#+everything else about you and your history ik about and the shit you cover up like. it kinda seems like its compiling into one thing.

[snekdood]

anyways if nick fartez and any of his skeevy fans are spying on me online I needja to know this: no one will ever love you or like you or fuck you and its all your fault bc your a nazi. the only way you'll ever get anything is if you rape someone and you and I both know that doesnt mean shit except how desperate you are to stick your dick in someone and how much you're willing to violate people who actively dislike you and would never be around you if it was their choice. it didn't hafta be this way but you decided being a ugly skeevy nazi was more important than anything, which is sad. honestly jump off a cliff, save yourself the time.

[not-me-simping-for-blasty]

another helping of living w/ bakugou thoughts:

pls i am so sorry, i feel like i bombard y’all with these constantly, but u don’t understand, he literally lives in my brain full time

- if you’re rolling your sleeves up, to wash your hands before dinner, he’ll whack your hands away and do it himself. very much “you’re takin’ too long, idiot. i wanna eat already. let me do it.”,, don’t be fooled tho, you could do it in 2.5 seconds and he’d still open his mouth. bc it has absolutely nothing to do with u and everything to do with him wanting to be close to you

-ik he watches the mha equivalent of the history channel. i just know it. dude is a grandpa at heart, n im so confident he would 100% sit down and watch a 3 hr docu on like, old weaponry or some nerdy shit

-bakugou is annoyingly arrogant, but only about things that don’t matter. like, he’ll fully sit in front of you and tell you he’s stronger/faster/smarter in passing conversation,, but when he does actually impressive shit??? the man clams up. absolutely clams up the second you praise him, trying to brush off whatever ridiculous feat he just pulled to protect u with a “It’s not that big a deal, shut up about it already, dumbass.” 

- pls mans is an absolute simp. u ask him to do something and he’s on his feet in a second. ofc he’s complaining but he’s also then following that up by doing things you didn’t even ask him to do. fan behavior honestly.

-when you’ve had a bad day, he’ll make u food and throw blankets in the dryer for u. don’t expect much verbal comforting from him, bc obviously, but he’s pretty good with actions. you always feel a little warmer after he’s wrapped you in a blanket n fed you something ungodly spicy

- i have absolutely no basis for this but ik he secretly watches kids movies. like, if it’s animated then he’s there. ofc no one is allowed to find out about this ‘embarrassing’ behavior tho, except maybe you. maybe. if you accidentally happen to see it bc he’d never tell u himself.

- he’s a beast to wake up in the morning, but he’s a lot more easy to convince if u pet his hair. or rub his back/shoulders. maybe even kiss his neck. look, u cannot tell me that he doesn’t want to be absolutely coddled in the morning- especially when he can get away with it so easily. 

-bakugou always pulls ur legs into his lap if u sit down next to him. pls he’s so weird, he’ll just like, tap his fingers on ur calves absentmindedly while he’s watching tv

-he probably created a playlist of songs ur ‘allowed’ to play around him. meaning, it’s only the songs on ur phone that he likes 🙄

-bakugou always takes his work phone calls outside. like if his phone rings he’ll just stand up n walk tf out the door to take it. even if it’s cold. u ask him once about it n he just “Work stays at work. This is my fuckin’ home. Now shut up about it already.”

-you’ve never once seen this man wearing socks around the house. don’t ask me, i cannot explain this whatsoever, but i just kno this man walks around constantly barefoot 🤢🤮 unfortunately.

-he’s like, the most functional person ever in almost every aspect, but the stuff katsuki is bad at?? pls he is hopelessly bad. like, lets say art stuff. omg he just doesnt have the patience for it, okay, so say goodbye to any dreams of cute lil couple’s crafts. like, he’ll sit there while u do yours, but his will look like utter shit

- during the week, katsuki is either at work, training, or at home. pls, he works so hard during the day that i highly doubt he’s anything but an absolute homebody during the work week.

- bakugou gets pissy if u re-arrange any of the furniture on a whim. pls he likes comfort and familiarity n if he stubs his toe on the stupid coffee table one more fucking time, he’s going to scream

-its a rare occurance,, especially bc of the crazy hours he works,, but bakugou rlly likes making dinner for u to come home to. he just likes to feel like he’s taking care of u tbh

-he still goes to bed at like 8:30. or thats what u think, but rlly he just goes to sit in your room and have some time to himself for a bit. as much as he loves u, he prob still needs some alone time to recharge

-bakugou takes meticulous care of any plants u have in the house. like he’ll water them on a strict-ass schedule, n preen them when necessary. pls the way he’ll curse them out if they even dare to wilt under his care?? very much “What the hell, you bitch? ‘m doin’ everything fuckin’ perfect! Grow already!”

-katsuki is such a little bitch when he’s sick. he’ll be running like a 103 temp, brain literally melting, and still trying to get up and work out. the only way u can get him to chill the hell out is if u take a nap with him. ofc that means u always get sick too,, but hey- lil sacrifices right??

-he never lets you get the door. like, if there’s a knock n neither of u knows who it could be,, pls he’s on his feet so fast. waving u away n looking thru the keyhole w/ sm suspicion

-he has his spot on the couch, n u will not find him sitting anywhere else. like, that’s his spot. u better pray for anybody who mistakenly takes it

-bakugou doesn’t like dirt or grime, so he won’t allow you or himself, to sit on your bed with clothes that have been outside. like, even if you’re just sitting on top of the covers, he’s gonna throw a fit and demand you change your clothes first bc “No way in hell am I gonna let your dumbass dirty up my bed.”

-katsuki rlly likes when it storms outside. he’ll go sit in front of the window and watch the rain, sipping on a warm drink while he waits for more thunder. 

-living with bakugou is incredibly frustrating, bc he’ll just show up with new skills all of the goddamn time. like you’ll be like, “hmm i’d love to remodel the bathroom someday”,, and the very next weekend bakugou is meticulously re-tiling the bathroom floor by hand, probably also painting the walls in a new color, maybe even installing a new sink just to spruce it up. n then he’ll just present the entirely new, upgraded room with such weird nonchalance that it pisses u off. pls and if you watch him while he does these little projects, with all the weird precision and skill he suddenly gains?? pls you’re sure he must be possessed by the ghost of a craftsman

- when he hangs out with the bakusquad, he’ll drag you along every time. he expects you to sit with him the entire time and act as a social buffer?? basically, someone’ll ask him a question, one he deems stupid and therefore not worth answering, and bakugou will just look at you expectantly. he’ll just stare at you blankly, hardly even blinking until you pick up the slack and answer for him. you call him out on this many times, but it doesn’t matter. it doesn’t change anything. he does this over and over and over again

-bakugou gets really unsettled when you guys fight. like, he can’t sleep and he’s snapping at everybody, and is somehow more aggressive than usual. he always wants to just make up already, but the pride in the way won’t allow it

-he’s a weird stickler about intended furniture functionality?? like, the table is for eating, and the couch is for watching tv, and then only way you’re gonna get him to mix the two is if you ask him rlly rlly nicely

-finally- i have no basis for this one, but ik it in my heart: bakugou has a very intense fight with your thermostat nearly every single day. he swears up and down that it never ‘behaves’ for him, but every time you check it, it’s working perfectly fine

--/-- 

ahahhaa sorry y’all for the super random spam today,, but here were are back to our regularly scheduled bakugou programming,,,, bc idk if it’s obvious ur honor, but i love him

[still-a-morosexual-help]

OBEY ME! CHAPTER 51 DETAILED SUMMARY + THEORIES

MC goes out looking for them, in the music room the record player starts on its own. MC ends up wondering the empty house on their own, ending up in the library. They reminisce about a conversation with the brothers where they were debating who the real killer of the OG HoL family was. With Asmo & Beel (Beel because he can never imagine family killing each other despite how bad things get and Oh Beel you Sweet sugar plum welcome to the human world~ it be like that sometimes) saying it was the servant, Belphie saying it was a stranger (cause the oldest and the servant are too obvious, and maybe the oldest wasn’t killed cause he was not home at the time) and Satan & Mammon saying it was the oldest brother (with Mammon defending his choice by saying that as they are always the meanest and nastiest it’ll be in an oldest brother’s nature, but also that in the story the oldest never got along with his siblings), Mammon’s argument makes Levi join team oldest. MC chooses who the killer was (it was the oldest c’mon! the guy bought a gun days before a similar model was used to shoot and kill his entire family, and he was seeing arguing with the servant the day before the murder). MC then gets a call on their DDD, and you can choose whether it’s from Satan or Simeon.

MC tells whoever calls what’s going on, while cats shriek in the background of the call (poor Simeon…) One cat is climbing and scratching Satan, Da Vinci and Michelangelo are fighting and the call is kept. They remember more times in the HoL; Lucifer trying to get Belphie to stop napping in the library cause it’s too cold and he’ll get sick, Asmo cooing over how adorable Belphie is asleep, Mammon & Levi arguing about money (Levi: give me my money back Mammon: Chill. Soon.  Levi: What’s soon? In 30s? In 1min? In 1min 30s? Mammon: is getting your money back on your bucket list and you’re wondering if you’re gonna croak soon?   I dunno I thought it was funny…), Satan yelling at them to find another place to fight cause he’s reading, Beel watching a gory horror movie and devouring snacks, MC is asked if they like horror movies. If they say they like it Lucifer says it’s good that they don’t scare easily, Asmo says they can handle any situation with cool and calm, Levi says they’ve already conquered 7 of the devildom’s most powerful demons so really what’s there to it, Mammon says that either way MC has nothing to worry about, Lucifer agrees adding that they’ll always have the brothers at their side (why is this so sweet?????). MC pines for them rn and tries to reassure themself only to satan to ask them what’s wrong and if they missed him that much (and this is the point irl where I would have taken the nearest solid object and chucked it at his head but MC’s made of stronger stuff)

Simeon is there as well and Satan is covered in powder (he’d been testing a new drink flavour which pissed all the cats and now he’s covered in the flavouring. Simeon says that wouldn’t have happened if there were no cats in the café in the first place. Satan says they are an improvement. Simeon – poor fellow – still has no idea why Satan thinks he wanted a cat cafe), MC screams wtf and they explain that Barbatos had dropped by and they’d asked him to portal them to MC and why hadn’t they done this in the first place? I mean ik they probably all wanted to spend time together via a mini vacation and all 3 of them are probably too scatter brained to think of Barbatos on their own but why did no one else suggest Barbatos? Barbatos had apparently being fuming cause he’d gone to the café to take a small break from his man-child of a boss and his other 24/7 duties only to be placed in charge of a café full of manic cats. Satan thinks being stuck in a cat café is heavenly, Simeon disagrees and says Barbatos will find a way to get back them. MC tells them calm the fuck down cause your brother and your son are missing! Satan says he is calm, heavily implying he was seconds away from losing his shit. Simeon changes the subject by saying that the imitation HoL looks like a carbon copy of the OG, Satan says the books in the library (where they currently are) are different to the ones back home and that the ones in this house are more to satan’s taste than the ones back home. Simeon notes that they all seem to be about art. Satan picks up an odd book out, it’s old and ragged with a picture of a pink geranium on it.  The title is Ma…14-31 with the middle part faded out. Simeon stresses that they should be focused on finding the others but both Satan & MC wanna open the weird book. Simeon manages to drag them away though to search for the others and come back to the book but when he opens the door out of the library they’re enveloped in a bright white light.

They end up in a brightly lit forest, with Satan wondering tf happened and Simeon saying he recognises the place, an unknown voice asks who’s there, revealing angel!Beel dncjndsjND is MC time travelling AGAIN!? How many times are they gonna fuck up history!? Also what about Satan!? Man’s gonna lose his shit!!? Also I desperately wish MC remembered their last trip to the past just so they could be like ‘lol hey guys long time no see’ and Satan & Simeon would just ???????!!!?? Beel (who’s a gate protector angel? Something like that) asks who they are and MC (who unfortunately remembers nothing) goes “Beel!? Tf you wearing” and he goes “tf are you”, Satan is stunned silent and Simeon soothes things over by being Simeon. Beel asks Simeon who MC and Satan are and he says they are his acquaintances – MC and Sully…….SULLY!! SULLY !!? SULLY!!!!? Out of respect to everyone named sully I won’t say anything, ANYWAY satan has the same issues with the name Sully as I do but Simeon whispers and tells him he doesn’t know if they’re in the past, in an AU or something else entirely so it’d be safer to keep the name ‘Satan’ a secret. Simeon asks what Lucifer’s doing and Beel tells him that he’s at the Celestial Palace, with Michael and the other higher ups which should include Simeon. Simeon says yes but “you see these two idiots here behind me are so fucking dumb they fell into a hidden pit and called me to rescue them because they were too fucking dumb to remember that as angels they have both magic and wings” Satan has the same issues with that excuse as I do. Simeon asks about the brothers, Beel says the same as usual. Levi’s holed up in his room cause he fears he’ll be made redundant with the end of the war (so this takes place around the same time as the last trip to the past). Satan mumbles about Levi being the same even back when he was an angel, MC asks whether Satan remembers anything from when his brothers were angels, he says he has broken fragmented memories from their times as angels because he only sometimes was able to see through Lucifer’s eyes (and I just realised how similar Satan and MC are? They’re both relatively newcomers to the family, biologically they’re nothing like the brothers and probably the rest of their species (Satan being born from Lucifer’s rage and MC having a fallen angel as an ancestor), they both accidentally became part of the family with Lucifer having no choice when all the others were picked by him, they’re both cool, collected and calm but hide destructive magic, from everyone else in the HoL they’re the more normal ones but are also up for stupid shenanigans, they’re both pretty considerate and seem to show affection through acts of service – with how they look out for the others and their needs and likes, neither are scared to talk back to Lucifer, neither have met any of the celestial realm higher ups or know the workings of the celestial realm, neither have really met Lilith, they both had some kinda beef with Lucifer, they were never part of the war between the demons and angels or part of the fight before the Fall, their few memories of the Celestial realm come from either what they saw through Lucifer or what Lilith showed them, they’re the only ones in the family who are biologically related to someone else who either is or was part of the family, they’re stubborn and hardworking, and because right after the Fall and after Lilith’s death I’d imagine Lucifer being broken and regretful of what he see as his decisions - fuelled by his anger - leading to her death and seeing Satan being created from all that overwhelming anger and pain…he probably saw it as everything he did wrong manifesting in the form of a person. As I said earlier I’m pretty sure Mammon’s the one who raised Satan considering he was the one doing a lot of the heavy lifting during the early days of the fall and Lucifer would only later come to acknowledge Satan, and as far as we know he’s only ever acknowledged that he’s technically Satan’s father twice and by this point after years of the two of them avoiding the topic Satan reacts to that acknowledgment with understandable anger but at some point right at the beginning I’d bet a much younger Satan wanted to be accepted and acknowledged by Lucifer, specially after all the others did so. What I’m trying to say is that MC and Satan’s initial relationships with Lucifer were probably similar too with Lucifer being mostly polite and even somewhat protective over them but also being distant and prickly while he tried to determine whether they were a threat to the rest of his brothers, while they resented him, butted heads with him and wanted to be acknowledged and accepted by him in equal measures after everyone else had already accepted them. Also in S1, specially towards the end, MC making pacts with the brothers became less about freeing Belphie and more about proving something to Lucifer – while Satan always seems to have something to prove to Lucifer. Overall, Satan and MC have a lot of similarities and a severely underrated friendship that I really wanna explore more of – I want them coming to each other for problems that the others won’t understand them having, to talk about the few memories they have of the celestial realm, to diss Lucifer, to talk constantly containing destructive power/anger in them, just I need more of them.  Plus would Belphie also have had issues with Satan, initially? I mean imagine your older brother coming to you and saying “so your little sister died in my arms but check out this other kid I just gave birth to��. I dunno Belphie’s grief and anger was irrational thousands of years after Lilith’s death when he blamed her death on the entire human race and you know not the people who actually shot the arrow that killed her (really need to talk about this too), so I can’t even imagine what he would have been like when the loss was still raw and not even a minute after her death Lucifer’s somehow found some new sibling for them.) Right enough rambling. Back to it. Beel says he’s looking for Belphie. Mammon turns up and asks who the shit MC and Satan are, Satan is once again speechless, Asmo’s with Mammon and calls the two of them cuties – poor Satan doesn’t like that one bit. Levi asks for their names and Simeon introduces them – Mammon seems highly suspicious of them, but Asmo accepts it in stride and says ‘Sully’ is an adorable name. Satan looks like he wants to throw hands. Simeon says that he has an idea where Belphie might be and that he & MC will go find him and has asks the others to look after Sully for him. Satan immediately protests but Beel agrees and Levi drags Satan along with them, while Mammon contemplates putting Satan to work to help with whatever they were doing which Satan complains more about (and isn’t this a topsy turvy world), Asmo helps to pull Satan along and Satan screams about where exactly Asmo is putting his hands – Asmo is merely flattered about Satan knowing his name. Satan screams for help as MC and Simeon turn to leave.

Simeon is giggling evilly about Satan’s face when they left him, MC notes he looked happy, Simeon agrees – shocked and freaked out but happy. Simeon said he didn’t leave him back just to be mean but instead because Satan was curious about his brothers’ celestial realm days. MC says “yeah sure you didn’t leave him just to be mean”, Simeon laughs and insists he’s “a nice angel” in the fakest way possible. Simeon says he loves the Celestial Realm air but that this doesn’t feel like the past. MC asks him what past Simeon would be up to – Michael and Lucifer were bossing him around and running him ragged, he says that hasn’t changed since then and that the both of them are sadists at heart who love making things harder for people (Luke vs Simeon’s view of Michael are so different it’s jarring but I also have the picture of someone who looks and acts like Lucifer’s complete opposite with a sweet, sunny personality hiding a cutting, cruel in the same was Lucifer is, even prideful person underneath it all. I just love characters who look and act kind but could and would murder you in cold blood if it benefited their cause),when he wrote TSL – he wrote it after the brother’s left cause he missed them. “No offense to Luke and Satan, who haven’t been born yet but this was the most fun period of my life,” says Simeon to a person who also hasn’t been born yet (also how are angels born? We know that all though there are lots of similarities between the Celestial Realm & the Devildom and Heaven & Hell they aren’t the same places at all, Lucifer refers to God as Father and I’m assuming the other brothers do as well but they’ve said before none of the brothers are actually related to each other, I always assumed God just poofed them into existence. But then how was Luke specifically born? Because it’s heavily implied that Michael is in charge of the Celestial Realm the same way Diavolo is, meaning God – like the Demon King – is probably maybe taking a power nap and Luke is only some hundred years old so he’s probably way after God’s time so how was he and all the newer angels created? I’m 100% sure most of the demons in the Devildom – Diavolo included – were biologically reproduced so did angels learn to do that? Does Luke have parents? But then Raphael saw a normal human party as immoral so, even after so long, I can’t see them promoting sex so then did Michael poof Luke? But if so wouldn’t Luke call Michael Father, the same way Lucifer called God Father? Or is there some cosmic magic energy that poofs out new angels? You guys ever watched that first animated Tinkerbell movie where she was still learning to be a tinker fairy? Remember how she was created? The little dandelion seed that was mixed with that gold glowing fairy dust & magic mixture until it spit out a person? that’s how I imagine OM! Angels are created minus the dandelion part. Swirling unknowable natural magic that mixes with emotions and cosmic matter it draws from its surroundings till it creates an angel.) Simeon makes MC stop and kick a tree as hard as they can (which they do without question) until Belphie falls out.

After Belphie is introduced to MC he asks if they’ve met before and MC very lowkey gaslights him for the sake of the already fucked timeline and Simeon tells him Beel is looking for him. (MC can also tell Belphie they live together and he now considers them a crazy person, unless they are the rat in the attic that’s taken a humanoid form in which case he’s gonna avoid them for the rest of eternity). Belphie says Lucifer had wanted him to do a job but he ‘lol noped’ outta there and now he’s recruiting MC and Simeon to help him with who knows what cause he refuses to explain when MC asks. Belphie is surprised that Simeon has two angels assigned to him and Simeon asks if he’s too much of a low level grunt to be given two angels and Belphie’s like “Dude you’re literally one of the highest ranking people here” and Simeon’s like “oh shit lol we’re in the past” and MC’s absolutely unhinged curiosity and unwillingness to let something go only strikes at the odd moment so they never bother asking how Simeon went from one of the most powerful people in the Celestial Realm to a low level grunt (fucking idiot). Belphie hears Simeon’s oh shit comment and asks what he said, Simeon lies through his teeth and MC comments on angels lying. Simeon gave us the whole white lies speech that our parents gave us at some point. Belphie insists that MC’s familiar and MC suggests in a dream, which Belphie takes cause when you spent most your time asleep reality starts getting warped. Belphie makes Simeon and MC carry 6 blankets, when MC asks what exactly Lucifer made Belphie do he says he made him go get blankets for 6 people & that Lucifer had just given them a list of stuff to get and none of them knew what for. Belphie says that Lucifer’s being gone a lot lately cause the prince of the Devildom keeps calling for him (and so this is definitely after MC’s first visit now and I loved the Devilgram about Lucifer & Diavolo’s first meeting but I need detailed backstory about every meeting since then, about how Lucifer started slowly warming up to Diavolo, how Diavolo was always in awe of him despite how much of a prick he was, how he slowly started doubting the celestial realm and seeing things Diavolo’s way, how he felt like the Celestial Realm was lying to him about how things should be, how he should be and that started building up his resentment and anger that would one day turn into Satan, how he felt more comfortable in the Devildom than he ever had in the celestial realm, how much guilt and anger towards himself all this made feel, I mean all this is briefly touched upon in the devilgram but I need it in depth pls someone come scream at me about this!) Belphie says today is Lucifer’s first free afternoon in a long while. Outside the door they hear Mammon yelling at Satan to catch something.

Outside Levi and Satan are trying to catch fluffy eggs (multi coloured eggs with wings), Levi calls Satan “Sully dear” when he tells him to watch his step which Satan takes great offense to. Satan makes a plan that leads to Levi catching all 6. Asmo comments on how despite just meeting they make a perfect team. They go to the brothers’ secret room where the others were making fluffy egg sandwiches on Lucifer’s orders until Beel let them escape. Beel says he didn’t mean to let them escape cause he only wanted to eat them and Mammon says that’s worse (love to see that Beel’s taken MC’s advice from their previous visit and is not trying to control his snacking). Mammon leaves MC in charge of making sure Beel doesn’t eat the sandwiches and asks Beel when he became so food crazy and he says lately he’s been getting more hungry than normal (I like to think that yeah this is Beel unconsciously following MC’s advice to give in to his urges but also Beel and the rest of the brothers unknowingly already starting their fall into being demons as they become more discontent living in the celestial realm during peacetimes). Satan tells Levi to put only thinner layer of butter on the bread and levi does so, Asmo says that there’s something about MC and ‘Sully’ that makes it feel like despite just meeting them that day it feels like they’ve all known each other much longer (I love how Satan just immediately fits into the group dynamics showing that even though he wasn’t there in the beginning he was always meant to be and how both this and last time MC’s just easily accepted like ‘yeah here’s this weird new angel they’re sticking with us now’). Belphie agrees saying he feels like he’s known them forever. Simeon asks MC and ‘Sully Dear’ if they heard that and that it seems like they all share a special bond. Sully dear takes extreme offense to his new nickname. Asmo tells MC and ‘Sully Dear’ that they’ve now been adopted into the family and that any attempt to resist will be futile. MC tells Asmo that it may not be possible. Belphie’s sad. Beels acts like they didn’t say anything and just repeats that they should stay with them. Mammon adds a ‘forever’ onto the end of that and that Lucifer will make it happen cause there’s nothing he can’t do (do you think if Lucifer stayed in the celestial realm he would have just kept on adopting random misfits and oddballs?). Satan’s daddy issues pop up at the mention of Lucifer and he says that even back then Lucifer was pompous with an over inflated ego (something I like about OM! Is how Satan’s deep issues with Lucifer are never resolved after one wacky adventure. They’re deep and old enough that it’ll take a long time to be fixed but progress is being made after each therapy session with Satan even if there’s the occasional regression. It makes it feel much more real). Satan’s annoyed enough about Lucifer that he doesn’t bother lowering his volume so the brothers end up staring at him silently. Probably shouldn’t have dissed Lucifer in front of people who think he’s the best thing ever. Period. Y’know since sliced bread probably hadn’t been invented at the time. Actually when was sliced bread invented? Wait. July 7 1928. Also apparently sliced bread is banned in the US? Is that true? Oh shit okay I actually read through the article and this happened during WWII and the ban was lifted 3 months later. Also it’s implied the saying “the best thing since sliced bread” originated from Americans pushing back against the ban. Look I don’t wanna start discourse about sliced bread but this one lady wrote to the new york times about how she had to slice 22 pieces of bread everyday to feed her family and like yeah I hate cutting bread too but like damn I’m not gonna write to the papers about it, some people are just so goddamned passionate but then again I don’t need to cut 22 slices of bread everyday – maybe I’d be passionate too in her circumstances)

Mammon, Lucifer’s #1 lil lapdog, says he has no idea what sully’s smoking to be talking about ‘back in these days’ but calling Lucifer ‘pompous with an overinflated ego’ is going too far, Satan’s dumbstruck by Mammon’s betrayal because despite everything Mammon’s always been there ready to badmouth Lucifer. Beel says Lucifer’s a good guy who always thinks about them and does what’s best for them (so it’s the same as now except he doesn’t try to hide all that behind 36 layers of assholery). Belphie says he can be easily misunderstood because he’s cold and blunt. Satan comments on everyone up here loving Lucifer (so it’s the same as now except they don’t try to hide it all behind 36 layers of assholery). Asmo asks why they wouldn’t love him when he’s their ‘beautiful, strong big brother’ and that they’re all proud of him (guys Satan’s seconds away from losing his shit and this is the last chapter dbksnkdsjksdnk next lesson the entire Celestial Realm gets reduced to rubble as Satan goes on a rampage rip). Levi says Lucifer looks after him even though he’s totally useless (he says it so casually too I don’t know whether to laugh or cry). Asmo & Belphie says they don’t know how well Sully knows Lucifer but if he knew him properly it’ll be impossible not to love him (honestly that’s true I hated him till we started learning more about him and now he’s my second favourite character! Guess who’s my first, I bet you can’t!). Satan’s absolutely dumbfounded by the suggestion. Simeon agrees with them saying it’s time to mend fences and maybe Satan can take the first step. Satan seems upset, realising that Simeon left him with the brothers in the hopes that they’d get through to him about Lucifer but then he gets pissed demanding if Simeon set up this whole journey to the past thing. Simeon denies it and tells satan to calm his tits. But Satan’s on a role now, asking if he’s doing it for the status, if he gets Satan and Lucifer to work things out he’ll get prestige amongst the angels which honestly makes no sense but anger rarely makes you rational so whatever. He goes on to ask if Simeon hoped he could control Satan, the same way Lucifer does (and hoo boy the issues. I like to imagine MC’s contemplating jumping out the window right about now.) Simeon tries to deny all of this but is cut off by Satan saying that Simeon thinks Satan needs to understand where Lucifer’s coming from and how he’s not so bad but that Satan doesn’t like Simeon telling him what to do and that he can’t believe Simeon created a whole illusion just to get what he wanted. And then he’s screaming about how if Lucifer is so precious to Simeon he should try being “Lucifer’s sweet, obedient little brother” (to be fair the idea of being micromanaged by your father who doesn’t even want to admit to being your father is very shudder inducing). The brothers obviously where no idea what the fuck is going on (MC has created a rope by tying blankets together and is now rappelling down through the window), Levi stutters and asks what Sully’s talking about, Beel asks if he and Lucifer have history, Satan looks shocked and sad for a second before he storms out (probably not a good idea considering what he is, where they are and when they are). Asmo seems upset he left, Mammon seems agitated and wonders wtf his deal was. Simeon says he hadn’t meant to set him off like that and that after all of MC’s therapy sessions Satan would have been more open to talking about everything but that he realises that Satan’s progressing at his own pace. MC knowing their job is never over (climbs back up through the window) offers to go after him. Simeon thanks them and says he feels terrible and will apologise but to spare Simeon’s head being ripped from his shoulders MC really should go smooth things over first. They find Satan in the woods looking sad and ask if he’s okay, he doesn’t reply. They can either hug him or take his hand. Hugging leads to a kiss there’s no choice (whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy let MC hug their friends and give the option to kiss or not instead of them both being to kiss). They sit silently together under the trees, holding hands and looking up at the Celestial Palace and this is the sweetest type of silent understanding that I love. After Satan’s calmed down he says MC can leave and go back to the others now. Just before they can answer they are confronted by Lucifer who asks them who they are and what they’re doing there. And that’s the end :))))))))))))))) Next Lesson’s either gonna be a long ass therapy session or a full out street fight can’t wait

[maggielindemanns]

tag nine people to learn about their interests!

TAGGING: @ijzerengels @calumthoodshands @redrattlers @thenervousduck @arzkiya-hai @kritiquer @lesbianearn @sondergf @embeddedinmybrain @vexedtonightmares @tsjernobyl @bandsanitizer @tarcyjonsson and anyone else that wants to! idk who did this or not, sorry if you already did it but you may of course ignore me.

aaaa also thank you @ottelu for the tag! love u bestie <3

MUSIC

fave genre: r&b and pop, for sure

fave artist: ariana grande, halsey, savannah ré, normani, alina baraz, kiana ledé, chloe moriondo, troye sivan, the neighbourhood, bastille, 5SOS (& luke hemmings solo !!!!!! my baby) — basically i love music, we been knew, i have so many faves i can’t pick one

fave song: rn it’s for sure ur best friend by kiana ledé ft kehlani or girl on tv by chloe moriondo

most listened to song lately: according to last.fm, it’s wild side by normani agskdhsk i do wish she released it without cardi tho i’ll die on this hill idc its fine i just skip her part

song currently stuck in your head: you right by doja cat actually and ur best friend i couldn’t stop singing those two at work

five fave lyrics (in no particular order, there’s too many i love omg)

“i know i’ll never meet your expectations / but the picture that you paint of me looks better in your mind” — high, 5SOS

“you don’t believe in one divine / but can you tell me you believe in mine? / ‘cause you’ve been my god, my god / and when you’re gone i’m godless, i’m godless” — godless, banks

“you’re the only one, you’re the only one / i’m so wrapped up in a daze / hoping this is just a phase / but when all is said and done / i know you are still the one” — the only one, the black keys

“i get lost inside all the stars in your eyes, it’s a galaxy / you control the tide like the moon in the sky, you’re the gravity” — more than enough, alina baraz

“standing there, you look at me / understanding everything / yeah, it’s so fascinating / you patch up the blood and the cuts / but our blood got mixed up / so i guess we belong to each other” — love song, yungblud

radio or your own playlist | solo artists or bands | pop or indie | loud or silent volume | slow or fast songs | music video or lyric video | speakers or headset | riding a bus in silence or while listening to music | driving in silence or with radio on

BOOKS

fave book genre: idk i prefer like YA novels and romance i guess but idc really, i just don’t like fantasy stuff like harry potter or . historical fiction?? i guess you could call it?? (tried to read pride and prejudice for leisure ……….. boring as fuck like holy shit) or science fiction like boring boring boring idc no offense to anyone that loves it of course

fave writer: don’t have one really

fave book: aaaaaa i don’t have one of these either !! the one that always comes to mind though is giovanni’s room, but i just love that book, it was brilliant

fave series: mmmm i don’t really like series but caro’s got me into reading trc so i guess that’ll be my fave series once i’m done!

comfort book: rwrb <3

fave book to read on a rainy day: giovanni’s room sgsjdhsj i literally reread it bc it has some of my fave lines ever

fave characters: adam parrish, blue sargent, ronan lynch, gansey but he on thin ice, ari and dante, aiden navarro, alex claremont-diaz, charlie and nick (actually . everyone in heartstopper except the characters that are a plague <3), and more that i cannot think of most likely

five fave book quotes: (again no particular order i love so many)

“My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.” || “The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.” — the picture of dorian gray, oscar wilde

“topography on the map of you, a world i’m still charting.” — red, white, and royal blue, casey mcquiston

“It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.” || “I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again.” || “And here my baby came indeed, through all that sunlight, his face flushed and his hair flying, his eyes, unbelievably, like morning stars.” || “And there’s something awful about being at the mercy of a stranger.” — giovanni’s room, james baldwin (ik i cheated so bad w this SHUSH)

“And then I think we all realized what fools we’d been. We might get out sometime, but she was locked up forever in that body.” — girl, interrupted, susanna kaysen

“You and I, we don’t walk the lines. We just follow the echoes.” || “My mother used to say, ‘Don’t throw compliments away, so long as they’re free.’” His face was very earnest. “That one wasn’t meant to cost you anything, Blue.” — the raven boys, maggie stiefvater

hardcover or paperback | buy or rent | standalone novels or book series | ebook or physical copy | read at night or during the day | reading at home or in nature | listening to music while reading or in silence | reading in order or reading the ending first | reliable or unreliable narrator | realism or fantasy | one or multiple POVS | judging by the covers or by summaries | rereading or reading just once

TV & MOVIES

fave tv/movie genres: coming of age, romance (ehhh to some degree), i like indie movies, idk same as books i dont like science fiction, historical stuff, or fantasy im boring okay

fave movie: dont have one tbh

comfort movie: speech and debate or easy a

movie you watch every year: dont have one

fave tv show: dear white people or skam + remakes, i like other ones tho like stranger things

comfort show: skamverse <3 not exactly an answer but mhm

most rewatched tv show: skamverse or dear white people OR THE FOSTERS …. dude …….. i used to watch that all day every day then they took it off netflix …. now it’s dance moms i play for background noise and watch on occasion

five favorite characters: lionel higgins, joelle brooks, olive penderghast, lucas lallemant, eleonora sava, fallon carrington, howie (speech and debate), connor walsh, annalise keating, wes gibbins, archie coleman, ellie chu, beth harmon, lara jean covey (yes here i am overlisting again i’m so sorry)

tv shows or movies | short seasons (8-13 episodes) or full seasons (22 episodes or more) | one episode a week or binging (well …. i don’t binge actually i have a horrible attention span) | one season or multiple seasons | one part or saga | half hour or one hour long episodes | subtitles on or off | rewatching or watching just once | downloads or watches online

[mxrcayong]

the avatar series: 01.13

masterlist.

previous | next 

chapter twelve

~ flashback to 24 hours before ~

Roddie was practically imprisoned in the mayoral home. Guards were deployed all over the mansion, basically preventing her from even thinking about sneaking out past curfew, which was put at 7pm. Before, she wasn’t even done with her transit from school at 7pm. She was banned from leaving any time before 9am or after 7pm without ‘proper supervision’, making her essentially trapped in the same home as the father she despised.

It’s not like she has despised him all her life. In fact, he was an amazing father growing up. He was the one who taught her about how bending was ingrained and imperative in their culture, who taught her about the history of bending. Consequently, when he became mayor and eight years ago and his opinion rapidly changed, Roddie could practically recognized the man she called her father. Her confusion quickly changed to anger. Yes, before he was mayor – there was a mayor before who implemented the anti-pro-bending laws, but growing up; he always enthused to Roddie how much he would like to take her to one. Once he got the position of power, it seemed like he completely changed and became worse than the person before him. And when he started acting on his position of power, Roddie didn’t hesitate in separating herself from her father.

Consequently, for the last few days since the attack on the abandoned warehouse, Roddie has barely left her room. Her hopeless plans of avoiding her father initially consisted of her napping throughout the day and then working throughout the night, essentially giving her a completely different time zone from her father. However, her father was a politician. He’s practically always working. Not only that, but the staff in the home would always wake her up for meals – her mother insisting on hosting family dinners.

Being a politicians’ daughter made all eyes on them, especially now when the current news focuses on the politics of their society. Often, Roddie would use her attention to call out the government – which did nothing to repair her relationship with her father – however, this is the first time she’s been forcibly banned and censored by her parents and the staff.

Roddie cannot complain about this attention, especially if it meant that their family meals would almost always be interrupted by calls from other government officials or the press. Fortunately, this means her time with her father was interrupted.

Tonight’s dinner felt like the ordinary; a tense silence, the awkward clinking of utensils, the small conversation between her parents, and the resounding noise of chewing that took over any silence. Underneath the table, Roddie had her phone out – using her utensils with one hand and her other hand was texting her friends.

to: (glopo nerds + roddie): I actually hate this so much

to: (glopo nerds + roddie): kill me now pls

from jeyes (glopo nerds + roddie): can you just say you need to study?? we do still have an exam in a month

from lele (glopo nerds + roddie: I see why you call him a nerd now.

to (glopo nerds + roddie): excuse you you’re included

from lele (glopo nerds + roddie): I would offer to come over but I’m in a similar situation lol

One benefit from living in the mayoral estate rather than her dorms? She’s literally a street away from Chenle. Normally, she’s an elevator ride and multiple hallways away. Chenle was quite literally her neighboring home. It was why she saw him as a brother – for the last eight years, they lived next to each other.

to (glopo nerds + roddie): group call in 30??? Imma try to eat fast and get the hell outta here

from nana (glopo nerds + roddie): sorry too social for you guys 💁♀️  

from jeyes (glopo nerds + roddie) even for me??? 🥺

to glopo nerds + roddie: we literally have no other friends, shut up

from nana (glopo nerds + roddie): why you gotta expose me like that 😡  I s2g ik what parents mean when they say raising children ain’t worth it

Rolling her eyes at her friends, Roddie chewed her food faster but struggled due to the texture. She was debating asking one of the chefs to put the food aside for her to eat later, but she knew her mother would only make her finish eating now. Roddie was hungry – but her hunger couldn’t even motivate her to stay around her father longer. The anticipation to leave didn’t last long as a phone call soon brought her father away from dinner and to the other room.

Usually, he closes the doors – wanting the meetings to be private, especially if Roddie was there. She was known for calling out the government, and if she knew any of their secrets? He was certain they would be all over the news the next day.

But this time, he left the door open.

“Zhong, Amon,” His voice was faint and muffled by the door, but Roddie basically did everything she can to focus on what he was saying. “Don’t you think this is going too fast?” Robotic yelling could be heard from the phone. “Wait, what do you mean a reporter has been asking you questions?” Could he mean Tari’s so-called ‘best friend’? Roddie thought. “Why does this have to speed up-“He was interrupted…and he started walking away from the door. But, Roddie couldn’t deny the panic rising in his voice. In her eighteen years of life, Roddie has never heard her father’s voice rise in octave and spill quickly.

Her eyes widened, and this didn’t go unnoticed by her mother. “Aye, anak,” When her mother speaks in her family tribe’s native language, Roddie knows she’s about to get in trouble. “You know this is serious times. Please do not escalate things. You do not know what is going on.” Roddie remained silent, rolling her eyes. She didn’t want to be like her mother – standing idly by, being submissive to her father just because of the traditional roles she was raised to live by.

Practically stuffing her face – Roddie stopped caring about the possibility of choking. “IM DAHN.” Roddie screamed, her mouth still full of food. Ignoring her mother’s critique on her manners, she sprinted up to her room on the second floor.

As soon as she got into her room, she let her back land on the back of her door. Sliding down to a squatting position, she started texting one of her best friends.

To lele: hey hey emergency, can we meet?? Your dad isn’t there right???

From lele: he just left, why? Whatsup?

To lele: was it after a call?

From lele: ye how’d you know?

To lele: I overheard the calls…do you wanna be the Watson to my holmes?

To lele: the bess to my Nancy?

To lele: the hastings to my Poirot?

From lele: I’m in ONLY if you stop comparing us to famous detectives

From lele: the teachers in class heard you once and I think they genuinely thought my name was watson for a month

From lele: also im not always the sidekick smh 🤬 I s2g can I be appreciated more pls

From lele: whats up?

“Are you sure it’s safe to invite them?” Chenle asked Roddie as the two waited in the foyer for their bending friends. “They’re benders… they’re more at risk than us.”

Roddie rolled her eyes, “It’s nothing. Honestly, Jeno barely bends unless in a designated area. We know him, he’s a damp towel when it comes to bending.” Chenle laughed at the joke shared between them that Jeno is nowhere at all funny. The laugh, hopefully, covered up his fears he had for the safety of his friends. “Plus, Jaemin is my partner-in-crime, the Robin to my Batman, the-“ Roddie was about to continue listing characters, but the look on Chenle face practically threatening to leave right now stopped her. “I can’t do activist shit without him.”  

“How are you expecting us to leave your house by the way?” The younger boy furrowed his brows, “I was allowed because I’m legit a minute away. My guards saw me enter your house. But how do we get out of here?” The older girl and mastermind behind the plan pulled out her best puppy dog eyes, making Chenle’s eyes practically roll to the back of his head. “What is it?” He practically growled.

Roddie started swaying, trying to act cuter. “Do you remember the old mannequins I had when I was into fashion for like a month?” Chenle nodded. “Can you help me look in the basement for them? We can say we’re sleeping over.”

“Where will our legs be?” Chenle almost yelled but hushed it to a whisper as guards started walking past them. “Your mannequins are legless.”

“Pillows?” Roddie said, more as a question.

“You didn’t think this out properly, did you?” Roddie ignored his question. “Do you even know where they have gone?”

Her eyes went wide momentarily, before she pulled put her phone. “I may or may not have taken photos of some documents I’ve seen laying around, maybe the address of the factory is in one of them.”

“Factory?” Chenle clarified. “Do you mean the factory on Bumi Boulevard?” Roddie’s eyes widened. How did he know classified information? “Listen, because you have a bad relationship with your father doesn’t mean I have one with mine!”

After thirty minutes of rummaging through the basement for the old mannequins and some wigs that could even remotely match their hair color and some of her father’s old college shirts to put on the mannequins. Scattering the four mannequins around the room in a somewhat cohesive manner, they had two mannequins lying down on a beanbag and two on the bed – both lying down facing the opposite direction. Roddie couldn’t help but be more thankful that Jaemin had dyed his hair bright blue or else they may not have been able to find a wig.

Screaming out her room saying they’re ‘going to be studying and then ‘having a sleepover’, Roddie blasted music in the room and the three took off. Roddie knew all the secret exits, and although the house is more guarded than usual, the four are all wearing black and due to the darkness of the night, can easily be concealed. Additionally, the guarded element of her life comes from her designated guard checking in on her every hour.

Another thing Roddie couldn’t be happier for? Jeno having a driver’s license. Bumi Boulevard, although is connected to the train station, Chenle mentioned how its in more of the outskirts of the city. “You do realize I’m not some valet.” Jeno teased, climbing into the driver’s seat with Jaemin in the shotgun.

The car lifted off the ground. “Every time you invite me to go out at night, it’s either a sleepover or when you need a ride.”

“Don’t take it personally, Jeno.” Jaemin commented from beside him. “It’s just because you don’t like parties and the only time Roddie goes out at night, other than with us, is to party.”

“That’s a noble reason!” Roddie tried to convince him, “I’m respecting your preferences.”

“Whatever.” Jeno was teasing of course. As much as they say he isn’t funny, he’s quite funny and Roddie cannot deny it. “Okay, so let’s go over a game plan. We can’t just waltz in.”

“We can’t?” Roddie asked, genuinely confused. She’s pretty much used to getting access to most government buildings, unless her father has told the police to ban her from entering. That usually happened once she breaks in. She didn’t even know about the factory yet, so it’s practically impossible that she’s been banned.

“Jaemin, I can’t give her the look or else my eyes will be off the road.” Jeno groaned. “Can you glare at her with disappointment for a minute? Maybe for even twenty? Never have I heard a more stupid statement in my life.” Jeno teased. Roddie slapped the head rest of Jeno’s seat in offense. None of them expected Jaemin to actually give Roddie a disappointed look for five minutes as Chenle started brainstorming ideas.

Jaemin interrupted Chenle’s idea of ‘dressing up like barbeque delivery guys’ with even more disappointment than Jeno implied him giving. “You guys are literally their children. Does anyone-“ Jaemin let out a soft ‘ah’ when he saw Jeno with a backpack, “Just say that you have something in your bag you have to give to your dad.”

“Okay, well it’s probably best to me.” Chenle noted. “Everyone knows how much Roddie hates her dad.”

“What if they go through the bags?” Roddie asked, remembering the security checks in the government building. “Jeno, did you pack anything that can somewhat resemble a gift?”

“I think?” Jeno questioned himself, voice full of uncertainty. “I mean, at this point, because of school and stuff, I just carry the bag out of habit. I haven’t actually touched it or opened it and saw everything inside for like…a month?”

Roddie cringed in disgust. “Okay, well, as long as there are no condoms in there or snotty tissues, I can imagine it being okay.”

Unfortunately, it wasn’t okay. “Sorry to ask, but what exactly of these are you giving to your dad?” The security guard asked. Somehow, they managed to convince them that Chenle needed to bring his friends inside to reduce his anxiety about being in a government facility. Honestly, Chenle was glad this person was someone he hasn’t seen before – or else they would know Chenle basically lives in the city hall when he wasn’t with friends.

He was faced with the contents of Jeno’s bag; some lint, a beaten up water bottle, protein powder, a ‘5 free coffees’ card that expired a month ago with only three coffees being used (Jaemin scowled so hard at Jeno for not letting Jaemin use it at the sight of it), and a laptop in a casing that definitely didn’t belong to a government official.

“Oh, he left his…personal laptop at home.” Chenle lied, scratching the back of his head. “He messaged me saying he needed it…I couldn’t find his laptop case though, so I put it in…mine.” The laptop case in question? A plain white one, which had some unfortunate drawings of penises on it with sharpie (Chenle can take credit for the first penis on there- having drawn it when Jeno fell asleep during a lecture).

The security guard nodded, obviously somewhat skeptical. They sighed. “Okay, well, he’s in the meeting room with Amon so just leave it in his office. I think they’re having a private talk.” They noted, “All the guards were told to leave that floor.”

Chenle quickly nodded. The four of them nod politely and thanked them, before running to the closest map they could see inside the factory. The factory seemed to be completely made out of metal and with more levels underground than over it. Thousands of rooms surrounded the edges, but something about the factory felt like an auditorium. The floors above the very bottom floor seemed to act like balconies looking down at the center. She could see what happens on the bottom floor, which she would say is approximately 17 floors below her on ground level, from her position next to the map on the pillar. “Okay, so my dad and your dad are in the office with…Amen?”

“Amon.” Jaemin and Roddie said in-sync, remembering his name from all the news reports he’s been on.

“Right, Amon…” Chenle trailed off, before trying to understand the language on the map. It wasn’t something he’s seen before. In fact, they weren’t even words. They were numbers in some sort of sequence that doesn’t quite make sense to him, despite practically being an expert in math. “Uh…I don’t get it.”

Roddie decided to look around. Chenle and Jeno were the best at numbers. Her and Jaemin? Not so much. He once said 20 – 10 = 0 during a quickfire round of trivia. So her best bet is to observe while Jeno and Chenle analyse the plaque of the map on the pillar.

“Do you think we can find a lab coat or one of the uniforms?” Roddie asked, breaking away the trance of her friends on the plaque. “So we can get into more rooms easily.”

Jaemin snapped, grinning widely as he looked at his partner-in-crime. “Okay, I bet we can find a broom closet somewhere.” And that’s what Jaemin did. With no regards to walking into a private meeting or caught, he started trying to open any door he could see that seemed unlocked.

Behind the first door was a female bathroom, the second door was a weird test-tubey room, the third was something Roddie couldn’t even describe. It felt like some perverse and illegal version of the ‘Price is Right’ with the prices becoming more and more obscure.

Until finally, they got to a room resembling a locker room. And luckily for them, saw a cabinet labelled ‘extra uniforms’. “Thank fucking Roku.”

It felt like they were in the metal labyrinth for hours. Their hearts were consistently racing, worried about getting caught. Roddie and Chenle eventually had to disguise themselves – many guards offering to escort them to the office, to which they would always say ‘I’m heading to the bathroom’. They couldn’t feel luckier there were only so many workers here that they haven’t come across the same one twice, or else they would look like they’re having quite serious bladder problems.

They had no sense of time. The only thing that reminded them of the time was the clocks on the walls, notifying them it was now one in the morning. They got here around 10. That means they spent three hours trying to locate their parent’s secret office.

But normally, they’d be done with their meetings by now, right? Roddie thought back to all the times her father’s meeting went over time…it’s usually when something didn’t go to plan or it’s something with more risks than they thought. Shit, Roddie started biting her lip so hard – it bled at first contact with the tip of her tooth. We’re really in trouble. But she started praying they just went home by now. I hope.

It felt like a miracle the moment they got into a room that resembled an office. It required some failed attempts at lockpicking from Roddie and Jaemin, before expertful lock-picking from Jeno, who refuses to tell anyone how he learnt it. “Maybe Jeno is cooler than you guys.” Chenle teased, sneaking in behind them into the office. But the cocky words that left his mouth were the last of the same tone.

He was full of awe. This was Roddie’s dad’s office. Around the room had photos of Roddie as a child and family photos. While he was frozen in place, everyone else went searching around the room. It wasn’t long before they opened every drawer, every file (Chenle used his hacking skills to good use to open every computer file), every potential secret entrance handle – everything was turned upside down and sideways.

Everything they saw broke their hearts. Chenle’s and Roddie’s due to the destruction of their nation and Chenle’s disillusionment of his father, but Jeno’s and Jaemin’s because they could no longer feel safe.

But one folder revealed a lot. The folder title was ‘BENDING RALLY 001 – THE INITIAL STAGE’. Dozens and dozens of files and blueprints describing an event happening in a few days fell out as soon as they opened it.

“What is this?” Chenle said, almost as if he wasn’t there himself. He wasn’t like Roddie where he believed the worst in his family, particularly his father – but the documents proved otherwise.

Plans and blueprints of technology that would remove one’s ability to bend. Plans to temporarily disable their bending in order to ‘make a safer world’. But the blueprints show a sprinkler with an ‘anti-bending’ chemical in it, bracelets that look like Apple Watches with a band comparable to a single side of a handcuff. Both were made to suspend people’s bending – although there was minimal information on the blueprints if this will be permanently or temporarily suspended. A plan was made to have a registration event, mandatory for benders to come at a certain time and pick up the tool that’ll be oppressing them. There was another note saying they have to have a backroom for Amon ‘to do his magic’. What magic?

There were thousands of lists on the desks. From names of every citizen to the city to the lists of confirmed benders forced to register their bending ability due to their profession, the duo noticed that all lists focus on potential or confirmed benders living in Sooman. But one list caught Roddie’s attention.

On the top, the list showed how the official filtered and created this list. The categories were the birth year and which tribe their family has come from, according to their social identity information.

The list contained ten people and a message on top ‘to investigate these ten immediately’ and ‘nullify their risk’. Roddie couldn’t even imagine how they will be ‘nullified’.

There was one name that shouted at her, as if the black text suddenly became bold and red and underlined a million times. There was no way, Roddie thought – trying to recall her every interaction with them. It can’t be …but they don’t know that, they might kill them. She took out her phone and texted someone who could get to the bottom of this. Only once her information is confirmed will she tell them. She didn’t want to panic them.

But even as she left, the visual of ‘Tari Kotala’ dead center in the list of identities haunted her like a devil on her shoulder.

request anything for future parts / penny for your thoughts here

[unfortunate-stranger-losers]

All Those Things They Couldn’t Say - A Runaway Baudelaires AU

{ao3} {tumblr} {masterlist}

Chapter Fourteen - An Incident at the Marketplace

Violet was very quiet for the next several days with Josephine. The kids didn’t have much to do that didn’t involve giving Josephine a heart attack, so they mostly just sat around in her library. Klaus tried desperately to find the grammar books interesting, while Josephine tried to teach grammar and English to Sunny, who instead found hardcovers to bite on. Violet, meanwhile, had taken out her own commonplace book, and kept either scribbling furiously or doodling, with her ribbon keeping her hair back. She wouldn’t let Klaus see what she wrote, but she would show him and Sunny her drawings- usually blueprints for another invention, or a sketch of something nearby, like a book or Sunny asleep on the table. A few times she drew the sea, and she always got a distant look in her eyes as she did. 

Every now and again, they’d ask Josephine how she knew their parents, or about Ike, or if they could please show her how the oven worked, but she always changed the topic, so they eventually gave up. 

Finally, one day, Klaus asked about Lake Lachrymose, and Josephine’s eyes did the same thing as Violet’s, where she looked like she’d fallen into a distant, but fond, memory. 

“Oh, I grew up on these shores, you know.” Josephine said. “I know every cave and curve, from the Lavender Lighthouse, above Curdled Cave, to the edge of the Fickle Ferry’s route.” 

“Could we go swimming?” Violet asked, as she bounced Sunny on her knee. “I’d love to skip rocks again, and-” 

“Oh, no.” Josephine shook her head. “No, I can’t go near the lake now. I can only bear to view it from this window.” 

The Baudelaires shot each other tired looks. Klaus said, “I know lakes and similarly deep-water locations can be dangerous, but if you know it so well-” 

“Oh, it’s not that.” Josephine said. Then, she leaned over and whispered, “It’s the leeches.” 

“The… what?” Klaus asked. 

“The Lachrymose Leeches.” Josephine shivered. “They’re quite different from normal leeches, you see- these leeches live only in Lachrymose Lake, and they will eat anything that even remotely smells of food. You have to wait one hour after eating to go swimming or they will swarm and-” she cut herself off, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. “I’m sorry, children. It’s not grammatically correct to end a sentence with ‘and.’ But I just get very emotional-” 

“That’s how Ike died?” Klaus asked. “Leeches?” 

Josephine jumped, and Violet hit him on the shoulder. 

That night, Violet signalled for Klaus to stay awake. They sat on the other side of her bed, with Sunny sitting on Violet’s lap and biting the handle of a knife, and Violet said, “I need your help with something. I was hoping to wait until Josephine was out of the house, but the dumb bitch never seems to leave.” 

“What’s going on?” Klaus asked nervously. 

“Josephine’s got a safe hidden in her library.” Violet said simply. Klaus didn’t even react; they expected secrets everywhere. “I’ve been hoping you could help me crack the code. I could invent something to bust it open, but that’d make noise and leave damage and Josephine would know.” 

“What’s the combination like?” 

“Dial. I think four numbers.” 

Klaus considered. “It has to be something she’d remember. But she doesn’t seem too into numbers, just words.” 

“We could use the A1Z26 cipher.” Violet said. “But it’d have to be a short word, especially if one of the letters is past i-9, which would make it two numbers.” 

“What does she like?” Klaus narrowed his eyes. “Grammar.” 

“Cold soup.” 

“Not telling us anything.” 

Sunny looked up, stopping her biting for a moment, and said, “Ike.” 

Violet and Klaus looked at each other, and then smiled a little. “Good work, Sunny.” Violet said. “Let’s go.” 

They got up, racing to the library. Violet opened the trick bookshelf quickly, and Klaus knelt by the safe, muttering the numbers for I-K-E. Once he got it, he turned the handle, and the safe clicked open. 

“Easy enough.” Klaus said. 

“See,” Violet joked, reaching into the safe, “This is why I keep you around.” She pulled out a file, which she flipped open. “Hmm. Photos of her not being a scaredy-cat.” Like in the scrapbook. 

“Is she jumping out of a plane?” 

“For fun.” Violet nodded. “Yeah, she did used to be interesting. What else is in there?” 

Klaus looked in. “Sheet music. Box of crackers. This book-thing- oh, hey.” 

He pulled out the book, and showed it off to Violet. The title, spelled out very clearly on the large, dark cover, was The Incomplete History of Secret Organizations. 

“Okay. So,” Violet pulled Sunny onto her lap, and said, “Is this a good or bad thing?” 

“Means she’s in VFD.” 

“But she hid it away. Meaning she’s trying to get out.” 

“Not good for us, considering what happened when Mother and Father tried to leave.” 

“Whazzit?” Sunny asked, confused. 

“But it means we’re safe from ankle-snatching bastards.” Violet shrugged. “Listen, if she’s hiding this shit away,” she held up the file, waving it a bit, “It means she doesn’t want to think about her past. We’re safe for the time being. Eventually Mother and Father will get here and then we don’t have to talk to her again.” 

Klaus sighed, and then said, “I guess.” 

“Well,” Violet groaned, standing up and lifting Sunny with her, “Let’s get back to bed. Aunt Jo said we’re hurricane shopping tomorrow, so maybe we can convince her to get hot food.” 

“Not gonna happen.” 

“Then we’ll swipe some when she’s not looking and make it ourselves. No biggie. And you, Sunshine, should be asleep.” 

Sunny huffed. “Ekaw,” she said, which meant, “But you’re awake.” 

“Yeah, but I’m old enough to make bad life decisions. Sleep time.” 

The next morning, at the market, Violet and Klaus tried to stick by Aunt Josephine, but she seemed scared of practically everything in the town. It was good that the lakeside was basically empty, or they’d worry about making a scene and attracting unwanted attention. Klaus held Sunny in his arms instead of in his bag, letting her point towards food she wanted- and, when Josephine wasn’t looking, letting her grab something to stuff into his pocket. 

Violet kept untying and retying her ribbon in her hair, both bored by the market they had to walk through so slowly and too stimulated by how many aisles of carts they walked past, all with different smells and vendors shouting what they were selling and bright signs and even some which had other, loud noises. Sunny and Klaus were too focused on grabbing what they wanted without paying, like they normally did, that they weren’t noticing how loud everything seemed to be. 

“Josephine,” Violet muttered, shoving her ribbon into her pocket and turning back to their current guardian, “Perhaps we could get something to cook for you. Klaus and I know how to make several very quick meals, and as fast as they are, it’s hard to mess them up.” 

“Oh, no, no.” Josephine shook her head. “I’m eager to try this recipe for cold lime stew.” 

“Nuki,” Sunny said, meaning, “I think I’d rather eat something hot, or bite your arm off.” 

“No, no, Sunny,” Josephine said firmly, looking up from her shopping list. “‘Nuki’ isn’t a word. Remember what we said about using correct English. Now, Violet, would you please get some cucumbers? I thought I would make chilled cucumber soup again sometime next week.” 

Violet groaned outwardly, giving Josephine the side-eye, and then she moved down another aisle in search of cucumbers. She had no idea where they were- she didn’t know this fucking town!- but likely they’d be around the other vegetables. Things should be organized normally, right? A vender was selling canned soup which would be amazing if she could just fucking cook it. She retied her hair again, wondering if she could take apart the oven and force Josephine to see it was fine. For a few moments, she was so lost in her inventing thoughts that she didn’t look where she was going until she walked right into someone. 

“Oh, I’m sorry-” Violet started to stay, and then she looked up, and froze over. 

Turning around to look at her, with a shiny gleam in his eye, was a tall, thin man in a blue sailor had and black eye patch covering his left eye, as well as a thick wooden peg leg. But even with the peg leg and the eye patch and the sailor outfit, she could see his shiny eyes and the one eyebrow snaking underneath the patch and the long, bony fingers that drumming on a nearby table, slightly rattling a bottle of olives. 

“You.” she breathed. 

“Why, hello, dear lady.” Count Olaf said, a strange tone as he adopted some kind of sailor’s accent. “Didn’t see you there.” 

His beady, uncovered eye was staring down at her as if she were a brightly wrapped birthday present that he couldn’t wait to rip open. Violet had seen that look before, and she immediately reached for her pocket to grab her knife. 

“Violet!” she heard Josephine call behind her, but she didn’t turn, keeping her eyes on the dangerous man in front of her. “What are you doing in this aisle? These people are selling food that must be heated, and you know-” 

When she saw Count Olaf she stopped speaking, and for a second Violet thought she’d recognized him, too. But then she smiled, and Violet felt a boiling fury inside her. 

“Hello,” said Count Olaf, smiling at Josephine, “I was just apologizing for running into your sister here.” 

Klaus and Sunny ran up, then, and Klaus said, “Sorry we wandered behind, we saw- fuck, that’s Count Olaf!” 

“Yeah, no shit, Klaus.” Violet said. “Stay behind me.” 

Josephine scoffed, and said, “Violet! Don’t be rude!” she gestured to the Count in front of them. “This nice man is clearly not Count Olaf. Look at him! He’s a sailor.” 

“Captain Sham, my lady.” Olaf made a bow, and as he did, he shot a sneaky, smug look to Violet. 

“Alright, fucker,” Violet pushed Klaus and Sunny back slightly as Sunny hissed, and then she pulled out her pocketknife, flipping it open and pointing it at him. 

“Violet!” Josephine gasped, as Olaf stood back up, not concerned. “What did we say about sharp objects?” 

“If you’re really a pirate captain,” Violet said, “Then I assume that peg leg is real.” 

“As real as I am, miss.” Olaf said. “If you could put the knife away, nice girls shouldn’t be playing with those.” 

“I’m not a nice girl.” Violet said, stepping towards him. “So if it’s real, I can just swipe at it with this knife, and there’ll be no leg under it for me to sever off, causing you to bleed out until you tell us where the fuck our parents are, you bastard!” 

“Violet!” Josephine nearly shrieked, and she grabbed Violet’s arm, yanking her back. Surprised, Violet nearly swung the knife at her, recovering quickly enough to keep herself from harming their guardian. “I’m sorry, sir, she must be confused.” 

“Well,” Olaf said, smiling again at Violet, “Sometimes young girls are like that when they travel too much. I find it’s best to keep them in one place to avoid hallucinations.” 

Violet tugged at Josephine’s hand, but Josephine kept a firm grip on her, and Violet groaned as Josephine carefully plucked the knife from her hand and tossed it to the ground. “There. Now nobody can get hurt.” 

“Bet.” Sunny said. 

“Josephine, that’s Count Olaf! He’s in disguise.” Klaus said. “He’s after us!” 

“Now, Klaus, be nice to Captain Sham and don’t play along with your sister’s-” 

He turned to Violet, asking with his eyes if he should start crying, and Violet nodded. Klaus then burst into tears, and taking the cue, Sunny did, too. 

“Please, Josephine-” Klaus began. 

“Oh, now, Klaus,” Josephine released Violet, putting an arm around him. Violet turned to Olaf, as if to rush him, only to see, to her horror and frustration, that while Josephine’s back was turned, he had picked up her knife. He twirled it in his hands, giving her a clear look that dared her to try anything. 

“Best be gettin’ the young boy home, miss.” Olaf said, hiding the knife as Josephine turned to him. “Seems the sea air’s done somethin’ to him.”

“I’m very sorry-” 

“Captain Sham.” Olaf pulled a laminated card from his pocket, handing it over. The Baudelaires gave him glares as Josephine read it over. “Sailboat rentals.” 

Josephine laughed. “Why, Captain Sham! You’ve made a grammatical error.” 

“What?” Olaf said, raising his eyebrow. 

“It says here, ‘Captain Sham’s Sailboats. Every boat has it’s own sail.’ There should not be an apostrophe over ‘it’s,’ as that signals ‘it is.’ You mean simply I-T-S, ‘belonging to it.’ It’s a very common mistake, Captain Sham, but a dreadful one.” 

Captain Sham’s face darkened, and it looked for a minute like he was going to attack; Violet moved to grab Klaus’s hand. But then he smiled and said, “Thank you for pointing that out. Perhaps, dear lady, you can explain more about grammar to me tonight, over dinner.” 

“No!” Violet said. 

“Now, Violet, please quiet down. Let the adults speak.” Josephine said. She turned back to Olaf and said, “I’d be happy. We could go to that new fried egg place, if you so wish.” 

“Wonderful. Where do you live? I’ll pick you up very soon.” He looked to the kids there, and Violet felt like she was going to be sick. 

“Josephine, don’t-” Klaus began, through his forced tears. 

“Right at the top of the hill.” Josephine giggled. “I’ll go get a new shawl and drop the children off.” 

“Yes. They can rest.” Olaf said. “Who knows what could happen to them in the wide open world?” 

“Go to hell, bastard.” Violet said. 

“Violet!” 

“Our parents will beat your ass, and they’ll find us, and you’re going to-” Violet spat. 

“Violet, please!” Josephine shook her head and tutted. “Children have no manners these days. If you’ll excuse us, Captain Sham…” 

She turned and pulled the kids along with her. Violet shot a hateful glare back at Olaf, who just smiled innocently at her. 

Once they reached the house, Josephine said, “I know you children have had quite the terrifying life. But that doesn’t mean you can be rude to kind sailors at the market.” 

“That wasn’t a kind sailor! That was Count Olaf!” Violet protested. 

“Please,” Klaus sniffled, “Listen to us!” 

“Children, go lie down.” Josephine insisted. “Captain Sham must be right, the excessive travel is making you-” 

“Did you seriously buy that?” Klaus temporarily snapped out of his fake tears. “That’s ‘female hysteria’ bullshit!” 

“Klaus! Go lie down! I will go get ready for dinner.” she paused. “Why don’t I make you all chilled cucumber soup, so that you have something to eat while I’m out?” 

Violet took a deep breath, and then spun on her heel and stalked off without another word. 

Klaus raced after her, and Sunny asked, “Ato?” which meant something akin to, “What do we do?” 

“I’m working on it.” Violet muttered. 

“Gui!” Sunny shouted as they made their way into their bedroom, meaning, “How could she fall for that phony disguise?” 

“Mother and Father told us often that disguises are an easy way to sneak around simple people.” Klaus said. 

“Well, good to know that Josephine is a dumbass!” Violet sat on the bed, and pulled out her ribbon, tying her hair back as tight as she could. She took a deep breath, and thought. 

She remembered, when she was about eight, her Mother had sat her down and tried to help her figure out better ways to manage her anger, after she’d punched a kid who threatened Klaus at the playground. One of the things that had worked was just letting her inventing mind go off on plans, keeping her focus on different ideas instead of on the first impulse to attack. She clasped her hands together, sitting cross-legged, and keeping her eyes shut, even as Sunny crawled onto her lap. 

Klaus sat beside her on the bed, bouncing the mattress slightly. “Ideas?” 

Violet considered what they had at their disposal. The house had little electricity, was situated above a lake… perhaps they could push Olaf through the library window, but he could grab one of their ankles and pull them with him. Josephine didn’t have anything very sharp or heavy… the only dangerous thing around the lake was- 

“I have an idea.” Violet said after a minute, smiling as she opened her eyes. “I need you guys to distract Josephine. If Olaf comes, keep him here.” 

“What are you going to do?” 

“I’m going to get our weapon.” Violet pulled Sunny off of her lap, putting the baby on a pillow, and she stood up, stretching slightly. “What we’re going to do, is we’re going to beg to go to dinner with Josephine and Olaf. We’re so sorry, we made a mistake, we feel so bad for insulting Captain Sham.” 

“That’s gonna be hard to fake.” 

“We’ll manage. Then at the restaurant, we’ll get him to take us for a walk by the pier.” 

“That’s asking for him to kidnap us.” 

“Exactly. Once lulled into a false sense of security, as we walk by the ocean, you trip him into the water.” 

“So he swims back and strangles us.” 

“No, so I throw our weapon at him. In the water, he’ll be helpless.” 

“What weapon, Vi? A weight?” 

Violet smiled and shook her head. She reached into Klaus’s bag, pulling out a small, glass jar, as well as a small snackbag. 

“The Lachrymose Leeches.”

[comeondowntosouthparkrpg-blog]

Kyle Broflovski

I hope you learned something today.

Kyle has been accepted! Please send in your blog link.

out of character info Name/Alias: Samantha Pronouns: she/her Age: 26 Join Our Discord: I’m in it Timezone: EST Activity: 6 Triggers: Password: fast pass my ass jimbo Character that you’re applying for: Kyle Broflovski Favourite ships for your character: anything tbh

in character info

Full name: Kyle Edom Broflovski Birthday: May 26th, 2001 Sexuality, gender, pronouns: bisexual, out, he/him Age and grade: 17 & senior Face claim: Harry Smith Personality: Kyle’s personality is often all over the place. To say he’s temperamental is an understatement, considering how quick to violence and harsh words he is. Perhaps it has to do with his New Jersey heritage, or the stress from the work he puts in, or maybe something else entirely. But the anger is a defining characteristic. Often this leads Kyle to getting into some various fight, be it with his mother or a peer, his wall or a tree when he escapes to the mountains to get away from the irritating people of South Park and forget about shit. Therapy or a yoga class would likely do him good, though Kyle often prefers to take his rage out on something a little harder. Because of his, his slender fingers are crooked and covered in scars from where the skin and bones broke during a fit of punches at a tree or door or brick wall. Or, if he’s lucky, someone’s face. Though Kyle isn’t angry all the time. There are plenty of times where he’s rather calm, such as focused at his desk writing in his various journals, finishing his school work, or reading. Being alone is cathartic, and peaceful. Though Kyle is often content and relaxed when he’s around those he cares about, he has the capabilities of being sweet, though he isn’t really aware of it. He does try, but often when he tries he falls short and hopefully he’ll learn to go with the natural flow and feel his emotions freely without overthinking it.

Which is another huge part of Kyle, thinking everything into oblivion until he’s lost in his own head and finding himself suffocated by his thoughts. Because of this he’s often insecure and paranoid, and desperate to forget about it. Which recently has gotten him into a bit of a sticky spot with someone else.

As well, if there’s one thing Kyle is that could be considered positive, it’s determined. When he knows what he wants, Kyle stops at nothing until he gets it. Case point for him is Yale, refusing to accept any other school that isn’t Ivy League. His classes are plentiful and filling his lunch breaks and several hours after class, leaving him with more than enough credits to have graduated. His determination has put him in various activities such as Student Council, DARE, Mathletes, Basketball and the debate team.

History: Kyle grew up in a fairly stereotypical Jewish household. Well, it was fairly stereotypical until he was ten and discovered his fathers very concerning internet hobby. But aside from that, it was Passover baskets, separate cooking utensils for meat and dairy. Absolutely no bacon. Or ham. Or mixing cheese and meat, which lead to a lot of envy over the other children who were able to eat cheeseburgers. But it wasn’t bad. The Christmas holidays often fell over Hanukkah, and even when they didn’t it was a few weeks off of school to bum around with his friends.

Everything with middle school was a preparation for high school, which was a preparation for college. Kyle worked to be top of every class, finding a taste for black coffee early on to stay up late and stay caffeinated for the school day. It began with sneaking instant coffee from the jar, to spending his allowance at Tweek Tweaks (by far the superior of the options, too). Cream didn’t agree with him, and he had to carefully monitor his diabetes.

As for family, Kyle’s current closest confidant is Ike, his adopted younger brother from the Great White North. Even though the kid was eleven, going on twelve, Kyle could tell he was going to far superior in intellect than he was. There was always the nagging jealousy over it, because Ike was a natural where Kyle just worked. Although Ike would often argue that it was worse, he felt like he had no passion. Kyle just chalked it up to preteen angst, although he wouldn’t doubt if it turned into strong teenage rebellion in a few years. He wouldn’t put it past his kid brother to dismantle governments before college. Now that Kyle was in high school himself, it was a whole new ball game. Or rather, the same game but what felt like a hundred times more stressful. He had no idea what he wanted to do in the future, no set career goal. Which meant Kyle needed to cover all options. The first semester of ninth grade had simply been used to assimilate him. Since the second semester of his first year, Kyle had worked with the guidance counsellor to get as many class credits as he could. Since then, he opted out of his lunch hour to fill it with more classes, and now in eleventh grade didn’t take the allotted study periods. Most used them to piss off school grounds and fuck around the city, but Kyle filled them with more classes. The workload was obscene, and Kyle spent every waking moment studying, working on projects. After school was used for extracurriculars, basketball, track. Kyle needed to cover all grounds. His goal was Yale, Harvard as a second. For what, he didn’t know, he simply knew he wanted to leave this shitty town and go Ivy League.

Anything less was unacceptable.

Headcanons: { 💥 } • Has clear anger issues, and attempts to manage them as best he can. Gives himself self-ratings from 1-5 in his head about it. One being general pissed offedness, three being angry as hell, five being blinding, inandescent black out rage. { 💥 } • Can forgive incredibly easily, but will rarely get over or forget wrongdoings. { 💥 } • Extra as fuck. This is the boy who went to commit murder, would have burnt down the school, and caused Canada to be nuked, after all. { 💥 } • While often portrayed as the logical one, Kyle’s most likely to react with passion as opposed to ration. He’s quick to violence, quick to make rash decsions, only to use reason after or when it doesn’t affect him. Kyle should practice what he preaches, but he tends to be a person that’s “do as I say, not as I do” type person { 💥 } • Always wanting to be bettering himself, which is a mountain he struggles to climb. But he always tries to go at least two steps forward one step back. { 💥 } • Absolutely hates when people put him into a box. He does not revolve around the fact he’s Jewish, he’s more than that, for instance. { 💥 } • Hates that his name means handsome redhead when he’s only one of those things. { 💥 } • Does not have freckles. At all. Do not even say he does. He does, however, have a strawberry shaped birth mark on his butt. { 💥 } • Started writing his anger down in notebooks in fifth grade when people (Eric) started pissing him off. Eventually it just became a good way to try to organize his life and now keeps them as a way to plan schedules, track lists, keep notes, things he’s learned, etc down. A lot of the ones from September have complex starbucks orders written down { 💥 } • Wears reading glasses. { 💥 } • Doesn’t stand for people blaming their actions on mental health problems. He tries to explain his actions as mistakes or poor judgement or decision making. Hates when people make excuses. Doesn’t blame his anger issues on his life, or his health issues, etc. Blames them on the fact he’s just stupid and makes mistakes. { 💥 } • Loves plants and trees. Is a nature freak. { 💥 } • Likely knows the woods better than anyone else in the town. Will be there most of the summers, and weekends in the warmer weather. Goes there to get away from people, and to calm himself down if upset. Has several favourite places. { 💥 } • Drives a 2017 Toyota Prius (White) { 💥 } • Will live and die eating Nutella { 💥 } • Is a fighter, obviously. Has no qualms throwing punches, and doesn’t intend to stop fighting until he’s physically removed from the situation. Kyle needs to have his eye contact actively broken, because he fights like a damn Rottweiler and sees eye contact as a challenge. { 💥 } • has probably the worst style known to man kind, if it’s ugly, he loves it. Specifically enjoys cable knit sweaters and corduroy pants.

Anything else: Family headcanons:

{ 🔥 } • Gerald has taken Sheila’s name. This is because Grandma Broflovski is Sheila’s mother, which means Gerald would have had to have taken Sheila’s last name. She’s a strong independent woman who needs no man but when she did she made him take her name. { 🔥 } • Got pregnant fairly young, and was unmarried, while living with her mother. Because her pregnancy helped Sheila realize she wanted to leave her jersey life, her and Gerald had a shotgun wedding before moving to South Park. { 🔥 } • Sheila had complications with her pregnancy with Kyle, and was no longer likely to have children after Kyle. { 🔥 } • Spent several years trying for another child with treatments before settling on adoption, ending up with a closed adoption and bringing Ike into the family. { 🔥 } • Gerald was once best friends with Stuart McCormick. Ended up resentful. Gerald moved to Jersey to continue his law degree. Gerald and Sheila chose South Park to move to from New Jersey because it was his hometown. { 🔥 } • Gerald, because of his fights with Stuart, thinks Kenny is a no good street rat and hates Kenny hanging around the house. Sheila, however, adores him. Gerald doesn’t complain about him while she’s around, but he has no issue with saying it around Kyle. { 🔥 } • Kyle, as mentioned, is a daddy’s boy. Because of how similar he is to his mother, they often butt heads. Gerald has dealt with this his whole life, and loves his angry wife and son and can handle them both just fine. { 🔥 } • However, Ike is similar to him in many ways, and this can cause Gerald and Ike to be distant to each other. { 🔥 } • Isn’t affectionate with Ike the same was he is Kyle. Sheila is far more affectionate with Ike, where Kyle pulls away. { 🔥 } • Sheila will believe Ike in every lie he says, without question. A lot of her favouritism of him stems from guilt from things like the Canusa War and forgetting his 13th birthday Photograph:

[imadethisatage11]

Live-blogging my reaction to Spiral: from the book of saw

Spoilers under the cut

TL;DR: my overall review is that it was good but I’m going to go watch DPS to cleanse me

- ok so that woman got robbed and for what

- I had to pause to find out who this detective’s actor was Bc it was driving me nuts and it’s MCMURRAY FROM LETTERKENNY???

- love that they’re gonna fuck up this train conductors day lmao

- LOVE genuinely that we’re back to looking gritty and having an old tv play the video and having some rapid cut camera work early 2000’s vibes I embrace you

- why does the voice sound like that,, I wasn’t expecting John but why is it so non threatening now it’s literally just Some Guy™️

- I am glad I paid $15 to listen to Chris Rock talk about Forrest Gump. Worth my money and I mean it genuinely I love Chris Rock he’s great. Stream Everybody Hates Chris on Hulu

- “Z?” Zeke who just had his cover blown: this MF

- “do I look like a fucking Jamaican nanny?!” I- 😀🤚🏽

- ayo Max Minghella

- Chris Rock falling just short of being convincingly aggressively cynical Bc he is Chris Rock with the voice of Chris Rock

- it sounds like he’s setting up jokes that don’t have punchlines and instead they’re just like,, mediocre cynic cop dialogue

- while looking at some pretty fucking intact teeth: this bum is gonna be pretty hard to ID

- I mean I guess the homeless don’t have dental records but were you not even gonna try?

- I’m very pleased Chris Rock put on gloves before handling the strange package I love actually smart character choices that would make sense for them to make

- I.e. the cop knows how to properly handle unexpected unmarked packages delivered to the precinct

- “I thought the jigsaw killer was dead” “well if it’s another copy cat…” another wait is that referring to Logan (which Logan pinned on the other coincidentally crooked cop whose name I’ve forgotten) does that imply Logan only did like? The one trap? And hasn’t been active? Just waited ten years after John died recreates the one trap he was in and then stops?? I mean don’t get me wrong if movie wants to ignore Jigsaw (2017)’s existence I’m game but like what

- also why do the packages look like they’re wrapped in Tiffany boxes lmao

- oh yay they did run dental

- Chris Rock is an asshole but they should go with protocol if that’s what they’re doing

- ordering a man mid piss out of the men’s room to yell at Zeke

- does conflict of interest matter when the whole precinct knows the victim?

- uncomfortable stand-offs with your ex while at the home of a grieving friend

- Samuel L Jackson!

- “I could’ve killed you!” “What are you talking about, I have the gun!” *SLJ pulls a gun out* “I could’ve killed you”

- daddy issues

- “you think this is linked to John Kramer?” Bruh you think it’s NOT??

- ik this is SO far fetched but I rlly hope this movie tells us wtf happened to Dr Gordon. I’m sure it won’t but a girl can dream

- “should we tell Zeke?” “Fuck him” I get you guys don’t like to work w him Bc he’s an ass but like. You’re just not doing your jobs now you’re just proving he’s right that you’re untrustworthy

- splitting up and not telling ppl where you’re going is the number one way to get kidnapped or murdered but way to go cop instincts

- what is this Chinese finger trap ass shit

- love the blue tones tho very Saw

- all it needs is to become uncomfortably green

- fun fact I actually watched the first saw w my friend who is red green color blind and he said it looked AWFUL and I was like oh yeah everything is blue tinted like twilight blue tint and later it’s green just FYI (he thought that made significantly more sense than whatever shit ass color palette he was perceiving)

- being mad at your son for turning in a dirty cop Bc now you’ll have to mess with internal affairs

- and then assaulting someone??? SLJ is an even worse asshole lmao

- another Tiffany box bound in twine maybe it’ll be one of those cheesy diamond heart necklaces

- HELLO what is that ugly ass pig puppet

- also the voice is so stilted did the killer use fuckin text to speech so they couldn’t unscramble the voice like they did to Hoffman?

- cops finding dead pigs, a little on the nose

- oh so this dude has a history of “fuck it” ok well screw that guy then

- SLJ deserves to be pissed at that cop for letting Zeke get shot but like what an unhinged man he threatened to kill him and then actually assaulted him HOW did he EVER get in charge to begin with

- ok wait is Zeke actually the only decent cop (inc his dad but maybe excluding the newbie)

- that is a truly gruesome way to lose fingers tho I must say but he deserves that shit

- wait did the trap not go fast enough or was there a way for him to do that faster and I missed it

- like should he not have hesitated Bc there was a time limit or was it just rigged

- cuz the machine had to pull them off he couldn’t just cut them quickly

- so are they just gonna leave broken leg Dude there or

- also just now I tried to talk abt this movie (so far) vs Jigsaw (2017) to my mom and I got too excited and referenced some character names she didn’t know and she shut me down and said she didn’t care 😀

- live-blogging to my, like, five followers that compromise one one (1) person that knows me IRL, one (1) Sawtual, and a handful of ppl only here for my main DPS content to fill the void of emotional parental neglect. What a great website

- oh no did the rookie die :( he was actually sweet

- I feel like he was too important to kill offscreen tho

- like they’re TELLING us he .. was skinned.. but was he REALLY

- Chris Rock having a revelation: AH FUCK

- everyone else at the crime scene: ….

- favorite thing abt movies that were already gonna be rated R is when they’re like “well if we’re already at R we might as well say fuck”

- she has to SEVER HER SPINAL CORD? Why was she deemed the biggest asshole

- also how on earth was this trap portable it IS in their basement right

- transporting the hot wax is just what gets me

- Chris Rock rn: are you tired of being nice? Don’t you just wanna go apeshit?

- was this abt his dad the whole time???

- does it count as live blogging when I do one big post instead of several small ones lol I just want it to be avoidable for ppl who are just here for Dead Poets Society

- man’s fully abt to cut his arm off like barely even hesitated long enough to notice the bobby pin he could pick the lock with

- there’s a body here suspended

- not hanging mind you

- but covered and suspended

- and I bet it’s the newbie

- ah damn it’s Pete that’s disappointing

- it’s possible the trailers just made him seem more important than he was

- why are they punishing Zeke for reporting a dirty cop and having his career accordingly ruined like he did the right thing and already suffered for it? This killer doesn’t like crooked cops?? Why does Zeke have to be tortured by hearing this dude die like that’s what they want isn’t it?

- I think it’s too late pal

- the glass trap was pretty fucking cool though

- I KNEW HE WAS ALIVE

- I didn’t think he was a MURDERER but I KNEW he was alive

- OH SHIT THE DIRTY COP ZEKE TURNED IN KILLED NEWBIE’S DAD??

- I’m terrible at guessing endings but it makes viewing more fun

- honestly,, do it Chris Rock ACAB

- “you want me to kill cops?” “No, fuck no, just the bad ones”

- what a fun villain though

- I have no idea what the Ultimate Game Plan™️ is here though is he gonna make him kill his dad? I mean his dad does suck but making a dude KILL his DAD? That is a tall order Max Minghella

- ok but literally why wouldn’t you listen to him here shoot the target??

- ANGIE! It WaS aNgIe

- killing this man is not correct justice anyway Zeke

- shot the target! Good man

- groovy of them to play the Hello Zepp soundtrack rn

- oh shit what’s going on SLJ knows what it is

- oh.. w o w. Brutal way to go. Very heavy handed imagery

- and that’s all I guess who the fuck knows what’s up w Doctor Gordon

- and I guess Max Minghella is just gonna get away now but tbh Chris Rock only seemed truly mad at him for involving his dad

- nice rap remix to the OG Hello Zepp score very cool credits music

[fanfics-await-you]

It Wasn’t Meant to End Like This

Prompt: “Red is such an interesting colour to correlate with emotion, because it’s on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you’ve got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger and frustration.” Ik this is a Taylor Swift quote but it’s also interesting.

Pairing: Steve Roger x Reader

Summary: You never noticed that the colour red seemed to run through your life connecting the events together, like a string of fate. Though, this time there is too much red; you feel like you’re drowning.

Tags: little hints of fluff, (mainly angst and death)

Notes: Well that was an interesting write and a rollercoaster. Ik I’ve only posted Cassian stuff but I’m a multi-fandom gal, and I’m spreading around the ‘love’. Anyways, I think I might continue on some of the cutesy stuff.

Word Count: 2,059

masterlist

Steve has always looked fantastic in red; the fact that he looks good in anything probably helps this fact, but you especially adore him in red. Even though you’ve already seen him a dozen times tonight, when he strides towards you across the gala floor you can feel your heart rate picking up. His suit is dark crimson, the tie a deep blue, and as good as he looks you can’t help but want to laugh. Even in his downtime, when he’s Steve Rogers rather than Captain America, he can’t help but be the truest patriot in the room. When he reaches you, your face is stretched into a helpless smile.

“What?” he says, returning the smirk.

“Nothing, Uncle Sam.”

He raises an eyebrow, “I thought you said I looked good. If I remember correctly, you said a lot more as well. I think it was something along the lines of ‘I want to-“

You make a sound of shock, clap a hand over his mouth, and look around to see if anyone was listening. When you look back at Steve his eyes are twinkling. You fix him with a halfhearted glare before drawing back your hand.

“You’re lucky that you’re cute, you ass.”

You lean forward to kiss him and can feel his smile against your lips.

———

Holy shit, nobody had warned you that Captain America was hot.

First year History had listed his achievements, noted his bravery, and been thankful for his sacrifice. It had not prepared you for the eventuality where you would meet him. But lo and behold, here he sits across from you, in all his handsome glory.

“-so basically I’m looking for someone to bring me up to speed with the times. I’m looking for a modern history education, and… someone told me you were the person to ask.”

You are so caught off guard by the whole situation that you nearly blurt ‘what’, but manage to catch yourself first, “Right, of course. But- I would’ve assumed that there would’ve been someone assigned to you during your transition. You are Captain America, after all.”

He seems to take this as a refusal and he quickly stands. He brushes down his shirt and then nods.

“You’re right… I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

“No!”

You blurt out the word a lot louder than you intended and immediately turn bright red. You pinch the bridge of your nose in embarrassment and sigh.

“No, I’m sorry. I’m more than happy to help you, Mr Rogers, but… you could have anyone you wanted- To help you! I’m wondering why you would chose me.”

Hoping he doesn’t notice the accidental innuendo, you close your eyes and slide down into your seat slightly. You hear Steve (Mr Rogers? Captain?) sit down once again and breath out softly.

“When I… When I came out of the ice, I was given pages of different specialists and professors and experts, all Ivy graduates and civil servants, that were at my disposal. After everything that had happened, after everything that I had done in the name of S.H.I.E.L.D. and this country, I wanted something that I chose for myself. And that was you.”

During his speech, you open your eyes in wonder at his confession. His last statement warms your cheeks (not that it matters much, your cheeks are still red from before) but to your surprise (and slight pleasure (slight), you notice that Steve is also flustered and blushing.

He offers you a small smile, “To be perfectly honest ma’am, I picked you by chance. I used the phonebook to find history teachers, and when I called you, I chose you.”

“Why?”

He blusters, red subtle but present on his cheeks, “I- I liked you voice… It seemed kind.”

Oh lord. Right. Ok. Crap. You take a moment to collect yourself.

“Well, after a compliment like that how can I say no?,” you grin, “When would you like to start?”

He smiles sheepishly, “My schedule’s pretty free. How ‘bout Friday week, same time?”

Your eyes flick to the planner open on your desk and nod. Again he smiles, then stands and extends his hand across the desk. You take it and shake it firmly, marking the deal as struck. Steve leans back and stuffs his hands in his pockets. He seems unsure what to do, so he nods his farewell and makes for the door.

In the doorway he pauses, his hand on the frame, “It’s Steve, by the way.”

“Y/N.”

“Y/N… Pretty name… I’ll be seeing you, Y/N.”

With that he’s gone and you’re blushing red all over again.

———

You love watching Steve paint. It’s one of the few times where he seems completely comfortable in his own skin. He gets lost in his art, and you can just stare and admire the angles of his face (one of your favourite pastimes). You lay spread out on the couch, listening to his music, as he sketches from memory. Last time you looked it had been a landscape but Steve was prone to changing things halfway through.

“Are you staring at me?”

“Mmm. Maybe.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re pretty, Steve.”

He laughs at this, and then looks at you. You blink once, twice, thrice, and he’s still staring.

“Is this supposed to be payback?”

“Nope. Just staring ‘cos you’re pretty.”

You roll your eyes, close them, and then lay back on the couch. A few moments pass before you feel a spot of coldness on your cheek. You squeak and bolt upright. You touch two fingers to the offending cheek and pull them away red. You look at Steve, who is attempting to look innocent as he adds touches of crimson to the backdrop.

“What the- STEVE!”

You both jump to standing. Steve places down the paintbrush and then waves his hands in surrender. You step towards him as he matches your pace in reverse.

‘Honey… have you changed your look?”

You charge. Steve is a super-soldier and could easily evade you (if he chose). He decides not to. He catches you and sweeps you into the air. He dives for the sofa, and the both of you end up in a heap. You’re both breathless with laughter, Steve beneath you so you can feel his chuckles all through your chest. His eyes are bright and his nose is almost touching your’s. Without thinking, like a reflex, you say it.

“I love you.”

You both stop laughing, caught in the apprehension of your confession. The grin slowly fades from Steve’s face as the realisation hangs in the air. You choke. You start scrambling but his hand tightens around your waist. Hesitantly, he brings up both hands to your cheekbones. He is staring at your lips, and his face is neutral. Steve brings up his gaze, and you know that everything’s going to be alright. A luminous, brilliant, darling, shining, wonderful smile dawns across his face and you break out in relieved laughter.

“I love you too.”

Steve kisses you and then repeats the phrase again and again and again; he presses the words against any skin he can reach. He has a streak of scarlet paint highlighting his cheekbone and he has never looked better in your eyes.

———

“NOO-“

A gunshot cuts Steve off. You feel a tug, a tear, in your stomach before you are blinded with pain. A scream rushes out of your lips as your knees buckle out from beneath you. It feels like someone is trying to cut you in half with barbed wire. Waves of blistering, suffocating heat are ripping through your abdomen; you think the agony might just kill you.

“What were you thinking, Y/N?! What were you thinking?!”

Someone picks you up and you cry out. The world is too deafening and warm and syrupy. It feels like a dream but everything hurts too much for it to be true.

“Someone help her! There’s got to be something!”

Steve is thunderous. Despite everything, all you can think as you watch his face swim before your eyes is how unlike him it is. Steve is passionate and stubborn as granite, but he’s not loud.

“Shhh, Steve. Shhh, it’s fine,” you don’t want him to change, especially not now.

He is cradling you in his lap, one arm under your head with the other pressed to your stomach. His face is haggard and grey, almost as if he’s bleeding out with you. You’re not stupid. This isn’t the movies; people don’t survive rifle slugs to the chest. Your life is cascading out of you onto the cement and goodbye seems the only thing left.

“Steve.”

“No.”

“Steve, please.”

Steve is barely holding it together. He’s violently shaking and tears are threatening to fall any moment. There is a pandemonium of movement surrounding you but you won’t take your gaze from his face. You want to memorise its every slant, curl, line, arc, and your own heart is acting far too quickly as the countdown clock.

“I love you.”

“Stop it!”

“I love you so much, Steve.”

He breaks. His shoulders shudder and the sobs choke out of him. As your own tears begin, the thought that you were learning more about him through grief than happiness swamps you. With lives like yours’, you had never been naive enough to think you would grow old with Steve, but you had been sure that there would be more time. You had got up in the mornings with the taste of tomorrow always promised around the corner. You had both felt, and seemed, far too alive for ‘what if’ to trouble you. Regret tastes like copper (though you wonder if maybe it’s just blood). However, the brightest thought in your headspace remains how completely and utterly you don’t want to die.

Someone else is jabbing at your ribs but the ache is just another part of the haze covering you. You want to tell them to stop, you want to beg for some peace, but you don’t want to seem like you’re giving up. Maybe you are, but dear God, you are so tired.

“Stay with me, Y/N.”

It’s a prayer, a plea to find some hidden strength but you’re not a superhero or a goddess or a spy. You’re just Y/N; human to a T and more fragile than even you knew. So, you don’t respond. You just take pull his hand from your stomach and hold it to your cheek. There is blood and red and your blood everywhere but you want him to know the truth. From the way that Steve leans back on his heels and screams into empty air, you see that he understands.

He kneels forward and touches his forehead to your shoulder. You feel nebulous and the pressure is somewhat indistinct at this point. The pain is even fading now, although the paralysing cold that is swallowing your legs is far more terrifying. The agony reminded you that you were still alive. This frost, this bitter cool, only reminds you that you are dyin-

“It wasn’t meant to end like this,” his words tremble.

The response catches in your throat.

“I know, darling,” it’s barely more than a whisper, “I know.”

Your heart is still fighting but black waits patiently at the edges of your vision. It’s not suffocating or invasive yet you know there’s not much to go now. It’s time to go.

“Steve…”

He hears something in your voice that makes him pull back and hold your face. Steve is searching for something in your eyes; you don’t think he’s going to find it.

“No matter what happens, or where I go, I’ll never forget you Steve.”

It’s like unanchoring. Numbness swallows you. Your sense of feeling goes first and the world dissolve into calm. Your hearing is next. Everything around you is screaming and, despite the fact that you really, really want to hold on, you are almost relieved when it fades. All that’s left of the world is Steve now. His face is all you can see. In spite of the pain and the exhaustion, he makes you want to stay; after all, he has always been the exception to your every rule.

Goodbye, my darling.

You admire his tear-streaked face one last time, and let go.

[rooreelooo]

GOTY 2016

2016 was a really big year for me. It’s the year I got married, purchased my first home, and finished the part-time studies I had been doing outside of work. It’s been very long, and very stressful in places, but also very happy - it’s certainly a year that I will look back on for the rest of my life to come. A lot of people say that 2016 has been the worst year in living history, but I don’t think that it will be remembered that way. I think it will be remembered as the last good year, before everything went fucking bananas.

Assembling this list was really hard! All that stuff I listed up there left me with reduced quantities of both money AND time, and as a result 2016 was a really scant gaming year for me. It’s true that I played a bunch of stuff, but when you strip away everything that was released prior to 2016, as well as the various ports and re-releases, there honestly ain’t all that much left to choose from. I think I ended up having about 13 viable games for this list, so it wasn’t too hard to assemble, but ordering everything up was tough and there were LOTs of last-minute changes.

It was fun though. I kept a gaming diary in 2016, and it was invaluable in assembling this list. I highly recommend that other people do this - keeping notes and recording memories about the games I played was probably the highlight of my gaming year!

Anyway, here’s some video games. There shouldn’t be any spoilers in here, I tried hard to avoid them, so you should be safe if that’s the sort of thing you worry about.

To start with, how about a non-2016 game that I played the hell out of anyway:

Final Fantasy Record Keeper

I need to cover this early - it was my GOTY 2015, but has it managed to stand the test of time? Well obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking about it here. I FUCKING LOVE FFRK! I play it every day, multiple times a day, and have so much fun with it… but it’s not just more of the same old thing. This year has shown a lot of improvements to the game itself! It’s easier to get your hands on the items you need to progress, and is far less reliant on gatcha systems, meaning that high-level content can be cleared more consistently and easily. In fact, it’s become so good in that respect that I have transitioned into being fully free-to-play, and haven’t spent a single penny on this game in over 6 months. God, I hope 2017 is as good for FFRK as 2016 and 2015 have been.

that genuine book boy is so fucking good at his job

And a few honourable mentions that didn’t make the cut into the top 10 list but are still worth paying respects to:

Drawful 2

We played the shit outta Drawful 1 last year, and so Drawful 2: Draw Fuller was always gonna be a knockout in this household. The addition of a second colour is a fun gag, and the custom draw prompts added a unique way for us to have a good time too, but it turns out the one addition that my friends all needed was the simplest one of all - MORE Drawful to play. After wearing out all the prompts in Drawful 1 through overuse, the blank slate afforded to us by the sequel has been the biggest justification of purchase of all.

next, please make drawful 3

Final Fantasy Explorers

This was always gonna be a weird one. Going into it I really thought this was gonna be a huge gamble, and that Final Fantasy Meets Monster Hunter would either rocket to all-new heights or plummet to destructive lows. The end result surprised me in as much as it did… neither of those? It’s a fair-to-middling Monster Hunter me-too that is pretty fun if you like that sort of thing, which I do, so I enjoyed it! I didn’t have anyone to play it with though and the single player stuff is not the main focus, so it was never able to make my top 10 for that reason.

on the whole this was a good year for chocobos

And as for the actual top 10 list list…

10. Xenoblade Chronicles X

I know this is technically a 2015 game, but it was such a late-year release that I never got a chance to load it up until January this year, so I’m grouping it together with these. The first Xenoblade game is the secret best JRPG of the decade, tucked away on the Wii of all places, and so I had high hopes for the “sequel” finger quotes.

In reality, this is not so much a descendant of the first game as it is a weird distant cousin - the narrative is tonally and stylistically very different, and the gameplay even moreso. This world, with its sprawling horizons, gigantic aliens, and evocative atmospheres, took my breath away as the most immersive gameplay world of the year. Every environment feels handcrafted and perfectly balanced to have a different look and feel - stepping into Primordia makes you feel as if you are breathing a cold lungful of air on a crisp winter morning, and then stepping into the rainforest continent (I forgot its name) is almost like stepping into a warm cloud of colours and humidity that reminded me of coming indoors in my winter coat and feeling the cold breath in my lungs suddenly turn into condensation. The graphics may not be the strongest, but XCX really really makes good use of what it has.

The game manages to shock you with a few paradigm shifts along the way as well, upping the pace and scale in such a way that everything beforehand feels like a different game. The fact that it’s capable of pulling this exact same trick like 3 or 4 times is outstanding.

XCX’s biggest crime is that it drowns itself in features and systems. Every menu hides like another 5 or 6 submenus, and although it all sorta slots in place eventually it’s a steep climb; one which requires you to read a 142-page pdf to become fluent in it. I never completed it because eventually it sorta coalesced into an impenetrable slurry of pointless sidequests, repetitive character interactions, and enemies who will oneshot your robot suit and set you back millions of dollars in repair funds. I may not have finished it, but I don’t think these alien world will ever leave my memories.

Something else that will never leave my memories: The weird soundtrack, with its overly-literal lyrics.

a rare shot of the fabled ‘non-destroyed’ skell in its natural habitat, taken moments before it was destroyed

9. Pokémon GO

For the few weeks I played this game, I loved it. I loved being a part of the zeitgeist. I have always loved the Pokémon series, and that brief window of time in which seemingly everyone in the world shared my passion made me feel incredible. Every café and shop on my street had images of Charmander and Pikachu in the window, advertising themselves as Pokémon GO-friendly environments. So fucking weird, but also so fucking cool!

When I said ‘for the few weeks I played this game’ though, I was being generous. The hype was like Charizard’s flamethrower - rapidly escalating into something huge and volatile, but swiftly dissolving afterwards leaving little sign that it had ever existed save for a comically-burnt Ash Ketchum, puffing a cloud of smoke out of his mouth in shock. It took me about 15 days or so to see and evolve every pokémon that was native to my hometown, and from that point onwards the gimmick of seeing the same stuff over and over again lost it’s lustre. Catching a Magnemite on my way to work was cool! Catching a Magnemite on my way home again was pretty good too. Catching nothing but Magnemites every day is not so fresh. Also, battling gyms was boring and it didn’t take me long to realise that it was tedious enough that I would never care about it in my entire time with this game. The tribal mentality between the three teams rubbed me the wrong was as well, and having my friends plant their flag in the sand in a different team to me for seemingly no reason other than to incite inter-team conflict rubbed me the wrong way. Why can’t we all just get along???

If it sounds like I’m pretty negative about this game, then yeah I guess at this point I sorta am. I haven’t played it properly in months, even the arrival of some Generation II pokémon recently failed to rekindle my passion. The thing that ranks this so highly on my list is the memories of that one wild fortnight… that post-release window where it was like I was in my childhood again, from the groups of friends eagerly discussing where they had seen certain monsters to the constant news reports questioning the effect it was having on the nation’s children. God I miss the 90s.

this game was released in july and i didnt see any pikachus until december, whats up with that

8. Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright

Fire Emblem games should have three things I think - fun and memorable characters, units with a variety of diverse battlefield skills, and challenging maps that require strategy to overcome. I believe that this game delivers the second and third items on the list in great quantities, but shortchanges you a little on the first one. Corrin never quite manages to become as interesting as more memorable protagonists of past Fire Emblem games like Ike, Chrom, Robin, and… uh… Marth? Hmm, my lack of experience and knowledge about this series is failing me here, sorry.

There are two kinds of people I think - people who play the Fire Emblem series because they want to enjoy a complex tactical RPG, and people who play it because they want to play matchmaker with an army of anime soldiers, choosing who gets to kiss eachother and have babies. This is where the problem lies - I didn’t think it would be an issue for me that this game lacks memorable characters because I arrogantly thought I was the former kind of person. You know, the kind who wants to look at numbers, study maps, and strategise his way to victory. I was laughably wrong though, and it turns out that I was obviously the latter kind of person all along. Without being able to spark any wild or interesting couples within my army I just didn’t have as much fun as I could have with this game.

Still, a Fire Emblem game that delivers on two out of three fronts remains a VERY good game nonetheless, and I had loads of fun with Birthright this year. I never did get round to playing Conquest or Revelation. Maybe the story would have made more sense to me if I had completed all three chapters? Probably not.

Shoutout to Azama for being the hidden best character in the game - if I was picking a Character Of The Year award it would almost certainly go to this dude.

love that magical donkey

7. Pony Island

The developer to Pony Island wanted to create a game that felt like it wasn’t meant to be played, and that sums up this game better than anything I could have ever come up with. Satan has trapped your soul inside an unwinnable video game, and only by tearing it to pieces and fucking with the internal coding can you ever hope to escape. It’s so cryptic and it’s so grimy and it’s so unsettling and it’s so weird, I LOVED it! Coming into this game completely blind was a hugely rewarding experience, so if you don’t know anything about it then you’re perfectly primed to grab it and enjoy it too.

Despite loving it so much, I really don’t have much else to say… and even if I did, I would be hesitant about accidentally spoiling some of the endgame aces that it has up its sleeves. If I was choosing a ‘boss battle of the year’, or a ‘moment of the year’, then Pony Island would win both of those because of one specific antagonist later in the game who manages to do something that I have NEVER seen a video game do in my life, and that I didn’t even think was possible. You gotta see this shit for yourself, seriously!

Buried deep within this satanic gaming cabinet, with its filthy surfaces and fractured display, lies a nest of some of the most creative, surprising and unsettling game design I saw all year. I’m not gonna forget this game in a hurry, and the only thing stopping it ranking higher on my list was the fact that at a few points it puts its entire premise to one side and asks you to do a little legitimate puzzle solving. Those sections were HARD.

pony island will ask a LOT of you

6. Orwell

This was one of two narrative episodic games I played this year, and I was unsure what order to put them both in, although Orwell ended up being my slightly less-favourite of the two. It’s still super good though! You play as a faceless government agent tasked with solving the mystery of who has been committing a slew of terrorist attacks, and your main methods of interacting with the game world involve monitoring civilian conversations, hacking into people’s computers, and trawling the internet for snippets of info related to your case.

Delving into the personal lives of the characters and invading their privacy to such a degree was very scary! Especially when you realise that there is no right answer to be found - it’s not about digging until you find the truth, it’s about coming up with your conclusions beforehand and then pulling snippets of info out of their original context so they can be used to support your argument. Turns out that the long weird rant this lady posted on her Facebook wall is PERFECT for framing her as a terrorist when you omit half of it and only provide the bits where she talks about how much she hates the government.

It’s a game about context, and the lack thereof - and how this can be manipulated to meet your goals. It doesn’t quite stick the landing when it gets to the final chapter, but the journey to get there is fun, memorable, and realistically malevolent.

sorry the screenshots are super dense so it’s really hard to make it resize cleanly

5. The Lion’s Song: Episode 1 - Silence

I haven’t played the later episodes of this game yet - I think there are 4 in total, but I’ve only played the first one. Still, it took me by surprise how touching it was. You play as Wilma, a young WWI-era musician who is struggling to overcome her writer’s block and compose a new melody for a performance she has been booked into against her will. The scope is VERY small, VERY intimate, and VERY personal - trapped in a mountain cabin and awaiting the passing of a storm that has stranded her there, we guide her through her creative process, help her adapt to the environment, and discover sources of inspiration buried in the world around her. I was fascinated by the slow process of finding her muse by unravelling all her anxieties and worries, and when I got to the end I felt like I had been welcomed into something deeply personal.

It’s also worth mentioning how amazing the game looks. It barely uses 6 colours throughout the entire game, but it uses them well enough to present mountain ranges and forest in a suitably ominous and gloomy scope. The whole thing looks like a cross between an upscaled DOS adventure and a box of of WW2-era photos.

I think that each chapter is a standalone narrative, mediating on various aspects of the human condition as they relate to creativity and inspiration, so I'm really keen to explore the other three episodes. If they can retain the scale and intimacy of narrative and the detail of characterisation then I will be very pleased.

colours? who needs em, surely you only need 6 of them to make a picture

4. Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley, aka Harvest Moon 2016, aka One Concerned Ape’s Love Letter To Farming Simulation. Throughout 2016 I made a few attempts at getting into this game. I also made a few attempts at getting Steff into this game. She ultimately ended up grabbing a refund on it because she didn’t like the way that it ‘copied everything about Harvest Moon’, but personally that never bothered me much at all. It’s true that this builds heavily on that series, but it’s way more of a loving homage than a cheap imitation - every inch of this game seems lovingly hand crafted by one guy who, upset over the decline in that series, decided to rectify that himself and smooth over all the creases to bring us the Game That Harvest Moon Should Have Been.

It’s amazing! I love it, I haven’t got this invested in a farming sim since 2001 when I pored over Harvest Moon 2 on the Gameboy Colour - I loved to systematically dig up squares, plant stuff, run out of money, wonder what the hell you had to do to get animals, restart my save file in frustration, and do it all again. If that sounds like a pointless waste of time, then yeah you’re probably right - but I was like 12 years old at the time, so cut me some slack. While it’s true that I ended up running through that EXACT same sequence of events again as a 27 year old, this time I got to do it in a game with a much prettier soundtrack, much more interesting characters, a more compelling narrative, and a greater variety of things to do and see along the way.

My one gripe with it is that I REALLY wish there was a handheld version, or a Wii U version that I could play on the gamepad. I feel like that is where this game belongs, and only being able to play it on a PC or a TV is a massive downer to me. God, it’s awful that the Wii U version was cancelled. Maybe 2017 will be the year I play this on the Switch and actually make some good progress on it. (Also the fishing minigame sucks, sorry but it’s true.)

fuck big business

3. World of Warcraft: Legion

One of my biggest gripes about WoW is that there are many many different choices you can make about your character, but very few of them have any noticeable distinction. In this world that is defined by constant skirmishes, struggles for power, uneasy alliances and clashes over the individual interests of each faction, you’d think that the play experience would have meaningful differences depending on which race and class you choose. But nope. Call it a gameplay limitation if you want, or a deliberate design decision, but whatever the reason it basically means that within the 111 possible race/class combinations of the game, there is only one meaningful choice - you gonna be Alliance or Horde? Once you decide that, it all kinda blurs together from that point onwards.

That’s why I loved Legion so much. For the first time in memory, the questing experience is different depending on class! If you’re like me and you play as a druid because you love their culture and lore, then Legion will be an expansion pack that sees you visiting signifiant druid locations, interacting with major druid characters, recovering important druid artifacts, and carrying out a druid-specific mission. Finally, I can actually start to feel as if my character's identity is a worthwhile choice to make and not just some unimportant fluff in the background!

The Alliance / Horde distinction has been kicked to the kerb, and instead the twelve different classes are all banding together across race and faction boundaries to deal with the impending threat of the legion in the ways which make most sense to them. It actually made me care about the story of the expansion, since the feeling of ‘oh shit everything is going wrong, we all need to do whatever we can to help the war effort’ really pushed through.

As always with WoW, I had a hell of a lot of fun questing to the level cap and then I dropped that shit like it was hot as soon as I ran out of unique and interesting missions to do. I have never cared about the ‘MMO’ part of MMORPGs, but this expansion in particular seemed to have a larger amount of awful dungeon experiences than the normal. I don’t know if that’s unique to Legion or if the general trend of player assholeishness has risen since I last played WoW, but it’s kinda just encouraging me to entrench even further in my mindset of ‘I’m just gonna do all these fun quests, enjoy all this dumb lore, and pretend that I’m the only one here by ignoring all these strangers.’ As always, this remains a perfectly legitimate way to enjoy an MMORPG.

oh the emerald dreamway is so so so so so pretty

2. Bravely Second: End Layer

I love Final Fantasy. I’m just gonna put that out there first, because it’s gonna contextualise a lot of what I say about Bravely Second. The Bravely series doesn’t fall under the FF banner and it lacks the FF name, but I would definitely class it as ‘FF adjacent’ as a result of of the shared heritage and development teams. The distinction is very important - by severing the game from the baggage of the FF series, it actually allows it the freedom to become one of the greatest games in this genre I have ever played.

I loved this game so so much. Gameplay wise it takes the most well-loved system from a Final Fantasy game (the job system of FFV) and polishes it until is is flawless. Every job is fun and gives you meaningfully unique abilities to use, and the game expects you to constantly shuffle these around and find fun combinations to help you out. I don’t know which of the new jobs are my favourite. Is it the Exorcist, who can heal your party by basically hitting Ctrl-Z and undoing any enemy attacks that you don’t like? Is it the Guardian, who can possess your other allies to share with them all of their stats and abilities? Is it the Kaiser, who is able to impose radical changes that affect both party members and enemies alike, forcing all involved to adjust their battle strategies to accommodate the new conditions? Or is it the Catmancer, who utilises kitties to assassinate people and gather information via the Informeowtion Superhighway? The answer is that it’s a team of all four, working alongside eachother in perfect harmony.

Quality of life additions like the ability to adjust the frequency of random encounters and the ability to chain enemies together for greater rewards encourage you to interact with random battles on your own terms - sure I guess the logical follow up question is ‘why do we even need the random encounters in the first place’, but… I dunno if you start to tug on that loose thread then you might end up unravelling the entire sweater and ending up with no video game at all. You need to have battles, otherwise there’s no canvas on which to experiment with all the cool jobs and abilities.

If I can talk about the story as well, it’s pretty neat. The first game in this series had a very ambitious plot twist in the middle of it that required you to replay huge chunks of the game multiple times in order to carry a narrative about ‘time repeating itself over and over again across alternate universes’. It was a neat idea with a clumsy-as-fuck execution that was borderline unplayable, and I can say that this game manages to pull off its mid-game switcheroo with MUCH more skill and finesse. No spoilers, but I REALLY liked the way the paradigm ended up shifting, and your team of always-one-step-behind-the-enemy losers manage to get their shit together and hurl some massive spanners into the internal workings of causality.

With some genuinely emotional character stories blended into the mix, excellent voice acting, fun side characters, amazing enemy designs, and a few boss battles that really made you reconsider certain truths that are taken for granted in a JRPG system, this is probably the best game of its kind I have ever played in my life. The few flaws that it had pales in comparison to all the things it did which just blew. my. fucking. mind.

most impractical design for a town 2016

1. Pokémon Sun Version

Sun & Moon may mark the beginning of the Seventh generation of Pokémon, but they themselves are the 16th swing at a main series Pokémon game (assuming that you’re counting the ones that were released in pairs as a single game). Game Freak always tries to stave off the feeling of repetition by mixing and matching some of the secondary features, so to a certain extent every Pokémon game comes with it’s own look and feel. In Sun & Moon however, the shakeup is far bigger than it’s ever been in the past, and for the first time in a long long time the game feels truly fresh and unique.

This game has more tiny changes than I can count! They’re all little things that you might overlook, but when taken en masse they are kinda amazing. See you in hell HMs! Those are gone. Also the unpopular Mega Evolution has been… not kicked, but nudged to the kerb in favour of the far more interesting and accessible Z-Moves. Changes to the EXP system allow you to switch your party members and catch up new monsters with greater frequency, preventing you from feeling like you got locked into a bad decision. The gym battles have been given a fresh coat of paint and rebooted as Trial challenges, something that is fundamentally the same but brings a different kind of experience and allows for a more flexible approach to gameplay progression. I could keep listing new shit, but I don’t need to do that here - maybe these are all small changes, but for me they felt huge. I didn’t have any gripes with the series beforehand, but I love these games and I want to see them try new things! More importantly, I want them to create lots of legroom for themselves to allow them to keep growing and changing in the future! This is a positive step on that path.

I’ve been trying to keep a spoiler-free policy in this list, and that’s not gonna change, which is a shame because I’d really really really love to talk in detail about the storyline to this game, and how much I enjoyed it! I’d also like to talk about the main characters, specifically the way they grow and change as the game goes on and the narrative starts to get stranger and more bizarre. I won’t though - I will say however that in a general sense, this game works harder than any before to tie each character into the larger story than any previous games have - too often in this series it feels like you, despite having no personal stake in the narrative, are forced to resolve it singlehandedly. This time around that is NOT the case.

TEAM SKULL ARE SO GOOD. They… god, I can’t get over how good they are! In the pantheon of Weird Pokémon Teams Who Are Trying To Do Fucked-Up Shit, they take the top slot as most memorable, most entertaining, and most overall satisfying as antagonists. There’s no ‘wipe out humanity for no reason’ or ‘flood the world because we feel like it’ rubbish here, their role in the story is legit as hell.

Look, there’s not really much else I can say here! Nintendo took a series that I love very dearly, and shook it up to give me something that is both refreshingly new and reassuringly similar. This is the best Pokémon I have ever played, even better than Black & White which, up until now, were my favourites. I’m really happy that I got to experience this, and I can’t wait to see what happens to this series in the future.

exeggutor is the manifestation of the stupid ‘eggs tree’ gag from homestarrunner