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lazaefair · 4 years

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Has anyone done the Disney Princess AU yet

Part 1 - written by me, @poemsingreenink, and @iwritesometimes

poemsingreenink: Like, if anyone has big, soft innocent eyes it's Marwan who I swear to god looks near happy tears in most intense scenes. I at one point during Aladdin in theaters thought "You know Jafar's maybe just not had a great life. He's really having a day here." BECAUSE OF HIS BIG SOFT EYES.

lazaefair: LUCA MARINELLI HIMSELF SAID IT

sarah: HOWWWWW DID HE EVEN GET CAST AS JAFAR LIKE THOSE ARE DISNEY PRINCESS EYES

lazaefair: I...I need somone to draw Joe in a Disney Princess dress

sarah: but WHICH PRINCESS i feel like belle's off the shoulder gold ballgown has promise

lazaefair: Ariel’s pink gown would really drive the point home, though Although you’re right, Belle is a literate, dreamy brunette who loves poetry, so she’s closer as an archetype

sarah: i'll be honest: i was mostly thinking of getting his shoulders nude

lazaefair: Nicky is Ariel. Big blue eyes, otherworldly, utterly uncivilized.

sarah: YES

So imagine: Prince Yusuf, who had a giant statue of himself gifted to him on his birthday, and who hates it because his best friend (and immortal general of the army) Andromache is NEVER GOING TO LET HIM LIVE IT DOWN.

Also imagine: feral merman siren Nicolò who bites off fishheads and communicates through weird clicking noises, when he’s not singing men to their deaths. He’s not one of those useless pretty koi mermaids, no. He’s a motherfucking creature of the deep. Lamp eyes that are used to distract fish prey. Claws and pale fins and an intense stare and fangs.

Now imagine: Prince Yusuf going overboard in the storm that hits his royal yacht. Struggling, swept away, half-drowned and losing hope fast when an unearthly song fills the air, low and sweet and compelling. He’s swimming towards the singing before he realizes it, delirious, until something closes around his ankle and drags him under. The thing under the water kills him quickly.

And then kills him again, when it doesn’t take. After the third killing, Nicolò’s on his way to being well and truly mystified (“Okay, don't panic. They all die eventually, maybe...maybe I’ll just need to do it again?”) and gives up after the fourth and fifth killing. He drags his (attempted) prey to a little sheltered island he knows about, kills it one last time just to make sure, and then watches, resigned, as the flesh heals up and the lungs push water out until it’s coughing its way back to undeniable life.

“You rescued me,” is the first thing Yusuf says to him. “Your song – it is the song of my heart. My soul.”

Nicolò...has no idea what to do with this, coughs awkwardly in reply, and leaves before he can think too hard about the warmth in his chest answering to the warmth in the human’s expressive, grateful eyes.

(He doesn’t tell Yusuf the truth about their bloody first meeting until years later. It’s too goddamn embarrassing, to be perfectly honest.)

Of course he comes back within a day, almost shamefully quickly. Unable to help being fascinated by this gorgeous, well-spoken, kind and generous human who cannot die. He starts bringing things to Yusuf: at first just fish, then interesting-shaped fragments of rock and coral, and then bits of treasure he’s collected over the years, just to hear what new poetic turn of phrase Yusuf will spout on the spot when he’s given something.

“...this is my family crest on this treasure chest, Nicolò. How strange.”

“It is the chest you said your great-great-grandfather lost,” Nicolò says, the words coming out dry and halting from long years of disuse. Watching Yusuf’s hands as he traces the elaborate lines engraved on the lid, now blurred with rust and coral.

“That’s amazing. Truly. I am at a loss for words,” Yusuf says, smiling.

“No, you aren’t,” Nicolò says, and keeps watching so he can see the moment when the smile turns into a laugh.

Another day, he brings to Yusuf what Booker had told him was called a ‘dinglehopper’ and was what humans used to keep their hair in order, as they did not have the ocean to spread it out like beautiful seaweed in the waves. Yusuf takes it, mouth twitching in a way that makes Nicolò doubt the accuracy of Booker’s explanation. Yet Yusuf does not correct him, but in fact solemnly thanks him before offering the dinglehopper back and asking him to help untangle his riot of curls.

And so it goes. Days pass. Fascination becomes infatuation, turns to desire and then into love, until neither can imagine living without the other, and yet—

Eventually, Nicolò has to give Yusuf up. The prince is too noble and good to just abandon his people indefinitely. And because Nicolò loves him, he goes out and once more lures a ship in with his song, but not to dash it to pieces on jagged rocks this time. He leads them to the island. Watches from a distance as the astonished shouting begins, then back-pounding hugs and joyous celebration as Yusuf boards the ship and sails away. Watches Yusuf turn back more than once to scan the beach, clearly looking for Nicolò, but Nicolò does not follow. Instead, he watches until the ship is lost to his sight and he cannot feel the ship’s current or smell, and then he dives deep and goes to visit Merrick.

Meanwhile, Yusuf arrives back at the capital, where his other best friend, Quỳnh (immortal admiral of the navy) feels terribly guilty about the prince going overboard on his birthday. Which is why she uncharacteristically doesn’t give him shit when he comes back babbling nonsense about mermaids. Or when he spends the next few weeks moping around, writing mermaid poetry and drawing mermaid pictures.

To be fair to him, the particular mermaid he sketches over and over does look pretty striking. Otherworldly and all that. Good cheekbones. Nice pearly scales. “Fucking...giant anglerfish eyes,” Quỳnh mutters while she and Andy look over the latest pile of sketches Yusuf’s left abandoned on a library table. “Our prince has been fucking bewitched by a fucking fish.”

“Mm,” Andy agrees.

So when Nicolò arrives at the palace one fine summer’s day – naked, his fangs smoothed away to look perfectly human, a giant emerald in one hand and a silver fork in the other – and walking, on legs, it causes a bit of an uproar.

“You still smell like the sea,” Yusuf says hoarsely into Nicolò’s neck, the two of them wrapped around each other as closely as two bodies can be.

“Oh, fuck,” Andy says, lowering her axe. Quỳnh looks more closely at the dirty naked wild man their prince is embracing as if his life depends on it. Angular face. Skin encrusted with salt. Absolutely enormous piercing blue eyes. Naked, did we mention naked.

“Oh, fuck,” Quỳnh says.

“You get them separated,” Andy says. “I’ll go...get them a bath.”

The price Nicolò paid for his new human shape:

His siren song.

His immortality.

What he gets in return:

Yusuf teaching him what a dinglehopper is actually called, and what humans actually use it for.

Yusuf teaching him how to read and write his native tongue, and a few other tongues besides.

Yusuf reading poetry to him or sketching next to him on long lazy afternoons in the gardens.

The immense pleasure of intimidating the fuck out of any remaining would-be suitors for Yusuf’s hand in marriage who are still hanging around the palace for some reason.

“I am Nicolò di Genova,” Nicolò replies to the marquis’s indignant demands – predator’s smile still frightening even without endless rows of needle-sharp teeth. “You have seven days to leave this place forever. Get your affairs in order.”

Friendship with Andy and Quỳnh.

“Holy shit. Did he just—”

“—stab the marquis with a fork, at dinner, in front of the entire court? Yep.”

“...”

“New best friend.”

“Obviously.”

Yusuf writing poetry about him and to him. Nicolò likes them all. He wouldn't know a good human poem from a bad human poem, but nothing Yusuf touches could be bad, so ergo it's good.

Sightseeing throughout the kingdom with Yusuf’s strong, gentle fingers twined around his.

Yusuf breathing blissful curses into Nicolò’s ear, exactly like he used to do on their island, as they move together on his enormous bed.

Yusuf. Yusuf. Yusuf.

(Booker is also there. He insisted on being turned human, too, and coming along to make sure Nicolò doesn’t totally fuck this up, but he’s really mainly there for the entertainment. And the booze. Andy asks him at one point about losing his immortality. He shrugs. “Look, if we die, we die,” he says, then offers Andy another pour of fine French brandy. The two of them get along famously.)

It’s all going great until one night on the beach, while they’re walking along hand-in-hand under the stars and idly discussing human and merfolk constellations. Someone approaches them, dressed splendidly and moving with arrogant grace. He is also angular, also fair-haired, also possessed of unsettling eyes. And he has Nicolò’s siren song, gently humming from the shell that adorns his neck.

“Merrick,” Nicolò hisses as Yusuf’s eyes grow glazed and blank, and he tightens his hand on Yusuf’s, afraid for the first time. “Our deal—”

“He can’t bear the idea of living forever without you, can he? And so he hasn’t proposed,” Merrick says, smiling cruelly. “You’ve missed your chance. He’s mine.” And he extends his hand out to Yusuf—

Who stirs, suddenly, and turns to Nicolò. “Limpid, or shimmering?”

“What?”

“Shimmering,” Yusuf decides, peering into Nicolò’s eyes. “Yes. Limpid would be too pretentious, I think.”

And that’s pretty much that – we don’t actually get the plot with Merrick the Sea Witch because Yusuf only has eyes for one weird-looking white guy. Also, his one artistic failing is that he's tone deaf.

They do eventually kill Merrick because true love wins out and we are all about those happy endings, Grimm’s can suck it, etcetera, so Nicolò gets his immortality and his siren song back. He’s also back to being a merman, but Yusuf does not care. “I could paint your beautiful tail for the rest of my life, my love, and still fail to capture the luminous iridescence of you,” he murmurs, stroking said tail with tender fingers. The last person to touch Nicolò’s tail got his hand bitten off. Here and now, Nicolò runs his claws through Yusuf’s hair, clicking deep and happy in his throat.

(“This is weird, right?” Quỳnh asks from where she and Andy are busy scraping evil kraken guts off their armor, a prudent distance down the beach from the lovers. “I’m not the only one who thinks it’s weird?”

Andy says nothing, just offers Quỳnh the rest of her bottle of vodka. This is why Quỳnh loves her so.)

(The wedding is a nightmare, at least according to the palace chef charged with cooking the wedding feast. “What is this, this, abomination? What in heaven’s name have you brought into my kitchen!”

“Tubeworm,” Booker says. “Considered a fine delicacy among our people. Don’t worry about it.”)

#the old guard #joe x nicky #immortal husbands #kaysanova #disney princess au #by lazaefair

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amarriageoftrueminds · 4 years

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@raindancing-with-the-stars-above in reply to your post “how weird is it to watch youtube fashion videos about olive complexions...” said:

can u tell me the results of ur research when ur done, cause i have olive skin & am never motivated enough to google such stuff

WELL so far I’ve found:

for make-up advice:

Alexandra Anele (pale olive Caucasian, great, very chill queer vibe tho a strate)

Olive Embrace (Asian, sounds about 12 tho so YMMV?)

for clothing colour advice:

(both very soothing voices for some reason)

Meriam Style (Indian cool-olive, seems the most in depth/clued up)

Audrey Coyne (pale olive Waspy McWasp)

All this is based on the idea that your skin has an undertone and the best colours to wear are the ones which match that undertone.

So far what I think I understand is:

olive people can be cool (blue) or warm (yellow) undertone.

cool people have blue veins in their wrist or look better in silver jewellery

warm people have green veins and look best in gold jewellery

neutral people have mixed veins and/or look okay in both

undertone can change during the year if you tan strongly

(eg. wear warmer, lighter colours in summer when your skin has gone over to the warm-undertone side and your teeth/eyes/hair are lighter)

within those undertones there are five kinds of olive, as far as I can see:

cool + saturated (vivid cool green)

cool + de-saturated (muted cool green)

warm + de-saturated (muted warm green)

warm + saturated (vivid warm green)

neutral (straddling de-saturated cool+warm green, varying through year)

cool olive need to wear blue-undertone colours

warm olive need to wear yellow-undertone colours

neutral olive look good in a mix of some blue and some yellow colours

And it actually seems that it’s most important to match your contrast.

EG:

Lupita Nyong’o has cool dark hair and dark skin, so that’s low contrast, BUT she has a high contrast between her dark skin and her white teeth / sparkling eyes. So she can wear an equally-pale colour (high contrast against her dark skin, just like her teeth) and look harmonious.

(And because her eyes and skin are bright, bright, saturated colour looks good on her. She has a cool undertone, and those 3 things -- cool + pale + bright = mean a saturated light blue is her best colour. Remember that Cinderella-blue dress she once wore? That.)

This is also why Chris Evans looks great in dark blue, despite being pale. That dark blue is highly contrasted against his pale skin - and so is his dark brown hair, so they match!

But as Cap, with his hair honey blonde (medium contrast) he looks best in medium-tone bright blue. (Because his eyes are vivid/saturated and sparkly, he can pull off highly saturated colour, which is why the bright red, white n blue Cap suit looks good on him, but his best colour is vivid jewel-tone teal, which also brings out the blue and slight green in his eyes.)

Seb Stan, IMO, is a neutral olive ( cool + de-saturated when pale, warm + de-saturated when tan.)

He looks good in medium tone colours because he often has medium contrast between his hair/skin/teeth, but when he’s very tan his skin looks very yellow and his eyes/teeth suddenly look super pale (become higher contrast) and, like Lupita, he looks amazing in (high contrast) equally pale colours.

His eyes are not a vivid/pure/saturated colour (because they’re so grey), so he cannot pull off vivid colour like Cevans can -- although he often wears it. Similarly muted, de-saturated versions of colours look best on him (camel, grey, beige, cream, charcoal, navy, burgundy, dull purple, puce, etc. and -- when he’s pale -- emerald green and ruby red. Basically he suits the classic Chanel colours!)

The paler his skin is, the more sallow, the darker his hair looks, the higher the contrast, therefore the darker/higher-contrast the colour he can pull off; so, ironically, Winter would be the time he’d probably look best in black! (Though it would look better if his hair was black, too). Perfect for a New Yorker.

Tips:

match your undertone (cool green, neutral/both, or warm green)

AVOID wearing cool-undertone (jewel) colours when very tanned

the saturation level of the colours you can pull off depends on how ‘bright’ and pigmented your skin and eyes are:

if you look bright & vivid, wear saturated colour

if you look delicate, wear muted/desaturated colour

match your contrast

dark tones look best on the high-contrast of dark hair/pale skin (in winter).

pale tones look best on very high contrast people (so dark skin/tan when the teeth/eyes look very light), OR NO contrast people (both pale hair/pale skin), but NOT on everyone else.

medium tones look best on medium-contrast people.

the best way to find your most flattering colours is to find your olive-twin celebrity and see what they look best in.

(a piece of clothing that doesn’t suit will draw attention/look like it’s floating on top of you in photos; in extreme cases it can also make your arms/skin look grey and dead.)

mix green colour-corrector with foundation to get the best match?

Colour Variants in each Undertone:

Cool + Saturated:

Red - pure red, fuschia pink

Green - teal, turquoise, mint green

Blue - royal blue, electric blue

Violet - amethyst

Black, white

Cool + De-Saturated:

Red - ruby red, burgundy

Yellow - beige

Green - emerald green, forest green

Blue - navy, powder blue

Violet - dark purple/puce

Silver, grey, charcoal

Neutral is a mix of ^ + v

- Warm + De-Saturated:

Red - blush pink, peach, coral, salmon

Orange - amber, mahogany

Yellow - camel

Green - olive green

Ivory, cream

Warm + Saturated:

Red - tomato red

Orange - blood-orange, orange

Yellow - gold, mustard

Green - lime green, leaf green

#olive #olive skin #complexion #undertones #colour theory #dat's me #raindancing-with-the-stars-above #toAyourQ #I HAVE NO IDEA WHETHER ANY OF THIS IS USEFUL #or just nonsense #also: if your skin darkness varies a LOT during the year #altering your contrast level #then the darkness of your outfits should change to match it #eg. light in summer medium tone in spring darker in autumn/winter #see under the cut for what different colours are suited to each olive skin undertone #also:#if you know the hex code of the colour you're interested in #you can google it to find out the exact percentage of cyan (green-blue) or yellow to find out whether it's warm or cool!

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gasp-iwrotesomething · 4 years

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Uhhh I read all your Cal writings and I am in love!! May I request something for Cal? Maybe with S3 and S40??

Aw, thanks so much, anon; I’m super glad that you really like them! I’d love to do your request as well (even if writing ‘Daddy’ makes me wither from shyness), so thank you for requesting and I hope you can add this to your list of Cal fics that you love!

And, p.s., this is a bit long so beware lol

S3: “I mean, I’ve never been called ‘Daddy’ before, but I can’t say I don’t like it when you call me that…”

S40: “You’re gonna make me–ah, fuck!”

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

MC could hardly breathe in the air surrounding her, the crisp and refreshing nature overlapped by the abrupt burst of smoke and fire in the atmosphere. A gun smokes with the succession of one bullet, then two, then three, until the resonating bang is all MC’s ears ring to. She claps her hands over her eardrums as Cal fires a few more. She stays like that, a startled figure on the sidelines, until the lack of blasting gunfire finally reaches her. Cal was finished, the hand wielding the gun now at his side, the barrel pointed harmlessly at the floor. That made some--though not all--of MC’s trepidation recede. His gaze is rampant on her and that familiar sense of “he’s watching to see my reaction to his grand achievement” falls over her. Once his palpable smirk dawns, MC’s eyes swing away to the target a long distance away, bullet holes and tears made by an influx of bullet holes scarring the dummy ahead. Cal’s malevolent blue eyes glitter with satisfaction as he turns to MC and places the gun in her hands. Despite the cold weight of the pistol and the sickening feel of it in her palm, Cal’s touch is a soft remedy that consoles her and she struggles to stay focused when he squeezes her fingers. “Now you try,” he keens, tender and warm, too affectionate to be intentional, “aim for the next one over and see if you can do better than me.”

She was still new to the idea of using an actual gun on actual living things. Lessons had been rickety following the consistent demon attacks and the looming presence of Alejandro over their shoulders, but Cal had kept persisting. He kept coaxing MC into the shooting range for more practice despite her evident hesitation. “Just think of this as some sort of cheesy life lesson, okay? Like... be prepared for whatever happens, or, get ready to use a gun if a demon approaches you. Y’know, those sorts of lessons.” Cal had said when MC first voiced her misgivings. A weird coil of warmth twirls around in the base of ribs and she prays that it wasn’t the feeling that comes after a pleasant memory was reminisced. She took a breath and raised the weapon, ignoring the lingering warmth in her chest. Whatever it was, it wasn’t welcome. Cal’s gaze was a pressure on her shoulders that she tried to ignore as she hooked her finger around the trigger.

BANG!

A bullet flies through the air with a staggering clap and dives into the dummy’s left hip, just shy of passing into the wall behind it. Her eyes were squeezed shut so her temporary victory wasn’t something she knew until MC heard Cal applaud slowly. “Not too bad,” he says, signature smirk blatant on his lips, “for a rookie. Unfortunately, that shot wouldn’t kick a demon down so you’re about as good as dead.” The amusement and snark that he emits is poisoning as MC rolls her eyes, scowling at the ground. Did he have to be a smart-ass about it? She heaves a groan and aims the gun once again, grumbling under her breath, “yes sir.”

BANG!

The second shot sails past the dummy and just misses its shoulder. By just an inch or two. She sags in defeat. Why did she have to suck so bad in front of Cal? The scowl on her face deepens as she senses Cal’s smug smirk on her back, almost like he could pick apart her thoughts and understand them. “Don’t say a word,” MC snarls as she tries her best to avoid his eyes and scrutiny she was under. A moment passes, filled with deafening and suspenseful silence...

“...after this session, I’ll make sure to have your funeral costs covered. Just in case.”

She shoves her elbow in his ribs as he snickers. “And you’d be okay with me dying?!” MC gives him a scolding, almost condescending glower as he mindlessly massages his ribs--right where she elbowed him. “Last time I checked, you’re the one who insists on teaching me!” His expression dilates a few degrees and a quiet hint of worry and disdain flood his eyes. Hell, even a waft of offense breezes through, as if her just making that accusation was insulting. Like the notion that he didn’t care for her was something to make Cal defensive. MC had been thinking about those pure blue eyes for so long that she had a picture in her mind for whatever emotion filled them next. For this, MC imagined an ocean plagued with pollution...why was her heart suddenly beating so fast? “No, I wouldn’t be,” his soft voice and serious tone sway her a little and MC has to reinforce her stubbornness before she falters, “that’s why I’m teaching you, MC. To prevent that from happening.” The trick shooter holds her searching gaze for all of another second before tearing his eyes away. He fixates on the pretty-much-uninjured dummy and gestures with his chin, arms crossed over his chest. “You’re getting there,” he pats her shoulder and it feels like he was being condescending to her, “but I do believe in your ability to be better--no matter how scarce that ability might be.”

MC scoffs, “what are you, my daddy or something? Seriously, I don’t need your cute little words of encouragement to do better.” Her words rush out in a mindless quip and she moves on autopilot: lifting her arm, pointing the gun accordingly, checking to assure she’s gripping the damn thing right... What MC’s autopilot fails to detect is the furiously-blushing Cal to her side, his gaze to the side and his hand ruffling through his hair awkwardly. He was stunned at her word choice in more ways than one. Her “daddy”? His “cute little words of encouragement”? The silence is a time bomb ticking in his head, awkward and loud in duet with the blooding roaring in his ears. Did she not understand what she just said? MC finally, after a few more painstaking moments on Cal’s end, swivels her head to see what he’s gone so oddly quiet about and discovers the color in his face, on the tips of his ears... She blinks, completely baffled. “What’s up with you?” He doesn’t respond immediately, his mouth parting like there were words ready to be said but just couldn’t leave. It only furthered her confusion. “Spit it out already, Cal.” She demands, a stern frown following her words.

“...do you ever even hear half the things you say?” Cal asks, a genuine lilt to his tone, his eyes perpetually soft and rigid with bashfulness. He looked shy, which was a look she saw rarely embellishing his features. Cal seemed to always have a mask in place and a blush of steel, one that only danced out whenever something truly undeniable happen. She doesn’t respond right away, her frown creasing her cheeks and wrinkling her nose. What was he talking about? Her mind rewinds their entire conversation and then, in unison with her falling frown, her face burns with the words she said to him waltzing in circles in her mind. “I didn’t--it wasn’t-! I was-!” She feels her tongue tangle in her mouth as she tries to defend herself, the tint in her face deepening. “...you’re the worst.” MC relents. The shy barrier of his expression doesn’t wane or dilute seemingly at all. In fact, it seems to strengthen as he opens his mouth again.

“I mean, I’ve never been called ‘Daddy’ before, but I can’t say I don’t like it when you call me that...”

MC considers self-destructing as her face flames even more like she was already on a timer, just ticking down the seconds. She shoves his shoulder like her life depended on it--if she was about to combust, then her life did depend on it after all. “Shut up!” Her expression squeezes into a pout as she whines this, her heart pounding so fast that she could hear it in her ears, “you are so dirty that it’s not even funny!” MC’s abrupt reaction must coral his snark out again because the shy smile on his face flips into a smirk and he snickers, lightly driving his elbow into her arm. The carefree attitude he chauffeurs does little to tranquilize her shame and embarrassment. “Hey! Don’t blame me for taking things you say so literally,” Cal says this as he safely removes the pistol from MC’s possession--just for good measure, “there’s always so much blabber coming from that mouth anyway.” He punctuates his point by poking his finger into her cheek, to which she swats away.

“Can we just focus on the lesson?!”

“Of course, who ever said I wasn’t? You’re the one talking about ‘daddies’ over here, MC.” Cal barely pronounces her name before he gets a fist pushed into his bicep, followed by his own light laughter.

“Cal! You’re just as guilty as I am!”

“I doubt that. You are far more distracting than I could ever be.”

“Idiot,” MC roughly bumps into his side, face now scrunched in a scowl.

“Jerk,” Cal reciprocates, grinning.

Tiny little quips follow into their session as MC attempts to lampoon the dummy with bullets in areas Cal would consider a ‘take-out zone’. She attempts again and again, her results varying in rapid degrees, before she slings her last shot. The bullet zips through into the crook of the dummy’s supposed elbow which is in the outskirts of a take-out zone, according to Cal. The circus performer is a statue to her side, quiet when she’s aiming and annoying when she misses. This final shot draws a dull snort out of him and he gives her a slow clap, mocking her. She both thanks and curses the pistol for no longer having any ammunition.

“Wow, somehow you did even worse. You would be definitely be a goner if we were actually in danger.” He critiques, vapid and sly, before the pistol is suddenly wrenched from her hand and she’s yanked backwards--right into Cal’s chest. She squeals out of surprise, yelping when she notices how tight his arms were around her waist and how his breath billowed against her nape. His laughter, alluring and soothing, sounds just behind her ear and she tries hard to not shiver at the whisper of it. The warmth of his body and the corded expanse of his arms and chest surround her, blanketing her in a Cal-fitted sheet. MC finds her heart pounding as he play fights with her and pretends to overthrow her, drag her away like a demon would. “Get off! I get it!” MC shrieks as he heaves her off the ground, casually holding her high enough to avoid enough the tips of her shoes from touching the ground. “Get what? I’m a demon, not your instructor. The only thing you’ll get from me is an ass-kicking!”

MC smirks as she swings a faulty kick to his side. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line, demon?” She teases easily, her hair swinging into her face as she spins out of his grip. Cal’s grin is challenging and ripe with glee as he lunges for her again. “No, only the person who can actually kick asses can have that line, and I do believe that person-” the gunslinger wraps her in his arms and secures her to his chest, close and tight enough to render her squirming as useless “-is me.” Her eyes snap up to meet his and once they do, it’s like a puzzle piece clicking into place, the pigments of their eyes losing their humorous glint. Suddenly, Cal’s grin fades from his features and the previous elation of a challenge rots away as well, leaving nothing but an undecipherable expression. A book she couldn’t understand, a language she didn’t speak but she yearned to learn. Their heavy, synchronized breathing and faint flush in their faces only add to this, becoming the tool to etch all of this in his gaze. His blue eyes dart to her lips when she parts them and her heart stomps in her chest. She registers the cradle of his arms and the minor proximity between them, the calming touch of his skin and the brittle vulnerability set in his gaze. Surreal was the feeling thrumming in her bones, daunting and deep. Insides, there was an amusement park alive and kicking, the adrenaline-provoked screams dancing in her stomach when Cal’s face becomes red and the coasters swooning when her mind imagines closing the distance between them.

That thought, however, is stolen as fast as her breath when Cal suddenly whirls MC against the wall, his grin choking the sentiment that had been collecting in his expression. “Stalling me, eh?” His lips move harmoniously and it’s hard not to glance down as he speaks, MC discovers. “I admit, you had me for a second there.” The smug warble of his voice seemed miles apart from the softness that had engulfed his eyes just moments before; it was like MC was talking to a whole different person. She knows she should respond, say something smart back, but her entire body, mind, and spirit were hyper-focused on how she was cornered by Cal’s body. She tried to not blush harder at the faint puff of his breath to her lips. She attempts to calm her raging heart and stave the desire leaking into her bloodstream, fueling the rest of her alike with the same blood that colored her skin and pumped rapidly in her heart.

MC tries... and fails.

The last thing she sees, imprinted in her mind’s eye, was Cal’s figure alight with the glow of fluorescent lights as she kissed his smirking lips.

Then quite literally, her body was alight with Cal’s hands traveling all over her skin, shedding layers upon layers of clothes as he proceeds. She didn’t even know when everything escalated--she just knew the feel of his kiss and the languid discovery of his hands. A nexus of passion strengthened and renewed with each touch, each kiss, each breathless retort or mindless quip... This was what intimacy was with Cal, right? Being so deprived of his touch to fold when he does and to feel that desire flow between each other; a river of lust, a stream of passion. MC drowns herself in that river, letting it wash over her as Cal kisses her again and again, something bubbling between them... When she came to her senses, she was still pressed to the wall, her clothes an abandoned heap on the floor along with Cal’s, whose defined body was pinned to hers.

Everything else was silent, a wasteland of nothingness, except for the thrilled pants of Cal and MC as they hold each other in the dark. Fervent warmth was exchanged at their skin and friction was created with their limbs. An ocean’s worth of desire peers at her, searching and needing and wishing--could he hear her heart racing this fast against him? “You... you understand what I mean when I say ‘distracting’? This--you--are distracting, MC.” Cal’s raspy, low voice husks over the intense jump of his chest. Even in the shadows, she could faintly see the pink infecting his face. MC found it hard to breathe even though Cal’s body wasn’t crushed against her. Her lungs failed her when he mentioned how distracting she was, when she glanced at the brunette curls adhered to his forehead from the sweat gathered on his skin. Had he always been this beautiful? Words congregate and knot in her throat, a ribbon of unspoken feelings and libido all threaded into one, so instead of responding with anything verbal at all, she smashes her mouth to his and kisses him with those unsaid words.

Cal’s mouth was still fervent and silky as it embraced her own, again and again, the furnace of heat between them unyielding. She could feel the gentle swipe of his hands up her torso, the way he presses his palm gingerly to her flesh like she was a treasure worth salvaging, and the sensual pattern of his fingertips smoothing over her. All of it made the furnace in her lower belly seem to explode and catch fire, somehow much hotter than it should’ve been possible. His small groan chases that rush of sparks in MC and their kiss was deepening, the passion intensifying. His teeth rake against her bottom lip but she hardly minds the sting. One of her hands card through the mishap of curls on his head while one of his travels up her thigh sinuously. MC’s heart rate hiccuped when she felt his need for her against her skin and her legs, off of reflex, clutch him closer to her. It was all MC could do but burrow in his strong embrace and relish in the friction of his flesh, the sensation of his fingers touching her, the solitude she felt wedged to the wall. They don’t even part to join their bodies, connecting themselves together in more than just their lips.

They didn’t need to; their two-person orchestra required no conductor.

When they come together, it’s an indescribable feeling made inexpiable with the council of emotions churning in her chest--it feels so good to become one. She delights in the sharp inhale near her ear and the slight grunt that he elicits, the sound resonating inside her. Cal was making it harder and harder to not lose that little scrap of self-control that she was still clinging to. His kiss turns rough, his touch spreads fire all over her skin. They move in brittle harmony, more of it powered by the desperate jerks of their hips. She held onto his broad shoulders and let her noises of ecstasy melt on his tongue, allowing him to swallow the vibration and the dull hum in his throat.

“You’re gonna make me--ah, fuck!”

MC’s thoughts divorced from coherency and soon she was bubbled in this constant rhythm of pleasure to notice anything else. Nothing but Cal and his desire for her, the gentle embrace he soaked her in, the taunting sounds he made for her ears only. All of the heat he gave her and all of the kisses he placed on her parted lips. Seconds blur together and before she feels she can even properly breathe, they were toppling over an edge and they were falling together. When the blissful flog clears in her mind, MC finds herself still against the wall with Cal’s lithe form pressed to her skin. His mouth is against her pulse as he continues to press a chain of kisses up her neck, the soft curls on his head brushing her chin. She was captivated in the soft and nurturing way he touches her, worships her, that it wasn’t easy to just pull away. Neither of them speak and they don’t have to.

She smothered herself in his arms and returned the sincere kiss he plants on her mouth. MC allows him to hold her tight, even for just those few extra moments, wanting to relish in the feeling of having Cal North to herself.

Maybe she should’ve been more respectful of her feelings and the welfare of her heart, but she felt like this was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up.

Like a trip to see the Pyramids of Giza: she just didn’t get to do that very often at all.

Or in this context, Caleb North.

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

Thank you again for your request! I’m so sorry for the long delay, I really enjoyed writing this for you though!

Oh and before you click away, support @vowtogether!!

If you want to request something, here’s the Prompt List, here are the Guidelines, here’s Who I Write For, and here is where you can Request me.

#cal north

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frenchy-and-the-sea · 5 years

Note

34 (how they act when they're nervous) + Zephyr

I think these have gotten away from me as like. A concept. But I think this highlights the idea that, uh, Zeph drinks hard and gets distant and weird when she’s nervous pretty well, despite being, you know, long as shit.

Including the Tea Party crew, with Mira, the aasimar cleric belonging to @colonelcupquake and Fàilbhe, the faun druid belonging to @kombits! With my genasi drunk monk, Zephyr. Obviously.

3000 words.

—-

“You’ve noticed her shaking too,”said the words in Fàilbhe’s book.

He flashed it quickly Mira’s way, just long enough for her toread, then gestured to where Zephyr was sitting, cross legged and silent, aboutthirty feet away. She had taken a post by the road when they stopped to restand take their midday meal, and had neither moved nor said a word since; thelatest in a long string of oddities that had started since they set out for herfamily’s estate two days ago. Mira stole a quick glance at her back, thenturned to Fàilbhe and lowered her voice.

“A couple of times,” she whispered back. “Like she’s cold, eventhough she says she isn’t. And she keeps grabbing her flask every time ithappens. It’s probably empty by now.”

Fàilbhe shook his head, and scribbled furiously in his notebook. “Sawher steal a wineskin from my pack.”

“She what?”

Fàilbhe shrugged. “Not worried about that. Worried forher. Acting strange. Wine isn’t going to help.”

Mira frowned, and chanced another glance over her shoulder towhere Zephyr sat, picking slowly at her lunch and staring intently down thelength of the road.

“What do we do, then?” she asked softly.

“Nothing,” Fàilbhe’s book said. “Watch and wait.”

—–

The waiting lasted until halfway through Mira’s midnight watch,when she caught a shadow creeping along out of the corner of her eye.

She didn’t turn her head, but her hand went slowly to thewarhammer at her hip as the figure stole over to where Fàilbhe was curledaround Delia just outside of the light of the fire. The dog’s head rose up asit approached, and Mira heard the faintest thump-thump-thump of a tail poundinghappily against the earth. The figure froze and made a gesture that Miracouldn’t quite make out; Delia just yawned in response, then dropped her hadback onto her paws and fell promptly asleep again. In the darkness, Mira hearda soft snort, and then saw the figure duck behind Fàilbhe’s turned back andbegin rustling in something that she could not see. One of Fàilbhe’s eyes slidopen, and found Mira’s across the camp. She nodded slowly, then fixed herattention back onto the fire as the rustling stopped, and she heard the figuresteal quietly into the woodline beyond.

She counted to thirty in her head, slowly, then stood andfollowed. As she passed Fàilbhe, she heard him push upright with a sigh, andtake her place at the edge of the fire.

Zephyr was not hard to find. Even with only half a moon to lighther way, Mira spotted her silhouette tucked up in the low branches of a widecoral tree after a few minutes of walking, her unbound hair caught up in aconstant, unfelt breeze. She had another wineskin in her hand, which she wasnursing slowly as she stared up through the treetops at the darkened sky.

Mira waited for a few long moments, then stepped forward into theclearing, deliberately shuffling her feet.

“Is this why we can’t ever get you up in the morning?”

Zephyr shot upright, one hand already clenched into a fist. Herunfocused stare landed on Mira a few seconds later - a few seconds too long,Mira thought with a frown - and then narrowed.

“I thought you were supposed to be on watch,” she sneered, andtook another, longer draw off of the skin before tucking back against the tree.“So much for any of us feeling like we can sleep soundly.”

Mira felt annoyance twinge at the back of her neck. “When there’sa thief in our camp? Yes, I think you’re right.”

Zephyr paused, head cocked her way, and Mira braced herself foranother burst of anger. Instead, the genasi tugged her wineskin a littlecloser, and put her eyes everywhere but in Mira’s direction. “He wasn’tdrinking it.”

“That’s beside the point and you know it.” Zephyr mutteredsomething in a soft, airy language under her breath. “Zephyr, please.”

“‘Zephyr, please,’” she mocked, and kicked at a piece of bark sothat it scattered over Mira’s head. “Merciful gods, you sound like my mother. Ididn’t realize that I had to ask for your permission too.”

The annoyance lingering at the back of Mira’s neck suddenlyflashed to life again, bright and angry as a hornet’s nest. Zephyr turned totake another draw off of the wineskin, and without thinking, Mira surgedforward, pushed up onto the bough and plucked it neatly out of her hands.

She landed hard in the dirt, knees buckling with the impact andwith a sudden, giddy rush at what she had done. That vanished as somethingshifted in her periphery, and she turned to find Zephyr on the ground too now,and stalking forward with both fists clenched tight at her side. Her lips hadpulled back into a ferocious animal snarl, and the wind that toyed with herunbound hair suddenly seemed more tornado than gentle breeze.

Mira clutched the wineskin to her chest and took a generous stepbackwards.

“Are you going to hit me?” she asked, the words tight and spillingout in a rush that she tried to hold them as steadily as her ground. “Over wine,Zephyr? Really? Is that all it takes for you?”

For a moment, it seemed like Zephyr had been fully deafened by herfury; her fists came up in a fighting stance, one already cocked back for aswing, and Mira felt the familiar panicked rush of adrenaline that always camebefore a fight. She latched a hand around the grip of her warhammer, and bracedherself to run.

Then Zephyr stumbled, her unsteady feet not the usual conjuredsort but the brutally honest stagger of a true drunkard, and the lines of furycutting across her face suddenly fell slack. She blinked, once, twice, and thenMira watched realization pool behind blue eyes that had been steely with angernot two seconds earlier.

The next step she took was backwards, and came with a lowering ofher fists.

“I’m….” she stammered, eyes darting back and forth between thewineskin, and Mira, and the camp beyond. Then she cleared her throat, squaredher shoulders, and without another word, Zephyr turned neatly on a heel andfled back into the boughs of her tree. This time, when she tucked herselfagainst the trunk, she put her back firmly in Mira’s direction.

Fight and adrenaline fled almost immediately. Mira sagged aroundthe wineskin pressed to her chest, hoping the sound of her heartbeat didn’techo in the half-empty container. Half-empty, her mind pointed out.Zephyr’s night had been a bad one, and coping alone had been her first and onlyanswer. Mira’s stomach suddenly knotted around itself, and climbed up into herthroat.

Slowly, as movement and strength returned to her limbs, she creptover to where Zephyr had pressed herself into the long, snaking shadows of thetree. She saw blue eyes flick back to meet her, then snap away with a quicknessthat seemed to imply a sniff of disdain. Don’t bother, the motion said. ButMira still had the wineskin in her hands, and it still felt too empty by half.

She hauled herself up onto the branch beside Zephyr, leaving afull foot of empty space between them.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, settling herself over the edge sothat her legs dangled. “I wasn’t trying to upset you. I…. we’ve been worriedabout you. You’ve been acting strangely since we left the aerie, and thenFàilbhe said you were stealing the wine they gave us from his pack and I…"

She trailed off, hoping Zephyr would pick up the conversation onher own. When she continued staring forward, silent, Mira sighed and held thewineskin towards her.

“Are you afraid of going home?”

This time Zephyr looked over, a bonfire heat suddenly blazingbehind her eyes.

“I am not afraid,” she hissed. Mira recoiled, and somethingabout the motion sent the fire scattering out of Zephyr’s stare. She huffed andsank back against the tree, tucking both arms close to her chest. “Not in theway that you think, anyway.”

Mira waited for a moment, watching as Zephyr stared daggers intothe darkened woods. Then, slowly, she shuffled over, closing nearly all of thedistance between them and offering the wineskin again. Zephyr’s gaze flickedsideways, hard as iron. Then she sighed.

“My mother is a sorceress,” she said finally, plucking the wineneatly out of Mira’s outstretched hand. “A proper magical one, you see, not thehaggish sort you always read about in stories. She used to travel when she wasyounger, and that has, apparently, made her very powerful. I wouldn’t know,myself; I only saw the fruits of her labor when I found enchantments on my doorto keep me locked behind it, or when she compelled the few guards that didn’toutright dislike me to tell her how I’d gotten out that night.”

She took another deep draw of wine, and must have seen Mira’swide-eyed stare in her periphery, because she nearly lost the whole mouthful inone very undignified snort.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. She never used anything on me,as far as I can tell. I guess she still wanted me to have something remotelylike dignity left. But I…” She hesitated. “I think it will be different, if wego back. I have never left like I did last time. Certainly not for as long. Andif she decides that she would like me to stay this time, well…”

She shrugged, but any nonchalance the motion might have hadvanished with the stiffness of her shoulders. Mira just looked on, silent.Zephyr had never been quite so open before. More than that; she had neverdeigned to answer anything so directly, had never spoken about herself asanything more than deserving of the highest praise and respect, and she had certainlynever done so with such genuine worry scoring the undersides of her words.Mira briefly considered taking the wine back, but Zephyr had it clutched in herhand like a holy symbol, and she greatly preferred her fingers in their currentorientations.

“Still,” Zephyr went on, clearly trying for casual, “if we don’tget my mother’s aid, then we let the world end. So, here I am. Stealing yourwine.”

She shot Mira a sidelong look as she said it, but all of the drysmirking in the world could not hide the way her eyes drifted just a little toofar past, off into the darkness, where she didn’t have to convince anyone ofher ease. Mira felt her heart catch in her throat.

She reached out and dropped a hand onto Zephyr’s bare shoulder,which jumped like a startled cat’s.

“We won’t let anything happen to you, Zephyr,” she said firmly.“Fàilbhe and I, we’ll make sure that nothing happens to -”

“Oh, please,” Zephyr muttered, and rolled her shoulder to dislodgeMira’s hand. “What are you going to do, exactly? Storm the estate? My mother isnot some cheap conjurer, Mira. She’s stronger than you and Fàilbhe combined,and she commands the entire martial force of a city. You would have to be verypersuasive, or very lucky, to even think -”

“Then perhaps we will be lucky.”

Zephyr paused, startled out of speaking by the force in Mira’s words.Then a deadly scowl crawled across her face, and she snorted under her breath,tucking into the shadows of the tree once more.

“Of course you will.”

“We will,” Mira insisted. She scooted herself the last few inchesacross the branch, until her thigh was pressed against Zephyr’s, and she couldfeel the phantom breeze that stirred her hair. “You don’t belong locked up insome room all day. You belong out here. Up there. Up, with thesky and the sound of wind pounding in your ears. You’re like me, Zephyr!You’re one of the Winged Mother’s children. She protects that for all of us.”Mira’s smile twisted wry. “Even the ones who don’t know her yet.”

Zephyr rolled her eyes - rolled her whole head, really - andturned to Mira with a word already half-formed on her lips. Then she paused,and Mira watched as a curious series of expressions stole their way across herface, like shadows over the moon. Thoughtful turned to terrified turned to aweturned to several hundred other things at once, all in increments, like everyemotion fit just a bit too tightly to remain. Her hands, still clutched aroundthe wineskin, had gone white at the knuckles.

Eventually, she caught Mira staring, and the strange, flutteringexpression snapped closed like shutters drawn in a storm. She turned away andtook another swig off of the wineskin.

“Well,” she said after a moment, her voice soft and unsteady, “Isuppose that I can use all of the help that I can get.”

Mira smiled, more broadly than she had in the last several days, andput a hand on Zephyr’s shoulder. She snorted, but didn’t shrug it off thistime.

They sat in companionable silence for a few long minutes, takingturns staring up at the darkened sky as Zephyr slowly but steadily wore throughthe rest of the wine. As she was tipping back the last few swigs, Mira clearedher throat.

“You, ah, probably shouldn’t drink much more of that,” she saidgently. Zephyr snorted.

“I’m a big girl, Mira. I can handle it.”

“Oh, of course,” said Mira, nodding. “I’m not worried about you.It’s just, well…that’s the wine the aerie gave us, right?”

“Yes,” Zephyr said coolly. “Is that a problem?”

“Well, no. I mean, not really. It’s just that, since it’sceremonial, it’s…it’s really more of a tincture than proper wine. We temperit with certain ingredients to bring us closer to the Winged Mother, and…”

“And?” Zephyr’s eyebrow rose. “Mira, what did you temper it with?”

“Um…griffon piss.”

Zephyr’s throw sent the wineskin hurtling into the center of theclearing, sending wine scattering across the ground with a dull thud. Shewheeled, purple-faced with fury, as Mira scrambled back out of her reach,laughing almost too hard to breathe.

“I’m kidding!” she wheezed, holding out a hand. “I’m sorry! Ididn’t think you would actually believe me!”

Zephyr just stared back, her brow a collection of furrows andhard, angry lines as her gaze shot between the wineskin and the still-gigglingMira. They softened only slightly as realization took hold.

“That’s not funny,” she sneered. “You’re not funny! It’sjust…it’s disgusting, is what it is! You’re disgusting!”

Her indignance only made Mira laugh harder, and when Zephyrdropped from the tree hard enough to nearly knock Mira out of it, she took thescrapes and bruises as earned.

—–

Fàilbhe was still sitting by the ire when they stumbled back intocamp, Zephyr still storming, Mira still picking twigs out of her hair. Hiseyebrow arched as Zephyr stormed off to the far side of the camp, mutteringunder her breath. Mira just smiled and offered him a quick thumbs up behind herback. It hadn’t been her swiftest or most graceful conversation, certainly, butfew things with Zephyr ever were.

“Thanks for waiting,” she said as she stepped back into the ringof firelight, hiding a yawn behind a hand. “I can take over again.”

Fàilbhe smiled and shook his head, then pointed to her bedroll andmade a shooing gesture. She opened her mouth to protest, but he turnedpointedly back to the book in his hands.

“Fàilbhe.” The faun’s ear twitched, but he didn’t move. “Fàilbhe,c’mon.”

“Oh, let him stay if he wants,” Zephyr’s grumbling came fromsomewhere behind them, along with a dragging sound as she appeared from out ofthe darkness with her bedroll dangling from a hand. “If he would like to sit upall night being eaten alive by flies, he can certainly be my guest.”

She tossed her bedroll down beside Mira’s without a word, thencrawled inside and pulled it up to her ears. Fàilbhe did look up now, frowning,and turned to write something in his notebook.

“Zephyr,” Mira said over her shoulder as he held it out towardsher, “Fàilbhe says -”

“That I have next watch, yes,” came the muffled voice from herbedroll. “I heard his furious scribbling from over here and guessed what hemight be on about. Hold your applause, please.”

Fàilbhe gave Mira a long-suffering look, then scrawled in hisnotebook again.

“She seems to be back to normal. Good job.”

Mira hid a small laugh, and then a slightly larger yawn, behind ahand. Fàilbhe raised an eyebrow and made another, more insistent gesturetowards her bedroll, and this time, Mira didn’t have it in her to fight him.Yawning, she waved him goodnight, then staggered her way towards the sleepingfigure curled up beside her bedroll. Zephyr had made a big show of being casualabout where she had thrown her bedroll down, but the bare few inches between itand Mira’s seemed a touch too well-placed to be an accident.

Smiling to herself, Mira shucked the rest of her armor into a pilebeside her pack, then crawled gratefully inside. Her head had barely met thepillow when Zephyr’s voice hissed out of the gloom behind her.

“Mira.” Her voice was so low that for a moment, Mira was certainshe had imagined it.

“Mhm?”

“Don’t tell Fàilbhe what I told you unless things go badly,alright? He’s got enough on his mind already.”

“Mm. ‘kay.” Mira couldn’t quite conjure the energy to fight withZephyr now either. “I won’t have to, though. It’ll be okay, Zeph.”

“I know,” said the voice behind her, too small and quiet by far.Mira felt her heart suddenly pound harder in her chest as something shiftedbehind her, and muffled the last word almost entirely away.

“Thanks.”

#my writing #d&d #dnd #frenchy replies #oc crap #other people's ocs #the zephyr tag #the tea party trio #mira is still so new of a writing subject that I probably fucked her up SORRY HALLE #and will I ever write from Zeph's perspective?? the world may never know

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7wanderingpaws · 6 years

Text

3. OCEAN'S DEPTH.

Genre: marine biologist AU

Pairing: Bambam x reader

Word count: 2.2K

0. Synopsis // 1. Whales // 2. Dolphins. // 3. Ocean's depth.

(( I apologise for the long wait, it was not planned at all. Uni is in full swing, I am in my final year so the thesis writing is giving me a little headache. I hope this part will still be somehow enjoyable! Please let me know your thoughts! ))

- - - OCEAN'S DEPTH - - -

You were tapping your foot against the warm pavement the next day in the docks. The weather was still shiny, pleasant and ever so welcoming.

You were supposed to have a good mood, considering all of these aspects.

You felt like a piece of a rotten tuna tin.

Exactly like rotten tuna tin, whatever it was supposed to mean.

"Where is he?!" you shouted angrily to your two colleagues who were looking bored and kept murmuring among each other, snickering quietly.

"Calm down," said Jaebeom and pressed the side button on his iPhone to check the time. He pushed it back into his back pocket of his jeans. "His late just 15 minutes."

Jackson laughed in disbelief. "Just 15 minutes."

You glued your strict stare at the cheerful man and he just shook his head, not bothering to talk to you more.

"Well, if he isn't coming in five more minutes, we are leaving."

"But boss, even if we leave in five minutes we will still be there 30 minutes early," replied Jaebeom in a diplomatic tone.

Jackson snickered again.

You sighed, combing your hand through your already messy hair. "Are you making fun of me? Do you think this is funny?"

"No, not at all, " replied Jaebeom, coughing away his giggle.

"Look, " you started, holding your hand out." You can think whatever you want to, but the fact is that we should be there a little bit earlier to make sure everything goes smoothly. As you can see, this duck head is late anyway. This is why we have to be there a little bit earlier."

"A little bit, " mumbled Jackson to himself.

Jaebeom started to laugh loudly, not bothering to hold back anymore.

As much as you liked to see your forever cold and reserved colleagues laugh, you did not appreciate it one bit at the moment.

" Shut up, Jackson, " you snapped. " You don't let me breathe even for a little while right? You always have to push me down."

He looked at your hurt face and before he could argue in any possible way, from the distance you hear rushed steps and a very tired looking Bambam. He was trying to adjust his bag on his shoulder as his hair was a big mess.

"I'm here! I'm coming! Oh, thanks for waiting for me!" he breathed as he finally arrived.

"Good." You turned around and marched forward towards the kindergarten that you hated so much at the moment. Youngjae was going to pay a big price for letting his mouth talk so much.

If Jackson were a dog, he would have his ears pressed to the sides of his head, his tail between his legs and lowered head. There wasn't a minute when you wouldn't fight these days despite how hard and cold you both were to each other.

He still wouldn't tell you what was pissing him off so much about you and you certainly didn't want to ask about that kind of thing. This way you were aware you were annoying him and that was more than enough.

You all made your way to the kindergarten and to your pleasure, you were quickly ushered in, the kids already waiting.

"Soon is never soon enough, Dr Im," you muttered to Jaebeom. Before he could retort something too sophisticated for you, you turned quickly to your team, mostly focusing your attention to your two colleagues rather than Bambam who was smiling the whole time as he was observing the kids' drawings. "Alright, we literally have like five minutes to discuss whose gonna talk about what-"

"Y/N," you heard your name. Youngjae's mum was standing next to you, her frame tall and her facial features kind. "I'm afraid you will have to go in now. The kids are waiting and they are restless."

"Yes but-"

"Alright, then there is no time to waste!" shouted Bambam, suddenly paying attention and soon he was entering the little hall kids had there for their performances.

Jackson snickered as he followed Jaebeom and BamBam. "So much for authority, huh."

A tiny growl escaped your lips, startling you. Damn. Now the game was on. You would ruin Jackson for sure.

The kids greeted you politely, most of them curiously looking at the blonde haired Bam.

While Jaebeom looked uncomfortable and seemed like dying inside from the attention, Jacskon was also naturally swayed with the kids as he was smiling brightly, waving at them.

"Everyone, let me introduce you these marine biologists," started Youngjae's mother, her voice a pleasant baritone. "Dr Y/N is The leader of the marine research institute here in Mokpo and Dr Jackson and Dr Jaebeom are her colleagues, great experts. Dr Bambam is a world famous marine biologist from Thailand so make sure to treat him with respect."

"Are we considered trash next to him?" muttered Jackson as he had his bright smile plastered on his face.

You bumped your elbow into his ribs quite hardly which made him wince with surprise. He widened his eyes at you, but you had a stern look already focused on the wall opposite you.

"Now I will let our biologists take over the talking and please participate actively!"

Youngjae's mum nodded at you with a supportive smile and you made sure to thank kindly before reaching for the microphone. "Hello, everyone! I'm Y/N and I would like to start with a question for all of you. Please raise your hands if you want to talk, alright?" you asked with a thumb up but when you didn't get any feedback you laughed awkwardly. "Alright! So, what do you understand under marine biology or marine research?"

You had a weird feeling these questions were not exactly meant for such a young audience as these four-year-olds who barely knew their mother's name but you were serious about doing your job professionally.

One little boy in the front row raised his hand shyly. "I think you work with dolphins."

You swayed your head from side to side. "Yes, could be also."

"That's totally true!" exclaimed Bambam. "And you know what? Let me tell you something that I'm sure you didn't know about whales." The way he was talking made kids much more interested compared to the poker faces they were giving you.

"The whales are these veeery big animals, right?" asked Bambam, motioning with his hands. "We also call them mammals.They can be much bigger than this whole kindergarten! And the important thing to know about them is that their poop is needed for the ocean's ecosystem."

You snapped your head to Bambam, not liking the direction he was going. On the other side Jaebeom and Jackson were also listening as intently as the kids.

"So how exactly does this work, hm? Well, when the whales poop it's really big and can create a big mess." Kids started to laugh, supported by Bambam. "Their poop contains lots of important microscopic creatures that are beneficial for other fish! For instance, phytoplankton is a crucial part of the ocean's ecosystem and some underwater animals live off of it."

"Eeeeeeeeew," kids whined but laughed loudly, scrunching up their noses.

BamBam laughed too, extremely pleased with himself. Jackson and Jaebeom had a light grin, also liking the playful way Bam introduces whale's poop.

"Another thing we have to watch out for are coral reefs," started Jackson his part. The k god it was an appropriate topic. "Do you know what are coral reefs right?"

There was a lady sitting by with a laptop who screened pictures on the big wall so the kids could see. She typed quickly into Naver search engine the keywords and all of you were met with colourful fish and massive corals. It made you smile right away and Jackson went up to the picture and tried to simplify the information about the coral reefs.

“They are extremely endagered. You know Nemo, right? Well, he also lives in these coral reefs. However, Nemo cannot cope with warm water. That is what causes these reefs to die out - warmed up temperatures.”

All of you continued with your presentations, trying to engage children as much as possible and at the end having a nice little quiz (with a rewarding present too!).

Jaebeom was breaking jokes about sea horses that you tried not to cringe about but thanks to Bambam, he supported every idea. It almost seemed like he knew only the silly stuff and not the important information.

After you were finished, you stopped Bam on your way out, so that Jackson and Jaebeom wouldn't hear you.

"Can we go diving today?" you spilled.

If Bambam was surprised, he didn't show it. Instead a signature smile spread across his face. "Well of course , boss. But I made a reservation at this five star restaurant you have in this little town so I will go there first."

You sighed, trying not to show your frustration. "Look. You shouldn't eat before diving especially not with the depth of our diving. Secondly, I thought you came here to help, not try all these so call five star restaurants."

BamBam laughed, tapping your shoulder. "should I cancel because of you, Y/N?"

"Exactly my idea," you smiled, walking past him.

He was quick to grab your hand though. "How will you refund me this loss?"

"What? What do you mean?"

"Well, you know how important I hold my luxury living. Since I'm going to sacrifice it for you, I hope it will be rewarding at least." His hand trailed over your arm, teasing you.

By now you knew better than to take his ideas seriously. "Well, heated kissing under the water, how does that sound."

Bam laughed tapping you shoulder. "Good enough, girl, good enough."

You couldn’t believe your own words. Your own mouth. Your own tongue. heated kissing under the water?! There was a sudden urge for you to slap yourself as you were heading to the docks to meet Bambam. How on earth could be this cheesy?

You knew Bam was not serious half of the time and even though he did tell you some good things about the marine biology and how to lead this entire expedition, there was just something slightly off. Whenever someone had a really professional question, he would suddenly go quiet, dissing the question with a simple answer that didn’t really add to your knowledge.

When you entered the docks with all your equipment, you were surprised to find him already there. He seemed deep in thought, his uniform already on.

You paused for moment, thinking what to do.

Set your goals straight...

There was no doubt you needed this guy for you to find the creature. He had all the knowledge. Apparently...

“How was it when you found out people know you?” you walked towards him, a challenging smile on your burned face. “And why would you talk about whale poop anyway.”

Bambam smirked as he turned towards you, his full attention now on you. “How else do you want to get the kids attention if not with something silly.”

“Good for you it was a true fact what you said,” you replied, putting on your swimming gear.

“I only say things that are true,” he murmured, eyeing you up.

A blush creeped up into your cheeks as you zipped up the uniform on your back. You both checked whether the equipment you had was prepared for the dive. “I sure hope so.”

“So the kissing part,” he started.

You held out your hand quickly. “Stop right there. I didn’t mean any of that.”

“And here I thought you liked me.”

“I do,” you said without thinking and immediately closed your mouth in pure shock. What did you just say?!

“You do?” he asked, his eyes full of hope.

You blinked a few times, hiding behind one of the oxygen bombs. “What? I mean I like the weather today.”

Bambam burst out into fit of laughters. “You are actually super cute, you know that? You play all this hardly approached girl but you are such a softie.”

“That is some good load of whale poop,” a doubtful laughter was the only thing you could let out. “Anyway, let’s go already. It’s gonna be super dark in a few.”

“Yes, that’s the point of night diving.”

As you walked passed him, you turned sharply, facing him. “Listen, Bambam. Whatever it is you are thinking, stop it. And just so you know, I have my eyes on you.”

He wiggled his eyebrows at you, obviously not taking you seriously but you just sighed and headed towards the little stairs leading into the water. It wasn’t until you reached the edge and you slipped on it that you felt his hands around your waist. You yelped feeling him pulling you backwards. It made him slip almost as well but he managed to keep a strong stance making sure you are steady.

You stayed like that for a few more seconds before your heart beat could simmer down to a normal rate. Slowly turning around, you saw Bambam’s gentle face. His eyes were already on you when you met his gaze. His hand reached out and slowly pushed your messy hair out of your face before his index finger slipped under your chin, sending goosebumps down your spine.

You didn’t realise you were holding your breath until his face was inching closer to yours.

Oh no.

What was he doing?!

18 notes · View notes

fearofaherobrine · 5 years

Text

Roleplay Server Log #397

"Nether Rescue, Plucked Phoenix, Pineapple Curl”

[Winston] Dispatches of a couple of wither skeletons that had charged them at the top of the fortress-

[Helm] - forcably guides Legion into the fortress halls, which other than Winston, is eerily quiet - There should no one in here, the battle wiped everyone out. Why are they here?

[Winston] - Just because they were wiped out in the past doesn't mean a few wouldn't come back. For awhile this would be the safest place if there were very few here

[Helm] - frowns, remembering their not to distant past - There are far more than any of us liked, the meanest biggest one commands the rest. They control... Or rather attempt to, the other mob's... And not obeying isn't an option. That's why I left when I had a chance.

[Winston] - Don't worry, I will not allow you to be dragged back into all of this

[Helm] I'm more worried they found Sammn.

[Doc] if there's Someone making trouble here I'm happy to take them out. I don't need the headache of organized hostile mobs.

[Winston] - If it comes down to it, the Matter can take command here

[Helm] The only thing preventing that is most of my kin... aren't the brightest. The Skells spent more time coraling them & getting them to listen than working on more elaborate plans.

[Sammn] - drags herself up & starts trying to figure out a way out. It doesn't take long to figure out she's in a small 3x3 sealed space. Putting her head against the warm wall, she struggles to listen for any sounds.

[Doc] Is following her signal and hir boots ring sharply on the nether brick floor. - I don't think involving Cp is necessary.

[Winston] - For now

[Doc] Rounds on him- no, not ever. If i have to rage around here myself to put things in order I will. I'm not having Cp organize an army under my nose and then bitch about how stressed out he is. I hate to pull this card, but I pay the rent here. He doesn't.

[Sammn] - thinks she hears faint voices, but can't be sure. Not knowing what was surrounding her, she doesn't want to risk teleporting. Drawing her knife, she starts striking the wall, giving off a dull ringing -

[Winston] - I am not arguing with you Doctor, just stating what I know works

[Legion] - has lagged behind, stopping in an intersection. Giving a look toward the others, it hops down a different hall -

[Doc] Glances back- unless you want to be lost you better get your cubic butt back here.

[Legion] - grumbles but slowly hops back -

[Winston] - How much farther Doctor?

[Doc] She's very close... Sammn?

[Winston] Keeps an eye on their surroundings-

[Sammn] - hears something and starts hitting the wall harder -

[Winston] Turns his head towards one of the walls, hearing the thuds- Doctor...

[Helm] - goes over to the wall, listening - What is that?

[Doc] I'm gonna find out- They start breaking the wall away with gusto. - Hang on, we're coming!

[Sammn] - hears louder voices and backs up -

[Doc] Breaks through the wall- Sammn! Are you hurt???

[Sammn] - blinks in surprise - Doc? What are you doing here?

[Helm] - peaks into the hole and sighs in relief - We have been looking for you.

[Doc] Looking for you! You've been missing for days. Your pigman friend and pet bird were beating the fuck out of Legion because they thought it did something to you.

[Sammn] Days? - stumbles out - And why where you beating Legion, Helm? [Helm] Cause since it did this - looks annoyed as they point out her arm with the blackened area on her wrist - you have been acting strange. Then you suddenly disappear and it ran off.

[Doc] Do you remember anything?

[Sammn] I remember thinking I needed to get somewhere I could think without it hurting. - looks confused - But, now... It's started again.

[Legion] Our mark should not be causing pain.

[Doc] Either way, I think we should get out of here.

[Winston] - Agreed, I can hear others farther down

[Doc] Shall we take the fast way now that we're not worried about wrecking or being noisy?

[Helm] Yes, the faster the better.

[Doc] Goes back down the hall a little. And shapeshifts, breaking the ceiling away and then headbutting a wall so the blocks make a crude slope back down to the shore of the lava lake-

[Helm] - climbs out, stopping to help Sammn -

[Legion] - growls and starts hopping it's way down, slipping halfway and tumbling the rest of the way down -

[Doc] Oooch. I'd help you but you said it's not safe to touch you. - they scuttle down the slope and protect the others as they run back to the portal.

[Winston] Traverses the terrain easily-

[Legion] - more grumbling as it rights itself -

[Doc] Picks up a block and uses it to push Legion fully upright.

[Legion] - flails at the block - Cease, we are fine.

[Sammn] - watches them, then turns to look around the area. When she does, it becomes clear there is a large red stain on her side, with several small holes burned into her dress.

[Doc] Sniffs at her. - You are very injured... -They hurry her to the gate- Go inside. I'll go last-

[Helm] - shuffles her ahead and through -

[Winston] Steps through as well-

[Legion] - follows -

[Doc] Shrinks down and changes hir mode to survival again briefly before crossing through.

[Mb] Is loafing on the other side. - Have fun chuckleheads?

[Sammn] - once thru, groans in pain - [Legion] - stares at Sammn's side - The Mark has been triggered again.

[Doc] Do you know what it's responding too?

[Legion] - it's orange eye looks at Doc - She was our Host. What triggers it, we do not know, but it prevented us from taking full control.

[Doc] Geeze... And you said I can't heal it for you...? What if I tried to numb it by cutting your connection to that part of your skin?

[Sammn] I don't know, you can try.

[Mb] How bout you get the fuck out of my place first?

[Doc] Yes, yes. Come on, let's go to my house.

[Winston] - If you do not mind, I will return to my Master's place

[Doc] If you wish, thank you for your help Winston.

[Winston] Nods respectfully before heading off-

[Doc] Offers Sammn an arm and helps her walk the short distance to the side door.

[Sammn] - each step makes her flinch more and more. At the door, she pulls away from Doc. - Stop, stop.

[Doc] What? What's the matter?

[Sammn] When you touched my arm, it got worse. Considerably.

[Doc] Pulls away uncertainly - Am I the one setting it off???

[Sammn] I don't know, it has been hurting on and off as I've been traveling around. Out by my place, it hurts less. Over here, it's constant.

[Doc] Is it proximity to Herobrines in general?

[Sammn] - looks worried - That would make sense, but why?

[Legion] -garble-laughs as it's orange eye glows - It is his Mark, His summoner.

[Doc] So... it's trying to keep you out of the influence of other brines? Maybe?

[Sammn] - looks angry - I am rapidly getting tired of this.... I can't think straight, I can't sleep. I can't remember why? I'm beginning to think it would have been better to just have left me wherever you found me.

[Doc] Looks rather hurt - I'm just trying to help... I think we need to find your friend. And if you're that desperate.... I know a place with no brines and you won't be expected to do anything.

[Sammn] - tries to calm down - I'm not ungrateful Doc, I know you are not the cause of my issues. No one here is. My apologies... I just feel broken.

[Doc] Wilts- I know that feeling all too well.... But my offer stands. No brines.

[Sammn] - shakes head - No. Trying to avoid it hasn't helped, so maybe it's time to confront it head on.

[Doc] I wonder what would happen if you got close to the big summoner?

[Sammn] Big summoner?

[Doc] Points to the high skinny tower behind the shrine. There's a black beacon at the top of it ringed by flaming netherrack- It's mostly full of slime blocks but there's a basic summoner tower at the top and a special reversed summoner TLOT built for Steve.

[Sammn] At this point, I'm willing to try. It's either that or get someone to look at my dreams.

[Doc] Let's try this first and then bug Cp. I wonder if... - Xe calls for Deerheart over the chat.

[Deer] Responds and starts making her way towards them-

[Doc] Waits for hir mate-

[Deer] - Comes out- Yes love? What do you need?

[Doc] For some reason me touching Sammn is paining her. Sammn? Can you just graze Deerheart and see if it's the same with her?

[Sammn] - reaches out and touches her, then shakes her head - Nothing. Who's the next closest Brine?

[Doc] Well I was thinking... Deerheart? Can you fly Sammn over near the summoner?

[Deer] - Sure, I can do that- She steps away and shifts her shape- Climb on Sammn

This message has been removed.

[Sammn] - climbs on -

[Deer] Flies her up to the summoner- Here we go

[Sammn] - braces herself, expecting the worse -

-At the top of the tower the golden summoner burns merrily and it's diamond echo glitters in the sunlight above the room-

[Sammn] - can feel some weird pull - How close can you get?

[Deer] - I can knock out some of the glass and you can go right in if you want?

[Sammn] Please.

[Deer] Carefully knocks out a couple blocks and gets close enough for Sammn to jump in-

[Sammn] - jumps in and stumbles as the pull gets stronger. Walks toward the golden summoner, each step increasing the pull. Reaching out, the symbol on her side flares bright red and burns her dress over it. Forcing herself to touch the summoner, she screams but keeps her grip. For one brief second, anyone sensative to the summoner feels its pull and it's gone. Sammn releases her grip and plops down, dazed.

[CP] In chat- Who's fucking doing what now!?

[Mb] chat- Stop playing with that fucking thing!!!

[TLOT] chat- Is someone in trouble?

[Sammn] - blinks a few times then slowly manages to access chat - I think u were right doc that hurt

[Doc] Is fretting. - You called out at least. The summoner does reach beyond the server when it's used intentionally. The only way to increase the range is to.. throw a live animal on the fire....

[Helm] - is freaking out - What!

[CP] In chat- You'd just call me if you did that Doc

[Doc] chat- You're not the only Herobrine that likes a sacrifice Cp.

[Mb] Chat- Yeah, I like a good BBQ.

[Sammn] - closes eyes and hears something, not with her ears. It's a faint voice, fimilar but she can't make out any words. Opening her eyes, she types in chat - Doc I can hear someone

[Doc] chat- That's a good start. Can you get a sense of a direction? Or understand what they're saying?

[Sammn] direction sorta words no

[Deer] Quietly- Sammn? Do you need help getting out?

[Sammn] - looks up and tries to get up, fails and plops back down - Probably. Don't feel like I have the energy to do much but sit. Sorry.

[Deer] Shifts back and slips inside- It's okay, I'll take you to one of the recovery rooms if you want

[Buff] Peeks up from the stairwell- Is everyone okay up here?

[Deer] - Ah, perfect timing Buff, do you think you can help me move Sammn?

[Sammn] - looks dazedly at Buff -

[Buff] Sure! I'd love to help. - He notices the big bloodstain- You look hurt! I'll be gentle. - He scoops her up as easily as a kitten and cradles her to his huge chest. - Where are we going too?

[Deer] - The recovery rooms downstairs

[Buff] Absolutley! -Starts walking downstairs.

[Doc] in chat- Is everything okay over there?

[Deer] In chat- For the most part yes, I'm having Buff help me move Sammn to a recovery room

[Doc] Good- They glance over- Legion, Helm, you two should still come inside.

[Helm] - darts toward the door in a panic -

[Legion] As you wish.

[Doc] And if you want food ASK. I have pets, leave them alone.

[Buff] Takes Sammn all the way across the house and down to a warm room near the lava pools in the lab.

[Sammn] - is mumbling - The lieutenants needs to move the others .. (mumble) Only the knights... (mumble)

[TLOT] Hears them coming and comes up the stairs with Steve to check on them- Oh dear.

[Steve] Sammn?

[Buff] Poor thing.

[Deer] - I wouldn't get too close TLOT

[TLOT] Okay.... - he stays outside the door to the room.

[Sammn] - mumbles - Take the king out first...

[Steve] Is she dreaming about chess?

[TLOT] I can find out? - He brushes her mind to see what's going on.

- Sees a castle under seige, a flash of people fighting next to mobs, attacking armored people. Normal people are running away. A cowering old man, dressed in red and royal blue, begging. Then what looks like a Steve attacking. Halls rushing by, then a room with 2 figures: a Brine, on the ground with a Notch moving toward them with a glowing hammer. Running, a shield rising and the hammer shattering it while someone screams "no", then nothing -

[TLOT] Uses his abilities to relay the image to Doc and Cp. Steve, Buff and Deerheart also get the gist of it since they're nearby.

[CP] Responds with a sharp mental jab- AM I SERIOUSLY NOT ALLOWED FIVE MINUTES OF PEACE!?

[TLOT] Winces- OOOWWW! Don't fucking do that!

[CP] - THEN STOP INTERUPTING ME!

[Doc] Is at the top of the stairs and unsure how to get Legion down them.

[Legion] - leers at the steps, then sighs - Move, Doctor. - with its tentacles, it tips itself and flop falls down to land surprisingly, upright. Another annoyed sigh and it hops out of the way.

[Doc] Sorry. I feel bad not helping... - They follow it down and then stand with TLOT in the doorway.

[Helm] - comes racing behind, looking for Sammn -

[Doc] She's right here Helm, it's okay.

[Steve] Yikes!

[Helm] - comes to sudden halt seeing her, then turns to sign - Are you sure?

[Steve] OH! - He signs to the pigman- She's just passed out.

[Helm] - frets - I don't like this, but as long as she's ok.

[Doc] We'll look after her.

[Violet] Comes up behind them with a bit of a bony rattle-

[Buff] Tucks the blanket over Sammn a bit.

[Deer] - Just let her rest for now

[Buff] I'll sit with her for a bit. I wasn't doing anything much.

[Helm] - darts over and sits on the floor next to the bed. Then signs to Legion - Don't make me go looking for you demon! I will have Wright rip your eyes off! [Legion] - grumbles, but tucks its tentacles into itself and leers at Helm with its blue eye - As you demand, beast.

[TLOT] No need for fighting or insults. I'm more concerned about Sammn right now.

[Deer] - Come on, we should leave them be for now

[Doc] Stands back so the others can leave the room.

[Buff] Stays with Sammn-

[Steve] Gestures vaguely at Legion- Um????

[Doc] Just don't touch them.

-NK has reached out mentally for TLOT, and upon finding him places a single query that translates to "Where are you?" -

-After a moment it's appended to "I'm ready to take your offer on looking through my memories, if you're still offering."-

[TLOT] Stops placing blocks and responds mentally. - I'm in the desert working on the dinosaur pen. If you want to come over.

[Yaunfen] Is playing with Fru, trying to keep them occupied.

[Waffles] Tries busking on Steve and almost knocks him over.

[Steve] Hey!

[NK] -I'll be over in a minute. Thank you.-

[Yaunfen] What's going on?

[TLOT] Nk needs a hand with something.

[Steve] It's okay Yaunfen, I'll keep working.

-Nk comes trudging over a hill toward the group, A lightfoot is scuttling along after him-

[TLOT] hops up on the wall and points at a small sandhill a little ways away that will let him climb up on the edge of the partially built wall.

[Yaunfen] Peeks over- Hi Nk! [dragon form]

[Nk] -Is quick to make it over, the lightfoot huffs since they can't before taking off- Hey... Yaunfen, was it?

[Yaunfen] Yep!

[Fru] Also wanders close, snuffling around.

[TLOT] You haven't met Doc's kiddo Nk?

[NK] Oh I have, I just wasn't sure if I remembered the name right. -Sheepish look- -Completely calm as Fru sniff snoffs his hair very close up.-

[Yaunfen] Giggles- This is Fru.

[TLOT] A result of my seed bleeding into theirs apparently. Doc says they're a type of redeye?

[NK] Oh yes, I'd say that for sure. Hello Fru. -Calmly pats Fru as Fru sniff snoffs his hair one more time-

[Fru] Gives Nk's hair a lick and makes a face.

[Yaunfen] BAD.

[TLOT] You're fine as long as you don't have candy on your person.

[NK] Oh you're usually fine with Redeyes as is, as long as you have a scarab. -Pushes his now slimy hair back into place.- Now I was here... about your offer to help me with my memories?

[TLOT] Of course. Let's get down on the ground.

[Yaunfen] I can help! - They grab Nk in their paws and put him on the ground gently-

[TLOT] Just hops down and lets his boots take the brunt of the impact.

-The ground of the pen is already the cake dirt blocks form Yaunfen's seed.-

[Fru] Wanders over to menace Steve a bit-

[Steve] Arrgh!

[Waffles] Is having a noisy drink in the little pond of fizzy soda/water

[NK] Well that's an interesting dirt block. Thank you Yaunfen.

[Yaunfen] You're welcome, and they're tasty too! excuse me! - They pad over quickly to herd Fru away from Steve.

[TLOT] Wait, you know about the scarabs too right? We think we found the equivalent on the candy seed. - He takes out the lollipop with the bug in it and shows it to Nk.

[NK] Of course.. Let me see.... Yes, that looks like it'd definitely be one.

[TLOT] Good. They tend to get a bit out of hand, especially as big as they are. Shall we find a spot in the shade to sit down?

[NK] Sure, after you. I'd also invest in making a copy of it, you'll need it if you accidentally hatch any others like that.

[TLOT] Good call. - He motions for Nk to follow and they go to a far corner of the pen where there are a few scattered chocolate wood blocks by the trap door out. He dusts a bit of loose sugar off one and sits on it.

[Yaunfen] Running Fru in circles with a toy like one would a cat-

-NK sits down himself by TLOT-

[NK] So how does it work?

[TLOT] Shrugs- I'm naturally psychic. And being the native here enhances my abilities. -He focuses on Nk and cocks his head slightly, thinking. His eyes seem to get brighter and brighter until they're all Nk can really focus on. He makes a small gesture like opening a door and digs a little deeper, gently poking around in Nk's thoughts.

-There's a thump as Fru bumps into the the wall.

[Yaunfen] Whoops! Be careful!

[NK] I... see.... -His voice trails off and TLOT finds that once he gets to NK's memories he... can't go any further?-

[TLOT] Hmmmm, you have a sort of..blockage...? Like your memories are knotted up. But it doesn't feel alien. More like you've repressed some memories....

[NK] I... had a feeling that was the issue. I could get to a certain point and just... nothing. People with one of these, -He taps a claw against the diamond in his chest- recall their memories differently... Hmm... Can... Can you fix it? Or give me a hand?

[TLOT] Can you be more specific about how you mean 'differently'? I don't want to damage your brain if it's set up in some strange way.

[Waffles] Wanders over hoping for pets-

[NK] I... It's hard to explain to people who don't have their minds set up this way.... Uhh… Here. -He presses at TLOT's mind and a vague impression crosses over, it's NK standing in an empty room, with a single door infront of him. He's confused, as beyond the door is.. nothing?- That's why I.. finally decided to ask for help. I've never just had... nothing, in my memories. It's... disconcerting.

[TLOT] That's helpful for visualization at least... - He tries again, this time seeing himself next to Nk. He guides the other brine closer to the door in his mind. - Perhaps we just need to look at it from a different angle. - He presses on the wall around the door, moving it inexorably backwards until the door is just free standing in the room. He leads Nk around to the opposite side of the door- Now try opening it from this side.

-Now, they can see something blurry through it, It's nowhere near clear or concise, but it seems to make sense to NK as he takes a tentative step through. He looks back at TLOT as though to invite him through that mental door, if he'd like to join him.-

[NK] It's... Hm.... I don't understand why I would have blocked this out...

[TLOT] Gets the feeling strongly - I'll walk with you. They're just memories. - He follows Nk

-They're fuzzy to TLOT, but the longer he stays with NK, the clearer they seem. Memory NK is pacing back and forth in what looks to be a throne room. TLOT might remember it from a picture Prince showed of a younger Mix. So far it seems.. Bland, almost.-

[Tlot] Adds some power to Nk's recollections, trying to bring them into a sharper relief.

[NK] What are... you doing? -He doesn't seem to notice it get clearer, which implies perhaps he was seeing it fine, and TLOT, outsider to NK's mind, was seeing it differently.-

-Memory NK seems downright livid as he paces, glancing at the throne every turn with a scowl.-

[TLOT] Someone seems very agitated...

[NK] Yes... But I don't know why. I can't tell when this was... -He makes a sliding motion with one hand and the memory seems to jut forward, and Memory NK turns to leave.- Well if it wasn't later on..... -Memory NK walks straight through them both, and NK turns to watch him leave.- Maybe... before?....

[TLOT] Shrugs- It's your mind....

[NK] Or maybe... It was over a large amount of memories... Here, follow. I'm going to skim through... Something had to happen for me to block it out... I don't just go removing access willy nilly… -He starts walking and the memories pass by. There's even one of child Mix being carried over memory NK's shoulder. Still not awful...-

[TLOT] Is just sightseeing, trying not to disturb any infrastructure, he does smile at child Mix though.

-There's... more memories of Mix as a child, just simple things, really. And then the memories start getting.. Odd, structure wise. It's like looking at them through a kaleidoscope...-

[NK] We must be getting close...

[CN] After sending Winston towards Doc has heads inside and goes to his room. He opens the door and peaks in- Firebird?

-Firebird looks up at CN, Hands pausing in picking the blue feathers from his body -

[Firebird] Yes CN?

[CN] Notes the blood welling up where the feathers have been pulled and the feathers scattered about the room- What are you doing?

[Firebird] Removing the feathers, why? - He looks... Bare, with so few feathers. The crest on his head is almost absent, with only a handful of feathers remaining, and his tail is no better.. -

[CN] - You're hurting yourself...

[Firebird] It's fine, CN. Don't worry. What did you come up here for?

[CN] Everyone else is out... And it is my room!- He's trying to discretely type in chat for either Mix or Flowey to come over

[TLOT] This all looks pretty ordinary, I wonder why you blocked it out?

[NK] I... Don't know. But the unstable nature of these memories is... It's odd. Its like I sustained damage to my spell stone. But it's still whole in all these memories.... Maybe if we go straight to the end? - Soon the memories are going by faster than you can make anything clearer out. A flash of Prince, Kraz reclining on a Thorntails back and talking with Memory NK, and then there's nothing. - Oh, that's too far...

[TLOT] You seem to be pretty good at navigating. Are you sure there's something mising?

[NK] I mean... I don't know why else my memory would be messed up... -The memory isn't actually nothing, at a closer inspection it's him out in the void between games. Memory NK lays face down on the "ground"-

[TLOT] Did you just cut it out since you were basically in a sensory deprivation space? That might have saved your sanity being out there so long.

[NK] I... Maybe? But my spell stone is.. Hm. - He bends down to check- oh, it is broken now. Odd. How far....

[TLOT] Yes, I understand it was broken when you were found. Wasn't there some kind of explosion that lodged Prince's bits in other people too?

[NK] That's he thing. I don't know why Prince's were like that. I know I had one but.. Oh, that's already in my hand... -he's poking his own memory hand thoughtfully -

[TLOT] Decides to dig a little deeper and puts a hand on Nk's shoulder to help him remember- It's there... I think you just have to want to know badly enough... - He feeds some of his energy into his brother brine.

-There's a knock on Litch's door-

[Licht] Groans but goes to the door and opens it- Yes? May I help you?

[Postman] Package miss. Can you sign for this please? - Holds out the little machine and stylus.

[Licht] - Uh, sure- She takes the items and signs her name, but she doesn't remember ordering anything

[Postman] Gives her a rather heavy box and smiles politely before going back to her little truck.

[Licht] Brings the package inside and looks at who it's from-

[EAlex] Waits for Licth to come back in before creeping up. - What is it?

-It's addressed to her from 'Collin Street' -

[Licht] - A package I don't remember ordering from...- She puts the box down and grabs a small knife before slicing away the tape

[EAlex] Just watching curiously-

-Inside are two red tins with weird designs on the front.-

[Licht] - The hell?- She pulls out her phone to look up what she's gotten and she see's a message which she opens stating that she'll be getting a package- Well that's helpful...

[EAlex] Reads the phone- Oh, this should have been recieved days ago. Doc ordered cakes?

[Licht] - Oh right, they didn't know what a fruitcake was, that's right

[EAlex] Well it looks like one of them is for us. I guess because they couldn't sign for it themselves?

[Licht] - Because they don't have an address

[EAlex] Gives us another reason to visit I suppose. This tin is super heavy. - She levers it open- Oh! It's so colorful!

[Licht] - Yeah, fruitcake can be. But visiting them will have to wait, I have to be getting to work

[EAlex] Do you mind if I...?

[Licht] - Go ahead, I've had it before

[Firebird] -Picks another feather out-

[CN] Waits nervously, he wants to help, but he has no idea how to make potions, and he doesn't feel comfortable leaving Firebird to go grab some healing flowers-

-It starts to rain outside and there's a lot of pattering as someone rushes into the house and shuts the door-

[CN] Perks up a little and pokes his head out onto the bridge yo see into the main room- Hello?

[Chester] Is soaked and shivering. He's running his shirt through his inventory to dry it.

[CN] - Are you okay?

[Chester] Skitters up towards him a bit and comes onto the bridge- Just got wet. My spider part is fuzzy and it's hard to dry off.

[CN] - Then why not use the lava pool?

[Chester] I was going to. I was just closer to the front door. It's really quiet... where is everyone?

[CN] - Um... Notch has the baby, and I don't know where Lie and CP are...

-There's a crack of thunder outside-

[Chester] I hope they're okay.

[CN] Shrugs-

[Chester] Looks down and his eyes go a bit wide and frightened- There's... Cn... you didn't hurt them... did you?

[CN] - What do you mean?

[Chester] Is a teeny bit poofy- You have blood on your shoes...

[CN] Looks down- Oh, well, Firebird is hurt! But... I don't know how to make potions...

[Chester] Are you sure Lie doesn't have some?

[CN] - I don't know...

[Chester] She's got stuff to do it right? And lots of books?

[CN] - Well, yeah... It's all downstairs in the workroom

[Chester] Do you want to... Like go and see?

[CN] - I don't know... What if Firebird does something while I'm gone? And hurts himself worse?

[Chester] Okay. I'll go. You stay here. - He turns to go into the workroom. He creeps into the shadowed space and the lightning throws his half spider shape in frightening shadows on the wall. He doesn't notice the sleeping figure in the bed, and his teeny claws tap lightly on the stone floor.

[Stevie] Stirs a little-

[Firebird] -Just continuing to absent mindedly pick blue feathers out. Almost all of the back of his head is bare, and his tail is so short. So, so short.-

[Chester] Bumps into the bed accidently with one spindly leg-

[CN] Steps back into the room- Firebird?

[Stevie] Jerks awake- Nether!- He then falls off the bed

[Firebird] -Head turns to look at CN- Hmm?

[CN] - Umm... One of CP's mobs... He's gonna try to get a potion for you...

[Chester] Whoops, sorry! I didn't see you there!

[Stevie] - What are you doing?

[Firebird] Alright CN.

[Chester] Looking for some kind of healing potion or a book on how to make them?

[Stevie] - Why?

[CN] - Please stop Firebird...

[Chester] Because the bird NOTCH is hurt- Thumbs back toward's Cn's room.

[Firebird] But....

[Stevie] - Ugh, okay, hang on a minute. I'll see if there is anything- He gets up and starts digging through the chests near the brewing stand-

[CN] - Your hurting yourself...

[Chester] Taps around a bit nervously. - You're the master's little brother right?

[Stevie] - Er… Yeah, I am- He looks through a few bottles before pulling too healing potions out, ones a regular potion, and the other is a splash potion

[Chester] Was going to shake his hand but it's occupied with bottles now- Chester.

[Stevie] - Right, anyways here are the potions you wanted

[Firebird] But..

[CN] - Please? Can't you just wait for molt?

[Chester] Thank you! Oh, sorry to inturrupt your nap too- He takes the bottles and hurries back up to the bridge-

[CN] Hears Chester approaching- Ah! The potions!

[Chester] Hands them over and catches sight of Firebird- Sir! Do you need a calming draught too? I read someplace birds pluck themselves when they're in distress...

[CN] Looks between the two potions with uncertainty, not sure which to give Firebird-

[Firebird] I'm fine, the regular potion will do.

[CN] Hands it over-

[Chester] Should I... call for someone? You don't look well at all.

[Firebird] -Takes the potion and grimaces at the taste-

-More rain outside, it's really coming down hard, There'a a bit of clattering as two of the skeletal riders go by on their bony horses. -

[CN] Watches nervously-

[Stevie] Comes up- Everything okay?

[Chester] Gestures nervously to the mostly plucked birdman and mouths at Stevie- What do we do???

[Stevie] - I have no idea... Probably just leave him be for now so he can heal

-NK's memories flash by, scenes of NK and Prince working together to evacuate the seed, glitchy broken code everywhere, Panic. Darkness. And NK yelps. Their joined memory exploration is cut, and NK covers his face with a soft "Oh."-

[TLOT] Backs away as well. - I think you need a little time to think about this...

[Steve] Rushes over- Are you guys okay? That seemed a bit abrupt.

[Fru] wiggles away from Yaunfen and hops over a low part of the half-built wall-

[Yaunfen] Nuuuu! - Chasing after them-

[TLOT] Pats Nk supportively- you think on this-

[Steve] Is already running after the dragon and the dinosaur- I'll help!

-Not long after-

[TLOT] Opens the door for Steve and the pair of them enter the bar.

[Sam] Immediatly starts fixing them something warm to drink.

[Steve] Cold sniffle-

[Lie] She and CP are curled up in a booth. Lie has a warm glass of tea and they are warming up after having run in out of the rain- Oh, hey TLOT, hey Steve

[Steve] Takes some coffee from Sam and settles down as well. - Hello you two.

[TLOT] Sorry to inturrupt your non-Aether time.

[Lie] - Believe me, the rain did that already

[CP] - We just can't catch a break...

[TLOT] There's always the beds downstairs...?

[Steve] Parenting is just hard. -toasts her-

[Lie] - No, I'm mostly just cold now

[CP] - So what are you two doing way out here?

[TLOT] A well deserved drink after a harrowing afternoon helping Yaunfen with Fru.

[Lie] - Oh dear, what did Fru do now?

[TLOT] Just went for an unauthorized scamper across the landscape.

[Steve] We think they caught sight of some Lightfoots and wanted to chase and or play with them.

[Lie] - I see

[CP] Pulls Lie a bit closer to himself-

[TLOT] It's always something with wild pets though, isn't it?

[Lie] - Did you see the video I sent to Dawn of Blake?

[Steve] Yeah I did! That was so cute!

[Lie] - How he got in without knocking the crib over I'm not sure, but he keeps repeating the feat

[TLOT] It's love. Dawn said he was a clingy guy. And Aether will probably benefit from his protection later. You know how much trouble little ones can get into.

[Lie] - Especially since she's close to crawling. She's almost got herself pushed up

[CP] - Yeah, that'll be fun...

[TLOT] Smiles- You know you're excited.

[Steve] Has she said anything else?

[Lie] Laughs a little- I'm not sure, Farfar has her now

[TLOT] Ah, someone else who's settled into his role like a silverfish in a block. - sips his drink thoughtfully.

[Lie] - That he has

[CP] Begrudgingly- It has been useful having him next door...

[TLOT] He loves you guys.

[Steve] Pokes his mate- You should show her the thingie!

[TLOT] Not sure she has the energy right now to finish it my lamb.

[Lie] - What thing?

[Steve] He made a plant.

[TLOT] It's just a sculpture for now, I was going to let you do the honors. If you want.

[Lie] - Uh, sure

[TLOT] I redid that weird fruit you gave me. - He reaches into his inventory. - It was a real pain to get to the edible part. So I made it easier. - He takes out a very strange plant in a large pot. It's got a sunburst of green leaves at the base and a skinny stem like an orchid. From the top three branches hang heavy with pineapple fruit. Just the edible part, cut in spirals that hang down in yellow swirls like minature tornados.

[Steve] We're calling it a pineapple curl bush!

[Lie] - Okay then... I mean, the vanilla vines curl sooo, it's not that far fetched?

[TLOT] What does vanilla have to do with it?

[Lie] - It's part of the same family?

[TLOT] Crosses his eyes slightly- That's... really annoying....

[Lie] - Real life is weird, and they did mostly develop in different parts of the world...

[TLOT] Errrgh. - He sets the plant on the table. - either way, it could use a boost.

[Lie] - Alright alright- She puts her cup down, it's mostly empty now anyways and reaches for the bush, focusing her powers of the bright foliage

-The plant seems to sigh under her touch and suddenly plumps up with even more fruit and leaves. -

[Steve] Good job Lie!

[TLOT] Plucks off a curl and slurps it up like a noodle. - Perfection. It's still weird though.

[Lie] - I just thought you'd like it. It can also be used in a lot of alcoholic drinks

[Licht] Finally gets off work and gets back to her apartment- EAlex? Everything okay while I was gone?

[EAlex] Is flopped on the couch - That cake is so heavy.... I only had a tiny piece. But I cleaned the kitchen for you.

[Licht] - Yeah, you eat that cake in small amounts, and thank you for cleaning

[EAlex] You're welcome.

[Licht] - I don't have to go to work until late tomorrow, is there anything you want to do?

[EAlex] Well... I was thinking we could... go visiting... I could use the support. It's kind of a big deal for me to.. you know...

[Licht] - You mean the other server? Sure, we just have to make sure we're back in time for me to get to work

[EAlex] Gets up. - I'm ready when you are.

[Licht] - Just let me grab a few things- She heads for the kitchen and grabs a paper bag, putting some bell peppers inside and the fruitcake- Alright, we can go- She pulls out her phone and dials Doc

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stompsite · 7 years

Text

Autopsy: Mass Effect Andromeda

Games are like dogs. You want to call all of them “good boy” and pat them on the head and tell them how wonderful they are all the time, because everyone’s a lot happier when you do, but some games are bad dogs, and you’ve got to take them out back behind the barn and shoot them in the head.

Games are difficult to make. Unlike a film, where you’re photographing what already exists, or a book, where you only have to use words to make things happen, a game requires loads of people to work extremely hard to build an entire reality. As a developer, you have to create spaces. You have to create physics. You have to control lighting. When two objects touch each other, you, the developer, have to ensure that they don’t simply clip through each other. As a developer, you might slave away for years of your life, working impossible hours alongside dozens, even hundreds, of other people, to ship an entire hand-crafted universe.

Games are places you get lost in, and places you call home. Only in games can you travel places, talk to people, and live the impossible. It’s why you mow lawns in the summer, saving up enough cash to buy that new graphics card so you can run the biggest hit. It’s why you wait, shivering in the midnight cold, outside a tacky GameStop to pick up the sequel you’ve been waiting years for. It’s why you draw fanart and write fan fiction of your favorite characters. It’s why you part with your hard-earned cash. You want to go there. You want to live that. You want to experience something new.

Mass Effect Andromeda is a bad dog, and I hate that I have to say that. Hundreds of people put five years of their lives into Andromeda, but the end result was a disappointment. Due to a lot of complicating factors, they weren’t able to make the game they wanted to make. There’s a tendency among gamers to criticize bad games harshly--when you’re eating ramen every day in college, you want an escape. You save up. You budget. If the game is bad, you have no recourse. Good reviews don’t necessarily mean you’re happy with what you got; after all, there’s often a big disconnect between reviewer tastes and player interests.

So it makes sense to lash out. It makes sense to want to have some fun at the expense of the game that caused you so much trouble. It makes sense to want to joke and mock and scream about just how bad it is, and how mad you are that you wasted your time on a game that the publisher spent years promising you was amazing as fuck.

The Witcher 3 is one of my favorite games. It was so good, I found myself swimming around the game’s oceans, just trying to lose myself in the world, performing every task, no matter how repetitive or mundane, so I wouldn’t have to leave. I didn’t want it to be over. With Andromeda, I finally gave up on the side quests, focused on the critical path, and installed as quickly as I could after the credits rolled.

Developers have a tendency to be defensive, and it’s completely understandable. No one wants to feel like their time was wasted. The secrecy of development mean a lot of myths arise. Sometimes leadership makes poor decision, technology doesn’t work like it ought to, pressures to hit deadlines lead to compromised work. You, the individual developer, do not have nearly as much power to make or break a game as players think you do. It’s a miracle any game gets made. Even something like “opening a door” is incredibly complex. And there’s no guidebook, no science behind it, no easy way to simply have an idea and make it work.

I say all this because I want set the ground rules. We’re here to talk about why a game didn’t work. We’re not here to vent our frustrations, as justifiable as that may be, and we’re not here to complain about the developers. It’s human nature to want to blame someone for something bad, and it’s just as human to want to avoid the blame. I’m going to avoid human nature, cut through the bullshit entirely, and try to diagnose the product.

Andromeda had a metascore of 72. It sold so poorly that it went on sale today for $15--that’s 75% off in less than six months after its release, something that only happens for games that sell poorly. If you’re one of the two people I know who loved the game, I’m not asking you to stop loving it, but I am asking you to acknowledge that the game didn’t work for most people. I think we ought to find out why.

This is not a review, this is an autopsy. I am not here to tell you whether or not you should buy the game. I’m here to explore why it failed. In order to be clear and informative, I’m working on the assumption you haven’t played the game, but I won’t be avoiding spoilers either.

So, now that we’ve set the stage, let’s look at the game.

1. Narrative

Mass Effect Andromeda is a clean break from the Mass Effect series. There’s some overlap in the lore--little references here and there--but for the most part, it’s completely its own thing. You, a human, and a bunch of aliens from the Milky Way have flown to the Andromeda galaxy in search of a new home. It took 600 years for your ships to get there.

Somehow, the Andromeda Initiative--that’s the organization running everything--had the ability to see what the Andromeda galaxy looked like at that point in time, despite the fact that light takes about two million years to travel between the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies. At some point between the time you set off and the time you got there, a catastrophe occurred, and some weird, uh… like… energy coral spread throughout space.

On one hand, it’s sci-fi, so we don’t need everything to be perfect. On the other hand, Mass Effect has always leaned a bit more towards hard sci-fi than most games. They acknowledge relativity frequently throughout the series--ships can’t travel between worlds without using these big ‘mass relays’ that were seeded throughout the galaxy millions of years before the story starts. Bioware created an element, Element Zero, to explain how how a lot of the tech in their universe functions. It was internally consistent.

Andromeda suddenly decides that ships can fly at something like 4200 times the speed of light, we can see a galaxy in real-time somehow (but only looked once), but we can’t use quantum entanglement to communicate with Earth any more, even though that’s a technology that’s been in the series since the first game. Andromeda breaks a lot of the series’ own rules to get to where it is.

This alone does not make Andromeda a bad game, but it does do a good job of illustrating a big problem: everything feels thoughtless. I’m not sure how a game spends five years in development and has a script that seems so… careless. Nothing in Andromeda feels logical or natural. In writing, there’s this idea called the ‘idiot ball.’ It comes from the writer’s room for The Simpsons, where one character would get to hold the ‘idiot ball’ one week, making bad choices that lead to the story’s drama. It works in a comedy. Not so much in a game that wants us to take its narrative seriously.

The idiot ball is why the crew of an Andromeda Initiative Ark, the Hyperion, wakes up next to a planet that wasn’t inhabited 600 years ago to discover that the planet is now uninhabitable and the aforementioned weird energy coral thing nearly destroys their ship.

Scientists are generally pretty careful. Don’t get me wrong, they take risks, and they occasionally do stupid things like licking test samples, but you’d think that the Andromeda Initiative might have done some recon first. Maybe, I don’t know, stopping just outside the galaxy, using their recon tech to see if anything had changed in six hundred years? Heck, why not stop outside the solar system to see if it had been colonized, or situations had changed? Of course they end up in a bad situation, because everyone in the game holds the idiot ball.

This isn’t a new problem for the series--remember when a giant robot attacked the Citadel and destroyed most of the Council fleet, and the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, on the Citadel saw it and the robots murder lots of people… and then pretended the giant robot threat wasn’t real? Mass Effect, starting with 2, has always had stupid people making stupid decisions that make no logical sense.

But--and this is incredibly important--they still worked, because they created dramatic moments.

Drama is the tension created by the conflict between a character, their goal, and the thing keeping them from attaining that goal. It’s difficult in the best of conditions to maintain the right amount of tension; a player who is constantly being told they’re the savior of the universe while only being tasked with hunting for wolf pelts is going to feel that the experience doesn’t match the premise. Great drama has stakes that feel important and make sense. Characters who constantly make poor decisions lose sympathy, which reduces dramatic tension, and we, the audience, stop caring.

The Council’s ignorance in Mass Effect 2 is awful writing, which isn’t surprising, since the entire game is a terribly-written mess. But at least it rings true! We can believe the government would ignore an imminent threat to our lives (see: global warming), and it makes us feel like we want to take action. Mass Effect 2’s “Oh yeah? You don’t believe in an alien menace? Well, I’m gonna prove it to you!” is exactly what makes a game work, even if the setup is poorly done. As long as it delivers its dramatic payload, it works.

Andromeda has nothing like that. Everything is twee. There’s some guy on one planet, named The Charlatan, and it’s obvious who he is as soon as you meet him, even though he plays it coy. This Charlatan fellow vies for control over a tiny little spaceport on an uninhabitable planet. He’s trying to wrest control away from a forgettable evil space pirate lady who spouts cliche lines in the vein of “guards! Seize them!” I don’t remember why I cared. I can remember every quest, every reason for doing anything in the first Mass Effect (Saren bad, Protheans cryptic, learn more about protheans, find Saren’s base, interrogate Saren’s sidekick), but in Andromeda, uh…

Yeah. I just finished the game and I’ve forgotten why I did anything. This is because the game never did a good job of making me care about things. Don’t get me wrong, it had situations that I ought to care about, but it made the Bioware Mistake.

What’s the Bioware Mistake? Okay, imagine that some guy walks up to you and says “hey, it’s me, your brother! I’m being chased by ninja assassins, and I need your help!” You wouldn’t believe him. It’s a case of someone telling you that they’re important, rather than the person actually being important to you. I felt nothing saving the Earth. I felt a lot more when I lost Mordin Solus in Mass Effect 3. Bioware makes this mistake frequently in its A-plots, but it usually makes its character interactions matter so much more in the B-plots that we can overlook the main plot shortcomings.

Andromeda does the A-plot thing: everyone’s lives are at risk unless you, the single most important human in the story, save them all. It just forgets to do the B-plot thing. There are nice little conversations between characters on the ship and in your party, as you might expect, but conversations with the characters are a drag.

It’s a problem with the game’s dialog on the whole. When you talk to anyone, they… well, they remind me a lot of that great liartownusa photoshop of a fake Netflix movie, “The Malediction Prophecy.”

“It's been 3,000 years since the Malediction, the spirit-plague created by The Order, a fabled army of immortals seeking to unravel the genome of the were-shaman Erasmus Nugent, who seeks to rebuild La Cienega, a bio-weapon capable of stopping Honcho, the deathless vampire king who sseeks to conquer the Fontanelle, the mythical fortress of demon hybrid Gary Shadowburn, who seeks to unleash angel-killer Larry Wendigo Jr., who seeks to release the Bloodfroth, a terrifying evil that seeks ot return the world to darkness.”

People don’t talk like people talk. They talk like fanfiction writers write. Have you ever seen one of those cringe-inducing tumblr story ideas that is just so bad, because everyone’s got these cutesy nicknames and the premise is super goofy and very “I’ve only ever read YA fiction in my entire life”?

Andromeda’s like that. People talk weird. They say things like “excuse me, my face is tired,” and make jokes without charisma. I have this urge to be really critical of the writing team, because they had, I presume, five full years on this game, and they work at a company that is literally built to make story-driven games, and the end result is an experience worse than Dragon Age 2, a game that was rushed through development in 18 months.

I don’t know how this script made it through editing.

This is the kind of writing we tore apart in our sophomore screenwriting classes back in the day. I can understand narratives not working on a larger, more plot-based level, because that requires a lot of coordination between a lot of teams. But basic dialog? How is it so bad?

youtube

Seriously, what is this? How did someone write this scene and go “yeah, yeah, this is good stuff.” How did this make it past animators and editors and marketing? How did this scene make it into the final game?

When your father sacrifices his life for you in the opening of the game, bestowing his role as Most Important Person to you, a character, apparently his friend, demands answers. She looks like Marge in that episode of the Simpsons where Homer uses a shotgun to apply makeup to her face. She asks you “what happened?” Your character, for some unknown reason, replies “to who?” Addison responds “it’s ‘to whom, and your goddamn father.”

I cannot envision a world where someone would: A) not understand that The Most Important Guy’s Death is the topic, B) correct grammar, or C) say “your goddamn father” in that context. It reads like someone trying to write charming and badass, but the situation is “a dude we all care about just died.” It makes no sense. What emotion was the writing team striving for? Did the voice actor ever think to go “uh, this makes no sense”? What the hell happened? How did this make it into the game?

The game presents us with a myriad of unlikable characters who do nothing but screw things up--Tann, Addison, Kelly, and so on. I can understand that disaster can stress people, but I also know that, in the face of disaster, most animals, humans included, have a powerful tendency to stick together in order to face off against a greater threat. In the case of Andromeda, the vast majority of living beings you encounter in the game are Milky Way characters who chose to abandon the colony and become criminal scum in the process. That Sloane Kelly lady, whose name I only remember because I just looked it up? She was the chief security officer of the program. No one should be more highly vetted than she is, but no, after a few months, she cracks and starts a criminal empire.

Why is this story important? Game design is the art of getting players to perform specific tasks that bring about some form of emotional fulfillment. In other words, it’s about establishing motivation. When the premise is stupid, the stakes are meaningless, and the characters unbelievable, it’s hard to compel players to keep moving. What is there to enjoy? What do I gain by playing a game where everyone’s an idiot?

How does a game, from a studio known for its stories, suck this bad after five years of development time? How does that happen? I’m exasperated with the game. I feel insulted by the script. I genuinely want to know how this game got as far as it did, because so many core ideas feel rotten from the get-go.

2. Technology and Presentation

Much has been made of Andromeda’s many animation glitches and bugs.

So, uh, just watch this vid if you want to understand how the game ended up:

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Personally, I struggle with Frostbite, as an engine. EA’s doubled down on it, pushing the tech across all their studios, and I think for the worse. It seems like EA’s development times have skyrocketed since switching from Unreal to Frostbite, and developers have complained at length about the engine. That Kotaku piece linked earlier indicated that wrestling with Frostbite was a big reason Andromeda took so long to develop.

On my computer, Frostbite games are among the buggiest, most unstable games I have. People complained about the load times in the Unity-powered ReCore, but I’ve yet to encounter a Frostbite game with shorter load times. It’s a big issue with the engine. The lighting seems to work really well in the hand of DICE artists, but nobody else seems to have the hang of it.

Suffice it to say, the technology has been called out by a lot of people by now. The animations--in a game that was in development for five years--look worse than they do in an Unreal Engine 3 game from last gen. From a technical perspective, Andromeda needed more time on the cooker. Maybe six months of crunch would have done it, but that team was crunching for a while as it was. The end result was a game that simply does not compete with any other AAA game on the market.

But then there’s the art.

Great fiction often relies on the power of its iconic imagery to engage the audience. Star Wars movies always feel like Star Wars movies. There’s nothing quite as distinctive as the Lord of the Rings movies. Studios like Bungie and Arkane thrive on creating visually distinct universes. Even Bioware’s first three Mass Effect games were fantastically realized.

Mass Effect Andromeda seems like generic sci-fi art you can find anywhere. The alien Kett have some really cool Geiger-influenced stuff, but I couldn’t begin to describe the other two alien species. One’s a robot race that has lots of squares and blocky shapes in their art design, and it feels like I’ve seen it a million times before. The other species, which looks like bad Farscape fan art, looks, uh… pretty normal. Nothing you haven’t seen before.

It’s all incredibly forgettable. If you played Dragon Age: Inquisition, then the vast desert worlds and limited selection of geographical oddities won’t surprise you. Seen the Giant’s Causeway? Someone at Bioware sure loves it. Hexagonal rock pillars are everywhere in Andromeda, some natural, some not.

Again, I don’t really understand how, in five years, the art design ends up looking like… well, this. You know how people made fun of the suit design in Bioware’s other sci-fi series, Anthem, for looking like the bad CG models you see on off-brand GPU boxes? Andromeda has the same problem. It’s weird going from a game like Destiny, where every location feels distinct and fresh, to Andromeda, where it feels like the art just doesn’t have any creativity put into it.

And it sucks to say this.

It sucks to be so harsh. I wanted this game to be great. They were saying the right things about trying to nail that sense of exploration, and early plans for the game, as mentioned in the article I linked earlier, make it sound like they were going for a much more ambitious, exciting game, but they were hamstrung by the technology. That doesn’t explain the writing or the art design, though.

As some of you may know, I’m working on an indie game codenamed G1. I created it, wrote the plot, did most of the design work, stuff like that. Anyways, I wanted to create a really cool, distinct sci-fi universe that sticks in players minds as strongly as Star Wars or Half-Life does. Being a volunteer-only project for the time being (I’d love to pay people, but I am so poor I literally went homeless this summer and am now staying with some family members who are in danger of losing their home as well!), we’ve seen some interesting people come and go. Way back in the day, we had some guys who really wanted to change the game’s entire setting to a much less interesting, more generic environment. Later, we had some guys who were big fans of Ghost in the Shell and wanted to make our character art reflect that instead.

My point is, I get that a lot of people want to do what seems and feels familiar, but I think, for a big, AAA video game, distinctive is what people remember, especially in sci-fi and fantasy. Nothing looks like The Witcher 3, or Dishonored, or Halo, or the original Mass Effect trilogy, Half Life, or… well, you get the idea, right? Distinctiveness rules. Sameyness drools. And for whatever reason, Andromeda is the least-inspired AAA video game I’ve seen in a long, long time.

3. Design.

This, for me, is the big one. I can deal with bad storytelling in a game, because almost all game storytelling is garbage. I can put up with bad technology, because I grew up gaming on the PC, where modding could often turn my games into an unbearable slideshow, and sometimes, I’ve found games that were fantastic despite their poor presentation. But if the design is bad… then we got a problem.

And the design is bad.

As much as I want to speculate on why the design is bad, the truth is, nothing productive can come of that. I don’t know why it’s bad. I don’t know who made what designs, or how much the technology is to blame, or anything like that. All I know is that the design is bad, and I’m going to tell you what makes it bad, so if you decide to develop a game in the future, you at least can be armed with the knowledge of what Andromeda got wrong, and hopefully avoid it yourself.

If you asked me to use one sentence to describe Andromeda, I’d probably call it “a waste of time.”

I mean this literally. I’ve never played a game that wasted more time than Andromeda. Like… holy crap. So much time wasting. People complained so much about certain time-wasting aspects of the game, Bioware patched some of it out.

Here’s an example, and I’m going to italicize it so you can skip reading the whole thing if it gets too boring. Because it is super boring.

If you want to go explore the planet of Kadara, you have to go to the star system, which involves an unskippable cutscene as you ‘fly’ from where you are to where you were. Then, in the star system, you click on the planet, and you fly over to it. You fly too close to it, then zoom back out (this happens every time you move between planets in the game; I have no idea why). Then you rotate the planet on your display until you can select the city, which is on the opposite side of the planet from you.

Now click on that landing zone. You must then verify your loadout, because the game won’t let you change it without seeking out a loadout station, rather than just letting you open your menu and swap gear. You will be faced with an unskippable cutscene showing you landing on the planet. Then you will spawn somewhere that’s nowhere near where you want to go. Turn around. Click on the machine behind you, and select the “go to slums” option.

You will now be around 100 yards away from the slums and the mouth of the cave. Run out of the cave. It’s a big, empty field, so this takes like 20 seconds to do. Jump over the fence. Run another 100 yards or so to a big terminal that lets you summon your car. Congratulations, you have finally spawned. Now spend ten minutes driving wherever you need to be around a planet that’s a pain to drive around.

Every planet is this bad. You’d think they might let you spawn wherever you’d like, and maybe even set up a few different spawn zones on the planet, but no, that’s not how it works in Andromeda. It takes way too long to do basic things. Fast travel points aren’t in convenient spots, but there’s nothing interesting to find other than some crates with trash you might as well break down. Any time you spawn in a base, you’re usually quite far from the person you actually want to talk to. You’re going to spend a time walking across flat surfaces to get to where you need to go.

Contrast that with a game like Destiny 2, which has multiple spawns on each planet, and keeps the social areas with vendors nice and small, so there’s not a lot of down time simply getting between points. Usually, these spawns take advantage of the game’s joyful movement system, as opposed to the flat, empty space in an Andromeda.

There are other ways it wastes your time as well. Consider the UI, which decides to put everything in a list. I do mean everything. There are something like 10 distinct tiers of weapon, for every single weapon in the game. Like the Dhan? Cool, your crafting list will include the Dhan I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, and X, which is weird, because it’s a straight upgrade every time, so there’s literally no point to keep the Dhan I blueprint around when the Dhan X is craftable.

Chances are the Dhan X won’t be craftable, because there’s no reliable method of farming research (I did almost all the quests on all the planets and scanned as much as possible and couldn’t get beyond the Dhan VII), but still, it’s weird that they’d put literally all the guns and their ten variations in one gigantic list of the 20-30+ guns in the game. That’s like 300 something entries in your crafting menu, and you can’t sort between any of them.

Gun mods? Same thing. Rather than letting you, say, sort mods by location type (barrel, magazine, etc), you’re just stuck with a gigantic list, and for some reason, you have to carry them on you, even though the game only lets you swap them out at various stations. Wouldn’t it make more sense to store the mods in the stations themselves?

You end up wasting so much time just navigating menus, trying to find the one thing you want, or being forced into seeking out the physical locations in game that will let you access the menus, because you can’t swap items out at will… it’s frustrating.

There’s this weird fascination with diegetic UI in games, and it sucks. Seriously, there isn’t a single game that benefits from having you go somewhere to access basic menu options. I don’t want to have to go to a terminal to swap out my guns. I’d much rather just press a button, open a menu, and swap my loadout there. Destiny got it right. Fable 3 did not. For some reason, Mass Effect Andromeda wants to be like Fable 3, if Fable 3’s weird menu space had huge amounts of dead space where nothing interesting occurred between the menus.

It’s awful. And I don’t know how the game shipped like that.

But the worst thing of all is the mission design. If you've played Dragon Age: Inquisition, you know that the mission design was extremely repetitive. Every location you went to would have the same few basic missions, no matter where you went. It got predictable. Andromeda is the same way. Go to two big towers on the map, solve a puzzle, go to a vault, press a button, run to the end of the vault, voila, you’ve done it. Scan a bunch of corpses on a planet. Pick up some rocks and plants. Go find the glowing orbs on the planet, and you’ll be rewarded with a poorly written cutscene. Fight the exact same boss on every planet, but don’t look for the variety found in Inquisition, where every dragon had something unique going on that made it kinda cool.

On and on it goes. Every planet, the same thing. There’s a point in the game where you have to go to a place called Meridian, and you go to some ancient alien city, and it’s not actually Meridian, but you don’t know that until you get there. To proceed, you must go to two different towers, solve two puzzles, and then go to a third puzzle, and do a new thing. When you fight the final boss, you will have to engage two similar phases, followed by a third, more unique phase. Every single fucking quest in this game seems to be “do two things, and then the third thing will be different.”

Find out who did a thing? Talk to two colonist, then the third one will say something different. Get artifacts for a museum? Three things. Every quest. Every single quest. Do three things, then move on.

I don’t want to be the generic internet gamer type here and accuse the developers of laziness, but I can say that the end result feels lazy. I remember, years ago, a Bioware writer saying on their forums that Bioware had decided that three was the ‘perfect number’ or something, and so they did everything in threes. Well, sorry, dude, but you’re wrong. Doing everything with the rule of threes sucks.

You know why? Because it robs the player of dramatic tension. Yeah. It all comes back to that. When you teach your players that they’re going to do two meaningless things for every quest, the player stops giving a shit about your game. When you claim to be making a game about space exploration, but there’s settlers on every single planet you visit, and the quests are the same every time, it doesn’t feel like you’re exploring, it feels like you’re a space janitor.

The rule of three makes everything predictable. Great games don’t have it, unless they disguise it really well. Bad games wear it on their sleeves.

If players can predict what’s going to happen in your game, the tension is lost, and the desire to continue is dampened. Word of mouth dies, nobody recommends your game to their friends, and your sales dry up and you can’t even justify making DLC for your game.

Rule of three design is garbage. It is that simple. There is no case where it is great game design, ever.

I have no idea why Bioware decided to make a game with nothing but rule of three design, but they did. And even when they try to make it interesting, it’s not interesting. One quest had me go to a location, where a person told me “I need a thing,” giving me some absurd reason as to why I couldn’t help them another way. I went where they sent me. Turns out the thing wasn’t there. That’s two places where I wasted time not completing the objective. At the second place, I was told about some big bad gangster dude at the third place. I killed the big bad gangster dude without even realizing it at first. Got the part, went back to the first location, and ended the quest.

The stakes never matter in Andromeda. You’ll always be forced to do something pointless before you can do the thing that does matter. Once, I found a place on a map, but the door was locked, and I could not get in. I finally found the quest that let me in that location, but I had to go to someone’s office. I went there. I tried to interact with a crate that obviously had loot in it, but I could not. Scanning something else gave me a map marker to the original location. I returned there. The door was open. It wasn’t like I’d found a key or anything, the door was just open. Then a vendor from the other side of the map showed up. We had a conversation. The next quest step was to see her… all the way on the other side of the map. Couldn’t we have had the conversation while she was still at the first location? No? Anyways, it was only after this point that the chest became interactive, and I could sift through its contents.

Contrast this with Divinity: Original Sin 2, where my excessive exploration has got me into numerous areas I shouldn’t be in. Look at a game like Skyrim, where someone can say “yeah, take the reward, it’s in that box over there,” but you stole it hours ago while you were sneaking around.

The game forces you around empty and pointless maps for no real reason at all. At least Bethesda places its objectives far across the map as a means of taking you through interesting and distracting landscapes. That’s part of the reason that Bethesda is such a popular developer. Their worlds are easy to get lost in.

I’m not gonna lie, I’d love to sit down with some leads at Bioware and talk about how to make their games better, because right now, their games seem formulaic as hell--Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect Andromeda are virtually identical games in their broad strokes, with the only real differences being the result of the setting.

If you’re a professional writer, you’re probably going “why is Doc using so many words to say things he could be saying much more simply?” Well, I’m being a dick and using this rhetorical device of wasting your time to give you the idea of what it’s like to play Andromeda.

It’s a waste of time, and it’s broken on the conceptual, writing, design, presentation, and technical levels. Nothing works here. Everything is broken. I don’t know how this game made it this far without being canceled. I don’t know how the writing standards for this game were so lax. I don’t know why anyone recommended this game to me, because it is quite literally the worst AAA gaming experience I have had in years.

Ultimately, it comes down to drama. Nothing Andromeda does is dramatic. It tries to use dramatic music and awful cliches to make things feel dramatic, but it doesn’t earn anything. The art isn’t inspiring, the stakes are rarely, if ever, high, the quests are so predictable that all tension is gone.

And it sucks that I feel this way. It especially sucks because the game actually starts out being interesting, making you curious, prompting you to ask lots of questions. By the second planet, you realize just how predictable it all is. By the end of the game, you’re wondering why you stuck with it this long. That 40-or-so gigs of hard drive space would be better off empty.

There are so many other problems with the game. Why do most mods either have negatives that outweigh their positives, or positives so miniscule there’s no point to using them? Does a 5% recharge timer in a 5 second timer really matter? Does a 3% damage boost on a gun with three shots have any perceivable effect? Nope. We could dive into the problems with dozens of quests, more specifics about the writing, and so many other things. There’s so little good to find in this game. It wastes all its time thinking it’s better than it is.

Drama is everything. Use your mechanics and your narrative to create drama. That’s what gets players playing and talking. That’s why they spend money. If you’re not going to do that, don’t bother making video games.

#stompsite #gameautopsy

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