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elixrr · 5 months

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ᴄᴜᴅᴅʟᴇ ɴɪɢʜᴛꜱ! ☆ ʜᴏʏᴏᴠᴇʀꜱᴇ ᴍᴇɴ¡

ʙᴇᴄᴀᴜꜱᴇ ᴏꜰ ʏᴏᴜ, ɪ ʙᴇʟɪᴇᴠᴇ ɪɴ ʟᴏᴠᴇ.

ꜰᴛ: Xiao, Wriothesley, Lyney, Dan Heng, Argenti, Blade.

ꜱʏɴᴘᴏꜱɪꜱ: Headcanons about their cuddles with you!

ᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀꜱ ɴᴏᴛᴇ: I considered adding Alhaitham into the mix, but I figured that I didn't know his character well enough for his part to be accurate and good. Apologies to all of the Alhaitham fans! Also, new format for my fanfiction posts, inspired by many creators! (Namely iheartganyu)

ᴘꜱ: pretty little spoiler warning if you haven't caught up with anything in either game 😭😭

✰ xiao ✰

— An adeptus of Liyue, the Vigilant Yaksha. It's easy to guess that cuddles with him are rare. Mostly due to his job, but he's too... awkward. Xiao has been touch-starved for the great majority of his life, so it's easy to assume that he's inexperienced, much to his dismay.

Don't get me wrong. He'd love to cuddle more often, but— while inexperience is one part of it, Xiao is ultimately insecure. He strongly believes that he's tainted. He believes that he's a disgusting, vile creature that lives only to slaughter, but he thinks of you as an angel. Xiao thinks that too many cuddles would taint you, alongside the fact that he worries about his Karmic Debt situation.

Nevertheless, when you do convince him to cuddle with you, he'll be awkward at first; hesitant to put his arm here, overthinking how he put his hand there, etc., etc. He doesn't emit much body warmth, but he finds you to be really cozy and warm to the touch, thus finding comfort in the closeness once he moves past the insecurities and hesitation. By the way, unless you like to initiate and contribute to conversations, most of the cuddles will be in comfortable silence, excluding the occasional comment about the scenery or compliments about each other.

Xiao would cuddle on the condition that it's in a secluded area and nobody else is present except for you and him. He'd prefer to book a bedroom at Wangshu Inn, but if not, then he'd prefer to cuddle on the rooftop of the inn, late at night when the stars shine from the heaven-blessed galaxies, the subtle natural light kissing your features to give him a little bit of an extra view. He doesn't think too much about how he looks to you, but he could only hope that he's at least bearable to look at. (Which he very much is.)

☆ wriothesley ☆

— He's so touchy and extra cuddly that sometimes that extra cuddly can be too extra, resulting in a near impossible mission to get out of bed in time for you to even get ready. Wriothesley loves holding you close to him. You're his love, and so he wants to treat you like it, but sometimes cuddles can transform into something a little bit more than just a cozy night, wrapping one's arms around the other.

Speaking of, good luck to you if you prefer being the big spoon, because you can't be the big spoon anymore. Wriothesley will always be the one to hold you, always the one to just wrap his arms around you and cherish you like never before. As previously mentioned, you're his lover, and he wants to treat you like it! Wriothesley wants to make you feel special, like you're the most important person in his life, so he'll do his best to give you that.

Also, I feel as though he'd whisper to you a lot. Even if there's no need to be quiet, he finds it intimate to just lean in and whisper compliments in your ear while holding you close. It doesn't matter what situation you're in; it doesn't matter where you guys are, even if you're talking about your day or the constellations in the skies above, he'll interrupt you, lean in close and just say something about your eyes, maybe your clothes, but preferably your lips.

Wriothesley would also love kissing you at random whenever you cuddle. Not to say he doesn't already do that outside of cuddles, but it's just, to him, you look amazing. You look cute, and why wouldn't he kiss you when you're his gracious lover? He hopes that he doesn't go overboard and accidentally make you uncomfortable, but at the same time, he knows you enjoy it— that smile on your face every time he pecks a kiss on your nose or cheek tells him everything he needs to know.

Before I forget, he doesn't prefer cuddles during any time of the day, but given his job, it's mainly during his afternoon tea breaks, and 100% at night in bed with you. To be honest, if he could, he'd take a full day off just to hold you tight and spend the day with you, wrapped like burritos in a blanket and sipping the day away with refreshments and love.

Some day, he might as well do just that.

☆ lyney ☆

— If it weren't for his job as a magician and as part of the fatui, he wouldn't let go of you. When Lyney can, he clings to you like a lost child who had finally found their parent in a big city. He holds your waist with one hand and performs little magic tricks with the other to impress you. Lyney's a very clingy, touchy lover.

When cuddling, he loves getting super close to the point where there's almost no space between the two of you. But on the occasion, he'll snuggle so close that it's basically just a tight hug—the only difference is that you're both lying down. The only times he isn't super, mega close to you, is when he's making rainbow roses appear randomly around your body. Most of the time, it's all fun and innocent, but other times, Lyney enjoys the look on your face when he does something quite bold.

Also, Lyney's very talkative while cuddling. Even in moments of relaxation, he'll take the time to just stare at you, even if he can't get the full view because of the ungodly lack of space, Lyney will look at you and start complimenting you. He loves you so much, and that's another huge way to show it. He's a romantic kind of guy. If there's a way to show his affection, he will take and use that way to show his affection. He loves your smile; he loves it when you blush, and it slowly grows more evident by the second because he starts to blush, too. Also, Lyney would immediately just hold you more at the sight of your reaction.

Nevertheless, his need to be close can change. Whenever he's out on a mission given by Arlecchino— more specifically, an assassination mission— you won't see him for a good three days. Even when the mission's complete, he'd want to seek out your love, comfort, and affection, but he stops himself. Lyney believes that his hands are still painted with the blood of the murdered, no matter how many times he washes or scrubs them, he'll still see the visible darkening red blood stains. There's no way he's even going near you with those kinds of sins straight on his body. It's sad, and you might have to seek him out yourself if he doesn't show up for the next few days. When you do find him, the moment he sees you is when that wall of guilt shatters, and he nearly breaks down seeing you again. Seeing you every day made him used to you, and just a few days of deprivation made him feel miserable. The simple, mere sight of you had him almost sobbing, running back to you and holding you tight, finally reunited with the one he loves most.

Were he not guilty of association with the fatui, he wouldn't have ever needed or wanted to let go.

☆ dan heng☆

— Blushing little mess. He's never a fan of PDA, so even when he does want to hold you outside of his or your room, he doesn't. Hence why the moment you both enter the private space of a hotel room or a bedroom, Dan Heng takes your hand and leads you to the bed for cuddles. He loves them, really, but he's a flustered mess of a lover because of how embarrassed he felt about being so clingy.

He's a big spoon, too, so he holds you close to him while cuddling. He likes the closeness, but he hates how visibly red his face gets, so he buries his face into your shoulder to hide. Sometimes, he just lays there listening to you or simply calming down in silence, but he does like hearing your voice before bed. It helps him sleep, and it somehow prevents nightmares of Blade. Quick note, your comfort and warmth make him feel safe through the night, and you accompany him when he'd usually be alone, either on his phone or reading a book.

PS: Dan Heng prefers to sleep in your room and/or in a hotel room because your bed and the hotel's provided beds are much more comfortable than a sleeping bag. He loves wrapping a blanket around the two of you and holding you like that. He says it's so you both get an even amount of warmth, and neither of you takes more of the blanket than the other, but he really does it because he feels a bit closer to you.

In his Imbibitor Lunae form, sleeping with him gets a bit harder, simply because he finds it harder to control himself. But when he can control himself, he'll let you run your fingers through his long hair, maybe even letting you touch his horns. Still, he doesn't allow the latter too often for reasons left unsaid. Anyway, he dislikes using this form because of how it reminds him of his former's past. He feels as though he's trapped in the memories and sin that are not his own. Yet, you make him feel comfortable in his own skin. He feels free with you; he feels alive, and he loves you for your ability to make him feel that way. Dan Heng will do everything in his ability to make you feel the same way.

And he likely already has.

☆ argenti ☆

— The most proper and romantic. Compliments littered across your entire figure, his hand in yours kissing your knuckles constantly with the addition of the most rosey and romantic sweet nothings. Argenti is old-fashioned and the most romantic, as he believes that this is the only way to live for his adored Aeon. The most comment compliment you'd hear between kisses is, “you're the most exquisite person in my world,” and Argenti would always wink with his compliments. Sometimes, it's wonderful to be the subject of his rose-colored words, but other times, it gets old; you become slightly lovesick.

The solution to that is conversation while holding each other in bed, or perhaps it's simply ushering Argenti to cuddle with you beneath the stars at night. It's beautiful to see the galaxy in its brightest moments, hovering from the dark skies. Argenti would silently pray to his Aeon, thanking her profusely for letting him see this wonderful view in person.

Still. You are his lover, and sometimes the weight of fear and trauma gets to him. Argenti often looks to you to confide in, and usually, nights like these are rarely cuddle nights, but sometimes, when it gets bad, you'll hold him in the night while he talks about his past— the wars, the music, the old friends, the worries— and how terrifying it can be if he would succumb to the same fate as his once so honorable friend. In exchange for your comfort, he holds you close and vows to protect you in your dreams and from the moment you wake to the moment you sleep again.

Argenti prefers to cuddle in bed, during a picnic, or beneath the stars. He seldom makes exceptions for heavy PDA, but when it comes to cuddling in public, even if there are people around during the day or at night, if it's stargazing or a picnic, he doesn't care as much. He'll smile, his eyes set only on you, not the eyes that may linger on your cuddles.

He doesn't care enough to look at anyone else, not when the embodiment of beauty lays right by him.

☆ blade ☆

— He's cautious. Blade's name takes after his weapon, and though he himself is not a sword, he still worries that he'll hurt you through cuddles. Blade is marastruck, and if it starts to get to him, he's terrified that it'll strike you, too. He admires death and the concept of it, but for you to die and for him to live with that? Impossible.

Anyway, convincing him is still 100% doable. When you do cuddle with him, he holds you with hesitation and care. He doesn't show it, as he masks his emotions with lips pursed to a line, but he feels relief. He feels happy, even, but he can't really tell. The Mara has calmed, and he can catch a break from the trauma. Something worth noting: Blade's trauma might cause him to cling to you, holding you close for comfort and reassurance— but that's only when he finds himself to be desperate for your love and affection. It's the one thing that keeps him together; your smile alone can mend all of his wounds, physical or not.

That can happen at any time of the day, but he'll typically seek you out at night. Blade will— without a spoken word— hug you from behind with a sigh of relief, and he'll take you to the nearest spot with the most privacy, and he'll hold you tight once more without a sign of letting you go. He loves you, and without even saying that he does, you already have all the evidence you need to conclude that he does. Holding you feels like heaven, in Blade's eyes. Once he gets past his fears of hurting you, he'll wrap his arms around your waist, but if he cuddles with you from behind, he'll wrap his arms beneath your chest, all with a sigh of relief and the tiniest hint of a smile.

The two of you cuddling is cute, so cute that Silver Wolf just had to stream it and broadcast one of your cuddle sessions to all of the other Stellaron Hunters.

Of course, you and Blade will never cuddle near any of the Stellaron Hunters ever again after that.

#character x reader #genshin x reader #hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #xiao x reader #wriothesley x reader #lyney x reader #dan heng x reader #imbibitor lunae x reader #argenti x reader #blade x reader #genshin fic #hsr fic #honkai star rail fic #character x y/n #character x you #hcs #headcanons

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transformers-synergize · 16 days

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Do you have any more stuff for Sunny & Sides? Your designs for them are some of the best I've seen, and I'd love to know more about your plans or headcanons for them!

No pressure ofc, I support you and your absolute galaxy brain :D

Sure, here is a bunch of random stuff about in no particular order, lot of this stuff was just pulled from my notes but whatever lol

Sunstreaker is egotistical, he knows he is the best and makes sure everyone knows it too. He also has the skills, looks, and combat prowess to back it up. Sunstreaker only really cares about himself and Sideswipe, considering pretty much every bots below him or not worth his time. He often makes sly comments, belittling or cracking jokes about bots whom he deems lesser. His friends are either Sideswipes friends who can tolerate him or bots who think he's cool, which is usually due to factors outside his personality. He's always down for a good fight, being ruthless and downright merciless in combat while still somehow managing to get as little dirt, energon, or other various combat filth on himself as possible, sometimes being nearly spotless after a battle aside from the energon coating his blade. Sunny likes to keep himself in good condition, making sure his paint is perfect and his polish shines, it really helps accentuate how he's the best.

Sideswipe is the nicer of the two brothers. He's outgoing and usually pretty friendly. Sideswipes is always looking for a fight. He loves the thrill of combat. He often treats serious situations more like a game than the high-danger situations he often places in. Sideswipe often can't sit still and always need something to do, and if there is nothing fun to do then he will make his own fun, he is often sparring with his fellow Autobots, trying risky stunts, pulling pranks on other bots and generally just causing chaos. He's very impulsive, often doing the first thing that comes to mind because he thought it might be fun, never considering the consequences. He's kinda like a jock who treats war like a sport with an almost ruthless approach to combat. He often tenses and banter with other autobots, sometimes making jokes at their expense, but unlike Sunny, he usually knows when to stop or when he's gone too far.

info dump bellow↓↓↓

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker both emerged during the Autobot Decepticon war and never known peace times. They are the youngest of the crashed Autobots, both being around a thousand years old, which is very young when your species can live to their hundred thousands.

Twins are what happens when a shuttle-sized spark splits into two, so before Sideswipe and Sunstreaker split, their emerging was highly anticipated because shuttles are rare and extremely powerful, but their spark ended up splitting. When they finally emerged, it was a great disappointment.

they were mentored by Inferno and, to a lesser extent, his conjux Redalert (they are one of the many reasons for Redalerts anxiety). Sideswipe has a pretty good relationship with his mentors Sunny… not so much

Sunny hates Earth, it's filthy it's wet it's squishy it's sticky it's too hot, at least compared to Cybertron's frigid temperatures, and its dominant species are nothing but a pain he hates he has to hide his existence from the stupid inferior fleshy creatures that rule this dirtball of a planet he hates how often on missions he has to have a fleshy human chaperone to perform basic task that he could easily do himself or wouldn't be a problem if humans just didn't exist. Whichever bot or bots are on a mission with Sunny where human help is required, the other bot will always be the one transporting the human because Sunny refuses to let a human inside of him.

Sideswipe likes Earth, there so much to see it his first time being anywhere without the war consent looming present of the great war, but having to hide all the time on Earth is frustrating, he's been able to seek out and do some street races without Prowl knowing, he likes quite a lot of human stuff human music is pretty good and he like some human tv shows and movies mostly the ones with a lot of actions and explosion, he like interacting with the humans he's allowed to interact with especially Carly and Raoul, thought Sideswipe often struggles to understand how fragile humans are and often can put them at risk without even knowing it. Sideswipe is still a little homesick for Cybertron, even if he's only ever known it as a war-torn mess.

their poses often mirror each other

Sunny tells Sideswipe to smile with his mouth closed because his split beak.

Sunny is the decision-maker of the two, and though Sideswipe may make destinations for himself on his own as a pair, Sunny always has the final say.

Sunstreaker hates Sideswipe stickers but gave up on trying to remove them because whenever he tried, he got his claws sticky.

Sunstreaker and Tracks have a bit of a rivalry going on, though Tracks hates Sunstreaker more than Sunstreaker dislikes Tracks. Also, Sunny usually comes out as the victor of most of their little spats.

Sideswipe pulls pranks but doesn't dare prank Sunstreaker because he knows there will be hell to pay if he messes up his brother's paint job.

sideswipe loves to cause chaos, Sunny often help

Sunny has some artistic talent, though he doesn't use it much

Sunstreaker always makes sure his frame is clean and in near-perfect condition. Sideswipe doesn't care as much but Sunny, make sure Sideswipe keeps up to a certain standard.

Sideswipe is very extroverted, loves interacting with other bots, and will talk to basically anyone. Sunny is more introverted and prefers to keep to himself and select bots. Sunny tries to encourage his brother not to hang out with bots he considers not good enough to be associated with them which is most bots.

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

As for plans for them, I like keeping what I share plot-wise pretty vague. They appear pretty early on, and they both are pretty plot-important. I don't really care about spoiling characters who appear in the first seven chapters. After that, I'm a little more sneaky and vague about who will appear.

#Sunstreaker #sideswipe #raoul #dont tag as ship #transformers fan continuity #transformers #tfs #transformers synergize #art post #ask answering #sunny #raoul lopez #sunstreaker is pretty controlling #his brothers images is a part of his image or atleast thats how sunny sees it #yes i call their teeth beaks instead of denta since the top and bottom pice are solid pieces without Individualt teeth #cybertronian have beaks kinda like squids #sideswipe naturally formed with a split beak #thank you happy ya like them so much #realized i left one my draft notes on here asaaaaa

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heartss4val · 5 months

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hi valerie!

i have a suggestion for a leo x reader. we all know he would give beautiful little gifts, so how do you think he would react when receiving them? like something artistic and carefully handmade. idk just thought it might me cute lmao

thank you 🩶

𐑺 ˖ ࣪ ࿐ྂ KNICKNACKS | leo valdez x gn!reader hc's [wc: 586]

leo would be so ecstatic omg

he'd handle the small trinket you made for him with so much care and delicacy, you'd think it was made out of glass. and once he was finished admiring your creation, (though, that would take a while.) he'd immediately blurt out a high-pitched "for me??"

he just struggles to comprehend why someone as talented as you would use your creative abilities for him? he's so used to being overlooked that even the thought of being the recipient of your artistry is almost unfathomable. :(

leo would turn your creations over and over in his hands, silently memorizing every detail, as if he's afraid that your work might vanish if he takes his eyes off of it.

and his reaction?? always stays the same?? no matter how long its been?? you'd present your work to him and he'd be so theatrically shocked. like full on gasping and lowkey fighting for his life as if he hadn't expected the gift at all, even though you'd been showering him with your creations for the past month.

but once he gets past that point?? he becomes almost obnoxious about it. 💀 he'd sit in the dining pavilion so proudly, your little knickknack perched right next to him with the full intent of somebody asking him about it JUST so that he could ramble about you.

literally ONE person would bring it up, just to make small conversation, and he'd be like, "oh, THIS?? it was made by MY partner, for ME, by the way. but no big deal, y'know."

waited his entire life for that moment fr.

i completely mean it when i say leo would sweep ALL the belongings from his shelf to showcase even ONE item you made for him in all its glory. front and center. his siblings are so confused.

but if you start regularly gifting him things and blessing him with your artistry on a daily basis? he'll dedicate an entire shelf to your creations. and it's so funny because the rest of his area is so cluttered and disorganized, with random unfinished projects laying around without a second thought, bed not even made, but the shelf above his bunk?? the one with all your creations sitting on it?? it's so neat?? organized and color coded and everything?? it almost looks out of place.

even when you're away on quests, he still admires the creations you've left behind, tenderly cradling them in his hands and running his fingers over every curve and edge, as though you were still with him in the moment. :((

after some time, the gifting thing would turn into running joke between you two. a game of one-upmanship where every gift had to be better than the last. like if you made him a small sculpture out of clay, he would show up at your cabin the next day with a BOUNTY full of creations he made himself, along with a bouquet of flowers that he borrowed with no intention of giving back (stole) from the demeter kids to top it all off. <3

you'd make him one thing and he makes you ten more, he's so whipped.

leo would cherish your gifts so much, like he's almost scared of ruining them. especially if your gift is something that is SUPPOSED to be worn, like a ring of some sort. he'd proudly wear it around camp, obviously, but he'd check on it every few minutes to make sure it hadn't magically vanished from his finger. or worse, broke.

of course, leo knows he could fix it if it became damaged, but it wouldn't be the same. it wouldn't have your charm and artistry, your unique touch that made it so special.

all in all, leo is so enamored with your creativity, but judging by his actions, you probably already knew that.

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dailyadventureprompts · 11 months

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Homebrew Mechanic: Bumpercar Combat

I'm going to keep most of my reasoning behind developing this system below the cut but I think we can all agree that D&D's combat can be painfully static. I love fight scenes but after going down a combined stage combat/ videogame boss design rabbit hole I've realized that one of the primary elements is missing from D&D's combat system, namely: Movement

From a mechanical perspective, D&D combat needs movement to break up the monotony of non-spellcater characters throwing punches at eachother until one of them drops, to introduce increased risk and randomness without damage-spike abilities.

From a narrative perspective, D&D combat needs movement to introduce tension and to help put character into day to day fighting beyond just flavor text. Likewise, fights that give different opportunities for movement will feel different from one another, making them stand out in the party's mind.

So without further ado I present my fun new system, which will have your party and their enemies bouncing around the battlefield like a demolition derby:

Press the attack: If you attack a creature and your initial attack roll is higher than their constitution score, you can force them to shift 5 ft into any of the tree squares opposite from your position. You then move to occupy the space they did.

Back to a Wall: Walls and other substantial barriers grant attackers the benefits of flanking as if they were a threatening creature.

Give Ground: If you are attacked in melee and the initial roll is lower than your dexterity score you may shift into any adjacent square, forcing the opponent to move into the space you previously occupied. If you are attacked at a range, you may still shift, but the attacker loses any cover bonuses they might have till the start of their next turn rather than moving.

Tripping Hazard: If you force an opponent into a square that could be considered rough terrain ( such as if it was occupied by a chair, or down a slippery slope) the target drops prone.

First things first I want to say that this system is largely inspired by the dynamic combat movement rules by raventear productions, which I found over on reddit. It's a great system but the more I thought about it the more I realized that introducing extra rolls into combat was adding extra bloat to combat, and so I needed to retool the system to ensure that the party weren't having to roll any more dice than they normally would. My goal with homebrew is always to add more options, not bloat.

Also, go check out@jillbearup over on youtube, her series breaking down cinematic fights was one of the main drivers behind wanting to find a homebrew system like this in the first place.

Finally, long hours spent watching @ohnoitstbskyen 's in depth bloodborne playthough got me thinking about the design of fights, and the right combination of enemies and environment can truly elevate the player(s) experience. I'm also working on my own bloodborne game which gave me a reason to finalize this system.

Now lets get on to why I wanted to build this system in the first place: D&D combat is at risk of being painfully slow and boring, as it's aged the depths to which it can be slow and/or boring have only increased. While part of that is up to the skill of players at the table, I largely chalk it up to the fact that the base system of combat isn't much changed from the days of old tabletop wargaming....characters and monsters control like army units, clashing up against one another till one side drops or some spellcaster drops an AoE ( artillery). That rigidity is fine when one person is controling a whole army of units, but I think every melee character has been in a position where they're slugging away with the same old attack while the wizards get to do cool shit.

The system sort of worked back In the early days when characters and monsters could only take a couple of hits before dropping, but as the editions progressed and everything got more complex what might have first been a quick life or death clash turned into a slugfest. Attacks of opportunity and rigid flanking rules specifically encouraged this slowdown, and 4th edition, the only attempt outside of the battemaster to really play with positioning crashed and burned mainly due to WotC's incompetence.

So how do I use this?

If you're having trouble thinking of why this system might be fun to implement, here's a few ideas:

It makes groupfights more dangerous, encouraging tactical thinking. Getting advantage reliably is the deciding factor in most d&d combats, with the tide turning in favour of whichever side has the most bodies. If combatants are shifting around with every missed hit then that advantage is more up for grabs

It puts increased focus on hazards and terrain features. Ledges, pits, pillars, walls, furniture, dungeon-clutter. Make no mistake that if you use this system and then design your combat arenas with some kind of terrain feature, it's GOING to be used. Where previously players and enemies alike had to chose between engaging with the arena for a potential benefit or doing raw damage reliably, here they'll be able to do both.

It gives non burst-damage melee characters a new way to play. Rolling a barbarian or fighter is supposed to come with a scene of empowerment which can be undercut one folks realize their super-strong orc berserker is being outclassed for damage by the shifty guy with the knife. Telling that player "Yeah, that person gets to roll more dice, but you get to bounce badguys off the walls like pinballs" is more than a consolation, it's what they signed up to do in the first place.

It adds drama to the fight. There's only so many ways a dm can describe enemies taking non-lethal sword hits that only take up a portion of their hp, and they're liable to run out of those long before the campaign is through. Part of what sells the importance of those hits and keeps players engaged between the first and the last is the feeling that they've had SOME kind of effect. Moving folks around is a middle ground between doing nothing and dropping a foe, changing the battlefield in a myriad of small ways that can build up to something meaningful.

Art

#homebrew mechanic #d&d mechanics #combat #bumpercar combat #bad moon campaign #d&d

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letsgetrowdy43 · 5 months

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Would you want it in like individual little thoughts for each brother or like a specific brother and like a larger blurb??

individual thought for each brother please🙏🙏

Request: could you write a fic/blurb for the hughes brothers and how they would take care of their gf who’s overstimulated and has gone non-verbal (and i don’t think you would take this the wrong way but some people have when i haven’t specified) (not in the sexy way)

I tried to be as general as possible, just cause I don't want to be insensitive to anyones triggers or to any personal experiences!!

Quinn—

Being captain means that Quinn has to attend these bigger events and be as present as he possibly can be for them. But if and when his girlfriend needs his help, his captain duties get pushed to the side until he knows she is safe and okay. They attend an event together and it gets a little busier than she expected she tries to stick it out, but by the sixth random person that had come up to ask her questions about Quinn and the charities that the two of them had been working with during this season, she is just completely out of her comfort zone and so overwhelmed Quinn noticed right away from her body language, watching her whole body tense up, and by the way her face looked blank with wide eyes as she tried to find the nearest exit. He's immediately trailing behind her and into the hallway of the banquet hall, finding her curled up in a ball, her pretty dress pooled around her as she hid her face in her hands. “Hey hey,” he mumbled, trying to get her to stop panicking, pulling her hands away from her face to make her look at him, “let's try those breathing exercises that you taught me” She's struggling to comprehend, but he is persistent and gets her to a state of calm in a few minutes. Her head rests against his shoulder as he creates a game plan in his head to get their things and get them out to the car without a soul noticing, and without being bombarded by people wanting to chat with him. At the end of the day, she is his number one priority, his leadership means a lot but she means a lot more to him than some tabloids that paint him out to be the saving grace of the canucks.

Jack—

Jack is known for being a carefree soul, he's go with the flow and has a bubbly or joking demeanour. But the second she needs him, all of his attention goes straight to her. The bar they were at had strobe lights, she had never experienced something like this, but the flashing, mixed with the music and loud chatter had her head spinning. She sat awkwardly in the corner of the bar, nursing a tall glass of ice water that she had managed to order herself before she completely shut down. So now she just sitting in silence in some dimly lit booth in the back, twiddling her thumbs in her lap as she focused on her breathing. Jack searched the crowd for her the second he came to realize that she was no longer by his side, his conversation with Dylan Larkin going a bit longer than intended which led to him becoming lost in their conversations about his upcoming wedding. His eyes found her from across the room, and within a second he was maneuvering his way around the room to get to her. "Oh baby," he said as she looked at him tiredly, slowly blinking at him which let him know just where her energy level was at, "I'll call Luke to come and get us now," he said sitting down next to her, careful not to touch her or move her around too much and make her feel even worse. "Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable while we wait?" with a slight shake of her head Jack watched as she mentally counted the seconds in between her breaths, "would some fresh air maybe help, get you away from the noise?" she looked at him again and nodded, her lips turning up into a smile as she reached out to squeeze his hand. A little notion to tell him. that she was okay when she could verbally express it.

Luke—

Luke's girlfriend hated parties, but this was the boys' last big college party before they headed to Tampa for the Frozen Four, and then Luke to Jersey, so she wanted to be there in support of him, and as a nice send-off. But it was a lot, a lot of people, a lot of music, and the awful smell of alcohol. An episode hadn't happened in a while once she realized that it was the parties and the environment that were causing them, but she wanted to surprise Luke and be there for his final hurrah. But the second she stepped in she was quickly anxious, she hadn't left her boyfriend's side the entire night, her hands gripping him to make sure not to lose him in the chair that was the hockey house. She squeezed his side the second someone accidentally bumped into her, her face growing red as she silently let tears roll down her cheeks, too out of it to wipe them off. He felt her touch and saw the look on her face, he quickly whisked her away and brought her into an empty bathroom on the second floor of the house. He felt a little panicked as he watched her just blankly stare at her feet, heavy breathing before he remembered the thing about pressure and relieving her nervous system of any stressors that his mental coach taught him about a few months before. "I'm gonna try something okay?" he mumbled as his arms wrapped around her, pulling her into his chest and squeezing her as tight as he could. they stood like that for a few minutes, his arms applying continuous pressure to her as her breaths steadied. "feel better?" she nodded slowly as her hands gripped the soft cotton of his shirt, feeling the soft material between her fingertips before tapping him to let him know that she was okay. he pulled away, holding her a good length away to examine her state, her eyes tired as she wiped away the tear streaks that had remained on her face, "let's go lay down in my room, let you decompress before bed," he said brushing the hair from her face and away from her neck as she weakly smiled and nodded at him

#rotalks: hughes brothers night!!#quinn hughes x reader #jack hughes x reader #luke hughes x reader

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lucakaneshiroswife · 9 months

Text

!- RANDOM SHU YAMINO HC’S -!

Warnings: suggestive content

Genre: NSFW

Word count: 610 words 3,228 characters

Published: 4th September . 23

! Minors and Blank blogs DNI !

"How can you be this pretty...?"

Regardless the way that our darling sorcerer presents himself to be, he actually has his needs, and they are a little intense. And so, like any other person, he always makes sure to appropriately care for those needs both when you are present and when you are not.

While Shu may not be straightforward with what he wants all the time, he still does have his moments where he just cracks. Although usually he finds it easier to just simply take care of his own ‘problem’ alone, which does often lead to you happening to stumble by when he is in the process of relieving himself.

When that happens, prepare yourself because you will end up on your knees between his legs as he sits in his gaming chair, fingers tangled in your hair urging you to keep sucking him like the good girl you are <3

Shu has a very obvious fixation on your face, the way you look just drives him insane especially during these moments. You always look so pretty for him and he frankly has no idea how you manage it with your hair sticking all over your face as you sweat, your eyes glossy and lips parted from just how much he pushes your limits. He has to admit that this obsession of his is one of the reasons he would suddenly thrust up into you, watching closely for your reaction with his usual smirk looking even more attractive as he does so.

Positions that allow him a full view of your face are everything for him. If there is anything he loves more than you then it will probably have to be the way you suck him, and trust me, he isn't shy to admit that. The way your warm mouth feels around him just makes him crazy, don't even get me started on the way you look while doing it, he is addicted to it.

Shu finds so much joy when he gets to incorporate toys into your intimate moments. After all, you do need to feel good while you make him feel good, it's only fair that way. Perhaps that's the only time he'd be 'fair' with you, and even then he makes sure to overstimulate you to see how much you can handle from a mere toy, surely you won't disappoint him right?

Despite his kind-hearted nature, Shu can and will be dominant. He loves being in charge and exploring different kinks that you both have. He is more than open to experimenting, he doesn't shy away from a new experience if it's with you~

Remember the part where he is not only an amazing sorcerer but also an amazing gamer? Yeah well if you didn't then it shows with the way he uses those hands of his. His touch is electrifying, setting your body on fire, he knows just how to tease and please. Making you beg for mercy but pant for more.

While Shu may not be the most vocal person in the bedroom, when things get heated and he approaches that sweet climax he does end up breathing up your ear, whispering nothing but absolute filth varying from how criminally tight you are around him to how good you are being for him.

Shu knows the importance of aftercare, especially after putting poor little you through so much. Don't worry he will take care of you, clean you up, bring you a cup of water or even strawberry milk before you find him wrapping his arms around you, whispering words of affection and love into your ear while kissing over the marks he left on your body <3

A/N: Yes I know I haven't posted in two months but I am back and I hope to finish doing this for ALL of Luxiem while the creativity is still there. I am just as thirsty and starved as you are. NOT PROOFREAD

ART CREDITS: I couldn't find the @ at all, lmk if you know them.

#luxiem x reader #luxiem smut #shu yamino #shu yamino smut #shu yamino x reader #in this household we love shu yamino of nijisanji en's fourth wave luxiem

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pinkthrone445 · 6 months

Note

hii!! i saw you’re taking requests for smutty stuff.

i was hoping to request a melissa x reader smut. where the reader gets something sexy to surprise mel with

🎄Merry Christmas everyone, smutsanta it's here.🎄

Sorry for not writing so much but the work at the end of the year is crazy. I hope you have beautiful holidays, don't forget to tell those you love how important they are to you. Thank you for the requests your naughty little monsters. Enjoy

-The perfect gift-

Pairing:Melissa Schemmenti x Reader

Gender: smut smut smut

Warnlings : (+18) strong words, use of double ended strap, oral.

Summary: You give Mel something seemingly innocent that led them to the perfect night.

One more year that is about to end, Christmas dinner would be the last time you would be at school before a beautiful and well-deserved holiday.

You and your wife Melissa had agreed to participate on the game 'invisible Santa' exchanging gifts with your coworkers, what your wife didn't know was that even though the gift assignment was random, you were her secret Santa and you had thought of a good gift for her.

All week Melissa tried to guess who you got, but you never let her know, saying that the rules of the game were not to tell anyone to make it more fun. Mel knew you were terrible at keeping secrets from her, so she was surprised by your decisiveness in not telling her anything, but that also made her suspect that you were her secret Santa and that's why you didn't want to tell her anything. Either way, you resisted the urge to tell her what your gift was, even when she was driving and your present was in your hands resting on your legs. Melissa noticed that the bag was quite small and light because of the way you held it when you got out of the car, so she didn't imagine what it could be, she just felt the perfume, your perfume that she loved so much, emanating from the small package so she imagined that maybe it was a blouse for her. Although it didn't make much sense because you weren't one to give simple gifts, but well thought out. You even remembered things that others liked that no one else remembered.

When you entered the teachers' room you left the small package with the other gifts and went to greet your colleagues, now your wife's gaze was no longer on the gifts, but on what the dress you were wearing showed, your beautiful legs that were adorned with high black boots to keep you warm on the cold winter night. It wasn't until Barbara distracted her that the redhead stopped staring at you, but her mind didn't stop for a second. It's not that it was a novelty to see you like this, short dress and high boots, after all you had been married for two years now, but it was strange to see you like that at school. When the kids were there, you always wore long pants or dresses that didn't show much, but seeing yourself dressed like that at school was something new that fed your wife's fantasies, which involved slamming you against her desk and rasing your skirt to touch you until you scream her name.

Ava's voice made everyone take their respective seats to exchange gifts, Mel was next to Barbara and you were across the table from her. You smiled a lot when you saw how Eddie gave you a set of legos, specifically one of the Scarlet Witch, your favorite heroine. This year everyone received gifts because you made sure Ava didn't cheat so that more than one person would give her gifts.

When it was Melissa's turn to receive her gift, you handed it to her smiling from ear to ear. The redhead opened the small package smiling at the smell of it, but her face turned to confusion when she saw that it was a large, green, very soft hand-knitted scarf

-"I made it, you always knit things for me, so I learned and I also made you something that could remind you of me when you wear it"-You commented and the redhead smiled stretching out on the table to give you a small kiss on your lips and a great view of her cleavage

-"Thank you, I loved it, you're so cute"-she answered

-"There's a little note as well"-You whispered blushing a little, trying not to stare at your wife's cleavage in front of your co-workers for too long. When Mel saw the note at the bottom of the bag, her eyes became darker than usual and she looked at you like a hungry wolf looks at its prey, the others didn't notice the way her gaze changed, but for you it didn't go unnoticed. No doubt the note had had its effect and she had liked the gift, she no longer saw it as something cute, but as something tempting, because for the rest of the night, the redhead didn't take her eyes off you, wishing she had x-rays to see under your clothes.

A few moments later, everyone had laid down the meals they had brought on the table, along with a good deal of drinks and eggnog. This time, you took your seat next to your wife, who, as soon as you settled down, put her hand on your thigh, where your high boots did not reach and your short dress did not covered. Her hand felt hot on your skin, like the comfortable warmth radiated from a campfire on a cold night, it was something she normally did, to have her hands on your waist or legs whenever you were close, so you didn't think much of it, you almost forgot that her hand was there if it wasn't for her gentle squeezes every time something made her laugh.

You were happy to see everyone gathered for Christmas dinner, at first it was just Barbara and Mel, but it made you happy that they passed on their tradition to everyone else.

The nice moment shared with your co-workers and your wife, plus a few drinks, made you very relaxed listening to others make jokes and tell anecdotes, you even felt a little sleepy, as Mel was going to drive, you didn't worry much about controlling how much you drank.

Your head rested delicately on your wife's soft shoulder, feeling her perfume made you smile and you closed your eyes as you felt the gentle caresses that Mel gave on your thigh. Taking advantage of the fact that your legs were under the table, the redhead took her caresses a little higher, putting her hand under your dress, which made you quickly open your eyes and sit up straight taking her wrist trying to stop her without attracting attention. Your wife just smiled and kept running her hand up your leg, until she nimbly hooked your underwear with her pinky and quickly removed it from your body without the others noticing what was going on. When you realized what had happened, you blushed a lot and stared at her surprised, Melissa just smiled arrogantly looking at you and with your underwear in her hand, she took a quick look at it underneath the table and then she hide it in her bra between her breasts

-"You were right on the note, your underwear matched my scarf, I can't wait to get home and take the rest off you"-The redhead said in a hoarse voice in your ear making you feel chills, leaving your brain not working enough to respond to her.

Since it was winter, and you didn't have any underwear thanks to your wife, a shiver ran through your whole body even though you felt very hot. While the underwear you had was lace and didn't cover much, not having it made you feel very exposed and a little desperate, especially when Mel kept stroking and scratching your thighs. Every damn second that passed, any breeze you felt, or every time your wife talked or laughed, made you more desperate and more restless. Every minute that ran was eternal.

You needed your wife, you had even thought of telling her to come to your empty classroom to help you with your desperation and need. Without you noticing, a small whimper came from your lips from squeezing your thighs so hard while you thought about all the things your wife could do with you

-"Baby, are you okay, do you want to go outside to get some air?"-Mel smiled at you and spoke loudly so everyone could look at you and your needy state, but you needed her too much to think of anything else or feel embarrassed

-"Yes please"-It was the only thing that came out of your lips before you grab your coat and head outside. On the way out you didn't even have time to check if your wife had followed you, that you were already pressed against the wall with her lips on you kissing every inch they could reach. A happy and relieved moan left your lips as you finally felt her kisses and caresses. Her hands were pressed on your hips, your body was attached to her, and her lips and tongue were dancing with yours.

Your legs lost strength when you felt the redhead's hands go down to your ass and squeeze hard drawing a moan out of you. Mel bit your lip and tried to pull away from you to get a breath, but you, taking advantage of the fact that she had put on the scarf you gave her, took the garment and pulled her to kiss again, which made her laugh on your lips. You firmly grabbed her hand and tried to guide her under your dress, but she shook her head and smiled over your lips

-"Let's get back inside before you catch a cold"-She spoke in her voice hoarser than usual and you pouted looking at her

-"But I'm not cold and I need you so much... Please Mel, touch me a little, get me to climax at least once..."-You begged and she smiled looking at you, it's been a long time since she've seen you this desperate

-"Love, it's starting to snow, we can't do it out here... Let's go back to the others and I promise we'll be home in a few minutes" - she replied and kissed your pout to then guide you inside the school again.

Your wife had noticed all your sighs and how restless you were and even though she was desperate to be with you, she liked to see you despair, to hear you beg. That was the reason why she didn't touch you at that moment and the reason why she started talking to Barbara for a long time while you were trying to play cards without being able to concentrate and losing every time.

An hour later, your wife took pity on you and decided to say goodbye to the others and go home, but not before warning you that you had to behave like a good girl on the car or she will not touch you at home.

When you got home you barely let her open the door before you started kissing her again, the only thing you could do was take off her coat before she stopped you from letting you remove her clothes anymore

-"In the note you said that in addition to the scarf, you had worn green underwear like the scarf to match and that you would also be my gift... I want you to go to bed and get naked, take all off but your bra and wait for me there"-Your wife said in an authoritative tone and you nodded before rushing upstairs to the room while you took off your shoes and dress. After a few moments, while you were sitting on the bed waiting for her, Mel entered the room wearing a black corset that highlighted her beautiful breasts and made your mouth water. Her hair was tied in a ponytail, her leather pants still on her legs, and her tall boots too. What particularly caught your attention, it was that the scarf you gave her was still on her neck. The redhead approached you with desirous steps, her heel echoing on the wooden floor of the room, filling the silence with noise as well as the labored breaths of the two of you that could be clearly heard. She smiled as she stood inches away from you, watching as you looked at her body with desire. Carefully she sat down on your lap and took your face in her hands

-"Do you want to kiss and lick my breasts hon? - she whispered inches from your lips and you nodded eagerly-"go ahead, make mommy happy with your soft mouth... But put your hands behind your back, use your mouth only"-Excited and dumbfounded you did what she told you, with your hands behind your back, you started giving wet kisses on her neck and cleavage, at first you tried to stay calm and go slow, but the more you kissed and bit her breasts, the more desperate you were, especially when you heard her soft moans. With more determination, you began to mark and bite her breasts causing her to growl. Forcefully she grabbed your hair making you lift your head so she could kiss you, her tongue connected with yours starting a slow and wet dance, moans escaped your lips as you felt how the redhead rubbed against your leg. Without much effort and still kissing you, she pushed you back so that you were lying on the bed and she was on top of you. Even though you felt that while she was kissing you she was moving a lot, you didn't think much of it as you were gawking and focused on feeling the way she exploded your mouth with her tongue. It wasn't until you tried to grab her hips so that she rubbed more forcefully against you, that you realized that your hands were tied to the bed with no more or less than the scarf you had given her

-"Mel..."-You barely whimper and her smile grow

-"You're my christmas present and I'm going to make the most of every second" - she replied in a very deep voice. With soft, moist kisses, she began to mark your skin, from your jaw, to your neck, your breasts (In which she took a pause to massage and suck them through the lace bra until they were sensitive and then continue through your body), your abdomen and your legs.

With your hands tied to the head of the bed, you were at the complete mercy of the redhead who had her face between your legs, carefully caressing and kissing your thighs leaving pink marks that would later become deep, dark purple marks, deep memories of the night that was just beginning. Each mark was followed by her tongue, relieving the tingling and pain immediately, only adding to your desperation and desire. Your wife laughed as she saw how your legs trembled with desperation, because of the desire you had, because of her caresses, because of her. She had barely started touching you and you had already lost control of your body. Not to mention, you were already so wet that you were dripping the bed

-"Melissa, please..."-You whispered, you didn't even realize that you were begging her or why you were doing it, maybe you were begging her to be faster, maybe to not torture you, to touch you where you needed her the most, to put you out of your misery, maybe you were begging her to make you come and at the same time to prolong the moment, you were begging her for something, for anything

-"Shhh shh shh, It's my Christmas present, I want to enjoy it as best as possible"-the redhead whispered kissing your hip and marking you, you subconsciously lifted your hips to rub against her to feel something. But with strong hands she glued you to the bed again, following her kisses, almost reaching where you needed her most but stopping to look at your desperate eyes making you whimper under her strong gaze. You tried to put your legs together to feel some relief but she wouldn't let you, with a single stroke of her tongue, she swept from your entrance to your clit, causing a gasp to escape your mouth. You thought she would finally take pity on you, but no, she didn't touch you again, she just looked at you smiling with her face stained with your juices-"You're being such a good girl for me and you are so delicious" - She whispered against your pussy. Your eyes began to water, everything was too much and at the same time it was not enough, if only you could squeeze your thighs and get some relief, you were sure that if you put your thighs together because of how sensitive you were you could climax easily, but no, the redhead was using her strength to stop you. Sobbings escaped your mouth. Your wife was lost looking at your crotch, your body, all your responses to her touch-"you're clenching around nothing my love... I've never seen you so wet, you're soaked, so soaked that maybe I'll take pity on you... Maybe... Maybe if you had behaved well I would have taken pity on you long ago eating you out on the car, maybe if you hadn't decided to tell me the kind of underwear you were wearing in a place where I couldn't touch you... Maybe if you had behaved better I would have pulled you out of your misery a lot sooner... Tell me love, are you enjoying this as much as you enjoy teasing me?"-She asked in a hoarse voice kissing your abdomen but you didn't answer, which caused the redhead to slap your pussy, sending a current of electricity throughout your body

-"Melissa!"-You screamed and she bit your neck

-"I asked you a question... Are you enjoying it? Because if you're not enjoying this, I might stop right now" - she whispered in your ear and bit you there, making you sob

-"I'm enjoying it, don't stop, I'm begging you"-you answered her and a tear dropped from your eyes-"I need you Mel..."-You whispered with not much strength left

-"What do you need me to do?"-She asked innocently

-"Fuck me, please... Eat me, do something please"-You responded pathetically whimpering but she walked away from the bed looking you up and down smiling-"Melissa, please, I can't take it anymore, don't leave me like this"

-"You look so beautiful begging...I also have a gift for you my good girl"-The redhead began to peel off her boots and then her pants as you watched her intensely, unable to move from the bed because you were still tied with the scarf. Your eyes almost went to the back of your head and your mouth started salivating as the redhead took off her pants letting you see the strap she was wearing. This one was different from the one you normally used, this was a double-ended one, which meant that the two of you would enjoy it fully. The toy was as red as your wife's hair and made you wonder how she had bought it without you noticing. You also wondered if she had been wearing it all night and if was as desperate as you were to feel it inside you.

Your wife took off the corset she was wearing dropping your underwear that had been tucked between her breasts to the floor and climbed back into bed while watching you look at her. Carefully she climbed on top of you and sat on your abdomen, you moaned as you saw how her breasts bounced and how the strap came out between her legs standing hard and almost brushing your breasts with the tip; your wife groaned as she felt pressure inside her as the toy rested on your abdomen. Slowly she began to rub herself on your abdomen, riding you as she kissed you slow and deep, wetting your skin with her juices. When you started moaning desperately to have her so close and not being able to do anything or touch her, the redhead got up from your abdomen and lined up with your entrance looking into your eyes and biting her lip, when you nodded, she began to enter you very slowly stretching you like never before, as soon she bottomed out and her hip was connected to yours, you began to desperately move your hips without expecting to get used to the discomfort of being so stretched out. Melissa moaned loudly every time you moved your hips, the other end that was inside her was pressing on the perfect spot inside her when you desperately moved your hips. With her strong hands she grabbed one of your legs and placed it on her shoulder before exiting you and re-entering with force, making you scream when she hit your g-spot. That new position where you were halfway on your side and with your legs wide apart made you feel much more pleasure than any previous time you had been together using a strap.

Even though you wanted to hide your face in the pillows, Mel grabbed your jaw so you could look her in the eye

-"Are you ready?" She asked and you nodded without trusting your words, but it wasn't enough for her-"Speak or I won't move, use your big girl words" - She was making fun of you and you knew it but you were so desperate you didn't care about a thing

-"yes, please Melissa, fuck me, destroy me, I'm begging you"-You spoke on the verge of tears because of the need for her that you had.

The redhead finally took pity on you and began to move her hips in and out of you, first slowly and then harder and harder. The two of you were very close to heaven, the room was full of screams and moans that no doubt that it could be heard from the sidewalk. Every time her hips collided with yours it made a beautiful sound, her breasts bounced with every movement and her hands gripped your hips tightly to fuck you harder. Out of her mouth came many obscenities and words which you did not understand because of how far gone you were. Your body began to spasm and hers began to spasm as well, making more desperate and clumsy movements. Her hand went down to your pussy caressing your clit

-"Cum with me my love"-It was the last thing you heard before you had one of the most intense orgasms of your life. Your wife kissed you hard and kept moving her hips against you to lengthen the blessed feeling. For a few seconds you kissed her sloppy, lost in the aftershock.

When you returned to the present, you felt how your wife untied your hands without leaving from inside you, delicately kissed your wrists relieving the burning of the pressure the scarf had left. When she went to come drag out of inside you, you whimper sadly and she understood that you wanted her to stay inside a little longer, so she settled on the bed and made you snuggle on her chest, which you did smiling a lot when you felt her warmth and how she hugged you. You hid in her chest listening to her fluttering heart and enjoying feeling the caresses she gave on your back and legs whispering sweet words.

The redhead saw the time on the clock on the nightstand and smiled seeing that it was already past 12 o'clock.

-"Merry Christmas my love..."-she whispered and kissed your forehead making you smile

-"Merry Christmas my life"-You answered and kissed her affectionately slowly staring to move your hips again a little sleepy.

#melissa schemmenti smut #melissa schemmenti x you #melissa schemmenti #melissa schemmenti fanfic #melissa schemmenti x reader #abbott elementary #fanfic #lesbian

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stemmmm · 5 months

Text

Close to a year and four rewrites later, I present to you...

Stem's Thoughts on the Game Design of Harvest Moon on SNES

I’m not going to lie, if you don’t like farming sims, you won’t like this one. At their core, every farming sim (at least in the rpg genre) is nearly identical, and that’s because of this game. In a way, I might dare to say that Harvest Moon for the SNES is the perfect farming sim because it has every one of the usual elements in their most simplified form and it just works straight from the get-go. It works so well in fact, that after this game came out in 1996, four more entries to the series were released before the year 2000.

If you are someone who does like farming sims, I can’t recommend this game enough. It’s simple and to the point, with a fast pace and enough random events and points of intrigue that the game kept me relatively engaged for my whole playthrough.

Also, by nature of this being the first game and therefore hard to cover concisely and by nature of taking so long to write this... it's long as hell! Enjoy! :) <3

I can’t say my appreciation of this game doesn’t come with a few caveats. I’ve intermittently played HM games all my life, starting with the GameBoy port (GB1) all the way to Pioneers of Olive Town, so while I don’t know exactly how the series has evolved, I’ve seen it at some of its earliest and at its latest. My vague childhood memories of GB1 (a game I didn’t own and didn’t play much of) were that it was pretty sparse and bland, so knowing that this original game was allegedly the same thing but with a little more content, I was expecting the bare minimum. I was prepared to never even be able to leave my farm, but the first thing the game did was shuttle me off to the nearby town and blocked the exit until I talked to everyone there.

(Maps of the town, mountain, and farm via The Spriters Resource)

You learn everything you need to know about the game right here at the beginning; Firstly, that this town is small as all hell and has hardly anyone in it aside from the five girls you can marry and their immediate family members. The next thing you’ll learn is that there’s a fence on your farm, and you need to be taking care of that. Of the few repetitive lines of dialogue any given person in town has to share with you on any given day, a fair amount are devoted to reminding you to fix your fence, to make sure it’s in good repair. There was just a big storm so watch out! Remember to check it every day! Are you chopping enough wood? Because you’ll need it for that fence!

I’m being dramatic of course, you aren’t reminded about it that much, though the thin variation of dialogue means it comes up a lot. The emphasis on your fence does exist, and it isn’t for nothing: while it doesn’t matter as much if all you do is grow crops– if you keep animals, the game tells you that the ideal thing to do for yours and the animal’s happiness is to put the animals outside to graze. Animal feed bought from the livestock shop will keep them fed, but it's nothing compared to fresh grass grown on your farm. You can’t even buy animals without a certain amount of grass planted! And sure, you can cut the grass to store for later, but it’s at its best straight out of the ground. However, the way the game is programmed, the animals only eat when the day rolls over, so putting animals outside for the day and taking them in at night isn’t an option, and on top of that, there’s things that come out at night that can hurt your animals. This is where your fence comes in.

The Utility of Fences

At the entrance to your farm is a cluster of buildings: your house, a small lumber shed, a barn, coop, and silo, a tool shed, and an old, dried up well. Just barely surrounding all of these is a little wooden fence that looks more like a row of upright logs than anything else. Despite this farm having presumably been abandoned, the fence is in perfect repair. You’ll quickly discover that the fence as it is won’t work out; there’s hardly space to plant anything within it, and with the well dried up, you’re forced to hop it to get to a water source to fill up your watering can. It’s pretty clear that you’ll need to expand your fence, and it’s easy to do with all of the tree stumps littering the massive field that it’s blocking off.

On top of needing to expand the range of your fence, the individual planks eventually will rot away and leave useless stumps. They show up more frequently after rain or a large storm. The posts don’t rot away completely so they have to be manually removed, but replacing them is as simple as smashing the old post with a hammer or ax and popping a new post in its place. It becomes a very natural part of your daily routine to run a lap around the farm’s perimeter before you go to bed to make sure everything looks safe and secure. It’s a good way to ensure your animals are put away and debris is cleared out, too! It slotted very nicely into my daily schedule until a certain point.

With how much time you have to spend hopping over the logs to get to the rest of the area too large to fence in, you might be tempted to leave one out of place for easier traversal. When night comes, it’s clear why that would be a mistake. Sometimes when you go to bed, you’ll hear your dog barking. It’s a small detail, one that took me a long time to notice because I didn’t always play with the sound on. There are wild dogs that prowl around the wilderness surrounding your farm, and only at night do they dare to come close. Your dog, if left outside, isn't able to do anything other than warn you of their presence if they show up. There’s nothing to notice during the daytime if it happens, unless you happened to leave one of your animals outside. There was one night that I left my chickens outside, having thought my fence was in perfect order and repair. I went to bed and heard the dog barking, followed by a horrible crunch. When I went out in the morning, I saw where my chicken had been before, it had been replaced by a pile of feathers. On the north side of my farm was a rotted fence post I’d failed to fix.

The Reality of Fences

After losing my chicken, a cluster of pixels on my screen it may have been, I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my animals outside. I didn’t want to take a risk again, the sound and sight of feathers was upsetting enough. On a more logical note, the chickens didn’t even lay eggs if left outside so there was no value in it. Cows were a pain to put back inside the barn too, because of some silliness with the game’s collision. As much of a disappointment as it was to not have my animals roam around, it was just easier. At the time, I was focusing on upgrading my house anyways, so I didn’t have time to take care of my animals outside where time would pass when I could use that time gathering wood, and everything I had was being saved up for the house so I didn’t have any extra materials to repair my fence with. My fence was all rotting away. Because it was inconvenient for getting to my crops, I started smashing all the old posts as they went, too. That’s when I noticed something: the wild dog wasn’t coming anymore.

I didn’t pay much attention to it until I was looking up a completely different mechanic and discovered a forum explaining how the fences were broken. Rotted posts attracted the wild dog, they said. It didn’t matter if you had gaps in your fence, or even a fence at all–in fact no fence was the best kind to have because the mere existence of posts that could rot was a liability.

I was hesitant at first to test this concept, after all there wasn’t much I could gain from it. My chickens wouldn’t lay outside, and my cows would be too challenging to get back in if the forecast called for rain. The thing that got me to finally try it was when I was trying to hatch more chickens. My coop felt like a nightmare to navigate due to its current population. I wanted less animals inside that I had to feed, so I threw a couple chicks outside–they weren’t laying yet anyways. Lo and behold, the dog didn’t come. More days passed and more animals were left outside, and it never came. My fence had rotted until there was nothing left at all. No dogs could ever come to my farm again. And I realized that the game’s own insistence on its mechanics was all a lie.

How You’re Told To Play - How The Game Lies

Of course, my animals didn’t stay outside. For a minute it was fun having a crowd of cows milling about while I tended to my crops, but letting them wander free and uninhibited made it impossible to find and milk all of them without any trouble, and there were the rainy days to watch out for. After the novelty wore off, they went back inside and stayed there. The thing is, that didn’t make a single bit of difference in how much they liked me compared to how they were living in the barn. On top of that, they didn’t seem to care whether I was feeding them grass or store-bought food either, though I mostly stuck to the grasses since they were cheaper and easier to get. Nothing about how I was told to care for animals really mattered past feeding them every day, petting it and maybe brushing it, if it was a cow.

It gets worse. The most basic aspect of the game is the fact that time passes. The story takes place over 2 and a half years, running through each day until the end, and these days last from 6AM to 6PM according to the game’s own internal time setting. After 6PM, all of the shops aside from the bar will close and you lose the ability to sell anything as you’re told it would rot in the shipping bin overnight, so there’s nothing to do but sleep until the next day. Issue with this is that when the days stop at 6PM… they just stop. Time doesn’t flow anymore. The game doesn’t give you any kind of clock to know the exact time it is until after you’ve upgraded your house, so all you have to go by before that is the color of the environment and whether or not your character has played an animation to eat something (you’re automatically fed when you wake up, at noon, and at night). I discovered this because I was curious if I could actually see the wild dog by staying out, and left the game running for probably 20 minutes in real life only for nothing to happen. Because of the time freeze, the time after 6PM actually becomes really valuable for farm logistics. You can’t sell anything, no, but you can pull up all the weeds on the farm, water your crops, fix your fences, feed and care for animals if you hadn’t already, and harvest wood for fences and house upgrades which would have taken a lot of valuable time to get during shipping-hours. The only thing that gets in the way of doing all that is you running out of energy.

Your energy is what allows you to use your farming equipment like your ax or watering can. Running out of it doesn’t mean you fall unconscious or anything, but your character will play an animation of them stumbling over and will fail to use any tools. The most obvious fix to this is to simply go to bed, as sleeping gives you a full recharge. You can also, however, recharge it by going to the hot spring on the mountain, or by eating food bought at the restaurant in town or foraged for in the forest. You can’t tell easily how much is refilled, as there’s no visual indicator like a health bar, but you’re able to eat more than once, and jumping into the hot spring seems to count whether you did it or not more than how much time you spend in there, so you can hop in and out a couple of times and call it good.

Individually, time freezing at 6PM and energy being endlessly replenishable aren’t bad things. Even together, they’re not the worst. Having free time to focus on profitless chores is nice, and I think it’s important to be able to replenish your energy in case you have a limited amount of time to do things like for example, cut all of your grass before winter kills it. What makes an exploit out of these is the fact that the resources in the forest will never run out. Every time you re-enter the forest, all forage items and tree stumps are respawned. The infinite amount of forage makes for infinite energy refills, and could also make for an incredible money exploit if you didn’t have a very limited amount of time to ship things. You don’t have a limited amount of time to cut up tree stumps though. If you wanted to, you could run up to the forest after 6PM, chop every stump, then simply reload the area, and everything’s back. You can get all of the wood you would ever need to fully upgrade your house in one night. It’s a bit of a grind to do all at once, but it’s a grind you’d be doing over time anyways. It’s not the worst exploit in the world, since you still need money to pay for the house upgrade, but arguably because of how you have to focus your energy elsewhere for most of the game, the wood is the harder thing to get. Additionally, when the game has very little to do in both fall and winter due to the lack of crops, this exploit takes away just about any reason to play those two seasons other than to take care of animals. It’s an optional exploit of course–as all exploits are–but once you learn about it, it’s hard to resist the desire to get the grind out of the way all at once and mess up the pacing of the game.

The Charm of the Game

Learning that the fences were completely broken as a mechanic was a huge disappointment for me. From the moment I got a grasp on how the game was supposed to work, I wanted to eventually surround my whole field with fencing and keep my animals outside so I would have some life on my farm while I worked. I didn’t just want this, I was excited for it! This was something I’d never done in a farming sim that didn’t already manage putting animals in and out for you like Stardew Valley or newer Story of Seasons games do. My routine is always the same: I go into the barn and coop to tend to each of my animals, I take care of my crops outside, then run straight to town to talk to everyone, and go to bed. The change in routine that would come from taking care of the animals outside and patrolling the fence every night felt fresh to me. It made me feel that even though this was the first game of its kind, it was different and required new things of me. But in the end, I played it exactly the same.

Harvest Moon is still very different from all of the games that followed it, though. In many ways, it’s because it has less “stuff” in it– both in terms of items and things you have to do. But I wouldn’t say that it feels incomplete. Harvest Moon runs over the course of 2 and a half years before your work is evaluated. Until that happens, you have the ability to farm four different crops, you can raise both cows and chickens, you can upgrade your house to have more features, upgrade your working tools, build relationships with the townspeople to a small extent, go to town festivals that happen each year, and you can get married to one of the five girls living in town with whom you can have up to two children. Everything that you would come to expect as a fan of games like this is already here from the very first iteration. The most notable lack this game has, and one that seems to be completely unique to this game, is that there aren’t any crops in the fall or winter, which means that unless you have animals, there’s a whole half of the year that you don’t have anything to do. The game is clearly aware of this though, because in an average playthrough, this is where you’ll start to run into the story events.

There isn’t much of an overarching story in the game, past the general concept that you’ve run away from home to work on an abandoned farm. The conclusion rests on how good of a job you actually do. In between those two points are smaller events, usually tied to when you get tool upgrades or special ones for each of the romantic interests. The first event you’re likely to run into happens on the very last day of summer, where one of the woodsmen comes to your house in the morning to ask if you’re okay because he heard a huge crash at night and you should check your farm. What I found was that a tree in my field had fallen over, and its remaining stump had a big empty hole in it. When I inspected the stump, I was suddenly underground in a cave filled with loud and industrious music, and I was faced with two, little green people–Harvest Sprites, though I don’t know if they’re called that yet here. One asked me if my scythe worked well, and when I said yes, told me that they had made it and that I should check my shed tomorrow for a better one. Other tool upgrades are obtained in similar fashion; one comes from feeding a starving sprite a mushroom and another comes from another hole in the farm opening up to reveal another part of the cave system that has a couple of hints on how to unlock other things.

The events for romantic interests happen at less scripted times, as they’re tied to how strong your relationship is with each girl. Each girl only has one event, and it only triggers when your relationship is high enough that you would ask her to marry you. The events usually take up a whole day, and don’t necessarily add much to each character. Ellen’s revolves around how she’s no good at keeping pets– something established on your second day at the farm when you get your dog from her, Eve’s hammers in her fraught relationship with her grandpa, and Ann’s is about losing the chicken weathervane, or “weathercock” which sits on the roof of her workshop and goes missing every time there’s a storm. Conversely, Nina and Maria’s scenes bring up entirely new events that bring up a number of questions while providing no answers. Nina disappears while looking for a medicinal plant because her mother is apparently sick, and Maria vanishes for days until you find her hiding away with the woodsmen for some reason. All of these events, whether they share new information or not, manage to add some greatly appreciated depth to each character by giving them more room to speak and be sincere than their short and repetitive day-to-day dialogues do.

The dialogue in this game is simple, to the point, and sparse– probably because there was only so much memory that could be reserved for approximately 15 people who all have multiple lines of dialogue, and only so much money to pay someone to write more. There is simple dialogue that doesn’t tell you much more than “hello, how are you” would, more dialogue that I’d label as tutorial text, and a few lines that I truthfully couldn’t understand well because of the sub-par translation this game received for english. The dialogue that exists to inform the world really manages to create a unique vibe though. Nina’s dialogue, almost always about plants, goes into forays about how they’re creatures with wills to live, too. Ellen’s uncle who runs the ranch shop tells you that it’s much better to feed your animals fresh grass if you try to buy any from his store, and if you decline to purchase he laughs as if he’s won something. There’s even dialogue referencing the silent player! Multiple lines exist to comment on him not paying attention, and inspection prompts have people telling you not to touch something rather than being an item description. It was the last thing I expected, to get the same level of personality out of the main character as I did from each of the girls, albeit very subtly. He went from a kind of nothing, self-insert into being what I perceive to be a hyperactive boy, akin to a border collie who was let out into a field of sheep for the first time–the exact kind of person crazy enough to take on an abandoned farm and succeed.

It’s these short little character details that bring life into the game. Each day, you’ll really only see one line of dialogue from each character, be it new or old, with that dialogue usually only changing if there’s a change in season or festival coming up. The repetitive, pretty mindless routine of the game can turn into a sort of meditation if you let it, where you spend your time working thinking about the folks in town and what they had to say to you the previous day. The developers took this concept in stride and gave the side characters loads of dialogue about life, about God and religion, and about… very basic morals, but morals nonetheless. It’s a children’s game after all. When you take the thoughts, questions and prompts the characters give you back to the farm to do your long and tedious routine, you have to ask yourself– what are you working so hard for? For the feeling of accomplishment? Recognition from your peers? For the sake of some higher power, if you worship one? For me personally, it was to write this essay, but it was also for a good grade on the high score screen at the end, so to be honest a lot of this stuff was lost on me until just now when I was reviewing the game to get screenshots.

Setting The Standard - Why You Should Play HM SNES

You may read all of this and still think, well, it doesn’t sound like the game has much in it. And you would be right, it’s a very small game, but it’s also extremely quick. On average, my days only lasted about three minutes of real life time. Everything flew by, and I think I finished the game in 20 hours or less. I barely got a chance to notice that there wasn’t much going on because every second of my day was spent busy doing something, and when I wasn’t busy, the break was appreciated. I didn’t start to run out of things to do until I was finished with the second year, and when I looked up what I needed to do to get a decent ending, I was already most of the way there. It was easy to push through those last two seasons to get to the end, and it was so, so worth it.

As I mentioned earlier, the game ends with a high score screen, meaning it has to track all of your accomplishments. These include, but are not limited to: the number of things you ship, number of each crop you grow, number of animals you have and how much they like you, how upgraded your house is, who you married, how much all of the girls in town like you if you didn't get married, how many kids you have (which basically equates to how long you were married), your happiness score (increased by going to festivals and decreased by having animals die), and how many times you’ve pet your dog. In addition to these being tallied up and presented to you, you get special cutscenes not just for each one of these accomplishments, but additional ones for if you managed to do even better! I got a cutscene for having a cow, followed by one for having lots of cows, followed by yet another for having cows that loved me! Watching them play one after the other felt like taking a victory lap even without getting the best possible result. Seeing all of my numbers come up at the end made me want to try again to actually get those other cutscenes, not to get to see them, they’re so easy to find on Youtube, but because the game made it feel like an accomplishment! If I weren’t following this game up by immediately playing its GameBoy port, I absolutely would have started a new file right away. I’ve been playing the Harvest Moon series since I was a little kid and this was the first time I’d actually managed to beat one of these games. I struggle to think the finale of any game following this will feel as good as this one did.

I started writing this whole thing about the fences because it was an easy and silly entry point to get into my core issue with the game, and so I could have an opportunity to dig into game mechanics and the way the knowledge you have of them will completely alter your playstyle, because that’s all fun and interesting for me to talk about. Another reason why I focused on that was because it was near impossible for me to pick any kind of focus point when talking about this game. After all, I’m trying to study a whole series of games that spans multiple decades, and this is not only the first game in that series, but a game that created the whole genre of farming sims and defined that genre so thoroughly that you can see its DNA in every single game that followed.

I didn’t expect much to come out of my experience with this game. My expectations for it before I even picked it up were that it was going to be basically featureless, as informed by my experience with one of the first games I ever played as a child, Harvest Moon GB, which I will get into next. This game was not that at all. I think that everything it did manage to get working right came together just about perfectly. Harvest Moon is exactly what it wanted to be, and where it wasn’t, it lied about how it worked to try and make you play the correct way anyways. When I believed that lie, my time playing was even more enjoyable. Maybe if farming worked just a little bit more like how you’re told it’s supposed to, and if there was just a little bit more story, those would cover the things I felt wanting for the most. But maybe a little flexibility and ambiguity is a good thing. Maybe actually maintaining a fence is just too hard, and maybe if the girls were more fleshed out, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy filling in their gaps in my head.

There are many more things I could say and wanted to say about this game, but this has grown far too long already so I'm cutting myself off here. I'm sure my later entries aren't going to get near this length. If you managed to get to this point, thank you so much for reading!

#harvest moon #story of seasons #harvest moon snes #hm snes #game review #m.txt #hm posting #i think i hit the image cap also? it wouldn't let me put in more even though i dont think there are that many. maybe it was a different cap #im happy to answer questions about things i didnt cover here too lol and i have notes from my playthrough if anyone is interested in those #those notes are the only reason i was able to keep all of this straight given how long it took me to write #anyways finally hitting post after like 3 days because i keep forgetting until weird hours

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alasse-earfalas · 8 months

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Some ideas I have about some of the Links and their brains.

This will not include all of the boys, as most of them (Time, Wind, Twilight, Four, and Hyrule) I see as being in the same basic camp when it comes to smarts and stuff, so there's nothing really for me to address there. I'm just going to point out some interesting quirks I've noticed / hc with the other four.

Warriors

It's easy to jump to the conclusion that Wars is the stupidest Link, since his game has no puzzles. I disagree. While yes, he is laughably terrible with puzzles, he is a strategic and tactical genius with a powerhouse, rapid-fire brain that can parse out an entire battle's worth of information in an instant and come to a decision in a flash. Traditional puzzles may not be his thing, sure, but that is not where his genius lies. His brain thrives on cutting through chaos with decisive action, and that is where he shines.

Sky

Has ADHD (inattentive type). Like, really, really bad inattention. Constantly spaces out and forgets things. There's a reason Fi pops up like, every half-second to remind him what he's supposed to be doing. Hylia knew what she was dealing with and planned accordingly. He is the most space-cadety of space-cadets. He'll be going along like a normal person with a normal train of thought and then he'll see a leaf floating by and completely forget what he's doing because the leaf is pretty and isn't it interesting how it moves with the wind like that and I wonder where it's going hey wait get back here—

But. Sky's mental superpower is that he is the fastest dang learner in the entire Chain. Not just with weapons or items or music like the rest of 'em, but everything. Wild's unable to cook but has all the ingredients for something he's made before? Sky watched how he did it once while helping him dice the veggies, so he'll just throw that meal together real quick. Wild let him flip through the "Ingredients" section of the compendium once, and now Sky can identify all the edible plants it listed by sight. He learned how to carve by watching Jakamar repair a couple of wooden structures one day. Sky may be a space cadet, but he's also the most potently absorbent practical-knowledge and information sponge you ever did meet.

Wild

Also has ADHD (combined type). There are literal "ooo shiny" mechanics in the freaking game. Koroks? ooo shiny. Shrine quests? ooo shiny. Every single item that Wild can pick up in the game literally sparkles. Everything about the Sheikah Slate is designed to account for this: scope pins, map stamps, inventory organization, Hyrule Compendium, Sheikah Sensor, photo album, a journal which he uses to take fastidious detailed notes of all the crap he needs to remember because he knows he'll forget all of it otherwise. He struggles to sit still for extended periods unless he is asleep or gazing into a pretty fire.

Wild is also the creative genius out of the bunch. He has the most robust understanding of fundamental physics out of the entire Chain. His visual thinking and creative problem-solving skills are off the charts. The rest of the Chain may be able to navigate with maps and compasses, but Wild can navigate foreign terrain using nothing but the environment itself. Present him with a problem and he'll think of fifty different ways to address it and all of them will usually work. He is an all-around genius problem solver and astoundingly creative thinker.

Legend

Mind like a freaking. Steel. Trap. Nothing slips past his awareness or gets forgotten. Ever. Journals are pointless because his brain is an information vault. Oh, and any puzzle he's handed better say goodby to its loved ones and make sure its will is in order because this lad will solve it before it has a chance to defend itself.

Let me just, give you an example. Just one. You see this here?

How long do you think you could remember this random character vomit without writing it down? A few minutes, maybe? Maybe a couple hours, or a day or two if you took the time to memorize it?

Try an entire journey to another country after hearing it only once.

Oh, but that's not even the most impressive part! You see, Legend didn't just hang onto one of these memorization nightmares for an entire extended trip to another land, oh no—he remembered several of them. Perfectly. As if that wasn't enough, y'all remember the item swap quests? Yeah, without notes of any kind, this Link remembered who needed what in every single one of those convoluted trading chains. All while he was busy saving the world.

The downside is that Legend's thinking is not very flexible. He operates best when there is a single correct solution to a given problem. He much prefers having concrete information to work with, rather than a vague scenario with a shrug and a, "idk, figure something out". Being dropped into a massive open world with no information other than, "alright here ya go, here's some basic abilities and a light dusting of backstory, now get out there and save the Princess!" would be an overwhelming, anxiety-riddled nightmare for this dude.

#linkeduniverse #linked universe #lu warriors #lu sky #lu wild #lu legend #sorry that ended so abruptly #I didn't really know what else to say #so there you go #those are my thoughts

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askmerriauthor · 10 months

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I said the game demands microtransactions, not that it requires them. That's not just me being pedantic about wording, but rather a big indication of how the developers designed the game to work. Pokemon Sleep doesn't want you to play for free and is designed to make playing-without-paying a worse experience.

Like many free-to-play games out there, they operate on the idea of monetizing convenience and "fear of missing out" (FOMO). Such games will either create a problem in order to sell you a solution, or rely on a rotating/limited availability of enviable items to encourage impulse buying to avoid losing the chance to have the item. Pokemon Sleep does both of these.

Despite Pokemon Sleep being presented as a passive "something in the background while you sleep" kind of novelty, that's not the actual gameplay at all. The game actually wants you to be extremely active and paying a lot of attention to it non-stop, along with encouraging you to get others involved as well. Up to 500 potential invitations with a 50 individual approval list of contacts, specifically, and the system "helpfully" lets you link to your Google, Apple, or Facebook accounts in order to facilitate that and further scoop up lots of personal data for advertising.

The basic gameplay cycle of Pokemon Sleep is that you have a 7-day period in which you can power up your Snorlax as much as possible, with a higher power score equaling a greater variety of visiting Pokemon for you to catch. Visiting Pokemon will appear in a variety of sleeping types, of which there are at least 415 to collect (with individual Pokemon having multiple sleeping types). These Pokemon can also be "befriended" by giving them a sufficient number of items, which means they'll then join your team and help you boost Snorlax's power score over time. You can further boost Snorlax's score by feeding it, which the game encourages you to do three times per day within a given time window. Your Helper Pokemon will supply you with ingredients to make meals for Snorlax at different intervals, and the meals you make have different potencies based on the ingredients used.

So, to summarize, you have a limited period in which to get a number as big as it can be, with various randomized factors able to improve the rate of progression, before it all resets and you're back to square one.

Yes, you absolutely can play this game without spending any money. But the game itself is designed in a way that urges you to spend money at every turn. Every element of gameplay is improved if you spend money, and will actively degrade in effectiveness and quality if you don't. Remember how you can befriend Pokemon to help you out with getting Snorlax's score up? That's faster and easier if you spend money. Those same Helpers who gather ingredients for you? They lose Energy (an arbitrary limit put in place by the game system) the longer they're around, and become worse at gathering ingredients the less Energy they have. But, good for you! You can just buy more Energy for them! Rather, you have to make two purchases - the Energy-restoring item only gives back 50% of their Energy, so you need to buy two in order to max them out again. And you can just buy a box of random ingredients too! How convenient! And if you really want to get the most out of sleeping, you can buy the monthly auto-renewing (until you manually cancel it through Google or Apple, not the game app itself) Premium Membership! Which literally makes your sleep more valuable than the same - or even higher quality - sleep of people who aren't Premium members! But you better buy fast, because all of these items for sale are on a rotating schedule and will swap out of the shop at different 15 or 30-day intervals. You wouldn't want to miss your chance, would you?

A core facet of microtransaction pricing is that it's intentionally and carefully designed to never be enough. You'll always be in a position where you need to buy just a little more than the minimum, and it always comes out at odd numbers that never fit exactly where they need to in order to maximize your purchase, and are priced in unorthodox values specifically to trick the buyer's brain into thinking it's a better deal than it is. With that in mind, it pays to look at the minimum and maximum amounts the game wants to try and charge you since that gives a good idea of their intended range of interaction with your wallet, and how far a given amount of paid microtransactions will take you. Because, remember, such games are built around the idea of NEVER giving you enough. They ALWAYS want you to be in a state of wanting a little more and being tempted to dish over some more cash for it.

In Pokemon Sleep's case? The minimum buy-in for "Diamonds" - their premium microtransaction currency - is 60 Diamonds for $1.19. Their maximum? 7000 Diamonds for $97.99. So what this says outright is that the game is designed in such a way that it expects 7000 Diamonds to NOT BE ENOUGH to maintain a player's best experience. Because, again, such games will NEVER give you a value sufficient enough to deter the need for further purchases. This is a game that wants players to spend $100 multiple times over throughout the lifespan of their interest in the game. Will the majority of players do this? No. There's absolutely going to be a number of whales who will, especially among influencers and content creators on social media who make their own career off these sort of things. But what Pokemon Sleep is relying on is that there will be a far greater abundance of players who think "Oh, it's just a dollar..." or 'Oh, this item is going away... it's not even $5, so why not?" on a very regular basis.

And I haven't even touched on the overt security/privacy issues and the personal info scraping the app has potential for as well. So, yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and sleep on Pokemon Sleep.

#pokemon sleep #pokemon #game development #game design #microtransactions

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