#really what they ought to do is remove it from the game but

[rohirric-hunter]

I'm actually very worried about that questline we don't speak of in the Angle because LotRO is usually so good about faithfully adapting Tolkien's obscure lore that it would be reasonable for someone to play through it and assume that it is also a faithful adaptation of some obscure lore. I mean some people might be clued in by how horrible it is as a quest, but taken at face value it could easily just be a bad story about some perfectly reasonable lore.

I feel like it should have a disclaimer before you accept it, that it alleges things that are straight up false. And also is going to make you feel really gross to play through, but technically that's a different complaint.

[wileys-russo]

Writing challenge

Alexia Putellas, “you and Mapi are children”, training grounds

alexia putellas

"is this really a good idea?" you asked with an ounce of hesitation as mapi messed about with the shampoo. "yes! did you forget what they did first?" mapi scoffed giving you a look as you shrugged unable to argue.

it was juvenile, you knew that. but as mapi stated it was pina and jana who started this whole thing. the 'thing' being an unofficial prank war of sorts, which had all begun just a couple of weeks ago.

you'd been off in your own world, headphones on and preparing yourself mentally for the game. you'd been rummaging through your bag trying to find your lucky hair tie when you saw it.

a large black spider sat on top of your training jumper causing you to let out a scream and fall backwards off the bench, smacking your head and groaning as several of the girls rushed over.

"mi amor what happened?" your girlfriend was the first by your side, grabbing your face and checking you over as you winced and gently pushed her away. "claudia!" mapi roared catching her trying to subtly remove the spider, the younger girl sprinting off in the opposite direction.

though intended to be harmless and there wasn't any real lasting damage, it didn't mean you weren't out for revenge and with mapi your willing accomplice it set off a series of events into motion.

claudia roped in jana to help her and everything started small between the four of you. if it was you signing claudias phone number up for telemarketing calls, hiding one anothers belongings, fake lottery tickets or scratchies.

but when claudia took it one level further and shaved a slit in mapi's eyebrow while she was napping after training one day, the tattooed spaniard was filled with an entirely new passion for getting even.

of course you'd been well warned to stop this all together by the rest of the team especially your captain and girlfriend who made a point to remind that you were both in your late twenties and ought to know better than to stoop to the younger girls level.

but all of the warnings fell on deaf ears which is what lead to you and mapi being crouched down in the showers, filling the girls shampoo with blue hair dye which was supposed to wash out after two washes.

"and you're sure its not going to be permanent?" you stressed again, constantly checking over your shoulder nervously. the two of you had arrived much earlier in order to avoid being caught out but it did nothing to ease your worries you would be.

"relax amiga! no one is here." mapi rolled her eyes, screwing the tops back on as the two of you exited the showers and placed the bottles back in both jana and claudias cubby's.

nothing more came of it until hours later when the game was won and everyone was back in the change rooms, and on such a high from winning you'd actually forgotten about yours and mapi's activities.

well you had until you heard a scream and the two girls appeared, hair tinted blue with dye running down their faces as the change room erupted into laughter, mapi taking off as claudia sprinted after her and jana stormed off to the showers to try and wash it out.

"cariño." you looked up with an amused smile which dropped seeing the stern glare sent your way by your girlfriend. "i did not do anything, it was all maría." you threw your friend right under the bus and sent the taller girl an innocent smile.

"mmm sure amor. you will apologise to both of them!" alexia ordered crossing her arms as you scoffed. "no i will not!" you argued, the girls firm look unwavering as she refused to break eye contact knowing exactly how to break you.

"fine!" you huffed, getting to your feet and yelling into the showers that you were sorry, jana's hand which was stained blue popping up over one of the stalls and flipping you off.

"can we go now? capi." you jeered, never appreciating when your girlfriend would pull the captain card on you. the two of you made your way out to alexia's car, claudia and mapi sprinting past you still chasing one another around as poor ingrid followed trying to break it up.

"you and mapi are children." alexia sighed, starting up the car as you settled into your seat. "i never was until i met her. she is a bad influence!" you tutted crossing your arms, sending her an innocent smile as she looked unimpressed.

"you love me though." you sang out as she started the engine, the older girl letting out a deep sigh.

"you are lucky you're cute mi vida, thats all you have going for you sometimes." "hey!"

[galedekarios]

this is a personal vent post so please let me just get it all out without trying to come at me lol:

so many ppl saying they respect larian's decision to peace out and not deal with hasbro/wotc, but i have to be honest, i don't respect them at all.

they are leaving a game behind that is unfinished and a narrative mess.

they leave a game behind where everyone paid the same amount of money for it, yet depending on which character you prefer, you get less content.

the disparity between everyone else and their writer's pet ast*rion is insane. he has a half to a third more content depending on which character you compare him to.

they leave behind a sparse act 2, which is already so barren compared to act 1 and all it had to offer. act 3 is a narrative mess and lacks structure.

they leave a game behind where they made promises a handful of weeks before release where they ought to have known that they, in fact, will not be delivering said promises: access to the upper city, consequences for playing certain races across the acts (playing a drow is going to be different in act 1 and gives you advantages vs act 3 where it would give you understandable disadvantages), etc etc etc.

they leave behind a game where content was cut from the companions to make it seem like the origins have something to offer when that system is barely able to compare what origin playthroughs offered in dos2 and it hurts the game and the experience (like tara being cut for companion gale).

they leave behind a game where they promised to much variety and proclaimed in panels from hell how they struggled to show the width and depth of the game, but really? it's about as deep as a puddle. a lot of the choices do not matter. kill ethel? nah, she's alive and well in the city. no sister hags to be angry here. give karlach no infernal iron and never talk to her at all? doesn't matter, she'll survive until the end of act 3 and will still call you her bff. dissuade gale to use the orb? we'll make sure he'll still offer 3 more times just in case. send yenna away from camp bc you don't want her there? doesn't matter, she'll stay. and yes, i'm aware these are all small things, but they are part of a larger problem. almost nothing you do truly matters to the point of where i just skip most things in act 1 and 2 now.

they leave behind a game that they promise to still patch, but some things have been broken since early access / release to the point of where i'm like i'm sorry, but your word that you will continue to patch things means about as much to me as all the other empty promises. the dialogue about morena dekarios is still broken and it's been over half a year now. the astral sea scene has low-res body textures for months. i know from mutuals who love minthara that her romance is still broken. and i could go on and on.

and what gets me the most about this is all is that they have learned nothing at all from dos2: act 3 of that game was so bugged and all over the place that i couldn't muster up the motivation to finish it the first time i played. they neglected a character to the point of where he could have been removed from the game or made a general hireling (beast).

those issues were at least attempted to be fixed in the definitive edition.

with swen saying that there will be no new content anymore and stating that both bg3 and its characters are now property of wotc/hasbro, it seems unlikely we'll even get an attempt of a fix.

so what this boils down to to me is just another game company not delivering on their promises after overselling their product and more or less abandoning it after a year to move onto the next big thing.

i don't think i can respect that ngl.

[sorreysorren]

if you think about it, it's like a game

he was enthralled by you in the same way he'd be when he found a game that was actually challenging.

(a/n: so you make his heart go doki doki?? and then you both go kiss kiss fall inlove???)

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phase i — the trigger

(aka the storm)

you stood at the entrance of the training field, although it was well past midnight.

it would take a while for blue lock’s backup generators to kick in during the storm.

everyone had already headed off to wash up or return to their dorms– in pure darkness.

a handful had planned to continue practicing, but after various hits to the faces, from one to another, ball after ball; deeming it impossible to continue, everyone begrudgingly left. 

but you decided to come back. you could make it work, or at least that’s what you thought. 

you thought wrong though, because the flashlight from your phone wasn’t enough to let you practice effectively. you didn’t have to see through the darkness to be able to tell that you were missing goal after goal. 

you decided that maybe you could stay up until the backup generators began operating. you wanted time to practice solo, rather than in a group setting, so you thought maybe you could be the first one to use the training field.

of course, though, you weren’t sure when the generators would actually come and do their job, so this could end up being a waste of your time. 

you sat in the training grounds, mindlessly playing papa’s freezeria, humming along to the soundtrack every time you finished an order correctly. there was a customer in the game: he had a bowl cut and glasses, heavily resembling ego, which caused you to snicker. it was almost taunting because soon, your thoughts circle back to the power outage.

you mentally scold ego in your brain for the way he chose to invest blue lock’s funds.

seriously.

you ought to think he’d be doing his best to get everyone back on schedule, considering his evident distaste for the current situation, but surprisingly; he too, suggested calling it a day.

at some point, you decided to get up and head to the cafeteria, having grown slightly hungry after also playing papa’s donuteria. and papa’s cupcakeria. and papa’s bakeria. and– okay. you were really  hungry.

as you walked out towards the hallway, your heart leaped out of your chest when you thought you saw a shadowy figure.

you do a double take, and flash your phone’s bright flashlight at what you thought was something resembling the babadook (if this was a horror movie, you would’ve just wasted 15 seconds and caused your own death.)

you sigh in relief after realizing it’s only nagi.

you’re certain you can still hear your heart thumping through your ears.

“..sorry.” you tell him after seeing his scrunched-up expression, quickly retreating your phone from his face, “i didn’t think anyone else would be out here”

“oh. same.” he yawned.

your eyes wander behind him, from the direction you assumed he came from. “were you in the cafeteria?”

he nods. “i forgot the outage meant the food order system wouldn’t work.”

you pause. you hadn’t thought of that. 

but then an idea pops into your head: “did you try the vending machines?”

he looked at you as if you were stupid, “that’s also powered by electricity”

“well,  yeah,”  you say while removing one of the bobby pins from your hair,  “but these exist too.”

---

the two of you sat at a table near the corner of the cafeteria. in front of you were a crap ton of different kinds of snacks, candy, etc. 

it was silent at first, the only noise was the crinkling of your kitkat bar. 

nagi didn’t seem to mind it, as he started watching a video on his phone. 

you took notice of how many twizzlers he’d gotten. an ungodly amount.

you were a twizzler hater.

“do you really like those?” you hadn’t meant to sound so judgy, but you couldn't help yourself.

“if i didn’t, why would i be eating them?” he answered simply. he didn’t seem to take offense. though it wasn’t really an answer if he was replying with another question.

to each their own , you thought. at least it wasn’t black licorice.

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phase ii — the manifestations

(aka the feelings)

the following day, the power was finally back.

everyone was eating their meal, talking, or doing their own thing.

near the end, ego’s face popped up on the wall, making yet another announcement before signing off, out of spite, ego announced the vending machines would be out of service for a while until the various amounts of snacks that miraculously… "disappeared”  (as ego emphasized with a scornful tone) were replaced.

nagi’s eyes instinctively wandered towards where you were, and the two of you made eye contact. it was sort of like an inside joke.

nagi didn't speak to many others except reo. in fact, he wasn't interested in being around anyone else. so if reo saw nagi show even the slightest interest in anyone, reo would know they must have something of a character.

---

days passed. 

there was a morning in which nagi found you in the training field, 

well, he didn’t find you.

he left his water bottle there earlier and he would’ve sent reo to get it, but he was in the shower.

he watched you dribble, touch drills, and practice target accuracy.

nagi continues to recall the night of the power outage.

you’d just been coming out of the training field.

he wondered if you were trying to practice then as well.

he was enthralled by you in the same way he'd be when he found a game that was actually challenging. 

what he didn't know is that you'd be a challenge to him in more ways than one.

it wasn't just your looks. 

it was how you played, and how you presented yourself; you were egocentric, but you were genuine. you were egocentric when you needed to be, and you still found the time to be kind. you kept a balance. 

every now and then, with a shy smile on your face, you’d offer him a pack of twizzlers. 

that action made his chest twist in an unfamiliar way. 

it was a hassle.

this feeling distracted him when he played his favorite games. it distracted him when he was trying to multitask (50% whatever he’s doing, 40% that feeling, 10% listening to reo).

he came to associate that feeling with only you.  the y/n effect ,  he’d  subconsciously come to call it. (50% whatever  he's  doing, 40%  you, 10% listening to reo).

these were the thoughts that went through nagi's head. things he would never say aloud. the kinds of thoughts foreign to him– as many things having to do with human-to-human connections and interaction were.

reo knew this. reo noticed this.

when he caught nagi staring at you for an extended period, he realized this was nagi's edition of a crush. which was weird. because nagi wasn't the type of guy to just get crushes.

but now, every so often nagi’s gaze would leave his phone, and he’d glance around until he caught sight of you.

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phase iii — ???

nagi wasn't a jealous person.

he wasn't even jealous whenever you got your hands on some rare game that just came out that you happened to earn through the amount of goals you scored (reo's trust-fund-ass would probably just get for him anyway, but still.)

he could see that this “y/n effect” that’s taken over his life didn’t affect him alone.

he didn’t like that.

nagi was not a jealous person.

but whenever he saw you smile at another the same way you smiled at him, the grip he held on the phone in his hands grew tighter. 

“nagi? hey chill, don’t get too upset over a game.”  reo would tell him after taking notice of his white knuckles. reo had a hunch this wasn’t about the game on his phone at all, though.

of course, nagi didn’t know that the smile you gave to others wasn't the same smile you gave to only him.

---

during meal hours you’d started sitting with nagi, reo, and zantetsu. 

it wasn’t really a thing that was premeditated, it kind of just happened.

reo was wary of you at first. he wanted to dislike you, but he couldn’t find a genuine reason to do so. plus points for liking some of the same artists as him.

zantetsu didn’t really care. you were just another face to the table.

at first, you sat across from nagi, but soon, you began sitting next to him. sometimes you’d exchange parts of your meal. for example, you could have some of his ramen, if he could have some of your onigiri.

you still brought him a pack of twizzlers every day.

each time, he’d stop his game for a second to open the pack. before resuming, he’d glance at you and mutter a quick  “thanks.” 

---

it was unconscious, the way your pinky interlocked with his as you sat next to him in the cafeteria. that was another thing that just happened on its own. neither of you ever acknowledged it out loud, but people (like reo, specifically) took notice. 

the interlocked pinkies would turn into hand-holding. again, another thing that wasn’t addressed out loud.

in a way, it was like a game.

one small achievement leads to another step, which leads to another achievement, which ultimately leads to an ending.

and if there’s one thing that nagi is good at, it’s winning games.

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[arpmemething2]

Batman the Animated Series sentence starters

Send one for my muse’s reaction.  Feel free to change pronouns as needed.

"All right, scum bucket, it's you, me, and thirty stories. You're gonna tell me exactly what I want to know."

"That's one way to remove a splinter."

"I have this natural immunity against poisons, toxins, the pain and suffering of others. Go figure."

"I failed you. I wish there were another way for me to say it. I cannot. I can only beg your forgiveness, and pray you hear me somehow, someplace... someplace where a warm hand waits for mine."

"Last time we met, you tried to throw me off a building."

"If you think I've been bad news before..."

"Old and infirm as you are, I'd trade a thousand of my frozen years for your worst day."

"What kind of a saboteur uses a six-thousand dollar Metronex to set a time bomb?"

"I never counted on being happy."

"A strong mind can fuel a frail body."

"I need a new car."

"There's no way you could have escaped from that explosion! How did you get out?"

"I'm gettin' too old for this."

"I suppose what they say is true: society is to blame. High society."

"Succumb to the fear!"

"Gee, it's amazing the things you find in people's glove compartments."

"Children and guns do not mix. Ever."

"I'm having a BAD DAY! I'm sick of people trying to shoot me, run me over or blow me up!"

"They're not stupid, and it's your party."

"Aren't they just the cutest family you've ever seen?"

"It's midnight darling, time to unmask."

"It's gonna be one of those nights."

"When you look too long into the abyss, the abyss looks back through you."

"If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"

"You've got to admit there's something between us."

"There's always time to heal."

"I didn't realize you'd taken up listening to rock and roll."

"Choosing a weekend date?"

"I don't believe in fate."

"An entire city screaming in fear. I wonder if we'll be able to hear it."

"Some thought I'd gone mad. Others thought I always had been. And so they put me where they thought I belonged."

"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no tales."

"This city would fall apart without you!"

"I love that trick but I can never make it work."

"Taking up video games, are we?"

"I hate it when he does that."

"You are strong... but not strong enough!"

"They don't make straight jackets like they used to. I should know."

"He's not samurai. He's NINJA. They're spies and assassins. Their only code is to get the job done."

"A pixel is worth a thousand words."

"I am vengeance! I am the night!!"

"And who says opera has to be boring?"

"He always knew how to make an exit."

"Hey! Do I hit your kids? Oh, actually I do..."

"Now boys, didn't your mommies teach you that's not the way to get a lady's attention?"

"Not the robot theory again."

"Freeze, maggots! You're all under arrest!"

"You said you'd never let me go home!"

"What was she before she went bonkers?"

"This used to be a beautiful street. Good people lived here once."

"'Tis better to have loved and lost, and made a small profit, than never to have loved at all!"

"Chance is everything. Whether you're born or not, whether you live or die, whether you're good or bad. It's all arbitrary."

"But you've forgotten the first rule of comedy: if you have to explain the joke... THEN IT ISN'T FUNNY!"

"I told you not to speak!"

"Coming through! Hot stuff!"

"The snow is beautiful, don't you think? Clean, uncompromising..."

"When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping."

"What a pleasant surprise. Though I should warn you - breaking and entering is against the law."

"This could cause a stampede to pork."

"You really know how to put the fun in funeral."

"You ought to put your toys away."

"Would not, could not... would not, could not... oh, could not join the dance."

"Home. I never thought that could sound so good."

"Then I'll see you in your nightmares!"

"As the Bard said, "the fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.""

"You know what I'd have given for a death scene like this. Too bad I won't get to read the notices."

"He's a little protective of all this. I think he likes bats better than people."

"All your power and money has bought you an empire of misery."

"Don't try this at home kids!"

"I feel ill."

"Well, that was fun! Now, who's for Chinese?"

"You're about to fall out of orbit."

"Why can't he ever stay dead?"

"They can bury me in the ground, as deep as they like. But I'll grow back. We always grow back. Don't we, baby?"

"All men have something to hide. The brighter the picture, the darker the negative."

"You thought I was just another bubble-headed blond bimbo! Well, the joke's on you, 'cause I'm not even a real blonde."

"When the wage slaves start acting like they own the place, it's time to pull the plug."

"I've been known to be foolish, but ain't nobody calls me a liar and goes to bed happy."

"Since you don't like my side-splitters, how 'bout a skull-splitter?"

"This is kidnapping, mister! Last time I checked, it was highly illegal!"

[soyeonsbabygirl]

Cheers and Pom Poms

Cheerleader! Yeh Shuhua x Reader

Practice had been going on for at least an hour now. You guys were all tired, but your first game was in 2 days. To say you were stressed was an understatement. You guys had 2 days to make sure all the cheers were right , moves were tight, and everyone’s voice was being projected properly. Then there was the dance for the halftime show. The dance was cute and sexy at the same time, overall something that would get the crowd hype and excited.

You had made them start the routine over 4 times. Telling the girls “Yuqi you’re being sloppy! Tighten up!” “Miyeon turn to the left not the right!” “Minnie you’re behind a beat!” “Soojin you’re going too early!” “Don’t overthink it Soyeon! You’re getting too much in your head!” Everyone knew you were stressed.

Being the captain of the cheer team was a big deal, but the stress of it being your guys first game of the season and knowing hundreds of people would be there since it was against the rival school with their cheerleaders. You were absolutely stressed beyond point. You were sitting on one of the bleachers in the gyms as you told everyone to take a break.

You were panting trying to catch your breath as Shuhua handed you a water bottle sitting next to you. Shuhua had noticed the amount of stress you were under and badly wanted to help you. She hated when you would stress yourself out this much, she especially knew how important it was to you that they all preformed well. You put everything into this team and it showed at every practice.

You had called practice telling everyone to go home, Shuhua stayed back waiting for you as she saw you staying back doing the dance again. Only difference is you had Pom Poms. When you had stopped she came behind you wrapping her arms around your waist. “Baby…You should really take a break. You’ve been working so hard…” She said as she traced small circles on your skin. You gently removed her arms from you as you turned around to look at her “this routine has to be perfect! I can’t mess up!” You said back to her about to pick up your poms when she stopped you.

“As Co-Captain of the team as well as your girlfriend, I order you take a break…trust me you won’t regret it.” Before you could protest she began kissing you. You kissed her back feverishly as her fingers went inside the tight tank top you were wearing feeling your sports bra. Her touch made you shiver as she parted her lips making out with you making you moan softly in response. She felt the tension in your shoulders ease as you both made out. She pulled away smirking as she looked at your flushed expression and swollen lips.

“See pretty? Don’t you feel a bit better now?” She stroked your cheek with her fingers as you leaned into her touch, desperate for more. She shook her head no as she gathered your guys stuff. “Come on~ I wanna go home and shower. I hate when we get all sweaty and shit.” She complained making you laugh as you held her hand walking out of the gym.

“No, No, No, No!” Your yells could probably be heard by anyone who was passing by the gym. You glared at the girls as you looked back trying to figure out who made the mistake. “Guys the words are ‘H-Y-P-E , Hype is what yall got to be!’ Not ‘Hype is what yall ought to be!’ And who the fuck is adding an extra stomp!?” You yelled at the girls who all were shocked since you’ve never gotten this upset. You were obviously way too stressed to function. The girls especially Shuhua knew this which is why everyone was quiet as you yelled. You left the gym going to the locker room to calm down, Shuhua directed the girls to go home as well as practice the cheers and dance for halftime. She went to the locker room and found you sitting on a bench upset.

She rubbed your shoulder trying to help you calm down, you looked at her about to complain but Shuhua kissed you before you could. Her hands found their way to your ponytail as she took it out messing up your hair as you subconsciously pulled her closer loosing yourself in the kiss. She pulled away placing kisses to your neck making you stifle a moan.

Her hands went to one of your breasts cupping it making you moan softly. “I’m gonna help you relax. You’re way too fucking stressed to even think straight clearly.” She mumbled against your neck, she slipped your shorts off with ease as she made small circle on your inner thigh. You let out soft sighs in response to this as you bit your lip looking at her as your thoughts weren’t even thinking about the cheers and halftime dance, only what she was gonna do. She kept teasing you as her fingers made circles around your ckit til you began to squirm a little like a little kitten in heat as a wet spot formed on your panties.

Shuhua chuckled darkly at this taking in the site of you soaking your panties, “I’ve barely fucking touched you and you’re this wet?” She teased. You began to whine subtly grinding your hips against her fingers desperate for some kind of friction and attention from her fingers. “Please Shu Shu…I need you…need you so badly…please help me..” you whined while you begged her making her smirk as she ripped your panties off and pushed her fingers inside you.

You moaned when you felt her begin to move her fingers moving in and out of you with ease from how wet you are. “Shit baby. You’re so pretty like this. A complete slut in the locker rooms.” She smiled when you moaned even more as she went deeper with each word she spoke. She made you lay down on the bench using your shirt and jacket as cushions.

She spread your legs so you were on full display if anyone were to come in and walk in on you too. She smiled as she watched your greedy little hole swallow her digits as she sped up moving in out of your pussy as you moaned even more not even trying to hide your sounds. “My baby has been so stressed…Forgetting that she also needs to relax..it’s good I’m here to help you.” With each word she said her fingers went even faster making you mewl and squeal.

She felt your velvety walls clench on her fingers as she went down to your lips swallowing your moans. With a loud moan you came all over her fingers making her smile against your lips, she pulled away from the kiss while she pulled out her fingers putting them in her mouth to suck them.

Her eyes darkened with lust as she immediately went down, latching her mouth on your cunt. She stuck her tongue in and out of you as she would look up at times loving the face you made. Your mouth was agape as your pretty moans fell from your lips. Shuhua would often suck it as well as she switched between the two as the lewd sound of her eating you out could be heard throughout the whole locker room. Her tongue hitting all sorts of spots inside you didn’t know it could reach as your hands went to her head only slightly tugging.

Your moans and mewls became whiner and more high pitched the closer you got your second orgasm. She sucked harder her tongue moving faster as you mewled. She held your thighs open harshly as your eyes rolled back making you see white screaming her name in ecstasy. You came hard all over her tongue getting some of it on her face as she came back up looking at you with a smile.

She held your face as she kissed you. She cleaned you up saying multiple praises as you caught your breath. Needless to say you were very relaxed now.

At the game you all performed flawlessly. Everyone on the team could tell you were more relaxed and the girls didn’t mess up once in the cheers or the halftime dance. After the game when your team had won you dragged Shuhua to the locker room making out with her.

“I don’t think I’ve thanked you yet have I?” You pulled away from her lips smirking. She smiled shaking her head as she watched you lead her to a random bench in the locker room. You got on your knees looking at her as she smirked watching you. Now it was your turn to thank her for helping you relax.

-

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This might be my second favorite shuhua smut I’ve ever written. Cheerleader Shuhua goes hard ngl maybe I’ll do another one with Miyeon one day ? Anyways hope you guys enjoy this!

[blueskittlesart]

what do u think totk is gonna b about

OH WOW I AM SO SO SO GLAD YOU ASKED!! HERES THE ESSAY I TOTALLY DID NOT HAVE PREWRITTEN ABOUT THIS SUBJECT!!

so arguably the biggest mystery left unsolved at the end of botw is the origin of ganon as we now know him -- "calamity ganon." in all other games (and by extension all known previous incarnation cycles) where "ganon" was the primary antagonist (incl. all ganon and ganondorf variants) ganon was something real, physical, and ALIVE. a man or a boar-monster, usually, but always something that was bound by the laws of nature to some degree and could be physically killed. botw departs from that formula (and by extension botw's CYCLE departs from the usual governing laws of its own universe--i'll come back to this point) by showing us a ganon that is far less human than any other known incarnation of demise. even in name, this incarnation of ganon is given no personhood--it's a calamity, a force of evil with no origin and no complex thought beyond a need for destruction.

The thing is, for all the game wants the player to understand this ganon as nothing but a mindless, monstrous force of evil, it also makes a point to identify this force as GANON, incarnation of demise. seasoned zelda fans will relate the calamity back to ganondorf the human king at the first mention of its name. anyone familiar with the cyclical lore or even just the basic formula of zelda games will recognize the cycle's steps being played out in such a way that the calamity plays the part of the king of evil. for those who don't make the immediate connection, urbosa's final line after the player frees her in vah naboris cements the calamity's former personhood: "it was written that calamity ganon once adopted the form of a gerudo." it's a deliberate hint to new players that the form we see ganon take in this game is not his true one.

So what is calamity ganon? what turned the newest human incarnation of demise so deeply inhuman? what happened to the human that calamity ganon once was? why, when the calamity struck, did it rise from underneath hyrule castle, with pillars full of armed guardians ready to aid it in its destruction? these questions are what i expect will be the main focus of totk. as for their answers, i only really have my own speculation, backed by some evidence from trailers and botw, which i'll outline now because that's the whole point of this post.

botw is 10k years removed from the last known instance of an incarnation cycle, a fact which is crucial to its story and worldbuilding. while there's no official source on how long periods of peace usually last between cycles, it's obvious from context that botw has gone much longer without a new cycle than any previous game before it, if only because of how much information about the cycle itself has clearly been lost to time. this lack of information is what causes a majority of the problems link and zelda face in botw. But it raises a question for those of us who follow the lore and have noticed the discrepancy: why was hyrule able to forget this information in the first place? Why was there such a long period of peace when the cycle ought to have continued? there's no other instance in centuries of documented hyrulian history where enough time passed between cycles for the idea of the TRIFORCE to be lost to time. how did it happen before botw? the answer, I think, lies with the hero and princess of 10k years ago.

there's a LOT we don't know about the hero and princess who came before botw, obviously. and I believe their story is going to be incredibly important in totk, given how it was teased in botw. we can assume, from context, that the incarnation of demise that this hero and princess went up against was the gerudo incarnation of ganon mentioned by urbosa. What botw tells us about this cycle is that ganon was powerful enough to need legions of guardians and four divine beasts ALONG with a presumably fully-realized hero and princess to defeat him, but that, with these resources, the hero and princess triumphed. what is not confirmed, however, is what exactly HAPPENED to ganon after his defeat. one could assume that he died, because hitting a human man with a sword enough times will usually kill him. however, there's another important piece to the puzzle when looking at loz cycles: zelda and her goddess power. the thing i'm going to be focusing on here is the fact that throughout botw zelda's power is referred to specifically as a "sealing power." it's significant to me that the concept of SEALING surivived when so many other crucial pieces of the cycle did not, because, in multiple previous games, "sealing" ganon does NOT mean he dies. in both oot timelines in which link DOES NOT return to the past at the end of the game (defeat & adult), the official explanation as to ganondorf's fate is that he is "sealed" in some form, either in the sacred realm or the twilight realm. (if you don't know what those are don't worry it's not important, what's important is that he is sealed.) alttp and twilight princess, follow the aftermath of these two timelines, in which ganon has been "sealed" but not killed. in both stories, ganon (specifically the SAME INCARNATION OF GANON AS OOT) eventually frees himself from the confines of the seal and continues to terrorize hyrule. so "sealing" is not necessarily synonymous with defeat or death, and it doesn't reset the incarnation cycle for demise's spirit, it just keeps the current incarnation dormant for a while.

i hear you saying, "blue, why the fuck does any of this matter? ive been reading for so long!" and i am sorry. i promise i will get there. the important point at this point is that SEALED does not mean DEAD or even DEFEATED, and that zelda's power in botw is exclusively referred to as a SEALING POWER. we can assume that this terminology is left over from the hero and princess from 10k years ago, because, by virtue of a 10k-year period of peace, most everything that botw hyrule remembers about the cycle appears to be left over from only that previous cycle. What this means is that, upon defeat 10k years ago, human ganon was not killed, he was sealed. and as i've already mentioned, there's a precedent in these games for a sealed ganon to come back to terrorize a new cycle's hero and princess. I think it's pretty obvious that the mummified gerudo skeleton seen in the totk trailers is that sealed ganon from 10k years ago. but those trailers take place AFTER link and zelda defeat calamity ganon in botw, so why is he still there, sealed but not dead?

the most obvious explanation to me is this: calamity ganon is not ganon. botw's blights give us proof that ganon is capable of somehow reproducing itself in smaller, less powerful doses to deal with immediate threats without having to leave its shelter in hyrule castle. if you recall, calamity ganon's first phase underneath hyrule castle is essentially a rehash of the blight fights, with ganon cycling through attacks previously used by its blights (and adding some new ones into the mix, obv.) One thing that struck me when fighting it, though, is that the fight lacks one signature mechanic that's been a staple of ganon battles in the zelda franchise since at least alttp: sword pong. in almost every game involving a fight with an incarnation of ganon, there's an attack pattern in which the player and ganon have to deflect a ball of energy between each other via their weapons until one of them eventually misses a swing and gets hit. calamity ganon doesn't have this attack in his arsenal, which is strange to me because it's an iconic move for loz final battles. the only ganon battle i can think of which DOESN'T involve this mechanic is oot's shadow ganondorf, a PROJECTION of ganondorf rather than the real thing.

can you see what i'm getting at here?

I don't think botw's link and zelda have gone up against their real incarnation of demise yet. I think the calamity was one of two things: either a genuine expression of rage/escape attempt by the sealed human ganon, or a calculated attempt by him to get modern hylians interested enough in the origins of the calamity to investigate and free him accidentally. The way the pillars rose from under hyrule castle, the fact that calamity ganon smashes through the floor of the sanctum and forces link to fight in that underground chamber, it all seems to beckon you to dig deeper. we know that that mummy is somewhere under the castle. Calamity ganon was a shootoff of its power meant to lead hylians to it. this is what i meant way back when i mentioned that botw's cycle departs from the usual governing laws of its own universe--link and zelda haven't actually played out the full cycle at all. what they've done is essentially the precursor to the main event--they've defeated agahnim, or zant, or ghirahim, but the true evil of this cycle has yet to be revealed. to that point, it's worth noting that, excluding shrine mini-dungeons, botw has WAY less dungeons than your average zelda title. most new-cycle titles (by which i mean games that weren't direct sequels featuring the same incarnation of a given link) are divided into 2 sections of dungeoning - the first section having 3-4 dungeons containing prize items needed to unlock some late-game functionality, and the second half having 5-7 dungeons and being accessible only after the player has completed the first section. botw has four dungeons TOTAL (not counting hyrule castle), meaning formula-wise it's essentially the first half of a cycle. i believe totk is going to be the second half of this cycle, with link and zelda having to fight the true evil -- revitalized HUMAN ganondorf.

so now we need to bring this all back to my initial point--why was there a 10k-year period of peace pre-botw, and how does any of this effect my predictions for the story of totk?

in simple terms, i think that the reason there was such a long period of peace was because 10k-years-ago-princess sealed ganon REALLY well. she probably came the closest anyone in hyrule's history has ever come to a TRUE defeat of ganon, because she managed to keep him ALIVE so he wouldn't reincarnate and SEALED so he couldn't hurt anyone for a really long time. what this implies is that 10k-years-ago princess knew on some level about the reincarnation cycle. she understood that if she couldn't keep ganon alive and incapacitated, he would revive and the cycle would start over anyway, so she did everything in her power to stop that from happening, and she did a DAMN GOOD JOB tbh. better than anyone who tried this shit before her. there are other bits and pieces of botw's story that point to the hyrulean civilization 10k years ago understanding the potential of a ganon reincarnation, most notably the fact that they buried guardians and divine beasts seemingly purposefully for later hyruleans to find and use should a new threat ever arise. this implies that 10k-years-ago hyruleans had a REALLY HIGH level of awareness about the cycle, in direct contrast to modern hyrule's REALLY LOW understanding of it. this is really important when we start thinking about totk.

we already have a decent amount of evidence suggesting that totk will deal with the events of 10k years ago and the hero involved in them. In several trailers now we've seen modern link's arm become weirdly, creepily fused with/corrupted by the arm that was holding mummified ganon in place under the castle. i think this arm is going to serve two purposes in totk. the first is a practicality thing: from gameplay footage it looks like the arm is going to basically take the place of the sheikah slate. the second purpose i think it'll serve is to be link's (and by extension the player's) connection to the events of 10k years ago. I've seen plenty of theories thrown around about what the arm is, but my personal theory is that it's some sort of prosthetic or tech that originally belonged to the 10k-years-ago hero. the way it's holding mummified ganon in place in that first teaser trailer looks less to me like an evil influence and more like something physically holding ganon down; a seal of sorts. (and in most games both the hero and princess's power is needed to seal ganon, so perhaps this is how the hero and princess managed to keep him dormant for so long: adding a physical piece of the hero to the mix?) in any case, i think that after establishing this physical connection to the 10k-years-ago hero, modern link is going to get some knowledge and flashbacks (potentially in the form of memory-style cutscenes like botw) that will serve to basically fill in all the cyclical lore that has been lost in-universe over the past 10k years. I've talked at length about how i believe link and zelda's initial failure in botw was due entirely to their lack of knowledge of the hyrulean creation myth and the REASON behind the motions they were carrying out, and i believe that by witnessing the 10k-years-ago hero and princess's journey, modern link will be given the knowledge he needs to defeat ganon.

[thenightfolknetwork]

Ever since I was young, I was raised to be a total blank slate. No interests, no aesthetics, nothing. I was meant to be the vessel to L’Gogamet, the Hallowed One. So, that meant I had to fully give myself over to Them.

The only problem is: They never bothered to show up. I sat there, on my eighteenth birthday, waiting for Them to rend my soul from my flesh, only to receive a burning blaze of light reading “sorry, can’t make it, save the next one for me.”

My family wasn’t exactly thrilled. They were under the impression that I had done something wrong, though for the life of me I have no clue what it was. And now, I’m all alone. I have no clue what I’m meant to do.

I have a small apartment and a roommate. I’ve tried to get interested in the same stuff she likes, but it honestly just doesn’t appeal to me. But I have no clue what there is that I do like. Apparently, outside of my family, there isn’t exactly a “L’Gogamet fanbase”, and that was the only thing I was allowed to be interested in for my whole life.

I’ve gone to support groups, but sitting in a circle with other blank slates doesn’t exactly feel helpful. And then when someone does find something interesting, I’m like “wow! good for you! time to go back to doing nothing with my life.”

Worst of all are the modifications. My family took it upon themselves to alter me in a few ways, various piercings and tattoos that They should have loved. Only now, I’m stuck with them. And most of them are cursed to never be removed. I’ve been called out a few times, told that they’re “appropriative for a Sapio like me to have.” That hurt more than most comments, because I guess that’s all I am now. A Sapio, with nothing special about me except the disgusting markings all over me.

Your show came up in one of the support group meetings. I thought maybe you would have some advice? How do I find my interests and my self when I’ve been raised to be a nobody?

I'm so sorry your family have treated you with such unkindness – and I don't only mean their failure to support you after their plans went awry. It was profoundly unkind of them to raise you the way they did, as if you were nothing but a vessel for their hopes and aspirations and not your own person.

Their treatment of your body is particularly upsetting. I am certainly not going to try and tell you that your markings aren't “disgusting”, or to tell you how you ought to feel about your own body. I do encourage you to take whatever steps you feel appropriate in reclaiming your body, however.

Part of this reclamation might involve covering or removing the marks inflicted on you by your family. But I encourage you to experiment with other ways of changing your appearance, too. Play around with your clothing, hairstyles, hair colour, make-up – whatever you can think of.

The point isn't to find a style that you love, but rather to demonstrate actively to yourself that this body is yours, your own, and that finally, you are in charge of how it looks.

Of course, this process does bump up against your initial question rather. How are you supposed to know what sort of choices you want to make when you've never been allowed to make that kind of choice before?

The answer may seem obvious: you need to try as many things as you can, and expose yourself to as many new experiences as possible. But for the time being, I want you try and set aside your concerns about finding what you “really” like.

That is a huge amount of pressure to put on yourself, especially when you're starting from scratch, like you are. Instead, go into these activities with no more pressure on yourself than a sense of open curiosity.

You're not on some great quest to discover your True Self – you're just popping into the local book club to see what it's like, or borrowing some knitting needles from a friend and giving it a go. You can check what clubs and events are running at your local library, and make a game of trying as many as you can fit into your schedule.

Give yourself time. Imagine your personality as a plant that has been left in a dark, cold room with nothing to feed it and no light to help it grow. Against all odds, it has survived – pale and stunted, but alive. Now imagine you bring that plant into a warm, bright room, you feed it and water it, and above all you give it the space it needs. Who knows what kind of beautiful thing it might blossom into?

Finally, a word on your identity. Reader, you absolutely don't have to identify as sapio if you don't want to. There are plenty of people who consider themselves to be people of the night based on their magical practice, their religious background, or their occupations. You personal experiences more than qualify you to do the same.

As I've said many times before, liminality is defined by the people who claim it. There isn't an external, objective standard of “strangeness” that you have to meet in order to be a member of the community. Anyone who says otherwise is at best dangerously ignorant and at worst, wilfully so.

[pizzaronipasta]

It deeply confuses and saddens me that people so readily dismiss older video games as being lesser. Several of my favorite games of all time are among the oldest in their genres, and frequently get unfairly written off as "dated." It's a shame really, because these titles are diamonds in the rough, and ought to be recognized as the absolute gems they are.

A perfect case study for this topic is Metroid, released for the Famicom Disc System in 1986, and for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987.

This game is immaculate. It features some of the best design I've ever seen. Its atmosphere, aesthetics, narrative, gameplay, and controls are all on point. Its worst flaw is its buggy programming. And yet, a lot of people seem to hate it. They respect it as the precursor to its widely acclaimed sequels, especially Super Metroid, but not a lot of people appreciate it for its own merits. Why is this? I suspect there are three main reasons.

The first reason is that it doesn't directly tell you much. Most people nowadays play it on an emulator, and don't think to consult the manual, which would have come with a new physical copy and clarified some points of confusion. The manual even has a partial map of Brinstar, the game's first area, and suggests making your own maps as you play.

Even so, the manual doesn't tell you everything. The game conveys most of what it needs to through gameplay. Its opening moments demonstrate this expertly.

When you start a new game, Samus appears facing the camera. There is nothing visibly stopping you from going left or right, and nothing to indicate which way the game wants you to go. If you're used to games like Super Mario Bros., you might assume you have to go right.

If you do, you'll come to an impasse. The only way forward is too narrow for you to fit through. So the only way you can go is left.

Doubling back, you'll find you can go left from where you started, and come across the morphing ball. When you grab it, you'll seemingly be trapped. The place you jumped down from is too high to jump back up to, and the only other visible path is a narrow passage like you saw earlier. Obviously, you need to use the morphing ball to escape. The game has taught you this without a word.

You'll probably remember the impasse from before. Since you were given the tool to solve a similar situation, you'll naturally think to try it there as well. Thus, the game has taught you the core elements of the search-action genre, or as it eventually came to be known, the metroidvania: as you explore, you will reach obstacles; further exploration will reward you with the means of clearing those obstacles; and remembering where you encountered obstacles will reward you with swift progress.

But Metroid is not done teaching. Once you resume progressing to the right, you'll reach the bottom of a tall vertical shaft.

When I say this thing is tall, I mean it. The same pattern of platforms is repeated around a dozen times before you reach anything of note, and the whole thing is crawling with simple enemies. Up until this point, a player will probably have fought nearly every enemy they could; after all, defeating them removes them as obstacles, and rewards you with health pickups, which you'll need since Samus starts with only 30 out of 99 units of health. But here, attempting to kill every zoomer (yes, that's what the spiky things are called) will make your climb either extremely slow and tedious or extremely costly in terms of health. Unless a player is unreasonably persistent, they are likely to get bored or frustrated and begin evading the enemies instead. The fact that you can't damage the rippers, the only other type of enemy in this room, further helps to signal that the player needs to pick their battles. And so, yet another critical lesson is wordlessly taught: that you don't generally need to go out of your way to kill enemies, and that avoiding combat can save you time and resources.

Metroid continues teaching the player like this from start to finish. With patience, caution, and observance, you'll learn the game's ins and outs without even realizing it. The problem is that many players don't play with this approach, because of...

The second reason I think people dislike the game: preconceived notions of what old games are like.

NES games have a reputation for being unfairly difficult. The usual explanations for this are that they were still being designed like arcade games, which were meant to get as many quarters out of players as possible, and that they also used difficulty to artificially bloat play time, creating the illusion of better value for people buying them. There is some truth to both of these, but the phenomenon is largely overstated. Nevertheless, this reputation precedes games from that era.

As such, when players today approach a game like Metroid, they aren't expecting an actual well-designed game. They're expecting a brutal experience full of cheap bullshit and cryptic nonsense. When they get to that vertical shaft, they don't consider that they might be doing something wrong, they just assume that it's supposed to be tedious and frustrating. And so they never learn the game's lessons. When they find themselves turned around in the sprawling nonlinear level design, they're predisposed to getting overwhelmed and giving up, at which point they consult...

The third reason I think people dislike the game: walkthroughs.

The way people perceive old games, as described above, has led to the proliferation of walkthroughs. Now, there's nothing wrong with referencing a guide when you're stuck, or when you're trying to track down things you missed, or in other such situations. However, following one to the letter for the entirety of your playthrough ruins games like Metroid. When you have a handy set of step-by-step instructions on how to win, you have no incentive to engage with the game. You have no reason to even try learning level layouts or remembering what's where. Metroid ceases to be a game, and instead becomes a checklist.

It gets worse, though. When you always know precisely where to go next, the time you were expected to spend exploring and getting better at the game gets completely cut out. You don't have time to master the combat. You don't have the opportunity to get a feel for where secrets are most likely to be hidden. As your progress increases, your skill does not. Therefore, following a walkthrough like this leaves you sorely unprepared for the challenges in store for you. And so games like Metroid end up feeling like brutal experiences full of cheap bullshit and cryptic nonsense. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

In conclusion, please give older games a fair chance. Engage with them as earnestly as you would with modern games, and never rule out the possibility that you might be doing something wrong. And above all else, keep your walkthrough usage to a minimum.

There's a whole world of fantastic new experiences waiting for you. Enjoy.

[chr0macide]

Orientation Day

posting two things one day wow im on fire

i kinda wanted to write a lil bit about magdalena but this fic ended up being more about purge university and shes kinda just there lol. i didn't put anything about her time in college while i was making her intro post cause i was lazy. i said she made no friends but maybe that was cap, she did meet markus there.

this shows a little bit about what i think purge university is like. it wouldn't be the same for every student but this is more or less what i think it would be like for the impoverished attendee. i write this fanfic as if break in happens in the "real(ish) world" instead of roblox so stuff has to be different. and yeah this is canon to the rest of the fic unless i start feeling like something conflicts with game canon too much.

also im seeing people with like 100 ocs when it took 100% of my power just to make this single one, lmao how are you guys doing that 😂

alright this is like 3300 words divided into 2 chapters les goooo

Chapter I – Ticket to Nowhere

“Purge University, huh? You excited?” asked the taximan.

The girl did not reply. He looked at her in the rear-view mirror and pouted when she simply lay her head against the window. Nobody waved goodbye to her.

Magdalena was the first one in her family to attend college at all—not that her relatives appreciated that—but she had thought she was finally about to leave this decaying urban hellscape. And yet, every request she’d sent to every collegiate and federal financial aid office had returned the same response to her. Denied. Denied. Denied.

It didn’t make any sense. Much to the disdain of her parents, she had studied until the dregs of coffee had long since dried into a rock-hard crust at the bottom of her cup, lest she be stuck in this slum forever, so why was she still here?

The taxi meandered through the streets and over a pothole. There were plenty of those in Magdalena’s neighborhood. She pinched the bridge of her nose as the motion briefly jerked her out of her brooding.

“Sorry. Wherever our taxes are going, it’s not towards the roads,” the driver chuckled. Magdalena rolled her vacant eyes. Everyone knew where the city’s coffers were going. Straight into the pockets of one of the local mafia dons… but maybe she ought not to complain. It was thanks to one of them that Magdalena was going to college at all, although the interest rate on her loan was horrendous and it came with the stipulation that she attended Purge University. Tuition was exorbitant there, not to mention that the place was notoriously corrupt. While Magdalena would admit it was preferable to living in a leaky trailer for the rest of her life, she would rather have gone literally anywhere else. She should have been anywhere else, the girl seethed inwardly. There was nothing she could do about the situation now, but the thoughts had kept intruding ever since she’d opened the acceptance letter.

The crumbling structures in her district became less dilapidated as the car approached the university. The college grounds rested on the boundary between the destitute and the affluent, so the buildings here looked like they actually might be livable on the inside.

The driver pulled into the parking lot outside the residence hall.

Well, some of the buildings looked like they might have been livable.

The driver ducked out of the car and removed Magdalena’s lone suitcase from the trunk. She put a few crumpled notes in his palm.

“Let me help you carry your-”

“No,” Magdelana cut him off.

The taximan looked at her for a moment longer, but she was already walking away, so he shrugged as he got back into his car and drove off.

Magdalena swiped her identification card. The scanner beeped. She pushed the door open and stepped inside, not really minding the odor of mildew. Her home didn’t smell too different.

“You don’t gotta use your card. The lock doesn’t work,” said a nearby voice with a slight accent. There was a burly student sprawled across an entire sofa in the lobby. Magdalena guessed by the color of his ID lanyard that he was a sophomore. She made a sound of acknowledgement and made her way to the front desk, but there was nobody there.

“The receptionist went on break. Beer?” offered the student.

“I’m underage.”

“Nobody in here gives a shit, believe me,” he said as he tossed her a can from the 6-pack on the end table. She caught it in her hand and stared at it for a second.

The student gave her an odd look. “What? Never drank before?”

It wasn’t that. Magdalena had booze a few times when her family’s water had been cut off. Her parents didn’t keep much else in the fridge. Magdalena popped the tab open and took a sip as another student came down the stairs.

“Where’s the RA?” the newcomer demanded.

The sophomore craned his neck to see who had just shown up. “Oh, hey, Isaiah. I think he’s out back. Why?”

“My roommate ripped the fucking sink out of the—is that my beer? I just fucking bought that!”

“Relax, man. I was gonna pay you back.”

Magdalena placed her can on the reception desk sheepishly, but Isaiah wasn’t paying attention to her.

“Like hell you were,” snapped Isaiah as he grabbed the remainder of the 6-pack off the table and stormed out of the lounge.

The lingering student took another swig. “Sheesh. I’d like to tell you he’s not always so bitchy, but… heh.”

The door behind the front desk finally swung open. “ID?” requested the receptionist. The lady didn’t glance twice at the can on the counter as Magdalena handed her card over. She didn’t know whether to be glad for that or concerned that this hall had such lax restrictions.

The receptionist passed a key to Magdalena along with her ID. “Room 217,” she told the girl.

“Hey, we’re roommates,” the sophomore piped up. He chugged the rest of his beer. “I’ll show you where our dorm is.”

Magdalena started towards the elevator as he stood up. His orange hair almost brushed one of the light fixtures hanging from the ceiling.

“The elevator doesn’t work, either,” he advised her.

Magdalena sighed. “Of course it doesn’t.”

The student lifted Magdalena’s luggage with one hand and carried it up the stairs for her. “Name’s Markus, by the way.”

“Magdalena.”

“I haven’t seen you before. You a freshman?”

She nodded

Markus set her suitcase down in front of their dorm. The smell of cigarette smoke clung to the discolored runner. Their neighbor’s door was open. Magdalena could hear pressurized water spouting out from somewhere inside, but Markus didn’t seem to notice as he unlocked their own dorm. “Sorry about the mess. Old roommate left most of his stuff behind.”

Notebooks and stationery were strewn across the desk. There was a backpack and a large folder on the ground underneath it. Even a laptop was still resting on the nightstand. Magdalena’s side of the room looked as if someone else still lived here.

“Did he graduate?” the girl asked.

Markus’s expression hardened abruptly. “No.”

He didn’t elaborate, but his tone warned her not to probe any further. “But they assigned me a new roommate,” he said, gesturing at Magdalena, “so I doubt he’s coming back. I guess you can keep some of his junk if you want. I’ll throw the rest of it out tomorrow.”

If Markus was reluctant to speak of him, it wasn’t hard to deduce what might have happened to the last tenant. Perhaps Markus’s roomie pissed off one of the mob’s higher-ups. Those who talked about it out loud too often were prone to disappearing, but most people knew Purge University doubled as a front for organized crime. Too bad for him, but Magdalena wasn’t one to turn down free stuff.

She moved to the nightstand and opened the laptop. It was greasy. Magdalena wiped her fingers on her coat. There was a password, but she was sure the IT department could deal with that.

“Huh. Almost didn’t think it would turn on,” Markus remarked. Yeah, the thing was pretty ancient. The fan sounded like it was on its last legs and there was duct tape over a corner where the plastic exterior had cracked. “You actually want that old thing?”

“I don’t have my own,” Magdalena told him. Markus’s eyebrows crept up.

“You made it all the way to undergrad with no laptop?”

“Not everyone is rich.”

“No shit. That’s why we’re here,” Markus japed, but it was plain that Magdalena didn’t come from money. Her attire was somewhat ill-fitting. Her luggage didn’t weigh anything, and neither did she, by the looks of her. “For real, though, how did you get anything done?”

Magdalena didn’t answer. She shut the laptop and commenced unpacking her suitcase, but there wasn’t a lot to unpack. With nothing else to do, Markus booted up his own computer. “Quiet type, huh?”

The girl produced a annoyed huff from the back of her throat as she moved the presumably dead guy’s clothes aside and hung up her own in the closet.

“Hey, we’re gonna be stuck with each other for a while. I was just trying to get to know you better. Don’t make shit awkward,” Markus muttered.

Magdalena murmured something unintelligible under her breath—probably an insult—but she humored him. “Used the library computers. Checked out some textbooks when I had to be a home.” She practically lived at the city library, though the administrators eventually put a limit on how long unaccompanied children were allowed to be there each day. The bigwigs had decided they didn’t want street urchins ruining the scenery.

“Sounds like a lot of work for… uh… what’s your major?”

“Mechanical engineering and biotech.”

“Oh, a smart kid? I would’ve taken your lunch money back in the day,” Markus kidded. Magdalena glared at him. “Ha. Sorry. Bad joke. I’m a business major.”

The girl gave him a once-over. “Figures.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Magdalena was silent again as she returned her attention to her suitcase. Markus stuck out his lower lip childishly and turned to his laptop. They both heard a pool of water making its way out of the next dorm and flowing through the corridor outside.

“Does that sort of thing happen often?” Magdalena asked.

“You get used to it.”

Chapter II – Spontaneous Expulsion

“And for those of you who have science classes this year, this is Gearwise Hall,” the campus tour guide introduced.

The freshmen looked up at the building’s hypermodern exterior. Someone had to be power washing those walls on the regular. Magdalena saw through the windows that there was even a sculpture of a DNA strand suspended from the rafters. It wasn’t hard to tell that they were in the rich kids’ part of the university. It was either that or mafia territory. She was seeing a lot of bowties and pinstriped suits.

The guide hauled one of the double doors open and ushered everyone inside. “There are a few students making up an exam, so try to be quiet,” he said in a low voice.

The interior was just as blindingly white as the façade. “Here’s the common area,” the guide told them as he led them across the rounded foyer and into an adjoining room. There were a few students sitting at the tables and poring over their books, getting a head start on studying, Magdalena supposed. The room opened into a terrace whose style was much more gothic than the building itself. It must have been there before the hall was built. It actually looked nice, Magdalena thought, but she noticed the students outside casting unpleasant glares at a student wearing a faded, wrinkled t-shirt. A few of them soon stood up and began hassling the kid until he grabbed his things and left.

Maybe Magdalena’s kind wasn’t welcome at this particular spot.

The guide led them past the many lecture halls and up the stairwell at the end of the corridor. “Freshmen usually only have classes on the first floor, and we’re running out of time, so we’re gonna skip the rest of this place. I need to take you guys to Purge Hall.”

The group mumbled various grievances, but the guide shook her his as they reached the second floor. “Bear with me, guys. Everyone has classes in Purge Hall sooner or later, and it’s really important that you don’t get lost in there and wander somewhere off-limits. Really, really important.” He opened the exit to escort the gathering across the bridge and into the adjacent building.

Magdalena didn’t know what she’d expected, but it didn’t look that different from the other buildings around this here. It was a lot emptier, though, and her footsteps echoed conspicuously. In fact, she couldn’t see anybody else except for the tour group. Magdalena peered over the edge of the entresol. The ground floor was vacant as well.

She was startled by the sound of someone’s phone alarm. It was the end of a class period, it seemed, because students began trickling out of the lecture halls.

Most of them didn’t speak to each other at all. The ones that did were murmuring almost imperceptibly.

“First of all,” the guide began, “that is the Head—I mean, President Purge’s office.” He pointed at the imposing double doors at one end of the pathway. The fancily carved redwood stuck out like a sore thumb from the more contemporary architecture. “Don’t even go near it. And don’t go to any of the basement levels, either. If you’re in the elevator and somebody hits a button for a negative floor, just get out and wait for the… next one… uh…”

The guide faltered. There was a dull metallic clank ringing out from somewhere in the distance, but the sound was getting closer. “Don’t block the walkway, guys. Move up to the wall,” the guide urged, herding the troupe aside. The freshmen were puzzled, but they fanned out and stood against the wall, and Magdalena figured out why when as ground trembled ever so slightly.

A man threw the door open on the other end of the entresol and stepped inside. Well, not a man per se. His “skin” was rough and burnished like steel. Two more followed close behind. Magdalena had never seen the bosses in person before, as prolific as they were. She’d thought Markus was a giant, but these things made him look almost shrimpy.

The one at the head of the trio—Mr. Clockturn, it was—made his way towards the Headmaster’s office without so much as a passing glance at the students, even as they stared at him with wide eyes. His crowbar clinked against the floor as he walked and Magdalena could hear the ticking of his innards when he drew near.

The second one—the only woman; it must have been Miss Gearwise—spared them a smirk. Magdalena nearly had to shield her eyes. She blinked dark spots out of her vision. The light was dazzlingly bright when it glinted on the automaton’s gleaming golden exoskeleton.

The last one flashed smiled at the tour group almost affably, to Magdalena’s surprise. He even winked at one of the ladies. That was kind of gross, actually. He’d strolled off while Magdalena was trying to remember how much older he was than the college students, but his coppery luster denoted him as Mr. Cogsworth.

The university belonged to the mob, certainly, but Magdalena hadn’t expected the Headmaster’s underbosses to show up here so brazenly. Magdalena wondered for a moment why law enforcement had quit raiding this place, but she figured the mob had paid the police department off a long time ago. What would the cops do, anyway? Shoot an ironclad robot?

A cluster of students ahead of them scattered as the three approached. One of them had his back turned to the automatons, however, and he evidently didn’t get the memo. Mr. Clockturn hefted his crowbar. Magdalena looked away.

The student was already out cold when he toppled over the railing. Magdalena heard a loud crack. The people on the first floor shrieked. He hadn’t stuck the landing, apparently. The automata tittered as they peered over the barrier and continued into the Headmaster’s dwelling. It was too dark in the chamber for Magdalena to see much when Mr. Clockturn pushed the doors open, but she glimpsed President Purge’s luminous yellow eyes, corners crinkled as if he were smiling.

The tour guide waited until the doors were closed again before he finally resumed speaking. “I apologize you all had to see that. Y-you never know when those guys are gonna show up. Listen, they take it as, um, rudeness when you don’t move for them. Just-”

“They just fucking killed somebody!” one of the freshmen exploded, motioning vehemently at the spot where the student had fallen from.

The guide shushed the dissident. “There’s no need yell!” he said whispered harshly as he glanced at the office uneasily. “Seriously. You don’t want those things to come back out here right now. As I was saying, that kind of thing won’t happen to you as long as you stay out of their way.”

The guide was clearly trying to remain collected, but to no avail. He fidgeted with the lanyard around his neck as he did a silent headcount of the tour group.

“Let’s just move on to the next building. Most of you don’t have courses here this year anyway.”

He hastily steered the tour group through the entrance where the automata had come in from, and the remainder of the outing passed by in a blur.

Markus looked up from his laptop when he heard the dorm door unlock. Magdalena walked in and dropped her backpack next to her desk. It sagged on the floor glumly.

“Fun tour?” her roommate asked. No response, but he was getting used to it quickly.

He put down the beer he’d been nursing. Drinking in the morning? Magdalena didn’t blame him. She couldn’t think of many reasons for people to stay sober around here. “Aw, I’m just messing around. Someone posted the vid already,” Markus told her, gesturing at his screen. A video of the student splattering against the vinyl tiles played on loop.

“Does that sort of thing also happen often?” Magdalena questioned.

Markus scrolled away from the post before speaking. “Guess that depends on what you mean by often.”

Magdalena stared at him.

“Come on. The Darwin Award is a thing everywhere. Don’t look at me like that,” Markus said.

“This is how I always look.”

“Oh.” He perhaps should have figured that out already. Magdalena was wearing that catatonic expression in the murder video as well. “Well. You saw those guys. The bosses, I mean. You’d have to be pretty stupid to stand where they’re walking, right? That’s, like, natural reflection, or some shit.”

“Natural selection.”

“Yeah. That. Whatever.”

Magdalena collapsed onto her bed and let out a sigh. Markus rested his face on his hand as he observed her through lidded eyes. There was a small smile of amusement on his lips. “Don’t tell me you’re already tapped out. You didn’t even know the guy.”

It wasn’t just the impromptu homicide. It was everything. Magdalena watched a roach as it crept down the cracked drywall. “Maybe I should have gone for an online degree. This university is shit.”

Markus drank to that. “This entire city is shit, babe,” he laughed. “I guess that means you thought you were gonna move away for college…?”

The cockroach made it to the window and squeezed through a gap in the frame, scrambling away to freedom.

Magdalena sighed again. “Yeah.”

“No need to give up just yet. I knew a few graduates who scraped up enough cash to leave.”

“I can’t move away. I owe money to the mob.”

“Oh… yeah, nevermind. You’re fucked.”

“Thanks.”

Markus laughed again. He crushed the empty can in his hand and pitched it at the waste basket. “Nah, you’ll be fine. Maybe. You want some advice from a guy who’s had to deal with this place for a while?”

“Shoot.”

His face grew serious. “Worry about yourself. Not morons flying over guardrails and shit-talkers going missing at night,” he warned Magdalena, looking pointedly at his old cotenant’s belongings. He’d said he’d toss them, but it was starting to seem like Magdalena would have to do it. “No one’s gonna cover your ass for you. We’ve all got our own problems going on, you know? And people who stick their noses in other people’s business don’t last that long.”

What reassuring counsel. “I’ll keep it in mind,” Magdalena replied blandly.

The girl rolled over in her bed. Markus’s eyes drifted back to his laptop screen. They didn’t say another word to each other until classes began.

[chronosik]

Oooh for your drabble thingy

Wooyoung and San! As for a prompt mmm soulmate aus are fun so maybe something having to do with that?

I hope you're doing well!

your woosan au my love

Analog

>word count: 471

>rated: general

>soulmate au (explicitly said but by which trope or means is up to you!)

San doesn’t win Nobel prizes for being with Wooyoung. He ought to, though. 

Putting up with Jung Wooyoung is not what he thought finding his soulmate would be like. His mother told him, over and over, that the right one would come. Patiently, kindly. And that if he lived by these virtues too, he would be rewarded with overwhelming love. Brimming over the sides of his gentle heart.

The string that connects them isn’t physical, and for that San is grateful, at the very least.

He can slam doors, he can block out the whining with noise canceling headphones. He usually does so when Wooyoung is on that damn game.

Like now, from where he is in the bedroom, he can see straight into the living room, Wooyoung’s feet propped up on the ottoman, though San has reprimanded him time and time again. 

He can only hear Pachelbel’s Canon, warm notes flooding his overworking brain. He takes this time to sit on the edge of the bed, forefinger and thumb worrying at the moon pendant around his neck. 

He says all of those things. He gets tired of the fights. Every disagreement feels like he’s filled with lava. 

But he really does, in spite of himself, love Wooyoung. 

After all, without the day, how can there be night? 

San feels the dip of weight behind him on the bed. Inching closer. And closer still. 

Wooyoung doesn’t remove his headphones, just wraps his arms tight around San’s thin waist, arms crossing over one another as he hugs tight.

San feels the rush of endorphins, the fireworks going off in his chest. This. Wooyoung’s presence fills him with heat. And this is what reminds San of his soulmate. That their spirits are entwined by a divinity he can’t even begin to understand. 

Wooyoung’s sun pendant swings over San’s shoulder and rests on his collarbone as Woo’s chin settles against the hard muscle of his shoulder. San doesn’t push him away, but lets his head fall against his partner’s. 

Finally, Wooyoung’s fingers curl around the thin metal of San’s headphones, sliding them off and around his neck. Their pendants cling for just a second before he pulls back to give room to the new tenant sitting on San’s shoulders. 

“I missed you. I didn’t know if you were still mad…” Wooyoung shifts to lay in San’s arms. 

Inhale. Heavy exhale. Wooyoung is a fucking master manipulator. But it’s San’s fault he keeps giving into it, hands instinctively going to touch Wooyoung’s dark hair. It’s soft beneath his fingertips. 

“I’m not.” He smiles gently. “But you’re so fucking annoying.” 

He leans down over Wooyoung and kisses him, deep and full, plush lips against hungrier ones. Wooyoung takes forgiveness like a favor, instead of something to improve upon. 

But San kisses him anyway.

Over and over. 

[ayyyez]

In honor of the "wife thinks about Madara just standing there during sex" post, how about Madara watching his s/o masturbate? 🤣

a/n: you know when I opened requests I just KNEW I'd get some sort of random Madara smut request like this but OF COURSE it's in reference to that post lmao but yeah sure why not. Also I wasn’t sure if you wanted vaginal masturbation or what not so I kept it vague on that front. Haha thanks for sending in the request.

warnings: smut, sexual content

tags: smut, masturbation, teasing, banter, under the cut bc smut

Madara wonders how he finds himself in this position, watching you touch yourself while he’s impossibly hard and unable to touch you but he’s also unable to look away. He’s enraptured by the sight in front of him.

It starts with some innocent flirting that leads to some hot making out and then the inevitable banter. It’s like the two of you just can’t help yourselves (in every way). 

It’s because of the banter really, the battle to one up each other while in the throws of heat. That and the passing dirty talk question he asks. ‘You want me to touch you? You want me to me make you feel good like only I can?’ 

Now you don’t know why that flicked a particular switch inside you today. Other days it would make you chuckle. Some others it’d have you rolling your eyes but agreeing. Today though it got you up for the challenge. 

‘Oh.’ You say pulling back a little. ‘You think I need you to touch me to make me feel good?’ You narrow your eyes. ‘I can get myself off just fine without your help.’ 

His smirk fades as he studies your expression. His firm grip loosens. The gears in his head are turning. He hadn’t expected that and he’s thinking.

You lift your chin for good measure daring him to test you. 

‘Is that so?’ He finally says, removing his grip entirely. ‘Perhaps you ought to show me then just how good you can get off without my help.’ 

And that’s how he finds himself getting a grand show just for him. You’re sprawled out on the bed one leg bend, the other wide open giving him full view. You’re working your hand just how you like, your hands getting slick. You can see how worked up he’s getting too the fierceness in his eyes. 

He’s shirtless but his pants are still on. He’s hard of course, so very hard tentingagainst them. The only relief he’s allowing is the occassional hand rub to give sweet relief against the strain of the fabric.

You make a show of running your other hand over your chest. You fondle it a little, thumbing a nipple and grazing it. It makes him growl. He wants to be the one touching it, touching you. He’s practically whinning. 

His eyes though never leave you. Whether they’re following your hand motions, the outlining the contours of your body of just meeting your heated gaze. It ignites a new blaze of passion every time. 

God, you want each other and knowing you’re playing this game of not being able to touch each other just makes it so much hotter. Your entire body is on fire and the more you work yourself the more you think maybe you should give in and let him touch you. 

But then he smirks and it pushes you to prove yourself.

Especially since his own self resolve seems to be breaking. He’s bringing his own hand to his crouch more and more. He’s spurring you on now. 

‘Yes, just like that.’ There were no rules about verbal help alongs after all only touching. ‘Touch yourself for me.’ Of course he had to make this all about him when you were proving you could do this yourself. 

With new found need you pushed yourself on to the grand finale. 

Feeling that familiar build, that coil tighten ready to snap. Your moans were spilling and your thighs trembling but you tried to keep them open since you were putting on a show after all. 

You are vaguely aware of Madara encouraging you along. Rubbing himself in time with your motions and moans. Damn why is this so hot? You forget what this was all about in the first place and you’re coming. 

When you come down from you’re high he’s already over you. 

‘I can’t stay away for a second more.’

He’s asking for permission to touch you because needy man cannot stand being away from you and you just reved him up ready for the main round if you’ve got it in you. 

[thewhumperinwhite]

WKW: The Voice That Shakes The Stones (Part 2)

Continued directly from this, but will make more sense if you've also read The Rose Queen parts 1 and 2.

This one follows part one in terms of getting some plot stuff out of the way up top and then some Really Heavy Whump in the back half lmao

TW for: broken bones (including ribs and spine), blood, aftermath of beating/caning, past/referenced child abuse, referenced parental death, referenced decapitation, Again Broken Bones To The Extent That It Is Essentially Body Horror.

----

Morden raises a sculpted eyebrow at Tern. “Been opening my mail, have you?”

Tern looks at him; or at least Morden assumes he does. Tern wears an elaborately constructed mask sewn out of feathers and leather and bone, and removes it very rarely.

“I open everyone’s mail,” Tern says.

Morden knows this, of course. He has no secrets to keep from his own Falconers, and if and when such secrets do arise, he will simply have Thorne deliver them. If Morden feels—caught off guard, set on edge, it is no fault of Tern’s, and snapping at his own Scout will not help him feel more in control, anyway. Morden arranges himself more casually at his desk with a bit of effort.

“What do you think of the Lady’s proposal?” he asks, forcing his voice back into its usual light and airy register.

Tern tilts his head. The mask makes him the most actually-birdlike of all the Falconers, a fact Morden usually finds endearing, though he is struggling not to be annoyed by it at the moment.

“It’s my job to know things, not to act on them,” Tern says finally. Which is a letdown after such a long thoughtful pause, even though it is also true. Morden does not roll his eyes, but the temptation is there. “What do you think, Mord?”

Morden sits up straight and brushes his hair from his face. What he thinks is, she must have eyes in the Castle that Morden can’t see, to be able to time this missive so exactly. But that thought is uselessly paranoid—Tern would know, and Tern would tell him—so he is not entertaining it. Or vocalizing it, either.

“I think she’s audacious,” he says instead, which is true. “And I think I had better consider carefully before I think anything much else.” He folds the letter back up, so that he will not keep reading it uselessly over and over, and looks up at Tern, pretending to make eye contact through the mask. “In the meantime, make sure the Prince doesn’t die, will you? I may finally be able to put him to some use.”

Tern nods, and stalks out silently, still in his soft-soled scouting boots.

Morden makes it, optimistically, another five minutes before he unfolds the letter to read it again.

“Your desires have aligned neatly with our own, dear Crane,” reads the now-familiar script, “and the appropriate sacrifices have been made.”

Morden has not yet opened the accompanying jeweled and gilded casket, but the size and heft of it—and, more importantly, the smell—makes him fairly confident he knows what will be inside.

“A healthy partnership ought be reciprocal, however,” the letter goes on.

Morden chews his thumbnail, a nervous habit he does not often indulge. He scolds himself; he is only now realizing how he has begun to enjoy his exchanges with the Rose Queen, how they have begun to feel so like a game of chess against an interesting opponent as to make him forget the stakes. It has left him feeling—exposed, now, at best; trapped if he is not careful.

He needs to make a plan.

----

This is not part of Crow’s job.

It’s all very well for Tern, who relays Crane’s instructions—“Fix up the Summer Prince; the White Crane had his fun and now wants not to play with broken toys”—and then scurry off with the excuse of some Important Scouting Duty, which Crow suspects is probably bullshit.

When Morden introduces the Falconer’s, he says that Crow’s job is “Throatcutter,” the one who makes sure everyone’s theatrics have resulted in actual corpses at the end of every ambush and skirmish. And although that isn’t all he does—far from it—that is certainly part of his job. If the White Crane had said, “I’m too busy to finish killing the Summer Prince, finish that up for me, will you?” Crow would have done it, and with a whistle and a spring in his step.

Crow is built for ending lives, it’s truly what he’s best at. He doesn’t prolong pain on purpose; he isn’t Raven. Once a creature is past a certain threshold of injury, keeping it alive becomes—boring and sad, and little else.

The Summer Prince flops slightly at Crow’s feet, as if hearing him think this. He is moving like a deboned fish. Sounds a bit like one, as well.

Morden is going to owe him, and Morden doesn’t enjoy owing things, even to his own Falconers. So at least, Crow thinks, there is that.

“I don’t suppose you can walk,” Crow says. He slides the toe of his boot underneath the writhing shape of the Summer Prince, meaning only to nudge him slightly.

There is—more give in the ribs than there should be.

The body at his feet spasms violently as the Prince tries to curl in around himself. He manages to twist his torso in a way that makes Crow’s gorge rise a bit in spite of himself, his handless arm flopping over and up to haphazardly cover his face. His legs don’t move at all.

Crow contemplates, very briefly, the idea of picking the Summer Prince up off the floor and carrying him to Heron’s quarters, or more probably to the Castle’s Healer. He doesn’t mind blood, as a rule. The blood would not be the problem.

The Prince heaves in what must be his first full breath since Crow entered the room several minutes ago. It scrapes audibly against his throat; the effort of taking it arcs his back up off the floor, except that his legs still haven’t moved. Something—either ribs or spine, Crow isn’t sure which—grinds audibly inside him and he loses whatever air he has managed to take in in a single quiet, bubbly-sounding wail.

“Eugh,” Crow says, and turns his back on what is rapidly becoming the corpse of the Summer Prince. Where has that bloody wolf pup got himself to? Cleaning up Morden’s messes is literally that kid’s whole job.

----

(Andry can’t see. He can almost breathe, if he tries very hard. It feels like lifting a very heavy weight, and at the height of each breath there is a sudden stabbing pain in his back, just left of the center, that makes him twitch. He is in—water, maybe. Or anyway his face and shoulders and ears feel wet. His lips feel wet, too, although the inside of his mouth feels very dry indeed.)

(He must have hit his head, he thinks. He knows that burning cracked-egg feeling well enough, in his temple and below his right ear and on the high point of his opposite cheek. And his back is cracked open that way too, not sharp and bone deep like the whip but broad and blunt and shattered like his father’s cane.)

(His father is—dead, he thinks, around the buzzing in his head, like bees tangled up in cotton wool. The White Crane cut off his father’s head, and Andry could not catch it when it was thrown. And now he cannot even tell if he is sorry. His father did kill him once, after all.)

(He had known where he stood with his father, though. His father was not elegant and smiling, like the White Crane.)

(Although the White Crane was not smiling this time, was he, Andry thinks; no, this time he was angry, and the worst part is that Andry does not even know why.)

(…Andry thinks that is the worst part. Then he tries to move his legs.)

----

Heron is the Falconers’ battlefield medic, and he is not a healer. He has smelling salts in his bag that will get a man to his feet and into the fray with an arrow through the stomach; and skill enough with a needle and a bandage to patch up even serious punctures well enough to heal on their own. He even knows the basic alchemy needed to keep a wound from going septic about seven times out of ten.

In this situation he is useful only in that he has a stretcher he is willing to bring to Thorne’s chamber in exchange for the privilege of seeing a mutilated body.

Crow returns with Thorne and Heron after about five minutes, and it is clear as he nears the threshold and begins to hear the Prince’s breath whistling in and out, like wind blowing across a broken bottle, that the boy has not done him the great favor of dying in the interim.

One of the Prince’s eyes is open when Crow stands over him again, but it is rolled back in his head far enough to hide all but a thin ring of blue-purple iris. The other eye is already swollen too far to open more than a crack. Every time he takes a far-too-audible breath he shudders, violently, exactly twice. His torso is still twisted at that odd angle, as though he has tried to roll over onto his side without lifting his hips.

Thorne has been helping Heron carry the stretcher. When he enters the room he drops his end of it with a loud clatter.

Heron does not seem to notice, though he gamely drops his end of the stretcher, too, so that he can dart closer to the body, his pale eyes glittering behind his physician’s mask.

(Tern and Heron are both masked more often than they aren’t; both masks, as far as Crow is concerned, are products of paranoia. Tern is convinced some authority or other is going to discover his identity, as though that would matter now that he is at the right hand of the conqueror of a whole damned country. Heron is concerned about inhalants. This seems sensible sometimes, even to Crow; Heron takes apart something like a half-dozen cadavers a week in pursuit of his craft. However he also wears the mask when it is just the eight of them alone in the Nest or in their rooms here at the castle, and that seems like overkill to Crow.)

As always, Heron’s hands are light, and clever, and ruthless. He pulls the Prince’s fluttering eyelid up and peers closely into his eye, tipping his head back quite gently. Then he presses his fingers against the Prince’s shattered ribs with slow, deliberate pressure, using his hand in the Prince’s hair to keep the Prince from curling up in a ball at what must be excruciating pain. Heron’s face is quite close to the Prince’s answering gasp. Crow, a safe distance away with his arms crossed, thinks to himself that perhaps Heron wouldn’t need the mask if he was willing to do his job without getting so very close.

When the Prince has relaxed out of his pain-spasm, Heron taps twice on the sharp edge of the Prince’s sharp recently-starved hip bone with a gloved fist. The Prince’s gasp this time is much quieter, more of a hiccup than an airless scream.

When Heron stretches out a booted foot to give the Prince’s calf a not-particularly-gentle kick, the Prince doesn’t react at all.

“That’s interesting,” Heron says, his voice dark with things Crow finds professionally distasteful.

----

Thorne left Andry—what, thirty minutes ago? An hour? Surely no more than that. Thorne left Andry asleep on the couch at the foot of his bed, wrapped in Thorne’s borrowed sheets, curled up like a child with the stump of his missing hand tucked under his chin.

Thorne’s bedsheets are in disarray, now, on the floor in front of the couch. There is blood on them. There seems, at least to Thorne’s suddenly spotty and blurred vision, to be blood more places than there isn’t.

Heron’s hand is on Andry’s throat, now, prodding narrow deep bruise that is forming there. Heron is hovering over Andry with the same excited twitchy over-interest with which he treats any sick or injured person. Thorne is familiar enough with Heron’s attention to remember the growing unease and sick, crawling discomfort it inspires.

He usually finds it easier to look away.

“Well go on,” Crow snaps at him from where leaning against the wall, looking mildly disgusted but little else. “Get him on the fucking stretcher already.”

Thorne’s instinct to obey is honed sharply enough that he moves to follow the order without thinking. So at least there is that relief.

[angelosearch]

Here's a long mushy post because today is a special date.

Way back in the early oughts, I was talking to this guy on AIM (blast from the past, I know). We started talking in November of 2008 and from the first time we chatted, I felt like there was something special about him. We became fast friends and would chat into the early hours as we put off doing our homework. He was funny and smart and would help me with my physics homework and occasionally Rick Roll me.

One time, we worked together to try and figure out if every person in the world moonwalked against the earth's rotation on the equator, could they get the planet to stop spinning (inconclusive, but probably no).

The first time we spoke on the phone (the first time we heard each other's voices) it was the day that Obama was inaugurated. I remember this because I felt overwhelmed and awkward. I didn't know what to talk about, so I brought that up.

I got the sense that he liked me - or at least I hope he did, because I liked him. A super nerd, captain of the fencing team, loved his dog - I DEFINITELY had a crush.

But I wasn't certain that he liked me until February 10th, when he messaged me on AIM and quoted Newton's third law. He said something to the effect of "Newton's Third Law states that reactions are equal and opposite. I really like you - does the law apply here?"

Well, that guy and I have been together 15 years now. After a long distance relationship through the rest of highschool and college, we moved in together in 2014. We got married in 2016. His sister Rick Rolled us at our wedding. We got a congratulations card from Obama (someone mailed him our wedding invite, to this day I don't know who).

It's been an eventful couple of years. We've had jobs and apartments and dogs and roommates. We've gone on amazing adventures, engaged in so many hobbies together, and played through a bunch of videogames side-by-side. There's been hundreds of hours of audiobooks and probably months worth of television. Oh, and A LOT of BeatSaber.

He has been very excited about my return to fanfiction and my renewed love of FFVIII. He has never played the game but he will let me talk about it endlessly and bounce fanfiction ideas off him. Everytime I finish a chapter of something, I send it to him and he gives me feedback. If that's not love, I don't know what love is!

He was there to help me into the car when I was loopy from having my wisdom teeth removed. Before I learned to drive, he took me anywhere I couldn't reach from walking/transit without question. He has seen me through my career ups and downs and is now my biggest cheerleader as I apply to grad school.

Once I hosted an event for a job I had. Doing that always pushed my mental health to the brink. I was staying at a friend's place in the city after the meeting with the plan to metro home in the morning, but the wave of a manic episode that had manifested over the week crashed into my mind and I was caught in the riptide of a panic attack. He drove out during a blizzard in the middle of the night to bring me home and rubbed my back as I laid on the floor of our apartment, sobbing.

Our relationship survived a whole pandemic. When I had struggles with my birth family, we became each other's family, and his family welcomed me too. Then he saw me through my darkest timeline and has supported me through every step of my mental health journey. Just a few hours ago, I was stuck in some memories and he talked me through it. I am tremendously grateful everyday to have such an amazing person in my life.

In October of last year, we moved into our home. For the first time in my life, I feel safe and comfortable in the place I live and waking up to be with him, here, everyday brings me so much joy. I recently heard this song, which really captures how we feel in this moment of our lives:

So happy anniversary to "my Rinoa" - @tharinock (funnily enough the same handle I first got to know you by). Here's to the next 15 years of fun and love.

[the-many-soul-speaks]

CEDARCLAN: Moon 1

Clan play began this moon.

* Prose for CedarClan is kept beneath a readmore for potential length.

--✧--

⇢ Faithspore & Stumpymoth - Discover an abandoned kittypet; hit by a car. 1 -1 =1. There is a scuffle, and the outsider is killed, only for their patrol/family/ clowder/etc. to appear and demand justice.

Faithspore is something of an enigma to much of his clan, and Stumpymoth would be the first to admit to being somewhat flummoxed by the older tom. His dedication to his daughter, Darkkit, has always been clear, nothing left to be desired in his parenting— and even before her birth, in his own youth, Stumpymoth recalls him as a favorite kitsitter. His work ethic is impeccable, he goes out of his way to finish tasks others would rather leave for another day, and never once complains or lauds it above others. 

So why, when all his traits suggest compassion and cooperation, does he remain so apart? 

It’s not so much that the answer is unclear; merely, what is it that makes him so, Stumpymoth wonders.

The kittypet they had come across was clearly lost, far removed from any twoleg homes in the vicinity, and distressed. One, or rather, Stumpymoth, would have expected sympathy towards such a case. Instead, Faithspore is at their throat before a word was uttered.

Perhaps he had a difficult upbringing.

“Faithspore!” It’s his alarm that makes Stumpymoth slow to act, intervening too late to stop blood from being drawn. But no amount of alarm in his voice is enough to halt the older tom. “Faithspore, stop! It’s just a kittypet!” His only answer is a snarl, and a spray of blood. Before another word leaves the younger tom’s mouth, Faithspore has slashed his claws across their neck. Dead before they hit the ground, the kittypet slumps. 

Stumpymoth would be more shocked if this hadn’t happened before. Faithspore was one of Patchoulistar’s most loyal followers, after all. 

Still, it turns his gut unpleasantly, a measure of fear mixed with the disgust. “You didn’t need to do that…” Anything else to be said dies  on his tongue as the dark-pelted cat swings his head, muzzle flecked with blood. 

“A trespasser is a trespasser,” is all Faithspore says . 

And really, there’s no arguing with him after that. 

--✧--

⇢ Peakdapple & Oakpaw - Badger set; bushes shoved in to check if badger is present.

“Do you smell that?” Oakpaw’s anxious mew cuts through the quiet, jolting Peakdapple out of a cloud of thought. Lifting her muzzle, she breathes the crisp spring air over her palate, wrinkling her nose with a scowl at the musky scent. “Badger. Good nose, Oakpaw.” “Is it fresh?” The worry in the apprentice’s voice isn’t without cause, but Peakdapple thinks, rather pessimistically, that it isn’t badgers they should all be concerned with. 

She scents again. “Not fresh enough to worry about. Lets see if we can’t follow it a bit, find out if it’s denned nearby.” She picks up her twisted forepaw, still aching from the lingering chill, and begins a lilting gait down the game path. Still looking skeptical, Oakpaw hurries to catch up. 

They don’t have far to go, the pools of the swamp giving way to sandy uplands and broader-leaved trees, one a gnarled old oak with a hole at the base. Here, Oakpaw falls back, mouth open. 

Peakdapple follows suit. “Not fresh enough to worry about,” she muses, “still. But I wonder if it intends to return. What do you think, Oakpaw?” The apprentice shuffles, anxiety in every inch of the movement. “I don’t know… We can’t know, can we?” “I suppose not.” Peakdapple fixes him with a sympathetic eye. “We’ll have to keep an eye on it.” Oakpaw remains silent. After a moment, shifty-eyed under the consideration, he mews, “What if… What if we full the den entrance with brush? And when we come back, if the hole has been cleared…”  He trails off, but Peakdapple is already impressed. “Very good thinking.” Another consideration, and then, “Very good! I suppose we ought to get to work then, hm? If it is coming back.”

“Yes ma’am!” Oakpaw’s fur bristles, and Peakdapple has to resist a laugh. A little mean that was, maybe, but the idea is good. She’ll have to mention it to Alderstar.

[haru-naechi]

Second Rant: The Villainess/Mob/Side Character/ Random Girl Who Wakes up in a Novel She Read

Whoopie! Reincarnated to a novel/game, an interesting concept really. Seeing how there is already a pre-determined story to follow, I do wonder how they'll go about this.

*Several reads later*

Oh boy. They can't really think of anything else can't they?

Okay so, one thing I really really like genuinely hate about these stories is how the mc always acts so dumb. Like, girl, come on, I think for the past few years you've been in this world you ought to think that things develop.. idk NaTurAlly? Why do you keep saying that "things are changing" like no shit things are changing, you've changed and that's practically gonna cause a ripple effect on everything.

Oh, oh, and I hate it when ml is like obv showing feeeeelingsss but mc is just: (⁠.⁠ ⁠❛⁠ ⁠ᴗ⁠ ⁠❛⁠.⁠). "No OmG tHaTs NoT PosSIblE, cu'Z he'S supPosEd to FalL foR ThE OrigINaL FL!"

Fuck it even when the ml admits his feelings the girl is just like "no".

It's frustrating to me because authors tend to develop these ladies as quick thinkers and determined, always trying to find ways to avoid death flags set to them. But then they do those aforementioned things and it kinda makes you think how shallow they are. It's like they don't see the relationships they build as real ones and are all just superficial for specific reasons.

I understand the concern when you feel like you're trying to fight against fate but most of these stories don't even actually have that. Things do change and usually nothing terrible happens, but mc acts like there will be even though the author clearly only puts "horrible" things as plot advancers and nothing too serious.

Also, for those mc that woke up in their new body with a shit reputation paired with what everyone knows has a shit personality, why is everyone just okay with her changing all of the sudden — like its just plain stupid. If I knew someone who is evil suddenly becomes good overnight, I would not only be sceptical but also assume that she's possessed (seeing how magic always exists in these worlds i don't that's too far from the realm of possibility right?). This one honestly is what bugs me the most.

Suspicion is removed cu'z mc does something heroic or wonderful (blegh), but that kinda undermines the suffering other people have gone through with the original character. Some authors have even shown fully blown flashbacks where the original character is violent, verbally abusive and typical in every possible way. And these people just, flips a damn switch and say "Oh! She's changed!" Which boggles my mind every time I read something like that.

Which puts me to my next complaint. There is no real villain or even when there is they aren't really appealing. The problems set by the "original" story already gets destroyed like a couple chapters in, so what next? There are quite a lot of stories that just turn the OG Female Lead into whatever the villainess is supposed to be like: delusional, fake, etc. Which to me is, fine, but if you're gonna turn someone else in that world into a villain for the sake of having a bad guy, then why not put the stakes higher? Or at least give them more of a reason than just them feeling entitled to have the boyz. They don't have any substance to them and are bland af. Its a story vying for a downfall you already know will come.

Overall these ladies think too much and too little at the same time. Istg their dialogue can be summarized into "That didn't happen" "This didn't happen in the original.." "Is there a bug in the game..?" or "Why are things not going as the orignal!?"

It burns my brain trying to see through their eyes and understand their logic, until you realize they don't have common sense at all. They are geniuses only when they need to be, but is dumb af everywhere else.

Also, as much as I love puffy, frilly dresses I'm tired of mc changing the og characters seemingly sexiness into this cutesy vibe doesn't sit well with me. They're obviously trying to put this as more of a visual dichotomy between the original character and the current mc, but its not much of a statement. (But honestly this just may be me because I want more sexy mc you know?)

Trust me when I say this post barely covers half of what I truly feel about these stories and this is just the general gist of it. Also couldn't be bothered to add specific titles like the last rant.