#and like i DEFINITELY remember thinking that i wasn't having any fun. but assuming everyone ELSE was having fun

[susiephone]

my favorite part of the defunctland kid cities video is that it's FINALLY confirming what 9-year-old me thought when my class did exchange city: for a field trip that the teachers had hyped up to us for weeks, exchange city kind of sucked.

[cheezeybread]

Anon McGee with an actual request this time [once again not pertaining to any actual game things, unfortunately, but I'm working on it LMAO. Twisting Wonderland will not be forgotten about, I prommy]

Starting to think about different kinds of mythologies and I've absolutely fallen in love with the idea of Selkies! And as a result, it only came naturally that the thought would come up of the Octavinelle trio with a reader who's a selkie!

For additional context on that if needed [both for yourself and for other people reading this], Selkies come from Celtic Folklore and are, watered down [haha], people who wear sealskins in order to turn into seals. Generally, I think they're described as being super kind and gentle, as opposed to other creatures of mythology you often hear of.

Thinking mostly of it being something that got them put in Octavinelle because it was assumed they'd fit in better there than anywhere else in NRC. Specifically I'm thinking of the reader being a Monk Seal Selkie because those seals tend to live in warmer, tropical climates and that fits in pretty well with Azul and the Tweel's species as well, making the Octa-Dorms a pretty comfortable place for something like that. I'm also thinking that this wasn't exactly something that the reader tried to keep hidden, but it also isn't exactly spoken of super often until the reader potentially loses the seal skin and it traps them to the confines of the land [which doesn't sound all that bad in THIS situation as long as it's quickly resolved, but many Selkie stories focus on the idea of losing the skin and as a result of that, their identity and freedom they had before].

Something something, it turns out someone took it or something, probably not even for malicious reasons, just because they were curious about it, or maybe they were snooping and accidentally got something on it and were trying to discreetly clean it and return it. Whatever works, really, reader is panicked, maybe gets to show off the seal a bit after the fact, something fun and chill like that.

Also, entirely unrelated to that, but I offer you my playlist of Ghost songs that is entirely curated to my tastes, but I feel like it's a good way to ease yourself into it more [most definitely not attempting to indoctrinate you]

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2LWceY9cJfeLZOayhbuxbm?si=Px81gThlRQmFWHFRvQEQlg

AHHHH I LOVE SELKIES SO MUCH !!!! I remember first reading the stories about them and thinking "omg that would make for SUCH a good yandere plot- with someone who steals their coat so they can't go home, and then the stealer is all like 'lol sucks you can't leave now let's get married'", does that make any sense?? I dunno, I'm very tired right now!

And YIPPEE, I'm getting indoctrinated, I'd always hoped it would happen to me eventually! I'm gonna be listening to that playlist while writing this XD

◦•●◉✿✿◉●•◦

Octavinelle was known for being a generally quiet and calm dorm. Even the area in which the Mostro Lounge was is a fairly chill area, since there were very strict rules about fighting. The most that happened was an occasional yelp of terror as Floyd managed to corner one of his dorm members. Other than that, it was smooth sailing.

Except for today.

Almost everyone got woken up by a panicked, terrified screech.

It had ended almost as soon as it began, so most students chalked it up to be some sort of weird half-asleep dream- the others who believed it to be real sat up in their beds....before going right back to sleep of continuing on with their daily routine. After all, they didn't have to worry about anything dangerous happening with Azul and the Twins to safeguard the place.

And, speaking of the devils, the trio began their march through the halls, knocking and banging on every door to find the source of the mysterious sound.

When they got to your room, they found that although the door was unlocked, you never came to answer it.

"Maybe they're out in the bathrooms," suggested Floyd, already tired of this tedious task.

"Doubtful," remarked Jade under his breath "We checked there first, did we not? Surely we would have seen them heading to the bathrooms on our search, as well."

"Hush, you fools!" Azul hissed, leaning his head closer to the door, his eyes squinting as if that could help him hear better. "They're in here. I can hear them....crying, I think?"

"Oh, dear, well, if they're crying, we should allow them some time to-" Jade started, clamping his mouth shut as Floyd brought his leg up and kicked the door as hard as he could, flinging the piece of wood off of its hinges.

"KNOCK, KNOCK, SELKIE" He said with a proud grin, hands stuffed in his pockets casually.

"Dear Sevens, Floyd, I hope you know that's coming out of your paycheck," Azul looked disgusted as he viewed the once-beautiful white wood door splintered into two pieces, laying on the floor.

He focused his attention on the inside of your room, his body relaxing when he saw that there was no imminent danger, but then he winced when he saw you sitting on the floor in front of your closet, sobbing.

"Oops, didn't know you liked that door that much," Floyd said in an attempt to lighten the situation. You sniffled and tried to stop your crying, wiping your eyes as you looked up.

"Oh fu- geez, sorry, guys, I didn't think-" You stopped yourself, rubbing your eyes one last time before taking a shuddery breath "I'm sorry for screaming, I didn't mean- I didn't mean to...."

"Dear me, what's got you in such a sorry state?" Jade asked, placing a hand on his chin thoughtfully "We assumed the worst had happened. Octavinelle is not a place where one may use their outside voices, as you are well aware."

You glanced back into your closet again, the action making you want to start sobbing again "I lost it- no, someone took it....my coat."

"Coat's ain't that expensive, jus' get you another one, Selkie," Floyd shrugged, figuring the whole issue was solved.

Azul shook his head, going through the list of students in his mind's eye. He had made it a point to memorize the basic facts of all the members of his dorm, of course. It gave him the high ground in any situations, knowing of their weaknesses in academics, or background, or anything of the sort. He knew who YN was. "Wrong type of coat, Floyd. It's not one you can just purchase at Sam's store on campus."

"Ah, yes, they mean..." Jade made a motion with his hands to mimic putting on a coat, then swimming. It was a rather...silly pose to do, which made you chuckle a bit, despite the situation. Perhaps he had meant to do that.

"Exactly. Their coat. The one that allows them to change forms." Azul let out a small sigh, bordering on frustration "Sevens, I wish it were so easy for us, imagine not having to drink that awful bitter potion every day to retain legs....it could be just as easy as taking off a jacket, but no-" he cleared his throat, stopping himself "Apologies, YN. So I assume the missing 'coat' was your reason for such a disorderly cry not too long ago?"

You nodded your head shamefully "Yes...I know I shouldn't have screamed, but with all the stories I heard growing up of humans taking our coats so we lose that part of ourselves...maybe I overreacted."

"You did," agreed Azul, not bothering to sugarcoat it "It's ridiculous for you to assume the worst in such a situation, and as a result, bother the rest of your dorm members. Besides, if you would have bothered to read the memo I posted in the wall just outside of the bathrooms, you would have seen that today is the day that the school's ghost-workers come gather our clothes to be washed and pressed- paid for entirely out of my pocket, might I add, as a reward for the dorm's excellent exam grades." He pushed his glasses up, rolling his eyes "You would have also seen that I made a footnote stating that for any clothes you do not wish to be taken, to lay them out on the foot of your bed, lightly sprinkled with salt."

Floyd made a retching sound in the corner of your room. "Yech, salty clothes."

You felt a little better knowing that your coat wasn't stolen, but the embarrassment of being caught red-handed at ignoring the Housewarden's memo made your face turn red, itself. "...Oh."

"Oh is right!" Azul said loudly "Now pick yourself off the ground and compose yourself. I'll send Jade to retrieve your coat before the Ghosts start their washing. I would send Floyd, but..." glancing over at the Eel-mer, who was busy entertaining himself by seeing if he could fit underneath your bed, Azul let out an aggravated noise "I assume you wouldn't want him touching such a precious item."

"No, I- I wouldn't," You said "Thank you, Housewarden Ashengrotto."

"You can thank me by cleaning out the pool once you have your coat back- I assume that being in your natural form would help you better reach the hard-to-get crevices under the water," And there was his angle. So much for him helping you out of the kindness of his heart.

You tried to manage a grateful smile nonetheless "The indoor or outdoor pool?" you asked. There was a very clear difference between the two and which one you would prefer to clean. The indoor one was a basic pool, treated with natural products so that any of the water-lovers in the dorm or merfolk could enjoy a nice swim without getting chlorine in their eyes, The outdoor one was on the back-end of the dorm, and was made up of legitimate water. While the entrance to the Octavinelle's pocket dimension made it appear as if the guest was swimming underwater and yet could still breath, the back was as close to the real ocean as one could get. The larger mer-creatures enjoyed swimming there, as well as any homesick students (who could breath underwater, of course). It had magically-altered coral and reef spaces, tons of rocks, and lots and lots of crevices...

You felt the bottom of your stomach dropped when Azul flashed his iconic business smile

"The Outdoor one, of course," He stated.

----

This was a terrible job. It was so unrewarding to try and scrape off what barnacles there were sticking to rocks- mainly because the reef was entirely magicked up and the barnacles were consciously made a part of it! And also because, well, barnacles were natural in the ocean! Gahhhhh, curse you, Azul!

Although, now that you had time to think about it, maybe giving you such a meaningless task was Azul's plan to make you learn your lesson for making him go door-to-door searching for an emergency. That mean-spirited octopus...

"Ooooooh, Selkie's doing such a greeeeeat job!" A voice chirped from behind you. As you whirled around to see who it was, a phosphorescent light blinded you for a moment before you could see Floyd in his eel form.

Pushing down the prey instinct to run away, you forced yourself to turn around, continuing with your tasks. Floyd still lurked behind you, however, since the little lights on his body provided a faint glow.

"Can I help you with something?" You asked, your voice a mixture of grunts and barks in your current form.

Floyd had no trouble interpreting your words, and responded with chirps and clicks of his own eel tongue "Nope! Just bored!"

"Well, maybe you could help me out some."

"Hah! Not a chance, Selkie! Besides, everybody knows that those barnacles are spelled to grow back within ten minutes of being removed," Floyd grinned at you, swimming up and over you so that his head was in front of you, upside down, his sharp teeth flashing.

You frowned, looking back at the small section of barnacles you had just finished scraping.

They were all back in place. It looked like you hadn't even touched them.

You yelled out a few curses, throwing the blade in your hand onto the floor. It didn't feel as good as it did on land, though, since the water only made it gently float down.

"Sooooooo, you wanna ditch the boring scrapey-scraping and go for a swim?" the eel asked, mischief in his eyes already. Although, when did that look ever leave?

You pondered it for a moment before sighing. What else did you have to lose? This was a meaningless task anyway, like he said.

"Sure, why not?"

◦•●◉✿✿◉●•◦

[woso-dreamzzz]

i love the fact that squish looks like frida and emma did any fun misunderstandings come out of that?

Definitely a few!

For one, newer signings at Linköping think that Emma carried Squish and they're always a bit in awe over it because they can't remember her taking a break from football to get pregnant. It's always funny when they ask about Squish's origins expecting a sweet little story about the ivf process but Emma takes them out the back by the bins and the bushes and says 'yeah, we found her right there'.

It definitely threw the Arsenal girls a bit too who assumed that Frida carried. They're just in shock at how much Squish's 'sperm donor' ended up looking like Emma and jokingly asked if they got the sperm from a sibling only for Frida to be like 'why would we need sperm?' and everyone's like 'so you could have your baby????' and she has to explain that no, Squish wasn't ivf, she was just found.

Fans also theorise over whose egg it was that Squish came from only for Frida to mention really nonchalantly in an interview that the reason she thinks Squish loves nature so much is because they found her in a bush

[sameschmidtdiffname]

If anything were to ever be released from Peeta's POV during the series, I think what I would be most interested in is what was going through his head during The Mockingjay Trial.

Peeta's thoughts during Mockingjay as a whole would be interesting. Peeta is ultimately cunning. We all joke about how Peeta would've ran 13 if he'd been the one that was saved, but I can't imagine Snow was having a particularly fun time with him either. Peeta knows how to communicate with the Capitol. I wonder if part of the reason Peeta was abused so horribly was not to torture Katniss, but because it's very possible there was a real possibility Peeta could've won the war from the inside by turning Snow's people against him with his own personal showmanship. "If it weren't for the baby" is a perfect example of how capable Peeta could be of doing just that.

I imagine once Peeta begins to regain his mind, it doesn't take long for him to realize the multiple problems that exist within president Coin. The problems Gale decided not to acknowledge in the proper manner.

Gale and Katniss are incredibly close. Now, I know we all like to poke our fun at Gale, (I'm definitely guilty of it,) but Gale is a genuinely complex character. He was a kid too. That doesn't take away from how he still did wrong, but you cannot look at him from a black and white lense when legitimately viewing his character. He does have depth.

Gale and Katniss are close because they are similar. They lose their fathers in the same accident, they learn to survive the same way. Katniss speaks throughout the series of how similar they are. It would not at all be impossible for Peeta to assume Katniss was radicalized the same way Gale was since he remembers their relationship despite the hijacking.

I think this is what hurts Peeta the most during the voting for the final Hunger Games. Peeta is at a severe disadvantage to reading Katniss still. His mind is better, and most likely he had already begun therapy in seriousness and was already improving mentally. But he and Katniss have not begun to grow back together yet. He no longer has access to her obvious tells. And yes, Katniss's thoughts are obvious to her inner circle. To everyone else, she is a mystery. Katniss loves him, but he is no longer in her inner circle at this point.

I don't think Peeta would realize the truth of Katniss's vote until she shoots Coin instead of Snow, which I think is the point for many to realize the amount of deep set problems there truly were with Coin. Most of the time it takes someone doing something extreme to make people pause and think.

Peeta is already having to put the pieces back together in his mind about Katniss. I think The Mockingjay Trial would probably be the tipping point of Peeta's recovery due to the testimonies, the evaluations. Something I've wondered is if Peeta was even allowed to testify since he had been hijacked. Honestly, I would assume that he wasn't. Leaving him off to the sidelines, forced to watch as someone he knows he used to be close to be examined live for the nation to see, to be picked and torn apart. I imagine that maybe the general public was not allowed to see any footage, but based off of Plutarchs offer for Katniss to be on a new singing program during their final conversation in 'Mockingjay,' it seems Katniss was correct in thinking there was most likely a live broadcast of her in the Training Center available to watch. Most likely Haymitch was allowed a peak. And through Haymitch, probably Peeta. I don't think it would be until the entire nation is forced to learn the "truth" about The Mockingjay that Peeta has the same moment as Katniss has in 'The Hunger Games,' when suddenly he realizes just how much he does know about her.

I would think this time would be when Peeta and Haymitch also make peace with their relationship as well. Most likely there were probably a few, very hard to have conversations between the two of them during the trial. About Katniss, about Haymitch's promise to both of them during 'Catching Fire,' about being unable to save him.

Peeta returns to District 12 at the earliest opportunity allowed. Probably for a few reasons. It's his home, it is ultimately where he belongs. But I also think there's probably a very large part of him that wants confirmation for what he's sure he already knew. Her thoughts when shooting Coin. When she voted yes. I think The Mockingjay Trial is probably when Peeta decided he wanted to be her friend again. That it was when he finally remembered her. And I'd just really like to see that, even as a short story.

[lopposting]

Hello Puppet pals + Romeo fans

would you like a fresh, fun new dose of pain tonight

On Romeo (long post)

So way back in april, in the taiwan event they showed some material from what looks like early builds of the game. this is the still i want to talk about today

It's gepetto (romanized to "zepeto" here) asking if we've "killed the beast".

In the released version, we meet him outside in rosa isabelle street after the KOP fight. It looks as though he's even beside the same lamppost. There's no other similar scene of us meeting gepetto like this, so it's likely referring to the puppet king. (When we meet him on the bridge, he's seen that the donkey has been killed, so we wouldn't need to lie.) but the thing is, this question is a YES OR NO ANSWER, meaning one or the other would be a lie.

So maybe in the early versions of the game it was actually possible align with/spare the puppet king (and by extension romeo) and then lie to Geppetto about it. (I mean, it's possible that it's simply just lying about not killing him to G, and we couldn't spare him to begin with)

I think they realized that they couldn't possibly make such a narratively important boss fight optional and that story-wise it wasn't linear enough to work. The story as a whole is not nearly as effective without his loss.

TLDR: I'm speculating that that image was from an early version of the game, and Romeo could've actually lived but the devs made the hard call against this.

[It's also possible that they just made that image for the purposes of presentation, and that it doesn't mean anything, or that it's another beast entirely.]

But still, somehow it makes it the more tragic. *stares blankly into space.*

(bonus fun notes below)

In this IGN interview before release, Director Choi dropped a big hint about romeo here.

"Yes, this is the king of puppets. And we want to call him a character and not a monster, because he will be the centre of the story. So if you play more and discover more about him, you'll find out more about what he is and who he is."

the puppet king being lampwick was also inadvertently leaked by IGN in this video:

I don't think people unfamiliar with the story would know anything, but pinoheads definitely would've and did recognize what "romeo" alluded to

They kept Romeo's ENTIRE EXISTENCE a secret up until launch. During the roughly two years of promotions before release there was never any mention of Romeo before release. Zip, Nada, so much so that the budding fanbase was starting to assume that he wouldn't even be in the game. NO ONE saw it coming when we found out who exactly we killed. Developers did consider that people who had read the book would catch on to particular things, so, bravo neowiz

And here's the other ingenious thing - they showed us the "Mad Donkey" boss early on in the demo and NOW I'm starting to wonder if this was a deliberate play. Almost everyone assumed this was already the game's iteration of Lampwick, so Romeo came as a surprise, and I think the proceeding story reveals about who the King of Puppets truly was were very effective.

also.. it's extremely cute what they did with the character. Of course, Romeo is the canonical name of Lampwick in Pinocchio, but the name "Romeo" is also probably the most heavily associated with Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet (which also takes place in Italy, as does Pinocchio!). And then we meet him in a theatre, and he puts on a play for us before we fight. Romeo supposedly had an affinity for acting, as Carlo did with the piano (I have heard this around on reddit, I don't know where this originates from, please lmk if you've seen these lore items). But most of all, Romeo and Juliet is a deeply remembered tragedy - like Lampwick in collodi's pinocchio. They are two young boys who didn't get away.

(maybe all of this was so obvious to everyone else but i love it still haha)

Fun to revisit this stuff after release with new clarity.

[To Reiterate - All of this is just my speculation]

[venus-is-thinking]

DRDT Handwriting Analysis

Hello everyone! I decided to take a look at the canonical handwriting of the various characters in DRDT. We've actually seen a good number of handwritings and it definitely seems like they are specifically written differently, so it's a fun new dimension of the characters we can look at. I've done my best to compile all of them in this post, but please let me know if I've missed any!

I'll be going in order of when we first see them, starting with:

Arei Nageishi!

Arei is our first handwriting reveal, which we know because she wrote the arm wrestling contest board in Chapter 1, Episode 2! She seems to write in all caps and has a slightly curvy style.

Min Jeung!

Whoops, murder time. Min's handwriting is seen on the "OUT OF ORDER" sign. We don't know it's hers when we first see it, but in the trial, it's revealed that she must have written it.

As far as I remember, we don't have another sample of her handwriting, which is unfortunate, given that I believe this is probably not what her real handwriting looks like. She's clearly printing in very straight lines; it's probably meant to look official. If it looked handwritten, it would lower the credibility of the out of order sign.

I also tried to see if you could tell what any handwriting looked like from the papers on the table in the Bonus Episode she's in, but I didn't manage to pick anything out that was actually legible. So, I guess we don't really know what Min's handwriting would normally look like.

Xander Matthews!

Xander wrote "Charles Cuevas' Motive" on this DVD, but a lot of it got smudged off when he planted it in the CD reader (god I hope I got it right I'm sorry Charles I'm trying to remember which is which).

He seems to use all caps. It's also not the neatest, given that the two Cs run into each other despite being on different lines.

Notably, there is a more filled-out version.

However, the red text isn't written by Xander himself, because he's dead at the time. As best I can figure, this is Teruko writing in an impression of Xander's handwriting. The image of the CD appears as Teruko says, "Hm, are you talking about this?" implying she's the one carrying it, and the rest of the writing is filled in when she says so. It might seem like it would be Rose, given that she's the one who figures out what it's supposed to say, but Rose instructs someone else to rotate it, so it can be assumed Rose isn't holding it. Teruko is the one to take the DVD out of the player at the end of investigation, so I'd really assume it's her.

...HOWEVER!

We actually have a specific example of Teruko replicating Xander's handwriting! She smudges it during investigation and re-writes it on. It seems to me like the creator went back to the original version of the CD in the trial (the little ink blot at the left of the O matches better with the first of the two images here, imo). I doubt there was much internal consistency given to how Teruko writes Xander's handwriting when trying to replicate it on this CD, but...

Teruko Tawaki!

Teruko's handwriting is bad-bad. It's very shaky and she struggles with letters. The O and C (as she thinks she's writing) that she replicates back on the CD have some more of the shakiness that this handwriting has, which implies to me that the creator knew at the point of the Chapter 1 murder that Teruko's handwriting wasn't smooth. The replication of Xander's handwriting in red back in Xander's section looks smoother than I think Teruko's would, which might be points towards someone else having written it. No clue who, though.

Notably for Teruko, I honestly wonder if she's meant to have dysgraphia? I don't know a ton about it, but it's a learning disability that makes it much harder for people with the condition to handwrite clearly. Just an interesting sidenote, if anyone with dysgraphia knows more/if this is wrong to say in some way, please let me know!

Charles Cuevas!

Back on track, I skipped ahead with Teruko to put hers next to Xander's. We don't technically have confirmation that this is Charles' handwriting, but it's very very heavily implied. It's written in cursive, which Whit says Charles writes in in the Chapter 2 trial.

This also implies that Whit has seen Charles' handwriting, which could add more to imply that this is his, but considering Charles has evidently seen Whit's (more in a sec), I don't think that means much.

Plus, as a fun note, Charles' custom weapon is the only one that isn't listed on the above handwriting sample. This is the biggest factor in me believing that it's Charles'. (Plus, I think Whit says something about getting it from a friend? I'm not reopening the episode sorry gang)

Whit Young?

Wait, where's the handwriting?

Well, as far as I remember, we haven't actually seen Whit's handwriting. We know from Charles that he dots his Is with hearts, but that's all we got. Sorry gang.

Eden Tobisa!

Eden literally gave us a handwriting sample. Thanks!

It's pretty cute! She has a curvier handwriting style with some irregular spacing, which I think gives it nice charm and character.

The Chapter 2 Killer??? (or accomplice)

Idk man! It seems like it has to relate to someone who's at least somewhat guilty in this whole thing, right?

I've written briefly about why I believe this is Levi's handwriting on @1moreff-creator's Levi accomplice theory post, but that would totally work for the popular theory that he's the killer, too. Either way, it's a handwriting sample.

Bonus!

NO WIFI! WHY LIVE :(

I have no idea who wrote this. From what I can tell, it might've been here when the cast got there...? The weird thing is that it changes.

Shoutout to @accirax for remembering that the white board changed, because I did NOT notice/remember. However, that begs the question...

WHO THE HELL WROTE THIS???

It's very possibly Veronika, as she's the one who's noted to, like, know and remember what Monokuma looks like. If so, that means we have a Veronika handwriting sample, yay! I really don't know who else would be drawing Monokumas. Maybe the mastermind...?

And that's all! Clearly there's no point to this post and I can wrap this-

Haha. You didn't think I actually made a post that doesn't have a theory to it, did you?

This has all been building up to me trying to figure out who the hell wrote this note. Because, I originally believed it made the most sense if it was a note that Xander wrote to himself, but accirax pointed out that we've seen Xander's handwriting, and it looks different. Then, I started noticing that we've been receiving various handwritings. Like, a LOT of handwritings.

I think that it's plenty likely that we're going to receive EVERYONE'S handwriting at some point throughout this series. Notably, all characters who have died thus far (Xander, Min, Arei, Chapter 2 Killer Even Though We Don't Know Who They Are) have already shown us their handwriting. This is probably because we're going to figure out who wrote this note at some point.

Does that mean everyone whose handwriting we've already seen thus far is safe? Maybe! I've gone through and talked about Xander, Arei, Eden, Charles and Teruko's with confidence. From what we know of Min's and Whit's, it doesn't seem like it's theirs, but I'd believe for either of them that it could be theirs if the devs wanted to pull a fast one on us (Whit could just... not write with hearts on the Is for this one. Min was replicating printed text).

I guess that means I'm saying that the most likely authors of the "Kill Teruko Tawaki" note are Mai Akasaki Ace, Rose, Hu, Arturo, Veronika, J or Nico, with Min, Whit and Levi also being possibilities that I just don't believe as strongly. I do want to note that, if Rose IS the one who wrote it, she could also easily be replicating someone else's handwriting. Ultimate Art Forger moment.

Conclusion

I compiled this image of all the handwriting I talked about with the purple being known handwriting and the gray being unknown.

I think it's really cool that the dev put time into giving each of the characters unique handwriting, and I think it's definitely a piece of evidence to keep in mind when theorizing about masterminds and killers and such.

Hopefully this was a fun read! I look forward to possibly figuring out the handwritings of literally every other character someday.

[jayktoralldaylong]

There is surprisingly no ABO discourse in the TMA fandom. I don't know if it's an unspoken rule for there not to be, but I was thinking about it.

What would Jon be?

When you think of Jon suffering wet cat Sims the immediate assumption is that he'd be Omega or something, but thinking of his Season 5 persona I entertained the idea of him being an Alpha. Jon could be an Alpha right? He's not the most dominating person in the room but he can get very protective (and Jon with power is very sexy). Then I thought of the fundamental elements of an Alpha which are protectiveness and high level of possessiveness........which is when it hit me.

Martin Blackwood is totally an Alpha. 💀🤣 (Another win for Martin). I don't think there's anyone more possessive in the show besides Elias and Elias is a whole different brand of crazy. Martin seems like a sweet, harmless guy until you start stepping on his toes and he smacks the living daylights out of the aggressor with pure unrefined loathing - Just not easily noticeable cause he doesn't get violent but he makes sure his enemies get fucked up.

So Martin is definitely an Alpha. He gives the vibes of ensuring his mate will never lack, making sure they feel safe when they're nesting and never letting any harm come near their territory. Which raises the question....is Jon his omega then? I think not. Jon seems more like a Beta to me.

Jon: A Beta? That's the most ordinary creature in the whole verse.

Well, Mr. Sims you ARE basic. 😂 You're just a basic guy with super powers. I can't for the life of me picture Jon nurturing anything. He's not even very good at looking after himself and nearly everything he tries to protect crumbles away. He's a very tragic character, with not a lot of self esteem and he masks this by being sassy and sarcastic cause he doesn't want people to see how fragile he actually is. Jon's Beta to me and it feels fitting for him and Martin. Jon would probably try masking as an Alpha and Martin an Omega but the truth about each other would come out and Martin wouldn't care less. He loves his tiny hopeless Beta.

That being said, most of the others in TMA strike me as Alpha Alpha.

LonelyEyes aka Peter and Elias - Alpha/Alpha with Peter being possessive of his alone time and Elias being possessive over his control of Peter. (It would be funny if Peter was Omega though cause everyone would assume Elias the Omega.).

Daisira aka Daisy and Basira - Alpha/Alpha. Look Daisy's Alpha, there's no two ways about that. Maybe Basira is Beta but she strikes me as Alpha as well and they work well as partners.

Melanie x Georgie (can't remember their ship name) - Alpha/Omega....maybe Georgie is really flowery and soothing so she could easily be an Omega with her nurture of the Admiral. She could also be a very kind Alpha to her violent chaotic Omega Melanie. It could go either way.

TimSasha - Alpha/Alpha and I love them so much. ♥️❤️ Sasha just strikes me as Alpha. She would have been archivist if not for Elias' plans and Tim is either an Alpha or a chaotic Omega in disguise.

GerryMichael aka DoorKeay - I've only recently heard about this ship but it's kind of cute. Omega/Omega....cause I think it'd be funny. Obviously the Distortion isn't an Omega, the Distortion wasn't anything but I imagine after getting redefined as Michael it wakes an Omega and it is not happy about it. Gerry is not an obvious Omega and everyone assumes he's Alpha. Little did they know. I like the awkward story of two fakers (because the Distortion would definitely try to hide it's identity) slowly realising and still loving each other cause why not. They're also likely faking to be Beta cause one thing they wanted most in the world was to be ordinary.

Agnes x Jack - Alpha/Beta and this one doesn't even need an explanation.

Agnes x Gertrude - Alpha/Alpha, would be a fun dynamic watching these two growl at each other from the same side of the spectrum.

LonelyEyeSkies aka PeterxEliasxSimon - Alpha/Alpha/Alpha chaos. Lovers of this ship just enjoy watching things crash to the ground and I can't blame them cause I love it too. (Would still be funny if Peter was an Omega. Though Peter wouldn't find it funny at all).

JonMichael - Beta/Omega, but to no one's surprise, Michael's the one dictating everything about this relationship. Jon is shocked to find himself building a nest cause that's how dominant Michael's gonna be.

JonTim - Beta/Alpha and I'm guessing Tim would be a passive aggressive Alpha. This will either go really well or it will be a toxic dumpster fire.

[fraudulent-cheese]

actually I would be interested in your heather/eva thoughts if you wanna share them......

OK. ok im actually on my computer so it's time to attempt to be articulate!!!

So my memory is uh. shit. and i don't remember when i really started thinking about them? I know it was AU related however, since i said so in my reblog of this post but im unsure which one it was??? (like it def wasn't my swap au but i don't think any other ones i had running around my head had them at the time) And it was just a pairing i thought was neato at the time. i was uh, a little more focused on other ones (courtzzy. and alenoah.) + i hadn't looked into Heather's character yet so it got sorta put on the backburner.

I had to dig up rambles i left in discord wayyy back in june to clean em up a little to try and explain what scratches my brain about em!!!

Funnily enough it's got very little with the few canon interactions they have - which mostly consists of Heather stealing Eva's MP3 player then giving them back after the challenge's over, Eva ranting about her dislike of Heather during Haute Campture, and one or two moments where she's just part of a crowd.

The thing that drew me in at first was just how opposite they are:

Like you have manipulative, pushes everyone away, has huge trouble being genuine Heather, and then you have blunt, straight-foward, values honesty Eva. You have Heather who places both alot of importance and feels alot of resentment towards her feminine presentation, while Eva seemingly doesn't care and presents more masculine (for this show at least).

They do have some things in common however; they've got alot of anger in them for one! They're both interested in leadership positions, and both fail to reach them for different reasons. I also headcanon both of them as neurodivergent and neither are super aware of it. They also don't have many friends, but would definitely get attached to the ones they make.

I have the very specific vision of eva being the first girl heather crushes on and her not knowing what those feelings are or how to deal with them and assumes they're fully negative and it must be hate because she's not acting how "a girl should" and she's fine with it so there has to be an issue with it (and it's definitely not because heather's lowkey jealous of Eva's ability to just be herself or to admit to and work on her own flaws without getting shamed for them by the people closest to her, totally not. It's not that eva gets genuine connection that is completely alien to Heather at this point, no)

Meanwhile Eva is not remotely aware of Heather's inner termoil and doesn't like her for her scheming and dishonesty but will admit that she is pretty, even during her bald era. (This would probably fuck with Heather's feelings for the girl even more, because what do you mean the literal manifestation of her insecurities still thinks she's hot like this. That must be a trick of some kind, no one could think she's even remotely beautiful like this and not be lying out of their ass to make fun of her but this is Eva. Straight foward, blunt Eva. Why would she lie?)

Also i genuinely do belive that Eva's female bully label mostly to fully originates from her anger issues and the complete lack of acomodations or therapy for it, most likely worsened by her status as an immigrant (remember the Island bios?) and the bullying she most likely received as a child for it. Guess who was also most likely bullied growing up for not fitting it? Heather.

I've been developping an AU alot that is currently stuck in the interns server/astrokyle's server limbo because there's a couple parts i wanna get out before i start talking about the actual fucking meat and bones of the au but what i can say is that heatheva happends in it and it's been a blast both figuring out what happends and Heather's arc in it as a whole. I have talked about them in the context of a no Total Drama AU before however, so uh. Feel free to read it ig.

I also had an idea for a fic a while back for them and i might write it out eventually, but it's a fic that takes place in the short inbetween period of island and action in which after a conversation during lunch, Heather takes interest in Eva's music player (spoilers: she actually likes the music she's composed). I have no fucking clue when it would be finished tho (reminder that im in medschool and while it's pretty calm now it's not gonna be soon) but yeah!! The girlies, they've been on my mind :)

[frances-baby-houseman]

This is a picture of me and my friend Jared in Israel! Here's a fun story about that night:

I went on a birthright trip in early june and the way birthright works is you get a round trip ticket to Israel and a 10 day tour, and you can go home at the end of the tour or you can change your flight to stay as long as you want for (at the time) $40. So I changed my ticket to stay for another two weeks and hung around in Jerusalem and stayed in a hostel and would just like, hang out every day with whatever australians were hanging around (everyone was australian.) At the end of my two weeks, my friends Joey and Jared were coming on THEIR birthright trip, so I decided to spend the last three days in Tel Aviv to see them. So I went to Tel Aviv and it was the fourth of july! (ed: I just did the math and it was not the fourth of july.) And we went to a bar and that was great and I was tired so I decided to go back to the hotel.

SO I was going back to the hotel and I was walking down the street and these two guys were walking toward me and they were like, hey, we know you! were you at the (whatever it was called, I can't remember) hostel in Jerusalem last week? and I was like yes! And they were like come have a drink with us! so I did! and I hit it off with one of them and we were definitely going to hook up and it was so exciting and we walked back to my hotel and JOEY AND JARED WERE SITTING ON THE FRONT STEPS OF THE HOTEL WITH THE POLICE WHO THEY HAD CALLED WHEN THEY GOT BACK TO THE HOTEL AND I WASN'T THERE.

So I did NOT hook up with this guy, whose name is lost to time, and I DID talk to the police about my not being dead or kidnapped and it was very upsetting tbh!! I think they should have just assumed I was fine until I wasn't there in the morning! Also in America I do not think the police owuld have taken them so seriously but I guess they like to keep the americans happy and also canadians bc Jared is from Toronto.

Anyway that was that I never saw any of those people again except Joey and Jared. And then 5 years later (I just remembered this) at our five year college reunion my friend Abby was like, Who is that he's hot! and I was like ABBY that's JARED he COCKBLOCKED me with the ISRAELI POLICE.

[mountain-wire]

6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, here's to the last man on earth in the end.

Au!Raphael x gn!reader

Part 1

Cw: Talk of death kind of

Self-indulgent writing, we love it. This is entirely based on Anna Bates song "Last man on earth" and a random writing prompt I saw on TikTok a while ago, so. If that tells you something, take it I guess.

An au set where the reader has ended up immortal and as the last man on earth due to a medicine that everyone had to take that was meant to lengthen human life[spoilers: it didn't.], until... actual alien turtles show up. That's basically it.

The world. Still just as empty as you remembered. You'd been alone for a while now, a few years you'd think, maybe 5. You lost track after a while, just sort of living life as it came by. This whole thing started by you thinking everyone in your house just disappeared, left without you. You realized after a little bit that it wasn't what happened. You found out the horrible way that after this sort of shot meant to keep everyone alive for much longer actually did the opposite. To everyone but you.

So you were left alone, you wandered. By now it felt like you'd lost your mind, saying everything in your head out loud, so you could at least hear something. You ended up in New York 2 years ago, seeing all the buildings starting to grow plants was... Weird. You didn't think any structure would be growing Vines and moss by now, let alone New York of all places. You were definitely found wrong there, it was sort of fun watching the plants grow over the past 2 years, gave you something to do.

Animals had also started venturing into the abandoned city, it was a good change in the silence you'd fallen into. You even got close to the deer and squirrels.

At the moment you were walking through one of the most overgrown parts of New York you'd seen by now, the vines climbed the side of the buildings at least 20 feet up and moss was spotted around up much of that. It had a weird comfort of seeing it, it looked just like old images you saw of cities taken over by plants. You were sure to see more of this soon, you thought.

You walked to what you assume used to be a restaurant, pulling out a knife and cutting at the vines that locked the door shut, and started talking out loud to yourself.

"This'll be fun. I think. I mean it looks like a cool restaurant," you looked to the side, the restaurants windows covered. It did not actually look cool. "yeah. Cool looking. Looks like... Vines! On the menu today! Maybe it'll be the road work ahead one."

Quietly laughing, you opened the door, hearing a jingle. Man did that bring a bunch of memories back. You brushed it off and jogged to the front, rang the bell thing they had. Leaning against the counter you looked around, this place seemed to have the same vibe as those little pit stops you see in more rural areas. It was much quieter than it should've been though. It made you uncomfortable.

Deciding it had been enough time you hopped the counter, knocking the stuff on the side to the floor. You ended up on the floor too, you'd just tripped yourself.

"The service here sucks." You said after a couple seconds, hoping anything watching you would laugh along too. You didn't think anything was watching anyway, but you can always be sure.

You felt like you could sleep, but you needed to up and move. Quickly, you sat up and crawled to where you assumed the kitchen was. You assumed right, and it smelled horrible. Someone had to have died here, come on.

"Knives knives knives, spoons, but is there any food that's actually good?" Clanking and scraping attacked your ears as you moved things, grabbing different knives you liked so you could add it to the knife room. "Hopefully this place was bad and used canned shit. That would make my and the microwaves day..... How that thing still works is a mystery to me. I'm sure someone out there knows why it still works! If only they could tell me."

Reaching the end of the line you decided to grade the cleanliness of this place and went back through, you learned if a restaurant was less clean there's a better chance of them using cans or non perishable foods. You liked the mystery of it too, it was like a game. It took up time and kept you entertained!

"Let's see.... Ovens... Check! Kinda greasy, kinda dusty too, somehow. How is the inside of an oven dusty, it's supposed to be shut tight right? Wouldn't that stop a lot of dust. So put 'not very good ovens' on the list."

You enjoyed using the knowledge Gordon Ramsay gave you from his shows. Wait...

"GORDON RAMSAY!!! NOO!!!!" You gripped your hands to the side of your head and dropped to your knees, all dramatically.

Upon the realization that Gordon Ramsay was dead like everyone else, you decided to skip the rest of the kitchen and just head straight to the freezers and fridges to look for food. On the way you took note of how this place actually had a microwave. Hopefully their salads weren't being put in there.

Every Gordon Ramsay reference your mind made had you feeling slightly worse. It wasn't super new, realizing someone big was also gone, but it always hit you the same.

"Alright. This one's for you Gordon." You wiped fake tears from your face before bursting open the doors to see...

A normal fridge. Nothing horrifying or exciting. That was exactly what you wanted right now, to be met with more silence, more quiet. An upside! There was at least honey in here, and at least a single can of soup. You'd read all the details on the nutrition labels later, but for now you would stuff them into your bag and continue the investigation.

"Let's go! Kinda nasty freezer check! Let's mark this place down! This one's gonna be nice to clean I can tell. Well I can't really, but it'll be satisfying! There's a lot of random tins, I'm not sure I wanna know what's in there. Maybe this is what died, not even a person." Reminded of Gordon Ramsay again, you frowned and pulled out a map of New York.

You marked this place with a red marker, that you know means to return. You never said the reason but you always knew when you'd return to any location with the red mark. You also marked it with orange, which means it's a restaurant. You had colors for many places. Black for 'dont return here', red for 'do return here', purple for electronics stores, orange for restaurants, blue for sporty areas, yellow for more shop filled areas, green for apartments or homes, and pink for unpredictable areas(you also liked to call them the exciting areas). Most areas with black were also pink.

"Let's blow this joint, guys." The map returned to it's spot in your bag and you gave it a pat before slipping on invisible sunglasses and taking long strides out the door.

You never realized how stuffy it was in the restaurant. It felt amazing to take a breath outside of that place. It really did smell horrible. There's probably a good few reasons for that. You moved away from the restaurant to take a good look at it, you wanted to remember what it looked like for when you eventually returned. You wanted to head home for now though, listen to music on the many different things you had. You had a vinyl record player. Who just has that in New York, you didn't know but you were pretty glad they did, they had some pretty cool bands too. You wanted to listen to music desperately, so you planned to run. Seeing a cool skateboard you stopped in your tracks, almost falling flat on your face.

"Well hello there! How did I not see you before... Oh wait nevermind, I was definitely just way too focused on the plants. That makes sense. Who would just leave this out here though. There's nobody nearby, who just loses this on the streets of New York..? Whatever, mine now." The skateboard seemed uninterested in your commentary as you held it under your arm.

You looked back at the area you just came from, upset you didn't get to explore more, before setting the board on  the ground and setting off.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The wheels came to a stop as you placed your foot down, a weird squeak-screech noise coming from it. Maybe all the years of no use. You looked around wearily, looking for anything that could see where you're going. It felt like your home was a secret you needed to keep, but it wasn't. Even if it was what would you have to hide it from? Nothing. Something inside you just kept saying you had to look around whenever you stopped and eventually you just stopped caring about suppressing it. Seeing that everything was clear you picked up the board and ran into an alleyway in-between what you think is an arcade pizza place and bakery with a home on the second floor. Rummaging through your bag you walked to the back doors of the bakery, it was barred up with this silly looking padlock you found in one of the unstable areas. The arcade was locked up with a similar one too, you were just in the bakery mood today.

"Found you, you beauty!" You said, holding a key that looked just as silly as the padlock up to the sun like it was going to save your life.

The lock opened easily, which was not surprising, the key was made for it. Quickly, you slid into the bakery before closing the door and relocking it, except from the inside this time. Putting the key back into your bag you moved further into the building, your bag now only hanging loosely from your hand. Your feet felt heavy and your eyes felt the same. A good sleep to some music would be awesome. Making your way to the stairs you moved through your bag once more, this time simply checking you had everything you wanted.

"Everything's there, I think. I'm okay, it's okay. Everyone's okay." You yawned and turned towards the door besides the stairs.

The basement doors always felt ominous, today was no different. There was a feeling of something new this time. Today was really throwing you off, everything's felt new. You didn't like it, but what else could you do. Brushing off that feeling you swung the door open and shuffled in and down the stairs.

The walls were painted with your own hands, a white background with designs, characters, and silly things you remembered from the past. It made you feel better to see, a comfort in an uncomfortable place. The wood floors matched pretty well covered in drops of paint you ignored and never cleaned up, no matter how messy it could look it felt like home.

You dropped your bag on a stool by the stairs, a loud clang coming from it. Ah, the knives. You were so caught up in the almost normal you forgot the knives.

"How could I! Gordon Ramsay look what you've made me do."

You made it a point to collect random things from your adventures, it just so happened you got so many knives you have a room dedicated for them now. It wasn't your favorite use of a room but it felt cool. Grabbing the knives from the bag you quickly walked through the basement coming to a smaller-than-normal door with a label that let you know exactly what it was on it.

"I've got more knives for you, knife room! I hope they fit in well! They're pretty cool ones this time." They all looked the same, another lie.

The door got stuck a little, you've just gotta turn it until you hear a click then you can open it. It's just like lockpicking.

Once it opened you hurried in, already looking for a place to put the new knives. You were at least glad the knife room was kinda small, so it's not like you'd use this room for anything else. Finding a nice spot in-between the few knives that look exactly the same and the other knives that look exactly the same. You really dreaded the day you'd have to start hanging knives on the walls. Or just sticking the knives in there like some freaky countryman.

With the knives In their new home you felt satisfied enough to leave the shiny room, which you did with little complications! The door that's weird to open is weird to close, you still needed to do that stupid maneuver.

Heading back to what you called the living room, you happily slid over to the record player you definitely didn't steal. You had a little bookshelf beside it with all the records you found and liked. It was mostly just everything you found, you weren't going to pass up any music in this world. Your favorite was this Queen record you found, it was Queens greatest hits. Which the greatest hits might not hold your favorite Queen songs but it still had really awesome songs. It's Queen, of course there's awesome songs on it.

Carefully you put it on the player, and moved the thing that you didn't know the name of onto the record and started playing your music. Holding your hands up like if you touched it you'd break it, you backed up towards the couch. You knew that as soon as you sat down you were going to fall asleep, but you didn't mind.

"This sleeps gonna be awesome." Were your last words after you sat down.

You fell asleep to Bohemian Rhapsody, could you ask for anything more than this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suddenly, a loud crash woke you up. As far as you know, that wasn't normal in your home. Slowly, you stood up. Your eyes were still blurry and you were still riddled with sleep side effects, but you made a move to the stairs.

"....The music.... It's not playing... It's been longer than like 20 minutes. That narrows it down..." You were slowly waking up.

Another loud crash sounded when you opened the basement door. It was definitely coming from outside. At least that's good to know.

You realized you forgot the door key. You didn't want to go and get it so you just opened the window and crawled out, with a bit of knocking things over. You hoped that whatever was making the loud noises didn't hear. If it was even a creature, at that.

You stopped and waited for a second, hoping another sound would come from the noisy thing.

Another sound did come, and not even a minute later. The smart half of your brain suddenly kicked in.

"Itsnoneofyourbusiness Itsnoneofyourbusiness Itsnoneofyourbusiness.... Don't be like white people in horror movies....... Damnit." You moved silently, heading to the back of the arcade instead of the bakery, as it had more cover.

You were hoping it would just be an animal being ridiculously stupid, and that's definitely what you were expecting too. The crash was followed by an unfamiliar noise, the sort of thing you'd expect to come from a tuba or other large brass instrument, but it was weirder than that at the same time, like an auto tuned tuba being operated by someone who doesn't know how to play the tuba.

What you did not expect to see was what looked like a very large and spiky rock. No wait... That's not what it was.

"Oh my god, what the fuck" you whispered as you ducked more behind the building that was currently blocking you from the thing on the road.

It was laying on the road, so that's why you would think it's a large, green, spiky rock but you've never seen a rock that looks like that and by this point you're pretty sure you've seen all kinds of rocks. A second point that changed your mind from rock completely was that it moved. It was moving. Rocks don't move. You'd say that whatever it was looked like a turtle, but turtles are not that large the last time you checked. The biggest turtle you knew existed was the Archelon and those guys were extinct, and also sea turtles. So a normal turtle? Totally off the table. Rock? Also totally off the table. Everything you could have come up with was thrown off the table. The table was thrown out the window!

"Okay okay okay. This isn't my business, this isn't my business. Not my circus, not my monkeys." You tried to convince yourself to walk away, that this was something you didn't want to deal with.

You couldn't help but stay though, it was totally new, even to the world before you became the last person on earth. You were in new territory and it was so cool.

You leaned further out, to get a better view of whatever it was. You didn't think turtles could stand like that either. Every instinct in your body was telling you to run as whatever this held its head and looked around.

If you were to die from the shot that killed everyone else you'd want it to be now. Your curiosity got the better of you and the turtle saw you. You made eye contact. A note, it had normal eyes too. It was weird. This situation was weird and now? You were screwed. Utterly screwed.

You started at the turtle and he stared at you for what felt like forever before you slid back behind the building. You didn't know if you should run, stay hidden, or go inside somewhere quick. You quickly shut up your mind, if you needed to really listen at any point it would be now. If whatever that was decides to sneak up on you what would you do? It is definitely stronger than you, you'd lose in a fight instantly.

Shoving your fear down you stood tall, preparing for what you would see when you looked around the corner again. You felt like you should've run but you wanted to be brave. You carefully grabbed the wall before the corner and leaned over, prepared to see the turtle thing still looking over from the road. What you didn't expect was the turtle basically directly in front of you, close enough you could reach out with one arm and touch it.

The feeling of dread that overcame you was something you could attribute to the feeling you'd expect a mouse to have when a lion is standing behind it and it knows.

You looked up at the turtles face. It looked extremely confused and shocked. Even worse, it now leaned down to your level. It didn't seem like a threat but you were certainly terrified. It spoke, but you couldn't understand it. You're pretty sure it's just a different language type of situation but you did not want to deal with this at all. On that thought you finally listened to your instincts and absolutely booked it down the alley. Where you were going you didn't know but hopefully it didn't either. You could hear it shout something out as you ran away, but you weren't going to stop and see it's reaction. No way were you going to get yourself captured or something. You could think about what just happened when you stopped and were safe.

You were going to run until your muscles ached. You could promise that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So gonna be a series. Apologies if it's not awesome, this is literally my first time writing something like this ever. Criticism is absolutely appreciated! <3

⭐ Next

[parkitaco]

can I ask for details abt this amnesia fic that once has so much promise? 👀

also fun fact I too have an amnesia fic that once held so much promise but is now functionally abandoned until further notice. hive mind moment

hello elli YES omg idk what it is apparently amnesia fics are just that fucking difficult. or smth. idk but!! yes i will share everything that is still in my brain involving this fic (under the cut tho i'm abt to infodump so hard)

this idea was originally planted by an anon who left a very cute little amnesia prompt in my inbox (anon if you're out there i'm so sorry i swearrr). i've since deviated from the og prompt which was fairly lighthearted (amnesia will sees mike hovering over him obsessively and assumes he's his bf. and mike short circuits. which was an excellent idea my brain just wouldn't accept it) and went for angst bc well. i'm like that. and basically my idea was just that will wakes up in mike's room very recently post-apocalypse (the wheeler's house has been a base in the apocalypse and mike offered his room bc of course he did), having been in a coma for a few months. the idea behind it was that vecna / the hive mind tried to possess him again, but this time will was strong enough to fight back, and though he couldn't fight *through* the possession he was at least able to kind of incapacitate himself so that he couldn't be used to hurt his friends (yay angst!!). while he was asleep the others managed to stop vecna / kill the UD, hence freeing will from possession. yay he's awake!! unfortunately, since he was in the coma for so long, the virus ate away parts of his consciousness, namely his memories.

basically i took s2 and birthdaygate and made it bigger and more dramatic and worse. yay parker!!

the way i was planning on having will's memories come back is very slowly and methodically (i.e. it takes him a while to remember stuff but once he does it pretty much sticks), mainly through him being reminded of them through sensory recognition or people sharing stuff - he also has vague feelings attached to people, and can definitely recognize when a face belongs to someone important to him (cough cough mike wheeler) but he doesn't remember names or details and this drives him INSANE.

the bylerification of this would be mike, post-apocalypse and broken up with el and having had some Very Important Realizations, frantically fumbling trying to give will love confessions and apologies when will literally doesn't remember any of their fights. so not only does mike have to apologize for everything, he also has to make will relive it first, and Then hope that will doesn't reject him. (hehe.) this sucks for him, but yada yada it all works out and they make out sloppy. the end

i abandoned this fic for a lot of reasons, many of which i no longer remember, but the main ones were a., that is a lot of backstory for a story that ultimately doesn't have much plot beyond Mike Is Stressed And Will Is Confused, and b., at the time i was kind of burnt out on writing/reading apocalypse stuff, and c., i wasn't a big fan of the concept of everyone saving the world with will still incapacitated bc i know my boy is more of a key character than that!!! (this is small and ik people could get over it for This One Fic but it Really Bothered me Ok)

that being said,,, writing all this out did remind me of how much i liked the concept and i think taking the pressure off of myself for a couple months did help, as did taking a break from apocalypsey concepts for a while. so. Maybe. and that is all i will say about that <33

[maxwell-grant]

any thoughts on the game awards street fighter trailer?

Not too many but a few, the game's got a loooot of content to cover and I'll stick with mostly some character impressions

Dee Jay! I have never been happier to see Dee Jay! ...I've never usually been happy to see Dee Jay, granted, but this redesign is really all that was needed for me to unreservedly love the dude, it does away with the biggest problem with him that was his basic and kinda-racist design (the new art style also helps a lot). It's such an upgrade in terms of his style and vibe and conveying the kickboxing DJ concept. He looks like someone I'd find at Mongaguá beach if I went down there tomorrow, drumming away and living his best life. I'm so happy for this dude.

I like that they opened the trailer with him, with a club party and him dancing along with the protagonist. LOVE the music notes on his new Super, love his new animations and that camera autograph victory pose, love the sparkles and ways they've incorporated his old moves (he's got a Sonic Boom fakeout and, as obnoxious as that's gonna be to deal with, it's a pretty brilliant choice and one that fits him superbly)

Love that the new minigames, I mean of course they brought the basketball parry, and I'm sure the car destruction's gonna be real fun as always, but I'm surprised they dug back that far and brought some things we haven't seen since Street Fighter 1.

I think it's really remarkable that, for the trailer shown at The Game Awards of all things, they chose to focus on the return of, arguably the least popular of the New Challengers, and three new characters. Everyone assumed it was a dead giveaway that this was gonna be the Cammy trailer and the fact that it wasn't, and that people still absolutely loved it without complaints, man, what a testament to how confident these guys are in what they're doing. I have never seen a Street Fighter title be this brazen in it's new faces in the trailer period, I've never seen one where EVERY new character or return of an old character, without exception is incredibly popular and well-received.

I'm not too big on Manon? I do like her but she's probably my least favorite as of yet, feels a little more gimmicky than the others and I kinda wonder if she wasn't some SFV concept that they held off on (in fact I'm pretty sure I remember seeing some characters like her on the drafts for Kolin and Menat). She's definitely filling a much-needed niche as the agile pseudo-grappler and, those months of dance training I took for music theater definitely give me a greater appreciation for her animations and pose work.

She's been compared with Abel a lot but I kinda feel like she's a response to Shermie? Definitely with her alt costume. Capcom and SNK riff on each other all the time and I do wonder if someone in the SF6 dev team saw that KOF XV Shermie trailer a couple years back that got the biggest viewcount of all the characters and thought to themselves, hey why don't we have our own sexy French fashionista grappler lady, and that's how Manon was born.

Oh GOD, Marisa, the standout of the trailer to me. I was hooked from the design alone but that trailer, good God, what a character. Everyone thought she'd be a grappler but no, she's just a tank, absolute beast mode woman who just bulldozes through whatever puny shit you do to repaint the pavement with your face. I get stupid looking at this character, what a glorious addition to the Giants Club of Street Fighter characters.

SHE LIFTS LIONS LIKE KITTIES, living the dream.

She might have some ties to the Illuminati characters? I’m curious if she’s gonna be a villain or anti-hero or on the “just here to fight good” alignment, I’m cool with all of these.

She’s Zangief-size and built for it and we’ve NEVER seen a female character be depicted like this in a fighting game. Every other “big girl” people point to in these games is pretty much always some fitness model with, at best, muscle definition in the arms but a typically thin stomach and torso, identically-attractive to all the other female characters but slightly more ripped.

You never see women characters built the way Marisa is, You just don’t see muscular women depicted often (if at all) outside of either someone’s fetish or someone’s punchline. Fighting games have a marginally better track record with body type diversity than other game genres but still an incredibly, painfully limited one when it comes to women, who are given like two body types to work with and no one would be able to tell 80% of them apart in either type if they switched acessories.

I am supremely glad over the fact that this is a SF6 character just now making her debut, because if Marisa had debuted at any prior installment in the series I do not think she would have been allowed to be this way. If she was in the 2/Alpha/3 titles, there is no way she'd have been given such an unapologetically burly design, and if she was a IV/V character, she'd be most certainly some kind of awful joke they’d have to rework later.

I love that Marisa is a bruiser, that she’s got an rowdy attitude and might even be a villain, but that she’s not fucking Abigail (...I mean maybe she IS fucking Abigail, I don’t know her life, if anyone could do it it’s her but why would anyone want that tho), that she’s allowed to be so cool. I have nothing but praise for this character so far and I really wanna see how her story unfolds and also I NEED TO PLAY THIS.

I main Big Lads in fighting games and I main all the Big Lads in Street Fighter and now I need to main The Big Lass, I need to land that glorious counter of hers ASAP, I need to Sparta Kick my way through matches, this character has my playstyle written over her and I need this game to be out now damnit

I’m sure he was a nice guy and obviously not saying he was the sole cause of everything, but every step of this development process I’ve been thanking my stars that Ono quit the team, we are so unbelievably lucky

While I was holding out some hopes that Capcom would make the final boss a woman this time around (especially with all the new characters being so great that this wouldn’t be a worrying prospect), I was also very curious for JP and I’m really excited with how he’s turned out.

He definitely feels like they took their time connecting a whole lot of separate design ideas and undercurrents into a single character to carry them. He is a rich fighting dandy, a modern equivalent to Dudley and Eagle (Eagle in particular since he was the first weapon user in the series). Some have brought up comparisons between him and Rugal Bernstein, which makes a lot of sense as a character to emulate if you’re doing a Final Boss who’s supposed to be like Bison but different, a next evolution of Bison and his power, since that’s kinda what Rugal was, the next evolution of the Fighting Game Final Boss after Bison and Geese.

Like Ed and Falke, he’s another new character who wields Psycho Power and has mysterious connections to Bison, except he doesn’t suck. He’s got a fantasy wizard vibe and his single-letter name and style seems to imply some sort of connection to G, another powerful fighting wizard dressing and behaving like authority figure, and by far the standout character of V.

G was also said to be the Final Boss of SFV, a position I do think he was qualified for but never really fulfilled because, I don’t think he was supposed to be that entirely, I think they retroactively made him the Boss when Necalli proved to be a dud and the story mode revolved around Bison but they still needed someone who could be the V Boss for assorted reasons.

I think JP is kind of them taking that idea, of G as a Final Boss and important character in the storyline, and sort of doing it right this time around, as he also follows that theme of succession they’ve been doing with these bosses: Emperor/King (Sagat) - Dictator (Bison) - Cult Leader Messiah (Gill) - C.E.O (Seth) - President (G) - N.G.O Oligarch (JP)

He hits such an absurd amount of my aesthetic and conceptual tastes that I, almost don’t believe he’s real? He’s Bison 2 + Eagle + Rugal + G. He’s a Russian supervillain with a dapper red suit vest, gloves reminiscent of black claws, a wonderful mustache and beard combo, and he fights with a cane. He’s got a killer design I absolutely need to take a crack at cosplaying after the game is out.

He has a cat, a detail deemed important enough to go in his bio. He’s voiced by Wally Wingert and Tomokazu Sugita, two people I could watch in anything. He’s got a sick fighting style summoning portals and claws and spike energy spires and one of the most murderous supers in the game yet.

He’s Christopher Lee as a Street Fighter final boss. Can you blame me for thinking more and more that this game is made for me?

[arcanadreams]

im the a6/sorenn anon and while for now most content is on patreon(s), cal's ex info was definitely discussed on their discord, and some of the pegasi info (especially the youngest ones) used to be free to read on aerie's patreon (not anymore i believe. btw, someone literally had to remind aerie of tilaari!mc existence, she edited tilaari!bro one to add their relationship only after that😅😅😅), so im not leaking any behind the paywall info! dw yall are not missing much if you can't afford to be a patron now, their characterization is kind of weird tbh especially compared to the mc's ("traveler was raised as a humble noble" vs "sike bc everyone else wasn't but somehow they are all from the same household"😂😂)

but yeah, not only calderon's ex betrayed him for kmerii, but also his best friend (not sorenn, the other one duh) and im not 100% about this, but there was a free piece (preview, I think) which was heavily hinting he did it for her (aka cal's ex) lol! idk if any of this has changed since then, but man, what a personal life

also, i dont think cal and arlo really knew each other, cal probably just knew of him/who he was from sorenn or when he was in the palace with his mom. arlo prob wasnt even aware of his existence or didn't care asdfgh just still its weird that cal wouldn't know of kit!mc imo

holy SHIT, the fact Cal's gf (I assume Aeriie made it so she was his gf at the time of the betrayal bc that just. makes sense) and his best friend turned on him for the k'merri?? methinks they may have been the ones who framed him based on his in-game dialogue. YIKES, no wonder this man has like three sticks up his ass.

i wanna join the discord for info like this but i've never joined a public discord so i'm kinda scared to LOL, thank you so much for sharing!! maybe i'll muscle up the courage to join but idk.

also i agree with you on traveler making more sense being snobby. the only traveler who seems to have canon reasons for being less of a snob is kit!traveler, because Nikolle was the most well-adjusted of the queens before she got sick, and Sorenn was a pretty nice prince, so kit!traveler had him to look up to. personally i think it'd be super interesting if traveler's mom influenced their personality more. i also think it would be fun to play with the idea of traveler being a far kinder person when they don't remember their past, and then feeling conflicted when they remember their royal lineage because we know through dialogue that they were predisposed to dislike mercenaries already. how would their old personality rear its head? would it at all? just fun things to speculate.

to the arlo point, i went back and played both june and cal's route through episode 6 the other day and tried out every single hobby option on both of them LMAO i have problems. but anyway i believe you're right in that Cal knew of Arlo rather than knowing him directly, i believe he says something like "No offense but he always seemed like a little shit" and Traveler is like "None taken he totally was" LOL.

i can see why cal wouldn't know mc, but also HOW CUTE WOULD IT HAVE BEEN IF THEY SAW EACH OTHER IN PASSING AS KIDS??? UUUUUGH missed potential imo

[unethicalexperiments]

oh now that dragula s5 is over i can do my writeup on that too. spoilers for the whole season (and probably show) below the cut

i guess i'll kinda go episode by episode for this.

ep 1: fun way to start off, love when they make them walk around in the woods n shit in full drag. everyone meeting for the first time was fun as well big personalities right off the bat. correct winner and correct bottom 2. i loved the extermination challenge on this one, hardcore as fuck.

ep 2: i will say i am not a fan of contestants (of any show) returning for no real reason. however i very much enjoyed jay kay on the show so i can't say i'm too mad about it. VERY correct winner, throb nailed that floorshow. i do not remember if cynthia deserved bottom2 off the top of my head but correct extermination. unfortunate because onyx is a cool performer just a little too... shy/quiet/etc for the show. there is no amount of money you could have paid me to do this extermination i do NOT do bugs </3 but i do love a gross one.

ep3: this was the ghost episode which was fun. by this point this season had already surpassed s4 for me. loved jay kay's bellhop look, deserved the win especially after the rough start. i remember throb doing really well this one too. as for the bottom 3 this ep. clearly there is something about orkgotik's drag that i just do not get. the entire time i thought their looks were messy and i didn't get the concepts but they were PRAISED by the judges (up until here) for it all. like ep1 when they were called to stay on stage i legit thought they were bottom 3 not top 3. obviously this is just a me thing bc other people online seem to really like them too. i forgot about satanna so i'm assuming her going home here was right. another good extermination with the rats but fuck that looked miserable. i would do it but i would not be happy about it LOL

ep4: ok it seems like the fanbase doesn't care for monsters of rock but i LOVE monsters of rock, and having this broken up into 2 episodes felt like a bonus for me. fantasia absolutely deserved the win here, she really is an excellent performer. i know a lot of ppl thought the whole time she wasn't giving monster (myself included at a few points) but you cannot deny her stage presence at all. jarvis and jay kay definitely did deserve bottom 2 and jarvis did lose that lipsync which was unfortunate but jay really beat his ass lol. jarvis's death scene may also have been one of the best in the show so far.

ep5: part 2 of monsters of rock. ok so i enjoyed this half less LMAO i do not care about songwriting on the show/rpdr, most of the time its mid at best; but i do get that its also how a lot of artists make money. but then again not every drag performer should be a recording artist lol. ANYWAY on to the actual floorshow. orkgotik's band NAILED it and they def deserved the win. fantasia's band was for the most part pretty good (or at least fantasia herself was good LOL) but man... you could tell niohuru had never performed like that before. i also forgot anna was on this season and it was way past her time to go. i like the tattoo exterminations, but it is pretty clear they use those to get rid of whichever contestant they want to get rid of. i think anna held her own in this extermination comparatively speaking between the two tattoo designs. i liked the tattoo challenge from s3 the best where they got to pick a tattoo for the other competitor.

ep6: i BARELY remember this episode oop. had to go to the wiki to get the synopsis of what happened. i thought it was strange the boulets said the floorshows weren't "what they were expecting". ok if everyone "missed the mark" then clearly your instructions weren't good enough. i remember the looks being cool but the actual "selling" being kind of.. forced? idk. not as much fun as i was hoping it would have been. i do not remember anyones looks this episode, but i do remember blackberri's win being deserved. i do not remember if fantasia deserved bottom but jay kay definitely did, and he gave up in the extermination! so yeah! its just pregnancy simulators that shouldn't be that difficult especially when you have contestants bungee jumping and eating maggots.

ep7: oooohhhhhh mygod. this was a great episode. i know they also said the runways "weren't what they were expecting" again but like i said before that's on them. i thought these runways were cool as fuck. blackberri and throb had really cool looks but hooolllyyyyyy shit niohuru. niohuru blew me the fuck away with that floorshow. i literally sat there eyes locked on the screen jaw open. she deserved to win the season on that alone. holy fuck. cynthia and orkgotik were definitely deserving of bottom 2 but man i loved cynthia she was so much fun even if her runways weren't the best. personally would have sent orkgotik home here but like i said i'm clearly missing something about their drag that everyone else loves.

ep8: this one i didn't care for but it certainly wasn't a bad episode. i think i'm just unfamiliar with the floorshow theme and that's probably why it didn't impact me the same. again i would not have given orkgotik the win here, i would have given it to throb. the extermination challenge for this one was fun i like it when they let them straight up fight. this was unfortunately fantasia's time, but i think she did better than a lot of people expected, i think she showed she has the versatility to be any kind of performer.

ep9: last supper, which is always a good time. loved whoever it was pulling a vape out in the middle of the episode fgfhjdsk i do not care for on-screen relationships but i know a lot of people wanted a clearer answer wrt niohuru/orkgotik.

ep10: ok so finale. i have to say i did NOT like final 4 last season and i did NOT like it this season. there is no reason to have 4 out of your 11 contestants as potential winners. i would have cut orkgotik or blackberri (but really orkgotik) and made it a final 3. i also hate that they went in a different order (filth/horror/glamor as opposed to glamor/filth/horror) bc seasons 1-3 went in the same order. i also have to say i wasn't particularly blown away by anyone's finale looks. i thought throb did a good job overall, if we were picking a winner based off the final floorshow alone it would have been throb. i thought niohuru's and blackberri's looks were all around kinda mid, niohuru's takeout look was very good though. i actually liked orkgotik's horror look for this one! only took me to the finale to get on board with them then the boulets immediately turn around and say they didn't like that one dfgfhjdksa either way, niohuru was the clear winner of the season and she definitely earned it. its also nice to have a non-american, asian trans woman in the winner's circle.

overall, i would rank the seasons 2 > 3 > 5 > titans > 1 >>>>> 4 at this point in time (i had a lot of issues with season 4) but its also been a minute since i've watched season 1. not ranking these on performers but in terms of how the season was produced. i think they've improved a LOT since season 4/titans alone, let alone season 1, but i think there's still some room for improvement. and now i'm getting bored writing this so i'm ending it here lol

[sapphire-weapon]

Honestly, thank you for calling out misinformation and how it actually does affect people in the fandom.

At first I found it mildly amusing and didn't think much of it aside from being slightly embarrassed that I'd believed some of it. What really disconcerted me were the "facts" that were so out there they essentially equated to "don't believe your lying eyes." And even now I feel bad for saying that because I can't always know if someone's acting in bad faith or if that's what they genuinely believe.

(Then there are things like that bit on the wiki that says Leon met Chris at a TerraSave event with a citation that doesn't mention said event in any way. I remember thinking "surely not" and reading the file about seven times before confirming that yes, somebody really did that.)

I know this sounds ridiculous, but I actually decided to leave Tumblr completely for a couple weeks just because it was genuinely getting to me and I needed to take a step back from the fandom to introspect and collect myself. I came to the conclusion that because I'd already been embarrassed by trusting what I thought were my fandom elders and the sheer amount of non-canon info being falsely circulated as canon, I was constantly on guard and conflicted. In any other fandom, upon seeing a take that went completely against my own, I would just keep scrolling and probably never think about it again, but with RE it was actually bothering me and making me question my own perception of the media as well as people's intentions. I don't like to assume that people are acting in bad faith (at least in this context, as opposed to just misunderstanding or having a different opinion), and that was causing turmoil in me until I took stock of my own emotions regarding the fandom as a whole.

Not that I was losing sleep over it or anything (I'm not super active or immersed in tumblr so it wasn't a big deal to log off for a while), but it definitely did suck a lot of enjoyment out of the experience for me and made me far more reluctant to engage with other fans.

Sorry that was so long and not really a question, but I just wanted to give my testimony that yes, these things do impact fandom experience in multiple ways.

Unfortunately, I think it's a combination of both things at play here, which is what makes it so insidious and difficult to uproot. There are people who genuinely believe that everything that was ever said in any piece of media by anyone who ever even tangentially worked on Resident Evil should be taken as hard canon fact (the Project Umbrella guys, I think, do legitimately feel this way).

There are also opportunists in this fandom who don't necessarily believe that every little thing is canon, but they've been holding some of those specific details as their personal headcanon for years (shoutout to the guy who told me "I know that Capcom has given Leon several different backstories over the years; I just like the mafia one the most.") and springboarded off of the true believers' narrative to help reinforce their own.

People in both categories are the kind of personality types to get hyper-invested in being the first to get the information out to a new audience and to laser focus on making sure that these details are reinforced every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. And since people who are new to fandoms are eager to suck up any obscure, fun trivia they can get their hands on, those new people flock to bad actors like this in droves.

By the time my old, tired ass gets around to hearing about any of it, the message has been spread so widely and been reinforced so many dozens (hundreds?) of times that new fans already have a concrete, cemented viewpoint on what the canon is/says, and they have no desire to hear someone try to tell them otherwise. After all, this is what literally everyone else is saying, so why should they listen to the one guy in the back going full oldmanyellsatcloud.jpeg? To them, I'm basically that crazy guy on the street corner screaming about how the Illuminati has been controlling the government and lying to you and we're all living in the Matrix and also Jesus is coming.

But the reality is that I'm Belle trying to convince the angry mob that the Beast isn't dangerous. It's an effort too little, and I got to them too late.

I'm really happy and grateful that my presence in fandom has helped even one person feel better about the bullshit that they've been peddled, but at the same time, it's really disheartening to see my posts max out at around 130 notes, when bad information and shoddy story analysis easily hits 300+ and sometimes even into the thousands. People just keep the cycle of misinformation going, like the shittiest Ouroboros this side of Albert Wesker's corpse.

[convexicalcrow]

In which I decided to write the ending of this fic until it was done... 4k words later. XD Enjoy. <3

---

False landed on the outskirts of the Ancient Capital. She really didn't want to have to go and confront Pix again, but this wouldn't be over unless she did something about it. She didn't see him anywhere, though he was online somewhere. Maybe down in the catacombs? Maybe.

Maybe she should call for back-up. That might also be a good idea. Perhaps a better idea. But there was really only Impulse, and he was busy working in the nether last time she checked in with him. Scar and Cub were too far away to help right now. Well, she didn't know they were too far away, but she had trusted them to the nether search, and maybe an amnesiac and Scar were perhaps not the best pair to send on that particular expedition. Truth is, though, she wasn't sure she trusted them with this task either. She didn't want to risk either of them being infected again.

She sighed. Seems it was up to her to fix this problem. Pix had warned her to stay away last time, and she was very definitely ignoring that warning. Perhaps that was unwise. Still, no time to back out now, right? The skulk couldn't be allowed to continue infesting him, and if no one else was going to take up the fight, then it was going to have to be her, as usual. Cleaning up everyone else's mess. That seemed about right.

She slowly made her way into the city, trying to think of places where Pix might be, assuming he was here, of course. She didn't know for sure that he was here, but something told her that he was. The place was quiet, apart from the shuffling and kicking and sharp chirps of the dodos. It felt… eerie. Like the air knew something bad was about to go down. False didn't like that feeling either. Perhaps she was unwittingly walking into a trap. If she was, at least she could fight her way out of it. Scar and Cub wouldn't stand a chance.

Well, best start somewhere then. If she was going to get this far in, she might as well do this properly. She flew over to the catacombs and entered, heading down the stairs into their depths. Maybe he wasn't here either, but she had to check, just to be sure.

-

"Hey guys! Just a quick question before I head over, do either of you have any enderpearls?" Impulse said, getting them both in a call.

"I know I don't," Scar said.

"I know Joe donated a whole bunch to your base, Cub, but I don't know if you have any on you," Impulse said.

"Honestly, I haven't really looked through what I've got on me but maybe, maybe. We'll see." Cub got out his enderchest and set it down to look through his items. "Why did he give me all those enderpearls then? I don't remember that happening."

"I believe it was because you and Cleo burnt his totems. So he rerouted the trash to your base and now you have all the enderpearls. So yeah, have fun with that," Impulse said.

"Yeah, that seems fair," Cub said. He'd looked in a few shulkers and had found no pearls. "Not looking promising though. I have some prismarine blocks for some reason though in case you need those."

Impulse laughed. "Nah, I'm good. In that case, I'll bring the bedrock-breaking kit. You'll need to dig up to bedrock so you can help me find the best place to break it, yeah? I'll be maybe ten minutes. Three thousand blocks in the nether is a long way out for sure. How did you even manage that?"

"You know how easy it is to get lost down here! You take one wrong turn in unfamiliar territory and suddenly you're a thousand blocks from where you thought you were and can't remember how to get back!" Scar protested.

"He took me through the wrong portal. He wanted to show me the froglight farm but yeah. Now we're here," Cub said.

"Oh, of course! Anyway, hang tight, I won't be long, alright?" Impulse said.

"We'll dig up and meet you there, alright?" Cub said.

"Carve out a hole when you reach bedrock, there will be explosions!" Impulse said. "Make it Scar-safe, Cub! I don't want either of you losing your stuff this far out."

"On it, Impulse. Thanks again, I'm not sure I'd have been able to get us back. I'm… navigating is difficult at the best of times, let alone off the back of such a large blackout, yeah? So I'm glad you're here because I'm not sure Scar could have rescued us either."

"It's no problem, I was working in the nether anyway. I'll be over in a bit, yeah? Seeya soon," Impulse said and left the call.

"Well, Scar, I guess we're digging up," Cub said as he picked up his enderchest.

"I guess we are! Thank the Vex for Impulse!" Scar said as he started digging upwards.

-

False found no one in the catacombs. What she did find, however, was a very nondescript hole in the ground leading to a staircase that she almost didn't see because it was so covered with skulk that the stone beneath wasn't easily visible. Maybe- maybe she should go down there. That seemed like a better lead. She got out her communicator.

scar, cub, maybe get to pix's base as soon as you can? not sure if this will be dangerous, not sure he's even here, but you know, just in case?, False sent to Scar and Cub. If she was going to go down and confront him, she wanted them to be not far behind her, ready to unleash the hoards of Vex should she be infested or otherwise incapacitated.

She took a moment to steady her breath and drew her sword. "Alright, here goes nothing."

-

She headed down the staircase, carved out of the rock. The smell of skulk slowly got stronger, though whether this was a sign of his presence or not, she didn't know. But there was definitely skulk down there at any rate.

The staircase stopped, opening out into a large cave. In front of her was a great skulk covered … thing? There was a spawner there, she could see that now. Maybe this was for making skulk? Maybe. She dared get a little closer to the edge and looked down to see … wait, was that Pix sitting in the middle of all that skulk? It was hard to tell, there was simply skulk everywhere.

Dare she go down? That seemed… unwise. But then two blue-green bright eyes stared straight into her from down below, and she froze. Pix was definitely here, and he knew she was here too. And then the figure vanished, and before False could run, Pix had appeared through the skulk on the wall close by, veins shooting out to wrap around her.

"I thought I told you to stay away, vex," Pix hissed as he pulled her close.

"Er, yes, yes you did, you definitely said that," False said, trying not to show her fear.

"And yet, you ignored my warnings. Well, then. I can't be held responsible for what happens to you now. You should've stayed away. But perhaps that guilty conscience got the better of you. After all, why exactly are there two of you? Do you happen to know? Not everyone knows, but I know. I've seen into your mind. I've seen the secrets you're keeping from the other one, and from your friends. You wouldn't want me to tell, would you?" Pix said.

False froze. He couldn't possibly know. Could he? "I-I don't know what you're talking about."

"It's just you in different outfits, is that it? Like Gem and her LARPing? Yeah, that's definitely just it. Only there aren't two Gems here, are there? But there are two Falses. So, tell me, which one's the real one? You? Or the one who's memories you wiped and want to keep as far away from the Hermits as possible?" Pix said.

The veins squeezed tighter around False, and her sword dropped to the ground, the muscles in her hand cramping in such a way that she let go without warning. How did he even know all of this? There's no way he could know all of this. Right?

"There's only one False, I swear. I-It might just be someone who looks like me, right? That has to be it. A cosplayer, maybe. Maybe that's it," False said, struggling to find a more convincing argument without giving away how correct he was.

Pix laughed. A vein moved up her face and False could feel it trying to get inside her brain. "Now, I wonder what would happen if spilled all your dirty little secrets, hmm? I wonder if your friends would still be your friends if they knew what you'd done. Because that's the thing about skulk. It gets inside your brain. And the Vex don't care about you nearly as much as they care about those other two. Who'd miss you if the skulk claimed you as well? No one. Your dark heart is just what the skulk like best. It's rotten already."

Every word he spoke simply evoked more terror into False until she couldn't move, couldn't speak, could only stare into Pix's horrid glowing eyes as veins spread out through her hair, sinking painlessly into her brain. Pix's eyes were the last thing she remembered.

-

It hadn't taken that long to dig up to bedrock and clear a space. They'd had a lucky run and had managed to find only one spot of lava to get around, and now they had a nice little cavern carved out. Cub had already identified a couple of potential blocks Impulse could use. He hadn't forgotten everything, to be fair.

"Hey, hey! How are my lost little lambs?" Impulse said as he called them again. "I'm about a thousand blocks away. Are you up by the roof yet?"

"Yeah, we're ready. Got a couple of spots you can use. Want me to send the coords?" Cub said.

"Yeah, please do. It'll make the set-up faster if we don't have to do that once I arrive," Impulse said.

"Yeah, False has asked us to meet her somewhere as soon as we can, so anything that speeds up the process, you know?" Cub said. He got his communicator out and sent Impulse the coordinates he'd found. "Check your messages. I've sent the coords over."

"Thanks, man. I'll call again when I'm over there," Impulse said and left the call.

"We're pretending we don't know what False wants us for, right? If he asks?" Scar said.

"Yeah, of course. I got a feeling she's in big trouble though. The Vex are screaming again. We might need to deal with this on our own," Cub said.

"Oh, no, surely Impulse would help if we asked!" Scar said.

"Too difficult. Let's just keep it simple. The fewer involved, the better," Cub said. "We don't know for sure that she's been taken, but we need to prepare for that."

"Right, of course. We're going to need to be in Vex forms, aren't we?" Scar said.

"I think so, yeah. We may need to taunt them to bring them out, then attack. Focus on curing, not killing. Killing doesn't work, it just spreads the skulk. So we want to avoid that," Cub said.

"Right, right, of course. I didn't think of that. But the potions will be enough, right?" Scar said. "On the swords?"

"Should be, yeah. Of course, we don't know if there will be any other effects on a non-Vex like Pix, but we should be able to get rid of the skulk. False should be fine, though. But yeah, we should hurry over there as soon as we're out," Cub said.

-

Impulse was with them soon after, and before long, Scar and Cub were climbing up onto the roof as Impulse packed away his redstone.

"So where's the way back?" Cub said, looking around.

"Oh, I'll take you, don't worry. You kinda ended up pretty much east in a straight line, weirdly enough! So it won't take us long to get back," Impulse said.

"Oh, of course. That'd be right. Thanks again, Impulse. I don't know what we'd have done if you hadn't been around," Scar said.

"Oh, you could have just flown back towards zero-zero, but I get it, especially if False is asking for you. Come on, this way," Impulse said.

-

Cub and Scar took their Vex forms once they hit the overworld and had said goodbye to Impulse. Travel would be significantly faster, and they could collect the Vex who had been preparing to fight off the skulk. Vexspace was chaotic again, though. It seemed False had been ripped away from Vexspace and they'd lost contact with her. Definitely not a worry.

They went to Pix's base, where the skulk had spread so much that Pix's builds were almost buried under it. At least it was concentrated around the catacombs and the statue, but it still looked very ugly.

"I think this has gotten worse, far worse. More than we can handle," Cub said.

"Maybe, maybe. But we can't just run away. We're the ones who can actually fix this. We can't let the skulk keep possessing our friends like this. It was hard enough with you, I don't want this to happen to anyone else, alright? We go in. We fix this," Scar said. "I promised I would burn all the skulk in this land for what they did to you, and I meant that. This ends today. We take them all down."

"Then I guess we'd better go find them then, hadn't we?" Cub said.

-

The Vex flew, phasing through the land as they sought out Pix and False. They quickly found them underground by the skulk machine. Cub held them back. He didn't want to risk Vex lives if he didn't have to. But it did confirm that False had also been corrupted. They sat down in the skulk, watching the spiders from the spawner above them fall and die, spreading skulk all over the stone below them.

"They can travel through the skulk. Their bodies may be difficult to hit. But I don't know if seeding the skulk with the potions would also work," Scar said. "I know they can do that, because I saw you do it, Cub, before you were cured. Their bodies are like the Vex, impermanent faces of the skulk itself. How do you fight something like that?"

"Hmm. Tricky. Maybe we try both? Some distract Pix and False and get them stabbed, while others seed the skulk itself? Do you want to lead the charge, Scar? Hotguy those pesky skulk into oblivion? I can watch from here and see if the potions work on the skulk down here. Maybe it will if there are bodies attached," Cub said. "And if it doesn't, we'll be backup."

"Sounds good to me. Alright, half the Vex, come with me! We're moving in!" Scar said.

Cub watched them peel away, hoping they would be successful. Two would be far more difficult to deal with than one, but maybe they could succeed if they attacked from both sides, through their bodies, and through the skulk. They could move faster than the skulk could, able to teleport instantaneously elsewhere in the world. Dropping their nametags would transport them back to Vexspace. That was the plan to save as many Vex as possible.

Cub looked down, distracted by shouting. Pix and False were definitely distracted, though it was hard to see what was going on. The impressions Cub was getting from the other Vex were veins being used as lassoos, or as whips, attempting to grab the Vex out of the air and kill them, but the Vex were tricky, and had no physical body, so the veins just didn't work at all.

Cub got his potions out, and uncorked a couple of bottles. "Now, maybe we'll all want to stab the skulk with our swords too, but I'm going to pour it on. If anyone wants to take another couple of bottles and get closer to the skulk down there, that may work too. Splash them onto the skulk, that should work. I hope."

A few Vex came forward and took some bottles, emboldened by their fellow Vex being untouchable. Cub gave out as many as he had, and then started pouring the potion onto the skulk, hoping it might make it retreat, or die, or, well. Something.

-

Scar swooped down to slice at False, managing to hit her arm this time. She cried out and tried to hit him back, but he was too fast. They were slowing down as the potions kicked in. That much seemed clear.

"Got you, Falsie! The skulk won't take you this time!" Scar cried as he flew around and went in for another attack.

"You couldn't kill me last time, what makes you think you will now?" False spat, eyes angry as she shifted around him.

"Oh, I've brought all my friends with me this time. You'll have to try harder than that," Scar said, dodging another attack as False's sword barely missed his ribcage.

A flurry of Vex collided into her, and she cried out, clearly in pain. "No! What have you done to me? Stop the burning!"

"The skulk must die, False. All of it must die," Scar said.

Scar wheeled around and went after Pix, catching him off-guard as he sunk his blade into his shoulder. Pix nearly got him as he turned and swiped at him instinctively, but Scar was out of the way before Pix could react.

"The skulk will die! All skulk will die!" Scar cried as he flew up to the spawner and broke it, denying the skulk below any further fuel.

-

The skulk hadn't really retreated much from the potions thrown onto it, which Cub wasn't surprised about. Instead, he got out his hoe, the one thing he knew would work to clear up the skulk, and got to work, sending the rest of the Vex to go help Scar.

If the skulk wanted to spread so badly, clearly the antidote was to remove it and stop it spreading. He'd seen Scar remove the spawner, and he clearly wanted to destroy whatever contraption this was. Cub was fine with that. He worked fast, pushing the skulk ever lower, ever smaller, as he shrunk the space the skulk took up.

Scar seemed to be holding his own, too, though there had been some struggle at first to figure out how to fight them when they kept disappearing into the skulk. Apparently annoying them into a fight was the solution to that particular problem, and then it became easy. Well, easier. They would still need to watch them, and keep throwing potions at them until the skulk was clear. Getting them away from here would also be a benefit. They didn't want to risk the skulk spreading to them again.

-

"Oh! Remove the skulk! Good idea, Cubby!" Scar said as he checked in with him. Pix and False were still struggling, but the skulk seemed to be weakening. He grabbed his hoe out and started clearing the area, tasking the Vex with keeping the potions up until it seemed safe.

"If you think the skulk will forgive this, you are wrong. We have been here from the very beginning, and we will be here at the very end of time. Our memories are long. The Vex will pay for this!" Pix said as he lunged at Scar.

"Oh, oh no! Not this time!" Scar said as he flew out of the way. "The skulk will not live! Give me our friends back!"

Pix seemed to stiffen, his body stilling, as the skulk seemed to retreat. "Enjoy what's left, then, pathetic little vex."

Pix collapsed then, and Scar was at his side, catching him before he hit the ground. He picked him up in his arms and got him as far from the skulk as possible. "Cub! Help!"

Cub was by his side immediately and took Pix in his arms as Scar handed him over.

"Take him somewhere with no skulk. I'll go get False," Scar said.

"On it. We'll head back to the mansion, quarantine them there," Cub said.

Cub flew off, and Scar went back to see False staggering towards him, arms outstretched, reaching for him.

"Oh, False! You looking for me? Try catch the HoTGuY now!" Scar said as he loosed a few more potion-tipped arrows into her.

"You'll pay for this, Scar! I'll have your head as a trophy for this insult!" False said as she tried to grab him.

Scar circled around, taking a moment to remove some more skulk, before he turned to find her on her hands and knees, eyes looking big and afraid and finally free from skulk.

"False? You okay?" Scar said, keeping another arrow locked on her just in case.

"S-Scar? I-I don't-" Her voice was cut off, and skulk veins seemed to come after her, grasping her ankle. She looked behind her, trying to pull away. "Oh, god, what's going on? Scar? What's this?"

Scar flew down and cut the veins loose. "Get back! She's ours! Try it again and I'll burn this whole place to the ground!"

He pulled False into his arms and flew away from the skulk. "It's okay, False, I've got you. You're safe with the Vex now."

"Vex? Am I a Vex?" False said, exhaustion filling her voice.

Scar didn't cry, not yet anyway. "You're the best Vex I've ever known, False, I promise. Now, let's get you out of here."

-

Pix and False had been placed in the same room Cub had recovered in once they got back to the mansion. The priests were tending to them to ensure the skulk had completely left them. Scar and Cub were at least together now, pacing near the room, anxiously waiting to hear how they were.

"I hope they haven't forgotten as much as you have, Cub. I'm not sure I'd forgive myself if that happened," Scar said.

"It's not your fault. None of this is your fault. You didn't erase my memories, the skulk did," Cub said.

"But-but I should have noticed! I should have been with you! Not messing about in Trouble Town! As soon as I felt you leave Vexspace, I should have been with you," Scar said.

"Honestly, Scar, please, stop blaming yourself. It's not going to solve anything, alright? Just be glad we stopped the skulk. And you destroyed that machine, right? So hopefully there's no more skulk spreading anywhere," Cub said.

"Oh, I destroyed it alright. I burnt all the skulk from Pix's empire and restored it with Joe as best I could. That machine is dead. Gone. Buried. We tore it all apart, and burnt everything. Hopefully that's all we need to do," Scar said.

"Yeah, here's hoping the fog doesn't try it again, too. That's where I got corrupted, apparently," Cub said.

"Well, you can't destroy fog! But you can stay away from it. So hopefully this will teach everyone to stay far away from that fog," Scar said.

"I hope so. I don't want anyone else going through this. Come on, I'm starving. Let's go eat. You can tell me more about the things I've missed. Maybe it'll jog my memory after all," Cub said.

Scar brightened. "Yeah! Joe said he was making some kind of rabbit stew too, like a really, really good one! And he made cookies for dessert!"

"Well, I can't say no to that," Cub said.