#But I remember that I didn't like Bill's anime humanizations at the time.

[pinkish-cat]

Another quick drawing, but on the theme of Gravity Falls. I recently watched all the episodes and remembered that as a child, these two were my favorites.

Well, a gif at the same time.

[faeriekit]

#i'm very pro danny accidentally adopts a whole bunch of talons previous installments

*

The next day, the body was back.

The green was gone from its eyes, but the awareness wasn't; it spent about an hour watching people go around outside Danny's apartment, which was new behavior. None of the corpses that shadowed him had shown any interest in garden-variety humans before. Now it sat at the window and watched families come home from school or head to their afternoon shifts.

That went into Danny's notes.

After that hour, it taught itself to flush the toilet repeatedly, rearranged the contents of Danny's half-assed linen closet (again) and then stood hovering over the safe where Danny had stashed the ectoplasm.

"...Okay," said Danny.

The dead body croaked. It was a new sound, but there was no context for it. Danny just kind of...wrote it down and hoped for the best.

The day after, Danny woke up at a very reasonable ten forty eight in the morning to find stray corpses feeding each other spoonfuls of ectoplasm in the kitchen.

At that point he kind of had to throw out the notes on how much each one was dosed with, because what the fuck.

"Really?!" Danny shouted, spooking the bodies into fleeing behind chairs and doors and back into his closet again. The only one that didn't flee was Danny's ringmaster corpse of the hour, of course. "You really couldn't wait??"

It stuck out a withered black tongue out at the mortician, who was, really, the victim in all of this. A victim to his parents' whims and a victim to the dead people who followed him around all the time.

This was how Danny found out that, when it doubt, the corpses could just tear through solid steel if they were motivated enough. The finger-marks were so deep and so embedded that they actually looked more like rough claws in the metal.

Great.

Danny ordered a new locking cage for the fridge on Prime and darted off to work. One of his regulars was on the table, though, so Danny just ended up doing what he would have at home— sewing up a gash in its neck and reattaching dead fingers back onto dead stumps.

On the third day, in which four of Danny's frequent fliers had learned from the first how to flush the toilet (and therefore raise the water bill immensely) Danny got a ring from a dark voice he (almost) recognized.

"Is he here?"

Danny squinted, jerking the phone further under his ear as he whipped up some scrambled eggs. The dead girl leaning over his shoulder leaned a little closer to watch the egg froth up. "Is who here? Who is this?"

"This is Batman. Is— the body requisitioned from your facility currently at your place of residence?"

Danny fully let go of the whisk. It landed haphazardly in the glass bowl he'd been stirring in. "What on Earth is a Batman?" he asked, incredulous.

"I visited your workplace previously."

Oh! "Yeah, the cop's friend. I remember now." Danny pulled the whisk out of the liquid eggs and held it out to the body. The unusually animate cadaver mostly prodded the whisk wires and paid no attention to him. "No one's here but me, though. Not that it's your business...?"

"And there are no non-living bodies currently in your apartment?"

Danny ignored the flushing noise in the other room. "I don't know, dude. They practically live in the walls at this point. Don't come over unless you have a warrant."

The call ended with a click.

His omelette turned out amazing, by the way. In case you were wondering.

On the fourth day, the ectoplasm was gone, because the corpses had apparently all taught each other how to lockpick the container in the fridge.

"Okay, some of that was meant to be my dinner. No more lotion at the funeral home now, okay? Now you all can be ashy forever. I'm so serious," Danny complained to the only visible dead person in the room.

The dead person held up a cracked egg. It was probably a gesture of peace, but now there was egg on his vinyl flooring to deal with. And. It wasn't exactly all that comforting in the end.

On the fifth day, Danny awoke to the sensation of a hand jamming itself through his neck until it punched into the mattress beneath him.

Fuck.

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

What if instead of threatening to take Ford's eyes, Bill just took Fiddleford's?

Tate still remembered the night his father's sight was taken from him.

"What have you done to me, Stanford?"

He felt the storm coming even before the first lightning struck. From the very moment he opened his eyes that morning until the very moment he lay back down to bed, he could feel a vicious tension brewing in the otherwise serene household.

Storms were very uncommon at Tate's house, and on the rare occasions they did arrive, they never stayed for long.

Yet, after a quiet breakfast full of anxious, unmet glances and clattering cutlery that rang far too loudly in the silence of the table, he knew that this storm was going to be unlike any other storm he'd witnessed before.

A prickling, disquieting static seemed to have made itself at home underneath his skin, that day. It had made every hair on his body stand on end, and an odd stinging sensation to dance across his spine and tongue; an uncomfortable urge to duck and take cover low on the ground nearly overwhelming his every sense. It was like waiting for the shattering thunderclap to sound after the sky turned white with a blinding flash of light. He knew what was coming, and the anticipation was unbearable.

His mother and father had acted as though nothing was wrong; as though they didn't feel the looming presence of the darkening clouds growing like a murky gray forest on the ceiling.

He hadn't been able to fathom at the time how adults could seem so all-knowing, and yet simultaneously be so utterly clueless about the very obvious happenings that surrounded them. Now, though, he just found it strange how adults often tend to assume children don't feel the stifling weight that they hung around themselves; as if children didn't breathe the same bitter choked air as their parents did. It wasn't even as though they did a very good job at pretending; his parents always were terrible liars.

When the lightning finally struck, it set the house ablaze.

He heard the thunder from his room, and felt the crackling heat crawl up the stairs and seep through the gap beneath his door. He'd laid in his bed, hand clasped nervously across his chest and looking up at his room's cloudy, weeping ceiling as a cacophonic explosion of noises came bursting from the living room downstairs. The fight had erupted with such unprecedented force that in Tate's young mind, he'd felt genuine fear of the house collapsing atop them all from the sheer force of the yelling.

The smell of burnt tongues gently wafted through the air, and Tate briefly wondered if it hurt his parents when they scorched their mouths with such scalding words just as much as it hurt for him to hear it.

It was a big fight; a terrible, big fight; so loud, and so very angry, and helpless, and desperate, and betrayed, and sad.

The back and forth screeching seemed endless, and eventually the screaming words began to muddle and merge into one another until they hardly even sounded human anymore. Suddenly there were animals wailing in the living room downstairs, and Tate could do nothing but listen helplessly and grip his interlocked fingers tighter; hoping that if he stayed still enough, then the growling beasts that were shattering plates downstairs wouldn't come upstairs.

But then,

then,

something changed.

The shift was all too sudden; too abrupt; too quick even for the usually sharp witted child to catch on, and before he knew it, the screams of anger suddenly shifted into one of pure, unadulterated horror.

"Fiddleford, your eyes- good lord, your eyes! Let me look at them!" "Don't touch me! I- I must call Stanford, he's done something to me. Him and that demon, they've cursed me." "For Heaven's sake! Please, forget about that damned Stanford of yours for one moment and listen to yourself! My husband's gone mad, mad!"

And suddenly his parents were human again.

Tate was restless in his bed as his heart seemed to beat bruises against his ribs, his sweaty fingers digging crescent shaped grooves into his skin as fear enclosed its frigid claws around his throat in a vice-like grip. He couldn't breathe.

The storm was over, and it should have reassured him, and yet he was anything but.

Curiosity and fear had been what forced him to kick the sheets off himself and creep his way down the rickety wooden steps. He had to know what happened, he had to know what damage the storm had caused, he had to know.

His steps were far from quiet, and the creaking of the floorboards beneath his feet hardly did him any favors, but no one answered the calls of the squeaking wood. No one came peeking out from the living room to stop the obviously sneaking presence that was tip toeing through the halls; No one called out to check on their little child; all was silent, and calm, except for his mother's soft sobbing coming from the kitchen.

When Tate eventually found his father, he saw

devastation.

The storm had been merciless. It had left nothing behind but a shuddering husk of a man. His father was shaking like a leaf, shoulders tense and back hunched over as though bowed by an incredible burden. The telephone receiver was held in his hand like a lifeline; as if it was the only thing in the world that was keeping him tethered to sanity, and somehow, Tate didn't doubt that it was.

Curled up on the floor in the dark, muttering and trembling, he dared say his father looked... small.

It almost felt surreal to see his father in such a state, like witnessing a God collapse, or a star's light dim to nothingness. His father had always been a solid, permanent pillar sho seemed able to hold up the whole world on his shoulders, and still stand tall and proud despite the weight.

And yet, the crumbling remains of a once impermeable monolith now lay scattered across the hallway floor and splattered across the walls.

The sight had scared him.

At the time, Tate hadn't known what had happened. Even to this day, he still wasn't too sure he understood what exactly had taken place in that living room for his father to have so sudddenly gone from seeing to blind in the matter of seconds.

His mother had tried, in vain, to explain it to him later, to try and make him understand when he was eventually old enough to hear the gruesome tale; but still, he struggled to fully wrap his head around it.

"It was as though his eyes just sunk into his skull," his mother had recounted to him with a haunted look in her eyes. "They suddenly just vanished into the empty sockets of his face, like someone pulled them out from inside his head. There was no blood, no resistance, no tearing. It was as if his eyes were simply plucked out of sight by some invisible hand."

There had been blood on the walls when he had found father back then, a long trail of gorey wet red smeared all across the lovely yellow wallpaper. He realized only now, recalling the memory, that the blood back then had not been from his father's eyes, but from the deep gouges he had dug into his face with his nails, his searching fingers desperately looking for eyes that weren't there beneath his empty eyelids.

"What have you done to me, Stanford?"

Tate had never heard his father's voice sound so raw, so afraid. It was so unlike the familiar comforting drawl he'd grown to love and recognize, it almost sounded alien, coming from his father.

"I can't see, Stanford, I can't- my eyes, they're gone. Why are they gone? What have you done?" "Answer me, damnit, what have you done?"

His father never got his answer, because whoever was on the other side of the line soon hung up, and his father was suddenly left blind and alone.

[ckret2]

Chapter 31 of human Bill grudgingly enduring being the Pines' prisoner because the Henchmaniacs won't take his call: Summerween night! Everyone gets ridiculous costumes!

The Summerween Trickster's buddies are attempting to resurrect him. Robbie's making a music video. Bill's attempting to woo Ford back into friendship, to terrify Dipper with cursed knowledge, and to recover his dignity from THE most gentle chastising imaginable, and he only succeeds in 1 out of 3 of these endeavors:

It's not this one. He's just gotta process these emotions while wearing that stupid wig.

####

Soos was putting the final touches on his cosplay (the suave and mysterious Masked Guy In A Suit, love interest of the heroine from the classic anime Teenage Planetary Soldier Girls) when he heard the phone ring in the office. "Hold on, I'll get it!" He hurried downstairs, ducked under a construction paper chain Mabel had strung over the door, picked up the phone, and said, "Hello?"

A mysterious voice droned, "The sun sets a deep blood red."

"Oh, no thanks, we don't want any." Soos hung up, sighed happily, and said, "Ah, Summerween. Always brings out the weirdos."

"Hey Soos!" Mabel ducked into the doorway. "Where's the candy bowl?"

"Oh, hey Hambone. It's in my bedroom." He put on a stage whisper. "I put it in there so Bill couldn't steal it."

"Thanks Soos!" She ran upstairs.

Dipper and Bill waited downstairs, the tension thick between them (on Dipper's side, anyway; Bill—watching a black-and-white horror movie, sipping at a can of cider, and brooding over going to voicemail—didn't notice). Dipper was waiting by the door in a folding chair; but he kept glancing toward Bill in the living room. When the silence got too much to bear, he asked, "Okay, what are you dressed as?"

Bill was wearing a brown bedsheet toga (the most historically-accurate part of his costume); a cheap wig of a teased mullet that had ended up mostly red with yellow streaks, forming a plume of hair right over his head and then a long straight tail he'd draped over his shoulder; and a bunch of paper faux-Greek homes taped all around the hem of his toga, forming a ring around his calves.

"And are those my sandals?" Dipper asked.

"Take it up with Mabel, she loaned them on your behalf," Bill said. "I'm not telling my costume. You have to guess it."

"Seriously?" Dipper sighed. It had to be a god, gods towered over their mortals' temples. What god would wear brown? "I don't know—Demeter?"

"What? No. Do I seem like the Demeter type? Pathetic." Bill waved off his guess. As Mabel ran downstairs, Bill said, "Hey, Shooting Star, you haven't made your official guess yet."

Without hesitation, Mabel said, "A time-traveling hair metal singer touring the Roman Empire and trying to find a way home before his hair dye runs out."

"Wrong, but I would love to live in the world you've dreamed up." He meandered into the entryway to join Mabel as she plopped down in the second chair by the door.

Dipper screwed up his face. "Are you helping us answer the door?"

"No, you're helping me answer the door. I'm cursed, remember?" Bill leaned over Mabel's shoulder, dug into the candy bowl, and popped a lollipop in his mouth. "But you're not getting rid of me, if that's what you're asking."

Soos headed to the door, cape billowing dramatically behind him. "Hey dudes. Hey Bill." He paused in the door, studying Bill. "Hey! Is that a Bobo the Uncouth Berserker cosplay?"

Bill blinked. "Who?"

"Bobo the Uncouth Berserker! You've gotta read Bobo. He's this primitive hero descended from lost Lemuria who goes on daring adventures through the lush impenetrable jungles of Central Europe. He's got this comic that was so popular it spawned an anime, which got an American movie adaptation, which formed the basis of a second comic continuity that isn't as critically acclaimed as the original but has drawn in a lot of new fans... and..." Soos petered out. "You're not Bobo, are you."

Bill shook his head. "Thanks for playing."

"Aw." Soos's shoulders slumped. "Anyway—me and Melody are gonna be at the cosplay contest at the theater. I'll keep my phone on in case of monsters."

"We'll be fine!" Mabel said. "Go have fun!"

"You too!" With a dramatic flourish of his cape, Soos disappeared into the night.

Bill watched Soos go enviously. He could have been given a human body that looked that good in a suit and top hat, but was he? No. It wasn't fair. And Soos didn't even wear the right hat size.

Dipper glanced sideways at Bill. "Hey. Is... Lemuria real?"

"Not anymore." Bill perked up as Stan passed by, dressed like Frankenstein's monster. "Hey, Stanley! You haven't guessed yet. What am I?"

Stan surveyed him. "White columned buildings, Statue of Liberty dress, and a red clown wig. I dunno, the American government?"

Bill squawked in laughter. "That's my favorite wrong answer so far. I like you, Stanley." He fished a chocolate bar out of the bowl and held it out.

Stan grunted in disapproval, but accepted the candy. "If any of you need me, I'm gonna be up on the roof, terrifying kids." He held up a boombox and a cassette that said "Spooky Sound Effects of Halloween". "If you hear screaming children, don't worry: that means I'm winning."

"Where's your brother?" Bill asked.

"Avoiding you." Stan passed through the living room and left.

Bill's shoulders slumped; but he just dug into the candy bowl for more chocolate. Then the first trick-or-treater knocked on the door, and Dipper jumped up in relief to answer it.

The shack didn't attract quite as many trick-or-treaters as the houses closer to the center of town, but they got a steady stream of children, and more than they'd gotten the year before. Between visitors, Bill dug into their candy stock, gleefully ignoring Dipper's complaints. After the fourth or fifth visitor, Dipper and Mabel realized that Bill was covering up the amount of candy he'd pilfered by meticulously re-folding the empty wrappers and putting them back in the bowl.

"It's fair play," Bill said. He untwisted one end of a Twisty Roll tube, squeezed out the candy, blew into the wrapper to re-inflate it, and twisted the end shut again. "The kids are trick-or-treating, right? Sometimes they get treats and sometimes they get tricks."

"Come on, seriously?" Dipper said. "Even for you this is low. You're literally taking candy from babies."

"The babies are trying to take candy from us. I have no sympathy." With the precision of an origami master, Bill refolded a paper fruit chew wrapper into a box and dropped it back into the bowl.

"They're supposed to take candy from us, that's how the holiday works." Dipper looked at Mabel for support.

But she was holding up an empty 3 Fencers wrapper and squeezing it lightly between her fingers. "Wow. How did you make the wrapper puffy again? It's so convincing."

Bill shot Dipper a nasty smile, then turned to Mabel and said magnanimously, "I'll teach you everything I know." He twirled a glue stick between his fingers.

Another trick-or-treater knocked, and Dipper answered.

"Trick or treat! Please give us the worst candy you have."

Mabel blinked, leaning around Dipper to see who was outside. "Wait, what?"

Outside stood a purple-furred monster with a dozen limbs from a dozen different creatures. He gasped in surprise. "Ohhh, twin costumes! That's so cute! What are you two, haunted dolls?"

Dipper took a surprised step back. "Limby Jimmy?"

The monster was silent a moment, taken aback. He took off a bear mask he'd made out of a paper plate. "Is it that obvious?"

Mabel asked, "Have we...?"

Dipper said, "Oh! Sorry—Mabel, this is Limby Jimmy, I ran into him last year in the Crawlspace under town when I was trying to get your face back—"

Helpfully, Bill threw in, "He's Gravity Falls' most accomplished arms dealer. And legs dealer, and tails dealer, and ears dealer..."

"Limby, this is my sister Mabel. Actually, I don't know if I ever introduced myself—"

Limby Jimmy cut in, "Ohhh, yeah, I remember you! You're Troll Boy, right?"

Dipper winced. "It's—it's Dipper, actually." He paused. "Wow. We meet a lot of weird people."

"Nice to meet you, Jimmy!" Mabel held out a hand. After a moment of thought, Jimmy elected to shake it with a tentacle and a dog's paw.

"What are you doing up here?" Dipper asked. "Is Summerween the one night of the year that Gravity Falls' monsters can walk among humans without fear?"

"Oh no, I'm terrified. I wouldn't be out here if I wasn't collecting donations," Jimmy said.

"Donations?"

Jimmy hesitated, then lowered his voice. "You've been in the Crawlspace, so, you and your sister are cool, but is the lady...?" He wiggled a hoof toward Bill.

Coolly, Bill said, "I'm actually an ancient interdimensional energy being cursed to wear a human form."

Dipper and Mabel flinched in alarm and rounded on Bill, hissing, "Bill!" "Shhh!"

Ignoring them, Bill said, "So, continue."

"Oh," Jimmy said brightly. "That's all right then, yuk yuk." He wiggled his multitude of right arms. "I don't know if you humans have heard yet, but the Summerween Trickster got eaten to death last summer! It's really sad!"

Dipper and Mabel, who had watched as he was eaten to death, stayed quiet.

"But probably happy for him?" Jimmy mused. "Since I think that's what he wanted? But it's sad for the rest of his poker group, we all miss him! So I'm out here with Doug—"

"Who?" Dipper asked, looking around the porch for a second monster.

"Oh, he's back there." Jimmy pointed toward a tree at the edge of the clearing around the Mystery Shack. The tree chittered unnervingly. "We're going around collecting donations to resurrect the Trickster! Or... re-summon him? Or however this works. We never really asked him how he came to exist, it seemed rude."

"Naturally," Bill said. "You can't just ask a freak what made him so freaky. It's a sensitive topic."

"Right! You understand," Jimmy said. "Anyway, we need a lot of crappy candy!" He looked at their bowl. "Which pieces have the kids been ignoring this year?"

Mabel had started bouncing on the balls of her dusty Victorian ghost shoes; and the moment she had a turn to speak, she squealed in excitement. "You're the Summerween Trickster's friend! That's perfect! Stay here, I'll be right back!" She shoved the candy bowl into Bill's arms and zoomed up the stairs. "I've got some stuff for him!"

Bill looked at the bowl, looked at the stairs, shoved the candy in Dipper's arms, and followed Mabel. "Hey, Shooting Star? What are you doing?"

Her voice drifted down the stairs: "Getting a donation! I'll be just a minute!"

"Hold on, you're actually helping that guy?" Bill laughed. "Why?" He climbed high enough to poke his head above the attic floor  and lowered his voice so Jimmy couldn't hear. "I wasn't paying that much attention last Summerween, but I got the impression from your little costume store brawl that the Trickster was trying to kill you kids. Am I missing something?"

"I mean, yeah, he was—but he was in a really bad place back then, that doesn't mean he deserves to be dead for it. And now he knows someone out there wants to eat him, so maybe he'll be less insecure and evil." Mabel laughed, "Anyway, the Trickster isn't that bad! He didn't try to kill me half as hard as you did!"

Bill froze a couple of steps from the top of the stairs. He didn't move for a few seconds; and then wordlessly, he slunk back downstairs.

Dipper watched as Bill, face beet red, trudged into the living room. "Hey. What's Mabel...?"

"How should I know." Bill curled up on the couch, picked up the can of cider he'd been drinking earlier, shotgunned it, and glowered at the horror movie on TV.

Dipper considered Bill—all alone in the living room and not doing anything important—and considered Mabel, upstairs; and said, "Hey, Jimmy. Do you mind waiting out here until Mabel gets back."

"Sure! I don't have any plans." Jimmy rocked back on his many heels.

"Cool. Thanks." Dipper shut the door.

He sidled oh so very casually into the living room and leaned against the TV. "Guess it's just the two of us right now."

Bill's gaze didn't waver from the TV. "Terrific counting skills, Troll Boy." He popped open another cider can.

Dipper grit his teeth. Let it go. "Sooo! You're from the second dimension, huh? What's that like?" (His voice cracked embarrassingly on "that.") "Just—just curious. Making friendly conversation. Caaasual conversation." He flashed a pair of finger guns at Bill, to underscore just how casual he was. "Yyyep." Witness the junior paranormal investigator in action.

Bill turned the cold, empty eyes of a killer on Dipper. He took a long, slow sip from his cider. And he asked himself: what can I say that will make this stupid boy regret ever daring to speak to me?

Bill smiled. "Yeah. Sure. Okay," he said. "You wanna know what it's like? Have you ever read the Allegory of the Cave?"

Dipper hesitated. "By... Plato?"

"That one. You know—ignorance is like being a prisoner chained in a cave, watching shadow puppets being cast on a wall, and thinking they're reality; and having knowledge is like being outside the cave in the sunlight, seeing the real shapes that are casting the shadows—"

"I have read it, actually," Dipper said, a tad defensively. "It was for extra credit in—"

"English class, I know."

Dipper frowned; but he soldiered on. "So... living in the second dimension is like being chained in a cave, staring at the shadows on the wall, and thinking that's reality? Bleak."

Bill laughed so loudly that Dipper started. "Wow, you're so dumb! Use your brain, kid: it's the second dimension. You're not the prisoner: you're the shadow on the wall." Bill's lip curled in a sneer, "An illusion in somebody else's allegory. And the only one who can see the cave's exit... is you. That's what the second dimension is like!" He laughed again. It sounded forced.

"Oh," Dipper mumbled. He tried to wrap his head around the idea of being a living metaphor for ignorance. "Sounds... pretty bad?"

"Awful," Bill agreed. "Doesn't hold a candle to what your dimension has going on, though."

"Wh... why, what's going on in the third dimension?"

Bill gave him a malicious smile, and Dipper had the sinking feeling he'd just walked into an obvious trap. "You idiot, you still think you're in the third dimension? Really?"

Was that a trick question? What answer was Bill looking for? What could this be if not the third dimension? "Nnooo?"

"Wow. I can really see why you're a straight-A's honors student," Bill said. "You're so good at figuring out what answer the test wants and regurgitating it—even if you don't actually understand it at all." He heaved himself back to his feet; and Dipper was sure there was something threatening in the movement—something that reminded Dipper that he was talking to a dangerously unstable extinction level event precariously packed into an unsteady human body. "Although copying the year of the Louisiana Purchase off of Brandon's test in fifth grade  probably didn't hurt, did it."

Dipper's stomach dropped. The secret shame buried beneath the foundation of his honors roll-worthy record. Pull that out and his entire academic career came toppling down. He'd get kicked out of the honors classes. He'd go to jail. Was cheating against the law? "H... how did—?"

"What year was the Louisiana Purchase?"

Dipper's brain immediately went blank. He was silent, trapped in the paralyzing intensity of Bill's gaze. After several terrifying seconds, he croaked, "1803?" and hoped he was right.

"Attaboy. Too bad you couldn't have learned that a little sooner, isn't it?" As he spoke, Bill had closed in on Dipper until he'd backed him into the corner behind the TV set, filling Dipper's exit route with one hand on the TV and the other on the wall. "But we were talking about dimensions, weren't we! Whaddaya like to read, kid," Bill asked too casually, "do you like cosmic horror? Do you know what real 'cosmic horror' is?"

Dipper regretted this conversation completely.

"It's having an eyeball on the inside of your body, and seeing another dimension through it. And ohoho, I think you'd be amazed at the things I can see from here—"

Dipper got the distinct impression that if he didn't get out of this conversation, he would only hear things he'd be telling his therapist about for months. "Cool! Good talk, man. Hey Mabel?" (That was an absolutely humiliating voice crack.) "How's it going?"

A pause. "I think I need help!"

"Coming!" Dipper ran behind the TV to escape Bill and gratefully bolted upstairs.

The kid had caved so fast. And Bill had only just been getting started. He smirked, sat, and turned back to the movie.

A moment later, Mabel and Dipper came back downstairs, carrying four bulging plastic grocery bags. Mabel set one by her feet, opened the door, and shoved the first bag into Jimmy's arms. "Here! You can give these to the Trickster!" She shoved over the second bag.

Jimmy stumbled back under the weight. "Whoa there! What is this?"

"Candy chalk-hearts! I completely bought out the leftovers after Valentine's Day," Mabel said. "I wanted to make sure that if we met the Trickster again, I could let him know he's loved and appreciated as the terrifying avatar of spooky holiday spirit that he is! And that I also respect that he's made out of gross candy nobody likes to eat." She picked up a chalk-heart box and waved it in Jimmy's face. "So here's a gross candy that expresses love! See, the little hearts say things like 'You smell nice' and 'I heart ur face,' but they taste like if dehydration was a flavor."

Dipper handed his bags to Jimmy. "Wait—Mabel, that's why you got all these? You've been planning to help the Trickster since February? I thought you were gonna build a chalk-heart house or something."

"Oooh, that's such a good idea. I should do that next year!" To Jimmy, she said, "I was gonna give these to him personally, but if he's still dead, I guess you can add it to his candy sacrifice pile or whatever? And make sure he gets this!" She handed Jimmy a store bought Shimmery Twinkleheart Valentine's card. It read, "I BELIEVE in our friendship! Happy Valentine's Day!" Mabel had scratched out "Valentine's" and written "Summerween".

Choked up, Jimmy said, "Oh—wow. That's the nicest thing anyone's done for us all night. I'm sure the Trickster will really appreciate it when he's not dead anymore."

Dipper was a little more vengeful. Dipper didn't want to do anything for one of the many guys that had tried to kill them last year. But, on the other hand, Mabel had just gone all in on this, and Jimmy seemed nice enough, so... Dipper sighed. Whatever, it was Summerween and this was a trick-or-treater. "Hey," he picked up the candy bowl. "There's really only one bag of good candy in here. The bottom of the bowl is filled with after-dinner mints our great uncle's been stealing from restaurants for the last six months. The Trickster would probably love that, right?"

"Aww—thanks so much, you guys! We'll have the poker group back together in no time!" Jimmy dug past the good candy and started scooping mints into his bag. "Oh—since I'm here, can I ask about our other poker buddy? Do either of you know Mr. What's-His-Face? He disappeared around the time you were visiting the Crawlspace, maybe one of you saw something? Any information would be helpful." Jimmy looked at them with weird, plus-shaped, but very hopeful eyes. "Between the Trickster's death and Whatsis disappearing, the local paranormal community's been hit hard. Especially us guys in their friend group. I'm—I'm not gonna lie," Jimmy heaved a sigh, "It's been a really hard year."

Dipper and Mabel, who were directly and personally at fault for Mr. What's-His-Face's disappearance and knew he was frozen in stasis in Ford's bunker at that very moment, exchanged a look and came to a silent agreement.

"Nope, don't know anything," Mabel said.

"Sorry, buddy," Dipper said.

Like the Summerween Trickster, Mr. What's-His-Face was a weird faceless shapeshifty monster that had tried to kill them. But they felt like that was where the similarities ended.

By the time of the Trickster's death, Mabel and Dipper had realized that his deepest inner longing was to be called good enough to eat. Mr. What's-His-Face's deepest inner longing was to steal innocent people's faces. If Mabel and Dipper helped resurrect the Trickster, he'd probably go back to ensuring everyone displayed sufficient holiday spirit, while hopefully mellowing out about eating people now that he'd been consumed once. On the other hand, if Mabel and Dipper helped free Mr. What's-His-Face, he'd probably just keep stealing faces.

And on top of all that, they could help resurrect the Trickster without admitting they knew the guy who ate him. They couldn't really lead Jimmy to Mr. What's-His-Face without admitting their great uncle was keeping him captive. And that would be a problem for the whole family.

"Oh," Jimmy said. "Okay, that's fine. Thanks for all your help. You know where to reach us if you hear anything."

Mabel shook her head. Dipper nodded. "Yeah, we'll let you know."

Jimmy hopped off the porch, shouted, "Hey Doug, can you help me carry these?" and chucked a couple of bags of chalk-hearts toward the tree line. Dipper and Mabel stared. Nothing emerged to pick the bags up.

They shut the door.

"Man," Dipper said. "We kinda devastated the paranormal poker group last summer, didn't we?"

"Yeah." Mabel sucked in a breath between her teeth. "Wow. Feels... kinda bad."

Dipper offered her the candy bowl. "Drown our feelings in chocolate?"

"Please."

They grabbed a piece of candy each, tore open the wrappers—and frowned. Mabel stomped a foot. "Dang it—Bill!"

"Hm?"

"How many of these wrappers are empty?!"

Bill poked his head out of the living room and said, smugly, "Like candy from a baby!"

####

A knock, and Dipper opened the door. "Wendy! Hey! Good timing—"

"Hey." Wendy lowered her voice. "Quick question—this is super important—is Goldie here?"

"Uh—yeah, why—?"

"Yello?" Bill carefully wove his way out of the living room, already less steady on his feet than when he'd sat down. "I heard my name, who's summoning me?"

Wendy pointed over the twins at Bill and turned to shout into the dark, "Ladies and gentlemen! I present to you! Live and in person... Toga Lady!"

A half dozen teenagers immediately went bananas. Hooting and hollering and cheering and whistling: "To-ga! To-ga! To-ga!"

Bill's entire face lit up. Without missing a beat, he pushed past the baffled twins out onto the porch and spread his arms wide, basking in the cheering. "That's right, keep it coming! Worship me! I'm the greatest!"

"Yes!" Robbie pumped a fist in the air. "The legends were true!" Nate immediately added, "The prophecy! The prophecy!" Tambry snapped photos of Toga Lady's fresh look as fast as her phone could save them, muttering, "Everyone's gonna flip when they find out you're still in town."

Wendy waited, grinning, until her friends' faux hysterics had died down. "Okay—okay, after getting you hyped up, I should probably say that Toga Lady is actually Toga Guy." She glanced questioningly at Bill. "I think?"

"Eh, I'm not picky."

"Anyway this is Goldie, he was stuck in another dimension for thirty years, it's crazy, and now he's like my illegal backup cashier. He actually... doesn't usually wear togas?"

Bill laughed. "If you can't wear a bedsheet on Summerween, when can you?"

Lee said, "Thompson wore a bedsheet to homecoming."

"Hey."

Bill pointed at Thompson. "A man of impeccable fashion! I like it!" Thompson gave him a look of eternal gratitude.

"And Goldie, this is the gang! That's Thompson, he's the guy with the van; Robbie and Tambry, they're like, gender-swapped versions of each other, they even share their hair dye..."

As Wendy did introductions, Mabel whispered to Dipper, "Did you know she was gonna introduce Goldie to everyone?"

"No! This is bad, I told her not to trust him..."

Bill was responding to a question, "No, no, you've gotta guess, I'm making everyone guess!"

The teens considered the question. Robbie offered first, "Punk caveman?"

"Nope!"

Hesitantly, Thompson tried, "Nero fiddling over the burning of Rome?" He winced when Lee laughed.

"I like where your head's at, but no! I can't fiddle."

"The gremlin king from Huge Maze?" Tambry said.

Mabel piped up, "No, but the wig came from a gremlin king costume and I appreciate you for recognizing that!" Tambry nodded in cool approval.

Bill dispensed of Lee, Nate, and Wendy's guesses—Greek Christmas tree, that one guy who keeps painting burning banks, and hair metal Hades—before Robbie loudly cleared his throat to cut in. "Anyway, would love to stay and chat, but we've gotta move if we wanna be in position before sunset. Dipper, Mabel, you ready?"

"Ready to ghost it up!" Mabel said, squeezing around Bill with Dipper onto the porch.

Robbie surveyed their makeup—deathly white skin, ashen grey lips, and dark circles around their eye sockets. "Yeah, that's pretty good. Could use a little color, maybe. Like bloody tears?" He turned toward Tambry.

She said, "I think I've got some red eyeliner."

"'In position'?" Bill asked, giving Dipper and Mabel a questioning look.

Wendy said, "We're helping Robbie film this music video tonight."

"We're the creepy ghost twins!" Mabel announced proudly. "We get to sing the chorus."

Robbie said, "Yeah, the song's about childhood and growing up, but like, with ghosts? Because once you've grown up, your childhood is all dead? It's metal, but introspective. I'm calling the genre 'intrometal.'" He flipped his bangs dramatically. "It's a super deep song. Metaphorical layers."

"Oh yeah?" Bill stared Robbie down. "Sing some of it."

Robbie blinked. "Oh. Yeah, okay uh, I haven't warmed up my voice but, the hook is like—" He pantomimed playing a guitar and whisper-screamed, "'BABY DOLLS! BASKET BALLS! BASKET CASE! HUMAN RACE!' Like that."

Bill nodded slowly, face expressionless. "Ah, yeah, I see. Really deep stuff. Makes you think."

"Thanks." Robbie looked at Dipper and Mabel. "Anyway, if we're gonna get any footage in the graveyard before the jack-o'-melons start burning out, we've gotta move. Let's go, Creepy Ghost Twins."

"Wait, you're going out?" Bill asked Mabel. "Like out-out? Leaving me here? By myself? On Summerween?"

"Wh—yeah, we're only handing out candy for half the night," Mabel said. "I told you that."

"No you didn't!"

"Yes I did!"

"When?"

Mabel thought. "No I didn't," she admitted. "Sorry!"

Wendy punched Bill's arm. "Sorry to steal them. We'll be back in a couple of hours," she said. "Or you could come help—?"

"No!" Dipper and Mabel both shoved Bill back into the house before he could accept. Dipper said, "You've gotta—guard the house." Mabel added, "And hand out candy!"

"Right," Bill said flatly. "Yes. That. Ha."

"See you later!" Mabel said, and then shut the door in his face.

The last thing he heard was Wendy explaining to her friends, "He's on house arrest for, like, academic plagiarism and war crimes or something..." and then they were gone.

Bill's shoulders slumped. Well, now what? He couldn't celebrate a holiday by himself. What was the point of wearing a costume if no one sees you in it. He picked up a piece of candy, discovered it was one of his decoys, and picked up another. 

Someone knocked on the door.

"Yeah, yeah," Bill sighed. He picked up the candy bowl, turned toward the door, and paused. Ah. Right. What was he supposed to do with this impenetrable portal-blocking slab of wood.

Who was left in the house? Stan on the roof, Ford in the basement, Abuelita probably already in bed... were any of them worth harassing to help him answer the door? Maybe Stan, he'd gotten all dressed up, he liked the holiday even if he didn't like Bill—

The trick-or-treater knocked more insistently.

Or. Or.

He could pick up the bowl, peer out the small window in the door, and make direct eye contact with the children outside while he ate candy.

As a piece of mid-tier chocolate melted on his tongue, he saw three trick-or-treaters' faces fall as their faith in a kind, caring universe died. He grinned at them and ate another chocolate.

Oh yeah. He grabbed the rest of his cider from the living room and set up post next to the door. This would keep him entertained the rest of the night.

####

He made seven small children cry.

####

Stan watched from his post on the roof as yet another sobbing kid ran away from the shack. "HA! Gottem! Sucker!" He affectionately patted his boombox. "Creepy ghoulish laughter, you never disappoint! Terrifying moochers since 1989!" He paused the cassette and rewound it a few seconds to replay the best part.

He heard a scraping sound above him, and looked up just in time to see Ford sliding down the roof to join him. "Oh, hey! I didn't think we'd see you again tonight."

"Mabel made me promise to celebrate Summerween a little."

"Good for her!"

Stan had already claimed the sun lounger, so Ford brushed some dust and leaves off the roof's cooler and sat. "So, what are we doing? Scaring trick-or-treaters?"

"Yep. This year I'm taking a more atmospheric approach." He gestured at his boombox, which by now was playing haunting organ music. "Nothing like screaming zombies and rattling chains from nowhere to freak out the kids."

Ford nodded. "Psychological torment. I approve."

"Not quite as good as getting to see the terror in their eyes, but." Stan shrugged. "Bill was hanging out with the kids. I didn't want to put up with him."

"Mm. There's a reason I was spending the holiday in the basement."

"Heh. Well, there's always Halloween."

They were silent for a moment, listening as the cassette moved on from organ music to werewolf howls. Stan asked, "Think we'll be rid of him by then? I know we were hoping to be done with him before the Fourth of July—but since I haven't heard anything lately, I figure you hit a roadblock."

Ford winced. "Guilty as charged." He was still relearning how to keep other people in the loop. Even Stan. "You're right. I have a weapon that can destroy him, but I can't find a fuel source without restarting the portal. I'm hoping Fiddleford will come up with a solution I haven't."

Stan nodded. Ford had told him he was getting Fiddleford involved; even as reluctant as Ford was to admit how little progress he'd made, he wasn't going to tell someone outside the family about Bill without letting Stan know. "Any breakthroughs on his end?"

####

During the credits between episodes of the retired samurai period drama (most recently, the samurai had been asked to use his sword to help cut flowers for a bouquet), Fiddleford leaned over and whispered to Ford, "So I've been a-lookin' at those blueprints you left me."

"And...?"

"And I've constructicated a power adaptor. Just jimmy out the fuel tank, swap it for the adaptor's cord, and you can power that weapon by pluggin' it into the wall! It'll just drain all the power from the town for a few seconds, that's all."

"Fiddleford, that's amazing—"

"Now, hold on. There's bad news," Fiddleford said. "Try as I might, I can't quite get it to draw enough power to activate those energy-destroying features what you'd need to disintegrate Bill. It'll work like a powerful laser, but nothin' else."

Ford sighed. "It's a starting point, I suppose."

"I'll send you home with the adaptor anyway. Never know when you'll need a big laser."

"Very true. Do you have any promising leads on other alternative fuels?"

Fiddleford shook his head. "It's the NowUSeeitNowUDontium or nothing. But I've got a hunch we could synthesize it under lab conditions. I'll letcha know in a few days."

And then the next episode started, and they dropped the conversation.

####

Ford let out a heavy sigh. "He's only had a partial success so far. But I'm hopeful he's on the right track."

"So, if he's working on this weapon, what are you doing?"

"Waiting, mostly. I don't know what else I can do."

Stan frowned. "What—that's it? You've been downstairs all day every day—if you're not figuring out how to destroy him, what are you doing?"

"Passing time somewhere I can be on call if he gets up to something—but I don't have to look at him," Ford said wryly. "And—as long as I'm waiting to hear back from Fiddleford, I've been... picking apart that list of spells Bill gave me. To see if any of them are tricks or traps."

Stan couldn't say he was surprised. That was his workaholic brother. A pamphlet of demon magic was like catnip to him. If anything, Stan was almost glad Ford had that letter to distract him. Over the past year...

Well, Ford was fine on land—when he temporarily had a mystery to solve, an adventure to pursue, an anomaly to study, a distraction to fill his time—but at sea, when his mind was unoccupied, he was listless. He had books he didn't read, field notes he didn't enter into his journal, games he didn't play. He fed himself and exercised and did chores around the ship like a robot programmed to take care of itself, and he stared out at the sea.

Last summer, Ford hadn't seemed happy but he'd seemed alive. Tired and angry, but alive. But after Weirdmageddon, a light in his eyes went out. Stan didn't know if it was the end of summer, or guilt over the memory gun, or the gap between finishing a thirty-year-long quest and discovering the next one. All Stan knew was the light hadn't come back on until the moment Bill Cipher, clad in a new body and a purple cartoon bedsheet, tried to cave Ford's skull in.

Ever since they were children, Ford had had a tendency to develop obsessions. It was somehow simultaneously both what made him most interesting and what made him boring. Depended on the obsession. But these all-consuming interests had always tended to last a few months, at most a year; and he'd never seemed to be without one, much less for nine months. Stan had no idea what carrying a single obsession for three decades might have done to Ford's mind.

Stan was glad something had woken Ford back up, and he worried that losing that focal point again might leave Ford permanently adrift. But another part of him worried that, this time, Ford wouldn't let the object of his obsession go. He tended to collect things related to his obsessions.

But then, he usually tended to like his obsessions. He hadn't seemed bothered to burn the contents of his creepy Bill shrine last summer. Ford wouldn't do anything stupid, Stan told himself. Ford hated Bill. "So? Were any of the spells traps?"

"Not... so far, no." Ford sounded irritated by this.

Stan shrugged. "Makes sense. He's trying to butter us up. If that idiot thinks being nice to us for a week or two is gonna make up for the years of grief he's given us—"

A loud rattle-clattering below made them both start. Stan sat bolt upright. "What the—?"

Ford inched to the edge of the dormer roof, knelt down, and leaned over the edge just far enough to see the window.

Bill's face was pressed to the glass, eye rolled up toward the roofline. He grinned in surprised delight and shouted through the glass, "HEY, STANFORD! What are you doing up here?! I thought you were downstairs!"

"Ugh." Ford turned to grimace at Stan. "Speak of the devil."

Bill pounded on the glass again. "Hey, Sixer! SIXER! Open the window!"

"Why?"

"I wanna talk!"

"No."

"Come ooon, the kids ditched me and I'm bored! There's no one in the house to talk to! The old lady's asleep and Stanley's on the roof, so—" He abruptly fell silent, squinting with deep suspicion at Ford-who-should-be-in-the-basement kneeling on the-roof-where-Stan-should-be, and said, "Wait. Are you Stanley right now? Show me your hand."

Ford did not. "Go away, Bill." He left the edge of the roof for his cooler seat.

"Get back here!" The pounding redoubled. "I don't care which Stan you are! If you don't wanna talk, I can always go wake up Dolores!"

Ford looked at Stan. "Mrs. Ramirez's name is Dolores?" He had gotten used to everyone calling her Abuelita.

Stan stomped on the roof, "Shaddup!"

Bill did not shaddup. "Come ooon!"

Stan sighed in defeat and heaved himself to his feet. "If he keeps that racket up he's gonna break that window, never mind that hex you put on him." When they'd taken out the original Bill-shaped window, Stan had replaced it with the cheapest window he could find. He didn't think it was very durable. "How much trouble can he get in with one open window twenty feet above the ground and both of us watching him?"

Ford Frowned.

"Don't gimme that look. Do you want to pay for a broken window?" Stan flipped through his keys for his key-shaped emergency lock pick, leaned over the edge of the roof, and wedged the pick into the window frame. The latch popped open. Lucky this window was so cheap, that wouldn't have worked on one with deluxe features like "airtight weatherstripping" or "a properly-fitting frame." Stan swung open the window. "Okay, you have our attention. Now what's the fastest way we can get rid of you?"

Bill clumsily climbed out to sit on the windowsill with his legs in the shack, and leaned back so he could see up onto the roof. "Hiya Fo—" He lost his balance, flailed, and yelped as he toppled backwards.

Stan and Ford lunged forward to seize an arm each. Stan snapped, "What are you doing, you maniac?!"

Bill stared up at them both in wide-eyed amazement. "You do like me."

Stan made a noise of disgust, let go, and wiped his hands on his pants like Bill had cooties.

Ford said, "We like you trapped in that body and not free to cause the apocalypse."

"I heard 'we like you'!"

"Shut up." Ford managed to haul Bill back upright. (Touching Bill felt wrong—all soft flesh and skin and the suggestion of bones underneath. Even when looking right at Bill's human body, Ford still expected him to feel like heavy shadows and heatless flames.) From this close, Bill reeked of cider. "Just how much have you had to drink?"

"Not so much I won't remember whatever you say in the morning, so be nice to me!" Bill laughed. He leaned back, this time hanging by one hand off the window frame to precariously maintain his balance, and grinned up at Ford. "So! The least fun person in the house has finally emerged from his lair? And you didn't even come into the house to join in the Summerween festivities! 'All work and no play'..."

Ford had to crouch at the edge of the roof, hovering nearby in case Bill lost his balance again. "I wanted to participate in Summerween, actually. It just so happens that the last person I'd ever spend a holiday with is in the house."

"Listen, Stanford. I know you're holing up in your study for days on end just to hurt me. But let's be honest, you're hurting yourself more! When's the last time you saw the sunlight! Look at how pale you're getting, you look like a vampire."

Stiffly, Ford said, "It's costume makeup. That's my vampire costume." Stan laughed.

"It what." Bill flipped up his eyepatch and squinted blearily at Ford's face.

Wordlessly, Ford bared his teeth to show off his plastic vampire teeth.

"Oh." Somewhat deflated, Bill said, "Nice work, it's convincing."

"Thanks," Ford said grudgingly. Giving in to his curiosity, he gestured toward Bill's (somewhat disheveled) reddish-yellow wig. "What are you."

"Oh!" Bill perked back up. "You've got to see the whole thing. Hold on—" He turned around in the window, ignoring how Ford half reached for him in case he needed steadying, until he got his legs outside to dangle on the roof. "What do you think!"

Ford looked over the brown toga flared out like a cone, the eruption of red hair, the small paper city below, and said, "Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii? Very clever."

Bill's face lit up. "Finally! You're the first person all day to get it!" He smoothed out the skirt proudly, his jerky gestures just a bit more exaggerated than usual. "Do you know how long I've wanted to go to a costume party as Vesuvius? But nobody off Earth would get it! And now that I'm finally here, I can't go to parties and I'm shaped more like a mandrake than a volcano." He flung up his hands, wobbled, and caught himself before Ford had to intervene. "But at least you got it. I knew I could count on you, IQ."

He sounded so sincerely grateful. Ford regretted calling the costume clever. It was, but Bill didn't need the ego boost.

"Oh! By the by—I didn't think you'd emerge before the day was over, so I saved this." Bill fished around in his toga until he retrieved a mini pack of jelly beans. "Here!"

Ford eyed the pack. "Why is it open?"

"Because you only like the weird-shaped jelly beans, so I ate all the normal beans and saved the weird ones in one bag."

"I don't want this. You touched every one of the beans, that would be disgusting even if they weren't coming from you," Ford said. "Anyway, this is a patently transparent attempt to buy your way into my good favor—"

"It sure is, Ford, and if you don't accept it I'll get to be annoying about your ingratitude for weeks! Is that what you want? You know I'll do it. Everyone will be on my side—"

Ford sighed, but snatched the bag from Bill's hand. "Fine. Now drop it."

"That's more like it!" Bill favored Ford with an approving smile. "Anyway, it's just about the only candy left in the house, I ate everything else—hey, have you ever been cross faded on cider and a sugar rush?"

Ford was still trying to decide whether he wanted to engage in this one-sided conversation enough to ask Bill what "cross faded" meant when Bill moved on without him: "It's—not that interesting, actually. 6 out of 10. Anyway, all that's left in the bowl is mints and wrappers. And Mabel even managed to give most of the mints away—hey, she's so nice, did you know she's helping to resurrect the Summerween Trickster?"

She was doing what? "No. Why?"

"She's so nice."

"You just said that."

"What is she so nice for. What's she getting out of it," Bill asked, more to the universe at large than to Ford. "If more humans were half as nice to freaks as she is, your rotten planet wouldn't need people like you and me to save it."

Ford didn't even know where to begin with that. He looked to Stan for help.

Stan was sitting straddling his lounger, elbow on one knee and chin in his hand, watching this exchange like he was watching a weird bug on the wall try to navigate around a picture frame. At Ford's glance, he rolled his eyes and pantomimed sipping from a drink.

He could say that again. Ford cleared his throat. "Bill, maybe you should..."

"Hey," Bill said. "Great talk, we really should catch up more sometime. And pull your weight next time, I always have to do all the talking. But right now, I'm..." He gestured vaguely off to the side. "I'm gonna lie down and try not to throw up. Ciao!" He swayed as he tried to get back in the window, tumbled backward into the shack, and thudded heavily on the floor. "Ow."

Ford gingerly shut the window.

Stan turned up the boombox. "Chatty drunk, isn't he."

"He's chatty sober, too." But in front of the kids? Neither of them saw Bill as a role model, but they still didn't need to be exposed to that kind of behavior. Especially when the responsible adults were outside or asleep... "Did we really leave Bill alone in the house with the kids?"

"W—I—" Stan shrugged defensively. "They were all right! They can take him! They're doing karate or whatever! You didn't see how Mabel flipped him at the mall! It was like David wrestling Goliath."

"David and Goliath didn't wrestle."

"You know what I mean."

Ford supposed he didn't think Bill was any threat to the children. At least, not right now, and not physically. He felt like he'd know if Bill was about to try anything.

He looked at his open bag of gross felt-up jelly beans. Speaking of trying to butter them up... Ford wound up and chucked the bag as hard as he could.

He stared into the dark after it.

A small part of him was beginning to wonder whether this wasn't all just an attempt to get Ford's guard down. The gifts, sure, that was as clear-cut a case of bribery as you could get. Nothing ambiguous there.

But the endless chatter... Back when Ford had called Bill his Muse, this was exactly how he'd wanted Bill to talk to him. Not in the flighty half-distracted way of a friendly businessman catching up on a work project's progress before hurrying on to the next meeting; but just talking for talking's sake, talking for the company.

Getting what he once had longed for made his skin crawl. And he couldn't even tell if Bill was acting.

The boombox let out a ghastly banshee shriek. Ford and Stan both jumped, then laughed awkwardly.

Ford sat on the cooler again. "Is it just me, or... did Bill completely ignore you as soon as he realized I was up here."

"Well. I wasn't gonna mention it. I didn't wanna sound jealous of the attention. But yeah—he's been doing that since he got here. If you're in the room, he tunes everyone else out."

"I thought it was in my head." And he hadn't wanted to sound like he wanted to imagine Bill was favoring him.

"And you do the same thing around him," Stan said, and laughed at Ford's flinch of alarm. "It's—it's fine, I get it. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right? You've got some kind of superhero-supervillain nemesis thing."

Ford got the distinct impression that Stan was offering him a convenient excuse for the tunnel vision. He took it. "I suppose that's true." The way his jaw clenched and his shoulders tensed around Bill certainly felt like a "nemesis" reaction.

But if Stan thought Ford was a bit too preoccupied by Bill... well, maybe he was right. Once Ford had gotten over his initial wave of fear, of despair, of outrage at the injustice, at finding Bill was still alive—there was a part of him that was almost relieved. A part of him that had been on guard against nothing for the past year, twisting around looking for an absent threat. Now that it knew where the threat was, that part of him could finally settle down and watch Bill with steady, certain eyes. Having nothing to worry about made him more anxious than having one thing to always worry about.

(Maybe Shermie's kid had been on to something when he suggested Ford might benefit from therapy.)

Knowing Bill was back didn't put the old starlight and awe back in that hole Bill had left in Ford's chest. But dread could fill a hole all the same.

Ford tried to push Bill out of his mind and the conversation. "You think I'm like a superhero?"

"You run around fighting monsters with a space laser. What else would you be?"

"Huh." Well. That made his night.

"Just as long as you don't pull that 'hero spares the villain to show how good he is' shtick."

"Never." Ford laughed ruefully. "I think I left 'good' behind a few felonies back." He'd probably left "good" behind the night he accepted the portal blueprints.

"Couple stragglers," Stan said, nodding out into the dark. It took Ford a moment to spot the costumed kids and remember it was Summerween. "I recognize those costumes, I scared them off an hour ago. What are they doing back?"

Ford squinted at them. "Are those toilet paper rolls?"

"Wh—Hey! What are you little runts— Hey!" Stan leaped to his feet, shaking his fist at the kids below. "Get away from my car! Stop that! I'll have you know that's a classic— No, not the eggs!"

Ford slid out his freeze ray, turned down the power, and offered it to Stan. "Here. At this power and distance, it'll feel like getting pelted with invisible snowballs."

Stan snatched up the weapon. "Eat this, twerps!"

The Summerween night air was filled with the screams of terrified children and the evil laughter of an old man.

####

Wow. It sure sounded like everybody was having fun. Outside. Without him.

Bill was nauseous.

He stared at the spinning ceiling, flat on his back, one leg on a cushion and the rest of him on the floor. 

Bill was nauseous and alone. The loneliness tore at his throat. Even Mabel had ditched him. Of course she did—he'd tried to kill her. He'd barely even remembered he'd tried to kill her until she brought it up. Had he tried to kill her? No, surely not—he liked the kid, he'd always liked her—he'd been faking to force Ford's hand, he never would have gone through with it. He would've teleported her into another room and pretended he'd disintegrated her. She didn't know he hadn't meant it. She was just mad he'd scared her. She couldn't take a joke.

But, Ford talked to him. Ford even liked his costume. It wasn't much, but it would get Bill through the night.

When he saw Kryptos again—when, not if—he was slicing him into a jigsaw puzzle for not taking Bill's call. The nerve of that guy, hanging up on a human without even waiting a few words to see if they had anything interesting to say. 

(What if it hadn't been an accident, he wondered? What if Kryptos had realized it was Bill and still hung up?)

(No. Of course it was an accident.)

He shut his eyes. He was probably too drunk to dream tonight. Well, he could try again tomorrow. His little lucid dreaming guide was currently teaching him to influence the next night's dream by focusing on a topic before sleep. Maybe tomorrow he could dream about the Nightmare Realm.

He missed home.

####

(Congratulations to the approximately 50% of respondents who correctly figured out Bill's costume when I posted the art on Halloween, you're officially smarter than everybody in Gravity Falls except Ford. This is one of those chapters with a whole lot going on so if you enjoyed, I'd love to hear your comments!!)

[httpkaulitz]

Bill x female reader 2009 era

Bill has his studio at home of course so he doesn't have to always leave yn alone .

He texsts her to come to tbe studio because he wants to make her listen to human connect to human so she goes.

As she listens to the song she realizes it's about them and she starts to tease him leading then to tbe bedroom 😇

Human conect to human

PAIRINGS: Bill 2009 x Female reader

CONTENT: Smut

SYNOPSIS: Bill writes a song about you two and you decide to tease him.

WARNINGS: unprotected sex, p in v, kissing

A/N: One of my favorite songs so of course i got carried a bit

Because Bill had a busy routine, he always prioritized as much time as he could spend by your side, which is why he decided to create a studio at home, so he could spend time with you between work breaks and always stay close.

He had been working on a song for a few days now and although he didn't talk much about it, you knew he was excited.

You had gone out to buy some things when you received the message from Bill asking you to go straight to the studio when you get home. And you ran home, curious to know what he had to show you.

As soon as you entered the studio you could tell how excited he was just by the way he looked at you. Bill always seemed like a ball of energy when he was happy and excited.

Without saying anything he handed you the headphones and put the music on. You listened intently as he waited anxiously. Even if you don't understand music in a technical sense, Bill was always very appreciative of your opinion.

You paid attention to the lyrics and noticed many similarities in your relationship with Bill. You had to fight a small smile.

Bill never hid that his life was a source of inspiration for his songs, but he had never been inspired by you or your relationship before.

After a few minutes the song ended and you took off your headphones.

“So, what did you think?” He asked anxiously.

Deciding to provoke him, you said seriously. “It’s a bit provocative compared to what you’re used to writing, isn’t it?”

His gaze quickly changed from excited to surprised, clearly not expecting that answer.

"You didn't like it?" You almost felt bad of how his voice sounded.

���Oh, I really liked it.” You said as you slowly approached him. “I wonder what could have inspired you to write something like that.”

You watched his ears turn a shade of red and he was quiet for a moment as if he had been caught.

“Nothing in specific.” He whispered as you traced circles on his chest through his shirt, looking at him closely.

“Oh, really?” You hummed looking through your eyelashes. He knew you already knew about it, but you liked playing and so did he.

You stood on your tiptoes and whispered in his ear, making him close his eyes. “A kiss, a touch, never enough, so soft, so hard, don't stop, you start. Instinctive skills, like animals.” Bill sighed before opening his eyes again.

“So it’s not about us?” You asked innocently, lowering one of the straps of your dress drawing his attention to your now exposed skin.

You smile, standing on tiptoe to get closer to his face. One of your hands ran down his chest until it reached the front of his pants. You could feel the hardness under your palm. And you smiled before squeezing gently.

Bill brings his face closer to yours, but before he could kiss you you hook your hand on his belt and pull him out of the studio. The path to your room seems longer than you remember.

As soon as you entered the room you began to undo his belt, Bill seemed almost in a trance, he closed his eyes eager to be touched. You had to take advantage of the opportunity because you weren't always able to overpower him. He waited, but you didn't do anything else.

"I won't touch you until you answer my question." You said in a firm tone making him open his eyes to look at you. Bill bit his bottom lip, watching you mouth so close to his.

"I want you to kiss me." He whispered the first thing that came to mind, forgetting what question you had asked. Seeing you bring your face closer to his, he parted his lips and closed his eyes in expectation, only to then sigh in frustration when he felt you place a wet kiss on his jaw and nothing more.

"That's not what I asked." You said smiling ironically.

He whispered some things in German that you had no idea what meant, but from his tone he sounded frustrated.

"I want to hear you say it." You said, wrapping your arms around his waist tightly and pressing your bodies together. The feeling of his erection against your belly made him moan.

"I-I... I want you to touch me." He whispered, his voice cracking. He could feel his cheeks burning with embarrassment. Bill wasn't the type to let himself be dominated for long, but you loved seeing him like this.

Keeping your body pressed against his, you fixed a strand of hair, taking the opportunity to caress the soft skin of his face.

"But I'm already touching you, my love." Bill knew you were playing with him, teasing him.

“Now tell me what you were thinking while you were writing that beautiful song.” You whispered before stretching your body, standing on your toes. Wrapping your arms around Bill's neck, you moved your hips against his, making him part his lips in surprise.

"Did you think about us fucking?" Running your fingers over his dark shirt. Bill nodded weakly shaking a little more each time you rubbed your hips against his.

"I would close my eyes and think of you in all kinds of positions." He said holding one of your hands that was now on his chest. “Thinking about the intoxicating sensation of being inside you.”

You watched as Bill slid your hand down his body, making you feel the subtle muscles on your palm. Reaching the edge of his shirt, you pulled away to help him take it off. Quickly discarding the piece somewhere in the room, you turned your attention to Bill's body. Your eyes roamed his naked torso, following the v-line as if they were the path to paradise.

You walked quickly closing the space and pressed your lips tightly against Bill's, feeling his taste on your tongue. He seemed surprised by your sudden actions, but quickly responded to the kiss with fervor. You wrapped your arms around Bill's neck and pressed your body against his, making sure there was no space between the two of you. After a few seconds he separated your lips from his, his mouth traveling every inch around your lips, kissing everything from the rosy skin of your cheeks to your jaw.

You let out a moan as Bill took control. You knew he would at some point. He kissed your neck, sucking the skin below your left ear making you pull his dark hair between your fingers, you moaned and rubbed your legs against his, feeling an electricity pass through your body.

"Bill..." You whispered in a moan, feeling his hands travel down your body, squeezing and caressing every little part.

The feeling was wonderful, but you needed more than furtive kisses and caresses. When your lips met again, Bill wrapped his arms around you and pushed you against the wall.

He grabbed your hips and lifted one of your legs, holding your thigh firmly. You sighed, unable to contain your excitement as your tongues fought, occasionally moaning against each other's mouths. Gaining dominance again for a moment, your hands traveled down Bill's chest until reaching his pants, skillfully opening the button without breaking the kiss, you grabbed the edges of his pants, pushed them down and smiled when Bill's lips parted. He kicked his shoes, socks and pants away and kissed you again.

You felt Bill's hands travel up the fabric of your dress and into the slit, his hand moving up until he was caressing the skin of your stomach. He was quick, holding your thighs, spreading them open. He slid his hand between your legs and into your panties feeling the soft, wet skin against his fingers.

"Bill." You moaned and threw your head back, giving him opening to kiss and suck on your neck, while his skilled fingers made small circular movements against your clit.

"I love the way you taste." Bill said softly against the soft skin of your throat, before traveling back up to your lips. You could feel Bill's breath against your lips, you didn't need to open your eyes to know that he was watching you moan as you writhed against his fingers.

Bill smiled when you opened your eyes, which were now a darker shade. You kissed him quickly, pulling his bottom lip between your teeth making him moan instantly.

"I want you inside me." You said through moans, pulling him onto the bed.

"I'm all yours, love." Bill whispered following you, his hoarse voice clouded all your senses, you took a deep breath, pushed him sitting on the bed and then pulled the black boxers down his legs, discarding them in some corner of the room with the rest of your other clothes.

Bill watched your every move as if hypnotized. You smiled, moving the straps of your dress aside, letting it slowly slide down your body followed by your underwear. Bill stretched out his arms trying to pull you towards him but you slapped his hands away giving him a warning look.

You removed the clip holding your hair and placed it on the dresser next to the bed, taking your time. You smiled, watching how Bill bit his lower lip, looking at you in a mix of desire and impatience. Walking slowly over to him, you climbed into Bill's lap and slowly sank down on top of him. You tried to suppress the shudder at how good it felt to be in control. Bill groaned and closed his eyes, an expression of pure bliss on his face as you moved your hips.

"God, you're so hot." He whispered as he opened his eyes and smiled.

Bill leaned forward, his eyes on your lips, but you pushed him back, moving faster on him. Struggling to stay in control.

"You won't let me touch you?" He asked laughing, Bill pushed himself forward forcing his hips to slam against yours hard. You bit your lip to hold back a moan, feeling your face flush under his gaze.

"No." You responded hoarsely, excited by the way his smile grew wider in defiance.

"What if I don't obey you?" He asked, smiling mischievously before sliding one of his hands up to your left breast and squeezing it roughly. You bit your lower lip, slapping his hand away.

"You know I can't let you control for long, love." Bill held your hips and forced you down quickly, making you let out a little scream of surprise and pure ecstasy.

"Bill-" You swallowed your words and clung to his shoulders, when with a growl he thrust his hips again and you both simultaneously let out loud moans.

Not being able to escape Bill's dominance any longer, you began to move against him, your hands on the back of his neck for support. Bill's hands on your hips commanded each movement with a rough thrust. Then he leaned forward, buried one of his hands in your hair and pulled you in for a kiss.

You moaned, not realizing how much you wanted your lips against his until that moment. You ran your nails down Bill's shoulders and pulled him closer as the kiss intensified. You felt your movements becoming erratic and your legs starting to shake, unable to keep up with him.

You heard Bill murmur between moans and grunts, but you couldn't understand in the midst of all that euphoria. You screamed and closed your eyes tightly feeling the pleasure taking over your body. You felt a hand grab your throat, forcing you to open your eyes to look at him. Bill smiled widely, licking his lips as he looked at you with mischief and delight.

"I left you in control." He said slowly. "Now it's my turn to command."

You thought about answering him, but he leaned in and kissed you. In an instant, the almost gentle kiss turned into a primal need with tongues and teeth fighting against each other violently. Bill started to push himself into you again. Soon the pressure in your belly became unbearable and you threw your head back, not being able to contain your screams of pleasure.

Bill buried his face in your neck, biting and sucking the skin, you gasped in pain and pleasure. He spread open-mouthed kisses over your neck, smiling when he found a spot with a mole. You scratched Bill's back. Moaning, the name left your lips in hot breath. "Bill..."

The effect it had on him was immediate. His lips were back to your ear, breathlessly growling. “Say my name again.”

“Bill…” You complied with his request immediately, repeating his name in a moan over and over again. Bill clung tighter to your body, making you bury your face in the crook of his neck to hide your scream of pleasure.

He let out a loud moan that made your body shake. You held Bill's hair between your fingers, feeling your hands shake as he continued to move his hips.

You moaned loudly when his teeth grazed your neck and you felt another orgasm hit you again. Screaming loudly in his ear, clinging as close as you could. He managed to give one last, hard thrust before releasing himself too, moaning against your hair. He fell back onto the bed, pulling you with him. You just lay there on Bill's chest, wrapped in his arms, recovering from the post-orgasm ecstasy.

"This was amazing." He whispered smiling.

[alastor-x-reader-stories]

HELLAVERSE x Reader - Part 2 of ? - Life with Owl Boi

GIF by honey-im-still-free

GIF by fatboychedda

GIF by idzymi

Summary: You're just some person who lived on your own in a slightly spooky town. Who knew demons would show up! Who knew they'd end up living with you?

Tags: Reader Insert, Hazbin Hotel Characters, Helluva Boss Characters, Fluff, Humor, Friendship, Romance

Relationships: ( & for platonic, x for Romance)

Stolas & Reader, Fizzarolli & Reader, Alastor x Reader, Lucifer x Reader

Stolas was actually a pretty good roomate. After the initial awkwardness and hour tour, you quickly established some rules:

No breaking my stuff

No stealing my stuff

No hurting my cat

No hurting me

Don't be a jerk

Stolas agreed, saying these were rather reasonable terms.

You lived in a rather run-down house which was great because it was rather cheap. It had working wifi and the roof didn't leak and the water was clean so it was ok. So what if the doors were slightly ajar and the paint was peeling?

Anyway, because you had this run-down house you had an extra room to spare. you admitted to Stolas that it was rather dusty and mainly used as a storage room but he was just flattered you were giving him his own space at all.

Between the two of you, the room got cleared out and dusted and the small family of opossums living there were chased away, You didn't know they were there but that'd explain where your peanut butter kept going.

Stolas was talkative and somehow never said a thing. He'd often ramble about plants and stars or whatever interested him at the moment but would quickly end up apologizing over and over. You let him know you didn't mind. Also that you might zone out but it had nothing to do with him you just had a hard time focusing for any extended amount of time.

"I believe that's called Attention Deficient Disorder, yes? Or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?"

You told him you had no idea and just left it at that. He didn't pry, which you were thankful for.

Stolas told you a lot of things, and you did your best to remember the things that seemed important. You got him a small potted plant you saw at the hardware store as well as some basic plant-tending supplies. He was overjoyed and was basically in tears. So much so you were confused and worried that you had done something wrong.

"O-oh my, no!" Stolas fretted, wiping the growing tears off his cheeks "These are happy tears, my friend. I just- I can't really remember the last time someone got me a gift. It makes me...it makes me happy."

That gift opened the floodgate for you to get more random things you think he'd like. Glow-in-the-dark star stickers, small succulents and flowers, a funny looking stuffed animal of indeterminable species... That last one wasn't based on anything more than you just thought it'd be something he'd like.

It was.

He hugs it in his sleep.

Once Stolas saw you fretting over bills, he started feeling kind of...well. Very guilty. He was just staying here this whole time doing nothing while you constantly gifted him with things simply because you think he'd like them (and he does! it honestly doesn't matter what it is because you gave it to him and that alone make him happy).

And here you were paying for it all. It reminded him of his rather sheltered and pampered upbringing. And how selfish and conceited he could be because of it.

So, the owl demon threw on his best human disguise, went to town, and got a job.

...

You know this because you had to comfort him after said job.

"-and they just YELLED at me because I sat down for, like, five minutes??? My feet were hurting and the customers were so mean even though I didn't do anything to them??"

Man was not made for retail. You asked him why he got a job at all. His answer made you feel rather fuzzy on the inside. You hadn't even brought that up, but he noticed and tried to help.

You still asked him to quit because of how stressed he was. Maybe he can be like a live-in maid kind of thing? You couldn't really pay him for that but you'd take care of the money stuff... He agreed to that but insisted he try to find a different job.

You were just confused as to how he got one so quickly in the first place.

Eventually, life calmed down and you and your new roommate got into a bit of routine. Work, play, research ways to return to Hell, etc etc...

...then The Storm hit.

[cod-dump]

ffff- your post where Ghost says "I swear you assigned him to me like he's a service dog or something" got me thinking about support werewolf Soap. Like supernatural creatures being able to get training as support workers to help more dangerous people and other supernatural creatures that might hurt regular service animals or if they live in an environment unsuited for them.

Wolf senses for things that service dogs can detect and the human ability to help in a more complex situation, offer support with words if needed, or shift if things go really wrong (or the person just needs to pet something to calm down).

Plus, with someone like Ghost, having a hulking wolfman able to wake him up from nightmares without worrying about hurting him (even if he goes for a knife) would probably cause him less stress than a normal service animal.

Ghost didn't notice at first what was happening. Sure, he's seen others with support lycan. Hell, his insurance covers getting one assigned to him! But Ghost never looked into it. He didn't think he needed it. Then he met Soap, a very friendly werewolf. He was a new addition to 141 and Ghost had skimmed over his file to learn that he was, in fact, a certified support lycan.

He had shrugged that off and continued on. So what if he was a certified support lycan, didn't effect him any... But then Soap started hanging around him more. Started checking up on him, making sure he had eaten or drank any water that day. Ghost started to get suspicious then. But he continued on, not wanting to assume anything. Soap was just nice and Ghost knows he was just being friendly with him.

Nothing else was going on.

Ghost remembered Soap started to hang around him more after he blew up on a couple recruits a week before Christmas leave. Price had pulled him to the side, telling him he couldn't take his emotions out on clueless recruits. Ghost didn't say much during the lecture and just quietly left once Price saw that he wasn't responding to anything that he was saying. Soap decided to start following him around not long after that incident. It took a week before Ghost got annoyed by the wolf's almost constant presence and demanded to know what he was doing.

"Why the fuck are you following me around, Sergeant? Don't you have better things to do?"

Soap just smiled warmly, "Is there something more important than spending time with my friend?"

"If you're wanting to hang out as friends then stop acting like I'm a patient!"

Soap held his hands up, "Sorry, LT. Hard habit to drop, sometimes..."

Ghost glared at him and stormed off... with Soap following him. He stopped again, Soap bumping into his back. He turns and glares at the wolf who avoids eye contact while backing up.

"Did Price put you up to this?"

"Hmm? Up to what?"

"This!" Ghost waves his hand through the air between them, "This patient, emotional support bullshit!"

"Noooo..."

Ghost groans loudly, "I don't need a support lycan!"

Soap blinks, "Then what about a support animal?"

Ghost shakes his head, "No, no support anything! I don't need it!"

Ghost storms off, pissed that Price would assign him a support lycan behind his back. He barged into Price's office, finding the man on the phone. He stared at Ghost, wide eyed, as Laswell was trying to talk to him about something.

"Hold on, Kate. Simon just busted down my door."

"Oh, is that what that was?"

Ghost growls, "When the fuck did you assign Sergeant MacTavish to be my support lycan!?"

Price stares, "I didn't?"

"Bullshit!"

"He didn't do anything, Simon. I did."

Ghost gawks, staring at the phone. Laswell continued to speak calmly.

"Simon, you have gone through a lot with no support. No human, supernatural, animal- Nothing. I figured you could use someone being there for you and MacTavish just so happens to be certified. He can keep up with you and handle himself on the battlefield. He's fits the bill perfectly."

Ghost was stunned, shocked that Laswell did this. Price was also shocked and apparently didn't know about this. Ghost moved his arms around, unsure what to say.

"Oh my god-"

"You did this without talking to me about it first?"

"Do you have something against it?"

"... No-"

"Then there's nothing to talk about."

Ghost finally finds his voice, "Don't I get a say in this!?"

"Simon-"

"Kate, I don't need someone up my ass all the time! I don't need support, I am perfectly fine!"

Ghost storms out before either Laswell or Price could say anything. He headed straight to his room and locked himself in. Pissed at the world, Ghost tears off his mask and sits on his bed, groaning. He didn't need a support lycan! He doesn't need a support anything! He's fine! He's fine...

He's perfectly fine.

[thatsparrow]

watched twister (1996) for the first time (thoughts)

wasn't expecting the opening credits to feel as ominous as they did, very horror-adjacent (when the tornado lands, there's this growling sound effect that feels very monstrous. from what I remember, this is really the only time that happens, which could be a cool, like—given that this is the tornado that killed her dad, to jo, it was a monster)

between toby getting (briefly) locked out of the storm shelter in the beginning and bill paxton having to carry aunt meg's dog out of the house before it collapses, this movie puts animals in danger much more than I anticipated (I guess that one cow didn't have such a good time, either)

still in the opening, but when her dad got yoinked, all those nighttime shots of the lightning and tornado felt very supernatural, ufo-ish (this big transcendent thing in the sky, abducting her father, so large you can only see bits and pieces of it) which does play into the mystery/unknowability aspect

we cut to the present, and there's this jaunty, western-style music playing, which I also didn't expect! I think that was one of my main takeaways—that I thought this movie was more a straight-up natural disaster action movie, when it's really more of an adventure story (and a love story, which bookends the whole thing.) but like, if you think of the tornadoes as some rare treasure, the storm signs (and bill's ability to read them) as the map, chasing against rivals after the same goal, all the beats are there. (not to say it isn't also a natural disaster movie, but it is interesting watching how/when the movie shifts between tornadoes as an object of pursuit, stirring excitement, the majesty of nature, and when they're a threat, a point of fear, dangerous in their unpredictability and impassivity)

we see helen hunt, and my first thought was, "why would he ever divorce helen hunt"

(more under the break)

but also I wasn't actually ever clear on why he was divorcing helen hunt? or more, why they had separated in the first place. the closest I could figure was that conversation when he says something to jo about her not wanting a house, and maybe that it was him wanting to settle down and she wanted a life on the road (see: his current job as a weatherman now that he's with melissa) but also, does he really want to settle down? the whole movie is us seeing how he's clearly happiest and most alive when he's chasing (and with helen hunt), but he can't or won't let himself accept that until melissa ends the relationship for him

didn't expect carey elwes to be here, doing his absolute best effort at a southern accent

i love human barometer bill paxton. "he's better at reading storms than anyone else" "why" "don't worry about it" (genuinely though, it's such a fun detail, and I'm glad they include it in twisters, too)

jo's storm chasing team is bigger than I thought it would be (granted, I had no concept of anyone else being in this movie other than helen hunt, bill paxton, and philip seymour hoffman) and I love that sequence of all the vibes of the different cars as they take off, the music they put on, the interiors—we are running the gamut of personalities here, but they are all equally excited and motivated by storm chasing (then compared to the deeply corporate and uniform energy of jonas's team)

"have you lost your nerve?" "tighten your seatbelt" we all know their chemistry is good, but their chemistry is SO good ("let's get you wired" LET'S GO)

melissa is interesting, like — she's the audience surrogate, she's the excuse to explain things about storm chasing and tornadoes that everyone else would already know (but the audience likely doesn't), she's insightful and compassionate when she's talking to her clients (are we meant to take the reproductive therapy or something as a joke job?), and she does clearly love bill, and he loves her, too. but she's so out of her element, she complements this entirely different side of him, and now that he's in this place where he's most himself, she's completely at sea. she's understandably afraid and overwhelmed. she's watching her fiance fall back in love (or, realize he was always still in love) with his ex, who's accomplished and capable in all the ways she isn't. and there's some friction between them, like melissa telling jo not to try to win bill back, and some jockeying from jo at the diner counter, but then you also have jo checking on melissa after the first tornado hits. I like that her story ends with her deciding to leave bill, but then adding the line about not being that sad about it, her recognizing that they weren't really what the other needed (it is weird though that she's suddenly gone from the group and no one remarks on it)

very into bill starting the movie all buttoned-up, then gradually shedding those layers, getting less kempt, his shiny new truck converted into their chase vehicle (later when the other chasers refer to bill as "the extreme," the push-pull between who he is in his life before the movie starts, and who he clearly is at heart)

it is wild that a divorce is the undercurrent of this whole thing (but wild in a fun way! like it's fun how much this is a love story that also has tornadoes. bill paxton is here to get the divorce papers signed. the movie ends with them kissing. rebuilding relationships via natural disasters)

that shot of the flying cow happens so much earlier than I expected

just between us, it took me way too long to realize jo was the little girl from the beginning ("how long?" don't worry about it)

jo as ahab, her trying to look into the tornado and bill turning her away, the obsessive need to understand, pushing forward beyond what's reasonable

the cars! cars as their primary instruments, reflective of their personalities, this is a western and their cars are their horses, but also cars won't protect them when a tornado hits, and in fact add to the danger, they're at the drive-in when the surprise tornado comes, they hide out in the floor of the garage, cars as homes, cars getting trashed, I've lost the point but you see it

there's something about the disconnect between the threat messages, both "they had no warning" when a tornado hits unexpectedly, vs. an f-5 that you can see and follow the trail of, but it's still going to destroy whatever is in its path (also after wakita gets hit and jo's aunt meg tells her that jo needs to stop it—like the data they collect is vital, but also them getting dorothy to fly won't have any immediate consequences on the tornado itself)

I do love all the "bill's back" "I'm not back" from the beginning, him saying he's only going to stay a day, and then he's immediately so back

spoilers but I did not expect carey elwes and his driver to die. this movie has a pretty low onscreen body count, and that one was a surprise

that near-kiss in the cornfield! so good!!

the whole sequence of them sprinting from the tornado toward the barn, the fence posts getting pulled up just behind them, the horses running—so, so good

but also what's the deal with the murder barn? like they run into the barn and it looks like a murder barn and then they run out because everything in the murder barn would murder them when the tornado hits, and then we never address it again. was this just to keep them running from the tornado a little longer?

they're a battle couple but for storm chasers, and it slaps

the movie ends with them kissing! this is their love story!!

all in all, I had a hell of a time, a blast from start to finish

[hongjoongscafe]

Someone out there…

Part: 1 {Serieslist}

|In the empty house|

Pairing: bunny!hybrid!jungkookxhuman!readerxbunny!hybrid!wooyoung

Boy groups involved: BTS & ATEEZ

Genre: angst, fluff, smut, neighbour au, hybrid au.

Summary: the two bunny hybrids were terrified of the cruel world. Will they be able to live their life?

Word count: 2.2k+

BTS and ATEEZ masterlist

Masterpost

Do not repost, plz

The hot days of June were never your thing. It always felt like your skin was melting and becoming juice for vampires. You did adore them though, the vampires. You watched a movie about them just last night.

The closest thing to a vampire was a bat hybrid. They were mostly stray and were not exactly friendly. You remembered that when you were a child, your neighbour had a bat hybrid. He once clawed the face of his owner and sat there in his bat form. It was so hard to get him off and when he did, the owner had deep wounds. Back then it was scary but now you kinda laugh. The bat hybrid was then left alone with his other bat hybrids in the dark jungle.

Hybrids.

You loved them a lot. They were so cute with their special features like tails, ears, and their ability to shift from human form to animal. They were smarter and had better hearing and vision abilities. They could climb and run fast. You always watched something about them on your phone.

But

You never owned one.

Since childhood, you always loved them so much that everyone would say that you would be the first one to adopt one or maybe more. You wanted that but life could be unfair in many ways.

You were just not ready to have one. You were still settling. Your job wasn't still giving you enough to afford a hybrid. And overall, it was a huge commitment. Having a hybrid means having a partner with you. It could turn into something more than an owner-and-hybrid relationship too. It was too much to ask for.

The loneliness, though, demanded that partner.

It was getting dark as you walked to your house. Trying to be health conscious, you didn't bring your car to work. The sky had pretty hues of orange and red. You worked overtime not because you had too much work but because you wanted the sun to hide away so that you could walk back in the breezy evening breeze. But to your bad luck, the environment was completely still. Not a single leaf was moving.

“Ah, I think the rain might come sooner this year,” you sighed as you looked up at the sky. “I should take a picture,” you took out your phone and clicked a picture of the beautiful sky.

Finally, you reached back and opened the door. You had already turned on the AC in your living through your phone while you were walking back. You were, for once, thankful for the electricity bill raiser machine.

You sighed happily when the chilled air kissed your face. Removing your shoes, you quickly waddled towards your bathroom to take a cold shower to cool down your nerves.

Knowing that nobody was gonna come here, you wore a cami top and your underwear. Who, in good mind, would wear proper clothes especially when they live alone or with their lovers anyway?

Wanting to eat something refreshing for dinner, you ordered Naengmyeon, the Korean cold noodles. In the meantime, you took out the bottle of soju and brought your laptop and started finding some nice shows. In the end, you settled with Spy x Family anime.

“Ah, I should turn off this AC. I hope they finalize me sooner so that I can get my whole salary and then be able to use this AC however I want,” you said to yourself.

It was a weird habit of yours that sometimes irritated your mother. But you did it without knowing. Anyway, your job would pay you highly if they decided to keep you. You were just a trainee for now. You still lived in an expensive neighbourhood. That's where your salary would go most of the time. But it was only you so there were no worries. As long as you turn off your AC for a long time, it is all set.

The bell rang after twenty minutes. You squealed excitedly and grabbed the cash. Not forgetting to wear shorts. The delivery man handed you the food and started finding the change.

Looking around while he was finding money, you saw a car that just stopped at the house on the left. That house has been empty since the day you moved in. Nobody ever visited that place. Your friends, Hongjoong and Namjoon, who live on the same street, told you about the owners living somewhere else.

The delivery guy handed you the change and left. The moment you turned around, you caught sight of a guy who walked straight into the house. And then three more people followed behind. Two of them were holding some heavy-looking stuff in their hands.

You shrugged and closed your door and went straight to your living room. You enjoyed your noodles and the anime and spent the rest of the evening watching anime and scrolling through the phone until bedtime.

…

The next morning was chaotic— as if that was a new thing to mention.

You totally forgot to prepare your outfit and then you burnt your breakfast. While trying to manage the little fire in the pan that was cooking the eggs, you knocked off some fragile glasses that broke. Your neighbours could hear it all, for sure.

On your right side, Hongjoong lived. He always complained about you being so loud without using a single word. It was embarrassing. You were totally dependent on your mother. So managing so many things at once, nah, it wasn't your thing.

“Mama,” you whined, missing your mother, “how in the world did you raise three of us at the same time?!”

“Well, I always told you that a mother can do anything. It doesn’t matter if there are three or three hundred,” your mother’s voice came out of the speaker of your phone. “And how many times did I tell you to do some work and that you will suffer later?”

“It’s not the time for scolding, mother. I’m late, I’ll call you when I am free, oky?” You said with a pout, cleaning the shards of glass from the floor.

“Oky, do your best!” said your mother.

“Thank you, Mama!” You quickly threw away the glass and grabbed your bag along with an apple as your breakfast and left your house.

Luckily, it was Friday, meaning the weekend. You couldn’t wait to sleep away the whole week.

“Hello!” You stopped in your driveway as a voice called you. You turned to the left and saw a lady who was speed-walking towards you. “Hello, I’m Kim Bina. We came back yesterday.”

The image of four people flashed in front of your eyes, “ah, hello. Welcome back!” You awkwardly said.

“Thank you! I’m not gonna waste your time. I just wanted some milk and sugar. My husband likes his morning tea too much but there is nothing at home except the raw tea,” she giggled nervously.

“Oh, yeah, hold on a second,” you quickly unlocked the door and collected the whole bottle of milk and poured some sugar into a tiny bowl.

Locking everything back, you handed the lady what she needed, “thank you so much! I hope you have a good day!”

You smiled and quickly got into your car and drove away. “Aish, lady, you made me even more late. And here I am trying to secure my job.”

…

“Joongie, Joonie, I swear to god I am gonna lose my job if I keep on getting late like this,” you stuffed your mouth with some expensive macarons that Namjoon served.

The three of you were at Namjoon’s. He invited you both for a movie evening. It was a regular thing that happened at three of your houses, turn by turn. It was great to find such dorky friends right away when you moved in here a year ago.

Back then you had just joined the company you work for. And now you were close to either losing it or securing it.

“I think you will get the job permanently, or well, as long as you don’t resign,” Namjoon said.

“Mhm, I think so too!,” Hongjoong said.

“Why?” You asked.

“You see, getting late to work is one thing and it can be changed. But quality work is what gets you a job fixed. So, I think you will get the job. Your work is neat and I have seen you working before and the fact that you complete your work before the deadline is far more important,” Namjoon said. He was an owner and CEO of a well known trading company. He knew how everything worked. Every time you had any problem in your work, you always knocked on his door with a huge sugar coated smile and puppy eyes.

Hongjoong, on the other hand, was a CEO of a music company. He was enthusiastic about music. He spent endless nights and days in his chair to get the thing done. Namjoon recorded some of his songs with him. They both shared this passion.

“Yeah, I would be so happy to have an employee like you,” Hongjoong said while sipping on his coffee. “Just do your thing properly and try not be late.”

You hummed and slumped on the couch. The movie wasn’t that interesting to watch. “Oh! The neighbors came back!”

“What neighbors?” They both looked at you.

“The one on my left side! Or right, when you face the houses,” you said.

“Ah, them! They came back? I have never seen them, to be honest. I have only heard about them from the lady who lives next to me,” Hongjoong said.

“I heard it from Mrs. Song who lives across from your house,” Namjoon said, pointing towards you.

“I saw four people yesterday. And in the morning, when I was running late, the lady stopped me and asked for milk and sugar. He said her name was- uh,” you tried to remember, “uh… oh! Kim Bina!” You hummed.

“Oh, the typical neighbor bullshit,” Hongjoong said. “Get ready for neighbors not buying their own stuff but using other people’s stuff.”

“Aw, Joongie, did your neighbor on the other side eat all of your pantry?” You mocked a pout.

“Pantry?! She inhaled my laundry detergent and groceries too!” He exclaimed, and Namjoon and you laughed at his misery, if you could call it that.

The rest of the evening went by. You all ended up watching some episode of random series. The time flew by fast and it was getting late. Hongjoong and you helped Namjoon clean up and then bid farewell for the night.

“I am going away for a while, by the way,” Hongjoong said.

“Where are you going?” You asked.

“America. I might be gone for months. If I get some time, I’ll visit back. Hopefully the work ends sooner because there is no place like home,” he sighed.

You nodded, “I’ll miss you then. Don’t forget to call often,” you smiled at him and stood outside his house.

“Of course I will,” he smiled and hugged you before letting you go.

You walked to your house and stood outside and took a deep breath. You looked towards the new neighbors, well, technically old but whatever. You smiled to yourself.

“It’s nice that you have some people living in you now, huh, house. I can’t imagine being alone like this for decades,” you talked to the house as if it had ears. But you never know. “Anyway, y/n… it’s finally the weekend. I’m gonna sleep the best.”

You nodded and went inside your house. While preparing for bed, the thought of your new neighbors came in. When you moved in here, your neighbors greeted you well and brought you meals and other useful stuff to make you comfortable. That’s how you met Hongjoong and Namjoon. They brought you dinner and spent the whole evening getting to know you. Since then, you became a part of their tiny group.

Thinking about all this, you thought of taking something for them and a welcome treat or something. That way, you could get to know them too.

So with that grand thought, you went to bed.

…

Your house was filled with the aroma of freshly baked cookies and pastries. It was only eleven in the morning. You woke up early, not because you had prepared a gift for the neighbours but out of the habit of waking up early for work.

It sucked. You only had weekends and they were destroyed by the habits.

You liked baking and cooking. It wasn't something you had time for but whenever you had some time on your hand, you always made something. And of course, shared it with good neighbours and friends.

Everything was done so you packed the cookies and the pastries separately in two containers. You were wearing your denim shorts along with a graphic tank top and your all-time favourite sneakers.

Making sure you had everything, you marched next door.

You rang the bell and stood a bit behind, waiting for someone to open. A minute later, a guy opened the door and looked at you with a question mark face.

He was beautiful, to say the least. He had a beauty mark below his left eye. His black hair brushed his slightly red eyes. He must have woken up late. But what caught your eye the most was the grey fading to white at base rabbit ears on his head. They were laying flat and twitching slightly.

“Hello, I am the neighbour next door!”

.....

Sanaa’s note:

Hello! I hope you like this part. Much more is gonna happen sooner, don't forget to join this journey as well💓.

The behaviour of all the characters is visualized.

Taglist:

@veneziamadness @cheline @sansmilkbread @jayb17 @constantlydelulusional @8tinytings @tea4sykes ; @jhmylove

*lemme know if you wanna be added to the permanent or specific taglist*

*original picture is not mine, I just edited it*

[talesfromthecrypts]

Top 10 Comfort Movies

tagged: @thequeerestdad (sorry this took so long I wanted time to think about it then forgot then it was a week later)

Labyrinth: its fantasy, its a musical, its got puppets, it has a man wearing pants so tight you can see his bulge. My dad has always shared movies with me and its not the earliest one I remember but its up there. Also I can't totally claim its responsible for my fiction romance tendencies but its not NOT responsible you know.

Near Dark: Between the moments of bloody murder and elaborate blood drinking displays its actually a pretty quiet chill film. Also I really like to watch Bill Paxton go sicko mode.

The Company of Wolves: Aesthetics, special effects, ill advised romantic trysts, soft music. The movie to drift off to sleep to after a hard week. High fantasy horror hitting just the right notes for me.

Aliens: being so familiar with a movie you know every bit of it from start to finish. That's comfort baby.

Paterson: Actually radiates comfort. Whenever you just need to watch something that is really a weighted blanket, a warm hug, a reminder its not all bad. For me this is it.

Fellowship of the Ring: All three of them really but seeing this in the theaters really blew my mind at the tender age of 8. Watching it does take me back to that exact moment in time. Which is a comfort in some ways by itself.

The Phantom of the Paradise: I really can't explain this one. Just the weirdo sicko vibes coming off it I guess. Feels homey.

Fantastic Mr. Fox: The feeling of fall in the air. The way you can see the fur move where the animator touched the figure to move it. The fancy little star apple. Stop motion animation is one of those creative outputs humans do that warms my heart. Sure its easier to do another way, but the human touch is what makes it special.

The Birdcage: Every father's day back when all the kids were home my dad would get to pick a movie and that was the only movie all year we had to watch. Cause that was all he asked for father's day. This was one of them. I tend to watch it when I can't go see him for his birthday. And like lots of other days too.

The Witch: I really like watching the woods tear apart that family every couple of months. The attention to detail is incredible, the acting (from children no less) spectacular. If they didn't want it to comfort me then they shouldn't have fascinated me so good.

tagging: @hellboys, @finalbabe, @aethelreds, @anthonysperkins

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Rare Media Found: GLAGO'S GUEST

Have you ever heard of GLAGO'S GUEST?

It is a 2008 Walt Disney Animation Studios short film directed by Chris Williams, who would later get a co-directing gig on BOLT.

This short was apparently supposed to be attached to BOLT, as it was screened at Annecy in June of 2008. Much like the Pixar tradition, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull's WDAS was supposed to put shorts before the feature-length movies. MEET THE ROBINSONS, completed under their watch, came with a classic short attached. If you saw that movie in 2D, you got the 1938 short BOAT BUILDERS before the movie. If you saw it in 3D, you got the 1953 short WORKING FOR PEANUTS. Later in that year, 2007, they readied the then all-new Goofy short HOW TO HOOK UP YOUR HOME THEATER for ENCHANTED, but later put it before NATIONAL TREASURE 2. Smart choice, that movie made a lot more money, though I think ENCHANTED is a lot more remembered.

So it seemed like there would be shorts before new WDAS movies, and even shorts before other Disney movies...

2008 rolls in, GLAGO'S GUEST screens at Annecy, Lasseter apparently is very impressed with it, yadda yadda yadda... And yet it's not put before BOLT. The uploader of this screener claims that GLAGO'S GUEST tested very poorly with an audience, so they opted to leave BOLT short-less...

That was, until about 3 weeks into its run... Disney decided to take one of those CARS shorts that were being made for The Disney Channel and ABC Family (now Freeform) at the time, and bump it up to theatrical status: TOKYO MATER ran before BOLT starting in mid-December. So we had a Pixar short before a WDAS movie, a move that seemed unusual at the time... Both for the two studios sharing a double-bill, and because the short was attached to the movie as it was playing rather than from the get-go.

GLAGO'S GUEST remains unreleased outside of that Annecy screening. It strangely did not appear on the Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection Blu-ray that was released in 2015, which had almost every other short from that period (from THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL - 2006 - all the way up until the latest, FROZEN FEVER) included. Even TICK TOCK TALE was on that set, and that too was hard to find for a while.

I wonder why... Now having seen it... It's not unreleasable. Sure, you have purring eyeball-looking aliens and a Soviet Russia setting, but I really can't tell you why this didn't see any kind of release. Did it really - should we believe the uploader - test *that* poorly back in 2008? I don't understand why, if Lasseter liked it, it got buried.

It's a fascinating, sort-of experimental film for the studio. Walt Disney Animation Studios fully started doing all-CG animated movies with CHICKEN LITTLE in 2005, when the company was like a ship in a raging typhoon, with the animation wing bearing the brunt of it. CHICKEN LITTLE took on a very cute and cartoony style, which differentiated it from a lot of other CG films at the time of its release. It rung more MADAGASCAR and ICE AGE than it did FINDING NEMO and THE INCREDIBLES.

The next feature they did, which was significantly overhauled after Lasseter and Catmull took over, was MEET THE ROBINSONS. Being based on a book by William Joyce, the character designs in that movie were very much like something Joyce would've illustrated, with a bit of that Disney look to them. But they definitely look much more like Joyce characters than anything. Much like how ATLANTIS was Mike Mignola by way of Disney, and HERCULES was very much a Gerald Scarfe-looking picture. Also, unlike CHICKEN LITTLE, it mostly had a human cast. These were, in a way, our first CG Disney Animation humans.

GLAGO'S GUEST is pretty much the Lasseter/Catmull era's first CG short, because HOW TO HOOK UP YOUR HOME THEATER was - of course, being a Goofy cartoon - done in traditional animation. Right down to even re-using backgrounds from 1940s sport Goofy cartoon shorts. Maybe it was treated as a test film more so than anything.

ROBINSONS, GLAGO and BOLT are like different attempts at styles for a Disney Animation CG film... That was, until TANGLED came along... And I think TANGLED, which had Glen Keane involved as animation supervisor (formerly the straight-up director of the movie), really set the course going forward for character design in a WDAS movie. Created a house style, if you will. In terms of backgrounds and utilizing a subtle painterly style, that all begins with BOLT... But the *character design*, I think, begins with TANGLED. TANGLED looks unmistakably stereotypical Disney, with those big expressive eyes and proportions and whatnot... and it made a lot of money at the box office...

So, the house style was pretty much set from there on out. In terms of the features, only the WRECK-IT RALPH movies (and ZOOTOPIA to a lesser extent) seemed to do their own thing. Calhoun definitely gets bit by this design bug, as earlier concept art of her suggested something less stereotypically Disney, less TANGLED-looking.

But... FROZEN, BIG HERO 6, MOANA, RAYA, ENCANTO, WISH, etc... STRANGE WORLD was kind of an exception here, that looked more comic/cartoony to me. Yeah, that TANGLED style really, really stuck...

So it is fascinating to see what other styles WDAS played around with, styles that could've very well - I think - worked for features, but they chose to largely stick with one style going forward.

Only the shorts really continued to play with character design. INNER WORKINGS and some of the Short Circuit entries have the more interesting and dynamic character designs of their recent output.

[binch-i-might-be]

hey ray i was thinking about getting pet rats when i can & researching stuff about them and then remembered that i literally know a real live person who owns rats. and four (4) of them too

would you say rats are expensive or hard to take care of? i've heard some people say they're beginner pets and other people dispute that. generally, do they need a lot of attention and care? also, i know this is different per country but how much did they cost on average?

also out of pure curiosity, have you litter trained your rats?? i was reading something about it and it said it's easy to do it. i need to weigh on an expert's opinion

ohoho what an incredible idea! (<- totally unbiased). thank you for considering me a real live person <3

okay so I actually kind of disagree with the concept of "beginner pets" overall because literally every pet you could get is a living being that requires care and attention. I think this mainly comes from people being uneducated about the needs of small animals like fish or rodents and assuming their lack of knowledge is equivalent with a lack of things to know.

that said, I don't consider rats hard to take care of, but that's because I enjoy spending time with the lads! cleaning in and around their enclosure takes a while, but it's not too bad when you throw on a youtube video and also pet a rat lmao

regarding costs, I think rats are probably amongst the lowest cost pets you can have–aside from insects or arachnids. that doesn't mean they're cheap tho!

the most expensive thing will be the cage, because you need a fairly big one. I paid 300€ for my current one that fits four rats (and that was on sale, the original price was over 400 lol). the cage furnishings will also cost you a good chunk of change, but they usually last for a while and don't have to be replaced too often.

regarding food, I usually buy a good brand 2.5kg rat food bag and another 500g dried vegetable bag every like three to four weeks and supplement with fresh food and treats from the food I eat. costs me about 17-20€

bedding is also something you'll have to buy often. it depends on what brand and size you buy–I recently switched from buying small packs of bedding (60l) to buying LARGE ones (500l), because it's cheaper for me in the long run. just sucks that I gotta lug those 20kg of bedding up the two flights of stairs to my flat <3 (I pay 18€ for those big ones I think, and they last a good few weeks)

now, the thing that's most likely to gut your wallet is vet bills. especially as rats get older, they tend to develop a lot of ailments like tumors or respiratory problems. that can easily cost you several hundred bucks in one go. I'm lucky to have fairly healthy boys, so I only had to bring them to the vet the one time! still cost me 75€ tho lmao

it depends from where you get your rats. I got them from the pet shop and paid I think 16€ per lad.

also about them needing attention, it's best to keep rats in a place where you also keep yourself. they like being around their human! and they need a decent amount of enrichment and play, as they're very intelligent little guys :)

I have not litter trained them, but tbh I didn't see a need to. rats will usually just pick a corner in their cage and designate that as the Poop Corner. I'm sure you could do that quite easily tho, and it would probably save you some cleaning up

anyway tldr: rats are wonderful little critters who are full of love and have sparkly little eyes and will outwit you with their wits tied behind their back. but you will have to invest time to be with them/make sure their enclosure is clean, and have to be prepared to drop a LOT of money should one of them get sick! they also only live to 2-3 years old which is unfair and cruel. things to keep in mind!

[elwynten]

New Universes 7

The full Moon

All of the girls were in Kim's kitchen, with Miia writing on a white board.

Miia started drawing on the white board as she talked. "Right, now let's review the 'Inter-species Exchange Bill'. Rule #1 is, humans and demi-humans can never do harm to each other. And rule #2, you're not allowed to go out unless your host family is with you. And most importantly. Rule #3 is, whoever has resided with the host the longest, has ultimate authority. So, you better listen to everything I say." Miia said.

"You made that last one up." Cerea told Miia. "Didn't you."

Papi was trying to read the book, "Interspecies Exchange For Dummies". She looked up as Miia was drawing on the white board. "Fasinating." She declaired.

"Don't listen to her Papi!" Cerea exclaimed to Papi.

Miia had her back to the white board with a pointer in her hand pointed to a picture of herself on the board. "Did you get that Centerea? Miia asked Cerea. "Pay attention please!" She said with a little more authority.

"How dare you. I've read the bill. It says nothing of the sort!" Cerea retorted.

I received a phone call from Smith. Smith wanted to make sure Cerea filled out the 'Home stay" forms. I relayed the message to Cerea.

Papi was still trying to read the book but was having a lot of difficulty with it. Even though I had increased her intelligence she still has to learn to be able to understand, and she has not learned all the big/large words they use to explain the bill. You could almost see the smoke coming from Papi's head because it was so difficult for her. She put the book on the table and laid her head on the book.

"Papi are you okay?" I asked her.

Papi turned her head to the side so she could look at me. "Oh, man, this interskesee whatever has way to many big words. My head hurts, I want to take a bath." She told me.

"Go ahead and take one. Besides it will get easier as you learn more. It's a pain for me to read as well. Lots of gobbledygook in it." I told her.

"I can't take a bath by myself." Papi exclaimed.

"Yes, you can. Remember I gave you the Extra Arms." I reminded Papi.

"Oh, ya. I keep forgetting about them. I'm so used to not having arms and hands, just wings." She replied. "But will you give me a bath like you did before with Taima?" She asked.

"Sure, I will." I told her.

All this time Miia and Cerea were arguing over which monster girl was the boss over the rest of the monster girls in the house.

"How about this!" I raised my voice to cut into Miia and Cerea's argument. "Miia is in charge in Kim's house and Cerea is in charge in my house where she and Papi lives." I tried to defuse the situation.

"I guess that would work." Miia admitted.

"I like that idea." Cerea agreed.

Papi and I headed into the hall to our house so I could help Papi take a bath.

Papi was starting to be very physical. More physical than normal. She grabbed my arm and hugged it to herself, rubbing her breasts against my arm. "We can be much closer now Master. Papi wants to be much closer to Master." Papi told me.

Since I had arrived in this universe, I had changed several things. Which means the timeline has changed quite a bit from the original story line. But I did know some major things that would still happen. One thing being the full moon. Papi was reacting to the full moon. During a full moon the monster girls act more on their animal instincts and become more aggressive. I was hoping that if I could get her into our house, the full moon would not affect her or would affect her much less, since the pocket plain was not a part of this universe and did not have a moon in it.

I washed Papi's hair. I know she could do it herself, but I didn't mind helping her out and wash her hair for her.

Once I had washed and rinsed Papi's hair Papi handed me the soap. "Master can wash my front now."

I handed Papi the soap and wash rag. "You can do your front, yourself. That's one of the reasons I gave you hands. So, you can do things on your own." I told Papi and stood up. "I have some things I need to do right now." I added.

"Oh, Master. I wanted you to bath me." Papi said and pouted, but she started washing herself.

I left the bathroom and went to find Cerea.

The next morning, I got up early so I could fix everyone breakfast.

[ckret2]

Chapter 7's been updated for TBOB compatibility! It's also on AO3! And this one's got a LOT of edits, so I recommend rereading it.

"Hey," I hear you say, "I already read this chapter once, why should I read it again?"

Because this chapter heavily changes his first few minutes of life; it explains some of his powers that were previously only explained much later in the fic; better explains his motivations for his early actions; and it also includes a brand new—

Because the chapter's so different, I saved the original version of the first half of the chapter in case y'all wanna compare/contrast to see how much is different. Took out a lot of talk about the Axolotl, since Bill's not surprised to be alive in this version like he was in the original; I'll find somewhere else later in the fic to put the axolotl stuff back in.

####

Bill liked collecting prophecies about himself. Interdimensional historical records only lightly alluded to his presence, but that didn't matter. History was written by the winners about the losers. Prophecies were written by the losers about the winner.

He liked being so important—dangerous enough that people felt the need to write fairy tales about how to kill him.

And he liked the warnings about what threats to look out for.

The Axolotl's "redemption" wasn't a prophecy so much as an offer—although Bill had learned of it in the form of a prophecy, passed from Axolotl to prophet and from believer to believer until the divine gossip grapevine finally reached him. The stupid salamander never even had the guts to extend the offer to Bill personally. And as such, he knew little about the details—like whether it was a limited-time offer that had expired a million years back, or whether Bill could only accept the Axolotl's conditions voluntarily rather than under duress... or even whether it was true. 

Imprisoned in Stanley Pines's burning mind, stripped of every trick and spell he knew, reduced to a delicate two-dimensional shape on a collision path with a three-dimensional fist, he had called out to the Axolotl and desperately prayed it was true.

####

So the fact that he could remember all this was a good sign: he was alive, and he still had his memories.

The prophecy as he'd heard it said something about getting a full pardon by taking another shape in another time—he'd worried that might mean reincarnation, with no recollection of his former life. But no. He was still Bill Cipher. He could pick up where he left off.

Just as soon as he oriented himself.

It took a moment to figure out how to peel open his eyeballs. Two of them, he was pretty sure. He'd expected to be a square or something. Maybe isosceles. But—he rolled his eyes experimentally—he was some three-dimensional animal? His brain registered the sky above as a hazy something-blueish, but that didn't mean much until he knew what kind of color vision this species had. The sun made a long streak across the sky and burned to look at.

He was sure he'd worn one of these creatures before. On a hunch, he ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth—definitely human. His rib cage twitched as he laughed—a bitter hiss, the first time he'd used this body's voice. The Ax had a sick sense of humor, sticking Bill with the species that killed him. Well, fine. He knew more about humanity than humans themselves did, and he'd worn countless human bodies before. This was one of the easiest starts he could ask for.

Now that he knew what he was, the muscle memory came more easily. He sat up on the warm concrete ground to inspect his new prison. Four limbs with five mini-limbs each, no interesting mutations or deformities that he could see, yawn. And human skin came in such painfully boring neutral tones; he'd have to redecorate. He flexed his finger joints experimentally, imagining his hand encased in gold rings and bangles. He could live with that until he figured out how to recreate his real body. The skin was reasonably elastic, neck felt too narrow (he hated how goofy human necks looked), an impressive 20 for 20 arched fingerprints and toeprints (quirky, but Bill suspected the Ax wanted to ensure he'd stand out if he ever got his fingerprints in a police database), head line like a river, absolutely hideous heart line, so-so melanoma resistance, healthy-looking cellulite pattern...

While in the middle of trying to contort himself like a cat licking its butthole, from the corner of one of his eyeballs, he spied a mass of golden yellow filaments dangling from the top of his head. Several internal organs automatically convulsed and spasmed at the sight; white lights and awful gory memories and the room he'd died in flashed by his mind's eye; he felt the flesh on the inside of his throat struggle to thrash around, and had to seal a hand over his mouth to keep from regurgitating whatever was inside him. He closed his eyes to hide the awful filaments dangling down from his scalp but now he couldn't stop feeling them brush against his cheeks and shoulders. For a long moment he was paralyzed in place, heavy breaths whistling through his ridiculous little nose tubes, mentally battling his own body's attempt to revolt against him in his moment of weakness.

This inspection was just a distraction. He couldn't ignore that he was stuck in a carcass made of meat, and even as his pulse pounded in his ears he was marching toward decay. He hated this body. He hated it.

Somebody was going to pay.

####

Bill saw the time police coming around the corner of a crumbling building several minutes before they would arrive. Of all the rotten luck— He contemplated running, considered how far he'd get in a fresh, uncalloused, nude body before a shard of glass ripped his bare feet open, and instead hurried to hide behind a pile of rubble.

As the officers drew closer to the moment Bill saw they would turn the corner, he heard one say: "Would you put that stupid thing away and focus? We're suppose to be on the lookout for Cipher."

Bill's heart leaped into his throat. (He was pretty sure it wasn't actually his heart, but it sure felt like that. Huh. That's one baffling English idiom explained.) They'd found him already? How? Had the Axolotl snitched on him to Time Baby? Was this "second chance" just a petty trick to get him locked up? Maybe it wasn't too late to run—

"But this is stupid," another voice grumbled. "Cipher won't show up here. This is worse than hover car crosswalk duty—"

"Listen," the first officer snapped. "Today is exactly one thousand years since Cipher's death and this is the exact place it happened. Time Intelligence is sure that if he finds a way to return, it'll be on some dramatic anniversary. Need I remind you we've got officers swarming Roadkill County for six months in both directions from his death—"

"I know, I know—"

"—and patrolling on every anniversary for the first century, every centennial anniversary for the first millennium, every millennial anniversary for the first—"

"I know, I know—"

"And if he's going to make a move, there's a high risk that the first millennial anniversary—"

"But the world is ending in less than four months! Why would he come here?"

"I don't know, maybe he wants to watch Time Baby's molecules reconstitute! Our only job is to find Cipher if he is here—Would you put that away!"

The world was ending. That made this 3012. The Ax probably thought he was cute, dropping Bill exactly a thousand years after his death. 

Even better: Time Baby and his goons didn't actually know Bill was here. He could still take them by surprise.

Best of all: what exactly had the Ax promised? Something something another time, another form—Bill never recalled hearing anything about another place. He was still in Gravity Falls.

And that gave him an idea.

Bill peeked over the rubble. The officers were so close to the moment they would turn the corner that Bill could see the irritation on one's face and the handheld game console in the other's hands; and he was also beginning to see the fuzzy shape of his own future self approaching them as a plan formed in his head. He ducked again. Only one shot at this. Would a human think he looked harmless and vulnerable? Those uniformed slabs of muscle were two feet taller than him, and he was naked. Check and check.

He waited until they turned the corner, then stepped out from behind the rubble pile, waving. "Oh, thank goodness, the police!" Probably the first and last time he was ever saying that. "I'm lost, confused, and can't seem to find my clothes. Can you he—" He tripped on a concrete chunk, yelped, and had to grab the officers for balance. "... help." Okay. That was good. Extra harmless-looking. He meant to do that. But he made a mental note to spend a few minutes on walking practice once he got away.

Grumpy Officer was looking toward the sky. "Oh." Gamer Officer was hiding his face behind his game console. "Oh dear." Grumpy Officer cleared his throat and said, "Of—of course. We're happy to help, Miss...?"

Heck. Think of a human name fast. "Tomato."

Gamer Officer said, "This entire decade is supposed to be evacuated, Ms. Tomato. Where and when did you come from?"

"I'm not sure, it's all such a blur! One minute it's August in 2912², the next it's... whatever this is!"

"I have family in 2912². Beautiful year," Gamer Officer said helpfully. Bill decided not to point out that, given how linear time works, he had family in every year.

Grumpy Officer said, "We'll get you to your contemporary authorities, ma'am. They'll help you get home." Still trying not to look directly at Bill, he detached his time tape from his belt, drew it out, and hesitated. He turned to Gamer Officer. "Hold on. Weren't Augusts abolished in squared years?" (Darn. Bill never could remember if it was Augusts or Julys.)

Both officers were desperately avoiding looking directly at Bill, one had his hands full with the game console, the other had his time tape extended inches in front of Bill—now. Bill flung his whole weight on Grumpy Officer's arm to wrench the tape away from him, pulled out a random length, and snapped out of 3012 before the officers could registered what happened.

####

The first jump was just to escape. The second jump took him to a ruined battlefield in the middle of the Time Baby War—Bill knew his human history—where Bill could dump this cheap police time tape riddled with temporal tracking technology and scavenge a military tape off a fallen soldier.

By the time he found a tape in good condition, his abdomen, eyes, and head had developed an assortment of overlapping aches. Nothing he couldn't ignore. But it was worth the effort: the military tape was less prone to overheating, more lax on permitting temporal doubles and time loops, and built with standard-issue paradox-cloaking stealth tech. Even if the time cops followed him this far they'd never know where he went next.

He was continuing where he'd left off.

He wanted to return to the moment he died and murder the Pines on the spot—or, better yet, warn himself ten minutes before it happened. But even the best time tape would struggle to target a temporal paradox as complicated as Weirdmageddon; and besides, Bill was self-aware enough to know if he tried to warn himself, he was at risk of being zapped before he convinced himself of his identity, and then he was really doomed. So he'd just have to focus on revenge.

He'd murder the Pines and anyone else in their stupid shack. He'd dig up the buried treasure Pine Tree and Shooting Star had buried in the woods and liquidate some of the gold. He'd fast-forward until the murder investigation was over and the shack was back on the market, buy it himself, repair the portal to the Nightmare Realm, and restart Weirdmageddon in his dead enemies' own home.

He could figure out how to get back in his real body and pop the stupid weirdness bubble around the town as he went. Minor details. For now, all he cared about was killing the two-faced twins who'd dared try to stop him.

And he couldn't wait to see the look in Stanford's eyes.

The cops said Time Baby had them patrolling Gravity Falls for six months after Bill's death. He set his time tape for February 25, 2013. He appeared in a suburban backyard, snatched a bedsheet drying on a clothesline and a couple safety pins from a nearby laundry basket, made himself a chiton tunic, and headed for the Mystery Shack.

####

In retrospect, he probably should have planned the murders a little more thoroughly.

Time for chapter 7 of "Human Bill Attempts To Murder The Pines And Ends Up Their Prisoner/Involuntary House Guest," which will eventually get a title, I'm sure.

Featuring an explanatory flashback on how the hell Bill made it from reincarnation to an attempted murder at the Mystery Shack; his first full day as the shack's prisoner; and angst.

The masterpost for the full fic is available here! Chapter edited 9/23/2024 for TBOB compatibility!

The first thing the reincarnated Bill Cipher's new ears heard was a crack of thunder.

And then he felt the damp soil beneath him and the chill air above him, the position of his limbs, smelled the green forest life.

He was alive, he was... he inspected his teeth with his tongue (ooh, wisdom teeth)—he was an adult human, and he had his memories. It worked. His head felt clear, freed of the fog of the constant antipsychotic drug fog. He was still Bill Cipher. He could pick up where he left off.

Just as soon as he oriented himself.

It took a moment to remember how to peel open his two new eyeballs. He was half-laying half-sitting in a freshly dug hole too small for his whole body, limbs splayed out over the dirt. Had the Theraprism's reincarnation machine spontaneously generated his new body straight from dirt? How Pandoran.

He was in the center of a tiny clearing, surrounded on all sides by a ring of evergreen trees but with a view of the cold, clear sky above. His brain registered it as a hazy something-blueish—the color Earth's sky usually appeared when he was looking through human eyes. And that meant one thing:

Whenever and wherever he was, it wasn't Weirdmageddon.

No way had that dumb reincarnation machine actually accounted for Earth's uneven weirdness to randomize when and where he landed. It would ruin everything if it had! 

He climbed unsteadily to his feet, searching the area for any identifiable features.

Through the trees, in the distance, he saw the cliffs that the Trilazzx Betians had flown their ship through. Okay! Great! Just as he'd hoped, Gravity Falls's Weirdness Attractor Zone had drawn in an ancient reincarnating alien soul like a flame drawing in a moth. He was exactly where he wanted to be. 

He just wasn't when he wanted to be. Why hadn't he landed during Weirdmageddon? What moment in all of Earth's history could possibly be weirder?

The stone bridge over the hole left by the main body of the ship had collapsed, and human train tracks bridged the gap. That left a pretty narrow window he could have landed in, a little over 200 years around Weirdmageddon.

Maybe Weirdmageddon was too weird to hit. Bill had killed time itself. Maybe rather than falling into the weirdness barrier surrounding the town, he'd slingshotted around it like light around a weirdness black hole's event horizon and been flung somewhere else on the timeline. Did the barrier work like that? He wasn't sure, he'd have to ask—

No. Bill wasn't asking him. This time, he'd figure out how to bring down the barrier himself.

But if Bill was in Gravity Falls, there was a chance his backstabbing pawn was currently here, too. And if so, that meant he could personally show him just what happened to people who crossed Bill Cipher. Maybe he'd strangle him with his bare hands, just so he could look in his horrified eyes as the life left them—

His fingernails dug into his fleshy palms as he imagined wrapping his hands around Ford's throat. This body would never do, though; he'd have to shed it. If he were post-Weirdmageddon, his corpse had to be somewhere in the area; he could repossess it and pick up where he left off. If he were pre-Weirdmageddon, he wouldn't be able to obtain physical form, but he could just return to the Nightmare Realm and redo Weirdmageddon in a few years, no loss...

He shut the body's eyes and focused on degloving the expendable corpse from the immortal energy being within.

And nothing happened.

He tried again to peel off the body. Nothing. Trying to leave his body felt like sticking a car key in a plastic toddler car: not only did it fail to start the engine, but there wasn't an engine there to start.

Had the reincarnation process altered his soul? Was he no longer a triangle?! Had he been reshaped into a human spirit to match his body, was he gone, had Bill lost himself—?

He didn't realize until he broke skin that he'd started trying to claw his skin off. He forced himself to stop.

But no, that didn't make any sense. Humans could astral project their souls from their bodies. He'd personally taught humans how to do it, so he knew the process. Even if his soul was human, he should have been able to escape this body. So something else was keeping him in. 

But what? Some magic? Something stitching his soul into this body?

The horror ripped raw all his fears, his doubts, his denials; for a moment, he couldn't lie to himself about his situation. So here was the truth:

During the entirety of timeless captivity, he had told himself that the rest of himself, his full self, with all his energy and all his power, had been locked outside the Theraprism; while only the little triangular avatar he used to interact with the world—his anglerfish's lure—was pinched inside, pinched tightly enough that the rest of his power couldn't flow in and could only thrash impotently outside.

But the truth was, he didn't know that. He hoped that, but he didn't know.

The truth was, he hadn't been able to feel his power since the Axolotl dropped him in the Theraprism. The truth was, he wasn't sure if he'd even felt them at all since the moment Stanley's mind began to burn.

It was true that Bill's little triangular avatar was just the little glowing lure dangling from the vast, vast anglerfish of his powers. It was true that Bill's power was contained externally. It was true that he'd been told clearly during admission to the Theraprism that he wouldn't have access to his power.

But he didn't know whether his power was sealed off—like squeezing the walls of a straw shut so no liquid could be sucked through it—or if he'd been cut off from it, like beheading a dragon.

He couldn't feel any of the metaphorical psychic "muscles" he typically used to climb in and out of puppets—as though they'd been amputated. He couldn't feel most of his powers. Why?

Was it because they'd been sealed off at his admittance to the Theraprism and he'd skipped a step during reincarnation that would have unsealed them?

Or because the Theraprism's reincarnation machine, as a therapeutic tool, was designed to prevent recovering patients from fleeing their bodies before they'd finished fully reintegrating into mortal society?

Because he couldn't reach the Nightmare Realm from here?

Because all his power had been destroyed?

Because the reincarnation had truly, irreversibly turned his soul human?

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried, at least, to feel the shape of the energy trapped inside the matter. Was he still a triangle? Or had he been remade human?

He couldn't feel anything. Just blackness and numbness and silence and cold. The space beneath his skin may as well have been a hollow void.

He didn't realize until the blood trickled down his wrists that he'd started clawing his skin again. He stuck his fingers in his mouth to prevent them from clawing again.

When his head bent forward, he spied a mass of golden yellow filaments dangling from the top of his head. Several internal organs automatically convulsed and spasmed at the sight; white lights and awful gory memories and the cold silent suffocating void and the room he'd died in flashed by his mind's eye; he accidentally bit down on his fingers and felt the flesh on the inside of his throat struggle to thrash around; he had to yank them out and seal a rubbery hand over his mouth to keep from regurgitating whatever was inside him. He closed his eyes to hide the awful filaments dangling down from his scalp but now he couldn't stop feeling them brush against his cheeks and shoulders and all he saw was the dark, the endless dark—

He was dizzy. He dropped to his knees, dug his fingers into the soft earth, and tried to remember how to breathe. For a long moment he was paralyzed in place, heavy breaths whistling through his ridiculous little nose tubes, mentally battling his own body's attempt to revolt against him in his moment of weakness.

Somebody would die for this. The Pines family, the zodiac, that backstabbing Axolotl, D-SM5 and all its condescending cronies, the Henchmaniacs who'd abandoned him to the Theraprism, the whole Earth, the whole universe—everyone who'd been responsible for Bill ending up like this. He'd kill and kill and kill until he stopped feeling like he'd been buried alive in hell.

His eyes burned, but he didn't cry.

####

There was a rustling behind him and a human grunt. He turned—and saw, behind him, the beforeimage of a fight a few seconds in the future: a short wide-hipped human female with curly gold hair and a tall narrow human male with straight black hair. There were both naked. Why were a couple of naked humans about to fight in front of him?

Wait—he grasped for a handful of the sickening yellow filaments peeling out of his flesh and pulled it into his peripheral vision. Curly gold. Oh, that was him fighting in the future. He shuddered and let go of the hair. So why was he about to fight a human?

He could figure that out later; he studied the near-future battle in the space in front of him, the blurry moments with several possible outcomes, squinting at the possible futures where he won to see how he did it. He seemed to win in most timelines. Opponent was pretty clumsy—

Even though Bill could see exactly when the human would stumble out from between the trees, the moment still arrived sooner than he would have liked. The human glared down at Bill, panting and sweating in the chill air; and then he asked, suspiciously, "Bill Cipher?" What?

But of course, the human hadn't actually said "Bill Cipher." That's just a convenient translation for a word that can't be rendered in any human orthography. Bill Cipher was one of several names Bill used on Earth, a couple of human words Bill gave to humans as his name because they could pronounce it; he handed out different names to different species. The name this human had said, although heavily accented, was still recognizable as one of the names Bill used in—

—the Theraprism.

His rib cage twitched as he laughed—a high, hissing titter, the first time he'd used this body's voice. "Heyyy, were you one of the guards? Did you get too close to the altar when—"

"You," the guard snarled. "You've gone too far this time. I'm taking you down, Cipher." He charged toward Bill, fist raised.

And Bill just grinned. He had a lot more experience being human than this joker did—and he knew all their weak spots. He'd already seen how this ended.

He let the guard get close enough to begin swinging his fist—then kneed him right in the human design flaw, rammed his head through the guard's nose, and knocked him on his back. The guard was out cold before he hit the ground. Bill stood on his throat until he was sure the guard was never getting up again. He could feel his lungs expanding and contracting and his blood pulsing through his neck; he could feel the adrenaline in his hands and brain like a drug.

He laughed.

It turned out he only needed to kill one person to stop feeling like he'd been buried alive in hell. Now he just felt like he was partially submerged in heck.

Bill was great! Everything was fine! He totally hadn't had a panic attack within five minutes of reincarnation, he definitely knew how to breathe, and he felt fantastic. In fact, he didn't mind being trapped inside a human body at all. It was funny! So, so funny! Funny little prank reality had played on him.

See? He was a good sport. He was the best sport.

Well, he'd get reality back.

####

As he walked in the direction of town, he took stock of his current body and what he could do with it.

He still had his first most important power—the one that even the Theraprism hadn't been able to take away without keeping him drugged out of his mind: his all-seeing eye.

He'd been born with a strange eye that let him see into one higher dimension than everyone else. From the second dimension, he'd been able to see into the third dimension: the starlight and sunbeams shining down on his world. From the third dimension, he could see into the fourth: the past and future superimposed onto the present like transparent ghosts showing him where everyone had been and would be, blurry around the moments where he saw multiple possible futures.

He looked at the sun. At full power, Bill could see days into the future and past—multiple white streaks across the sky tracing the sun's path as it rose and set—and further with a basic telescope; but now, based on the short streak of white light he saw before it trailed off into the blue, he suspected he could only see about fifteen minutes into the future and past if he squinted. And he couldn't see the brilliant ring of extraturquoise that should have haloed the sun. Human color vision was an embarrassment.

In the second dimension, his all-seeing eye had also been able to see through objects—or, rather, over objects, bent up slightly into the third dimension so it could look down upon the flat world. When he tried to bend an eye up into the fourth dimension, he could see through the nearby trees, but it felt like his eyelids were trying to pop his eyeball like a pimple. His eye hadn't started bleeding immediately, so it was easier than trying to peer into the fourth dimension with a puppet's eyes, but not by much. He'd have to use that sparingly. And he'd better not risk attempting pyrokinesis unless the fire was more important than his eyeball.

And finally, for the first time, he turned his full attention to his new prison. He'd gotten a glimpse of it when he'd been watching his future actions, enough to tell it wasn't bad looking for a human. Pretty triangular body shape. Neck was too narrow, though—he hated how goofy human necks looked.

Four limbs with five mini-limbs each, it was nice to have ten fingers again but he didn't see any interesting mutations or deformities, yawn. He'd hoped he might mutate fractal phalanges. And on top of looking disgusting, human skin came in such boring neutral tones; he'd have to redecorate. He flexed his finger joints experimentally, imagining his hand encased in gold rings and bangles. Maybe he could stab some graffiti into his dermis, too. He could live with that until he found his way back to his real body.

Aside from the expected patches of lighter and darker melanin, there was no variation in his skin tone except for a band of slate grey splotches stretching from his left shoulder down to his right hip. They looked like two-day-old bruises, the hemoglobin dull and blackish-blue—but why would an hour-old body be created with a two-day-old bruise?

It took a moment of inspection to recognize that the "bruises" were birth marks, and they took the same path across his torso as the fatal crack that had split his exoskeleton in half. Ugh. Moving on.

He hopped on one foot at a time to inspect the bottoms (and tripped and tumbled into the dirt twice in the process). All 20 toeprints and fingerprints were, unexpectedly, still triangular—Bill wondered if the Theraprism did that on purpose to make reincarnations easier to track—head line like a river, absolutely hideous heart line.

Skin was reasonably elastic. So-so melanoma resistance. Healthy-looking cellulite pattern. How was his design flaw looking?

While in the middle of trying to contort himself like a cat licking its butthole, from the corner of one of his eyeballs, Bill saw two time cops emerging from the trees and heading his way several minutes before they would arrive. Of all the rotten luck— He contemplated running, considered how far he'd get in a fresh, uncalloused, nude body before a sharp rock or broken branch ripped his bare feet open—he'd already had to slow down and adjust his footsteps to be more tentative just from walking toward town—and instead he to hide behind a cluster of trees.

As the officers drew closer to the moment Bill saw them pass his spot, he heard one say: "Would you put that stupid thing away and focus? We're suppose to be on the lookout for Cipher."

Bill's heart leaped into his throat. (He was pretty sure it wasn't actually his heart, but it sure felt like that. Huh. That's one baffling English idiom explained.) They'd found him already? How? Maybe it wasn't too late to run—

"But this is stupid," another voice grumbled. "The energy signal from Cipher's resurrection is already fading, he's got to be long gone by now! Assuming the signal wasn't just an instrument error caused by the dumb ship under town!"

"There's no way it was an instrument error."

"If Time Baby really thought he'd still be here, he'd have sent more than a handful of us! This is worse than hover car crosswalk duty—"

"Look," the first officer snapped, "the tantrum Time Baby threw after the Theraprism notified him that Cipher's at large and probably headed back toward Earth is the worst I've ever seen. Think about the lives lost, man! The cities leveled! How much angrier will he be if no one finds him—"

"I know, I know—"

"—and Time Intelligence is sure that if he's coming back to Earth, it will be here! Need I remind you we've got officers swarming Roadkill County for six months in both directions from Weirdmageddon, and checking the site yearly for the first century in either direction, centennially for the first millennium, millennially anniversary for the first—"

"—I know, I know—"

"—as well as checking out every suspicious energy reading on the whole timeline! I don't know about you, but I do not want to be transferred from 'check out suspicious energy reading' duty to 'six-month stakeout' duty! But if we return to Time Baby with nothing—"

"But what if there is nothing?! Think about it—if Cipher were still here, wouldn't he be, you know, conquering the world?"

(Oh, he wished.)

"It's not our job to make sense of the mind of an escaped alien madman. It's just to find him if he is here—Would you put that away!"

Of course the Theraprism had sent a warning to Time Baby! Time Baby and D-SM5 probably adored each other, pair of dictators that they were.

But: Time Baby and his goons didn't actually know Bill was here. He could still take them by surprise.

And that gave him an idea.

Bill peeked around the trees. The cops were so close to the moment they would emerge from the trees and pass Bill's hiding spot that he could see the irritation on one's face and the handheld game console in the other's hands; and he was also beginning to see the fuzzy shape of his own future self approaching them as a plan formed in his head. He hid again. Only one shot at this. Would a human think he looked harmless and vulnerable? Those uniformed slabs of muscle were two feet taller than him, and he was naked. Check and check.

He waited until they turned the corner, then stepped out from behind the rubble pile, waving. "Oh, thank goodness, the police!" Probably the first and last time he was ever saying that. "I'm terrified confused, and can't seem to find my clothes. Can you he—" He tripped on a root, yelped, and had to grab the officers for balance. "... help." Okay. That was good. Extra harmless-looking. He meant to do that. But he made a mental note to spend a few more minutes on walking practice once he got away.

Grumpy Officer was looking toward the sky. "Oh." Gamer Officer was hiding his face behind his game console. "Oh dear." Grumpy Officer cleared his throat and said, "Of—of course. We're happy to help, Miss...?"

Heck. Think of a human name fast. "Tomato."

Gamer Officer said, "What seems to be the problem, Ms. Tomato?"

Now think of a story. "I... I witnessed a murder!" He pointed back the direction he'd come from. "It's just that way! Hurry!"

Grumpy Officer said, "That's the direction of the signal from Cipher's resurrection! Show us!"

As Bill led them back toward the guard's body, Gamer Officer asked, "Do—do you need some clothing, ma'am?" He patted down his jumpsuit and found no removable clothes.

"It's fine, it's not that cold."

"Did you... lose your clothing during the murder?" Grumpy Officer asked.

"Yep! Sure did!"

"How?"

That was a good question. "I'm not sure, it's all such a blur!"

As they emerged into the small clearing, they stopped dead at the sight of the body. Gamer Officer took one look at its face, turned away, and covered his mouth. Grumpy Officer knelt by it, careful not to touch it as he examined the damage. "He's definitely dead. This doesn't look like Cipher's usual work, though."

Trying to shield his eyes from the body, Gamer Officer asked, "Did you see what did this?"

Did he want to confirm to Time Baby's agents that Bill Cipher had been in the area? Probably not—last thing he needed was more Time Police. "I'm not sure! It could have been a bear."

"Hmm." Grumpy Officer rubbed his chin. "Well—we'll get you to the contemporary authorities, ma'am. This looks like a case for them." 

"You go," Gamer Officer said, voice strained. He pulled his time tape off his belt. "I'll report this to HQ."

"Good idea." Grumpy Officer paused. "Hold on. We don't look like contemporary authorities. How did you know we're cops?"

Both officers were desperately avoiding looking directly at Bill's naked body, one was kneeling by the corpse, the other was turned toward the woods and had his time tape extended inches in front of Bill—now. Bill flung his whole weight on Gamer Officer's arm to wrench the tape away from him, kicked Grumpy Officer's butt to knock him sprawling over the corpse, pulled out a random length of time tape, and snapped out of the year before the officers could registered what happened.

####

The first jump was just to escape. He popped open the time tape with his teeth and a sharp rock and packed it with dirt—it'd probably kill the tape after a jump or two but it would block Time Baby from being able to detect it, which was more important. The second jump took him to a ruined battlefield in the middle of the Time Baby War—Bill knew his human history—where Bill could dump this cheap police time tape riddled with temporal tracking technology and scavenge a military tape off a fallen rebel soldier. Rest in peace, brave rebel—Bill really wished they'd won the war against Time Baby. Maybe he could fix that for them once he was in charge.

By the time he found a tape in good condition, his abdomen, eyes, and head had developed an assortment of overlapping aches. Nothing he couldn't ignore. But it was worth the effort: the rebel military tape was less prone to overheating, more lax on permitting temporal doubles and time loops, and built to hide from Time Baby and his forces with paradox-cloaking stealth tech. Even if the time cops followed him this far, they'd never know where he went next.

He was continuing where he'd left off.

He'd love to return to the moment he died and murder the Pines on the spot—or, better yet, warn himself ten minutes before it happened. But even the best time tape would struggle to target a temporal paradox as complicated as Weirdmageddon—and if his reincarnation had taught him anything, it was that Weirdmageddon clearly sent travelers aimed toward it astray. The pigs had said Time Baby had them patrolling Gravity Falls for six months in either direction of Weirdmageddon; Bill could return to Gravity Falls before then, start the portal up earlier than Stanley managed to, invite himself through and give himself a few warnings about what to watch out for from the humans...

But that wasn't good enough.

Time moved wrong in the Theraprism. He felt like he'd experienced millennia surrounded by its grey tiles and fluorescent lights; but he also felt like time hadn't passed since his death.

His death was as fresh in his mind as if it had been an hour ago.

And the Pines family would pay for it.

First, he'd murder the Pines and anyone else in their stupid shack. He'd decide what to do next from there. Maybe he would jump a few years into the past and start Weirdmageddon early.

Or maybe he'd just continue where he'd left off. He'd find his corpse—he knew it was somewhere out in the woods—and keep it safe in the shack. He'd dig up the treasure Pine Tree and Shooting Star had buried during the summer and liquidate some of the gold. He'd fast-forward until the murder investigation was over and the shack was back on the market, buy it himself, repair the portal, and then, he'd shake his corpse's hand. He'd restart Weirdmageddon in his enemies' own home, wearing his true form—and as soon as that portal opened up, all his power would come rushing back to him from the Nightmare Realm. Maybe not the most efficient plan...

But so satisfying.

He could figure out how to pop the stupid weirdness barrier around the town as he went. Minor details. For now, all he cared about was killing the two-faced twins who'd dared try to stop him.

And he couldn't wait to see the look in Stanford's eyes.

He set his time tape for February 25, 2013—six months and a day after Weirdmageddon.

####

He appeared in a suburban backyard, snatched a bedsheet drying on a clothesline and a couple safety pins from a nearby laundry basket, and made himself a chiton.

Bill Cipher had billions upon billions of eyes on Earth. There were a million in Gravity Falls alone—stuffed into wallets, peering out of grocery store shelves, nestled into book pages, growing on the trees. He shut his flesh eyes to peer through the others, looking for his corpse...

And saw nothing. When he shut his eyes, his vision went completely black. That had never happened before.

It looked like the solitary dullness void.

He shivered and opened his eyes. He could find his body later. He didn't need it! He had his memory, he had his identity, and he had his all-seeing eye. Eyes. Once upon a time that was all he'd needed to liberate a dimension; and it was all he'd need now to liberate himself.

Provided he also had a portal. And that meant he needed to murder some enemies.

He headed for the Mystery Shack.

####

In retrospect, he probably should have planned the murders a little more thoroughly.

####

June 2, 2013

Bill was locked back in the cellar until the humans could Bill-proof the house—cutlery moved out of the kitchen, phones relocated where he couldn't reach them, dangerous chemicals locked away, etc. His cuffs and restraints were removed, he was handed a few granola bars and water bottles and awkwardly gifted a bucket that he received with an expression that suggested he wasn't quite sure what the humans expected him to use it for, and he was locked in.

And at last, everyone could get some sleep.

It was past five in the morning when Dipper and Mabel collapsed back in their beds. With time travel thrown in, they had been up for thirty hours with only an hour or two of napping. And yet, for all their exhaustion, when the first hint of morning grayness lightened the sky outside, both of them were still awake, staring at dust motes and the old wooden ceiling beams.

Mabel sighed heavily.

Dipper said, "You too?"

"Yeah. I guess it's the chocolate shake and pancakes. What's your excuse?"

"Bill ordered coffee for the table, and nobody told me I couldn't have it, so..."

Mabel laughed. "Evil chaos demon got you! You fell for his trap!"

"Oh nooo."

Neither of them needed to admit that it wasn't the caffeine keeping them awake.

"Hold on." Mabel got out of bed, scooted around Waddles—he took up more of the floor than he had last year—and trudged to her suitcase. She tossed half her clothes on the floor, and pulled out—

Dipper laughed weakly. "You brought those?"

"I thought we might need them. You know—being back here, reminded of everything."

Almost as soon as they'd gotten home last summer, Mabel had started knitting throw blankets depicting the anti-Bill zodiac that Ford had drawn. She gave the first to Dipper as his bar mitzvah gift. She kept the second herself. She mailed the other eight to the other members of the zodiac. (The family therapist their parents had started taking them to said self-expression through art was a great way to cope with difficult experiences.)

Ford had told them the zodiac drawing merely represented a list of people, like a chart with table seating arrangements. They knew the symbol itself didn't do anything. It held no magic, it couldn't protect them. Nevertheless, sleeping under his blanket had done more for Dipper's Bipper nightmares than any dream catcher ever could. Mabel thought wrapping up in it felt like a hug from their friends in Gravity Falls.

She handed Dipper his red blanket with the zodiac embroidered in dark green yarn, and pulled out her own rainbow blanket with black embroidery. Mabel wrapped hers around her head and shoulders like a huge hooded shawl and slid back in bed, her mind and dreams now properly shielded. Dipper stared at the face in the middle of the zodiac for a long moment, before he turned the blanket over so Bill's ever-watching eye could only see the dark surface of Dipper's bedsheet.

And then, at long last, they were safe enough to fall asleep.

####

"So then he said—" Bill put on his best impression of Stan's voice, "'Do you expect us to baby-proof the whole shack in five minutes? No! You're going in the cellar!'" It was actually a very good impression. "And now I've been here for hours. If they think they can trick me into staying down here..." A pinball fell between Bill's flipper bats. He sighed and launched another ball.

"It's downright disrespectful, is what it is," the cowboy skull in the pinball machine said. "Sounds like you've had a rough night, pardner."

"You don't know the half of it." Bill lost another ball in the gutter. "Gimme another three."

"That's supposed to be Game Over."

"Come on, I'm having a bad day. Just a friendly match! Look at my reflexes in this body, you and I both know I'm not high score material."

"Okay, okay. Here."

Ford cracked open the cellar door, flung a wad of fabric down the stairs, and shut the door again. "All right," Stan shouted through the door. "No tourists are around. Solitary confinement's over. Put on some normal clothes and knock when you're done."

"It's about time." Bill lost another ball between the flipper bats. "Sorry, 'partner.' Looks like we'll have to finish this game another time."

Stan, Ford, and Soos automatically took a few steps back as creaks and thuds drifted through the door from Bill climbing up the stairs, as though he were a monster they expected to break through the wood and attack them. He shouted, "Hey, how long does it really take to move a few knives to another room, anyway? I was starting to think you planned to leave me down here."

"We needed sleep! We were up all night!"

"How is that my problem? I never told you to sit up all night staring at me—"

After a few more minutes of back-and-forth grousing, Bill knocked on the cellar door to be unleashed. The shack household had scrounged together an XL yellow-beige pine tree t-shirt (surplus from the gift shop), a set of Soos's winter sweatpants (which Bill found too long and set aside), an elastic-waisted plain green skirt in case the sweats didn't fit (some old thing Abuelita never wore), a pair of old swim trunks (to compensate for the fact that nobody had the energy or motivation to go buy their prisoner underwear today), and mismatched flip-flops (from the Mystery Shack's lost-and-found).

The shack household had not scrounged together a broom to give to Bill, and yet when they opened the door, he was holding one, bristles pointed up, like a poorly-dressed witch waiting to go on an evening flight. The potential weapon was promptly confiscated, and Stan, Ford, and Soos escorted Bill around to the back of the shack. He stared out toward the woods as the door was opened for him, but it was impossible to tell whether he was looking for something specific or just getting one last glimpse of the sky before he was incarcerated indefinitely.

The moment Bill stepped inside, Abuelita was in front of him, shoving a hot plate of chicken and enchiladas in his chest. "Welcome. You are staying with us for a while, yes?"

Bill tried to take a step back, bumped into Soos, and automatically took the plate in both hands. He blinked at Abuelita, eyebrows raised in polite bafflement. "Yes?"

"Yes. Soos told me. You missed dinner." There was loose plastic wrap still half-covering the plate, which had been labeled in black marker: para Bill Cifra - NO TOCAR! "I saved you a plate."

"Oh yeah," Soos said, "Abuelita put that in the fridge for you before we ate last night. She's big on hospitality." 

"Well!" Bill beamed. "At least you have some manners—unlike some people around here who apparently don't care if I miss dinner." He shot a sly look at Ford. "Say, didn't I tell you never to call me—"

"Watch it," Ford said warningly. Stan gave him a baffled look.

Bill chuckled. "So! Does this come with silverware, or—?"

"Here." Abuelita offered him a plastic orange baby spoon. "Soos says you do not get the good silverware. So you cannot kill people."

"Yeah, yeah, I know the routine." He tossed the plastic wrap on the floor and attempted to saw off a chunk of enchilada with the soft edge of the spoon. "Between you and me, I'd be more likely to stick a fork in the microwave than try to kill someone with it—but hey, I'm not the warden."

"You threatened to stab me with a fork this morning," Ford said.

"Nooo, I told you why I wasn't going to stab you with a fork. That's the opposite of a threat," Bill said. (Ford exchanged a sideways glance with Stan, who rolled his eyes.) "Anyway, show me what you've done with this place since I last saw it!" He wove past the humans to duck into the kitchen. "I see you finally got rid of that second stove! Really frees up the space in here, doesn't it! Too bad you kept the gas one. I didn't wanna say anything about this last year, but fix that slow gas leak, would you? If you want to get haunted by carbon monoxide demons, that's your business, but I owe a tokoloshe money."

Stan blinked. "The slow what?"

Ignoring them, Bill went on, "You're gonna have to do something about all this." He waved his baby spoon at the fridge and cabinet doors. "You don't want me to come ask for help every single time I need to eat."

"Actually, that might be preferable," Ford said. "It would ensure you can't tamper with our food when we aren't looking."

"You'll get sick of it," Bill said confidently.

He finally freed up a spoonful of enchilada, stuffed it in his mouth, and tore off a chunk of chicken with his teeth—and then stopped, staring down at the plate in amazement. With his mouth still full, Bill said, "Oh wow, this is delicious! You know, I haven't had a home cooked meal in centuries! And that nutty aftertaste? Mm! You're a daring chef, lady. I love it."

He spat his mouthful back onto the plate. "But unfortunately, I think I'm allergic to one of your ingredients!" He held the plate out to Abuelita, grinning widely. "Would you mind giving me a portion with less cyanide?"

Everyone stared at Abuelita.

She shrugged placidly. "It was worth a try." She took back the plate.

Bill licked the last of the poisoned food off his teeth and spat it on the kitchen floor. "Mil gracias, señorita Silloncito."

She gave the floor a displeased look as she passed to wash off the dish in the sink, but merely said, "Un placer." She gave Bill another dirty look as he shoved in front of her to wash his hands in the sink before she could get started on the plate.

Dubiously, Ford murmured, "Silloncito isn't Mrs. Ramirez's first name, is it?"

"Nope." Stan grinned. "While you were busy studying the Odyssey, I was in South America learning Spanish—you know, a language people actually speak."

"What does 'silloncito' mean?"

"I dunno."

Soos had been gaping at his grandmother since Bill said the word "cyanide." He finally managed to work his jaw enough to say, "Abuelita, what...?"

"Do not worry about it, mijo," Abuelita said sweetly, pulling out a mop.

"Did you just try to...?"

"We can talk later." Abuelita gestured to the door, where Bill was meandering out of the kitchen. "I'll clean now. You go with the others."

As Bill left, he called back, "Next time, I'm making my own plate! Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..." He swept past the humans into the living room. "Hey, you finally got enough seating in here! This place is really starting to shed that 'lonely old bachelor' stench—ey, Stanley?"

"Watch it."

Where Stan's old recliner once sat, Abuelita had put her sofa with the pastel yellow floral print. Her blue armchair and Stan's recliner were lined up at a right angle to the sofa to form a seating area around the TV, which had been turned to face all the seats. Atop the decorative T-Rex skull sat a small vase with a few fresh flowers.

Soos dragged his distracted gaze away from the kitchen to point at the floral sofa. "You, uh... you can sleep on the sofa bed. It folds out. We're kind of out of other rooms. I'm in the master bedroom, Abuelita's in the study cuz she gets her own bathroom there and doesn't have to use the stairs, we made the parlor a guest room for the Pineses, the kids are in the attic... and that's pretty much all the bedrooms we've got, dude." Soos shrugged. "Me and Melody, we were talking about walling off the empty attic area to make a sick gaming room? I guess maybe we should think about making it another guest room instead—"

"Which Bill wouldn't be able to use," Ford said, "if it has a door. Besides, I doubt Bill will be here long enough for you to finish any large construction projects."

Airily, Bill said, "Think you'll figure out how to get rid of me that fast?" He didn't even look at Ford; he was busy taking off the sofa's cushions to inspect the foldout bed underneath. "Last time you tried it took you thirty years, and you're 0 for 4 murder attempts so far." Bill tried, unsuccessfully, to lift the folding bed out of the sofa. "Not—counting—all the times—" he grunted with exertion, "—you failed to burn my book."

Voice icy, Ford went on without acknowledging Bill. "And at any rate, I'd rather have him out in the open where we can all keep an eye on him."

Soos glanced back and forth between Ford and Bill as they shot verbal barbs at each other, his fingertips pressed together. "Oookay! So. Sofa bed it is. I like sofa beds! It feels kind of like camping, but without going outside."

"Bet I'm not allowed to start a campfire in the living room." Bill gave up on the sofa bed and looked around the room—and his face lit up like a child who'd just received a pirate ship-shaped birthday cake. "Hey! Is that me?" In his rush to cross the living room, he tripped over Abuelita's blue armchair, flopped flat on the floor, and got back up like nothing happened.

Where Ford had once hung his father's banner from the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel, Soos had put up a new decoration: a knit tapestry depicting Bill Cipher, framed in apocalyptic lightning and hovering over a sea of fire...

... and encircled by the Ten Cosmic Symbols of the zodiac prophesied to witness his defeat.

Bill's smile dimmed. "Ah."

"Oh, hey! That's the blanket Mabel made me." Soos stood next to Bill, admiring the zodiac blanket. "Yeah, she made us all blankets to commemorate our epic battle and everything? She called us up to ask how we wanted them customized and stuff. I suggested the flames and the lightning bolts! Thought they'd look rad. Heh. It's—it's pretty cool, right?"

Bill's gaze slowly traced the confining ring of symbols; and then met the gaze of his own, true, proper face. And he turned away to face Soos and forced his smile wider. "Question Mark, I like your sense of decor." 

"Ha—wait, seriously?"

"Heck, if I'd commissioned a portrait myself, I'd have requested the same! Remind me to show you some tapestries the Northwests have been keeping of me, I think you'd appreciate them!"

"Oh." Soos rubbed the back of his neck. "Huh. You know, I didn't think you'd think cool things are cool. Kinda."

"You kidding?! Fire and lightning! I love it! Like a party with natural pyrotechnics! It's nature's way of trying to unleash a bit of anarchy on an otherwise disappointing little world!"

"Uh..." Soos quickly glanced toward the Pines in a silent plea for help with this conversation, then looked back at Bill. "Yeah, totally dude! It's like... got that boom factor, you know?"

"Boom factor! Ha! You're all right, Questiony." Bill turned his back on the zodiac and swept across the room again. "So! What have you done with the rest of this dump!"

Soos stood rooted to the spot until Bill left the room.

He looked at Stan and Ford. "Do you think Bill, like... knows my name?"

Ford shrugged and made a so-so gesture.

Soos nodded. "Okay." He pulled out a chair at the living room table. "You guys wanna go ahead without me? I think I'm gonna... sit here. And process the fact that Abuelita is an attempted murderer."

As they followed Bill, Stan lowered his voice and asked Ford, "So, uh—what was with that thing about Bill telling you not to call him something?"

"Oh." Ford grimaced. "When we first met, and Bill had me convinced he was some muse of knowledge," (Stan snorted) "I asked if it was alright to just call him Bill. It... seemed too informal for a god." (Stan snorted again.) "Stop that." Ford spoke with great displeasure, as though he were repeating a particularly distasteful joke: "He said I could call him anything but don't call him late for dinner."

"Ah." And that was all they had time to say before they caught up with Bill, Ford had to rebury his memories of the years he'd thought Bill was his friend, and Stan had to force himself to stop wondering about them. It seemed inappropriate to think about Bill making friendly jokes.

####

On Bill's first proper night in the Mystery Shack, he woke in the middle of the night, gasping for air so loudly it sounded like a reverse scream.

Waking didn't improve things.

He was back in the room where he'd died, no light but the eerie blue of invisible flames licking up the walls, his vision framed by golden filaments spilling out of his head. He rolled over and heaved on the floor—and between his stomach's convulsions he made direct eye contact with an axolotl, cold, serene, staring dispassionately at him from an illuminated fish tank—and past the axolotl, he saw an image of himself trapped flat on the wall, surrounded by a ring of his enemies, fire lapping at his heels. And it was just like dying again, he was powerless, he could see his body coming apart in his peripheral vision, he couldn't even float, pinned to the ground by gravity—

He had to claw at his skin until this human body's uncomfortable alienness overrode the memory of his gold exoskeleton shattering.

His rebirthmark burned.

The next morning, the household found no signs of Bill in the living room except for a puddle of dried puke.

The sofa bed's mattress had been dragged halfway up the stairs, and then abandoned at the landing where the stairs turned a right angle.

They found Bill in the attic, laying on the floor atop a makeshift bed he'd assembled out of sofa cushions. He was curled up facing the wall beneath the seating alcove where, just a few months ago, there had been a window of his face.

####

(I hope y'all enjoyed!! I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you read the original and are back now to read the edited & updated version, I'd particularly love to hear your thoughts—even setting aside the TBOB edits, I think this new version of Bill's first moments alive is much stronger.

Plus he gets to kill a dude. Good for him.)

[rosemarythegoose]

LooneyFan1990

LooneyFan1990 was a… Very weird YouTube channel to say the least. The person behind the channel, known as Josiah Long, would only post on weekends, posting 3 videos every Saturday and Sunday. Obviously, if the username is anything to go by, he's an obvious Looney Tunes fan, with Bugs Bunny as his profile picture. His content usually ranged from straight up clips from Looney Tunes shorts, to weird animation parodies he did of Looney Tunes. Usually, his animations were surrealist and/or edgy retellings of known Looney Tunes episodes. Think Yellow Submarine meets VivziePop. Let's just say the amount of swears won't fly with YouTube nowadays.

I myself found the channel through a friend on Discord, who I'll keep anonymous out of respect for their boundaries. I've always found Josiah's content weird due to its surrealist nature and edgy dark humour. One joke in particular was the KKK shooting at the darkness of a cave because the dark is the colour black. I hate to admit it, but I laughed. It served as good commentary as to how stupid and insane those KKK guys are.

One parody in particular… Traumatized me when I was 13. It was called… “Elmer Season”. The sky was an acid trip with a giant eye as the sun and the trees looked like they were melting. It started Bugs and Daffy, like a typical Elmer Fudd cartoon would. They were sitting on a log, smoking weed.

Bugs: “Mannn, doc… I'm so sick of Elmer Fudd hunting us.”

Daffy: “Yeah, me too… It's duck season one minute, wabbit season the next. It's like we're both at risk.”

Bugs: “I know. It's fuckin' me up…”

Daffy: “Me too, man…”

Elmer in this parody looked… Weird. He has a sharp tooth in his mouth, with a Slipknot shirt on. But those aren't the only parts. He looked a little disproportionate in height, shorter than usual. His nose, for whatever reason, was purple. His eyes were also yellow. Bugs and Daffy didn't look that much better. They looked skinnier than usual, and Bugs had an Acid Bath shirt, with Daffy sporting a Metallica one. Bugs’ grey fur looked like a darker grey than usual too.

Both Bugs and Daffy turn to Elmer.

Elmer: “Be vewy vewy quiet~ I'm hunting wabbits~”

Bugs rolled his eyes and said this.

Bugs: “Oh shit… It's Elmer.”

Elmer: “That's wight~ And it's wabbit season~”

Bugs: “Actually, bitch, it's duck season.”

Daffy: “Oh fuck no! It's wabbit season!”

Bugs and Daffy do their usual routine of “duck season wabbit season” like in actual Looney Tunes. It continues until they swap.

Bugs: “Wabbit season.”

Daffy: “Duck season! Fire!”

Elmer fires his gun. Now, in normal Looney Tunes, Daffy’s bill would be in a different position after Daffy gets blasted. Here, in this parody, Daffy's face gets blasted to gore, horrifying Bugs half to death.

Bugs: “DAFFY-”

Daffy's blood was rainbow coloured with sparkles, and his skull was that of a human. Let me repeat that; Not a duck, but a human skull. A real photo of one in fact. Watching that, 13 years old me was shocked. I've watched Looney Tunes with my uncle before, but I've never seen anything like this at the time. I mean, nowadays, I'm obviously desensitized to stuff like this in animation, but kid me was never the same. Elmer laughed coldly as he said this.

Elmer: “Well, wooks wike it was duck season after all! Well, see ya, siwwy bitches!”

Elmer leaves the screen as Bugs stares, horrified. Daffy just made slurping and gurgling noises at Bugs in response before pulling out a meatball sub, also a real photo, seemingly offering it to Bugs. Bugs' eye twitches as he whimpers out the words, “That… wasn't… supposed to happen…”

Daffy just tilts his head, seemingly confused. Bugs just stares at the screen for a few seconds before he shakes and smiles impossibly wide. I'll tell you, kid me was confused. Remember when I said I was never the same after I saw Daffy get absolutely gored? Well… That wasn't the most traumatic part… This was. This was much worse than that.

Bugs Bunny, the icon, the very face of WB, eating Elmer's organs, berating him for hurting Daffy, blaming himself for it too. Elmer’s only responses were moans of pain as Bugs continued his gorey feast.

Bugs: “WHY DID YOU DO IT?! WHY DID I HAVE TO PULL OUR USUAL ROUTINE?! I'M SUCH A FUCKING IDIOT FOR LETTING DAFFY GET HURT THAT WAY!!! WHY DIDN'T I BE THE ONE TO GET SHOT?! WHY?! WHY?! FUCKING WHY?!”

I did not believe what I was seeing! I felt frozen and unable to move. I could only stare as Bugs continued his crashout. Bugs stared at the screen again after his blood, gorey feast, blood soaking his fur, breathing heavy. Bugs had that impossible smile again after a while, his pupils very tiny. The only sound? A very weird version of the Looney Tunes theme song, and backwards laughing.

After seeing that, I couldn't take it. I X’d off the window making it go away, and began crying hard. My mum ran up to my room and asked me what was wrong. When I showed her the video, she was horrified. I had to have my mum watch me as I used the computer for a while since the incident.

Nowadays? My Internet access is more or less unrestricted now. When I tried to search up “LooneyFan1990” out of curiosity, the channel was gone, either because YouTube caught up to it, or because Josiah deleted it for personal reasons. Part of me felt a little sad, cuz a part of my childhood was gone, but a part of me also felt like I was free, because I can no longer be subjected to the video that gave me nightmares as a kid. One question still lingers though… Why did Josiah make this?

[thesweetestsupervillains]

What is your opinion on AI?

// Truthfully, I love it and wish the community would engage with it more so that they'd understand the real problems that it has and the real threat it poses, which is not and never was about 'small artists.'

Let's be frank here, if you have ever tried to train a LORA or finetune a model, you'd understand that you need two things: good data and good tags. And no offense to small artists, but 99% of art just doesn't fit this bill online. Just pull up Pixiv and DeviantArt and scroll the first page; if you were trying to teach a PERSON about art, how much of that would you use? Not much I imagine. Even if you were trying to teach it a style or concept.

The other thing is, it's not theft. A style can't be copyrighted legally, and if you're posting gifs or using comics/anime/tv/movie screencaps for icons or the like, congrats you're also 'stealing.' If you draw fanart, you didn't pay Disney for that, if you write fanfic, you didn't pay the author for that, and those of use who remember the early fanfic.net days will remember when authors sued and won to stop fanfic from being put online.

The environmental impact is also grossly distorted. You can train and generate images on your home computer using 4gb vram. Unless you think that having your personal PC plugged in is destroying the environment, it's not. The giant amounts of water you see cited are to the run the giant server farms, and if you're going to talk about that you need to accept that the internet requires massive amounts of power to function structurally; that's why there are giant cables running across the ocean floor to connect the world's DNS.

No, the real problem with AI is two-fold:

how it's going to change copyright enforcement

how it's going to change the nature of the internet itself

You may have heard that the Internet Archive recently lost it's case in regards to allowing people to borrow books on it's platform that were copyrighted. That's the tip of the iceberg.

The reality is that what you see GPT do right now with google (where it mimics a human by randomly scrolling the pages on its first page and then guesses what was there ) is still in the realm of human possibility. It's also not different from people looking at WebMD and thinking that they can self diagnose. In other words, it's not being used in a way that's scary, yet.

But they recently started on the first leap forward, where a model can 'consider' things. Ergo, it can understand context. Now, let's apply that to how say, algorithms police content online. Now let's let the government decide what gets policed. A human being can only reasonably see so much, a lot falls through the cracks. But a computer is only limited by computational power.

So imagine if, say, Disney had a model that could search the internet for every instance of someone drawing and posting fanart of spiderman and then send the hosting company like Tumblr a cease and desist and demand that it be removed, pending prosecution. The reason that companies don't do this right now is that this requires a LOT of manpower and time and effort and it's just not worth it. But a computer that was capable of automating that could do it easily. And suddenly, posting spiderman online is illegal, because it's already illegal, because you're violating their copyright by reproducing a copyrighted image.

And no, 'fair use' won't matter, as that's been A. gutted to hell, and B. is actually a game about who has more money and time. Are you going to go to court with Disney to say that your drawing of spiderman is actually fair use, potentially taking years of your life and going bankrupt due to legal fees? No. You won't.

In other words, the internet we have is going to look a lot more like the great firewall of china, where posting a picture of winnie the pooh gets you thrown in jail because it's slang used to refer to dear leader.

But that's just one aspect to it. You'll still be able to have spiderman. But you won't be allowed to post your own drawings.

What companies are going to do is train models based on their own legally owned works, and then sell access to them to you, the consumer. There's nothing illegal or stolen about that. If Disney, which owns Marvel, wants to train a model to generate spiderman pictures, it 100% can, and without violating any copyright laws. In so doing, it can then say that if you want to have spiderman pictures, you have to use their app, and if you don't, you're breaking the law, and they'll know about it, because surprise, their models can now police the internet for any and all posts that violate their rights.

In other words, AI has shown that the current system of copyright is untenable and impossible to maintain. Thus, we have two paths forward. One, which is what I've already described, which resembles a dystopian nightmare where the internet is nothing but an application that you pay megacorporations to use, or one in which we entirely disassemble copyright law entirely.

Now, doing that would also hurt lots of artists; if you come up with an OC and there's no copyright, anyone can do whatever they want with it. They can make all the Winnie the Pooh horror movies they want! They can draw porn of your precious characters and there would be nothing you could do about it.

But remember, any laws that you create, any restrictions, will be used by people much more powerful than you with legal teams and lots of money. So there's no such thing as a 'middle ground' here. AI has changed things.

Of course, even without AI this would happen. Lots of major characters and franchises are running up against public domain in the next decades; Superman becomes public domain in 2034, and Batman becomes public domain in 2035, but spiderman not till 2057. And that's if there aren't carve outs; remember that while Winnie the Pooh is public domain, that's only the original version, not the version with the red shirt. That's still copyrighted. And of course, parts of Sherlock Holmes are still copyrighted.

So really, AI didn't create any of this. We were going to face this bridge eventually. We're just facing it now as opposed to in a decade. AI, I think, is a great tool; but I also think that people's ignorance and lack of knowledge cause them to focus on out of date or minor topics in how it works and will be used.

While people complain that twitter might scrape for their fanart, the US government is training facial recognition model that can compare any photo taken from a drone to every single photo on the internet, ensuring that you will be instantly identifiable wherever you go at all times. That phone with a gps you have? It'll be able to tell people what places you frequent and then a model will be able to predict where you're most likely to be at what times based on that.

Again, AI is not magic. It simply takes tasks and makes them easier which means that more things become possible. Things that are too expensive, burdensome, or complex become easier. And that cuts both ways. It will make your life easier. But it will also make your life less yours, in the same way that social media and mass communication turned your life into a public spectacle for mass consumption for strangers.