#for instance One-piece toilet

[krispeetersvisitingthings]

Rustic Bathroom (Chicago)

[seat-safety-switch]

Are you getting sick of fixing your house every Goddamn weekend? The struggles of modern life getting to you, with its demands to excel in your personal and professional lives? Do you want to give in to your inner animal nature and commit violence against inanimate objects for reasons unclear even to yourself other than "me angy?"

Good news. One of the hottest new businesses of our otherwise inert economy is "rage rooms," where they fill a room with a bunch of thrift store shit and charge you fifty bucks an hour to go buck wild on it with a golf putter. Whether or not this is a good idea is a matter for the psychiatrists, but I do note one thing. When given the option, every single one of the customers goes right for the printer.

Printers are, according to the Bible, the embodiment of Satan on this Earth. That's a hundred percent true, and if you don't believe me, show me the part of the Bible that doesn't say it. While essential, fixing a printer (and they need fixing frequently!) is rage-inducing, nonsensical, and often reduces even the hardiest experts to a gibbering mess. Add to this the time constraint of any printing (always done at the last minute,) and you've got yourself a recipe for sobbing into a pile of shattered gears and spilled laser toner. So being able to turn the tables on these accursed machines, and reduce them through brute force into a fine powder of microplastics, is gratifying as fuck.

Most rage rooms have convinced themselves that they need to fill a room with other stuff. Glass vases, for instance. Or a pile of intricately-arranged pianos. Nobody wants to smash this stuff, unless they're bored while waiting their turn to smash a printer. At Switch's Smash Shouse, we provide nothing but printers. Are they in good enough shape to smash with a bat? What do you care? You're getting your inarticulate, impotent rage out by beating a piece of consumer e-waste into the next dimension. We could write "PRINTER" on a piece of toilet paper tube and you'd probably still go hog wild on it for long enough to get a hernia.

[peacheesex]

Aightt,I had an idea for fluff dtk x (gn)reader who is Asymmetrical, meaning their appearance is Asymmetrical/messy n they're somewhat more chaotic. Basically a whole polar opposite of Kid. But yet they somehow work together,as if they complete each other(like reader helping Kid calm down when he's worried abt smth being asymmetrical too much,n Kid calming down reader when they act as if they got sugar overdose n would destroy everything on their way)

Basically yin n yang couple,,,

It can be a oneshot,or headcanon,or both,,I'd lov to read anything:))

OMG THIS IS BASICALLY ESU 72(my OC) AND KID ALREADY EJFKEKFK dw I got this in the baaaaag😔😔😔👏👏👏👏 This just an excuse to ramble about how much I LOOOOVE THIS DYNAMIC😩😩😩 (Pictures of Esu will be at the end if you're curious about her!)

Death the Kid x Asymmetrical!Reader~☆٭꙳

TW: Kid swears cuz he's potty mouth, other than that we gucci!!

☆ You.

☆ YOU.

☆ You were HORRIBLY asymmetrical and so unbearably friendly. With your stupid outfit and uneven bangs. They were lopsided!! Oh it drove him CRAZY.

☆ But your overly friendly rear end just keeps on /showing/ up. You never seem to want to leave him alone.

☆ Everything about you two was different, even down to your colour schemes!

☆ He was a pessimist, you were an optimist. He was an asshole, you were a ray of sunshine. He was a ballerina, you were a punk. (/j about that one.)

☆ Even your combat styles managed to be opposites with him being far ranged and fast you being hand to hand and a little slower.

☆ But somehow, that made you guys work like clock work almost.

☆ Where he falters, you cover him. And where you struggle, he picks up your slack.

☆ For instance, he isn't the most social person but definitely knows how to carry a conversation where as you want to make friends, but you're extremely awkward.

☆ So he'll help pull up topics for you while you do all the talking for him.

☆ Me thinks you guys would have matching outfits, but in an opposites kinda way.

☆ Like he'd wear black and purple with yellow accents and you'd wear white and yellow with purple accents. You feel me?

☆ You're also kind of more on the dumb side, so he helps you with homework since he's the brains of the two of you.

☆ But you're infuriating little grin makes up for your dense noggin.

☆ You probably wear lots of colours opposed to Kid's monochromatic colour scheme. Like that one rainbow hair girl and the goth one, yeah that's you and Kid.

☆ I imagine you'd also try your best to straighten paintings with Kid but always be an inch off and he'd rant and rave at you.

☆ But he also apologizes after cuz he realises he was being a douche and you were just trying your best:(

☆ "Damnit, I'm sorry that was impolite. I... didn't mean any of that. You're much more than trash, I assure you."

☆ There was one time you made a bracelet for him, but he refused to wear it cuz it'd make him asymmetrical and unbalanced so you turned around and left.

☆ He thought he upset you so he went to find you, turns out you were making a matching bracelet for him to wear on the other arm so he'd stay balanced.

☆ God he loves you so much and doesn't even realise it. Boy is down bad.

☆ You guys really are like the sun and moon, a golden retriever and a black cat.

☆ Completely opposite, but that also makes you perfectly balanced. You two work together in perfect sync and fill in gaps the other leaves. Two pieces of a puzzle stuck together flawlessly.

☆ Like the little dancers in a music box.

☆ No matter how much of this you point out though, he'll still vehemently deny all of it.

☆ But like, you also do your best to fold toilet-paper for him so maybe you're not too bad. (He would die for you.)

-----

Heeeere's Esu! I'd lore dump for hours but that'd make this post ten times as long٩( ᐛ )و So I'll leave it with just the info in the reference! Hope you enjoyed the little thingy, stay hydrated and eat well!!! ✨✨✨

[bestlittlebunny]

News headline reads, new experimental medical treatments result in Female/Female breeding.

She is my best friend, but I want her as more, pregnancy entrapment is wrong...I keep telling myself that as I sign the authorization forms for the treatment.

That evening, I get you very intoxicated, we make love for hours. Sure enough in a few weeks I'm gazing at a positive test......

(Oooh. I love this prompt. Okay, here goes.) I wake up with a mild pressure deep inside and rub it away as I sit up in bed. You've already been gone long enough for your side of the bed to have gone cold. We were only best friends, and we lived in a two bedroom apartment together, but most of the time we just slept together because we were too lazy to move to our respective rooms by the time we got tired. Or, at least that's what we told each other out loud. For me, I enjoyed your company. Your warmth. Your smell. Your taste. There were several instances where one, or both, of us got tipsy and our inhibitions wavered. I'll never forget the taste of you on my tongue as it slid between your soft pink slit, lapping up whatever moistness you produced for me. I delighted in you. As I recall the sensations, I begin to touch myself, aching for another taste.

I shook my head, snapping out of it. I had to get up, had to get to work. Besides, I knew you didn't feel the same. I just was glad to have a piece of you, even for a moment. I collected my outfit for the day and my towel from the night before and headed for the bathroom. Just as I did any other day, I heard the shower running and barged right in, only to see you jump and quickly hide something behind your back. Your cheeks bright red, eyes watery, you quickly wiped away a tear that had betrayed you and then faked a smile. "Hi! Good morning! Uhm... I was just about to get in the shower. Do you, uh, do you want to go first?" You chirped.

I looked at you inquisitively, "Are you okay? What's behind your back?"

You tense, refusing to drop your smile, "No, no. I'm okay. It's nothing. Really."

I can see the fear in your eyes. I put my pile of fabric down on the counter and walk slowly up to you, pulling you into a tight hug, "I'm here. You're safe." I stroke your hair as I hold you near. I feel you begin to tremble, soft whimpers turning into full sobs. I just hold you tighter as you cry, letting you process what you need to. After a few minutes pass I feel you slowly relax and take a deep breath. You step away from me, hand still behind your back, and slowly sit on the edge of the toilet, "I... I need to tell you something." You barely speak above a whisper.

I kneel in front of you and gently grab your elbow, encouraging your hand to come out from hiding. As it presents it's secret, I see the two pink lines almost instantly. The emotions that flood through my mind are overwhelming: Heartbroken, angry if anybody hurt you, pity for myself, guilt... my mind spins. But I still it long enough to cup your cheek in my hand and softly smile. "It's going to be alright. You tell me what you need from me. I'm here. Can I ask... who's it is?" As far as I knew, you hadn't been seeing anyone. And I would wring anybody's necks who took advantage of you.

You hesitate before steeling yourself and standing up, turning away from me. "It's yours." You finally say.

A wave of nausea rushes over me and I throw myself against the toilet as I love whatever remained of dinner the night before. I feel you pull my hair away from my face and rub my back. When it passes, I sit back on my heels, "Mine?" I turn to you.

"I didn't think the announcement would make you physically ill. I'm sorry." "No, no. Oh my gosh... Oh my gosh! No." I keep repeating for a moment as thoughts swirl around in my head. I stand up and walk out of the bathroom, leaving you frozen. When I return, I'm holding my own test and hand it to you. "I think we need to have a talk. We, well, we're going to have a lot of planning to do. I'm sorry. I should have told you. I should have talked to you about it, first I--"

You cut me off "No, I'm sorry! I know entrapment is wrong but I--"

At the same time we both shout "I love you!" and freeze. Our eyes lock onto one another and tears well up instantly.

"You do?" I whisper as I choke down sobs. You nod, "You're all I've ever wanted and I thought... well..."

I lifted your chin with my finger, pulling you close to me and kissing you passionately, "We both thought the same, apparently." I giggled and kissed you, again, this time pressing my hand against your belly to let you know I understood... [END]

Should I continue this one??

[mmmmalo]

I haven't thought about homestuck in years but I began to reread it recently, and I remembered highly enjoying your analysis so I came to revisit, and I'm rather surprised by the turn it's taken. Genuine question to satisfy my own curiosity, how come your analysis shifted so heavily from possible trauma and teenage issues to homophobia, transgender readings of so many characters, and the grotesque?

First up, I'm moved that you thought of my blog when you revisited the story! Thank you for stopping by.

I think I would sum up the change as... various factors compelled me to reframe the way I approached paranoia in the comic? Like you said, I used to be all about character's individual psychologies: John with the fear of being judged, Jade with the latent hostility toward Grandpa, etc. But sometimes the fears were bigger than individuals. Homestuck cracked its first Obama joke in reference to Deep Impact, a movie about people for whom a black presidency is an event comparable to cataclysmic flooding. The poorly received Skainet Systems lore made a sly reference to racist birther conspiracies, asserting that Obama was born in another timeline instead of another country. Dirk lays out a story (which he outright states was gathered from conspiracy theorists) where a tyrant, who speaks a distinctly Black flavor of English, eventually floods the earth. Between instances like these, I eventually inferred that Homestuck itself takes place within a conspiracy theory -- and a self-consciously racist one at that -- which raised more specific questions about unreliable narration than Homestuck was already encouraging with its meta motifs.

At various points, characters make revealing Freudian slips -- Karkat summoned an image of Jade "making out with herself" when he was trying to critique what she was "making herself out to be", for instance. The pun revealed an embarrassing, private fixation. When I was still focused on character psychology, I had some luck finding Freudian slips that weren't openly teased, which provided further insight into the characters' psyches. After shifting into the conspiratorial mode, I eventually applied a similar idea to the story at large: if certain word choices in the narrative are designed to reflect proximity to certain societal hatreds, then finding them allows us to piece together the paranoid conspiracies about the hated groups in question, which structure the narrative. I whimsically dubbed this activity "Slurquest". The allusions to homophobia and transphobia found via this approach made it easier to spot the same motifs in individuals.

The recent turn towards "the grotesque" (by which I assume you mean porn jokes) basically amounts to me catching a fairly simple joke: why does Problem Sleuth combine a film projector with a contracting waste disposal pipe? Why are allusions to sun-blindness accompanied by torn up toilets? The answer is gay pornography, within its utility for shock: the old internet practice of linking people images of huge distended assholes, to their displeasure, for laughs. Terezi's sun-blindness is on some level a repetition of Hussie's old gag "the elf saw a picture of a penis and started to cry", with the red sun acting as an abstracted goatse -- this is why Dave, whose apartment is haunted by the Red Sun, is likewise haunted by Bro's gay pornography. This ongoing sun/ass symbolism makes it funnier when Dave uses the phrase "privy to what I flame broil below" to describe Terezi smelling his ass.

That's the short of it, at least

[shurisbathwater]

Hiii I have a request☺️

Shuri x reader

Reader gets pregnant and is confused and terrified bc she’s only been with shuri

So one day she visits shuri in the lab and starts asking more detailed questions about the strap

Then she’s also worried bc he and shuri aren’t actually in a relationship so she starts avoiding her until she can figure out what to do

Shuri doesn’t like that she’s being ignored so she just shows up in the readers house and like is sitting on the couch or something waiting for when the reader gets home one night.

Plz forgive my formatting I wrote this at work. Thank youu😚

𝐖𝐀𝐈𝐓 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐘𝐎𝐔 ; Shuri udaku

✿•˖*

A/n :: Thank you sm for the request love <;3! Srry this took ages 😭😭 I had alot of stuff going on personally.

𝐈𝐍 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐂𝐇 :: you find out your pregnant with Shuri's baby. Freaked out and confused, you avoid and deny everything. Hard truth -You and Shuri are not even in a relationship. So what will happen now?

𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒 :: Angsty, fluff. That should be it.

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓 :: 1,834

✿•˖*

higher -- tems

best part -- daniel caesar Ft. H.E.R

𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐍𝐈𝐁𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐋𝐈𝐏 and bounced your knee up and down as you sat on the toilet of your bathroom. "Fuck.Fuck.Fuck. Oh my gosh."

You put your head in your hands as you just needed a moment to.. you'd say.. think. How could you let this happen? You grab the pregnancy test sitting on the sink and you grab it, looking at the result.

"Positive.." you breathed out as you shook your head. "No no no." You put your head in your hands once again. You throw the test and it hits off of the door, onto the floor. You rip open another test and repeat the same process.

You watch the test as you wait for the result, keeping your beady little eyes on it.

Soon, two lines come up on the test.

"No!nope nope nope." You dig through the trash to look at the box. "This has to be some kind of prank." You muttered, in denial about everything.

It could be the test, right? there's no way..well it is from a cheap drugstore. You read the test, and nothing seems useful to you so you throw it back in.

You're going to have to accept it.

You're pregnant.

With shuri udaku's baby.

Without thinking, you leave the bathroom and grab your coat. You then get your keys from the counter and go down to the stairs, to get to the parking garage.

As you get there, you sit in your car and nibble your lip. You cant be pregnant. You guys aren't even together. You can't be together. That was the agreement. This was just for fun..but It got serious so fast. You drive off, palms sweaty and shaky.

✿•˖*

𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐄 standing outside of shuris lab now. You grab the doorhandle but hesitate, but before you can do anything griot informs her that someone is here.

"Come in!"

You take a deep breath and open the door, standing helplessly as she works on a new project.

"Oh, y/n. Didnt expect to see you here." She says as she glances up at you, then continuing to work.

You chuckle shakily as you muster up some words to say to her. "I'm..I wanted to ask you something, you know about the strap." You get quieter on the last word.

She drops her piece of equipment and stares at you. She raises her brow and stares at you strangely. "Can it maybe get me pregnant, for instance?" You ask.

"No..why are you asking?" She tilts her head. "Y'know, I just wanna protect myself. Is anything faulty about it or...?" You slightly lie, and before she can open her mouth you cut her off.

"Actually, don't answer that. Its fine." You say as you turn around to the door. "Y/n--" but before she could say anything you were gone.

you felt a wave of embarrasment and shame come over you. You felt as if you screwed this up. You walk to your car and try to open the door, but your hands were shaky. you take breaths to calm yourself.

"I'll figure it out." you mumble to yourself as you finally open the car door. Okay, a plan. what will you do?

No idea.

you groaned and put your head against the steering wheel. You were completely clueless..how were you going to take care of a mini you when you can hardly take care of yourself some days?

You figured the best idea was to stop seeing shuri untill you figured out and processed all of this.

you rub your belly and bite your lip.

"Everythings gonna be alright.." you reassured yourself as you started the car, your shaky and clammy hands gripping the steering wheel.

You drove off from the lab, playing some chill r & b to soothe you.

Once you got to your house. you slumped on the couch and sat there in distress. you felt the tears prickling in your eyes, and your throat closing up. There was one question lingering in your mind. what were you going to do?

Your phone buzzed, bringing you out of your trance. you wiped your eyes and sniffled.

shuri

wyd tomorrow?

you

busy

shuri

day after that?😏

you

busy all week

you threw your phone across the couch as you slumped there, being sorry for yourself. How could you let this happen. Messing with the princess of wakanda wasn't the best idea.. but somehow you couldn't let go. You craved her touch, and when she wasnt there you could still taste her on your lips.

The best idea was to avoid. avoid avoid avoid. Untill nessecary. Which would probably be..forever? she couldn't know about this baby. Not now , not ever.

✿•˖*

weeks later

𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐅𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐋𝐄𝐃 with your fingers anxiously as you sat out in the waiting room, outside of the obstetricians office. You sat alone with your thoughts as the clocked on the wall ticked. Shuri had been trying to contact you for ages now, and your only choice was to decline and avoid.

You now were here for your first ultrasound, which was well overdue. suddenly, a secretary comes out.

"Y/n L/n?" she says as she looked around the room.

you got up from your seat and took a deep breath, your hands shaking. "Okay.." you muttered as you made your way to the office.

You had no idea what the gender was, and the pregnancy was slowly started to show on you. mood changes, morning sickness, and cravings. The belly was starting to show too, in which you had to hide with baggy clothes. Layering clothes was basically your best friend.

You walked into the office as the doctor smiled at you warmly. "Hi.." you said in a low tone. "hi y/n." She said as she put on her gloves. "Do you mind just sitting over there?" she says to you as she prepares everything for your ultrasound. you take a seat. she then adjusts the chair to make you lean back.

She starts the procedure by pulling up your shirt and putting gel directly on your stomach. she rubs the cold gel on your preganant belly. "Nervous?" she said to you, trying to make conversation. "Kinda." you chuckled. "Thats okay.. it's normal. You're not the only one." she grinned at you.

"Okay..." she says as she gets the sensor and puts it onto your stomach, moving it round. Suddenly something comes on the screen. your..baby.."Oh..oh my gosh." you say as a tear rolls down your face, hands over your mouth. you laughed softly. You start to sob quietly out of joy.

This was a moment you were going to cherish forever.

"It's just me and you." you said in between sobs, smiling.

"Would you like to know the gender?"

"No..no..I want it to be a surprise." you sniffled as you wiped your tears.

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐕𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐑 𝐃𝐎𝐎𝐑 opened as you get to your apartment floor. You felt joy running through your body, but also waves of sadness.

You walk over to your apartment and put the keys in the door, the keys jangling. you walk in to see the lights on and someone sitting on the couch. It can't be..you drop your keys and walk backwards. "When were you going to tell me...sthandwa." she turns and gets up to look at you. "oh.." you mutter as you close the door behind you. "h..how did you get in here, Shuri?" you said shakily. "when were you going to tell.Me."

she picks up the trash can from your bathroom , and takes out the two pregnancy tests. "I..."

"This is why you were avoiding me?"

"I didn't know how to tell you." you sniffled as you felt the waterworks coming.

"..I thought it was for the best."

Shuri looks at you, attempting to stay strong. you saw her slowly breaking down, tears rolling down her face. "When did you find out? how far along are you?" she rushes to you, grasping onto your elbows, rubbing her hands along your arms.

"A couple weeks." you sniffled and smiled up at her. you take the photo of the ultrasound out of your bag and show it to her. she gasps softly as she takes it out of your hand to look at it.

she cries some more, tear drops rolling on the picture. "entle.." her mother language slipping off of her tongue. she puts it on the counter and gets on her knees, admiring yourbaby belly. she kisses it softly and looks up at you. she closes her eyes as another tear comes down, and you cover your mouth to stop you from full on sobbing.

the most beautiful moment you had ever experienced.

"Have you told anyone yet?"

"no.. i don't plan on it anytime soon."

"I'll wait for you. whenever your ready, I will wait for you."

✿•˖*

𝐘𝐎𝐔 looked at yourself in the mirror and adjusted your hair for what felt like the fifth time in the past five minutes. "Relax babe, you look amazing." Riri reassured you as she walked towards the mirror, looking at you in the relfection. "You should go out there. Everyones waiting for you." she grinned. you give her a tight lipped smile back as she put her hand in yours. "you got this. it's your day." you nodded as she walked out of the bathroom, glancing at you and shutting it behind her.

"Okay." you mutter as you walk out of your hiding spot.

you walk over to the front of your babies gender reveal in awe. You couldn't believe it was happening. You felt calm and stress-free as you know there people who love you and care for you, meaning you didn't feel alone anymore.You felt a little anxious though. you rubbed your belly again and you looked down at your outfit, and admired yourself. You felt as confident as ever. you smiled to yourself as Shuri came up beside you, kissing your forhead. "I told you not to wear those death traps." you rolled your eyes as you knew what she was referring to.

"Heels aren't going to hurt the child, Shuri." you chuckled. "Plus, i look good, don't I?" you spun around to show the full fit. "Amazing." she smiled wide.

Shuri grabbed a pin, and you grabbed a balloon which had the words "Boy or girl?" inprinted on it. Family and friends gathered and smiled hopefully at the both of you.

"3..2..1..!" They all chanted along with you

Shuri pops the balloon, and suddenly everyone cheered in unision. Blue glitter spread in the air, meaning it's a boy!

You and shuri screamed excitedly, jumping up in the air. she picks you up and spins you around.

"Oh my gosh..Marry me."

your lips part slowly as you try to process the information you just heard.

"Marry me, sthandwa."

You nod as you were shocked you couldn't even say anything.

it was now you, your wife and your son.

A/n : sorry this took so long yall...chile what a mess. Anyways hope you enjoyed.

[therogueheart]

RIP Shitbox - 2024.

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[24-guy]

3070 words later. I present to you...

What was the deal with the grill brush?

An amateur essay on “Just for Once” from Nerdy Prudes Must Die by J

When listening to the soundtrack for Nerdy Prudes Must Die (NPMD), I realized that the song that was hitting me most was, unexpectedly, Just for Once. This was odd to me because one could argue that, of all the songs in the musical, Just for Once isn’t that emotional of a song. Especially since it was sung by a side character like Ruth. But since this instance, every time I listened to it, I was struck with the desire to sit and properly delve into the lyrics and try to understand what exactly it was about it that made it so emotional to me. My aim in writing this is to understand how this song develops Ruth’s character further than her initial portrayal.

To do this, we need to take what we already know about Ruth and put it into context. Before this song happens, we have seen Ruth, as a character, in five of the nine songs, with Just for Once being the tenth song in the musical. This feels important to note as this is a significant amount of time to get to know Ruth and her character as well as her motivations and story through the musical.

Ruth is one of the two characters that open the musical. The first is a fellow nerd, Richie, who sings that he is dead. The stage is set in red lighting. When Ruth joins as a second voice to follow up his line, the context stays the same. We know from the first song of the musical that Ruth is going to die. As the performance continues, we go into a bigger piece with the students of Hatchetfield High School singing about how much school sucks. This doesn’t tell us much about her character, so let’s move on.

Literal monster is a song where the nerds of Hatchetfield High sing about their bully, Max Jägerman. Ruth’s part in this is telling us that she is a nerd and that she gets bullied. She has both solo and group lines that tell the audience and the listener that they aren’t enthusiastic about the bullying stopping. However, one of the lines in the part after the first chorus gives us our first hint into Ruth’s main character trait, she is extremely sexual.

The musical continues after this to see our main trio of nerds at a library. Peter, Richie and Ruth are working together on a thermodynamics paper. Here, we get another line that cements Ruth’s main trait being that she is extremely lonely, and that comes across in often uncomfortable moments. This scene we also get told that Ruth craves contact enough that she will talk telemarketers into hanging up the phone, and that she sees Peter getting a call from one as “lucky”. As the scene continues, we see that Ruth doesn’t seem to understand personal space and is nosey as she asks Peter about what Stephanie Lauter – a popular girl from school – is talking to him about. There is some minor things to note from this scene too, like how she references Star Wars and how she initially agrees that Peter shouldn’t get his hopes up about Stephanie because they’re too different in the social hierarchy in school.

Our next proper character moment happens when Ruth, Richie and Stephanie go to the boy’s bathroom to find Peter after he didn’t show up to study at a restaurant with Stephanie. Here, she remarks how the boys are lucky because they can all watch each other go to the toilet thanks to the urinals not having walls between them.

Our last major scene with Ruth and new traits to note, is during the set-up and consequence of a prank that the nerds, Stephanie and a girl called Grace play on their bully, Max. During the set-up we see that Ruth’s history of bullying leads her to lash out at Stephanie for calling them nerds, going into too much detail about her allergy to deodorant. It helps to solidify Ruth as someone who tends to make people uncomfortable with her lack of a vocal filter. In a later moment during the same setting, Ruth is talking to a telemarketer and gets hung up on. When Ruth talks about her nervousness about pulling off the prank, Stephanie comforts her. This leads to Ruth saying that Stephanie is nice, and that she might be in love with her. This helps us understand that Ruth probably doesn’t understand a lot of what she’s feeling, considering that earlier on she seemed almost negatively inclined towards Stephanie. In a moment between Richie and Peter, we get further confirmation that Ruth is “thirsty” all the time, and that it would be easy to sleep with her and then leave her because of it. When the prank goes wrong, with Max fighting against the perceived ghost and skeleton, we see that Ruth – in the skeleton costume – seems flattered and happy with the praise from Max.

So, to recap. In the lead up to Just for Once, we can understand that Ruth is an anxious character. She doesn’t think too highly of herself or her fellow nerds and will only really push for them to try to get ahead if someone else seems to be reaching out with them to support them. We know that she is touch starved enough that someone being kind and touching her shoulder is enough to make her think that she is in love with someone and that, because of this, she will take any human contact that she can – even if its salespeople on the phone.

With this foundation, we can now talk about how Just for Once expands our view of Ruth as a character.

In the opening before the song, we find that Ruth thinks she can perform on stage better than one of her classmates. This leads into our “musical in a musical” song that is a staple of StarKid shows. This song is supposed to be sung within the context of the musical “The Barbecue Monologues” that exists within the Hatchetfield universe, but I think it can do well at telling us a lot about Ruth’s character as she did decide to sing this song over any of the others that possibly exist within the rest of the production.

The first hint that the song means more to Ruth than immediately apparent is during the end of the second verse, where Ruth sings “And life is fine, if only it were mine.” While it may be because the character that she’s singing for is discontent with life, we have also seen that Ruth doesn’t really fit in outside of the nerd friend group she’s found herself in. We can speculate that she also feels like life isn’t hers to hold. She may feel like she would enjoy life, if only it was something that she could enjoy, seeing as for so long before this point in her story, she was being bullied.

Before this, she sings about how the character has “installed a new bay window” and that they were shopping “for shutters to obstruct the view”. I think that this implies that Ruth understands that having improvements to her life is something that she should want (after Max’s death, the bullying stops entirely), and that she can see the appeal of, but she still wants something to conceal the view of the outside, or even stop the outside from seeing who she is on the inside.

The chorus is the main tell that this song goes deeper than surface level to me. Ruth sings that “just for once I’d be the centre of attention, just for once, remember what a life could be, just for once I feel the light inside the burning of a candle, living just for once…” I’m going to take apart this chorus piece by piece to explain what I think each part means.

The opening line states, “just for once I’d be the centre of attention,” and this lines up with what we know already about Ruth’s character. She has demonstrated already that she craves attention and affection. We have seen her reaction to being praised for her performance as the skeleton in the prank to Max. Ruth wants to be loved, and to have her performance praised. She wants to be the lead of a play.

The next is “just for once, remember what a life could be” this feels like it’s reiterating my point where Ruth wants to remember what her life could mean if there was never any bullying that happened as it has warped her view of what life is. She now has a downplayed life where there’s no point in standing up to people because what’s the point if they all have more worth in your school than you do?

The second to last part is “just for once I’d feel the light inside the burning of a candle” and I think that this means that she wants to feel the light of the spotlight on her, that she wants to be in the spotlight. The way candles are always described is as calm, dancing flames. She wants to be like the flames on candles, to be seen as a delicate but bright focal point of the entire picture.

The final line of the chorus is “living just for once” and it is repeated halfway after the initial singing of it. This, again, just gives the impression that Ruth doesn’t think she was ever really living. She wants to live a good, happy life. But she can’t.

There is a line in the third verse that states “and I was not unhappy about the attention I ensnared, judge me”. This is referring to the character she’s singing for losing their hair after chemotherapy. It can also be read as Ruth not being unhappy about the attention she possibly got after the news of Richie’s death got around. After all, they were both nerds, and in a superficial school like Hatchetfield High even if they weren’t friends, she’d probably get some attention thanks to the apologies gained. This isn’t to say that she was happy, or even neutral, about Richie’s death. This is me pointing out that she would have gotten some of that attention she craved from the loss of her friend.

The following lines don’t stand out to me as anything personal as they start to feel more like the story that she’s singing about is getting across comes in. But the chorus changes again, so I’ll cover those lines too.

The first of these lines is “just for once my life could be just what I wanted”. Here it feels, again, like Ruth wants her life to be something specific, that she could just be better, and be more confident, popular, whatever.

The following is “just for once I’d feel the spark that I once knew”. This introduces another piece of information when it comes to Ruth’s character; she used to know what it felt like to be like this, to perform. She has felt that spark of being on stage, like she is while singing this, and she wants to feel that spark again.

The next is a similar line to one in the first, with a single word changed. “Just for once I’d feel the fight inside the burning of a candle”. This doesn’t change a lot about the implications of the line, but it does give the feeling that she feels like she could be ready to fight for wanting this. She wants this bad enough that, just for once, she’s ready to fight for it.

“Something more than I can handle” is the last line before we have a “just for once” and I feel like this calls again to her wanting to be in that spotlight. She wants to be in the spotlight, even if she knows that she can’t handle the pressure it puts her under for doing so. This marks a turning point in the song where the tone shifts, paralleling what Ruth may be going through with realizing she might not be ready to handle the pressure that being on stage could cause.

The first line of this section is “Should I flip the burgers now? Should I double check its well done on the outside not within?” This is filled with confusion about what she is doing. Ruth’s character has been placed to supervise something they don’t know what they’re looking for when it comes to checking it’s fine to flip the burgers. I believe this parallels Ruth’s hesitance and uncertainty when it comes to navigating a space like theatre, or high school, where she does know what to look for in theory. But in practice she falters, consumed by insecurity and self-doubt, potentially ruining her reputation/ ”burgers” if she does one thing wrong.

Breaking up the lines in this portion of the song are painful sounding “oh”s that sound like pleading to whoever is listening.

“Should I let the coals burn out? Should I let the years cook my body down in front of him?” Is the following line. And, again, this feels like a parallel between the character’s doubt about themselves and their health struggles with getting cancer at a reasonably early age, and Ruth’s doubts about her popularity and lack of connection, feeling like her life is over even though she’s only eighteen years old and her life is barely properly begun. She feels undesirable now, how is she going to feel when she’s older?

This next part of the song, while just repeating the line “Just for once”, has a portion of the music playing that is a leitmotif that has shown up in a lot of the songs before this point. Most noticeably, it takes centre stage first during the song “Cooler Than I Think I Am”. It plays over the top of a part of the chorus where Peter – the lead singer – sings the line “I’m not a loser”. This is brought up again during the titular song “Nerdy Prudes Must Die”, where Max is about to kill Richie, and Richie sings the line as a last-ditch effort to prove he’s no longer a loser, Max shouldn’t kill him. This musical idea is used as a point where the nerds are breaking out of their set place in Hatchetfield High’s social hierarchy. Richie uses it as a beg to be spared. The music behind Ruth’s vocals use it to foreshadow her demise at the end of this song thanks to the use of it in Richie’s number. It sets hope up and dread in the audience when they remember that Ruth was alongside Richie in the opening number singing about how they were dead.

The final part of the song doesn’t seem like it’s a part of the song from the in-universe musical at all. Ruth sings about how a family is borrowing her tap shoes. It’s melancholy in tone, and she continues, singing how it’s “no bother, I never ever use them”. And in a heart-wrenching moment, she says “I used to dance”, before repeating “I used to dance” like she’s about to cry.

I think that moment of the song is the most plain about Ruth’s feelings. I think she did used to dance, and that she did lend her tap shoes to someone because her anxiety stops her from performing anymore. This is a sad moment that lingers slightly before we return to spoken dialogue for the end.

“I found your grill brush, Maurie. It was right here, all along.” Right. The grill brush. This is one of the main reasons I wanted to write this in depth look at Just for Once, because I feel like the grill brush holds more meaning than it first appears. When it is first mentioned, the character of Maurie is looking for the grill brush and Ruth’s character gives a sarcastic comment about how they used it to brush their hair that morning. We know this is even more of a joke thanks to the later lines describing the chemotherapy. However, this ending says that the brush was there the whole time.

I think that the grill brush is symbolizing Ruth and her ability to perform. Given the initial response, it would make sense for the parallel to be how Ruth wants to perform but can’t because, well, she’s herself. She’s nerdy little Ruth who makes sexual remarks and Star Wars references and has anxiety so bad she quit dancing even in her free time. But, after this performance she does while the rest of the cast for The Barbeque Monologues are taking a break, she has more than enough ability to act on stage if the pressure isn’t there. She can do it. So why does she sound so sad when she says, “It was right here, all along…”? Because she knows that even if she can perform, she can’t do it with an audience thanks to her anxiety and self-doubt.

So where does this leave us with Ruth’s character after watching this performance? We now know that Ruth, despite initial appearances, is an aspiring actor with the ability to act but her anxiety is holding her back. She’s performed willingly on stage, but when she knows there is no audience to watch her perform. Even though she wants attention and to have the comfort of people seeing her, she still wants to have the ability of shutting everything out, letting herself be a secret because that’s what she’s used to.

Just for Once feels so sad because it’s an “I want” song that ends with the lead dying. The audience listens to her story, her wants and desires, and knows that she is going to die before the end of the musical because that is what we were told with the opening number. Just for Once is a song that Ruth sings to herself because she can let herself be selfish, and she can let herself want to be the centre of attention when she’s stood on stage alone with nobody to judge her.

Maybe if she survived, she would be able to gain the courage to handle the pressure she feels when she’s stood up on that stage.

[ragecndybars]

AO3 tag game :3

thanks so much for the tag @mvshortcut !!!!! much appreciated, this was a blast to fill out :D

How many works do you have on AO3?

86! Damn, that's more than I remember 🙀 I have been writing pretty fervently since I was pretty young, though, and I transferred all my old fics from fanfiction dot net to AO3, so it's a long stretch of time. All my old wattpad fics are still rotting somewhere though lmaooo I can't even access them anymore bc I forgot my password and I can't reset it bc I used a school email 😔

What's your total AO3 word count?

443,734! When I get to half a million I'm gonna have to throw myself a party. With boba and everything

How many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

Oof, okay, here we go. A lot of the fandoms I have tagged on AO3 don't really "count" because they're just aggregate tags for the same fandom, so even though AO3 says the number is 48, I'm gonna count the TRUE number as 17. (It got cut down so much because of how many video game series have different games with different fandom tags on AO3, lmao)

Here's the breakdown of the list:

Persona (Mostly Persona 3)

Fire Emblem (Mostly Shadow Dragon and Blazing Sword)

Legend of Zelda

Pokemon

Professor Layton

RWBY

Kid Icarus: Uprising

Earthbound/MOTHER

Red vs. Blue

Voltron Legendary Defender

Naruto

Final Fantasy XV

Harvest Moon

The Mysterious Benedict Society

The Avengers

Animal Crossing

Care Bears (despite having never actually consumed any Care Bears media to my knowledge)

The worst part is that this stupid list would be much, much, MUCH longer if I finished even a quarter of my WIPs 😭 Hell, even just my "Video Games" subfolder in my "Fanfiction" subfolder has more than 17 subfolders in it...

Y'all don't understand how many random fics my ADHD spares you from ever seeing I have no focus

Top five fics by kudos:

Ash and Emotion (Zelda) - Not surprising, I knew this was my most popular fic. It was for a ZeLink zine full of beautiful work :)

Resemblance (Naruto) - bro I always forget people really liked this one. Literally an unedited drabble I did in an hour for a "pride month drabble challenge" which I immediately abandoned. Trans rights I guess

Always Wanna Play (But You Never Wanna Lose) (Persona 3) - This one isn't surprising either, and I'm very proud of this fic so I'm quite chuffed to see it get so much attention... thanks everyone :')

The Beat of Your Heart (Zelda) - Now this one surprised me a lot. This was just a little piece for ZeLink week... Another unedited one, I literally was writing it on the toilet in church so I could get it out in time 😭

Comfort (Zelda) - Another ZeLink week piece, but I knew this one was popular. Also unedited, lmao. I was writing it on the day of my AP Calc finals and I rushed through the exam so I could have more time to work on the fic 😭 I made some Choices that year

Do you respond to comments?

I try to! But I get very anxious about it and tend to work myself into a tizzy, so I often put it off for later and then forget, haha. Then I'll go and respond to all my comments from the last few months and feel even weirder about it... T_T

What's the fic with the angstiest ending you've ever written?

Oof. That's... a hard one, haha. I've written a couple of fics without happy endings, though I typically don't. At least three fics which end on a canonical character death, for instance. But I'd say the ending which made me the most emo writing was Butter, a Mother 3 fic. It ends with Lucas, who's like 9, recently lost his mother, then lost his twin brother (and thinks it's his fault), and is now being neglected by his father, crawling into bed and crying. So yeah, pretty bleak, lmao... but at least he doesn't die I guess?

Do you write crossovers?

I do, but I haven't posted many yet. I'm not always huge on writing them, but I do think about them a lot. I was working on this one Persona 3 x Fire Emblem Awakening crossover but I lost steam on it, and now there's a really lovely crossover on AO3 with a similar premise that I was SO delighted to come across!!! Hope y'all don't mind me taking a break from linking my own work to shill for this one, hehe

Have you ever gotten hate on a fic?

Unfortunately, yes, about six times, I'd say. Even more unfortunately, most of those times happened earlier on in my fanfic writing career, and I was pretty sensitive to hate back then, so I deleted many of the relevant fics, and some of them I don't even have access to myself anymore.

Not gonna talk about the ones that are still upsetting, but I will talk about the funny examples: on a (since deleted) RWBY fic, I said in the author's note that I "wrote them as platonic, but the fic can be read as WhiteRose", and then I got a glowing comment gushing about how good the story was which ended with "but then you had to ruin it by shitting all over WhiteRose, how about you [long suicide bait]". Third most baffling comment I've ever received.

The two most baffling were on different fics, but both were making the same weird accusation??? One was on a ZeLink fic (actually, on Comfort, my fifth most kudos'ed fic of all time now), and y'know I think I'm just gonna show you the comment in question:

The other one was on a long-since deleted fic which focused on both a romantic ship, as well as a fatherly relationship between one member of the ship and the other member's father. I guess having a fatherly relationship with your father-in-law makes your boyfriend actually your brother (and therefore you can't date him anymore). IDK man people are crazy. (tbf the commenter in question thought I was setting it up so that he'd get adopted by his boyfriend's parents, which would give them more of a case, but like... that didn't happen in the fic and wasn't going to. they just guessed at a future plot development and got angry about their guess)

Do you write smut?

I do, but I've never posted any. I've posted one fic that was very suggestive, I'd even call it "NSFW" in a sense, but never anything explicit. Maybe I will in the future? We'll see if I can ever finish anything smutty, lmao.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yep, I had Ultimatum, my longest chapter-fic (and by far my most popular fic in the ff.n days) stolen and posted on another site by somebody. I reported it but never checked back up to see if it got taken down.

I also feel that I've had my work plagiarized pretty damn blatantly in another fandom (I was browsing a certain AU tag and read one which contained all the exact events and sometimes word-for-word dialogue from a fic of mine, just very very slightly rewritten) but the poster had no other works and their writing was definitely extremely juvenile, so... I figured they were a dumb kid and just decided not to raise a fuss. Checked back later and they deleted it, hopefully because they realized they shouldn't do that, so I figure there's no need to start shit over it. Honestly, if that person used that experience as a jumping-off point to write their own fics, then I'm glad it happened, imitation being the highest form of flattery and all.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, though I had someone reach out to me on fanfiction dot net a long time ago and ask permission to translate An Unheard Goodbye, which was super exciting! I agreed, but I don't believe they ever got around to it, or if they did, they never posted it. Still very flattering, and I think about that a lot, hehe.

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

HOW COULD I POSSIBLY ANSWER THIS. UM. UM UH. UHHH UM UH I. UM.

I'm.... gonna say Zelda/Link? I haven't written it in FOREVER but it was such a huge part of me coming into my own as a fanfic author, so I have to give it credit for that.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will?

.......all of them 😭 god I have so many of these damn things. But for the prime example, I'd point to Ultimatum, an old Pokemon fic that I started in middle school. I got all the way to the climax and I feel bad leaving my readers hanging, but... at this point, if I did continue it, I would honestly have to rewrite the whole fic first just to be in line with my current understanding of the characters.

What are your writing strengths?

Y'know, I think I get character voices down extremely well in a way which elevates my dialogue and narration. That's probably the thing I'm most proud of in my own writing, at least.

What are your writing weaknesses?

BREVITY. Or the utter, glaring lack of it. I have also been known to muddy up my writing with an overabundance of A) adverbs, B) unneeded clauses tacked onto perfectly good sentences, and C) em-dashes 😭

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fics?

I think it's dope as fuck, but I currently can't really accomplish it because I'm monolingual (NOT FOR LONG IF I HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT, I'M COMING FOR YOU, JAPANESE FLUENCY!!!!). I will also say that I don't like when authors will write characters having a story-important conversation in another language, then put the translations in the end notes or something, requiring you to either read the chapter confused or else keep scrolling back down and back up.... I think even that's totally fine to do if what's being said isn't plot-relevant, though.

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

Naruto. I hadn't read or watched Naruto btw, I had only read other Naruto fanfics. I have spoken on this topic many times, but it remains hilarious to me. Also, so many of my old Naruto fics are lost to the Wattpad times, but I will take this opportunity to once again share a quote which I recently managed to unearth from my long-lost unsung magnum opus:

Never ever will I intentionally attain the level of comedy gold that I managed while writing completely dead serious Naruto fanfiction on Wattpad in 2012.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written so far?

See above. How could I ever top that fic.

In all seriousness, this question always makes me sweat, but I think I'm gonna say Oil, a slightly older fic from my EliHec days which I absolutely obsessed over for months before finally managing to finish. And, unlike most of the fics that I obsess over, I think the obsession actually made it come out better rather than worse, haha.

thanks again for the tag!!!! as for me, I'll tag uhh, hm, @wizard-finix @dreamedge @misty-wisp @flyfish1999 and any other AO3 writers who see this!!! (idk how many of you use AO3 and most of the MBS authors I know have probably already been tagged hehe but anybody who wants to should absolutely feel free!!!!!!!)

[kafukaselect-blog]

No, Power Hasn't Been Forgotten

I saw someone on twitter the other day say that Fujimoto had forgotten about Power, they genuinely tried to argue that he has dropped the Blood Devil storyline in Part 2. Obviously I know that most chainsaw man fans aren’t this dense, but the post did get me thinking about the fact that some people aren't really aware of how the Blood Devil storyline is being setup in Part 2, which is crazy because Power has been referenced in every single arc of Part 2 so far.

In the Justice Devil arc, Denji's literal first scene is him saving a cat that is clearly modelled after Power's blood devil form (Not to mention the fact that cats are a motif strongly associated with Power). The idea of Denji ignoring a choice put in front of him to instead save a cat (Power) is definitely some sort of symbolic foreshadowing for future events, though it's too soon to predict exactly how.

In the Endless Aquarium arc, Denji refers directly to Power, clearly showing that he still thinks about her, and In the Falling Devil arc, we literally see Power, manifesting in Denji's flashback. I know it's easy to sort of disregard this as a wink-wink nudge-nudge bit of fanservice to bring back memories of Part 1, but that sort of thing is honestly pretty uncommon with Fujimoto.

Every instance of a side character returning to Part 2 from Part 1 has been preceded by basically no direct references to the character ahead of time. Both Quanxi and Katana Man appear out of nowhere, and Kishibe – who given recent events is almost certainly making a comeback – has similarly received no direct mentions or even allusions yet.

I think the fact that Fujimoto is setting up Power / The Blood Devil so early clearly shows that she is going to be an important part of the narrative.

And finally, in the current arc, when Denji is talking to Pochita in the toilet, Meowy enters and then the scene ends. Meowy is clearly symbolically representing Power here (Meowy has only ever been relevant to the plot in their relation to Power), and is being presented as a clear counterpoint to Denji's assertion that he no longer needs to fight. Not only are there consistent references to Power, but this one – even more obviously than "Save the Cat" – positions her as a crucial narrative piece of Denji's dilemma going forward.

I hope this hasn't all been a bit too obvious, it's definitely possible that most fans have noticed this already, but honestly I just want everyone to be on the same page regarding Power's involvement in Part 2. Not only will the Blood Devil be a major plot point in Part 2 in the future, she already is one now.

[hiddenbysuccubi]

I am ADHD. It's hard to dispute (not like I disagree) I was diagnosed at 7, had a regular pediatric psychiatrist, still re-diagnosed as a teen after my parents' divorce warranted one, then again in my early 20s sought after on my own. (Not even counting the practicing therapist I went to in College on campus or various other instances of me seeking help) I wish I hadn't been made to take stimulants from 7 to 17. I don't... It's so hard. I can't. I've taken everything. From Ritalin and Adderall, Concerta, Vyvanse, etc. Lately I've been wishing I could just take the stupid meth lite again. It seemed to get me passable grades enough in school. I was quiet and agreeable enough on them. I wasn't ME by any fucking means - my classmate saying "I didn't know you were actually fun" the one day we hung out in a group while I was off them or whatever will carry me to my grave but. I was quiet and productive and all my insane just went into my written words while I navigated the world catatonically and maybe that's the way to survive this government and future, going forward? Maybe I go back to fcuking catonia and vyvanse? I tried so hard to find a place for myself without it after quitting at 17 but I've just... failed. At every avenue. In every decision. And don't get me started on fucking addiction. I couldn't get myself to take those pills without coercion. From 7 on I was trying to hide them under my tongue or in the wastebasket in toilet paper or flush them. I was begging off them every chance I got. I never wanted them. I've met in the last couple years someone who doesn't have ADHD who does take the pills FOR FUN. She has a son who actually is diagnosed and needs them and she just.... fucking takes them. I cannot in the fuck understand. I don't want to touch those pills with a ten foot fucking pole. Let alone for fucking FUN. But. I don't fit into society. And the only way I did was on them. 'High' and unresponsive. I fit every criteria, and I have every documented history that would warrant someone prescribing them again. I really don't fucking want to fucking resort to going back on them. But society tells me I'm a goddamn unwanted piece of shit without being catatonic every second of every day.

[idk6123]

A Fellow Journalist (Frank West X Male Reader)

And so, his quest for searching the truth continues. Just arriving at Paradise Plaza, Frank heads to his next objectives. Between the important missions, trying not to die to the zombies and psychopaths and rescuing any survivor, Frank has been stressing way too much. And so, he’s on edge 24/7. Because of it, he’s on high alert. And so, he hears something that doesn’t sound normal. Photo’s being made, as well as footsteps only alive people can make, however as Frank tries to sneakily look what’s going on, he doesn’t see anyone.

Thus, he quickly thought up a plan. One where he can confront however is following him. He heads to the back of the plaza, pass the toilets and to the staircase. He uses it to get to the next floor, and arrive at hallway, hiding against the wall to jump on however it is. He focuses on the entry way, waiting for a few seconds. He hears quiet footsteps that comes closer. Soon enough, a man enters the hallway, not aware of Frank’s presence, who is behind him.

“Hey-”

The man jumps and let out a scream. Within an instance, he grabs his taser from his belt and begin using it on Frank. However he soon stops, though the damage has been done, with the journalist spacing around and falling on the ground.

“Holy shit! Why did you do that?”

Frank glares up to the stranger, still recovering from the attack. “I can say the s-same about you.” He can still feel the electricity through his body.

The stranger puts his taser back and offers a hand, one that Frank accepts. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stun you.”

“But stalking is?”

“I wasn’t stalking.” The stranger defends himself. “I was just doing my job, just like you West.”

Frank didn’t expect him to know him. “You know me?”

“Yeah. We’re colleagues after all, and you got quiet a reputation.” The man offers a hand for Frank to shake. “Name is Y/N L/N. Independent journalist.”

Frank accepts his hand but is still cautious about him. “Nice to meet you, but you forgot to tell me why you were following me.”

“Well, like you, I’m searching for the truth. I look around the place for any clue, only to discover you. Since I just arrived, I expected you to have a better idea what’s going on. So I just follow you and if there was a chance you were going to die and grabbing the left over scraps and continue searching.” Y/N explains, feeling no remorse for his actions.

“In other words, you’re a vulture?” Frank gives him a tired look.

“Isn’t that how life works? Someone dies, and someone else pick up the leftover pieces.”

Frank let out a sigh. “I can tell you’re going to be a hassle.”

“I won’t.” Y/N respond. “I got enough self-defense training. I killed plenty zombies. Speaking of which, before entering the mall, I did research into them.”

These intrigues Frank. “Anything useful?”

 “Some. But you gotta give me credits.” Y/N demands. He’s quick to grab his notepad to look at his notes. “Let’s see. They love eating human meat.”

“Wow. What a revelation.” Frank says without a joy.

“They look like they don’t have pain. The brain is the weakest parts. Any amputation doesn’t seem to be bothering them. Oh! And they have these insects in them.” Y/N grabs a glass jar from his pocket, showing the parasite alive, making Frank uncomfortable. “I think these little guys are the source of the zombies. Not sure how though. If only I could test on people…”

Y/N gives an interested look to Frank, who look deadpanned at him. “No.”

“Well, I won’t force you.” Y/N shrugs and continues to look at the parasite. “Maybe another time Mr. Wexler.”

“You give it a name…?”

“Yep. I’m constantly under stress, and I learned to look things at the bright side. Might as well have some fun with the little things.”

Frank sighs. “This man…” He put his hand on his temple, only to remove it and look back at his colleague. “Look, maybe it’s better if-” He stops talking as Y/N continues focusing on the wasp. “Put that thing away.” Without question, Y/N did so. “Look, whatever you heard about me, you can’t compare it to whatever is going on here. And I’m not sure you’re a fan, or just a guy doing his job, but you can’t expect me to know how to properly handle this. So I give you two options, although I know you chose a certain one. First, I bring you to the safehouse, where your safe and bring you info.”

“And where I can’t do my job. I take the second option.”

“You don’t even know what it is.” Frank argues back.

“And?”

Frank let out a tired sigh. “Or you come with me, watch each other’s back and get the scoops together.” He put out his hand. “I’m guessing you take the second offer. So, you’re in?”

With a wide smile without any hint of fear, Y/N accepts his hand. “I sure am.”

-

Somehow, to Frank’s surprise, he managed to work well with Y/N. He’s not as incompetent as his odd character seem to be. With his help, he manages to find the truth about the outbreak of Willamette. If only they knew they were going to it again, 5 years later at a place they didn’t expect it to be, Fortune City in Nevada.

And so, now without his buddy at his side, Frank investigates whoever caused this outbreak, entering Uranus Zone. From the camera’s, he saw together with Stacey one of her fellow CURE members, going to the bathroom with a captive. And so, once he enters the zone, he’s ready to push his way through the zombies and towards Brandon, though what he didn’t expect to see an old face he hasn’t seen in years.

“Y/N?” Frank enters a militances room, seeing the other journalist stich something up together.

The man looks back to see him. He instantly smiles. “Frankie! It’s good to see you.”

“You too, even if it’s again in an outbreak.” Frank tiredly adds the later parts. “You’re here to investigate this whole ordeal?”

“Yep. You?”

“Well, I originally went here for vacation, but plans changed.” Frank let out a huff. “Speaking of, last time we made a pretty sweet duo. Ready for a second time?”

“Depends.” Y/N answers. “What’s up with that clip Channel 6 showed?”

“It’s fake.” Frank replies, still mad that however behind this would smear his reputation.

“I know. I just wanted to hear it from you.” The journalist shows a shit-eating grin. “And it was pretty obvious. By the way the face has been covered, to the body type. They could’ve just give the outfit to someone larger.”

“Gee, thanks for the complements.” Frank scoffs, though he doesn’t sound offended since he doesn’t care much.

“Hey, I don’t meant it as an insult. I still think you look handsome, even if you have a bit more to love.” Y/N defends himself, but it doesn’t help.

“I rather want you to call me fat than ‘more to love’. And can we get pass about my appearance. There are better things we can do.”

“Oh yeah.” Y/N is easy to shrug off the small discussion. “Wait, what we’re talking about?”

Frank knows he’s doing this on purpose. “Us teaming up. Remember?”

“Yeah. That sounds good.” Y/N agrees to the idea. “I almost got shredded by a tiger and killed by an alcoholic biker. It appears psychos are here as well, sadly. And I prefer not dying anytime soon.”

“Sure thing. I’m not going to let you die anything soon.” Frank assures. “Now, are we going to go? Or do you want to comment about my appearance again?”

“Sure. I think you looked pretty cute back at Willamette, but you looked like you aged 20 years or something.” Frank looks deadpanned at Y/N, who continues talking. “I know a great therapist. We can go together after we’re done. Sounds fun, doesn’t?”

Frank sighs. “I should’ve seen this coming.”

-

After several hours and days later, and the truth behind the Fortune City outbreak has been uncovered, with the discovery that Phenotrans and Tyrone King was behind it all. With their motivation creating more Zombrex and money.

After the discovery and the death of their member, Stacey Forsythe, Phenotrans will be dealt with after the journalists exposes the truth. That leaves TK, however as Frank arrived back at the safehouse, he discovers that the culprit is gone. However, what he soon discovers that he escaped and kidnapped Y/N. In order to save him, he needs to do many tedious tasks just to please TK.

After collecting everything, he headed to the arena, only to get knocked out and get put in an arena, with his opponent, TK. Even without his weapons, Frank could beat him easily. However, there is a twist. Y/N life is on the line, as he’s dangling on the rope that slowly descends to the zombie filled ground.

During the fight, Y/N felt anxious that his life would end, as he continues to go down, only to be lifted up, and then again go down. He can only ears the fighting that is going up the platform, but the journalist has no idea who’s winning.

That’s when he hears screaming. He quickly snaps his view upon however makes the sound. That’s when he sees TK falling with vast speed, as he saw him alive on one point, only to splatter dead by the other second. Y/N immediately feels relieved as he knows Frank won, and as Y/N almost reached the zombies, he gets lifted up.

After a few seconds, Y/N sees Frank lifting up the crane and once he’s safe, the journalist swiftly gets to him to help him get out. Once he’s freed, the odd reporter is quick to give a thankful hug towards the older man. Frank looks surprised at first, only to hug him back.

“It’s alright. It’s over.”

Y/N continues to hug him tightly. “Thank you, Frank.”

“You’re alright?”

“Besides the new trauma, I’m fine.” Y/N cracks up a forced joke. The two stops hugging to talk further. “I owe you my life.”

“Don’t sweat about it. I’m just glad that bastard didn’t kill you.” If TK did so, then Frank would sure give him a death worse than he got.

Y/N smiles happily. “We’re done here, right?”

“Yes. We got all the evidence we need to put out the truth to the world, again.” Frank answers. “I’m not sure what to do next to be honest. Guess I’m back to life out my crappy celebrity life.” He says with disdain in his voice.

“Wow, it sounds like you got a rough 5 years.”

“Feels like a decade to be honest.” He tiredly says.

“I just know what you need. Get away from the zombie life and do something fun.”

“Such as?”

“Dunno. Getting a date.”

Frank chuckles. “Dunno. I think it’s pass my time to find a genuine relationship.”

“Nonsense.” Y/N disagrees. “You just think that way just because you’re depressed.” Frank can’t help but laugh, though knowing it’s partly true. “You just need to find the right person. Hell, I can be the right person.”

“You think we should date?” Frank questions.

“Yeah, why not? We’re both around the same age. Got the same job. We get along well and whenever you feel down about the past, I will always get you, since I has been there with you.”

Frank thinks about it, only to smirk. “Why the hell not?” He holds his hand out to allow Y/N to grab it. “I know a five-star restaurant we can go to, my pay.”

“Sweet.” Y/N accepts his hand. Both men begin walking towards the exit and their way to escape Fortune City. “We’re going to be a great couple. I know so many things we can do together.”

“Like?”

“I like to gamble without the zombies one time.” “How romantic.” Frank sarcastically responds. “Maybe dating some weirdo like you would do something good to my health.”

[seat-safety-switch]

Our ancestors never had to deal with software bugs. Their society was slower, sure, but it didn't fall apart. What we live in now is the equivalent of owning a house where you're warned not to flush two toilets at the same time, or the natural gas pipeline will explode.

There's two schools of thought on software bugs. The first one is that that you should notice them early, and be really loud about it. Don't let those bugs get away. Lots of other people think that they should go with more of a drunken-master kung-fu approach. Notice the bugs, sure. Document the bugs. And then roll with them, just don't let it bother you too much. Will one person in a million have a really bad day because stuff doesn't quite work properly this evening and it just sort of fails silently? Yeah, but you can't make everyone happy.

Given my predilection towards tolerating imperfect cars, homes, electronics, and universe, you would think that I'd be solidly in the second camp. Life is messy, right? The thing is, computers are meant to be a special, private universe of mathematical perfection. They're supposed to do what you tell them, even if what you tell them isn't what you meant to tell them. So when things don't go right, it's sort of like if you put two Lego blocks together and then they caught fire, rather than making part of a Gundam's dick. How dare you oppose me in this, the realm I have created for you?

I am learning to let go of things, though. For instance, I no longer smash errant computers into a million pieces. That amount of unreasonable violence is saved only for printers.

[dragon-business]

Start of Kiwami 2: Majima is free, Kiryu is depressed

So, in Majima's pre-kiwami 2 story we learn that anonymous guys from Togo decided to ask around and get people to send some money to Kiryu. Increasing sums over the span of time… and we don't know if Kashiwagi had a hand in this, but he was worried about Kiryu's perspectives after leaving Tojo again.

Majima, sending Kiryu money: Hah, this is kinda pathetic how eager I am to do it… I wish to see his surprised face tho, would be nice. Or just to see his face. Dang, I gotta end this through with a joke, it's getting too sappy.

Yeah, of course, Majima diligently transferred the payments, but the ever increasing amounts of them, and the wording of the letters really made us think that… barely anyone besides him contributed to this cause. Like. This was enough support money to live more or less comfortably with Kiryu working part time as a garbage collector.

– And yes. RGGO explains that during the year-long gap between kiwami and kiwami 2 Kiryu did exactly that. Worked at his part-time job, cared for Haruka, and… nothing else, apparently. Just imagine him coming home, chatting with Haruka a bit and then sitting in his tiny room, dissociating. Not thinking about how Reina and Shingi are dead. Not thinking about the fact that Yumi is dead (how he failed to protect her again). That Nishiki is gone, and it's unclear when he will be back again, if ever (we sent him to prison here). And this is not even touching the whole thing with Kazama.

Man sucker punched Kiryu's view of himself and his life choices one last time before kicking the bucket. And Kiryu might’ve forgiven him in the moment, because what else can you do when the man is dying and you've been hit with the life altering revelation you literally have no time to process. But living with this knowledge afterwards? Realising what it can do to Nishiki? What it is doing to you?

So yeah, Kiryu was very depressed, and very closed off from the world for a bit there. And it lasted up until the events of Kiwami 2 started, and got him out of the room, and made him enjoy life even.

(In our version of the story, events of almost all games take way longer time than in canon. For instance, plot of Kiwami 2 spans about 7 months, and ends, like in canon, at winter)

Majima, without knowing, was sponsoring his lonely depression streak there. Even canon confirms that Kiryu dropped contact with almost everyone at that time. But Majima didn't go out of his way to stay in touch with Kiryu either. At least at first. He had a lot to deal with and process after Shimano's death. About himself, his life, about Kiryu and what he means to him. Majima's whole life got turned around. So, naturally, he needed some space. From Kiryu especially. 

– But then months went by. And even more of them. Majima sent Kiryu gift money (not knowing he's the only one doing so), gifted him his special knife, thought about him, missed him. Majima got closure with Makoto, finally letting that piece of his soul heal. Then he left Tojo, because it was the best decision at the time, and Majima's still the best manager. He became truly, actually free – with legal business and all of his boys with him. A lot of stuff happened.

So yeah, sure, Majima was doing his own thing for a bit there, and then so much time passed it seemed a bit awkward to make contact. But also, all this time Kiryu was right there in Tokio. And didn't even send a word to Majima. Nothing at all. After everything, he just dropped off the face of the earth.

And it's not like Majima is bitter about it or hurt. Oh no. He's deeply indifferent and passionately doesn't care. And everyone should remember that, if they don't want a special boink on their safety helmet, and the reassignment to toilet cleaning duty.

– So, when Kiryu decided to finally show up out of the blue, wanting something from Majima no less, with all of his "I need you", "you are someone I can trust". Of course Majima played it super cool and indifferent at first. And of course he made Kiryu fight him.

And did you notice that he finally really smiled only after that fight? Did you notice how Majima immediately gave in, and forgave Kiryu right there on the spot afterwards? Did your heart also missed a bit at that moment?

– before / navigation / next

[shkatzchen]

~Update!~

Hello all!

I haven't been posting much content of late, but I have been working on a good deal. While I'm not well-educated in any of the various areas that are useful for this particular hobby (meshing, 2d image manipulation, or coding), I've made some great progress recently. I upgraded from Paint/Paint 3D to using GIMP, which has expanded what I can do significantly. I've also gained experience with Blender, including the management of uv maps and matching them to textures.

One of my favorite projects of late was converting the extremely talented Cashcraft's Danbury Regency and Your Grace Regency Sets from TS3, with a few alterations. For instance, Cashcraft made the dressing table and mirror sections separately, and the mirror was not functional. I wanted to make it a single piece and have it function like a vanity from Vintage Glamour. This became a much simpler prospect when I could sort the UV maps out so they didn't overlap as I could then join the mirror and desk instead of needing them separate.

I used them here in the Violet Boudoir of my Hotel de Charost build, along with another chaise lounge also converted from Cashcraft's TS3 work. [BTW, does anyone know her TOU? I can't find anything on TSR and I don't have an account there to message her directly. I'd love to share the conversions and recolors I've done so others can use them too, but I don't want to step on anyone's toes.]

I do have some other projects I absolutely can share and will soon. I have a few modifications of the Draping Palace Single from Seasons in the works geared to make it look a little more historical. However, my favorite project that I'm currently working on is a close stool so that my historical sims have better period-appropriate toilet options. I have a few kinks to work out, but it's going well.

Happy Simming all!

[beardedmrbean]

In response to mounting criticism, some public places in Finland have chosen to revert their unisex toilets to separate facilities for men and women.

One of those is the Rewell shopping centre in Vaasa. About six years ago, the business introduced gender-neutral restrooms with the aim to aid inclusivity and save space.

Critical feedback started soon accumulating, particularly from women, prompting the return of gender symbols on the shopping centre's restroom doors in August 2022.

"The feedback, mainly from female customers, was that not all visitors were keeping the restrooms tidy. Hence, we reintroduced the gender division," said Susanna Spak, the CEO of Rewell.

She explained that now some stalls are designated for women, some for men, and one stall remains gender-neutral, alongside an accessible restroom.

The spread of gender-neutral unisex toilets in Finland accelerated rapidly after the amendment of the Equality Act in 2015, which aimed to prevent discrimination based on gender, gender identity, and gender expression.

Despite their increasing number, unisex toilets have sparked mixed reactions. While some places have made changes based on feedback, new gender-neutral restrooms continue to be introduced.

Unisex toilets receive both praise and criticism

In the case of Tampere University Hospital, the negative feedback from users resulted in the hospital reverting its public toilets to separate men's and women's facilities.

Despite this, the new Oulu Hospital, which is being partially designed by the same architectural firms as the Tampere Hospital, has chosen to incorporate gender-neutral restrooms with shared vestibules marked with gender-neutral symbols, along with single-occupancy restrooms.

The Helsinki Central Library Oodi, completed in 2018, has also retained its gender-neutral toilets despite criticism – which has been steadily fading.

"In June, we received one piece of feedback regarding the gender-neutral restrooms, while there were none in May and April. The restrooms have not been changed based on the feedback. We inform those who inquire that Oodi also provides single-occupancy restrooms, and all of them are gender-neutral," Kari Lämsä, Oodi's service manager, said.

Why do gender-neutral restrooms provoke such debate and strong emotions?

Most critics of gender-neutral restrooms highlighted the untidiness of the shared spaces.

Messiness was the primary reason for customer dissatisfaction, even though the restrooms are cleaned eight times a day, Spak from the Rewell shopping centre pointed out.

"Since the change, I haven't personally heard any negative feedback, so I believe the current solution pleases everyone. We recently renovated all the restroom surfaces, which makes cleaning easier," Spak said.

Some women also expressed feeling unsafe or uncomfortable in unisex restrooms; for example, some said applying makeup can be awkward when a man is washing his hands nearby.

Hanno Airas, CEO of Novosan, a company specialising in public toilets and baby-changing facilities, said he has encountered a lot of "toilet shame" in his work. He explained that a surprising number of people suffer from shy bladder, feel embarrassed by restroom sounds, and experience shame and insecurity in public restrooms. Suitable toilet design should also include consideration for different cultures and nationalities; for instance, gender-neutral restrooms may not be without challenges from religious perspectives.

Airas also acknowledged the criticism regarding the cleanliness of gender-neutral restrooms.

"If there are only stalls in the restroom, they can be quite messy. Some men are accustomed to using urinals while standing, and now that they use stalls standing up, urine may splash onto the toilet seat. This quickly creates a very dirty feeling," Airas explained.

"Everyone should have access to safe restroom facilities"

The Equality Ombudsman regularly receives reports of cases where discrimination is suspected based on gender identity or expression, according to Senior Inspector Päivi Lehto.

These cases can include situations where individuals belonging to gender minorities have been denied the use of dressing facilities that align with their identity.

"At the moment, we have very limited legislation that takes gender diversity into account in gender-segregated spaces and services. The Equality Ombudsman has to assess individual situations on a case-by-case basis," said Lehto.

Last spring, the Equality Ombudsman recommended to the parliament that the law should explicitly address how gender diversity is considered in dressing and sanitation facilities.

The matter is now being actively promoted during the new government's term.

Lehto pointed out that individuals whose gender is unquestioned may not be aware of the challenges faced by gender minority individuals on a daily basis.

"The positive aspect of unisex facilities is that one's gender doesn't have to be defined at the restroom door, potentially avoiding negative attention," Lehto said.

Lehto stressed that safe restroom facilities are a right for everyone, including those from different cultural and religious backgrounds.

"When updating legislation, we must take into account the equality and equal opportunity principles, ensuring that new construction provides inclusive and safe spaces for all," Lehto noted.

She also emphasised that sexual and gender-based harassment is prohibited by equality laws, and any such cases must be addressed promptly.

Examples of good unisex toilets exist

Not all gender-neutral toilets are criticised. According to Airas, the right spatial division is crucial.

For instance, urinals can be made available for men, but they should be separated from the rest of the restroom. Airas cited public sauna Löyly's unisex restroom in Helsinki as a successful example, where urinals are discreetly separated from the main area by saloon doors.

Enhancing comfort can also involve providing good sound insulation and sound design within restroom stalls, as restroom sounds can be embarrassing for some. Background music or soundscapes in the restroom can help mask these sounds.

Airas suggested that in large unisex restroom areas, there could be separate single-user restrooms. It is essential to carefully consider the overall picture.

"If we want unisex restrooms, we must consider the perspectives of everyone: children, young people, people from different nationalities, religions, genders, and ages. Suddenly, what seemed like a simple issue becomes very complex," Airas noted.