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sergeifyodorov · 1 year

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would you actually be willing to give like a pretty long rundown of those main guys from the 2015 draft class?? because i would be Very interested

Of course! I wrote this in a Google doc so I could get it all down. It's a LOT btw -- this is the abridged version, leaving out what are probably important details, and it's still [checks] 11k words long. Sorry about that.

Anyone who tells you that the draft is a science is an idiot not worth their twenty-dollar stadium beer. The draft has analytical elements, sure, but it is a crapshoot through and through. If you dare to take a look back on draft histories from the past ten years -- the past twenty, the past thirty -- only rarely is the first pick, the “best in show,” actually the best of his class. I mean, no wonder, right? How well can you determine how good a man is going to be at hockey when you have only seen him as a teenager? Accuracy and prophecy are not kin.

Every ten years, though, you come across someone whose trajectory is easy to map. A prospect who is so head and shoulders above everyone else -- in numbers, in the eye test -- that you cannot help but say that they are going to be The Next One. God save the poor boy you put that name on.

In this case, it is 2014, and they are speaking those words again. On the dingy ice of an OHL arena, a red-haired Toronto boy with scared fawn’s eyes paces around the circles, faster than anyone else in the building. There are articles written about him already, calling his experience the torture test and labelling him Jesus, the saviour, the new great. It will get worse for him from here.

A Generational Prospect

It is 2004, and all eyes are on Sidney Crosby. He has eclipsed QMJHL scoring records. He performs highlight-reel antics. It is known that he will make the NHL as a teenager, and that whichever team has him will have an asset they should not ever think to relinquish.

Now, in 2023, all expectations of him are blown away. He is fifteenth on the all-time scoring list, having played most of his life in the dead-puck era, and will be inside the top ten by the time he retires. He has never been below a point per game, having gotten to a hundred points as an eighteen-year-old rookie and only slowed down to ninety at thirty-five. He has won three Cups; two Harts; two each Art Ross and Rocket Richard.

Something similar can be said for his contemporary, one Alex Ovechkin, sixteenth in all-time scoring, second ever in goals. While neither were always the most singular, dominant player of the past eighteen years (has it really been that long?) their longevity and consistent high-level play have cemented them into that tier of all-time greats.

Such players only emerge once (or, for them, twice) in a generation; a “generational talent.” Gordie Howe was the first, before drafting happened at all, then Gretzky, joined as a part of the WHA merger, then Lemieux, then, debatably, Jagr through the early half of the dead-puck era, then Crosby and Ovechkin. Jagr was drafted fifth overall partly due to political constraints (it was 1990, and Czechia was behind the Iron Curtain), but all of the other drafted ones went first. While development curves for everyone else are hard to map, it is easy to tell, for them, how good they are as youths. We all call Gretzky the “Great One,” but he actually got that nickname before he was a teenager, because of how much better than the rest of his peers he was.

This is how we go up to the 2015 draft. Let’s say that it is September 2014, a full hockey season before the draft, so we can set the scene. Go back to the dingy Erie rink, watch the red-haired boy speed around the ice.

This is Connor McDavid. He was born in January just outside Toronto; if you are unfamiliar with the term “GTA,” I will pause now to tell you that it means Greater Toronto Area, and that it is the nexus of all hockey in the world. He is a Leafs fan, as so many of the GTA hockey-playing hopefuls are.

Connor is an unusual child, even by young hockey prospect standards. Entry to any of the CHL major junior leagues -- the OHL, the WHL, the QMJHL -- starts at sixteen, but select few can apply early, and if they are academically, physically, and emotionally deemed adept they can be accepted for exceptional status and join at fifteen. This happens once every two or three years nowadays; Tavares and Ekblad were the only ones to predate McDavid. As well as being deemed exceptional by the board of the CHL, he is exceptional among peers, too: intelligent and analytical, black-and-white, painfully shy. He works hard in school, desperate to avoid coming off as a “dumb jock.” Media interviewers ask for him, but they have to change the settings on their microphones in order to pick up his voice, it is so soft.

He has already won trophies; scholastic achievement, sportsmanlike behaviour, CHL rookie of the year. He will score at least one point in all but one of the first eighteen games of the 2014-15 OHL season, before breaking his hand in a fight (getting himself a Gordie Howe hatty, being that he already has a goal and an assist). He will score a hundred points in thirty-eight games, and a hundred and twenty points in the forty-seven games he will play.

Understandably, his name is penned in at number one on the draft board. Even such deficits as breaking a hand and being out for six weeks don’t tank his stock, it is so obvious how well on track he is to outpace all but the best.

He is sweet and shy, a captain of Erie based mostly on skill, and tight-laced into the destiny of future franchise saviour.

At least he has a friend, though, right?

Dylan

The 2014-15 Erie Otters are a good team. A great one, even -- third in league standings by season’s end, and you don’t get that far if your single generational superstar is sidelined half the year with a hand injury.

This is where Dylan comes in. Like Connor, he’s a GTA boy, and a young Leafs fan. Unlike Connor, he’s part of a serious hockey family -- the middle child of three. His older brother Ryan has already been drafted, in the first round, no less. He’s a real student of the game, too, a stats obsessive and a calm, steadfast personality.

Remember how we said the draft is a crapshoot? That’s very true. Prospects may have precise rankings when all is said and done, but in the meantime I find it best thinking of them as instead arranging into tiers -- there’s the generational talent in this year, but disregarding him we have a first overall-level, then a small handful of top prospects. Not saviours in their entirety, but certain to make a team very happy. Dylan projects as the latter group -- he’ll be somewhere between three and five. In 2014-15, he’s the OHL scoring leader, and takes the Erie Otters’ single-season record.

He and Connor are also best friends. Connor’s quiet, anxious even, but Dylan has a coolheaded sort of confidence that brings out the best in him. Rarely are they pictured without each other; rarely are they spoken to without mentioning the other. There’s a sweet little video out there of the Otters going to New York state and going on this little ziplining/outdoor climbing gym, and Connor and Dylan are about as glued to each other’s sides as you can be while obeying the harness safety rules. In hockey terms, while a little young for it, they’re married. Much like Crosby and Malkin are, although over a much shorter term, and publically the two Otters are much closer.

Dylan is the one I feel as if I can talk the least about. He is mostly defined by what he is not: not Connor, to start, and before the actual draft takes place that is the most of it.

Of course, that’s the most of what any of it is, isn’t it? These are teenagers, separated into imprecise tiers and mostly defined by which tier they slot into. The three boys below Connor, no matter how good they are, are defined by being not Connor.

Jack Eichel most of all.

Jack, to start, is American, unlike any of the other three. He’s a late birthday -- born in November of 1996 instead of the first eight and a half months of 1997 -- so he’s, in theory, had another year to adapt. (Brief footnote: the September 15 cutoff is what determines draft eligibility, either the year you turn eighteen or the year you turn nineteen. If you were born in, say, June of 2000, you would be eligible for the draft in 2018. If you had the audacity to be born in October of 2000 instead, you’d have to wait until 2019.) His development pipeline is also unlike the others, having come up into the NCAA, college hockey, and playing at the US National Development team before committing to Boston University. He won the Hobey Baker award as a freshman, and led the NCAA in scoring as a rookie.

He was marketed, coming into the draft, as the American Connor -- the new face of American hockey, a homegrown star, a fellow generational talent, although that was a feeble marketing strategy to dull the disappointment of going second to greatness. He was proud and polite, quiet but not scared, a young man uncomfortably aware of his own myth and rather irritated at the fact he had a myth in the first place. Taken in and treated well, he would probably have a well-suited disposition to a high-stress, playoff-bound team.

It’s unfortunate that that wouldn’t realize until eight years after he was drafted.

The Draft Itself, or, What Caused All These Problems In The First Place

The draft lottery rolls around. The lottery and the draft take place on different days -- the lottery several weeks before, so that for a long time the boys have an idea of to whom they will go. The first four teams to pick are, in order:

Edmonton. Edmonton had been very bad, for a very long time, and had three shiny prizes already to show for it: Taylor Hall, drafted first overall in 2010; Nail Yakupov, drafted first overall in 2012; and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, drafted first overall in 2013. I’m sure you already know this, but Edmonton was Gretzky’s team, while Gretzky won all his cups, and they now stand to get themselves another generational talent in Connor McDavid.

Buffalo. The Sabres have a few decent pieces: Ryan O’Reilly, Sam Reinhart. They haven’t made the playoffs in a few years, and have plummeted to the bottom of the standings, finishing thirtieth out of thirty.

Arizona. Arizona has never gotten off the ground, not once. They are a dust mote of a franchise, held in place by Gary Bettman’s fragile ego and the skimmings of Original Six markets. Their survival, as doomed as we know it is, is banking on a distant hope of good prospect luck and better PDO.

Toronto. While Arizona is the smallest of small markets, Toronto is… well, it’s Toronto. Remember earlier, how I said that the GTA is the nexus of hockey? Toronto is called the Centre of the Universe, and for good goddamn reason. The Leafs are one of the most storied franchises in the NHL, and simultaneously one of the winningest (the second-most Stanley Cups, after Montreal) and the losingest (their most recent Cup was almost sixty years ago.) Their fanbase dwarfs all but the most hardcore of French Canadian separatist contingents. There’s a common phrase now, when any hockey news is mentioned -- but how does this affect the Leafs? It’s well-done satire.

And with four teams, we have four boys. So I come upon the last one now: Mitch Marner. Mitch, like Dylan and Connor, is a GTA boy, a born and raised Leafs fan on an OHL team. He plays for the London Knights -- a diminutive forward (he weighs in at 160 pounds soaking wet at eighteen, and eight years later barely cracks 180) with fantastic playmaking skills, the creativity and gall to do things other players have never even thought of. He’s a sweet one, too, bubbly and energetic and cuddly and kind.

Here is how the draft goes:

The Oilers take the stage first, for the fourth time in six years. The ceremony is unnecessary. Connor McDavid is the name everyone knows they will say. Connor walks up to the stage, looking vaguely nauseous, and dons the jersey and the hat. (His facial expression in the interviews afterward is thoroughly dissected over the next eight years. Some say it’s simple stage fright; others say it’s personal distaste for the Oilers -- remember, Toronto boy, Toronto heart. I choose to believe it’s the first one. Not all of us are John Tavares.)

After a first-round prospect is chosen, they bring him down for an interview, then shuffle him off to some arena underbelly for photos upon photos. Connor performs his niceties, but before he is taken back, he asks to stay. He wants to watch Dylan get drafted.

The Buffalo Sabres come second, and pick Jack Eichel. Eichel is asked, throughout, how he feels about Connor, being behind Connor, coming second to Connor. The narrative being pushed is called McEichel -- the Canadian wunderkind versus the American one -- and he wants no part in it. He’s impressed by Connor’s play, in their few brief meetings he thinks of him as nice enough, he wants to carve out his own path.

This refusal to play along may have been the start of the discontent, in hindsight. The media clearly wasn’t going to get anything out of soft-voiced scared-eyed perfect Canadian boy Connor, but Jack, sharper edges and colder heart, might be good for a soundbite or two about this new league-made rivalry. Jack, though, ever aware, puts himself solidly into Generic Hockey Interview voice and backs off.

The Coyotes come third. Here is where a choice occurs, the first genuine decision. Connor McDavid had been slotted into first pick since the day he got accepted for exceptional status. Eichel had taken a few years more, but his place in second after Connor was well known for months on end. Dylan and Mitch, however, were up in the air. Do you pick the big one with more points, or the small one with star power?

The Coyotes follow the conventional hockey wisdom, and take the big boy. Connor waits to watch his friend take the jersey, then hugs him in the wings.

Finally, the Leafs.

Let’s actually take a step back to talk about the Leafs rebuild, for a second, because it, like everything the Leafs have ever done, is a testament to failure. Also, somewhat, because it is relevant. Also, moreso, because I can’t shut up about hockey and you’ve asked me to talk as long as I like. If you’re still reading, I want you to know that a) I am ever thankful for your time and b) we’re, like, just getting started here.

The Leafs’ last contending era was before the 04-05 lockout season, which means it predates the salary cap. They struggled in the midsection, for a long time, then finally fell enough to gain the fifth overall pick in 2008, with which they selected a big tough young defenceman named Luke Schenn, the first official piece of the Leafs’ rebuild, strange as it may be. Luke, while competent enough, was obviously not the sort of franchise-changing star the Leafs needed, and they struggled in the midsection again, before gaining, once more, the fifth overall pick, with which they selected Schenn’s partner, one Morgan Rielly. The two would be perfect partners, but we won’t know this for eleven years. Luke was traded twelve hours after Rielly’s draft.

Rielly is still in the AHL the next year, 2013, when the Leafs make the playoffs. This is the infamous 4-1 series: the Leafs go down 3-1 in the series, claw their way back up to game seven. They gain a 4-1 lead, going into the third period, and then blow it completely and lose the game, and the series, in overtime. They do not make the playoffs in 2013-14, and before the 2014-15 season begins they change management. The man they install as President decides to tank, and tank hard, selling as much of the Leafs as he can in the hopes of landing that elusive first pick.

They end up with fourth overall, and Mike Babcock, the Leafs’ head coach, does not want Mitch Marner, instead asking the then-management for the bigger defenceman, a boy named Hanifin who will go fifth to the Hurricanes. The Leafs take Marner anyway. Watch him as his name is called. He, like the first three, sits in a nest of other prospects and their families -- Mitch actually sits right behind Jack Eichel -- but unlike them, when his name is called the other prospects lean over to offer him congratulations, as well as his parents and brother. Mat Barzal, from across the aisle, offers a bro-hug as Mitch goes by.

The rest of the draft goes as usual. The 2015 draft, beyond narratively, is one of the deepest drafts in recent memory; players you may recognize include Timo Meier, Mikko Rantanen, Travis Konecny, Sebastian Aho (the Carolina one!), Roope Hintz, Kirill Kaprizov, Troy Terry… the list goes on. These players have their own stories, but few really tie in to this one. (So far.)

Summer passes; we move on. Training camp rolls around.

Connor McDavid, as expected, makes the team. He moves in with Taylor Hall, a fellow first overall. Jack Eichel also makes the team.

Dylan and Mitch do not. Dylan’s reasons are unknown to me, but Mitch is sent down because, again, Babcock does not want him. He’s naturally undersized and does not have a frame that builds muscle; Babcock is not under the impression that young men in Mitch’s image make good hockey players. Both Mitch and Dylan are returned to the OHL.

The stage is set now; each boy has a team. Eight years on, only half of them are on those teams. But we can’t worry about that yet! We have to make it to the NHL first!

World Juniors and the Memorial Cup

Once Connor makes the Oilers, Dylan Strome is named captain of the Erie Otters. Very cool, to only get what you deserve after the golden boy is gone.

Jack and Connor are off playing with the big boys. They’ll get their own section later -- we have to work our way up, not up and down and up and down. I’ve got to be somewhat cohesive, you know? So, we’ll stay, for now, in the world of junior hockey.

The Otters and the London Knights, Mitch’s team, are in the wonderful circumstance of not only both being very good at the same time, but also being in the same division as one another. This means they see each other quite often (no plane travel in the OHL. Bus only.) and have thus formed… a bit of a rivalry. It is becoming difficult to dance around: Dylan Strome, despite the politeness they’ve shown each other at the draft, hates Mitch Marner.

And why wouldn’t you? He’s the one Dylan fought with all last season for the OHL scoring title; he’s fast on his feet and can shoot from impossible angles; he makes plays you’ve never even considered, much less considered possible. He dangles through the Otters and scores the easiest impossible goal you’ve ever seen and laughs as light as air about the whole thing. And he’s tiny. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Marner drew a lot of comparisons to Patrick Kane in his junior days -- thankfully without the character in common, but as a hockey player. An undersized (almost comically so) London winger with otherworldly ability to manifest scoring chances out of nothing. The exact sort of irritating worm that not one of us wants on the other team.

So, of course, they get put on the same team.

The 2016 World Juniors are summoned. Connor McDavid, then dealing with a broken collarbone and a great deal of pressure, is not on Team Canada’s roster. Dylan Strome and Mitch Marner both are. Suddenly and thankfully, the media’s focus shifts from one, false rivalry in McEichel to a very very real one.

I don’t want to dismiss what happens next as a mere symptom of the fact that hockey players are engineered to get along with their teammates, even if they don’t like each other. Admittedly, it does start that way -- Mitch is a winger and Dylan a centre, and both skilled, so the coach puts them on the same line. Simple enough. And then they spark up a friendship.

Dylan’s reasons for hating Mitch were not personal, just hockey-related. Dylan hated Mitch because he was good and he knew it, the simple way a teenager hates their direct competitor. On the same team, though, the competition aspect is removed, and the barrier for hatred is gone. This is the Dylan/Mitch enemies to lovers arc, if you want to put it that way.

Mitch, for the record, I doubt ever hated Dylan. He doesn’t have that in him, never had. He saw a rival, sure, and as soon as that rival wore a matching jersey I assume he taped the word friend over whatever defined their relationship before. Mitch is probably one of the most gregarious, friendly, charming hockey players out there. Beyond his cute little face and on-ice highlights, even. He’s loud, sure, but when he talks he knows how to include you. He finds out what you like and talks about it, he singles you out if you’re shy and builds up your confidence. He’s just plain nice.

Dylan, like the rest of us, was charmed. Within weeks he went from calling Mitch annoying to telling us all about how he loves cuddling (!?) with him. They became fast friends and great linemates.

Dylan’s not the only one Mitch Marner befriends at Worlds, though. Somewhere between matches, Mitch takes an elevator at the complex they’re staying at, and ends up sharing it with a boy from the American team, a tall square-jawed Mexican centre with a Justin Bieber obsession. This is Auston Matthews, one of the projected top picks of the 2016 draft -- born just two days after the cutoff that would have made him eligible to go in 2015. He played with Jack Eichel at the USNTDP, before taking his age-eighteen year to go play pro in Switzerland. He holds the NTDP scoring record as a seventeen-year-old, and will continue to hold it until Jack Hughes breaks onto the scene. The two boys in the elevator do not yet know it, but they are about to share the mantle of franchise saviour, for the franchise most desperately in need of saving.

Either way. The Canadians place sixth at World Juniors, the Americans do better, the Finns win the whole thing. (In the long run, Laine turns out not to be better than Matthews after all.) Mitch and Dylan go back to their OHL teams.

Erie and London tie in points that year, but London wins the OHL title and goes to Alberta for the Memorial Cup, the CHL trophy. Mitch Marner takes home the scoring title, the Stafford Smythe (CHL equivalent of the Conn Smythe), and the Memorial Cup itself. He is one of the most decorated winners in OHL history, touted as being clutch, creating magic, and racking up points. He has close friends in Dylan Strome and fellow Knight Matthew Tkachuk, who will be selected sixth overall in the 2016 draft, the second American after Auston Matthews himself. And when NHL training camp rolls around in the fall, even Babcock cannot deny he is ready, no matter how slight he may still be.

Connor Complex

There’s nothing that fuels story like a good rivalry, and the NHL was obsessed with marketing this rivalry. The Canadian versus the American. The perfect child of a long line of red-blooded southern Ontario tradition versus the Boston boy with a chip on his shoulder. Jack and Connor, Connor and Jack. They hyped Jack up the time leading up to the draft, trying to hint that he was almost as good -- no, just as good -- as McDavid himself.

He was not, and everyone knew.

The 2014-15 Sabres, then the worst team in the NHL and having done an elite job at tanking (they are one of the worst teams in the analytics era, besides the 2022-23 Anaheim Ducks -- I wonder what prize might be waiting at that number one spot? Surely not someone named Connor.) wanted McDavid. The Pegulas, the owners of the Sabres, tried to hide their disappointment in him as pride. They had an all-American star, they said, someone who had grown up not too far from Buffalo himself, and in the same country, no less. He would be the sort of man to lead them into a new golden age, away from the misery of the tank years.

And yet the narrative persisted. McEichel, they whispered. Look at how good Connor McDavid is, and look at how much Eichel is not him. McDavid, they say, McDavid McDavid McDavid. No article could be written about Jack without mentioning how he came second to Connor.

The Sabres tried to quell the whispers. Look at our boy, they say. They signed Eichel to an eight-year, ten million dollar contract, and in the beginning of the 2018-19 season they named him captain. Isn’t our boy great.

The team does not improve. The Sabres hadn’t made the playoffs for three years when they drafted Eichel; they still haven’t made the playoffs today. I wasn’t around to look, but the team was bad. Eichel did his best, but he was young and inexperienced and did not -- never did -- have captain’s blood in him; Ryan O’Reilly lost his love for the game.

The whispers of character issues start to come out. Jack Eichel is a “locker room cancer;” he’s selfish, stuck-up, quick-tempered. He’s caught in a cage where the only key is to be Connor, something which he never wanted to achieve in the first place, and never could have even if he did want it. The whole narrative was completely fabricated. He liked Connor well enough when they met.

I do imagine he has feelings about it, though, and feelings about Connor now. He didn’t know him, not enough to have an opinion on the boy, but the name followed him around long enough for him to think about it. Imagine it. You’re good in your field, great, even. You’re doing well enough to earn yourself a superstar contract, you’re an All-Star, and yet the only way you will get any recognition at all is when they say that you are worse than one of the greatest players ever to play the game. They lock you into a connection that you have never wanted, barring you from forging your own path. You exist permanently in that orange-and-blue shadow. I don’t blame Jack for being angry. I would be too.

Babcock

Auston Matthews was incredible from the jump. He was big, he was strong, his wrister is the stuff of legend. He won the Calder in his and Mitch’s rookie year, by a not insignificant margin, well ahead of Laine. He was a coach’s dream doll, unusual enough to be marketed and good enough to be useful. Unavoidably masculine even at nineteen.

Mitch less so. Mitch is still small, remember, and struggles to gain weight. I know I talk about his size a lot, but it’s genuinely important. Hockey and its fan culture has long been a group that prioritized size and raw power above all things. Mitch possessed neither of those things, and when he struggled with gaining muscle it was seen as an unwillingness to try. If you know anything about the ability of our bodies to gain or lose weight, you know that it is simply a genetic roll of the dice, a scale that puts a little bit of us into the “gains muscle mass easily” category and decides when to stop. Most hockey players actually aren’t very far up the muscle-gaining spectrum, especially when compared to American football or baseball players -- mass is strength, yes, but it’s also more to move around on ice -- but Mitch is especially low on the scale. Because of this, he is seen as unmanly, a dangerous thing to be.

The Leafs media market is a nightmare, and always has been. Because this is the Centre of the Universe, there are more eyes on the Leafs than on any other team. More eyes mean more writers, means you have to say weirder and wilder things to beg for clicks. Outrage is a good marketing tactic. Getting mad about one of the prize prospects seemingly not wanting to bulk up for the good of the team is a very easy thing to do.

What’s more, Mitch, after his entry-level contract had expired, had had a very difficult and long-drawn out contract negotiation, asking for a lot of money -- essentially the maximum that the Leafs could afford at the time. Because of the salary cap constraint, this was seen as kind of selfish. The angry clicks move. Mitch is sensitive, they say. Soft, selfish, weak.

It’s easy enough to dismiss out of hand when your uncle from Belleville does it, because what does he know. It’s different when it’s the head coach of the Leafs. Mike Babcock, is, at the time of hiring, the highest-paid coach in the NHL. He was signed before the 2015-16 season, and at that point had an eight-year contract, which would have carried him up until this year.

Mike Babcock sucked. Structurally, his teams were fine -- the Leafs made the playoffs in 2016-17, and haven’t missed it since, but he was awful, horribly mean to the boys under him, and especially, especially Mitch.

We should skip ahead a little bit. It’s the beginning of the 2019-20 season. The Leafs have made the playoffs three times already, and lost in the first round each time -- but this, too, is not yet a phrase that strikes worry into our hearts. They’re young, and they have plenty of time left.

Respected veteran Jason Spezza came home to the Leafs, having spent his career -- a player who might squeak the Hall of Fame, but is more likely just below its level -- in first Ottawa, where he was the captain of the Senators briefly and one of its most well-loved players, and then Dallas. Like the boys I talk about here, Jason Spezza is a former OHL player, a GTA boy, a Leafs fan. The Leafs’ season opener is against Ottawa, the team where Jason Spezza left most of his mark. There used to be a promotion with the Senators -- a local branch of some pizza chain would offer a free slice if the Sens scored more than five goals in a game. Spezza (and his linemates, Heatley and Alfredsson) were so good, they named his line the Pizza line. Mike Babcock makes Jason Spezza a healthy scratch on that day.

This is seen as disrespectful, but no more than a coach living up to his hardass reputation. You do what the coach tells you, don’t you? Lest you become a whiner, or worse, a locker room cancer. Scratching an extremely well-respected veteran on the opener against his former team is just something some guys do. A message, if you will. Stay the course, Babcock just wants his players to respect him.

And then news of the list leaks.

It happened when Mitch was a rookie, but they kept it hidden for three years. The Leafs went on a father-and-sons trip, one they do every season. They’re on a road trip, with only their fathers, isolated from their home.

(A brief aside to talk about Mitch’s dad; his name is Paul Marner, and he is the most stereotypical hardass hockey dad on the planet. A nitpicker, an armchair coach, a bully. I do not imagine Mitch felt particularly comforted by his and Babcock’s combined presence on this trip.)

Babcock approached Mitch and asked him to organize all of his teammates in a list. He wanted Mitch to arrange them in order of hardest workers to laziest; he thought Mitch was one of the lazy ones, and wanted to drive this point home by making him categorize his teammates like this. Mitch, as a rookie hockey player does in the presence of the Maple Leaf hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles, obliged. He was under the impression it would be a private affair, just an assignment from Babcock to teach him some sort of lesson. Whether it be out of fear or honesty, he placed himself last on the list.

Babcock told the others.

Specifically, two Leafs vets that Mitch had placed low on the list -- Nazem Kadri and Tyler Bozak. Imagine this: you are a decent centre on a bubble team, but nonetheless an established NHL veteran of about a decade, and your coach shows you a list a rookie made. He tells you that the rookie arranged everyone by work ethic, grinders to lazy shits. You are firmly on the “lazy shit” end.

How much does the coach have to suck, or how much does the rookie have to be loved, for Kadri and Bozak to react like they did? The rumour says they called for Babcock’s head on the spot. Mitch was in tears. I wouldn’t want to stay in Toronto if that happened to me. No wonder he and Auston signed for so much -- Babcock was barely halfway through his contract when they did. If I’d thought that I would have to deal with him for that long, I wouldn’t accept anything less than as much as they could possibly pay me.

In the end, in the beginning of December, 2019, Mitch got hurt and the Leafs went on a road trip. They were already losing by the time they’d left, and they kept losing. Normally, a team on a road trip doesn’t take the hurt players with them, but they took Mitch. The Leafs lost six in a row and finally fired Babcock, letting Sheldon Keefe take his place. Mitch’s presence was a comfort.

Go West

The Leafs make the playoffs first, and take Mitch with them. The Sabres are fighting a silent war with their star centre, but they are no closer to success.

Connor McDavid is named captain at nineteen, the youngest in the history of the NHL. He scrapes the team to a playoff spot, then to a second round loss. He wins the Art Ross and the Hart.

The year before his entry-level contract expires, when he is first eligible, he signs what is then the most expensive per-year contract in NHL history -- eight years, a hundred million dollars. He is looking forward to spending the rest of his prime as an Oiler. He wins the Art Ross the next year, comes very close the year after. The Oilers do not make the playoffs again until after Covid hits.

He gets hurt a lot, too -- he breaks his collarbone as a rookie, missing half the season, and at the very end of the 2018-19 year, crashes into the net irons and shatters his knee. There are rumours of the man who broke Connor’s collarbone doing it on purpose; Connor claims that he overheard the man bragging about it, and I am inclined to believe him. This guy gets traded to the Oilers not too long after that.

In the meantime, Dylan is struggling. The Coyotes stick him in Tucson, a team he is obviously too good for. His entry-level contract slides another season. He wiffles between Tucson and Arizona, not being considered good enough to stay up but being too good to stay down. In the end, on the last year of his entry-level contract, he is traded from the Coyotes to the Chicago Blackhawks, a similarly bad team with a few remnants of its Cup-winning days. Dylan, a feeble icon of Chicagoan hope for one last dance with the aging core, centres Patrick Kane.

In his first half-season with the Blackhawks, he scores 51 points in 58 games. There are hopeful flashes of what he can be, the touted prospect he once was.

Things wrap up on New Years like this: Connor is beyond a hundred-point pace; Dylan, although in no less danger, is at least out of the dust at the bottom of the barrel; Jack is caught in a cold war; the team loves Mitch.

John Tavares has a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Playoff Series

March of 2020 rolls around, and with it the coronavirus pandemic. The league is shut down before the season ends, and the playoffs re-formed in July, inside a bubble -- no one in, no one out until they are eliminated. The Sabres stay with their families, having once again missed the playoffs. The Leafs are set to play the Columbus Blue Jackets, and the Oilers are set to play the Blackhawks.

This, to date, is Dylan’s only playoff appearance, and he is set to face Connor.

Dylan wins.

The qualifying round -- functioning as the first round of the bubble playoffs -- is a best of five, not of seven, and the Blackhawks defeat the Oilers 3-1. They then proceed to lose in five games (this one is a best of seven) to Vegas, but Dylan’s job is done.

The Leafs lose in the first round again. The Leafs have made the playoffs since Auston and Mitch’s debut, every single year, but they lose each time; in six, to the Capitals, then in seven every year after that. Or, in this case, in five.

Covid had not stopped by the end of the 2020 season ( :/ ) and the NHL was rearranged for what would be ostensibly the 2020-2021 season, but ended up being played mostly in 2021. Because of border laws, the Canadian teams are sequestered into their own, North division. Dylan Strome signs a two-year contract extension with Chicago right before the season starts -- one that will carry him until the end of the 2021-2022 season.

If you’ve seen All or Nothing on Amazon Prime, it is this season that is covered. The Leafs tear through what is seen as a weaker North division, taking a comfortable first place spot. Connor McDavid cracks a hundred points in fifty-six games. Both Leafs and Oilers lose in the first round.

The Leafs do it perhaps most remarkably. They have drawn the Canadiens, a rather insubstantial team who are in their spot mostly because they have one of the best goaltenders in recent memory at their back.

I watched this game, live, before I was a serious Leafs fan. I can only imagine what it would be like if you were already invested at that point; I would not wish to live that horror on anyone. I tried to watch All or Nothing, later, but I stop here.

Corey Perry and John Tavares are both on the ice, in the race for the puck. Tavares catches an edge, as you sometimes do, and falls, and Perry’s knee is in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, and it catches Tavares in the side of the head. He falls to the ice, his limbs splaying unnaturally. He won’t move.

Medics come over, to try and raise him to his feet. He fights against them, blood streaming from a cut in his forehead, unable to tell if they are trying to hurt him or not. There is no one in the crowd, the stadium empty for the pandemic. The camera cuts to Kyle Dubas in the rafters, who has a phone in his hand and swiftly vanishes back into the halls of the arena. He is calling Tavares’ wife. We do not know what is going to happen. Everyone looks shaken -- the Habs have just watched a man nearly die, the Leafs have just lost their captain, perhaps forever. They lose, although the game feels like an afterthought. I do not want to watch hockey anymore.

They win the next three straight, though, even without him. Then they lose, twice, in overtime.

The Leafs, as they have done for the past four years up to this point, go to game seven.

Partway through the game, Mitch Marner panics in his defensive zone and puts the puck over the glass. This is a penalty, it is a penalty every time, and he knows that. He sits in the box, looking defeated already. He curls in on himself, and the camera flashes to the penalty box. He’s crying. He knows the game is lost.

The Leafs are eliminated again, and there is a target on his back now, not only for the puck going over the glass but for the tears. He’s soft, they say. As they have said since he was picked, because he doesn’t look like a hockey player should, because he doesn’t act like a hockey player should, because he doesn’t play hockey like a hockey player should. He makes too much and he disappears when it matters.

Thoughts on the Leafs’ playoff successes suddenly switch from the core is young, even if this is frustrating to they need to win before it’s too late. Already, in recent years, they have suffered historic game-seven chokes and drastic failures to launch. Whether they do it against teams like the President’s Trophy-winning Capitals or the barely-alive wild-card Canadiens is irrelevant. They cannot win a round, at all. The Leafs are already the team with the greatest Cup drought, and they are now gaining a long playoff round victory drought too. It should be time, at least, for them to look like they are a contender.

This is how the Leafs find themself stuck; a particularly frustrating timeloop, even though hockey itself is nothing but. Sports are cyclical by nature. A team is bad, then okay, then good, then declining, then bad again, and this repeats anew. Some teams try to get themselves out of this cycle by being good forever; I can assure you that this only really happens to the New York Yankees, who employ a cadre of evil wizards to keep everything on that hell team going well for them. Most other teams who try end up stuck like the Canucks are, right now: bad enough to miss the playoffs, but not good enough to get key picks for a rebuild. I can see next season play out, clear as day: they struggle out of the gate, one of their stars gets hurt right when it seems like they’re at the very, very start of gathering momentum, they’re bottom-10 by January and the team says everyone but Pettersson are on the table, they trade picks and low-grade players, they get blazing hot post-deadline and finish twenty-first.

There is, unfortunately, also a perception that pure talent is not what makes players playoff performers -- instead, some so-called “clutch gene” that exists, or not. The reality is somewhere in between. Clutch exists. There are always players who can score when no one else can even dream of it, but a greater problem is luck. President’s Trophy winners are not often Cup winners (even if higher seeds are most likely to win), because the regular season is a much, much bigger sample size and the playoffs can change the course of all of it by a goalie having a hot streak at the right time. The 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lightning, third-best team in NHL history, got swept in the first round by Sergei Bobrovsky going crazy. The 2022-23 Bruins lost in seven in the first round in much the same manner.

And no matter what, the Leafs are always on the wrong end of the luck. Bounces hit the post. The refs take back goals for reasons they would have ignored at any other time of year. John Tavares slips, and his head makes contact with a knee.

Mitch ends up the whipping boy. He is the Leafs’ most valuable player, and this is a team with Auston Matthews on it, but I’m serious. He was the Leafs’ leading playoff scorer in 2023, he’s one of the best penalty-killers in the league, he’s adored by everyone who’s ever once talked to him. He only ever wanted to be a Leaf, and now that he is here he is the sacrificial lamb for the anger at a curse that is not his fault.

I do blame the media. I will always blame the media, those who turn on him at a moment’s notice because they know picking on the skinny pretty unmanly one will get more clicks than anything else. I beg of you -- know that, of anything that it could be, it is not Mitch’s fault.

Jack Eichel has a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Neck Injury

It is 2021, and the Sabres aren’t going to make the playoffs. Jack Eichel has been captain for coming up on three years, and has been a Sabre for coming up on six, none of which have even slightly improved the team. He is widely disliked within the fanbase, and, rumouredly, within the locker room and organization.

Jack is frustrated, dragging a mediocre team along through a slog of the past six years, and he has never been the kindest man on the planet. He is about to get worse. The Sabres are on a losing streak when they head to Long Island, and Jack is hit the wrong way and slips a disk in his neck. The Sabres insist he’ll only be out a week and a half.

It is a great sin in hockey, to go against team. Anything that can be seen as selfish is demonized; shooting from a difficult angle when your teammate is wide open, not playing when you can muscle through the pain. Not trusting your coach or management is about as bad as you can get. If you’re a team guy, willing to sacrifice health and limb for the boys, you are held as saint, no matter how hurt you become in the end. This is a philosophy that has been drilled into these men since they were kids, as soon as they put their first skates on. You can stand any pain for the length of a hockey shift; you can play through anything for two minutes. It is a dangerous, dangerous school of thought, one of the most destructive parts of hockey culture. But it is, nonetheless, law.

Eichel is about to commit a sin so great they’ll kick him out of Heaven. I do think that, of the four of them, he is the only one with any semblance of genre awareness: when he was first scouted as a prospect and they were comparing him to McDavid, I think that he would be the only one to ignore the media’s spin on that as thoroughly as he did. He knows what he is, and he knows himself. Of course it comes off as bitchy and selfish, though -- that kind of pressure can’t be kind to anyone.

Before the week and a half is up, he visits a specialist doctor about his neck. This is where it all starts to go wrong.

The Sabres take issue with that for two reasons: one, that they hoped he’d be able to come back after the end of it. Keep in mind that he has herniated a disk in his neck, an injury typically so severe it’s impressive he’s walking -- slipping a cervical disk often causes nerve pain that radiates down through the entire spinal cord below that point, which is the whole body from how high up his is. Two, that the doctor he consults is an independent surgeon, one unaffiliated with the Sabres themselves.

The thing about belonging to a hockey team is that you are, because of the way your employment is linked to your physical health, essentially their property. They make your medical decisions for you, they feed you, they tell you how to move. Going to someone else is a breach of contract, and the already-tense connection between Jack and the Sabres gets more tense. The Sabres keep losing. They lose eighteen games in a row.

Jack’s doctor recommended a surgery that no NHL player has ever had; cervical disk replacement. The Sabres did not want this -- the surgery carries risks, yes, but they also wanted to control the way that Jack’s injury was handled, and going through with this surgery was Jack’s wish, not theirs. The Sabres do their own evaluation, and ask for a different, more common surgery: spinal fusion. This surgery carries less immediate risk, but the bones in Eichel’s neck will also be fused, and he doesn’t want that. Because the team has final control over a player’s health, not the player, they decline his disk replacement. Having reached a stalemate, they rule him out for the rest of the season, trying to win a war of attrition.

September 2021 rolls around, and the Sabres, along with thirty-one other teams, take training camp. At the beginning of training camp, players do a physical exam. Jack, because his herniated disk has not improved, because he needs a surgery that has been denied from him, because he is stubbornly and bravely willing to wait out the Sabres, fails his physical. As a result, the Sabres, fed up with him, strip the captain’s C from his chest.

Jack makes one final request to the team: either let him get the surgery or trade him. In the end, they trade him to the Vegas Golden Knights, a team that did not exist when he was drafted. The Golden Knights approve him for the disk replacement surgery the day they acquire him.

The surgery is a success; his rehab goes better than anyone expects, and he starts tearing it up when he comes back. I would argue that, if the Golden Knights win the Cup this year, he should get the Conn Smythe -- he has been an invaluable member of the team, even without a letter on his chest.

It is less important for him to win his million awards than it is for him to come in and out of this surgery in the first place, still able to play. He fought with the team that was supposed to have upheld him as their star for months over his right to do what he wanted with his own health; in the end, the only way to go was for him to change that team. He was the first to have this surgery, but after him there have already been hockey players who have undergone it -- much like Tommy John, the baseball player who got his ulnar ligament reconstructed and the surgery to do so named after him. He fought for the chance to control his own body and won.

And for that, he was demonized.

The Sabres missed the playoffs every year they had him; they missed the playoffs every year after he left. Because he was the captain and he had the audacity to go against the organization’s wishes, he was hated. In Buffalo, he is still hated. If you ask, they’ll tell you he was a locker room cancer, that he was undevoted to winning. If you look at him in Vegas, neither of those things are true.

Jack Eichel is a rare man -- he does have that “clutch” gene, or rather doesn’t have the choke instinct. He has always been unbothered by the spiral around him. He operates well in the mire, and when the pressure rises it doesn’t affect him (or maybe, even better, he feeds on it.) He has the right kind of mentality -- that fuck-you, I’m here and you can’t change that, you tried to control me and I wouldn’t bend mentality. He has only made the playoffs once, this year. Like Dylan, actually, his only appearance has involved defeating Connor McDavid. Go back and watch his highlights from the Vegas-Edmonton series if you can: he has a couple of pretty goals and more than a couple great defensive takeaways, but he doesn’t lose his cool, not once. He has earned his right to be here, and he knows it more than anyone else. I’m rooting for the Stars, but I hope he wins some day.

153

How do you talk about the Edmonton Oilers? I mean, without either excusing or demonizing them, although I admit I have Hater Instinct and trend towards the latter. They have the best player in the world; that grown-up incarnation of the wide-eyed boy on the Erie rink. They have the best playoff performer in the world; Leon Draisaitl, who I have not avoided mentioning until now on purpose, but whom I cannot continue without bringing up. They have been terribly cap-managed since the day McDavid was drafted, and are an unstable roster with blazing-hot offense and very little defence or goaltending at all.

For a brief moment, let’s not talk about the Oilers. Let’s only talk about Connor himself.

McDavid has 850 points in 569 career games. Not even Sid had that many points through that few games. If he stays healthy, Connor’s well on track to become the second player ever to hit two thousand for his career -- after a certain other Oiler, who need not be mentioned. He has won just about every award you can win, with the exception of the Selke… and the Cup.

If it’s possible, he has proven himself better than all of the hype at the draft saying he would become a great. To watch him, you can see the way he has changed his team, how even though they have all learned from him that he is still the best.

There is something that many Oilers do. When next your team plays them, pay attention to it: they cut into the offensive zone with possession on the outside, using tight little crossovers to gain speed, after which they’ll usually try to rush the net (if there are no defenders in the way). This is a move that McDavid has patented; he’ll use it, just as many of the others will, but he’ll probably be the one that scores. The depth all skate like him, really, fast and in wide arcs, trying to generate a rush chance.

Connor as a player is a tour de force, the best power-player in the world by a mile, no slouch at even strength, speedy enough to score even shorthanded. The boy’s got wheels. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which NHLers are fast and which are slow, but Connor’s just that tick above everyone else that you can see it without eye training at all.

Connor as a person is a bit less showy. He’s quiet by nature, shy and soft-voiced. Because he was hyped so much (franchise saviour, McJesus, Next One) he has been media trained into sterility, giving the same level answers as everyone else, hardly daring to express any opinion at all. His eyes are big, rounded, and one of them is lazy from a time when his brother tried to take it out as a child, and that combined with his heavy brow and stiff expression -- he’s never been a good smiler, smirks with one corner of his mouth and that’s mostly it -- give him a resting expression of something like concern, or maybe despair. When he laughs, he doesn’t really “laugh,” just kind of coughs, a one or two-syllable affair. He avoids eye contact with the camera, and often the reporters as well. There is no seething emotion under the surface, not like with Eichel, nor does he speak analytically like Dylan does. He moves through his life as if he is someone who does not want it to turn out quite like this.

I do not know if he wants to be in Edmonton. There are jokes about how he is desperate to leave, but I definitely don’t believe those; there’s a difference between not wanting to stay and wanting to go. I don’t think he hates it. He has been given a responsibility, the captain’s C -- and because, unlike Jack Eichel, he is a good Canadian boy who has been given a destiny, he accepts it. He loves his teammates, especially Draisaitl, whom he seems to derive all his confidence from.

I will also say that I don’t believe he’s stupid. Naive, perhaps; not stupid. There is no way out for him, even if he was sure he wanted to leave; he’s the best player in the world, far too expensive for any contender to afford in either trade or cap space, and if he asks for a trade he won’t let himself go to a team that isn’t already a contender. He will remain an Oiler at least until his contract is up, and I imagine that his staying afterwards depends on Draisaitl.

People talk about him leaving a lot, largely because of the team that has been assembled around him. The Oilers are not a well-created team, and I will say that plainly now and spend as little time technically deconstructing it as possible.

Beyond McDavid and Draisaitl, they have:

A rookie starting goaltender, whose success as we know it is based on a single-season sample size and a complete playoff collapse.

A five million dollar backup goaltender, who earned his contract by being carried by the Leafs, despite being utterly horrendous for a long enough stretch leading up to his free agency that anyone who looked beyond the win-loss numbers wouldn’t have signed him.

One genuine shutdown defender.

One young up-and-coming defender; by far one of the most promising Oiler (or otherwise) defensive prospects, beyond the usual suspects.

One netfront grinder who is great at playing wing to high-power setters, but cannot drive his own line.

One decent 2C.

Sarah Nurse’s cousin. Sarah’s better.

A supporting cast of bad defencemen and middling-at-best forwards.

Many charming characters, of course: Zach Hyman, the grinder, is a beloved ex-Leaf, and I’m personally a fan of Nugent-Hopkins, the 2C, but the vast majority of this is not the sort of thing a contending team is built upon. McDavid has missed the playoffs almost as often as he’s made them. The playoffs are a crapshoot, but in order to try your luck you have to at least be able to enter the lottery, and it takes a stunning amount of effort to be able to do that.

So, McDavid lingers, in this kind of limbo. It mirrors the Leafs, almost. (And yes. Because McDavid is an Ontario boy, and the Leafs are the Centre of the Universe, we have to mention them both in conversation. Not all stories revolve around the Leafs, but this one does.) One true contender, and one generational talent, both what we picture to be well overdue for their Cup run, but neither having yet done so.

The thing about the stories of the class of 2015 is that they intertwine, that they mimic and mirror each other. These boys have not simply gotten drafted in the same handful of picks in the same year and gone on their merry ways -- they layer, they parallel, they weave around each other. Connor is the captain of a team that cannot win, Jack is a captain, Mitch cannot win. Jack fought for the right to control his body and was demonized for it; Mitch negotiated for a contract that he determined to be a fair price for Babcock, and was demonized for it. Whatever pure saviour they figure Connor to be, Jack is the twisted inverse of that, falling from grace.

Connor has one of the best seasons in NHL history, one of only seventeen player-seasons with over a hundred and fifty points (Nine of those seasons belong to Gretzky. Another four belong to Lemieux.) He loses, in six games in the second round, to the Vegas Golden Knights. At the time that he’s eliminated, he leads the playoffs in points. Leon Draisaitl is tied for second place. Counting from the date Mitch Marner played his first game in the NHL, the Oilers and Leafs have almost exactly the same number of playoff game wins, with the Oilers having one more.

There’s No Place Like Strome

Before we can look to the future, there is one person I have been neglecting. Dylan, poor Dylan. I think it would be only half an unfair assessment to call him a draft bust. He’s talented, for sure, but not nearly the same calibre that the draftees around him are. Hardly a Marner, an Eichel, or even a Rantanen or a Meier.

His career has existed quietly in the shadows, so far from Connor McDavid that it only feels fair to mention them in the same conversation in this context. It has been eight years since they were best friends, Connor so close to Dylan he waited in the stadium in order to watch him get drafted. They didn’t look each other in the eye in the handshake line when Dylan won their series. Connor didn’t go to his wedding.

That being said: so far, he has found himself a knack for landing in the shadow of greatness. When he was an Erie Otter, it was Connor -- Dylan held the scoring title in their draft year, while Connor was out nursing his hand, but Connor was the chosen son and Dylan was the Coyotes’ consolation prize. When he was traded to the Blackhawks, he found himself centring Kane and Debrincat, but of course both of them were the offseason and trade deadline’s prizes, and not him.

And then he signed in Washington.

So now, we go back to Ovechkin. Alex Ovechkin is one of the greatest players of all time; his Capitals are on the decline now, but they contended for a long time while he was playing and may still contend as long as Ovi still skates. For a long time, the team relied on Ovechkin’s goalscoring, assisted mostly by his faithful centre, Nicklas Backstrom. They, too, are married; they have played a thousand games as teammates, been through a decade of heartbreak together before the Cup was theirs. During the 2021-2022 season, Backstrom took time off -- he needed hip surgery, something likely to end his career. Ovi was alone.

There is a fundamental difference, of course, between the expectations of wingers and centres. A winger, like Ovi, scores, or assists, at his own leisure, but it is the centre’s job to drive his line. Ovechkin is generational -- he will sink forty goals no matter what -- but he still needs someone to move him out of the defensive zone, someone to make his assist.

Enter Dylan -- a young centre, not especially fast on his feet but intelligent, and clearly experienced in the realm of managing high-calibre wingers (see: Debrincat, and the ghost of Patrick Kane.) He joins the Capitals on a one-year contract, desperate to prove himself. Chicago didn’t want him, and Arizona didn’t either. It takes barely until November before he is, once again, the necessary shadow of greatness.

Ovechkin, the team’s captain and centrepoint, clearly likes what he sees, and the management does, as well. The Capitals offer Strome a five-year extension.

Maybe it’s because he’s less of a superstar then the other three members of his draft class, but Dylan has a life outside of hockey -- a wife and young daughter. After being thrown away by other teams, and with his new family, I can only imagine that it was… peaceful, if anything, to be offered this contract.

Chicago, after rapidly getting rid of him, Debrincat, and then Kane, would go on to tank spectacularly, and win themselves the first overall pick. They will use it to draft another generational talent. His name is also Connor.

The Blue Wedding

So, here we stand, at the end of it all. Dylan finally has a home, a mother hen of a Russian bear that it has become his job to assist in record-breaking, and soon to be two daughters. Jack has a team that loves him, freedom from pain, and an ongoing potential Cup run. Connor has a sterile mansion, a best friend, and an unsteady team. Mitch’s life is up in the air.

Right as I’m writing this, the general manager of the Leafs has been unceremoniously kicked out. His tenure will end the day before Mitch’s no-move contract kicks in, but it is not known if Mitch’s time as a Leaf will survive that long. He is well on track to become one of the greatest Leafs of all time, and his tenure might be cut short in the prime of his career.

But let’s wrap up with this: Mitch will get married this summer. Because he’s Mitch, the darling of the league, everyone’s best friend, I imagine the wedding party to be extensive/ Packed to the brim of current and former Leafs, as well as people who have never been Leafs. I wonder if Dylan Strome will be there -- or even Connor McDavid, although McDavid never even attended Dylan’s wedding.

The stories, as they do, go on.

#asks #mitch marner #jack eichel #connor mcdavid #dylan strome #hope this helps and/or gives you brain poisoning #narrativeposting

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balioc · 5 months

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Holiday Engineering: What Not to Do

We can learn a lot from Chanukah, because Chanukah is a garbage-tier holiday.

I mean this in a mostly-detached, mostly-analytic way. Like many people who were raised Jewish, I have some very fond and happy memories of Chanukah. Anything can accrue fond and happy memories, if you have a way of getting people to do it. But Chanukah is full of features that actively detract from its being resonant, impressive, memorable, or fun. It is an anti-advertisement for its community.

If you're a would-be designer-of-holidays, this is actually a really useful thing. Mimicking the good and successful holidays is quite hard; their quality tends to hinge on a lot of idiosyncratic hard-to-replicate factors, and "invent something as cool and punchy as the $WHATEVER" can be a tall order. But it's easy to look at a design failure and say, "I"m not going to do that."

With that, let's go into the details:

CHANUKAH: THE GOOD

Timing. It's a midwinter festival-of-lights. Solid start. Everyone loves those. Brightness and festival cheer, in the long cold winter nights, is practically a need for many. The holiday mostly skates by just on being the winter light festival for the Jews. A+. Or, really, we should knock that down to an A, because Chanukah usually comes too early to be ideal for this purpose, but -- still, quite good.

Traditional food (side dishes). Latkes are incredibly popular, and for excellent reason. If you're trying to settle on a food that everyone will love, "fried potatoes" is a damn good choice.

CHANUKAH: THE NEUTRAL

Symbols. There's really just one that matters: the chanukiyah (nine-branched menorah). Which is, on paper, a very cool and snappy symbol. Distinctive silhouette, ritual engagement, plus the allure of fire. But it loses a lot of points for the fact that you don't actually light the whole damn thing, and get the proper visual effect, until the very end of a long-ass holiday when everyone's enthusiasm and attention have ebbed. On the first night, in particular, you light just two candles in your chanukiyah, and it looks lopsided and sad.

Traditional food (sweets). Jelly donuts are fine, I guess, if uninspiring and uninspired. Chanukah gelt is pretty lame as candy goes...but from a holiday-design perspective, it's hard to go too far wrong with giving kids candy.

Music. "Maoz Tzur" is kinda pretty. "Oy Chanukah!" is kinda fun. That's pretty much it, barring some silly kids' music (and I guess that Adam Sandler thing). Nothing that will knock anyone's socks off. But, honestly, two decent songs is more than many good holidays have.

Gifts. Being the big annual gifting holiday is a double-edged sword. It's some super-powerful mojo, culturally speaking. People are obsessed with giving and receiving gifts, in a way that's very hard to excise or evade, no matter how often you trot out your utilitarian language about deadweight loss. Chanukah gets a lot of its traction out of the fact that it's the holiday where you get presents. But. (a) In the modern world, the gifting holiday is unavoidably a locus of stress and misery for many people, and Chanukah doesn't have nearly enough upside serving to support that burden. (b) Chanukah is bad at being a gifting holiday. The gifting is not well-integrated into the event, it's a tacked-on thing copied over from Christmas, and it shows. There's no real ritual surrounding it, no presents-under-the-Christmas-tree equivalent, certainly no Santa Claus. Worse yet, the eight-day-holiday thing means that either you need a set of gifts whose awesomeness is equally divisible by eight (mega-awkward), or else you have inconsistencies and disappointments.

CHANUKAH: THE BAD

Theme. What is the holiday about, when everything is said and done? What is our key takeaway message from all the shit we're doing. "God is great, God looks out for His people, God performs mighty miracles." Stop. Shut up. You fail. That's every holiday, if you're operating within a religious tradition. You need something more than that, something powerful and deep and important and special, to be even halfway-decent as a holiday. But for the vast majority of Jews (including Jews in the most orthodox and observant denominations), that's pretty much all you get. Because...

Mythology. The story of Chanukah, the holiday's narrative raison d'etre, is just unconscionably bad. In some extremely vague sense, it's a story about Jews overthrowing foreign oppressors and casting off foreign influences...which is already pretty bad from a modern liberal perspective, we don't like jingoistic ethnonationalism these days. But the actual events of the Chanukah story are less about Jews-against-foreigners than they are about Jews-against-other-Jews. It is a story about fanatics seizing power and murdering cosmopolitans. Virtually everyone hates that shit, up to and including the most tribal-minded Jews. The rabbis of the Talmud were pretty iffy about Chanukah for exactly this reason, and didn't talk about it much, with the result that the holiday doesn't have much in the way of supporting cultural infrastructure. And you really can't tell the Chanukah myth without that horrible stuff; it's so baked-in that it gets incorporated into even the most sanitized propagandistic Hebrew-school versions of the tale (with exactly the effects that you'd expect on Hebrew school students). The miracle of the oil feels like a tacked-on narrative coda, because it is, because without it the only possible moral of the story would be "kill your neighbor if he's not pious enough for you." But it's much too little, much too late. The miracle of the oil is super lame by miracle standards: no one is saved from danger, there are no memorable SFX, the whole thing is relevant only to the rituals of a long-vanished Temple.

[There are several lessons that can be learned from this particular problem, at multiple levels of abstraction.]

Structure. You can have a good eight-day holiday, but a festival of that length needs an arc. The days need to be distinct from each other. You need to be either building up to a climax, or -- more commonly, as with Passover and [the twelve days of] Christmas -- coming down from a main celebration at the beginning in a long pleasant haze of semi-special time. Chanukah is flat and internally undifferentiated, except for the addition of more candles to the chanukiyah. You can't sustain real holiday feeling that long, and there's no particular day on which you're supposed to do anything special, so it all just turns into a mush of "how much do we care right this moment?"

Activities. The traditional dreidel game is the worst, most boring, most unbalanced game in the history of games. Pushing it on children only makes those children hate Chanukah, and Judaism, and games, and you.

Traditional food (entrees). There's no classic Chanukah dish that can serve as a viable main course, unless you're one of those people who can happily eat fried potatoes as an entire meal. This is a glaring omission. It's particularly bad for Chanukah, because Chanukah has so little else going for it that it really needs to lean hard on the standard holiday "gather for a festive meal" thing.

Social role. As many people will eagerly tell you, Chanukah was a pretty minor holiday for most of Jewish history; it got big largely because of a marketing push in the 19th and 20th centuries, mostly because people got scared about the prospect of the younger generations assimilating, and wanted to give them a holiday to compete with Christmas. Which is maybe the worst idea that anyone has ever had. For more reasons that I can easily list here, modern Western Christmas is an absolute SSS-tier holiday, one of the very best of all time. Setting yourself up as a direct competitor to Christmas -- inviting your own people to make that comparison -- is tantamount to telling them that your traditions and your community are worthless and weak, and that they should join the ranks of the gentiles. And that would be true even if your own offering were something halfway decent. Trying to do it with Chanukah...it's like Estonia declaring war on the US. It's the ultimate "we have food at home." It is, if you'll pardon my saying so, Christian rock.

#holiday analysis

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phasecornnuts · 2 months

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I would love to power bottom Valentino from hazbin hotel ples 😏 also I LOVE angst so maybe a bit of that 😌 head cannons or a fic doesn’t matter I love words

Hello again whores! This is over 16k words…. I think I may have a problem, but I cooked so whatever

Tbh I may open writing commissions bc I love y’all but if I’m writing biblical epics I lowkey would appreciate being paid (college is expensive) 😭

CW: For general angst and Drug use

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You hated working nights, but working for Val always meant you worked nights. If someone were to ask you to write a list of everything you disliked about the club, you’d swear the exterminators would be here by the time you were done with it. But alas, it was what it was and there was nothing you could do to change it. That fucking contract made sure of that.

There were a few things that could make your shift bearable though. You liked Angel, even though he didn’t really come by anymore because of that stupid hotel, you liked the free drinks, even though Val made sure they were watered down after you vomited on a customer, and you liked the pills Val would give you, even though they made you feel loopy when you preformed. Those were the shit. Grade A. Top tier. Happiness in a tablet the size of your fingernail.

In your dressing room you watched the clock, five minutes. God, you were already sweating in the shitty outfit Val made you wear for tonight. A frilly maid outfit with black lingerie underneath, the man wanted a strip-tease and he was gonna have it one way or another. With Angel gone, you were the only other person he thought was worth headlining. That felt good to hear, even if you were only second choice. Maybe Angel being gone was a good thing, not for him but for you, maybe Val would see that you’re better than him, that you tried more. Maybe then you could be the star, and not just the understudy. Maybe, maybe, maybe; The word’s rhythm wavered in your head.

Hoping for Val to want you was fruitless though, you knew. Angel was the golden goose- or spider, you supposed - and it would take an act of god for someone to eclipse him. You took your eyes off the clock, knowing getting lost in your thoughts would just lead to a spiral of self-loathing. You closed your eyes and released a heavy sigh. On your table, beside your makeup and phone stood a fluorescent orange bottle. Unscrewing the cap you let loose three in your palm before capping the bottle. You ran the pad of your thumb over the tiny white buttons, smooth and chalky, before placing them in a row on your tongue, all washed down with watery gin. A twisted communion.

You lean back in your chair, wondering when the pills are gonna kick in. About two minutes pass before you hear the door to your dressing room open and a tired waitress with smudgy blue eyeliner and a crooked wig tilts her head towards the hallway to tell you it’s time for you to get on stage. Walking past her, you can smell a heavy peach scented perfume she used to try to cover the smell of sweat. Your heels clacked on the tile floor as you walked up to the entrance of the stage. You scratched your back from the itchy fabric of the costume, then adjusted the tops of your stockings. The song that’s currently playing ends and the performer before you walks to the back, they’re huffing and tired. They stretch and pop their back before looking at you, mouthing “Good luck.” The DJ of the club took a beat before announcing you to the crowd. Rolling your shoulders, you walked on stage feeling the hot spotlights shine on you.

That’s when it hits.

All of the tension you held in your body lifted, and your mind began to swim as you felt the Oxy kick in. Fuck, they really were the best. They made you feel warm and floaty, made the world seem bearable. You swung your hips seductively as you sauntered to the pole, ready to begin your act. Looking around, all the faces of the crowd blended together. It felt like the world was painted in watercolor, all of its harsh edges gone, replaced with washes that drifted out into nothing.

A chemical confidence kicked in then. Those languid movements of yours had everyone entranced, grinding your sex to the pole as you teased eager watchers with a peek up your skirt. Over the music you could hear their hoots and wolf-whistles, then frenzy when you began to shimmy off your top, exposing that black bra you had on under. You throw it out into the crowd, grateful not to have that polyester piece of shit on you anymore. The way they all clamor to catch it made you bite your bottom lip with a smirk. They were all so pathetic.

You spun on the ball of your foot, but the weightlessness of your opioid addled body worked against you, making you fall. Luckily you caught yourself on your hands, pretending it was some sultry move like a lady in a porno. The crawling was good though, you pretended to fuck the stage before you got to the center. You leaned back on your hands, stretching out a heeled foot that they all begged to touch. One almost did, before you snatched it away.

Slipping off that ugly skirt and kicking it off into the drunken crowd felt so good. They were transfixed, enthralled, however you wanted to put it. Your high made everything better, blanketing your body in comfort- That was always the peak. Savoring those small moments that made them scream. Looping and spinning and sliding and going upside down, stretching your legs out spread-eagle. When you felt the room start to spiral you stopped with your back to it for support. With a fake sexiness you slid your hand down your stomach, into those thin painties before taking it out.

God, it felt good to be desired even if it was like this. Sure, Val didn’t want you, but they did. All those sinners and hell-born who clamored to touch you and have you touch them. How they fought over an ugly, scratchy top because you wore it.

Turning your head you saw a wide-eyed patron ignoring a half-drank glass. You smirk and crawl towards them, and their eyes turn to the size of saucers. Reaching the edge of the stage you lean over, hanging over their small table. You opened your mouth wide enough to kiss- But you didn’t. You let your tongue hang out of your mouth, letting a fat drop of spit land in their drink. That was all they could have of you; You smile and go back to the stage to continue your act.

You don’t know how long he’d been standing there when you saw him. Valentino. He nips at his cigarette while he looks at you, not knowing what he’s thinking. Your moves become bigger, looser, hoping to impress him. A glob of phlegm sits at the back of your mouth and you swallow, feeling the tenseness grow inside your body. I can be good too, see! I’m as good as Angel! Even better! Please…please don’t fire me.

He walks closer to the stage as you keep grinding on the pole. Your eyes meet for a second before you look away, unsure. When he reaches the edge of the stage is when you slam yourself to the floor- the crowd hollered. Val adjusts his glasses and takes a long, long drag from his cigarette. Your body cranes towards him, head lowered in reverence while you studied his face. Val was always so hard to read, that’s the thing you hated most about him - well, at least one of them- was he displeased, impressed, disinterested? Fuck if you knew.

With one hand he pinched your face, between his pointer and thumb. He pressed his mouth to yours, filling it with all of that warm smoke. The roof of your mouth hurt so much, but the rest of your body trembled. He’d never been this open, kissing you, watching you dance, it felt so, so good to have his attention. Val pulled away, pink cloud leaving your parted lips.

Valentino leaned in, “Meet me in the back.”

“I still have five minutes left…”

“I’m your boss.” There was a vague sternness to his words, what were five minutes compared to his regard?

You breathed heavily. “Gimme a second.”

Quickly as you could you got off stage. Your head was spinning and you couldn’t tell why- was it the Oxy? The drink? The dancing? The cigarette? All of them combined. The backstage was full of cold air, making goosebumps prickle over your legs. You crossed your forearms and leaned them on the wall. Eyes closed, you counted backwards from 100; 100, 99, 98, 97- Val with his cigarette showed up in your mind, how he pulled your mouth to his, how you shivered, how you liked it. You tried again, but he kept lingering. Another restart, going a bit longer this time, but you gave up somewhere around 56.

Through the backstage hallway you walked to the back, The Velvet Rooms. Those fancy, gilded places hidden away that only those Val liked - or who could afford it- could enter. Valentino hid himself away in the biggest one, a room within the wall closed off with heavy dark blue curtains. The Velvet Rooms were where Overlords and certain Goetia came to be spat on, spanked, and other “peculiar wants” that Val catered to.

Opening the curtains you were struck with the heavy scent of his smoke. You closed them shut, the room illuminated by a faint pink light. Val sat on the couch, legs spread wide and arms slung over the top, his heavy coat thrown to some unknown corner. Seeing him reminded you of how little clothes you had on. Val’s second set of arms beckoned you over, you obeyed. He rested them on your waist, idly feeling the texture of your garter belt.

“Good of you to come carino,” He kissed your stomach, tittering at the way you quivered. “You did so good I had to meet with you privately.”

“How could I deny you Valcito?” You responded in a honeyed tone that made him chuckle.

“Valcito?” He smirked.

“Aren’t you?” You tilt his head up to see your smiling face, dressed with sultry bedroom eyes, “My little Valcito who liked my dancing.”

Val showed off that gold tooth of his; He kissed your stomach again, leaving a little red mark.

You dropped your hands to his arms, sliding up to his biceps. You bit your lip, so hard and toned. For so long you were curious about Val’s body, his sex, his libido. You wondered what he did to Angel to make him so sore and his voice so hoarse. It was embarrassing how many nights you spent thinking about what he tasted like- though now there was no point, you knew now, cigarettes and citrus vodka.

The tips of his fingers traced along your hips, fingering the thin strap of your panties. Your voice grew weak as he nipped again and again at the soft flesh of your stomach. Mind in a daze, words slipped out of your mouth.

“You know, I’m surprised you called me back here…” A kitten-lick across your navel that made you squirm.

“Why’s that Carino? Don’t think you’re pretty enough?” His voice teased.

“I thought you didn’t like women”

“Why would you think that?” He looped his finger around the hip strap again

“Angel.” He snickered.

“Oh Carino, don’t worry. Angel is just the soup D’Jour,” His finger dipped forward along your hip bone, “Men, women; Women, men; all of those sweet things in-between, how could you pick just one?”

“How poignant.” You said with a bit of a flat affect. His waxing-poetic seemed so unimpressive to you. Though, you felt a stab of guilt for thinking so.

“You, Sugar, I just can’t deny,” Val moved his hands up along your torso, stopping just underneath your breasts, “Good tits, nice stomach, pretty face,” his attention went back to your panties, “You coulda been on the cover of Hustler. Hhhnn, maybe I’ll make you the centerfold this month…”

You leaned over him, pressing your face to his. Fuck, his tongue felt so good in your mouth, making your stomach start to knot and squirm. He took your bottom lip between his teeth, making you whine before you pulled away. Placing tiny nips on his neck, you felt the heat in your stomach grow hotter and hotter and turn to slick. You wanted to touch him, feel him, consume him, and be consumed.

Val pulled away for a second, but it felt like forever. He reached into a shallow pocket and produced a button of something. It was a tiny tablet, waxy and fat, and pinched between his two fingers. You wondered what it was, it didn’t look like Oxy. You hoped it was something stronger, desiring the out of body experience you’d been losing since you started to grow tolerant of the opiate.

“You ever play a game of rolling roulette Sugar?” Val asked, you shook your head no.

“You trade the X tongue to tongue, and whoever’s it dissolves on is the lucky winner.” Oh so it was Ecstasy, now that’s good shit.

Val pulled you onto his lap, cupping a breast, “C’mon Baby, let’s go on a trip together…”

That’s all it took.

The tiny pill teetered between both of your tongues as you kissed, growing smaller and smaller and smaller. Val’s spit was thick and sweet and wonderful, something about it making your body go alight with electricity. The X melted so easy, like blue cotton candy; You could feel the serotonin swell in your brain like a party balloon.

When the first roll happened you moaned into Val’s mouth. All of your nerves were standing on edge, shivering with anticipation. He removed your bra, placing a nipple in his mouth as you felt his cock grow harder. It felt so much better than your other highs. The Oxy only ever calmed things, washed them out. The X was so different, so so much better. Everything seemed to shimmer, like the whole world was wrapped in cellophane. How could you think the absence of feeling was so wonderful when this existed?

Your mind was in a twinkly daze when you started to undress him. He kissed and licked at your neck while you felt your way through unbuttoning his top. Fuck, his skin was so smooth and warm; He pressed you closer, teeth bit into your collar bone before dragging his tongue over the marks he left.

You kissed your way down Val’s body. At his chest you lingered, leaving tiny red marks on the trail to his V-line. Valentino’s head lolled back on the couch as you unzipped his cock with all of its dark hair. You put it in your hand, running your thumb over the leaking tip. He swore under his breath as you pumped him slowly, up and down up and down.

The warmth of your tongue dragged along his thick shaft. Your stomach gets a sharp squirm to it, same as your cunt. It’s hard to tell because of the drugs or how sexy Val looks with his legs wide open and his cock needy for your touch. Looking up at him, you’ve never wanted anything more in your life.

His breath hitched when you took him in your mouth. Your tongue twists and swirls around his cock, savoring the feeling of him hitting the back of your throat, making you gag. To try to calm that darling pain between your legs you rubbed your thighs together, but that didn’t help. All it served to do was make your cunt needier. You push his member deeper and deeper into your mouth; You moan into his sex, making him squeeze the palmful of hair he had in his hand tighter.

“You’re so good, Carino.” He says, breathless. You start to suck him faster, blowing and kissing and licking. Val kept sprinkling compliments throughout. It felt so good to be praised by him; All of those sweet things he’d save for everyone else, but never you. You’re so good, you’re so sexy, you take me so well, you’re so pretty, you make me so hard.

“‘M close.” He grabs your hair again, pulling your face in. Feeling devious, you pulled away, savoring the flustered look on his face. Val is huffing, fucked out, and dazed out of his goddamn mind on X.

“You can stand to wait a little longer Valcito~” You nip at the inside of one of his thighs, making his voice hitch into a falsetto. You dragged the tips of your fingers up to his sensitive stomach, mouth leaving a hard bite outline near his ribs. Tracing him was so wonderful, feeling all of those hard edges give into softness. Nursing on his neck, your thumb and forefinger followed his neck muscle and collarbone, dipping into their crevices.

“Valcito~” Your breath was hot against his neck. He mumbled something under his breath and tried to slip his hand into your panties. You caught his wrist and pushed it away, biting hard on his collarbone. You can wait.

Again your mouth found its way south, the want in your cunt becoming more and more painful. You took him in your mouth again, your saliva getting thick and syrupy. Val seized the opportunity and shoved your head down on his cock, chasing the release you denied him. Your teeth grazed his member before pulling away again. Val whined, his eyes pleading. A dark smile grew on your face before you took him again.

He let out a sharp breath and pressed his hands onto your scalp. You went faster, letting the flat of your tongue trace the vein on the underside of his cock. It was fun playing with him like this, having a little control with him for once. Val’s hands tensed in your hair when he warned you he was going to cum.

When he came he wailed, filling your mouth with his salty taste. Looking up at him, you opened your mouth. Val’s thumb traced your bottom lip, admiring his work.

“You look so good like this, Carino.” He huffed.

Pushing yourself from your knees you kissed Val, his seed still in your mouth. That’s all that took to make him go feral. He pulled you to his lap and laid you down, wrapping your legs around him. Without taking his mouth off yours he took his top off, ramming into your needy sex.

Fuck, Val was bigger than you thought he was. His pace was hard and fast, making you scratch your nails into his back. Your kiss tasted like everything good in the world- cum and grapefruit and cigarettes and cotton candy and euphoria. Both of you swallowed, pulling your faces away to catch your breaths. God, you were so wet, Val’s cock slipped in and out of you so easily and it felt so goddamn good. Better than any finger or cock or toy and it made you squeeze him tighter.

You pressed your forehead to his neck, mumbling nonsense. “I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.” Val spat on his fingers and slipped his hands between the two of you. You didn’t know what he was going to do until you felt his wet fingers graze your clit. He got rougher with it once he found it, making you squeal and cum on him.

That didn’t stop Val though, and god did it feel good. He kept fucking you through your release, making you cum another two times. Your legs felt like jelly, body weak and weightless. The X was releasing its last wave of chemical joy as he fucked you, pleasure rippling inside of you. He came inside you, making you sob into his neck. Val pressed you closer to him, whispering in your ear as you felt your release drip out of your cunt.

“You’re so good baby, so good and pretty.” Pleasepleasepleaseplease, say the magic words.

“I love you, you’re my perfect girl, my pretty baby.” You came again.

His thrusts got sloppier and you could tell he was gonna cum again. “Please, please, please, let me be your favorite, I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I’ll be good.” You whimpered.

The anticipation of an orgasm built up, shivering and needy. Val grazed your face and kissed you, “Oh you’re my favorite, baby. My little sullen girl~” He held you closer, savoring the way you squirmed when you came together.

When he was done he stayed inside you. Val pressed his head on the couch beneath you. You traced the scratches you left on his back, feeling your high from the X begin to ebb. Your breath felt so heavy and your mind so fuzzy. That all didn’t matter though, Val wanted you now. He’d been inside you, kissed you, felt you, squeezed you, and couldn’t get enough. He wanted you. So what if it was only for the moment, so what if this meant you could disappoint him, so what if you’re only a place-holder until someone better comes. You’re the favorite.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel smut #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel fanfiction #fanfiction requests #valentino #hazbin hotel valentino #valentino x reader #valentino x you #hazbin hotel imagine #the vees

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cerastes · 25 days

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Hey, would you recommend nabbing Gnosis or nah?

For context, I'm a Day 1 Player with 289 total Operators. Mainly just missing Gnosis, Archetto, Swire Alter and Ejya Alter.

I'm like 5 certificates away from affording him in Gold Cert shop, just trying to balance the scales on to use them for him or continue to hoard the monthly headhunters like a dragon sitting a top their funny little gold.

Hey, dope icon first of all.

Yes, but I need to elaborate on that yes a little: I'm very biased in favor of Supporters, and specifically I like Gnosis a lot, both as a character (fail INTJ garbage guy) and as a gameplay element.

So, why is this a Yes with an asterisk? It depends on how you go about your gameplay, really. Specialists and Supporters, or as I call them, "Also Specialists", are the classes that most heavily fall into "some players may not even use them". They are powerful, but generally require more than activating Thorns S3 twice and calling yourself the strongest Doctor in the landship.

Now, Gnosis himself: Is he powerful? Very much so! His Freezing crowd control and how easily he can inflict it, in addition to the immense Fragile he inflicts on Frozen enemies, his Hexer range, and the ability to knock low altitude hovering enemies with Freeze make him a valuable unit is a ton of different situations. In SSS, if you stack ASPD on him, he permafreezes (and thus, permafragiles) his target. In IS, he synergizes with a baffling about of items, with S1 and S2 being Spinach skills, benefiting from every CC buffing item besides the new Levitate items (so, he benefits from extended duration and Arts dmg during Frozen very easily), and in general gameplay, Hexer range is very good, and can enable incredibly solid killboxes with S2 and S3.

His obvious weakness is Freeze-immune enemies. He's not completely useless, because he can still land Cold on them if they are not Cold immune, but still, that's where his weakness lays. Still, even in those cases, it's important to note that he's still very good at dealing with every other enemy in the map, since bosses don't come alone in a vacuum. For example, the Trees of Rot enemies, the ones that become stronger the more enemies you kill before they bloom? When those start getting out of control due to engaging them late, Gnosis is god tier at handling them with constant Freezing and Fragile. Again, Supporters are Also Specialists, and when they are in their zone, they perform.

The trick to Gnosis is that, for single priority targets, you want to activate uncharged S2 right after he uses an autoattack. That way, that enemy will be frozen for 4 seconds (at S2M3) on a charge of 6 seconds. That makes that particular enemy actionable for (approximately) 2 seconds and then on Fragile Timeout for 4 seconds before repeating. That's very powerful! If you have many enemies in range, you let the skill overcharge and Freeze everyone, making a nice, nice Fragile killbox for Fia, Horn, Firewhistle, Dusk, Mostima, Omertosa S3, you name it. Please keep in mind that enemies Frozen in Gnosis E2 range receive 50%(!!!) Fragile, 60% with Module and no Potentials! That's a lot of Fragile!

So, if you're going to use him? Yes, he's a stupidly powerful support unit. If his gameplay or inclusion to your general playstyle doesn't spark light in your heart? You should continue cosplaying Reed and sitting nice and cute on your golden hoard. I personally use him a lot, as people that come to my Arknights streams can attest to!

*As an extra: Enemies with Cold have -30 ASPD, and enemies that are Frozen have -15 RES.

#mama phantasm #arknights #gnosis

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harlowtales · 5 months

Text

Chapter 4 - Final Revenge

Y/N gains the upper hand on well…everyone ❤️‍🔥 🎨

18+ Adult Themes - romance/drama/language

“Y/N I’m so glad you called I came right over” the bartender said. Last time you saw him he was trying to break you and Jack up, conspiring with Jack’s female friends. If everything was going to go according to plan to get back at them you had to reel him in.

“I missed you. After Jack and I broke up I…” you started to say.

“Yeah about that..” he attempted to say.

“Let’s not talk about all that. How are you? Class isn’t the same since we don’t sit near each other.” You said pretending to seem upset.

“What are saying Y/N? Do I finally have a shot?”

“You always did silly.” You joked sexily “Want to go to the Drake and Cole concert with me?”

“Do I! YES” he said excitedly

“Ok great it’s tonight. Meet me at the South entrance ok?” You said

“Awesome thanks Y/N. What will Jack say?” He asked

“Do I look like I care?” You said rolling your eyes. It worked. He was hooked.

Later that afternoon you met Jack to go for couples counselling.

“Y/N why are we here on the day of my show?” Jack complained “I should be at sound check.”

“You said this was important to you too.” You reminded him. Just then you got called into the office. The session was great for you to get a bunch of issues off your chest but Jack kept bouncing his left leg impatiently wanting it to be over to hit the arena.

“Could you have been anymore disinterested?” You said angrily as you both left the therapist’s office.

“Baby. I swear on a day when I don’t have to perform with my two god tier idols I’ll be fine.” Jack said pecking you on the cheek “Anyways is everything set for tonight?”

“Yup! All is going to plan.” You assured him

“Make sure nothing really happens. I’ll knock him dafuq out.” Jack said furrowing his brow.

“What about on your end?” You asked him and he seemed less sure. “Jack?”

“I think they think what they’re supposed to think.” He said a bit cautiously.

“This was your idea so don’t fuck it up or no happy life with happy wife.” You threatened. “I will not marry you and be terrorized by those little obnoxious cunts.”

“Damn baby tell me how you really feel.” Jack laughed

A line up around the block was starting to form. Jack quickly ran through soundcheck with Drake and you were waiting for your bartender friend at the south entrance.

On his way the bartender texted the girls in the chat.

Operation Get The Bag Chat 💬 🤑🤑🤑

Bartender: “I think I’m in. Y/N and Jack are super done. I’m meeting up with her right now and we’ll be together in Jack’s face!”

Girl #1: Amazing. Of course we’ll be in Jack’s section. I’m all dolled up. If not Jack then Drake or Cole ☺️

Girl#2: Cole is married. Like super married 💍

Girl#3: Yeah we know. Sugar Daddy is the aim 🍭🙌🏽

Girl#1: K I’m here. Let’s enjoy the fruits of our labour ladies! We did it!! Jack and Y/N are done and now it’s may the best woman win…by best I mean me…respectfully.

Bartender: Well I got Y/N that’s all I ever wanted 🥹

Girl#3: You can have Y/N she is too much all up in her little corner studying at parties. Girl is a joke. Jack is a star. He needs to be with someone like me to match his shine ✨She always dressed like a nun.

Bartender: Well you don’t have to show everything all the time. Men like a little mystery.

Girl#1: Remind me to exit you from this chat when our mission is complete cuz you too slow to be in here 🙄 See y’all in 10mins.

Girl#2: I’m already backstage! I just met Drake and Jack invited us to the afterparty of course. It’s at 21C! I hope you know we could snag a billionaire tonight ladies! Jack is fine but he small time 😒

Girl#1: Yeah we been knowing Jack. Time to level up ⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️

You connected with your bartender friend and headed into the show. You walked by all the girls in Jack’s section who just looked you up and down and laughed at you because you were on the crowd side of the barricade. They thought they were in and you were out. One of them was holding Pups and that really hurt.

As Drake and Cole came out they had to act like they didn’t know you or see you in the crowd. The bartender stood behind you in a boyfriend stance for a lot Drake’s love songs. Jack had to not show he was losing his mind. He went into the green room to let out his negative energy with Urban calming him down.

“Fuck! He’s standing right behind Y/N with his hands on her hips!” Jack fumed.

“Remember it’s all worth it to teach these bitches a lesson.” Urban reasoned. “Besides you’re up soon. You gotta get it together.”

Jack got his head back in the game. He put his earpieces in, grabbed his mic, and walked the hallway to the stage where he would walk out. He saw Y/N in the front and the bartender cozied up to her. He looked past them out in the crowd and everyone was whispering about her being there with another guy and Jack pretending not to notice. This was definitely going to be on Instagram in about 10 more minutes if it wasn’t already. The girls backstage were eyeing the whole situation delighted.

“Poor baby Y/N. Jack hasn’t even looked at her.” One of them said sarcastically.

Y/N decided to have a little fun and piss Jack off. He hadn’t always been faithful so she had some fun and got back at Jack too. She threw her ass back on the bartender and twerked into him as he held his own and stood behind her with a big smile on his face. Jack’s face was red as he seethed with anger as he rapped his part of Churchill Downs. He shot several looks their way and was resisting the urge to jump into the crowd and beat down the bartender. The girl’s in Jack’s section backstage noticed he was getting angry.

“Guess Jack is still jealous.” They scoffed. “She definitely isn’t invited to the afterparty after that behaviour.

After the show, Y/N and bartender slipped out to head to the afterparty. The bartender texted the girls to say they were in fact going that according to Y/N Jack said it was only fair since she did so much work with Drake and Cole’s teams. There was a couple hours before the afterparty would go down.

“That was so fun! Did you see Jack’s face!?” You giggled

“Bro wanted to kill me!” The bartender said laughing

“Let’s grab something to eat.” You suggested“Quidoba or Indis?”

“Imma go Indis” He said “Y/N I…Ummm…I’m having a good time.”

“You know what? Me too.” You said because honestly you were. It was kind of nice to not have the pressure of being Jack’s girl and enjoying a show like a fan. Just then you got a text from Drake.

“Baby girl I better see you later.” He said

Then Cole hit you up. “Thanks for everything. I don’t do after parties. I’m headed back to the fam. We gotta talk about your art tho. You mad talented.

“OMG. Cole wants to talk about my art.” You gasped.

“That’s dope!” The bartender exclaimed “You deserve it Y/N”

You started to feel bad playing this game with him as you could see he really liked you. “Look, I need to let you know. I love Jack. I am in love with Jack.” You said

“You think I don’t know that.” He said “I see it, but I was a winner tonight.”

You took a selfie together and he posted it to IG immediately. This set the internet on fire. The Shade Room reported breaking news that you and Jack were over. Had this little charade for a little clap back gone too far?

Jack texted. “You taking this too far Y/N.”

“Relax it was just dancing.” You replied

“Maybe for you but dude was all up on your ass.” Jack spat back. “Fuck that guy, and now this fucking selfie?”

“Cole wants to talk about my art!” You texted in excitement.

“Dope.” Jack said flatly as he was so mad he could barely control it, but his short answer made your heart sink.

“What’s wrong?” The bartender asked concerned

“Nothing. You ready?” You said. Jack and the girls had to be taught a lesson.

All the girls and Jack’s crew arrived and took their spot in the party. It was in a private suite at the 21C Hotel. Jack was friends with the eccentric owner of the art themed hotel. Jack had a surprise for you. The owner was to unveil a collection of your work at the party. There was a special exhibition under black drapery. When you and the bartender arrived Jack couldn’t wait to talk to you. It was worrying him that this whole situation was getting out of hand.

“Meet me in the bathroom.” He texted you.

“I have to run to the bathroom.” You said to the bartender and excused yourself. Jack was waiting for you and quickly locked the door.

He pressed you into the door and kissed you hard and deep. “Remember who you belong to Y/N” he said breathlessly

“Jack stop.” You said “It’s just a game remember?”

“Is it?” He asked quizzically “You sure it’s just about the girls?”

“Of course.” You lied “Besides it’s kinda nice to have someone crush on you so hard.”

“I am your man. Don’t forget that.” Jack said firmly

“Oh like how you seemed to forget sometimes that I am your girl?” You shot back

“Y/N…that’s not me anymore. You have to believe that.” Jack begged.

“I will when those bitches are put in their place. Especially the one you were with.” The pain in your voice was still at the surface.

“I will do anything for you.” Jack said “Anything…just say yes to me.”

You walked back out into the party. The bartender had a drink waiting for you with a smile and put his arm around you. Jack sure was getting a taste of his own medicine and it hurt like hell looking at you with another guy. You felt his intense gaze on you and leaned into the Bartender sexily flirting and laughing at nothing. He realized now more than ever he would never be the same if you left him. How could he ever criticize you for not wanting to hang out with those girls especially when he had cheated with one of them. Sure you guys were on a break and he was high but it was no excuse. Then there was a couple on the road. He was determined to do right by you.

The girls were working the room trying to see which eligible bachelor they could latch onto. One of them was trying to get Drake into her, but he was interested in catching up with you. “What’s up with you and Jack.” Drake asked you.

“Oh you noticed?” You asked him.

“Yeah of course. I thought this was going to be some fun little game to get back at some chicks, but my man looks devastated.” Drake said motioning over to Jack.

“Jack and I are…figuring things out.” You offered vaguely.

“Y/N he loves you.” Drake said plainly “Don’t ever doubt that.” Drake left you speechless as he went to continue mingling and settle behind the DJ booth.

“Can I get everyone’s attention please.” Jack announced “We got something special for someone special. Raise your glasses for a toast to someone I can’t say enough about. She is my reason for getting up in the morning. My life has never been the same.”

One of the girls that Jack had been with on Y/N was getting ready to receive her praise. She started walking towards him to stand beside him.

“Y/N if you can come to the front please.” Jack said stopping the girl in her tracks in embarrassment. Her friends were all looking around in shock. Everyone thought Jack and Y/N were over.

You made your way to stand beside Jack. “Y/N the 21C wants to unveil this exhibit of your art.” With a cue to drop the drapery a beautifully curated exhibit of your paintings was revealed. The owner of the 21C shook your hand and the room erupted in applause as camera’s flashed.

“Jack I…Ummm. Thank You so much.” You said “How did this happen?”

“We loved your work so much we bought the whole collection.” The owner said “Congrats”

“Jack OMG!!” You exclaimed, hugging and kissing him. The girls drew gasps of horror. What was happening? This was not according to their plans.

“Oh one more thing.” Jack continued “I want to talk about friendship for a sec. There’s some real ones here tonight, and some not so real ones.” The crowd started murmuring and looking around as if trying to identify who Jack was about to put on blast.

“Some people found it in their best interest to break me and Y/N up. Well I’m here to say, Y/N, I’ve asked you now at least 20 times. Will you marry me?”

Urban led the puppy out on a her pink diamond fancy leash for special occasions with the engagement ring around its neck. “Awwww” the crowd said to the cute scene. Jack took the ring from the puppy and went down on one knee as had done almost every other day since you ran out of the barn crying refusing to say yes.

“I’ll get rid of those girls over there and do all the counselling you want, even if there’s a soccer game on.” He said

“Whoah you doing too much now.” Urban said at Jack’s soccer comment.

Jack pointed out the girls who were trying to shrink away and hide their faces. “Actually security can you escort them out so we can enjoy the party?” To his orders they were promptly removed and humiliated as it was live streamed.

“Yes Jack.” You said calmly as now it finally felt right. “Yes. I will marry you.” Jack was ecstatic. He picked you up and twirled you around and planted a long kiss on you.

Your bartender friend smiled at the whole scene. He knew Jack was your whole world. He didn’t tell you but right after graduation he was leaving town for an internship at a gallery in New York. He had wishes you would consider leaving with him, but he could see there was no way you were leaving Jack. He had no plans of playing second fiddle to Jack and was just grateful for the time he had with you. He decided to leave quietly and exit from the group chat with the girls who had taken to IG and Twitter to launch a smear campaign against Jack that he knew would be coming.

TMZ breaking news⁉️: Jack Harlow Proposes to Ex GF in Same Night She Shows Up at Concert With New BF!

“Mom!” Jack said as he called his mom to tell her the good news

“Oh hey hunny! Congratulations!” His mom said

“Thanks Mom.” Jack said

“I’m so happy I’m finally going to be a grandmother.” She said

“What? No, Y/ N said yes.” Jack said confused

“Oh yeah yeah that’s what I meant.” His mom back tracked.

“Mom?” Jack questioned “Is Y/N pregnant?”

“Well maybe… well yeah. We did a home test. Sorry hunny you weren’t supposed to know until we took her to a doctor. She came to us to tell us and let us know seeing as you broke up she didn’t want it. Hunny we had to talk her out of not having it” She said. “We were so hoping and suggesting you get married because your grandmother doesn’t want you having this child out of wedlock. Y/N is the daughter I never had. To see her in such distress…I had to help her and keep her secret.”

“It’s ok mom. I understand. Thanks for being there for my girl.” Jack thanked her.

“Y/N” Jack turned to you. “Why are you drinking ginger ale in a champagne glass?”

“Just tryna stay sober like my man.” You said snuggling up to him.

Jack took a better look at you and noticed a slight curve in your stomach. He was over the moon inside. He hugged you from behind and rubbed your tummy.

“Boy or a girl?” He said in your ear.

“How do you know?” You said shocked

“Should’ve made my mom sign an NDA” he said

“Ah shit” You groaned

“Congrats dog.” Drake came up to Jack and patted him on the back. You ready for all this? Marriage…kids”

“Drake knew?” Jack said incredulously

“Duh we’re besties.” Drake said rolling his eyes

“Don’t roll your eyes like that. I have PTSD from those bitches.” You said laughing.

Drake said “I have PTSD from one of them trying to rap for me.”

@itsyagirljaz @ride4harlow @okaaay-mice

#jack harlow #fanfic #romance #jackman thomas harlow #jack harlow fanfic #dramatic #jack harlow smut #jack harlow concepts

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venuscrashed · 8 days

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Obey me x Ghost Hunter MC

Based off this

- Mammon, Satan, and Beel would definitely be the first ones to join you on stream. Taking you to one of the most haunted places in the devildom for your first livestream there.

- Lucifer would be so against you ghosthunting in general. You would have to create those tiktok videos about the slide show like “seven reasons why I should ghosthunt” to convince the population to let you go. Then they convince him to let you go.

- You are popular in all three realms. When it was revealed that you were the exchange student the RAD students went crazy. You got so popular that Asso did a collab with you.

- Diavolo would totally watch your livestreams. He’s your top donor and every time he says something chat goes crazy. He practically bought all your equipment with he’s donations.

- All the demons/ghosts that you dealt with are in the devildom. So you would be doing “what happened after” and going back to talk to them. The brothers would be so protective over you if you met one of the demons that possessed you.

- Luke would be so scared for you. He’d bake you snacks for the streams and would always give his best wishes. “You got this MC! Those demons won’t hurt you” would also subtly use that to threaten the brothers. “I’m not a chihuahua! I’ll get MC to perform an exorcism!”

- Simeon would give you the best crosses. Tier 3 crosses? More like God tier crosses crack myself up He would also check your equipment before hand to make sure nothing is faulty. ABSOLUTELY sends you private texts during your live streams “I saw wjat you did with the ghost. I hopw you’re okay.”

- Solomon would be delighted after hearing your career. He would ask questions after questions. “Say Mc, can you help me get rid of a pact? Perhaps an exorcism?” He’d give you enchanted charms to ensure your safety. Would also subtly threaten the brothers before they leave with you. “Now you wouldn’t want to become the demon now would you if MC got hurt?”

#obey me x gender neutral reader #obey me x reader #obey me x you #obey me x mc #obey me x y/n #obey me shall we date #obey me nightbringer #venuscrashed

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grailfinders · 3 months

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Grailfinders Viewers' Choice #25: Suzuka Gozen (Santa)

today on Grailfinders we’re finally striking back against arcade by building one of their unique servants! sure they finished their story and stopped releasing new servants almost a year ago, but it’s better late than never!

today we’re building Suzuka Gozen Santa, who is to date the only evil santa servant, afaik. she’s a Peace Cleric to inspire love in those around her, as well as a Divine Soul Sorcerer to get her demon fox magicks. there’s precious little arcade info available outside of official trailers and machine translations, so forgive us if we speculate.

check out her build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

Ancestry & Background

once again, since we’re building an existing servant in a new outfit, her race and background are pretty much unchanged from the original. mostly because WotC still hasn’t returned our calls about adding a fox race to D&D, but I digress. Suzuka’s a Swiftstride Shifter, giving her Darkvision and free proficiency in the Acrobatics skill. she can also fox it up with some Shifting, giving her faux ears for up to a minute as a bonus action. while be-eared, she gains temporary HP equal to her level + her constitution modifier, and gains an extra 10’ of movement speed. on top of that, you can react to someone moving within melee range to run away from them without provoking opportunity attacks. she also gets +2 Dexterity and +1 Charisma.

as Santa Suzuka’s probably more of an acolyte than before, but it still gives her proficiency in Insight and Performance.

Ability Scores

her stats, on the other hand, have changed rather dramatically. this time her Charisma is as high as possible, with her Wisdom in a close second. everyone loves Santa, and you probably have four ears so you’re great at hearing things. spears are still Strength weapons, so that has to be decent, and I’m not going to be cruel enough to give you a +0 in Constitution, so those are third and fourth, respectively. that means your Dexterity isn’t great, but we’re dumping Intelligence. I don’t think Suzuka’s actually that dumb, but I do think she’d act that dumb to play the part of a high school girl better.

Class Levels

1. Cleric 1: if we want to be a lancer, we need to start as a cleric. that means we get proficiency in Wisdom and Charisma saves, as well as Religion and History. Saint Nick’s old as balls, and since you’re a Santa Cleric, I guess that means Santa’s a god now. not the weirdest basis for a religion I’ve ever seen. as a Peace Cleric, you are an Implement of Peace, giving you proficiency in Persuasion. Santas publicly admit that they watch children while they sleep and nobody’s creeped out by that, that’s some god-tier persuasion right there.

you can also give your party an Emboldening Bond as an action Proficiency times a day, choosing up to Proficiency number of creatures to bond with for up to ten minutes. as long as any two of those creatures are within 30’ of each other, they can add 1d4 per turn to an attack, check, or save. kind of like guidance, but through the power of love.

you also learn some Spells, which you prep and cast using Wisdom. since you can change spells to match the occasion, the exact ones you pick each day don’t matter, but I’ll give you some highlights. that being said, Clerics have one of the strongest spell lists in the game, so you’re definitely spoiled for choice.

that being said your cantrips are pretty stuck on, so let’s go over them, Light lets you make your spear all shiny, and since it doesn’t specify the light has to be a static color you can totally make your spear say something if you spin it around fast enough. Thaumaturgy will help your ho-ho-hos carry through the night, and Resistance will help you not die. nobody likes dying, so don’t do it, lest whatever killed you becomes the new Santa.

as a peace Cleric you’ll always have Heroism and Sanctuary prepped- the former gives a teammate extra HP and immunity to fear, while the latter gives a creature protection from attack for up to a minute, or until they attack first. honestly, who would punch santa? anyone who succeeds on their wisdom saves. you also get spells like Ceremony, which isn’t in character but it does mean you can marry people, which feels like a natural endpoint for the “make everyone fall in love” character. you can also Cure Wounds now. think of it as a little christmas gift to whoever has the lowest HP.

2. Cleric 2: second level Clerics can Channel Divinity as an action, either Turning Undead and making them run away, or delivering a Balm of Peace to your allies. with this, you can move up to your speed without getting attacked, giving every friend you pass a little pick-me-up as you go. and that’s how you deliver presents to everyone in the party in a single turn.

3. Cleric 3: third level Clerics get second level spells, like Aid and Warding Bond. aid makes extra HP for everyone, and warding bond lets you take hits for someone else. but you barely have positive constitution, so. don’t. you can also Calm Emotions now, which sounds like the opposite of what we’re trying to do, but it’s hard to let love into your heart when anger’s in there too, y’know? you could also Enhance Ability to make someone more charismatic, or make a Prayer of Healing for a group heal when you have the downtime.

4. cleric 4: at fourth level you become a dual wielder thanks to ur first ability score improvement! this one doesn’t improve your ability scores which makes the name kind of pointless but it does let you carry two spears at once! while doin that u get a +1 bonus to ac which you rlly need and you can draw both spears at the same time!

this is actually a pretty bad feat but we need it for lore reasons!

5. cleric 5: fifth level clerics get to Destroy Undead instead of turning it, instantly killing any undead monster of CR ½ or lower whomst fails their wisdom save. they also get third level spells or whatever.

Sending lets you direct tweet anyone 25 words or less and they can send a message back, though if you try to target someone on another plane, there’s a 5% chance the spell fails. Beacon of Hope gives as many creatures as you wish within 30’ of you advantage on wisdom and death saves, as well as maxed-out healing.

as for your chosen spells, Bestow Curse and Remove Curse are kind of like single-person versions of your NP, weakening obstacles to love, or freeing someone to find love, respectively. if you just want an AoE attack, get Spirit Guardians.

6. Cleric 6: at sixth level Clerics can channel divinity twice as often, and your bond is now a Protective Bond, so if any bonded creature takes damage while another one is nearby, the latter can teleport next to the former and take the damage for them. given that you currently have less than 30 HP and an AC of 11, you’ll probably get a lot of use out of this.

7. Cleric 7: seventh level Clerics get fourth level spells! you get Aura of Purity and Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere for free, and to be honest there’s not much else we need for the build here so let’s just enjoy the mercifully short level for a change.

8. Sorcerer 1: okay enough of that time to pile it back on. as a Divine Soul sorcerer, you’re Favored by the Gods, letting you add 2d4 to any failed save or attack roll once a short rest. foxes are just cooler, it’s a fact.

you also get Divine Magic, which is like normal sorcerer magic, (cast with charisma, mixes with cleric magic so check the phb to see how many spell slots you have, spells only change on level-up,) but you can also pick from Cleric spells too! you could already pick from Cleric spells by being a Cleric, and with more freedom due to the preparation system, but it’s there.

in more useful news, you get Inflict Wounds for free, so now you can deal a lot of damage in a short amount of time. you also get another cavalcade of cantrips, like Friends to make friends, Mending to keep your unrealistic battle outfit in one piece, Message for more texting, and Sword Burst to spin around and poke stuff.

on top of that, you get first level spells like Charm Person to again make friends, and Fog Cloud to set the scene. I imagine reflavoring the fog to be a bunch of falling snow wouldn’t be too big a stretch.

9. Sorcerer 2: second level sorcerers are a Font of Magic, letting you turn spell slots into sorcery points and vice-versa. right now, this just means you have an extra 1st level spell slot every day you remember it exists.

you can use that spell slot to cast Mage Armor, so your AC is no longer terrible! now it’s just kind of bad!

10. Sorcerer 3: third level sorcerers can spend their sorcery points on Metamagic! it’s magic, but meeeetaa! you can make a spell Heightened to force whatever you’re hitting to have disadvantage on the save or Subtle so nobody can notice you cast the spell.

you can also turn one of your spears into a Magic Weapon, dealing +1 damage and gaining a +1 on all attack rolls. ideally your legendary spears would be given by the DM at some point, but if you need a magic spear, now its here.

11. Sorcerer 4: fourth level sorcerers get another ASI, and with Piercer your Strength can finally get evened out while also making all your spears better! now you can reroll one piercing attack’s damage die once per turn to avoid 1’s, and your critical piercing hits get an extra die of damage slapped on! I wouldn’t call suzuka a melee powerhouse, but she’s got more mightocondria now.

you can also cast Blade Ward now to not die on impact with an actual fighter, and Snilloc’s Snowball Swarm. Suzuka probably can’t summon snowballs at will, but it feels Santa-ish and nobody can say otherwise.

12. Sorcerer 5: fifth level sorcerers can spend their SP on Magical Guidance, letting you re-roll a failed check. you also get magical magic like Slow, our real NP for the build. I’m sure the part in Suzuka’s bio that talks about hindering obstacles to love isn’t quite so literal, but for a third level spell it can seriously mess people up- up to six creatures can be affected, and if they fail their wisdom save they’ll have half speed, -2 AC and dex saves, can’t use reactions, and have to choose between their action or bonus action. on top of that, spells have a 50/50 chance to take two turns to cast. the big downside is they keep making wisdom saves every turn, but particularly unwise individuals can get slowed down for up to a minute.

13. Sorcerer 6: sixth level holy soulies have Empowered Healing- whenever you or someone next to you casts a healing spell, you can spend 1 SP to re-roll any number of dice you wish. dying is a pretty big obstacle to love. so are fireballs, now that I think of it, so grab Protection from Energy as well.

14. Sorcerer 7: our last level of sorcerer is just to pick up the fourth level spell Dimension Door. you gotta be able to take all your selfies at the best angle, after all.

15. Cleric 8: now that we’re back in our original class, you get a long-awaited ASI to spend on Wisdom. plus, you get a stronger Destroy Undead that kills anything CR 1 or lower, and Blessed Strikes! once per turn, you can add an extra die of radiant damage to any damaging cantrip you cast or attack you make. turns out jamming a glo-stick into someone’s ribs hurts!

16. Cleric 9: ninth level Clerics get fifth level spells, and again there’s not really much to talk about- though that’s because the one I really wanted you get for free. Greater Restoration can cure an ally of tons of different kinds of impairments to love, like exhaustion, petrification, or paradoxically enough, charming. true love doesn’t come from the magic of magic, it comes from the magic of christmas! you also get Rary’s Telepathic Bond if you want to put everyone on your cell plan.

17. Cleric 10: tenth level Clerics get one of the most powerful features in the game when it works, Divine Intervention. basically, once a day (with a week’s cooldown upon working) you have a 1/10 chance of calling up your dad and having him solve whatever problem you’re dealing with. given that he’s a demon king, that might end badly.

or you can use your last cantrip Guidance for a 1d4 bonus to an ability check for a bit after you cast it. if guidance could help I’d hold off on summoning a god.

18. Cleric 11: Destroy Undead hits CR 2 creatures now, and you get 6th level spells like Heroes’ Feast, one of the better party-wide buffs you can use. you spend a short rest chowing down with friends to cure all diseases and poisons, gain immunity to the poisoned and frightened conditions, gain advantage on all wisdom saves, and their HP maximum goes up for 24 hours. (also you could argue that combining this with Beacon of Hope’s healing feature you can max out the HP buff for a couple people, but that’s pretty close to rules lawyering)

19. Cleric 12: we get one last ASI, so bump up that Wisdom once more for stronger spells and harder to make saves.

20. Cleric 13: our final level of the build gives us access to Suzuka’s reality marble, letting her make a Temple of the Gods, or in Santa terms, a shopping mall. this spell takes an hour to cast, but lets you set up a 120 square foot complex of your choosing, and your temple can block out certain types of creatures, forcing them out if they fail a charisma save and reducing all their rolls while inside. it also blocks divination, and improves your healing to boot!

Pros & Cons

Pros:

this santa does a little bit of everything, with offensive spells for damage, weapon skills to fall back on if magic fails, healing, buffing, debuffing, and even social spells, you’ll never be a fish out of water. because you’re a fox, and a fox out of water is pretty standard all things considered.

while a lot of buffers tend to focus on making one character powerful, you have access to a suite of party-wide buffs to make everyone a bit better! love doesn’t play favorites, after all! (also you never know who the necromancer’s going to try and charm, even if it probably will be the barbarian again)

thanks to being a swiftstride shifter, you move a lil faster than most casters, and that means it’s easier for you to stay out of danger. you’ve also got access to plenty of ways to escape from melee range without provoking attacks, which can really come in handy when you resort to throwing spears around.

Cons:

you need all that speed, because if you do get caught unawares you’re going to go down easily. you have barely over 100 HP at level 20, and your AC is atrocious right up until you get mage armor at level 9. don’t get killed, we can’t take another santa clause reboot.

we didn’t have enough ASIs to max out your casting features, so your heightened spells are a godsend. unfortunately, you don’t have a lot of sorcerer points, so you can’t actually use them too much without burning spell slots.

on a related note, this build lacks focus. that’s not inherently a bad thing, but it means you’ll have to get creative to stand on par with more specialized builds.

#fgo #fate grand order #D&D 5e #DND #Suzuka Gozen #fgo arcade #cleric #sorcerer

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kinkyintherealworld · 3 months

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Sissification - a toxic construction of femininity or getting off on outdated social constructs?

Becca here. 😀

First… I LOVE THAT YOU STARTED THIS DISCUSSION!!!! Thank you so much @youngchastity - who wrote to us (and tagged us in a post) for some healthy discussion around the sissification kink. We’ve definitely had a few things to say about it on the podcast, as have our guests. You can read his post, that started this conversation, here

Rather than speak for both of us at @kinkyintherealworld, I’m going to jump in and answer this from my point of view.

@youngchastity I love your thoughts on gender - I totally agree. I actually reblogged a post by @necromimetics the other day that said:

“can’t stop thinking about my friend’s cishet partner who said last night that he doesn’t think anyone is the same gender. god-tier take.”

And I agree - we’re all a wibbly-wobbly swirl of masculine, feminine, and everything in between energies, and everyone has their own unique blend. Trying to squash us into labels is lame as hell.

I like to think I am never one to kink shame (keeping it safe, sane and consensual), and in world where I (and many other women) want to smash the patriarchy, I may be a bit more sensitive to kinks that look down on femininity - or that’s how I have perceived it to date. As someone who has struggled with gender equality issues in real life (your capitalism comment made me give a disgruntled, but amused, snort), it’s hard to not knee jerk react and feel like I need to defend womanhood/femininity. There is still a power imbalance in the world, and equality is still a goal yet to be achieved, but upon dissection, is in the bedroom, playing with kinks, even a place we need to bring this battle? A question that has been raised to me, even before your message.

It’s funny, because I have actually had your very points discussed with me, last fall with my partner, Misty (who if you have read my personal tumblr is trans-personality who enjoys both sides of the gender spectrum fluidly) - we were on a road trip discussing the two episodes you made note of in your post, episode #16 and #19. And Misty, like you, felt we were missing the mark. S/he felt that in no way does sissification for the purpose of humiliation somehow degrade/make fun of/make lesser femininity. For all the same reasons you stated. S/he and I actually talked about doing a podcast about it, to dive more into the topic, Misty felt that strongly. It should be noted that Misty is NOT into sissification or feminization for the purpose of humiliation, and still she felt that we gave the sissification kink a bum rap.

Hearing her thoughts and yours, I think it is something that should be revisited and, for me personally, I need to take a closer look at why I find it uncomfortable.

Since you made such lovely points I want to try and address each one!

We’ve established that we both agree the trappings around what we consider to be masculine and feminine are made up (and ridiculous). I think, the kink we are talking about here is ultimately humiliation through outdated (but still most commonly accepted) societal norms. IF you get embarrassed about having those things stripped away, and “forced” into the opposite direction… good for you? I mean seriously, how fun is it to get off in weird and wonderful ways with someone who shares your kink from a slightly different perspective! The reality is, I believe, this isn’t hurting anyone. You want a person to lock up your dick, make fun of your little penis (your actual size is irrelevant), or put you in clothing that bends your mind with eroticism and makes you flustered with sexual need - awesome! Life is too short not to enjoy the kinks we have. The bigger question, if I want to dig into the piece that makes me feel uncomfortable is, “Is there misogyny in the specific kink?” - and the answer to that, for me upon reflection, is no. Misogyny comes from the person performing it. So yeah, some kinky things are done with TONS of misogynistic intent… but that isn’t concentrated in one area. Those assholes are everywhere.

To me, feminization is never something that goes hand-in-hand with sissification. My partner feminized himself (their pronouns are all over the place), in a loving way. To empower the feminine in himself. He has often described it as blooming or becoming a butterfly - his higher form of being. So no humiliation to be found, for either of us on either end. I find it hot as fuck when he is all dolled up.

I haven't dipped my toes into the humiliation via feminization kink (...yet?), so it’s hard for me to wrap my dirty little mind around it.

Weirdly I do have a bimbofication kink for myself… sometimes. 😁 If I am in a particular mood for the fantasy. I have never found the right time/partner/energy to explore that. Am I feeling humiliation when I go there? I don’t think so…? More the need to feel desired, trophied (yes I made up that word), and used in a deeply submissive way. I’m not embarrassed about that. ;) I too would be interested in hearing from women who enjoy humiliating others through feminization/sissification, and how they feel about it. Awesome point! 😀

Celebrating feminization! Now that is my jam! 💗 Give me a soft cute boy, and let me make him weak with wanting to be pretty and obedient for me. To me this is a huge mind shift - the key word “celebrating”, not shaming. Gosh, I could just sink into this topic like the perfect bubble bath. To me, this is a core element to gentle femdom. It is about making boys better… pretty, soft, sweet things that want to please - the D/s element being a key piece. The submissive to be absolutely loved and worshipped for their submission. No shame, not less than me, and certainly not shifting my own very feminine self. I love the feminine. I love to see it in men, and men embracing that side of themselves. Is this a form benevolent sexism? I don’t know. And more to the point, if I am engaging in it with my partners, writing about it on tumblr, and reblogging things that I enjoy around the topic, am I hurting anyone? Food for thought, but I am going to keep doing my thing. ;) I feel like you can look at BDSM here, and for those who wish to criticize it, could for its dynamics. But that feels like a giant, whole other post. Another thing you mentioned in this point was the strapon, and it’s use as a symbol of power. I have never seen it that way. To me, it is my soul penis… and I love being able to be inside my partner(s). It is an act of love, and makes me want to bring them to amazing places of pleasure (while I get off too). I really don’t enjoy the pictures of women wearing strapons who look like they want to punish their partner with it. But that’s just me. I know lots of people must enjoy that because there is a shit ton of porn that looks that way.

Playing with gender. I like that - and I do it! I love being able to put on a penis!! I really enjoyed trying my hand at Drag King make up and going out as a boy (I’ll post my picture again). I LOVE seeing boys in make up and fucking gender norms right out the window. You said it in your post - gender is made up and stupid. So yeah, let’s play with it, and maybe even break the molds! Though then you’ll have to find something else to get embarrassed and turned on about. ;) Our kinks are about orgasms and pleasure. Let’s enjoy them. In the end, it is all about intent and the people doing it. Not about the kinks themselves. People who want there to be an imbalance of power between women and men will keep doing mean spirited things to keep that nightmare alive - in the streets and in the sheets.

I feel like I have answered your points (I may have jumped around a bit), and I don’t feel the need to argue any of them. Misty had already shone a light on where I may have not been seeing the bigger picture.

I am SO HAPPY you wrote us a message, and that you took the time to write out your thoughts (that can be read here). So sorry it took me a while to see it and respond! I am always up for conversation and debating (with kindness) any of the points.

I definitely feel this topic should be a podcast. Any chance you'd like to be on it @youngchastity? ;)

Hugs! Becca

#kinky in the real world #podcast #podcasters of tumblr #matriarchy #smash the patriarchy

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bimtheory · 5 months

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Trying to watch Marilyn Monroe films again because I feel like it's impossible to write a book about bimbos and not mention Marilyn, but it's proving to be difficult.

I'm trying my best, but I just can't figure out what people find special about her. And it's so hard to find any sort of truth. There are so many made up quotes and misconceptions just to further this narrative of Marilyn as the ultimate victim, people treat her like a martyr. If she's not being discussed and treated as a sex symbol she's being used as a symbol for tragedy, and would Marilyn even want that?

In a 1962 interview published by Life Magazine a day before her death, she had this to say:

"I don’t mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual. But what goes with it can be a burden. Like the man was going to show me around but the woman said, “Off the premises.” I feel that beauty and femininity are ageless and can’t be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won’t like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour, it’s based on femininity. I think that sexuality is only attractive when it’s natural and spontaneous. This is where alot of them miss the boat. And then something I’d just like to spout off on. We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it’s a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift. Art, real art, comes from it, everything. I never quite understood it, this sex symbol. I always thought symbols were those things you clash together! That’s the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing. But if I’m going to be a symbol of something I’d rather have it sex than some other things they’ve got symbols of! These girls who try to be me, I guess the studios put them up to it, or they get the ideas themselves. But gee, they haven’t got it. You can make alot of gags about it like they haven’t got the foreground or else they haven’t the background. But I mean the middle, where you live."

And, later in the interview:

"It might be a kind of relief to be finished. It’s sort of like, I don’t know, what kind of a yard dash you’re running, but then you’re at the finish line and you sort of see you’ve made it! But you never have. You have to start all over again. But I believe you’re always as good as your potential. I now live in my work and in a few relationships with the few people I can really count on. Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experienced, but that’s not where I live."

None of this is paraphrased. And, personally, it sounds to me like she rather be remembered for being a sexy actress than whatever this is:

But a lot of people who claim to be Marilyn Monroe fans or even just mention her don't seem to care about or have any actual interest in her. Unfortunately, I think Andrew Dominik may have been right in that (most) people are not watching her films. I have friends that won't even touch movies from before 1980, let alone the 50s. And watching the clip of her performing Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend on YouTube is not watching one of her movies.

Marilyn is invoked when people want to a sort of classy sexuality, or beautiful "feminine" tragedy, which is bullshit.

But anyway, like I was saying, I don't get the appeal. And it's hard to find any writing approaching her honestly and critically instead of constant "she was a perfect angel that could do no wrong"-tier glazing. I don't mean to be rude; I have nothing against her, and her life did seem tragic in some respects, but it always feels like the praise outweighs the reality of the material. Like people felt bad having been so judgmental about her after the circumstances of her death that they overshot trying to make up for it and Marilyn became indicative of the tragedy and mistreatment of every woman, a myth that has been passed down for generations at this point.

I don't know. That's just how it seems to me. I read people talk about how great of an actress she really was, but I don't see it, and people conveniently always forget to explain how she was a good actress or what made her so great, just "she trained at The Actor's Studio!", a lot of actors did.

#bimtheory #bimbo theory #marilyn monroe

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bonearenaofmyskull · 6 months

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Hey! Curious if you're currently into any great shows. If so, mind sharing your recommendations? Always on the lookout for some good TV suggestions!

I imagine you've seen everything I have. I spend more time gaming. Not into anything great at the moment, but I can dig deep and see if I can remember what shows I've watched since Hannibal aired and give my opinions. I binge TV series with my mom who is in her 80's and has Parkinson's and macular degeneration and can't really do activities or read anymore, so I rewatched some old ones with her here largely to torture her with them, so they'll be in here also.

S-Tier (Winners)

My Brilliant Friend. Probably the best thing I've watched since Hannibal. If S4 is out I haven't seen it yet, no spoilers.

Better Call Saul. Possibly tied with My Beautiful Friend. Better than Breaking Bad. Much better ending. So good, no complaints. Nailed the ending. Did I mention the ending?

A-Tier (Runners-up)

Black Sails: God, there were some parts of this that were so gratuitous and tedious, especially early on, and I hated Eleanor Guthrie and not in the kind of way that means good things for a show. Some of the dialogue was just really on the nose too. This sounds like a lot of complaints, but the things it did well, it did SO WELL that it really does make up for the negatives. The acting was sooooo good and the Flint and Silver dynamic was AMAZING and the show looked great, and over all that, it really had something thoughtful to say, and that stays with you when it's over.

Stranger Things: Some parts of this show hit better than others, but I'm squarely in the bullseye of the target audience and get the vast majority of the references and nostalgia, and I love David Harbour. I appreciate their exploration of various types of horror, attempting a new style each season, and I like the charm and humor and cheese, and it's a show that knows its voice and its tone and commits fully to those things. It's trying to be a fun show and it is, and it wants to deal with real fears and real grief, and it does.

The Handmaid's Tale: Speaking of shows that are committed to their tone, this one definitely is that. It's too heavy and relentless for most people, I think, but I don't mind that at all. Parts of it do drag, but it has a lot of the same qualities (for good or bad) as Black Sails: great acting, powerful character dynamics, the things that it does well it does so well it makes up for the shortcomings, imo.

Breaking Bad: Famous show, not much to say here. Rewatched it recently and don't think it's as good as Better Call Saul, so I put it here.

B-Tier (Can't complain but will anyway)

Good Omens: Can't get into it, can't find anything particularly wrong with it. I'm into the ship. I guffaw out loud while watching it yet am thoroughly bored most of the time. Love Michael Sheen and David Tennant on screen together. I know the show can't be that all the time but I wish it was. Aziraphale ftw. I feel like people missed the point of the ending of the last season.

Mad Men: Show could give Seinfeld a run for its money in terms of being about nothing, but definitely had its charm. Watched it with my mom so her nostalgia and appreciation for how historically authentic it felt went a long way. Good performances. God, it could be boring sometimes though.

Vikings: This one was a lot like Black Sails for me. They had a bit of a struggle for a season or two but once going, they really got going. Many great acting performances and characters. Loved Ecbert and Ivar especially. Didn't have Toby Stephens and Luke Arnold, so you know...can't quite make that tier. And didn't have as much to say, or didn't say it as well, and it doesn't stay with you.

C-Tier (Can complain and will, but were good enough to stick with)

LOST

The X-Files

His Dark Materials

Downton Abbey

BBC Sherlock

Game of Thrones (I think most people have misdiagnosed this show's problems, but it sure did have them)

D-Tier (Tried but could NOT, though many people will like these...they were just Not For Me)

Bridgerton

Dark

The Good Place

The Gilded Age

Outlander

The Crown

Outer Range (what even the fuck with this show)

I tried to think of more shows I've watched in this time, but this about sums it up. But here are a couple YouTube channels I really like:

Beau of the Fifth Column

Bistro Huddy

#bear answers #not hannibal

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dxndjxrin · 2 years

Text

Monsta X headcanon: how they’d eat you out

Hello y’all! I don’t really post writing on tumblr but I thought hey! Why not! This idea was inspired by my dear @subbysoob’s BTS one. So go check theirs out!! Find me @sagebrush on AO3 to check out my other works if you liked this one <3

Ateez version

Nct 127 version

SVT, performance unit version

NSFW under the cut. 18+ only!

Shownu: definitely more as foreplay for actual sex. If he’s eating you out it’s because he can and wants to take his time with you. Hyunwoo in general is just so attentive. He knows all your nonverbal cues that will steer him in the right direction of how you want it. It’s sensual, it’s loving, it’s giving. Also his plush ass lips Jesus Christ

Wonho: uses his strength because of course he does. He’s fully got you pinned down, you can barely writhe under his tongue because he’s got an iron grip on your hips. Attentive like Shownu though, sensual with a beautiful touch of tease. If you sit on his face, it’s less sitting and more he’s holding up your entire weight because your legs gave out.

Minhyuk: Mf a nasty freak. Probably likes you to sit on his face just to suffocate in you, be surrounded in you. Will dirty talk the shit out of you. It’s MESSy and loud and crazy but goddamn is it good. Definitely enjoys it himself as well.

Kihyun: mean mean MEAN but in the direction of overstimulation. He will go ham and just keep going and keep going. Those lungs can hold his breath for a long time while he’s burying his face in between your legs. Loves the absolute power trip of seeing you so fucked out, legs shaking in his hold. God tier aftercare tho, like a switch being flipped

Hyungwon: the only way this mf eating ur pussy is if ur sitting on his face. Lil pillow prince ass likes to lounge while making you fall apart. He also kinda likes being able to show off his hard work in the gym when he has to hold you up.

Jooheon: embodiment of that “u need head?”Audio. Will offer it at ANY time ANY way you want it. I’d say out of all of the members he derives the most pleasure from directly eating you out. There’s just something so…perfect about the way you taste and the sounds he can get to come out of you that drives him insane.

Changkyun: mean but in the opposite direction than kihyun. Instead of overstim, this man WILL edge you till you cry. He loves seeing how desperate you can get for him, how you beg, how you trust him enough to put your own pleasure in his complete control. Is also mouthy; the dirty talk just keeps coming. Doesn’t necessarily derive pleasure from directly eating you out, but the power/trust stuff that goes with it.

Divider by @cafekitsune

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vikkirosko · 1 year

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I wanted to request headcanons for the alpha trolls with a female jiangshi reader.

When reader died, she wasn't brought back with the help of the god tier, but was resurrected as a jiangshi (a chinese zombie/vampire).

Her body is stiff and it's hard for her to move her joints, so she stretches herself to be less stiff and able to move more freely.

Sometimes, her mind get lost while she's speaking or when people speak to her so she often change the subject of conversation or say something completely missing the point.

She paper talisman on her forehead can sometimes make people scarred of her (because her face is partially hidden).

Thanks!

Hi Qiqi...

Headcanons Jiangshi

♋ Kankri Vantas x fem!Reader 💬

Kankri wasn't too bothered by the fact that you became jiangshi instead of godtier. He didn't really understand what exactly it was, but you didn't look much like a zombie in those performances that were usually in the movies that he saw once. You were practically alive, but every time he saw a paper amulet on your forehead, he remembered that you weren't alive after all

You were one of those who never interrupted him. He could talk about a variety of topics and you seemed to be listening to him, periodically answering something, but at some point you could just start talking about a completely different topic, forgetting what you were talking about all this time. There was no such thing before, which quickly made it clear to him that your condition was the reason for it. He understood that you couldn't control it or fix it somehow, so he wasn't angry with you. He saw that you sincerely tried not to lose concentration in your conversation, but you didn't always succeed

He saw how some people looked at you anxiously because of the amulet on your forehead, but every time they regretted it, because Kankri began his monologue about how they should be ashamed of what they behaved like towards you. Usually you didn't pay attention to it, but Kankri couldn't stay away, outraged by such behavior of others

Kankri knew that you often forgot about everything, and secretly he was afraid that you would forget about him. He treasured you and the last thing he wanted to lose was you, one of the few who truly treasured him. That's why every time you gently called his name and took his hand, he felt relieved knowing that you still remember him

♈ Damara Megido x fem!Reader 🚬

Damara was well aware of Eastern culture, so when she saw the amulet on your forehead, she immediately realized that you had become a jiangshi. She wasn't sure exactly why it happened, but the fact that you were still alive in a sense gave her confidence. She wasn't sure if it was a good thing that you stayed between life and death, but she couldn't change that. Damara wasn't even sure that it could be changed

She didn't feel annoyed because you forgot something or started talking about a completely different topic. She understood that over time your memory would only get worse, so she gave you a notebook where you wrote everything down. You didn't want to lose the memories of the people you cherished, including Damara, so you tried to reread your notebook as often as possible so as not to forget anything

She wouldn't let anyone who tried to hurt you do that. She was rude to them even though you usually didn't pay attention to it. In a sense, you understood why others began to treat you like that. You were basically a living dead man. Your body often seemed to stiffen and your mind often clouded, but Damara continued to stay by your side and help you despite what others said

Damara helped you not to forget about everything in the world. She talked to you a lot, so even without your notebook, you forgot less. She understood that someday you might not remember her, so she tried to create as many memories as possible that would take the place of the old ones

♉ Rufioh Nitram x fem!Reader 🧡

Rufioh was very surprised when he saw what you became instead of rebirth. He saw that your condition had changed, but it wasn't godtier, so he didn't understand what had happened. It was only thanks to Damara that he found out that you had become a jiangshi. He wasn't sure if it was good, but it was definitely better than if you just died. It was this thought that calmed him

Quite often he noticed that you were trying to warm up. The reason for this was that your body often stiffened and according to you, if you stopped doing this, your body would become like a wooden doll. Sometimes Rufioh would keep you company so that you wouldn't warm up alone. He tried to spend as much time with you as possible so that you would remain the same as before

He began to notice that you periodically began to forget things. You could talk about something, but at some point you would fall silent and then start talking about something completely different. Your memory gradually got worse and Damara's according, the longer you stay in this state, the more you will forget. That's why Rufioh decided to start helping you train your memory. Every day you talked together about who you were, who he was, and a few other things that you didn't want to forget

Rufioh didn't know if it was possible to change your condition somehow, returning you to a full life or not, but he tried to spend as much time with you as possible. He hoped that you would be able to return to your normal state again, but if it was still impossible, then at least you could spend as much time together as possible while your memories were still with you

♊ Mituna Captor x fem!Reader 🛹

Mituna did not immediately understand what exactly happened to you. He saw that you didn't reach godtier and at first he thought you were dead. But pretty quickly he realized that you were practically alive. He didn't understand why the amulet on your forehead was needed, but since you said it was necessary, it means it was. Pretty quickly, he noticed that your behavior had changed slightly, but, unlike others, it did not frighten him and did not bother him

He often noticed that you began to warm up and he began to do it with you. He saw that after these small physical exercises you moved more freely, as if your muscles were stiff before. He was happy to study with you, laughing and making you laugh so that you wouldn't be so sad and thoughtful

He occasionally noticed that you might have forgotten what you were talking about, but he didn't get upset about it. He continued the conversation on a new topic, without worrying that you did not finish the conversation on the previous topic. He understood that it wasn't your fault, so he didn't take offense at you and continued your conversation with a smile

Mituna didn't know how much you could change after you became jiangshi, but for him you were still the same person for whom he had such strong feelings. No matter how much you changed for him, you remained the same as before

♌ Meulin Leijon x fem!Reader 🦁

Meulin was very worried when she saw that you didn't switch to godtier. She was worried that something might go wrong, but she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that you got up and only after that she saw a paper amulet on your forehead. You both didn't fully understand the reason for this, but you didn't know exactly why it happened and whether it was possible to fix it somehow, but you decided to deal with problems as they appeared

One of the problems that you had was that your body became very numb and stiff. You couldn't move properly, which is why you started doing warm-ups so you could feel better. Meulin supported you and encouraged you while you were warming up

When you forgot something, Meulin reminded you of this or that thing. Sometimes, because of your forgetfulness, you forgot what exactly she was trying to tell you, but pretty quickly you began to understand each other again and she helped you remember something. When during conversations you started talking about completely different topics, Meulin continued your conversation on a new topic, knowing that then you will be able to return to what you did not finish talking about earlier

Meulin continued to love you despite the fact that you became jiangshi. She didn't think it changed you much and should have ended your relationship. You stayed by her side when she lost her hearing, and she wasn't going to leave you now when you literally existed on the verge of life and death

♍ Porrim Maryam x fem!Reader 💚

Porrim has always treated you with care and attention. That's why when she found out that when you were supposed to reach godtier something went wrong, she got very worried and headed to you. She was afraid that you had not been resurrected, but your condition turned out to be completely different from what she expected. It was like you were between life and death. In another situation, she would have called such a state a zombie, but you didn't look like a risen dead man. Outwardly, the only thing that betrayed your condition was a paper amulet on your face

Porrim has been watching you closely to find out what has changed in you. One of the first changes in you was forgetfulness. At first it wasn't noticeable, but then she started noticing that you might have forgotten some word, and then you began to forget what you were talking about with someone just a couple of moments ago. Every time this happened, she reminded you that you had forgotten, to which you smiled absentmindedly and thanked her every time. The only thing that bothered Porrim was that your memory would get even worse

She found out pretty quickly that there was another problem. This problem was that your body often began to go numb, as if to stiffen. To avoid this, you began to do warm-ups often. After that, you could move more freely. Porrim didn't rush you when you started your warm-up and sometimes worked out with you

Porrim didn't know if there was a way to return you to your initial state or help you reach godtier, but so far she didn't know if there were ways to do it. That is why she was in no hurry to change anything. While there were no drastic changes, she decided to take her time and perhaps a way to fix everything would appear later

♎ Latula Pyrope x fem!Reader 🛹

Latula was sure that you would be able to reach godtier without any problems. That's why when she found out that something had gone wrong, she was very worried. She hurried to you, but when she saw you, she didn't immediately understand what exactly was wrong. You were alive, but there was a strange paper amulet on your forehead that she had never seen before. Your speech was a little slow, but she finally realized that something was wrong when you tried to remember her name for a couple of minutes

Her friends said that you have apparently become a jiangshi. Neither you nor Latula fully knew what it meant, but she didn't think it was something terrible. You were alive and that was the main thing, and the fact that there were small changes in you did not look like something critical. Your forgetfulness didn't look like such a terrible problem, sometimes when you forgot what was being discussed and started talking about a completely different topic, Latula kept the conversation on a new topic, even if she started a conversation on the previous topic

Quite often, your muscles were stiff, so you were doing warm-ups. When Latula found out about it, she decided to help you. She understood that you wouldn't be able to skateboard in this condition, but you could do warm-ups together, after which she could skate and you sat nearby and just watched or dozed

Latula didn't know if you would change even more or not, but she still liked you. She knew that some people began to fear you because of the amulet on your forehead, but not her. She knew better than anyone else that such trifles were not a reason to stop communicating with someone, and even more so to break off such a long relationship as those that were between you

♏ Aranea Serket x fem!Reader 💙

Aranea realized that something went wrong when she saw a strange paper amulet on your forehead. You didn't know what the amulet meant either, but you knew for sure that you couldn't take it off. It was like an unbreakable truth that someone put in your head. Aranea started looking for information about what kind of amulet it was in the books and found out that you became jiangshi. She spent several hours trying to find out as much information as possible in the hope of finding out how to help you, but it wasn't as easy as she would have liked

One of the clearly noticeable problems that appeared after you became jiangshi was absent-mindedness. At first you forgot something for a few moments, but gradually you began to forget more. You could forget what you were talking about just a minute or two ago, after which you would start talking about something completely different. Every time Aranea reminded you of what you were talking about earlier, wanting to continue the conversation that you forgot about

Another problem was that your body was numb and stiff. Because of this, you had difficulty moving. To ease your condition, you started doing a warm-up every time you felt that your muscles were starting to stiffen. Aranea gave you advice that she read, but she rarely kept you company in your physical activity, preferring to spend this time reading books

Aranea continued to look for a way to return you to a full life, realizing that over time your condition could get worse, so she did not stop searching, and until she found a way that could help you, she tried to help you not forget what is still left in your memory

♐ Horuss Zahhak x fem!Reader 🐴

Horrus was sure that you would be able to reach godtier without any problems, but his expectation turned out to be wrong. You didn't reach godtier like the others, but something else happened to you, something strange. You've become a jiangshi. You both didn't know exactly how it happened and what could be done about it, so you decided to leave it as it is for now. He wasn't sure that this condition could be corrected, so he made sure that you didn't get worse

When he found out that your muscles started to get very stiff and stiff, he offered to help you. He understood a lot of things and was able to help you make a plan of warm-ups that would allow you to stretch your muscles well. Sometimes he would join you and you would warm up together. He liked spending time with you and then seeing your soft smile when you thanked him

You've become quite absent-minded. Horrus often noticed that you could forget what the conversation was about or what you were going to do just a couple of minutes ago. He helped you by reminding you of this or that thing that you forgot and even made a memo for you of the most basic things that you could forget. You began to carry this memo with you in order to read it in case of something and remember what you especially needed

You and Horrus continued to stay together even though you were jiangshi. You still didn't fully understand whether it was possible to change it, but you were still the same person he fell in love with and nothing could change it. Even if you completely forget everything, he will stay by your side and remind you of everything in the world

♑ Kurloz Makara x fem!Reader 💀

Kurloz wasn't completely sure what happened to you when he saw you. You were going to meet after you both reach godtier, but something went wrong with you. You looked almost the same as in your last meeting, but there was a strange paper amulet on your face because of which some looked at you with concern and fear, but Kurloz was more worried that you were not completely alive

One of the main problems that you had was your forgetfulness. You began to forget what you could have been talking about with someone just a moment ago and started talking about something else. But it was much worse that you began to forget the sign language thanks to which you understood what Kurloz was saying. He helped you learn sign language again and you began to write down some signs so as not to forget at least the basics and understand exactly what he wanted to say

Another problem was that your muscles often began to stiffen. Because of this, it was difficult for you to even walk. You and Kurloz came up with a warm-up plan together and practiced together. He worked out with you so that you wouldn't be so lonely, because doing sports together was more fun than being alone

Kurloz knew perfectly well that some were whispering behind your backs. You both looked a little strange, and for some frightening, but it didn't bother him. You continued to be together and nothing could spoil your relationship, neither his inability to speak, nor the fact that you became jiangshi

♒ Cronus Ampora x fem!Reader 💜

Cronus often spent time with you and shared what he learned about humans. It was thanks to this knowledge that he realized that you had become a jiangshi when he saw a paper amulet on your forehead. He had seen such characters in films, but did not expect that such a thing was possible in the real world. However, you became a jiangshi and now you had to figure out how to deal with it

Because you were jiangshi now, your memory has deteriorated. You began to forget a lot, to the point that you could forget what you were talking about just a couple of minutes ago and start talking about a completely new topic. It seemed strange, but Cronus quickly got used to it and began to remind you what you were talking about or continued to talk about another topic so that you wouldn't feel awkward

Another problem was that your muscles began to stiffen and stiffen. He helped you cope, helping you to warm up and not lose count, because sometimes you even forgot how many bends you did right during the warm-up. After such a warm-up, you felt better and could calmly go about your daily business again

Cronus didn't know much about jiangshi other than what he learned from the movies, but it wasn't like you. You were still the same person he fell in love with and with whom he had such a great time. He wasn't afraid even if you suddenly wanted to get his life energy or anything else that jiangshi needed. He loved you anyway

♓ Meenah Peixes x fem!Reader 🦈

Meenah found out that something went wrong with you only after a while. When she came to you, she didn't immediately understand what exactly happened to you. You looked pretty much the same as usual, except there was a paper amulet on your face that she had never seen before. When she tried to remove this amulet, you recoiled, not letting her do it. You didn't know exactly why, but you knew that if this amulet was removed, then your life would be over, literally

Despite the fact that outwardly you have changed little, changes have still occurred. One of them was that your muscles often began to stiffen, which is why you could not move normally. Meenah watched several times how it was difficult for you to even walk, so you started doing a warm-up, which helped you feel a little better again. Every time Meenah waited for you to finish so that you could get back to fulfilling her plans for the day

Another problem was that you became forgetful. You could forget what you were talking about just a moment ago and start talking about a completely different topic. Meenah was annoyed by this, but you tried to forget as little as possible. You wrote down important things in a notebook so as not to forget them and Meenah reminded you of what you were talking about so that you could continue your conversation

Meenah was angry at those around her who looked at you askance. She knew that some people were worried about the amulet on your face, but these little things stopped bothering her. She treated you pretty much the same as before. The fact that you became jiangshi did not change her feelings for you and she was ready to stand up for you as before if someone said something unpleasant about you

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