#YES fuck me in the haunted house trap room
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i would just like to say alla, you have me in an absolute CHOKEHOLD w scare!actor levi i really can't. your latest update on your fic is just UGH. imma read it in its entirety sometime tmrw but i skimmed through it and the dialogue you write for levi in it is so hot i might pass out T.T
CHA, THANK YOU SM 😭
Scare Actor Levi has become my conduit for all of my perverse hornee spooky thots. He has quite a mouth on him. 🥲
Just let this man have nothing but fun and mischief in another universe, I beg.
I hope you got the chance to finish it because, listen, the thought of him making you fuck his chainsaw like a sybian in a haunted house…
Someone take my keyboard away from me goodbye 💀
Thank you so much for reading & loving my fic! This made my damn day & I adore you 🥹
* * *
Read Paranormal Activity | Levi Ackerman x You Here: Part I | Part II
Summary: Your Scare Actor boyfriend Levi has a taste for the macabre that competes with every aspect of you, his pretty girl.
#levi ackerman#scareactor!levi#fics by alla#listen I’d let him roleplay me to pieces#like YES chase me with a chainsaw#YES fuck me in the haunted house trap room#BYE 💀#THANK YOU CHA#paranormal activity#levi#Halloween#haunted house#levi ackermann x reader#levi ackerman x you#levi smut#not sfw#levi x you#levi x reader#levi x you smut#levi x reader smut
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Don't mind tho, just watched that skz code when they have to solve puzzles in a haunted school, and during hyunjin's turn to go alone, both han and minho go there to scare him . and i've been recently on my dark hours..
so my mind came up with a scenario where MC is in a haunted house with her friends, she's not a scary cat...unless she's alone there. that's when she's the most vulnerable.and minsung have the wonderful idea to put on some masks and play a game of cat-and-mouse with her inside the house, purposedly getting her lost and far from the group. they corner her in empty rooms, sneak behind her, come out of dark corners, but their favourite is definitely making her run while they chase her and she can't see them
the chase, her fear, the adrenaline of it, they enjoy it more than they should, making them consider if they perhaps have a predator kink they didn't know about.
i leave the rest up to you, my friend~
Oh Baby, How You Haunt Me So...
They feel alive when they see her cowered in the corner of the empty room, the sound effects of the haunted house drowning out the noise in the background.
Once they are satisfied that they have her trapped, they remove their masks to show off their predatory glares, eyes drinking in her body in pure carnal hunger.
You are surprised it's them, but you can't shake the feeling of self-preservation with those expressions they directed at you. "M-Minho? Jisung? Wha--"
"No." Minho cut you off. They both slowly narrowed in on you and you suddenly felt extremely small.
"Look how scared she is, poor baby." Jisung cooed condescendingly.
"What do you think we should do with her, jagi?" Minho said to his boyfriend, speaking as if you weren't even there.
Jisung grinned from ear to ear in a frightening display of pure threat. "What shouldn't we do with her?" He said with a voice an octave lower than usual and your core stirred.
"I-" You couldn't even get two words out before Jisung pulled you forward and was attacking your mouth viciously. You felt Minho circle around the back of you and immediately slipped his hand up your shirt and bra to roughly grope your breast while sloppily kissing and biting your neck.
You felt your panties quickly becoming useless as they soaked up your juices. You arched your back and wrapped your arms around Jisung before he began vehemently clawing your jeans off of you and throwing them in the corner. "Fuck, hyung, she's so fucking wet..." Jisung growled against your lips as he rubbed your clit over your soiled underwear.
You suddenly felt a hand between your legs from behind you and felt another finger rubbing your panties just over your entrance. You whined at the combined feeling and Minho twisted your nipple hard. "Be quiet or we will stuff your pretty throat." Minho hissed against your ear.
That was when they simultaneously slipped your panties to the side and ran their fingers through your folds, Jisung instantly going at your clit rapidly as Minho plunged two fingers in and began pumping in you. "Fuck yes!" You gasped and threw your head back at the delectable feeling.
You abruptly felt yourself being knocked to your knees as Jisung quickly pulled his rock-hard cock out of his pants and sat on the ground in front of you. You felt a hard body press against your backside and grab your jaw. "You were warned." Minho said as he turned your head to messily kiss you and then pushed you down to have Jisung gain purchase of your head.
"I have other uses for that mouth, darling." Jisung growled with a cocky grin. That was when you were being pulled down to wrap your lips around his fat cock.
When you started bobbing your head, you whined when you felt Minho rub the head of his throbbing dick through your folds before slamming himself against your cervix, causing you to gag on his cock.
While you were being pounded from behind and your head being forced to swallow dick, you had a thought.
This was NOT what I expected out of this haunted house but... you couldn't necessarily complain...
My bitches:
@lyramundana
@channieandhisgoonsquad
@sweetracha
@moonlightndaydreams
@noellllslut
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take care - chapter 1
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2
Pairing: Joel Miller/Reader
Rating: Explicit (18+, MDNI)
Word Count: 6,684
Read on AO3
Summary:
“Sorry.”
You tilt your head. “For what?”
He follows behind you, shutting the door with a soft click. You turn to face him, the small hallway pressing the two of you closer together.
“For not gettin’ there faster,” he grunts, not meeting your eyes. “For you havin’ to get up to take care of her.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. You know, it’s okay to let someone else take care of things once in a while,” you reply.
He regards you with that intense stare of his, the one that makes you want to confess that sometimes, when you lie awake at night unable to sleep, your hand slips beneath the waist of your shorts to thoughts of him. You press your lips together.
“Maybe…maybe you need to have someone take care of you,” you say.
Additional tags: explicit sexual content, p in v, cunnilingus, blow job, dirty talk, mild angst
A shrill scream breaks through your subconscious. Your eyes snap open and you’re out of the bed before your brain even comes fully online, rushing across the hall to Ellie’s room.
She’s thrashing in bed, eyes squeezed shut and fists flying, legs trapped in the faded floral top sheet. She lets out another gut wrenching wail that spurs you back into action.
You gently grasp her face in your hands as you start firmly saying, “Ellie, sweetheart, it’s me, I’m here. It’s a dream. Wake up.”
It takes a few repetitions, but her eyes eventually snap open and she goes limp once she realizes it’s you, and not whatever haunts her memories.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispers as she buries her head against your stomach.
“No, you don’t gotta be sorry, honey. It’s okay,” you whisper back. You run your fingers through her sweat damp hair, pushing it off her forehead.
You’ve known Joel and Ellie for three weeks, since they’d stumbled upon your cabin in the woods after escaping Silver Lake and that fucking creep of a leader. You’re pretty certain he’s only stayed for so long because you get along with Ellie like a house on fire and he likes seeing her smile.
You and Joel take turns hunting or heading into the ghost town to find rations. Ellie does a pretty good job setting small game traps now, and she’s been a big help with your garden.
Most of the time, Joel pretends you’re not there. Sometimes, when Ellie says something crazy, he’ll give you a look, like a disapproving father who needs the only other adult on his side, even as you’re trying your best not to laugh and encourage her.
Ellie’s breathing evens out as she falls back asleep. When you lift your head, Joel is standing in the doorway, chest heaving with deep breaths.
He steps in the room, eyes trained on Ellie. “She okay?”
“Yeah. Poor thing had another nightmare,” you tell him. You shift slowly, carefully, moving the girl back to her pillow and lifting the sheet back over her.
“Sorry.”
You tilt your head. “For what?”
He follows behind you, shutting the door with a soft click. You turn to face him, the small hallway pressing the two of you closer together.
“For not gettin’ there faster,” he grunts, not meeting your eyes. “For you havin’ to get up to take care of her.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. You know, it’s okay to let someone else take care of things once in a while,” you reply.
He regards you with that intense stare of his, the one that makes you want to confess that sometimes, when you lie awake at night unable to sleep, your hand slips beneath the waist of your shorts to thoughts of him. You press your lips together.
“Maybe…maybe you need to have someone take care of you,” you say. Oh, god damnit. The impulsive thoughts won. You feel your cheeks burn up from the implication of your words and his eyebrows draw together.
“That’s not a good—“
“Forget it. Forget I said anything. I’m just…gonna go get the coffee started. Yes.” You inch your way past his broad body, shoulder brushing his as you make your escape. “I’ll leave some for you!”
One of the reasons you’ve stayed in the house for so long, instead of venturing out to find other people, is the field of solar panels. They allow you the luxury of using an actual coffee maker instead of the packets of instant bullshit that taste like mud. You set the machine up, watching it slowly drip and brew like it will hold all the answers to your problems.
Ellie pads into the kitchen shortly after the pot fills. She looks at you sheepishly.
“Sorry for waking you up earlier,” she mutters.
“You and Joel have both gotta stop saying sorry for every little thing.” You hand her a half full cup that she dumps a spoonful of sugar into from the cellar on the table. “Don’t let him see you drinking that or he’s gonna complain about me wasting the good caffeine on your youth.”
She laughs and gives you a little salute before heading back to her room. You put your own coffee in a travel cup and go to get dressed so you can check the game traps and feed Millie and Champ, your two horses.
Joel’s nowhere to be found when you head back to the kitchen, dressed in your cold weather gear. The coffee pot is suspiciously less full than it had been when you left, though.
Great. You’ve made it weird.
You grab the coffee thermos and your rifle before heading out into the woods surrounding the farmhouse.
At least you can keep yourself useful and busy.
——
Joel lays in bed, staring up at the yellowing ceiling as his brain plays an endless loop of your words.
Maybe you need to have someone take care of you.
His immediate reaction was to shut it down. No, he doesn’t need anyone to take care of him. He’s been on his own this long, and will continue to be long after he delivers Ellie to the Fireflies.
But the longer he thinks about it, the more his resolve crumbles. The seed of uncertainty has been growing roots in his brain ever since that little girl risked her life to save his. And when he found her covered in blood and screaming into the cold winter air after what David had tried to do to her, he started to wonder whether he was willing to give her up. He’d failed one daughter already - he doesn’t know if he’ll recover from failing another.
He scrubs a hand over his face. Then there’s you. Another root digging into his brain. When they’d come across your cabin, thinking it was abandoned and wanting to rest for a bit, he wasn’t prepared to have a beautiful woman point a gun at his head when he came through the door. But you’d quickly dropped the weapon seeing the state he and Ellie had been in. You’d offered your home to them - hot showers, clean clothes, warm food, and surprisingly easy companionship that’s making the choice to leave harder with each passing day.
And now…now you’re offering something Joel hasn’t even thought of in years. Beyond some quick work with his hand when the urge is too strong to ignore, Joel hasn’t known that kind of release in…a long time.
Would it be so bad to do something with only himself in mind?
After a few hours of him wallowing with his inner turmoil, he hears the front door bangs shut. He listens as you stomp the snow off your boots before the heavy booted footfalls are replaced with soft socked ones. He can hear Ellie talking to you, followed by a chorus of giggles that makes his chest tighten.
When he enters the kitchen, he sees you standing at the counter, skinning a rabbit with surprising efficiency. Ellie is watching, eyes wide like she can’t look away. You set the hide in a parchment lined bowl to be dealt with later before narrating how to cut the meat from the bones.
“That’s fucking disgusting,” Ellie comments, nose wrinkled.
“Might be, but do you want stew or not?” You huff out, faux annoyance lacing your tone. “Chop the potatoes, then, weakling.”
“Was it from one of my traps?” Ellie asks you as she pulls out another cutting board and grabs the potatoes from their box.
“Sure was, kid. You’re keeping me well fed.”
Ellie’s lips quirk in the tiniest smile, the flicker of pride in her eyes making Joel’s heart squeeze in his chest.
He chooses that moment to make his presence known, entering the kitchen with heavy steps. You look over your shoulder and flash a tentative smile at him before going back to prepping the rabbit.
“Where the hell’ve you been?” Ellie asks. Joel reaches out and tugs on her ponytail.
“Around,” he replies. “You need any help?”
“Grab some stock and onions from the basement? And hand Ellie some of the tomatoes and celery to dice,” you instruct.
He grabs the required items from the basement and places two ripe tomatoes and two onions on the cutting board in front of Ellie. He also finds the big stock pot from your cupboard and sets it on a burner and turns it on a medium flame for you.
“Thanks,” you murmur, both hands full of bloody rabbit chunks that you toss in the pot. Once they’ve browned a bit on the heat, you motion to Ellie to dump the vegetables into the pot.
Joel watches as you explain the steps to Ellie, enjoying the calm of your voice as you speak. When you look up for a moment and catch his eye, he doesn’t break the contact. Instead, he watches as your cheeks turn a pretty shade of pink before you duck your head back down.
Fuck.
——
“What do you call a factory that makes okay products?” Ellie asks.
“Christ, not this again,” Joel grumbles around a mouthful of rabbit stew.
“What?” You ask, paying him no mind.
“A satisfactory,” Ellie says.
You press your lips together, fighting back the giggle bubbling up. “That…that was awful.”
“You’re literally trying not to laugh!”
“No, I’m not!”
“Yes, you are!”
You throw a napkin at her head and she ducks. Joel is giving you that disapproving father face of his, but at thirty years old, you let it bounce off of you.
Besides, he’s not fooling anyone. The corners of his eyes crinkle as he wrestles his own smile into submission.
“Can we play one of those board games tonight?” Ellie asks.
“Which one? I’m not doing Monopoly again. You’re a sore loser.”
She sticks her tongue out. “Fine. I’ll go pick.” She abandons her empty bowl at the table to go raid your stash of board games in the living room.
Avoiding Joel’s gaze, you grab both bowls and bring them to the sink. As you start to rinse them, you feel the older man step beside you, his shoulder brushing yours.
“I got it,” he says, gently pulling a bowl from your hands. “So…,” he starts, clearing his throat.
“So?” You reply, peeking at him from the corner of your eye.
“Is that…offer…still available?” He’s staunchly refusing to meet your questioning look.
“Offer? What offer?” He raises his eyebrows at you. It takes the gears in your head a second of turning before your eyes go wide, the spoon you’d been washing slipping from your fingers and clattering against the steel sink, but you finally catch on. “Oh! Oh, that…uh…that offer. Right. Yes?”
“That sounds like a question. I need you to be certain.”
You straighten your shoulders before turning to face him, meeting his surprisingly heated stare. “Yes.”
“Good. That’s…good,” he mutters. “Tonight? After Ellie goes to bed?”
“Sure, yeah,” you whisper. He’s pressed closer to you, his chest grazing against your breasts when he takes a deep inhale. His tongue swipes across his bottom lip and your eyes track the motion, glued to his mouth. “Tonight works.”
He shuts the water off, stepping back to set the bowl in the dish rack and reaching for the hand towel on the stove. Ellie runs back into the kitchen, holding the faded Sorry! game box.
“Alright, losers, let’s go,” she says before flopping gracelessly into her chair at the table. “I’ve got a good feeling about this one.”
You risk one more glance at Joel, who seems to have moved on from the moment you’d shared. He sits beside Ellie and helps her set up the game.
“I call red,” you announce as you take your seat across from them.
Joel wordlessly slides the red game piece to you, fingers brushing against yours in the exchange. Just that little touch lights your nerves up, makes you press your thighs together a little tighter. Joel must notice, because his lips tip up in a little smirk before he schools his features back to stoic and grumpy when Ellie gives him the green piece.
“Let’s get this over with,” he mutters.
——
After five games of Sorry!, three of which you lost, Ellie finally announces she’s calling it a night. She’s been yawning through the last game, so it was only a matter of time, but she wanted to beat Joel just one more time.
“‘Night,” she says as she heads back to what you now consider her room, leaving you and Joel at the table. You stand, picking up the discarded game pieces and cards and putting them away neatly in the box.
Joel stands wordlessly, leaving your line of sight and you think maybe he changed his mind.
Large, warm hands circle your hips, pulling you back against a broad chest covered in worn flannel. His fingers slip beneath the hem of your thermal shirt, calluses dragging on the soft, sensitive skin just below the waist of your jeans.
You tip your head back against his shoulder to look up at him. One of those devilish hands slides up the front of your body until his palm presses to your throat, angling your chin so that he can press his lips to yours.
It’s your first kiss in who knows how long, and you hadn’t realized how much you missed this kind of connection with a person. His lips are a little chapped, but surprisingly gentle considering how aggressively this man lives his life. You twist around in his grip until you’re facing him, looping your arms around his neck and pressing your body tighter to his.
His tongue traces your bottom lip and you open to him with a groan. Like the noise breaks some sort of spell, he pulls back.
“Have to be quiet,” he whispers. “Can you do that for me?”
You nod your head and he rewards you with another kiss, this one rougher, more demanding. He wraps his fist in your hair, tugging your head back to change the angle to his liking. Your fingers play with the hair at the nape of his neck and this time, it's him that groans into your kiss.
“Have to be quiet,” you whisper, voice teasing. His eyes narrow, another smirk playing at the corner of his lips. You like this look on him - hair disheveled, lips kiss swollen, eyes glinting mischievously in the low light of the kitchen.
He moves suddenly, crouching slightly and wrapping his hands around the backs of your thighs before lifting you up from the ground. You let out a surprised squeak, your fingers digging into his shoulders and legs wrapping around his waist as he carries you out of the kitchen.
You can’t help the laugh that escapes you, and Joel shushes you with a bright smile you’ve not seen yet on the man. Your laugh tapers into a quiet giggle as he shoulders open the door to the guest room he’s been sleeping in, on the opposite side of the house from your master bedroom and Ellie’s room. Once inside, he turns to press you against the door, using one hand to keep you suspended while the other flips the lock.
“Don’t wanna scar that nosey kid more than I already have,” he says before kissing down your neck, beard scratching against your sensitive skin. You let out a quiet whimper as he bites your shoulder, your hips snapping against his. You can feel the hard length of him through his jeans and that quiet desperation that you’ve been feeling for the older man continues to boil in your veins.
You drop your legs from his waist, standing on the tips of your toes as his hand refuses to relinquish its grip on your ass. You push at his chest and he steps back only enough to allow you room to stand on your own two feet.
You wiggle both your hands between your bodies as he continues to press kisses to your neck, your jaw, behind your ear. Locating his belt, you unbuckle it quickly, tugging it through the loops and tossing it away like it offends you.
Joel distracts you for a moment by gripping your face in his palms, kissing you like you’re the air he needs to breathe. You quickly return to your task, tugging open the fly of his jeans and reaching your hand in to palm his cock through his boxers.
“Shit,” he hisses. His head drops back, eyes shutting as you work your hand in the limited space.
It’s not nearly enough.
You drop to your knees, working his pants down until his cock bobs free, thick and long with a bead of precum already pooled at the tip. You grip him at the base, leaning forward to let your tongue swipe across the head and collect the small essence of him.
A rough groan leaves him as you guide him into your mouth. He cuts it short, sticking a knuckle between his teeth to stem his noises. His other hand rests against the back of your head, not pressing, but like he needs to touch you, needs to feel you.
His hips snap forward unexpectedly when you grasp his balls in your hand, making you gag slightly. You can feel the burn of tears at the corner of your eyes as you look up at him. His eyes are wide, laser focused on where his dick slides between your lips and into the tight, wet heat of your mouth.
Without warning, he pulls completely free of you, a hand wrapping around your upper arm and tugging you to stand. He rips your shirt over your head before ridding you of your jeans and panties before you even realize what’s happening.
“What–”
“On the bed. Now,” he grunts, pushing you gently toward the mattress. You sit on the edge of it, naked as the day you were born, eyebrows drawn in confusion.
Joel removes the rest of his clothes before standing before you. “Spread your legs,” he commands.
You move to obey, but must not be fast enough for his liking since he presses his palms to the inside of your knees and wrenches your thighs apart before dropping to his knees.
“Wait, wait,” you say. He stops, looking up at you. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you .”
“Trust me, baby, getting the chance to eat this pussy is taking care of me. Now lay back and shut up.”
You shut your mouth but you don’t lay back, propping yourself up on your elbows to watch as he presses kisses to the inside of your thighs. You’ll be damned if you’re going to miss committing even a second of this to memory.
His tongue swipes through your folds before lavishing broad circles over your sensitive clit. He hums, the vibrations adding to the onslaught of sensation against a part of you that’s gone without attention for so long.
“ Joel, ” you whisper, trying to keep your voice low. He looks up at you from between your thighs and your head drops back on a moan you were meant to be holding back.
“Remember what we said about being quiet,” he rasps, pulling away from you to run his fingers through the slick pooling at your entrance before sliding one, then two inside in quick succession. “You’re so goddamn tight.”
“Been a while,” you huff, voice breathy. Your hips chase his fingers on every withdrawal and when his mouth returns to your clit, your back arches from the bed.
“Gonna cum,” you warn. His pace doesn’t falter as he works you over until your tummy tightens almost painfully. With a slight graze of his teeth, your release washes over you, your muscles tightening around his fingers, your thighs pressing against his broad shoulders.
He stands, beard glistening from his attention, and he slips an arm beneath your back, using it to haul you further up the bed.
“You want this?” He asks, tugging at his still hard cock. You nod, spreading your legs for him once more as he positions himself between your thighs. “Then be a good girl and take it.”
He slides the head over your clit, making you shiver, before slowly pressing inside. His eyes stay trained on your face, watching your expressions as you envelope his cock.
When he bottoms out, he shifts forward so that his elbows rest on the mattress beside your head. Your fingers claw between his shoulder blades as you flutter around him, adjusting to the sensation of being so full.
“You okay?” Joel asks, voice strained. You nod, shifting your hips and making both you groan. He drops his head to your shoulder. “Don’t be movin’ like that if you want this to last.”
You do it again, and this time Joel takes matters into his own hands, pulling back before snapping his hips forward, punching the air from your lungs.
He sets a pace that should hurt, that should feel brutal, but it just feels so damn good . The weight of him surrounding you, the pressure of his hips against yours, the breath you share as he kisses you again, biting into your lower lip to stave off his own moan.
He pulls out, grabbing your hips and twisting until you’re on your stomach. He hitches your ass higher and lands a smack to one cheek for good measure before sliding back inside you. You bite down on the pillow beneath you, letting your noises out into the stuffing.
Joel slams into you again and again and again, like all that pent up frustration you’re sure he bottles up tightly has finally boiled over. He leans over your body, the angle going impossibly deeper, and slips his hand over yours, folding his fingers into the spaces made, what feels like, just for him.
He doesn’t say anything else. All you hear from him at the little groans and grunts that you’re certain would be an amazing experience at full volume. But what he can’t say with words, he does with his touch.
The trail of a hand down your spine, the flex of his fingers between yours, the press of his lips to your shoulder as he chases his release and sends you hurtling towards another.
With a cry into the pillow, you cum around him, muscles trying to stop him from ever leaving your body again. But with a few more thrusts, Joel pulls out, cum landing across your back and ass.
You flop down flat on your belly, body spent and brain offline from the two delicious orgasms. You hear him move about the room, the sound of clothes rustling and open and shut of the door reaching your ears as you lay there boneless. He returns a moment later and runs a wet washcloth over your back and between your thighs, cleaning you of any evidence of his enjoyment.
He shifts you around the mattress until he can tug the covers over your naked body. To your surprise, he climbs in beside you, an arm wrapping around your waist and tugging you toward him.
Joel Miller is a cuddler. Who would have thought?
“Thank you,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head as you slowly sink into sleep.
____
“Wake up, kid,” Joel says, shaking Ellie’s shoulder. “We gotta go.”
Ellie mumbles something in her sleep. With a roll of his eyes, he tugs the blankets off of her, causing her to roll onto the floor with a thud and a surprised yelp.
“You asshole,” she snaps. “What’s the big rush? Why are we leaving now?”
“Because I said so. Now, come on.”
Blessedly, she listens. She gathers her backpack and tugs on her jacket and shoes before trailing out after him into the dark morning.
At the back of the property, Joel directs them to the all black horse named Champ that he’s already saddled.
“We’re stealing her horse? Isn’t that a bit low, even for you?” Ellie asks.
Joel ignores her, swinging himself up and situating himself. She’s right. It is low.
But he knows that if he stays, he may never want to leave.
And he’s got a job to finish.
#joel miller#joel x reader#joel miller x reader#tlou fic#Joel Miller x reader fic#joel miller smut#no use of y/n#joel x female reader#joel miller x female reader#hbo tlou#joel is daddy#Joel is a cuddler and i will die on that hill
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ffxiv fic ideas that ping around my brain:
pre-shb thancred teaches ryne how to trap and skin a rabbit. and it's half about illustrating them living on the run & thancred teaching her survival skills. and half about the symbolism of it all. and ryne looking at the rabbit. this tug between "yes thancred interacting with me and teaching me, awesome i love positive attention" + "i love living out in the world and being Free" and... the rabbit, hungry and naive, baited into the trap. and thancred looking at ryne and trying to decide whether to have her be the one to kill it. or for him to kill this poor creature who just wanted to live, who he needs to die, in front of her. and they clean it, cook it, eat it, but when they go to sleep ryne can't get its shivering form and big glassy eyes out of her head. (will that be me?) [babybirch_joannanewsom.mp3]
pre-shb urianger taking care of ryne for a month while thancred splits off to throw off a eulmoran tail. urianger and ryne hanging out and having an alright time. half about their relationship (the sweetness, but also the tough spots - urianger's role in ryne's existence (he is guilty about it, while he's the most normal adult in her life so her brain is incapable of being mad at him about it (or is it), ryne's mixed feelings about how thancred is always happier and relaxed and nicer when they're at the shelves (yay he's happy! vs i wish i got that all the time, i wish he thought me worth his best self) (in general there's a lot about the ghost of thancred in the room); half about them exploring the ruins of the bookman's shelves (i firmly believe there are underground cellars), its neighbors, and voeburt in general.
urianger childhood lore. i had some headcanons about him being raised by an old, frail, distant grandmother which got squished a little by ee3 but the new lore is in line with my hc that urianger was neglected as a child and tbh im delighted for confirmation. some stuff about the augerelt family in general. their house (smaller than many in journey's end) having rumors of being haunted. moenbryda. autism.
urianger, moenbryda, thancred, and y'shtola (plus yda?) as teens in old sharlayan, for whatever overlaps they had in the city as youths. i strongly believe that thancred & moenbryda were closer than thancred & urianger were as teens. i also think there's something with y'shtola being forced to leave the colony (and also being raised by y'shtola) and away from matoya and thancred's teenage years spent in Spy School (where they melt your brain) that could result in two really temperamental, angry, resentful teens. louisoix delegating moenbryda to try to be a good friend (good influence) to them, urianger getting taken along for the ride
thancred teaching ryne how to swim.
there's more. maybe i'll add to this. who knows. if you get inspired by any of these please write to your heart's desire
epistolary/fake media fic. the one i wrote for ds9 is still my fave thing ive written ever. i'd love to write some scion paperwork
lucia and maxima hanging out and talking about growing up gay in fascist conservative garlemald, the revelations about emperor solus, their work in current garlemald, and their opinions on gaius (lucia does not like him over the livia situation, while maxima has always considered him a moderate conservative that he doesn't like but now there's also some strangeness from when they were in the burn in stb patches) (generally 'i dont like him but i dont hate him as much as i used to bc its complicated and hes become emotionally pathetic'). fic would end with them going "fucking nero tol scaeva though, right?" "OH my GOD."
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Dead (pt.3)
𝔴𝔞𝔯𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰 - death, gore, fear, crying, swearing, kinda long, I think that’s it
Y/n’s POV:
“Nick stoooppp” I giggle, shoving his shoulder lightly.
We both lay in his bed, cracking jokes and teasing each other about random shit. He’s never failed to make me smile or cheer me up. He is my home, my safe space and lll love him unconditionally forever. Forever?
The walls of his room start closing in, trapping me, suffocating me. Glancing back at Nick I gasp, watching as his head detaches from his body, rolling off of the bed hitting the floor with a loud thud.
“Nick!” I shout, waking up in a cold sweat. Matt is quick to comfort me, pulling me in with his tattooed arm while the other soothingly cards through my hair.
“It’s ok baby I’m here” he sniffles, obvious that he’s been crying.
“Can’t sleep?” I question, taking deep breaths as an attempt to pull myself together.
“Mhm” he hums in response, burying his face in my hair.
“Want me to make you something to eat?” I ask, already moving out of his arms, pushing myself off of the bed.
“Yes please.”
I sigh sadly seeing the dark circles under his eyes through the dim lighting. It’s been extremely hard for me and I’m not even related to Nick, so I can’t even imagine what it’s like for his family.
It’s been almost a week since, well… you know, and things just haven’t been the same. Matt and I sleep with dim lights on, terrified of the image that’s been burned into our brains to be seen in the dark. There’s been many sleepless nights and when anyone does end up falling asleep, the nightmares that haunt us feel as though they’ll never end.
After being questioned by the police we immediately went back to the triplets (Boston) home, unfortunately having to break the news to their parents. And we’ve been here since.
No one wants to leave the house in fear they’ll be the next.
I pad down the hallway with Matt on my heels, pausing in front of Nicks door. A gloom has fallen over this once happy room, the only occupant being Trevor whining at the bottom of Nicks bed.
Trevor knows something is wrong, off, but doesn’t know he’ll never see Nick again. No one will.
***time skip***
Matt’s POV:
Mom and dad left for the grocery store 10 minutes ago and my anxiety is running wild. I’m in a constant state of fear, terrified that someone else I love will die.
Y/n is currently curled up on my lap, head in the crook of my neck while she traces my tattoos. God I love her.
Chris is sitting directly next to me while Nate is upstairs taking a bath. This house hasn’t been the same since Nick died. It’s so empty; cold.
The silence in the room is deafening but short lived, as a crash echos through the upper floor. The three of us exchange wide-eyed glances, Chris immediately sprinting up the stairs shortly followed by y/n and I.
All three of us stop in our tracks, seeing a masked figure hunched over the bathtub with a knife.
Well fuck.
The person snaps it’s head towards us as Chris slams the bathroom door shut, all of us sprinting in different directions.
Y/n’s POV:
I take off left from the bathroom as soon as Chris slams the door, hearing footsteps following behind me. Assuming it’s one of the boys I turn around, only to be met with the masked figure.
My eyes widen as the bloody knife that had just killed one of my best friends, is pointed directly at my head.
“p-p-please don’t” I beg, now being backed into the corner. I can’t die, at least not yet. I have so much life left to live, there are so many things I still want to do; experience.
Pressing my back into the wall, I slide down it, my knees going weak. My heart is beating a million miles a minute as the figure squats down to my level. It glides the knife down my cheek leaving a cut there in the process.
Ouch.
The figure raises its arm, about to stab me leading to my death when Chris comes from behind, grabbing its arm and wrestling it to the ground.
“Run!” He lets out, struggling to keep the knife away from him.
Stumbling to my feet, I run out of the room, hearing Chris scream before footsteps continue to follow me.
I’m dead.
Matt’s POV:
I take off back down the stairs as soon as Chris shuts the bathroom door, hoping that all of us make it out of this ok. I run straight to the front door only to find it, and everything else either locked or blocked off. We’re trapped.
I frantically look around for a way out or something to use to help y/n and Chris. The footsteps stopped and I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. Just then, I hear Chris scream, a few seconds later followed by a bloodcurdling scream from y/n.
That was definitely NOT a good thing.
My beautiful girlfriend, best friend, and triplet brothers all dead within a few weeks. And I’m next.
Hot tears slip down my cheeks, burning my eyes as I push myself into a corner, hoping I’ll just disappear with the rest of them. I don’t think I can do this. Live without them. I’m done for.
And then I hear it. The creak of footsteps coming down the stairs.
I’m dead.
#fypage#sturniolo triplets#chris sturniolo#matt sturniolo#sturniolo fanfic#imagine#christopher sturniolo#nick sturniolo#scary#halloween#matt sturniolo head cannons#matt sturniolo fanfiction#matthew sturniolo imagine#matt sturniolo fic#matthew sturniolo x reader#matt sturniolo imagine#matthew sturniolo#matt sturniolo x reader#christopher sturniolo imagine#chris sturniolo fanfic#chris sturniolo x reader#chris sturniolo imagine#chris x reader#nick sturniolo imagine#nicolas sturniolo#fypppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp#finally posting this#zoe talks !#the sturniolos#nathan doe x reader
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I love your haunted siphonophore posting so much it's really good. I think it really fits with how the science team and the game and benrey all sort of play off of each other with Gordon always ending up as the victim/'food' but there's a slight dissonance between all of them. Benrey comes back as a skeleton and for the first night he just walks around and talks like normal until after Gordon wakes up where it seems to become it's own creature that is more tethered to the gamespace (I know it clips out and fucks with geometry but it also feels like it starts to slot into the role of 'spooky skeleton to antagonize and frighten the player' instead of 'benrey is around and talking to people when he's supposed to be dead'). Or how the world seems to bend to fit the insane things the Science Team says (Sunkist, Chuck E Cheese, Passport, etc) but Coomer is still seperate enough from the game that he becomes frightened and angry when he realizes that his world is small and painted. They all kind of group up into one thing, which is basically an elaborate bait and trap for Gordon, but there's tension between the individual pieces and they all have unique perspectives on what's happening despite playing into the same greater thing.
Sorry I'm having a hard time capturing exactly what you meant into this I get what you meant it's just. words are difficult. But your hlvrai thoughts make me insane
no this is like. exactly what i mean. you get it.
the thing about siphonophores is that each component of the organism has its own mouths. like. one component will be the stomach, one will make the organism swim, etc etc, but they all have their own mouths. they all feed.
and there is always this kind of dissonance between gordon and the others, and yes obviously he is the one playing a video game, but i always felt like it went deeper than hostile AI being weirded out by the new guy. it felt more,,, natural?? i guess??? it all feels set up on a stage. aside from the fact that its a game and it is has coded events. the AI, the thing that is suppose to think for itself, still seems kinda. within its own limits. stuck within the body of the facility. (for example, coomer and/or bubby freaking out when they go outside of the skybox/into space).
but the dissonance between the science team and the game/facility is!!! oh my godddd!!!! i could write an essay on that shit. so interesting. and i love that the dissonance is often physically manifested. your hatred towards this thing that you hate is real and will be seen and will affect the world outside you.
like. you have this thing, a large container that has events and ideas that are built into it (the game, the organism as a whole, the haunted house), and there are different components within this container that have some kind of symbiotic relationship (good or bad) with the outside container (black mesa, the individual nervous systems of the organism, the rooms/ghosts/humans haunting* the house), and all of these individual components has a manifestation of its difference or hostility (the science team, the individual mouths, the opinions each component of the haunted house has on each other (i need to make another post about this)).
sorry that was probably really complicated. i just needed to get it out of me because its all ive been thinking about since i made that first post.
*this is within the idea that the hypothetical house is haunted by something. which is generally the idea i go for when in reference to sentient AI, the whole this house had a purpose and it changed, this AI had a code and it was faulty. etc etc. pretty sure ive already posted something about that.
weird little mspaint diagram with some other ideas i have not talked about. note; this is not scientifically accurate to siphonophores. i just thought they were a really good allegory. you are definitely gonna need to zoom in for this thing. but it is important to the explanation i guess.
i just find it really fun to put obvious differences between characters/living things and see where they come together. like the science team, gordon, and benry are all separate beings in their own way but they are like a family. blah. hope you enjoy as always this is a bit messy.
#hlvrai#stupid diagram took way to long to make#whatever. i hope this sums it up well. and thank you so much for adding stuff on tjodity i always adore your additions.#they keep this trainwreck of an AU going strong#excuse any spelling and/or grammar mistakes im really bad at this#derealization#unreality#haunted house hlvrai au
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Ok Horroblr!
Tumblr was great at helping me find metal bands to get into, so now I'm asking for horror recs.
I'll first list some movies I've loved, ones I've liked, and ones I've been bored by and/or just couldn't watch, then list my specific likes/dislikes below. I feel like listing specific films is more helpful to get the feel/vibe of what a person likes.
Horror/scary movies I've loved:
Alien
Altar / The Haunting of Radcliffe House
Apostle
Creepshow (1989) - I saw this when I was 6. Probably explains things about me.
Crimson Peak
Event Horizon
Hannibal TV show
House on Haunted Hill (1959)
Jurassic Park (the original) - Hnng, the opening scene with the velocirapter in the crate? Fucking terrifying.
Psycho
Rose Red (2002 miniseries)
Silence of the Lambs
Sunshine
The Lodgers
The Others - this is the first horror movie I remember loving.
The Village - yes, really, I liked this movie shh.
Train to Busan
Winchester
Honorable mentions:
OldBoy (2003) - Not really a horror movie, but it does have a psychological aspect to it I really liked. Except the teeth part.
Batman (1989) - I also saw this when I was 6. My dad showed this and Creepshow to me at the same time.
IT - The new movies. They were good, but I though they were hilarious, not scary.
Season of the Witch - I know this movie is bad but I love it. A buddy-cop movie set in the medieval era with Nick Cage and Ron Pearlman? I love it unironically.
Velvet Buzzsaw - more funny than scary but sarcastic and smart and very good.
Movies that were fine, but I was either bored, not scared, or just amused:
The Blair Witch Project (it was fine, there were good parts, but I wasn't scared)
The Boy (another movie where the ending ruined it, I was so into it in the first half)
The Conjuring (forgettable and boring, no one even died in it)
The Disappointments Room (boring and had an ending that ruined the movie)
Movies I could not watch:
All Is Lost (boring)
Castaway (boring)
Saw (had to turn the movie off basically immediately)
Things I like:
Suspense
Plot that builds slowly
Psychological horror
Quiet moments
Haunted houses/towns/spaceships/places
Zombies, ghosts, monsters, demons, aliens, dinosaurs, animals
Possession
Horror that makes you think
Horror that was intended to be scary but ends up being funny aka "so bad it's good" movies
Things I can't watch:
Graphic, deeply personal violence like in Saw where someone has to injure themself to achieve a task, or the teeth-pulling scene from OldBoy.
Isolated/claustrophobic horror, like a single person trapped in a cave for the whole movie, or trapped under a rock, etc. I don't mind individual scenes but if that's the whole plot, it don't want it.
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Previous First
Back to the present
"Uh, you okay?"
Oliver is hunched over, shivering and breathing heavily
"Uh, hey, um, its okay, I'm sorry, didn't mean to, uh"
"There, there"
She awkwardly pats his back
Is clumsy, but rhythmic. It grounds him
"You need to do uhh breathing. With numbers, I believe, yes do that"
He does that
They wait for a while until he recuperates his composure
"Uh, do I need to get the other guy here, or are you good now?"
"I'm good to speak now, it's okay"
"Do you need water or..."
"No need to worry, I'm- I can manage on my own"
"Although I wouldn't mind getting Ángel in here...
No, if I do so I won't get any information.
I'm a professional, I can do this"
"How... how do you know about that?"
"... Once dad got a hold of those investigations, he became obsessed"
"He talked day and night about those houses, about their potential, about their location"
"While there have always been Haunted Houses all around the world, they're actually really difficult to find"
"He has been looking for years and years,
until one day, finally, he found one"
"A house made into an art display, it's said the people who go in, don't come out"
A shiver runs down his spine
"The owner was really proud of their art. They wished that the people who came to see them would never leave. Or so the interviews say"
"...I see. That's- That must have been the purpose"
"Uh, would it be okay for you to elaborate?"
He takes a deep breath
"...The rooms kept changing. I- I couldn't get out. There wasn't an exit. Just more and more rooms"
"Was - did the creator get out? Or did they unknowingly doomed themselves as well?"
"That makes sense"
"A lot if haunted houses get lost to time, they get demolished, sold to companies, destroyed.
This house was perfect for the taking, Dad planned on buying it.
I heard him ramble about changing the purpose, he thought there might be someway to override the previous command and make a new one.
I don't really believe in that theory to be honest, but he wanted to try it, he wanted a haunted house of his own"
"And then you came along"
"You left a petition to demolish it because you got trapped in it and deemed it a danger to people"
"I saw it on the local news, Detective gets trapped in abandoned house, Human remains were found by officers upon investigation, it has now been demolished and replaced by a Starbucks"
"Dad was absolutely furious. You demolished the Haunted house he took years on finding.
He investigated you. It turns out you had a very convenient webpage with a lot of information on how to contact you"
"And now you're here"
"... Ah Fuck
He wants me dead, doesn't he?"
"Wait, does that mean...?"
"Your father, the factory, do you think the reason he made all those workers get hurt was because..."
"... He wanted to make a Haunted house out of it, using the will and emotions of the workers"
"What would the purpose even be? To keep working despite anything?"
"I believe so, too. I tried to stop him by exposing it with the speedrunning thing, but I never found out if it actually worked"
"What? Why?"
"Because some asshole that I shall not name bought the company, so now we don't have any authorization to go in. The guy hasn't even stepped inside the building! He just sent an email with 'keep up the good work sunglasses emoji thumbs up emoji' and left everyone to fend for themselves!"
"What an infuriating man"
"I feel bad for the poor soul who managed to anger her"
She sighs
"But, that aside, here's the terrible part"
"You've heard this is a museum, right? It wasn't supposed to be made here.
He chose this location"
"... Oh.
Oh no."
"So, we have 2 alternatives"
"Either he is planning to make this a Haunted house, using us"
"Or, the worst, most likely scenario"
"This house is already Haunted
and we got eaten"
#lore lets gooooo#once again one of two#i think#im still a bit doubtful on how to continue to the next bit after this conversation#which means poll!#detective beebo
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Written for Siriusly Spooky 2022 on the Wickedly Wolfstar Discord.
“Okay, the sensor is showing supernatural activity,” Remus says, lifting it up and moving it slowly around the room, whilst James’ camera is fixed firmly on him. “Come, let’s see if we can find it.”
A door bangs in the background, and the pair jump, Remus spinning around.
“There are too many stories about Grimmauld Place being haunted,” James says. “But we’re here to offer you the truth, viewers. Deep inside one of the most haunted houses in all of Britain.”
Their movements are slow as they leave the foyer and head into the sitting room, eyes moving around. “Empty,” Remus says, not sure if he’s relieved or scared. It’s dark, musty, but there’s something that makes him feel cold about this place, that nowhere else has ever made him feel before.
“Set the cameras down, we’ll look around this room,” James decides.
“No, perhaps you should get out of here.” The pair look over to a man standing at the far end of the room, near another door. “Not safe here, friends.”
“How did you get in here?” Remus asks. The guy is handsome, sure, but they’re recording for their show and he likes his recordings to be perfect, and he doesn’t need strangers to interfere. Not again. It keeps happening. At first he was nice about it, but when equipment got broken, he drew a line and said never again.
“I’m local, you could say.” The man takes a step forward. “For fucksake, can you just leave?”
“Look, we’re recording and I don’t want to be rude, but—” Remus is cut off by James grabbing his arm.
“He’s a fucking ghost,” James hisses, and then Remus really looks.
The man is walking, but his feet don’t seem to touch the floor properly. His clothes are dated - maybe a hundred or so years old, he’d have to consult his books to figure out the right era. “What…”
“I said, get out,” the man hisses, eyes darting around. “It is not safe here. I’m warning you to leave. To be safe. Please. Get out.”
“You don’t scare us,” Remus says, though he is very scared. They’ve seen paranormal activity and strange things, but this is the first time they’ve come face to face with a real ghost.
“It’s not me you need to be scared of,” the man says. “I’m Sirius Black, resident trapped-person of this hellhouse that I grew up in, my brother Regulus is lurking around somewhere. We’re not the ones you need to be scared of. This house is cursed, and if you stay, it’ll take you too.”
“Curse?” James perks up. “Curses are fun.”
“Yes, and we’re having a wonderful time trapped here for eternity because of the delightful and fun curse,” Sirius snaps. “Just… look, if you stay, you’ll never be able to leave. I live that life. I don’t want that life for you. And for your information, I’m not a ghost. I’m a trapped soul.”
Remus reaches for his notebook, fascinated.
“Curses,” he whispers, noting it down.
“You’re… making notes,” Sirius comments. “How cute. I’m almost tempted to stop you leaving, because eternity here doesn’t seem as daunting if I had someone as adorable as you to be trapped with.” There’s a longing look before he frowns, shaking his head. “Get the fuck out, your time is almost up.”
James grabs Remus and starts to drag him away, but there’s something in Remus that urges him to stay. Still, they find themselves outside, and Remus’ gaze is drawn to the window where he’s sure he sees the curtain twitch, though no-one is there.
“Cursed,” James says. “Imagine if we could break the curse. Imagine… imagine our viewers reaction. Our ratings would double. Triple. More.”
Remus nods, though his thoughts aren’t on the ratings, they’re on the trapped man inside. This man isn’t a ghost. He’s just trapped.
And Remus wants to free him.
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7/2/20XX
So I’m outside the Castle with Tundra, waiting for Cameo to show up. They apparently like to arrive at council meetings early.
I won’t be surprised if Harlow shows up late or absent… again.
How many times has he done that?
Not even Pringle themselves can count.
Wait, where are they anyways??
Likely digging through boxes of Human World catnip. It apparently has the same effect on them as it has on Human World cats.
Huh.
…In the meantime, do you want a tour around where we have our meetings? I usually like to walk around the inside of the Castle before the others arrive.
…Yeah, that would be interesting.
Alright, then. Follow me.
(Tundra opens up the Castle doors and heads inside. Sprigg follows suit.)
Wow, this is niAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Sprigg, what—
OW! OOF!
(Sprigg slipped on a banana peel, then ended up bumping against some kind of lever.)
Oh, shit.
SPRIGG, LOOK OU-
(An unusually large amount of crabs falls on top of the poor Furcorn.)
GEEEYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!
( NYAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ! BWAHAHAHAHAH— OH , DEAR TORRT ! )
…
PIETER.
GYAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAAAAAAAAAAA-
OH .
(Tundra glares at the dark-red-and-pink Hyehehe with their dark purple eyes.)
(They are fucking PISSED.)
I’M SORRY , SORRY , HAHA !
THAT WAS MEANT FOR YOU , YOU KNOW .
Did Pringle not tell you to STOP SETTING UP TRAPS NEAR THE CASTLE ENTRANCE?
UH , YEAH . THEY DID .
(Tundra facepalms.)
You don’t know how to follow rules, do you.
BAH ! RULES ARE FUCKIN’ STUPID .
…Go to the meeting room. Now.
GAH , FINE .
YOU’RE SUCH A FUCKIN’ KILLJOY !
(Pieter fucking cartwheels away. Sprigg swats the last crab off of themselves.)
Ugh… who the fuck was that?
I’m sorry. That was the Pieter that Cameo and I told you about a few days ago.
He’s always setting up traps against me whenever the Dream Council has meetings.
Damn. Probably sucks to have to deal with him.
…Anyways, back to touring the meeting place. Follow me, Sprigg.
(Sprigg follows Tundra into a hallway full of stars and constellations swirling around. Think of those spinning tubes you probably walk through in those “haunted house” attractions.)
Whoa…
This is only a hallway. Dreamcraft can conjure some interesting things.
(A door materializes at the end. There’s nothing special about it, just… a regular door you’d see in your house.)
Ah. There it is.
…There’s a regular office meeting room behind that door, isn’t there?
If regular office meeting rooms are filled with stars, rugs, extra Cradle thread, and books about Dreamcraft, then yes.
Oh.
(Tundra opens the door and lets Sprigg in. They weren’t lying about what they said— the meeting room looks BEAUTIFUL! There’s even a little replica of the Lunapparatus, and— *ahem*.)
Wow… this is beautiful!
I guess you could say that. Take a seat.
(Sprigg takes a seat on a green floral pillow. Tundra sits on a white pillow with an icy pattern on it.)
So… how long do we wait until the others arrive?
A few minutes, probably. Though everyone has different consistency rates, and— wait.
Where’s Pieter? I told him to come here…
(Suddenly, a sharp-toothed skull is thrown at Tundra from behind. They turn around to see Pieter, relaxing on Cameo’s pillow, which is pink with rainbows on it.)
YA MISSED ME ?
Pieter.
That.
Is.
My.
Husband’s.
Pillow.
ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT ?
YOURS IS *RIGHT THERE.*
(Tundra angrily points at a dark grey pillow with lava patterns on it.)
ALRIGHT , FINE .
(As Pieter makes his way to his own pillow, Tundra facepalms.)
Wait… Cameo’s your husband?
Yes. We’ve been together for… I don’t really know how long, but I feel MUCH better when he’s around. He usually helps me deal with Pieter’s antics, albeit in a much calmer way.
I can only IMAGINE how Pieter was at your wedding…
OH , YEAH !
I WAS THE LIFE OF THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ PAR-
No, you weren’t.
… HMPH .
(Pieter crosses his smelly-ass arms and turns away like a pissy toddler.)
ASSHOLE .
…He was not.
Yeah, I can tell.
It’ll probably take some time before the others get here, so we should just wait.
Yeah. Galvana forbid Pieter does anything stupid…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
anyways yeah!! tundra and cameo are married lol
-Mod Jimmy 🗣️
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Love of the Grave
Series based off of this fandom and cosplay channel on YouTube: The Dandy Lyon Club
Link to video to exact inspo: https://www.youtube.com/live/LGjqHu6dV_o?si=Brkyqjrm3F5nPn6f
Masterlist
A scream rung throughout the black manor; something common to the old building. Its creaking walls, which seemingly warped the sound to its will, used similar noises often to shudder the windows. From the hidden memories that laid dead beneath the floorboards, they arose as the house took another breath.
However, there was familiarity within the sound, and it was as if the house could remember its pitch. Perhaps… it was part of its collection?
The spirits trapped along each doorway could recognize the sound as well, but found the noise wasn’t as pleasing as it had been. It was pitiful to what it once was a mere few years ago. All misery and lustrous terror gone, now left in a finicky and chaotic nature. A part of the house felt betrayed by the shift, and one could even argue that the air within the house had soured— destain floating in the air alongside a plethora of dust.
Soon there came a rumble of footsteps down the hallways. The dashing feet making the floor squeak, as another, well favored, voice followed.
“Sirius, you’ve scared her away!”
The feet halted, being replaced with the second, far more boisterous voice in the otherwise empty abode. “Oh! I’m sorry, but she bloody scared me!”
The heir— the only acknowledged heir anyhow— of the Black household rolled his eyes before apologizing to the open room, trying to piece together everything his dramatic sibling had scattered. His delicate hands making sure to relight the candles, which were luckily just spares in the grand scheme of their séance, while muttering an array of half curses at his older brother.
As his eyes drifted, he noticed that his annoyance would only grow. “For fucking Merlin sake— you knocked the damn salt off the table you idiot!”
Still refusing to renter the room he now deemed haunted, Sirius peered through the edge of the doorframe. “Regulus I do apologize, but if you don’t recall about five seconds ago there was ghost of one of our dead relatives standing this,” he pinched his fingers in front of his eyes, acting like he was zooming in and out on his younger brothers face, “ close to us!”
“Yes there was,” Regulus replied in a patronizing tone, specifically used for Sirius when he thought him especially dim witted. “I’m glad your sight wasn’t effected like your hearing from our unfortunate genes.”
“Reggie,” the older Black slid down the doorframe with his face covered by his hands. “Do you truly live in this horror every day and night? You poor boy!”
“Yes, as if our house—that is hidden within another flat complex by the use of magic— being haunted is the biggest shock.” Regulus deadpanned with a raised brow, holding blunt judgments. “You’ve been around muggles for too long.”
In any other situation Sirius would have teased him for the action, pointing out the similarity to their mothers resting expression, but there were more pressing matters.
Scoffing, Sirius glared at his brother with a playful yet warning undertone. “James and Lily’s place is far better than this hellhole.”
Not bothering to look back at him, Regulus picked up the books that had fallen from the shelves. All it took was one tipping over for Sirius to jump, accidentally kicking the shelf closest to them with his gangly legs, causing ten more to topple.
“Anastasia seems to disagree.” He remarked, referring to their ancestor who had patiently answered all the questions they had for her in the séance Sirius suggested they have.
“Well seeing as she was killed, probably by someone in relation to our family, I don’t think it’s her favorite place in the world.”
“You can like something and not it’s owners, you do know that right?” Regulus asked, a tinge of irritation slipping through is otherwise perfect monotone disposition. “Or is that too vast of an idea for you to comprehend?”
Ignoring his younger brother, as he often did, Sirius groaned as he pushed himself off the floor. “What I don’t understand is how she lived so long.” He admitted, flicking salt off the skin peaking below his cropped Bowie tee.
“Because she was a Hufflepuff?”
“Well, that, and she was a lesbian.” Sirius replied with a click of his tongue, waiting for his brothers reaction.
“So?”
Furrowing his eyebrows, Sirius gaped at his brother like he was a mad man. “So?! Our family is the definition of traditional Reggie or have you not noticed because your too busy collecting bones with Creature? Where the hell is he anyway? He could be helping us clean up right now.”
“Me, helping me,” Regulus corrected. “You haven’t done anything helpful since you’ve arrived.”
“Ouch, okay— but where is he really? It’s weird not hearing him grumbling in the corner when we hang out.”
“Do you remember which one fell first?” Regulus asked, piling together the pieces of literature. He could have sworn it was green, but that didn’t slim down his choices much. Practically every book in the house was green or black, an occasional brown spine making a rare appearance.
“No,” Sirius answered, easily distracted from his train of thought. “I was busy trying not to piss myself.”
“Calm down, it was not that scary.”
“Not that scary?! She was this—,”
“Shut up would you and make yourself useful!” Regulus all but ordered, as he began to knock on the empty space of the bookcase.
“What? Am I supposed to be checking the stability of the furniture now? Or the quality of the wood? Because I’m sorry to tell you Reg, but everything in this house is as old as the bloody forefathers—,”
“Oh dear Merlin,” Regulus rubs his eyes fervently to try and relieve the building pressure in his head. “Please tell me you know about the passageways.”
He got no response.
Daring himself to look, Regulus peaked over at Sirius. “Not even the hiding quarters? The hidden artifacts?”
Sirius just blinked at his brother.
“Of course you don’t,” he huffed, almost laughing at the discovery.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You never pay attention to anything besides James Potter—,”
“First of all, James is perfect. Second that’s not true I pay attention to plenty of other things that interest me.”
Like Remus Lupin, Regulus wants to say, but he doesn’t.
He’s always had more self control than his brother.
Rolling his eyes, Regulus caved. “You never liked the house enough to actually look around.”
“I did—!”
“Then you did a shit job at it because there’s a hidden trap door right in front of your room.”
“What?”
“Or maybe you just didn’t hear the difference in the flooring.”
“I’m not deaf!” Sirius defended himself, now growing tired of the reoccurring, childhood joke he thought outdated.
Without warning, Regulus startled Sirius as he started coughing, having hit a dust bunny while lining his finger to the creases of the bookcase. Scrambling away, he heaved over trying to catch his breath in between each lurch of his lungs. Rocking on his feet, his arm searched behind him in hopes of finding something to keep stable. Sirius, overcoming his pride, made himself a quicker fix than the wall. Grabbing his reluctant sibling by the shoulders, he slowly set the boy down to sit on the nearest chair— knowing he would only complain if placed in the floor.
When the rather painful episode was coming to an end, Regulus shoved Sirius’ hand away from his back that had been rubbing and patting in hopes to help. He let out a whisper of thanks but no more as he leaned back in the hard wooden chair.
Allowing himself to laugh, Regulus croaked out a smug remark, “And I don’t have asthma.”
Sirius shook his head with a disbelieving grin. “How do you even know what asthma is? I thought ‘all muggle diagnoses were inferior’.”
“When have I ever actually said that?” Regulus quipped, some spite hidden beneath his gritted smirk.
If it weren’t for the suddenness of the question, Sirius may have noticed it, but it would seem that he was far more intrigued by the new found spirit buried somewhere deep within his uptight, little brother.
“Touché,” he replied with dopey— Regulus dare say proud looking smile.
Straining his eyes with the twisting habit, Regulus pointed to the shelves that had just terrorized his lungs. “Check the creases, and press down on the—,”
“I got it, I got it.”
Sirius didn’t, in fact, know what to do. Not as precisely as his brother anyway, but he’d never admit that. So he simply let his hands slap about the sides of the cleared shelves, sometimes leaning toward a bit to tap the back wall. As if he knew what the difference would sound like.
“I still can’t believe you screamed—,” Regulus snorted with his head laying limp off the back of the chair.
“She popped out of nowhere!” Sirius defended, feeling especially tempted to throw another book at his brother.
“Ghosts did the same thing at Hogwarts.”
“Yeah but at least they announced themselves. She didn’t say a word. She- she—,” Sirius couldn’t help but tumble over his words as he had his feet when racing away from the scene. “She just stood there!”
“You sounded like a—,”
“As a feminist, and because Lily Potter commands it,” Sirius took the closest book in hand before raising a brow at Regulus, pointing it menacingly at him, “if you say I ‘screamed like a girl’, I will throw this at you.”
“Would you let me finish one sentence?!” Regulus snapped, and Sirius couldn’t help but stare in awe at the tint appearing across his brothers otherwise ‘ungodly pale’ skin. “Merlin, you’re insufferable.”
Staring at each other, both brothers held something of their own, as they often did. Sirius with his inquisitive and sometimes rash curiosity, contrasting that of Regulus unmoving sternness. However, this time, the youngest seemingly held more defiance than his roguish, older brother.
It would dull within seconds. That was how they worked. Quick to burn up, and just as fast to burn out.
“How is she doing?” Regulus asked, picking at nails all while Sirius continued his search.
“Who? Anastasia? Pretty sure she’s spooked, ironically.” Sirius offered, wanting to make this uncomfortable tension to disappear.
“Lily, you idiot.” Regulus corrected, returning to his annoyed facade.
Staring at him with a curled nose, Sirius asked, “Why? Thought you didn’t like my friends.”
“I don’t,” Regulus confirmed, peeling away whatever remained around his nails. Now he dared not meet his brothers eyes. “She wasn’t originally your friend. We had that in common.”
“Wait… are you saying you two were mates?” Sirius laughed. “You? Mr. Black, heir to the pure blood dynasty—,”
“Oh sod off! We talked in the library,” Regulus trailed off with a small smile of his own, his voice growing soft. “She was nice to me.”
Knowing he wouldn’t get anything further from his brother, Sirius smiles to himself after finding something they held in common, and decided to be kind. He could interrogate Lily about this later anyway.
“She’s fine. Great. Happy and in love with James. I mean who wouldn’t be?”
Regulus just hummed.
“Ah ha!” Sirius shouted in victory, standing on the tips of his toes in order to reach the ridge he had found. “I think— I think I found it! I just got to get the right bloody angle and—,”
Click
The floorboards began to shudder beneath them, sending Sirius backward with a surprised shriek as everything seemed to move. All while Regulus watched in excitement as the wall opened to a hidden hall. It was as if the two had traded personalities as the book shelves began to twist and fold themselves until falling downwards.
“I think I broke the house.” Sirius muttered, stuck still in his spot, unable to move on his own.
“Shut up and come along,” Regulus said with a new surge of energy, yanking his brother by his arm.
“When did you become so adventurous?” Sirius asked, annoyed by this new disposition. He would follow without delay of course. “You weren’t ever like this when I wanted to do things.”
Practically running down the newly made path, Regulus allowed his fingers to glide against each side. “That’s because your ideas were stupid.”
“They were fantastic!”
“They got you into trouble. How many detentions was it? Over a hundred?”
“I didn’t keep count. I’ll ask Remus for you.”
“Oh I’m sure you will.”
“What’s that supposed to me— and now I can’t see.”
The hall had gone dark. All light diminished with each step. Apparently they had wandered too far from the entrance, for when Sirius looked back, he found no difference from his front. And there wasn’t a candle in sight.
Clutching onto his brother’s shoulders for dear life, the older Black whispered, “Please tell me you know where we’re going.”
“The path is still going, we’ll be fine until one of the walls disappear.” Regulus stated without a single quiver in his voice.
“I reckon you’ve done this before?” Sirius inquired, still whispering.
“Yes I have— why are you whispering?”
“I don’t know! It just felt right.”
“You’re so weird.”
“Me? I’m weird? Says the one who is totally fine and dandy going down a hidden passage like looks like a literal death trap.”
Sirius heaved, crashing into Regulus’s back. “What? Why’d you stop? What’s going on?”
Ignoring to urge to tell his brother to shut up, Regulus replied softly, “The wall ran out.”
“Which side?”
“Both.”
“Both?! But you said—,”
“This hasn’t happened before, now back up and let me think.”
For once in his life, Sirius listened to his brother. Regulus was grateful for it.
Finding his way back to the stone wall, Regulus thought. He had gone through dozens of secret passageways in this house. None of them ever lead both directions. The first few times he was thankful, but after a couple of venters he thought it was something done on purpose. No one other than family would ever find them, blood bound magic guaranteed it. He thought maybe his ancestors did it to keep the finder on track or safe. Regulus even let his mind wander to the idea that perhaps it was the house leading him. As if it somehow was giving him permission.
Now he thought himself a fool.
“Hold my hand.”
“What?” Sirius asked, the prospect ludicrous coming from his younger brother. He’d never been scared before, or at least he never showed it.
“Take my bloody hand, I’m going to see if there’s a wall in front of us.”
“Oh.” Doing what he said, shockingly cooperative, Sirius took his brothers left hand in his.
“Now touch the wall and don’t stop until I tell you.”
Sirius complied, shivering. Whether it be from fear or the cold wall he couldn’t tell.
“Alright what now—?”
Sirius grip tightened as his brother moved forward, no warning given. He gulped down the impulsive words longing to jump off his tongue. And he waited until he heard his brother let out a sigh, one he could not differentiate from disappointment or relief.
“What? Is it there? Holy shit it isn’t there is it? Oh Godric we’re going to die in here—,”
“Shut up,” Regulus retorted finally. “It’s there.”
Letting out a sigh of his own Sirius nodded, still touching the wall. “Can I let go now?”
“No.”
“But it’s fucking freezing Reggie.”
“Just—!” Regulus huffed out his frustration before unintentionally giving his brother’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “Give me a moment.”
It only took a few seconds for it to be beyond quiet.
The lack of noise made Sirius ears ring, and he hated the way his mind liked to play tricks with him— making him think he could hear clicking fingertips, nails scratching along the walls, or a far off voice waiting to blind him numb.
Regulus, however, he was used to the silence. He had grown safe within it, utilizing it when it benefited him best. Just as he served it when screaming absently into the void, not a sound leaving his stretched jaw.
And it would appear that it had not forgotten his offerings.
Left
Feeling air pass over the hairs now tall from a short chill running up his neck, Regulus heard a faint whisper in his ear. Tilting his head his eyes closed, pleading the voice to say it once more.
Left
“I’m sorry— I really tried but I can’t stand it. I need you to say something,” Sirius broke, “We’re not splitting up right? I don’t trust this house to not try to impale me or dismember me somehow—,”
“We’re going left.” Regulus replied, leading the way. “You can stop now.”
It didn’t take long for Sirius to flinch away from the chilling stone. “Thank Godric, I was starting to feel pins and needles.”
Walking slow and swiftly, Regulus held his arms out once again, except this time he let them drift up and down as well. The action made a noise that of a brushstroke, sweeping in a back and forth motion.
“How did you know to go left?” Sirius asked, this time in a normal fashion. “And why are you caressing the walls all of a sudden?”
“She told me too.” Regulus replied shortly, continuing like clockwork.
“Okay— that sounded creepy as shit,” Sirius remarked in a comical tone. “What do you mean ‘she told you too’? Who is she? Did you take your vitamins today-?”
“Sirius, for just a few minutes could you just not ask me a question—,”
Stop
Sirius screamed, “Horrid mother of mine— I heard it that time!”
Slipping his fingers a little forward, Regulus felt something smooth pass over his hand. Cool to the touch, and soft when pressed together. A fabric of some kind, fluttering by air which only the tips of his fingers could feel.
Bracing himself, Regulus leaned back into his brother. He was going to warn him to hold on, but then he felt something that lit his body with irritation.
“Sirius?”
“Yes?”
“Have you had your wand on you this whole time?”
“…”
“Sirius.”
“Yes?”
“Do the bloody spell you idiot.”
Rustling to his pockets, Sirius held his wand firm before speaking the word that would have been most convenient not even three minutes ago.
“Lumos.”
Regulus squinted out a glare at his brother, his eyes tensing at the new light within pitch black. “I should maim you.”
“Don’t look at me like that!” Sirius countered, covering the embarrassed bloomed across his face. “What about your wand?!”
“It’s on the table in the room.”
“Well, that’s not very responsible of you is it Regulus? Leaving your only defense behind.”
“Shut up and point it forward.”
“Fine, your such a—,” Sirius train of thought slipped from him the moment his eyes reached what was before them.
A veiled entry, fluttering to a wind they could not feel nor hear. It’s drape black and ripped, as if nails were taken to it, yet the fabric still shined in the light. There was no sign of age, discoloration or even dust. It simply hung in the air, not even connecting to that of a rack or the wall.
What was beyond, they could not see. Almost as if teasing them, the veil would only swing high enough for them to see the outline of the other side. No more, no less.
Regulus took a step forward, ready to embrace whatever resided on the other side. His brother, however, wavered.
“Reggie are you sure this is the best idea?”
“When did you become so reasonable?” Regulus quipped, lightly amused by his brother’s fear.
“Apparently when you stopped.”
“You sound like me.”
Sirius vocally gagged. “Don’t you dare ever say that to me again.”
“Then hurry up and come along.”
That was the last thing Regulus said before ducking under the black veil when it had reached its peak.
There was nothing left of him anymore. Not a glimpse of of his coal colored curls, not the even the sound of his clothes brushing up against each other.
“Regulus?” Sirius asked into the nothingness. “Regulus I swear on James if you pop out of there like a little shit and try to scare me I’ll strangle you.”
Nothing.
Gulping down his nerves, Sirius bounced on his heels, whilst tightening around his wand. “Okay, can’t let my little brother show us up can you now Sirius… Fine. Fine, fine.”
And he leaped… falling flat on his face… onto grass?
“Took you long enough.”
Huffing with a mix of amusement and annoyance, Sirius glance up at his brother— who didn’t so much as offer him a hand, only a shit-eating grin. “You’re a prick.”
Smiling even wider, Regulus watched as his brother scrambled up, making sure to check on his prized attire. “You should mind your manners brother.”
Furrowing his eyebrows at the sudden title, Sirius acted as if Regulus had grown a second head. “Brother? Mind my manners? Did you hit your head as well?”
Glancing from his brother to Sirius’ left, Regulus felt even more smug. “No, I landed gracefully with the help of one of our relatives,” he watched as Sirius’ head slowly shifted to follow his line of sight, “Now mind your manners and at least greet Anastasia. She did allow us to find her garden after all.”
Sirius went pink with shock and embarrassment. Barely a yard away from them way their ancestor, with a title including a plentiful amount of ‘greats’ he imagined. She sat with poise on an out fashioned swing made of only wood and rope ridden with moss. Both look aged, contrasting to the youth covering her features. In fact, everything around them look rather dull. The flowers were all in bloom and ripe in color, yet they stood so sickly. Although, Anastasia, even with the black and gray of her being, she look almost as alive as the two of them.
“Nice to finally meet you Sirius,” she spoke. Her voice was higher than he suspected, holding an echo to each syllable. “You’ve changed so much since I’ve last seen you, yet stayed the very same. Very fortunate of you.”
“Hi, yes, I’m sorry for… well that,” Sirius gestured  dramatically to the patch of grass he just fell upon. “It nice to meet you too, again, um— I’m sorry are you talking about a little while ago, ‘you last saw me’ or…”
A small smile crept up her face, but it seemed to hurt her too much for it to become full. “I used to watch you both when you were little.”
Scrunching up his nose, Sirius tilted his head as if to stop from saying something. He should have known better.
“Sorry that just sounds a bit creepy.”
“Sirius!” Regulus scolded, genuine in his disbelief this time.
“What it does?! I said sorry!”
“She’s a ghost Sirius, trapped in our house, of course she’s seen us!”
“Alright… touché, but why is it you’re trapped?” Sirius asked, turning his attention to Anastasia, who sat still but seemingly had breeze flowing about the strands of her hair. “Or are you? You did say you had unfinished business right? With the Malfoy family?”
Her expression was quick to turn gloomy and sour. “You would not need to know if you didn’t want to. I’ve been nothing but cooperative with your little seance, and you insist of asking more?”
“Sirius,” Regulus whispered harshly, ordering his brother to apologize.
“I’m sorry,” Sirius stated, not knowing which set of eyes he feared more. “I just want to know how to help.”
Anastasia’s head tilted, her brows softening as she rose from her seat. None of her footsteps making a sound as she approached the boy. Sirius tensed as she grew inches from his face, not seeming to think of personal space. He guessed in a way this was his karma.
She took her time studying his features, as if looking for the truth behind his eyes, but she knew it already.“You used to look just like your mother.”
Sirius bit his tongue, his jaw twitching at the comment. She was right. He was the depiction of his mother, many mistaking him for a daughter at first glance when he was a toddler, especially as his hair began to grow. His mother hated it as well, after Sirius had a personality of his own that is. She’s cut his hair in order to stop the reoccurring remarks, and she’d hex whatever she couldn’t fix with scissors.
The only way Sirius could bare to look himself in the mirror was by constantly changing with time. Sure there were things that he couldn’t change: the slope of his cheek, the color of his eyes, and the Cupid bow of his upper lip. But he could fix everything else by painting his eyes and nails colors that his mother would never be seen near, by dressing scandalously, and by the cut of his hair— always wild and all over the place.
“You’re lucky,” she complimented, a small hint of jealousy within her tone, “You’ve outgrown her.”
Slipping through his side, sending goosebumps all along his right arm, she floated in Regulus’ direction. Anastasia didn’t even look at him as she passed by, letting out a whistle of a whisper of which only he could hear.
“Some of us never do.”
Regulus didn’t need her touch to feel his bones go cold.
“Anastasia, what happened to you?” He asked, feeling his heart falter as him and Sirius followed after her— having to almost jog to keep with her deadly pace.
When she finally stood still long enough for them to catch their breath, they couldn’t help but gawk in awe at the vine infested statue in from of them. An Angel stood with its head down, depleted, as if weeping— grieving.
“I don’t really remember anymore,” she answered, hardly a whisper.
Staring in a daze, she hovered over the angel’s garb, scared to touch the piece. “I started hiding away my memories so that I wouldn’t be tormented anymore. Sometimes I come across a few,” she evaporated from the spot in an instant, reappearing atop a tree branch hanging over the boys, “Every one hurts more than the last. I often wonder if that’s another reason I ripped them from my head.”
Pinching his brows together, Sirius asks, “If you can’t remember, than why are you still here?”
Regulus couldn’t help but wonder the same thing. Without a purpose, a ghost would normally move on. Why hadn’t she?
“I cannot leave without her.”
Approaching softly, Regulus stared up at her with pure eyes, “Who?”
Anastasia smiled to herself, this time until her cheeks caved, revealing dimples both brothers could swear they had seen in their own reflections. Moreover, when her mouth opened as if she were to speak her lovers name, nothing left. Her lips just parted, agape, and her hand reached to cup her throat as if free the name from its cage.
Her chin quivered when she finally gave up her attempt, and she only wished she could walk away the wretched feeling.
There was something festering within Regulus he could not comprehend. He had assumed pity, perhaps sympathy, but he found neither fit.
He would not hold his tongue any longer.
“We’ll find her for you,” he promised, paying no attention to his brother, who was gaping at his audacity. “Just tell us where to start.”
“Regulus,” it was Sirius turn to scold.
“The mirror is where it began.” she whispered descending from the branch to lead them away.
Regulus followed without questions, determined not to lose sight of her. All while Sirius chased after him, tugging on his arm to gain his attention.
“Regulus, I won’t say I’m not proud by this kind gesture, but you don’t know how long this will take,” Sirius said, a worried pitch to his voice. “I can’t be here when mother returns, and if I don’t go back in an hour or so James, Lily, Remus— they’ll worry. Merlin forbid they call Dumbledore to find me only to see us in this—,”
“Time doesn’t move here.” Anastasia interrupted, stopping to point at a broken father clock, the hands stopped on three. “You’ll be returned to the time you came here.”
Regulus glanced back at his brother, his expression asking ‘any other complaints?’.
Shrugging his shoulders, Sirius gave in. “Sounds good.”
They continued down the grass path, noticing with every step that the number of wildflowers diminished. Instead they were replaced with white stone, building up to what look like an alter. Except, in stead of offerings and a monument of worship, there was a mirror, round and grand in gold. Candles leaked down the sides, dripping onto the cobblestones that mimicked horse hooves.
“This is where I awoke, and the only thing I can remember,” she stated somberly, her eyes now drained and dull.
It was as if the short trip had taken a toll on her.
Finally, she looked at them. There was no more fondness found, nor destain, only warning.
“If you touch the mirror, you won’t be able to leave until the memory is finished. And the body you inhabit won’t be yours,” she explained a deep gravity in her otherwise pleasant voice. “You’ll have to live within another mind. No autonomy, no control.”
“Well…” Sirius trailed with a prolonged sigh. “It wouldn’t be the craziest thing I’ve done.”
Glancing at Regulus, she awaited his answer.
“We’ll be fine,” he replied, giving his brother a look only he could interpret.
No backing out now.
Sirius nodded, taking his place next to Regulus as they held out their hands.
“Ready for our first adventure brother?” Sirius asked cheekily, hiding the fear lodged in his gut.
A small smile tugged at Regulus lips, and he deemed it worthy of a response. “Don’t change my mind now.”
Their hands pushed forward, touching the middle just for it to pool around their fingers and envelop them whole. It swelled around them, swallowing their being in silvered mercury, until it was all they could breathe.
The substance went thick as smoke down their throats, and when they exhaled their eyes opened. A new freedom in their lungs, but a different color welcoming their vision.
Their grey eyes now a whiter tint, and their hair falling lower than Sirius’.
There she was, gripping the engraved wood around the mirror they had just transformed through— Anastasia.
Youthful. Their age.
Alive.
#lgbt representation#marauders#marauders fanfiction#marauders x oc#the house of black#sirius and regulus#sirius black#sirius being sirius#regulus black#regulus deserved better#witch aesthetic#witch oc#thedandylyonclub#slytherin#hufflepuff#historical#1800s aesthetic#sapphic#wlw#wlw yearning#wlw love
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I posted 290 times in 2022
That's 263 more posts than 2021!
208 posts created (72%)
82 posts reblogged (28%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@neinofthem
@viciousmollymaukery
@quinn-of-aebradore
@essektheylyss
@andgently
I tagged 166 of my posts in 2022
Only 43% of my posts had no tags
#essek thelyss - 99 posts
#critical role - 98 posts
#the mighty nein - 89 posts
#cr - 88 posts
#mighty nein - 83 posts
#tm9 - 81 posts
#cr2 - 74 posts
#shadowgast - 68 posts
#cr shitpost - 53 posts
#critical role essek - 50 posts
Longest Tag: 137 characters
#imagine waking up one day and remembering that the disgraced former shadowhand is a. 4’10 on a good day and b. definitely without a doubt
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
literally the best thing about essek is that it’s so hard to have a bad take about him because he is so many things. yes he is a virgin librarian yes he is a suave sexy politician yes he is a brilliant wizard prodigy yes he has the warcaster feat no he has never seen conflict. it’s literally yes he’s world weary and has lived for over a hundred years yes he’s said the word ‘fuck’ once and once only. yes he carries around a frilly pink parasol yes he was the head of arcane intelligence for the fucking queen of the kryn dynasty and no one has asked his favorite food before. what is WITH this guy I LOVE him.
2,493 notes - Posted February 28, 2022
#4
as much as essek is a genius wizard and schemer and intimidating and aloof he is also Just Some Guy. he stole the most important items in his country’s culture not because of a desire to start war but because he’s a huge nerd. he’s being chased by assassins and the people who exposed his crimes led the worst man of all existence to his doorstep and he wants to get drunk off of boozy hot chocolate. he tried to fistfight a giant with his twink wizard noodle arms. he gardens. he can crush a man with one hand. he has little teefies. his dad got so angry at him he died. he’s dating the worlds most traumatized man. he’s my best friend. he’s gay. easily the most character of all time.
2,535 notes - Posted February 21, 2022
#3
essek: caleb did you fight a demigod. caleb answer me did you fight the fucking ocean.
caleb, tenderly cradling his face: you’re so hot.
2,577 notes - Posted December 2, 2022
#2
bells hells merrily traipsing their way into aeor sometime in the near future: who are you guys lmao. anyways we think we’re swinging by that little bitch moon next to take care of the Moon Haunting that has been Plaguing us with Visions.
caleb and essek on their fifth aeorian honeymoon: what are the words that you are saying. why does that stalactite have a beacon in his head. what do you mean you ran into ludinus da’leth. why do you have a fucking robot. what was that about the fucking moon.
2,899 notes - Posted September 2, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
imagine you are the director of the magic cia and you betrayed your home country because they denied your grad thesis and you thought everything was chill but then a group of people in bdsm gear burst into the room holding the god that you stole and you now have to babysit them and watch while they ruin the house your family gave them and you are also in a honeypot4honeypot situationship with their resident ginger and you teach him forbidden magics because he has nice eyes and you keep having to ferry them to fight dragons or some shit and they keep fucking inviting you to dinner so you go to dinner and they trap you, the traitor they’re looking for, in a truth spell and instead of asking any damning question they want to know which of them you find the hottest and what your moms name is and then they disappear for like two months and then you’re in disguise at the negotiation which undermines your past decades work and they fucking show up and they find out about your crimes so they paralyze you and drag you to their ship and instead of killing you the ginger kisses you on the forehead and they tell you that you’re family now and then they disappear for a long fucking time so you leave and go chill in the north and then they show up chased by a purple man with horns and a dead member of the fucking cerberus assembly and then they fucking dip and when you come back they take you to a flesh city to fight the purple man but they get really sad when they murder him so they revive him? and also you find evidence that the god that you stole is not a god and is some kind of hyper advanced magic computer maybe and then you just sort of fucking go home? and chill in a garden? every day essek thelyss wakes up.
4,733 notes - Posted March 24, 2022
Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →
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yes it is :)
-🩸
Okay bit of a long story ish I guess
Also I'm sure there's details I'm missing but like I can't remember a whole lot
Tw: for a tiny bit of dark themes (yucky creature, self forced staying awake?)
So for context idk if you've seen Sam and Colbys second to last video where they mention an Elemental.
Well when I was smaller. I finished 4th grade and then we moved. We got to our new house I did 5th grade blah blah. Then I started 6th grade.
I don't remember exactly when it started but I started having what I thought was a hallucination. A pale scrawny human ish formed creature with black tipped long claws. Obviously it had now hair and it was always hunched over. If it moving it ran on all fours or just hopped a bit while squatting.
I thought that what I was seeing was impossible at first. That it was maybe a piece of clothing and that without my glasses I was just crazy. But of course as the typical "emo" kid all I owned was black clothing. Nothing white.
I ended up being terrified and rolling over to not move. Then I heard it walking around, shuffling, sniffing and then it stopped. I flipped back over and it was gone.
Of course I was like 12 or 13 at the time so I was just like "maybe I didn't sleep enough. That can make you see things," so I just flipped my closet light on and called it a night. I forgot about it the next morning completely.
Until night fell and it was back again.
It wasn't there every night. But once it started showing up I just kept trying to sleep to avoid it. I'd try to sleep all the time. At least until it was then in my dreams. I then stopped sleeping.
I wouldnt let myself sleep at all because then I was scared of seeing it there. Being trapped with it. Obviously not sleeping lead to other issues like being sick, and not eating and drinking properly and almost hospitalization. (Sleep is good. Please sleep♡)
Now my mother is an entire nightmare herself and she's always hated that I've been afraid of the dark. At this point in time I had 6 night lights. Well.
There was one night my mother came in. "Sick" of my "shit" and started taking them all. She ignored me as I started sobbing to not take the lights because it would be back. She said the usual shit "man up" "there's nothing there" "go the fuck to bed"
I had avoided it for a few days at that point because there was so much light in my room. Well now that there was none it was back.
Of course. I'm super upset and traumatized and so so tired. I started whisper yelling at it to go away. To leave me alone. To let me sleep.
But obviously didnt say anything and this time it came closer. It was no longer a few feet from the edge of the bed. No. This fucker walked up to my head which was on the edge of the bed. And it sat staring me in the face. Idk how fucking long but I've never held my breath for as long as I did
It rippled kinda like an image after a while and dissapeared. But it fucking smelled. Like this awful rotting stench and it was just awful. I thought I'd pass out.
Once it left I flicked the closet light on and attempted to sleep.
During that time I had a small mirror at the end of my bed on the wall. Of course, like am idiot during the night I looked up and saw a dark shadow behind me in the mirror. Easily 6 7 8 feet tall. Problem was the wall was behind me. So why I saw a shadow was beyond me.
I hide under my blanket, and then I felt a small pressure. As if someone was pushing on my head and then it was gone.
Next morning, a hand print with claws on the mirror.
There was other spooky instances in that house like footsteps and doors slamming and things going missing.
But who believes a kid that your house is haunted :)
Also that story I said yesterday with my friends mom happened somewhere in that mix. She didn't want my friend around me cause she thought I was passed by the demon? Creature? but it was attatched??
Anyways seeing that creature both irl and in my dreams and all those instances lasted for like 4 years.
With the mirror I would always refuse to have it after those moments so I would throw it into my closet. Shocker. Mom wasn't happy about that either. I ended up carving protection symbols among other things and stuffing pieces of scrap paper with the symbols that I had left out in the moonlight into any space inside the mirror. Idk if that did anything but everything seemed to stop after that?? And after her mother saged me like 27 million times.
I still have a very hard time sleeping. I'm still very afraid of the dark.
But it's been like 8 years now since that all happened and I always thought it was just a really detailed hallucination. So you can imagine why I had a mental breakdown upon finding out via Sam and Colby that I was being terrorized by a creature that actually has a name and it wasn't an overactive imagination creating something I didn't even know was possible
Wowww I've been traumatized😵💫✨️🤪
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I'm a weird person who likes archiving things. Making lists. Etc. My friends bully me for it all the time but it's simply who I am 😔 I always liked doing these little end-of-year gaming wrap ups but they never really felt right on twitter (and I had to post my rambling thoughts at an external link anyway). I thought about just coming back with 2022 and ignoring the two years I didn't post them here but the gap would bother me too much, so here's a repost of my 2020 gaming recap.
Unless otherwise noted, all text was written in December 2020. For a couple games that I’ve played more in the time since I might add some additional thoughts, but I’ll make a note of it being 2022-me talking if so.
The Sims 4
I feel like I have to preface this with the fact that I was never into the Sims franchise, and never played any of the previous games in the series. Yes, yes. I know that they were better than the Sims 4 in every way. But since this is my only Sims game and thus the only metric by which I can judge a Sims game for myself, I can still say that I’ve gotten a lot of fun and enjoyment out of it since obtaining it earlier this year.
It started because some friends of mine were playing, and I became intrigued by the building system (and the death traps one friend was constructing with said building system). I don’t think life simulator games as a whole really appeal to me, which is why I never got into the Sims before now, but I do love me a good building system. And I do think the Sims 4 has a good building system. I just love zoning out and making and decorating houses, even if I’m not exactly GOOD at it.
Still, despite all the things I hear about how inferior Sims 4 is to its predecessors, I’ve enjoyed the gameplay too. Since I play on PC I of course have access to mods to improve some of the areas where it’s lacking, but even so, ON ITS OWN without having anything to compare it to I think it can be a lot of fun if you know how you want to play it. Like, the only real ‘playthrough’ I have done so far that wasn’t just me testing mods and CC and stuff involved me trapping a full household of 8 sims inside a house and forcing them to live together reality show style. Except the house was also cursed AND haunted, and I had a mod that made fires spread faster and kill quicker. The goal was, any sim that could survive until they reached Elder on the fastest aging game speed would be set free from the house and be granted eternal youth and immortality. I had a lot of mini goals pop up as I played this save, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel — “reach elder without dying” — and that helped guide my gameplay enough that I didn’t feel completely aimless, which can be a problem for me if a game is too open-ended sometimes.
I can’t say I’d recommend spending more than $800 for the game and all its packs, but if you were to acquire it through some other means (that I absolutely definitely wouldn’t and am NOT advocating, of course) I think you could theoretically get plenty of enjoyment out of it, especially with the plethora of mods and CC out there. While there are certainly a lot of areas that have room for improvement and I have hopes for with the eventual Sims 5, I don’t think the Sims 4 is a BAD game. At least for a newcomer to the franchise like me who can’t really be disappointed because I have nothing to compare it with. To me, it’s a fun sandbox where I can zone out and enjoy building, or just throw some hapless sims into a horrible situation and play god. And sometimes it’s nice to have a game like that where you can just turn your brain off and do whatever.
Undertale
Yeah, I know. Undertale in 2020, extremely late to the party, etc. Thing is, when I first heard about Undertale, it sounded like a cute and fun game that I would probably enjoy. And then the overzealous fandom blew up and no one would shut the fuck up about it, casual spoilers were literally all over the place, and people looked at you like you had two heads if you said you hadn’t played it or didn’t want to play it. I got SO SICK of seeing people not SHUT THE FUCK UP about FUCKING UNDERTALE that I developed hype aversion and came to actively hate a game I’d never played, a game I probably WOULD LIKE if I played it, because everyone was so goddamn obsessed with it. I was actively avoiding it for years for this reason.
Anyway, after many years of consciously avoiding anything to do with Undertale as a result of the hype aversion, I ended up deciding to play it after all at the behest of good friends whose opinions I trust and who knew about my hype aversion going in. We sat down and talked it through and decided that I’d stream it to them on Discord while playing. They wouldn’t influence my gameplay or talk out of turn and spoil things for me, or give me hints I didn’t ask for, or tell me how to play the game. We’d meet once a week for a few hours for ‘Undertuesday’ and they’d just watch me play and experience things for myself (even if I sometimes very definitely annoyed them with my gameplay). And I appreciated that, so thank you guys again for being patient with me.
Now…I think I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about this game when I finally finished it, but it was back in April, and I don’t seem to have put them in writing because we were talking in voice chat. Unfortunately I can no longer remember any of the specific commentary I must have had for the game when it was fresh. But I think my general take was…I wasn’t able to enjoy it as much as I think I could have, had I TRULY been able to go in blind. But I simply had too much meta awareness of what the game was expecting of me due to how much it blew up. My awareness of things like the mere EXISTENCE of ‘pacifist’ and ‘genocide’ routes ensured that I tried to do the right thing throughout and never kill any monsters, because I knew the game didn’t ‘want’ me to. I had foreknowledge that actively changed the way I may have played had I not known. I also knew that the player character and the original lost human were not one in the same. Perhaps my feelings about the story may have changed had I been properly fooled into believing they were. And in general I had a hard time letting myself like Papyrus and Sans because of how popular they had become, and how sick I was of seeing their faces plastered all over the internet at the height of Undertale’s popularity.
Lots of things like that, mostly little things, but those little things added up to an experience that felt inherently tainted compared to being able to go in without that foreknowledge. I felt like I was just acting the way the game ‘wanted’ me to, but didn’t always expect me to, because a part of me knew that I was supposed to act that way if I wanted the best ending. Because I knew I’d be guilted and punished if I acted differently. Because I went into a game that acts as a deconstruction of the genre knowing that it was a deconstruction. I don’t know how else to put it, but I feel like I wasn’t really able to play it genuinely, and it affected my perception of the game and its themes. Perhaps also being aware that my friends, to whom this game means a great deal, were watching me with expectations and hopes of their own that I would come away loving it as much as they did, and wanted me to. And I feel like I probably let them down because that just didn’t happen for me.
Undertale is a good game. It’s cute, it’s got some cheeky little amusing moments, and you can tell a great deal of love was put into it. I understand why it’s as beloved as it is. But I think it’s also a good lesson about fandom hype and how NOT to try and get your friends to play a game you like (or watch a show, or whatever). I know that when you’re very interested in something you want more than anything to get your friends to become interested in it too — believe me, I’ve been there, and I was definitely the annoying type about it (especially about Umineko). But I think it’s also very important not to let your excitement for a thing override the experience of others, especially if you want them to love it as much as you do. Undertale feels like the kind of game that really works best when you can go in blind and not have your experienced guided — directly or indirectly — by spoilers and meta knowledge. I feel like I definitely would have been able to appreciate it more had I been able to have a natural experience with it, anyway.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
A lot of my thoughts on Odyssey are basically repeats of my thoughts on Origins from last year, so I won't rehash those here. The TL;DR of it is, I can enjoy both games on their own merits as vaguely historical open world action games, but not as what I consider to be Assassin’s Creed games. What I consider to be Assassin’s Creed has essentially ended with Syndicate, and it appears that we won’t be going back, now that Valhalla continues to follow in Odyssey’s footsteps in turning the franchise into (the very loose definition of) an RPG.
What’s NEW here from Origins is the addition of dialogue options and “choices” in how quests can complete. Except your choices aren’t real choices at all, and the player never truly has any agency in the parts of the story that actually matter in the end. (spoilers for this next part so skip to the end if you don’t want ‘em)
Phoebe always dies, for example. No matter what you do. No matter how fast you are. No matter what choices you made before this point in the story. Her character, regardless of what you do or don’t do, is destined to die. To me this would have been an IDEAL point in the story to have some actual cause and effect…like, maybe my actions earlier with her friend and the plague business could influence this, and if I choose poorly, I would have to live with the fact that I’d doomed her. Or something DURING the quest itself, as you pursue her. Maybe you could have acted in a way to get to her in time. I know they really wanted Aspasia’s reveal as the big bad to be a surprising end game affair, but it was pretty heavily foreshadowed at this point in the story (I didn’t think she was The Ghost yet but I certainly was suspicious of her being a cultist). Maybe if my character could have had the opportunity to not trust her, I could have advised Phoebe to not work for her at all, and not end up endangered as a result. There are any number of ways they could have given me the agency to either save or or TRULY end up responsible for her death by my actions. They did not. She is scripted to die no matter what you do. And this is just one example of many points in the game just like it where places that I feel like I SHOULD be able to influence the outcome with my decisions don’t do jack shit because it’s scripted. By contrast, most times that my decision CAN influence the outcome of a quest, the change is so minor (slightly different dialogue or the opportunity to pursue a bland out of the blue fade-to-black sex scene I don’t want) that it doesn’t feel worthwhile at all.
At the end of the day I’m left wondering why this even needed to be a feature at all. Just to give the illusion that this is an RPG now, and broaden the customer base? Because that’s what it feels like. The game could have played out almost exactly the same had they gone with a FULLY scripted story like all the previous games, especially since Alexios/Kassandra clearly already have a pre-written personality that comes across through the things they say and the way they say them regardless of which dialogue options you actually choose. The choices are basically tacked on for appearance’s sake, choices in name only. I felt nothing meaningful from a single one of my choices in all of my 207 hours so far (I’m still trying for 100% completion but I have finished the main questline with both Deimos and unveiling all the cult members). And that’s my biggest complaint about this game — the “choices” didn’t even need to exist because their absence wouldn’t have actually changed the game at all.
And that’s not even getting into the whole forced DLC marriage and child debacle (I don’t own it and plenty of other people have already gone on at length elsewhere on the internet about it, but I think it speaks to the exact same issue of the game promising and giving the illusion of player choice but ultimately still having a scripted story to tell and a protagonist whose personality is already set in stone regardless of your ingame decisions).
At this point I had a whole txt file with more specific examples of Quests That Did Not Actually Give Me A Choice but you get the picture, so I’m not gonna go on endlessly about each one…
Anyway. I feel like Ubisoft would be better off just making a new IP if they want to explore the RPG market so badly. Assassin’s Creed never fit this format and I don’t feel it ever will. RPGs with significant choices work best with silent protagonists (though I feel like KC:D did a serviceable job without one), not fully fleshed out characters who already have literally existed in a historical context by way of the game’s entire premise. By actively taking place in the past you are inherently limiting the things my character can do to influence the story, because that story has already concluded, and the results of it can be seen in the present day story. But they keep being so wishy-washy with the present day story that it’s like a relic at this point anyway that they’re just afraid to drop entirely to piss off the minority who still cares (me, I’m the minority). But when it clearly doesn’t MATTER anymore, why not just bite the bullet and do it already? You could always resolve the loose ends in a comic tie-in lololol
Honestly though, while I’m probably the .0001% who actually enjoys reading all of the stuff on Layla’s PC that gives more context on the lore of the modern day assassins vs. templars conflict and the overarching story that’s been running through this franchise since day 1, I think we’re at a point where they may as well just let it go. They’ve been doing it so dirty since Black Flag as it is, I’d rather just see it go than get further tarnished by being forcefully tacked on because it’s an artifact of the series. After the complete disregard for modern day that we saw in Unity and Syndicate I was genuinely excited when we got Layla, because I thought she’d step into the role of The New Desmond and have adventures that actually made the modern day story relevant again…but she’s actually LESS relevant than the nameless faceless Black Flag modern day protagonist, and that’s just sad. Just pull the plug already, Ubisoft. You’ve made it abundantly clear that you want this series to become a loosely historical sandbox RPG and the intricate and complex lore of the modern day storyline is only dragging you down. You don’t care about it anymore, so what’s it matter to people like me who DO care if you’re not giving it proper attention either way? Just let it die before it can be disgraced any more.
I’m getting off track though…honestly, it’s a fun game. Like I said, 207 hours and I’m still not done shooting for 100% completion by exploring every island and doing every sidequest that I missed my first go around. If I wasn’t having fun at all I wouldn’t still be here. I AM having fun. I think less fun than I had with Origins, if I’m being honest, but it’s definitely not a bad game. I’ll just never be happy with the idea of the series going in this direction in the first place, so I’m always gonna be here nitpicking about little things the majority of people won’t care at all about. Like the fact that haystacks and hidespots no longer exist despite being a literal staple of the franchise. Or the fact that you can’t die from fall damage anymore. Lack of true poison/berserk darts mechanic or any real ability to sow chaos in an enemy camp without breaking stealth because the game really really REALLY wants to force you into open dynamic combat because it looks cooler in the promo trailers. Feel like I had to fight the game to give my gear all the mechanics that boost Predator Shot and passive adrenaline regeneration so I can pull off multiple headshot kills without being spotted, y’know, like I want to actively do in a game where I expect to play like a proper assassin. Oil barrels also seem way weaker than they were in Origins where setting fire to camps was a risky (because it’s not exactly stealthy and quiet in the traditional sense) but very fun way of making quick work of enemies in the dead of night and then slipping away in the chaos before they could see you. The game just really wants me to be a Spartan Warrior Demigod and I’ve gotta work so hard to NOT be that and it annoys me. Can’t even blow up a grain silo from absolute and complete cover with no one around to witness SHIT and not get a mysterious bounty on my head. Are the horses and goats reporting my crimes again, like in Skyrim?
I could keep going with nitpick after nitpick but I won’t. I’m just cranky because I actually really liked both Unity (gameplay-wise, the story was a trainwreck) and Syndicate (slightly less of a trainwreck which is funny considering the presence of actual trains) and thought they did a lot to really refine that tried and true core Assassin’s Creed gameplay…and I know it’s never coming back. But Odyssey is fun I guess. If you aren’t an experienced AC fan you’ll probably enjoy it. And I guess that’s exactly how Ubisoft likes it.
Sonic Adventure 2
One day I was babysitting my 3-year old nephew and he told me he wanted to play a ‘blue game’. I didn’t know what that meant (I have since learned that this is how he refers to his parents’ Switch, which is light blue) so I looked in my Steam library for something blue. I landed on this, which I forgot I even had on PC. And that’s how I got my nephew obsessed with Sonic and also how I spent the next 2 months reliving one of my favorite games of the GameCube era.
I don’t really have a lot to say here. It’s Sonic Adventure 2. I got big into the Chao Garden, as one does, and trying to A-rank all those stages that used to give me the hardest time. I’m actually really proud to have A-ranked Crazy Gadget on all stage types, and Eternal Engine on all types except Hard (couldn’t manage more than a B). Also got all A ranks on Route 101, but I did that in the olden days too (after a great deal of frustration and one broken GameCube controller). Can’t manage to pull it off for Hard Mode Pyramid Cave though…and I know I DID finally get that one last time I replayed this game, like, 8 years ago, so I know I’m capable, but I just can't manage to pull it off.
Mostly I focus on the Hero stages though. Growing up, me and my brother used to share our save files on most games instead of having separate ones, and when he played I’d watch and vice-versa. For SA2 I always played the Hero story and he played Dark, so I’m always less familiar and more rusty when I try to do the Dark stages. I did get all A ranks on Radical Highway after many many hours of trying (fuck you, time attack)…but that’s about my sole Dark stage claim to fame. Rouge's stages in particular are exceptionally difficult for me.
I was still working on raising some Chao before I inevitably got distracted away by other games…but the good thing about having it on Steam is that my save data will be there next time I get the urge to play, whether it’s a year from now or 5+. No more hunting for old memory cards that probably got lost or thrown out when we moved houses, taking all those hard-earned A ranks and carefully-raised Chao with them. And I think it'll be satisfying to boot it back up after a long time and remind myself that I got all A ranks in Crazy Gadget (the finest achievement I'll ever attain in this lifetime and what should be engraved on my tombstone).
Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town
The original Friends of Mineral Town (back when it was still Harvest Moon) for GBA was probably my favorite Harvest Moon game, so I was excited to play the updated remake. It’s not PERFECT, and I did kinda end my playthrough on a sour note which I will explain in a moment, but looking back on it now several months later I’d say it’s a very comfy and largely casual farming sim that’s hard not to like. Fans of Stardew Valley or more modern farming sims might find it too shallow, but for people who played either the original FoMT, HM64 or Back to Nature, it’s a fun and nostalgic little game.
Of course, as with all remakes, there’s always those things you wish they didn’t change. Some of the character redesigns don’t sit as well with me as the originals, but most of them grew on me as I played (except Karen…). The removal of rival marriages is also a heavy blow, simply because a certain Japanese market didn’t like the idea that their waifus might get “stolen” if they didn’t act fast enough (and iirc you had like, 2 whole years before they WOULD in the original so like…)…I’d like to say the inclusion of same-sex marriage makes up for it, but I wish we could have had both. I always end up wooing everyone in town before I actually get married in these games, just so I can see all the events, and then I feel bad for leading everyone else on, so I like the idea that they’ll find happiness together too! I think that if the game were ever able to be hacked for mod support this would be the first thing modders would put back in.
But while these things are the main offenders you’ll hear people talk about, they’re not the worst. A lot of this is probably on the nitpick level that most players won’t care about so feel free to stop reading here. Granted that a lot of the game’s issues stem from being a little TOO faithful to the original and some of its more frustrating gimmicks (who honestly thought a 50 year wedding anniversary gift was a good idea in a game where no one will ever age?!), but there are a lot of things that were CHANGED from the original and made needlessly more difficult for some baffling reason…and then tied to achievements, to boot.
So, most of the achievements are pretty easy to get as long as you play normally and get past 3 years. Others require you to go a bit out of your way to achievement hunt for them specifically, but are absolutely doable if you set your mind to doing them. But then there are the ones that basically require you to plan your entire save file around getting them, and making no mistakes in the process unless you just really really REALLY love waiting around for entire ingame seasons before you get another chance. The main offenders here are all related to breeding farm animals, and how they needlessly changed the breeding mechanics in this game for seemingly no reason than to make things more tedious and difficult.
See, the remake introduced a convoluted friendship/happiness system to all your animals. I think the original had some hidden friendship requirements too, but the main thing in the remake is that animals you purchase have a friendship CAP, after which they cannot continue to gain more friendship, even if you’ve had them and cared for them every day lovingly for years. The only way to raise that cap is to breed your animals, and each time you breed a successive generation that heart cap goes up by one. Purchased animals cap out at 5 out of a maximum of 8 hearts. If you breed your 5 heart cow you bought, it’ll have 6 hearts. Breed that one and it’ll raise to 7. And so on down the line until you have a cow with 8 hearts…which is basically a requirement if you want to get several achievements, and if you aren’t aware of this and start doing it IN YOUR FIRST YEAR you’re going to have a very bad time.
See, you need your animals to have max hearts if you want them to produce the highest-quality animal products (milk, eggs, wool). And you need those animal products in order to cook some dishes, which you need for the achievement to cook all dishes in the game. And you need them at max hearts to win the seasonal animal festivals, which also have achievements. And the thing about those festivals is that they come once a year, and if you don’t have your maxed out adult animal by the time they roll around you have to wait a whole year to do it again. This is much worse than it sounds when you consider the aforementioned fact that the heart cap only raises by one with each successive time you breed…and it takes a full season (30 days) for a pregnant animal to give birth, and about another 20 for that baby animal to become fully grown. And then you have to actually GET that animal’s friendship maxed out up to its cap before you can breed them and pass that cap on to its baby (I think? I was playing in August so I’m a bit fuzzy but I’m pretty sure this was part of what made it so obnoxious because you couldn’t just breed the baby as soon as it hit adult stage if you wanted to do it right).
Now remember, the animal festivals come only once a year. You can’t submit a pregnant or baby animal, but you need an animal with 8 hearts or more (10 is actually the maximum but you only need 8 for everything that matters) to win the festivals. So if you time your breeding poorly, you might not have an animal that’s ready for the festival in time…there’s also holidays and the occasional typhoon/blizzard (which you can sort of cheat your way around in most cases if you’re vigilant about watching the weather channel) that can interfere in your ability to feed and brush the animals, which loses you precious days of raising that friendship.
Now let’s say you didn’t even find out about this cap system, or the 8 heart requirement for winning festivals, until well into your third year, after you’ve gotten most of the other achievements and basically done almost all you wanted to do in this game. Well too bad, because you’re basically going to need another 2 years minimum before you’ll actually have a prize-winning animal ready for the next festival! And if you’ve already befriended all the townsfolk, gotten all the romances, married, fully upgraded your farm, learned all the cooking recipes, fully explored both mines, and basically everything ELSE in the game besides these achievements…you’re going to have a lot of extremely BORING grind ahead of you where you basically just wake up, care for the animals, go back to bed and repeat. For season. After season. After season.
I was basically working like crazy to try and pull this off and I DID actually just barely not make it in time for the sheep festival one year which kinda threw me over the edge in my anger about this mechanic. And if you want to get all the products for your shipping log (thank GOD not required for an achievement, but something I was actively trying to complete before the breeding madness made me just say fuck it, achievements and then I’m done with this game) you have to do this for each type of cow as well…or at least have the sense not to buy any other type of cow besides normal until you’ve already gotten an 8-heart cow through breeding. Because whenever you buy a new animal of the same type after raising the cap, those animals will have the increased heart cap too…so if you had bred yourself a cow with 6 hearts, and bought a new cow, it’d have a 6 maximum instead of 5, and the different cow flavors all run on the same cap system as the normal cow (but only the normal cow’s milk is needed for the cooking achievement so the flavored cows are…well, frankly useless outside of the shipping log).
If this were the only frustrating system in the game I could probably suck it up and deal. It’s very obnoxious since, despite all the tutorial books in the library, I don’t think any of them mention this mechanic at all and basically require you to read about it in an online guide to know (and sucks to be you if you don’t do so early into your save so you can get started on it ASAP), and because it takes so much time to do it that it’ll take you a couple years for certain…but I’d probably sigh, complain a bit, and move past it. But the game decided that this was simply not ENOUGH of a punishingly specific seasonally timed game mechanic to tie to an achievement. No…instead they had to throw in that achievement for owning all 4 of the possible animal pets.
In the original FoMT you just started the game with a dog and you could take it to the fetch festival on the beach in summer. That was about it. The remake introduced different breeds of dog as well as cats, penguins and capybara you can get during different seasons from a special pet merchant. That merchant only shows up on the 15th of the month, and only if it’s sunny, and only if you’ve done some other stuff I forget exactly in order for him to start coming to town. And THEN, the pet he sells changes per season — cats in spring, penguins in summer, dogs in fall and capybara in winter. He won’t sell you a second pet until you’ve raised — you guessed it — your friendship hearts with your first pet, and it also has to be an adult…and you also guessed it, this takes a lot of time and daily dedication to level. And you have to do this until you’ve obtained all 4 pets from him, which you have to do EXACTLY on a sunny 15th day of each season, and only when all of your other pets are adults with maxed friendship.
Getting the idea yet? Another achievement basically tailor made to make you waste your time living through more ingame years than the game has engaging content to complete, and another element that you basically have to read about online to know exactly how it works. I wanted to get a cat. Cats are sold in spring, but it’s impossible for the merchant to come to town before the SUMMER of first year, so the earliest you can get a cat is year 2. It’s also not possible to get two pets in a row — your pet does not grow from baby to adult in time. I tried. So you CAN’T get a cat in spring of year 2, and then a penguin in summer of year 2…you have to skip over summer that year and you’ll be able to get a dog in autumn year 2. But then your dog won’t be an adult by winter of year 2, so you can’t get a capybara. But you can get a cat in year 3 spring! Oh wait, you have a cat already? Bummer. You effectively shot yourself in the foot and wasted time by not buying your pets with the maximum efficiency required to get this achievement.
I was in year 6 by the time I finally got all of the achievements. I had actually reached a point where I basically abandoned my actual save and made a second save file just to do this, neglecting my friends, family, livestock and farm for the sole purpose of waking up, playing fetch with my pet, going to bed and repeating until the time came that I could buy my next pet. The amount of time I wasted, both in real life and in the game, was just unbelievable. The unbelievably restricted mechanics in this game that can’t even be blamed on it being a remake of something so old, because they were actively INTRODUCED in the remake…by the time that last achievement finally popped I was just 1000% fucking done. I came away from a fun and jaunty little remake of a beloved game from my yesteryear feeling angry and soured on the whole experience. And I know that’s stupid, and I know you don’t have to get all achievements and I know achievements should be for things that you really SHOULD work to ACHIEVE and not be handed out like candy. But there’s a difference between achievements that make me feel like I worked hard to achieve them, and achievements that are gated behind ridiculously convoluted time-gated events that require you to actively stop playing the game normally and dedicate yourself solely to…waiting. To grinding your real actual time WAITING day after ingame day until the right time appears, and praying to God you didn’t fuck up and miss even one day in your routine. It’s bullshit, plain and simple.
And it’s not enough for me to not recommend this game, because I still had a lot of nostalgia and fun with it and this isn’t something that’s going to affect the vast, vast majority of players. I just…it’s remarkable how this game is both cutesy and casual and also so sadistic in its torments that it would make Satan himself blush. And it just kinda left a bad taste in my mouth by the time I’d finished and made me want to rant about it. And I put it in my notes, ‘rant about this thing when you write up the end of year post because I’m too angry to do it now’, and I didn’t wanna let my past self down. They put a lot of wasted time into getting those achievements, dammit, they deserve a little 10-paragraph rant as a treat.
But hey — at least I’m in the less-than-1% of (Steam) players who made it.
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright
Been playing this on and off at a very slow pace for a while now…I’m not finished yet so I don’t really have a whole lot to say. It’s…alright. It’s like Awakening: More Differenter Edition, except it lacks a lot of the charm that game had and copypastes some of its mechanics over seemingly just for the sake of it despite it not REALLY making sense to do so (I’m looking at you, dimension babies). The characters are less charming and memorable IMO, and while I kinda like the story plot itself more than Awakening’s, I’m not a big fan of the Pokemon-style version split between the two stories. I’m basically never going to buy or play Conquest, so I’m effectively missing out entirely on the characters and perspective of that side…a perfect scheme to engineer people into buying two copies of the same game, of course (at least with Pokemon the idea is that you’re socializing with other people to get what you don’t have…that logic doesn’t really work when it’s an entire story that you’re splitting between two games that effectively must be played by the same one person to get the full experience).
I was enjoying it well enough though, even if not loving it, until the other day when I finally got to that mission. Suffice to say I didn’t have the requisite A-rank with a certain someone, who was then Doomed To Die By Cutscene In The Stupidest Most Convoluted Way Possible, despite that person being one of my best and most-used units gameplay-wise…so I was basically punished for not having them stand next to my PC character, specifically. But I’m not going to go on another 10-paragraph rant about why I hate game mechanics that come out of the blue and give you no way of knowing about them without seeking knowledge from outside the game. Suffice to say I just sucked it up and reloaded my save, grinded out the last level of support on one of the bonus maps (we were at a B support already…just not A 🙄), and then replayed what had been one of the hardest maps to get through in the game so far the first time (it was easier the second time since I knew about the reinforcements spawning nigh endlessly from the towers if you don’t block em off). The character’s life was spared and life goes on.
Still one of the stupidest things I’ve encountered in a game though, since no other Fire Emblem has had something like that locked to a support, to my knowledge (unless the old pre-GBA ones that I never played did), and there’s really NOTHING in the game’s story to that point that suggests this character’s relationship with the protagonist is important enough to doom them to Death By Cutscene if you don’t support them to A before that point. I was angry. But I managed to overcome it so I’ve moved on.
2022 Addendum: I finished this game the following year, before moving on to play Three Houses. My final verdict was ultimately one of disappointment, hence the updated ‘Meh’ review on the page image. The writing was just plain bad (and I’ve heard that it’s arguably worse on the other two routes), and the characters were just not that memorable or likeable to me with maybe two exceptions. What I did like about it was the gameplay - and at this point I can’t even remember the specifics, but I do remember that there were a few times playing Three Houses where I kept thinking ‘man I really miss being able to do [x] like in Fates’, so I guess there’s that. I know Birthright is also the Baby Easy Mode of the Fates trilogy, but I think Conquest would probably be hard enough to piss me off (I put up with that shit in the GBA era but I don’t know if 2022 Tiger is patient enough for that anymore).
But mostly, the reason I don’t ever particularly care to play Conquest or Revelation is simply because Birthright wasn’t satisfying enough in the writing department for me to WANT to. Ideally you’d want one of your 3-part game series to hook the player into wanting to see how things go down on the other routes, right? Like, no one plays a visual novel, gets one ending, and says ‘okay that’s enough’ (r-right?). If the writing were GOOD it should make me want to see things from the other side. If the characters were compelling enough I should want to see them through another viewpoint. And if the overarching plot (which I spoiled myself on once I decided I didn’t want to ever play the other two games) actually had more hints to its presence IN Birthright’s story, enough to nag at my mind and say ‘there’s something unfinished here and I want to know what it is’...but well, it didn’t. Birthright didn’t manage to make me care about any of those things, certainly not enough to spend more money to buy both a second entire full-priced game and THEN a paid DLC on top of that.
Some people play these games entirely for the strategy gameplay, and that’s the crowd I hear praising Conquest. But other than that I get the strong sense that I’m not alone in finding Fates a pretty weak entry in the series overall. Thankfully I feel that Three Houses more than made up for all of Fates’ shortcomings, at least in the writing and character department, but I’ll talk about that more in my 2021 Three Houses review. UNthankfully...well, I’m not too excited for what I’ve seen about Engage so far, so I guess time will tell as to whether Fates redeems itself in my eyes in the future.
Skyrim Modlist: Elder Souls
I think it’s becoming a meme at this point that Skyrim, in some form, will be on these lists at the end of every year. But I can’t help it…something about it calls to me every year around the same time (late August to September) and it always manages to pull me back in 😔
Anyway, last year I gave Ultimate Skyrim a try because the last time I modded my own game I broke things in hilarious ways by trying to make my own mod compatibility patches (turns out I’m not that good at it). I thought having someone else curate the modlist experience for me would alleviate my problems. And I loved that part of it, and how integrated Ultimate Skyrim’s systems felt compared to me just slapping together whatever I liked with no thought to how those systems would interact. Unfortunately I wasn’t as big a fan of Requiem, the entire system Ultimate Skyrim is based upon…
But in the intervening year between playthroughs, Automaton (the tool used to install Ultimate Skyrim) gave way to a new tool called Wabbajack, and an entire new world of curated modlist installers opened up before me. I decided to peruse the various Wabbajack lists and see if I could find one that’d suit me a little better than Requiem…and I actually really liked the sound of Elder Souls.
As the name implies, Elder Souls is basically The Dark Souls Of Skyrim. The world is harsher, bleaker, and filled with a huge variety of new enemies and dungeons chemically balanced specifically to kick your ass. The skill and leveling system is completely overhauled — aside from the crafting skills (smithing, alchemy and enchanting), you don’t gain exp and level up by doing anymore. You gain gold with each kill, and when you sleep you spend an increasing amount of gold to raise your level in the skill of your choice. Eventually you’ll earn enough exp to level up and gain perk points to invest. As you level, the amount of gold it takes to progress increases higher and higher, from the hundreds to the several thousands…but as you grow in power, you’ll be able to kill more enemies to earn more gold to put towards leveling up further. It’s actually a really cohesive and fun gameplay loop that works surprisingly well in Skyrim, and I came to enjoy it a lot.
Of course you can also earn gold in the usual ways…loot, selling loot, crafting things and selling those…everything you do in the game basically makes you think about how much gold you have and how you want to invest it. In the early game especially, when it’s so hard to kill and loot enemies, that expensive weapon at the blacksmith can be really tempting…but that means you’ll be spending the gold you need to level up, so it’s a judgment call. It also makes you really focus your character build because your skillups are restricted to when you can sleep and afford them, and your perk points become harder and harder to earn as each level up starts to feel so far away (though you can find perk points by exploring and finding waystones in the world as well, for a little extra help). Do you want to invest that perk in alchemy or enchanting? Or is it more practical to boost your damage or defense by taking a combat perk instead? It really makes you think about how you level.
In the early game, you’re a fragile little baby. When you die, you leave behind a gravestone and all your gold with it (you don’t lose your gear) and respawn in the last inn you slept in. If you can get back to your body before dying again, you can recover your gold…but if you die on the way, it’s gone forever. It may be practical to bring a follower along for better survival, but they’re expensive to hire and share in a portion of the gold you earn…is it worth the tradeoff for the survivability? I managed to get lucky and beat Uthgerd the Unbroken in a fistfight by using the architecture of the Bannered Mare to my advantage, ducking and weaving, so I earned a ‘free’ follower to carry my burdens and tank for me in my early hours. She also came at level 11 when I was like, level 3. I had to make her essential, though, because she kept jumping in front of my arrows when I tried to shoot the enemy and I killed her/reloaded about 5 times before I’d had enough of that 😔
By the middle to the end of the game, though, if you’ve been diligent in exploring, killing and building your perks well, you come to feel like an invincible god. You can take anything alone, and followers just get in the way. I was playing an Orc warrior, with two-handed/heavy armor/archery/smithing. Orcs in Elder Souls have passive health regeneration. With the Wintersun religion mod I followed Malacath, of course, and his boon allowed me to regain health for the amount of overkill damage I dealt with each enemy kill based on my favor with him. My favor with him was constantly high because I pleased him by constantly slaying great and powerful foes. With the addition of crafting equippable Runes I furthered my health regeneration per kill and buffs to my armor rating. For completing Meridia’s daedric quest I got a spell that…well I forget what it did exactly but it buffed me even more. Using Ocato’s Recital I had it autocast whenever I entered combat. As a werewolf, I also had further buffs to my health and stamina, even outside of my beast form. By the endgame I was further buffed by Black Books and the reforged Gauldur Amulet (which in Elder Souls has the extremely OP power of letting you revive once on death with a 15 minute cooldown — but considering the Gauldur brothers are extremely formidable, it’s a reward worthy of defeating them). And with the Cleave ability in the two-handed perk tree allowing me to deal AoE damage with each attack, I became a literally unkillable, unstoppable machine of death.
I’m not even a min-maxer. Optimizing builds and gear isn’t something I find fun, so I don’t really do it. This just was mostly a case of multiple factors all aligning in just the right ways to make me feel like a literal actual god. To further illustrated exactly how broken my character became by the endgame, there’s an enemy in the Vigilant mod designed to be unkillable — as in, you’re supposed to just RUN from her if she sees you. I’m kind of a weenie about horror in games in general so I was very scared and I did run and panic when I got to that part of the dungeon but then I got cornered in a room and in my panic flailed about attacking and…killed her. And then her equally scary friend who showed up shortly thereafter. Just killed them both. They’re either meant to have stupidly high health or defense or maybe both, I read about them online and they are definitely not meant to be killable because this section of the mod is more or less supposed to be a survival horror. You can’t kill the monsters chasing you, you can only run. Unless you’re me, the most broken Skyrim character who ever lived.
Anyway. To further drive home how much I ENJOYED Elder Souls, this is the first time I actually, legitimately finished Skyrim. In all my 2,193 hours of OG Skyrim on Steam, in only 228 hours of Elder Souls (this was my first time playing Special Edition so I did have the exact hours on hand) I did what I thought I could never do because I was always so distracted adding and removing mods and generally being too busy breaking my load orders to actually play the game. I beat Alduin. Then I did the Dawnguard DLC for the first time. Then I did Dragonborn for the first time. And then I did vicn’s trilogy of GLENMORIL (I was actually doing this concurrent with Dawnguard), VIGILANT and UNSLAAD. And there were even more quest mods I’d never played included in Elder Souls…but after being able to solo VIGILANT basically effortlessly it felt like nothing in this game could be a proper challenge anymore and I officially decided to call it quits. At level 49, Ushnak the Orc retired, too powerful for Tamriel to contain.
I was still in the mood for Skyrim after that, though, so I grabbed a new modlist and started a new file. But it just…didn’t click. It was a fun enough modlist in its own right (Equanimity) but it just…didn’t feel the same, after getting used to Elder Souls. The world felt so much more empty without all the enemy variety…sure, they had QUANTITY with bandit camps absolutely overflowing with difficult foes, but it wasn’t the same feeling as wandering through the desolate mountains and stumbling upon a minotaur, armed to the teeth and blocking your path. My gold no longer felt like it had value when I couldn’t spend it on skill ups, which had kept loot meaningful throughout the entire game. I feel like Elder Souls just kinda ruined a more traditional Skyrim experience for me…it was so DIFFERENT, and definitely took some getting used to at first, but when I stopped playing I finally realized just how much I’d warmed up to it.
I do wonder how much more punishing it’d be on a different build, though. I was focusing on archery more in the early game but then focused mostly on two-handed by the end, but how would the traditional Skyrim Sneak Archer survive in Elder Souls? What about a mage? I never play mages, but still. A squishier class, a race and religion without inherent health regen abilities…it might be fun to try next year when the Skyrim urge strikes me again. Or maybe I’ll venture out and try another new modlist again. I think I just couldn’t jump RIGHT from the Elder Souls experience into something that was a little closer to normal Skyrim, but a year off might ‘reset’ that a bit. Still though, I’d like to play Elder Souls again sometime. And I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who wants to play Skyrim for the 100th time, but also like, doesn’t want to play Skyrim for the 100th time.
2022 Addendum: Sadly Elder Souls has been discontinued, so my ‘Recommended’ rating feels a little weird now, but there’s other Soulsy inspired lists out there that can hopefully scratch a similar itch (last one I was playing before I got distracted was Ruvaak which was pretty fun). In general I still cannot recommend Wabbajack modlists enough, and since the time of this review I have not played Skyrim without it being a Wabbajack modlist (with the semi exception of me taking someone else’s Skyrim Together modlist and then kind of hacking it to pieces to fit me and my friends’ needs, but that’s a story for the 2022 game reviews).
Genshin Impact
Some friends were playing Genshin so I decided to give it a try. Especially since it was constantly being called a BoTW clone, and I figured I’d never get a switch or be able to play BoTW, so hey, why not?
I feel like I don’t have a lot to say about it. It’s cute and fun and while the gacha elements are, well, gacha elements, I think the game is still very playable and enjoyable without suffering under the greedy fist of Big Gacha. The elemental interactions are really fun — I love games that take elemental play in more exciting directions than simple “water beats fire” style (one of the reasons I like Divinity a lot). Exploration is also a lot of fun, and it’s always really rewarding to solve a puzzle and see a chest pop up. I was also pleasantly surprised by how much worldbuilding and story there actually is, since I kinda figured it was gonna go more sandbox-style and just throw me out with a vague premise and have me explore the world in hopes of finding my sister.
I’ve enjoyed it a lot so far, I just haven’t played it a ton yet because I’ve also had my hands full with other things. But what’s there so far is pretty fun and I think it’s worth checking out at the very least.
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth/Shadowlands
A friend of mine usually buys me a couple months of WoW sub for every new expansion (I started playing when Pandaria was current). For reasons I no longer remember but are probably ARK-related, I didn’t end up getting a sub during the BFA period (my last sub came around the end of Legion). So about a month before Shadowlands dropped she got me a new sub, and I had to play catch-up on all the BFA stuff I’d missed out on…and THEN jump into Shadowlands.
Since I didn’t play BFA when it was current content, I think my opinions of it are pretty skewed. From what I hear, Azerite gear was wildly unpopular, but I kinda thought it was fun (granted I’m not into the endgame high tier raiding stuff where it’d really be an issue). I also liked how the Alliance and Horde stories were COMPLETELY different, and not just slightly different takes on doing the same content in the same zones. Both islands have a lot of personality and I thought the stories for both were interesting, and neither really required me to have a PHD in World Of Warcraft Lore Studies to understand them (which Legion sometimes felt like it did). I’m not SUPER thrilled with some of the changes they made to Outlaw Rogue since I was away, but I’ve gotten used to it…mostly.
Then Shadowlands came out JUST after I finished up my rep grind to get flying in BFA, where I now no longer had any reason to be and to fly (okay that’s not true, because it came in very handy when I leveled my horde main through BFA later, but it’s how I felt at the time). I kinda liked the more railroaded leveling experience for a change because of the way the story elements were able to be tied together and flow into each other, and I appreciate the fact that once you’ve gone through it that way once you don’t have to do it again on your future characters. Usually when I’m leveling I end up wandering off and picking up !s wherever I see them, getting vastly off-track from where the game actually wants me to go (I basically wandered away from like, the third story quest you get in Kul Tiras and ended up doing Every Sidequest in Tiragarde Sound before wandering back to continue the ‘main’ story there and realizing some of the places it would have taken me were places I had already gone to). For Shadowlands, since it wanted to guide me into focusing on the storyline, I decided not to do that — Bastion still had a bunch of the map unexplored by the time I finished the story there, but instead of wandering off to see it all I just headed right to Maldraxxus so I could do the story while it was all fresh in my mind. Then after finishing that, I went back to the other zones to wrap up the extra sidequests and stuff I had missed the first time around. It was a different kind of experience from how I usually play but I liked it for a change. Not sure if I’d like to see it as the new style for every expansion going forward, but I thought it worked well for Shadowlands in particular and the story it wanted to tell.
I’ve now got both my mains set up in covenants and am working on developing those. Another friend who hadn’t played WoW since WoTLK also recently came back and we have been working on leveling new characters together. As someone who’s mostly only ever played one Main Character, with a Secondary Character to occasionally experience stuff on the opposite faction, it feels weird to suddenly have all these ideas for new alts I wanna make, and having to find time to do all the things I wanna do. Thankfully my friend extended my sub as a Christmas gift, so I feel less pressured to have to do EVERYTHING I want to do by the end of the month now that I’ve got more time.
Overall I’ve been having fun though, after having been away from the game for a while. I’m kind of a casual WoW player in general, preferring the questing experience to doing stuff like Dungeons and Raids with groups of strangers that are gonna be putting pressure on me and my gear and my performance, so MY enjoyable WoW experience is not going to be EVERYONE’S enjoyable WoW experience. I get the sense that BFA was not terribly popular, but I thought it was better than Legion (and I liked Legion when it was current content). I’m also not as concerned with choosing the optimal covenant for Maximum Performance, but more based on aesthetics and style and how they fit my characters, and I’d like to see how all their little stories play out on alt characters at some point (right now my rogue is Venthyr and my hunter is Kyrian). Plus there’s still leveling my lowbie druid with my friends, and other alts I wanna make at some point…and working on stuff like pet battling and archaeology on the side. Lots of stuff to do, but hopefully now I’ve got enough time to do it in, and can relax a bit.
2022 Addendum: This was all before the whole big Blizzard scandals came about. At the time me and my friends were having a blast playing Shadowlands content together almost every night. Then basically all at once we all kind of stopped playing. For one friend, it was entirely due to the controversy. For the other I think it was a combination of conflicted feelings and general burnout. I kept going for another month or two until my sub ran out, but I was hitting the burnout around that time as well, and not having them to play with made me lose my zeal to work on my alts and other things to hold my interest, so I just let it lapse. I’m not really sure what the future holds as far as playing WoW together again, now...maybe someday. I don’t think there’s even been a new expansion since Shadowlands yet, anyway (I don’t really keep up with WoW news at all when I’m not actively playing). It’s kind of crazy how much can change in such a short amount of time. I’ll still look back at that time we were playing together and having fun, though, even if our WoW playing days might potentially be over.
Grounded
My friends came to me and basically said, “we’re obsessed with a new survival crafting game, do you wanna play”, and I said “why yes, I do love a good survival crafting game”, and the next thing I knew I had become a little ant…
Grounded hits on all the usual trappings of the genre. You have a vague premise (in this case you’ve been shrunken down to insect size and forced to brave the dangers of the backyard, Honey I Shrunk The Kids style) but otherwise are on your own to fend for yourself against things that want to kill you, while managing your own hunger, thirst, and other needs, building increasingly more advanced shelters and braving deeper into the world to get higher-level crafting materials and march ever toward advancement.
What makes it fresh is the way the ‘theme’ of being shrunk in the backyard feels really well integrated into the world. Things like finding a discarded juice box or soda can with a little (large, to you) droplet of liquid you can drink or fill your canteen with to replenish your thirst, which you can absolutely imagine finding in a backyard where children play. The giant bird who sometimes flies by and perches on a nearby bit of distant scenery, massive enough to blot out the sun from your tiny view below. The koi pond essentially acting as the ‘ocean’ biome, filled with hostile aquatic creatures and the ever-present threat of drowning. The vaguely 1980’s aesthetic of it all. It just all feels really cohesive and helps you immerse yourself in the world.
The mechanics are also a bit more…dare I say, casual? More forgiving? Than some of these games tend to be. Your only needs are really hunger and thirst, and while you CAN sleep, you don’t have to…you can just keep working through the night every night if you want to, without rest. Buildings can clip into the terrain by default, so where you build is a bit more forgiving (some games could stand to learn a thing or two from this…looking at you, ARK). When you die, your corpse basically stays there forever, so there’s not a ton of pressure to race back to where you died to recover your stuff. For that matter, anything you drop seems to stay on the ground forever. These things might change if the game gets persistent servers down the line for performance reasons, but it can be kinda nice in a multiplayer game with friends.
I think my favorite thing is how the building system is LEGITIMATELY cooperative. In games like ARK or Conan Exiles, it’s like, you basically designate one person in your tribe to be The Builder, with everyone else just being your resource gathering monkeys. One person has the plans, the ideas, the visions for how to build the base…and it can be hard to communicate that without wires getting crossed, and that can be costly when these games usually don’t return all your resources spent when you demolish a structure. But the way Grounded does it, you’re basically not placing down structures in the world right away, but blueprints for them. Everyone can see them, even as you’re trying to position them. Then anyone can get the resources and actually turn that blueprint into a structure. And if you decide you don’t like it, or change your plan, you can just destroy the blueprint without sacrificing the resources on it. It feels a lot more like I’m working with a team when I see blueprints that my tribemate made, and I can just go get the resources to build it when I’m able. Really working together, just like real ants…for queen and colony…
Another thing I love and think needs to be default in ALL these games, ASAP, is the ability to color code and add a floating icon to all your chests and containers as an easy way of saying ‘this is what we store in this box’, without requiring signs or mods or just you having to memorize/check every chest every time. Seriously, survival games? Please take note.
All that said, it’s still early access, and there’s some bugs (heh) sometimes. We’ve had some semi-frequent random disconnections kicking us back to the main menu and forcing the host to re-invite us back. There are also not yet actual servers, so the multiplayer game saves just live on the host’s computer. Latency can be an issue if their internet is better or worse than yours, and lagspikes and rubber banding is a bit more frequent than I tend to feel it in games with dedicated servers. Some hitboxes are a little wonky sometimes, for both enemies and resources. And lots of other little stuff I’ve already forgotten, but nothing I’d consider really gamebreaking.
Overall pretty fun if you don’t mind some bugs, both literal and technical (though there IS an arachnophobia slider that can make the spiders into basically cartoony blobs, which I think is a pretty cool consideration in a game like this). It seems like the devs have a lot of big plans on the roadmap as well, and a friend who was playing around in God Mode stumbled upon a few areas labeled as UNDER CONSTRUCTION, so the map might be getting some extensions at some point too. If you ever felt like you just wanna zone out and go about some farming tasks like a diligent little ant…Grounded is your game.
2022 Addendum: Grounded’s officially out of Early Access at this point and there have been a lot of changes to the game in the time since I wrote this review, and updates have continued coming out pretty regularly even post-release, which is always good to see. I think the funniest thing about my review in hindsight is that I don’t know if I’d consider it ‘casual’ as much anymore because combat has become a bit more deep and challenging...we even had to bump our difficulty down in an ongoing save at one point because we were having a rough time. I think more or less all the changes have improved the game, though, which isn’t something you see every day in a game like this (at least in the two I’m most familiar with, ARK and Conan Exiles, where every update tends to be met with a choir of angry players (usually PVP people, I don’t go there) about how the devs broke everything and suck and should issue refunds and also die). But yeah idk, go check it out, it’s pretty fun to be a little ant sometimes.
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#apex legends - 12 posts
#lmao - 7 posts
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#caustic - 3 posts
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Longest Tag: 139 characters
#like... i think thee'd have to be thunderbolts raining down as i flipped off the sky to motivate me to even consider... how i would tell th
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
you know, in almost every horror movie ive seen where the premise is that the whole family/community are cannibals and th3ey just have whole rooms for bodies to be hanging about in different pieces
like...99% of the movies just have it in some filthy shed or room covered in old blood and mold, with flies and meat hanging up sans refrigeration
like how has the whole ass cmmunity or family not died from rotten meat? from salmonella? half the time they don't even clean the bodies before they kill them so they're caked in mud
pretty sure humans have weird shit that lives on our skin just chilling and waiting for a cut or microtear to get inside and cause chaos
you would think an entire household or town dedicated to luring tourists and murdering them for meat would have discovered a more efficient and food safe way to do it.
not to MENTION like how does this happen? you go to a town meeting one day and on the ballot is a) lowering the speed limit around the school, b) funding the community garden restoration, and c) becoming a covert murder factory for fun, food and frivolity...
Things that would make more sense than a hotel that traps people: a SPA
the people coming in are usually the health-conscious type, they have some form of bath or soak throughout the process, they're relaxed, and you could put paralytics in the facemasks or something
not to mention, most rural towns (where this shit is usually set?) have butchers and mobile butchers at that with their own set up and clean room type equipment. there's heaps in our area. Wouldn't it be less suspicious to have them turn up, grab the bodies and transport them to another area for dismemberment?
People are used to mobile butchers doing this sort of thing with cowsa, pigs, goats, etc. Plus they'd at least have clean equipment and less chance of unsanitary items used for the dispersement of meat etc.
The butcher shop would be the first place you'd think of for cold storage, but what about the freezers in the local supermarket? Assuming there's a walk-in and everyone's on board so the new people in town won't squeal to anyone.
The local ice cream truck or shop? Maybe?
If it's small enough the pub might have one of those converted shipping containers out back that's now a giant freezer.
Not sure how they'd store it, but like there has to be a better premise for the horror of the movie than 'opened fridge in dirty house to find a head or fingers'.
I think you could absolutely pull a subtle horror story out of this, and they could legit gaslight the tourists (only taking specific ones) by advertising the hotel as haunted.
you KNOW that people will already be on edge thinking they might see a ghost, and will manufacture paranormal incidents, which is the real trojan horse here. so you go in thinking its a ghost movie or maybe a cryptid movie, so when the occasional bone or skull is found it's like "oh no, the ghost/cryptid did it"
the whole time the protagonist(s) are having just the most amazing meals and customer service... never suspecting.
NOT TO MENTION none of that bone windchimes bullshit.
What is the one thing a LOT of farmers use? It smells like vomit so you always know its in use? Blood and Bone fertiliser. no questions asked for anyone who has been in a farming area. It really helps gardens bc nutrients (its legit blood and bone with other mixtures, usually the offal and such from abbottoirs)...
Maybe the locals are like super funny about it.
There's a whole year-round halloween attraction with real skeletons and just enough tacky decorations that no one questions them.
Or the doctor's office has a like 6ft skeleton and the school uses it on occasion for biology.
the real question is like, what are funeral rights like in a town dedicated to eating people?
Is a town member considered Sacred and Off the Menu?
Or is it an honour to have your body shared amongst your loved ones after death? Does anything change in the event of like, an unexpected or accidental passing?
If you have a combine harvester accident, and you lose an arm, does the amputated limb go on the menu or it is carefully disposed of?
They never really look into how this whole system works in terms of a full town structure. It's always some shitty "protag snaps awake and screams at dead bodies" thing as people leer or masked people cut up bodies"
If they expanded on it, it could be interesting.
But that's just me, I'd want to know WHY a whole town went full hannibal and how that impacted all the other systems. Government, health, education, political/legal, community events?
Do they have a section for Special Meat Dishes in the local show / bake-off?
See the full post
57 notes - Posted April 24, 2022
#4
...can a mimic get into a hospital/magical medical center with dr clerics or whatever, and pretend to be an organ?
Like, eat what was in the transport carrier, and get transplanted?
That could be a really fucked up DnD campaign where it slowly starts to bond to the body and fights for ful control of the limbs, and noone in the party knows until the changes are physical...
It could go:
a) the horror route, where they lose out to them and become a monster, and perhaps this is how mimics gain the mass to become a greater threat
b) the tragic hero route, where they see they are being consumed and sacrifice themselves to save the others
c) the changeling route, where the two mix into a new entity either with, or against, the will of both the mimic and the host
d) the symbiote route, where they bond and learn to live together, even begin to work together and maybe even love one another much to the discomfort of the other party members sharing the tent
e) the trial by fire route, where only through great suffering can the means to remove the creature or make it inert be gained
f) the medusa route, where the host is strengthened through (faith, medicine, magic, other) and is able to overcome the parasitic thing and force it into inertia so it 'dies' but remains as the organ itself
g) the feral route, where the host embraces the desires radiating through them and becomes wildly unhinged around concepts like 'good/bad' and 'friend/food' as the tendrils slip into their mind but still retains primary consciousness
h) the mirror route, where the creature takes control if the host is unconsious and has a different 'self', but will usually only act to preserve the body
i) the What? route, where the hero just wakes up as a normal person with a strange ability to shapeshift or blend into surroundings without any explanation and is just like 'fuck it let's gooooo'
j) the Aw YEah route, the same as i) but it's a bard, and they use it for... reasons of charisma, seduction and experimentation
k) the What To Do When You're Expecting route, this could be the final part of a mimic lifecycle and the hero was a good option to carry their spawn or eggs or magical essence or however you want to play that. mostly bc it would be hilarious to have someone being healed mid-battle and the cleric being like, 'uh, congratulations and im not sure what it is but there's a lot of teeth...'
l) the Choose route, where the host has a crucial moment to choose to keep the mimic or destroy it despite the cost and has to think about the benefits and problems. like, it could be attached to any other letter scenario as well, or random.
m) the PAssive route, weird but hear me out... the cleric catches it, and believes fervently that their patron or deity would want them to help soothe the anger and bloodlust, to bring this creature to peace and handles the issues through intense meditation or calm
n) the Zombie route, where the creature bonds to the hero and fills their blood with spores. non toxic, not harmful, but it does push for them to bring their bodily fluids into contact with the others around them. maybe they get hurt in battle more easily, maybe they're more seductive than usual, or more violent (eg biting in fights), and it targets the party. because it wants to build a protective brood around the host that are loyal to the mimic and will die to keep it safe / has readily available back-up hosts around.
o) the It Takes a Village route, smooshing concepts (k) and (n) together, so that the mimic builds a whole interconnected family of ifferent biologies to spawn through. giving the future mimics unique and durable genetics. more autonomy for hosts, but it pushes emotional bonds as well, and builds an army to protect spawn.
p) the Bonding Song route, where it uses the basic idea of (n) but to gradually make the infected cease movement and settle in a safe, secluded place all together with one mobile to bring food to them as the others meld together physically into a big organic Thing that will slowly form into a Boss Mimic. The mobile one remaining will continue to feed it, and help lead adventurers to it.
Probably others
74 notes - Posted March 15, 2022
#3
cant shake this shitty headcanon in my brain of percy accidentally seducing the others in vox machina by teaching them how to do court dances
something the gentry and nobility are schooled in from a young age bc half their interactions with other noble houses are at balls where all dancing is regimented and very public, the most physical contact with someone outside your own household, usually
But it's all 'hands pressed as you step in counterpoint' and maybe a few flourishes or dips to show you have some mastery
its all fun and games until you realise how close you both are, and that you have the instructors full attention as he shows you how to dance (and not make an ass of yourself at the next formal dinner/ball / charity royal or-gee or whatever the money havers get up to in their free time)
Scanlan would be fun, though, imagine the strict discipline of dance trying to quell a bard whose entire way of motion to music involves hip thrusts and disco moves???
just saying, could be hilarious, could be very cute too
having trouble picturing a few of them, but as a spectator sport it would be very entertaining
89 notes - Posted May 15, 2022
#2
Master List - Creativity Help/Art Block Busting for Writers & Artists
Post for AUs & Tropes
Post for Monster-Making (Mundane Items)
Post for Dryad Creation
Post for Fae/Fairy Creation
Post for Random Character Weaknesses
Post for Random Superpowers
Post for Mermaid Making
Post for Monster Mixology
Post for Making a Randomised Centaur/Taur
Post for Winged Creatures
96 notes - Posted May 8, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
i feel like the voix machina group could have handled the percy situation much easier if they have an enchanted like, pole catcher thing
like... "I am death and vengeance and-"
*snick* "Gotcha, let's get you a snickers."
324 notes - Posted April 3, 2022
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Miraculous fic recomendations!!
This is just an excuse to show all my bookmarks? Yes. Yes, it is. I'm pretty sure most of this fics are really popular, but try see if you find something you didn't knew about!
All of the fics will be rated Teen and up audiences or lower. Also if I don't put the author's tumblr is because they didn't put it in the fic or/and I couldn't find it.
Pairing: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
knowing you by emsylcatac (they are not really the author of the fic but that's the account that says in the fic, the actual author doesn't have an account).
After dropping their transformations months ago, Marinette and Adrien see each other for the first time after being apart. They've both left too much unsaid and have to work to pick up the pieces of their confused hearts.
Chapters: 1/1
Post-reveal but mostly ladynoir, light angst with happy ending.
the last day on earth by Reiaji
The first time Marinette sees Chat Blanc, she's fourteen years old. The second time, fifteen—the third time, seventeen.
The closer she grows to Adrien, the harder it is to save him.
Chapters: 1/1
Post-reveal lovesquare, kinda heavy angst, hopeful ending.
tell me something i don't know by carpisuns (@carpisuns here on tumblr)
Do you think it still means something? To love someone, even if the universe said you had to?
The odds of having a soulmate are about negative one billion (or something like that). But somehow, like they always have, Marinette and Chat Noir find themselves together. They’re ready to finally tell each other everything, but it turns out that even soulmates have to keep secrets, and while their bond draws them together, duty forces them apart.
Chapters: currently 17/28 (WIPs can be exhausting but this one is 100% worth the wait!)
Mostly marichat but almost all of the lovesquare sides make an appearance, soulmates au, mostly fluff but it can get angsty if it wants to.
One Thing After Another by SKayLanphear
Marinette notices that, sometimes, Adrien acts a little out of the ordinary--like the time he stood in a cardboard box for no reason, or when he actually hissed at Nino. It's only when she starts to notice the similarities between Adrien and a certain feline that she begins to get suspicious.
Basically, Adrien acts like a cat when he probably shouldn't.
Chapters: 15/15
Mostly adrienette with one sided reveal by Marinette's side, miraculous side effects (by both sides wich is really cool!), it's fluff with a lil tiny angst for drama.
This would take some getting used to by Codango (@codango here on tumblr!)
Adrien peeked out from behind the chimney even as the magic of his own Chat Noir mask fell away.
She was still visible, her dark hair bobbing under the street lamps a couple blocks away.
“Marinette.”
Adrien blew out a confused breath. His fiery Ladybug… was the quiet little mouse who sat behind him in class?
“What. The.”
This… would take some getting used to.
Chapters: 8/8
Adrienette with one sided reveal by Adrien's part, awkward flirting, just fluff, nothing to worry about.
comfort food also by Reiaji!
In Marinette's house, cooking is a language of love, and Marinette loves Adrien more than most.
Chapters: 1/1
Adrienette with a little of ladynoir, super super fluff, a lot of insight into Marinette's chinese heritage.
The right side of his face by walkingonthestars (@hamsternamedmarinette here on tumblr!)
Marinette and Adrien are able to remain in their new seats in the back of the room at the end of Chameleon.
Chapters: 1/1
Adrienette, fluff with light angst.
it's a long way forward so trust in me by aloneintherain (@captainkirkk here on tumblr!)
“You’re not the only strong one around here, Chat,” Marinette said. She looked a little winded, but she wasn’t struggling to hold him up.
This close up, he could see the freckles on the bridge of her nose. He could see how that smug smile lit up her eyes. He could feel the strain of her arms—and wow, okay, he really wasn’t the only person around here with muscles.
Six times Marinette carried Adrien (plus one time he carried her).
Chapters: 1/1
All the sides of the lovesquare! Fluff with LOTS of mutual pining.
a fight that you were born to lose also by aloneintherain
When the prosecution starts throwing around the word victim in reference to Adrien, he has to stuff his hands under his thighs to keep himself from bolting out of the courtroom.
Adrien had felt unsafe during those last few weeks, but, until he had woken up and seen Father silhouetted in his bedroom doorway, that had only been paranoia. Father was controlling and cold, but he wasn’t hateful. Adrien was isolated. He was often hungry. And some weeks ago, when he had snuck out to visit Nino, sitting thigh-to-thigh on his bed while Adrien cried in that silent, crumbling way of his, he hadn’t argued when Nino put a hand on his shoulder and said, tentatively, That’s abuse.
But Adrien remembers being small and Father touching his hair after he’d aced another test; Father holding his scribbled drawings like they were something precious, and framing them around his office; Father, dressed as Hawkmoth, his eyes wild behind the mask, lashing his sword against Adrien’s baton; Father, collapsed against Mum, crying into her ashy hair.
Adrien finds out Gabriel is Hawkmoth, and Gabriel gets to bring his long-waited plan into action.
Chapters: 1/1
This one doesn't really focus in the ship that much as is an Adrien character study and an exploration of his relationship with his father, but they're still there so I put them here. Really heavy angst (this is one of this fics that haunt me in the middle of the night) with a happy ending. ❗TW: parental abuse, eating disorders❗
Supercut by LNC
Marinette loves her friends and Adrien can't deal.
Chapters: 1/1
Post-reveal lovesquare, again light angst, an exploration of Adrien's insecurities, Marinette Dupain-Cheng deserves the world, happy ending.
Madame Snare by jettiebettie
“Sounds like a lot of work for nothing. She should take this as a sign to have a relaxing weekend with no responsibilities.”
“It's a lot of work she put her whole heart into. It wouldn't be right for it to go to waste,” Adrien whispers to him. The look on Marinette's face is enough to cause Adrien's own heart to ache. If anyone deserves the satisfaction and pride from a job well done, it's her.
“Too bad there isn't anyone else who can walk in those death traps,” Plagg says. Adrien hums in thought, tapping his chin.
“I could.”
Chapters: 1/1
Marichat, episode-based, Chat Noir in a dress!!!, light angst but it's mostly just idiots being idiots and a lot of fun.
in the same sun by peachcitt (@peachcitt here on tumblr!)
"It’s hard to believe that I saw you last at the peak of summer, when the sun was close and warm - and so were you. It should go without saying that I miss you. I miss you something terrible."
//
"It’s been seven months to the day since I’ve seen you. I wish you were here more than anything else."
Two letters, signed with initials instead of names, found in Paris, France.
Chapters: 1/1
Ladynoir, just angst, that's it, written like letters. No ending, just pain.
an uncurtain discovery by Missnoodles (@ladyofthenoodle here on tumblr!)
When he returns from school on Wednesday afternoon, Adrien discovers the darkness in his own home. He struggles to come to terms with it. To his utter mortification and delight, Ladybug is nearby to rescue him.
(He does not discover that his father is supervillain. That will happen on a different Wednesday.)
Chapters: 1/1
Ladrien, it says it's crack, and don't get me wrong, is super funny, but I also found it sad as fuck?
An Open Secret by Kasienda
Adrien whirled around toward Marinette. She smiled at him.
He couldn’t smile back. He stared at her like the dumb blond model that he was often accused of being.
Something shifted in her expression. And her warm open Marinette smile transformed into Ladybug’s grin. He was looking at Ladybug right now.
He knew Ladybug’s name!
Her name was Marinette Dupain-Cheng.
And he couldn’t say anything! Not to Marinette! Not even to Plagg, who had confided two weeks prior that Master Fu was growing increasingly paranoid since the location of his home and hideout had been compromised. Their master had apparently decided that Chat Noir and Ladybug would have to give up their miraculouses if they ever discovered each other’s identities.
It wasn’t fair!
...
A fic where they both know, but can't openly talk about it.
Chapters: 4/4
Post-reveal... but is it? Mostly adrienette and ladynoir, fluff with light angst and them being absolute idiots at hiding their secret identity.
golden (like daylight) by okayanna (@anna-scribbles here on tumblr!)
Friendship, Adrien decided, shaking off the mental image of Marinette’s hurricane eyes and hesitant mouth, parted in a small, careful “o.” He had a very strong friendship with Marinette. That was all.
or
Adrien thinks a lot about words, love, and Marinette Dupain-Cheng.
Chapters: 1 + epilogue
Adrienette but has lots of ladynoir, another Adrien character study because I hate myself, it tries to not be angst but the writing will punch you in the guts and make you cry, it's so good.
Strangers in the Bright Lights by poodles (@ladybeug here on tumblr!)
Adrien is about two drinks in when he sees a girl at the end of the bar wearing black cat ears. It's kind of weird, so he watches her, and although it's crowded he can see her face when she turns around. She’s wearing a Chat Noir mask. He takes a quick look around- nobody else is wearing a mask. Just her.
Adrien finishes his gin martini and heads over to her. He could use some company tonight anyways, he hasn’t told anyone he’s back in Paris and Nathalie won’t arrive in town for another month. And it’s been a rough day, okay? A rough move! He’s not sure he wants to be back yet, and he spent most of the day in the Agreste mansion sorting through some photographs of his father he found in the study. Maybe he wants a drink and some stranger to tell him he’s pretty! That’s not a crime, is it?
Chapters: 1/1
Adrienette but it's also ladrien??? I think??? It's super super angsty but they're both drunk the entirety of the fic so it's also really funny.
Pick-Up and Chase by also SKayLanphear
After she accidentally trips into Adrien and apologizes about "falling for him," Marinette learns that he's no match for cheesy pick-up lines--whether they were unintended or not. And while she finds it flattering that he turns into a flustered mess with only a few words, Marinette comes to regret making him uncomfortable. That is, until she learns he's Chat Noir. At which point the phrase "just deserts" becomes a permanent fixture in her everyday plans.
A story in which Adrien is flustered, Marinette is smooth as glass at dropping lines, and Chat Noir gets the romance he was always asking for--even if he doesn't quite know how to handle it.
Chapters: 10/10
Adrienette with one sided reveal by Marinette's side, it doesn't say it in the tags but I'm pretty sure the characters are much older than they actually are in the show, so much fluff and so much flirting.
Pairing: Alya Césaire/Nino Lahiffe
Nino Has Done Nothing To Deserve This by GuardianKarenTerrier (@guardiankarenterrier here in tumblr)
It's nothing, really- just an innocent comment, a joke. But when they hear it, Nino and Alya come to a realisation.
There were, in retrospect, dozens upon dozens of hints. Now that they're suddenly aware of all their friend's flimsy excuses and rushed explanations, they're not only sure how they've missed it, they're not sure how anyone else has either. They realise that it had to be magic protecting their friends- and that same magic has ceased to work on the two of them.
Well, this means they'll just have to start watching over their friends themselves.
Chapters: 7/7
This is more a found family fic than anything else, Alya and Nino are the mom friend, has light angst but it's mostly identity shenanigans in the most bizarre way. ❗TW: eating disorders❗
christmas lights by demistories
Nino checks up and down the street, checking to make sure there’s no raging akuma headed his way before he crosses quickly and ducks inside the small café. He closes the door quickly before the icy air can blow inside and tugs his beanie down over his ears. He spots Alya sitting alone in the corner.
Chapters: 1/1
Just fluff!! Really short but really sweet.
hold on, i still want you also by Missnoodles!
Written for the @thedjwifizine ! Wich I also recommend if you wanna binge a lot of djwifi fics while also looking at amazing art!!!
Five times Alya ran into her ex, and the one time he stopped being her ex.
Chapters: 1/1
Light angst with a happy ending! I don't really like the ex-lovers to lovers trope but this one is the only exception.
I will continue to expand the list in the future! But by now I hope I was helpful in the search of new fics!
#miraculous ladybug#mlb#marinette dupain cheng#adrien agreste#chat noir#ladybug#lovesquare#lovesquare fic rec#miraculous ladybug fanfiction#miraculous ladybug fanfiction recomendation#miraculous fic rec#fic rec#djwifi#ninalya#djwifi fic rec#adrienette fic rec#marichat fic rec#ladynoir fic rec#ladrien fic rec#ml#fanfiction
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