#basically i need games that aren't too hard to play like i can't do fucking. stealth missions. or real time combat.

[beatriceportinari]

i know me asking for recommandation is always v funny but since I enjoyed the experience. i would like to try out some more games. i like light gameplay/vn adjacent/walking sim ( ? ) and you know what I like in a story. on switch plssss i don't like playing on the puter+i wanna move around

[mamadovie]

I sent this in to your old blog but can you do a NSFW alphabet for Vilkas please 🙏🏻🥺

𐙚 . . . VILKAS.

A N: We are so back with the NSFW Alphabet's, I've missed these. ♡

A B O U T: A list from A-Z of all the ways Vilkas is sexually.

W A R N I N G S: Sexual content ahead, so MDNI!

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Vilkas — as a general note — is a rough man. He doesn't own much gentleness in him, not whilst fighting nor when he's pinning you down into the sheets — but in those moments afterwards, he's the sweetest and kindest. He's tired, and he wants nothing more than to relax with you. After a nice bath (if you both have enough energy...) he will lay down with you, enjoying the feeling of his hands roaming your skin and your fingers through his hair.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

On him: his dick. Simple. He likes how it makes you feel. He likes how it allows him to feel when he's deep inside of you.

On you: your back. He loves to trace his fingers across your back. He's got it memorised in the back of his mind, and his favourite view is your back as he's going to pound town. ♡

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

He's a clean man, I'd say. He may be a dirty bastard, but he's still a civilised member of Whiterun — he prefers to cum inside of you rather than make a mess of it. He also views it slightly disrespected to cum on you, he's a gentleman like that.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self-explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

He loves the idea of fucking you in a place where you could potentially get caught, the excitement and recklessness is what gets him going.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

He's experienced! He acts like he isn't. He never brings up his past sexual partners. He isn't like that. But he shows his experience in his actions. He knows what he's doing.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

Since he loves your back so much, he loves back shots. Or if he's lazy and tired, reverse cowgirl. He also likes to watch your ass bounce in those positions.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Does he look goofy to you? No. He doesn't.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

On him: he maintains it. But he doesn't really care.

On you: he doesn't give a single shit. He's prepared to go foraging if you don't shave.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

He fucks hard, but he is a romantic to his core, you just need to dig deep enough.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

He doesn't masturbate often, never has. He's always busy or generally not interested enough to do it.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Vilkas is a choker. He likes impact play and loads of teasing. He's also into edging, you of course.

L = Location (favourite places to do the do)

Anywhere. That's it. As long as he's with you, he's down.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

After a bad day, he's ready to fuck it out of his system. But he gets turned on simply by you biting your lip, stretching, and showing your stomach. Simple acts that are innocent.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

He's possessive. Nobody else can touch you.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

He prefers to receive it, but he's always down to go down under, too. He's very talented in that area, and when he does it, he can't hold himself back from touching himself as he works his mouth on you.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

Fast and rough. He's a pounder.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

He prefers actual sex, quickies aren't for him. He hates to feel rushed. He wants to take you in complete and for you to take him in... literally.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

I'd say he does take risks, but nothing that will hurt you or ruin both of your reputations (like actually getting caught...)

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

He has a lot of stamina, and he can pace himself, but he needs to recharge afterwards.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

He never really thought about them, but if you asked about it, he'd get into it. He'd enjoy the use of them, too.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He's a massive tease. He likes to watch your reactions.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

He's not that loud. He's a grunter and buries his face into your neck to hide his moans.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

Vilkas is obsessed with the sounds you make, so he will always aim to make you loud and begging for him.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

Big? Yes. Thick? Yes. Veiny? Yes. He's not a monster, but he's definitely got that D, and yes, the D is fire.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Average, I'd say. He's always ready if you are. But it's rare that he's the one to initiate it.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

Hella fast. He's ready to sleep like he's never slept...

[glngrbred]

There is something wrong with gamers. They made a new quiet place game, and the main character is pregnant and has asthma. Now, Any reasonable person should be able to think about A QUIET PLACE and realize that having asthma is a GAMEPLAY FEATURE they designed FOR GAMEPLAY!!! Like, remember the Amnesia series?

(tangent) Amnesia Rebirth is an entire game where all of the horror is built around that concept from bloodborne where a woman is impregnated (against her will) and is giving birth to a demon basically. also the demon is in her body so shes like possessed and shit. COOL! Pregnancy is amazing for horror!!!!

Asthma? AMAZING for horror where you have to be quiet. it is game design MAGIC and is so cool! they managed to turn their difficulty feature into a diagetic and logical system. like, needing to find refuels for your inhaler is just automatically going to succeed in making scrambling stressful scenarios that will have you shitting the bed.

Remember Amnesia: the bunker? the famously increadable design forces you to put yourself in time scrambles where you know you'll run out of light, you know you need more rations, and you know you're almost out of fuel. Just to EMULATE that franticness and the FLUIDITY and rapid pace of gameplay is an acheivment.

Especially with the rigidity of A quiet place's near parallel world, you can't add too many fantasy elements outside of the apocolypse and the monsters (shreikers?) so turning corruption/insanity/fuel/ammo into Inhalers turns those fantastical, hard to explain systems into something so Inherently realistic and basic, that anyone who picks up the game will be able to understand the objective. V VV You have to breathe -> rasping will get you killed -> use your inhaler-> Uh oh ur out of charges -> you have to go on an adventure and find more -> that means you have to go on a crazy mad dash avoiding making sound and a single error will get you killed -> your getting closed in on OH FUCK THER IT IS -> take your inhaler -> you survived! NOW YOU HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN What did every youtube comentary slop farm say? OMG? a PREGNAT WOMAN WITH ASTHMA?? thats so UNREALISTIC. SHe would die IMMIDIATELY. Fucking forced diversity! I want to have microphone integration and play as a white guy WAHHHHHHHH!!! I can't critically think for 2 seconds and realise that this game is designed to be realistic, and be a similar experience for all players and alsot to avoid metagaming by just fucking MUTING your mikE. Like they solved a fundamental flaw with an Audio based horror game in such an elegant and story driven way. They aren't even trying to get diversity points. its purely for story and gameplay.

[nygmobblepot-trash]

Oh so they're just going to pretend like last episode didn't happen and go straight to finding Sylvie.

Cool.

(Rant)

Mobius and Loki almost died and we aren't going to get even a scene showing the aftermath??? Wasn't Mobius hit by the temporal aura (whatever it's called)? Didn't Mobius ask what took so long? Didn't Loki explain why he said they needed to find Sylvie after time slipping? No one said anything? Or am I supposed to believe Mobius wouldn't lose his absolute shit when he found out he almost died because Loki was too busy making googly eyes at Sylvie.

Ok. Ok. Maybe to be fair they really said nothing. In E1 Loki told Mobius very little what happened at the end of time. In E2 we see Mobius burying his feelings hard--even worse than Loki. But at least show that. Mobius in E2 seemed completely different. I get he's probably putting on an act because he really doesn't want to think about his life but come on.

Actually you know what? I think he was putting on an act for the whole episode. Call me delusional but I don't care. In the beginning, Mobius seems really happy to be looking for Sylvie. I think that was true but for other reasons. It's clear Mobius doesn't want anything to change. He doesn't want to think of a life he could've had so he needs to keep being an analyst. Before shit hit the fan that was searching for Sylvie. The whole thing is a game for him. It's why Loki was so serious and Mobius didn't really seem to care. He rather have a drink with Brad and play games. Normally Mobius wouldn't be so easily fooled but he was while Loki was the one paying attention. He's obviously going through the motions. He's happy again when he and Loki are trying to figure out the TemPad. Of course, it doesn't last long as the interrogation follows.

Let's talk about the interrogation. God I want to talk about it so bad because what the fuck. So Mobius warns Loki that Brad is an asshole (Mobius keeps swearing and I'm so here for it) and to not lose his temper. So I immediately think okay Loki is going to go off on this dude because why not? He'll do anything for Sylvie. The gang walks in and Mobius did not lie at all. Brad goes off on everyone. He's laying into Loki the most of course while Mobius keeps trying to keep Loki calm. Brad's speech also mimics several conversations Loki and Mobius had in S1. Brad basically says what Mobius said to Loki in S1. He drills that Loki is a villain and only brings suffering and pain but instead of twisting it around like Mobius did it changes into something that Loki yelled at Mobius towards the end of S1. Brad doesn't twist it into something hopeful or give Loki a choice no he tells Loki that at the end of the day he's lying to himself, that he can't play the hero. Yes that isn't exactly what Loki said to Mobius but it's eerily similar to the "lies you tell yourself" in S1. I understand if that made no sense but I'm just saying that it's super interesting to see the difference between Mobius and Brad.

Anyways so Loki starts to spiral and it seems like he's going to say fuck it. They even cut to Mobius's concerned face. I do love though that no matter what happened Mobius let Loki take the lead. Yes, he kept butting in but it seemed like he was reminding Loki that it was okay. It was like his way of proving Brad wrong. He was trying to tell Loki he trusted him and that he was with him.

I will say that Brad said the one thing I'm sure everyone in that room was thinking, "You're too obsessed with her. You need therapy." Honestly Brad you were so real for that. But he wasn't done yet. This man then had the audacity to tell Mobius to control his pet. And Mobius smiles and tells a fucking joke about Brad disappearing?? And Loki smiles at it?? I'm sorry but what is going on? Mobius I love you. I was so disappointed that they didn't let Mobius lead the interrogation because he would've rocked it. But Loki failed so Mobius said fuck it and did not disappoint. He literally got one line in and it was telling Brad he's going to disappear with a smile on his face. Mobius is ruthless.

This is where we circle back to the point I was making before... several paragraphs ago... I'm sorry. Brad goes off on Mobius and Mobius takes it for a little bit. You can tell what Brad is saying is getting to him. He's making points that even Loki is reacting too. Points that Loki should've talked to Mobius about already. It seemed like Loki was just then realizing that Mobius hadn't brought up his life at all. That Mobius had been acting like nothing was happening. Which was interesting to see. Finally, Loki seems to pay attention to Mobius for 5 seconds. Of course that's interrupted by Mobius slapping the hell out of Brad. Thus making it clear Mobius has been freaking out for a while but hiding it. They were both probably having a panic attack at the same time. The whole time Loki was running around in a panic Mobius put his fears aside and focused on Loki. It's incredibly sad. Did he feel he couldn't confide in Loki? It really hurts that this poor man had his world turn upside down and not once did Loki bother to ask him about it. Loki had to think it was odd that Mobius just stopped trying to burn down the TVA. Mobius deserves better.

I am happy that Loki stopped worrying about Sylvie for 2 seconds to chase after Mobius who clearly wasn't okay in the slightest. "He got under your skin" and "I was following you" Sir? Do you even know where you're at? Loki's dumbass doesn't know what to do either and takes Mobius to get some pie. As if that's going to fix anything. Mobius admits he lost it a little bit and Loki tries to relate and uses the battle of New York as an example of a time he lost it. ??? I'm sorry? Honey, Mobius punching someone isn't the same as you trying to conquer a city. You suck at this. Thankfully Loki cares enough to dig into why Mobius has no desire to at the very least see what his life could be like. Honestly, though Mobius's answer makes sense. Of course, he doesn't want to know. He's all about free will and deciding your own path. Why would he care what path he was on? It's a path he was supposed to be on but now he isn't. He got to escape the sacred timeline, he has always seen that as a blessing which is why he fought so hard to rescue Loki. The thing that annoys me though is Loki moves on so fast. I get he probably respects Mobius's decision. After all, if he saw a happy life that was taken from him that would suck. But why not ask what Mobius really wants to do? No one would blame Mobius if he got up and left. He now has the free will to do whatever he wants and yet he stays at the TVA. It would have been interesting for Loki to point out that Brad was kind of right. That it isn't healthy to pretend like nothing happened. I could see Mobius getting angry and pointing out that technically Loki is hiding from his reality as well. But of course, we can't spend too much time developing Mobius or his relationship with Loki, we have to get back to Sylvie.

Interrogation 2 happens and they finally get the info they wanted. The whole time I was thinking "damn this really seems like a Mobius plan," only to be proven right. Of course, Mobius immediately jumps to torturing Brad and calls it a "little bit of mischief". Again I have to ask, sir are you okay? Mobius is fucking terrifying.

I think the answer is no. When they take Brad to McDonald's Mobius is acting strange again. He's snapped back into acting like everything is okay. He ignores Sylvie and Loki talking and is being nice to Brad -- the man he punched within the last 10 minutes). Mobius is petty and as we now know hides his feelings until he explodes. He is clearly trying to distract himself with the food. Brad starts to freak out and Mobius tries to dismiss it but can't by saying that the relationship (between Loki and Sylvie) is complicated. But his petty ass can't stop there and adds that opposites attract in the same breath as him saying that Loki is in a relationship with themself. Mobius is really out there saying that opposites attract and Loki and Sylvie aren't opposites. Brad then says it's weird and I'm waiting for Mobius to agree but this man goes, "hey isn't it cool that 10 minutes ago you said I was nothing and then I punched you and got a God to torture you?" Mobius are you good? For the love of jetskis stop deflecting. You can't just torture Brad again because you're too much of a coward to talk to Loki. I will say good on Mobius for figuring out it was a trap. The slap on Brad's arm and the angry "Hey!" Will live in my mind for far too long. Like I said Mobius is scary as hell.

Lastly, I want to talk about the end (yes I'm almost done with my rant -- yay!). I hate that Sylvie continues to be pissed at Loki and the whole TVA. Loki and the others are trying their best. She didn't give them a chance. She just made a decision for everyone else and got pissy when they couldn't fix her mess. Honestly fuck right off. That's all I want to say about her. Anyways the thing that broke my heart was Loki saying, "Please, don't. It's harder to stay." I'm sorry but what the fuck does that even mean? Maybe I'm interpreting this wrong but does he mean that if she isn't around it's hard for him to stay at the TVA? If I'm right, then what the actual hell? Your friend Mobius is hanging on by a thread and you want to abandon him? You're all he has. He isn't close with hunter B15, OB, and Casey like he is with you. Mobius never once abandoned Loki. And yea I get that he does go over to Mobius and puts his hand on his shoulder but he only does it after getting rejected yet again by Sylvie. Hell Mobius probably just heard that Loki doesn't want to stick around. Are you seriously telling me that Loki is just using the TVA and Mobius to find Sylvie? At least last episode he wanted to go find her and fix the mess that she made.

Please stop chasing after someone who doesn't care about you in the slightest.

[misc-obeyme]

I'll keep spoilering you just cuz... Cuz I wanna talk about those chapters so much. Yes, I thought about the board game too later on, but never played it myself. Could be fun with them, honestly, Lucy will win anyway. Look, I am not happy about the whole "multiple human worlds" either, it makes it soooo much broader, also Diavolo has basically god powers from what I get from the lore? Creating dimensions, stopping time and so on, so it makes sense he can travel between dimensions? So why does he needs Barb's powers? Also, why isn't teleportation is used more often? I think there's a chat somewhere where Mammon had to keep the lights on with magic, and said it's too draining. So I get that they can't use magic that often (mc is excluded cuz, it's mc) but still, the amount of times that the brothers were late for RAD. Just teleport there. But this is a whole different conversation. I am just a stickler for lore and logic within it, if I get going. Yes, yes, I will lighten up... In the rest of hard chapters 50 and on, there's like 4 of them where Levi and Mammon are doing stupid shit. Like a lot of it. It makes me think that if you let the two of them be alone for longer than few minutes, they will destroy the world. Also, Levi is super rich. Sugar daddy to Mammon. It just makes it so much more profound now. How didn't I think of this before. Can't wait to see what the hard lessons in season 4 has to offer. -🐆

Well, I've only played it once and I remember being somewhat bored, but I still can't see Catan and not think of it for some reason lol. No doubt Lucifer would win, too.

OKAY now we're getting into teleportation because that is a question I also have!! In fact, I'm so preoccupied with the fact that MC can teleport as a sorcerer that I've included it in both The Threads That Bind and Unchained. In Threads, MC uses it to teleport themselves from inside the castle to outside the castle. And in Unchained, they give an excuse for why they aren't using it, which is that it's exhausting and depletes their magic and isn't worth using for short distances. But they also use it to teleport between worlds, which is something that seemingly only MC and Solomon and Barbatos can do.

I don't know about Diavolo, honestly... I can't remember what the specifics of his powers are. But he's supposed to be the strongest demon in the entire Devildom, so you would think that would mean he could do things like teleport, too. I'm not sure how that might differ from Barb's abilities. I always thought of Barbatos doing it more like portal-style, so it might be less exhausting. If you can open a portal to anywhere, that's likely less taxing than trying to move your entire body from one place to another? I don't know, there are no rules to this stuff and it makes me crazy.

So I just kinda headcanoned teleportation rules as needed for my stories. It's important in a few plot points, so I had to address it, you know? Otherwise I'd have had to come up with some kinda alternate way for things to go down.

Ahaha please don't lighten up, I am absolutely the same way lol. I could rant about this for several more paragraphs. But in the end, I always just end up filling in these questions myself as needed because there's so much that they don't fully explain. And I'm like, I need my own stories to make sense. So that means making up rules where none exist in canon.

Anyway, I love the Mammon and Levi relationship. They're so funny, I feel like they're constantly just fucking around. And Levi getting so mad at Mammon for owing him money is really hilarious when you consider how often Levi still lends Mammon money. Like is all that just for show? Mammon is spoiled lol.

[littleslavediary]

psychological abuse

It started while he was on break at work, playing a game of hearthstone with me. I did something wrong in the game and he was pissed. It seemed he was in the mood to be angry and not let anything go.

After that started an hours long argument where he was mostly mad that I don't send him nearly as much text as he sent me. Eventually, the argument was dropped, but he was still angry. We had a different conversation about skittles.

I mentioned they are my favorite candy and he said, "All skittles have the same taste regardless of the color."

I disagreed and said it wasn't true, he got increasingly angry about this, first arguing they have slightly different smells but taste the same, and eventually sent me a scientific article that claims there are only five basic tastes. He uses this to argue that "taste" is different than "flavor". So they can taste the same while having different flavor.

Now he started to get upset at me for arguing with him and he started warning me and reminding me I'm a slave. I finally lie and say he has convinced me that skittles technically taste the same, and apologize for arguing about it. But now it's too late and he is enraged.

A few hours and many angry texts later, I expected him to physically attack me as soon as he got home from work but he acted sort of normal at first. We sat down together on the couch and he gave me an Israeli candy that has pieces in different colors.

After a while he asked me if the different colore taste the same. My fight or flight instincts started to kick in as the tension rose.

"No, because they are more and less sour, they aren't all sweet."

"Good," He replies, "So do skittles taste the same?"

"Yes, they all taste sweet, so they taste the same."

In my head my mind is screaming that the word "taste" is a verb. It just means to test the flavor of something. But he would seriously hurt me if I said something like that, and it's physically impossible for me to say it because I have been trained.

At some point the conversation started to devolve. His number one complaint is that I don't say enough. I think he actually just wants me to say something that will justify him hitting me.

Eventually, I become so frustrated. We have been talking about this for over an hour now. Now it's all about how I barely replied to his texts earlier, now I'm not saying anything and I need to communicate way more in general. He is so filled with rage that he is yelling at me and threatening me with body language.

But I can't say what I'm actually thinking because that's argumentative. Saying he is right isn't good enough. Saying sorry isn't good enough. I wasn't thinking. I wasn't trying. He purposefully mistakes my frustration for anger and cruelly teases me for getting mad.

"Fucking answer me slave," he yelled punching the side of my thigh as hard as he can several times, which left a massive bruise.

Finally, this all manipulated me into going off on a tangent about how him getting this enraged over a disagreement about a video game and candy isn't fair, and that I feel like nothing I say helps. I focus on saying the level of anger isn't reasonable and if he tried to explain this argument to any of our friends and family they would find it completely ridiculous.

This is what he has been waiting for and I felt a rough tug on my hair as my head was pulled harshly down into his lap and I was left looking up at him slightly daised.

Calling me names, he viciously slapped my face on either side several times but he was holding back a little more than usual because we are leaving to spend the night with his family soon so I can't have fresh bruises.

It still hurts and leaves my skin bright red, I start feeling tears drip down from the corner of my eyes, at least my mascara is water proof. Part of the crying is an involuntary reaction to the sting and the rest is an emotional reaction to feeling so hopeless to avoid his wrath.

He starts asking me questions slapping my face hard after each one, glaring daggers into my eyes.

"Are you my slave?"

"Yes!"

"Do I get to be as angry as I want?"

"Yes."

"Why would I give a fuck what anyone else thinks about this dynamic?" He asked continuing to slap my face with each question. "Are you okay with being mistreated by me?"

"Yes."

"Would you like me if I was a normie and didn't hurt you?"

I shook my head no.

"So yeah. Maybe I am a little psychopathic. A little sadistic. And if I say 'black is blue', I expect my slave to say 'yes Master, that's right.' Do you understand?"

He hits me again and I wonder if he is even concerned with what I will look like in front of his entire family in 20 minutes.

"Yes! I understand."

"It's hard, isn't it?" He asked his tone softening, as he stroked my bright red face gently.

"Yes, I'm sorry," I said, crying harder.

"Do you want to be the object of my affection?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to be my one true love and my everything?"

"Yes."

"Are you sorry?" He asked. "Show me you are sorry." He pushed me off of him and stood up in front of me unzipping his pants. I immediately took him into my mouth.

[dundunny]

Final Fantasy XVI

Final Fantasy XVI completed, and wow, I think it's my favorite Final Fantasy since IX, and I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it (focusing on VIIR2?). It's not a perfect game and has some glaring flaws, but I haven't had this much fun playing a Final Fantasy in a long time.

I'll start with the issues, and I think number one is the items, which affects the game twofold. First is there's a completely fucked up weapon upgrade system. Literally after I get a shiny new sword, barely an hour later I've gotten another one. It's like Square didn't track when a player should get trying out something new. The second is the rewards for exploration or epic battles don't matter. There are maybe a dozen different upgrade materials in the whole game, most of which you get pretty early on. So I'm literally running around the final area and finding fucking sharp fangs, which I started collecting way back in the beginning when Clive was like fifteen. Yeah, (some) bounties have good drops, but I literally defeated Bahamut and got forty bloody hides, of which I already owned hundreds. None of the accessories felt like game changers either, so opening up treasure chests felt like meh. You need a sort of nice reward for effort. If I'm gonna walk across the map for some distant treasure, it better not be five of what I already have hundreds of. It's annoying because they put so much effort into everything else, so literally hiring one dude whose sole job is this I feel shouldn't've been hard.

Then there are regular battles. Let me say this first: boss battles were amazing and I was completely satisfied with them. But XVI suffered from the same issue as Hogwarts Legacy: too little variation in enemies and you're way overleveled early on. There's no incentive to fight regular enemies on the map because you're not getting much EXP since you're already way over, their drops are pointless like every other item, so they're more or less just an annoyance you avoid. I didn't put any effort in trying basic encounters, and I beat the game one level below max. So what's the point. Given how much effort Square put into the battle system, it's a shame they didn't let me flex my muscles with it more often.

This is a personal preference but I think others would agree: I'm a big environments fiend, and you don't get to explore any of the major cities. Hell, you never see the Iron Kingdom's capital even in a cutscene. The cities are just dungeons, so you're basically there as a continuous fight so you don’t have time to appreciate the surroundings, and when you do everything is in the process of being destroyed or already is. You don’t even get to visit what should be a moderately sized town, Port Isolde, and even Northreach felt like a minor checkpoint before the capital moved. All that's left are small towns or even just hovels. I wonder if they were trying to save resources on environments; Oriflamme looks amazing from the outside, I can't imagine having the render all of that.

That being said, dungeons are following the trend of a linear path with perhaps a quick diversion for treasure. There's no puzzles, no thought (although a good portion of the time the dungeons are mid-battle of a large attack so there isn't time). XVI isn't alone in this; I've noticed most RPGs in recent years don't do the puzzle route as much anymore.

Another minor complaint is at times they would shove the point down the player's throat until it became fantastical. Yes, slavery is bad and people abuse slaves. However, I cannot imagine even in the cotton-picking South some person would purposefully have other people's slaves be killed by a giant wolf. That is someone else's property. Slaves to that extent are safe from others besides the master. Some dude is not going to go out and start murdering slaves randomly because even the law protects the master's possessions. It just doesn't make any sense.

Now onto the good things: pretty much everything else. The plot is solid and feels like Final Fantasy returning to form. Big crystals that need to be destroyed, kingdoms falling, a higher power controlling things behind the scenes... One thing I appreciate, and I think many recent games have lost this, is XVI had many sidequests that had us check in on friends we've met along the way and continue with their subplots. You never really forget these people and it shows how a network of connections and bonds is maintained. Even Eastpool, which was massacred fairly early on, rises up again much later on.

Another factor that I think is important is I just like Clive a lot. He's also my favorite Final Fantasy protagonist since IX. Don't get me wrong; I did like Lightning but if I ever had to work toward a common goal with her in real life, I probably would punch her in the face. I have no idea how she was ever in the military because she has zero sense of teamwork, and she acts like an asshole to even people who are actively trying to help her. Clive in contrast is very mature, has strong leadership abilities, not overly angry or obnoxious or lonerlike, and is just trying to do good in the world. He does make mistakes, but they're reasonable ones that happen because he didn't have all the information or there were circumstances he couldn't've foreseen, unlike other protagonists who do things you know are wrong and stupid but they do it anyway for the sake of plot. He makes the effort to play with the kids even though he isn't great at it, and they admire him for that. Even when he's angry in the beginning of the game, he's still respectful toward Cid and says, "Thanks for saving me, I have nothing against you or your group, I just have my own path I need to take." He recognizes his own weaknesses, and in such situations seeks assistence or delegates to others. He feels like an actual, filled-out human being, and kudos to whoever wrote him.

The other members of the cast are great too. Jill is very badass but a bit quiet and subdued, but given her time in the Iron Kingdom that's understandable. I thought Joshua would just be a plot point, but he really grew into his own. Cid was fun to be with, and I was sad when he was gone. Gav as always was cool. The enemies were great too. Benedikta died early on, but they threw in a great backstory with the little time they had. Kupka was an idiot and not deep, but you could feel his love and pain. Dion's path was surprising and I never knew what his next step was.

The battle system is definitely the best in the series. It was cool to experiment with each of the summons, and really it can be tailored easily to your style. No one I've asked equipped the same three summons. It feels like they were trying to reach a God of War level of combat, but simultaneously they fumbled on the actual fights. Again, bosses were amazing, but regular fights were just meh. I guess that's why they threw in so many boss fights so frequently.

In terms of music XV was definitely better, but I wouldn't stick my nose up to this. As with many aspects of the game, there were a lot of throwbacks. Prelude and the Final Fantasy Theme came up repeatedly, but also On the Shoulders of Giants had the traditional Final Fantasy regular battle opening. And also randomly for one of the times you fight Ultima, it's the FFI world map theme. I've definitely heard better, but I could listen to this OST on its own. The lyrics however are stupid. From what I'm understanding, they tasked the English translator to provide them, and considering this is the dude that wrote out "such foul attaint may not be sublimed through gainstanding," you can tell where this is going. I'll give a few examples:

A sickle forged of adamant To server the man from his hooded past No more a slave to sorrow's gloom In onychine eyes burn chthonic doom An evil hidng from the sun Blinding, he screameth eschaton immanent Now in its wake yawned lightless abyss Yon gaping maw his circumfix

I feel like this written by a high schooler who believes using as much SAT vocabulary they just learned makes them sound more intelligent. I don't know why anyone would compose this.

Visually it's all right. XV had a prettier environment, but this wasn't bad, especially when you're walking around Rosaria. I touched on how you never explore epic architecture, but the nature is beautiful. Unfortunately in the second half of the game when everything goes to shit, the world gets this haze over it and nothing is appealing to look at (which isn't unusual; other Final Fantasies, especially VI had catastrophic situations in the second half of the game). I guess that's kinda the point; the Blight is wiping out everything and actually Clive's efforts could ultimately be for naught and it's too late.

Which is how I'm going to end: It's a very depressing game. There's a lot of death, a lot of tragedy, a lot of loss. Clive lives a totally fucked up life, and he's not alone. The fact I still enjoyed this never-ending sadness demonstrates how well it was done. Totally recommend, play it as soon as you can.

Also... can we address that whole Barnabas and his mom thing? They had literally one scene with that and never mentioned it again. What the fuck was with that?

[thessalian]

Thess vs the Bank Holiday Blues

Currently doing the mental health evaluation and ... well, sometimes you just do everything you possibly can and you're still fucking struggling. Which fucking blows, thank you very much.

I've gone through the checklist. I've eaten. I've hydrated. I slept recently. Technically my "meds for neuropathic pain" are an antidepressant so I can't even say I need meds. As for therapy ... well, been there, done that, developed the coping mechanisms. But mental health-wise? I am struggling to cope at this point.

To be fair, this is largely external factors. This is the realisation that I was very much right about literally nothing changing in this country when we got a Labour government, because now they're saying, "Well, the Tories lied about the massive financial hole they left so we have to scrap all our infrastructure promises, cut the winter fuel allowance, and let the energy companies jack up their prices right at the start of autumn" and it's getting to a point where I wonder if they're just trying to kill the old people so they don't have to pay their state pension.

This is seeing some of the short-sighted bullshit going on in the US in the run-up to their own election. Because I know a whole lot about populist garbage and people making protest votes without thinking about what they're doing, okay? Our general elections here aren't the best example of it, but I have a better one - Brexit. We ended up leaving the EU for a few very simple reasons: a) populist wankers like Johnson and Farage lied through their teeth to win the racist vote; b) some people didn't really want to leave the EU but didn't like how the EU was going about things so voted leave in protest; or c) figured that Leave couldn't actually win and so didn't bother voting. Now, does any of that sound familiar?!? All you have to do is add d) third options that will never win but take the vote away from the sensible choice and you've basically got the US right now. And this country destroyed itself at least partly based on that one stupid badly-planned referendum. The US can't survive another Trump term, I can't actually do anything about the stupids that might allow Trump to take the election, and I have too many people I love in that country to be anything less than terrified. I know that my feelings are valid, I know I can't spend too much emotional energy on something I can't change, but still.

My situation is still not great. It's never going to be, and I know that, just because of circumstance. I guess it's just harder to keep from being depressed about my disability when so much else is weighing me down. I try to keep counting my blessings, because I have a lot of those. Still, no matter how hard you try, some days everything that's wrong seems so big that you're kind of stuck squished. That and probably the Bank Holiday Blues. I mean, I don't work Mondays anyway, but there's a different vibe to the world on Bank Holiday Mondays.

Right. I just need to take my mind off the blues. One of the blessings I can count is that my last therapist was basically the best. She didn't focus on the diagnosis as handed down from the psychs (which was almost definitely a standard "ADHD is often misdiagnosed as BPD in women" thing) and instead looked at my symptoms and my previous coping methods, and helped me hone them into something healthier. Some people would call what I do "avoidance" and "escapism"; I call it "therapeutic hyperfocus". I've done every healthy thing I can to improve my mood, so if the mood's still there, and hyperfocusing on, like, a video game or something keeps me grounded until it blows over, I do that.

Of course, then I have to pick which video game, but I do have a playthrough of BG3 that I am determined to complete, and nothing says "hyperfocus" like "game you've played a few times before but will still hold a couple of surprises because Dice Be Like That". And I deserve some fun after having had to spend most of Saturday in bed because migraine and exhaustion.

[uglyduckling339]

KY'S LIFE IS STRANGE DOUBLE EXPOSURE NONSENSE LIVEBLOG: The Tutorial

(spoilers under cut) (do not take this seriously lmfao this is me basically talking to myself) (this will make ZERO sense without playing the game or watching it btw)

um.. where do i start

firstly that fucking qr code is rhe genuine bane of my existance. i spent 7 minutes tryna get it to work for basically nothing.

also !! the settings menu was hella fucking confusing and i got lost tryna change the captions (skill issue on my part ngl)

anyways so intro to the game: music was ass and i was confused why the door was being shook so gently until Max Fucking Caulfield wandered in😭 10/10 shock value worked tho cuz i didnt think that she was breaking into a broken room until her face appeared on screen

Safi is very cutesy in both a physical manner and a personality manner but her jokes are so hit or miss lmao

Max caulfield stealing that toy and joking abt stealing stuff??? talk abt character growth

i fucking HATE THE NEW CAMERA ARGGGGGGGG i keep fucking up my pics

Hot take i think safi and max are equally sexy in this new game GOD DAMNN

nvm maybe not equal. i'd let safi hit so fast tbh ("boss"??)

ALSO !! HER REWIND GETTING REMOVED POST-STORM IS CANON !!!! *

i've been saying this since the trailers but max's voice sounds so fucking weird in this (and yeah ik its not THAT diff from the og voice, but something abt it is irking me and idk what) (no hate to hannah telle)

nobody:

this game: fun fact !! safi's mom is the principal of the school! her mom! safi's mother! mom! mother! safi's ! principal !

god shut the fuck up i get it bro

FLASHBACK SCENEE

Ik its not just me who thinks this but istg they musta refilmed these scenes cuz chloe and max both sound hella odd (maybe i am trippin tho)

CHLOE! HAUNTING! THE! NARRATIVE!

smooth cut between chloe and safi's voice 10/10

i know the fandom is gonna be in fucking shambles over those choices so i'm holding my opinions off until i form a bigger analysis on it

I don't hate Amanda but i do hate rhat the game is pushing her on us so hard **

Also reminder to check yalls texts!! theres no journal but half of the shit i've seen complanted abt is referenced in the texts/posts

Chloe and Max having issues long before rhe breakup is so nice to see tbh. i'm glad it wasn't just a one comment plot choice.

also the issues primarily stemming from Max's trauma and her need to run is so good i can't wait to yap abt it

god off topic i am fucking DREADING the fandom. im so worried abt us tbh

okay back to the game, I think Amanda is really nice but I'm not gonna romance her day one cuz idk how to feel abt her yet

okay theory time! i think if chloe was actually IN the game, she'd be with a band in the Turtle bar. seen in the pink twitter, chloe "performs". i think she'd totes pull up at perform at the bar (once again im not saying if i think its very likely or nah but its a cool idea at least)

ALSO VICTORIA CHASE IS ALIVE :DDD AND BESTIES WITH CHLOE???

i'm only using pink twitter to watch Chloe and Vic ngl idgaf abt nun u other hoes

did u all a HUGE favor and tested rhe other option w rhe bottle cap.

on that note do the candy not the bag

shit like ts makes me miss rewind :(

animal symbolism my beloved

i think thats all? OH WAIT okay so i actually love safi. she's so weird and cringe but in a subsitute teacher way. it's a vibe and i would romance her w Max if i was given a choice (im gonna get hate mail again for rhat comment arent i 💀😭)

so far i really don't hate rhe game. it's glitchy in ways rhat for 80$ it shouldn't be but so far i've only had one actual issue so i'm not too pressed abt it. (for me, Safi keeps jumping between visible and invisible during cut scenes.)

I think the in game music is fire, but the actual "songs" aren't allthat good. tbh tho thats a personal opinion lmfao

[yung-goos]

okay okay, revised the tier list and actually ordered it from left to right as best as I could. think I'm happy now

progress: 167hrs (+37hrs) 4/15 Gold Deck Stickers (+3) 98% Collection (+4%)

previous tier list + further thoughts under the cut cuz I can't stop thinking bout this damn game

overall stayed reletively the same with some notable changes, esp. towards the early game carries and hard to build around but enough groups. the common level hand jokers (flush/2 pair/3 pair/etc) really aren't meh after all, I think they're just meant to be played below ante 4/5 for the best results, hence the switch. hologram and throwback went down a level for the sole reason of needing time to build. they aren't must buys at late antes, and lets just say my ass threw some runs being blindsided by a free polychromed hologram at ante 7. dont fall for it. as for hard to build around category, some notable things needed to be switched around, like vagabond (I am sorry for doubting you you are so good and reliable), madness (once I realized it doesn't need to destroy a card to grow, it changed my mind. still needs to be built around eternals though so it'll still be hard I guess), fibonacci and shortcut. I am tempted to add another column named "needs a hyper specific build to actually go crazy. otherwise its w/e" tier for things like madness, hack, four fingers, and to an extent the money making cowboy build (bootstraps, bull, golden ticket, midas mask) but then the category would be too small I suppose, and I like the cowboy build where its at, cuz it really is nasty. the reps tier was added for cards that I think have some hidden potential but need to actually hit the builds I want to test them further. stone cards are.. um.. eh? I really dont know yet I always ignored them. and hit the road I feel like it would go insane in a deck just filled with jacks. otherwise, its going right into the "why dawg" tier. cuz why the fuck dawg? as for the cards I do not own, I feel like I have an idea where I'd put them already based on what they do. invisible: must buy. basically getting a free ankh card that wont destroy the rest of the deck? abso-fucking-lutely. as for satelite and seeing double, yea idk. satelite doesn't sound bad if it works as I think it does, and seeing double is just... mid as fuck. idk. but anyways.

[yellowocaballero]

of the fandoms you have written for, which ones would you genuinely recommend? (like, should I play half life?)

That's a difficult one! It's hard for me to give very broad recommendations, "everybody should watch this, because everybody will like it". I can normally really only just list my favorites and the reasons why, and let people see if they're interested or not.

It's also double difficult because I mostly write fanfic for works I find like...5/10 - 7/10. If I like something too much I don't write fic for it - it's like painting on the Mona Lisa, lmfao. There needs to be a sweet spot of 'good enough for my brain to chew on it, has enough untapped soil and potential that there's blanks to fill in'. If I really, really love something, I'm just like...wow, I really love that! I'm very satisfied with that experience and there's nothing I would want to add or change! Anyway! So all of my favorite works that I would recommend without reservation aren't things I would write for.

That being said, my Animorphs, Buffy, and Artemis Fowl works were written from a place of deep love for the source materials. I can't recommend any of those without reservations, but they were written because the source material was very special to me. Other things I've written because I hate the source material. Detroit: Become Human is very bad.

If you're thinking, 'I might want to get into The Magnus Archives!', I do want to suggest that you read some transcripts of I Am In Eskew first. IAIE is my favorite podcast, and it basically did what TMA tried to do a thousand times better. It's incredible. 'Paining on the Mona Lisa' situation.

Similarly, if you're interested in comics, I'd have to recommend specific authors or runs over characters.

So - Half-Life is a classic, and makes the list of 'best of' games. It's acknowledged as one of the best FPS shooters of all time. So if you're the kind of person who likes 90s FPSes that are very light on plot, then it's a great example!

Sorry that's not super helpful haha. I don't actually think I can recommend without reservations anything I've written for. Either it's like The Magnus Archives (which was pretty good, but I really never feel the urge to re-listen or anything) or it's like Animorphs (incredibly high art that in some instances was either just really fucking dumb or really did not age well).

Play/watch a Let's Play of The World Ends With You. It builds character.

[kygerbearr]

getting into high-end ff14 content made me realize 2 things.

1). many people who have particular responsibilities have NO business with them

2). apparently i'm a fucking genius when it comes to shit because i can watch a short guide and understand what to do while everyone else apparently needs several days worth of catch up to do one of the most basic be-here-then-go-here shit on the planet. i have never been more frustrated with humanity. i am so tired. everyone i meet is either someone who takes thing too seriously and has zero skills to back it up or there's people with a wife and kids and a 9 to 5 job and a mortgage who come home from work and are somehow fine with doing MORE work dealing with people who dont know their fucking job and everyone is managed by someone who's an absolute pushover and still expects to be the "leader"

like i don't consider myself very smart. everything in this game appears to be very easy, i don't struggle with any of it, i don't understand how all of these seemingly normal people can struggle so hard with mechanics that have been reused over and over with a new coat of paint, and I feel guilty even suggesting its easy because of how hard everyone makes it out to be

do not believe anyone when they say ff14 is hard. it isn't. it's one of the easiest games i've ever played, i have never felt personally challenged by something in it and the only difficulty i'm having is being around dipshits who somehow don't understand how something works. i feel like i'm in a classroom full of people who showed up to the exam without studying anything and it's like they expect a clear just for showing up. buddy, this fight has so much personal responsibility that if you don't figure your shit out, the WHOLE CLASS fails, and you can't move on until you pass.

and i KNOW its easy because I made my OWN group out of frustration and we cleared THE FIRST DAY WE STARTED RAIDING. the VERY FIRST DAY. I have been with this other group for MONTHS.

this group cannot handle clockwise and counterclockwise somehow. there are markers on the floor arranged in a clock. it got to the point where I had to suggest that people look for a particular number and rotate towards it, and somehow, everyone STILL messed it up.

not only that, but in this group, any time I try to express something that goes against their ideology either the leader gets on my case or one of the members gets on my ass. just the other day I had this fucking asshole who was running shield healer who WASNT APPLYING SHIELDS?? during PROG??? and when I said "hey can we get shields" he was like "no we're good" we were dying. bodies on the floor right in front of him.

so I asked why. his argument? we cant have shields. it would mess up his gcds. I have CLEARED THIS FIGHT ALREADY, AND WITH SHIELD HEALER. so I know we can have shield for Every raidwide. and when I tried to explain how, he got angry and was like "no the fuck we cant and i will NOT have someone micromanaging my gcds" buddy my friend is dead on the floor right there and it's your fault

we proceeded to not hear from him the following week. essentially no-call-no-show but for a videogame and not a real job. whatever, not my problem. just meant I could be shield healer. and that day went super well! we had prog. i was healing. we didn't die outside of people failing their personal responsibilities.

i mean it when I say I genuinely don't enjoy the game anymore. I'm so exhausted from dealing with people who don't give a shit and aren't trying hard enough, are too stubborn to do anything different and hate it whenever I do anything whatsoever that goes against their agenda. it's not a team at all, it's a fake ass leader who can't lead with followers who are so fucking mindless braindead that they think they can mindlessly follow this failure of a leader into a clear for a fight they've been stuck on for THREE MONTHS STRAIGHT.

it takes up so much time out of my week (3 hours on both monday and tuesday so back to back, very exhausting, reminder i dont like these people because they treat me like shit and simultaneously I'm the only person who cares about what we're doing) and there were times where I legitimately would've preferred working (which i cant do while playing this game) and man I hope they get rid of me because my martyr complex keeps me from leaving them until we clear the fight

don't play final fantasy 14 it's not fun it's not worth it and if you do then dont talk to anyone. i legit only have fun when its with my friends and I have yet to meet a person on 14 I could make any sort of meaningful connection with. they're all so normal feeling, they're always like 5 years older than me and it freaks me out, I don't fit in, I don't belong there, and I don't want to stick around in a place I don't feel I belong in. the ONLY good thing about the game is that I can play as a big kitty cat

[retphienix]

(a lot of) Oberon stuff

I decided instead of using my stockpile of forma for farming more kuva and tenet weapons for mastery rank fodder, I'd dump them into oberon because...I mean, why not

tbh, I just kinda like them. They were one of my first faves years and years ago and I haven't really touched them in years because, surprise surprise, they are/have been/continue to be kinda "mid" as power creep and buffs have spread to other frames.

AT LEAST for a layman player. Some tuber with maxed arcanes and 30k plat can probably post some build claiming Oberon is the best because he can't die, as if the arcanes aren't doing the heavy lifting lmao.

Despite that, they have always been my favorite support frame on an aesthetic and conceptual level, and I've always been annoyed that the druid healer frame is pretty much the worst healer in the game with Trinity spamming free full heals with free DR, Wisp being BUSTED (love her), and now Citrine just casually giving everyone free DR- HoTs as a passive- and orbs (also LOVE her).

ANYWAY, I sat down and theorycrafted some stuff, I was THIS close to putting my stockpile of umbra forma into him and just making him a pseudo tank that kept up phoenix renewal (maybe another day, and a second oberon prime lmao because I'm not overwriting all my hard work).

The plan was to basically push his armor and health to the extremes and just kinda, exist. Okay, saying it out loud sounds boring, so I'm glad I didn't do it, but I did really want to push his power strength high as hell while tagging on Primed Flow and some basic eff/duration to keep renewal going alongside all the beefed defenses.

I deleted that build idea so here's a mock up that's clearly inaccurate since it's lacking the flow etc but that tasty Effective Health was the goal (I'd have definitely used some staples like rolling guard etc instead of like gladiator resolve):

At the last minute I decided to do some browsing for other ideas and I came across some niche steel path gimmicks abusing quadratic scaling from ragdolling enemies interacting with his Reckoning augment.

tl;dr, stack enemies, use reckoning augment, silly funny extremely good things happen.

Now at first I figured the build just wasn't for me, but the more I thought on it, and the more I tweaked it for my own enjoyment and not just copying the max/min setup, the more it sounded interesting to try.

So I did it.

He's not done just yet, obviously. No subsume because the intended subsume is Gyre's to grant better energy economy and abuse the whole "ragdoll + reckoning = broken" thing, so I'm not even utilizing the interaction yet.

Also few shards, needs more shards.

Also it's still a work in progress- I'd like to toss on at least 1 go-to survival mod on him, but I haven't decided what I want to axe to do that. I'm thinking rolling guard for more leeway since he's shield gating (my first real build to abuse the mechanic) but figuring the values out on this build was tight enough without thinking "Oh, one more mod!" so we'll see. He can currently survive just fine in steel path content owed mostly to the CC of the mass radiation, tbh, and that might not even be an issue if the gyre interaction works out to just making everything too dead to hurt him in the first place. We'll see.

But the gist of him, as he currently exists, is pretty simple.

He nukes with his 4 and uses his 2 to ignore status / the need for primed sure footed on steel path builds.

The augment for his 4 is fucking fantastic thanks entirely to it scaling off range.

Too bad this patch note isn't right and it's still bugged and can revert to the 3m starting range whenever it wants in online content :/

Regardless, I mostly wanted to ramble on the short design journey on making this new build because the mid-point-result has been EXTREMELY fun to play lately.

Sure, he's not getting much use out of his renewal, and he's not enjoying the silly fun of smite infusion, and he's lacking some core parts to his build (that subsume is like 2 days out), BUT! As is, as a max range shield gating nuker, he's having a lot of fun. You know, when warframe doesn't decide to remove the range mod effect for no reason.

I honestly hadn't ever thought of making him into a nuker before, so mostly the novelty is making it fun.

I have only ever tried making oberon a mass CC gardener who keeps renewal up for that armor bonus, or a mass healer with eff/duration to allow it, or a smite infuser to assist groups with being weapon platforms.

Nuker never appealed to me because his 4 never appealed to me, his 2 and 3 were my faves and his 1 (with augment) was a simple radiation buffer.

Using his 4 so much and to such great effect is honestly just fun lol

Good stuff.

[xxghost-zombie-jesus]

A/N: I decided that I'll be doing prompt fills/writing requests in between my longer fics! If you have any prompts or requests you'd like to see, shoot me an ask with the prompt, character(s) and/or ship you'd like! They'll probably be between 3k-5k but with my track record, who knows.

Anyway, onto the fic!

Prompt: "What if Beej has a really bad nightmare (wake up in cold sweat, shaking, absolutely terrified kind of nightmare) and Lydia comforts him. Just some good old sibling hurt/comfort and fluff." Requester: attack_choppa01 on AO3 Warnings: nightmares, panic attacks, vomiting, the following within a nightmare: child abuse, child death, verbal abuse, emotional manipulation, Juno (she needs her own warning), violence Word Count: 7,563 Read on AO3

Friday nights were reserved for Lydia and Beetlejuice to hang out. Sure, they had the weekends where they went out and did stuff, and family movie night was Thursdays, and she sometimes snuck him into school, but Fridays were 'chill nights'. Nights where Lydia forewent doing her homework, and as soon as dinner was finished the two of them headed upstairs or claimed the living room for their own use until the wee hours of the night when one or both of them got too tired to continue.

This particular Friday they took the living room, a pile of snacks spread out across the coffee table. Charles and Delia had headed upstairs a few hours ago, the Maitlands before that, so the two of them basically had run of the house as long as they kept the noise to a dull roar. Currently Lydia was sprawled across the couch, Beetlejuice perched on the back like a cat, or perhaps a bird. Her Switch was plugged into the TV, and she was wiping the floor with Beej in Super Smash Bros.

"Come on, you're so bad at this," she heckled, hitting Beej's character off the map as he made a strangled noise of anger. He managed to double-jump back to safety only for her to hit him off again, this time he wasn't so lucky, and his character lost a life. "I thought demons were supposed to be good at everything. What happened, Mr. 'Ghost with the Most?' Lost your touch in your old age?"

"Shut up." She could feel his leg bouncing against the back of the couch, could hear him aggressively smashing buttons as he tried to no avail to gain the upperhand. Instead he dashed right off the edge and she hit him back when he tried to recover. "Goddamn it! If this was Mario Kart I'd be kicking your ass hardcore!" Lydia knew this was true, hence why they weren't currently playing it. He grit his teeth and leaned forward, nearly falling off his perch as he glared daggers at the screen.

And of course Lydia got her final smash and destroyed him. The match ended and he threw his hands in the air. "Fuck it, I'm done with this. Put a different game on." Lydia grinned meanly at him and started readying up another match, and he 'accidentally' dropped his controller onto her head. "Oops, my hands aren't working anymore," he deadpanned, holding out his arms which he spaghetti-fied, them hanging loosely in her face. "Can't play any more Smash, oh noooooo. Whatever shall we do?"

"Ew, get your noodle-ass arms out of my face, BJ," Lydia shoved them, and they swung limply. "Ugh, stop being a baby. Fine, what about Mario Party?" She hit the home button, blindly throwing the controller back at him. He hurriedly grabbed it out of the air to make sure it didn't fly across the room and ended up toppling backwards off the couch and landed on his head with a cartoonish bell noise. Lydia sat up to look at him, laughing so hard her face screwed up. "What the fuck happened to you, Beej?"

"Well," he grouched as he flopped over before sitting up. "You'd've ripped my balls off if I let the controller break." He said it matter-of-factly, giving her a dirty look and rubbing the top of his head despite the fall not hurting all that much, in reality. Lydia only continued to laugh at him. "I sacrificed myself to save you sixty bucks and you're laughing at me."

"You're so stupid. You could have just used your powers, or not fallen off the couch, or, and this is groundbreaking I know, not have dropped it on my head in the first place."

He mocked her, making a hand puppet and going "mleh mleh mleh mleh," in a high-pitched, whiny voice before he hopped over the back of the couch to sit properly. Lydia barely moved her legs out of the way before he sat on them, and she stretched back out and used him as a footrest. She just gave him a sweet smile when he turned a raised eyebrow in her direction, and he rolled his eyes and propped his own legs up on the table. 

The two end up gaming for a few more hours, working their way through the snacks–Beetlejuice, mostly–before Lydia's ass starts to hurt from the couch. They had just finished the level they were fucking around in, neither really taking it seriously any longer, and she quit the game. "What? Why'd you close it?" Beetlejuice asked her, tilting his head as she held her hand out for the controller. 

"I'm done, I got bored," she told him, shaking her hand for emphasis until Beej handed it over. She swung her legs off his lap and stood up, stretching and feeling her back crack. She attached the controllers back onto the Switch and grabbed it from where it was docked, before turning off the TV. 

"Aw come on, going to bed already? The night's still young," Beetle whined, flopping onto his side dramatically. He stared at her from the darkness that fell over the room, eyes glowing from the couch. He'd look scary if not for the fact he was practically giving her puppy-dog eyes. 

"I was going to go watch some true crime on my laptop, if you want to come. I'm gonna put on Nick Crowley," she offered, knowing he liked that particular Youtuber. He scrambled upwards and waved away their trash before falling in step–or, rather, started floating a step behind her. "Do you remember where we left off, BJ?"

"Uuuuh," Beetlejuice hummed, wracking his brain as he tried to remember. Oh, right! "Last one we watched was about the Dyatlov Pass." 

He followed Lydia into her room. He leapt onto the bed as she headed to her desk and exchanged the Switch for her laptop, grinning at her as she turned and stared at him. She shoved him out of her spot and opened her laptop. He peered over her shoulder to see if she had any tabs she forgot to close he could tease her about, but it was all school-related except Twitter and Tumblr. Weirdo, but not teasing-worthy. Boo.

She pulled up Youtube and quickly navigated to the correct channel, scrolling through the videos until they found where they had left off. Clicking the next video, something about Smiley Face killings. Lydia got under the covers, handing Beej the laptop to prop up on his legs. He did so only after wrapping himself in her black fuzzy blanket, not needing the heat but liking how it felt. He had a matching one in his room but he couldn't be bothered getting up to get it, nor teleporting it either. She let him borrow it, only saying she'd send him back to the Netherworld if it stank. 

They both fell quiet as he pressed play on the video, though they did pause it occasionally to talk about what was happening or crack a morbid, most definitely inappropriate joke. Three videos in, Beetlejuice felt the telltale tug of sleep trying to drag him under. He was comfy enough with the blanket around his shoulders and Lydia against his side that he didn't have the intense urge to fight it. He did half-heartedly attempt to stay awake, however. Lydia would fall asleep first, probably, and he could head onto the roof or his own room after that. 

Except she was as awake as possible and put on the next video when it took Beetlejuice too long to do so. She glanced up at him and saw him bite back a yawn before focusing on the screen. Heh, she should make a joke about him being tired. It's not like he did anything all day. She at least had an excuse to be tired. By the time she came up with a suitable quip, which took less than a minute, and paused the video, he had his head slumped forward, eyes shut and mouth parted slightly. 

She was lucky he didn't snore, or, thank Christ, drool. She elbowed him and he jerked awake, glaring at her. "Aww, is the baby tired? Is it beddy bye for the big bad demon?" She cooed at him, laying the baby-talk on thick. 

"I'm awake," he grumbled, leaning back and crossing his arms. He stared pointedly at the video, before conjuring a third arm to flick her ear when she didn't unpause it. "C'mon I ain't getting any deadder here, Witchy."

"Are you sure you can stay awake? You look reeaal tired there, Beebleboose." He flicked her again and she snickered. 

"I'm fine, put on the damn video before I eat your laptop," he threatened, and she slapped his arm before leaning forward to unpause it. He got through the rest of the video and lasted a whole 4 minutes of the next video before his head tipped backwards and he was out again, arms still crossed. 

She'd finish the video and then kick him out, she supposed. Except she didn't make it through, either, eyes drooping before she, too, fell asleep. Her head hit his chest, the video droning on, unaware and forgotten, in the background.

- - - -

When he woke up, the room was dark, the laptop nowhere to be seen. Perhaps Lydia had grabbed it when he had fallen asleep to make sure it didn't fall to the ground? Yeah, that made sense. Beetlejuice blinked and rubbed his eyes, wondering why it was so dark, he could usually see pretty damn well in the dark, almost perfectly, in fact. Whatever, probably a side-effect of his half-awake state. He stood up and headed towards the door, intent on heading to his own room or something, but paused when he heard voices coming from downstairs. 

Well, he couldn't ever pass up eavesdropping! He quietly made his way down the steps, avoiding the one that always creaked when stepped on, and hid just above the landing, peeking out to see who was talking. He didn't see anything, not at first, and he frowned. He could have sworn that there had been voices–

Lydia yelled from the kitchen and Beetlejuice didn't think before he was leaping down the stairs and charging towards where he had heard her yell. She yelled again, "No! Stop, why are you doing this, leave me alone!" He begged himself to go faster, why was he so slow right now, but something wrapped around his ankles and tripped him. He hit the ground, hard, and turned with a snarl.

Whatever was around his ankles was invisible, but he could feel it sticking to him. He reached down to rip it off but it just tangled around his hands as well. No, fuck this! He conjured fire in his hands and felt whatever it was begin to burn away, leaving him free enough to spring to his feet and charge into the kitchen. It was empty.

He looked wildly around, growling under his breath before calling, "Lydia! I'm coming!" There was a commotion from the living room and he leapt over the island in the kitchen and into the living room. Lydia was holding onto the wall with both her hands, kicking out against whatever was trying to drag her through a door, green mist billowing out behind her. "Lydia!"

"Beetlejuice, help!" Lydia cried, kicking again. He ran forward, hand outstretched to grab her, but it suddenly felt like something physical slammed into him, filling his head with ice. He froze stock still as a gnarled hand appeared from behind Lydia, a long, clawed finger pointing at him. Lydia was put down, a matching grizzled hand on her shoulder to keep her in place as Juno's glare met Beetlejuice's stare.

"Not today, Lawrence, I can't have you messing everything up for once," She barked, waving her hand and making him slam backwards against the wall. He struggled against the possession, baring his teeth at the older demon, but a phantom sensation tightened against his throat and kept him pinned. "Do as you're told for once in your not-life and stay put."

He opened his mouth to make a retort, to tell her to get her wrinkled hands off Lydia, to fuck off, to go eat shit and jump into the void, something, but he choked instead, the pressure against his throat worsening. He managed to free one of his hands from her possession to claw at his throat, but all he did was seemingly rip away layer after layer of… spiderwebs? He shook his hand to try and rid the sticky webs from it, but they clung to his skin and wound around his fingers.

"You! I told you before, no one leaves the Netherworld. You're coming with me, I have a special place for you." Juno grabbed Lydia again, her fighting doing nothing against the surprisingly sturdy demon, who conjured up a lit cigarette in her mouth. She took a deep drag, the smoke escaping through the gash in her throat, and Lydia coughed as it plumed in her face. "Don't make this harder on yourself."

Beetlejuice struggled again, trying desperately to get off the wall and do something, to help Lydia instead of just watching, but he couldn't. Damn it, he was stronger than this, why couldn't he just break this! 

"No! Beetlejuice, help me!" Lydia screamed, and his eyes snapped up to watch as she was dragged through the door, her grip slipping from the wall. Suddenly the pressure keeping him stuck to the wall faded and he stumbled forward.

"Lydia, wait!" He bolted forward as the door closed, trying to hook his claws in the gap between it and the wall but he wasn't quick enough. The door slammed shut in his face and he beat his fist against it, heart pounding in his chest. No. No! No! Shit! "Lydia!" He cried in anguish, banging on the wall again three times. Nothing happened and he howled wordlessly. No, no, he couldn't lose Lyds. He couldn't let her get stuck in Juno's clutches. 

He yelled again, kicking the wall this time before pacing in front of it. No one came downstairs, which surprised him, but he cursed them in his head silently. Fine, fuck them, who needs them? He could get Lydia back all by himself. He conjured a piece of chalk and drew a haphazard door onto the wall, knocking three times in quick succession. When it didn't open he grabbed the edge and forced it to. He was a fucking demon, he could bend reality if he really wanted.

He stepped through before it could be closed and found himself in the offices where Newly-Deads ended up, and didn't even spare a glance around before shoving his way through the staff door, slamming it open with a frame-rattling bang. "Where is she?" He snarled, but no one was around to take his anger out on. Fine. No one could stop him, then. Good. He stalked out into the hall and glared around, daring anyone to come from the woodworks to stop him. No one did, and he headed down the never-ending hallway.

The twists and turns and spinning made him dizzy in a way it didn't usually, but he chalked it up to his fear for Lydia messing with his perception. What felt like fifteen years and also only twenty seconds passed and he found himself in front of Juno's office, the only thing announcing this being a tiny plaque on the wall that read uoJn hgtoShog.

He took a deep breath to try and force some of his anxiety away and instead replace it with anger. Teeth on full display, lips peeled back in a snarl, he opened the door. Lydia was cowering against Juno's desk, said demon standing over her with her hand raised. Beetlejuice moved before his mind could think and he darted forward to grab Lydia and push her behind him.

"I thought I told you to keep out of this," Juno sneered, staring impassively down at him. Beetlejuice couldn't make his mouth move, and she laughed at him. "What's the matter, Lawrence? Finally learn how to hold your tongue?" He grit his teeth and tried to glare at her. "Aw, look at you, so scary. What a big, scary demon, glaring down his own mother. You're pathetic, nothing but a mistake."

He tightened his hold on Lydia and pushed her further behind him. Lydia glared hatefully at Juno and he begged her to keep her mouth shut, let her focus on him. "You're pathetic," she hissed, and Beetlejuice cursed in his brain, since he still couldn't make himself speak. "Nothing but a big bully."

Juno's eyes snapped to Lydia, and she took a step forward. Beetlejuice was rooted to the spot but he still squared his shoulders and stood protectively in front of Lydia. "Did you say something, pest? I don't remember inviting you to speak? What, are you Lawrence's protector or something?" She threw her head back and laughed, it grated against Beetlejuice's ears and he'd have winced if he could move. "He's really such a pathetic, fucked up excuse for a demon that he has to have a little human girl stand up for him."

Juno reached out and easily batted Beetlejuice away from Lydia, sending him crashing against her desk. She then grabbed Lydia by the arm and hefted her into the air, somehow larger than life itself as she glared at the girl. "Do you know what we demons do to weaklings here?"

Stop, put her down! Leave her alone, is what he wanted to yell. He tried to force himself to his feet, but he remained powerless and stuck in his spot as he watched Juno shake Lydia around like a rag-doll. He felt something crack in his own brain when Lydia spat, "You don't scare me," and got slapped across the face. He wanted to scream, he wanted to rip his mother from limb to limb, he wanted to grab Lydia and hug her and tell her not to backtalk to a demon older than magic itself. He wanted to do a lot and all he could do was watch in muted horror.

"How about we show her, Lawrence? You love putting on shows, don't you? For the attention it brings. What is your stupid little catchphrase again?" Juno put a hand to her chin in mocking thought, twirling Lydia around like she was nothing, ignoring his cries. Lydia was now held between two fingers, Juno the size of a building and the room growing to accommodate for her size. "Oh, right, how could I forget, it's so fucking stupid, just like you."

She stopped swinging Lydia and instead held her up at eye-level. Lydia clawed at Juno's fingers and kicked her feet in the open air. "It's showtime, isn't it, Lawrence?" 

Something shattered behind him, he could feel it, but he couldn't bring himself to move. The room went pitch black, a spiderweb spreading across the floor and creeping up the walls, blood-red light shining from nowhere and everywhere at once. Beetlejuice found himself standing, now, at the end of a web-lined tunnel, Juno and Lydia at the far end. Clawed hands gripped his arms, his legs, his neck, his hair and forced him to his knees, ripping his head up to make sure he watched whatever was going to happen next. Terror bubbled in his veins, both cold as ice and burning him like flames, leaving him shaking and struggling desperately against the hands. 

"I want you to watch, Lawrence, what happens when you mess with things you shouldn't have," his mother's voice echoed in his ear, in his brain, railroad spikes of fear and adrenaline that stabbed through his body. He managed to get his feet under him and started to stand when he froze again, eyes nearly bulging out of his head.

Lydia was now chained to the wall, gag shoved into her mouth. Black shapes emerged from the shadows. Spiders, or something close to that. They approached Lydia, chittering, their feet scraping against the floor oddly. Lydia stared at him, begging him to help her, stop this, do something, but the hands held fast, claws digging in painfully to keep him at a heel.

The first spider-like creature approached her, bobbing and weaving strangely, skittering around her feet. She flinched when it touched her, and it jerked backwards, spitting a glob of something at her. It hit her in the leg and instantly the scent of burning flesh filled the area. Lydia screamed behind the gag, the muscles in her leg jumping, and Beetlejuice couldn't let this go on. He couldn't let her get hurt. He lunged forward but the claws shoved him to the ground, bashing his head against the floor until he saw stars. Now, dizzy and woozy, they pulled him back upright, holding his head at an uncomfortable angle. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision, while also trying to focus on his powers which were refusing to work for him. Another one of the spider-things crawled up the wall and shivered next to Lydia's neck, glowing and crackling oddly. It stepped onto her arm and she jerked back against the wall, a scream tearing from her throat as she was electrocuted. Again, Beetlejuice tried to fight the claws holding him, and again they merely shoved him to the ground. This time they didn't pick him up, instead they just wrenched his head back until his neck snapped out of place.

The third and final creature bristled from the floor, swinging its two tails as it rattled threateningly. Lydia hung limply, tears pouring from her eyes as she caught Beetlejuice's stare again. And again she silently begged for him to stop it. He grit his teeth and slowly, slowly, shifted his legs. The spider-creature darted forward, one of its two tails stabbing forward. It missed Lydia by mere inches, imbedding into the wall and melting the surrounding area like it was butter in a microwave.

The other tail swung forward and Beetlejuice pulled against the hands, digging his feet into the ground and ripping himself from their grip. He hit the ground and scrambled onto his hands and knees, before stumbling to his feet with a scream. He dashed forward, but it felt like he was fighting molasses, the ground itself fighting every step and keeping him mostly in place. 

He watched as the tail stabbed Lydia in the chest, and felt a third and final crack as her scream cut off into nothing, the room going 20 degrees colder as the feeling of death washed over him. "No!" He shrieked, falling forward and down into an inky abyss, drowning in the too-cold, too-hot darkness.

- - - - -

Lydia was almost thrown completely from the bed, waking up as her shoulders hit the floor. She blinked up at her ceiling for a moment, brain struggling to figure out what happened and why she was down there instead of in her bed. Her angle was too wrong to have simply rolled out of bed, so why was she…

She pulled herself up, legs hitting the floor too, and stood in one motion. Beej. He was thrashing where he was half-laying down, sweat beading against his brow and face screwed up in terror. Even his hair had gone white and orange, and she dodged a flailing hand as she crept closer. "Hey, Beej," she whispered, trying to wake him up without touching him. She wasn't sure if touching him would make things worse or help, but she didn't want to chance anything. That, and she was lowkey afraid he'd bite her, like a scared dog.

"Beej, wake up," she tried again, a little louder. She got a slightly closer, hands hovering over his shoulders. Should she… slap him like they did in the movies? No, that was stupid, he'd probably just think she was being mean on purpose and fucking leave. "BJ." Again, he just turned his head and kicked his legs, a choked noise warbling from his throat. She hated to do this, but she knew it would probably work. "Beetlejuice, wake up!" She hissed.

Suddenly his eyes snapped open and he shot upright, his forehead connecting against hers with a crack. She stumbled away and raised her hands to her face with a muffled curse, prodding at the area. It stung but it didn't seem to have broken the skin, or like it would really bruise. Jesus fuck. Lydia opened her eyes to see Beetlejuice shoving no less than half his fist into his mouth to unsuccessfully muffle a scream. 

Oh, God, he was crying. To her horror, tears bubbled up from his eyes and dripped down his face as he bit down further on his fist, now just whimpering pathetically. Lydia moved back to his side and crouched down, hand hovering over his knee. "Beej, hello?" He didn't look at her, which was unexpected, and she hesitated before waving her hand in front of his face.

He flinched away from the movement but didn't seem to actually register her, and she wracked her brain for what to do. What did she do when she had a nightmare? Quick, Lydia, think. When she was younger she'd go wake up her parents to comfort her, but once she got old enough that she thought that was childish she'd stopped. Now she usually just waited out the panic until she got tired enough to sleep again, wrote it down in her dumb sleep-journal, or barring those, got Beej to come distract her.

She had no idea what to do. He obviously wasn't going to stop panicking any time soon on his own, and he was getting louder, risking waking the rest of the house. She doubted he had a dream journal. That left trying to distract him, but first she had to get him to focus on her.

"Hey, hey, B-man," she tried to get his attention, shaking his shoulder slightly. This time his eyes slid over to her, slowly, and met hers. She watched as his pupils widened, then shrunk to pinpricks, and could physically see the moment something clicked in his head.

"Lydia?" he whispered in a cracking voice, and she winced at how rough it sounded. Yikes. He reached out and grabbed the sides of her face, and she tried not to flinch away from them because one had just been crammed into his mouth and was now bleeding slightly. He squished her cheeks for a moment before one of his hands lowered to press against her throat.

He was checking her pulse, she realized, and tilted her head slightly to make it easier on him. "I promise you I am alive, you can't get rid of me that easily," she weakly joked, giving him a small smile which he didn't return. She could feel his hands shaking against her face and neck. "And even if I did die I'd haunt your ass."

After a moment he pulled his hands off of her and covered his face, mutterting, "Jesus fucking Christ shitting on a stick," in what she could only describe as a very strained voice. He didn't move after that, except to lean back against the headboard. She took this chance to crawl back into the bed beside him and sit facing him.

"Are you… no that's stupid, you're obviously not okay. Um, did you have a nightmare?" She scratched the back of her head, trying to figure out what her therapist would tell her to do in this situation. Maybe she'd ask next time she went. Beej didn't move, just grunted listlessly. She'd take that as a yes. "Do you… want to talk about it?"

He shook his head slightly, hair shifting rapidly through a motley of colors, before it settled on the gross yellow-green she associated with him not feeling well, with a few streaks of white that made him look like he was going gray. Normally she'd tease him about it, lightly rib him and poke fun at him because it was the best way to distract him, but that made something churn in her gut at the moment, so she refrained. 

You know, for someone who claimed to not need to breathe, he did it a lot. And right now it was picking up to a rather unhealthy speed. Cool, great, he was hyperventilating now. She needed to get him to stop thinking about it, at least until he wanted to talk about it, or he looked less like he was going to vomit all over her bed due to anxiety. Actually, her first step was to get her wastebasket from next to her desk because she wasn't exaggerating, he looked like he was going to be sick.

"Okay, okay, okay, okay," she chanted, scurrying off her bed and across the room. She snagged the small trash can and barely made it back to her bed before Beetlejuice jerked forward. "Here!" She shoved the waste basket into his hands just in time for him to wretch into it. "Gross," she muttered, curling her lip at the sound of her resident demon spilling his guts into a trash can.

Rather bravely despite her disgust, she climbed back onto the bed and patted his shoulder in sympathy. While she had never actually thrown up from her own panic attacks, she had gotten close once or twice, so the fact that the normally rather iron-stomached demon was currently crying and puking into her plastic trash can because of his? Fucked up in her opinion. 

"Sorry," his voice wavered, muffled strangely from where his head was still in the trash can. He swallowed and breathed slowly from his mouth, trying to do the breathing thing that Lydia and Adam had taught him. It didn't quite work, he still felt like shit, and his breath kept getting caught in his throat and making him choke, but he didn't feel quite as sick as before. He chanced lifting his head and felt even better now that he wasn't breathing trash can air. Who'd've thought?

He felt dizzy, though, now, and his heart was still pounding against his ribs, and his brain kept replaying the scene over and over and over again, which only made his breathing pick up again despite his best efforts.

He vaguely heard Lydia ask if he was done, and assuming she meant vomiting like a kid after a roller coaster he nodded. She took the waste basket and he felt her leave the bed for a moment and open her door, dropping it outside to be dealt with later before shutting it again. "Suck on this," she told him, pressing something into his hand. 

He opened his eyes and looked down, squinting at the yellow-wrapped candy. She probably knew what she was doing and he unwrapped it and put it in his mouth before wincing at the sourness made him flinch. "What the fuck," he mumbled around the piece of candy, a tiny part of his mind noting that she hadn't said to eat it, so he didn't immediately crush it between his teeth to stop the sourness. "I'm having a mental breakdown and you give me candy. What am I, five?"

"It worked, didn't it?" Lydia asked, for the umpteenth time that night getting back into her bed. "Lemons are good for when you're having a panic attack because the sourness forces your brain to focus on that instead of your panic. I don't have any whole lemons laying around but I did have some Warheads in my bag from school."

That made… no sense to Beetlejuice, but it worked apparently because it did shock his brain out of his panic. Now he just felt the dull lingering fight-or-flight vibrating in his bones, leaving him exhausted and shaky. "Weird…" 

"I know, right? I learned that from Tiktok, believe it or not." He gave her a disbelieving look, and she pulled out her phone, typing something into it before shoving it under his nose. Yep, that was a bald dude in glasses saying a lot of words biting into a whole-ass lemon. She pulled her phone back when the video ended, smiling at him. "See, the app isn't all garbage."

"Whatever, I still think it's stupid," he grumbled around the candy in his mouth. It wasn't sour anymore, and so he bit it, chewing it quickly before swallowing. He ran his tongue over his teeth as he thought, before he sighed. "Sorry."

"Why? For what?" Lydia looked genuinely confused and his eyebrow twitched. Uh? For freaking out? For ruining their night? For throwing up in her dumb little trash can? For having a stupid fucking nightmare right where she could see him? For being stupid enough to fall asleep in the first place?

"For making you deal with my bullshit," he said wearily instead of yelling the rest of it. It was too late (early?) for yelling, the last thing he wanted was Chuck to come in and berate them for being too loud. He could have an ounce of self-control every once in a while, surprisingly. 

Lydia squinted at him, before muttering, "we really need to get you to therapy."

"No thank you. I won't go see a shrink. My brain is an enigma that I don't even get to understand." He grinned at her but it fell short of his eyes, and it quickly dropped. He looked down at his hands which were clenched into fists on his lap, and he flexed them. He could still feel the phantom claws pinning him to the floor, could smell the burning flesh, could feel the sudden freezing cloud of death

"You look like you need a hug, come here," Lydia's only slightly awkward voice cut through his thoughts and he glanced up to see her holding her arms open. "I don't know what you dreamed about but you're okay. We're okay," she told him in a strange tone of voice that told him that she had totally noticed him check her pulse earlier.

He leaned forward and pressed his face against her shoulder, and he felt her wrap her arms around him. He focused on the steady pounding of her heartbeat he could hear for a long couple of seconds before he wrapped his own arms around her and hugged back. He was bent a little awkwardly but… the hug was nice. It wasn't one of their usual quick, one-armed, sibling hugs, but something more grounding, more substantial. It melted some of the tension in his shoulders and he tightened his hold on her.

"I won't make you talk about it," she spoke into his hair, leaning her chin on top of his head. "But it might help. It always helped me, how many times have I dragged your ass in here to complain about whatever stupid dream woke me up?" She laughed slightly, and she felt him huff out an amused breath against her collarbone. "I doubt yours was about going to school with no pants on, though. God, that was a stupid nightmare, I don't even remember why it worked me up so much."

"Cause you care too much what people think, Night Terror. 'S a problem," He snorted, twisting his hand into her PJ top. He was avoiding the topic, not something she could really begrudge him for. "But you're right, this wasn't a 'oh no my teeth are falling out!' kind of nightmare, kid." Something about hearing him call her 'kid' while she hugged him made her have to fight a smile. This was serious, they were being serious, she couldn't actually laugh at him right now, otherwise he'd leave and then where would they be?

"Well, what happened, then?" The hug was getting a little much for Lydia, but she didn't let go because she could acutely tell that the touch was helping. She wasn't much for physical touch, but Beetlejuice tried to have contact with people as much as he possibly could. "If it wasn't your teeth falling out, then what? Were you falling forever until you finally hit the ground and bounced?"

"Haha, really funny, tease the fat guy," Beej snorted dryly, finally pulling back from the hug and giving her a flat stare. His lips shook in that particular way they did when he was trying as hard as he could to not smile. Good, it was better than him crying. "You're difficult, did you know that?"

"I try to be. Sooooo…"

He rubbed his face and brought his knees up to lay his head on top of, staring at her from the corner of his eyes. "I woke up and was gonna go back to my room to let you sleep, and I heard voices from downstairs, thinking it was Chuck and Delia, I went down to eavesdrop, as one does–" Lydia nodded because, yeah, obviously "–but there was no one there, and then I heard you yell from the kitchen. I ran in but again there was no one there, and I heard you again in the living room and that's when I saw that… she had you."

Lydia didn't need to ask who 'she' was, she could make a spot on guess based entirely off the way Beetlejuice had spat out the word like it burned him. Juno. So, Juno grabbed her, and then what? Lydia stared expectantly and Beetlejuice averted his eyes.

"I tried to stop her but I wasn't strong enough and she held me back and dragged you to the Netherworld. I couldn't get to the door before it closed and no one would wake up to come help so I drew my own door. It wouldn't open for me so I forced my way in, and got to Juno's office where she was standing over you as if she had hit you."

His voice grew detached, oddly stilted, as if he was reading an academic paper instead of regaling something that terrified him, and he stared blankly across the room. Lydia put her hand on his arm and felt him shiver.

"I was mad, really mad, how dare she lay a hand on you? So I stepped in front of you and she thought it was so funny. She berated me, which I mean, what's new? And then I couldn't move and she grabbed you. And she grew, or we became tiny I don't know, and she shook you around and then she said she was going to show you what demons did to weaklings and forced me to watch."

She shifted until she could lean her head against his arm and felt him shudder again, muscles in his jaw tensing. "You can stop if you want," she offered him an out, but he either didn't hear her or flat out ignored her. She was suspecting the former, though, by the way he stared forward.

"Something held me in place, hands, or claws, or something, and she chained you to the wall where these spider-things took turns hurting you. The… the first one burned you with some kind of acid. I tried to get over to you but I was pushed to the ground until I couldn't see straight. The second electrocuted you and again I was shoved to the ground but this time they snapped my neck to make me watch. The third…"

He finally turned his face towards her and looked so genuinely distraught that she felt her heart sink. "I got you killed, Lyds. Because I was too weak and slow to stop it." He finally moved for the first time since he started speaking, leaning back and violently running his hands through his hair. "If I can't even protect you in a dream, how-how the fuck am I supposed to–" His voice broke, face screwing up. He let out a frustrated growl and tightened his grip on his hair.

"Do you know what I think?" She smiled at him and he opened a single eye to stare at her quizzically. "Dreams aren't fair. They aren't supposed to be. They don't make sense, your brain just makes up exactly what'll hurt you most. I think if, and that's a big if, anything ever did happen you'd stop it. You wouldn't let me get hurt."

"But what if–" he started but she shook her head, cutting him off.

"No 'what ifs' here. I know you wouldn't let anything happen to any of us. I know you're a big ol' softy, but you are still a really powerful demon, and no one messes with a demon's stuff, right?" He gave her a calculating look, both eyes staring unblinkingly at her, and she just grinned at him. "Besides, we beat Juno once, we can do it again. Even if it's a super-buffed up, hacked, perfect IV dream version of her. Super Saiyan Juno."

He laughed at that, dropping his hands to push her shoulder. "Super Saiyan Juno," he quoted, shaking his head at the sheer stupidity of it. "I'd hate to see what she'd look like as a Super Saiyan."

"She'd look real scary with muscles," Lydia giggled. "All old and wrinkled but with wicked huge muscles. Like an old body-builder."

"Ugh, gross, don't make me think of that," Beetlejuice pushed her head lightly to the bed, where she laughed and kicked his leg. "Now it's in my head you freak, what's wrong with you? Do you hate me that much, Lyds?"

"Oh yeah, I just hate you soooo much that I have to resort to psychological warfare," She agreed with a shit-eating grin that Beej matched. She kicked his thigh again with both feet before sitting up. "Hey, where'd my laptop go?" She was wide awake now, and it wasn't worth going back to sleep.

Beetlejuice looked around, before peering over the side of the bed. It wasn't there. Lydia crawled to the foot of the bed and looked, but it wasn't there either. "Where the fuck," she heard Beej mumble, and the two of them spent the next 20 minutes looking for her stupid laptop.

Beej even fished around his pocket dimension and came up with nothing, the only laptops he had were one of the oldest clunkers she'd ever seen and then a hot-pink monstrosity with Barbie all over it. 

"How do we lose an entire laptop?" She asked the room, checking under her bed again in case it mysteriously appeared there. "Are we both fucking stupid or?"

"I mean, we are," Beej grinned from across the room, "but this is beyond our usual idiocy. It's literally just gone, Scarecrow."

"There is no way it's just gone. Things don't just disappear, BJ. You didn't Thanos-snap it out of existence, did you?"

He gave her an offended look, hand on his chest. "Ow, my heart! You wound me! I'd know if I poofed it into oblivion. That isn't something that can just happen on accident."

"Sure, sure. Then where is it?"

It ended up being in the very last place either of them looked: the bed itself. Wrapped up in the back fuzzy blanket Beej had been using, it had gotten kicked to the bottom corner of the bed, only showing itself when Beetlejuice ripped the blanket off and it went sailing across the room. He froze it midair before it slammed into the wall and shared a look with Lydia before the two of them began to cackle, barely remembering to keep it down.

"We're so stupid, Beej," Lydia cried, flopping onto the bed and clutching her stomach as she laughed. "Why didn't we look there first?"

"We share one (1) braincell and neither of us had it in that moment," he wheezed, dropping heavily next to her and making her bounce. "It's almost as if the author forgot about the laptop until the last moment."

"What?"

"What?"

"Nevermind, give it to me, we're going to watch something stupid," she made grabby hands for her laptop and he handed it over. She glanced down at the time, 4:37 AM, and groaned. Well, she definitely wasn't going back to sleep anytime soon, oh well. She'd just chug a bunch of coffee to make up for it. Sleep was for the weak anyway, she had plenty of time to sleep when she was dead. "You ever watch Smosh's TNTL?"

"Tee En Tee El? What?" He looked at her like she had just had a stroke, and she flipped him off.

"Try not to laugh, idiot. Have you?"

"No."

She clicked the most recent episode and handed him the laptop to hold. "Whoever laughs the most loses and has to do something the winner picks."

"Deal," Beetlejuice grinned, holding his hand out to shake. She grabbed his and sealed the deal, before starting the video, grinning because she knew she had this in the bag. She had already watched it, so she knew all the jokes. At one point, close to 7 AM her dad peaked in at them, surprised to hear them awake so early, and worried about the trash can outside her room, only to close the door when he heard, "I'm your mental illness! Okay, have a good bad day!"

Beetlejuice lost in the end, though surprisingly only by one laugh.

[doodlemancy]

i drew this roughly a year into an ordeal that started in february of 2014 that has shaped my life for the worse ever since. it looks like complete ass, because A. i wasn't as good an artist in 2015 and B. i was in a lot of fucking pain when i was drawing it.

today, i finally saw an orthopedic specialist who did NOT brush me off. i have a new diagnosis of "tendonitis of the shoulder and wrists". which is very common stuff. very easy to spot if you know what questions to ask and know what to look for; i had suspected it for years. after two years without a diagnosis, i had given up and tried to adapt on my own, and i did a pretty good job all things considered! but things got worse again in December of 2023, worse than they've been in a while, and i crashed and burned.

tendonitis is very treatable. i'm going to PT soon. there's plenty of reason to believe that even if i can't make a full recovery at this point, there's a lot of room for me to get better. but i've had 10 years of my life stolen from me. i haven't been able to work a full-time job partly because of this. i haven't been able to improve all of the skills i want to because i'm so limited in what i can do in a day. i don't have the stamina to do things i want to do, like sometimes open commissions or release a new full illustration at least once a month. i've missed out on a lot of video games; i don't get to play or finish many of them because it's too painful and i can't justify the flare-ups it tends to cause. it's been a real fucking bummer of a decade for me.

goddamn tendonitis. my entire life was upended by an extremely common type of RSI because i was not taken seriously by doctors. because, you know. a young woman? it's probably her wandering uterus, or depression or something. i have been abused and gaslit and neglected so much that i can't get a decent blood pressure reading inside a doctor's office anymore because i am so, so afraid of being abused. i was at one point told that my pain was just depression, tried an SSRI, and found out the hard way that i have a sensitivity to them that results in extreme anxiety and panic attacks. one of my useless visits in 2015 ended in, i am not kidding (but i also won't go into detail) a nurse practitioner assaulting me. i dropped out of college, got traumatized, got assaulted, got two new phobias... because i had goddamn tendonitis and nobody believed it. imagine if you went to the doctor with a bad ear infection and they went "sounds like depression", left the room, came back with a folding chair and just started whacking you with it. honestly, if it had all happened that quickly instead of a slow-drip of mistreatment it'd have saved me a lot of time.

diagnosis could have happened years ago. years ago. years ago. but my doctors didn't think anything real could be wrong with a 22 year old woman, and the trauma of how badly i was mistreated in 2014 kept me discouraged and scared. so here i am, nearly 33, still in pain, still suffering. spent last night basically having a prolonged panic attack.

there's no recourse for me. there will be no justice for any of this. i don't have the evidence or the stamina for a legal battle. i've at least reported the nurse practitioner who assaulted me, but i have no proof, so it'll probably never go anywhere unless she hurts other people (and i would prefer that didn't happen!).

but i made it. i'm still here. i adapted, i got a bit more productive through my own efforts, enough to start a SHOP! and i finally worked up the courage to try to get diagnosed and treated again.

if i could go back in time, this would be my advice to myself: -never give your full trust to a general practitioner or a nurse practitioner. they're note dispensers, mostly. they can handle simple stuff like needing some sudafed or w/e but mostly they exist to get you a note for work and a referral to someone who actually knows things. if they aren't helping you, learn what kind of specialist you need and tell them you want a referral. -ESPECIALLY never trust a general practitioner who wants to prescribe you antidepressants. they don't know what they're doing with that shit! those are life-saving drugs, but if they go wrong, there can be serious consequences and you need proper support from someone who knows more about mental health than how to give you a depression assessment survey. -show up with a page of bullet-point notes of what's going on, what you've tried, what works, what doesn't work, etc. and just hand that sucker over. make them read it. they can read faster than you can talk, and they'll get your organized thoughts rather than your nervous rambling.

-practice your self-advocacy. have conversations with an imaginary doctor in the shower. decide what you're going to say if it sounds like they're going to dismiss you.

-bring a notepad. visibly take notes during appointments. (you know the notebook scene in Hot Fuzz? that shit works on doctors.)

-if you have someone you trust who's willing to come to your appointment and be in the room, a lot of doctors suddenly become WAY MORE HELPFUL when they're no longer the only person in the room with the patient.

and to all doctors who are sexist, fatphobic, racist, ableist, otherwise bigoted, or just plain full of themselves and fucking dismissive of their patients: if there were such a thing as hell, you'd belong there. if my shoulder gets any better i might dig it myself.

I drew this a few months ago when I was hopeless and waiting to see a new doctor, sat on it when I thought it was actually gonna be ok this time… and now the cycle has repeated YET AGAIN :)

[autisticlee]

"just be your self! it solves all your problems/makes everything better!"

except you're a person where being yourself gets you severely bullied, abused, and/or neglected. it makes everyone hate and abandon you and leaves you with no connections or support or anything. sometimes you're disabled and need to rely on others to live and they simply refuse because they don't like the real you. sometimes it leads people to purposely harm you because they don't like who you are. sometimes you can't simply avoid those people because they're your family you need to live with and cant simply move out, classmates you cant change, or coworkers at a job you can't afford to quit. it can even cause people to physically harm you because they are hateful. sometimes you can't escape them before they inflict their harm. sometimes people purposely sabotage your life because they decide they don't like you and sometimes you can't do anything about it. sometimes you can't get anywhere in life like in a career because you aren't liked enough and can't play social games to please others.

yeah maybe you have the benefit of not pretending, not wearing a mask, not trying to live to peoples expectations, but sometimes that majorly backfires, and some people don't seem to understand that.

"BEING YOURSELF" ISN'T ALWAYS THE ONE AND ONLY PERFECT SOLUTION. SOMETIMES ITS NOT SAFE. SOMETIMES YOU CANT AFFORD TO "NOT GIVE A FUCK" AND SOMETIMES IT SIMPLY DOESNT BENEFIT YOU AND YOUR LIFE FOR MANY REASONS.

wheres the support for us people out here being ourselves but still struggling with life sucking?! where support for us people who are being ourselves and still have no support from other people or friends? why do you all only respond to us that we ~still aren't being ourselves correctly/still care too much what people think"??????

if we aren't being ourselves correctly, aren't you basically telling us to care what you think and be what you want? what if I don't want to listen to your nonsense? and we care too much what people think still?? would you not care if someone threatened your life or even tried to take it because they don't like you?! if you were stuck with disabilities and no support because the only people around you abuse you for being yourself?

maybe think about this next time you think this is perfect advice everyone should follow and want to argue with them if they say it doesn't help.

and just because someone might point out that "being yourself" hasn't helped them/is actibely harming them, doesn't mean they are currently *trying to be someone else/make people like them/care what others think/gave up being themsleves* so telling them they aren't doing it right is not going to help!!!!

me for example, I only like what I like, do what I want. I always ignore and turn people down because I don't like their things or they try to insult me and my things. im known to be blunt/straightforward and "make conversations all about my special interests (hobbies for you nonautistics)" and don't care if others hate it. I have no control over how I am or act because of autism and adhd and dissociating so I can't even "pretend" or mask anyway. what you see is what you get with me. and I don't care if people don't like me individually. i'm not actively *trying* to make people like me. maybe that's why it seems like no one ever does

what I do care about is people purposely harming me because they dont like who I am (because it hurts? how do you not care about that while it's happening lmao). I care about the fact that I scare everyone away with being myself and "the right people" haven't magically showed up yet, I care I have no support, no companionship in life, im forced to be alone and cant share things i enjoy or "myself" with others. I do everything alone. i'm disabled so that's VERY HARD and unsatisfying and even dangerous!!!! but I have no choice.

again I don't care of individually people don't like me or the things I like/do or whatever. their judgements don't hurt me. their physical harm and abusive mind games hurt me. and the fact that being myself pushes away everyone until i'm the only one left is what bothers me. because is it my fault or theirs? don't know! Who cares. but it's very hard due to my circumstances to be completely alone and only have people against me because they dont like the "self" I am and don't connect with me and things I enjoy and there's just no connections or ways to bond! and I dint have the privilege of meeting enough new people due to living in a small restricted area/life conditions and being disabled and not having the energy to talk to 100 people a month to try weeding out all the bad ones until I find the single good one! (I did that the last couple months and i'm now so burnt out that i'm having really bad physical disability symptoms and mental regression-like symptoms. so what do you want from me?! how is "being myself" solving my porblems if they're still here or getting worse?! I don't get it!!!!!

to be fair, when I was doing the little masking I was able to do growing up to try avoid being bullied,,,,,it didn't help. so I gave up and accepted the no friends/abuse/bullying/neglect, believing people "one day it will get better" but im tired of waiting for " one day. " nothing has changed by "becoming my true self" there's no difference. I still have no friends. my needs are still neglected. I still get bullied by strangers and abused by "friends" so it's not a solution. i get the idea. the stress and pressure of putting on a play and being a character can be too hard. thinking about everyone's opnions every time you dp anything can be too much to handle. but not doing that anymore doesn't automatically make everything better. it hasn't made it better for me. I can't make people like me. but I also can't make them stop treating me like shit or help me. liking myself and helping myself only gets me so far before I hit a wall I can't get over alone. but when I look beside me, I see some bullies pulling me down and no people that like me in sight. don't try to *make* people like you sure. but not having anyone that likes you makes life very difficult. admit it! being yourself does not make people automatically like you!!!!! 😭😭😭😭 maybe i'm just a horrible person that thinks too highly of myself to realize I don't know!