#Mandates kill

[johnnusz]

COACH SADS NUMBER #1. Montana State Bobcats defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator Jonathan “Bo” Beck, 51, died suddenly, mysteriously, and unexpectedly in his sleep on June 22nd AT HOME. Never made it to the hospital. Never even woke up.

COACH SADS NUMBER #2. Frankfurt, Germany soccer coach and trainer Christian Reibold, 38, died suddenly, mysteriously, and unexpectedly this week. His team, SV Hellas Darmstadt, is in mourning and is as baffled as anyone as to what might have slain the healthy young father.

COACH SADS NUMBER #3. Beloved Italian basketball coach Titto Porcelli, 56, died suddenly and unexpectedly in his sleep in the early morning of July 3rd, while on vacation for two days with his family in Puglia, Italy. An article in Traniviva reported it was “probably from a heart attack.”

COACH SADS NUMBER #4. Olympic gold medalist, WNBA star and Rutgers basketball coach Nikki McCray-Penson, 51, died mysteriously, suddenly, and unexpectedly on July 7th, 2023.

COACH SADS NUMBER #5. Beloved StonyBrook football defensive coordinator Bryan Collins, 58, died suddenly and unexpectedly of a mysterious “cardiac event” over the weekend.

SAD stuff!

[sandwichsapphic]

modern au where bertie wears these shitty t shirts with increasingly bizarre slogans that keep getting more and more specific

one day he'll wear one that just says I <3 JEEVES and no one will even bat an eyelid

also i gave him funny little heart-shaped sunglasses cause they match his vibe and would send jeeves into cosmic stuffed frog territory

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

i think climate change discourse often uncovers ways that people have trouble thinking about things on a certain scale… for example it feels counterintuitive to say that on the one hand, the US is iirc the second biggest emitter as a country and the biggest per capita (since number one is china whose population is famously quite large), and on the other, if we waved a magic wand tomorrow and the US went fully net zero, that would not really have a huge impact on the situation as a whole. but it’s true, because there are just that many more people living Not In The US. or like, it is both true that taylor swift traveling is probably responsible for more emissions in a year than you or i would be in several lifetimes, and that banning private jet use entirely in every single country in the world would be a drop in the bucket at best because it’s a relatively small subset of a relatively small fraction of global emissions. a lot of ostensibly justice-focused climate rhetoric has a very moralistic viewpoint on what we might call disproportionate emitters - which is why many people read a sentence like “taylor swift’s private jet use is mathematically negligible in the grand scheme of things” and assume it’s some kind of ethical or moral defense of taylor swift (or the US, or 1%, or whatever) - but i am starting to feel like “what we really need to do is hold the rich accountable” is just as much performative magical thinking as whatever alleged greenwashed bandaid someone is bringing it up to criticize, because saying it feels radical or serious but betrays a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the actual scale of the problem.

[astrarche-x]

rereading the spring hunt chapter and having feels about Ouyang's meeting with the Great Khan

Firstly, I find it quite poignant that it's the second time we see Ouyang have a panic attack and both times this happens when he has a face-to-face meeting with people directly responsible for murdering his family: Chaghan and the Great Khan. Like huh, the embodied trauma of it all.

Secondly, there's the fact that the Khan can see Ouyang's ghosts and asks if he's an Ouyang from Henan. He knows. And he still chooses to praise Ouyang's skills, rewards him and tells him to serve his masters "loyally and well"???? Like, I know that one reason is that he probably kind of had to say this because of manners/protocol etc. But I also think it underlines how, for the Great Khan, Ouyang is someone who can make amends for his father's betrayal in a positive way. He can be precisely what his father was not: a loyal, talented general who will bring success for the empire, and it is his LOYALTY that would allow him to restore the honour for himself & his family. And of course we know that this is could never happen because Ouyang really lacks some crucial info here and also he was never going to give up on getting his revenge especially on Chaghan (and this is not even getting into the whole ''former slave asked to uphold the regime who enslaved him'' dynamic). But just. losing my mind over the fact that Ouyang had the option to regain his honour by staying loyal to Esen - by doing precisely the one thing he wanted, the only thing that made him happy. And he still did the exact opposite.

And thirdly, that line of foreshadowing....... yeah.

[musicalsobachka]

ok hear me out like i know having kipperlily's file gave them alot of information that is helping them piece everything together but also im like "guys thats a HIPAA violation. guys you cant just. steal medical records. guys. guys."

[zaritarazi]

ok hear me out they go to therapy but their arguments get Too Weird And Sexually Charged one too many times and the therapist gives up and walks out of the session and they fuck on the couch

4/5 i think bondage would really take this to the level it needs to be but overall an incredibly good and solid plan. i also think they'd fuck on the couch and then move to a desk so they can really be as rough and bizarre as possible.

honestly i can't tell if kendra or carter is the one that makes the therapist give up because you know everything carter says is "now we don't have time to unpack ALL of that" but kendra is also swinging a bat at that hornet's nest every chance she gets so it's anyone's game but maybe it's that kendra keeps grabbing carter's leg when she wants to yell at him or the way that carter will put his finger to her lips when he's trying to talk over her that really makes this licensed medical professional decide to go to lunch

[mzminola]

Huh. As far as I can tell in Preboot era, none of the Robins' murder moments or near-murder moments were ever as Robin?

Damian beheaded that guy in his intro issue (idk if he had near-murder moments while Dick was Batman). Dick killed Joker (and I think one other guy?) while he was Nightwing. Jason killed as the Red Hood, and as someone with no mantle during the Lost Days arc. Stephanie (nonfatally) strangled her dad while she was Spoiler, and kicked off War Games explicitly after the end of her Robin run.

Main timeline Tim got close to killing Boomerang as Red Robin, but like Steph let her dad go, Tim let Harkness live. He thinks about it in a couple desperate situations as Robin, but quickly rejects the idea. The closest thing to near-murder he has as Robin is threatening suicide to chase off Evil Future Batman.

It's interesting! Robin doesn't kill. Characters who have been Robin or may become Robin in the future can kill or come close, but when you're in the mantle of Robin, you don't kill.

JPV, Jason, and Evil Future (erased timeline) Tim have killed while in the Batman mantle, but nobody has as Robin. Is that true in alternate timelines, dimensions, what-ifs, etc too?

[randomnameless]

Drankengard done (land 2!)

A lot of nice things in this part, so far it feels like the most FE-like land, and some characters from this land are really interesting!

l firstly love how the plot starts with "we have to rescue this midget prince from 100k soldiers" in one of the few defend maps of this game with various catapults and other engines to attack/defend against a cluster of loldiers coming at you - that was nice compared to the nigh useless ballistas and other engines in FE.

Granted, Gilbert's defining moment after being revealed is basically protecting his vassal from a gotoh-like character who's twice his size and more or less recruiting her for the defend map -

(localisation thingie : no "kisama" for eng/fr script Gilbert, sure it's kind of complicated to put it in words - like an agressive "you" - and yet it gives some nice characterisation, after Amalia rekts Leah and while Gilbert is standing seconds before being surrounded by 100k peons in front of someone who's basically stronger than anyone else around, he is still angry and pissed for his friend's sake) -

Just before being upset at asking our party - aka a foreign nation who was at war with his for the last few decades and revealing that his dad only granted asylum to the princess of said foreign nation to marry her to his heir to conquer it later on - for help.

Hopefully for him his game is no Triangle Strategy, so no one will actually tell him to eat shit because he wasn't the one who liberated the land even if he participed to instead worship the "foreign" person who led the liberation army.

Hell, idk what kind of PR campaign Gilbert and his few loyal soldiers pulled out, but some NPCs are really acting as if he liberated his kingdom single handedly lol

His relationship with his elder brother was sort of developed in the main plot - but more in the equivalent of the support convos - but as I said in another post, I really loved that part where he feels like he's still a second prince, and if his older brother returns, older brother should get the crown even if older brother feels like dirt for failing his country and his father, and became a wandering... mercenary who's busy saving priestresses from jails (and leaving them in the middle of battlefields).

Ultimately, they reunite and more or less solve their issues, and Ludwig manages to tell him that he wouldn't be half the king Gilbert is, because Gilbert is the one who led a rebellion and ultimately led Drakengard free, is loved by this people etc etc.

TBH, while it was short, this was a nice character arc -

(complete with the support/rapport convo just after the final map I unlocked where Gilbert, wanting to know how the common people live in his kingdom, gets plastered with the a random worthless bandit/merc who's freaking out from the entire situation lol)

The other major character from Drakengard is Virginia, the MC's older cousin!

We first see her being kind of pushy and overbearing, sometimes taking the initiative to do rather extreme stuff (wanting to fetch her axe instead of recruiting the earlier worthless bandit/merc), but she's still deferring to the MC, save for a certain mission - because, and kuddos to the game for going there, while Virginia's story is basically a tragic Marth's, aka, when her kingdom was invaded she had to run away to a foreign state for asylum but without any Jeigan, she believed for 10 years and never stopped believing that she was the only one who survived, and thus it was her role and duty to restore the Cornian line on the throne and take back the country from the evil Empire.

And... MC pops up, as the rightful - aka the son of the late queen as opposed to her mere niece - heir thus Virginia's hopes of becoming the Queen and the one to restore her nation vanish.

So kuddos for the game to basically have Virginia tell her cousin that while she was happy to see him and learn he was alive after all those years... she also felt jealous, because the 10 last years she spent having this dream and hope to be the one to restore the country... vanished in 10 minutes lol.

She's not going to challenge Alain's claim to the throne and instead will support him.

Granted, this moment becomes ten times more interesting if you do her own mission before - aka the one where she zerg rushes against the dude who slaughtered her retinue against the advice of Jeigan Joseph and becomes a dreaded green unit (who loses her promotion somehow???), running in a battlefield full of catapults to have her vengeance.

Remember when I said one of her first defining moments is when she asks to be handed her axe to get rid of a worthless merc instead of recruiting him? Well, her words back then were something like "your men died for you, so you can't beg for your life" or something like that, we learn in her own mission that she was basically talking about herself.

Basically, kid!Virginia was supposed to have her Jeigans and Cain/Abel/Draugs and they were supposed to escape and run away together to Drakengard... but they were slaughtered by some general of the evil empire who thought bringing her head would make a good offering to the evil emperor, so the Jeigans, Cains, Abel, Draugs etc etc laid down their lives to allow her to escape - we have a voiced FB with a few images and a battle cinematic, where the knights basically say they will die to make sure she'll be able to escape, and will slow down the evil general with their corpses if needed.

The entire platoon of knights died, and Virginia has been carrying this trauma for ten years, dreaming of having her revenge but never once confiding in anyone from Drakengard about it - not even in her (Gilbert's) vassal Leah who she seemed to be close too earlier.

Short story, the general holds a fort and is supposed to be called back to the evil empire's capital for some reason, and instead of waiting for his departure to recapture the fort, Virginia storms at the general to have her revenge (accompanied by the knights who were just squires when she had to leave, and thus couldn't be there when their senior knights were slaughtered and want revenge as much as she does!).

You have to send Joseph to talk to her to have her turn blue again (and promoted again thank gods) and the re-recruitment scene is cool for 2 things :

1/it's Joseph, not Alain who talks to her because her beef and the one who talked to her and the one whose plan is ignored is Joseph - I love it when the MC isn't at the center of everyone's universe

2/Virginia during this convo notices her friends/knights are injured (they have the injured sprite) and realises she was going to send to their death the last remaining members of that platoon, chastises herself and her next battle lines are something like "I won't let them die/bleed anymore" or something and it's fucking powerful because hey, besides some "vengeance is empty" that she will get later on herself, part of what makes her see reason is the realisation that her allies are injured and were going to die in her quest, and she can't have that anymore (nice ludonarration moment here, Virginia is a tank, if her allies are injured, it's because she wasn't tanking well enough!).

"Vengeance is empty" moment : the evil general who slaughtered her former knights doesn't even remember the people he slaughtered, or the mission where he hunted her, aka, she's been obsessing for 10 years over something her so called "nemesis" forgot.

End of the map, the realisation that her vengeance was nothing + she put her close allies' lives in danger (+ the little bit of salt when she mentions that Alain is the Cornian Royal people should follow because he is royalty) make her want to leave the army as fitting punishment - which, you know, coming from a series where some lord basically goes 1VS1 against the guy who killed his dad and who was followed by his kid sister who put herself in mortal danger but only receives a scold from his not-mom and slap on the wrist just makes me side-eye FE Tellius' writing even more.

Anyways, while I read on redshit that some people were pissed because "wah wah Virginia is a character who does foolish things and there are consequences about it she should be exiled forever or something", she obviously doesn't leave the army because, all of her close allies ask her to stay. Hell, Alain only gives one or two sentences that are dispassionate compared to the other 4 - again to show that MC privileges aren't everything at least plot wise - but the main voice is Leah's - aka her (well) Drakengard retainer!

When earlier Virginia told her that this story and her choice had nothing to do with Drakengard - because it's about Cornian knights who died during her flight from Cornia - Leah now reminds her that she became someone important for Drakengard too, and you know, the 10 years she spent here ? It's not just only background to give some fluff for a teatime line, no, it has more implication, if not only to have this moment where Leah says that Virginia's pride, bravery and hope to restore her country also influenced and inspired people (Gilbert, the second son who had to assume the role of the King when no one else was left!) around her and made the people of Drakengard also hope to liberate their country - if she leaves now, the named character from Cornia will miss her, but also "Drakengard" in general.

To cement her words, after this map we can talk to some Drakengard NPC who's all "wow Princess Virginia is so cool she defeated the bastard in charge of this fortress!" and while idk if Leah's speech + that NPC were added to make the ending where she becomes the queen of Drakengard (save for Alain marrying his cousin) more plausible, but it was a really nice addition.

Adding to that the fact that Virginia is the one who's basically telling Alain (and informing the player) about various map hazards like geysers around the land, giving some backstory about the desert along with Leah and also the one who tells the party about a sort of shortcut/secret passage and yes, we get it that she lived for 10 years in that land and knows it enough to act as a guide, but also that the people around know her.

I mean compare with a game where some dude apparently went to a school in a foreign capital but when he marches on said foreign capital or talks to people who also attended that school he never mentions it - it's like night and day.

Final "daw" moment that is both tied to her character but also, another example that Alain isn't the center of the universe... Virgnia is the one who tells Alain to talk to Aramis (the eldest prince who became a merc!) and ask him to talk to Gilbert to put his worries aside about the throne and the succession and ust, to reunite with his younger brother.

The characters concerned (Gilbert and Aramis) thank Alain for giving them the occasion and push to talk to each other - not knowing this was something Virginia planned, because while hers and Gilbert's issues are sort of similar (the not "legitimate" heir who took the mantle of restoring their country to glory and believed it so for the last decade, only for the legitimate one to return), she has a good enough read on Gilbert to know that he needs to talk to his brother to put his doubts and questions about his legitimacy aside and accept that he is the King.

Coming from a series with "avatar scissors", the bonds and links between the characters was really something I enjoyed, Alain will not pop up and tell Gilbert that he is a good king and should get over/or deal with his doubts about his brother, Alain isn't the one who gives the most meaningful speech about why Virginia is important to Drakengard and hell, we don't even see the exchange we know he had with Aramis to convince him to talk to Gilbert, because the most important scene here isn't the Alain-Aramis dialogue, but the Aramis-Gilbert one. Gilbert doesn't want to free his Kingdom because he envies Alain or Alain told him to do so, it's something he wants to do being inspired by Virginia.

In a nutshell, Drakengard's major characters were a good surprise and their stories and quests were cool.

More minor character wise...

We get the Drakengard version of the same plague we saw in Cornia, but instead of having "clerics" perform experiments on infected people to find a cure, the accent here is put on a wyvern knight who was to enforce a lockdown, to prevent the plague from spreading and well... no fines in this setting, instead she runs them through with her spear.

IDK how that game would have been received just after Covid lol

All jokes asides, just like the Cornian version of this plot heavily suggested, the plague was devised by the evil empire to cut down the forces of the rebellion and make sure this land would be able to be conquered easily.

Why are the imperials killing people? Well, it might have to do something with the fact that the totes-not-gharnef old sorcerer guy is a necromancer...

Leah's quest explored a little more the background info that "Drakengard and Cornia used to be at war" thingie, with random green units also mounting a liberation army but refusing our help, and we know how this ends with green units, we basically have to save them.

Map ends with some Drakengardians - who swore allegeance to the evil Empire? - still willing to fight us, and Alain asking Leah to please ask them, as a Drakengardian (?) to surrender because if someone from Cornia asks them they will refuse.

Also it's a bit of a character exploration, for once the usually demure + always in the back behind Virginia asks the Liberation Army to do something and insists even if people refuse, straight up saying that in that case (if they refuse) she's going to help the green NPCs herself since she's strong enough to do so and it's cool because I think at one moment Virginia sighs/laughs, but not in a derogatory way, but more in some "damn she's becoming like me" way - which is alluded to in ther rapport conversation, Leah seeks to emulate her bold and fearless (being a green unit) behaviour.

I haven't seen a lot of convos with the desert people we recruit - thank goodness we're far from Hyzante's clichés even if the "people in the desert are bandits and former prisoners" trope is still here, but given how the ones who attack us were brainwashed by the evil Empire, it's not as aggravating as, well, Nopes or Hyzante.

Gameplay wise :

Damn if promoting your units cost medals, but it's so worth it to have more than one action (at least) per turn ! It also means we can use entire new strategies because now the turns are at least longer than one round each!

Drakengard fills the Jugdral quota with the group of units coming all at once at you sometimes lol, but I loved the aesthetic difference that ultimately became gameplay difference between this area and Cornia, basically we have more mountains to less space to manoeuver the non flying units, the enemies use AoE engines to ruin you or at times, AoE map abilities from their own units to deal some annoying amount of damage.

The cities are larger so instead of fighting in a meadow with one or two small buildings here and there, at times the fight takes place in an entire city, so again, it means reduced mobility and of course, desert sucks because, just like FE, you can't move well in the sand.

Lolcalisation wise :

Virginia "I have never been fond of court formalities" says a desert full of bandit isn't a place for "royalty like us"? When the "us" is both her and her cousin reknown for their martial abilities?

What the fuck does it mean ?

At least in FR it's "a lot of people avoid this place" and not just "royalty like us" - which doubles as ridiculous because in the "people avoid this place" it's again the trend of Virginia being a tour guide of Drankengard, telling Alain that people from Drakengard think about the desert, eluding this part is also, in part, eluding part of the knowledge Virginia has about Drakengard.

I think the localisation took the "royal pride" that defines her and exaggerated it to "royal arrogance".

IDK if the meaning is the same in english, cretin is an insult like in french, but damn if you say to someone the are a "crétin" they will feel offended and insulted because that's way more rude than calling someone an idiot!

:/

And I also have a bone against whoever thought it was a good idea to throw "pseudo elvish" words in the localised script (sadly we followed this :'() when the japanese audio doesn't use them at all, was it to pretend the evles from Fevrith have a different language because Tolkien shall be universal, or what?

Elf land doesn't see that interesting plot wise compared to Drakengard, and I'm not saying this because of my Alcina bias lol but I'll just have to wait and see!

(poor hodrick is being slaughtered by those pesky pointy ears and their hybrid attacks, tfw armor not withstanding magic is universal, I'll have to promote Miriam asap to protect him or just bench him :/)

[thepro-lifemovement]

https://www.liveaction.org/news/court-11-year-old-abortion-against-will/

An 11-year-old girl in the United Kingdom will undergo a court-ordered abortion, even though she wants to keep her baby.

The Telegraph reported that the girl became pregnant after being raped several times by older boys. London High Court judge Emma Arbuthnot ruled that she should have an abortion, saying it was in her “best interest,” even though it was a health board, and not the girl herself, who requested the abortion.

“She became pregnant after being raped by a 14-year-old she met on the internet when she was aged 10, on the 18th or 21st of May 2023,” Arbuthnot said. “She was raped by another 14-year-old boy on the 11th of June 2023, but he did not make her pregnant.”

Arbuthnot explained that a health board asked for “declarations that a termination of pregnancy would be in her best interests,” and that the placenta should be retained for forensic testing.

However, according to both The Sun and Fox News, the girl (identified only as AZ) and her mother did not request an abortion.

“When the many risks of continuing with the pregnancy were explained to her, AZ said she was ‘happy’ to be pregnant and wanted to continue with it,” Arbuthnot’s ruling said. “She said it made her feel ‘special’. The mother supported AZ’s position.”

[sleepless-in-starbucks]

how would u guys feel if i killed luke for the second first time again

[glamfellens]

try not to turn my nose up at peoples d&d campaign ideas on reddit but sometimes im just like. are u for real

[bluejaybytes]

show us your oc lore!!

I'm so sorry but it's exclusively my Splatoon OCs

I'm not at ALL confident in how legible this is, but this is my Web Of Lesbianism(tm), AKA how (almost) all of my lesbian sploon OCs connect to each other, excluding a few who only connect in small places and/or I don't feel like making icons for. Sorry to Scarlet, who absolutely warrants a place here, but I simply Do Not Want to make an icon for </3

Lore under the readmore because I get extremely rambly. whoops and apologies and this is probably the only time i'll ever let myself get THIS infodump-y in a Tumblr post. I'm writing this after I wrote it all out and I'm so fucking sorry it's literally over 2k words because I have no ability to stop once I've started and I've been outright POSSESSED by these losers for the past month. Here's basically everything about my Splatoon OCs

FOR NAMES. Top right is Basil (Blue tentacles), middle right is Penny (Her name is just written because I haven't drawn her yet), bottom right is June (Pink tentacles), bottom middle is Jake (Blue tentacles), bottom left is Parker (Purple tentacles, also the sanitized icon), middle left is Ruby (Orange tentacles), and top left is May (Pink tentacles)

Everything starts when May, Jake, and Ruby are all around ~16-17, while June, May's little sister, is around ~9. May is VERY into Jake, and Jake's just generally a big flirt and a huge romantic, though it's unsure if he really realizes May's extremely obvious crush on him (He doesn't), or he reciprocates, which is unfortunate, because Ruby, who's May's childhood best friend, is also very into her, but May doesn't realize this. When [UNDECIDED EVENT] happens and May and Jake both come to the realization they need to head to the surface to escape the oppressive Octarian domes, Ruby being with them is very clearly an afterthought, and she knows it. So, her jealousy over Jake being someone May has known for less time yet clearly loves more than her, and the fact that trying to escape being very, very illegal, she turns them both in.

Jake manages to call May before he's caught to warn her that Ruby turned them in and the cops will already be heading to her parents house, which gives May enough time to run home, grab June, and make a run for it. Both May and Jake manage to outrun the cops, with May and June ending up far into the outskirts of the domes, while Jake only gets further and deeper within them.

Around a month or two after their initial escape, May's spotted by a patrol of soldiers stationed right around the way to the surface, with the soldier who spots her specifically being Scarlet, the oldest sister to Ruby (Who's not featured here because I don't want to make her icon), who remembers May from when she was a kid and, alongside that, has been feeling disillusioned with life as a soldier, despite her high ranking, and decides not only to let May go, but to even share rations with her. This only increases as Scarlet realizes May is the runaway who's known to have a young child with her, and it goes from Scarlet sparing her own rations to stealing rations from the squad she leads to make sure both May and June are able to eat properly.

Of course, this doesn't last long, as Crimson, the middle sister to Scarlet and Ruby, and fellow soldier stationed with Scarlet's squad, gets suspicious of the missing rations, Scarlet's dismissal of the issue, and her wandering off frequently, and ends up following her and finds her giving the stolen rations to May. A fight breaks out between the two, with Crimson managing to nearly take Scarlet's eye out in the process, as Scarlet's the only person ever to bring a gun to a knife fight and lose. May booked it the MOMENT Crimson jumped out, so she's long gone by the time the scuffle ends, but Scarlet, having just been caught stealing rations, aiding a runaway, and now attacking a fellow soldier (Even if in self defense), bolts to try and make it to the surface as well, albeit she doesn't know where May ran off to.

May ends up making it to the surface around a month after that incident, after wandering lost for the time between, and, while struggling to try and buy some clothes thanks to the language barrier between her and the commonly spoken languages of the surface, one of the employees working there, Penny, is able to help figure out what May's looking for, and helps her with the whole process, since it's a lot different from how it was in the domes. They don't end up seeing each other after that for around a year, but it's important when they do, as Penny's was the first person on the surface May really had a good experience with, so when they randomly run into each other, May's very happy to be able to tell her how meaningful that was to her, and that she's much more adjusted to the culture and language now.

Meanwhile, Jake! Jake ends up wandering deep within the domes, far away from where the actual settlements and cities are, for over a year, just barely surviving through scavenging and avoiding patrolling soldiers. Still, he's not great at it, and eventually he ends up being held at gunpoint by Parker, who insists he tell her his rank and what he's doing out here. He has no idea, as he was never in the military and lies through his teeth. Luckily for him, Parker is a military deserter, and would've had a much worse reaction had she believed him, instead realizing that he's not a soldier and has no idea what he's talking about. Parker's been hiding out in the area, an abandoned sewer system that's frequented as a supply route for soldiers, for several months at this point, and while she actually enjoys her life of living down there, it's a lot of work to survive on her own, and realizing Jake's a fugitive also means he's a potential survival partner.

The two end up meeting up once every day for around a week before Parker feels confident enough that Jake isn't going to screw her over or try and turn her in or anything, and invites him to live with her at her "apartment", an old maintenance closet that's very secluded and not marked on any military maps, under the agreement that the two of them actually work together. Jake instantly agrees because he's been miserable and awful for the past year, while Parker's doing surprisingly well for herself, she even has multiple sets of clothes that she's stolen from nearby outposts (As well as an entire mattress she stole, and her most prized possession, a full deck of playing cards, and an Octo Shot she definitely killed a man for), as opposed to Jake, who's been going off of only what he had on him when everything went down, which is... practically nothing.

The plot basically slows down and chills out here for a while, May and June end up moving in with Penny after a few months of May and Penny hanging out instead of having to live in the shitty motel they'd been living in before (Albeit, the motel was better than the wilds they'd been living in before that), and Parker and Jake get adjusted to their lives in hiding surprisingly well. May and Scarlet even find each other on the surface again, they run into each other while May's out grocery shopping, and it's a very important moment for the both of them, as they've spent this entire time carrying around the guilt of feeling responsible for what happened, so them seeing the other and seeing how much better they're doing on the surface helps ease those guilts.

And then the events of Octo Expansion happen in the background. Parker and Jake know the routines of the soldiers in the area after years of living together, but the supply lines end up being used by sanitized Octoling soldiers after Kamabo starts massively ramping up production, leading to patrols of sanitized soldiers at seemingly random intervals, and outside of the predictable patterns that Parker and Jake were used to. Parker's out doing the laundry when a patrol finds her, and, greatly outnumbering her, end up nearly killing her, and dragging her back to be sanitized. She's in too bad of condition to be saved and reused as a test subject, so she's just sanitized instead.

Jake, naturally, notices when Parker never comes back from doing the laundry, and proceeds to be missing for upwards of two weeks. Jake does his best to look for her, but he also doesn't want to stray too far from their "apartment", as he's scared she might return home when he's gone, and with the unpredictable patrols, he doesn't feel like it's safe to stay out for as long as he wants to to look for her, so he ends up sticking close to home and just hoping he'll be able to find some clue of her. Of course, when he finally does, finally spotting her hanging around the entrance to the hallways that lead to their apartment, it's Not a good thing. He runs up to her to ask where she's been, and the moment he calls for her she turns and attacks him. It's not even a fair fight, even if he went in expecting a fight, he wouldn't have won, but this was a complete surprise. She quickly attacks him and takes him back to be put into the metro as a test subject, and, since he was brought back in much better shape than she was, he actually can be salvaged as a test subject!

And then he isn't. He's in the process of being readied as a test subject, namely, having his memories messed with, that the entire plot of Octo Expansion actually happens, and he's freed when the entire facility shuts down, and the metro is just a normal transport system again. He ends up wandering around for another month or so, except doing so very poorly, as the effects that being prepped to be a test subject had on his memory is bad, and basically erased all of his knowledge on how to survive on his own. Eventually, and luckily for him, he's found by one of the rescue teams that have been sent out in the aftermath of Octo Expansion to rescue lost and sanitized Octolings, and FINALLY gets brought to the surface, as well as being hospitalized for a whole myriad of problems, mainly being severely dehydrated from not remembering safe ways to find and gather water reliably.

When he's ready to be discharged, he realizes he has really nowhere to go, but since he still remembers May's phone number from when they were kids (As it's been years at this point, May and Jake are both in their mid 20s now, and June's around ~17), and calls her to ask if she can come pick him up and also if he can crash at her place for a bit. May is more than a bit surprised that her childhood friend she was fairly convinced had died years ago, and that she feels guilty for abandoning, is not only still alive, but super casual and chill just. Calling her cell and asking if he can sleep on her couch. At this point, June's already moved out, having been encouraged by both May and Penny to get out on her own and try getting out of her comfort zone, and is living in Splatsville with her roommate Basil, and not really having any major plot moments of her own. She's having fun and coming out of her shell and having silly lesbian shenanigans with her roommate in the background while Jake and May are experiencing the horrors.

Ultimately, this is about where thing stop being decided and I still need to figure out what happens next. Jake is living on May and Penny's couch (The universe will never let them have their house to themselves. Not even 3 months after June moves out, Jake's crashing on their couch), and has no memory of his time with Parker, Parker's MIA and potentially dead, and May's struggling with the idea that Jake's either in denial of some major trauma he must've faced through the years, or that she's somehow uniquely fucked up from what happened to them. To make matters worse, Jake's memory issues become more and more apparent, as he continues to struggle to remember Penny's name, instead repeatedly calling her "Parker", yet getting confused when he's corrected. I'm ultimately unsure what I'm going to do to resolve this plot thread, but May and Penny do realize that whoever Parker was, she was someone Jake knew in the time he was missing, and are trying to figure out just exactly who she was, if not where she actually is

Whether or not Parker is dead... it's up in the air. I initially planned for her to die and stay dead, but I'm the worlds biggest sap and I feel bad about killing her off permanently, as well as the fact I have plenty of silly ideas for what I could do with Parker once she's on the surface, so I'm still debating if it's more narratively satisfying for her to die or not. There's, if you believe it, actually a ton I'm glossing over (The intricacies of Jake and Parker's dynamic, the reasons why Parker left, basically everything about Basil and June, literally Basil has an entire friend group that has their own mini-plot that's not at all connected to this and doesn't get mentioned, Crimson is going to be more relevant once I figure out what I want to do with her, ect), but uh. That's the very long gist of it.

If anyone actually, genuinely reads through all of this. Thank you, apologies, and I love you

[beevean]

My third eye has opened.

[artsandstoriesandstuff]

I have some more ideas for Killing Machine!

[therinos]

"your entire country's economy depends on tourism" and who's fault do you think that is

[largemandrill]

Laios x Marcille is so weirdly popular and also displays how the fandom outside of tumblr has negative media literacy.