#rayala writes

[welcomebacktohoimicraf]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Happy holidays, @follow-the-compass-home ! I hope you like your gift for the @mcytblrholidayexchange ❤️

[welcomebacktohoimicraf]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Grian sighs and shakes his head. And for good measure, hits Sam lightly upside the head with his palm.

"Ow," Sam says.

"You deserve that."

.

.

.

(Pairing: Grian/Sam, Grian & Sam)

[welcomebacktohoimicraf]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

For you, @galaxy-minecart  <3 A short little story about our beloved Team Rancher, and a little adventure out in the Slime Rancher universe for the @mcytblraufest gift exchange! (posted late because I’m a dummy who forgot about timezones sorry,,,,)

tumblr version under cut:

From the diary of Jimmy Solidarity from the Ranch by the River, of some peculiar findings.

Journal Entry #102

            Tango and I found him just outside the fence just before sundown, looking at the chickens. At first we thought he was a tarr with his dark sludgy body and glowing eyes, but as we raced after him in a panic we realised that that first assessment was wrong. First of all, he didn’t attack us. We had our vaccum-packs in our arms, splashing water at the fence and absolutely soaking some of the chickens, and upon seeing us he didn’t do that characteristic roar that Tarrs do and open its mouth to try and swallow us. He just… ran away. Not like a naughty tangle-slime that bounces in surprise when you catch eating something it shouldn’t or a fire-slime that bobs and slides around on its ashtray. No, this little guy simply pointed its mouth to the ground and disappeared. The cliffside where our ranch is built on the limestone formations of a dried-up reef, and it had no trouble simply melting into the pores of the rock and leaving not a trace of itself behind. Both Tarrs and regular slime species leave some of their goop behind. That can only mean one thing: this isn’t a slime. It’s a new species entirely.

Yours,

Jimmy

Journal Entry #103

            The next week we tried asking some of the other fellas if they’d ever come across a critter like that on their own ranches before. We’re all stationed on the DL Planet Belt, with each pair on our own planet to reduce over-stressing of a single ecosystem, so it was the perfect opportunity to also host lunch. Just a light one, you see: most of us eat plenty enough for the physically-demanding work of the ranches, but it’s never good to eat a heavy meal midday, y’know? Tango gathered up some silver parsnips to put in the spread for the sandwiches and Grian’s carrot cake recipe is just hands-down amazing. Even Joel had a good time, I think, though he did spend more time walking after our stony hens calling them names. We had a good laugh at that! Tango brought up the question to Etho then, and this is how it went:

            “A what now?” Etho chuckled, glass in his hand as tango flailed his hands around and tried to explain.

            “A Not-Tarr! You know, those little fellas that bury into the rock when you try to go near them and have little green goopy bits stocking out of their heads? Never heard of it?”

            Etho scratches his neck and chuckles: “I…no? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

            “Ugh, whatever. Cleo, do you know anything about it?”

            Cleo frowns. “Are you sure one of your tangle-slimes didn’t just escape their pen and camouflaged into the grass, because knowing the two of you that’s definitely possible.”

            “Yeah, Jimmy.” Scott pipes in then. “I keep telling you that you have to cut the grass around here or…”

            And blah, blah, blah, on it went. The whole conversation suddenly turns into a gardening lesson. Granted, it was genuinely a very useful gardening lesson and I’m definitely taking into account their suggestions on the heartbeet patch tomorrow morning— but I don’t think they took us very seriously, you know. I think they all thought we were messing with them, or we were seeing things. But Tango and I both know what we saw that day. We know it’s real, and we’re not going to stop until we find it!

Yours, 

Jimmy

Journal Entry #103

            Alright, so progress on the new critter is going a bit slow, but it’s still progress nonetheless! Like Tango says, we gotta let it come to us, first. Maybe it’s like a lucky-slime, that only appears when it wants to and we just have to find it on our own, or maybe it has specific spawning conditions we aren’t aware of like how phosphor slimes only appear at night. In the past two weeks since we first saw him we’ve only seen him three more times: another time by the chickens, then another time hanging around near the entrance to the cave part of the ranch, and another time near the quantum-slimes near Tango’s laboratory building. He says that he just so happened to see it from the window in the middle of his slime science, walking in circles around the corral and sort of “herding” the quantum-illusions, kind of? 

            Tango says that it went something like this: when one of the quantum’s illusions escape the corral and start drifting away, it tries to follow it and lead it back into the corral in a futile effort. The critter’s antennae would wiggle, as if detecting disturbance from its surroundings, and that's when it would turn and move the other way. It does a similar bobbing movement as other slime travelling leisurely across the ground, but occasionally it would wiggle its antennae again and find something else to follow, like a butterfly or a bird. Eventually it got bored and burrowed into the ground again.

            Tomorrow I will help him set up some cameras around our whole ranch, and maybe even some out in the outposts just to see if it will turn up anywhere else. It seems to gravitate towards our corrals and pens the most— not so much the crops or fruit trees or other wild slimes— so it’s definitely not looking for food. But then, what’s it doing? I am unspeakably excited about this. I will update again when I have news.

Yours,

Jimmy

Journal Entry #104

            Hello, Jimmy’s Journal! Tango here! I am writing in you in place of my partner who is out of the house at the moment and because I have amazing news:

            We have a name for the little guy! And we got him on film! Jimmy and I camped out inside the house watching the cameras when we saw him. He was on the docks where we set up that pool for the puddle slimes near the beach. It was a pretty rainy day so we didn’t exactly expect to see him there, especially since the water kept lapping up and down. One of the puddles accidentally flopped out of the pool (we checked up on him later; he’s fine, just in a little tizzy), and— get this— our friendly little fella picked him up and put him back in! 

            That confirms my suspicions of him. He must’ve seen either me or Jimmy do that during one of the past storms and remembered the action and copied it. He hangs around the rowdy slimes a lot too— our pink-tangle mixed breeds have been pretty contained lately, likely because he’s been hanging around. It’s like he’s our own personal guard dog, or a warden, or something. So that’s exactly what we’ve named him: Warden the Friendly Creature! (work in progress)

            Jimmy went out on the shuttle to go buy a nametag from Grian. If we can get him nametagged, we’ll have a way to track him down and gather more evidence of him.

-Tango

Journal Entry #105

            Has anyone ever told you about how tedious field work is?

            And I don’t mean field work as in, watering crops and raising chickens. That’s just the everyday morning chores of an amazing rancher like me, and I’m good at these things! I mean like the kind of field work that Tango and the other research guys do, because oh my goodness I can’t even begin to describe how much pain it is.

            The first step is to acquire a little bit of the subject: Warden, as we’re calling him. If Tango’s correct, and he’s actually an evolved form of a slime rather than a completely separate species, then that means getting some of his bits will be easy. I laid out one of our old carpets on the ground and disguised it with some dust and grass outside the laboratory, where we see him frequently on camera. Sure enough, a little bit of goop was left on the bristles when we went to check it later that day and we scooped it up in a little baggie and brought it in the lab. 

            I’ve been with Tango for about four years now, but I still have absolutely no clue what half the machines in here do. He put the goop in a test tube-looking thingy, poured in a sample of the water from the slime sea, and then put that vial into an even bigger vial, and around and around it went into just about every device in the room. Tango tried to explain it all to me— something about centri-things and vortexes and piping— but unfortunately my brain is just a little bit too pea-sized to comprehend all of this on a short notice. I’m just a rancher, man! I don’t know machines, I came out here to far, far space because I wanted to take care of some slimy little fellas and build up a ranch. Tango’s amazing, dude. He can do everything I can and more.

            Anyway, so a ping! noise sounded, and the big screen in the corner of the room turned on. Tango was absolutely ecstatic. He pointed at the lines of colours and boxes, and turned to me in excitement.

            “We were right,” he said. “Warden is a slime, and he’s the first one of his kind discovered here.”

            I was so amazed. He pressed some more buttons and the computer whirred to life again, the screen this time opened to a picture of a family tree.

            “He’s part of the rock family of slimes— so the radiated-slimes from underground, the regular rock-slimes on the surface, and the like. All of them from the Indigo Quarry. Specifically here—” he points to a dotted line that distantly connected ‘Warden’ to ‘Boom Slimes’ on the chart— “that is where he evolved from.”

            “Huh,” I said smartly. It was a lot to process at once. Tango must’ve seen the confusion on my face and grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze.

            “Sorry, sorry, I’m just…I’m so excited right now. I don’t even know where to start.”

            I squeezed it back. “You should be! This is a big deal, for you especially.” I glanced in his eyes and they were filled with wonder. The two of us together, in that little laboratory room, late at night, sharing a special moment. 

            “You’ve wanted to research slimes all your life. Not just on plort tech. Not just on economics and outsourcing. We accomplished so much on this ranch together, and now you get to pursue a new research for yourself. I’m so proud of you, you know.”

            “Yeah…”

            “We should probably get back to the ranch, you’ll have a big day tomorrow.”

            He suddenly stopped and looked at me. “‘You?’ What do you mean?”

            “Well— aren’t you going back to corporate to tell them about this, show them the film and the evidence? You’ll get funding, gather a team, go in search for Warden’s family out there in the wild—”

            “Oi, oi! Hang on now,” he cupped my head in his hands and looked at me. And I couldn’t look away, couldn’t stop staring right back into his soul. 

            “I ain’t doing this without you, my buddy. You’re coming with me! We found Warden. We are going to look for him. No stinkin’ corporate is getting involved in any of this until we’ve got a whole hoard of them!”

            “Really?”

            “Absolutely!” And he grabbed my hand again, and led me outside. It was proper nighttime now, and the stars in the sky were numerous and colorful. The lights of the lamps, and the floating phosphors were gorgeous.

            “We’re doing this together, you and I.”

            And let me tell you, man. That was only the beginning.

[welcomebacktohoimicraf]

In my head, I like to think of the DreamSMP being bigger than it actually seems.

Most of the server congregate near the spawn chunks—the community house, nether portal, the prime path connecting everything—all of it merely a few minutes on the sprint key away. Most of the infrastructure are either small and cluttered, or grand and unused with no in between. So little of the SMP's original infrastructure and landscape have survived, you'd barely even be able to find a naturally spawned oak tree.

But from a story standpoint, I think its definitely much bigger. More alive.

The land that used to be L'manburg was actually quite small on a minecraft scale, but was surely more interesting than it let on. Perhaps it was a trading port province across the channel from the Greater DreamSMP, which is why it was so heavily targeted by corrupt cops.

Maybe the hotdog van wasn't only a van. It may or may not have been part of an abandoned sandwich restaurant near the center of the city that had been left to rot, until one day when a man called Wilbur Soot climbed into its boarded windows and started recounting his plans to sell drugs. It was the first White House: the only one commemorated.

Tommy's base is a roadside attraction. Like its owner, it's never static—its shape, materials, and rooms always constantly changing from how much it gets griefed and pranked—and it reads like a dearly loved flower patch a wombat burrowed into one day and refused to budge from ever since. Perhaps it's a curiosity to the travellers on the Path; it's never the same when you pass by. Just be sure to replant any seeds after stealing from the little garden outside.

Or what about Snowchester? A single-island country small enough to seem unthreatening, but its citizens are few and elite. The chieftain owns a nuclear silo, partially funded by the Innit Hotels Corporation. His husband owns a mining business; the wealth earned put into a commissioning a mansion from an Egyptian luxury real estate agency. The regular working-class citizens are hush-hush about the details: they till the potatoes fields and keep their cottages warm. They, too, have secrets.

Ultimately though, there is one thing that connects them all: the Prime Path. It isn't just a long row of wooden planks, but a highway—built to assist travellers regardless of political affiliation. It's humble and precious despite the odd creeper hole here and there, and repairs are a community effort. The SMP just isn't complete without it.

[welcomebacktohoimicraf]

Ooooooh boy i'm an absolute sucker for any form of historical fiction drama and now all I'm thinking about is a Regency AU wherein Lmanberg, in the wake of their new found independence but severely war-torn land immediately begin searching for alliances with other countries, and the antarctic empire reaches out and asks for their prince beloved (Ranboo) to marry the heir of Lmanberg (Tommy) for an alliance between them. And of course it's tough cus General soot doesn't want to give up his younger brother figure but lmanberg is war-torn and absolutely drained of their resources bc of the war. And despite the peace treaty, there's nothing stopping the greater dreamsmp from attacking them again so he makes a hard decision and agrees to the marriage reluctantly in exchange for a hefty dowry.

And of course tommy huffs and puffs indignantly about it bc he's not just gonna get married to any old sod, but he's a compassionate soul at heart and he'll do whatever it takes for Lmanberg. So on the day the antarctic fleet arrives at the harbor to send for him he tries not to cry as he says goodbye to everyone, except when he tries to say goodbye to Tubbo and they're having one last drug session together, Tubbo dumps an extremely strong sleeping potion into his drink, hands tommy to fundy and niki to take care of him, takes his coat, and boards the ship disguised as the heir of lmanberg

So philza the high adviser of the antarctic throne meets the heir's new fiance at the harbor; a scrawny boy with pale blonde hair and clothes too large for his back and large green eyes. immediately he's suspicious and morbidly curious because the rumours describe tommyinnit to be tall, blue-eyed and sharp-tongued, but eh rumours aren't always true so he takes the boy and doesn't look back. And none of the lmambergians, not even wilbur realize something was wrong until a few days later when a very groggy and extremely confused tommy barges into his office demanding to know where Tubbo is

But Tubbo is long gone; the antarctic empire is protected by a strong magic border that only the native people can navigate that no one from the outside enters or leaves. He is, by all accounts, a hostage now. And it's the fate he sealed for himself with no turning back now

[welcomebacktohoimicraf]

DreamSMP au where Tommy is the star quarterback of the football team and Tubbo is the head cheerleader at DSMP University, and Ranboo is the poor old sod who's just stuck in the middle of their rivalry

[welcomebacktohoimicraf]

Hello Dsmp fanfic writers!

As much as I love consuming fan content from the talented people in our community, it's just slightly painful to log into ao3 looking for things to read and be bombarded with absolute abomination of tags every time

This may just be a symptom of a lot of dsmp fans being fandom youngens or having migrated from wattpad or smt else, but learning tagging and posting etiquette is just courtesy when entering a new platform, so my tip of the day is this:

Keep your relationship tags to the minimum.

Not every character is important to a story, and that's completely okay. Same goes with their interactions. You're basically spoiling your own fic at that point so just let your writing do the talking.

So smt like this...:

Short and sweet; not too cluttered and immediately tells you the important ppl in the story. Leaves space for additional content tags for triggers/warnings/trope preferences etc.

...might be better than this:

Takes up an entire screen and discourages the readers from looking at your other tags. This either means you lose a lot of potential readers, or that your readers they might miss potentially triggering tags. You don't need to put so much emphasis on every possible rendition of a friend group m8s

The tagging system isn't perfect as there isn't a uniform way to clarify cc! or c! versions of the smp members, so the tags are fairly inconsistent with the rpf formats vs fictional character format and can get sketchy with the boundaries n all,,,, but for the most part it's pretty easy to handle.

[welcomebacktohoimicraf]

From the other end of the field came the devil himself. Coach Schlatt lifts his shades, eyes alight with the almighty expression of a man devoid of sleep.

“Do warm-ups first, then we’ll have a mock drill in thirty. Sapnap and George get to pick the teams. If you need me I’ll be in the parking lot checking my stocks. Now move your asses.”

“Aye, Coach!"

“Man, they’re really serious about this practice session, huh,” Ranboo murmurs to himself. Wilbur hums in acknowledgement, but otherwise doesn't look up from his guitar. "I mean, I knew you guys were pretty into football 'n all but this is...wow."

“They lost to COG Tech Uni last season,” Wilbur strums his guitar. "Too many rookies in the team 'cause they weren't able to recruit early in the year and all the seniors graduated. George wasn't too happy about it.”

“George doesn't seem too happy about many things.”

“No, he does, he just hasn't found the optimal napping spots on campus yet.” Phil says, lifting his eyes from his phone. It couldn’t possibly have been readable anyway, considering the midday sun was shining down directly on the outdoor bleachers of DSMP's football field.

Ranboo huffs, perplexed. "I still don't see the big deal about all this. It's just football— who cares?"

As soon as the words left his mouth, a shadow appears on the ground from behind him, and he feels a chill go down his spine as he turns around to face it.

"Oi" says Tommy Innit, star quarterback of the DSMP football team. "What the fuck did you just say?"