#but he is still voting and so should you!!!!

[deadhands69]

*❆ League of Villains Christmas Movie Headcanons ❆*

The holidays are here at the LOV headquarters! A suspiciously large pre-decorated tree has been acquired (thanks Compress!), all carolers have been scared off (thanks Dabi!), and a fresh batch of cookies just came out of the oven (thanks Kurogiri!)

Unfortunately, everyone wants to watch a different movie and it's caused a massive argument.

Who do you think should win?

When I wrote this post a little while ago and scheduled it, I ended up writing another one based on the intro then accidentally posted it while editing drafts on my phone. Here's the other post that's older/next. There will be one more after this!

Toga votes Nightmare Before Christmas! She's already watched it three times by herself since Halloween, but she'd love to watch with everyone else!

Dabi has never seen a Christmas movie in his life.

Or so he says. Toga disagrees, pointing out that Edward Scissorhands is technically a Christmas movie. He's still claiming it doesn't count and that this will not be the year he changes that.

(It will. They've decided this for him.)

Twice is really pushing for Home Alone. No, Gremlins. Wait, no. Home Alone. Definitely one of those.

Shigaraki wants to watch Terrifyer 3 and simply doesn't understand why no one else wants to watch that. It is too festive. His idea was vetoed first. He's pouting now.

Spinner Die Hard. Just Die Hard.

Magne votes for Happiest Season.

Compress is giving a very compelling argument for It's A Wonderful Life. With lots of very dramatic arm waving. He's almost won over Twice.

Kurogiri wants everyone to chill out and watch one of those four hour long fire log videos. Preferably the Calcifer one.

i think Kurogiri will win, what do you think? -jade

masterlist

[homestuckreplay]

JOHN EGBERT’S GIFT UNBOXING VIDEO LIVE UNEDITED

(page 1052-1069)

‘So much sweet loot. You'd almost think it was simultaneously your birthday, AND Christmas or something. Of course you know that is ridiculous and could never conceivably happen.’ (p.1069)

Today’s update – which was posted on December 21-22, near Christmas, but is set on April 13, John’s birthday – is John blatantly ignoring Rose’s orders and making himself a bunch of sweet loot. The story has laid the groundwork for John alchemizing further, so I think this could still work for someone who’s reading the archive and/or who doesn’t celebrate Christmas – but it’s clearly set up as a real time, shared culture experience.

The things John makes apparently came from an 80 item (!!) MSPA forums poll, with other readers voting on potential alchemy combinations. That’s cute because it’s like we’re collectively deciding what Christmas gifts to give him. Unfortunately I can’t find the poll to see the other options.

I’m going to list off everything John makes for completonism, and then drill down on a couple specific items and discuss the alchemy process generally.

John’s Christmas Loot <3

Hammerhead Pogo Ride (Hammer || Pogo) (5 build 20 shale)

Green Slime Ghost Suit (Suit && John Shirt) (3 build 1 shale)

Wise Guy Slime Suit (Green Slime Ghost Suit || Wise Guy Book) (1 build 5 shale 10 tar) (Contains Secret Trickster Gimmicks)

Serious Business Goggles (PDA && Glasses) (6 build 3 tar 6 mercury)

Telescopic Sassacrusher (Sledgehammer || Colonel Sassacre’s && Telescope) (250 shale 10 tar 50 mercury) (MUCH bigger than John)

Hellacious Blue Phlegm Aneurysm Gushers (Gushers && Nannasprite’s Ectoplasm) (24 build 30 shale 18 mercury) (has healing properties, but still made by Betty Crocker)

Remote Ghost Gauntlet (Fake Arm && Nannasprite’s Ectoplasm || PDA) (32 build 128 tar)

Left Handed Remote Ghost Gauntlet (Remote Ghost Gauntlet && Bathroom Mirror) (32 build 128 tar)

Barber’s Best Friend (Umbrella && Razor) (2 shale 8 mercury) (I support john branching out weapons wise)

Betty Crocker Barbasol Bomb (Gushers && Shaving Cream) (1 build 1 shale) (terrible, but the || combination is likely even worse)

Cosbytop (Ghost Dad Poster && Computer Tower) (30 build 10 shale)

Fedora + Candy Corn (Fedora && Problem Sleuth Game) (5 build)

?????? (Problem Sleuth Game && Hammer) (30,000 build 90,000 ? 6,000 mercury 180,000 ? 1 ?) [NOT MADE]

Wrinklefucker (Pogo Hammer || Iron) (55 build 44 shale 66 tar)

John thinks that his Serious Business Goggles make him ‘look way cooler, like one of the kids from SPY KIDS or something.’ He then quotes the tagline ‘REAL SPIES… only smaller’ which I thought was a classic Homestuck incorrect quote, but a quick search reveals that this was the actual tagline for Spy Kids 1 (2001). I haven’t seen that movie but I HAVE seen Spy Kids 3: Game Over (2003), which is a very Homestuck relevant movie. So I’m planning to rewatch that in the next couple days and see how the game in that movie compared to John’s experiences playing Sburb.

John wearing a bland business suit didn’t feel right to me. It felt like he was playing a part, either dressing up like a movie character or dressing up like his dad because the house feels empty without him, and John feels like he has to step into the ‘man of the house’ role. Now that he’s customizing the suit with the green slime ghost and the possibility of playing 52-card pickup at any moment, this feels like a John outfit. Any suit is still a type of clothing that has a lot of cultural associations, but John showing some identity through his clothes is still meaningful, and the teal looks good on him.

The Cosbytop is a very unfortunate reference and I don’t support Bill Cosby in any way, but the connotations are accidental. From John’s perspective, this person plays a movie character he looks up to. John loves the movie Ghost Dad, but has defaced its poster with ‘IDIOT [R SLUR] DEAD FATHER’. It seems like something John’s dad should have noticed and maybe discussed with John, but instead he apparently ignored it and kept on watching movies with John. I am starting to think that a lot of John’s problems come from his dad’s complete unwillingness to address things openly, which is a common, culturally ingrained trait of quite a few fathers.

And now John has made a computer themed after someone he sees as a good dad, literally creating his own new father figure to guide him through important activities, alchemizing a dad replacement. So there’s a huge difference between John’s conscious and unconscious opinions of Elliot Hopper (the protagonist of Ghost Dad), and he’s unwilling to think through that – he takes a moment to think ‘lousy goddamn stupid subsconscious!’ but immediately moves on. I think John is less able to compartmentalize his feelings towards his actual dad, but they’re just as conflicted.

In and around the SWEET LOOT, we actually learn more about alchemy (although it’s easy to miss in the excitement). John is now using overlapping card && combinations, leading to punched cards with only a few holes, and double punched || combinations, leading to punched cards with a lot of holes. The hammer/pogo combination is the only one where we’ve seen both options. I think this is a missed opportunity – John should have tried Problem Sleuth Game || Hammer and seen if it also cost a ridiculous amount of grist.

The pogo hammer cost 10 build grist and 16 shale, while the hammerhead pogo cost 5 build and 20 shale – the same types of grist for both, but the numbers are different. I’m not sure how an item’s grist cost and types are calculated, or if it’s possible to predict that – but most items John has tried to make, he’s had the right types of grist for. So maybe the items in a player’s house are linked to the grist they collect in the early game, while other items John might discover on his journey (or perhaps on Prospit??) will use grist that doesn’t appear until the late game. The cost could relate to the number of combined items, except the butchered rocket pack (4 combined items) only cost 4 build and 8 shale.

On page 1064, John figures out how to ‘subtract’ one item from another, making a simpler item instead of a more complex one. This is super smart of him, as he accounts for all possible ways the subtraction could work, tries them in turn, and finds which one is right. I want to give John big props for being so smart, but also highlight how different the items from the other combinations are – punch cards with a single hole difference can yield a potted plant, a painting of a horse attacking a football player, and a Ghost Dad movie poster. So it’s not possible to change a single hole to make a similar but different item; there’s a randomization process preventing that.

I also wonder if there’s a maximum number of items that can be combined – John says that by alternating && and || combinations, the total number of holes will stay relatively consistent, but surely there’s a point where combining enough complex items loops back around to making something really simple. Just due to the limited number of hole combinations available, there’s a theoretical limit to how weird this can get, and I think it’d be funny if John combined the Wise Guy Slime Suit with the Hellacious Blue Phlegm Aneurysm Gushers and ended up with a simple kitchen spoon, because he’s hit the limit.

I understand why Rose wants to save the grist for building John’s house, but most of the items he’s made are genuinely useful – the new weapons are essential, the healing gushers are really smart for if Nannasprite isn’t around, and the serious business goggles will make it WAY easier to keep in touch with Rose without the PDA getting lost in John’s sylladex. Sburb/Skaia is a somewhat malevolent entity, so while this is a fun happy update, I can’t help but wonder if Sburb is trying to sow discord between friends by giving the server and client player two different goals, but a singular resource. Even if it’s not malicious, it’s a trial by fire for this friendship.

> John: Combine playing cards and candy corn.

[preservationofnormalcy]

OCULUS Beta Fork 0.4.43

Welcome, DIR.WALKER

The following text is interpreted by OPN lowercase OCULUS from raw visual and audio data from public surveillance equipment at OPN site DC, Office Security wing. Incorrect inferences may occur.

Trust, but verify.

[O-SEC WING, MEMORIAL HALLWAY. One SUBJECT (ID: SECURITY DIRECTOR KNIGHT, 94% certainty) sitting by the memorial wall. One SUBJECT (ID: MAINTENANCE INTERN FLENCH, 88% certainty) pushing wheelchair containing third SUBJECT (ID: AGENT HALTER, 99% certainty).]

[AGENT HALTER] Thought I'd find you here.

[KNIGHT is silent.]

[AGENT HALTER] Flench, go take a smoke.

[FLENCH] You got it, boss.

[AGENT HALTER] How deep in the bottle are you?

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] You don't get to talk to me like that, Halter.

[AGENT HALTER] You're right. I don't. I don't get to talk to you the way I talked to you a few days ago, either. I came here to apologize.

[KNIGHT is silent.]

[AGENT HALTER] I was stressed out, and I snapped. The Director has been riding my...butt about PR. That's not an excuse, though. I'm sorry, Orson.

[KNIGHT is silent.]

[AGENT HALTER] I don't know why, but it seems like every other month some stupid thing is happening.

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] You know why.

[AGENT HALTER] I do. We broke something.

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] We broke it.

[AGENT HALTER] I guess.

[Seven (7) seconds pass in silence.]

[AGENT HALTER] Knight?

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] Yeah?

[AGENT HALTER] I wasn't entirely truthful just now. About why I snapped at you.

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] I know.

[AGENT HALTER] I still hate you sometimes.

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] I know.

[AGENT HALTER] I try not to. It's not right of me. Everyone who voted for it--

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] I hope one day we all burn for what we did.

[AGENT HALTER] Yeah. Yeah, me too. For what it's worth, I feel grateful that for the...two dozen people that remember her, you're one of them.

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] I should have been there. In her place.

[AGENT HALTER] Knight...

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] Let me have this, Halter. I got nothing left but the guilt.

[AGENT HALTER] You have us.

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] You don't think that makes it worse? Looking at you? The only time I don't feel it is when I'm dead.

[AGENT HALTER] I know the feeling. Deep down, we both want the same thing, I think.

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] I think so.

[AGENT HALTER] She was in your taskforce. You knew her. Do you think she'd want that for either of us?

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] No. She'd have taken a gun down to the Dir--

[AGENT HALTER] Shh. Not here.

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] Where is Johann now?

[AGENT HALTER] Who -- oh. He's in Medical. Did you....want to go see him?

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] Yeah. I think so.

[AGENT HALTER] Push me down there?

[SEC DIR KNIGHT] I think I could.

[fickleminder]

Three's A Party

Team Partyyyyy enjoys a little holiday celebration in the attic.

This is my gift to @xcyberbuniix for the @obeymeholidayexchange event! Happy holidays and have a great year ahead :)

"Exams are over…"

"Lucifer is out of the house…"

"It's time to PAR-TEH!"

Three party poppers went off at the same time, showering the floor in glitter and confetti. Mammon gave a loud whoop and threw his hands up, nearly dislodging the little sheep perched on his shoulder.

"Whoa, watch it Mammon!"

"Sorry MC!"

Asmo tutted and plucked MC from his older brother's grasp. "Mammon, you really should be more careful with dear MC!"

"I said I was sorry!" Mammon pouted.

"Don't worry about it!" MC fiddled with a party hat, struggling to strap it onto their head without getting it caught by their horns. Darn these tiny hooves. "It's the start of the holidays; we should be celebrating and having fun!"

"Seconded~" Asmo reached over to smooth down their fur and help them put the hat on. "Though I still think we should have gone to The Fall. They just introduced exclusive year end cocktails to their menu!"

"The last time you two brought me there, you ditched me to go dancing and some other demon spilled their drinks all over me," MC huffed. "Besides, it's been a while since the three of us got to hang out together, so I thought we could just keep it small in the house tonight."

"Of course! Who wouldn't want to spend time with The Great Mammon?" The second born grinned as he grabbed a pile of snacks from the nearby table. "C'mon, let's have some grub and get this party started!"

Belphie would have raised a stink if he'd known the three of them brought food and drinks into the attic, but they were in the clear so long as they cleaned up before he got back. Beel had taken him out for a walk in the snow (though MC suspected Beel probably ended up giving his twin a piggyback ride or something), which was also how they even had food to sneak into the attic to begin with. Two birds with one stone, as the saying went.

"Ooh, these poison berries are to die for!" Asmo dabbed his mouth with a napkin after each handful and checked his compact mirror for stains.

Next to him, Mammon was crunching loudly on some spicy newt chips. "Why'd you gotta be so healthy all the time, Asmo? Live a little!"

"I dunno, I think they taste pretty good together!" Like the menace they were, MC arranged a few berries on an extra large chip before shoving the entire thing into their mouth. "Mm, yummy!"

"…Humans are so weird."

"You can say that again."

"Hey! You haven't tasted weird until you've had eggnog…"

The conversation quickly shifted to the bizarre stuff — by demon standards, at least — that often popped up during holidays in the human world.

"I'm telling ya, it's technically the corpse of a tree. You chop 'em down specifically to decorate and then display them in your house."

"…I guess!"

"Oh don't go frowning like that MC, you'll get wrinkles!"

Mammon snickered. "Man, if we had one of those in the House of Lamentation, I can totally picture Levi putting all his stupid dolls on it!"

"Do you think Satan would hang cat treats or just cat-related merch?" MC wondered out loud.

"Both, darling, definitely both." Asmo shook his head in mock exasperation. "And then he'll lug the entire tree outside after the holidays are over and use it as an oversized cat lure in the garden or something."

"Well if he's gonna play stupid games like that…"

"Lucifer's gonna kick his ass?"

"Bingo!"

The three of them laughed at the mental image. The other brothers were incorrigible, but that was what made their family so unique.

"Speaking of games, what's a party without some? I vote for Seven Minutes in Hell~" Asmo proposed, raising his cup.

"Don't you mean Heaven?" MC tilted their head in confusion.

The fifth born licked his lips and fixed them with a sultry gaze. "Did I stutter?"

Mammon immediately jumped in-between them and scooped MC off the floor, keeping them far away from Asmo's clutches. "Oi, oi! None of that, ya hear?"

"Don't be such a spoilsport, Mammon! I'll make sure you get your turn too~"

"What if the two of you end up in the closet together?" MC snarked, not exactly pleased to have been hoisted up so suddenly. Just because they were small and fluffy didn't mean they could be carried around like a stuffed toy!

Mammon and Asmo shuddered at the thought and exchanged horrified glances.

"…Yeah, no, maybe we should play something else."

"Agreed."

But Spin the Bottle and Truth or Dare weren't as fun with only three participants, and Never Have I Ever wasn't getting anyone drunk fast enough.

"This is harder than I thought… Any more ideas, MC?" Mammon scratched his head.

"During the parties I attended back in the human world, we would usually have food and drinks and then sit around to chat and generally just chill." MC paused for a while before sighing loudly. "Damn, I'm getting old."

Asmo perked up at a thought. "How about some Devil Kart? We can borrow Levi's console to set up here; I'm sure he won't mind!"

Mammon fist pumped the air. "Aw yeah, that's a great idea! He should be out queuing for some nerdy stuff in town. I can get us into his room, no problem!"

"But he doesn't like it when you take his stuff without asking—" MC tried to protest, the only voice of reason among the three.

"I'm sure Mammon won't pilfer anything else to sell. Isn't that right, Mammon?" Asmo asked with a dangerous glint in his eyes.

"Uh, of course! You know me, haha… Demon's honor!"

"Then there's no problem!" Asmo's smile returned as he hopped to his feet. "Now let's go before I die of boredom!"

Outnumbered, MC rolled their eyes before toddling after them. "Don't come crying to me if Simeon puts coal in both your stockings again this year."

"Wait, what?!"

[remotewatch]

recreationally feral Jack when the reader wants to shower before they fuck

[navree]

genuinely would love for some of the "both parties are the same" people to name me a single election in the entirety of the twenty first century where the outcome for the country wouldn't have been better if a democrat had won

[kaiserouo]

how do you know i like excalibur

[dykedvonte]

I think the most baffling thing about the Tulpar as a vessel to me is the fact that the ship really did only have a one way communication system.

I know it was cheap but even the most basic of vessels regarding major transport would have some way, shape or form for outside communication. Not only that but there was absolutely no form of innate emergency signal to show they may have been offline or in trouble despite clearly having a system to dock credits if they went off course. It's another factor that really shows that bad situations are made to get worse by design. One person who is required to relay all information to the crew and make all the choices without feedback. No way to update or call for help in case of a dire situation. No way to inform of inner personal conflicts and acquire procedures accordingly.

It really is like they are all in some sort of fucked up solitary confinement. They have their own world with strict roles that are meaningless in the end, as long as the cargo makes it, it doesn't matter what happens on that ship to the company. They don't want to hear anything and will come to conclusions on what happened based on how much pay they can withhold from the workers. Even what they do send is short, sterile and corporate to the extent it was likely written and sent out with a command by some random unmanned computer in an office.

There's something to be said about how unfair it is to force absolute power and control onto one person when you as an entity could do so much more to offload it but I've said it many times before so I won't again.

[artistformerlyknownasbutttrumpet]

Your election post was the most holier-than-thou, performative, bullshit I’ve ever read. Get a grip and get some self awareness.

i will take "missed the entire point" for 500, alex

[billdenbrough]

fundamentally disinterested in the recurring discourse about kevin's drinking that aims to a) make it his Specific Problem To Focus On And Overcome when it is a crutch and coping mechanism to get him through a Much Bigger Problem (emotional fallout he can't square with by himself, culture shock, trauma, loss of his extremely wildly co-dependent relationship w riko, losing the structure of the nest, mourning a future he was meant to have, processing a grave injustice, anger and fear and desperate grief, all of which is his Actual Specific Fox Problem) while he builds himself back up, and b) thinks that even if it is a problem (more on that later), it's the foxes' problem to deal with.

like. it's just not.

yeah, he doesn't drink until he meets them. they gave him that habit, and in traditional terms, they're (the monsters specifically) a 'bad influence'. but these are the foxes. this is kevin day, son of exy, whose meteor is crashing spectacularly through no fault of his own. there are no traditional terms to be found here. the framework for it literally doesn't exist. neil comes into the foxes with more conventional expectations—appalled at the athletes' substance use, his horror at matt's trip to columbia, his steadfast and early repeated stance that none of the foxes should let andrew treat them the way he does, and certainly not nicky—and tends to engage with them less as the series goes on and he folds himself into the foxes. the thing about the foxes is that they've all been in pits deeper than they are tall. and some of them got a helping hand on the way—erik, andrew's extreme intervention methods, stephanie walker—and wymack was always waiting for them on the other side, ready to throw down a rope, but all the foxes dragged themselves out of their own holes. often not alone, often not without assistance, but at the end of the day, they have to do it.

there's that line neil has about aaron in that scene that got deleted when the timeline shifted around, when he thinks about how aaron got this far in life on his own, surviving on willpower and sheer desperation. that applies to aaron in a way that's a little more acute than some of the rest of them—boy who doesn't let the foxes in bc of andrew, boy who doesn't let nicky in bc he doesn't know how, boy made of flinching and seeking an escape and grieving the one who hurt him—but is broadly true for the foxes en masse.

this isn't to say the foxes can't help each other, but it's not their job. it just isn't. they'll keep kevin alive, keep him safe, keep him flanked and contained within their ranks. they'll fight tooth and nail in this battle with him, fight to get him to that championship game, fight to get that trophy in his hands. but that's all they've agreed to. that's all they're responsible for, in this covenant they've made with him. he says they can make this happen, and they're going to get him to that final game, but it's up to him what state he's in when he gets there.

like. they're foxes. they've been triaging their whole lives. they hate each other and they hate everyone else more. they're the kids with their backs up against the wall. half of them are addicts. i don't think kevin is comparable, personally; he's getting through a horrific situation with a coping mechanism. that's not the same thing as battling yourself to stop using. but that's not really the point of this. what i'm getting at here is that to the foxes, it's easy math: kevin who can lean on vodka and andrew and wymack and the foxes to stay upright when he's not ready to stand on his own two feet is still a kevin who is standing. a kevin with one less piece of scaffolding to lean on is a kevin who falls over, a kevin at risk of complete collapse, a kevin one phone call away from running back to the master, a kevin one crucial loss away from not ever making it back to himself at all. they're triaging. this is low on the totem pole of things they have the room to care about. they very much have bigger problems, both individually and even just kevin-related. if alcohol makes seeing the boy he knew best in the world and moved in tandem with his whole life and who destroyed their entire legacy and his entire life in one move — if alcohol makes facing that boy easier to stomach, then, fuck, why would they take that away? they're foxes. they've all got their demons. this is what kevin needs this year and a half to let him face his, that's all. they can understand that. it doesn't have to be pretty, as long as it keeps him in the fight. that's the priority.

i think there's absolutely space to explore this in fic and art and fandom in a way that maybe does explore it as a Problem, both that it's an active problem for kevin & that it's something to explore other foxes helping him with (there's a t&n fic that i've been gnawing at the bit to read for months that seems poised to explore this premise, and that's super up my alley)! i just think we're in different territory when we're talking about the series—and its characters and dynamics—in a conversational rather than transformational way, and end up talking about this like the foxes are responsible for kevin's choices. i love kevin day. i read these back at the start of 2015 & he's so dear to me that loving him was the blueprint for how i feel abt kageyama. but it's been pretty weird to see how the conversation has been translating Loving Kevin Day into... thinking the foxes are doing wrong by him with respect to this in actual canon. like that's just not how it operates there

[stuffedsand]

innocent voting kazui every day is not enough i need a gun

[pallases]

IM FREEEEEE

[runawaymun]

Man what a horrible way to wake up.

[maulfucker]

Yeah yeah jedi Maul au we've all seen him. But what about senator Maul au. Representing Dathomir, a neutral world like Mandalore that is still somewhat hostile to outsiders. Wearing fancy clothes that show a bit too much skin for the cold climate of Coruscant. Falling in hate at first sight with Padmé, the only other senator who brings a gun to the senate floor "just in case". The two of them having a weird rivalry because Maul doesn't trust the Jedi and is neutral in a lot of subjects that Padmé is a vocal defender of.

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Words cannot describe how much I despise this man, they really can't. It was already beyond disgusting to make that jibe while Brianna Ghey's mother was literally in the seats, let alone now actually continue to refuse to apologize and actually SMILE while discussing the jibe and the fact that the mother of a child whose murder was motivated by transphobia heard him.

[cementcornfield]

good lord my inbox is a mess lmao