#like what was the point of that puzzle anyways

[sukunasweetheart]

Sukuna, a middle aged man jaded by the harsh realities of his life. He steps outside for a smoke nearby a convenience store, completely bored out of his mind.

A lady is handing out flyers nearby, although nobody is bothering to look her way, including sukuna himself.

You approach the man who's getting irritated by the lighter that refuses to work in his hand.

"Hello there, sir. Would you be interested in taking up classes for arts and craft?" You offer the cute flyer up.

Sukuna scoffs. Is she serious?

"No thanks."

"Are you sure? You look like you could use a bit more colour in your life."

He's too exhausted at this point to get angry at a random woman on the street.

"...You're not too far off, i suppose," sukuna mutters, still trying to get the spark to stay on his lighter. "Even so, I'm not interested in the likes of arts and craft. Do i look like a child to you?"

You withdraw your offer of your flyer, and inspect him for a moment.

"Arts and craft can be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of age. But moving past that... you seem a bit down. If you'd like to confide in a stranger for a night, I'm happy to listen."

What a strange, persistent woman. Sukuna gives up on his lighter, and takes out the unlit cigarette in his mouth to think back for a moment. One thing does come to mind.

"I'm not feeling down. But i remembered something, now that i think about it..." he confesses, feeling weirdly compelled to tell you about it.

"Today is supposed to be my birthday."

Birthdays have never been special to him. Nobody celebrated his birth as a child, and in turn, he's never paid attention to the birthdays of others.

"Oh, happy birthday. Are you doing anything special for yourself today?"

"No. I've never cared for birthdays. And I'm getting too old for that anyway."

"Well, that won't do... Hold on for a second."

Puzzled, sukuna looks back at you but you've already gone inside the convenience store. Whatever you're up to now, couldn't possibly be more enticing than getting in a proper smoke right now. Sukuna begins to zone out.

He only snaps out of it when something mildly cold grazes past his cheek, leaving a ticklish and moist sensation on his skin as it disappears upon impact.

Bubbles. Bubbles are flying past him, and floating away into the sky.

For a moment, he gets mesmerised by the swirl of colours that are harboured in each one. Even just from the light of this dingy street, they fly up while holding a multitude of different colours inside them. Time seems to slow for a split second, and he doesn't understand why.

His gaze follows the trail to identify it's source. And unsurprisingly, it's you, standing behind him. You blow a couple more out, and then grin at him childishly. He finally looks at your face properly for the first time.

"Birthday bubbles. For the birthday man," you chuckle sheepishly, knowing that you probably look a bit silly right now. You put the bubble wand back into the small bottle of the soapy mixture, and screw it tightly.

"Here, you can have it. Next time you're feeling a bit antsy, why don't you try blowing some yourself? They're pretty, aren't they?"

You also hand him a different small item.

"And i also threw in a little something else, while i was at it."

He looks down, and sees that it's a new lighter. He slowly pulls his hand out of his pocket to take both of them from your hands.

"I hope you get to do something more special next year. Birthdays are supposed to be joyful, after all," you comment.

"Thanks for putting up with my nosiness. Farewell."

And then you leave him after a quick wave.

Sukuna stares wordlessly as you walk off, wondering what to name this ticklish feeling rising in the pit of his stomach.

The small bottle in his palm reminds him of a moment in his childhood. Kids in the park bragging about their bubble wands that were gifted to them. the laughs that resounded as they all ran off to catch the fragile spheres as they blew away in the wind. The tiny feelings of envy in his heart.

The item he tucks away into his pocket is the lighter. And when nobody is watching, he blows a couple more bubbles into the night sky.

-

Every time he passes by that convenience store, the thought of you comes to his mind. A flashback of your smile in the back of his mind. Every so often, he comes to this particular store. Despite having closer options, he comes to this specific one.

At times, sukuna regrets not taking one of the flyers that you were handing out. He wouldn't have had to mope around a convenience store in hopes of running into you again.

Today is a rainy day, and this calls for a hot piping cup of instant ramen. He doesn't usually enjoy convenience store food, but he wants a reason to stay around inside for a bit longer.

He needs to wait five minutes for the noodles to soften. In this time, he stares out the glass frame of the store, and watches the various rows of people walking past with their umbrellas opened.

There appears to be one anomaly in the crowd, however. Running without shelter from the rain, clutching her bag as if it contains something important in there. Sukuna realises that it's you.

Forgetting about his instant ramen, sukuna grabs his umbrella and dashes out the door.

You're mildly panicking about being stuck behind the red light at the zebra crossing without anything to save you from the rain, but the sensation of the droplets hitting your body come to a stop all too suddenly.

You look up, and there's a black umbrella sheltering you, big and strong looking. You spin around and recognise the stranger with pink hair and sharp eyes. Seemingly out of breath.

He signals to the light that has now turned green behind you, and ushers you forward to cross the road before you can say anything to him.

Now safely on the other side of the road, you begin to converse with him.

"It's you! Hello. Thank you for sheltering me. How have you been?"

"... So-so. Nothing's changed since the last time we met."

"I see. You look better than last time, though." You get the feeling that his eyes have a little more light in them.

Sukuna doesn't really get what you mean, but he moves on.

"What’s in your bag that's so important for you to be protecting it like that?" He asks, effectively changing the topic.

"Oh, this? I literally just bought some brand new origami paper... i can't risk getting them wet and unusable. The children would be disappointed."

"Origami, huh? How original."

"Hey! That's not all... there's a lot of options i offer them. They voted on origami this time."

"You got a lot of people signed up?"

"Not really... but I'm sure it'll start picking up soon. Slowly, one at a time."

You smile up at him hopefully.

"...is the offer still open?"

You cock your head to the side slightly, confused. Sukuna grits his teeth, feeling a little bashful about having to ask more specifically.

"You know. Lessons for grown adults."

"Oh! Of course, anytime! Would you like to come sign up today?"

"Do you offer one-on-one sessions too?"

"Yes, I do."

"Alright. Let’s go."

Sukuna can't fathom the words that are coming out of his own mouth. But fuck it, what's the worst that could happen? You've somehow intriged him, and he can't think of a better way to approach you.

You chatter his ears off along the way, and he nods along while his shoulder gets wet from the way he leans his umbrella closer to your side.

[goldshootingstars]

You know, Badboyhalo brought up a good question today. What would have happened if they hadn't failed the pressure plate puzzle at the start of QSMP after they got out of the train?

[the-blue-phantom]

finished playing KEY and had a good time. its a definite improvement over MID, but the new controls definitely take some getting used to. one i always had trouble with was rotating objects to observe them, because once it got slightly out of my control i couldn't reorient it easily.

otherwise, i enjoyed the puzzles (and how many more there were compared to MID. one of my favorites was the play script puzzle), even if some were definitely not the most intuitive/i needed more information for them. some of the new functions, like texting, are fun additions

my major complaints honestly were that despite adding in a bunch of things, the game felt emptier than, like, SEA, especially when it came to the phone calls. why do you keep sending me to voice mail boys. and i think the ending had a lot that was thrown at once, but it didnt ruin it for me/i think other games have been equally as rushed/busy

point is i'm interested to see where they go next with these games

[sunkillerlovechild]

i finally forced myself to watch 9-1-1 and im going crazy

i got hooked cause of buddie edits and stuff and first of all they really dont do justice to how crazy they both are about eachother

secondly i got to the tommy part and its kind of like watching a car crash but also so on point for buck and eddie's relationship

[sysig]

Featured - me, fully certain I will make this craft in This Exact Sequence, with These Exact Pieces, and Do Not Need to label or set things in particular order or prepare or anything:

Me, a fool:

[sho-haizono]

YAYYY MISHA THEME!!!

MISHA 💖💓🩷❤️💕💖💓🩷💖❤️💖💓💓💖🩷💓

[dullahandyke]

sidenote speaking of polls that infuriated me, that poll like 'does a story require themes to be good' was sent from hell to kill me

[mishkakagehishka]

I will say the fact that Mr X doesn't just despawn is a very, very good horror mechanic. Because, let me tell you, i am pissing myself trying to avoid him.

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia! What work is you think is your best one? In your opinion, not counting readers response, kudos and so on, which work you are the prouder of?

I don't know, anon!

The works I feel are my best are not actually the works I'm always proudest of. The works I love the most are not actually my best. So here we go:

The work I think I've written that is my best: The Ice Plague (particularly books 2 & 3)

The work I've written that I'm proudest of: The Golden Age that Never Was

The work I've written that I love the most: Falling Falling Stars

It was hard to narrow this down because it's also changed over time and I expect it to change in the future as well. In the past for example, I would have said that Inmates was probably my best work. Or that I was proudest of Stuck on the Puzzle. So I definitely don't think this is static!

[villalunae]

ah once again the "didnt think it was for me, got big, now i definitely know its not for me but everyones talkin abt it" problem lol

[freebooter4ever]

The tech guys are hanging out in my office again and chatting about $10,000 week long vacations like this is normal.

[mwagneto]

welcome to post about franchise noone knows about but the fucking.... trajectory of the mystery files games is truly insane to me and this trailer for the newest game that absolutely feels like a parody but is 100% real made me think about them again, like with the first 4 you have an extremely simple "look at an image find the items" click and point which is the entire appeal of the game and then they upgrade to walkable maps for SOME REASON which somehow make my laptop lag even now so i can't imagine what they did to stuff 15 years ago but anyway not only do they lose the entire format they also for some reason attempt to connect all the games and introduce the detective while trying to keep them universally relatable so now by game 57 you're a sometimes-man sometimes-woman who's forcibly gay married to the villain from the third game walking through random empty maps with a rare badly voice acted npc every now and then and you don't understand anything and your computer is about to burn down trying to play all the bouncy room transition animations at the same time and all you wanted was get a list of 10 items and stare at a screenshot until you find all of them

[tendercoretroglodyke]

I have some kind of weird evil wizard curse on me where I feel deeply sad and uniquely horrible when my beloved bestie roommate is home but feel Normal and Emotionally Regulated when theyre out like literally what is wrong with me good GOD get that girl some therapy !!!!

[end-orfino]

What if i'd make an art sideblog

[jackwhinesandfavabeans]

Ngl To/tk is rising among the ranks of games like 3h where I'm becoming convinced ppl played a different game than I did based on their hot takes

[transgaysex]

btw i did not get my testosterone dose raised bc my endocrinologist said that im already on the higher side of testosterone in my blood by cis men standards and she didnt want to overdose me