#gesture clues

[unloneliest]

in the lonely hearts club job leverage asks the question "does romantic love exist?" and answers it by having eliot buy parker a venus fly trap on hardison's behalf, expecting no recognition and revealing eliot remembers a throwaway comment parker made on their second job together.

we all know this.

but was anybody going to tell me hardison already had a browser window open looking for restaurants to buy eliot in portland in response at the start of the episode immediately after that? or was i supposed to figure it out on a rewatch all by myself?!

[themissingnumbers]

[ @pkmn-monochrome - interaction thing i can't send as an ask bc long and images]

The dark of the Pokemon tower is never something that has bothered Red. Never something that would, certainly not after seeing much worse and being much older.

At this point, really, it's a kind of eeriness he'd come to miss. It reminds him of simpler times- days when a young boy only had to fear things like ghost stories, and shadows that lurked in the dark.

He knows very well that this place is not the Pokemon Tower he knew, of course. He's not stupid. This place was only built in its image, the miserable ending of a game dyed in grey and built out of spite.

He runs a hand along the wall of the staircase he descends, feeling the cold stone, yet also the intangible data, dull static and code under the fingertips. Watches in quiet fascination as the textures distort and corrupt under deliberate contact, the broken foundations of Generation 1 reacting to him, (same as always,) but a touch more stable from the fusion of the bastard remakes keeping it grounded.

Any damage caused is meaningless, the existence of it debatable as a whole, as he passes through a loading zone. Half of him watches everything fade to black, the other half just continues down the steps that are as tangible as anything else here is to someone within the game. Everything is right- just as it should be.

Either way, it's not like it's his game to break. That would be plain rude, especially with the risk of killing someone!

Intrigue in this world, curious as it may be, isn't why he's here.

Nah. He's more interested in something else.

Or, someone, to be more precise.

Having finally found who he'd looking for, Red steps off the stairs and into another layer of this endless graveyard, whistling as he finally lays eyes on a certain monochromatic individual.

"Y'know..." he chides from across the room, "A graveyard's a pretty cliche place to spend eternity, don't you think?"

He snorts at his own remark. "Course, I guess it's not like you had a choice. The sadsack that made this game could've picked something a little more outside the box, is all I'm saying. Do you think they'd bury bodies in the Viridian Forest, maybe? Or swimming offa Route 20, try a little watery grave... Oh, Champion's Road could be pretty morbid!"

He sighs and folds his arms, shaking his head at himself.

"... Nah, I'm joking. I can see the vision. I could give less of a shit about this place, anyways..."

His eyes gleam, and a menacing smile spreads across his face.

"I'm more interested in you. A glorified reskin of Pokemon Tower ain't shit compared to you. A little bug told me about some sentient Red-Leaf kinda amalgamation with the memories of a real person, and I just had to look into it and come to see for myself. Lo and behold..."

He spreads his arms out in some kind of almost-mocking grand gesture.

"Here you are! Cody, right? In the flesh, or... I suppose your problem is the lack thereof, heh."

He begins to approach, moving slowly and never once looking away. He stalks forward, every step careful and deliberate, teeth bared in a grin that holds no happiness but oozes with amusement.

"I've got so many questions, I don't even know where to begin. You're really something special... One of a kind, fully aware of everything. Knowing what life both here, and out there, is really like. I've seen players that would kill to even get a chance to stand where we do, but... You want out more than anything."

Scratching his chin, the man walks around them at a slight distance. Red gets the thought that Cody wouldn't want something like him anywhere near them. At least he can respect that.

"Suppose the courteous thing would be to ask a question- that's the tradition around these parts, right? Constantly interrogating you so you don't have to sit here, alone with your..."

His eyes flicker to the two GHOSTs at Cody's side.

"... Thoughts. And the like."

He hops onto a grave nearby, sitting with his ankles crossed. Respect towards the dead be damned, every tomb in places like this were about as sacred as Halloween decorations.

"Here's what I'd like to know, Cody."

His smile widens further- for a brief moment, the glitches on his body seem to spread to the air around him, cutting through the gray with burning streaks of red, white, and yellow.

"You have your hacker's memories. Some of them. ANY of them. It's enough. You'd know what it was like to be them. You know what it was like to be human. You know both worlds."

"What is it like? To be real? To be something more than code. How different is it from this?"

"What was it like to be HUMAN?"

He jabs a finger forward, pointing at them as the static that flared up around him quickly subsides, clearing the air back into the typical oppressive atmosphere of the endless graveyard.

"I want to hear it from you," he finishes cooly, "someone who has been on both sides of the screen. You could tell me better than anyone."

[deliriuxe]

Insecte...

[whatudottu]

How could you. HOW COULD YOU! You know EXACTLY how much time he spent Crafting himself to become the person he can at least begin to tolerate, begin to identify as himself, to proudly label as ISABEAU! You broke it, your his face, that stupid face that makes you so so SO CRABBING FURIOUS! SO VIOLENT! SO! UNRELENTINGLY! JEALOUS! And now you've Changed him, with your rage, with your anger; like the Universe Changed you. For the worse. Your bleeding Pincushion. You dig your fist into his nose. Blood on your hands.

*grinding my teeth* God god god I have become obsessed with Quin (to quote it, "I'm a mannequin without the man[ne]") and how on a scale of love to hate in the loopified party, Quin and Isabeau are worse together than Siffrin and Loop :P

Here's a post-quin fight where Isa is guaranteed to lose and guaranteed to get his nose broken, good thing if there's ever any sprite edits I wouldn't have to have two different Act 6 portrait sets :)

[aceonn]

uh guys

anybody there??

HELLO??

[marcusagrippa]

collective violence and sacrifice in shakespeare's julius caesar, rené girard

[blackvelvetofnight]

thinking again about that trixie mattel quote that's like people can clock a gay man at twenty paces but the most masc dyke walks up to them and they're like 'oh shes different. she likes overalls'

[lesbiankoby]

i really am invested in that one au where minato's rushed seal accidentally killed naruto (the boy) and kurama (the fox) (inadvertently fused with the body-cage) grew up, memory-less and oblivious in naruto-the-boys place, because i do think of that often

[pocketgalaxies]

"the job that i had before i met up with you guys, information passes through. you hear things."

"what job?"

"i worked at a library.......the cobalt soul library."

"what's that, what's a cobalt soul"

". it is a faction of monks."

"...what kind of a faction of monks?"

"......????"

[favvnsongs]

rvb introduced the bodily/psychological horror of poor private jimmy being a prisoner in his own body and puppeted around by a pissy ai who doesn't Know he's in someone else's body and his only fucking freedom from that was being blown up ;___; and then literally they never revisited that concept again

[catboygirljoker]

working on his character ref for khoc week has got Boy on my mind so im gonna Boypost

trying to imagine lamia in a relationship with anybody who isnt That Old Man is really funny to me because like. when i sat down to figure out who lamia was, i asked myself the question, "what kind of person not only could be in a relationship with xigbar, but would benefit from being in a relationship with xigbar, and would benefit xigbar to be in a relationship with"

and that kind of person is so hyper specialized that trying to put him in a relationship with a normal well-adjusted person is like trying to take one of those giant tube worms that live near boiling hot hydrothermal vents, and putting it in, like, a sunny meadow.

every other person lamia's tried to date has either abused him, tried to fix (or "fix") him, or been completely put off by one of his many idiosyncracies. and even if a potential partner were able to "do everything right", i think lamia would still chicken out on them because he cant deal with people being nice or affectionate to him in conventional ways.

like ive designed this guy to be an extremophile, hes not gonna be able to survive anywhere but the caustic soda salt lake i designed him to live in

[monty-glasses-roxy]

Horsies in the Plex if Roxy is a horse lover before she knows they've ever existed here is really good honestly. She's off exploring, finding random horse themed things and immediately drops what she's doing to run over to Vanessa with it like "LOOK WHAT I FOUND!!!" cause Vanessa also likes horsies and is the reason Roxy likes them so much in the first place.

Like it starts with a prop horseshoe or something. Then she's finding plushies and building a little collection of them, making sure to give Vanessa one every time she finds a new one. Then she finds a random ass saddle or a bunch of prop hay bales or something. A bridle. Some bit pieces. A harness for a wagon. The wagon itself. Horse action figures. Whatever else. She's been excited about every single thing she's found so far and wonders how much more there is to find...

Opens a new storage room door and she finds actual fucking horses. Deactivated, dusty as hell, animatronic horsies.

Fucking grabs Vanessa and takes off running into areas Vanessa is absolutely not allowed to be in at all to show her all the horsies sndjjd like "VANESSAA!!! THERE'S HORSES!!!! NESSA HORSES ARE REAL!!! THEY REALLY EXIST NESSA LOOOOK!!!!"

[dreamofstarlight]

It’s good that William is doing something but I’d like it if KP named what the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East is bc it’s very vague to just say “human impact of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East”. Where is the crisis happening? Why is there a crisis? BE SPECIFIC!

[dooxliss]

ADHD 🎉

[thesecondlaw]

two android girls sparring for their owner/wife because they have a praise kink only for them both to get a treat of running obedience training code while being told how to play with each other and getting point rewards that are equivalent to dopamine when they do good

your mind is such a powerful place. i want to stay here longer

[katierosefun]

the last of us seems like an excellent show but i fear i can’t watch it bc tell me why i watched the first 30 minutes of episode 1 last night and then immediately had the most fucked up zombie dreams