#even if completely unprompted

[moeblob]

son boy raccoon trash can man suffering in a dnd au as a cleric bc his warlock will not stop committing murders and he has to keep coming up with reasons murder is valid to convince the gm its fine and under control

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 20 thoughts

oh man! i really loved this episode. no aliens, no overarching plot, just some silly shenanigans and yeah, some murder, but in a far more lighthearted fashion than in other cases. filler episodes i love you soooo much <3

from the beginning, i thought the prompt sounded really good... shoutout to people who work in sideshows and other touring entertainment industries, y’all are real for that 

we open with some kids laughing under a full moon… nothing could be scarier… except SOMEONE WATCHING THEM!

and whoever it is, they are approaching the pool with feet out. where are their parents to safeguard them from stranger danger, i ask into my screen!

OH he is the dad!! what was once scary has now turned heartwarming. he splashes about in the pool with them and says they need to get ready for bed. aww. 

BUT NOW SOMEONE IS WATCHING HIM IN THE POOL!! NOOO the heartwarming session HAS BEEN CANCELLED... is he being EATEN???

(as he is killed, the camera shows a van with the words “alligator man” on it... at first i'm thinking that the alligator man was the creature who just Ate this guy, but turns out the father WAS alligator man, so named for his skin condition. rest in peace mister alligator, the world is a worse place for ur loss)

and now the agents are looking into his murder :(

(also, in the opening credits, we see that one of the guest stars is named “the enigma”... I’ll have to look into their work)

mulder says there have been a lot of murders in this fashion over the last 28 years, and they have been going all over the country!!! it seems to involve some sort of round bite mark. must be time to go investigate.

they roll up the the alligator man's funeral. honestly it is sad! and we see that the widow slash mother of the kids is a bearded lady and she is absolutely serving but this is a very sorrow-filled moment for them all

and interrupting the moment in which his community remembers the warmth he brought to their town, his casket starts moving… and someone emerges from the ground… and stabs himself in the chest with a spike???? HUH???

so the deceased was an escape artist but was forced into the sideshow circuit because of his skin condition… scully says she didn’t know sideshows were still a thing… which is honestly fair because it is a very vintage sort of entertainment. and they have a Not So Great history.

BUT if the people who live in this town in the summer are all traveling performers.. and if they have been touring for years... and the murders go on for years… hmm, it seems things are starting to add up

mulder notices a drawing of a creature on the menu of the restaurant they are sitting in, and he asks who drew it. why, the sheriff says, it's the artist named hepcat, of course! cut to him tending to his freaky mermaid. he describes his scary maze business as “a tabernacle of terror” 

mulder asks what the drawing on the menu was, and i was thinking, hmm, looks like the fiji mermaid, and hepcat says it is the fiji mermaid, and mulder doesn't seem to recognize it?? i assume this is one of those situations where he acts like he doesn't know what is going on to get more information because i feel like that is Exactly the sort of thing he has read about at length. like i had him pegged as a guy who could write a dissertation on the subject at the drop of a hat. so i think he's lying but narrative wise it isn't fully revealed. 

scully: “what’s the fiji mermaid?” hepcat: “it’s the fiji mermaid!” <- thanks this clears up a lot <3

mulder is acting surprised to hear that the top half of the fiji mermaid was a monkey, which i again assume to be an act? but he says that the tracks at the murder look monkey-ish. so perhaps there is a correlation...? between the very active murder case and that time PT barnum sewed a monkey and a fish together? hey, the dots aren't connecting for me, but i don't work for the fbi so what do i know

they go to get a place to stay and the guy operating the rental place, a kind and verbose fellow with dwarfism named mr. nutt, gives them their keys. and mulder asks if had worked in the circus, (and since everyone they have met so far has in fact done so, i feel that this was a fair question, but maybe i also deserved what follows), and mr. nutt really lays into him about making judgements, and maybe some people with dwarfism want to manage hotels...

and as all of this goes down scully just observes. wow. she let him flounder. lmao.

the man carrying their bags is named lanny, and he has a conjoined twin sort of situation, it's not entirely clear- but he says mr. nutt got him to work there because he believed it was undignified to work in the circus. hmm.

back to hepcat at his studio… listening to some groovy music... and something crawls in his window… looking like the fiji mermaid. and it BITES him.

next morning. mulder going for a jog. in a sweatshirt and sweatpants in florida heat. what in the hell was he thinking??? let’s analyze that while a man chomping a fish emerges from the river. we receive no real clarification on what is going on in either of their minds.

scully in bed. alerted to a murder by lanny. still in a robe. we get a shot of her chest and also lanny's brother that felt mutually uncomfortable. SMH no rest for her!

okay, examining the scene of the murder. mulder notices some blood on a little window and WHY DID HE TOUCH THE BLOOD NASTY!!!! NASTY!!!

they deduce that to fit in the window, the suspect would have to be a contortionist…. and they walk out to see a contortionist. it’s the spike guy that so disrespectfully ruined the funeral!!

he puts a nail up his nose in front them. and mulder pulls the nail out. probably to get some blood. not an easy watch still.

we learn here that the guy with the puzzle tattoos who was eating the fish in the river earlier is called “The Conundrum”, and the spike guy slash contortionist is dr. blockhead

dr. blockhead gives the conundrum a bunch of crickets and he gulps them up; then he offers crickets to the agents and scully TAKES one, says thanks, eats it, and leaves LMAOOO????? never let them guess your next move....

mulder is staring at her trying to figure out if he is in love with a woman that just ate a cricket and if this is something she does regularly and JUST KIDDING!!! she didn't eat it silly!!! she "reveals" the lil cricket behind mulder’s ear awww... her uncle was a magician <3

(he also does a lil slight of hand trick and pulls out the bloody nail, saying "everyone's uncle was an amateur magician", which i am sure they can bond over at a later date)

scully goes to a museum that says "freaks free, everyone else leave a donation" and she puts in some money… publicly declared non-freak 

this guy at the museum is touching her. don’t care for that. but I like that he knows lots of random information. and he won’t show his whole face, we as the audience only see him through mirrors. very cool framing device.

he says he will take her back and show her something of barnum’s for another $5 and sworn secrecy. good luck bucko; last time she was told to keep a secret (affair baby) the SECOND she was reunited with mulder the tea had been spilled LMAOOO. he hands her a paper featuring jim jim the dog faced boy, who, dare i say it, seems to be a king.

he leads her into the back rooms… scary. but her trench coat is serving though

okay, deep in the back is a trunk. and it’s empty and opens an exit door. NOOO she was scammed! it’s all part of the hustle. 

(well, that is what i THOUGHT, at least, until she realizes it leads to the sheriff's house, and things are adding up...)

mulder sees something crawling about. it’s the guy who owns the rental space, mr. nutt, under scully's trailer! he asks why he is under there and mr. nutt says he is NOT being creepy. mulder flirts with the man and he runs away LMAO... weaponized bisexuality 

agents are in the trailer having a nerd off and it’s not clear who is winning and there is romantic tension. sheriff hamilton used to be jim jim the dog faced boy???? what a reveal!!!

we are watching them watch the sheriff dig a hole during a full moon. average agent bonding activities. he buried something in the ground and goes inside. 

they are in his yard digging up what he was just digging and mulder has taken his earlier roasting to heart and says “we’re being highly discriminatory here” and clarifies that’s no reason to suspect him of being a werewolf and it’s like well. i don’t know that we both thought he was a werewolf. they pause to consider the moral weight of their actions then keep going.

uh oh! sheriff catches them!!! not a good look being caught digging something up. “We’re exhuming… your potato” is the best line that usually quick-tongued mulder could come up with, which had me losing my MIND and i proceeded to write a very long keysmash to express my amusement

“may I ask why?” (she starts monologing about serial killers taking positions in law enforcement and needing to monitor him as as suspect, and it’s convincing) (he cuts in: “we found out you used to be a dog-faced boy” STOP THIS IS SOOOO FUNNY) and she looks soooooo guilty!!

he doesn’t deny it and says he started balding on his head which put him out of a job. fair enough, gotta pay the bills.

next genius dialogue exchange: “that doesn’t explain the potato” “I got some warts on my hand” “...that doesn’t quite explain the potato” 

(i kept having to pause in rapid succession to write these lines down because i was laughing SO hard)

has anyone thought that maybe a man wants to bury a potato in his yard in peace…. like that’s how we get more potatoes…

“to get rid of warts you rub a sliced potato on your hand and bury it under a full moon” <- new life hack just dropped!!

nooooooo the conundrum is chasing the dog… dog escaped. everyone is pleased. he brings a check to mr. nutt and it’s rent!! king of paying his bills on time. but dog is still barking... NOOOOO MERMAID ATTACK ON MR. NUTT!!!

someone with bloody hands bursts into scully’s room and she must have her gun right by her pillow, and she gets it so fast, but it’s just lanny, saying he found mr. nutt dead... they truly hate to see a hard working entrepreneur in the field of hospitality winning 

the pin at the scene looked like something from dr. blockhead, so they go to his house to investigate and he is full of hooks. i made a noise like whAUUUWAUUHWAUH and mulder is looking intensely at what's going on there. blockhead goes on some cultural appropriation bs. um sir this is weird timing bur you are under arrest.

he gets out of the handcuffs- contortionist and escape artist! but the sheriff catches him by the hooks. what a KING! shoutout to this sheriff, formerly jim jim the dog faced boy, can we add him to the team? skinner are you hiring?  

just as our agents apprehend their suspect, we see that the mermaid creature is in the room with lanny!!! but... he isn't hurt?

OMG the twin inside him IS THE MERMAID??

lanny confesses to this when he asks how it would be possible to turn his "brother" in without turning himself in...and he thinks the mermaid fellow hates him and is looking for another brother which is so SAD but he says he’ll come back

is anyone concerned about the twin crawling out of lanny? well, mulder knows he isn't the man in charge here: “scully, you’re the medical expert… I believe you” yessir it's good to remember that!

the mermaid brother appears to have run off into the "tabernacle of terror" and mulder trying to hold a little evil mermaid at gunpoint is SO comical

their asses are lost in the maze!!! scully pulls a gun on a rubber skeleton that fell from the ceiling!

she's trapped in a mirror room to serve infinite looks in all directions, and it looks like mermaid baby is caught... she fires.. but it hits the mirror!! baby mermaid brother escaped!!!

at this moment, mulder slides through a trapdoor... and it was SO funny pls tell me there's a gif set of that somewhere because i need it...

baby on the loose... bad news!!! conundrum is being eaten by the baby twin…. but what if he eats him FIRST, i ask myself, and received an answer in the form of baby being gone and conundrum rubbing his stomach!!!! yassss!!! diva down!!!

the next morning, while everyone is searching for mermaid brother, we learn lanny died that evening of a condition related to alcoholism. we learn this while dr. blockhead and the conundrum are getting ready to leave.

and dr. blockhead's going on about the future, and how nature needs freaks, and in the 21st century everyone will look perfect… "just like him" (points to Mulder majestically posing by a trailer) LMAOOOOOO “imagine going through your whole life looking like that!!!” <- yeah it must be really hard....... /s

at last, conundrum and blockhead are taking off into the great unknown... scully points out he doesn't look too good…. CONUNDRUM TALKS???? “probably something I ate", he says. LMAOOO his voice is sooo normal 😭😭😭

this episode had me laughing. we really had it all: exhuming a potato, scully's valiant attempts at lying, mulder hitting on a guy, lessons in ableism and judgement, a man who eats crickets and fish, flirting over case details, a dog, scully doing magic, mulder running in the florida heat dressed like it was a new england winter. truly i have nothing that could be added.

and did i have a secret evil mermaid twin on my list of probably monsters of the week? no, i cannot say that i did! was it the most compelling or scary of creatures? not really! but i was filled with whimsy. cannibalism saved the day. an excellent episode, and a perfect contrast to earlier in the season when scully was literally About To Die and i was crying a lot over the whole thing. ah, the duality of TV shows!

[not-a-matopoeia]

Good Luck Babe? He read the lesbian masterdoc

[homocrafting]

giggling and kicking my feet like a schoolgirl you’ve just activated my trap card

SO!! I haven’t decided just how Purpled ends up in LL just yet, but the general timeline leading to it is:

-he loses a life to Slime -He thinks “ah shit fuck my entire life. I have to kill him dead again. wait no what if that goes wrong and I die again. that’d suck so bad and then what?? I’d only have 1 life?? fucking loser behavior I refuse to risk that. actually fuck this I don’t even like this place. how the fuck do I fuck off this server” -lots of shenanigans happen and he finds out how to get out of the dsmp (there’s a REASON no one leaves and that reason is god doesn’t want them to) (sorry I just wrote an almost 6k words thing about him leaving the dsmp I’m trying So Hard to not focus too much on that part rn) -???? - >joins last life smp - “what kind of bedwars lobby is this”

and that’s how it all begins

everyone’s like “what the heck who is this guy how did a child get here??” and there’s general confusion but Grian. can’t get him out bc this random kid managed to enter the server on the exact moment he locked it down

so now they’re stuck with a random teenager, and like... the show must go on! this is their vacation server, they’ve been looking forward to this for months, they’re not gonna completely shut it down bc a random teen magically joined. plus, it’ll be fiiiiiine

meanwhile Purpled is lowkey freaking out bc one: he JUST got out of a memory locked, completely unleavable server with a 3 lives system. sure, this one has the possibility of having more (later, when the randomizer rolls, he gets 4 lives. Which, hey, better than what he lived a solid.... many years of his life with, so he’s winning), and the rules that were directly injected into his head through ~server magic~ tell him he’ll be back to his last respawn point once he’s out of lives, but come ON! as if he’s going to buy that. is this karma for flipping off god. this is probably karma for flipping off god

whatever, all he has to do is survive. he’s good at that.

with time, everyone’s divided into groups, and he happens to come across a dirt hut on top of a mountain- it’s empty, which, damn, but also, better than coming across whoever lives here-- ah shit nope nevermind there he is

now, this guy has scars all over his body, AND he’s fucking ripped. sure, his house is made of dirt, BUT if he has THAT appearance then surely he must have incredible survival skills, as well as the mind of a battle hardened warrior.

if he can have this guy on his side, he gets and ally AND someone who knows more about this whole death game thing

meanwhile, Scar is looking at this kid who joined the server by apparently complete accident, looks lowkey wayyy too old-warriory for a kid, and is looking him up and down like he’s the most interesting thing to ever exist.

so, logically, he asks if he wants to be allies. Purpled looks... surprised? confused? perplexed because he has such a hot guy on his side? perchance.

and this leads to magical mountain having 3 members: Scar, Purpled and Joel. Joel and Purpled don’t talk too much initially, but start getting along pretty decently. the ally of his ally is his ally, after all

on the 2nd week (each session in the series is a week in the au), when Joel and Scar are boogey, Purpled is ALSO boogey. so we have the 3 boogeys of magical mountain. Purpled kills Martyn shortly after Scar kills Mumbo, and bc I didn’t want to deal with changing kills that happened in the canon series, I just gave Martyn an extra life for Purpled to take

then Joel goes red, and suddenly it’s just Scar and Purpled. he is, of course, not affected by this at all, and when he goes tease Joel for dying, it’s merely a tactic to show him he’s not afraid of him and he’s better than him, and not at all because of any feelings he might have about this. at all

I don’t have any, like, concrete timeline from here on out, but Purpled loses his first life to Cleo, who gets boogey on the 3rd week, and kills him via ripping out his heart <3 this information isn’t even that relevant I just think it’s a fun little thing

he loses his 3rd life when a bunch of red names attack him at the same time. contrary to what Joel might tell you, they aren’t even the ones who killed him. he missed a waterbucket MLG and died

he survives on yellow for a long time, and ends up in the patchworked “I’m not red” team. Joel and Grian + a few others manage to kill him

contrary to popular belief, customized game mechanics CAN affect one’s psyche. the red lives/boogey system was not made in a way that’s safe for people under 21 years old, (and even then, Joel is more violent after that season. the effects should have faded when he was back on empires, but everything had been so red for so long and) so after a day or so Purpled just goes completely feral. like, he’s gonna die anyway! corpses are falling around him like puppets with cut strings! nothing in life matters! he came all this way for this so he might as well take as many people as he can down with him.

he hates how that anger is more familiar to him than the relative normalcy of being a yellow life.

After Scar dies, Grian tells Purpled he’s back home now. nevermind the fact he currently can’t really remember how home is, but he assures him it’s pretty nice. not that Purpled cares or anything

that conversation ends up leading to Joel telling them that he has a castle, or something like that, and it’s really bloody cool. Purpled tells him he doesn’t believe him. they bicker for a while, and it ends with an invitation to visit him when this is all over. Purpled accepts it (it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t believe there will be something after this)

Etho is the one who kills him, in the end.

Purpled is... frankly surprised to respawn in hypixel, but that’s stuff to unpack later. this post has gotten way too long already but shhhh.

anyway, since he has no idea when Joel is going to die, he just hangs around for a while, plays a round of bedwars while trying to decide what to do. then Scar somehow finds him?? one does not question Scar. and they hang out on hermitcraft for a while

later on Joel messages Scar, etc etc etc, and it ends with Purpled in empires.

empires is just... generally more similar to what he’s used to, in a way he can’t quite explain. AND there’s nothing messing with his brain! and he can leave whenever he wants! so he ends up sticking around and living with Joel

that’s all I have time for rn but if u wanna know anything just send me an ask or ask it here and I’ll be soooo normal about answering it

casts a spell on you that makes you want to send me asks about my Last Life Purpled au that I made specifically bc I thought Joel and Purpled would be friends

[pika-blur]

catch of the year

[labyrinthofthestar]

da*2. is a game

[kingofdinosaurs]

this is still like the single meanest thing i think I've ever heard get said no contest at all

[sskk-manifesto]

Finally got around to watching ep 11 (´；ω；｀)

[daredevils-advocate]

.

[revvethasmythh]

it's the way here lies the abyss as a quest only makes logical narrative sense if you a) sacrifice hawke and b) banish the wardens. literally any other set of choices net narratively sensical options such as "this guy i saved specifically because he's the only remaining senior warden to lead this group of wardens i've taken in has decided to fuck off to weisshaupt instead of leading them" and "my good friend varric's bestie who has a personal score to settle with corypheus has inexplicably decided it is their duty to have a meeting with the first warden that could have been an email (missive) and has exited the inquisition in order to pursue this." option 2 is even MORE confusing if you banished the wardens. hawke, bestie, why are you doing all that

[moongothic]

Oh my god, okay, okay, so like a while back in a post somewhere (think it may have been an ask about the "Crocodile is Whitebeard's son" theory) I talked about how I swore I remembered Oda mentioning once like 10+ years ago that he had based Whitebeard on a gay friend he had, and I complained how I couldn't find anything to confirm it (no mention of it anywhere, no interviews, not a peep), and I was like "did I make that up?? Was it some early 2010s Tumblr hoax??"

BUT YOU GUYS

I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO REMEMBERS THIS

I MIGHT NOT HAVE IMAGINED WHITEBEARD BEING GAY

(This is from a Reddit post about Weevil's role in the story)

[shinkai-kaiju]

if theres one thing im a huge sucker for, it's monster ecology. Monster hunter sometimes misses/goes for the rule of cool and "if the monster looks bad its probably dangerous and we should kill it NOW" and like. sometimes loses me. But sometimes they're fucking spot-on with designs and lore and ecological interactions.

[majormeilani]

yesterday this lady was purchasing something and using cash and her total was something like $17.07 and she hands me a $20 bill and randomly adds "and no i DON'T have the change, get over it"

[scarletfasinera]

Just tried to read a post on my dash that I did not immediately realize was about Disco Elysium that kept mentioning some strange concepts called "Kim" and "Harry" I couldn't understand for some reason & the thing my brain did to try to comprehend the words it was reading and make sense of them for me, was to BEAM (literal) two separate images of Kim Il-Sung and Harry Styles into my vision, which did not help me understand the post at all.

[starsiide]

if an artist says their turnaround time is usually a week and that they should be done with your specific commission by the end of the week, then goes nearly three weeks without saying something, is it OK to ask them for an update on your commission? I'm a bit torn on whether I should wait a whole month

[thespacehound]

🦀 who is the BRITISH one

🪼 who has the most obscure source? who has the most well known?

🐡 who’s the most insect adjacent. either in the little guy way or the EEEAAAAGHHHTKGJF FNN KILL IT way

🦀 who is the BRITISH one

All of us 😭 I’ll nominate Dogbeast ( @dogfreakfairy ) for this one though bc he’s a fae black dog from British folklore so he’s like double British 😌 One of our other hosts Bramble (who uses this blog a lot but doesn’t have his own side blog yet ^^’) has The RP Accent Of The System though so he’s the runner up lol <3

🪼 who has the most obscure source? who has the most well known?

Most obscure source probably goes to Andreas (P.entiment) or Orion (doesn’t like us talking abt his source on tumblr but I’m pretty sure u already know who he is lol <3) 😌 neither of them are from super obscure media but they’re the most obscure active fictives we have rn uwu’’ idk if it counts but Kangal ( @letmebeyoursword ) is party ‘sourced’ from tiktok videos we used to watch around the time he formed of a group of livestock guardian dogs who worked on a farm. He’s not a factive of any of those dogs but those vids definitely influenced our brain’s decision to make him a livestock guardian dog so that’s probably our most obscure non-fictional source. Some Sirius lore for u lol 😌 Most well known is probably Jotaro (jjba) or Scourge Warriorcats I bet so many systems have Scourge alters uwu’’

🐡 who’s the most insect adjacent

@eviltamagotchi !! Squishing it like a bug 😌 (affectionate)