#Abuelita is finally here!

[ckret2]

Chapter 67 of human Bill Cipher gradually becoming less and less the Mystery Shack's prisoner:

Mabel's Guide to Secret Sleepovers!

They definitely won't get their lives endangered during the sleepover at all!! And if you believe that's not a lie, I've got a skyscraper in the second dimension to sell you.

####

A camera set up beneath the attic bedroom window recorded the dark room. In her pajamas, Mabel stood in the middle of the attic, boogying nervously to silent music.

A light shining from beneath the bedroom door turned off. Mabel stopped boogying, crept to the door, and leaned her ear against the crack.

She ran back to the camera and picked it up. "Okay," she whispered, "Dipper and Grunkle Ford are out on their mission, Stan and Abuelita are asleep, Soos finally knocked off building for the night, and Bill's in his new room. Welcome to... Mabel's Guide to Secret Sleepovers!"

She held up a flattened cereal box she'd written the title on. The title was almost invisible in the dark, but it was framed by stars painted on with glow-in-the-dark nail polish.

"Step one: getting your friends in the house." She turned the camera around. She swerved over to Waddles's bed as she crossed the room, whispering, "Hey, wanna come to the sleepover?"

Waddles snorted gently in his sleep.

"Aww, that's okay. Next time." She rubbed his belly, then crept toward the attic door.

She tiptoed in her socks down the newly-built hallway and past the curtain hiding Bill's new room, padded down the stairs, opened the back door, and hissed, "Pssst! Coast is clear!"

Out from the tree line ran Candy, wearing a camo-print blanket like a cloak, and Grenda, dressed in black and with her arms and face painted in brown and green. Grenda waved ecstatically at the camera as she passed.

With Mabel in the back, they quietly crept upstairs, quietly snuck past Bill's room, quietly closed the bedroom door, and quietly squealed with excitement. "First summer sleepover at the shack," Candy said, flopping on her back on Mabel's bed and spreading out her blanket cloak. She sat up, noticed a cardboard cradle next to Mabel's bed, and picked up the porcelain doll inside. "Oooh! Who's this handsome gentleman?"

"That's Bartholomew! I told you about him. Barty, these are my friends Candy and Grenda."

The doll did nothing.

"You can say hi, Barty! I trust them!"

The doll continued to do nothing.

"He's shy," Mabel said. "He's totally haunted by a little Victorian boy, though, really."

Candy nodded. "I believe you."

"This is cool!" Grenda said. She was trying to scrub the camo paint off her arms and face with her hands. "I've never gone to a secret sleepover before. Next time we should sneak into my place!"

"Okay, so," Mabel said. "I promised you I'd introduce you to the secret guy that's been staying here as soon as it was okay to. And it's okay to! As long as nobody else finds out I introduced you."

Grenda nodded. Candy said, "This sounds reasonable."

"Anyway his name's Goldie, he's been staying at the shack this summer, he's really fun, he's kiiind of a bad guy but in a cool way"—(Candy appreciatively said, "Oooh.")—"aaand he's asleep right now." A dramatic pause. "But not for long."

Candy and Grenda grinned evilly.

####

"Secret sleepover step two," Mabel whispered. "Introducing your friends to your other friend!" The camera's dark screen was illuminated by a slit of light as Grenda pulled open the curtain to Bill's room. The dim starlight pouring into the room was barely enough to illuminate the white lightning and yellow circle of symbols on the hanging zodiac blanket as the girls pushed past it to creep into the room.

Bill lay sleeping on the chaise extension of the orange sofa, catty-corner to the doorway, curled up on his side with his back to the door. Beneath his curls, the eye stitched on the back of his hood peered out at the room, shifting up and down with his steady sleeping breaths. The girls crept up behind him, biting their lips to keep from giggling. Candy and Grenda flanked Mabel, arms raised in preparation to attack, as Mabel held up her fingers... 3... 2... 1...

Bill rolled over with a devilish grin and lunged at them. "HEY, KIDS!"

The girls screamed. They bolted for the hall with Bill's laughter following them.

####

"You should've seen the looks on your faces," Bill gloated. He was sitting on the floor, legs crossed lotus style, in a semicircle with the three girls around the camera Mabel had set on the sofa. They'd set one flashlight next to the camera pointing out and another on the floor pointing at the ceiling.

"You got us good," Candy admitted.

Grenda leaned across the semicircle. "Hi! I'm Grenda. This is Candy."

"I've heard a lot about you two." Bill sat back, giving Grenda a somewhat less than warm smile. "Call me Goldie."

Grenda gasped. "Hey! Candy, look at his eyes!"

"What?" Bill's gaze darted between the girls' faces. His eyes caught the faint light and flashed like a cat's.

"They did it again!"

"Whoa!" Candy got up on her knees and leaned toward Bill. He leaned away.

Panic crossed Mabel's face. "Uhh, I can explain—"

"We knew it," Candy said. "We were sure you couldn't let us meet Goldie because he was a werewolf catboy!"

"I dunno," Grenda said. "They look more like frog eyes. They're kinda bulgy, too."

Bill stared at Grenda. A broad smile broke out across his face. "That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about them!"

Grenda asked, "Do your eyes suck into your face when you swallow like a frog's do?"

"I dunno, swallowing makes me blink. You tell me." Bill deliberately swallowed.

"Ugh, they do! Gross," Grenda said approvingly.

"Why do you have frog eyes? Are you a werefrog?" Candy asked. "Or did a mad scientist mutate you?"

Bill said, "You know the story about the frog prince? My great-grandfather."

"He is not."

"He could be!"

"Anyway," Mabel said, "Goldie's not any kind of not-human person or anything, that'd be crazy. He's just a big secret because he's committed war crimes, that's all!"

Grenda and Candy considered that.

"That's cool." Candy slowly pulled out a makeup bag. "Do you like makeovers?"

Bill eyed her appraisingly. "How good are you?"

####

The camera sat tilted off to the side, catching Grenda, Bill, and a bit of Mabel's hair. Bill and Grenda sat just out of the flashlights' range while Mabel and Candy off-screen debated how best to shape Mabel's lips. Grenda held a purple tube of foundation in one of the flashlights' beams; the tube had a logo that looked like a lilac triangle with a single eye and thick purple lips. She uncapped a black eyeliner pen, drew a big X over the triangle's eye and gave it a curly mustache, and added a cramped word bubble over it that said "UGLY LOSR." Grenda chuckled.

Past her, Bill's eyes flashed in the dark as they narrowed.

"Finished!" Mabel announced. She turned the camera to face the whole quartet again. "Secret sleepover step three: normal sleepover activities! Starting with... makeovers! Remember, you're beautiful just the way you are; but a real artist can look at a human body and see a canvas. And canvases are for paint!"

She pointed the flashlight at her own face. "I call this look... the Showstopper." She had eyeshadow, blush, and lipstick—in three different shades of pink—liberally caked on with a crunchy layer of multicolored glitter and with plastic gems bedazzling her brow and temples. It looked bad.

Mabel pointed the flashlight at Grenda. "This one's... Beach Babe."

Grenda said, "Like a mermaid!" She had blush painted to look like scales, clumpy blue mascara and blue eyeshadow shaped like waves, and lipstick that looked like a fish. It looked bad.

Mabel pointed at Candy. "And this is the Glam Rock Revival!" Candy had a shimmery blue star painted over one eye and half her face, and a smaller matching star on her opposite cheek. It looked unexpectedly good.

"And Goldie..." Mabel pointed the flashlight at his face. "He kinda just... let us experiment with some designs Candy found in a makeup book."

One of his eyes had a neon rainbow eyebrow and eyelashes and tiny glittery butterfly stickers. The other eye had golden eyelashes and bright blue and black flames that would look at home spray painted on an old school hot rod. It looked bad.

"I look awesome," Bill said.

"And check out our mani-pedis!" Grenda grabbed the camera and pointed it down at their hands and feet. Mabel had messy watermelon nails, Grenda had decent French tips, Candy's actually matched her makeup, and Bill—who, unlike the girls, wasn't so much showing off his nails as he was just sitting there while Grenda waved the camera around—had a different set on each hand and foot.

Mabel said, "Goldie let us each experiment on one set of nails."

Grenda pointed at Bill's right hand, "I did that one!" He had five extremely long glue-on nails, which in turn each had two more glue-on nails on top, each trimmed to a sharp point. All fifteen nails had garish pre-printed designs—stripes, polka dots, and three types of animal print. None matched.

Bill cheerily said, "I could stab clean through a grown man's throat with these."

Mabel leaned closer. "Goldie, why's your other hand so boring!" His left hand had all black nails.

Bill said, "Turn off the flashlights."

Mabel turned them off. Five glow-in-the-dark eyes peered up from Bill's nails. The girls ooohed appreciatively.

"Now what?" Candy asked. "We can't do our other usual sleepover activities. Rom-coms, karaoke, and saucy book readings are too loud for a secret sleepover."

"Aww," Bill groaned, "I was looking forward to karaoke."

"Candy's right." Mabel turned a flashlight back on. "We'll have to get creative. What's a good traditional sleepover activity that isn't too loud?"

They sat around for a moment in silent thought.

Bill turned the other flashlight on under his grinning face. "You girls ever summon a demon before?"

The girls smiled excitedly.

####

The camera trained on Grenda and Candy as they leaned over the lizard tank in the Mystery Shack's museum, staring at the "baby dragon" display. "Awww," Grenda cooed. "Look at them! They're so cute." She stood on her toes and crossed her arms on the edge of the tank. "How do their fake wings stay on?"

"Alien superglue. It'll last until their next shed," Bill said from behind the camera.

"They're very brown," Candy said, disappointed. "I guess it's good camouflage." She held up part of her camo blanket cloak to compare.

Grenda said, "I think they're either western fence lizards or sagebrush lizards. Do you know where Mr. Ramirez caught them?"

"In the forests around town," Bill said.

"Western fence lizards," Grenda said. "If they're boys, they'll have blue bellies!"

"Oooh." Candy crouched down eye-level with the lizards trying to see their bellies.

Grenda tentatively reached a hand into the tank to pick up one of the baby dragons; it skittered under a rock for safety.

Bill said, "You know your lizards, Grendo."

"Heh. Grend-O."

Candy said, "Grenda is the reptile and amphibian expert."

"I have a book on them! And a pet iguana!" Grenda announced. "Hey, Gold-O! What's your favorite lizard?"

Bill was silent a few seconds. "Leeet's go with chameleons. They've got cute eyes."

"Chameleons are my favorite too," Candy said. "I like how they change color. Their eyes are freaky, though."

Grenda said, "I like chameleon eyes! They're crazy! I think it'd be cool to look two different directions at the same time."

Bill lowered the camera slightly. "What, you mean like this?"

Grenda and Candy gaped at him in shock. Candy squealed in discomfort and shielded her eyes. "That looks painful."

Grenda laughed. "Cool," she said. "Hey, you like frogs too, right? What's your favorite frog!"

"Golden poison dart frogs." Bill answered without hesitation. "The brighter, the better."

"I love poison dart frogs," Grenda said. "On my death bed, I wanna lick one to find out what it tastes like!"

"Bitter sushi, until your mouth goes numb," Bill said. "But if you're gonna get drugged by a frog, make it a psychedelic toad. They're more fun."

"Ohhh. Thanks. Now I wanna taste sushi!" One of the baby dragons crept up a rock; Grenda tried, unsuccessfully, to catch it again.

Bill walked closer to the tank to film the lizards. After a moment, he asked, "What're your favorite frogs?"

"Oooh, that's hard." Grenda put her hand to her chin, thinking.

Candy said, "I think... the little green ones with the guts you can see through."

"Glass frogs," Bill provided.

"Either red-eyed tree frogs or strawberry poison dart frogs," Grenda said. "Maybe the tree frogs. Dart frogs have boring eyes."

"One of their only flaws." Bill paused. "What do you think about axolotls?"

"Mr. Pines lets me feed his sometimes," Grenda said. "They're kind of overrated, though. Frogs are better!"

"Hm." The hm sounded approving. Bill reached into the tank, effortlessly scooped his fingers beneath the wings and around the belly of a lizard, and lifted him up. Candy and Grenda gasped. "One male in the tank." He turned the lizard's blue belly toward the camera too. It wiggled in distress.

"Got it!"

Bill swung the camera around to look at Mabel, who'd just triumphantly come through the curtain from the gift shop. She was holding a box of rainbow chalk over her head. "The chalk Soos uses for sales and stuff!"

"Perfect," Bill said. "Manage to find a religious text?"

"No, buuut I found a copy of a DMV manual at the cash register." Mabel held up her find. "Will that work?"

"Hm." Bill considered it. "I've never seen someone try it before, but traffic law is just as imaginary as any other divine commands! Just try really hard to have faith in the rules of road safety and maybe it'll work. Never know unless we try it out!"

"Good enough for me!" Mabel said. "What did we need a religious text for, again?"

"Oh, once the demon's here, it's the only thing that'll be capable of banishing it, that's all," Bill said. "So! Where are we drawing this summoning circle?"

They found a clear space in the museum on the floor near the treasure chest display. Bill handed the camera momentarily to Mabel while he drew a four-inch version of the summoning circle for the girls to copy. "It needs to be white and blood red. Do we have any blood red chalk?" He rummaged through the box of chalk. "Hmm. Okay, either one of us can let a lot of blood, or we can try it out with pink chalk. What'll it be?"

Grenda and Candy looked to Mabel, considering the question seriously. Finally, Mabel said, "Pink chalk sounds like it'll be faster."

"I guess," Bill said, disappointed. He finished his example circle and stood. "Okay, there you go! Usually you're not even supposed to draw the circle unless you've fasted for twelve hours, but there's three of you and you haven't eaten in at least four hours, sooo it's probably fine."

Grenda raised a hand. "I had a soda. Is that bad?"

"Naaah, a soda's more bubbles than liquid, I bet it barely even counts."

Bill took over camera duties again as Mabel and Candy each took a stick of white chalk to draw half the circle. They started at different sizes. They had to do a weird wiggly slope in order to make the two halves meet. Candy asked, "Is that good?"

"Hmmm..." Bill considered the lopsided blob. "It's good enough!"

While Mabel and Candy puzzled over Bill's tiny pink protective sigils and tried to figure out how to draw them bigger, Grenda leaned over to Bill and whispered, "Hey! Are you really related to the frog prince?"

"No," Bill said. (Grenda's face fell.) "I was cursed by a witch. I can see through walls and in the dark, but in exchange I have frog eyes."

Grenda's face lit up again. "Stupid! Frog eyes just make you look even cooler!"

"That dumb witch had no idea what a real curse is. I got nothing but benefits," Bill said. "All right, you asked me one, let me ask you one."

Grenda looked at Bill with trepidation. "O-okay?"

"What's with the face you were drawing on that triangle?"

Grenda seemed relieved by the question. "Oh! We're not really supposed to talk about it much? But there was this triangle jerk that tried to take over the world last year. So we're supposed to cover up pictures that look like him. I dunno, it's a whole thing."

"Okay," Bill said irritably, "fine. How come you make him look stupid, though?"

"Because he was a big monster that hurt my friends and wrecked the town," Grenda said hotly. "He almost killed Mabel!"

Bill was silent a moment. "Sure," he said tersely. "If that's what it looked like, I can see how that would leave a bad impression."

"Hey, Goldie," Mabel said loudly. "I think we're done! Does this look right?"

"Let's see..." Bill inspected the circle, circling the perimeter with the camera. It looked bad. "Looks good enough," Bill said.  "All right! Everyone in position around the circle—Grenda, you're on the circle."

"Oops." She slid her foot back, smearing the chalk line and one of the protective sigils. "Uhh... I think I broke the ring?"

"It's fine, it's small! And you can still tell what the symbol is. Mostly," Bill said. "Okay, everyone remember the chant I taught you? Three, two..."

The camera's audio only recorded a long squeal of distortion instead of words as the girls started chanting. Bill backed up to get a better shot of the whole circle. The girls' eyes began glowing white; the flashlights flickered; and a fiery cloud of smoke filled the ring, billowing from floor to ceiling. The girls stumbled back, shielding their faces from the smoke.

"Hey, hey," Bill said. "Get back in there! If you stop the chant before it's complete, you'll—!"

With a boom, the smoke exploded outward, filling the room and completely obscuring the camera's view.

When it cleared up, the ring appeared to be empty.

Bill aimed the camera down and zoomed in. In the center of the ring was a tiny imp. It looked like a skinny coral-red hairless mouse with a spade-tipped tail and little bat wings.

"—you'll only get a small one," Bill finished.

They crouched down and stared at it. "It's cute," Candy said. Mabel said, "I'm naming her Cinnamon."

It blinked big wet black eyes at them. And then it scampered out of the gap in the chalk line.

The girls shrieked. The imp chased Candy around the treasure chest. Grenda tried to climb onto a display pedestal with a taxidermy jackalope, screaming, "Get it! Get it!"

"Candy! Run this way!" Mabel got on her knees, Oregon state driving manual held high over her head. As Candy ran past, Mabel shouted, "I do believe in the speed limit!" and swung the manual down like she was swatting a bug.

The manual smacked the imp. With a puff of smoke, it poofed out of the mortal plane and back to where it came from.

"Nice banishment, star girl," Bill said. "Hey, not bad for your first summoning, kids. You'll be bargaining with demon royalty in no time."

The girls heaved a sigh of relief. "That went pretty smoothly, I think," Candy said.

"Yeah!" Grenda climbed down from the pedestal. "There weren't any weird life-threatening twists or anything!"

"That doesn't happen a lot," Mabel said.

The camera suddenly lowered, pointing at the floor at an angle. "Hey, Mabel. Where'd you get this camera, anyway?" The camera's view turned back and forth. "It doesn't look like the one you usually record your guides with."

"Oh, yeah," Mabel said. "Dipper's using our normal camera, so I'm borrowing one I found in a box in the attic loft."

Bill said, "The cardboard box covered in fifteen strips of duct tape?"

"Uh-huh."

"So, the cursed camera?"

A pause. "The what?"

The camera's view became a blur as it whizzed across the room, only focusing again when the camera was ten feet in the air and staring down at the group of four. The camera's neck strap had wrapped tight around one of Bill's wrists, wrenching his arm into the air. Candy and Grenda automatically clung to his sides, the one adult in the room; he had his free arm raised up to avoid touching Candy.

"Well! This isn't ideal." The camera had a clipped, artificial-sounding voice—but a familiar one. "I'd been hoping you'd split up so I could steal your souls one by one!"

Mabel said, "Why do you sound like Grunkle Ford! Did you steal his soul?!"

"Stanford's voice is just the only one it's ever recorded before tonight," Bill said. "If it had stolen his soul, you'd know."

"How?"

"Because he'd be dead."

"Oh."

"So much for the element of surprise." The camera's sigh was laced with the crackle of VHS static. "But as long as my secret is out... time to hunt!"

"Huh! How about that," Bill said. "Kids? Run."

Grenda and Candy turned and bolted deeper into the museum.

Bill turned to stare at them in bewilderment. "Not that way—!"

Mabel threw herself on Bill's arm, trying to jerk down the camera and pull off the strap. "Let go of my friend, you—!"

The screen blurred as the camera butted the side of Mabel's head, knocking her to the ground. Panic flashed across Bill's face. "Mabel!"

The camera took advantage of his distraction to snap its strap around both his wrists, bind them together, and yank Bill closer. "At least I get to take out the biggest threat first," the camera hissed. "Smile for the camera, sweetheart."

Bill shot the camera a glare—and then seemingly got caught there, unable to tear his eyes away from the lens, as the camera slowly zoomed in...

And nothing happened.

"It's not working," the camera said. "Your soul should be sucked out by now. Why isn't it working?"

Bill shook himself out of the trance and laughed darkly. "Because a force too powerful for your little electronic mind to comprehend glued my soul in this body so tightly, even I can't pull it out!" He leaned closer until one wide bloodshot eye filled the screen. "Go ahead, give it your best shot! Maybe you'll help tug it loose!"

The camera paused. "Are... are you alright?"

Bill jerked back, scowling. "Oh, just shut— Mabel! Flashlight!"

"Flashlight!"

Bill tilted his head aside just in time for a flashlight to sail over his shoulder and crash into the camera. It shrieked inhumanly. It crash-landed at a tilt, a crack in its lens, the shot unfocused. Bill's blurry form looked down at the camera, holding the flashlight—and then he turned and ran for the curtain into the gift shop. The camera slowly rose back up.

Mabel shouted, "Bi—Goldie! Come back!"

"Keep it distracted!"

"You don't even need a flashlight, you coward!"

The camera's blurry view focused. The crack in its lens repaired itself. It stared at the curtain where Bill had disappeared, snarled, "Not worth it," and rounded on the museum.

And then it began stalking its prey.

The camera followed heavy thudding to find Grenda trying to knock down the main entrance's locked door. "Come on!" Grenda grunted. "This! Doesn't! Meet! Fire codes!" As she glimpsed the camera's approach, she gasped, flipped a rug over it, and bolted. 

It zoomed past Sascrotch, peered behind it, and caught Mabel and Candy clinging onto its back fur. They screamed, dropped down, and ran two different directions. The camera glanced between them indecisively and snarled in frustration when they both turned corners before it could choose a target.

It passed a six pack-o'-lope, a mummy, and a triclops skull; heard a papery rustle; and did a double-take at the displays. Grenda, wrapped in a bunch of receipt paper from the gift shop, ran away from the former "mummy" display.

It swooped under a taxidermy turtle with wings to find Candy hiding beneath the turtle's shell; Candy flipped the shell over the camera before she ran the other way.

It chased Mabel around a barrel of monkey heads, ending in a stalemate on opposite sides of the barrel with each of them twitching left and right trying to figure out which way to run; until it remembered it could just float over the top of the barrel. Mabel backed up and blew a handful of chalk dust in the camera's lens. By the time it wiped its lens clean on a dried monkey pelt, Mabel was gone.

It circled around the invisible man to see whether its cloak hid any children behind its back, made a noise of disgust when it didn't find any, and turned to leave. "Wait a minute. That man isn't invisible!"

Candy—her face beneath the "invisible man's" suspended glasses and bowler hat—sighed harshly and threw down her camo blanket, revealing she was sitting on Grenda's shoulders. "This camouflage doesn't do anything!" They tumbled to the ground and ran different directions.

This time, the camera didn't make the mistake of hesitating before choosing a target. It flew after Grenda.

Grenda stopped in a dead end with a gasp. "Uh-oh." She turned to see how close the camera was behind her, flinched, and tried to dodge around it. It jerked to the side, backing Grenda into a corner.

"Back off, you big, ugly—!" She punched the camera square in the lens, her fist filling the shot. The crunched lens had repaired itself before Grenda stopped shaking her smarting hand. She gasped and covered her eyes. "Please don't take my soul! I'm using it!"

"Not for long!" The camera's strap whipped around Grenda's wrists, yanking her hands down. "It's time for your close up!"

Grenda tried to turn her face away—but the camera caught her gaze, and she turned toward it, eyes wide, hypnotized. The shot zoomed in. A swirling green mist began spiraling out of Grenda's eyes.

Until another set of eyes cut in between, yellow and slitted and furious and framed by mismatched eyeshadow. "Miss me?"

"You," the camera snarled.

Grenda cheered, "Gold-O! You came back!"

"Hey, Grend-O." Bill glanced back over his shoulder. "Sorry for the wait—takes a while for glow-in-the-dark nail polish to charge and dry."

"Get out of my way!" The camera tried to butt the side of Bill's head.

He caught it in his left hand without looking, his arm extending off the edge of the screen like he was taking a selfie. "I don't think so." He raised his right hand—several of the ludicrous nail extensions had already broken off—with palm facing out. There was a symbol painted on his palm, glowing whitish green; but whatever symbol he'd painted on his palm couldn't be fully seen because the moment it was in full view of the camera's lens, it became so bright it almost completely washed out the rest of the frame.

The image skipped and the audio recorded a shriek of static before the camera managed to wrench itself free of Bill's grip and rush back.

Bill caught it by its strap, twisting it about his left wrist to keep it secure. "Now let's get this straight," he snarled, teeth bared at the camera. "Everything beneath this shack's roof is my domain and under my protection! If you want to hurt anyone here—" his voice dropped demonically low, "—you'll have to get through me." He dragged the camera closer. 

He clamped his right hand over the camera's lens, trapping it with the glowing symbol on his palm; the static screamed, stuttered; and then the film overheated and melted.

####

The camera switched back on. "Welcome back to Mabel's Guide to Secret Sleepovers!" Mabel's left eyeshadow and blush was smeared across her face. "Weee're back! Goldie taped a symbol to the camera that keeps it stunned, so we're safe! Woo-woo! Now, back to sleepover step, uh... seven or something: greeting the sunrise with your friends who didn't get any sleep!"

She turned the camera toward Candy and Grenda, who were sitting with her on the saggy sofa on the back porch. They were blinking dazedly toward the glowing horizon.

"And now you've completed a successful sleepover! Great job, everybody!"

"You kids can stay up if you want," Bill said. (Mabel aimed the camera down; Bill was lying on his stomach on the porch, cheek resting on his crossed arms, eyes shut.) "I'm already asleep."

"Boo," Candy said. "Sleepover quitters are lame."

"Yeah," Mabel agreed. "But he saved our lives, I think he earned it if he wants."

"Do you wanna sleep on the couch?" Grenda asked. "There's still some room! We could squish together!"

"Nah, s'more comfortable down here," Bill mumbled. "My back's killing me."

Grenda laughed. "Old."

"I got assaulted by a camera!"

"Hold on, I have an idea!" She got off the couch and knelt next to Bill. "I saw this at the mall once." She dug an elbow into his back. "Is this helping?"

Bill grunted. "More to the left," he said. "It might be helping a little bit..."

Grenda pressed her other elbow into his back, putting her upper body weight on it. "How 'bout now?"

"Not quite..."

Candy climbed on the arm of the sofa and crouched there. "Let me try!" Grenda leaned back. Like a wrestler, Candy jumped in the air and dropped, sharp elbow first, onto Bill's back.

Bill's eyes flew open and he let out a strangled shriek of pain. It petered out. "Oh, hey—that actually got it. Thanks, kids." He sighed in relief and immediately fell back asleep.

Grenda pumped a fist. "Yes!"

"He really was tired," Candy said.

"So, what'd I say, girls?" Mabel asked. "I told you Goldie was cool, right?"

"Okay, you were right," Candy said. "He is a very patient makeup mannequin."

"And he taught us how to summon demons and saved our lives," Grenda said. "And the first thing didn't even cause the second thing! Which is weird!"

Eyes still shut, Bill mumbled, "You flatter me."

"Hey!" Grenda picked up a sofa cushion. "You're supposed to be a-SLEEP!" She swung it down on his head. He only laughed.

"Yes!" Mabel cheered. "And the moral of the story is the friend of my friend is my friend's friend! Or—wait—no. The friend of my friend is my friend too?"

From under the cushion, Bill said, "The friend of my friend is my rival for her attention."

"No!" Mabel turned the camera to herself. "Anyway, that's Mabel's Guide to Secret Sleepovers! Tune in next time for... I dunno, maybe alpacas or something. We'll see!"

She set the camera in her lap, episode completed.

####

(Would you look at that, positive character growth. Hope you enjoyed, and looking forward to hearing y'all's thoughts!)

[gracefireheart]

A lil' gift to the best father figure boss :]

Originally, I wanted to make a lil' comic, but I just don't have the energy for it. So instead, I'll write what I wanted the comic to be about here.

Basically, I was reminded of a moment in the Lost Legends comic, where Soos hears sobbing and said how he recognized those sobs- which then showed that it was Stan sobbing.

The lil' comic I wanted to make was gonna be set maybe around a year into Soos working at the Mystery Shack. After it had closed for the day, Soos had gone home to eat dinner with Abuelita. After they're finished, she gives Soos a gift for him to give to Stan as a thank you for the fair amount of money he pays Soos for his work and for being there for her lil' Soos when his father just isn't.

When Soos arrives back at the Mystery Shack, it's ofc closed, so he just let's himself in with the keys Stan had given him not that long ago. He calls out to Stan when he doesn't see him in the gift shop, but gets no answers. Making his way through the building towards Stan's office, Soos hears the faint sound of sobbing coming from there. Knocking on the door to the office and calling out that it was just him, Soos gives Stan enough time to compose himself before he enters the office.

Stan cuts to the chase and asks why Soos is here when he saw him leave earlier after his shift was done, to which Soos presents him with the gift from him and Abuelita. Soos tells him about the reasoning behind the gift while Stan just stares at it in silent surprise before finally opening it and finding home baked cookies. Finally, Stan smiles and gives Soos a lil' thank you- and asks him to forward that thank you to Abuelita- for the gift, and it makes Soos smile in turn.

[hasnomoxxie]

So, if the Smile Dip Dog swaps with Bill, did he still destroy his own dimension? A dimension full of colorful talking animals? Because I’ve gotta say, that already sounds even sadder.

Right on the money boss!

Here's how I think it'd go!

First off the zodiac, this initially was the way that the beast was split and banished to the astral plane.

Now that this is here, I can list out all the main swaps hoho!

Dipper ⇆ Stan

Mabel ⇆ Ford

Wendy ⇆ Lazy Jane

Soos ⇆ Manly Dan

Abuelita ⇆ Tyler

Pacifica ⇆ Fiddleford

Gideon ⇆ Bud and mrs Gleeful (little villain couple to rival the stan duo)

Robbie ⇆ Preston

THE BEAST ⇆ BILL CYPHER

The pups are silly and playful in nature, opting to try and make things as brightly coloured and 'fun' as possible. Though this usually results in freakish abominations that do things that really shouldn't be done. Though they're not stupid, they know exactly what they're doing and how it effects others- It's mainly just for their own enjoyment.

After destroying their universe full to the brim of brightly coloured talking animals, 'The Beast' was split into halves and banished to the astral plane. This meant their reality warping abilities was whittled down to being intense illusions and hallucinations, however they typically tend to use it to try and restore their original look when they are seen by people- though that only works for a short time.

Pretty much anyone could theoretically see the dogs, either through extreme meditation or having a suspiciously high amount of sugar in your system. Safe to say, a food company having a suspicious amount of complaints from parents saying their kids are now 'unresponsive', 'babbling gibberish and mysteriously disappearing' or were 'seeing God and He's a Dog' was enough to get the entire line of candy shut down. Mabel was unlucky enough to stumble onto some smile dip during a late night work session and met the pups. They quickly bonded and the pups were leading Mabel to the weirdness left right and centre, with the end goal of opening a 'weirdness rift'.

A portal.

Safe to say, Mabel couldn't do this on her own. She's smart but not- dimensional science smart. So she called on the smartest person she knew, her twin brother Mason. At this time, Mason wasn't really doing as well as he could have, being attracted to the extraordinary he was prone to being the laughing stock of his university- but a solid breakthrough. Money wasn't an issue, especially when Mabel's old friend Pacifica was willing to help lend a hand and be on site (despite lying about her financial security in order to help her friends). So- the three of them set to building the portal.

Due to unknown circumstances, Pacifica leaves the project. When Mabel finally realises the true intention of the portal and tries to shut it down, Mason is reluctant to do this- fearing that it may be sabotaging his last chance at being recognised for his scientific works and being slightly jealous that Mabel found all of the weirdness instead of him. Either way, a small fight happens, ending with Mabels disappearance, leaving her scrapbooks behind.

The project failed and the pups still aren't free, but it's a matter of time before someone eventually sets them free

I'm litterally figuring out the timeline as I write but some things are set in stone. I'm just figuring out how to show it all off- I did get alot of outsite help for this too ^^

How would y'all feel about comics? or animations? What particular scenes? I feel like tackling this bit by bit would be the most effective way to go about it, especially for what the world is like in this flipped version.

I dunno this is my first time doing something like this umm, if this doesn't make sense lmk and I'll revise some stuff

umm

bazzinga, thanks for yer question ^^

[artsninspo]

"FIRST LOVE💗 " - RIO X READER

Summary: For the girls who wanted a younger rio x reader. Here it is; Rio’s fallen for the daughter of his boxing coach. Based around this ask.

Pairing: Rio (Good Girls) x Reader

Warnings: none this is fluffy 🐻 🐻 🐻

Word Count: 1K

Full Masterlist

RIO MASTERLIST

“Tell me you love me” Rio laughs, pulling you to him. His thumbs looped into the belt loops of your jeans as his hands rest on your butt. Looking up you laugh at the sight of him wearing your puppies of choice.

“No” you respond and he pulls you in closer.

“Don’t play with me” he laughs sitting on the trunk of his car.

“Tell me you love me” he repeats and you look up at him about to respond when your phone buzzes in your back pocket. Taking your hands from his knees you reach into it to see your dad in the caller ID.

“Dad?” You question picking up.

“Maria says we also need vegetables, I texted you the list. Don’t come back without it” he says talking about your stepmom. 

“Okay, it’ll take a little longer” you respond.

“Hurry we’re all hungry” your father says and Rio hips down from his car swinging an arm around you as you hand up.

“Lucky for you I know where all this shit is” he smiles, taking the phone from you. The two of you walk like that from the very back of the parking lot into the store. You grab a cart and Rio leads the way. His abuelita has taught him well or he’s excellent at bullshitting.

“Hey, Y/N it’s nice to see you” one of your friends' moms says, eyeing Rio.

“Nice to see you too Ma’am” you smile.

“One of your brother's friends?” She pries, ready to sell your secrets for a chance to be with your father.

“Yeah, he works at the gym” you don’t hesitate.

“Christopher” Rio smiles.

“Mhm, be good sweetie and stay away from boys who look at you the way he does. They’re all trouble” she advises before walking away. Everyone’s already made plans for the kind of man they want you to be with.

“So you don’t love me?” Rio whispers in your ear to taunt you.

“I told you not to get that neck tatt” you laugh evading the question and he smiles laughing. 

“I’ll get one for you, when you tell me you love me” Rio whispers in your ear again, in good humour.

“We should tell my dad.” You sigh.

“Why?”

“Because he’s your boxing coach and it could get messy if he thinks you’re a fox in the hen house” you explain.

“You won’t even tell me you love me, he doesn’t have to worry about us having sex” Rio scoffs, placing the final ingredients in your cart. You smile happy he knows and he smiles back winking at you.

“You’re okay with that?” You ask and he shrugs walking at your side.

“I’m seeing you when your dad can fuck me up, my heads already gone. Probably best for my well being you don’t sleep with me yet so I can stop spinning” Rio says making you blush.

“My dad likes you” you share candidly.

“For now” Rio says knowing how things work.

“I don’t think us dating changes that. Just makes you the enemy first, his pupil second.” You explain and Rio gets his money out to pay ahead of you. 

“Keep it” he smiles, allowing you to pocket the money your father gave you for the errand.

“Rio-“ you object.

“Shh” he says before helping you bring the groceries to his car. You both second guess parking so far out for some privacy. Rio gets your door and you sit passenger side waiting for him to get in. He pulls off and you look at each other smiling before the blushing happens and you’re both filled with butterflies. Rio’s hand interlocks fingers with yours and he kisses thrm. “I’ll tell him” he relents.

“Thank you” , you sigh with relief.

“Then we can go places together and go on dates” you say with excitement.

“Where do you want to go first?” Rio asks and you relax against the headrest pondering the thought. Rio watches your eyes sparkle. He watches the thoughts roll through your head as he waits for the red light to turn green.

“Let’s go to the roller skating rink”

“No way I’m not busting my ass in front of you on our first date” Rio smiles.

“Where then?” You ask.

“Take you somewhere nice to eat so you can get all dressed up and I can show you off” Rio says with his priorities all over the place. You laugh.

“After you show me off?”

“A drive in, we can watch something scary so you have an excuse to be all over me” Rio proposes and you love it.

“No imagination” you sigh, acting like it’s a bad suggestion.

“I don’t care as long as you’re happy and I’m not busting my ass,” Rio concludes.

“What about an art class? I could look for something. A workshop activity we could do?” You ask obliterating Rio’s idea of romance which was everything he’d ever seen on television.

“If it makes you happy” Rio shrugs.

“Okay, I’ll find something” you smile, getting ahead of yourself.

The rest of the ride is short and you find your father waiting out front. He scrunches his face at the sight of Rio taking the bags of food from you.

“It’s all here” you tell your father.

“Christopher” your dad nods in acknowledgement.

“Sir” Rio nods.

“You staying for dinner? The boys aren’t back yet” Your dad says.

“I’d like to speak to you about something” Rio’s voice cracks a little.

“Sure” your dad says heading in to set down the groceries. You sigh watching from the kitchen as they talk outside. Maria, your father’s current fixation watches you like a hawk.

“Told you he likes you” she smiles. “Don’t work, I’ll convince your dad you should be allowed to date, if you try and get him to take me on a trip for my birthday. Three days away can go a long way” she comments, chopping up the produce.

“Why don’t we just make dinner like we said we would?” You ask peeling your eyes away from the outside window. She smiles hearing your dad’s voice raise.

“Kid has some balls” she scoffs as your heart races. He gets louder and she stops putting the knife down to head outside. You stay out of it wanting to speak to Rio but not wanting things to get worse. “Babe she’s a good kid, you should reward honesty. She’s not having sex and she wanted him to tell you. Be her hero not her warden. You can’t protect her from everything. If he messes up guess what, you’re still her dad, you can go off” Maria says reasoning with him.

“I like the kid. I don’t want to have to kill him. But that’s my baby girl” your father snaps.

________-

Authors Note: Testing, I wanted this to be longer but I haven't written teenage puppy love in so long I hope I did okay. This was supposed to be one long update but I had to break it up so you all could have something in relatively timely matter.

Let me know if you enjoyed it.

LIKE COMMENT & REBLOG

[vampillaarts]

RELATIVITY FALLS FANDOM

Just hear me out(Final)

They exchange among themselves:

I just wanted to say that Fiddleford would still be the twins' age, and that his relationship with his father is close here.

And here I wanted to say that while in the original Stan kisses Abuelita, here Mabel is so happy that she slaps Soos in the belly, it sounds less bad.

[noellawrites]

Y Tú, Mamá? Part 2 - Yandere!Lalo Salamanca x reader

part one linked here

summary: you wake up in a strange place and Lalo is the first person you see.

warnings: kidnapping, forced restraint

tags: @jaythegreat @gothams-gotchya @oceandolores @matt-lipstick @joonie7007 @mavericksicybabe

author’s note: the two year wait is finally over! sorry it’s so short. if anyone has any more ideas on how to continue this or what they’d like to see, please let me know! :)

Your evil, sadistic and wickedly smart husband had eyes on you every moment of every day.

And, in your momentary lapse of judgement, you had forgotten that. Lalo never let you out of his sight without a few of his men keeping eyes on you and his precious daughter.

After calling Saul’s girlfriend and setting up a meeting, you walked with Leticia hand-in-hand out to your car.

Before you even knew what was happening, Lalo’s men grabbed you and threw a bag over your head. The last sound you heard was Lettie screaming as your world went dark.

—

You woke up to the sound of birds chirping and children giggling. As you looked around the room, something about it was strangely familiar.

The mix of Southwestern and Mexican artwork, the patchwork quilt on the bed, even the view of the countryside outside of the window.

You looked down at the chains binding you to the bed and realized that this was Lalo’s house in Chihuahua. You were in Mexico.

“Good morning, my love,” Lalo cooed as he opened the bedroom door, a glass of water in his hand.

His unmistakable musk followed him, expensive cologne of tobacco and leather. Your body shook with fear each time he took a step closer.

“Lalo… why are we here? Where’s Lettie?”

“Lettie is fine, she’s with Abuelita and her cousins. Now, are you going to apologize?” your husband said, an edge to his tone.

He crosses his arms, raising an eyebrow as he stares at you. You try your hardest to sit up, chains rattling as your limbs move.

“You don’t understand how hard this is for me, Lalo! I haven’t been able to see my family in years and your family hates me! You treat me like a pet! I’m tired of it!”

“How hard this is for you? Mi amor, I take care of everything for you. You do not have to work. You do not slave away. You simply watch after and grow our little ones,” he stated, taking a step closer.

“I never wanted this, Lalo,” you sighed, tears building up in your eyes.

“So I should’ve left you there, frying chicken for Gustavo? Suffering, struggling to get by?” he scoffed, shaking his head at how stupid you were.

“I don’t want to argue anymore, I’m tired and I’m cramping,” you groaned, trying to adjust and allow your stomach to rest comfortably. Your child seemed to be kicking up a storm in there.

Lalo walked up to you, eyes bearing into yours, and leans in to kiss you on the lips.

“Eduardo Junior should be here soon,” he says with a smile and a gentle rub on your stomach.

“Lettie’s gonna be so excited,” you say softly, trying to crack a smile.

Giving birth to your daughter at nineteen was a traumatic experience, to say the least. Especially with the way Lalo had kept you locked up.

And now, looking down at your chains, you suspected you would be put back under strict watch, though now he had his entire family to keep watch over you.

“Are you feeling okay?” Lalo asked, forehead wrinkling in concern. Before you could respond, he sat down next to you on the bed, resting his hand on the swell of your stomach.

“Yeah, I just— Lalo, do you think you might let me see my family sometime? I want them to meet Lettie and—“

“Mi amor, your family is right here in Mexico. Now, it will be so much easier to see Abuelita, the cousins, and all our nieces and nephews,” he smiled, gently rubbing your baby bump again.

“Lalo,” you said gently, “I want to go back to New Mexico. We can’t stay here, the kids—“

“The kids will love it here. Lettie’s Spanish will improve, they can be around family. I can protect all four of us better out here, hm?”

Lalo looked at you expectantly, and you knew in that moment that you will not be returning to the United States anytime soon. Lalo, the father and husband, always had the last word.

[volturiprincess]

Mi Felicidad

:My Happiness:

Poly Volturi x Fem Mexican reader

Summary: A little surprise for reader

Warnings: Mentions of Alcohol (i only say what the drink is called), mentions of a dead grandma (my Abuelita's are well and alive i just added this touch for the sake of the plot), Fluff

A/N: Happy Latin Heritage Month to all of my Latinos❤️. Kind of a last minute one-shot but I wanted to work on something that was not a request. And this idea kind of was preventing me from doing my HW so I was okay quick break to just get this idea out of my head and just write it out. Anyways.......Enjoy💙 (forgot to mention I do not see Demetri as a toxic person, i was just joking, please don't come after me😅)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Los Fantastico Cuatro)

“Are you busy?”

I tilt my head to the side to be met with Alec’s burgundy eyes. They're so pretty, I wish I could stare at them all day without having to worry about blinking.

“Uh no?”

He kept watching me with a deadpan look. 

“Come with me cara”

My head tilts to the side in confusion but nevertheless I take his outstretched hand as he guides me out of my room. We walked down multiple long hallways until we somehow ended up outside in what I can assume is a patio. I didn't even know this existed, as we step closer to the patio, a strong smell meets my nose. It’s so familiar. It's a smell that I could never in a million years forget, even if many centuries in the future when I'm already a vampire I know this smell will bring back my human memories instantly. I grip Alec’s hand as he continues to pull me along.

The sight I saw was the most heartwarming thing I could ever witness. On the grill roasting carne asada and other familiar food items was my giant of a mate, Felix. To his left side was my casanova of a mate Demetri chopping up items for what I can assume was for a pico de gallo. Lastly stood my little death flower, Jane, adding final touches to a chocoflan. I felt small tears fall down as I kept intaking the sight of my mates cooking for me. All of their eyes turned to me as if they could hear my tears, which caused them all to gravitate toward me.

Demetri who stood in front of me reached a hand over to my cheek to caress it. “Why the tears cariño?”

Another hand, Alec’s, was on my other cheek wiping the tears away as I composed my thoughts.

“You four remembered?”

Felix spoke up “We could never forget the first day of a month that involves who you are”

That line right there did it for me because more tears came down. Jane, who suddenly broke from her serious facade, snapped her gaze to Felix.

“Look what you did you made her cry”

She pulled me away from Demetri’s and Alec’s touch, and into her arms to hug me gently. She might be the ‘cold’ out of the four but with me, I’m her only exception in breaking through her walls.

“I didn’t mean to make her cry, you know I hate seeing her in tears, it hurts me more than it hurts her”

Demetri slapped his arm “Oh shut it Felix, your not helping your case here”

I smile into Jane’s shoulder while they argue. I turn to them which causes all them to stop arguing as they are met with my small smile.

“I'm not crying from sadness, these are happy tears my loves”

They all answered in unison a oh. I laugh at their unison when I spot black smoke from the grill. 

I yell out “Felix! Grill!”

He rushes to the grill fanning it but that only makes the fire grow more.

“Felix honey, air feeds the fire”

I scrambled and grabbed a random bucket of ice and just threw it onto the fire, it sizzled but it did what needed to be done. I looked up and Felix as he looked down to me.

“Are you okay doll?”

I nodded. “Yea and you?”

He nodded in return, we turned to the other three who were just watching like fishes out of water. I spoke up again to break the silence 

“So about all this, how did you guys learn to do all these dishes? I don’t remember teaching you”

They all went around saying that it took months and months of reading different recipes and some of them secretly going away to the kitchen to physically learn these skills while I slept. If my heart was not warmed up enough, it was bursting with awe for them now.

“Who made the rice?”

Jane raised her hand and I went to the rice to inspect it, to say I was shocked, it was perfectly made and it seemed it had the perfect amount of a red hue to it. I grabbed a nearby spoon to taste it and I turned to her

“Jane marry me”

She raised her eyebrow in question. “You are aware we are mates, marriage seems useless compared to the mate bond we have”

“I know but in a joking matter even if this is true in my culture but if you know how to make a proper rice then technically you are set to marry”

She rolled her eyes as the others chuckled quietly. 

“I still can’t believe you all did this for me, who told you I was in the feels lately?”

Demetri gave me his cute little lopsided smile “Nobody did angel, we just knew from the way you been acting, we thought of doing something special and coincidentally we happened to do it on this day” 

“You have no idea how I am feeling, to even think you guys learned to do some of my comfort foods just for me says a lot”

Felix pulled me into his arms. “We would move the earth for you if we could, anything really to just see you smile”

“Felix, I'm going to have to stop you there or you will make me cry again, you are just feeling your own inner casanova today, huh?”

He smiled at my words. “Only for you my little rose”

I turn to the other three while still being in the giant's arms. “So is everything ready or…?”

As if on cue Felix carried me to a nearby table that was decorated with a variation of colors of rose petals.  While Demetri prepared me a Paloma, and just seeing him making it makes me think he would make one very sexy bartender. Jane and Alec focused on serving me a plate with every dish that was made.  Soon they were all sitting with me and Felix at the dinner table waiting for me to take my first couple of bites. Again absolutely flabbergasted how these four who have not eaten human foods in centuries manage to make the best Mexican food, my Abuelita would be rolling in her grave from shock. They would definitely be invited to the Carne Asadas if they were humans. 

“You four always create a whole new reason to love you guys”

They all gave me smiles and I admired how beautiful they all look with the sun setting behind them. But as my eyes landed on Felix I noticed his apron which totally caught me off guard.

“Felix mi amor, why does your apron have a Don Ramon loteria style art with the caption being El Toxico”

They all laughed along with me.

“I thought it was funny”

“I mean it is but you are not toxic, if anyone here is, it's definitely Demetri”

“Hey! Why me?”

“Demetri the way you love to start drama makes me think you are”

“I do not start drama as you say”

“Oh yes you do, remember how the other day you were spreading a rumor that Master Aro wears a wig and everyone for a while believed that, even his own soul brothers believed it”

“Ok well you got to admit you thought it was true” “Well yea because you were very convincing but remember the consequences that resulted from that”

“Yea I was forced to train the newborns on my own and I didnt see you for 5 days”

“And now you know why you are El Toxico”

He huffed while the others were chuckling at our banter. 

“So is this all you guys learned to do, not that i'm not grateful for this, but I wouldn't mind being pampered like this again by you four”

Alec was the one who answer me “We might of not been looking at recipes for a nice authentic Birria and or Tamales to make with you for Christmas”

“I think I just fell in love all over again”

They are, Mi Felicidad.

[ofmdrecaps]

07/11/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; Rhys Darby; Taika Waititi; Erroll Shand; Nathan Foad; Vico Ortiz; Madeleine Sami; Ra Vincent; Dominic Burgess; Darby Family Foster Kittens; Rose City Comic Con; Adopt Our Crew's You Bear Fine Things Well; PA In Person Events; Fan Spotlight; Love Notes; Daily Darby/Today's Taika.

== Rhys Darby ==

The Hungry Games: Alaska's Big Bear Challenge is live on Peacock! Rhys had several articles mentioning it-- as well as some great reviews you can check out below!

== Taika Waititi ==

Taika is out in Piazza del Popolo -- in Italy! He was directing the Indoor Garden Party there, featuring Russell Crowe, The Gentleman Barbers, and Lorraine O'Reilly!

Source: giorgiociccanti Instagram

Some behind the scenes of the show!

Source: RussellCrowe's Twitter

Annnnnnnd.....Another fun interview with Taika and Jemaine talking about their old friendship and Time Bandits!

Source: Cairn's Post

Special Note: Apparently Rachel is also in Time Bandits! I didn't know that either, I love how many of the AoNZ crew are!

Source: Rachel House's Instagram

And finally, below, a behind the scenes shot of Taika and Jemaine from Time Bandits!

Source: Fotc_fans Twitter

== Erroll Shand ==

A rare appearance of Erroll! This was from Day 1 of the script read through for Season 2 of 'The Twelve'!

Source: StevieCruzMartin's Instagram

== Nathan Foad ==

Some shots of Nathan from Jan - Jun this year!

Source: laurenecarse's Instagram

== Vico Ortiz ==

Season Finale of Date My Abuelita First Podcast is up! You can listen to all the episodes of Season 2 here!

Source: DateMyAbuelitaFirst Instagram

== Madeleine Sami ==

A few days old but this was a fun clip of Mads and the Deadloch Crew from the Season 2 announcement!

Source: PrimeVideo AuNZ

== Ra Vincent ==

A rare sighting of our dear Ra Vincent, showing some love for his previous and current projects<3 "Just when you thought you’d reached your favourite all time project another new favourite comes along. #timebandits #artdepartment #ourflagmeansdeath"

Source: Ra Vincent's Instagram Stories

== Dominic Burgess ==

Our good friend Dominic, Jeffrey Fettering, is up at a crazy hour! Hope you get some rest Dominic!

Source: Dominic Burgess' Twitter

== Darby Family Foster Kittens ==

More kittens! Rosie is keeping us appraised of these adorable foster babies!

Source: Rosie Carnahan Darby's Instagram Stories

== Rose City Comic Con ==

News from Rose City Comic Con! Rhys and Matthew will be joining Kristian and Vico! Will you be in Portland OR in September? For guest and ticket information check out:

rosecitycomiccon.com/guest

rosecitycomiccon.com/badges

Source: RoseCityComicCon's Instagram

== You Bear Fine Things Well ==

07/11 was the day all! The Hungry Games have gone live on Peacock! Our fantastic crewmates over at @adoptourcrew have been keeping up the hype with daily themes! "Day 3: Which fictional bear do you think would join the crew of the Revenge?" I'm a day behind on this but Rachel, aka bbviago on twitter was kind enough to submit Fozzie From Muppets Treasure Island! (someone I would have also submitted!)

Source: bbviago's Twitter

"Day 4: Vote for the Hungry Games Bear you think will win!"

The Bear Madness was busy all day over at @adoptourcrew headquarters and on twitter! It was close there for a while but Quad Mom won the day!

Source: Adopt Our Crew Twitter

== In Person / Online Fan Events ==

= Philadelphia PA: Calypso's Birthday =

Are you near Philadelphia, PA? Consider stopping by Tattooed Mom for games, crafts, and fun Saturday July 20th! 6-10 PM!

Source: FerventRabbit's Twitter

= PA: Spoken Word Porn-A-Thon Fundraiser =

CW: NSFW! Do you like NSFW fanfiction? Do you like helping out Queer Fundraisers? Well look no further! Some of our crewmates over at Harold & Maude's in Millvale PA will be writing smutty fanfiction (some OFMD, some not!) which will be read at an in-person/virtual event in return for donations to benefit the Queer Resource Center of Millvale! The event will take place at 7 PM on July 18th! Don't have the funds right now? You can also enter to win a pair of tickets for you and a friend by tagging a friend on Queer Witches instagram! Each tag is one entry into the raffle! The winner will be pulled on 7/13! Visit the QueerWitches website to purchase tickets!

Source: QueerWitches/Harold's Haunt/ @ringasunn on Instagram

== Fan Spotlight ==

= Cast Cards =

And we're back with more cast cards from @melvisik! The first, Michael Heidemann is one of the English Seamen!

Second up we have another "Emmy submission, for Outstanding Music Supervision in a Series for Impossible Birds - AdoptOurCrew", Maggie Phillips!

Source: @melvisik's Twitter

== Love Notes ==

Hey there lovelies, I have had a cold and have been swamped with work so I'm severely behind again with everything going on. I apologise for no personal love notes. I figured I'd share some more love from others, but know I'm thinking of you and hoping you're going into the weekend well crew. First is from the fabulously kind people over at @ positivelypresent

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dani DiPirro (@positivelypresent)

Source: positivelypresent's Instagram

Next is very wonderful affirmation from TheLatestKate -- when you're having a bad day, these are some good words to remember:

Source: TheLatestKate's Tumblr

== Daily Darby / Today's Taika ==

Today's gif is courtesy of the lovely @snake-snack-stede <3 One of the best scenes from Fun and Games.

[stargirlfics]

B U T T E R F L Y

Joel Miller x Black Latina Reader

Summary: Sometimes the path to healing starts with a reminder of what’s been lost

Warnings: 18+ ONLY, death tw, child death tw, some TLOU spoilers but doesn’t follow canon, post-outbreak!Joel, angst, hurt/comfort, trauma and violence mentions, fluff, slow burn vibe, mutual pining

Word Count: 5.6k

My mind has been stuck on the butterfly imagery connecting Sarah and Joel in the show, and in the game too! I grew up hearing from my abuelita that monarch butterflies are symbols of loved ones who’ve passed and I thought that would fit well here! This fic explores grief and pain but also finding hope through it too 🦋

To be soft-hearted at the world’s violent end, that’s where you’d decided to make a home for your heart with all its fragile beating.

Doomed is what they all said you were, surviving the outbreak this long sooner or later came with a price and they had been right, but still, half out of spite, half out of needing something to hang onto, the tenderness of you remained.

Surviving was a miracle and most could go on just grateful to wake up another day, but you’d seen how void life was lived here in the ruins of a former world, and as doomed as it all appeared, you tried your best to find pockets of light where you could, fighting the urge to shut yourself away. 

Because maybe one day those pockets of light would be abundant where they were once scarce, maybe one day, if you kept yourself open to it, there would be a sign of a changing tide to let you know you were finally safe. 

How strange signs could be, in plain sight but unseen until your brain could catch up with what your soul was feeling, and rarely did they ever come without complexity. 

In your case, that complexity came with a stern scowl that belonged to one Joel Miller. 

The first whispers you’d ever heard about Joel were that he was grumpy, stubborn, and not the kind of man to be messed with. He was the muscle behind trades done in shadowed alleys here in the QZ, illegal substances, weapons, extra ration cards, you name it. 

He was intimidating to most people, even you; having a reputation for being a man of few words and an even shorter fuse would do that but you knew there to be sorrow there too, etched deep in the lines of his face, reflecting like moonlight in his eyes. 

You’d never spoken to him, not in all your time in Boston, always seeming to narrowly avoid crossing paths, but you often saw him from afar. In the town square, catching glimpses of him waiting in line to collect a job’s earnings or in the pit, hauling bodies to the acrid cremation pyres smoldering hot throughout the day. 

If you thought about it, that’s where you saw the sorrow most.

That old, faded bandana he wore over his nose to block out the stench of burning gave you the clearest view of his eyes; sad, angry orbs fixated on the task like it was penance for him. 

All those hushed whispers told you he wasn’t a good man, that he had hurt people to get what he needed, and that wasn’t a surprise, you’d seen it enough to understand the grim nature of the wasteland you were in, how people often turned against each other if they thought it meant they’d live to see another day. 

Maybe that understanding was how it happened that day, the first time you’d meet, something in your soul already well tangled with something in his yet neither of you knew it yet. 

You’d been expecting someone else at your door that evening, a friend of yours with a bag of good soil snuck in from the outside in exchange for a radio of yours that was in decent shape. 

Instead, you were greeted by Joel Miller, bag in hand, a frown already on his face as he explained the switch up, even pointing to a note on the bag in your friend's handwriting to vouch for him. 

His voice had caught you off guard, a low, gruff bass in his careful cadence, Texan accent making the words go down smooth. 

“Okay, no problem, she did tell me she wasn’t sure if she would really make use of it. You can step in if you want, I’ll just be a second.”

Maybe you shouldn’t have been so trusting. 

That’s how people got robbed, taken advantage of, murdered and you weren’t going to get any sympathy from neighbors or any FEDRA soldiers in the area if something were to happen but despite that, and his reputation, you didn’t feel unsafe. 

Quite the opposite. 

Joel was certainly the grumpy type and you didn’t doubt he was capable of hurting you if he wanted but as you returned with the radio you found him just where you’d left him, his body filling your doorway in a way that reminded you of a guard dog. 

Something had caught his eye in the time it had taken you to walk back, gaze fixed somewhere behind you. 

It took you a second to realize what exactly he was staring at, eyes tracking him and following until they landed on the butterfly figurine hanging from the makeshift curtains of your kitchen sink window. 

Golden hour light warming the window had bathed the glass winged butterfly in its rays, casting fractals of color across the wall and the worn wooden floors. 

You studied his face for a moment then, a familiar kind of sadness reaching his eyes, the darkened circles underneath them a little more noticeable now. 

You wondered when the last time he got any proper sleep was. 

“I made it…” interrupting his thoughts gently you gestured towards the window when he looked at you in question, “La mariposa...took me ages to fit the glass and wire together right but I think it came out ok.”

He grunted in response, finally handing over the bag of soil when you noticed the slightest tremble in his hands. 

Oh…so he’d been caught off guard too. 

Something about your butterfly had shaken him up and you were curious, who could blame you for being tempted to cross what you were sure he would say was a line, but you pretended not to notice, trying to offer him some privacy, a second to collect himself. 

You’d appreciate it if he did the same for you in his place after all. 

The exchange was completed swiftly after, a palpable silence settling between you before he was leaving almost as quickly as he arrived, taking the fading summer sunset with him.

–

Joel barely slept that night, woken by nightmares again, a routine he was familiar with, haunted by the same old ghosts but it was different this time, the barbed wire around his heart digging in just a little extra, memories of her surfacing. 

Sarah. His Sarah.  

He didn’t realize just how long it had been since he was reminded of her this way, of what it felt like to be her father, shutting himself off to that years ago, unable to think about his life with her before because that pain was nearly unbearable. 

There is only after, the after in which she doesn’t exist, where he searches for her in his sleep and wakes knowing he won’t find her. 

Because he watched her slip away, had pleaded and begged to the skies to bring her back, had held her in his arms, hands stained red with her blood, and had to accept that she was gone and he was granted no time to say goodbye. 

Days turned to weeks, months into years and he had learned to operate on a certain level of numbness, just focused on surviving, never getting too attached, acting cold and angry, just a dead man walking. 

Until now, his chest nearly caving in with the truth that he was still breathing even after so long spent closed off. 

He wasn’t even sure why he’d considered your friend’s offer to complete the exchange at all, he knew he shouldn’t have, the radio you traded wasn’t in as great a shape as he would have liked, he knew that upfront and still begrudgingly agreed, not expecting to feel so exposed, so upended by a simple encounter.

That butterfly shining in the sunlight of your kitchen made his heart stop the second he saw it, flashes of memory surfacing, almost like his little girl was pulled to the surface of his skin again, like if he stepped inside he could reach out and she’d be there. 

A dreadful reality had washed that away after a moment, grief swallowing up the hope just as he knew it would, like it always had, but something was undeniably different this time for Joel. A difference that left an ache in his center. 

Because for those few fleeting seconds, he had felt alive again. 

–

The second time you met Joel was intentional, another bag of soil in exchange for some instant coffee this time. 

It was still early morning when he knocked on your door, quiet, hands tucked in the pockets of his jeans and a sleepy kind of softness that you hadn’t seen before around the edges of his eyes which made you wish he didn’t look so inviting then. 

It wasn’t so hard to look at him as unapproachable as he made himself seem, he was handsome, the streaks of gray peppered in his hair and along his beard lending to his rugged look. 

“About the coffee, it’s not as strong as it could be but it’s the best I’ve got,” you handed over a jar, watching him open the lid and sniff its contents.

“That’ll do just fine.” 

Relief arrived at his approval, you gathered it’d been a while since he had any and you were glad your stash wasn’t a disappointment. 

You watched as he knelt down to set his backpack on the floor, stowing the jar inside and handing you the bag of fertilizer mix you had inquired about. 

It wasn’t long now before he’d be out the door again, these things were best kept short and simple but as you thanked him for the exchange and moved to store the bag with your other garden supplies, you noticed a moment of reluctance. 

Joel didn’t plan on lingering around now that you both had what you came for but then he was reminded of what he felt the last time he’d been in your space and his mouth was moving with the thoughts that were swimming in his head before he could bite back the words.

“That’s a good amount of soil you have, got some sorta secret garden FEDRA don’t know about?”

Suddenly you felt very silly for wanting to smile at his curiosity but also recognized the significance of him asking. 

“Something like that, yeah. I…actually found a spot of flowers growing through one of the QZ fences and I’ve been tending to it. It's no garden but the flowers are in bloom now, first time I’ve seen real butterflies in years.” 

You watched him perk up at the mention of real butterflies, furrowed brows hiding the flicker of emotion mere seconds later but it was too late, you’d seen it already. 

Up until now, your little patch of greenery had been a private endeavor. 

Something for you to put some love and effort in, and just a quiet, secluded place to be, to clear your head or be alone for a while, away from some of the chaos in the streets, and yet here you were, now, carefully asking him if he’d like to see it too. 

You thought just maybe, bringing him there would do him as much good as it had done you. 

And it’s there, in that moment when he says yes that you see all that hard exterior start to slip just an inch.  

It’s an inch you can work with. 

–

Early morning dew still clings to the soft blades of grass sprouting up near the fence line, the section where you’d been taking care of the vegetation noticeably more vibrant with color and growth. 

Slowly, you’d been replacing the dirt, had saved as many roots and sprouts as possible, taking care in replanting them, and from there, a shabby little makeshift garden bed had formed. 

This would be your third week caring for it and now Joel was trailing behind your steps to see it too.

His body language was tense like he couldn’t quite be sure you weren’t actually taking him to some secluded corner to ambush him, but you get it.

Being wary was smart, but you couldn’t lie that it was satisfying to let him take it in without explaining anything first, the tension in his shoulders easing, sagging when his eyes fell upon the dusky blue flowers and rich green leaves and vines growing up from the ground, searching for the sun’s nourishment. 

Joel couldn’t be certain whether it was the day’s first tendrils of summer heat making him feel warm or the fluttering orange and speckled black wings of a butterfly nestled atop a marigold. 

He glances at his wrist, at the memento that never leaves his side, a broken watch, and there’s a moment of clarity in the silence where Joel can feel it, all the shattered parts of him spilling out, and there isn’t any way he can catch it all, he’s already too late and he knows it. 

Panic works its way into his bloodstream, causing his hands to shake, not used to being so disarmed, so flayed open. 

His fingers curl into a fist, trying to steady himself, needing a moment to catch his breath, to process. 

And there you were, your gentle voice cutting through the noise in his head and that tidal wave of emotion. 

“They’re monarch butterflies, which means they’re special,” you’ve moved a little closer now, watching another one land next to its friend on the flower. 

“What makes' em’ so special?” Joel takes a deep breath and you do too. 

You thought for a second he might shut down and walk away, there wasn’t anything keeping him here after all, he had the coffee he came for and yet still took you up on your offer. That in itself was difficult not to attach yourself to immediately but there was no denying it felt good to know you’d earned maybe an ounce of his trust. 

“In Mexico, my abuela used to say they were a sign of the dead coming to visit the living, loved ones, our ancestors, the monarchs carry their souls to us. I think they’re good luck too.”

The smile working its way onto your lips is fond, sad, one you knew he’d recognize, the silent but shared knowledge of loss was a heavy burden to carry. There was no mistake about it, but being here, amongst your flowers and your butterflies made it easier. 

Orange and gold halos shimmered around the plant life softly swaying with the wind, your own features now warmed with the climbing sun, brown skin shining deeper under the light. 

Joel was looking at you now, following your words. The meaning of what you were both looking upon hitting him square in the chest when that feeling blooms behind his eyes again, that itch of something alive, something beautiful growing again amongst concrete ruins.

And it's there, standing next to you, watching you water the soil while butterflies float around you that he works out what that feeling must be. 

Salvation. 

–

After that morning, trading goods with Joel became a regular occurrence. 

Soil for another stash of coffee or a packet of seeds for a hunting knife in need of experienced hands, neither of you quite sure how it happened but eventually the trades became more like friendly favors to each other than practical transactions. 

Your ‘garden’ also became a frequent place for you both to go, so much so that on any given day you could bet he was there, a quick stop on his way back home, or in the morning before the day started, it became an unspoken shared refuge. 

Joel helped you fix up the makeshift garden beds when it became clear your tender care of the plants called for an upgrade and you were grateful for it, dismissive at first, not wanting him to feel obligated.

You could handle yourself around a hammer and a few nails but he insisted and you relented, the two of you knelt under the setting sun, working on the task together. 

It didn’t matter that it was closing in on curfew time, or that you didn’t really have anything to compensate him for his time because, the moment itself, the small inklings of trust building between you were actually far better. 

That’s when you started to see him nearly every day, sitting against bomb-scarred concrete, always facing those marigolds, the ones the monarch butterflies you’d told him about always flocked to. 

At first you kept your distance, knowing better than to pry. 

It was clear he’d been through a lot, most his age-if you were guessing correctly-had, old enough to have lived a good portion of their lives before the outbreak, the last witnesses of an old world. You wanted to respect that and as long as he was finding some sort of peace here, you were content. 

You didn’t mind his company either, he wasn’t much of a talker, but his presence was comforting and familiar and you felt safe with him near. 

Eventually though, keeping him at a distance became impossible, both of you stumbling through the uncertainty of what to say to each other yet not giving up on trying at the same time. 

And Joel had resisted too, had tried to keep his words short, always residing somewhere in between neutral and aloof but the more he watched you in your element, amongst the seedling sprouts and vines and moss, the more it made him want to talk.

It was easy to find his voice around you. 

You were soft-hearted, he could see that and it wasn’t easy to get used to the way you looked at him, like you cared, like you understood something about his brokenness right away, had let him sit here day after day watching the butterflies because somehow you knew it’s what he needed, but he didn’t mind the learning curve either. 

His usual annoyance and reluctance to speak about feelings couldn’t keep up this time surrounded by reminders of Sarah, coaxing the small part of him that hadn’t died with her out of its state of numbness, softening him again. 

‘You were never gonna do it for yourself’ rings in his ears. 

He’d never been much good at that, doing things for himself, and Sarah was always so clever about calling it out, even now, nudging him awake again after all these years. 

It’s why he decides to tell you when you ask one day, sitting next to him on sun-warmed stone. 

He merely came by to sit for a little while and clear his head and found you already sat in his usual spot, butterfly watching, your eyes telling your secret, that you had been crying before he arrived, his first instinct carrying him forward, to your side. 

He offered you some water, even sliced an apple in half to share with you, pleased with himself when he got a smile out of the gesture but remained as quiet as you were, wanting you to feel like you could just be. 

“Who do they remind you of?” your voice was small, unsure of how he’d react to the question, overexplaining in hopes it would make him recoil less, “It’s okay if you can’t talk about it, I understand. It’s just that…what I told you about the monarch butterflies, I really do believe in it you know, the people I’ve lost…they feel so close to the surface, like they’re watching over me and I think you feel the same.” 

Joel nods after a moment and you’re exhaling a breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

It takes him a moment but he finds the words. 

“My daughter…her name was Sarah. They were her favorite, actually, since she was bout old enough to talk. I used to call her my little butterfly when she was a baby which, yeah, got real old when she started middle school but I liked to remind her anyways, just to see her roll her eyes at me. Just as long as she knew I loved her, you know, that I never stopped, not since the moment I held her in my hands for the first time.”

It broke your heart to hear. 

And it hurt him too, to speak about her and then remember that he had lost her, that twenty years had passed and he couldn’t remember what she smelled like anymore, and he hated the nightmares but without them, he was afraid of forgetting her face, her eyes, the coils of her hair, the sound of her voice calling out to him. 

It was only now that he was seeing how deep he’d pushed it all down, bottled up tight out of fear, and then somehow you’d entered his life, Molotov aimed straight at his heart, stunning him into remembering her the way she deserved to be. 

“I’m so sorry,” you extend all the comfort you can, knowing there weren’t any words that would ever make it right but you wanted to try anyway. 

“Yeah, me too. But you’re right, she feels close, and I know you’ve put it together by now but it’s why I’ve been sittin here every day, I see those butterflies and I see her, I remember her and it feels...good. I didn’t want it to; don’t really trust things that feel good but it does and I wanna thank you for that, for letting me have that.” 

He worries he’s said too much, or said the wrong thing, wanting to kick himself because he was never much good at words either but the sight of your lips pulling up into a small smile came as a relief. 

“She’s with you, Joel. And there’s no need to thank me, it’s been good for me too, doing all this. I think it helps.” 

He nods again, agreeing before asking you the same question, extending an opportunity to open up too; a big step when keeping personal histories to a minimum was the lay of the land around here. 

And it wasn’t easy, to talk about the things that hurt, baring your grief to Joel, and trusting him with it but you did and he had held it so gently, understanding it for what it was. 

Looking back you think maybe it’s there that things started to change, where your life and his started to merge. 

Sometime after that conversation you gifted him one of those glass winged butterflies like the one in your window, showing it to him one evening in the garden, earning you the first real smile you’d ever seen from him. 

It was after he told you more about himself, about Sarah, his brother Tommy, recounting happy memories; like the time he and Tommy surprised Sarah with her own soccer ball for her birthday one year, how he’d caved almost immediately the time she begged him to get her a polaroid camera, and you shared too, thinking on good times you’d had with the people in your life. 

It meant a lot to Joel that you spent time crafting the ornament, knowing just how deep the symbolism of it went for him. 

You were always doing that, looking out for him, planting tiny seed after tiny seed, slowly working your magic on him, ensnaring him deep, making him want to look out for you too. 

Under the fading sun again you sat with him, watching the marigolds, the calm, slow fluttering of wings, and it’s in that same spot that you find your hand in his for the first time. 

No words needed to be said, this was far better. 

A little while later you saw your gift hanging from the window in his living room, right next to the radio you had first traded him for.

The two of you had found yourselves escaping the heat here after some time tending the garden together, pulling weeds, clearing new soil of rocks and rubble, now sharing his couch, a rusty old fan that still somehow worked cooling the sweat prickling the back of your neck.

Curfew hour was nearing and you knew you would have to start making your way back home but Joel warned that he’d heard from a FEDRA officer he did trades with that they were patrolling the streets early the next few nights.

You knew why, it was hard to forget the hail of gunfire last night, a group of Fireflies going after a group of officers on patrol, a fight that neither one had won. 

Tensions in the QZ had been high all day since then and Joel suggested that you stay here with him for the night, saying he didn’t want you dealing with anything that might be going on out there.

He was being protective, a disapproving frown on that handsome face of his when you told him you didn’t want to intrude on his space but he was right, things had already started looking a little dangerous on your way back from the garden and you appreciated that he was trying to keep you safe. 

So you stayed. 

Curled up on Joel’s old, worn couch with a blanket that smelled like him tucked around you, the white noise of the fan still blowing and the knowledge that he wasn’t far, just in the next room over, carried you off to sleep.

–

One night had turned into two and then three and somewhere in the last couple months of summer that were left, you spent most of your days and nights with Joel. 

No label had been applied to whatever your situation was with him, you knew better than to ask, this all needed time, and you were okay with that, just content on holding onto this good thing with him. 

Because you liked being around, like sharing a space with him and sitting in the garden together, opening up to each other more and more every day. 

It was nice watching Joel come out of that hardened shell of his, watching him find it easier to talk about things, noticing him trying to live life more, not as reluctant to connect. 

Things were good, not to say that there hadn’t been bad days amongst all the progress made, there were plenty of them in fact. 

Days where old patterns became default again, stretches of nights where the nightmares returned, both of you trying to wade through it. 

When the aching of old wounds came knocking and the walls came back up again. 

You hated to fight with Joel when that happened, and you hated not being on the same page but he was so stubborn it wasn’t always easy to bite back your frustration. 

He had told you about his past, about the people he hurt in those early days and it’s something he wrestled with, believing in the goodness you saw inside him when all he could see were the bad things.

It frustrated you sometimes, how he preferred to shut himself off, to you, to Sarah’s memory because he felt like his hands were too dirty, too blood-stained to even try. 

“Que, no entendes?! Please, Joel! Stop trying to be something you aren’t. You think you aren’t a good man but bad people don’t get upset about being bad. Do you think you can just turn it off, the part of you that was always a good man, a good father? Well sorry, but you can’t, that’s who you are to your core, I saw it the first moment I met you and every time since then.” 

 “I’ve killed people,” his tone was mean, and venomous, another attempt at pushing you away. “Goddamnit, it’s not as simple as-”

“I get that! Look I know that you’ve done bad things but you’ve also spent every waking moment punishing yourself for it, do you realize that? All these years you’ve been paying your penance any way you can and I’m trying to tell you it’s okay live well, that you don’t have to torture yourself anymore because we have to try and make something out of all this pain.” 

It wasn’t easy to get him to see what you saw but you didn’t back down, even when it would have been easy to, Joel knew it too, guilt washing over him as you looked at him then, tears brimming in your eyes. 

“You’ve endured enough.” 

It’s those final three words from you that makes him ease up, a reminder you nudged him with often, that he could rest already, could make amends by making a choice to find the light. 

He lets you take some space from him, coming to find you before bed because he doesn’t want to fall asleep without fixing things. 

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair, talkin to you like that. You’re just tryna help my sorry ass and I haven’t thanked you enough. I’m gonna get better at that.” 

It’s the first time you ever hug him, noticing the tremble in his hands as he says the words, feeling the sincerity in his voice, unable to stop yourself from all but barreling into his arms. 

He’s still for only a moment before his arms wrap around you in return, the two of you bathed in moonlight, that butterfly still hanging in his window, pushing you towards each other again just like it had when you first met. 

–

Eventually, the day comes when the monarchs leave, the approaching fall and winter seasons carrying them to warmer places, a solemn change in what had been yours and Joel’s routine. 

The absence of the butterflies that had provided so much hope the last few months was felt, but the world was also a lot more open and wide now too. 

You no longer slept on Joel’s couch, you slept pressed against him now, and woke with your limbs tangled with his, a quiet partnership forming.

It scares both of you, knowing that you had grown to care for each other so quickly, knowing that was dangerous and reckless but also feeling stronger because you were a team. 

You think that’s why you make the decision together, one rainy fall evening when Joel comes home with a message from Tommy. 

They had gone through a rough patch recently, being apart from each other for some time and still not seeing eye to eye on Tommy’s choices but slowly, they’d started talking again and there was news that Tommy and the group he was with had gotten a hydroelectric plant that had once belonged to FEDRA up and running. 

There was electricity and a place to stay if you and Joel were interested, plus Tommy wanted you to meet Maria, said she did him a whole world of good and this was some of that good in action. 

It hadn’t been a hard choice to make even knowing how difficult the journey would be.

This was the chance you’d both been waiting for, and had talked about, a far off dream of running away from all the violence that was inescapable here in Boston, searching for something better out there, and now it was within reach. 

So you’d left your garden in the care of a friend you knew would understand its importance, and you bide your time with Joel, making deals, doing jobs, collecting and saving up supplies, and helping him map the way to Jackson. 

And then the day came when you left the QZ behind for good, watching the city fade away in the rearview mirror.

Making it to Tommy hadn’t been easy, there had been one too many close calls for comfort but the trust you and Joel had in each other didn’t waver, and here you were, finally on the other side. 

Settling in hadn’t been the easiest, especially for Joel, his guard still up but little by little, you both sank into a new way of life. 

You quickly learned how to ride a horse and hunt in the woods surrounding the power plant, even making friends with some of the families in the community. 

Joel had taken to things a little slower, but even he couldn’t hide for long, helping some of the men in the group with repairs on things that needed fixing, even cautiously attempting to make friends with you. 

Small pockets of peace started to open up the longer you stayed and the threat of raiders loomed over that peace at times, keeping everyone on alert for attacks but you all had Joel and Tommy now, always amongst the first to be out there protecting, defending fiercely.

You knew they wouldn’t let anything happen to you here.  

As spring arrived again you found a nice spot for a garden, pointing out sprouting flower buds to Joel one day, almost missing the fond smile forming on his lips, both of you knowing what this meant. 

You were happy here, and happy being with Joel, the two of you building a new garden together this time, until finally, as the chill spring breeze transitioned into summer heat and sunshine you were sat next to him like you had been what seemed like ages ago, watching the butterflies circle the flowers in bloom in what had become Sarah’s Garden. 

Joel made you a promise; to keep going for family, the family you, him, and Tommy were now. And you promised the same, not scared of how much you cared for the man by your side anymore.

It wasn’t perfect, the world was still rotten and the broken parts of you all were still raw, still healing, but this time her light was guiding the way through it and that made it all worth it.

---

A/N: When I saw that butterfly hanging in the window of his place in Boston I just couldn’t resist writing something about how he got it and here we are! This world is so dark and tragic and while this fic doesn’t change those facts, I hope it plants some gentle, hopeful little seeds of healing, because Joel deserves that and so do you as the reader! thank you for reading this, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it! 💌

some tags no pressure! @inklore @allaboardthereadingrailroad @yelenas-lova @ozarkthedog @amethystwonders11 @blkmorticia @moreofem @eupheme @obiknights @tarrenterror25 @superhoeva @buckyhoney @plumbits

[firesofdainix]

Relativity Falls AU time

This won't be a one on one counterpart for the entirety of Gravity Falls. Since we're not doing this one on one, we're changing contents of some episodes!

Here's the swapped characters:

Ford = Mabel

Stan = Dipper

Shermie is a fusion of both twins

Pacifica = Bill

Wendy = Fiddleford

Euclid and Scalene = Preston and Priscilla

Axolotl = Smile Dip Dog

Shanklin = Waddles

Soos = Abuelita (her name's Maria, or 'Ria' for short)

Bud and Mrs. Gleeful= Gideon

And now, context!

Mason is the Pines brothers' grandpa, who had a falling out with his son Filbrick before the events of the show. The fight is unknown (but will be revealed later on) but Filbrick cuts off all contact- until he and Sherman began butting heads, teenage rebellion and all, so Filbrick asks his dad to 'set Shermie straight.' What happened was the best summers Shermie has, and annually he goes to Gravity Falls to be with his grandpa.

Much to the family's obliviousness, Shermie has been helping Mason cover up any supernatural things happening within the town, while also using the tourist trap known as the mystery shack to give tourists and other townsfolk the benefit of the doubt. Because of this, Shermie has few to several run-ins with the Society of the Blind Eye but disagrees with their methods of keeping the townsfolk safe from Gravity Falls' weirdness.

Mason trusts his oldest grandson completely with working around the house and keeping the supernatural creatures distant from their family, but he hasn't told him anything about his sister or the portal inside the basement. He doesn't trust Shermie enough for this.

In Shermie's 18th year, his parents are finally in their divorce proceedings, and Caryn wants custody of his younger brothers. Since he's been admitted to college, he offers that he and his brothers stay in Gravity Falls with their grandpa Mason for a while, to which both parents accepted.

Shermie secretly keeps the fact that he was moving away from New Jersey to California for the college years for his university, something that WILL be found out by the twins. The twins assume that Shermie is going to be studying in a community college near them.

Stanley doesn't trust Grandpa Mason at first but starts warming up to him when he sees how much Shermie trusts him, and the way Ford is smiling to be with someone as weird as him.

Ford's main gripe with Mason is the fact that he makes a 'mockery' of weirdness, which is then soured by the fact that Gravity Falls is TRULY weird and Mason seems to think they're just 'special effects.' When he found the third scrapbook, he starts trying to find out about the author, and figuring out the many weird things in Gravity Falls, even adding more information in the scrapbooks provided.

Since Shermie is included in the twins' adventures (mostly- if he's not being a distant dumbass most of the time) some of the stuff will not stay the same if Shermie has anything to say about it. He just has a hard time trying to be like... a perfect role model for his brothers. He's not socially awkward, he just doesn't feel dedicated socializing with people. It's a lesson he learns at the end of the series, that being distant won't help him in the long run.

Mason and Mabel have a good relationship. Once Mabel is out of the portal, Mason takes it upon himself to resolve the rift that had formed between the two of them, and grow a stronger sibling bond. Meanwhile, Ford and Stan's bonds are starting to fracture. Stanley idolizes the bond they shared, promising that he and Ford will be like Mason and Mabel when they grow up, minus the portal thing.

Mason feels very guilty about pushing Mabel in the portal. Even if it was an accident, he still managed to rob Mabel 30 normal years. She's always wanted to get married, and Mabel tries to make him feel less guilty over it. He was just paranoid, mad and hurt Mabel was sending him away over again. She takes responsibility, wishing she could've been more direct and explained the situation better.

Wendy is Fiddleford, wherein Mabel asks her to help her with heavy work and heavy lifting, along with Candy and Grenda who were recruited to help with the portal project. She was the one who fell into the portal the testing day and found out about Pacifica's true plans. She tries to get Mabel to stop the project, but she only ended up convincing Candy and Grenda, who admit that ever since the portal project started, Mabel hasn't been feeling herself. Mabel wouldn't budge, so Wendy and her friends left, causing Mabel to be isolated socially.

Mason married a high school sweetheart after he left his house when Mabel was still upset with him over accidentally ruining her discovery that won the science fair. He stayed with her and decided to have a family, because that's what grown-ups do, right? Start a family and raise kids? And he wants to be better than his parents, no fighting with children and whatnot.

But happy endings don't last forever, he ends up being in the same cycle as his parents are, but at least the two of them fight privately unlike what his parents have done. But it was inevitable that they end up divorcing, and his wife won the custody battle with Filbrick. But that's mainly because he had been in Gravity Falls during the entire divorce trials, seemingly not caring about the divorce proceedings and his son.

Mason and Mabel reunited after ten years of no contact on the cusp of winter. Mason is incredibly stressed with the divorce proceedings, while Mabel is paranoid, sleep deprived, and afraid of Pacifica coming to get her, and Mason is eager to get this over with so Mabel can maybe vouch for him in the divorce proceedings so he can gain custody of Filbrick. But then he sees Mabel look so broken and shattered, he stops his motivations, tries to calm her down, but it leads to the portal incident. Or accident! Mason tries to hold onto her, but Mabel still fell, and now he has lost both families in one day.

When he realized he lost the custody battle, he relocates to Gravity Falls fully, becoming some sort of monster hunter and tourist guide respectively, and to work on the portal. He introduced everyone as Mabel's brother, saying she entrusted him to take care of her house while she navigates the Arctic. Then, he fabricates Mabel's death, stating she is forever lost at sea after her shipping vessel exploded, so now Mason has the rights to the shack. Of course, when he is found by Mabel's old friends, his memories of the unknown were almost erased, since the trio ended up making a cult.

Candy is the new leader of the Society of the Blind Eye, however, because of her close ties to the author and Wendy remembering her old friend even a little bit, the twins are a lot more lenient with erasing almost the entirety of her memories. She does face the consequences of her actions about running a cult, though.

That's all I have for the characters as of this moment! As I said before, not everything is gonna be a one-on-one counterpart! Everyone is unique in their own ways!

Here's a few episodes that might be altered thanks to Shermie's involvement (idk some stuff yet ok):

Tourist Trapped: Dipper and Shermie immediately figure out that Stan's new girlfriend Darlene is a spider monster and ushers her out there. Stan becomes rebellious and rendezvouses with Darlene, causing her to reveal her true nature. Ford thinks she's a fairy about to kidnap Stanley to make him her queen.

Society of the Blind Eye: He's going to punch Blind Ivan, RIGHT IN THE FACE-

Lee, Ford, and Shermie vs. the Future: Instead of Mabel asking Ford to be his apprentice, Ford asks Mabel if she is willing to mentor him. When she asks if his brothers would be fine with that, he says so, and she says she'll think about it. When he returns, he finds out that Stan heard the conversation, and Shermie immediately begins to scold Ford for thinking about himself. The ensuing argument forces Shermie to reveal that, since he's going to California for college, the twins should stick together. This makes the Stans feel betrayed, that their only possible role model is now going away from them 'forever.' Stanley runs away, and Ford and Shermie try looking for him.

Some episodes may be different or have a different monster of the week! I want Ford and Stan and Shermie's adventures to not be identical to the Pines twins!

[ckret2]

Chapter 69 (lol) of human Bill Cipher being a prisoner with terrible fashion sense: beach episode!!! Well, lake episode. Close enough.

And a few other people come to town.

Just after dawn, a sleek, nondescript black government SUV, now dusty from a long drive, parked in front of the Gravity Falls Police Department. Three agents in sleek, nondescript black suits stepped out.

As they left the car, Blubs came out to meet them, Durland trailing behind him. "Agent Powers, Agent Trigger! Good to see you again." He shook Powers's hand, then glanced at the new agent. "And you are...?"

"Agent Dale!" The rookie shook Blubs's hand next, beaming. "Very pleased to meet you. I was just saying in the car—you have a beautiful town here, just beautiful."

"Wouldn't stop talking about it," Trigger muttered.

Blubs chuckled. "Why, thank you. We're quite proud of it ourselves."

Durland said, "Say, Agent Dale—don't you agents usually have tougher-sounding codenames?"

"Agent Clyde S. Dale. Like the horse."

"Ohhh. Yup, that'll do it."

"Sheriff Blubs," Powers said. "I trust you have the requested materials?"

"Right inside," Blubs said. "We've got the readings on last week's gravity anomaly from McGucket's scanners, and reports on this weekend's power surge."

"No overlap between the incidents?"

"None anyone here detected."

"Hmm. Has anything else strange happened since we were last in town?"

Blubs hesitated. "Well—never mind all that." He quickly shifted topics, "Say, I like your 'honk if you want to be arrested' bumper sticker." ("Oh is that what it says?" Durland asked.)

Agent Powers said solemnly, "I can get you the contact information of the shop where I bought it. It's a very nice small business run by art students."

"Would you? That'd be delightful."

Powers paused before following the cops and his agents into the police department, glancing out at Gravity Falls' town square—the modest little main street shops, the town hall, the statue of the town founder, the distinctive water tower with the faded muffin graffiti, and the familiar mountains surrounding the little valley town.

And then he let out a long, frustrated sigh.

"Fine," he muttered grumpily, glaring at the town as though it were an old rival as annoyed to see him as he was to see it. "Let's just get this over with."

He followed Blubs into the police department.

####

"Attention, everybody," Stan said, standing in the entryway with his fists on his hips, Soos beaming behind him. "I've got some great news!"

Abuelita and Bill glanced up from one of Abuelita's soap operas; Mabel and Dipper craned their necks to see Stan from where they were having dinner at the kitchen table.

Stan announced, "It's finally time!"

Dipper and Mabel blinked. Bill said, "Great. I'll get the ritual daggers, you can set up the blood red candles. Dolores?"

Abuelita said, "I will put out the good sacrifice altar." Bill laughed in delight.

"Yeah, yuck it up, you two," Stan said. "We're going fishing tomorrow! I've got the bait, I found everyone's rods, Soos and I patched up the old boat, I even—" He paused at the sound of the vending machine opening. "Hey! Ford!"

Ford ducked in from the gift shop. "What?" 

Stan chucked a hat at him. "I made you a fishing buddy hat! See, it's got your name! That's pretty good!"

"Oh." Ford inspected the letters haphazardly stitched onto the hat. "Why?"

"Fishing tomorrow! Half the summer's gone by, and we haven't gone fishing once! The guys from the lodge probably think I'm too ashamed to show my face. But it rained this weekend, the weather's just cleared up, now's the perfect time for fishing!"

"Oh," Ford said again, trying to drag his thoughts from magical tapes to fishing. "If you'd let me know earlier, I'd have built another fish-summoning beacon like the one on our boat." (Bill glanced curiously at Ford at the mention of an invention he didn't already know about; then stubbornly refused to be interested and dragged his gaze back to the TV.)

"No beacons! This isn't fishing for survival, this is about the sport! Asserting our manhood! Just the skill, strength, and patience of three men—and some women and children—against the lake!" (Soos beamed at being included amongst the men.)

Ford considered that. He didn't assert his manhood very often; usually he just sort of let his manhood hang around minding its own business, like an old cat that wants to be in the same room as you without socializing. It sounded like an intriguingly novel experience. "Okay, great. What time?"

"I want everyone on the road tomorrow morning! By six thirty at the latest."

The kids groaned.

"C'mon, dudes," Soos said encouragingly. "It'll be fun! After about three hours, once you're awake enough to think."

"No griping, we've gotta be there early to get a prime fishing spot," Stan said. "Tomorrow's a lodge fishing day. We're going home with a haul so big they'll be embarrassed they kicked me out!"

Dipper asked, "You mean the lodge for the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel, right? Why'd they kick you out?"

Stan sighed, "Once the town found out about Ford, they realized I'd spent the last thirty years attending lodge meetings under his membership. Since I'd never undergone the—" He rolled his eyes and made finger quotes, "'sacred angler initiation rites,' they booted me. And they said I can't try to join again, just because of that one dumb little white lie! And my extensive criminal record."

Ford hurriedly crossed the living room to avoid blocking Abuelita's TV view. (Bill looked through him like he wasn't there.) "Stan got a lot more out of my membership than I did—once I'd finished my initiation I probably only ever attended three meetings. I tried to petition the Mackerels to let him rejoin."

"How'd they respond?" Mabel asked.

"They kicked me out too."

Bill scoffed. "Big deal! The Fishmasons and all their subordinate organizations are just a big boring social club that got you hotel discounts three hundred years ago. The mystique around them is more interesting than anything they actually do."

"Figuring that out is why I stopped attending after three meetings," Ford said. "I joined to learn about the dark secret underbelly of Western politics—not sit around eating charcuterie and fancy nuts while everyone talks about baseball and makes fun of me for not knowing what a fly ball is. It's a stupid term! Doesn't the ball always fly?"

"Really, they aren't even worth joining," said Bill Cipher, the only person to have ever been kicked out of seventeen separate Masonic lodges in seventeen separate bodies.

Reminded of the fancy nuts he was missing out on at this very second, Stan set his jaw in determination. "Yeah, well, they're a big boring social club that'll rue the day they kicked out Stan Pines! Out the door, six thirty, on the dot!"

"I don't have an alarm," Bill said. "Hey star girl, wake me at five."

Mabel shuddered at the thought of setting an alarm that early. "No way. You can borrow my radio."

"Hold on, I didn't say you're invited," Stan said. "We've already got a full boat! Me, my brother, the kids, and Soos and his girl. Nobody wants to sit on the lake with you for eight hours."

"I wanna sit on the lake with Bill!"

"Nobody but Mabel wants that."

"Relax! I don't want to sit on a boat with you underpainted clowns either," Bill said. "I just want to sit on the beach! I miss sunlight! Sunlight without being forced to hike through half the valley on no food or sleep."

(Ford decided that was his cue to make himself scarce. He scooted into the guest room.)

"Well," Stan said, "we're not staying thirty feet from the shore, we're not leaving anybody behind, and we don't trust you to stay put on the beach without your dumb magic bracelet—so how do you expect that to work."

"I'll just stay with Dolores."

Stan and Soos stared at Abuelita. Soos said, "Abuelita? Do you want to come?"

Abuelita considered it. "Sure. The weather is nice. I can catch up on my reading."

"Yes!" Bill hopped off the couch. "Then it's a plan!"

"Hey, hold on," Stan said as Bill breezed past him, "I didn't agree to—"

"Hey star girl!" Bill leaned into the kitchen. "Need your fashion services! I need a swimsuit before tomorrow."

Mabel gasped in delight. "What kind?"

"Whatever exposes the most skin without getting me arrested. I'm absorbing as much sunlight as possible."

"With sunscreen, right?" Soos said.

Bill turned and gave him a blank-faced stare.

Soos hopefully repeated, "With sunscreen?"

"Don't need it."

"You totally do, dude. Not many people talk about this? But having more melanin doesn't totally protect you from sun damage, it just slows it down," Soos said. "Trust me on this. When I was like eight, I went to this water park—

"Uh-huh, and three days later you were peeling off flakes of your own dead flesh," Bill said. "It's cute how you think you know more about humans from 23 years of passively being one than I do from 500,000 years of actively studying them."

"Oh."

"C'mon, star girl! No time to waste!" Bill grabbed Mabel's hand and tugged her off her chair.

"Wait, my sandwich—!" Mabel grabbed the rest of her dinner off her plate and shoved it in her mouth as Bill dragged her upstairs.

Abuelita shot him a dirty look as he passed, but turned back to her soap opera.

####

Just past five in the morning, Bill crept by the guest room door. He glanced through the wall as he passed; good, both of the Stans were in bed and sound asleep. Bill wouldn't have had a chance to get up to his mischief if Ford had decided to sleep downstairs.

He snuck behind the vending machine; paused to squint toward the future and confirm that when he looked at the stairs, he could only see himself using them anytime soon; then down to the elevator; and down, down to Ford's study.

Bill sighed in relief when the elevator slid open and he saw that Ford had left his study door ajar. He crept into the room, feet socked, hands gloved—Ford was the kind of paranoid to actually check for prints if he suspected anything, and Bill's triangular whorls were very distinctive—and looked through the objects piled on the shelves and furniture for any concealed sensors or cameras. The coast was clear.

He idly scanned the nearby shelves for any sign of his stolen time tape, didn't find it, but didn't expect to. That wasn't what he was here for.

He knelt in front of a half-disassembled filing cabinet, flipped through the files in the removed bottom drawer until he found several folders together about curses and hexes, and flipped through them until he found the one labeled "Curses & Hexes (w/ ingredients)". Good old Sixer, left everything exactly where Bill remembered it.

He rifled through the pages—"aha!"—until he found the paper he was looking for and pulled it out. Handwritten at the top of a ragged-edged piece of notebook paper were the words "Reverse Sunscreen". Bill read through the list of ingredients—"Oh, pepper juice, not pepper flakes, right."—then put the paper back.

He glanced back and forth between the past and present to ensure he put the files back exactly where he'd found them—again, considering Ford's paranoia, he might notice any difference.

And then he returned to the elevator and headed upstairs.

The whole time he was in the study, Bill didn't let himself glance at the back of the room where Ford's shrine to him used to be.

####

"Heya, pal," Bill said. "It's been a while! Where have you been hiding all summer?"

Gompers blinked up at Bill.

"I guess we both look different than we did the last time we met, huh? I think your makeover went better than mine, though! You didn't fall as far as I did." He didn't have as far to fall.

Gompers accepted the backhanded compliment with utter indifference.

"But hey, why talk about the past! Let's let bygones be bygones. Here." Bill knelt, pulled one of Ford's nutrition pills from the folds of his beach towel, and held it out. "A peace offering! A little snack for you."

Gompers eyed it warily.

"Come on, you've eaten worse things than this."

He delicately ate the pill out of Bill's hand.

"Thaaat's right. Tell me how you like that thing later."

Leaning on his car, Stan—the only other person who'd actually been ready to go at 6:30—looked over Bill's shirt and trout slippers, and asked warily, "You didn't forget that humans need to wear pants, right?"

Bill got to his feet, shoved his makeshift umbrella-cane under the same arm as his beach towel, and pulled up the hem of the puma shirt he'd stolen from the gift shop to reveal his bikini bottom. It was teal with little puffy gold triangles painted on. "Cover-up dress. Your arbitrary fashion rules are different for beaches."

Stan considered whether a t-shirt counted as a dress, decided he didn't know enough about dresses and he might as well give this one to Bill, and grunted. "Fine, you're legal."

"Am I free to go, officer?"

"Never compare me to a cop again."

"Stop acting like one!" Bill trotted off to his ride to wait for the other humans to assemble.

There wasn't room for all eight beachgoers in one vehicle; the Pines piled together in Stan's car, while the Ramirezes (including Melody—honorary future Ramirez—and Bill—magic braceleted to Abuelita) took Soos's truck. So that Abuelita didn't have to squeeze past the front seats into the back, Bill and Melody were assigned the back bench; when Bill greeted Melody and she only responded with a vague mumble and an averted gaze, he scooted closer to the middle of the bench, spread his knees to take up more space, and smugly pretended not to notice how Melody squeezed herself against the door.

By the time the Ramirez vehicle parked at the beach, the Pines family was already out of their car: Stan was glaring up the beach with his fists on his hips, the kids were unsuccessfully searching Mabel's supply bag for Dipper's sunscreen, and Ford was lingering back at the car, pretending to check the contents of their tackle box but actually trying to shake the sudden memory of weightlessness and water in his throat. As Bill passed, Ford muttered, "I'm surprised you wanted to get this close to the lake so soon. Considering." It had been less than a week since their joint near death experience.

"Why not? Nearly drowning was the most fun part of that hike." (Ford wondered whether that was a red flag, an underhanded comment about how unfun the rest of the hike had been, or just Bill being Bill; and, for his own peace of mind, decided it was probably the third thing.) "Looks like you got something fun out of the trip, too." Bill snapped the shoulder strap of Ford's waders.

Ford shoved Bill's hand away. "As long as I have them, I might as well use them."

When everyone caught up with Stan, he was scowling at four men, ages ranging from 50 to 80, wearing fishing vests and hats with the Holy Mackerel's distinctive stylized fish symbol. "Eugene," Stan muttered. "Eugene and his goons wanted to kick me out of the lodge for years. Just because I have a grating personality and am generally unpleasant to be around! And tried to get the lodge to pick a local affordable housing fund as our charity for fundraising one year!"

Ford gave Stan a surprised look. "You never mentioned you worked with an affordable housing charity."

"Yeah. The Compassionate Angel's Fund For Gravity Falls Tourism Business Owners Who Are Behind On Their Mortgage Payments."

Ford snorted. 

Bill said, "I think you should've gotten away with it just for being funny."

"Don't even look at them," Stan instructed the group. "These jerks aren't worth it." The collected group studiously avoided looking at the Mackerels, except Bill and Abuelita, who didn't care.

As they walked up the beach toward the pier and veered around the Mackerels, Stan suddenly stopped, turned straight toward them, and said loudly, "Why, Eugene! What a coincidence! I almost didn't notice you!"

A tall, elderly man with a fishing rod over one shoulder and a black wooden cane in his other hand glanced over at the Pines/Ramirez party. "Oh," he said, with a voice like he'd found a fly stuck in gum on his cane. "Hello, Stan-ley. We haven't seen you out on the lake this summer."

Stan laughed loudly, as if Eugene had told a hilarious joke. "Oh, that! I was just waiting for perfect fishing weather! I'm not about to waste my time out on the lake on a bad fishing day!" He gestured behind himself, "Besides, I had to wait until my whole family was free to come along."

(Soos elbowed Melody and whispered excitedly, "He called us his family!")

Stan clapped his hands proudly on Dipper and Mabel's shoulders—who looked like they hoped the sandy beach would swallow them whole—and said, "I don't see your family, Eugene, where are they?"

"Dead." With mournful dignity, Eugene said, "I outlived my wife and all three of my children. Remember? You ate potato chips during my daughter's funeral."

Stan opened his mouth, shut it, and said, "Was that the really boring one that went like an hour?"

Ford, who didn't always have the best social instincts but could tell when Stan had screwed up, started shooing the rest of the family away from the scene, elbowed Stan, and said, "Let's get to the boat. You wanted to get a prime fishing spot, right?"

Eugene looked at Ford. "Ah. You must be the real Stanford Pines?" he said. "So I'm assuming, anyway. Apparently it's hard to tell you two apart."

Stan scowled; but before he could retort, Bill pushed past him to butt into the conversation. "Is it ever! Listen, take it from someone who's made this mistake—you've got to count the fingers on these two, every time."

Eugene huffed sardonically. "So it seems." (Ford self-consciously hid his hands in his pockets and shot Bill a dark look as he shuffled off with the rest of the family.)

"Say, while I've got your attention—name's Goldie, by the way—I couldn't help but admire your cane!" He tapped the tip of his umbrella against Eugene's cane. "I'm in the market for an upgrade from this substitute I've been using! That's no blackwood, right? That looks like true ebony."

"Good eye," Eugene said, surprised. "Yes, genuine Gaboon ebony."

"Must've dropped a lot of gold on this thing," Bill said appreciatively. "You've gotta tell me where you got it."

"I'm afraid I don't remember off the top of my head..."

"That's fine! Look it up—" (he twisted around to speak over his shoulder as Stan grabbed his arm and dragged him away) "—I'm sure we'll meet again!"

About fifteen feet away, Stan growled, "What was that?"

"Networking. I've got plans for that guy," Bill said. "Hey, did you hear him? Gaboon ebony?" He laughed condescendingly. "Easiest way to make a guy look like a moron, start talking about 'true' ebonies. Didja know the word 'ebony' comes from Egyptian? And when they talked about 𓍁𓈖𓏭𓆱, they were talking about African blackwood. Wood so hard it sinks and you have to tool it like a metal! Gaboon ebony is a flimsy usurper!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"But you don't pretend you do, and that's what makes you better than that guy." Bill tugged Stan down by the shoulder. "Listen, Fisherman. I can't tell you where the fish are biting but I can tell you where they're swimming. It'll give you an advantage, but you'll need to do the rest."

Stan squinted mistrustfully at Bill. "What's the catch."

"The catch is you have to accept my help. Do you want it or not?"

"And why are you offering?"

"Because I think these lodge guys are a bunch of snobs. And they should've chosen your charity. It was funny."

That, plus Stan had been the most reluctant to let Bill live; Bill had to convince him he'd made the right choice.

Bill gave Stan directions to a bunch of fish he could see underwater by the Island Head Beast's right earhole; and then, his good deed for the day done, he headed off to claim a spot on the beach.

Ford had gone into Tate & Backle's to properly purchase the clothing they'd borrowed after the eclipse, and Soos was helping set Abuelita up with a low beach chair and a large umbrella. Bill smoothed out a patch of sand about ten feet from Abuelita so he could lay out his beach towel and dump his supplies for the day beside it. While Mabel and Melody got the boat ready, Dipper wandered around looking for sunscreen to borrow. He saw Bill's tube, snatched it without asking, and generously coated his arms, legs, and face. Bill fought back a grin and pretended not to notice.

He tossed aside his t-shirt and fish slippers, settled down on the towel in his bikini, carefully squeezed several horizontal lines of reverse sunscreen across the front of his abdomen and thighs, and drew a few vertical lines in between to break them up.

Ford trudged over from the bait shop to tell Bill, "I thought you'd like to know those ridiculous fish slippers were thirty dollars."

Bill laughed. "Whoa! Seems like a lot of money for some cheap novelty shoes! It's too bad you decided to trap me in a position where I'm too destitute and powerless to make my own purchases, isn't it?"

"All right, all right." Ford's gaze caught on the bruise-blue line discoloring the skin from Bill's left shoulder to his right hip—had he gotten injured during one of his hikes the past week? Or had that always been there? Ford didn't think he'd ever seen Bill's body shirtless, maybe it had always been here—but then he noticed Bill's lines of sunscreen and barked a laugh. "I suppose you're not planning to rub that in."

"Brilliant observation." Bill began smoothing down the lines with a finger, maintaining the pattern he'd drawn.

"You wanted to come out here to suntan? I'm sure you're already aware of the cancer risks from tanning."

"If I'm in this body long enough to get cancer, I'll welcome it." Bill lay down, laced his hands behind his head, and gave Ford an obnoxious smile. "Anyway, basal cell carcinomas are delicious. There's something kinda romantic about them, you know?"

Ford ruminated on that with thoughtful bafflement, shushed the voice in his head trying to point out that Bill was waving ever more red flags, and concluded that perhaps humans weren't meant to comprehend the romanticism of skin cancer. "Fine."

"What's everyone standing around for?" Stan asked, trudging up to Soos and Ford. "C'mon, we're burning daylight! Let's..." He trailed off, staring at Bill.

His bikini top consisted of two triangular red cups. Each cup had an enormous staring eye.

"See something ya like?" Bill asked dryly.

Stan quickly looked away. "Ugh. That's indecent."

"What is?"

"That—design!"

"What's indecent about eyeballs?"

"It looks like...!" He gestured vaguely but emphatically.

"What? What does it look like? Tell me what it looks like, Stanley."

"Never mind!" He turned away with a huff and muttered to Ford, "Can you believe him?"

"I honestly didn't notice anything until you pointed it out." Ford waved back at Bill dismissively as he followed Stan toward the boat. "Enjoy your sunburn."

"I will! I haven't had a good sunburn in centuries! That's one of the best features of earthling bodies!" Bill got comfortable and shut his eyes.

Soos finished getting Abuelita settled, headed toward the boat—but hesitated as he passed by Bill. Bill opened an eye a crack to glower up at him. "What?"

Soos mumbled, "You could've just told me you wanted to get sunburned. I mean—yesterday."

"But you didn't ask if I wanted a sunburn," Bill snapped. "You just assumed I didn't know how they work. And that's the point: you assumed I was stupid instead of considering that maybe you didn't know my plan."

"Oh. Uh... sorry." Soos rubbed the back of his neck. "I didn't mean to make you feel stupid."

Bill's irritation flared higher. He sat up. "I didn't say you made me feel stupid," he hissed, voice low, talking fast. "There's nothing that you could do to make me feel stupid. But that doesn't mean you aren't treating me like I'm stupid, does it?"

"Whoa—!" Soos raised his hands defensively. "Chill, dawg. I didn't mean—"

"What's the phrase, do ut des? 'Do unto others'? Your species's phrase. Don't treat me like I'm stupider than you and I won't have to return the favor—sound like a fair deal, Question Mark?" Bill stared up at him challengingly, brows raised.

"But th— I w— You..." Soos's protests that he'd been doing nothing but trying to do-unto-others Bill got jumbled all around under the force of Bill's spotlight glare. His shoulders slumped. "Sure," he mumbled. "Sorry."

"Good." Bill lay back down. "Get out of my sun."

Soos trudged away; and Bill took a deep breath, tried to get in a meditative mindset where he could shut off his mind, and focused on the feeling of sunshine on his body.

He'd just about managed to drop into a proper trance when Abuelita called sweetly, "Bill? Would you grab a bottle of water for me?"

His face twitched toward a frown as he was dragged back to full consciousness. Hadn't Soos left them close enough for her? Some grandson. 

"Bill?"

He tried to think of an excuse to stay where he was; then growled in irritation and sat up. "Okay, okay." He couldn't afford to offend the chef with access to the poisons.

The bag with the water bottles was right behind Abuelita's elbow; but maybe her joints were stiff. Bill knelt to unzip the bag. "Another bodice ripper?" he asked, glancing at her book. 

"A powerful sorceress queen has been captured by her enemies. She just learned they are led by her former apprentice."

"I can sympathize with that." Bill dragged the bag up next to Abuelita's knee so he wouldn't need to grab another bottle for her later. "Who's the love interest—guileless guard? Heroic rescuer?"

"The apprentice."

"Sympathy's gone." Bill glanced toward the boat to see what the rest of the household was up to.

They'd already reached the spot Bill had indicated and started fishing. Soos was excitedly reeling in his line; the boat listed to one side as everyone crowded around him to see what he'd brought up. Stan dipped a net in the water to scoop up his catch.

It was a boot.

Everyone's faces fell in disappointment.

Except for Ford's, who gleefully snatched up the boot he'd kicked off during the eclipse when he fell in the lake. He dumped the water out of his boot, switched places with Soos, and began fishing the same spot.

Abuelita said, "My grandson has been very nice to you."

Bill looked at her warily.

"Hasn't he?" She had a polite smile and daggers in her eyes.

He had the oddest feeling that this was going somewhere dangerous. "Yeah yeah yeah, sure he has," Bill said. "Nothing but nice. I think I'll take a little stroll, stretch these legs! See ya!" He stood to escape.

He only got a step away before the enchanted bracelet pulled tight around his wrist. He turned around to stare in amazement.

Abuelita had wrapped the slack of the bracelet thread around her hand.

Bill had made a severe miscalculation.

"So," Abuelita said. "Why are you being mean to my grandson." It was a trap all along. She'd agreed to be handcuffed to him so she could corner him for an interrogation.

"Whaaat," Bill said. "Me? No way! I'd never!"

Abuelita stared at him patiently.

"I don't even talk to him," Bill said, trying to think of a conversational escape route.

She raised a brow.

Got it. "He's just too nice, you see! I don't know how to talk to a guy that nice," he lied. "Makes things awkward!" How could any grandmother complain about her grandson being called too nice? "Yeah—not Jesús's fault at all. I don't hold it against him."

"Ah," Abuelita said, "you aren't used to people being nice to you?"

Sure, they could go with that, try to get him some pity. "Yeah! You know how it is. King of Nightmares, scourge of the multiverse—I'm not a popular guy."

"But you have friends, don't you? The scary ones you brought with you to town last year? Are they not nice to you?"

Bill hesitated, trying to figure out his story now. "Sure—they're nice to me. They're my friends! They love me! They'd do anything I say!"

"Oh. So, you're only comfortable with people being nice to you when you can control them." Abuelita smiled sweetly.

Swift, efficient, and brutal. Bill gaped at her.

"I'm glad you have nothing against Soos," she said. "And that you won't be rude to him."

Bill snapped his mouth shut. "Of course not." He gave Abuelita a tight smile. Played like a fiddle. Even though he'd been lying, she still managed to make him look like a loser. How embarrassing. "If you don't mind, I've got a sunburn to get back to."

"I'm not stopping you." She let the extra thread on the bracelet cuffs unwind from her hand and drop to the sand.

Bill trudged back to his towel, snapping as he went, "I hope this is one of those books you hate where the couple only gets hitched because they've got a baby coming."

"The sorceress has magical birth control."

"Course she does."

Bill flopped onto his towel again and stared at the sky. Ouch.

####

(I've been promising Agent Powers AND a beach episode for ages, and we finally get to them both at the same time. Let me know what y'all think so for!)

[natolesims]

MY HEART IS YOURS | A Sims 4 Legacy Challenge

Written by @natolesims AKA @dustbon

I did a thing! This challenge is based on the mexican telenovela "Mi Corazón es Tuyo" (My Heart is Yours) where the main character, an exotic dancer, ends up working as a nanny for a millionaire by accident. I used to watch it every single afternoon with my abuelita and since I was feeling nostalgic, this challenge came to life. Hehe.

This is a 10 gen, story-driven challenge with detailed objectives and dynamics for each generation. I hope you like it! I'd love to see if you play it, so feel free to tag me or use #myheartisyourslegacy

Rules under the cut! Or if you prefer it, here's the Google Doc~

NOTES AND GENERAL RULES

Adult themes are included in some generations. You’ve been warned.

There might be some aspects of the gameplay that might not be included in the game by default (for example, earning money as a nanny or a dancer). If you play with mods, feel free to use how many you’d like to enhance the experience! 

Alternatively, you can always make your own twist and interpretation of the challenge, its features and rules. It’s your gameplay, so have fun and do your thing!

Since the story revolves around wealthy families, I’d suggest to create / download  some rich sims or households if you’d like to have more options.

You can skip, add new or change the order of the generations.

No cheats allowed besides freerealestate or funds modification (according to some situations)

I created this challenge considering multiple aspects of the game and its DLCs. If you’d like to change or substitute something, go ahead!

Each generation is a bit specific, so I’d suggest to play on normal / long lifespan or pause aging whenever you consider necessary.

Again, have fun!!

GEN 1 - THE NANNY

You are an orphan who learned to survive on your own at a very young age. After years of working as an exotic dancer you finally managed to buy your own little house, but you lost everything unexpectedly. In an act of desperation, you asked for a large loan from your horrible boss who has you trapped in their grasp and  the money they gave you is still not enough to get by... so you signed up into an employment agency to get the expense off the ground. As if it weren’t enough, they mixed up your papers and now you've been hired as a… babysitter? Are you kidding? Welp, thank goodness you love children.

Traits: Good, Family-Oriented, Loyal

Aspiration: Super Parent / Big Happy Family

Skills: Max dancing,  charisma and parenting 

Job: Make-believe nanny and part-time exotic dancer. 

Rules:

Move to an empty house and set your funds to 0.

Alternatively: Move to a furnished home and destroy everything through an "incident" (you can cheat for this) and break all the plumbing. You can’t fix those items, only replace them after you get your loan money.

Have a night job as an exotic dancer in a local club. None of your day job clients should recognize you while you’re working at the club, and vice-versa.

If you have mods that fit this situation, feel free to use them! Save the tips you earn :) 

If you play this vanilla, disguise your sim and send them dancing to a club each night. You'll earn $200 per day if performance.

Ask the nightclub owner (your boss) for a loan of $8,000 simoleons. You’ll have to keep dancing there until:

A) You earn the money and pay your debt, or

B) You’ve been working in the club for 1 in-game year, but then you can’t keep the money you’ve earned from dancing.

Optional: Consider paying $1,000 for a renovation permit and another $1,000 for plumbing and electrical installation per story.

Start a day job as a nanny. You’ll earn $300 per family.

To do so: Meet sims with children and visit them often to take care of the kids. You can only help one family per day.

Alternatively: You can choose a particular household to be working for. The wealthier and more kids, the better.

Give your sim the always welcome trait so you won’t have issues with cooking and stuff. 

For super wealthy families: You can build a room for yourself in their homes or use the visit room if they have one, but you can’t move your sim into their households at all. You’ll still have to work at the club at night and work on rebuilding your little home. 

Befriend all the kids of the families you’ve worked for.

Fall in love with the head of family of the wealthiest household that hired you. To marry your potential spouse, you must:

End paying the nightclub debt

Finish rebuilding your house again :)

Become friends with the live-in services, if they have (butler, chef, maid, gardener, etc.)

Max your friendly relationship with each kid the love interest has. Only then you can start building a romantic relationship with them.

If they already have a spouse, make them your enemy and have the love interest divorce them. 

Have as many own kids as you can. 

GEN 2 - A GROOVY GRANDPA

You come from a rich family that cares for its wealth with fervor. You did everything your parents and your parents' parents taught you: work hard, make money, have an heir and make even more money. You always felt that working was the only purpose of your life… but now that you are older, you realized how wrong you were. Now that you're old, loades, and your family can fend for themselves, you have the opportunity to do everything you couldn't in your youth.

Traits: Materialistic, ambitious, loner.

Aspiration: 1) Mansion Baron and 2) Inner Peace

Skills: All the skills needed for the career of your choice, mixology, dancing, wellness and a hobby of your choice (as an elder).

Job: Business (Investor Branch) or Salaryperson (Expert Branch)

Rules:

Go to university and get a degree that’ll help you get a jump start on the career of your choice (options above).

University can be tedious and long to play, so I’d suggest using a mod that makes the terms shorter :)

Reach the top of your career as a young adult. 

Marry a wealthy sim out of tradition and have only one child. That’s our heir.

Have a so-so relationship with your kid and your spouse.

Your spouse should die as an adult (you can cheat for this).

Focus on making all the money you can while being an adult. If you can get fame points while you’re at it, perfect.

Once you reach elderhood, have a life crisis and embrace a new “you”.

Change your traits to: Romantic, adventurous and goofball.

Change your aspiration to: Inner Peace.

I’d strongly suggest to turn aging off so you won’t die of old age.

Enjoy life! Be self-indulgent, go partying, pick up new hobbies, make new friends, visit new places. 

Try getting the emotional mindful moodlet often.

Find true love with a humble sim significantly younger than you. 

The next heir must disapprove your new relationship.

Have a child through pregnancy or adoption with your new partner. Move out of the family home and go live with your new little family.

Focus on being an excellent parent and spoil the little one rotten until the last of your days. 

GEN 3 - THE WORKAHOLIC

Your father lost it and messed up his life's direction... and stained the family’s values. You carry your last name with pride and you’re determined to put it back to its former glory by doing what you do best: working. You will rescue the company that your father nearly ruined, return wealth and good fortune to your family and lead an exemplary life, whatever it’s the cost. Your children constantly complain about how absent and cold you are, but they are too young to understand the importance of your priorities. They will thank you one day.

Traits: Proper, Ambitious, Perfectionist.

Aspiration: Fabulously Wealthy

Skills: All the skills needed for your career only. You’re not interested in anything else.

Job: Business (Management Branch)

Rules:

Always excel as a student.

Don't have a social life.

All sims you meet (except the future spouse) must stay as acquaintances.

Always turn down any kind of social invite.

Never throw a party of any sort.

Never celebrate a birthday, not even your own. 

Go to university and study communications at U-Brite. At uni you must:

Enter the secret society.

Enter the debate guild.

Graduate with honors.

Meet the love of your life during your time as a student. Your spouse must:

Have good traits only.

Belong to a wealthy family.

You can only marry if you have a full romance bar.

Also: no woohoo before marriage!

You two must live in the family home / manor. Refurnish it with  expensive items, fine art and decorations if it isn’t.

Have a butler. If you play with mods, also have all sorts of live-in services. If not, hire a scheduled gardening, maid and nanny service via the phone.

Don’t have any kind of pets. Not even fish.

Fill up your sim's fun need by doing "boring activities". For example:

Only listen to the talk radio and classical music stations.

Only watch the news and the weather channel.

Don't tell jokes.

The only game your sim can play is chess.

Only read non-fiction or skill books.

You get the idea by now :)

Dedicate your entire existence to your career, completing your aspiration and your loving partner.

Earn fame points through situations or interactions related to your career only.

Get the workaholic lifestyle and live accordingly.

Have as many children as you can with your spouse. After the last family slot is taken, your spouse has to die unexpectedly (you can cheat for this)

After your spouse's demise, change two of your traits to: Hot headed and gloomy.

Have a rocky relationship with all of your children:

Try to limit your interactions with your children. Have the helping sims (butler and nanny) take care of them.

Develop the strict family dynamic with every single child.

All of your kids must be top students and gain the good manners character value trait.

Your kids must have a tight schedule: School, after-school activities, homework time, limited playtime, music lessons (for girls), sport lessons (for boys) and early bedtime. If they develop a dislike for an activity, accept it but they’ll have to do it anyway.

Marry a co-worker as an adult, but do not love them. On the contrary to your loving spouse, they must only have negative traits. Bonus points if they have the hates children trait.

Start a recurrent affair with one of your service sims.

The next generation starts when the heir is a teen. 

GEN 4 - THE INDECISIVE ROMANTIC

You grew up in a large family that seemed more like a military company. Being the smartest of all your siblings, your father always sought to train you in such a way that you would take his place when time comes, but you don't want to be remotely like him. You are still young and you have enough time to change the course of things. You want adventure, you want love, you want happiness and wealth… but the pursuit of hedonism may not help you make the smartest decisions.

Traits: Genius, bookworm, snob

Aspiration: 1) Nerd brain 2) Serial Romantic

Skills: Logic, writing, research and debate, fitness

Job: Law career (Private Attorney Branch)

Rules:

Be the typical nerdy teen. Embrace the stereotype at its fullest.

Always excel in school 

Complete the nerd brain aspiration as a teenager.

Frequent intellectual lots like libraries and museums.

If you can, become a valedictorian and/or achieve early graduation.

Start a romantic, toxic relationship with the first sim who is constantly rude to you.

Your sim has to still be a teen.

Break-up and get together again frequently.

Enter the U-Brite Communications program as your parent did, but drop out shortly after. You want something else in life. 

Improve your physical appearance and start working out. After your makeover, change your bookworm trait for the self-absorbed trait. 

Move out on your own, live the party life and date around! But keep coming back to your toxic ex.

Don’t have any source of income after moving out.

Have an accidental pregnancy with your ex, but don’t take responsibility for the baby. 

Have another accidental pregnancy with one of your affairs, and also don’t take responsibility. 

This other sim must have the good or cheerful trait.

After spending all your simoleons on parties and vice and, go back to the family home and enter the Law career to become a private attorney. 

After getting your life in order again, look for your previous partners and decide to take care after the kids they had with you. 

Don’t have any more kids after that.

Start building up both romantic relationships again, but keep them in the shadows from one another. Never make a final decision.

Write books as a hobby, but only publish: non-fiction, poetry and biography books.

The least disciplined child will be the heir.

GEN 5 - THE ADVENTURER

You grew up in a millionaire family that has everything you could imagine, but somehow you always felt like you didn't belong to it. There is a certain indomitable spirit of adventure within yourself and when you came of age, you decided to fully embrace it. Your parent disapproves and would rather have you not prefer an unstable life of artistic adventure to the safety of a well-established profession... but he has no place to tell a you a thing, knowing the kind of life he led in his young years. Leaving all the responsibility of the house and the family business to your half-brother, you packed your bags and took the first plane to the jungle.

Traits: Active, creative, loves outdoors.

Aspiration: 1) Jungle Explorer 2) Mt. Komorebi Sightseer, 3) Beach Life and 4) Archaeology Scholar.

Skill: Selvadorian Culture, Archaeology, Fishing, Fitness, Singing and Guitar.

Job: Freelance photographer.

Rules:

Always be a laid back, cool type of person. 

Frequent museums and parks as a kid and teenager.

Once you graduate high-school, travel the world to become a nature photographer! Think of a globetrotter-ish kind of generation:

1: Selvadorada. 

Build a luxurious villa as your jungle home (you’re still a millionaire, so no problem with this). You’ll frequent it a lot during the generation.

Complete the Jungle Explorer Aspiration.

Once you reach level 2 of the photography skill, you can travel to the next destination:

2: Mt. Komorebi

Complete the Mt. Komorebi Sightseer Aspiration.

Visit each festival.

Once you reach level 3 of the photography skill, you can travel to the next destination:

3: Sulani

Complete the Beach Life Aspiration

Max the fishing skill.

Max the photography skill.

Be a flirt and have multiple lovers across the worlds, but find true love with one in particular.

Optional 1: have this sim travel with you as a companion.

Optional 2: have your half-brother fall in love with them as well.

Complete 3 collections of your choice.

Become famous by publishing your photographs.

After ending your stay in Sulani, your half brother must die (you can cheat for this). You’ll have to go back to the family home and take care of the generational fortune.

Keep traveling often to Selvadorada, the world you like the most. Work on completing the Archaeology Scholar Aspiration during your short visits. 

Decide to settle down with the sim you fell in love with and form a family of your own. 

Have lots of children.                                     

GEN 6 - THE STAR

You don't understand the tendency of past family heads to get rid of a life full of all sorts of comfort. Dirt? Ew. Luxury and fame are everything to you, but since you were young you had a problem with your appearance and awkward personality. But you know what? That is going to change. You are not interested in a boring company or looking for love: you just want to shine as bright as the sun.

Traits: Self-absorbed, materialistic, high-maintenance.

Aspiration: World-Famous celebrity.

Skills: Charisma, mischief, acting.

Job: Social Media (Internet Personality), Actor (optional)

Rules:

Be the “ugly duckling” of the family while growing up. 

Have the socially awkward trait as a teen.

Have your first puppy love as a pre-teen / teenager, but be heartbroken. Never believe in true love after that. 

Have a bad relationship with every single family member. 

Move out on your own to a luxurious home as soon as you become a young adult and cut ties with the rest of the family, previous friends and acquaintances. You’re on your own now. 

Have a radical image change after becoming independent.

Enter and reach the top of the Social Media career as an Internet Personality. Only then you can enter the Actor career if you wish. 

You can only actively work as a Young Adult.

Start building your own fortune through fame and gold-digging. 

Have an accidental pregnancy and use it to your convenience. Keep the baby. 

Never develop the parenting skill

Have a bad relationship with your kid

Mold your child to your image. They must be conventionally beautiful.

Your child must be well educated and skilled, but have terrible character value traits.

If you marry, become a widow everyone shows their sympathy to. Keep being a gold digger after that and never remarry.

Quit your job(s) right after entering the adult lifestage and spend your fortune as if there were no tomorrow. 

The next gen starts when the heir becomes a young adult. By then, you must be broke and have lost all your fame.

GEN 7 - THE HOMEWRECKER

You always meant an instrument for your parent, even before you were born. Thanks to them, you are an expert in the art of manipulation, seduction and performance. You are beautiful, intelligent, cold and calculating. Such confidence and mettle has carried you far from childhood, but now that you're an adult, it's time to think big and not make the same mistakes as your stupid parent... even if it means carrying them around for the rest of your life. Now, time to choose a victim to pay the family debts and live a perfect life.

Traits: Evil, hates children, hot-headed.

Aspiration: 1) Drama llama, 2) Mansion Baron

Skills: Charisma, logic, writing, acting, research and debate.

Job: Salaryperson (Supervisor Branch)

Rules:

Be the perfect, spoiled brat your mother made you since childhood. 

Always have a pristine image, even if you’re broke as hell. People doesn’t need to know your family is in bankruptcy

Become the unreachable, popular meanie in highschool and embrace those vibes throughout teenagedom, but never start a serious relationship. 

Complete the Drama Llama teen aspiration.

Move out on your own as a young adult, but have the previous heir move in with you shortly after to live at your expense. Your parent:

Cannot get a job or have any source of income of any sort.

Has to have the slob trait (you can cheat this),

Has to follow every whim related to their personality, and

Has to spend $5,000 simoleons by the end of each week. If you don’t have the money, add it to a “debt” list you must pay. 

Enter the salaryperson career (Supervisor Branch)  and reach the top of it quickly as a young adult. As soon as you reach it, get relaxed and don’t pay much attention to your career anymore.

Optional: get an university degree that’ll help you get a jumpstart. If you chose to do this, you’ll have to study at home, ask for all the scholarships you can and graduate with honors (of course).

If you get the workaholic lifestyle, go to coaching to get rid of it. 

You must choose only one ultimate spouse candidate.

They must be attractive (to your sim), successful and ridiculously wealthy.

They must be already in a serious romantic relationship of any sort with another sim.

Bonus points if they have at least one child. 

Once you decide on a love interest, develop one-sided feelings for them and do everything in your reach to gain their favor, but they should never love you.

Get to marry your love interest one way or another. Move your sim and the previous heir into their home and enjoy your new fortune :))

Once you marry, adopt your spouse’s last name.

Have only one own child: the result of a one-time affair with another sim.

Use mean interactions only with every child you meet (even your own), any “low-class” sim you meet and service sims. 

Gain the Twisted Heart reward trait.

GEN 8 - THE BEAUTY 

You've lived in a bubble all your life. Despite having a lousy relationship with your parent, they have given you everything you wanted and more: a good education, luxury, travels and gifts. You have always tried to fulfill their expectations and desires... until you met the love of your life in someone you would never have expected. After a terrible argument with your family, you decided to run away with your love and start a new life from scratch. The plan sounded good in your mind, but then you realized that you don't know how to do anything other than being cute.

Traits: Good, Clumsy, Romantic

Aspiration: 1) Admired icon 2) Soulmate 

Skills: None in particular

Job: None in particular

Rules:

Be the stereotypical perfect, beautiful and shallow rich kid. 

Have a bad relationship with your parent, but respect their authority.

Try not to do activities that make you gain "useful" skills (or any skill). Focus only on having fun and enjoying life.

Complete the Admired Icon aspiration in your teenage years.

Have your parent arrange your future marriage with a wealthy sim and start a forced relationship with them, but reject their romantic advances often. 

Enter university in a conventionally well-respected degree program. Become engaged with your current partner at the same time.

Find true love with a service sim.

They can be either one of your household's employees or a NPC like the mailman, a street vendor, a mixologist, a firefighter, etc.

They must be poor.

They must have the creative trait.

They must be a single parent. 

Keep your affair with the service sim in secret until a family member, a close friend or your partner discovers you. Only then you can break your current engagement and escape to live with the love of your life.

Move your sim with their new partner and their child, but bring no simoleons or material goods whatsoever in your inventory.

You can only move to a Needs TLC starter apartment or a starter home with the Gremlins and Grody lot traits. 

The lot or apartment cannot be pretty when you first move to it.

You cannot move out of it on this gen.

Drop out of university but don't get a job. Your spouse must work as a starving artist (Painter career level 1) and don't let them get promoted. 

If you play with mods, keep them in the service career they were when you met them.

Spend all the household's funds on useless things.

Optional: Everytime your sim breaks anything (even the plates while washing them), cheat -$100 simoleons of the household funds.

Get a job only when all your services are cut down after not paying your bills.

You should go through all the basegame careers before deciding on a permanent one. You may start with part-time jobs, then full time careers. 

After you decide on a career to stay, focus on developing the necessary skills for it. When you reach level 3, your spouse can finally work on their artistic career.

If the spouse sells their art, they can't gain fame out of it.

Have only one own child after your household has a stable income. 

GEN 9 - THE NONCOMMITTAL ENTREPRENEUR 

In your family there was never a lack of love, but money definitely was a problem. Your parents made an effort to give you everything that was within their reach, but the truth is that you could never shake off the itch of having something more… something “big”. The thing is that working seriously is not your thing. Never has been, in fact. However, you have brilliant ideas that you just have to materialize with the right investment. But first, let’s go to the party everyone’s talking about.

Traits: Lazy, party animal, noncommittal

Aspiration: 1) Live Fast 2) Party Animal

Skills: Juice fizzing, dancing, entrepreneur skill.

Job: Odd jobs

Rules:

Be a terrible student and surround yourself with lots of friends.

Complete the Live Fast teen aspiration. Then, drop out of high-school but keep living with your parents.

Gain the Irresponsible character value trait.

Earn money only through odd jobs or in-game activities that doesn’t require "intellectual" skills (like writing, programming, painting, etc.), but have Juice fizzing as your main interest.

Frequent party lots every single night like bars, clubs and lounges and spend at least $500 simoleons each night on bar drinks.

Accept every party invite you get, no matter who they are or what your sim is currently doing. 

Meet a love interest in one party night and start a relationship right away, but don't commit to it:

Never take the initiative to go on dates with them, only accept their invitations and make them pay for everything.

Be unfaithful.

Ask them for loans and crash their place frequently to take care of your needs (eating from their fridge, using their shower, etc).

Only visit them to woohoo if your fun levels are low.

Have unprotected woohoo often (try for baby instead of regular woohoo or use mods for this)

Have an accidental pregnancy with your partner and get excited by it. 

Once the baby's born, you'll have to take care of them and your partner will have to dump you and lose all contact. You can then move out of your parents' house.

Now that you're a parent, take your side hustles more seriously and even get a part time job if you decide to, but keep partying at nights and spending most of your earned money on vice.

Don't have any more kids and try to nurture your child as much as you can.

Have an unexpected death while the heir is a child.

GEN 10 - THE (UN)LUCKY MIXOLOGIST

When you were little, you listened with amazement to all kinds of stories that your father told you about the adventures and misadventures of your ancestors. That’s why you have always been a dreamer who wants to achieve success and, above all, to know true love, but that is something that only happens on TV. It seems life had other plans for youm and the only thing left is to work hard and try to move on with a smile.

Traits: Good, foodie, music lover.

Aspiration: 1) Master Mixologist 2) Soulmate

Skills: Mixology, DJ mixing, cooking and baking.

Job: Culinary career (Mixologist Branch)

Rules:

Since you'reunderage, move into a shelter or an orphanage.

Once you become a teen, dropout of high school and earn money through odd jobs and buy a dj mixing station. Only then you can start working in secret as a freelance dj in local clubs and bars:

To do so, create an alternative persona or character your sim must disguise as whenever they're on a show. 

Save all the money you earn through tips.

Don't gain fame.

Once your sim becomes a young adult, join the culinary career and help out at the shelter/orphanage until you have enough money to move out on your own, but keep presenting as a dj each night.

Buy and move to the starter home the founder fixed.

Present yourself regularly at the bar your founder worked at as a dancer, and also work as a hired mixologist some nights. You'll earn $300 per night.

If you have mods that adjust to this, feel free to use them!

Have 10 failed relationships throughout your Young Adult lifestage. Give up on finding love after your last relationship.

The relationships will only count if you get to become boyfriends or more and get to break up, divorce, cancel engagements or separate through other circumstances. 

Once you become an Adult, fall madly in love with a sim you meet in one of your work nights. This sim:

Must be an elder.

Must be visiting the lot you're at for the first time.

Must be super rich. 

Start a sugar-ish relationship with your love interest. Have them gift your sim money ($1,000 simoleons) everytime they see each other. You decide if they keep, donate or sell the gifts.

Break up with the love interest, but get back shortly after and get into a serious relationship.

Only then, start working on the soulmate aspiration with this sim.

Move in with the elder sim only when you have a full romance bar.

If the elder sim has family, make them disapprove of your relationship together.

Wait a minute… isn't the story kind of repeating itself?

You decide what happens next ;)

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

06/13/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; Taika Waititi; Linds Cantrell; Dominic Burgess; Vico Ortiz; Tell Tale TV Reminder; Emmy Ballot Nominations; Adopt Our Crew: Our Flag Means Pride Raffle; FibreArtsBrigade; GLAAD Article; Articles; Schadenfreude; Fan Spotlight; Because The Night Zine; Love Notes; Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika;

== Taika Waititi ==

Source: Taika Waititi's Instagram Stories

More pictures from the peabody awards!

Source: birdrunningh2o's Instagram

And a fun and chaotic interview with Taika and Sterlin Harjo!

Source: GoldDerby's Instagram

== Linds Cantrell ==

Lindsey Cantrell making us all cry using this template on instagram.

Source: Linds Cantrell's Instagram w/ Special thanks to chaoticmulaney on Twitter (cause I saw this but forgot to save it! and you posted it-- so thank you!)

== Dominic Burgess ==

Dominic's been busy on twitter the last couple days! There' a new article by Deadline Hollywood!

Dominic was also kind enough to share some lovely colorful photos he took while out in Oregon!

Source: Dominic Burgess' Twitter

== Vico Ortiz ==

New episode of Date My Abuelita, First! Listen in here!

Source: Vico Ortiz' Instagram Stories

In addition-- if you're on Vico's Patreon, they've uploaded several more BTS Videos. If you're interested in joining to get access, here's the link!

== Tell Tale TV Reminder ==

Final round is still going on! Remember to please vote for Rhys, Ruibo, and Our Flag Means Death (as well as any other shows you'd like)! Tell Tale TV Awards

Source: TellTale TV's Instagram

== Emmy Nomination Submission ==

Great news crew! OFMD was submitted for Emmy Nominations in several categories! Wanna see all the submissions? You can visit the Emmy Nominating Ballots. For a summary, please check out @adoptourcrew's graphic / post below!

Source: AdoptOurCrew's Tumblr Wanna learn what's next with how the Emmy's work? Our friends over at @adoptourcrew have put together this awesome post about the entire EMMY process. Please visit them here. Below are some basics, but please visit the full post!

Source: Adopt Our Crew's Tumblr

== AOC: Charity Raffle Reminder ==

Our @adoptourcrew crewmates will be running the OFMPride Charity Raffle through June 28th! Reminder: Donate to an LGBTQ+ charity of your choosing and you'll enter to win a prize my one of the many donating artists, writers, crewmates!

Source: Adopt Our Crew's Tumblr

== Fibre Arts Brigade ==

Some news from the Fibre Arts Brigade and their craft auction for Pride Month benefiting SAGEUSA! They have some important updates for us! Please give them a read below! Fibre Arts Brigade FAQ Sage Donation Page Fibre Arts Brigade Twitter

And great news! They've already raised almost $1000 for our LGBTQ+ Elders <3

Source: FibreArtsBrigade Twitter

== GLAAD ==

Another article from GLAAD on Where We Are On TV 2023-2024 - Cancelled Series Article by GLAAD

Source: Glaad's Instagram

== Articles ==

== SchadenFreude ==

Heh heh, down 6.66% today <3

Source: Nasdaq: WBD

== Fan Spotlight ==

= Because The Night Zine =

Last couple nights to preorder the "Because The Night" NSFW Gentlebeard Zine!

== Love Notes ==

Hey lovelies. It's almost Friday! (and is already Friday for some of you!) I know this weekend is particularly hard for some of you because of Sunday, so please remember to be kind to yourself if you can.

I also just want to say, that I know change is hard. I know life is hard. So much of life is just weathering storms as they roll in, and sometimes it's just too much. When things are looking down, remember to look back at where you've been. I know it's difficult, especially if you've been through so much, but sometimes you have to look back to see how far you've come. You've made it so far. You've done so many things and made such an impact on the people in your life. Don't give up being the kind, wonderful, brilliantly beautiful person you are because of tough days. One day soon things will look up. Sending hugs your way lovelies. Take care <3.

Source: The Latest Kate's Tumblr

== Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika ==

Tonight's theme: These two are chatting, thats all, side profiles and nods. Gifs courtesy of the fantastic @5bi5 and lovely @celluloidbroomcloset!

[enigmatist17]

Miguel Rivera becomes the first Rivera to turn down tequila, the fifteen-year-old knocking the offered shot out of his father's hand and onto the ground.

He looked horrified at the drink, and the adults crowded around him asked him what was wrong.

So he tells them of the Día de los Muertos he'd gone missing and where he had actually gone. Of course, at first, none of them want to believe his tale as he talks, hands waving as he describes the day from start to end, but the dread starts sinking in part way through.

It explained why Miguel never went on the roof again after returning, the teen trembling now when asked to climb a ladder or somewhere high. How he had come back after his disappearance to sing a song to Mamá Coco that only she and her papá had ever sung together, despite not knowing a single thing about the man. It had been three days after that Miguel was found throwing his de la Cruz merchandise into the firepit the family had, the twelve-year-old refusing to speak as he tore posters and muttered curses his abuelita boxed the back of his head for. Any mention of the man as the family slowly came to grips with the infamous music ban finally being lifted would instantly sour his mood, going so far as to throw a record Abel found secondhand into the trash with a look of utter hatred. It also explained that when Miguel wasn't in school, he was diving headfirst into research, the proof Mamá Coco had saved instantly, sparking interest from historical researchers worldwide. It didn't take long for the truth of de la Cruz's theft to become public, and while the world raged, Miguel spent time with historians who flew out to Santa Cecilia going over all inn records from 1921 following the letters Héctor had sent.

Miguel cried when he finally found the last time H. Rivera was recorded checking into one, his name never again reappearing alongside E. de la Cruz after he left Mexico City in the dead of night.

Luisa embraces her son when she remembers the day officials had finally discovered Héctor's body in a hastily dug grave nearly an hour from the city, her son never leaving the coffin his bisabuelo's body had arrived in until it had been buried beside his wife. To have actually met the man and had come so close to losing him, the way Miguel had been a silent guardian until he was gently guided home, made too much sense.

They all stop breathing when a tearful Miguel recounts precisely how Héctor had been murdered, eyeing the tequila bottle with a shiver.

I'm scared to drink it.

The local liquor store where the Rivera's shopped never placed another order for tequila again.

---

Héctor was an easygoing guy. After living for so long, he took most things on the chin and smiled around the pain.

As long as it didn't revolve around Ernesto or...tequila.

For a long time, Héctor never understood why touching or drinking made him feel uneasy. It flowed like most other drinks in Shantytown, but he always hesitated when reaching for a bottle, or accepting an offered glass. They had all eventually stopped asking about the flinch he seemed to always be surprised by, and while he didn't entirely avoid it, Héctor turned to other drinks.

The fog in his mind of his death is finally cleared, and Héctor realizes why tequila has never satisfied him.

Now, here he sits among his familia, laughing about something as a glass is placed in his hand, and Héctor takes a sip before registering the smell of the tequila.

A large hand is on his back as his stomach twinges in pain, a voice that should have been soothing in his ear as he lets go of his guitar case, everything going cold as he collapses onto the dusty street

Perhaps it was that chorizo my friend

Héctor doesn't realize he's hyperventilating until gentle hands take hold of his skull, Imelda's lips moving but words unheard over the pounding in his ears. The glass he'd been holding had been crushed, and once he realized that damn liquid was all over his hand, Héctor shrieked and jerked back and onto the floor. It takes both Imelda and Rosita to keep Héctor in one piece, the matriarch of the family just talking to her husband in the softest voice they'd ever heard from her as Héctor tried to undo himself and run...somewhere. Eventually, she gets through to him, gently caressing the side of his skull as Héctor clings to her, eyeing the bottle of tequila on the table with wide eyes as his family crowds around him in concern. It takes him nearly an hour to begin his tale, his voice giving out far too many times for Héctor's liking, but he tells them of a night like any other at the start. Of a long day performing, leaving both himself and Ernesto tired but relatively happy, until Héctor had seen a photo of his family and felt the resolve that had wavered for months finally solidified.

I'm going home Ernesto! Hate me if you want, but my mind is made up!

Oh I could never hate you. If you must go then I'm...I'm sending you off with a toast!

¡Salud!

Of how he'd missed his friend's hatred until it was far too late, dropping to his knees as his body burned....and he awoke dead in a land that became his prison.

He had just wanted to go home.

Julio was the first Rivera to move once the poor man had finally gone silent, adjusting his hat before grabbing the tequila bottle on the table and leaving the room. For a few minutes, all the family could hear was the clinking of glass being set into something and faint curses as Julio went through what seemed to be every room in the entire Rivera household. Once satisfied, Julio returned, kneeling beside his father-in-law with a slight nod, able to see the taller man visibly relax when it dawned on him what he'd done.

The crate full of tequila was picked up by Victoria once Héctor had been coaxed to bed by Imelda, making sure the liquid would find its way to her abuelo's other family in Shantytown, as it would go to waste otherwise.

---

Dear Papá Héctor,

I hope you're having a great Día de los Muertos, I cooked everything on the ofrenda myself this year :D (sorry if it's burnt D:) to give Abulieta a break :)

I wrote this letter for you specifically because - I told them. Papá wanted me to try tequila, but I couldn't do it, and everyone wanted to know why, so I told them. From start to finish, though, I may have left out the part where I got thrown into the cenote and off the tower.

I promise to tell them someday, but it can wait <:)

Abuelita wanted me to say she's sorry for offering you tequila the past three years, and that when she eventually joins you, that she's going to smack a certain someone with her chancla. I told her Mamá Imelda beat her to it, but Abuelita said she didn't care, and you'll see how scary she can be :P

We are still trying to figure out another drink to leave you because, apparently, guitar picks aren't a suitable replacement :(

Te quiero Papá Héctor, make sure you do your best gritto for me!

Your bisnieto, Miguel <3

[chainsxwsmile]

¡Feliz Dia de los Muertos! Here’s Bruce as a alebrije for the occasion.

This Dia de Muertos is particularly special for me. Although it’s the first one without mi abuelita, it’s also the first time I can put her photo on my ofrenda alongside other members of our family. I finally managed the time to make pan de muerto, and visit my ‘lita’s grave to give her the cempasuchitl that also decorate our family’s ofrenda.

I miss you, ‘lita 🌼 Until we meet again ❤️

[i-like-cats-and-stars36]

I made a shellshocked bad future fanchild!

Meet Rio Dai Hamato-Morales! Or Rio Dai Morales.

Why are you seeing two version of her on this post? Well, the one with the Prowler jacket is the version of her if she was raised by shellcrime instead of shellshocked.

Soooo, some general lore about her:

-Rio was born through a mystic accident while Miles and Mikey were practicing mystics together.

-They were very overwhelmed by a eighteen-months-old baby suddenly appearing in their arms, but quickly accepted her as their daughter.

-Being born through mystics, she is not entirely human and posesses a plethora of mystic abilities that used to go haywire when she was small a lot.

Think of Baby Rio suddenly going invisible and everyone freaking out because they can't see her anymore.

Or it getting too cold in the apocalypse and Rio straight up using those turtle DNA parts to hibernate.

-So as soon as she was old enough, Mikey started giving her mystic training, so she can learn to control her mystics better.

-Taking an example in Splinter, Mikey always tries to make the lessons fun for her and it quickly becomes their main bonding time since Mikey can be quite busy through being one of the resistance's strongest fighters.

-Through that training, Rio herself quickly becomes a powerhouse in the resistance.

-Her main attack are flaming mystic webs.

-Some of her other abilities include: invisibility, a strong spidey-sense (she also gets a lot of visions) and mystic healing.

-Personality-wise: She is sweet, fiercely optimistic and quite expressive and emotional, but also tends to be reckless and impulsive. (It's the ADHD.)

-She feels very strongly her emotions and wants to help the resistance and protect her loved ones with all her might.

-Still, it's the apocalypse and Rio knows that every mission could be the last of someone, so that gives her plenty of anxiety as well as the thought of not being strong enough to save them if she could.

-The death of Miles hits her hard and is the final push for her to go on the frontlines and fight the Krang head-on. It's why you see a lot of Miles imagery in her costume.

-On a lighter note, Casey Jr. is her favorite cousin.

-Her favorite uncle/aunt is Raph (It's April, but we can't tell Raph that, he would cry).

-She would like sour candy if that were a thing in the apocalypse.

-She is pretty close with her abuelita Rio.

-If Rio could choose a job other than resistance fighter, she would become a nurse like her grandmother she was named after.

Now, about some differences in shellshocked! Rio and shellcrime! Rio!

-Shellshocked!Rio's full name is Rio Dai Hamato-Morales while shellcrime!Rio's full name is Rio Dai Morales because I headcanon that 42! Mikey was raised by Draxum and therefore doesn't have a sttong connection with the Hamato name.

-Shellcrime! Rio hung out a lot in Donnie's lab when she was younger because Miles G helped Donnie run resistance tech (pushing Miles G & Donnie friendship here) and she learned a lot about tech there. Don't get me wrong, she's still a badass mystic warrior but she can also program a computer.

-Shellcrime! Rio was a lot more sheltered and trained as a child because Miles G was very anxious about her getting hurt in actual fight. It lead to a bit tension when she got older, but Miles G died before they could ever find a solution and Rio got to fight at the frontlines.

-Shellcrime!Rio doesn't posess Spidey-sense, mystic webs or invisibility and instead she fights with mystic lightning.

So that's all I have for now! I probably forgot some stuff, but we can talk about that another time!

I hope you like Rio and feel free to add your own headcanons here, I'd love hearing about them!