#sharpswriting

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Chapter 5!!!

The fifth chapter of vm! is now up! I am tired and have no energy to write a blurb nor to scrounge up art... But Hey It’s A Dang Fic!

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chapter 3 of vindicate me! just dropped, which means that now is the perfect time to start reading a villain buddy comedy starring the flux baddies and a handful of ocs

be gay do minecraft!

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A board meeting goes well; everything else does not.

technically I should’ve been working on D&D stuff, which is of course why I ended up writing an entire Slate fic.

the boy is back and he’s doing some murders

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My name is not Slate Camille. I never worked for your company.

Welp, finally worked up the courage to post this! This guy is Slate, and he’s an Overwatch character I’ve been working on for a while, basically ever since the Sombra short came out and we found out about a mysterious conspiracy with their hands in almost every agency in the world.

Slate’s got nothing to do with that, though. He’s just an ordinary foot soldier. Nothing special.

(backstory under the readmore! i’ll post his mechanics along with some alt skins, next time.)

A plain-looking man with perpetual dark circles, Slate doesn’t seem like much at first glance. He’s a hard worker, sure, often pulls overtime shifts to help other people out, but his work - and his combat skills - are solidly average, landing him right in the rank-and-file of most other background people. He’s pleasant to be around, but not really interesting enough to make friends with; the long and short of it is, he’s normal.

Or so it would seem.

At a young age, the college student who came to be known as Slate Camille excelled in his classes, though he went otherwise unnoticed. A certain cabal picked up on this, and offered him a job; hoping to step out of the shadows, he agreed.

Rather than step out of the shadows, however, Slate ended up over his head in the very center of the Eye’s operations, being trained as the ultimate assassin and spy for their purposes. Somewhere along the line, it was decided that his glasses had to go - instead, Slate was fitted with state-of-the-art eye implants that constantly recorded audio and video. (The implants didn’t exactly fit as well as they could have, hence the dark circles - they’re bruises.)

Slate’s former identity was washed off the face of the Earth, scrubbed so thoroughly that not even a kindergarten trophy remained with his old name on it. He was trained in every weapon, from the improvised to the ridiculously niche, and stripped of his personality. He learned quickly how to make almost anyone like him as a coworker but not as a friend, how to get things out of anyone by threat or by friendship, and how to be a perfectly average person in any place. Slate was no longer a person, but instead a weapon.

The man joined companies unnoticed, gathered data, and left - someone so stunningly average that even the few who remembered him couldn’t recall the shape of his face or the color of his eyes. With most companies, he simply left after a while, but some were different.

Occasionally, the Eye would decide that a company was doing a bit too well off, and that it needed to be fixed. Slate would be ordered to do something - steal data, kill an important employee or possibly even a building’s worth of combatants. And, of course, he would - often using the weapons of the guards against them, leaving no trace behind. He’d return to work the next day, and for months after until somebody else was blamed for the crime... and then a few months after that, he’d inevitably vanish.

There’s no record of any Slate Camille in any system in the world, but really, why would there be?

He’s just an ordinary foot soldier.

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Longer thing on Story Mode b/c I watched the trailer again.

It looks interesting. First word comes to mind is “fluid” - the lighting’s nice, the movement of people is well done. It looks like a Minecraft animation, which is honestly exactly what I expected. The mouth animations seem a bit weird, though; they’re kinda too static compared to everything else.

The other thing I’m thinking about - actually, the main thing - is plot. And to be honest… I’m not sure about it.

Now, from the trailer itself we get characters, and to be honest they’re not all that. It’s already obvious that they’re supposed to be the Order of the Stone, so that’s a bit of a letdown from someone who likes their chosen heroes to, well, not fulfill roles and just exist as a group.

It also looks like a heavily male-dominated cast, which is a bit of a letdown since I was hoping for some great female characters. The only one here - who doesn’t have a name as of my writing this - seems neat enough, though. They showed a command block at one point, which is something I’m rather curious about. Hopefully they’ll be related to the plot directly, because it’d be a unique direction to go in.

Telltale mentions the Farlands in their blog post about this game, which is odd considering that the actual location hasn’t been in Minecraft proper for aaaaaages. They also specifically mention the pig, which… probably means something, to be honest.

There were no Herobrine references in the trailer that I caught, by the way. Hopefully they’ll include a nod to that mythos somewhere, since it seems to be a pretty big part of what happens when people think “Minecraft story”.

Conclusion: It looks like it’ll be a very pretty game, but with a bit of a weak plot.

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WBJ DAY 7: TECHNOLOGY

Craftlands time!

The Craftlands is what I like to call pseudo-medieval - that is, you’ve got your traditional monarchies, melee weapons being the bread-and-butter of combat, et cetera. Except - “false” medieval - you also have some more modern gadgets. Let’s go over some stuff.

As a general rule of thumb, the Testificates probably invented whatever it was first.

Typewriters exist.

Guns exist, but due to the fact that they’re relatively unreliable and rather expensive, they haven’t really caught on.

On the other hand, magical weapons are everywhere. You want a sword that can turn invisible? It’s out there. A spear that turns into an umbrella? A stave that collapses into something that fits into your pocket? A gigantic but light hammer that can propel you somewhere alarmingly fast? Someone can make it for you.

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a poem

tonight i ate the last apple cider doughnut the one you were probably saving to have with a morning coffee

it was flat and no longer puffy it had been sitting on the counter for a little over twenty-four hours the sugar on it was falling off but it didn’t stick to anything

it looked sad and tired like me

tomorrow you will probably discover it and ask me about it and i will lie and say it’s your failing memory

but the point is this i did not eat that doughnut because i wanted it (appetite is the last thing i have right now)

what i hope is when you find your baked good gone and you are sad about it maybe you’ll feel then

a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of the hurt you caused me tonight

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WBJ DAY 6 - ARMS AND ARMOR

Craftlands time! Hoo boy do things exist.

Melee weapons are pretty common in the Craftlands, to the point where you can mention the most ridiculous kind of weapon and someone will probably have it. Swords are rather common, but fisticuffs are preferred by a lot of people.

Guns do exist, but they’re old - think flintlock rifles and such. Most people prefer bows and crossbows to guns, and elementalism is generally the most favored ranged weapon.

In addition, speaking of elementalism (which I’ll go into more detail on later), all 10 elements have a slightly different style of fighting.

As for defending, some people wear armor; most people prefer to rely on their own abilities to defend themselves, however.