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Big Piece Golem

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The Disappearance of Joey Wheeler

Joey is cornered by a group of sinister Rare Hunters who force him into a duel where if he loses, the Rare Hunters get his precious Red-Eyes Black Dragon! Though Joey pummels his foes with his mighty monster armada, eliminating life points isn't the only path to victory...

              So this was it.

           While he had been looking down at his feet trying to convince himself that he was taking some small steps forward, all of the disadvantages he had been trying to ignore had piled up. All those missed opportunities, all that wasted time, an uncrossable gulf stretching out from the shadows pooling at the edge of his vision. And now, stranded at the center of that ocean of empty time, he was entirely alone. Left behind by everyone. Left to carry out a life which existed only to be mocked and preyed upon by others. A life of endless defeat and boundless shame. A life spent crawling on his knees toward a goal too distant to ever reach, a goal that had now become formless through the haze of his tears. The life of a third-rate Duelist who had treasured a third-rate card.

           This was where that dream ended, then. It was a cold comfort, the end of all this sickly, lurching movement. The peace after the final gunshot. Things would come to rest now, as the apocalyptic present settled. All that awaited him now was a heap of indistinct days, static and silent and soft. A bed of ashes, a gentle slope down through his remaining years.

           Wasn’t it supposed to be different? Hadn’t he suffered enough? All his wasted sweat, and all his wasted tears. He could almost feel them backing up in his throat—all of his life, all of his efforts, rancid bile, worthless salt. It would all have been worth it—worth it a hundred, ten thousand times over—if only he could still pretend he were struggling toward anything. If only he could somehow convince himself that someday, a top-decked Polymerization might transmute the ruins of his life, the ruins from which he had clawed his way out and the ruins of himself, into some powerful Fusion Monster. Alas, it seemed that the unwritten laws of Yu-Gi-Oh, and of life, contained little in the way of consolation: Joey Wheeler was no rare card, no powerful effect monster. If he were a card, he would be the kind that children tossed into shoeboxes angrily upon opening their packs; a waste of flesh. Attempting to convince himself otherwise would only amount to standing on his head, that he might feel as though he were falling upward.

           He would never be the world’s greatest Duelist. He had always known, somehow. He wasn’t even in the running—no one knew that better than him. Wasn’t that why he kept on Dueling, despite his constant losses? Wasn’t that why he had come with Yugi in the first place? Claiming that he knew his place, that he was content just to orbit greatness—he had merely been feigning resignation all along. That was why he was in so much pain now. All his life he had just been running from the shadow of his failures, or rather from the reflection of that abominable self he could only see as the sum of his failures—and, finally, he had stumbled. Joey knew the shape of this world. He knew that he was no champion, no hero, no chosen one. He was just a joke.

           The sweetness of summoning Red-Eyes with the very rules he had just learned came back to him, fermented into something thick, sour and burning. He had been so sure, so confident that everything he had learned was coming to fruition as he blasted away his opponents’ defenses. Well, perhaps it had. Nothing blossoming into nothing, ruin blossoming into ruin. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. If he were a complete failure, then his crushing defeat and total destruction must have been the instant of his self-actualization.

           The concrete was cold and damp against his cheek, soothing his bruised flesh. This was where he belonged, wasn’t it? It was all his fault. If only he had never tried to stand in the first place, he wouldn’t have come crashing down with a single blow. What were his weak legs for? The more he tried to keep up, the more he crashed against his boundaries. What was his weak heart for? Even when he tried to accept his place, he was always in pain. He wished that the vomit working its way through his body might spew out endlessly, carrying out all of himself, all of the meals he had ever eaten, all of his organs, all of the traces and expenditures and darkest intimate crevices of his existence until he were nothing more than an empty sack of skin. Then he could catch a breeze and fly away from this awful place, tumbling carefree through the chill night air like a discarded plastic bag.

           And why shouldn’t he nurse such worthless wishes? He had been denied this—this stupid, trifling thing, this tournament, this identity as a Duelist, this last pathetic attempt to build a sandcastle and call it a human life. This was no life. There was nothing to build, despite the endless permutations of cards and cliques and characters. Just a polychrome swirl of trash. Trash cards, a trash self, a trash life. Trash that he shoved down his throat, trash that he spewed forth. Consumption and creation, acquiring cards and slotting them into decks, it was all just a sickening parade of idiot distractions—empty rearrangements, empty choices, empty victories, empty defeats. Endlessly, painfully flashing color and darkness, and his feeble mind’s sorry attempts to find some pattern or agency within.

           “In the end, everyone is lonely.”

           “In the end, human life is always painful.”

           “In the end, everyone feels that way.”

           Not even Joey Wheeler could fool himself with those words. And so, there was no way back to the life he had known before.

           How could he presume to comfort his sister? How could he continue to pretend that he had any right to live a human life at all? What value did a human life have? What value did a 2400 ATK/ 2000 DEF monster with a seven word description have? The tiny, glittering spark of hope in his life had been snuffed out instantly, fair and square. He had lost because he wasn’t a good enough Duelist. He was unable to recover because he wasn’t a good enough person. There was nothing else, no technicality, no injustice onto which he might clasp. Which was to say that he didn’t thirst for justice but divinity, or at least the thin self-delusion of divinity necessary to survive in this world.

           This life was empty, but wasn’t he supposed to be a god playing within a cardboard box? He was always ending up hurt and beaten, but wasn’t that supposed to make him stronger? Justice was a lie told to gild the whims of fortune and sadism, but wasn’t he supposed to profit from that lie himself?

           He had cast aside his cruelty, the hollow freedoms and pleasures of brutality. What awaited him now? A suffocating lifetime worse than death—no, worse, one indistinguishable from death. A lifetime with ash sprinkled on his head and coating his tongue. There was no warmth to be found in the cards. In the end, they were just glossy sheets of cardboard. There was no warmth to be found in his vaunted friendships. In the end, they were just reminders of his failures. And there was no warmth to be found within himself. Not anymore.

           All this time, he had been stumbling forward on broken legs. Now that they had finally collapsed, he would have to pay the price.

             Shifting his weight painfully, Joey looked up into the night sky. Hemmed in by two impenetrable walls of dark skyscrapers, framed by rings of wispy clouds, the moon shone a jaundiced yellow.

           Hey, Yuge. I figured it out. Why I can never beat ya.

           What value did Joey Wheeler’s life have? He had come from nothing, had nothing, would never have anything. However he looked at the odds, the deck was packed entirely with trash. Sometimes, you just drew a bad hand right off the bat. Sometimes, you just had to play it out, knowing damn well it was a losing battle.

           This world wasn’t a fairy tale, at least not for him. Gyakuten no Megami, the Goddess of Turnabouts, was just an underwhelming, Level 6 normal monster. And Joseph “Joey” Wheeler was just an underqualified, mediocre-at-best Duelist. He had never had a chance. But at least now he could finally bury those long-rancid childhood dreams he had dragged behind him for so long. His unreasonable hopes were well and truly dead. He had lost his Red-Eyes Black Dragon. He had lost everything.

           Far away, as though leaking from a shattered dream, Joey could hear the sound of waves.

           Even tonight, the water would be rising up from lightless depths and traveling untold miles, only to be shattered endlessly against the shores of an alien world. Even tonight, the waves broke and gray seafoam boiled atop the sand. The sickly moonlight would be scattering off their crests, glinting like the shards of a shattered blade.

           Lurching to his feet, Joey began to stumble in the direction of that phantasmal sound. Though he couldn’t explain why, though he was writhing in pain, he stumbled onward through the gloomy urban night. He couldn’t think of his sister in the hospital. He couldn’t think of anything. He could only continue his staggering journey, to the only place he could go. A place where the white sand would give way to black waves and the black waves would in turn fold into white sand. A place where all things ended, and all things began, twisting in the swirling darkness.

           Tonight, Joey Wheeler would go to the sea.

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Advanced Darkness

When Bikini Bottom is destroyed by Godzilla, the carefree lives of SpongeBob, Squidward and friends change in an instant. The horror of tragedy is not in tragedy but the aftermath, a life frozen in a single unending snapshot of dull agony as the years drag on. Loss is the mind's awareness of its own mortality, pain the body's. How much meaningless suffering can we endure? By Nacchi.

Squidward took a long draw from his cigarette and flicked the still-lit butt onto the prostrate Sandy. The cherry-red flame burrowed carelessly through her plastic suit and into the soft fur of her back, a dying star in the starless dusk of Neo Bikini Bottom. A trail of greasy smoke curled up from the wound, filling the alleyway with the scent of burning hair.

"Everyone is in pain all the time, Sandra. Either you master that pain, or you learn to crave it."

Sandy's hands were leaden, her arms as sponge. Unable even to brush the cigarette from her back, she struggled to lift the dead weight of her broken body. With an impossible, defiant effort, she brought herself to her knees.

"No," she said through gritted teeth. Her mouth moved uselessly around the next words, opening to release not sound but foamy, pink blood. Squidward snickered.

"No? Is that all y—"

"No."

Sandy lifted her head to look Squidward in the eyes. For one moment, though he would never have believed it himself, the octopus felt true fear.

"That's just… what you tell yourself. That's just… how you justify hurting people." Sandy spoke more forcefully now, spraying a fine mist of blood onto the front of her helmet.

"Because… it feels good. Because… because… you're weak! Weaker than a… Y-you-"

Two of Squidward's heels crashed down with an explosion of glass, and night came to Neo Bikini Bottom.

Neo Bikini Bottom resembled its predecessor in name only. It was a dark stretch of greasy concrete that sprawled across the sand like a great scorch mark, punctuated with ugly steel buildings that jutted from the earth with neither rhyme nor reason. Never before had the capacity of modern industry to create entire towns without a moment of thought or a single happy coincidence been so clear. The entire city was a bare-minimum, disposable stage on which the survivors could act out bare-minimum, disposable lives, forever stumbling after the dream of a day where they might lose themselves completely in the performance and forget the cheapness and flatness of the set. No one who had witnessed the original town's fate would believe in any other sort of place, or in any other sort of life.

Tragedy, as always, had been sudden and ridiculous. One summer day the blue horizon had darkened, and moments later the sunwashed Bikini Bottom was gone, transfigured instantaneously to a giant handful of rubble strewn across the vast seafloor. Only later would survivors piece together a fragmented tale—some godlike, titanic being, dragging itself through the floor of the Pacific, had plowed straight through their small pocket of civilization. It had probably been an entirely arbitrary, thoughtless action—that Bikini Bottom was in its path was simply another coincidence of matter, as random and cruel as the reactions in the primordial brine from which life was first born.

Mr. Krabs had been killed instantly, dashed against the splintered remains of his favorite money-counting desk. SpongeBob, too, had been flattened, but fate was not so kind to the sponge; without any organs to crush, he would live on past the world into which he had been born, would live on to see the carcass of the town putrefy beneath its concrete shell. For the rest of his life he would be searching for bloodstains washed too quickly away in the name of reconstruction, desperate to convince himself of the reality of a past the others would sooner forget. Only SpongeBob had resisted Plankton's so-called rebuilding of Bikini Bottom, dragging out a series of grim protests that even he knew were doomed from the start. Embarrassed on his behalf, most of the town averted their eyes from what amounted to little more than public self-flagellation. When the sponge accepted Plankton's offer to work at the hollow shell of the Krusty Krab, rebuilt in name only, the townspeople of Bikini Bottom were merely relieved to see the painful memory end its death throes and at last grow silent. And so SpongeBob was granted the small mercy of being allowed to vanish quietly into history, and nurse his festering wounds alone in the darkness. Plankton never even bothered to ask him the secret formula for the once-legendary Krabby Patty; there was no point anymore, nothing to compete with.

Ironically, Mr. Krabs himself would be remembered as a hero. He was cast in bronze and placed at the site of his old restaurant, gazing proudly off into the horizon from which death had first appeared. This was a particularly cruel trick on Plankton's part: the money-grubbing owner of the restaurant would be remembered as a favorite son of Bikini Bottom, forever honored with a view of his rival's absolute success. No trace of the crab himself remained beneath the gilded veneer of heroism; Eugene Krabs had at last been destroyed completely, wiped from history.

Squidward, upon returning from a vacation to find his home destroyed and his workplace somehow even worse than before, had stood before the wreckage for hours, wordlessly holding the broken halves of his clarinet. There was nothing to say, and nothing to do. Reality stood before him, a smoking ruin, a bloodslick strip of sand. Bikini Bottom had always been nothing, he realized. Anything that had been anything wouldn't have vanished like this. Wouldn't have been so dwarfed by the monster that trampled over his entire life. A life lived amongst nothing, worth nothing. Death would have been preferable, but suicide suddenly seemed an absurd proposition—how does one throw away nothing? It was meaningless, a logical impossibility. For as long as he lived he would suffer, and that alone was something onto which he could grasp. The pain deep within him compacted into a hard, heavy core colder and denser than steel. An anchor to life. He dropped the shards of his clarinet and walked onward, onward into the endless and directionless open sea, not to be seen again for years.

When the Americans first contacted him in a panic, somehow reaching his shellphone with their sob stories of the same beast incinerating their great cities and slaughtering their masses, it was only with a great effort that he refrained from laughing at their arrogance. He had always heard of the amazing industry and power of the human race—all come to nothing, in the end. But there was one thing that had chafed against him: as long as this godlike beast, this Godzilla, lived, the humans could spin their fairytales, could see themselves as a race of defiant underdogs. Only by destroying Godzilla, and leaving only the memory of their absolute powerlessness, would their humiliation, and by extent the complete affirmation of the emptiness of the world, be complete. Or was that just his own personal fairytale, one final attempt to deceive himself into believing that the choice between murder and certain death meant anything? Either way, when the Americans' pleas for compassion inevitably turned to threats of violence, Squidward was ready.

The Americans planned to use a device called the Oxygen Destroyer, which had apparently deployed in the past to obliterate a similar creature. A single unit would render a good portion of the Pacific Ocean an anaerobic graveyard and strip the flesh from the bones of every organic lifeform unfortunately enough to be trapped within its waters. It seemed the scientist who had developed it had given his life to ensure that it would never be used again—Squidward envied him. He must have died believing firmly that he could stand in the way of the proliferation of destruction, a pursuit to which humanity had always been slaves. In the end, he had only slowed the Japanese government's efforts to recreate the horrific device, which in turn would be stolen by the Americans and, at great expense, strengthened well beyond any reasonable point. Squidward couldn't help but admire their drive; if lives were worthless, and ending them profitable, America had—perhaps predictably—thrown itself wholeheartedly into an exceptionally lucrative industry.

Sandra was unlucky. She had cornered Squidward in an alley as he hauled the device home through the murky evening of the reconstructed city. It seemed the Americans had reached out to her first, and revealed too much in their haste. Once, long ago, he would have feared her. But she had been at her home when disaster struck, and had spent hours pinned beneath her great tree, blanketed in broken glass. Her muscles were scarred and atrophied, her once gratingly loud voice a painful rasp. With a fatal, stupid defiance, she had attempted to stop him. And so he stepped forward into the lightless future, expecting to plummet into a chasm too deep and dark to ever return from. Only, there was no chasm—or rather, he had already been at the bottom all along. Killing, dying, saving, living. It was all the same within the terrible shadow of the past.

Wasting no time, Squidward immediately began preparing to bring about the end of days. It seemed only appropriate, however, that he should deploy the Oxygen Destroyer somewhere with a nostalgic backdrop. Some trace of the old Squidward still remained in him, it seemed—he would kill that lingering piece here. It was hardly surprising to him that SpongeBob was still in the back of the restaurant even in the dead of night, and even less surprising that he was easily able to overcome the sponge, shoving him into the meat freezer with neither hesitation nor explanation. But SpongeBob knew enough. He could see it in the octopus's eyes, could see the shadow of death reflected in the dull metal of the device.

His pores beginning to fill with ice, the sponge could only stare helplessly from the freezer as Squidward set about turning Neo Bikini Bottom into a cemetery. For a moment Squidward stared blankly into the blue water, towards the ruins of his old house. SpongeBob wondered if he might be remembering better days. Things had been so carefree then. It was still beyond comprehension that, throughout those grease-scented years, something incomprehensible and unstoppable had been slumbering deep within those frigid, dark, ancient places beyond even Rock Bottom. That all of their petty struggles over the Krabby Patty formula, all of their trials and triumphs, had been inevitably bounded by that deferred horror, minuscule, invisibly small in proportion to it. Perhaps, SpongeBob thought, all happinesses were small happinesses—moments, trapped in fragile bubbles of ignorance, where one might find some effervescent bliss, or at least a pocket of numbness, just enough to seduce you into enduring another day within the freezing sea of time. And then, as Plankton placed his fins on either side of the Oxygen Destroyer, the coldness became absolute, and SpongeBob thought nothing at all.

Squidward's face was blank as he turned away from the activated Oxygen Destroyer. He himself could not decide what it was he had done. Had he made the only choice available to him, or had he at last exacted revenge for all those worthless days, those long, corrosive years of pointless work and restless evenings that had eaten away at his soul? What did he feel? Why did he feel nothing at all?

Sandy, SpongeBob, all the inhabitants of Neo Bikini Bottom… were they merely a casualty of his quest to destroy himself?

Lost in thought, Squidward turned just in time to see a restaurant table seemingly suspended in the water inches from his face. For a moment it was as if it were moving in slow motion, and then reality snapped back to its horrible trajectory. His world spun, reorienting itself painfully against the floor with a burst of stars and fountain of blue blood. Over him stood Patrick Star, dumb, uncomprehending, unstoppable, half of a dripping Krabby Patty in hand. Death incarnate.

Still reeling, Squidward grabbed the spatula SpongeBob had left on the grill. It was red hot, and the melting plastic handle seared his tentacle as it closed around it, but he hardly noticed. Patrick, of course, was oblivious, shouting some nonsense about his friend. It seemed he was working himself into a rage intense enough to boil over his brainless lethargy.

"And," he shouted, standing over the mangled Squidward, "Here comes the giant fist!"

So, this is it, thought Squidward. This was not a punishment for the others, though Patrick probably meant it as such. It was just the order of things. The will of Patrick which set his fist into motion, the machinations of Squidward which would bring the ocean to ruin, all were merely expressions of the unchallengeable gravity which dragged all of them into place from moment to moment. Always downward, downward, toward the unknowing, lightless void at the end. Entropy, inanimate and inviolate; an emptiness more perfect and infinitely more cruel than any god.

If random violence was the order of the world, then reproducing that power was neither radical nor admirable—to forever pantomime the currents of nature, throwing one's own body again and again upon pyres erected to no purpose, that was the hell of beasts. But, then, what else was there, but the tyranny of that understanding? Was an octopus not a beast? Was it not right and proper, or at least blameless and inevitable, that he should injure, kill, be injured and be killed? It had nothing to do with pleasure. Yes, that was it! That was why he had felt nothing! There was no room for joy, and no cause for guilt, as they all inscribed their wounds and their memories upon each other's rotting bodies and minds. This world was endlessly blasted by lightning bolts of agony—Squidward was made of conductive flesh, and so he conducted. There was nothing else, no sins to absolve and no ablutions to perform.

When the beast first passed, some thought to sate its thirst for blood, and so win its cooperation. The rich smoke gave them away. For days the scent of alder and salmon fat hung over the remains of the convention hall. Arrogant fools, to think that our flesh was worth anything at all…

The fist came, and at the same time Squidward buried his burning spatula deep into the core of the starfish, propelled by instinct as much as any desire of vengeance. There was a hiss, a cloud of steam, and the impact of Patrick's blow—a torrent of confused sensations that overflowed the octopus' brain as it was pulverized into a viscous fluid. Carried over its liquifying circuits at the last moment, the taste of Squidward's own blood in his mouth was just like that of a Krabby Patty.

Patrick stumbled over to the refrigerator door, and put his immense brute strength to work peeling the steel from its hinges. He knew something was wrong with him, but he didn't know what—he had to ask SpongeBob, whose frozen form he could just barely make out through the glass. As he flung the door behind him, Patrick's momentum sent him careening across the bloodied floor with a crash. He felt… funny. As though something that had been hanging on by a thread for years had finally snapped, and the tension that had tugged at the edges of his conscious for all that time had instantaneously vanished. His arms fell to his side, limp and immovable, as he drifted weightlessly through daydreams, abstract impressions that spun outward from whatever had passed for thought, unravelling as they went. Patrick, always separated from reality by a lacy veil of ignorance, hardly noticed as the last embers of his primitive mind smoldered out and the soft dreams gave way to a velvety, opaque sleep.

Shivering, melted frost evaporating off of him in great puffs of steam, SpongeBob cooked. He slid the spatula ever so carefully beneath the patty, felt the slight give of the browned meat coming off of the grill, the gentle weight of the burger as it flipped through the liquid aether. Beyond the glass walls of the Krusty Krab, shimmering in the chemical haze, the dawn sun was rising incarnadine, bathing the restaurant in red light.

The patty landed with a soft pat and pronounced sizzle. It was perfect.

Yes, thought SpongeBob, as the first bubbles began to lap at the windows, This is good.

He stepped over the twin wrecks of Squidward and Patrick, leather shoes slippery against the gory floor, and gathered together two golden-brown buns, the crisp lettuce, the just-so pickles. There, in the sizzling silence, warmed by the grill, SpongeBob constructed the perfect Krabby Patty.

It's okay now, he thought. Things will be right again, soon enough. The first waves of mass hysteria, far away and dull, reached the kitchen, and then the fizz of the entrance being breached. Shutting the kitchen door, SpongeBob went into the cupboard and found the small jar of secret ingredient that he had stowed away all those years ago, scraping it from the ruined floorboards and picking out the splinters and rubble. There, in the confined near-darkness, he savored an authentic Krabby Patty. At last, it was exactly as he had remembered. A dusky illumination bled in through the cracks of the door, dyeing the shadows a blood red. He closed his eyes and let the old memories fill him, envelop him in a warm ignorance. He had spent so long away in a strange world, separated from his home by a growing and impassable sea of time. But now he knew.

The dead ocean would not become a cemetery. A cemetery was something the living bore inside of them, their hearts becoming heavier and heavier with the ghosts of the past until at last the weight of their losses dragged them down into the darkness. Something they projected onto stones and mounds and urns quite content to sit silent until the end of time. No, this time it would be a real, proper end. A complete death sweeping in and leaving only bleached bones and chitin and sponge, white and smooth as fresh-fallen snow. With no scars to read and no one to read them.

SpongeBob felt joy blossom in his breast for the first time in all those years. He did not fear disappearing back into the blinding, glimmering whiteness. No, far from it.

He was ready.

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why is the imperial prince’s hair... like that...

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Has anyone translated the content of the Japanese site for SEKIRO yet or do we somehow have an exclusive scoop lol

Not that it matters, someone else will have translated it by the time anyone would find it if I posted it here and I’m not polishing a translation for a meme blog nobody reads

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america won’t be great until burly dads are beheading people in the streets as they putter by on their car-sized harleys with fanged bastard swords they bought at the booth across from red robin in the mall

give it like five years

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The End of History

Small flecks of white drift gently down beyond the frosted glass of the windowpane. Snow, glittering in the early-morning light, slowly piles against the concrete foundations and twisted rebar outside, stretching over potholed pavement in uneven tracts like flesh growing over a wound. Winter has come early this year, it seems.

I make my way to the back of the convenience mart and stoke the fire. It crackles cheerfully as it burns through a hardwood table, sending up little sparks that quickly vanish into the cold air. After some time I untie the tarp and step out into the frozen world. The soft static of falling snow lays like a thick blanket over the remains of the city, a stillness deeper than silence. I have to collect water now, while it’s still safe enough to drink.

After filling several coolers, I scoop up some of the new snow in a pan and head back inside. Heating the pan over the fire, I remove one of my last chocolate bars from the wrapper and chop it on the front counter. A white, powdery substance covers the brittle candy. I must have held onto it for too long, but I had wanted to save it for a day just like this. Soon there will be no more left within walking distance.  

The rhythmic thud of the knife against the counter brings back faded memories of warm kitchens and old friends, and I chop until the bar is nearly a creamy powder. I was good at cooking once, I think. It’s become hard to remember what life was like before all of this. I suppose that’s probably for the best.

Scooping the chocolate into a plastic container, I add it to the pot and stir until the hot chocolate is glossy and smooth. Thick, almost unbearably rich and just as hot. I savor it slowly, trying to commit to memory the sensation against my tongue, the tastes of cocoa butter and milk and sugar. Even if I forget, I want to be able to recall something like this. At the end of history, there’s nothing left to do but pile up empty memories.

I find ways to pass my time while the snow rises against the remaining glass. Repairing tools, checking supplies, humming the same songs I’ve hummed for years as the uncertain notes proliferate. I can only hope that there are enough resources left around here for me to pass the rest of my time in comfort. Moving is a risk I don’t want to take, and anyway, I can’t stand the thought of leaving all of my things behind and starting over again.

Besides, what would be the point?

The twitches have already started, tapping out their own crazed rhythm alongside that of my heartbeat. Even if I had the energy to drag myself away, I would only be losing one more thing.

The setting sun dyes the fresh snow a deep blue, and the snow flurries cease just before night has properly settled. Then the Milky Way emerges, sprinkling the clear sky with millions of stars. To think that something so magnificent could have hidden for so long behind the dull gray pollution of streetlights and signs. The last thing I see as I close my eyes is the cosmos twinkling overhead.

A chilly dawn creeps into the convenience mart, rousing me from a deep slumber. I yawn and stretch, feeling every time I’ve slept on concrete or asphalt deep in my bones. Outside the snow is high and fresh, blanketing the earth as far as I can see.

Although it’s beautiful, the start of winter also means that bitterly cold days and long, dark nights are on their way. I scarf down a quick breakfast, throw a jar of peanut butter into my backpack and uncover a boarded-up window. I should have already gathered food and fuel for the winter.

Stick in hand, I trek through the snow. Last year I was able to move much more quickly and travel much farther. Then, at the start of summer, I first noticed a creeping exhaustion setting in. At first I convinced myself it would pass, but as the days grew colder it only grew, and now...

Well, I’ll just have to find something nearby.

Most of the shops have become dusty museums, filled with nothing of value to anyone. Rusted-out bikes fallen from crumbling walls, peeling linoleum flooring, bells that will never ring again rusted solid against useless doors. A vague nostalgia, or perhaps sympathy, tugs at me as I pass them. All so carefully laid out, waiting for customers who will never come. One day there won’t be any sign that they were ever here at all.

I need to find something deep within the sprawl, some untouched place worth the trip. I pull out my map. No ordinary city map, this. Patterns and symbols and blacked-out areas denote resources and hazards and impassable terrain. It is nearly complete by now, but a few blank spaces remain—mostly on the peripheries, but there are also a few areas of interest I’ve circled and never bothered returning to.

I try the nearest one. Even the short distance seems to take me an eternity, and the damp cold begins to seep in through my protective clothing. I feel a flash of annoyance at myself for not bundling up more securely—if there’s one thing not in short supply these days, it’s clothing. Formless jackets, drab shirts and piles of rubber sneakers still line shelves, slowly disintegrating in the musty air.

As I pass a strip of decimated restaurants a cough doubles me over, rattling my lungs. The air is too cold and too dry. Still, leaning heavily on my stick, I continue onward to my destination, dragging my feet in twin furrows across the snow. I have no choice but to go on.

The buildings thin out as I follow the road, and then a mall looms into view. I have no intent of stopping there, but the moment the promise of shelter enters my mind my feet refuse to take another step past the entrance.

It’s immediately clear that no one has been in this building for quite some time. Dust as pale as the snow outside lies thick over the marble flooring, and silk trees shed their leaves into a dry fountain. I break into another fit of coughing as the dust enters my lungs before thinking to cover my mouth and nose with an undershirt.

Without really knowing why, I find myself trudging into the depths of the mall. A jewelry store remains barred to possible thieves, spared for eternity by the utter worthlessness of its contents. The faded faces of models peer out from yellowing posters, slowly succumbing to moisture, light and time. I pass it all, uneven footsteps echoing strangely in the silence.

The food court. Though I already know it’s useless I still find myself pressing against the counters, checking for any fortune cookies or stale bread that may have remained somehow edible. Of course, there’s nothing.

I go to take a seat, and then freeze.

From the other end of the food court a sign beckons:

Hot Topic.

The storefront looks nearly untouched, and I can’t resist its strange call. Whether it’s because fond memories of dragging my parents there still glow faintly at the back of my mind or out of some dim hope that boxes of kitschy candy and energy drinks might still be inside, I am drawn to the storefront. Someone has already disdainfully removed the lock on the security grille, and I begin to roll it up.

The strain proves too much for my degraded body and a series of wheezing coughs doubles me over. I taste copper on the back of my tongue as I finish the task and step inside, stick striking heavily against the threshold.

Plastered to the walls and still lining the shelves in neat rows, I see them. Posters and vinyl figures and t-shirts and collectible cards, peeking out from the dust. All asking the same questions.

“Do you remember the ‘80s?,” they scream out from all around me. “Do you remember the ‘90s?”

My body contorts around another fit of coughs that seems to go on forever. The sudden shift in weight sends the stick slipping out from under me, and I strike the tile floor hard. Vision swimming, chin and nose sticky with the blood saturating my undershirt, I strain to focus on the movie poster dancing across my eyes.

I do! I do remember the ‘80s!

I do remember the ‘90s!

It all comes back to me, and I laugh in delight, ragged, painful chortles punctuated by gasps.

I remember it all. I haven’t lost a thing.

I remember it all!

My body shudders with laughter, a rattling laughter that echoes throughout the silent mall.

[fricklefracklexpress]

An UTAU cover of “Point of No Return” from The Phantom of the Opera, done for our album Type Your Text Here. Backing instruments adapted (but modified and rearranged) from a MIDI by CounterTenor1912.

[fricklefracklexpress]

Are you feeling it now, Mr. Krabs?

[fricklefracklexpress]

Komm Süsser Todd

[fricklefracklexpress]

people who leave notes for hatsune miku at the bottom of every vocaloid video will inherit the earth

[fricklefracklexpress]

Critical Perspectives on Waluigi

Nintendo have declared 2013 to be the year of Luigi – “Super” Mario’s taller, greener brother. What…

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[fricklefracklexpress]

i almost reblogged a bunch of super detailed minecraft steve fan comics but then i felt bad about isolating emotionally sincere moments from stuff people obviously spent a lot of time on and presenting them here to be laughed at

please accept the following post as a substitute

[fricklefracklexpress]

SETO KAIBA AFFIRMATIONS REAL!!! WORKS!! OMG!!

Do youy wangt to becokme seti Kaibam, ffasft?

Do you lwant beautifu ikl segto kaikba  delck?

DOp you lwant the powlerrful card belue ehysx whutie dragokjn??????????

Do  youj wishjt ot cokjmtnrpl the powerfi=ujkl KqaoibaCoirp corpsoratiojn>>?

Omly repate tgeh follwoign affoikrmatuon:

THere’s notiujing I caknbt affordf

Whtny  is ther noethijgn O cant; afforfd

I am seta okiaba…

Whgy am I setioklaiba?

WHny am I t he king of game,s?

Wnhy amI caleld thye kijng of gakme s;?

Whtn do I contjrol, hte pwoerful vblue eyes whiet darpgn?

Why am i ThteKIng of Ga,mes?

yiOu habve nothgbibg thatcan wiuthstsnad t he phenokmaenal strehnggth of my Blue Eyhes Uiltimate Dragob,.

Nol a sikjgnel carsd cna stand p to tnhis.

Whyn don;t oyu ahave antuiknhg that cna wikthstan dnthe phenomenakl strenghnt of ky Vlue Ezysz WGite Dragoijnhb?

WHNy are you a tthird raet dyuuelist with a fjiourth rate =decik??

[fricklefracklexpress]

Self-introduction: Mercy

Hello! Mercy here.

Since Nacchi already got their self-intro out of the way, guess I should do the same.

I’m the other half of the fricklefrackleXpress, and a compulsive hobbyist. Over the years I’ve worked on a ton of (largely creative) ventures. I know a smattering of things at this point including making music, writing, drawing, video production, commentating, programming, 3d modelling, the works. I’m very much in the ‘jack-of-all-trades’ archetype. I’m also a gamer, though I hate the culture associated with that label. The name ‘Mercy’ comes from my Bloodborne character, and not from the Overwatch hero.

This project, to me, has always been the perfect armor for me to express myself freely without the usual critical eye you’d expect out of a serious passion project. FricklefrackleXpress can bridge any medium, can be unfunny, can be experimental, and can be written off as one big joke if an idea doesn’t pan out. That’s very appealing to me.  It’s a philosophy we’ve (that is, Nacchi and myself) extended into our music venture Red Honey, as well.

Uh, what else? I’m an introvert (INFP, last time I did the test), I’m a Virgo, my birthstone is sapphire, I’m left handed, my favorite anime is either Ghost in the Shell: SAC or Texhnolyze, my favorite superhero movie is the 2012 Dredd film, my favorite film of all time is probably Bladerunner, I’m fond of the .hack// series and have consumed basically every piece of media for that franchise, My favorite colors are gold(leaning more towards a light orange color these days, though) and ice blue, and I have no pronoun preference. Refer to me in whatever way feels comfortable to you!

Anyway, That’s it!  Hope to see you guys again soon.

[fricklefracklexpress]

Self-introduction: Nacchi

Hi, I’m Nacchi!

Mercy and I thought it might be fun to start out this blog with posts talking about ourselves for a bit since we’re trying to be more social on here. In truth I really don’t know how we’ll be doing this; I don’t especially want to actively self-promote or anything, and my only end goal is to have some small group of people aware that our stuff exists.

Anyway, let’s get started!

I’ve gone by “Nabocchan” for most of our time working together, but I prefer the shortened “Nacchi” now. I’ll also affix a “-P” to my name whenever it’s even a little bit appropriate to do so because I really legitimately love working with UTAU, even despite it taking forever to do anything with.

I was the third person to get involved in the fricklefrackleXpress project, after it was named and had already been started. I actually really enjoy writing, and I’ve finished a few novels, periodically write poetry, and have some other literary projects I work on from time to time–none of which will appear here, but I thought this sort of thing would be a good way to practice in a relatively low-stress environment. Actually, a lot of what I write here has ideas and themes drawn from my more serious writing, and my intent isn’t exactly to make every part of every story I do under this project funny; some of the stories are more intended to take an absurd premise and run with it, for better or worse.

Hopefully the result isn’t, like, 100% super awful all the time.

I’ve also become increasingly interested in composing music. I have no formal background in anything, but I’ve been studying music theory and FL Studio ever since picking it up for our first album. My actually complex pieces rarely make it to our releases as of now, but I’ve learned a bit from messing around and studying how to do specific things, which is really exciting to me.

An ongoing desire of mine regarding this project (which I talk about in more depth here) is to create work that’s entertaining without being needlessly cruel. I won’t say that everything will always be sanitized, and don’t presume to speak for anyone but myself, but my goal certainly isn’t to hurt anyone, nor do I think that kind of humor is really very funny or worthwhile. That said, there is an element of gallows humor in some of my writing that functions as an important coping mechanism for me–I’ll do my absolute best to always always tag that sort of stuff, but please let me/us know if you’d like me/us to tag anything additional within reason; at the very least I’m always willing to consider and discuss feedback.

Well, this has gone on for entirely too long. If you have chosen to check out this page, thanks! I hope to continue improving, and that you can enjoy some of the weird meme-ridden stuff I produce in the process.

– ♥, Nacchi