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voltronisanobsession · 16 days

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So you like my ideas, huh? Well, I hope I can continue to create some good ones for you! I shall try my best 🫡

Oh! I do have one request in mind, how about Percy being paired with reader who’s the child of Athena? Yes, yes, I know an amazing half-blood known as Annabeth exists but I had something in mind.

We all know how children of Athena are seen as wise, intellectual, clever, and combative people but what if the reader was different than that? There’s several types of intelligence after all, so what if they specialized in emotional intelligence and craft?

I can see them being insecure of their “abilities” since they know their siblings can do better, and even fear that Athena herself is disappointed in them, but, while Percy thought it was strange at first, he soon found himself enjoying those traits.

I mean, with their emotional intelligence, the reader knows when he’s upset no matter how hard he tries to hide it, and they tend to give him gifts like Melinoe!reader. They’re probably usually architectural models, weavings, mini sculptures of what he enjoys… You know all that good stuff. They probably gifted him something as something to remember them by when he went on a quest… but I’ll leave that up to you.

Combat practice to bond/as dates 👀?

Also, I’m not sure if you saw, but I like long headcanons so stop apologizing and keep it up!/lh

Poor all of your thoughts into it if you have to or want, I like it!

Percy with a Child of Athena!Reader

I literally LOVE these detailed asks UGGHHH!! I love the idea of instead having a different form of intelligence as a child of athena like damn😍 I'm getting used to brain dumping on these, its a work in progress🙈

Sorry for answering so late😭

Lowkey this reader sticks out like a sore thumb amongst their siblings😭

I like to think that most Athena kids are usually on the more serious sides, so it surprises a lot of campers outside of the Athena cabin to see Reader extremely expressive!

While the other Athena children spend their time devising tactical plans for big camp games, reader is just on the side doodling architectural designs and whatnot

They aren’t as involved in what their siblings do because it doesn’t interest them much

Like whenever they try and ask for readers opinions and start using big ass words, they just smile and nod cuz they had no idea what the others were saying

Athena's children are extremely intelligent so its difficult for reader to be on the same wave length as their siblings

It lowkey makes them feel like an outcast in their cabin because they cant really connect with their siblings like they do with each other while they talk about subjects beyond reader’s comprehension

Constantly being surrounded by books, scrolls and maps full of knowledge, reader often beats themselves over not being able to comprehend and show interest in wanting to learn about these types of things

They’re led to believing that they are a defect amongst their mothers children (crying)

They are always surrounded by reminders of their own inabilities to match their sibling’s intelligence which is why they spend little time in the Athena cabin, and even littler time with their siblings

Readers only saving grace is that they are always in tune with peoples emotions and feelings, no matter how well or little they know the people around them

Whether its feelings of anxiousness, sadness, quiet anger, or happiness, reader always seems to know how a person is feeling!

The first time Percy meets reader is when he spots them at the crafting hut

Being one of his first activities in the beginning of the day, he notices how reader is always there before anyone else

Percy probably thought you were apart of the Hephaestus cabin or something like that with how many times he’s seen you sculpting and carving away at a new project every other day

So he’s surprised when you reveal that you’re actually a child of Athena

He would definitely notice how you distance yourself from your siblings, especially during breakfast, lunch and dinner

He’s good friends with Annabeth so he sees the differences between you, her and your siblings

While she and her siblings are more closed off and have their noses stuck up a new book everyday, your always seen drawing or weaving a new tapestry for your cabin

You show your emotions more openly compared to their more dismissive nature as well!

He definitely sees you as the 'social butterfly' of the Athena cabin

The more time he spends with reader though, he notices just how in tune they are with his feelings

He could give the smallest, most insignificant indication that he's had a bad day and you'd be able to read him like an open book

It's easy talking to you about his conflicting emotions, your patience and thoughtful expression gives him more confidence to just let everything out

I think he would definitely fall for how empathetic you are in many situations

You've made many friends with campers from different cabins because of this quality trait! Always learning and understanding a situation/conflict that arises, you're always able to resolve the problems that makes it fair for all parties involved

Despite this, Percy is confused and a bit surprised to find out that you're actually insecure about this dominating trait of yours

"What?! It's literally the best thing about you though!"

"I know but its just! My siblings aren't the way I am. They're able to actually use their skills for something. All I can do is listen to people and make friends. That's nothing special. I'm useless."

It PAINS him to hear you say that because its obvious you don't understand the importance of being as emotionally intelligent as you are

He makes it his mission to show you just how many people you've helped, to show you that you have a reason to be proud of what you're able to do!

You slowly open yourself more after hearing all his reassurance, from him and other people around camp

It's definitely a positive change as you have a pep to your step now. You engage with you siblings more now that you have a confidence in your own abilities.

You make him many sculptures as thank you gifts! Even when he says that you don't need to, you cant help admit that enjoy giving him these gifts with a nervous smile

You've made him a mini version Riptide and even have given him a small owl pendant

You were hesitant to give him the pendant because it seemed more intimate compared to your other gifts, but he happily accepted it with a soft smile

AND WHEN HE PUT THE PENDANT ON IN FRONT OF YOU YOUR HEART NEARLY LEPT OUT OF YOUR CHEST I CCANNTTT

I think reader would be pretty aware of Percy's feelings for them which makes them feel fuzzy

So imagine how you feel when Percy pulls up to you one late afternoon after not seeing him for the entire day to give you a small pendant of his own

The sculpting of the trident is definitely more crude and less detailed compared to the one you gave him, something Percy abashedly admits but you wave him off

"It's beautiful, thank you Percy."

"No problem, now we're matching!"

You're aware of your own feelings for him as you are aware of his feelings for you, so it doesn't take long for a confession to happen

I mean matching pendants? come on bro its so painfully obvious to everyone

Percy falls for who reader is, not because their a child of Athena

He doesn't care that you're different from your siblings because he understands everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses

You still represent Athena with pride and he'll happily support you till the end

PERCY IS SUCH A GREEN FLAG IN GENERAL I LOVE WRITING FOR HIM💔💔

#pjo x reader #percy jackson x reader #pjo #percy jackson pjo #percy jackson headcanons #percy jackson and the olympians x reader #percy jackson x you #Percy jackson and the Olympians #percy pjo #Percy jackson #x Reader #pjo headcanons #pjo percy #headcanons

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ganondoodle · 9 months

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was watching another totk video and through that found out what the reward is for completing koltins quests, honestly im not really surprised but also baffled and it really just shows, once again, that totk kinda does exactly what you shouldnt do in a sequel imo.. double down on all the bad stuff of the previous title

at this point i have talked about various problems in detail but i just keep realizing over and over just how much of the wrong lesson they seemed to take from botw, they recycled almost everything from botw by changing some paint or some words, made a giant game even bigger and filled it with boring and tedious busy work that has mediocre to insulting rewards EVEN MORE than botw

game too big and empty? make it TWICE as big, change barely anything about the map of the previous title and the new added map(s) is ONE biom that almost everywhere looks the same and even emptier with little to do

too many krogs? MAKE IT MORE and double down on the literally shit reward bc its the SAME just with one more stack of shit

too many shrines with short puzzles? ADD EVEN MORE and make them even shorter and easier to complete, alot of them not even involving a puzzle and multiple being an utterly out of place tutorial that could have been explained to you in a single text box

rewards in the overworld being mostly either a krog or a shrine which gets repetetive with shrines being ALOT and krogs being wayyy too many? add even MORE shrines and EVEN MORE krogs, but now add over a hundred of caves to it that all get repetetive after just a few of them and you only do them for a shrine or a currency you have to collect to get one cool looking but pretty bad to use armor set and a piece of cloth for your parasail that you can only use one of at the tiem and to switch have to go back to a specific NPC, theres ghost lights to collect which only serve to yet again buy one armor set from a set of NPCs and ar meaningless afterwards, the light roots dont require you to do anything but walk to them and the reward for finding them all is a "you did it" sticker that doesnt even stick (its useless)

weapons break too quickly? well make the weapons you can find even worse to force you to fuse a material to it so its at all usable BUT IT STILL BREAKS and when it does it breaks not JUST the weapon but ALSO a material, materials that you will need for now EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE armor upgrades too, weapons cannot be rewards anymore either bc they will always have to be fused with something to make them stronger bc none is strong on its own- this also applies to THE MASTERSWORD, something ALSO complained about that it still 'breaks' even after empowering it through the DLC in botw, and now it cant even BE empowered (bc no DLC) unless you fuse soemthing to it (to. the. MASTERSWORD.) EVEN THO EMPOWERIGN THE MASTERSWORD IS THE ENTIRE POINT OF ZELDAS ULTIMATELY MEANING- AND CONSEQUENCELESS SACRIFICE !!

the dungeons were to samey and simple? make them look different but keep the core structure (activate terminals in completely seperate from each other "puzzles", fight boss) while also makign them be even more skippable (climable walls, the ceiling jump ability- something the titans DIDNT have) with incredibly easy bossfights that end with an embarassing copy and paste scene that hits you over the head with long known and obvious information over and over

people didnt like how the story was so detached from everything in the present? well, make the story and the present EVEN MORE detached from anything in the present, so far in fact that there is literally no connection to it aside from zelda who is the only connective thread and is also only treated as such (she is as personality lacking as sonia as soon as shes yoinked into the past) and the suddendly and out of nowhere intruduced architecture and history that wasnt a thing in botw but is treated like it was always there

people didnt like how far botw was detached from all other zelda games? ok totk is not only FURTHER detached from those it also completely detached itself from its on predecessor :)

people didnt like the memory system? ok make it WORSE then, its a linear story now that you can ruin by seeing even one out of order, they are super short and dont give you anymore context to anythign than the things you could figure out yourself or were already told really, instead of giving you views into a characters personality you get to view a basic plot summary of a story that is so flavorless and predictable i knew what would happen from the start yet acts like its being vague and cool that i felt like i was beign treated like a literal toddler

too few enemy types? well, we will reuse the old ones EVEN MORE thant before over twice the map and the new ones that are there are either utterlly irrelevant to change up the gameplay or largely feel like the old ones just with a paint job (constructs), the griocks looked cool at first but are just a more annyoing version of the lynels (who feel like an actual duel, akin to a proper boss)

even the things that were adressed, or attempted to, didnt fully work, like the bosses ARE more unique, but also still so incredibly easy and ALSO have multiple duplicats just sitting around in the underground despite them being supposedly the root of the problems of the regions (i like refighting bosses, but id rather have a character that lets me choose ok i wann fight this one again and teleporte me into a vision or sth- also the most fun fights arent even part of it (koga) )

the rain complaint got a new effect type to counteract it, which ... doesnt work well, you need specific materials to make potions with that effect which you also need to upgrade the only armor set wit hthat effect that ONLY works once you upgrade it (i think ... i dont know how high i got it but if even the full upgraded set doesnt negate the rain effect i will not be surprised either lol) also it adds just yet another effect type that spams your inventory and you dont really need .... or i might be the only one that saw no value at all in the "attack up when hot" new type of effects bc it felt so specific and situational while also having a way better option (just make it a standard attack up thing?) at least in my eyes-

... ill stop here .... this got longer again didnt it O-o

#ganondoodles talks #zelda #totk #ganondoodles rants #YET AGAIN #aaaaaaand i wasted all my evening #this was supposed to be a half joking short post #but i keep getting into ranting #hhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrraaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

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dr-spectre · 3 months

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a thought i keep stumbling on while trying to work out Splatoon's world, how fairly "utopian" splatoon seems to be compared to our own, and i'm wondering just how far that goes, socially and economically

the primary activity for inkfish is an all-inclusive, free to play social sport where you literally get paid for playing, the only barrier to entry being a weapon, of any kind, even a scavenged up Splattershot Jr. (which may even be freely given?)

GrizzCo, evil as it is, seems to take full advantage of inkfish respawning (the helicopter does not leave even when the Triumvirate shows up in an enclosed space like Undertow, fucking insane pilot), so no one ever seems to actually die on the job? with actually pretty decent pay alongside it (if you get lucky lmao)

there is/this is way WAY too much to type in somebody's askbox but GRAAHHHH SPLATOON LORE

I'm going to be honest, i haven't given much thought on the social and economic status of the Splatoon world LMAO! My knowledge of Splatoon lore only goes to the Idols, the timeline and the hidden stuff in the games. Trying to figure out how money works in Splatoon and the conversion of it to real world dollars is just as headache inducing as figuring out how the fuck does the Inkling and Octoling hair work.

Like look at this chocolate cereal for example, in our dollars, would it be 38 bucks? 3 dollars and 80 cents? Or is it based on Japanese Yen? Because Inkopolis is definitely inspired by Tokyo and other cities in Japan, just take a look at the architecture.

Inkopolis and Splatsville for sure seem very utopian and you don't hear much about crimes or any real issues aside from giant electric fishes being stolen every once in a while, and maybe an Idol goes missing and comes back like a few days later (you know who I'm talking about.)

To me it's basically Japan but more advanced and has sea creatures running the place instead of hairy fleshy humans like us lol. And they have a popular sport anyone can join and get paid for. Turf War is like THE THING in their society and they wanna encourage everyone to play it, so they give out money. Or at least that's why i think Inklings and Octolings get paid when participating in Turf War. Hell it makes sense for Inklings and Octolings to get paid for ranked battles because it's more serious and competitive, like the competitive sports we have in our world.

Also i wanna say something too which is semi off topic, Inklings and Octolings are kinda fucking insane strength wise, they are able to carry large rollers, fire giant gatling guns, survive from nearly any height as they seem to slow down in the air and land just fine. They have no bones and can stand perfectly fine with just muscles alone. And as long as there's a respawn machine, they can never die, and if there isn't a respawn machine then they'll stay as floating little ghosts until they find a machine.

Like Callie and Marie for example, are not some cute little defenseless girls, HELL NO! They will MURDER you easily if given the opportunity. If a creep were to go onto their stages or if someone tried to grab them, they would easily grab them by the neck and throw them into the atmosphere! Their bodies are just pure muscle and ink. (And they have military training too technically.) And that's one of the reasons why i like em so much... They strong... We all love physically strong girls that can carry us or fucking destroy us... Don't lie to me...

The only thing that can truly kill them is age and even then, they age MUCH slower than us. Cuttlefish and Octavio are over 130 years old and they act like they are around 70 to 80 years old in human years. And you can probably extend their lifespan by giving them more ink as when they age they slowly dry out, so all you gotta do is keep giving them ink and they might be able to survive for much longer.

There is also water, however it only seems like large bodies of water make them explode and i'm sure you can't just spray a hose at them to kill them lmao.

It's no wonder Mr. Grizz uses these cephalopods to collect eggs, Inklings and Octolings are insanely strong.

#splatoon #splatoon 3 #ask blog #ask me anything #callie cuttlefish #callie splatoon #inkling #octoling #marie splatoon #marie cuttlefish #craig cuttlefish #dj octavio #japan #tokyo

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sapphim · 23 days

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I keep wondering why there's so many DA2 armors, weapons and assets in DAI. Was it easier to add things they had already created - in another engine - into the new game or were they intending to have the DA2 crew actually show up (given half the plot of DAI was for DA2's cut quest). I know you're not a mind reader but I was wondering if you ever had any thoughts about this.

So I am neither an expert nor as you say a mindreader. But it's my understanding that's just kind of the nature of large scale development. There's a period after launch where your game is in support mode for patches and DLC but you're also getting started on the next project right away. And having many people working on many things in parallel there will be many such cases where team A can't start on thing 2 until they get thing 1 from team B; you have to finalize the script before you finalize the voiceover before you finalize the cutscenes, etc. So it makes sense that development would be staggered.

It also makes sense to just, make things you can use? Even if you're not working on the yearly FIFA release there's no sense in not using good assets if you have them. Time not spent replacing those assets can be spent on making something else, and now you've got more assets. (And not for nothing but Inquisition was very much sold on the basis of "wow look at the scale! much large! so world! crafting system!" lol)

And they got smart about this when they started work on Inq. Origins and DA2 share the same engine architecture but they changed the proportions of their body models (sometimes drastically) and they added additional bones to their face rig. DA2 to Inq, while they had to transition to an entirely new engine, you know what didn't change? All that model stuff I mentioned. So even with having to convert your work over for the new materials—and, you know, slapping on some tchotchkes bc you're allowed a higher poly count—it's still a big time save, as modders who have done conversions can directly attest. And again this is time that can now be spent idk sculpting Bull's fat tits or whatever.

Also DA2 is really the first time we see where the visual identity of Dragon Age started to form. The visual language of Origins was... derivative. A faux medieval nothingburger. 00s era brown. Most of the stuff that we think of as comprising the "look" of Dragon Age as a whole really didn't start appearing until DA2. Did the Dalish look Dalish in Origins? Did the Wardens look like Wardens? It's been an ongoing process to make Dragon Age look like something instead of nothing (god bless).

Even without getting down into the weeds of Inq being the sequel they originally planned during the development of Origins, and questions about what their state of development was when they got the word to sunset the game and scrap that DLC, and the pivot to Inq. Like whatever they were thinking throughout working on 2 and whether or not they were also thinking ahead to Inq throughout and whether or not that influenced any of their development decisions on 2 particularly toward its end of life... Yeah, it's just pragmatic. And pragmatism is the thing that gets games out the door.

#there's a book that talks about some of this that I haven't read lmao #look up blood sweat and pixels if you want to hear it from someone who actually knows what they're talking about

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dualityvn · 8 months

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Hey, hello. I love your game. I was so afraid to ask something about/ to the boys because I know how much work goes into developing stuff. I also know how excited fans are to also interact with the developer. And it is so awesome you reply to them.

So my only question is: after you choose a name for your MC, the first scene we see is her apartment (the houses). It caught my attention that they look really similar to houses in Amsterdam. Being from the Netherlands myself I felt a bit proud. (Not from Amsterdam though). (And could also be Denmark as well now that I think about it). Was this intentional or just a looks cool gonna use it?

Cool either way. Take your time. Keep up the good work, but also take good care of yourself.

Hi! Don't worry, even if I don't have time to respond to them all, I'm always happy to receive you guys' asks and I do read them all.

I did pick something similar to Denmark's architecture because I like the style. I can't remember where the photo was from exactly, though.

#duality game

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official-megumin · 8 days

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Y’know, I generally like to think that I’m pretty good at staying in my lane, so I don’t typically stray too far into fandom stuff or whatever.

But as some people may know, destiny as a franchise recently turned 10 years old. And I wanted to talk a bit about that.

Back when I was a wee little girl at 14, destiny popped up at my local gamestop, this was back before gamestop left Denmark as well.

Back then I didn't even go to the internet. So all I knew about destiny was that it was made by the people behind halo. Which at the time was my favorite series.

All I had to go on about destiny was the little pamphlet I got when I pre-ordered it.

And the way all these worlds we've all grown up imagining visiting, being presented? It just captivated me, the way all the characters looked both like they came from a distant past and the far future all at once.

So I went the rest of the year just looking at this pamphlet. Again, I barely went online at this point, so I had no idea how excited people were online, I had no idea that I could find out more about it online.

And then it came out, I barely knew how my xbox worked, so it took me a week or more to even get access to the game.

So I made a character, a male warlock at the time. The promise of great powerful magic and discovery had me intrigued.

And I will never forget the first time I saw the game.

The intro, seeing humanity go to Mars for the first time, seeing the traveler and what it could do.

The shifting landscape in the back, almost showing how this is something that has happened time and time again, repeating for eons.

All with some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard.

And then I got control of my character, and ghost spoke to me. I got to look around an abandoned road leading to a great wall.

Ghost told me I had to hurry because something was stalking us. I had no idea what.

So I kept going into the wall.

I still knew nothing, but this world already had me hooked. Around every corner was mystery and excitement.

As I went further through the wall, they found me; the fallen, a race of space pirate spider monsters.

Back in 2014 I just saw them as cheap copies of the covenant from halo. But as the years have passed, it had become so obvious that they are much more than that.

Luckily just before the fallen found me, or I found them really.

I found a rifle, a rifle that has stayed with me every since that day.

I still have my original khvostov in my inventory after all these years, still safe in my vault.

After fighting my way through the fallen, I came out the other side of the wall. And the world opened up.

It was a huge space port, filled with ancient secrets and rocket ships designated for the stars, but left to rot on Earth.

As I didn't have much time to play back then, it took me a while to get further.

A couple months later I reached the moon. Another place we all know so well from staring into the night sky.

But standing there in the dust of a great calamity felt different. And of course, we had neighbours there now.

The hive and their organic gothic architecture.

I pushed forward and reached Venus, another location that has etched itself into my memory.

The jungle, the vibrant volcanic pools everywhere, the blue lava and of course. The vex.

I robot hivemind existing beyond time. Like the hive and even the fallen. Their architecture was unlike anything I had seen in a game before.

It was geometric and ancient, it defied logic yet felt real.

It devoured Venus and imposed itself on everything.

Then I got to Mars, a planet that had defined my imagination unlike any celestial body till then.

Here we met the cabal. A race of militant giants.

At the time I didn't much care for them. But as we have moved further into the series, I have come to miss them as they were then greatly.

They were like us, they were conquerors and scientists. War pushed their limits in all fields of existence.

Like us, they tried to understand the vex.

And that let us to the black garden. The final level of the original game.

As I wasn't very experienced with gaming, I couldn't beat the final boss.

And as much as it's embarrassing to admit, it made me rage. And I ended up breaking a table.

This rage marked my end of playing until I was 15.

I had very limited money, so I didn't get to buy any dlc, or even play online with other people till then.

But then I somehow saved up the money to buy the taken king.

And since then I have bought everything on day 1. And the franchise has become a constant for me. It's become a source of comfort and excitement.

Be it exploring the dreadnaught or braving the plaguelands. Destiny 1 always sparked wonder.

Then destiny 2 came out, and I stuck around even in the darkest hours of the franchise.

It always hurt to see how much people hated what I loved so much.

As forsaken came out, my thoughts and feelings about my gender were starting to resourface.

I started struggling more, but destiny was still there for me.

A year passed, and by this point I had admitted to feeling how I did, and I came out as trans.

With the nex expansion called shadowkeep, old content returned too.

The first ship you got in destiny 1, the arcadia class jumpship. Returned, and it had me excited.

I started over, made a new warlock, female this time. To reflect who I now was. It also saw us return to the moon. It let us, for the first time in destiny 2. Explore hive architecture.

And I loved it.

This time was especially hard for me. It was a time of the players being the least hopeful since destiny 2 launched.

And it was a time where I was on the brink of collapse.

I attempted to take my own life, and in the wake of that. I came out to my fiends and aquaintences.

Luckily for me, this still mostly worked out, and I kept having friends to play with.

As the year kept going, beyond light was announced, and I lost interest for a while.

Gear would be sunset and I would lose all the armor I had worked so hard to aquire for years.

I didn't come back till the season just before transmog was introduced.

It happened to drop on my birthday.

Since then I have played pretty much constantly.

We have seen highs in the form of witch queen, and lows in the form of lightfall.

But I stayed through all of it. Enjoying all of my time spent in the process.

And now, tens years after I set out on this journey with bungie leading me and all other players.

It's over, the light and dark saga has been completed.

We defeated the witness.

And I'm thankful I got to experience it.

Few things in my life has been there for me as consistently as destiny.

I left out so many things that has happened over those 10 years.

I barely have mentioned the lore and how it helped get me back into the game several times over the past decade.

I have alluded to how much the music has meant to me.

But it has been the one consistent thing about the game, and now all the original composers are gone.

And I'm sad to see it end. But I regret none of my time in this game.

Neither do I want to see it go now.

Bungie has announced the next multi year saga. And I'm ready for it.

I'm excited to see the mystery and wonder return to this franchise so near and dear to me.

Thank you bungie, for letting me have this in my life

#destiny #destiny 2 #bungie #the final shape

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canmom · 3 months

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l'aventure de canmom à annecy - épisode deux: XR

so I'm going to abandon all semblance of chronological order at this point.

just like last year there was an VR room operating on a morning booking system - each thing had two headsets and a signup sheet. I didn't get to try every one but I did get most of them. enough that the volunteers noticed me coming back every day x3

^ some random people immersed in the Wired

this is easily the longest annecy post so far... so please read on for a big old discussion of the unique difficulties faced by VR film as a medium, and how this year's annecy films meet them... or more often don't.

so annecy's vr films section is for essentially linear vr projects (i refuse to write "experiences") that can be watched/played in less than an hour. i don't know if that's a hard rule but that's how long all the ones here were!

let's get the technical stuff out of the way: the Quest 2/3 was by far the headset of choice. some ran natively, some were PCVR with a wire connecting to a computer, and some were 360° videos which played back on the headset with 3dof tracking. some had a degree of interactivity, up to about a 'walking simulator' level. the average runtime was between 20m and an hour.

the preamble: on the limitations of VR

the big question I have with XR movies is basically... how well does it actually use the medium? like, is it doing anything that wouldn't work better as a flatscreen game or a film?

this might seem like a high bar to clear, like why shouldn't it be in VR - but VR is uncomfortable, the headset is expensive etc etc, and that's before even the formal stuff I'm about to get into. so that's 'why not'. and also, this is a new medium, I want to see what unique features it has to offer!

I'm sure I've said this before, but despite on the face of it being more 'inmersive' than traditional flatscreen games or films, VR is actually a pretty restrictive medium! compared to flatscreen games with their many 'buttons', you are very limited in the possible interactions. your main interaction is to 'pick up' and 'hold' objects, but this is close enough to actual physical interaction to highlight how much it isn't. what it actually means is that you position your hand or controller in a trigger and press a grab button or pinch your fingers, at which point the object snaps to your hand and moves weightlessly with it.

you also can't accelerate the pov too much without causing motion sickness, etc etc.

ok, what about film? well, compared to film, the big big thing VR lacks is the frame of the camera. you can't cut, you can't frame a subject, you don't have long shots or closeups, you can't even rely on the player/viewer looking in the direction of an interesting thing.

since movement is also tricky in VR due to the motion sickness problem, you're also limited in your ability to steer the viewer to interesting sights with Valve-style 'vistas' using the level architecture. it's not impossible - Valve themselves have their familiar vistas in HL Alyx - but it's something that depends on the player being able to move through a large space, so it doesn't fit these kinds of movie-like project so well. otherwise you can draw attention to a direction using various means, like visual effects that converge on a spot, or just keeping most of the action in the same area.

what you can also do, closer to camerawork, is move the viewer's point of view, and shrink or enlarge their surroundings. the language of VR 'shots' is still far from defined, but we have a few recurring ones: standing in a normal sized room, the giant's view in a tiny city, the floating perspective looking down on a diorama, the ant's eye view inside something regular sized.

how about theatre, which also has most of these limitations? well, compared to being in person with a real human being, you're limited by the capabilities of realtime animation systems and the rendering tech available on the device. you're looking at the character in a slightly fuzzy low resolution and unless you have AAA money which noone in VR does, you're a bit limited in the 'acting' you can pull off. this may change if the apple vision pro gets popular - apple already have a 'gertie the dinosaur' style demo where a very detailed dinosaur emerges from a portal - but it's definitely out of reach of most teams working on the Quest.

so compared to all these other media, what does XR offer?

compared to film and theatre, there is the game aspect of agency: a story feels different if you are the one doing it. so most VR narrative games have characters interact with the player somehow, though this introduces the problem of how to write the player into a story without feeling like you're railroading them or that they're superfluous to the real story.

it's very easy to undercut this sense of agency by having an amount that's not zero but still too small, e.g. if it just feels like the player is touching a button that lights up then you wonder why they even bothered.

the role that most games put the (vaguely defined) player character in is 'terrifying violence doer'. this is a fairly easy role to write around, and it gives the player a lot of control of the 'how' while letting the writer control the 'what' and 'where' and 'why'. similarly if the player's role is something like 'puzzle solver'. but for a purely narrative presentation, these roles don't exist.

still, this is the idea that a lot of VR rests on: an 'immersive experience' which puts the player into the story.

the other big thing that VR has is the joy of experiencing visual effects in 3D. particles, trails, transforming geometric shapes etc are cool on a flat screen and even cooler in stereo vision where you can move your head around. another benefit is spatial audio by default - something that is gradually coming to games but provided 'for free' by vr consoles.

in the land of games, you also have incredibly precise position and direction input... as long as it's in arm's length of the player. the most successful genres of VR games (so far) use this: a lot of shooting games, and some games that let you interact with physics objects, offer 3D jigsaw puzzles, or simulate sports to provide some real exercise. it can be really good for rhythm games as beat saber demonstrates.

VR is also really for social games like VRChat - similar to MMOs but with the benefits of more complex tracking in lieu of canned animations.

but... none of these fit the form of a predictable 15-50 minute narrative sequence! they're not films! so the VR films category at annecy is a tough problem to crack.

last year, the VR project that most impressed me was one that put you in the seat of a novice spotter in a bomber in the second world war. this was a great fit for a lot of reasons. you are in a vehicle so you have no reason to move from seated; the scenario is full of loud scary sounds that can make full use of spatial audio; your 'character' is well-defined but also doesn't have much reason to speak within the scenario. this had a small amount of interaction (by pointing your head) which you could actually fail, making it a bit closer to a game, and also giving you reason to play close attention to the bombed out cityscape below you. it did a fantastic job of capturing the tension of a dangerous air mission, the pilot character interacting with you was compelling, and overall it really benefited from being in VR.

this year's films

sadly nothing I saw this year comes close to that. but still, some are interesting, so let's go through them!

My favourite this year was probably Flow - completely unrelated to the movie in the main competition, though they share the trait of being completely wordless, conveying their story simply through imagery and music.

Flow's big trick is a very cool visual effect where characters and objects are conveyed the trails left behind by little particles, causing them to appear ghostlike . At first you're just flying through a cityscape, passing various people on the street and in the subway, with the particle trails conveying the breaths of the passengers; gradually a storm brews, the trails becoming the wind that tears at everything.

I believe this was a prerendered film, with only 3dof tracking - i think i saw some compression artefacts at some point. So it's less technically impressive than if they managed to do it realtime but it does make full use of the power this gives to render loads of particles and move rapidly through different scenes. it was also an effect that benefitted from the ability to put you in the middle of it - something that would not work as well on a flat screen.

But it also benefitted a lot from being more film-like. It has an original soundtrack, and progresses without input from the player. There's no awkward 'player' character to write around, no space you stand about in. The film can simply unfold and let you appreciate it. In this case, no interaction is better than bad interaction.

My Inner Ear Quartet from Japan did not do anything particularly novel with the medium, but to my mind it had by far the most compelling story. It tells of a young, introverted boy who habitually digs in the dirt for objects that other people would consider trash. The title refers to a string quartet which he hears when he cries, imagined to be in his inner ear; also there is a pair of tiny shrimp which he saw grow in a net.

The first half is narrated by a man who turns out to be the boy grown up, now a hearing aid salesman. While the boy abandons his box of treasures, as an adult he returns to collecting and documenting abandoned objects as a kind of urban explorer.

The geometry here is stylised in a kind of rough, children's drawing way. I think this could have been pushed further with more complex shaders but it works. For the most part, you're watching as an invisible observer seated on a floating chair. At certain points, the viewpoint is taken inside the boy's ear, or into the tin of treasures, where you can grab the objects and get the boy's brief, poetic description of each one.

I liked this story because it had substance, but left enough up to interpretation to be engaging. By showing the treasures to us with the descriptions we get to understand why they might be significant to the boy. It plays well with the classic anime theme of objects as vessels for emotional significance. I think it would have worked just as well on a flat screen, but I enjoyed my time with it.

Now the rest...

The Age of the Monster had some things going for it, but honestly I think this one shouldn't have been in VR. It's basically a film about how bad we're fucking up the planet, putting us in the house of a man who works in the nuclear industry in the 70s up to a future where the cooling towers lie in ruins. The 'monster' is a giant anthro catfish, seen first as a B-movie monster and dream vision and finally as a real kaiju scale creature in the final future scene.

We're told about the economic circumstances that led to the man getting this job, and his relief at working in nuclear during the oil crisis; we're told about the infamous repressed oil industry report about how climate change is gonna be a thing; we're told about the man's fraught relationship with his radical daughter who is furious about his extractivist ways. Then we get a collapse and humans learn to take the force of nature more seriously, i forget the exact phrasing they used.

The main problem is? These are mostly things you are told, by voiceover. There is some environmental storytelling in the evolution of the house but not enough to convey much without the v/o. the film does not seem to have the confidence in its imagery to show us what it's trying to say.

I feel like the film's vision of the post-collapse future, with flocks of birds flying over a wide river and collapsed overgrown cooling towers, is a huge missed opportunity. Here's an opportunity to apply some true visual imagination of how humans might live in a climate changed future... but nah, giant catfish kaiju just kinda hanging out there.

The environmental message is generally a stance I sympathise with, but the film doesn't make a good case for it on a propaganda level. We see the cooling towers outside the window and eventually the house, flooded, but it does little to make the collapse narrative emotionally compelling - and I question a little the choice to make it nuclear focused in a film about climate change. It's probably based on an actual guy, right? Maybe someone's parent? But... despite putting us in his shoes i don't really feel like i understand him very well.

Does this seem harsh? I know full well how involved vr dev is, and even simple things can take weeks. But i also want someone to make the most of this medium. To make something as compelling as the best short films on the main screens.

Gargoyle Doyle tells another 'skipping though time' story, depicting a gargoyle on an 800 year old church from its construction through to demolition. I would compare this one perhaps to a puppet theatre - it certainly stands out in terms of character animation, with Doyle played by Jason Isaacs as a classic grumpy old British theatre guy, his foyle foil a goofy statue of monk acting as a drainpipe with a penchant for puns.

I didn't get to watch this one in full, since I got to sub in for someone who left early (thanks to the volunteer who took pity on me when it was fully booked lol). So I didn't see the full arc of this. What I saw was... definitely edutainment material, but pretty well done. The player is cast as a visitor to a future museum and nature reserve built on the site of the church. It seems like this was originally shown in a real museum in Venice, with the 'in the museum' sections portrayed in mixed reality; obvs this wouldn't work at Annecy so they have these virtual too.

The narrative as a whole seems a tad self congratulatory and pat, with Doyle learning a valuable lesson about not being a cunt to his only friends as he's resurrected in the museum, and it doesn't do a whole lot with the VR framing, but taking it as an educational puppet show, it works pretty well - the voice performances are good and the jokes, while a little predictable, work for the kid-friendly style it's going for. I'm not sure it really needed to be 40 minutes long, but I can see they wanted to go maximalist for a proof of concept like this. It is kinda limited by the rendering capabilities of the Quest, the lack of shadows in particular, and could definitely benefit from some baked lighting given the relatively static scenes, but I give it a lot of credit for the character animation and VA.

Apparently the jury liked this one too because it won the competition!

Nana Lou has been in development a few years apparently, casting the player in the role of a psychopomp spirit whose role is to ease the passing of a woman dying of a stroke. Visually, this is one of the best looking, with elaborate forest scenes and strong environment design.

What I really like about this one is its use, at times, of a diorama-like presentation where the player looks down on tiny characters in a room. This is a concept I've wanted to try in VR for a while, and it's cool to see someone do it.

I found the kind of spiritual aspect of the story a lot more underwhelming. The player is accompanied by two other spirits who explain everything that's going on and point out the significance of all the imagery. The player is informed they have an important role, but they don't have a name and can't talk back, and the only interaction is to grab floating photos to initiate flashbacks.

I wish this film had had the confidence to trust in its acting and visual storytelling. While Nana Lou's life is a bit too lacking in serious conflict to make the premise work, it would still be far more interesting and compelling with the frame story largely trimmed. You could still cast the player as a psychopomp but you don't need to have a greek chorus telling them what to click on!

The actual story concerns Lou's relationship with her daughter, who became estranged when she quit university to raise her child, instead of staying on as Lou thought she should. This caused them to spend decades estranged. Finding out this story frees up the daughter's spirit as well, and the penultimate scene has her speak to Lou and make up.

There's definitely something to work with there, but the main delivery mechanism is rather ponderous narration triggered by interacting with objects, with the dramatic scenes largely having taken place off screen. Like The Age of the Monster, it suffers a severe telling-not-showing problem.

It's a shame because there are nice touches here. When you are beside Lou's bed in the hospital, your touch leaves a glow effect which is very evocative. The acting is solid, though the script undermines it a bit.

I don't think narration is evil - evidently, Yuri and I used it in our film, it's a very efficient way to convey information - but I do think it requires a lot of thought put into style and rhythm.

Spots of Light... ok. This one tells the story of an Israeli soldier who lost his sight in the Lebanon war, and later regained it temporarily through surgery. Given my general feelings about the Israeli military (presently carrying out a genocide), I was definitely not disposed to like this one. Nevertheless, it was the only one free so I decided to give it a shot.

This is one of those films where you interview someone and then put an animation to it. So this guy tells you what it was like to be blind and then not blind to see his family briefly, and it's illustrated with various images. And (if i remember right) some parts are on tvs showing video (and if you're using vr to embed a flat screen what is even the point??). When he's blind, everything disappears except vague outlines suggested by small points of light.

Ultimately this is a film about blindness, not the war (of course, meaning this is a person who could leave the war behind - though not to make light of the cruelty of conscription). Making a film about the experience of blindness in a purely visual medium is a choice all right, and I don't feel like this film expressed anything unexpected about it - he was sad to lose his sight, glad to see his family, depressed to lose it again but ultimately at peace. Which is conveyed, of course, primarily by narration.

So yeah this one didn't do much for me!

Stay Alive My Son, now. Agh. This one was... this one was a mess.

So this one is about the Cambodian genocide, right. It's based on a memoir by a survivor of the genocide, Pin Yathay, who became separated from his wife and son while fleeing the Khmer Rouge.

The way this is presented is essentially a walking simulator that takes you through a dungeon-like environment full of skeletons. Every so often you encounter 3D films - filmed with some kind of depth camera - showing actors playing out scenes from the life of the family. There is also a frame story where you visit Pin Yathay in his modern day house, where he sees a digital reconstruction of how his son might look as an adult

This one is difficult to review because it was severely marred by technical issues with the spatial audio, which caused the sound to cut out when you turned your head the wrong way or moved it to the wrong place. It would probably be less of a rough experience if the audio worked as intended. Nevertheless, I have plenty of reservations with the way the story is told as well.

It seems the director of the VR experience (fine! I'll write experience, there isn't a better noun for this kind of thing that sits between game and film) met Pin Yathay, there's video of her speaking to him at the end, but he had pretty minimal creative input beyond providing inspiration through his memoir. So this is a Greek/US interpretation of the Cambodian genocide. The narrative it tells is basically: Yathay and his family are living a pretty idyllic life, then the Khmer Rouge happens, seemingly not for any particular reason. Yathay and his family are evacuated and then put to hard labour growing rice; eventually, their son is put to work too, so fearing for his life, they flee into the jungle.

The Cambodian genocide is - obviously! - one of the worst atrocities of the whole bloody 20th century, and the circumstances surrounding it are worth reading about (though pretty unremittingly bleak). But you won't learn much about, say, cold war geopolitical alignment, Prince Sihanouk, the absolutely horrific civil war, the different ideologies in play in the Marxist milieu that influenced Pol Pot, or the spillover from Vietnam and the massive bombing by the Americans here which helped put the Khmer Rouge in power. You definitely won't learn much about the Cambodia that existed before the war. Instead, you're mostly traversing a dungeon that could come from any horror game, shining your torch on the things you're told to in order to unlock another segment of narration from (the actor playing) Yathay. It is, in pretty literal terms, a tour of atrocities.

Unfortunately the '3D film of actors' conceit doesn't really work because... even audio issues aside, the acting is pretty unconvincing. For some reason - perhaps that subtitles are tricky in VR - the dialogue is in accented English rather than Cambodian, and it's pretty quickly evident that they just have one guy in the role of 'Khmer Rouge soldier' and the lines he's given are kinda awkward. The horror game aesthetics of the environments and the amateur actors and costumes all clash pretty badly. The 3D filming is also kind of jank, only really working if you're fairly close to the camera position, so you aren't really free to move too far even if the audio didn't crap out.

The basic feelings it's trying to explore - the horror of living through a genocide, separation from a child, guilt for abandoning him, not knowing if he's alive or dead - is definitely worth depicting, but honestly this would have been far far better expressed as a 10-20 minute film than a slow 55 minute VR walking sim. The more abstract bits toward the end with paper plane imagery and a Buddhist temple (where you have to put a block in a slot to unlock a door) also feel too jank and videogamey to really have much impact, though by that point I had been wrestling with the audio for nearly an hour so I wasn't in the most receptive mood.

But all the execution flaws aside, that leaves the question of what even is the right way to portray a genocide artistically? This approach is very abstract, reducing the events to dislocated symbols - propaganda posters, the tree against which children were dashed - which perhaps might reflect how fragmented memory becomes, but seems to be wasting the potential of VR to establish you in a place. But then, I guess rice fields are harder to render than enclosed dark rooms.

Speaking of rendering, this was PCVR, so your torch casts shadows and it has other features that would be hard on realtime. But the lack of ambient light and general harshness of the materials adds to the 'horror game' feel.

There is something here about how genocides become associated with certain images. For Cambodia, it is primarily phrases like 'killing fields' and the stacked skulls in the genocide memorials such as Choeung Ek - few people know the name of the memorial in the west, but I think everyone who's heard of the genocide has seen the big stack of skulls. I imagine this is what all the skeletons in this experience are supposed to call to mind: they're representatives of the many ways people died. The problem that this kind of environmental storytelling has long ago been made kind of camp by videogames. A photo of a stack of real skeletons still has power to disturb, but less so a low poly 3D skeleton.

Should it have tried for a realism? The idea of trying to realistically simulate the experience of living in Cambodia though the genocide is kind of ghoulish, and I'm glad they didn't take that approach. But the 'tour of images' approach falls flat. I think The Most Precious of Cargoes elsewhere in the festival makes a stronger case for how to approach a topic like a genocide in a consciously constructed way, but it also has the ability to be in dialogue with a lot of other films made about the Holocaust. There is less in English about the Cambodian genocide - the viewer can't even be assumed to know what happened.

Overall, I think it would be possible to make a much stronger film about the genocide in Cambodia. But I'm not sure what that film would look like. I did learn one thing from this story, which is that there is a reality show in Cambodia which shows survivors of the genocide being reunited with their families. Not much is made of this here, it's something of a background detail. What would it be like to grow up in the shadow of an event like that? I wish the film had been willing to portray more of modern Cambodia - and I hope at some point someone in Cambodia will have a film at this festival, in VR or not, which can talk about it all from the first person.

Is there a good way to try to answer the curiosity of people who live safely in rich countries about what it is like to go through an actual genocide... using a Meta Quest 2 VR headset that costs a few hundred quid? I don't really know, but this film could have done with being a bit more reflective, I feel. So it goes.

the others

there were three films I couldn't see - The Imaginary Friend, Oto's Planet and Emperor. If I get some other chance to try them I'll write about them too!

Overall I felt a bit disappointed with the VR this year, but also I kind of want to put my money where my mouth is and try my hand at making this kind of thing. I do have the technical knowledge at least!

If you read all this, thank you.

#l'aventure de canmom à annecy #annecy 2024

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kid-az · 1 year

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All Tomorrows: Vanga-Vangog’s Clicker Hc’s

Specifically, I’m talking about these guys.

They’re a fanmade All Tomorrow’s species made by Vanga-Vangog, and are essentially the descendants of the Blind Folk. They are described as an agoraphobic species who live in dense cities completely without light, as such a thing isn’t useful when you don’t have any eyes.

Anyways I found them to be a very interesting and adorable people, simple in concept but very interesting in execution, so I’m going to make up some headcanons about them.

-Due to their agoraphobic nature and how important crops are for civilization, Farmer’s are heavily respected and idolized in many of their cultures, as they are brave enough to venture into the open plains with little fear of the endless void above them or whatever predators are outside. Often these farmers wear iconic, low brimmed tin hats designed specifically to better focus their echolocation.

-Focusing on farming more, the clickers generally grow various fungi and yam-like staple foods as their primary, non-meat based food sources, as well as some tree fruits and a wheat-like plant. Unlike humans, their animal husbandry involves the domestication of large, herbivorous crabs, cockroaches descended from the Hissing cockroaches, various species of herbivorous salamander descendants for slime and eggs, and a few species of non-sapient posthumans.

-There dog and cat equivalent is a terrestrial species descended from Olm’s, who had entirely lost their eyes like them but more than make up for it through a powerful strong sense of smell, taste, and electro sensitivity. They of course have various different breeds, from larger, longer-legged breeds used by farmers to herd posthumans and salamanders, to smaller breeds who hunt pests inside the cities, to even more aquatic breeds who help with fishing.

-Due to their dense cities, preference to tight spaces, lack of lights and the need to keep settlements more quiet to not overwhelm people and make them deaf, their ecological impact on their world was much lesser than that of modern humans and many other posthuman species, and most of their megafauna and and ancient forests still existed when they first contacted their posthuman brethren.

-Continuing on ecological impact, their world was one terraformed by the Star People before getting Qu’d, so there was very little existing fossil fuels in their world. Instead, their civilizations were powered via nuclear fission and later, fusion. They utilized this energy for power far before they invented their first nuclear weapons.

-They never invented tv screens, instead relying entirely on advanced radios broadcasting talk shows, news, and music. And yes, these radios had separate channels, which were indicated by symbols which functioned similarly to braille. Videogames were only a very recent concept introduced by other species. (Idk how videogames would work for an entirely eyeless species?)

-Other forms of entertainment involved strolling around enclose cave and night parks, appreciating forms of artwork such as sculptures, hollow casts and bas-reliefs, and of course concerts and operas. Also stuff like swimming, children games such as hide and seek + tag, and sports.

-Their cultures were in general more accepting of physically disabled people, (Aka folks with paralyzed/nonexistent limbs and the deaf.) and a lot of their architecture involves heavy use of ramps, elevators, and escalators, with very few stairs in…… “sight.”

-Clicker’s have head hair, but it’s almost never in front as it’d heavily disrupt their echolocation. They are unfortunately beardless, but compensate with their whiskers. Some folks even grow their whiskers to be 1 feet from each end!

-They would not be happy about being compared to a walking fungus zombie. /s

#all tomorrows #nemo ramjet #cm kosemen #posthuman #all tomorrows blind folk #blind folk #fanmade species #clicker #headcanons #worldbuilding

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zaebeecee · 2 months

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To Sever a Loveless Bond

••RadioDust Soulmate AU••

Part 19/?

First chapter | Previous chapter | Next chapter

Read on AO3

•••

CW: more explicit references to the last chapter (but just references)

Sorry updates are coming slower, y’all, real life work that pays money and stuff has been picking up lately and I need to buy hot pockets

Also featured in this chapter: more examples of soul marks sucking for people. I’m glad y’all seem to like my take on Arackniss tho.

•••

In 1932, Anthony disappeared.

That was, Arackniss supposed, not exactly the right way to put it. ‘He ran away from home’ might have been more accurate, but he was an adult at the time, and the phrase was so… juvenile. But, while none of the family knew where Anthony had gone, Arackniss himself had one leg up on the others: he was the one who saw Anthony off, gave him some money for the trip, and hoped (for his brother’s sake) that he never ended up in New York City again.

In 1933, Anthony returned, and their father threw him in a sanitarium for being queer. That was, after all, what people did in their day. Hell, it was the reason Anthony had run off in the first place, trying to save himself from their father’s old-world homophobic, Sicilian rage. And after Anthony got out, everyone talked about how much he had changed. How different he was. How much colder he had gotten.

Arackniss, however, knew different. Whatever turned Anthony icy and cruel didn’t just happen in the institution. It started wherever it was he had gone, when he tried to leave the family behind forever. Something he saw out there broke him, and Arackniss never learned what it was; they didn’t get the chance to talk before he was institutionalized, and when he tried asking Anthony about it after his release, his little brother didn’t remember.

It was the lobotomy, probably.

Arackniss figured that was the start of his protectiveness over Anthony, an aspect of brotherhood that had never existed between them before. Something had wounded his brother, something Anthony might never remember and Arackniss—Bernardino, in those days—would likely never understand, and he thought that since he couldn’t protect Anthony from the pain, he could at least shelter him better from new wounds. It wasn’t easy, since they still didn’t like each other, but Arackniss was able to do most of it behind Anthony’s back, particularly once their father kicked it and Arackniss inherited the family business. Besides, it made Maria happy, and both of them would have done anything for their sister, in their own ways.

Wherever she is now.

It’s funny. She could be worse than either of us on her bad days, but I’ve never found her here.

Anthony died before either of them, a gruesome and painful death that could as easily have been an accident as suicide, though the cops called it the latter. Arackniss had heard the name Angel Dust several times after arriving in Hell before he ever realized that was referring to his brother, and their reunion had been brief and awkward. Even though they never spoke, he knew how often Anthony came to that one restaurant he managed. And, even though Anthony pissed him off… they were family. They were brothers.

Arackniss wasn’t going to let anybody use his little brother as a pawn in their political game, no matter how firmly he had promised to stay out of things where the Vees were concerned.

VoxTek tower was huge and gaudy, in Arackniss’s opinion; it was too tall, it was too sleek, and it was too ostentatious to be anything but a status symbol three overlords were holding over the citizens of Pentagram City. There had been a time that it hadn’t existed, and after that, a time the tower had seemed so out of place. But the Vees were powerful, moreso than any coalition of overlords should have been, and soon the aesthetic of Pentagram City’s center had fallen in line with Vox’s penchant for sharp lines and curves and unholy marriage of Brutalist and Googie architecture.

Arackniss had wielded power in life, sure—after he’d taken over the family, he’d run it from the forties all the way into the sixties before he got shot nine fucking times—but he’d never been a bragging asshole about it. People who wore their wealth like a badge of honor were just asking to get shot.

The security system was thorough, but with the paths Arackniss planned to take, they were nothing he hadn’t seen before. The loading dock was open, sinners and Hellborn busy moving something off the back of a truck and into the bay, and with Arackniss’s size and coloring nobody even glanced his way as he skirted around a couple of security guards and into the shadows of the back warehouse. He jumped from the floor up into the rafters, running along the metal until he reached the wall, where he hopped down to land on an air duct. He made short work of the screws on the vent, then dipped in, pulling the vent into place behind him.

Usually, air vents weren’t actually something you could navigate buildings in like they did in movies, but sinners tended to plan things as though their own size was normal, and most sinners were an average of four feet taller than Arackniss was himself. Plus… well, he was a fucking spider, he could crawl almost better than he could run.

After that came the most tedious part of any infiltration. He knew the rough layout of the building, but keeping everything in mind while scaling up ventilation shafts was a bitch, and he had to find air vents near enough the floor directories for him to make out what the fuck floor he was even on.

Of course, the Vees kept their personal shit near the top of the building, probably in part because of people like him. The further up he got, the fewer people he heard in the hallways, until the building seemed as cold and deserted as it looked. It was eerie in a way very much unlike the environment he liked to foster; while both were detached and impersonal, this place was worse, because it was so… fake.

The sounds of voices drew his attention, and Arackniss slowed so he made no noise as he finished his approach. He stopped out of line of sight of the vent, not wanting to risk anyone glancing up his way, and stilled himself to listen.

“—what with his little fanclub fucking converging on our lobby and still no official statement from your boytoy, the parasocialites are going to start being a real pain in the arse quite quickly.”

Velvette.

“What do you expect me to do about it?” Vox. “He’s happy enough now that he’s got the little whore functionally incapacitated. He’s never been smart enough to consider long-term consequences.” Arackniss heard them shifting around, but he couldn’t tell what they were doing.

“…you think he’s gonna end up dead, don’t you?”

“…I’ve considered the possibility.” Vox’s voice was neutral in a way that Arackniss could only call ‘politic’, concealing everything under a layer of pragmatism. “When Alastor kills Angel, Val will lose his shit, and he doesn’t stand a chance against the Radio Demon.”

“So why are you doing this?” There was a pause, and when Velvette didn’t get an answer, she continued, “You have to see how fucking insane this is. There’s no way you don’t. It’s unnecessary. If the mark is such a big deal, cut him from his contract. VoxTek made him and we can make someone else just as easily.”

“You wouldn’t understand.” Vox hesitated, and it sounded like he reconsidered whatever he was going to say. “It’s a little late to change tack now.”

“You boys and your fucking dick measuring contests.”

Arackniss smirked a little, but only a little. Vox seemed so positive that Alastor was going to destroy his little brother, but after that evening…

When he found Valentino’s office, it was empty. Carefully, he let himself out, refastening the vent covering and soundlessly dropping to the ground. It smelled terrible, probably residue of the smoke from those cigarettes Valentino was never seen without, but otherwise it seemed like the office of any other sleazelord. Arackniss knew where he would keep copies of soul contracts (if he had any), but from what he had gathered, the porn overlord was a fucking moron.

The desk, then.

It wasn’t even locked, but the interior of the drawers were so disorganized it was almost a built-in security measure all its own. He found a disturbing number of pictures of his brother, as well as several other performers over a spectrum of different gender presentations, loose receipts that probably meant his books were a disaster, pens that probably didn’t work, toys that he did not touch, and a wide variety of odds and ends, most of which didn’t belong in an office desk.

The top middle drawer, usually reserved for writing implements, was full of loose papers… and a false bottom. Arackniss shifted the papers back and slipped his fingers under the latch, carefully lifting it and retrieving two objects: a photograph, and a contract.

The photograph was much different from all of the others he had found. This one was old, gritty and washed out the way photography had been in the late 70s, and the only two people in it were a far less garishly dressed Valentino and Vox back when his head was a far bulkier shape. Neither of them looked particularly well-off, and the photograph was a selfie that Valentino had clearly taken with his longer arms. It must have been before they were overlords, Arackniss thought, because he didn’t actually hear Vox’s name as anything but a sinner pushing television in Hell until the early 80s.

They both looked happy.

Arackniss slipped the photograph back in place and unfolded the contract, fairly certain he knew what it would be, and he was… half right. It was actually two contracts folded up together, both copies of different transactions.

One, his mission target, was signed by Anthony and authorized to Valentino.

The other was signed by Valentino and authorized to the name ‘Vincent’.

Arackniss frowned, staring at it—did someone actually own Valentino’s soul? And was Vincent…?—but this wasn’t his problem right now, and he fucking hoped it never would be. He folded the second contract back up and slipped it into place, just as the door clicked.

“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath, immediately ducking underneath the desk and slipping the drawer closed from below. The door swung open with a violent bang, and Arackniss heard a storm of manic muttering that sounded like it might have been Spanish as black velvet boots stomped over to the desk.

Valentino rounded the desk and stood in front of it, cursing quietly as he opened his desk drawers and began rooting through them in a way that sounded aimless. Arackniss held his breath, listening for any words he could recognize, but Spanish wasn’t as close to Italian as people who spoke neither one believed, and so he was only able to parse enough to determine that Valentino wasn’t feeling angry. Not exactly, anyway. Bitter? Or… maybe petty would be a better word.

“Perfecto,” Valentino muttered as he found whatever he was looking for. “Let’s see the Radio Demon ignore this.”

He sounded triumphant in his pettiness. That was not good. Arackniss didn’t know what kind of man Alastor was, but he didn’t have to in order to recognize that Alastor had a very short leash that had been frayed over what was likely a lifetime of building insanity and neuroses and was currently even more volatile than his past reputation would suggest. The moment Valentino left the office again, Arackniss slipped the contract into his jacket and jumped back up to the vent, opening it and slipping back in.

He just hoped that, if Valentino was intending to antagonize Alastor somehow, he could get to the hotel first.

•••

“Look, you really don’t need to do this, we’ll be fine.”

“It’s okay, really. Please, just stay here for now, until all of this blows over.”

Blitzø sighed, rubbing his forehead, before he looked back at Millie, Moxxie, and Loona. “What do you think?” he asked them, trying very hard to ignore the pleading look Charlie was giving to all of them.

“I actually think it might be a good idea, sir,” Moxxie said. “If the Vees are actually determined to get rid of us, we shouldn’t make it easy for them to find us.”

“It’ll only be for a bit, right?” Millie added. “Me an’ Moxxie’ll take you up on it at least, Princess.”

Loona shifted. “…I don’t want to go back through Pentagram City right now,” she muttered.

Blitzø held up his hand. “Okay. Okay, fine.” He turned back to Charlie. “Guess we’ll be hanging out for a while. Don’t worry, we’ll do our best not to break anything.”

Charlie shook her head. “I’m not worried about that. Besides, uh, you might have noticed… we aren’t exactly bursting at the seams with guests!” Her voice was bright, but Blitzø knew an emotional coverup when he heard one.

“Well, we’re irredeemable, but we’ll do our best to look like a crowd.”

Charlie took them up to the floor where, apparently, everyone had their rooms. She showed Millie and Moxxie to one (“You’ll be right across the hall from Husk, but I’m not positive he ever spends much time in there, so don’t worry about bothering him.”), Loona to a second (“Niffty is right next to you if you need anything, and just ignore— yeah, that noise right there, it’s apparently nothing to worry about!”), and finally, Blitzø to a third. It was nice enough for a fairly standard room, and Blitzø couldn’t help thinking that even unmodified it was almost as big as his and Loona’s apartment. He took a couple of steps in, looking around as he did so.

He could feel Charlie watching him with eager apprehension. “Well?” she asked finally.

Blitzø turned his head, raising an eyebrow at her. “Well?” he repeated back at her.

“What do you think?”

Tilting his head, Blitzø turned to face her, his hand on his cocked hip. “Why do you care so much what we think?”

Charlie looked like she was at a loss for a moment. “…because… I… why wouldn’t I?”

“Because we’re not your target demographic,” Blitzø said, frowning. “Because you’re letting us crash for free. Because we don’t write for some fucking travel magazine or something. Take your pick.”

“Oh.” Charlie shifted uncomfortably. “…well… to tell you the truth, you’re the first people from any other Ring who’s seen the hotel,” she said. “I know news circulated about it, and I know it was…”

She seemed to be struggling with phrasing, so Blitzø supplied, “A laughingstock?”

“…yeah,” Charlie said on a sigh. “And you— I mean, you know, you own a business, and you’re…”

“…the lowest form of Hell society?” Blitzø asked with a sarcastic smile.

Charlie frowned at him. “I didn’t say that, stop finishing my sentences in the rudest way possible.”

Blitzø shrugged at her. “No, you’re right. An imp owning a business of any kind is… weird, I guess. But I figured, fuck it, if my old man could run a circus, I could run a tiny assassination agency.”

She nodded. “Did people tell you it was… a dumb idea?”

“Among other things.” Blitzø tilted his head at her, just a little. “I’m not sure what, exactly, it is you wanna hear out of me.”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said, sounding exasperated with the universe as a whole. “That it… that it’s a nice hotel, I guess. That it’s not a waste of time. That it’s not… stupid.”

Blitzø smirked. “But it is,” he said. Charlie blinked, clearly surprised that he would say that to her face, so he took advantage of her silence to continue. “Of course it’s stupid. You looked at a long-standing murder ritual that the angels clearly fucking love, and decided that the answer was to build a voluntary rehab center for the worst parts of humanity to do the work on their souls that they couldn’t be bothered to do while alive on the off chance that maybe, somehow, that would get them into Heaven.”

Charlie’s shoulders sagged slightly. “It sounds awful when you put it that way.”

“But that’s what it is,” Blitzø countered. “And you knew it was stupid when you first started. I know you did, you’re not an idiot. But you did it anyway. Why?”

“Because…” Charlie threw her hands out. “I don’t know, because it was important to me?”

“Right.” Blitzø smiled at her, just a little, and Charlie lowered her hands to look at him again. “Everybody does stupid shit because the reasons are important to them. You just happened to have the drive to do something huge and stupid for a cause that you don’t even have any proof works. And y’know, good for you, most people would look at this plan of yours, laugh at it, and give it up. But you didn’t, and because you didn’t, you stopped an extermination, which has never happened before.”

Charlie’s expression had been softening as he spoke, and at that, she smiled. “…yeah. Yeah, we did, didn’t we?”

He snorted under his breath, smirking. “So, there you go. So what if it’s stupid. So what if the rest of Hell thinks you’re… I dunno, naive or childish or out of touch for doing it. Why should you give a fuck what they think? Even if redemption isn’t a thing, at least part of your hotel works. You wanted to bring people together, and you did. You wanted to protect people from the extermination, and you did. What the fuck have your naysayers done except bitch about other people’s ideas? Mammon’s never had a single idea that wasn’t utter fucking trash, and he’s had success with almost every single one of them.”

Charlie actually giggled, folding her arms. “I didn’t know you were a motivational speaker.”

“What? Oh, fuck that,” Blitzø said with a laugh. “I’m the absolute picture of demotivation. But you’re pretty okay, comparatively, and I’d rather watch them fume at your success than contribute to your failure because the first one is funnier.”

He didn’t like the way her lip quirked into an amused smirk. “Uh-huh. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you were being nice to me.”

“Stop that,” Blitzø said, pointing at her. “Or I will start being rude to you again.”

She shrugged, clasping her hands behind her back. “I live in a building with the Radio Demon, I’m not worried about you.”

He narrowed his eyes, dropping his hand to hang at his side. “…if I wasn’t pretty sure your girlfriend is faster than me, I’d call you a bitch.” Her laugh was startled and maybe a little scandalized, but it was a laugh. He sighed. “Well, at least you’re getting into the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ groove easily enough.”

“Oi! Blitzø!” a voice called from somewhere else in the hotel. That Cherri Bomb chick, if he wasn’t mistaken. “Get your ass down here!”

Blitzø groaned, letting his head fall backwards “I should ask Millie if this is what being married feels like,” he muttered before waving his hand at Charlie a little as he passed her. “It’s probably the nicest hotel I’ve seen in Hell, and I grew up in Greed. Do with that what you will.”

Charlie didn’t follow immediately, and Blitzø didn’t wait for her, heading back down the hallway and vaulting over the balcony railing down to the ground floor. “You bellowed?” he asked as he approached Cherri Bomb, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Yeah, bitch, I got something for you,” she answered with a sharp grin. It was only then that he realized she wasn’t alone; there was a very small sinner with her, a guy who seemed to be some kinda gray spider-like… something. He was crouching on the arm of the couch, which barely put him at Blitzø’s eye level, and he was giving him a look that was obviously daring him to be sarcastic.

Blitzø immediately had six comments he could make. Five of them were funny and one of them wouldn’t end with him getting shot, so he went with that one, because it was the middle of the night and his reflexes weren’t quite up to ‘avoiding death at the hands of an unknown sinner’ at the moment. “Your contact?” he asked Cherri Bomb.

“Arackniss,” she said. “And this is Blitzø.”

“Here,” the sinner said in lieu of any greeting, offering a folded contract out to Blitzø. “Don’t fuckin’ lose it, just get him outta this and do it fast.”

His accent sounds a lot like— “Ohhh,” Blitzø said as he took the contract, his eyes wide with understanding. “Yeah, I got you.”

Arackniss didn’t ask what his revelation was, and it really looked like he didn’t care. “Is Alastor here?”

Blitzø and Cherri Bomb exchanged looks. “…uh, maybe?” Blitzø asked.

“Don’t look at me,” Cherri Bomb said immediately, holding her hands up. “Bitch made me walk back on my own, I don’t have a clue where he went.”

“Keep an eye on him, as much as you can,” Arackniss said. “That Valentino bastard’s apparently planning something. He ain’t smart, but you don’t gotta be smart to be effective.”

Cherri Bomb sighed. “I’ll tell Niffty—”

“Tell me what?”

The explosive sinner jumped a little. “Shit, Niffty, where did you come from?!”

“Japan,” Niffty said with a wide grin, staring up at Cherri Bomb. “You’ll tell me what?”

“Arackniss here says someone needs to keep an eye on Alastor,” Cherri Bomb said.

Niffty tilted her head, then looked up at where Arackniss was still crouched on the arm of the couch. Her eye went incredibly wide, and Blitzø could have sworn it started glittering. “Ohhhh, you’re a bad boy…!”

Arackniss frowned at her, leaning back just a little. “…the fuck…?”

“Noooo,” Cherri Bomb said, reaching down to take Niffty by the shoulders and start ushering her out of the room. “No bad boys for you tonight. You go keep an eye on Radiohead and make sure he stays put, okay?”

“Okay~” Niffty said in a somewhat dreamy voice, still looking back at Arackniss as she was pushed several feet. She then giggled, scampering off to go find Alastor.

“Right,” Blitzø said. “Before this gets weirder, I’m gonna get going with this. He… might still be awake,” he said to himself, before shrugging. “Welp, he’s about to be.”

He was halfway to the door when he heard a voice. “Blitzø. Hold on.” He stopped and turned just as Vaggie approached him. “I’m coming with you.”

Blitzø frowned at her. “What— why? I can handle this, I’ve been there like a thousand times at this point.”

“You’re still a target for the Vees,” Vaggie said, crossing her arms as she stared down at him. “And, besides, I want to make sure you get there with the contract and get back with the info.”

Blitzø smirked. “What, you don’t trust me?”

“I’d say not as far as I can throw you, but you’re small.” As Blitzø’s expression turned into a frown, it was Vaggie’s turn to smirk. “You don’t get a choice, pendejo. Sorry ‘bout it.”

“Oh, no you are not.” Blitzø glared at her before huffing. “Fine. But I’m doing the talking when we get there.”

“Fine with me. So, you said you’re going to talk to Prince Stolas?”

“Yep,” Blitzø said, turning towards the doors. “This is gonna be awkward. So just remember that you decided to tag along,” he added, heading outside before she could respond.

•••

Normally, Alastor was excruciatingly patient. He almost never slept, he enjoyed watching plans unfold slowly over a long period of time, many of his pastimes were things that couldn’t be done quickly… even in life, Alastor had never really been one to be impatient.

That, he had decided, was one of the effects of having Angel Dust so present in his life now: he had only been back in the hotel for a few hours, and he was already getting agitated at the lack of news from Arackniss. He had fixed his desk and picked up its scattered contents—he certainly was throwing things quite a bit recently! How uncharacteristic of him!—in a matter of half an hour, which had left him with nothing else to do but wait. Normally, he would read, or listen to music, or even go out and eviscerate some unfortunate who decided to aggravate him in one way or another, but all he was doing was just… sitting.

Upon deep reflection of the past few days, Alastor supposed he felt responsible for what had happened. It wasn’t that he believed the Vees were holding Angel hostage now because he had neglected to break the bond; no, he was certain Vox had something else up his precisely starched and pressed little sleeve, and so too was he certain that Angel would be in a similar predicament to his current situation regardless of Alastor’s own actions. But perhaps, had he not left Rosie’s so rashly…

Alastor sighed and rubbed his forehead, his smile straining at the corners. There was little point in dwelling, and he knew that, but he couldn’t help the alien feeling that was broiling up in his gut and gnawing at him with a hot ferocity so unlike the hunger that perpetually clawed at his insides.

Am I feeling guilty?

But that was ludicrous. Alastor had felt regret in his time, certainly, but guilt? No. Guilt implied shame. Guilt implied his actions had been such grievous mistakes that he felt it necessary to assume fault for someone else’s misfortune. Alastor didn’t feel guilt, so why would this be different?

“Do you love him?”

The memory of the question made him twitch. In truth—and this was something he hadn’t wanted to divulge to anyone, let alone Arackniss—he wasn’t at all certain what he felt about Angel Dust. Over the past month, he hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on anything except the fact that they needed to bond, and the fact that he had been granted the opportunity to satisfy a number of intellectual curiosities that, it turned out, hadn’t been wholly unpleasant.

Don’t talk yourself in circles. You liked it.

The thought of touching anyone else still stirred even less than disinterest in him, but Angel’s presence was oddly soothing, in many ways. It was surprising, because Angel himself was so fucking grating when he wanted to be, and while he hadn’t had any interest in repeating their intercourse as yet, he found it pleasant when Angel touched his hand or leaned on his arm.

So what did he feel, when it came to Angel Dust? He liked him, certainly, which had come as quite the surprise. Upon their first meeting, Alastor had written Angel off; a porn star (boring) who worked for VoxTek (irritating) and kept propositioning him (absolutely not) was definitely not his sort of person, he thought, and he had resolved to be cordial and little else. He couldn’t even put his finger on when it was that he started liking the little spider, mostly because he couldn’t remember a time he had ever actually found his attitude that off-putting. Familiar, perhaps, but… well, he couldn’t begin to imagine why.

He found Angel Dust to be more than just likeable, of course. For example, he was infinitely aggravating: while he did understand a firm ‘no’ when he heard one, anything less than that seemed to be more of a challenge than an instruction or a warning to be heeded. He was also supremely confounding, and Alastor still couldn’t understand why Angel did half of the things that he did. He didn’t think Angel understood why he did them.

Alastor wasn’t a stranger to impulse, of course, and he had been known to act rashly at times. Angel, however, seemed predisposed to simply follow whatever whim made its way into his fluffy little head, which made him unpredictable and entirely illogical. He had never met anyone who answered the question ‘why are you doing that’ with ‘I dunno’ with such frequency, and never seemed bothered that he rarely knew why he did the things he did. Even Niffty tended to give a reason, even if that reason was out of left field.

But all of that just made Alastor wonder why he had even bothered. Normally, someone frustrating and confounding would be someone he would strive to avoid whenever possible, but Angel… Alastor laughed under his breath, putting his face in one hand. His first thought had been the mark again, but that didn’t explain why he had been speaking to Angel with increased frequency for several weeks before the damn kitchen incident. The mark, completely dormant at the time, had no hand in that, and Alastor wouldn’t allow fate to be the reason for his change of perspective.

No. That had been his own doing… and, in all likelihood, Angel Dust’s. What the spider had done, Alastor couldn’t begin to guess, but he did know that it wasn’t intentional. If it was, it never would have worked.

A soft tap against the glass of his only window startled him, and Alastor got to his feet, crossing to it and unlocking it. He wasn’t sure if he expected Arackniss or not, but when he opened it, there was no one there, simply a cassette lying on his windowsill. Raising an eyebrow, Alastor delicately lifted it between two claws, turning it back and forth curiously; it was unlabeled, but it didn’t appear to be… cursed, or anything of the sort. Just an audio cassette.

Shutting his window again, Alastor went to his desk and conjured up a cassette player, which landed on the wood with a hollow plastic clatter. Magnetic tape wasn’t the worst evolution in audio technology, he supposed, and it was absolutely easier to record on than wax cylinders, so it certainly had its place in the oeuvre of music as a whole.

Alastor slipped the cassette into the player and snapped it shut. It was already rewound, so he hit play, thumbing the volume control as it started up.

“Alright, baby, now come show me how much you missed me.”

Instantly, Alastor’s lip curled in distaste. Valentino? Why the fuck did he have a cassette recording of Valentino? He had half a mind to stop it immediately, but the next voice stilled him.

“Anythin’ for you, Daddy.”

“Angel,” Alastor muttered, his eyes now locked on the player in his hand. He could hear sounds that he wasn’t able to parse, shifting fabric and soft thumps, but it was followed by a sound he was growing to know alarmingly well: the wet, soft noise that two pairs of lips made when they met and then separated.

“You’ve been a very bad boy, Angel,” Valentino purred.

“I’m sorry, Daddy. I wanna be a good boy. I’ll do anythin’ to make it up to you.”

“Anything?”

“Anythin’ at all.”

Alastor clenched his fist around the player as he heard sounds that he knew from the films of Angel’s he had seen, wet smacking and open-mouthed exhaling and the occasional choked gag, all underscored by Valentino’s satisfied, low groaning. Alastor hesitated, then pressed fast forward. When he hit play again, he heard the repetitive smack of skin colliding with skin, the occasional shift of furniture against a tile floor, and Angel’s voice, panting and crying out in that horrifically fake performance voice that sounded nothing, nothing, like Angel did when he was actually enjoying himself.

“Oh, fuck, yeah, Val, come on, Daddy, do it, harder, please Val, god, please, fuck m—!”

The cassette player cut off with a high screech as Alastor crushed it in his fist, and the tape along with it. The plastic and metal mechanisms fell to the floor, where they began smoldering, then burst into flickering green flame.

Perhaps he was overdue for a little bout of rash behavior.

•••

“Make me a drink.”

“You’re pleasant today.”

“Fuck you,” Cherri said, turning away on the bar stool and looking out over the lobby. She could practically hear Husk roll his eyes behind her, but the clatter of bottles and ice followed as he obliged her demand anyway. Cherri bit down on the side of her tongue, resisting the urge to turn around.

“How long d’you think it’ll take?” Husk asked.

Cherri couldn’t tell if he was actually interested. “Blitzø?” she asked. “Who fuckin’ knows. I don’t know anything about the Goetia or how long they take to do anything.”

“Can’t believe we’re dragging Hellborn nobility into this.”

“Hmn.” Husk set a glass down at her elbow, and Cherri turned just enough to see that he had his hand over it, preventing her from taking it. She narrowed her eye and turned further, glaring at him. “What?”

“Everyone is already on edge,” Husk said. “You don’t have to make things worse.”

“Oh, fuck off, Husk,” Cherri snapped, turning around fully and slamming one fist on the bar top. He didn’t even flinch. “You were the one who called me six fucking times in a half hour to get dirt on Angie months after basically telling me you never wanted to see me again.”

Husk’s expression shifted, just a little. “That wasn’t what I said.”

“It was clearly what you meant.”

He narrowed his own eyes at her. “Don’t tell me what my own goddamn words meant, Cherri. You’re not a mind reader. And you were the one who decided to leave the hotel.”

“You expected me to stay after that?” Cherri asked, incredulous. “After we— after it was— you were the one who said to act like it didn’t happen!”

Husk actually rolled his eyes. “Not this shit again,” he muttered.

Cherri tapped the countertop. “You brought it up, buddy,” she said. “You said that you wanted to just ignore it. You said you didn’t want it. You said you had absolutely zero interest in me and you never would.”

“Do you have to be so fucking unreasonable about everything?” Husk asked. “You were the one who was furious when it happened. And then you were furious when it didn’t lead to anything. Is there anything in this goddamn miserable existence that doesn’t make you mad?”

“You didn’t!” Cherri said, gesturing at him. “At least, not until you became such an asshole about… it! I can handle rejection and I don’t give a shit about soul marks or what the fuck ever, but there’s a big difference between you not being interested and you acting like I’m beneath you!”

Husk blinked. “…what?”

“I get it, I’m not good enough for you,” Cherri snapped. “You made that very clear. But you don’t get to dictate how I react.”

“…the fuck are you talking about?” Husk asked, his eyes narrowing again. “You didn’t want to be, what was the phrase, stuck with a drunken, washed-up, failed children’s entertainer?”

“You called me a bitch!”

“You are a bitch!”

“You’re a bitch!”

“Um…”

Cherri realized that she was on her feet, and both she and Husk were leaning forward on the bar top as they shouted at each other (or as close to shouting as Husk ever got). They both snapped their heads to the side and saw Niffty looking up at them, blinking her single wide and curious eye.

Cherri threw herself back onto her stool with a huff while Husk turned away. “What is it, Niff?” he asked, his voice infuriatingly controlled again.

“It, um. Cherri told me to look after Alastor.”

Cherri frowned at her. “Yeah. So why are you here?”

Niffty gestured helplessly. “Well… I can’t,” she said. “Alastor’s gone.”

•••