#except not really because they canonically don't actually fuck at all they just sorta like each other really hard for a bit

[pokemonbiologyirlthetabletop]

Da Rulez: How the FUCK does Pokemon Breeding Work? (Breeding 101)

Well, you see…. when two Pokémon love each other very much, an egg magically appears out of nowhere and no one knows where it came from!

Okay, snarky response aside, here’s what’s going on: first, Pokémon don’t have genitals. They don’t have sex, but they do have a sex, sort of, sometimes. When two Pokémon mate, what is actually going on is that they are combining magical energies together to create a new being, which takes the form of an egg. Almost all Pokémon start off as an egg, though there are a handful of striking exceptions such as Minior and certain gods/eldritch beings.

But Professor Redwood, I’m confused, you talk about gestation periods for Pokémon but how can there be pregnancies if there’s nothing to be pregnant with? I AM CONFUSION! AMERICA EXPLAIN!  

This is my step-by-step guide to how Pokémon reproduce:

Step 1.) Courtship: They find a mate that they like.

Step 2.) Mating: Mommy and Daddy Pokémon like each other very much, and then they mutually agree to combine magical energies to create babies. This step is functionally the same as having sex, but there’s no actual sex involved, but the same basic thing is going on. This is the stage where genes and magicks are combined and mixed together to form someone new. This process requires consent from both parties for it to work.

Bi-sexed species can only mate with other bi-sexed species and only with the “opposite sex.”

True mono-sexed species can only mate with other true mono-sexed species.

There are three types of mono-sexed Pokémon

True mono-sex: either parent is equally capable of being the siring or carrying parent. Can only mate with other true mono-sexed species.

Mono-female: can mate with other species but this Pokémon will always be the carrying parent. Can only mate with bi-sexed species

There is seldom any bio-evolutionary or adaptive pressure to develop self-replication, since the males of other bi-sexed species are usually readily available for mating at any time of year.

Mono-male: can mate with other species but this Pokémon will always be the siring parent. Can only mate with bi-sexed species.

(Mono-Male) These Pokémon are capable of self-replication, meaning that they can bear cloned offspring of themselves in absence of a mate. Without "females", this is the species only viable option unless they evolve to be a true mono-sex species.

(Mono-Male) Exceedingly rare. Almost always the result of a species losing its female population and "nature finds a way" allowing the males to self-replicate.

God-tier Pokémon and above can only mate with other God-tier Pokémon and above, except Mew.

Demigod-tier Pokémon and below can only mate with other Demigod-tier Pokémon and below, except for Mew.

Ditto can mate with any Pokémon that is not God-tier or higher on the divinity tier.

Mew can mate with any Pokémon, God, or Eldritch Being or any other divinity tier not otherwise listed. It is the only Pokémon that can do this. Mew are responsible for the creation of many demigods and minor gods and the proliferation of incredibly rare demigod species.

Step 3.) Gestation/Pregnancy: The energies have combined and have begun the process of creating a new individual, but there’s nothing physical to show for this, this stage is entirely intangible because of its lack of physical presence. Meaning, eggs are forming but you can’t actually see anything going on. However, the effects on the carrying parent (usually called the mother) are the same as if they were pregnant. The carrying parent must still acquire extra food, and during this time the invisible magically forming eggs are functionally gestating and taking their toll on their parent’s health and body. During gestation, eggs are gathering magical energy in order to prepare for materialization.

Step 4.) Materialization & Incubation: When its time to “give birth/lay eggs” the eggs will magically materialize from the aether, alleviating the parent of the burden of gestation.  

Step 5.) Birth/Hatching: When the eggs hatch, they glow the same type of glow as when a Pokémon evolves. It’s theorized that we should be considering the egg to be the first stage of Pokémon magic-evolution, but for simplicity’s sake, we do not.

Step 6.) Reproductive Maturity: Pokémon must reach certain developmental milestones before they’re able to combine magical energies with another and create new Pokémon from the aether.

In general, these are the rules-of-thumb for Pokémon reproductive maturity:

 Must be at least level 15

This is because a Pokémon needs to be physically and magically fit enough and developed enough to be able to reproduce. This is no different than in real life, when severely underweight or “underage” animals are physically incapable of reproduction until they reach a healthier size and/or developmental stage.

Any larval-stage or cocoon-stage Pokémon is incapable of reproduction.

Caterpillars can’t reproduce. Neither can cocoons. This is true to real-life.

Yes, this includes Pokémon like Larvitar & Pupitar, and Bagon & Shelgon. Their taxonomic clade convergently evolved the larvae-pupae-adult life cycle, so it falls under the same rule.

Yes, Larvesta doesn’t evolve into Volcarona until level 59. Larvesta is a caterpillar, it cannot reproduce. This means that the entire lineage cannot reproduce until at least level 59.

Examples of larval-stage Pokémon include but is not limited to: Caterpie, Weedle, Wurmple, Sewaddle, Scatterbug, Blipbug, Grubbin, Larvesta, Snom, Larvitar, and Bagon.

In general, the adult stage of a larval Pokémon is capable of reproduction immediately upon evolution, but this is definitely not true for all of them and you should actively consult the life cycles of these Pokémon.

Baby Pokémon cannot reproduce

Babies can’t make babies. It does not matter what level they are at.

This is a very specific group of Pokémon, and they are: Pichu, Cleffa, Igglybuff, Togepi, Tyrogue, Smoochum, Elekid, Magby, Azurill, Wynaut, Budew, Chingling, Bonsly, Mime Jr., Happiny, Munchlax, Riolu, Mantyke, and Toxel.

In the videogames, certain Baby Pokémon are produced with incense items. These do not exist in this world because that’s way too complicated to figure out its ecological implications. Plus, many of the later-Gen Baby Pokémon were introduced with incense-holding mechanics as an in-game continuity explanation for why they weren’t available in earlier games. If your Game Master wants to incorporate the incense-holding breeding mechanic from the games, have at it.  

What are Egg Groups and how cross-species mating works:

Pokémon form at least 18 named broad egg groups, and any species is capable of being in two of them at a time.

Egg groups are how the magicks of Pokémon divide themselves. They represent broad physiological differences and groupings, allowing Pokémon to reproduce with others that are somewhat like themselves. This means that Pokémon who are living rocks will be able to mate with others who are living rocks, while aquatic Pokémon will be able to mate with other aquatic Pokémon (sort of), and so forth.

When two Pokémon of different species mate, the babies will be the species of the “mother.”

What are Egg Moves and how does my Pokémon get one:

Egg moves are moves that a Pokémon knows from birth—on the learnset charts, this is also marked as “learns at level 1.” They are inherited from the parents, notably the “father.” In the videogames, egg moves are largely the only way for Pokémon to be able to learn certain attacks, but in this game, egg moves can also be taught to a Pokémon with enough dedication.

When calculating egg moves, the ones from the learnset chart come first, then should the total egg moves be more than 4, it is up to your Game Master to determine which ones your newborn will have. There are different ways you can do this, but you must stick to one, and it’s advised that you use whichever method best fits your game’s narrative style:

You just pick the ones you like

Dice roll

You do what the videogames do and override the default egg moves (“learns at level 1”) with whatever the baby is inheriting from its parents directly (ie: what comes from the breeding learnset chart)

Note: in the videogames it is possible to breed high-level attacks onto a newborn Pokémon so long as it is within the newborn’s possible level-up learnset. As an example, a Swampert that knows Hydro Pump could have baby Mudkips that also know Hydro Pump from birth. This is a really cool breeding mechanic in the videogames, but I am unable to decide whether it should be officially kept or not. As such, it is left to Game Master discretion whether this is a cool feature that gets kept or is considered an unfair and unbalancing mechanic.

Have fun with your Pokemon Breeding endeavors!

~~~~~~~~

Hey guess what, if you like my stuff, this is my website where you can find other Pokémon I've written on and more information about the game that I’m slowly making! Check it out! I write books sometimes too.

[iamyouknow-yours]

Marcel is a Mikaelson. He does not have to call himself a Mikaelson as he is fully within his rights to denounce the very toxic family but he is one.

I hate the way the show treated him, I hate the way the characters treated him, and I hate that he is involved with Rebekah. I hate the way he and Hope are only kinda sorta siblings.

1. The show:

So we know Julie Plec is very much a white liberal. We know this. We know she has sexism issues, we know she has racism issues (black women will save us all, really Julie????). I don't know which of her multitude of biases made her (and the rest of the writers) think that the way they wrote Marcel and the Mikaelson's relationships with him, was normal (or like normal in the context of the show). But boy howdy.

The plantation house. We're just going to have the Mikaelsons move into the house where Marcel was owned as a slave????? That's what we're gonna do?????? And where his abusive biological father lived and y'know, abused him. Fucking what the fuck?? I feel like this just epitomises the way the show treats Marcel.

2. The characters:

The family never treats him as part of the family unless they want something from him.

They did not raise him as a son and it is weird and terrible and he was a child!!!!! Why did you adopt him if you didn't want a child???

Why is Klaus so scared of having Hope if he's already had a child?

Why does Klaus treat Marcel the exact same way Mikael treated him just because they're not blood related?? (if they actually explored this it could have been interesting but no they just only half treat Marcel as a Mikaelson).

YOU'RE TELLING ME THEY DIDN'T CHECK?? THEY DIDN'T CHECK HE WAS DEAD????? Not once in the 80+ years did Klaus or Elijah go back to New Orleans or even send someone to fucking check that his SON was really dead??? Didn't think to do that???? No???

3. Rebekah:

Oh my god what do I even say about Rebekah?

They could have at least made her be daggered for the time when he was a child and only meet him when he was already an adult and a vampire because that way she's only technically his aunt and not a full fucking adult who saw him grow up!!!!!!!!

Hope:

Idk man, they were siblings. Let them be siblings. The whole thing in Legacies where the Mikaelsons just kind of left Hope alone? Weird. Bonkers. Batshit. I know it's because they couldn't get the actors but maybe think about that before writing your fucking show my guy.

Or in TO where Hope was just left alone and Klaus was not there as a dad for like 5(?) years.

Hayley was the only good parent on The Originals or Legacies canon, fight me.

(side note, you're telling me Caroline would leave Alaric, Alaric, an alcoholic, vampire-hating, weirdo (Caroline and Alaric being romantically involved briefly WAS WEIRD GUYS, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK HE USED TO BE HER FUCKING TEACHER) in charge of the school for supernatural children??

You're telling me she left him in charge of parenting Lizzie and Josie?? Yeah okay sure.

And look how well that turned out. Locking teenagers in goddamn prison worlds, excellent headmastering there Alaric well done. And just swell parenting of the twins. Favouring Hope over them at all times and letting them bully each other weirdly for years and allowing your mentally ill children to just get more mentally ill from your parenting. Great moves. Very good.

Okay Legacies rant over)

Yeah okay my whole rant is over I think.

TL;DR: Marcel deserved better.

(and so did the kids on Legacies.)

Also PSA, the only reason I have so many feelings about this is because I like the freaking shows okay? I like the characters (except Alaric and Damon and the ones we're supposed to dislike like Mikael and Esther).

[squarebracketsmileyface]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I WOULD KILL FOR BIRDIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I WANT MAMA LARK AND PAPA TIM AND BUBA BRIAN AND LITTLE BIRDIE TO JUST BE THE BEST HAPPY FAMILY IN THE WORLD GAH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mon I hope you know this will forever be in my brain, all my thoughts, are going to be consumed by them.

Do you think inthe everyone lives au they'd want more kids or are they completely happy with their little surprise miracle? And in that vain, do you think Tim would yeet his uterus/ get his tubes tide after Birdie is born or like, again, maybe perhaps... holding out for the possibility of another....

(Don't mind me, I'm just a fiend with baby fever and the love of projecting onto my favorite guys)

~💜

Oh dude even in the 'canon' of Sorry, It's Locked Tim does end up with another kid.

The second kid is more planned than Birdie but still not entirely planned (as in, he and Brian have been talking about it and have been a bit less careful about using protection, but it still happens a lot sooner than they expected it to lol). They name this kid Jesse and it's a little boy, so Birdie gets a little brother.

In the 'everyone lives' AU I think I'd keep this. Around the time when Birdie is sorta 12-13 ish, after Brian comes back into their lives and eventually starts dating Lark and Tim, he and Tim have a kid as well, and again, that kid is Jesse.

Also Jesse is like, obsessed with his big sister when he's a baby. Like, he only wants to be held by her, he stares at her constantly, y'know? He just really loves his big sister.

OH YEAH WAIT I FORGOT TO TELL YOU SOME STUFF ABOUT BIRDIE IN THE LAST ONE.

Birdie is a bug autistic, she fucking loves insects of all kinds. Every type of insect, there isn't a single one she dislikes. However, Tim really doesn't like bugs much (blame that on waking up in the forest, lying on the floor covered in insects and insect bites) but he tries for Birdie. Like, she wants to raise caterpillars? Sure, they can do that... Except that Birdie releases the butterflies in his room one day and he almost has a panic attack so now he's gotta explain to 3-4 year old Birdie that she really "really can't do that because papa is very scared of bugs, even the pretty ones". Birdie gets it and is allowed to raise caterpillars again, but she does ask if that means she can't dress up as insects for Halloween anymore, if Tim is even scared of the pretty ones.

Obviously, Tim says she is the prettiest bug and only bug he likes. She is very happy and proceeds to dress as a shield bug for the next Halloween. Tim is just very confused by her choice 💀

Confused but supportive dad lol

I think I also forgot to mention some of how Birdie is in 'canon' S,IL while it's just her and Tim. Because even though Tim hides MH from her, he can't really hide the PTSD kinda stuff it left him with. He can't hide the nightmares that wake him up, he can't hide how scared he is when he forgets things, stuff like that. He and Birdie have this kinda routine where if he wakes her up with his nightmare she goes and sleeps in his bed with him. So she'll wake up because he's yelled or something in his dream and she'll go into his room (wake him up if he isn't already awake) and they'll cuddle until they both fall back asleep.

A lot of Tim's nightmares pot MH are about losing people, they're about losing Jay and about losing Brian, they're about killing Alex and lying to Jessica about what really happened and then never seeing her again, stuff like that. But they're also about losing Birdie. They're about sort of "what if" scenarios where he lost her before he even knew he was pregnant, where the fight with Alex at the end caused him to miscarry. They're about losing her to some horrible accident now that he actually has her to look after. They're about the Operator coming back and hurting her. They're about the Operator coming back and Tim doing to Birdie what his mum did to him, sending her away to a mental hospital and rarely coming to visit.

The ones about Birdie are the worst for him, the others he kinda knows how to deal with, he dealt with them during MH and also, they did happen. He did lose those people. In a way that makes it less scary, because it's just reliving the events in a way and he can kinda handle that. But the dreams about losing Birdie? They fuck him up. Some days even sending her off to school after a really bad nightmare about losing her feels like too much and can send him into panic attacks all day.

On days like that he and Birdie have an agreement with the school that Birdie can phone home at break and lunch, and if Tim really needs to he can phone and ask for her outside of break and lunch. He tries not to need that one, he doesn't wanna drag her out of class in front of everyone, he doesn't want the other kids to make fun of her for it, because kids can be mean like that. Birdie doesn't really care what the other kids think. She doesn't even realise that getting called out of class like that could be something to be embarrassed by. All she cares about is "my papa is sad and scared and I can make him feel better by talking to him about bugs" because on those phonecalls she literally just talks about bugs she's seen that day and Tim's just happy to listen and remember that she's alive and safe and strangely obsessed with bugs.

ALSO kinda on the same lines as this, even tho Birdie loves Brian as a teacher, she's kinda suspicious of him when he and Tim get together. Like, not massively, but the first time Brian sees Tim have a nightmare when he stays the night, he ends up getting kicked out of Tim's room by Birdie because she doesn't trust him to know how to help. She kinda gets one of those little kid power trips about being the only one who knows how to look after her papa when he has a nightmare, like, she feels all special because just being there or talking to him makes him feel better, y'know lol?

She gets all high and mighty with Brian and he tries to focus on how funny he finds it rather than panicking about whether Tim is okay.

When Birdie doesn't come out of Tim's room again Brian cracks the door to look in and absolutely melts because Birdie and Tim are sound asleep all cuddled up together. Brian sleeps on the sofa that night and ends up all manners of fucked up because it is NOT a comfy sofa to sleep on and his back is already fucked 💀

Many many spasms were had all the next day. That poor man was not having a good time. Birdie feels sorry for him and tells him that next time he can go and sleep in her bed instead.

He appreciates the offer 💀

It doesn't take much convincing from Tim for Birdie to let Brian stay after the first few times he has a nightmare while Brian is staying over, rather than her causing a whole palava kicking Brian out (cos that's not as simple as just, Brian gets up and walks out of the room, he has to transfer into his wheelchair and make sure he grabs his morning meds in case Birdie won't let him back into the room in the morning when he needs them, and make sure he brings his service dog with him cos she sleeps on the bed with him and Tim, y'know? A little less simple than "get up and walk out". Also his neck is also kinda fucked up from the fall so he has a specific pillow that he always uses, which if he doesn't he always finds his neck all kinda of fucked up in the morning, so he's gotta grab that too lol)

Anyway, eventually Brian just becomes part of their whole nightmare routine and Birdie realises that teaming up with him to look after Tim works way better than doing it on her own. So she and Brian cuddle Tim from both sides and he gets extra reminded that they're both still there. Also Brian's service dog is probably trained to help with PTSD, cos no way Brian isn't also a little fucked in the head after MH, so she can task and do deep pressure for Tim. She's a bit confused at first cos usually she does it for Brian, but she gets it very quickly. Birdie is delighted that a dog can be taught to cuddle on command.

Oh shit you asked about tubes tied and stuff as well lmao. Sorry I got so distracted.

I think after they have Jesse, Tim gets a hysterectomy and all that. He doesn't wanna go through pregnancy and birth a third time, so they get that done so he doesn't have to worry about it. He jokes that if Brian or Lark wants another kid they'll have to figure out which one of them is gonna carry it.

He'd be happy to have another kid, all three of them have pretty good jobs now (Lark's the big moneymaker for the family with Tim close behind, Brian's still a teacher because he adores kids) so they could support a third kid financially, but if they want another kid, they're gonna have to adopt or go through a surrogacy thing rather than Tim carrying it like with Birdie and Jesse.

Oh yeah also the kids names:

Birdie is "Birdie Amelia Wright"

Jesse is "Jesse Alexander Thomas"

Yes, I know it's dumb but I love it. Jesse for Jessica. Alexander for Alex. Amelia for Amy. Tim names his kids so that people who were lost to MH are still kept alive in a little way (yeah yeah Jessica is still alive, but Tim has no way of getting in touch with her so nyeh). In the 'everyone lives' AU that kinda doesn't work as well so Jesse's middle name would probably be different in that, cos Alex is still alive lol. But yeah.

@pianofirepirate helped me come up with the Kids full names :]

I've ranted to them about this shit so much recently lol.

SPEAKING OF RANTING TO THEM here's another thing we came up with:

In the 'canon' of S,IL Birdie does eventually find out about MH. Probably about when she's 15-17 I think? One of her friends tells her about it, like, mentions that her dad's look like two of the guys from this old YouTube horror series and shows her a couple things that people managed to save before Tim deleted the MH channel and all that, cos even in universe I like to think MH got relatively popular, with people thinking it was a fictional horror series. It starts a WHOLE conversation at home with Tim and Brian where they have to explain that yeah all that stuff happened to them, no they really don't remember a lot of it (especially Brian), yes people think it's fictional but it's not, etc etc etc.

Tim and Brian are upset that some 'random' kid at school showed MH to Birdie, but over all it's not a world ending thing. What it does do though, is open the floodgates on jokes about stuff that happened in MH. E.g. "can't believe you pushed me off a building" jokes. Brian uses that one so often and Tim just sighs dramatically and comes back with "First of all, you fell! And also YOU'D BEEN STEALING MY MEDS FOR YEARS AND I DIDNT KNOW WHO YOU WERE BEHIND THAT STUPID MASK!" And Birdie just sits back and watches in glee. She finds it hilarious.

Though the first time Brian accused Tim of pushing him she did go "you pushed him off a building!?!?" Like, completely taken aback and they had to explain the whole thing to her and they probably showed her the video so she could see what actually happened.

Honestly I think that maybe once Birdie is like, 18 they end up putting all the videos back up. Maybe they only privated them rather than deleting them idk. But yeah I think after a while they'd just silently put the videos back up and all the lost media people rejoiced, and there's just the unspoken thing that Birdie can watch the videos if she wants to.

She doesn't.

Like, she watches a little bit of it here and there. But she never actually sits down and watches everything, she just doesn't feel like it's something she needs to do. She watches enough to know who the people being talked about by her dads are (Amy, Jessica etc etc etc) and she watches a couple entries with Jay in them over and over and over again. But generally, she just doesn't want to watch the whole thing, y'know. She doesn't watch all of MH and she hasn't seen a single TTA video.

Wait that reminds me now again (sorry, I keep fucking doing this)

That whole thing with Tim sometimes needing to phone Birdie's school and just, like, make sure she's still alive. That doesn't fully go away when Birdie gets older and goes off to college/university. Tim's always been a bit of a helicopter parent and though he gets better at it, he and Birdie do make time to phone each other pretty much every night. Mostly it's just Birdie talking about her day and what she's been up to, and Tim listening. Occasionally he'll chip in with bits about his day, but mostly he's happy to listen to her talking about her studies. (She's gonna be a bug scientist. I can't remember what they're called. But she's gonna be a big scientist, specifically working in conservation of insects).

If Birdie misses a phone call one evening Tim will definitely start to panic a bit, but he makes sure he only sends her one or two texts to check in before he forces himself to put his phone down and go spend time with Brian and/or Jesse :]

Cos while Birdie's uni age, Jesse is only like, idk 10 at most? So Tim still has a lot to do, y'know? Jesse keeps him and Brian occupied and while he's looking after/spending time with Jesse, Tim manages to take his mind off worrying about Birdie pretty well.

[zmediaoutlet]

dean/crowley and sam/crowley

ahaha well --

dean/crowley

technically you don't have to 'ship' things that are canon. :)

that said: I mean, come onnnn. D/Crowley has mUch more canon basis than just about any other "okay, I guess they didn't technically show us kissing" ship in the show. I mean the fivesome alone! But also the obviously canonical pining from Crowley, the way Dean threatens a lot but you can't ever actually imagine him really going through with killing Crowley (because he's soft with guys who've fucked him <3), the way Crowley always Gets what's going on with Dean in a way deeper and more fucked up than anyone else -- even Sam -- even maybe Alastair. The spectator sees more of the game, as they say, and what's interesting about Crowley is that he would never, ever expect to be #1 -- but what he can get at as #2 might be just as useful.

what's also fun about D/Crowley is like -- while it's obviously a mistress ship to the side of the main canon event, it's very... free? Dean doesn't have to pretend to be anything other than what he is. Of course he does, because he wouldn't be Dean without a little gloss of pretense, but like -- Crowley knows him. Crowley knows his worst shitty parts. Crowley probably has a spreadsheet with how many souls Dean shredded in Hell and has polite comments arranged for every one, which he Will Not Say but they both know he could. Dean's guilt encompasses the whole planet but Crowley doesn't give a shit about that guilt, except how he can manipulate it to his own ends, and they both know that, and it's like... all the cards are on the table, you know? In that way it may be a little bit of self-harm for Dean, sure, but he's going into it with eyes wide open and knows exactly what he'll get out of it and it's. Well, 'free' is the only word I can think of. A little corrosive maybe but lots of things have been worse.

also the dude died for Dean, which we should always appreciate as the ultimate simp move. Dean's got a bodycount stacked much higher than Sam's dick. Why isn't the meme about Dean's murderous puss?

sam/crowley

would Crowley attempt to seduce Sam? Sure he would. Would he try to get him into a place where Sam might really consider saying yes to it? Of course. Would Sam actually say yes? lolno, not unless LITerally every other option (potentially including his own death) were wasted, because--

unlike the previous ship in this ask, Sam has self-respect. rip Crowley but Sam already learned his lesson with skanky demonsex and like. He's just not that sad. Plus there's zero zero zero interest or closeness from Sam -> Crowley, and Sam's a lot of things but I really don't think he's a 'self-punisher with sex', and he obviously just finds Crowley fucking irritating, lol. He's also never gonna kill Crowley because the network wouldn't let him, but where with Dean you can hear the shouted threat as very empty, with Sam you can hear that he would REALLY LIKE TO and keeps getting thwarted. Crowley might be useful but he's not Sam's friend, and---while I fully believe that Sam can have hatesex---Crowley doesn't feel like an option he'd ever choose. Not least because he knows Crowley would try to use it as a card against him, and he's smart enough to not let that happen.

As an interesting codicil to all this, I also sorta suspect that Crowley respects Sam more than he does Dean. He'd still use the opportunity if it were given, but where with Dean it's a fun way to needle him (we'll ignore his subsequent schmoopy pining, the dope), with Sam, it feels like Crowley would really just find it a disappointment. Like, he expects better. Adds a cool element to their dynamic.

[saunne]

You know what babe? M gon ask u about yingheng now cause they 💯💯 need the spotlight as well and i WANT the world to know how crazy u are about them. Go fuck shit up dear spouse

*looks at inbox* *looks at ask* *looks at date*

WELL GUESS WHO FORGOR TO ANSWER. I did the XingRen one here but I guess ADHDon't then got in the way and since I open my inbox like, once every three month I just. Forgor. We're kinning Acheron in this house baby.

So. Heart is big cause So Many Thoughts but I think indicating that it could have taken off like a rocket from the top right corner towards distant horizons was also a possibility.

So, YingHeng. YingHeng as "HCQ Era Furnace Master Yingxing" and "Dan Heng of the Astral Express" (and for once it's fixated dynamic). It is a rareship and even more, it is a crackship cause there is absolutely no way for them to ever fucking meet in canon.

Doesn't mean I won't try tho.

(Long babbling under the cut)

It doesn't make any sense because they do not belong to the same timeline at all (700 years apart more or less) and because the only way for them to meet (and do more than that) would actually break the space-time continuum OR involve some really strange and fucked up revival/reincarnation with the existing possibility of destroying/replacing Blade in the worst case scenario process.

BUT AEONS IT DOES COMPEL ME SO MUCH and you would know cause I shoved at least 4 WIPs about them right in your face lmao.

I like this ship because it compels me and scratches a itch in a way that classic RenHeng never really managed to do except for certain fics.

I will admit that I sometimes have troubles with the RenHeng ship and the way their dynamic can be/is portrayed despite loving the ship. RenHeng has a common past involving Yingxing and Dan Feng their past-self/incarnations (whether one agrees or not with the theory/system of thought that DH = DF for that matter) and their ship is based on acceptance/rejection/reflection around this common past, the idea of responsibility and above all an idea of healing of trauma (for BOTH OF THEM).

The main thing is that RenHeng often involves violence (canonical and/or added one) and more or less toxic relationship tropes that I don't always have the desire or energy to deal with, even if the writing of the fic is of exceptional quality (I have a lot of RenHeng fics like that in the waiting list fir when I'm in the mood for it tho) . Sometimes I just want something that's still as emotionally charged but a lot simpler and that's where YingHeng came in.

The biggest problem for YingHeng is to "bring" Yingxing back into the picture and there are several solutions for that :

time travel (him coming or Dan Heng going)

dimensional travel (Curios are very practical for this kind of stupid plot)

Yingxing's memory having survived in one way or another (in an object, in Dan Heng's memories inherited from Dan Feng, sealed outside or inside of Blade)

Alternate Universe (it's easier to make him appear in a modern AU settings than in sorta-canon HSR settings lmao)

I like the third option the best, because it allows me to be able to keep Blade in the picture if I want (whether to do a YingHengRen or just an opposition/comparison study between Yingxing and Blade) or not ( by "killing" Blade by retransforming him/rewinding him back to Yingxing).

My two mains thoughts paths about YingHeng are “longing for something you never had” and “mourning for something you never thought you would have to mourn”.

"Longing for something you never had" is mostly Dan Heng centered. I like to start from the idea that Dan Feng's surviving memories can be a curse because they blur the separation line between their respective identities, but that it can also be a blessing. I like the idea that fuzzy and imprecise surviving memories of XingYue's passionate love could have been one of Dan Heng's greatest comforts during his imprisonment in the Shackling Prison. I like the idea that Dan Heng fell in love with the idea of Yingxing or at least fell in love with the idea of Love and Being Loved because of these memories of Yingxing.

All of this while being intimately aware that they were never intended for him.

I like the idea of Dan Heng longing for something that doesn't belong to him. Of being unable to let go of this feeling of "wanting/desiring/missing" Yingxing's love he felt in Dan Feng's memories despite wanting to separate as much as possible from Dan Feng and the burden of his unintended inheritance. Which can lead to a feeling of shame/embarrassment due to being sorta "voyeuristic" and yet attracted to it. Or on the contrary, a sort of defiance with a "these memories have been imposed on me against my consent so I don't have to feel guilty about anything, let alone my feelings about them".

For Yingxing, it was the idea of how he would deal with grief that interested me. Firstly the mourning of his life/friends (and what they became) if it's a time/dimensional travel scenario. Secondly, if his memory is forced back into Blade's body or stuffed in a newly created body to "re-alive him", the mourning of his past death and having to continue / start living again (whether or not he is immortal after said resurrection). If Blade remains alive it adds yet another level of mourning/philosophical reflection on identity, on what makes someone unique and all the tropes around "what would you ask/would say to your past/future self if given the opportunity". I like the idea of exploring the grievance of the one who died/should have died first ending up mourning the one who should have lived/who was supposed to live.

I like the idea of how Yingxing and Blade might treat differently the whole "is Dan Heng = Dan Feng ?" and "does Dan Heng has to pay for Dan Feng's mistakes/errors/crimes ?". I like the idea of Yingxing being "excuse me I was married to/in love with Dan Feng and I can tell you that Dan Heng is definitely not him" compared to Jingliu and Blade's "Dan Heng is Dan Feng" motto. I like the idea of exploring the theme of the difference between Dan Heng and Dan Feng through Yingxing's eyes rather than Blade's.

I like the idea of Yingxing bringing emotional and identity stability to Dan Heng by falling in love with Dan Heng not for his similarities with Dan Feng but for his differences with him. Because Dan Feng was irreplaceable and nothing could take his place in Yingxing's heart, especially not what would appear as a poor copy of his former lover. I want Dan Heng to feel comfortable asking Yingxing about Dan Feng, because Yingxing never compared them as a before/after or past/present but always kept talking about Dan Feng as if he was Dan Heng's deceased brother or distant relative.

Also, I'm sorry but I find Yingxing more aesthetically pleasing to the eyes than Blade, even more when you put him in the Artisanship Commission uniform and next to short-haired no Vidyadhara features 4-Stars Dan Heng. Also, Yingxing should have wrinkles like crow feets and smile lines. And not completely white hair, but more like a salt and pepper hair with mostly grey/white hair but some surviving black hair.

I think they should hold hands and cuddle in the Archives Room while Dan Heng updates Yingxing on what happened while he was dead and asks him about crafting and Zhuming to add to the Express Database.

*gestures* I'm nowhere near the term "sanity" when it comes to them.

[bitimdrake]

Do you think there could be a compelling and well-written way for Jason to ever start healing from his trauma? I get the tragedy and all is why so many people like his character and all but it’s been over 18 years since he came back and I’ve grown apathetic to the whole “I died boohoohoo” thing. Idk the way DC is written makes it hard to me to feel the same way I did when he first came back as Red Hood because death is so meaningless in that universe, now more than ever. I feel the same way about Bruce and his whole mess of trauma and want to see them do something new, yknow? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

.

Absolutely!!

I think I end up hammering on the tragedy and angst aspect a lot because it's the part I feel gets most lost--certainly in fluffy batfam fics, but also in DC canon just abruptly declaring him totally part of the family now don't worry about it after Flashpoint. I think the legitimate trauma Jason has, the significant differences in principle with the other bats, and the harm he's done them in turn, have gotten worn down and minimized, and it's a bummer!

But I would like to see him heal from his trauma and like. have a real arc.

That's my biggest problem with Jason in canon thus far*. It's not that he is a hero now and aligned with his family. It's that we never got to see how that really happened. He was a villain one second, and then the universe got rebooted, and suddenly we were supposed to just infer this off-screen development.

(*Thus far being up to where I have read, which is through the New 52. Cannot comment beyond that yet.)

In my dream where I get to rewrite the history of DC, we would have spent like five years watching Jason gradually progress from the remorseless antivillain he became by the end of preboot into someone healthier, with more actual morals, a principled antihero. And working out his various relationships with his family along the way.

Unfortunately, because DC skipped to the end of that theoretical arc without ever actually doing the arc, we're sorta...stuck.

The status quo is where it is. DC can't pretend Jason has been an antagonist this whole time and give him the arc now. Red Hood has been a significant part of the batfamily for years. They can't just insert the 'Jason heals' arc because theoretically he's already done that. But also, so long as we never actually see that arc, it's never truly going to feel resolved.

This is the crux of the Jason Todd problem.

Anyway, I feel you on the death thing as well. When Jason died (I'd argue even when he came back), death was a lot more meaningful and significant. His death really meant something, and his return was a huge shake up.

But since then...everyone's died. And now there's this awkward disconnect between (a) in story, all these people having gone through the traumatic event of dying and returning which should probably be significant for them all, and (b) out of universe, Jason's death being considerably more significant than anyone else's and a core part of the character.

Jason's death can't really be a meaningless joke (though he absolutely can recover from the trauma), because we all know it wasn't; it was a huge deal. But we also can't have all the characters act like his death was significant while a bunch of other death's aren't, because then they just seem insane and myopic. But we can't have everyone act like every death is significant, because then we wouldn't be able to do anything else except reflect on the massive amount of death and trauma around here, plus it would be so hollow to most readers who know a lot of these comic books deaths were just cheap shock value that got immediately reversed. And around and around and around--

It's a fucking mess. I have plenty ideas of how I could fix it in a rewrite (whether fanfic or magic time travel where I Fix DC Comics). But I don't have a lot of ideas of how to fix it now, over a decade after the problem started.

Although, to return to your very first question: even if we can't fix everything, yes, I do think a good writer could give a compelling story of Jason healing from his tragedy, without a doubt. I do think that angle can still be explored and developed, because it has not be closed off.

...the biggest problem there would just be that comics are cyclical, and you know some other writer would come in two years later and revert him back to brooding about his death all the time, because that's the version of the character they're used to.

[restrainedhungr-a]

get to know the mun.

basics.

pen(name) : Arson

pronouns : She/They

zodiac sign : Pisces

taken or single : Poly/Open??? But in a relationship with @neekoshub

three facts.

I play and DM campaigns in DnD, though I've never actually played any of the Forgotten realms. I also play MTG casually

My most hours in a game is Rimworld at 2,141.2 hours

I enjoy playing supports when starting in FPS because it allows me to get a better feel and idea of the battlefield, teammates mentality+positioning before playing DPS

experience.

platforms : I originally started RPing on Deviantart in art-groups. Specifically a Pokemon Gijinka group. I've been RPing since ~2010 I only moved to Tumblr back in ~2015/2016

plotting / winging it / memes : I can do both/all? Generally I like winging it and memes to begin with just so we can jump right in, but I don't mind plotting things out to start. I LOVE coming up with big plots and over arching ideas. I want my blog to have "arcs" and feel like the characters are alive which does require plotting and I'm never against it!

muse preference.

gender : I normally RP female or NB muses, but I do drabble in male muses as well. My favorite non-OC muse is male but I tend to cling to more feminine or female-oriented muses because it's easier as an AFAB demigirl to attach to for me.

multi or single : Ship wise or... muse? Ships im all for multi-ship because why limit myself? But I'm also poly so I tend to also make a lot of my muses poly lol

least favourite faceclaims : I don't...really use face claims? Much? I usually either draw my own icons if I have an OC or have a canon-character I can use icons for

fluff / angst / smut.

fluff : I love fluff. Fluff, soft, slice of life, things to make the characters feel alive. Not everything has to be big bombastic and torturous! I want to have the "normal" every da moments to make the characters feel alive, breathing, and not just "hit this story beat every little thing has to have meaning" . This isn't a TV show, this isn't a time-crunch series, we have all the time in the world to go into these things that shows and series cant!

angst : I'm on and off with angst. I love angst because it develops and challenges characters but I also know too much can feel. dragging. I've, in the past, fallen into the hole of writing too much angst which became a whole. Is this me doing this for the character? Or am I only writing this to hurt myself? It's a whole thing but I'm never against angst as long as there's reason or purpose and it isn't literally everything I'm doing. There needs to be a balance, the angst will be so much better if we can build the characters up first.

smut : I'm extremely insecure about smut. I am terrified to make a fool of myself as I'm sorta on the Ace spectrum? Sort of, I identify with what is called Aegrosexual which is in the ace spectrum but that means everything is fantasy. I don't know how things actually work so I get worried I'm fucking it up and then I look foolish so I tend to stay away from it except under *very* specific circumstances with people I'm comfortable with.

Tagged by: I stole it from the dash <3 Tagging: Steal it from me :Oc

[eldragon-x]

how angry do you think stan would be if he found out if ford publicly joined bill (though we all know he’s backstabbing him late) in One of Us. like. all stan knows about bill is that he ended the world. and there ford is, JOINING HIM. that would really fuck him up, I think. definitely no shackatron now, because ford needs no saving. unless he attempts to backstab and bill is just like Fuck That and puts him in the same torture situation as canon. except Worse. but then this time everyone would be even less motivated to save him! it’s such a weird situation. and if/when ford gives bill the equation (since bill will inevitability ask for it. unless this is where ford backstabs him) does bill just WIN? i suppose so. how do the pines win from here, if they do at all? :(

Anon this ask has kept me up all morning since like 2 am thank you for giving me the kick to start thinking about oou au. anyway

Speaking from a canon perspective, I don't think there is an equation, but for this AU I'll say there is because if anything, Bill would want it immediately when Ford joins him. He has no reason to wait and the deal is get power and knowledge and everything in exchange for the equation.

Which means yeah, Weirdmageddon does just get global early on. Though I think Bill and Ford would stay behind in the Fearamid because Bill seemed to intend to stay behind when initially trying to send the Henchmaniacs out into the world and he'd probably choose to keep Ford around to sorta show him the ropes and just to spend time with the guy. I've already talked plenty about how I think Bill genuinely likes Ford, I can see him choosing to hang out just with him above the other Henchmaniacs. Also y'know, the fact that they're both pretty much the central characters in this AU but I want to justify that with in-universe reasoning too lmao.

How the Pines win from that point is a whole thing I have yet to unpack but like. Killing Bill does reverse Weirdmageddon and I am not dead set on making this a bad ending type thing necessarily (tho I have thought about putting together ideas for how a successful Weirdmageddon would play out 🤔 mostly in how it would affect Bill long-term).

ANYWAY TO THE ACTUAL QUESTION there might still be a Shacktron? Because even if Ford accepts Bill's deal as early as in the Penthouse scene instead of folding at some point during the torture, the tron was already being built about that same time and I doubt it's going to be noticeable from the town if Weirdmageddon is spreading outside of it. It's just now that when the Shacktron crashes Bill's party it's not gonna be to a scene of the Henchmaniacs cheering as Bill tortures Ford, but to a scene of Bill happily chatting to Ford about how they're gonna rule the universe and stuff.

And about Stan, this absolutely depends on how much he knows about Bill because if we assume all he knows is based on Weirdmageddon happening like the show probably wants us to, yeah there's absolutely going to be resentment, depending on how obvious it is that Ford's hiding a knife behind his back.

But if we assume that Stan saw Ford's private study and saw some of the Journal 3 pages about Bill, despite Ford assuming Stan doesn't know about the study and the show never touching on Stan having looked through the third Journal beyond the portal plans, I think there will be some concern and confusion seeping in. Was Ford being tricked by Bill again? Would Ford get tricked by Bill again??

[purefandomonium]

Glitchy Red Oneshot

This is NOT canon to Connection, I just got carried away with the writing again and this became its own thing. It might as well be an AU for my AU. I was writing little oneshots to figure out some characterization and while I really like this it doesn't fit the version of Red I'm working with at all. So here we are. It reads more in-line with OG Glitchy Red from the pokepasta in terms of the way he torments the player, except he's not as direct here. Couple warnings: psychological torture, mild suggestion of suicide (it doesn't actually happen but because it's technically mentioned I'd like to let people know), trauma

This was inspired by my recent fascination with glitches and how they work on the OG games. I LOVE learning about how old games run and handle the programming and all that. Don't understand a lick of it but fascinating nonetheless. I sorta fell down the rabbit hole watching different YouTube vids on the subject and that got me wondering: holy fuck that shit must be traumatic for someone in Red's shoes. I kept imagining a scenario where a player was exploiting the game to that degree and this was born.

Writing below the cut

This particular player was very infuriating. It appeared that he was deliberately trying to get as many glitches as possible. Not just Missingno or ZZAZZ—but any and every error that would cause the game to grind to a halt. Crashing it and corrupting text boxes wasn’t helping; this particular player seemed to enjoy it even more when that happened. He even had the audacity to tell RED he was a joke when asked.

Fine. If he wanted to test limits, so be it.

After a long day of monitoring and recording Pokémon Red’s many faults, Sebastian was hungry, tired and stiff as a board. A quick trip to the microwave followed by a shower was all it took to fix two of his issues. Last on his list was to get ready for bed. He dozed off thinking about how impressive it was that the developers were able to make something so complex work, despite the multiple setbacks their methods introduced. The game may be old and an obvious first-step for people unfamiliar with computers, but it held up surprisingly well given the broken nature of the code. It was fascinating.

Before he knew it, he was out cold.

Sebastian jolted awake and shot up in his bed, shirt and hair damp and clinging to him. It took him several seconds to orient himself and realize that he was still in his bed, in his room, away from… whatever that was. He couldn’t for the life of him recall what he’d seen that scared him awake like that. In a way, that fact brought a strange comfort to him. He reached for his phone to check the time. His eyes strained to make out the smaller-than-usual numbers.

That was odd… He couldn’t read the time. He recognized the symbols as numbers and a part of his brain knew what they were but… it just wasn’t registering. Ah, well. The darkness that filled his room was a good indicator that it was still nighttime. Some cold water and a quick trip to the bathroom would clear his head enough to fall back asleep.

As his feet touched the floor he felt an unusual sensation. The normal coolness of the floor was still present but it felt different somehow, shifting beneath him. Almost unstable. Like he was walking on sand or something. It was enough to put him on edge.

He was morbidly aware of how thick the darkness felt and, despite the coolness beneath his feet, his lungs began feeling warm and heavy. Something akin to a sudden burst of extreme humidity.

He shook his head and took even steps out of his room, refusing to let some childish nighttime fear get to him. The heaviness in his lungs didn’t leave him as he trekked to the bathroom. By the time he reached his destination, it felt like there was something inside his chest that was pulling the air out of him as soon as he sucked it in. His breaths were heavy and labored yet he felt like he wasn’t even breathing. He reached for the light switch.

The bathroom was bathed in an ugly shade of orange. Sebastian wasn’t worried about the abnormal lighting, instead focused solely on what should have been his reflection.

The face that peered back at him wasn’t his own, nor did it look like anyone that he knew. In fact, it could hardly be called a face. If it weren’t for the vague appearance of hair on its head and the pair of eyes that was wrong, wrong, wrong he would’ve thought it some kind of prank. But who would break into someone’s apartment just to—paint?—some messed up abstract of a human face on their mirror? The eyes suddenly blinked and he realized he hadn’t taken a breath since turning on the light. He tried to gasp but no air reached him.

It felt like his lungs were pulled out by a powerful force.

Sebastian jolted awake and shot up in his bed, shirt and hair damp and clinging to him. It took him several seconds to orient himself and realize that he was still in his bed, in his room, away from… whatever that was. He couldn’t for the life of him recall what he’d seen that scared him awake like that. In a way, that fact brought a strange comfort to him. He reached for his phone to check the time. His eyes strained to make out the smaller-than-usual numbers.

That was odd… He couldn’t read the time. He recognized the symbols as numbers and a part of his brain knew what they were but… it just wasn’t registering. Ah, well. The darkness that filled his room was a good indicator that it was still nighttime. Some cold water and a quick trip to the bathroom would clear his head enough to fall back asleep.

He tossed the covers aside and made his way to the bathroom. He flinched at the blinding light and had to wait a minute as his eyes adjusted. He half-assed his matted hair, did his business and reached for the sink to wash his hands—

Only for an eardrum-shattering screech to send him stumbling into the tub. He hit the back of his head on the way down, but the only pain he was capable of registering was the horrid high-pitched shriek that continued to pierce his ears and echo in his mind. His hands couldn’t block the noise and he was in so much agony he couldn’t think, let alone will his body to go turn the damned thing off. Even opening his eyes caused immense pain, the sound somehow registering as massive, discolored distortion where the water was starting to overflow.

Before he knew it, he was drowning.

Sebastian jolted awake and shot up in his bed, shirt and hair damp and clinging to him. It took him several seconds to orient himself and realize that he was still in his bed, in his room, away from… whatever that was. He couldn’t for the life of him recall what he’d seen that scared him awake like that.

Somehow that terrified him.

Ever since that horrible night, every subsequent attempt to sleep was met with the same fate. He’d end up in a never-ending nightmare, each one worse than the last as some unknown force taunted him. To keep his mind off the time he focused on things that would keep him awake. Watching loud, obnoxious action movies at a volume just below what would be considered respectful for his neighbors. Doing random jumping jacks. Watching internet videos that irritated him. He only took freezing cold showers, well-aware that anything remotely warm would lull him to sleep, right into the hands of his unknown demons.

Last but in no way least, he continued to play Pokemon Red. If he was going to stay awake for ungodly amounts of time, why not spend it doing at least one thing he actually enjoyed? Despite having knowledge of the game’s code and knowing way too much about the intricacies of the Game Boy, there were just so many ways the Red cart could glitch out. Some of the things he’d never even heard of happening. He was making—an admittedly small and niche—history!

The first time he witnessed the unusual ‘glitches’ he assumed he’d been scammed and given a hacked version. After all, who had ever heard of the game ‘screaming’ that something hurt? It wasn’t just the text that told him it was suffering; the demonic cries and crackles it made during every crash only aided in proving its point. The corrupted tiles of the background seemed to show pleas of agony that he could almost make out if he had more time before the game crashed.

If the extent of the corruption was anything to go by after he’d managed to force the old man glitch, this was no mere hack. On the Red version, Missingno didn’t normally wipe the entire save and permanently corrupt the intro cutscene.

It didn’t briefly show what appeared to be a face, frozen in pure agony. Or perhaps anger.

He simply had to keep going, he had to learn more. So he played and played and played, trying all sorts of ‘experiments’ as the hours ticked by and he fought off sleep. Anything else felt like such a chore. Work, eating, even hanging out with friends and family left him watching his phone until the minute he was allowed to leave.

He simply had to keep playing. All he wanted to do was worry about the damn game but people had to constantly badger him, question what he was doing, pester him to get out of the apartment. He just wanted to play his game.

The days and weeks that followed—maybe it was more than that, he couldn’t keep track anymore—were not getting easier. He was exhausted all the time, irrationally short-tempered, and something somewhere was always aching a solid seven out of ten. His social life suffered immensely—he’d lost pretty much everyone, save for a few ride or die friends—his work ethic suffered to the point of losing his job, his physical and mental health were in the dumps. Things were not good.

The only thing he had to do with his spare time these days, weeks, months, was continue to test the limits of Pokémon Red’s code. See how far he could push it before the game stopped running. The answer was pretty far.

Sleep no longer came to him. The few times he’d tried, he’d wake up in a panic over some horrid night terror, just to experience another. It was somehow far worse than it had been in the beginning. Now they were vivid and unforgettable, burning images into his mind and leaving lingering sensations in his nerves. Again and again and again and again he’d ‘awaken’ until he found himself sprawled on his bedroom floor sometime in the afternoon, tears staining his cheeks and sweat sticking his clothes to him like glue. Sometimes there was blood, but he didn’t like to acknowledge that. If he didn’t think about them, it was as though the scars didn’t even exist.

Energy drinks and stupid amounts of coffee were his new best friends. He needed something to replace the fakers who’d left him, after all. If he wasn’t poring over the old game’s glitches, he was chugging can after can and cup after cup. He never ran out. Despite his second addiction always being available, he couldn’t recall a single time where he’d gone out and bought more. He couldn’t recall doing much of anything besides play the game, really. But he had to be buying it. Every time he’d gone to grab another the cabinets were always stocked. He was still the only one in the apartment.

Despite the fact he could feel a heavy presence in the air that radiated anger.

Sebastian snapped to, grabbed a can of Red Bull, and went back to his room to continue the game. He never even registered having stopped.

His eyes burned. When he finally managed to tear his weary gaze from the tiny screen of the Game Boy, his phone had stopped buzzing from its place in the opposite corner of the room, on the floor. He, too, sat on the floor, hunched over and legs stretched out, the Game Boy heavy in his hands. His back hurt. His eyelids felt like sandpaper. He couldn’t remember how long he’d been sitting there, playing the little game as the world around him faded into nothingness. Was he still in his room?

For the first time in a long while, he thought about checking his phone. He wondered how all his old friends were doing, his former coworkers. He never had spoken to his parents much since telling them off… Maybe he should call them. When was the last time he even checked his front door?

A familiar chime pulled his attention back to the game. At some point in his pondering, the screen had gone dark. A simple text box stood out against the blackness and his mind struggled to comprehend it.

Tired?

His mouth didn’t work so he nodded numbly.

What’s the matter?

I thought you liked seeing how far broken things could go.

Don’t tell me you’re giving up already?

He was too mentally depleted to process that this was no glitch, that it had never been glitches. He felt his head fall forward and he jolted it up, trying to stay awake.

Do you even know how long you’ve been playing?

“…ile…” He blinked hard once, twice, and shook his head. “A while,” he managed, words slurring. His jaw felt like it was held on by string that couldn’t support its weight. Everything looked hazy. Like a cloud of static hung in the air. He felt empty, like he was so light he’d drift away. The only thing grounding him was how heavy his head felt.

Y’know, most people would’ve learned their lesson pretty early on.

But you just had to keep on breaking the game.

The words echoed in his mind, prickling the edges of his consciousness like they were the only things keeping him awake.

I guess some people never learn.

You thought it was funny, didn’t you?

The game presented him with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ option. Despite the bizarre situation, his battered psyche had him choose ‘yes.’ Somewhere deep in his subconscious he recalled that honesty was the best policy.

It didn’t remind him that being honest was what had gotten him into this mess.

Not laughing anymore, are we?

I can only hope the next poor sap isn’t as idiotic as you.

He squinted, the rectangular form of the Game Boy distorting into incoherent shapes. The game… The game had done all this to… punish him? For what? What did he do?

You know what you did.

“Wh… What… are you…? Why…?” He forced his eyes to focus on the screen, the first time in far too long he’d ever needed to be deliberate about it.

I’m done with you.

Move on with whatever is left of your pathetic life.

Just make sure you forget about me.

Feeling began creeping its way back into his limbs, constant pricks of blood flow like his entire body had fallen asleep. He was uncomfortably aware of how fast his heart was beating despite his sluggish state. He gasped.

The Game Boy clattered to the floor as his arms uselessly fumbled about, trying relearn movement.

He didn’t see the text box that simply displayed ellipses. All he could see was the room shifting and spinning as his body struggled to adjust to having free will again. He tried to get up or at least change positions but his limbs felt heavy and before he knew it he was face-first on the floor.

His vomit burned and tasted like acid and cherry-flavored medicine.

Sebastian couldn’t remember calling an ambulance, he couldn’t even remember being in the ambulance. He just woke up in the hospital room in a panic before everything caught up with him all at once and he fell back onto the bed with a tired groan.

He was made aware of the other presence in the room when a hand reached out to him. His voice left him as he tried to scream.

It was Mark, one of his longtime friends and the last one to keep trying to reach out to him until Sebastian simply refused to answer. Even in the state he was in, it was clear to see that Mark was deeply troubled by what had transpired. He wanted answers, and Sebastian didn’t know how to tell him he had none.

How does one explain that a stupid kid’s game made them throw away their life, chase away their friends and family? Who would believe him when he said the scars weren’t self-inflicted?

After an excruciatingly long road to recovery, Sebastian soon found himself living some semblance of normalcy. As much as could be had with a newfound heart condition and when everyone close to him thought him suicidal. His parents hadn’t coddled him this much since he was a kid. It would have been nice if they weren’t so concerned he’d ‘do it again.’

The only hiccup was when someone brought up the cause of the whole ordeal, that damned Pokémon Red cart he’d gotten for cheap off of eBay. His only response was that he didn’t care what they did with it, so long as he never saw it, the Game Boy, or energy drinks ever again.

He loathed coffee.

I hope y'all liked it! In a way I really like expanding on the darker version of Red where he's far more dangerous than you'd think. I mean, the bastard could enter dreams in the OG story so I like to think as the years wore on, he got much more creative with his abilities. What else does he have to do when he's stuck in a game and the only interaction he gets are wannabe hackers? This is probably not the last alternate version I'll make either. I've got a ton more ideas that I'm not using for Connection and it'd be a real shame to let them go to waste... ;)

Also, fun fact: I like to think of this as an endurance test for the both of them. Red really gave the guy the chance to not fuck around and find out, but the SOB wouldn't quit. He was really hoping the guy would figure it out and try to stop interacting but then got ornery when he wouldn't quit glitching the game. So Red's just over there enduring shit just to torment this guy until one of them breaks. So... technically... Red caved first from how obsessive Sebastian was at breaking the game despite the torture. Win, I guess?

[boobachu]

Sonic Prime gush

No one wants to talk about this and I don'[t want to spoil people so hiding under read more

Okay so first off: I hate the prime universe. Big is ugly, Knuckles sounds weird, Amy acts weird, Shadow acts weird, Rouge isn't showing her titties and everyone sort of acts like a budget 3D children's cartoon. The way they smile, and stand it scared me it was like Sonic Boom or Pac-Man or Mega Man...

Tho I looooove the animation, sometimes they seem to move like claymation, they're actually animated like cartoon characters! Something in the games Ive only seen in Sonic CHampionship and Sonic Riders!!

Also even tho the prime universe sucks, you barely see it!

Tho.. the weird wormy story telling is like... "dude why didn't you just have a longer intro instead of jumping back to finish the intro"

Like, it persists through the whole season so like... aunno I don't get it. My friend said that Ben10 man wrote this and it's a Ben10 thing but I never watched Ben10

Oh yeah I love Sonic's voice, like... he actually sounds like Sonic for once! It's very modern but like... duh. It's not 1999 anymore (sadly) so he kinda sounds like what corporate thinks is a tiktok but oh cool there's foxy comics in Sonic's world

(oh yeah! I can screeny on VLC!)

Like, aunno Sonic looks off but I also kinda love how he looks like those Y2K Archie comics like...

Also, isn't it weird that Rouge was made into a good guy instead of a dubious guy?

Also Rouge is the best she's been since SA2. The personality is... eh, but her mannerisms are great.

Also this smile reminds me of Robot Chicken

Like did Seth Mcfarline make this? It reminds me of Toyfaire theatre titan maximum

Also it's weird the egg-o-matic isn't in the series? Like supposedly this is canon now so like.. where's the egg mobile?

It's weird how Amy is sorta like the brains (tactics) instead of Rouge or Tails or Sonic. Kinda reminds me of Sally Acorn.

Tho the AU Amys are fantastic like it's almost like she's Sonic's rival like Knuckles used to be. I love seeing them fight! I fucking hate the baby Robotnik tho.

Also it's weird that only Sonic Underground world got AU Robotnik(s) but Junghole and pirate world didn't.

Like, this is all we get? Where's colonial eggman or monarch eggman... well I guess both are the same...

Where's Good Robotnik? I want to see a universe where Sonic's pals n gals are the villain and Robotnik is the force of good.

This is going to be 24 episodes and it's not (quite) Quantum Leap in that it's episodic... it's more worm spaghetti.

Also

I fucking DIED when he said his name! NINE?!?!! They did it! They made him canon!!!!

Well only sorta... not really... well I mean hey.

Also is this a Spider-man 2 reference... except Spider-man saves Doc Ock?

(God that smear) XDDDD

Also it's weird that like, they seem to reference the classic games?

but like, later Sonic remembers Knuckles in the hidden palace but the floating island doesn't seem to exist? Like is the hidden palace in green hill?

Cuz like the stupid palm tree is a reality anchor, there's the loop-de-loop, nexus of shattering, and a palm tree they "gave" to Sonic because I don't know the real superpower of teamwork?

Also Sonic seems to be sorta connected the the crystal he shattered? Like the glue to the multiverse? Pretty weird.

Nine would be my favorite character if not for Rusty Rose.

Like she's the Robotniks' lap dog but she seems to be roboticized but more robocop than SatAM (which, Wildbrain is basically new DiC) and she's a formidable opponent and I love her?

She is basically mind-controlled by the Robotniks (then later Nine) so I wonder how much of her is her and how much of her is programming and how much of her is lost...

Also I wonder how long until someone makes fetish art of Nine controlling Rusty (I'm busy working on JG so not it)

Shadow seems to be lost in the void and can only communicate with Sonic when he's running fast which causes him to warp similar to Sonic CD

Sonic also warps when he touches a jewel (sorta like Sonic CD except no)

I wonder if there will be six worlds: one that focuses on each character's social problem, on the rewatch I realized Amy cared about forests in the shattering, which, the jungle episode is about Thorny Rose wanting to defend the jungle at all costs.

So is SU world about Nine needing Sonic?

is pirate world about Knuckles not thinking?

Will there be a Rouge, Robotnik and Sonic worlds?

Will Blaze or different Sonics be in the show?

Aunno!

This is an interesting sight to see.

Also

Rings actually act like rings???? What is this nonsense?!

Wait someone in the credits is Miles "Tails" Wyrth? XDDD okay I mean how can you not

Aunno, kinda feels like they wasted the first season stevenbombing but like... aunno it's good.

If they release it on BluRay I'll buy it (downloaded Mkvs off a website)

I do wonder how Shadow plays into the story cuz it kinda hints that only Sonic is lost and no one is "split up" but time is breaking down or something but like...

They're air shoes.

[catman-draws]

In regards to the Lusus ask I actually have a headcanon around that! Trolls must be really self sufficient even as grubs. Because they are the ones who design their Hives and instruct the carpenter drones. (Maybe the drones are made with low bloods who had psychic capabilities to communicate with them????) I feel like they mostly must take care of themselves when it comes to cleaning/eating/moving around and that the Lusus are actually for protecting them from the harsh environment of Alternia. They protect the trolls from other non guardian/more monstrous Lusii. The lower your blood the weaker your Lusii and chances to live and the higher your blood the crueler your Lusii is but also teaches you your place. Like Feferi has to constantly hunt and feed her lusus training her to be good Empress (except Eridan did it lol) even Terezi’s Lusus could kill off threats psychically since we know it’s aware. The only truly stupid design I believe is Sollux’s lusus. Poor fucking guy chained to the roof his whole life.

- Trash

Eh-

I dunno. Canon describes it as a mutualism where the lusus cares for the troll as a guardian while the troll cares for the lusus as a zookeeper would.

I sorta agree? Trolls do seem to be relatively self sufficient- but I doubt they come straight from the caverns Fully Ready To GO. Like I guess that makes sense for Bugs, but eh. If it was all about protection rather than care, I don't think it would be a lifelong relationship.

I think it's sorta more dependent on lusus species, rather than caste. IE, species that tend to care for their young vs species that typically don't; plus just individual personality and environment and whatnot.

And like yeah, they have to design their own hives and stuff but uh. They're aren't actually very good at it. Idr who, but someone (Vriska?) definitely says that that's stupid and they hate their design.

Plus, it's the lusus that chooses their troll. It feels kinda weird that they would choose to take care of a baby and then. Not really do much to actually care for it.

I don't really like the idea of caste deciding the inherent cruelty of a lusus, though. That just sorta leaves a bad taste. Like, The Hemospectrum 2- This Time It's Animals

Like Gl'bgolyb did demand constant feeding- but that wasn't out of cruelty? She was just enormous and needed to be fed to keep her voice down (she WAS a horrorterror) so everyone on the planet didn't die. It's just that that ended up being a very hard task for Feferi to do alone, thus why she had Eridan kill lusi for her (which is what ultimately kept her trapped in that horrible moirallegiance). (iirc, i'm pretty sure Feferi even says her lusus was very nice, just misunderstood? something like that)

And I think the most Pyralsprite could really do (pre-hatching) was communicate psychically- I don't remember her being able to do much more than that from the egg.

And I think maybe my biggest thing against this is goatdad and Gamzee. In canon (i think Karkat says this?) it says that Gamzee started eating sopor (and joined the clown cult) because goatdad wasn't around to tell him not to (or interact with him At All really. Gamzee spent most of his time waiting for him to come back.)

TLDR; Protection as a Main Thing makes sense to me- but I don't think it would be the Only Thing.

Even with the apparent self-sufficiency of trolls, lusi are still their guardians, and there's too much of an emotional connection for me to not to think there must be more. (Especially with their many comparisons to the human guardians)

But most importantly, yeah, that poor fucking bicyclops.

What was the deal with that guy?

[willel]

I’m going to be a bit cruel but they wrote a Lucas book, and he’s clearly less popular than El, Will and I’d even say Joyce; on the other hand there isn’t a Steve book, the ultimate fan fav. So idt that it’s necessarily about marketability, I just don’t know how these choices are being made tho.

So far, Hopper, Max, Lucas, Robin, now Eddie have gotten a book.

I tried to read the Hopper book but it was so irrelevant to the plot and uninteresting that I haven't even picked up the rest of the novels.

While I agree Lucas isn't an obvious pick for a book, I'm still glad they made it. I just wish they'd do it MORE.

Out of this list, I actually think the outlier is Hopper. It seems to me like they'll give books to characters whose stories aren't deeply related to the main plot. It may still line up though because like I mentioned already, Hopper's book had absolutely nothing to do with the events of Stranger Things. It was like an existing novel and they just slapped Hopper's name on it.

Steve, as popular as he is, is still alive. There are still stories of his to tell in the show itself whether we want it or not. Writing a book would be pointless and there's no way they're going to write a novel about him when he was still a jerk (even if they do they'll make him less of a jerk) and there's not much angst going on in his life compared to all the other characters you can write about. I can see why there is no Steve book. YET

Joyce/Hopper are at least getting an entire play about them I guess.

Will has had a buttload of comics from his point of view of varying quality. There was even a game about him being developed by Telltale games before they went bankrupt a few years back. But... it's not really a NOVEL. There's so much more you can write in a novel compared to a 4 issue comic.

Jonathan has had fuck-all. I think he has appeared in exactly 1 comic of Will's and that's it.

El also pretty much only appears in other peoples content briefly. She sorta had a comic where everyone was telling her about holiday/Christmas movies, but.... not much of substance. The comics about the lab are pretty much debunked as canon so not even her brief appearances in those are real.

I don't know what their strategy is with novels either, but without a doubt Hopper, Robin, and Eddie's novels were written because they were fan favorites at the time and they were able to write stuff that had no relationship to the plot of Stranger Things at al.

So I guess what I'm actually asking for is plot relevant deep dives into how the main characters are dealing with their life between seasons and what they're doing to cope with how poopy their lives are most of the time.

Lucas is the exception <3

[cassioppenny]

Please tell me more about Lucas hallucinating. Are there more amnesia people remembering moments overall?

okay so lucas is like not doing good at all during the banishment thing and is basically running all over hisui trying to find literally anyone to help him. he's like extremely exhausted and hasn't slept at all and is just straight up Not Feeling Great.

lucas is in the highlands trying to find someone to help him, which is a bad idea because the fucked up sky got darkrai out of their hiding spot and they're doing their nightmare fuel stress response everywhere.

lucas isn't super close to darkrai so he isn't put to sleep BUT it is fucking him up mentally. he notices two people who are familiar but he can't remember who they are exactly and chases after them not realizing he's running off a goddamn cliff

lucas falls but get caught by volo (who was trying to chase him down the whole time) by the wrist and volo pulls him up. this snaps lucas out of the hallucination.

so yeah afterwards the cogita and red chain things happen after this not much changes there except volo thinks lucas tried to fall off the cliff purposely so that's fun for everyone involved.

also sorta off topic but volo doesn't really hate lucas personally in milesverse. it's a mix of giritina brain fucking him up a bit, envy, and him fully convinced that he could just recreate lucas in his new world that caused his behavior in the final battle. which his belief that he can just recreate everyone later in the new world contributed to him continuing being a little wacky later on during modern day. volo and lucas have more of a big brother little brother dynamic

okay back on topic for looker, anabel, and ingo uuuuh not much for them. ingo does get little snippets of his brother but not like a lot compared to canon. he does go home but like ingo got eebied sometime after bw2 and lucas was eebied three years after dppt (ingo was just sent farther back in time than lucas) so lucas has a fun awkward conversation with pre eeby ingo during bw1 and he's not actually plot relevant after going home so idk.

we don't know much about looker for me to give him anything like that and i don't have that many ideas for anabel. like maybe she runs into a battle frontier member who's on vacation to alola idk. she seems to have accepted having amnesia so idk what to do with her remembering wise

[proftsutsu]

AU's have overtaken my brain so have this whole thought out concept idea part 1: void switch,I’ll put it all under cut because it’s quite long lol ^^;

so put it simply; i was thinkin about void sora and then it spiraled into a whole au. The first thing i thought of was the voids and that i didn't want any of them to be related to the original kill order (sorta) so i ended up with *drum roll* syobai, setsuka, sora, yuki, and teruya. I didn't think much about the reasons for them, just that theyre people sora could be close to. So with our voids revealed i'll give their au stories first and then the kill order!

Syobai being first, his backstories mostly the same he was abandoned by his parents and was living on the streets but he didn't get into the broker business here, instead he pretty much was barely getting by everyday and was hardly living properly until utsuro happened upon him one day and blessed him with divine luck. Awhile after that he began collecting stuff off the street to try and sell and miraculously he was able to! And even at a higher price, because of this syobai eventually was able to get by much better and make a small name for himself until a business couple flew in from Japan one day, noticed him, and took him back home with them where he grew up learning how to do proper business dealings. He joined void mostly out of fear that if he loses his luck he'll go back to having nothing and having to scrape by along with the fear that if he can’t do business anymore than he’ll be worthless to his adopted parents. So he's almost as smart as his canon counterpart but with no black market knowledge and while still kinda sassy (especially when threatened or pissed) and kinda sloppy he's pretty chill and actually socializes more with the group. Instead of the ultimate broker he'd call himself the ultimate business man.

Setsuka's story is also kinda similar to canon but quickly diverges, when she was little she got into a car accident that fucked up the side of her head and her eye, they got a regular surgeon/doctor to try and help her in this au though but unfortunately they really couldn't find a way to do the surgery without possibly killing her but still made the attempt, during the procedure utsuro by chance happened upon the hospital, for what reason's up to interpretation but him being there blessed setsuka and her procedure miraculously was a success! Her skull was okay, and she got a false eye too though because of the divine luck it became a constant void eye (kinda like kinjo's its just constantly like that i think) so just like in canon setsuka has to keep it closed, less she be called creepy or bullied. That aside setsuka and her family left the hospital, awhile ( right before the tragedy) after the family got into financial trouble, setsuka wanting to help her parents tried to find a way to get money fast, and luckily found and entered a billiards competition and with the few lessons from her dad and divine luck she won and got a big cash prize! after that she started entering them more up until the tragedy started, and some time after that she joined void so she could stay financially stable along with y'know, keeping herself alive because divine luck is literally what saved her life. I don't think there'd be too much of a difference personality wise except maybe her being a bit more cocky about being "ultimate billiards player" and family being a lot more emphasized being important to her, plus maybe her playing up being carefree a lot more.

Sora is a bit more complicated as I haven't thought of her backstory too well as i got too distracted thinking of everything else ^^; But what comes to mind is that sora was born (as her own human person) with a defect, whether it be a mental illness, a physical defect, or something else it caused her family to shun her and while they didn't completely abandon her yet, she grew up the first seven years of her life being neglected, ridiculed, and mistreated by her own family up until they finally decided to throw her out, she was then found on the street and sent to an orphanage and while treated better she was still neglected and no one seemed to want her until utsuro came to the orphanage, sora happened to be outside at the time and actually got to very briefly talk with utsuro before he suddenly left but he did end up directly blessing sora with divine luck and a few hours later a rich family came in and adopted her where she was given all the attention and love she desired. Eventually sora decided she wanted to explore the world and experience and meet all kinds of new people and places and so that's what she did up until the tragedy. She joins void both out of fear that if she loses divine luck she'll be neglected and ignored again and to find utsuro and talk to him once more so she can finally have answers about the mysterious kid that apparently blessed her so long ago. Sora in this au i imagine being kinda very more talkative, you'd actively see her talking with the other cast members of course keeping her flirtatious side (not too much though) and she’d be very curious about the things around her. She probably wouldn't take being ignored very well though. Since sora wouldn’t have amnesia or be an ai in this au, I imagine with her backstory in mind she’d be called the ultimate traveler.

Yuki's backstory is pretty much the same up until 6.5 which changes completely, Yuki's kidnapped, put in a coma/life support, killing game happens. Big difference though yuki wakes up and escapes wherever tf he was before showing up in 6.5 briefly! Unfortunately though he's only completely fine because of utsuro's divine luck, he eventually figures out what happened to him and while understandably pissed with utsuro gone his regained freedom will inevitably begin to fade and he'll die or possibly worse to him suddenly go back into a coma he won't ever wake from, so he tries to find a way to restore divine luck before meeting and joining the other voids which he does grow to like. In this au's 6.5, rei is tasked with investigating the group void and finds one of their (nearly) abandoned hangout spots being an abandoned building now filled with some monokuma's, they cleaned out the place mostly but theres a few things here and there that allude to the members of void like littered old cigarettes (syobai's), red heels (setsuka's), crumbled up diary pages (sora's), and of course notes like the ones found in 6.5. When rei's done investigating before she leaves she gets a glimpse of yuki looking out one of the buildings windows not seeming to have left like the others yet (he was spying on her almost the whole time btw) he runs off before rei can get close to him and escapes through an emergency exit. Yuki would still be considered ultimate lucky student in this au and his personality is overall the same except a bit more suspicious of others because of what happened to him.

Teruya, oh boy. So everything in dra stays the same and so does teruya’s personality, in fact literally nothing about teruya changes up until a few years after the killing game where the divine luck starts to ware off and both him and rei notice tsurugi getting very Ill and in pain due to divine luck being used to save him back in dra chapter 5. Dr. Ando gives kinjo prescriptions to help with the pain but that’s not enough in teruya’s eyes so he decides to look into it to help tsurugi, upon confirming kinjos pain is because of divine luck fading he looks for some way to regain it because if luck fading is causing kinjo pain not only is that hurting his friend but what about the fact utsuro allowed them to leave all that time ago? Will something happen to him and rei too? This of course leads to the start of teruya’s villain arc. All these worries inevitably leads to him coming to the conclusion utsuro needs to be resurrected and then reluctantly comes up with the resurrection killing game plan, teruya isn’t the smartest so he doesn’t think about death orders or similar motives nothing like that he just knows he needs ultimate level talented people and yuki (who the kisaragi foundation has been looking for). Finding the cast is easy but for yuki and the other voids he happened to find them by chance and since there related to utsuro he figured he’d have a better chance with the resurrection with them plus they have yuki which he desperately (thinks he) needs for this to work, now for the final task of finding a way to do the killing game without actually killing anyone, because of course this is still the teruya we know and love so far, he doesn’t want to ACTUALLY hurt anyone, so he’s stumped on this for awhile until he (now with some luck from the voids) finds the human mikado sannoji who is working on the stuff he was in the original chapter zero minus kg and utsuro related stuff with kokoro, of course most important of note being virtual simulation tech, which teruya now having discovered it existing desperately wants, he buys it from mikado with his own money but when mikado finds out what teruya’s going to use it for he’s very vocally against it and demands his tech back which leads to teruya knocking him out hard and throwing him in the sim with everyone else along with kokoro. Teruya goes mentally down hill from here. Also while I think teruya would have void eyes I think they’d lead more to representing his descent into madness than relating to utsuro or luck.

Okay void backstories done now for kg order and mini (hopefully) explanations!

Syobai kills iroha (aha the sad, sad irony) He kills her by a simple literal stab in the back and then frames it as a suicide by luring someone (maybe yuri or hajime for canon reference) to the bell tower and dropping iroha’s already dead body off from the top. He explains he went after her solely cause she was weak and therefore an easy target plus it’s been awhile and no one killed yet so. Plus he was convinced that since it’s just a sim it doesn’t matter too much right? His execution is being tied in a coffin getting coins and money thrown brutally at him before being buried alive.

Setsuka kills hibiki (I’m sorry it was just the only option in my eyes .-.) Awhile after the melody rhythm concert she talks to hibiki in her dorm and hibiki somehow manages to correctly guess setsuka as a void and tries to encourage setsuka to switch sides before saying if she doesn’t she’ll out her to the group herself and that leads to setsuka knocking her out and killing her by snapping her neck, she breaks some of hibiki’s bones and puts hibiki’s body in the freezer then dumps her in front of the second island shrine. Setsuka unlike syobai seems very openly guilty for what she did and briefly mentions hoping she can apologize to hibiki later. Setsuka’s execution is being stuffed in one of the black pockets you’d see on a pool table and inevitably being crushed by a giant billiards ball.

Oh boy chapter 3 here we go. So uh this chapter goes very different, sora in nikei’s place defects from void at this point and teams up with this Au’s nikei (who is just a happy yet mildly pessimistic journal boi) teruya finds out about this and sets up a plan to be rid of nikei which leads him to setting up and planning out this whole thing. Motive video’s still happen but also sets it up where he added a warning of “oh yeah there’s another traitor among you” which makes everyone suspicious as hell to one another which leads to yoruko having a fight with shinji and accidentally killing him in the garage in satsuki land, teruya leads nikei over there and with nikei being a nice boy and wanting yoruko to not die instantly helps her cover up everything by discreetly moving shinji’s body making him an accomplice. Post trial teruya modifies the rules so accomplices also get killed so both nikei and yoruko get executed (look guys nikei gets screwed over by rules, again!) Yoruko and nikei get executed by being put on a conveyer belt and crushed multiple times before their remains are mixed into a smoothie. So chapter 4,,So putting it simply sora is just done with the killing game and wants to end it so makes an elaborate plan to murder and get away with it. Since I noticed a pattern of killing the og voids in reverse I’ll just commit to that, she kills Emma. I’m not sure on how, maybe she slits her throat then amputates the body like kanade did with setsuka and places each part around the island during night time so they can’t figure out where she was killed originally. I’m not sure on it though, sora is really acting out from grief unlike canon nikei acting out of spite. That aside during the trial she is just going along with it waiting for them to vote wrong and her desperation to get it over with leads her to acting kind of suspicious but not enough to be deemed a suspect, everyone’s about to vote despite kokoro and kanade sensing something off until teruya also speaks up and points out how odd sora’s acting and with that sora gets defensive and they gotta try and get her to confess or something like that but she continues to deny involvement until teruyer pulls the “you aren’t that kind of person” with sora and she just breaks down. They vote for her and she confesses while in tears and of course she gets executed. Sora’s execution is being put on a stage and having her limbs stabbed by strings being put onto her and then she’s flung into the sky and lands in a aquarium exhibit where she’s eaten alive by a bunch of carnivorous sea creatures.

chapter 5 is as hell as the canon one…But with a twist! So teruya sets up a neat lil trick and makes yuki kill, I never really said who would take teruya’s place and idk if mikado really counts considering how he ended up in the game so to mix things up, ryutaro is there instead, he came with rei just like teruya did in og timeline. Since teruya in this au when they were going in the sim was mysteriously missing till they saw him in the prologue ryutaro went with her in his place and now he’s stuck in the sim and poor boy is in for it. So yuki kills ryutaro following teruya’s very specific instructions so it would like teruya did it and given how chapter 5 goes it does actually work, the majority voted wrong and will be mass executed and as bonus that rule teruya implemented back in chapter 3 makes it so teruya doesn’t get executed along with them. So everyone except the remaining voids are dragged away; kokoro is strapped to a electric chair, kanade dragged by Monocrow’s on a stage to be decapitated, yuri running through a maze avoiding monocrows dressed as aliens, hajime strapped to a wall as a machine with a bunch of boxer gloves prepared to beat him to death, and mikado being tied to a cartoony looking rocket blasting off into the sun. Of course just like canon this mass execution gets interrupted.

Now chapter zero is very different from before, it taking right after this au’s prologue, rei just found out teruya is running a killing game albeit virtual but still, and he’s kidnapped ryutaro (didn’t hurt him at all in the prologue he just literally took him from rei and then kicked her out) So she reluctantly tells Tsurugi this and he’s pretty understandably upset, like they literally went through a killing game together and now teruya is flat out masterminding one. Of course he’s got a job to do so he orders rei to find out about the participants and try to help out however possible while he groups a team up to deal with the possible aftermath in the outside world. There’s also a lil flashback of mikado and kokoro working on the virtual world while discussing the business deal with teruya.

And finally chapter 6! So it starts the same everyone awakens in the virtual world in older forms (idk how old exactly everyone would be in this au so up for interpretation there) they explore the virtual world and we get some exposition such as teruya buying the virtual tech from kokoro, monocrow being yuri’s but instead of being made to help humans they were really just to help yuri how to make ai and robots and teruya decided to take ‘em along with yuri since Monocrow really did already look like a mascot here, mikado explaining why he and kokoro are in the killing game, the dead participant’s files, the monitor room that shows fun stuff like syobai smoking, hibiki rehearsing for the concert, nikei and sora’s meeting, and the whole murder of ryutaro. No more exposition for awhile until the survivor group meet up with rei and tsurugi who are just in the sim already (no re entering happens here) who go on to explain teruya’s relation to the kisaragi foundation and vaguely the past killing game, everyone proceeds to the trial room where yuki is looking super dead inside and teruya very unhinged and the trial starts soon after. It goes kinda the same as canon trial 6 but rei and tsurugi are much more talkative and a bit snappy because well teruya betrayal. The graduate or repeat stuff happens, but instead of putting everyone in sadness/despair teruya literally just rigged it so it would act as graduate no matter what so everyone freaks out when he reveals that but quickly are silenced as they except for yuki, rei, tsurugi, and mikado are sent into ideal worlds. Kokoro’s is just hanging out with mikado, kanade getting to prep for her own concert, yuri getting to go outside and take a walk, and hajime hanging out with everyone. Of course they break out of it and just in time to see teruya awaiting utsuro to resurrect through the dead inside yuki but…it doesn’t happen as y’see no alter ego utsuro was made which teruya never thought about and as rei goes on to explain along with kokoro apparently akane is the wielder of divine luck now and they have no clue where she is, so teruya essentially set up the killing game for nothing and as mikado adds he and kokoro never got to finalize the virtual world so everyone may or may not be permanently dead which hits teruya even more making him realize all the stuff he’s done and how insane he became throughout the whole thing and he breaks down. Everyone slowly leaves the same and the kisaragi foundation decide to just leave teruya in the sim as repentance for his actions.

Epilogue! Midori is grieving ryutaro and minako tries to comfort her while keisuke seems to be getting worse out of grief, Dr ando is trying to treat yuki since he was left extremely traumatized and still suffering from lack of luck, kokoro and yuri joined the foundation and kokoro was quick to start contributing by giving tsurugi therapy, and kanade, hajime, and mikado are wondering about trying to figure out what to do with themselves. Now finally we leave with rei doing her job but still upset about everything that transpired contemplating if things could’ve been different, she goes out for a break but is quick to run into a mysterious women (akane) and boom the end.

And now bonus notes:

In this au kanade is not a serial killer or anything like that, she’s just in desperate need of therapy, she has a complex relationship with hibiki and when she dies she starts to realize that she shouldn’t have let hibiki treat her that way not just for her own health but it was clearly not helping hibiki grow as a person either. The reason she hardly stood up though is because kanade in this au deals with really bad intrusive thoughts and was afraid of accidentally lashing out and hurting Hibiki, her poor mental health is shown through her small outbursts in the trials.

Kokoro I don’t see being related to mikako in this au, she’s just a psychologist who got into virtual tech, though I’d like to think they’d get along decently if they met. Also while she is good at reading people kokoro wouldn’t be super good like her canon counterpart.

Speaking of, I imagine kokoro as the protag of this au with yuri and kanade as her supports, mikado occasionally will join in too but he’s a bit outcasted.

For the reason how yoruko was able to overpower and kill shinji, the yoruko in this au is stronger than she looks, girl has felt with many bar fights and moody customers so she’s grown into being a fighter.

Mikado in the sim is like the ai counterpart at least somewhat, having blonde hair and being pretty static and hardly emoting. This is simply because that’s how mikado was as a teen in this au, he was a lover of style and theatrics and wanted to stand out but he had a lot of trouble showing his emotions a lot if the time so he figured getting into theater and such would help him out if his shell, it did help and older he is much better at expressing his emotions. Though because he was hit pretty hard when getting knocked out and having his memories tampered with in the sim he ended up getting full blown amnesia only being able to remember his name until way later but even then mikado only ends up recovering some of his memories and leaves the sim kind of a mix of his teen and older self.

The og voids backstories aren’t as severe as they are in canon, hajime did have a illness but it was treatable and his parents didn’t abandon him, emma was treated as a kid servant but not really physically harmed too much, iroha was decent at drawing enough to not be treated as harshly but she was still heavily neglected and kind of spoiled by her family staff, and nikei not really having a canon backstory (yet) is obsessed with journalism trying to make a name for himself in the career but failing he still tries though up to awhile after the age he’s in in the sim where he accidentally kills someone and it spirals him into killing for scoops so he’s kinda the serial killer of the cast in kanade’s place.

What happens to teruya after the killing game is that sense he was pretty much imprisoned in the simulation he decides to put himself in the ideal world state to cope with everything, though it’s not really healthy and if he were to leave the sim after he’d just despair and snap even more.

Akane is in fact not brain dead in this au, she does recover from her injuries and leaves the hospital she was put in, she has a whiteish gradient to her hair now but otherwise it’s mostly still the same color and she hasn’t changed too much sense the first game though she is a bit out of it.

[betterdonutgalaxy]

I feel like listing headcanons for some of my f/os for funsies

It may be a lot so im putting it under a cut

Captain Spaceboy/Space Boyfriend

I see his gender as just transmasc (which is canon!) And his sexuality is prob smth like ace and panromantic

He is an absolute fucking gamer, which I see him as being a nintendo fan for the most part, and is probably addicted to monster (which just comes from how others portray him tbh djfkfke)

He is partially a bird-like alien (because his dad is but for some reason canonically he's basically just a blue human) and has a bunch of scars on his body from battles but also ofc top surgery scars

He has freckles in the shape of constellations

He is so beautiful istg

Sour Belt Cookie

I see her as transfem and bisexual (probably prefering fems)

Our relationship is purely romantic however

She actually still looks masculine and is absolutely not ashamed by it, shes fine with being flat and having a bit of body hair (which I dont think ive drawn damnnnn)

She is fine with showing a lot of her body which is pretty much canon I think but I feel the need to specify that, she loves wearing comfy stuff <3

Shes in a poly with me and choco bar (and maybe schneeball cookie but idk if shes an f/o yet)

She keeps trying to encourage choco bar to wear comfier clothes

I don't have as much to say about her I'm so so sorry but shes so pretty omg djdjsksk

Choco Bar Cookie

Shes a cis lesbian, and usually I like to depict her as having darker skin (mostly just because. chocolate)

I've been meaning to depict her with a bunch of scars on her body because she's a stunt double after all, but I keep forgetting

At least ive drawn her with a lost tooth and a bandaid on her nose <3<3<3<3<3<3<3

Usually she likes wearing things that cover her entire body, wearing a full blown body suit most of the time and wearing pajamas inside only sometimes, shes very shy about showing any skin, how is she not sweating her ass off

She has freckles all over her body that are sorta like nuts or whatever is on granola bars usually and it looks cool

I should mention that the way I usually portray cookie run characters is that they are much more humanoid, but are still completely made of dough and sweets

You could theoretically eat her but dont fucking do that

I love my wivesfjfdidkdjj

Auglur

Auglur seems like the type to not really care about gender and sexuality labels too much, and would be fine with any pronouns (I usually use they/them) and could be fine dating anyone

I see Auglur as having a soft and serious persona, while occasionally being super snarky if in a bad mood

My self insert is made out of slime that they can't control well which causes a lot of monsters (really just any that aren't made of slime) to be uncomfortable with them-

but Auglur is an exception, they like the feel of it a lot and would probably play with me a bit as if I was a kid's slime toy djfisosojfj

On rare off-chances, Auglur would play little video games on, uh, theirself??? Auglur is sort of weird with how they work with digital stuff, being able to manifest hands and panels that create sound canonically, Auglur could probably have social media idk

This is all I can think of for nowbcjdossowo this is just my main f/os admittedly

[ayylmaoasdfghjkl012023]

bro i wanna draw the most unhinged aether proto-protagonist possible. give that boy a grin. no light in his eyes. bro is constantly thinking the wrong way but doing the right things to advance the storyline, bro is self aware, bro does not care.

I know canonically he's like the warmer guy but damn just because a character's nice doesn't mean they can't be mean as hell. Wanna push that up to 10. Only things Aether really needs is getting clues to his sister and finding out how tf to get outta this stupid realm that sealed his shit off and wasting his time. Bro don't wanna bother with the narrative and masks up with smiles when necessary for money, information, and ease of way.

Would probably get a spark in his eye from watching the faceless hordes he's helped explode into fire and heavenly judgement then go and raze over the ruins again not because he's buddy buddy with the system administrators but because he knows he's playing easy mode in a game where he's been playing outside the screen. Just a schadenfreude thing after the sunken cost fallacy of seeing the world he's obligated to save be a real piece of shit.

but then also like lumine as like that kinda gap moe sorta protag that's come in the trails of her brother and is figuring out stuff on the second run of the simulation. She'd definitely give mercy reluctantly. Loves the feeling of getting over gods. Cold but actually the better of the two both combat-wise and personality-wise, but that doesn't make her that kinda naive kinda main character that just does whatever for whatever whoever says what. Energy saver.

Still like her brother would forget every face that came her way except for the useful ones, and try to get to know them to tell a good story once that's all they have left of their time travelling around. Girl exploring the ruins of past civilizations and thinking about the taste of her own dissolved home in the back of her throat, the riveting revulsion of total freedom as the last light in a sea of candles. The power that remains, sealed away by tyrants that can only smile when they meet the end of her blade.

Double agent Lumine going over voluntarily to the Abyss and allying with them from convenience, manipulating the logic of the world to her benefit. Tired but kind to non-human creatures that might make her run around for years to fix things others have broke but have the best foes to fight, because only with the things like Aranara and Melusines can she show her true self as that otherworldly alien no human can understand, not even the Vision wielders to a certain sense. Wanders the deep lore areas of the continent to absorb more about the conflicting logic of the world, the idea of samsaras something that she wants to toy with.

dawg I would draw the fuck outta that if I got good bro it would be so crazy trust trust trusstttttt now just gotta wait for the game plot to actually finish so I can like see how it actually is lmao