#Lie for Me Chapter 3

[somerandomcockroach]

"Mistakes on mistakes until" (my speed of reading is that one day where every planet stands in one line)

2 chapter in nutshell

3 chapter in nutshell

[cherrywhite]

Silt Verses protagonists // Returning Home

[oceans-beloved]

Meme dump yayyy🥳✨️

(off to make more now muhahaha >:3)

[celestial-toys]

That I Would Be Good [2/5]

Mind Games

“Contrary to that thing, my monitor doesn’t need to be on in order for you to interact with me. No eye-strain or migraines required.”

You lean back in your chair, muttering as you turn to face him. “Just trading one kinda ‘strain’ for another if you ask me…”

He idly turns your mug over in his hands. “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.”

Your brows raise and you cock your head up to look at him. “That’s… mature of you.”

His optic's focus doesn’t move from the mug in his hands. “…One of us has to be.”

- - - - - - -

In This Chapter

Moon walks in on you in a vulnerable state, Sun displays his concern over your health in his own strange way, and they both attempt to care for you as you chip away at your work.

Pairing: Sun x Moon x Reader

Word Count: 4,606

Contains: [AU - Real World | Sentient AI/Automatons | Personality Swap] [depiction and discussion of EDNOS (including mentions of weight gain + disordered eating and its slew of related thoughts and behaviors)] [invasion of privacy (both intentional and unintentional)] [more of Sun’s usual brand of tension and intimidating behavior]

A/Ns: This is a songfic. Lyrics and title are from ‘That I Would Be Good’ by Alanis Morissette.

This fic is part of my AU “[Not] Made by Design”, the full series can be found here.

Links to other parts of this fic: [Ch.1] [Ch.2 (you are here)]

That I would be good even if I gained ten pounds.

You glare down at the bathroom scale in a brief moment of anticipation, and the illuminated digits that soon flash back at you make you regret stepping up here in the first place.

A critical little voice fills your head, speaking to you in a smug tone as you watch the scale’s display time-out and go blank.

“What else did you expect?”

You stand frozen in place, eyes darting over to your phone lying on the counter by the sink. The screen displays a document containing a substantial number of weigh-ins, body measurements, progress photos, and more. It’d gone unopened for a blissful few months before that damned voice urged you to open it again.

“You’d surely feel better if you got healthier,” it said.

“You’d be healthier if you lost some weight,” it said.

“You’ll thank yourself later,” it said.

“You’ll do it right this time,” it said.

“It’ll be worth it,” it said.

You’re familiar enough with this cycle to know not to fall for it’s words, but fuck do they sound good sometimes. They sound right. They manage to convince you that that’s really all there is to this nagging desire. They frame it around your health, they paint it in a pretty, harmless, positive light, and you eventually cast aside all better judgment and wade back into that familiar sea of lies.

You’re surprised it hasn’t drowned you yet.

You do the quick math in your head and frown at the confirmation that you’ve nearly gained back the same damn ten pounds that you’ve lost and gained more times than you’d like to count.

The logical part of your brain is pleading with you to listen to reason.

That your body feels safe here, and that there’s a reason for that.

That there’s a reason you keep bouncing back to this weight when you eat like a normal human instead of an obsessive, restrictive control-freak.

That every time you restrict and deny and starve yourself down toward your “goal weight” you’re only hurting yourself.

That once you inevitably give in to the human need for food, your body is only going to put on more fat-reserves to try and protect you.

That no matter how many times you listen to those lies, your efforts to be “healthy” will never do you any good as long as the focus is on your appearance.

That try as you might to hide it, you’re not living alone anymore. That eventually- sooner or later- your ever-observant house-mates are going to catch on to what you’re doing.

Apparently, “sooner or later” is actually right fucking now. As you stand in place, fully naked and perched on the bathroom scale lost in thought, the door swings open and you aren’t sure if it’s you or Moon that shouts first.

You jump in shock and immediately move to cover yourself, unable to get a coherent word in over Moon’s shouts of “SORRY—SORRY—DIDN’T REALIZE YOU WERE IN HERE—I AM SO SORRY!”

He twists his faceplate 180 degrees on its axis so damn fast that you’re afraid he’s damaged some internal components in his rush to prove that he isn’t looking at you. He rushes back out of the bathroom, swinging the door closed behind him, and you slump against the wall, cradling the bathrobe you’d instinctually ripped off its hook against your chest. As you try to calm your heart, you hear the muffled sound of Sun’s irritated voice growing louder as he presumably approaches the door to investigate the noise.

You hurriedly wrap yourself in the robe before any more unfortunate incidents can occur.

“What the hell are you shouting about?! Is everything okay?”

Moon’s voice is a lot quieter when he answers him. “...Yes—No—I… I mean…” Silence hangs in the air. “I don’t… know.”

“What does that mean? Are they okay or not? Yes or no?!”

“Everything… is fine, Sun. Everything’s fine.”

A pit of fear begins to grow in your stomach at Moon’s haunted tone.

Surely he didn’t have time to realize what you were doing amidst his rush to vacate the bathroom… right?

“Sure as shit didn’t sound fine! What happened?”

“I just… I accidentally walked in on them in the bathroom. We startled each other. That’s all.”

You can feel the tension through the door.

“You’ve always been an awful liar, Moon. Now tell me the truth.”

Your eyes cast across the scale on the floor, the unraveled measuring tape sprawled across the counter, and your phone, its screen still lit up, displaying your detailed list of measurements.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding.

He put it together that fast?

“…I don’t think the truth is mine to tell, Sun.”

A terribly uncomfortable silence falls between the two of them, and you can only assume that they’ve moved whatever remains of the conversation to their internal chat.

You weigh your limited options as you take a seat on the edge of the bathtub, cursing your past self for ever confiding in them about your history of disordered eating. Why’d you think that was a good idea?

You could try to play it off, make a big deal about getting walked-in on while naked and pray that they conveniently forget what else Moon saw.

Or, you could try convincing them that it's different this time. Use all the same tactics that the disorder uses on you.

Or, you could try being honest. You could try being open with someone about this for a change. You could try asking for some damn help.

A soft knock on the door takes you out of your thoughts. Moon’s strained voice follows it. “Star, uhm… whenever you’re decent, I think the three of us should talk.”

You hear a sudden sound-the reverberation of rubber on metal-and Sun grunts out a muffled “Fuckin’-stop it! Okay- okay- y’ don’t gotta hit me…” before his voice follows Moon’s. “We aren’t… mad, if… if you’re worried about that. We’re just concerned. And we want to talk. That’s all.”

You close your eyes, and feel the pang of a painfully empty stomach.

Your voice comes out colder than you expect it to.

“I’m decent. Just open the door.”

A few seconds pass where you wonder if they even heard you, but then the door handle twists and the last remaining barrier between them and your poorly hidden secret is removed.

Moon enters first, looking concerned, of course, but also… almost… guilty. Internally, you scoff. It’s not like it’s his fault that you’re like this.

His monitor pivots, sweeping across the room but not lingering for long on any one thing, apparently already having seen enough in the brief moment between first opening the bathroom door and then registering your unclothed presence in the room.

You didn’t expect his environmental processing speed to come back and bite you in the ass like this.

His focus eventually settles on the floor tiles as he shuffles into the small room far enough to leave space for Sun.

You wrap your arms around your middle as the solar bot steps into the room, uncharacteristically… distant.

Well. Emotionally, his distance is nothing new, but he’s got quite the penchant for invading personal space, particularly yours, so the way he lingers near the doorway doesn’t go unnoticed. You watch as he silently leans forward, monitor shifting away from you and over toward your phone on the counter. He bends down to get a better look, apparently not shy about confirming Moon’s assumptions regarding what you’d been doing in here. He lowers a pointed finger to the screen, back-scrolling through your records and lingering on a few… unflattering photos.

You grit your teeth and grow restless in the tense silence. The uncomfortable vulnerability that comes with his casual invasion of your privacy manifests itself in your defensive tone. “Either of you gonna say anything or am I supposed to just sit here quietly as Sun reads about exactly how fat I’ve gotten?”

Moon’s head tilts slightly toward you, brow furrowed, and Sun mirrors the expression as he puts your phone to sleep with a defiant huff. You suspect he could easily unlock it and continue his investigation if he so chose, given his penchant for surveillance. He seems to recognize though, or at least finally acknowledge the rudeness of it, pulling back and righting himself, leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed. “I couldn’t care less about that. I just want to know what’s going on with you.”

Moon pulls in a breath he doesn’t need, trying a gentler approach. “I apologize for walking in on you. I promise I… didn’t see… much.” He pauses, considering his words carefully. “…I can… show you? What I saw? I’ve already censored it. Or, uhm… I can just fully delete it if you’d like me to.”

The reminder that he can recall exactly what he saw and relive it again as many times as he’d like isn’t something you want to think about right now.

Maybe if you fling yourself backwards into the bathtub, you’ll hit your head so hard that at least you’ll be able to forget that any of this ever happened.

Pushing aside the intrusive thought, you shake your head. “I… appreciate the offer, but honestly that’s not what I’m concerned about right now.” You huff. “Hell, I’ve seen the two of you stripped bare, inside and out. Maybe it doesn’t hurt to level the playing field… I don’t know.”

The expression on Moon’s face changes, looking like he’s about to speak, and you cut him off before you all can wade any deeper into that discussion. “I assume seeing me naked for all of two seconds isn’t exactly what you two are concerned about either.”

Moon nods in both agreement and understanding, presumably answering for the both of them, as usual.

Sun reaches out once again, pinching the loose length of measuring tape between two fingers and lifting it off of the counter. “You know, I was willing to believe you when you started turning down your usual dinner, saying that you wanted to opt for something healthier.” He runs the tape between his fingers, straightening it as he speaks. “I was willing to write it off as your usual, run-of-the-mill lack of self care when you conveniently started “forgetting” meals entirely.” He begins slowly wrapping the tape around itself and you watch as his hands make quick work of re-rolling the tape into a neat little coil. “I was even willing to encourage you when you suddenly started wanting to exercise more. Though I had to admit, you seemed to be pushing yourself too far, too soon.”

He places the rolled tape back down on the counter, gaze suddenly meeting yours. “How long were you going to try and make fools of us?”

Okay… he’s taken this more personally than you thought he would.

“I—I wasn’t trying to “make a fool” out of either of you. Is that what you think this is? Some fun little game of mine?”

Moon jumps in before the conversation can grow heated. “That’s… not what he meant—”

“The hell it wasn’t—”

“Drop the act, Sun!”

Moon’s unexpected outburst catches both of you off guard, but his voice doesn’t waver, monitor swinging over to stare his other half down. “I know you’re worried about them and I know you don’t know how to show it, but shoving your head up your ass and acting like everything they do is some personal slight against you is not the answer.”

For once, Sun actually looks a bit shocked.

His screen flickers, cycling through a few different expressions before blacking out altogether. He’s quiet for a long few moments, monitor angling down toward the floor.

“…Then what am I supposed to do.” His defeated question comes out more like a statement, his head picking back up just enough for the image of you to enter his field of view. “How am I supposed to fix this? How do I reason with this nonsensical part of you that thinks there’s something wrong with your body?”

You search for an answer, a simple shrug followed by “It’s not that easy, Sun.” apparently not enough to satisfy him.

He keeps talking as he slowly approaches you, brushing past Moon’s outstretched arm as the lunar bot fights with his outdated instincts to keep Sun away from you. “There isn’t anything wrong with your body. Never has been. Never will be.”

You guess that his words are meant to sound comforting, but something isn’t right. His tone is off, the approach is all wrong, and he isn’t even technically correct.

“You know what there is something wrong with, though?”

You humor him. “What?”

He’s within arm’s reach of you now, and he reaches out to tap you on the forehead.

Moon’s hand darts in and clamps around Sun’s wrist, losing his internal fight.

Sun ignores him entirely.

“Your brain. There’s something wrong inside your head and it’s gonna fucking kill you if you keep listening to it.”

Moon attempts to interject. “Sun, that’s enough—”

“Tell me how I can help you.” Sun cuts Moon off like he’s not even there, focus locked entirely on you. “How? How? I can’t work on you the way you can work on us! I can’t lay you down, open you up, and pull out all the broken pieces. There’s no antivirus program to run. No broken bits of code that I can repair. I can’t fix you with my own two hands, and these mind games are not my forte.”

He lets his legs fold, collapsing to his knees before you. You wince at the sound of metal hitting tile. “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. You know I will.” His voice grows desperate, “Please, please tell me that you know I will.”

You shake yourself out of the near trance you’d fallen into while watching him show you his own peculiar brand of honesty.

“Sun…” You reach for the hand that Moon isn’t holding back. “I do know that you would. I do. I just don’t know how else I can explain to you that this… isn’t something that can be fixed in such a way. Hardly anything on my laundry list of problems can be cured using your preferred methods. I… I’m sorry.”

Sun sinks the rest of the way to the floor, slumping against the sink’s cabinets. With his black screen and lifeless body, he’d seem dead if it weren’t for the voice still coming out of him. “…Moon?”

Sun’s better half answers him as Moon lowers himself to the ground beside him. “Yes…?”

“Could I bother you to talk some sense into the both of us?” Sun breathes out his request, and you’re only a little offended by his use of “us.”

In spite of it all, Moon laughs. A soft, gentle sound.

“I can try.”

That I would be fine even if I went bankrupt.

The door to your office swings open slow and quietly, and if it hadn’t been for your eyes picking up on the movement in your periphery, you’d’ve been none the wiser to Sun’s silent entry. You don’t even need to glance away from your monitor’s screen to confirm which of your boys it is, Sun’s habit of “forgetting” to knock is plenty of a giveaway.

“It’s been an hour.”

Your eyes close as you suck in a deep breath, releasing it with more force than necessary as you will yourself to remain civil about this. “Thanks for the reminder, Sun.”

Your dismissive thanks is far from enough to appease him.

“Which means… it’s time to take a break.”

You reopen your eyes, avoidantly locking your focus on the work spread across your screen. “And I’ve scarcely made any progress yet. I can’t afford to take a break right now.”

He’s quiet for a few moments, and you almost dare to think that was a good enough counterpoint to convince him to leave you alone.

Almost.

He moves wordlessly from his imposing stance in the middle of the small room, and you watch him in the edge of your vision. He approaches the opposite side of your desk in measured steps before dropping down out of sight. There’s no sound or indication of movement for an uncomfortable few seconds too long. You’re about to angrily push away from your desk to look beneath it, mind quickly flooding with any number of nefarious things he could be doing. Namely, unplugging your PC again like the nuisance that he is.

As the palms of your hands press into the edge of your desk in preparation to push yourself away, your attention is caught by movement at the top of your monitor. You watch with impatient confusion as Sun’s rays peek above the top of your screen, the curve of his faceplate rising into view akin to the sun over the earth’s horizon. His motion halts when he’s risen halfway, and you’re rendered speechless in a mixture of annoyance, amusement, and shock as a pair of hyper-realistic human eyes stare back at you.

“Can you ‘afford’ to damage your eyesight?”

He’s replaced his display’s usual simplistic, circular approximation of eyes with an uncanny digital replica of what seems to be yours. You can hardly focus on the point he’s trying to make given the odd sight before you. “I—Sun, now really isn’t…”

He blinks at you, unwavering.

“Sun—quit lookin’ at me like that!”

He stifles a brief laugh. “Take a break from your screen and I will.”

You huff, shaking your head as you tear your gaze away from both screens in front of you, gaze pointedly darting around the room. “And look at what instead? You? What good’s it gonna do for me to look at your screen instead of this one?”

True to his word, once your eyes are off the screen, he rids himself of his disturbing new look. You glance at the motion as he rises fully from behind your desk, and take note of the way his monitor goes black instead of defaulting to his original face. He rounds the desk, hooking a finger through the handle of your long-empty mug and planting his ass on the corner where said mug just sat.

“Contrary to that thing, my monitor doesn’t need to be on in order for you to interact with me. No eye-strain or migraines required.”

You lean back in your chair, muttering as you turn to face him. “Just trading one kinda ‘strain’ for another if you ask me…”

He idly turns your mug over in his hands. “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.”

Your brows raise and you cock your head up to look at him. “That’s… mature of you.”

His optic's focus doesn’t move from the mug in his hands. “…One of us has to be.”

You sigh. “Sun, I appreciate your attempts to preserve my eye health, I do. But right now really isn't a good time…”

His monitor swivels on its axis, turning a near 180 to look at your monitor on the desk behind him. He surveys the day’s work: a messy assortment of various windows, tabs, and programs, recognizing that one client’s unreasonable list of requests among the disarray. From how long he spends staring at it, you begin to wonder if he’s got anything else to say at all.

“…You ever think about quitting?”

A surprised laugh escapes you. “Quitting? Uh—aha—I mean…” You give your answer a bit of thought. “…Of course I think about it. Especially when I’m stuck with a project like this one. Or, well… a client like this one. But that’s not… practical. I can’t just walk away from a job when things get hard.”

His monitor reverses the path it took to face the screen, swinging around slowly and pausing halfway through the motion to face you. “What’s stopping you?”

Another breathy laugh leaves you. “You mean aside from not wanting to feel like an even bigger failure than I already constantly do?”

He doesn’t respond, and you barely give him any time to. “Aside from that, y’know… when I said I can’t ‘afford’ to take a break right now, I meant it in the financial sense as much as any other.”

It’s not like losing out on the profit from one project would hurt your finances too much, at least not in comparison to how badly the failure to deliver would affect your reputation in your field. But quitting altogether? That’d be a different story.

“You… have money.”

You resist the urge to roll your eyes, reminding yourself that in spite of his intelligence, some knowledge can only sink in when you experience it firsthand.

“Yeah, but I won’t continue to have it if I just up and abandon this job with nothing else to fall back on. I’ve got bills to pay, a house and car to upkeep. Mine and Zero’s food and water, you and Moon’s maintenance—these things aren't free.”

His monitor swivels away from you as he considers your words. “Well they should be.”

You bite back a smile at his indignant response. “You’re not wrong… and in a better world, they would be. But unless you guys have figured out how to universe-hop and just haven’t told me yet, we’re stuck in this one. And I’ll stick with this company as long as they’ll have me if it means we can keep living comfortably.”

He resumes his idle toying with your drinkware and the thought suddenly occurs to you that maybe you should look into gifting him a fidget toy of some sort. He and Moon both would likely benefit from one, though you suspect Sun will reject the notion and Moon will just end up with two. Not that they’d go unused regardless, the lunar busybody could likely work one in each hand and still find himself restless.

Perhaps you should look into something more involved, like… complex puzzles? Intricate crafts? Something to keep his hands busy, given his preference for physical tasks as opposed to Sun’s love of idle entertainment. For someone who hates so-called “mind games” the solar bot sure does spend a lot of time in his own head. Regardless, you ought to find something for Moon, because you don’t think your house can get much cleaner or more organized. Though, the solution to Sun’s penchant for micromanaging your behaviors will likely be more difficult than a simple fidget toy can solve…

As your mind gears up to run off with the ideas, Sun’s next abrupt question halts it in its tracks.

“Did you want to quit when you were working on us?”

You freeze for a moment as the vulnerability in his tone catches you off guard, but the truth comes out easy when you answer him. “No. …No, I never did.”

His head tilts just enough to angle halfway back toward you, and if he wore any expression at all you assume it’d be one of skepticism.

“I mean it, Sun. I mean— hell, talk to any of my colleagues and they’ll tell you how insufferable I was back then. How difficult it was to get me to focus on any other project. How hellbent I was on executing the vision. How… well, I guess you saw at least some of those fights there toward the end when things got kinda… tense. No one could even get me to entertain the idea of giving up on you.”

The finger he’d been tracing in endless circles along the rim of your mug comes to a standstill. “…Why?”

You spin your chair around a bit, swiveling further into his avoidant line of sight, tilting your head and attempting to catch his invisible gaze. “Because I wasn’t doing it for money. You two were a labor of nothing but love.”

In the silence that follows, you hear his cooling system kick up a notch, and that’s the only sound that fills the room for a long moment. 

But like all moments, it eventually passed.

A soft knock on the doorframe pulls your attention away from the flustered automaton on your desk, and toward his counterpart standing in the open doorway of your office. One look at the tray effortlessly balanced in one of his hands answers the question of his arrival before you can even ask it.

“Am I interrupting anything?”

Sun unexpectedly answers before you can, and when your gaze flicks back over to him you’re surprised to find his default expression returned, and his demeanor completely shifted. “Nah, I was just reminding them of the importance of taking breaks to rest their eyes.”

He motions Moon over and the lunar bot accepts the invitation. “That is very important!” Soft-spoken and positive as ever, he presents you with a very reasonably proportioned and healthy spread of food. “You know what else is very important?”

You gaze up into his blue crescent eyes and he answers his own question on your behalf. “Lunch!”

Your grateful smile is involuntary as you reach out to lift a plate from the tray, turning toward Sun in a silent request for him to vacate the dedicated food-and-drink corner of your desk. He’s already moving before you even turn to him though, rising and striding to the middle of the room as you offer your gratitude to Moon and listen to him describe exactly what he’d made you.

You do your best to fight the long-memorized caloric numbers that rack up in your head as you take stock of what all he’s brought you.

“I’d offer to refill your water bottle, but it seems to still be quite full…” Moon’s commentary brings your attention back, and you sheepishly answer him.

“Yeah, I… finished the coffee first and… kinda forgot about that.”

He pets you gently on the head, calm as ever. “It’s alright, starlight, I understand.”

As you guiltily reach for the water bottle, Sun pipes up, excusing himself. “Well, now that you’ve been sufficiently distracted, I’ll be taking my leave—”

Moon cuts in, “Oh, don’t let me run you off, I just wanted to bring this in.”

Sun begins walking effortlessly backwards toward the doorway. “Oh, you’re not. I’ve got… my own plans. Starting with washing this mug.”

You can’t resist the urge to tease him, ‘talking to yourself’ plenty loud enough for him to hear on his way out. “Oh, thank fuck, he’s gone. Now I can get back to work!”

He halts in his tracks halfway through turning to face the exit. “You know, on second thought—”

You grin and wave. “Goodbye, Sun! Thanks for washing that for me!”

He shifts his weight onto one leg, idling in the doorway and thoughtfully dangling your mug from one hooked finger. “I mean, The American Academy of Ophthalmology actually recommends—”

“Good-bye, Mr. Sun.”

Moon chuckles at your deadpan dismissal and Sun huffs, turning and trudging away down the hall.

As you sip your water and begin to poke at the lunch with your fork, Moon walks around behind you and leans forward, surveying the work spread across your screen. “Do you mind if I take a look over this while you eat?”

You know it’s probably mostly an excuse to stay in here and make sure that you do eat, but you nod anyway. “Uh, sure! Have at it.”

The hunger hits you once you’ve had a taste of Moon’s cooking, and you muse aloud, mumbling around a mouthful of food. “Hell, maybe you’ll find some workaround that I can’t.”

A/N: Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed. I’ll be back soon with part 3! You can also find my notes and commentary on this fic right here on Ao3. Links to the playlist and moodboard for [N]MbD can be found on this blog’s pinned post, as well as in the series notes on Ao3. Image Sources: x - x - x

[grimalkinmessor]

The way that I—

[fruitybashir]

holidate ch10 spoilers without context 😌✨️

[thecousinsdangereux]

the gods we can touch [complete]

pairing: Ava/Beatrice (Warrior Nun)

rating: T

chapter word count: 14,321 (whoops!)

chapter summary: 

In her dream, Ava is wearing a button-up, one with a familiar little green frog printed all over the fabric. She’s tan, as though she’s spent a couple months in the same too-bright sun they’re under now, and her legs are left bare by the tight jean shorts that barely make it mid-thigh. There's nothing but sand all around them, a vast and barren desert, but Ava is barefoot; this, Beatrice had known before anything else, since she’d followed Ava’s tracks to where she finds her now, sitting on a rock with her face turned towards the light.

Yesterday, Ava had been shot through with Divinium. Yesterday, there had been blood on her lips and hands and forehead. Yesterday, she could barely sit up, could barely breathe, could barely get out the few words she’d refused to die with. But in the dream, she is whole, and in the dream, when she sees Beatrice, she stands, as though the motion gives her no trouble at all.

chapter link: AO3

playlist link: SPOTIFY

[random-ykw-facts]

Fact #84

While Yo-kai Watch 2: Psychic Specters is meant to be the definitive third version of Yo-kai Watch 2, it is actually missing content from the other versions, Bony Spirits and Fleshy Souls, namely the version-exclusive requests, which all instead have their own counterparts in Psychic Specters.

Train Lie-in with Pride/Slicenrice Under Fire are replaced with Directator's All-Star Cast, Seal No Evil/The Price of Iron are replaced with A Real Charmer, The Realest Kappa/From the Future are replaced with Trying Tangle Tango, and The Bony General/Fleshy Souls General and Enma and the Serpent/The Old Fox Shrine don't have replacements, though many new requests were added to the post-game.

[lloydfrontera]

i will never stop being confused about people saying og lloyd was maltreated. like. what the fuck are you talking about. it's not maltreatment if you verbally and physically abuse and harass the people around you and then people start avoiding you and talking shit about you. that is called Consequences Of Your Actions and it's literally the least og lloyd should've gotten for the shit he pulled. like. someone very well could have decided not to take his bullshit and beaten his ass easily at any point. but they didn't. no one ever fucking did. javier is the closest we ever get to that and it was one (1) punch to get him to stop destroying someone's home and business. show me where is the maltreatment. cite your sources. tell me where can i find it. if you're gonna say something with your whole chest please tell me you've at least read the source material and aren't just explaining your headcanons as if they're facts. show me the fucking receipts ajsdhksf

[pr1nce-elias]

I'm so normal about Gideon and Harrow. I am not thinking about Harrow painting Gideons face a couple chapters ago. I am not thinking about Gideon biting her. I'm so normal about them.

[wetcatspellcaster]

the next chapter of AHL is so silly :)

[jattendschaton]

Technically, I am ahead of my word count goal, but somehow I am also still finishing up a scene I should have finished three days ago so I am both ahead and behind simultaneously. have I mentioned I love writing :')

[ninyard]

☔️ for the teasing wips ask game! 🧡

☔Is there a fic concept you have that you'd like to just explain and share because you're not sure you'll ever write it? If so, what is it?

I’ve wanted to write Betsy, Wymack/Abby and Kevin’s reactions to ~thanksgiving~ for soooo long. I started the Betsy one but didn’t get very far into it tbh, where she gets the phone call to say something has happened to Andrew

I’d share a snippet but I started writing it like easily five years ago so it’s not very good at all the writing sucks when I read it back

I’d really like to write it though, oh would it hurt. Betsy’s conversation with Andrew once she sees him? Kevin’s call with Wymack? And Wymack telling Abby, and then Abby telling Betsy, and the story having to be repeated over and over and over again. Just Bee’s reaction to hearing it???? Ouch!!

[guthrie-odonto]

Chapter 3 still hasn't been released yet, which can only mean one thing... we can still speculate and have fun ideas as to who the fan-favorite Secret Skrunkly Boss™ will be! In my case, I have a mix of multiple common theories: The runningest, rip-roarin'est raptor this side of the Pixos, Chonery the Cowboy! (pronounced similar to "Connor" and "canary")

Once the beloved star of a simultaneous kids show and computer/video game (think like Dora the Explorer but inverse/a video game would be seen as a show in the dark world), Chonery even knew Ralsei at one point, the two being good friends and going on all sorts of fun adventures before Ralsei ended up leaving for his princely duties in a way, Chonery was the Chara/Kris to Ralsei's Asriel.... One day, Chonery would be told by some stranger (through mail, like how some shows would have fan mail segments) that their show would come to an end, as cowboy shows tend to go. At first, they just saw it as a chance to give one final great perfomance and proudly watch as his successors carried on in their role. But...

Nobody came...

Nobody did anything with them, no director/screenwriter/controller gave any commands, nothing was done with the sets he once performed on, nobody even came back for props. Eventually, the mysterious entity they had been in contact stopped writing to them, his last note being about the truth of this world paired with a shadow crystal and a poncho constructed from pure darkness, information so core-rattling that it left literal scars on their eyes. Being left alone without a spotlight, without light, without anything more than darkness for so long, cursed with the so-called freedom of abandonment beyond their control, even their color left them; but that's just how cowboy shows are... right? The one place they ended up finding solace in was the deep caverns of the fossil mines and the remains found within. Might not seem like the place for a spunky buckeroo to be in, but perhaps they saw a bit of themselves in the extinct creatures after all, they were certain that they too were a Goner.... And besides. If a canary sings in a mineshaft and nobody is around to hear it... why would it mean that there's something wrong?

Then, after the dark fountain that had been seeded was opened, Chonery noticed that some visitors had shown up in his little ghost town. Not just any visitors, but genuine, bonafide lightners! It wasn't enough to completely bounce them back, but the sight of Lighters of all entities visiting their little patch of NOTHING was enough to bring some hue to Chonery's shaded face. And if that wasn't enough, his old friend "Rip-Roaring Rally" subsequently arrived, having detected the dark presence that had been spawned in the Dreemurr household. After being filled in on the situation, Chonery even volunteered to join the party as someone who knows the ins and outs of this particular dark world as well as being just as knowledgeable on matters of darkness and lore as Ralsei (in battle, Chonery and Ralsei would act together as a single party member). And what's more, they didn't even ask for anything in return, not even a chance to get the airtime they'd gone so long without it's not like a dead bud walking such as themselves had any reason to breathe anymore. But Chonery would have an idea for a project he'd make for the fun gang, one that they suggest Kris and the player could help out on by obtaining the six power cathodes split amongst the two big factions of the dark world, the gangs led by Mike and Tenna respectively. This, of course, is the buildup for the secret boss fight, but it was also... oh, it was an idea. a great idea.

It was a simply WONDERFUL IDEA.

for some meta, behind the scenes notes: Chonery (a portmanteau of Chara, Goner, Flowey, and canary–as in "canary in a coal mine") is obviously a mix of Chara and Flowey in allusions, paralleling how Ralsei was in Chapter 1 and being the Ralsei version of Chara. (doesn't hurt that it means they have eye scars that match Photoshop Flowey and look like a face in the Memoryhead enemy from Undertale) In addition, they also draw on the popular cowboy/woody theory, with the video game aspect being from the sonic theory crafted by @right-brain-left-brain as well as the semi-common idea that the chapter 3 secret boss could be inspired by how Asriel had an attachment to Yoshi and felt enough guilt over pulling the "Yoshi down the pit" trick to confess to it in church–hence why they're specifically a raptor (plus it fits the sonic angle because what's more 90s and cool than a dinosaur?) Also, the secret bosses all have some kind of speech quirk (Jevil's repetition, Spamton's advertisment interruptions) and have actual voice lines somewhere, so what'd those be for lil' ol' Chonery here? They'd be both. That's right, instead of a written speech quirk, all their dialogue would come with voice acting (almost as if they're capable of not just speaking to Kris and the others, but to the player). As for what object they're formed from: The trashed flowers from Asgore? The bootleg video game controller? Kris' feelings of the once-happy (or at least relatively stable) state of the Dreemurr family overall, now a shadow of what it used to be? Who's to say.

Even with all their knowledge on the truth of this world and what darkners become in the light world, Chonery isn't so sure themselves...

[acourtofquestions]

Dont be angry, Finnula said. Be smart.

[tomboyyyaoi]

i cant describe it but people just putting meryl and milly in the background of vashwood instead of just putting them front and centre in their own piece genuinely feels like im being cucked like why did u even bother

like damn maybe id like the ship more if people didnt just go "theyr so cute and soft and married aahhh so so gentle and femme and girly theyr so cyute" then the only time they draw them is like. idfk them walking in on vash and wolfwood fucking eachothers brains out like god. all talk.