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the-penguinspy · 1 year

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19. “You deserve so much better.” mary x shannon

thanks for the prompt, em :)

The late afternoon sunlight casts a muted, golden hue on the courtyard, light shining through in lazy bursts at the behest of the clouds fast-moving eastward. A gentle breeze ruffles the grass and provides a welcome respite against the heat, no doubt refreshing for those sister warriors at the tail-end of the day’s training sessions, especially evident to those who close their eyes and tilt their heads toward the heading of the wind.

All-in-all, a serene end to the day. Mary is certain that she’d be enjoying it a lot more if she wasn’t currently following Shannon to the outdoor sparring mats.

They reach the mats and Shannon starts stretching immediately. Mary stares for a second before she starts her own warm-ups. “Remind me why we’re doing this again?”

“Your shotguns do an excellent job at keeping enemies at bay, but what happens when you run out of ammo? What happens if someone gets inside of your guard?” Shannon stands and brings her legs together, bends at the waist until her palms touch the floor. Mary simply continues with her arm stretches. Show off.

“That’s why I have two shotguns, instead of just one.”

Shannon frowns, straightening her body once more. “I’m serious. I know you can take care of yourself, but I still worry about you.” She takes Mary’s hand and squeezes gently, and when she speaks, her voice is soft. “Humour me this once. We can see how it goes.”

Mary squeezes her hand back and sighs. “Fine, but only if your next prank is played on Lil. It’s her fault that I still double-check the sugar and salt shakers each time I use them.”

A dozen instances of eating mat and Mary finally, finally performs the disarming maneuver successfully. Shannon grins proudly, canines sharp, and Mary looks at her mouth just in time to catch a tongue darting quick over teeth. She resets her body into the starting position once more, and Mary rolls her shoulders before mirroring her stance.

“Again.”

By the time Shannon calls for a stop, the sun had already reached the horizon and painted the sky into a beautiful red-orange. Mary flops down on her back to better appreciate the view, heartbeat hummingbird-quick, her breathing still ragged from the impromptu training session.

She hears Shannon shuffle down beside her, looks over to see legs stretched parallel to her own. Shannon leans back on her hands, nary a hair out of place and with only the slightest sheen of sweat on her forehead to give evidence of physical exertion.

They stay that way until Mary’s stomach growls. “Any idea what they’re serving for supper?”

“Mashed potatoes and roasted veggies, if my sources are correct.”

Mary closes her eyes and groans. “Ugh, mashed potatoes again? After that workout you put me through? I deserve so much better.”

“You deserve so much better,” Shannon agrees.

Something’s off about her voice. It wavered a bit at the end, and Mary looks over to assess if there’s anything wrong. Shannon keeps her gaze trained in front of them, squinting at the sunset, her mouth set in a neutral line. Her face is a careful mix of nonchalance and solemnity, and she would have succeeded in her portrayal of such if her lip hadn’t wobbled when Mary looked over, if her teeth hadn’t bitten down on the inside of her bottom lip to tamp down a smile. For an enthusiastic practical joker, Shannon’s got a surprisingly bad poker face.

Mary narrows her eyes and scrambles to sit up. “Shan.” A responding hum. “I know that look. What do you have planned?”

Shannon turns to face her and, now caught, releases the abused lip to offer her happiness freely. “You deserve so much better,” she repeats. “You deserve someone who you can kiss in public, someone you can love in the open.” Her smile wavers slightly. “You deserve someone who can stay.”

“Shannon.” The name rasps out of Mary’s mouth, and she brings a hand up to cradle Shannon’s cheek. “It’s my choice to be here, to be here with you. I love you, I’m staying, and there’s nothing that you, or anyone, or the goddamn universe can do that’ll make me leave.”

“Language,” Shannon says, but her smile settles, is no longer turbulent, and she turns her face into Mary’s palm to hide it. The heat of her cheek spreads evenly through Mary’s palm, and the small kiss that Shannon places there electrifies her skin. Tiny bolts of lightning travel up her arm and through her veins, thousands strong; restarts her heart and awakens her body, and Mary blinks fast in an effort to stabilize her focus.

“You also deserve,” Shannon continues, “a reward.” The words come out muffled against Mary’s hand, vibrations smoothing out over the skin, and Mary leans in to hear her better. “Seafood paella. That place by the beach, the one with the perfect shrimp-to-clam ratio? I’ve made a reservation.”

Mary laughs, touched, and her affection spills out in the form of a thumb stroking reverent over Shannon’s cheek. “And what exactly am I being rewarded for?”

Shannon’s smile turns sharp. “Finishing a session of hand-to-hand combat training. I think they call that positive reinforcement or something.”

The eye-roll from Mary is inevitable. “They don’t take reservations. It’s barely busy at this hour, too.” “Is it so wrong to want everything to go smoothly?”

Mary smirks. “Everything, huh? There’s more to this little date of ours?” Shannon flushes, cheeks turning rosy. She keeps her gaze locked with Mary’s and brings her own hand up, fingers circling Mary’s wrist. Her thumb brushes over Mary’s pulse – a quick one-two pass – and Mary watches as the thumb is replaced with lips, as Shannon presses a slow kiss over thin blue veins, pressure feather-light, imprint barely-there.

The expression on her face must be amusing at the very least, because Shannon’s mouth curves upwards and chuckles, and the breath that Mary had been holding in finally finds its way out. Her lungs snatch greedily at the air, and she’s certain that her unsteady breathing isn’t due to the lingering exertion from their earlier spar.

“Are you coming, or what?”

Shannon’s already on her feet. She stands in front of Mary, extends a hand down and wiggles her fingers to entice a handhold. The sun from behind her casts her shadow long and dark over Mary, over the courtyard. In the shadow of her face, her smile is a gentle arc; small and shy, directed towards one recipient, and one recipient only.

Mary takes her hand and hoists herself up from the ground. “Obviously. Can’t let that hard-fought reservation go to waste.”

Shannon shoves at her shoulder playfully, but their hands stay linked all the way to Mary’s parked motorcycle.

#warrior nun #warrior nun fic #mary x shannon #shotgun mary #shannon masters #penguin writes #[grits teeth] it doesn't have to be perfect. it doesn't have to be perfect. it doesn't have to be-#nahh 'twas a fun one as usual so ty em :)#brain's just gotta thinkie less sometimes...smth im working on #sloooowly making my way thru these prompts jfdjdjf #birgittesilverbae

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cursedfortune · 3 months

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swordduels Ohh this headcanon sounds as if witches is its own species which is pretty fun. I do think some folklore mention witches as if they are not really human at all In regards to this post.

You're correct, witches are their own species. In my lore, witches are soul-based, their vessels can be any species. I use that term (vessels) vaguely because it's not as if they are possessing another.

Witches come into existence when a soul so willful is able to (some degree) reshape reality and enforce their will both to change themselves and all that surrounds them. Which is why they are the mediums and in between mortals and immortals.

The other way witches come into existence is via a bloodline. Whenever a first generation witch is born, every spawn to come from them will always be a witch. (Which is why the whole dynamic with how witches procreate in my lore doesn't follow mortal trends).

For simplicity's sake I used to just say Mortem was human when I first made her blog but it was never accurate and I hated it. Her physical shape is human, yes. Her bloodline is human-based because the first generation witch was human. No witches in her bloodline have procreated outside of humans. You can, however, find witches as other species. There's a half orc fella in her story living in hiding because he's a witch. Witches are not subjected to a race, species or gender - it's entirely soul-based. I will say though, witches are more dominantly women because of human history where they originally hail from. So you'll find those bloodlines scattered and primarily women due to the terrible things done to women in history. And while Mortem's world specifically lacks a lot of those historical things, it doesn't mean they don't exist back on the original Earth - so that's why I have the warning in my rules regarding witches and the treatment of women or however I wrote it.

But yes! Mortem is not human. She is a witch who just happens to have a human shape! That's why a lot of her speech will regard others or herself as having that separation. She uses the word 'mortal' a lot as a general term, for example. Not because witches are immortal, but they aren't mortal-mortal in her canon either - especially Mortem, after what she did to herself.

#me: just clarifying info. i'm very thinky today so the fun comments today have got me writing out stuff again lmao #but it's useful for newer peeps to this blog or as reminders and for me to just have fun with so i'm enjoying it #headcanons

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raayllum · 7 months

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karim-callum-viren parallels meta is coming this week mark my woof

#it's been long enough and my other metas are too long and big thinky and #i want something fun and easy to gnaw my leg off over #also it's been months and i've been thinking about it since like the first week the season released #it's Time #and i keep putting off my fic writing so i gotta do Something #upcoming #dragons rambles

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blackjackkent · 2 months

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So, what Rakha really wants to do right now is go kill the people hunting Karlach, because they don't have anything else that would qualify as a direct plan other than the creche, and the "paladins" are closer. However, I happen to know that the paladins are level five and Rakha is level 2 and could be knocked over by a stiff breeze, so I think a better bet is a more full exploration of the Emerald Grove first.

I'm guessing that this is the result of a concerted effort on Wyll and Shadowheart's part, primarily - Wyll already knows the people of the grove and Shadowheart has fixated on Halsin as a useful lead. Gale doesn't seem to have any specific plan in mind and, left to their own devices, Lae'zel would already be heading for the creche and Rakha and Karlach would be after the paladins. But between them, Shadowheart and Wyll manage to convince everyone that at least TALKING to the healer in the grove would be a useful start before everyone goes off half-cocked.

Amused because I stopped in to talk to Zevlor and got a disapproval from Wyll purely for leaving the conversation without asking the question about whether the ritual could be stopped. XD Sorry, Wyll. I swear we'll get to a point where you like Rakha, somehow, but I doubt sincerely we're there yet.

Speaking of the ritual, down we go to the grove proper - with a quick stop to talk to the teeth-ling kids.

"Whoa. Hey! Can't say I've ever seen someone like you before."

Without preamble, he shows his hands to her, empty. Then a quick flick of the wrist, and suddenly he's holding out a tarnished gold ring between his fingers.

"Go on," he says cheerfully. "Take this ring. It's lucky."

Rakha, who has very little context for anything she experiences, has never seen slight-of-hand magic done before, nor is she familiar with the concept of a con man. So she watches this little display and is immediately fascinated. Magic - but with no surge of that visible tapestry around the boy, the network of power that Gale calls the Weave.

How?

"That was a fancy trick," she says slowly.

His eyes narrow and something subtle shifts in his expression, a flash of interest. "You haven't seen anything yet, lady," he says dryly. "Go on - take the ring and watch your fortune change!"

Take the ring.

She takes it and looks at it carefully. There is no magic on the ring either, nothing that she can sense. But the boy looks up at her earnestly as he draws a coin from his pocket. "Call it! Heads or tails."

She blinks at him, puzzled by the question.

Pocket the ring.

"Hey, hold on!" the boy cries at once. "You gotta pay for that!"

She does? She withdraws the ring out of her pocket again and squints at the boy, incredibly baffled by the entire situation.

("The boy seeks to deceive you," Lae'zel says impatiently under her breath. "His magic is mundanity. The ring likely the same."

Wyll sighs. "Be kind, the both of you. He wants to show you a trick, that's all. Let him flip the coin.")

Rakha's eyes narrow. She stands there with the ring sitting on her palm and feels foolish. "It's only a joke," she says slowly after a long silence and trying to sort through the words from her companions. "Go on... flip your coin." If anything, she is curious to learn what that means.

"Real sweet sense of humor you got there, chum." The boy looks as if he's starting to regret his choice of mark, but he presses on gamely. "Anyway, you gotta call before the flip. Heads or tails."

A long pause. "Heads?" Rakha says cautiously.

The boy grins, tosses the coin in the air, catches it, and then shows her the side with the head facing up. "Heads it is!" he crows. "See? That's the kinda luck you get from just one of my lucky rings! I've got more where that came from. Real cheap, too. Interested?"

Rakha is starting to understand the situation now that she has seen it play out, and her lips twitch with irritation. [SORCERER] "If there was magic in this ring, I'd have felt it," she says bluntly. "It's nothing but junk."

The boy flinches and raises his hands defensively. "Not so loud!" he hisses. "You caught me, all right? They're not lucky rings." His eyes grow wide, his expression twisting with sudden, exaggerated pathos. "I'm just... trying to earn money for my family," he whimpers. "My father left and my mother... she's so sick. I wish I had better things to sell than... trinkets, but it's all I have!"

Rakha squints. The shift in tone is abrupt enough that she is certain it's disingenuous and that Lae'zel is right - the boy is making a fool of her. There is nothing of value here.

Wordlessly she shoves the ring back in the boy's face.

Return the ring and leave.

#bjk plays bg3 durge #rakha the dark urge #ok so fundamentally this was not like #a scene with much of a point in rakha's case :P #did give me some thinky thinks though #one reason writing rakha is proving to be interesting is that by going real deep down the you-know-nothing rabbit hole #it often ends up a smidge comedic #and there's a challenging balance to be struck between this and not making her come across like an idiot #because i don't think she is!#she's quick - given information to work with she extrapolates lots of things out of a small amount #and makes rational decisions on how to act on that information #she just has zero context for anything #especially when the situation involves slang; it's kind of fun realizing that (for instance) if you didn't know what heads or tails meant #why would you be able to guess?#tldr using this scene that went nowhere as an excuse to write meta about my own character :P #i honestly really like rakha; she strikes me as someone who is perfectly decent (when the Urge isn't taking control at least)#but blunt and almost purely rationally-driven and needs to be met on her own terms #which so far the companions have been willing to do which is nice

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jacqcrisis · 2 years

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Summary: While on probation after getting out of prison on good behavior, Zeke meets a vampire who has a thing for toothy bastards like him. Luckily for the leech, Zeke is hornier than shit and is more than happy to bite the man as much as he wants.

Alternatively, Zeke’s down bad and gets frisky with a vampire all while having some thoughts. In 2nd POV. Rated E for literally no one.

#monster dude and gym bro #this was a fun exercise #i like zeke's thinkies #i like writing in his pov #and theres a lot of little backstory stuff thrown in #its fun i think #and i hope the ten people or so that read it do too #this was supposed to be a tumblr post #oh well back to writing left turn

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carmeloffie · 1 year

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i think you’re incredibly smart and knowledgeable about so many things and i aspire to write as well as you do

stoppppp this is so sweet…… thank you omg.

#i guess i don’t ever thinki write that well like it’s something i do for fun just to sort of put my thoughts on paper #so to know that someone finds it well crafted is really nice thanks a lot…..#samael speaks #angel radio

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aflockofravens · 3 months

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I have this super weird urge to post this Itafushi fic today, just because it'll be another 4 years before I can post something on a leap day.

But I'm not super happy with how everything sits and would like to do further tweaking tomorrow, when I'm not slightly stoned and still in pain.

Decisions, decisions.

#thinky thoughts #writing is hard #existing is hard #Orpheus and Eurydice Itafushi AU fic #there's also a tiny part of me that's like #no one will want to read this #and if they do they'll hate it because you're bad at writing and this sucks #so that's been fun to deal with too

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zalia · 5 months

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Experiencing Destiny 1 as a D2 player

I picked up Destiny 1 in a sale recently despite being told a lot about its problems, and honestly I'm really enjoying playing it! I feel a bit like a time traveller visiting important places and events from the past.

I also have friends who played Destiny nearly from the beginning and it's fun to go back and go 'ooooh that's what they were talking about!'. I am also very aware that if I had started playing it without already being invested, I would be having considerably less fun. (Also, being fair, much of the fun is doubtless novelty after playing *mumbletymumble* hours of D2 over the past couple of years).

But it's genuinely been really interesting from a design and narrative perspective going back to it and seeing where the story began and how things have changed and I wanted to ramble about it. Full disclosure, I have played up through the first couple of missions of The Taken King. There are also things I can't comment on such as Crucible (because getting enough players for a match has not happened yet), events (no longer happening) etc. Also haven't managed to run a raid yet but hopefully will eventually!

I will start with the bad, to get it over with. A lot of stuff here will be well known and honestly it's probably less interesting than the good/thinky stuff.

The Bad

Oh boy I have maligned D2's New Light introduction so badly since it is miles ahead of D1 just by merit of actually having one! D1 gives you the opening run through the Cosmodrome where they tell you what buttons to use and then refuses to explain anything ever again. (This very definitely ties into it being a game I enjoy now but would probably not have enjoyed if I wasn't already invested)

You don't realise how many QoL improvements D2 has until you have to go to orbit and select a new destination every single time. Also no fast travel points. And no you cannot just look at a map of the place you're traversing. Fashion is difficult too.

Up until Taken King, I am not sure why they bothered hiring voice actors for anyone except Ghost, Elsie Bray, and maybe the Speaker. And I have no idea why they hired Bill Nighy for that part (I mean I do, it's because they wanted to use Big Names for marketing but still...). The Vanguard could easily be replaced with cardboard cutouts because they are basically uninvolved in anything until Taken King begins. I know they aren't involved in every seasonal plot now, but they do appear and develop.

The story and writing is... well, it makes an attempt to exist. It does not succeed until The Taken King. I went in knowing what happens in the story and I'm still not actually sure what happens in the story because it is basically someone's pre-first draft bullet points of a narrative. The only reason I knew I was starting different storylines is because the mission popup tells you which storyline it is. 'I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain' is a meme for a reason, but another bit which I think illustrates the point well is from House of Wolves. Petra tells you that Skolas has entered the Vault of Glass and this is bad so you need to stop him. It is never explained before then what the Vault of Glass is, what it does, why it would be bad for Skolas to be in there, or... anything. While D2 can be obtuse, and sometimes leaves important info in easily overlooked lore tabs (or in vaulted content), it at least tries to tell you what the story is. I feel like D1 actively resents that players do not read the bullet points and fill in everything the writers had in their heads. Another example is the Devil's Lair strike. it's the first one you take on in D1, and after doing it in D2, I was expecting backstory and build up. Nope, you just get sent in with nothing to really explain what is going on, who the House of Devils are, what a Servitor is... I know it had troubled development and the story got torn apart and remade very close to launch, and it really shows in the early stuff. It's a series of missions that were made and then had to be strung together with the thinnest of threads. It gets better in Taken King, but at times is still not great. You first encounter the Taken on Phobos, I think Ghost asks about what they are. I was expecting more discussion about them and what they are and how horrifying it is. But nope, they just exist now and we're all fine with that.

So. Much. Grinding. The pinnacle grind was annoying in D2, the grind to just get your light up in D1 is so much worse. You will be doing bounties desperately to try to get your rep up with the various groups just so you can actually get fragments of story and quests. You will be grinding just to level up your subclass and it takes ages.

The places you visit are very expansive - even the Cosmodrome is significantly larger - which is great when they're used well, but a lot of the time they feel very empty, there to make you play for longer to get between areas than because there is anything to do.

The Good

The game is gorgeous! I'm loving getting to see Venus and Mars and the Dreadnaught. They're beautiful environments. Everything feels very expansive which can be very cool (as above, it can also be less good). When used well, it feels like there are so many mysteries and secrets hidden in this abandoned world. There are hidden bunkers and spaces, huge Vex structures and ruined cities, tunnels burrowed beneath the Cosmodrome and the Taken King's dreadnaught. It's genuinely fun to explore (up to a point).

It does an excellent job of making you genuinely feel like it's post-apocalyptic and the existence of humanity is precarious. And you, the Guardian, are brand new and everything is trying to kill you. You don't have multiple gods stored in your vault in the form of guns! Everything feels more dangerous. For example, I think if D2 is your intro, you look back at the Great Disaster and the first Crota fireteam and go 'but how did that happen when I go onto the moon and take out ogres with a single punch? The biggest threat in the Abyss in Crota's End is falling into a pit or getting hit by a pendulum! Yeah no I get it now. In D1 you are much less powerful and it makes swarming thralls and normal enemies much more of a threat. Things feel dangerous in a way that D2 rarely manages. I'll talk about this a bit more in depth later.

By making your supers and abilities less powerful, they have weirdly made them more useful. In D2 I usually save mine for bosses since it feels like a waste to use them on normal enemies. In D1, it makes absolute sense to use your abilities basically as soon as you have them. You should absolutely use your Golden Gun on a normal Hive Knight or Fallen Vandal!

There's some great atmospheric touches. I love hearing the snippets of distorted music when I'm near a Rasputin bunker. Going into some of the ruined buildings on Mars or Venus where it's dark and suddenly seeing so many red Vex eyes staring back at you is chilling.

The opening mission of Taken King is fantastic. Genuinely creepy and the Taken in general in D1 feel much scarier and threatening than in D2.

All the different enemy factions are different colours and designs! I love that!

Weapons still go brrrrr in a very pleasing way. And getting new gear feels genuinely satisfying in a way that it rarely does in D2. I junk 99% of the armour and guns I get in D2, in D1 I end up being much more considering of whether something is useful. Legendary weapons and armour feel precious!

I keep picking up random Warmind weapons to turn into Banshee that I know lead to an exotic quest and I am enjoying the feeling of that being another Secret Thing I am discovering.

Honestly, I really like Banshee's weapon bounties - you get given a prototype weapon to test out and gather data by doing certain things (killing X number of a certain enemy etc.) and that gains you rep. And you can then order a legendary version of the weapon from him to be delivered the next Wednesday.

Thoughts/Observations

Knowing that the 'original' story was seemingly going to focus more on Rasputin, and an exo version of him getting stolen by the Hive makes the appearance of some of the Hive areas on the Moon make more sense. There's some bits that are high tech in a way that feels very at-odds with what we see of the Dreadnaught and, other Hive locations which lean much more towards the organic and magical.

Similarly, Rise of Iron feels a lot more hard sci-fi than much of what Destiny has become, and has such a huge Rasputin focus. I believe it was partially developed by an outside studio, so I do wonder if it was based, at least in part, on the 'original' story of Destiny, and was either too far into development, or the other studio just never got the memo about the change in tone.

Vaguely related to the above, but way more speculative, I wonder if Banshee was originally meant to be a Rasputin exo, then that story got shifted to Felwinter, but the seeds were used for the story of Banshee having been Clovis Bray.

Honestly while it's fun to think about, in general I find the obsession parts of the Destiny community have with 'the original story' (of the 'maybe they're finally going back to the original story!' type where the unspoken idea is that this was the perfect undiluted pure story that was 100% planned and set in stone) to be fundamentally misunderstanding how creating stories work. I can guarantee that even if that first story had been used, after 10 years of multiple writers etc. it would still be in a very different place than where the people who came up with it initially thought it would go. It would have evolved and changed and shifted, even if it was following the same vague plan. That's just what stories do.

Oh wow, suddenly all the Nightmare Hunts in Shadowkeep make way more sense! I get it now!

Actually I get a lot of references now XD

Oh wow Shaxx sounds so depressed. I guess this was before he started therapy.

So many identical caves...

Thoughts on Power Creep

D1 leans much more into the post-apocalyptic setting and it does an excellent job of making the existence of the Last City, humanity, and Guardians feel precarious. Everything seems more dangerous, more of a threat. You really are part of the last bastion of humanity. And there's a few ways this is done.

First, you are much less powerful. Yes, you have supers and grenades, but they do much less damage (and are much less flashy) than in D1. There has been a huge amount of power creep! You won't be one-shotting bosses, even normal Vanguard Strike bosses with golden gun easily.

Legendary weapons feel rare and special, and I am still using Blue weapons at times because sometimes I have to just to get the higher light level. I have reached level 40 and have only just got my first exotic armour pieces which I bought from Xur! They are FR0ST-EE5, an exotic I have never bothered with in D2, but in D1 the recharge for abilities when sprinting is genuinely handy. I don't have any exotic weapons at all yet!

It leads to a very different playstyle - I play much more carefully because I cannot just charge in with something like Osteo Striga and wipe out a room with a few shots. In D2 we have killed multiple gods, taken down an Empire, and forged alliances. In D1, we're just some random Guardian and the gameplay reflects this.

And I hate to say this, but I also kind of get the YouTube/Stream BNFs who complain about things not being hard enough. It's just... they're completely wrong about the reasons and the solutions.

They seem to think that what is needed is more enemies with higher health, and nerf Divinity because it makes it too easy, and everything should be designed to stop normal players being able to do it. And it... it doesn't work? Ghosts of the Deep was fun, but holy fuck the health bars on the enemies make it feel grindy and dragged out. Legend Avalon was a slog because there's Too Much - too many elements at the same time so it's just overwhelming instead of fun. (Starcrossed on legend is tough, but feels more enjoyable and managable. I'm looking forward to doing it again instead of dreading it).

More difficulty isn't what makes D1 feel harder, being weaker is what does this. I have no doubt that if I could put my D2 stuff against D1 enemies I would decimate them. But in D1 I am a lone Guardian with scavenged gear and yes, I have the Light and can be resurrected, and it gives me an edge vs normal humans, but not a crazy amount.

In D2 I have so many exotics and weapons that I can just throw them away. I can have intricately crafted builds to take on any enemies! I am basically one of the most powerful entities in the solar system.

And that's not something you can really scale back. They did it with Red War at the start of D2. Maybe they could do it as a result of Final Shape and do smaller stories focused on Earth and recovery and what you even do after your purpose for fighting for so long is gone (and I think there is value in those stories! I would love it personally). But uh... I don't think most people would actually be happy having everything nerfed on such a scale. Give up your 999,999 Celestial Nighthawk boss damage, for a Golden Gun that with a bit of luck might one-shot a yellowbar?

Give up a lot of creativity in terms of what you use and how you play, in exchange for a tougher game with way less choice for builds, but one that is potentially more atmospheric and in-keeping with the post-apocalypse and the dangers of the solar system?

I don't have an answer for that! And it's not even the most important thing. Gamer BNFs gonna always want to prove that they're better than everyone at pressing buttons, and forget that the majority of players are casuals. But it's been interesting playing a different type of difficulty, rather than the forced difficulty of insanely high HP and Too Many Things.

Power creep is a real issue in a lot of long-running media (just look at superhero movies, or many many monster of the week TV shows). You're in a position of feeling like you need to one-up yourself every time. Every new villain has to be the biggest and baddest, and so you have to become more and more powerful to combat that, which means the next villain has to be even bigger and badder.

With Destiny we've gone from a scrappy underdog, to a god-killer.

I'm reminded of Osiris talking about Saint in The Sundial lore.

'I watched him grow from neophyte to demi-god'.

King of fitting for us to have done the same as Saint's inspiration.

#destiny 2 #destiny 1 #destiny the game #meta #gaming #video games #my thoughts

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gingerteaonthetardis · 7 months

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MSR prompts you say? This is a bit weird but, an autopsy record has more than the autopsy on it. Mainly Mulder and Scully being ... well themselves. (Basically Mulder interrupts Scully mid Autopsy and she forgets to turn off the recording.) -disappears into the ether-

thinky!!! i had so much fun writing this, i hope you like it even if you don't really go here and i don't really know what i'm doing. <3 thank you for prompting me and for always being an incredible friend.

click here to read on ao3!

click here to send me another prompt!

warning for: lame ass gag names, brief objectification of a corpse, mulder being a sentimental dweeb (but what else is new), msr being sickeningly in love

for posterity

He finds it in a dusty box, crammed in beside VHS tapes and manila folders and a million other memories, and he can't help himself.

He presses play.

A static hiss. A crunch. The rush of movement through still, cloistered air.

He hears the recorder clicking into place, suspended over the gurney. He's seen it there before, hanging like a pendulum, poised to hear every word she speaks from every possible angle.

"11:32 p.m., August 1st."

Like so.

"Begin autopsy on unidentified white male, weighing… 198 lbs. in extremis. No immediately visible cause of death."

There's a puff of breath near the recorder, and he can picture her blowing it out between her full lips. Balanced on her tip-toes, leaning out over the body to get her closest approximation of a top down look.

"Subject appears to be between the ages of thirty-five and forty, and healthy. That is, he's in good shape."

He pops a potato chip between his lips with a crunch. She sounds flustered. Interesting.

"Uh, really good shape, actually. Well-developed pectorals, abdominals, and whew, that inguinal ligament—wait," she says, voice slipping out of its even, prim cadence, "what the hell am I saying?"

He snorts.

She sighs, and it's tinny but familiar. "Okay. Get it together, Dana… A visual examination of the epidermis shows multiple tattoos, relatively fresh. The newest, on the upper left thigh, is—" and her words go the tiniest bit muffled as, he assumes, she leans in close to the appendage, "—still slightly scabbed. Certainly less than two weeks old. It's in the shape of a… a reindeer head? A moose? Huh. How… cute."

Charmingly, she says it like being cute is an infectious disease an otherwise appealing corpse has been tragically inflicted with.

"Artifacts left at the scene suggest that the subject had some sort of fixation on body modifications, or perhaps needles in general. However, the extensive tattooed area makes it difficult to determine if injection of some kind played a role in his death, as initial findings suggest. I'll have to look beneath the surface. Beginning with a Y-incision…"

His nose wrinkles, and he's quite certain the next bit will put him off his chips, so he hurriedly presses the fast-forward button, zipping through a few minutes of audio.

It resumes on a splat.

"...heart weighs 520 grams, no signs of aching or breaking," she cracks to herself before clearing her throat. "Appears healthy."

He's always suspected she's like this when he isn't around for autopsies, looking over her shoulder and going green as a Painted Parakeet with car sickness, pitching theories at her like he's playing for the Mets. When she goes in alone, she tends to leave the morgue with a kind of tranquility about her—a counterintuitive freshness that even the stale scent of latex and bitter iron can't hide. Her smiles are a little brighter.

Perhaps, he considers, it is simply the opportunity to reconnect with what makes sense to her: anatomy, the body and the story it tells. Everything connected, with clear delineations of where each piece belongs along the way.

There is so little ambiguity in the arrangement of a person's organs. Mysteries cannot help but stumble forth to reveal themselves.

But it's equally possible Scully just likes her own jokes. Her achy breaky jokes.

"This is interesting," she interrupts him, as she so often does when he's on a roll. She doesn't even have to be physically present to do it. Her undercurrent of genuine excitement pricks at his ear. "There's some cirrhosis of the liver, atypical for someone who bears no outward signs of extreme alcohol usage or any of the other usual physical risk factors. Perhaps the subject was participating in regular steroid use, or—"

On the tape, a door swings open and closes on an exuberant thunk.

"Whoa! I didn't know we were getting a celebrity in." His voice crackles out from the speaker. "Or that Steve Reeves had so much ink."

"Steve Reeves is about seventy, Mulder."

His own startled laugh sounds very, very young and—he winces—tinged with an arrogance that can't be tamed, even by his partner's dry replies.

But past-him is too intrigued for self-consciousness. "You know who Steve Reeves is, Scully?"

"I have two brothers." Her tone has gone cool and inscrutable, the loss of her previous lightness palpable in a way that only a voyeur could sense. But she was always so careful with him, back then. "Do we have an ID yet?"

"No, not yet. Prints are still being processed. But the name given at the motel check-in desk was clearly false."

"Let me guess, 'Steve Reeves'?" Listening hard, he can practically hear her eyebrow twitching upward, the faint lift at one corner of her mouth.

"Try 'Mike Hawk.' Jeez, what's that a tattoo of?" he adds distractedly. "A Rorschach test?"

There's silence for a second on the tape, and he suddenly remembers this exchange. Vividly. "Oh my God," he mumbles, abandoning his chips in favor of rolling over on the couch.

He sets the recorder down cautiously, like it's a holy relic, and stares at it, grinning with his chin propped on crossed forearms.

"I don't get it."

"Don't get what, Scully?"

"Why would that be an alias?"

"Why would the name 'Mike Hawk' be an alias? Mike Hawk?" His words are tinged with an obvious grin. Probably smug, as is his wont. Some things never change. "Mike Hawk."

There's a snapping sound as Scully removes her gloves. He recollects how they caught on her fingertips, causing a bit of a struggle as she spoke. The beginnings of a blush had seeped into her cheeks, the sting of embarrassment her fair skin couldn't help but betray.

"Why do you keep saying it at me? It's a perfectly ordinary-sounding name, Mulder."

"Didn't you just say you had two brothers? Mike Hawk, Scully, come on. Known associate of the dirty devil Mike Hunt?"

"I think Mike Hunt was in my sixth grade class."

On the recording, he can barely speak with the effort not to laugh. But there was another feeling, too, in that moment, one he remembers well: a pulse of intrigue, of fascination, which used to catch him off guard. He never knew how to cope with the reminder that Scully the woman—a shadowy mystery, perpetually out of his reach—existed in cohabitation with Scully his partner, the woman he saw every day.

This was the person who threw wadded up bits of paper at his face when he fell asleep with his mouth open; who wore men's deodorant on the road just so, in a pinch, they could share. Back then, Scully using any word—even unknowingly—to acknowledge her own sexuality felt like sudden, blazing exposure to the Lost Ark. It was a miracle his face hadn't melted clean off.

But it was a line they'd taken so much care not to blur, even then.

Now, he listens as it all begins to deteriorate over a puerile joke.

"Listen, Scully, listen to the sounds. Mike," his past self says, stretching the syllable, "Hawk."

"I am listening! You sound ridiculous! What am I supposed to be hearing?"

"You're supposed to be hearing 'Mike Hawk'!" He chuckles quietly to himself. "I can't believe this. The smartest woman I've ever met doesn't know about Mike Hawk."

"Well, I wouldn't say that," she casually replies. "I did see you in a bathrobe once."

The words are so perfectly clear, and suddenly all the noise—the shoe-shuffling, the rush of water as she washes her hands, even the background hum of the refrigeration units—seems to stop.

An interminable second passes in which he wonders if the recording got cut off. But, no.

That's just how long it took him to put the pieces together.

He closes his eyes, picturing it: the pert angle of her stubborn chin, the smirking tilt to her lips. Sparkling amusement, tinged with an adorable hint of triumph.

His grin grows. Scully really does like her own jokes.

"Scully!" his recorded voice bursts out, suffused with delight and bafflement. There's a thread of horror there, too. And desire, but that's more or less a given.

Her voice is thrillingly deadpan as she pronounces, "Gotcha."

"I don't believe it!"

"Mulder, has anyone ever told you that you're endearingly naïve?"

"You little—you just wanted to hear me say 'my cock' over and over, didn't you?"

She clears her throat, a demure little ahem.

"That would be very unprofessional of me."

In sync, both his past and present self laugh, one compressed and crunched by time, the other ever-so-slightly roughened by the same.

"That's not a denial."

"No," she replies. "It's not."

God, he can barely believe this conversation was recorded for posterity. This, of all moments. The moment when he realized maybe Scully enjoyed their flirting. That maybe, when he pushed, she could be counted on to push back.

Even now, belly down on the couch in the privacy of his own home, his stomach clenches at the memory.

She's always been the better actor, between the two of them. He's convinced she could get away with anything, and she more or less has. But the warm undercurrent of invitation on that recording is unmistakable.

"Scully." Closer to the recorder now, he goes low and flirtatious, even as he cautiously asks, "Are you coming on to me?"

He doesn't hear her answer this time around; instead, his ears catch on the rattle of keys, the click of the lock in the front door. When he glances up from the little black box, there she is in the open doorway, auburn hair catching the light.

She's holding the brown bag of takeout in one arm and her purse and keys in the other, and before he can think, he's pressing the pause button on the recorder, shoving it under a pillow, and going straight to her.

"Mulder, what are—?"

Wrestling the bag out of her hands, he stoops his shoulders and catches her lips in a long, hard kiss.

She doesn't expect the force of it, but she's got the legs of something seaborn, unbending against his tide. She accepts the assault with parted lips, mouth already curving like she's laughing at one of her own jokes.

"You must be really craving that Pad Thai," she whispers.

"Nope." He isn't even embarrassed by his own breathlessness, how hurriedly he dives back in to breathe her air. "Just you." He feels the muscles move as her eyebrow jumps toward her hairline, same as ever, and it's like all the blood drains from his brain.

It's hard to help her shed her coat with one hand holding noodles and the other in her hair and the bulk of her back pressed to the door—but he likes to think he makes it work.

"Hey," she murmurs, freeing herself enough to drop a kiss on his chin, "this have something to do with what you just crammed between our couch cushions? You weren't digging through my old cassettes again, were you?"

His eyes light up at the reminder of that particular discovery. "I didn't even know they made erotic audiobooks, seriously. A whole avenue, Scully, a whole dimension of pornography I was completely ignorant of until you opened my eyes! But," he stops, shaking off his momentary distraction, "no, that's not it."

He pauses for another kiss, lingering again because he can.

"It was an old audio log, an autopsy you did on one of our cases."

"An X-File?"

He and the takeout make it to the couch, Scully only a beat behind, pausing to kick off her little heeled boots. She's been breaking them in, claiming she'll need them if they're going to be chasing lights together again.

"No, it was a case we took on as a favor to someone. I can't remember now… What was his name?" He snaps his fingers. "Ben… something. Ben Dover? Or was it Mike Hunt?"

And Scully—well, she just wouldn't be Scully if she wasn't immediately hip to his bullshit, attuned to it like a sniffer dog to a suspicious scent. Her gaze narrows, and he grins at the way her eyelids flutter in an attempt not to immediately and violently roll her eyes. She's had a lot of practice, but he truly is a hazard to her ocular health.

Her smile, though. She can't help herself. It spills out at the edges, softening the corners of her mouth, even as it carves her laugh lines deeper.

She smiles more now than she ever did back then, and he treasures each one. The twist of her lips always feels like he's pilfering extra helpings from some great cosmic store of joy. It's an untold pleasure to watch the wrinkles form, knowing how hard-earned her smiles used to be.

Now, she's happy. She gives them out for free.

"I remember that case," she sighs, flopping down beside him on the couch, kicking her socked feet up on the coffee table. "God, we were young."

"I was 'endearingly naïve,' if I'm to take your word for it."

"Did I say that?" Her lips quirk in wry amusement. "Doesn't sound like me. I must have been in love."

"Yeah," he agrees, stealing another kiss. "Must have been." She softens against him.

He's about to steal something else—second base, if he's lucky—when there's a muffled sound from under the pillow. The distinct sound of his own voice saying, "Mike Hawk" over and over again. Their disturbance of the couch cushions must have started the tape over.

Scully's snorted giggle parts their lips. Her eyes dance like sapphires under the sun. "Did we ever figure out the victim's name?"

"You don't remember?" He sits back, shaking his head. "Wow, Scully, you really love 'em and leave 'em. I thought you had a thing for the guy."

"The dead guy?"

"Yeah, who else? Don't try to deny it, it's all on the tape."

She just shrugs. "Well, if I did—which I can neither confirm nor deny—it's only because I had a lot of tension back then… for some reason."

The grin he's wearing is probably so goofy, and hell if he cares.

Someone once called him one sorry sonuvabitch, but all Fox Mulder knows is that he's lucky. So ridiculously, obscenely, deliriously lucky, sitting next to the girl of his dreams, his once and future partner—twenty years later, on a couch they bought together, in a house they call home.

Twenty years, and she still flirts back.

"The guy's name was Eric," he finally says, because he can't not. Especially when it's the truth. "Eric Shunn."

Scully's laugh is so loud and uninhibited it rings through the house. And he has the distinct pleasure of letting it go on a while before silencing it with his lips.

#*putting my clown makeup on and honking my nose* XFILES IS A SERIOUS SHOW #txf fanfic #msr fanfic #mulder x scully #msr #abbey writes #my fic #txf #idk how to tag and also i fear being perceived. particularly since this is my first published attempt at msr. so if anyone sees this. hi

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michellemisfit · 11 months

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It’s Tag Game Tuesday Time!!! 🙌

Thanks @celestialmickey for the game and the tag. Thanks for tagging me @too-schoolforcool @energievie @deedala @lingy910y @tanktopgallavich @squidyyy23 @redshirt2 @metalheadmickey @sleepyfacetoughguy <3

Name: Michelle

Pronouns: She/Her

Where do you call home? London, UK

Favourite animal: Cats

Cereal of choice: Gluten-free Multigrain Hoops

Are you a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner? Textual, sorry. I learn best by reading, and then summarising in writing.

First pet? Two Siberian gerbils called Tom & Jerry

Favourite scent? Lemon Verbena. I’m absolutely obsessed with it. Also freshly baked bread. Yum.

Do you believe in astrology? Not really. But it’s fun to dabble and occasionally go ‘omg that IS totally like me!’

How many playlists do you have on spotify/apple music? 20 exactly lol

Sharpies or highlighters? I… what? They do completely different things! How is this an either or question?? I’m so confused! Hahaha but if I have to choose in a ‘you can only use one of these for the rest of time’-way then it’s Sharpie!

A song that makes you cry:

A song that makes you happy:

And finally, do you write/draw/create? if so, use this as an opportunity to shamelessly (😉) promote yourself!

I am one half of @f-f-podcast.

We host a Kat McNamara approved Shadowhunters Podcast

We host a Bradley James approved BBC Merlin Podcast

We host Thinky Thought - A Multi Fandom Podcast

We host South Side Rules - A Shameless Podcast

I also draw (‘Mys Art’ tag), bake (‘Mys in the kitchen’ tag), and drabble (‘Mys Fic’ tag), and once in a blue moon I write some real length fic.

My AO3 is here

—

I would like to tag @rereadanon @tsuga-of-mars @thepupperino @ian-galagher @industrious-ian @palepinkgoat @faejilly @southsidestory @depressedstressedlemonzest @harrowhark-a-vagrant @heymrspatel @juliakayyy @mikhailoisbaby @mishervellous @malec-crazed-author @creepkinginc @vintagelacerosette @sweetbee78 @mickeysgaymom @look-i-love-u @greentealycheejelly @gallawitchxx @callivich @gallavichy @suzy-queued @mikcrymilkovich @spaceofentropy or alternatively please let this puppy 🐶

#tag game #tag game tuesday #Mys stuff #podcasting #in case you wish to click the tags (as I’m still unsure how people do the links to tags. must be a desktop thing)#Mys fic #Mys art #Mys in the kitchen #there you go :)#tag you’re it

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autumnslance · 4 months

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(@driftward) Oh, let's see, one per inbox item defeated per blog, correct? Of course I'm correct. Gimme dat Little Brother Thing; self-indulgent on my part going to ask after The Effects of Wine (Y'shtola); It Ends Where It Begins sounds ~interesting~; Hilda Ideas, for both me and a friend; X'rhun and F'lhamin (eyebrows eyebrows eyebrows); and a bonus just out of sheer curiosity, Biot's Antecedent Musings

Good job defeating the inbox boss. Why were you awake at hours only reasonable to me and our local Australian?? Anyway.

Little Brother Thing - Stormblood 4.3. As Alphinaud accompanies Maxima, Aeryn reflects back on key moments in their journey together, and how much he's grown and changed from the arrogant boy she shared a cart with but didn't properly meet until the Remembrance Ceremonies, to the confident young man he is at this point--and how she's still going to worry for him regardless of how capable he is, because that's how it goes.

I should revisit this actually, it's got some good bones. Hrm.

The Effects of Wine - ARR, Company of Heroes chain, Y'shtola POV. After the Feast, Y'shtola and Aeryn rest in a bungalow and have a late evening talk about Aeryn's growing reputation, why the Company did what they did, and how she just ever meant to be a common adventurer to help people--not a primal slaying hero. Aeryn says more here than usual at this point in the story; maybe the wine, maybe the growing trust in her comrade.

I should get around to cleaning it up and posting it somewhere, honestly. It was a noodle-thought from very early on as I was figuring out voices and relationships, but it's not too bad.

It Ends Where It Begins - is a post-5.0 Shadowbringers. Something that the Exarch said in the cliffside convo before Mt Gulg reminded Aeryn of Papalymo's words post-Ultima Weapon (it's a click text when everyone's gathered in the Waking Sands to congratulate you before you turn in the final 2.0 quest in to Minfilia). Given all that happens to WoL in 5.0, and the revelations in general, Aeryn ends up thinking of the words as she looks back on her journey, and ends up in Gridania. And it leads into what then became a seaswolchallenge prompt in 2020, Metamorphosis, where she tells Miounne and Bremondt stories of her adventures.

Hilda Notes - Literally just a list of notes about horny Hilda moments for some reason. There's a draft for a fic of her and a touch-starved Thancred I can check off. Ideas for a cop vs vigilante fic with Sidurgu (maybe something sexy there, maybe not). And an idea for a Hilda solo as she fantasizes about a hot Highland lass met while dealing with Ala Mhigo stuff. It's not even a real fic draft, it's just a list of random ideas written up while apparently hormonal.

X'rhun and F'lhaminn - Oh this is from back in I think Book Club days and a rarepair challenge month. Find a relationship that doesn't already exist on Ao3. Write something. Back then there were no tags joining these characters in any way. I was going to try to write the duelist and songstress in a light friendly adventure of their own, maybe get in some witty flirty banter for the fun of it, but the mystery never quite gelled and so I shelved it. Maybe someday. And add in Nashmeira.

Biot's Antecedent Musings - Discord convo on 12/28/22 where you were having thinky thoughts about Thancred and Minfilia and being the person she confided in about the Echo and I accused you of trying to bait me into writing something about that.

#final fantasy xiv #Lyn Prompts #WIPs #Lyn Writing

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nanowrimo · 1 year

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So You Didn’t Hit Your Word Count… Did You Have Fun?

Sometimes we don’t reach our word count goal. And that’s okay! Longtime NaNo participant Michael Chatfield has a few words of advice on how the most important part of writing is the journey itself. There’s a regular responses to missing your word count— “I’ll just increase how much I write tomorrow, I’ll spread it over the remaining days!”

If that works for you— go for it!

If that doesn’t and you’re starting to beat yourself up about not hitting those numerical milestones and your obstacles are starting to look like blockades, this might be for you. My limited nuggets of wisdom I can give you on the all fearing word count.

I’m going to talk a little about passion, some about joy and a lot about how while numbers are great— they are not the be all-end all of writing. Showing up, getting lost inyour world, exploring it everyday and putting in the time is the win. Sometimes that results in words, we hope, but sometimes that means we don’t hit the numbers we want to.

Many times when we don’t hit that all important word count, there comes a sinking feeling. You may say to yourself something like — “I’m slipping”, “I’m behind”, “It’s going to be so hard to catch up”, “I’m failing!”. These are all a variation of “I didn’t get x words today so I’m losing”.

Woah— wait, you’re losing? You’re falling behind? Let me steal some words and heavily paraphrase what I heard fellow writer Elana Johnson say. Writing is like climbing a mountain, we’re each going up it on our own path in our own way. When we take a pause we feel like we’re slipping down the mountain. That’s just plain ridiculous, you climbed up to this point.

You’re HERE!

Take a look around. Your love for an idea, for a group of characters has led to this point. Draw from the excitement, that passion that got you here.

Get excited by that next scene that’s bursting to come forward, that next juicy tidbit you see ahead that opens a pit in your stomach, or fills it with butterflies!

Are you chasing numbers, or are you chasing those feelings, those scenes and parts that send a thrill through your mind and out into the world?

Ground yourself in where you are, just like a trek up a mountain, rarely do you do it in one damn bound.

You walk, take a break, take in the view, study the path behind, the path ahead. Maybe you want to be at a higher place than where you are right now.

Okay, totally fine, hell maybe you want to charge all the way up to that next lookout perch. Or maybe you didn’t move at all, you just took in the view.

That’s totally fine too, you didn’t start falling off it (base jumping is a whole different exercise).

Here’s a couple of thoughts/rut busters to think of:

If you’re stuck on something you need to do but having such a damn hell of a time doing it: Write a note. Dump all the information you have on this part. Now move onto the next thing after this.

When you have momentum use it, when you start seeing a scene coming together, start writing on it.

Write how you want to write. Some go from beginning to end, some write in chunks and fill it in, some use pen, keyboard or speech. Others hangout with friends, discuss a topic and write it all down. How do you want to record your stories? Do that. If you don’t know, then explore! Try out the most romantically writerly things you can think of like writing in calligraphy, on a typewriter, or with a cup of something. Picture how you think an author writes, try it out.

Writing your thoughts out can be a great help and allow you to go from writing out where the story is going to putting down the words that will get it there. Give thinking and thoughts space too. We often think it a waste of time or “doing nothing”.

I heard this from Neil Gaiman first and several other writers since. When writing, I can write or do nothing. Give writing the time it deserves and fully devote yourself to enjoying that time. Sometimes doing nothing is amazing. It’s known to cause thinking and boredom, which has been linked to increased creativity and energy.

You decide if you win or lose. If you show up, write, think, and be bored, you’ll honestly be surprised with the results. You win by living in your passion, you win by having fun. Don’t try to define failure, recognize when you’re having fun instead.

After all, writing is the author’s adventure.

Have fun, Michael Chatfield (Like all advice, it is only as useful as you find it. If this doesn’t gel with you, don’t worry, this wasn’t for you, there might be other advice that helps! Writing is your journey, find the information that works for you.)

Michael Chatfield is an international bestseller who likes to create character-driven stories set in fact-paced worlds. His main genres are Fantasy, Science Fiction, and LitRPG, but he enjoys adding enough realism to make the stories leap off the page. His book, Connection Unknown, can be found here.

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

#nanowrimo #writing #amwriting #writing motivation #by nano guest #michael chatfield #motivation

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mega-ringsandthings-world · 6 months

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Ok, ok, glad you liked the art! There's more to come because I am full of ideas and sadness! Prepare!

Anywho, now that I have rambled about the boys a lot (and trust me, there's definitely more where that came from), I thought I'd take a change of pace and focus on others.

Like Buggy. What we know is he escapes, possibly due to running away (which will probably haunt him forever) or getting saved by someone. He does meet someone, as you've said before, but who? Could it be Dragon? Does our greedy, narcissistic clown somehow become a revolutionary? Maybe it's a marine. Did a marine see this kid and go, "Screw it, I'm not killing kids," and let him go? Does he run into Smoker? Start a traumatize boy band (now I wanna write the fic we’re buggy and smoker run into each other after lougetown.) Or is it someone else, someone I wouldn't have guessed in a million years? Doflamingo, perhaps? That would be the meeting from hell. One of the other would-be warlords? And what happens to him? Does he spend the next two years trying to help Shanks in any way he can? Does he do mostly what he's done in canon and go for the One Piece? Or is he a warlord? Did he make deals with the world government for Shanks? ‘Gasp’ I'm gasping at nothing but thinky thoughts, but eh, I'll just throw some crazy in there for fun.

Also, are you going to add pirates we know to Loguetown who get caught, aside from the characters we already know? There are a few characters we see in canon that could be the right age to have been around. You could just slip them in there to add more people to the "Fun Time with World Government!™️" and more people Shanks and Mihawk can bounce off of while captured and once they get out. You said that they won't trust anyone who didn't go through what they went through, so not a lot of allies or having civil conversations. But maybe that's the point... oh well, whatever you do, I'm sure I'll love it.

Also, this pirate generation needs a name. If the last generation were the Great Pirates, maybe this generation could be the Silenced Generation? And later, after the two years, the Monster Generation.

And propaganda, does Roger's message about the One Piece get out there like it did in the main timeline? Not a lot of people escaped from the excision, so that's not a lot of people to spread the word. Is the World Government suppressing it after all? They didn't mean for Roger to tell the crowd, so why in hell would they want that driving force that created pirates who are specifically seeking a piece of the Void Century and possibly information on Joy Boy or Nika? So, do they turn it into, instead of a last word, a rumor? Like Davy Jones or Nolan and his Sky Island, like it's a fun bedtime story but nothing that's actually real.

Those are all the questions I have today hopefully I’ll get you that new art out soon no promises but I will try! Seriously thanks for indulging my asks, I know you don’t ow me any of you time and it’s cool that you’ve given me some. Anyways off to dreamland for me!

Prepared and so excited! See, with Buggy, it's a mess. If this AU is the sort-of inverse of canon events, Buggy has to keep his beef with Shanks. That happens because Shanks is the one who saves him. He gets him to safety, and then gets himself caught to lead the marines away from him. But from Buggy's perspective, Shanks abandoned him. Which. He's going to spend his time torn between grief/worry/resentment and thinking Shanks got what he deserved, (because Buggy is vindictive like that) only to find out how wrong he was. During the end of the two years, he's going to try to help Shanks, though. Him and Smoker do meet, Smoker being the one to spur him into helping Shanks. Smoker is going to go the way of Vergo in this AU, at least as far as the marines are concerned. Dragon is going to pick up some key players, (wink, wink) and he would save a child. So that's Buggy, even though Buggy doesn't espouse revolutionary ideas. (and Buggy would be even more obsessed with the one piece, it's his way of coping) And here's the thing, once what the marines are doing starts coming out, there's going to be an alliance between the revolutionaries and pirates to protect themselves. Because after the marines get information out of the captured pirates, they will start hunting the free ones. Benn Beckmann is already around, and some other characters will come sooner, some later. Garp is going to be the one who brings Mihawk and Shanks and some of those characters together. It will take them a long time to trust anyone else, but they will. And the pirates who weren't captured but were still hunted count as having a shared experience in their books. As well as the people who have been hurt by or due to the government, especially children. (wink, wink) I was thinking the Ghost generation! Since the marines kept an entire swathe of these people in captivity for two-three years, living as nothing more than ghosts. The one piece declaration did get out, though yes, the WG is trying to make it seems like nothing more than the ravings of a madman. It still becomes a substantial rumor, though, because it's something for the the pirates left to cling onto while they are being hunted. And the WG also wants the one piece. So it's them, and not the pirates that initially began the search. They go out systematically raiding pirate ships and hideouts and work their way up from there. When Mihawk and Shanks get out, Shanks kicks off the real pirate hunt by confirming Roger's last words. Which he does for Buggy's sake. No rush! And you're welcome! Ask away as much as you want, my mind is full of this and I'll literally talk forever if given the chance!

#one piece #op #opla #dracule mihawk #akagami no shanks #hawkeye mihawk #red haired shanks #mihawk one piece #shanks one piece #mishanks #mihawk x shanks #op marines #loguetown au

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