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warlocksoup · 6 months ago

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into the spider-verse: nishinoya yuu

volume one, chapter two: calls

word count: 2.5k

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On the rooftop of the Flatiron Building, she leans back, and stares at the sky above her. She’s learned that looking down gives her vertigo, and if she’s lying down, she can pretend she’s not twenty-two stories off the ground.

Noya laughs at her, because he always does, but he still holds her hand, because he knows it makes her feel better. “I can’t believe you’re still afraid of heights.”

“I feel like this is a super reasonable fear to have.” She inches a little but further away from the edge as she speaks. She doesn’t even wanna be close to it. “Plummeting to my death isn’t like, a big priority for me right now.”

He squeezes her hand. “You know I’ll catch you if you fall.”

He would. She doesn’t even doubt that for a second. If right now she stood up and decided to take a swan dive off the side of the building, there would be nothing getting in between him and her, and Noya would have her safely in his arms before she hit the fifteenth floor.

But still. It fucking terrifies her.

“Okay, sorry my primal instinct does not recognize that you got bit by some weird science experiment spider and now you defy all laws of nature,” she rolls her eyes, still tightly holding onto his hand as he sits upright beside her. “I’ll work on that.”

Nishinoya leans over a lightly pinches the soft skin of her stomach under her t-shirt. She squeals. “Keep it up with the attitude and I’ll throw you off the side of this building myself.”

“Hmm, not very hero-like of you, Spider-Man.”

“You bring out the worst in me.”

She grins. “I’m going to have to write an article about this. ‘Spider-Man throws innocent journalist with fear of heights off Flatiron Building.’ Jameson will love it.”

Nishinoya scoffs. “Yeah, I’m sure he would. Too bad you’ll be busy being a sidewalk pancake.”

Her eyes find their intertwined hands. It’s always been natural, their friendship, everything that happens between them feels like it’s supposed to. The handholding and the couch-sharing and the arm over her shoulder. It’s always right, with Nishinoya. She doesn’t even have to think about it.

She watches his thumb as it brushes against her skin. “How’s it been out there lately?” she asks.

“Quiet,” Nishinoya replies. “Saving kittens from trees and helping old ladies across the street. Besides Sytsevich, everything’s been quiet since Osborn died. It’s kinda weird, y’know? Like eerie.”

“Yeah, I imagine waiting for the next disaster to strike can feel like that,” she comments, leaning back to stare up at the empty sky. You can’t ever see stars out here. “Hey, Noya?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think you’re gonna stay here forever?” she asks. “Just stick around and be Spider-Man for the rest of your life.”

He hums a bit. “I dunno. I think I’ll probably just go wherever you end up.”

🕸 ｡𖦹°‧✩｡🕷˚⋆｡

She’s sitting on the train, a hot cup of coffee in one hand, and her phone in the other. She’s looking down at an email from her favorite Yahoo user: If you don’t want the whole world to find out, do as I say.

It’s pretty explicit. It’s hard to misinterpret that kind of message, as much as she’s deliberately trying to. Her fingers tap against the paper cup, trying not to let panic work its way up her throat in the middle of this train cab, surrounded by bored commuters that wouldn’t flinch twice at any sort of breakdown she could have.

A heavy breath leaves her lung, and she pockets her phone, trying, with a tight feeling of desperation around her throat, not to think of it. If it’s not in her face, it’ll be marginally easier to pretend.

Yachi’s waiting for her at her desk when she gets into work. She slides into her chair, and Yachi skips the greeting. “Jameson’s pissed,” Yachi says, tapping a pencil against her desk.

“Yeah? What’d Spider-Man do now?” she questions, typing her password in. She mistypes it, and curses slightly under her breath.

“The PI he hired to find out his identity quit,” Yachi laughs. “Apparently there wasn’t enough for him to go off, and the guy got tired of Jameson raising his blood pressure at him for forty minutes a day.”

She snorts. Noya’s told her about private investigators before. Everyone touts that they’re going to be the one to unmask Spider-Man, but it’s kinda tricky trailing a man with superhuman sixth sense and the ability to basically fly through the city. “I give it another three months before he tries this one again.”

“I give it one,” Yachi counters.

Her desktop loads up, and she is immediately hit with a barrage of emails, looking like they’re coming in all at once, all in caps lock. “Fuck, looks like he’s taking it out on me again.”

Email after email, the subject lines varying from things like, “This piece is crap!” to “How are you still employed here?”

Yachi leans forward to get a better at her screen. “Oh, that’s bad. I’ll leave you to that.”

And it’s just that Yachi gives her a sharp grin and two-finger salute that another email pops up. No subject line, just a simple: Wait for my instruction.

🕸 ｡𖦹°‧✩｡🕷˚⋆｡

Harry Osborn looks smarmy on the television screen, a thin layer of sweat shining on his forehead and slick smile that looks a little bit too pleased for his father’s funeral. She knocks her knee into Noya’s leg underneath the blanket they share. “That guy’s such a piece of shit,” she comments, jerking her chin forward towards the younger Osborn.

Noya knocks his leg back into hers. “My guy looks like he just won the lottery,” he remarks, eyes not leaving the screen. There’s a bit of history between Spider-Man and the Osborn family, mainly consisting of Norman committing acts of domestic terrorism from the vantage point of a hoverboard, dressed like a fucking goblin.

“Yeah, well he basically did,” she snarks. “Imagine inheriting Oscorp before you’re twenty-five. Basically guarantees you a fucking thirty under thirty spot.”

He snorts. “I’d rather not have anything to do with Oscorp. I’d rather be broke.”

"Oh, you mean the company that basically sponsored the lizard-ification of Dr. Connors? I can't imagine why." She lops her head to the side to look at him. “And anyway, I’m broke. You’re a freeloader.”

Nishinoya waves her off. “Same difference.”

She snorts, turning to face the television again to see they’re playing old footage of Norman Osborn in a lab (coat and everything), explaining the mission statement of Oscorp. To build a better future.

There were rumors about Norman, post-mortem. Details floating around about how he was driven mad in his final year. That the Osborn curse had infected him beyond hope, and his mind had began to decay, along with his body. Some people think he’s been dead for much longer. Some people think a group of investors had been secretly running Oscorp for years while Norman received private care upstate. Some people even suspect him of being the Goblin.

She wonders if that was the better future he had envisioned.

Noya shifts uncomfortably in his seat. She reaches over and grabs his hand, squeezing it tightly in hers. She’s sure he’s wishing the son will be better than his father. She’s hoping too.

His thumb traces circles over her knuckle. He doesn’t look in her direction. She tries to focus on the news and enjoy the way his hand feels in hers before there’s some police broadcast or distant siren or whatever to call him back to duty.

🕸 ｡𖦹°‧✩｡🕷˚⋆｡

Meet me @ 300 W 57th St tomorrow at 8am. Or I tell everyone about him.

She sits at her desk, biting down on the end of a pencil, and weighing her options.

One: she could tell Noya.

There’s not even a chance he would let her go. Not even if he were there. No matter the argument she would present. Nishinoya would sooner web her to the couch than let her go meet up with some mystery blackmailer. She also knows that this threat would do little to sway him. If she tells Noya, the most likely outcome is him, masked up and aggravated, showing up to fight.

Which would result in ijs99ETJfdhsg@yahoo.com telling everyone.

Two: she could do nothing.

There’s really been no hard proof presented to her that shows that Yahoo user ijs99ETJfdhsg knows what he claims he knows. This could all very well be a big misunderstanding on her end. And so what? Even if he does know what he claims to, it’s not like the world would so easily believe that Nishinoya Yuu, random unemployed man, is Spider-Man. Random liars claim to be Spider-Man every day. Noya could easily blend in with random liars.

The consequence of doing nothing though is, of course, him telling everyone. And still, the possibility that the masses believe him or that Yahoo user ijs99ETJfdhsg does have some hard evidence on his side gnaw away at her. She can’t shoulder that.

Three: she could show up.

She could put some pepper spray in her bag and give Noya the address just in case something happens, and she could go and meet with this mystery blackmailer to see exactly what the fuck it is he wants.

And then, he wouldn’t tell anyone.

The thought of it puts knots in her stomach, and those knots are worsened by the acknowledgement that it’s probably her best course of action.

She sighs, using her cursor to highlight the address he provided and plopping it back into search bar. She’s envisioning some deserted alley, an abandoned storefront or someplace that would leave no witnesses if she were to be kidnapped and/or murdered.

What she wasn’t expecting was fucking Oscorp.

🕸 ｡𖦹°‧✩｡🕷˚⋆｡

Harry Osborn’s office is neat. Almost empty, save for a few hard-drives and a stack of unopened newspapers at his desk. The wall to ceiling windows provide a view of the city she’s never seen before, and standing in the middle of it, she feels so starkly out of place. She looks behind her, just to see the assistant that led her up here closing the door behind him.

She feels trapped, at once.

Harry himself is leaning against a window, and as if operating on a que, he turns on his heel, a sickly grin plastered on his face, and, if she squints, she can almost see a greenish sort of hue in the undertones of his skin. “There’s my favorite journalist,” he greets, arms extended out as if he was going to hug her.

She steps back. “Erm, yeah,” she responds, head turning slightly to eye the closed door behind her. There’s something off in the air of room, something off-putting in the way Harry is looking at her. “Is there a reason you summoned me here through cryptic emails, or did you just wanna like, hang out?”

He stops, and lets his arms drop back down to his side, stuffing his hands in his pant pockets. “Straight to the point. I like that. I like that quality.”

It’s strange to be in the same room as him, New York City’s prodigal son. She’s seen his face on the cover of magazines and on news segments and she’s written articles about him. Harry Osborn has almost always been some kind of mythic figure in her head. An untouchable prince. Nothing she could get away with printing in the Bugle would ever have any impact on him.

But here before her, he does not look mythic, or untouchable, he looks like a very sick man. His hair falls flatly on his forehead, and he uses the back of sleeve to wipe off droplets of sweat. The longer she looks at him, the greener he seems, like his whole body is lightly stained.

Harry takes another step towards her. She steps back again.

“Y’know,” he drawls, and moves to stand behind the large desk that takes up most of the room; she watches him carefully, eyes trained on his every movement, “one of the most underrated parts of a power acquisition in a company like Oscorp, is that you suddenly have a lot more information at your disposal. A lot of information that money can’t buy.”

There’s something about the way he talks that is starkly unnatural. The PR training bleeds out of every word, and though he looks young, but the way he carries himself is eerily like his father. It makes goosebumps rise on the back of her neck. She looks over her shoulder, back at the door behind her. “O-okay.”

Harry takes a seat, like he’s unbothered by her presence. His hand lingers over one of the hard drives. “Did you know that, back in the early two-thousands, this company poured millions into researched on genetically enhanced spiders. They were supposed to be this miracle cure. A magic spider that could cure any illness. Until, of course, the head scientist died in some accident, and they had to kill off the whole project, including all the spiders they bred. Y’know, today, I think we only have one thing to show for that project.”

Her face is hot, and her ears feel like they’re stuffed with cotton. This all suddenly feels like a mistake, like she’s in over her head and she never should’ve come here without Noya. Her tongue is dry when she tries to speak. “Is this, is this on the record, or…?”

Harry leans forward in her chair, and sneers. It chills her blood, that expression, cold and gnarled. “I’m not interested in going on the record with some second-rate journalist at a trash paper. I’m interested in this.”

Harry Osborn grabs the newspaper on his desk and slams it forward. She takes a step forward to get a better look and knows immediately what it is. It’s the Daily Bugle, with Spider-Man on the front page and her name printed on the bottom.

The First-Ever On-The-Record Interview with the One and Only Spider-Man!

Her hands are shaking. She looks up to see Harry grinning at her. “It’s funny, actually, how someone right out of school, with no credentials and no reputation to go off, could get this kind of interview.”

She can hear her heartbeat, and all she can think of is how unbelievably, colossally fucked she is.

Harry Osborn stands and makes his way to stand directly in front of her. The closer he is, the more of him she can see. The green tint of his skin, the almost scaly quality, the point of his teeth. “I want you to find Spider-Man, and I want you to get him to give me his blood.”

🕸 ｡𖦹°‧✩｡🕷˚⋆｡

On the busy street beneath the Oscorp building, her fingers tremble as she dials Noya’s number. He answers after the first ring. “Hey, what’s up? I’m just dropping this bodega thief off at the station-“

“Noya,” she cuts him off, trying to hold back the sob in her voice. “I fucked up.”

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brigdh · 1 year ago

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I want to talk about Izzy's rant to Ed in episode 10, the one that brings out the Kraken. I've seen a lot of different descriptions of what is going on in this scene – death threat, homophobic slurs, etc – and I don't think either of those are what's actually what's happening.

Let's look at it closely, line by line, and the way Ed reacts, from the very beginning of the scene.

Ed: Well, feels nice to tidy up a little. Can't believe I was living like this. Can you, Iz? Izzy? Izzy: I'm going to speak plainly. Ed: Wonderful. You know we share our thoughts on this ship.

Izzy, cont: This, whatever it is that you've become... is a fate worse than death.

Okay. So there we've got what some have interpreted as a death threat. But does Ed seem threatened? He's startled, certainly, put on his back foot – literally – but he doesn't look afraid or alarmed to me. He draws in a slow breath, assessing the situation, but overall seems more confused than frightened.

In fact he laughs it off with his next line:

Izzy then escalates the level of aggression in the conversation:

But Ed, again, looks more confused than anything. Check out that furrowed brow, that head tilt! This is a man going "what is your deal?", not a man thinking "uh-oh, you might kill me!".

Extremely noticeably, even when Izzy storms right up into his face, Ed holds steady. He doesn't run, doesn't lean back, doesn't hunch his shoulders or drop eye contact – there is no vulnerability or defensiveness in Ed's body language at all. Ed is in supreme control of this confrontation – look at the slow way he deigns to turn back to the paper Izzy's holding! As though he's making the point that he chooses when to turn, not Izzy:

Then we have the "homophobic slur". But watch closely:

Ed does not react to "namby-pamby", "silk gown", or "pining" at all. He doesn't even blink. He barely seems like he's hearing Izzy. His entire attention is on the picture.

Ed's body language and behavior changes at one word and one word only, and that is "boyfriend". As soon as Izzy says it, Ed's furious:

(It's even easier to notice when you actually watch the scene instead of using gifs, because Izzy really draws out 'piiiiiiining', putting a lot of time between the first half of the sentence and 'boyfriend'.)

Why is the use of the word 'boyfriend' so important?

Well, what has Ed been doing all episode? He's been crying in a blanket fort and singing sad songs, yes, but he's been keeping a careful level of mystique about why he's doing it. Ed often uses distanced circumlocutions instead of directly acknowledging his emotions, but he's doing it in this episode even more so than usual:

Here are the lyrics to his song:

(Version one, with Lucius) Hanging on By a thread Hanging on Shouldn't let go If I let go, all will fall Fingers bleeding down to the bone now Can't let go Nothing makes sense Hold on Hold on Hold... on

(Version two, performed for the whole crew) Just let go Make yourself let go Make it go away Away, away today Life's a hard sad death And then you're Deaaad

Notice something? There is no mention of Stede, or love, or break-ups, or abandonments, or relationships in general. All Ed discusses is a vague life-sucks attitude, which could apply to basically anyone under any circumstances. He seems pretty okay with people knowing that Blackbeard is having some sort of weird emotional breakdown as long as he convinces himself that no one knows it's specifically from having his heart broken

This is true of everything Ed says and does for this entire episode. He never once even mentions Stede's name, unless "Farewell, Bonnet's playthings" at the very end counts. The only thing Ed openly admits to feeling bad about is a fictional character who's having a hard time "holding on" (holding on to what? he never says). There are no allusions to heartbreak or romance anywhere in his dialogue.

Now, Ed's not stupid. I'm sure he knows Izzy and Lucius and the rest of the crew can connect the dots and realize that something bad happened with Stede, even if Ed doesn't fill them in on the details. But Ed is also traumatized, and has a whole host of coping mechanisms set up to help him avoiding thinking about things that he doesn't want to think about. If he's not a murderer because "technically the fire killed those guys", then no one knows he's heartbroken because technically he hasn't acknowledged it.

Until Izzy says the word 'boyfriend'. Suddenly the secret is out, and Ed can't handle it. Izzy knows his weakness. That's why this word effects Ed more than anything else Izzy says in the whole scene.

At the end of the confrontation, he hears the crew calling for another song. Look at Ed here. He looks as haunted, as disturbed, in this moment as he does at any point in Izzy's rant.

This is an important part of the scene, not just a closing note. Because if Izzy (the Caribbean's most emotionally constipated man) can see through him, obviously the whole crew can too.

Obviously Lucius – who advised Ed on his and Stede's relationship, who played along with Ed's 'fictional character' claim, who wrote down Ed's lyrics – can do so most of all.

There's a direct emotional logic to Ed killing Lucius because he had a fight with Izzy, and it doesn't involve Ed having been threatened or hate crime'd at all. Ed doesn't deal well with his own feelings (from Stede), so he chooses to become Blackbeard/the Kraken and gets rid of all the witnesses who saw otherwise.

#meta #our flag means death #I've been thinking about writing this up for a while but finally got motivated to finish it before S2

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inconsistent-kuroshitsuji-blog · 10 months ago

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Can I request Sebastian with a gender neutral s/o (or master) who had a mental breakdown bcs of math and acted like nothing happened infront of him? (I'm gonna lose my mind over math)

My dearie, of course. I know, it has been a while, but now I am here. (That sounded like I'm some sort god-figure.) I'm about 90% sure that I have completely lost my mind over math and have no way of getting it back.

Sebastian comforting you after you lose your mind over your math homework

When the fuck did math get letters? Why does math need letters? Why must it make a problem out of everything? Who cares at what degree a certain angle of a roof of a weird art exhibition is. Why should you care at what height a discoball is located if a laser hits it at a certain angle? And who even thinks of such ridiculous problems?

Advanced education? More like an advanced headache. You've sat here at your desk for about three hours, longer than you planned to. You were just trying to do your homework, but nothing was working out. The numbers didn't add up, you don't even know where to start at. It is all too much, too much at once, you just can't handle it anymore.

Throwing away your pencil, you start sobbing over that darned piece of paper. What is this supposed to teach you? Well, nothing that matters to you, of course, yet you're still forced to keep up with algebra and geometry and analysis, totally useless in your daily life. If only these problems were solvable with tears. The only thing they do for you right now is smudge your already hastily written tasks and solutions. Oh, how you hate this. You can only hate this. How could you ever do anything else-?

Your door opens. What now? Who has come to bother you at your lowest point of the day?

"Is everything alright, my dear?", you hear, yet you don't look up. You don't have to do so to know who is there. You'd recognise his gentle voice in a crowded room full of people who don't know how to properly adjust their voice volume. You also want to save yourself from the embarrassment of him seeing your puffy red eyes. So you only mumble something into your arm, something along the lines of "Maybe, I don't know, leave me alone.".

But he didn't. Of course he didn't leave, he never really does what you tell him to. Just like his beloved cats, Sebastian does what he feels like doing at any given point. So if he wants to physically see your tears for his amusement, he will watch them slowly run down your cheeks. You hear how he places something infront of you.

"If everything truly was alright, you'd show me your beautifull face. So, look up for me.". That snarky bastard. You'd hate him for that if you didn't love him more. So you slowly look up to him, eyes all puffy and swollen. "See? I'm fine.". You finally realised he placed a batch of biscuits infront of you, freshly made of course. Sebastian looks down at you with that smirk he always seems to have on his face. "Well, I don't believe you. You're a bad liar, kitten. What is troubling you?". He doesn't even wait for your answer, he just looks down and responds with a little "Ah.". He saw everything he needed to see.

"Is your scholarship too hard on you again? Or is it you being too hard on yourself?", he asked while sitting down next to you. He seemingly tries to make out what you wrote, but it is simply incomprehensible thanks to your tears. "I told you already, it's nothing. Just some stupid problems. As if I would've brought them to class anyway..."

"Frustrated, are we?". "Shut it...", you deliberately look away, yet he pulls you into his arms and starts to stroke your head. "Now, no need to cry over silly made up numbers and problems. Rest your head for now.". Sebastian slightly nudges your head onto his chest. Maybe he's right. You should take a little break, just for now.

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Phew, finally something fresh on my paige. As you can guess, I'm well and alive, more alive than well but alive nonetheless. I'll see how I can get back on track. But until then, I will fulfill the meaning of my name by disappearing suddenly and reappearing again. Like a little ghost.

Until then~

Your Inconsistent Kuroshitsuji Blog~

#black butler #kuroshitsuji #sebastian michaelis #black butler sebastian michaelis #kuroshitsuji sebastian #sebastian michaelis x reader #black butler sebastian

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beevean · 2 months ago

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Second half of S2. I think the best way I can summarize my state is saying

and trying to put my thoughts in order.

While it is slightly less disjointed than OG S3, the sheer number of plotlines that they attempted to tackle means that every scene lasts about 30 seconds before having to switch over. I genuinely struggled to keep up with what happens in each episode, until E6 where everything converges. And what made it even worse is the realization that... very little of what I watched actually matterered to the plot.

"But Beev, it's a character-driven story! Like Best Character Of All Time Isaac's!" I get that. And you know what? With stuff like Maria/Tera and Mizrak, I do see the potential for a good character-driven story, especially as the show is finally tackling more complex themes with vampirism instead of reducing them to elves or evil oppressors! But... I cannot get invested. I failed to connect with the characters, and the show keeps throwing other shit at me to divert my focus. This is simply a mess that has been bombarded into my eyes, while simultaneously being empty of content. And it is frustrating, because I want to like the less irritating parts.

Like this scene:

This is adorable. Random and another instance of fixing things too late, but it is a treat to see RoB Maria and finally some genuine emotions <3 literally the best scene in both shows idc. too bad it's drowned by the edgy pretentious Peak.

Anyway, time for the usual breakdown, character by character.

Taking a page from the OG S2, the heroes did nothing until the finale when they get to show off how cool they are. Think about it. Alucard recruits his sidekicks, they go to the Louvre, they get their asses kicked by Drolta, they split, and Annette suddenly has the revelation that the visions of her ancestors haunting her were trying to guide her to the solution of all of their problems: go and retrieve Sekhmet's third soul in the spirit realm.

And here I was hoping that it was some kind of internal turmoil for her. No. They were just the new Miranda, conveniently leading the hero to the solution. She just had to take five episodes to realize that for the suspence.

It's really weird. Annette in S1 was the focus of the season, infamously so, being all about her past as a slave and her desire to free everyone and thinking lowly of Richter for being a coward. Now, she was definitely made more pleasant for ship purposes, but then what is left of her? It says something that technically speaking, Annette wasn't even there in the finale! She was being possessed by Sekhmet!

Which, by the way, isn't just lovely? The descendant of a god being chosen by a god to become the vessel of a goddess. Why do we even keep Richter around?

This is not rhetorical. Why is Richter here? What does he contribute? Being the guy whose 90% of dialogue is swooning over Annette, fretting over her, telling us over and over why he loves her? (while I still don't know how Annette went from thinking he's useless to blushing around him and thinking he's cute.) Now, to be fair, he does kind of sort of talk about himself a few times... but it doesn't land. I don't care about his doubts as a Belmont now because they aren't relevant.

I've known I'm a Belmont and what that means since... since I could form words. Fighting evil, serving some kind of higher purpose. But then I watched Olrox kill my mother, and I understood the bitter fսcking truth. My mother died for absolutely nothing. Actually, she died because I tried to help her, which meant she had to protect me, and that's what got her killed. My whole life since then, I told myself it was so I could live. As if I was the higher purpose.

Why are we suddenly caring? Richter hasn't thought once of his dead moms (moms, Tera raised him too!) and in S1 he was all "I am a Belmont, and Belmonts kill vampires!". I understand the survivor's guilt, I do, I understand the logic "I need to fight otherwise my mother died for nothing", but okay, Richter, tell me: what does being a Belmont mean, in your opinion? Because it certainly isn't being locked in a generational fight against Dracula and realizing that once he dies, you have no purpose in life anymore!

The world's changing so fast. Belmonts, we're something from the past. Maybe there's no place for us anymore.

You know, I almost don't blame him. No wonder he thinks that Belmonts are a thing of the past. They sure were a thing of the 1980s-2000s. These shows hate the Belmonts with a burning passion and do everything in their power to make them tertiary.

But yeah, Richter and Annette bond over dead moms, woohoo. Thankfully this new, revamped Annette doesn't mock him over it, now that he has magic. It does get a bit ridiculous when Richter asks Alucard if he could change being Dracula's son, Alucard says that that would change other parts of himself that he'd rather not, and Richter immediately asks about his mother. I don't think Richter even knows Lisa's name, but he just can't help connecting to people through dead moms!

Oh yeah, Alucard! He's still a cunt. That's what his fans love about him. That, and how hot he looks after taking a bath in the shit-filled Seine, I suppose. E5 started with a moment so infuriating, it briefly took me to the OG S2 days:

call me carmilla the way i cry bloody tears

Now, to be perfectly fair, Annette does get her first big W by reminding Alucard that they all thought he killed Drolta and yet now she's back and stronger than ever. hell yeah it takes an asshole to put an asshole in his place 🥰 (although I wish they had done the same to her when she insulted Richter and no one reminded her that Edouard died because of her.) But more seriously, this shifts that line from "Sypha having a boner for Alucard and defending him at all costs" to "Annette trying to comfort Richter that he's not as useless as Alucard implies". I am glad that someone is finally on his side. But still, I am very tired of this. In the OG S2, Alucard was in theory justified because he was a grieving teen: how come this wise 300 yo old man still snaps at Belmonts when he's mad at himself? Now it's even worse due to the age difference. You can't have him stroke his dick over how old he is when emotionally he's still the same brat!

But yeah, this is Alucard in this season. They try so hard to make him sound old and wise and experienced and jaded. To the point where he says that he has fallen in love "countless times", and this is why he dares to give Richter advice on how to approach Annette romantically. I really don't know how to feel about this. It's not wrong, per se, but doesn't gel with my personal vision of Alucard - not just the game version, naturally, but I also can't really imagine show Alucard opening himself up like this, especially since this season paints him as being almost completely detached from human society. What sort of people does he fall in love with? The Belmonts? People like Greta? Eh, I could just take this as a cheeky reference to his Launcher of a Thousand Ships status lol. lmao imagine if they adapt the sorrow games and it turns out soma is one of alucard's many descendants when he lived his best slut life in japan fhdsjkfhskdhkj

I really don't know why they still bother to remind us that he's Dracula's son, though. Sure, they're correcting this from the OG show where the dude sympathized with vampires. But it's not like anyone gives a shit about Dracula anymore. Juste lowkey implied he's less impressive than Olrox. Richter didn't even know who Dracula was. In this setting, Dracula was just a more meow meow version of Erzsebet, not the closest thing to Satan who periodically threatens the world. Not even Dracula cares about himself anymore, since a WHOLE ECLIPSE happened and he's still chilling in Hawaii. Alucard has no reason to tie his identity to what in his perception is a dead man that was forgotten by history. He sure acts like a celebrity, though!

literally "bitch, don't you know who i am? 💅" i don't know, who are you? the one who allowed vampires to become human nobility?

There is, however, something that greatly bothers me about Alucard's untold past.

(why 14? had they said 18, it would have been a neat reference to HoD, even though I know it can't have happened)

If the Drolta plotline (more on that later) didn't convince me that this season was hastily rewritten, this would. Alucard keeps flipflopping between being solitary and being a Belmont ally through generations, which he apparently counted. I'd assume that, considering how much emphasis on his age is put, "years" for him means multiple decades, perhaps a whole century. So which is it? Did he fight alongside Christopher and Simon, whatever they did, and then got tired by the time Juste was born?

Speaking of the Belmonts, what happened to Dracula's castle? Why didn't they stay there, as their new hold? Are you going to explain that, show? No? Okay.

By the way, once again, I was ready to call Alucard a cunt (not helped by his condescending "Trevor would be proud [at Richter's sarcasm]" which I hate on principle), but him being tired of seeing Trevor's descendants die is a pretty good reason for wanting to distance himself and spare himself the pain. See, once again, I'd care much more about Alucard's experiences with immortality if he was more likeable. I'd accept him being more standoffish because his heart has been hardened by so many people dying, if he didn't start out as an 18 yo piece of shit who insulted Trevor's whole lineage for petty reasons.

Oh, and if he didn't literally, deadass, lead the actual Robespierre in the revolution. What the fuck. You know, I was joking about him telling Galileo Galilei about the heliocentric theory! Now I'm totally expecting the Sorrow adaptation to mention in passing that he was the one who killed Hitler!

And you know what? You know fucking what? For all of his posturing, Alucard is just as useless as Richter! His only purpose in the plot is to basically tell the gang "here's what we need to defeat the villain", then he failed spectacularly by allowing Drolta to snatch the McGuffin (and blamed Richter for it), then he basically inserted himself dick first in the Revolution plot to give him something to do in the two-parter finale! He didn't even care about the Revolution! He said so! The Revolution is a completely pointless backdrop to the fight against Sun Thundercat! You know, I'm impressed, I honestly thought he'd be the real protagonist of the show, but no, they managed to waste him too. peak.

Maria, Tera and Juste are all connected, but Maria is pretty much the only character going through an arc here, as Juste is nothing more than Maria's babysitter and adoptive grandpa (yeah, clearly they're trying to establish a "found family" theme as also mentioned by Alucard, but sure it's nice of him to call Maria his family when dude abandoned his blood grandson and hasn't still quite reconnected with him). I think that what they're trying to do with him is to basically prevent Maria from falling down the same pit of despair he did until two days ago, but it doesn't really work, Juste feels like a plot device and Maria's reaction is different than his anyway, since she's falling into... well, edginess.

In fact, Maria is so edgy, that she out of nowhere gets the idea of making her mom bite her to turn her!

Maria: It feels good... to have such power. To control such powerful forces. To have power over life and death. Juste: It shouldn't feel good, Maria. The world can be a dark place, full of horror. But if you surrender to the darkness, what's the point in living? None of us counts for much. All of us will be forgotten eventually. But there's something miraculous about us being here at all. To see this world. Breathe its air. Smell the forest at night. Feel the sun on our skin. If we're still able to do that... there is a point in living. Maria: And maybe there's even more point in living forever. He's right. This was different. Killing my father. This was murder. I can never go back to who I was. But I could be with you forever. *exposes neck*

Just a taste of the dialogue here. Juste doesn't even feel like a real person at this point. Why is he talking to Maria like she said that she wants to die? Is he projecting his own depression? Or is it only so that she can talk about living forever?

Maria, the girl who sees the world in black and white and therefore slotted vampires in the "evil" category, being ready to ditch her humanity because she'd rather live with her mom forever and perhaps out of guilt for killing her father out of revenge and not a righteous reason, is a very interesting idea. And this is why it's never brought up again :) Tera, with shocking self control for a newborn vampire, runs away from her to "find herself", leaving Maria crying and to be comforted by Juste. By the way, Tera's arc is done here lol. She runs away, lowkey implying that she manipulated Maria into killing her dad because "he deserved to die", and then she's the only open plot thread left for S3, enjoying the executions and perhaps glad of the dark path taken by her daughter, leaving ambiguous how much vampirism corrupted her.

Again, I kinda like this arc. I like that it ends with Maria declaring that the humans who worked alongside vampires (which I didn't notice at all, but maybe it was because I was inundated with too much Peak) deserve to be executed, probably still thinking about Emmanuel. It just rings hollow because Maria has always been a serious righteous fuck who only cared about the Revolution, with all that it entails, so I don't see much of a change in her. Maybe it could have worked better if they hadn't been cynical hacks in S1 and kept her RoB innocent personality. And I'm also irritated that they could have given this corruption arc to someone else...

(also, since I'm a horrible person, I am compelled to point out that the show leans heavily onto the "bite is sexual" trope, as shown by how predatory Sun Thundercat is with women and later on by Olrox with Mizrak. Therefore, having Maria begging for her own mother to bite her so that the two could live forever together is very. mh. well this is getting interesting i suppose)

As for the villains, before the finale, I just have to say: why in the sheer fuck do the villagers bow down to an obviously foreign vampire noblewoman?

Your Abbot, as you know, is dead. Murdered by a revolutionary. Your Abbot compared me to Joan of Arc. But I am not like her. She was defeated, burned like a witch. I will burn all your enemies. All your oppressors. Burn them all to ash. I am the one who wields the knife.

I get that these people are against the revolution, but really? They trust her as being better? I don't know anymore. Also her Sun Thundercat 2.0 transformation is a punch in the eye but we all know that.

oh right, olrox and mizrak. uhhhh they spend most of the time still doing their drama. Olrox is a passive force who mostly spends his time spying on everyone, Mizrak wants to fight. Since they don't really matter, I'll summarize the rest of their arc here: Mizrak joins the fight like he suddenly belongs, he's fatally wounded by a random vampire, Olrox saves him and decides to turn him into a vampire. The last shot we see of them is vampire Mizrak ready to rail that cockrox raw lmao. And, again, this is a good concept. Mizrak was shown being torn between his faith and his desire to sin with Olrox: therefore, vampirism for him means shedding his inhibitions and indulging in the sinful pleasures he has always coveted. This is good! And completely irrelevant to the story! Even thematically, vampirism hasn't been treated in this way by the story, not even with Tera! These two just make their own sideplot that never intersects with the main one! What's with this series and being unable to organically integrate gay people into their plot?

Okay, I think I covered everyone, so it's time for the grand finale.

The final fight is basically two episodes straight of this

and it's boring. I'm sorry. I get that the animation is cool and the anime fights are cool, but I just find boring to watch a bunch of people throw flashy but redundant spells to an invincible foe. Yeah yeah muh Harmony of Dissonance spells, that just pisses me off at this point, you didn't even mention Maxim once and had him and Lydie be fridged offscreen while the game can't happen due to the lack of Dracula's relics but you're pretending we're suddenly fans of the games?

(a small correction, though. Apparently, Juste's ring is not meant to be the friendship bracelet, but the Aurora Ring, the one that increases the power of the Sacred Fist. While I don't understand why it's specifically that ring, since Juste never uses punches, I do appreciate a more niche reference.)

Hey guys. Remember how fun it was to play Portait of Ruin and having to protect Charlotte for 20 seconds as she casts her plot-solving spells? This is Sekhmet's role in the fight. A sitting duck who tries, for half an hour of real time, to absorb Sun Thundercat's Sekhmet soul to weaken her, while Richter sometimes goes to cool her down with his ice powers. For a goddess, she is quite weak. And I would dearly love for someone to come here and explain to me what the fuck was that monster that Annette fought for the entirety of the finale in the spirit world. And, in the meantime, Alucard and Olrox fight Drolta, with the weird implication that the latter is stronger than Dracula's son since he's much more successful at keeping her down (and that they met once, because we like making fans speculating). Again, I need to stress out: the heroes do nothing of importance until the plot lets them win.

And then this happens.

youtube

alright. So, memes are in order.

youtube

But I think it's time to talk about rewrites, right?

Sun Thundercat's death feels not just pathetic, but spiteful. Compare it with other deaths: Dracula cried that he was killing his boy and let himself be impaled, Carmilla exploded herself to not allow Isaac to claim a victory, Lenore sunned herself because her life got a little more uncomfortable. They are undignified deaths, but they are at the very least graceful. We are meant to feel something for them. Sun Thundercat has an utterly pathetic breakdown, and then she's randomly betrayed by Drolta, who cements herself as the Real Big Bad.

No one liked her. Erzsebet Bathory has been, from day one, derided as a flat, cartoonish villain with a stupid plan. Her design is ridiculous, her personality never goes beyond "smug wannabe goddess", and her only power is being invincible. She is boring, and always has been. But Drolta? Oh, Drolta was cool. Nevermind that in S1 she also had the depth of a piece of paper. Everyone loved her many designs, everyone thirsted over her BDSM get up, everyone thought she was a huge badass in fight. So, what did they do? Give her a whole backstory and kick her upwards to the role of the true puppetteer who was in control the whole time :) basically, they gave her the Isaac in S3 treatment.

yeet, you waste of screentime

And in the meantime, I'm here left asking two questions. One, why didn't Drolta absorb Sekhmet's soul from the get go, instead of wasting so much time finding the right vessel and killing countless women? She had no hesitation trying it now.

And two... why did we spend so much time with Sun Thundercat? What was the point of hyping her up as this great figure, much more terrifying than Dracula, only for this to happen? This isn't cathartic. This isn't fun.

Sun Thundercat is a pathetic villain, by far the worst in the series, even more wasted than Carmilla, with less feats on her belt than everyone combined despite the hype. And they didn't even try to fix her. Instead of making her a better character, they doubled down on her being flat and then pulled a bait and switch for fanservice purposes. Drolta is probably the most inoffensive villain in the series since Dracula, but that doesn't erase the sloppy, disingenuous writing.

She doesn't put much of a better fight, either. Now Alucard joins Richter in their epic team up, because of course. And I'm going to sound like a Classic purist, but I am sick and tired of the shows ignoring the Vampire Killer. Why in the fuck is Richter fighting Drolta with magic punches? Didn't Dracula mock Trevor for that? You have a consecrated whip, you imbecile!

oh, then they redo the same scene they did with Sun Thundercat, with Sekhmet being all angery that Drolta defiled her, Drolta sobbing and whimpering that she did everything for her, and the two engaging in some sort of Avatar spiritual fight that makes Annette's eyeballs explode or some shit.

Btw, gotta love this epic reference to Sonic '06:

I don't think you will live anywhere if you don't let her do her thing, genius.

I could be generous and think that he's so attached because he doesn't want to lose another person. I like some details here, like Richter using his ice magic to embrace Annette's searing body. It's just. I don't buy this romance's foundations, because S1 fumbled so bad. Alucard says that Annette laughs at Richter's jokes, and debates his ideas, which means that she loves him, but is that really enough for him to declare that she's more important than the world he swore to protect? Also, why does Annette like him back? Because he constantly tries to protect her, even though that should piss her off according to her S1 personality?

btw

shut up you cunt

Speaking of the cunt, Richter kills Drolta by using Alucard's sword infused with ice magic. No, I have no clue why it works except anime logic. The Vampire Killer can go fuck itself. yay. To top it all off, Richter is surprisingly chill when he spots Olrox, even calmly echoing his promise of "killing him one day, but not today". hey, remember how Richter used to suffer from PTSD over his mom's murder and panicked at Olrox' presence? remember how Olrox was built up to be this msyterious, charismatic figure with his own agenda and plans for the little Belmont? guess that's another tease for S3!

The ending feels like a fusion of the one of OG S2 and S4. Richter and Annette pull a whole Trepha and abandon Maria to her own grief. Nice job guys! She is still crying for her parents but you just have to bone in private, I suppose! So much for muh family! Well, at least Maria will hang out with her new grandpa and Alucard, who...

ah. mhh. well. This is bound to be very funny lol.

(btw, it's perfectly fine for a 16 yo to crush on an older man lol. We'll just have to see what said older man will do with it.)

Oh, Edouard! I forgot about him because he was nothing more than a jukebox: his only character development is that his extra hands move away from his face, maybe because he's no longer ashamed of himself. Well, he's coming to Saint Domingue too with Annette and Richter! Yes, as a Night Creature. Annette simply says "the people there have had worse nightmares than you" and the matter is settled. Hey, remember when she felt guilty for being the cause of his fate? Remember when she was this close to mercy killing him? It doesn't matter anymore! Yay, just like Dracula and Lisa! Conflict is for those who are sure they're going to get a next season!

And while Richter and Annette kiss and are all cute and everyone is happy, I'm left wondering who was the true protagonist of this season. Richter? No, he did fuck all until the end. Annette? Same. Alucard? He could have vanished in E1. Maria? She got a lot of focus, but ultimately irrelevant to the main conflict. Juste? Tera? Mizrak? Olrox? Don't make me laugh.

Drolta, then? The season took the time to give us her backstory to explain how she got here. She stole the mummy, which is what caused the final fight. And that's it. Once again, I feel the need to use Carmilla as a comparison: she was the true star of the OG S2, because she was the only character in both plotlines to actively do something, and she acted throughout the whole season, even if in the end she didn't get what she wanted. What is this season even about? How do you summarize it? Why is it so rushed and confusing? Why did they try so much and muddle every theme they could have tackled, like the effect of vampirism on your soul, or the dark path grief can take you, or finding a new family?

and oh right. the shadowy figure that seems interested in maria and tera. i don't even know. we'll see in s3 i guess. which will happen, since this season has currently a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes because it is considered peak fiction.

anyway,

#anti netflixvania #beev watches nocturne #long post #i'm tired chief #i need to replay rob #Youtube

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starstruckodysseys · 11 days ago

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the lanie woodward relationship breakdown !!

(bc chart was sort of a bold word for it so we’re here now)

okay so first off. this is going to be very rambly and tangential. possibly a little cringe. definitely deeply embarrassing for me personally. however i have love in my heart and whimsy in my soul and if you’re mean to me i’ll cry. anyway here we go!!

liv: ohhh skyward my loves. they start off as sort of… distant friends? like they get along well enough, but they’re not super close. this does not stop lanie from forming an awful, terrible crush on her, because lanie is who she is, which means she instinctively flirts her way into having genuine feelings and then continues to play them off as a joke. everyone is aware they are not a joke. slowly, they become actual friends, gossiping and joking and getting unnecessarily emotional during shifts. slowly, lanie’s crush develops from surface level to something all encompassing, consuming, heart wrenching. and then they get sucked into the movie, and everything sort of flips — they get arrested, lanie says she’s not abandoning liv, the kiss bet happens, they talk in the rainforest, sort of (they don’t kiss, though), they fight their boss, and then they talk about none of this. they’re Just Good Friends. obviously.

wendell: short version: work friends turned best friends turned ???. long version. oh boy. they’re work friends, a little distant but still chill, until lanie notices wendell’s crush on liv (it doesn’t take long he’s not subtle) and is like “woah same hat!!” so they bond over that. world’s least subtle fanclub indeed. slowly, they become actual friends. slowly, lanie forms another world ending crush. it’s actually not very slow this one sort of hits her all at once and she’s like. well fuck. so she ramps up the teasing to hide it, drops the fake flirting for the most part because what if he realizes. he doesn’t btw. because he knows how she reacts around liv, so he knows how lanie is when she has a crush, and that’s not how she is around him, so there. lanie uses the same logic on wendell. they’re both really stupid about it. and then the movie happens, and lanie gets blackout drunk and accidentally says she loves him, and then she forgets that so they never really talk about it. and then they get out of the movie, and she accidentally confesses, and they still don’t really talk about it.

that’s kind of the moral here. i don’t know what’s going on with these three. they don’t either, to be fair. they’re all Very Good Friends and they disappear behind the store during their breaks for normal and platonic reasons. i think they eventually talk about it. something has to give, eventually, and one of them probably snaps, and it’s really messy until it isn’t because it’s that weird technically-teen-technically-adult space of being 18/19 and having your first relationship and none of you really knowing what you’re doing. but also they’re sort of just friends who kiss. so nothing really changes. and i think that’s pretty neat <3

anyway. rest of the chart.

dang: partners in disrespecting dave balt and clocking in chronically late. every time dave threatens to fire one of them, the other threatens to quit, and he can’t lose two employees so he just stops. they hang out on smoke breaks except lanie doesn’t really smoke (usually) so she’s kind of just moral support. she��s bad at it. they talk about aliens and being outcasts and people not really believing in them. particularly their family. lanie doesn’t necessarily believe in rashab, but she’s not really going to say that, and also, like, who is she to say what’s real, really. they end up at the kennel club fight together, and lanie’s a little upset about dang running out on them, but also she gets it, kind of. especially once he (eventually) explains it — she’s a little snippy with him about it, at first. she supports him about rashab, in the end. it’s pretty rad to believe when no one else does. he makes fun of her for her crushes and also for the fact she becomes a “goody two shoes” once she starts showing up on time. she just rolls her eyes and says she has more game than him.

russell: one thing about lanie is she will be actively and casually combative with anyone. maybe combative isn’t the right word? she thinks russell’s flirting is weird, is the point. she’s better. they’re sort of the “aren’t you a sweetheart/someone call hr” meme. except lanie’s actually worse about it and they do probably need hr but they don’t have it so. whatever. she doesn’t hate him, they’re pretty chill actually, it’s just sometimes he goes a little Too Far. they don’t spend a ton of time together in the movie until lord’s, when lanie gets blackout drunk and then cries at russell about tricycle metaphors. he sort of gives her advice but he’s also drunk so it’s not… good. he does remember the conversation, though, and he’s absolutely going to bring it up later, much to her chagrin. she teases him a lot when he technically becomes her boss, but she’s more respectful of him than she is of dave. she at least starts coming in on time.

paula: lanie doesn’t hate paula. really. mostly because she has a distaste for authority, and paula, despite how hard she tries, is not necessarily authority. paula doesn’t necessarily adore lanie, to start with, on account of her blatant rebel attitude — lanie probably covers for liv’s shoplifting because paula’s way more likely to expect it from her — but she eventually realizes that lanie just dresses like that and isn’t actually a criminal. probably. lanie may or may not have a breakdown about college and such in front of paula and paula isn’t great at advice, but they can both relate to shitty situations and getting the short end of the stick. lanie fully supports whatever paula has going on with cosmo as jack. and also with lucy as both jack and herself. eyes emoji. she teaches her about ao3 which is great for them and terrible for everyone else.

usha: here’s the thing. usha is willing to tell a story at any given moment. lanie will abuse this in the same way that a student will bring up a new topic to get their teacher off track. dave will tell her to do something and she’ll be like “but usha needs my help :(” because she knows he never yells at usha usually. important to note she has nothing against usha, but her hatred for dave outweighs most other things. she’s tried to help usha get better with technology, but she gave up pretty quickly after she realized it was a lost cause. they share a car during the long beach 5000 because lanie can’t drive and usha offers to drive her before anyone else can volunteer. lanie tries to stop the oil shirt from happening. she does fail. they get arrested together. lanie picks up on g13 taking over pretty early but she doesn’t bring it up right away and then feels awful for it later. she Does help usha with technology after the movie, especially now that lanie’s the social media manager and sort of always dealing with that.

#this post has a target audience of like three people #and one of them is me #but we ball #reese’s ocs #lanie woodward #sky full of stars #i’m going to throw that one in there. for fun

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sourw0lfs · 1 year ago

Text

dance with the devil - part nine

Words: 571 | Rating: E (mostly parts 1 & 2, but also future parts) | CW: no warnings this time! except Steve's continued bad time

part one || part two || part three || part four || part five || part six || part seven || part eight || part nine || part ten || part eleven || part twelve

Turning twenty-one is supposed to be big and fun and momentous. Or at least that’s what everyone’s always told Steve, but he thinks it’s off to a rather crummy start actually. Surely that means it can only go up from here, right?

Except that part where it absolutely doesn’t do that. If anything, Steve finds his luck getting worse and worse. From missing his bus to losing his wallet to dropping his phone, it feels like one little thing after another little thing, and quite frankly he’s sick of it. If he didn’t know better, he’d blame Eddie.

But the thing is, Steve’s always kind of had awful luck, so if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s his own. It doesn’t make him feel better about Eddie just always being there, though.

“Are you absolutely sure you can’t just fuck off for like an hour?” Steve asks exasperatedly and for what feels like the hundredth time.

“Trust me,” Eddie deadpans in return, looking just as annoyed as Steve feels which only serves to make him bristle more, “if I could leave for any length of time, I would. But I get dragged back here any time I try.”

If Steve were less annoyed, he might feel sorry for Eddie. Something about a lack of freewill makes him sad, angry, upset? He’s not sure. But Eddie’s annoying, so Steve can’t bring himself to feel bad for anyone but himself. He’s never done well with being annoyed.

“What if you talk to whoever the hell is in charge of you or whatever?” Steve suggests, not for the first time in the week they’ve known each other. “Surely they can give you some kind of away time.”

Sighing like the weight of the world is bearing down on his shoulders, Eddie shakes his head. “I can’t get to her if I can’t leave. And I can’t take you with me, so we’re just gonna have to figure out how to get along.”

It’s the same response Steve always gets, but that doesn’t make it any less grating. Steve wants to be alone. Preferably for a long time while he processes the disaster that was the morning after his birthday. Shoving it down, pretending nothing happened because he doesn’t want Eddie (or anyone else) to see how much it’s upset him, can’t work forever.

This time, though, a thought strikes Steve and he frowns in thought. “What if you tried your weird magic shit?” he asks. “You cleaned up a murder scene with it. Surely you can use it to allow me to be alone for a while?”

Mentioning the murder scene to someone other than himself leaves Steve grimacing, but it’s the reality of things. It also brings him that much closer to a breakdown, but he keeps it held back. He always does when the memory tickles at the edges of his brain, which is alarmingly often the longer he dwells on it.

Eddie frowns in thought, expression matching Steve’s as he considers the suggestion. “I don’t think it would hurt to try,” he allows after a few moments. “Not optimistic, but we don’t seem to need many angelic miracles right now so…”

Which Steve disagrees with, but he doesn’t say anything in response. Instead he just watches Eddie, watches as the blinding light fills the room just like it had all the times before, and when it clears Eddie is gone.

Steve is alone.

As always, tags below the cut. Let me know if you want added!

@chaosgremlinmunson @soaringornithopter @hbyrde36 @shares-a-vest @dreamwatch @quevadilla @tboyeddiee @penny00dreadfull @momotonescreamingg @stevesbipanicic @dawners @steddiejudas @just-my-latest-hyperfixation @estrellami-1 @vthx @lolawonsstuff @gleek4twd @littlebluejane @swimmingbirdrunningrock @lawrencebshaggoth @sadisticaltarts @queenie-ofthe-void @r0binscript @anaibis @hairdressersdoitwithstyle @goodolefashionedloverboi @spookednsaucy @anne-bennett-cosplayer @flustratedcas

#fox writes things #steddie #steddie fic #steve harrington x eddie munson #steve x eddie #steddie brainrot

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darkseed-two · 1 month ago

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Oh about the feederisation explosion moment death.

I think. Personaly. Dark Seed could have leaned more into the sexual and Giger (thematic) horror. It's the first thing DS1 shows. But then it is kind of Over apart from the bad ending. Sad.

It would be comically out of place with DS2's general tone but idk. Guy probably has some kind of alien brain impregnation trauma, but we don't get to see that facet explicitly iirc.

I suppose I mean that it ends up just being the catalyst, then Mike is just like "damn……… anyway. the battery still works! also I didn't kill anybody."

I'm thinking too much about this stupid funny game and it wouldn't have been the done thing at the time but…… I continue to think anyway.

Unrelated. Have you noted how the dream sequence that in baby head -> mike head -> scargy head -> sküll dream, his head is on the same mount design as the heads on the generator in the sequel. I thought that was mildly interesting.

gonna say this two things real quick before anything else 1) honestly if i had the chance to go back in time and change anything about the darkseed games i probably wouldn't as theyre so perfect in their own garbage way / doing anything to them would give them a different energy. and 2) i am probably going to get SO dark(seed) with what im about to say so please forgive me. that being said lets get down to business (to Defeat. The huns)

read more divider put here because this shit is gonna be looooong

I agree with you 100% about the missed opportunity of the sexual thematics of gigers art being implemented more into the game; as much as i wouldnt want to actually change anything about the game, if somebody told me to go nuts with a remake or something i would absolutely get a little freakier with it

yes! literally 80% of gigers works are abstracted visuals of sexual penetration so its a mystery to me as well that it didn't get more of a focus. They already borrowed the whole forced male pregnancy thing from the Alien movies, so why not just go apeshit? All of the deaths in ds1 dont really have anything to do with those themes (unless you count the library drekketh guard/weird vagina-looking skull creature impaling him in the chest) so. missed opportunity. i think the main reason why they never leaned into that is because they didnt want an X rating. it wouldve killed any chances of making money as pornographic games got hidden behind the counter back then

This next part is long and probably a bit tedious to read so i apologize, but i just.🤷i gotta get my thought process out about this whole thing- mainly the two main takes, the chad "ancients are real" vs the bitchass "mike is just crazy" theories.

If you go with the whole "its all in his head" bullshit, I feel like the first game would imply that he was orally sexually assaulted the first night he moved into the house. & him being like this plain boring straight cis man who does nothing but ad work all day, that shit clearly fucked up his mental health SO bad. Even with the ancients being real, being forcibly impregnated would be just as traumatizing. I know that in the beginning of the game Mike writes it off as a nightmare, but by the time he sets foot in the dark world he HAS to know that somethings wrong. i feel like it left him dumbfounded and unable to grasp the whole situation at the time with how little he says about his fetus "ailment" (mentioning NOTHING about the weird infant doll), especially going off of his final line where he says hes "only beginning to understand". After the events of Ds1, it would only make sense in Ds2 that he would finally process what just happened to him and have a completely and utterly massive mental breakdown right before the start of the game. the question that plagues me about this is who even did that to him if not the ancients? i feel like if it was a person then they did it to him in his own fucking house. Having someone break into your new home to sexually assault you would probably destroy any and all feelings of security Forever. This would also explain his belongings being missing (the movers ""never showing up"") as they could steal his stuff as well. Also, with how they emphasize his sleepiness in the booklet, it feels like the symptoms of rohypnol to me. Did he get drugged somehow & got set up to be assaulted because of the real estate agents "obligation" to the previous owners?

I don't know where he could have been drugged, though, because on that fateful day the last person he interacts with is an old cab driver named Andy, who seems to be plagued with either the ancients energy or the horrors present in town. Mike does not appear to eat or drink anything either in his travel from the airport to the house. Also, Beverly does not show up at the house, and is never mentioned again. If I had to take a guess, I'd say Beverly did show up, and that hes blocking it out of his memory.

He also forgets her name when this happens. I feel like that would further cement that he's blocking out the events of that night + this entire narrative is in the past tense + him forgetting her name at the time could be taken as symbolism of trauma response. I don't think being roofied makes you forget peoples names. but yet again idk maybe. fuck if i know. i feel like what they're actually implying is that beverly was merely a pawn (and the "family" is the ancients), which would blow Ds2's insisting that its all in mikes head completely out of the water. (I noticed that ds1 treats it more like the ancients are actually real - ill elaborate on this later). What this all means for the role of the pills at the end of the game, I don't know. Maybe Mike was secretly FtM all along and sue got him abortion pills or something idfk

I know that 1) john mckeegan is said to be the previous owner, 2) his journals in the game depict that he went through a similar torment to mike (but not impregnated), 3) ultimately ended up dying of a stroke, but this does not explain the weirdness of the real estate agent and the whole transaction if the ancients arent real. Who the fuck inherited the house when mckeegan died? are they actually out of state or is she lying through her teeth? I feel like every little bit of info from this beverly character is complete bullshit lies. the house isnt even in good structual health as players were supposed to fix the staircase in the hallway or mike would eat shit and die from falling (never implemented though). so i wouldn't doubt if she was the one who set him up to get assaulted. was mckeegans family fucking with him too if the ancients dont exist? is mckeegans family actually like this evil fucked up group of nefarious serial killers that hide out somewhere in town pillaging and raping people at night? The ds1 hintbook all make the characters drone on about how its "sooooo SCARY out here from all the MURDERS" but like no one is ever directly mentioned being murdered as far as im aware.

all of them talking up a storm about how its sooooo dangerous in town and how people keep getting murdered makes me feel like they were going for a completely different route with the game initally. I feel they were trying to make it plainly obvious that the ancients are real (more on that in a bit), but with how Ds2 changed everything this could all easily be supporting evidence that there are a lot of nefarious types roaming the streets of this town.

All of this is grounds for very sick and sadistic things you could do to this poor man or the others. texas chainsaw / motel hell / children of the corn type of shit with how vicious these mysterious killers seem to be.

Now, for the opposite "ancients are real" theory; They mention Sue having dreams of Mike asking for help- something thats barely touched upon until right at the very end of the game. Delbert vaguely implies he knows about the ancients when he says "those things" when referring to whatever mckeegan was dealing with. I can't remember where I read this but the cops in ds1 are supposedly under control of the ancients. Also, the whole Beverly situation. As much as I am a major fan of media that has an unreliable narrator angle to it (case in point: one of my favorite films ever is Total Recall 1990), I feel like Ds2 trying to insist that Mike is crazy is a direct spit in not only the players face, but on the original game as well, as Ds1 was very clearly making it out that the ancients were real. In fact, I argue that they opened up the game with that scene and had mike proclaim it as a nightmare to make the players be like Heh. Little Silly Funny Man. That Was Real! and honestly with how much everyone shits all over mike in ds2 (the writers included) it feels meanspirited and frankly ableist to give him a serious mental condition as hes framed as an annoying and pathetic nutjob + gives a completely wrong hollywood-type view of DID & the schizospectrum. Although I cannot deny that it clearly makes Ds1 a lot more interesting. Trying to figure out what would have happened in ""reality"" to him spawns a lot of ground for Nefarious and Evil brainstorming as shown above. I also kind of can't help but project schizoaffective disorder onto him. so. 🤷

For me, I have no lack of imagination for all the possible deaths mike (and co) could experience with these horrific thematics. It would probably not be wise to get into detail on that, though; when i talk about those topics it comes from a fucked up place of lustfully intense hatred and trauma-related suffering & id want to bash anyones head in who would use it as their own masturbation material. Also, just based off of that hilariously random feederism death, you could basically turn any extreme fetish into a death sentence for him. some real tom and jerry slapstick shit. like whatever the fuck was going on when moe howard got inflated and the other two stooges had to shoot him down. use mike as a clay pigeon for a giant harpoon made to look like a schlong or something idk the possibilities are endless 🌈 you can also imagine one of the big biomechanical women getting REALLY mad at mike and stomping him to death with a comically large high heel shoe

for the generator- it is pretty neat to see that reused for it. They also reused it on the far left here on the wall in the DW pool hall -

Im assuming that the Ds2 devs got the idea for the generator from this specific nightmare Mike had in Ds1. What this could mean in symbolic terms, I'm at a loss for right now. My brain juices are sapped up. Its been 3 hours writing this since I sat down and checked my notifications before I was going to watch the tooth fairy staring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and settle in for the night. It is now 1:54 Am and i want french fries from the air fryer. I will post this dangerously without proofreading and leave it for me tomorrow afternoon to fix any mistakes

edit:it fine

#we should think more about this stupid game. actually

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bikananjarrus · 4 months ago

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Elzar for the breakdown because I miss him

chip thank u for giving me the opportunity to talk about elzar 🙏 i miss him real bad too :(

(this got longer than expected but i have feelings about him)

how i feel about this character:

oh man, i just love him to bits. he was my favorite pretty much from the moment he showed up on page, and he's still my favorite. he's bisexual. he's a bit of a bitch. he will pout and get very sad if he doesn't get enough attention. he's a weird little jedi and just wants to be left alone to do his weird little experiments with the force. most of all i think i just love how much he tries and doesn't give up, even when he wants to, even when he's at his lowest. he's the heart!! and i just love him a lot!!

all the people i ship romantically with this character:

avar and stellan. they're the only ones for him because they match his freak <3 i'm a polycule truther, but also i love him and avar together, and also thinking about him and stellan makes me want to walk into the ocean so!

my non-romantic otp for this character:

HIM AND TY YORRICK!!!!! obsessed with their bitchy bisexual + brash lesbian dynamic. went from trying to kill each other (really just ty trying to kill him for stealing her lightsaber. understandable) to drift compatible besties. i love them <3 and no i'm not bitter that we haven't seen her at all since and elzar hasn't talked about her why do u ask

but also, cheating and giving you two more, i love him and orla's friendship, and his friendship with lina. he just keeps collecting these women who take one look at this depressed suicidal wet cat of a man and go yeah, we'll take that one.

my unpopular opinion about this character:

i am thankfully not involved with the corner of the fandom that argues about this, and this definitely shouldn't be as unpopular of an opinion as it is, but ELZAR DID NOTHING WRONG ON STARLIGHT and i will DIE on that hill! sure he killed chancey, but he had spent multiple days on a sinking space station with force creatures that were eating away at all the jedis' states of mind, and he saw somehow he knew to be affiliated with the nihil (their enemy!) and thought she was further sabotaging the station, so he stopped her. should he have asked questions first, swung lightsaber later? yeah, maybe. but he did what he did and it's fine and it's also not his fault stellan died. stellan knew what he was doing when he went down there. even though elzar blames himself, it's not his fault!

relatedly, fandom sure gives elzar a lot of crap for this when avar did almost the exact same thing. she would have killed lourna dee if keeve hadn't stopped her, and avar had a lot more murderous intent behind her actions than elzar did his. but no, let's go ahead and demonize the brown member of the firebrands instead of the blonde white woman.

one thing i wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon:

oh so many things. but really (and i understand this is probably a bit of a side effect of having multiple authors writing these characters across many years) but i think canon has introduced SO MANY cool storylines and possibilities for elzar and hasn't followed through on a lot of them. and now we only have one book left with him, and i'm a bit worried that it will be an unsatisfying conclusion for him :/

his force visions, for one. introduced in lotj, mentioned again towards the end of rising storm, and then not really talked about again, even though he was clearly connected to everything going on with the nihil and nameless through his visions. connecting him as a foil to azlin and not really going anywhere with that (which, i haven't read tears of the nameless, so there may be a bit more there, but still).

(okay, DEFINITELY probably an unpopular opinion, but it's related to what i'm talking about here, but i didn't love temptation of the force quite as much as the rest of the adult books, and i do think it diverged from plot to focus on the romance, which is fine, because i thought the romance was done very well, however. again. when we have one book left, now there's too much to cover and i feel like elzar took a step backwards idk)

overall, i think if you had to pick one character to be the protagonist of the adult books, elzar (or bell) is the strongest contender, and i feel like the authors keep forgetting that.

Give me a character; and i’ll break their ass down

#thank u again chip for letting me talk about this guy <3 #elzar mann #ask games #answered #mik chats

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rubykgrant · 6 months ago

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I had this one funny concept for a Magnus Archives AU that basically had Jon just constantly being pulled out of the main-character role, so stuff always STARTS to happen, but then it never actually WORKS, and I just thought of a very funny addition to it, so I'm sharing it again-

-At some point, Jon has a bit of a stress-induced breakdown at university and just drops out. Even though they aren't dating anymore, Georgie offers him a place to stay while he kind of tries to sort himself out, and he just. Stays. It's fine

-As a result, Jon is much less pretentious, but a LOT more blunt. He just doesn't keep any of his weird thoughts to himself, and has no inclination to keep up a "professional" appearance. Thus, Georgie gets gremlin-Jon as her roommate. It's fine

-Georgie eventually meets Melanie, and they collaborate on a few projects regarding various supernatural topics. Because Jon is just THERE, he always winds up heckling Melanie about her "spooky show". While it is annoying to hear them argue, Georgie notices that Jon and Melanie ironically motivate each other when it comes to research

-Melanie invites/dares Jon to come with her on a few investigation trips. Spooky stuff keeps trying to kill Jon, he's like a magnet for this stuff, but also nothing ever manages to kill him. He and Melanie work together more, having this weird antagonistic-rivalry thing going on as they explore creepy areas, and film monsters trying to bite off Jon's head. Then they both go back to Georgie's apartment, where Jon cooks everybody dinner. This is actually sort of nice???

-Georgie and Jon eventually visit the Magnus Institute, for spooky reasons, and learn about the recently missing Archivist, while meeting the "temporary research team"; Martin, Tim, and Sasha. They're all a little unorganized, but willing to help answer questions if they can. Jon has ZERO hesitation or humility, just flat-out telling Elias he's weird, and also telling Martin "You look like the human personification of a classical painting of a sky full of clouds in soft morning light. Where's the bathroom?"

-Elias is silently losing his mind, because this rude little man is practically RADIOACTIVE with fear-marks, but Jon has no interest working here, and even if he did, Jon doesn't have the "qualifications" for being an Archivist (not that it really matters, but for the farce of legality, it would help). Martin is perpetually flustered, because he truly can't tell is Jon is flirting with him or not (to be fair, Jon isn't sure either. he's not gonna stop, though)

-Georgie comes along at some point to see the library, and Elias is BAFFLED by her; she has almost as many marks as Jon, but somehow feels "blank" when he tries to SEE what caused any of these fears (he doesn't understand she is incapable of feeling fear like that). Well, Georgie sure has the qualifications for the Archivist position! Elias offers her enough money for her to take the job, and as a bonus (for Elias... or so he thinks), Jon helps her record/catalogue various statements

-Georgie keeps being a wrench in the works. Nothing bad happens to Sasha. The very first day Martin doesn't come in for work, Georgie asks Jon to go check on him, he sees the worms, tells Georgie, who makes up a more believable lie to get some rescue people over there, and Jane Prentiss is dealt with right away. Martin doesn't get trapped in his apartment for days and days. Georgie saves everybody from the Circus shenanigans. It goes on like that. Occasionally, Elias will call somebody like Peter to try and scare people, but Georgie keeps fixing it, and Jon keeps being a fear-magnet who also won't die (Elias is most sincerely pissed-off)

-Also, because Martin's apartment still got all gross, Georgie and Jon invite him over to stay until he finds a new space. Martin still isn't sure if Jon is flirting with him, but he kinda likes being doted on... (at this point, yes, Jon approaching him with romantic intent. He doesn't change anything about his behavior, so to Martin, there is no difference. It might not be clear until Jon asks what Martin wants to do for their 6 month anniversary)

#the magnus archives #tma

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xoxo-ren-xoxo · 1 year ago

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ohh holy shit ren tell me abt pearl and scar in the apocalypse au. I haven’t read through all the posts abt it just the main explanation but tell me more. Who do you think breaks first out of mumbo and grian? Who stops trying first? ohhh what the hell you can’t keep doing this to me . Please keep doing it but like ohhhhh -🤖

HI IM SO EXCITED I GET TO TALK ABOUT THIS AU AGAIN

LONG POST AHEAD UNDER THE CUT:

Pearl: I put more info about the side/background characters here but something I didn't mention about her is that she is VERY protective of Grian, and when Mumbo causes Grian pain (unintentionally) she gets very angry and almost violent with him. She's always kind of around, even though she doesn't show herself very often. Most of the time she's out pretending to be human - either hunting humans or trying to learn more about them so she can blend in even better. She just kinda does it all so much better than Grian can, lol.

Scar: little freak of a man. He and Cub walked into a wormhole and came back Weird. Mumbo thinks Scar is dead because Grian can mimic his screams and Outsiders only tend to do that with dead people (because copying someone who is still alive is... kind of pointless). Scar and Mumbo were coworkers, and Scar sees Mumbo as a friend, but Mumbo is too much of a lonely little loser to realise he has friends. Anyway, Scar's genetic information got all shuffled about in that wormhole and now he's unusual. A bit vex-y. He might have a hunger for human flesh--

Who breaks first? Ermmmm. So I talked to Ange about this and... neither of us can actually remember. BUT I believe Mumbo breaks down about The Apocalypse and also Grian attacking him that one time. And. Stuff. Which causes Grian to push himself to look and act more human - which hurts him and eventually leads him to break down too, stealing Mumbo's crying sounds because he doesn't know how else to express his sorrow.

Grian abandons Mumbo because he doesn't want to scare him anymore, and he has a big breakdown in the middle of the woods alone, letting himself get hurt by other monsters. But eventually he returns to Mumbo when Mumbo is attacked by yet another monster. Pearl is properly introduced and is So Mad About These Idiots. But sees how much Grian cares and tries to get them to make up.

They try to reconcile but Mumbo eventually leaves in search of other humans - he can't just be around a monster forever. This is where he finds Xisuma and other survivors. Grian follows him. Eventually Mumbo finds Grian again and suggests they go to the suvivor's place together, with Grian disguised as a human. (Mumbo still doesn't really comprehend how much that Hurts Grian, but Grian complies anyway). And nothing bad happens (lie).

ANYWAY. THIS AU HAS A STONE GRIP ON ME AND ANGE. IT LIVES IN OUR HEADS RENT FREE.

#ben chats shit on the internet #hermitcraft #hermitblr #fanfiction #hermitshipping #grumbo #grian #mumbo jumbo #grumbo apocalypse monster au #anon #ask #anon: tordsgiantrobot

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sillyname30 · 1 year ago

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I just listened to the latest episode of and that's what you really missed on Glee.

Jenna said there may have been a hick-up. We may have thought there wasn't gonna be time, but we made it.

Darren: I didn't want to. But now that we're sitting here I admit that this is a re-do. This was supposed to happen last week and it just slipped my mind. I feel so bad. It was the last week of my run of Little Shop of Horrors. And there was this deluge of people reaching out. Family and friends coming from all over the place. I spent my entire day doing like schedule tetris, ticket tetris. I'm sitting all day doing this and there was that one Wednesday afternoon that seemed to like subside and I look on my calendar and I'm like 'I don't know how but there is nothing on my calendar here' and it felt really strange. I was watching Curb You Enthusiam (with Mia) and I felt weird because 'I'm supposed to be doing something. Something isn't right with it.'

Darren: The summer before senior year (college) I decided to visit friends in Los Angeles. Through a series of circumstances I met some agency people, casting director people that sent me on an audition for that would be the pilot of Glee.

After senior year Darren moved to Los Angeles and booked a TV show named Eastwick.

Later Darren put a video for something like an open call for Glee on My Space.

Darren used to go by his full name „Darren Everett Criss“. But in Starkid he was just „Darren Criss“ and he kept it that way because of the popularity of Starkid. (that was new for me)

Darren on the auditon for Blaine: I'm blindly aware of the importance of this audition. The idea of a new character being Chris' love interest was being picked up. I'm the kind of guy – like any audition I get I stalk every person involved. I learn everything about the casting director, everything about the show, trying to learn everything I need to know to maximize my chance of being involved in it. The breakdown of the person was Tom Ford. I got a haircut. I wore a prep school outfit for the audition.

Darren: I booked this huge thing. I didn't even watched the show a lot, but my then girlfriend now wife loved the show and watched it.

Darren: They flew me first class to New York to record this record (Teenage Dream). And I got to see the girl I was dating who lived in New York. There wasn't a guide track. So I kind of decided what to do, how I wanted to do it. I made suggestions. There were a lot of choices in it that were very deliberate from me.

Darren: I even didn't like the recording that I had and ended up recording at home with a buddy a redo of the vocals for one of the songs.

What I got from the first part: Darren had a totally different experience than Kevin and Jenna. Different audition process, different recording experience for most of the Warbler songs.

#and that's what you really missed on glee #darren criss

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via-rant · 2 years ago

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Hey don't you think it's funny how we don't get a specific age for Leo's cousin, Raphael? (Not TMNT people, don't get it confused!) Anyway! Here!

---------

Raphael was conflicted. He loved his cousin. But his mom hates him. So he tried to play with him as much as he could with his other little cousins. But one by one they all avoided him. Raph stayed until he could until his mom noticed him playing with him and kept him by her side whenever they were around. He was 9 when he got the news his Tìa Esperanza had died. He heard his mother screaming at him when they were at the police place. Everyone said Leo had killed her. And he believed it when he didn't deny it.

He yelled at him. Asking how could he do this? It broke his heart that he made his best friend cry harder. Leo apologized, saying it was an accident but he didn't care at the time. He punched him. His dad took him out to calm him down as his Mom took care of the rest. He remembers his life getting worse from there. His Mom went into depression and soon started drinking herself to sleep. His parents fought more and eventually got a divorce with 50-50 within a year.

His dad showed him how much he loved him and that he was there if he needed anything. That it wasn't his fault. It was Leos. Even after his breakdown in that room he still felt bad. He didn't want to. He was a muderer. He ruined their family. But Raph felt that that was wrong to say. Something more had to have happened.

By the time he was 12 he decided he needed to find him. Wanted to make up for how his family treated him and get the full story. He needed closure.

His mom was remarried by then and was doing better. His stepdad didn't care for him so they ignored each other.

His dad on the other hand was doing great. Took him everywhere, did a lot of searching and found out he wasn't religious, and found a wonderful girlfriend. They've grown closer since the first day and do everything together. They gave him a computer for his 12th birthday and he thanked them. They set it up and left him alone for a while.

He looked up his cousin. He got nothing. He emailed the lawer that was in charge of Leo's situation. He took the card out of the trash when his Mom tried to throw it away that day. The lawer said he "wasn't in charge of that freak anymore". Raph asked more and more questions and finally got the current social worker when he was 13. But realized he had no way to get there. None of his parents would approve of it and disown him. So he emailed them and said to wait a few years.

He immediately got into driving when he was 15 and looked for jobs. He met his girlfriend. She moved from Guatemala with her parents and he helped her with her homework and other things. And made it official. A year later he told her the situation with Leo and she understood. She said that it was weird that the door mysteriously locked but felt the same way about it being harsh how his family dissed him so quickly as he was obviously mentally ill and just needed help.

It took years to find him. But when they did Raph was 17. He was adopted by a couple in Indianapolis who had another daughter. Raph had a car, a house, and a good job by then. They decided to go job searching there. It took a while but they found somewhere to stay. He was excited but nervous. 8 years.

He didn't even have to knock when the door opened by a dark woman with grey hair in a bun.

"Hello, sir."

"Hello. I'm uh... I'm looking for Leo Valdez?" She raised an eyebrow her smile dropping.

"You with CPS?"

"No! No. I uh... I'm his cousin." He said and she glared and he gulped. Oh this was going to be fun.

#hoo #heros of olympus #leo valdez #raphael valdez

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shwoo · 2 years ago

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Grumpus Headcanons (3/3)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Here is all 1,100 words of headcanons for every Bugsnax character relationship I can think of from before the expedition. Every character relationship closer than Filbo and Eggabell, or Chandlo and Floofty, anyway. I don't think either of those pairs knew each other very well.

The Clumby and Journalist one is basically a summary of a fanfic I wrote (about what Clumby was thinking during the game's intro). The headcanon list came first, but I am very uneven about finishing things.

Relationship Headcanons

Jamfoot and Clumby He likes her and considers her a friend, but in a selfish kind of way, where he doesn't care if she's happy or not, and doesn't really respect her as a person. She thinks he's an idiot who ruined her life, and resents him for it. She also thinks that he saved her life, which is probably true, so her feelings are complicated. They do a trivia night together every couple of weeks, which Clumby enjoys but would never admit. I think that because it would be a funny thing for Jamfoot to act betrayed about if Clumby switched sides to Team Desperate Loser (that's what I call the main characters). Did trivia night mean nothing???

Bronica and Clumby Clumby had a crush on Bronica, which was part of the reason she went with her to Snaktooth. They'd already met when Clumby interviewed her, and Clumby was desperate to prove her ability to handle dangerous situations. So going on a secret expedition with her celebrity crush to a mystery death island seemed like a great idea at the time. Bronica was aware of Clumby's feelings, but she was in her 60s and Clumby was in her 20s, and Bronica saw her more as closer to her preteen granddaughter.

Bronica and Triffany Bronica nominally lived with Triffany and her more immediate relatives, but wasn't around much. She did take Triffany on some safer expeditions, and promised she'd take her along on a full adventure when she was old enough. But then Bronica disappeared. She definitely wanted to bring something back from Snaktooth for her. Probably talked to Clumby about it.

Chandlo and Snorpy From Chandlo's perspective, they got together soon after Snorpy was fired from his government job. Snorpy had just had a mental breakdown as a result of everything that was happening and dropped out of contact with Chandlo. Chandlo managed to get back in touch a month or so later, and being around him helped Snorpy feel like himself again. Chandlo deliberately didn't use the boyfriend word because he doesn't want to stress Snorpy out by moving too fast, but he assumed Snorpy did know they were dating.

Clumby and Journalist Clumby is very well-known in journalist circles, and the Journalist admires her work and considers her a big influence. They think she's a little inflexible and old-fashioned, but mostly their opinion of her is positive. Clumby thinks the Journalist is a good writer, but bad at picking what to write about. Her attitude in the opening cutscene was a bit more hostile than she usually is towards them, because she was stressed from watching Lizbert's video, but she was legitimately angry about their previous failures. The Journalist noticed that she was acting weird, but thought she was just out of coffee or something. She'd already decided to fire them by the time they insisted on going, and was trying to be nice by not telling them, since she realised she couldn't stop them. As she mentions at the end of the game, she thought they were definitely going to die, so she didn't think they'd ever have to find out.

Eggabell and Lizbert Their official status is "partners". They could get married if they want to, because homophobia isn't really a thing in this universe and any consenting adults can get marreid, but they both find the concept stifling, for different reasons. The idea of marriage sets off Eggabell's self-loathing because she associates it with going back to her old life and being alone and unfulfilled again. She's never articulated it clearly enough to notice the really obvious contradiction there. But Lizbert just really hates rules and conventions on principle.

Eggabell and Wiggle Eggabell was a fan of Wiggle's music first, and got Lizbert into it. She was also the one who wanted to be backstage for Wiggle's first farewell tour, though as Wiggle mentions during her interview, Lizbert is the one who actually broke in. Eggabell has all of Wiggle's albums, and is still kind of starstruck around her. Wiggle thinks Eggabell is very sweet, but also keeps forgetting that Eggabell actually likes her non Do The Wiggle work. She is extremely insecure about her other work.

Filbo and Lizbert Lizbert likes Filbo as much as he likes her, and she genuinely admires his commitment to making other people happy. She asked him to help with the settlement both because she wanted her friend there, and because she thought he'd be better at community stuff than she was. When Lizbert's big Gumpus Atlantis thing turned out to be a hoax, Filbo sent her a bunch of encouraging letters, though she was too mopey to look at them until Eggabell made her.

Floofty and Snorpy I think there's a lot of in-game evidence that Floofty and Snorpy used to be close, so that's not a headcanon exactly, but I also think that Floofty is three years older than Snorpy, and that Snorpy absolutely idolised them when he was younger. He grew out of that as a preteen, to Floofty's confusion. From their point of view, their little brother thinking they were cool was just an immutable law of the universe. But they stayed close for another ten to fifteen years, until their estrangement over the evil government stuff. When they do work together, they are very efficient, and tend to talk to each other in fast, incomplete sentences that confuse everyone else present.

Lizbert and Wiggle They stayed in contact after their first meeting, and related to each other's issues with getting famous and then repeatedly failing to produce a followup. They were talking soon after Lizbert's first Snaktooth trip, and Wiggle mentioned how desperate she was for inspiration, giving Lizbert the idea to start a settlement. She knew it was a big discovery, and she knew she wanted to use it to help people, but she hadn't been sure what exactly to do until then.

Triffany and Wambus They met while Triffany was studying the area near his farm as part of her PhD. She was married at the time, but no cheating was involved. Either they didn't get together until Triffany was single, or Triffany's ex did that thing where one partner wants to open up the relationship because they're bored, and the other partner reluctantly agrees, but then meets someone who actually likes them. The game already has the other heartwarming relationship anecdote that tends to show up online, with Chandlo and Snorpy, and Snorpy not realising they were dating, so it might as well also have this. I don't know if I want Triffany to have an abusive relationship in her backstory, though. But also, the idea of that happening and then Triffany meeting someone who genuinely wants to listen to her go on and on about the fall of Grumpus Rome or whatever, and won't tell her she's annoying… It's very appealing.

#Bugsnax #This is everyone except like four characters but I'm listing them all anyway #Alegander Jamfoot #Clumby Clumbernut #Bronica Lottablog #Triffany Lottablog #Chandlo Funkbun #Snorpy Fizzlebean #Bugsnax journalist #Eggabell Batternugget #Wiggle Wigglebottom #Lizbert Megafig #Filbo Fiddlepie #Floofty Fizzlebean #Wambus Troubleham #Diversity win! These body horror muppet creatures have depression!#Jamfoot can be at the top of this one I guess #I just didn't want to have three Clumby headcanons in a row #How dare this veteran investigative journalist be relatively well-connected

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