#the hotbar for me to remember

[mikkouille]

wait actually connecting the dots was the guy telling us the fight would go well when we were half a party of first timers also the one who forgot to lb3 us like bro was a tank one of em. jffjjssn he forgor.

[bizlybebo]

does anyone else remember minecraft on the xbox 360 where you could choose from 3 presets of controls to play the game with. like you could either play with 1 2 or 3. did anyone else ever play with 2 i swear this was a thing

[nikibogwater]

Life-Saving Minecraft Tips that I almost never see anyone else using (am I just bad at the game...?)

Always carry a bucket of water in your hotbar, especially if you're going caving.

Keep a Warped Fungus handy when traversing the Nether. Hoglins can't attack you if you're standing near a Warped Fungus. I also like to keep a Flower Pot on me just in case I run into a pack of Hoglins somewhere I can't place the fungus directly on the ground.

Use potions. Idk if it's just the kinds of lets-players I watch or what, but I can't believe how many people are sleeping on these.

Night Vision for the Deep Dark (Nether Wart + Golden Carrot). Keeps you from waking up the Warden with a single careless torch placement, and also negates the Darkness effect if you activate a Shrieker.

Invisibility Potions for death runs back to your items (Night Vision Potion + Fermented Spider Eye)

Slow Falling for the Ender Dragon fight (Nether Wart + Phantom Membrane)

Fire Resistance negates like 85% of the danger in the Nether (Nether Wart + Magma Cream)

Adding some Redstone Dust to any potion will increase the duration of its effects to 8 minutes. Three max-duration potions will keep you covered for a little more than one full day-night cycle.

Wool blocks are soundproof (but carpets aren't 😕). Completely covering a Skulk Sensor or Chest with wool blocks before interacting with it will prevent chain reactions from other Sensors.

Set up a safe base with a bed at world spawn (usually around coordinates 0, 0) so that you don't have to sprint buck naked through the night if you lose your respawn point.

I actually like to put my main base near world spawn because I easily get disoriented when trying to navigate by coordinates alone, and it's much simpler for me to just follow a Compass back home (I think that's an exclusive-to-Niki problem tho. I've never heard of anyone else wanting to do this 😅).

This is only tangentially related, but I can remember a time when Zombies dropped Feathers instead of Rotten Flesh. You'd think I wouldn't die so often, having played this game for almost 13 years...

[fogwitchoftheevermore]

ok so. forgive me for a second but i've been abnormal about skizz and ren since the hiatus between third life and last life and holy shit this season is already not helping.

let's talk about skizz, ren, undying loyalty, and golden apples, shall we?

so the thing that you need to understand about skizz is that he is loyal to a fault. impulse literally says this exact thing about him in limited life, and skizz himself says himself: "you know me and my factions, i never turn." the second thing is that the first person their loyalty manifests for in third life is ren. he and ren run into each other on the second night when ren is getting accosted by mobs outside skizz's door and skizz gives him a place to stay the night. ren decides to trade skizz for his leather, for the upcoming enchanting buisness, and gives skizz a golden apple in exchange. skizz thinks this is wildly more than he deserves but is very thankful. skizz doesn't say it here, but this is the moment he swears his loyalty to ren.

throughout third life, he is willing to do or get basically anything for ren. the two of them literally die together to the tnt trap. when ren dies on the alter and everyone thinks martyn betrayed him, skizz is the first person to get there in the morning. he's in half broken gold armor and borrowed tools from bigb and he still tells ren "get behind me", still tries to protect him from martyn. when skizz is on red, he goes a bit crazy, but he channels that bloodlust into protecting ren. he kills jimmy in the red desert, he kills cleo when she tries to attack ren, he chases down impulse when he betrays dogwarts and dies trying to kill him.

when skizz dies in third life, he's got an unused golden apple in his hotbar. after he dies, he remembers the first time he met ren, etho, and martyn, and he spends quite a bit of time on his memory of ren and ren appears in his first memory of etho. after he dies, ren wields a blade named in his honor.

skizz spends third life loyal to ren- he dies for him and he dies with him.

in last life, ren and skizz end up on completely different sides, and it very quickly gets bad because when ren becomes boogey, he kills skizz. he lures him into a trap. he tells skizz he loves him. skizz literally says "i am broken hearted" when ren kills him. ren holds no regard for the relationship they used to have and yet skizz cannot help but compliment ren's skill with the trap, outright says he can't be mad at ren.

and then it only gets worse because skizz tries to storm ren's tower with impulse after they've gone red. and that! doesn't go well! and while skizz is retreating, while he is eating the golden apple in his hot bar, ren shoots him dead.

and that is the last time they've spoken. two years ago.

because skizz isn't in doublt life. and ren isn't in limited life.

and when skizz's time comes in limited life, he ensures he doesn't have a golden apple in his inventory this time. this time, he hands the apples off to his teammates, where he knows they will go to good use. and then he hands etho a diamond fucking axe (red winter is coming) and asks him to execute him for the sake of their alliance. ok! sure! fill ren's role more explicitly, why don't you!

and that first session of secret life genuinely only made it worse. when skizz is talking to tango and cleo about their alliance, skizz says he wants to give leadership over to someone else: "i want to be more of a soldier than a leader this time." cleo says she'll fill the roll of leader- she doesn't take orders well - and then seals their alliance by giving tango and skizz a golden apple each. because of course she does.

and well, we all know that didn't really work out, so that's one person off the list that skizz can fill the dogwarts shaped hole in him with, so then he goes to bdubs. he says he'll lay his sword at bdubs' feet. he says he'll win bdubs with his loyalty. he calls bdubs "my leige", jesus christ dude, you couldn't be less subtle unless you straight up called him ren's name.

skizz has been (whether accidentally or on purpose is up to you) trying to recreate the experience he had with dogwarts, and particularly what he had with ren, since the moment dogwarts fell. he can't have it with ren because he missed his only chance in last life, so he'll fill the void with whoever he can. his fellow soldier. ren's successor. ren's new kingmaker. anyone. and it's never gonna work. i need ren to come back for like, 900 reasons, but i especially need him to come back so skizz can have a shot at making it to spring.

[abimee]

Scholar has treated me so well having distinct men on its buttons and where blue = damage and green = heals usually i can still decipher when blue buttons are heals and green buttons are damages because they have a distinct enough design. ill bare it but im weeping into me shirt rn

i cant say anything about FF14's accessibility in regards to colorblindness and low vision because ive heard mixed reports between ''their tweaks are really good'' and ''this is ass'' but has square ever considered not releasing jobs whos buttons are all the same goddamn color for us little people who cant read our hotbar out the corner of our eye when all of the buttons are BLUE

[churrobird]

short mini-fic inspired by this post by @magnecalliope and tags by @femboyclownpierce

pangi enjoyers i dont know what inspired me to write this from pangi's POV because i dont really watch him outside of ros.... if i got his mannerisms wrong, im sorry

The tiled floor and wooden cabinets of the castle's kitchen were cold against Pangi's scales. The cold was really the only thing keeping him present, and a deep part of him despised it.

He dragged his eyes up from where he had been staring at a red stain (it wasn't blood, blood dried brown, but his heart thudded in his chest all the same) to look at Ros, desperately trying to ignore the red figure right behind her.

Pangi had found Ros in the kitchen, having tracked her down after noticing the absence of purple. She was leaning heavily against the counter, not quite falling over, with an open bottle of fruity wine in her hand. She wasn't absolutely wasted, not yet, but she was certainly on her way there.

She had looked at Pangi, her eyes wet, and asked him if she could complain to him.

Pangi was... trying, at this whole "being genuine friends with Ros" thing. It was hard, after Pili had burnt him so deeply; he didn't really remember how to be a friend.

But what he was good at was listening in on gossip, and if his love of messy chisme helped Ros get out all her woes, then no one could fault him for it.

And, Void, he knew Ros had issues, with all her violent and sacrificial tendencies and what he had heard Pili yell at her about her self-worth issues, but...

She went on, and on, and on. How she tried to make everyone happy, and how it never seemed to make her happy. Everything with Owen, which he had to shove down his old feelings of triumph about, which now felt sickening. Being Queen while Foolish was dead, and how Red and Green had hunted her every day, and how she didn't fault Pangi for it anymore, but it still scared her, even now.

It was when she finally started talking about Pili and everything he did, did Pangi ask for the half-empty bottle, and joined her in her drowning.

Halfway through whatever this was, with Pangi sobbing over his dead best friend who came back but didn't truly, and Ros sobbing over her twice-over murderer who made her angry and scared and confused, did Clown walk in.

It was an interesting experience, for Pangi's heart and soul, to be near-yelling about how Pili had died, and then for Pili's murderer to walk in the room.

All at once, he was slammed with this nauseous feeling of rage-terror-grief, spurred on by dulled memories of past lives and the haze of alcohol. For a moment, his mind screamed to just attack Clown right then and there, but the last remaining vestiges of his preservation instinct held him back.

That and... it would probably upset Ros. It was strange, how something like that mattered to him now.

Clown had just stared back at Pangi and, to his surprise, silently walked over to where Ros sat on the floor, and dropped down behind her, leaning against her back.

That's where they were now. With Ros still on a mad rant about Pili, and Pangi was trying to pay attention, trying to be a good friend, but it was getting harder and harder with a certain jester in the room.

Clown was entirely still. This alone set off every alarm bell in his head. A still, dead-silent Clown was a Clown that was planning to strike when you least expected it, and it nearly made Pangi ready his end crystals in his hotbar.

But the longer he sat here, the more he realized that wasn't all. Clown was still and silent, but he was relaxed. His posture loose, all of his weight supported against Ros. The archmage had an arm wrapped around the architect, something that normally would send the shocking fear of being grappled into anyone, but Ros had simply gotten hold of Clown's other arm, the grip being reciprocated.

For that matter, Ros was confusing too. Her hold on Clown tightened as she got more and more emotional in her ranting, until her knuckles turned white and her nails dug into the dark fabric of Clown's sleeve, like Lifesteal's deadliest player was just her emotional support stressball.

He would've expected Clown to protest in any way, but the only acknowledgment the jester gave was a soft, mumbled hum and his head lolling against Ros' shoulder, and that's the moment Pangi finally realizes,

Wait, is he also wasted?

He really didn't expect Clown to lower his guard at an event like this enough to get drunk, even if it was hosted by Ros. He also didn't expect Clown to be okay with showing off this much softness in the presence of someone like Pangi. He knew Ros and Clown were friends, by Ros' own admission, but he didn't know...

(It reminds him of Pili, and his gut churns. Days and nights spent deep underground, laying against each other and the potion machine. The sound of turtle eggs hatching and the feeling of Pili's soft fur against his scales. Sometimes, only when he's just moments from sleep, he would feel a soft, wispy caress on his head, and he felt safe.) (He felt safe with his best friend by his side, and a dark specter keeping watch over them.) (He wonders how Ros feels about getting both in just one person.)

He reaches for the bottle between him and Ros again. There's smudged purple lipstick on the rim. He doesn't care, hasn't cared about anything since Pili died, and takes another swig.

[baffledandbewildered]

We've been waiting so so long to reveal this oh my gosh (gay fic under the cut)

I want you to kill me.

It started with those words, so long ago. It was a cruel thing to ask, maybe, but it’s true. Betty wants, a fierce desire that stuns her if she thinks about it too much. She wants it to be Sin. 

Sure. There’s other reasons for it - the ten hearts in her hotbar, the statistics saying 0 deaths, they haunt her more and more these days. I feel death creeping closer and closer and closer and I can’t cheat it forever I’d rather die to you than anything else because there is no one more important to me than you and giving you my life feels like devotion made physical - She wants it to mean something when she dies.

There’s also the desire to mess with people - what will they think? How confusing can they be? And she’s always loved a challenge. 

But the main reason could probably be described as devotion. There’s something thrilling about it - it’s the most extreme version of a trust fall, maybe. It’s a promise. It’s not like she wants the heart back, after all. The idea of one of her hearts alongside Sin’s own - it's a good thought.

I want it to be you over anyone else.

Quite a bit of time passes before they actually do it. Betty doesn’t want to press - it’s a lot to ask of Sin. She can wait.

Then Pantheon build an angel at spawn. And Betty’s never exactly been known for her good decision making skills, so while it’s nothing more than an obsidian box she climbs to height limit and - well, most people know how that story ended.

But that’s not… exactly good for her continued safety. So she’s not really surprised when Sin messages her about their plan a little while later - she doesn’t know if he’s thinking the same as she is, but she’s not going to argue. She wants this.

It seems wrong to do it just in a random cave somewhere, so she plants sunflowers around them. Symbolic, maybe. Her flower, sunset flower, it means something to her, to them both.

So they face each other in the darkness, and she laughs, giddy, because this is what she wanted and it's amazing to see a sword in Sin’s hand and know it’s for her and not be scared. She’s been scared of dying for so, so long. It’s freeing, to stare death in the face and smile. Maybe it’s a bit fucked up, but this is the safest she’s felt in a while.

It makes sense to her. It doesn’t matter what other people think.

“You ready?” Sin asks.

“Yes.”

Dying doesn’t hurt as much as she expected. She lingers in the darkness for a little while before respawning - it’s peaceful. 

There’s an emptiness in her chest. First death, first heart lost - it makes her a little giddy to remember that it’s Sin who owns that heart now. Betty would be lying if she said she didn't like it - there's a lot of confusing thoughts racing through her head about the whole dying thing, but that one remains static.

She's so glad it was Sin to kill her.

But she can’t stay here forever, so she respawns in their base and runs back to Sin. They talk - they don’t really have a plan with all this, not yet. Sin logs off, and Betty goes back to spawn - there are lavacasts to clean up. (She feels a little guilty about those, even if she knows they were inevitable.)

She’s expecting to see people at spawn. She’s not expecting Cogmented, which - to be honest, is a mistake on her part. It has questions - so does everyone, really, and it was fun at first but suddenly she’s realising that confusing people isn’t so smart when they don’t really have a story to imply, so she blurts out something stupid and - well, it’s not wrong. Her death was kinda to do with the carts? She doesn’t want to lie too much - this is meant to be confusing, not -

It’s a dumb thing to say and she realises immediately. Too late for that, though. Five minutes later he kills her, and the last thing she sees is the blue ground at spawn.

That death hurt, and for a long moment she hugs herself in the cold room of her respawn point, waiting for her hands to stop shaking.

The first thing she does is message Sin. The second thing she does is message the global chat - it’s not a great situation to be in, but she can use it, right? She can - make people feel sorry for her, maybe. 

She wishes they’d planned this out more beforehand.

Making people feel sorry for her works better than expected. She meets Void at the parkour and he gives her back her sunset shield she’d thought lost. He gives her carrots and an enchanted axe and she’s so incredibly grateful because - she isn’t lying when she says she has no gear, unenchanted diamond and raw meat meagre protection against monsters, and two hearts down she feels so incredibly fragile right now. He tries to convince her she can fix things - she doesn’t feel bad when she lies and claims it’s unfixable. 

The guilt comes later.

Then she’s left alone, digging herself into a tiny cave on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere, and with shaking hands she draws out her communicator. They need to explain to Deli - but Betty’s too - fragile, panicked, she doesn’t really know what to say or think or do, so she just says something about Cog’s theory being wrong but it’s fine if they go along with it, not realising it doesn’t explain anything.

But she’s not exactly thinking straight right now. She looks back at her communicator, messages from earlier -

It makes her laugh weakly. Sin’s protective, not just possessive he wants her to be safe and happy and oh gosh it’s only been a few hours but she misses him so much, misses the warmth of his wings around her, misses just being in his presence - this hurts but it’s fine, it’ll be fine, they’ll work something out from this and it’ll be awesome - she’s just gotta wait -

When she thinks of Sin, the ache in her chest from her first death warms, a fierce, comforting burning - she'd noticed, soon after the first death, that the scar was… strange. It doesn’t look like a sword-scar, nearer a burn, star-shaped, heart shaped, and it glows gold - Sin’s colour.

Yeah.

She’ll be fine. Betty thinks of her heart, beating in Sin’s chest all those miles away, and the scar on her own skin - it’s a physical reminder of devotion. A promise. She’ll be fine.

[kawaoneechan]

Some more Project Special K design help

In Animal Crossing City Folk, which I've never played, screenshots indicate to me the following layout during normal gameplay while outside:

Clock in the top left

Four reaction buttons in the top center

Save button in the top right

Buttons along the bottom for pockets, designs, critter encyclopedia, camera, friends, keyboard, and map.

In New Horizons, the interface is simplified, sticking most features into the NookPhone or behind special inputs (think reactions), which makes for this interface during normal gameplay while outside:

NookPhone icon and food power in the top left

Time and date in the bottom left

Map in the bottom right

The fully-upgraded NookPhone menu?

Camera

Nook Miles

Critterpedia

DIY recipes

Shopping

Island Designer mode

Designs

Map

Happy Home Network

Room sketch

Chat log

Player profile

Friends

Call a friend

Rescue Service

Loading screen tips

That's a lotta features to hide away in a menu.

Now, you might remember this mockup I made for Project Special K:

That's an ACNH-inspired interface with an item hotbar along the top that can perhaps be hidden until you fling your mouse there, a time and date in the bottom left, and some ACCF-inspired buttons along the bottom right, that may also only appear if you fling your mouse and/or stand still long enough:

Blank

Blank

Pockets

Reactions

Critterpedia

Map

More

My problem now is what to put in the More menu, and what to do with those two blanks. Because the only ideas I could come up with so far are:

Designs

Profile

Shop, maybe

Settings

Which, if I were to keep those two blanks and assign something to them, would mean there's only two items left for More.

So what do you think I should do about it? Which of these many suggestions would warrant a button?

(By the way, I'm still taking villager submissions, and please check the #open questions and such tag.)

[these-godforsaken-halls]

Suddenly Grian is not standing where he was standing one second ago. He’s slightly to the left, and he’s also sitting down. He startles, hands flailing as though to catch himself. “That woke you up,” Scar says, smug.

“What—? Scar,” Grian starts, but then he’s moved again — about five blocks to the left this time. He jolts, tries to stand up, and realizes he’s sitting in a boat — an invisible boat. 

“This is a neat little trick, you know, Doc taught me this one. It’s like — some kind of glitch with boat placing. All you have to do is — boop!” And then he’s gone again. “Ta-daaa! The Great and Powerful Scar strikes again!”

“Scar,” Grian shouts from twenty-five blocks away, trying very hard to be frustrated, but he is half-laughing. He’s clambering out of the boat as Scar jogs over, making a series of dramatic sound effects, and Grian risks a glance with his Watcher eyes and sees seven more boats in his hotbar — “No, no, no you don’t” — and then Grian’s moved again, and he yelps in shock, much to his embarrassment. 

“Scar, stop it — no! Now is not the time! This is — I’m being serious, Scar,” he protests, but it’s not so believable because he’s full-on giggling now. “Scar!”

“Oh, I’m being serious, too. Very, very serious. In fact, I’m making a business deal. I can sell you the knowledge of how to perform this glitch for” — he pauses to actually count on his stupid fingers — “every diamond you own! How does that sound?”

“Scar.”

“See, I’ve been trying to nail the specifics, but it’s tricky. Doc said that it’s a little bit like ender pearls, but I’m not sure how. And you can’t do it with yourself, only with another player. He also said it works in multiples of five and that you’ll always teleport in the same direction and a whole bunch of boring stuff that I don’t really remember because I didn’t listen — hmm, come to think of it, that’s probably why it’s so tricky to nail the specifics. Maybe I should go back and ask him again —”

God, this man is going to be the death of him. Grian drags a hand down his face, still giggling. “You are so dumb,” he says, “I can’t believe it sometimes. I love you.” He doesn’t really mean for that last bit to slip out, and his breath catches a little when he realizes, but Scar doesn’t seem to notice.

“I am not dumb,” he says, placing a hand on his chest. “Grian! My closest confidante! How could you speak ill of me this way? I simply have a — a spicy attention span!”

“The spiciest,” Grian agrees, nodding, and for a moment Scar’s distraction has worked perfectly, and he forgets everything he was afraid of. There’s only Scar’s face, bright with mirth, and the sun in his hair, and  — and he’s reaching for another boat.

. . .

from quality entertainment (ao3) - i loved this bit so much, wanted to post it separately

[belovedgamers]

Time for a challenge! Here's a hotbar fic based on these flash fic proposals by @redwinterroses.

There was a book. No, there will be a book. No, there is a book; it tells tales. It speaks, it sings, it reads of vanity and memory, betrayals and meetings. It says: bountiful luck, a prosperous land, a king, a soul, a father. 

You and Fate, you and I, you and chaos and—

There is. There was. Do you hear that? It’s coming.

vi.

Her old crowns are discarded, as are her royal robes. Her bedroom almost meets the same fate —the oceansong felt too far away— but she spares it. 

The tailors are hard at work, weaving sea and lotus silk. The architects are raising ceilings. The musicians have new songs: she’s been found, she’s right here, all along…

Endless, beautiful blue stares back from the mirror.

xiv.

His home has no churches. 

Holiness walks with him, see. It follows everywhere they go, everywhere anyone goes, as long as there’s belief. He drags dirt, sacred, across his chest in hello, and the waters outside sing back: hello, hello, welcome.

Stone has no place in worship, he knows. Sacred halls are for other people and their banners, red and gold.

But he’s desperate.

x.

The King is sick, that much everyone knows. 

“These should make things easier,” his friend says. Her hair is piled high atop her head, and pearls glimmer from within those endless loops. What a terrifying world; she doesn’t strain one bit from the miracle. “You’ll be okay.”

Neither candle nor sandstone stops singing. The horizon looms scarlet.

What are you trying to tell me?

xxiii.

Black and red, a bruise, he’s a dark splotch against the grass, obscene and impossible. 

“I’m just dropping by.”

The father —not yet a boy— has learned his lesson. He doesn’t turn a friendly back on the stain. “What do you want?”

“Oh, nothing. Why would I want anything? Can’t a simple farmer come in to see a friend?”

He sighs. “Aren’t you tired?”

v.

“Only good things,” he promises, appeasing. His smile is small and terrible. “Only good things.”

She feels the ghost of his blade on her neck. The ache remains even as the water washes everything away in long, brutal rivers. The weight on her head is missing, not given but taken.

“It was a game,” she tells him, herself. 

He won’t look at her. Right.

xix.

“You’ll be there, right?”

He doesn’t raise his head from his notes when he asks, only listens out for the telltale squeak-squeak of his friend’s movement. Outside, birdsong. Inside, their song.

“Are you joking?” is the answer. He hums along to a rhyme, and tries his flute for the next. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Good,” he says. “Don’t miss your cue.”

vii.

“Are you sure?” he asks. Even with his belly full, he looks hungry. “I mean, I think we have to be sure.”

“Look at me,” she says. He takes her claws in hand. “What else do you need?”

Small as a guppy, he says, “Do you remember anything new?”

“No,” she admits. “You?”

The quiet sings. Then, not like himself,  “Music. I remember music.”

xiii.

She’s here for light and sound again, all those lively arches. Her wings, delicate, shake with every strike of white against dirt. “Aren’t you going to try?”

He swallows down a cough. She’s a friend, yes, but she gossips. “I don’t need it. I’m perfectly content.”

She makes a disappointed noise, unladylike. It doesn’t surprise him anymore. “Really? You could make a funny rule.”

xvii.

The grief rocks him as much as the earthquake does. He can’t think, at first, then he can only wonder, only fear. Horror tightens around his teeth. 

“Where are you?”  read all his unsent letters. “Where are you?”

There are people to feed, to rescue, to heal. Ships and debris line up the coast like river stones.

Joel swallows, and sets his heart aside.

[erstwhilesparrow]

god there are so many little bits of outsiders that make me want to chew glass. in an effort to exorcise some thoughts:

there's something really fantastically horrifying about how much visual and mental space the maze takes up for almost all of the server's run, contrasted with the fact that we learn in the owenge q&a that the maze is one of multiple scenarios, built by STARR for a handful of seasons and ultimately meaning nothing. all this about learning the maze, this structure that was the outsiders' whole world for what they believed to be years, and it was a set piece that might not ever be used again. i can't stop thinking about the fact that on the literal actual minecraft server, the maze was built floating in the sky, and like, yeah. it was for this one server and nothing else. i get why you'd build it like that, in terms of practical concerns, but god. to know that thing never even touched the 'actual' ground.

hey. cc!owen PLAYS A GOOD FUCKING HEEL. oh my god he's good at playing the bad guy. this is not like thoughtful analysis at all but being able to hear so clearly the shift in tone when he goes into hunting mode, the willingness to just let things sit in silence, the way he completely sells a character's absolute conviction. the way when he has a knife in his mostly-empty hotbar during Spill Your Guts the distance between the currently selected slot and the knife right next to it feels like a tangible weight somehow!

speaking of which. please tell me the berries in his hotbar during his demon killing spree aren't raspberries. i can't actually identify them because i'm not familiar with the mod but i think if they're raspberries i would simply explode into a million bits of confetti.

hey remember how there was a giant underground reservoir beneath the clearing containing the skeleton of some enormous creature? was that fucked up or what.

hey also remember how one of the last written records left by the people who died in the frozen clearing was about how at least their friends got to die peacefully, in their sleep? remember how the maze was full of notes scribbled on pieces of paper and scrawled in blood on the walls trying to warn them, begging them to get out, hoping against hope that their last words might mean something? remember how mohwee's last words to the outsiders were take care of each other? they tried so hard to look out for each other, and whether they ever did it especially well is an open question but MAN. you can't say they didn't try.

even after deciding apo can rot down in the prison, owen still says, "the next time i see him is when i go shackle his hands together, and drag him through that maze to get him out." in the wake of the [don't dirty my name again] conversation, owen promises rasbi, "we came up together, we're gonna get out of here together." even with his faith in -- and i think i will argue that this is accurate phrasing -- the world shattered, owen has no concept of actually leaving either of them behind. he can't even imagine it. ;-; .

i don't know what the event is called in canon so i'm going to refer to it as [the clearing event with the scuffed mcc energy], the one where acho drowns, and it delights me that the nature of the medium is such that sometimes when owen says something, it becomes true because he said it. (i mean, this is true for all of them, but i say owen because he's the one i watched and he has an interesting degree of narrative control by virtue of having such a comprehensive pov.) acho didn't die in a way that minecraft the game would necessarily call a death, i'm not convinced what happened to him was distinguishable from what the characters call being 'downed' in the maze, but because owen said it, on some level, yeah, acho did die in there. isn't it so fun how you can kill someone by saying they died? reach back through linear time and make true what wasn't before? and i think about this and i think about how often owen declared apo dead, and how it makes apo not just a ghost but a sort of schrodinger's cat. apo is alive except no he isn't except yes he is. reality is so frighteningly malleable in mcrp.

[lilbittymonster]

i can't send an ask from the sideblog but ty for the long tags bc yeah I do think Dawntrail was absolutely an overcorrection. And I cannot believe I didn't mention the total lack of screentime for Krile. Was also thinking about jobs the other day just from a UI perpective even - they're going to have to revamp the menus if this keeps up. Its causing problemmmsss.

(tags in question)

Yeah I'm still kinda seething over how we got two, maybe three(?) cutscenes with any real Krile Character Development and then she ends the one in Living Memory with "well, enough about me" like NO I think we have not had nearly enough of you, Krile! When they geared her up to be a pictomancer in the EW patches I was excited to get to travel and interact with her more and she was still reduced to a third trust member most of the time and a vehicle for the magic USB earring that saved the day. C'mon, man. Hasn't she gotten the short end of the stick enough already?

Speaking as a controller player the jobs situation is dire. Even for K&M players the button bloat has to be getting annoying by now. But I have at least three jobs that have both hotbars and cross hotbars maxxed out, and several more that are only a few slots away from being full. I'm nervous for whatever else they plan to add in future expansions and already thinking about how annoying it will be to have to toggle hb3 mid combat. I barely remember to do it for crafters lmao.

[justcrowsandcorvids]

sometimes i do randomly remember that one of the ways i killed time working retail was pretending to be a point-and-click protagonist. concentrating on Exactly One Thing at a time helped me from thinking about how bored/miserable i was I think? If I have to go to another aisle. My AI must figure out the straight lines necessary to get there. I must visualize the mouse clicking on the map and my character with their cart moving there. Can only grab one thing at a time, and you Can put one thing in your offhand but you have to tell the computer to do it. Customers and management are enemies that are ideally avoided. My scanner and phone are things I can scroll to in my hotbar and equipping them means they're held out so they're onscreen. Do you see my vision.

[before-calamity]

CNJ/WHM Skills Overview P1: CNJ Spells

Read more for more CNJ spells from 1.0...

I believe this is the same order of the spells you learn in modern FFXIV. I really don't have a lot to comment on this - they have a longer cast time and non-instance recast time like we've seen in the THM spells because, well combat was slower.

Remember what they took away from us. But not really. I know that everyone missed Protect from modern FFXIV, and I guess this is a hot take, but it wasn't all that effective. It amounted to a 3% damage reduction, and when they cut Protect, they went ahead and adjusted stats so that you have a 3% damage reduction. So you basically always have a protect on nowadays.

While it is a cool spell for class flavor (which they kind of ruined by making it a role skill in SB), I don't miss it.

Cleric Stance had a bit of a history, and it's another spell people miss. It's funny because from what I heard, in ARR, it was a literal swap between your intelligence and mind values, and then later on before it was cut it was more like it's 1.0 counterpart. This is heresay though. AND apparantly when it swapped the values, you also got the Attack buff and Healing debuff. It was replaced with a Cleric Role role action in SB and ultimately removed in Shadowbringers.

This spell confuses me. You basically turn HP into MP, and you set it aside so that you can get a big MP jump in the future I guess? I guess it's useful for a burst, but FFXIV 1.0 wasn't really known to have such bursts like modern FFXIV.

Stonera continues a trait we've seen in some spell lines where by default it's an AoE.

Stoneskin is another spell people miss, and it's one that NPCs still cast from time to time. Unlike Protect which is a general damage reduction, Stoneskin acted more like Scholar's Adloquium spell.

This was in the game until Stormblood, and even featured a Stoneskin II, which was an AoE. Like Protect, Stoneskin I and Stoneskin II lasted for a long time, 30 minutes.

Turn everything into an AoE...it just takes longer to cast. Not sure if this is a good trade off.

This was another spell that was in modern FFXIV until Stormblood...and it was basically reborn into Lucid Dream. Even the hotbar icon for ARR Shroud of Saints looks like Lucid Dream, just recolored.

We've actually covered Repose in an earlier post. I'm still shock it's essentially the same spell as a THM spell that they get at lvl 42.

So that's the CNJ spells. Next we'll talk WHM actions and Traits.

My one takeaway is how the spells are very similar to what they were in ARR, and I have yet another one of my famous theories (tm) regarding how CNJ changed during the development of 1.0, due to some recent data I've come across.

Do you miss Stoneskin, Protect and Cleric's Stance? Tell me what I'm missing out on. I never got to use Stoneskin but I did play during Stormblood which still had Protect and Cleric's Stance.

[hollylovely]

sooooo just a lil confession

i haven't watched jimmy's smp streams and it's honestly because of that one newlife stream where scott teleports jimmy where jimmy gets stuck and dies

now i maybe just projecting onto jimmy but i really do think he got really panicked that he became unable to think clearly at the time and wasn't able to pull out his shovel (which was in his hotbar) to dig out

i also think that at the time, his body (in this case, his fingers/hand on the mouse) was moving faster than he could think which may be also why he trued to use his pickaxe instead of his shovel

and i genuinely could feel his disappointment right after his unsuccessful attempt at digging himself out

i got upset when, after he got revived/respawned, scott and the others (i can't remember if it was just scott but i'll put the others there as well) (also i refuse to watch that stream again) immediately went on about why he didn't get himself out and why he left himself die (although scott apologized then, i still felt like they were entirely blaming jimmy only here)

then i got even more upset when i saw the chat filled with "YOU HAD A SHOVEL IN YOUR HOTBAR!!!" and "why did you use a pickaxe lol" and the vod's comment section also had comments like that and comments basically saying "it's literally jimmy's fault lol" and "it's your fault jim, you had a shovel in your hotbar" (so again, blaming jimmy here)

uhhhh again, i maybe projecting only but yeah, i refuse to watch another smp livestream after that incident (i've also been kind of on and off when it comes to watching the streams during esmp2 because of the toy jokes and all that) (i think this newlife stream may have been the last straw for me??? idk)

[fountainpenguin]

"The boy had such an ego; he liked to talk about himself all day and all night; you think you're such a ladykiller..."

---

New Dog's Life chapter today!

Chapter 5 - “Crackle (Joel)”

Read on AO3

Start from Chapter 1

Check the chapter notes on this one, m'dudes 🥂

---

We're back and spotlighting Mr. Ladykiller Wifeslayer himself! Despite knowing Impulse is his game-assigned hunter, Joel hangs around him a little bit longer... Later, while chopping wood with the boys, he muses on the nature of the digital world and on the trust he and Lizzie have built between them. Remember kids: consensual murder is fun!!

(First 1,000 words under the cut)

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Smallishbeans - Player

Quarry: Grian

Hunter: impulseSV

💚  💛  ❤️

It’s the middle of the blimmin’ night, he’s climbing a hill, it’s windy in a smack-your-face kind of way, and he’s tracking an enderman flitting back and forth in the nearby trees. That’s why he almost falls down the cave drop. His foot swings into empty air. Joel jerks back, instantly dropping to a crouch, and grabs Impulse by the edge of his chestplate. The dirt flecks he scuffed up go tumbling over. Down. Down… 

They’re on a knobby little hill without trees or bamboo to shield them from the elements. Impulse grabs him by the shoulder and hauls him back to more solid footing. “You all right, dude?” he mutters, and Joel hooks his fingers more tightly in his armor straps. His hearts kick a little higher, leaking up his throat.

One block away from absolutely certain death.

He blinks. There’s a border wall of cliff that should have indicated a scratched-out blip in the elevation, but he wasn’t looking. If he had been looking, if it weren’t the middle of the night, if it weren’t a hill, if it weren’t so windy, if he weren’t watching the enderman (and if he weren’t trying to watch his back around Impulse on top of all of that, actually) then he would have noticed. It’s just a stroke of luck that the guy was close enough to grab.

Joel spreads his legs for better balance. Even though he’s crouched - even though he and Impulse are both still green names - he definitely doesn’t trust his resource-gathering buddy not to grab his armor and toss him over the edge. It’d be an epic way to go, maybe, and a bloody painful one. Joel tilts back his head, staring into Impulse’s eyes. They’re icy flecks of emerald. Guarded. Impulse stares back at him, saying absolutely nothing.

This man’s assigned to hunt me down. He can kill me on green. Right here. Right now. There’s no way he can resist.

They cling to each other’s chestplates with seized-up fingers… like they’re already dead. Like they’re dead and can’t let go even if they wanted to. Actually… It’s almost stupidly romantic to hold each other, eyes locked, under the silver moonlight. And he kind of wants to laugh because he hates everything about this.

Joel keeps his fingers wedged under Impulse’s armor so the guy can’t shove him off the hill without being yoinked along with him. Impulse’s grip is bitterly tight. Those lips are bitter too, and his glowing eyes as narrow as an end rod. The wind rustles both their hair and waves the grass stalks against their ankles. Joel’s got armored legs, but not boots. Didn’t quite get there yet.

He’s going to make me the first death of the series.

That’s the worst part of this whole thing. See, even though Joel’s got a nicely crafted iron sword just waiting in his hotbar, he’s not allowed to slide it between the lines of code that make up his rival’s ribs. Impulse is his hunter - There’s no doubt in my mind about that - but that’s a one-way relationship. Stupid quarry mechanic doesn’t work in reverse. Until Impulse makes an undeniable attempt on his life, Joel’s a neutral party. He can’t engage.

Impulse knows it, too… That’s gotta be why he’s stalling so long. His stare cuts so deep, Joel considers making a sarcastic Do I have enchanting table text on my face or something? comment just to make him falter. Hm. Joel drops his voice to a whisper, lifting on his toes.

“You’re a peach, Impulse.”

“Wh- what kind of peach?”

“You know what kind.”

Impulse huffs, laughing in a nervous sort of way. The enderman lurking in the trees puffs away, materializing in the corner of Joel’s vision. Yeah, right… No way is he turning his back to chase it now. Together, he and Impulse shift their eyes off each other and down at the drop that nearly just took both their lives. Their sighs mingle into one. Sweaty fingers shake, pressing into each other’s skin and clothes. Finally, Joel lets out a long, low whistle. The wind picks it up and carries it away, like a canary leaping from a branch.

“That’s- Oh, that’s horrific.”

“I know, right? Dude… I didn’t even see it.”

“Right… It’s so dark out here, even with the moon big.” Joel pulls Impulse an extra step back from the edge. Impulse does have iron boots, which clank with every step. “Disgusting. Hey, d’you think this is where Jimmy died?”

“Yeah, this must’ve been it,” says Impulse, leaning over the edge. He shifts to a crouch, gripping his wobbly wooden sword. “Yikes. I mean, that’s gotta be at least 60 blocks…”

Grian stole the traits of Bee

Joel massages his mouth, holding a little more tightly to Impulse’s iron armor. “Geez, just look at it down there… I don’t think you can fall straight through from the top, but just… I mean, can you imagine landing in that second hole? Like, you drop from here and you just- you just keep going?”

LDShadowLady: You killed a bee?

“Oh, that second hole’s gotta be another 30 down for sure, and I think I’m lowballing. I can’t even render it in.”

Joel twitches, but resists the instinct to make some stupid play on words. “Someone’s down there,” he says instead, peering into the hole. He lowers himself to one knee, carefully removing his fingers from Impulse’s metal sleeve. “Who’s moving around down there?”

“Cleo, I think? And… I want to say BigB.”

Grian: it looked at me funny

That sounds about right. They sit in silence on their heels and hands, sizing up the two figures moving like ants far, far below. Lizzie’s name flickers up in chat and Joel notices she’s just killed a zombie. He tosses in some lame joke about whether she killed the guy because he was “looking at her funny” the same way Grian said about the bee. Then he glances into the hole again. Honestly, Impulse is right. That’s definitely Cleo down there, whose flame-orange curls stand out even in the dark. Zombie by name, zombie by nature… She pulled her puffy hair back in a low ponytail this round, apparently. Joel can make out the glint of an iron tool or weapon in their hand, but not the details. 

And yeah, the second person’s BigB. Um. Maybe? It’s not a great angle, especially in the dark, because the blue of his jumper melds pretty well with the gray of shadowy stone. Hmm… Joel can’t be sure if those two are acting aggressively - it looks like BigB has his sword out in perfect mirror of Cleo - or if they’re on the same team.

InTheLittleWood: it's me sorry

(About “looking at Lizzie funny.”)

Smallishbeans: SLDKFJSDJF Smallishbeans: you perceive Smallishbeans’ WIFE?!?!? InTheLittleWood: Sneak 100 Bigbst4tz2: :o LDShadowLady: So I gather rotting flesh is in this season ZombieCleo: Always has been InTheLittleWood: fair PearlescentMoon: Jail for Martyn for 1000 years InTheLittleWood: I am looking respectfully :) Smallishbeans: i'm not LDShadowLady: =^-^=

[Full chapter on AO3 - Link at top]