#there’s a cover page but I hit the ten image limit

[kingycrow]

This will be a staple bound riso printed zine, I’ll add pictures once I print it :))

[fenmere]

We don’t think we’ve shown you what’s in our book, yet.

There are cool things in it, like a title page:

a map

a table of contents

a list of the characters found throughout the book:

alien text that is also translated for you:

Useful phrases in that alien language:

a grammar for one of the two alien languages so that you can try to learn to speak it:

an about the authors page:

a splendid synopsis on the back cover, but we’ve hit the ten image limit. So, here's the text of it:

Why are we all born like this?

The Crew of the Sunspot supposedly built the ship to find or create a better world. And to preserve the diversity of the population, the Crew have utilized evolutionary algorithms to choose the genetics of each new child. The Crew, which nobody can recall seeing, or even talking to directly. The Crew, which raise the populace, teach them, and communicate with them through AI Tutors such as myself. Even I, Metabang, didn't know who or what they were.

Until, one day, driven by a rare dysphoria that the algorithms never could remove from humanity and aided by an accommodation of my own design, my own students devised a way to confront the Crew.

The events which followed have shaken the Sunspot and uncovered vital truths that you may find important to know should we cross paths. We've chosen to broadcast these documents ahead of us in diplomatic hope that we will be well received, or that you will be sufficiently warned.

- Metabang, founding author of the Sunspot Chronicles

And over 253,000 words of story itself!

And you can get a copy here:

[ererokii]

Heyyyyy, so I just finished the Aot 2 game and was kinda messed up by the ending... sooo in honor of that, could you possibly write something about the reader sacrificing herself to distract the Titans so that everyone can get away safe and she doesn’t come back for a few years? I’d prefer something with Jean but it’s completely up to you! Thanksssss

Thank you so much for requesting, I had a fun time writing this and I hope you love it!

For those that don’t know, this is based off of the Attack on Titan 2 game! This contains some spoilers from the game!

Year 3, 850

Three years of intense training are now behind me as today is the long-awaited graduation. Unfortunately, I could not come in the top ten, but Shadis believes that I have potential. My goal from the beginning hasn’t changed. I plan to dedicate my heart to the Scouts and take out the armored titan myself. 

Y/N

XX, 850

Reiner and Bertholdt escaped, and we were able to retrieve Eren and Ymir. Not long after the fight with them, we gained insight that Wall Sina has been breached. This is it. Now or never. The battle to keep our human race alive was at stake. I will not let defeat take over my body. 

Y/N

Jean’s eyes scan over the series of letters in the journal that belonged to an assumed fallen comrade. Every day for the past three years, it has always been the same routine. 

Get up, train, socialize with comrades and read this journal. 

By now, he wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t have memorized the whole book. Each inked word seemed to lose its meaning, and its color as the pages began to fade away, just like his hope did. 

The tips of his fingers grazed the rough sheets of paper, a lump forming in the back of his throat. No matter how many times he has read this, he can never shake off the dull aching pain in his heart when he realized he had looked over the last entry once again. 

Currently, he’s sitting in his room, the window open that allows the cool breeze to wash over his body. Goosebumps form on the nape of his neck as he shifts his attention to the walls in the distance. The moon took its place in the sky, the light shining down on the walls as if it were mocking him. 

His tongue peeks out and swipes across his lower chapped lip, hoping that the wetness is enough to moisture them. His fingers continually flip through the pages after the last entry, staring down at the blank pieces of faded white sheets.

The vivid images replay in his mind on the day Wall Sina was breached. Reiner, Bertholdt, and the Beast Titan were all there. The Beast Titan was a surprise to everyone. Out of all the battles, Jean has fought, this one was by far the most blood-curdling. The thought of humanity dying out on that field was enough to ignite a feeling in all the soldiers. 

When Eren and the rest of the scouts defeated Reiner for the second time, there was enough time to take Annie’s crystal back to an underground cellar. But because it weighed more, the horses were at a disadvantage. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jean likes to think that you survived. Maybe you were residing in the new buildings of Wall Maria once the scouts took it back. Perhaps you didn’t want to be apart of the Scouts anymore— then maybe you would be safe. 

The slamming of the door catches his attention as the sound of pants and coughs are heard. 

“Jean!”

“What, Connie?” He sighs and slicks his hair back. “What could you possibly want at this hour?”

“S-Someone’s approaching headquarters! I think it’s Y/N!”

His body grows cold at the sound of your name. “Y/N..?” He whispers underneath his breath, thinking that his mind was playing games. “How are you so sure?”

“The person is wearing the Scout uniform with no horse! We haven’t been scouting outside! It has to be her! It can only be her!”

“That has to be impossible,” he stands abruptly from his wooden chair, stalking towards his comrade. “She’s dead.”

“Weren’t you the one who told us to have faith?!”

“I did. A year ago. It’s been three years, Connie. She’s not coming back.”

“Jean,” he whispers, unsure if he heard right. “We all know you were heartbroken when she sacrificed herself but—“

“She’s gone, Connie!” His arm swings out as his fist collides with the wall, a surge of pain shooting through his arm. “Because I couldn’t help, she’s dead! We were useless! Maybe we should have let Reiner take Annie back so she would be here! But she’s dead!” 

His voice cracks as a lump grows in his throat, limiting the use of words. His nails dig into his palms, nowhere near, causing the amount of pain he felt within his heart. 

Only a few minutes pass as Connie leaves his friend alone, not wanting to upset him further. 

Jean’s mind begins to flood with the memory of your departure. His eyes are squeezed shut as the clear liquid runs down his face, damping the wood of the desk underneath his arms that rest under his head. His grown out hair sways slightly from the cold air that sent shivers down his spine. 

“The horses can’t go as fast with that big thing in the cart! There’s just too much weight!” Connie yelled out as he and Jean steered the horses forward as Titans trailed from behind. 

You, Mikasa, Eren, and the crystal that held Annie sat in the cart. The horses ran at top speed. Your fingers gripped the leather of the journal, nails pressing against the material. 

Your eyes are trained on the hoard of Titans that seem to get closer and closer by the minute. 

“Any minute, they’ll be on us!”

“I know that, Connie!” Jean grunts and glances over his shoulder. The determination in his voice washes away as his eyes widened, face growing pale as he watches you slide the journal into Eren’s hand as he lies unconscious. 

He was no fool to know what you would do. The air is knocked out of his lungs as the faint noise of the gear rings in his ears. It’s like he’s living in slow motion. His mouth opens as he screams out for you, begging to keep you on the cart.

Your alluring eyes bore into his own as your lips curve into a small smile, mouthing something to him as a hook shoots out from its confinement and into a tree, shooting your body forward. 

A hoarse sob leaves his mouth as he sits up, covering his face with his hand as his shoulder shakes violently. Jean can feel himself washing away from reality and falling into the deep void that was his heart as he cries. Each waking second he knows he’s becoming insane.

As harsh as reality was, the man wanted to live in his fantasy world, where you were still aliv—

“Jean..”

His body stifled as he heard the sound of a voice he knew by heart and loved dearly. His pupils are wide in shock as he stares forward at the walls' chipping paint in his room. 

“Impossible,” he trails off in a whisper, hands beginning to shake in uncertainty. “It’s impossible..”

“Jean...turn around,” you whisper into the tense air, walking forward as the creaking of the floors alerted him of your presence. “Please?”

“Maybe I have finally lost it,” his voice comes out in a lower octave as he runs his hand through his hair. “I guess that’s what I get for not sleeping.”

“Jean, it’s me!” You plead as you place your hand on his shoulder, feeling how tense he was under your fingertips. “It’s me..Y/N.” 

“No, she’s dead. I saw her leave us. You aren’t even here. You’re just a figure of my imagination to make me feel better so I won’t wallow in my pity.”

Your heart aches at his confession as you suddenly wrap your arms around him from behind, burying your head in his neck as your hair tickled at his exposed skin. “I’m home now, Jean,” your voice cracks as tears well up, the liquid hitting against him. “I’m back..”

“How can you?” He questions, relaxing upon touch. From a face showing sorrow, it shifted into one of seriousness. “I s-saw you leave us. You can’t be alive..it has to be a joke.”

“I survived Jean..can’t you see?” You press your cold hand against his warm cheek, feeling his warmth radiated off of his face. “I’m here..flesh and blood. I’m alive...I came back to you.”

Jean tilts his head to gaze up at you; his mouth parted as he gazed into your eyes. All the words he had to say now left his mind as his lips became parched, peeling his tongue out to lick them. “You are here..”

“I am!” You laugh through the tears, cupping his face in your hands. “I was in a shelter in Wall Rose. I was injured for a long time before I was able to return here.”

Words couldn’t express how the boy was feeling, only actions. He abruptly wrapped his arms around your torso, bringing you flush against his body. “You’re here now..”

All of his worries and hidden thoughts could now be thrown out the window and buried deep underneath the earth, a place he would never have to reach. You were alright, alive and breathing.

And especially in Jean’s arms.

[howaboutleeches]

Are you still doing request on that Au/Troupe/Prompt thing? Can you make a Troupe - Fake Dating Lucio?

You Are My Favorite Memory - Lucio x Reader

Word Count: 3.094

"C'mon Y/n, it's just one night! You don't even have to stay close to me all time! I mean, it would be better if you did, but anyway, just please do this for me!"

You sighed, feeling a few stares on you from some of the palace workers. You tried to walk faster, but it wasn't like Lucio couldn't catch up to you. He gripped your arm a bit tighter, pulling you closer to him, which made you stumble.

"Lucio, stop! I already told you I won't be your escort" You pulled your arm back, not looking at his face.

"I think escort is a strong word for what I'm asking. I asked you to accompany me to the party and pretend that we're dating. Not to be an escort"

You rolled your eyes. He had been bugging you for almost two hours now. It was a miracle how you haven't smacked him yet and how he hadn't given up on the idea. You sighed and turned around, looking at Lucio. If you weren't so angry, you would've giggled at his facial expression, literally begging you with his eyes.

"Fine! But I have rules!" You pointed your finger at his face, but he kept the puppy eyes, nodding his head vigorously.

"Anything you want Y/n! A fur coat? Fancy clothing? Shiny and gold jewelry? A crown!? I'll give you a crown!" He held your hand, the one close to his face, with both of his, completely covering it.

You felt a little sorry for him, seeing the level of his desperation. You shook your head 'no' and pulled your hand back softly, raising your eyebrow at him.

"First, no interviews and no autographs from my part. Second, your limit is to introduce me as your partner to five important people only. Third, I get to take as much food as I want back to the shop"

"Yes, yes, and yes! Phew, if I knew that's all you wanted we could have ended this conversation so long ago. Hmpf, why didn't you make it all simpler?" He gave you a disappointed look and shook his head, making the urge to punch him come back "I'll make sure to send you many dressing options. I'll go personally to the shop to pick you up, so be ready, huh?"

And with that, he gave you a charming smile and started walking away. Lucio knew how to act like a child sometimes, but it was kind of part of his whole charm. You laughed a bit and started to make your way to the shop.

×

One week had passed since that conversation. During those seven days, tons and tons of clothes, shoes, ornaments, perfume, jewelry, and things you didn't even knew arrived at the shop. Asra didn't mind much, occasionally making fun of Lucio's fashion choices, but Faust found it hard to move around with so many things around. "Friend messy!"

"I can't believe he's still sending things for you to decide. The party is tonight!" Asra groaned once he closed the door, carrying into the shop a delivery Lucio had sent to you.

"What is it this time?" You chuckled and grabbed the package from his hand, moving to a nearby table, putting it on it.

"Open it up, I'm curious" Asra rushed behind you, planting his hands on the table, giving him enough impulse to sit on top of his, a few inches away from the package.

You undid the tie on the package and set it aside, raising the box lid. You gasped and let the lid fall on the floor. Asra peeked inside the box, his eyes widening up as he did. You carefully reached inside the box, tangling the necklace string around your finger, bringing it up close to your's and Asra's face.

"A Memorium...." Both you and Asra said it in a hushed tone, not believing what was right in front of your eyes.

"Hey Y/n, what are you doing?" You jumped a bit in surprise on your chair, holding the book tighter due to the reflex. You relaxed a bit when you saw it was Lucio.

"Just reading this book about magical artifacts. Always good to learn more" You smiled up at him, seeing his body moving in front of you.

He looked at the book with a frowny face, grabbing it from your hand and holding it sloppily, paying attention to the page you were in.

"Memorium....what is that? Oh, it looks fancy! Is it magic jewelry!?" He turned the book to you, still holding it on his hands. He had turned one page, showing the image of the rhombus-like shaped Memorium.

"You can say they are fancy in a certain way. They're very rare and expensive. A Memorium is like a portable center of information. You can use it to record your own voice, the voice of others, spells, and even short events. For example, if I decided to use it now, we could  see our clear image projected on it, with our voices and everything" You explained, excitedly

"But it looks like a necklace..." He turned the book to himself, examining the image closer.

"That's the point. It's small but very useful. That's why it's so expensive" You concluded, getting up from your seat and grabbing the book from his hands.

"That's interesting...I guess. Oh well, I came here for a reason. I have to ask you a huge favor, the biggest favor, that if you do, will make me very happy" He opened a bright smile, hoping it would make it easier to convince you.

"Okay...? Tell me then" You crossed your arms with suspicion.

"I want you to accompany me to a party next week and pretend to be my partner!"

"If I knew he was going to give you a Memorium, I would've offered to accompany him instead" Asra smirked playfully, looking at you.

"I...I also had no idea...." You felt hypnotized by it. Had Lucio really remembered that brief conversation?

"Well, you have time to stare at that later, now you need to pick an outfit" Asra reached for your waist, gently guiding you to the immense piles of clothes and all other things as you kept your eyes glued to the necklace.

“O-Oh, you’re right. Lucio will be here in any minute, I need to be ready”

It didn’t take you very long to find something you liked. It was simple, but very elegant. Comfortable, and yet, it looked stunning. You looked at your reflection and felt like an angel. Asra’s look on you only made you feel even better. A proud and happy smile. He went behind you and carefully placed the Memorium around your neck. Once he finished, you heard a knock on the door. Asra smiled at you through the mirror.

“We’ll definitely explore that thing later, but now, someone awaits you” He backed away a bit, making way for you to walk through. 

You let out a sigh and made your way to the door. Once opening it, you could see Lucio’s confident face, proudly holding a rose. He extended his arm, bowing a bit, and extended the rose to you.

“You look magnificent! I am such a lucky man to be with you” He says in a playful tone, making you snort in response. You take the rose and place it behind your ear since he had removed the thorns - or asked for someone to have them removed - and the stem had been trimmed.

“Oh my, how lucky of me to be favored by the Count” You play along, grabbing his arm. You look back, seeing Asra with crossed arms and Faust on his shoulder.

“Back before midnight. Unlike you, some of us have responsibilities the next day” Asra said with a stern tone, but you knew he meant well. You looked at Faust, who had her eyes squinted. “Friend home soon!”

"Don't worry, I'm not stealing your apprentice......tonight. Bye now!" Lucio didn't even give you time to say goodbye properly and pulled you into a very flashy chariot, closing the door and tapping the ceiling, alerting the Coachman that he could get moving.

The carriage was going on full speed and you could see the streets of Vesuvia passing by rapidly by the window close to you. Lucio sneaked an arm around your waist, holding you close as you entered a bumpy road. If it wasn't for his grip, you would be bouncing on your seat like crazy. You put your body close to his, trying to keep your body steady.

Once the road was over, he pulled back his arm, resting it comfortably on his leg. You felt self-conscious of your actions and pulled your body back, sitting up straight. Part of you wanted his arm to keep holding you and for your bodies to stay close together, but those thoughts quickly went away when the castle lights hit your face.

You squinted your eyes a bit, trying to get used to the bright environment and you could see Lucio's excited face from the corner of your eye. Once your eyes were accustomed enough, you peeked out the window. Colorful lights both directed at the castle and the sky slowly moved in synchrony. All kinds of people entered the castle on their fancy clothes and some of them talked outside. All of their eyes turned to yours and Lucio's chariot, making your heart beat faster.

Lucio held your hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. You looked up at him and met a kind smile, a sincere and kind smile "No need to worry. You're with me. It may be a bit overwhelming, but I'm sure you and I will have a good time. Ready?"

He moved his hand away and extended it close to your face, a sly smirk on his face. You took a deep breath and placed your hand on his, giving him a confident nod and a smile. "Ready"

...........

It hasn't even been ten minutes. Ten minutes into the party and Lucio was already gone. You sort of expected it to happen, but that didn't make it hurt any less. He had introduced you to a few people as his partner but soon vanish to do something else.

You had stares on you, which didn't help with the situation at all. Some were apologetic, pitiful even, feeling sorry for you for being one of Lucio's failed dates. Others were filled with sarcasm and superiority, scoffing as saying that's what you deserved for being with a man like him. A few others were jealous, wishing that they were in your place, even if you were alone now. All of them made you feel bad.

You held back a few tears and walked to a balcony, only a few people there. Some drinking, others talking, but all of them looked at you and went away discreetly, leaving you alone under the night sky. You looked down at the garden beneath you and your eyes laid on the roses. It made you remember about the one behind your ear, but when you moved your hand to touch it, you noticed it wasn't there anymore.

You sighed in frustration and looked down again, wondering if you could sneak there and grab another one unnoticed. With all the stares on you though, it would probably be challenging. You felt a hand on your shoulder, pulling your thoughts away from your scheme and turned around, seeing Lucio.

"I'm afraid you lost something?" He extended his hand to you, holding out the missing rose. You put a displeased expression on your face and snatched the flower from his grasp, placing it behind your ear once more and turning back around, supporting your arms on the balcony.

Lucio didn't say anything, which was new. Maybe he knew that words wouldn't help him out now. You hear his footsteps getting closer until they stopped at your side. He looked up for a few moments, probably admiring the starry night, then looked down at the garden, giving out a chuckle.

“I hope you liked the rose. It was a ton of work to go down there and get that for you, plus removing the thorns was just awful. But seeing how it looks on you makes it all worth it”

You looked away, embarrassed, wanting to show him you were still mad, but with him acting so......so sincere and yet bold as ever at the same time made it almost impossible. You noticed the song slowly getting lower on the dance floor and then changing to the next one.

You couldn’t help but to shake your head with a defeated smile. You never thought Lucio would be the type to remember small details, but he has been proving you wrong the whole night. The soft and embracing tune that brought you back many memories played loudly inside, making it come out to the balcony in the perfect volume.

You turned around to look at Lucio and he was already staring at you, a cheeky grin and an extended hand. He wasn’t good with verbal apologies, but he did his best with what he could. You held his hand and he pulls your bodies closer together, his golden arm involving your waist.

“Did you play with your new toy yet?” He said, looking down at your chest. You followed his gaze, looking down at the Memorium. You had forgotten about it due to all the commotion of the evening. And only now you realized. You knew all the facts about the Memorium, how it was supposed to look, the average size and weight, even how many were produced in the last one hundred years....you just didn’t know how to use it.

As if reading your mind, Lucio used one of his hands, keeping the other on your waist, to get a gentle hold on the Memorium. “Would you mind holding the top part dear?” You gave him a small nod and, since one of your hands was also free now, you held the sharpish tip of the Memorium.

Lucio grabbed the bottom and slowly twisted it, as if opening an upside-down bottle. It was now evident that it was like it was divided into two attached parts, since you could see a source of blue light coming through a slit in the middle of the artifact. 

Lucio slowly let go of the Memorium and so did you. but it kept shining, now pressed on your chest. You looked at it, amused, for a few moments until looking back at Lucio who had a very proud look on his face.

“Apparently I know more about magical artifacts than the magician. What an irony, huh?” His look was so smug you couldn’t help but to giggle a bit, making him feel ego inflate even more. You felt his hand on yours again, starting to move with the song on the background.

“I can’t believe you remembered that tune...It was a long time ago and-”

“-And we were walking on the market, on a day I had insisted to stay in the Palace since it was awfully hot. But you made me go out anyway to....have a picnic. It was an incredible day, especially after that musician kept on following us, playing this song”

You smiled at him. He may act like he didn’t care in the slightest, that he didn’t notice the small details, but he always wanted to make you happy in the ways he could. You pressed your head on his chest, the soft blue light shining in between your bodies, making it look as if your hearts were becoming one.

-------------------------

You were tired. Your feet were aching like crazy, burning even. After the dance had ended, Lucio grabbed your hand and pulled you through the Palace halls, laughing and telling you to ditch your shoes, as he was doing. He led you to the garden, where you had danced and danced, ran after each other, and almost fell on a pond. You were exhausted. But happy.

Lucio had taught you how to see the memories on the Memorium on the way back, which was simpler than you thought. Obviously, he had given you a ride back to the shop, and obviously, he had instructed the coachmen to go as slow as he could.

Once at the shop door, with your fancy shows in hand and Lucio barefoot, you shared a passionate and real kiss. You could feel the happiness coming from his lips and the sincerity they held. It was funny to see him walking back to the carriage, trying his best to ignore the dirty floor of the streets. You touched the rose behind your ear as you saw him poke his head off the window and wave at you. You waved back with a smile and entered the shop, the sweet scent of lavender dancing towards your nose.

The lights out, so you guessed Asra and Faust were already asleep. You silently made your way to the kitchen and poured some of the lavender tea on a mug, silently thanking Asra for his kindness. You decided to leave both the rose and the Memorium on the table in the living room, wanting to show it to Asra on the next day. The tea was no longer on the mug when you arrived in your room. You placed it on a nearby nightstand, fell on the bed, and drifted to sleep, feeling fulfilled.

Maybe it was the tiredness, or maybe the lack of lights, but you failed to notice Asra sitting in an armchair, in the corner of the living room. Once he saw you were asleep, he got up and made his way to the table, looking at the gifts you had received that night. He pulled up a chair and sat close to the table. Of course, he knew how to use a Memorium. He didn’t tell you to give you the satisfaction of figuring it all by yourself.

He contemplated it for a few moments before touching it. The Memorium glowed and floated around half an inch over the table. The image of you and Lucio dancing was as clear as day. The music on the background was soft, like a music box. And the happy expressions on your faces was obvious. It was love, wasn’t it? The love that he couldn't give you, displayed to him, as if he was just a mere bystander. 

Which, at the end of the day, he was.

---------------------

Was the angst necessary at the end? Nope

Did I enjoy putting it there? Absolutely

I hope you all like this. The last gif is from the anime "Sword Art Online" - Season 1

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If you want to be added on the tag list, go interact on my pinned post so I can know 😉💖

Requests: OPEN

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[yespolkadotkitty]

Pero Tovar x mixed race OFC, Isla Han

Thank you @heatherbel for the beta!

Welcome to my next crazy adventure, a Romancing the Stone/Kate and Leopold mash-up. Big love to the really excellent @fleetwoodmactshirts for the original idea and planting the seed for the romanting the stone twist.

There might be quite a lot of British humour in this? Just know that Manuel is a character from the cult classic Fawlty Towers.

Chapter One

Present Day

ISLA: C’mon Lau. Put me out of my misery. Just tell me he won’t be at my office this year.

LAURA: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

ISLA: Don’t pick now to start being modest. At least get someone actually Spanish this time. Last year’s effort was way more Manuel than Antonio Banderas. Just saying. 

LAURA: And yet you insist that you weren’t into that…?

ISLA: He was dedicated, I’ll give you that much. My editor wasn’t impressed when he started to strip in full view of the conference room, though.

LAURA: He was worth the money, all right. Should’ve got someone to record it for Youtube.

I snorted and tossed my phone on the sofa. My birthday was tomorrow. Which meant, just like every year since I’d started my bestselling series of novels, I’d get a visit from a guy all trussed up like my swarthy Spanish mercenary, Alejandro.

It had been five years and my friends - Laura was the ringleader - never failed to embarrass me. All the guys they hired were complete bollocks. Dressed in cheap party-shop chainmail and leathers. 

Some of them tried a Spanish accent (always terrible). 

Others stripped (even worse). 

Last year, poor Manuel had done both, exceeding my expectations, and tripped over the chainmail around his legs on his way out, yelping loudly as he fell face first into a waste paper basket.

At least everyone else had been entertained.

I closed my eyes and leaned back on the sofa. It hadn’t escaped my notice that I’d managed to write the man of my dreams into books that had sold well all over the world, and yet I couldn’t find an actual man who held my interest much longer than the time it took for them to say “what you drinking tonight, love?”

It was probably just as well. I’d rather live in my delicious fictional world of Alejandro and his warrior Princess bride as they traversed the globe, saving others in need and having sex on any surface that stayed still for longer than five minutes.

I heard footsteps on the stairs and opened my eyes. My gaze caught on the poster of the cover of my first novel, The Spaniard. I’d had the image blown up to A1 and framed after it had sold a million copies and the artist’s rendition of Alejandro had stolen my breath. He looked the perfect combination of menacing and beautiful, his full lower lip creased in the centre, like the angel who made him had pressed a thumb there to mark a job well done. His inky hair curled, tousled, over his forehead and his chestnut eyes, one marked with a long, wicked scar, blazed out from the page. Little wonder people had been compelled by him and his broad-shouldered form in the layers of chainmail and leathers.

The footsteps came closer and my brother Paul poked his head around the door. “I’m off out. Want anything from Tesco’s?”

“No, thanks.” I did in fact, want some milk, but when Paul said he was going out he could be gone for ten minutes or five hours. God knew what he did when he went on these little sojourns.

“Okay, text me if you change your mind. See you later.”

“See you.”

I listened to him clatter back down the stairs of our shared townhouse and a minute later, the front door slammed shut.

My parents would be appalled if they knew I essentially let Paul sponge off me. But I was lucky; I could afford it. And Paul had been my rock in our early years, when our Dad had several nervous breakdowns and was sectioned. I’d have been lost without him.

Besides, I didn’t like rattling around this big house by myself. There was only so much TV I could watch, and the bright lights of London held limited appeal after a few years.

LAURA: So... will you record the next guy? I mean, not that I’ve hired anyone.

LAURA: Yet.

LAURA: Please?

I laughed, decided not to reply, and instead got up off the sofa and climbed the stairs to my office to continue work on my edits.

*****

London, 1269

“I should have known bringing her here was a mistake,” William Garin groused as he and a fellow mercenary, Pero Tovar, crouched outside their somewhat ramshackle lodgings, waiting for a man to exit.

Pero snorted. “Bringing a woman into any situation is playing with fire, no? Someone always gets burned.”

William sighed, shifting position behind the large hay bales. “Not my sister. I brought her here to protect her from the kind of gobshites we have in Ireland. Not to have her catch the eye of another.”

Pero drew out a strip of dried meat from his belt pouch, offered it to William. The Irishman shook his head.

“Suit yourself, amigo.”

“He’ll be coming out any minute, and you’re eating?”

Pero scoffed. “I can eat and fight at the same time, cabrón.” He finished the dried meat, and took out another strip.

William shook his head, but he was smiling. “Do all Spaniards eat this much?”

“They do when their Irish comrades starve them, and make them sit for hours behind stinking bales of hay to protect their virgin sister, si?” 

William clapped him over the head. “I - look alive, Tovar.”

The door to the small, two-storey thatched house opened. Catriona, William’s sister, a comely redhead, peeked outside, then ducked back in.

A tall man, pale-skinned, thick dark hair with a closely trimmed beard, exited, then briefly doubled back to kiss a smiling Catriona.

“Bastard,” William gritted out.

“Patience, amigo,” Pero cautioned. “We see where he goes, and then we plan.” He shoved William’s head down behind the hay bale, letting him up when it was safe. “And now we follow.”

“Eejit.” But William followed Pero’s steady lead.

They tracked the man through the dirty London streets, narrowly avoiding a fishwife emptying a chamber pot out of a high window. Two girls half Pero’s height wheeled a cart of freshly baked pies down the narrow alley opposite, the scents mingling with the more unpleasant stink of everyday life.

The stranger turned, and Pero yanked William behind a rickety butcher’s cart, crouching and ignoring the stocky man’s “oi!”

“He’s stopped looking,” William confirmed, and they tracked him down nearer the big river that snaked through the dogpile of the city. 

Pero’s attention was briefly snagged by an enterprising young pickpocket, currently targeting a well to do merchant admiring trinkets with what was likely his mistress. The boy caught his eye, hesitated. Pero winked. Who was he to cut the boy off in his prime?

The stranger disappeared into the mouth of what looked to be an abandoned hovel, and William and Pero darted after him on feet made silent by years of training.

The hovel was dark inside, dank. A light blinked on in the gloom; like no light Pero had ever seen the like of.

“What is this witchcraft?” He muttered.

“Don’t dally, man!” William tugged Pero after him, rushing to grab their quarry.

The Irishman tripped, caught the surprised stranger by the collar - and then everything went black.

******

“Tovar! Tovar!”

Pero opened his eyes, groggy. He lay on a smooth, flat surface. Not unlike the floors of the fine throne rooms of kings he’d served during his years as a sellsword. He smoothed a hand over the unblemished ground, blinked.

“Snap out of it, man!” William grabbed him, shaking roughly. “Follow the bastard!”

A terrible banging, drums perhaps, assaulted Pero’s ears from somewhere outside their strange, smooth grey prison. A pile of rubble was stacked in one corner. Crude art littered the walls; also the same luxurious smoothness there.

“William - where are we, amigo?”

But the Irishman was preoccupied. “Do you not see he’s getting away?”

Pero climbed to his feet, his head aching. Mierda, it was so bright here.

William was already giving chase, so Pero followed his friend as best he could with his head spinning from wherever they’d followed the stranger to - the stranger woo-ing Catriona. Sweet Catriona, who he’d seen grow from a child.

William shoved a rickety door open, and all at once a pillar of light hit them. William stumbled, falling back on to Tovar, who hit the ground with a grunt.

“Ay, cabrón!”

“What in Heaven’s name-?”

They gaped through the doorway. A huge metal pole grew from the earth, a bright light at its apex, streaming down on the ground. Some feet away sat what looked to be a small fort on wheels. But wheels unlike any Pero had ever seen before. The unholy, piercingly bright light shone into the wheeled fort, illuminating a chair inside. 

Used for torture, perhaps.

“Where are we, amigo?” he whispered again, to William.

“We’ll make enquiries later. For now, the bastard’s getting away. Come on!”

“Of course, amigo, where you go, I follow,” Pero muttered. 

But what other choice did he have?

They ran out of the door, towards the wheeled fort of torture, and into the unknown.

Tagging the Pedro pals: @thirstworldproblemss @jaime1110 @chews-erotically @songsformonkeys @alwaysbethewest @beccaplaying @nelba @synystersilenceinblacknwhite @gamingaquarius @buckstaposition @pedropascallion @soldade @agirllovespasta @pajamasecrets @thegreenkid @cryptkeepersoul @kindablackenedsuperhero @littlemissthistle @alienprincesspoop @keeper0fthestars @f0rever15elf @mrsparknuts @abuttoncalledsmalls @mrschiltoncat @thempiregroovy @dornish-queen  @mourningbirds1 @a-seeker-of-imagination​ @knittingqueen13​ @ mstgsmy​  @roxypeanut​ @poenariuniverse​

[hopelikethemoon]

Headlines (Javier x Reader) {MTMF}

Title: Headlines Rating: PG-13 Length: 2000 Warnings: None. Notes: You can find everything about Maybe Today, Maybe Forever here. Set in March 1998. Summary: The article hits the newstands. 

@grapemama​​ @seawhisperer​​ @huliabitch​​ @pedropascalito​​ @rogrsnbarnes​ @thewallpapergoesorido​ @twomoonstwosuns​​ @gooddaykate​​ @livasaurasrex @ham4arrow​ @plexflexico​​ @readsalot73 @hdlynn​​ @lokiaddicted​​ @randomness501​ @fioccodineveautunnale​  @roxypeanut​​ @snivellusim​ @lukesrighthand​ @historynerd04​ @mrsparknuts​ @synystersilenceinblacknwhite​ @behindmyeyes-insidemyhead @exrebelshocktrooper​​ @awesomefandomsunited @ah-callie​ @swhiskeys​ @lady-tano​​ @beskar-droids​ @space-floozy @cable-kenobi​​ @cool-ultra-nerd @himbopoes​​ @findhimfives​​ @pedrosdoll​ @frietiemeloen​ @arrowswithwifi @random066​ @uncomicalhumour​​ @heather-lynn​​ @domino-oh-damn​ @cyarikaaa​ @ahopelessromanticwritersworld​ @im-still-a-pieceofgarbage @ksgeekgirl  @yabby-girl @xqueenofthecraziesx @punkass-potato​ @coredrive​​​ @pascalesque​​ @theduchessofkirkcaldy​​​ @queenquazar​​ @sabinemorans​​​ @buckstaposition​ @holkaskrosnou​​ @yespolkadotkitty​​ @fleetwoodmactshirt​ @seeking-a-great--perhaps​

DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENCY UNDER FIRE FOR GENDER-BASED DISCRIMINATION 

America was captivated by the DEA’s pursuit of the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Following his death in 1993, two names became synonymous with the chase — but there was another name carefully removed from the narrative. 

In 1987, Annie Morley transferred to Colombia from the DEA’s Atlanta Division eager to make a name for herself within one of the government’s most notorious agencies. Her drive led to numerous successful apprehensions. Most notably, she led the takedown on a notorious associate of Escobar within her first twenty-four hours with the agency. 

The DEA rewarded her loyalty to the agency by burying her efforts and scrubbing her dedication from the record books. 

Following Escobar’s death, Morley entered into a quiet relationship with her longtime partner, Javier Peña. After years of fighting against the rampant sexism at the embassy, she was forced to conceal not only the relationship, but the paternity of her daughter.

The DEA’s response to her pregnancy was to place her on indefinite desk duty, prematurely ending the career of one of their best field agents. She was replaced by Chris Fiestle, a junior agent with a record for complacency, forged documentation, multiple disciplinary infractions, and at least one harassment-based misdemeanor on his record. Fiestle’s connections within the DEA agency allowed for his unowned momentum, despite his unfavourable records. While Morley found herself under increased scrutiny, harassment, and intimidation merely due to her transition into motherhood.

Once the couple’s relationship became known to the agency, the DEA swiftly severed Morley’s employment and terminated her work permit sponsorship in Colombia. Morley and Peña have provided the paper with first person accounts and documentation of numerous actions undertaken by the DEA to silence, intimidate, harassment, and even blackmail them into subjugation. 

Files obtained by the Post, courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act have confirmed internal communication between several upper level members of the DEA actively conspiring against the couple. Including, but not limited to, explicit correspondence reflecting on the nature of Morley’s morals and whether other members of the agency would be willing to “share her”. 

Two years ago, Peña contacted the Post to investigate Morley’s omission from official DEA records and was met by the DEA financially blackmailing one of his students at The University of Miami, orchestrating false sexual assault claims in an attempt to silence their attempts at going to the press with their story.

The Post will continue coverage on these shocking allegations next month. 

 ———

 The newspaper trembled as your eyes skimmed over the article. There it was. In print. The summation of your six years with the DEA. Pictures of the three of you on assignment — a copy of the one that had sat framed in your apartment for years. You had been there. You had given your blood, sweat, and tears to the agency and in return, they’d buried your contributions all because you had become a mother. 

“I didn’t know that.” You remarked, peering over the edge of the newspaper, watching Javier as he read through his own copy of the Post. 

“What?” He questioned, arching a brow at you. 

“That they wanted to share me.” Just repeating what you had read made your skin crawl. You sat in briefings with those assholes — stupidly thinking they saw you as an agent and not as a woman. “I must’ve missed that in the FOIA files.” 

Javier nodded, “That’s tame, in comparison to what Vickers has sitting on his desk.” He reached over and gave your leg a squeeze. “You good, baby?”

“It’s just surreal.” You admitted, covering his hand with yours as you sat up. “I never thought it would come to this, you know? When we were back in Colombia — before Josie… I would never have imagined this.” You gestured to the paper. 

And it was just the beginning. Now that it was out, you were certain the DEA would retaliate. They’d dredge up something to hurt your image, to hurt Javier’s. They played dirty and you weren’t sure how swift their retaliation would be this time. 

“I wish I could be a fly on the wall when Chris reads this.” Javier said, loosely shaking out the newspaper before folding it closed and sitting it aside on the coffee table. He stared at you for a long moment and you could feel his eyes on you. “C’mere baby.” 

You sighed heavily as you sat the newspaper aside, crawling down the length of the sofa to him. Javier pulled you into his arms and you settled against his chest, listening to his heart beating beneath your ear. 

“Are you glad we did this?” Javier questioned, pressing his lips to the top of your head.

You swallowed thickly, nodding slowly. “I think so.” You trailed your fingers over his arm, drawing little patterns against his skin. “You know, it’s really wild to see our relationship put to print. Because it was a quiet affair, we’ve never made it into something.” 

Javier played his fingers through your hair gently, his other hand sliding down your back. “Do you want to make it into something?”

“No.” 

“I didn’t think so.” He chuckled quietly. “But you’re not wrong, baby. Seeing the two of us in the paper like this — it’s fucking weird.” Javier gestured to the newspaper on the table. “Seeing everything put so plainly, spelled out for the world to see.”

You tilted your head to press a kiss to his throat, “Thank you for this very belated Christmas gift.”

Javier snorted, “Well, we had to have a baby and move first, didn’t we?” He stroked his fingers up and down your back. 

You cracked a smile, resting your cheek against his chest again. “The last year has been a blur.” 

“Make that ten years.”

“Truly.” Your eyes flickered towards the newspaper, your heart best quickening as you stared at the picture of yourself right there on the front page. 

One. Two. Three.

You exhaled heavily.

Javier pressed a kiss to the top of your head, just as the phone started ringing in the kitchen. “I should get that. It might be the daycare.” He remarked, reluctantly starting to get up. 

You pulled away from him, reclining back on the sofa as you watched him head into the kitchen to catch the call on the third ring. 

“Hey, baby?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s for you.”

Your brows rose upwards are the somewhat odd tone Javier was using. You hadn’t actually considered that people might call you in regards to the paper until that moment. 

“Who is it?” You questioned, hands on your hips as you stared at him. He had the receiving pressed to his chest to muffle out your voices. 

“Lance.”

“What?”

Javier shrugged, a casual indifference that you knew wasn’t indifference. 

“Javi,” You rolled your eyes as you took the phone from him. You turned back towards the wall to press the speaker button on the phone. “Hey, Lance! You’re on speaker.”

Lance chuckled coolly, “Saw the headlines this morning, thought I ought to drop a line.”

“Yeah, it’s been a long time coming.” You admitted, folding your arms across your chest. “How’s Sheena?”

“It’s going great. We actually just moved back closer to her parents. She’ll need the help in about four months.”

“Congratulations, Lance.” You offered, “I know how much you wanted kids.”

“Got my wish too. Twins.”

Javier arched a brow at you, looking in between you and the phone. 

“What?” You mouthed. 

He shook his head and headed over to make himself a cup of coffee, eyes still flickering your direction. 

“How are your kids doing?”

“Josie’s a spitfire. I don’t know how she’s going to manage kindergarten.”

“Kindergarten? No shit. How the hell is she five?”

You laughed, “She’s still got a couple months. And Sofía’s doing really well.”

“Sofía. Sheena actually has that one on the name list.”

“It was my mother’s name.” Javier remarked, with just the edge of annoyance to his voice. You stepped away from the phone, curling your fingers around his arm. 

“Stop.” You whispered when he tried to pull his arm away from you. 

“Well then, I’ll promise to steer Sheena away from the name then.” Lance remarked with a good-natured laugh. 

Javier’s expression softened as you cupped his cheek and leaned up on your toes to kiss him. You drew back, brushing your nose against his. “You jealous fool.” You whispered just for him, ruffling your fingers through his hair. 

“I wish I was calling just to congratulate the two of you for sticking it to the DEA, but I, uh… I come with some unfavorable information.” 

You stiffened and Javier reached for your hand. “What do you mean by unfavorable news?”

“Looks like the DEA got ahead of your story in the Post,” Lance explained. “First thing this morning I had the public relations team at the DEA Headquarters calling me. They were wanting any information I would give them about our relationship.” 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Javier hissed out. 

“Easy there, Peña.” Lance warned him, “I told them we had a good relationship, but we both ultimately wanted different things. They seemed rather disappointed to find out you and I still talk.” 

Javier’s hand tightened around yours. 

“What kind of questions were they asking?” You questioned, biting down on your bottom lip as you worried about what the DEA could possibly be up to. “Specific questions about our relationship?”

“Start and end date. Whether I suspected that you and Javier were more than partners.” Lance chuckled. “You and I were long over before the two of you got together. I told them they didn’t have a story with me. But that means they’re going to be following other leads that might be able to discredit your story.”

“We have the fucking FOID files. There’s nothing to discredit.” You seethed.  

“You’re welcome to pass my contact info along to the journalist,” Lance told you. “I’m happy to lend whatever assistance I might be able to render.” 

“You might be a fucking suit, but you’re not a bad guy, Lance.” Javier retorted, his tongue pressed into his cheek as he glared at the phone.

“You’re not so bad yourself, Peña.” Lance countered. “You make her happy and frankly that’s all I care about. You two have a good rest of your day.” 

“Thanks for calling, Lance. I’ll pass your information along to Vickers.” You offered as you stepped towards the phone to hang up. “It’s not like we should be surprised that the DEA is already trying to damage control.” 

Javier gave you a look, his lips drawn thin. “So you keep in touch with Lance?”

You rolled your eyes, “You are ridiculous. You should be thanking me for keeping in touch with him. Otherwise we wouldn’t know what the DEA is up to right now.” You approached him, poking him in the chest. “Once again, I prove to be a better agent than you.” 

“And how’s that?” He questioned, curling his hand around your hip as he leaned down to press a kiss to your forehead. 

“I keep people close,” You answered, resting a hand on his shoulder. “People who someone might be able to turn against me. I keep that relationship — no matter how badly it ended — in good condition. The old adage is ‘an enemy of my enemy, is my friend’ and I try to keep that from being used against me.” 

“Is that why you went to coffee with Elena?” 

You shrugged, “I always liked Elena.” 

“Me too.” He admitted, “She let me talk about you.” 

You made a face, “Pretty sure I talked about you to Lance and neither of us knew why.” You reached down and took both of his hands into yours, interlacing your fingers before bringing them to your lips. You pressed a kiss to each knuckle. “We knew this wasn’t going to be easy. Look what the DEA did just because of a FOIA.” 

“Yeah.” Javier sighed heavily, clicking his tongue against his teeth. “I’ll fucking tear that entire institution down if they try to hurt you for this. I’ll burn it all to the ground.” 

“Oh, arson.” You pursed your lips, giving him an appraising look. “I hadn’t taken you for an arsonist.” 

Javier snorted, tracing his tongue over the edges of his teeth, “DEA deserves to burn. And I’ll use the embers to keep you warm, baby.” 

“I’ll get the matches.” You smirked, tracing your fingertip down the length of his nose, before you tilted your chin and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. 

[merrysithmas]

I read boris as bisexual (and theo as gay) but I see a lot of people saying he is gay, did I miss something??

i really wish tumblr's tag system worked, bc then I could link you to my old post about this which would be much more detailed and eloquent, so I'm sorry about that!

But to be succinct (ahhaa as if i ever could be) everyone's hc about Boris' sexuality is valid, however in my opinion (and many others) it is textually obvious that Boris' liasions with women are either compulsive heterosexuality, just used for the simple hendonistic pleasure/ having the easy availability of a partner compared to the difficulty he would have finding a male partner in many conservative countries, used for status gain, or simply bold-faced lies.

Boris NEVER speaks of any sexual encounter with a woman unless asked (by Theo, about losing his virginity, and again by Theo, pressing if he slept with Kotku). Boris does not connect emotionality to his dynamics with women specifically (on purpose, because he doesn't care and they are not important to him), and he often makes up lies to cover up his true feelings or put on a show (when he deems it necessary to his own survival or opportunistic).

Boris is also VERY nonverbal in expressing his real feelings of love. This likely comes from fear and being raised in an abusive household. Boris fears putting in jeopardy anything he truly loves. Things he doesn't love or fear losing? Well they are truly game for vapid exclamations of showmanship -- meeting Kotku and "loving" her in one afternoon, talking about how "hot" Xandra is bc she is an attractive older woman who he "should" find desirable. The sex worker he lost his virginity to was "awesome" yet he js u comfortable talking about it. Theo? The person Boris devotes ten years of his life to? Does he ever outright say I love you? No. There's the evidence.

Boris keeps women at a distance and even is abusive to them when the limits of his adolescent understanding of himself/his psyche are pushed (he was raised in a violent household, he equates love with instability and violence and ingenuine feeling). He also uses violence to express his emotions - he and Theo frequently roughhouse and hit each other speficially at moments when they have romantic or sexual tension to displace that. With Kotku, he hits her when she seems like he is going to break up with him. An emotional fear of not being "the man that she wants". A fear of not being "a man". Of not living up to an image he never wanted in the firs place (sensitive Boris who loves reading and philosophizing and music and craves love and companionship).

On the other hand he openly flirts with Theo, watches him in class, compliments his glasses, sits next to him on the bus, can't stop talking to him all afternoon, begs him to come to his house, begs him to sleepover, asks him to sleep in his bed, cuddles him when he has nightmares, soothes him to sleep, listens to him, keeps him from comitting suicide, kisses him, and then when they are older he specifically mentions his sexual relationship with Theo, brings it up entirely on his own, outright professes his love for Theo with a kiss and longing guilt for a decade, willingly will give up his gang/life to retrieve the painting for Theo, and is open and flirtatious with Theo when they reunite (come to Moscow, come to Antwerp, shall we stand here tenderly and gaze?, telling him to eat, REFUSING to give up the painting aka Theo's soul to Martin on threat of his LIFE ... survivalist Boris finally finding something he's willing to die for).

Textually Boris' relationship with Kotku was engendered out of gay panic after the text suggests he and Theo had a relationship of some kind for a year following the pool scene in Vegas. Boris, who has only known love as instability and abuse (via Vladimir) and who also like has internalized homophobia in the sense that he feels he cannot flaunt this preference of is out in the open, flees to Kotku and essentially recreates his relationship with Theo with her, in a heterosexual lens. He gets extremely touchy when Theo asks if he was sleeping with her after boiling over in jealousy for months, and Boris gives an answer "What do you think? You want me to make you a map?" that can either be taken as a grudging yes or embarrassed no.

Boris also dates Kotku SPECIFICALLY because she already had another boyfriend and therefore his relationship with her is already moot. It is uncommitted. He denies the advances of all the other girls at school, much to Theo's confusion, even girls he asserts are prettier and more interesting. Cough. Boris just doesn't like girls. Boris even points out one of the girls, Saffi, is "too straight" and Kotku (who it was mentioned in previous pages is bi/pan/poly) is "like them".

Boris did not enjoy his first sexual experience, which he notes was with a sex worker in a parking lot in Alaska (undoubtedly the influence of the miners), and ONLY has a positive relationship with women (not abusive, as he is with Kotku) when he strictly emphasies he and the women are just friends (Xandra, Myriam his "right hand man").

When they are older Boris invents a cover story about a Swedish family that Theo sees RIGHT through and laughs at, letting us know how fake it is, after which Boris drops the lie immediately and doesn't continue it. But Boris did not know Theo at that point - Theo who was marrying a wealthy woman himself - and Boris needed to see if Theo was still the same person he knew in Vegas. He needed to pin their boyhood romance on Theo at first, to test the waters, and invent a family on par with Theo's own invented family connection-- the Barbours. He needed to know for sure Theo didn't despise him before he poured his heart out in him again.

Those are some of the many reasons I and many others feel the text indicates Boris is gay :)

[moralanxietystudio]

Buried In Words - Roadwarden Devlog

(Roadwarden is an illustrated text-based RPG in which you explore and change a hostile, grim realm. It combines mechanics of RPGs, adventure games and Visual Novels, and you can now wishlist it on Steam!)

Since the middle of December, working on Roadwarden is mostly about writing new events, dialogues and quests. There were almost no updates on social media - I don’t have time to draw (aside of some inventory icons), and by popular demand, I try to avoid deeper spoilers. I’ve written quite a bunch of stuff, but the results won’t do for exciting screenshots.

I’m  currently focused on designing and filling up Howler’s Dell, the largest settlement in the game, so there’s a LOT of important character interactions to introduce, including quests, merchants, and lore. But in the meantime, some major changes have also been introduced:

 1. The game over screens

In the original Roadwarden’s Design Document, there were no game-overs. You could get significantly hurt during your journeys, but never to the point where you’d hit a brick wall that would make the further progress impossible. You’d need to rest and heal your wounds to participate in some events, but you could always move forward.

I’ve finally decided to change it. In most situations, reaching 0 HP won’t result in an instant death. But in some scripted encounters - usually when facing an overwhelming opponent while being completely unprepared - your character will be broken.

Still, I hope to make it as player-friendly as possible. Did you forget to save your game? Was autosave ran in an inconvenient spot? You can jump back in time a bit, no strings attached.

In various European cultures, the winged hourglass is an image related to the ephemerality of life, and it has became an important part of the Viaticum fantasy setting over ten years ago. Since there’s no single “canonic” design, I’ve had an opportunity to experiment with various approaches.

 2. New “regular” font

The text has now more space to breathe, the letters have more personality, and thanks to the serifs, it’s going to be easier to keep track of the lines you read. Everybody wins:

While the majority of feedback that I’ve gathered shares my enthusiasm, I’ve also seen some words of criticism. It’s still possible that the font is going to be replaced with a different one, but I’m convinced it’s still a step in the right direction.

Even if the font is going to be replaced again, this little feature will be kept in the game. The good old “select a font” setting now showcases a small frame that explains the most significant traits of the regular font and the pixel one. Even though the pixel font looks cool on screenshots, it won’t be gentle on your eyes.

 3. Updated inventory menu

From now on, pointing at an icon in your inventory will showcase not just the item’s brief description, but also its name.

This update was essential due to the constantly growing number of items added to the game. Usually, the player will keep using or loosing some of them as they complete more quests or take a part in more unique interactions, but you may reach a point when you’ll see a couple of dozen of icons at once, and they may start to get a bit blurry. When there was maybe 20 items in the entire game, clicking an icon to see the broader description wasn’t a large problem, but it became clear that it was a short-sighted, flawed design.

 4. Redesigned armor system

I’m not gonna lie. The gambesons that were present in the demo? They were a placeholder, waiting for a better idea to show up. And here it is.

The original two “types” of armor were related to the character’s class selected at the beginning of the game - the Warrior gets the good stuff, while both the Scholar and the Mage have a piece of trash, since they couldn’t afford anything better.

I was expecting to introduce some encounters “better” armors later in the game, and also script interactions where the better armors help you survive major injuries or even death, but I felt it was not good enough. This approach doesn’t introduce much decision making, and it introduces sort of a boring stagnancy.

The new system offers three “levels” of armor. The level 1 - “A Worn Gambeson” - offers you little to no protection. If you want to be saved during some difficult encounters, or maybe get less hurt when you screw up, you want to get to at least the level 2 - “A Decent Gambeson” - which is given to the Warrior class at the beginning of the game.

Upgrading armor requires getting in touch with a tailor, and paying them to do some fixes for you. However, when the armor “saves” you, it often also gets damaged. Its level decreases.

The 3rd level of your armor - “A Fine Gambeson” - follows the same rules. Wearing it will save you from most wounds, but during this process, it may also get torn, downgraded to level 2. As the player, you have to decide how many dragon coins you are willing to invest to keep yourself in one piece.

So simple, yet so much better. And I can still decide to introduce levels 0, 4, 5... Depending on  what will turn out to fit the larger picture.

 5. Updated journal menu

The journal has received the very needed scrollbars, which appear only when there’s too much text to fit in a single window. From now on, I don’t expect that the player will just “figure out” that they can use a mouse wheel, or drag the text box. Nice and easy:

Also, when you select a chapter (like “Quests”) or a specific entry (like the “Necromancers?” quest), the button is now highlighted, what will help you keep track of what you’ve been clicking through:

Also, unlike in the game’s demo, the “People” chapter is now cohesive with the “Quests” formatting. Originally, these sections had different sizes, what didn’t look as good as I intended.

6. Dolmen updates

Just to make it clear - the game receives a whole bunch of updates and bug fixes every week, and I don’t plan to list dozens of small adjustments just because. But this one is pretty fun for me, since it shows the progressing level of attention to detail, and the evolution of the game’s design. : )

Since the day I’ve introduced this area to the game’s prototype, I was unhappy about the low amount of visual changes it had to offer. No matter what you’d type down to solve the puzzle, the only clues you’d receive were presented in text.

The updated dolmen required some rewrites and a fair bit of drawing, but from now on, once you find something that provides a significant clue, you’ll also see a visual feedback that’s going to reflect your discovery. It will help you backtrack the older information, and focus your attention on more successful guesses. Oh, something new has showed up? I guess it’s important!

7. The world map reworks

Some of those updates are difficult to spot without a looking glass. Some percentage of the “bushes” have different colors now and a couple of new shapes; the forests and trees now cast shadows; the lake nearby the Southern Crossroads has more details; the river in the east is broader; there are new hills nearby Tulia’s Camp...

But it’s the eastern part of the map that has seen some major updates. It’s filled with hills and mountains, and because of it, it provides more limited vision than lands in the west, covered with plains and swamps. Previously, this disproportion was quite a bit larger, and I’ve decided to town it down a bit. I hope that the effect I’ve had in mind is still clear to spot.

 8. More “stable” text boxes

When the player points at an icon, it usually creates a text box with a related description. From now on, more of these text boxes will be anchored to specific parts of the screen, instead of showing up in an area related to the player’s cursor. It should make the information less chaotic, and won’t cover other icons anymore. Also, there will be no more situations when the text box is partially outside of the game’s window.

---------------------------------

Thank you for taking a look at this devlog, for your support and kindness. Remember, you can also find me on Twitter and Facebook, and the game has a Steam page on which you can add it to your wishlist. Have a great day!

[algaesway]

第2章

Chapter 2. Spite: Part I. 

The very moment Wei Wuxian opened his eyes, someone kicked him.

Like a sudden thunderclap, a voice close to his ear roared: ‘Stop playing dead!’ 

The kick, which had been directed squarely at his chest, nearly made him cough up blood. As the back of his head hit the ground, he gazed up, mind still covered in a haze. He thought: ‘This guy has some gall, daring to kick me, the Yiling Laozu.’ 

Wei Wuxian didn’t even know how many years it had been since the last time he’d heard a living person speak, let alone such a resounding voice cursing him. While his head was still spinning and his vision was blurred, this young fellow’s duck-like croak reverbated in his ears like tinnitus: ‘Have a think - whose land is it you’re living on? Whose rice is it you’re eating? Whose money are you spending? It goes without saying that the answer to all these questions is “mine”!’. 

Immediately after that, Wei Wuxian heard sounds of frantic rummaging from all directions, as if someone was digging through chests and drawers. Judging by the clangour, it seemed that things were being thrown around and smashed on the floor. It had taken a while, but Wei Wuxian’s eyes were finally starting to clear up. A dingy ceiling emerged in his line of vision, followed by a pallid face with drooping eyebrows, standing above him and splashing spit on his face as he shouted: ‘How dare you tell on me! Did you really think that I’d be scared of your snitching? Did you really believe that there is anybody in this house who would take your side?’ 

A pair of burly men, apparently household servants, emerged on the young fellow’s side and said: ‘Young master, we’ve finished smashing everything to bits!’

The duck-throated youth asked: ‘How did you get it done so quickly?’

The household servants said: ‘Well, there weren’t that many things in this dirty hovel to start with’. 

Beaming with satisfaction, the duck-throated youth turned towards Wei Wuxian again. He jabbed at his nose forcefully, index finger seemingly itching to push it all the way up to his forehead, while shouting: ‘How come you were acting all uppity before, snitching on me, and now you’re cowering on the ground playing dead! Who is this act meant for? As if anyone would actually want your scrap metal and waste paper! Now that I’ve smashed it all up for you, feel free to try snitching on me to your heart’s content! You think you’re so amazing just because you spent a few years in a cultivation sect. Even though they drove you out just like a stray dog, didn’t they!’ 

Feeling barely half-alive, Wei Wuxian pondered: 

‘I’ve been dead for years. I’m really not pretending!’ 

‘Who is this guy?’ 

‘Where am I?’

‘How did I end up possessing someone else’s body?’ 

Having let out enough steam by kicking and smashing up the room, the duck-throated youth swaggered out with the two man-servants in tow, slamming the door and ordering in a shrill voice: ‘Keep a close eye on him! Do not let him come out, or he’ll just make a spectacle of himself again!’ 

On the other side of the door, the man-servants vowed to follow the order. Silence fell both inside and outside the room. Wei Wuxian tried to sit up, but his body refused to obey, so he lay back down again. There was nothing he could do but roll over on his side. Although his vision was still blurry, he took in the unfamiliar surroundings - and the complete mess that had been made of the room. 

A bronze mirror had been discarded on the floor beside him, close enough that he could easily reach out and grab it to take a look. A strange white face appeared in the mirror, with both cheeks covered in uneven and asymmetrical stripes of crimson. All that was missing was a long red tongue lolling out of his mouth, and he would have been the spitting image of a hanged ghost. 

Bewildered by the sight, Wei Wuxian threw the mirror away. He wiped at his face, only to find his hand covered in white powder. 

Fortunately, this body hadn’t been born with such an eccentric appearance; its previous owner had just had eccentric tastes. This was doubtlessly the body of a grown man, yet with rouge and powder thickly smeared all over its face. The worst part was that the make-up had been applied with appallingly poor technique. 

Being startled had had a revitalising effect. Wei Wuxian finally found the strength to sit up, and only then did he notice the curse array on the floor beneath him. The scarlet-coloured array was circular but uneven. It seemed that someone had drawn it with a shaky hand, using their own blood as paint. The pattern was still wet, and a meaty stench emanated from it. Twisted incantations had been frantically scribbled inside the array. Some of them had been wiped away by the body lying on top, but the remaining words and drawings were permeated by a demonic gloom. For however many years, people had been calling Wei Wuxian the sovereign of demons, the patriarch of demonic cultivation, and so on and so forth. Knowing such matters like the back of his hand, a quick glance was naturally enough for him to figure out that this was no good-natured array. 

So he hadn’t possessed anyone’s body, after all - rather, someone had offered their own body to him!

In its essence, a demonic consecration was a form of a curse, requiring the person casting it to mutilate themselves with a weapon. The blood flowing from the wounds that had been carved on the body would then be used to draw the array and write down the incantations. Once the array had been drawn, the caster would position themselves in its centre, thus turning their own flesh into a sacrifice for demonic spirits. For the price of returning their own soul to the earth, the caster could summon an unspeakably wicked demon or even an evil god to take over their body and fulfil their most desperate wish. 

The polar opposite of a demonic consecration was, naturally, a demonic possession. Both of them were widely reviled as forbidden arts, but the former had been far less popular in reality than the latter. After all, very few desires were strong enough to compel a person into sacrificing oneself completely. As a result, this curse had barely ever been put to practice, and over the last century, it had almost fallen to complete obscurity as a forgotten art. The ancient books recorded only three or four verified cases of demonic consecration over the millennia. Without exception, each of these people had been consumed by the same desire - revenge. The demonic spirits they summoned had perfectly satisfied this desire with ruthless bloodshed. 

Wei Wuxian felt deeply uneasy. 

How exactly had he ended up lumped together with ‘unspeakably wicked demons and evil gods’? 

Sure, he had a relatively poor reputation, and the way he’d died had been extraordinarily brutal. But he had no interest in either haunting or vengeance. He could bet that even if one searched all corners of both heaven and earth, they could never find a wandering soul as friendly and dutiful as he was! 

The thorny issue was that the whole act of demonic consecration was based on the primacy of its caster’s desire. No matter how unacceptable that desire may have been for Wei Wuxian.. Now that he had been inserted into the spell-caster’s body, a tacit contract must have already formed between them. He had no choice but to fulfil whatever had been asked of him. A failure to fulfil a contract like this would result in the curse rebounding on the possessor. His soul would be completely extinguished, unable to ever be reincarnated again.

Wei Wuxian loosened the sash on his robes and raised his arms to inspect them. As expected, both of his wrists were crisscrossed by nasty cuts from a sharp blade. Even though the wounds had already stopped bleeding, it was clear to Wei Wuxian that these were no ordinary injuries. The cuts on this body would not heal unless its original owner’s wish was completely satisfied. The longer it took to fulfil the task, the more its condition would deteriorate. If the time limit was exceeded, the soul that had been summoned to possess this body would be ripped apart along with it. 

Wei Wuxian reiterated this over and over again to make sure there was no mistake. In his heart, he repeated ten times: ‘This is absurd!’. Finally, he forced himself to stand up, leaning on the wall for support. 

The room was spacious but empty and squalid. The bedspreads and quilts looked like they hadn’t been changed for a very long time, and the air smelled musty. A bamboo basket full of rubbish had been kicked over in one corner, spilling out dirt and wastepaper. Wei Wuxian noticed traces of ink on the wads of paper and picked up one sheet to take a closer look. Sure enough, it was covered in dense writing. He rushed to collect all of the scattered pieces of paper. 

The previous owner of this body had clearly written these notes as a way to vent out his distress. Many of the passages were completely nonsensical or incoherent, and the distorted characters were steeped in anxiety. Wei Wuxian mustered up all his patience to read through page after page, and the more he read, the more uneasy he felt. 

Even if he had to make some wild guesses to patch it all together, he could roughly figure out what was going on. Most importantly, the original owner of this body was called Mo Xuanyu, and this place was the Mo family’s manor. 

Mo Xuanyu’s maternal grandfather had been one of the richest landlords in the area, but struggled to produce a successor. Even after diligently trying for years, he’d only had two daughters, whose names were not mentioned. His legal wife had given birth to the elder daughter, whose husband later married into the family. The second daughter’s mother, on the other hand, was actually one of the housemaids. Because of her illicit background, the Mo family had originally been intending to send the second daughter away through marriage. A chance encounter she had at sixteen upended these plans, however. At that time, the leader of an influential cultivation sect fell in love with her at first sight while passing through. As a result of their clandestine affair, the second daughter gave birth to a child - and that child was Mo Xuanyu. 

Although people at the Mo manor had initially viewed this affair with contempt, they also held a deep admiration for cultivators. In the eyes of common people, cultivation families enjoyed Heavens’ special blessings; they were noble and mysterious.  From time to time, the leader of the cultivation sect would also provide the Mo family with all kinds of favours. Eventually,  the wind started blowing in a completely different direction. Not only did the Mo family start considering this special treatment a source of glory, it also roused the envy of outsiders. 

A good thing never lasts forever. The sect leader was the type to always crave for freshly hunted meat, and it only took a couple of years for him to grow tired of the familiar taste. His visits grew more and more infrequent. After Mo Xuanyu turned four, he never visited again. 

In the years that followed, the tone of voices within the Mo manor changed once again. The old contempt and ridicule came back, this time intertwined with disdainful pity. While swallowing her bitter regret, the second Mo daughter remained convinced that the sect leader would never completely abandon a child of his own blood. Sure enough, when Mo Xuanyu was fourteen, the sect leader dispatched a large group of delegates to ceremoniously welcome him into their clan. 

At this, the second Mo daughter regained her pride. Even if she couldn’t accompany her son, her previous sullenness was swept away at once. Whenever she met somebody, she would loudly boast about her son, who was sure to become a great cultivator, achieve meteoric success in his career, and bring great honour to their ancestors. As a result, the wagging tongues at the Mo manor changed their tune for the third time. 

However, before Mo Xuanyu could establish himself as a fully-fledged cultivator and a successor to his father, he was kicked out. 

Not only that, but it was an extremely unsightly homecoming. Mo Xuanyu was a cut-sleeve, and he had been harassing his fellow disciples in audacious ways, causing a very public scandal. Moreover, it turned out that his innate talents were mediocre, and he could hardly make any great contribution as a cultivator. Because of all this, the clan had no reason to let him stay. 

To make matters even worse, these experiences had triggered something strange in Mo Xuanyu. After his return, he went completely off the rails. His moods fluctuated wildly, and he seemed perpetually terrified of something.

Wei Wuxian’s eyebrows twitched as he read these words. 

As if being a cut-sleeve wasn’t bad enough, this fellow also had to be a lunatic. 

At least that explained why his face was covered in enough make-up to get him mistaken for a hanged ghost. It also explained why nobody had seemed to give two hoots about the large blood-drenched array on the floor. It could very well be that even if Mo Xuanyu had painted the whole shack in blood, from the floor tiles all the way up to the roof, the people around him would have considered this nothing out of the ordinary. Because everyone knew he was sick in the head! 

After Mo Xuanyu’s return to the family home, nobody had bothered to hold back on their scorn, and he was mocked relentlessly. This time, it seemed clear that he’d used up all of his chances to redeem his reputation. The humiliation proved to be a fatal blow for the second Mo daughter. She couldn’t purge the resentment that settled down deep in the pit of her stomach, and it eventually suffocated her to death. 

By that time, Mo Xuanyu’s maternal grandfather had already passed away. Mo Xuanyu’s aunt, Lady Mo, had taken on the role of the family head. Ever since they had been children, Lady Mo could barely stand her little sister, and she viewed her illegitimate child with even more disdain. She only had one child of her own, the fellow who had barged in and ransacked Mo Xuanyu’s room earlier. It turned out his name was Mo Ziyuan. When Mo Xuanyu had been invited to his father’s sect, Lady Mo had concluded that she could now claim a familial tie to the cultivation clan. Whenever envoys from the cultivation clan came to visit, she would implore them to invite Mo Ziyuan to study cultivation as well. Of course, her requests were rejected, or perhaps simply ignored. 

No kidding. This was not a situation comparable to haggling over the price of cabbage, let alone getting two for the price of one! 

Where did everyone in this family get their bottomless confidence from? They all seemed to harbour very misguided notions, firmly believing that Mo Ziyuan possessed immortal bones and an innate gift for cultivation. Moreover, they believed that if only Mo Ziyuan had been the one sent to study cultivation first, the clan would definitely have recognised his immense talents. There was simply no way he would have turned out to be a disappointment like his cousin. Although Mo Ziyuan had still been a young child when Mo Xuanyu left for the cultivation sect, he had been stuffed full of such utterly baseless notions about his own superiority. Even as he grew up, he remained absolutely convinced that they were true. Barely a day went by without him grabbing Mo Xuanyu to humiliate him and accuse him of blocking his path to cultivation. Yet at the same time, he couldn’t keep his hands off the items Mo Xuanyu had brought back from the cultivation sect: the talismans, the cinnabar elixirs, the ritual instruments.. Mo Ziyuan considered them his own rightful property. If he saw something he wanted to either take for himself or destroy, he didn’t think twice. Even though Mo Xuanyu suffered from bouts of madness, he was perfectly aware that he was being humiliated. He endured it day after day, but Mo Ziyuan’s behaviour only grew worse, and eventually his room had been almost completely emptied out. At the end of his rope, Mo Xuanyu had finally confronted his uncle and his aunt to stammer out his grievances. This had been the reason for Mo Ziyuan’s fury earlier that day. 

The handwriting was so small and dense that reading it had made Wei Wuxian’s eyeballs sore, and he wondered to himself: ‘Just how fucking dark was this person’s life?’. It was no wonder that Mo Xuanyu had resorted to demonic consecration to get his revenge. 

Just as the pain in Wei Wuxian’s eyes subsided, he felt a headache coming on. When using an array like this, the spell-caster was expected to incant their wish so that the summoned evil spirit - in this case, Wei Wuxian - could hear it in detail upon entering the body. It seemed that Mo Xuanyu had been secretly copying fragments of forbidden books without studying them completely, and this crucial step had been omitted. Even if Wei Wuxian could make an educated guess that his task was to exact revenge on the Mo family, how was he supposed to know exactly how this revenge was to be served? How far would he need to go? Was he expected to seize back all the possessions that had been stolen from him? To give every member of the Mo family a good battering? 

Or.. to completely exterminate them? 

Complete extermination was the most likely answer! After all, anyone who had connections to the cultivation world would likely evaluate Wei Wuxian using broadly similar words: an ungrateful wretch, a complete lunatic, the most fiendish monster among humans. Nobody would summon a soul like his to fulfil a light-hearted desire. 

Grudgingly, Wei Wuxian sighed: ‘You really picked the wrong person…..’

(translation notes here)

[septemberpoems]

Pact of the Shipper

You made a deal with a powerful entity way beyond your understanding. Blue eyes stare at you unblinking as you sign up for a life of servitude that could grant you immense power, but also mutually assured destruction. He gives you a Tumblr, the words Welcome to My Twisted Mind in purple letters on a black cover, the first page oddly listing all your interests and every page of the DSM-V remotely applicable to you.

His true name is David Karp, but you call him Daddy.

This is the Pact of the Shipper.

Cantrips:

Infestation Someone said something less-than-positive about your otp in the tag. They have anon asks enabled. Target has to make a con save or take 1d6 poison damage from your anon hate and, if it fails, is stunned for one round as they go on a short hiatus.

“Do you love the color of the sky?” (Lightning Lure) You throw out the aforementioned post at a creature you can see, forcing it to make a strength save to scroll through the entire thing. If it fails it’s forced to scroll all the way up again to click the old reblog, taking 1d8 psychic damage.

Create Dumpsterfire You conjure a dumpsterfire that fills a 5ft cube. Creatures must also make saving throws if they move into its space or end their turn there. The dumpsterfire will spread if the environment is susceptible.

Mutuals (Friends) Choose a creature you can see that isn’t hostile toward you. You gain advantage on charisma checks toward it for the duration. When the spell ends, the creature looks through your tumblr and discovers problematic discourse from two years ago, possibly attacking or getting other payback.

Spells

1st lvl Cause fear Target must succeed wis saving throw or become frightened of you. The target can repeat the saving throw at each end of its turn. The spell has no effect on deactivated accounts or pornbots.

Comprehend Keysmash You can understand any written language while the spell lasts. While you cannot discern the words of a spoken language, you understand the general gist of it and can respond in kind.

What colour is this dress? (Armor of Agathys) Blue and black? White and gold? Who knows. You gain 5 temporary hitpoints for the duration. If a creature hits you with a melee attack while you have them, it takes 5 cold or fire damage depending on what color you think it is.

2nd lvl Gpoy (Mirror image) Three posts appear, all of them of situations you’ve tagged with #Gpoy at some point. Each time a creature attacks you, roll a d20 to see if they hit the posts instead.

Mapcrunch (Misty Step) You teleport to the middle of a badly rendered forest. You have no sense of direction and have to rely on street signs to find your own way to the airport.

Suggestion You further a rumor you have no factual basis for to a creature of your choice that you can see and that can hear and understand you. You’re limited to 140 characters. Target makes a wisdom save. On failure, it spreads the rumor and goes on a rant.

3rd lvl All Hail the Glow Cloud (Gaseous Form) You turn a willing creature you touch and all it’s carrying into a mist for up to an hour.

The Ballpit (Hunger of Hadar) A 20-foot-radius void appears. All creatures in it get an extra hour in the ballpit. The void’s area is difficult terrain. Any creature that starts its turn in it takes 2d6 psychic damage. Any creature that ends its turn there must pass a dexterity save or take 2d6 poison damage from that one guy who peed in it.

Summon Lesser Demon You summon demons from the abyss. Roll to determine what appears: Clippy, Tumbeasts or a full copy of the script of Bee Movie in fanmail format.

4th lvl None of You Are Free of Sin (Banishment) Blocked, blocked, blocked. A creature you see must make a charisma save or be banished to another plane of existence.

I am Forcibly Removed From the Premises (Dimension Door) You instantaneously teleport yourself to any spot in range.

Summon Greater Demon You summon a demon of your choosing from the abyss. Boneghazi, Loss.jpg, and that daddy kink-cumsicle post are level-appropriate examples.

5th lvl Spooky Scary Skeletons (Dance Macabre) Up to five small or medium corpses you can see become undead, drafted to fight in the Skeleton War under your command for an hour. 

Hold Monster When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it. Choose a creature you can see. It must pass a charisma save or be paralyzed. You tenderly hold the creature in your arms. At the end of its turn it can make another save, ending the embrace on a success. Or maintaining it, if the feelings are mutual.

London Calling (Infernal Calling) You summon Sherlock Holmes from the BBC adaptation. He appears in an unoccupied space that you can see, unfriendly toward you and your terribly dull companions. On your turn you can use a free action to attempt to issue a verbal command, your charisma check versus his insight. You have advantage if you know the actor’s real name as opposed to the Tumblrised versions.

Enervation You’re just that annoying. Choose a creature you see to make a dexterity save. On success it takes 2d8 psychic damage. On failure, the target takes 4d8 damage from bashing its own head against the wall to make your talking stop. Whenever the spell deals damage you regain hit points equal to half of the amount of damage taken.

6th lvl True Seeing You’re so far down the meta spiral you solved the Reichenbach Fall before it even aired. For the duration of the spell you have truesight, notice all hidden references implying Destiel and/or Johnlock and you can see into the writer’s room, all with a range of 120 ft.

Don’t Blink! One creature of your choosing has to make a constitution save. On a failed save it is restrained. After three saves, the spell fades. After three fails, the creature turns to stone.

Devil’s Trap (Circle of Death) You recreate Sam and Dean’s devil trap with black pearl powder. Each creature in a 60 ft radius sphere must make a constitution saving throw, taking 8d6 necrotic damage on a failed save, or half as much on a success. Should’ve used the salt.

7th lvl AU (Plane Shift) You and up to eight willing mutuals who link hands in a circle around an open Ao3 page are transported to its alternate universe. You can use this spell to banish an unwilling creature within melee range to an AU of your choosing.

The Police Box (Forcecage) It’s smaller on the inside! An immobile, invisible, cube-shaped prison composed of magical force springs into existence around an area you choose within range.

Feels (Power Word Pain) Cas saying dying, John watching Sherlock fall, Bad Wolf Bay… You speak a quote that causes waves of intense pain to assail one creature you can see within range. If the target has 100 hit points or fewer, it is subject to crippling pain. Otherwise the spell has no effect on it.

8th lvl I Can’t Even (Feeblemind) A creature you can see takes 4d6 psychic damage and makes an intelligence save. On failure its intelligence and charisma become 1. It can’t spell, unlock its phone, understand language or communicate legibly by any means. However, it can identify other shippers, and follow and protect them. It can repeat the save once an hour, ending the spell on a success. Repeat exposure to the source of I Can’t Even will require additional saving throws.

Dominate Monster You knew exactly what you were looking for when you clicked that tag on Ao3. A creature you see must pass a wisdom save or be charmed. If you’re fighting the monster it rolls an automatic success because this isn’t 50 Shades and safe, sane and consensual is a must. If the spell succeeds, until the end of your next turn, the creature takes only the actions you decide and nothing you don’t allow it to unless it uses the agreed upon safeword. Using an 8th lvl spell slot the duration is 1 hour, using a 9th lvl spell slot extends it to up to 8 hours.

Mishapocalypse (Maddening Darkness) He is everywhere. Nobody can escape Him. Misha fills a 60-foot-radius sphere, spreading around themes, into posts and inboxes. Missing E, Xkit or similar addons can’t penetrate the onslaught of pictures of Misha. If a creature stays on their dash, it makes a wisdom save. On a failed save, its theme and icon also becomes Misha. On a success, only its icon becomes Misha.

9th lvl Canon Otp (Psychic Scream) Up to ten shippers of opposing otps of your choice must make an intelligence save. On a fail, a target takes 14d6 psychic damage and is stunned. On a success, it takes half damage and isn’t stunned. If a target is killed by this spell, its head explodes. 

I Was There For Yahoo Groups (Foresight) An old fandom veteran, nothing fazes you anymore. Fandom wars, sites falling into the sea, it’s all old news. For 8 hours you can’t be surprised and have advantage on attack rolls, ability checks and saves. In addition, other shippers have disadvantage on attack rolls against you.

Reaching lvl 20 you become a SuperWhoLock. An ancient creature everyone has heard of, seen traces of, but nobody has ever claimed to be one out loud. It is a branding as much as it is a title, striking the average population with both nausea and fear.

[kyvir]

They were best friends, denying for years what they both really wanted. When a little teasing turns serious, feelings are revealed. There’s an accident, a long road of recovery and a love that only becomes stronger over time. To be together always, that’s all either of them ever wanted. 

Continuation to A Walk in the Park (SasuSaku)

To Walk Alongside You (BoruSara)

Rating: M 

Warning: excessive cursing and eventual smut

Genre: Romance/ Friendship 

Chapter Two: Sleepover

Previous Chapter I Next Chapter

I closed the door quietly behind me when I got home, not wanting to wake anyone. The lights were off and I could just make my way to Junior’s room with the moonlight. His door was ajar and I peeked inside, finding him fast asleep and snuggling with Levi. I smiled at the sight, my little brother still as soft hearted as always despite being seventeen now. He was the spitting image of Dad and acted just like him.

I padded over to my room next door and slipped my shoes off. After I changed into my red nightgown, I sent Boruto a text, letting him know I got home in a safe and timely manner. I had fun today despite having to wait for a certain blonde idiot that never showed up. Even though we bickered, he was still my closest friend. He always reminded me to loosen up while I reminded him to keep his head on his shoulders. I honestly didn’t know what he would do without me.

Just as I sat on my bed, a response came through from Boruto. ‘I’m home already too… because you’re such a slow ass.’

“Tch.” I huffed, but there was no heat behind it.

‘And how many laws did you break getting there?’ I text back, knowing he sped the whole way.

He replied quickly. ‘Only one.’

I rolled my eyes and put my glasses in their case before texting back. ‘I see, and how fast were you going, hot shot?’

‘Not fast enough. Faster than you though.’

“Jerk.” I whispered out loud, giggling. ‘Yes, yes, I know. You’re the fast and furious while I’m slow and serious.’

‘If you’re so serious then get to bed. You have work, remember?’

I smiled and layed down, pulling the covers over me. ‘You have work too. Stop texting me and go to sleep.’

‘Fine. Bet I’ll be asleep before you though.’

I shook my head at the challenge, still smiling. ‘Sorry, can’t hear you, I’m already asleep.’

‘Goodnight then. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Goodnight, sleep well.’ I text back and set my phone on my nightstand.

I can’t imagine him surviving without me, but then again, I couldn’t without him. That night I dreamt of when we were younger and we played outside the shop while our dads worked. It didn’t happen too often because of my dance classes, but we enjoyed it when it did. He was still as rough around the edges as he was now, the only thing that had grown was the size of his ego. But I was used to that, I had a pretty big ego of my own, being an Uchiha and all. In fact, every member in our family did except for mom. She’s always so humble and kind, and I find myself thinking of her when my pride starts to slow me down.

I woke up the next morning to the sound of my alarm, hitting the snooze for five more minutes. I could smell Mom’s cooking from here and smiled at the thought of Dad sneaking samples. I dozed off until my alarm went off a second time and then sat up, stretching. I turned it off and hopped in the shower trying to make up my mind whether I was dreading going to work or not. It wasn’t terrible per say and I was learning a lot. However, most of my co-workers were a joke. The men were better than everyone and sucked up to those in a higher position, some women joining in. Most women, though, they were completely clueless.

I honestly couldn’t understand why half of them were there if not to flirt. ‘Oh doctor, you’re so smart’, ‘Oh doctor, let me get that for you’. Yuck. I don’t know how my mom did it, the medical hierarchy was insane. At least school was easy for me and for that I was thankful. While Junior went with Dad and learned about cars, I danced and learned about medicine from Mom. If she hadn’t started teaching me so young, I wouldn’t be where I was now, top of my class. I got out of the shower and dried off, dressing in my burgundy scrubs. Then I combed my hair and braided it, clipping it up into a bun. After I grabbed my glasses, I headed to the kitchen.

Mom was finishing the sausages while Dad was sitting at the table, feeding Levi bacon from his hand. Lou was sitting at my mom’s feet, watching her and patiently waiting for attention. “Here, Lou.” I called and she pounced over.

Mom said Lou looked just like her grandmother aside from her green eyes. I had never met Luna, but I could tell from family pictures how much she meant to us, just as much as Levi and Lou did. She barked as I showered her with as much love as possible.

“Morning.” Dad greeted before picking up his newspaper, Levi laying by his feet contently.

“Good morning, Dad.” I smiled. “Good morning, Mom.”

“Good morning, Sarada.” Mom smiled sweetly at me before setting a plate loaded with food for me at my usual seat and then walking over to give Dad his. She leaned down and their eyes met. My heart swelled at the look of affection passing between them before Mom walked away, always aware of when she had an audience.

Seeing the love between them always awed me and I could only hope I would have that someday. “Do you need me to pick up anything on my way home from work?” I asked, coming up to the sink to wash my hands.

“No, that’s okay. I know you’ll be going to the park to meet up with Boruto.” The suggestive look in Mom’s eyes did not get past me.

Dad cleared his throat. “Don’t get any ideas, love.” He told Mom, flipping a page.

Mom turned on her heel, her hand propping on her hip. “I don’t know what you mean. All I said was that I knew what our daughter would be doing after work and if I’m being frank, I’m glad she’s doing it.” She turned her nose up then, grinning from ear to ear.

“Yes, you’re forever innocent.” He teased and I could tell he was smirking. “I think we both know what the park entails.”

“Do you… really want to have this conversation darling?” Mom asked, walking closer to Dad.

Dad put his paper down and looked at her, sure enough, smirking. “Perhaps . . . . but after breakfast.”

“Very well… though you could save yourself the trouble because I already know how it will end.”

“Oh, do you now?” Dad asked and I didn’t like the look in his eyes. “Shall we put that claim to the test?”

“Preferably not in front of me.” I said, holding my hands up in surrender as I sat at the table.

“Behave darling.” Mom told Dad then, and I couldn’t get that suggestive smile of hers out of my mind. Their love was a beautiful thing, but so was the sun. If you got too close, you would get burned.

Junior walked in still half asleep with his hair going every which way. “Hey Mom, Dad.” He yawned, sitting at the table.

“Junior.” Dad hummed gently and then went back to his paper. Levi got up from his spot and came to sit next to Junior, his tail wagging.

“Did you brush your teeth?” Mom asked Junior as she brought over his breakfast. “I’m very worried about that foul mouth of yours. If you’re going to use bad language at least do it when you’re alone.”

Dad gazed over his paper and gave Junior another one of his looks. “It’s not a hard thing to remember, son. Don’t curse around your mother.”

Mom gave Dad a smug look then. “Or around anyone’s mother for that matter.” She pointed out.

“Hn.” Dad nodded. “No cursing around mothers.”

“I got it.” Junior sighed. “Sorry again, Mom. It slipped.”

“Just don’t let it happen again.” Mom smiled as she finally came to sit at the table with a plate of her own.

“Hn.” He grunted, digging in.

I began eating my own breakfast as Dad and Mom followed suit. Mornings were one of my favorite times with the family, it was peaceful and never boring-- Uchiha’s never were.

“Hey Mom, did you need me for anything today?” Junior asked. “If not, I wanted to head to the shop.”

“No that’s okay. You can go to the shop. I have to do some grocery shopping but I can use your father for that.”

“After we settle the matter from before.” Dad stated and I rolled my eyes.

“What matter?” Junior asked, looking at me.

“You don’t wanna know.” I told him and he read between the lines, scrunching up his nose.

We all finished our breakfast and I headed out, grabbing my purse and my car keys. Junior followed me outside and made sure Mom and Dad weren’t paying attention.

“Sis, Dad’s planning on going to the shop today too.” He said, giving me a pointed look.

“Do you think Boruto was able to fix his car?”

“You tell me, you saw what condition it was in.” He huffed. “Look, I’ll see if I can distract Dad for as long as I can, but you should text him and let him know.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Why don’t you text him?”

“I can’t do all the work.” He scoffed. “I’ll let you know when Dad’s heading over, he’s giving me a ride anyway.”

“Alright.” I sighed, knowing better than to argue, He was as stubborn as Mom and Dad put together. “See you when I get home, Bro.”

He smiled at me and tugged my sleeve. “Later, Sis.”

I got to work ten minutes early and put my purse in my locker, sending Junior’s message to Boruto before I started my day. At least I had Chocho there with me to help me through the idiocy. She was a bit simple herself, but she understood things in a way I couldn’t describe, it was truly amazing. We had become friends rather quickly and she was definitely someone I could count on. Work ended up being pretty intense and annoying today, but I had something else to look forward to. I got home as quickly as I could, admittingly going one mile over the speed limit. I wasted no time going to my room and changing my clothes.

I decided to go with white shorts and a purple T-shirt. I put on my sneakers and was out the door again, now heading to the park. After I got there, I pulled out my pocket mirror and checked my hair. It was still up from before and I made a split second decision. I took it down and let it lay where it pleased, the braid making it curlier than usual. Then I straightened my glasses and put the mirror back in my purse, heading towards our spot. I was surprised to find Boruto already there, sitting on the bench and looking like a lost puppy. I smiled and called out to him, noticing he had brought food too.

“Hey, look who’s on time!”

He looked up, blue eyes finding me and a smirk instantly pulled at his lips. “It’s just you’re late. Though I’m not surprised. You probably didn’t drive over fifteen miles an hour.”

“I drove a mile over the speed limit, thank you.” I told him proudly, taking a seat next beside him. “Praise me.”

“Ooooh, not a whole mile. I’m just… so proud.” He chuckled and leaned back on the bench, his arm casually moving to rest behind me.

I reached over and tugged a strand of his blonde hair. “Better be.”

“I brought burgers… don’t worry I remembered to get you extra tomatoes.”

“Ha ha, very funny.” I said. “You better be joking.”

He rolled his eyes and handed me a burger. “I’m not an idiot, Sarada.” He said as I took the burger and he reached for his own.

“Are you sure about that?” I giggled, unwrapping it.

“Sure am… and so are you.” He said before having a bite. “Oh… your fucking dad…” He chewed quickly. “Bastard gave me an earful… and nothing was even wrong with my car! Why can’t I catch a break. There I was, doing my own thing with my tune up and he had to come waltzing in all ‘you need to use these brake pads’ and ‘that’s not the right stance to use when you’re standing and hovering under the hood.’ What the actual fuck… he doesn’t make sense. Honestly I think he just wants to give me a hard time about everything for no damn reason.”

I leaned back, focusing on his words rather than the arm I was now resting on. “He wouldn’t say anything if he didn’t care, even if he can be a bit much. Mom puts him in his place all the time.” I told him.

“Well you know I just have to take his shit. Pain in the ass, he may be… but I still have a lot of respect for him.”

“He is pretty cool, huh?” I teased, though it was true. “Your dad too, Mom says they were amazing out there. I wish I could’ve seen it.”

“Yeah… they were both amazing. Your dad is still one hell of a mechanic too. And… he hasn’t even shown you any of his old races? I have all of them on disks at my place.”

“Do you?” I asked, looking down as I took a bite. There was no way I would admit that while my dad was showing Junior his racing videos I had played outside with him instead.

Boruto pulled his arm back and turned to face me more. “Damn right I have them. I can’t believe you’ve never seen him race. Hate to admit it but, he was even better than Dad.” He laughed a bit and leaned back again. “You wanna come over and watch them?”

“Sure.” I said, smiling. “As long as your house isn’t a hot mess.”

He coughed then and scowled at me. “Hey, you’d know if you came over to visit me once in a while…”

“I would if you weren’t at the shop all the time.” I countered. “Though I might make an exception this time and help you clean up a bit.”

“I don’t want you to come over and clean. You’ve wounded me… my house is actually really clean. I mean… I only go home to sleep anyway.” His voice turned quiet with his last words and I couldn’t help but notice that and the way his face fell.

“Only to sleep?” I repeated softly. “Well, that isn’t any good. Maybe I should come over and cook some time, that way I know you’re eating well.”

He shrugged. “I eat. Every day with you and most of the time I get something on my way home. It’s just kind of boring there… and I prefer to be at the shop anyway. Or here…”

I titled my head and took hold of his hand. “You can always find me here.” I reminded. “Though I doubt it would be boring if I came over. Have you met me? I’m crazy, I drove a mile over the speed limit. And you see these hands? They were trained by the one and only Sakura Uchiha to cook only the finest of foods. I have skills, Boruto, you should recognize them.”

“Keep on and I might make you move in.” He laughed. “It would certainly be… interesting.”

“Interesting.” I repeated. “You may be right about that.”

“Who are we kidding… your dad would definitely blow that shit out of proportion and kick my ass.” He sighed then before suddenly jumping up and pulled me along with him, our hands locked together. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t come over sometimes… like now.”

“Now?” I blinked. “Like right now?”

He nodded, grinning at me. “Don’t you want to see those old videos?”

“Yes, and that clean house of yours.” I teased, remembering what his room was like when we were younger.

“I hope you’re not expecting to be disappointed.” He said, pulling me along. “We’ll take my car.”

I smiled and pushed up my glasses. “Can I drive?”

He hesitated, smile fading but I never in a million years expected him to hand over his keys. “Just this once… and… you can’t be a slow ass-- my car doesn’t believe in that shit.”

Despite the rude comment, my dark eyes were sparkling. “Right. One mile over the speed limit coming up!” I grinned.

“Make it twenty.” He muttered. “Better yet, just drive normal… you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”

“I do too.” I said, regrettably letting go of his hand to get in on the driver’s side. “I’m part of team Konoha just as much as you are.”

Boruto got in the passenger side next to me and moved around, trying to get comfortable. “Well this feels all wrong… and if you are then show me. Drive like you mean it.”

I bit my lip and gave him a challenging look. “Alright hot shot, I’ll make it two miles.”

I started the engine and felt it roar, vibrating the car as it came to life. I may not be as obsessed as my dad and brother were, but I had a love for cars too. As long as they were driven safely and responsibly. I tapped my foot on the gas pedal, excitedly glancing at Boruto.

He grinned, liking the thrill in my eyes. “Don’t be scared of it.”

“I’m not.” I insisted. “Just seeing how it feels first, it’s a lot more power than I’m used to and for good reason. I’ve seen whats under this hood.”

I threw him a wink for good measure and then pulled out, taking us on to the street. I let it fly for a short while, getting wrapped up in the engines purr, but then I settled it down with an ease off the pedal. It was more sensitive than my sports car and a lot more wild. I could see how much this car suited him. It was just as excitable as he was and it gave me a tingling feeling to have so much speed at my fingertips. I was tempted to go three miles over the speed limit, but held back. I didn’t want to get too reckless. I turned on to Boruto’s street with one hand, loving how smooth it rode.

“I’ll admit it.” I sighed. “This is a cool car.”

“Well, it’s my car isn’t it.” He chuckled. “Don’t drive past my house now, you might not know where it is since you never come see me.”

I puffed out my cheeks and glared at him. “I know where it is.”

“Good.”

I spotted the blue and grey house, pulling into the driveway. I turned off the engine, sad to see it go, and handed Boruto his keys.

“Well? How did I do?” I asked.

“Slower than I like but… you did just fine.” He smiled softly which took me a bit by surprise.

“Thanks.” I smiled back, deciding I liked this softer look.

We got out of the car and went inside, Boruto closing the door behind us. I was shocked to see it really was clean, spotless even. The Boruto I know was never this neat and it made me think back to his words before. He was only here to sleep. He was a guy who fought for his independence, but now that he has it, he’s . . . alone. It was heartbreaking to think of him sitting in this big house by himself.

“I’m impressed.” I told him. “I am in fact eating my words, your house is very nice.”

“Told you not to expect to be disappointed.” He said smugly as he took my hand and pulled me into the living room. “Have a seat and I’ll put on a video.”

I did as he said, choosing one of the green beanbags, watching him move around happily. This was the Boruto I knew. “Which one are we starting with?”

“I thought it would be best to go back to the beginning… but if you prefer, we could watch his last race.”

“Well, I’m not planning on leaving soon, so let’s start from the beginning.” I told him, promising myself I would come over more often.

He nodded, finding the certain disk and putting it in his bluray. He got the remote and came to sit in another one of the beanbags, moving it closer to mine. He started the video then and I watched carefully, recognizing Dad instantly. He looked just like Junior as he walked to his car and got in. A few moments later the race began. The way he took off and handled his car was enough to take my breath away. He was smooth and efficient and he won, not only on the first clip… but on all of them that we watched.

Boruto changed the disk when we finished the first one and I noticed how Dad had aged. Not by much, but enough to tell. He was just the same in his racing, possibly better with each clip. I was always so thrilled to watch Boruto, and though I didn’t think watching these videos would excite me as much as seeing a race in real life-- they did. I found myself wanting to cheer my dad on, even though these races happened so long ago now.

“This is his last race coming on now.” Boruto explained, settling in to watch closely and I did the same.

It filled my heart with joy to know that he’d won his last race as well and there at the end of the video as he got out of his car, I saw Mom running to him. Her belly was swollen, obviously in the late stages of her pregnancy with me. I could tell by the way my dad was on the track that he really loved racing… and to know that he’d given it up for Mom and my brother and I… it made me a little sad for him. Not that he’d ever seemed unhappy to me.

“He really was something. I’d beat his ass in a race though.”

I laughed, lightly shoving his arm. “I’d cheer you on.”

“I’d be counting on it.” He smiled and checked his phone, his brows pulling together. “Shit… Sarada it’s almost midnight.”

“Oh crap!”

“You should just stay the night.” He murmured. “By the time I take you to your car and you get home it will be really late and I don’t want you on the road at this time of night alone anyway.”

I hummed and considered his words. The park was safe enough to leave my car and I didn’t really like driving late at night . . . .  “Alright, I’ll text my mom and she’ll smooth it over with my dad.”

“Better tell her just not to tell him at all.” He muttered before getting up and stretching. “I think I’m going to have some hot chocolate. Want some?”

“Of course.” I grinned. “Don’t even think about holding out on me.” I said and sent my mom a quick message.

“Never.” He called as he wandered into the kitchen and started fumbling around the fridge and then the cabinets. “Damn it. I never know where anything is in here… found it.”

“Want some help?” I asked and walked over to the fridge, wanting a snack. “I could make something to go with it.”

“I’m fine with just the hot chocolate but you’re welcome to fix anything you want.” He said as he poured two cups full of milk and carried them to his microwave. “This will just take a minute. I do it all the time.”

I raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t comment. There wasn’t really anything in the fridge that I was in the mood for and I was about to give up when I spotted graham crackers on top of it.

“Bingo.” I grinned and reached for them on my tippy toes, the box just out of reach.

Boruto chuckled as he moved next to me, his body too close as he reached and grabbed it for me, his chest brushing against me and the scent of his cologne filling my nostrils. He handed the box to me, blue eyes heated and smirk ever present.

“Short… and slow.”

My cheeks flamed and I smacked his arm. “I almost had it.”

“Almost.” He mumbled, leaving me to return to making the hot chocolate. “Why don’t you take those and go pick out a movie?”

“Tch. Whatever.” I huffed, admittingly pouting. I can’t help it if I’m short.

I took my graham crackers and opened the box while I scanned his movies. A horror movie caught my eye and I put it in, grabbing a blanket on the couch and sitting right in the middle. I got comfy and chewed on my crackers, happy and content as the disc menu came up.

Boruto finally returned, handing me a steaming cup as he glanced at the flatscreen. “Horror? Really… I figured you’d pick a chick flick… not that I have any of those.”

I smirked. “If I wanted to watch one of those, I’d just sit here and watch you.”

“I’m not offended. It’s not my fault the ladies love me so much. Shit.” He sat next to me, his arm going behind me to rest on the back of the couch. “And if you want to watch me, anytime… feel free.” He winked.

I choked on my cracker. He laughed as he patted my back and I glared tearily at him, sipping some hot chocolate. “Jerk.”

“You’re the one who said it.” He mused as he took the remote from me and played the movie. “Gonna get scared and hold on tight to me?”

“You wish.” I said and rolled my eyes, even if the thought was appealing. “Though you can hold onto me if you get scared.”

“Tempting… thanks for letting me know. I may take you up on that.”

I reached over and stuffed a cracker in his mouth. “Hush you.”

“Damn… I thought you were gonna kiss me.” He grumbled, mouth full of the cracker.

My eyes widened a bit and I couldn’t fight my blush. “Slow down there, speed racer, before you hurt yourself.” I said, voice waning.

“It’s you that hurts me.” He sighed and sipped his hot chocolate as the movie finally began.

I decided to leave it at that and focused on the movie, trying to play his words off as a joke. It was hard to tell whether he was serious or just teasing me sometimes.

After about half an hour, Boruto was fidgeting around until he’d scooted much closer to me, his arm now resting around my shoulders. “Where the hell did you find this movie? This is another level of weird.”

“It was on your shelf.” I pointed out. “And while it is weird, it’s also quite predictable.”

“The hell it is… if one more thing jumps out unexpectedly I may end up on top of you. And I don’t wanna hear you squeal… actually… scratch that, you can squeal all you want.”

I reached over a pulled a blonde strand of his hair. “Cool it, hot shot.” I told him despite his words making my skin heat up. That was not an image I should be picturing in my head.

He sighed loudly. “Fine.”

I patted his head. “Good boy.”

“Excuse me, but I am not one of your dogs. Don’t pet me.”

“No?” I asked and giggled. “Don’t be like that Boru, I know you just want some love.” I teased, petting him again.

“I might… but if I do it’s damn sure not the petting kind. I’m a man, in case you forgot.”

“Yes, very scary.” I said, never feeling in danger when he was by my side. “I’ll take note of it.”

He hummed a light chuckle then. “Good. I’d hate to have to show you… or maybe I wouldn’t.”

There he goes again. “Don’t forget who beat who when we were younger.” I reminded, though judging by his frame, he might be too much for me to handle now. “I’d hate to have to punch you.”

“I doubt I’d feel it at all.” He mused, staring ahead at the screen. “Short and slow… and that girly strength is no match for me.”

I put my crackers down and threw a right punch straight at his chest, feeling the muscle push back against my fist. It was a lot harder than I’d expected.

Boruto turned to me, cocking his left brow and appearing completely unphased. “What the… did you just…” His lips fell apart as he stared at me for a moment and the next thing I knew I was tackled onto my back with him hovering over me.

“Boruto!” I squealed, taken off guard.

He grinned broadly then. “Ooh. Say it again.”

I blushed again and my whole body felt hot beneath him. Since when was his voice so deep? “N-no way.”

“Why not?” He asked, voice too low. “It sounded so good.”

I was confused. Boruto had never teased me like this before and I was starting to take it seriously. Was this really happening?

“Shut up.” I huffed, turning my head away. I couldn’t stand to look into his blue eyes any longer, they would swallow me whole. “I took it easy on you.”

“I hope… that punch was weak as fuck. But that’s not the point… you did punch me. So, you owe me.”

“Owe you?” I squeaked. “N-no I don’t!”

He moved a bit, more of his weight resting on me and my breath hitched. “Don’t you though? I mean… I’ve never punched you.”

“So what.” I whispered, barely able to think straight with his body so close. Even my glasses were starting to fog up. “Doesn’t mean anything.”

“I’m wounded.” He murmured, holding himself up with one arm as he moved his other hand down to them hem of his shirt and pulled it up, revealing his perfectly muscled torso. My eyes locked on his bare upper body and my blush spread all over me.

“Boruto!” I squeaked again. “Don’t flash me!” I said despite not being able to look away.

“Flash you? I’m just showing you the wound you’ve inflicted on me.” He smirked.

“What wound?” I asked, unconsciously scanning over his body. My eyes caught sight of black ink on the right side of his chest, going over his shoulder. “Is that a tattoo?”

He laughed then. “This old thing? Some best friend you are not even knowing I had it. It’s been over a year now. Oh and yes, it is a tattoo.”

I didn’t hear a word he said, too focused on the way it curved on his skin. “That’s sexy.” I mumbled, not realizing I said it out loud.

The amusement in his eyes died out immediately and I felt him stiffen against me. “You didn’t just say that.”

“Say what?” I asked, finally looking up to meet his eyes.

His face fell and slowly, he got off of me, dropping his shirt and getting up off the couch altogether.

My ears burned and I looked after him in confusion. Had I done something wrong? I pushed up my glasses and took a deep breath. What in the world had just happened? My best friend was on top of me. . . . and I liked it.

“Let’s get back to the movie.” I suggested, clearing my throat. I would have to sort through my feelings later, when I was alone. I couldn’t ignore what just went on between us.

Boruto hesitated and I could tell he was upset but after a moment, he sat down at the other end of the couch quietly, eyes looking straight ahead at the screen. It was awkward . . . it hadn’t been awkward between us since . . . never. I hated it. I picked up the box of graham crackers, silently offering him one.

His eyes cut in my direction before his head cocked to the side and he reached for the cracker, taking it quickly without touching my hand. He turned back to the movie, taking a bite of the cracker and not saying a word. A small smile made its way to my lips, it was better than nothing. We watched the rest of the movie in silence, the box of crackers soon empty. I stood with the blanket around my shoulders, draping it like a cape before I spoke.

“Could I borrow a towel and some pajamas?” I asked meekly. “I’d rather take a shower before bed than wait until I get home tomorrow.”

He stood slowly and stretched. “Follow me.” He said, his voice as low as it had been earlier.

I followed him through his home, down a long hallway and into his room. He went to his dresser and quickly found a T-shirt and a pair of flannel pajama bottoms that he handed over to me. “My bathroom is through there,” He told me, pointing to a closed door. “You can shower there. My other bathroom doesn’t have any supplies.”

“Thanks.” I told him, offering a small grin but all I got in return was a slight nod before he turned and walked out of his room, closing the door behind himself.

I huffed in frustration, not knowing what had made him so upset. I went into the bathroom and started the shower, stripping down, setting my glasses on the sink. I honestly didn’t understand what happened back there. He was . . .  and I was . . . it was different. He wasn’t just teasing. Or at least, I thought he wasn’t. I got into the shower, letting the water wash my tension away. That feeling that I had when he was on top of me, it was unreal. My body was hot and I found him . . . attractive? Sure, I always knew he was a good looking guy, but that was attraction.

My body had been burning for him, because of him. This was uncharted territory. People don’t feel that way about their best friends, right? We don’t feel that way . . . right? I can’t deny how my heart had raced, even if I didn’t acknowledge it at the time. We’ve never been in a situation like that before. I thought back to how his chest felt against my fist, how his body had felt against mine, how he looked, discovering his tattoo. My face heated up. What was going on with me? My feelings for him weren’t any different, surely. I still cared for him the same. He was my best friend and always would be.

So why did I feel like things wouldn’t be the same? Was it possible my feelings were changing? I wasn’t sure, my feelings were in knots that I didn’t know where to begin to untangle. How was Boruto feeling? Did he feel any different? Was that why he was upset? I sighed and rested my head against the tiled wall. Was he only teasing he like usual? Did he get upset because I didn’t react the way he thought I would? I wrapped my arms around myself and bit my bottom lip. Whatever was going on, I wasn’t solving it tonight. Hopefully time would tell and I could straighten things out before something bad happened-- before I lost my best friend.

[moteloleander]

A 30 Day Art Prompt Challenge For Someone Trying To Get Back In To Drawing

It does not matter if it takes way more than 30 days.

It does not matter if a prompt leaves you cold (there are alternates at the bottom of the list)

If you want to make it fandom, make it fandom. If you don't, don't.

There are no limitations. Just do the thing.

Day 1: Start small. Take 20-30 minutes and doodle things you can see. A glass on the table or flowers in a vase or a dog outside a window or the elderly drunk chef on TV. It doesn't matter in the slightest if they're a mess

Day 2: Tighten up a bit. Take one doodle and try to make something you're happy with. (Happy-ish, I never met a creative who was happy with anything)

Day 3: Draw an animal walking a tightrope. You were serious yesterday, you don't have to be serious today.

Day 4: Sketch your left foot. If feet are hard, just do the big toe. If toes are hard, pick a wrinkly knuckle and do that (hairs and all)

Day 5: Draw something you'd like to eat. OP accepts no responsibility for Tumblr bans incurred by creative misinterpretation of this prompt.

Day 6: Get a knife from the kitchen (or some other utensil if you're not to be trusted with knives). Do little texture studies - of a shiny blade or a rubbery grip or a wood handle, whatever you've got. It doesn't matter if the page looks like a patchwork quilt rather than a knife.

Day 7: A whole week's worth of good arty fun! Today draw somebody telling a joke! It's up to you if they are confident or desperate, if they've already made themselves laugh. If in doubt, go tell a joke and take note how you feel.

Day 8: Don't try to draw the room you're sitting in, you'll break your brain. Take care of yourself. Pick one corner or one little image. Draw that.

Day 9: Make something complicated really, really simple. You might suggest a brick wall just by sketching one or two bricks, or suggest the lacy pattern of leaves on a tree by just outlining the empty spaces. Plaid, fur, a shelf full of books - invent a shortcut!

Day 10: Speaking of a shelf full of books - get a book. Go to page 46. Eight lines down, six words along. Draw that word. (If the word is 'the' or otherwise uninspiring, practice lettering, or illuminate it, or do something with the letters themselves)

Day 11: Get out of the house and doodle. I don't care what you doodle. Streetlights, drain covers, a billboard, a terrifying black-out drunk dude nodding out at a bus stop, just so long as it's not indoors.

Day 12: Break time! Take your favourite holiday and your favourite non-human creature and put them together. The St Paddy's Day Siren. The Chinese New Year Mutant Abomination. The Alien Of Christmas Past.

Day 13: Sketch a wall. With graffiti on it. In an art gallery. Shelves with interesting things. Covered in overlapping posters. Idk. Find a wall and draw it, k?

Day 14: Today we are looking at age. It doesn't matter if you make a complete drawing or just texture studies. A cracked stone step. Chipped paint. The worn corners of a notebook that's been knocking around the back of your desk for a year. Or ask the bus stop weirdo if he'll sit for you again. Make a friend, hey, why not! (Please don't.)

Day 15: Stretch out your legs and draw them. You can leave out the feet if those are still hard. Pay attention to where they touch or don't, to where they get squooshed out of shape, to the creases and seams in any fabric.

Day 16: Chill. Draw a complete freakin cliche. A nerd with big glasses and ink stains. A heroic collie posing on a hill. A fat chef. An old hill ffs just draw something you've seen a thousand times. That doesn't mean it's bad. Enjoy it. Be happy-ish with it.

Day 17: Look at something melting - candle wax, chocolate, that bacon grease you forgot to wash off the tray starting to burn because you need to use the oven again...

Day 18: Watch something via streaming or DVD. Look at a particular character for five or ten minutes. Then fastforward. Pause just as soon as you see that character again. And I don't care how weird that face is, draw it. If faces are daunting, just try and space out the features, get a curled lip right, or a squinting eye.

Day 19: Get tied! Tie some knots in string or in the cord of your jim-jams or the belt of a bathrobe, you could even braid your hair, and sketch how things tie together and wind through each other.

Day 20: It's time for hands! (Sorry! Tomorrow will be chill, I promise). Draw whatever hand isn't holding your pen/pencil/scalpel/quill. You can pose it however you like. If fingers are tough, ball up your fist

Day 21: You're on your damn way! Relax today. Doodle something from a movie you love. It doesn't have to be good. If all you've got in you is a stick man being tackled by a Blob Of Unusual Size, just tag it Princess Bride and we'll tell you it's beautiful and put it on the fridge.

Day 22: Look at some sports people, irl or on TV or online. Try and sketch some muscle form. A big thick football neck, a sinewy female MMA shoulder, a sprinter's calf

Day 23: Let's look at liquid - a puddle, a running tap, how milk kind of clings to a glass, the dregs of a cup of tea with biscuit crumbs. Just some kind of damp, k?

Day 24: Shiny shiny! Shiny things and light! Gather some shiny things together - glittery costume jewelry, a compact mirror, that bit of sea glass you can't part with, put everything in a glass jar, whatever, just S H I N Y - and draw what you see. Don't worry if it makes sense. Little reflections and flashes of light like you're drawing a treasure chest. It's all about how light hits and bounces.

Day 25: Okay, remember the sports day? Well, this time you're going to look up some dancers. Look at the whole body this time. Find the strangest, most contortionist poses. Draw exactly what you see and try to understand how tf they got their leg up there

Day 26: NEARLY THERE! Today your theme is cheese! A cheesy grin! A little mouse trying to get cheese out of a trap! A monster made of radioactive cheese! The moon, made of green cheese, complete with Clangers and Soup Dragon!

Day 27: Sketch out your favourite room in the house. You don't have to get the kitchen counters exactly level, you don't have to draw the fish tank if you don't want to, maybe there's just a lamp you're particularly fond of. Just draw a background from your own home. It can be the garden if you like!

Day 28: Try and draw some interaction. Use stick-men if you want to, or simple outlines. Make them shake hands or get in a fight or slow-dance. Or all three, in sequence. Cute couple.

Day 29: Look at two buildings next to each other and sketch what you see. Is there an alley between them? Is it overgrown? Do they butt up against each other? How do the two surfaces meet?

Day 30: IDGAF what you draw today, bunny, because it's thirty days and you made it and you did all these stupid little exercises and you did good! You're happy, right? Happy-ish?

*

Here are some loose alternates you can sub in if you don't like any of the days above.

Alt 1: A Sad Piano

Alt 2: A Friendly Ghost or Monster

Alt 3: A Fruit In Love

Alt 4: A Battered Fish

Alt 5: A Nun/Priest Of An Alternative Religion

[wickedbananas]

NEW On-Demand Crawl: Quick Insights for Sales, Prospecting, & Competitive Analysis

Posted by Dr-Pete

In June of 2017, Moz launched our entirely rebuilt Site Crawl, helping you dive deep into crawl issues and technical SEO problems, fix those issues in your Moz Pro Campaigns (tracked websites), and monitor weekly for new issues. Many times, though, you need quick insights outside of a Campaign context, whether you're analyzing a prospect site before a sales call or trying to assess the competition.

For years, Moz had a lab tool called Crawl Test. The bad news is that Crawl Test never made it to prime-time and suffered from some neglect. The good news is that I'm happy to announce the full launch (as of August 2018) of On-Demand Crawl, an entirely new crawl tool built on the engine that powers Site Crawl, but with a UI designed around quick insights for prospecting and competitive analysis.

While you don’t need a Campaign to run a crawl, you do need to be logged into your Moz Pro subscription. If you don’t have a subscription, you can sign-up for a free trial and give it a whirl.

How can you put On-Demand Crawl to work? Let's walk through a short example together.

All you need is a domain

Getting started is easy. From the "Moz Pro" menu, find "On-Demand Crawl" under "Research Tools":

Just enter a root domain or subdomain in the box at the top and click the blue button to kick off a crawl. While I don't want to pick on anyone, I've decided to use a real site. Our recent analysis of the August 1st Google update identified some sites that were hit hard, and I've picked one (lilluna.com) from that list.

Please note that Moz is not affiliated with Lil' Luna in any way. For the most part, it seems to be a decent site with reasonably good content. Let's pretend, just for this post, that you're looking to help this site out and determine if they'd be a good fit for your SEO services. You've got a call scheduled and need to spot-check for any major problems so that you can go into that call as informed as possible.

On-Demand Crawls aren't instantaneous (crawling is a big job), but they'll generally finish between a few minutes and an hour. We know these are time-sensitive situations. You'll soon receive an email that looks like this:

The email includes the number of URLs crawled (On-Demand will currently crawl up to 3,000 URLs), the total issues found, and a summary table of crawl issues by category. Click on the [View Report] link to dive into the full crawl data.

Assess critical issues quickly

We've designed On-Demand Crawl to assist your own human intelligence. You'll see some basic stats at the top, but then immediately move into a graph of your top issues by count. The graph only displays issues that occur at least once on your site – you can click "See More" to show all of the issues that On-Demand Crawl tracks (the top two bars have been truncated)...

Issues are also color-coded by category. Some items are warnings, and whether they matter depends a lot on context. Other issues, like "Critcal Errors" (in red) almost always demand attention. So, let's check out those 404 errors. Scroll down and you'll see a list of "Pages Crawled" with filters. You're going to select "4xx" in the "Status Codes" dropdown...

You can then pretty easily spot-check these URLs and find out that they do, in fact, seem to be returning 404 errors. Some appear to be legitimate content that has either internal or external links (or both). So, within a few minutes, you've already found something useful.

Let's look at those yellow "Meta Noindex" errors next. This is a tricky one, because you can't easily determine intent. An intentional Meta Noindex may be fine. An unintentional one (or hundreds of unintentional ones) could be blocking crawlers and causing serious harm. Here, you'll filter by issue type...

Like the top graph, issues appear in order of prevalence. You can also filter by all pages that have issues (any issues) or pages that have no issues. Here's a sample of what you get back (the full table also includes status code, issue count, and an option to view all issues)...

Notice the "?s=" common to all of these URLs. Clicking on a few, you can see that these are internal search pages. These URLs have no particular SEO value, and the Meta Noindex is likely intentional. Good technical SEO is also about avoiding false alarms because you lack internal knowledge of a site. On-Demand Crawl helps you semi-automate and summarize insights to put your human intelligence to work quickly.

Dive deeper with exports

Let's go back to those 404s. Ideally, you'd like to know where those URLs are showing up. We can't fit everything into one screen, but if you scroll up to the "All Issues" graph you'll see an "Export CSV" option...

The export will honor any filters set in the page list, so let's re-apply that "4xx" filter and pull the data. Your export should download almost immediately. The full export contains a wealth of information, but I've zeroed in on just what's critical for this particular case...

Now, you know not only what pages are missing, but exactly where they link from internally, and can easily pass along suggested fixes to the customer or prospect. Some of these turn out to be link-heavy pages that could probably benefit from some clean-up or updating (if newer recipes are a good fit).

Let's try another one. You've got 8 duplicate content errors. Potentially thin content could fit theories about the August 1st update, so this is worth digging into. If you filter by "Duplicate Content" issues, you'll see the following message...

The 8 duplicate issues actually represent 18 pages, and the table returns all 18 affected pages. In some cases, the duplicates will be obvious from the title and/or URL, but in this case there's a bit of mystery, so let's pull that export file. In this case, there's a column called "Duplicate Content Group," and sorting by it reveals something like the following (there's a lot more data in the original export file)...

I've renamed "Duplicate Content Group" to just "Group" and included the word count ("Words"), which could be useful for verifying true duplicates. Look at group #7 – it turns out that these "Weekly Menu Plan" pages are very image heavy and have a common block of text before any unique text. While not 100% duplicated, these otherwise valuable pages could easily look like thin content to Google and represent a broader problem.

Real insights in real-time

Not counting the time spent writing the blog post, running this crawl and diving in took less than an hour, and even that small amount of time spent uncovered more potential issues than what I could cover in this post. In less than an hour, you can walk into a client meeting or sales call with in-depth knowledge of any domain.

Keep in mind that many of these features also exist in our Site Crawl tool. If you're looking for long-term, campaign insights, use Site Crawl (if you just need to update your data, use our "Recrawl" feature). If you're looking for quick, one-time insights, check out On-Demand Crawl. Standard Pro users currently get 5 On-Demand Crawls per month (with limits increasing at higher tiers).

Your On-Demand Crawls are currently stored for 90 days. When you re-enter the feature, you'll see a table of all of your recent crawls (the image below has been truncated):

Click on any row to go back to see the crawl data for that domain. If you get the sale and decide to move forward, congratulations! You can port that domain directly into a Moz campaign.

We hope you'll try On-Demand Crawl out and let us know what you think. We'd love to hear your case studies, whether it's sales, competitive analysis, or just trying to solve the mysteries of a Google update.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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[ask-de-writer]

Genii’s Junk (1 part) – A tale of the Bizarre Borderland

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to the Bizarre Borderland

GENII’S JUNK

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

© 2014 by Glen Ten-Eyck

2581 words

Writing begun 06/19/14

From an idea by Alte Seely, who wondered what a Bizarre Borderland junk yard would be like.

All rights reserved. This document may not be copied or distributed on or to any medium or placed in any mass storage system except by the express written consent of the author.

//////////////

Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story. They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions, provided that such things are done without charge. I will allow those who do commission art works to charge for their images.

All sorts of fan activity including but not limited to art, stories, musical compositions, plays or anything else is ACTIVELY ENCOURAGED.

///////////////////////

There were a few old, gnarled trees out in front. The building itself was totally unremarkable. Just an old, cheap sheet metal structure. The peeling, sun-faded sign read “Genii’s Junk – Worth anything or not, I buy it or sell it. If you need it, I have it. But it may need work!”

I parked in the shade of one of the trees and strolled into the slight gloom of the cool interior. There were dozens of racks holding the multitude of things that Genii wanted to keep out of the weather. The sun in Border County is infamous for destroying anything that it shines on, if it shines long enough.

It had obviously not shone on Genii enough to do any harm! Lovely young looking lady. Appearances are deceiving. She is lovely enough to look at, yes. Young? Define your terms. I know for a fact that she helped to found the Ottoman Empire. Lady? Try calling her human if you want an earfull of excellent profanity without a single sleazy four letter word.

Like everyone in North or South America, if you trace back far enough, there are immigrants in the woodwork. Genii is one, sort of. She has been in the same location since at least 1530. That is the year, not the time on a 24 hour clock.

She told me herself that Cortez was one cranky customer.

Today, there was a slight individual with a large head hidden by a bigger hat at the counter. Genii had the oscilloscope and a big, hundred function multimeter out on the counter and three big power leads with clamps and adapters.

A long, too many jointed finger pointed at a stud on the device sitting on the counter. His (?) somewhat squeaky voice demanded, “Positive One go here! Not over there, stupid human!”

Genii’s lovely face curled into a snarl, showing her many fangs. “Watch who you call HUMAN, you gray trash!”

Settling some, she explained patiently, as if to a retarded three year old, “This is the anti-gee element of a 1942 Star Sweeper. From 1951 on, you are right. For any earlier models, if you want to do that test hookup, put your gold on the counter now. You will not be alive to give it to me later but you WILL have destroyed the unit.

“This is from one of the two that US Airforce took down outside of Roswell in 1947.” She turned to a LONG shelf of manuals and other books that sat on top of the massive number of scroll pigeon holes. Taking down a much thumbed manual, she expertly flipped through pages and pointed to a picture for the customer.

“There. Manufacturer’s Manual for the 1942 Star Sweeper. Hookup diagram and warnings…” The Gray examined the manual in something like shock.

“Where you get this? I give you two pound gold for it.”

With a sour expression Genii pointed over her shoulder at a sign in at least a hundred languages. One of them was the same as the one in the book. It read, “NO WRITTEN MATERIALS FOR SALE AT ANY PRICE!”

He (?) started to say something more, while trying to put the manual under his (?) coat. Genii, with a disgusted look, leaped over the counter like an acrobat. She hit the customer with both feet at shoulder level, flattening him (?). She took back the manual and hopped back across the counter to put it away.

She also took the device off the counter and lifted the oscilloscope back to its rack of test equipment.

The test leads and other gear went neatly back to their places. Brightening, she turned to me.

“What can I do for you today, Jimmy?”

Flipply I replied, “You could sell me your bottle, my dear, but I have heard a rumor that your personal home is not for sale.

“Actually, I was looking for a carpet. Something that isn’t a Belgian knock-off of a real carpet.”

Lighting up, she asked, “Hand loomed and knotted or machine made?”

“Hand knotted, I think, Genii.”

“What about a dubious one? I have one out on Aisle 34, about a four or five hundred yards down. I’ll loan you a yard wand to get you there. It is between the NC-2 and the De Haviland bomber. There is a rack there. I am sure that you will have no trouble finding it.

I snickered. “Anything on YOUR aircraft rows is fun. What do you have that is new to you?”

Genii grinned in delight. How about an X-B70? It needs a little work!”

I chortled, and asked, “Which aisle? I should have no trouble seeing a Valkyrie if it is anything like reassembled.”

Genii handed me a wooden pole with a wide bicycle type seat and handlebars on it. With a grin, she said, “Aisle 36! Have fun!”

Leaving the disgruntled Gray behind, I took the handlebars, activating the “Yard Stick” and took off. In only moments, I found the Aisle 34 marker and swooped around the turn, scooting down the Aisle.

The NC-2 was a great locator. The giant WW I sea-going biplane was totally intact. It had a 103 foot wingspan. For wood and wire technology there were few that ever matched its sheer size and NONE that could match it for range and load.

It was meant to launch in Maine and fly antisubmarine patrol all the way to the Florida keys, non-stop. The Great War ended before it and its three sister aircraft were finished.

Congress canceled the contract without payment. Curtis (the C of NC-2) went ahead and finished all four planes on their own dime, while Congressmen all got on the “They will never fly” and “defrauding the War Department” band wagons. When all four launched from the factory in Virginia and flew up to Maine, the world was astounded.

When they refueled, they took on as passengers those few Congressmen and Navy personnel still championing the NCs as practical aircraft. They then flew, non-stop to the Florida Keys, exactly as designed, except that they were carrying almost a 20% overload in passengers, instead of bombs and depth charges. That feat blew away the whole world at the time.

It also shut up the NC program critics more effectively than if they had been hit by the bombs that the planes were designed to carry. Congress quietly tried to pass Curtis the money that they were due, so that the US Navy could claim the aircraft.

Later, the four made a trans Atlantic Flight. The NC-1 disappeared in thunderstorms. Some wreckage was found. The NC-3 was forced down at sea. It was taxiing on only two engines when found. The tow to the Azores caused enough damage to the plane that it could not continue.

The NC-2 got to the Azores a day before the NC-4. It refueled. The weather being good, it took off for Lisbon and was never seen again. The NC-4 landed in the Azores, refueled and later landed safely in Lisbon harbor, the first airplane to fly the Atlantic. It is now in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

I made a note to ask Genii how she managed to get the NC-2 and set my yardstick down by the rack of carpets. They followed that old law, 90% of everything is crap.

Genii, as usual, was right about it not being hard to find the one that she had spoken of. It had a clearly later, and phony, Antwerp label sewed on. The work had been carelessly done. The metal needle used to sew the label on had damaged the port side lift and control spells, unless my Pocket Dowse and Spell Strength meter was wrong. Judging by the fringe and warp damage, it must have been some crash.

As I rolled up the carpet and strapped it to the Yardstick, I heard a warning siren. It was coming from the vicinity of the X-B70, whose huge nose and forward canards jutted above the intervening aircraft.

No chance to look at it, then. I headed back in to the shop. I got there just before the unearthly scream of the six monster jet engines being fired up. It sounded like the X-B70 was a live bird. If Genii was going to that much trouble, she very likely had a cash customer for it. I wondered who it was.

Sometimes Genii would talk about customers and sometimes not. It was never wise to pry. There was someone new at the counter. The Gray was still there. Still complaining.

Genii turned her back on him and told him, “You are right. I did not sell to you. I will not sell to you. You tried to shoplift PRINTED MATERIAL from ME! I have not let any written things go since Caesar screwed up our deal and BURNED the Library at Alexandria! You have only seconds left to get out of here alive! Go!” She was reaching under the counter when the Gray left - - at a waddling run.

Turning to the new man at the counter, she smiled very professionally and asked, “Sorry about the scene, General. What can I do for the Air Force today?”

Self-importantly, he replied, “What was that? It sounded like a jet engine test!”

Serenely, which is a bad sign with Genii, because it means that she is absolutely certain of her legal footing, Genii replied, “It was. X B-70 engine test. Starboard #2 engine began to develop vibration, so we aborted the test.

“It is ALL covered in my salvage contract. Do you need a copy?”

Sourly, the General replied, “Why bother? You can’t sell it if it is operational. Mass weapon laws.”

Smiling with her fangs but not her lovely eyes, Genii replied, “Loophole big enough to fly a carpet through, General. If I am not selling it on Earth, the laws don’t apply. I am not selling it anywhere that you have any authority.”

Voice hardening and chilling some, like maybe a glacier, she asked, “Do you have any actual business here?”

“Where are those ten computer stabilization systems that we ordered!” More a demand than a question. Bad way to make points with Genii.

Her face froze. “I have been forced to cut off all credit to the United States Armed Services. Proper notices were sent according to the contract. The reason given is failure to render payment of the agreed form or amount. Further, the Military Procurement Office has sent formal notice of refusal to pay and stated that I will receive only 1/10th of the outstanding total and that only by a check drawn on the Government.

“This has totally canceled our contracts and agreements. I filed a notice of repossession for all of the following items.”

She fished out a file box and gave the thunderstruck general a list. She also handed him a file of correspondence.

“That file and notice are copies of the originals. You may keep them or return them. Neither you nor any other armed service gets anything until I have my gold on the counter.”

I will give the General this. He took the whole file and settled himself at a large table. He began at the front and started working though it. Soon he was on a cell phone.

I was walking beside the Yardstick, guiding it with the handlebars. I brought it up to the counter and asked, “Got a Merlin S-multimeter, Genii? I want to check this out pretty carefully. I am certain that this is a Second Caliphate carpet but as near as my Pocket Dowse can show, the counterfeit label was sewed in with an Iron or Steel needle.

“Looks like that caused the control failure that made it crash.” I shook my head at foolishness. “Can you believe knowing enough to get a carpet like this and then sewing in the phony label for tax dodging with a steel needle? It shorted or blew out all the port side lift and control spells.”

Genii grinned hugely which showed off her big fangs wonderfully. She hopped across the counter again. She had five different willow wands and a very well worn Merlin in her hands.

She helped me to unroll the carpet. I showed her the weave and fringe damage that led me to think that the carpet had collided with something pretty solid at high speed.

Genii nodded agreement and plugged the biggest of the wands into the Merlin. Between us, we made sure that the original starboard spells were all intact.

The port side was a total loss. Between that steel needle and the impact damage that distorted the weave, and with it the spells, it was going to have to be totally reworked from fringe to fringe.

She looked up, shaking her head. “I got this out of the Lord Carleton Estate. I just paid a flat fee for it all. I was pretty sure of what this was but that was a LOT of stuff to sort. Drove my Yard Imps nuts.

“I just set it over in aircraft and hoped for the best. You lucked out, Jimmy. This IS a genuine and restorable Second Caliphate. I already have it priced.

“Yours for only five ounces.” She grinned again. I may be weird but I like Genii’s grin, fangs and all. She was holding out her hand.

Like a true gentleman, I dropped in three one troy ounce Krugerands and two Chinese Pandas. Genii, being Genii, closed her hand about them. When she opened it, the coins were gone and a receipt was in their place. It looked for all the world like a magic trick. Which it was. Real. Not slight of hand.

With the General expostulating fiercely into his phone in the background, Genii helped me roll the carpet snugly and secure it with straps for transport.

Carpet over my shoulder, I walked to the door. Looking out, the Gray and a companion were going over my rig, big jumper cables in hand.  They were trailing down from the nearly antique Type A saucer hovering overhead,. They were trying to find the hookup points for a jump-start. One was gabbling in Gray, “No Anti-gravity! How it fly?”

Door partly open, I called back inside, “Genii! The Grays are trying to swipe my rig from your parking lot!”

Snaring her fiercest, Genii came barreling out past me. She had what looked like a shotgun in hand. The double boom sounded like a shotgun all right. The result was not your normal shot shell hit on the tough hull alloy of the Type A saucer overhead.

The blue fire blast was something to behold. A visible hole about a foot across started to trail smoke most impressively. The saucer tilted some and sailed across Genii’s Yard Fence. A few moments later the array of crashes and the crunch of failing metal announced the end of the saucer, and probably, some expensive junk. The Grays ran like rabbits while Genii was reloading. Definitely not normal shotgun ammo.

I stowed my find and climbed under the cloth sunshade of my rig and, taking out my control wand, lifted my old Mohgul Carpet and took off for home. As I flew, I reflected that if Genii had lost some junk in the crash, she had gained a whole, nearly intact Type A saucer for salvage. I think that she was going to come out ahead. As usual.

–THE END–

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to the Bizarre Borderland

[donald-clemons]

10 Merchant Errors that Cause Chargebacks & How to Avoid Them

Operating in the card-not-present environment offers many lucrative opportunities for merchants. Unfortunately, those opportunities come alongside risks.

Chargebacks are nothing new. The process was introduced decades ago as an important consumer protection mechanism to ensure that cardholder have some recourse in the event of fraud or abuse.

Chargebacks can come into play if a cardholder finds an unauthorized transaction on their statement, or if the goods that arrive at their doorstep don’t reflect what was promised at the time of purchase. In either of these situations, the cardholder could be entitled to file a chargeback (assuming they’ve already tried to address the issue directly with the merchant first).

The character of the chargeback process has shifted considerably with the rise of eCommerce, click-and-collect, and other card-not-present channels, though. Nowadays, chargebacks are used as a tool to commit fraud more often than to prevent it.

  Friendly Fraud is Taking Over

“Friendly fraud” may refer to any invalid use of the chargeback process. For instance, a cardholder might suffer buyer’s remorse and decide to file a chargeback to recoup their funds. Or, the buyer might see a legitimate transaction on their billing statement that they don’t recognize, assume it’s fraudulent, and file a chargeback. In some rare cases, the cardholder might even complete a purchase with the intent to file chargeback later; basically, the cardholder is trying to “get something for free.”

The cardholder’s motivation is totally different in all three of those scenarios, but the end result is the same. If the cardholder successfully disputes the charge, that means you, as a merchant, lose the revenue from the sale, plus any merchandise shipped. You also lose the cost of overhead charges like shipping and interchange fees, and get hit with a chargeback fee to cover the bank’s administration costs.

Chargebacks add up over time. Each of the major card brands have their own predetermined chargeback thresholds; if you breach these thresholds, you might end up in a (very expensive) chargeback monitoring program. In extreme cases, you might end up on the MATCH (Member Alert to Control High-Risk Merchants) List, which could make you ineligible for a standard merchant account.

The fact that friendly fraud operates by hiding behind false chargeback claims is what makes it so difficult to prevent. Each chargeback comes with a reason code that’s meant to explain the reason for the dispute. However, you can’t rely on these reason codes because any one of them could be friendly fraud in disguise.

  Many Chargebacks Are Preventable

Given the risk posed by chargebacks, it’s vital that you try to prevent these payment disputes whenever possible. But how?

You might be surprised to learn that, according to internal data from Chargebacks911, friendly fraud will account for up to 61 percent of all chargebacks by 2023. However, the data also suggests that between 20-40 percent of all chargebacks could be prevented.

It’s helpful to think about chargeback sources as a kind of spectrum. You could be dealing with totally-preventable merchant abuse on one extreme, and totally-unpreventable deliberate chargeback abuse on the other. In the middle, there is a wide expanse of chargebacks that may be prevented with the right approach.

    The key is to address some seemingly-minor internal issues that can trigger disputes, while implementing best practices to keep chargebacks from happening. Chargebacks911 has identified more than 100 potential errors that can cause chargebacks, and published a digital guide offering dozens of tips to help protect against disputes.

Here are ten of the most common mistakes that merchants make, along with key tips as to how you can avoid them:

  #1. Unclear Return Policies

Confusing return policies are among the most common reasons why cardholders file chargebacks. A cardholder might return an item, but then never receive a refund because the item was ineligible for a return. If the buyer doesn’t know that, though, they’ll almost definitely file a chargeback.

Customers need to know which items are eligible for returns before completing their purchase. Thus, your return policy needs to be very clear and concise, as well as intuitive. If any special conditions apply, i.e. some items are not eligible for a return, that needs to be explained in very plain language.

  #2. Customer Service Missteps

It can be easy to think that an exchange is over once you ship out the customer’s goods. There are a lot of touchpoints with customers before, during, and after a transaction, though. Failing at any one of these points could lead to a dispute.

Providing live, round-the-clock customer service across multiple channels (phone, email, and social media) is one of the best things you can do to prevent chargebacks. If an immediate live response is unavailable, the cardholder should get an autoresponse letting them know that their inquiry has been received, and when to expect and answer.

  #3. Fulfilment & Shipping Delays

Like your return policies, you should set clear expectations among buyers regarding fulfillment and shipping. These policies should be clearly-displayed on each product page, along with a shipping estimate and multiple carrier options.

Customers should know what to expect regarding delivery method and shipping timeframes. Also, any delays that come up during this process need to be conveyed immediately. It’s probably wise to include a caveat about potential delays around high-volume times, like the weeks leading up to the holidays.

    #4. Poor Product Descriptions

You want to convey an accurate, honest impression of each product to buyers. This will create a positive brand image and make buyers feel that they can trust you, while also ensuring against the possibility of chargebacks resulting from products that don’t live up to customers’ expectations.

Providing detailed written descriptions of each product on your site is recommended. This should be accompanied by multiple high-res images on each product page that show the item from multiple angles, and which also illustrate size and scale. Anticipate questions that buyers might often ask and include an FAQ section to answer these.

  #5. Skipping Tracking & Delivery Confirmation

Let’s say that your customer places an order, but they’re experiencing a shipping delay. That buyer is much less likely to file a chargeback if they can use tracking information to verify where the package is at any given time.

Tracking and delivery confirmation can both help to reassure buyers about the status of their goods in transit. Also, delivery confirmation can be a valuable piece of evidence if you need to fight a chargeback claim through the representment process, so I recommend it for high-dollar value items.

  #6. Not Optimizing Your Billing Descriptor

Your billing descriptor is the brief line that appears on your customer’s statement to help identify a transaction. If your customer can’t identify you based on your descriptor, then they may suspect a transaction is fraud and file a chargeback.

Ensure that both the soft descriptor (the temporary one which appears on the cardholder’s statement for a few days) and the permanent or “hard” descriptor give the customer all the information they need to know. It should include your business name, website URL, and contact information. A brief description of the product is also a good idea.

  #7. Insufficient Fraud Detection

Using one or two tools to identify criminal fraud is not enough. Bad actors have a lot of tactics at their disposal to commit fraud, and you need to have dynamic, multilayer strategy in place to fight back.

There are dozens of tools you can deploy, including Address Verification Service (AVS), 3-D Secure technology, geolocation, velocity limits, and fraud blacklists, just to name a few. These should all be backed by fraud scoring, which allows for simple up-or-down automatic decisioning on transactions based on predetermined indicators.

  #8. Mismanaging Recurring Payments

Offering subscriptions is a great way to see reliable, sustained income from month to month. It also presents some risks, though; cardholders can sometimes dispute subscription charges, rather than cancel the service through the proper channels. In these cases, the issuer may overturn all transactions dating back to the beginning of the service.

You can prevent this by being proactive about maintaining relationships with customers throughout the term of service. Give customers regular reminders before billing dates and inform them of any upcoming changes to their rates or to the service itself. Finally, make cancelation easy, quick, and painless. While you obviously don’t want customers to cancel their service, a cancelation is far better than a chargeback.

  #9. Having a Lax Attitude Toward Industry Rules & Regulations

There are a number of chargeback reason codes that are dedicated specifically to transaction errors. Processing a transaction without a valid authorization can result in a chargeback, for example, as can submitting a late presentment.

You can avoid these disputes by adhering to all rules and requirements as laid out by the card networks. Stay up-to-date on any changes to these rules and be sure to alter your practices and procedures as needed.

  #10. Not Training Employees to Prevent Chargebacks

Your workforce is your primary line of defense to prevent chargebacks. Any misstep can result in a problem; for instance, if employees don’t adhere to data security best practices, or PCI compliance standards, it could result in a fraud incident tied to business email compromise (BEC). Alternately, if a cardholder contacts your customer service department, but employees aren’t given up-to-date information on how to handle a specific inquiry, it could lead to a chargeback.

Be sure that all employees have the most current, relevant information on how to prevent fraud and chargebacks. You can provide periodic refreshers to make sure that everyone’s knowledge and skillsets remain sharp over time.

    Prevention is the First Step

Here’s the simple truth: you won’t be able to prevent every chargeback that comes your way.

Every merchant has to deal with a determined fraudster or an irate customer from time to time. That said, there’s no reason to accept chargebacks that could easily be prevented by taking simple steps on your part.

Comprehensive chargeback management demands an approach based on preventing disputes wherever possible, then fighting all illegitimate chargeback claims through the representment process. You can’t identify an illegitimate chargeback until you’ve ruled out the possibility of all other chargeback sources, though. That’s why prevention must come first.

  About the Author

    Harlan Hutson has spent the past 12 years focused on solving real world problems in payments and security; first as an eCommerce merchant, and then as Co-Founder of an authentication company. In his role as Chargebacks911’s Director of Strategic Partnerships, he is now focused on solving the chargeback problem for some of the largest companies in the world.

  The post 10 Merchant Errors that Cause Chargebacks & How to Avoid Them appeared first on The 2Checkout Blog| Articles on eCommerce, Payments, CRO and more.

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