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[seiwas]

cw: suggestive, just iwaizumi being hot in a muscle tee, use of 'baby', sweat, unedited sawry (this is my pure carnal desire for this man)

iwaizumi hasn’t worn a muscle tee in years—

it hangs off him like a singular piece of cloth, haphazardly cut to show off as much skin as possible. slutty, the way mattsun and makki had intended for it to look when they gifted it to him in his third year of college.

which, to be fair, maybe he was one—a slut, that is. whoring himself out completely with those ‘subtle’, ‘lowkey’ thirst trap instagram stories on his fitness account. the way his skin flushed a darker peach after your joint gym days was always borderline inappropriate, the strands of his hair sticking up in what you could easily mistake as sweat-matted sex hair.

iwaizumi’s muscle tee days are well associated with him being the image of absolute sin.

but it was all for you anyway: the instagram stories he set on ‘close friends’ only, the hours he kept free so he could align his gym schedule to yours—

“oh! that’s perfect!” you beam at him, your smile completely unaware.

“yeah. it all worked out…” he casually brushes it off.

—it was oikawa's idea in the first place.

"you have to sell yourself better iwa-chan," the brunet whines over the phone.

and so he did; followed every embarrassing idea oikawa came up with, posed and posted in ways extremely un-iwaizumi, and stocked up on muscle tees. a lot of them. only for him to be called—

"simp," oikawa snorts on the call. iwaizumi groans, rolling his eyes.

—"baby," you stop dead in your tracks, your breath on hold.

yeah, he thinks, it was all worth it because this is what you call him now.

"is that—?" you inch closer, mouth falling slightly open. he thinks there are stars in your eyes as you ask, "are you wearing—?"

oh.

iwaizumi looks down at the muscle tee hanging off his body and feels a little bit exposed. he just came from the gym and he hasn't worn a muscle tee in years, his collection of them having dwindled over time. the only reason he kept this one is because of its sentimental value, and the fact that it came from makki and mattsun.

compression shirts are his thing now, which you approve of very much, but you're both in the middle of moving, and some of his clothes are still in boxes.

you approach him slowly, "is this a comeback?" the smirk on your face grows when you reach him, your hands fiddling with the fabric.

this is the same muscle tee he was wearing the first time you told him you loved him.

he moves away before you can come any closer.

"sweaty," he scrunches his nose as he takes your hands into his, kissing your fingertips.

you scoff, pressing yourself right into his chest, "even better."

your hands cling to his sides, slipping underneath the damp cotton of his muscle tee as you rake your fingers down planes of taut muscle. he shivers, breath hitching as the heat travels up his body, flushing the sides of his neck deep peach.

you peer up at him and grin, placing small pecks at the areas of his collarbone that peek through.

fucking—

his hands grip your waist, keeping you in place as he tilts his head low, lips grazing just the tip of your ear.

"don't tease," he warns, voice low and hoarse, but his hands show no signs of moving away.

notes: i would like to thank @pastelle-rabbit for asking me the hardest question of all time, otherwise this little blurb wouldn't exist

[sehnsuchts-trunken]

Pinch Me

Gally x reader summary: Gally isn't dead after all. In fact, he's very much alive. And so is that weird feeling in your stomach whenever you look at him.

a/n: god the lack of maze runner fics on my blog is unbelievable!!! needed to change that desperately

maze runner masterlist | main masterlist

You eye Gally carefully from the side as you wait. There's only one telescope and it's not like you're gonna line up behind Thomas to use it - no, you take the time to sit down on the ground and narrow your eyes at the newly un-dead glader next to you instead.

He's taller than when you'd last seen him. You'd noticed how much he'd grown the very first second you'd lain eyes on him. But he's got broader, too. He looks older, much older. More like an adult now. And that hoodie suits him. A little too well, actually.

"You're staring", Gally says, pulling you from your silent assessment of him. He doesn't even turn to look back at you. Some voice in the back of your head pipes up, tells you that you should probably feel embarrassed that he's caught you - but you don't, somehow. Instead, you hum in agreement. Yeah, you had been staring. You are staring.

"Are you trying to check if I'm real or what?", he asks with a chuckle, one that's surely supposed to cover up the fact that he sounds quite a bit nervous underneath. It doesn't really help. You hear the shake in his voice anyway.

It has you grinning just a little.

"Honestly?", you smile, trailing your eyes along him once more. "I kind of am."

He looks back at you then, finally, turns his head to yours and meets your eyes.

"You wanna pinch me to make sure?", he asks, seemingly serious with his eyebrows raised, but with a twinkle in his eyes that you've rarely seen in them. Your grin widens even further.

Without another word, you lean forward and pinch his arm. Just like that.

He doesn't even flinch.

He's warm under your fingertips, warm despite that thick, woolen hoodie he's wearing that looks so comfortable you honestly want to steal it from him. You pull back with a satisfied grin.

"Very much real", you approve, and then the corners of his lips tug up and you almost black out. Your heart really skips a beat. Just because he's smiling back at you. Oh, lord.

You settle a little further back and let out a breath.

"I'm glad you're not dead, Gally", you mutter, trying to keep your voice down so Newt and Thomas won't necessarily hear you. It's not that you want to keep it a secret, you just want to keep it private. It doesn't concern them. This is something between you and Gally. Something personal. Something that tugs at you and pulls you to him.

You don't know what it is exactly.

Maybe just relief, relief that at least one other glader is alive after you've already lost so many others. Maybe it's happiness, happiness to see an old friend. Or an old acquiantance? An old.... God, you don't even know what you and Gally were back then. Two people who threw glances at each other, who smiled at each other, who... Did barely anything else for the three months you'd spent there before Thomas had come up the box. Two people, three months and absolutely nothing that happened.

Ever.

But now he's back. And that something that never happened? That's back now, too.

...

You're nowhere near safe, really. You're anything but safe. You're the absolute, complete opposite of safe. You're running through a city on fire, your legs burning, burning, burning with the strain of carrying yourself- Fuck, fuck, fuck!

You can see the aircraft already. It's right there, you just need to run a little faster. If you had any oxygen left in your lungs, you'd shout for Minho and Gally to check if they're still right behind you - but you don't have the oxygen and you don't have the time either, so you push on, on and on until you're close, closer and closer and then, finally, inside the aircraft. You collapse onto the floor and gulp down what feels like a litre of air.

"Serum", you wheeze. "Serum. Newt."

You hear a body collapsing close to you, then another. You force your eyes open and turn your head to one side - Gally, his chest heaving and his eyes squeezed shut as he tries to calm down.

You're safe.

He's safe.

And you're both still alive.

Your ears ring so loudly that you barely hear how Jorge starts the aircraft. You don't care, either.

You're safe. And alive.

For the moment.

And that's all that matters.

So you steady a palm against the floor, heave yourself up and reach over him. Your hand comes down next to his head just as he opens his eyes.

Fuck.

Your heart is racing. You don't know if it's him or the adrenaline. You're not really bothered to think about it either, to be honest. He's too close to think. So close. Closer than ever before.

And you truly are drunk on adrenaline. Which is definitely the only goddamn reason for why you lean down, just like that, and press your lips to his.

You catch him off guard. You catch yourself off guard, too.

He tastes like sweat and blood, bitter and metallic and absolutely perfect considering you're still very much in a life-threatening situation, blood rushing in your ears and minds reeling with the heaviness of everything that's happening.

You shouldn't be kissing him. You shouldn't be planted half on top of him, with your hands shaking and your body so heavy you almost collapse. And then his fingers close around your waist and you do collapse, right on top of him.

He's broad and tall and most definitely more comfortable than the floor. Fuck, his hands on you feel so good. They're so wide and big and he's such a good kisser, his lips against yours so perfect.

God, how have you never done this before? He's always been right there, you've always felt that tug. And now that you've given into it, you never ever want to stop again.

He's heavenly. And he's holding you so firmly, so easily on top of him. He's so broad and tall and comfortable and firm and perfect and-

"Shit!"

Jorge's voice startles you so hard you flinch away from Gally, your head jerking up, your eyes searching the inside of the aircraft -

Everyone's staring at you.

Absolutely everyone.

Oh, god.

Oh, lord.

Oh, fucking hell.

Heat rushes to your cheeks. With a start, you push off of Gally and turn onto your back again. Your eyes squeeze shut as your breath evens out. Slowly, but steadily. Ever so steadily.

You can't think.

You're exhausted. Simply and just exhausted. This entire day has been too goddamn exhausting. And it's not even over yet. It's nowhere near over.

But as Gally reaches out for you, as he slips his hand into yours and interlocks your fingers... Yeah, you'll be fine. You'll be just fine.

[badboydevotee]

Highway to Home: A Birthday Surprise

The campus was quiet on a Saturday afternoon, with most students scattered across campus or lounging in their dorms. The sun hung low in the sky, casting a warm golden hue over the sprawling lawns. You had taken this rare opportunity to do something special—something for Sho, whose birthday was today.

Sho was known for his cocky attitude and his less-than-welcoming demeanor, but you had seen another side of him—one that was more complex, more human. As a friend of Leo and Sho’s, you had been exposed to the softer, hidden facets of Sho’s personality. And while he might act like a stereotypical apathetic delinquent, you had come to appreciate the occasional glimpses of his heart beneath the tough exterior.

The crowning jewel of Sho’s personality was his cooking. His food truck, "Highway to Home," had become something of a legend on campus, earning rave reviews from students who were fortunate enough to sample his culinary creations. And although you weren’t quite in Sho’s league when it came to cooking, you were determined to make something special for him today. You had spent the entire morning in your tiny apartment kitchen, trying to replicate one of his simpler dishes—a creamy risotto, with the hope that it would convey your appreciation and affection.

With a final sprinkle of parsley and a dash of freshly cracked pepper, you finished plating the risotto and set it carefully in a box. It wasn’t perfect, but it was made with genuine care. You had also picked up a small, thoughtful gift—a vintage keychain that matched the aesthetic of Sho’s dark blue bandana.

You approached Sho’s food truck with a mixture of nervous excitement and determined resolve, your steps purposeful as you neared the truck. Inside, Sho was busy cooking, his focus entirely on the sizzling skillet in front of him.

As you reached the window, Sho looked up, his blue eyes meeting yours with a flicker of curiosity. He raised an eyebrow, his typical smirk tugging at the corners of his lips.

“What’s this?” he asked, wiping his hands on a towel as he leaned against the counter. “Did someone order a special delivery?”

You held out the box with a shy smile. “I made you something for your birthday,” you said, trying to keep your voice steady. “I know I’m not as good as you, but I thought you might like it.”

Sho’s expression softened, and he took the box from you with a gentle touch. He carefully lifted the lid, and his eyes widened slightly as he inspected the risotto. There was a pause, and then he looked up at you with an amused glint in his eye.

“So, you’re gonna celebrate my birthday, huh?” he said, his tone half teasing, half genuine.

You nodded, feeling your cheeks warm under his gaze. “Yes, I am. And I also got you a little something.” You handed him the gift—a small, wrapped package.

Sho accepted the gift and opened it with a mix of curiosity and surprise. His fingers brushed over the vintage keychain, and a rare, sincere smile spread across his face. “Well, this is pretty cool,” he said, his voice softening. “Thanks.”

You couldn’t help but smile at his reaction, feeling a warmth spread through you. “You’re welcome. I hope the risotto is at least edible.”

Sho chuckled, a genuine, unguarded sound that seemed to come from deep within. “Alright, let’s see if you’ve managed to make something that won’t get me food poisoning.”

He took a spoonful of the risotto, his eyes narrowing in concentration as he tasted it. The moments stretched out, and you could feel your heart pounding in your chest, awaiting his verdict. After what felt like an eternity, Sho’s expression relaxed, and he looked at you with a mixture of surprise and approval.

“You know,” he said, still chewing thoughtfully, “this is actually pretty damn good. I might have to add it to the menu, just so I can get some of this more often.”

Your face lit up with a mix of relief and happiness. “Really? I’m glad you like it.”

Sho nodded, his gaze lingering on you with an unfamiliar tenderness. “Yeah, really. And for the record… thanks for making my birthday a little more special.”

There was a quiet moment between you two, an unspoken understanding settling in the air. Sho, despite his usual bravado, seemed genuinely touched, and you felt a flutter of warmth at the connection you were building.

“So,” Sho said, his playful smirk returning, “what do I want for another birthday present? Hmm… I suppose I’ll take you. Just kidding.”

You laughed, a genuine, happy sound that seemed to surprise even yourself. “You’re impossible.”

Sho grinned, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Yeah, but you like it.”

As the sun continued to set, painting the sky with hues of pink and orange, you and Sho shared the evening together, the warmth of the risotto and the shared laughter creating a cozy, intimate moment. For once, the tough delinquent seemed less like a hardened rebel and more like someone who had found a small, unexpected treasure in the middle of his ordinary day.

AO3 vers.

[the-broken-truth]

Twisted Wonderland Nonsense [5]: The Prefect's Side Hustle

Note: [Male Yuu With Tall Muscular Build]

Rook: Trickster! (Walking over to the First-Years' Table during Lunchtime) I require your services once again, Mon Créateur!

Yuu (Looking up from his food): What can I do for you, Rook?

Rook (Dramatically): Your previous work was splendid, tout simplement magnifique! I am in dire need of those services once again to magnify the beauty that is Roi Du Poison! Will you aid me, Trickster?!

Yuu (Wiping his mouth with a napkin): Depends. What do you need to be done and when do you need it done? Depending on these factors will determine how much I am going to charge you.

Rook (Pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it to Yuu): Here, Mon Trickster! This is the visage Roi Du Poison has!

Yuu (Looking at the picture - holding it to wear the others can't see it): This can be done, but I need at least 3 weeks to get this done and I will charge at least 10,000 Thaumarks for this.

Ace & Deuce (Jaw Dropping): 10,000 Thaumarks?!

Rook (Smiling): Of course, Trickster, such a cheap price for your services! The time frame is most convenient as well! Do you wish to be paid in full now or upon completion?!

Yuu (Folds the paper and puts in it in his pocket): I'll take half as a deposit and the other half upon completion. In Cash, please.

Rook: Of Course, Mon Créatif Trickster! I shall be around Ramshackle after schooling is done with the first installment! Until then, Au revoir! (Walks away)

[Ace & Deuce look towards Yuu, who decided to go back to his food as if that didn't just happen.]

Rook (Bursts into Ramshackle with an envelope in hand): Mon Trickster! I have arrived!

You (Sitting on the sofa - a small cash box on the table in front of him on the table): Just on time, Rook; do you have the deposit amount we agreed on?

Rook (Handing Yuu the envelope): Of course!

[Yuu opens the envelope, pulls out the stack of cash, and starts counting in while Ace and Deuce are watching with wide eyes.]

Yuu: This is the correct amount. I'll get started tonight and have it done in 3 weeks or soon. If you want to make any changes, let me know; just know that it's going to cost you extra.

Rook: Of course, that is only fair! Until next time, Trickster! (Leaves Ramshackle with a smile)

[Ace and Deuce watch as Yuu opens the Cash Box, which is already overflowing with cash, and puts the new money in before locking it after forcing it down.]

Yuu: I'm gonna need a new cash box.

[2 Weeks & 3 Days Later]

Rook: You finished it already, Mon Trickster! You are truly a wonder!

Yuu (Pulls the sheet off the body mannequin - revealing a very elegant outfit in Pomefiome's Colors): Thoughts?

Rook (Examining the outfit from all angles): MAGNIFIQUE! SPLENDIDE! UN DÉTAIL TELLEMENT ÉLÉGANT ! PAS UN SEUL ÉTIREMENT MALPLACE ! CECI EST LA PERFECTION! LE ROI DU POISON VA ADORER CELA ! MERCI, MON CRÉATIF TRICKSTER!!!

Yuu: Glad you approve. May I have my payment so I can package the outfit for you?

Rook (Hands Yuu another envelope): Here you are, Trickster!

[Yuu counts the money, removes the outfit carefully from the mannequin before folding it and packing it in an air-tight plastic bag before handing it to Rook.]

Yuu: A pleasure doing business with you, Rook.

Rook: With you as well, Trickster! Hopefully, we can do business again soon. Until then. (Leaves Ramshackle)

Ace:...

Deuce:...

Yuu (Counting Cash): Yeah, Papa Crewel taught me about fashion and sewing. Clothes aren't the only things I make.

Deuce: What else?

Yuu: I have...other wares.

[END]

[igottatho]

It’s been about one month since Aaron Bushnell, active duty serviceman, immolated himself in front of the DC Israeli embassy.

Today the UN called for a “non-binding” (qualifier added by US) ceasefire for the remainder of Ramadan (~two weeks). Meanwhile, yesterday Biden unilaterally approved another 3 billion dollars to be sent to Israel, begging the question, will Israel truly abide by a ceasefire?

In the past (years, not since Oct 7) ceasefires have been enacted, which Hamas and Palestinian Authority have respected, but Israel meanwhile would continue to control Gaza’s water, food & medical access, and yes, inflict violence upon Palestinian peoples. Knowing this, what is the incentive for Hamas to abide by a false ceasefire? when Israel now continues to murder children, rape women and cripple a population indefinitely.

Today I found my first real bit of info re: the Arab Spring of 2011. I worked within a large box bookstore at this time and through my years there, I was unable to find any literature on this topic. It’s been about 6 years and this may have changed, but typing “Arab Spring” into the billion dollar search function, there were NO RESULTS. This doesn’t mean the info wasn’t out there, somewhere, only that access wasn’t condoned, and academic thought was likely restricted (or … that’s how I understand it).

This is the podcast I found today and learned from. The show “Throughline” is really worthwhile in its entirety, but this episode shows us the power of social media and organizing dissent. On this near- anniversary of Aaron Bushnell political and radical act, I think a lot about the man in Tunisia who self immolated in January of 2011. His name was Mohamed Bouazizi, and his death sparked the Arab Spring,

Find it here.

[sethshead]

My big complaint about contemporary gender discourse is that the Butlerian presentation-is-gender has become prescriptive. It seems as if, for many, gender can only be a straitjacket conforming to the most rigid and stereotypical roles and expression society can devise. To reduce gender to presentation is equally simplistic as is reducing it to anatomy.

A woman is assertive? This makes her a “they”. “I’m too good at math to be a ‘she’”. To have the confidence to buck the latest influencer cosmetics and fashion trends, a woman must un-“she” herself. Conversely, some men have expressed that they cannot dismantle their toxic masculinity while being “he”. They cannot be soft or tender or vulnerable or colorful in their attire without sacrificing their maleness.

Now of course I do not write about any person in particular. I cannot know what precisely is going on in anyone’s mind, or in that mind’s relationship with the body in which it resides. I speak exclusively of a social phenomenon, and the above anecdotes are based on a composite of many sources. But the overall gist is that it is no longer considered possible to be a well-rounded human being while male or female. This is a pathology, and it is tragic.

There should be room for all manner of gendered and non-gendered expression within a given gender. A woman is not less a woman for being butch; a man can wear a dress or an entire drag persona while still being entirely male. Trans people, non-binary people exist, but so do crossdressers and the gender-nonconforming. The transing of people who are not trans, especially the posthumous transing of people who in their own times identified as cis, is presumptuous and no less conformist than is general cisnormative society.

Granted, people in the past who identified as transvestites or as cis-in-drag (such as, famously, Marsha Johnson) might simply not had the verbal or phenomenological conceptual vocabulary to identify as trans or non-binary in a way we’d understand it today. Were they still alive, they might well adopt these identities. But that is not our decision to make. They led their lives as who they knew themselves to be, and that must be respected.

Likewise, my peers who explain their pronoun usage in ways that, to me, reek of internalized misogyny, internalized homophobia, and internalized toxic masculinity, might simply be struggling to articulate feelings and sensations for which there is no standardized explanation. I can criticize the discourse, but I don’t want to stuff those who employ it into constricting binary boxes of my approval and disapproval.

Which gets me to the gender-critical radical feminists at the Genspect conference. Just as radical and illiberal trans activists seek to dictate others’ identity based of superficial criteria, so too did the illiberal radical feminists who tried to restrict greatly the spaces and motivations that might justify a man wearing a dress (not to mention a transwoman wearing a dress). While I will admit that biological sex is more closely correlated to gender identity than is whether one’s lower garment has separate tubes for each leg (shoutout to all the sarongs, kilts, thawbs, and all the women’s shorts and slacks in the world) the two are flip sides of the same coin.

I’m not really a liberal. I’m not so much the individualistic “live and let live” as I am “social cohesion is imperative, but it can only be achieved by buy-in, not exclusion”. As I say, I am a left-of-center conservative. But we will all live happier, better lives if we all stop defining others (especially those outside our narrow identity groups) and telling them where and how they can be themselves.

[yellowmagicalgirl]

an icy hand at the back of all of us

After the Lonely, John and Martin go to Martin's flat. John makes a mistake.

This was originally written for the Hurt Comfort Exchange 2024 on AO3 for thursdayinspace.

AO3

FFN

SquidgeWorld

Leaving the Lonely didn’t fix everything. Even when John could no longer smell the salt and sand of the Forsaken beach, the fog still clung to Martin like a heavy miasma, threatening to smother all the light that made Martin Martin.

John couldn’t let that happen, but he didn’t know how to fix this. He broke everything he touched and hurt everyone he cared for. It was a miracle that John hadn’t started the apocalypse on accident by now.

“You…” You’re wonderful and far more than I could ever deserve. John swallowed and restarted. “You said that your flat is down this street, yes?”

Martin nodded, but he didn’t say anything. Everything about him was still muffled, even if the echo was gone. The two of them continued down the street to Martin’s flat, and as Martin fumbled with his keys they, too, were muffled. The jingling noise as he tried to find the key to his flat was damped, like they were metal plated instead of actually metal like John Knew they were. He Knew that Martin’s landlord used cheaper keys made of aluminum instead of a stronger material like brass, even though the landlord could afford to use a stronger material. Considering that the landlord had once had an encounter with the Slaughter, he really should have used better keys.

John squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them, he focused on the color of the door so his mind wouldn’t wander with unwanted thoughts. It was a mulberry color, a very un-yellow that John felt was comforting for a door. It wasn’t a door that wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t sure what he would do if the Distortion showed up right now. Helen had refused to help, and John still didn’t know why. He just wanted Martin to be safe, and even though Peter Lukas was dead, Martin wasn’t safe. Hopefully Martin wasn’t afraid of John.

John hoped that Martin enjoyed the color of his door. John didn’t ask, though, he just let Martin push the door open and lock it behind them.

A lock wouldn’t be able to stop the Hunters. It could at least stop Elias, no, Jonah, based upon the tape that John had listened to. He had listened to it over and over, just to listen to something Martin had said that hadn’t been part of a Statement.

“I’m going to go change,” Martin mumbled as he walked towards a hallway. “Get the sand off my trousers.”

John didn’t want to let Martin go, but he did anyways. Martin was speaking without an echo, which was good. And besides, why would he want to be around John? John had been a prick before, and now he had killed someone in front of Martin. Killed him to save Martin, sure, but maybe there was a better solution to the problem that was Peter Lukas. A solution that Martin would approve of. A solution that John hadn’t thought of. He hadn’t really been thinking of anything, not even whatever plans Jonah may be even in this very moment winding around John’s hands and legs like puppet strings or strands of webbing. All that John could think of was saving Martin. He hoped he had done that properly, at least.

John walked through the kitchen, noticing the layer of dust on the counters. Martin likely hadn’t been back to his flat in the past two, three weeks. Had he even left the Institute before today? John grabbed the kettle and rinsed it out, throwing out the stale water, before putting it on the stove. He had honestly expected Martin to have an electric kettle, like the one in the Archives, before he walked over the tea and investigated the boxes. There was a loose-leaf Earl Grey that John immediately passed over. He wasn’t sure what to do with a loose-leaf tea; he had only stopped microwaving his water with the tea bag in the mug when Martin had begged him to stop. John still couldn’t taste the difference between microwaving the water with or without the tea bag, but, well, John wished he could say that he had wanted to be in Martin’s good graces. At the time, though, he had just wanted his subordinate who actually had archiving experience to stop whining and lecturing John on yet one more thing John was unqualified for compared to Martin and all of his expertise.

The two boxes of tea bags that Martin had were a mostly full green tea and a mostly empty rose tea. John couldn’t remember which of the two Martin had more frequently drank, back when he was still in the Archives. Was the green tea mostly full because he didn’t drink it often, or because he often resupplied?

The Eye wasn’t giving John any helpful answers, just the knowledge that Martin used to keep one oolong tea bag that he just in case his mother ended up coming home because something had happened to the care home. Even after she died, he had kept it up until he had agreed to work for Peter Lukas.

Out of the corner of John’s eye, he saw steam. That was odd; it was too early for the kettle to be ready.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh no. What had he been thinking?

John barely had the sense to turn off the stove – because that would be just their luck, to survive Prentiss and the Unknowing only to die in a house fire – before rushing to where Martin said the bedroom was. The fog in the kitchen had been warm, but as John got closer and closer to the bedroom, the fog grew colder and thicker. It clung to his skin and hair, muffling even the sound of John’s breathing.

And the sound of sobbing coming from within the bedroom.

“Martin?” John pushed the door open and knelt by the cloud sitting at the foot of the bed.

Are you okay? Is everything alright? John didn’t need to compel Martin to know that the answers to both of those questions would be no.

Slowly, scared of accidentally sticking his arms inside of Martin’s body, John wrapped his arms around the fog. He Knew that the last time that Martin had been hugged had been an awkward side-hug from Melanie.

The time before that had been before the Unknowing.

John had been the second-to-last person to hug Martin. It felt so wrong to think that – John had never been a person good at comforting people. And yet, it also made too much sense. He wasn’t good at comforting people, but he was what little that Martin had.

“I’m here,” John found himself saying in a voice so soft it was just barely above a whisper, or at least that was how the fog made him sound. “It’s going to be alright. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.” He didn’t know if time would prove him a liar, but John would try his best anyways.

“But for how long?” the fog said back.

“Forever, if you’ll have me.”

“You can’t promise forever.”

“Then for as long as I live.” That was apparently the wrong thing to say, because the fog began to shudder. John made soft shushing noises as he stroked where he imagined Martin’s pearl-white hair to be. “It won’t come to that, not any time soon. I’m getting increasingly hard to kill.”

The fog huffed in annoyance. John hoped that was a good thing, that Martin was coming back to himself.

“I won’t leave you. Not again,” John said. “For better or for worse, wherever you go, I go. Deal?”

“Deal,” Martin said, a distinct echo to his voice. He wrapped his arms around John, gingerly at first, like John was still as fragile as he had been when in the coma. After a moment, he squeezed John more tightly, the fog fading away. His fingers dug into John’s shoulders with desperation.

“I’m here,” John said. “I’m here, and I love you, and I’m sorry I ever left you.”

They stayed like that for several minutes, John murmuring promises as he rubbed Martin’s back. Eventually, Martin’s tears subsided, and he pulled away. “What you said earlier,” Martin said, voice still hoarse from crying. There was still sand on his trousers. “That sounded a lot like a wedding vow.”

“Well, how do you feel about eloping to Scotland?”

[kirikoo]

Calendrier de l'Avent 2024 - Jour 18. (Des cases non ouvertes suite à un week-end abdl à 17, et trois jours intenses) Quoi de mieux qu'un super lit à barreaux pour les dodos et les siestes des petits (2015). Testé et approuvé. Advent Calendar 2024 - Day 18. (Unopened boxes following an amazing abdl weekend at 17, and three intense days) What's better than a super cot for little ones' naps and sleeps (2015). Tested and approved.

[cartoonus-maximus]

Notes and Observations on FNAF TFTP Vol 6: "Nexie"

So, um… I'm not gonna sugarcoat this, guys. I hated this volume. I spent most of it being either bored or irritated.

This is the first cover art from this series that I didn't like. It's so bland and un-creative, and it's not even story accurate! I can't find anything positive to say about it! DX

I'm sorry if I come across as a hater. I don't mean to, but so many stories of this series are so frustrating to me, and I can't find it in myself to speak very positively about stories that I'm not enjoying. Like, you enjoy these, that's great for you, but I was straight up not having a good time, my guys.

These are my notes and observations made while listening to the audiobook, which I borrowed from my local library. Fair warning: there will be spoilers. If you want the whole experience for yourself, you should skip this and go read/listen to the book yourself first.

Here are my observations on the other books in the series, if you are interested.

In this volume, we learn more about the Mimic, and that's an important part of this franchise these days. So let's get into it.

"Nexie"

In this story we're introduced to a line of Fazbear products called "Buddytronics," a line of expensive animatronic toys that are sold by parts and assembled in front of the customers in a manner akin to "Build-a-Bear" stores. Buddytronics are highly customizable, and can be made to resemble existing Freddy Fazbear animatronic characters, generic humanoid dolls, or generic stuffed animals, or some combination thereof. They're generally somewhere between 2 and 3 feet tall (about 2/3 of a meter to a full meter) and have robotic parts, allowing them to walk and move their arms. They also come with simple computer chips and voice boxes, which allow them to listen to their owners and observe actions, which they can then mimic or otherwise respond to in simple ways. They're marketed as companion toys, acting as both playthings and friends for small children.

This story centers around Astrid Erikson, a 9-year-old girl who comes from a family of Swedish immigrants. Astrid lives with her father and grandfather (her "Farfar"), who both work as carpenters. Her family is extremely old-fashioned, and don't value anything they can't make with their own hands, and don't value any aspect of modern society; her father also seems to have a very "women and children are to be seen and not heard" sort of attitude, and can be very judgemental in a way that Astrid finds stifling.

Astrid's mother ran away to become a model, a career that Astrid's father and his family "didn't approve of." Astrid feels that her mother abandoned her, choosing an "undesirable" career over her own daughter, and it results in Astrid feeling that she isn't lovable; she thinks her mother must value physical beauty over all other traits, since she left to pursue a career in the beauty industry, and she wonders if her mother would have stayed if Astrid had only been more beautiful. (Astrid's conflicting feelings about her mother come up a lot in this story. It's also worth noting that most Astrid's knowledge about her mother comes from her father, who is a very unreliable source of information, picking and choosing what he wants to share about the woman who left him with the daughter he keeps dangerously sheltered.)

The Buddytronics are very popular among the other kids at Astrid's school. In an attempt to fit in, Astrid decides to get a Buddytronic of her own. Since she knows her father would never buy one for her, she's been saving up her allowance for awhile in order to get one, but, since Buddytronics are about $1000 each, it's taking her a long time to save up.

Unlike her father, Astrid's Farfar is more open to Astrid's opinions and interests, and regularly indulges her with trips to the local Pizzaplex, where they eat pizza and play games in the arcade. (He compares the Pizzaplex to a carnival he went to as a kid, which I thought was an interesting detail.) For Astrid's birthday, her Farfar decides to take her to the Pizzaplex to buy her a Buddytronic, citing that he wants to give her a birthday gift that he knows she wants, even if he personally doesn't understand it.

When Astrid and her Farfar go to the Pizzaplex on her birthday, things a lot more hectic than usual. There's some weird feedback on the intercom system, filling the air with a high-pitched squeal. All of the lights in the building are blinking off-and-on, a glitch that seems to start from the Storyteller tree and is working its way across the Pizzaplex. Other pieces of machinery seem to be glitching, and several Pizzaplex employees are bustling around, shutting down glitching rides and closing off boutique stores, seemingly trying to close the Pizzaplex early because of these severe glitches.

The employees at the Buddytronic boutique are closing up, but Farfar convinces them to let Astrid build a Buddytronic for her birthday. Astrid picks out the parts to make a feminine doll with pale skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, and wearing a blue dress and a straw hat, wanting the doll to look like either herself or her absent mother. She names the doll Lexie (possibly after her mother? We're not told the significance of the name).

All of the doll parts to build Lexie are put into the assembly machine, but the machine malfunctions, and the doll's parts are assembled in the wrong places, resulting in a doll with wonky, bugged out eyes, a snarling mouth, arms sticking straight out of its torso, legs that are the wrong size for the body, and the hair sticking straight out from being rooted in strange places on the head. When the doll is turned on, she introduces herself as "Nexie," showing that her personality chip was misprogrammed, and she speaks with a flat, monotone voice, indicating that her voice box is wrong as well.

When Nexie infodumps a bunch of facts about the history of the name "Astrid," the Pizzaplex employees express confusion; clearly the Buddytronics aren't supposed to come with that much information in their programming.

Despite how wrong the doll came out, Astrid decides to keep and love her anyway, not wanting to abandon her creation in the same way her mother did.

The next day, Astrid takes Nexie to school with her, since all the other kids have been bringing their Buddytronics to school with them for weeks already. But this doesn't help her fit in with the other kids, who all have Buddytronics that look like pretty dolls, cute teddy bears, and mini versions of Fazbear characters like Circus Baby, Funtime Foxy, and DJ Music Man -- instead, having Nexie with her just gives her classmates something else to bully her about, as they make fun of how ugly Astrid's new doll is and even steal Nexie from her to play keep-away with. When Astrid tries to defend herself and Nexie, she's the one who gets in trouble.

I'm not going to spend much time talking about any of Astrid's bullies/classmates, because they're mainly just generic mean kids. They show up a lot throughout this story and they're really obnoxious. The most "important" of this bunch is a boy named Remy, who acts as a second POV character, and it's mostly through his eyes that we see Astrid's time at school.

I'm really annoyed by how the author of this story (Andrea Waggener) portrays the bullies. She tries to give them backstories, and tries to explain to the audience why these kids bully Astrid, but instead of focusing on the real reason (Astrid comes from an immigrant family and dresses and speaks very differently from the rest of her class, and the kids don't like how different she is from them), the author leans into tropes like "the bully acts like that at school because he's a victim of domestic abuse / she's neglected at home" and the dreaded "he's mean to her because he likes her." I hate these tropes with a burning passion, and I don't think they should be used in children's media anymore, since they can be internalized by their impressionable audience and lead to their audience members getting harmed later in life.

In short, there are several segments in this story that involve Astrid's bullies, and I hate how they were written, and most of them aren't worth talking about anyway, so I'm not going to say much about them. Just know that they exist.

At home, Astrid apologizes to Nexie for all the mean comments she received from the other kids at school, and Nexie listens and tries to comfort her owner. Nexie is self-aware enough to know that her parts are the wrong sizes and in the wrong places, and she asks if Astrid could "fix her," with the comment "Everyone would like me if I were not ugly." She and Astrid spend the next few days talking about what specifically would need to be replaced, and what parts would be needed.

Throughout these parts, Astrid tries to explain to Nexie that a beautiful personality is more important than physical beauty, but Nexie is skeptical about this. She reminds Astrid that her name means "divine beauty," and that Astrid herself is expected to be beautiful, and just generally preys on Astrid's insecurities. (I just wanna remind you that Astrid is 9-years-old. The real horror of this story is that our 'insecure about appearance' character hasn't even gone through puberty yet. Like, she's a literal child, guys! She shouldn't give a flying flip what she looks like! DX )

There's this creepy section where Nexie tells Astrid that her endoskeleton is wrong, and that they're going to need an entirely new endoskeleton to really fix her. When Astrid asks how they would transfer Nexie's outer layer of skin and hair onto a new endoskeleton, Nexie reveals that she's been carrying scissors around for awhile, and she pulls them out of her dress pocket and promptly degloves her own hand with the statement "See? Skin can be taken off and put on something new."

Astrid still brings Nexie to school with her, and the two are subjected to more bullying. Some of the girls call Astrid "as ugly as her doll" and suggest that she needs to be completely getted and remodeled like an old house. Not caring about the opinion of some mean classmates but caring deeply about her appearance, Astrid internalizes these comments; when Nexie looks at a database of what "attractive" girls look like and starts listing physical features off, Astrid realizes she doesn't have any of those features and it feeds into her insecurity.

During this segment, Nexie tells Astrid that she has access to a database full of "pictures of pretty girls." She doesn't clarify what this means. Is she connected to internet, and looking at some random beauty article online? Does she have some really weird files downloaded on her personality chip? What is going on here?

Nexie sees one of the mean girls trip Astrid in the school hallway. Apparently having learned this move from a single observation, Nexie later trips another of the mean girls while the kids and their Buddytronics are moving between classes. They're walking down the stairs when she trips her, and the girl falls over the railing. Some of the surrounding kids manage to grab her before she falls, and she's pulled back to safety.

Astrid knows it was Nexie who tripped the other girl, but the idea of it is to much for her, and she can't even bring herself to think too hard about it or really acknowledge it. Secondary POV character Remy also saw that it was Nexie who tripped the girl, but he doesn't say anything, literally threatened into silence by Nexie, the doll sneering and winking at him.

Astrid's Farfar buys her a new Buddytronic doll as a surprise, so she doesn't have to carry Nexie around with her. This doll introduces herself as Lexie, and resembles the original design that Astrid had in mind for her doll. The new Lexie and original Nexie dolls stand next to each other in silence for a moment, but then Nexie attacks Lexie, literally biting into the other doll's face and using her teeth to skin Lexie alive. Astrid screams in horror at the plastic carnage, Lexie wails and writhes as she's torn to shreds, and Nexie ignores both of them, focusing on tearing out Lexie's CPU and crushing it in her hands. When Astrid tries to reason with Nexie, pointing out that they could have used Lexie's parts to repair Nexie, Nexie dismisses her, saying that Lexie's parts aren't what they need.

Astrid learns that the Buddytronic parts are built in one of the basement levels of the Pizzaplex, but aren't available for purchase by customers unless as part of a complete Buddytronic. Nexie tries to needle Astrid into breaking into the robotics lab to steal the parts.

Unwilling to break in anywhere and steal parts, Astrid gives up on the idea of fixing Nexie. But, the next day, Nexie kills one of Astrid's bullies by throwing the boy directly in front of a speeding car, and the boy's bones are shattered on impact. Horrified, Astrid decides to get the parts for Nexie, believing that it's the only way to keep the doll from killing anyone. She gets Farfar to take her to the Pizzaplex after school and manages to steal an employee's key card so she can access the basement robotics lab.

Later that evening, Astrid sneaks out of the house with Nexie, and they use the stolen key card to get into the Pizzaplex. They avoid being seen by any night guards or security cameras, and they make it to the basement robotics lab without getting caught. Nexie points out all the parts they'll need, and Astrid gets to work, and the two spend several hours hard at work in this lab.

Later at school (either the next day or a few days later, depending on which sentence you choose to read during this segment; I don't think these stories are properly edited), the other kids in class are horrified when Astrid enters the room, carrying Nexie on her hip. Nexie looks the same as ever, but Astrid is now freakishly tall, and her skin has been cut apart and resewn together, stretched out over a body much bigger than hers used to be. She resembles Frankenstein's monster in all the worst ways, deathly pale and stitched together strangely.

Nexie grins smugly at all the screaming kids, looking for all the world like a satisfied predator. Astrid hugs Nexie close and says "Perfect now."

And that's it. That's how the story ends.

.

.

.

This story was really frustrating for me. I actually stopped the audiobook and walked away from it multiple times, that's how frustrating it was.

A big part of the problem was that, due to the recycled content, I found most of this story to be really boring. Andrea tries really hard with this story to recreate both the Fazbear Frights story "To Be Beautiful" and the Blumhouse movie "M3gan" … and frankly, imo, fails. It makes sense that we would get a story trying to recreate parts of both of those, since:

"To Be Beautiful" is a FNAF fan favorite because of it's placement in the first volume of a series and because it introduces Eleanor, who is a fan favorite character; it's fine as a story, and it at least mostly makes narrative sense.

"M3gan" is a movie that lands in the horror genre in a similar way to how FNAF fits in, and, imo, is a very simple and basic script that is elevated by the excellent work of the actors and the affect team, with most of its charm coming from the portrayal of the characters themselves.

Both tell very different stories, but have a lot of similar elements, and both center around an evil AI-run doll and a young girl who the doll befriends and preys upon.

I understand the point of the exercise -- recreating aspects of existing stories -- but, as someone who's already seen "M3gan" and already read "To Be Beautiful," this story ended up being very boring, since it only recycles parts from those prior stories and doesn't do anything to build on them.

(Also, for those who don't know, I have an exhaustive list of fears and phobias, which include large dolls, dolls that walk and talk, evil sentient dolls, and dolls that look wrong or have manufacturing defects. Nexie checks off all these boxes and should have been terrifying to me in particular, but instead I was bored or angry for most of this story. What a complete miss!)

There was of course also the portrayal of the school bullies, which I've already talked about and don't want to get back into (but I kinda want to throw hands with Andrea by this point in the series). And then there was the ending, which comes completely out of left field and doesn't make a lot of sense. While there had been some subtle foreshadowing tossed in every once in awhile, there really wasn't enough for the story ending to make any sense with the rest of the story, and it ends up feeling like a random, horrific ending that was just tacked on at the end.

(The audio version of this story is just over 2 hours long, and that's 2 hours I could have spent doing literally anything else. Ugh.)

But, as far as potential lore goes, I think it's worth noting that 1) Nexie is built in the exact same Pizzaplex where the Storyteller tree is, and she's also built during a time where the Storyteller/Mimic is malfunctioning. The story implies that this leads to Nexie having a copy of the Mimic AI downloaded into her personality chip, which leads to 2), that Nexie is portrayed throughout the story as watching people and mimicking their actions later on, a trait that she clearly shares with the Mimic. I don't have any concrete thoughts about these parallels atm, but I think it's worth noodling around with.

Yeah, that's all I got for "Nexie" right now. Let's move on to the next one.

"Drowning"

This story centers around a friend group of teenage girls named Kara, Francine, and Lola. The girls have won a prize from a contest, and the prize is a free day at the local Pizzaplex, so the girls are spending their day going on various rides and trying out different entertainment booths.

The girls try out a new VR attraction at the Pizzaplex called "the VR Resort." This attraction brings customers into a small room where first they are scanned by a laser, uploading a digital copy of their body into the VR computer system. Once this is done, the customers are shown to a soft seat with straps on it, which they are strapped into for safety purposes (so they don't accidentally hurt themselves while in VR). They are then given a VR helmet, and putting it on takes them into a VR landscape or experience chosen from a premade list. One of the big draws for the VR Resort is that time moves differently in the VR experiences than it does in real life, allowing the customers to feel like they're enjoying the experience for an hour or longer when they're only actually in the experience for a few minutes.

When it's the girls' turn, they opt to try an experience called "Coaster City." Once they enter it, they find themselves walking around an idealized amusement park, with lots of fun rides available to them, lots of amusement park snacks to try, and no lines to wait through. The experience is over before the girls are ready for it to end, and they are surprised to find that only a few minutes passed.

There are monitors around the outside of the main room of the VR Resort, and they show different clips of what the different available experiences are. As the girls leave, they pass a few of these screens, and Kara looks at one depicting a water park. She thinks she sees the shadow of a person in the pool, but then the screen flips to another clip, and she decides she was just seeing things.

The girls go on a few others rides and play some games around the Pizzaplex. At some point, Kara sneaks away from her friends, slipping back to the VR Resort; she wanted to try it out again, but the other two weren't interested in repeat rides, so Kara decides to go back to the VR Resort by herself.

Back at the VR Resort, Kara chats up Zach, the attraction attendant who's about her age. She flirts with him a little bit, and Zach lets her into the off-limits part of the attraction, showing her all the monitors and controls that the attendants are in charge of and how they work. He shows her how to set the time for the VR experience, telling her that, but inputting different time amounts on the controls, he and his coworkers can control how long the customer feels like they're in the virtual world, with preset time slots ranging from a few minutes to an hour. He says that if an employee doesn't set a time, the customer could feel like they're trapped in the virtual world forever.

We learn that the VR system keeps the scans of customer's bodies and faces in the system all day; they are automatically deleted at the end of each day.

He also introduces her to "hyper time," which is an extra service that the customer can request, but it costs extra. It's literally giving the customer a shot of adrenaline, so they're keyed up during the entire virtual experience.

Kara is an adrenaline junkie, and she convinces Zach to get her set up in the VR Resort for free, with both "hyper time" and an extended virtual time period, giving her about an hour to explore the experience of her choice, the water park. Zach turns the sign on the VR Resort to "closed," so he and Kara will be alone inside, and gets Kara set up in the seat. He goes back to the control booth and starts to key in all of the instructions, but gets distracted when his manager calls him, and he's forced to rush through the VR settings before running off to cover another employee at Monty's Gator Golf; it's made clear to the audience that he fails to set a time on Kara's experience, and that he leaves her completely alone in the booth when he's the only one who knows she's there.

Kara has a lot of fun in the virtual water park, jumping and splashing around in various styles of pools and climbing to the top of towering water slides. She explores around the virtual water park, which is broken into different sections, with each section designed around a different theme, including a jungle section, a donut shop, an alien landscape, and even a pizza parlor. Kara's body thrums with adrenaline and fear, and she revels in it, loving every second. Things take a turn when she feels something in the water brush against her leg, and she catches sight of black hair. It makes Kara wonder if there's a mermaid in the pool as part of theme, or if the VR program has glitched in some way and is trying to project the digital copy of another customer for some reason.

In the jungle section, Kara encounters a virtual parrot, which is a prop for the section but behaves much like a real bird. Like real birds, the parrot mimics the sound of her speaking, repeating "hello!" after she addresses it. The parrot mimics her a few times, then says "Don't leave me here alone," something Kara hasn't said out loud (but is a phrase that carries personal significance to Kara, as we'll explore later).

When Kara finally gets a look at the other person that seems to be in the pool with her, she sees what looks like a girl around her age, floating at the bottom of the pool like a drowned victim. Instinctively, Kara looks around for a lifeguard or an adult who can help, only to remember she's the only one there. She ends up jumping into the pool to try to pull the girl out, but, as soon as she touches her, the girl's eyes open, and she tries to hold Kara at the bottom of the pool, as though trying to drown her. Kara kicks her and escapes to the surface, where she has to take a few minutes to regain her breath, as she genuinely feels like she was held underwater for too long.

Kara tries to call out to Zach to turn the experience off, but gets no response. She tries to reconnect to her physical body, which she knows is still sitting in the booth back in reality, but she can't feel it, and feels like her mind and body have been forcibly separated.

We learn more about Kara as she's forced to relive her most traumatic memories while she's trapped in this VR landscape. We learn that she's broken her arm before, and that she's fought with her parents, and, most importantly, that as a little kid she witnessed her older cousin suffer a terrible injury after falling out of a tree, a sight that scared her so much at the time that she ran away, temporarily leaving her cousin all alone; unable to process her horror at the time, Kara blamed herself for her cousin's injuries, and she still feels responsible all these years later.

In addition to feeling bad for leaving her cousin alone in that moment, Kara also has a deep set fear about her family and friends abandoning her, afraid of being left alone. The drowned girl seems to be prodding at these particular insecurities by repeatedly begging for help and pleading with Kara not to leave her alone.

After awhile, Kara feels like she's been in here for hours, and she feels really tired and thirsty. Any time she's not paying attention, the girl in the pool tries to grab and drown her. The girl's appearance also changes from time to time, her body taking on different states of decay and looking more or less like a drowned victim. Sometimes she even looks a little bit like Kara's cousin.

Kara wonders if helping the drowned girl is part of a secret game in the VR attraction, like how some video games will have a special "save the princess" minigame hidden in it. With that in mind, and with the girls looking and sounding more and more like Kara's cousin all the time, Kara decides to stop running from the girl and try to help her.

She follows the girl's voice to a hidden location in the water park, which resembles a normal, suburban house that's been abandoned and left to rot. The inside of the house has been flooded, with walls and floors and furniture pieces all ruined by water damage and covered by rot and mildew. Kara sees a family portrait depicting a little girl with black hair sitting between her mother and father, but their faces have all been rubbed out. A broken music box can be heard playing from inside what used to be a girl's bedroom, and Kara follows the sound to find a music box shaped like a carousel ride, and surrounded by unintelligible child's drawings.

Kara follows the girl's voice to a bathroom, where she sees an old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub overflowing with water. When she approaches it, she sees the girl from the pool laying submerged inside the tub. Kara reaches in carefully to try to help the girl out of the tub, but the girl grabs onto her and pulls her into the water. The abandoned house fades away, and Kara finds herself in the water park pool once again.

After escaping being drowned by the computer system again, Kara is trapped inside a maze of mirrors. Some of the mirrors show her images of her current appearance -- soaked, frazzled, pale, exhausted, and terrified -- while others show her visions of her own fears, showing her scenes of her family and friends being happy that they don't have to deal with her anymore. Kara knows the images aren't real, no matter how upsetting they may be, and she gets angry with the VR program for intentionally messing with her feelings in such a personal way. She punches through a wall of mirrors and escapes the maze, but gets badly cut up in the process.

As the girl from the pool follows Kara, the lights of the VR world flicker off and on. (Now where have we seen that before?) Kara tries to climb up one of the water slides to get away from the girl, and the girl calls after her; the girl has changed appearances again, and she now resembles a grown woman, with black teeth and bulging green veins under her grey skin, and her voice no longer sounds frightened, taking on a predatorial, sinister tone.

Kara slips and falls to the ground, much the way she remembers her cousin falling. She hits the ground hard and both her legs break on impact. She screams and begs and cries as the girl from the pool approaches her, but is unable to fight back, and ends up being pulled into the water and down into the darkness.

Back in reality, Francine and Lola have realized that their ride home is waiting for them in the parking lot, and they try to call Kara on her phone to come meet up with them. When Kara doesn't answer, they go to the information desk to ask an employee to call for Kara over the intercom. They spot Zach before too long and recognize him from the VR Resort, and they ask him if Kara went back to it - when he tells them he left Kara at the VR Resort 20 minutes ago, the two girls start interrogating him, and drag him back to the resort with them to look for their friend.

Arriving back at the VR Resort, the three teens see that the monitor that should be displaying Kara's experience is blank and full of static. Zach realizes that he didn't set a time for the experience and that he didn't turn off "hyper time," so Kara probably received several shots of adrenaline beyond what she originally asked for. Zach doesn't share any of this information with the two girls, awkwardly playing it off like Kara's experience just ran a little over time and everything is fine. He shuts everything off and opens the customer room, revealing Kara's body sitting completely still in the VR chair.

Francine and Lola rush to their friend, yelling at her about how worried they've been and how she should have told them where she was going and how their ride home is waiting outside, but Kara doesn't answer. When Zach removes the VR helmet from Kara's head, revealing her face, Francine and Lola scream in horror. Kara's body doesn't move, resembling a corpse more than her usual self, and her eyes are frozen staring fearfully at nothing.

.

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.

I enjoyed this story a lot more than "Nexie." In fact, I think it might be my favorite of these stories that was written by Kelly Para. It's a very straightforward story, which I appreciated: a girl tries to use some VR equipment at Freddy's and the whole thing goes horrible wrong. It's a storyline we've seen often enough you'd think I'd be bored of it, but I wasn't bored at all during this one.

Once again, this monster in this story is very Mimic-like. We see the drowned girl cause the lights to flicker off and on, a trait that Mimic animatronic exhibits in the epilogues. We also see her mimic images and actions from Kara's memories, and specifically preying on Kara's memory of her cousin falling out of a tree, changing herself to look or sound like the cousin in ways that often lure Kara closer to her, manipulating Kara with the visage of a person she cares about and wants to help. To that end in particular, the drowned girl reminded me a lot of how Glitchtrap lures in the player of the VR game, "Help Wanted."

I also found it interesting that Kara specifically wonders if the drowned girl is a "princess she needs to save." In a lot of the recent FNAF games there are versions of a minigame called "Princess Quest," and these games usually pop up in relation to a character becoming trapped in VR, or being attacked by another entity in VR, or both. It's not much of a connection, but it's certainly there.

So, we've had a few characters that feel like stand-ins for the Mimic, so now it's time to get to the real thing.

"The Mimic"

(Quick! Where's that Dawko Mimic meme? I can't think about "THE MIMIC!" without it.)

This story is contains two parts. The first part centers around Edwin Murray, our good buddy from "the Storyteller," but before the events of that story takes place. We spend a lot of time with Edwin and his son, David, who is still alive at this point.

(I don't really like learning about Edwin's life in this backwards way. We were introduced to him years after he lost his family and then we see his death, but now we're learning about his past, and I wish it was the other way around. It feels like being given spoilers for a story -- if I know how it ends, why should I care about how we got there?)

We learn about Edwin's life out of order, so I'm going to do my best to keep it in order for these notes.

As a child, Edwin likes to take appliances apart to see how they work and try to put them back together. Over the years, he continued to be interested in engineering and building machines, and even created and patented his own inventions as a young adult. His most lucrative invention was a robotic vacuum cleaner, which was a popular fad product for a little bit.

(Isn't there a vacuum character in the Trash and the Gang bunch? Related, or coincidence?)

Edwin got married to a woman named Fiona, and they bought an old house together to renovate, along with an old lace factory that Edwin intends to repurpose into the new headquarters for his robotics company. (It's specifically called out that their home has an old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub, which is a weird detail to include and the second time in this volume of stories that this exact item has been referred to.)

Fiona becomes pregnant and both she and Edwin are very excited about the prospect of starting a family together. But then Fiona dies in childbirth, leaving Edwin to raise their son alone. He names their son David, and tries to be a good father to the boy, but struggles with grief, depression, and other mental problems as he tries to run a small company and raise a baby by himself. This results in him making some bad decisions and his company goes under.

Edwin's company is bought out by Fazbear's, who are interested in his robotic designs for use in their own projects. As part of the buy out, Edwin comes to work for Fazbear Entertainment.

Edwin stops living in the house that he and his wife bought, and moves into the old factory that he operates in. He brings David to live in the old factory with him, and renovates a section of the factory's second floor into an apartment area. The rest of the factory is still filled with old pieces of machinery and whatever dust and mildew was already there when Edwin originally bought it, since he never finished cleaning it out. Edwin tries sending David to daycare once, but David tells the adults there that he lives in an old factory, and Edwin almost gets CPS called on him; he freaks out about the idea of losing his son, and he doesn't send David to daycare, preschool, or any similar program, and he doesn't hire babysitters, so it's just him taking care of David 24/7 alone while also trying to work. (So, y'know… a totally healthy set-up for a great living situation. 🙄)

Details we're given about David include that he looks like his mom (and shares no physical characteristics with Edwin), that he carries a stuffed tiger everywhere with him (named "Tiger"), and that he loves chocolate chip ice cream.

During the story, Edwin is currently working on a very special project for Fazbear's. He's been given a large collection of character costumes from older iterations of Fazbear's productions (costumes that human employees/actors would have worn), and his job is to build endoskeletons to put in the costumes, transforming the costumes into fully functional animatronics. Some of the character costumes are familiar to the audience, described in ways that sound like recognizable characters from the franchise, while others are brand new, never before seen in the franchise. At the beginning of the story he's working on Chica, who is the 18th in the line of animatronics that he's been working on. Later in the story we'll also see him working on Foxy, Monty, a previously unseen "yellow dog" character (possibly a Sparky reference?), and Bonnie.

When David gets bored and keeps interrupting his father's work, Edwin does what any normal parent would do and build a robotic babysitter to keep David occupied. He builds a robot with a head, torso, and two arms, but no legs, and fills out the robot's face with leftover doll eyes and a set of novelty toy chattering teeth. He programs the robot to observe people and mimic their actions, labeling this program 'mimic1' while he works on it. Once it's finished, he introduces David to his new playmate, "Mimic."

Edwin brings Mimic online, and the robot immediately imprints on David and starts mimicking the boy. Over the following weeks, we see David teach Mimic how to play patty-cake, how to play dress-up and put on costumes, and how to draw with crayon. Edwin gives David a new pack of construction paper and crayons one day, and checks in later to see David and Mimic doodling on the paper, seemingly "writing" in their own language that Edwin thinks resembles hieroglyphics. (This is interesting since there are a few strange codes scattered around the Pizzaplex in the "Security Breach" and "Ruin" games, and their structure is similar to how David's play language is described.)

Mimic learns speech quickly, and can understand simple questions that are directed at it, and can nod or shake its head in response. It doesn't have to ability to speak, so David teaches the robot to pantomime certain words and phrases.

Since David carries his stuffed buddy Tiger everywhere with him, Mimic starts mimicking the motion, curling one of its arms as though carrying its own stuffed animal. This leads to David collecting bits and pieces of the old lace that's still scattered around on the factory floor, shaping it into a makeshift tiger for Mimic to carry. While he doesn't like David messing around with the old fabric pieces, Edwin can't help but praise both the boy and the robot for their ingenuity.

While most of Mimic's lessons in how to perform tasks come from David and are centered around the idea of play, the robot also observes when Edwin does chores around the apartment, learning to put food away in the fridge and how to fold or hang laundry. Being a robot with limited intelligence, Mimic doesn't understand the actual purpose behind these actions, with the concepts of food spoiling or clothes wrinkling being lost on it, but it can perform the actions themselves pretty well.

But things aren't always smooth sailing, and sometimes Mimic is witness to actions it should never mimic. Edwin overworks himself and often gets angry at David for (*checks notes*) behaving like a bored child who's been essentially trapped in an unsafe building. When David expresses frustration about not being able to play outside, or complains about being hungry, or makes a mess, or just generally acts like a kid, sometimes Edwin gets mad and yells at the boy. And, sometimes, he doesn't just yell, but also shakes or pushes David. David is never badly hurt physically during these times, but it makes him cry a lot, and it's certainly not a healthy environment for either father or son. (But especially not for the son, who is literally 4 and has no way of understanding why Daddy would grab and shake him like that.) Luckily, Mimic never mimics any of these actions, although we aren't told why it doesn't.

One morning Edwin calls David for breakfast, only to find David missing. He realizes the factory's front door is open, and that David must have decides to go play outside, directly disobeying Edwin's instructions. He rushes out the door to find David and makes it outside just in time to see his son chasing a rubber ball out onto the highway, where the boy is struck and killed by an oncoming vehicle.

(I'm having flashbacks to both "the Cliffs" and "Friendly Face." The vehicle that hits David is even a white van, which only further cements my assumption that "the Cliffs" was an early attempt at telling the Mimic's story.)

After witnessing the horrific death of his son, Edwin enters a fugue state, going through the motions of eating and sleeping all while his mind is lost in despair. He sort of "wakes up" after two weeks have gone by, and he finds he can't remember the last 14-ish days at all. Still in this broken state, Edwin wanders onto the factory floor and into the section where his workshop is set up. He tries to return to work as usual, but finds himself unable to focus on or complete any tasks.

Mimic has been spending the last two weeks following Edwin around when the man was awake, or sitting quietly in Edwin's workshop when the man's asleep. The robot doesn't seem to know what to do without David, and wanders just as aimlessly as Edwin does. Mimic is sitting in the workshop when Edwin returns to it, and tries to communicate with its creator through pantomime. The gestures remind Edwin of David and he loses it, grabbing and nearby tool and attacking Mimic, beating up the robot in his anger and grief. Mimic is soon reduced to a pile of scrap pieces, wrecked beyond use and almost beyond recognition; its remains remind Edwin of what his son looked like after being hit by that van, and the parallel makes him break down into wails and tears on his workshop floor, collapsing beside Mimic's remains as he cries.

And with that, we're finished with the first part of this story, and now we're moving on to the second part. This second part takes place an undisclosed period of time later, and centers around a group of Fazbear employees.

These new guys are a group of techs named Dominic, Harry, and Glen. They're sent to Edwin's old factory to clean up and collect some of his old work, as Edwin has been missing for a few months now and Fazbear's needs to have their property moved to another location.

(We're not told why Edwin is missing. Like, did he just completely snap and go off the grid for awhile after the events of part one of this story? Are we picking up after his death/disappearance in "the Storyteller?" When are we with this?)

For some reason, the factory only has one door, and that door swings shut and locks behind the techs as soon as they enter the building. They don't notice this at first.

As the techs look around the factory, gauging the scale of the job before they get started, they first notice a garment rack sitting on the factory floor, where some old costumes of Fazbear characters are hanging. Dominic easily recognizes characters like Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy, but he also notes some "bright pink and green jester costumes." He also sees the fake tiger plush that Mimic used to carry, the bundle of old lace sitting on the floor near these costumes, but he doesn't know what it is.

"Why were all the windows covered with nailed-into-place plywood, both inside and out?"

The three techs head deeper into the old factory, and find Edwin's living apartment on the second floor. All of Edwin's personal belongings (including those of his deceased wife and son) have been boxed up and damaged by time and water. Dominic can smell rotting meat in the kitchen area, and he assumes that there's a dead rat or food that Edwin abandoned in there.

The trio of techs spread out across the factory as they look around. Dominic finds company issued items of other Fazbear techs, and he realizes his team isn't the first to be given this particular assignment. In a duffel bag he finds a tape recorder, issued by Fazbear's, with a half-used tape already loaded in it. When he listens to the tape, he hears the voice of another tech, who complains that he and his coworker are trapped inside the factory, citing that the entrance door locks from the outside for some reason.

The man on the tape details the steps he and coworker have through on this job, with this detailed recording being a part of the job itself. This tape guy explains that he and his partner found some of the animatronic endoskeletons that Edwin had been working on, and they ran diagnostics on them to determine their levels of functionality, after which they cleaned them up and finished or repaired them as needed. He also says that they found another endoskeleton, different from the rest and "more advanced," but in a terrible state of disrepair and missing legs. They fixed this mystery endo up with spare parts and gave it legs, and now it's operational again. The recordings end after this.

Dominic meets up with his coworkers again on the factory floor. (And it's worth noting that there are no animatronics or endoskeletons here at this point.) They notice that they're locked in, and that one of the jester costumes is missing, and they become very uncomfortable very quickly.

Against their better judgements, the guys end up following the scent of rotting meat into Edwin's kitchen. There's a pool of blood on the floor in front of the refrigerator, and, when they open it, they find the remains of a man. He's wearing a Fazbear technician uniform and his body has been broken and twisted around in order to fit inside the fridge. The man's throat has been garroted to the point where he was "nearly decapitated."

Realizing that the dead man is one of the prior technician team, the trio look for his partner. They find his remains hanging on a clothing rod in Edwin's closet, a metal rod forced through the man's rib cage and then bent into the shape of a clothes hanger, and he's been hung up like a set of clothes. The man's abdomen has also been cut open, and his organs are hanging out of the opening.

The men are stalked and attacked by what they think is another man at first. The stalker is wearing the missing jester costume, causing it to resemble a "bright pink and yellow [jester]… with a wide, leering grin." Whoever or whatever this jester is, it slices Harry's head open, killing him instantly, and then starts "pulling his brain out the top of his skull" "like a bear pulling honey from a beehive." (What a mental image!)

Glen and Dominic try to flee and find weapons in order to defend themselves against this apparent "serial killer." After they haven't seen the killer for awhile, the two men hesitantly leave their hiding place, and they see the discarded, blood-soaked jester costume on the ground. The figure appears again, but is now wearing a mushroom costume.

"… A fuchsia and white mushroom costume, with gaping, dark eyes and an 'o'-shaped, cavernous mouth." (What in the FNAFWorld kinda character is that?)

The mushroom-wearing figure grabs Glen and slams him head-first into a wall, crushing the man's head and spine in the span of a single second. Dominic has the realization that this isn't a man that's been killing his coworkers, but rather a machine, or more specifically a "costume-wearing killing machine."

Dominic avoids his fate briefly but not for long. When next he and the unknown killer come face-to-face with each other, the killer is now wearing a "grey-ish purple" lion costume. The killer slams Dominic face-first to the floor and then forces its hand through Dominic's solar plexus and up his throat, "grab[bing] his trachea from the inside." Dominic dies in extreme pain as he is literally torn inside out.

.

.

.

So obviously, this story is meant to be the origin story for the Mimic itself, telling us that the Mimic was built to mimic the world around it, but wasn't programmed with any true intelligence. The Mimic understands how to perform movements (folding laundry, putting food away, putting on costumes, etc.) but it doesn't understand the purpose for those movements, or what the end result of those actions should be (so if "putting food away" results in killing a man, the Mimic doesn't understand why that's the wrong result).

I have no idea when the second part of this story takes place in relation to "the Storyteller," and that really bothers me. I mean, the techs tell us that Edwin has been missing for months, which could indicate that this segment takes place after "the Storyteller," since that story ends with Edwin being trapped inside the Storyteller tree. But, if that were the case, then the Mimic wouldn't still be in the factory, since the Mimic was installed inside the Storyteller tree.

Now, the epilogue for this volume suggests that there are more then one physical Mimic animatronics (spoilers, I know, but we'll get to that later -- just bear with me for a sec), so I suppose it's possible that the Mimic in the Storyteller tree is a separate animatronic that was only modeled after Edwin's original Mimic. But I think the Storyteller Mimic is meant to be the original Mimic, given how Edwin behaves around it in that story. But at any rate, it's certainly food for thought, and something to noodle around later.

Speaking of noodling, I'm personally really interested in Edwin's son being named David and how the boy is portrayed in this story. There's been talk in the theorist community this year about Dave/David potentially being the name of the Crying Child from FNAF4 (aka my son) and it's a theory that I think holds merit. In this story we see a young boy named David who carried a stuffed animal everywhere with himself and consider that stuffed animal his friend, who dies as a child due to the negligence of his guardian, and whose father works as a Fazbear's engineer. I'm not saying it cements anything, but the parallels are there and they're worth noting.

Epilogue:

Kelly finishes repairing the radio, and she hears a voice crying for help over the airwaves. She and Lucia identify it as the Mimic, using the same voice from earlier; it sounds like a young boy, and claims to be trapped somewhere in the Pizzaplex. The two girls decides to ignore it and seem to give up on using the radio after this.

Lucia has found an old notebook filled with notes and drawings from one of the original engineers who designed and built the earliest animatronics at Fazbear's. It's from this notebook that she learns that there was a whole line of Mimic animatronics, which were designed to watch and learn from the human performers, learning to mimic specific show routines. The notes say that one of the Mimic endoskeletons witnessed something outside of the usual performances and then started recreating this unusual action, and apparently that's enough for the whole line of Mimic endos to be discontinued and deactivated.

(The implication here being that one of the Mimics witness a crime, possibly a murder, and started acting violently.) (Lucia also thinks it's this particular Mimic that is the one pursuing them, but she doesn't explain why she thinks that.)

Jace returns to the girls alone, and they realize that Adrien is dead. The Mimic attacks them, the kids are temporarily separated as they run. Lucia loses a chunk of her hair and scalp to the attacking Mimic, but survives.

The kids regroup and come up with a plan to trap the Mimic. Jace volunteers to act as bait in a last-ditch effort to impress Lucia. The plan is to trap the Mimic in a room, and then Jace will escape through the vents, which the Mimic won't follow him into. Jace kisses Lucia ("firm and long and passionate") before the girls leave to set the trap and he leaves to spring it.

Jace catches the Mimic's attention, the robot now wearing a yellow cat costume (seriously, where are these costumes coming from?). He successfully lures the Mimic into the trap and hears the girls lock and block the monster inside, trapping it in a way it shouldn't be able to break out from. Jace starts to crawl through the air duct to get back to safer ground, but the duct breaks under him, dumping him backward toward the Mimic. The Mimic grabs him by the ankles and pulls him out of the vent, and quickly pulls off his arms and head.

From their place of apparent safety, Lucia and Kelly listen to Jace's dying screams.

.

.

.

I am intrigued by the implication that there was a *line* of Mimic endoskeletons at some point. And it might also explain what we were seeing in that earlier story.

But that's it for this volume, and I have nothing else to say about it. (Other than I'm glad to be done with it! Ugh!)

[princess-of-the-corner]

Toontown: Rewritten Recap: March 2003 (Confusion and Delay)

March 15, 2003

30 minutes after the scheduled posting time, Alec Tinn announced that he was finally done recounting the votes, and had bolted down the ballot box to make sure the Toon Troopers wouldn’t tip it over again.

He then ranted a bit about Sir Max delaying the election again, complaining that it was supposed to be that very day, but apparently working the Toon Troopers for over 24 hours a day was both inhumane and against the laws of the Tooniverse.

Regardless, Flippy Doggenbottom and Slappy Quackintosh would be working twice as hard for the next week, and 6 more Alpha Keys were going to be given out.

He then stated that the official, and FINAL date for the Toon Council Election would be March 22nd at 2:00 PM Toontown Time (PST), 21 Days after it was supposed to occur!

He also revealed that the Toon Troopers would then be put back to work on getting a Super Sunday Update out, followed by going back to the “Daily Alpha Update” cycle, laughing at the fact that the Toon Troop thought they’d be getting a break after the election.

Regardless, he at least didn’t exempt himself from the busywork, holding himself to the same “work ethic” as his workers, and thus got back to work setting up decorations for the election, hoping to make things silly enough to TRULY animate the campaign stands.

March 17, 2003

The polls were closed. The votes were being counted, but Flippy was still baking pies for his stand and Slappy would continue to give rides on his hot air balloon until Election Day.

But Flippy had found something to celebrate: Six tons of fireworks left over from New Years.

First, he made sure the fireworks wouldn’t get in the way of Slappy’s hot air balloon, and then he passed on Slappy’s announcement that he could probably even take toons flying DURING the fireworks shows (man I’m so mad that I missed that), and finally came the best part.

When Flippy launched the first firework, it went haywire, flying across the playground and towards McQuack (while he was working on something for Alec Tinn). The firework hit McQuack and rocketed right up into the sky with the unfortunate duck in tow, until…

KABOOM!!!

The firework blew up McQuack, the silliness of the entire situation being JUST enough to fully animate Flippy’s Campaign Stand, bringing it to life.

And unlike the MANY false starts from the past few weeks, it DIDN’T immediately go static again. Doctor Surlee got to studying it and murmured about installing the now-iconic Silly Meter into Toon Hall, something Flippy absolutely intended to approve if he won the election.

He gave out the next two Alpha Keys to the next two winners before signing off.

Also, aside from Flippy’s Campaign Stand now being alive, the fireworks shows had returned. Once an hour, every hour, in every Playground.

March 19, 2003

Slappy was back, and commented on how voting was over and how Alec was working his gloves off both tallying up votes and preparing some games for the election. He has a slightly more positive outlook on the election being delayed than Flippy did, seeing it as evidence that the fun is only beginning.

He then gave out the next two Alpha Keys, and reminded everyone that there were only two openings left. He suggested that the rabbits rub their lucky paws, while everyone else should either look into a species change or get a new job as a leprechaun.

This segued rather nicely into his next topic on where toons could go to get a little green for that line of work: Literally anywhere in Toontown.

The reason?

The birthday cake powering Slappy’s balloon was actually an Un-Birthday Cake. This wouldn’t be a problem, if not for the fact that unbirthday cakes have explosives in them. As such, Slappy was forced to dispose of it, by throwing it somewhere else so he wouldn’t be in the blast radius.

Meanwhile, McQuack had been released from the hospital, having finally recovered from getting blown up by a firework rocket, completely convinced that he was safe from explosives, and unaware of the highly explosive unbirthday cake flying at him until seconds before impact.

KABOOM!!!

The explosion got green goo all over his campaign sign, and the silliness brought Slappy’s campaign stand to life. Either that or inanimate objects just REALLY like seeing McQuack getting blown up.

Either way, the campaign stand could now use the green goop from the exploded cake to turn toons green for an entire day when interacted with. Not just the fur/feathers, but the snouts/bills as well!

March 21, 2003

With 24 hours until the election, Alec Tinn announced that Sir Max would be livestreaming the event (with Hawkheart handling the cameras), with Slate Blue Rabbit and many other members of the community streaming their own POV’s of the election.

With only 24 hours until the winner of the election was declared, Alec gave out the final two Alpha Keys, and announced that there wouldn’t be any more keys until Toontown entered the “Beta” phase of construction. With that, there were now 320 Alpha Testers, and thus a maximum of 320 Toons who could attend the main event in person.

The Toon Council Presidential Election was scheduled for 2:00 PM sharp, Toontown Time. He suggested that everyone who planned to attend in person log on at least an hour early so everyone could get sorted into different Districts (servers) and avoid too many people crowding into one place.

The people watching over Livestreams were recommended to hop on 15 minutes before the main event instead.

The moment the entire Alpha phase had been building up to was just around the corner!

March 21, 2014

At 7:00 PM, 5 hours past the event’s scheduled start time, the TTR team announced that they were delaying the Election AGAIN due to technical difficulties.

They were all burned out from all the hard work they’d been pouring into this, and thus weren’t able to resolve the server issues when 320 people logged in all at once, in addition to the dozen or so staff members’ toons (Sir Max, Hawkheart, Shockley, Slate Blue Rabbit, Goshi, McQuack, Fat McStink, Roger Dog, Too Many Secrets, etc.) meant that our sleep-deprived hobbyists could NOT get the servers to cooperate.

As such, they’d be taking some time to rest, and try to put all their focus on making sure the event would run properly.

Thus, they’d be rewarding 100 players with Beta Keys as an apology (just… AFTER Beta started, for obvious reasons).

And so, the Toon Council was still without a president.

March 22, 2003

24 hours later, we’re back in the Tooniverse, where Sir Max had an update.

He’d gotten some sleep, ate some of Flippy’s pies, and had nothing.

Thus, he instead announced a livestream (hosted on Slate Blue Rabbit’s YouTube channel) where he’d be answering various questions from the playerbase, a chat channel were fans can help them find bugs (even if they can’t play the game personally), and an MMOCentral Forums post where Joey (the real life human being who plays as Sir Max) answered some questions about a then-recent event.

Unlike with the previous delays, he did not have an exact date for the election pinned down, mostly because he didn’t want to make any promises until he was absolutely CERTAIN the election would be happening.

And so, March’s election arc concluded.

Next up…

The Elephant in the Room.

-

I know I said it last time but this is still less of a mess than irl elections.

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[lepartidelamort]

Taliban Fully Bans Women from Speaking, Showing Faces in Public

Andrew Anglin

If you thought this was the law already, that would make sense, given that it was being widely enforced already.

But apparently there were still some women in Kabul showing their faces and trying to talk to people. So the issue has been fixed. No more of that crap in Our Afghanistan, The Greatest Country on Earth.

They do not have a birthrate problem in Afghanistan. I can tell you that much. This much, my friend, I can indeed tell you: women are having kids in Afghanistan. And it’s a very poor country. Very poor. They’re recovering from a massive war. Gay retards invaded them and occupied their country for 20 years before surrendering and slipping away. It’s a poor country, ravaged by war, and yet they are having a lot of kids, because the birthrate has precisely zero to do with economics.

Someone needs to call South Korea and tell them about this. I don’t think they know about the Taliban and how women get pregnant in Afghanistan. Those gay retards in Fake Korea think the birthrate is an economic issue.

The Guardian:

New Taliban laws that prohibit women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes have been condemned by the UN and met with horror by human rights groups. The Taliban published a host of new “vice and virtue” laws last week, approved by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid leading men into temptation and vice.

Yeah, that’s something Western men don’t understand: if you don’t have to look at women all the time, you don’t feel constant sexual pressure. It is women being in public that creates all of these sexual problems for men.

We need to bring in Taliban advisors to assist us in establishing new norms in America.

We have to shut it down.

Women’s voices are also deemed to be potential instruments of vice and so will not be allowed to be heard in public under the new restrictions. Women must also not be heard singing or reading aloud, even from inside their houses.

“Whenever an adult woman leaves her home out of necessity, she is obliged to conceal her voice, face, and body,” the new laws state. Men will also be required to cover their bodies from their navels to their knees when they are outside their homes. From now on, Afghan women are also not allowed to look directly at men they are not related to by blood or marriage, and taxi drivers will be punished if they agree to drive a woman who is without a suitable male escort. Women or girls who fail to comply can be detained and punished in a manner deemed appropriate by Taliban officials charged with upholding the new laws.

The Taliban covers all bases.

They don’t let these whores in the school.

They don’t let them do anything.

Full lockdown.

That is, of course, the most obvious way to deal with the woman problem.

That said: if you just want to force women to have kids, you don’t really have to do all of that. You just have to box them in. You can’t give them options. If they have options, they are not going to choose marriage and kids (at least not until they are 28 or so, at which point they are mostly useless for these purposes).

Anything you can do to close off women’s decisions is going to change the dynamics of society that exist now, where women have the ability to make all of the bad decisions they want.

If you don’t want to lock them down, you at least have to box them in. Make it so not getting married is more difficult than getting married and the majority of these mindless hoes will just go along with the flow.

[bellshazes]

do it again directors commentary part 2

He and Etho had shown up at her favorite diner for takeout midnight breakfast while she had been hanging out at the bar, chatting with Scott, and without even thinking about it she’d joined their argument, switching sides periodically to keep it going. Years enough have passed that she can’t remember now what it had even been about, but she remembers Bdubs’ instant adoption of her as an ally and the wounded look he gave her when she conceded Etho had some good points, too. Etho had smiled brightly with his eyes and given her the faintest nod of approval, opening up the takeout boxes and settling down on the seat next to her.

this is very explicitly inspired by all the times i've gone to waffle house and the encounters i've had meeting old friends there who i never expected to see again. it's about the familiarity but also the capacity to shift and surprise and change the dynamic if it's funny. so it goes

Bdubs smiles knowingly at her. He heard all the goings-on of her tabletop campaigns and knows exactly what happened to her old D&D group. He’d been an exceptionally good sport about it, showing up for many late-night dinners to let her vent, as if it were a recap of his favorite TV show.

this and other things allude to the cleo-big b breakup that i never found a good place to make more explicit. i like the idea of it being some nebulous D&D situation partially because i despise D&D and because i think it's fun that since cleo continues to care that big b betrayed them, it should show up in silly ways, because it's fundamentally a betrayal in the specific context of a game. but it matters, what we did or didn't do, etc.

Cleo pauses and holds eye contact. For half a second she imagines a red bandana around Bdubs’ head, but it’s only the force of Bdubs’ belief that snares her.

another thing i never quite made explicit but is true: cleo received an unusually high number of lives, as did bdubs, and it's that fact that makes her more susceptible to remembering. if i had got to make it more explicit, i could've got into the exchange of lives as memory and as permanency, as debts and owing and relationships built across lifetimes... but I didn't. so this is what you get.

“That is a lot to ask of a guy, Cleo,” he says, but he stands up when she does. “If I for some reason am prevented from talking to Etho by such things as him being asleep all day, or un-overcomeable anxiety -”

i hate this line? i think i nailed bdubs' voice in the first half but i've spent so long trying to come up with something better than "un-overcomeable anxiety" and never did. i think he says things in super fucking weird ways but that's not right. it was worth leaving because i do believe in the dynamic of cleo playing mediator insofar as it's funny to them, and in cleo chastising bdubs, and their back and forth.

“Bdubs,” he says. “Hey, Bdubs.” He squeezes his hand again. “I wanted you to know. I’m so glad you were my partner.”

this whole Death Coffee Incident is borrowed wholesale from opera25's mll au, but it was fun making something kind of fantastical work. etho never was given any lives, and only gave one up to tango for the you bet your life game; he remembers here solely due to the life-threatening duress of consuming wayyyyyy too much caffeine. it was fun to write but also the pivotal moment in bdubs becoming convinced etho always had remembered and thinking then that the only reason he'd behave the way he did if he remembered was out of bloodlust... not that bdubs had yet unlocked memories of enjoying that murderousness and play back and forth.

there's a level to which this misunderstanding is a satirization/playing with fandom conceptions of if you view LL in a vacuum you get some crazy interpretations. but as they both learn, the threats were fun BECAUSE they had history and both enjoyed it. four more chapters for that to sink in though.

The process of checking into the ER is as onerous as he expected – trying to fill out the paperwork for Etho, who is still more out of it than Bdubs was when he had a head injury, having to put his foot down that he’d like to stay with his partner as much as possible and yes he had the paperwork to back him up, because Etho had made him keep a copy of important things in his wallet after he fell of the roof in case of something like this.

this part is in spite of my severe medical phobia, but also because of me working in insurance-related fields for the last 4 years. this document is called an advance directive or living will and if you live in the USA you should complete one by searching "advance directive [your state]" and filling it out and filing it according to the directions on your attorney general's website or whatever. it's genuinely imporant esp if you're not married and queer in any way. this is my one genuine PSA of the fic. but also they would. etho requesting to dot Is and cross Ts bc he thinks bdubs will be the one who needs and and then needing it himself... well. anyway.

He remembers fragments from his last death: that he had made some promise that didn’t save him, that cost him his last life. That he died calling Etho’s name, calling out to an Etho who took great joy in menacing him and making him paranoid, who had attacked him in that long dark stairway. It does not comfort him to know Etho thinks he’s responsible for whatever happened.

this chapter ends with bdubs trying and sort of succeeeding in believing in etho, but that last sentence is the lynchpin of what comes after: etho feeling even a little responsible for bdubs permadying - esp when bdubs remembers being a ghost for session 7 but was not present for etho's permadeath in session 8 - makes him think etho knows more than he does, and holds him accordingly responsible. the metacommentary is there but it wasn't the point; it's true, but incidental. the reveal eventually is that the trust was there, and that bdubs' permadeath was stupid and willing because it's about the novelty and the endless beginnings. spoilers but whatever if you're reading this you must not care by now.

chapter 4

He can feel his heart beating in his chest, and he has a sense-memory of falling down with all the vivid, terrifying sensation of jumping from the height of a swing in the park as a child, down to the faint awareness that the intervening years meant it was no longer quite the same body, that something had been knocked out of alignment by time.

it's a little tonally dissonant, but i'm still proud of this. you can tell later on i floundered for plot in this chapter, but the image of being both in the past and in the present and the overlay is important to me. it's very poetic.

Etho snagged a nametag off the apron that had been draped over the drinks counter, presumably in a now-ruined hope of ending the shift quickly, and slipped it into his pocket before turning back to smile placidly over Bdubs’ shoulder.

etho stealing the nametags is another MLL AU concept i stole and can't take credit for, but again trying to find a plausible concrete explanation for it was really fun and was the impetus for this whole chapter. grateful for it, and he's an ass and also nosy like that. he would.

Etho punched the crosswalk button and tried to remember that conversation but couldn’t. He remembered getting coffee, and that he’d almost finished it off by the time he’d gotten home. [...] “No,” he said, sounding strangled. “That hadn’t come up, actually.”

the limited alternating third person POV is restricting at times, but i really enjoy the contrast between what we already know of bdubs' perception of the Death Coffee Incident re: etho's knowledge and etho's POV making clear he doesn't know jack shit, but he cares. bdubs is reacting this way because etho saying he took the crazy coffee to stay up to see bdubs sounds like a threat, but it's also an expression of caring and not knowing how to bridge a distance.

if theres anything i believe it's that these two motherfuckers don't capital-T talk. they exclusively communicate through threats and shenanigans and team-ups and every time they mention talking outside of Events it shocks me. and yet their friendship persists over more than a decade! what miracles.

“You can’t take dreams too seriously,” Etho said, cat purring loudly under his hands, a soothing anchor. “It’s just your brain picking up on whatever’s going in your life and making up stories about it. No good worrying too much about them.”

this is mine own opinion on dreams, despite my sincere involuntary belief in signs and omens, but more importantly it is another point at which bdubs is implicitly in his own POV goign oh my god this son of a bitch is manipulating me. miscommunication for ages.

 He spends a few nights on the couch, methodically trying to rule the variables out: the quality of moonlight through his bedroom window, some oppressive sense of confinement, embracing the possibility his roommate is testing him and trying to prove to his subconscious that fishing rods are nothing to be worried about.

etho being experimental and scientific about this all is important to me. almost as much as half-remembering bdubs misinterprets this exacting need to know as being meaningful and knowing when it's not, especially when he was trying to elicit some response. guy gets a response and thinks the worst even though he's causing his own problems? there's a thesis in that

Etho bites back a comment about Bdubs’ dedication to sleep schedules and waves the criticism off instead. “I’m trying to sleep right now,” he lies. “Not my problem if you want to haunt me.”

if i ever let myself revise this chapter (and this chapter is the one i want to revise most) i want to include the detail from beau's comic of this passage of etho having his glasses on when he says this. my dude was definitely not tryign to sleep AT ALL and i forever wish i'd thought of that indicator myself.

When he sits down to start his own work for the day, he thinks about the drawing and decides then and there what his plan is to fix all this.

i wrote this line bc i have such a sense that chapter endings, like the endings of short stories, should have a paritcular cadence and effect - but neither etho nor i knew how "to fix all this" and in fact the subsequent chapters indicate he definitely was not laying his final plans yet. i've let it stay because putting this line in let me move on to write the rest of the fic... but it's untrue and a red herring and i hate it. i will fix you eventually. but not yet because i still dont' know how to satisfyingly transition.

etho doesn't get his next POV chapter until the second half of chapter 6 at the diner with cleo, where he finally confronts that his dreams might be real enough to have to deal with, and even then he goes through great lengths to validate cleo's theories by messing with tango... so who knows. but it's fine. it's fine. i hate it. it's fine

[speedyposts]

In legal no-man’s land, refugees in Malaysia struggle to eat, pay rent

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – It is late afternoon in Kuala Lumpur and in the harsh heat, Zabi* concludes his third visit to the doctor in a month, still unsure of what is causing his excruciating stomach aches despite all his reports being normal so far.

He worries about paying for the doctor as, being a refugee, he does not have much money or any medical benefits.

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When Zabi came from Afghanistan to Malaysia as a teenager five years ago, he had no choice but to fend for himself. His family had only enough money for one of them to flee.

“I know it’s illegal for a refugee to work in Malaysia. But I have no choice as an orphan, as I have no trace of my family at the moment. I work around 18 hours a day and I hardly get paid four ringgit ($0.88) an hour,” the 18-year-old told Al Jazeera.

Zabi is working as a housekeeper in a Malaysian-owned hotel in Kuala Lumpur but because he is a refugee and not officially allowed to work, he has no written contract.

He has had a series of other jobs – as a security guard, in restaurants and in customer service – and lives a precarious existence, struggling to make enough money to pay his 500 Malaysian ringgit ($106) monthly rent.

“After extremely exhausting long working days, Maggi instant noodles are something I eat most days,” he said.

Malaysia has no formal framework for refugees, which means they are left in a legal no-man’s land where they are vulnerable to exploitation by those who do employ them. Under Malaysian law, refugees are also no different to undocumented migrants who are often targeted in official crackdowns.

Asked about refugees at the United Nations last month, the Malaysian representative defended the government’s approach and indicated that there was no room for change.

“Who is the deserving refugee? Who is a deserving asylum seeker? Who is an economic migrant? Who is to determine them as such?” Foreign Affairs Ministry Deputy Secretary General (multilateral affairs) Bala Chandran Tharman told the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in Geneva, according to the Malay Mail.

While Malaysia is a member of the UN, it has never signed the 1951 Refugee Convention and there are no laws (PDF) in place to recognise and provide for those fleeing persecution and conflict.

Refugees also have no right to work, attend school or access medical care.

Registration with the local office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) provides some measure of protection and support, including limited access to healthcare, education and other services provided by the UN and its partners.

“This is only an identity document and has no formal legal value in Malaysia,” the UNHCR website notes of the card given to all those registered with it.

In 2022, the Malaysian government said all asylum seekers and refugees would need to register under the government’s Tracking Refugees Information System (TRIS), which was launched in 2017.

The TRIS website talks about safety and the risk of social problems linked to the influx of refugees but suggests registration may allow cardholders to work in some, mostly unskilled, areas.

“The lack of legal protection forces refugees to work illegally, and most of the jobs that they find are 3D jobs, the ‘difficult, dangerous, and dirty’ kind of work that Malaysians try to avoid,” said Jana Stanfield, the co-founder of Together We Can Change the World and founder of the Refugee Film School in Kuala Lumpur.

Without legal protection and proper contracts, many do not receive Malaysia’s national minimum pay (introduced in May 2022) of 1,500 Malaysian ringgit ($329) per month or 7.21 Malaysian ringgit ($1.64) an hour.

Zabi, who spent five months learning English after arriving in Malaysia in 2018, says the boss at the security firm where he once worked had agreed to pay him about 1,000 Malaysian ringgit ($219) a month but never did.

Even now, he is forced to do overtime, which is unpaid, and work in other roles to meet his employer’s needs. He told Al Jazeera he has to agree to these conditions, having no alternative.

More than 70 percent of the 185,000 refugees in Malaysia registered with the refugee agency are of working age. According to information gathered from refugee communities, most make a living in restaurants, retail and other service jobs as well as agriculture and construction.

“It is a ‘win-win’ for Malaysia, as it would take into consideration both the humanitarian needs of refugees, whilst also benefiting the Malaysian economy as it recovers from the social and economic impact of the pandemic,” UNHCR spokeswoman Yante Ismail said in a statement to Al Jazeera about allowing the community to work legally.

Malaysia has allowed certain groups of refugees to join the workforce in the past.

In 2015, some Syrians were allowed to work and send their children to school under a scheme based on an initiative in the early 1990s for Bosnians fleeing the Balkan wars.

“Malaysia can allow refugees to exercise their right to work under an existing legal framework … and then this can be expanded to include education and healthcare,” said Mahi Ramakrishnan, an investigative filmmaker and activist based in Malaysia. “The question is whether the government has the political will to do so.”

In 2017, a pilot project allowed about 300 Rohingya refugees with UNHCR cards to work legally in the plantation and manufacturing sector, but was not adopted.

In October, the Human Resources Ministry said refugees might be allowed to work officially in the so-called “3D jobs” amid shortages of workers who are usually brought in through government-backed arrangements from countries such as Bangladesh and Indonesia. Those schemes are currently under review as Malaysian seeks to regularise its policies on foreign workers.

Ultimately, refugee advocacy groups say the government needs to take the lead on any policy change.

“To grant refugees the right to work is to ensure that they are able to have access to livelihood that is safe, decent and dignified,” Hui Ying Tham, the executive director at Asylum Access, told Al Jazeera. He stressed that the implementation of this “requires a multifaceted approach with the government leading, in consultation with refugee communities, the changes in laws, policies and attitudes to create a framework that recognises and supports the rights and potential of refugees.”

Tham added that work should also recognise the skills and experience of the individual refugees as it does with any other member of the workforce.

Abolfazly*, an Afghan refugee school teacher whose village was burned down by the Taliban, agreed.

“We had a life before taking refuge in another land,” he said. “We’re educated, we’re resourceful. Host countries like Malaysia can use us – not only in agriculture but in their socioeconomic development,” said the 28-year-old, who is working on finishing his PhD in law.

The UNHCR remains hopeful that there will eventually be a resolution, although the latest comments at the UPR suggest that might not happen soon.

For refugees like Zabi, that means continued struggle.

“I want to go to university. I love learning new languages,” he told Al Jazeera. “Right now, my life is all about eating, sleeping and working. I have no plans for the future because I know none of the plans will work. But I’ll still keep trying – like I always do.”

*Pseudonyms have been used to protect the refugees’ identity

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[supermediabrothers6]

So I wrote a short story about the First Doctor to submit to the Big Finish writing contest this year and I was rejected. Since the story won’t be turned into a Big Finish audio it’s now just a fun little fan fiction. Therefore I’m posting it here for your amusement :) enjoy!

“A Step Too Far” By Billy.

The Doctor was young. Their current body was wearing a bit thin, but that was practically nothing to a Time Lord. It was their first body. The only one they’d ever known. The Doctor’s people cycled through a little over a dozen over the course of their life span. Of course, if they were honest with themselves, they were quite nervous about renewal (The process by which a Time Lord exchanged an old body for a new one). They acknowledged this fear as irrational. Billions of Time Lords before them had regenerated successfully to the point where it wasn’t worth remarking upon. “But,” the nagging voice at the back of their mind said, “you have never done it.” The Doctor’s subconscious, played on their own prized feelings of individuality to undercut their confidence. The cheek… It was a good thing then that the Doctor was almost never honest with themselves, or anyone else, about anything.

Portraying a confidence so real they almost believed in it themselves, the insecure youngster who called themselves the Doctor strutted into the control room of the TARDIS that they had the audacity to call theirs.

While the Doctor was young, next to the individuals who met them there, they were a corpse several times over. Ian Chesterton, and Barbara Wright, looked an awful lot like Time Lords, but they were in fact alien intruders from a strange and barbaric world known as “Earth.” “Earth,” the Doctor thought, sounded like a word one would say while trying to move a heavy object across the room. “URTH!” Ian was humanoid, generally speaking, but strangely box-like. He had a rectangular body, rectangular features on a rectangular head, and two rectangular arms that ended in cuboid fists. Even his sense of style added to the effect. His constant frumpy sweaters, rectangular ended ties, and his haircut angular and semi symmetrical. Barbara’s fashion sense the Doctor approved of much more. Her hair was worn in a big, almost spherical, shape. She also wore mostly sweaters, but hers were much less boxy than Ian’s, and the collars were often rounded like the collar of a spacesuit, which the Doctor found amusing. The last of their companions, however, was no savage alien creature, but their own granddaughter. A charming young woman who had become so interested with the culture of Earth that she also dressed in an earth style somewhere between Ian’s and Barbara’s. Nice sweaters, and a high and tight haircut. Annoyingly she even insisted on being called by an Earthling name: “Susan.”

The Doctor could hardly blame Susan for being so interested in the blue-green speckled world. They admitted to also being intrigued by it for several key reasons. First and foremost being of course that they couldn’t seem to escape the bloody place. The day they and Susan had “borrowed” the TARDIS from a scrapyard on their home planet they’d set course for the wonders of the universe, and landed right away on the blasted thing. Ever since it seemed every other trip they took it was another random visit to a culture or historical period on the planet Earth. Another reason, of course, was the fact that the Doctor had two abducted Earthlings living on their ship.

It was all Susan’s fault. The Doctor had landed for a time in London on Earth in the mid 20th century for reasons of their own. Susan had insisted on participating in the local schooling system. Perhaps inevitably two of her so called “instructers” at the institution she had attended noticed something suspicious about her, and had followed her home, discovering the TARDIS. In a move spurred by absolute panic, the Doctor had taken off, abducting these two earther subjects, and dragging them all across the universe. Ever since then, they’d spent even more time on Earth than before as the Doctor tried everything they could to find a way back to the time period from where Barbara and Ian used to belong. To make matters worse it was on that same disastrous trip that the ship’s chameleon circuit had stopped working. Trapping the ship in the shape of a “Police Public Call Box” whatever that was. Ian, Barbara, and even Susan had tried to explain it to the Doctor multiple times and they still weren’t sure they fully understood.

So maybe it was only because of the sheer amount of exposure the Doctor had had to the earth and its people. But the Doctor also found themselves absolutely fascinated by the earth and its people. When arriving on earth, on the voyage that resulted in the alien invaders on their ship, the Doctor had adapted to wearing earthling clothes to blend in. Now their earth style wardrobe had become the only items out of their expansive closet that they ever wore. They had not sunk so low as to wear the dull sweaters their companions did, but instead wore a jacket with tails, a waist coat with a watch chain, a flowing cape, and a series of colorful patterned ties. Fashion had been a passion awakened in the Doctor by their travels. At home, everyone wore the same drab robes, with only minor differentiation based on ranks or certain professions. In many other places in the universe clothes were used as an expression of the inner self. There was an art form in choosing the right clothes to leave the right impression in the minds of the people around you. Today, as on most every other day, the Doctor wished to create the impression of maturity, near omnipotent wisdom, and supreme confidence.

The Doctor stood at the console of the ship and placed their hand, in what they hoped was a masterful way, on the control panel. “Ms. Wright! Mr. Chestermum! You’ve made no secret of your casual disrespect and disregard for me and my ability to control this vessel. As if the man who built this great craft would not be its master!” They hesitated somewhat after that. Concerned that Susan would call them out on their flagrant fib, but as always she left them un-challenged. They continued: “But I promised you that I would indeed bring you back to your own time and your own planet, and I as always, am a man of my word. So, if you would be so kind to observe the scanner!” With a flourish the Doctor flipped the scanner switch and pointed dramatically at the screen overhead, keeping their eyes on Ian, and Barbara’s faces. Sadly, rather than the looks of excitement, gratitude, elation, or even shame, that the Doctor expected, their faces had a look of bemused condescension. Angry, and confused the Doctor looked back at the scanner, only to see the screen buried in static.

Susan piped up hesitantly, trying to be helpful: “It must have developed a fault grandfather.” “Nevermind!” said the Doctor cutting her off. Their self confidence was rapidly depleting. They needed to do something fast to save face. “We don’t need the scanner after all” they said as they moved as casually as they could with how hard their hearts were beating towards the door controls. “Now hold on Doctor.” Ian interjected “Just a minute! You haven’t even checked the environmental readings yet!” The Doctor was feeling heat rising in their head. In their state of shattered hubris, Ian’s words, meant as a friendly reminder, instead felt like a cruel insult. The heat in the Doctor’s face boiled over and exploded outward “FOR THE LAST TIME CHEDDARBIN! I AM THIS VESSEL’S MASTER! I am sick to death of your insinuations, and insults sir! Once and for all I will tell you this: I am the Doctor, and I know what I’m doing!” they then wrenched the door control a good deal harder than necessary, stormed through the slowly opening inner doors and grasped the door handle of the police box shaped outer doors. They took one extra second to look back at their companions, probably to finally get the reaction they had initially hoped for, and flung open the doors. They then immediately, and quite against their will, flew out the door, and into the vacuum of space.

In the briefest millisecond after the Doctor realized they were about to die, a series of thoughts passed through their mind at a speed that surprised even them. Their earlier insecurities about the concept of renewal of course sprang immediately to the forefront of their mind. They were almost grateful. The lifespan of any individual’s body was always hard to gage. Though their current body looked, and felt, to be near the end of its tether, they could be living with their fears and trepidations about the end of their first life for another year, or another hundred years, or another thousand. As unpleasant as a sudden violent, or accidental death might be, at least it would be over. They would know what it was like, how it was done, and could live the rest of their lives without ever having to worry about it again.

They wondered what they’d look like when it was done? What they’d BE like when it was done? Renewal wasn’t just a new body after all, it was a full body and mind metamorphosis! What if they decided they didn’t like their clothes anymore? What if they ended up as an incredible bore who decided to be mature, and responsible, and take Susan, and the ship back home? They could never go back. They simply couldn’t, even if they wanted to. Even if they could, outsiders would not be permitted. What would become of Ian and Barbara?

They had always assumed they would go through this alone, or perhaps with Susan by their side. They’d never thought of the possibility of their first renewal being observed by two strange, savage, aliens. They couldn’t help but be greatly amused at the thought of the human’s reactions to seeing the process take place, and the result of it. If they had failed to impress them with their ability to pilot the TARDIS at least they’d finally wow them using basic time lord biology. They wondered if they’d be able to see their faces as they changed. They tried to think about where they were in relation to them so they could turn their head towards them again.

They then realized as the shock began to wear off, that they were spinning through space into an endless void. They would either asphyxiate, freeze, or explode from decompression. Regardless there wouldn’t be enough living cells in their body left to start the process. They were going to die, really die, pointlessly, and very far from home. Instead of impressing their companions, they’d shown in their final moments to be a blustering preening idiot. They’d traveled with these people, as alien, and irritating as they often were. They’d fought with them, laughed with them, cried with them, and now because of their own ego, their own insecurities, they were dying alone. Despite all they’d been thru together, the last memory they’d have of them was them shouting like the petulant spoiled child they were.

It was finally at this moment that the Doctor was broken out of their thoughts by incredible pain in their arm. They’d never taken their hand off the door handle after opening it. They’d flown out the doorway, and their arm had just snapped taught like a rope between them and the TARDIS’ outer door. They flapped like a leaf on a breeze, barely hanging on to its mother tree in fall. Despite the impression of wind, it was eerily quiet as the Doctor was buffeted about. “Of course!” The Doctor thought, “sound doesn’t carry in space!” Almost as soon as they’d had that thought, they impossibly heard the sadly familiar noise of their granddaughter in great distress: “Grandfather!” she shouted. With effort, the Doctor looked up at the open TARDIS door. Susan was just standing there, in the TARDIS doorway, in almost the same spot the Doctor had stood when they were flung from the ship! Yet she showed no sign of being sucked into the void with them. Barbara stood behind her, she looked as if she had rushed forward to prevent Susan from falling out, only to realize the same strange fact the Doctor had.

There was a moment of impasse where neither Susan, nor Barbara wished to abandon the Doctor, but neither could figure out how to reach them without leaving the TARDIS. The moment lasted just long enough for the Doctor to realize despite all logic that they were still able to breathe. The moment concluded as Ian came to the rescue. He approached the doorway of the TARDIS brandishing the heavy wooden coat stand from the console room. Barbara and Susan, understanding what he was trying to do, moved to brace him as he extended the stand longways out towards the Doctor as a lifeline. The Doctor gratefully grasped it, thanking their lucky stars that their artificial hand was holding up so well.

After tense seconds that seemed to stretch on for eternity, the Doctor was safe on the solid extra dimensional ground of the TARDIS interior. They felt their frail, and worn body threatening to drift into unconsciousness but they were unable to allow that. Their companions dragged them bodily within the interior doors. “Shut the doors!” barked Ian. Susan rushed to the control panel and obeyed. The doors hummed shut. The serene buzz of the machine was rendered irritating in relation to how hard the Doctor’s heart was pounding. The Doctor struggled to their feet, and moved to the controls. “Are you alright grandfather?” Susan asked. “You should rest” said Barbara. “Hm? What? Oh no no no no no, quite out of the question.” The Doctor muttered almost to themself. “Susan, check the fault locator.” Reluctant to leave her grandfather’s side, Susan nevertheless obeyed. “Everything is reading normal grandfather.” “Not possible.” The Doctor sputtered. “Surely at least it’s reading a fault in the scanner?” As they spoke they checked the scanner switch. The scanner worked perfectly, showing a frankly breathtaking view of the world beyond. The Doctor also noticed rather ruefully that even when the TARDIS had landed in empty space, from the positions of the stars, they appeared to be only a stones throw from Earth.

Eventually the Doctor was able to get a rough idea as to the sequence of events. Apparently the moment the Doctor was thrown from the TARDIS door the magnificent ship had extended a kind of protective barrier that contained enough oxygen, pressure, and heat to protect the Doctor and their companions from serious harm. “What a marvelous safety feature!” the Doctor exclaimed without thinking. Recovering quickly they sputtered: “Silly old fool that I am, I quite forgot I installed it! Hehe! The only part I don’t understand, If I understand, I mean, if I remember correctly, how this feature works, as it was working even before the door opened, there should have been no explosive decompression when I opened the doors.” “There wasn’t.” said Ian. “What do you mean my boy hm?” snapped the Doctor. “Do you think I flung myself out the door in a fit of peak hmm? Do you imagine I’ve lost my wits completely?” Their companions exchanged a glance. “Doctor”, said Barbara, “If there had been explosive decompression we all would have been sucked out too. When you opened the doors the ship pitched violently. It almost felt as if the ship was being shaken in such a way specifically to push you out the door.”

The Doctor felt a chill shoot through them. The fact was that when they left their home planet they’d had next to no experience with these machines. They’d heard stories but they’d assumed that people who spoke of TARDIS as if they were alive were engaging in romantic exaggeration. But between this instance, and the incident with the fast return switch…

The air corridor had been in place before they’d been ejected. They didn’t believe the ship meant them harm, but they did think they were being warned. What was it they’d said before the ship had thrown them out? “This ship is mine!” “I am the master!” They’d started believing their own lies, and the ship was fighting back. Warning them not to take it for granted. The Doctor felt then the true enormity of the situation. They stood not in the control room of a space-time vessel, but in the belly of a great creature. A creature that could expel, or potentially swallow them, at any time. The Doctor decided to keep this information to themself. One more lie would have to be acceptable if it meant allowing their companions to sleep at night. They would simply have to be more careful to live in harmony with this beast, this ship, this being, that they had begun to think of as home.

The Doctor turned to their companions, “Oh Susan!” They said. “I wonder, have you been keeping up with your lessons child?” Susan looked bewildered, “Well, no grandfather.” “Oh dear, dear me. We left Coal Hill school quite a time ago now my dear and I’m afraid you’ve fallen quite behind. What good fortune it is then that we have two of your teachers here to help.” “Doctor…” Ian seemed about to interject. “cha cha cha!” The Doctor said to interrupt, “I will not have a juvenile delinquent in the family, now go with Ian and Barbara and they’ll fill you in on what you must have missed in the time you’ve all been gone.” They shuffled Ian, Barbara, and Susan towards the door to the rest of the TARDIS. “What are you going to do Doctor?” Ian asked. “Work on figuring out what went wrong?” “What? Oh no no no no.” The Doctor said. “It was nothing my boy. Just need to give the old girl some over due maintenance that’s all.” As soon as their companions were out of earshot, the Doctor set about giving the console room the most thorough cleaning it had ever received. They resolved that from then on this would be the best cared for TARDIS in all of time and space.

If you were to ask her, the TARDIS would not answer of course, but inside she would think, that while this promise was not always kept, the intention, and spirit of the thing was what meant the most.

The End