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canmom · 1 year

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Das Abenteuer der Canmom in Köln (zur Gamescom)

It's time for canmom to have another adventure! What will that wacky lil porygon do next?

[you may be wondering, whatever happened to the plan to transfer l'aventure de canmom à Annecy to the main site for easier reading? that's still planned to happen, hopefully pretty soon! I've just been very busy.]

So: I work for a small VR games company called Holonautic. I've been working for them for around four months now (time flies)! This week some of us were in Cologne, Germany, attending Gamescom. Until this trip I hadn't met any of them in person, and indeed only had a vague idea what they looked like, because the modern world is wacky that way.

What's Gamescom? It's a major industry expo where game devs show off their games to the public and journalists, and otherwise have various industrial sorts of chats. The event fills a massive convention centre (the Kölnmesse), similar to the Excel Centre in London. Thousands and thousands of gamers enter in massive queues, and once inside, they queue up some more to get a chance to play some work in progress games at massive display booths.

Or maybe they go to the indie room, where there are hundreds of tiny desks just wide enough for a dev to set up a computer with a demo... or the retro games area, where various old consoles were set up for people to play... or one of the zones set up for laser tag or something like that. There was a lot going on!

Even Cthulhu came down to check out the games.

My own experience of Gamescom involved very little of that. With my Trade Visitor badge I could skip the queues, but most of my time was spent in a corner of the Business Area demoing our game to influencers, other devs and members of Meta and Unity, and then heading out to restaurants to have dinner with other VR devs in the evening. I had a good time though! It was great to meet the rest of Holonautic in person, and get to see the sights of Köln a tiny bit. And it was a very rewarding feeling to see other people enjoy the game I'd been working so hard on.

So in this post I'm going to talk about my trip, do a bit of amateur sociology, think about the place of videogames in the world and all that - and also talk a little about how the game sausage gets made - at least as far as I can without breaking NDA. Sadly, the game I spent most of the weekend demonstrating remains under wraps, so I'll have to tell you about that another day. I didn't get to see a ton of games but I'll also talk about the handful of indies I did see!

This time I travelled by train (non-transport nerds, feel free to skip this paragraph), taking the Eurostar from St. Pancras to Brussels, and then the ICE 19 to Cologne. Although it was slower and a bit more expensive than flying, once you factor in the time it takes to travel out to the airport, and the security generally being much more straightforward, I think I much prefer the trains. I spent my journeys drawing other passengers (coming soon to @canmom-art) and reading Osamu Tezuka's manga Ayako (which will be its own post). It was all told very straightforward and comfortable.

[minutiae: I thought I was clever by getting an Interrail pass instead of just buying tickets the usual way, but I didn't realise that you also have to pay for seat reservations, so in the end the Interrail probably cost about as much for a 'there and back again' type of trip.]

By far the most expensive part of the trip was the hotel room. We stayed in a hotel pretty close to the centre of Cologne, but it turned out that its proximity to be about 15 minutes walk from public transport, so we didn't end up saving that much travel time. Since I ultimately spent almost no time in my hotel room, I think if I go next year, the call will be to stay at a hostel. But anyway, let's talk games.

How a game gets released on the Quest

So, Holonautic specialises in VR games. I wrote about our previous games in this very nerdy post, but in brief, there are broadly two major types of VR game: PC VR and standalone VR. For PC VR, the game runs on a computer, and the headset just contains a screen and something that can be tracked. For standalone VR, the headset is essentially a powerful Android smartphone with a custom OS; it uses the headset's cameras for tracking and does all the computing on the headset.

With the success of the Oculus/Meta Quest series, standalone VR became really, really popular - much more so than PCVR ever was. It makes sense: for native games you don't need a powerful gaming PC and there are no cables to trip over or expensive base stations, but you can still play PCVR games if you want to. Almost all of Holonautic's games are Quest-native.

For PCVR games, you can use one of various APIs, such as OpenXR, to wire up your game to VR tracking and input. Moreover, Valve built pretty good VR support into Steam, and since Steam is pretty much anything-goes, it's pretty easy to release a PCVR game in a way people can get it - but marketing is all on you, as with any Steam game.

The Quest is a different story. Compared to other consoles, Meta (which absorbed Oculus a few years ago) occupies a bit of a strange position in this industry, simultaneously the hardware manufacturer, the only publisher, and also a developer of first-party titles.

I don't have any good pictures for this part so here's me in a massive cathedral. Metaphors? No no. It's just a holiday photo...

There are two ways that games can get released on the Quest. There's the store, which is heavily curated: here, Meta acts as a publisher, releasing only games they think will sell, but they also put games through months of QA and handle all the marketing for you (i.e. putting it in front of people when they boot up the Quest). To get on the store, you basically need to have an in at Meta - there's a whole process, I'll talk about that in a moment. There's also 'App Lab', which is much less heavily vetted - but also it's a lot harder to get an audience on App Lab. If a game is particularly successful on App Lab, Meta may end up promoting it to the store. But a lot of games just languish there.

Of course, just because you have a liaison at Meta does not mean you have a free pass onto the store. There's a whole series of stages you have to go through: first you write up a detailed pitch, then if approved (based on what else may be in the works, Meta won't approve two overly similar games), you have a few months to make a 'Minimum Viable Product' prototype of your game and show it to Meta. I joined the company about a month before the MVP was due on our game.

Assuming your contact at Meta likes the MVP, you get a few more months to make a 'Vertical Slice', which is essentially a small portion of your game that's more or less complete. (For example, a single level.) Then, you show this to Meta again. If you make a good impression, they'll give you the go-ahead to finish the game and release it on the store.

Here's another random picture of Köln from the famous Hohenzollern Bridge. Are you saying this wall covered in padlocks is symbolic of something? Overactive imagination, I tell you.

So if yo uwere wondering, the last few weeks of intense work were all about making that vertical slice be as good as possible (and it got pretty clutch at the end). Since we were all going to be at Gamescom, we agreed with our guy at Meta that we'd demo the game in person.

The upshot of all this is that selling a VR game is heavily heavily shaped by Meta, and specifically the individual at Meta who makes the call. Holonautic has a longstanding contact with a laid-back American guy I'll call W.; he has in the past championed some of our games like Hand Physics Lab that left other Meta staff unconvinced. (As it turns out, W. was right and Hand Physics Lab was successful.) But he's not shy about saying that a game doesn't make the cut and should go to AppLab instead. Our game would live or die based on W.'s opinion.

But not just W.; Meta itself as an organisation is also looking for certain things, shaped by its internal politics. They have new features they want to tout - so if you can come up with a game that uses mixed reality, hand tracking and shared anchors that's probably going to count in your favour. And they have certain directions they are keen to push: sporty exercise games are in favour at the moment.

What does this mean for the evolution of the medium? Well, of course people will make the games they want to make, and just because Meta likes an idea doesn't mean it will sell. But Meta does have a lot of power to dictate the general direction of VR games - and if the Apple Vision Pro takes off in a few years, Apple will no doubt end up with a similar role.

It's been interesting to see the forces that shape a game up close: our ideological desire to make things that are new and different and meet our personal tastes, balanced against the need to have successful games to keep the company afloat (good old M-C-M'), and the need to satisfy Meta; all of this leaves its fingerprints on the game.

To not keep you in suspense, I think the demo to W. went pretty well; I can't really say more than that. It was also a good chance to tell the Meta guys about the parts of their APIs that are jank and hard to use - and to their credit they were apparently rather desperate to get feedback and I feel hopeful that they'll make it better.

It's hard to talk about Meta, because it's just such a massive organisation. We can talk about massive erosion of privacy, enabling genocide in Myanmar, and so on - but we're dealing with a small sub-corner of this huge beast, which is less a social media company and more of a games publisher and console manufacturer. But I definitely understand why someone wouldn't want to let a Facebook device loaded with cameras into their house! I could go more into privacy and the Quest 2 but it would be way too long a tangent. Ultimately this is probably a 'no ethical consumption'/'we live in a society' type of deal - one day Meta's domination will erode and we'll have to deal with a different superpower.

Whatever happens, we can continue to explore what's possible in this medium! I think of all the ethical bargains that must be made with the tech industry, I have done OK.

What Cologne is like

On Tuesday, I arrived in Cologne Central Station (Köln Hauptbahnhof) and walked over to my hotel, where I met my colleagues. Most of them looked fairly similar to how they'd set up their VR avatars... but none of them had realised I'm super tall. surprise, bitches ;p

We went out to an Indian restaurant where we all ended up ordering biryani. This being Germany, the portions were massive, so I asked for mine to be in a box to finish later, forgetting that my hotel room had no fridge or microwave and I'd have zero time to eat it (rip). Overall I think I hit it off pretty well, and we chatted for a while about games we liked, the mess that happened at Za/um, movies and the like - it was good to get a chance to interact more casually in person instead of only ever talking about work stuff. Everyone was exhausted from travel so we turned in pretty early, though probably not as early as the restaurant would have liked...

The thing that surprised me most about Cologne is how much it didn't feel strange or unfamiliar. If not for all the signs in German and cars driving on the right, you could drop me in an area of Cologne and tell me it's an unfamiliar part of London and I'd easily believe you. The parts of the city that are filled with business parks and glass-fronted chain stores could exist almost anywhere on Earth.

That said, there are some ways the Germans do things differently! One is restaurants. I visited three different restaurants and two of them worked on a 'self-service' model. Essentially, you order your food at the bar, and they give you a little buzzer device. When it buzzes, you go back up to the bar and collect your food. Nobody would wait tables, there would just be one person behind the bar taking orders and such (though someone would still have to clean your table).

Restaurants also close very early in Cologne. I think a couple of times we put staff in an awkward position of wanting to go home but having to sit around until our party was done. That said, at one point I walked through a riverside area with a few dozen steakhouses, and that seemed to stay open a lot later.

Köln has a decent amount of graffiti, a surprisingly large portion of it in English. Under most bridges there's usually a good number of tags. I didn't manage to get any good photos but shout out to the person who wrote something like 'this world is too damn loud', which is a big mood for autistic girl walking away from a convention centre lmao.

Wednesday: in which our heroine finds out what an influencer is

The next morning we all went down to a German bakery (pictured above). According to my colleagues, the thing to get is a Bienenstich, or 'Bee Sting', a kind of cake with crispy honeyed almond flakes on top and cream in the middle. Here's a really bad photo:

It was pretty tasty!

We scooted over to the convention centre on the metro, and made our way in. I started getting used to navigating the Messe. Our company didn't get our own booth this year, but XR game devs are pretty tight-knit, and Niantic, creators of Ingress and Pokémon Go, there to promote their new phone-based AR Monster Hunter game - lent us some space in their booth to do a demo to the popular VR influencers Cas and Chary.

We headed over to Hall 8 and none of us could find the Niantic booth. Eventually we figured out why: the Niantic booth was outdoors. On a very bright summer day.

The Quest 2 has a bit of a finicky relationship to light. If it's too dark, the cameras can't pick up anything and tracking can fail - hand tracking is especially susceptible. But bright sunlight is also a problem. Essentially, the controllers on the Quest 2 contain small infrared LEDs, which are tracked by the headset's cameras. This works very well, in general - but in the sun, the background infrared radiation can completely overwhelm these LEDs and the controllers become essentially unusable. You also have to be very careful never to let the sun shine through the lenses inside the headset when you take it off, or the focused sunlight can destroy the screen.

So, an outdoor demo was a problem. Luckily, Niantic had an air-conditioned tent in their little zone. We all filed into the tent and started testing the headsets. Even inside a tent, it was too bright for the Quest 2 hand tracking... but we managed to figure out the Quest Pro still worked (since it uses cameras in the controllers for tracking), and rushed to test everything would work. Before long, Cas and Chary arrived, and we demoed the game. Look mum, I'm in a tweet:

Before this convention I had very little knowledge of the whole world of VR influencers, and honestly I still don't, but it seems to be a big thing - a good word from an influencer is a massive boost to a game's chances. I'm still not entirely sure what the difference is between an influencer and a journalist; both are in the business of reviewing new tech and games and rely on a reputation of unbiased analysis for credibility, and both are courted by devs hoping to promote their games. I guess an influencer is like a fully independent journalist? In any case, Cas and Chary were really sweet in our extremely brief meeting, and it was amazing to see the first people from outside the company having fun with our game.

We got word that bHaptics, a Korean company which makes haptic suits and gloves for use with VR devices, had some space in their booth and were willing to let us do some demos there. So we set off back down the entire length of the convention centre to go into the secret Business Area.

Wednesday at Gamescom is restricted to trade visitors, meaning it's much less crowded than the later days. On those later days, that restriction only applies to the three halls designated as the Business Area. Like regular Gamescom, these halls are divided into flashy booths trying to sell you stuff, but in this case it's mostly companies trying to sell services and tools to developers: backend services, special 3D pens, anti-cheat... also a bunch of stands selling merch and figurines for some reason (maybe because they want to manufacture tie-in merch for your game), as well a bunch of national organisations promoting the game development scene in xyz country.

The Belgian stand functioned as a meeting spot, and they were also handing out vouchers for free beer. A strategy that seemed to be quite effective, judging by how crowded their booth became that evening.

We tested our headsets in the bHaptics zone, and discovered DOTS Netcode's prediction/rollback is good enough to make the game feel smooth even on public convention centre wifi, which was rather satisfying - so you know, good job Unity! Unfortunately the Shared Anchors continued to be a pain. We briefly ran into the head of DOTS at Unity and arranged a demo, scooted off to meet W. from Meta who bought us drinks, scooted over to Niantic again to meet some members of XR Bootcamp (a training course in XR game dev, whose cofounders Ferhan and Rahel seem to be the glue that holds the whole XR dev scene together), and at last wandered back to the Belgian zone...

...and then I went back to bHaptics to have a go at their gear. I didn't take a photo (rip) so here's a photo by CNet showing the full bHaptics getup, which in combination looks... kind of like you're the member of the SWAT team on washing up detail...

(source: Scott Stein/CNet)

I had never gotten to try any sort of haptic suit before this, so it was quite novel. Essentially the vest contains 40 (or 16) vibration motors; the gloves contain further motors on the tips of each finger, and there's another motorised ring between you and the headset. There are also motorised wrist bands, motorised ankle bands...

The first demo was designed to showcase the features of the suit and wristbands, so you could try out various actions like shooting guns or putting stuff in a backpack with and without haptics. A second demo focused on manipulating objects: no wristbands, just the glove and hand tracking.

Of the various devices, the most convincing was probably shooting with the haptic suit. Vibration motors are well-suited for brief, intense pulses, and firing guns definitely felt more impactful with the suit on - not a perfect simulation of impact, but a strong effect. The backpack demo was especially impressive: it really felt like dropping heavy objects into a backpack. You also got to shoot at your own mirror image and feel the bullet/laser impacts, which felt like a rather roundabout way to give myself a back massage, but I could see it being effective in the right game.

The hand demo convinced me less. The problem is that vibration is a poor simulacrum of pressing against a solid surface, so it just felt distracting to have a vibration pulse when i grabbed an object - and you still had the usual physics jank associated with manipulating objects in VR using hand tracking. The final section of the hand tracking demo was social interaction: you were faced with rotated clone avatar, and you could shake your hand, punch or slap yourself, or give yourself a hug. As someone who lives half a world away from most people I love, I think giving someone a hug in VR would be a fantastic use of the technology, but sadly this hug was... not entirely convincing. It is very hard to simulate a steady touch with vibration motors.

Ultimately I think the best use for this haptic gear may not be simulation fidelity, but more abstract: similar to the haptic suit used in certain public demos of Rez Infinite, pulsing in time to music. Such uses are mentioned on the bHaptics site, and I'd love to have been able to try that kind of demo. (And yeah, I'm sure you could hook it up to the other kind of remote-controlled vibrating devices if you so desired, though you'd probably have to do a bit of work to wire everything up.)

It was really cool to finally get to experience haptics, and I was very grateful to the bHaptics members for taking the time to show me their gear.

After I'd satisfied myself, I caught up with the gang; we went out to dinner with other XR devs at a Turkish restaurant called Bona'me near the river. (The food was tasty and had a decent amount of vege options, once again in huge portions but this time we split them between the table. ...and once again we were the last table to leave by a long way, and I feel bad for the staff who had to sit around waiting for us.)

There, I met a solo dev called Ben Outram, who's spent the last three years working on a game called Squingle, a fascinating psychedelic game about manipulating bubbles in a world of DMT-core abstract visuals. (Honestly, check this game out, it's nuts. Meta are sleeping on it, it should absolutely have a full store release.)

Thursday: chaos reigns

On Thursday it somehow ended up that in the space of an hour, we would be demoing our game to the head of DOTS development at Unity (whose name I somehow never managed to catch), demoing our other game Cybrix to Cas and Chary, and then doing the big important demo for meta. Then it turned out that our metro line was blocked by an accident up ahead. We hurried out to get an Uber, and our driver gave us a rather... exciting ride; he rolled down the window to argue with another driver and dropped us off in the middle of the road while we waited in traffic. Rather harried, we arrived back at the bHaptics corner and set up for the demos in an unused area of floor nearby.

I'm not sure if I can say too much about how our demos went, but unfortunately we ran into some versioning issues and were not able to show Cybrix to Cas and Chary before they had to rush off (we weren't the only one to face transport issues that morning). Lesson learned: test everything, not just the part you're worried about. It's not the end of the world, though, and we all headed over to W.'s hotel, into a swanky suite with a nicely laid table for the most important demo of the week. We had the room for maybe 20 minutes, then we were out the door again to the lobby of another hotel to talk it over.

After that... suddenly the afternoon was free, ish. We went back into Gamescom and ate some very expensive ramen. Then, word came that some more influencers wanted to try out our games, so it was back to bHaptics and well, the story gets a little repetitive at this point :p I can't say much more than that without talking about our game, so I will just have to say that the demos went well.

This was my view for most of Gamescom.

At the end of the day, I had a couple of free hours to scoot over to the indie games area and try out some games before everyone went home. At this point my social batteries had run very dry indeed so I was glad to get some time to just play games.

The indie zone was divided into lots and lots of small booths, typically just wide enough for one computer. And even late in the evening, it was very, very busy...

This is just one small corner of the indie area.

Not really knowing almost any of these games, my 1337 MLG Pro Gamescom strat was to wander around until I spotted an empty chair and then play whatever game was going and chat with the dev if they were around. This worked out pretty well! I'll write up the games I played in a moment, but first I'm overdue to wax philosophical.

What was really striking about walking around the indie area is just how many games there are. Wandering around you can pretty quickly spot patterns and influences just by glimpsing at screens (here's a combat tutorial, there's a crafting/survival game, and yonder a narrative game that's borrowed the entire interface of Disco Elysium).

I've seen, up close and personal now, just how much fiddly effort and dedication it takes to make a game. There's something kind of strange and alienating to me about encountering all this creative output in a massive aggregate, where you can only give it maybe half an hour in a noisy room, surrounded by a dozen more or less similar games, in a way that kind of demands you rapidly assign it into a broad, combinatoric category: x art style, y core mechanic, z emotional register. Presenting this game this way really seems to file them all down to Content, which can be boxed and tagged and matched to a consumer with the appropriate set of subculture flags.

One thing that is distinctive about games as a medium to me is the very strong separation between 'mechanics' and 'presentation'. To produce a game you don't just need a system to manipulate, but also associate it with a narrative to make it comprehensible and lend it some sort of affective impact.

So you could theoretically make a game with the exact same mechanics as, say, Half-Life 2 - the same movement, the same enemy hitboxes, the same collision geometry and shooting mechanics and progression - but a completely different presentation style and telling a completely different story. Indeed, a typical early stage of game development has placeholder 'programmer art' and 'greybox' levels.

Equally, you could lift the iconography of a game and drape it over a completely different mechanical substrate - and indeed, it isn't at all uncommon for major franchises to launch spinoffs in different genres.

So games as a medium consist of all these different pieces which you can attach in various ways to define a game which you can name. And once this is done, that game becomes in a sense 'concrete': we act as if Half-Life 2 is an object with a distinct existence. It's a powerful social construct. Then, a successful game is then one which manages to unify all these disparate elements into some sort of whole that feels coherent. Game development sees all the possible elements of a game gradually collapse into whatever gets released. It's highly stochastic: an arbitrary decision by a tired dev, or even a glitch, might later become fixed as one of the core icons of the great 'Franchise'.

When there were less games around, and it was a lot harder for people to get their hands on dev tools, it made sense to think of games as solid, discrete things. Whatever you got on the cartridge or disc was pretty much immutable. Now, though, most major games operate as a 'service' that is constantly modified, and it is not uncommon either for players to mod a game, on a continuum from small changes like injecting shaders or changing music, to total conversion mods that are a 'whole new game'.

And indie games, then... you've got a subculture which heavily emphasise sharing techniques, and it's just as beholden to genre as AAA games. The existence of all these games side by side, even though each one has its own name and identity, seems to further break up "games" into combinations of pieces. When I encounter a new third-person action game, it's as a variation on a kind of broader, abstracted super-game. My first task is to discover the particular quirks of this manifestation of the third person action game. The days when we had a shared culture of 'games everyone has played' are basically already gone, but we still have a certain degree of shared context, because each game is a probe into that constantly evolving game-space, which someone has gone to the trouble to fish out and decorate...

I suppose this is all coming back around to the otaku database thing, isn't it? Or just semiotics in general...

Anyway, here's what I found on Thursday:

I played an FPS called Serum, in which the core conceit is that you inject big syringes into your arm to give yourself powerups. Otherwise, it seems to be a game about gathering and crafting. Sadly the demo computer didn't have headphones, so I was missing sound, and seemed to be a bit underpowered for the game. Nevertheless, I walked around a bit, manufactured a healing serum, and shot some wolf and rabbit monsters with a bow and arrow.

I feel like I was rather ruder than I intended to be, because in talking to the dev afterwards, the first thing I mentioned was the performance issues and he had to apologise like, yeah, we're running it on a laptop (it sounded like he said with a 3070? but I must have misheard him, unless he has very high standards for underpowered), it does run better on a proper computer. The environment design in this game was definitely really strong. Not quite sure how the serum mechanic would work in practice - it sounds quite like Bioshock's plasmids, but the demo didn't really give the opportunity to try out the different options.

I played Dead Pets Unleashed, an adventure game about a demon girl in a struggling punk band. One of the devs was hanging out with this one and generally had a great vibe, joking about how almost nobody picked a certain option and suggesting the route that would get the most out of the demo.

The game uses a sidescrolling perspective with hand-drawn sprites. The art style is very consciously flat, its population of monster people allowing an impressive variety of colours. It broadly alternates between conversations with choices that adjust stats (e.g. +punk, -social) and a variety of minigames - there was a music minigame of course (the conceit being chasing away intrusive thoughts), but I also washed a dildo, constructed a hot dog, and waited tables. Generally it oozed style, absolutely nailing the punk vibe, and had a bunch of cute features like changing your character's outfit. You can play the same demo on Steam. I think this is one I might well get when the full release comes.

And then I played... a game I can't even find now! I really should have made a note or taken a picture or something. It was a kind of Amanita-like point and click game in which you play a tin can person, manipulating objects as you try to rescue your can dog, descending into a city made of cardboard boxes. The puzzles were occasionally a bit obtuse, but the cute style really carried it. The devs weren't on hand for this one, but they did have a wall where you could leave postit notes with your comments on the game, including one with a fairly essential hint for the first puzzle. It was called something like 'can world' or 'box world', but at this point, I can't find it anywhere. It's a shame because I thought it was neat.

That was all I had time for on Thursday: I zoomed off to another restaurant by the river to eat some more falafels. Someone let off some fireworks for some reason.

We started to make our way back, across the famous Hohenzollern Bridge, which is one of those bridges with a tradition that lovers will attach a padlock to the fence to symbolise how long their relationship will last.

At this point the padlocks have started to resemble kudzu, hanging down in strands of linked padlocks, or even growing up onto the superstructure of the bridge on chains. Questionable symbolism or not, it all makes for a fantastic textural effect, especially since it maintains the sheer density of padlocks for the entire length of the bridge.

While we were crossing, a boat passed under the bridge carrying some kind of a party. From a distance, all you could really see was a mass of glowsticks, and all you could hear was the ghost of the beat. It was a cool sight.

At this point I was pretty much completely exhausted so while there was some kind of industry party I definitely could not handle the crowds and walked home past the cathedral for an early night, eager to head in early to Gamescom tomorrow with a good night's sleep...

Friday: just like in my Bloodbornes, amirite gamers?

Predictably I overslept. Since I'd only get a few hours at Gamescom, I decided to visit the famous cathedral. I took that photo that I posted earlier, where somehow my little phone camera absolutely nailed the lighting, even if the cathedral is severely out of focus...

I headed inside the building too.

Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) is a bit of an oddball, historically. While it wasn't uncommon for cathedral-building projects to last a century, after working on this thing from 1248–1560 they downed tools, leaving the city with a half-finished cathedral for about 300 years.

They had the front and back of a cathedral, with a big crane on the front part.

In the 1800s, the middle ages were in and the state decided it would be a good idea to have a big cathedral - both to make their new Catholic subjects happy and a symbol of THE NATION. After raising a stonking amount of money with one of the world's first NGOs, they built the rest of this thing, which briefly became the tallest building in the world. Hooray, said Emperor Wilhelm I. I love being a big strong nation with a big cathedral dick.

The cathedral survived the first world war, but got hit by a lot of bombs in the second - though the towers remained standing. After the war, they put it back up again. Now, it's a tourist attraction. Transsexual atheists can walk in and turn their phone to funny angles to try and capture the ceiling...

You can call this a Deutsch angle, because... ok whatever guys they can't all be winners.

They've got some old school Christian-style guro in here.

The interior is pretty cool: huge vaulted ceiling, massive stained glass. The stained glass unfortunately photographs really poorly on a phone, the colours washed out pretty much no matter what. They did have this funky ladder contraption, which I assume is probably used for maintaining/washing the windows...

After a little while in there I decided this was pretty neat but I'd go to Gamescom, to say goodbye to everyone and maybe get a glance at some of the mainstream game zones. As it turned out we had another demo lined up, so we went back to The Corner Near BHaptics and did the routine. This time the audience was mostly other VR devs so I got to have some nice technical discussion.

At last, I had about an hour before my train. I thought about exploring the indie game zone some more, but decided I should really at least take a glance through the other halls. What I discovered was... queues! Many many queues. And various elaborate dioramas.

Sometimes they had actors to go with them. I decided to include the people taking the photo because... I don't even know what I was going for with this one to be honest, it seems kind of banal.

Here's a queue of people waiting to play Rogue Trader, which boldly tells you it's the first(!) CRPG in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, hopefully not also the last. 'Warhammer CRPG' is a concept that 16-year-old Bryn would have gone completely insane about. 31-year-old Bryn was still a bit curious, but not enough to wait for a sitting down queue with less than an hour left at the con.

I didn't take a lot of photos of the Extremely Gamer Shit, but for a taster, this lady was DJing a set on something called the 'Leet Desk', which appears to be a desk with built in RGB lighting, billed as 'the desk for gamers', because we can no longer contain the rainbow puke. When I walked past, she was playing an EDM remix of a tune that I vaguely recognised from a movie or a game but couldn't place specifically, which felt about right. Maybe it was Skyrim?

A lot of people walked around with the Hoyoverse bag, Hoyoverse being the collective term for the games of Chinese developer miHoYo such as Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact. Their slogan was 'tech otakus save the world', which thanks to their cunning move of handing out large bags, was soon paraded all over the convention. I feel like the jury is still out on the impact (ha ha) of tech otakus on the world...

In the end, the last hour was spent briefly walking around to see the halls and then I left to say my goodbyes and hop back on the train. The journey back was totally straightforward. I finished reading my manga and drew some more train passengers, who were generally pretty happy to be drawn.

Cosplay

It's a con, there's gotta be cosplayers right? Sure enough, the crowd was peppered with stormtroopers, kitsune, army men, luffies and various spooky skull guys... I didn't get many photos but here's a couple.

Obligatory stormtroopers. Luckily, the inside of the con was airconditioned, those suits look toasty.

These three kindly stopped to pose for me. I don't know what game they're doing, Dead by Daylight maybe? DbD girls, tell me ^^'

This robot-girl cosplayer's costume is neat: when you look close you see it's made of old PC parts. Or at least the casings of them. I spotted a graphics card and an old VR headset. She also has built-in stilts so she towered over everyone, big respect. She was hanging out in the hall on Wednesday, so she might have been there in an official capacity, but I didn't get a chance to talk to her.

Observations of demographics and stuff

It's been a good long while since I've been to any sort of nerd convention. Mostly I've been to scifi/media fandom cons like Nine Worlds and Worldcon, or general nerd-shit cons like MCM Expo, and in the old old days, Warhammer cons like Game Day. But this event being specifically a gaming expo was pretty new to me.

Predictably the demographics skewed male (but not overwhelmingly) and white/East Asian (almost without exception). The various national organisations present were primarily European (which tracks for an event in Germany) but there were large stands e.g. promoting Korean game dev or the Guangzhao region of China. In the indie zone, there were a good handful of Japanese devs, and I spotted one game that was fully in JP. Here and there, you'd spot banners promoted other gaming expos - a lot in Europe, but also there is apparently a Gamescom Asia in Singapore, and a Tokyo Indie Games Summit which sounds pretty fun. By contrast, while I don't have any real stats to substantiate, I would say I saw very few organisations were promoting game devs from South America, Africa or Oceania.

Beyond that... this is very definitely a place for nerds, but there's a lot of different varieties of nerd you can be now. So sure, T-shirts with slogans and cargo shorts for many, but equally you could dress super goth, you could show off all your tattoos, you could go in your colourful coordinated kitsune cosplay or just wear some bright hair die. I'm confident I saw a few other girls from the isle of 🏳️‍⚧️, but 'hello I clocked you let's be friends' is not the best introduction even from another trans girl lmao - in general I didn't really talk to people besides the group I had arrived with. I think if I'd gone alone, it would not be the sort of con where you make a lot of friends, but who knows?

All in all, a solid adventure. I'll probably go again next year, if I can find somewhere cheaper to stay. I never did get to see the chocolate museum.

ok, story over - thanks for reading, nerd ;p

#gamescom #computer games #adventures of canmom

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alias-sam · 4 months

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Pierced by a Golden Soul

Chapter 42. Sleepover

Platonic Jojo's x Reader

Summary: Fate is a bizarre concept with countless more bizarre implications. In life sometimes such extraordinary events happen that the only reasoning left must be fate. The tragedies that constantly befall the Joestar bloodline for example may be the unluckiest series of cards drawn in human history, or perhaps the work of a greater power. There is no way to tell for sure. Had Dio Brando or Jonathan Joestar moved slightly on a divergent path the world itself would be left very different. The fate or luck of the noble Joestar bloodline has led to destruction of evil likes of the Pillar Men and DIO. This story is of a similar caliber to that of the other Joestars (as I am sure you are familiar with them). This is a story of lost souls, compassion, hope, and above all fate.

Word Count: 1,552

(Crosspost from Wattpad, full fic is already posted there.)

Your explanation of the past few weeks of your life was... complicated to say the least. But Vita held on to your every word.

"...and that leaves us where we are. Hopefully all of that makes at least a little sense."

"Wow." Vita breathed, looking up at you in awe. "You really did all that?"

"Among other things, yeah." You nodded. It was a long story, with a lot to explain, so you skipped a few details that you deemed too complicated or strange. "Anyways..." You groaned uncomfortably at the feeling of mud and sand in your clothes. "I should probably get going."

"You're in no condition to walk all the way home." Vita carefully tore his gaze from your fatigued form to the window. It was still raining heavily outside, so badly the sunset was completely blotted out by the storm clouds. "Can your mom pick you up?"

"Nope."Your mom didn't even own a car. She was also going to be worried sick if you didn't get home soon. "Got a phone I can borrow?" You asked bluntly. Vita nodded before leading you down to his living room. The two of you went as quietly as possible since Vita's parents didn't know you were there. He pointed you over to a phone hanging on the wall. You carefully typed your home phone number, anxiously waiting for your mother to pick up. Your heart nearly stopped when the line clicked. "H-"

"Y/n! Where have you been?!" Senora Jones' angry voice came over the line.

"Hello to you too."

"Y/n..." Your mother warned sternly, obviously in no mood for any teenage sarcasm. "Where are you? Are you okay? Why aren't you home yet?"

"I'm still at Vita's house. We sort of lost track of time." You explained timidly. After glancing out a nearby window at the horrendous storm outside you continued. "At this point I think I should just stay the night." You heard Senora Jones sigh across the line.

"Have you eaten? Do you have something to wear?"

"Yep." You answered after looking down at your mud-stained clothes dusted with sand.

"Fine, but we are having a serious talk about this tomorrow." Senora Jones relented.

"Okay... I love you."

"I love you too darling. Goodnight." The line clicked off. You stood there contemplating for a moment before becoming very aware of Vita's presence hovering over your shoulder.

"You're pretty good at that."

"Lying to my mom? That's not a compliment." You replied sadly. The air between the two of you became very stale as you headed back up to the refuge of Vita's room. It was obvious he thought the whole situation was an amazing adventure, it didn't seem he processed just how dangerous your life had become. Or the danger he could be in.

"So... stands." Vita finally said, breaking the silence as the two of you reached the massive staircase that led to the second floor. "What else can you tell me?"

"I'll admit, your stand is a little different compared to the ones I've seen. I didn't think a stand could possess living things."

"So even for a stand user I'm abnormal..." Vita muttered sadly.

"Not quite." You said quickly. "Compared to the crazy things I've seen the past two weeks your stand isn't too bad." You paused as you through about your experiences in the woods. "Just really really freaky when you aren't expecting it." You explained, sugarcoating just how terrifying his stand could be at times.

"What did you call yours again?" Vita asked.

"Golden Soul. Don't judge me for the name, I'm not the one who came up with it." You replied. "It was kind of a placeholder that stuck."

"Does mine get a name?" Vita looked at you curiously.

"If you want it to." You shrugged. At this point all of the stands you had interacted with had names. "Did you have one in mind?"

"Yep." Vita hopped excitedly before going completely silent. You waited patiently for the boy to elaborate, but you were only met with silence. Even as the two of you arrived back at his room, Vita hadn't said anything.

"...are you going to tell me what it is?"

"Eventually." Vita smiled and gave his signature wide-eyed head tilt. You sighed, remembering who exactly you were talking to. Vita was an enigma, but that's why you liked him. As you were about to follow your friend into his room, you heard a floorboard creak down the hallway. When you turned towards the noise, you only caught a glance at Mannesh's retreating form. You turned back to Vita, curious if he had seen what you did, but the boy was already searching through his room for something. After looking off into the darkened hallway in the direction Mannesh had fled, Vita called for your attention.

"You aren't staying in those clothes." He said sternly, grabbing you by the shoulders and dragging you all the way back into his room. Before you knew what was happening, the boy threw a few clothing items at you and directed you to the bathroom attached to his bedroom. You examined the clothes hesitantly before setting them aside and taking a shower to wash the forest grime from your skin.

Vita was decently shorter and skinnier than you, however he managed to find one of his oversized hoodies and some gym shorts, which still managed to be a little snug on you.

Figuring out your sleeping arrangements for the night became a debate as soon as you finished showering. Vita insisted for you to take his bed, but you didn't want to impose on his space. During the little debacle it came to light that neither of you had experienced a sleepover before, so you weren't sure about the protocol. When you insisted on making your own bed on the floor Vita objected, claiming it was ridiculous for you to sleep on hardwood while being his guest.

That's what brought the both of you to sleeping on Vita's bedroom floor. The boy had wrapped himself in blankets and pillows, while you simply laid on the bare floor with a pillow under your head. Vita asked if you were comfortable and once again insisted you at least have a blanket before throwing one over you.

Even after saying goodnight and dozing for awhile, you could hear Vita fidgeting beside you.

"Whats up V?" You sighed, opening your eyes and turning to face the boy in the dark.

"If its not too much trouble..." Vita slowly also turned to face you. "What were your parents like?"

"What?" You muttered, not entirely sure what to make of the question. Even in the dark, you could see Vita's expression turn to panic.

"Its just- earlier in the driveway you mentioned your dad sucked. I was just... hoping to compare notes." He rambled. "If you don't want to get into it that's fine..." Vita quickly backpedaled. "Sorry, that was stupid and tactless! Forget I said anything." The boy laughed nervously before turning over on his other side to face away from you. Silence ensued. You gently poked the boy's back, getting his attention.

"Its fine." You reassured Vita calmly. "The thing is, I don't actually remember anything about him. His name isn't even on my birth certificate. As for my mom... I try not to think about it." Your expression and voice fell slightly. "My life got a lot better when she left." It was true. At this point, when you tried thinking of your biological mother's face, there was only a dark shadow. Besides, Senora Jones was your mother now.

"I see..." Vita looked at your contemplative expression curiously, but decided to leave the subject alone.

"I have a question." You said, finally breaking out of your diverging train of thought. "Did you interact with someone named Keicho Nijimura? Or maybe get shot with some kind of golden arrow?"

"What?" Vita asked with a raised eyebrow. For a moment he thought the question was some sort of joke, but after realizing your seriousness he shook his head. "No."

"Then, when did you become a stand user? Do you remember?"

"I'm not entirely sure, but..." Vita trailed off, thinking for a moment. "When my bugs were attacking you, I started feeling more energized. And when you stopped them, that energized feeling stopped." His body gave off a familiar orange glow as he unconsciously activated his ability. You watched as Harvey and Rodger crawled over Vita's blankets and into his lap. "I felt that energized feeling for the first time when I became well enough to leave the house. I didn't know how to describe it before, but Im thinking I developed my stand around then." Vita gently ran his thumb over Harvey's exoskeleton while deep in thought. "Its hard to explain, but I just sort of feel it, yaknow?"

"Yeah..." You had experienced a similar feeling firsthand. Even if you didn't per say know how Golden Soul worked, you just knew that it did. It was a similar story for Tim, you knew that. And it was probably a similar story for most stand users. "Maybe you're like me then. You might have been born a stand user."

"Like you?"

"According to some friends of mine that are also stand users, one or both of my parents were stand users, that's just how it works I guess." You turned so you were on your back again. "Maybe it's the same for you."

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24hrmajimachan · 4 years

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Here’s what the cool kids call a Starter Call. Capping at 4 but if we’ve interacted before then feel free to like past. Heck, like past that anyways. Just the first 4 are the guaranteed spots, you get me?

#isola rp ad #sadly not for the event since i'll probably skip it this time #i came in at the final stretch but it ain't for me chief:tm:#i'll get to these sometime later today or tomorrow depending on when i feel better

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af1899 · 3 years

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FEH - update notes [5.10.0] + thoughts and reactions

So, I.S. posted the release notes for the Fire Emblem Heroes 5.10.0 software update with quite the delay, but you can see them here.

I'll comment on each point of interest right below, skipping on less relevant stuff Imo.

Tfw you were saving for the merge but it'll come at you for free the same month

I was planning to save for Halloween Kagero (and use the opportunity to perhaps get a merge on either/both Halloween Myrrh/Mia) but her first merge is literally coming my way with enough participation in events and I'm excited to get it of course, I'm definitely gonna work my way through it. My plan now is to summon all but blue in her rerun banner in the first round, then wait for whatever banner could be of my interest before deciding if I wanna keep trying... at least this free merge will help me...

If you're looking to fodder her, she has [Bottle Juice+] (always active [Guard] positive effect) or [Bold Fighter 3] as noteworthy fodder, you'd probably prefer the former since it's seasonal and somewhat useful, but the latter is also great.

This time, both 5★ [Combat Manuals] are seasonals, the other is Halloween L'Arachel who has a bunch of nice fodder options, I'm taking [Madness Flask+] (grants same effect as [Fury 3]) and [Rally Atk/Spd+] as I think they are among her best comboes (as for who will get those, it's been decided to be Female Robin... I don't really like at all the Lv.2 {Tactic} effect and I'd daresay Cecilia is better for colorless/blue checking overall, so I'll delegate that role to her and do something else with Female Robin... who should start to get some premium skills), but should you need to plan ahead who needs some of her skills, she has the mentioned ones plus [Swift Sparrow 2] and [Spd/Res Ruse 3].

You may also be able to get that Young Innes, a good practice is to save all {Divine Codes: Ephemera} of the month until no more are obtainable, then pick the [Combat Manuals] you need, otherwise you may be risking to lose one of the free 5★ ones or even the [Heroic Grails] one — which you shouldn't — but with active participation you should get something over 700 to get those.

The red refines batch

This time, everyone is only red, like... why? But at least, some units that have been waiting on those refines will finally get them, Soleil has sure been waiting for long, hasn't she? I'm not excited for her at all but I'm glad for her fans.

I'm moreso looking forward to Laevatein's refine, even though I don't have special admiration for her, she's still an interesting character indeed, I actually have her but never built her properly... and I'm glad I did wait this long since a refine should give me a better direction on how she should be built:

Bridal Tharja was also due her refine since she was the next seasonal with preference weapon waiting on a refine, next should be Summer Tana, which I'm hyped about!

I'm also curious about Julius too, sadly I foddered one of the free copies but I still have some around should I end up building him someday, hopefully his refine will give me a "oomph!" to get on it.

Wrapping things up

Gonna start to finish this post talking about this new feature, from the looks of it, the [Memento Events] (cinematics you watch to get [Rapport] and rewards) can be now obtained by choice using a specific resource that's locked to the current season of the [Heroes Journey] event, so you should use them before they vanish...

[Memento Events] can now be watched anytime, instead of when [Heroes Journey] is around.

I think this is a nice feature, it doesn't do much to improve the event's overall rating Imo, but it's nice that at least, I.S. allows us to somehow relive it anytime.

I realized I've never gave my opinion on this event... I'll rate it at 7.5/10, it's nice to have more interaction with our units, we can even hang out with our favorite character by bringing along [My Summoner] in a growing variety of sceneries, some of them being really heartwarming, but the rewards are slightly underwhelming barring [Orbs], and asides the cutscene stuff you have to partake in [Heroic Ordeals]-esque battles that cost [Stamina].

Aaanyway...

...Yes, I consider this part important, I'm still waiting to put "No Justice" (whichever version) from Fire Emblem Fates everywhere in the game, best track of the game hands down.

This is more important though:

...There'll be a maintenance period, we've been notified before I believe, neverthless, it doesn't hurt to add the periods here and remind you the game will be unplayable during this period, the seasonal banner comes the 7th.

Use this clock for reference... so you can have an idea of when maintenance starts; for me, it starts at 9 p.m. the 5th and ends the next day at 2 a.m. (PT is 4 hours behind GMT-3), it's likely we'll get the trailer in-between, and the update roll out at 8 p.m. (GMT-3) at the usual day before the banner, do note they don't say when the update will be out.

As for you, use said clock to determine what's the difference between the PT timezone and yours, then use that difference to go forward/back in the time periods that appear above.

For example, it's 10/1 11:50 p.m. in PT, and 10/2 3:50 a.m. in GMT-3, I can see there's a 4 hour difference, so I add 4 hours to each timestamp I.S. gives me: "10/5/2021 10:00 p.m." in PT is "11/5/2021 2:00 a.m." in GMT-3. (The date format in my country is DD/MM/YYYY but normally I'll use the American format here, to avoid confusing the English-speaking community)

The update details are now in the bulletin board in-game but figured you could keep this advice for the future, the in-game notices already convert the timestampts to your timezone.

In any case, that's all for this post and I hope the info here has proven to be helpful to you!

Btw... I just spent 4 [Orbs] on [Performing Arts] revival banner (had a circle with three red stones, 1 colorless and 1 green, chose the latter first then the former) and got nothing special on either, just some random low rarity units... meh, I'll just keep saving.

#feh #fe heroes #fire emblem heroes #refines

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hoopdiddies · 5 years

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I'm Not Over You // Ben Hardy x Reader (Part 8)

A/N: Ayoooo. Hey guys, here's part 8 and I'm so sorry if the previous chapters kind of frustrated you. I didn't really mean for it to but I hope you enjoy this one. I'll be posting 9 tomorrow or the day atfter. Thanks again for your feedbacks, y'all motivate me a lot ^^ ♥ (My Wi-Fi has prejudice against tumblr rn)

Summary: You had always loved Ben ever since you two met in university and became the best of friends. That feeling went out like a candle flame when the two of you parted ways until he re-entered your life...but this time with someone who has already occupied his heart.

Warnings: Angst, bois. ANGST (I cried like a sucker during one part I wrote 😔) mention of blood, yet again drinking, some speckles of fluff, and unnecessary dialogue if you look closely enough :^ I feel like a terrible writer today

WC: 4k I think?

Tags: As always my taglist is always open uwu

@haendel-me-with-care

@mrsdoradominguez-barnes

@mickmoon

@lakef

@mrsmazzello

@valeriecarolinaw

@queen-turtle-boiii

@hardzzellos

"You look...beautiful." Ben's comment is indeed one thing to start the night. It's not like he's never told you that before–it's just the tone in which he has said it in is...different. A foreign tone never been released from his lips until you. You look up at him through your lashes, giving him a slanted smile accompanied by a bubbly chuckle. "Thanks. You smell nice too."

The corner of his eyes crinkle as his curving lips push them up. As expected, Rosy chimes in between you and Ben almost too quickly, the blurry speed in which she has arrived in making you gasp. "Excuse me, babe. You got interviewers on your tail and I- oh," her brows shoot up upon seeing you, seemingly haughty eyes flicking up and down your outfit in mild contempt.

"Surprised to see you here as well." The smile plastered on her face couldn't be any more forced than it is.

Girl, chill. Anti-aging soaps are not easy to manufacture these days. You begin holding your breath to prevent yourself from bursting into a fit from hearing that thought ring in your head. You shrug, garnering the guts to shift on your heightened stance and lean in an inch close.

"You're not the only one with a celebrity date."

You turn around too early to gauge her reaction, finally exhaling from holding your breath too long. You can finally conclude that she's had an effortless transition from being benign to far from being benign. The smoothest one-eighty you've ever witnessed. You remember her clearly being downright considerate of you the first time you met her yet now is a whole different story. You wonder if she was actually ever considerate.

As the boys and Lucy indulge in brief interviews, you stand behind the scenes and get the first-class chance of conversing with Brian. He's readily the coolest person in the house right now, bantering with you every once in three, fascinating topics. How fortunate are you to be in the spot a million Queen fans would die for but of course, you don't want to leave out Roger who - by a landslide - makes you wish you could wheeze and snort all you want if you weren't in a luxury event such as the Oscars. He seemed intimidating for you at first but as he joined in your talk with Brian, things escalated real quickly.

With the pre-ceremony interviews and the clinking of champagne glasses dampening, you begin hunting for your seats in the theatre.

Before you know it, you are informed that only a specific line of people are given exclusivity for the seats. And it shocks you that Joe, Allen, Ben and Gwilym are not given that card when in fact they were part of the very film that brought forth a new generation of fans.You shake your head disappointingly albeit contented that Rami, Lucy, Brian and Roger and their wives are part of the exclusivity.

Utterly determined to know the results - by Joe's 'sovereign' vote - the rest of you hang around in the waiting area, focusing on the ceremony rights shown on TV. Quietly sitting through the results, you all whoop and applaud at the mention of Bohemian Rhapsody obtaining three awards straight– your cheers amping up a notch as Rami brings home the 'Best Actor' award. Joe begins filming your reactions for Instagram, zooming into Gwilym, Ben and Allen's faces for most of the video. You throw your head back in laughter at how goofy the boys look; a bunch of men in their 30's bouncing up and down with one of them documenting the entire episode. At one point, Gwilym yanks as you in for a group hug, mercilessly crushing you in between their muscles– the disorienting experience now being something you wish you would never undergo again.

As Rami's thank you speech unfolds, you pay attention closely. The sentimentality of him lovingly thanking Lucy for being his anchor after dedicating his award to Freddie Mercury is just overwhelming and you wish you could tear up but your mascara would be waste. You're certain that made Brian and Roger emotional as well.

An hour after the ceremony, you all head down to the Vanity Fair after party in the same limo you had arrived in with every single person in the group eager to get the night progressing. Regardless of saying that these type of parties are not up to your speed, you try to get along with the evening and revel in what you know would be your last night with them. Sadly enough, Roger and Brian had to skip out on this with rough schedules on their hands. The moment they walked out of the place, they spent nearly half an hour congratulating the boys and having other celebrities congratulate them.

As you are seated across Ben and Rosy, you can't help but notice him acting a little distant from her. She's all nuzzled up against his arm and he is nowhere close to returning the favor. He's just...lost in thought, staring out the tinted window. It's still early to assume that in all the hours you were within a close range to them, Ben only ever acted aloof, giving her attention when the situation required it.

Perhaps a lover's tiff took place?

"Yeah, I'm wondering the same thing too." Mimicking your position, Joe calling you back to Earth makes you gasp a little. You close your eyes and look at your fingers blankly after recovering, sighing. "I think we should end all this pretending. It was simply a cop-out in the first place."

"I know," he whispers audibly enough for only you to hear, running his fingers through his fiery, red hair, "you should probably come clean soon enough before you leave."

And that you will. At least, you'll try.

In your defense, you thought the after party would host a fancy banquet but seated around with celebratory drinks -considerable with something classy - and attendees breaking down on the dance floor is a rather okay scene as well. As long as you don't end up like the night you were invited out for a drink with your colleagues, you should be fine for the most part.

The boys and Lucy have fully immersed themselves in the beat of the music while you've decided to remain stationary with one glass of wine, the only glass you'll be having for the rest of the party.

The entire time you gawk at them amusingly as they break out their dance moves, your eyes always find their way to Ben, who makes you snort painfully from all his antics as he moves along with Joe. They're a mess with their ties and buttons undone from all the movement and the sight inspires you to stay put.

But oh dear lord, can Ben dance like an uncle.

Keeping your attention on them, a descending weight sinks down next to you. You pay no mind to whoever it is but do as her voice interrupts your thoughts. "I hope your eye is on the right person, honey." You click your tongue in exasperation, turning your body towards Rosy and her developing, bitchy tendencies, scoffing as you place your drink down to set things straight with her. "First of all, what did I ever do to you to deserve this kind of talk?"

She smacks her lips together at you, simpering. "You didn't think I'd notice?"

"What are you talking about?"

Her almond eyes narrow as if she's trying pin you down with a warning. "Please, don't act like I never noticed. You're overstepping that boundary between you and your best friend- my fiance." Okay, so she's noticed. But your neutralized expression is not going to be giving away anything.

You incline your head to one side in hopes that the facade you're pulling would decompress her suspicion. "I have no idea what you're talking about. Ben is like my brother. "

Grabbing her drink from the table, she sighs and stands up, hands firm on her hips and face silhouetted under the beaming light nevertheless giving you a transpiercing glower in the manner of seeing through the makeshift barrier you've pulled up. "He better be. Try backing off every once in a while when I'm around."

To your dismay, you snap inside, whipping your head up at her and replying sharply to make the message crystal clear. "Rosy, you have no idea." Unable to withstand the atmosphere you're in, you put great emphasis on your words and snatch your drink, walking out to the mini garden to finish what's left of your wine without having to bear being around her.

The question is unadulterated and obvious– bold and italicized if you wish to give it a stretch and clarify it.

Why is Ben still with her?

Is he that clueless not to realize it?

You don't want to pry the answer out yourself but ruminating on it, Rosy pulling off a full one-eighty only when Ben's at an appropriate distance for her to squeeze you between her fingers is just about good as a reason as anything. Your unwavering feelings for Ben are clearly perceived by her– from the way you had reacted the day he introduced you both to each other to not so long ago.

You wonder if Ben ever took heed of her growing attitude towards you.

Finishing your wine in one, immediate, swig, you place it down on the marble surface before you with your fingers cradling the stem of the glass– relishing the spicy liquid flushing down your throat.

At the extent of overexerting themselves, Joe and Gwilym flop down back on their seats like jelly, tuckered out from the unconventional combination of alcohol and unsteady movement. Panting like a dog who had just participated in a marathon, Joe shrugs out of his blazer and tosses it over his shoulder, silently wishing the ice in the bucket that held the bottle of wine would save him from the grinding heat of the wine he had just about five minutes ago.

"Mate, you're deep in the heat." Gwilym comments as it is followed by a gentle laugh on how Joe's glistening in sweat under the dimming lights. He hands him a partially bland look before wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. Lucy and Rami are situated at other end of the place enjoying a chat with another party of people meanwhile Ben and Rosy are nowhere near any of them. Until, of course, they reappear from God knows where and Ben suddenly asks Joe where you've gone.

"I-I don't know." He says after a hefty sigh. Somewhat eager to find you, Ben begins excusing himself from Rosy whom which he has spiked a bitter reaction from for sharing his supposed time for her with you. Fed up and jealous in the slightest, Rosy snaps at him.

"Okay Ben, why do you always have to skip in between minutes to hang out with her even when we're together?"

He pauses from turning around completely and sighs. "She's my friend, babe."

Unwilling to accept his statement, she claims. "Well your friend is getting in the way of what was supposed to be our time together! Can't you set aside a limited time for her?! " This has alarmed Joe and Gwilym but it isn't their business to butt in and stop a quarrel from breaking out. Unless it turns physical, which is doubtful to happen. Ben, a little frustrated but still tolerant of her ongoing skittish behavior, tries to reassure her. "I know that, alright? But something's been bothering her for days and I just want to make sure she's doing alright."

"Can't you leave the worrying to Joe? He's her bloody boyfriend anyway!"

Wagging his forefinger at Rosy, Joe grumbles as he is not having any of her talk, scrunching his brows at her.

Grabbing her shoulders gently, Ben tries to relieve her of tension and assures her once more, but with a well-known fact she obviously still doesn't accept. "Joe's a little drunk. She's like...a sister to me," it really took him an abrupt pause to say 'sister', "besides, you're my fiancee. There's nothing to be jealous about."

"Why does she still have to be a part of your life? Our life?" Now that's a question that has just shifted Ben to a farther side. His brows knit together in momentary disbelief, unable to take her words in a good light. "God, Rosy! She's been around for so long! At least make an effort to accept her!" Like a slap to her conceitedness, Ben turns on his heels and walks out to find you. Leaving Rosy a steaming mess of insecurity.

However slightly drunk, Joe mutters to himself as he makes sure neither Gwilym or especially Rosy hears his words stumble out in a whisper. "You've grown a pair, Ben. You've grown a pair."

You've been outside for nearly half an hour; wine glass empty and your hair, along with the skirt of your dress, drifting along the harmless breeze and the waning moon spilling some light from behind the shaded clouds. Though there were a couple of people that found their way here to get some respite not too long ago, you're just glad to have this space to breathe in from the draining background of the party.

As you lose yourself in thought, a certain voice brings you back to reality.

"Nice night out, huh?"

Turning around slowly, you are met with the cool, forest green irises that you've grown to never tire of seeing. "I'm surprised you're still well-kept in that suit despite the scene back in there. " You give in to a chuckle, your smile pulling Ben to approach your side leisurely. "It's my Oscars suit. Something worthy of protecting."

"Hah!"

As he rests his elbows on the surface next to you, the distance between your skins makes you a tad bit anxious. Comfortable silence falls upon you both– for Ben at least, it's tolerable however you're not taking it well, not even in the slightest. You rub your hands together and sigh, prompting Ben to finally ask you.

"You alright? You've been tensing up lately."

You nod, closing your eyes and opening them afterwards. "This dress is just depleting me of bodily warmth." Half a lie told by you. Acting on his thoughts, Ben begins taking his blazer off but you stop him mid-shrug. "Keep it on. You look better with it on."

"This would look better on you, you're obviously freezing." He's really keen on keeping you warm but you're just as so in letting him keep it on. "I'm serious. Keep it on. I'm fine."

What can he do but just give in? When you're serious, you're serious. He lifts his shoulder in half a shrug, ducking his head as an idea flickers in his head like a bulb. He wants to relive something that has been lost through the years and it's only right that he does...now that you have less than a day to disappear from his life completely.

"Y/N..." He muses gently. You raise your brows at him in question, taken by surprise that he has his hand held out to you. Bewildered, you raise your finger to ask what on Earth he's doing. "What- what are you doing?"

He licks his bottom lip and the smile on his face becomes bashful but certain. "What else does it look like I'm doing, silly girl? Asking you to dance."

You're sorry that you couldn't keep a snort at bay. "Pfft. Ben, I think you're asking the wrong girl."

"Just let me dance with my best friend."

"Wow! That's noble of you," your chuckles can not be contained, even so much as restraining yourself from letting the blush spread throughout your face. But he has the fragments of what was once your heart, so why wouldn't you? You slip your hand in his and the grin on his face widens. "There we go. Easy does it." He breathes out, his voice getting gravelly. You hit him softly on his chest for cooing, at the same time realizing that his voice becomes that way only and only when he's nervous– something uncommon between you both. As his hands find home on your waist, you throw your arms around his neck, laughing at how awkward yet funny it feels. What a huge nod to how you danced with him on Homecoming.

"You're so weird sometimes. You got your fiancee, why don't you dance with her?" Getting used to the sting of referring to Rosy, you question anyway. He initiates with a sway before responding. "I already have. But, " he diverts his heavy-lidded eyes from staring off the distance to yours and suddenly, it feels like you're home, "I want to finish that Homecoming dance."

You find yourself speechless as you shift your unflinching gaze at him and he at you, your bodies swaying along the concrete and in perfect sync, coincidentally to the sudden change in music from inside, compared to the bittersweet night you had before the day that parted you both. Thin silence hangs in the atmosphere but only because you are looking at each other in a way you never have in your entire lives.

Instinctively, you break your gaze from his and rest your head on his chest, your hair falling into your face as your eyes screw shut. You hear his heart skip a beat, unusually in the same manner yours always has. Feeling your head follow the rise and fall of his chest tickles you inside– temporarily making you forget about the pain of soon letting him go and producing a sense of safety.

Maybe it's because of exhaustion? You wonder. He doesn't hesitate to stroke your hair and revel in the moment as well, easing you in closer to his body without breaking the sway. "You'll be there on my wedding day, right?" He asks nervously, his question pulling you back to the harshest reality.

You open your eyes slowly, your lips trembling as you let out the saddest sigh, feeling your chest tighten from the anxiety of soon telling him the truth.

"Y/N?" Your tensed-up body alarms him and so he breaks away and lifts your chin up lightly, being met with glossy and regretful eyes. His messy brows drawing together in slight worry. "What's wrong?"

Everything.

However uneager to push him away, you do, escaping his warm embrace. "Ben, I..."

He's dreading for your answer, painfully anticipating for the best or the worst to the point where his hands are lubricating with sweat.

You swallow the lump that has hardened in the back of your throat, pressing your lips together to prevent a sob from escaping and shunning his prying stare. "I can't..."

Joe's half-assed predicted, worst case scenario is slowly unfolding.

"What are you saying? You're not- you're not going...to be there?"

You bite down on your lip hard enough to make it swell, shaking your head and casting a sideways glance.

"Why?"

Tell the truth. Just tell him and you're either getting a support or another jab to the heart.

"Y/N, please! Tell me why!"

"I'm leaving, Ben!" The words didn't seem to stumble or carelessly flop from your lips, in fact it speared through him clean thereby catching him off guard. His eyes have fallen gravely, lips parted due to shock.

"I got into a medical school I had previously applied for. And I'm leaving," you snap your eyes shut and open them in tears once you've looked up at him, "on your wedding day."

"Why didn't- why didn't you ever tell me?" He's pleading for your explanation, barely clinging on to the belief that you would always tell him things.

You don't answer as you are battling to muster up the courage to say it.

"Y/N, please! You never tell me anything these days! And this- this news, it's important! You're leaving on the day I need you the most, and you never bothered to squeak a word about it! Not a single, bloody word! Why?!" He's racked up with disbelief and apparently, anger. Eyes rimmed, clouded with mixed emotions and face full-blown red from the pressure.

He grabs you by the shoulders and pleads heartbreakingly, his lively voice reduced to but a whisper. "Why..."

"I-" You're still holding back.

"Say it! "

"You'd soon forget about me, Ben!" You inhale sharply as you add, croaks present in your voice while you take two steps further away from him as you lament. "I'm hopelessly in love with you, you idiot! I've always been. I try- I try to brush off every single prick that stems out every minute I realize that you already belong to someone else..."

"Y/N-"

"I figured not telling you would help me let go. And it's the only way I can...because screw you for being a clueless, irreplaceable bloke! I can't imagine my bloody life without you in it! I don't think I can ever love anybody else...but you, "

"Y/N..."

You don't let him finish and achingly throw your hands to your chest as a gesture, pounding your chest thrice as you're finally wearing your heart on your sleeve. "I can't blame you for being oblivious to my feelings. You're committed to Rosy...and as much as I want to see you happy, I don't want to stand idly by and- and feel this way when you've pledged your heart to her...I want to forget and for you to forget me," As the warm tears you've held back for so long roll down your cheeks, you hug yourself through the pain, "I want you to be happy without worrying how I'd feel. And disappearing from your life, is the only way I know how..."

"Y/N, please, don't say that- don't do this...you can't do this...you c-can't..." With hands shaking, he strides towards you to haul you in back into his arms but you take an agonizing step away, stopping him in his tracks. "I have to. I...I want to. It hurts so much, Ben. It always has but promise me," even if you have taken a step away, you take it upon yourself to take those steps close to him and cup his cheek with a cold hand, "promise me you'll revel in that happiness. It's going to hurt being away from you. But it's going to hurt even more if I stay. And watch...my best friend grow old with someone else." Finally rendering him wordless, you shake your head and whisk past him back into the party which has died down a bit, leaving him a pondering mess out under the bleak sky.

"How could I be happy without you..."

You'd gladly do anything to go back home right now. The weight of what just took place is crushing you and the need to escape is fuming. But the thing is, Ben was never one to let you go easy.

He never did and possibly never will.

He sniffles and inhales sharply, jogging in after you and calling out your name amidst the constant noise and chatters. "Y/N, wait!"

You reach your table just in time to see everyone still gathered around with drinks raised and laughs released but you have to excuse yourself deliberately. "Y/N? Where have you been? What's the rush?" Lucy notices your hastened movement and places her hand on your tense shoulder. You snap your head at her with your purse in your grasp, shaking your head and apologizing that you have to leave, forgetting to rid your eyes of tears; the sight of you amping up Lucy's concern therefore leading you into her embrace. "Oh my god, are you okay? What happened?"

"Y/N!"

Ben's distant but audible voice echoing through the place just sends you panicking inside. "I'm so sorry, Luce. I have to go."

"Y/N, wait! What's wrong?"

Just as the rest could react to Lucy calling out for you and Ben dashing past them to catch up, you've already disappeared into the crowd, headed out the theatre to take a cab ride back to the hotel. Relentless to let you go, Ben follows your trail, spurring a quick frenzy from the rest and having them pursue Ben in return. Once you reach the outskirts of the pavements, you don't think twice before crossing the highway with your focus hardened before you.

Gasping for air upon exiting the theatre, Ben glances around in haste and finally spots you marching down the street oblivious to your surroundings despite treading along the pedestrian lane. His eyes widen in dread and acting on a fight or flight reaction, he yells for your attention as he speeds down the street to pull you in or rather save you from a possibility of getting hurt with all the rushing vehicles and careless drivers. "Y/N! Y/N!"

The boys, Lucy and Rosy arrive outside just in time to witness Ben race towards your direction and in a moment of feeling time slow down, you feel your heart in your throat at the late flash of nearing headlights, to add a heavy force propelling you off your feet and onto the other side of the road. What gets you up from the ground are the mixed screams of a familiar bunch and the sight of a bloodied man in white laying unconscious on the cold surface of the road.

White noise suddenly fills your ears instead of your own voice as you scream out his name.

#borhap #queen #ben hardy #ben hardy imagine #ben hardy x reader #borhap cast #borhap cast x reader #borhap imagine #ben hardy fanfic #imagine #fanfic

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the-only-villain-here-is-me · 6 years

Text

Suspicious Nerdivity

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Pairing: Reader x Spencer Reid

Warnings: Violence, Language, Murder

Requested By: @lostmermaidponyo

Prompt: "Imagine meeting Reid at comicon and getting along great, only to be a suspect on his next case."

Note: I am so sorry this took so long to get up!!! Everything's been so crazy lately I kind of had to back burner it, but thankfully, I have finished it up. I hope you like it! :)

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"You wouldn't dare!" You scream at your friend, pawing for her phone as you weave in and out of the massive cluster of people; occasionally pausing to gawk in admiration at them.

You see; this sort of gawking is socially acceptable at the event you're at. Currently, you are surrounded by masses of cosplayers at the annual Washington DC Comic Con.

There are Hermiones, Deadpools and Spider-Men, there are Doctor Whos, Sherlocks and Dean Winchesters. It's like a dream come true...the only problem is you had to call in sick to attend as you didn't have enough vacation hours to last the entire week.

Cue your friend holding the knowledge you gifted her with as ammunition to get whatever she wanted from the various booths peppering the room.

"Fine, I concede!" You yell ahead to her, catching up long enough to snatch her phone and bolting off.

"Cheater!" She screams behind you as she gives chase.

You only grin in delight as you high five a Deadpool and plow on through the massive crowd.

You also just so happen to try to plow through a man you hadn't noticed in your path. To say the action worked is a severe overstatement; instead, you bounce off the scrawny man and land smack dab on his sonic screwdriver with a sickening crack.

"Oh my god; I'm so freaking sorry!" You exclaim hurriedly as you kneel forward to pick up the pieces of his screwdriver, banging your head against his as he has the same idea as you.

Holding your aching head, you shake off the pain and start to stand up, wordlessly taking the hand he has offered out to you.

"Are you ok?" He questions softly, worry cast across his features as he eyes you.

"Um, yeah; I should probably be asking you that though seeing as how I just rammed into you," You sigh embarrassedly, peering down at your feet awkwardly as a small smirk flutters across his lips.

"Well 1 in 29 people are 50% clumsier than the national average so I wouldn't hold it against yourself," He chuckles, fixing the felt hat topping a mess of curling, chestnut locks.

"Oh yeah, that makes me feel a lot better!" You reply jokingly, slapping his arm lightly.

"I'm Spencer Reid; what's your name?" He questions curiously, waiting expectingly for your answer.

"I'm (y/n) (y/l/n), nice to meet you Spencer," You smile before your friend comes barging up, rambling about you taking her phone until she notices Spencer.

"Ooh, he's fluoride, iodine, and neon!" She whispers to you before snatching away her phone.

"Go get him tiger!" She growls in your ear before skipping off to check out the booths.

"Listen; I'm really sorry about your sonic screwdriver; can I get you a new one?" You question bashfully, feeling your cheeks heat up in embarrassment.

"No, it's fine; I'll just pick a new one up from one of the booths here," Spencer reassures you, his lips tugging back into a small smile.

"Well; then I'll have to buy you dinner to make up for it," You blurt out, a sense of confidence overwhelming you as the man looks taken aback by your blunt offer.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" He questions curiously, his eyebrow cocking slightly.

"Definitely; here's my number so we can set up a date and time," You grin happily, grabbing a pen and paper from one of the booths beside you, ignoring the glare the older woman running it is sending you.

Passing him your number, he smiles and yanks out his phone; entering your digits into the phone before scribbling his own number on the back of the paper for you.

Suddenly, his phone lights up and he sighs; staring down at the bright screen warning of an incoming call.

"I have to take this," He sulks, tapping the accept icon and pressing the phone close to his ear.

"Reid here," He greets into the phone, murmuring every so often in response the person on the end of the line before hanging up.

"I have to run; but I'll call you?" He offers sheepishly, running his hand through his tousled locks awkwardly.

"Alright; I'll be waiting," You respond with a smirk.

"Great!" He exclaims, starting to take off.

"Don't be a stranger Spencer!" You yell after him, grinning as the lanky man darts between the crowd.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You sip your cup of water carefully, gazing around the bland grey room you're in as you try to determine why you are here.

Soon, the door to the interrogation room flies open and Spencer enters, accompanied by a serious looking man with dark brown hair and a thin lip.

"(Y/n) (Y/l/n); that's your name I'm told?" The serious man questions gruffly as you eye him wearily.

Ignoring him, you turn to Spencer and exclaim; "When I said don't be a stranger; I didn't mean this!"

"(Y/n), I'm sorry but we do have reasons to believe t-" He starts softly before you cut him off.

"Reasons to believe what?" You huff, "To believe that I would kill those men?"

Spencer nods sadly and you roll your eyes in disbelief.

"Reid; please wait outside," The man beside Spencer orders.

"But Hotch-" He tries to plead in vain, but in the end, he leaves the room.

"You were spotted on multiple cameras in or around the vicinity of where three bodies were discovered near a local Comic Con you were attending; can anyone account for your whereabouts around the times that these men were killed?" The man, Agent Hotch it seems, questions; laying out a spread of gory crime scene photos depicting the victims.

Your mind flutters back to Comic Con, and when you had heard of the heinous crimes...

"Hey, what's going on?" You question curiously as a throng of people gather on the front lawn of the Comic Con venue, staring across the street at an influx of police cars forming a blockade in front of your hotel.

"I heard some teens discovered a couple of bodies in the hotel trash; said they were torn up pretty badly," A man dressed as Castiel whistles from beside you.

As you watch, you hear footsteps nearing you and you turn slightly to notice your friend join the crowd of onlookers.

"Why'd you change; I loved your Lucifer costume!" You whine to your friend, noticing she had changed from her Lucifer costume into a ratty pair of jeans two sizes too big and a stained flannel that smelled slightly of cigarettes.

"I dropped some food on it," She murmurs, a bit preoccupied as she watches entranced as the coroners pull up to the hotel.

"Look, the FBI is here!" A woman dressed as Sam Winchester on your left exclaims, her hand flying instinctively to her own fake credentials.

For some odd reason, your friend's face seems to flush an odd pale at the mention and look of anger bubbles across her face.

"Not the exact time; but my friend can confirm that I was in the crowd watching you guys pull in," You reply, your voice barely above a fearful whisper at the thinly veiled accusation of murder.

"We were called in for two other murders before the other three; you also happened to be captured on camera at a gas station not too far from the first two," Agent Hotch growls lowly, making you gulp in fear.

"Wait, was Agent Reid undercover to catch me for something I didn't even do?" You question out loud increduolously, eyes widening.

"No, Agent Reid was not undercover; he recognized your face on security cam footage later after he left the Comic Con," Agent Hotch replies cooly, peeling back his papers as he searches through the manilla file.

Suddenly, the interrogation room door flies open; startling you as Spencer Reid himself rushes in.

"Hotch; it isn't her!" He exclaims excitedly, his eyes wide.

"Wow, what took you so long?" You quip jokingly, rolling your eyes.

"Reid, what are you talking about?" Agent Hotch practically hisses, his eyes flickering between you and Spencer.

"Garcia reviewed the tapes from the gas station and since we weren't looking for it; we didn't see that (y/n)'s friend also pulled into that same gas station a few hours after time of death," He almost sputters, as your heart starts to beat wildly at what is being implied.

"How long was your friend in the crowd with you (y/n)?" Agent Hotch questions gruffy, eyeing you carefully.

"She went back to the hotel around breakfast time and then I saw her a couple hours later when she joined the crowd after you guys pulled in," You reply, piecing together the timeline in your head.

"Does this man look familiar to you (y/n)?" Agent Hotch asks, sliding a glossy photo towards you, which isn't an easy feat to examine it with your hands cuffed to the table.

Craning your neck, you notice the man who's on it is very familiar to you, in fact.

"He's the one who was flirting with (y/f/n) this morning; he gave her his number; why do you ask?" You question curiously as Agent Hotch stands and motions for the guard in the corner.

"Release her; we're dropping all the charges," Agent Hotch instructs the man, who nods his head silently and twists the key in your handcuffs to release your swollen, red wrists.

You storm past Spencer wordlessly, in a tizzy of anger; waiting at the front desk for your belongings to be returned to you.

"(Y/n), I'm sorry; we had to bring you in, you were at or near both crime scenes and you fit the profile," Spencer sighs apologetically.

"If you're going to arrest me, at least wait till after the first date Spencer; now we have to reschedule it!" You exclaim with a huff, signing a few forms the receptionist shoves at you.

"Wait, you still want to go out; on a date; after we arrested you?" Spencer questions oddly, his head tipping to the side quizzically.

"Well yeah; I do like you even with your unconventional methods of getting to know each other," You chuckle, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear as you grab your bag.

"What about tomorrow; I'll pick you up at 7?" He offers gingerly.

"It's a date; you know where to find me after that whole background check you guys ran," You chuckle, saluting the man as you rush from the station and past your friend being wrestled in, handcuffed.

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x oc #spencer reid x you #dr. reid #reid #criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #criminalminds #criminal minds fandom #criminal minds fic #x reader

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