#ONE OF MY FAVORITE MULTIPLAYER GAMES OF ALL TIME. AND IT'S BACK AFTER /YEARS/ | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs | Tumgik (2025)

TITANFALL 2 IS BACK TITANFALL 2 IS BACK TITANFALL 2 IS BACK TITANFALL 2 IS BACK!!!!!!!

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I am in so much pain rn, my stomach hurts, my head hurts, and my throat is dry, but here we are.

In the spirit of kinktober, my absolute exhaustion and my want for more subby nerds, I present to you... This monstrosity

Younger!Boss Male reader X older!Nerd Colleague.

NSFW work, don't like don't read 👍

Light dacryphilia, Semi public (? Idk they bang after hours), overstim, getting caught 👀

Nerd Colleague who likes to play games, his office cubicle is literally decorated with mini figurines of his favorite characters, he would play online multiplayer games with the younger employees, he would teach them tricks and all the hidden things to find.

Nerd Colleague who's older than you by a few years, but you're his boss because you founded this company yourself. He talks to you like you're just a teen, but treats you with respect as well. It's kinda funny to see him fumble a little when you walk up to him looking serious as hell, but start asking him about games.

Nerd Colleague, who helps the new employees whenever they have a problem. You see him patting some guys back and feeling a little bit jealous, you would walk up to them and start a conversation. You're basically scaring the new employee away, but hey, at least your favourite man in the office is talking to you about a new update he's excited about.

Nerd Colleague, who gets confused why the younger employees are calling him the "office mom" and you the office dad. You also notice someone is shipping you two, you have your own little office Fandom. You tell your colleague not to care too much, just kids being kids.

"you're calling us kids when you're barely five years older than us?"

"then stop calling me dad"

"hell no, I'm not living in a divorced household. Stay with mom"

Nerd Colleague, who fell asleep at his desk one day, and ended up being the only one left... Except you were also there. Just, kinda watching him?

Nerd Colleague chuckles at you, gesturing for you to come over so he could give you a little kiss on the forehead.

I mean, just sayin, the new employees might call the two of you their parents, but the fact they didn't manage to figure out you two are actually dating was funny to the both of you.

Nerd Colleague who is also freaky. You both are, you match each other's freak really well. He wore a tie to work today for the fact he wants you to use it on him. In the office.

Nerd Colleague, who is a brat. Brattiest brat you have ever met. Constantly complaining about how he has more stamina then you dispute being older.

You prove him wrong later, after making him cum on himself so much his mind goes mush. You barely even needed to do anything with his cock and he's already leaking. You don't even need to get his pants off to feel it getting a bit wet ♡

Nerd Colleague gets tied up with his own tie but not in the way he expected. It's around his tip so he wouldn't get to come that easily, while your own tie was the one around his wrists.

Nerd Colleague who instantly stops being a massive brat, begging so nicely for you to release the tie on his dick.

Nerd Colleague who starts crying asking you to take off the damn tie. You don't, but you do give him little kisses to clear those tears away. He whimpers and complains about the "harsh" treatment you're giving him.

Nerd Colleague who finally gets to cum. And then you pick up the pace again, without giving him time to recover. He cries even more now, calling you unfair, you don't even bother, you're content on watching his tears fall down his pretty face as his eyes roll back from the pleasure.

Nerd Colleague who limps to your car. Complaining all the way there because you fucked him too hard. it's fine though, he did say he would get his revenge back home. You hope that revenge is as fun as what just occurred in the office.

...

"... I hate my job."

"Not my damn fault you forgot your phone, dumbass. At least we do know they're definitely mom and dad now."

"it's giving 'self fulfilling prophecy vibes', y'know? Calling them our parents and they end up banging?"

Vinny's extra notes :

Ngl I don't have anything planned for kinktober, this one is very light in terms of content. Might do a MHA fic, something like Shigaraki X reader or Dabi x reader if I feel like it. Should I do monster fucking? I feel like I should. Or something with sub Mr Reca when he comes out (my unfinished symphony ahh looking man). I love myself some mentally unhealthy men.

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11/09-10/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; David Jenkins; Rhys Darby; More Starfury Republic of Pirates Pictures!; Samba Schutte; Vico Ortiz; Kristian Nairn; Samson Kayo; Guz Khan; Damien Gerard; Dominic Burgess; Articles; LettersToSeaForSeason3; Love Notes;

= David Jenkins =

Chaos dad has broken his silence of several days with a very important question (about his pups).

Source: David's Bsky

He also shared this awesome work by @tabbystardust, which is still one of my faves.

Source: David Jenkins Instagram / Tabby Stardust

= Rhys Darby =

Rhys was interviewed on Flightless Bird with Rhys' old buddy David Ferrier! You can check out the Spotify Episode here!

Source: Rhys' Bsky

Another excerpt from Rhys' 25 year show on his instagram!

Source: Rhys' Instagram

= Darby Daily Doodle =

Source: Rhys Darby's Free Substack

Source: Rhys Darby's Free Substack

He was also on Craigio On the Radio!

Source: Craigio On The Radio

== More Starfury Pictures! ==

Starfury Conventions posted some more picture from the convention!

Source: Starfury Twitter

= Samba Schutte =

Samba's posting more selfies of his latest work.

Some of the shows that Samba's been doing voice work for have been getting some acknowledgement over at The Velma Awards! First up was Monster High which received the "Best Guest Star Extravaganza".

Jurassic World: Chaos Theory won "Best Queer Relationship That's Just a Plain Ol' Relationship" in the Velma Awards!

And BAFTA Nominations are up! Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has been nominated for three BAFTAs! Congrats Samba and Damien!

Best Game

Multiplayer

Audio Achievement

Animation

Source: Samba's Instagram

= Kristian Nairn =

Apple Music has been recommending Kristian's new track!

Source: Kristian Nairn's Instagram Stories

= Vico Ortiz =

I'm running a bit late so the Tales of the Trancestors just happened in this weekend! Check out some BTS for it!

Source: ChloeGlowyFlowy Instagram

= Samson Kayo =

Samson is out in Abu Dhabi for the F1 Filming.

Source: Samson's Instagram Stories

= Guz Khan =

Guz finished filming the last season of Man Like Mobeen recently, and he spent a few minutes reflecting on watching the last episode <3

Source: Guz's Instagram

= Damien Gerard =

One of Damien's recent works "Blame!", a short film by Suzanne Roche is an official selection for the 2024 Hollywood Best Indie Film Awards!

Source: Damien's Instagram Stories

= Dominic Burgess =

Have a lot of extra cash and want to dine with Dominic and help out a Charity at the same time? Well good news! You can! You can bid on a chance to dine with Dominic at this Charity Auction!

Source: Dominic's Bsky

== Articles ==

Our friends over at @adoptourcrew have been keeping us posted with lots of articles about OFMD. It's nice to see the show being featured in so much media even a year later after S2 ended!

Source: Adopt Our Crew's Bsky

== LettersToSeaForSeason3 ==

More helpful information about the LettersToSeaForSeason3 to netflix! Mailing window cheatsheet:

US: 12/31/24 - 01/07/25

Europe: 12/26/24 - 01/02/25

Other International Locations: 12/22/24 - 12/29/24

Source: Aproperpirate's Twitter

== Fan Spotlight ==

= Never Left Podcast =

Source: NeverLeft Podcast Spotify

= OFMD Colouring Pages/Wrapping Paper! =

Our fabulous crewmate @patchworkpiratebear is back! They've made wrapping paper for the holidays! Check out these adorable patterns! If you want some high res versions to download you can do on on the Repo.

Source: PatchworkPirateBears Bsky

== Love Notes ==

Hey there lovelies. I have been having a bit of week so I'll be brief so I can make sure to get this out tonight. We are coming to the end of the year, and I hope very much that you are being kind to yourself. Please oh please give yourself a hug tonight, drink some water, or some tea, and have one of your favorite treats. The new week is starting soon and you'll need your strength. Be good to yourselves <3 Sending hugs your way.

Source: Self Love Rainbow

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✮⋆˙ 𝐨𝐟��� 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐬, 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟑 ˙⋆✮

| pairing: johnny x manager!oc

| warnings: 18+ MDNI. COVID-19 lockdown stuff. Alcohol consumption.

| aurora's note: finally getting to the chapters i enjoy cuz johnny and aurora actually get together instead of everything just being world building lol~~ my bestie says she loves these early chapters the most tho so idk ...?

| aurora's note 2: don't forget this is kinda(???) an au, so some things are SLIGHTLY different from irl.

A year and a half after Aurora was hired at SM, things were still going smoothly. Her job was secured after the executives decided to extend her contract due to how happy the boys were when working with her and there were only good things to say about her work ethic. It was a miracle, to be honest. There were a dozen times that Aurora thought that she would get kicked to the curb, but she was still holding strong, and she was happy there with Yuta and Taeyong at her side to help her navigate it all.

But of course, nothing good ever lasts forever… One day everyone was at work, practicing, messing around, Yuta and Taeyong hanging on Aurora while Ten waited impatiently to make another TikTok with her. The next day, they all got emails from the executives telling them that the company would be taking an in-person hiatus following South Korea’s COVID-19 epidemic preventative measures being implemented overnight. Everyone thought that it would last about a week. The government would find a way to contain the illness, a cure would be found, or everyone would simply forget about it and move on… But none of that happened. One week turned into two, then into an entire month, and then it went on far longer than anyone could have possibly imagined, putting everything on pause. No world tour for 127. No practices. No working at the office. No more music. It was like life came to a halt right when things were getting good, and Aurora had zero clue of what to do with herself.

In a random turn of events, Johnny and Aurora began getting buddy-buddy. They had always been friends at work, but because of the COVID lockdowns, he had a lot of free time on his hands to finally get to know her better, she supposed. It was weird to think of Johnny Suh as a friend. Ever since they met, he treated her with plenty of respect because that was the type of guy he was, but he also liked to give her a hard time every now and then which had a tendency to piss her off in a mild way, prompting her to give him a hard time back. He must’ve thought they were just having fun. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world, granted, since Aurora understood he meant well… But when they became actual friends who were constantly talking and hanging out in Discord calls together, the teasing seemed different.

When they would play multiplayer games together, Johnny would always roast the shit out of her— One of his favorite things was to play Among Us with the rest of 127, and every single fucking time, Johnny found a rhyme or a reason to throw Aurora under the bus, even when he knew that neither of them were the imposters! Oh, she despised that. Whenever Johnny would play story mode games, like Until Dawn which he had an obsession with in the early months of lockdown, he would stream his screen for her and let her rant about her day. Aurora had it a lot harder than he did. While the idols got to relax at home and simply wait for the restrictions to be lifted, Aurora and the other managers were still having to put in endless work to keep the company afloat, because if they stopped their efforts of promoting the boys, then everyone would be out of a job and on the streets in no time. That put a lot of pressure on Aurora. Not only was the work difficult given the circumstances, but the threat of being alone in a foreign country made her stomach twist. Aurora was a social creature. She needed to be in the office, meeting with execs face to face, yelling at the boys when they got too rowdy, cuddling Yuta whenever she was tired or overwhelmed. But all of that had been ripped from her in the lockdowns.

“I tested positive,” Yuta texted one day. Prior to that, Aurora considered sneaking him into her building so that they could spend a weekend together for the first time in months, but the idiot had to go and get COVID while attending an underground party in Hongdae. She decided she was going to smack him upside the head next time she’d see him.

So Johnny was one of Aurora’s only sources of comfort while Taeyong struggled to keep up with his own work for the company, Yuta slept away his COVID symptoms for two weeks or so, and Ten was busy hanging out with his other friends. Johnny was a good listener, surprisingly. He was one of the only extroverts in NCT, yet Aurora was amazed by his ability to zip his mouth shut and listen to her go on and on and on for hours like the extrovert she was too. It was easy to get over his humor— The moments where he could be so cringe Aurora would fall out of her chair were at least still funny, so she dealt with him. Barely.

“Noona, I have something important to ask you,” Ten said urgently over the phone one day. Aurora hummed a tone that said she was listening as she cooked her dinner. “Are you and Johnny… A thing?”

Aurora accidentally dropped the knife on the cutting board with a heavy thud. “Excuse you?”

“He’s acting weird, okay! I figured you would’ve told me if you guys were dating, but I don’t know!”

“Why on Earth— How’s he acting weird?”

“He’s just been talking about you a lot. Like, an unreasonable amount. And he keeps asking me questions about you to get to know you better, and I keep telling him to leave me alone, but he finds every excuse to talk about you.”

Aurora rolled her eyes then casually went back to cooking. Men. “We’re just friends. We spend every day together playing video games, he probably has nothing better to do than talk about me.”

“Noona, I—”

“He’d probably have more of a life if you talked to us more instead of playing games with the WayV boys,” she teased, licking homemade spaghetti sauce off her index finger after dumping the sausage into the pot.

Ten dropped the topic after that. Aurora didn’t hear another peep from him about Johnny or the laughable thought of Aurora dating him. Was it actually impossible for people to believe that a guy and a girl could be friends, and just that? She was already just friends with Yuta, Taeyong, and Ten, so where was Ten getting the idea of Johnny and Aurora dating planted in his mind? He never fessed up, and Aurora didn’t ask.

Come the end of April, going into May, restrictions around the pandemic lockdown were slowly lifting, especially for companies who had a heavy impact on the country’s economy, like entertainment companies. Aurora was given the greenlight to host meetings in the office, so long as all social distancing laws were obeyed. Easy enough. She started pulling the boys of NCT into a meeting room on a schedule that allowed them to see each other for the first time in months while also getting a bunch of work done for the upcoming Resonance album that the company was desperately hoping would help bounce them back financially after a rough first quarter.

Each of the members got a chance to review the songs in the album and vote on which project or two they wanted to be involved in— Although neither Aurora nor any of the other managers could promise anything, they wanted to try their best to make everything fair, not only for the boys’ sakes but for the fans too who all had different biases. If the company wanted to make money, they needed to utilize the boys properly, and that was what Aurora was there for. She knew their international fanbase best. She knew who needed to stand out the most and who didn't, beyond putting Mark in every single song because he was the company’s golden goose.

Honestly, almost everyone was quick and easy to meet with. The only outliers were the expected suspects, like Taeyong, Yuta, and Ten who all wanted to talk story with Aurora first before actually getting to work, and they kept getting distracted throughout the entire conversation. Taeyong wanted to keep talking, but it wasn’t about random stuff, it was specifically about work, as if Aurora didn’t have a million other things to do after her meeting with him, and he was just delaying the process by prying unnecessarily. The person Aurora didn’t technically expect to also be chatty with her was Johnny. In the past, whenever they had work meetings, he was quite good at listening to her while he reclined back in his roller chair that he swayed side to side while nodding along to everything she had to say in a mixture of Korean, English, and Japanese like her mind was all over the place— Which it usually was. However, during this meeting specifically, perhaps because they had become friends more recently, Johnny was more on the talkative side. He had far more input than usual. He had his sights set on certain projects, and Aurora was more than willing to write her notes down in the hopes of helping him out.

The productive part of their meeting passed pretty quickly since Johnny was an easy client to negotiate with, so the conversation drifted to something more casual. He asked her about how her videogames were going and if she was doing okay balancing everything with work. After replying, she asked him about his games and if had the chance to see any of the other boys. His games were fine though he needed some of her help carrying him in CoD— She of course laughed uncontrollably at that because she was worse than him at the game and they both knew it. He didn’t get a chance to see any of the boys, unfortunately. He was looking forward to prepping for the album, though, so that he would be able to spend more time with them like before COVID struck.

And then, out of nowhere, a change in topic smacked her across the face as he asked, “What type of guys are you into?”

It was an invasive question for sure, but it wasn’t like Aurora kept it a secret from anyone else in NCT when they asked. Still, she shocked herself by answering honestly: Mostly twink guys with long blonde hair. She wasn’t sure why, but she really loved dyed blonde hair on guys with dark hair, especially when the roots started to grow out… That was the best part. Beyond that, though, she liked guys who were actually just real softies in private. Big cuddlers. Guys who didn’t mind her special interests. It was important to her that she had someone who would listen to her rant for hours on end about the things she enjoyed and even get involved themselves.

“So does that mean you like Yuta?”

Aurora laughed loudly, throwing her head back, hitting the table with a loud smack. There was no fucking way he had just said that. Yuta? Yuta Nakamoto? Pft! Sure, she knew that they were close— Closer than she was to anyone else at SM— but never in a million years did she think people saw them as having any kind of relationship beyond being friends. That was like saying she was in love with Ten or Taeyong! It simply didn’t make sense.

“What!” he defended quickly. “He’s got dyed hair, and you two are always all over each other, and he listens to you go on and on and on in Japanese when no one else knows what you’re saying.”

She couldn’t breathe, she was laughing so damn hard.

“Bruh, you’re impossible.”

She tried to catch her breath between words so that she didn’t leave Johnny hanging, “That’s… That’s like saying… my brother and I are in love…” She exhaled deeply to try to stop laughing. “No, I don’t like Yuta-kun.”

Johnny tsked while squinting to see if she was really telling the truth, but when she didn’t budge, he nodded and moved on to a different topic. To Aurora, it was a relief that he didn’t pry more because if he kept asking who she could possibly like, she feared that it would create some kind of drama at work, which was a big no-no for her. She wanted to keep things professional to the best of her ability. So Johnny showing her some mercy came with a breath of relief; However, throughout the entire conversation, the vibes were noticeably off slightly, but Aurora tried to trick herself into thinking that it was all in her head after Ten's comment about thinking that they were together… Johnny didn’t seem to think differently of their conversation, though. He kept talking and talking like they had been friends their entire lives.

When her eyes flicked to the time, Aurora realized that they had been wasting their afternoon talking story and now he was required to go to his schedules for the day, which included stamina training that all the boys had to attend together.

“Everyone is probably waiting for you downstairs.”

She checked her calendar to see what the practice was for exactly… It seemed that the boys were practicing their new dance for music shows now that their comeback was just around the corner. Shit. How could she forget that, and could she not keep Johnny on time?

Just as quickly as she realized her mistakes, Aurora jumped to her feet, collecting her belongings, eyeing Johnny to see if he was following her lead— Which he was— and they hurried out of the meeting room together.

“If you fall behind today ‘cause you’re late, I’ll still yell at you in front of the others.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Johnny replied teasingly.

A couple of days later, the dreaded topic of Aurora and Johnny came up again when Ten showed up at her office unexpectedly, wearing a medical mask, keeping his distance from her as he closed the door and sat across from her. He had more to report about Johnny. Apparently he was still talking about her, but ever since their meeting in person the other day, he was doing the most to the point it was pissing Ten off. Johnny was asking about each of Aurora’s special interests in order to try to get into them. Literally everything. He was already into anime and video games, that was the easy part for him, but he wanted to know more than that, and it seemed he thought he could trust Ten to keep it between the two of them rather than if he went to Yuta who he knew would’ve snitched to Aurora immediately. Unfortunately for Johnny, Ten was just as loyal to Aurora.

But she was genuinely confused. Why did Johnny care so much? Like, they had never been that close before, and suddenly he was trying to be her bestie? Where did it all start? What spawned those behaviors?

Ten giggled. “He must like you.”

She rolled her eyes. Johnny was the type of guy to be into models and fuck around with really pretty women, because as a celebrity that was the kind of person he had easy access to. She didn’t get the vibe that he would ever be into someone like her. There was no chance he would even take a moment to give her a second glance.

“No,” Ten shook his head, “Johnny stopped fucking around a couple of years ago— Actually…” He raised his brow at her. “It was around the time you joined SM. He’s been so consumed by work that he hasn’t had the time for girls, so the fact that he’s trying really, really hard to get your attention is saying something.”

Aurora scoffed because she thought that it was complete bullshit since no one had ever been into her, and Johnny of all people couldn’t possibly be. Ten couldn’t fathom that she felt that way about herself. He genuinely fell silent for minutes on end while trying to think of something to say except for, “Shut the fuck up,” which was ultimately what he decided on regardless. But to Aurora, statistically, it was true, and of course she knew it best because she was the one living her lonely, sad life.

However, as time went on, Aurora couldn’t completely disregard Ten's claims. Especially whenever Johnny kept appearing in Aurora’s life— Or rather, popping up, like a whack-a-mole or something. He would ask to play video games with her, which mostly consisted of Call of Duty that he played on his PS5 at his place and she played on her Xbox at hers. Sometimes they would dabble in other things for fun like Fortnite, Among Us, etc. When they weren’t gaming, he would watch Criminal Minds and various anime shows with her. He got into all of it. Fast. He spiraled into reading manga that she would recommend, he would do online figurine and manga shopping with her, and he’d help her look into different conventions she could potentially attend in the future.

Every time she talked to Johnny, the conversation she had with Ten always played in the back of her mind. Surely it wasn’t true. She just wanted to appreciate the new friend she was making. But Aurora couldn’t deny that he was being extremely suspicious… and she was trying so, so hard not to get her hopes up… Yes, her hopes. Even though she thought the whole thing was silly, part of her wondered if there was some merit to it and if she should’ve chased him, but what did Ten say all those years ago about needing to be more careful than everyone else because she was a foreigner, but Johnny was too, so maybe it wasn’t insane to think— No. No. She had to keep things on a friendship level and she couldn’t allow her imagination to run wild.

By July, Aurora took notice over how Johnny had been growing his hair out without any requests from the execs on the matter, and the most shocking part was that he was going for a length that was longer than he ever had before. Eventually, when it finally got down to his shoulders, he suddenly dyed it without any warning. One day he just FaceTimed her out of the blue, showing off the blonde, bragging that he thought it looked good but that he also wanted her opinion since she was the “expert” on blonde men. Though she rolled her eyes, she played along. It was hard to deny that it did in fact look good… And that it really was working for her… Though she would never tell him that.

Aurora immediately texted Ten after she got off the phone with Johnny because it was no longer all just a coincidence— Johnny was being incredibly suspicious. The fact that he dyed his hair, complimented her, and practically begged for her opinion convinced her of everything that Ten was teasing her about for months.

"I told you so," he bragged when he FaceTimed her. "I knew he was obvious, but I didn’t think he’d actually go as far as to become the exact type of guy you’re into.” He face palmed.

“Can you ask him?”

He looked up at her.

“Can you get a serious answer out of him, see if he actually likes me or not? But be smooth about it, obviously….”

“I can try, no promises.”

Come October, there was still no news from Ten on the Johnny situation. Aurora had limited time to bother him about it, honestly, and he was just as busy that she figured there was no time to prod about office romance gossip, so Aurora easily let the thought drift to the back of her mind. In the meantime, she worked hard on the upcoming album that she’d been planning with the boys. The songs were recorded, the dances were rehearsed, now it was down to the last few weeks where they would be filming all of the music videos back to back, hardly giving some of the boys like Mark and Taeyong a chance to rest. She felt bad… It was technically her fault because she was in charge of scheduling them, but she tried to pass the blame off to the execs who forced her to use their best idols as much as possible, and unfortunately for them, that meant Mark and Taeyong were in practically every song on the album.

During the filming of the song Work It, Aurora was on set both days to make sure everything ran smoothly since the majority of the group assigned to the project were from 127— AKA, her responsibility. Since they filmed so early in the morning until late at night at various locations around Seoul on the first day, the boys were incredibly tired, which meant that they were docile, so they did whatever Aurora wanted, and they worked well with the crew who was even more tired than they were.

It was a major relief to Aurora that the project turned out as well as it did because she had her hopes set high ever since assigning Johnny to it because he didn’t get many other NCT U opportunities. She hoped that it would finally be his breakthrough— His turn to stand out. And stand out he did. The execs asked him to cut his long blonde hair for the videos, but he refused very adamantly. Aurora couldn’t wrap her brain around why on Earth Johnny would put himself on the execs’ bad side after she went to all that trouble shoving him into as many projects as she could… Johnny wouldn’t explain it to her. She asked plenty of times when trying to convince him to listen to them, but he refused and walked away with a laugh and a shrug that brushed her off. Asshole. It was just hair. It would grow back if he really liked it that much. Regardless, he still adamantly thanked her for fighting for him because he was usually overlooked; He kept promising that he wouldn’t let her down.

On the second day, that was when the boys somehow got an extra boost of energy, which made Aurora’s life hell because not only was Work It filming, but so were some other subunits who needed to do B-Roll for the NCT U song, Resonance. Aurora was so busy running between sets that she really didn’t have time to fuck around, but the boys couldn’t care less. Whenever she was on the Work It set, Yuta and Ten were all over her, teasing her, successfully distracting her from her actual work between their takes. And then there was Johnny. He was always lingering behind Ten, laughing along with their jokes, making comments to try to fit in, and so on until he got more comfortable to step closer and closer… until he was in every conversation and was able to pry Aurora’s attention away from her friends. Yuta was honestly ready to fight them both so that they could just focus on filming and not Aurora. “Says you,” Ten teased with his tongue out. That only ticked off Yuta more, however, earning Ten the wonderful experience of being dragged back onto set via his ear by Yuta, meanwhile Johnny pointed and laughed the entire time until Aurora kicked him in the shins and told him, “Get moving.”

When the dreaded day to film the large group shots for Resonance finally dawned, Aurora knew what was going to happen, and she wished that she was a time traveler in order to just skip right past the entire thing; but, alas, she had to be there from early in the morning until late at night to wrangle all twenty boys… Laying in bed the morning of, Aurora asked herself if it was worth it. Sure, she loved them. Her job was fun. But she was tired and there were only so many times she could complain to Taeyong and Yuta about her stress and workload. Maybe she just needed a personal life. “Maybe a dog would be nice,” she said before forcing herself to roll out of bed.

“Good morning, everyone,” Aurora greeted confidently upon walking onto set.

Because there were so many members they needed to film in a single shot, the creative team came up with the idea of filming them in a stadium where there would be plenty of space, and it would also make up for the lack of concerts due to the pandemic, so fans would be happy to see their favorite members on some kind of stage. Most of the crew was already there since their call time was earlier in order to set up. Most of them stopped to bow in her direction once they realized who she was, but all of the new crew whom she’d never worked with previously didn’t know who she was or the power she held, they just saw a foreigner and decided to keep going on with their day. Aurora truthfully didn’t mind. The only person who did seem to care was Johnny who stepped onto set behind Aurora, still dressed in his street clothes, to loudly announce that they needed to show their manager some respect.

Aurora rolled her eyes. “Morning to you too.”

“Late night?” he asked her with a grin.

“Yeah.”

“CoD still kicking your ass?”

“Every day.”

Hayoon approached silently to give Aurora a cup of iced Americano provided by the catering company on set for the day. Aurora thanked her quickly. Johnny still stood there, waiting for Aurora’s attention, but she didn’t have much to give him when the rest of the boys were arriving in droves in all their loud glory, needing assistance finding their changing rooms where they would also get their hair and make up done. There was never a moment to rest, not even for Johnny and those sad puppy-dog eyes of his that he gave her as she walked away to pull Haechan off of Renjun.

During the long day of filming, Dream was the least well behaved group because Aurora had no leash on them. Chenle, Haechan, and Jaemin were the worst because they fucking fed off of each other’s constant energy! Not even Taeyong could get Chenle and Haechan to listen at that point. WayV was fine because Ten was like a stern dad that sent silent glares to each of the other members to make sure they listened to Aurora… and it worked! 127 were literally there like, “Mommmmm…” so they did whatever she said, and they were constantly on their best behavior for her and Taeyong. Yuta looked like he was on the verge of killing whoever wasn’t paying attention— Mark and Haechan specifically. Because the majority of them were able to behave themselves at least to some mild degree, they were able to get through shooting on time, so Yuta, Shotaro, Ten, and Taeyong immediately asked Aurora out to dinner. As she gathered her things to follow them out to a taxi Taeyong called, she noticed Johnny still waiting to talk to her. Hours had gone by and he was still waiting for her? Maybe she just needed to play more games with him later on that night. But he seemed to back down once he saw her leaving with her friends.

In a surprising turn of events, Johnny decided to keep his unique hair for the entirety of the promotional season for Resonance. It became such a joke as his hair continued to get longer that the boys started calling him “Aphrodite” or “Aphrodite’s son” regularly instead of his actual name— Ten was specifically notorious for doing so, and Aurora found it to be hilarious. Johnny didn’t seem to mind— In fact, he was kind of leaning into it in order to entertain her and Ten. One time when Aurora showed Johnny a clip of Glinda on Broadway flipping her hair everywhere and said that it reminded her of him, Johnny made it his thing. He strutted everywhere, flipped his hair dramatically, winked at everyone. He was really going for the Aphrodite thing.

Aurora assumed that he would stop once promotions were done, so she just enjoyed it while she could because it wasn’t the worst look on him, admittedly. However, the hair didn’t disappear. The last of their schedules for the album finished, all of the music videos were nearly done and ready to be posted in December, yet Aurora never saw the words “Haircut Appointment” appear on Johnny's personal schedule, and he never appeared suddenly with short hair. Despite her want to inquire about it, there just wasn’t any time. She’d concerned herself enough about Johnny as it was, she needed to focus on getting the album out and what the boys would do after that in preparation for the next album. Tour was a possibility if COVID ended soon. Fan meets were a must the second restrictions would be lifted. Honestly, the boys were about to be a fuck-ton busier than Aurora ever was during lockdown when they all pitied her for the amount of work she had to do while they sat around on their asses everyday.

“You want to play some games tonight” Johnny pestered one day in their Discord DMs. Usually Aurora would’ve said yes, but it was already going on five o’clock and there was no end to her daily efforts in sight, so she had to turn him down. He followed up by asking if she wanted some background noise while working. She chuckled at that text. If she were working at home, then perhaps, but since she was stuck at the office and likely had to meet with the American office within the next few hours, she had to turn him down once more. “So you hate me” Aurora rolled her eyes and replied, “Not all the time.” “Wooowwwww” “Have a good night, Johnny.” “So official. Period.” Aurora rolled her eyes again then left him on read so that he wouldn’t continue to distract her.

“Noona, can we have a watch party for the new album?” Taeyong texted during her meeting with the Americans.

She responded while still looking up at the Zoom meeting on the TV screen, “What?”

“The boys are begging to watch the MVs together.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Meeting rn.”

Taeyong, unlike Johnny, understood that meant Aurora didn’t want to be bothered, so he left her alone immediately.

It wasn’t unlike the company or the group for that matter to break a few rules here and there so long as no one else found out about it. With the new album coming out, Aurora tried to convince the company to let the boys watch the new music videos together to celebrate, but they declined, citing that it was too many people to have in such a small, confined space, they didn’t want to get in legal trouble. But, honestly, that didn’t stop anyone. Once the boys heard they couldn’t meet on official terms, they started sorting out whose house they could go to instead, who would bring what snacks, what alcohol everyone wanted, and so on. Aurora pretended to not know a thing. She just coincidentally happened upon Chenle's house one afternoon and was completely surprised when all the other boys were there, waiting for her flash drive that held the music videos! How did that happen?

Most of the boys were already there when Aurora arrived. They had rearranged Chenle's living room to make a giant couch where the majority of them could sit while the rest of them lounged on blankets and pillows spread out on the floor in front of the TV. Everyone was spread out around the house, however, until one person took notice that Aurora was setting up the TV to show the music videos, at which point they all began cheering her in both a teasing but also grateful manner. The boys ran to claim space on the couch. Literally, sprinted, like their lives depended on it. Hendery and Xiaojun pushed each other out of the way, Haechan tackled Jungwoo who was taller and stronger than him so he ended up getting pinned down for a moment before Jungwoo made a run for it. Aurora rolled her eyes at them as she finished connecting the flash drive to the TV.

Aurora’s spot was decided for her as Yuta, Ten, Taeyong, Shotaro, and Johnny all made room for her to be squished in the middle of their group on the couch. She happily took the space. Laying down with her head on Yuta's chest so he could wrap his arms around her while Taeyong hugged her left side and Shotaro inched closer to her right side, she started the videos.

Ever since they worked on music videos for the album together and Shotaro actually had a chance to talk to Aurora in depth and in Japanese, they had become pretty inseparable. Aurora knew that it was possible. Back when she got hired at SM, she imagined that she would be friends with Shotaro because they both spoke Japanese, but she also guessed back then that there wouldn’t be many opportunities for them to interact because of their conflicting schedules… and she was right. Now that they finally talked, of course they were friends. He would text her to ask if they could go to a cafe almost every day, and if she didn’t have time, she would ask him to go to dinner with her and Yuta so that they could relax and just talk in Japanese for the evening. Ever since their friendship bloomed, Shotaro seemed to come out of his shell a little bit. He talked to the rest of the boys more often, he joked around loudly, he wrestled Chenle on occasion… Aurora was always filled with joy when she saw that after knowing him to somewhat of an introvert for so long.

Ten and Johnny were a bit further from her on the couch, but honestly it didn’t matter too much once the videos started playing and everyone was more focused on teasing each other than figuring out their seating arrangements. Work It was by far Aurora’s favorite. She just loved to give Ten and Yuta a hard time about it because they had given her a difficult time working on the set that second day, but they took her teasing with laughter and returned it with pokes in her side that made her laugh so hard she couldn’t breathe.

But then there was Johnny.

The lingerer.

The guy that was always around her, begging for her attention.

There were certain parts of the video where he looked incredibly good, and every time the thought struck her, Aurora panicked slightly. She just couldn’t help herself! Her kryptonite was men with long, dyed blonde hair! But the scenes which caught her off guard were the ones where he wore a skater boy aesthetic outfit with the black t-shirt and a white long sleeve shirt underneath, paired with black skinny jeans which were decorated with chains and tons of jewelry. The hair was an added plus— The length was down to his shoulders, and it was tied into a messy half ponytail to show off his roots that were slowly growing out… Ah, fuck… She was trying her absolute best to remain professional and just cheer on her friends, but it was damn near impossible to look anywhere but at Johnny.

“You could pick up your jaw, you know?” Yuta whispered to her.

Aurora snapped out of her trance, her mouth closing, her gaze turning to meet Yuta's while he was laughing at her.

However, her torment didn’t end there because the next video to play was Resonance. It was fine to whistle and cheer for all of her friends, bragging about how sexy they were, laughing at how silly some of the memories from set had been, and all that; but what carried over from Work It into Resonance was Johnny. Just Johnny. His hair… A black outfit that hugged his fit body and the shirt was even hemmed short so every time he raised his arms over his head while dancing, his stomach was shown off as he winked at the camera. What was Aurora supposed to do with that? For months all she could do was think about why Johnny was acting the way he was, and what she was supposed to do about it… Then all of a sudden he looked like that, and he seemed proud of himself from his spot on the couch as the boys continued to rightfully tease him for looking so “pretty.”

“I need a drink,” she quickly whispered to Yuta.

He nodded, his gaze still glued to the TV, so she felt like she couldn’t move quite yet or else it would be a total distraction to all the boys sitting in the living room as they had casual fun with each other for the first time in a long time.

“Get me one,” Yuta said, still staring at the TV.

“Hai.”

The second the music video was over, Aurora stood to get some alcohol. She shook out Shotaro's hair until it was all messy and he was giggling while trying to get away from her. She kissed the top of his head and finally complimented him for doing so well. He blushed a deep shade of red. A quiet, “Arigato,” left him, but then they were both quickly distracted by the others pulling out champagne that wasn’t even being given a chance to properly make it into glasses before the likes of Jungwoo and Haechan decided to just start chugging out of the bottles. Aurora pulled an Asahi out of the fridge for Yuta, then she poured herself a glass of wine— Perhaps a little more than she should’ve, but she felt like it was needed after the long year they had with the pandemic and all, and she was desperate to do anything but look at Johnny, so the alcohol would have to be her distraction. However, when Aurora returned to the living room, she discovered that she’d been betrayed. Everyone had moved around. Yuta was no longer available since he’d moved to talk to other people, Shotaro was being smothered by Renjun, Ten and Taeyong were pouring drinks for each other. The only empty space she could find for herself was beside Johnny who seemed to have nothing to do as he drank a beer of his own.

“Traitor,” she whispered to Yuta as she handed his beer to him before going to sit beside Johnny.

Johnny was focused on the TV where Mark had put on a soccer match to keep them occupied as they all talked, drank, and hung out like old times before it wasn’t allowed. For a moment, however, as Aurora settled beside him, his gaze flicked to her out of the corner of his eye until he realized that she caught him so he went back to watching the TV.

“Hendery looks good, doesn’t he?” Johnny asked expectedly, like he was egging her on to say something incriminating, yet there wasn’t a single thought that crossed her mind other than confusion as to what he was getting at. He shrugged nonchalantly, “I just mean that the pink hair suits him. You like that kind of thing, you should know, right?”

Aurora snickered. “Sure.”

“So you don’t like him?”

“Who says I like anyone here?”

Johnny sipped his beer and finally looked directly at her. “I can see it on your face most days… There’s someone you like, I just haven’t figured out who yet. If it’s not Hendery's pink hair, and Yuta and Ten are like your brothers, then the options are narrowed down a bit— You’re not into younger guys, are you? I think Jisung's a little too young for you—”

Aurora hit his buff bicep roughly. “Fucking weirdo. Stop trying to assume things about me. You hardly know me.”

“After two years, I hardly know you?”

“Yes.”

Johnny snickered. “Guess I’ll have to pry harder in the future, then.”

While he went back to watching the TV, Aurora continued to stare at him, inspecting his features while simultaneously asking herself if he knew the truth for real or if he was just messing with her. The skin tag he had around his septum was cute. He had a deeper, more pronounced philtrum than most people. His chin was sharp, his cheekbones were always highlighted naturally wherever he went, and he had long eyelashes that men usually didn’t have. She tried to hide behind her drink by taking a lot of big sips. Surely he couldn’t know about all the conversations she and Ten had about him— Unless Ten snitched. No, he wouldn’t! Right?

“What?” Johnny asked self-consciously after he caught her staring while thinking.

“I’m honestly a bit surprised that the long blonde hair suits you so well, and that you fought the execs on it.”

“How come?”

“It’s just hair… You usually keep it short, anyhow.”

He lifted a brow. “Is it a good or a bad thing that I kept it?”

“Good.”

“So, then, you like it, huh?”

“I do…”

Maybe it was the alcohol, but she could have sworn she heard him wrong when he asked, “Will you go to dinner with me some time?”

And it was most definitely the alcohol when she had the audacity to say yes to him.

Johnny grinned with pride and excitement before attempting to hide it behind his beer in the hopes that no one would tease him for being such a sucker for her. However, Aurora noticed, and she couldn’t help the smile that grew on her face too.

A few minutes later, Aurora got up to get another drink, and in the process of doing so, Doyoung took her spot next to Johnny, so she instead went to sit with Yuta and Ten again. They were in the middle of talking to each other about something nonchalant that they didn’t stop to acknowledge her for a few minutes. Aurora was fine with that. She continued to drink in peace while listening to them and glancing over at Johnny who was twirling his long blonde hair around his finger. Doyoung was chatting his ear off and he seemed distracted. Aurora quickly realized that she was the reason because Johnny made eye contact with her randomly and suddenly he was fixing himself up to look pretty for her while blushing like an idiot.

“Why are you eye fucking him?” Ten asked all of a sudden.

Aurora broke eye contact with Johnny to slap the grin off her face before looking at her friends. “I, uh… Well, I actually came over here to tell you that he asked me out.”

Yuta choked on his beer.

“And I said yes.”

He swallowed hard before smacking his lips and exclaiming, “Finally!”

Before the conversation could continue on, Yuta got up to talk to the other boys. Apparently everyone was putting bets on if and when Johnny would finally grow the balls to ask her out, so the second the rest of the room found out the truth, half of the boys groaned and started coughing up their money. It seemed that Ten, Jaehyun, Hendery, and Jeno were the only ones who ever had any faith in him, the others all lost their bets.

Aurora hit Yuta's arm. “You bet against us?!”

“He’s so whipped for you, I thought he was going to chicken out of it because he thought you were too good for him!” he defended himself in Japanese.

Her? She was too good for him? Yuta must’ve been insane. There was no one in the world too good for Johnny Suh, especially not frumpy ol’ Aurora who didn’t believe a guy like him would even look her way once. She figured that she would just play it by ear and hope for the best… And not let Yuta give her too much shit about it in the meantime.

taglist: @ohmysion , @userntfnd , @phototypee

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at the rainbow's end // mysta rias

pairing: mysta rias x gn!reader

word count: 4.1k

genre: fluff, staff!reader, mutual pining, wingman elira

content warning(s): swearing, unedited

summary:

After nearly a year of hearing each other's voice, you finally meet him.

a/n: this was originally going to be released as my 100 follower celebration since i hit that a while back and to make up for the lack of event since i don’t have the time to host one. but with mysta’s graduation this past weekend, i didn’t want to keep this in my drafts since i’ve been working on this for like practically a year now.

this fox-dog man means so much to me, even though i can’t really catch his streams due to timezone differences, but he means So Much to me. i got back into writing because of luxiem, but he and shu were the ones who got me back into the swing of writing which is amazing bc i love writing. i just lost all the motivation to do so until i found them last year. even though he’s no longer in niji anymore or mysta anymore, i will keep writing for him. in fact, i actually have like 3 or so mysta works in the drafts lol

and speaking of writing, this is the first long fic i’ve written in 3-4 years. i’m considering crossposting this onto my ao3 as an alternative access to read longer fics bc ik how tumblr is poopy with loading long text posts. i’m a bit rusty when it comes to writing long fics, but i hope you’ll be able to enjoy this as much as i enjoyed writing this 🧡

links: luxiem m.l || main m.l || ao3 ver (if tumblr dies)

You twist your head from your phone back towards your monitor, displaying the Discord window showing your current private call with your blue dragon friend.

“Mysta’s WHAT?”

“Yeah, he’s coming along on the trip,” Elira laughed. “You didn’t know?”

“Apparent-ly! What the hell!! Luca, that motherfucker, I’m gonna beat his ass when I see him!”

She howls with laughter as you ramble on and on about how Luca told you everything about their planned trip but didn’t tell you about Mysta’s planned involvement. Once you’re done, she takes many deep breaths to calm down. “You should come with us! It’s gonna be fun. And, you’ll get to see him again.~”

You can’t really see each other’s faces, considering you’re both in a voice call. But god damn, you can hear the eyebrow wiggle in her teasing tone.

“I can’t,” you groaned, “I have finals when you’re there. As much as I wanna skip it, I really need to pass.”

“Damn, you can’t even get a referral from staff to get you here for a business meeting? Unlucky.”

“Can’t even do that anyway. I already told my professor that my trip’s been canceled, so now I have to take it.”

Though you’re not a liver for the company, you are, however, a staff member for the company. Specifically one of the staff in charge of promotions. Of course, you mainly focus on promoting EN and sometimes the other two now-merged branches. In fact, that’s how you got close to some of the livers.

As one of the staff promoters, you have to speak with the associated livers about PR stream offers and their convention appearance invites. Since you’ve been interacting with the livers the most, you’ve become friends with a few of them. Some namely Elira and Mysta.

Honestly, it’s not that you play favorites with the livers. You try your best to keep your relationships professional with them. But your bond with a specific fox-like man says otherwise.

You see, Mysta has been a joy to be around with. Although you haven’t met him in person yet, you have played some multiplayer games with him. Sometimes you check out the EN Minecraft server to see if the installed mods are working properly. Weirdly enough, almost every time you visit the server, Mysta is online. In fact, that’s how your not-so-business relationship started.

When you first entered the server, after double checking if no one was streaming at the scheduled hour, he was the first person you met. You thought you would run into Selen, Pomu, or perhaps Uki during your visit, but you were pleasantly surprised at his sudden appearance. Luckily, he was kind enough to show you around the server while teaching you some mods. With, of course, the trademark Mysta Rias experience packaged with sexual innuendos and teasing about. Well, except he didn’t go completely sexual considering it was your first time meeting him. He has some decency.

After that, you’ve run into him almost every time you visit the Minecraft server. Every visit eventually turned into hangouts, just you two (and sometimes another liver) chatting and building projects in-game. Soon enough, you and Mysta started to play other games together. You both played games such as Overwatch, Clubhouse, and sometimes League if you felt like torturing yourself for some reason.

Obviously, you had to keep the professionalism on both sides somehow. Your fellow staff members, especially some livers, noticed your close bond with the detective. So they usually send you to his DMs to discuss about any promotion offers involving him. Whenever you have your cameras on for a meeting, he somehow always flusters you with sudden flirtatious marks or something of the sort mid-conversation.

“Hello? Helloooooooo? Is someone there??”

Elira’s voice yoinks you out of your thoughts. Oh god, were you spacing out this entire time? How embarassing.

You clear your throat then respond as if you weren’t thinking of someone just now, “S-sorry, did you say something?”

“Oh my god. It’s that bad,” she mindlessly mutters.

Blink blink. “Huh?”

“Nothing,” she quickly retaliates. With a slight hum, she speaks again, “Since you’re gonna be stuck in hell… Want me to get you something? Like a souvenir or a limited edition thing? I literally have your address, man.”

Oh right, she does. Sometimes you and Elira send gifts to each other like figurines or plushies at random times.

“Nah, I’m good. Thanks for the offer, man.”

“Are you sure? I mean, I’ll still probably send some pics buuut… Y’know… Just saying…”

There she goes again, doing that thing where she wiggles her eyebrows even though you can’t see her fucking face right now. Goddamn it, why did you tell her about your… thing with Mysta? You should’ve known that she’s NOT going to let it go.

You groan, “Just. Just surprise me.”

“That’s so vague! Do you know what that means?”

“Yeah? So? Surprise me.”

“Man… You have no idea how much power you just gave me.” She cackles for the next few seconds, making you start regretting your decision. “Okay, I’ll surprise you. Just don’t forget you asked me to, alright? And no complaining!”

“Okay, alright, fine! I won’t complain! Jeez… Now get to bed, nerd, you have a flight tomorrow.”

“Sheesh, what are you, my mom?” You both chuckle at her remark. “Okieee~ I’ll go pass out now, I guess. Good night!”

“Good night, Ewiwa. Have a safe trip.”

And you both leave call. Well, maybe you should get to sleep too. It’s getting super late, after all.

—

Mysta stares at Elira across the table in disbelief. “Finals? Of all times? Bruh…”

“Haha, yeah! Super uncool and lame and not something I have to worry about soon,” his penguin colleague beside him laughs with a dreadfully crazed look in her eyes. She anxiously reaches out for her soda and starts drinking rapidly.

“Wh— it’s not like I can control it or anything. Shit happens!”

“I know, it’s just…” he drawls off as his gaze lowers to the table. Admittedly, it’s difficult for him to hide his expression. So naturally, the two girls noticed his disappointment. Elira and Petra awkwardly look at each other, then to him, then back at each other.

“Hey, it’s okay, Mysta,” Petra says as she pats his back. “You can always see them next time! Like Nijifest!”

The dragon nods, “Yeah! Or you could see them the next time you take a break. Like going on another vacation or something.”

“If I have enough money for it,” he sighed. But he gives them a small smile to appreciate their attempts to soothe him.

Petra frowns. “If? Mysta, you’re literally one of the top livers in EN, like? Hello? Mr. One Million?”

“But I still don’t know when that’s gonna happen. Might as well be in a year or maybe like half a year or something.”

Elira’s eyes narrow. She quietly listens to their conversation, or bickering at this point, while taking some occasional sips of her drink.

For the past practically a year, Elira’s been one of the victims to both of your hopeless gushing.

She already knew about your friendship since you’ve talked a lot about it before. She knows the stupid hijinks and drunken confessions that you and Mysta told her about off stream. Her eyes closes as a confused thought crosses her mind, Seriously, how are you two not dating already?

Of course, she’s quite aware that the rest of Luxiem are both of your victims. Hell, when Elira’s alone with the other boys, it’s usually them talking about how astonishing that you and Mysta aren’t together. Sometimes, they make bets on who’s going to confess first. It’s obvious!

Even with the two going back and forth, practically becoming one with the background, she closes her eyes and hums in thought. Finals should be finished next week, she mused. Her visible eye opens as she takes a glance at the ashy haired male. But he’s been so busy lately that they haven’t spoken with each other…

The entire EN branch had a full schedule for the past few months. In fact, their schedule was so full that sometimes the livers couldn’t make their own streaming schedules nor stream in general. Mysta, of course, was no exception. As one of the most popular livers in EN, he’s one of the most busiest people she’s ever known. On top of that, you too have been busy recently too. You haven’t been able to hang out with him as of late despite being a staff member yourself. Life really likes to fuck anyone over, doesn’t it?

She could tell that you two haven’t been able to find the time to talk with each other. The staff picked up many projects that practically almost everyone is unavailable, and you were one of said unavailable members. The only times the livers could contact you was through Slack or by email for business inquiries. But things should be slightly slowing down, for now that is.

Although, it would be nice to have you two meet each other once at the same time, even if it’s a coincidental encounter.

Wait a minute…

A devious smirk lifts her lips, her eyes glinting with mischief in mind. She chuckles to herself as she entertains the thought. Hell, it even looks kinda creepy to the other patrons. ESPECIALLY to her coworkers who’s now staring at her with confusion and a hint of fear.

“…Elira? Are you okay?” Petra asked the dragon.

“Hm?” She blinks out of her thoughts as the penguin’s voice pulls her back into reality. Elira stares at her and Mysta, who also looks a bit dumbfounded, before grinning at them. “Oh, don’t worry about it. Just thought of something.”

Blink blink. “Like what?” Mysta asked this time.

Again, she lets out a chuckle and flicks her wrist to wave off the concern. “Like I said! Don’t worry about it! Y’all will see it eventually.”

Soon enough, the waitress arrives with their orders. Elira turns to face her and helps her with the food. On the other side of the table, the two livers tilt their heads in confusion and eventually give each other an unknowing look as the table is served.

—

You lie in bed snuggled underneath your covers, but the lights are still on as you scroll through Twitter on your phone.

It’s been about a couple weeks since your call with Elira. She’s been sending you updates, videos, and pictures of the group’s adventures in Japan. Sometimes, she’d call you before going to bed to tell you what happened during the trip in case it was a story she couldn’t explain over text. Of course, there were times when another liver like Reimu and Nina would join in the call and give you the tea. As much as you wished you wanted to be there while dying in exams, you felt warm as you saw the livers enjoying themselves on their vacation.

Then, you noticed how fast the month flew by. Eventually, it was time for the livers to fly home and say goodbye for a while. They all had different flights, obviously, but there was a specific person who didn’t leave the country yet.

You were looking on Twitter while watching the members’ story time streams on a pop-up viewer. Although, you didn’t see Mysta’s waiting room or tweet indicating his return to streaming yet.

Suddenly, you remembered why.

“He wants to stay back for a bit,” Elira answered over the sound of her packing. “Dunno why, but I don’t blame him. He was in Japan for work last time.”

That he was. Though disappointing it is that you can’t hang with him for a while longer, at least he’s having fun.

“Oh, remember the thing I asked you about?”

She asked you something? When?

“What thing?” You asked.

“Uh… The souvenir thing?”

Oh shit, you forgot about that. And apparently, she noticed your forgetfulness as indicated by her laughter.

“I got you something,” Elira continued, “but I’ll send it to you when I get back.”

“Why not now? You can just ask headquarters to send it to me.”

“It’s not something in a box though.”

You blinked in confusion, unanswering.

On the other end of the line, you heard her chuckle, “You’ll see.”

Your brief conversation did, in fact, make you scared. Although it’s Elira, your local dependable dragon, sometimes she can be as unpredictable as… well… the rest of Nijisanji. Not just EN, but Nijisanji in general. Remember that one time you watched her stream where she suddenly jumped into a hole in that Forest collab? Yeah…

Now, some time has passed since the trip and she’s been home for about almost a week. It’s something not in a box, right? So what’s taking her so long? Is it digital? Or did she fuck up somewhere with the delivery?

Currently, you’ve been juggling schoolwork, personal work, and work-work. Needless to say, it’s been a stressful time, especially around this type of year. Seriously, why is everyone so goddamn busy around this time? Idle thoughts aside, you’ve also been anxiously waiting for Elira’s souvenir. For the past week, you’d constantly check your phone and your PC for any email or DM from Slack and Discord with Elira’s name attached to it. Every time you get DM’ed or emailed, it’s always been another liver or staff member whose name doesn’t start with Elira and end with Pendora.

But hey, at least you got funny memes from Luca and Mysta in the mean time!

Honestly, at this point, you might as well just give up. Maybe she did run into issues, or she just forgot.

You let out a sigh as you refreshed your feed for the umpteenth time tonight, accompanied by the ghost’s voice eminating through your speakers. Yet suddenly, a notification banner from Discord slides down onto the screen.

Elira Pendora

SURPRISE!!!!

Oh.

Huh.

So she didn’t forget??

Confused yet astonished at the same time, you pull down your notifications bar and tap on the DM to see what she sent.

As the iconic Discord logo pops up on your screen, it eventually loads your conversation with Elira. When you look past your previous chat, a message larger than it should be fills about a third of your screen.

A plane ticket to London next week. Seat number and all. And most notably, it has your name.

…

“HUH?”

You frantically tap on the textbox and type.

You

GIRL

WHAGT THE FUCK IS THIS

Elira Pendora

your souvenir! ☺️

You

WDYM SOUVENIR THATS NOT EVEN RELATED TO JAPAN??? 😭😭😭😭

also

HOW DID YUO GET MY NUMBER??? AND MY EMAIL????? :monkas:

Elira Pendora

I had to pull a few strings with staff

just normal coworker things

You

:thonk:

“normal”

Elira Pendora

but like you should go!!!

I didn’t go through all that just for you to not see him

and you really needed a break so 😎

You

??????

but hes Still in japan?????

Elira Pendora

yeah but he’s flying back home next week

I asked him earlier and had to like try to figure out how to get you to meet him at the same time

or like

around the same time 😌

You

man idk if i should thank you or yell at you

Elira Pendora

LMAO EITHER WORKS IT’S OKAY MAN

better get ready!!!

You

wait what about the hotel

Elira Pendora

what hotel? ☺️

i’m sure he wouldn’t mind letting you stay for a few days tbh

and yes I will also pay for your return trip

You

BUT YOUR LEN FUNDS……

Elira Pendora

I KNOW 😭😭😭

but it’s worth it! go get your man bitch!!

but :thonk:

I think I’ll try to pass out now since I have something scheduled tomorrow soooo

GOOD NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!

You

gn ewiwa :D

Well! Looks like you have a trip to prepare for.

—

The gray haired detective lounged comfortably in the AirBnB’s living room, resting on the sofa as he scrolled through Twitter. He let out a chuckle here and there, sometimes full on laughing whenever a funny meme popped up on his timeline.

“Meesta!” Elira called out to him from the kitchen island.

He turned around to look at the unusually giddy dragon. Confused, he asked, “What’s up?”

“When are you heading back?”

“Uh…” Pulling out his phone, he quickly went through his gallery to find a screenshot of his ticket. Once he found it, he examined the ticket for its boarding time and date then put it away. “In like a couple or so weeks. I thought I told you?”

“I don’t think you did,” she answered.

She motioned him to give her the device, or at least show her the screen. Of course, he complied. Though insane she is, he does have immense respect for her and Lazulight. Mysta stood up from his seat and approached her. Once in the kitchen area, he flipped his phone towards her, letting her singular visible eye take a peek.

Elira hummed as she inspected the ticket details then pulled back. “Cool. Thanks man!”

She walked away from the kitchen, carrying a glass of water upstairs leaving him even more confused.

It’s been three weeks since his unusual encounter with Elira. He sits idly at a bench by a luggage conveyor in the airport, waiting for his bags to unload from the plane. While waiting, he leans back into his seat and lets out an exhausted sigh. Luckily, no one is seated beside him, so he could just take up all the space on this uncomfortable bench. Still, he couldn’t help but reminisce onto their conversation.

Was she planning something? Was she just curious? What was she cooking?

Now, he’s back in the dreaded land of England, land of the beloathed. He pulls out his phone and immediately checks Discord. The EN server is lively as always, everyone’s practically home but the sense of energy radiates from the screen despite being digital. Like any other liver, he hops in the conversation a bit, sometimes memeing around with the others in the general channel.

Although, he noticed that your icon hasn’t appeared at least once since he landed. He was even paying attention to the top left corner of his screen for a red dot indicating your message. Normally, you’d send him a meme or something to see while he’s asleep or busy. But strangely enough, you haven’t yet. Maybe he should send you something? Or maybe call?

Mysta continues to catch up and reflect on the livers’ vacation in Japan on the server, his attention eventually caught by a familiar bag on the conveyor.

Welp. Looks like he’ll call you later.

—

Thank god Elira had the brain cells to make sure your flight isn’t after his own. Of course, she had to take in account about the flight times since you’re both literally across the globe from each other going to London. To avoid missing him right after landing, you were booked super early into the morning. But sometimes, there’s a possibility that you might be too early when he lands. And, unfortunately, that seems to be the case.

“He lands around midnight,” Elira told you on phone prior to checking in. “So you should be a biiiit early.”

Yeah, by like, 2 hours.

Man, what the hell are you supposed to do for two whole hours? Well, at least you have your phone AND your luggage. You could even people watch in the lobby. But that’s 2 hours!

What’s even more fucked up is that you can’t really use your phone unless you find the wifi. But airport wifi is kinda shitty, especially in England of all places. Talk about a British debuff.

You let out a heavy sigh and collapse into your seat. Napping is out of the question, even though you’re still kind of tired from the flight. Don’t wanna risk missing him by a smidgen, of course. So you ended up roaming around the airport for a while, getting yourself some drinks and snacks to keep you occupied while waiting for your friend. Luckily there were plenty of places to lounge while waiting, so you found a place to sit and enjoy your haul of snacks while waiting.

You did get to connect to the public wifi to look at some memes, but again, it’s the airport wifi. With how slow your phone’s been loading, you eventually disconnect yourself from the wifi after moments of mindless scrolling.

But then you realized something.

You have absolutely no idea what gate he’s in.

Panicked, you scramble to pick up your bags from your side and stand up. Shit, did Elira tell you what airline he took? God, having data in another country would be so helpful. There’s absolutely no way you’re gonna reconnect to the public wifi, it’s too damn slow! If you did have data, you’d look back to your DMs and scrub through your brief conversation from last night.

With a quick glance at your phone, the clock flashes briefly on the screen. 9:20pm, that means his flight’s arriving in less than an hour. Oh shit.

Immediately, you pace briskly throughout the terminals. As you scrounge through the crowds just to take a good look at the terminals, you ask staff for international flights from Japan along the way to help narrow down as much as possible. Throughout the search, you occasionally checked the clock on your phone. 9:40? Shit, his flight should be here now or soon.

“Mysta!” You suddenly shout, passerbys looking at you strangely as you start calling for his name. Your luggage rolls and bumps against the crevices of the floor, bags jostling as you promptly continue your search throughout the terminals. “Mysta Rias!”

Meanwhile, in the same area…

An ashy gray haired man stands in front of the carousel, waiting for the rest of his bags to drop onto the conveyor belt. He pulls out his phone from his pocket, taking a quick glance at his notifications and Discord. His mouth lowers into a frown, his brows furrowing in worry as he notices the lack of notifications from you. Did they really fall asleep?

Clink-clang!

Sunset kissed eyes shift towards the carousel at the sound. Spotting his luggage on the conveyor belt, he walks over to his revolving baggage and lifts them onto the ground. Maybe he’ll shoot you a dm later when he gets home. The handle on his large case clicks as he pulls it up, soon dragging it on its wheels behind him as he heads towards the direction of the exit.

You continue running and searching for him, frantically calling his name throughout the terminal. Your head turns left and right as you look into the surrounding late night crowd, your gaze briefly analyzing each arrival for any hint of his gray hair or his tallness. As you remain standing in the middle of the hall, looking for him, you see a tall man wearing small shades on the bridge of his nose. Gray side hairs framing his face sway into the air as he lugs his bags from the baggage claim and towards the nearest exit.

Without a second thought, your feet starts moving towards him. “Mysta—“ you call. “Mysta!”

After seconds and minutes of searching for him, calling his name and pushing through the crowd as you chase after him. Just a little more…!

“MYSTA!”

And finally… Finally, you see him.

With a clear shout of his name, the gray haired man halts.

Bewildered, he looks left and right until he turns around to see you panting. His heart stopped as he stares at you astonishly. The ambience of the crowd and muffled intercom speakers drowned out as he zoned onto you.

He looked at you.

The person standing just centimeters away from him.

The person who he thought was someone he’d never meet face to face ever.

The person who helped him find a reason to keep going even in the darkest of times.

It felt like hours just staring at each other. It didn’t even feel like there was an ocean of people swarming about and passing by. Without a second thought, Mysta slowly approaches you as if he were to scare you off. As if he didn’t want to wake up, if he is dreaming.

As he gets closer and closer, you didn’t make a move. No, you merely stared at him with wonder and excitement im your eyes.

You both stood across each other, only a few centimeters apart. He blinks several times, even pinching his wrists to disprove his thoughts. But he felt a stinging pain on each part.

An airy huff somewhat resembling a laugh escapes from him. Relief washes over him, and he whispers with a smile, “…Hi.”

You smile back.

“Hi.”

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i'm in a creative slow period right now

and it's not for lack of ideas or motivation, just... spoons, i think. lack of spoons and so much stress.

i mentioned the other day that with all the big coordinated showcases and multiplayer streams i've put on lately, it's been a while since i've done any streams where i just sit down and Play A Game for the sake of it. i did plenty of that last year and i'm proud of what i've accomplished, but i think i got a little burnt out on it? so i'm waiting to recharge and rekindle that fire again, because there are a LOT of interesting games i want to play!

it reminds me of when i wrote all those Retrush developer commentary posts over the course of a year and burnt out on writing for a while... actually, that spark still hasn't come back to me either. i've got tons of ideas for interesting posts, but i haven't been able to sit myself down and Write Them. i completely missed my chance to write about my favorite games of 2024...

even level design, where i've been excitedly working on what i can only describe as multiple "dream projects," has been a struggle for me to return to – especially after i spent so much of the back half of last year designing the upcoming Threemixes for Retrush, once again expending all of my creative energy.

there's burnout no matter which direction i look... to say nothing of drawing or mazes or programming or any of the thousands of other things i do. i want to do it all, but i can't bring myself to do any of the work!

there are a million reasons for this (like a recent working memory reset), but if i'm being honest, this is really about the fact that i've started at my new job after nearly a year off. i spent almost all of last year creating new things in every spare moment that i had – now i have to adjust to a new schedule, new priorities, while still creatively spent from all of 2024.

but i wish so badly that this wasn't the case, because everything is so stressful right now! these are the times that i want to be at my most creative, my most prolific, because it helps other people (and myself!) bear the stress of everyday life.

i feel helpless like this, stuck in a creative rut while the world burns around me. what a terrible time for my metaphorical starter to give out.

i'm sure that all of these things will come back to me soon – give me a month or two to get back on my feet, to adjust to my new schedule, and i'll be flying again before i know it. but in the meantime all i can do is try my best to recharge and hope things calm down a bit.

besides, i am lucky enough to still have one thing to work on in my low energy state, that being the Minecraft highlights video... and for being a low-energy effort, it's gonna be a big project by the time it's complete. maybe by then i'll have found my spark again.

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Alright here goes: I have poured almost 100 hours into this game already and I’m only in act 2. I know how it ends (cause of spoilers but I don’t mind) so this is gonna be my review and it’s gonna be long I have feelings and I’d like someone who cares to actually hear them. If you wanna read this rambly mess imma put it under a read more.

I’m gonna be blunt: I am ENJOYING the game. HOWEVER I am not ignorant to what we lost. This is the game we got and I will enjoy it and take it.

Also disclaimer: I have been playing these games since they’ve come out. I am a long time fan and this is one of my special interests.

This game is still a labor of love, there is a lot of poured into the characters and I can see that but it was 100% rushed. This game was rushed even after 10 years. It feels like a certain gaming company pushed it out early even though it’s been so long. So many things were removed and you can still feel the multiplayer aspects in the game.

The game should have been even larger. You should have been able to travel all over Thedas and YES our last games should have mattered. Out of all spoilers I’ve seen the destruction of southern Thedas is the only one that truly makes me mad because that’s where I have spent the last 10 years loving so of course I don’t want that. Ferelden is my favorite country and it’s been wiped off the map. Maybe this is what BioWare wanted but I want them to know of all the decisions made that is the one they shouldn’t have done. I understand limited time and not being able to visit them again but honestly if the North can be ignored in all the other games then the south should have been as well.

The next game (if there is one) should have at least 100 years worth of timeskip (preferably more probably) that way it can be rebuilt properly.

The Inquisitors role should have been bigger but the dragon age games do like new protags. (Side note I am kinda glad you don’t get to see their LIs mainly because they means they didn’t have to bring back Cullens VA because he’s a prick).

It’s rushed more should have been added old decisions should have mattered and the world states should have been bigger.

But I still like the game and it is still the story they managed to tell. Not the game all of us wanted we can all agree and seeing the art book stings big time. But I don’t hate. I love it actually but I am being critical. All the negativity is bring down the whole thing.

None of this flows well and I’ll probably add more as I remember(no one in my real life care about this game and how much I care for it) But if you like this game in spite of its flaws that’s fine as well just know you’re not the only one.

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I'd like to get this blog started by sharing an aesthetic that I absolutely love, especially in the setting of a game, and one of my favorite games, My Time at Sandrock, which follows it. It's a "post-post-apocalyptic" setting, in which the apocalypse has happened, the world was destroyed or became uninhabitable, but by the time the game (or other media) takes place, people are beginning to get on their feet again. I don't know if there's a specific name for this. I've seen "reclaimed by nature", but while that's often a part of these settings, that the ruins of the world before the apocalypse have been filled with plant and animal life over time, it's not always the case. "Hope punk" is probably the closest.

I'll probably come back to this idea a few times, but for now I'd like to talk about how well I think My Time at Sandrock embodies this aesthetic.

For anyone who hasn't played or heard about the My Time series, they're super chill singleplayer (for now) RPGs where you play as the "builder" for one of the "Alliance of Free Cities" (Portia and Sandrock, in their respective games). They have a vibe very similar to Stardew Valley, where the game is based around days in the calendar year, but you can work at your own pace, build your workshop as you like, complete quests to improve the town, and socialize and form relationships with the NPCs. My Time at Sandrock is one of my favorite games of all time. It's currently my banner image, and I met one of my now best friends during the multiplayer closed beta.

My Time at Sandrock takes place in a frontier town in the Eufala Desert. It's this world's equivalent of a gold rush town, where people flocked to dig up relics and technology from the Old World (the game's term for the civilization who lived before, and caused, the apocalypse). However, most of the town's already scarce natural resources were squandered during this time, and it fell on hard times. Your job as the new Builder is to help the town get back on its feet by helping to build buildings, explore the ruins, defend from monsters alongside the Civil Corps, with the end goal of achieving prosperity for the town, sustainably this time.

The town of Sandrock is built nearby a massive ancient ruin, resembling a shopping mall, called Paradise Lost (a name which I think is referencing the "Paradise Lost" step of the Hero's Journey). This ruin is presumably what a lot of the Ruin Divers were interested in. The game has a cute, cartoony style and I love wandering through the hazardous ruins, fighting cleaning and construction robots, and wondering what they were building before the world was shrouded in darkness.

So, how did that happen?

300ish years before the game takes place, was an era described as the Age of Corruption, when technology had peaked, humans lived the high life, and robots did most physical labor. However, before long was the Day of Calamity, when the technology that the humans had built for war caused chaos and darkness across the world.

For 200 years, humans lived in darkness, mainly underground, under nuclear winter conditions while monsters owned the land above. Finally, a man named Peach built a machine to blow through the clouds, allow sunlight to reach the land, and allow humans to come out from underground and begin to rebuild civilization. This event is commemorated as the Day of the Bright Sun.

The series doesn't give much detail beyond this, but I don't think it should, unless it's the focus of a future game. It's just enough to give context to the settings, as most of their worldbuilding happens in the present, not in the past. Both games take place in a world 100 years and two or three generations after the Day of the Bright Sun. Civilization is being rebuilt, people are prospering, and there is even a religion called the Church of the Light formed around non-violence, cooperation, and opposing the use of Old World technology, as they believe it's dangerous and fear the same end as the Old World had.

Sandrock, though, has gone through this pattern again, in its own way. In their rush to strike it rich on Old World technology, the ruin divers and the city used up all of their natural resources, resulting in the trees all being chopped down, the town's oasis drying up, and the only thing left being the ruins themselves. You, as the town's new builder, are put in the empowering position of lifting up Sandrock from this situation and restoring it to its former glory.

This is the part that I love so much about My Time at Sandrock. The prospect of rebuilding an entire civilization is difficult to achieve as one character. Games like Civilization, RimWorld, and Terra Nil tackle this by making the player essentially omnipotent, giving them control over the whole developing civilization at once (or in Terra Nil's case, with wildly advanced technology). But Sandrock does this differently: By re-creating the reconstruction effort on a smaller scale, with just one town, and placing the player not at the top, in charge of everything, but as the one doing the grunt work to build bridges, buildings, lifts, farms, train tracks, and much more (though some of this has been in the pre-release multiplayer story mode). You slowly get to see this charming frontier town rise back up from the desert. Over the course of the game, you even get things like tourists appearing once you repair the train tracks. It's an absolute joy to watch your hard work come to fruition, and see the town overcome its own mini-apocalypse.

Thanks for reading! This is a topic I've wanted to share for a long time, and I'm glad I finally had the time to do it. I'd highly recommend My Time at Sandrock, especially if you're a fan of games like Stardew Valley, or aesthetics like the one I talked about here It's a super chill game, and I love playing it to relax after a long day of work or college lectures. And, if you want someone to play multiplayer Sandrock with, feel free to message me!

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please try to sell me gw2. i really want to like it and ive tried a couple times over the years to get into it, but every time my experience is like: walk for 5 irl minutes -> talk to someone -> kill 20 things -> random world events -> kill 50 things -> go back and talk to the person. rinse and repeat

and then i uninstall the game

Hard to sell it to ya when it's free to play ;0

As a new/returning player I honestly recommend going in with some friends. It's a game were you can absolutely solo PvE with the right build, but I always have more fun playing with my friends for the shenanigans. I also, 100%, recommend plopping an OC in the game. My first characters were both in-game and all their lore is based around GW2, but putting June in there has been hella fun to see how she would handle being in Tyria.

Your first 80 levels are basically to help get you accustom to the game mechanics and the story. Though the story is optional, I recommend playing it so you get more of a feel of Tyria and the history. The story also leads you through the game an the map rather than just taking random quests as you explore. It's really the only mode that gives you a bit of direction in the game.

If you happen to get stuck or have any questions about the game, it's pretty safe to ask the map chat and usually people will help you out, especially in early maps. GW2 is a game that doesn't really teach you how to play, you learn as you go. There's also plenty of YT vids on how to get started and tutorials if you get stuck or suggestions of things to try out as you level. They've also updated the game fairly recently where you now have access to the Raptor mount without needing to have Path of Fire or doing the expansion, which is a HUGE quality of life change while you explore the early maps.

Once your toon hits level 80, that's when you unlock your mastery tracks that will allow you to do more of the endgame content and continue through the living story. Fractals, Raids, Dungeons, Strikes, World Bosses, Meta Trains, Gold Farming, PvP, WvW, FASHION WARS!!, There's a ton to do once you're set up, and again, lots of resources available to help you out (TaCO, GW2 Efficiency, Crafting Guides).

The world is unique. It feels lived in and ever expanding. The lore for all the playable races in the game is really interesting and they do a lot to subvert expectations from typical fantasy stories. Some things are a hit or miss for a lot of folks but there's so much to love about the game even my least favorite parts are like just mid to me compared to the parts I genuinely enjoy. My favorite expansion is Path of Fire + Season 4. The desert maps are my favorites followed by Maguma (begrudgingly). Cantha had grown on me a lot after a million Leviathan Farms for gold lol. THE SEASONAL EVENTS AHHH like again there's just so much to touch on but yeah the long and short of it is it IS a time sink at minimum to get to the more favored content, but even as a old player I still love making new toons and taking them through the early game content again just for fun.

But yeah, free to play, no subscriptions, all expansions are a one time purchase. You've got 10 years worth of content to explore and try out. It's a relatively inexpensive MMO (the expacs can be up to 50% off during certain yearly sales). An overall very helpful community. Any paid content is mostly cosmetics and convenience items, but nothing that gives you an advantage over other players. Basically everyone is grinding towards a similar end-goal, so you can always get the same gear as people through grinding. Nothing is really out of reach and people are always willing to help others out with multiplayer content.

I've been consistently playing for 8-9 years now. It's one of those game where I'm IN it for like a few months then may take a few months off until a holiday event I love is coming up and then I play for a few months again. It's probably the only other game I've sunk as much time into as Pokemon or Skyrim over the years (I jokingly call it Skyrim Online since ya'll won't catch me playing ESO). But yeah just, it's a game I never expected to play for this long and this consistently and it always feels fun to pick back up. Genuinely I do hope you give it another try. I've honestly had the most fun I've had in years with the wave of new and returning players jumping back into the game c:

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prior to e3 2021 i made a bingo sheet for splatoon 3 stuff. at this point the only things we knew were what they showed in the reveal trailer in february 2021. now that the game's done i think it's time i go back and see how well it did

wowww that's a lot. 2 bingos. i get why people were disappointed with this game and i agree with those points to an extent but generally im pretty satisfied (this is far from acnh where i think like nothing on the bingo i made was there) (maybe that's because half of it was "bat villagers" repeated and they didnt give us that. well they shouldve given us bat villagers. and splatoon items. why the fuck didnt they give us splatoon items when they did in new leaf and pocket camp)

explanations under the cut (im factoring in my intent for this, so some are marked if they get the spirit of it even if they don't match exactly. yes that includes the apartment one)

✔️ ride or fry sounds ENOUGH like a daft punk song that im going to just assume that the surving member got absorbed into octoplush

✔️ returning stages! wasn't sure they'd do it since it doesnt take place in inkopolis but i guess they just have an actual public transportation system in splatoon world. and the first one revealed was museum d'alfonsino, the image i used for this (because it was my favorite s1 stage). unfortunately they ruined all the s1 ones they brought back though… sad that urchin underpass and saltspray rig are gone from official online play now that nintendo network is dead, but at least they were spared that fate (i did also say at one point that i wanted saltspray to get reworked into a salmon run stage, but they didnt do that either. wouldve been cool)

❌ no hide and seek mode :( i did that with my friends in splat1 in 2015 and nintendo still hasnt caught up. they did at least do group recon i think? and that's something i came up with (when flounder heights dropped i suggested we all get into a private lobby and just explore it together instead of fighting, that was SUPER fun ^_^) (unfortunately now that private lobbies have recon i dont play with a group of people anymore lmao)

✔️ yeah there's chaos. they did a lot for salmon run which is a pretty chaotic mode (though they really should do more). and anarchy battle is uh. anarchist? and having 3 teams in splatfest is chaotic. do you think if order had won we wouldve had totalitarian battle and 1-team splatfests? monocolor turf war peace?

❌ NO MC CRAIG RAP…. :'( i wanted him to rap in octo expansion and we didnt get it and then we didnt get it again. could they just not get mahito yokota to do it? he did rap a bit in maritime memory, why cant he do it again. oh well, pearl's probably a much better rapper anyway

✔️ splatnet 3! and it's even better than 2. especially after they added all the boss/king salmonid numbers. not knowing and having to guess or keep track of it myself was agonizing

✔️ NEW NOGAMI POSE!!! do you think for splatoon 4 he's gonna do the type of 4 that makes a triangle (like on this text) or the type thats more squarish (where the lines at the top don't meet)

✔️ NEW ABXY MUSIC!!!!!!!! abxy fans keep winning, it's the only multiplayer music band to come back for every game and now paruko herself is there too. shiho fujii came back to do these again (only other thing she did--for both 2 and 3 incidentally--was the squid sisters credits theme)

✔️ there IS a co-op mode, and it's called… salmon run! when they showed us hanging out with a salmonid i was like ok so i guess salmon run isn't coming back because that wouldnt make sense, like how can we be friends with a smallfry and then go kill all of its friends and family? well i guess we can! ok. 2 years later and i still think thats a little fucked up. good thing splatoon isnt real so i can play salmon run with a clear conscience

✔️ we got amiibo!! we got a LOT of amiibo! 10 of them! that's 2 more than what splat1 and splat2 each got! i expected to get something for side order, i did NOT expect to get new squid sisters AND off the hook amiibo

✔️ yeah i'm counting this one. squid sisters are back, off the hook's back, agent 3 is back, agent 8 is back… sure agent 4 isn't fully there, but between the palette and parallel canon i'm going to say that it's close enough to count (though maybe i wouldn't if they weren't the only one missing)

✔️ NO REGION LOCKED GEAR!!!!!!!! in this case it was because they didn't do any promotional gear whatsoever though. which is a bit of a disappointment in its own way. unlike splat1 and splat2, splat3 actually only has one version (instead of different ones for each region) so if they had given out gear intended for japan, if it worked the same way as the splat2 stuff then anyone who got a code would be able to use it (getting a code may have been difficult, but in splat2 even if you got one you could only use it if you had the jp version of the game). they also probably couldve added the splat2 japan-exclusive gear to splat3, but they didnt do that. well, at least there aren't any more locked to japan than there were before

❌ no destroying france mode. squid sisters must have done that all on their own after the concert

✔️ i use squid beatz as a music player so i'm counting this (even though the fact you have to pay to make the songs play means i dont actually use the music player we got… why did they do that…) sorry for anyone who wanted to do the rhythm game on hard mode for frothy waters or whatever though

❌ squid girl did not come back unfortunately. maybe someday (that reminds me, i should finish watching the anime… i started it in 2015 when they added her outfit to splat1)

❌ no triplies. how can you call it splatoon 3 if there's no triplies. is it because they thought you wouldnt be able to booyah if youve got the third one in your mouth like zoro from one piece? maybe in splatoon 4 theyll do quadries and the other 2 will be on our feet (like bayonetta? idk i havent played it)

❌ 2 things for splatfest tees i have wanted since like the start of splatoon 2: 1. when splatfest ends and the tee gets turned in, prompt us with the option to pay to have it scrubbed so we don't miss out on any cheap chunks if we forgot to do it before it ends (not particularly upset about this in s3 since salmon run has given me 1 billiam chunks). 2. dont put it on a brand that favors a certain ability!! why the fuck do they have a whole mechanic for getting chunks faster and cheaper and then just have it weighted towards ink resistance up. splatfest should be its own brand!!!! (again though… salmon run has made getting them so trivial it doesnt matter)

❌ lmao

✔️ technically speaking we did not get "splatoon 3 global testfire" like we did for the other games but my desire here was to get a prerelease demo and the splatfest world premiere fulfilled that. clearly only splatoon 2 was cool enough to get 2 of those (wait shouldnt splatoon 3 have gotten 3 then? maybe 4 will get 4)

✔️ SAVE DATA CLOUD!!! im so glad they figured out a way to tie your multiplayer save data to the server so they wouldnt end up excluding the whole game in the name of preventing cheating (that, as i recall, wasn't even prevented anyway). the whole cloud save system seemed useless to me for a long time since the games i play the most are splatoon and pokemon and those are the ones that you can't back up

✔️ GRIZZ IS DEAD!!!!!!!! like i said before, i knew something had to happen when i saw we were friends with a salmon. i was wrong about salmon run going away, but i was right about grizz. i even called him being the villain of rotm in the middle of the reveal trailer. unfortunately even killing grizz didnt do anything to stop the evil corporate system he put in place. i guess the theories that it was an ai talking to us on the radio were right (i thought that was a weird conclusion for people to come to but i was wrong about that)

✔️ we CAN change lobby music again!! one of the biggest flaws of splat2 was you could only listen to dubble bath (in splat1, provided you got the squid amiibo and did the challenge to unlock it, you could go into squid beatz in the lobby to play whatever song you wanted). i'm annoyed you have to pay to change it manually, but the lobby does at least rotate between a lot of music--i actually would've counted this before the jukebox was added, because my real concern behind this was "stop making us listen to just one lobby theme all the time" and even in the base game there were like 9 of them and there are a ton of really good ones in there

✔️ ok. yes i'm counting this. there is no actual apartment room, yeah. but considering we had nothing even close to it in the first 2 games, i feel like having a locker we can decorate is enough of a step towards that for it to count. could it be better? yes. but it fills the role of being a decoratable space, which is really what my desire was. if i put this exact thing on a splatoon 4 bingo and they gave us lockers again, i wouldn't count it, but going from nothing to having lockers i feel is enough to count (since there was nothing to indicate they would do something like that)

✔️ they probably couldve done more for octavio, but we did team up with him to fight the final boss (though after being completely absent for most of the story) and then he was there at grand fest with everyone, so he did get some redemption. they shouldve credited him on 3mix and had him perform it with the idols at the concert though. maybe in splatoon 4 he can be the one who recruits the player character

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Stardew Valley!!! I love a lot about this spread but I wish I didn't use so many pen colors. This is another game I played before I even started journaling so I had to recall a lot of my older thoughts. Sebby's little corner might've been even bigger 😅 (Y'all might even guess where the name PumpkinSouppe came from, but it is also my favorite dish irl)

The Sebastian sticker is by ArcaneGoldArt! They have a whole collection of all the love interests.

Writing typed below!

Rating: 9.3 Played: Fa 2021 Port: PC (steam) Favorite? Y Replayable? Y Recommend? Y

Comments:

Name: Beans

Farm: Soup

German Shepherd

Beach Farm

Spouse: Seb <3

The Junimo are SO cute

only talked to like 7 characters lol I'm so introverted

had so many wiki pages open

LOVE the dungeons and enemies + the hunter log/achievements

It's sometimes pretty creepy

You can put hats on the horse and children lmao

don't like Shane at all (skull emoji)

stopped playing when I got the child, not the biggest fan [but I'm also against sacrifice]

#1 Krobus fan, love him

love my crazy animal names

made a little statue garden

so many eggplant parms

so much fun catching all the legendary fish!

the movies are so pretty and fun

The Sebastian corner: (DO NOT SAY ANYTHING)

(List of his favorite and liked gifts) Frozen tear, obsidian, pumpkin soup, sashimi, void egg, flounder, quartz

motorcycle kiss T^T

LOVE his theme

when he hid behind the tree lmao (I accidentally planted a tree right in front of where he would stand and I thought he would just disappear once a week and I could never find him)

quit smoking for me

he loves Jasmine tea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

you can kiss him <3!!!

Frog Sanctuary

Game Dev notes:

really good day/night + seasonal cycle with relation to player mechanics

great progression of unlockable events -- well paced

great long term achievements

amazing cooking mechanics and storage

no definitive objects, very choose your own adventure!

easy controls, nothing memorable

beautiful pixel art and boundaries

Summary:

One of my all time favorite games. It is the gold standard of farming games and even has one of the best fishing mechanics. I played this during the beginning of my health problem during senior year and it really helped me cope a lot. Although I didn't play multiplayer, my friend and I played at the same time. This game has so many cherished memories especially when I got to compare gameplay with my friend. Made by one man, this is such an unbelievable game. There's unlockable events after x amount of years that entice players to continue playing.; There's also no one way to play, for example I was a lot more introverted and only talked to a few characters whereas my friend played more socially. Maybe someday I'll continue playing to complete more achievements. My one gripe is there's a lot of responsibilities to get back into, so it's a little hard to get back into. It's one of the games I can recommend to everyone. It's hard if you makes it hard, cozy if you make it cozy, etc. Excellent designs, animation, gameplay, story, choices, etc. My worry is that this game is so well crafted I'm worried playing other farming games won't live up, I am so excited for ConcernedApe's new game. He is a major inspiration to start making my own games. I have also heard modded Stardew is really good and really worth checking out. All in all, a superb game loved by so many fans. Highly recommend.

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Hi! I absolutely adore your writing! Every single thing I read on your blog is just *chefs kiss* 😍

I was wondering if you have any particular hcs about Myles Joo and Dongha Baek you're willing to share? 👀 Also Wolf. Always starved for more Wolf content. Only if you feel like it obv ")

hello !!! thank you to both anons for these asks ! i decided to do them both in the same post since it was easier this way lol, hope it's okay- honestly thanks for giving me an excuse to write more myles content (even though yall probably shouldn't allow me this much power), lord knows i needed it :D

anyways, hope you both enjoy !!! this was fun to answer lol

weak hero headcanons; myles, dongha + wolf

myles joo / joo seungjin

⋆ used to be star player on his middle school basketball team ! grew up playing with his big bro and made the team in his first year. was really good at it too. loved being on the court, and winning itself, of course. near the end of his second-year, though, a teammate started a fight with him which resulted in him getting kicked from the team

⋆ still likes to shoot hoops in his free time; it's relaxing for him, honestly. thought about joining the high school team but he didn't have time for it and the union. even though he does now, he still feels like something's holding him back from pursuing it

⋆ not a crazy cat person like teddy, but has a soft spot for the strays in his neighborhood they like him, surprisingly lol. can't leave them food since he lives in an apartment, but carries a few treats in his pocket for ones he sees~ there's a black cat who really likes him that's been around for a year now; secretly wants to keep him, but he can't see it going over well with his dad :,)

⋆ not a headcanon so much as my opinion, but would totallyyy suit an eyebrow piercing (because somebody needs to compete with donald lol). gave himself one in middle school, but it got infected after his face got fucked up in a fight and he had to remove it. thought about redoing it, then realized it wasn't safe to have with all the fights he gets into-

⋆ including the black one he always wears, he has a big snapback + baseball cap collection ! his favorites are displayed proudly on his wall, the rest boxed up in the closet

⋆ his hair looks like that because he cuts it at home. had one too many bad barbershop experiences and now he doesn't trust them, but his own skills are... subpar at best :,)

baek dongha

⋆ dongha is the type of mf who refuses to wear shorts- no matter what. it could be 900° and he will still wear pants, only because he hates how his legs look and feel in shorts. would sleep in them if he wasn't normal lol

⋆ dongha has known seongmok since childhood, even before they became friends. truth be told, dongha was a nasty little kid, so he didn't hang out with a lot of people. but seongmok (who was very quiet even back then !) started following him around one day and dongha, who tried to scare him off at first lol, soon realized he really liked having someone by his side :)

⋆ i know he smokes cigs in canon, but imo he's more of a vaper than anything. def one of those people who has 500 vapes and has to hit one every 2 minutes before suffering withdrawals- only elf bars, only fruity flavors

⋆ got this idea from an ask, but he lives with his grandma and has since middle school ! he's in a weird, defiant time in his life so he's not as close with her as she wants, but she loves him just the same~

⋆ to add onto this, when he isn't at his grandma's, dongha's couch-crashing at seongmok's house- he's a lot closer to his family and they've basically adopted him, lol. it's not that he feels excluded at his grandma's, but she wasn't present for a lot of his life up until moving in with her. so, for now, seongmok's place is his true "home"

⋆ avid video gamer, lol- he likes doing multiplayer ones with seongmok or hitting up the arcade for some Tekken, but he's really into anything. keeps some gacha games on his phone for when class is too boring, but he usually regrets the money he spends on them :,)

wolf keum / keum seongje

⋆ surprisingly smart ! doesn't take school seriously, so much as it comes easy to him? + ganghak isn't an idiot cesspool like some of the other schools, so he didn't get in on connections or money alone- he's not a fan of studying or showing up to all his classes, but he manages to make consistent As and Bs and, if his attendance were any better, he'd be an almost perfect student !

⋆ doesn't have much for hobbies lol. its not like his life revolved around the union, but he's never really stuck with one thing. you could say his hobby is fighting, but i think he used to be a bit of a bookworm~

⋆ loved books about mystery/crime and detective-type novels that he could solve himself; he was a bit of a nerdy kid :,) he still enjoys media of that genre but doesn't read as much as he used to. if anything it benefitted him, since he was able to figure out jared's plan pretty easy

⋆ whether he says it or not, he considers hwangmo a good friend. i imagine they went to elementary school together where social-butterfly hwangmo tried to befriend him, though seongje wasn't too interested lol- didn't even remember hwangmo until he asked seongje about it

⋆ but out of all his lackeys, he's the only one who actually respects him and sticks by his side, and has a brain on his shoulders lol- so seongje respects him, too :) sometimes gives hwangmo extra from their funds like a raise lol, buys him a snack/drink after meetings, or offers him smokes; hwangmo thinks they could be friends someday, once this union stuff blows over

⋆ ik a lot of people subscribe to "homophobic gay wolf" but i honestly think he wouldn't care that much- his sexuality isn't anybody else's business, or something he even cares about. he likes who he likes, though he doesn't really like anyone... :,)

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Honestly I'm really surprised that no ones gone and made a dating sim for fnaf sb so here's some ideas I made for a crossover mod within Monster Prom about Security breach around a year and a half ago.

As someone who might only know of sb and nothing what monster prom is let me go into some detail of the game before I share my ideas

Monster prom is a dating sim set in a high school with almost all of the characters being monsters

So think like monster high but with crack shit humor and everyones gearing up for prom night in a weeks(you can change how long a game last so it could be only one week or two) that game is also multiplayer so you can share the experience with friends!

Back when I had writtin this out I had planned on using the in-game mod menu to make this into a mod but with almost every idea i come up with and get really determined over I lost interest after getting into the actual making it into the thing phase. I gift these ideas for ANYONE to pick up and use! all I ask is to let me see what you make

Now with that out of the way, onto the actual content!

Monster prom & security breach crossover ideas

Freddy and the rest of the cast are in spooky high school wow!

Event storyline with Freddy that has him and Bonnie Hook up after finding out Bonnie didnt acctly die. if you play your cards right you get the chance join them ;3

Monty and Damian chilling together and then getting into a fist fight and/or a fight over who can cause the most damage

Vanny event that also has Jerry pop up at least once and the two bond over killing people

Freddy bonding with Liam over being adopt dads (liam is a "dad" in cannon apparently)

I'm gonna have all of em be monsters rather than robots but I cant decide if I want to do this with Freddy too mainly cause I really want to have a

scene where Gregory pops out of fredds stomach hatch which spooks and horrifies everyone watching, someone exslapes that OMG Freddy YOUr Pregernore?!?

Vanny and zoe bonding over being fan girls

Vanny got catfished by Afton and is now stuck taking care of him outside of school hours

Sun and vanny scene that starts off with they getting along pretty well and they both start listing off things the two both like and then vanny shares she loves killing kids which ends that budding friendship real quick

Gregory with a Fazblaster will always end well! (hint, it doesnt) roxy gets blinded and if u fuck up the choice so do you

Aaravi finds out that a human child is just chilling amongst all of these “monsters” and self proclaims herself as Gregory's new guardian or something along those lines. Gregory is taking none of her shit at first but likes her attitude and they end up as good friends/a sibling dynamic

“DONT YOU KNOW HOW DANGEROUS MONSTERS ARE KID?! You cant just chill with these creatures, you must be on your guard at all times. I'll show you the ways “ something like this

Gregory in a small way reminds Aaravi of her brother, and even more so for Michael. ido how I'll be able to convey this smoothly but damnit it has to happen somehow

There will be events that lead to odd places around or near the school. Sun made a playroom under the gym bleachers, vanny event/storyline leads you down into the basement to meet afton, Chica event that has the two of you fall into said basement

Maybe chicas storyline can be the two of you searching for montys monster mash thing?

Ok so freddy is still a robot but hes a ghost haunting said robot, aka Freddy is Michael afton.

Gregory: “i wanna be like you freddy-”

Freddy:”thats great superstar!”

Gregory: “a kick ass immortal robot >:3”

Freddy, horrorifed: “no you dont”

Freddys lived a long ass life

Player gets punted into the Sun, aka Sun the monster

Vanny storyline has you help her try to get out of having to take care of Afton, one of the final choices is on how to this [1]he's so old a frail, lets just burn him in a fire [2] beat him at his favorite game, princess quest.

[1] would cause you to fail and have afton be quick to say i always come back with vanny agreeing by giving examples of how many times he has already died and come back, some of which was because of a fire! She loses confidence and you lose your chance forever

[2] has afton scoff at the idea of anyone managing to do such for HE is a master at the game and is the true number one fan and if you dares say otherwise your in for a reckoning, you in turn say “if ur so confident then there should be no problem with wagering my win for vanny’s freedom”(maybe rephrase this) and then commences the most epic game of princess quest, the narrator before you get into it comments on the fact that lucky for you ur a speedrunning champion for old arcade games like this one. It ends up being a close game but you manage to beat the old basdter's high score!

Moons eyes change from blue to pure red depending on his mood

Sun likes to hide out during gym but can't get the braves to full on skip so that's why he made his playroom under the bleachers. Plus no one ever goes under there besides the injured trying to crawl away from their death

Among us Gregory vent meme

Gonna have each of the bois be something completely different than the other, freddy as already stated is the only one that's still a robot, monty is a were-gator that stays in his gator form as often as he can because he’s self conscious, Sun and moon are some kind of doll. Magic or some shit makes their change, Gregory is still a full on human. As for Chica and Roxy, I'm not quite sure what I wanna do for them other than just furry.

Furry roxy, then bird thing for chica, air people? Yes, when it get brought up joke about it “this will most likely end up proved non canon by the next game but who cares!”

Gregory: Freddy, I'm serious!

Freddy: hi serious, im

Ok Plan is to make the mod with only Sun Moon and Vanny to start off.

So that would be at least 3 to 4 different routes to make. I want to also throw in a small handful of random events. After making/posting the final result i get to work on update GlamRock, which will add the rest of the cast along with a shit ton of new random events.

Someone brings up how her mouth never moves “annoyed: look its a skin condition”

Vanny Route, activated after buying a rabbit's foot

Sun Route, you get pulled into this route after buying sun-drops

Moon route, is gotten by buying moon-drops

Nope ok you get Sun AND Moon’s routes after buying “celestial themed candy”

Depending on your choices durn this route it will branch off into 3 different endings. Similar to how Aaravi and Hex’s routes work in monster camp ;>

One event has you join sun during one of his shifts at the daycare he works at (guest star of gregory? Depends if i get around to fricking drawing him)

Moon “moonlights” as a aerial dancer, durning his route you get to watch him durning one of his performances. Joke is made on how much you would love to see him on a pole ;>(this whole game has so many horry jokes, tho you can turn off any nsfw realted stuff through settings)(even then nothing explicit happens or shows btw! At most Just implied)

During both of sun and moon’s routes you get the chance to pair up with both depending on ur choices

Costume ideas

Vanny, white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland

Moon, pied piper

Gregory, crying child/ghost

Roxy, Red Riding Hood

~

And thats everything I wrote! As you can probably tell I did not bothing with polishing this up much, if I did I'll never getting around to actually posting this(<- already been procrastinating on posting bc of this reason) so I just decided to post as is.

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CoD notes: BO1 Started

So first off, yes, I am playing these a little out of order for the purpose of better understanding the overarching plot lines.

Secondly, wow I do not remember much about this game. The whole first mission with killing “Fidel Castro” felt entirely new to me. Did not remember that Ice Cube was in this game which is funny also because Ice T in Gears 3 is just the next year after this game

Right off the bat, I really appreciate that this game actually has a protagonist that you get to see and hear. It makes this game feel much more modern designed than the Modern Warfare trilogy, which still feel a bit stuck to the pre-MW formula in some ways like Waw was.

That being said, I don’t always perfectly understand the Black Ops 1 plot and the missions feel a bit jumbly because they jump around, but overall it’s been having a pretty positive effect on me.

I had forgotten that the Vorkuta prison escape is so early in the game. It’s still a ton of fun, I think in part because it’s not the kind of mission you’d find in the Modern Warfare trilogy. They follow such a cookie cutter template of “massive gunfight, stealth mission, vehicle mission, repeat” but this isn’t quite any one of those. And of course it was so fun as a kid to see Reznov return from WaW. I can’t believe I was able to play both games in that order and be equipped to get that reference.

Anyways then a big cutscene about the pentagon, just kind of funny to see JFK and all the assets reused for Five, plus hearing the multiplayer lobby music in a cutscene is cursed.

Then the rocket launch, a fine mission but looking back, I think it has a lot more dialogue per minute than some of the MW missions. Also this game has no qualms throwing out all kinds of attachments on guns, which MW2/3 seemed scared to do.

Then the Vietnam trench defense mission, which is fine, not my favorite thus far.

Then extracting Reznov which is extra fun since I know the twist this time! Very interesting to see that they commit to it so early on, and you can even see a dead guy in the room where you meet Reznov. Super fun!

Also this is the mission with the Dragon’s Breath shotgun, which I think I had previously misremembered as being in BO2, but maybe it also has a Dragon’s Breath mission, who knows.

Also weird that the M16 is inexplicably full auto in the campaign.

Excited to play more of the campaign, although I doubt I’ll invest in the multiplayer too much. Also I’ll have to give Five a good try at least.

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On the origins of Not So Seecret Saturday, and its future

When I first found Minecraft I was roughly 10 years old.

I can’t precisely identify how I found it - through some kid at school, or a friend of my sister, or randomly on the internet - but I remember falling in love with it.

I loved the aesthetic, I loved the dopey Minecraft music parodies, I loved the let’s plays, I loved the classic multiplayer servers, I loved the dumb jokes the community made, but most of all - I loved the game itself. It was weird, beautiful, simple, terrifying, serene, and hilarious, all at the same time.

I spent hours not only playing the game itself, but also watching videos about it, reading forum and blog posts, and poring over the Minecraft wiki - my favorite articles of which were the ones regarding the removed, unused, and planned features - aspects of the game that I could know about but never experience for myself.

Over time the game I fell in love with started to fade away - the aesthetic changed as biomes were added (though not that much, and it still looked nice), the gameplay began to suffer (a fast travel hell dimension with nothing to do in it, beds that let you sidestep the entire challenge of the game), but it was still largely the game I loved.

After Beta 1.8, the game I loved ceased to exist.

Okay, that’s a bit too dramatic. I still played the hell out of the game during the early release era - but I notably stopped playing survival singleplayer altogether after Beta 1.8. Multiplayer in any game is fun, and the newly added creative mode gave me hours of mindless entertainment blowing things up with TNT and making useless redstone contraptions. But to a large extent I stopped playing the game itself - survival singleplayer - and every time I did I found myself having a very hard time enjoying it.

Now, kid me didn’t really know why I suddenly lost all interest in this game I loved - I could kinda grok that stuff like the new hunger system and terrain system were less than stellar (likely helped by the fact that everyone seemed to hate these two things at the time - the massive open letter to Mojang begging them to add beaches back to the terrain generator springs to mind), but the nitty gritty specifics of what exactly made the game less fun for me were not yet apparent.

Luckily for kid me, I managed to find something to help me alleviate the problem - Exalm’s OldDays mod. This mod allowed you to tweak Minecraft’s features to your own preferences, literally undoing changes from various updates on-the-fly to permit you to hand-tune your personal “perfect” version of Minecraft. I used it to tear out all the changes I didn’t like - gone were the biomes, hunger system, nether, sprinting, new terrain generator, stackable food, potions, enchanting system, etc. Now, suddenly, I could play (and enjoy) singleplayer survival again - and this was the ‘default’ way I played Minecraft up until the mod stopped getting updated in 2013, around release 1.6.4.

By this time a brand new Minecraft launcher had released which allowed you to (officially) go back and play previous versions of Minecraft - with OldDays gone, I picked the version of the game closest to my hand-crafted ideal and dove right in. Thus, the primary version of Minecraft that I played became Alpha 1.1.2_01.

Flash-forward 5 years to July 18th 2018, and I’m not a kid anymore. I’ve just graduated high school, and I’m on vacation with my family in Long Beach Island, New Jersey. It’s a rainy day, so I’m playing Minecraft on my laptop. By this point I had a singleplayer world with damn near everything a player could want in 2010 - an automatic cactus farm, a mob grinder, a minecart system, vast underground mines, an automatic boat dispenser, a hulking storage room - you name it. But deep within I felt a twinge, a feeling that something was missing. I don’t remember what originally set me off, whether it was being by the ocean, or the nascient release of the update aquatic, or a memory of Minecraft classic, but somehow I started getting a bit upset that sponges were unobtainable in the version of the game I was playing.

Very conveniently, I had taken a class on Java my junior year of high school.

I dug up an ancient version of the Mod Coder Pack for a1.1.2_01, decompiled Minecraft and started poking around the codebase. After a bit of digging, a realization slowly began to dawn on me - why stop at sponges? Why not fix more things? Like fix axes not breaking workbenches? Or redstone ore taking an eternity to mine? Or boats exploding when you sneeze on them? Or, better yet, fulfill my childhood fantasies by implementing all the removed/unused/unimplemented features I used to spend hours reading about on the minecraft wiki. Realizing I could use some guidance, I asked my friend Vulpovile (creator of Minecraft Classic Creative Revived) if he might like to help me out with my new project.

side note: I planned on adding the ambient loops a full two years before getting around to implementing them... and my method was essentially the same as what I schemed up on the first day. Most NSSS features bounce around my head for a year or two before I finally implement them.

We managed to get sponges done within a day, and banged out the rest of the little QoL fixes I wanted not too long after. Soon we began going haywire - adding singleplayer commands, trying to fix the outrageously janky alpha multiplayer, optimizing the game, making food stack, making trees drop apples, underwater dungeons, whatever we wanted to do, we did it. We had already numbered our new ‘fork’ of Minecraft as ‘Alpha v1.1.3’, but didn’t actually have a name for it - the original working title was “Minecraft Redone” - a very literal description of our goals, but not that catchy. After 4 days I finally coined the name.

By the 28th, our first release was out: Not So Seecret Saturday’s Minecraft Alpha v1.1.3. We ended up released one update every other week straight on into october - in 1.1.4 we tried to beat the server code further into submission, in 1.1.5 I reimplemented the score system from survival test and added floating worlds, in 1.1.6 I tried (and failed) to improve mob AI and made sponges redstone-sensitive, and in 1.1.7 we polished our work a bit and added two more world types. Then September hit and Vulpovile and I were sucked right back into college. During winter break we managed to release some more patches to 1.1.7, as well as 1.1.8 to add McRegion and running... before the first gap.

‘The gap’, as I’m dubbing it now, is a fairly common occurrence in NSSS development - it’s happened roughly 3.5 times now, and each time it’s the same thing:

Development on NSSS is interrupted by something IRL (at first this was always college, but now it’s health conditions and other boring responsibilities of being an adult. And a bit of depression.)

I don’t get right back to working on NSSS.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the then-current state of NSSS. A LOT of time.

The more I think, the more I determine needs to be done to NSSS before I’d be satisfied enough to do a new release.

Every time I open eclipse I either get so overwhelmed by the massive backlog of work that has to be done that I either only manage one tiny portion or I give up and do something else.

Steps 2-5 are repeated ad nauseum, until...

A sudden, miraculous wave of motivation occurs. I get everything I’ve been planning over the past [weeks/months/year(s)] done in the span of 2 weeks, release the update, and finally return to making semi-regular NSSS updates.

This routine is so predictable to me now that I can nearly time my watch to it. But that first gap after 1.1.8 was special - as I sat and thought about NSSS, and what I really wanted to do with it, my goal slowly shifted. At first I had just wanted to ‘fix’ Minecraft alpha by cramming a bunch of shiny toys and knick-knacks into it to satisfy my inner child, but now I wanted something... more. I didn’t just want to make a better alpha than alpha, I wanted to make a better Minecraft than Minecraft.

Let me preface this by divulging that I’m a massive fan of Team Fortress 2.

The development history of TF2 is utterly fascinating, and if you’re at all interested in game development I urge you greatly to play through the entire TF2 developer’s commentary, but the relevant parallel is this:

The original Team Fortress was a mod of quake made by a trio of Australian teenagers who went hog-wild with QuakeC, the super powerful Quake scripting language, to invent the class-based shooter in 1996. At first they were just adding things to have fun, but over time started paying more and more attention to the actual design and balance of the game they had created. Eventually, the entire team was hired by VALVe in ‘98, and after porting Team Fortress to GoldSrc as ‘Team Fortress Classic’, they got right to work on Team Fortress 2.

Team Fortress 2 didn’t release for another 9 years.

During that time, TF2 went through a multitude of totally different designs and ideas, at some points being nearly unrecognizable gameplay-wise to the original Team Fortress, until ultimately VALVe decided to stop trying to invent something wholly new and unknown and instead to improve on what they knew - and so they essentially rebuilt Team Fortress for the third time, now in the Source engine, and with a cartoon-ier art style. And then they started playtesting.

VALVe had learnt from making half-life that playtesting often and early is utterly invaluable as a tool to aide game design. After all - how do you know how something is gonna play until you’ve played it? And how will it play for people who are totally unexposed to it? A developer already knows all the game’s mechanics and how they work - how would a lay-person discover them all for themselves? Which mechanics would a normal player use in ways the developers never intended? There’s no way to find this stuff out until you hand your game off to a stranger and wait to see how they break it.

And so VALVe, through constant playtesting, tweaking, and fiddling, honed TF2′s design and gameplay to a point where, while not totally perfect, was absolutely better than the original Team Fortress. And aside from the new artstyle, the omission of grenades and bhopping, and the medic becoming... well, an actual medic, very little had changed of the core gameplay beyond little tweaks and nudges.

That’s what I wanted NSSS to become.

I wanted to make Minecraft into a better game than it already was through little tweaks and nudges - an adjustment here, a rebalance there, and a few new features where a gap exists to justify them.

During the first gap I did manage to release some moderate patches to 1.1.8, fixes for things like the busted FastRender port and proper textures for all the dye colors, as well as the first release of the NSSS launcher. But all of these were just tide-overs for what I really wanted.

In summer of 2020 the first gap-and-a-half concluded with the release of 1.1.9, which added Creative mode, Sponge Armor, and Ambient loops. All of these features were things I had spent years brainstorming, tweaking, and revising before I was finally happy with them - and when they finally released to the public... they were good. By now NSSS had started to accumulate some following, and the positive feedback to 1.1.9 was notable - it turns out that people like things that are carefully thought-out and designed! Two weeks later I released 1.1.10 to patch over some more things and finalize gold touch, and then I set my aim on the largest hulking problem NSSS has faced since day 1:

Multiplayer.

The original ‘legacy’ NSSS server was accidentally based off of a version of hMod for Alpha 1.1.2_01, but our problems with it would have occurred regardless; the Alpha server SUCKED. Within a day of poking around the code Vulpovile and I came to the conclusion that Notch had taken the Classic server and stapled infinite worlds onto it to create a horrible abomination.

Mobs would randomly turn invisible, Redstone would only work at certain Y levels, Doors would open halfway, you would randomly die of fall damage for no reason, you couldn’t eat food unless you were looking directly at the floor, if you checked a furnace while it was smelting something it’d break the timer and waste fuel, you could dupe items in chests by clicking on them fast enough, tools could be repaired by dropping them on the ground and picking them back up - it was a nightmare.

Vulpovile and I both, quite rightly, came to the conclusion around 1.1.8 that the legacy server was unworkable. We started trying to write our own , new server from scratch, but that went nowhere - too much of an uphill battle. Once 1.1.9 came along, I decided to do it ‘the easy way��� and just take a later version’s server and downgrade it to alpha - the winner was beta 1.7.3. I had hoped to finish by 1.1.10, but found myself in a deeper hole than I expected, so 1.1.10 was shipped with no multiplayer and I made 1.1.11 into the “fix multiplayer” release.

1.1.11 took over a year to finish.

God what a nightmare. It did not take me very much time to get simple interoperability between the NSSS client and the Beta server, but certain bugs quickly emerged as gordion knots: if someone sneaked they would crash all connected clients, opening a chest crashed the game, crafting recipes were one slot to the left, your armor would shift one slot down at random times, and vehicles were possessed by demons. The sheer amount of bugs I had to work through to get this update out was mind-boggling, to a point where I actually opened 1.1.11 up to a limited group of playtesters for several months before full release just for the sake of trying to eliminate every bug possible. Ultimately, the pre-planned release date of September 18th, 2021 (exactly eleven years after Alpha 1.1.1, the first seecret saturday) snuck up on me, and I panickedly released what I hoped was a relatively bug-free 1.1.11: it wasn’t! While multiplayer was far, far better than it had been in 1.1.9 and prior, singleplayer had become riddled with bugs, namely pertaining to inventories and creepers. I quashed most of them in later patches, but the armor shifting bug still isn’t totally fixed in multiplayer - if you die and relog without completely closing and reopening the game, your armor still shifts one slot down. I have no clue why the hell this happens.

Something that started happening during 1.1.11 that would foreshadow the next 2 years of NSSS’s development was a trend wherein I would gradually feel more and more trapped by the feature set of the update I was working on, and would increasingly wish I was working on the next update instead - this sucked for motivation and made 1.1.11 take even longer. That next update was going to be one that would add Seasons and Dynamic Weather to NSSS - an update which has been in progress for almost two years.

1.1.12 is still coming along, don’t worry, but I can guarantee you that once it’s out, I am never doing another massive, year-long-wait update for NSSS every again. Updates will return to being smaller and more frequent - the way it should be! Expect further ranting in a later post.

-DirtPiper

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A letter to the Uncharted Series

I remember being being eight years old, and watching my brother play through Drake's Fortune on our brand new ps3 on our fancy new projector-screen-tv and just being astounded by the animation and story at the time. I specifically remember complimenting the water animation (ha) and hating Elena (I'm so sorry my queen, I think I saw too much of myself in you and therefor hated you for it).

I remember being ten years old, and begging my brother to watch him play through Among Thieves because I adored that first game so much. That opening train shot took my breath, and proved to me how much camera angles can increase tension in movies. Snow scenery has always been my favorite and I genuinely believe it's this games fault for rewiring my brain so young. That introduction of the Yeti creature still haunts me, and the puzzles and scenery were gorgeous. I taught myself how to play just so that i could do the online portion and have more content (didn't realize the controls were inverted until I was hours in and finally realized that up was down and left was right and that was why I sucked so much ass ha). I remember playing the online multiplayer for hours, forcing my school friends to come over and double-team the story-mode co-op portions over and over until we had them all memorized word for word.

I remember being twelve, and buying the art book for Uncharted 3 before it even came out, and reading it page by page, just to pause before I was spoiled to the plot for the next one. I remember begging my brother to buy it for me, and he did, and by that point I had replayed the 1 and 2 campaigns multiple times, and taught myself my inverted controls and being so freaking ecstatic. I remember there being this Uncharted 3 Sponsorship with Subway back in the day, and casual cosplaying Chloe to go get a marinara sub, which looking back is pretty cringe, but like I was so happy because I got to keep their plastic cup with the cover artwork on it. I remember loving that you could now throw the grenades back. That feature in itself changed the multiplayer experience so much---I remember grinding my way up to level 75 online even through I was still shit at it, but I just played it that much. I would spend hours of my life on it after school. Get two or three matches in before dinner.

By the time the fourth one came out, my family didn't have the money for a PS4 and my brother had long since moved out for college. I didn't have a way to really play it, so I just waited. Avoided spoilers like the plague, and somehow managed to avoid everything except Drake having a kid (because someone shouted it at a Drake cosplayer at comic-con back in like 2017).

Today, eight years late from when it came out, I just finished watching a play-through for A Thief's End and all the emotions are hitting. I'm so glad that Nathan Drake got a satisfying end. A happy end. That character meant so much to me growing up and while the writing quality of the older games is certainly a little flat looking back, they were so important and life changing to me.

I guess I just wanted to like say thank you Naughty Dog for giving me that infatuation with a game series when I really fucking needed it. Nostalgia for childhood and all, I hold it in my heart with such fondness.

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