted to keep an eye on me."

Bright green eyes narrowed, pupils dilating like a cat's. Kai shrugged.

"You're kind of a wreck."

"Already said I drank too much."

"No. Not that. I mean in general." Satan sat down on an overstuffed wing back chair, crossing his long legs at the ankles.

Kai shrugged, giving another chair a glance, raising an eyebrow curiously. At a nod, he sat down, tucking one leg beneath himself. "Yes, and? I feel like there's more to that statement?"

Satan tapped his fingertips on the arm of the chair, frowning. "There was. I wasn't expecting you to agree."

"What am I going to do? Lie? I'm fucked up. I know that. No reason to hide it when it's obvious.", the human shifted in the chair, getting a bit more comfortable. This had the feel of A Discussion.

Wrath fixed him with a level stare. Kai stared back, refusing to look away first.

(don't flinch, don't look away, this is just a test, you've seen it play out a hundred times, don't fail, don't blink)

"So, did you just want me here to ask me indirectly if I'm fucking your brothers?"

A curl of the lip, almost a sneer twisted the demon's features, he glanced away.

(good job. you didn't break first)

"I'm not. For what it's worth. Yet, anyway."

"Surprising. How'd you manage that?"

"I'm my own worst enemy, and they're still a bit too holy to take advantage when I'm too far gone to know my own name."

Satan coughed, covering a surprised laugh.

"Really? I didn't think that would matter."

"Turns out the human here is worse than at least two of the Lords of the Devildom."

A look of morbid curiosity. "Hard to pin a moral judgment on the one making the offer."

"Precisely."

A short "hm" was the only response.

Kai waited a few moments. "Did you need anything else?"

"No. You confuse me."

It was the human's turn to look baffled. "I'm an open book."

(liar)

"Sometimes. But you tend to insinuate more than you say, and act as though we should understand whatever subtext you imply. The strangest part of it all though?", Satan leaned forward, features darkening. "For whatever reason, sometimes for just a split second, I understand exactly what you mean, but it's like trying to hold on to smoke. Why?"

Kai shrugged. "I can't begin to guess, really. Maybe somehow we are both on the same wavelength?"

The answer was met with a skeptical noise, and rolled eyes.

"You can go. This is pointless."

Nodding at the dismissal, Kai stood, turning towards the door.

"Hand me the book on the top stack to your left before you go."

The human shrugged, nodding as he picked up a heavy leather volume, intending to further irritate Satan by tossing it in his direction.

Two things happened at once.

A sudden alarmed exclamation, "Not that one!"

The room felt as though it twisted on its axis, Kai somehow standing in his own memory, a flash.

The guest room. As it used to, or would someday look. Kai saw himself sitting on the edge of the bed, a younger-seeming self, hair still dark and a single color, ears still blunt and human in appearance, with no bruises at his throat. He cradled his arm close to his chest as Mammon teased him about being accident prone, which was met with a shrug and a sheepish smile. He waited as Mammon and Beelzebub argued quietly about the best way to bandage a human's wrist.

Another shift..

The rhythmic clicking of a train. Deep burnished wood paneling appears as a hazy spectre of a woman comes into view, her voice distant and sad. "...know that one day in the future, he will lose all trust he has placed in you."

A flash.

Solomon's voice in the dark, "You have to act now, before it is too late. Listen carefully, if you want to live, you have to do this! This is the only way - hold this dagger as tight as you can, and thrust it deep into..." "This is the only way to stop it - you have to do this" A sob, and the vision shifts, dagger now pressed to his own chest, knuckles white around the handle, a trickle of blood staining the shirt as a mote of pain flares.

A shimmer.

The cafe of a large bookshop in the human world, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Satan, both heads bent over a large book. The conversation is lively, a friendly debate.

"Do you believe the sacrifice was one of love, anger, or sadness?"

"Does it have to be one exclusively? It seems so much more complex than.. "

A shift.

Luke and Barbatos in the kitchens of Purgatory Hall, chatting quietly as the demon showed the young angel a trick with pastry. There was a moment of delight as Luke mimicked the movement, nearly nailing the results perfectly. Kai paused to watch, on his way elsewhere in the building, smiling, happy.

A flash.

Lucifer's study, a fire roaring in the hearth. The demon himself looming larger than life, a predatory grin stretching across his face as an aura of power rippled around him, pressing the human's back to the wall. "Now listen, and listen well. I will not be your possession. I will not belong to you, you will belong to me." Lucifer stepped closer, the tip of one wing curving to trace along Kai's cheek. "Do you still want to make that pact with me?" The only answer was a soft moan, as trembling fingers wrapped tightly into starched lapels, the human surged up, pulling Lucifer into a deep kiss. A flare of blue violet light tinted the vision before the images dissolved.

A shimmer. A large guest room at the castle. The brothers, plus the Future King engaged in a raucous pillow fight, dividing in to teams and egging each other on, the competition dissolving into a feathery tableau. Laughter. Joy. Camaraderie.

The visions cleared, leaving only one lingering reminder, Solomon's voice once again, "Be careful Kai. Remember, you're less powerful now withou -"

The book hit the floor with a heavy thud.

Satan stared coldly at the human, a low growl echoing from his chest as his tail flicked with irritation.

Kai leaned heavily against the table, feeling as though the thoughts had been forcibly torn from his mind, trying to catch his breath before turning to face the demon sitting before him.

They spoke in unison.

"How are those your deepest wishes?"

"Why would you? Those are my memories."

It felt like time stopped as the two untangled each other's words.

"How can they be memories? That's ridiculous. None of that has ever happened." "No. N-not y...", Kai felt his throat close. "What?", the demon snapped "Did you say?"

The human let out an involuntary sound as he was pushed roughly back against the nearest shelves, bones rattling with the impact. As he began to curl in on himself, he felt a now-clawed hand snaking around his throat, in a near-perfect overlay of the damage already there. "S-stay.", the word was barely a croak, with no strength behind it. (looks like this is it, you aren't meant to last, no matter where, there's no way that will work....)

The fingers twitched at his throat, before falling away. Kai looked up into eyes he was unfamiliar with, pools of inky black with only the slightest pinpoint of vibrant green. "Leave.", the demon gritted out, the sound an unnatural rasp.

Kai scrambled away, unwilling to wait for so much as a second word. He fled, the sound of destruction behind him.

[dwter]

this clip and the clip of tina talking about how dream and other dsmp creators brought an entirely new and diverse audience to twitch will never not fail to make me emotional. theres few creators that want to actually acknowledge dream and the dsmp for the magnitudes they did for the streaming and gaming community as a whole, but poki and tina truly get it and them speaking publicly about it makes me really happy. dteam and the dsmp deserve so much more credit for completely changing the culture of twitch in less than a year. it's ridiculous that there's so few people that recognize how crazy the influx was and how drastically they changed the streaming landscape for women and diverse content creators. i hope later down the line someone writes about the shift because it truly is so groundbreaking

ive never seen thos omfg thank u so much for showing me anon !!!!! its so nice to hear, esp from someone as big (and also sadly, as targetted) as poki, that the influx and change in the demographic of twitch was not just not a bad thing with a bunch of “annoying” blue haired girls with pronouns, but a genuinely GOOD thing and made her experience on twitch better and just made twitch in general a more inclusive space is seriously just so awesome to hear. like u said, ppl very rarely like to acknowledge the good that came from dream and the dsmp in general but their influence is undeniable and while u get a couple thousand dnf 💚💙 spammers, you also got an new set of people who have an entirely new world now open to them that is so much more approachable for so many different reasons. and it all circles back to the crafters and the way they completely changed the culture and created space for women and minorities in general :)))

[mypoisonedvine]

𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙫𝙮 𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙖𝙡 𝙡𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧 (𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘝𝘐𝘐 - 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙚) || sub!bucky barnes x dominatrix!reader

(𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘐) (𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘐𝘐) (𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘐𝘐𝘐) (𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘐𝘝) (𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘝) (𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘝𝘐)

𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙨𝙪𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙮 || the finale.

𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙙 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩 || 3.5k

𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 || fluff, angst, implied smut, domestic goodness, more EMOTIONS!!!

six months ago...

Bucky wrung his hands a few times before knocking on your door, feeling his heart beat a little faster when he could hear the sounds of your footsteps on the other side. He'd been dreaming of a day like this for so long— the day he finally acted on this secret obsession he had, the day he stopped fantasizing and started realizing— but all this time, part of him had never really thought he'd go through with it. I mean, there's a pretty big difference between jerking off to videos of dominant women and actually getting spanked, slapped, and choked by a dominatrix after paying her an insane amount of money per hour.

But frankly, Bucky needed a big difference from what he'd been doing. He'd been alone for a little too long, he needed someone else's touch before he lost his mind. And he knew that he needed something more substantial than a hook-up, someone who wouldn't expect him to be dominant at all. Even in a kink-less, vanilla hook-up, there’s still an onus of dominance, that’s what Bucky had realised. He’s still supposed to initiate, to guide, to be fully in control… and he hates how it feels to be in control. He’s not used to it, and it doesn’t feel right, and it just makes him sure he’ll do something wrong. So here he was, standing at your door, hoping you’d take away his freedom to do something wrong.

The latch turned and you opened it.

Fuck.

You looked great. Too great, almost overwhelming. Even better than the pictures on your website.

You looked so much softer than the women he saw whenever he searched up femdom porn (yes, that was pretty much the first thing he did once he figured out google— thankfully he had also figured out incognito mode), but your presence was twice as commanding. Your eyes scanned over him quickly and your face stayed annoyingly stoic.

You invited him in; And since then, you’d had him wrapped around your finger.

Even knowing to a certain extent what he was getting into, he could’ve never prepared for how quickly he’d fall for you. Not that he was exactly new to the feeling, but he thought guilt might eat him alive: because of course he felt awful for developing real feelings for you. You were just doing your job and he was falling into the same trap that probably every dumbass client fell into.

Or maybe they actually knew what they were doing and understood how to separate fantasy from reality. He couldn’t decide which one was worse.

He spent a few hours trying to decide while staring up at his ceiling— certainly a better way to spend the time than being social or taking care of unfinished business, right?

But leave it to you to change everything with just three words. Make me yours.

He hadn’t stopped thinking about those words— or about the way you said them— since the moment you spoke them. He hadn’t stopped changing his mind on if he could really believe you were his or not. He wanted to, more than anything; and in those brief moments he did, he felt a joy that he had no idea what to do with.

He frowned as he turned his back towards the mirror, looking over his shoulder to watch his finger run over the fading scars on his back. They’d be gone for good in less than a week, but he knew you had left plenty of permanent marks on him— just unfortunately not those that anyone else could see. He liked the way these scars looked under your fingertips much more than his; he liked everything about being in your arms.

Since you’d texted him to ask if you could have a serious talk with him soon, he worried he wouldn’t get to feel that again. In fact, nothing worried him more.

He was typically antsy as he waited for you to answer the door— he had been since that very first time so long ago— but this felt entirely different: not as jittery, but a thousand times more anxious.

At first he’d been wishing you’d answer it right away, but then he heard your bolt turn and panic landed on him like a dangling anvil dropping on a cartoon character. Suddenly the last thing he wanted was for you to open that door, to be standing there looking all perfect and shit, to smile at him and greet him and invite him in. He didn’t want it; he couldn’t take it.

But you did it all anyway, though it was obviously and immediately a new situation entirely, compared to every other time you’d done it.

You were dressed differently, still formal but definitely toned down. Nothing sexual, at least not objectively. And your smile, though it still made his heart skip a beat just like always, was noticeably softer and maybe a bit sadder.

He stepped in past you, and you surprised him by sitting next to him on the couch rather than across from him on your chair. “Do you want, like, water or anything?” you asked, breaking the silence for a moment.

“No, I’m fine,” he nodded.

Bucky had gotten pretty good at silence these past few years; it didn’t bother him, in fact he barely even noticed it. But this silence made him remember why everyone else hated silence so much: it was heavy and thick and made him overcome with the need to blurt something out. “Everyone calls me Bucky,” he finally admitted. You smiled.

“Do you want me to call you that?” you asked.

He considered your question, trying to imagine you saying it. “I… I used to think it would be better, but now I like the way you say ‘James’ too much.”

“If you thought it would be better, why did you ask me to call you James?” you pressed.

“Because I didn’t want you to know who I was.”

“I know who you are,” you informed him. “I always knew.”

He swallowed as the pit formed in his gut, glancing away to hide from your gaze. “You did a good job of… of pretending you didn’t. You never seemed scared of me.”

“Because I wasn’t. And I’m not.”

He couldn’t imagine how; but then again, if there was any truly fearless woman, he figured it would be you. “I thought you’d beat me up better if you knew what I’d done,” he admitted, almost smiling but not exactly feeling very happy. “Thought you might want… revenge.”

“Surprised that didn’t make you want to tell me.”

He laughed a bit at that. “Yeah, fair enough.”

You asked him a very different question next, one that made his throat suddenly dry: "Have you ever had something that was all your own?" you spoke gently.

"Not for a long time…" he trailed off, letting his eyes unfocus as he stared down at your floor before finding the courage to look up at you again. “Is that what you wanna be?” he asked, already wishing he hadn’t said anything in case it was too presumptuous, but you just smiled back at him in a shy sort of way.

“Something like that,” you mitigated.

His eyes darted around your face— from your eyes glancing away, to your lips that you gnawed on for a moment, to the little crease between your brows— and he found himself leaning forward before he even realized it. “Can I kiss you?” he asked quietly.

You didn’t answer, you just kissed him first; he was so relieved that you did it, too, that you took control so easily and just let him melt into your kiss. As good as it felt to submit to you, he enjoyed the new freedom he had in this moment as well— the freedom to reach up and grab your waist, to brush his hand over your hair, to tilt his head and deepen the kiss further.

It was hard to define exactly where it went from innocent to sensual to sexual, but by the time you were straddling his lap and running your fingers through his hair, it was definitely sexual.

“I want you,” you breathed against his lips.

“Have me,” he offered immediately, “I’m yours. Always was.”

He breathed in sharply when you moved your hips just right to rub up against his swelling cock through his jeans, making him grip your waist a bit harder. “Good boy,” you whispered. “You’re so good, James.”

He believed you this time, finally.

For your first real date, he took you to Coney Island. Not the classiest affair, and he promised to take you somewhere really nice next, but you didn’t mind. It was jarring to see you in casual clothes for the first time, something summer-y and light which was everything opposite to how he was used to seeing you; but he liked it, and he liked knowing a secret about you as you walked through a crowd of carnival-goers that were none the wiser.

He walked you through the fair and explained how he remembered it, showed you the few things that hadn’t changed much. He bought you a hot dog and even won you a prize at one of the games; that one where you throw a baseball and it measures your pitch speed? Yeah, it’s rigged, but he pitched lefty and it seemed to even everything out. (It’s not cheating, okay? It’s beating them at their own game, literally.)

So with a massive teddy under one arm and his waist wrapped in your other, you two walked through the winding pier, under twinkling lights and over walkways towering over the ocean below. And then you fooled around a bit on the ferris wheel. It was the ideal Coney Island experience, for sure.

Bucky didn’t have a ton of friends, per se, but he was excited for you to meet them. Meeting friends was certainly a step, though; hopefully a step you were willing to take, but he didn’t want to ask you to do it without at least having a title to introduce you with.

“I want you to be my girlfriend,” he finally told you.

“I kinda thought I already was,” you laughed.

And so, with more pride than he might have ever had for anything before, Bucky finally got to take you to meet everyone (‘everyone’ being a mix of his friends and his coworkers, who may or may not be his friends because he couldn’t always tell) and say “I want you guys to meet my girlfriend.”

Of course you were amazing with all of them; you continued that tactful “I know who you are but I’m pretending I don’t to be nice” thing that you’d started with him, and everyone seemed to appreciate it. You cracked a couple jokes, everyone laughed.

You lied about how you and Bucky met, or at least answered very strategically. Everyone at least pretended to believe you.

Afterwards, they all said something about how great you were or about how lucky he was. The only thing he ever said back was “I know.”

Now that he could kiss you without breaking any rules, he never wanted to stop. He hardly ever did, actually. He kissed you basically whenever he could get the chance; you two didn’t even go out much anymore because he wasn’t very good at keeping his hands to himself, but you weren’t exactly complaining about staying in. You were too busy kissing him back, and teasing him mercilessly while you were at it, to do that.

You had already found the fastest way to get him needy and begging, not that any way took very long. If you kissed him while you straddled his lap, wrapping your arms around him and slowly grinding against him, he lost it in minutes. And you really seemed to get a kick out of watching him lose it, just as much as always.

It made him realize that the way you looked at him before, in sessions and scenes together, was a lot less of an act than he’d assumed at the time. He just thought you were a really good actress, or that he was really whipped; and maybe the first was true, and the second was absolutely true, but regardless it had become clear that you had it almost as bad as he did from the beginning. It gave him even more respect for how well you controlled yourself, he certainly hadn’t had much self-control at the time— after all the whole ordeal was about losing control, and occasionally about trying to gain it back.

He didn’t ask you to quit your job. He didn’t want or expect you to; but you did cut down your hours, which gave the two of you more time together.

To be totally honest, part of him got a bit titillated to imagine you with your other clients. He didn’t like the idea of other men touching you, but he smirked at the thought of them begging to touch you and being denied; he liked knowing that you didn’t do with them even half of the stuff you’d done with him when he was your client.

But he wasn’t your client anymore. He was your boyfriend, and he wanted the world to know it.

six months later...

He let you struggle to reach the top shelf for a moment, just because you looked cute on your tip-toes with the tip of your tongue sticking out of the corner of your mouth, before he finally relented and helped you grab the bottle of rice wine vinegar.

“Thanks,” you smiled as he set it in the cart.

After that you let him grab everything, content to stand on the end of the cart and push you around as you reminded him what else you needed.

“We’re out of Captain Crunch!” you remembered as he passed the cereal aisle, pointing to try to get him to turn.

“Yes, and we need to stay that way,” Bucky explained sternly, “that shit is addictive. Only way to avoid it is to not have it in the house.”

You frowned but accepted that he was absolutely right, though you groaned when he took you to the refrigerated section to stock up on chicken breasts. “I swear, you would eat these for breakfast if you didn’t think I’d judge you for it,” you joked.

“What’s wrong with chicken breasts?”

“They’re just so… bland!”

“Not if you season them right,” he corrected.

“Which you don’t,” you rolled your eyes. “Come on, at least splurge on some chicken thighs. They’re basically the same but so much more flavorful.”

“Fine, but no more making fun of my cooking,” Bucky decided, placing the breasts back on the shelf and grabbing two packs of thighs instead. “I’m still adapting to 21st century sensibilities.”

“Right,” you nodded, though he caught your smile in the corner of his eye— you knew he couldn’t exactly claim to still be as conservative as he was raised to be in every way.

Like any well-planned grocery run, it ended at the frozen section where you got some fruit bars and frozen vegetables (you had this theory that frozen vegetables tasted better in fried rice than fresh ones, and so far you’d proven him right) and he got a pizza to have for dinner in a pinch. When shopping alone before, he always did self-checkout to avoid being seen anymore than he had to… he still did it with you, but he didn’t even think about who might be looking at him, because all he saw was you.

You drove for this trip, and he always felt oddly soothed by riding passenger with you at the wheel. He liked to close his eyes and lean back a bit, or occasionally look over at you (but if he did it too much you complained that he was being creepy and distracting you). It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that he enjoyed the feeling of you taking control, considering everything, but it was one of those little ways that he hadn’t expected. He just felt so comfortable, so safe with you, and never he felt like he was a burden for asking you to take the lead when he didn’t trust himself with it. And that applied to everything— driving, cooking, speaking up in crowds, all those little things that sometimes made him anxious.

There were some things he didn’t have any trouble being dominant about, though. He was very protective of you, for example, and tended to be uptight about how late you went out for walks or where you should be going alone. And he didn’t struggle to ask you for what he wanted— he was getting a lot better at asking for help, specifically.

He used to ask you to say that you loved him, instead of just saying ‘I love you’ himself, because for some reason it was easier to make you do it first. It started as something he’d beg for in the throes of passion, fingers digging into your skin as his eyes watered (as they often did in intimate moments): please, say you love me— jus’ need to hear you say it, please? And you were always sweet about it in return, of course I love you, James, my good boy, I love you so so much. But then he’d ask you to say it whenever he felt like it— he’d come up behind you while you were reading or cooking or something and kiss the top of your head or the shell of your ear and try to act nonchalant as he asked you love me, right?

You’d laugh and roll your eyes before you answered, but it was, thankfully, always a ‘yes.’ Eventually you figured out how often you needed to say it to make him stop asking all the time, which was probably a little too often.

“I love you,” you blurted out randomly as you turned on your signal and leaned a bit to make sure it was safe to make a left— case in point.

“I love you too,” he answered back with a smile.

“I don’t mind saying it so often,” you added, “but you know that I love you even when I’m not saying it, right? I love you all the time.”

It was a simple question, probably mostly rhetorical, but it hit him harder than he expected. “Yeah, I know,” he managed to get out evenly enough that you didn’t notice he was tearing up a bit.

He put the groceries away while you took the trash out; you liked to keep the fridge pretty organized, and it was an adjustment at first, but by now Bucky had it down pat. Before you, he hadn’t even considered that the contents of a refrigerator could be aesthetically pleasing.

Dinner was leftovers in front of the TV— you two were almost done with Frasier, but after that you had ten seasons of Friends to get through. You had tried to encourage him to watch more challenging stuff— you know, True Detective, Hannibal, dark cerebral stuff with arguably more artistic merit than classic sitcoms— but Bucky had had enough darkness in his life that he didn’t need it in his fiction. Maybe he’d find the time to catch up on the last 80 years of dramas and murder mysteries after he caught up on the last 80 years of comedy.

After dinner you were going to do yoga and Bucky, not in the mood to embarrass himself with that, retired to the bedroom a bit early to read his book— he’d heard a lot about this Harry Potter guy and now that he was on the fourth book and could hardly put it down, he understood the hype. He related a bit to the unwilling war hero in its protagonist; most of the time the series enthralled him, but occasionally something would hit too deep and he’d have to put it away for a couple days. At the moment, though, he was in one of the easy parts where it was just about schoolwork and childhood antics.

He instinctively glanced at the door when he heard you open it— he wasn’t sure how long it had been time-wise, but he’d gotten through quite a few pages— but he only quickly looked up at you as you shut the door behind you, before returning his attention to the book he was reading. “So, Bucky…” you began.

“Yeah?” he mumbled.

“James.”

It wasn’t any one thing that got his attention— not just the tone of your voice or the way it got a bit deeper, not just the look you gave him, not just the way the air of the room seemed to shift all at once. It was everything about you that made his body react instantly. He shut the book and set it aside, sitting up straight to look at you expectantly.

And you seemed to notice his instinctual obedience, considering you just barely smirked at him, raising an eyebrow as he spoke his reply: “Yes, Mistress?”

[rek1s-headband]

Oh oh! Can we get some hedcanons about cherry adopting a girl who is around miya's age. Like how close would they be and how would others feel about her being his daughter now. Bonus points if uncel Joe and little missy mess with daddy blossom

Xoxo love your work so far, keep it up💙

➯ A/N: This was such an amazing request, I had so much fun writing it! Hope you enjoy :)

Also, i started watching Your Lie in April today, and its AMAZING! So much more than what I was expecting

➯ With a daughter

➯ Characters: Kaoru Sakurayashiki with a young daughter. Reki, Langa and co. are mentioned throughout!

➯ Warnings: none:)

Having a child had never crossed Kaoru’s mind before, but when Joe had teased him about how “you treat Carla better than you would a child!”, the idea kind of stuck with him. And so, he’d spent countless nights awake, wondering to himself if it was something he truly wanted?

He’d pass parks, seeing parents with spewing babies and toddlers throwing tantrums, wondering if he could actually put up with that? But as he passed the shops, he came across a mother and her daughter, who looked around 12. He watched them pass, a grin on the child’s face as she looked into her shopping bag, examining her haul for that day. And so it was settled

He wanted a baby girl he could spoil absolutely rotten

And the search for a child carried on, and this time instead of baby shops and websites, he was browsing the shelves of Claires and other tween clothing stores. It had only occurred to him over a bottle of wine with Joe, as they were discussing if Kaoru was truly ready for something like this. Instead of a crying baby or a messy toddler, he could simply adopt someone a bit older!

It made sense too. For a single parent, an older child seemed much more doable. Of course, he wouldn’t be alone. Joe was always telling him how he’d help out, yknow, if he actually went through with the damn thing.

Not to mention, the older you get, the more difficult it is to get adopted. Babies and young children will get adopted left right and centre, whereas the child he will take home will have been there for a while. Finally, they will have a place to call a home

He spent months trying to get the approval for adoption, and one fateful day he finally got the letter that yes he could go ahead and take one home. He was ecstatic, spending the next few days finding out the location of every orphanage around his area of Japan. He messaged every single one, asking when their next visiting day was

And so it was set: Kaoru would not rest until he had found his perfect little girl

He went through orphanage after orphanage, searching for someone he could call his own. However, none of the children were lighting that paternal flame inside him. It wasn’t their fault of course, they just didn’t click with him, staring at him any time he tried to talk to them. Visit after visit, he’d go to Joe’s, ready to tell him about his recent fail.

It wasn’t until Joe came up to him with a phone number, asking if he’d been to this particular orphanage yet. Apparently they had a few children aged 12 and up, and were available for visit that Saturday. And so there he was, packing a bag and getting ready to travel to the house. This time felt different, somehow. He could feel his palms sweat, as if he could sense he would take one of them home

When he finally made it to the house, he was a nervous wreck. The lady of the house let him in with a smile, telling him the children were in the backyard playing while she bounced a baby on her hip. Cherry winced as the baby gurgled at him, glad he opted for an older child

She led him outside, gesturing at the children who were sprinting around in the vast field, hiding behind trees and bushes. It was clear they were playing a game of hide and seek. He smiled as he scanned over them, but it quickly disappeared when he noticed one little girl sitting on the step, head in her lap while her shoulders gently shook with tears

He walked over to her, bending down with a soft smile. He didn’t know where this sudden calmness came from, but that was his last priority right now. A little gash sat on the girls knee, caked with blood as it trickled down her shin. He frowned, pulling out a tissue to gently wipe it. She jumped, wincing with shock from the fresh wave of pain, and surprise. Kaoru gently wiped at her knee once more before looking up at her to attempt a conversation

“Hello, is your knee alright?” She shook her head frantically, wiping a tear away from her face. A small breathy laugh escaped him as he watched the child stand, gesturing to her leg

“Nope, not at all. I think its broken, if you ask me. All cause of that stupid thing!” She threw her arm out, gesturing to a pink board Kaoru hadn’t noticed before. A skateboard.

That’s when Kaoru realised it: I want this one

Suddenly he felt a new sense of importance, like he had to make a good impression. He walked over to the board, tutting as he looked down at it. “This is what hurt you?” He looked at it with disdain as the little girl nodded her head violently. Kaoru could see how she hurt herself, the thing was massive, especially for someone her age. It looked around the size of a board he would use.

Grinning, he picked up the board. “Well, want to see something cool?” She watched in wonder as kaoru stood on it, pushing off and turning quickly, popping an ollie over a stray toy. The little girl jumped, throwing her arms up as she cheered Kaoru on. He finished with a flourish, coming back to stand beside her. “What did you think?” She was speechless, simply moving her hands, saying scattered “wows” and making various sound effects. Kaoru smiled, certain that he could teach her more.

When he realized visiting time was coming to a close, he proposed the idea to the girl, who’s name he had come to know was Lily: he’d come back next week, and he’d bring his board. He even promised to find her a smaller boar perfect for her to learn on, saying he knew a friend who could make her one. From there he would teach her the basics of skateboarding, even a couple of tricks once she got that down. She was delighted, bouncing up and down and declaring she couldn’t wait, all the energy of someone much younger than her. Kaoru found he couldn’t stop smiling himself either

He made his way back through the house, Lily skipping alongside him. He explained the plan to the Lady, that he would come back next week for another visit. Just as he was about to leave, he turned to the lady to request one final thing from her

“Make sure no one snatches her up from me while I’m gone, yeah?”

Needless to say a bottle of wine was opened at Joe’s that night in celebration of Lily, the potential daughter

And so the weeks turned into months, and Kaoru returned each week with his board and some sweets for her and the other children, teaching her everything she needed to know about skateboarding. After a month or so she could confidently ollie without bailing, and next time he visited she displayed it with delight, watching Kaoru’s face light up with pride.

She had taken a real liking to Kaoru, according to the Lady. She refused to pay any other visitors any notice, declaring they “simply weren’t Kaoru.” This is what finally made him realise that maybe it was time to ask if she’d like to live with him from now on, where she could practice with him every day.

When he asked her, Kaoru could’ve sworn he actually saw stars in her eyes. She simply lit up, throwing herself at Kaoru, tears streaming down her face as she shouted yes, of course she would. she wasn’t the only one crying, Kaoru could barely see from the tears in his own eyes, the lady dabbing at hers with a tissue

Once the paperwork was complete and Lily was his, he felt a weight had been taken off his shoulders. He had packed her a new change of clothes the day he went to collect her, bringing Joe along with him for emotional support. Lily came flying at him the second he got out of his car, wrinkling her nose at Joe

“You never told me you had a boyfriend, Kaoru” she stuck her tongue out at him from over his shoulder while they both tried to convince her that no, they weren’t a couple, before she ran upstairs to get changed. Joe turned to Kaoru, an almost offended look on his face

“Why were you so adamant that we weren’t together??” “I dont need her worrying she’s going home to a Gorrila” “HEY”

Once they all got home, they threw a little party at Joe’s who had closed a little early specially for it. Kaoru didn’t let her out of his sight, making sure she wasn’t uncomfortable with all the new people. Of course, it was only Joe, Shadow, Reki, Langa and Miya, all of whom she would meet eventually, but he still worried in case she got overwhelmed.

She made quick friends with Reki, who was ecstatic from the moment he realised she could skate. The two bonded over it, talking about tricks they’d learned, Reki shouting over at Kaoru because why hadn’t he taught him anything??

Miya was a bit standoffish at first, but when she saw the switch in his hand, the two were instantly bonding over who had better villagers in Animal Crossing, and who had passed more levels in Mario with three stars

As the months went on, Lily really settled into her new life in Okinawa, starting at school in Miyas class. The two were joined at the hip, Miya often coming home to Kaoru’s so they could practice together, or simply study and watch some movies. Reki constantly teased the shit out of the two, talking about how he heard “wedding bells”. This comment earned him a swift whack into the skull from Kaoru, warning him not to tease his little girl

Soon enough Kaoru was making her own skateboard with built-in Carla, who helped her skating improve insanely. As Kaoru said, she was definitely a chip off the old block. Langa and Reki would take her to the skate park with them, helping her land new tricks and would take videos of her to send to Kaoru

Shadow was like a chill uncle to her, bringing her flowers for her room and taking her out to get some clothes and ice cream. Joe was like an uncle too, but a much more untrustworthy one. Would he take her to the park, or would he take her to parts of downtown she definitely shouldn’t have been? Who knows, certainly not Kaoru...

Poor Kaoru can never get a minutes peace. Every second of the day she’s plotting something, waiting for him to let his guard down so she can pounce, scaring the shit out of him. When the others are around its 10x worse, all of them ganging up on him to pull pranks

As well as skateboarding, Kaoru tried to teach her how to do calligraphy. She ended up being awful, blotting the ink and smearing it with her hand. But hey, it was a fun art project that made it onto the fridge

At S, she was watched like a hawk. When Kaoru was competing,the others would be like her bodyguard, making sure no one got within 5 feet of her. She’d watch her dad with wonder, the look of awe never leaving her face since the first day she saw him skate. She can’t wait for the day she can compete, maybe even beating her own dad

The first time Lily called Kaoru “dad” was when he won a race, showing off some amazing skills and winning the insanely close match by a hair. He picked up his board, looking around for Lily. He saw her in the crowd, throwing her arms up and cheering “THATS MY DAD!! LOOK, RIGHT THERE, THATS MY DAD!” When she spotted him, a large grin spread across her face. “Nice job out there dad! You did amazing!! D’you think I can do that one day?”

Everyone was staring at her, she hadn’t even realised she had said anything out of the ordinary. Soon enough Kaoru was lunging at her, picking her up in a hug so she didn’t see the tears quickly forming on his face. With a smile he pulled away, his voice dripping with pride

“Of course you could. You’re my daughter, aren’t you?”

[nebraska-is-a-myth]

So I’ve been watching older clip compilations of Erets pov during the start of the dream smp/l’manburg war and I love learning about Erets character. Because these clips show how much they have changed as a person. Like in these clips, Eret is the villain. He is a downright villain. They are re-iterating Dreams driving message of "no mercy" all while laughing in the faces of the people who were their family. Eret laughs at the crater and ruins of l'manburg, declares that "victory is sweet" and gorges on golden apples all while the remaining soldiers cower away in Tommy's bunker. When asked if she regrets it, she responds with "hell no" and even builds herself a makeshift throne while she listens to her former president and second in command cry out in surrender.

"I did everything and it wasn't enough, we weren't going to win so I left."

Eret doesn't act like someone who just lost hope, if Eret truly only switched sides because they thought l'manburg never stood a chance, why make a deal with dream. Why laugh in l’manburg faces, why boast about their victory and sit on a golden throne?

Sure lost hope was apart of all of this, but it wasn't the driving force

I also want to know why Dream promised him friendship, and why Eret makes a point to include it regularly in the terms of their deal.

Eret was surrounded by people who admired him in l'manburg. Tommy was the driving force of a lot of opinions in l'manburg because he liked to shout loud and clear about his opinions for everyone to listen. Tommy has always worn his emotions on his sleeve, ( We also see this later as he shouts directly at Eret about trust and how land and power wont get him anything. Even fundy goes on to say "he's mad, but not as mad as tommy." It's no wonder Eret seaked Tommy's approval most, because Tommy was the one who constantly told Eret how much it hurt.) - and Tommy had such positive opinions of Eret, he admired them so much, possibly on par with Wilbur. And they had a deep connection with Fundy too, which proved itself to be just a strong as they were the first to reconcile after the betrayal. Tubbo and Eret were often seen as brothers, and while Wilbur and Eret never explicitly spent much one on one time together, Wilbur did speak fondly of him. So why did dream offer Eret friendship if they already had so much of it? Could this have been the first signs of dreams manipulation? Who knows what c!Dream told c!Eret in that meeting that started it all. Even on the first days of Eret joining the server and l'manburg being founded, Dream seemed eager to get Eret on his side with public in game messages.

But it's not all down to Dream in these scenarios.

Eret built the majority of the l'manburg walls, even on the very first day of being welcomed into l’manburg Eret was put to work. Clearing out a hill, placing blocks, grinding for gear. And sure Eret gets thanks from Wilbur and compliments from Tommy, but past that first day nobody really gives Eret a second thought. Nobody looked at the l'manburg walls and remembered, "yeah Eret built those" They think "oh l'manburg built those '' but nobody views Eret as part of l'manburg so really, Eret was forgotten.

So there is an argument that Eret could have betrayed l'manburg because she wasn't being treated fairly/being recognized for her contributions. However, Wilbur and Tommy were so in awe of Eret, Tommy mostly, and put Eret on a massive pestle. So I do genuinely believe that Eret betrayed them for greed and power, as much as I want to pretend it was Dreams manipulation, while it may have played a part, Eret was also fully aware of what they were doing, and why they were doing it. Eret was power hungry and greedy and wanted status. Something she never would have gotten in l'manburg. And while she states it was “the merciful way out” for the remaining citizens, the statement itself is also a contradiction of those moments on the battlefield where Eret would chime in with the others shouting "no mercy".

"Eret your a traitor and a bastard" "oh I know"

"Eret I hate you alot" "Understandable"

[ Erets reactions to the people of lmanburg stating their dislike for him, only 11 days after the initial betrayal. ]

I really just want to see that one moment of regret that starts it all, where Eret thinks of his actions and wishes he could take it all back. Because there is no remorse on this final day, on the day of independence Eret believes it to be a victory. I want to see the moment, the sentence, the second of Erets first regret. Like what changed for this downright power hungry, vengeful, mistreated villain want to make amends for every bad thing they've ever done? Eret turns from this loud, prideful king, to a meak, regretful pawn. And I just wanna know man, I want to be able to see the full story played out in front of me and see every single feeling of doubt that leads Eret to wanting redemption.

TLDR: Gimme the fukin Vods Eret. This is a threat.