#it's for the end of August so there's plenty of time to process but still
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So I...eh... Booked plane tickets to Japan 👀
#I'm honestly so overwhelmed just thinking about it#it's for the end of August so there's plenty of time to process but still#🙊🙊🙊#i was crying historically after i booked them haha#I'll be there for like two and a half months#😱#that's crazy to me
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WELCOME TO THE STYLE MASTERLIST
series based off of taylor swift’s song style
Summary → He’s the Quarterback of the Cincinnati Bengals, a worldwide heartthrob with an ego the size of Lake Erie—but does he have the heart to match it? You’re the Bengals newest cheerleader, desperate to prove how much you deserve your spot on the team. It doesn’t take much to catch the eye of Joe Burrow, however that isn’t necessarily a good thing when you’re told that any romantic relations between cheerleaders and players is strictly prohibited.
AN → Honestly this idea came to me pretty suddenly, it wasn’t very premeditated. I’m not sure anyone will be interested in reading it, this is me kinda testing the waters. I’m just going through a crazy sad breakup so I’m kinda just trying to get back into the things I love to do, writing being one of them. Also, I kinda just want to get my mind off stuff and who doesn’t love Joe Burrow haha. As always, let me know to be added to the tag list :)
Pairing(s) → Joe Burrow x Fem!Reader
Warnings → Strong Language, Alcohol Use, Mature Themes/NSFW Themes, Angst, Injury, Forbidden Love, More to Come
PLAYLIST
PART ONE - No Headlights
PART TWO - Good Girl
PART THREE - James Dean
PART FOUR - His Wild Eyes
PART FIVE - Taking Off His Coat
PART SIX - Tell You To Leave
Teaser →
After a rigorous auditioning process with over a thousand girls trying to earn their spot on the Bengal’s Cheerleading Squad, only forty made the cut. Most returners, some new like yourself. You’d watched girls break bones, continuing to audition on them to have a shot on the squad. Many left in tears, cut and sent home with hardly any reason why.
There was a little bit of metaphorical survivor’s guilt after you’d made the team, knowing this wasn’t your dream like it was for some others. This was only a season or two commitment for you while you finished up your last year of college. Then you’d become a teacher, something you’d had a passion for over the years. Cheerleading was more so a hobby, you’d danced all of your life and had cheered in high school. This wasn’t going to be your livelihood, nor did it offer you the funds to live off of for more than a short while.
There were plenty of rules to follow, many of which had you questioning if this was truly what you wanted. The handbook they’d given you was thick, although some of the girls had told you that they’d lessened up on the requirements over the years after a lawsuit had been filed. In the end, it wasn’t so bad. Tedious, but still a very surreal experience.
From about April to the middle of July, it was practice twice a week from 7:30 at night to about 11. There was a separate facility used to work and condition through the colder months, just following the Super Bowl. Once pre-season truly began, the whole team moved practice facilities. This put you in the same place as the Bengals practiced, giving you more field time than gym time to get acclimated. It was different, especially due to the fact that players and cheerleaders were placed at an arms length most of the time.
The afternoon of the first practice at the new stadium, you’d all been given the talk. This was basically your coaches and executives way of saying that if anyone found out that anyone off the squad had anything more than a friendly, professional relationship with one of the players—they’d be either cut or sanctioned. It was bad for the image of the team, making it bad for those in charge.
It shouldn’t have been a problem.
That first night practice in August was tough, you were coming off of a sprained ankle and the heat was blistering even at 8 at night. Amanda, your head coach, sent you inside to grab some ice from the athletic trainer to bring back out to the field. There was a stigma around the coaching and treatment of NFL cheerleaders, but you’d mostly had a decent experience so far. Your coaches did care that you were healthy and equipped to cheer.
Adorned in a slightly baggy Bengals T-shirt and spandex, you walked through the empty halls of the mostly deserted facility. The players had just ended their practice about an hour earlier, you watched them all exit into the locker room. That meant that mostly everyone had called it a night, heading home. The cheerleaders stayed late because practice was meant to be after work or class, it wasn’t a full-time job.
The door to the athletic trainers office was slightly ajar, the light on. Pushing it open slightly, you stepped in with furrowed eyebrows and a curious look. On the large medical table, ice in hand, sat Joe Borrow still in his practice jersey and shorts. The office was empty besides him, trainer nowhere to be seen.
He was a good looking guy, you’d give him that. Maybe it was the fact that he was 6’4 or maybe it was the fact that he was really fucking good at his sport. He looked up at you and gave a friendly grin, laying the ice on his knee.
“Emily said she was heading home about a half hour ago, her kid was sick or something so she had to pick him up from the babysitter,” Joe told you politely. “I came in just as she was like walking out, she just told me to lock up the office when I was done.”
Someone was clearly a rambler.
“Yeah,” you nodded. “I was just going to grab some ice.”
He nodded and went silent while you walked over to the ice maker, taking the plastic scooper and putting some of it into a plastic bag. He was still looking at you, making it obvious as you saw him from your peripheral. Twisting the bag, you felt slightly awkward just standing there in silence.
“I’m Joe,” he spoke again.
“Y/N,” you turned back towards him. “It’s nice to meet you.”
He extended a hand towards you, smiling as you took it and shook it softly. When you broke from his grip, he remained looking at you. He was definitely one of those people who looked you right in the eyes through the entire conversation. You didn’t know if this made you particularly uncomfortable or slightly excited.
“You’re a cheerleader.”
“Was that a question?” You chuckled, “I think that’s pretty obvious.”
“No, no. I was kind of just thinking out loud.”
He was easily flustered, that much was obvious. He repositioned the bag of ice and looked back up at you with slightly pink cheeks. This made you want to crack a grin, feeling like you were talking to a boy for the first time ever or something.
“I should head back to practice,” you told him, watching him slowly nod in understanding.
“Yeah, of course,” Joe smiled. “It was nice meeting you, Y/N.”
Let me know if you’d like to be added to the tag list :)
#joe burrow smut#joe burrow imagines#joe burrow imagine#joe burrow#joe burrow x reader#joe burrow x yn#joe burrow series#joe sheisty#joe burrow blurb#joe burrow fluff#joe burrow fan fic#joe burrow fic
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Twisted Wonderland Birthdates/Birthyears, In Order.
A comprehensive list of each TWST character’s exact birthdate, in order, down to the year + their ages. This will be going off of Twisted Wonderland’s release date, (2020), and not the current year (2023 at the time of writing). Contains chapter 7 spoilers.
- I’m aware that the Japanese school year starts in April instead of September, but for some reason my brain refused to process this so I ended up doing these based around the school year cut-off being September. I decided to post it anyway, since I’m pretty sure most of it’s still accurate, though I may do a Japanese version at some point!
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Lilia – Unknown, 1321. Chosen date is January 1st, 1321. (699 Years Old).
Silver – Unknown, 1621. Chosen date is May 15th, 2003. (299 - 300 Years Old, mentally 16 - 18).
Malleus – January 18th, 1842. (178 Years Old).
Leona – July 27th, 2000. (20 Years Old).
Trey – October 25th, 2001. (18 Years Old).
Rook – December 2nd, 2001. (18 Years Old).
Idia – December 18th, 2001. (18 Years Old).
Cater – February 4th, 2002. (18 Years Old).
Vil – April 9th, 2002. (18 Years Old).
Jamil – September 12th, 2002. (17 Years Old).
Jade - November 5th, 2002. (17 Years Old).
Floyd - November 5th, 2002. (17 Years Old).
Azul – February 24th, 2003. (17 Years Old).
Ruggie – April 18th, 2003. (17 Years Old).
Kalim – June 25th, 2003. (17 Years Old).
Riddle – August 24th, 2003. (17 Years Old).
Ace – September 23rd, 2003. (16 Years Old).
Jack – October 11th, 2003. (16 Years Old).
Sebek – March 17th, 2004. (16 Years Old).
Epel – May 6th, 2004. (16 Years Old).
Deuce – June 3rd, 2004. (16 Years Old).
Ortho – August 14th, 2011 - 2013. (6 - 8 Years Old, mentally 11 - 16).
~Ortho’s age is anonymous, so I had to do some speculations and maths here. I’m going to assume that R!Ortho was 8 years old at the date of his death, and that Idia constructed O!Ortho when he was around 10. This would give their parents plenty of time to start caring about Robortho before the pair left for Night Raven. I’m going to assume that O!Ortho is either 3 years old with the mental state of an 11 year old, or 3 years old with the mental state of a 16 year old (since he joined the first years, albeit as a special exception). Personally I’m leaning more towards the former.
~If Lilia was 300 years old during the war and Silver was a baby at the time (seemingly 0 - 1 years old) then that would mean that his birthyear falls somewhere between 1620 - 1622, most likely 1621. Lilia also states that the day he found Silver was the day that he decided for Silver's birthday, meaning that the odds of May 15th being his real birthday are 1/365. During Silver's identity crisis dream we see what he looked like on the day that Lilia found him, which we've established was May 15th, and he looks to be roughly 6 months old.
It's possible that Lilia thought of this and decided to consider this Silver's 1st birthday, but if that were the case, there's a good 50% chance that Silver has actually been awake for 16 years of his life, which would actually be very clever since Aurora was 16. In the reverse, if Lilia decided to treat the day he found Silver as the day he was born, then there's a 50% chance that Silver is actually 18. Basically what I'm saying is I haven't got a fucking clue-)
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Hope you get some use out of it, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on anything <3
#twisted wonderland#twst#riddle rosehearts#trey clover#cater diamond#ace trappola#deuce spade#leona kingscholar#ruggie bucchi#jack howl#azul ashengrotto#jade leech#floyd leech#kalim al asim#jamil viper#vil schoenheit#rook hunt#epel felmier#idia shroud#ortho shroud#malleus draconia#lilia vanrouge#sebek zigvolt#silver twst
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Our new home! Wah a lot has happened over the past few months and I'm only just starting to process it all. We knew all along that we were leaving Zurich after I finished my PhD, and vague plans to move to the mountains have been around for years. In early 2023, we started talking about it more seriously and soon realised living IN the mountains (rather than in a town in the valley at the bottom of the mountains haha) would involve buying a house because there aren't really any rentals in the villages around here. We spent a lot of time that winter looking at different places to find areas we liked, and then a lot of time in the summer viewing houses and figuring it all out. We decided on a house in late August, thinking there would be plenty of time to get it all through before the end of the year, that I would defend and then we'd move. As usual, that didn't go to plan and instead we found ourselves driving the 3.5 hours to Valais to sign for the house 4 days before my defence 🤦♀️ not ideal and all the uncertainty around the buying and the move combined with the defence stress over all those months really did me in, I'm still exhausted now even though the pace of life has gone from 100 to 0 (okay maybe more like a 10 but still) in the past few weeks. And the house is definitely not without issues 🤣 some of which we knew about, some we didn't, so the actual move in process has also been more exhausting than anticipated. There's also a ridiculous amount of admin involved in moving canton in Switzerland, it's almost like moving to a new country, especially as foreigners. But we survived the first bits, we moved in properly in the days after Christmas, and it's all slowly coming together now, and I love it SO much already. It's so quiet and peaceful, there's a little forest right outside our balcony that has deer walking through it almost every day, they come up all the way to the front door sometimes. Skiing is 10 mins away. It's been pretty cold as we're still figuring out the heating but we have a wood stove and it's so cosy. I love walking down the stairs in the morning in my warm jumper and making tea and meditating and journalling, all the while looking out at the mountains. I'm so burnt out from the end of the PhD and the entire past year it's been hard to take it all in, and it doesn't feel real yet most of the time. But when it does I feel so lucky. And I have a lot of time now, because I'm finally taking that gap year I've been saying for years I will take haha. It won't be an entire year, probably, but it will be a few months at least. Lots of skiing for now and some time to write, finally, getting settled into the house, and then some travelling.
#life update#in a lot of words?#a lot has happened haha#personal#me#mine#switzerland#my mountains#new home#home#house#mountains#skiing#ski#phd stuff#2024#winter 2024#moving#ben
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What now? What’s next?
Hi Besties!
I can’t believe it BUT Beskar Doll has now officially come to a close and with it comes the end of my first two fan fictions.
I started writing Beskar Doll on March 16. I’d never written a word of fan fiction before that and had only recently started reading it (thank you to Stitches by @djarinsbeskar for making me love the genre so much I had to write it!) I started making it for myself and talking to my friend about it. The file is still just called Mando because I didn’t have a name and never intended for anyone but me to read it. But after a few chapters and plenty of encouragement from my dear friend @mysticnightmarewrites, I decided to post it on AO3 because why not? A few people might like it.
So began sharing Din and Doll’s story, which grew into sharing Joel and Doc’s story in Lavender and publishing more than 520k words of fan fiction (not counting drabbles on here) since then. (For those playing along at home, that’s more than 3,795 words per day on average - oy!) It also led to starting this Tumblr and I have so loved getting to know the community that exists in the fan fic world on this chaotic little corner of the internet.
Of course, this is not the end of my fan fiction life (though it does feel like an end to an era.) I started sharing Yearling, another TLOU story, a few weeks back and have plans for other fics going forward.
Here’s what I’m planning for the next few months, both fan fic wise and beyond:
August
- Continue Yearling, updating 2-3 times a week
- Write all the asks that are sitting in my inbox because OMG y’all are lovely and patient and I want to give you just all the content
- Finish watching Narcos and plan a Javi P fic (I have something in mind here that I think will both work and give me the brain rot 🤞🤞🤞)
- Finish my rewrite of book one of my book series, potentially start the query process
- Go on vacation, start teaching in the evenings and potentially host a foreign exchange student (these things may impact posting schedules, I’ll do my best to make sure you know what’s up!)
September
- Launch second long form fic (likely the Javi P fic) updating twice a week
- Continue Yearling, updating twice a week
- Kinktober prep? Do y’all think I should do kinktober? I write smut but like… plot with porn sprinkled in, not sure if kinktober is the place for my content? Send help??
- Query Ace
October
- Continue two fics (Yearling and other)
- Kinktober? Maybe???
- Query Ace
- Football games (my husband was born and raised in a college town with a major team - literally lived a mile from the stadium his whole life. He went to school there and now works there. His birthday is in October so that is when we end up at games. It will probably interfere with writing time on more than one occasion!)
November
- NaNo in the form of an AU Joel fic! I have a few ideas here so stays tuned
- Continuing Yearling and other fic, updating at least once a week for both (hopefully twice but NaNoing on a third fic may change that.)
- Query Ace/explore self publishing
This is what’s to come from me in the near future! Thank you so much for being here and being interested in what I have to share. It means so much ❤️
Love you all!
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Balance
Relationship(s): None
Tags/Warnings: Episode: s04e03 Lessons from the Gift Shop, Angst, Emotional Hurt, Growing Up, or trying to at least, Missing Scene
Summary: August's thought process in 4x03
Taglist: @theladywyn, @ihavepointysticks, @klaatu51, @itsjessiegirl1, @neptunium134
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This is a good idea, August tells himself as he packs up his vinyls.
I barely use this stuff anyway, he reminds himself as he winds up the cords for his mics.
I have other plans for my future, he tells himself as he dismantles his speaker set up.
It’ll make so much money for the animals, he tells himself as he packs up his keyboard.
It’s just a hobby; not like it’d make me much money, he tells himself as he loads the last of his equipment into the wagon.
It’s not just because of what Trey said after bootcamp. Sure, that was a big wakeup call to the commitment he was making, but it was so much more than that. He was growing up; he’d be 18 by the end of the school year. He needed to start shaping up if he wanted to prove to everyone that he could do this.
And he did need to prove himself. Dad and Gramps could give him platitudes all day, but he knew they didn’t believe it. He knew they didn’t actually want him to go, that they didn’t think he could handle the responsibility they once shouldered. He could see it in their eyes, hear it in every There’s still time and You have plenty of options.
But he could show them. He could show all of them how serious he was about this. He was growing up, getting rid of distractions, making plans. They’d have to take him seriously now.
They’d have to.
—----------------------
August dropped the vinyls he backed out on selling in the corner of his room. They looked stupid sitting there without a player to put them in, but it was too late for that now.
He sat on his bed and looked around his room. His starkly empty room.
It had all seemed like a good idea earlier. Get rid of all the childish, stupid distractions, make way for adulthood. It was the right thing to do. He needed to focus, needed to be present for his team, need to prove to everyone he could do this.
Of course he screwed that up. Of course he took it too far, made a mistake. His room is basically empty and he doesn’t even have any money to show for it. And for what? Some false sense of adulthood?
Maybe his dad was right. Maybe he wasn’t ready for this. Maybe he never would be.
Trey’s words from earlier came to mind. It’s just practicing different muscles.
He looked around the room again and saw his mother’s camera sitting on his dresser. After a few moments, he grabbed it and left his room.
He needed some time to think.
#walker#walker fic#walker fanfic#august walker#walker spoilers#s04e03#lessons from the gift shop#my writing#my fic
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It took Quaritch 10 years to build the cabin and immediately after finishing it he went to get Spider or did he finish it earlier but he was waiting for the perfect moment to take him?Will there be a fragment describing exactly how the construction took place? I wonder how he found the place at all, whether he make all the furniture himself and how he moved everything up the hill
<3
I mention the construction of the cabin in a few lines here and there but I never have like, an in depth flashback scene of the process of building it, but I do have the whole process thought out so let's get into it.
So the cabin is on a secluded mountain in Colorado. Originally Spider lived in the D.C area so Quaritch took him completely across the country. Quaritch had a general idea of where he wanted to go when he first started thinking up his plan. He wanted a place that was secluded, hard to reach, and with plenty of natural resources so they could live off the land. He would have gone through a list to narrow down other locations until settling on the mountain the cabin is on and then actually going there to make sure it was as secluded and hard to reach as he originally thought. That process alone would have taken about a year as he thoroughly considered and tested every option.
Once he found the perfect spot he'd started construction using pretty basic tools, things he could easily carry up the mountain. He'd have to clear a lot of large trees first, saving them to use as construction material later, then dig up the tree stumps so he could level the ground. The cabin does have a basement, a septic system, and a water well so he'd have to dig, using small explosives to make the initial holes then shaping it how he wants. He'd use the dug up stone from this to make concrete that would be used to make the foundation of the house. Then he'd actually start building the house from the trees from earlier. Once the cabin is done, the plumbing is set up, and the electrical wiring is done (but not functional yet) he'd start making a good amount of the furniture, bed frames, desks, wardrobes, dressers, end tables, kitchen table, chairs all of that stuff. He'd also be starting their garden around this time because it takes years to actually cultivate the soil to grow good crops so he'd have to start that years in advanced to make sure they have a good source of food for when him and Spider will be living there.
This would all be a very long process made longer by his lack of heavy duty power tools and help. His team would come up to help him a few weeks at a time but they all have lives too that they can't be away from for that long without arousing suspicion and no one wants that. He'd also only be able to really work on this from mid spring to mid fall which is still a good amount of working time each year, but he wouldn't want to be away from Spider for that long. So he's in D.C watching Spider from late august when school starts to about Spider's spring break then heads back to work on the cabin.
Quaritch would take up as much as he could with every trip, so like first it'd be all the tools he needs for building and supplies he needs for surviving in the woods for months. He'd leave it all there in a safe place, so that next time he could start bringing up gardening supplies, then family photos/videos and so on. All the big stuff like the couch, mattresses, fridge, stove, etc. where airlifted there by Brown. Every member of team deja blue that could be there was there to quickly unload everything so Brown could fly away fast, then they moved everything into the house. That all happened a few months before Spider was taken so yeah he didn't waste much time. Spider was kidnapped at the end of august. Quaritch probably had everything airlifted in during the spring, took some time to get the house in order, arranging everything how he wanted, trying to make it feel homie, double checking that everything is in order, that there solar panels work, the backup generator works, the radio system he uses to talk to his squad, the water filtration system all in perfect order. Then triple checking that the basement is well stocked with enough non perishable food, water, medical supplies, and personal care items to last them both for the next decade.
Once he's 100% sure everything is perfect he goes back to D.C to watch Spider, study his routine, and fine tune his plan so he can take his son back without a single issue.
I hope that covered everything! I'm happy to answer anymore questions you might have if I missed something 💞
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"I have many thoughts (most of them ranty) about the whole gig economy and freelancing and everything else we are expected to do just to stay afloat." I have popcorn and plenty of time to read a rant if you ever want to go in depth on the fuckery of the current system.
Like. With absolutely no exaggeration, this is the entire first page of one of the academic jobs boards that I regularly visit:
So... literally all they want is adjunct, online, part-time, non-tenure faculty who are expected to drop in, teach one or two courses for one (maybe two) semesters, then start the entire grueling job-search process all over again! Sure, that makes sense, and will definitely enable you to build a stable and predictable career that allows you to grow as a scholar and pursue meaningful work and research! How the hell are you supposed to be able to plan for the future, know what you're doing or where you're going to be, or anything else?
Not to mention the absolutely insane requirements that come with each application: just the other day, I finished one that, with all the necessary documents included, was 32 pages long. Nor is this at all uncommon. Many of the adjunct jobs listed above often want you to submit multiple documents, transcripts, letters of recommendation, teaching statements, research plans, etc etc, for -- I repeat -- a non-guaranteed, only-if-we-need-you, maybe-someday part-time job that will last six months at most and may or may not involve actual physical work (as opposed to trying to teach an online Zoom class, which is the devil). This is obviously specific to my particular field, but it's emblematic of so many things that are wrong with the economy, our approach to the humanities and historical knowledge, and the absurd hoops that people even in far less specialized areas have to deal with. Once upon a time, a college degree pretty much guaranteed employment; now it rarely does. Which is a direct and entirely foreseeable result of how systematically the rules of the economic game have been rigged by the people who benefited from them the most: the baby boomers and early-Generation X'ers. And instead of actually serious pushback against that (though there's more than there used to be) we just get "lololol millennials are lazy and entitled!!!"
I have three degrees, including a doctorate in a highly specialized field which represents 10+ years of higher education, and I'm still reduced to making lattes on the weekends in an attempt to somehow pay most of my bills. I don't know how I'll make it to the end of the year, since I've already had several other part-time jobs suddenly crap out on me and this one is only guaranteed through the end of August. And it's like... do you think I WANT to be doing this? Don't you think I would prefer to be doing the job that I trained to do and for which I would like to have an actual sustainable career model, rather than /waves hand/ All This Shit? I will give you a hint: yes. Yes, I actually would. And yet.
Anyway. Thank you for this opportunity to get that off my chest. It's just all so very, very stupid.
#anonymous#ask#school stuff#academia: not even once#ronald reagan burn in hell#boy being born at the end of the 'fuck around' period#so you live through the endless shitblizzard of 'find out'#sure is great!#by which i mean terrible obviously
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May I ask why under construction is going to be your final kylux fic?? I'm gonna miss your writing for them if that becomes true 😭
So I talked a little bit about this on twitter, but tbh should’ve here both because half my audience is here and also because tumblr actually has the room for a complete explanation without worrying about character limits lmao
At this point, I don’t intend to stop writing star wars stuff completely if that’s any comfort. I have some renbens I want to do/finish, also a recent bentai idea, plus who knows what inspiration will strike. Even kylux inspo is possible, especially if we get new stuff at some point (like perhaps that comic in august). Nothing is set in stone here. I never thought I’d actually be at a point where this fic feels finishable lmao, yet here I am, so who knows
However, I have been writing kylux for over 7 years now. I posted that moodboard on my anniversary of the first fic I published, though I was reading fic and stuff for a few months before that as well. And it’s just… after this fic is complete, I’m not sure I’ll have anything left to add to kylux, you know? With it, I feel like I’m saying everything that I want to say about them. Writing this, as both rough and rewarding a journey it has been, feels a lot like closure to me. Tbqh I’m expecting a lot of people not to like the subject matter or agree with some things regarding this fic, but for the first time in a while, it really is about me and what I want. It’s a story I have to tell - that’s why it’s driven me mad for 3.5 years lmao. And after it’s done? I’m not sure what will be left to say. Maybe something, in which case more kylux will happen, but also maybe nothing. Essentially, I’m preparing both myself and the people I care about in this fandom (including lovely readers like you) for the latter just in case it is what happens, even though it may not. Maybe when I post it, it’ll get a ton of love and I’ll get flooded with sudden inspo. But maybe not. Everything has to end eventually, sadly, and this just feels to me like an ending, like the closing of a chapter. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s just the feeling I have. I’m going with my gut here rather than a specific plan
Also, as much as I have people in this fandom I truly care about and adore and I have people who care about and like me, whether we’re close friends, mutuals, or just a follower and a person that have never spoken to each other yet the care is there regardless, there’s also some elements to this fandom that are not so great. I know a lot of people who’ve been driven out. I myself was cancelled on twitter for running a particular event and the rest of the fandom hasn’t treated me the same since. The fandom has changed a lot in those 7 years, some of which is for the better, and some of which I think we could’ve done without. Plenty has also stayed the same; both the good and the bad. And I think the fandom as it is today and what I want to get out of it are just unfortunately incompatible. It’s no ones fault, but sometimes a space isn’t giving you what you need it to. I wish it could still give me that, I really really do, but right now it just seems it can’t. And that’s not the entirety of the reason, but it is a factor as to why I’m not as interested in continuing as I once was. I’m just not getting what I need out of the fandom right now. Again, everything is mutable, but it’s felt that way for a bit now
All that being said though, kylux will still very much exist on this blog. I still very much enjoy the ship and I don’t have a new fandom to move to permanently as of yet, so reblogs will continue, as will shitposting and memes and all of it. I recently finished collecting all the tweets I want to preserve here, so there will be an influx of posts, ficlets, memes, all of it, that will be coming sometime in the near future (whenever I have the energy to actually start the process lmao). This is still the kyluxtrashpit, after all lmao
So I’m not leaving the fandom by any stretch, it’s just that I feel like this fic will say all the things I have left to say about kylux. And because the fandom space isn’t giving me what I’m looking for at the moment, I have less interest in seeking out inspiration and rather am letting ideas to come to me, which at present I just don’t have any more beyond this fic. I could be wrong and who knows, maybe there’s another 7 years of kylux ahead of me lmao. But I want everyone who’s supported me at any point during these last 7 years to know ahead of time that it is very possible for this to be my last fic for kylux because I think that’s the least I can do for you all
#I hope this answer explains it well enough#I could still write more kylux#it’s possible#but it’s also very possible I will not and I want to be transparent with the people who’ve made this fandom experience great#that is: my readers#but more sw will happen#and I have a ton of stuff to bring over from twitter#and I’m really excited about this fic#so please don’t be too sad I promise this isn’t the final end of everything forever#ask tag#anon#text#long post
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Post-comp-mortem
I was debating on whether to publish this post before or after the voting ended. I was wondering if it would influence the player's opinion of the game too much/at all. Even after seeing a few popping up on the Forum, I still felt a bit weird about releasing mine. I was also hoping to get a few more reviews/comments as well :P
If you haven't checked the IF Comp entries this year, I really recommend it!
This post will be hella long too. I am not kidding here, don't click Keep Reading/scroll further if you don't have a drink and are seated, it is almost a novella below. Also, it is a mix of very dry summary/emotional reaction. Like my entry, it might look like a mess. There is a TLDR on the Forum.
Table of Content:
1- Some Points about creation and process
2- So, did I manage to do what I wanted?
3- And what was the verdict?
_ _ a. The Reviews
_ _ b. Result and Further comments
4- What's the future for TTTT?
5- Some fun tit bits...
6- In Conclusion,
For people who don't follow me here (or only started following me recently), I've only been in the IF Community for about a year and a half by now, with my first game (Meeting the Parents) published in early June 2021. I have only created things with Twine (and mainly on SugarCube) and had not had any coding knowledge before starting my own project.
I- Some points about creation and process.
The Thick Table Tavern was actually conceptualised back in 2021, when I wanted to dip my toes into a bigger competition after completing Exquisite Cadaver. Since I had created MtP and EC (and the first part of CRWL) pretty quickly, I thought the two months ahead of me would be plenty enough to create a whole new game and submit it.
I've always loved Fantasy settings and RPGs, but often wondered why there were very little games centred around less heroic occupations or what would be the life of an NPC, like a bartender in a tavern (probably because it might be pretty boring). I also have very fond memories of those Flash games where you would build meals/drinks (RIP Flash).
I knew from the get-go that two components where going to be central to the game: the drink mixing aspect and your interactions with the NPCs. Instead of having random customers dropping in, I thought of 5 fleshed-out NPCs which would come, talk a bit with you about their story and order drinks. You might have been able to influence them a bit. But that would be it. Above all, I wanted a chill and light vibe, with Trope-y characters (ex: a coward but flirty bard, a pirate always in trouble, etc). I wanted people to relax and have some light fun, and enjoy themselves.
I worked on the project for about 2 weeks, having submitted my intent, started testing some code for the bartending side and written the introduction of the game and 2 characters (give or take 3k words).
Then I kind of... burned out.
Fast forward this summer, and I am back working on the project. Granted, I was not fully into the game at that point, since I was working on the re-writes of EC at the same time too. But I had sketched out the UI and was thinking about the code during writing EC. And I was talking my friends ears off about it too. What I knew for sure, is that the Bartending experience would be the core gameplay/interactivity of the game, with the story wrapped around it (giving you a reason to mix drinks).
Here are some pictures of my very pretty handwriting about the UI and how the story/bartending should be formatted/coded.
Throughout July, I would take breaks from writing EC to set up the UI for this game (or create a SugarCube template because I have not self-control), learn more about grids, flex boxes and class hierarchy. [No joke, I learned A LOT about CSS/HTML with this game!]
August came around and my other projects were put on hold so I could focus on TTTT (I still did other stuffs, because again, no self-control). I probably didn't start writing until the last third of August, as I researched drinks recipe (I still have a form for future drinks addition, you can add your favourite), made lil' bottles and set the bar. Even then, the amount written was pretty marginal compared to September.
September was wild. I wrote about 45k words total during that month, averaging 2.5k/days by the latter half of the month. Not all that I wrote ended up being included in the entry, as I had to cut some NPCs since I didn't feel they were ready (which included a travelling salesman monk). Being oh so lucky, I caught Covid just as the last week of the comp started. And since I hate following my/sound advice, I kept writing and coding through that and insomnia until the last hours of the deadline. This was obviously reeeeaaaaallly dumb, it made me super exhausted after the whole thing, but I still pushed myself and even with the whole hazy brain I managed to submit the game with... a bunch of bugs (and a lot more typos).
In retrospect, that should have been my sign to pause the project and submit next year.
All and all, I don't think I spent more than 3 months on the game, during which half of that time was being shared with other projects (old and new ones). Still, my goal was to submit a working game... and to rank in the top-half of the ranking overall.
II- So, did I manage to do what I wanted?
Short answer: definitely not. But I gave it my best shot...
Long answer: I managed to do more than I thought I would, especially as the deadline crept closer. My plan from the beginning (of this year's try, not the original beginning) was to build the game in 3 stages:
The basic create/serve drinks with no interaction with customers.
The NPCs you only meet once and appear randomly, with choices that have little repercussion on that NPC and story overall.
The Big NPCs who come back multiple times (4/5 times, depending on their story) with choices that impact both the player and the NPC. And you build a bit of relationship with those.
The first stage took a while mainly because I had to create a whole bar from scratch. I could have chosen to stick with a simple design/asset for the bottles (like the one you could see in my first attempts of the bar), but damn, this is the IF Comp, not some basic Jam... Go big or go home!
While I didn't struggle too much with the mixing part, it was the serving/check the ingredients and optimisation of the code that gave me a few headaches. {And still does...}
The second step was thwarted almost as soon as I started, when I realised TTTT needed a lot more fluff parts to link each game block (morning, between drinks, end of day) to make the experience smoother. Like the randomness of the drinks I didn't want players becoming bored with starting/ending each days. So there's a lot there that took priority for a while.
__Still, I managed to include some NPCs. Out of the 11-ish NPC ideas I had, one was fully included (the oldie couple), one was a re-hash of the last year's version of the Adventurer (Dylan), and one was added last minute out of frustration (the 4th Wall break). The Fortune Teller doesn't really count in my book, as she was always part of the Introduction (and written almost completely last year).
And the last one... *throw hands in the air*
I knew it was going to be very hard to include this one, especially since it required a bit more planning for the day (and work around the randomisation) and having to take into account the different variations. Not being able to include this one ended up not bothering me as much as I thought it would be. I get to keep it for an after-comp update... :D
What I manage to include which was not planned was, like I mentioned, the random linking bits and the long-form Endings. None of them were really interactive (nor had much choice aside from knocking the sign or setting the tip jar), and may have thrown the player off when everything gets randomised by Day 2. There is only the Setting Up/Cleaning the Tavern where you can get the same/similar enough text.
Ezabell and Brom were also not planned at all. In last's year's version, out of the tavern's employees, you'd only interact with your Boss (and Filessandro as one of the recurrent NPCs). I was really happy with Ez especially, and how much colour she brought to the tavern (and writing banter with her was so fun!). She was probably one of my favourite character to write (along with the Oldies).
There were also a lot more things I had to cut for time, whether it was writing or coding. This is a non-exhaustive list: the Tip Jar getting stolen event, The Watcher coming half-way through the game to check on your progress, having more options/choices when talking to people (patrons and employees), having an Ending Recap for the NPCs, having a choice at the End on whether to buy/pursue your original background choice...
So at the end, the agency stayed quite low (where most consequences happen when you create drinks). After the first day, there is very little new choices.
There were many things with the final version that made me frustrated, among others:
Misusing my time, forcing me to cut back on what I wanted to include, just because something new and shiny took over my brain (it's not new, I can have the attention of a toddler sometimes).
Definitely not realising early how much I was trying to include from the get go, in terms of words and code, and how much time I would need to manage it all (lol at me thinking the summer would be enough for this chunky of a game).
The Watcher and Fortune Teller's spiel heavily relied on the player having choices with consequences talking to the recurrent patrons (Step 3) and proposing activities/giving advice to the one-time NPCs (Step 2). Since 3 was scraped, and 2 was not finished... I ended up setting some mystery for pretty much nothing...
Not having a more rigorous proofreading period. A lot of what was written was done so very late into the process, and while I did use some proofreading programs, I should have taken more time to re-read my text, edit it more and correct it all. It is obvious where I put more effort/love... (yes, it's the Oldies)
Have beta testers a bit earlier to catch all the bugs I corrected on Day 1/2 of the voting period (that's related to the time management points above).
Not being able to have more NPC's during the day (adding 3-4 one-timers to the game more would have been great!)
Not having time to include music :(
Getting Covid... (not that I could do much about that :P)
I could have chosen to fix a lot of those issues/add more content half-way through the Comp, but it felt a bit like cheating... And honestly, I was too tired after that.
Still, there are many things I am very proud of achieving:
Actually submit an entry to the Comp (even with the bugs/typos still there...) !
I created a completely new UI all by myself from scratch, which has completely different designs depending on which passage the player is in (Title page, Main Story, Bar, The Notebook/Frenzy List).
Have I talked everyone's ears off about the Bar yet? Definitely not. Because it is hella cool. I spend a lot (maybe too much time) on it, editing each bottle/box so they would feel distinct enough from each other. My first attempt last year was... a whole mess with list points... ew...
I started dabbling more with CSS animations (the menu button in the Main Story, the text shaking, the starting page, etc...), all of which required A LOT of tweaking to get right (and including an accessible option too).
Creating more complicated widgets and learning how to optimise my code (I managed to remove over 500 lines of TwineScript code at once...) which was a fun puzzle to be honest.
Adding very last-minute addition with the Arcade Mode and the Restocking (which taught me about messing with CSS classes at random), which I think was a pretty good addition.
Adding as much accessibility tools as I could (key binding, toggles for animation, text formatting, etc...).
Look at this Passage Map! There's a lot of text/code in those...
Finally... Not submitting the game with only the Bar mixing as the whole game. The mixing mechanic without any text would probably not have gone over well.
Overall, a lot of frustration but also a lot of pride (I definitely felt that last one mixed with anxiety when I pressed the Upload button the first time). I was really impressed with myself for being able to do this much in such short amount of time (considering everything).
Would the game have benefitted from a bit more time, attention and love? Definitely (especially, the writing). Do I regret submitting it like this? Not even one bit! There were a lot of new things I hadn't done before or even came across with my other projects until now. I've gone even deeper into Sugarcube, CSS and even some JavaScript (my nemesis)!
III- And what was the verdict?
Before going into the reviews/comments I got publicly/privately or the ranking/votes (apart from 3B, I wrote this post before the results), I won in the eyes of some important people (to me). Of course the ranking/votes matter to a certain extent, but I feel like I already had a little victory even before the reveal of the ranking. My biggest offline supporters, some of whom never played any IF before (nor knew it existed), absolutely adored the game, especially the bartending bits. My folks were so amazed about what I done (especially as their view of the gaming world was pretty... narrow/negative to say the least). And I was so happy they tried something they never done before too!
I'm glad I got to introduce IF to new peeps :P
There was even a small contest with my family on who could get the most drinks done in the Timed Arcade Mode (the 38 cocktail highscore has yet to be broken)!
Also, bless my sister for spamming her friends to play the games... They even sent her messages back about what they played and how cool IF is :)
A- The Reviews
[Again, this was written before the results] According to the Review Spreadsheet, I have gotten 13 reviews on the Forum/IFDB: 7 on the Forum (?), 5 on IFDB (9 ratings). This is about the average amount of reviews games got this year. I received a few more messages through Tumblr and Discord about my entry as well.
(Note: one review disappeared from IFDB during the voting period)
First of all, I want to thank again every one of you who not only tried the game, left a vote, and for some of you even a review. Everyone who took their time to share what they thought of my little bartender simulation and to answer some question when they stumbled upon some bugs too.
Here are some cute titles of reviews I got: Innovative Bartending Simulator, A lengthy and somewhat heartwarming game about running a tavern, Bar game of my dreams, Lots to like with this one, Beautiful Gameplay, Fun Mixing Minigames...
A few reviewers "played the game" and included drink puns in their reviews, which I absolutely adored. One was really nice and pushed through their first impression of the game to give it a fair shot (I put a nauseating gif in the starting screen, which couldn't be turned off until the next passage...), when they didn't have to.
I should probably mention the elephant in the room before getting into the comments: out of the reviewers on the Forum, only one or two did not run into what we called the Groundhog Day bug (the Brom event repeating itself for no reason), while on Tumblr, only one person ran into it (and even then it was with only one of their playthrough) AS FAR AS I KNOW since I didn't get more reports. Sooo... that really sucked so see :/
Fun fact: Covid was kicking my ass while I was writing that event. Maybe it was a sign...
That bug was something I could not recreate for the life of me, nor did it appear on any savefile I was able to get my hands on (thank you again!). Unluckily for me too, this looked like it was a cache bug: yay for the code not being the culprit (Thanks Twine Discord), booo because this was something that could not really be fixed because it was not browser/extension specific (emptying the cache helped). This obviously/probably affected more people's rating of the game to no fault of my own nor theirs. Just bad luck.
The only common denominator here seem to be the IFComp website. Maybe it was the source of the issue? But at the same time I didn't get anymore reports after that... I can't say for sure until I upload the game on itch and more people raise the same issue.
Also it worked meh on tablets, my mom showed me... Impossible to click on the garnishes...
SO! I rounded all the comments I got from everywhere (save for the offline one, because they are more than bias and just said I was the best; they swore they were fair in the ratings tho) on a spreadsheet and made two columns: what worked and what didn't. I wanted to address the comments in a Post-Mortem rather than answering them on the Forum too much, partly to avoid writing in an emotional state. I will be paraphrasing below, since quite a few aspects were shared by multiple people. Overall, the reviews were quite positive, ranging from very neutral to overly positive.
The Bartending Mini-Game
Let's start with the Bartending Mixing-bit. From the reviews, it was a bit of a coin flipper. Some REALLY enjoyed the mixing aspect, and how relaxing and fun it felt; others found it too grind-y and monotonous. This is not surprising, game mechanics are very much a personal preference. Though having a randomiser during Frenzy giving you up to 9 drinks meant that someone could end up with making 20 drinks during one day... which is a lot considering the size of story.
The difficulty settings were not as challenging as it appeared, nor did it give any sense of progression in skills. While the latter was partly explained in the story (you've been a bartender for a while, you should know your stuff), it was mainly because I did not think about that at all (or how to implement it). Similarly with the Difficulty Settings, I thought the differences would be large/annoying enough between each of them, but it wasn't really [I did get some interesting ideas from the reviews tho!].
When it came to combining ingredients and serving drinks, some thought it was great fun, other felt some responses were missing. The random colours appearing can be confusing (it's just because it's fantasy ~magic~). And outside of serving drinks to named NPCs, you do not know whether you've done well when serving the drink until the end of the day (that'll be easily fixed with some notifications).
There was a little hitch with the UI, with the longer recipes requiring a bit of scrolling to find the last ingredients (I knew about that, and thought it would still be ok to be left as is, turns out not really :/ ) and some notifications not appearing (known issue with the macro used when clicking too much in a short span). Still the overall visual was really well received, and people really liked the names of drinks and how diverse they were (there were 29 when I submitted).
I also forgot cherries were not berries... I should rename the pot Red Fruits instead later...
Shoutout to the Arcade Mode being a bit of an MVP here, making people compete for highscores! (And people sending me good points to make it more fun)
The Writing
This was where I lost a lot of peeps (and for fair reasons). The biggest gripe people had was related to the writing needed a lot more proofreading/edits, as it made reading distracting at best, confusing and boring at worst. This is not new to me, I've had comments about typos on other projects too (there's even a special section to report typos in my usual bug forms...), but it was worse here because of the time constraint (inflicted on myself, having written most of the game in September). Blaming it on English being my second language is not even fair, I could have asked other people to take a look at the text {Some users in the Forum do that!}. Honestly, compared to when I started or where I was even at the start of this year... I've progressed a lot (ahem... current version of MtP still online being a whole mess and a half). I still have a lot to learn and grow in my style, but I'm getting there!
Quite a few reviews advised to cut 25% of text in each passage, as the prose was either awkward, too long, threw the pacing off, or was unnecessary. Again, not really news to me. I am a very descriptive writer, I like to go on and on about small details. [Look at this review...] Still, while I will definitely edit the text (since it is necessary), I don't think the amount of text will be cut this drastically (I like my descriptions, thank you very much :P).
On the plus side, people enjoyed the snarky and humorous tone of the story, making for a fun experience overall. Yay for keeping a consistent funny tone :D
I've had lovely compliments about the dialogue, which is amazing, because it's a thing I struggle with the most (aside from proofreading, lol). It's so hard to be sure to have distinct voices between characters (and keep that up), have a good pace/back and forth between them, etc... I think working on the EC re-writes just before (which is 95% dialogue) helped me a lot there.
The Story
I've also had positive return on the story itself, as it was playful and chill. Some even found the story immersive with cute and fun storylets. Honestly, I tried to have fun while writing. Each tit bit was framed to bring a laugh or a smile in mind. This was the tone I wanted throughout the whole game anyway, and I am glad people vibed with it. Some also found the worldbuilding intriguing (I got quite a handful of asks about it after the release).
On the other hand, some found the story having nothing to say, with a lot of missed opportunity in the theme and concepts introduced leading to nothing or being brushed off quickly. A large part of it has to do with me cutting a lot of the story to make the deadline, removing a lot of choices (because variations would require more writing and time). The rest of it being just... life. The game's story is essentially a slice-of-life. Life doesn't always make sense and is often just random. There's not point to it.
Still the replayability of the game was noted, with the amount of randomisation of the fluff text. I made sure there was enough variation for players who needed the full 14 days to complete the game (sooo much writing 😭).
Another issue related to the pacing, was with the introductions. Because I did not just do one, I made two of them. It made sense in my head, since I was probably thinking wayyyy to ahead (with all the planned aspects of the game included) and thought it would be the best way to introduce, well, everything. But it made the first day needing more than 30min to complete (which is already 1/4 of the allocated voting play per game). The first intro felt very long and required a lot of clicking (or space-bar pressing with the keybinds). Both were very disjointed with the other. And fair... after the first day, it's pretty much thought of being a bad dream (even when you meet the 4th wall character).
With how the story was written, it left very little choice for the players to have (if you disregard choosing to serve a good drink or not), with most having little consequences on the story as a whole. The only thing driving your end result was either running into a bug (fixed) or getting the required amount of gold. This was not always noted positively. Again, understandable, I had to cut a lot more than planed to make the deadline, turning the MC's agency into a very minimal state. Still, some reviewers did not mind or realised how little choice you actually have (thank you Mixing section and Characters for the distraction!).
The Characters
My pride and joy. And also more positive comments there. Almost everyone had something nice to say about the characters, whether it was finding them overall quite fun or well-constructed. There were so many lovely adjectives used about the NPCs, I was so so so so happy people liked them as much as I did.
From the storylets, the Oldie Adventurers seemed to be everyone's favourite (they were mine as well) and the 4th Wall Character got a good laugh (yay for self-deprecating humour). Getting this kind of response was SO validating.
Aside from it, the tavern's employees/boss were also well received, even if they were quite the stereotypical kinds. Hey... If it works, it works!
Some found the camaraderie between the tavern peeps touching (which works even more if you get a "good" ending). A few notes were given on the confusing appearance of Brom, which is fair because depending on the randomisation of the text you'd get introduced to him as the cook or you'd just think he'd be a weirdo doing strange things in the tavern. Similarly, the characterisation of the boss felt confusing for some, going from incompetent hardass to loving "uncle" for no reason.
At least one point in this section should be taken for the character of the Watcher. A character you only see at the start and end of the story, does not have any impact on the game aside from introducing you and asking you how you liked your run. Understandably, it was a let down. I used the character a bit as an introduction of the character (I had more MC characterisation choices in mind), with the plan of commenting more on your choices in the ending... which doesn't really happen because there are very few choices to talk about. Still, I stand by my choice of keeping the Watcher. It gives it a bit of a mystical air you'd have in a fantasy setting :P
My first idea with the Watcher was to make it a Dungeon Master and the player is a TTRPG character... but after writing it it felt way too weird, so I scrapped it.
The Interface
I don't think I've had anything but compliments about the UI and visuals of the games. From the Bar and its bottles, to the different pages, it was praised for the polish and care I gave the game. Considering I spent a lot of time on it, it was nice to hear about this. People found the interface welcoming and colourful. The UI was consistent throughout the game, and little was left to be desired. Someone even said it was the prettiest Twine game they had ever seen, while another found it having the most accomplished visual designed by pushing the rules of CSS this much.
😊
I've had good return about the accessibility points: especially the keybinding (you technically don't need a mouse to play the game), which is not often present in Choice-Based games, and the font options for ease of reading.
Aside from an obvious accessibility mistake I need to fix (the already mentioned nauseating intro gif), there was not much to add about it. It was crisp and high-production and definitely took too much time making it look the way it did.
OH: the Tarot Cards. Even if it amounted to nothing (because why would it... :P ), people liked the Tarot Cards :D
Miscellaneous Comments
Here is the part where I discuss comments I didn't know where to file.
The randomised encounters added to the bartending experience for some (since this is what would happen in real life...), but it also meant that some players did not get to see some characters. While the randomisation helped the replayability aspect, if the player did not enjoy the introduction it would have been unlikely they would press the restart button (I didn't put a fast play link for that...).
Similarly, some enjoyed the structure of each day, while others found the repetitiveness of the tasks boring. Like with the Mixing part, this might be more of a personal preference, it did not really seem to skew one way or another.
Having the Restoking event or the Tip Jar amounting to nothing was also disappointing (latter cut for time, the former only realised after I submitted the game -would need to re-edit the whole bar code to make it work as intended).
There were a few other frustrating bugs (the raised ones were taken care of as soon as I got them, but it included the gold not tracking properly, which always gave the player a bad ending), but with a game this large and complex (in the coding part), I am sure there are still some here and there. I am still dedicated to polish this game (see the final section) but some things will take a while to implement/write.
The gold tracker was set one line too high on the code page.... sigh
A last point I wanted to address here was about TTTT not knowing what kind of game it wants to be. To me it is obviously clear, since I made it, but I think I now understand why players might feel that way (I didn't when the review dropped, it even made me a bit angry, even if the comment held some truth). The game starts with a mysterious character never seen until the end, and the mystery amounts to nothing as the player is left in the dark (pun). Then, we move to a more slice-of-life-y fantasy setting with a bartending sim. Then you serve a Fortune Teller that pushes the idea of agency, which goes nowhere because there are virtually no real choices in the game. Aside from getting little to no tips, the Bartending section does not change nor indicate how you are doing. Then you flip between light-hearted storylets and others with more dark undertone. Repeat until you reach an ending. When experienced that way, yeah... what's that game about? What does it want to do? What's the point of it?
__Frankly, there's no point to the game, aside from chilling at a bar, making drinks and talk to people. Winning or losing does not mean life/death, you don't hurt anyone really (unless you make terrible drinks, but even then). It's about the vibe more than anything else. Relax and enjoy and mix some ingredients.
So, what, then?
While a very reductive and deprecating conclusion would be that my entry was all show and no substance, it would be misrepresenting a lot of positive aspects of the game. It is definitely very Show but the Substance is lacking in some part (duh, since I cut a lot) or need some extra care for it to reach what it should have been.
I kinda shot myself in the foot by focusing so much time/effort on making sure the bartending experience and UI was not only working fine but that it was visually pleasing, since it meant rushing through writing a whole game in such short amount of time. It might have given quite a few player too high of an expectation on what the game would be (though I tried to warn it in my blurb that it was more of a chill type of game). I was too ambitious with what I wanted to do with this game, especially more in the time frame. It happened in other Jams (for EC and SPS IH). Unfortunately, it didn't pay off here.
A huge saving grace, it seemed, was found in the characters (outside of the Watcher and maybe the Fortune Teller). Had they not be charming or interesting, TTTT would have done much worse than it did.
Overall, it worked for some people and not for others. Even if it didn't work for some, they were kind enough to leave me extensive reviews about what didn't work for them and what they would have done to enhance the gameplay (thk u 💚). And even when it worked, I got some lovely suggestions to make the game even better.
But how did I handle it all?
I did not, because I never do :P
With this edition of the IFComp being my first, it was honestly nerve-wracking. The IFComp is considered the SuperBowl/Olympics of IF and amazing pieces of IF have been released during the previous editions. Before I submitted mine, I knew a few other participants who had submitted before were planning on having an entry (and I really like their works). It was also going to be my first time getting reviews outside of essentially the "chill" Tumblr/Itch crowd. I had seen those long reviews on IFDB around Comp season and honestly it scared me a bit (even if everyone were so very lovely).
As the reviews were dropping in, I was wondering if maybe I should have forgone submitting (or even withdrawing), spent more time on the game (I really should have) and submitted at the SpringThing instead. My entry had nothing to say, it was just there, sipping on a cocktail and enjoying the vibes. This feeling got increasingly worse when I played other entries and compared my work to theirs (so many amazing ones).
My goal was to reach the top-half of the ranking (this year, the lowest ranking for half would have been 35?). Half-way through October, I was dead-sure that I wouldn't even reach that rank. Now that we are hours away from the Voting Deadline, I think it will be just fine. It won't be so good that I will reach top 10, but that reasonable starting goal will be doable. Though I might be a tad disappointed if I don't...
B- Results and Further Comments
It is now Sunday 20th. The results dropped yesterday... 37th out of 70. Honestly, I can't hide I was disappointed a tad. I was this close to reach my goal (by 2 spots). I think I am more disappointed I was so close to this goal and didn't reach it more than I didn't rank high.
For anyone interested (though I already posted it yesterday, this is a screenshot of how the voting went:
I was kinda surprised to see 1s and 2s in there. Though, sure if judges played during the first days, when I was still ironing out some bugs, it's understandable. There was even someone in the anonymous comments who encountered that Ground-hog Day bug (I wonder if they left a review, because I didn't receive anything about this one outside of the reviews/one ask on Tumblr). Someone else had ran into a strange bug with the Fortune teller has well (again never heard about this one either...). Of course, everyone has their metrics... but 1 is pretty much unplayable/doesn't belong in the Comp... and I don't know. It's not sitting right with me because TTTT doesn't feel like either?
_ _ At the end, everyone has an opinion. If they really hated the experience, so be it. You can't please everyone... *shrug*
Looking at the curve, I was a tinsy disappointed there were not 10s, it would have made the curve so much more satisfying to watch... I think my family's votes looked too much like spam as well (or they didn't fill in their form correctly), cause they ranted their score was not there after I sent them the result. Bless them, they tried.
Regarding the anonymous comments, there wasn't much that stood out that hadn't been spelt out for me in the reviews/direct feedback: UI great, story meh, atmosphere is nice, needs more proofreading/pruning of the text, bartending is fun/tedious (this is really a coin toss damn). My favourite comment: as-is it's borderline unreadable.
The most interesting comment I got out of it was whether my entry should be considered a point-and-click rather than interactive fiction. I think I understand where that reviewer is coming from: you lack interactivity/choice during the story bits, and that is compensated by the bar mini-game being, well, point to the bottle and click to serve. Still, I would love to discuss more about this with that reviewer (or anyone really). Is point-and-click IF?
So how did I handle that?
Meh. Again, disappointed. Can't lie about feelings. I thought I had done a better of a job than I did (according to the judging scores). Even looking at the reviews/feedback I had gotten on IFDB/Forum, I thought I had done better. My gut feeling half-way through the voting period was correct, after all (damn it! it always is...).
But having written 95% of this post just before the results dropped was surprisingly cathartic and brought a lot of perspective on the whole experience. It was obvious where my entry lacked and where it shined. At the end, you get a overall mediocre entry (as in of only moderate quality). It made sense for it to end up where it did. Like I said previously, I was over-ambitious, and that really didn't work in my favour, because I didn't have the stuff to back it up.
Sure it was disappointing to see my entry scoring so low/not be a favourite, but weirdly... it didn't last long? I checked the voting pattern, the anonymous feedback, talked with a few peeps, had some some food, a nice hot drink, and went back to business as usual.
Maybe it will hit me later...
Anyway, I'll just finish this part with saying that my family was more mad about the ranking than I was. Not because I didn't do better than I did, but because they couldn't believe other people didn't have the same opinion about the game than they did.
Quote from my mom: This is the first time I've liked a game.
That's one of my wins right there (that and the stickers we are getting :P).
IV- What's the future for TTTT?
Like I mentioned above, the reviews and interaction I had on Tumblr gave be a bunch of ideas/suggestions for the next step of this game. I don't know the timeline for the intended update or how I will update the game (in one go or in chunks - probably the latter) or how the code may need to change (it definitely will need some sort of overhaul). There is A LOT of work ahead of me.
So now, I have multiple To-Do lists: one created while I was working on TTTT before I submitted it and one after the Comp deadline. The first included ideas I would have while writing or coding and items that I could not include in the game because of time. The second were ideas I would get while getting returns/impressions, suggestions sent/in reviews, and stemming from discussions I've had with players. {Not every comment I've received in the reviews will make me change that particular aspect, but even those gave me ideas.}
Here's a non exhaustive list** of the first one:
Obviously adding the missing NPCs (both the one-timers and recurring ones).
Adding more choices while talking to those NPCs (eg: stopping them from doing something, giving unsolicited advice, etc...) and giving each of them an Ending.
More drinks! {would require a few new bottles and merging the Soda ones together}
Reloop the Restart to the Story Screen as a NewGame+ Function.
Adding Music for the ~ vibes ~
Creating an Achievement list and have more stats trackers.
Creating a Highscore page for the Arcade Mode.
More MC Customisation (as an option to do, it won't have any consequence/effect on the story, just for the lolz of it all).
Redesign the Menu to look more like a Bar Menu (and includes the name/link to the real drink).
Adding a Codex Page for NPC's encountered (maybe an achievement too).
More fluff text!
Adding the missing Events (Stolen Tip Jar/Knock on the sign combo among others)
Maybe try to scale it for mobile (v unlikely with the size of the bar)
And here's the non exhaustive list** of the second one:
Have a more detailed tutorial explaining the combined bottles and where to find/what to find in the Guarnish box.
The Restocking Mini-Game to include penalties (bottle not available until restock/next day), except on Easy Difficulty.
Re-work on the Difficulty Setting: make the Hard Time harder, Recipe not available on Hard (only in the Menu list), Hard Mode could have measurements instead of one click-bottle.
Adding a Setting for a fixed amount of drinks during Frenzy/Rush time.
The bottles in the Bar appear randomly (time/space).
Look into substitution of ingredients {the code would need to change drastically, depending on the recipes might not even be possible...}
Make the Umbrella do something (extra tips?)
Arcade Mode-TIMED: perfect drinks add time to the timer, really bad ones removes time.
Proofread and edit the text (obviously, but no cuts!).
Give a choice to play all 14 days (which will be fixed to 14 days when I introduce the Recurring NPCs)
After finding the Tip Jar, only give one choice: display or hide it, rather than leave the option to change your mind (that confused people)
Have something to do with the coins if you get too much (this started from a bug where the gold wasn't tracked properly)
**It's mainly non-exhaustive because I have a bunch of post-its with ideas and it's not organised yet.
If you are reading this and thought of an interesting thing I could add to the game, do shoot me a message! I welcome it all!
V- Some fun tit bits...
Here are some random thing about the game/process that didn't make the cut in the novel above.
95% of the drinks are actual drinks, and as close to the recipe I could get them. I spent hours looking at recipes, and I even made a few while making the game.
Renaud's Nightmare is named after a disgusting concoction mentioned in Exquisite Cadaver (referencing my own work :P).
For a few weeks, I went back and forth between keeping the bar as is (one click on a bottle) or making it more like VA-11-HALL-4 (5 ingredients, different measurements). It was worse when I was fighting my code.
MelS (my writer for TTATEH) helped me name half of the drinks and of the characters (including NPCs not in the game currently). He also had to suffer through my various attempts at making the page look good (his go-to responses: I don't know what looks good or not, it's fine and both versions look good, why do I have to choose? You know this stuff better than me.).
I've been on a Terry Pratchett binge since May-ish, and it inspired the humour of TTTT to be a bit more over the top than I would have probably done otherwise. The Last Continent was one of the reasons I gave the MC an Australian accent.
All bottle ingredients had at least 2 versions: plain colours and the current 3D-looking version with shading and a cap/cork.
There are over 120 assets/images in this game, 3/4 of them being the glasses.
VI- In Conclusion
You've reached the end of this post. Thank you for playing reading! I hope you enjoyed the ride and I hope to see you again when progress on the new version finally starts. Like during the making of TTTT's Comp version, it will be well documented on this blog. In the meantime, you can find the game on itch now!
Thank you to everyone who played my entry, voted for it, left a review or a comment, and interacted with me on this long/short journey!
I don't think I'll participate next year tho... I am exhausted. Well... unless I get a good idea until then... I should try to make a smaller game this time...
#tttt#the thick table tavern#postmortem#ifcomp#ifcomp2022#game dev#twine#twine game#retrospective#gosh I hope I don't sound whiny in this#I promise I am not bitter
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⭐️!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
directors cut || open
where the heart is
my first fic back in the fandom, my second nalu/fairy tail fic ever (don't ask to read the first one. it's bad and it doesn't exist anywhere on the internet or my files anymore). i definitely feel that i have improved everything about my writing since then but im still super fond of it.
i have a lot of "old ideas" which usually refers to stuff i came up with about august/september of last year before i started writing, but this is an old idea; i came up with it about june 2020 when i went through another brief fairy tail phase but never ended up writing it until over two years later.
the first couple paragraphs were written on a google doc on my phone while i was sat on a swing at a park which was my go-to way of coming up with ideas in what i call the "pre-hailey era". there's definitely others on The List that i've come up with on that exact swing (it's always the same one btw, the others are too creaky and i can feel the vibrations when i swing. +1 to autism). i think of my published stuff i definitely came up with the idea for alcohol free that way, but i think also author's note and a little bit of peace and quiet.
the summary comes from a sign we have outside our front door that says "a home without a cat is just a house" because we are cat people. i saw it during the process of writing it and it made me think about how lucy considers natsu's house as more of her home than her own because that's where the people who care about her are.
A wide variety of mugs had been placed haphazardly on the shelf, indicating to her who might have last been in charge of emptying the dishwasher. But right at the front was her favourite mug; a deep navy blue with bright gold stars etched into the shapes of constellations. It sat between one with a picture of a dragon on it, whose paint had faded and chipped over the years, and a novelty World’s No. 1 Dad mug.
this paragraph i really tried my best to foreshadow where she was without having to say it out loud. this isn't an apartment or a flat, this is a family's home. the dragon mug obviously belongs to natsu and the world's no. 1 dad mug is igneel's, which i imagine natsu and wendy gave to him at some point.
the way they're not neatly put away is my way of indicating that these are frequently used and that natsu is terribly lazy when it comes to putting away the dishes. i also imagine he deliberately puts lucy's at the front because he knows she uses it every morning.
The house was quiet, and quaint, nothing at all like the extravagancy she had known her whole life. Just a small family home, enough to house four people, and perhaps, a guest during the warm summer months. Lucy had grown so familiar with it over the years, she knew it, and its inhabitants better than her own.
this section is really what the whole fic is about. in canonverse lucy's home isn't the place she came from and the place she grew up and it never really was; her home is with fairy tail because that's where her family is. the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb and all that.
in this au there is no fairy tail, but that doesn't stop her from having her second home that she considers to be her real home. even though she has an extravagant home, and probably plenty of holiday houses, lucy would always choose to spend her summer (and probably every other moment of her free time) with natsu and his family.
Soft footsteps indicated that someone else had finally woken up, and if Lucy hadn’t already memorised the routines of everyone else in the house, she would most certainly still recognise the light and airy steps as they approached.
this is the line that really inspired the whole fic. it was the idea that lucy had become so familiar with this home and its inhabitants that she not only knew everyone's routine, but she had also become apart of it. she knows it's wendy coming because she knows wendy is always the first to wake up after her.
my headcanons have changed since writing this; i don't think lucy is a morning person, so much as she really wishes she was, but i do still think wendy is early to sleep and early to rise.
They had established this routine so long ago, it almost made Lucy nostalgic. She recalled a time when Wendy was younger and the sofa she sat on almost swallowed her whole. Both were showing their age now; Wendy’s feet could finally touch the ground as she sat, and the chair showed visible signs of wear, with the once bright upholstery now sun-bleached, and the fabric at the leg frayed from where it acted as Happy’s scratching post.
i really like modern au's that make natsu and wendy siblings of some sort. i think she, lucy and natsu make up a fun trio of girl who hangs out with her older brother and his much cooler girlfriend.
here i wanted to portray the idea that natsu and lucy have been friends for a long time even before they became romantically involved. if i had written this nowadays i think this part would have been much longer and much more detailed lol.
i think the idea of an old fraying couch also makes a home feel really lived in which juxtaposes the life lucy knows back home. she lives in a massive estate, but there's no way that she's "living" in the entire thing. she probably mostly stays confined to her bedroom, while the other rooms mostly stay untouched and any wear and tear on the furniture is immediately fixed or replaced.
"Oi, son!" Igneel called out, "are you bothering your poor old girlfriend again?" his voice was loud and booming, perhaps too much so for the occasion.
Like father like son, she supposed.
His comment seemed to get a rise out of Natsu though, almost certainly what he was going for, and both Lucy and Wendy couldn’t help the laugh that escaped them.
while i have set rules for the way i write natsu and lucy to make sure i'm keeping them in character, i have a bit more creative freedom with igneel, especially in a modern au where he's not a literal dragon. i think he and natsu have the relationship where he knows his son is a pain in the ass, and even though he loves him very much, he's going to make sure that he knows that.
i'd like to write another fic in this au elaborating on igneel and lucy's relationship because i wholly, genuinely believe he would really like her and lucy would feel that igneel is the father figure she never had.
"You can’t just go round causing that girl grief all the time," he jests as Natsu pulls at his arm, struggling to escape from his grasp. "I don’t think you’d know how to survive on your own if she left."
natsu provides lucy with a lot of love and stability, but lucy provides him with the exact same. she's so important in his life that even igneel, the other most important person in his life and the one who has seen him grow up into the person he is, is well aware of it.
like i mentioned before, i do think igneel likes lucy and i think he wants their relationship to work out because they're good for each other and he wants to see both of them be happy.
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WIP Your Heart Out 2023: EXTENSION Posting Sign-Ups (8/01-8/15)
WIPYHO authors and artists who took extensions! It's time to pick your posting dates! While the extension creation period is only just beginning, now is the time to prepare for when you want to post!
Picking these dates now will help give you an idea of just how much longer you have left to work on your piece(s)! You still have plenty of time to get through your pieces though, so don't stress! And as a reminder for authors, if you do end up not being able to complete within the final weeks of the event, that's okay! So long as you got the minimum requirement of 10k words, you are very much still a part of this event and your fic will be included in the final wrap up!
The point of this event, after all, is progress, and even an incomplete fic that's made progress counts for this! And you still get a lovely accompanying piece of art too! So it's a win-win!
As mentioned in the FAQ and in the original on-time posting sign-ups, the posting date you sign up with is when you will begin posting your fic, so make sure that first new update is polished and ready to go, and any accompanying art is finished and inserted into the text of your story on Ao3 on that day.
One-Shots: super easy and straight forward! Just post your one-shot as you normally would on the day you've chosen.
Multi-Chaptered: begin posting your fic on the day you've chosen. Set yourself an update schedule that works for you based on the number of chapters you have left to post and the time frame of the posting period. If you need to post during the extension period, that is okay! Just let me know. If your fic has more chapters than there are weeks of the posting period, again, just let me know. Any chapters posted outside of the posting period will still be shared and do not discount that you've finished the fic for the event.
Partially Completed: if you did not drop out, but weren't able to finish your fic in full yet still got a minimum of 10k words written during the event, you are able to share your fic for the event and include it in the Ao3 collection. Just be sure to contact me to let me know. Post what you have beginning on the posting date you choose.
Make sure when you pick a posting date you confirm with your artist the date works for them too. Longer form fics with a longer posting time will have more leeway in the completion process, and that means the art will too. Discuss your posting schedule with the artist, make sure the date works for you, and then submit the form.
If anything comes up after you've filled out the form, no worries! Just send a message to @puregaalee and we'll figure it out!
This form will also feature an option to request an extension should either you or your artist need one!
Please be sure to fill this form out by August 15th! Available dates are first-come-first-serve! If you end up needing to change your date to a later date, either within the original on-time posting period or the extension period, that is perfectly fine! There are only five fics in need of an extension, so there should be plenty of dates to choose from!
You can check the available posting dates here.
-POSTING SIGN-UP FORM-
Reminder: This form is for authors only, however, the dates should be discussed with your artist.
Congratulations, everyone! No matter how much you've completed, you did a great job and should be proud!
-PGL
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based off of taylor swift’s song style
a/n → welcome to the first part of style!! if you guys enjoy this i can for sure come up with a more permanent updating schedule. like i said, i came up with this idea pretty suddenly. let me know to be added to the taglist, interaction is always encouraged if you like!!! it lets me know you guys want more parts
summary → he’s the quarterback of the cincinnati bengals, a worldwide heartthrob with an ego the size of lake erie—but does he have the heart to match it? you’re the bengals newest cheerleader, desperate to prove how much you deserve your spot on the team. it doesn’t take much to catch the eye of joe burrow, however that isn’t necessarily a good thing when you’re told that any romantic relations between cheerleaders and players is strictly prohibited.
warnings → strong language, alcohol use, mention of injury, nsfw content
word count → 4.1k
reblog and leave some comments if you enjoy!!!
SERIES MASTERLIST
Chapter 1
After a rigorous auditioning process with over a thousand girls trying to earn their spot on the Bengal’s Cheerleading Squad, only forty made the cut. Most returners, some new like yourself. You’d watched girls break bones, continuing to audition on them to have a shot on the squad. Many left in tears, cut and sent home with hardly any reason why.
There was a little bit of metaphorical survivor’s guilt after you’d made the team, knowing this wasn’t your dream like it was for some others. This was only a season or two commitment for you while you finished up your last year of college. Then you’d become a teacher, something you’d had a passion for over the years. Cheerleading was more so a hobby, you’d danced all of your life and had cheered in high school. This wasn’t going to be your livelihood, nor did it offer you the funds to live off of for more than a short while.
There were plenty of rules to follow, many of which had you questioning if this was truly what you wanted. The handbook they’d given you was thick, although some of the girls had told you that they’d lessened up on the requirements over the years after a lawsuit had been filed. In the end, it wasn’t so bad. Tedious, but still a very surreal experience.
From about April to the middle of July, it was practice twice a week from 7:30 at night to about 11. There was a separate facility used to work and condition through the colder months, just following the Super Bowl. Once pre-season truly began, the whole team moved practice facilities. This put you in the same place as the Bengals practiced, giving you more field time than gym time to get acclimated. It was different, especially due to the fact that players and cheerleaders were placed at an arms length most of the time.
The afternoon of the first practice at the new stadium, you’d all been given the talk. This was basically your coaches and executives way of saying that if anyone found out that anyone off the squad had anything more than a friendly, professional relationship with one of the players—they’d be either cut or sanctioned. It was bad for the image of the team, making it bad for those in charge.
It shouldn’t have been a problem.
That first night practice in August was tough, you were coming off of a sprained ankle and the heat was blistering even at 8 at night. Amanda, your head coach, sent you inside to grab some ice from the athletic trainer to bring back out to the field. There was a stigma around the coaching and treatment of NFL cheerleaders, but you’d mostly had a decent experience so far. Your coaches did care that you were healthy and equipped to cheer.
Adorned in a slightly baggy Bengals T-shirt and spandex, you walked through the empty halls of the mostly deserted facility. The players had just ended their practice about an hour earlier, you watched them all exit into the locker room. That meant that mostly everyone had called it a night, heading home. The cheerleaders stayed late because practice was meant to be after work or class, it wasn’t a full-time job.
The door to the athletic trainers office was slightly ajar, the light on. Pushing it open slightly, you stepped in with furrowed eyebrows and a curious look. On the large medical table, ice in hand, sat Joe Borrow still in his practice jersey and shorts. The office was empty besides him, trainer nowhere to be seen.
He was a good looking guy, you’d give him that. Maybe it was the fact that he was 6’4 or maybe it was the fact that he was really fucking good at his sport. He looked up at you and gave a friendly grin, laying the ice on his knee.
“Emily said she was heading home about a half hour ago, her kid was sick or something so she had to pick him up from the babysitter,” Joe told you politely. “I came in just as she was like walking out, she just told me to lock up the office when I was done.”
Someone was clearly a rambler.
“Yeah,” you nodded. “I was just going to grab some ice.”
He nodded and went silent while you walked over to the ice maker, taking the plastic scooper and putting some of it into a plastic bag. He was still looking at you, making it obvious as you saw him from your peripheral. Twisting the bag, you felt slightly awkward just standing there in silence.
“I’m Joe,” he spoke again.
“Y/N,” you turned back towards him. “It’s nice to meet you.”
He extended a hand towards you, smiling as you took it and shook it softly. When you broke from his grip, he remained looking at you. He was definitely one of those people who looked you right in the eyes through the entire conversation. You didn’t know if this made you particularly uncomfortable or slightly excited.
“You’re a cheerleader.”
“Was that a question?” You chuckled, “I think that’s pretty obvious.”
“No, no. I was kind of just thinking out loud.”
He was easily flustered, that much was obvious. He repositioned the bag of ice and looked back up at you with slightly pink cheeks. This made you want to crack a grin, feeling like you were talking to a boy for the first time ever or something.
“I should head back to practice,” you told him, watching him slowly nod in understanding.
“Yeah, of course,” Joe smiled. “It was nice meeting you, Y/N.”
Walking out of the athletic trainer’s office felt somewhat like developing a crush in sixth grade of sorts. With hot cheeks, you could not get him out of your head for the remainder of practice. Whether it was his stupid hair or his stupid shit-eating grin, or his stupidly toned body.
The drive home was only a twenty-five minute stretch of turning back the interaction in your mind over and over with Phoebe Bridgers playing lightly in the background. Pulling into your apartment complex garage was when you’d finally resorted to telling yourself to leave it be and take a cold shower. This boy was not worth thinking too hard about.
You turned the key over and cut the vehicle off, grabbing your phone and cheer bag to head to the elevator. The walk up was somewhat somber after a hard practice with a racing mind.
By the time you’d made it up to your front door, you glanced down at your phone to check the time. There were several unopened notifications, nothing out of the ordinary at first glance. One immediately stuck out to you, though.
joeyb_9 started following you.
“What the fuck,” you mumbled to yourself, nearly dropping your keys as you unlocked the door.
There was a small part of you that was excited by this, he was one of the most sought after players in the NFL—who wouldn’t be a bit flattered? Only there was a small part of you that wondered why he was going out of his way to search up your instagram.
Setting your phone down, you resorted to making yourself a quick dinner. Watching your phone light up from where you stood across the kitchen making yourself a wrap was slightly unnerving.
Once you finally couldn’t resist any longer, you sauntered over to grab your phone off of the island. He’d sent you two DMs. One right after the other.
@joeyb_9: Hey
@joeyb_9: It’s Joe.
This boy was either extremely humble or just plain stupid. His ability to continue to tell you that it was Joe—like you wouldn’t know who Joe Burrow was.
@y/n.y/l/n: I’m aware
@y/n.y/l/n: Missing me already?
@joeyb_9: Maybe…
There was a slight pause in between his next message, you weren’t sure what to say to that. This was already pretty bizarre and very against the code of conduct you signed at the start of your cheer season.
@joeyb_9: Sorry if this is weird
@y/n.y/l/n: That you’re sliding into my dms lol?
@joeyb_9: Is that what this is??
@y/n.y/l/n: You use that on all the girls, Joe?
@joeyb_9: Would you believe me if I said no?
@y/n.y/l/n: Probably not lmfao
@joeyb_9: That’s fair, I probably wouldn’t either
This was the point in the conversation where you always wondered what to do. It also was pretty obvious that you were not the only girl Joe Burrow probably private messaged on instagram. He’d probably long forget about you by morning and the few hours of your stomach doing backflips at every message would cease.
@y/n.y/l/n: Alright, I’m headed to bed.
@y/n.y/l/n: Was nice meeting you earlier. Have a goodnight!
@joeyb_9: Goodnight, Y/N :)
The smiley face was only slightly scream inducing. He was a nice guy, but he was not just any guy. This was the type of guy that charms you straight into bed and is gone before you wake up. This was what you reminded yourself at least.
-
The next day was fairly simple, the thought of Joe escaping you almost entirely by lunch. Classes hadn’t yet begun, making it easy for you to go out with girlfriends and get your mind off of any failed talking stages or unattainable guys like Joe Burrow.
“He’s hot as fuck, though,” Lena said, eyes closed as she laid on a towel beside you.
It was a lake day, the heat beading down on the both of you as you felt the sun on your bikini clad skin. On your right and left was Lena and Sydney, both close friends from college. Lena had been your freshman year roommate.
“He is,” Sydney agreed. “Plus, I mean, you can’t say you didn’t think about it a little bit when you started cheering for the Bengals.”
“Okay, screw you!” You laughed. “It’s not some fucking erotica, I don’t cheer hoping to sleep with one of the players.”
“Kind of a turn on, though,” Lena hummed.
Once the three of you had made it onto Lena’s boyfriend’s party barge, you broke out the Mike’s Hard and Twisted Tea. This only led to endless giggling about Joe and pretty much any guy they’d heard you have spoken to since high school.
Living in Ohio had its faults, like the fact that there was no ocean. Lake days on the boat weren’t so bad, though. Sydney had a gift for taking hot pictures too. Her camera skills truly did capture your ass at its best, and your skin glowing.
“Post those,” Lena told you. “See if Mr. Joe Sheisty will like them.”
“He won’t,” you sighed. “He definitely was just fucking around last night.”
They both rolled their eyes and sat back as the boat bobbled a little. While the idea of entertaining Joe was slightly enticing, it was so against the rules and you really couldn’t afford to get kicked off the squad before the first actual game of the season.
The alcohol kind of skewed your judgement, though. Making it fairly easy for you to post the bikini pictures and keep refreshing the likes. You weren’t necessarily proud, but it was hard to resist the urge to match his energy of private messaging you.
A few hours after you made it home, the notification popped up on your screen. You were midway through stretching to work on your routine for your next practice.
joeyb_9 liked your post.
@joeyb_9: Would it be wrong to tell you how gorgeous you are?
This just about sent you over the edge. You’d thought your days of dms from Joe Burrow were done and the novelty would’ve worn off after he’d slept on it.
@y/n.y/l/n: Slightly wrong
@joeyb_9: Fine by me
Swiping out of the instagram app, you decided that you needed to continue your stretch and practice. There was a night practice tomorrow and you couldn’t afford to show up unprepared, this would only end in worse things than flirting with Joe.
Between ab exercises and strength training, you’d been able to glance down at your phone with no more texts received. Of course, you had left him on read. It was pretty obvious his intentions, though. At least it seemed it.
-
Practice was strenuous, it was only three nights of the weeks so the coaches made sure to push each girl to their limit each night. By the last thirty minutes of practice, your ankle was on fire.
They’d made you run through the stunting over and over again, launching you into the air and cradling you over and over again. The stadium lights were gleaming onto you, your face coated in a thin layer of perspiration.
Through your peripheral, you could see Joe leaning against the doorframe of the stadium support office. He was pretending to scroll through his phone, glancing up and watching every couple of seconds. The players had a practiced later tonight, but still had been done for over forty five minutes.
Every time they sent you up, you were reminded of your distractions. A coach would yell to point your toes, or smile bigger, or suck in harder. Physically, you were exhausted. Mentally, you had already checked out of practice completely.
“Did any of you see Joe?” Carolina asked in a hushed voice, picking up her things as practice ended, ready to head inside. “He was watching for like a half hour.”
“Really?” Johnna smirked. “Alright, which one of you is he sleeping with? I won’t tell, I just have to know,” she teased.
The girls continued to discuss it bashfully all the way inside. Joe was nowhere to be seen, making you wonder if he’d even been there to watch you at all. Truly, you were feeding your own delusions. There were so many girls on the team, he was bound to find interest in the group as a whole. That was sort of the whole appeal.
Just as you finished up showering in the locker room, you heard the ding of your phone. Another message from Joe.
@joeyb_9: Hey, I’m in the parking lot. Down for getting something to eat?
The overwhelming feeling of excitement and guilt passed over you. This was so against the rules, and this guy was such a player. It was not worth it, but a part of you didn’t care. You were only twenty one once, wasn’t this the kind of thing you did.
@y/n.y/l/n: Give me like 10 minutes
He liked the message, giving you some time to slip into the white dress you’d thrown in the bag. It was kind of wrinkled, the type of thing you’d put over a bikini leaving the beach. The true definition of a sundress. There were Birks at the bottom of your bag. The August heat was still very sticky and humid, even at almost midnight.
There wasn’t much else in your bag, you let your hair down from its claw clip and used the mascara in your bag to at least lift your lashes. Some Glossier cloud paint and brow gel and you were left with nothing else really. It wasn’t often you needed to do much to your face after practice. You mostly had the few things you did for morning practices before classes.
The walk out to his car was slightly dehumanizing, knowing how badly you were breaking the rules right now. He had turned his headlights off, inside dark and hard to see from an outside perspective. He’d messaged you that he was in a black Porsche, which was telling.
Once you opened the door and the small yellow light came on, you could see him in a white T-shirt and black sweatpants. His hair was familiarly slicked back, smirk on his face as he watched you step in.
“You’re going to bring me back to pick up my car, right?” You asked, knowing your car would reside in the parking lot until you came back.
“Yes,” he laughed. “I’ll bring you back to grab your car.”
The car smelled very fresh, you threw you cheer bag in his backseat. It laid next to his football bag, his practice jersey crumbled up and stuffed in carelessly.
He put the car in reverse and pulled out of the lot. It was a comfortable silence for about a minute before he began babbling about watching you practice. You’d never heard a boy so enthused to know about stunting and what it meant to be a flyer.
“What if they drop you, though?” He looked over at you. “Does that happen ever?”
“Well—yes. I kind of just have to get back up and try again or some other girl will take the flyer position. It’s not really something I can control.”
“That’s like crazy,” he mumbled, fully serious.
His radio hummed the sound of Pink Floyd, making you grin. He was a fan of older rock. That, you wouldn’t have guessed. Joe tapped his fingers along the steering wheel, smiling every time he saw you looking at him.
“Do you like Mcdonald’s?” He asked, ready to put his blinker on and pull into the drive thru.
“Yeah,” you chuckled. “Who doesn’t?”
He got up to the menu and glanced over it for a second, looking to you for what you wanted. As you told him, he laughed at you for not wanting a burger. This made you teasingly shove him in the arm.
“Welcome to Mcdonald’s. What can I get for you?”
“Alright,” Joe started. “Can I get a Double Quarter Pounder with onions, a large fry, and a large chocolate shake. Then can I get a ten piece chicken nugget and a large Dr. Pepper.”
“Will that be all?”
“Yeah, that’s gonna be it.”
Joe pulled up, still laughing about the fact that you went through a drive thru and got chicken nuggets on purpose. He slid his wallet out of his back pocket, giving you a funny look when you tried to hand him your card.
Pulling up to the first window, he gave the woman his debit card. You turned away from the window, making sure if she did recognize Joe, she would not be able to make out your face. While it was unlikely, it was just too risky. You did the same at the next window, Joe pulling the bag into the car and setting both drinks into the cup holder.
“Alright, I got a good spot to eat,” he said.
Cincinnati had plenty of spots you were unaware of, so when he continued to drive you out of the main part of the city, you were blissfully unaware of where you were. Either this was a ploy to murder you, or he just really liked surprises. After all, you were the one who got into his car.
Once he finally parked at the location, it was pushing one in the morning. It was a deserted lookout, a beautiful view of Cincinnati. The city looked lit up from this view, making your smile at that the gesture.
“The food might be slightly cold by now, but I really just wanted to bring you up here,” he said with a sigh as he sucked down the last of his milkshake.
“Here, have some,” you chuckled and handed him your soda.
The two of you ate, looking out at the city. The small talk was nice, he asked about cheerleading and you asked about football. Joe told you about his family and you asked about his hobbies. By the time you’d been sitting for a half hour, you were trying to throw french fries into his mouth without missing.
“So, if you don’t mind me asking,” you laughed nervously. “Why did you want me to come here with you, Joe? I mean, it’s all really nice and I’ve had a great time. Just why?”
He was silent for a moment, taking a sip from your soda. The question was kind of sudden, but you had to know. You’d only met a few days before, and this guy definitely had no trouble picking up women. So why you?
“Honestly, I just haven’t been able to get you out of my head,” he chuckled. “As stupid as that sounds out loud. I knew you might not go for this, but I thought maybe it’d be worth asking you.”
Your stomach flipped, his hair falling slightly into his eyes. The swell of his arms underneath that white T-shirt. This guy was insanely good looking, and maybe he was just saying what you wanted to hear, but you did really want to hear it.
Now, it wasn’t necessarily a good idea to look at him the way you were. It was impossible not to, though. Like clockwork, he was leaning into you full force and you let your hands go to his hair. His lips were hard on yours, desperate and hot. It was one of those kisses that wasn’t gentle nor rough, but completely and incandescently full of desperation.
Letting your hands slide down his body, you pulled at the white shirt, letting him know it was okay to run his hands up and down your torso. There was a middle console between you, making it hard to truly do much.
“Backseat?” You pulled away.
“Are you sure?” He asked, breathing heavy with swollen lips.
You nodded, he got out of the driver side and threw both bags in the front. Slipping back from the passenger seat, he got in through the back door. Immediately you’d both found each other again, bodies on fire. He let you get on top, straddling his thighs and kissing his throat.
Soon his hands found your breasts, leaving you to let our breathy whimpers. His lips were soon on your neck, sucking hard enough that it might leave a mark. You couldn’t find it in yourself to care, pulling his shirt off and letting him do the same with your dress.
Left in your underwear and bra, his fingers grazed overtop of the fabric. His name left your lips in pleas, making his erection grow increasingly more obvious. He was watching you rock back and forth on his fingers, the windows of the car steamy.
“Fuck me,” you breathed. “Please, Joe. Fuck me.”
He unclasped your bra, letting his lips trail from your pulse point at the throat down to your collarbone, then to the bud of your nipple. He played with the other with his fingers, leaving you a whimpering mess. He felt you grind on his clothed erection, sending him into a spiraling mess as he sucked harder and harder, fingers slipping underneath the fabric and inside of you.
Eventually, when you couldn’t take it anymore, you pulled at the waistband of his sweatpants and let him help you to pull them down his thighs. He wore white Calvin Kleins’s, cock very clearly erect and begging to be let out from the constriction.
He slipped his fingers out and took the hem of the underwear, tearing the fabric in half. This made you slap his arm, muttering something about how those were Aerie and expensive.
“I’ll get you another pair,” he kissed you again.
You sat up on top of him, aligning yourself and letting his length sink into you. There was sweat dripping off of both of you, burying your head into his neck.
“Fuck, Y/N,” he groaned. “Yeah, just like that. Good girl.”
It was like nothing mattered except for this moment, you weren’t thinking about the consequences of your actions, or why it was wrong. He steadied your hips and held your jaw, looking you in the eyes at each thrust until you both came undone. Neither of you had regulated breathing, the whole car smelled like a mix of sex and his cologne.
“Fuck,” you sighed, head dropping onto his shoulder.
Slowly, you got off of his lap and let the realization of what you’d just done hit you. Here you were, in the back seat of Joe Burrow’s Porsche, having just had car sex. Now you had no underwear as well.
He pulled his underwear and sweatpants up, looking over at you and pushing his hair back out of his eyes. There was something funny about the entire situation, making you nearly bust into a fit of giggles.
“Are you laughing?” He teased.
“A little,” you laid your head against the seat.
He leaned forward and grabbed the Dr. Pepper from the middle console, taking a long sip and holding it out to you. You were pretty sure this wasn’t one of the five love languages, but it worked nonetheless.
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#joe burrow fluff#joe burrow x reader#joe burrow imagines#joe burrow blurb#joe burrow imagine#joe burrow smut#joe burrow fan fic#joe burrow series#joe burrow x yn#joe sheisty#joe burrow#joe burrow x oc#joe burrow blurbs#elle’s fics
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For the fanfic writer ask game: 6, 10, 11, 17, 29, 48, 63, 94
oh wow!! so many!!! thank you so much! ♥️ i will answer these lovely questions below the cut 👍
6 ~ do you have any kind of consistent writing schedule or just hoping for the best?
tbh it’s mostly hoping for the best. in general, i can usually squeeze some time out from like 8pm-11:30pm. sometimes if life is forgiving, i can get a generous 4pm-midnight window, but usually i’m so exhausted from all my morning shenanigans, i don’t do a whole lot of writing in these free-time chunks. i’m hoping by august i’ll have some free mornings and i can get back into my full groove again!
10 ~ at what point in the process do you come up with titles, and how easy or hard is that for you?
there are two options. either i come up with the title immediately as i’m writing it, (01746, a gift and a curse, happy belated, king of karaoke, negotiations). the other option is staring at the empty title box in the ao3 posting form for an hour trying to magically come up with a title. (broken fingers hold tightest, broken hearts bleed brightest, donut miss your chance!, rise & shine, temptation, torment and tangerines). seems like i have more trouble naming newer stories for some reason. 🤷
11 ~ what’s something neat you’ve learned while doing research for something you were writing? also, how much do you worry about doing research in general?
research is pretty important to me, because i like to blend the mystical magical world of one piece with some realism. (like what if drinking milk didn’t solve all our health problems) recently i learned cocoyashi was inspired by a part of indonesia, and the coldest that area gets is around sixty degrees fahrenheit, or about 15.5 degrees celsius! law and rosi are gonna roast their north blue asses off 🔥
17 ~ what is your favorite line you’ve ever written?
what a cruel question 😝 i’m giving you a few answers! in terms of dialogue, in my original series, i had someone proclaim, “Why do we have to die to be loved?” and i quite like that line. for exposition, i think it might be, “It wasn’t so gummy, it wasn’t so strained, the muscles in his neck were relaxed and the apples of his cheeks weren’t threatening to split through the skin.” from the donquixote bros event. OR. i also like, “His brother lurked in the bloody pulp along the gumline of those smiles.” i’m gonna cut myself off now, i could keep going for a while 🤪
29 ~ give us a spoiler of one of your stories.
hmmm trying to think of something shiny and new that you might not have seen me mention in the villain server… i’ll spoil a wip too, since you’ve read a lot of my posted stories! in sublime > perish, gladius is going to lose one parent at a time. so he can wallow in the misery of missing one before i kill the other. and then i’ll take his memories. 🥰
48 ~ do you reread your own stories?
y-yes. i write fanfic very self-indulgently. whatever ships/stories i can’t find, i write. so i do end up rereading them when i’m craving that trope. and that’s when i find all my typos.
63 ~ what’s the best insult you’ve read in a fic?
oh dear. this is a hard one. uhhh. lemme go through the ol bookmarks.
i really love this exchange between doflamingo and croc in crowbar’s “Product Demonstration”:
“Let’s take war, for example. Who won the last war in your neck of the woods?”
“Wars aren’t something that can be won.”
“That’s a bleeding-heart answer if I ever heard one.” She drew up, affronted. “No, no, don’t worry, you’re still an asshole.”
94 ~ do you prefer dialogue or description?
dialogue! i am sucker for dialogue. i’ve got full fictional conversations going on in my head. i used to have a notebook when i was in middle school that i filled with these random edgy conversations between ocs. that’s how i got into writing! and now i’m writing obscure fanfic with plenty of dialogue! XD
thank you so so much for all the asks!! i feel like this was some sort of celebrity interview, hehe 😎
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Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💗
Hi Sarah! I hope you know that I saw that one reblog where you shared you dyed your hair with rainbow colors? (hopefully I'm not misremebering?) - anyways, so now I think of you with magical unicorn vibes gloriousness anytime I get a notification from you 🦄
Thank you so much for this fun ask!! So cute, and hopefully no one minds me sharing more details about each piece I picked - only because I know I genuinely enjoy hearing about the creative process and what an author got out of it, or their essential “why’s” so I’m gonna list seven from the TOG fandom (because no joke, I calculated it, 96% of my stuff on ao3 is TOG lol), and with three bonus ones from other fandoms - because I have some 86 works listed on AO3 (though plenty are fanarts), but yeah, I just couldn’t narrow it down more than that lol.
In no particular order:
Their souls were knit together (and he loved him as himself)
I sort of consider this one my magnum opus of all the pre-canon JoexNicky pieces I had written before then. It’s like each and every fic/meta/post/research piece led me to this one that I embarked on in the fall of 2021 (and even with some academic and religious studies, still spent a few extra weeks on research just to ensure I had a few key pieces in place). I’m a history nerd at heart, what can I say lol. The religious symbolism is thick and they fall in love slowly, so then, sprinkle in some historical contexts from Genova, Tunisia, Constantinople, and Crete, and it sort of snowballed to 88k in three months lol. But there are definitely scenes from it that I’ve re-read several times over, because yeah, it just speaks to me on multiple levels, and I’m glad it seemed to resonate for a few others as well ❤️
Called you by name
This was one of those pre-canon ficlets I was referring to just above, and looking back, I think this could easily be a sort of soft sequel for TSWKT (even though I wrote CYBN beforehand) - but it’s essentially an existential one-shot, stand alone of Nicky returning to his home land about two centuries after he had left it. I projected a lot, but in the end it’s about faith but also the freedom to label your own identity. I still look back at it fondly.
The Returning
This is more of a drabble piece, based on a tumblr prompt, that I wrote for Nile - which is still one of my favorites. Nile is a character I would have loved to explore more about/through/with due to me being a military brat, and my father being a wounded vet (my father had his TBI 20 years ago this August, and for all intents and purposes, died that day). Between that, and her faith, there were actually quite a few meta posts I had wanted to write up, but I kept it personal to a few friends instead after seeing some discourse. So, writing a canon adjacent Nile, instead of the modern au’s I had been doing up until then, and finally explore even some of that? Yeah, deeply personal and I’m glad I had the opportunity to 🥹
Pwimo
For personal reasons, but I still get a giggle out of it 😎
Precious Days
I think some of my favorite pieces are the ones that I make with others (whether that’s by a prompt suggestion, plotting together, making a fic based on art, or vice versa - and I’m so grateful for people who allowed me to sort of practice with them before deep diving into fandom events lol). Now most of my fandom collabs have been art (but also podfics?? Who am I lol) - but yeah, this was one of those giggling with a friend in DM’s over plot ideas kind, that I still look back on fondly. I was grateful for the opportunity to write something as a birthday gift, but also have some fun trying a different trope, and looking at it from a different perspective/lens that I normally tend to write in. It was like this fantastic experiment, dedicated as a gift, but somehow still resonated with several readers, and it’s also one of the few fics of mine that I sometimes re-read scenes from.
Promises, promises
One of my absolute faves because I got to explore one of my favorite subjects - interfaith dialogue - through the whole team, in this modern au, which was also a bit of a rom-com <333 Some scenes and dialogues were projected from my own experiences, and discussions, and though niche as heck, also resonated with some fellow LGBTQIA+ religious readers 💒
Bonus - other fandoms:
Miracoli
Should we call it TOG-adjacent? Lol. I adored writing Daan and Paolo, and the found family trope was THIQ within this FIC yo. Plus, getting to write a teenager, and a preschooler? And exploring those dynamics of building a family together? Yesh, please - there are so many scenes from this one that I re-read just to bask in the serotonin because it’s probably one of the sweetest fics I’ve written, uplifting, romantic and soft 💕
Mixing It Up
My Steddie fic! I binged ST, resonated with Eddie Munson hard, and projected some aceness onto their potential dynamics. I’ve received some of the sweetest “I feel seen” comments with this one, and some are saved on my phone on days when posting anxiety tells me not to bother. Write the stories your teen self would have loved to read, because I guarantee there are others out there who it will speak to, too.
Pretty Ballads Hide Bastard Truths
This was one that has fallen on the back burner due to other fandom events/projects but I promise it’s outlined and ready to resume come late summer. Like, it’s on my list - I’m itching for it! I adored Calanthe x Eist’s scenes in the first season, and I wanted to devour more of it, and with some loving encouragement I was glad to dedicate this one to Claz. It’s still one of my favorites for the worldbuilding, and little nods to canon throughout, but just that exploration of growth, healing, and coming together over the years that has yet to leave my brain. I’m looking forward to finishing it and allowing the story to come full circle.
Thanks again Sarah ~ looking forward to passing this one on soon 🤗
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Seven Years
Trigger warnings -
Seven Years
There’s a myth that one’s entire body is completely regenerated come seven years. I looked it up because I was hoping it might be true. Well, for the most part, most of your body is brand new. A few things remain as they were (more or less), such as brain and bones and a few other ones I can’t remember.
But, for the sake of my mindset, let’s go with the new body theory. At least on the outside, there has been a total regeneration from the person you were seven years ago.
August 15th, seven years ago, I made it known to the sociopath that I wanted him gone. He took his time, so technically, I may have until the end of the year before it’s “official”, but either way, the date marks a very significant part of my life.
Plenty of people don’t want to hear about it. I guess that’s why we have shrinks (no disrespect meant in the term). How do you process twenty (not taking into account the lifetime before that twenty) years of insanity in seven years? Simply put, you don’t. You try. You put in the work. You process a whole lot of flotsam, but you don’t simply get over it. And in many cases of severe, life-long “crap” (technical term) you never do.
So, your non-existent support system (the one the abusers managed to rip away from you because ….[insert lie here]) consists of a pet, a journal and a few long-suffering individuals who’ll listen because they care, but have really had their fill of the horror that is your life.
Still, the only way I was able to escape the torture (literal) was because someone told me the truth and I was able to research, thus finding others who had experiences all too similar to mine. In fact, once I did the research, I was terrified about my living situation. I was scared for my life and the life of my pets. Hell, my captor had already killed our dog. And history brought back a long-line of canine victims that suddenly made sense.
But, this is not about that evil individual. They took enough. They enslaved me for too long. (again, literal here folks) This is about the new person I am becoming. The seven-year reformation that has taken place, and is still happening, because I am one of those who will likely not live long enough to completely overcome that many years of crazy.
It’s no easy path. To pull oneself out of a pit of despair and fear; to walk away from what seemed like a secure life for one of total tightrope walking. And yet, there seems no other choice when faced with the alternatives and the violations that have taken place. Staying is not an option. If you don’t die from mysterious circumstances, it’s murder by suicide (still not recognized in this country as a crime).
If only I were being dramatic. If only this kind of vile creature did not exist. Sadly, they seem on the rise; accepted and glorified as “saviors” or leaders or “just a nice guy/gal”. I don’t have the words. I don’t know how to put the insanity into words that a non-victim could possibly understand. But for those who may not have identified the dangerous persons in their lives, maybe this will act as a red flag; a warning light. It was a post from someone else that helped send me running for my freedom and beginning this journey. I don’t know who it was, but I will forever be grateful. Someone told the truth and at least I was able to grab that life-rope and begin to pull myself up.
Seven years. Seems both like a lifetime ago and only yesterday. Some wounds are still tender and fresh. Some have merely become a scar. I’m proud of every scar. They mark me a survivor. I am also proud of the person who told me a very difficult truth about the person I was with. I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t do better.
There have been a few people who have stood by me best they can. I love you and I am so very grateful. I will likely never be able to repay you save for my gratefulness and ever-living appreciation. Y’all know who you are. Thank you.
So, seven years is coming. I am a new person, at least body-wise. Hell, inside especially. I am the weird, blurting, clueless, laughing me. But I am also the one that carries the weight no one should bear. Better me than someone else. Perhaps that’s a reason - when “why” creeps in. Because if not me, then someone else. And really, there’s no changing it. It is at the core of who I am now. Hopefully, I am kind and loving and giving and understanding. Hopefully, I have some sense of honor and integrity. Hopefully, I have sloughed off the entirety of what I was forced to be for too long.
Seven years. I should have a party. But, alas, I don’t like parties. Go figure. Instead, I’ll just post an overly-lengthy post around the internet, hoping it helps someone, somewhere. Letting some of me into the light of day (or moonlight is good too). It’s been too long. It’s been too hard. And the truth of life is it doesn’t get easier. We just learn how to carry the weight.
Thank you, friends & family & friends who are family. I might have drowned were it not for you all being there. I love you. Especially, this new me.
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