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plasticflowering · 3 years

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ONEUS Fancall Writeup

In summary: aldjalskdjdkfjkdj I should have thought of more to say, but it was enough just to meet them and they were so kind and amazing, 10/10 group, will stan forever as long as they behave themselves, which I trust they will.

(sorry for potato quality on the gifs. That’s the unfortunate reality of Wi-Fi video calls. I tried my best to at least color them a bit)

FIRST OF ALL, MMT get your queue in order. I got the message that said “your call’s coming up very soon, be on standby” and literally ONE SECOND LATER Skype was ringing, ahhhhhhhhh

The thing with fancalls is that it’s always disorienting to see the member order. Like you can’t prepare for that. You never know which person is next until the phone is passed.

Also, I got too caught up in past fansigns with asking questions so I just focused on what I wanted to tell each member here, and... well, that was a mistake. I should have indeed prepared some questions. I just feel like everything’s been asked at this point, you know?? More on that later. Anyway I felt like the time limits per member in this call stretched on for AGES, and I was not prepared to fill the space well aaaskdjhaskjdhsa I’m sorry everyone.

🐥LEEDO

First up was Leedo, and tbqh the boy looked checked out, but he was still so wonderful. They’re probably so tired and working so hard, so I felt a little bad. And, honestly, Leedo was the one I had the least to say to because idk I love him but I have kind of a silent respect for him. I’d let Leedo do his own thing and just nod at him in acknowledgement if we ever met irl

I told him that he’d looked really happy lately, and that I hoped he was taking care of himself and doing well. I also told him I hoped he was eating his vegetables (shoutout to @highponyleedo - admittedly I panicked 😂).

🐥: I’ll think about that.

I told him that he’s inspiring and that I think about him when I work out (which is true! Gotta get buff like Leedo!) It was a nice little convo, and I was still VERY nervous at this point having been thrust DIRECTLY into the call. In every fansign I’ve been in (four at this point), the first member is always unfortunately sort of a throwaway for my mind because I’m still scrambling 😖

He was beautiful and gracious nonetheless.

🐱RAVN

He has never done anything wrong, ever in his life.

OKAY SO

YOUNGJO TRIED TO DO OUR WHOLE CONVO IN ENGLISH???

I WAS SO IMPRESSED

HE’S SO WONDERFUL

🐱: Your hair is green?

✌🏻: Yes!

🐱: Like my hair for Easily song

lksdjsalkjdaksdj ❤️

I also gave him a cheesy personal message of encouragement, and in the process I mentioned that I’m so much older than him (I AM) but I find him to be kind of a role model (I DO), and that I hope he gets to be his true self and make art that makes him happy.

🐱, aka this bitch: Age is not important.

✌🏻, knowing he has a noona problem: For some things, yes, you’re right!

I also showed him a fanart I drew of him, and immediately he was like “Oh, Procreate?” Yeah, boooiiii. Also he said my art was good but I’m sure he wouldn’t have said anything negative to a fan so... I just wanted him to see it lmao.

Youngjo spent almost the entire call like this, so there aren’t many great gif opportunities, but I’m glad he got to practice his English with me! How special!

As the phone was passed to the next member, Youngjo calls out: “You are very young!”

I love he. I’d fight him in a Denny’s parking lot, but I love he. For what purpose, that smile??

🐶XION

My son.

***Hey. Self. Note for the future: next time prepare a little more to say to your Ult.***

Okay, like, Xion looked RADIANT what the hell. See proof below

I gave him a very cheesy personal message about how I’ve watched him grow and improve and it makes me so happy, he makes me so happy with his music and his kindness. Also I mentioned that his makeup skills are always on point and look so, so good.

🐶, like immediately, proudly: Oh, thank you!!

I’ve lived a long and good life. But now I have expired. I have deceased. My ult smiled at me like this, and I have ascended to the next plane of existence.

However I’m coming back from the dead to finish this writeup and also to keep shitposting.

Anyway I would and did die for him.

BONUS: his reaction when I was like “I swear I thought I had more written out, I was like ‘oh I have so much to say to Xion’ and now here I am just staring at you.”

🐯HWANWOONG

Best! 👏🏻Boy! 👏🏻

(they’re all best boy, but Hwanwoong was just so on. He’s really just so welcoming and kind, ahhhhh)

I told him I’ve really been enjoying the 1theK choreography videos, then I mentioned the Cardi B choreo specifically and did a chef’s kiss motion, and this was his reaction (along with “thank you for watching that!”:

Then I asked him if there was a song he really wanted make some choreography for, but he hadn’t had the chance yet.

He thought, and then he swerved me by saying it was a SECRET and I’d have to stay tuned. 👀👀👀👀 You know I will, ya tricky lil’ bean.

Also hey who gave him the right??? To be so cute?? Like, stop. (don’t stop.)

🐰KEONHEE

So there’s this thing I’ve noticed with fansigns, where there’s always one member who just knocks the fansign experience out of the park so thoroughly that they steal a piece of my heart I never expected to give. For this fansign, that was Keonhee.

At this point I was also realizing I didn’t have much prepared to say, and I was just kind of riffing. But I did want to tell him that we had two things in common: we both studied ballet, and we both sang opera. I thanked him for the recent VLive where that was A Whole Thing, and then:

🐰, in English no less: Can you show me?

I don’t know what I expected. But I did show him. I sang a couple of operatic scales for him because I was like “what the hell, why not? Lee Keonhee’s gonna hear me sing opera. This is what my training was for.”

So that happened even though I was definitely nervous and forgot to open my throat up as much as I should have. It’s been a while, okay?

He also pointed out the LED moon lamp I keep on my side desk, which I’d forgotten to turn on before the call. So luckily Lee Keonhee was there to remind, at 5/6 of the way through my call!

🐿SEOHO

Firstly, I was taken in by the cool retro style jacket, so I mentioned that.

What’s with this little dance he did when I was gearing up to tell him what I wanted to say? Anyway he’s cute.

Then, I told him that Dizzy is one of my favorite ONEUS songs, and that he should definitely try to do more songwriting in the future if he wants.

He agreed. 😂

Then, he sang a little bit of Dizzy for me, but the sound was really not doing me any favors at this point in the call so it came through a little choppy ahhh.

So there you have it! All in all an amazing experience, would definitely do it again but would definitely prepare more to say/do/ask! I just don’t want to go in like an interviewer, but I also don’t know what else to do when there’s The Language Barrier, even with an interpreter. I’m definitely not in this for the boyfriend wish fulfillment or aegyo (Xion can’t help it), but since there is SO MUCH I could conceivably ask about, I’ve got fodder for future fansigns.

I hope you enjoyed!!!

#fancall writeup #v.text #v.gifsets #i guess this counts for my gifset tag #even with the potato quality these are LIMITED EDITION #ahhhhh i'm so happy

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twistedmusings · 3 years

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How the dorm leaders react when they catch you kissing someone from their dorm [Part 2]

A/N: AND HERE IT IS! Oh my god I still can't believe I managed to get this done! I actually stayed on task! Honestly these three were probably my favourite from the original post, I've had far too much fun writing these bois.

And what can I say? Playfully flirty MC is a good MC u wu

Warnings: Heavy smooching, possessive talk, and the reader just really pushing the dorm leader's buttons~

Part 1 here!

“How dare you...?”

Vil was more than happy to be coming back to Pomefiore with all the stuff that had happened today. Classes were more annoying than usual, he had to chase Leona down to tell him to get his work done and there had been some problems in the modeling studio that caused the lights to be brighter than usual and now he had a headache that only a nap could fix.

Thing was, if he wanted to keep his schedule as tight as possible he would need to stay awake for...another 6 hours.

One good thing was waiting for him though. Rook had greeted him at the entrance and let him know that the Ramshackle prefect was in the dorm today as per his request.

Good.

This would keep him awake. He remembers promising you a lesson in proper skincare in order to remedy whatever you did once you woke up in the morning. Deep in the back of his head he remembers you telling him that you just splash cold water on your face but he preferred to think that you at least put some sort of moisturizer. Maybe.

He rushes to his room to freshen up and makes sure that he has the materials he needs. Vil had decided that his own brand of face cleansing products would be a good start for your skin. The tingles in his fingertips went ignored as he thought of you thinking about him in the morning. It wasn’t that sort of thing at all, he reminded himself. Dorm leaders were supposed to help each other out, despite how often they were at each other’s throats, and he was just fulfilling his role not just as a dorm leader but as a...friend.

Vil takes one last look at the mirror and makes his way down the row of rooms in Pomefiore to reach the Lounge, only to stop when he sees you being pulled into one of the many rooms by what was clearly a Pomefiore’s students hand.

Wait what?

It’s almost alarming how quickly he approaches the door and puts his foot in it, choosing to stay quiet as he sees that the two people in the room didn’t even bother to wonder why the door hadn’t closed all the way. The student was pressing kisses against your lips in small intervals, choosing instead to talk as you run your hands up the expensive purple robe and taking in the little designs.

“I had a new lip scrub I wanted you to try out.”

“Really? Then why aren’t we in the bathroom?"

“That’s rather forward for a dorm leader. Is everyone in Ramshackle this daring?”

Vil couldn’t even pinpoint the student’s name. That was your first offense. The only thing he remembers about him is the man’s caramel brown hair and how it contrasted beautifully against his dark skin. After that, nothing could pop into his head that would make that student even remotely interesting for you to be hanging off of him like that! Of all the people to be with, it just had to be a nameless potato, didn’t it?

The hairs at the back of his head stand up as the potato hands you what he believes to be the best lip scrub in the business, which only makes the alarms in Vil’s head go off even louder. That brand wasn’t even known for doing lip scrubs! In fact, they once put out a three in one shampoo/conditioner and the fact that the student even had that brand in the dorms and you just blatantly accepting it was your second offense.

And as much as he wanted to focus on that being the thing that truly bothered him, he felt the alarms deafening him as he saw the potato’s hands wrap around your waist as he kissed you again, your lips parting to let him inside.

He shouldn’t be looking at this, he should be leaving and just leave you to your own devices. The lesson wasn’t important, you weren’t that important to him--

Amethyst eyes widen when you tilt your head as the student starts kissing down your neck, already choosing one spot to make his own as he licks and nips at the skin while you dig your fingers into his robe.

Vil didn’t really know how to describe the sudden surge of energy that caused him to fling the door open and grab the student by the back of his robe and pull him backwards, eyes glaring at you the entire time as you whisper his name, as if suddenly remembering that you had a previous engagement before this whole ‘sticking your tongue down a Pomefiore student’s throat’’ business.

“Prefect. My room. Now.”

You put your hands up and walk out of the room without looking at him, Vil letting go of the student’s robes and walking out after you. He didn’t even need to tell him that he was in trouble, the student would realize it soon enough once Rook delivered the chores that needed to be done by tonight.

A list only that student would be getting instead of the entire dorm.

Vil closes the door of his room and turns the lock rather harshly, looking back at you sitting at the edge of his bed still staring at the window. You weren’t trying to defend yourself, you weren’t even looking at him.

“I hate to be kept waiting, Prefect. Not just that, it is extremely rude to keep someone waiting just so you can fraternize with someone in my dorm.”

No answer. He grabs his desk chair and sits down so he can face you directly.

“What made you go and pick that potato?”

“Why would that be any of your business Vil-senpai?”

It was very much his business, if you asked him. He would have been okay if it was Epel or even Rook that you had picked to make out with but he wasn’t just going to stand around and watch as one of the student’s whose name he didn’t even know threw all of his work out of the window! So he asked the question again, this time getting a chuckle as an answer which only served to upset him even more.

“Out of anyone in my dorm you could have picked, you had to go with someone who offers you such a low quality brand of lip scrub?”

“That is your problem with this? What he offered me? Me and him just started hanging out, we know nothing about each other! I just wanted to change that.”

His headache was coming back again.

Vil put hard work into everything he did. That was his work ethic and people be damned if they thought it was too much. Maybe they couldn’t handle it but they still respected it, respected his craft and the work he put into it.

So why do you, of all of his recent projects, disrespect him so blatantly?

It was clear you weren’t ready yet, Vil wasn’t done working with you yet. After doing something like this, and right inside his dorm, he knew that you had just taken all of the careful brushes and strokes he had decorated your canvas with…

And burnt it right in front of his eyes.

Which is why he didn’t necessarily feel any guilt when he grabbed your cheeks and pulled his own lipstick out of his back pocket, ignoring your protests.

“Quiet.”

He applies the shade quickly and before you have any chance to protest, pushes his lips against yours.

The kiss is anything but sweet. It’s almost punishing. Vil was reminding you that you were a work in progress. He still had so much left to teach you, so much left to work with you and if you kept rushing things you were going to make him mad. Once he was done with you, you could go about your pitiful little life and kiss whoever you wanted and he wouldn’t even bat an eyelash.

A hand grasps at his wrists as you press his palms on your cheeks, your tongue gently pressing against his lips so you could slip inside--

Nevermind. This sort of impatient kissing would also have to go.

He pulls away and pushes you onto the mattress, your eyes hazy with eagerness and confusion as Vil removes his jacket and gloves and leans down to trap you below him.

“Were you this greedy with him? Did he also get this treatment from you? No, don’t answer. I fear I’ll only get angrier if you do. Now be an obedient little potato and stay still, the first thing I’ll fix is that messy kissing of yours.”

“ :( “

Snacks runs had to be the most annoying and heart pounding of his usual daily life quests. If waking up was a struggle enough, especially when no special loot such as new anime or manga was available, it was hard to complete such basic tasks without some sort of incentive.

Although Idia guessed that not dying of starvation was enough of an incentive.

He walks down the corridor of his own dorm, humming a quiet tune to himself as he looks down at all the snacks he had acquired. Which, score! They even had a limited edition chip flavor that came with the card of one of his favourite idols! It took everything in his power to not just spend all of his money on more than one bag but he had such a good day today that he knew his gacha pull luck just had to be good.

The door to a room behind him opens, Idia quickly picking up his pace and hiding behind a corner as he looks at who it could be. He isn't against anyone in his dorm but...he didn't have the means to engage in any conversation that wasn't about his current FPS game or Gakemo so--

"Thank you for the help! I thought my phone was beyond repair!"

His hands tighten around the chips pressed tight to his chest, eyes wide in surprise as he sees you stepping out of the room.

Of all people...why were you here so late?

The student laughs as he scratches the back of his head, handing you back your phone and looking away.

“No--No problem! I...I honestly didn’t think you would come to me for help. I integrated the newest magical technology on it as well as voice activated features and a--a brand new messaging app that sends messages faster!”

Idia clicked his tongue as he heard the student speak. Look at him showing off. You didn’t know that he was taking advantage of your naive mind! You didn’t know anything about magic so, of course, all those features would sound fancy!

When it was literally taking your phone and just downloading some fancy new apps on it!

Yet there you were, marveling down at it as if you had just gotten the latest version.

Well maybe he shouldn’t complain too much, even from here he could see your smile. A part of him worried that all this luck he was suddenly getting would affect the luck he would get on his chip bag but...you were worth it.

Such a rare event shouldn’t be left unnoticed.

Maybe...maybe if he stayed here you could walk by and he could open up the ‘bumping into each other late at night’ event?

“So how can I repay you? Do you need anything done?”

Idia tunes back into the conversation as he frowns, looking back at the two of you as the student looks at every single corner of the ceiling instead of looking at you.

Payment? The guy had just downloaded a couple of apps that wasn’t good enough reason to offer some sort of payment. He frowns and taps his foot impatiently as the guy stutters out a few excuses before finally giving you an answer.

“A ki--A kiss? Would that be alright?”

The Ignihyde dorm leader almost falls down as he hears that, retreating further into his corner as he glared daggers at the guy who had just dared to ask for such a bold request.

A k--kis--kiss? A kiss...from you?

This guy was starting to piss him off! He should just be content staring at you! You were a SSR character all on your own! That guy should be happy he even got to talk to you at all and shouldn’t ask for more than he was given! He already rolled for such a life changing event why would he even want more!

His eyes soften when he sees you mull it over. It was okay, you could reject him. Such a guy wouldn’t even be worthy of a kiss from you so you so all you had to do was say no! Go on, [Y/N], just reject hi--

Idia can feel his heart breaking as his muscles stop working, dropping all of his stuff on the floor with a thud as the sound echoes. Yet it went ignored, the other two people in the hallway too busy with their own activities.

When...when had you even kissed him? Idia only remembers you putting your phone away and the moment he blinked you had already pressed your lips against that other guy--!

He should be leaving, why isn’t he moving?

The student’s hand goes to your waist as you deepen it, his face turning a deep shade of red as you pull away and tap his lips.

“Was that your first kiss?”

“...y--yes..”

You were smiling and giving him such a rare, almost ultimately rare item and Idia didn’t know how long he could stare until he combusted.

So all he could do was turn around…

And run as fast as he could.

He ignored the familiar voice calling out his name, footsteps quickly following him as he started to run out of breath.

Making a poor otaku like him run, even now you were still being so cruel to him!

Idia’s door slides open as he bursts inside, ready to bury himself in his bed and never come out again--!

Only to stop when he hears you hiss in pain.

Blue eyes turn around to see your foot jammed into his doorway, not allowing the electric door to slide closed. A part of him wants to immediately go to you and ask if you were alright but he stops himself as the image of your kiss flashes through his mind again.

“[Y/N]-shi! W--What--!”

You rub at your foot and sigh, walking in with a confused look as Idia presses his back against his bookshelf. He knew it. If a SSR character could be brought to real life, this is the sort of power they would have over him.

The kind of aura you were emitting was enough for him to want to get on his knees, but he chose to remain strong.

“I was calling out to you…didn’t you hear me?”

Idia turns his head and looks at the floor, the pain still raw and emotionally taxing than what he was used to. Disappointment was one thing but heartbreak was a complete other monster!

“Shouldn’t--Shouldn’t you be with your boyfriend?”

He spits the word out, annoyed that a guy from his dorm could unlock...no...could get someone like you. You were open to every single activity Idia gave you, you gave him good feedback and didn’t get scared when you two disagreed on something. Every manga he gave you, you read and every anime he told you to watch, you would watch it.

You were receptive, you were attentive, you were what Idia wanted in a real life friend!

He hadn’t dared hope for more!

That still didn’t mean he couldn’t fantasize when he was all by himself.

“Boyfriend…?”

You tilt your head in confusion before chuckling as you realized what had happened.

“Oh so you saw that.”

Is that all you were going to say?! You had just taken his heart and crushed it into tiny little pieces and you were just going to talk about what a pervert he was being!

Someone just KO him now, like right now!

“Yes...I saw. So what? You were just ki-kissi--doing that thing from everyone to see! So you should just go back to him instead of bullying me in my own room!”

Please just leave, he wanted to cry in peace.

Yet you stubbornly remain, just like the first time he met you.

“Idia I don’t know what crazy assumptions you are making but that guy isn’t my boyfriend.”

You put up one finger.

“He fixed my phone…”

Another one follows after.

“And he asked for a kiss for payment. Simple as that. You shouldn’t act like you caught us doing something major. It was just a kis---”

Large hands land on your shoulders as Idia now stands in front of you, head hung low as he mutters something to himself.

“Just a kiss….just a kiss.”

You jump as he gets close to your face, eyes staring at you pleadingly as he cupped your face.

“JUST A KISS? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU ARE? AN EXTRA RARE CHARACTER SUCH AS YOURSELF SHOULDN’T BE GIVING OUT SUCH RARE ITEMS LIKE THAT!”

He shakes you back and forth.

“IF YOUR KISS WAS JUST NORMAL THEN EVEN I...I COULD--”

Idia’s eyes fall on your lips, the rush of adrenaline mixed in with his built up desire for you all culminating in two choices popping up in his head. And for the first time, he knew that hesitation was not an option.

So he dives in.

His lips met yours roughly, not really moving them or anything but just pressing them against you. You put your hands gently on his chest but he takes it as a protest, which only causes him to push them onto yours even more.

This was...disastrous.

He had never kissed anyone before. How in the world did he think that he would be able to kiss you? Ah, maybe this was a dream? Right! He had just dreamed all of this up and you didn’t really force your way into his room to confront him!

His hair flares up when you cup his face, pushing him away slightly and tilting him in such a way that your lips would meet in a much softer fashion. He looks down and sees you closing your eyes, following in your footsteps and melting inside your kiss.

You both pull away slowly, Idia opening his eyes and blushing when he sees you licking your lips and sending him a teasing grin.

A rare sight...made only for him.

“I feel like I just spent all my stamina on this one event...so I don’t want to go unrewarded. Can we go further? I want to go further. What option do I have to pick for you to do that again, [Y/N]?”

“Don’t touch them.”

“YOUNG MASTER! WHERE ARE YOU!”

Malleus sighs as he looks on at the Diasmonia students gathered around the outskirts of the school, smiling as he sees Sebek directing them each and every way. Sebek really didn’t give up, did he? One of his classes had been canceled and he was eager to see the gargoyles around Ramshackle in a much better light but he figured Sebek would cause up a stir when he didn’t find him in his classroom.

As much as he appreciated him, Sebek didn’t have to walk him to every single class.

He sighs and goes deeper into the woods behind Ramshackle, the small broken path there leading him down a familiar terrain.

This is where he usually walked with you, after all.

Seeing this place in bright light was so very different. Instead of it being illuminated by his lights, the sun peeked out from over the trees and provided a sunny trail instead of the usual moonlight. He took a deep breath as he breathed in the smell of flowers all around, all of them growing wildly around him and defying any human to try and tame them.

His fingers trace some of the thorns he found on some of them, the flowers attracted to his touch and moving closer to his hands as a small vine wrapped around his finger.

All with his magic’s help after all.

This was his safe space. Malleus would come here during his first and second year and lose himself in the wilderness. In here no one would fear him. Here every single thing was responsive to his touches and even dared to touch back. Some of the wild rose bushes also reminded him of him, Malleus adding a bit more thorns around the flowers as in to emulate the very home he missed.

In this lonely place, he flourished.

But it wasn’t so lonely now, was it?

His third year had brought one big surprise. A human. A child of man who did not know who he was or what he was capable of. They looked at him as if he was just any other stranger roaming around their dorm and not the next ruler of the Valley of Thorns.

And Malleus, being the very curious person he is, found himself pulled to your inattentiveness.

He had dropped many hints that he was eager to get to know you more, relishing in the fact that you two were starting to get closer. And while he had hoped to keep his identity a secret a bit longer, he found it almost unbearable for you to not know who he was.

If you were so open with who you were, then he should show you the same kind of respect.

How wonderful that you were now on a first name basis with each other.

Malleus could walk over to Ramshackle dorm now and knock on your door without hesitation, smiling as he sees your excitement at just what places you two would discover in the dead of night.

Bummer you couldn’t be with him now.

He had seen you come out of your dorm and ask Sebek if he needed any help, to which the fae replied rather rudely that no human could ever track down his young master, so he was a bit reluctant to discover any more places without you by his side.

These walks were something you two did together, after all.

So he remained at this spot, touching everything and anything that would strike his fancy while going deeper and deeper into a small clearing you two had found. A large tree decorated its middle, the leaves falling gently upon the ground as the sun shone down on the large pond that provided this part of the forest with the water it needed to balance out the sun’s gentle rays.

“Shhhh, don’t make too much noise.”

Malleus stops as he hears your voice, his head immediately turning towards the sound as he hears rustling behind him. He smiles and turns to where he thought you were coming from only to be struck by a sudden idea--and immediately hiding among the trees and bushes so you couldn’t see him.

Would you be surprised to find him here?

He hoped so. Malleus had the habit of appearing to you suddenly so this wouldn’t be breaking any traditions between you two. If he played his cards right, you might join him on a walk all the way to the edge of the island.

“Prefect do you know where you are going?”

“I do! I’ve been here so many times. Now come on!”

Another person’s voice. No...he had heard that voice before.

Malleus retreats back into his hiding spot as he sees you rush by, holding by the hand a Diasmonia student as he rushes to follow you. You smile and turn around, still holding his hand while the other looked on in amazement at where you had led him.

“Prefect...this is…”

“Like it? Me and Malleus found it a while ago. This is how we know we are close to the edge of the forest.”

The Diasmonia dorm leader smiles as he watches you show the student around, pointing out different sights and sounds as the other watched on in amazement. That student probably had never gone anywhere this secret and while Malleus was glad you were showing off the place you two shared…

There was a feeling deep inside his chest that flared up angrily as he caught the student looking at you more than his surroundings.

Green eyes watch as the student’s hand clenches and unclenches, seemingly working up the courage to do something as you continue speaking. Which was rather rude, in Malleus’s opinion. You were explaining some wonderful things about the flora here and he was just staring at you without engaging in the conversation.

And how did you two know each other? Malleus had never mentioned you in Diasmonia except to Silver and Lilia, had he known you before him?

Malleus hands grip the tree bark tighter as the student takes your hand, stopping your explanation as he gets you to focus your attention on him.

What--?

“I’ve been eager to find some time alone with you.”

The student clears his throat before pulling you by the hand gently, your surprised look turning into one of playfulness as you follow along with his movements. He leads you to the edge of the pond, spinning you around as you allow him to position you in such a way that you are now closer to him than before.

Which only makes the angry feeling in Malleus’s gut flare up even more.

“Have you now? What for?”

An answer Malleus wanted to know as well.

Blushing, the student smiles and leads you into a dance with no music which only served to make you laugh and make Malleus’s fingers dig deep into the wood of the poor tree.

In the dragon fae’s eyes, you two are dancing for hours without caring about who was around. Why had he even brought you here? This student was part of Sebek’s surveillance crew and yet here he was not doing his job. But he wasn’t the one who brought you here…

You were.

Your actions were lost on Malleus as the dance finishes up, the student dipping you low before bringing you up.

“So you brought me here to dance? Who knew Diasmonia students were so charming.”

Malleus didn’t like the way you were smiling, nor how your hands rested on the student’s shoulders. He hadn’t seen this side of you before, you were playing along with this student and his motives.

Had you always been so playful? Malleus had only seen you during the night and whenever you two spoke it was a conversation worthy of two friends sharing experiences together.

But not this...never this…

“Well, not just a dance. I’ve wanted to state my intentions outright.”

The tree starts to crack slowly as Malleus can feel more thorns growing out of the rose bushes around him.

“Ever since you arrived, you have been an enigma to me. You are always so helpful even to those who do not seek your aid. Even now, you didn’t have to help me search for our Young Master."

He wasn’t searching for anyone, he was too close to you for Malleus’s liking and he needed to learn how to respect your boundaries.

“Yet you still offered me your help...and I…I want to...”

The student was leaning closer as his hands slid down to your waist, Malleus staring as you started to tilt your head as you placed your hands on his chest while his lips were dead set on meeting yours--!

Your face is tilted up as cold lips meet yours, your mouth opening in a surprised gasp as the hold the student had on you was no longer shy and timid but angry and possessive. These lips were pulling you in closer and closer, greedily eating each and every sound you were making as the air was slowly stolen from your lungs.

A string of saliva is left hanging as you two separate, your eyes fluttering open as you think of something to say to such a ravishing kiss.

Only for them to open wide in surprise as you see who you had really kissed.

“Malleus!?”

You turn to look behind the fae’s back, the Diasmonia student looking at his Young Master in mild panic and surprise while Malleus presses you close against his chest, clearly hiding you from view.

Right before the student even had a chance to taste your lips, Malleus had rushed out of his hiding place and pulled him away by the collar of his shirt.

For a dragon to watch on as something that was his was so close to be taken away, the surprise must have gotten to him.

“Go tell Sebek to head back to Diasmonia and call off his search. I will be there by nightfall.”

The student tries to stutter out a response but Malleus glares back as he keeps you pressed firmly against him.

“Now.”

You watch the student leave in a hurry, following the broken path you had led him in with. Your eyes peek up to look at Malleus but the dorm leader waits until the sound of footsteps is long gone before tilting your face up again and leaning down to press his lips against yours in another rough and dominating kiss.

Hands push you forward as your back collides with the huge tree in the clearing, Malleus making sure that the back of your head meets the bark gently as his lips never parted from yours. You wrap your arms around him as best as you could and let out an involuntary squeak when the fae decides to pick you up so that you could pull him in even closer.

He is the one to pull away first, hands firmly on your bottom as you wrap your legs around his waist to support yourself.

“Malleus--”

The fae presses another kiss to your lips, effectively silencing you so that all your attention would be on him.

“Don’t ever bring someone else into this place, child of man. Do I make myself clear? This place is our haven and I will not have someone else come steal both it and you away from me. Well, even if you don’t understand, I’ll make sure to explain it to you thoroughly. Now...kiss me again.”

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #twst #twst x reader #twst mc #vil schoenheit #idia shroud #malleus draconia #vil x reader #idia x reader #malleus x reader #twst headcanons #twst imagines #vil schoenheit x reader #idia shroud x reader #malleus draconia x reader #//TO THE PEOPLE WHO ASKED ME ABOUT THIS A LOT!#//THIS IS FOR YOU!

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indulge-that-sin · 3 years

Text

A Social Experience

Characters: GN!MC, Leviathan, Asmodeus, Mammon

Wordcount: 1700

Tags: Fluff, Domestic, Bonding Activities, Humor

(No spoilers for latter lessons, but takes place fairly late in the game.)

***

"--a gross, shut-in otaku like me!" Levi finished, on the all too familiar note.

Usually by this point you would already be launching into reassurances that he certainly wasn't gross, and shouldn't talk about himself like that, but this time there was nothing but a silence that bounced off the walls, damning and louder than any words.

You reached into your bag of chips, removed a single potato chip, and ate it as you tilted your head in thought. Levi took your silence like a slap in the face, and recoiled, his face already wavering. The sound of your chewing was distressingly loud in contrast.

You finished chewing and swallowed. "I mean, is that even true anymore?" you asked after a nerve-wracking length of time.

Levi's expression twisted more into confusion than hurt. "Huh?!"

"Don't you kind of lose your hikikomori credentials if you become popular and people start coming to spend time with you all the time?"

"That's not-- I'm not-- You don't count!" Levi sputtered.

"Oh, I don't count, huh," you repeated, putting a hand to your chest and dramatically feigning heartbreak.

Levi looked abashed now. "Th-that's not what I meant," he rushed to add.

"I know what you meant," you said. "Give it an hour."

Now Levi tilted fully into confusion.

"Give what an hour?"

"My point to be made," you said, and placed your D.D.D. onto the lip of the bathtub, out of your own reach. It was also clearly visible to Levi as you both sat on beanbags in front of his TV, next to the bath tub. "An hour," you repeated in a portentous video game narrator voice.

Levi scowled and picked up his controller again, turning back to his game. But his reactions were off, now. His character moved jerkily around the screen, doubling back and taking wrong turns on the 8-bit map as Levi's mood roiled with the strangeness of the conversation.

You continued eating your chips slowly, savoring the taste of the limited edition novelty flavor that Levi had generously acquired for you. He'd tried to pass it as a coincidence, but he didn't really know anyone else who unironically enjoyed the taste of cream and devilradish chips.

Not even half an hour passed before there was a knock on the door. Levi asked for the password on reflex. Surprisingly, from the other side of the door came a sigh, and then Asmo's melodious voice reciting the string of nerd trivia that Levi had set as a password for him ever since they became unlikely allies for the Bloody Moon competition.

"Come in, I guess," Levi replied, giving you a long look. Your D.D.D. was still on the edge of the bathtub, untouched as you sat there elbow-deep in greasy chips. You couldn't have called anyone over. And yet, was this what you expected to happen?

"Give it forty more minutes now," you said low.

Asmo fluttered into the room, like a passing breeze bringing in the smell of perfume.

"Oh, there you are, darling, I was wondering where you were," he said, face lit up as he saw you.

He sat uninvited next to you in the beanbag, and you scooted over to make space for him. Levi would have complained, except moving to make room for Asmo meant you shuffled closer to Levi instead, so he ended up biting his tongue.

"What do you want?" Levi grit out.

"Must I want something?" Asmo asked, "Is it not enough that I give my adorable brother the opportunity to entertain me?"

"He's bored," you translated.

"I'm soooo bored," Asmo whined, his shoulders rolling in a full-body sigh. But he perked up as he leaned forward to look at both you and Levi. "But what about all this? Mind if I join the fun~?"

"Let's find a game Asmo can play," you suggested.

"If you'd like," Asmo acquiesced with a shrug, indicating he'd had some other kind of fun in mind.

Levi gave you another sidelong glance, full of suspicion, but his head was out of the game he was playing anyway, so he exited and pulled up his game library instead. Deciding which game to choose was the trickier part, because Asmo had terrible reflexes, and an attention span worse than Mammon's when it came to playing anything. This ruled out anything requiring twitch reflexes or understanding complicated rules.

Asmo, meanwhile, scrunched his nose at your chips.

"All that grease and salt is going to be awful for your complexion, darling," he said, clearly disapproving.

"I'm not rubbing it on my face," you said, and defiantly sucked crumbs off your thumb. Levi nearly choked at the sound, which was borderline obscene. The little sound Asmo made in response did nothing to contradict this impression. Levi managed to swallow back the wave of envy before it came undammed by concentrating on the list of games on the screen. He still had to make a selection.

A farming sim seemed like a safe enough choice; something bright and frivolous. Just like Asmo.

Levi passed the controller as the title screen came up, and Asmo, to his credit, managed to choose the 'New Game' option without messing anything up. Yet. When the screen went dark as the game loaded, Asmo couldn't resist looking at his reflection and primping his hair a bit. Levi did resist snorting and rolling his eyes, but it was a close thing.

The character creation screen popped up with its myriad of options, and Asmo gasped in delight.

"Oh! This is a good start! Much better than getting shoved into some ugly gray metal suit at the beginning," Asmo remarked cheerfully. He cycled through the hair and clothing options with the speed and deftness of a veteran player.

"Hey, beginner armor in RPGs can be colorful too," Levi protested.

"But not fashionable, apparently," Asmo sniffed.

Asmo had only just barely settled on a hairstyle and color combination he thought was adequately cute, and was scrunching his nose at the shirt options, when another knock came at the door.

"Come in," you called out, before Levi could demand a password.

Mammon's head popped through the door, and he pulled a face when he saw you there, just like he always did when you were in somebody else's company and not his.

"Eh? What're you doing here?" Mammon asked, closing the door behind him and sidling up to the three of you.

He craned his neck and squinted at the screen, like he was verifying that whatever you were doing, it passed his requirements for propriety. Between knowing the kinds of games Levi had in his collection, and seeing Asmo there, maybe he was not completely unjustified in some suspicion, but it still made you want to roll your eyes.

"We're watching Asmo create his character," you explained.

Mammon guffawed. "Betcha been watching him do that for a while!"

"Fifteen minutes, more or less," you said. "But to be fair, Levi takes way longer to create characters."

"It's an important step!" Levi sputtered.

"Especially with the quality of the options," Asmo added. "Look at this. A purple T-shirt with a pink butt on it?"

"That's a peach!" Levi protested, his face turning red.

"I know what a butt looks like, Levi," Asmo replied tartly.

"Wait, wait, Asmo, that black one with the gold design ain't half bad! Go back an' pick that one."

"That gaudy thing! Absolutely not!"

"Mammon, why are you even here?" Levi asked, now completely exasperated with his brothers.

"I was just seein' if we were still on for Devil Kart against those Purgatory Hall guys. We need ta win back our honor, ya know."

"Do we?" Levi asked suspiciously, "or are you running a betting pool again?"

Mammon made a good show of appearing indignant at the very suggestion, but he'd hit you up earlier today about whether you'd be willing to take a dive in the second half of Candy Mountain in exchange for a lump grimm sum, so you knew too much about the subject to defend Mammon without exposing him.

"Can't I be showin' an interest without ya gettin' all suspicious a' me? What makes me so weird, huh? Asmo here doesn't even play games, and I don't see ya hasslin' him!"

"I do too play games," Asmo protested.

"Really? 'Cause only thing I ever saw you play was that stupid matching thing with the gems, and I ain't seen much of even that lately."

You knew which game Mammon meant, because it was the only game app you'd ever seen on Asmo's phone. You'd watch him play in moments of boredom, swiping his screen with a completely blank look of concentration as he matched the colors of the gems in rows and columns, and they burst into sparkles.

"Ugh, of course you haven't seen me play, I finished it. I have to wait until they add new levels."

"Didn't that game have like ten thousand levels already?" you asked. "You mean you passed all of them?"

"Eleven thousand and sixty five," Asmo corrected primly. "And yes, I did them all. I have to wait until they add more now. I asked."

The room fell into shocked silence at this. Even Levi looked mildly dyspeptic at the thought of completing eleven thousand levels of a match-3 game. You'd played it yourself for a while, and past the two hundredth level, the number of complicated mechanics the game introduced had completely broken you.

"Anyway," Mammon said after a few more beats of silence. He gestured to the screen, where Asmo was flicking between two shirt options. "This thing got co-op or somethin'?"

You finished your chips, and folded away the empty bag. When you picked up your D.D.D., fifty five minutes had passed.

"Still five minutes left," you muttered to Levi while Asmo and Mammon bickered over the choice of pants. "Wanna play the long odds and see if the twins show up too?"

"Okay, okay, you've made your point," Levi grumbled. "I let way too many people waltz in here. I'll have to tighten security."

But Levi's heart wasn't really in it, and when he turned to watch Mammon try to swipe Asmo's controller while the latter loudly protested, there was almost a smile threatening to spread over Levi's face.

#obey me shall we date #obey me fanfic #obey me leviathan #obey me levi #obey me asmodeus #obey me mammon

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morimallow · 3 years

Note

Kenma with a gamer s/o that’s actually more of a introvert than him - like they’ll be eating ramen 24/7 snacks, chips, BIG eye bags, slightly messy room, game collection that date back too 2005/2012, will literally stay up for 3 day to play a game, raging etc.

Gender neutral pls :)

A/N: I am genuinely sorry for not writing this earlier because I surprisingly had fun writing this even if I don't play games and stuff. I hope you like this! ^o^

As usual, I posted this the second I was done writing it so this wasn't proof read and if you ever notice that I shifted from second person POV to third, I apologize. I've been using third person in the multi-chap I've been working on. (╥_╥)

Kenma Kozume's Gamer S/O

How you met Kenma was both cliche and at the same time, unusual because what are the chances that you'd meet your Player 2 for who knows how long at a local game store to buy the newly released video game you were both supposed to play that night?

You both thought that the person you met inside the store was a whole different human being.

It's not an angsty love story because when you realized your stories match up, you immediately started getting closer and closer until you found yourself in front of Kenma's large TV, sitting in your own gaming chair beside his black one, playing an old game released way back in 2005 and trying to complete all of the quests before 3AM.

Although it was hard to convince you to play at his house because surprise! You were even more introverted than him. You work from home, you do go out for groceries (sometimes but you usually order them online) and for games, of course, but in hoodies and a face mask so people won't talk to you.

So, Kenma had to make a move.

When he found out you both live in the same neighborhood, he played it simple first. He would place a bag of your favorite junk foods and the sweet drink you rarely drink and sometimes it's the energy drink you've always preferred with a little note asking if you'd let him borrow that limited edition video game from your vast collection of games from 2005 to 2012.

That was a good move, you'd have to admit because he knows the games he mentioned in the notes were the most precious to you and wouldn't leave it hanging inside a plastic bag hooked on your front door knob and wait for him to get it without anyone looking at it suspiciously.

It was too risky.

Fuck human interaction, right? Your games were more important.

Those little interactions and accidental touching of hands when you both decide it's the perfect time to grab a piece or two of potato chips Kenma bought on his grocery trip (believe me, it's a soulmate thing).

Ah, yes. So romantic.

Then the time came when you considered Kenma like one of your precious games — you don't want to throw it out, to sell and ship it away, you don't want anyone else to handle it because you know you can and you want to. You want him safe with you and show off to everyone as if he was the last copy of the rarest and most expensive purchase you've had.

In their faces.

You didn't really plan on confessing to him until you were playing where duos could battle and your opponent asked who Kenma was with because your moves were so in sync like you've played it for so long that you know each other's plays and moves (spoiler alert: you really did though).

“They're my S/O,” he answered before looking at you and asked for confirmation, “right?”

Play first! Play first! You gripped the controller, mumbling strings of curses under your breath in which Kenma thought it was your way of letting out the rage because of the game.

After you defeated them, you answered his previous question but more like stating it to your opponents, “Yeah, I'm his S/O,” you confirmed before reaching for the bag of chips beside Kenma when he grabbed your hand and placed a kiss between your knuckles then he continued playing as if it was the most normal thing he'd done.

Tonight would be the third night you've gone without sleep with Kenma. It shouldn't be a habit because it's obviously unhealthy to not get even a little bit of rest throughout the day but it kinda became a thing for you two. It's the quality time, it's the hobbies and interests you share that makes you feel things.

You weren't in front of Kenma's large TV tonight, you were plopped down on the bed with his blanket sitting comfortably over your bum and Kenma was outside the room somewhere doing something you absolutely didn't pay attention to when he was talking.

His room wasn't entirely messy like you expected. It was the typical room that has that kind of home-y vibes just to your taste. There was a stack of paperworks on his bedside table and on the floor along with pens and folders.

It was just like him to have this kind of room.

Kenma entered the room with a big microwavable container enough to feed the both of you, talking to someone on the phone which was between his shoulder and ear, “Yeah, we're eating. No, please. Shoyo—”

To your surprise, it wasn't ramen or those ready-to-eat meals from the convenience store with only one tablespoon of meat and a cup of rice, no. It was a real meal, a very healthy one, you think. Turns out that Hinata and Kuroo sent it to his house that afternoon because his two best friends liked to take care of him and now, you too since the container became bigger compared to what Kenma had received when you weren't together yet.

Kenma took a spoonful, hovered in front of you and waited for you to open your mouth before taking a bite for himself then went back to playing.

That was also one of the things you both just… did for each other. For some people, it might be romantic to give the first bite to your lover and for others, it might be a way to protect themselves, you know? To check if it was poisoned. Your hidden intentions weren't voiced out, just simply trusted each other.

A big celebratory YOU'VE REACHED THE END OF THE GAME appeared on the screen indicating that you both had completed the quests and can finally sleep.

Eye contact was very necessary every after games (if his eyebags looked horrible, you should probably check yourself out too) like how placing a kiss between your knuckles became a habit of his.

#kenma kozume #kenma x reader #kenma x you #kenma x y/n #haikyuu x reader #hq x reader #timeskip kenma #kenma x gn!reader #haikyuu x gn!reader

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acti-veg · 4 years

Text

Cheap Vegan Essentials

With everything going on right now, I thought may be useful to repost an edited version of my list of cheap vegan groceries. Most of this is standard stuff but if you’re used to ready meals and faux meats but you can’t get them with the panic buying, this post may prove helpful to you. A lot of these have a really long shelf life as well, so they will be useful if you end up isolating. You may struggle to find some of these items with people clearing the shelves, but it will hopefully help to know what to keep a look out for. Just please avoid stockpiling. It is sensible to have these items in your cupboard but you should only buy what you need.

Rice: Rice is an extremely cheap and filling staple. A cup of rice contains roughly 45 grams of carbohydrates and 4-5 grams of protein. In an airtight container it lasts at least 6 months.

Beans: Beans are one of the most accessible protein sources and have been a staple around the world for thousands of years. Just one cup of soybeans, for example, contains a massive 28.62 grams of protein, while even standard baked beans contain around 14 grams. They also contain lysine, which is missing from most other plant sources.

Chickpeas: Chickpeas can be purchased very cheaply canned, and in large bags in bulk if you’re willing to prep them yourself. Each cup contains about 15 grams of protein, tonnes of fibre as well as magnesium and folate.

Lentils: Similar to chickpeas, lentils can be bought canned or in large bags. A cup of cooked lentils contains a massive 18 grams of protein, they also lower cholesterol, improve heart health and help stabilise blood sugar.

Oats: Oats are very cheap, can be bought in bulk and have great shelf life. They are high in protein, fibre, and B12; they are even thought to help lower blood pressure and cholesterol.

Cereals: Most cereals, especially supermarket’s own brand products are very cheap. Whole grain cereals like bran or oat based products are high in fiber, calcium and iron, and most are fortified with B vitamins.

Pasta: Pasta is another great product to always have on hand, it is one of the least expensive items in any supermarket, can be bought in bulk and has a very long shelf life. Depending on the type, pasta can be a good source of fibre and carbohydrates; it is a high energy food and is very filling.

Potatoes: Potatoes are one of the cheapest foods available in most supermarkets, at an average of just $0.56 per pound. They are versatile, filling and despite their reputation as unhealthy, they are an excellent source B6 and a good source of potassium, copper, vitamin C, manganese, phosphorus, niacin, dietary fiber, and pantothenic acid.

Sweet potatoes: Sweet potatoes are as versatile as white potatoes, are high in vitamins B6, C, D, iron, magnesium and potassium. They’re also a more balanced source of energy than white potatoes, as their natural sugars release slowly, avoiding blood-sugar spikes.

Noodles: Many varieties of noodles are vegan, they are very cheap and last a long time. Noodles are very filling and contain high levels of B vitamins, vitamin E, magnesium, iron, riboflavin, and calcium.

Nut butters: Depending on the type, nut butters can be purchased very cheaply. It has a surprisingly good shelf life, is an excellent source of heart healthy fats and is very high in protein.

Falafel: Falafel is usually cheap to buy pre-made but it is even cheaper when made at home just using chickpeas and spices. It is filling, can be used to make great vegan burgers and is a good source of protein, fat and soluble fibre.

Hummus: Though buying pre-prepared hummus is usually relatively cheap, it is far more cost effective to make your own in larger quantities, depending on the recipe you usually only need chickpeas, tahini and lemon.

Couscous: Couscous can be great in salad or as its own side dish, it is cheap to buy and is a convenient option since it is so easy to prepare. It is a good source of lean protein, dietary fibre and B vitamins.

Tofu: Tofu has an odd reputation for being expensive, quite probably among people who have never bought it. Tofu has been a Chinese staple for thousands of years, it is now widely available in supermarkets and is far cheaper than comparable animal products, averaging less than $2 per pound. It is filling and is high in both protein and calcium. If you find it expensive in your local supermarket, try a Chinese market or world foods store. It will keep for months if you freeze it.

Tempeh: Tempeh is similar to tofu in price and use, but has a different texture and slightly different nutritional properties. The fermentation process and its retention of the whole bean give it a higher content of protein, dietary fibre and vitamins compared to tofu, as well as firmer texture and a stronger flavour.

Seitan: Seitan is made with wheat gluten and is extremely high in protein, as well as being one of the cheapest sources of protein per dollar when made at home and is around the same price as low quality beef in stores. It has a steaky texture and is very filling.

Frozen fruit/vegetables: Large bags of mixed frozen vegetables can be bought extremely cheaply almost anywhere. Despite popular opinion to the contrary, frozen vegetables are almost as healthy as fresh produce since they are frozen while fresh and don’t endure the loss of nutrients associated with long travel and extended shelf time. Frozen fruit like mixed berries can be a cheap way to prepare smoothies or dessert.

Canned fruit/vegetables: Having a few cans of fruit or vegetables around is always a good idea, things like canned tomatoes or corn can be a side on their own, canned peaches or orange pieces are an instant dessert and canned tomatoes can be used to make sauces.

Bananas: Bananas are one of the cheapest fruits available and deserve a mention based on their nutritional value and their versatility. They can be used in desserts, as a healthy snack and can be used to make cheap vegan ice cream.

Citrus Fruits: Citrus fruits like lemon, orange and limes are cheap to buy in bunches, especially when in season and can be eaten as a healthy snack or used as a cheap way to add flavour to existing dishes.

Vegetable stock: Vegetable stock is good to have around for a variety of purposes; it will add flavour to any dish from gravies to soups and roast dinners. It is extremely cheap and relatively healthy if you go for a low sodium option. It is even cheaper if you make it yourself from leftovers or trimmings.

Olives: Olives are a healthy source of fat, they are thought to have anti-inflammatory properties and contribute to good health health, as well as being good sources of iron. They can be bought in large jars very cheaply and can be a healthy snack.

Olive Oil: Thought to be the healthiest oil to cook with, it is heart healthy and can be used to add flavour to a variety of dishes like pastas and salad.

Spinach: Spinach is often called a super-food in terms of nutritional content, it is is high in niacin and zinc, as well as protein, fiber, calcium, iron and a multitude of vitamins. You can also buy large bags of pre-prepared spinach very cheaply.

Kale: It has a different flavour and texture to spinach, but has similar uses. It is a great source of dietary fibre and is packed with nutrients, vitamins, folate and magnesium. Even a 500g bag should only set you back around $2.50.

Bread: Many new vegans assume bread is off limits, but many breads are vegan. Even speciality loafs are very cheap considering the amount of meals they can contribute towards, and they can be a good source of carbohydrates and protein. It will keep for 3-6 months if you freeze it.

Plant Milks: Plant milks have an undeserved reputation for being expensive, this is only in comparison to heavily subsidised dairy milks, though even then the price is comparable, in fact, some supermarket’s own brands are even cheaper. Plant milks are packed with calcium and are usually supplemented with vitamins B6 and B12.

Non-Dairy Spreads: Non-dairy spreads can be made form a variety of sources, from soy or olives to coconut oil. They tend to be comparable to dairy butter in terms of calcium, but without the unhealthy fats and cholesterol. They are usually priced similarly or cheaper than their dairy counterparts.

Peppers: Peppers tend to be very cheap to pick up in large bags, particularly bell peppers. They can be stretched over several meals, and can add flavour and texture to curries, stir fries and salads.

Nutritional Yeast: Seen as something of a speciality health food, nutritional yeast is actually very cheap, lasts a long time and is one of the best sources of vitamin B12. It has a nutty, cheesy taste, so you can use it in place of anything you’d usually sprinkle cheese on. It is also great in soups and when used to make “cheesy”, creamy sauces.

Flax seeds: Each tablespoon of ground flax seed contains about 1.8 grams of omega-3s. It is included in this list as they make a great egg substitute in baking, can be sprinkled on cereal, yogurt or oatmeal. It is cheap to buy, and even a small packet lasts a long time.

Dark chocolate: Dark chocolate is not only far healthier than milk chocolate, it is usually cheaper to buy in the same quantities and is far more filling. It is versatile for use in baking and desserts and is a healthy snack in small quantities.

Selected Produce: Fresh vegetables are not always expensive. Seasonal vegetables are usually cheap in most supermarkets, but some vegetables like carrots, turnips, onions, cabbage and cauliflower are inexpensive all year round, and can often be bought on offer or as “irregular” (but still perfectly edible) for even less.

Herbs and Spices: Having a range of spices on hand is always a good idea; things like cumin and garlic can add depth and flavour to simple meals and they last a very long time. Investing in a good spice rack and some curry powder will save you money in the long term.

Stay safe everyone, and please check in on your vulnerable friends, family members and neighbours. I am always around if you need any advice, resources, accessible recipes or just a bit of a chat to help with the stress. Take care of yourselves and each other.

#vegan #coronavirus #vegan on a budget #budgeting

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heyimboredtalktome · 3 years

Note

For your solangelo thing, here’s a concept:

It’s a dark night in NYC. A McDondald’s has just been robbed of... all their fries? LITERALLY ALL?? EVEN THE POTATOES?? The cameras didn’t find anything.

Back at camp, Nico di Angelo and Will Solace are getting filthy rich from being underground fry dealers.

They've set up fryers and Will is like peeling the potatoes and they've also asked the stolls for help so like it's a four man job they got ready made fries that they stole from McDonald's and like good quality potatoes which they're turning into good quality fries and since the campers are junk addicts and Nico and the Stolls stole literally everything from McDonald's (Will's too good for that, he was there "in spirit") so the campers had no choice but to pay ridiculously inflated prices to get their dose of junk. They collected the money and split it four ways and to put into perspective how much money they made, Nico got one fourth and was still able to buy the super ultra premium limited edition mythomagic card deck so like it was a win. What did the others buy? You tell me......WHAT IF WILL USED THIS MONEY TO GET THAT TATTOO OF HIS

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tlbodine · 3 years

Text

Thanksgiving is Gonna Be Weird: A Survival Guide for 2020

It’s 2020, the pandemic is worse than ever, and the holidays are right around the corner. No matter what, this is going to be a weird Thanksgiving for a lot of people. With travel restrictions in place and most of us having a mighty desire not to murder our friends and family by spreading around a disease, there’s a good chance that you’re going to be celebrating a bit differently this year.

And, hey, maybe you decide not to celebrate at all. Which is perfectly valid!

But maybe you’re staring down the possibility of your first Thanksgiving on your own, or feeding just the small group you live for rather than a big crowd, or some other unusual circumstance. And if that’s the case, I wanted to compile together some resources/ideas to help you out. I know this isn’t my usual horror fare, but...well, I hope it’s helpful, regardless.

“Help, I’ve Never Made Thanksgiving Dinner Before” Starter Kit

Maybe you’ve always gone home for the holidays but are currently stuck in an apartment with a few roommates, and none of you have any intensive cooking skills. Maybe you always take the kids to Grandma’s house and have never had to contribute more than a side dish but now really want to do a proper Thanksgiving feast for your partner(s), kid(s) and whoever else lives in your house.

Never fear! A Thanksgiving feast doesn’t have to be intimidating! In fact, Thanksgiving foods are usually pretty simple; the most challenging part of the whole feast is the project management aspect of working with a lot of different dishes and getting everything ready at once. But the smaller your crowd to feed, the easier that is!

So, the first thing you’ll want to do is come up with a menu. Sit down and write a list of all the foods you normally eat and enjoy on Thanksgiving. If something is served at your family meal that you’ve never cared for, guess what? You can boot that bad boy right off the list!

By and large, the standard Thanksgiving feast consists of:

Roast turkey

Mashed potatoes

Gravy

Some kind of dinner roll

Cranberry sauce

Some number of vegetable side dishes (often a green been casserole and a sweet potato casserole)

Some kind of dessert (often/traditionally a pumpkin pie)

I’ve linked above some easy & favorite techniques/recipes for all of these foods, but of course you can buy time-saving convenience items to get you rolling -- from potato flakes to gravy mix to premade pie. I won’t tell if you don’t.

If there’s something you’re used to eating every year that you don’t know how to make....call whoever usually makes it! If at all possible, obviously, I’m not recommending you do a seance to talk to your dead great-aunt and get her rolls recipe. Just, like...phone up your friend/family member, get the recipe, and use it as an opportunity to connect. Odds are both of you are missing the human interaction.

“Hey, That’s Nice, But I Live in a Dorm Room” Edition

Okay, okay, I get it. You’re away at college and can’t get home to see your family safely and you’re living in some kind of weird socially isolated dorm situation where you have limited access to cooking implements. Or, shit, idk, maybe you’re couch-surfing or living in a motel or otherwise not in possession of a full kitchen.

I got you, fam.

Do you have at your disposal a microwave? Rice cooker? Even an electric kettle will work!

If you have some way to boil water, you can make instant mashed potatoes, gravy, and stove-top stuffing. If you have a microwave, you can steam some vegetables and bake a sweet potato. For dessert, core an apple, stuff the cavity with brown sugar + cinnamon + butter and nuke in the microwave for 4 minutes.

It’s hypothetically possible to microwave a turkey, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Instead, I’d opt to buy a deli roast chicken (about $5 at most grocery stores), or even just some turkey deli meat. Alternatively, ham usually just needs to be warmed rather than cooked, and you can buy a big ol’ ham steak at the store for a couple of bucks.

“I’m Dead Broke Because COVID, Send Help”

You know the great thing about Thanksgiving food? It’s cheap. No, really! It can be, anyway, especially since a lot of foods go on sale.

In my area anyway, the local Wal-Mart and Smith’s Grocery have:

A can of green beans for about 79 cents

A bag of instant mashed potatoes for about $1

A big can of yams for about $1, or fresh yams for 50 cents/lb (usually a couple sweet potatoes = 1lb)

Canned corn or peas + corn for 50 cents, or steam-in-bag veggies of your choice for $1

Stovetop stuffing for $1 or sometimes even 50 cents per box

Margarine for 79 cents to $1

Gravy mix packets for 50 cents each

A can of cranberry sauce for $1 or less

Most of these are also available at Dollar Tree!

A lot of food banks will also be giving out turkeys this time of year, and some grocery stores will give you a free turkey if you spend $50 or $100 on groceries or whatever. Do you have an older relative who needs groceries? Ask if you can go buy their food and deliver it to their door (contactless!) and keep the free turkey.

You can pretty easily feed a group of 4-6 for $20 or so, especially if you’re willing to be flexible on your protein. And what are you doing feeding more than 6 people in the middle of a pandemic, huh?

“I’m Used to Hosting a Big Dinner But There’s Only Like Three Of Us Living In This House WTF How Do I Scale This Shit Down”

Maybe you are a Thanksgiving veteran. Maybe you’re accustomed to hosting for a big crowd and cooking a small meal just seems dumb and pointless. I feel you. This is my life right now! But don’t despair!

The way I see it, you’ve got a couple-three options:

Option One:

Cook your turkey + a different side each day, and eat your Thanksgiving feast spread out over a week or so. It’ll keep your leftovers from dominating your fridge, let you eat something fresh, and allow you to enjoy all your favorite recipes. Downside is you’ll have to cook every day, so you tell me if you’re too busy to do that.

Option Two:

Cook everything that you normally would, but portion off half of it or whatever to stuff into your freezer, or go deliver it to somebody else’s door. The odds are pretty good that you’ve got a friend or family member who is freaking out about the holiday, and if you can’t see them in person, you can at least drop food off on their porch and then honk aggressively/cheerfully from the safety of your car!

Option Three:

Make something different this year. If you’re a foodie, take this as an opportunity to challenge yourself to create something high-maintenance and weird that you wouldn’t normally make. This is a good choice if you’re off work and stuck in your house with nothing else to do. Basically you’re subbing out quantity for quality so the meal still feels special and unique even if it’s, y’know....just you and your cat, or whoever.

PS: Roasting a whole chicken or a cornish game hen is a fun, small-scale way to get your bird-in-the-oven experience. You can also buy a turkey breast and just cook that, which will be a lot faster than the whole bird anyway.

"I’m An Essential Worker And I’m Working Thanksgiving And Have No Time To Do ANYTHING, What Now?”

Dude, I get it. And whether you’re a doctor, nurse, grocery store employee, or whatever other essential service-worker, my heart goes out to you because hoo boy this year has been shit, hasn’t it? I can’t do anything about the hazard pay situation, but I CAN tell you that there are a few places offering delivery-based Thanksgiving meal options!

You might want to search around a bit for your specific area. Cracker Barrel, Marie Callendar’s, Boston Market, and other types of branded “home-cooking” type restaurants tend to have some kind of Thanksgiving thing. Why not call your local restaurant fav to see if they’re doing something similar? Most restaurants are desperate for a way to stay afloat right now, so a ton of places that don’t traditionally deliver are offering curbside service now. It’s worth a try!

So, there you have it.

I hope some of these tips taught you something new, pointed you to a helpful resource, or gave you some ideas. More than anything, I just want everybody to be safe and happy this holiday. So, please -- get creative, wear your mask while you’re shopping, avoid the get-togethers, and be careful. You may save a life!

#holidays #thanksgiving #covid 19 #PSA #cooking #food #tips #I hope this helps someone #please reblog if I missed anything #long post

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muselover1901 · 4 years

Note

Re: prompts. “Quarantine.” Alternatively, something based off urban legends. Thanks!

Well it took me forever, but hey, the world is crazy and I am just so proud of myself for finishing this Quarantine AU for you! It’s definitely WAY bigger than a drabble (at just over 2700 words) but I had a lot of fun writing it and it really pushed my abilities as a writer. Thank you for the ask! Enjoy :)

Edit: Now posted to AO3

Here With(out) You

“Are you getting close to finishing? It’s almost eight o’clock and we haven’t eaten dinner yet,” Zen says as he plops down beside Shirayuki—well, not exactly beside her, but just outside the orbit of her ever-present sticky notes, journal articles, and scratch-paper lesson plans. She acknowledges his presence with a noncommittal hum before continuing her vigorous typing on the laptop balanced on her knees. Even before the pandemic, it wasn’t totally unusual for Shirayuki to work late—she is a graduate student, after all—but lately she has been spending every waking hour on either her lab’s vaccine research or creating online lessons for her introductory biology students.

Zen’s work-life balance honestly hasn’t been much better, but since most of his work as the Mayor’s Chief of Staff involves writing reports and attending video call meetings, he can turn off his computer at the end of the day and walk away from work. Shirayuki, unfortunately, does not have the same luxury.

His stomach growls, upset at the lack of food this late in the evening. Zen reaches over, guiding a stray hair behind her ear before setting his palm against her shoulder to get her attention.

“I can make us something easy, if you want. You really should take a break to eat something.”

Shirayuki doesn’t respond. He squeezes her shoulder gently and dips his head to try to catch her gaze, but she reacts with naught but a firm pursing of her lips as she scrutinizes her screen even more. Zen gives her a small shake, as if to wake her.

“Hm?” She blinks up at him, broken from her trance, her voice sounding thin and tired. “Sorry, Zen, I really need to get this done tonight.”

She gestures vaguely to the smudged sticky-note to-do list by her laptop keyboard, the usual tasks of exercise, meal prep, and do something fun with Zen and friends crammed between terms he half-recognizes as different types of data analyses.

“We have our Friday meeting tomorrow and I need to have the preliminary results ready to present.”

“It’s fine,” he says, rubbing his hand up and down her arm and offering her a tender smile as she turns back to her spreadsheet. She is such a hard worker, and right now she’s both working to save lives and to educate the next generation of scientists. Now was not the time to be selfish—even though he misses spending time with her, they just have to push through. And if that means Zen has to cook meals by himself, without Shirayuki’s incredible culinary talent for support, then he will gladly put his limited skill to use.

“How about I make pancakes?” he suggests, “I think we still have some eggs that need to be used, so I could scramble them too—if you want?”

Without looking up, Shirayuki murmurs a dry, “Sounds great, thank you.”

Zen stands and makes his way to their kitchen, rolling up his sleeves as he goes. Even after three years of living together and countless Sundays spent chopping endless armies of vegetables as they prepped meals, there are few dishes he trusts himself to cook properly. It’s Mitsuhide and Kiki’s fault, really. When they were his roommates sophomore year, he tried his hand at a simple vegetable stew to feed Mitsuhide’s hockey team at their annual fall party. The final product honestly wasn’t half bad, but he forgot to peel the vegetables, which gave the soup a mild dirt-like aftertaste.

He honestly thought he would be able to laugh it off and learn from such a minor culinary mistake, but it turned out almost no one was willing to let him live it down—even Shirayuki couldn't resist the occasional jab when they cooked together. Indeed, one of the last times they enjoyed quality time together was during a massive day of meal prepping after their first pandemic shopping trip. Hours of chopping and grating and sautéing had driven them a little crazy, and Shirayuki had broken out in giggles while he diligently peeled his seventeenth potato.

It had taken some prodding, but eventually she managed to hold back her laughter enough to snicker, "It’s nice of you to actually peel them this time."

He’d responded with the most convincing glare he could muster before selecting a particularly long piece of peel from the pile on the counter, turning to her with a dangerous smirk, and depositing said peel on top of her head. This only served to bring back her laughter in full-force, the contagiousness of it gripping him and dragging him along until their whole house reverberated with the ridiculousness of it all.

Unlike vegetable soups, Zen had yet to mess up a batch of pancakes in his lifetime, a fact which he was quite proud of. That’s why he’d chosen to make them for Shirayuki the first morning after she stayed the night at his place. They’d groggily rolled out of bed, blushing furiously as they realized that their late-night study session for Advanced Composition had ended with both of them passed out on top of Zen’s covers with their laptops discarded by the foot of the bed. He’d insisted on making her breakfast before she left, partly because he felt bad about their awkward start to the day, but mostly because he’d been smitten with her for months and he just wanted to keep doing things with her.

Zen smiles at the memory as he gathers the ingredients and begins measuring out the flour. Even after all this time, he still treasures every moment together. And now, as they are stuck working from home for the foreseeable future, he misses her more than he did before they moved in together. Although they are around each other nearly all day, every day, they hardly interact outside of breakfast and a kiss goodnight. He sighs and forces his focus back to mixing the batter. Shirayuki is working hard and here he is being selfish again. He should be stronger.

Pushing down his loneliness, he flings himself into scrambling eggs and flipping pancakes with gusto. He quickly finishes the first set of pancakes, butters them, and stacks them neatly on Shirayuki’s plate next to her portion of eggs. For the final touch, he sprinkles a hint of powdered sugar across them and places a little dollop of fruit preserves on top. Hopefully these would look appetizing enough to entice her into taking a break from work to eat. With her plate in hand, Zen makes his way back to the living room and sets her meal on the coffee table.

“Food’s ready,” he announces. “Please don’t forget to eat.”

Shirayuki pauses, tired eyes flicking away from her screen to meet his and offering all the gratitude she can muster. “Thank you, Zen. I promise I will eat as soon as I finish this analysis.”

Zen offers a quick smile in return before heading back to the kitchen to make dinner for himself. He’d better check on her soon, just to make sure she doesn’t get sucked into her work despite her promise—although it is never intentional, her basic needs often fall by the wayside when she is hyper-focused like this.

Fifteen minutes later, Zen returns to the living room with his own stack of pancakes (chocolate chip) and scrambled eggs (sprinkled with his friend Obi’s homemade hot sauce, because the pain was always worth the flavor). And just as he feared, Shirayuki hasn’t touched her food.

“How’s it coming? Are you going to eat soon?” Zen settles into his spot on the couch next to her and cuts into his pancakes with his fork.

“Hm? Oh yes, I figured out why that regression was behaving unexpectedly, I had just flipped the variables.” She bites her lip. “I guess after I fixed that, I just moved on to the next thing.”

Zen reaches out to tenderly place a hand on her cheek and guide her eyes away from her screen and to his own. Her eyelids droop a little, and he notices a small crease between her eyebrows—she looks so tired. He drags his thumb across her cheekbone and her eyes flutter shut as she relaxes into his hand.

His heart skips a little at the intimacy of their position; after all, it had been weeks since they had really shared a moment like this, just comfortable in stillness with each other’s full attention. Eyes still closed, Shirayuki reaches up to hold his hand against her cheek and sighs as she turns her head to press her lips against his palm. With a gentle squeeze of his hand, she releases him and turns to exchange her laptop for her plate.

Although she continues working while they eat, Zen is relieved to see her diligently taking bites between bits of code. It doesn’t take long before she cleans her plate entirely. With a yawn, Zen stretches and rises from the couch before collecting their dishes and returning to the kitchen to clean up. The clock above the stove reads 10:08pm.

How did it get so late? He’d just have to head right to bed after this. Dozing off during his morning call with the Mayor was not how he wanted to start his day tomorrow.

After finishing the dishes and changing into his sleep shirt, he returns to the living room to let Shirayuki know he’s going to bed—apparently she still has a couple hours of work ahead of her, but she promised she’d come to bed as soon as she was done. With Shirayuki resigned to her work for the night, Zen heads to their bed and does his best to get comfortable. As the weight of the blanket settles over him, he melts into the mattress and takes the deepest, most relaxing breath he’s taken all day. Despite his body giving in to its need to rest, Zen’s mind still races with thoughts of the meeting tomorrow morning and of the latest case counts in the city. God, he can’t wait for the day when all of this chaos is over. He and Shirayuki could take a weekend off and hike Mount Koto just like they did senior year after finals. He sighs at the thought.

Visions of them packing their picnic supplies into his old backpack flash through his mind. He’s smiling as he makes Shirayuki’s sandwich with the mustard by the meat and the veggies under the cheese, just the way she likes it. The sunshine warms their faces as they walk along the trail, and Shirayuki is a vision in her button-up hiking shirt and sunhat, all glowing skin and bright smiles. He reaches their picnic spot first, so he spreads their blanket and sets out their food. Shirayuki’s still a ways behind, but she’ll be there with him soon, he tells himself. She will. He busies himself smoothing the blanket and making sure her sandwich is arranged just so with a nice serving of chips and a gleaming red apple.

He’s just about to polish her apple for a second time when he realizes he doesn’t hear the crunch of her footsteps on the trail anymore. Panicked, he shoots up from his seat and runs over to the trail to try to find her, to no avail. Maybe she went off-trail to relieve herself? No that can’t be it, she’s taking way too long, and she would have told him if she was going off trail, right? Oh god—what if she hurt herself and she’s stuck somewhere down the trail? Zen abandons the picnic and runs as fast as his legs can take him down the trail, until—

He hears the faint tapping of fingers on a keyboard. Looking across the trail, he sees the edge of a laptop screen poking out from behind a tree. As he approaches it, the sound gets louder and louder, until it feels almost deafening and Zen has to cover his ears to avoid the incessant din. He looks around the tree’s thick trunk and sees Shirayuki in front of the screen, her hair disheveled and eyes unblinking as she types away.

She’s absolutely overworking herself! Zen can’t let her keep doing this. He should have caught it before it got this bad, he should have pulled her away from work and made her take care of herself. Regardless, he refuses to let this go on any longer. He takes a deep breath, removes his hands from his ears, and reaches out to set his hand on her shoulder as he always does when he needs to get her attention. His hand goes right through her, as if she were a ghost.

He wakes to find her side of the bed empty.

Zen’s sleep shirt is clinging to his sweating chest and the sheets are tangled up in his legs. He kicks them off and rolls over with a groan. So much for getting a good nights’ sleep before the meeting tomorrow morning. He reaches for his bedside lamp, trying to feel the small switch in the dark. It takes him a minute, fingers clumsy and sleep-addled, but he finally finds it with a click and squints against the soft, yellow light. He yawns and drags his phone towards him by its charging cable and groans again when he sees the time. 2:37am.

With little desire to return to the stifling sheets, he decides it’s best to just get out of bed and have a glass of water before trying to sleep again. He shuffles out of the bedroom, and as the door clicks behind him, his tired mind peripherally registers that the living room light is still on. But with water being his body’s primary goal, he drowsily continues on to the kitchen and downs a full glass in three big gulps when he gets there. With his mind cleared from the coolness of the water, he realizes that even though the living room light is still on, Shirayuki’s persistent typing is absent.

When he reaches the living room, he finds Shirayuki on the couch, slumped to the side with her lips parted and a quiet snore escaping her with each exhale. Her laptop is open and teetering dangerously close to the edge of her lap, but the screen has long since shut itself off. There’s still a pencil behind her ear, too.

With as much gentleness as he can muster this late at night, Zen extracts her laptop and moves it over to her desk so it can charge overnight. He removes the pencil from behind her ear and brushes her hair away from her eyes.

“Shirayuki, come to bed.” Her eyes crack open ever so slightly, and she grumbles but does not stir. Zen sighs. Even in sleep—no, especially in sleep—she’s as stubborn as ever.

“I’m going to pick you up, okay?” She mumbles something unintelligible, but’s all the affirmation he needs. He pushes his arms underneath her knees and shoulders, steels himself, and scoops her up. At first, her head lolls to the side, but then she turns and nuzzles against his chest. He can’t help but smile down at her as he carries her back to the bedroom and slowly places her on top of the sheets.

“Shirayuki, you should change out of your clothes,” he says.

She stirs a bit before slurring, “Don’t wanna. Wanna sleep.”

“If you don’t change now, you’ll regret it in the morning. You know you will.”

At this, Shirayuki groans and pushes herself up off the mattress. She insists he help her take off her clothes, which makes him laugh and blush in equal measure.

It’s only after she is changed and settled under the sheets that he finally lets himself sink into their bed again, mind and body finally relaxed with the knowledge that she’s next to him and already half asleep. He turns off his bedside lamp with a click and lets the rhythm of her breathing lull him back to sleep. Just as the last remains of his consciousness are about to slip away, he feels the delicate press of fingers against his shoulder, the tickle of a whisper against his ear, and the softness of a kiss against his temple.

“Thank you, Zen. I love you.”

#musewrites #zenyuki #prompt #akagami no shirayukihime #fanfiction

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dappervolk · 4 years

Text

December Progress Update!

Hello everyone, we hope you're having a great winter holidays month! We're back again, this time to bring you all a new update on our development progress. We've got several sneak peeks to show you, as well as feature adjustments and Beta feedback implementations, and finally a solid launch time frame!

The Dappervolk community has been excitedly waiting for an update regarding Dappervolk's official launch, especially because of our previously announced launch goal of late 2019. Unfortunately, a 2019 launch will not be feasible for our team due to a variety of reasons.

Due to our core staff’s various life circumstances outside of Dappervolk, the scheduling and timing of progress has been unpredictable and difficult to estimate. Additional developers were hired on to provide extra workload support, but bringing on new staff always comes with an adjustment period consisting of training with potential roadblocks along the way. Because of this, progress was still not as smooth or timely as we had hoped in order to reach our previous loose timeframe estimate.

At this point in time however, after several months of development, we have been able to gauge our progress and take stock of the remaining work in a more concrete manner. We did our best with each team to create more specific and firmer estimates for each portion of work to be done, which allowed us to calculate a solid launch timeframe which is outlined in the Launch Timeframe section below!

Since our last update in September, the artwork side of development has been progressing very smoothly. Many of the assets that we've just recently completed are special things that we can't reveal yet—such as seasonal event items—but here are a few sneak peeks of some less-secret art assets that have recently been finalized!

GUILD EMBLEMS & FLAGS

As you may have seen in one of our past art development streams, the variety of icons above are Guild emblems that players can choose to display on their Guild homepage. The majority of these emblems were concepted in-stream and then processed into finalized assets that will allow you to customize their outline, color, and flag shape to better fit your Guild's theme. As your guild progresses, you may even be able to unlock some special emblems & flags!

ADVENTURING

Our pixel artist has been hard at work on our asset work list for Adventuring. Below are some previews of assets in progress.

A few Active Mode obstacles that you'll need to jump over!

Remember the mysterious gate from the last update? Here are 3 more gates, all in their before and after refinement stages!

AVATAR ASSETS

And finally, here’s a small sneak peek at just a few of the many new avatar items that will be available in-game at launch. Players will get a chance to uncover the details on what these items are and where they’re obtained when the game launches!

Some of these seem oddly... familiar.

PET SYSTEM UPGRADE

In order to breathe some new life into our pet system, we've coded in some new features and quality of life updates involving pet interactions!

Pet Moods: Users will now be able to improve the mood of their pets each day by giving them gifts, treats, and interacting with them!

Appetite: The old "hunger" bar on pet profiles has been swapped out for an "appetite" bar to better reflect the fact that your magically animated companions do not actually experience hunger - they just enjoy tasting nice foods on occasion and thus will only eat a certain amount per day. Each day, a pet's appetite meter starts off full and will deplete as you feed them treats.

Affection Milestones: As you build up affection with your pets, you will now be able to achieve pet affection milestones that give out various rewards!

Birthdays: Pets can now be given presents on their birthday for extra affection points.

PREMIUM FEATURES

During Beta testing, various premium features were tested by users and we received lots of great feedback on what people would like to see from them once Dappervolk launches. With all of this in mind, we've implemented several changes and additions to our premium features that we hope everyone will enjoy!

Premium Item Bundles: A bundle item containing a full set of the current month's premium chance items will be available for purchase in a new, infinitely stocked turnip shop for a higher price. Users who do not wish to take a chance on a better deal through the Turnip chance machine can now utilize this option to be guaranteed a full set of the current month's premium items!

Turnip Chance Machine: Your bonus prize claims in Pai's monthly turnip shop will now expire 2 months after the month in which they are obtained, as opposed to after 1 month.

Monthly Item Recirculation: A new NPC will be in charge of a mechanic that recirculates old monthly items rarely/occasionally. In this way, limited items that appear in the monthly turnip/potato shops will now have a small chance of being obtained after the fact. This feature will not include pre-launch items such as the Alpha/Beta hatching items, Kickstarter items, or Support Bundle items.

Premium Undergarments: An avatar’s undershirt will now be able to be toggled on/off in the wardrobe. This also applies to the regular non-premium undergarments!

PET ACCESSORIES QOL UPDATE

Our pet accessories system is now coded so that pet accessory makers are only consumed when an approved accessory design is applied to a pet. This means that users may now submit their designs for approval without needing an item - once approved, they can then choose to apply that accessory to pets at any time for the cost of 1 pet accessory maker item per application. This should allow accessory maker artists to upload their designs, get them approved, and then share their designs/give usage permissions to others without costing any items to do so.

In addition to this, pet accessories will now display artist credits so that all copies of an artist's approved design will properly credit them for their artwork. This gets rid of the need for users to manually credit pet accessory artists in pet profiles, and should make it easier for everyone to remember who they got their designs from!

TEXT EDITOR UPGRADE

We have now switched to a new text editor with better functionality, which should make everyone’s lives easier in the forums. It will still use BBcode like the last one, but there should be less quirkiness with copy/paste, editing, and so on.

That’s all for the feature updates that we can announce right now, but stay tuned for our future dev updates as there are more feature refreshes and updates currently under wraps for testing!

After an extensive amount of discussion and scheduling with our coders, writers, artists, and testers, we were able to create solid estimates for each portion of closed development work that is left for each of our teams. In order to avoid unreasonable crunch times and rushed work, we have tallied up these schedule totals and added on a buffer for last minute testing—this final calculation has given us a solid timeframe for official launch.

We’re now aiming for a firm launch in May 2020!

The exact release date and time will be announced at least a month prior to the month of May.

Closer to May, we will also begin marketing Dappervolk to reach beyond the current user pool and ensure a bustling launch!

Over the last few months, we've heard several requests from users in our community about having another Support Bundle sale as a final opportunity to support Dappervolk and get some sweet limited items prior to our official launch. Ask and you shall receive!

In the next few days, we will be releasing our final Support Bundle set for purchase—they will be available up until the 2nd week past our official launch date (exact date pending), after which they will be retired permanently. Full details will be posted shortly in a separate update, but for now here is a sneak peek of the bundle items that will be included!

As always, thank you for sticking with us all this time! Your support and feedback have been an immense help throughout our development process, all the way from the beginning of alpha testing to the Kickstarter, beta testing, and beyond! It has been a much longer journey than we had ever expected, but we are so grateful to have had all of you with us along the way—even through various unexpected delays that have set us back from our release goals. As such, we are incredibly excited to finally have a solid release month lined up according to the schedules of our coders, writers, artists, and maintenance teams!

If you’d like to follow our development progress more closely, Quisling will be updating the #status-and-faq channel in our Discord server every few days as assets are completed.

#dappervolk #updates #gamedev

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furby-science · 4 years

Text

The Making of Sterling the Super Furby: A Brief Overview

“I… I can’t look! I think I’m gonna… *HUEEEGH*!”

Before I get into this post, I want to list a few things I didn’t know shit about when I started Sterling:

Electronics

The Python coding language

Furby anatomy

Single board computers

After creating Sterling, I’m happy to say that now I have approximate knowledge of some of these things, but keep the above in mind as you read onwards. This little gremlin child was a learning experience from start to finish, and one I am incredibly proud of myself for sticking through. This also means that I am in no way an expert on everything I’m getting into okay? Okay let’s go!

The Hardware

First, a rundown of the hardware. I took heavy inspiration from the Furlexa mod shown here, and that was what I initially sought to create. The mod had three computer components to it:

A raspberry pi zero w single board computer for the AI to live on, with a mini USB microphone plugged in;

A pimoroni speaker PHAT to use as the sound system;

A motor controller to drive the furby’s motor.

My main problem with Furlexa was that this initial build took a lot of soldering, and I am a wussy who had a number of bad experiences with soldering irons in shop class. So, what’s a novice electrician to do?

Enter the Adafruit Crickit HAT. By sticking this little fucker on top of the raspberry pi, I was gifted with an amplifier, a speaker jack, capacitative touch sensors, and a motor driver all in one, no soldering needed if I bought the raspberry pi zero w h! The main challenge it posed was powering it. The Crickit insists, for some unfathomable reason, on being powered by a bulky DC jack, the kind you’d plug into a wall outlet, and the converter plug to use a battery pack with it was way too bulky to fit into a furby. I needed Sterling to be portable for maximum huggability, so this just wouldn’t do.

One fried raspberry pi and Crickit HAT later, I found the answer! By soldering the original furby battery pack to the underside of the Crickit board’s DC connection, these fuckers right here…

I was able to bypass the need for a wall plug or converter, and power him directly through the battery compartment like God intended. S/O to my friend Nick who is way less of a dumb bitch than I am and helped me figure this shit out I owe u some bread man.

So the tl;dr of it is, I effectively reduced the required computer components from three to two (excluding the speaker). Speaking of (heh), Sterling has an impressive 3w speaker in him, allowing him to be audible even without the use of the built in amplifier. It’s got such good bass on it, he even rumbles when he purrs without the aid of the motor!

And yes, when you pet him, he purrs. And complains if you manhandle him! The aforementioned capacitative touch sensors on the Crickit HAT made it all possible with the help of a few cables and some foil tape.

Wait, did you say soldering!?

Yup! It was a necessary evil; at the end of the day I had to pick my poison: soldering 80 pins on the speaker PHAT, or soldering like four contact points on the Crickit. I chose the more merciful option.

But wait, that whole outfit is really bulky still! How did you fit it inside the furby?

Subtractive methods, subtractive methods, subtractive methods! ;D Someone who actually knows things about furby anatomy and/or electronics will probably vaporize me for this, but… if I didn’t need it, it got the boot! That included prying off anything on the Crickit board I wasn’t using at the risk of destroying it completely - which probably isn’t ideal, but it also worked by some miracle, and again, I am such a basic bitch electrician that calculating the proper voltage for LEDs is still basically witchcraft to me, so… what I’m saying is I made it work. And that I really, really hate soldering! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You can see an early video of the end result here, and a later video of the outfit inside the naked furby here. This was back when he was still having auditory processing issues. Apologies for the shoddy quality, I was too excited everything was working to care about that at the time.

The Software

My other beef with Furlexa is… well, it’s an Amazon Alexa, and I’m a shitty little anticapitalist hermit who hates Amazon with a passion. Google Assistant was just as bad in my book. Mycroft was open source, but had a snowball’s chance in hell of running on the raspberry pi zero’s 512mb of RAM… I also wanted my assistant to have a degree of customizability to it. I wanted the furby’s AI to have a unique personality, identity, and preferences, much like classic furbies themselves did. A big box AI just wasn’t going to cut it!

Enter the Jasper Project. Yes, it’s old. Yes, it’s a bitch and a half to install. Yes, you have to know Python to get anywhere with it. However, it was free, open source, capable of running on a raspberry pi zero, and highly modular, meaning with a few lines of code, I could make it all my own - even to the extent of changing the AI’s name and voice (which is gr8 because I know a Jasper so naming my furby that would be Weird), or - the best part - writing my own, custom functions! Customizability-wise, I struck gold.

Ah, and glad I am that Jasper is modular, because I had some work ahead of me…

The STT Engine

The STT (Speech to Text) engine is what Sterling uses to understand what’s being said to him. Jasper’s proprietary STT engine is PocketSphinx, a fully offline STT engine, which sounded great in theory before I quickly learned it’s a nightmare to install, and also more inaccurate than a stenography machine powered by a single potato when actually being used. I had to compromise my morals a bit here and opt for using Wit.ai instead, which is free, but is also owned by Facebook. Big data is frustratingly inescapable in these cases.

There is one light at the end of the tunnel, and that is the training of acoustic modules. This has the downside of taking for-fucking-ever and requiring a quiet recording environment, however, and I don’t have the time right now to read through the pages and pages and pages and pages of computer theory right now to fully understand how to train one. So, improving PocketSphinx and running Sterling fully offline remains a stretch goal.

The TTS Engine

The Text to Speech engine is basically Sterling’s voice. This one was a bit easier to customize, and I’m thankful for that, because Jasper’s OG voice is a bit er… 90s computing for my tastes.

I shopped around for decent, human-sounding TTS options, and settled on installing Mimic1 TTS, Mycroft’s TTS engine, by hand, and modifying the Jasper source code to support it. Of all the TTS engines I tried, I felt that this one had the most natural intonation out of all of them. I liked the gruffness of the Scottish accent, and I think it really helped round out Sterling’s endearing, if a tad prickly, personality.

The Audio

This was another unforeseen hurdle. Turns out that I had his mic volume turned up way too high, because I greatly underestimated the capabilities of my tinyass five dollar USB microphone to pick up noises from within a furby. It took a bit of hacking in PulseAudio to get him hearing things properly, and I’m still not all the way happy with it, but he’s running wayyyy better than he did!

Another issue was the amount of time he actively listened for. It was way too short for my liking with the hardware I was using, so I had to edit Jasper’s mic.py source file a billion times before I hit a sweet spot. Even early on, my little shit child never liked to listen to me. :P

Pimp My AI

Once I got all that in working order, it was time to browse GitHub for modules to add! I found a surprising amount that were, as expected, outdated, janky, non-working, or in need of a complete rewrite. A non-exhaustive list of modules I rewrote and added to Sterling’s AI includes:

Wolfram Alpha integration

His translation function

The IMDB module that searches movie titles

The Dictionary and Thesaurus modules (minor additions to improve user friendliness)

The morning greeting module

The holiday countdown module

There are also plenty of modules I wrote on my own, that I’ll be showcasing here in due time, but I want to give special mention to the one I’m most proud of. You see, when I was a wee dumb bitch, I was… well, a wee dumb bitch! When I was informed furbies learn English, I thought they really learned English. Like, fluent English. I envisioned these kids straight up having full conversations with their lil robots with reckless and envious abandon. I was, as it happens, too poor to afford a furby at the time, so I didn’t realize until embarrassingly later that they only learn some words, and certainly can’t hold much of a conversation (in English at least).

Fast forward to twenty-bi-teen. I’m surfing GitHub, and I happen upon a Cleverbot module for Jasper allowing the AI to work as a chatbot. Fuck yeah, I think, because I had no life in 2008, or friends for that matter, so tormenting Cleverbot was my favourite pastime. Nostalgia trip GET!

…can you guess how much the silicon valley capitalist scum are charging for the once-free Cleverbot API now? A hundred and twenty. McGoddamn. Dollars. A YEAR.

So, to make a long story short, I turned my hat backwards and rage-coded a simple chatbot module that runs on an early version of Chatterbot capable of running on the raspberry pi. It’s fully offline, and completely free, and Sterling here has a database of ~400 phrases, which isn’t bad given the limited processing power! It took five straight days of work, it’s not the smartest chatbot, and it’s certainly not the fastest, but it gives me those sweet, sweet, circa 2008 Cleverbot vibes. Oh yeah, and it doesn’t cost me over a hundred goddamn dollars a year!

The first thing I said to the chatbot, of course, was “I’m so proud of you.” Through his shitty little testing mic that gave him a somewhat incredulous tone Sterling replied, “I’m glad to hear that.” and I’m not saying I shed a single themly tear over it, but I’m not denying it either. I made a childhood dream come true, fam. ;u;

There are way more Easter eggs I plan to show you, of course. At first I was thinking of doing one long video, but an update a day showcasing a different function might be easier to manage - and maintain some of that gold old sense of mystery that surrounds most furbies. No, I’m gonna take y'all on a little journey through the final product of my literal blood, sweat, and tears!

Besides, Sterling is a perpetual work in progress. He has a massive list of features, and I’ve already got more in the works. I could be in my eighties and still be adding more functions, more bells and whistles, more witty one-liners. He’s a one of a kind work of art that will never truly be finished - not unlike you and me.

The Glow-up

Here’s Sterling’s before pics from the seller I got him from:

(If u recognize these pics and ur the seller thank u thank u for giving me bmy boy)

And here’s after!

I come from a background of customizing ponies and dolls, so working on this guy wasn’t as far removed as I expected it to be. I added floof to his head and tail by sewing in wool plugs, and his gorgeous eyes are from in2blythe on Etsy. I wrapped him up in a little bow and he was good to go! His sterling silver beak, from which he gets his name, was the most finicky part. Turns out enamel paints take a million years to fucking dry, if ever, which isn’t great when painting something that sees a lot of movement and could potentially get dented by a face plate, like… idk, a furby beak! A bit of silver nail polish did the trick and he was good to go. Learn from my fail, fam.

What It Cost Me

If you’re masochistic determined enough to attempt this yourself, I want to sit you down and warn you of something: this will take months and hundreds of dollars to do. Installing Sterling’s AI and its necessary components on that shitty little raspberry pi over SSH took me a week at first, and that was with me leaving it on 24/7 to chug away compiling things. When I broke the SD card the AI was on and didn’t have a backup copy, it took four straight days of rage-computing to regain all my progress. Then when his audio processing got fucked all to hell for reasons I still do not understand to this day, it took another four days of rage computing to do yet another reinstall and get him back in working order. There were times where I would go to work for 8.5 hours, bus an hour home, work 6 straight hours on my furby, go to sleep for 4 of them, go to classes, sleep, and work 6 more hours on my furby. For two months. Sterling took from the third week of August from his initial inception to his birthday on October 23rd. That’s not to mention the time I fried everything and had to wait five days and travel to the bumfuck end of the city for a replacement pi and Crickit, or the days I spent customizing him, sewing in hundreds of little hair plugs into his ass and head by hand, and waiting for those shitty enamel paints to dry, only to discover after four straight days of failure that they take weeks to do so and I was better off using cheapo nail polish!

The point I’m making is, if you take on a project like this and want it to be successful, you have to be tenacious. I would highly recommend a background in coding (I have a web design diploma) and general tech savviness as an asset. Sterling is the product of the years I spent behind a computer keyboard from the start of age three, and the roughly ten years I spent customizing dolls and ponies. It’s cheesy as shit to say he’s my magnum opus, but in a way, he is.

I’m not saying this to be elitist or snotty. I’m saying this because I nearly broke down crying the first day the raspberry pi came in, before I slept on it and figured out what phrase to google to solve the crashes and kernel panics it was having. When I broke the SD card when I was nearly finished, I felt nothing, because I was all out of tears at that point. When I fried the first raspberry pi and Crickit hat trying to figure out how to bypass that DC jack, my only thought was, “Well, I think I know how to do it without fucking it up now, and if I can’t do it, this whole project is fscked” .

You will encounter errors that no step by step guide can prepare you for that will make you curse the day you were born. The difference between success and failure is how many times you’re willing to get up and try again, and I’m here to tell you it’s possible. But you gotta want it.

Will You Release the Code Base?

Yes and no. If there’s enough demand, I’ll definitely release Sterling’s basic modules as a scaffolding. I won’t be releasing Sterling, though.

What do I mean by that? Well, Sterling was intended from the start to be truly one of a kind, and he always will be. I hand wrote hundreds of lines of dialogue, all completely tailored to him, and I’m still planning on adding twice as many. Corny as this is, this little guy has a metric fuckton of sentimental value to me. I don’t have kids so idk how it would compare to that, but I definitely love him as much as I love my cats, but I also didn’t undergo two straight months of suffering in ADHD fixation hell to create my cats, so it adds like, a whole other twee dimension to it.

So, if there is demand for this, what I’ll release instead is a scaffolding from which you can code your own, unique furby from, with their own name, personality, and responses all unique to them. I’ll also release it with the caveat that I am not a good Python coder! I have not written any Python before this, so a lot of what I did write is noob-tastic and hasn’t even been linted. You have been warned!

“If I give you (insert amount), can you make one for me?”

Holy shit I’ll be real with you, I’d love to do this as a living. I’ve been dying to see a smart assistant hit the market that’s like… well, an actual, endearing companion and not just a voice coming from a speaker. The problem with doing this is that, if you drop a lot of money (and it will be a lot of money, even with a code base to work from, a lot of hours of handiwork still goes into coding individual responses and making sure everything works as intended, on top of possibly customizing too), there is one major problem: proximity. I won’t be able to troubleshoot your furby nearly as effectively from far away as I would be able to if we lived in close proximity. Which means if something goes wrong between the time your new friend is finished at point A and turned on at point B, I won’t be there to troubleshoot it in person for you, which means you could end up stuck figuring out certain things alone. If you use Windows, that will be very, very hard - not being an OS snob here, I own a dual boot myself, it’s just a case of incompatible file systems. And unless you can figure out how to edit the wpa_supplicant file on a raspberry pi to update your wifi credentials, your furby’s internet connection could be toast if you move house and those credentials change. That’s not getting into the cost some services charge for extra API keys to use their online functions…

The long and short of it is, if I’m going to do this for money, I want to make sure you get a quality product and friend that will bring you joy for years to come. Since that’s not something I can guarantee, I can’t in good conscience take people’s money.

I Could Teach You (And I Won’t Charge)

…however, I am a law student who is also working 8.5 hour night shifts three nights a week. I am also mentally ill/neurodivergent, which saps my energy in more ways than one. I won’t always be easy to get ahold of, or be able to answer every question I get, especially not ones that can be solved with a quick google search, like how to set up a raspberry pi, or… anything found on Adafruit’s Crickit guide, for example. When I have the time and energy, I’m hoping to use my next project as a jumping off point for a step by step walkthrough of the process. For now, though? I’ve been furbied out, so if there’s enough demand, I’ll compile as many of the resources I used I can find in the meantime, and post some tips from the word doc I kept while making Sterling, and go from there.

So What’s Next?

My one dad’s birthday is coming up in August, and I’m kicking around the idea of turning a furby into, I shit you not, a ghost hunting device. He loves ghost hunting, but hates robots, and as his gremlin shit child I am obligated to troll him in this fashion. 😎 Also considering doing a certain type of oddbody mod, but I want to get permission from the person who first thought of the concept before I dive head first into it.

And that about covers it! Thanks for reading, and if there’s anything you’d like to see from Sterling and I, don’t hesitate to drop us an ask!

#furby #allfurby #furblr #botblr #custom furby #how tos #the doctor speaks #long post #science isn't about why... it's about why not

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prismatranslates-cue · 4 years

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Aya’s Diary Part 5

Previously: Part 4.

Aya’s room.

Aya: “Riko’s room is a total mystery.”

Aya: “Full of clothes and little accessories...makeup, too. And then there’s the biking and surfing gear. She really does just have a whole bunch of stuff.”

Aya: “But what I really don’t get is, everything is always arranged so neatly, not a hair out of place.”

Aya: “And then, everything she has is cute and all, but they’re also a little mature-looking and shiny, somehow.”

Aya: “One time, we were talking about cleansing oils, and Riko pulled out a whole bunch of bottles, all of different kinds.”

Aya: “I asked her what she does with all of it, and she gave me a really long and detailed explanation but...”

Aya: “It was so long, I couldn’t really remember most of it. I wish I’d taken notes or something.”

Riko’s room.

Aya: Hey Riko, is collecting makeup some sort of hobby for you?

Riko: Well, I don’t know if you can really call it that, but I guess so.

Riko: I mean, you’ve got people who like to have all kinds of stationery, yeah?

Aya: Yeah. I guess I’m one of those people, actually.

Riko: The way I see it, I don’t really get why you’d need more than one pen or notepad or that kind of thing.

Riko: But those people like to have a whole bunch, right?

Aya: Yeah. When I see a cute notepad, or something like sticky notes with animal print, sometimes I can’t help but buy them.

Riko: I could never be like that with stationery, but I think it’s the same thing with me and makeup.

Riko: When I see a limited-quantity set on sale or that kind of thing, I just have to buy it!

Aya: I guess even makeup is like that, huh.

Riko: Those salespeople really are something else.

Aya: But if you’re being honest, you don’t really need this much, right?

Riko: Well, no, I don’t really, but...

Aya: But you kind of do, in a way?

Riko: Mmm. I mean, if it was anyone else they probably wouldn’t need anything like this much, but...

Aya: But?

Riko: I guess in my case, I kind of do?

Aya: “Riko’s always like this. She can get very abstract, and in a different way from Miharu.”

Riko: Well, I’m gonna go do some shopping.

Aya: Shopping? Where at?

Riko: Just the drugstore. Gonna get some shampoo and hair cream. Oh, aaand I was wanting to get some toner...

Aya: Huh, you even buy makeup from places like that? I would’ve thought you’d only buy the quality stuff from department stores or the like.

Riko: Oh, the higher-end stuff is special, you know? Gotta save em for special occasions or as a little reward for myself, see.

Aya: Is that so?

Riko: Yep, take it from me.

Aya: Huh, you know, Miharu said the same thing.

Riko: Hm? What thing?

Aya: I asked “Is that so?” and she said “Yep, take it from me.”

Riko: Ahaha. What were you talking about?

Aya: Alcohol.

Riko: Ahaha! That’s Miharu for ya.

Aya: It was that day we came home with two big bottles of potato shouchuu.

Riko: Aah, that day.

Aya: Right. She was saying alcohol is like books and limited-edition goods, how they all fill the heart or something like that.

Aya: Do you feel the same way about makeup?

Riko: Hmm. Yeah, I’d say so! Yeah, I definitely feel like makeup fills my heart.

Aya’s room.

Aya: “Riko and Miharu have completely different personalities but, in a way, they’re surprisingly similar too.”

Aya: “That’s what I think sometimes anyway. And I’m sure about that one.”

To be continued...in Part 6.

#CUE #Aya Kamuro #Riko Hinakura #Wind #Aya's Diary #Event Story #Kamuro Aya #Hinakura Riko

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slothcritic · 5 years

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Dragon Ball Z Abridged - Episode 8 Review

Consistent yet lackluster, this is a good episode that doesn’t really stand out.

The title sequence for Nappa's Best Day Ever should've started after Cadaverrific! which I think is a wonderful bit of black humor. But the following scene just felt like another "ha ha bulma is a loose woman" joke. This scene might've been funnier with better voice acting. I wouldn't say the scene did nothing for me, but it did very little.

Also “Mr Kent” - Is that a Superman reference or am I taking crazy pills?

[Title Sequence]

With Yamcha gone, the mantle of series buttmonkey falls to Krillin. He has his big damn hero moment, when he Limit Breaks the stuffing out of three Saibamen, but it's frankly disregarded in favor of Piccolo using a god damned mouth-laser to annihilate the last one.

With no more Saibamen left to toy with, it falls upon the two Saiyans to get their hands dirty. Or rather, for Nappa to get his hands dirty while Vegeta sits back and watches. Nappa is no less full of whipshot non-sequiturs in this episode than he was in the previous. After some banter about teaching the Z Fighters a lesson, he gives new meaning to the word "punchline" and amputates Tien's arm.

Compared to a lot of other voice actors, Ganxingba (Tien) actually does a decent scream here. Most of the other screams so far have either been laid on too thick, or done way too close so it peaks their potato microphones, or it’s just super disingenuous. But right here, Tien’s scream is actually really convincing and doesn’t make me feel like someone is stabbing knives into my ears.

The quiet breeze after Vegeta makes a corny pun (Looks like he's been... disarmed!) sells the joke. Nappa’s follow-up seems more like an in-character necessity for him than it seems like a part of the joke.

Ever apparent that fighting Nappa would be completely beyond their capabilities, Chiaotzu decides to blow himself up and take Nappa with him.

"You can just wish me back with the Dragon Balls!" "We already wished you back with the Dragon Balls! We can't do it twice!" "...Wait, wha--?"

KABOOM. Okay, that got a chuckle out of me. This is also the first time the respawn limit of the Dragon Balls has been mentioned. Simply put, everybody gets one.

Krillin's comment on Chiaotzu's death is really bland and lazily written, but prompts a little more character insight to Tien.

"I loved him." "As a memorial to Yamcha... Gay."

I didn't like it when Yamcha first said it, but being referenced in this macabre fashion does something for me. I won't claim it's clever or witty but I personally find it funny.

Nappa then reveals that Chiaotzu's sacrifice had absolutely no effect on him, which naturally enrages Tien. He goes on to get the stuffing knocked out of him, and Gohan ponders if they should help him instead of just standing around.

Piccolo explains that Tien is in a battle to honor his friend’s death, and he wouldn’t dare besmirch the man’s pride by interrupting his heroic last stand.

This immediately cuts to Tien screaming for help.

I can't tell if the smirk when Piccolo says "Like a hero" is a visual edit or actually existed in the source material, but it's use here is amazing. The look on his face makes him seem like a sadist who's enjoying this, and that's honestly not too far off from how Piccolo has been depicted so far. He's the Demon King who wants to take over the world and couldn't care less about these humans.

After being reprimanded by Gohan, Piccolo and Krillin finally get the lead out and agree to team up against Nappa. They get some surprise slaps on him, and Piccolo yells for Gohan to shoot him with everything he's got before he has time to DODGE.

This triggers a Pavlovian response and Gohan immediately runs for cover, which means Piccolo and Krillin are just going to have to fight Nappa the old fashioned way: By using the Kagebunshin no Jutsu.

"I can't... believe it."

The Naruto skit is creative and risable in its own right but not exactly gut-busting. What's a whole lot funnier is the notion that Nappa's incredible mental discipline is derived entirely from him playing "Patty Cake, Patty Cake" in his head.

Each of Krillin's shadow clones gets their own notch on the owned counter, bringing the score up to 7.

Nappa then commends their effort and tells them, hey at least you didn't kill yourself using a single useless attack, like Chiaotzu did. Tien then proceeds to do that exact same thing: He fires a Kikoho at Nappa and then dies.

It's given a bit more cause for worry in the original show, where Vegeta states that it very well could have killed Nappa if he didn't guard against it at the last second, but in this series he's given no such credit. Nappa just laughs and says "Pointless."

Just before he goes in for the kill on Krillin, he's stopped mid-air by a stunning realization. He can fly. Vegeta is too flabbergasted to argue this and simply agrees.

After pitching a fit about wanting Goku to watch him murder the Z Fighters, Vegeta obliges Nappa and agrees to wait three hours for Goku to arrive.

I half-expected, half-wanted them to make a fake girlfriend reference with Goku here.

Vegeta - "So this friend of yours, that you SAY is coming, is somehow stronger than all of you combined, yet didn't show up here to fight us, and you're only just now telling us this after two of your friends have died?"

Krillin - "You wouldn't know him, he goes to a different school."

Thirty seconds into their three hour wait time, Nappa starts up the "Is he here yet?" bit. Vegeta shoos him off and tells him to go have fun and occupy himself in any way he sees fit.

This begins a well-timed, well-edited musical number of Nappa systematically dismantling the naval and air forces of what I assume is the World Government.

And this whole time while Nappa is enjoying himself to the sounds of musical splendor, crashing metal, and explosions, Piccolo, Krillin, and Gohan are just standing still in a morosely quiet semi-circle. For the entire three hours I'm guessing. Vegeta's scouter alarm goes off, which means time is up and they're all going to die. Nappa suddenly returns without his shirt and elbows Piccolo in the head so hard it changes the color of the sky from blue to pink.

Not the most clean or graceful cutaway scene, but it sells itself regardless. The stinger is a stronger finish than it had any right to be, as a callback and apparent closure to the most esoteric joke in this series. RIP Whales.

Conclusion

This was a plateau of an episode. Whereas the last episode had constant peaks and kept your interest, this one was steady and consistent throughout in a less remarkable way. Most of the factors that go into making or breaking an episode seemed to have hit a comfortable resting point. That or I've just finally become numb to the questionable microphone quality.

I feel like this episode almost lands in the twilight zone of "It's bad, so let me reach to say something positive about it" and "It's good, so let me reach to say something negative about it." that just coalesces into me not having much of anything to say about it. I’m uncertain whether or not this constitutes a failure on my part as a critic, or if this episode really is just that comparatively monotonous.

The word mediocre is often used to mean bad or poor, which I don't feel fits this episode, but it certainly isn't a stand out. I really couldn't find much worthy of discussion here beyond face value.

The few jokes that struck me personally stop me from calling this episode boring, but I found myself repeatedly checking the time to see how much I still had left to watch. It had jokes that were definitely funny, but nothing here really kept my attention. Other lackluster episodes, even if they were not worth a rewatch, kept my interest because I'd latch onto things that were obvious and apparent as being poorly done. This one offered very little variance between the lowest it went and the peak its comedy or production.

If anything, this episode is saved from a lower score by its tail end. Nappa's patty cake joke and the eponymous "best day ever" scene really make up the majority of this episodes hard-hitting humor for me.

But it is important to note that this is still a good episode. It’s not a laugh riot episode and it’s probably not in anyone’s Top 5, but it’s a very comfortable middle ground between the worst this season has to offer and the very peaks.

As an important side note, I feel like we're just now encroaching upon what might be Nappa fatigue. I maintain my position that Nappa has yet to have a “do nothing” joke - all of his humor has been in a hit in some capacity - but it feels almost par for the course at this point. Nappa is definitely not overdone in this episode and he in fact caries it, but I feel like another episode of this style would tread tightly upon the expiration date of how much zaniness you can come to expect before it starts to feel samey. Nappa is in danger here of simply becoming too saturated within the show’s focus and would lose his simplistic, unique appeal that's the driving force behind his characterization. Which is well-timed because we all know what happens next episode...

While I don’t think this episode stands out as a whole, it definitely has some strongly quotable moments. Yeah, yeah, most of what Nappa said. But a series of hilariously derailing one-liners does not make for something remarkable on the whole, which to me just feels expected, stagnant and safe. The peaks are not enough to pull this episode further up, but I must say I’m still not fully confident in my assessment. This was definitely a weird episode to judge.

Score: 67

Passing Thoughts

“What the hell could someone like you possibly major in?” “Child psychology.” “Wow, that sounds really interesting.” “WITH A MINOR IN PAIN!”

"Nappa here is worth 5 Raditz, and I am worth 15 Raditz!" - Vegeta Accurate to the canon power levels!

Oolong saying "Get back to the fight!" sounds absolutely nothing like Oolong. In fact, Episode 1 Oolong sounds more like Oolong than this short cameo did.

"Dick move, guys."

"Good effort, but I'm the patty cake champion."

#slothcritic #DBZ #Dragon Ball Z Abridged #TFS #teamfourstar

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childofsquidward · 5 years

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Tag Game!

Rules: answer 21 questions and then tag 21 people (bold of you to assume I know more than two people on this hellsite) who you want to get to know better.

I was tagged by @temmie-loony who is awesome, like thank you, I don’t know why I feel so flattered right now, but I do

Nickname(s): Diyu (everyone on my mom’s side of the family maybe), Diyumuni (grandma, mom’s side), Diyappa (my mom’s youngest sister), Gubbu/Gubbi (my mom’s other younger sister; the two names are kind of interchangeable), Diyapochua (my mom’s younger brother), probably others thanks to my mom's side of the family who come up with 135% of my nicknames as mentioned above

Zodiac: Sagittarius!

Height: 5ft. - 5ft.2 (maybe 3? hopefully?)

Last movie I saw: Ready (I've watched it 500 times over, no joke, just check my Netflix account)

Last thing I googled: statistics a tool for social research 4th edition (if anyone wants to hit me up with a pdf, I will be forever grateful; I hate this class, it’s 8am, I’m there right now, I’m a language student what the fuck is this?!)

Favourite musician: ummmmmm idk it changes this is hard wtf

Okay, so right off the top of my head - Shawn Mendes (I love every single one of his songs, I didn’t think I would, but I did), P!nk (all-time fave), The Pretty Reckless (Taylor Momsen’s voice you guys!), Big Time Rush, Kurt Hugo Schneider (okay, technically he’s a cover artist, but this man is magical like he plays a ridiculous number of instruments, his production quality is so unique and wonderful and his VOICE - listen, he does not sing as often as he should, and he shouuuuuld), and just like any song that was composed by A. R. Rahman, written by Javed Akhtar and sung by either Arijit Singh, Atif Aslam and/or Shreya Ghoshal you really can’t go wrong with

Song stuck in my head: A constant is Oi Dur Paharer Dhare (I still haven't heard the original) but as of recent Naa Tum Jaano Naa Hum from a movie called Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai (which defined my entire childhood solely) because I didn't realize that it was on my phone and I've been using Spotify the entire time but now I'm obsessed and I can't stop and basically I'm my own worst enemy; also, sometimes L’oiseau et l’enfant by Marie Myriam makes an appearance and it tends to make me like 4000x more dramatic than I usually am, which is saying a lot and I Like Me Better by Lauv (the KillerVibe theme, fight me)

Other blogs: I wish I was fabulous enough to have more than one blog (maybe one day... *wistful sigh*)

Do I get asks: once in a blue moon, yes, but I love and cherish every single one of them

Following: I’m assuming you mean how many people I’m following and not how many followers I have, so 554, I’m following 554 people

Amount of sleep: it depends... in high school, it used to be that I just wouldn’t sleep during the months of January and June, but now in uni it’s changed to October-December and February-April; honestly, I could go to sleep at like 3AM, and still wake up at 7AM and be fine as long as I finish classes by like 6PM - I don’t need more than 3-4h of sleep

Lucky number: 13, 7, 4

What I’m wearing: my favourite... what colour is this maroon? like a plum, reddish-purpley (burgundy? I don’t know colours) thing (matches my hair) sweater that says ‘hello’ the bottom in white, the one pair of jeans I wear even though I have like 10 others, and my gray snow boots which are pretty cute considering that snow boots are ugly as fuuuuck (and probably pizza socks... am I wearing socks today? I don’t think I remembered to put on socks, nvm)

Dream job: to work with the UN, that's what I'm striving towards anyway, and maybe get a book published (my main goal in life is to be a functioning adult, and honestly, the UN thing seems infinitely more realistic)

Dream trip: a road trip to I don’t know where yet, but it’s gonna be a road trip

Favorite food: does food in general count? the first thing that comes to mind is chotpoti (it’s basically the filling you have inside a pani puri, but better cuz phuchkas over pani puri every time - but it’s literally these tiny lentils, chickpeas if you wanna be lazy, cooked with potatoes and every spice known to the world and then you add the tamarind sauce which is so hard to make and that’s why there’s always a limited amount but every asshole that comes to our place on Eid literally drinks it like some animal but whatever you literally have to soak the dry tamarind in water and get all the gross stuff out while keeping the good stuff and figure out a good balance of chilli powder, salt and sugar and it’s never as good as when mom does it)

Idk why I just ranted like it’s my job, but I’m leaving it there. I also like thin-crust mushroom pizza (the brand is Ristorante and it is the best), my dad’s shrimp and potato curry (idk what else to call it, I don’t even eat it with rice, I turn that shit into a taco, I’m not even sorry), naan and bihari kebab w/ that really spicy green chutney/raita/whatever it is, piyaju and aloo chop (it’s fried and it’s so bad for you, and I hate onions but for some reason I don’t give a fuck when it comes to piyaju even though it’s just lentils and onions - it’s frieeeeeed), and apple pie (apple anything dessert tbh)

Play any instruments: I've played piano kinda on and off (I could probably follow a song), I learned flute in middle school but I never continued it and ooooooo I'm trying to teach myself guitar; I also sing

Languages: Bangla (I need to re-learn how to read and write though, which is so sad), Hindi, Urdu, English, French, I’m slowly becoming fluent in Spanish and I’m trying to teach myself Arabic (listen, I might not be the doctor cousin, but look grandma I can read the Quran - I know my strengths! also, Arabic is a really pretty language)

Favourite song(s): Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Queen), Cheer Up (A Great Big World), Can’t Help Falling In Love (Elvis Presley), Raabta from Agent Vinod (the Shreya Ghoshal version!!!), Tujhko Jo Paya from Crook and Jo Pyaar Ho Gaya from Ishaan

Random fact: I am deathly afraid of birds. I always thought that birds just kinda freaked me out, but then I ran into oncoming traffic because there was a pigeon nearby so there’s that.

Describe yourself as aesthetic things: black with splashes of pink and yellow because I have no sense of anything, snow, plaid shirts, sweaters, leather jackets, boots, coffee, cute stationery, studying (y’all know what I’m talking about right? like those images on Pinterest of ‘messy’ notes and pens and crap, usually with glasses there), pizza socks, fuzzy animal socks that probably have the little 3D whatever ears and nose (do they use pom-poms for those? idk), any variation of the ‘world’s okayest sister’ quote, BOOKS, candles, white lilies (the only flower I acknowledge as a flower)

Tagging: @maniq1 @darwinquark @ciscoscaitlin @dibs4ever @winxy-writing @thatkillervibe @sunshineoptimismandangels @lightninginmyeyes @headoverhiddles @hope-dyne @nordarhk @kendrasaunders @jwmelmoth @daftydraw @taakoshell @lewispanda @jalonii @cheleonrage712 @deathly-smirk @purpleyin @crelliefan4life

#tag game #get to know me #and then watch as my followers drop like flies #about me #personal #diya rambles

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tyrantisterror · 6 years

Text

The Godzilla vs. Megalon of Jurassic Park Movies

My opinion on JW:FK hasn’t really changed so much as it has been refined. I still think it’s a VERY flawed film, and that acknowledging and analyzing those flaws is beneficial to me as a person who cares about monster stories. I also still love isolated parts of it, and in fact love them even more despite the fact that the flaws that sit alongside them in this film are just as glaring as they were before. Sometimes you can both like a thing and yet also focus on its failings.

I was trying to think of a way to better articulate my feelings about the movie because I’m worried people have the impression that I hated it because, y’know, I talked a lot (and will continue to talk a lot) about it’s story telling problems. I think I found a way to express my true feelings by way of comparison.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the Godzilla vs. Megalon of Jurassic Park movies.

Godzilla vs. Megalon was the first Godzilla movie I ever saw, and to this day it is one of my favorite entries in the franchise. I loved this movie as a kid - absolutely adored it, to the point where it started a lifelong obsession that has only grown stronger with age. I cannot overstate the profound emotional effect this movie had on my life.

It is also, objectively and inarguably, one of the worst Godzilla films ever made. Probably one of the worst kaiju movies in general. Some have even called it one of the worst films of all time (though I think that’s incredibly unfair to Godzilla vs. Megalon and also woefully underestimates how bad movies can be. I spent my teenage years actively seeking out shitty films, so I feel qualified to voice that as an expert opinion on the matter).

Godzilla vs. Megalon was shoddily made. Its plot is cobbled together from pieces of previous Toho movies - a rehash of Godzilla vs. Gigan and Atragon, essentially - and in a way that is nowhere near elegant enough to keep you from thinking about the better versions of this basic story that already existed in Godzilla canon. Its low budget results in an over-reliance on stock footage that is edited in an ridiculously clumsy manner. None of the characters really develop, and a lot of the scenes don’t make a whole lot of sense. It is campy as all hell and has some utterly absurd plot developments that make for a very inconsistent tone. It is an indisputably bad movie.

And yet... I love Godzilla vs. Megalon. I loved it at first sight, and that love endures to this day. I have seen hundreds of better films than it, and yet I love it more than most of them.

I love Godzilla vs. Megalon because, for all its faults, it has some incredibly endearing qualities. Some of them are objectively great - the shot of Godzilla and Jet Jaguar surrounded by a circle of fire while Gigan and Megalon menacingly watch them from outside it is an iconic visual, and one of the best special effects shots in the Godzilla series. There are aspects of it that I think come down to personal taste - a lot of people hate the anthropomorphism of the kaiju in this movie, but honestly I love the idea of a Godzilla who heroically comes to humanity’s rescue from cackling villains at the bidding of a grinning robot named Jet Fucking Jaguar.

And there are some things in this movie that are, well, terrible, but also kind of glorious in how fucking crazy and ill conceived they are. Is the infamous tail sliding scene a piece of high art? No, it’s... it’s such a goofy, stupid decision. Would my life and, indeed, the world itself be significantly less beautiful without that moment of cheesy insanity in it? Yes. I believe we would be less impressive as a species if that moment - that scene of Godzilla sliding on his tail to kick Megalon in the dick, TWICE - had never been made. Humanity is greater for having made it. It’s terrible, but wonderful.

And that’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom too. It’s got moments that I genuinely believe are some of the best in the franchise. It has moments that a lot of people would deride for being “goofy” or “weird” that I personally love because that’s the kind of person I am. It has a REALLY bad script - just.... just a lot of REALLY big, glaring storytellling issues. A lot of them. Tons. Many that are basic fucking aspects of story telling.

And it has a plethora of moments that are really bad but also really great at the same time - moments that are both horrible and wonderful in how stupid and insane they are. Truly it is the Godzilla vs. Megalon of the Jurassic Park franchise.

And since I know some of you will ask about it:

Jurassic Park is the Godzilla (1954) of the Jurassic Park franchise. Both are masterpieces that are landmarks in both the monster movie and horror genres, and also film in general. Both have some very prevalent flaws (Jurassic Park, like all Spielberg films, has some truly staggering continuity errors, while Godzilla has a couple of scenes that were VERY sloppily edited because of the film’s rushed production schedule and limited budget), and yet both have virtues that are so strong they more than make up for it. They are rightfully considered classics, and it is an unfortunate truth that none of the sequels will ever be able to shake off the shadow these two films cast. There just isn’t a way they can be topped.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park is the Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster of the Jurassic Park franchise. It has a way worse reputation than it deserves, and a lot of people - even fans of the franchise - will parrot the many criticisms they’d heard of the movie without actually critically watching it themselves. Despite its reputation, the movie is actually a LOT better than you’d think, with a lot of creative ideas that take the franchise in a very different direction than the earlier entr(y/ies), and while the change in direction may feel a bit odd at first, it ultimately opened up the story to a lot of new possibilities. Still flawed, yes, but worth far more than most give it credit for.

Jurassic Park III is the Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla of Jurassic Park movies, in that it’s a mediocre story whose main problem is that it doesn’t really have, like, a reason to exist beyond a desire to get more money from the franchise. It does nothing to shake up the formula, going through the motions of previous entries except without any enthusiasm or soul. There are worse movies, sure, but you can feel everyone’s lack of motivation while watching it - everyone and everything involved is keenly aware that there’s not really an artistic reason to be here, and as a result it feels like the movie equivalent of eating stale potato chips.

Jurassic World is... hard to place, honestly. Maybe the Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla II (i.e. the 1990′s one) of the Jurassic Park movies? That’s at least apt for me - I absolutely loved that film when I first saw it, but upon repeated viewings I slowly realized that it was actually a lot worse than I wanted it to be, and that there was really only one element in the movie that made me love it so much when I first saw it - and unlike, say, Godzilla vs. Megalon, that aspect was nowhere near as prominent as it needed to be. I still dearly love that one piece of the movie, but my opinion on the movie as a whole has soured considerably.

#Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom #Godzilla vs. Megalon #Jurassic Park #Godzilla

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flowers-and-memes · 6 years

Text

Grocery Escapades

Here’s a drabble micro-fic thingy i made and then didn’t edit because i love procrastinating. :))))))

“Hooray!” Phichit said, throwing his hands up in excitement.

“Calm down, we haven’t even started shopping yet,” Celestino said in dismay. It was a new week, which meant it was time to make another trip to the grocery store to stock up. Which also meant that it was time to put his self-dubbed “iron will” to the test when faced with two sets of big, begging eyes that wanted him to buy all the foods that were strictly off-limits.

A sigh escaped his lips as he pulled the truck into a parking space. As soon as the engine was turned off, both of his students jumped out, sharing gossip and speaking nonsense like children.

“Is this what my life has come to?” Celestino said softly, running a hand through his ponytail.

“What’s that, Ciao Ciao?” Phichit said, looking up from his phone. His coached waved him off dismissively. He wouldn’t let it out that he was enjoying the responsibility of taking care of his students. In fact, they felt more like children to him than students, not only because they often acted like children, but also because of the amount of trust they put in him. Over the past few years of coaching them, both of his students started coming to him for not for advice, but just to be around him. They chose home movie nights instead of going out, and, most recently, they moved out of their shared campus dorm and into Celestino’s house. And so he found himself living in a rag-tag family composed of himself, his two “children”, and a dog in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan.

His love for his students-turned-children would be tested today, however, as it always is on grocery days.

“Please don’t go running around the store without me, now. And no hide-and-seek this time,” Celestino said as they collected a cart and walked through the automatic doors, a cold rush of wind blowing at them.

“Oh, I have an idea!” Phichit said.

Oh no.

The last time Phichit had an idea, Celestino ended up having to clean and restock an entire display of colorful energy drinks after Phichit had knocked it over in his attempt to traverse the grocery store walking backwards.

“Can I ride in the cart, Ciao Ciao?” Phichit said, already getting into the cart.

“I don’t see why not,” Celestino said with yet another sigh. At this rate, he wouldn’t need to watch his blood pressure anymore with all the deep breaths his two charges have been making him take. But at least Phichit’s idea didn’t involve backwards walking or an in-store game of Red Light, Green Light.

With Phichit comfortably settled in the cart, Celestino headed toward the produce section.

“Um,” He heard someone say softly next to him.

“Yes, Yuuri?”

“Can I ride in the cart too?”

Oh boy.

“Sure, get in,” Celestino said, gesturing to the cart.

“Yay!” Phichit exclaimed. “So what’s on the list, Ciao Ciao?”

Drawing his phone out of his back pocket, Celestino opened his grocery list:

Tomatoes

Garlic

Onions

Three items of absolutely abysmal quality in the States. Great.

“The tomatoes here couldn’t hold a candle to the ones in Italia,” He said while inspecting a plump, red tomato.

“You say that every time we’re here, Ciao Ciao,” Phichit said. He earned himself a bop on the head for that comment.

“I say it every time because it’s true. The ones here are absolutely flavorless,”

“Careful Coach, a native might hear you,” Yuuri said, slinging his arms over the edge of the cart.

“Let them hear. They need to learn how to make proper Italian food,” Celestino said. He wheeled the cart over to the potatoes, walking a few feet away to go inspect the onions.

“Hey, Ciao Ciao! Let us help,” He heard Phichit call to him. He proceeded to ignore him as he put one, two, three russet potatoes into a plastic bag.

“Yeah, we didn’t come here with you for nothing,” Yuuri added.

“That’s right,” Celestino started, “you came here to pressure me into buying junk food for you,” He finished, sending the boys a look from the corner of his eye. Phichit opened his mouth to protest, lifting a finger, but decided against it, muttering something along the lines of “kill-joy…” to himself.

As it turned out, Celestino’s charges entertained themselves in the produce section by pointing to the different items they saw and calling out the name in Japanese or Thai. It became a guessing game as they told their coach the name of the item, and then he had to guess what it was. It involved a lot of hot-and-cold hints and some laughter, and it ultimately took them about 10 minutes longer than it should have to find all of the produce they needed.

Celestino had to stop Phichit from attempting to juggle the tomatoes twice before they wheeled to the next section.

“Oh, can we get mango juice, Ciao Ciao?” Phichit said.

“What do you need mango juice for?”

“Mango lassi,” Phichit said as if it was obvious.

“Like I know what that is,” Phichit huffed, putting his hands on his hips, or the best that he could do in the small grocery cart.

“It’s like a mango smoothie,” Yuuri said helpfully.

“This is a little out of my price range,” Celestino said, inspecting a carton of mango juice closely, “if you have mango juice money, you can buy it,”

“Come on, coach!” Phichit protested. Celestino didn’t know if it made him a good or bad parent that Phichit’s whining made him feel just a little bit of satisfaction. Just a little bit.

“Watch out, this is cold,” Celestino said and then dropped a bag of frozen salmon filets into the cart, earning a yelp from both skaters, “And this,” he dropped two packages of raw chicken breast in as well.

“Ciao Ciao, how could you?” Phichit said in mock-despair.

Three more packages of various lean meats later, and it was time for Celestino to go through the first trial of his iron will: the cereal aisle. Last time, he had broken down and allowed his two charges to put a box of cocoa puffs into the cart. But he still holds true to his excuse that he only let them do it because he felt bad for going so hard on them during practice, not because they were adorable or anything.

“You can pick out one cereal,” He said.

“Yay,” both skaters exclaimed,

“From the granola section,” Both skaters groaned at that, letting out variations of “come on, coach” and “not cool”.

“A bowl of sugary kid’s cereal isn’t going to give you anything but a 5 minute rush in the morning,” Celestino chided.

As it turned out, both boys were too busy sulking to bother choosing a cereal, so he picked up two boxes of granola cereal and one bag of muesli and stacked them on Yuuri’s lap for safe keeping.

“Can we get some oatmeal?” Yuuri said.

“Now that is a good choice,” Celestino said and added a tub of oats to the cart, “10 points to team Yuuri,” That got a rise out of Phichit.

“You didn’t tell me this was a competition, coach!”

“It’s not, I just like Yuuri more than you,” He said, failing to keep a straight face and breaking out into laughter at Phichit’s insulted expression.

What Phichit and Yuuri dubbed “the boring section” of the grocery store came next. The so-called boring part of the shopping experience was every aisle that wasn’t the cereal aisle or chips and soda aisle. Yuuri also perked up while they walked through the bakery, but ever since that one time in December, Celestino had developed a detour that avoided the bakery altogether. Nevertheless, the boring part of the shopping passed with companionable silence, the two skaters preoccupied with recording their experience in Snapchat and teaching one another new words in Japanese or Thai. They approached the medicine area,

“Either of you need any more bruise cream?” Celestino said, parking the cart next the ointments.

“No, I don’t think so,”

“How about hemorrhoid cream?”

“Ciao Ciao, ew!”

“That’s gross, coach,” Phichit and Yuuri said, sticking out their tongues. Celestino ended up putting a tube of bruise cream into the cart anyway.

“We need more Band-Aids, though,” Yuuri said.

“Oh, can we get the hello kitty ones? Can we, Ciao Ciao? Please,” Phichit pointed towards the band-aids with more enthusiasm than was necessary.

“Alright, alright, just stop nagging,”

Over at the yogurt section, Celestino was currently debating whether or not he should just leave the cart there and go home. Because now his two skaters were arguing over what kind of yogurt they wanted and which brand. Because apparently the brand of Greek yogurt matters. And apparently, even though Celestino had told them that no, they cannot get GoGurt, it was still being brought up in the argument. Yuuri was in the process of reaching from his seated position to grab a container of blueberry yogurt when,

“Ow! Coach, he hit me,” Yuuri called out,

“I didn’t hit you, I move your hand out of the way,”

“By hitting my arm!”

“Did not,”

“Did too,”

“Boys,” Celestino tried to interject. But there was no stopping them now, because at the moment they were having a tug of war match over a container of mango-flavored Greek yogurt. While they argued, he walked over to the refrigerators and picked out a gallon of lactose-free milk. Low-fat because it was training season.

Yuuri and Phichit were still arguing.

He made a mental note to pick up some wine before he left.

Now both boys were taking turns yelling “blueberry!”, “mango!” at one another endlessly, and their voices were becoming alarmingly louder. In a wash of dad-mode determination, Celestino wrenched the containers of yogurt from both boys’ hands and put them back on the shelf.

“No,” he said in a scarily soft but stern voice, “not today, not ever…” He then put three containers each of mango and blueberry yogurt in the cart, “now stop arguing, you’re making this so difficult,”

“…sorry coach,” Yuuri said quietly, hanging his head.

“Just ask me before you start fighting over food I’m already going to buy you, for goodness sake,” Celestino said, taking three deep breaths. He wouldn’t tell them that the actual reason he was upset was because he had seen a rather attractive woman over in the refrigerator section and was going to try wooing her, but his skaters had caused a commotion and made him look bad.

Fishing out his phone, Celestino checked more items off the list. Only three more left:

Bread

Eggs

Cheese

Oh, and wine. Make that four items left.

“Be very careful with these,” Celestino said, and then handed each skater a carton of a dozen eggs. Yuuri shifted positions and cradled the carton of eggs like he would a baby, earning a giggle from Phichit. At least the two were getting along again.

“Phichit, close your eyes! This is the adult section,” Yuuri said and proceeded to throw his hands over Phichit’s eyes. They had just wheeled into the wine section.

“Hurry up coach, the longer we’re here, the more he gets corrupted!” the Japanese skater called out over Phichit’s cackling. After picking out a suitable red wine, Celestino wheeled the cart out of the wine section,

“So what’s the diagnosis?” He asked Yuuri.

“He’ll pull through, but some ice cream would do him some good,” Yuuri said, now cradling a dramatic, swooning Phichit in his arms instead of the eggs.

“Nice try,”

Checking off the final items on the list, Celestino headed towards the cash registers.

“Alright boys, is there anything I forgot?”

“Ice cream,”

“No.”

“Then no, I think we have everything,”

As expected, the cash registers were all crowded, people forming jagged lines with their carts while other grocery shoppers tried to move through them. Every register had a line, so Celestino picked one at random. In what was most likely a cruel twist of fate, the attractive woman from earlier was standing in front of them at register 8. Phichit and Yuuri were busy giggling at something on Phichit’s phone.

“Are these your kids?” The woman asked.

“In a figurative sort of way, yes,” Celestino said, then added, “they’re studying abroad and I’m hosting them,”

“Ah, how sweet!” the woman said with a gasp.

“Boys, introduce yourselves,” Phichit was the first to look up from his phone.

“Oh, hi I’m Phichit! Sawasdee khrab!” He said with a wai.

“I’m Yuuri,” Yuuri said softly.

“Phichit’s from Thailand, Yuuri is from Japan,” Celestino added.

“Wow, you two are a very long way from home,” the woman said, “I’m Helen, by the way,”

“Celestino,”

As they all waited in line, Celestino and Helen carried on their conversation. Phichit and Yuuri were stuck in the middle, turning their heads from Helen to Celestino to Helen again as they talked. Yuuri whispered something into Phichit’s ear, and then the two giggled.

“What are you two laughing about,” Celestino asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Nothing,” Phichit drawled, and then the two giggled again. Celestino then gave the two boys The Look, which, in the context of the situation, meant “don’t blow this for me I’m about to get a date”. And so both skaters went back to looking at Phichit’s phone.

Groceries bagged and paid for, all three wheeled out of the store and towards the truck.

“Thank you for not ruining it for me, boys,” Celestino said.

“No problem, Ciao Ciao,” Phichit replied, and then Yuuri added,

“Just let us know when Helen’s coming over so we can go stay at someone else’s place. I’d rather not be scarred for life again,”

Celestino let go of the cart, letting it roll away past the truck, and watched the boys shriek in terror for a few seconds before running to catch it again.

#Yuri!!! on Ice #yoi #fic #drabble #i guess #celestino cialdini #phichit chulanont #yuuri katsuki #hope you like #uh #this is bad #don't read #yuuri and phichit are literal children

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