#the nature of a comedy game is that not everyone is going to find it funny that's just the way it is lol
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i am going to make the general utdr community recognize undertale 2 if it is the last thing i do
#and like man it's not like i'm trying to get everybody to PLAY the game#the nature of a comedy game is that not everyone is going to find it funny that's just the way it is lol#but i REALLY want people to recognize it and know about it. there's far too much effort that went into it for it to be as unknown as it is#bri talks#incredible how long this game has stayed in the front of my brain. it's lasted longer than most things.#you know i was only a wandersong guy for like 3 months? wild. i've been here for five.#every day i look at my legs flowey acrylic stand and i'm like Wow :) that guy:)
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Age Gap (Buggy x Reader)
A/N: for @soft-mafia since she wanted more age gap Buggy! Mostly bulleted like a headcanon but has two little drabbles sprinkled in cuz I couldn't help myself. I will be posting a continuation of this actually writing out the scene mentioned at the end, but I wanted to get this out now.
Word count: ~2.6 k
Warnings: obviously an age gap but the younger one is mentioned to be in their 20s, fem!reader, NSFW mentioned at the end, alcohol consumption, probably (hopefully) silly humor, the touch starved shows hardcore for a second there, tried my best to get Buggy right but you know how it be especially because he exists as an amalgam of LA and anime Buggy in my brain
Now come get y'all dopamine
I imagine you joined Buggy’s crew largely looking for that found family goodness then found out how much you’d never been taken care of and how much you craved it
One day while going through the different acts you were learning from the crew trying to find what stuck, you took a decent fall. Not the kind that breaks bones, but the kind where you just gotta lay there a sec and recalibrate how you got to this point
After some laughter (I mean come on it is a crew curated by Buggy and they could tell it wasn’t serious), the nearby crew surrounded you to check on you. While you were breathlessly saying you’re fine from your position on the floor, they parted to reveal the Captain coming to your side:
Buggy bent down to loom over you. The shadow he cast over your face was a welcome break from the bright overhead lights. You just wished that the way they haloed him didn’t make it so hard to see the laughter on his face.
“Good form! I think we could just throw you around to see you flail like that as your act - you’d be our finest comedy routine.” His voice was thick with sarcasm and giggles. However, his detached arms were gentle when they lifted you from the floor. They changed to posing outstretched with his hands on your shoulders and he walked into them to reattach. He looked you up and down before circling around you, all the while his hands were nudging you this way and that for his inspection. Once he was back at your front, he changed to brushing some dirt from your arms and shoulders. You didn’t speak for fear of interrupting this attention you were receiving from him. He seemed to suddenly snap to clarity anyway.
“RIGHT.” Vocal control? Who is she? Buggy doesn’t know her. “So either get better at what you’re doing or actually fall on purpose. Wouldn’t want you fucking up that money maker.” He was already walking away when one detached hand gave your cheek two brisk pats and he made himself scarce.
It was obvious to you and everyone else how much you ate up his attention. The soft look you were still giving the direction he went in was damn near sickening. It was then you understood your purpose here - becoming Buggy’s spoiled lapdog.
Luckily for you, that was also the moment Buggy realized how his body buzzed when he touched you and how he lit up when you looked up at him with pretty, wide eyes.
Unluckily, he also decided that being near you would lead down a dangerous route of him needing more and more of you and he was positive that he was just being some old creep over a pretty little thing like you.
This led to a game where Buggy would try to keep you at arm’s length while he battled both his own desire to be around you and your seemingly supernatural ability to just appear next to him at all times.
He wasn’t great at the arms distance thing even when he thought he was nailing it because nailing it to him was being in his natural space as the center of attention and only checking (immediately and desperately) that you were watching and approving of whatever he was doing. The way his head would always snap to you for your reaction was neither subtle nor discouraging to your rapidly growing infatuation.
You decided that orbiting his personal space wasn’t working well enough. Sure, he’d give you a hit of what you wanted with some fleeting touches and mostly disguised compliments but you needed more. Hurting yourself intentionally so that he would take care of you didn’t seem like a sustainable option, so you settled on playing his own game. Time to practice owning a room.
This could be a dangerous game to play. You were certain that blatantly taking the spotlight would just make him upset with you not that you’d mind him taking that out on you. You settled on more subtle things like spreading your attention more through the crew instead of mostly on him, being more focused and daring in your training, participating more in the many games that broke out when the alcohol did, and dressing a bit more intentionally (whether that’s flashier colors, eye-catching accessories, bold makeup, new or intricate hairstyles, etc.)
The boldest card you played was feeding more into any of the flirting you received.
He has a freak show, yes, but have you ever seen how fine circus performers are?? Full fun costumes are It and also the tasks they have to perform either help them get conventionally attractive bodies and/or the rizz that comes with performing feats (just look at the traction Fryboy has gained with women like damn why he kinda-). Due to that, you’re around attractive people all the time.
While the flirting is for the purpose of pushing Buggy’s buttons, you must admit that it wasn’t a hard habit to keep up and may help inflate your ego.
Your attempts have mixed results. Buggy’s desire to claim you grew but so did his insecurity
In his mind, you look more natural next to one of the younger lookers in his crew while he’s certain the pair of you must look ridiculous together. It’s this very insecurity that’s gonna make it necessary for you to bluntly and shamelessly throw yourself at him both repeatedly and with no room for questions:
You have no clue what else you can do to get through that thick skull of his. You’re on your knees, quite literally at that. You figured that kneeling in front of that circus throne while he’s laid himself all over it would be enough to break the man. Enough to break any man, really, but he’s still finding ways to deflect you.
Buggy nodded his head to a nearby open seat. “You know they made chairs to be comfortable and your dumb ass is on the floor. That drunk already?” he snorted. Maybe choosing to do this during one of the many celebrations (you think this one is for one week of no one pregaming for show runs. ironic.) was a bad idea. You had been banking on some drinks loosening up whatever was holding him back. It always made you snicker when you entertained the idea of it being from a sense of propriety. Checking in on the situation, you could see how all the chaos going on around you two made it easier for him to keep his eyes off of you and his ears unfocused. Earlier, you had counted it as a plus that working up a buzz would help you bulldoze through his stubbornness. You had forgotten that any alcohol in your system would make for the perfect excuse for him to write you off.
“I’ve barely started my third drink,” you started with a pout, “and I’d be ashamed if that’s enough to get me drunk after all the time spent on your crew.”
“Then you are just being stupid.”
You huffed and rolled your eyes. Okay. Attention didn’t work. Compliments didn’t work. Kneeling didn’t work. Time for some big guns.
You shifted to the side so you’d be sitting towards your left hip with your bent legs beside you. Your drink found its way to your right hand but, most importantly, your chin found its way onto Buggy’s left knee. It brought you so close to where you’d really like to put yourself to work, and, man, was the temptation strong with the way his right leg was slung over the armrest of his seat. How did he expect you to stay away when he was serving himself up on a platter like this?
Buggy was definitely giving you his undivided attention now. His gaze was dark and slightly accusatory. The lighting matched with his makeup made him look more dangerous than usual. The nerves it sent through you might have had you back right off. Instead you held your ground because you saw his pulse hammer against his neck. You saw his throat bob as he swallowed. You saw his pink tongue contrast with red as he licked his lips and gave a shaky exhale.
While you were starting to settle into your bold move, Buggy was becoming more and more antsy. His grip on his glass became white-knuckled under his gloves, and he tried to give himself time to think by taking a huge gulp of his drink. Why did you have to look at him like that? So pleading? The angle from his lap made your lashes darken your eyes and it was impossible for him to keep the image of your hooded gaze about a foot closer to him out of his head. What did you want from him? You’d denied his accusations about money or intel so what the fuck could it be? Was this a game? Get in the pants of the Captain for preferential treatment and go back to whoever else you had in your palm on the crew to laugh about him falling for it?
You noticed his mood turning sour so you decided to interrupt whatever was tumbling around his head. “I think I could get much more comfy right here.” To prove a point, you dragged your chin to his inner thigh, right above his knee, and snuggled your cheek into his leg. His pants weren’t the softest against your skin but he was so addictingly warm through them. Your eyes briefly fluttered shut to enjoy the sensation before you looked back up at him and flirtatiously said, “I’m comfiest next to you.”
His hands itched with the need to grab you by the hair and force your face right where he needed you. Instead he scoffed at you. “Suuuuure. And why’s that, princess?”
“You make me smile,” you admitted immediately. His startled gaze met your lovesick one and you realized what you said and how quickly you said it. Too close to emotionally vulnerable; time to backtrack a touch. You want to get the role as his trophy before you even attempt to approach the title of Love of His Life. “You also said that you take care of your crew and I’m on your crew, right? So you’ll take care of me.”
The cheeky smile you spoke through melted him. An achingly deep sigh left him while his right hand detached from the arm to deposit his drink on the floor next to you. Quickly, it flew back to its limb. Both of your hearts pumped fire through your chests as he reached that hand out towards you. Buggy took his time stroking his fingers from your forehead into your hair. When his palm came down to join the gesture, you were very happy to realize that his hand was just as warm as the thigh still under your cheek. You shuffled closer so your legs squeezed in between his foot and the left leg of his throne. Buggy shuddered when he felt your fingertips graze the back of his calf and spread out like a star so you could grab it. Using your new grip, you snuggled more firmly into his leg and let yourself buzz off of getting this new touch from your Captain.
Ulterior motives be damned, Buggy couldn’t give them any credence when you looked so happy to sit at his feet and receive such a simple touch. He should probably laugh and call you a needy puppy to regain some control over the situation. Instead, he slipped his hand down the side of your head. He massaged his fingertips into the base of your skull and said, “I’ll take care of you, little star.”
Once he has accepted that you’re serious there will be jokes about the dynamic but do not be fooled - he can only dish it out and WILL spiral if he receives any type of comment about how much older he is (the word geriatric is punishable by death)
Sometimes the joke is him patronizingly treating you like a child (you almost socked him right there at the dinner table when some food came at your face with accompanying airplane noises)
Sometimes it’s calling you a gold digger (“then where’s my allowance, huh?” “OH so my gIFTS AREN’T ENOUGH FOR YOU NOW? YOU were the one ACTUALLY CRYING over me buying you that wonky ass stuffed seal with the lopsided face!!” “HIS NAME IS JERRY AND YOU WILL SHOW HIM SOME RESPECT”)
Sometimes it’s just dumb shit like pointing at the type of girl’s clothing store that has made a contract with God to own all the pinks and pastels the world has to offer before turning to you straight faced and asking if you want to stop in to look. Any way this man can think to goof, he will.
And it’s tooooootally a coping mechanism to process the fact that he’s nearly forty and dating a twenty-something and not at all because joking around with you has become one of his basic survival needs
The dynamic ends up helping both of y’all feel special - you have a hot, boisterous, spotlight-stealing pirate captain pampering (and then making a mess of) you while he gets a beautiful, capable, eye-catching young thing looking at him like he hung the stars in the sky
Nothing goes to Buggy’s head more than when you walk into a room full of people, attractive ones especially, and only see him.
He loves anything that makes it obvious to others that you are his, whether that's him draped over you, you draped over him, red stains on the back of your hands, your shoulders, your cheeks, your forehead, your neck, having his jolly roger on your outfit, having you in his hat or coat
This very much extends to him wanting anyone and everyone to overhear you in the bedroom. Everyone should know you're his and he's the only one who can make you feel so good
Don't worry, they'll also get the message that he's yours from all the moaning and praises
He gives you endless pet names but always comes back to “sweet stuff”, “sweets”, “princess”, “star”, “prima donna” (affectionate), “prima donna” (derogatory), and anything preceded by “little” (“little showstopper”, “little tease”, very rarely “little girl” if he feels especially like exerting power over you)
He prides himself on making you feel cared for and safe. Instead of feeling like a chore he has to do because he’s in the ‘older man’ role, he loves the way you preen under his attention and how you happily return the favor.
When in the Cross Guild Era, Buggy started going to all meetings with you by his side then on his thigh. It was a good defensive strategy because the other two seemed more hesitant to throttle him if you were in the way, but lets be real this man is also clingy and loves showing you off too.
At first he found it offensive that Mihawk and Croc were so disbelieving at the sight of you happily perched on your captain’s lap but then it made him the smuggest motherfucker when he would see their eyes trail over you knowing that they can only look and he can touch however he wants. This leads to him pushing until he hit your boundary at leaving very visible marks on you
One time he fucked you stupid right before a meeting so that you wouldn’t think about the bite mark surrounded by red makeup that kept playing peekaboo with your shirt collar (or the red smears between your thighs that showed whenever you shifted your legs)
#buggy x reader#buggy the clown#one piece#one piece x reader#buggy one piece#opla buggy#buggy x you#buggy x y/n#my writing#fem reader#afab reader#x reader
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ULTIMATE JAKE: an idea and an execution
iA I Aka the post where borzoi talks to the crowd how awesome Lord Jake English is, the guy that everyones seen around, but have no idea who he is. Pull up a chair, this will get long.
If Ultimate Dirk can be summarised by the mask of tragedy in theatre, LE Jake, AKA Ultimate Jake, could be summarised by the mask of comedy. I’ve barely read HS2, but from what I can see, Dirk wants to make a serious nitty gritty tragedy of serious and epic proportions. But he tries so hard that he ends up making it almost laughable.
Jake wants to make a thighslapper huckshaw comedy where everyones having a grand old time but there is such deep and hollow tragedy hidden within the folds of all those pretty smiles.
If anything they abide a lot by aristotles theory on comedy and tragedy. While tragedy imitates men better than average, comedy parodies those who are worse.
Aristotle stated that those of a more serious type that may have once been inclined to celebrate the actions of great heroes in poetry and prose turn to tragedy, while those who’ve been dishonourable, humbled, turn to comedy. It comes down to duality, tragedy viewing duality as a fatal contradiction forever a fault in things, while comedy views it as natural, but something that everyone must live with the best they can, enjoy.
Do you see where I’m going here? Dirk, who praised Aristotle and read the epics turned to tragedy. Jake, dishonourable and hiding from those who he care about, turning to comedy. They line up well with the cognitive psychology of the tragedy and comedy visions, which you should totally look into when you can.
Tragedy is idealistic, stubborn and serious. They long for something higher and greater than common existence. They value heroism, hierarchy, and finality.
Comedy is pragmatic, adaptable, and playful. They consider the self, comfortable in their own skin. They’re anti-heroes, valuing situation-based ethics and reversal.
With that out of the way, lets keep to philosophy like it’s a boat in the atlantic. If Dirks look in life upon going ult is one of pessimistic realism, Jake is an absurdist.
If life is a cruel joke to jake, and it has been, then in his ultimate form hes acknowledged it, and given the cruel void, hes decided to seek out his own meaning. And it just so happens to be his best friend.
Misc details
- Capitalist
- He wears old 3D movie glasses because he’s that idiot.
- He collects a lot of things. He has plenty of things hes shot killed and stuffed in his collection.
You could say he’s rather past oriented, taking care to document it all out of interest and perhaps a subconcious pursuit to figure out the future.
- Very apathetic. He may be charming, but he’s still a jackass. He thinks existence itself is funny, he’s an absurdist; but he’s also a guy who realises he’s been kicked to the curb too many times and started shooting people.
- His crew consists of John/June, (in place of rose. They have a lot of movie nights!), Karkat, and one (1) dead dave.
And finally some thoughts about ult Dirkjake:
Maybe Dirk wants Jake to just kill him. It’s a game of cat and mouse, and perhaps it’s love for someone who deems himself unworthy, no, incapable of doing so. What better love than to kill someone? To trust and know they will kill you. Feeling safe in the knowledge they’ve known you in every universe and are here to kill you. Not that Jake would let him.
I like them.. I think it’s my fave brand of dirkjake besides the original.. they’re dysfunctional, intolerable, and they hate each other, but it’s just interesting. For better or for worse, they’re stuck, and they’re not afraid of the fact they suck. If anything, it’d spur them to be worse.
“Oh yeah. I find the other guy fucking annoying and I’d gladly take a moment to rip his guts out and walk him around a tree until they’re all out and he's calling me every bad name he can think of, but if anyone tries doing this shit with him without my consent, I’m going to be hells of more pissed off.”
Look. It’s funny in the way that realistically, they could probably do a lot of damage to everyone else but due to the fact they know the other guy exists, they’re too busy trying to kick the others ankles out and then beating each other up to become dangerous.
Oh you bet your nanny it’s the gayest most fucked up kismesis known to man. Ultimate Dirk hates LE Jake, because he doesn’t give a damn. Because Jake makes him feel things he denies feeling. And that ridiculously, somewhere in paradox space, Jake went ultimate and decided he was going to man up and pursue Dirk to the ends of the universe. Ultimately:
“My soul is bound to you in explicable ways. Our bonds cross the multiverse and wherever you are, somewhere I am by your side. Even in a hundred universes, maybe even a million. I will still find you.”
Perhaps the greatest thing and a closing note is that given they are the ascended versions of themselves, they’re aware of the fact that they’re aware of every time the other guy screwed them over, kicked them in the balls, etc. But they’re also able to see everything else. So what’s with a little hatelove eh?
#homestuck meta#dirkjake#ultimate dirk#ultimate jake#homestuck#ultimate rose: ive seen the light and you two either need to get laid or die#jake english#dirk strider#a lot of philosophy/#borzoi talks#borzoi meta
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kicking my legs in the air. tell us more abt silvervance i am fascinated with whatever they've got going on
i mean. god where do i even begin.
so first off there's their main tag where i put all the posts that even vaguely remind me of them............like there are posts in there i would not show to my irls let alone god.
anyway. silvervance is the ship ever. they're both products of arasaka's influence, whether thru their own free will (in vance's case, or so he'd like to believe) or otherwise (in johnny's, vis-a-vis his eponymous prosthetic arm). they both manufactured their identities for an audience wider than themselves. they both recognize this similarity between them.
when vance came back 2 life with johnny in his head, he saw himself in johnny and he didnt like what he saw.
but as u know, in game canon, vance had no choice but to suck it up and bear the ghost's anti-corp, anti-capitalist, anti-night-city, rambling. oh woe! woe! is johnny silverhand, night city's last rockerboy turned co-pilot for arasaka's missing asset.
the thing is. the thing is. with everyone telling vance that the best course of action would be to excise johnny--with hellman telling him point blank that its not possible as well--he doesn't want johnny gone.
johnny becomes second nature to him, more than just a poltergeist who offers him snippy quips and lame one-liners. who likes annoying the hell out of him or who likes making him laugh by doing bits of physical comedy that johnny knows only vance will see.
he just grows to have so much. affection for this man. this man loser who he wishes he had known when things might've been simpler between them.
in the hypothetical good ending for silvervance where they get their own bodies, they're gonna move out to some colder state, somewhere that snows. they're gonna move as far away from local civilization as possible. but they're still gonna find merc work together because neither of them are quite suited to a domestic life.
they take each other's poisons when they finally separate; vance grows wolfish and snarky and johnny goes quiet and smiles a little too much like a dog, lips curled over his teeth. vance is brash and a risk-taker; johnny is loyal to someone other than himself for once.
they'll eat each other alive one of these days. they could not think of a better set of teeth to do it than one that so closely resembles their own.
in my heart n soul i know they find each other in every universe. not that they will happen upon each other; that they'll actively look for the other, not knowing who it is they're looking for at first, but just knowing that there is someone out there for them. i don't usually like throwing the term soulmate around but it's something a lot like that.
they'll find each other in the corpo rat au, they'll find each other in the father vance au, they'll even find each other in the ending where vance stayed with arasaka. there's no separating them and it drives me bonkers. insane, even. i wrote four fics in a haze for them bc of how much they drive me up a wall
anyway ty for the ask <3
#asks#silvervance#vance#johnny silverhand#ANNYYYYWAYYY#they have freaky wireplay sex btw as well#my art#i literally cant refer to them individually bc they would do the SAME THINGS TO EACH OTHER#AURGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
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i have a character in a bitd campaign i’m running who is going to be defending a dissertation and i would love to do a different game for when that happens. do you have any recs that have the vibe of thesis defense or an interview, public speaking/presentation, etc? Thanks!
THEME: Debate Games
Hello friend. There are not a lot of debate games, but I found a few that might give you the structure for something that you can rebuild to meet your needs. Some of them even work for more than two players! I’m also going to include one game that is about duels, in case defending your thesis is more about protecting a position, and I’m going to slot in a recommendation for a game where bantering back and forth represents a pre-duel sort of duel, in case you find it’s system more to your taste.
ANTological Theory, by Adira Slattery
ANTological Theory is a GM-less tabletop comedy game for 3-5 players, who take the roll of ant philosophers debating in the Hive. You will debate about a variety of randomly chosen topics; the nature of Food, an ant's sense of self, the importance of the Queen, and even the trolley problem. Gameplay can be fast paced, or players can spend a lot of time debating one of the random topics at their leisure. The entire rules fit on a single page, and you'll just need two six-sided dice.
This game will probably need a bit of re-working to make it about your chosen topic than to be about ants, and the rules are pretty loose as well. The bulk of the game is a list of roll-tables and a series of mirrored statements that your characters will take stances on. If you bought the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality back in 2020, you already own this game so it might be worth checking out. You can also check out the One Shot Podcast’s episode of this game to hear what a game session feels like!
Salads N’ Sandwiches: An Absurd Debate Game, by aghostofeli.
Every dish you have ever eaten was either a Salad or a Sandwich. What that means is only limited by your imagination and how well you convince everyone else. Players compete to have their arguments and rebuttals heard by a judge of their peers. The first to rack the most points wins.
This is a debate-tournament style game in which you argue about items and what category they belong in. The initial game is about sorting foods into the category of Sandwich or Salad, but you could likely replace it with any other two categories! The game is designed off of Caltrop Core, so you’ll only need d4s to play.
Meeting God on a Park Bench, by Owlsten.
Meeting God on a Park Bench is a small game about discussing things in a safe environment using card-based mechanics.
This game is meant to simulate an argument, but you don’t literally have to have an argument with God. It has two roles: Attacker and Defender. You will use cards to determine what happens with each round of discussion to determine whether you will remain as Attacker and Defender, whether you move on to a new topic, state something you like about the other player, or change the topic. This is an argument game that has built-in safety tools to ensure that the disagreement stays civil, to ensure that the players behind the characters don’t feel personally attacked.
The biggest downside to this game might be the looseness of the rules. If you’re going to be defending a dissertation in an academic setting, you might want to change how some of the cards work, or add in a few extra rules to make sure the game properly simulates a defense.
A Duet of Steel, by Adrian Thorn.
Throughout your life, throughout generations of your family, throughout the various fronts of your war, you have had one great rival. Again and again you clash with them, one walking away the victor of the battle, but bearing the scars of your war.
Whatever the setting and scope, the focus of A Duet Of Steel is the two Duelists, their climatic duels, and the aftermath of these confrontations. The Duet Of Steel is a dance of antagonism, with an ebb and flow of conflict and recovery. But it is a Duet, with the two parties playing off each other. It takes two to tango.
A Duet of Steel is a game about two rivals going head to head, but their conflict doesn’t necessarily have to be physical, which is why it might be a candidate for this kind of game. You will build your duelists, your setting, and decide what is at stake. You’ll also have to agree on a Victory Condition. You’ll then move through a timeline in which your Duelists will use a deck of playing cards to determine what you might lose or gain. The cards will also be used as modes of attack or defense, and will help you determine who wins and whether or not an opponent gets to counter. Out of all the games on this list, this game has the most concrete rules and the most well-defined play structure.
Games I Have Recommended Before
I Have The High Ground - for a duel of words where emotions are more heavily involved - and you wear capes!
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How Postal 1 is a playable Tragedy and how Postal 2 followed with a Comedy after it. - A semi formal essay about the narrative and story beats of the beginning of Postal
That's right! This was not an april fool's joke! The only april fool here is me! It's an idea ive been brewing on for a while and it's probably very rambly, but such is life, i hope you enjoy it regardless <3
Before I begin this essay, I would like to clarify a few things.
One, I want to address right away that while I do try to be critical and non-biased on these sorts of discussions, due to my own personal attachments to specifically Postal 1 Dude, I don't think I will ever be able to make a fully unbiased view of him. Again, I will try my best to, but I hope pointing it out here will make it so you can decide if that’s something you’re okay with.
Secondly, while i will try to reign myself back a little and not just spew words at you here, i do tend to ramble a little and have trouble connecting points to other points, so if i do please forgive me there. This is meant to be a semi-formal essay, but still I am not a professional writer. Additionally, while i do this analysis of this series, i do not think it is what the creators intended, please do not take this as full canon and all. This is simply for fun and to recollect on the first two games of the series.
I hope you will understand, and with those disclaimers out of the way, we can begin with the essay.
We begin this essay with Postal (Which I will be calling Postal 1 for the sake of clarity, by the way), a PC-Rom game released in 1997 by the company Running With Scissors, originally published by Take Two Interactive before publishing moved over to Ripcord Interactive. The game was marketed to be intentionally provoking and intense. One example is through fictional interview quotes talking about how he seemed to be fine before the events of the game with a simple question below.
What went wrong?
With little more than that, a picture of an M-16, an invitation to find out at their website below, and a short talk about how to get the demo, it leaves a striking impression on the viewer and a burning curiosity to find out what did go wrong. Other advertisements for the game are similar in nature, being very eye-catching and intense to draw in the reader to want to see more.
Described by the studio as “The game every gamer wanted and no one else dared to make”, it’s very clear their intention was to bring you in with its more intense subject matter as this game that dared to go where no game had before, to either acclaim or great critical disgust. It is described by the promotional material as a psychological thriller, preparing the incoming viewer for the expectation this game would be intense.
From the advertisements though you can already get the idea there may be something else to this game, introducing Paradise as a town where everyone is out to get you (or are they?), and that whether it is Conspiracy or Insanity, you have no time to question, only to act. This narrative carries over to the game itself, as there is no formal introduction to a story given to the player unless they actively decide to read the manual included in the game’s case (or chose a higher difficulty in the remake, Postal Redux), you are more an outsider to what happens after you press play guiding the Dude through this hell.
However, I think to truly enjoy Postal 1, it is important to consider the journals themselves to get the inner perspective of your player character. Those who do not choose to may take the game at a more surface level with the “dark” cutscene texts and gorey gameplay then simply leave it behind, but the hidden story adds a whole extra level of depth and truly establishes Postal 1 as a tragedy.
To explain where I am coming from at that point, I would like to establish what makes a tragedy, specifically with Postal 1 being a Domestic Tragedy. (A tragedy in which the characters are middle-class or working-class people instead of nobility or rich people)
Aristotle’s tragic plot structure starts at the beginning, goes through action, leads to the realization of error, then goes through the falling action and emotional impact of it, eventually releasing the emotions of pity and fear through to the catharsis as the story ends and fear is removed.
While the game does not give much of an actual explanation of what happened in the Dude’s life before the events on October 17th, 1997 even in the diary entries that show his viewpoint, it’s easy to infer there was a rise even before then that he was not doing well mentally. He describes a rising paranoia, belief that the people there are sick, how “I hear gunshots, screams after dark. Now the phone calls, sayin’ i’m being thrown outta this house. My house.”, constantly arming himself with a sidearm and kevlar vest preparing for the incoming perceived impact that he ultimately makes reality.
From there we have our beginning, the game’s levels acting as the actions through the story that lead him on this journey through Arizona. Though initially he tries to find help and contact a sheriff, because he is seemingly so far gone, those efforts are in vain and his belief that everyone else is infected is reinforced. It separates him further from the people around him, believing that he is the only one who can save them from this sickness and that though the journey is bloody, it is for the good of mankind.
It’s likely at the beginning he intends to save them, but after a while, comes to the conclusion that the area is simply beyond saving, and that he needs to leave a scorched earth behind so he can warn those outside. His condition worsens the further the player goes, covered in blood, bullet wounds, body aching but unable to stop until he sees this desired resolution. As quoted from The Industrial Complex journal, “Too far to quit now. Whatever waits at the Base, I’m going to see it with my own eyes.” and from the Air Force Base as he tries to resolve himself to finish what he set out on, “Me or them. Can’t delay, can’t risk infection.”
Notably in the game’s manual there was no journal given for the ending cutscene in the original game, though I think the one for Redux is also fitting. “I’ve been here before. I know it. But… Something’s changed. Will they understand me? Forgive me? Is this where I find salvation?” One of the main things you’ll probably hear about relating to the differences of Postal 1 and Redux is the ending being changed.
In Postal 1, the game ends with the Dude making his way to an elementary school in a haze, the player no longer in control as he desperately tries to take aim at them, but nothing he does seems to affect them. Considering unfortunate tragedies in real life, this ending was changed for Redux, where instead the Dude walks up to the end of a church, watching as a coffin is lowered into the ground either alone on Easy to Medium or with two mourners on Hard to Nightmare, and the hostile count goes down from one to none as soon as it’s in the ground.
Either way, it ends with the Dude collapsing down to the floor, and the game finally ends with pictures of Dude in a hellish confinement and a voice speaking over top. The final speech talks about the stress of modern life before further mentioning how he had perceived himself as a hero against impossible odds, but in reality will now only ever be seen as a mad man who hurt hundreds, if not thousands of lives.
Some may say this ending is an anti-climax or a bad reward for the game, but i think through the lens of a tragedy, it is a perfect ending. Our ‘hero” through the entire game has kept himself standing because he thought he was doing the right thing, that his actions were horrible, but it would be justified by the good he was doing. He does not want them to writhe and suffer, the journey is a horrific nightmare, and there is no sense of pride or that he’s finally getting some kind of vengeance on those who wronged him. But he persists, he moves onwards because he so desperately wants to end this and stop the madness, one that only he sees as reality.
That is where we get the action, right after the Air Base is the Recognition, the point of realization that it was all for naught. In Postal 1, it’s likely this comes at the moment he realizes that he’s not doing anything to them, and unable to simply destroy this ‘threat’, he is forced to stop and think if he’s even been going against any threats at all. How far has he gone to the point he was going to harm innocent children? How many more innocents has he harmed? With Redux that realization is more up to interpretation, whether the casket is where he’s in after he dies and realizes that there’s no recognition of him after his death, or if it’s the last hostile he has to kill, only to realize even with them dead, the world around him has not gotten any better, only worse because of his actions.
The pity and fear comes from the moment inside the cutscenes, and from there the "catharsis", when he is ultimately institutionalized with no seen trial, no fanfare, and is given an analytical view from an off-screen doctor before the game ultimately ends. And again, I think for the game that Postal 1 is, it’s the perfect ending. Because truthfully, was there ever going to be any good ending for him after his collapse? The player either knows or discovers along with him that his journey was for nothing, he killed countless people including potentially civilians who had just happened to get caught in the crossfire, and the grand threat he fought against did not even exist. There are no heroes, there is no triumph, it was all for nothing, and now he is confined to a cell as several hundreds of families have to cope with the loss.
With all of this, I think Postal 1 Dude (and subsequently Postal Redux Dude) is a great tragic “hero” figure, as deep down he wants to do good for the world. If you take the advertisement interviews and hints from others as a sort of semi-canon, it’s implied he was doing good, he was kind to others and liked well enough, but likely due to an untreated and ignored illness began to fall in on himself into a paranoia so deep he could never crawl out. I hear a lot of the notion that he “snaps out of nowhere”, and that he’s just “crazy”, but I think that’s a gross oversimplification of his character.
Even in the moment of it all, he initially tried to go to a higher authority for help but found himself all alone to try and stop this ‘sickness’. His journey is his own personal burden, taken to try and stop anyone from being hurt, at the cost of his health and potentially his own life. But it’s also important to not just consider his intent, but the action caused afterwards.
Because while he did mean to save others, he still hurt hundreds of people. There are hundreds of families who will never see their partners, their siblings, their children, their friends, all because of one overzealous man who decided he was going to be humanity’s savior. Perhaps it is not just conspiracy or insanity, but instead the poor judgement of a man who truly believes he is doing right being guided along by an outside force who makes him see it through to the end.
In Postal 1, you are the audience to a grand scale tragedy, bringing a man on a journey through hell to a shallow grave where no one is saved, no one is cured, leaving you back on the title screen to think about what you’ve done to him and the people of Paradise.
In Postal 2 you can smoke crack and piss on people.
Okay, sorry for the whiplash, but I had to transition somehow.
After the release of Postal 1 and subsequent expansions, there was obviously a backlash as well as critical acclaim. The game was banned in several countries, Running With Scissors was personally given a letter by the USPS about the name, and it was pulled off the shelves of several stores. Many books about video game violence and newspapers talked about the game and admittedly got quite a lot about it wrong, like believing the Dude was an ex-postal service worker despite the game never saying so, that there was some sort of score based system for “killing as many innocent victims as possible while they begged for mercy” (Stop Teaching Our Kids To Kill, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and Gloria DeGaetano, Chapter Two, 1990s: Video Game Violence Increases.), not to mention how many were quick to try and pull a connection between it and horrific tragedies in real life.
(Quick unprofessional note, the amount of times i saw this one damn quote about a specific killer killing himself “JUST LIKE HOW YOU END LEVELS IN POSTAL!1!” despite that NOT being how you end levels in postal or even the game makes my head physically hurt.)
With this reception of Postal 1, it does make sense for Running With Scissors to decide to take a change of focus when they began work on Postal 2 after the cancellation of their next game, Flesh and Wire. While Postal 1 was more intense in tone and serious, Postal 2 was set to be much more parody focused and had a drastic shift in the appearance of the main character.
While Postal 1 Dude in the concept art and promotional image notably looked disheveled and scared, Postal 2 Dude felt more laid back, engaged in the chaos around him and able to dish it back just as hard. There’s a very noticeable shift even before the game came out, from a man huddled in the corner with a rifle or seemingly startled holding an M-16 (note, i'm pretty sure it is? I am not a gun person, sorry </3) to a man standing with his body facing the player, brandishing his rifle as chaos ensues behind him.
The town of Paradise goes through a similarly drastic change, from a somewhat toned down and realistic feeling environment made of cool and dark colors to a much more exaggerated parody of a small town in Arizona full of bright, warm colors. The game begins with a sweeping view of the town, passing by a road sign warning to “watch for psycho assholes”, a drunk man dancing in the streets as a cat falls asleep, a man is beat by a police officer, and the player can already see several satirical billboards on their way to Dude’s trailer.
The introduction to him is also drastically different, now speaking directly as he wakes up in his obviously run down trailer and gets into an argument with his wife about moving to Arizona to pay for his crack habit, the AC being broken (which he obviously doesn't make better by shooting at it), about chores until he makes his way out of the trailer and kicks away Champ, his car not working, and the Bitch reminding him to get her rocky road. This immediately sets up Dude in this game being much more cynical and snarky, someone who’s been chewed up and spit up by life, and now is dealing with a pretty rough morning.
The game itself follows a pretty similar tone, gone are the unsettling journals, the morality of it all, in this remodel of the series the game has effectively gone from Tragedy to Comedy. More specifically, I think Postal 2 falls under a Farce, which according to the Wordsmyth dictionary, is “a comedy that depends for its humor on quick and surprising turns of events and on exaggerated characters and situations, or the type of humor characteristic of such a play.”, which I feel is very fitting. Running With Scissors put more emphasis on physical comedy, slapstick yet still grotesque violence, bodily function humor, and of course, a lot of satire and parody of life at the time.
The game itself plays as if it were a comedy, each day functioning as a new act as the chores act as the separate jokes, returning jokes such as the Dude’s relationship with his wife and introducing new ones such as the incredibly zealous anti-book protestors burning down a library on Tuesday or the cannibalistic butchers of Thursday. The main sources of these jokes in the game come from two factors, that being the world around Postal Dude is insane and absurd but he still has to make it through each day somehow, and an extreme form of Murphy’s Law, in which anything that could go wrong will, and at the worst possible time.
The ability to make it through these insane events in one piece is what mainly separates Postal 2 Dude from Postal 1 Dude, as while Postal 1 Dude holds onto his sense of justice and morality in the horror he saw and ultimately ended up hurting himself and those around him, Postal 2 Dude is adaptable, able to keep his head above water and make it home despite it all. The game’s increase in the story’s conflict as each hate group begins to target Dude is still joking in nature, just another group of people who hate him and try to kill him on sight, but you’ve got errands to do so you just gotta deal with it.
The ultimate climax of this increasing rise of stakes leads to the final event of Friday, quite literally a full blown apocalypse (complete with a nod to Postal 1 on the newspaper about mind altering gasses and the military being involved) where cats and dogs rain from the sky and everyone and anyone is trying to kill each other, especially you.
It’s the final big obstacle as you book it back home, this massive hysteria that serves as the big crazy finale until you finally make it home and things shift back to a mundane that now becomes comedic in its own right. Dude returns home, having made it through figurative hell only to be reminded of a joke that comes full circle from the start, the fact he forgot the Rocky Road. The final joke ends with a loud gunshot, implying that while he could make it through all he’s been through that week, having to be there even a moment more made him decide he’d rather spend the night in a hospital or a grave.
In conclusion, the drastic difference between Postal 1 and Postal 2 is incredibly fascinating to me, especially through the lens of them as a traditional Tragedy and Comedy in video game format. While the series has leaned much more to comedy after the release of 2 and Redux did not do as well financially, i think it’s still interesting to look back at the beginning of the series and their adaptation of it later on to see how the Dude began.
From a desperate and hopeful but ultimately misguided self imposed martyr of humanity who was going to drag along as many as he needed to “save” those outside to a cynical and sarcastic man living in a trailer home making it through each progressively more crazy day to make it home and start a new day after that, you can fully feel the shift in tone from the soundtrack to the design to the gameplay of the games itself.
I do think it was probably for the best that Postal had turned more comedic as time went on, it seems to be more where Running With Scissors are able to fit their writing, however i still look back at Postal 1 very fondly and hope to see more of those tragedy elements come back for a bit in the jokes. It’s a compelling narrative and even if they say it has no story, i’ll always think the story it DOES have is very underrated.
Here’s to hoping for that Postal 4 weekend expansion?
#postal dude#postal 1#postal 2#character analysis#i included some drawings inbetween to break it up a little so its not all just words#i hope p2 looks okay i dont draw him as much as i do p1-#again i hope you all enjoy this ive been thinking about it very much#Postal 1 you may have no story according to others but you have all the story according to me <3
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Ok but mentor Wednesday and Tribute Enid!!!! 😭😭 this might be my twelve year old self coming back but….that seems like such a right fit for them. I have to say anything you write comes out marvelous. I love this little AU you created! It’s amazing how you come up with all these details in so little time! Truly! You ever wanted to write a hunger games AU your fans (and especially me wouldn’t mind one it) not me wondering how the dynamic between Wednesday and Enid would be if it was a mentor/tribute would go😂 love as always!
“My fans” omggg you flatter me fr 🫣😭
I’m so glad you like the little AU!! Thank you for reading!! I was about 12 when I was reading THG for the first time too, that series changed my biochemistry lol
For mentor!Wednesday and tribute!Enid AU, I of course see them falling in love (wenclair stan until I die), and Wednesday growing increasingly desperate to get sponsorships and do anything she can from outside the arena to keep her alive. But (and again, I am not closed to major character death in this type of AU! They realistically can’t both live unless it’s an interpretation like this!) I think Enid could hold her own in the arena. I could even see her using her charisma to romance a tribute for some element of protection just to kill him in the end, and Wednesday having to watch, not able to wrap her head around why she is quite so bothered by it all (lesbian denial, perhaps? Or “I have human emotions?” denial).
And maybe there is room for some coded communication meant just for the two of them via sponsor packages Wednesday sends her (and maybe bizarre items of extremely tactical use that only Wednesday would see the value in, but Enid knows her well enough to understand exactly how to use it). And I do think Enid getting her facial scars in the arena is a must in any HG AU, so the idea of Wednesday having to watch that from the sidelines (hearing an unassigned cannon after a violent struggle between her and the other tribute?) has strong potential.
If Enid wins her games, I love the idea of a little semi-happy ending where they live together in the victor’s village, and while they likely couldn’t be open about the nature of their relationship, the Capitol would spin it as best friends in a deadly duo or something equally marketable while low-key threatening their lives if anyone finds out. And then, every year, more hurt/no comfort as they have to train subsequent tributes together knowing it’s statistically unlikely that their district will have another winner after two consecutive victors for a long time. I imagine Enid would have wanted kids in this AU, and slowly loses her desire for that as each mentored tribute gets their shit rocked on live TV.
Hehe anyway, it has been really fun imagining them in this universe and picturing what an allegorical dystopian horror might look like for characters that are so firmly teen-mystery-comedy. Thanks to everyone who sent in asks about this prompt, and to the anon who suggested it in the first place!! 🫶
#honesttoblogjuno#wednesday netflix#wednesday fanfic#wenclair fanfic#wenclair fanfiction#wenclair#wednesday addams#asks#wednesday hunger games au
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Hello! While speaking with my friend about a concept for a silly little vampire story a question naturally arose; "Why do vampires, of all monsters, lend themselves so well towards humor?"
Hope you have a wonderfully spooky October!
Well hope you have a wonderful October as well!
Honestly I think all monsters lend themselves to humor in ways that haven't been fully tapped into, but I think vampires have that extra edge mainly because the main things that define them (needs to feed on others for sustenance, can't go out in the sunlight, immortal but can be killed in specific ways) are Rules. Rules and structure and consistency are things that you need to build a set-up, because you can't have a punchline without a set-up. Other monsters are more loosely defined, or have only a couple of rules that can usually be ignored, but you can't ignore the basic specifics of vampirism the same way. You can have a werewolf who doesn't turn on a full moon or due to weird birth circumstances related to the number 7, but you need to address the feeding aspect, or you don't have a vampire.
And the counterpoint to that is that vampires, while obviously they have aesthetic signifiers and tropes and Dracula-isms that people go to in defining them, are nowhere near as bound to their aesthetic traits as other kinds of monsters, so you can make anything and everything a vampire so long as you establish that parasitic aspect and the rules. If want to make your characters specific kinds of monsters you generally have to include the aesthetic signifiers that define them: Frankensteins generally need to be some kind of stitched-up corpse and/or giant, mummies need to have the wrappings or the lore, zombies need to cadaverous undead, werewolves need to be some kind of horrible animal (not necessarilly a wolf - Brazilian werewolves are commonly said to be more akin to pigs and boars, for example), but vampires?
If it's a parasitic monster that needs to feed on something otherwise it dies, and that something isn't just regular food, pretty much anything you do with them is fair game. The more out there you go with it, usually the better.
And because they're among the most popular unambiguous kind of monster (skeletons, witches, ghosts and aliens are there still but all sorta morphed into their own things overtime, vampires you still find at the forefront of every Halloween pack), everyone is familiar with what those rules are on the baseline, which means you have a much, much easier time doing jokes about the specifics of vampires than with any other kind of monster, and so it becomes more necessary to focus on specifics of the vampire's personality to make them stand out. Generally speaking, a Frankenstein is a type of character, a werewolf is half of a character when not in frenzied bloodlust, a ghost can be one or several characters, a zombie used to be a character, but a vampire needs to be a character, if you're not doing a Dracula pastiche (and even then) you can't bank on the shorthand as easily. It's a very competitive field.
Everybody knows the specifics of how vampires work, and so you get to play them straight or subvert them for comedy, and even make up new kinds of vampires out of twisting the premise around. A lot of what makes Colin Robinson from What We Do In The Shadows so funny is that, placed opposite a cast of fairly traditional vampires as somehow the most mundane personality as well as the weirdest freak among them, they can and do just constantly make up new shit about the way his existence and powers and biology works and get away with it, and constantly set you up for surprises more so than with the others. And they even still kinda do that for the others. All vampire media needs to place it's characters across a spectrum of possibilities.
Doesn't show up in mirrors, can't cross running water, needs to be invited into places, needs to stop and count marbles, needs to sleep in coffins, needs ancestral soil within said coffins to sleep in, etc. Needs to feed their blood to victims to reproduce, or actually doesn't need to do that. Can go centuries without a sip, or needs to kill a person every day to not die, or can just feed on cattle / the color red / other fluids. Can walk in the sun but weakened, can walk in the sun unbothered, can walk in the sun with careful skincare routines made from human sweat, instantly desintegrates if they play the desert level in a videogame, and so on.
Once you get past the baseline, you actually can get a lot more out of just piling up both weird new powers you never have to explain, as well as bullshit rules and specifics atop each other, because that's just how Vampire Lore works, and naturally each and everyone of those can be squeezed for comedy as well as horror. It's that old adage about how horror is comedy without the punchline and both need a dramatic investment into the set-up of how it works, before it can be torn down dramatically or comedically.
To be clear, I think this is something you can and should do more or less with all kinds of monster characters, but the thing is that, most of the others you do need you to go the extra mile and define them, what defines them, what if any are the rules and standards and limitations they live with. With ghosts and mummies and bugbears you do need to tug a bit at the concept and ask questions and walk your audience through some of those questions to get somewhere more than surface/aesthetic-based gags with them, where as with vampires, you can kinda skip a lot of that and just get to work pulling comedy out of the basic set-up and then subverting that.
Because yes, vampires live by codes and structures and rules, but there's also nothing we like more than telling those to get stuffed so we can do whatever we want. You need something to rebel against in order to rebel at all.
#replies tag#monster#vampire fiction#wwdits#what we do in the shadows#laszlo's beach trip is everything to me
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I need to give the cast their flowers 💐
I love Dimension20 and all their seasons hold a special place in my heart, but there is just something extra in A Court of Fey and Flowers. I don't know what it is exactly.
The cast is all amazing on their own, but everyone also has such incredible chemistry and it was so instant.
Lou Wilson is the BACKBONE of this season. He understood better than anyone what a Regency Fey story would be like (equal parts being horny and causing problems on purpose cause you're bored) and he fucking WENT FOR IT. In a story like this you need a Squak. You need a rich, powerful guy who's just here to fuck shit up and do things he specifically will think is funny because he's the idle rich among the FEY. And having a genuine connection with his cousin just makes it so much better. Everytime Lou slips and calls Chirp his sister instead of his cousin I cryyy. Lou understood the assignment and I truly mean it when I say that all the cast did. They really nail the genre. All of them in different ways. But this season would not have been able to reach that perfect balance of Regency and Fey without Lou's character specifically. He's an antagonist, he's an anti-hero, he's a little bit of a villain as a treat, he's here to get in your way, but he might help you out if he thinks that's funnier, he has a cousin who can do no wrong and everyone else can leave. I LOVE him.
Emily as Chirp is amazing as well. Emily Axeford has a bit of a reputation for wrecking DM's shit and causing chaos wherever she can and she is in fine form in this one. What I love about Emily is that even though she IS chaotic at the table, it's almost always with purpose (even if that purpose is "I think this will be funny" she makes the things she does count, in the story, in the fight, whatever she's doing) and she never uses that chaos to take over the table. She's so mindful of the other players and always wants to do things that will make the game fun for everyone while also coming in with this great energy for herself. Her and Lou, like I said before are incredible to watch together. They have such Team Rocket meets Henry and Mary Crawford energy. They play off of each other SO WELL it is a delight to watch every single time they interact. Emily has great range. She's an incredible comedic actor and is also a very strategic player and these two things make for amazing character choices. ("Ostrich chariot pulled by birds!" She prioritized bird puns in her character build when picking spells!!) She is AMAZING.
And what can I say about Brennan Lee Mulligan that hasn't already been said? He's one of the best DMs in actual play. He's incredibly talented and intelligent and he uses humor and comedy as a foundation to create such emotionally rich and resonant stories in a way I really admire. And as a player? He is incredible to watch. His ability to go wherever the story takes him while remaining staunchly in character is great. And I ADORE his dynamic with Aabria. There is truly so much trust and respect there and even though they're really good both as players and as GMs I think Aabria being the GM brings something extra to Brennan being the player. Like I don't know if they just have really good communication, or if they just have great instincts that let them play off each other so well (probably both) but whenever they work together the work is immediately elevated. Brennan as Hobb is such a stand out performance among 5 other stand out performances. Brennan is always very good at nailing whatever genre he's in and my God did he bring his A game here. The serious, dutiful captain pining for someone above his station is like... PEAK Jane Austen. And he didn't even PLAN hitting that archetype. It literally just happened naturally. The power. The skill. I am in awe of that ability to find the most interesting story for a character and make it happen. His desicion to let the dice decide important choices for his character because Hobb is being pulled in two different directions all the time is INSPIRED. He's just great. We all know it.
Okay now we get to the people new to the dome and don't worry I have A LOT to say about them, they're all so talented and amazing and I want them all to come back.
Oscar is playing his first full campaign in THIS SEASON??? ARE WE SURE??? He is out here making huge swings immediately and they're all paying off! It's so satisfying to watch him play. He has chemistry with literally everyone at the table and like this whole table has amazing chemistry, but he is so good at zeroing in on the other character's motivations and figuring out the best way for Rue to engage with and connect with them. I love the way he's so RP focused and every move he makes is always with Rue's motivations in mind. Literally everything Rue does is highly motivated, even if we don't understand their reasons yet and that is SO GOOD!!! Like when Rue didn't sit down at the meeting with the Lords of the Wing I thought that was Oscar metagaming a little bit to mess with Emily and Lou because they were trying so hard to fuck with Rue and it was funnier but NO. They had a reason the whole time!! He's so good at this. And the way Rue had one moment with Hobb and Oscar was like, "I am now the romantic lead in a regency pining fest." is amazing. The way he has developed Rue's arc and their romance with Hobb is just so incredibly well done and he has just done such an amazing job in this season. Another person who absolutely understands the assignment.
Omar next. OMAR! OMAR !!!!! IS KILLING ME!!!! The juxtaposition of his character being a socially awkward loser and also the Hottest Catch at the Bloom is amazing and what he does with it is so fun. And the way he's such a comedic character at the beginning (and yes D20 is a comedy show but he is REALLY playing Andhera as like a comic relief character trying to break into being a main character and not really knowing how and it's so fun) but then he hits us with just some of the most emotional shit known man with a friendly little smile on his face and you're like "WAIT NO GO BACK. What was that???!!!" I have said it before and I will say it again, Andhera is the most capital R Romantic character in the whole show and I just can't handle it because he's also just so funny and can turn on either the tragedy or the comedy at a moment's notice. He's hot! He has a fake voice! He was deeply neglected as a child! He has a creepy grandpa face dog! He's so bad at talking! He has a shard stuck in his neck and it's the saddest fucking thing you've ever heard!! Omar has some RANGE and Andhera is such a fun character. (Also his whole thing with Binx may actually lead me to an early grave. I have not been so obsessed with a dynamic in years. Like platonic, romantic, I don't care I just want them to be devoted shell pals starting revolutions and finding a home in the Court of Craft forever and ever. And I would also like them to hug before the season ends, please and thank you.)
Surena!!!!!!! Is!!!!! AMAZING!!!!!! I've probably called every cast member amazing but Surena especially deserves the title. They are so incredible. She had a hard job coming in, playing someone pretty separate from the rest of the group, an outsider playing a role they were uncomfortable in and really just knocked it out of the park!! And her character is so essential to getting the plot moving and the connections their character made have really done a lot in making the whole story of this season so engaging. All her reveals and her secrets!! And leading that to them finally letting down her walls and trusting people. I am at the edge of my seat whenever Surena/Gwyn/Binx does basically anything because she's so embroiled in the main mystery. Like other people came ready to party and make matches but Binx is spying and ready to tear down the institution from the inside and I LOVE that. So many great stakes in the show come with their character and her choices. Like Lou is the backbone of the show in terms of tone and setting the right scene, Surena spent half the season carrying the whole plot on their back (not that the other players didn't move the plot forward or have interesting things going on. They ABSOLUTELY did! But this story would just not be the same without Surena doing some brick laying from the beginning). Her characterization of Binx is also just so charming and I love watching her reactions when other players are doing cool things. (And also Surena has a great smile. That also can be said. It's sort of relevant to what I was saying 🤣) Binx is a great character and watching how Surena plays them as both a spy intent on justice and a socially awkward outsider is just such a joy to watch.
And finally Aabria. @quiddie. Can I talk to you directly for a second about what a talented and intelligent and empathetic and AMAZING GM/DM you are?? Because you are absolutely incredible at what you do. Whatever extra spark this season has I think is down to Aabria and her ability as a GM. She's so GOOD at finding the things her PCs care the most about and making them happen so organically. She is always just SO prepared and ready and willing to roll with whatever punches the PCs might throw her way. And the way she hypes up the players and wants to make sure everyone is having a good time is very wholesome. Her entire vibe is both exactly what I aspire to be as a GM and also exactly the kind of person I would want as my GM. She has such an eye for detail and I love how she weaves the important stuff into the story with so much grace you don't even know she's setting something up until she brings it back a couple episodes later and punches you directly in the face with it. Aabria knows how to tell a good story and she is so good at working with her players to make sure that story is fully collaborative. And as someone who loves a good romance subplot, I really respect her coming into D20 and being like "This is great, but what if more characters kissed?"
In conclusion I love everyone involved in this project. It's just so well done and well acted and well made all around.
I need a season 2 with the Pack of Pixies. One season is just not enough.
#a court of fey and flowers#acofaf#dropout#d20 acofaf#dimension 20#aabria iyengar#surena marie#omar najam#oscar montoya#brennan lee mulligan#emily axford#lou wilson
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hello, I know absolutely nothing about Ultrakill besides gun, flesh and
COIN
Please enlighten me. Do not hold back. I want to hear every excruciating detail, from lore to gameplay.
and if you want to know *exactly* how much I know, all the media of ultrakill I have consumed is random pictures of the sentient security camera and Gohrdahn’s video on SPARECHANGE%.
also asking people who have no idea what’s going on about what’s going on is funny, so so far all I’ve picked up is that you’re a robot angel thing from hell and you fighting your way to heaven. Machines killed everyone and I wonder if the protagonist finds the metal areas more disturbing than the fleshy areas; after all, they’re seeing what is basically their insides, no?
No offense, but wow is that summary incorrect! Let's rectify that!
I'll only be covering the lore because, even though I've finished the game (so far), I don't fully understand the mechanics.
Be warned that some information may be incorrect since my memory sucks, and it also may become outdated in the future, as the game is still in development.
Also, I really recommend just playing the game. It's very good so far!
Anyway,
The ULTRALORE
Long ago, humanity had a Big War™ and built robots powered by blood. Remember that last point, it will be important later. One of these robots is our protagonist, V1; a blue robot with large, glowing wings that it uses to store its weapons, Hammerspace-style.
Eventually, the war ended, but humanity still used the robots for stuff like security. They also discovered Hell, which coincidentally happened to be structured identically to Dante Alighieri's interpretation, as seen in the Divine Comedy (Limbo -> Lust -> Gluttony -> Greed -> Wrath -> Heresy -> Violence -> Fraud -> Treachery).
An indeterminate amount of time before this, Minos, king of the layer of Lust, tried to improve the living conditions of his people, believing it to be wrong that they were being judged for the "crime" of love. He was killed by the archangel Gabriel (yes, that one) and had his soul imprisoned within the Flesh Prison, a half-demon half-angel living cage, forced to watch his gigantic corpse destroy his own realm. At another point in time (though I am not sure when it happened in relation to the last one), King Sisyphus (yes, that one) tried to rebel against Heaven, and was killed; unlike Minos, whose body lived on as a gigantic Husk, Sisyphus was beheaded and crucified within a secret chamber inside a pyramid in the Greed layer, while his soul was imprisoned within the Flesh Panopticon.
Back to the present, V1 got a younger, more-advanced sibling named V2, designed for security purposes and equipped with an explosive punch. Meanwhile, the people exploring Hell discovered that the entire realm is alive.
And then all of humanity died of probably robot-related causes.
So naturally, the robots made a beeline for Hell; after all,
MANKIND IS DEAD.
BLOOD IS FUEL.
HELL IS FULL.
BABA IS YOU
One of these robots is V1. It entered Hell through some kinda funky mechanical entrance thing, where it encountered other Machines, as well as Husks (the embodiments of human souls) and Demons (statues filled with Magic Meat™ that animates them and gives them powers), collecting blood as it went. Eventually, V1 reached the gates of Hell (which, much like in the Divine Comedy, have the phrase "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" written across them), defeated the Cerberi (a pair of Demons resembling simplified versions of the Thinker), and entered Limbo.
The ULTRAKILL version of Limbo is interesting, though fairly basic compared to the later layers; the "sky" is made of screens, ambient nature-sounds come from poorly-hidden speakers, and there are folly-like "ruins" everywhere. V1 continues its journey, fighting the Hideous Mass (a large Demon resembling a scorpion or maybe lobster with the Creation Of Adam carved onto the tops of its claws, along with a harpoon-tail, and lots of exposed demonic flesh leaking out from large gaps in its armour) on the way. Eventually, it reaches a serene church, where it encounters V2. After a long battle, V2 escapes, dropping its left arm; V1 takes it and leaves, entering Lust.
Lust is a gigantic Cyberpunk cityscape, with Minos's gigantic Husk towering in the distance.
It's one of the most beautiful areas in the entire game.
As V1 travels through the layer, it gets closer to Minos, until the dead king himself attacks V1; it kills him, and a gateway to Gluttony appears in his throat.
At time of writing, Gluttony is the most conceptually-obvious layer, being a big organic thing with wobbly meat-walls, giant searchlight-eyes, spine-bridges and lakes of stomach acid. Shortly after arriving, V1 is contacted by a mildly-peeved Gabriel, telling it to "turn back now", as "the walls of this palace are not for your kind". Naturally, lacking any sense of self-preservation, nor any percievable emotion, V1 proceeds to battle Gabriel in front of a gigantic beating heart. Gabriel loses, swears his revenge, and proceeds to have a tantrum and call V1 an "insignificant fuck", then teleports away in a blinding flash of light. V1 drops down the hole in the bottom of the arena...
Disgrace. Humiliation. Unseemly and unwelcome at the feet of The Council. Their eyes ablaze with bitter resentment, glaring through Gabriel's wounds of body and soul, bore outward for all to see.
"Has this one abandoned the way of our creator?" "It is unworthy of its Holy Light." "The Father's Light is indomitable." "This one sees fit to squander it."
Their words resonated in Gabriel's limbs, coursing through as lightning upon wire, a searing hiss that would strike lessers deaf and blind. The Holy Light within him, an unstoppable force of divine fury. Insurmountable for mere Objects. This he knew.
"Holy Council, my devotion to our creator is absolute. I have never strayed from the will of The Father, but a machine-"
"You dare imply the might of The Father could be shaken by mere objects?"
"Impossible." "Heresy." "Unspeakable." "Heresy." "Heresy." "Silence."
"Your treachery will not be tolerated. As punishment, The Father's Light shall be severed from your body. You have 24 hours before the last of its embers die out."
"And you with them." "Prove your loyalty." "Unmake your mistakes."
As the Light was ripped from his being, Gabriel's screams were silenced in the hiss of gospel in praise of God. A boiling anguish to which even the fires of Hell could not compare. Through the blaze of torment a single burning hatred was forged anew.
If the machines seek blood, he would give it freely;
and with such fury, even metal will bleed.
... before landing in Greed, a vast desert with literal golden sand, with recreations of various famous landmarks. V1 fights a Sisyphean Insurrectionist, and later re-encounters V2, who has a new hookshot arm, but manages to beat the newer robot; the two end up in a high-speed chase down the side of a pyramid, but eventually V1 manages to get V2 to fall, with it landing hard on a nearby bridge, turning into a large, red stain.
V2 is canonically dead.
V1 grabs its arm, and leaves for Wrath.
Once upon a time, Wrath was the River Styx (yes, that one), before it suddenly turned into vast ocean. The souls of the damned literally fight for air, while those who lose hope fall to the bottom and [REDACTED FOR SPOILER REASONS].
V1 fights through a flooded underground complex, before ending up outside on a stormy night; they fight through many enemies, and manage to summon a gigantic cruise ship captained by a skeletal Ferryman, leading to ULTRAKILL's only moral choice at time of writing; using the revolver's Marksman mode, it is possible to throw a coin to the Ferryman. Alternatively, V1 battles the Ferryman (who is a gigantic Gabriel fanboy that carves demons into enemy-protecting Idols). Either way, this opens the path to inside the boat, which is attacked by a vast sea-monster; after escaping the now-capsized boat, V1 fights the Leviathan (a gigantic demon whose flesh was made from the Husks who gave up and sank to the bottom of the Ocean Styx; its heart, which sticks out of its head, has multiple angelic spears impaled into it, and constantly screams). V1 defeats the Leviathan, which explodes into a shower of blood, and the ocean splits open to reveal the entrance to Heresy.
Heresy is the most "hellish" layer yet; it's bright red, there's fire everywhere, and a lot of the buildings have goat-skulls on the walls. Gabriel, more furious after having his divine link severed, awaits V1. He goes off on one at it for killing everything in Hell, then tries to kill it again.
He loses, but this time, he's more graceful. Gabriel leaves to think, and his giant pipe-organ opens, revealing the entrance to Violence. That is where the story ends for now.
Silence. Introspection. How many had he killed? Had he ever thought to count? How much cruelty did he embody... and to what end? How many did he condemn to hell and who did it benefit..?
Two defeats at the hands of the machine had changed Gabriel. The world of the one supposed Will of God was now shattered and only he was left to put the pieces back together. They collected before the light of a dying fire that fresh fuel couldn't sustain, this new light showing the truth to Gabriel:
The pieces never fit together to begin with.
The supposed Council of "the people" who boasted a God that wasn't there. Gone. Vanished. The Council still chased after the light of God's fire, their memory of its words and will grown twisted and warped, and the rest of the aimless masses of Heaven follow their footsteps. The angels still act in The Father's name but His kingdom has changed.
Now the fire was dying, sputtering out as the heat failed to gain purchase. Gabriel looked upon the embers with a perfect clarity. He drew his blade and held it in contrast to the dying light.
In its reflection he saw a weapon reborn, no longer wielded by the will of another, but his own. He knew words alone would never sway the masses. He chose to do something drastic.
Death stains the auditorium. The littered corpses of the once mighty council now strewn against its surfaces, their last gasps of life dripping down the dissident blade of Gabriel's sword.
The last councilor, now backed up to a wall, scrambles for words between panicked breaths as death approaches with measured steps.
"W-wait! Y-you can't do this! Out status forbids it! This is treason, heresy, murder! We are the supreme authority, our law commands you!
"You command nothing. Your words hold no power over me, or anyone else. Lest you truly believe you can talk my blade back into its sheath."
"B-but the people are on our side! The citizens of Heaven know that we are just!"
"The masses only follow you out of fear and desperation. I will show them there is nothing to be afraid of, for there is not species nor origin, vested rank or holy status that will stop the sharp edge of a sword.
We all bleed the same blood, and the cushions of your thrones have made you weak and impotent."
"P-please, Gabriel, see reason! The council follows the will of The Father! You seek to go against our creato-"
"Face it, brother. God is Dead. The fire is gone. You're chasing phantoms."
Gabriel's silhouette now towers over the councilor, his shadow cast upon a soon lifeless corpse.
He raises his sword for the final cut as the crying mess on the floor stammers out its final feeble argument.
"B-b-but the Father's light! Without me you cannot hope to reconnect with it! I-i-if you kill me, you'll be dead in a matter of hours!"
...
"I know."
A clean, silent cut glides through the councilor's neck, severing his spine with elegance and ease. His head falls onto the marble floor, the rest of his body following soon after.
Bereft of status but brimming with purpose, Gabriel gave a final message to the angels amassed at the gates of the auditorium before leaving Heaven for the very last time.
His arm outstretched, without a word, the people saw. In the silence the message rang out to the far ends of the cosmos.
The terminals encountered in Prime Sanctums and other secret levels reveal a bit more; most importantly that A. the terminals get bored, explaining the infinite Cyber Grind mode, and B. God regrets condemning Lucifer to Hell.
There's more, but honestly, play the game. It's really good.
that moment when you realise that Gorillaz lore is probably easier to explain than ULTRAKILL
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A bit belated of a topic, but last week's holiday and a few other things have me positing the possibilities of "joke" weapons for War Bots.
The tricky thing is that it's hard to define what a joke weapon really counts as. My go-to definition for a joke character, weapon, move, etc in a game would be something like "funny in execution but not practical", but this is still a hard line to draw. In large part it's because comedy is subjective, and what one person finds funny could just be annoying to someone else, but it's also hard to define what the "funny" part should be.
For instance, Smash Bros has a variety of answers to what joke characters it has. To a casual fan, characters like Jigglypuff, Mr. Game and Watch, Wii Fit Trainer, Duck Hunt, and Piranha Plant are joke characters due to their conceptual absurdity in just being playable in this game. To a more competitively inclined person, Ganondorf and Little Mac are instead the joke characters because of their incredibly min-maxed skillsets making them extremely unviable in serious competitive play, thus the joke becomes not their existence, since they feel like they seriously should be here, but rather their functionality. Sometimes these opinions align, Plant has been considered pretty lackluster, but sometimes they directly clash, like Jigglypuff being one of Melee's best characters. But according to the series creator (not looking up the exact source so Dude Trust Me), Smash doesn't have joke characters at all. Every character is made as seriously as everyone else, regardless of who they are or how well they end up doing competitively. I personally think that Smash's only true joke character is Melee Pichu, an absurd and dated inclusion almost certainly here due to Melee's tiny development period leading to abundance of clones in its roster, and a character so deliberately self-detrimental with no redeeming qualities that it's a miraculous accident that there are worse characters competitively than them. Their trophies even allude to jow terrible they are, and how they should just scramble for items rather than seriously fighting on their own. But even then, when they returned for Ultimate, they were "un-joked" and turned into a serious character with the lowest durability and a self-damage mechanic, but also genuine strengths over Pikachu that made them a seriously competitive character that was even NERFED early into the game's lifespan. Pichu is a real character now who has a genuine place in the game's cast, and isn't just a comically undertuned throw pick used to flex on your friends if you somehow win with them.
A similar but more infamous deliberately bad fighting game character is Dan Habiki, who got his start in Street Fighter Alpha before becoming a series mainstay. In Alpha, he was very literally a joke, made to make fun of Capcom's rival fighting game company SNK and their suspiciously similar looking gi-wearing fireball-throwing martial arts man, Ryo. To poke fun at this imitation of Ryu, Dan is a deliberately terrible clone of Ryu, with a pitifully weak close-range fireball in place of the gameplay-defining hadouken of his more competent counterparts. His one strength? Taunting. In Alpha, every other character can only taunt once per round, but Dan can spam his taunt as much as he pleases. He can even pull off a super taunt, which uses meter like a normal super, but does no damage and leaves him exceedingly vulnerable. The ultimate flex. This puts him in a very stark contrast to Akuma, the secret superboss character of SF2 that was banned in that game's competitive play, but has since become toned down to be a much more competitively fair character in the rest of the series. Similarly, and just like Pichu, Dan was turned into a serious character in terms of competitive usability in later installments, though retained his comical nature by incorporating his goofy nature into his gameplay. He's still funny, but now he's taken seriously as a character. In SF5 he actually somehow had infinite combo, a rarity in a big-name modern fighting game. This was patched out by giving his aforementioned terrible fireball, which is part of the infinite combo, a random chance to come out as a stronger red fireball. This gave Dan an appropriately funny random chance to throw out a stronger attack, but also the way the red fireball launches the opponent breaks the infinite. It's a buff and a nerf at the same time, a paradox so delightfully and thoroghly Dan.
Fighting games have a more storied history of deliberate joke characters past Pichu and Dan, which are too numerous to go into here in full detail. Skullgirls has Fukua and Robo Fortune, parodies of real characters Filia and Miss Fortune of dubious canonocity that owe their existence to jokes too complicated for me to explain now. Sega's old internal crossover fighting game, Fighters Megamix, has a roster including cast members from Virtua Fighter, Fighting Vipers, Sonic the Fighters, and... a car from Daytona USA. Excellent youtuber Leon Massey has a recent video discussing Tekken 3's two terrible bottom tier joke characters, which I highly recommend giving a watch.
But this is all a bit of a tangent, with the main point being that the culture of fighting games makes it unclear sometimes what a joke character really is, while also deliberate joke characters are often made more serious as a series goes on, but still retaining their identity as "funny".
For a more relevant genre, let's talk class shooters... and by that I mean TF2. Overwatch doesn't really have joke characters, it's not a game devoid of humor but it likes to take its cast seriously.
TF2 doesn't really have joke characters either, the cast was made well ahead of the game devolving into mediocre Adult Swim humor, but TF2 *does* have interchangeable weapons introduced later on. Most of these are serious additions to a character's arsenal, even if in somewhat comical forms like a ham sandwich or a soda can. But even in its earlier alternate weapons, there additions that felt like deliberate downgrades added for either sheer fun or comedy value, like the Huntsman being a questionably useful alternative to the hyper-efficient sniper rifle that's validated by just kinda being funny to use and see in action.
As the game went on though, there's very clear instances of joke weapons that aren't useful but funny, weapons that are plain bad but not in a funny way, and weapons with comical concepts but genuine uses in gameplay. The Holy Mackerel is functionally identical to Scout's weak default baseball bat, but announces every hit in the kill feed and humiliates enemies on death with the condemnation of a "Fish Kill", because hitting people with a fish is funny. The Hot Hand meanwhile has Pyro slap people twice with a unique glove, and is objectively kinda useless, which adds up to being a vaguely funny throw weapon. The Pomson 3000 is a cool-looking shotgun alternative for the Engineer that is just terrible, but in a way that isn't funny or interesting, just kinda frustrating. And the Second Banana is one of the final weapons ever added, given to Heavy as a gag pity prize to rub in how he lost to Pyro in a vote for a major update... but it ended up being a seriously viable sidegrade to the Sandvich, with its stat adjustments giving it pros and cons that fit a slightly different playstyle over Heavy's mainstay secondary. It was a joke in concept, but a valid choice in practice.
This all adds up to joke options being kind of. Weird. Not only in the variable nature of comedy, but also in how seriously they get taken in practice. Sometimes what wasn't meant to be a joke becomes one, sometimes what was meant to be a joke is taken seriously, and sometimes this status flips over time.
...this post became very long and eventually wasn't about War Bots, so I'll go into my ideas there later on. There's more I wanted to talk about, didn't even get to taunt kills, but god this is a lot to type on a phone so give me a break.
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🏕 Camp Lovers Lake - Chapter Six 🏕
An Eddie Munson x Female Reader summer camp story. Set just before the beginning of season 3 of Stranger Things, with a few diversions from the original plot of the series.
🏕 Chapters List
Pairing and tropes • Eddie Munson x Henderson Female Reader - fluff, forced proximity, slightly slow burn, summer camp clichés ♥︎
Summary • June, 1985. Close to the city of Hawkins, Indiana, the placid waters of Lovers Lake stand as the perfect background for the homonymous summer camp, where you’re about to be a counselor for the last time before senior year and then, hopefully, college. Your brother Dustin Henderson won’t be with you this year, as he’s chosen to attend Camp Know Where until July - but with your best friend Robin Buckley at your side and the unexpected addition of Steve Harrington to your duo, the upcoming months seem to promise endless fun and exciting adventures nonetheless. However, as you get closer to Eddie Munson, resident metalhead and drug dealer who’s been forced by his uncle to work at Camp Lovers Lake after another missed graduation, your plans for the summer might have to go in an unexpected direction.
Warnings • Cursing, possible mentions and/or depictions of violence, sexually suggestive language. Having no idea where this is going myself, you’ll need to be 18+ to read this fic just in case! In this chapter you'll also find veeery slight mentions of fake rape allegations and animal cruelty (nothing major I absolutely swear - it's just gossip - but I'll put them here anyways).
Chapter notes • Sorry for the long wait, but here we are! This one is more interaction-focused and it's quite long (lots of thoughts in here), but I hope you like it! I can't wait for the next chapters to come! Hope it makes sense so far :)
Chapter word count: 7.7+ k
🌹 Masterlist 🌹
The quest does, in fact, continue.
The thunderstorm and heavy rain that forcefully took over the treasure hunt doesn’t stop - on the contrary, it keeps coming undeterred the following day, the incessant downpour causing all plans and activities to be canceled as everyone reunites in the Headquarters with a cleared schedule and the special concession from the directing staff to occupy the long hours of the rainy day as each one prefers.
Most of the campers and counselors decide to go back to the games they took out last night and are now moving tiny pawns with chipped paint on faded Monopoly boards or shuffling old card decks before starting yet another rummy game. Others prefer to read or listen to music, getting lost in fictional worlds or occasionally sharing their headphones with a friend. Some younger kids are drawing and filling out with bright crayons the last few untouched pages of some coloring books. Back in the corner of the large main room, Jason Carver and his friends, Patrick included, are fruitlessly killing time by throwing a basketball into the air and joking about random topics that, according to the loud, saccharine laughs coming from Jenna, Tammy and a few other girls in their group, must be peak comedy.
In other circumstances, you might let the temptation to eavesdrop win over your good sense, even if you know that their conversations must be as funny as casual, misogynistic jokes can be; however, right now their babble, mixed with the rest of the chatter and the pattering of the heavy rain on the windows and walls of the Headquarters is nothing but a background noise whose words and sentences you have no intention to decipher: all your attention, as well as that of your friends, is indeed all caught up in Eddie’s D&D campaign.
With the story unveiling and becoming more interesting by the minute, especially thanks to Eddie’s storytelling skills and immersive recounting of your characters’ deeds, anything else is pushed to the back of your mind, and it’s a feeling that’s shared by the rest of your group: everyone, even Steve and Robin, has fallen under the spell of the fantasy game, the role-playing becoming more and more natural as you go along your imaginary adventure. You cross dangerous rivers, spend the night in the forest, investigate mysterious footprints in the mud, the storm raging outside becoming part of the story at some point - all in the span of a single day at Camp Lovers Lake.
Most of the magic happens because of Eddie. As a Dungeon Master, he reveals a new side of him that you weren’t expecting: he lets his creativity and imagination run wild, following the plot he prepared in his cabin at night, in the dim glow of his flashlight - but he’s quick to adapt the story to the party’s decisions and choices, creating new scenarios and letting the adventure flow with his melodious tone and theatrical gestures, guiding you through the rules and dice throws without influencing your decisions and your interpretations of the characters. You are all wrapped around his finger, hanging to his every word and revelation, gasping when a treasure is found in the secret compartment of a marble column or cursing when a troll or goblin manages to hit you during a fight.
And that’s actually what is happening right now: an angry goblin has just hit you with his rusty sword, and you’re left with just a few hit points - and now it’s your turn to choose what to do next.
“Use the healing potion!” Gareth excitedly suggests, the pencil in his hand drumming rapidly on his character sheet. “You can get some points back and keep fighting for a while”.
You’re tempted to follow his hint, especially because he’s a seasoned player and this is just your first campaign; however, as you stare at the menacing d20 die lingering in the middle of the wooden table, another idea pops into your mind.
“If I hit him and kill him” you tentatively say, your eyes rising to meet Robin’s across the table, “only the hobgoblin is left. He might attack me as then I’ll be closer to him than any of you on the map, but as he moves to do that Robin can perform an opportunity attack and tear him apart”.
You don’t know if that makes any sense - you’re not even sure that the opportunity attack works this way, but it definitely seems more reasonable to you than gulping down a healing potion whose effect will completely wear out with the next hit you receive. If there’s a chance of winning this battle, this is it, you think.
“That might work” Jeff observes as he checks out the squared sheet of paper on which seven pebbles indicate the positions of your adventurers and the two NPCs on the map.
“Yes, but if the hobgoblin harms her, she’s as well as dead” Gareth insists, and you’re glad to understand that he’s choosing the safe option because he doesn’t want you to stop playing.
“We will all be, if we don’t finish him quickly” Steve chips in, “in my experience, the sooner you face the fucker, the better. No use in procrastinating the inevitable”.
Robin swiftly turns towards him. “In your experience?” she jokes, barely managing to hold in a laugh, “what are you, a professional monster hunter?”
As you grab the die and start weighing it in your hand, you notice a weird look appearing on Steve’s face - almost as if he’s realized he has just said something that should have stayed a secret. But it goes away so quickly that you come to the conclusion that you’ve probably just imagined it.
“Movies, duh” Steve replies, glaring at Robin, “you know what I’m talking about”.
Robin shrugs. “If you say so” she states, before turning back to you. “So, y/n, what are you going to do? Time is running out here”.
Your gaze spontaneously falls on Eddie, as you feel the need for his advice even if your choice is already almost completely clear in your head. However, he doesn’t take an explicit position: his upside-down smile lets you know that this is something that you need no help with.
“Your choice, princess” he declares, the rings on his fingers glittering in the light of the ceiling lamp as he spreads his hands in a bestowing gesture.
You look up at him, moving your eyes back and forth between his encouraging look and the d20 in your hand.
“You can do this” Eddie adds in a light whisper, meant only for you to hear. His voice unexpectedly sends shivers running down your spine, and as a low thunder rumbles outside in the distance, you make your final decision.
“I’m rolling to attack” you announce, shaking the die in your closed fist before letting it fall on the table.
“Shit” Gareth hisses, his hands nervously grabbing his own hair as he and everyone else lean closer to the table, their eyes fixed on the rolling die. Even Eddie is staring, his lower lip caught between his teeth as the tiny piece of plastic moves across the wooden surface in an endless spin, until…
“18” you sigh with relief, soon echoed by everyone else’s cheering. “Please, tell me that’s enough” You ask Eddie with pleading eyes, the shadow of a hopeful smile already appearing on your lips.
Eddie lifts his eyebrows and grins as he starts speaking.
“You all see princess Eowyn moving towards the goblin, raising her longsword above her head in a last effort of collected strength. She aims at the head of the creature and with one swift gesture…” he pauses for suspense, basking in the expectant looks of five pairs of eyes stuck on him. “She swings her weapon and hits the goblin, taking him out in one single motion” he concludes solemnly, moving one of the pebbles beyond the edge of the map and away from your fighting field.
Everyone exults, and you relax in your chair. Don’t even need to throw the damage dice this time, because your strategy was definitely worth it: as you suspected, the goblin was on his last hit point, so all you need to do now is see what comes next.
And, unsurprisingly, the final part of the fight happens exactly as you predicted: with your character losing consciousness at the hands of the hobgoblin, who attacks you only to be immediately slain by a critical hit rolled by Robin.
The atmosphere at the table is ecstatic as everyone cheers your best friend, Eddie included. With this final fight, the short campaign he planned has already come to an end, but he’s filled with proud happiness at the sight of your party’s enthusiasm during the game.
You catch his barely repressed smile as he collects all his notes into his black binder, everyone else’s chatter and comments about the adventure still echoing around the table, and something warms up inside you. It’s something that you can’t quite place a name on yet, but that it’s getting more and more frequent every day, and any time you meet Eddie’s chocolate eyes, or every time he casually brushes against you for trivial reasons - passing through a door at the same time, your legs accidentally bumping into each other when you sit down on the steps of your cabin’s front porch at sunset, or when he hands you something across the table and your fingers lightly touch by mistake.
It’s a different feeling from what you’ve felt with Patrick before. With him, it was all tingles mixed with nervousness and expectations and the thrill of the first time; with Eddie it’s a swarm of butterflies that fills you whole, fluttering inside you until you feel it drawing you towards him, almost physically at times. It’s as if the more time you spend with him and knowing him, the more you feel a thread connecting him to you, an invisible but altogether tangible line that ties you together whether it’s either across a table or across a room.
And you feel it now, too, right in the heart of the Headquarters on an incessantly rainy evening - but you’re prevented from exploring its possible meanings any further, as Eddie himself turns towards you and snaps his fingers in front of your face, the metal of his rings clanging as he brings you back to the present moment, away from your thoughts.
“Heart to y/n” he almost sings, his smile growing warmer as he addresses you, “are you still lost in our adventure?”
You chuckle embarrassedly. “Yeah, you could say so” you decide to reply, hiding your actual thoughts with a shrug, “that was an amazing one, really - I can’t wait to tell Dustin about it, he’ll be thrilled. Thank you for letting us try the game, sir Dungeon Master” you add, mimicking a royal bow as you get up to head towards the food counters, as dinner has just been announced.
Eddie’s cheeks turn slightly pinker and his smile shines brighter as he stands up as well and follows you, leaving the others at the table for now. No one seems to notice you leaving as they’re still caught up in their chatter - except Robin, who throws you a curious glance while she keeps talking to Gareth.
“My pleasure, princess” Eddie replies, his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans as he leans down towards you while you stand in the already long line that has formed at the side of the room. “You’ve played one hell of a game for a first-timer. Slayed all the monsters like pieces of cake, huh?”
You shrug again, with genuine modesty this time. “Robin did most of it” you reply, nodding towards your table, “killed that final boss with a natural 20 like she was born to play D&D”.
“Sure, she did” Eddie agrees approvingly, “but your strategy? Maaaan, that was a pro move” he exclaims, accompanying the dragging tone of his voice with a theatrical hand movement.
“N need to flatter me, Munson” you chuckle, slightly elbowing him in the side, “but I’m glad you approved of my choice”.
Eddie smiles wide, his fingers lingering on the spot on his body where you’ve just touched him. Then, dinner is served.
— 🏕 —
Finally, after a day and a half of pouring, unstopping rain and loud thunders, the following morning welcomes you with a bright blue sky and a crisp summer breeze, not a single cloud to be seen on the horizon.
Birds are singing again, flying out in the open from the safety of their nests among the tree branches, flowers glimmer in full color in the dewy green grass, and even if the ground is still wet and splashes of mud are scattered here and here all over camp, the warm sun rays and fresh air are the perfect excuse for spending the whole day outside.
All the camp activities are restored and, following a shared agreement from the whole staff, the vast majority of them will be held outside to make up for the previous day of lockdown.
A painting station is set up on the Headquarters’ porch, where Steve and some younger kids are spending the morning recreating the colors and shapes of leaves and flowers; Robin is stuck on the lake shores, overlooking a definitely unsuccessful fishing session; you, instead, have found yourself paired with Eddie as you are both in charge of directing a group of overexcited kids through some rounds of a capture-the-flag game.
With a lot of effort, mostly due to the need to navigate through established friendships and preferences, you’ve managed to let the kids split and line up in two more or less orderly rows, one in front of the other. Right at the end of the two rows, staring into each other’s eyes with a challenging smirk as the contagious competitive spirit of the campers is slowly and inexorably starting to affect you both, you stand as captain of Team Red, while Eddie is leading Team Blue.
Between the two of you, pinned loosely on a wooden stick, is the so-called flag: a white cotton square, flapping lazily in the soft breeze.
“Alright, Team Red and Blue” you begin, grabbing the attention of the giddy kids with a clap of your hands. “The rules are easy. Each one of you is a number; starting from Tim here, we are counting one to ten” you say, patting lightly on the head a grinning Tim, whose stay at camp has substantially improved after Jason’s brother has been moved away from his cabin. “Keep your number in mind - because, once we call it, you and the kid with the same number from the opposite team will have to compete for the flag. The first who brings it back to their place in the row scores one point for the team” you conclude, nodding towards the wooden stick and catching a glimpse of Eddie’s very smug smile.
“Is everything clear?” He asks the kids, crossing his tattooed arms across his camp t-shirt as he eyes with particular intention the slightly frightened kids of his team, “I want to see you fight for that flag, army-crawling your way to it if necess-“
“Without hurting yourselves, that is” you interrupt him, nudging him intently as you throw your brightest and most reassuring grin to the petrified row of kids with blue stripes painted on their cheeks. “It’s important that we all have a good time, alright?”.
While the still unconvinced campers start getting ready and focused, Eddie leans towards you with a look of complicity. “Party pooper” he whispers in your ear, but you can feel the smile in his joking tone as his breath tickles the side of your neck.
“Afraid you’ll lose without the violence, Munson?” You joke back, turning around to get in position at the head of your row, your cheeks slightly heating up at the closeness.
“Me?” Eddie exclaims, clutching his heart dramatically as the steps backward, taking his place next to Team Blue as well. “I’m a sworn pacifist. Let’s make love, not war” he declares, his eyes never leaving yours.
Thankfully, you remember that there are twenty kids right there with you, eager to start playing, so you manage to snap out of his magnetic gaze and clap your hands one last time.
“Alright, campers!” You state, the suspense palpable among the kids as you wait to announce the first number. “Let’s start with… number three!”
One at a time, you and Eddie alternate in calling numbers for the following half hour, watching excitedly as the kids run and clash into each other, stand still next to the flag waiting for the other’s next move, fall on the ground after slipping on a patch of mud just to get up again laughing and with dirty clothes. Thankfully, no one gets hurt and everyone’s having fun, even if the competition is getting more intense - and you and Eddie slowly start getting into it as well, moving past mere superintendence as you cheer the kids when they score points and encourage them when they lose the flag to the other team.
“Yes! Yes!” Eddie is exulting now, throwing his ringed fists in the air as a girl from Team Blue earns another point and makes the score tie to 15-15. “That was fucking amazing, Williams” he tells her with a huge grin, bending to her height with one hand raised in front of her.
You refrain from calling his swearing out as you notice that the girl is looking at him panting, the white flag held tight in her fist as rivulets of sweat roll down her forehead. She hesitates a second as she studies him, her eyes moving fast between his encouraging look and his hand - until, finally, she grins back at him enthusiastically and gives him a loud high-five.
You smile at the interaction, your heart warming up as you watch Eddie roughly ruffling the girl’s hair with pride - seeing him interact and play with the younger campers like this forced job isn’t that bad after all makes you feel glad that he’s here.
But above it all, you’re happy that the kids are able to see past his tattoos, his long hair and heavy rings, moving beyond the prejudices and preconceptions that they’ve been taught from the day they’re born. Just as Jason Carver is always picture-perfect but secretly hides mean remarks and the attitude of a real bully, Eddie is proving again and again how kind, funny and creative he can be - to you, to your friends and to the campers as well. Sure, he might be a weird metalhead who’s into fantasy games and who presents himself with a dark, moody façade that he wears like armor - but deep down he’s a good guy. Special, you’d dare say. And watching the kids getting to know him and discovering all the beautiful sides that shine through the cracks of prejudice and appearances just warms you, because you know that it must feel good for Eddie, as well.
“Miss y/n” a voice from your left suddenly grabs your attention, making you turn your head away from Eddie. “You should play the final round”
With your eyebrows furrowed, you curiously look at Tim, who is speaking to you with a wide smile on his lips. The other kids on Team Red are nodding enthusiastically behind him, some of them encouraging you to go ahead, and make them win - their growing cheers immediately echoed by the members of Team Blue as the girl who just high-fived Eddie is pulling at his t-shirt to convince him to join you.
“Guys, we can’t” you try to reason with them, “this is your match, you’ve played so well so far and it wouldn’t be fair-“
“Afraid of losing, Henderson?” Eddie chips in, mocking your own statement as he takes a step forward, his hands on his hips and the swarm of Team Blue kids giggling behind him.
You cross your arms on your chest, pretending to be offended as the kids in Team Red gasp in surprise.
“Come on, Miss y/n, please” Tim nudges you in your side, his expectant and pleading puppy eyes making a soft smile appear on your smile.
“Well, if you put it like this...” you reply, lifting your gaze up to meet Eddie’s with a sigh. “I guess I’ll have to defend my honor”.
The loud cheering of the campers rings in your ears as you and Eddie walk to the back of your respective rows, your heads high as you feel the invisible thread between the two of you vibrate with an exciting kind of tension. The playfulness and defiance in Eddie’s eyes make your heart beat faster and your smile gets harder to hide. He cocks an eyebrow up at you, his own smirk mirroring yours as he places his palms flat on his bending knees, ready to spring as soon as you get the go-ahead. Something in your stomach twists, but you push the feeling away as you firmly direct your eyes towards the billowing piece of white cotton in the near distance.
“Ready…” Tim exclaims as he begins the countdown, the kids beside him crossing their fingers and cheering you on. “Set.. go!”
It all happens in the whirlwind of a few seconds. Both you and Eddie sprint towards the flagpole, racing to be the first to get to it; you’re losing ground at first, Eddie’s long, jeans-clad legs allowing him to cover more distance with each step. But suddenly he almost slips, the sole of one of his white Reeboks sliding on a patch of mud - he wavers but doesn’t fall, but it’s too late: you get to the pole first and the flag is now in your hand, and you wave it victoriously as you turn around.
It doesn’t end here, though, and you know it - and so does Eddie. As he balances himself to stand up straight again, you realize that now you have to make it back to your spot in the row to score the point - but to do so, you’ll have to pass by him.
Eddie looks at you with glinting eyes and a knowing smirk, the lean muscles tense under the fabric of his clothes as he’s ready to sprint in whatever direction you’re going.
You look back at him, chest heavy with quick puffs.
“Take your time, sweetheart” Eddie coos, his eyes steady on yours, “I'm in no rush”.
The kids on both teams hold their breath in anticipation. You consider and weigh all options, then decide to go for a little trick - you don’t know if it’s going to work, but at this point it doesn’t really matter.
Slowly at first, you make your way towards the left one step at a time. Eddie matches your every movement, a chuckle threatening to escape his lips (and yours as well) while you tiptoe towards each other as if you’re walking on eggs.
Then, all of a sudden you sprint to the right, attempting a last-minute turn that seems to catch him by surprise. You feel Eddie’s rings and fingertips graze the skin of your arm as you move past and around him, your spot in the Team Red row now closer than ever, the cheers of victory from the kids already echoing in your ears… but just as you’re about to step in place, you feel a tug around your waist and you’re suddenly pulled backward.
In the blink of an eye, you hear Eddie scream a loud “Gotcha!”, but before you can realize that whatever’s grabbing you it’s actually one of his arms, your feet skid without any warning and you feel the ground escape from under your shoes, the sky turning upside down.
With an unexpected splash, you and Eddie tumble into each other and lose your balance, the kids’ surprised exclamations loud around you as you both fall in a muddy puddle, brown grime splattering all over you and staining the white of your t-shirts.
However, as you find yourself literally head over heels, you don’t feel the hardness of the ground beneath you: instead, you’ve landed on something soft, and… moving. As you turn your head to make sense of what’s happened, you realize that you’re lying on Eddie’s chest.
“Shit, you okay?” He asks you, half worried and half amused, one of his hands fluttering across your face and grazing your cheek uncertainly, before landing on your shoulder.
It takes a few seconds for you to respond, as surprise has taken you aback - and because all of your attention is now focused on him being so close. You can’t take your eyes away from his face, from the definite line of his lips, from the soft curve of his nose, from the light in his eyes that seems to be miles deep as you stare into them, the palm of your hand now extremely aware of the rising and falling of his chest as he breathes beneath you.
Batting your eyelids a few times to get back to the present moment, you cough to disguise your slight embarrassment.
“Uhm, yeah, I think so” you reply, getting up to your feet as quickly as you can to examine the damage.
In order to prevent you from going straight into the puddle, Eddie’s tried to shield you from the mud by falling backward and pulling you on top of him - as the thick layer of dirt on his back, his torso and part of his face clearly demonstrates. But it didn’t help much: your shirt is irreparably stained as well, and blobs of thick, brown water are sliding down your cheeks and matting your hair.
“God, we really need a shower now” you mutter as you pluck some wet grass from your ponytail, grimacing at the thought of how much scrubbing you’ll have to do to get rid of all the dirt.
Eddie, who’s been quick to follow you into standing up, nods in agreement, taking a step back with a mischievous smile. “‘Course” he says, as he places himself at the end of the now silent and expectant kids of Team Blue, “but first, we have a victory to celebrate”.
You lift your gaze to him and as soon as you see the previously white flag, now scattered with dark and blotchy stains, waving proudly in his hand, you let out a defeated sigh.
The Team Blue kids erupt in a loud cheer, unmirrored by the sad frowns of Team Red, and you mutter a resigned “congratulations, Munson” as Eddie happily joins the celebrations, bowing down solemnly to the campers that are exulting around him.
— 🏕 —
“And he won? Just like that?”
Robin’s excitement at your retelling of the unexpected turn taken by the capture-the-flag game makes you chuckle.
You're back in your cabin, crickets chirping outside in the dark as you’re getting changed into your pajamas. It’s not bedtime yet, however: after an early dinner that your sports-fuelled appetite welcomed quite eagerly, it’s now time for the annual movie night - which, thanks to the warmth of the early evening, will be held outside the Headquarters, under the starry sky.
“Yeah, he did! The audacity, right?” You reply as you wriggle into your PJ top - an oversized ABBA t-shirt that almost completely covers your light cotton shorts.
“And he did that after he hugged you into a fall?” Robin continues, leaning towards you as the playfulness in her tone reaches her lips, which curve into a knowing smirk.
“He didn’t hug me” you protest, grabbing your pillow from the top bunk before making your way towards the door. “He grabbed me to stop me from, you know, winning the game, and he accidentally slipped on the mud and I ended on top of him- God, Robin, don’t look at me like that!” you yell at your friend, trying to hide your embarrassed laugh as you throw your pillow at the increasingly sardonic expression on her face. “I know how that sounds, but I guarantee you it’s not like that!”
“Okay, dingus, calm down!” Robin exclaims, the smirk never leaving them as she catches the pillow just in time, “you don’t need to murder me to prove your point! It makes it seem even more less than a point, you know? But okay” she quickly adds at the sound of your groan, throwing the pillow back at you and lifting her palms in surrender. “I won’t mention it again if you don’t want to. I’m just saying it’s cute, like something straight out of a romantic movie where both protagonists are too busy hiding their real feelings to actually enjoy them and-“
“Robin” you interrupt her, leaning against the door with a soft smile, “I promise, we’re just friends. Now can we please go? I don’t want to miss the beginning of the only real movie we’re seeing at this camp”.
Robin sighs, jumping to her feet off of the small desk where she was sitting. “Alright, Miss Just Friends, as you wish” she murmurs, throwing an arm around your shoulders as you both head outside.
As you make your way in the dark, meeting a few other campers and counselors on the path to the Headquarters, you can already catch some glimpses of the cinema-like setup from a distance. Then, once you get closer and finally come in full view of the large wooden building, you realize that this year the directing staff have really outdone themselves.
The whole porch is decorated with fairy lights, twisting around the handrail and hanging from the roof in large glittering curves. Hung between the two wooden pillars on top of the short set of stairs, a white, king-size bedsheet is illuminated by the light of the projector, which is set in place behind lots of cushions and picnic blankets scattered on the ground. Most of the kids are there already, sitting in small groups and snacking on warm popcorn that Mrs. Janet is handing out by the kitchen.
“Woah” Robin exclaims, the sparkle of the fairy lights reflecting in her eyes as she amusedly stares at the ensemble, “it wasn’t this nice last year”.
“I know, right?” You nod in agreement while you scan the sparse crowd, looking for your friends until your attention is grabbed by Steve’s waving hand.
You gently tug Robin by her arm, bringing her attention back to Earth as you both climb over pillows and other people’s legs to reach Steve. He’s sitting with Jeff, Gareth and Eddie on a large blanket, whose checkered print almost exactly matches the ones on their pajama pants.
“Hello, strangers” Steve exclaims as he watches you approach, “about time you got here. Thankfully I was early enough to get the best seats in the house”.
“Thank you so much, Harrington” you ironically reply, waving your hand back as you make your way towards them, Robin following your every step to avoid crashing into anyone - since, as she always argues, she has terrible coordination.
As soon as you reach the group, Eddie shoots up to his feet to greet you.
“Hi, princess” he says with a complicit smirk, making you blush with the nickname he’s borrowed from your D&D session, “how’s the coping process with today’s defeat going?”.
You glare at Robin as she badly suppresses a snicker, watching her sit down with the others before turning your eyes back to Eddie’s.
“Not too bad, thanks” you reply, mocking indifference as casually as you can, “even if I could argue that foul play was involved”.
“Oh, was it, now?” Eddie jokes, but he suddenly grows silent as his eyebrows furrow and he leans closer to you.
You’re instantly petrified as he lifts up one hand to your cheek, your heart thumping hard and fast in your chest as a million thoughts run through your head trying to understand what he’s doing with his face only a few inches away from yours - then, taking you out of your anxious wondering, Eddie scrubs something away from your left cheek with a flick of his fingers, his skin grazing at yours for the second time today as he absentmindedly tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear.
“It was, uh, a bit of dry mud” Eddie mumbles as he straightens up away from you, hiding his hand behind his back quickly as if he’s caught himself doing something he shouldn’t have.
You swallow slowly, the sensation of his fingers still on you. “Uhm, thanks” you reply, shying away from him as you sit down on the blanket.
Steve throws a meaningful glare at Robin, who only shrugs in response - you catch the eloquent wiggling of her eyebrows nonetheless, but refrain from nudging her this time.
“Alright” Eddie exclaims, his tone just a pitch too high as he claps his ringed hands together. “I’ll go get some popcorn. Jeff, come with me?”
“Come on, man, I’ve just sat down” Jeff whines, but a burning glare from Eddie makes him stand up with a grunt. They come back with two full paper bags just when the movie starts, and the salty smell of popcorn immediately fills your nostrils as Eddie plops down next to you.
The movie is Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which came out last year and was highly requested by campers and counselors alike. The excitement is palpable around you, and even your friends are enchanted by the adventures displayed on the makeshift screen: their eyes are glued to it, and they hold their breath when suspense gets intense.
Scene after scene, caught up in the plot even if it’s the third or fourth time he’s seen the movie, Gareth is relentlessly stuffing popcorn in his mouth, with Steve elbowing him every now and then as Jeff whispers a low “leave some for us, too, man”. Every time that happens, you, Robin and Eddie snicker behind them, thankful that you’re more democratic in sharing the bag of popcorn that you’re holding between them.
During the whole film, indeed, you’ve been alternating picking from the snack bag, in an unrehearsed but perfectly synchronized sequence: Eddie first, since he’s been so kind to go and get the popcorn himself, then you, as you’re sitting right in the middle, then Robin. During a particularly suspenseful scene, however, right when Indy is attacked by an assassin in his room at Pankot Palace, you’re so immersed in the movie that you forget that it’s not your turn yet, and your fingers meet Eddie’s inside the half-empty popcorn bag.
It lasts only a second, and with a low “oh, sorry” you retreat your hand to your lap; but it’s finally done, now, and the movie plot seems to lose any sense as you fail to follow it from this scene onwards. Suddenly, Eddie’s presence beside you becomes the only thing you can feel: the light touch of his knee against yours (has it always been there?), the glimpses of his wild, curly hair that you catch in the corner of your eye, his earthy and sweet scent brought to you by the soft summer breeze, the heat radiating from this body that seems to ignite you in your cheeks and belly without a touch. And it’s there, back again, the new, exciting and scary feeling that you’ve felt so many times by now, the unexpected hope of something great, the warmth of a kindred soul - it feels good, it feels terrifying, it feels like Eddie, and as you slowly, finally come to terms with what it means, right there in the nightly dark, surrounded by projected sacred temples and flickering fairy lights, you can’t help a smile of relief from blooming on your lips. Because you know, finally, what that feeling is - or better, you’ve always known, but now you feel confident enough to admit it. It feels a little like losing control, alright, but is it that bad? Losing control for something that feels this good?
You don’t realize it, and no one else notices, but you shake your head just slightly. No, it really wouldn’t be that bad to lose control. Not for Eddie - not with Eddie.
But. And as this tiny, powerful word appears in your mind, your smile freezes for a second. What if. A million possible doors open up in front of you, each leading to a different worst-case scenario. And you start to think straight again.
But, even if the feeling is something good and new, something you’ve never experienced before, what if the consequences it may bring are the same as those brought by other feelings you’ve felt already? What if it comes to light, this indescribable thing that moves everything inside you without you being able to keep it down, and it ruins everything? What if he doesn’t feel it as much as you do? Or worse, what if he doesn’t feel it at all? It might just be all in your head, for all that you know. A longing for something that’s not actually there, that you thought you had with someone else and that you’ve lost now. Something that was never there, but god, how you wished it was.
You bite your lip as you go back to the story on the screen, pushing everything to the back of your mind. It’s no use getting this worked up now - you can think about it later, or tomorrow. Well, you might even mention something about it to Robin, if you’ll feel like it. Your eyes focus and you wonder how the hell did the movie go from a beautiful Indian palace to a railroad in the mines - but it’s Indiana Jones, so you guess there must be a perfectly reasonable explanation for that.
It doesn’t take long for the movie to end. When the theme song starts playing and the credits roll on the bedsheet wavering in the breeze, everyone starts yawning and getting up.
“Shit, that was so cool” Gareth exclaims, stretching his arms in the air, popcorn crumbles falling on the blanket as he gets up, “I really wish they’ll make more movies”.
“Next time I won’t sit next to you, though” Jeff scoffs, “you’re a snack thief”.
Gareth groans. “Jesus, are you for real?” He talks back to Jeff, hands wavering as he throws himself and his friend into a whirlwind of back-and-forth bickering that doesn’t end until they reach their cabin. They barely even say goodnight to the rest of your group, but none of you actually minds - what’s more, as you watch them arguing while they fiddle with the door handle, you let out a small chuckle that you’re thankful they haven’t heard.
After leaving Jeff and Gareth, you, Robin, Steve and Eddie walk a bit more, talking about the movie and about tomorrow’s plans. When Steve and Eddie reach their cabin, they wave goodnight and go inside - Eddie’s upside-down smile following you until you and Robin are out of sight.
“God, I can’t wait to sleep” Robin groans, throwing herself on the bed as soon as you get into your room. “I’m so glad they went for a pajama party dress code. I’m so tired I couldn’t bear to get changed. You know, like, I could sleep for a whole fucking century and not even world war three would wake me up - ”.
You listen to Robin’s endless grumbling with a smile as you move towards the ladder that leads to the upper bunk, but you stop right in your tracks when you notice that the window in front of the small desk is still open.
“Shit” you mutter, taking a few steps to reach it, barefoot on the wooden floor. As you grab the frame to close it, however, you hear someone talking outside.
“… I swear, it’s true. If Harrington and those two silly friends of his actually heard about it, I bet they’d stop treating them like they’re worth something”
“Y/n, can you pleeeease turn off the light? I’m trying to sleep here” Robin complains, her voice muffled by the pillow. You ignore her, trying to recognize the voice outside - until it clicks. It’s Tammy Thompson.
“… Yeah, Carver told me. That’s why it must be-“
“Y/N” Robin groans louder, but you shush her immediately. She lifts her face up with an outraged look and you apologize silently, waving at her to reach you next to the window. She doesn’t move at first, but as you insist she finally gets up with an exasperated sigh. Once she’s next to you, you flick off the light as quietly as you can.
“What?” Robin whispers, and you touch one of your ears with a finger before pointing outside.
“Here it is” Tammy continues, taking a short pause to make a puffing sound - as an acrid smell reaches you, you realize she must be smoking with someone. “But promise not to tell anyone, okay? I mean, no one that doesn’t, you know, share our opinion on this”.
“Promise! Now go on, I’m dying to know over here” another feminine voice replies, but you have no idea who that might be.
“Alright” Tammy begins, and you swear you can hear the malicious smirk in her voice. “So, a few days ago Jason Carver was talking about Munson and those two freaks that follow him like dogs everywhere, right? He mentioned how he made fun of him once at lunch after y/n Henderson said something about Jason requesting his rightful portion of food or whatever, and how the two of them talked back at Patrick during their hike and stuff”
“Oh yeah, I noticed that” Tammy’s friend replies, “are they like, together now?” She then adds disgustedly.
“Jeez, I hope not for her” Tammy says, “she’s still in time to steer clear of him, even if I don’t think she’ll do that - or Harrington, or their other weird friend with short hair. Buckley, I think her name is. Too bad, I guess”. After a short break, during which she’s loudly puffing smoke, she goes on. “Anyways, Jason was saying how outrageous it is that Munson and his freaks talk back to him or even address him when he knows what they do in their free time. And no, it’s not about that awful music they play, but it’s kinda related. Jason swears that he’s seen them doing something terrible in the woods behind the school - something in the name of the same evil they sing and play about”.
Tammy pauses for some dramatic effect, and her friend urges her to go on.
“Well” Tammy continues in a lower voice, and you have to get closer to the window to hear better, “he said he was walking past the woods after practice one day, and saw them sitting at the picnic table - you know the one, yeah? He couldn’t see what they were doing, but it was looking very suspicious, so he waited until they went back to class. And guess what he found on the table? A dead squirrel. Gutted in a pool of blood. And with the blood they had drawn a freaking pentacle on a tree”.
You and Robin look at each other with wide eyes full of surprise and outrage at the blatant lie - Robin even slaps one hand on her open mouth.
“What’s a pentacle?” Tammy’s friend murmurs, her stupefied words echoed by the chirping of crickets in the woods around camp.
“Oh, I have no idea” Tammy casually replies, all the drama now gone from her tone, “but it has something to do with the devil. Yeah, I know right?” She adds, as her friend gasps loudly. “But Jason is keeping this to himself, and only told me and a few others. Says he wants to wait for the right time - when Munson and the freaks cross the line for good”.
A beat of silence occurs before Tammy’s friend speaks again. “Gosh, Tammy, you’ve been so brave to be alone with him in the woods the other day. I wonder what might have happened if you had followed him off the path”.
“I was lucky” Tammy replies gravely, “would you be surprised if he assaulted me or something? I wouldn’t, that’s for sure. I could make something like that up and everyone would believe me instantly - that would be quite the lesson for people like him. But even the thought of having to deal with-“
Something cracks in the distance - a branch, maybe, or some leaves, and Tammy and her friends almost shriek before rushing away and back to their cabin next to yours.
As silence fills the room and the sounds of the woods slowly creep back in the background, Robin closes the window.
“Shit” she hisses, now wide awake. “Shit. Did you hear that?”
You don’t reply immediately. You’re still by the window, frozen in place with your heart filled with rage and sadness and powerlessness at the thought of what you’ve just heard, at the injustice and at the bullying that Jason Carver, Tammy Thompson and their narrow-minded companions are perpetrating towards Eddie and his friends.
“Y/n” Robin speaks up softly, one hand tentatively placed on your arm as she notices your eyes growing glassy. “Are you okay?”
You shake your head. “You know that’s a bunch of stupid lies” you finally snap, worry irrationally taking over you, “right?”
Robin stares at you for a second, her mind putting all the pieces together once and for all. It’s only fair that you’re angry at Tammy Thompson for talking behind your friend’s back - hell, she’d be mad if she caught someone talking like that about you. But seeing you so distraught, so upset about someone you’ve known for less than a month, that’s new - or, it should be. However, since she’s come to recognize the hidden meanings of all the little interactions she’s witnessed between you and Eddie by now, it doesn’t seem that new after all.
“Of course” she exclaims, reassuringly placing her free hand on your other arm as well, “are you kidding? They would never. That’s all Jason Carver’s doing. The kid’s mental, I could swear on that”.
“What do we do?” You ask her, apprehension clouding your gaze.
Robin takes a breath. “Let’s go to sleep” she replies, quietly. “We’ll think about it tomorrow”.
— 🏕 —
Hope you enjoyed this chapter :) Feedback is always welcome!
Taglist • @meaganjm @emwhite1 @juggernort @final-girllll @mermemerald @sarcasm-is-my-form-of-attack @stardustworlds @eddiesbirdie @carolineesnell @djarintreble @earthtokace @copycatkillerfics @purpleorbvoid @shinydixon @kiribabyy @whoreforhowl @eddiesskittle @princesseddie
#eddie munson#eddie munson x y/n#eddie munson fluff#camp lovers lake#eddie munson x female reader#eddie munson x reader#eddie munson x you#stranger things 4#stranger things x reader#eddie munson imagine#eddie munsons stranger things#eddie munson fic#eddie munson fanfiction#eddie munson fanfic#stranger things x you#steve harrington#robin buckley
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Freetime Posters - 12 Film & Literature Hobby Posters
Hi everyone! 120 posters later and the Freetime poster series is finally finished! Whooo!🍾 Today we wrap up with the last hobby, Film & Literature. Swatch, details and download below! 📚
So, for the last time...these are on @linacheries’ best-poster-mesh-in-the-whole-world 4t2 conversion of Simsza’s National Park Prints (mesh is included), and they feature another 12 designs made with Flaticon elements + lots of Simlish fonts. They’re all inspired by locations, items, Sims and features from the game.
Translations:
Werewolf Poster for one of the spooky movies
Subtext: A Lucien Hyde Film Title: Cat Lady Poster for the other spooky movie. I borrowed Lucien Hyde's name from TS3's Midnight Hollow; it seemed apropos
Weather Control Poster for one of the action movies
Top: Chickmate! Bottom: Chicken Poster for one of the comedy movies (y'all didn't think you were getting out of this without more bad puns I hope XD)
Top: Alan Stanley's Bubble Bath Quote: "This year's most dripping drama" -- Sim City Times Bottom: Emmy Starr Devin Ashton Tiara Angelista Poster for one of the drama movies, with more borrowed TS3 names (all from Bridgeport)
Fetch Poster for the other action movie
Desirable Discourse For the film and literature secret lot
Top: Discover the Magic of a Good Book Bottom: Bell Books Desiderata Valley Bookstore advertisement inspired by Issac Bell, Desiderata Valley film and literature enthusiast
Madeleine Mace's Book Club Named for Madeleine Mace, one of the film and literature hobby trainers
Voleskine Notebooks and Journals Since I couldn't find a name for the in-game journals, they're now Voleskine :D
Once Upon Whenever Felicity Joyeuse Poster for the in-game romance novel
Larry Owens' Writing Workshops Named for Larry Owens, another film and literature hobby trainer
A numbered swatch is included.
Icons are by Freepik, Chanut-is-industries, justicon, Smashicons, max.icons, Futuer, RaftelDesign, ultimatearm, mikan933, photo3idea_studio, iconixar, Victoruler and smalllikeart. Huge thanks to all the designers for their amazing resources!
And a huge thanks to everyone in the Simming community as well! I've so appreciated your wonderful feedback while working on these. It was a crazy project and sometimes I felt frustrated or overwhelmed, but then I'd read your kind comments or see one of these designs in your screenshots and it was always worthwhile. <3
DOWNLOAD (SFS) Recolors are ~350KB
I should be back to posting content more regularly this week. This post is scheduled to go out while I'm (hopefully) still sleeping, but I'll be getting caught up on everything I missed once I'm conscious again! 🤗 See you all very soon!
Lots of love,
Spacey
UPDATE: Now that this series is complete, here is a master list of all the posts, plus a single download link for all the posters. All swatches are included, and files are sorted into folders so you can easily keep just what you like:
Tinkering
Nature
Arts & Crafts
Fitness
Science
Cuisine
Sports
Games
Music & Dance
Film & Literature
DOWNLOAD ALL THE POSTERS (SFS) Recolors are ~8.5MB
You can now also get all the designs on BV's Travel Keeper!
#s2cc#ts2cc#ts2 download#sims 2 download#ts2 custom content#sims 2 custom content#s2 cc#ts2 art#ts2#ts2 posters#ts2 wall decorations
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WAY DOWN ON THE RIVER
“Oh mother tell my baby sister / Not to do what I have done / But shun that house in New Orleans / They call the Rising Sun” — House of the Rising Sun by Lauren O’Connell
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genre: horror comedy
pov: 3rd limited; switches between characters
setting: on a traveling new orleans riverboat, from new orleans, louisiana to cairo, illionois
content warnings: gore, graphic depictions of violence, depictions of panic attacks, blood, death
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blurb, characters + worldbuilding under the cut
BLURB
Nine killers board a boat, each with a different intent. Some there to kill, and some there for it's intended purpose — traveling. Whatever the reason, all of them get tangled up in the complex web of everyone's favorite game show, Who Killed That Guy? With the deaths piling up, everyone aboard has to manage to survive the rest of the week. If only there was a detective on board; alas, they probably killed him, too.
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CHARACTERS
Anastasia "Tasi" Marie / TEATIME
Anastasia "Tasi" Marie was born and raised in New Orleans, USA. Most of her childhood was spent hiding from her transphobic, alcoholic mother and learning about anything she could get her hands on, usually politics and government. When she turned 16 she leaped at the chance to get emancipated and won the court case. Due to her intelligence and studious nature, Anastasia managed to get accepted into a college soon after emancipation. She was a history major at Columbia University, New York, and later worked as an archivist at a local museum. When she discovered one of her coworkers was cheating on his wife, she killed him, leading police investigations to discover he was adulterous and make his wife aware. After the first killing, Anastasia continued to kill cheating spouses. Eventually, she quit her job and started traveling to find a wider variety of victims. Her method of killing is inviting her victims over for tea and poisoning them with cyanide. Anastasia hates violent killing, not for the nature of it, but simply because she thinks it's too messy and the cleanup isn't worth it. She's very strategic and can form a complex plan from very little information, which is how she's succeeded as a serial killer for nearly a decade. She has what she describes as 'the most peculiar sense of being able to tell when it's going to rain, but only a few hours before it happens.' She has a pet rat named Rat that she always brings with her to her murder scenes. Anastasia also suffers from inattentive type ADHD. She currently lives in Denham Springs, Louisiana, USA.
Araceli "Cheli" Malviya / LANCELOT
Araceli "Cheli" Zamora was born in Madrid, Colombia and lived there for the first seven years of her life to a Spanish father and Colombian mother who later divorced when she was 3. When she was 9, she was adopted by an Indian-American woman referred to only as the Specter after her parents were murdered. Cheli moved to New York, USA and The Specter became her mother and taught her how to kill as well as personally educating her in most other subjects. She learned Louisiana Creole, Hindi and Mandarin Chinese as a result of being raised with the Specter, Sam and Zexi. The Specter allowed all her children to choose if they wanted to choose the path of serial killing, and they decided they did want to, becoming the group of serial killers known as the Trinity. Cheli's main victims are pastors with a history of SA. Her method of killing is killing her victims with throwing knives. The knives are personalized — they're named after female Catholic saints, and the names are engraved into them. Cheli has slight anger issues and learned how to box and play drums as a coping mechanism. She's the only one of her siblings that knows how to do hair, and loves it. She learned how to do Afro hairstyles and dye, bleach, and cut hair so she could know how to do her sibling's hair. Cheli is described by Sam as 'charming in an annoying way — she'll insult you and make you fall in love with her all in the same sentence.' She has a strong dislike of bright, artificial lights, but loves dim lighting from lamps. Cheli suffers from hypoglycemia and as a result always has candy or candy wrappers in her pockets. She currently lives in New York City, New York, USA with Sam and Zexi.
Samson "Sam/Sammie" Malviya / BAM BAM
Samson "Sam" Zamora was born in a small farming town near Baton Rogue, USA. They were raised unaware of their parents, since the community operated under a communal raising structure, usually only bothering with parents for government requirements. When they were 9, they were adopted by the Specter, an ordeal the farming community was concerningly apathetic about. Sam moved to New York, USA and The Specter became their mother and taught them how to kill as well as personally educating them in most other subjects. They learned Spanish, Hindi and Mandarin Chinese as a result of being raised with the Specter, Cheli and Zexi. The Specter allowed all her children to choose if they wanted to choose the path of serial killing, and they decided they did want to, becoming the group of serial killers known as the Trinity. Sam's main victims are middle-aged addicts with children. Their method of killing is blunt-force trauma. Sam has horrible eyesight and uses glasses, but mainly relies on their siblings for guidance. They are easily the best dressed out of their siblings and put the most effort into their appearance. Sam is also the best cook out of their siblings and enjoys cooking Indian and Louisiana Creole food with the Specter. They love visiting museums with their siblings and making it a competition to see who can find the most homoerotic exhibit in a set amount of time. Sam is described by Ruhi as having 'impossibly long eyelashes over piercing gray eyes that make Ruhi's breath catch when they sweep over him with a mix of curiosity and disdain.' They currently live in New York City, New York, USA with Cheli and Zexi.
Zexi Malviya / HONEYPIE
It's unknown exactly where Zexi Zamora was born, as his mother abandoned him at an orphanage after his birth due to mental health and financial reasons on his part. He was raised by primarily Latina people, and as a result, became fluent in Spanish. They were also firm in teaching him Mandarin Chinese, believing it was important for him to have some connection to his culture even when he wasn't surrounded by it like he would be if he had been raised by his mother. When he was 9, he was adopted by the Specter, which was very bittersweet for the orphanage caretakers. Zexi moved to New York, USA and The Specter became his mother and taught him how to kill as well as personally educating him in most other subjects. They learned Hindi and Mandarin Chinese as a result of being raised with the Specter and Sam. The Specter allowed all her children to choose if they wanted to choose the path of serial killing, and they decided they did want to, becoming the group of serial killers known as the Trinity. Zexi's main victims are detectives who are assigned to investigate his sibling's murders. His method of killing is using a suffocation agent in his victim's food, usually a dessert like cake or pie. Zexi is the peacemaker between his siblings and often tells them they 'need to chill out.' He's a photographer and frequently visits the scenes of his sibling's murders to photograph them. Zexi is deaf and knows ASL (so do Cheli and Sam), but his deafness isn't took severe so he's able to use hearing aids. He likes to joke about lots of things being deeper than they are — for example, he could see a penny lying facedown on the ground and equate it the silencing, oppression and genocide of Native Americans. Sam has described this talent as a 'stupidly interesting skill, the way he pulls things from thin air. Sam nearly considers it an art form.' He currently lives in New York City, New York, USA with Cheli and Sam.
Akachi Moriai/ MS. MEDIC
Akachi Moriai was born in Enugu, Nigeria and lived there for 16 years with a complicated relationship with her parents until she left for college possibilities in the US. They had a few kills under their belt before they left for the US, but after they made it to the US they started killing more frequently. She befriended Toyoko, who was also coincidentally a serial killer, but it wasn't something Akachi was aware of until they started dating when Akachi was 19. Akachi dropped out of Harvard Medical School to instead travel around killing people with Toyoko, which they found much more rewarding (to each their own, I guess). She married Toyoko when she was 22. Their main victims are male gynecologists who SA their patients. Her method of killing is overdosing her victims on certain pills. Akachi is a very artistic person and paints portraits of their wife's victims with the victim's blood. She keeps a jar of things that are sensory-pleasing for her wife around at all times. Akachi is very fond of snakes and usually has one around them at all times. Sometimes the snakes aren't even personal pets, they're just...there. She also really likes wearing jewelry and is constantly layering bracelets, earrings, rings, and necklaces. While they are very artistic, Akachi is also kind of flighty and non-committal, hopping around arts and crafts and picking up new creative hobbies every few months and such. She currently lives in Chicago, Illinois, USA with Toyoko.
Moriai Toyoko / THE SURGEON
Moriai Toyoko was born in Narita, Japan where she lived for fourteen years before her parents immigrated to the USA. Due to large pressure to become a doctor like her uncle from her parents and their refusal to accommodate her needs as an autistic person, Toyoko went slightly crazy and killed her parents with surgical tools when she was 17. She managed to frame their deaths as if they were murdered by burglars and played the part of the grieving daughter. After that, she continued her killing. Her main victims are psychiatrists who diagnose with obvious bias/ableism. Her method of killing is cutting with surgical tools. Toyoko is often self-destructive and works more than healthy for her, but tries to stop because it makes Akachi nervous about Toyoko's health. She's obsessed with keeping her spaces clean and cleans her tools 3 times a day at designated times. While Toyoko is autistic, she has high-functioning autism and a harder time with social cues and interaction than overstimulation. Her special interest is in surgery and medical mysteries, and she spends a lot of her time reading or studying surgery procedures/statistics and medical mysteries. Toyoko is very oblivious and didn't realize she was dating Akachi until three months into the relationship. While not a very sentimental person, Toyoko makes certain to keep every small gift her wife gives her. She currently lives in Chicago, Illinois, USA with Akachi.
Ruhi Arana / FLASH-BANG
Ruhi Arana was born in Auckland, New Zealand, and lived there for their whole life. The start of his killing began as a response to the murder of his mother and father when he was 7. As a result of their parents' death, they were raised by their aunt. His parents' death was the outcome of a racial hate crime, and the man who murdered them was later put on trial and declared guilty due to the efforts of Ruhi's aunt. While Ruhi was on a vacation in Argentina when they were 16, they ended up meeting Don. They both attempted to kill the same man, which they succeeded at, but then both attempted to kill each other, which failed. Ruhi's main victims are people with a history of racial and transphobic hate crimes. His method of killing is stunning his victims with a bright light and then choking them via smoke inhalation. Ruhi is described by Zexi to be a 'tall, lanky son a bitch that was even taller than Zexi, who was notably the tallest of his siblings.' Ruhi is a solitary person and despises working in large groups, barely tolerating partnerships. It's easy for them to adapt to new situations and learn things very quickly, which is part of the reason they've managed to get away with murder for 8+ years. Ruhi is incredibly good at literary analysis and composition and works for a newspaper. If able, he signs up to write articles on his murders, making sure to reveal the victim's history of hate crimes. They're also majoring in English Literature at The University of Auckland. Ruhi's a shameless flirt, described by Don as 'willing to flirt with a shoebox if it attracted him enough.' He currently lives in Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Donna "Don" Nekvasilová / BELLADONNA
Donna "Don" Nekvasilová was born and raised in Sokolov, Czech Republic where she lived for eleven years before her family immigrated to the US. Don attends Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey as a psychology major. He plans to get a master's degree in psychology and become a forensics psychologist. Their killing started when they were 16 and saw a xenophobic woman harassing an Asian person, leading Don to later kill the xenophobe. Her parents remained unaware of this and are very supportive of whatever Don decides to do with her life (probably wouldn't be supportive of murder, but what I'm saying is she's the only serial killer with a happy, living family). Don's main victims continued to be xenophobes after the first murder. His method of killing is through the use of poisonous plants, usually atropa belladonna since that's his calling card. Don is dyslexic and uses colors to code his plants instead of the names, which is helpful in concealing their crimes. She's incredibly skilled at makeup and uses it to her advantage and is one of the best at hiding her identity. He has the nervous habit of biting at his nails, leading to his fingers always having stains of blood or blood crusted around the nails. Don is also a gymnast, specializing in aerial silks and the balance beam, making them incredibly agile and flexible. She's a very energetic, vibrant person who often has trouble sleeping because of their amount of energy. It also causes him to be slightly irritating to the people around him, and his energy and constant movement can be tiring to some. They're described by Ruhi as seeming 'weirdly knowledgeable about many things — it's like she was made for Jeopardy.' She currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
Muoi "Ash" Vanich / THE PYRE
Muoi "Ash" Vanich was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand. He attended the Faculty of Medicine, Chang Mai University to become an RN. He lived in Thailand for nearly twenty-five years before immigrating to the US with his sister to help her raise her family. After immigrating, Ash got a job as a travel nurse, which led to him traveling around a lot, making it easier for him to kill people without his sister and other family becoming aware. In the medical world, ableism thrives, and as a result, Ash's main victims are ableists, usually people who accuse disabled people of faking it. His method of his killing is through fire by any means. Ash was born with a limp and uses a cane full-time, experiencing chronic fatigue as a result. He's plagued with night terrors about drowning, which is part of the reason he's so attracted to fire. Ash is depressed and anxious, and basically a tired old uncle that needs a nap instead of murder. Despite using a cane, is supernatural how clumsy he is, he gains fifteen new bruises every day. When he gets to new places he'll be in for a while, he walks around them, mentally mapping them out so when he walks around later he can close his eyes and get the slightest moment of rest. He's described by Cheli as a man who looks like 'the tired, sad uncle that you only see at the family function and always looks to be on the verge of death.' He currently lives in Washington, D.C., USA near his sister.
Crew of the Beaulieu
The Specter (she/her ; 53) is the Indian-American woman who adopted Cheli, Sam, and Zexi. She was also a serial killer, albeit before her children's time, stopping her killing around five years before her children's adoption. She was called the Specter for her unknown method of killing and the fact that her identity was never discovered.
Kalpani Corea (she/he ; 48) is the Sri Lankan pilot and captain of the Beaulieu, the riverboat WDOTR is set on. She is a close friend of the Specter and regraded by Anastasia as a woman with 'a confident set to her shoulders and a sly smirk playing on the edges of her lips.' To Cheli, Sam, and Zexi he is considered an honorary, 'fun' aunt.
Aniyath Inasa (he/him ; 34) is the Maldivan clerk of the Beaulieu and cousin of Kalpani. He's a serious man with a blank gaze and aloof attitude toward most of the passengers. He does have a soft spot for Cheli, Sam, and Zexi, however, and has been known to crack an occasional smile around them.
Nazli Volkan (they/them ; 26) is the Turkish engineer of the Beaulieu. They're quite skittish and usually only speaks around other crew members. While they do take a while to warm up to, they are very dependable and gets on Aniyath's nerves the least.
Szalai Zita (xe/xyr ; 40) is the Hungarian head of the firefighters of the Beaulieu. Xe's a loud, slightly obnoxious member of the crew, but much of the younger crew adores xyr like a mother. Xe is the love of Kalpani's life and her partner.
Miryam Caillat (she/her ; 36) is the French mate of the Beaulieu. She doesn't hesitate to snap, and while not abusive like mates used to be in older times, is quite strict with the deckhands. Even though she's firm, she's fair and respectful of each of the deckhands, taking the time to learn each of their names and getting to know them, despite her joking that she only does that so the deckhands know who she's yelling at.
Jackie Watts (they/she/he ; 27) is the American 'leader' of the deckhands, or the co-mate of Miryam on the Beaulieu. Jackie is a mischievous, bouncy person whom Toyoko describes as having 'a sparkle in their eyes that they'll always have, no matter how old.' Despite their decade long age gap, she's known to get along well with Cheli, Sam, and Zexi.
Isma Samaha (he/they/ze ; 33) is the Egyptian head of the cabin crew. Considered the kindest of the crew on the Beaulieu, Isma is described by Cheli as 'a soft kind of person, but only to the people he thinks need it.' They're very supportive of the entire crew and jokingly called Dr. Samaha due to the crew joking that Isma could be a therapist.
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Worldbuilding
The World
The world is basically a parallel/alternate world to ours. It's very similar and has many of the same elements like world leaders, celebrities, historical events, etc. Aesthetic-wise, it is more steam-punky and the use of machines and mechanics like trains, steamboats, and ferries is commonplace globally. Mechanics* as a whole are incredibly innovative and forward, much more advanced than our world. Supernatural elements are also way more prominent in this world, and things like cryptids, monsters, and magic are real, tangible things. This does affect the day-to-day life of the people of this world, and it's not uncommon to see something supernatural every day.
This world is, funnily enough, aware of our universe/world. While this world is not constantly up to date on our world, they do manage to get some form of news every few years. Of course, major historical events still happen, including the horrible ones. But as for mechanical, technological, architectural, etc. — those mistakes are often discovered and corrected.
Note: this doesn't mean technology. Technology, while more advanced than on our world, is not as common in this world.
Transportation
It takes place on a riverboat in New Orleans, Louisiana. In today's world, they usually aren't used for travel, more for a tourist attraction. In this world, steamboats and riverboats are used more commonly as modes of transportation on the water. The other main form(s) of transportation on land are trains and/or buses.
#wip intro#writerblr#evvy is typing#wdotr#anastasia marie#cheli malviya#sam malviya#zexi malviya#malviya triplets#akachi moriai#moriai toyoko#the brides#ruhi arana#don nekvasilová#ash vanich
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Scriddler mood you say...? Well i would love to see them having fun with a poor hapless victim... 👀
Have some mean-spirited shite!
"Isaac Cox."
Drawling the words with a mocking lilt, Jonathan brought the newspaper in his grip closer to his face as a muffled whimper attempted to break free of the gagged figure restrained before him.
"In a tour de force performance which has taken the Gotham comedy circuit by storm, Isaac Cox stands head and shoulders above the rest as he pokes fun at everything from Bruce Wayne to Lex Luthor's latest presidential gambit. However," Jonathan paused to let every word sink in, "his crowning achievement - one which had the crowd in tears - centered on the costumed villains which inhabit Gotham's sewers and shadows."
Jonathan read with perfect clarity in a tone that dripped sarcasm, every inch the honed ex-lecturer he once was, before passing the newspaper onto the green-clad figure by his side.
"Taking aim at Deadshot," Edward picked up the review with a wide grin as his cane remained clasped tightly in his free hand, "puzzling over Riddler's sexual preferences, and making a scarily accurate impression of the Scarecrow on a bender, Cox left no stone unturned as he rampaged like a rogue in his own right. It's enough to have this reviewer feeling like we have a new fearless jester to join our resident Clown Prince of Crime. 4 stars out of 5."
Edward sniffed in disdain as he dropped the newspaper to the filthy floor.
"For such a glowing review, you think they would at least have the decency to give a full five stars. Your thoughts, dear doctor?"
"Everyone's a critic in these modern times."
Flexing the syringes of his fear gauntlet, Jonathan allowed the dim light to catch the metal and noted the violent flinch in the restrained figure.
"I won't insult you by explaining why you're here-"
"But I will," Edward cut in, "and I have to say that choosing to target such a dangerous group of individuals shows that there's not much going on upstairs in the old cranium, is there Isaac?"
To emphasis his point, Edward tapped his temple with the pad of his index finger. A smile broke across his lips as genuine dread filtered through Isaac's expression; the horror of his situation too great to allow regret any room at the table.
In the dampness of Jonathan's underground room, a perfect setting for his various experiments, the vague sound of rainfall could be heard beating against the upper building as a storm raged against Gotham. However, the worsening weather went unnoticed by all three men as their little game continued.
Edward leaned in closer, his bowler hat slipping forward an inch as his head fell to a deep angle. His voice was low and intimate, a simple conversation between a predator and its prey.
"In days gone by, the jester filled an important role to a King's court. He spoke freely but always with the healthy fear of the executioners axe should his words offend rather than amuse."
"Parallel to that, if a jester failed to amuse his king then he would often find himself a victim of hubris as he was thrown into the nearest moat to be devoured by crocodiles."
"And while we lack a moat-" Edward shrugged.
"-we do not lack the crocodile." Jonathan finished his sentence with a crooked smile. "And Waylon Jones does not take kindly to those who would dare to mock him so publicly."
The restraints creaked like old floorboards as Isaac's thick wrists wrenched at his bindings once more. His eyes widened to dinner plates as the natural fear of being eaten, having his flesh consumed by a feral beast, weighed on his chest.
"But we are fair men and so we devised a way for you to save yourself. If you can."
Pulling free the fabric gag which lay within Isaac's mouth, Edward had barely retracted his fingers when the pleas stared to break free of his panicked lips.
"Please, I'll do anyth-"
"Do not interrupt," Crane hissed as he clamped his thin hand around the terrified man's mouth, "or I will sew your lips shut just to watch you struggle more with your next task." He gestured to Edwsrd with his free hand, encouraging him to lay out the instructions.
"One who acts a fool must fill the role entirely. It seems to us that we hold the power in this exchange and that makes us your court. So your task is to make us laugh."
"What?" A question disgused within a sob.
"Make. Us. Laugh." Edward punctured each word with a cruel flick of his wrist. "You have three minutes to make either of us smile or your life is forfeit. Waylon Jones waits in the wings for a simple invitation if you fail. Consumed by a crocodile for failing your simple role. Poetic."
Jonathan watched the explanation with stony features, mercy absent from every pore as he knew he was playing a game he would not lose. Hubris was a death sentence in Gotham and this fool before them would lose more than he bargained for in payment for the unspoken challenge he had set.
Producing a small egg timer from his jacket, Edward wound it back as each subtle click tinkled away like a death rattle in its own right. He tilted forward to position it on the small table which lay between them as Jonathan moved to stand to his full, impressive height by his other side.
"Three minutes, Isaac Cox. Time for the jester to work his magic."
x-x-x-x-x
By the time Waylon Jones had slowed his brutal enjoyment of his screaming meal, the scent of blood and viscera hung in the air like a cloying fog and it was enough to make Edward's stomach lurch despite the many atrocities he could ascribe his own bloddied name to.
"A pity, really." He muttered the words with a pitiless tone. "I could have used him as a test subject for a new contraption i've painstakingly designed."
"And deny Waylon a good meal? You would be so cruel?"
Silence falling once again, both men resigned themselves to watching the smoulding display of cannibalism as a vague hope that the other would take point on the inevitable clean-up knocked curiously at their thoughts.
#time is preventing me from adding more to this but i hope you like it babes#riddler#scarecrow#Edward nygma#Jonathan crane#edward nigma#scriddler#riddlecrow#ish i suppose. no actual romance here#gotham rogues#batman villains
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UQUIZ CATCH UP;
Okay so I’ve fallen really behind in a bunch of tag games that I was tagged in by a variety of people: @corvosattano @roofgeese @chuckhansen @fenharel @minaharkers @denerims @simonxriley (and probably more) but why not have a mass post of them!? Thank you sm for the tags beloveds, I’m sorry I’m such a slow old gal🤍 doing this for my brain rot bbies but also my newest kiddo - Kaida!
Tagging (only if you want to, I have no idea who’s done these): @sstewyhosseini @risingsh0t @florbelles @queennymeria @river-ward @confidentandgood @indorilnerevarine @liurnia @marivenah @noonfaerie @detectivelokis @jinfromyarikawa @nokstella @solasan @shadowglens @jackiesarch @shellibisshe @arklay @arthrmorgann @jennystahl @jendoe @phillipsgraves @jacobseed @necroticpetals @heroofpenamstan @hunterhorn @kingsroad @unholymilf @baldurians + @blissfulalchemist
Q1: what planet are you? || Q2: which type of protagonist are you? || Q3: how is your soul perceived? || Q4: what kind of time loop are you stuck in? || Q5: why do people love you? || Q6: what kind of complex do you have? || Q7: darkest desires || Q8: what’s your underlying motif?
Q1: SATURN;
patient. stable. reliable. preserving and diligent. your capacity to hold focus on something you choose to is unmatched by all other planets. you were made for hard work that you love and that you know is rewarding. you are the shoulder that everyone wants to cry on, so remember you can lean on yourself when it seems there is no one else. there is nothing wrong with being self sufficient. you are justice and evenly balanced scales.
Q2: THE PRODIGY;
now this is most like the child protagonist who witnesses complete incompetence and feels so trapped in it that they have to find their way to a better tomorrow (all by themselves). whether it's wit, intelligence, creativity, privilege, or skill, you use your assets to their utmost, usually under the guidance of someone who knows how to hold you back just enough. you've earned your triumphs, and your adventures help you find power and control where before there was none. and sure, the arrogance can be quirky, but like, in very small doses.
Q3: THE STRONG-WILLED;
your soul has touched darkness and so you learned to wrap yourself within it. you felt fear and decided you would never let it control you again. you're not always all sharp edges and cool stares, but you refuse to be prey again. you turned your teeth into fangs so you would be the one to bite. you learned to growl louder than all the predators who stole your innocence. it may seem like you don't care, sometimes you try to pretend you don't, but i see the way you sharpen your knives when the ones you care about are hurting.
Q4: MODERN DARK COMEDY;
happy birthday! where has the time gone? another year older, another year wiser. happy birthday! another year down, and eternity to go. happy birthday! maybe this year will be different, you have 365 days to find out. clock’s ticking! happy birthday!
Q5: BECAUSE THEY CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT YOU;
yours is an obsessive type of love. people find themselves completely enthralled by you and your presence in their life. they can't imagine their life without you in it, and they'll do anything to keep you. it's the kind of love that makes them feel like they're suffocating when it's taken away. be careful with that power.
Q6: SUPERIORITY COMPLEX;
grow up. you're worse than everyone else.
Q7: FOR EVERYTHING TO BE REAL;
you grew up so immersed fantastical realms that now you have to imagine yourself in them each night so that you can fall asleep. it's a comfort you've never been able to sever. but the reality you were given wasn't made for you. it's time to create a new one.
Q8: THE LIGHTNING ROD;
whether it’s your turbulent nature, your flash quick mind, or the air of unknown about you, your undercurrent is the lightning rod. you are somewhat unpredictable, but if we unravelled we’d see you know exactly what you’re doing, but it’s makes you feel less vulnerable to pretend it wasn’t planned. some people stay back from you, but others would follow you cross country, for the very same reason. they don’t know enough about you. the difference is in who wants to learn more. keep your golden nature, it’s exciting, but don’t be afraid to admit what you know. matshona dhliwayo said “lightning strikes but does not roar” your bite will always be worse than your bark, keep that close to your chest.
Q1: EARTH;
nurturing, generous and caring. introverted, tolerant, honest and trustworthy. you are "my phone is always on, call me any time." you are "i feel like i'm everyone's therapist." you are impressive with your stability and and peacefulness. you are wallpapers of cows and fields of ever-growing seeds. you are the best friend. mother nature. ice cold water and the smell of rain.
Q2: OVERPOWERED SWEETHEART;
you were probably gifted from birth, but humble about it. whatever it is--alien sun, parents with powers, or what i like to call the taco tuesday special (fell at breakneck speed into a radioactive vat of chemicals immediately upon birth)--your origins played a big part of your journey. that positive attitude and those grassfed morals sure aren't something you see every day! it's no surprise that you're a natural, but you have a lot left to learn about responsibility, and...it's probably not gonna come easy (sorry)
Q3: THE KINDRED SPIRIT;
your soul is like a mirror for others to find their own beauty. you see the best in people and you strive to bring it out in them. you draw all sorts of people to yourself and you make them feel seen. but who sees you? you try so hard to take care of everyone else, watering everyone else's garden until there's nothing left for your own flowers. when will you fight for your own heart as strongly as you try to nurture others?
Q4: HISTORICAL TRAGEDY;
you know how people say that when someone dies, it’s like their candle goes out? of course you know, you’ve been lost in the dark before. you’ve felt the wax drip onto your skin as the wick burns out, the smoke rising away from the puddle in your hands. maybe you can reshape it—put it back together. maybe you can light it again someday.
Q5: BECAUSE YOU REMIND THEM OF SOMEONE THEY LOST;
you're a chameleon. you have this uncanny ability to mold yourself to fit any hole in someone's heart. you're the ghost of the person they miss, and they love you for coming back to them. maybe you're afraid to show yourself, or maybe you don't even really know yourself in the first place.
Q6: OEDIPUS COMPLEX;
oh my stars stop talking about milfs stop talking about milfs stop stop stop stop NO DONT CALL HIM A DILF OH MY STARS
Q7: TO BE AS BEAUTIFUL AS YOU ONCE WERE;
you revisit the memories of your former self in a haze of nostalgia. all those wild nights seem prettier from the rear view mirror. it's an ideal you'll always be trying to replicate, but growth is a journey. and you can't repeat the past.
Q8: THE BREAD;
whether it’s your ability to rise against the odds, provide comfort, or be a staple in lives, your undercurrent is bread. you’re made from love and you carry it your whole life, to give on to others in any way you can. you’re delicate and it doesn’t take a lot to break you, but still you rise up and that is more important than what took you down. be careful with your heart, it’s so full of love that it needs to be treated delicately. you’re a staple in lives, a necessity, but not always as appreciated as you should be. so here is a thanks to you. m.f.k fisher said “ the smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight” and that my friend, that is you.
Q1: NEPTUNE;
mercy. kindness. sweet. forgiving and compassionate. you are second chances and sometimes third. you are "its ok because everyone makes mistakes." you are "i forgive you as long as you are learning." you are not held down by the demands of your ego. you believe and right and fair. open mindedness and friendship. you are mystical and magical, observant and the smell of warm bread in the morning.
Q2: MORALLY GREY, BUT SEXY ABOUT IT;
you are a bundle of mistakes and personal, gut-wrenching trauma, masked behind irresistible charm and mystery. maybe you've been alive a while, or maybe you've lived so many lives in your short span it's felt like centuries. regardless, you know enough about the world to know it's rarely ever black and white. you'll help when called, but you also don't go out of your way to solve anyone's shit...not until you fuck up and start to care for someone. after that, playing it coy and selfish can only get you so far.
Q3: THE QUIET OBSERVER;
your soul is like a sponge, absorbing so much of the universe sometimes you feel like you're drowning. you wish you could make your heart a little stronger. but your gentleness is not weakness and neither is your sensitivity. you feel so much more than everyone else. it makes you kind even to those who don't deserve it. it makes you notice the hidden tears and the covered scars. you wonder who will save the ones who are suffering in silence, don't you know that includes you too?
Q4: SCI-FI HORROR;
there is always something behind you, but you will never see it…have you seen it? you don't think you can remember now. maybe take another look, just a little glance. what’s one more time, right? just once more, once more, once more…
Q5: BECAUSE YOU NURTURE THEM;
you take care of people's souls. people are drawn to you because you make them feel fulfilled. your love is tender, constant, and whole. however, you often forget to nurture yourself in the same way, finding yourself burnt out and empty. save some gentleness for yourself. you deserve it.
Q6: SAVIOUR COMPLEX;
... oh man. Go take a nap, buddy. they're not your responsibility
Q7: TO BE A DAYDREAM;
you wonder if anyone has ever seen you on the street and heard violins swell. you want to be the kind of beautiful that makes them envision a grand romance in the silver screen of their heart. even if it's just for a minute.
Q8: THE ORANGE;
whether it’s your sweet nature, breakaway cover, or your natural displays of intimacy, you have the undercurrent of the orange. a love language in itself, your nature makes others want to take a bite and enjoy the tang that you leave behind with your laughter. you remind others of a summer day, hot air, long nights, always hopeful you’ll never go away. in her poem “the orange” by wendy cope she said “i peeled it and shared it with robert and dave, they had quarters and i had a half” you’re generous and have much to give. she also said “this is peace and contentment, it’s new” well i say, it’s you.
#tagged*#misc: uquiz#corvosattano#roofgeese#chuckhansen#fenharel#minaharkers#denerims#simonxriley#oc: rin kyutoku#oc: margot durand#oc: kaida ishimoto#will be making an edit for Kaida real soon!!#but this is her first bit on proper content!#can’t wait to show y’all more#and sorry for the long ass post but it needed doing#the accuracy of these answers tho😩
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