#and using the term ‘functioning’ also pisses me the hell off

[pixlmonkeys]

I say this with the deepest sense of hatred imaginable, fuck this article

[wonysugar]

fuck you stupid | ning yizhuo

synopsis : you thought you’d seen it all with her, but no, she somehow managed to surprise you even further.

pairing : bimbo!ningning x fem!reader

genre : bffs to... fwb?? idk they just fuck,, so obviously smut too! xx

tags : yall got lost help, fingering, degradation, belittling, dumbification, car sex, she's so stupid but she fucks you good so it's okay, very slight cunnilingus, she slaps you like once so impact play!

warnings : none!

word count : 1.6k

you, y/n l/n, weren’t exactly smart, but you also weren’t exactly stupid. like yeah, you weren’t a genius per se, but it’s not like you were brain dead either. average was the term you always used to describe your intelligence.

you unfortunately couldn’t say the same about ning yizhuo, your best friend. 

you loved her, like that’s your bitch, of course you love her! however, you’d be lying if you said that she was intellectually capable, because she just wasn’t. god, she was just so, so painfully stupid?? clumsy??? careless???? all of the above applied when it came to this woman. not even to be mean or anything of the sorts, just, yknow… natural selection at its finest.

she was aware of that, though, and even thrived in being the self proclaimed bimbo everyone knew and loved. (to which you wholeheartedly agree with, by the way) and honestly? you just couldn’t stop teasing her about it whenever you two hung out. things similar to “stupid hoe” and “dumbass” always escaping your mouth as you two laughed, probably moments after she bumped onto something on the sidewalk whilst spilling all the tea to you. 

in summary, she’s done stupid shit before, but nothing, nothing could ever top what she had done that day.

the day she got the both of you lost in some random parking lot at like, 2 am.

“ning, we’re fucking lost.” you told her, eyebrows furrowed in frustration as you watched her giggle nervously.

she grabbed her cellphone and hovered her finger over the power button, “oh come on y/n don’t be like that, i can just go on google maps and we’ll be out of here in no ti-“

a black screen.

she cleared her throat hesitantly, sighed, then pressed the button again.

nothing.

she kept doing that, giving longer presses to the side of her phone in hopes of a miracle . your patience was running thin and you were quite frankly not far from panicking.

after the 27th-ish try, you finally snapped at her.

“fucking hell ning do you not charge your damn phone??” 

“sorry that i forgot to?” 

oh she had to be joking. 

��girl oh my god what the fuck?? we’ll stay stuck here for only god knows how long and it’s all gonna be because ‘ning yizhuo forgot to charge her phone beforehand’ for fuck’s sake.” you closed your eyes and pinched the bridge of your nose in exasperation. trying to calm down, you ignored ning’s gaze.

her stupid annoying yapping wasn’t helping at all. like, at all.

“oh so we’re once again blaming me, got it. y/n you didn’t even bring your own phone, how do you have the audacity to put the blame on me.” she said back, her eyebrow raised up as she threw her phone down on her skirt, sighing exasperatedly. 

“because someone told me it was her turn to get the aux.”

“where in that sentence did i ever tell you not to bring your phone??”

“god, ning just- just stay quiet. okay? just- please shut up, i’m trying to think. we can’t rely on you for anything.” you told her, exasperated.

in response, she scoffed, “no?? no i won’t, actually. you’re always putting the blame on me and it’s seriously starting to piss me the fuck off. yeah i’m a bimbo, whatever, but does that mean that you have to talk to me like i only have two barely functioning brain cells??” 

“oh please, saying you have two functioning brain cells would be wayy too generous. you’re always doing the stupidest shit out of the two of us. i mean fuck, you literally drove us here, in the middle of nowhere. you’re not a bimbo, you’re just fucking dumb, ning.”

when you looked back at her, she seemed hurt. like, 

a wave of guilt quickly washed over you upon seeing her pained, pained expression. she looked into your eyes, frustration and sadness clearly showing into her own. yeah, she looked pissed. you wanted to apologize almost immediately, and you were going to, 

if she didn’t suddenly press her lips onto yours before you could even get a word out. 

-

how do best friends make up after a fight?

usually, they talk it out, they go out, hug it out then get milkshakes or whatever, hell, sometimes they just go a day or two without talking then eventually forget about it.

this? this was none of that.

since she planted a kiss on your lips, you, instead of doing anything stated above, were fucking.

like, yeahh you were still lost, but at least you were getting your pussy ravaged. the situation could be handled later; when you weren’t drenched.

throwing your head back as you moaned out ning’s name, you were straddling her in the backseat of her car, feeling her two fingers deep inside you and stretching you out. she looked up at you with lustfully hooded eyes as she kissed and left very visible marks all over your neck, all the way down to your collarbone, her free hand fondling your tits, lazily playing with the nipple. 

“f-fuck ning keep going i’m sososo close- fuckfuckfuck..” feeling yourself getting pushed closer to the edge by the friction you felt, you bucked your hips faster onto her digits. the knot tying in your stomach felt like it would’ve snapped any second now, that is,

until she stopped moving her fingers altogether.

frustrated, you whined loudly, “ninggg please let me cum pleaseplease-” 

“oh yeah? so now you wanna rely on me for something, and it’s to make you cum?” she laughed. “fucking slut. i’ll make you cum whenever i want to, got it, bitch?” she added, pressing her thumb on your swollen throbbing clit, smirking condescendingly and watching how pretty you looked when pleasure contorted your face.

you unintentionally clenched at her words, nodding shamefully. it was embarrassing enough having your best friend knuckles deep inside of you, having her call you names and whatnot, but the real embarrassing part? 

enjoying it thoroughly.

she knew this, she knew she had you wrapped around her finger at that moment and oh was it such a power trip for her. seeing you be so needy for her touch, you almost started riding her fingers yourself, too. she was always the one being treated like a dumb bitch, it was nice being on the other side of things, for a change. 

she kept twisting and pulling on your nipple with her free hand as she slowly started to slide her fingers up and down your walls again, giggling and paying close attention to how your body shook and twitched at each and every one of her slow movements. what a sight to see. 

“you like being fucked stupid hm?”

and that’s what she did,

seconds,

minutes,

what felt likes hours,

you were sloppily bouncing and grinding on her fingers, speed ranging from a painful slowness to an overwhelming rapidity. 

you gripped her arms tightly, as if you would fall into some sort of void if you didn’t hold onto her for dear life. resting your head on her shoulder, you whined, losing yourself onto her. her fingers were still pumping in and out of you at that moment, faster than they were before, by the way, so it took you all of your body strength to not just cum right then and there, but you managed to hold back. for her, you held back and took all of it. every minute passing, every single motion feeling like it was threatening to make you go insane. 

“ning pleaseplease let me cum i wanna cum so badly fuck- pleasepleasepleasepleaseee-” you begged, looking down at her with pleading teary eyes.

“fuck, look at you. calling me a dumb bitch all the time, yet here you are, acting oh so stupid for my fingers. such a brainless needy little whore for me, hm? does my idiotic, pretty girl wanna cum?” 

you nodded eagerly as you whined, tears actively running down both of your cheeks, so desperate for release that you quite honestly didn’t care for how ridiculous you looked to her at that moment. you just wanted to cum, so, so, so badly, and you were ready to give up your dignity for it.

the sound of her hand slapping your cheek resonated in the car.

“say it. you know damn well i don’t accept pathetic sounds for an answer.”

“fuck— your idiotic pretty girl wants to cum pleaseee let her–”

she hummed, smirking at your response. incredibly amused by your behavior, she took her fingers out of you, picked you up by placing her hands on your thighs, then gently put you on the empty seat that was next to the one she occupied. upon seeing you sat comfortably, she proceeded to kneel down on the empty space between the front seats and the backseats. y’know,

the ones a grown woman couldn’t possibly fit in?

it’s okay though, like, yeah she would most definitely complain about back pain later, but right now?

she needed to feel you cum all over her tongue.

and that’s exactly what she worked towards, her tongue driven by the scent of your arousal to roam all over your folds and clit, kissing and sucking on every inch of your core as she attentively listened to all the sweet noises that came out of you. it really did not take long before your moans reached octaves you didn’t even know you could achieve before, an overwhelming wave of relief hitting you like a truck. you were 100% sure you would pass out afterwards.

at the end of the day, yeah, you both were still stranded in the middle of some unknown parking lot, but at least, the stress of it all evaporated in the air.

while you were trying to catch your breath, you made a mental note;

never underestimate ning’s intelligence when she was in a bad mood! or, do. depending on if you wanna get fucked stupid that day or not.

[zahri-melitor]

Newish Comics:

Batman: The Brave and the Bold #14: I am largely uncompelled by this set, but I was amused that they had to specify "look! This Barry/Iris story takes place before we break them up! Because we want fluffy Barry/Iris!"

Also charmed that in the Black and White story at the end with flashbacks to previous events there's Bruce as Tengu in KnightsEnd! That's a bit of a deep cut I wasn't expecting.

Green Arrow #13: Williamson please learn to pace a story at some point. That said, I was very fond of seeing Roy and Lian snuggled up together, and Connor and Mia hanging out together. Also Williamson finally acknowledged Sin's existence for the first time? I think? in this comic.

I also note Williamson is on team "we like Jade" rather than on team "Jade's a villain who's done a bunch of irredeemable things" (Which. Both positions are perfectly acceptable, but does give me a bit of an 'of course you're like that' for a guy with a known tendency to prioritise biological relationships)

The plot is ridiculous but it's editorially mandated, everyone is about to go into their Stupid Eras for the next two-three months.

The Flash #10: speaking of editorially mandated storylines...I was snorting at 'make Ollie and Barry punch each other', in terms of Ollie was doing everything but shouting what his name was and Barry was going ??? mystery guy who is not Bruce.

Jai is great in this issue. Wally is busy ascending into a higher plane of existence, still, and I am waiting until his brain comes back online and the various creepy higher dimensional beings stop trying to brain wipe him and use him as conduit, as they will not enjoy him handing them their asses.

Please get Bart into a room with his friends so he can notice they're also young adults over 18 and stop reverse aging himself, he's drawn younger than Jai in this. Or actually address the plot point that Bart's currently making himself be the age he was when Max was his guardian, and what that means about their relationship.

Zatanna: Bring Down the House #1: oh this is fun. It's functioning as a Zatanna origin story, and a good reminder that Zatara is in hell.

And now a look at everyone losing their minds for the Event:

Suicide Squad Dream Team #1-4: super reluctantly reading this as lead in for Absolute Power.

I'm not sure if I'm more mad over how Amanda Waller is being villainised here or how they're characterising Lori Zechlin. Lori, what have they done to you?

As I scrutinise this, it's written by the actor who originated Nia Nal, and uh...it could use being less Nia's perspective v general Squad attitudes. It just feels very very righteous v Waller Being Evil For No Reason.

I dunno. I don't think Nicole Maines has enough experience or practice in writing for a shared property. Her Nia stuff on its own has been fine so far, but managing to write decent team dynamics for the SUICIDE SQUAD is something that takes a lot of skill and experience (given the number of strong personalities involved). It probably shouldn’t be handed to a writer who’s effectively never written a comic that doesn’t star the character she played on TV.

Absolute Power: Ground Zero #1: sigh.

This is not going to be a particularly compelling event to me.

Like hmmmmm part of me wants to point out that under a different storyline, Waller living out 20 years of peace in a virtual reality as a mother figure would be something that would affect her a lot, given her history.

Unfortunately, we are no longer in Suicide Squad 1987.

The Warlord #58: this week in Skartaris we don't see Travis at ALL. Guy who's cosplaying Travis is doing a terrible job of it, and pissing off Tara, who has been driven back into finding her childhood sweetheart Graemore attractive. We get a full retrospective of their childhood growing up together: Graemore was the son of a blacksmith and a tailor whose family were captured in warfare by Tara's father. Graemore played with Tara while his mother made swords for Shamballah and his father educated Tara. It's a very cute 'they grew up together' teen love story.

While all of this is going on Darvin the Thief goes to try and extort more money from the people on council paying him to hold Travis prisoner, and he suddenly realises where he's seen Joshua's weird bracelet before...on Tara's arm!

Surely this can only end well.

In the Arion backup, I am very slowly starting to get my head around how to fit Skartaris's ancient Atlanteans, Earth's ancient Atlanteans and modern Atlantis together. They do all come from the same group (which is what I expected) but it's definitely interesting in terms of the various interactions between magic and advanced technology.

(Now I actually need to read some more Aquaman to confirm my understanding, as it's still pretty vibes based right now)

[demonfox38]

Completed - House Flipper 2

All houses are living creatures of chaos, when you get down to it.

There are many arts I'm not great at. Most fiber crafts for one. Watercolor painting, two. Interior design, big time. Like, I'm not going to let my house get filthy, and I'm going to keep everything running to the best of my ability. (Hell, there's something empowering about replacing a toilet's float!) But, by nature? I'm just about keeping things picked up and in general functional order. If you're gonna ask me about what's fashionable when it comes to interior decorating, you're going to get a response that looks like something out of a 1970s Sears catalog. I'm about being functional, economical, and comfy when it comes to my house. Not cool or trendy.

Cool people don't have a wood-paneled basement, oak-laminate particleboard cabinets, or CRT television sets.

Since I'm an aficionado for mid-to-late century American interiors (and the weird vibes they can produce), I tend to follow blogs online that showcase such rooms that still exist in the modern era. Two such blogs include Unteriors and Roomhole. As a response to Unteriors, another blog called Unteriors-In-House-Flipper-2 has crossed my dashboard from time to time. Their skill in rendering such locations is shockingly good. Like, I think you could trick people into thinking these were real-world images. As someone who has dinked around with a few 3D editors, I was fascinated about the tool they were using. What was "House Flipper 2"? How could its users make something that looked so good so fast?

Well, practice is an obvious answer. Familiarity with the tools. A good understanding of lighting, too. But, having the tool be pretty good to begin with also helps!

As the name implies, "House Flipper 2" is a design tool/game that simulates the reconstruction (or straight up construction) of various spaces. You can do this either to your own whims or to those of various clients in the game's story mode. While a person can just dive right into a sandbox and mess around with tools as they see fit, the story mode does give structure and context to how each tool works. The plot there is nothing to write home about, but the houses themselves…man. No shit "Crime Scene Cleaner" is a game that exists. Garbage-based jump scares abound, and I'm not just talking about the awful wallpaper your character's parents keep putting up.

Hmm. Both "House Flipper 2" and "Crime Scene Cleaner" are under the Playway publisher page in Steam. The games have different developers, but I do wonder if their staff members were talking to each other. Perhaps even sharing employees…

If a player is hoping to get something a little deeper than an HGTV television show in terms of plot, they may come away disappointed from "House Flipper 2." I'm not saying that a person can't draw their own conclusions from the details they find around the house they are cleaning. (I'm pretty sure a couple was copulating in the bathroom at one house concert, for one.) You're just not going to deal with anything more complicated than cleaning up a house post-flood. Which, trust me. At the risk of beating a dead horse, I have a lot of empathy for that. But, it's not exactly navigating the factional relationships between Pinnacove town citizens and designer corporation Accenzo, like being in some kind of housing-based "Shin Megami Tensei" RPG. It's just generally trying to make people happier.

I mean, if we're being super honest, most of them pissed me off via jealousy over familial/economic stability and being able to pursue their own dreams. But, I did think it was pretty cool that one of my clients had vitiligo. I mean, I guess all video games with Michael Jackson in them also star someone with vitiligo, but that's a unique and thoughtful design choice.

To complete your jobs, you get (or gain access to) the following options:

Hands (for moving objects around)

Flipper Tool (responsible for selling or duplicating items, as well as changing their appearance post-purchase or copying their style)

Collecting Trash

Cleaning (for stains and windows)

Vacuuming

Demolishing (for wrecking walls)

Building (for building walls)

Edit Wiring (to hook your electronics up to switches)

Surface Finishes (for tiling, wood, and wallpaper)

Painting

Most are intuitive, once you get access to them. The more you use them, the more perks and abilities you can unlock for them. Since there's not a great real-world equivalent for the Flipper Tool, that one may take a little more time to get used to. Just remember that it has a submenu for selecting its various features, and you should be good to go.

Client demands are highlighted on your tool wheel with yellow exclamation points. Getting into your quest menu will also show you an itemized list of tasks to perform. When you have a tool selected, you can hit a Flipper Sense button to have what needs to be acted on highlighted in yellow. Very handy, especially when you can't see what to destroy or clean up.

Usually, you'll have the best luck doing the following in order:

Sell off unwanted stuff.

Bag trash.

Vacuum.

Clean stains.

Clean windows.

Paint.

Resurface walls and floors.

Buy wanted stuff (and arrange as desired.)

Unpack boxes (for stuff the client has already purchased.)

Some of your objectives get hidden behind furniture, so be sure to fling that aside if you get stumped. Might as well spam the Flipper Sense, too. You do get points for it, after all!

The only "threat" you have is your budget. I put that in quotes because, assuming you are following the client's requests, you should never go anywhere near running out of money. Even in your own projects, you can repeat previous jobs to get more cash, should you get in a pinch. Just put in enough attention and elbow grease to max out your job to three stars, then cash out.

You do get into a lull, working through those jobs. At a certain point, you may hit a level of brain fatigue with redesigning whatever items your customers want you to purchase and just give into their requests, regardless of how you feel about the style of the products you are purchasing. The game's just checking that you made the right purchases, not that you placed them well or used a certain style. Perhaps this brain fatigue is what makes coming across a junked-up room all the more shocking. You're just trying your best with making an efficient, pleasant space, and wham! Thirteen pizza boxes chucked across an attic space, complete with grease stains sinking into the hard wood floors. Like, there's worse things to find in a house. I've seen worse in real life. But, it doesn't mean that it didn't make me curse or shudder.

Man, though. I get where real-life house flippers just keep doing the same crap over and over again. White walls and gray laminate floors aren't just the results of creative bankruptcy and penny pinching. It's also mental fatigue and executive dysfunction.

Additionally, the game will occasionally treat you with a furniture assembling mini-game. Successfully getting at least 2 stars on your assembled product will grant you a small discount to purchased items of that class in game (somewhere between 2-6%, depending on the difficulty of the item in question.) They work well enough, despite some arguments I had with the game's camera. Whoever made the time limits to beat on those mini-missions needs to have some kind of intervention for whatever stimulants they are abusing, though. Like hell I'm repeating something that took me 20 minutes to put together just because they think it can be done in 15.

You can also platform across "Floor is Lava" maps, but man. I'm just here to fix up houses.

If you did want to cut out the story and get right to the point, a sandbox mode is available for you. The tools aren't an exact 1 to 1 with the tools you get in the story mode, but there's enough overlap that playing the story mode will help you out here. Additionally, there are tools for assigning quests, jobs, etc. in the event that you want to upload your map to mod.io and have other players play your map. You can also control the lawn growth and punch holes in the map, which man! Would have I liked those options in the main game.

When you are allowed to take full control over a house and exercise your skills, you will likely be happy with the variety of colors, textures, and items to play with. The furniture is somewhat restricted to modern creations akin to something you'd find in IKEA or on Wayfair, with only select deviations made for the occasional appliance to look mid-century modern. (Which, for someone who has a fair amount of CRT television sets around the house, is a bit of a bummer. The one CRT they have in game is just not the vibe I'm going for, either.) Each furniture item and texture set can be dyed in at least three sets of color styles separated by vibrance, sometimes also coming with different pattern, wood, or metal types. In the right circumstances, you can also use photos off your own computer for additional artwork! For someone that remembers the more static days of the original Sims release, it's particularly impressive! Significantly fewer dead people around, too.

I'm always amused when guys discover exactly what gals did in "The Sims" games. Those games were pool-based slaughterhouses. Girls had to get their cool graveyards somehow.

When I had hiccups with the game, I could get around most obstacles by figuring out how to talk to the game in its own logic. Like, once I removed a timber log to paint behind it, then had to resize said log into a sliver to get it back into place, then resize it once more to its original size. Hooking up electrical wiring also wasn't explicitly taught, but I figured it out after messing around with light settings in a ranch house. The only problems I had that couldn't be fixed were being unable to cut triangular shapes out of bricks or placing bricks down in spots where the game arbitrarily said no. Annoying? Sure. But, that's a surprisingly low limitation.

Although, it would have been nice to be able to manually freeze items into a single group. Or, just have a bunch of items for purchase as a group. (Like, I'm talking having a block of books instead of having to arrange one at a time. I suppose you could put them onto a tray, move them, then delete the tray, but man. That feels weird.) Also, it's kind of weird that there are so many toys, but not a generic teddy bear or doll. Like, there's action figures for fake games, but not much in the way for dolls or stuffed animals. I don't know. Just seems like a thing kids would have.

Another weird thing—I ended up having this intermittent input issue with a Nintendo Switch controller that I was using from time to time. For whatever reason, right stick input would lock into a counter-clockwise circle, and I'd have to shake it out of that bad behavior. I doubt many people are using Switch controllers for PC gaming, but hey. Guess I’m weird like that. (I didn't have any issues with an Xbox 360 controller or the standard keyboard and mouse, for what that's worth.)

"House Flipper 2" is an awesome tool that happens to have a decent game mode attached to it. I am wondering how this could be used more as a partner tool or competitor to something like Sketchup more than expanding the boundaries and lore of Pinnacove. I imagine an average interior designer could get a lot of use out of something like "House Flipper 2," even if that's not the exact purpose of it. A person is never going to get exact furniture matches with it, but I imagine you could at least mock up a room relatively quickly with it. To those in the right industry, that might be pretty neat.

The base price for "House Flipper 2" is around $39.99 with a bonus DLC Starter Pack for $9.99. I suspect this price may change depending on how many people they want/need to pull in for co-op playtesting, so watch for any potential sales. I'm not exactly certain how many of my readers would be into building homes and decorating them, so for them, this may be too expensive. But, hey. It's important to engage in non-violent, constructive play, from time to time. This is a good way to do just that.

Although, if an option opens up to smash some digital NIMBY or HOA president's car in with a sledgehammer, I'm all for that, too. Gotta make this housing market more affordable somehow.

[box-dwelling]

OK so I am like a day past completing the Ansur dungeon and it's been enough time to let my thoughts on it settle. Spoilers ahead.

For context, first playthrough with a basic tav. I'm a good way through act three and have finished a few of the pc quest lines. Minsc, Jaheria and Astarion are done. I have yet to get the hammer or do the house of grief but I have done sorcerers sundries. Also I haven't refused Ulder yet but it like the next thing I'm doing. Other context is that dnd is a huge special interest of mine. I've been playing for about 7 years straight. Both dming and as pcs and I have played under professional dms before. This does affect how I view the game but it's mostly postively.

Disclaimer, I haven't finished the game so there may be some stuff that ends up being done that I just haven't seen but the quest line says it's over and from what I've read online it doesn't seem like that's the case so.

So let's start off with the pros because I honestly have less to say there

As a dm I can and always do look at the dungeon design. Larian is genuinely really really good at this, and this dungeon is no exception. I loved the puzzles though a few could use some tweaking. They arent all great. But there's ideas there that I will probably introduce in my games some time. A chess puzzle especially is such a great idea. That was so cool and the fact bring gale along means you can get the answer free I'd you don't play chess makes perfect sense. Genuinely great.

I also liked the visual design. I had expected the appearance to be what I was starting to dub in my head as the "character development dungeon aesthetic " given that really in terms of design and function cazadors dungeon, the gauntlet of shar and the sorcerers sundries vaults are very very similar. But this one wasn't and I'm very happy about that. Give me some variety.

The Ansur fight itself, AMAZING. Great boss battle. I loved the hell out of it. I'd have to dig into the code to properly tell but it looked like they used a varient of the colossus fighting rules which while I've actually never run but I have been at tables where it has been run to incredible effect. They're good rules. I'm glad to see them used. It honestly makes me consider running them myself.

Last pro, on the face of it, I like the idea. I like the concept of wylls character development dungeon being about learning about the tenants of being a hero from one he looked up to. That tracks. It's a good place to take his charcater at least in theory.

As for the cons, it's mostly one but it's also a big one that has majorly pissed me off. Because Wyll is in my joint top 3 for favourite characters and they did him so fucking dirty.

I really really hated how they handled the twist with the Emperor. I don't dislike him as a charcater but I think it's at least to me pretty unambiguous that he's a pretty shady and morally grey charcater. Which is fine. In fact, it's actually a pretty interesting way to take Wyll's arc. That he looked up to this hero, internalised his mindset through the chambers and then learns that he was actually a pretty shady morally complex figure that doesn't live up to wylls expectation, that is a GOLD mine of character development. That is absolutely fascinating. Except, it doesn't do that. He barely even comments on it. Just says he's forged into a new hero by the trials while ignoring the person who set them is the very shady figure who has honestly fucked us over a lot.

You know who's another hero wyll probably looked up to? Minsc! And the Emperor is a real fucking bitch about letting him join the party.

This is compounded by the fact his good/bad ending choice rather than being a slow build up like everyone else where they get tempted by power and then have to turn it away, he instead just says "hey I could become grand duke" out of no where and then doesn't even need a persuasion check to get talked out of it like everyone else does.

So, I would be remiss without giving a way I'd fix it. So here is that.

Th ansur dungeon isn't given to us by florrick in the lower city. It's given somewhere else before you get there.

I'd recommend like, it being in a book or something in Wyrms crossing. The location is tied to wyll anyway. Maybe add in his childhood bedroom that he asks to go visit. You can put in some environmental storytelling telling that can expand on his complicated relationship ulder. Maybe the room is bordered up and untouched but when you get inside there evidence of genuine love.

When you get there you get the story of ansurs legend and wyll becomes obsessed with using this as a way to help save the city.

The ansur dungeon then gets basically left untouched. Twist and all.

But at the end of it, rather than just deciding he's going to become grand duke, it becomes a question. He can't become grand duke while Ulder is alive. And Bauldrian the great adventurer became a politician after wards. Give the Emperor a reason to not want ulder alive. Maybe Ulder risks not being able to defeat the elder brain in some way, and tie it into his reaction to Wyll taking a deal with Mizora.

Wyll is now conflicted. If his father dies he can carry on in both his and Bauldrans footsteps. Ulder left his child in command of an army before he was an adult. Can he really be trusted to take care of the city? Of course wyll loves him and of course wyll wants to save him but there's that doubt there. I have been reforged in to bauldarns heir. I could do a better job. I could save more people. He abandoned me. Why should I save him? If he breaks his pact this is also fed into by the fact it puts him at very active threat from mizora. It's not that prevelant. Wyll is wyll he's not that susceptible to corruption but a little bit of doubt, coaxed on by the Emperor is all he needs.

Then the lower city.

Make sure you have to get minsc before continuing his quest line. Have wyll have a reaction to the Emperor 's distrust of minsc. These are two of his childhood hero's fighting. Play that up for some drama.

Then saving ulder becomes the thing that either makes him the blade of avernus or the grand duke. He can either choose to not save his father, take on the title of grand duke and rule the city following in baulderans footsteps or, he can kill mizora and swear his life to killing demons as a the blade of avernus. . Later becoming a ranger just like minsc. Even give minsc a few lines giving him a pep talk about it. Maybe even having him explain that wyll need to be his own kind of hero taking the infulances he has from the past and learning from them to become a better one. If the pact stays he just remains the blade of the frontiers if he saves ulder but can become grand duke if he doesnt.

Then, have ulder apologise and then reconcile. Have wyll learn to actually recognise his father as a flawed man who hurt him but who is also complex. Maybe even have an option for if he chooses to fully reconnect their relationship or not.

The bones of a really really really good story are here. Please, for the love of God, larian actually tell it.

[liebgotts-lovergirl]

BoB Headcanon: Could They Fix A Broken Cabinet?

A/N: Here, pls enjoy another obscure headcanon set that Literally Nobody asked for lol. A big thank you to @mccall-muffin for encouraging me to post it lol 💖

✿ Dick Winters: Will not only fix your cabinet but also IMPROVE your cabinet. Enjoy your new soft-close, freshly-painted cabinet. 🤌🏽

✿ Lewis Nixon: Absolutely Not. Nix knows when he’s beat. He Was Not raised for this & he knows that. Will gladly call someone else to fix it though! 

✿ Carwood Lipton: Definitely could fix it (he has the knowledge & the skills) but doesn't trust himself to do it because he's afraid he'll mess it up (🥺) so he'll pay someone else to do it. 

✿ Ronald Speirs: He’ll fix it! Won’t make a big deal of it though. Honestly would probably not even tell you he’s fixed it; you just walk in one day & it’s Done & you’re like “When did you do that?” & he’s like “Oh like a week ago”.

✿ Harry Welsh: Bound & Determined to fix it if it kills him. He will read Every book, watch Every show, Welshy is a man on a mission 😂 He is going to be your knight in shining armor even if he has to toil away at it for days & ends up cussing the thing black + blue before it's complete.

✿ Buck Compton: Will give it the ol’ college try (lol) but no guarantees. Will do his reading but still ends up freestyling it. 😂 Definitely not above calling someone if his attempt goes awry tho lol

✿ Don Malarkey: Sort of? It may not be perfect– like the hinges will probably squeak when it opens & it might be a little crooked maybe – but he worked all day on it & it’s Technically fixed.

✿ Joe Liebgott: Is convinced that he can fix it but will actually just fuck it up even more & then duct tape over it. It might be functional but it Will Not be pretty. Probably accidentally hammered his thumb once. Pls appreciate his efforts tho, he is Trying.

✿ George Luz: Will fix your cabinet super well! It’s gonna be in tip-top shape… You’re just gonna have to remind him to do it tho lol bc he’s kind of all over the place! (Also he whistles while he works; it’s kind of adorable).

✿ Eugene Roe: I'd like to believe he could but my heart just says no. Lowkey, it would probably frustrate him all to hell bc he can perform life-saving medical feats in the heat of battle but he can't fix a goddamn cabinet?? He's gonna call someone to fix it for y'all but he's gonna be So pissed about it.

✿ Joe Toye: Can definitely fix it. Very handy around the house but his true expertise is in cars! He could be a mechanic if he really wanted to. King of explaining Why It Makes That Noise in simple terms that Make Sense 🤌🏼

✿ Bill Guarnere: He'll fix it but it won't be in the way you expect. He's the type of person to put a book under a table leg to steady it, that sort of thing. But he is WAY too stubborn to ask for help so don't expect him to call anybody who can actually do it. He'll INSIST on doing it himself– it's a matter of pride at this point.

✿ Skip Muck: No way, not a clue. Might try to fix it but gets distracted halfway through like a puppy & abandons the project forever lol.

✿ Bull Randleman: Oh absolutely he can. Man was practically raised with a toolbox in hand. He likes to do little things like that for you around the house because he likes to feel useful. 

✿ Shifty Powers: Definitely can. But like Speirs ^, won’t make a big deal out of it. He has immaculate focus, a steady hand, & seemingly limitless patience so he can fix pretty much anything.

✿ Babe Heffron: Purely a duct-tape-&-a-prayer man. "We don't gotta call anybody, I got it covered." No, Babe, you do not 😆

✿ Johnny Martin: Could probably fix it if he actually put his mind to it but doesn't want to. He simply Does Not Have The Patience. He gets frustrated one time & he's Done. Calls someone by the end of the first day 😂

✿ Frank Perconte: Doesn’t know how to fix it at the beginning but will try to figure it out. He may storm off a few times cussing the damn thing in frustration but he’ll get it done eventually.

✿ Floyd Talbert: Absolutely could. He + his brothers used to do all sorts of odd jobs & carpentry stuff back in Kokomo. 

✿ David Webster: Nope! Wants to fix it so badly but is absolutely Hopeless when it comes to any sort of home renovation. Despite some of the more stubborn guys on this list, Web's not ashamed about calling somebody to fix it. He just kind of figures, "Well someone has to do it" & it is Clearly not going to be him.

✿ Skinny Sisk: Please for the love of God, Do Not Let This Man Near A Hammer. 😭 He will joke around with it like a dumbass & will probably just accidentally hurt himself or someone else. 

[obeymebutnotlikethat]

Dark Au: Chapter 6

Previous chapters:Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, chapter 5

"I should've let you die."

"Well, I should've killed myself when I had the chance. Look on the bright side: there is always next time."

They winced as they grabbed onto their shoulder and leaned back. It was taking every ounce of strength not to crumble upon the floor.

The good news is they survived Beel's rage. The bad news is they survived Beel's rage. All they wanted to do was go home but, complaining would only ruin Diavolo's plans; ruining Diavolo's plans meant Lucifer on their ass. So, sucking it up was the only option.

Well, until they went into their room and cried. Crying alone in their room sounds good right now. It would be better than having to travel in demon-infested hallways. Right, they can't call it an infestation because that's wrong. Infestation is the term for bugs but, some of them look like bugs.

"I shouldn't have to be babysitting some easy kill," Mammon complained, "Don't look at me like that. Your broken body does nothing for my image."

They glared and swung their bag at him. He might be a Demon but, they concluded he wasn't much of a threat.

"Whose fault is it I'm like this?"

"You're saying it's mine?" he scoffed, "You were the one pissing off Beel."

They bit back a wince and narrowed their eyes at him. If they closed their eyes, they could re-imagine their body going through the wall again. The thought of that appeared to make the pain worse, and they internally groaned.

"Mammon, MC."

They slid their eyes over towards Simeon. Perfect, they thought. He's the one they're looking for.

" Was starting to think you wouldn't be here," Mammon laughed.

"Why wouldn't I be here?"

"Mammon was getting irritated and bored. As Mammon has said before, he is very simple-minded."

"The hell I did!"

"Oh, right, that was just something I believe is true. Which it is," They sighed, "You wrote TSL, right?"

They watched Simeon blink in surprise. A part of them cheered that Satan's unnerving help on the school's stairwell was correct. While he did not directly say it, they were good at guessing. Another part also made them thankful Mammon was not as aggressive as his brothers. Considering, they bullied him over breakfast.

"I assume you heard something from Satan," Simeon stated as he watched MC nod, "I wrote it. Might I ask why you want to know?"

"We need Levi to make a pact with them for revenge," Mammon glared.

"I'm supposed to challenge Levi to a TSL quiz. It's not for revenge but-"

What was a good excuse? They couldn't use the "I-need-to-go-up-to-an-attic-that-Lucifer-threatened-me-to-stay-away-from" excuse. That would make them sound insane. How would they tell anyone that: while they were coming down from the drugs, they heard a voice coming from the attic? So, they limped their very prey-like body toward the sound, and Lucifer greeted them at the stairs.

"...I heard about the fallout between Belphie and Lucifer. I want to help fix their relationship."

It wasn't technically wrong. Mammon and Beel had mentioned Belphie to them while they were to stay in Beel's chambers. After the near-death experience with Beel, their wall was destroyed, as it bordered the kitchens'. So, after a lecture by Lucifer, they had to stay with Beel as he had an extra bed. Nearly dying at the hands of a hungry Demon makes no difference it seems.

They found no interest in another incident as their body refused to function. The quickest solution was utilizing Mammon to stay with them too. With two upset Demons, they hazily asked about the other bed.

"Is that so?" Simeon smiled.

"Yes, we stayed up binging it all night. Do you have an upper hand?"

They beamed with joy as Simeon led them to a side room and explained the upcoming chapters. Even though they barely knew Simeon, a part of them was pleased he would divulge such information. Then, their whole being was as the quiz began.

Before they knew it, the school day had ended, and they gathered in the council room for the quiz. Surprisingly, everyone decided to attend. They probably wanted to see them fail, they thought.

The quiz was going better than expected, and their body screamed at them: one, for the still residing pain throbbing amongst their lower back and a pull at their shoulder; two, for the information they were about to repeat.

Levi is the biggest TSL fan in the House of Lamentation, and he's also the Avatar of Envy and a Demon. Mammon told them earlier that it's difficult for Levi to lose his cool. They assumed it had something to do with him being an Otaku.

"How long are we going to keep this charade up? "

They frowned at Levi's complaint.

"MC, it's time to exact our revenge with the big guns. Let's see how Levi likes this!" Mammon cackled.

They were so dead. Somehow, Mammon always seemed to go overboard with his cockiness.

"Well, this is interesting," Diavolo grinned.

Of course, they were mere entertainment for these Demons; unless he was referencing Mammon's child-ness antics. They were too busy observing the possible risks as the other brothers seemed intrigued.

"It seems my advice is about to pay some dividends. Excellent," Satan smirked.

"Are you telling us you provided aid to them? How very wicked of you," Asmo drawled, "I suppose I should ask your take, Beel."

"You'll have to pay me with food."

"Whose idea was it to invite him here? All he's done is eat and salivate over MC," Asmo raved.

They rolled their eyes at the catfight and tried to ignore the fact Beel wanted to eat them. Shit, they wanted to sit down. Building up the courage, they stepped closer to Levi.

"Alright, let me tell you about volume 9 of TSL," they grinned.

[child-of-the-danube]

SPOILERS CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA PART 4

So it's time to fucking scream. I understand the conclusion was rushed since they probably didn't count on being cancelled but god damn was it hella rushed and badly done. I was fine with the Eldritch terrors being an episode-by-episode thing but some of it was straight shit. They almost appeared too easy to get rid of. Sabrina, to begin with, is the dumbest bitch on planet Earth. Does her brain function only short term without the capability of thinking of consequences?? Also, the writers/producers missed the mark on who their audience is. I legit don't know teens who watch the series. It's all 20+ people. The focus was too much on Sabrina's friends/the teens and not the actual characters with depth - the adults.

The only positive things I can highlight were:

1. Hilda's wedding/happiness

2. Zelda getting Vinegar Tom back

3. Lilith stabbing and banishing Lucifer

The singing was unnecessary filler and so was technically the whole of episode 7. Episode 7's good parts were the OG aunties and Salem.

Now for the what pissed me off the most.

ZELDA DESERVED NONE OF THIS SHIT!! For once it looked like she found someone who loved her and then she got fucked over again. This woman has to keep a family together, hold a coven together, run a school and clean up the mess her niece creates on a daily basis and all she gets over and over again is her heart ripped straight out of her chest. They catch Faustus and she gets no revenge for all he did to her???? She was abused and most probably raped while under the spell and that is just forgotten???? She gets her biggest fears thrown at her face and then they all fully happen. She already had Leticia taken away from her and now Sabrina who she absolutely was a mother to dies before her eyes????

Lilith. Sweet Jesus, Lilith. All the shit she went through with Lucifer, losing Adam, not getting the throne, being treated as a pet or a slave and now she killed her child in the hopes of being released of her millenia long pain and gets fucked over again. Her getting her revenge on Lucifer wasn't even that satisfying since they didn't even tell us what will happen with her and Hell. She was pushed aside to be a background character despite being one of the most interesting characters with so many possibilites to do with her story. I am beyond pissed. LILITH DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER!!

Sabrina dead at not even 17 is also bullshit but I'll let it pass cause they were probably planning on bringing her back if there were to be a part 5.

Now onto Nick. He straight up killed himself to be with Sabrina. I get it kinda. Endgame bla bla but someone who is practically a teenager killing themselves over their first love??? Even for a fantasy show that is a bit too much. They literally made the teen characters incapable of proper emotion and rational thought. No brain, just horny and impulsive.

ALSO, nobody wanted that sex scene with literal motherfucking underage people (in the show, I know they are of age irl). That's uncomfortable as hell to watch. Yuck!!

The weird sisters were also pushed aside. And what was that Agatha/Dorcas kiss???? When has that even been hinted at????

I don't understand what kind of vendetta the writers have against adult female characters and why they seem to be incapable of showing proper processing of emotions.

Overall, that's 8 hours of my life wasted for 4-5 maybe 2min long scenes that were actually worth the watch. What an end to a dumpsterfire year

[bisexualocs]

no cuz the 4star card of haruka from an angel spreads its wings gacha literally pisses me off so much. in terms of design it is absolutely the worst card in the game like what were they thinking 😭 i would take a good 3star card over this one any day.

like as just a piece of art it’s not bad. the render is good, it’s cute, pretty, whatever. but it’s not just an independent art piece, it is specifically a card in a video game. like you have to think about its function and that should affect the design. there are so many things wrong with this card. like

1. it’s non-specific. if you weren’t told which character this card belongs to there is literally no way to tell if this is a haruka, minori, airi, or shizuku card. every character is equidistant from each other with the exact same size in the exact same lighting and very similar poses. in fact, the only one who slightly stands out from the group is minori because she’s facing a different direction. even the stray feathers in the sky are making an arc towards minori (one literally looks like an arrow pointing at her), further emphasizing her in the piece. but this isn’t minori’s card, it’s haruka’s.

2. it’s dark as hell. don’t get me wrong, my favorite part of any good card is unique/strong lighting, but this isn’t that. this is haruka almost completely encased in shadow, making it super hard to even make out her features. it just looks like a silhouette, which is not what you want in a character card.

3. it’s blurry as hell. as a whole piece, the small size of the characters is fine, because the emphasis is on the environment. but you never see cards in project sekai as whole pieces except when specifically viewing them in the card’s profile. you only see zoomed in close-ups of the character whenever actually using the card/playing the game. because haruka is so small, her card appears extremely blurry when in use. it’s not QUITE as bad as the 4star cherry blossom miku card…but it’s bad. like, just look at her card next to other better-designed cards:

it seriously sticks out like a sore thumb in any team. this image is an example of the final issue:

4. it’s undetailed. haruka appears smaller than the others because it’s not quite as zoomed in, probably to minimize the already high level of blurriness. and because she was drawn so small on the canvas, her features, outfit, hair, etc have all been simplified. simplicity by itself is not a bad thing, but it does not at all fit with the detailed style of most other cards in the game. also, because her pose is plain and there is nothing but a blank sky behind her when zoomed in, that just adds to the effect of being way less detailed/complete than other cards. at least the offending miku one has some trees behind her. other cards with one-color backgrounds, like ichika’s paint-themed colorfes one, make up for it with interesting poses and more detail in the character themself.

this haruka card just takes all the bad elements of card design and throws them into one. the untrained art is bland (as most untrained art is, hence why training cards is supposed to make them look better) so that can’t even make up for the shitty trained art. if i were a big haruka fan i would be so pissed about this. i still am and she’s not even in my top 10 characters. proseka really forgot basic principles of design for this one huh 🤨

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

Disability month.

One of the FB groups I'm in is talking about the exploitation of the working class, and they're sharing a lot of these "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps" hot takes that rich people have that pisses them off.

And I noticed a pattern.

It's all abelist as hell.

"Just stay motivated and do the difficult things and you'll succeed."

First thought was people with ADHD. That completely relies on releasing dopamine when you finish something and making you feel good.

Second thought was addicts. Anyone that's prone to addiction knows it's really fucking hard to forego the immediate release of something like video games over the long haul release of something like a big project.

Third thought was depression. I have major depression. Sometimes I can't even enjoy the things I like, and you're asking me to enjoy the things I don't like? Do you know how aggravating it is when you're in a really dark place, and you go to your comfort items (for me it's books) to try to make the happy thing happen, and you get NO happy chemicals?

Fourth thought was anxiety. Kinda hard to bet on a long haul when you have anxiety. Jeez, I'd be losing hair if I underwent long term stress like that because the anxiety makes it all so much worse.

This doesn't even start to get into people with chronic pain. When you're in pain all the time, you think you deserve a little something you enjoy (which you totally do deserve that) on the days you're able to function. Not some stressful whatever.

And this doesn't get into how stress makes disabilities worse. I have insomnia. Most of the time it just presents as chronic fatigue, but Jesus Christ last time I was put in a stressful situation I didn't sleep for months. I was hallucinating it was so bad. (Also stress is a migraine trigger, so double whammy.)

It just... it baffles me.

They use abelist rhetoric to justify classism so that they can continue to oppress BIPOC people (whom are more likely to be poor and therefore more likely to be the victims of classism).

Oppressing 3 communities with one "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" rhetoric. Way to go.

(And since women earn only a fraction of what men earn and have a harder time finding jobs, I think if I spent more time thinking about it, I could make it 4 communities.)

-fae

[goldeneyedgirl]

Who’s ur favorite and least favorite twilight character and why?

LOL, oh man. Prepare for Discourse, Anon. 

My favourite character is Alice (that might be very obvious). I think she was wasted in Twilight, and that she has so much potential. 

She has no recollection of being human. She is a totally blank slate with a gift that is essentially an extra sense or limb. Like, this girl cannot be ‘okay’. I believe in my heart of hearts that Alice functions differently to other people. I mean, I infer from canon that her visions taught her everything that she needed to know - from how to feed, to how to convince Jasper, to how to join the Cullens. She’s going to get the wrong answer? She’ll change what she says!

And that is utterly fucking terrifying - especially if she was aware and doing it intentionally. But I do not think she is, in that sense. I just don’t think she would have any idea of how to live without her visions showing her what to do next. Alice is a hostage to her own gift, and always has been. 

Even her interactions with Bella and Edward in canon are really uncanny, like she’s playing a role - which is more reflective of SMeyer’s piss-poor writing ability than any sort of intention - but indicative that Alice is Not Okay, and kind of explains a lot about how the Cullen family is portrayed. 

A lot of what I love about Alice, and her relationship with Jasper, are things I’ve absorbed from fan-content - what we can infer from the information we’ve been given. Her conviction about her and Jasper, to me, is beautiful and both terribly childlike, and something someone who has suffered deeply would absolutely cling to as a lifeline. The idea that Jasper isn’t just her husband, but her very best friend and confidant as well, paints such a lovely picture of the symbiosis they have. I think that, whilst it’s normally Poised, Confident Alice to Rescue Struggling Depressed Jasper portrayed in fandom, that there is a distinctive possibility that two individuals who were both fucked over in the gift department and were holding onto reality by a strand found each other and rescued each other might be closer to the truth.

I also LOVE fashion, so I kind of get Alice on that level; and I treat Alice - when I write her - as someone with mental illness (like myself) because I find that very satisfying to write, and to explore. I can PROJECT, which is super fun.

Jasper’s a close second because holy moly, he has so much potential from a fic-writing perspective? This is a man who was not a good person as a human - like, there are Varying Reasons he would join the Confederate Army and be proud of being a Major, but that’s a TOTALLY different piece of discourse so we’ll put a pin in that because statistically, it meant he was a racist fighting for racist ideals. And THEN he is changed into a vampire and joins the Southern Wars, falling further into evil as far as violence, hate, and senseless death goes. 

Like this man was a full monster.

And it was eating him alive.

So he just walked away. Alice did not save him. Peter did not save him. Jasper walked away. Peter gave him the opportunity to do so. Alice offered him goals and a way to improve who he is. There’s nothing he can do about the evil he sowed, the legacy he has created. And he has to live with that every single day for eternity. Has to deal with the burn of his thirst, exacberated by years of gorging on human blood, every single day. There is no solution to/for Jasper. It’s one hell or another. And that is so much fun from a fic-writing perspective. 

Plus his dynamic with Maria is so crazy fun - Mother? Lover? General? What does ‘good terms’ even mean? I assume it’s code for ‘cold war’ or ‘not actively seeking the other’s destruction’, but who knows. I love that. 

Jessamine is also super fun and beloved by me, but that’s because she’s either Jasper-derivitive or my particular portrayal of a separate character, so she doesn’t count. 

As for my least favourite, that honour goes to Edward. Full disclosure, I have not read Midnight Sun, only skimmed parts, because the only thing worse than that would be reading EdBella fic. 

I think he’s an arrogant, misogynistic, controlling little brat, honestly. He’s above the rules and the laws when it suits him - at the cost to everyone - and he condemns Rosalie and Jasper so quickly and thoroughly with very little in-text justification. 

He says that Rosalie is vain - well, Captain Dipshit, maybe after being violently and fatally gang-raped by a group including her fiance Rosalie might deal with a lot of body issues - and copes with them the best way she can. Maybe after being raised with a priority of being beautiful above all else, and then harmed in such a grotesque way because of her beauty, and then becoming more beautiful might fuck with your mental health a little, Eddie.

Edward has a bad habit of classifying women in absolutes like Madonna/Whore, depending on his personal beliefs - which, as a frozen 17 year old from the 1900s, is fairly goddamn dubious. Rosalie and Tanya are both ‘bad’, Esme, Alice, and Bella are all ‘good’. But there are no women that Edward fully ‘trusts’ or allows to ‘win’/direct him. He prizes Bella because of her unreadable mind - she is a puzzle and something to possess. They are never partners. Edward uses Alice, Who Tries Her Very Best, as a weapon against Bella multiple times. I often wonder if it isn’t Edward who encourages Alice, off-page/off-screen, to play dress-ups, to make Bella into what Edward expects in a wife. 

Edward is over-indulged by both Esme and Carlisle; honestly, with his gift, I wouldn’t be surprised if he manipulates the family into their slightly toxic dynamic (it’s hard to tell because of SMeyer’s obvious bias, and the perspective of the novels) because it benefits him so much. It puts him second only to Carlisle - Jasper cannot be trusted despite his comprehensive understanding of vampires, especially when it comes to turf battles, and Emmett’s just a frat boy. Or is this the portrait Edward has painted so he gets to be #1 Son?

Edward is the goddamn architect of every disaster the Cullens face because what he wants is dangerous and illegal. Without Edward’s Volterra Tantrum, Aro never would have challenged the Cullens in Breaking Dawn. Victoria’s attack would have been neutralised before the Cullens even got wind of it. Bella never would have gone cliff-diving or solo-hiking if Edward hadn’t dumped her in the cruelest way possible. 

I honestly, truly believe that Edward shouldn’t have had a mate, let alone a wife and child. 

Also, movie!Edward looked like he needed a fucking shower and a flea dip in nearly every scene. 

Bella’s a close second because I have known girls like Bella and fuck me, they are deeply unpleasant to be friends with. She fucks over EVERYONE in pursuit of Edward. I understand that she doesn’t have the same interests as Alice, but not once just she make a suggestion for an alternative activity or a compromise (and that could be Bad Writing again, because Bella appears to have very few hobbies beyond ‘reading’ but it’s what we’re working with). 

In fact, I would argue that Alice tries her very best to be Bella’s friend, but it’s a futile attempt - Bella tolerates Alice because of Alice’s proximity to Edward. If Alice had been a human student at Forks High, you can bet that Bella would have dumped her as fast as possible. Bella has very few moments where she’s positive about the people around her outside of the Cullens (by association with Edward) or Jacob. Charlie gets mostly pity. Everyone else is looked upon with disapproval and judgement (which, again, reflects toxic writing tropes.) 

And Bella martyrs herself at every opportunity. There’s a lot of discourse where Bella’s neglectful childhood is examined, but Bella fucking lunges into the ‘victim’ role at every possibility. And ultimately, I really don’t see Bella maturing or learning anything at all through the series. It’s always about what she wants, above everything else. She succeeds because she and Edward are incredibly selfish individuals who are enabled by the parental figures around them. 

Second runner-up is Carlisle. 

[wormworker]

//racism, ableism, queermisia, islammisia, xenomisia

It's actually so disappointing to see which parts of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure failed to have cultural impacts -- all despite the immense popularity of the series, & how it blew up both in the 80's when the manga started, & the 10's when the anime started.

The queer elements are such a staple in the series, & yet all the edgy dickhole internet funnymen who love JJBA haven't stopped for one second to be like,

"Hey, maybe men wearing lipstick & pink & long hair & Versace underwear is actually kinda cool and not fucked up?"

Y'all edgy bastards are stubborn as fuck lol

Let me tell you about Mohammed "Avdol" Abdul also.

I was born in the U.S. in the 90's, & my god -- hatred & fear of Arabic-speaking people was so normalized in my world.

The thing about that, I was never exposed to anyone saying things like "Arab people are bad" specifically. Never.

It was more vague, more manipulative. Normalized in small pieces.

I grew up to see anything written in Arabic & to think it was something evil & scary.

& I still see that ideology perpetuated around the internet, particularly in connection to anti-Islam ideology.

Many marginalized people know & have experienced that representation does make a difference.

JJBA SDC might be from the 1980's, but I didn't see it until watching the anime version in 2020, & that was THE FIRST TIME I saw positive representation of literally anyone who Americans stuff under the "Middle Eastern" umbrella term.

I don't think JJBA can be consumed non-critically. You can check off a helluva lot of "-isms" in it, my god.

Particularly in the manga.

For instance, there's canon ableism & sanism towards literally every disabled character in the series.

That being said, not to diminish the damage that ableism does, that ableism changed my life.

Steel Ball Run changed my life.

I had experiences with disability even just in the past few years that some of the scenes in SBR were so parallel to that it hurt like hell.

Johnny sobbing on the ground when he realizes he might truly never be able to walk again.

The medical attendant making fun of him for being upset about & having a meltdown about his digestive functions not working how he's used to.

I read those parts like, "Wtf... wtf... is there a word for this???"

It hadn't occurred to me that ableism was a thing, & that it was systemic. That disabled people are a marginalized social group.

That ableism was largely why my life had gone the way it had gone.

Honestly, I don't think there's been a fandom that has pissed me off this much.

I mean, I'm just talking about the nasty alt-right kinda nasties. But how do these fuckers see representation of groups they hate & then just keep going lol

I'll confidently attribute it to willful ignorance.

The kind of bullshit where you have dickwads saying "racism isn't real" while seeing blatant acts of racism in front of them, just to say there's some other explanation.

[recurring-polynya]

Your thoughts and headcannons on Nemuri Hachigou because I don't think she gets talked about enough, when in reality she's pretty interesting, she's essentially, a blank slate, Mayuri's second chance that I don't think he feels like he deserves. She's Nemu but she isn't and I think people(especially Mayuri) forget that a lot, that's a fascinating position to be in.

Puttin’ this under a cut because I’m gonna say some unkind things about Mayuri and I do not want to cause any distress to the many lovely people on this website who delight in his horrible antics.

This is not so much a headcanon so much as a thing I came up with for fanfiction purposes, but it’s all I got.

Right. So, like I said, I despise Mayuri. I just hate him. I understand that he appeals to some people, but I strongly dislike the dude and go to exorbitant lengths to avoid him ever appearing in my fanfic.

Additionally, I do not vibe with Nemu 7. She registers as not-a-person for me, she’s basically an extension of Mayuri himself. Don’t get me wrong, I find Mayuri’s treatment of her to be vile and I wish someone would take her away from him, but she comes off as very robotic to me. She is conscious, but she is not an independent being, if that makes sense. She is not a real girl. It’s funny that Mayuri keeps talking about how advanced she is, because clearly he means only her cognitive and fighting abilities. In terms of recreating a person, she’s incredibly primitive compared to the other mod souls we see. Take Kon, for example, who has a fairly limited powerset, but is never presented as less of a soul than any of the other characters. An even more interesting example is Ururu and Jinta. Ururu is described as being older than Jinta, and she is clearly “less human” than him-- she has less affect, she shifts into a distinct “attack” mode, etc, which implies that Jinta represents advances in mod soul technology. It’s notable that Urahara and Tessai and even Renji, in the canon scene where he protects the Shouten kids, never treats them as anything less than people. The contrast with the way Mayuri treats Nemu is stark. He likes that her feelings and personality are limited, he sees this as a feature.

I was completely unmoved by the entire chapter where Nemu died. Her sacrifice did not come across to me as anything indicating growth or humanity-- in every battle she's ever been in, she nearly dies because Kurotsuchi tells her to. She simply prioritizes Mayuri over herself. She always has. It’s simply the logical extension of her programming. A lot of people say they would have preferred Nemu to live and Mayuri to die and for sure I would have *preferred* that, but I have never seen Nemu as enough of a character to be worth rooting for. Like, at least Uryuu would have gotten some satisfaction form killing his clown ass, and that might have convinced me for at least half a second that he actually was on the side of the Quincy.

Caveat: if some talented fanficcer wants to write a short novel on Nemu discovering her humanity etc etc, I’m all for it, I’m just saying that canon hasn’t given us anything to suggest she would do more than just shut down without Mayuri to tell her what to do.

Onto Nemuri 8. I can’t believe they let Mayuri have another one. It makes my blood boil. The dude is an on-screen abuser and Kubo had the gall to try to make me feel sorry feel him (I did not) and then gave him another one.

So, I took her away from him.

I mentioned earlier that I go to great lengths to keep Mayuri the hell out of my fanfic, and usually the way I do that is to have my characters go through Akon whenever they have to deal with Squad 12. I think I started doing this because Akon is sort of weirdly familiar with Renji and Rukia in the TYBW, but I have projected all over him and he’s mine now. The way I assume Squad 12 functions, based on my career in scientific programming, is that Mayuri is like a primary investigator-- he's the Big Ideas guy and he spends a lot of time doing wholly self-directed research. He’s the face of Squad 12, so he has to go talk to the Captain-Commander and beg for money and defend blowing things up, but when it comes to science stuff, he does what he wants. Nemu is the lieutenant, and I think she handles most of the usual lieutenanting-- paperwork, meetings, etc., but I think Mayuri takes up a lot of her time by using her as a personal lab assistant on his wacky projects. There's nothing wrong with this, but I think in a lot of squads, the lieutenant is responsible for the day-to-day running of the squad and spends a lot of time dealing with their subordinates and other lieutenants. Nemu, instead, focuses on her captain. Now, the rest of the Gotei counts on Squad 12 for a lot actually-- gigai, Hollow tracking, Dangai monitoring, etc. etc. From the point of view of most science people, this stuff is mundane-- it’s all application, not development, and all the difficulty is in the twitchy little details. It’s frustrating and it’s unrewarding and you never get credit for it, and it is vitally important. There is a certain kind of science professional that makes a career out of this. They usually have master's degrees instead of PhDs, and they are usually tragically underpaid and underappreciated for what they do. In the real world, without these people, you wouldn’t have mass vaccination sites or weather data on your phone or cute li’l robots landing on other planets. In Bleach, these are the people keeping soul reapers alive in the field. And in my mind, this is Akon’s department.

So here’s the headcanon:

After Nemu’s death, Mayuri has so much sad clown pain about it that he wants another robot child poste-haste, but can’t bring himself to do the actual work, so he shoves it off onto Akon, with a list of the design specs he wants. The last one was pretty good, Akon can handle a few minor upgrades, it doesn’t need his personal hand in it. Thinking about going through all that work again just pisses him off, honestly. What a waste!

And Akon's like, yeah, cool, fine. It was heavily implied that he did a lot of the work on Nemu 7, it's just a matter of digging out his old notes and cleaning out some vats.

Except that, right around the same time, Rukia and Renji decide to have a baby.

Babies are super rare in the Gotei, and it’s not like those stuffy nobles are gonna let Akon look at their precious offspring. But Rukia is a rank weirdo, and Akon is their pal, so she’s always like “I hear they have these things in the Living World where you can pee on a stick and tell if you’re pregnant, can you make me one?” and Akon’s brain goes, “Wow, what even is the first detectable sign of a newly formed soul, this is very interesting.” So, at the same time he’s trying to grow a new and improved Nemu, he’s got access to the developing fetus of two captain-class shinigami. So when he has to pick between eight good candidate embryos to move to the next vat, he picks… not the one with the strongest reiatsu signature, like they did last time, but the one whose reiatsu looks the most like a real baby.

Akon reminds me of a lot of programmers I know, so I always sort of headcanon him as particularly interested in whatever passes for programming in Squad 12, and I think he takes special interest in revamping Nemu’s artificial intelligence system, which is primarily based on taking in information about the world and building up a realistic personality based on people she observes. In particular, it gives extra weight to “people who resemble her”. Nemu 7 was raised by Squad 12, so she came up very Squad 12, just like Mayuri wanted. Unfortunately, toddler Hachigou Nemuri’s algorithm unexpectedly decides that she has much more in common with toddler Abarai Ichika than any of the adult soul reapers around her.

Nemuri 8 is a very successful sample in terms of power and intelligence but she’s also very boisterous, and the rest of Squad 12 is like “Akon do something” so Akon takes drastic measures: he asks Renji for parenting advice. Distressingly, Renji is full of useful ideas like “tire her out” and “only fight the important battles” and “we’re signed up for baby yoga, you wanna start comin’ to baby yoga? Your back is gonna thank you.”

Akon didn't mean to let them hang out so much, but Ichika is a very useful data point and also if he takes Nemuri over to the Abarai house, the girls will entertain themselves (i.e. chew on each other) long enough for him to have a beer with Renji and Rukia and honestly my man really needs that beer.

I don’t think Akon thinks of himself as Nemu’s dad past the first time when she calls him ‘Daddy’ and he corrects her (she only did it because that’s what Ichika calls Renji, very predictable quirk of her programming). She’s just a work project. She’s not even his project, she’s Mayuri’s project, he’s just handling the little details. Fathering just happens to be an adjacent field of study that he’s found to contain a number of very useful best practices.

I would prefer not to get into the detail of the physical abuse that Mayuri uses against Nemu 7, but I would like to think that Akon finds ways to protect Nemuri 8 from the same, or barring that, maybe this is what finally drives Akon to murder Kurotsuchi and become Squad 12 captain himself.

Other Nemuri Headcanons:

Her favorite book is Rejection of the Twin Fishes!, Captain Ukitake’s posthumously published children’s book.

She prefers to be called “Nemuri” over “Nemu.”

Nemuri’s second favorite person in Squad 12 after Akon is Rin, because he always has candy. Rin actually likes having someone to share his hobby with and helps her make a World of the Living Snack Bucket List. When other shinigami come in for gigai, Nemuri constantly tries to con them into bringing something back for her.

Rukia teaches her to cuss, but tells her never to do it around Akon. Nemuri never actually cusses around anyone, but really enjoys having Forbidden Knowledge.

Speaking of Forbidden, she is mildly obsessed with Urahara, even though she’s never met him. She’s constantly on the lookout for thumbprints of his work in modern Squad 12 technology.

The one thing she does have in common with Mayuri is an absolutely batshit personal aesthetic. She starts painting her face as a tween and is somewhat inconveniently both into piercings and inflatable outfits.

The true proof that she has surpassed her predecessor, at least in terms of humanity, is that she is able to learn the name of her zanpakutou.

Oh, if you want to read any of my fanfics with Nemuri, here's one where she and Ichika play football and here's one where she tries to con Byakuya into buying her shaved ice. I really like writing Nemuri hanging out with Byakuya because I think an adult man who navigates social settings via rigid system of etiquette and class hierarchy and a small child with a pile of Markov chains for a brain would be natural friends.

[whyamiherewhosummonedme]

you mentioned that blind!punz pains you in the tags of one of your rbs. so i will now be asking you for blind!punz hcs (: have fun (: please cause me and you and your other followers emotional pain (:

(-pie, but you might know that)

Oh god oh fuck why must you make me hurt myself so. I got like 5 seperate hc requests that I gotta work through so let's start with most recent and most painful shall we. Your first ask (unless you've sent some on anon in which case oof) and it's specifically to stab me in the heart, I see how it is

- He didn't lose both eyes at the same time. He lost one eye when Wilbur fired Chekov's Motherfucking Gun and blew up L'manberg, having gotten a faceful of shrapnel and fire. It took over a year for him to learn to move and fight without depth perception and half his sight. The second one, he lost to one of Techno's withers.

- He doesn't blame Dream for it. Dream explicitly told him to stay safe. Dream warned him well in advance what he was planning, even before he gave his ultimatum. It was fully Punz's fault that he'd lost his other eye - it was Punz who decided to charge forward and start killing the Withers, having decided that he couldn't let them escape the quickly-forming crater that was New L'manberg and that it would be the best and fastest way to "prove his loyalty" to the group he was supposed to be spying on. He hadn't expected how many withers there would be, and he couldn't dodge them all. This time, Purpled was far, far away, and he survived the wither's graze by luck alone.

- He hasn't gone to visit Purpled since he lost his vision. He told his youngest brother to hide in Hypixel with his Bedwars friends and not come back until he gave the all-clear, and he tried not to think about how getting permission to leave the SMP semi-permanently made Purpled happier than Punz had seen him in months. At least his last memory of Purpled's face was him smiling and hugging him.

- His blindfold is the same material that his eyepatch once was, but Ponk remade it so that it covered both his eyes. It feels rough and haphazard, but then again, everything about Punz these days feels rough, held together by tape and hope that the next strong breeze wouldn't be what knocks him down.

- He's been growing much, much closer to Ponk. They were already adoptive brothers, of course, but they'd been pretty distant for a while, what with Punz being in the thick of controversies almost constantly and Ponk moving deep into the Badlands, a long enough trip that Punz was lucky to have enough free time to go visit. Now, though... Ponk's been staying with him as he comes to terms with his newfound disability. Sam has been by his side near-constantly as well, but does have to leave relatively often. He's apologetic as hell every time.

- It took multiple days even after waking up for Punz to come to grips with the fact that his blindness was permanent. He stayed in the "anger" stage of grief for a long while, and still finds himself getting pissed off in a way he never really used to when his eyelessness is mentioned. He gets mad at himself, of course, for being dumb enough to get himself hurt this badly and become such a liability, but also mad at Tommy for his constant conflict-making and Tubbo for his dumb ass letting himself get pushed around so much and letting things get worse in the process and Wilbur for making L'manberg in the first place. Really, he's just pissed off at the Dream SMP in general.

- Punz has hardly left his base since he first lost his other eye. He's mostly just been trying to relearn how to walk and function in the safety of a base he knows like the back of his hand that he can't see anymore, the base he built every block of. He's starting to get the hang of things, of using a staff as a cane to tell where things are, but he's still very new to this and still finds himself unsure of every step.

- Really, he's just... Tired. He'll live up to his end of the bargain. He'll give Dream what information he's gleaned from his spying. But he can't fight anymore, not really. He can't build, because he can't see if the builds he makes look good or not. He can't do any of the things he loved. Because he made a rash, impulsive decision and pushed himself too far.

- He thinks that, after this, he'll retire. He knows how Techno's retirement went, knows how even honest people are treated on this server if they're called a traitor. Knows that once this is over, there will be no rest for him. Not anymore.

- He wonders if Hypixel will take him. It sounds like a much better, much safer place to live.

- And then maybe there, his cobbled together family, his brothers and his partner, will be safe.

- Punz hates the dark. Too bad that's all he'll ever see, for the rest of his life.

[still-a-morosexual-help]

AAhh I really like 45 it pushed the story along while also being just hilarious and touching and it was just so good!! 46 was just pokemon battles...

OBEY ME! LESSON 45 DETAILED SUMMARY

At breakfast the most of the brothers crowd around MC and ask them how different appliances work, Asmo apologizes for them and then immediately asks MC something as well and well Belphie calls him out on it he says he hasn't been in the human world for a really long time and things have changed. Beel says that the human world progresses so fast that it makes him dizzy and Asmo says maybe it feels like that since the devildom doesn't progress. Lucifer tells MC to get ready to leave once they're done eating (still on the white couches is2g this pisses me off so much) and when MC asks him wtf he says oh yeah forgot you nearly died while Solomon told you about getting a sorcerer's license. MC's got a meeting with Solomon and Beel & Lucifer were asked to come along. Mammon & Asmo protest cause they can't tag along.  Belphie says that Beel and Lucifer were probably chosen cause they'll at least appear as mature functioning adults.

They meet up with Solomon in front of the Sorcerer's Society HQ, which according to Solomon is filled with "Pompous Uptight Bureaucrats". It provides assistance to sorcerer's living in the human world and provides them with first a provisional license and then a full license that'll allow them to practice magic as they pls more or less. Lucifer's like; that's great and all but why the fuck are we here. And Solomon tells him that he'll understand when they get inside. Lucifer says that sounds exactly like something someone who was seconds away from causing problems would say and he tells MC to brace themself.

The backgrounds for both these lessons are really good! Right so when they walk in sorcerers start ooing and awing over Beel and Lucifer - they've never seen them irl before, one even wants their autographs. Apparently Solomon's apprentice taming the 7 rulers was believed to be an urban legend?????????? I dunno imagine going from being a normal human to becoming an urban legend amongst sorcerers? Lucifer thinks Solomon brought them along just to boost MC's reputation (ohhh the poor man). Solomon reveals that he isn't on good terms with the society (is it even a surprise?) and being his apprentice would just make things harder for MC and that he established the society with his previous apprentice long ago but they had a falling out and now that apprentice runs the society (is it sad that there's a huge possibility that the falling out could be food related?). Solomon says he brought the brothers as bodyguards for his cute apprentice/charming apprentice/favourite pupil (If he keeps talking like that whoever runs this place is gonna deck MC) since back in the Celestial Realm the two of the were known as "the two greatest champions and protectors of the CR". Beel gets pissed off cause he thinks this means Solomon is putting MC in danger and Solomon says 'lol that's definitely not who I'm putting in danger' and when Lucifer picks up on that and questions Solomon on it he goes 'man look at the time we really gotta go get MC registered WOW'. The dude at the reception uses his staff to etch a magic seal that's the society's crest on to the back of MC's hand (I really feel like you should tell someone beforehand that you're gonna give them what is basically a tattoo? Also cant wait for that butcher to see this and the rest of MC's harem and come to the conclusion that they're in a cult) which consists of  3 staves and 7 stars signifying the 3 Magis who are believed to have invented magical arts and the 7 virtues (is it bad that before i even started om i knew what the 7 sins were but only had a vague knowledge about the 7 virtues? I wouldn't have been able to name them all without this lesson :/ anyway they're humility, generosity, gratitude, patience, chastity, temperance and diligence. Something i really like is that the brothers have all displayed the virtues that directly oppose their sins on a semi regular to regular basis).  To get their license apprentuces must earn the seven stars via passing 7 trials with the first of the trials being set and judged by their master. (ok so I assumed each test would focus on a brother and MC'd earn the star that opposes each brother's sin and would pass the test by learning and displaying the virtue of that star. But that isn't what happened here? If anything the test was there to teach Lucifer humility? Is that how it will go? will each test somehow focus on MC helping the brothers learn and display their opposing virtue even though all of them have already displayed this virtue to some extent?  I mean I guess the main point of the tests were to show that MC could control the brothers so that makes sense? but even though this test did focus on making Lucifer let go of his pride, the test was about MC learning to control Beel's power and these two lessons are very much focused on Beel so was the star they earned actually temperance? Even though the test didn't have anything to do with that virtue? Ahh i have so many questions about how the stars are earned and neither lesson really clarify it and if anyone wants to come debate about this???)

ANYway Solomon uses a spell to bind Lucifer in place, which pisses Beel off, tho when MC stays calm and just observes what happens Solomon is pleased assessing a situation before taking action is important (Ive had this HC for a while now but solomon is definitely the kinda teacher who throws you into the deep end with just a cryptic warning and watches with a smile as you try to figure out how to not die, if you do something particularly amusing while struggling he'll give you another cryptic hint, occasionally he'll yell out praise with that smile of his even if it looks like you're actively drowning and dying and failing). They start to get an audience while Lucifer threatens Solomon and shifts into his demon form and goes also im still fucking pissed off about that lunch so/ Beel also shifts and threatens Solomon, tho lucifer tells him to stand down cause he wants to murder solomon on his own and that a mere binding spell won't hold him down, Solomon's like Jeez chill it's for MC's exam you fucknugget and Lucifer's like oh shit yeah but you know i'll actually kill you for this later and Solomon's like yeah that's cool and also imma use my powers to make you into the size of a barbie doll and lucifer's like what-  MC then proceeds to lose their shit over a tiny blushing Lucifer. MC's test is to keep lucifer safe for 24 hours which would be fine if they you know didn't live with the other 5.  which is actually what lucifer says when Beel says it'll be easy if they just stay at home cause home according to lucifer also contains his '5 greatest enemies'. MC's job is to protect Lucifer from them without using any commands on anyone other than beel, and the goal is for them to be able to fully command beel like they did with Asmo in S1 against Henry 1.0. Beel is not allowed to act on his own to protect lucifer and can only act on MC's commands.  Beel agrees, Lucifer swears and Solomon asks MC about their confidence levels. MC can promise one of the three of them that they won't mess up.  Solomon says he'll stay in the house with them so that he can judge and Lucifer's more or less like; you're having fun aren't you and solomon says Duh.

So they end up at the café where predictably Luke & Simeon end up screaming and laughing at a blushing pissed off mini Luci, Simeon tells him they physically cannot laugh cause of course big scary Lucifer is now in Simeon’s words ‘Teeny-Tiny” & how he’s so cute he wants to keep him in a jar as a pet (God I love this lesson).  He says Michael would love to see this and when Lucifer yells at him he completely ignores him to poke his cheek (V Relatable). Luke also wants to join in on the fun but Lucifer is a little bitch to him and as retaliation for scaring their son MC pokes luci on the cheek too. Beel laments about wanting to poke luci on the cheek too and when Solomon tells the others to stop teasing lucifer, luci goes, EXCUSE ME WHOSE FUCKING FAULT IS THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE. Beel notes that luci now smells human. When luke asks about the smelling thing beel says that all 3 species? races? Smell different. Simeon marvels at how much humiliation PrideTM is willing to take cause he’s simping for MC. Luci tells them to shut tf up cause unless they come up with a plan to deal with his hell children they’re probably going to kill him the second he steps foot inside the house. Beel tells MC to use his powers. Luci says they should be able to draw out Beel’s powers like they did Asmo’s in S1. Solomon says since he gave them a power up in S1 simply saying the incantation won’t work this time around and they must first fully understand Beel and his nature to be able to do that. MC has a flashback to the Butcher and his relationship advice and then asks Beel what he thinks they should do to be able to better understand him (while I do think ideally this is the right choice, in context with the other two choices, to me, this is the ONLY choice cause the other two come off as slightly yandere on mc’s part). Beel chooses spending time together via sleepover. But obviously Luci will have to come along and Solomon invites himself along too cause he’s still the judge.  Simeon’s sad about not being able to join in and luke is TOTALLY NOT JEALOUS OKAY!?!?

Outside the house Luci, Beel and MC all make pledges like they’re invading enemy territory; Lucifer: Swear you won’t let your guard down. Beel: Swear to protect Lucifer with your life. MC, 100% seriously: I Swear. Solomon: Are yall fucking serious??? These are your fucking brothers???? You practically raised them??? Lucifer: Have you ever actually met my brothers???? Beel: You legit think they won’t give up their lives just to fuck with lucifer for a day? When Solomon asks what lucifer ever did to make them hate him so much he says he doesn’t know. And look while “locking me up in the fucking attic for a whole year”, “not acknowledging that you’re actually my father and taking some fucking responsibility” and “blaming every minor inconvenience in your life on my very existence” are all very valid reasons none of them actually hate him right, cause I mean using every chance you get to fuck with your siblings is just part of being a sibling?  Which is what Beel and MC both tell Lucifer. Lucifer doesn’t believe them and actually seems sad about it. Solomon said “while I do find the complicated interpersonal dynamics of your family fascinating” my ass is freezing out here. …Do you think they’re like solomon’s favourite show??? I mean Solomon’s old as shit and probably doesn’t remember what it’s like to have a family, and before MC, Simeon and the student exchange he didn’t really have anybody so do you think he just watches the brothers + MC like ‘damn, this shit is wild’????????????????? The instant they enter the house, someone casts a spell and they’re pulled into a portal. The fuck did you say about everyone loving Lucifer, says Solomon while making direct eye contact with Beel. They fall through endless darkness and MC tells them to chill cause it only feels like they’re falling. They end up in a weird ballroom/royal courtroom kinda place, which Solomon marvels. Beel & MC recognize the place as a location from one of levi’s games and meet Levi in his TSL clothes who welcomes MC as the ‘hero’.

Beel, Luci & Sol kinda just wordlessly stare at levi with tired expressions and MC being the bro they are plays along with levi by asking if he is who they think he is. He introduces himself as The Lord of Shadows, the ruler of all 7 lands. Lucifer: WTF. Beel says they don’t have time for games and Levi gets upset that they’re making him look pathetic. Levi gives MC their mission – to save the world by defeating the demon lord satan. Lucifer tells Solomon to get the fuck out of there. Solomon says he can’t considering he has no idea where the fuck they are in the first place. Beel politely asks ‘his majesty’ the way to pantry and Levi yells at them to take it seriously. Beel says well ok and explains the whole test thing to levi as a way to explain why they can’t play. Levi says satan already knows this. After that there’s a flash and black smoke starts curling up around the room and satan turns up in his demon form. And LOOK I hate satan’s demon form outfit but it actually looks really good in this context??? The feather boa and ribbon bow thing really works with the curling black smoke, evil demon lord look. It probably helps that you can’t see his bottom half. Anyway Satan turns out to just be a magical projection and he says, well you’ll have to come to me cause I kidnapped your boyfriend, while Diavolo calls out to Lucifer and MC from off screen. Diavolo had run away from the devildom to surprise the brothers. While Lucifer scolds Diavolo and while Diavolo apologizes, Satan tells they must all come to him along with the “obnoxious talking doll”. Lucifer: the fuck did you just say. Ok this part is really cute; Satan: “I’ll be seeing you MC.” Diavolo, still off screen: Can’t wait to see you MC! Luicfer has a migraine. When Beel tries to say they should head off, Levi tells them they forgot something in RPGs. MC, still dutifully in character, asks the lord of shadows to give them aid. Levi gives them 100 grimm and just anekfnsndfjn the fuck can they do with just 100 grimm. Which is what both Beel and Luci say. Solomon says, well maybe they’re just fucking poor around here so everything here is cheap. Levi gives them a talisman to protect themselves with, Lucifer says cool, but once this is over I’m gonna beat your ass :) Levi says he just bought a new game that lets you create your own story and he just wanted to play it with them :(

So they end up in a cute lil’ game village & beel wants to go to a tavern but lucifer says they need to buy equipment first. If MC asks a NPC they just repeat the same line about how great life is under levi’s rule over and over again, if they search in the grass they find some medicinal herbs but beel immediately eats them, if they break a barrel Solomon starts breaking open barrels too and they get yelled at by lucifer. They end up in No. 2’s armoury. Lucifer’s fed up with life. Solomon says the gear looks like shit and Beel says it makes sense since this is only the first town. When Beel tries to ask 2 for food he repeats his introductory dialogue over and over again. With the money they have they’re able to buy gear for Solomon and MC and the only thing that fits Lucifer is the fairy outfit,,,, I’m NOT fucking wearing that says lucifer off screen and God I love this lesson. Solomon and MC are both little shits and can you just imagine them trying to convince lucifer to wear it just to test it out? Fucking amazing. MC tries to haggle/talk with 2 so they could get armour for beel but he says buddy I’m running a business here BUT there’s a monster in the casino that cheats ppl of their mone– Lucifer & Beel simultaneously: Oh, Mammon. So basically, if they can get 2’s money back he’ll offer them a huge discount on the lord of flies armour.  They decide to find an inn for the night before they face Mammon.

Lucifer finds it hard to eat food. Solomon: Cause you’re tiny ^.^   Beel: Wonder whose fault that is :I  MC can either offer to cut it for him (He thanks MC and tells them to feed him too. Entitled Fuck. Solomon & Beel also want to be fed but Lucifer tells them to fuck off) or tell him to just open wide and take a bite (Lucifer says if he gets too close to the food Beel would probably accidentally eat him). Beel says the food is a lot like devildom food and MC asks him if he likes devildom food or human food, Beel says all food is good. Since they don’t have much money MC & beel and Solomon & Lucifer end up sharing beds with Lucifer telling Solomon to use a spell to keep himself still during the night to avoid accidentally killing lucifer in his sleep. There isn’t a spell for that. At night, Beel asks lucifer if he thinks Satan still hates him and gets “…” in response. Assuming Lucifer is asleep he asks MC what they think. MC says they think Satan just can’t admit that he likes Lucifer. Beel says if that’s what they think then it’s okay cause he just wants Satan to love lucifer like the rest of them do. MC asks Beel if he’s worried about lucifer (Beel says Lucifer wouldn’t want him to worry but… and that he wants to be there when lucifer needs help) or says that Beel really loves Lucifer (Beel happily agrees that he does). Beel then tells MC about how he and Lucifer first met: So back when Beel was an angel, according to him the only thing good about him was that he was strong so he decided to become a soldier except he couldn’t control his strength and always ended up breaking things which led to Raphael always saying something sarcastic to him. The whole thing was depressing for him until one day lucifer came over, sat beside him and talked with him. Lucifer was always really busy and spent most of his days deep inside the palace (places where Beel has never even been to before). He told beel that a soldier was not about attacking but instead about protecting, that protecting was what was most important. He’d told beel that he was special cause he had the power to protect everyone and keep them safe (this shit is the sweetest and it has me sobbing but also that must have hit like a bullet when Lilith died…). Lucifer had told Beel if he learnt to control his powers then Lucifer would recommend him as a Cherubim, gatekeeper. Lucifer had given Beel confidence and his post as a gatekeeper. Which is why Beel wants to protect him, cause he loves and respects Lucifer. He says all his brothers love Lucifer cause if they didn’t they never would have considered leaving the celestial realm. He says that even though Satan’s situation is different he isn’t the same as he was before MC came around and that Beel likes the new satan better. And that he actually likes all his brothers more since MC came around, which is why he likes MC so much too. MC gets to either kiss, hug or thank him. Beel says his powers are there so that he can protect both Lucifer and MC. And FUCK I love this backstory so much????? And I desperately need all the other backstories?

[amarantine-amirite]

It's Not Up To You

I never once had any peace or rest. There was a persistent threat that resources and places would vanish without a trace. Even though I never got my ass handed to me daily, I could never anticipate when I would be able to catch my breath.  

I had to adapt. I had to be able to alter my expectations faster than the circumstances would change. It forced me to abandon having a set image of what I want in my mind. It took away my ability to visualize. I had to anticipate resources disappearing in the future, so I had a hard time with long-term planning.  

Going into the week, I had it all figured out. I had found an iron-clad way for me to have my cake and eat it too. It may not have been ideal, but at least I still had the resources available.

My mother planned to drive me to my piano concert. Because she had a stressful day at work yesterday, she went to the bar. She neither came home nor returned any of my calls, so I assumed she was either crazy hungover or still passed out. I now had to hitch a ride with Jackie and her sister, Henrietta.  

Henrietta drove like she had lead feet. “Uh, Ettie,” Jackie asked, “you just blew through a traffic light at” 

“Don’t tell me how fast I’m going; I need to know where I am!” she snapped. 

“Can we at least stop and get lunch?” I asked. I last ate at 7:00 AM. Bad things happen when I try to function on an empty stomach. My temper gets worse. My impulse control goes to Hell. I bounce off the walls.  

“Hell, no!” Henrietta snarled, “If we stop to eat, we’ll get stuck in a traffic snarl!”

“OK, what’s your problem?” I whined. I had no idea why Henrietta got so upset. 

Henrietta sighed angrily. “Do you wanna know why I’m so fucking pissed off?" she barked, "Those fuckers moved up my fucking interview by a fucking week. I was supposed to get married today! All that money I spent on the venue, the photographer, the catering; that’s money I’m never going to see again!” 

I don’t know how Henrietta could say that without bursting into tears. “And what about Jasper? He’s going to think I broke off the wedding because I don’t have feelings for him anymore. I’m worried. He doesn’t handle rejection well. What if he tries to kill himself again?” 

What happened next felt like being in the desert and coming upon an oasis, only to discover it’s a mirage. When we arrived at our destination, everything went up in smoke. Before we left, Henrietta told me that she would drop us off first, then head to the interview. She looked at us and said, “Nobody's leaving until I finish my interview. Understand?” 

I nodded. Inside, I wanted to smack her. Hard.

Today has been nothing but hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. I fucking hate being jerked around like this. The constant stop-and-start made me feel like someone drained of my life force. I can’t deal with it anymore. 

Jackie and I came up with a plan. The plan was simple, like Henrietta’s would-be husband, Jasper. Unlike Jasper, the plan stood a chance of working. When they let her in to do the interview, Jackie and I would duck out and go to my piano concert. We’d come back when I finished my set, and that’d be that.

Problem. We made a huge tactical error. 

It’s a long story. At the beginning of the school year, the cheerleaders thought it would be funny to nominate Anna Rose, the head of the chess club, for prom queen as a joke. Anna didn’t know about this, but the principal did. On Halloween night, we got something really scary in our inboxes: an official email with the school's letterhead saying that due to “bullying", prom would be permanently cancelled until measurable snowfall in July. A lot of the anxieties that kids channel into what they’re going to do at their prom got redirected elsewhere. 

The kids at school got offended. By everything. Like, a lot.

Remember how I said that school has been so hard for me because I have no idea what to expect? Well, this piano concert thing was a perfect example. I had to make a list of not just one song, but for possible songs that I could play at this concert. I need to be ready to switch out songs in case the band teacher changed his mind. He always did stuff like that. One day, you could pick whatever song you wanted for school concerts, and the next, they would say that it had to come from a pre-approved list. So that meant I had no idea what song I was going to play. When people asked me, the best I could say was, "I’ve got a lineup." Lineup was not a good choice of words; a better choice of words would have been revolving door .

This brings us to our mistake: the same reason that I had to keep a revolving door of songs in my mind for the concert was also the same reason why we should have called the hotel where the concert was to be held ahead of time to double-check to see if the school had not cancelled it. We did not do that.

That brings us to right now. We are smack dab in the middle of what appears to be a campus recruitment event. Everyone in the room except for us is wearing cheap suits that fit somebody else, nobody looks familiar, and the atmosphere consists of a general air of anxiety and lack of preparedness.

Five minutes after we arrived, a woman wearing a pantsuit that made her look like a pool table, pineapple earrings, and a name tag that read “Megan Mulroney“ approached us. “Excuse me, ladies," she said, “are you students at The Fletcher School?”

“No, we go to Arthur Vandelay high school," Jackie said, “I’m here with Margaret because she’s got a piano concert to go to.” 

I stood up and looked at Megan. “So is that in the Gold room, because I got a copy of the flyer here and it says Hall B, and I don’t know where that is, and…”

Megan cut us off. “I don't know what you’re talking about,” she said.

I handed Megan the flyer. “I’m talking about this.”

She didn’t look at the flyer. She gave it right back to me. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, but that’s a piece of blank paper." 

“It’s not blank!” I chirped. 

“Yes, it is; and I don’t appreciate you wasting my time like this.“

“We’re not wasting your time.”

“Well then, why am I dealing with two overdressed high school idiots when I have new grads to check in for a networking event?” she said, doing her best impression of a bratty 12-year-old.

“Why are you so stubborn?”

Megan shrugged at us and rolled her eyes in a cocky fashion. “I'm not stubborn all the time. I'm only stubborn when I’m right.” 

Big red flag. If someone says I'm only stubborn when I'm right , it means they're putting up a front, either because they don't want to but they're wrong or they're trying to bullshit you. 

She continued to puff herself out. “Listen, you’re not special. What happens to you happens to other people, too.”

“Not helpful,” I said as I rolled my eyes.  

She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, sorry you feel that way.”

“What does that even mean?” I blurted.  

She ignored us. Rather than explain what was going on, she instead attempted to have phone sex with Idris Elba and got the wrong number.

It didn’t stop there. One look out the window told me we’d have to get someone else to pick us up, as Henrietta got arrested. I’m guessing she found out that the job she applied for was posted as an April Fool’s Day joke and she either trashed the office or beat the crap out of the hiring manager. Based on the black eye, I think it was the second thing. 

Terrific. Now we have no plan, no ride home, and no idea what the fuck is supposed to happen next. 

I’m devastated. I feel gutted. But beyond that, I'm spooked.

This isn't something you'd consider typically scary. It felt like that last photo taken before a disaster. This looming sense that something catastrophic is coming down the pike continues to hang over me.

@writers-are-writers