#Great Bacon Knowledge

[iron-sides]

actually im not done complaining abt derap not liking hannah because in what fucking world is that an acceptable or even smart thing to say directly to someones face when you are trying to recruit them. if u didnt want her on the team why not just say that?? but now you just look like yr deliberately sabotaging recruitment efforts like :/ i get that hes playing a character but could that character include fewer WHO RAISED YOU moments my fucking god

[radinea]

Long bacon but make it raeda

(Note : the term "lesbian" has for definition "non-man loving non-men", meaning it can include non-binary people. It occurred to me that it was probably not common knowledge, and I should explain it for anyone who might be confused. This is just an headcanon tho, Raine has not been confirmed to be one, or anything other than non-binary so far. Have a great day !)

[astra-ravana]

Ancient Alchemy

Alchemy is one of the oldest mystical and proto-scientific traditions, blending philosophy, chemistry, spirituality, and metaphysics. It was practiced across multiple civilizations, including Egypt, Greece, China, India, and the Islamic world, each contributing to its development.

⚗Origins and Evolution of Alchemy

Ancient Egypt & Hermetic Alchemy (c. 2000 BCE - 300 BCE)

• Egyptian priests practiced early alchemical processes, such as metal purification and embalming.

• Thoth, later known as Hermes Trismegistus, was considered the patron of alchemy, giving rise to the Hermetic Tradition.

• The Emerald Tablet, attributed to Hermes, introduced the concept of “As above, so below,” suggesting the microcosm reflects the macrocosm.

Greek and Hellenistic Alchemy (c. 300 BCE - 400 CE)

• Greek philosophers like Empedocles and Plato theorized about the four classical elements (earth, water, air, and fire) as the building blocks of reality.

• The idea of the Quintessence (Aether) emerged as a mystical fifth element.

• Alchemy merged with Gnosticism and early Christian mysticism.

Indian and Chinese Alchemy (c. 400 BCE - 1200 CE)

• Indian Alchemy (Rasasastra) focused on immortality and transforming metals into gold, with mercury playing a key role.

• Chinese Alchemy (Neidan & Waidan) aimed at achieving the Elixir of Immortality, focusing on both external substances (Waidan) and internal spiritual practices (Neidan).

• Daoist alchemists sought balance through the Yin-Yang and the Five Elements.

Islamic and Medieval European Alchemy (c. 700 CE - 1600 CE)

• The Islamic world preserved and expanded alchemical knowledge, with figures like Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber), who systematized laboratory techniques.

• Alchemy entered medieval Europe through translations, inspiring figures such as Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and Paracelsus.

• The quest for the Philosopher’s Stone—a mythical substance granting immortality and transmuting base metals into gold—became central.

Renaissance and Early Modern Alchemy (c. 1500 - 1700 CE)

• The fusion of alchemy and early chemistry occurred through figures like Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle.

• Paracelsus emphasized spagyric alchemy, focusing on the medicinal applications of alchemy rather than purely transmutational goals.

• The rise of the Rosicrucians and Freemasons kept alchemical philosophy alive in esoteric circles.

⚗Core Principles of Alchemy

The Three Alchemical Principles (Tria Prima – Paracelsus)

Alchemy posits that all matter consists of three essential principles:

• Sulfur (Soul) – Represents spirit, transformation, and the volatile aspects of existence.

• Mercury (Mind) – Symbolizes fluidity, adaptability, and the connection between spirit and body.

• Salt (Body) – Embodies physical form and stability.

⚗The Four Classical Elements

Alchemy works with the foundational elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, believing these are essential to transmutation and spiritual purification.

The Magnum Opus (Great Work)

The process of transmutation was divided into four symbolic stages:

• Nigredo (Blackening) – Death, dissolution, and breaking down impurities.

• Albedo (Whitening) – Purification and enlightenment.

• Citrinitas (Yellowing) – Awakening and the infusion of divine light.

• Rubedo (Reddening) – Completion, the birth of the perfected being, or the Philosopher’s Stone.

⚗Applications of Alchemy

Physical & Material Alchemy (Transmutation & Chemistry)

• Attempting to turn lead into gold symbolized the refinement of base matter into perfection.

• Alchemists developed early chemical processes, including distillation, sublimation, and crystallization, laying the groundwork for modern chemistry.

• Gunpowder, acids, and medicinal compounds were discovered through alchemical experiments.

Spiritual & Mystical Alchemy

• Many saw alchemy as a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment—transforming the “lead” of the mundane self into the “gold” of the divine self.

• The Philosopher’s Stone was also symbolic of self-realization and immortality.

• Theurgy and Hermetic practices integrated alchemy with ritual magick to invoke higher states of consciousness.

Medicine & Healing (Alchemical Medicine – Spagyrics)

• Paracelsus introduced the idea that diseases could be cured by extracting the essence of plants and minerals.

• Early homeopathy and herbal medicine developed from these alchemical principles.

• Some alchemists sought longevity elixirs, believed to extend life or even grant immortality.

Psychological Alchemy (Carl Jung’s Interpretation)

• Carl Jung saw alchemy as a metaphor for psychological individuation, where the Magnum Opus represented self-integration.

• The shadow (Nigredo), anima/animus (Albedo), and self-realization (Rubedo) were psychological processes paralleling alchemical transformation.

Occult and Modern Esoteric Alchemy

• Alchemical concepts remain central in Hermeticism, Thelema, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry.

• The idea of internal alchemy is found in modern spiritual traditions, focusing on energy work, ascension, and self-deification.

⚗Legacy of Alchemy in the Modern World

• Chemistry & Pharmacology: Many laboratory techniques originated from alchemical practices.

• Spiritual Development: The concept of personal transformation remains a key theme in occult traditions.

• Symbolism & Psychology: Alchemy’s symbols and processes influence Jungian psychology and self-improvement methodologies.

Alchemy is far more than just the pursuit of gold—it is a science of transformation at all levels: material, spiritual, and psychological. From its ancient roots in Egypt and China to its esoteric revival in modern mysticism, alchemy continues to inspire those seeking wisdom, power, and enlightenment.

[donutz]

Catnap & Dogday being silly with reader

Request from Wattpad—! Here you go Zeki aph☆

—☆You are a smiling critter in this, if u want to know which one(but don't know what animal or insect to pick) you could start out as a sheep!

It’s early in the morning, and the kids have woken up(some of them, those are the early birds).

You and PickyPiggy help out with the breakfast, surprisingly you two never get tired of it.

PickyPiggy is very familiar with food so of course she won't get bored, but you? It can be confusing on why you never get tired.. Of cooking and baking for the kids.

Both of you cook everyday, at least for breakfast. Cooking over 500 pancakes, bacon(sometimes), and eggs isn't thattt bad!!

That's what PickyPiggy and you say.

So while you were cooking pancakes, you were by yourself. PickyPiggy already took care of the bacon. Seems.. Weird. Because y'know, bacon is pork. But she doesn't know that so let's keep it a secret.

You had 400 already done, just 100 left. Then you and Picky have to work together to set the table and place down the plates of food.

You finished pouring out the batter for a few pancakes then sat down somewhere on the couch.

You're cooking for all the kids, but the little ones come first. The little ones are 1-6, the youth is 7-10, then the older ones are 11-17. Why do the little ones wake up earlier? You're not sure.

Since there isn’t anything to watch except Smiling Critter videos. You decide to watch that. While it was playing, you kind of— zoned out..

‘Why don’t I have hands instead of hooves’?

Then Dogday and Catnap came out of nowhere.

“Sheepy”!

“...”

Dogday jumped on you while Catnap crawled on the couch and sat next to you.

“What’cha doin?!” Dogday asked, he was always so interested in what you do in your everyday life. It’s just a routine, sometimes it doesn’t always stick to that but it’s okay.

“Waiting for the pancakes to cook—” While you were speaking, apparently PickyPiggy woke up and wanted to check on the cooking.

“Oh that’s great! Your pancakes are amazing! As always!” Dogday always compliments you on your cooking.

“What’s the ingredients for em? Again..?” And for some reason he couldn’t remember the ingredients every single time you told him. But you don’t mind.

(This is a real recipe by the way you can actually make this, it’s how I make pancakes!) While making eye contact with Picky, you were stating the ingredients.

“So I first use 1 cup of pancake flour”(You can use any, I think, I’m not sure since I’ve been using the same one every time I make pancakes)

“Then a ⅔ cup of water(If the flour looks like it needs more water you can do a full cup!)” You were hand motioning to Picky to flip over the pancakes since they should be done by now. She did it so you don’t have to worry too much, now.

She’s taking care of the pancakes now that you’re explaining the ingredients to a very interested puppy, and a very much listening kitty.

“Then three slices of butter, after getting the pieces I put it in the microwave, for 30 seconds or 1 minute, depending on how big the slices were”

“And to add some yummy flavor to it I use cinnamon, as much as you want really, also if you want to make it really sweet, you can use milk”!

“After putting the ingredients together, you mix 'em up! And now you pour the batter on the griddle, as much as you want”.

“Also if it’s too dry you could add more liquids(any of them, the melted butter, the water, the milk) or if it’s too liquidy you could add more flour”.

“... Wow! Sheepy you’re so cool when it comes to cooking and stuff!” The puppy was wagging his tail at how amazing you were with your knowledge about making food.

Then he gave you a big hug, he was on your left side so you put your left arm around his back.

“Thanks—”

Then Catnap rubbed his head against yours while purring.

Even if Picky is still in the area, she’s too sleepy to process Catnap’s affection.

You didn’t want to sleep here on the couch so you suggested to the polar opposites that, “We should move to our critter bedroom or something”.

While you three were walking to the critter room, remember how I said that some kids were early birds? Yeah, and someee of those kids were out of their bedrooms. So you and Catnap had to deal with having them go back into their rooms, since Dogday isn’t too good at that stuff.

He sometimes gets.. Manipulated by the kids.. They reason with him and tell him that it’s okay to stay out of the rooms. Then he goes, “Okay!” It’s not annoying, but it is annoying that the kids were taking advantage of Dogday’s kindness.

After that frenzy, you guys were actually heading back to the critters’ room.

Luckily, the workers thankfully had sympathy for the critters so you all actually have a place to rest. Even if you don’t need to sleep.

All the critters, except Picky, were playing around in the room. Then your trio came in and walked in on a party. Like a teenage birthday party, it was actually crazy. And somehow Craftycorn was drawing during all of this??

Catnap, Dogday and you were going towards your bed, just sitting on it, watching the madness. There was so much laughing, the room could be mistaken for a bunch of 3 year olds.

Then, KickinChicken threw a pillow and it hit Catnap’s face..

The room went silent, though, Craftycorn was still drawing.

“Oh! Sorry Catnap! I’ll try not to hit you again”!

He slowly turned his head towards the chicken, looking scary as ever.

But then you scratched the underside of his chin with your wrist(since you’re a sheep and have wool) or if your critter actually has hands then you scratched under his chin with your hand.

“Sorry about him, continue.” And then the playing started again.

And yes, Catnap started purring.

[forsaken-headcanons]

💔 uhh now I can submit a request I almost forgot all my headcanons I had for forsaken

BUT ANYWAYS

For guest 1337 lore I was wondering how the admins would just yknow let a whole ass massacre of guests to happen Soo what if the admins like secretly support it

um basically guests can become corrupted like guest 666 at any time + admins have a very hard time banning them (like in the actual Roblox where a ban could be easily evaded as a guest)

and since this is very dangerous bc lots of people can get killed and the admins efficiently deal with them as they can’t ban them AND they’re quite strong

as a whole group of people, which is still relatively small but also poses major risks, an admin proposed that they should just get rid of guests entirely, cause not only they can evade bans they also cause lots of damage. But still, getting rid of a whole group of people is still removing a whole group of people which will cause alarm in Robloxia and any guests who wanted to oppose with the knowledge they can just become powerful easily will just use it to their advantage. What’s the better alternative? Fund a whole entire group (aka the bacon soldiers) to get rid of guests for them whilst keeping the secret that they’re behind this

Uh yeah that’s it. Sorry if this doesn’t make sense I’m bad at English (also maybe the admin who proposed such idea to remove guests entirely) was doombringer since he did get corrupted with his twisted sense of justice in the lore I think please don’t throw tomatoes at me for this headcanon 😭

wait holy fuck. our jaw dropped when we read this holy fuck. the concept of the bacon soldiers being FUNDED by the admin/s?? holy. got. damn. holy damn. HOLY PEAK?? yeah uh we're stealing that if you don't mind erm /silly

YOUR ENGLISH IS GREAT DW!! also oml mrdoombringer mentioned... when the admin named mrdoombringer indeed brings in the doom:

[ckret2]

Chapter 43 of suddenly human Bill Cipher is pretty eager to remain imprisoned inside the Mystery Shack:

The Eclipse: Part 1

Gravity's disappearing in Gravity Falls. Bill has an explanation for what's going on that has absolutely nothing to do with him, and also doesn't make any sense. Fiddleford has an alternate theory that makes a lot of sense, and has a whole lot to do with Bill. Ford trusts Fiddleford.

####

"An eclipse," Ford repeated. "Gravity's vanishing, you're floating, and you expect me to believe that it's due to an eclipse."

Bill shrugged. "I don't expect anything out of you. Believe whatever the heck you want. That's what it is, though."

"Even if it wasn't a ridiculous notion, there aren't any solar or lunar eclipses anywhere near Oregon this summer—"

"Did I say the eclipse was solar or lunar?" Bill asked. "No. I didn't." He breezed past Ford, heading to the kitchen. "Hey, is anybody gonna eat those pancakes?"

"Mine." Dipper ran past Bill to his abandoned plate.

"Then what kind of an eclipse is it?" Ford demanded.

Bill leaned on the kitchen counter, crossed his arms, and pursed his lips thoughtfully. Finally, he said, "Gravitational eclipse."

"There's no such thing!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Dr. I Think Having A Mere Five PhDs Means I Know Everything! Please, enlighten the trillion-year-old all-seeing eye who spent a year correcting all your math with your superior knowledge of physics!"

"It's twelve PhDs and you know it."

"Oh, so what! I can still count 'em on one hand." (Dipper gave Bill's hand a puzzled look.)

"Is that how it is!" Ford huffed angrily. "Fine, great teacher—would you be so kind as to educate your student on what the devil a 'gravitational eclipse' is!"

He fully expected Bill to start spouting some absurd science fiction explanation; but instead, Bill hesitated, gaze flicking nervously toward the ceiling. Ford looked up, but didn't see anything.

"Just don't worry about it." Bill rubbed his right eye. He turned away from Ford to watch Dipper struggle to squeeze pancake syrup out of an uncooperative bottle. "Everything will go back to normal in three days. Just—don't look at the sky."

"Why not?"

"Don't worry about it," Bill repeated.  "Hey, take off the lid and stick a knife in, you're never getting anything out that way."

"I've got it," Dipper said testily.

Soos came downstairs at about the same time Stan joined them from the hallway. "Dudes, I think something weird's going on," Soos said.

Ford turned his back on his fruitless conversation with Bill. "We've noticed. Gravity's decreasing."

Soos paused. "Oh," he said, slightly deflated. "I thought I was developing super strength."

"Sorry to disappoint."

"So what's causing it?" Stan asked.

"I don't know yet."

From the kitchen, Bill called, "I just told you!"

Ford didn't look at him. "I don't know the real reason yet."

Stan asked, "Think it might be a portal thing? When it was powering up, gravity got kinda screwy. It wasn't like this, though. Any time there was a surge, gravity hiccuped for a few seconds. It never just... went down a little."

"And not for this long, either," Soos said. "It's been like this all morning." He paused; then asked, hopefully, "You sure we aren't just all developing super strength at the same time?"

Ford shook his head apologetically.

"Aww."

"I suspected the portal first," Ford said. "But I just looked it over and checked the equipment. There's no way any of it could have powered on. It's been completely disassembled since last summer." 

Stan shrugged. "What else could it be?"

"The gravity anomalies occurred whenever the portal was connected to the Nightmare Realm. All I can think is that perhaps it's something else with a connection to the Nightmare Realm that might be having a destabilizing effect on the fabric of reality. Something much weaker, but steadily regaining power..." He turned to cast a venomous look at the kitchen. "Power like the ability to float..."

Bill had been preoccupied with dipping a strip of raw bacon into a stolen uncapped syrup bottle; but at the accusation, he stared at Ford in disbelief. "What—are you kidding me?"

"Have a better explanation for why, the moment all this starts, you can suddenly hover down the stairs?"

"Sure," Bill said. "I'm better at floating than the rest of you because I've been doing it longer."

"Oh, that's stupid!"

"You're stupid."

"You're up to something," Ford snarled. "I know it."

"What could I possibly be up to!" Bill spread his hands, exasperated. "Seriously! Tell me! What could I possibly be up to?"

Ford screwed his face into a scowl, trying to think of any way Bill could have orchestrated the gradual decline of gravity while imprisoned in the Mystery Shack. "You are up to something," he said firmly.

Bill groaned and rolled his eyes. "Well if you ever figure out what, let me know! I'm dying to find out what I'm plotting." He chugged from the syrup bottle like it was a flask. And then had to keep holding it up while he waited for the reduced gravity to work on the syrup.

"Hey, Dr. Pines?" Soos held up his phone. "Just got a text from Tate. He says Old Man McGucket wants to know if you can come discuss the gravity issue?"

"I was just thinking the same thing. Let Fiddleford know I'll be there as soon as I can. Does he want me to bring anything?"

"Nope. Just your handsome face." Soos chuckled. "He—he didn't say that part, though. I did. I just think guys should compliment each other more."

Ford nodded solemnly. "Thank you, Soos."

"Grunkle Ford, can I come too?" Dipper dumped his dirty dish in the sink. "I could—I dunno—help brainstorm solutions, or something...?"

"I'd be delighted." Ford had wanted to spend so much more time with Dipper this summer. By now, he'd thought they would have had at least one hike through the mountains around Gravity Falls and maybe dug into a couple of old mysteries he'd never solved. At least this was one mystery Ford could bring him along for.

Dipper's face lit up. "Hold on, let me go get my journal." He ran upstairs, bouncing up two steps at a time in the reduced gravity.

Ford murmured to Stan, "You can hold down the fort while I'm gone?"

Stan nodded slightly. "I'll keep a close eye on him."

"Good."

When Dipper had returned and they were headed out the door, Bill called from the kitchen, "Keep your head down out there. And get inside as soon as you can."

Ford shot a dark look at Bill, but said nothing. "Let's go." He shut the door behind them a bit harder than necessary.

Soos headed into the kitchen to make breakfast. As he passed, Bill said, "Hey. Does the 'guys complimenting guys' thing only apply to humans, or what?"

"Oh. Uh..." Soos pulled his head out of the fridge to look at Bill. "You... look good in yellow? Is—is that a good compliment? I don't know what triangle demons consider a compliment."

Bill considered it. "Sure, it'll do." He dipped another strip of bacon in the syrup. "I look even better in gold."

####

A quarter mile from the shack, Ford drove over a small bump in the road he'd gone over a hundred times before.

The car bounced so high that Ford's head hit the car roof.

Somewhere, he just knew, Bill was laughing at him.

####

Dipper's knee had been bouncing for three minutes straight by the time they approached the gate to the Northwest Manor. "Dipper, are you alright?"

"Sorry." Dipper planted his foot flat on the floor. "It's just—we're driving really slow, and this whole gravity thing is kind of an emergency..."

Just nervous. "I know," Ford sighed. "I can't go any faster without losing control. Lower gravity means lower traction between the tires and the road." But it was driving him mad.

At the manor, Tate greeted them at the door with a slight nod. "Hey. Dad's in the lab."

"Thank you, Tate. I know the way."

When they entered the lab, Fiddleford was working with a soldering iron on an electronic device the size of a toaster. He looked up as soon as they came in. "Stanford, Dipper! Good timing. Come in. How's the shack?"

"Down a few rubber balls."

Ford left Dipper to drift around the lab inspecting Fiddleford's equipment and listening in on the conversation as he and Fiddleford caught up. Fiddleford had first noticed something was wrong during his usual morning post-coffee rambunctious rollick, when he leaped high enough to bang his head on the ceiling. ("All the way to the ceiling? In this house?" "Well, I was standing on the counter, you see." "Ah, of course.") He'd immediately built a vacuum chamber he could drop various tools and cutlery in so he could measure the acceleration of gravity. Usually, objects on Earth fell 9.8 meters per second. When Fiddleford first measured, falling objects accelerated by 7.9 meters per second—almost 20% slower than they were supposed to. Now, it was 7.7 meters per second. If that rate of decline was steady, gravity must have been going down overnight without anyone noticing. By Fiddleford's calculations, gravity was decreasing by around 1.5% an hour—and, if it continued at this rate, it would be gone the day after tomorrow, by early afternoon.

(Bill had said three days. That wasn't even two and a half.)

Fiddleford had done some scans and called some old college pals down in Texas to ask if they'd noticed anything strange—and it seemed that Gravity Falls was the only place in the country experiencing anything unusual, at least according to NASA's data. Fiddleford had asked Tate to drive around town dropping things; quelle surprise, the gravitational oddity seemed perfectly contained to the circumference of the town's weirdness barrier.

"If you're in communication with NASA, I don't suppose you could ask if..." Ford winced at himself, "they've... noticed any astronomical anomalies?"

Fiddleford stroked his beard. "I reckon I could, but—why?"

Ford sighed. "Bill said this is being caused by what he calls a 'gravitational eclipse.' Which sounds like patent nonsense, but—on the one percent chance he's telling the truth..."

"I getcha. That Bill's as trustworthy as a rattlesnake with rabies—but until we know what's happening, we ought to consider every possibility."

"Yes. Precisely." Ford paused. "Can... rattlesnakes catch rabies?"

"Absolutely not! Which is why you should never trust one what says he's rabid."

"Ah. Yes. I see," Ford said uncertainly.

Like Ford, Fiddleford's first suspicion was that this had something to do with the portal—a suspicion that was scuttled when Ford informed him he'd already checked the portal. Ford's own next theory was that Bill personally was somehow behind this. His gravity already seemed to be far lighter than the rest of the town. But Ford didn't know whether that was because Bill was causing the gravity-reducing anomaly, or because the gravity-reducing anomaly was disproportionately affecting Bill. And even if Bill was causing it, as yet Ford had no idea by what mechanism he was doing it.

Fiddleford had the first idea that might explain how this was physically happening: dimensional rips.

At the end of last summer, the town and surrounding woods had been lousy with small dimensional rips torn in spacetime by Weirdmageddon and its aftermath. A few had been large enough for a grown man to stumble through, but many were barely as long as a fingernail. Ford and Stan had spent the last few days of summer running through the town and the woods with the kids, armed with alien adhesive, glueing shut the rips; and then—after traveling back and forth to California to attend Dipper's bar mitzvah and to get hollered at by Shermie for disappearing and/or faking a death—they'd spent most of the next month taking care of even more rips. (Just enough time for gnomes to steal Ford's new Journal 4.)

The remains of the rips could still be seen throughout Gravity Falls: odd invisible seams in the air that seemed to make the woods behind them bend strangely, like the transition between air and water where light refracted differently. Sometimes the sun would line up just right with a gap in the leaves so that you could see a sunbeam bending in midair.

Fiddleford had two theories:

Theory one: even after they'd sealed up all the rips, the distressed fabric of reality around Gravity Falls had grown threadbare. Rather than a few huge rips tearing through to the Nightmare Realm, countless micro-rips were forming—hundreds of thousands of holes between the fibers of reality, too tiny to be seen or detected—and they were reaching critical mass. The structural integrity of reality itself was about to catastrophically fail. The barrier between here and the Nightmare Realm could shred apart at any minute, ripping open a massive maw too wide to ever be repaired, irreversibly swallowing Gravity Falls into Bill's dying dimension of madness and leaving a frothing pustule of chaos trapped inside the weirdness barrier, ready to spread across all of Earth if anything should ever pop it!

Or two: something else was happening.

Ford thought it was worth investigating. The damage was already there; maybe Bill knew it, was exacerbating it—perhaps by his mere presence—and was just hoping the humans wouldn't figure it out before his homecoming.

"You remember the wormhole detector I built last September to sense when new dimensional rips were openin' up?" Fiddleford asked. "Well, it ain't detected a thing in town since March—but if these micro-rips are real, they'd be too little to detect from any farther than forty or fifty feet. So's I whipped up a portable scannermadoohickey!" He picked up the object he'd been working on when Ford and Dipper arrived. "You can take it to the places with the most damage and wave it around to see if it senses anything!"

Ford inspected the scanner. "It says it's detecting eighteen right now."

Fiddleford waved him off. "That's fine, a few itty bitty little tears oughta be expected for the kinda damage we got last year. But if my theory's correct, there's somewhere in Gravity Falls that'll have hundreds of thousands of tears within the scanner's radius. That's what we're looking for."

"Great. And, what do we do if we find them? Such small rips would be impossible to individually seal with my adhesive applicator."

"I thought of that, too!" Fiddleford scrambled over two tables, knocking tools on the ground as he went, to grab a plastic cone-shaped object the size of a football. He scuttled beneath the tables back to Ford. "Look! I made a glue grenade!"

"A—a what?"

"Once you figure out where the micro-rips are concentrated, just pour that alien adhesive of yours into this spout here, pull the pin, and chuck it! It'll instantly seal up all the micro-rips in the area and then cover the whole town in a cloud of alien adhesive, closing any remaining rips!"

"Hmm... It sounds risky. It would use up the rest of our andhesive all at once," Ford said. "And the environmental impact could be devastating."

Fiddleford blinked. "Environmental impact?"

"Just think of an adhesive this powerful settling over the whole town and forest in a thin film. It would glue people's pores shut! They wouldn't be able to sweat! Imagine. And that's just one example of the potential consequences."

"Hm." Fiddleford scratched his head. "I could invent a body lotion with alien adhesive solvent?"

"Or, maybe we should only use the grenade once we're sure that such an extreme measure is necessary."

"Aww." Fiddleford kicked his foot in disappointment. "Hold on—let me at least whip up a spray attachment for your adhesive gun. So's you can patch up any clusters you find as you go." He darted between several tables, searching through drawers and tool chests for supplies, and then returned to his soldering station.

"Wait, hold on," Ford said. "In the space of a morning, you've built a vacuum chamber to calculate the gravitational acceleration in Gravity Falls, called NASA to get ahold of somebody to collect data across the rest of the United States, built a handheld version of your wormhole detector, and built a grenade to distribute alien adhesive?"

"I sure did!"

"And, how long have you been awake?"

"An hour and a half!"

Ford stared. "Where do you get your coffee?"

Fiddleford glanced across the room at Dipper, and whispered, "I'll tell ya later."

Dipper had drifted over to the miniature particle accelerator and was slowly circling it, inspecting all the pipes, trying to figure out how it worked. He was leaning over the trash can when Ford drifted over to join him. "Hey, Grunkle Ford? I... think there's a cat in here?"

"You don't know that!" Fiddleford shouted. "It could be dead!"

"No it's not, I can hear it meowing."

"That might be something else! You can't tell!"

"I could just open it—"

Fiddleford chucked an empty plastic spool of solder wire toward Dipper. "Don't you touch that!"

Dipper withdrew his hand from the trash can lid and looked at Ford, baffled.

"I'll explain how it works," Ford said.

While Fiddleford worked, Ford caught Dipper up on the details of the fuel they needed for the Quantum Destabilizer, the contraption Fiddleford had built to synthesize it, and the complicated way they'd tried to paradoxically (not) observe the experiment in progress. When Fiddleford came over to offer the completed spray nozzle, Ford asked, "Any progress on figuring out how to get this thing working?"

"No," Fiddleford sighed. "I've been lookin' into more stable paradoxes to replace the cat. But as far as the observer—I'd hoped usin' twins might just get close enough, but I've redid my cac'lations three times and I'm afraid the only way to get this thing working is by gettin' one person to both observe and not observe it at the same time. If we can just do that, we'd have all the fuel we need. But for the life of me I can't figure out how."

"Maybe if we had two versions of the same person from different dimensions..." Ford mused. "But that would require opening up a portal to reach another dimension, and there's the risk that uniting parallel versions of the same person might destabilize our entire dimension. It's not worth the risk."

"It sounds like one of those impossible riddles," Dipper said. "Like, 'If only a barber shaves people who don't shave themselves, and if anyone who shaves himself isn't a barber, then who shaves the barber?' Because if he shaved himself he wouldn't be a barber but since he shaves other people he has to be a barber..."

Ford said, "A second barber shaves him."

Fiddleford said, "He just don't shave at all."

Dipper paused. "I think I told it wrong."

Ford patted his shoulder. "But I think you're on to something. We need to think of this as a riddle; and every riddle has a solution. We just need to find it."

"After we save the town, right?" Dipper asked.

Ford smiled wanly. "One crisis at a time."

####

They agreed that investigating all the potential micro-rip hotspots around town would probably necessitate a camping trip—which was the only bit of good news to come out of this mess so far. Due to all of this summer's Bill bullsoup (as Stan had taken to calling it in front of the kids), Ford and Dipper had hardly gotten to see each other so far, much less do any serious paranormal investigating together. Hiking and camping while in search of the strange sounded like exactly what they'd been missing out on—and it would've sounded even better if the situation weren't so dire.

Ford and Dipper came back in the Mystery Shack as Shandra Jimenez said on TV, "Today's top story in Gravity Falls is that gravity isn't falling. Many residents recall similar incidents around this time last summer, when gravity intermittently shut off entirely, leading many to ask: could this possibly be another devastating effect of global warming? Temperatures today are—"

Ford scoffed. "Global warming. Of all things. Gravity is probably the only part of the environment it isn't affecting."

"I dunno, Ford, maybe you oughta consider it." Bill was sitting cross-legged on the couch, chin in his hand. He had his eye patch over the eye he'd been squinting that morning. "As long as you're already rejecting the real explanation to make up one you like better, why not go whole hog? Let's adopt a real crackpot theory."

"You want to talk about 'crackpot theories'? Global warming sounds at least as likely as an eclipse."

"That says a lot more about your education than it does about the theories."

Ford grit his teeth. "You know I'm one of the most educated men on Earth."

"And that says a lot about your planet's educational system."

Stan, sitting in his armchair reading the paper, folded it down to glower at Bill. "Stop antagonizing my brother."

"Tell him to stop making it so easy."

Ford grit his teeth harder, but ignored Bill. "Dipper, go pack your backpack. I'll check the basement and meet you when I'm done."

"Right!" Dipper hurried up the stairs.

Ford crossed the living room, checking the micro-rip scanner—88 detected rips, over five times higher than at Northwest Manor, but still nowhere near the 100,000 rip danger threshold. He'd see whether that remained true next to the portal. He paused next to Stan's armchair, "Stanley, do you remember where we stored the alien adhesive applicator?"

"Uhh... when's the last time we used it?"

"Last fall, right before we headed to Seattle."

Stan lowered his paper, staring at the ceiling. "I think we stored it in one of the lockers in the basement, right?"

"It's not there," Bill said.

Ford gave him an exasperated look. "And how would you know."

"Because the first day I came here, I emptied out all those lockers and hid their contents while I was waiting for the rest of you to get downstairs."

Ford smacked the back of the armchair, making Stan start. "So that's what happened to my infinity-sided die! Where the devil did you hide it?"

"Frankly, I don't think you're responsible enough to handle that kind of power," Bill said archly.

"Where's the adhesive applicator!"

"What do you need it for?"

"That's none of your business."

"Pity." Bill turned up the volume on the news.

Ford moved between Bill and the screen. "If you don't tell me where you hid it..." What threat could he make? This was the demon willing to threaten suicide if his captors didn't keep him entertained.

"Tell me why you need it."

"As if you'd give it to me if I did!"

"Maybe I'll find your cause noble," Bill said flatly. "Try me."

Oh, what did he have to lose. "Fine. I'm testing to see if imperceptibly small rips are opening between Gravity Falls and the Nightmare Realm. If they are, I'm going to seal them shut." He hoped the revelation would throw Bill off—he hoped he was close enough to the truth to shock Bill into giving something away.

Bill's eye widened, eyebrows shooting up; and then he burst out laughing. "That's what Specs filled your head with? Embryonic wormholes? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard! And you're turning to him for an explanation when you've got a being with infinite answers sitting in your living room?"

Ford scoffed. "Sure, infinite answers—and just like the infinity-sided die, whatever I get is infinitely more likely to be trouble than anything useful. Now tell me where you put my adhesive applicator."

"I didn't put it anywhere." Bill held the remote out to the side to change the channel and stared at the TV straight through Ford, as if he didn't exist. "It's still in the basement. A little adhesive leaked out, I couldn't get the locker door open."

"Ha!" Stan slapped an armrest.

Ford whirled around to glare at him.

Stan held up his hands appeasingly. "Sorry! Sorry. That's not funny. Wasn't—wasn't funny at all. How dare you, Bill."

"I know, I'm just the worst."

Ford held in a harsh sigh and stalked out of the room. He didn't have time for this—not when they were on a deadline to prevent whatever was happening. (What if it became too late to reverse before gravity even reached 0%? What if they were approaching a tipping point when the whole sky would rip open?)

He opened the vending machine and headed downstairs.

####

He had to break the locker door to get the alien adhesive applicator out. He'd have to figure out how the nozzle had leaked before he stored it again.

According to the sensor, there were over a thousand micro-rips detectable just from standing near the portal controls. The number increased as he approached the portal itself; the highest quantity the scanner detected was nearly 5,000. Over fifty times higher than on the shack's ground level. It was clear some sort of damage had been done here.

But Fiddleford had said, for them to be concerned about reality shredding, there should be hundreds of thousands of micro-rips in one location. And Ford trusted any numbers Fiddleford gave him; wherever Ford tended to double-check his math, Fiddleford quintuple-checked his.

Even at the interdimensional portal itself—the spot where the veil between Gravity Falls and the Nightmare Realm had been ripped open and stitched shut so many times, the spot where the rift that nearly ended the world had been formed—there were less than 5% of the rips they needed before they started reaching dangerous levels.

Ford looked up at the portal, frowning.

The portal's torn and crumpled pieces lay against the cavern walls where he'd left them last summer.

Never mind. There were several other places that could be hotspots for micro-rips. He couldn't draw any conclusions about what was happening here until he'd checked them too.

But whatever was happening, it certainly wasn't an eclipse.

He added Fiddleford's spray attachment to the adhesive applicator and filled the chamber with a mist of glue, until the scanner read less than 200 micro-rips; then stopped by his study to grab a couple maps of the mountains around Gravity Falls, his antique lantern, and a tent; and headed back up to the house.

####

During their past year of travels, Stan and Ford had started keeping two emergency backpacks stocked in case they needed to flee on short notice. The backpacks contained everything they'd need to survive in the wilderness or a strange city for three days; and Ford had thirty long years of experience to teach him exactly what supplies that necessitated. He grabbed his backpack out of the guest room, and then spread out his map on the kitchen table to show to Dipper.

"If our micro-rip theory is correct, there are four potential places where I suspect they'll be most densely concentrated: the place where the interdimensional rift formed; where it was unleashed; where it was suspended for the majority of Weirdmageddon; and where it was sealed."

"And you've already checked the portal where it formed," Dipper said. "What about the place it was suspended? It was floating in the sky over town. There's no way we can get up there until gravity's completely gone, and by then it'll be too late."

"I've considered that. The closest we can get is Gravity Peak, but from there we should be able to get the sensor close enough to tell if there's an unusual amount of rips." Ford circled three spots on the map, and drew a dotted line connecting them. "We're heading out late, but we should be able to hit the locations where Weirdmageddon began and ended today. We can cross the lake to camp in the cavern behind Trembley Falls, get an early start, and take the hidden cave tunnel up to Gravity Peak."

"Not the best time for a hiking trip," Bill said.

Ford shot him an exasperated look. Bill was leaning in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, smirking condescendingly. "Or maybe it is, if you're trying to avoid as much effort as possible," he says. "But I still wouldn't go if I were you. You don't want to be outdoors during an eclipse—and you don't want to be on a mountain when gravity comes back."

"Nobody asked you," Ford said, turning his back on Bill. "Now—cooking will be difficult as gravity decreases, but not to worry—" he unzipped his backpack, "—I've already prepared everything we'll need." Grinning, he pulled out what looked like a toothpaste tube with a "beef and vegetables" label. "Astronaut food!"

Dipper grimaced. "Great."

"You should have asked me," Bill said, a bit louder. "Considering that Specs is sending you on a wild goose chase. But hey, if you're that determined to waste your time, just don't say I didn't tell you so."

"You haven't even told us what an 'eclipse' is," Dipper said. "If it's not important enough to explain, I don't see why it's important enough for us to listen to you."

"Well said," Ford muttered.

"It's too important to explain," Bill retorted. "I've told you everything you need to know!"

Ford said, "Ha," and started folding his map to pack.

There were a few seconds of blessed silence; and then Bill walked into the room, leaned on the fridge, and glowered at Ford. "Listen. As far as you're concerned, the eclipse is probably harmless. It should peak in three days—"

"Fiddleford said at its current rate of decrease, it should be the day after tomorrow."

Ford expected Bill to argue; but instead, he frowned uneasily. "I—Sure, fine, whatever, he's probably done the math, I've just been eyeballing it. Did he say what time?"

Surprised, Ford said, "early afternoon, by his measurements."

Bill nodded vaguely, glancing again toward the ceiling. "Whatever time it happens—gravity will gradually decrease until totality, and then it'll come back very quickly, so—if you want to help your town so much, tell them that they don't want to be climbing trees in zero G. Otherwise, the best thing you can do is stay inside, wait for it to pass, keep your eyes shutduring totality—and do not look up."

"Why can't we look up?" Dipper asked.

Bill laughed derisively. "Would you stare at the sun during a solar eclipse? It's like I'm talking to babies!"

The last fraying thread of Ford's patience snapped. He seized Bill's hoodie by the strings and dragged him closer. "Enough!"

Bill flailed, kicking the table as he tried to back out of Ford's grip, and ended up losing his footing and landing on the floor. It was too easy to drag him around—he was so light. Ford leaned down to glare straight in his eye. "If you're so worried about how we're handling this eclipse of yours, maybe you should come with us!"

Horror bloomed in Bill's eye. "What? No no no, that's—that's fine, I told you everything you need, I'd just slow you down, I'd really be much happier in here—"

"I bet you would be," Ford snarled. "As far as I'm concerned, the fact that you want to stay inside so much is reason enough to bring you along! Either something out there scares you, or there's something in here you want to be close to during totality! Maybe something will happen at the portal! Whatever it is you want, I don't want you to get it."

"Grunkle Ford?" Dipper had gotten out of his seat and was looking uncertainly between Bill and Ford. "I'm not sure about..."

Bill's gaze snapped from Ford's face to Dipper's, and Ford could almost see the gears shifting in his head as he latched on to a more vulnerable target. "Kid. Remember when I told you there are things out there you don't want to meet? Stay inside—let me stay inside—find a good book to distract you the next couple of days, and don't worry about things you don't want to know too much about. As far as you should be concerned, this is a weather phenomenon. You don't want to dig any deeper than that. Stay. Home."

The corners of Dipper's mouth turned down. He grabbed Ford's coat sleeve and said, voice low, "Great Uncle Ford, I... I'm not sure he's lying. I've never seen Bill scared like this before. And when he told me about things in other dimensions, this gravity thing hadn't even started, so he couldn't have..."

"Unless Bill was expecting this to happen, and everything he told you yesterday was the groundwork to make us believe whatever he wants us to believe." Bill had wormed deeper into Dipper's head than Ford had realized, if it was enough to make him consider Bill's nonsensical claims. Ford should have asked more about what Bill told him yesterday. The monster could have been filling his gnephew's head with all sorts of nightmares. "Doesn't it seem a little lucky that he told you all that one day before this?"

Dipper grimaced. "I mean..."

Ford glared at Bill again. "I'm not buying it. And the more you make up ridiculous explanations like 'gravitational eclipses' and 'things from other dimensions,' the more you insist that this is somehow both no big deal and incredibly dangerous just to witness, the less I believe this is anything but a patently ridiculous attempt to keep us from interfering with whatever is about to happen! And frankly, that makes me want to interfere even more!"

Bill let out a strangled laugh. "You've gotta be... If you think I'm that suspicious, how do you know this isn't reverse psychology?! Maybe I want you to take me outside!"

"Maybe you do. That's the awful thing about you, Bill: I can second-, third-, and fourth-guess everything you say, and I'll never be sure I've figured out the truth! At some point I just have to make an educated guess."

There was a knock at the doorway. "Hey, Dr. Pines?" Soos leaned into the kitchen. "I heard furniture and anger. Is everything... uh..." He trailed off, taking in the scene—Bill on the floor backed up against the fridge, Ford crouched over him, Dipper watching anxiously. "Everything cool here?"

Ford got to his feet. "Dipper and I are going on an expedition—and unfortunately, he has to come along. Soos, do you have a spare backpack we can use for his supplies?"

"Uh, I think so—"

"Great," Dipper snapped. "This is just perfect. I've been waiting a month and a half for us to do something cool together, and when we're finally about to go on an expedition, it's ruined by him?" He gestured angrily at Bill. "He's already ruined the rest of summer!"

Bill said, "Hey, I didn't consent to this plan either."

"You shut up," Dipper snapped. "This is all your fault! You could have just left us alone, but...!" He let out a frustrated noise. He pushed past Soos out of the room and ran up the stairs.

Ah. Ford's shoulders slumped. Sometimes he wasn't quite sure where he'd misstepped in a conversation, but this time it was pretty obvious. Between this and the nearly-disastrous trip to Portland, Ford was well in the lead for Worst Grunkle of the Summer.

"Wow. You broke that kid's heart," Bill said. "Not too late to make it up to him by going back to the original plan."

Ford shot him a dirty look.

Bill shrugged. "I'm trying anything I can think of at this point!"

Ford sighed harshly, and left to follow Dipper upstairs.

Bill sat up and waited until Ford's footsteps had receded. Voice low, he said, "Questiony, listen, I need your help. Stanford's gone completely insane. You didn't see how he was ranting and raving before you got in here. Who knows what he'll do to me if he gets me alone outside the shack with only his junior sycophant as a witness—?"

Soos looked deeply uncomfortable, but he shook his head. "Not buying it, dawg."

Bill groaned.

####

Ford knocked, and gently pushed the kids' damaged door open a crack. "Dipper?"

Dipper grunted. He was sitting on his bed, chin in his hands, glaring down at his journal in his lap.

"Can I come in?"

Dipper grunted again. Ford wasn't being ignored, so he took that as permission to enter. He delicately sat next to Dipper and tried to figure out what to say next. (He was surprised at how firm the mattress was—and then realized the real reason he wasn't sinking as far into it as he expected.) "Dipper..."

"You don't need to say anything," he sighed. "You're right—Bill probably is up to something. If he wants to be in the shack so much, and won't give us a straight answer why, then... it's probably safer to keep him out of it." But he sounded so terribly resigned.

"All the same, I understand your disappointment," Ford said. "I'd far rather go hiking with you than with him."

Dipper nodded. "Yeah. It's just..." He trailed off.

"I know. I wanted this summer to be different, too." Ford sighed. "As soon as he's gone, I owe you another hiking trip."

Dipper nodded again. He mumbled, "I've never gone hiking before."

This was some way to experience it for the first time. "We could treat this like a practice round? A warm-up with lower gravity to make it easier. Next time will be a real trip—without any crises to worry about, and without Bill."

"I don't mind the crises," Dipper said. "I'm kind of used to them, actually. They're almost fun now."

In his mind, Ford knew that this was probably another thing that should earn him a Worst Grunkle award. But in his heart, he was proud of Dipper. That was an adventurer's attitude.

"It's just... I haven't been able to get away from him all summer," Dipper said. "And even when I'm avoiding him, Mabel's spending all her free time either with her friends or trying to reform him, and you're spending all your time trying to figure out how to kill him, so I barely see you two..."

And that wasn't even something Ford could blame on Bill, was it? He hadn't been spending his time trying to figure out how to kill Bill since he'd handed over the Quantum Destabilizer design to Fiddleford. He'd simply been... obsessing. Hiding and obsessing. Ford stared down at his hands guiltily. "Tell you what. As soon as this is over, we can go do—something. I don't know what yet, but we've got a couple of days to think it up. I've spent too much time underground the last few weeks, anyway. We may not be able to go on that big adventure until Bill's gone—but it's something, for now."

"Yeah, I'd like that. Thanks, Grunkle Ford." 

Ford nudged him. "And as long as you do have to put up with Bill for this trip... look on the bright side. Haven't you been wanting to get a crack at him without your sister around? See if you can pry out any more alien wisdom before his execution?"

Dipper huffed—but one corner of his mouth reluctantly quirked up. "Thanks, but I'm starting to think that's a bad idea. Every time I try, he just says stuff that gives me nightmares."

"Well—consider it an intellectually broadening experience."

Dipper gave him a weak smile.

"Anyway, with a little luck, it won't be long before you'll never need to deal with him again."

####

Soos had an old Monster-Mon backpack with cracked vinyl around the straps that he hadn't used since he outgrew it in fifth grade. "Lucky I didn't throw it out when we moved. You never know when you're gonna need old stuff!"

Bill had no idea what he was supposed to take on a forced camping trip. He knew what humans took, but humans craved all kinds of material comforts that meant nothing to him. After a couple minutes staring at the bag forlornly, he stuck in a spare shirt and leggings—he doubted he'd need extra underwear or socks, right?—and the Pony Heist bedsheet he'd been using as his sole blanket the last month, his toothbrush and toothpaste, a cider six-pack, two boxes of cereal, a kazoo, and the TV remote.

"I need some first-aid supplies. In case of emergency," Bill told Soos.

"Sure, whaddaya need?"

"Bandages, painkillers, matches, and a knife."

"You got—" Soos paused, then pursed his lips at Bill disapprovingly.

Bill sighed. "Bandages and painkillers. And cold medicine. Woods get chilly."

He glanced up as he heard footsteps upstairs. Not much longer until he was dragged outside. He grimaced. "One more thing, Jesús. This is important."

"Whoa. Full-first-name important?" He stuck a bottle of cold syrup in the backpack, hit something hard, and peered in confusion at the six-pack.

"Stanford's being petty and refusing to believe anything I say, but I know you're not that stupid," Bill lied. "So listen: this thing will peak in a couple of days and then go back to normal. It's mostly harmless to humans—but once the peak has passed, gravity's coming back like that." Bill snapped his fingers. "So anyone you want to come out of this intact needs to do two things. One, the moment gravity completely disappears, they need to anchor themselves, as close to the ground as possible, before it comes back. And two, do not look at the sky. Got it?"

Soos hesitated; but then nodded. "Y-yeah, got it."

"Understand?"

"Understood."

"Good."

"So are you like... trying to protect the town now?"

Bill laughed bitterly. "I'm trying to cover my base. When this is all over, even if all my warnings were ignored, at least nobody will be able to say I didn't try. I could have sat on everything I know! But I didn't! And I'm going to rub. It. In. Ford's. Face." He punctuated each word with a jab to Soos's chest.

Soos endured the jabbing with a patience Bill didn't deserve. "Byyy protecting the town?"

Bill opened his mouth, reconsidered, and said, "Sure! Of course I'm protecting the town! Why would I want any harm to befall the citizens of my once and future capital?"

"I mean, no offense, but you befelled a lot of harm on us last year—"

"I did not," Bill snapped. "Everyone was perfectly comfortable in my throne of frozen human agony." He yanked the backpack's zipper shut, pulled it on, and pushed Soos aside to leave the kitchen.

Stan had stopped Ford at the foot of the stairs. "But if this is some nightmare dimension thing, isn't that just another reason not to take Bill outside? What if one of those wormholes opens up and he dives through? Maybe escaping back to his dimension will give him his power back, we don't know."

"I've considered that—but if that is what he's planning, all the more reason why he should stay with Dipper and me, so we can stop him if he tries anything."

"Are you nuts? It'll be two of you in the woods versus four of us here in the shack! We outnumber him more than you do! Plus walls and doors!"

"We have the hexed bracelets, he won't be able to escape us," Ford said.

"Aww, I get to share matching friendship bracelets with someone?" Bill gave Dipper and Ford what he hoped was his most obnoxious smile. "Who's the lucky guy?"

Scowling, Dipper raised his hand.

Bill's smile dimmed. "You are the lesser evil," he admitted grudgingly. "But I'm surprised ol' Six-Fingers doesn't want to keep as tight a grip on me as possible."

"We decided that if you try to kill your bracelet partner and escape, Grunkle Ford would have a better chance of avenging me than I would have avenging him."

Bill's brows shot up. "Ruthlessly utilitarian. Was that Stanford's idea?"

Ford ignored the question, pushing on with his conversation with Stan: "And anyway, there might be more people in the shack, but none of them would be me. I know him better than anyone else."

Bill laughed hard enough that his feet momentarily lifted off the floor. "Oh do you!"

Ford's gaze shot to Bill's face, eyes blazing with fury. "You know I do. I've spent thirty years learning every trick, every lie, every betrayal that's made you who you—"

"What's my favorite food."

Ford's mouth worked uselessly. "That—doesn't matter—"

"You think you know my innermost soul when you don't even know my favorite food?"

"Favorite... human food, or...?"

"Oh, sure, I'll give you a fighting chance. Human."

Ford chewed on the inside of his mouth for several seconds. Finally, he said, "Jalapeños."

Bill crossed the entryway, leaned into the hallway, and took a deep breath. "HEY, MABEL!"

From the far end of the house (where Mabel was seeing how high she could jump in the floor room), she shouted, "YEAH?"

"WHAT'S MY FAVORITE FOOD?"

"NACHOS WITH CHOCOLATE SAUCE AND SUMMER-SHAPED SPRINKLES!"

Bill gestured down the hall, ta-da. "THANK YOU!"

"I was close," Ford grumbled. "Nachos have jalapeños."

Stan said, "You're not even out of the house and he's getting under your skin. Are you sure you wanna—?"

"I am not," Ford said, "leaving him in the house. And if you'd heard how he was fighting to stay under this roof, you wouldn't trust him in here either."

Stan looked at Bill.

Bill looked Stan dead in the eyes and said, "I don't know what he's talking about. I agreed to go as soon as he asked."

"Oh, shut your—" Ford snatched the bracelets off the coat rack, flung one end at Bill, and handed Dipper the other. "Put these on. We're leaving."

Bill scowled, but considered his odds of successfully resisting, reluctantly put his end of the bracelet on, and yelled down the hall, "BYE, MABEL! I'M BEING KIDNAPPED BY YOUR UNCLE AGAINST MY WILL! I MAY NEVER RETURN!"

"I'LL MISS YOU FOREVER!"

Ford opened the door and gestured impatiently. Bill took a couple reluctant steps closer, but stopped to look at Soos and say, "Remember what I said. Do not let Mabel be in the air when gravity comes back, you know if someone doesn't watch her she'll launch herself as high as she can—"

Ford snapped, "Either you walk or I drag you, Cipher."

"I'm coming." He stepped outside, paused, and cast a worried look at the sky; then squeezed his eyes shut, lowered his head, and walked into the sunlight.

####

(That's this week's chapter! I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts. Next week: I'm gonna do my level best to shatter your hearts. Look forward to it!)

[copperbadge]

Behold, a slightly longer video of the cheese conveyor belt!

This is at Culture & Co. in Nashville, which is incredibly and delightfully the second charcuterie conveyor belt restaurant I've eaten at in the last two years, the other being Pick & Cheese in London.

As with Pick & Cheese I do know myself, so I set out the rule ahead of time that I could only take three plates, and thus I chose with care. First course: "Bruleed Brie" with passion fruit caramel cultured butter. This is a brie-style cheese from Pennsylvania (where my yinzers at) which has had one open side dipped in sugar and then presumably melted with a culinary torch; it looks like jam, but as you can see in the second image, when you tap the brulee it cracks like toffee.

Both the brulee brie and the butter were fantastic; the acid of the passion fruit cuts the sugar and the fattiness a little, but it also really emerges as its own flavor. I think this is the most imaginative way to upgrade brie I've seen in a minute. I kinda wanna try it at home.

Second plate was a Cumblerland "tomme-style" natural rind cheese from Tennessee (specifically Sequatchie Cove) with house made potato chive crackers and rosemary. The real highlight of this cheese is, honestly, the rind -- it has a flavor unique from the rest of the slice, which is much milder and reminded me of a young gouda, almost. The crackers don't look like much but however they make them they were really packed with this nice earthy salty flavor.

For "dessert" I almost went with a vegan cashew-based "Gouda" with shiitake bacon, mainly for the bacon I'll be honest, and you can actually see that plate go by, it's the first one you see in the video up top. Instead I decided to go with...I'm not sure even what kind of cheese this is because it's called GOAT RODEO BAMBOOZLE. I mean, the menu said it was a semi-soft washed rind goat's milk cheese, so there's that.

Normally I avoid goat cheese because I find it very dry texturally, but this was nice, it had that kind of gamey goaty taste but was much more buttery. It came with two pecan shortbread cookies (sandies) and a little cup of root beer caramel, which you can see dripping down a bite of the cheese in the second image. I don't know how you make root beer caramel (sasparilla in the milk?) but it had a nice peppery note to it. I wanted to down it like a shot but resisted.

Anyway, all three were fantastic, not a loser in the bunch, and the wait staff were super pleasant and knowledgeable, so it was a pretty great meal, especially for $30 (including tip).

I don't know who's setting these cheese conveyor belts up across the world but whoever you are, if you bring one to Chicago I will be grateful and I will eat there and bring visiting friends there. Some of my friends even drink wine, so we won't be cheap dates, I promise. We're so close to Wisconsin! Think what you could do with the curds, man, the curds!

[changingplumbob]

First Round - Day four (Connor group)

Dee: So this is the villa huh? Not too shabby

Berenice: do you think Joey will visit today

Kaye: *sighs* I hope not. Shouldn't you be more concerned about when Deanna will show up

Berenice: I can be concerned for both! I mean I am concerned for both. About both?

Nyami: Don't look at me, I didn't speak until I was five

Isla: That was a true fact?

Nyami: Yeah but I speak a bunch of languages now, I basically never stop talking

Isabella: Being able to speak more than one is so freeing I've found

Dee: How'd you learn so many Nyami?

Nyami: I mean each tribe has a different dialect right? Learning all the differences made it easier to pick up completely different languages as well

Isabella: It might be a weird question but do you have one you like most?

Nyami: For sure! Bunny-Latin. Owhay areyay youyay oingday?

Wikihow on Pig-Latin rules

Unfortunately the Bunny-Latin was too much cringe for Isabella and Isla to handle. They went off to the hallway mirrors to try talk themselves out of their second hand embarrassment.

Berenice: Watcher, Bunny-Latin clears people out faster than cast- cats, I mean cats

Kaye: Cats don't clear people out

Berenice sits awkwardly.

Kaye: I think I'm going to go grab lunch early

...

Nyami: I can be a bit much for some people

Berenice: oh, word. I mean, not you specifically - just word. Word for word. Uh, is anyone else having trouble with how to English?

Dee: *laughs* You're too funny Bernie. Why are you even studying physics? You should do comedy

After a while Isla and Isabella rejoin the group, leaving Nyami happy she hasn't scarred them away forever. Kaye also bring her mid morning mac and cheese to the couches.

Berenice: It doesn't actually take that long to knit the socks, I still find time to study

Isabella: You must hardly sleep with all that going on

Berenice: I sleep! On a bed, even. Yeah beds are great and comfy and things I use every day - uh, night.

Isla: Anyone want to play some some foosball?

At lunch the women settle down and chat with Deanna about how they're settling in. Kaye gets seconds.

Kaye: This mac and cheese is amazing!

Dee: It did taste pretty good. I wonder if there's a secret ingredient

Deanna: Bella? Isla? You all right?

Isabella: Just a bit queesy

Isla: I'm used to Sulani food

Nyami: So long as you're not still put out about my jokes this morning because that would be cringe

Deanna: Normally I like to put bacon in macaroni cheese but I figured with a vegetarian around it would be best not to

Kaye: Thanks Deanna

Isla: I couldn't imagine my life without bacon

Dee: I couldn't imagine my life without love *blows kiss to Deanna*

Deanna: *giggles*

Nyami: One time I heard this story about-

...

Kaye: I'd love to explore more of Salvadorada

Nyami: Well it's there waiting and just full of history. If you want to go you should

Berenice: I heard a rumour that there's maybe some kind of ma - something otherworldly going on there?

Nyami: If you do good the sun gods have been know to grant blessings

Isla: *sighing* I miss the sun

Nyami: Funny you mention the sun. Back home-

...

Isabella (voiceover): I…admit it was a little…cringe. Ahem. I didn't want to make Nyami feel bad so I left with Isla. I don't know why, I felt a little embarrassed. Nyami was nice at lunch though, she knows so much about so much and isn’t afraid to share knowledge. I don't want to nitpick the food but I miss my Bea's pasta a little bit haha. Anyway, after that, I figured I might need to work on my charisma, level my head and refocus.

Isla (voiceover): I think I'm doing alright today. Sure I had to take a minute this morning but I got back to socializing. For lunch, well, I would have liked the chairs to have more cushioning. All the furniture in Sulani you can just sink in to you know? I chose charisma for skill time, hopefully I can develop an immunity to the cringe

Kaye (voiceover): Did I get distracted by food this morning? Yeah... I just get hungry people. It was cool to chat with everyone though. I loved getting to talk to Nyami about the jungle, she's a fellow adventurer I reckon. Berenice is an acquired taste but I think I'm getting used to her? Maybe. Anyway I had to go with video gaming for skill time!

Nyami (voiceover): Oh boy are my family going to have a field day watching this. They're used to me running my mouth off about everything, I forget normal people take pauses. I probably got over enthusiastic at lunch but I feel like Deanna enjoyed hearing about the jungle. So yeah worked on charisma first, reminding myself to take pauses. I don't want everyone thinking I'm talking over them deliberately, I just get excited

Berenice (voiceover): Phew! Almost had some slip ups this morning due to something I may or may not have consumed [eyes dart around]… All natural, totally natural. I swear! Uh well, Dee seems to like me, which is nice I guess. But also it’s like “Dee, are you okay? Do you maybe need to see a specialist about that???” Well she’ll get to know me better and then she won’t like me anymore, so I may as well enjoy it while it lasts *shrug*

Dee (voiceover): I think my first impression of Berenice was spot on, she's hilarious! Of course the more refined in the group didn't approve but I'm sticking with her. She actually got me feeling pretty happy and confident so yeah I threw in a flirt with Deanna at lunch. I'm really hoping for a date from the challenges this round though so I picked charisma to work on for skill time. You never know I could win the very first challenge

Berenice (voiceover): You know, sometimes I think it’s worse for people to find you annoying than it is for them to think that you’re a bad person. Because a bad person, you’re expected not to like them - but with an annoying person it’s like “well they’re not actually a baaad person so I should be friendlier/nicer?” and that makes people resentful or something, but it is kind of nice to have a friend, even for a little while. You're not going to tell Dee that I chose to focus on mischief, right???

It was another cloudy day at the villa but the contestants opted to eat outside again. We really need to put in a complaint to whoever is in charge of outdoor lights at dusk because they really illuminate nothing. Anyway most contestants got to dinner on time. Berenice was a little late, apparently she needed a wardrobe change? Spirits were once again calm as contestants talked, Isla really missed the sun though.

Nyami: And that's how I escaped the python

Kaye: *mouth full of food* Darn, I thought I was adventurous on the slopes but you are one brave lady

Deanna: I hope you wont find watching a movie too slow

Isla: Well I'm excited to watch something that's not just a sports true story turned in to film. At home my brothers hardly ever go for films unless someone wins a trophy in it

Isabella: *smiling* I guess there are benefits to being an only child, picking the film

The group head inside to the living area to set up to watch a film.

Kaye: So I'm really thinking we should make popcorn

Isla: *chuckling* We just ate dinner

Dee: But movies require snacks. I still remember the rush of sneaking food in to the cinemas as a kid

Berenice: Were you afraid of getting caught

Dee: One time an usher came over and demanded we show him our bags to prove we hadn't brought in outside snacks. Luckily the chocolate was in my jacket

As the film plays the contestants sit on the couch and chat about what's happening. Most of this bunch don't seem to mind talking during films. When it finishes half the contestants head to bed but Kaye, Isabella and Isla stay chatting for a while. Eventually Kaye needs to sleep to.

Isabella: I'm sorry Deanna if I seemed out of sorts at lunch

Deanna: It was more than the macaroni cheese then?

Isabella: *chuckles* I don't want to nitpick with the food. It’s just that, it's difficult trying to befriend a bunch of women at once.

Isla: I felt the same. You just want to impress everyone here

Deanna: Don't worry, I feel the same about trying to connect with everyone. It can get hard

Sims created by: @corrienteallita, @eljeebee, @ethicaltreatmentofcowplants, @hashimasims, @jonquilyst, @riverofjazzsims

[roxannepolice]

I'm going to get on some big questions in regards to small matters here, but wtv, I've been having the problem with the audience looking at the most superficial level of characters and proclaiming them out of character (OR perfectly in character) too long.

First of all, however, a couple disclaimers: one, this is going to get salty, but two, I'm as always happy to discuss especially the salty parts, and three, I do not want to come of as seeing RTD's writing as absolutely flawless, because it absolutely isn't, but I do think it is generally functional. Like, if instead of stories he was doing chairs, then the ones he produces are sometimes not good looking or uncomfortable, but an adult human can generally sit in them without risking major injury (Moffat is the artistic type that will sometimes give you a chair that's both perfectly functional and aesthetically beautiful, but sometimes will give you a perilous glass construction that will break under an overfed hamster; Chibnall also produces generally usable chairs but decides the optimal place for this furniture is the ceiling). So with that, let me address some of the criticisms of the Rani characterisation, especially the "this might have been the Master" bit.

Because see, to me the big attraction of Doctor-Master relationship has never been "oh they were friends but they aren't any longer" or "the Master is just sad that the Doctor abandoned them" or any of that sentimental bs, only.

The Dialectics of Enlightenment.

The fact that the same scientific and industrial revolutions that allowed to curb most of diseases known to history has also created its worst poisons. That the same atomic power that can ensure cleaner and more available electricity in everyday life can also bring about the end of the whole of humanity in moments. That every armchair philosopher's perfectly logical plan at improving all of humanity has resulted in death, destruction and long-term problems with political legal and civic culture but hey at least satire flourished.

Knowledge is power (France is bacon) is usually framed as a purely inspiring quote, and naturally it often is, in fact it more often is than is not. But paralleled with the other big philosophical quote, this time from the great Unclus Benus, With great power comes great responsibility, the flip side comes to light. It is something of a big discussion in contemporary sociology just how much a modern human's condition is based on constant reflexivity, constantly being aware of all the consequences of all our actions. This is in many ways a good thing, but already Fromm was pointing to "escape from freedom" as the underlying cause of totalitarian systems rising to power. This isn't some sort of bitter "we are born to be slaves" reflection, just pointing out that people only two hundred years ago didn't have constant access to information about everything happening all over the world in real time, we didn't have "information for the sake of information". Two hundred years ago. That's a blink of an eye for our ape brains sthsth the tragedy of our times is that we have the brains of cavemen, the institutions of the middle ages and the technology of gods. Like, there's a reason Nietzsche came up with the Ubermensch (which is a concept not explicitly inherently related by him to any group of people but a description of a condition where the individual consciously decides everything about themself recognizing no external definition by either gods or men - he is the estranged godfather of postmodernism) in the industrial era.

It is the modern to be or not to be on a scale of a species. Multiple species, in fact.

So, look, when the Pole raised in a household where the only inexplicably shapeshifting Brit was James Bond, discovered there's been a show that in many tackles these exact problems while studying in a philosophy faculty building, though in the safely fantastical context of time travel, that was what I mainly latched onto. The conflict of "stay neutral" (allowing for all the pain that sentient beings will suffer across all of time and space) or "interfere" (which is. well on the one hand, it's just too fantastical to be communicative, and two sth sth free will and all that jazz).

And that conflict is nowhere better embodied than by the Doctor-Master relationship. Without getting to much into bootstrap and grandfather paradoxes, we just accept that the Doctor's interferences are good. Not changing, just fixing. Not trying to shape the perfect human only relieving the pains of existing ones. It is both a moral statement but also welp the show kind of wouldn't function without it, again, paradoxes upon paradoxes, at least we have subjective vs. objectified timeflow so that's something. The Master is the aggressively active party, the one that doesn't just fix what's broken only aims to control the whole and whats broken may be just as well gotten rid of. Except where does the line between the two go? Oh, we can go into "well, one is an altruist and the other egotist", sure, but a children's hospital build for your ego is still a children's hospital and the bloodiest crimes were committed for the most beautiful ideas. All too often, the only reason we know where the line between limited beneficial interference and maleficient control lies is because someone fucked up before us.

Which is why the Time Lord Victorious arc is so bloody good and having the Doctor use the Master's catchphrase really brings the message home. There's also the matter of "I am in fact the only being in the universe that understands all the consequences of what I'm doing so I'm the only how who can stop me", sthsth religion is society worshipping itself, God is dead basically means society is dead. The fact that this is opposed by an individual choice is perhaps one of the most profound statements made on primetime television.

In the midst of all this, there's the Rani. The Rani who was specifically designed as disinterested scientist, not the two "whats?" described above, but the "how?". Incidentally, I do think it's ironic that out of all the renegade Time Lords' club, hers is the only title that directly implies rulership, but that's for another day. Now, while the mad scientist is a well established trope in modern culture, unethical scientist is a bit newer animal. Just to give you an idea, the first legislation controlling animal testing came about in 1966 in the USA, and the UK didn't have one until 1986. Zimbardo was free to put random blokes in prisoners and guards positions and tell the latter they can and should be mean (no physical violence tho) to the former in 1971. So for all that the Rani was introduced as somewhat less of evil a villain than the Master, it is pretty understandable what fears where expressed there. And of course there's the problem of science-industry-military unholy trinity. Like, I know that Tony Stark's pre-Iron Man persona is meant to be looked down on, but it is true a lot of stuff we take for granted to save our lives and make them comfortable were originally funded by the military. Like, microwaves were initially meant to de-hybernate living organisms until someone noticed you can heat up food with these.

Which to me sort of explains why she wasn't brought back for so long. Nowadays we're generally likelier to suffer from people rejecting scientific research than from someone not meeting their institution's ethics board requriements and research is likelier to suffer from funds getting cut than from actually seeking the ultimate wunderwaffe. For all that the Rani was introduced as more of a neutral-neutral character, she certainly isn't the wide-eyed individual who just wants to research to appreciate (ah, shame on you, original DW producers, for not understanding the innate power imbalance between the observer and the observed). That's the Doctor. They're the one whose drive is to experience amazement for its own sake, to the point of picking up other species to experience it again. So, how do you go about writing this kind of villain in the 21st century?

Well, you can have her work with a conspiracy theorist "visionary" and have him build up the wish world, but it's just the resource to tear apart reality. Like, yes, this technology that in sci-fi catastrophical scenarios is supposed to find humans expendable and be too efficient in doing so but in reality is likelier to leave a lot of people jobless, BUT it can also genuinely improve everyone's wellfare, is now mainly used to waste whole lakes for the sake of generating the image of a woman preparing dumplings while her husband holds a beaver, but hey, that's where resources to improve it so it can actually answer the big questions come from. The Wish World actually gave the Rani an "altruistic" purpose - she isn't here to destroy, she is here to bring life sth sth our myth telling ancestors not really understanding where babies come from deifing the life giving powers of one body shape and the Rani being viscerally disgusted by human birth process.

The issue of "why would the Rani want to bring the Time Lords back?" is kind of one that goes back to the whole issue of "do we want to have other Time Lords in the story or not?". The former undeniably has insane amount of drama to it, but it also has a fundamental problem - all of its potential has kind of been already explored to the full, because well. It's deeply unrelatable. Oh, it can resonate, it can be a vessel for audience's individual losses, but the very idea of believing your pain to be the most unique ever is itself something to discuss with a therapist. We went through trauma recovery process with Nine and we went through arrival at ubermenschism with Ten. Fifteen perhaps adds a more raw (and metatextually real) pain, but it's nothing qualitatively new. And that's the problem with saying that either the Master wanting to rebuild the Time Lord empire or the Rani want to bring them backm or the Doctor sobbing over the Master is "ooc" is kind of null, because we straight up can't imagine what any one of us would do if our entire species was gone. That's the main reason I think re-destroying Gallifrey was a stupid, stupid, stupid idea. On top of the fact that we've had individual geniuses inventing time travel, but a whole society built around that technology is infinitely harder to come by and poses much more intriguing questions. So, yeah, maybe it is just a plot device. Or maybe Omega really does have some absolutely unique knowledge that the Rani wants to write an article about. Or she actually needs his signature on her grant application, who knows.

So, those are the big motivational questions that I went definitely too far about, so now I'll just refer to the two smaller qualms.

One, the Rani just suddenly has unexplained magic powers. Look, the idea that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic isn't exactly new to fiction or DW in particular, so the scientist extraordinaire shouldn't have problems understanding some grimoires. She picked up the Desiderium and conducted the pilot experiment by wishing Zufalls into flowers and animals. Maybe it could have been laid out more explicitly, but it is pretty clear in retrospect.

And finally, "why is she suddenly obsessed with the Doctor, her things should be pure science, this could have been a Master story!". One, she fucking isn't obsessed with the Doctor. He's just another resource. And I'm going to be extremely salty now, and ask: when was the last time the Master actually tried to do their thing and conquer something? Oh, but their thing actually is being obsessed with the Doctor, bullfuckingshit. Do you have any idea how many people thought Missy was the Rani? And yes, there's the gender bias, but in all honesty, would much about season 9 change if she didn't flirt with Twelve and the cybermen army was meant to dig up the original Higgs particle and the Doctor's dilemma was about whether that's worth corpse mutilation? Face it, the reason some of y'all think the Rani is to much like the Master is because the latter got reduced to the aesthetics. And monogamous insecurity it seems.

Particularly sorry about that last part getting salty, but frankly, I've been dealing with Saxon being "out of character" when he was the last regeneration to actually do the Master's stuff but incidentals were wrong that I can tell the same problem when I see it.

We're just experiencing the same thing that everyone did when that Troughton guy started being out of character for the Doctor, y'know.

[ysochonky]

new follower (fellow midwesterner, I can tell that's a body in desperate need of some Culver's asap)

legitimately among the most out of control gains I've seen! you could hang stuff to carry on your back rolls tbh

and that picture of you at your last checkup?? deceased

your boyfriend treats you so well, I can't wait to hear how much more your mobility suffers as you rack up the 10lb gains per month and watch your whole body swell and sag with so much doughy fat 🤤 I'd message you to tease, but I honestly think you need the following public at large to see how much it works you up being told what an insatiable fatass you're becoming 💕

Two triple bacon butter burger deluxes, with a family sized cheese curd, large sprite, and large Oreo mixer please. Add those calories up 😋. Plus it feels so good to be addicted to things that have so much fat, sugar and sodium. I love making my body work and being out of shape. Yes I was having numbness and tingling in my arm and leg, blurry vision and headaches. So we thought my fat ass was only way to s stroke. All blood levels were healthy. Blood pressure was healthy. Brain scan was great, and the dye they put into my veins showed my heart and arteries were perfect. I ate so healthy for a whole week because of this. My bf is very knowledgeable with nutrition and fitness. We left the hospital and he went straight to our favorite pizza place to get my fatass an XL meat lovers, wings, and mozz sticks. Ugh I was in heaven. Back to ruining my body! The doc definitely felt my belly up a bit when attaching the EKG sensors 😋. Message and tease all you want. I’m a 20 something fat ass that hasn’t exercised in 12 years. I am more out of shape than people 200 pounds heavier, and I’m addicted to junk. Gotta have it 3-4 times a day!

[derww]

DEVOTIONS WEEK DAY 4: ANIMALS/OBJECTS

Okay, the thing is: Zam goes to the Kings SMP, spends several weeks in a bloody meat grinder, fights back to back with Minute and Mapicc and Jepexx against the world and somewhere in the process realizes herself to be a girl.

It's not bad: she swaps her crown for an elegant tiara, and her pretty kitty princess blade hits exactly on target and holds in her hand like a glove, and the dress turns out to be much more comfortable than an almost formal suit.

She spends the rest of the season so at ease with herself – even after losing her magic blade, she does not return to her former self, but rushes around the server, ready to destroy anything, and, in the end, reunited with the blade, counts it as her happy ending.

And then it's time to return to the Lifesteal, and she lowkey expects that her dress, like in the Cinderella, will turn into rags, but she, Minute, Mapicc and Jepexx activate the teleport, and Minute holds her gloved hand, making sure of a safe landing, and they appear on a flying an island in the center of the spawn, and... Nothing changes. Even her pretty blade, despite everything, remains hanging on her belt.

For a moment, while everyone is still recovering and looking around, she just stares into the sky, and then, experimentally, lightly stabs Minute into the side. He curses and lets go of her hand, and a cat falls at their feet with a long meeeeeow. She looks at it, running around and scratching Minute's feet, with mild amusement.

Oh. Oooh. Okay!

In the end, it is kinda nice: everyone, as it happens usually on the Lifesteal, just roll with it and she changes her dress for the black one with purple accents, and cats help her push players into the void, and in return she makes them a corner in the skull base and feeds them with fish washed up by the waves. Pangi is being heavily liked by one of them for some reason. He names him Cheeseburger.

(For some reason, cats don't like Jumper. She wonders if it's because of their experience on Kings)

Cat ears make her much more sensitive and observant, allowing her to detect enemies and hide from them just as successfully, and also – to lie at night on an icy bedrock and listen to the measured whisper of the Abyss. Sometimes Mapicc joins her, but he doesn't quite hear it, and she describes it to him.

It simultaneously changes everything significantly and really does not. Her dress is elegant but shorter than she would like, and she doesn't wear heels, and her scar – her pride – is not going anywhere, and she still kills people and herself, but everything seems to be half a tone better than it was.

Mapicc grumbles about the need to retrain for her movements changed under the new center of gravity, and also about her too–long hair getting in the way, and she eventually ties it into a high ponytail and it instantly shuts him up. They fit her blade into their normal formations – backstabs do great damage, and cats push and interfere with enemies, and they are forcing opponents to always think about one more thing.

One day she makes a mistake and falls into the void and dies, and it's hard, but she accepts it because she knows that one day it was bound happen. The Abyss demands all kinds of sacrifices, she tells herself, and I must always be ready to give her everything, including myself. Bacon gifts her an elegant rapier crowned with stars, and she continues to live because it was not the blade that defined her.

But one day, in the dead of night, walking through the void, with bare feet on the great nothingness, listening to the eternal whisper of absolute knowledge and dancing under the new moon, the Abyss speaks to her. And it's not like She's never talked to her before, but this is the first time she's been alone.

My child, the Abyss whispers, overwhelming her with an invisible pressure, I have something that belongs to you by the right.

As if enchanted, she pulls her hand forward, and intently, and slowly, as if with effort, squeezes her fingers until she feels the icy metal of the handle, and nothingness separates the blade from the ink.

This is her blade, absolutely it is, but it is darker, almost completely black, and only rare gaps in the folds reveal the familiar deep blue.

She smiles.

"Thank you, lady," she says from the bottom of her heart, and the tension around her evaporates with a dry click.

[taotaoirl]

toji malewife headcanons

this is my take on the malewife headcanons (written months ago)

tags: fluff, gender neutral reader, you guys are living together/married

i like to think that toji is the #1 malewife (even though it is likely just my delusions speaking!)

first and foremost, he is a great cook

just imagine toji in a white apron (tied around his slutty waist ofc)

he would wake up super early every morning just to make the both of you (and the kids) breakfast, which would likely be a traditional japanese breakfast (consisting of fish, rice, miso soup, and pickled vegetables)

on sundays, he would make you guys an english breakfast (consisting of eggs, bacon, tomato, mushrooms, toast and no baked beans bcs fuck baked beans)

reiterating the toji would-do-anything-for-you fushiguro agenda because he would even *attempt to make you all kinds of baked goods even though he always overbakes everything. and ofc you gotta gobble that burnt shit up telling him it was the best thing you've ever had

once again reiterating the toji would-do-anything-for-you fushiguro agenda: when he's not running from his responsibilities, he likes to cook you an elaborate meal at the end of the day and yes he does the dishes as well

after a long day of work, there is nothing better than coming home to a table set for two and a three-course meal prepared by toji fushiguro.

the set up is nothing too fancy, no decorations whatsoever, but the food is top notch

toji likes to sit at the end of the table, head slightly tilted on his hand, watching you eat the food he has carefully prepared for you. he doesn't say much, but you notice the way his eyes soften the moment you pick up your chopsticks and start eating

if you compliment his cooking, he will likely get flustered (though he doesn't show it). he will simply raise his eyebrows, look away and say that the kids helped too (the kids, in fact, did not help)

it is well-established that toji probably has pretty nasty hygiene, but it is also common knowledge that megumi's mom helped him get his shit together. so i like to think that as long as he has someone to depend on, he starts taking care of himself too. especially when he is handed the responsibility of taking care of his family- he will do everything he can to avoid falling back into his old habits (of ass hygiene)

if you are away for long hours/working/too tired, toji will step up and do all the cleaning for you- vacuuming, dusting, deep cleaning every room- whatever it is, you name it, he'll do it

he'll do it but it's gonna be a mediocre job at best. it's better than nothing though!

needless to say he's also quite good at fixing household items (basically a staple repairman husband)

once he's done will allat (he will speedrun that shit) he'll get back on the couch/bed, put an arm around your shoulder and enjoy his silence with you

[seat-safety-switch]

One of my favourite things in life is to find a new use for an old thing. Dirty keyboard keys? Put them in a cup of hot water with some denture tablets, and they'll come out good as new. Dog won't respect your authority as master of the house? Feed him bacon if he agrees to stop eating your azaleas.

The reason why this feels good to us is twofold. One, we like applying our life knowledge to a new domain or problem. For instance, if the top of your stove is dirty, you know that you need some kind of abrasive to clean it off. Baking soda is abrasive, you learned that one weekend making Drano bombs with Uncle Tom, let's mix up some of that with water. Boom, works great, and now when the feds kick down your door you're sure to get your security deposit back for keeping the kitchen clean.

The second, and probably more important, reason, is that we like getting one over on the secret authorities who rule our life imperiously from afar. How dare they force me to buy their sunscreen, when this TikTok video reveals the truth about how to make my own out of expired mayonnaise and house paint. As you can imagine, this second rationalization can often get those of us without critical thinking skills of any kind in trouble.

It is important, and I'm talking to everyone in the back row who is currently trying to push their fingers into the wall-mounted pencil sharpener, to always listen to that little voice inside your head. If it sounds too good to be true, it's probably bullshit made up by malevolent algorithms beaming nightmares directly into our skulls while circling the globe. Only by purchasing my new book, and accompanying nine-part video seminar, can we hope to get back to the world where mixing together random chemicals in your house helps solve problems.

[nalyra-dreaming]

Some comments on episode 3 / episode 10 - SPOILERS * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Daniel not wanting to eat the living fish…. yeah I can empathize

Raglan James - Is that a real name???? (LOL)

Love the banter

Daniel doubting how many Rashid’s there are… indeed

I like that they’re echoing Louis being away in last season this one as well

The underlying threat of Armand being able to kill them all if he so chose

That audio visualization will become important still I bet

How do you hide from the cloud indeed

Louis being asleep during the day?! Why this time? He was awake during the day before?

“Lestat’s prophetic vision”

Yes, be snarky Daniel :)

Flashback!!!!

Ugh incineration by fire gift

Oh Armand watching Lestat as harlequin - he has it baaaaad

Armand hinting that Lestat has powers he has not touched, and them talking to each other in their minds….

Viens a moi! Come to me!!! There it is! Armand said it to Lestat, yes baby!

And Armand admitting to stalking and then kidnapping.

And I love that they’re doing it all in French - I cannot quite judge but hope it’s well done

mhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh YES I CANNOT LIE I APPRECIATE IT AND I LOVE IT

the time freezing was so well done

Gosh Nicki. Gosh that feeding

to summarize: Liar, liar, pants on fire (LOL), but I love it. Ah yes, great fanfic, I like

Great now I will imagine Lestat and Armand beeeeeeeep in that box for ETERNITY lol

And Daniel… not buying it lol

“He abandoned xyz”… ohhhh there we have it. There we have it (not). The crux of the whole matter.

Louis knows what’s up. Deep down he knows. But them matching the stories is almost cute.

Claudia humbling herself like this to be part of it all breaks my heart

The sneezing made me cry with laughter

Ahhhh the wet room. And the rats. And the tombs. The tombs. Ohhhhh they’re so gonna lock Louis up there later. Oh boy.

“That’s a bit german” re the incinerator !!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Holy shit?!)

God Lestat interrupting that moment. And Armand sensing “Bruce”. Daaaamn.

Daniel getting distracted but the Talamasca. Who have access to his computer. (!!!)

“Where is Claudia at this point” 😔 (and no answer)

Santiago’s maker being down in the tombs is IMMENSELY interesting. WHO THE FUCK IS HE

Also him telling Claudia that her lies are almost convincing….

The “come to me” scene. Even better in total. Oh Louis. Armand calling him out on it.

And the philosophical discussion there. The admission despite the warning. Something Louis ALMOST remembers…

“that’s debatable” - “she did”. Oh MAN LOUIS

“I told you I loved you” - “And you said nothing.” Holy hell.

THAT KISS. the music.

It’s RAW.

God they’re on another level

AND THE PHOTO: Lestat being there… and then vanishing!!!!

Louis knows. He knows. Also that little story Claudia makes up there… oof.

The Bacon triptych - that is so weird. WHO wants to buy it. I BET that’s important.

And Daniel using the time to go through the material and find the proof of the theater burning.

The coven pressuring Armand. I LOVED that. The trepidation. Ugh.

And them throwing Louis out when she is initiated. Does he know of the five laws??????

And Claudia’s expression at the laws. Oh maaaannnnnn.

And I KNEW it!! Armand is playing with the fire there “threatening” Louis. I mean, he ultimately doesn’t, but he ALMOST does. The discussion in the sewers. The foreshadowing once more. Louis calling on what Armand promised, and Armand throwing the lies into his face. DAMN.

And Armand stating that Claudia won’t be there for long.

God I knew the coven would go and humiliate Claudia with that role. I knew it. Damn. Her face.

“The Savage Garden”. The roaring of the fire behind Louis. More foreshadowing.

“Did he break you? Or did you break him?” 😭😭

A century ago. Yesterday. So much pain.

That kiss. And Louis inviting Armand in on the premise that he won’t kill him!!!!!!!!!! Holy shit.

NO PAIN.

AAAAALLLLLLL THE PAIN.

Argh, loved it, maybe a favorite so far. There is so much going on. So much foreshadowing. So much knowledge suppressed, or endured. So much bitter realization. So many things hinted at and introduced.

Also, as clear as it is (and was said in the episode insider) that this is Armand’s little fanfic version… (as Assad how much of it is used to "paint Armand in a good light"?!) :))) . It was a LOT of fun. :)

And that banquet scene will be in the next episode already!! Whoop whoop, cannot wait!

[whencyclopedia]

The Foundation of the Royal Society

The Royal Society was founded in 1662 to promote scientific research and increase our knowledge of the natural world. With royal patronage and a stellar membership of great minds, the society quickly gained international recognition for its work. One of the society's noted presidents in its formative years was Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who held the post for 27 years.

Newton was also responsible for one of the great feuds that beset the society, unfortunately not an uncommon state of affairs, as great men competed for credit as the first to make certain scientific discoveries. More positively, in many ways, the Royal Society was responsible for setting out what exactly we consider science today, with its emphasis on experimentation, sharing of data and knowledge, and having peers critically assess all new results and theories.

Origins of the Royal Society

The idea of the Royal Society is often credited to the English statesman and philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626). In Bacon's New Atlantis (published incomplete in 1626), he presented the idea of a utopian scientific institution that promotes research; he called it Salomon's House in homage to the wisdom of the Biblical King Solomon. Three decades later, in 1660, several natural philosophers, that is thinkers and men of science who sought to explain the physical world around us, men who had already met each other from time to time in informal settings, got together to make Bacon's idea a reality. There were other such informal groups in other areas of studies, particularly as at that time, the universities largely concentrated on teaching and did not conduct research like today. In order to more efficiently discover and promote new ideas, the benefits of a formal institution were required. In addition, such a self-funding institution would mean scientists (perhaps more accurately described back then as natural scientists) did not have to go around begging for financial support from wealthy patrons inclined to pursue their own interests rather than those of science as a whole.

Continue reading...

[marigold-hills]

june 2: oyster | @wolfstarmicrofic | word count: 502

PREVIOUS PART • NEXT PART

“Alright there, Moony? Looking a bit pale,” Sirius asks in between inhaling his breakfast and reviewing what sparse notes he made for the Potions NEWT.

Remus looks up from his mug of tea (gripped between large hands like a lifeline). There are shadows under his eyes: another late night, then. Exams are upon them, and the way Remus studies has become obsessive.

“You need food too, mate,” James piles bacon onto Remus’ plate, ignoring his grumbles – almost growls, since it’s only a week until the full moon and the lines blur a bit in those days. ��Yes, you’re very big and very scary. Now eat your breakfast.”

I should have done that, Sirius thinks because something in him believes the job is his. He’s never been good at caring for anything, hanging onto James even for his own needs, but it’s different, somehow, with Remus. There is a duality: being thankful for James’ care and resentful of it.

The owls come as they do every day, a flurry of wings and feathers. It’s a bright, clear day and they disturb the sun rays as they swoop through the Great Hall.

Remus gets the newspaper (something obscure about literature) and a beautiful, haughty looking owl lands in front of Sirius, raising a dignified foot with a small parcel for him to unwrap.

“What did you get?” James asks as the owl takes off, scoffing at Sirius’ offering of a sausage.

It’s an oyster shell, gold encrusted with an artisan's precision. Inside of it a marble eye, a shade of green which reminds him of autumn and of something else. He finds comfort in the colour - it’s why he chose it – a memory of warm fires and long cozy nights, of the happiness he feels when, as Padfoot, he’s surrounded by pack.

Sirius clips the silver chain the oyster is attached to around his neck “It’s an oisrí feiceálaí,” he hopes he doesn’t butcher the pronunciation, glances at Remus to make sure, “I’ve come across them when researching for my dissertation.”

“What does an oyster have to do with ancient runes?” Remus finds his voice at the bottom of the tea mug.

“Well… nothing. I just thought it was neat. It’s the symbol of fifth dimensional vision.”

“Sure you didn’t accidentally study Divination?”

“Hilarious, Prongs.”

Something catches James’ eye across the Great Hall – more likely someone – and he shoots up with a harried I have to go, see you at the exam!

Remus leans across the table, with a careful hand reaches for the necklace. Studies it, turning it around in his fingers. They oyster looks small in his grasp, the silver more pronounced against the golden skin.

“Very pretty, Sirius,” he says, and Sirius feels the sentence like it means something else, “Will you tell me more about it, after the exam?”

Remus looks up from the oyster, straight into Sirius’ face, eyes reddened and shiny from the lack of sleep and –

- well, Sirius knows what the green reminded him of.

NOTES:

this is part two of a 30-part series of shorts: I’m aiming for them all to be readable as standalone but are a part of a bigger story (better read together and in order, in my opinion)

oisrí feiceálaí, to the best of my knowledge, means seer oyster in Gaelic. It’s not actually a thing but I came across this and thought it was pretty and ostentatious enough for Sirius to wear ALCHEMICAL OYSTER PEARL

Remus is always autumn to me - by that logic Sirius in Winter, James is Summer (self explanatory, really). Peter is Spring I suppose. But I don’t ever write him into my fics so who’s to say

speaking of Peter - let’s say he’s already at the venue for the potions exam, absolutely shaking from stress and desperately cramming last minute revision

@lightningmonarchda3 @bowielover420 @tealeavesandtrash @digital-kam

(let me know if you do/don’t want to be tagged in next parts)