#going counterclockwise we have here:

[chiropteracupola]

some napoleonic men + dragons

[brokenmenswhore]

potions | regulus black

pairing: regulus black x fem!reader

summary: regulus invites his potions partner over to his family home to “help her practice”

warnings: DUBCON (MDNI 18+), choking, smut, rough sex

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When Regulus invited you into his home to use his in-house potions lab, you were suspicious. Regulus always had a darkness to him, and as your potions partner, he was never cruel to you, but he wasn’t the type to make such a kind gesture.

You accepted, knowing you could really use the extra practice. Regulus was talented at potions, and you felt bad that you were barely any help in class. As strange as it may be, you figured some extra time would benefit you, and Regulus could teach you and thing or two, if he felt kind enough to do so.

“Come on in,” he said, gesturing you through the door.

You smiled as you followed him through the house, the lighting almost as dark as his all-black outfit.

“I keep my potions stuff in here,” he said, pushing open the door to his bedroom.

“In your bedroom?”

“Mhm,” he responded, completely nonchalant about the fact you were in his personal space, while you felt it was a little strange. You didn’t know him too well, though you were attracted to him, and now you were only a few feet away from his bed.

He walked over to the table. “You coming?”

You swallowed and approached him, looking at the large collection of jars and ingredients spread out on the table.

“Should we maybe let your parents know I’m here? That there’s someone else in the house?”

Regulus chuckled. “The only other person here is my brother.”

“Sirius is here?”

Regulus shot you a look. You and Sirius had a weird past- you hooked up a few times at parties, you caught feelings and he didn’t, and you never spoke again. It was all ancient history, but you still tried to avoid being around him at all costs.

“Why does it matter?” Regulus asked.

“It doesn’t,” you spoke in a small voice, drifting your attention to the table, “so? What first?”

“Figured we could maybe just make sure you’re set on ingredients,” Regulus said. Everything he said was so dry, low, and monotone, and it sometimes made conversation hard.

“I think I’m comfortable with the ingredients side of things,” you told him.

“You’re not.”

You furrowed your brow and looked at him. “Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes I am!” you fought, “I know my own skill levels, Regulus.”

“I don’t think you do.”

He was so nonchalant about everything, reorganizing ingredients and setting up potion recipes as he spoke, as if anything he said didn’t matter.

You sighed and gave up fighting it, letting him take control and decide where to go from here. There was no point in going back and forth on the same thing over and over again.

“How about we just start with Shrinking Solution?” Regulus asked.

“Fine by me,” you answered.

Regulus backed away from the table, watching you do nothing. You looked back at him. Did he expect you to just do it?

“Well?” he said, “make the potion.”

You sighed. Sometimes he was so annoying and condescending. You looked at the unlabeled recipe and removed 7 red rose petals from a case of singular petals.

You began to drop them one-by-one in the boiling water. You looked at Regulus, who nodded at you to keep going. “How difficult,” you said sarcastically.

Remus folded his arms in front of his chest, watching you carefully.

You added five drops of essence of violet, stirring counterclockwise exactly twelve times.

“I don’t remember shrinking solution having essence of violet,” you told Regulus.

“Are you claiming my recipes are wrong?”

“No, I’m just saying.” You sighed and continued with the recipe, counting out 4 cloves and prepping canary flight feathers.

He didn’t say a word, just watching you make the potion, until you had completed the instructions.

“I also don’t remember it being pink,” you pouted, looking confused at the pot.

“I could have sworn this potion had daisy roots somewhere-“

“Would you relax?” Regulus questioned.

“Something just feels off about it,” you said, inspecting the liquid.

“Does it smell right?” he asked.

You leaned in and sniffed. The potion smelt like lavender, vanilla, freshly cut grass, and all your favorite smells.

The smell maintained throughout the smoke that you breathed in, overtaking your senses and filling your lungs. “Fuck that smells good,” you giggled.

Regulus crept behind you as silently as he could. When you stood up, he was directly behind you, your back almost banging into his torso.

You spun around to meet his gaze. “Can I help you with something?” you asked.

“I don’t know, can you?”

Your eyes locked for a moment, and you were suddenly overtaken with adoration.

“I think I probably can,” you said, all logic going out the window as the potion took over your emotions, your focus completely on Regulus.

“Atta girl,” he tsked, gripping your waist as he looked down at you. “How you feelin’, pretty girl?”

You were overcome with intense emotion, but you fought to remain grounded in reality. “You motherfucker,” you said, letting Regulus know that you were aware he had you make the wrong potion. This was not Shrinking Solution, this was Amortentia.

“No idea what you’re referring to,” he said.

“You know,” you started, twirling his already wavy hair in your fingers, “you could have just asked if you wanted me.”

“Now could I?” he asked, intrigued and eager to hear you continue talking.

“Mhm.”

“I thought I wasn’t your type.”

“Why?”

“You slept with my brother, did you not?”

Your eyes widened a bit. “And you know that how?”

“He’s my brother,” he said, holding you closer to him, his tone finally lifting to a bit lighter of a place, “and I’ve been keeping tabs on you.”

You giggled. “Have not.”

“I have been,” he admitted, “had to make sure you weren’t fucking anyone who didn’t deserve you.”

“I haven’t been fucking anyone,” you told him honestly.

“I know.”

“You wanna know why?”

His gaze darkened.

You sighed, “the only person I’ve wanted to fuck is standing right in front of me.”

Regulus growled, gripping your waist even harder and pulling you even closer. “Then what did I do all this work for? Getting you over here, the Amortentia, you’re telling me I worked for it for nothing?”

“Maybe,” you giggled, amused at how much thought and planning went into getting you here. You weren’t obvious about your attraction to him, but it couldn’t be that hard to notice.

“I feel drunk on you,” you admitted.

Regulus smiled. You had never ever seen him smile before. You didn’t even know he was capable.

“You’re so pretty when you smile,” you said genuinely, a hand moving upward so you could run a thumb over his cheek.

He couldn’t help himself anymore, he crashed his lips onto yours. Your hand found it’s way to the back of his head, holding him closer. You whimpered into the kiss, desperation overtaking your body. You couldn’t help it, the scent of the potion was still filling the room, and you were consumed in Regulus.

“I want you,” you said in between kisses, eager to finally get what you wanted.

Regulus didn’t break the kiss or loosen his grip on your waist, but instead inched you closer and closer to the bed. You felt the back of your knees hit the mattress, and you jumped up, attempting to land on the mattress, but Regulus caught you, forcing you to wrap your legs around his waist.

He leaned over you, your back touching the mattress as you kept your legs around Regulus. He remained standing, the small of your back at the edge of the side of the bed.

Regulus finally broke the kiss, running his hands all over your body and inspecting every single inch of you. “I’m gonna make you scream so loud that Sirius will realize what he’s missing.”

You couldn’t help it, you started laughing. Your heightened emotions won, and the more you tried to stay quiet, the more hysterical your laugh became.

Regulus slapped your thigh. “What the fuck is so funny?”

“You.”

“Shut up,” Regulus demanded, kissing you to distract you from the hysterics in your brain. You melted back into him, forgetting why you were even laughing in the first place.

You were still having too much fun to let him win so easy, and you liked watching him work for it. “Make me.”

Regulus cocked his head to the side. “What did you just say?”

A giggle threatened to leave your lips. “I said make me.”

A hand suddenly squeezed around your throat, not completely cutting off your breath, but stopping your giggling.

Regulus flashed you a wicked smile. “That seemed to work, didn’t it?”

“Y-yes,” you squeaked out.

Regulus moved a hand in between your bodies, cupping your heat from on top of your underwear. You inhaled sharply, desperate for any sort of friction.

Regulus tucked his fingers into the band of your underwear, collecting your wetness with his middle finger as he traced it in between your folds. A sigh of pleasure escapes your lips, and Regulus watched your face intently.

You thought he was going to continue on like this, slowly working you up until you were ready for him, but Regulus had other ideas. Without warning, he shoved two long fingers inside of you, his palm resting on your clit and circling, as his fingers pumped in and out of you.

Your body responded, back arching off the bed, a hand still around your throat. You squirmed a bit, unable to stay still from the sensation.

Regulus watched your chest rise and fall as your back arched and fell, his cock hardening as he watched what he did to you.

He curled his fingers, hitting that gummy sweet spot within you, causing your walls to convulse around his fingers. “That’s it, pretty girl,” he cooed, “come for me.”

His words undid you, the coil of tension within you breaking as you came on his fingers, whines and whimpers constantly filling the room as you calmed down from your high. He pulled his fingers out of you, never breaking eye contact as he sucked your juices off of them.

Once his fingers were licked clean, he unwrapped your legs from his waist, removing his hand from your throat.

“Stay,” he commanded as he untied his pants, pushing them, along with his underwear, down enough to free his hard and swollen cock.

You let out an audible gasp at the size.

“What? Too much for you?”

“How-“ you didn’t even know what to say, “how is that gonna fit in me?”

“I think you’ll be fine, pretty girl.”

Regulus held his palm in front of your mouth. “Spit.”

You did as he said, and he used your spit to wet his cock, lining up his tip with your entrance.

“You want this?” he asked.

“Yes, Reg,” you replied.

Regulus almost showed you mercy when he heard the nickname, it just sounded so pretty coming from you, but he still didn’t. “Beg for it.”

You nodded your head no in protest.

A hand grabbed your face, pushing your lips out and positioning your head so that you had no choice but to look him in the eye. “Beg. For. It.”

“P-please, Regulus I n-“

Regulus slapped your cheek, hard. You gasped at the pain, almost stunned that he did such a thing.

“Use that pretty little nickname you called me.”

“Please, Reg, I need it, p-please-“

Regulus shoved his length into you, a moan of his name leaving your lips.

“Fuck, Y/N,” Regulus growled, setting a steady pace as he pumped in and out of you. He tugged at the bottom of your dress. “Off.”

You did your best to pull your dress off without interrupting his pace, struggling for a minute but eventually succeeding. Regulus leaned in and bit at your bra strap, snapping it back onto your body. He kisses the top of your breasts, shoving your nipples out of the cups, his tongue immediately sucking on one of them.

“Fuck!” you cried out, the pleasure of his mouth on your breasts and his cock splitting you open, and the scent of the potion still filled your nose, almost feeling like too much.

“Louder,” he demanded, serious when he said he would make you scream so loud that Sirius could hear you.

“Fuck, Reg!” you screamed at the top of your lungs, his pace quickening as you did so.

“Good girl,” he praised.

He sucked a sweet spot on your neck, your head rolling to the side to give him even more access.

He was slamming into you, the bed squeaking as your body rocked back and forth. Your legs were weak as they fell off the side of the bed, but Regulus didn’t want the position to change. He grabbed both of your legs, positioning them over his shoulders and fucking into you even deeper.

You squeaked and whined, not even capable of any genuine moans anymore.

“You gonna come again, huh? All over my cock?” Regulus gasped out.

“Mhm.”

“Words, pretty girl.”

“Y- yes!” you squealed, your high hitting you again as you squeezed his cock, a groan leaving Regulus’s mouth as he fucked you while you came, pace never faltering as you attempted to come down from your high.

Regulus was still chasing his own, his lips enveloping yours in a heated kiss as he snapped his hips as fast as he could until he came inside of you, erratic breaths and sighs spilling into the kiss.

“Fuck,” he said, running his fingers through his hair that was sweat slicked and falling in front of his face.

“God, I needed that,” you said, attempting to catch your breath as Regulus laid down next to you.

Regulus didn’t respond, he just stared at the ceiling, calming himself down.

“Reg?” you asked.

“Mhm?”

“You didn’t bring me here just to fuck me and piss your brother off, right?” you asked.

Regulus turned to you. “Do you think that low of me?”

“No. I’m just curious,” you explained.

“No, I didn’t bring you here to piss my brother off,” he answered, “it’s just a massive, massive plus.” He rolled over the placed a kiss on your lips.

[ultravioletbrit]

“chill” - Jegulus microfic - @into-the-jeggyverse - 331 words

Regulus breathes a sigh of relief. After two hours working with James on this Potions project they’re down to the last few steps.

“…Once boiling, stir ten times counterclockwise.” James reads and Regulus stirs.

“Remove from heat and cast a cooling charm.” James continues and Regulus does as instructed.

“Allow potion to chill for three hours; stirring four times, clockwise, every twelve minutes—"

“Do what?” Regulus cuts James off.

“Allow potion to chill for—"

“I heard you, Potter.” Regulus snaps. “We have to stir every twelve minutes? That means we’re stuck here for three hours.” He grumbles.

“Not necessarily.” James says.

“Yes, it does. You can’t do anything in twelve minutes. By the time we would leave we’d have to turn around and come right back.” Regulus complains.

“First of all, there are a lot of things we could do in twelve minutes.” James grins.

“You’re finished in less than twelve minutes? I feel so bad for all your partners.” Regulus deadpans.

“That’s not what I meant, but it’s good to know where your head’s at.” James smirks. “What I was going to say was, we don’t both have to stay. I can stay and finish.” James offers.

Regulus stares at him for a moment. James is giving him an out, he should take it and run. But for some reason, something’s stopping him.

Regulus huffs and crosses his arms. “Well, what things were you talking about then? That we can do in twelve minutes?” Regulus tries to sound nonchalant.

James smirks again. “I meant something like exploding snaps or chess.” James pauses. “However, while I’m usually not finished in less than twelve minutes, if you had something else in mind, I’m sure we could get creative.” James lifts a suggestive eyebrow.

Regulus glares at him for a moment then sighs. “I guess we could play chess.” He rolls his eyes.

So, while the potion chills, they play chess, they play exploding snaps, and by the second hour they do in fact… get creative.

[f1cflcfic]

The Prophecy (SMAU ft. Lando Norris) Part III

pairing: lando norris x singer!reader (y/n)

summary: what happens after the break-up that noone saw coming? as Y/N L/N gears up to release her next album, each song reveals a little bit of the past, present and future of her relationship with Lando Norris. Inspired by a curated playlist built around "The Prophecy".

note: this is RPF and is obviously in no way, shape, or form reflective of real persons.

genre: social media au, angst, exes to lovers, happy ending

part i part ii

♥･*:.｡ ｡.:*･ﾟ♡･*:.｡ ｡.:*･ﾟ♥

Halloween, 2026

1st week of November, 2026

[Transcript of Y/N on the Graham Norton Show]

“Wow, Y/N L/N everybody, with “Jaded” from her new album “the Prophecy” that’s out next week - thank you, that was amazing.”

“Thanks so much, I was so nervous!”

“Nervous?” A giggle ripples through the audience at Graham’s incredulous expression. “Do you really still get nervous?”

“I do, yeah for special performances like this one, or Saturday Night Live in the States – it’s scary to sing on live TV!”

“Now, would you say that’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done?”  Y/N doesn’t answer, just looks on warily. “Because it’s just been Halloween, and I heard that last year’s was particularly scary for you.”

“Yes, but only because I just wasn’t made for Halloween – I hate scary stuff, but have a very insistent slasher loving friend,” Y/N confesses, then moans in embarrassment, hiding behind her hands. “I can’t believe you’re bringing this up Graham, I’m gonna be so uncool after this.”

“It’s okay,” Paul Mescal chimes in from further up the red sofa, “I can’t watch horror or anything like that either.”

With a small, grateful smile, Y/N starts recounting a story. “Right?! But I have this friend who is obsessed, and she’s wanted me to go to a haunted house with her for ages. I fumbled my excuse last year, then got dragged into it. It was awful. I went in holding Sabrina’s hand, but then that traitor let go of me at the very first jumpscare, which was some type of room with this chainsaw guy and then a bunch of creepy people making creepy noises. I tried to grab her hand again and just made a run for it in a blind panic, only to realise halfway down the hall that the creepy noises aren’t stopping and I’m screaming and running even harder. Until there’s a tug on my hand and I turn around, only to realise that I’ve been running through this maze with a death grip on this poor actor’s hand. And he just goes “if I show you the exit, will you take a selfie with me?”, and that’s the one and only time I’ve ever made use of the celebrity card.”

Everyone laughs, which Graham seamlessly uses to pivot to the Red Chair stories. “Let’s see what other entertaining stories we have here today. Tell us, what’s your name and where are you from?”

“Hi, my name’s Vivian and I’m from Glastonbury.”

“Oh, that’s nice! The hallowed festival grounds – is your story related to that at all?”

“It does, actually!”

Graham looks delighted by that, and claps his hands, “oh yes – I can’t wait to hear this. Off you go Vivian”

“So I work as a police officer in Somerset, but I usually take time off for Glastonbury each year, whereas some of my colleagues work security for everyone attending. Y/N was actually performing that year, so I made sure to take time off to watch her set.” It makes Y/N smile, but when she leans in to get a closer look her eyes go wide all of a sudden.

Graham looks over at Y/N questioningly, but motions for Vivian to continue – his hand resting on the lever. 

“I remember showing up to work afterwards, only to find out that my colleagues had been the ones to escort Y/N to and from the festival grounds. I was really bummed about it, jealous they got to meet her. But then earlier this year, around September or so I was on patrol in the area – it was a fairly quiet day on country roads. Until we get closer to this small borough, and there’s someone quite clearly about to drive through a roundabout counterclockwise.”

Y/N sinks into the sofa, trying to disappear. “We signal for the driver to pull over, and when I go up to their vehicle to write them a ticket, I got my moment after all - it turned out to be Y/N.”

“In my defense – I hadn’t driven in the UK for three years, I’m sorry! I paid the ticket!” Y/N says weakly.

The audience laughs, and Y/N cheeks go red from humiliation, but Vivian is quick to corroborate. “She did, and even signed my phone for me.”  

“Alright Vivian, that’s a good story, you can walk, go on then. Reminder everyone tonight in London – be safe on the roads, Y/N is out there!”

2d week of November, 2026

2d week of November - release weekend, 2026

[Daily Mail excerpt] Lando No-Comment-rris refuses to answer questions about ex-girlfriend Y/N L/N as he parties it up in London

As the Formula One driver for McLaren turns yet another year older, the question if he's also gotten any wiser. Norris was photographed entering exclusive club Annabel's, before later making his way to a private afterparty with close friend Martin Garrix.

The driver has been having an eventful F1 season, with a very tight race for the championship that's seemingly going to get decided in the final race, as Norris battles it out to defend his current #1 ranking. The athlete has clearly reaped the benefits of his new and improved lifestyle, which seems to include a strict exercise and mealplanning regimen and very little distractions. However, Norris clearly made an exception for his birthday, as onlookers said he was "taking shots" and "enjoying himself" in the VIP section. Pictured below is Norris, together with friends Martin Garrix and fellow driver Max Verstappen.

Perhaps the night was much needed, as Norris has had to endure a very private break-up becoming very public after the release of Y/N L/N's latest album on his actual birthday. In fact, in a rare twist of fate, both the F1 driver and his ex were spotted in the UK capital over the weekend to mark the occasion. While Norris enjoyed Mayfair, L/N was spotted elsewhere in the city as she performed an acoustic set of "The Prophecy".

The two previously resided in Monaco, but since their break-up have not been seen much in public. Norris is believed to have moved his main residence back to the UK, while L/N is rumoured to have returned to her original residence as well.

Up until now, Norris and L/N have remained tightlipped about their relationship and ensuing breakup. When asked about his feelings on the album's release date, Norris refused to comment. Similarly, he did not want to answer questions as to whether the two had been in touch. In a recent interview on the popular podcast Call Her Daddy, L/N did seem to imply there were no hard feelings between the two. The two do still share mutual friends, as is evident by Martin Garrix congratulating Y/N L/N on her new album in his IG stories earlier this weekend.

We have reached out to their reps for comment.

3d week of November, 2026

♥･*:.｡ ｡.:*･ﾟ♡･*:.｡ ｡.:*･ﾟ♥

part IV can be read here

♥ likes, comments, reblogs are always very much appreciated ♥

taglist (open) : @charlesgirl16

[mistresscitrusslice]

Why does the intro end with Jayce and not the sisters?

Pardon my shitty screenshots. I know I already made a post about the weird things in the intro, but there's even more that I didn't include in that post, and most of it is weird as HELL stuff with Jayce. This whole intro sequence has been weird as hell and I love it.

(I'll put it here since I'm not going to mention it later, but Ekko's first scene in the intro has his shadow as a clock ticking counterclockwise and I love it, but I won't talk about it again since we all pretty much know what that means.)

Last season's intro ended with our two lead women at each other's throats. That's no surprise. The whole show is about them. This one, though, ends with Jayce, a supporting member of the main cast. Matter of fact, he shows up a lot in this intro.

In my other post, I mentioned how his scene in the intro is eerily reminiscent of the moment he met Mel (other than the Council trial) when she shined a flashlight in his and Viktor's eyes in the hallway.

Could this be an indicator that he is once again meeting someone new who will change his life forever? Or could it be a reintroduction to someone he already knows? It could easily be Mel again, maybe after she's discovered and learned to control her magic? It seems like she wasn't aware of her powers until now. Considering how much the animators love to compare Mel with Viktor, it could just as easily be Viktor after he's gone full Machine Herald. They've already met again in the commune, but maybe they'll meet again when Viktor is more mechanical and Jayce is more... how do I put it politely... sane.

The light in front of Jayce's hand appears twice more, but something tells me it's a different light. Has the light evolved or is it a different light altogether?

This comes right after Mel on the lounge chair looking at the black rose and right before Viktor putting on the mask (we'll get to that). It is SO much brighter than before, less like a flashlight and more like a spotlight. Jayce's arm is more outstretched, too. It's less reminiscent of the hallway and more reminiscent of the moment he stepped onstage for the Progress Day speech. Bright, burning spotlights that he flinched at. Arm outstretched not only to block the light, but to wave at an audience.

The light and pose when he ends the intro also has these qualities.

I know it's a reach, but nothing is ever fucking reaching with this goddamned show.

So what does this mean?? Is it symbolic of the presence of magic in his life? Once a light in the dark, the path to success -- now burning, all-consuming? Is this another hubris metaphor??? I'm so tired of hubris metaphors. Let Man become God!

Seriously, what do you guys make of this? Because I have no clue. I have negative clues. Everything I see only opens new questions.

Okay, on to the Jayvik amalgam. :D

Who. The fuck. Is this.

Two pics since the camera rotates a bit and idk if the slightly different angle helps at all.

If you look at it from far away, the eyebrow ridge and nose resemble Jayce. If you peer closer, the eyebrow ridge looks more like Viktor's, but the nose still seems like Jayce. This person also looks to be at a healthy weight and has thick thighs, also qualities that Viktor unfortunately does possess. I want to say the hand also looks like Jayce's, but it's hard to tell. The lighting also makes it hard to determine their skin color. All in all, everything about this scene would suggest that the figure is Viktor except for the figure itself.

My gut instinct had me thinking it was Jayce the very first time I saw this intro, but then Viktor showed up with his blanket and mask later in the song and has been in said blanket for most of the show. The lack of purple limbs doesn't mean anything since the sisters also lost their tattoos, Mel lost her gold, and Ekko lost his face paint too.

And then we have this shot. Whose hand is that? NOT FUCKING VIKTOR'S.

That's Jayce's hand putting Viktor's mask on him. The hand looks like it fits naturally on Viktor's arm.

This could mean that Viktor will be wearing his mask because of Jayce. Partly in a "you see me as a villain, so a villain I will be" kind of way, but maybe also in a self-fulfilling time loops sort of way.

It's obvious that we're not supposed to be able to tell Viktor and Jayce apart in this intro. I even saw someone suggest that the animators made a whole new 3D model that was a mix of them both to be able to get the effect across. They might have also made one for Viktor with Jayce's hand.

This is basically saying that Jayce and Viktor are so deeply intertwined that they can't even be told apart. That's really ironic considering how different and divided they are right now. Could this imply that they'll end up back on the same side by the end?

[the-way-astray]

One of kotlc’s biggest plotholes(joking) is how the magnetic earrings don’t hurt. As someone who can’t wearing regular earrings bc of an allergy and has to wear clip on earrings, they pinch and it can hurt, especially a lot if you wear em for long periods at once with no breaks. Ik the ones in Kotlc are magnetic but it would still have to pinch the earlobe to keep the earrings secure. So that part where Biana explains the magnetic earrings always stuck out to me bc I was like “how are you not in pain” lmao

(I’m joking when I say this is a major plot hole lmao but it’s something I think about a lot)

okay i'm reading the aftg series and all i can think about is the scene where neil has scars on his wrists and the bartender dude thinks andrew is cuffing him for sexy times and casually goes "you know they make padded handcuffs right?" and neil is like. ???? i got these in a fight???? and the bartender walks it back so hard he should've crashed into the wall

i bring this up in a (very) roundabout way of saying. maybe the earrings have some sort of padding on them? and that makes them more comfortable so they aren't just crushing the earlobe between the two parts. some sort of cushioning would do wonders for this i think and i imagine they probably have something like that

also it's fitz that introduces sophie to the magnetic earrings, not biana. and i think his disgust with human piercings comes more from the idea of piercings/needles/blood/breaking skin and stuff like that because sophie's line directly before that is specifically about needles. so fitz is like "oh yeah we don't do stabby jewelry" so i think this is supposed to imply that the elf earrings are better not because they don't hurt necessarily but because they don't draw blood or pierce skin. which is a very elvin mindset to have, if you think about it lmfao

UPDATE!!!! i just reread the scene and!!!! the earrings are not even magnetic. here's a description of what's going on:

so it seems like the earrings just stick to skin. there's no magnet or anything on the back of the lobe keeping it there, it somehow just senses skin and sticks to it. i'd chalk this up to some kind of alchemical solution dabbed onto the back of the bead that senses and reacts harmlessly with the skin. it's strong enough to keep the bead suctioned painlessly onto the skin until the counterclockwise twist, at which point it's likely programmed to "let go", or neutralize somehow. but i think we can definitely put this to some sort of elf solution, not magnets. sorry guys it can't be explained with normal physics :(

[strniohoeee]

helloo I have a Chris request. Y/N and Chris are dating. One night at the triplets place after smoke sesh, they go up to the kitchen to make food, while the pasta cooks they start making out and Chris eats her out, they end up having sex on the table.

Cinnamon

Pairing: Chris Sturniolo X Female Reader

Synopsis: Y/N pops the triplets cherry for smoking weed, she smokes with them. Things are going good till Chris begins to feel some type of way🥀

Warnings⚠️: Uhhh smoking weed, and smut that’s about it! They was high and they was fuckinnnn🗣️

Song for the imagine: Ice Cream- Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, Cappadonna

⚠️This a 18+ imagine, so minors do not interact, or do??⚠️

Back to You Maybelline Queen let’s make a team

You can have everything in this world except CREAM

I wouldn’t classify myself as a heavy smoker, but I liked to get high here and there. When I became friends with the triplets I was really scared to tell them thinking they’d judge me, but they didn’t care

I never smoked around them….was I high around them uhhh that’s a different story. I never offered them to smoke with me, or forced them. After a while they did start to get curious about what it’s like to be high

Tonight we planned to have a sleepover where we’d all smoke, and I’d babysit them to make sure they were okay. I had a medical card so my weed was great. I brought two joints both a hybrid of Indica and Sativa, my favorite.

Hybrids are the best to me. I feel good, relaxed, no anxiety. I get the munchies. I'm always laughing, and then I have the best sleep ever. Everyone’s first time smoking is different, but I believe depending on who you surround yourself with will determine if you’ll be good or anxious.

I absolutely hated blunts, the tobacco leaves always making me sick and giving me the worst high of my life, so I would never do that to them.

I had gotten to the triplets house two hours ago, and we ate pizza and watched movies before we decided to smoke. I wanted their stomach full, and I wanted them to be calm

“Alright are we ready” I said grabbing my tin can with my joints in it and wiggling my brows

“I’m so nervous, but I’m ready” Nick said

“It’s fun trust me, and if anything yall will get super tired and knock out” I told them

“I’m readyyy” Matt said standing up

We went outside to their yard and sat in a circle

“Alright let me lay down some facts and some rules” I said as I took the first joint out and closing the can

“One pull per person…you want to ease into the high, we rotate it counterclockwise and try not to have it unravel” I said to them

“YES” they said saluting me

“Also when you inhale try not to inhale too much because you will cough, and it will fucking burn” I said laughing

“I mean yall never done this, so you will cough” I said laughing

“Show us how it’s done” Chris said

“Oh another thing….not to be weird, but smoking weed can make you super horny” I said laughing and grabbing my lighter

“OH GOD” Nick said

“But it’s not always, everybody’s different” I said as I lit the joint

I watched as it lit up, and I took a pull. Letting it into my lungs before breathing it out

“See very simple” I said looking at them

“Alright Chris you’re up” I said passing it to Chris on my left

He brought the joint to his lips and pulled, inhaling it into his chest and then exhaling

“Not too bad” he said passing it to Nick

Nick grabbed the joint, and inhaled….A BIG INHALE

“OH MY GOD” he said as he blew the smoke out and started to cough

“Nick that was too big” I said laughing at him, and he just kept coughing and taking a sip of his water

Matt inhaled, and exhaled nicely

“Nick you’re a pussy that wasn’t bad” Matt said as he passed the joint to me

Within 10 minutes we finished the joint, and I could tell they were all high, but I’m sure they didn’t feel it

“Yall are so fucking high” I said looking at them

“I am not” Chris said as his eyes were droopy and half lidded

“Yeah you are trust me you’ll feel it” I said laughing at them

Within 15 minutes they were so fucking high

“Nah this shit is too good” Matt said

“I told you it’s so relaxing” I said

We all started talking and laughing at everything

“Are my eyes open?” Nick asked me

“Yes” I said laughing at him

“Are you sure? Because they feel closed” he said

“They’ll feel like that but they are open I promise” I said to him

We were all talking so slow, and it was the funniest thing ever

“Yo I’m so fucking glad we got high together” I said to them

“Me too this is so much fun” Chris said

About 20 minutes later I was hungry

“I’m hungryyyy anybody want pasta?” I asked

“YES OMG YES” Nick said

“Chris come with me” I said and grabbed him

We both walked back into the house as Nick and Matt stood outside

I grabbed the pot, and put water to boil

“I need salt” I said to Chris

“It’s up down there somewhere” he said blinking slowly

“That wasn’t English” I said laughing

“Sorry it’s there” he said pointing to the table

I grabbed the salt and salted the water waiting for it to boil

“I’m so fucking horny” Chris randomly blurted out

“I told you it could happen” I said looking at him

“Like I have never felt my dick this hard” he said adjusting himself

“Alright horn dog” I said laughing at him

“Sorry” he said laughing

I put the heat down, so it wouldn’t boil too fast and put the pasta in

“I need to bust a nut or something because this is crazy” Chris said sitting down at the table

“Go take care of yourself” I said shooing him

I heard Chris get up, but I didn’t hear him come up behind me. He grabbed me by the waist

“Mmm or you could help me” he said

“That does sound fun” I said turning around to look at him

He immediately smashed his lips to mine, and we began to make out, him pushing me up against the stone slightly

I lost my footing and placed my hand on the stove, accidentally touching the heat level and putting it up without realizing

“Come on baby let me eat your pussy” he said

“Chris you’re dirty” I said smacking him playfully

“Come on” he said and pulled me over to the kitchen table

I sat down, and he slowly removed my sweatpants and my underwear

“Gonna be a good girl for me?” He asked

“Always Chris” I said to him

He got down to his knees, and opened my legs pulling me forward slightly

“Such a pretty pretty pussy” he said looking up at me with droopy eyes

“Fuck Chris” I whispered

He leaned down, and licked a strip up from my entrance to my clit

“Shit” I said shuddering and placing my hands in his hair

He started to lick my clit, and running his tongue from side to side and up and down

“FUCK” I yelled out as my thighs clamped around his head

As he was licking down his nose was bumping into my clit

“Mmm right there baby” I said kind of grinding on his face

He came back up, and started sucking my on clit harshly

“CHRISSSSSS” I moaned out throwing my head back

He pulled away from my pussy. My arousal covering him nose, mouth and chin

“I wanna fuck” he said standing up

“So fuck me then” I said biting my lip

In an instant Chris slid his pants and underwear down to about mid thigh. Swiping his hand on my pussy and using my arousal and his saliva as lube as he stroked his dick

“Ready baby” he asked

“I’m ready” I said

He spat on the head of his dick, and rubbed it against my pussy up and down, slowly pushing the tip in

“Shittt” we both moaned out

Chris bottomed out, and then began to move thrusting in and out at a good speed

“Fuck this feels amazing” he moaned out

He started to pound into me, grabbing my thigh and hooking his arms under them as he pulled me even closer, and started to fuck into me

“FUCK CHRIS OH MY GOD” I yelled out gripping onto the table

“Come on baby come on” he said as he kept pounding into me

The table was taking a beating…I’m sure it wanted to collapse on us

He brought his hand down to my clit and started to rub

“I know you’re close, come on baby milk me” he said pounding into me harder

“You’re so dirty I love it” I moaned out

Chris hips smacked into me three more times before I felt myself coming undone

“FUCK FUCK FUCK” I yelled out and came all over his dick, my thighs shaking and my back lifting off th table

He let me ride out my high before he pulled out of me, stroking his dick before high jaw went slack and he came on my lower stomach

“Fuck that felt amazing” he said trying to catch his breath, and picking up his pants

“So fucking good Chris” I said as I sat up and jumped down to pick up my underwear and pants from the floor

All of a sudden we heard water beginning to overflow and saw steam

“Oh shit the pasta” I said scurrying over to the stove and shutting the water off

Chris came over laughing, and grabbing a wet paper towel to clean his cum off of me

“Thanks baby” I said kissing his cheek

“Anytime” he said winking at me

I put my underwear on and my pants, and Chris and I washed our hands

We drained the pasta and suddenly Matt and Nick bursted inside

“WHERE THE FUCK IS THE PASTA” Matt yelled walking into the kitchen

“Perfect timing! Now we just need to heat up some sauce” I said to them

“Yay I’m so hungry” Nick said sitting at the table

Matt went to sit where we just fucked, and forgot to clean up

“I WOULDNT sit there” I said yelling the first part

“What why?” He said getting scared

“Chris already claimed that spot, and he tried to kill me when I said I wanted it” I said lying through my teeth

“Oh! Okay” Matt said walking back to sit by Nick

We finished making the pasta and we all sat and ate it. Laughing and talking, and eventually Nick and Matt fell asleep on the couch, so Chris and I cleaned the kitchen and table, and put the food away

We covered Nick and Matt in blankets and shut off the lights, and then headed to Chris room to watch tv and fall asleep

The End

This was my last request and I loved doing them, but now I can’t wait to start writing my ideas🤭🖤Dude thank you so much for 407 followers🥹🫶🏽🫶🏽 I just had 300 something this is amazing

-J💅🏽

[cultkinkcoven]

Understanding how your brain works to better utilize it in witchcraft, spirituality or occultism

I apologize if this post is really long lol

The biggest challenge I run in to when trying to explain my “mystical” experiences with my deities and spirits is in accurately portraying the “abstractness” of the interaction. We all have a special concoction of brain soup going on in our heads. While one brain may communicate with itself very auditorily, as in, in sounds and voices, other brains may be more predisposed to imagery. The goal of some forms of occultism is conditioning both the subconscious and conscious brain into adapting into different forms of “thought”, communication with oneself.

Think about it this way, some people have an inner monologue, that is an actual audible “voice” that speaks to them, narrates written text, etc. This inner voice may or may not be omnipresent, it may or may not resemble your voice. It may change.

Likewise some people don’t think in sounds at all, their brain is more visual and produces images, videos, movie like sequences that you may or may not be able to mentally interact with. If you have aphantasia, you will not be able to do this.

If you can identify and understand how your brain works, how the hardware and program you are operating on functions, you can understand how to better use it to communicate with deities or to preform other methods of magic.

So here are some easy ways to get an idea of how your brain works in regards to communicating thoughts and information. If some of these things don’t make a lick of sense to you, you’ll know that it isn’t your jive and you’ll probably have more difficulty learning magical practices that utilize that function.

For Visual Imagery we’re going to be using the letter A - Visual imagery describes thoughts that are communicated through visual senses. This means any kind of imagery, including simple colors and shapes.

For audible/ sound based thought we are going to be using the letter B- Audible thoughts describe ideas that are communicated through auditory senses. This includes music, narration, and sounds of any kind.

For texture/sensation based thought we are going to be using the letter C- Texture and sensation based thoughts are ideas that activate the “feeling” part of the brain. These can be both pleasant or uncomfortable.

For transcribed thought we are going to be using the letter D- Transcribed thoughts are ideas which are communicated through written text, literal letters and sentences, or symbols, as if you were watching a movie with subtitles.

For “invisible” thoughts we are going to be using the letter E- Invisible thoughts are ideas that are almost instantly understood through the subconscious. They do not take time to process and usually go unnoticed. These are usually common sense observations. The part of your brain that processes “person” when you see a person, and “dog” when you see a dog. These thoughts are your most prevalent and least observed.

For memory based thoughts we are going to be using the letter F- Memory based thoughts are ideas that are conjured using information from passed experiences, needing no new stimuli or information to be formed. These thoughts can also include experiences that occurred in dreams. Common sense repetitive norms influence these thoughts.

Keep track of your points.

1. You probably already know the apple thing.

Can you picture an apple? what color is it? can you rotate it? which way is it rotating? clockwise or counterclockwise? upside down? does it have a stem? does the stem have a leaf on it? Where is the apple?

If you can easily picture and manipulate the apple, you have the capacity to understand mental imagery. That does not necessarily mean your brain is predisposed to it, only that you have the hardware to process it. Not everyone has this hardware.

If your apple was spinning in a black room with no other objects or environment around it, you may be more dominant in another field of thought with visual imagery as a supportive addition. You get 1 point for A

If you pictured an apple you saw recently, you get one full point for F.

If your apple was already in a room, on a table, in front of your real world environment right now, or in some other environment that was not necessarily conjured through memory, your brain likely uses visual imagery as a predominant method of communication. You get 2 points for A.

If you were able to understand the concept of an apple and all of the manipulations, but didn’t necessarily “see” anything, you get one point for E.

2. As you’ve been reading this post, assuming that you are not reading aloud, have you been hearing a “voice” narrating the text?

Does that voice sound like your voice when you speak aloud? Do you take the time to pronounce every word as you read mentally? Do you pay attention to every letter individually, or do you look at the words as contained objects?

If you have an inner narrative voice that is activated by reading long passages of text, your brain is able to process visual imagery auditorily, especially when combined with will established symbols.

If that voice resembles your speaking voice, you are likely more dominant in another field of thought, using narration as a supportive sense. Your brain doesn’t naturally tend to generate sounds, it’s using the most easily commutable sound, your own voice, to deliver the information. This isn’t to say that you can’t conjure sounds, but rather that your brain doesn’t do so without “trying” to. You get a half point for B and a half points for D.

However if that voice does not usually resemble your own speaking voice, or changes often, your brain is likely more predisposed to communicating through sound senses. You get one full point for B and a half point for D.

If you have no inner narration or other sensory stimuli when reading this text, but still fully observe and understand the words, you get one full point for D.

If you have no inner narration when reading this text but imagine it’s contents like a slideshow or movie when given visual descriptions, you get one full point for A.

If you’ve observed the text with no other thoughts or ideas asides from what has been commanded of you by the quiz, you get one full point for E.

3. Oops I did it again…

“I played with your heart! Got lost in the game! Ooh baby baby!”

Okay, assuming you know the song “Oops I did it Again” by Brittany Spears, did you hear her voice singing the song when you read the passage? Did you hear your own voice singing it? Did you only read the text?

And if you did hear her voice, did you also hear the background instrumentals? Did you see Brittany in your head in her red jumpsuit? (assuming you watched the music video lol) If not in her red jump suit, did you at least get some kind of visual imagery of Brittany’s face?

If you heard Brittany’s voice singing with no background instrumental or other stimuli, you get one point for B.

If you heard your own voice singing the song with no other stimuli, you get a half point for B.

If you only read the passage, you get one point for D

If you heard Brittany’s voice and heard the background instrumentals, you get 2 points for B.

If you heard Brittany’s voice and heard the background instrumentals, and saw her to some capacity, although not dancing or moving, you get 2 points for B and an additional 1 point for A.

If you saw and heard all of that whilst seeing Brittany dancing in some way, as if you were actively watching a video, you get 2 points for B and an additional 2 points for A.

If you saw Brittany specifically in her red jumpsuit alongside the instrumentals and singing, as if you were watching the exact music video, or remembered some other portion of the music video, you get 2 points for B, 2 points for A, and an additional 1 point for F

and, if you immediately remembered the entire song of “oops I did it again” without any other stimuli, or without necessarily “hearing” anything, you get two full points for F.

Consider how your brain handles all of these rabid thoughts and quick communications to understand the contents of this post.

4. Imagine yourself sitting in your living room

Now imagine there’s an apple in your right hand and a cube of ice in your left hand. Sit for about 15 seconds. Now, mentally, stand from whatever surface you were sitting on, still holding the ice and apple, and lick the floor.

If you had difficulty imagining the living room, “feeling” the ice cube and apple, and maintaining those things while licking the floor, your brain is likely not dominant in texture based thoughts. Subtract a half point from C if you had any already.

If you could easily and vividly imagine the feeling of ice and an apple in your hands, but did not experience any discomfort, and had difficulty maintaining your living room or moving within that space, you only get one point for C.

If you could easily and vividly imagine the feeling of the ice and an apple in your hands, but did not experience any discomfort, and had an easy time maintaining your living room and moving within that space, you get one point for C and an additional one point for A.

If after 15 seconds you felt somewhat uncomfortable, vividly felt the ice melting in your hand, or felt disgusted by feeling the floor (carpet, tile, hard wood etc ) on your tongue, specifically at the thought of dust, dirt, or debris on your tongue, vividly feeling hair and lint get stuck to your tongue, you get 2 full points for C and an additional 2 points for A.

If you could easily imagine the space and do all of these things, but did not experience discomfort and/or saw yourself doing these things in the third person, you get one point for A.

If you could somewhat do these things but got tripped up or lost some of the immersion by thinking about things that aren’t actually in your living room, like imagining both the room and the apple at the same time, you get one full point for F.

5. If I were to hand you a page with 50 phone numbers on it, and told you to memorize all of the numbers in the list, would you…

1. Remember each phone number sequence individually to the best of your ability, starting from the first.

2. Remember the sounds of the numbers as you recited them aloud and recall the “song” or rap that you created with them

3. Recall the whole page of numbers like a photo and try to remember what was written on the entire page

4. Remember each number individually and remember how they sit in the sequence in relation to each other

5. Assign each number a color and then recall the number sequence by remembering how each color transitions into the next

6. Assign each number a letter (4 = F, 9= N), and create words or abbreviations to remember the full sequence of numbers.

7. You wouldn’t be able to remember them all.

If you chose option 1, you get a half point for F

If you chose option 2, you get one full point for B

If you chose option 3, you get one full point for A

If you chose option 4, you get one half point for F and an additional half point for D

If you chose option 5, you get 2 full points for A

If you chose option 6, you get one full point for D

If you chose option 7, you get 1 full point for F

6. Your goal is to think of absolutely nothing for the next 30 seconds. Close your eyes, and do not think about anything.

If after about 10 or so seconds, a song or tune started playing in the background of your mind, you get 2 points for B.

If after about 10 seconds, you had any conscious comment or thought, “how long has it been?” “am I doing this right?” “I wonder what…” “I hope that”… or you felt the need to mentally count to 30, you will subtract a half point from E if you had any already.

If after about 10 seconds, you visualized something against your will, anything at all, even though you were actively trying to think about nothing, you get 2 points for A.

If you started thinking about previous parts of this quiz that you have already completed, you get two points for F.

If you had inclinings of thoughts coming on but were able to quickly stifle them, you get one point for E.

If you were truly and honestly able to think about absolutely nothing for thirty whole seconds, you’re a winner baby, you get 2 full points for E.

7. You’re laying in bed procrastinating doing some task you really don’t want to do. But you eventually find your strength and finally decide to get out of bed. When motivating yourself, do you think:

1. “okay, I gotta get up now”

2. “come on, you gotta get up now”

3. “alright, we gotta get up now”

4. you do not have any inner dialogue about it, you simply know you have to get up and get up without consciously voicing it to yourself.

If you chose option 1, you do not lose or gain any points.

If you chose option 2, subtract 1 full point from E if you had any already.

If you chose option 3, subtract one half point from E if you had any already.

If you chose option 4, you get two points for E.

8. When you hear people speaking in real time, do you see their words transcribed in your head as if you were reading subtitles?

1. No, never

2. Sometimes but not always

3. Yes, all the time

If you chose option 1, remove a half point for D

If you chose option 2, you get one point for D

If you chose option 3, you get 2 points for D

9. Which best applies to you?

1. I remember things best when I write them down

2. I remember things best when I say them out loud repeatedly

3. I remember things best when I have some kind of visual reminder

4. I remember things best when I’m nervous about them

5. I don’t know how I remember things, I just do.

6. I remember things best when I’ve done them at least once before

If you chose option 1, you get one point for D

If you chose option 2, you get one point for B

If you chose option 3, you get one point for A

If you chose option 4, you get one point for C

If you chose option 5, you get one point for E

If you chose option 6, you get one point for F

10. You're waiting for something and you're bored, there's no one around you so you're not nervous to do whatever you want. How do you "stim", or occupy yourself?

I probably start singing a song to myself or repeating a funny phrase

I tap my fingers, feet, or teeth together. I do some kind of repetitive movement

I daydream or imagine scenarios in my head

I think about my day or something weird that happened recently

I'd have to have my phone or some kind of music to occupy me or I'd be upset

I'm able to wait for long periods of time without stimming or using distractions

If you chose option 1, you get 2 points for B

If you chose option 2, you get 2 points for C

If you chose option 3, you get 2 points for A

if you chose option 4, you get two points for F

If you chose option 5, subtract one point from E if you had any already

If you chose option 6, you get two points for E

Part 2: Interpreting your results

[existentialterror]

ARG notes: ZampanioSim, part 2

Hey guys. catfishAnabasis (Light) here, continuing my… uh, ZampanioSim Let’s Play? That’s dumb. My investigation into the Homestuck/Magnus Archives/House of Leaves-inspired alternate reality game ZampanioSim. Read Part 1 first.

Now we have the bare minimum on Zampanio Sim’s format. Actually, we don’t know much and it’s constantly changing, but we at least have an idea of what we’re in for. Cool.

What is the story unfolding within Zampanio Sim?

So we know from the Classpect Menu game, the one that “is” ZampanioSim, that this was an effort to simulate a now-deleted game from the 1970s called Zampanio, based on a now-lost* FAQ on how to play it. At some point, possibly just search engines, I have learned that Eyedol Games is the company that makes Zampanio. Let’s take that going in.

*dubious

A lot of the “routes” off the house at the start of ZampanioSim – see the diagram – are procedurally generated places to explore or are otherwise collections of content. But other have a more directly obvious narrative to them. I have marked these places here.

Let’s go. We'll start... Uh...

…

(Okay, so there’s a recurring meme in ZampanioSim about whether personality-typing you based on whether you traverse labyrinths clockwise or counterclockwise.

But I’m confused about which one that means – like if I’m looking at a drawing of a labyrinth top-down, and I go from the entrance to the right passage, I guess I’m going counterclockwise. But if I were standing in a physical maze, the clockways framing wouldn’t occur to me – I mean, they’re both chiral processes, but like, the hand of a clock moves to the right, so which reference am I taking?

Maybe I’m not cut out for labyrinths. When I’m caving in minecraft I go to the right, so if I’m coming back into the house through the north door, then... I guess:)

We’ll start with the non-existent West Route (accessible by clicking on the west side of the house, where you’d expect a door to be.)

AdventureSimWest

AdventureSimWest is an audience-participation adventure game that, like Problem Sleuth or Early Homestuck, takes suggested commands from an audience that guide a character, and the author tells a story around it. This one has been running for quite some time, so there’s a lot of backlogged material!

AdventureSimWest gives us a lot of info right away. It’s about a character named Peewee, who is hired by Eyedol Games. Peewee and the staff of Eyedol Games are trapped inside a Space Loop. A Space Loop is like a Time Loop except that once you die, physical space (within the loop) and many of the circumstances reset, but its point in time is… not fixed. Peewee is a snakelike alien called a lamia. He first appeared in a different SBURBlike game on FarragoFiction.com called Farragnarok, which he remembers but which I don’t know anything about. He is a COOL GAMER who has lived various other lives including through the destruction of his home planet, Segundia. Keep in mind that he is from a SBURBlike.

Oh, hey, according to an offhand exchange in AdventureSimWest, solving mazes by following the righthand wall means you’re going counterclockwise. Everyone jot that down. We can bootstrap this. We can do this.

I read up through the “JR Rambles about Spoilers” interlude. And it was fun! It’s Peewee’s quirky, haphazard series of adventures in a quirky, sharp universe. The style is fun, self-aware and whimsical. I don’t know how much about the AdventureSimWest lore applies to mainstream Zampanio, especially given the multilayered narrative Zampanio serves up to us like a delicious but concerningly non-Euclidean cake, but some of the characters and concepts appear in other places, and so the worldbuilding might too. Here are some things we learn about the world of AdventureSimWest:

Peewee arrived here from his old universe by jumping into a giant, spiky, magical wall of flesh called an Echidna. He’s actually one of the set of gods who created this universe, but seems to be the only one left.

People central to the space loop remember the space loop exists.

Eyedol Games may have caused or be causing the space loop, but does not appear to be completely in control of it.

The space loop started in 1971 and is spiraling towards the end of the world in 2022.

Eyedol has other employees, including:

Wanda, the “CEBro” and “Lord of Space” (homestuck classpect). She’s tremendously rad and maybe a shapeshifter.

The Intern, a college-aged dude from Ohio, who Wanda is always trying to find and who seems unexpectedly critical to the existence of Eyedol Games. (I might apply a little homestuck logic and guess that he’s the “Muse of Time”, but this is my own speculation.)

The Closer, an aggressive businesslady in a suit and cape

Someone called the Eye Killer, who, like, lives in Eyedol’s basement and kills people.

Flower Chick, some kind of identity-stealing fae, who keeps a copy of Peewee’s skull on her desk.

Quotidians, which are another alien species – these ones are shapeshifting crows and are a hivemind. Many of them are named Tom.

Parker, a “waste”, who has made his business out of learning glitches, hacking, etc, in reality itself.

There are also just two other teams of people who don’t work at Eyedol Games, who both got ejected into some kind of infinite labyrinth around the same time. They have kind of SCP energy. I don’t know what their deal is. Yet.

What about that FAQ?

The mysterious lost ZampanioFAQ actually exists, more or less.

When I found it, it felt like natural game progression: I beat the Classpect Menu game, then there got a link to the official Discord. Then buried in one of the Discord channels, one of the pinned links goes to – yes – THE Zampanio FAQ.

But then it turned out the thing I’d found a link to was a fan-made transcript (by @verbosebabbler) of a different “official” ZampanioFAQ PDF. And through various link-hopping, most of which I now forget, I also found the original PDF on a different website by JR. So I don’t know if I got there the way I was “supposed to” or where else I might otherwise have found the FAQ. But we’re here now!

(The official discord, by the way, does not have talk permissions open in any channel. They are all frozen conversations from years ago, with only a spare few used threads acting as the actual usable channels. So the discord is its own labyrinth too. ITS A-MAZE-ING)

Okay. The ZampanioFAQ. In the frontnote to the FAQ, JR describes this finding a printout of fic they'd read long ago, and sharing it as evidence that they did not invent Zampanio – that this is a sburbsim/glitchFAQ (we’ll get to that, hang tight) crossover fanfic by someone else that they read once, lost, and recently re-found - and that it has a couple indications that it’s referencing Zampanio.

Mostly, contentwise, this FAQ is sort of a interuniversal document about how to play SBURB (the universe-creation game that the characters in Homestuck play), written by a group of players. The Zampanio FAQ has, unfortunately, been heavily redacted by interdimensional forces, perhaps SBURB itself.

It’s like it’s written by a new set of characters who are playing their own game of Sburb. They’re learning about it as they experience it! Haha, that’s a cute gimmick.

Oh, the skull? Yeah, don’t worry about that. Hah, no, I get how it looks. But it's actually totally fine.

The redacted words in the ZampanioFAQ seem mostly to do with certain details of SBURB itself, like SBURB is trying to keep its players from spoilers.

Drawing from VerboseBabbler’s transcript and partial de-redaction of the FAQ, I gave my hand at making what sense I could out of the original PDF.

Excerpt. You may not like it, but this is peak ARG performance: multiple collaborative layers of nested PDF annotation.

--------------

Trying to fill in these blanks made me appreciate the potential of the fan-ARG.

Homestuck is a story that both rewards a lot of knowledge about its worldbuilding and also often doesn't explain itself – I think that’s why it has such intense fanwork, because it implies so much but leaves you to fill in the gaps.

Like, okay, classpects, alright? Fans make a big deal about classpecting and it’s cool but it’s also kind of nothing, like, we get some gestures about what it means but not much. (Quick, what does a mage do?) There’s so much fanon trying to make sense of it that even the wiki explanation is based on fanon. But fanon can be dope and people have done some really, really neat stuff bouncing off of the gaps in canon.

ZampanioSim is about nested realities and missing information, and it's heavily based on specific fanworks of homestuck. And filling in missing information on this document, I could use my knowledge of Homestuck to make inferences about this related-but-separate storyline and worldbuilding. That’s so cool!

In the same way that the best fanfiction draws from and interacts repeatedly with canon, the fan-ARG can act as a commentary on or a dialogue with its sources - a story made stronger by connection to another.

There have been other fan ARGs and this is really my first experience with the genre (well - does EverymanHYBRID count as a fanwork? discuss), but like, holy shit, I get it now.

-----------------

Okay, let’s regroup. So the FAQ is a bunch of advice written collaboratively by a group of people playing SBURB. The FAQ is about a kind of SBURB that is very similar to the one in Homestuck – but it’s even more similar to another game on the FarragoFiction website, SBURBsim, which is “is a fanmade browser simulation” of SBURB.

In SBURBsim, you can throw in a randomly-generated or customized set of characters into their own session, and SBURBsim will invent plotlines, fights, character progression, romance, alchemy, time travel shenanigans, and more, eventually telling you a story about how that session might go. It is mind-bogglingly ornate and cool, check it out.

Okay, anyway, so the game described in the FAQ is mostly Sburb-y but has some clear Farrago/SburbSIM elements in the form of the fan-classes – wastes, graces, smiths, and more. But it has some stuff that feels more Homestuck-classic-SBURB, like in the FAQ [EDIT: SBURBsim] there’s a convention where all the randomly generated player-usernames have the same initials as their classpects, so like the session’s Bard of Time might have the username belugaTrainer or belligerentTriangle or whatever, which isn’t a thing in Homestuck nor in the FAQ. It also adds a few elements all its own, like that there’s a recognized pantheon of gods who have sway over the rules of the universe, with their own usernames and classpects.

(Hey, synthesizing that with some background Homestuck knowledge + what we’ve learned from AdventureSimWest, I think the ‘gods’ are the players whose Sburb session created the ones that the FAQ authors were born into. Elegant!)

Oh yeah, as JR mentions, the Zampanio FAQ also takes heavy and pseudo-explicit inspiration from a fanfiction called the Sburb Glitch FAQ, a sprawling fanwork I haven’t read that’s sort of a game guide and technical manual to SBURB. Maybe more of this is references to that, I don’t know.

(Sidenote, Rose’s GameFAQ was one of my favorite plot points in Homestuck. I’m only sorry it wasn’t used more. So I’m delighted to see all these fanworks that took inspiration from it.)

So okay whether the FAQ players are more playing OG-SBURB, or SBURBsim, or a game that has aspects of both – well, they’re all pretty similar, I don’t’ think we need to split hairs. This document is an in-universe survival guide for a SBURBlike.

You know what it’s not particularly like? ZampanioSim, the game it supposedly inspired!

This is so fun to me. SBURBsim existed long before ZampanioSim. If you were going to make a simulator game based on the Zampanio FAQ, that game would be SBURBsim. But SBURBsim was already a thing! JR knows this – they worked on SBURBsim! Their sburbsona is on the about page!

They mention this in the introduction to the “found scanned printout” of the FAQ - they initially read it deeply to figure out, through the redaction, if it was a fanwork for their own project (SBURBsim). They write:

this is obvs JUST the faq, not any of the like, description or author name or all that shit that eventually lead me down the rabbit hole. like, you could find the missing sections in this weird ...not arg? I don't THINK? and they started talking about things like the achievement system and shit, stuff that stuck with me a lot more if what i chose to focus on in zampaniosim is any indication. still. having a record of the START of this branch is better than nothing

So, okay, the FAQ itself is not explicitly Zampanio. We’re missing the description and whatever else that’s supposedly out there somewhere, as lost media. I tried to find some reason to think the fic was supposedly out of time, like that it would have been from before SBURBsim was made, but there isn't any - everything lines up with what JR said in the forward.

So I think maybe reading so far into the FAQ without that other supposed metadata was a great time and, yes, sold me on a new art form, but it wasn’t that productive in terms of the broader Zampanio story.

... Or was it?

I've connected the dots

There was a reference somewhere – I think in the South route, though I can’t swear to it – that was pretty outright something like “JR added Magnus Archives elements to Zampanio because of an at-the-time obsession with the Spiral from TMA.” Now, some stuff like the south route is less in-character than in other places, so I don’t want to necessarily say that everything like that will “carry through” to the rest of canon, if that makes sense. But it helps put those pieces together, so here’s my running theory:

In the story, Zampanio is a memeplex that moves and spreads between dimensions - very diverse multiple dimensions, including different fictional worlds. (Think the Big Bad in There Is No Antimemetics Division - effecting "universes which embed ours as fiction".) Sort of a psychic prion that goes around twisting orderly systems and punching its way between meta-layers. The core of it stays similar between - it has a predilection for spirals, mazes, meta bullshit, and games - but some of the specifics change from instance to instance.

Zampanio probably spread rampant among this constellation of Sburb universes, perhaps because Zampanio is affiliated with games and Sburb universe is a game. (Or at least uses a game to reproduce.) It’s a great carrier. From there, Zampanio rode into our universe on the back of the FAQ. (Game FAQs being a known way to throw information between Sburb dimensions, in Homestuck.)

JR took the seed that came with the FAQ and instantiated Zampanio in this universe, and added their own compatible TMA-spiral flavoring to it.

(This also lines up with another cool aspect of Zampanio, which is that if you make your own fan-work or fan-story about Zampanio, that’s canon too. It is impossible to gamejack this. Thus far I’m focusing on JR’s ZampanioSim canon, but there are other people out there putting their own spins on it, which are also canon.)

Questions I have now, if that theory is true:

What other aspects of ZampanioSim carry on between versions?

Is Eyedol necessarily associated with the Zampanio memeplex? Does or did it actually create ZampanioSim in some causal way?

Does the Space Loop that occurs in AdventureSimWest have ramifications or equivalents in other instances of Zampanio?

Why does Zampanio like games so much? (Is it because interactive games are a convenient way to punch through from one dimension to the fictional dimension within it?)

There are comments about someone, maybe Eyedol, trying to scrub the ZampanioFAQ from the internet (in our dimension). Why would they want that?

What’s the other missing metadata that would have associated the ZampanioFAQ with Zampanio?

Who wrote the ZampanioFAQ? Was it written (...IC) as a fanwork of SBURBsim or did it “come from a SBURB universe”? Who censored it?

Aw man. And there's still so much I haven't even gotten into.

Like, okay, do you guys know gopher? It’s an early alternative to HTTP as a way of organizing the internet that was mostly sidelined, but a few servers are still around.

Apparently there’s a bunch more Zampanio stuff only accessible via Gopher and I’m going to have to figure out how to use it.

Thanks, JR, YOU MAD SORCERER.

So, that's where I'm at vis a vis ZampanioSim. I gotta get back to my own stuff for right now, but thank you ZampanioSim discord for helping blaze trails and mostly to JR for weaving such a wonderful weird mystery.

If you have questions or comments you want me to talk about in a future one of these, my ask box is open.* Also, if you get into ZampanioSim yourself, feel free to say hi on the discord.**

*(okay I know people have been involved in this for years and I’m still mostly trying to formulate my own opinions about what’s going on, so if you know something that’s like “an actual answer” and want to share, then consider phrasing it as an ominous clue instead of telling me outright – but I’m under the strong impression that this is an ARG where there’s not gonna be like a canonical underlying “answer” to a lot of things so, you know, do what brings you joy.)

**Your first challenge is to find the discord. I wanna be cryptic too!

[captainfantasticalright]

“The Ineffable Wheel of Misfortune”.

Some time ago, I wrote a small meta about this. I truly never go much into that terrain here, but I did write a study on the Goddess Fortuna and thought it most appropriate to share some of the facts about her wheel of Fortune here.

I will not go into much detail about who exactly Fortuna was. Her depictions vary from culture to culture and from age to age (Tyche being the name in Greek, which came before the Roman Fortuna, but many debates have been had about these origins and even comparing the two). But if there is something that remains; one essential aspect: her wheel.

One very important quote from the Prime extra videos revealing some easter eggs:

"There isn't a single prop or a single bit of costume that hasn't been thought through". And that begs the question, why show this prop so openly in the easter eggs section, but not in the show itself?

As Dylan Thomas wisely said: to begin at the beginning- although just to emphasize something:

Fortuna’s wheel is commonly known as the wheel of Fortune- yet what we have here is a wheel of misfortune. But there are two contradicting factors here, namely “misfortune” and “ineffable” fitting in the same description.

Now fate and ineffability could shake hands sometimes, depending on the belief of the doer. But ineffable and misfortune throws us unto different territory.

Now before focusing on the words of the wheel, let’s take a look at the picture keeping the wheel together.

Not only is the bench uniting the two figures (obviously you can see who they are), but the color scheme derives from here too. Cloud and flame, combine into each panel with the flaming sword and the fluffy, goat opposite. Horns and halo are on clear display, but this wheel has no pointer to indicate which fate is chosen. An outside force spins the wheel (Fortuna herself), but where does it land? The only pointer- indicator- is the flaming sword. It comes out of the circle, it is the guidance. It is quite literally cutting through the fabric of Fortune because even though Fortuna spins the fate, the sword guards against any circumstance.

Is this a prediction of Aziraphale taking the center place in guiding and protecting against all odds? Most definitely.

Now, you’ve probably seen the Zodiac signs on the wheel. Those are there because:

Although this states that the wheel of fortune moves from east to west (counterclockwise), let’s keep in mind that this wheel defies fortune and is actually ineffable misfortune.

For that reason, one takes the liberty to assume that this wheel spins in a clockwise direction (west to east).

One reason I am reading this "clockwise" is because I want to correlate it to Crowley's "it's always too late" and to "metaphorically started ticking", as if the options on the wheel follow time strictly in a way. But the wheel has a mind of it’s own:

A wheel can rotate indefinitely. So even if there is a stop at a certain spot, it most definitely will change again. It is in this case, an eternal repetition of ups and downs.

One can fall from the wheel and rise again. Interestingly when reading what’s on the wheel, one starts with the upper left hand side- the best moment at the moment. Coincidentally, ineffably, Aziraphale’s flaming sword is pointing exactly to that point - “blessing for you”.

Spin the wheel and you’ll land on the next part- good news.

Notice how you’ll go through some seemingly good events until you reach those that can be read as their opposites. Even putting it like that, a blessing for you can come back again and not be a blessing at all.

On the image above, the qualities are also opposite their negatives. For example peace-war, patience-impatience, and so on.

On the ineffable wheel of misfortune you could choose to read it as color opposites. So take the yellow "pleasure ahead" and match it with the opposite yellow "going on a journey" and it still makes sense, it could be the good and the bad- or it could be nothing at all.

There are many wheels of fortune out there, eternally rotating by the hands of a force outside our control.

Hopefully you’ll have realized by now that even though the wheel belongs to Fortuna in mythology and literature and art and everywhere else, this wheel belongs to God.

Because God plays an ineffable game of their own devising- much like Fortuna does with the fate of mankind.

Yet, there is room to escape the wheel. To defy ineffability, to build another wheel turned by your own hands and to finally say “it’s not too late”.

[its-sheepe]

Art Week: Bugsnax

Day 1: Main Character

It’s the Journalists! I love it when people make each different color of the Journalist a different character so here’s my take on it!

All the journalist siblings together taking a nice family photo :)

Starting from bottom middle and going counterclockwise, we have

Red: The middle child and most “generic” of the group (as it’s the default journalist color). Represents normal playthrough.

Black: The youngest sibling, very goofy. Represents messing around during normal playthrough.

Purple: Second youngest, most responsible. Represents 100% completion playthrough.

Green: Same age as Red and adopted! Nobody ever remembers seeing him with his shades off (maybe he’s an alien). Represents debug playthrough.

Yellow: The oldest of the group, indirectly inspired the rest of his siblings to be journalists (he doesn’t mind). Represents good ending playthrough.

Blue: Second oldest, and also very aloof. They love their siblings though! Represents bad ending playthrough.

[five-rivers]

For ectoberhaunt 2023 day 13: horror flick.

.

Roy frowned first at the book, then at the circle he’d painstakingly laid out on the forest floor, sweeping his eyes back and forth, hunting for mistakes. He couldn’t find any. The lines and curves he’d painstakingly carved into the soil and painted over were immaculate. All the symbols were in the right places. The candles were still burning strong. The sacrifices (items with great emotional value to the summoners) were in place, ready to be consumed.

Which meant that the problem wasn’t his fault.

He turned his glare on his two companions. “Did you two do the purification ritual like I said?”

“Yes,” said Aimee. “Don’t talk to us like that. We’re not stupid.”

That wasn’t an assertion Roy would make, but there weren’t a lot of people around who had real experience with the occult and a willingness to, ah, experiment with rituals of this level.

“Did you do the purification ritual?” drawled Beth. She pulled back the hood of her robe and pulled a stray strand of hair away from her numerous ear piercings. “Rituals like this are touchy. Even a tiny mistake can upset things. For all we know, we have the time of day wrong, or the wrong kind of soil.”

“We checked everything, though,” Roy complained. Not only had they checked everything, they’d practiced. They weren’t a bunch of stupid college students in a horror flick. They knew what they were doing. They’d summoned things, real things, before. Nothing as big or as powerful as this, but they’d gotten ahold of some powerful entities.

One of the spirits they had summoned and bound had even traded this book for their freedom.

Maybe that had been a mistake on their part, if the ritual in the book was incomplete or a scam.

Something snapped and rustled in the trees behind him, and Roy turned, scowling. If a deer messed with his summoning circle, he’d scream.

But, no, it wasn’t a deer stumbling out of the underbrush. It was a kid. A short kid. A middle schooler? Roy had never been good at figuring out the ages of kids.

“What are you doing here?” asked Aimee.

“Uh, walking. It’s public property,” said the kid. “What are you doing here?””

“No, it isn’t,” said Beth.

“Uh, yes it is. I know, because I walked here.” The kid leaned sideways and peered around Roy. “Ooh, are you summoning something? What is it?”

“That’s none of your business,” said Roy, wondering if he could get away with setting one of his lesser spirits on the boy. Beth could be surprisingly touchy about that sort of thing. “Leave.”

Between his family, his body type, and his occult power, Roy wasn’t used to being ignored or disobeyed by anyone but Aimee and Beth. The boy didn’t even look up at him, instead starting to walk counterclockwise around the circle.

“Where are your parents, anyway?” asked Roy, feeling out of his depth. It was an unusual feeling, and he didn’t like it.

The kid did look up at him, then, scorn clear on his face. “How old do you think I am?” Before Roy could answer, the kid knelt next to the circle.

“If you mess that up,” said Roy, threateningly, marching over to loom over the boy.

“Roy,” hissed Beth.

“Geez, chill,” said the boy. “I’m just looking. You’ve got a mistake, here, by the way.” He pointed. “You’re missing a line.”

“What?” snapped Roy.

“And the same thing, over there. Is your handwriting this bad, or did you copy these signs straight from a book without knowing what they really meant?”

Roy almost believed the boy for a minute, then scoffed. “What do you know about it? You’re just a kid. You’ve got a good face for lying, though, I’ll give you that.”

“I know more than you,” said the boy. “For example, did you know that when you summon a ghost, they don’t have to portal into the circle? Like, that’s usually easier, because where’re you going to find a natural portal, or a door, or whatever, and you can jump on the energy from the summoning, but you don’t have to. Lots of ghosts can’t, even. They’re not strong enough to make portals, so they just have to deal with the pull until whoever is trying to summon them gives up. Although I guess stronger ghosts do that too? Huh.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Aimee, and, huh, she actually sounded scared.

“Well,” said the boy, straightening and brushing off his knees, “I guess what I’m saying is that if you were trying to get a hold of a ghost that happened to already be on Earth, and nearby, they could just walk to a summoning. Or fly. Personally, I prefer flying.”

Aimee took a step back, her hand dropping to a protective charm. Beth, lips pursed, mirrored the motion.

“Did you know, there used to be separate rings for the summoners in these kinds of rituals? They sort of fell out of favor over time, because most ghosts did portals and they were problematic or something, I didn’t really pay attention to that part, but…” The boy shrugged. “They were there for a reason. All of your protections are in that circle.” He nodded at it. “Not great if someone does come from outside. Useless, just about.”

Then the boy looked Roy straight in the eye for the first time, and smiled.

The smile was wrong. It started out too white, too sharp, too curvy, bright and moonlike beneath glittering eyes. And then Roy’s vision began to blur. Or, no, only the boy blurred, but even as he blurred, two shapes became bitingly razor clear. A dark and burning crown that made Roy want to weep, and a shining ring that made him want to run and never stop.

Bright, unnatural eyes continued to gaze into Roy’s.

“If I were you,” said a voice that could have belonged to the boy, but echoed with the thoughts and feelings of a thousand other speakers, “I would quit now, while I was ahead. You’ve already bitten off more than you can chew.”

Then the presence, the crown, the ring, and all, vanished. Roy looked wildly around the clearing, but the only people he saw were Beth and Aimee, and they looked downright ill.

He took a shaky breath. “So, should we call our first attempt at summoning the Ghost king a success?”

[erikiara80]

Theory: the car crash in the winter of 1976 (Part I)

More here

I've been working a lot on this theory, and I keep finding things. In this post I'm going to focus on the hidden references to 1976. In Part II I'll talk about the hints at the accident.

I think there are many hints that there might've been a car crash in the past, and that that changed everything. Maybe, after the accident, a wrinkle in time and space created a different timeline-timeloop in which two babies swapped places in the hospital/lab. Maybe the girl we know as El was born stillborn, and Will Byers was the subject of the experiments, as the newspaper in 1x08 suggests. But his death and the experiments created a wrinkle in time and now El now exists and has taken Will's place as the lab kid. Maybe that's why there are hints that they both died in the past and are so connected. There are many possibilities, I don't rule out anything.

If the theory is correct, that means that El wasn't originally abducted at birth. She was brought back, powers made her "crawl backwards", like Steve says to Nancy in S4 (here)

and "she was swapped in the hospital (to tell you the truth)" like Karen says in S3. It's interesting that Karen says in the hospital, and not at birth, and in S4 Brenner calls the lab hospital.

The flashback of Sara's death could be an altered memory of what happened to Will and El after the accident. Or maybe there's even a bigger twist about her, but I won't talk about it here.

@chirpsythismorning noticed something interesting. When El saves Max, the camera rotates counterclockwise. And her arm reminds of the hand of a clock. Same counterclockwise rotation when Brenner dies. Going back in time. Bringing someone back.

But why in winter, and why in 1976?

There are many references to ice, feeling cold and freezing to death, but both the gates weren't opened in winter. So they're hiding something else.

El says that she comes from a bad place, and the boys say that it's Sweden, a cold sub-zero place. Bad place-> frozen lake, or the accident in the lake is the reason she ended up in another bad place, the lab?

The lyrics California dreamin' on such a winter day, in this scene that parallels Brenner and Ten scene in 4x01.

The last line in S4, "It's snowing" while Max is in the hospital.

And here the hints about 1976.

S1: The reporter says that the authorities suspect that Will was victim of foul play and that seven years before ('76) another person drowned in the quarry (*) S2: Lucas tells Max that a very decomposed body was found there.

Castle Byers flashback. Will doesn't get too scared anymore. Joyce jokes about her witch and he says that he's not five anymore (he was five in 1976). Joyce's witch could be a reference to the Witch of the West. In S1 Hopper calls the lab Emerald City. Also, in Castle Byers there are a rainbow, a stuffed lion and a microscope -> connection to the lab?

Possible hint at Lonnie's involvement in the "accident". When Jon was nine/ten he made him kill a rabbit, an animal associated with El and Alice/Henry. Jon was born in 1967, so the rabbit died (there was an accident) in '76. I also think it's not a coincidence that it's Jon, a boy worried about his brother, who sees Barb disappear in a pool. Jon says he cried for a week. He mourned that little rabbit...

Also. When he tells Nancy about the rabbit, he says that he's a fan of Thumper. And in the Nancy and Steve dialogue about crawling backwards, Steve says that what he needed was a thump on his head, to finally start crawling forward.

First day of kindergarten ('76) Will was swinging by himself. Swing sets are associated with both Willel and the Creels, and one of the swings is always broken or missing. If I'm right, this beautiful Byler moment could hint that Will shouldn't have been alone that day. A kid is missing.

The lifeguard at the pool: 'No one in the water until 30 minutes after the last strike. You wanna get electrocuted, go climb a tree'. A very specific line and another possible hint that someone ended up in the water (a lake) and that powers (the strike) saved them. Behind him a poster with the date '76 and the word Happy Birthday.

In 4x01, El says that they're all time travellers and that it feels like it's been ten years since she saw Mike. 1986-10 = 1976.

There's also this poster of the Salizburger Festpiele of 1976- Der Talisman. We see it as Murray and Joyce are talking about Russia and Murray is preparing his ice bath (he was the one who thought El was a russian spy). Once again, connection between cold and 1976. Plus, The Talisman. in 4x09 Lucas read Stephen King's novel, The Talisman, a story about parallel worlds and Twinners.

EDIT 2/3/24: Ross posted a photo of A Wrinkle in Time. The book was published in 1962, but this is the cover of the 1976 paperback edition (here) Interesting choice.

(*) About the quarry scene.There's also a parallel with Fringe, one of my favorite shows. Mike wears the same shirt Peter wears in episode 3x15, Subject 13 (my post about Number 13 and Polivia-Byler parallel)

In that episode, Peter almost drowns in the same frozen lake where Walter opened a portal to the other universe.

And it is revealed that Olivia can travel to the other universe when she's scared. The trigger? Her violent stepfather (looking at you, Lonnie) Why would he hurt the kids? Jealousy, money, or both. A possible parallel with Billy's father, who was jealous of his wife and in Billy's memory asks her: Did you see him again?

[happysaddca]

PING Daycare_Attendent_LightMode ERROR DESTINATION HOST UNREACHABLE

Moon hides in the closet turned staging area/bedroom that he and Sun share, keeping out of the lights and ignoring the calls from their human assistants below. The daycare would be opening in 43.25 minutes and Sun would usually be downstairs, prepping for the early morning rush of kids getting dropped off before parents went off to work.

Sunny is not responding.

Moon has tried everything short of actually stepping out into the light because doing that would mean either talking with the assistants and if Sun didn't come out... He'd be forced to talk to the assistants while looking like Sun, and that seemed even more unpleasant.

A knock startles Moon from his renewed efforts at contacting Sunny; for a split second he wonders if the sound is in his programming and Sun has somehow summoned a door to play games with in their shared code. But no, it's sadly a knock, a very insistent if light sound, coming from the human sized door that they'd half-hidden behind a pile of spare toys and boxes meant for the daycare.

"Sunny? Are you in there? Everything okay?"

The daycare opens in 31.59 minutes.

Moon doesn't want to answer; his voice is a dead giveaway that this is not Sun currently in control. The knocking continues, and he paces, clawing at his faceplate. It's equal part distress and performance. The knocking and constant soft "Sunny?" is gonna drive him up the wall.

"Okay something is wrong. I'm gonna get one of the janitors. They should have a key to get in."

"No!" The boxes rip in his haste, glitter and paper scattering. The door's hinges screech in protest as it opens long enough to jerk the human on the other side into the room and slam shut again. "Do not tell."

"Ow, what, Moon? Where's Sunny?" Moon lets go of their arm like it's on fire. This is one of the newer assistants, someone who still treats the animatronics as human and not an annoyance. Well, he's just screwed that up.

Moon pantomimes shushing, one long finger pressed against his unmoving smile as he squats to be level with the assistant. "Don't speak so loudly," he warns. "Sunny isn't here."

"Isn't... what?" Oh, they are not quiet, not quiet in the least. Moon covers their mouth instead, the if, then rhetoricals playing out fragmenting as an error stiffens his servos until he can dismiss it. He's not hurting the assistant, he's not.

"Sunny isn't here," he repeats, more softly, insistently. "Don't yell. Draws attention." When they nod, his faceplate tilts. "Promise." They nod again, crossing an x over their heart for good measure. Moon pulls his hand back, but it hovers close, anxiety high. If they yell or try to run, he'd have to stop them. How?

"Are you okay?"

A pause, Moon's face untwisting and retwisting counterclockwise. Processing is slow. There's too many variables, and his fans are slow to kick on.

"You're not. C'mon, let's sit. Do you sit?"

They're guiding Moon to a dilapidated couch they'd squirreled away from one of the breakrooms when it was meant to be tossed. Moon sits, staring as they sit next to him, drawn into Moon's space from the weight.

"Okay. Explain what you mean by Sun is gone." There's a red mark on their cheek, a spot they absently rub. Moon's hands click as he flex's his fingers.

"Not found. Dunno where, but no response in here." Moon taps at the back of his head. "We were fine last night. Plugged in to charge for this morning. Woke up and he's gone."

"Oh." Their face scrunches up in thought, fingers moving from their cheek to tug at a lock of hair. "What have you tried so far?"

"Diagnostics. Restarting. Defragmentation. Testing code. More I can feel where he's meant to be. He's not there."

"Should we go to Parts and Services?"

"No." The venom in his voice startles the assistant. They cringe back into the couch. "No techs."

"Why--" They cut themselves off, looking around the dilapidated room and Moon's own unmoving face. They frown, looking down at their hands. "Nevermind. But what do we do? We need Sunny for playtime."

Moon shakes his head. "Dunno. Hasn't happened since we were repurposed. No techs."

"No techs," they reply. "But maybe we can use Parts and Services after the plex is closed? You could walk me through the process."

"Why help?" Moon can't help the suspicion in his voice, especially as the red mark hasn't especially faded. They shrug, looking Moon over and then away.

"I'm trying to think how upsetting it'd be to wake up and not have part of myself there. Dunno how to make to correlate exactly but... yeah. It doesn't seem fun."

"No. Not fun," Moon agrees. The assistant stands in front of Moon, offering their pinky. He stares at it in confusion.

"I promise I'll not tell anyone what's going on if you promise to come with me downstairs after work is over. I'll tell people that you two are having a maintenance day? It should work."

"Should." Moon slowly links pinkies with them, his fingers dwarfing the human's. "Sorry for grabbing."

"Well, now that I know why, there's no hard feelings. You're just really strong!" They let out a laugh, but Moon can't tell if it's genuine. They move towards the door. "I should go now. We open in shit 15 minutes. I gotta let everyone know the cover story."

Moon doesn't know entirely how to reply, so he remains silent. They linger for a moment, clearly wanting a response. With none forthcoming, they continue. "It's gonna be okay Moon. Sunny's just... on vacation. He'll be back."

"Thank you." His voice is small, made even smaller by how empty the room is once the assistant leaves.

----

@biblically-accurate-dca

nooot my best writing but you have me inspired by the idea of Sunny being MIA so I spat this out right quick.

[stormyoceans]

(regency au anon again) thank you so much for the kind and lovely words about what i sent! i was blown away that you liked it! and thanks to everybody who reblogged and commented as well, it was so sweet. i think i will end up posting that au on ao3! i actually wrote some more, so maybe i will wait until i have a semblance of plot before uploading it.

i wrote some of the tanfang backstory and made myself very sad lol. here, let me share my sorrow in a tiny snippet. i don't want you to feel obligated to comment ASAP so i won't keep spamming your inbox, but whatever else i write in this au is all dedicated to your wonderful idea and i hope i can do it justice!! and that i can post it soon.

[It would be so easy to say yes. He ached to say yes. But it was as if that moment in the shop had thrown a revealing light on the past summer of Fang’s friendship with Tan. As if he could finally see what this bond was growing into -- see what his feelings for Tan really were.

You love me, Fang thought, gazing at that beloved face. And I… I am my parents’ son.]

HIIII ANON HIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

first of all, i must apologize for the really late reply!!!! going to the fanmeet last weekend kinda threw me off my (already usually very slow ;;;;;) rhythm and im taking way too long to catch up with everything ;;;;;;;;; i know you said it was okay if i didn't answer right away but still!!!!!! I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW IM SO IN LOVE WITH YOUR WE ARE REGENCY AU AND NOT A MINUTE GOES BY WHERE I DON'T THINK ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SPEAKING OF WHICH. THAT SNIPPET ABOUT TANFANG'S BACKSTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You love me, Fang thought, gazing at that beloved face. And I… I am my parents’ son. <<< THROWING UP ALL THE BLOOD AND ORGANS IN MY BODY AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN AS WELL OH THE ANGST IS GONNA BE SOOOOO DELICIOUSLY SOUL DESTROYING AND SOUL-DESTROYINGLY DELICIOUS THE DUTY VS LOVE OF IT ALL WILL HAVE ME CLIMBING THE WALLS AND SPINNING COUNTERCLOCKWISE ON THE CEILING ABOUT IT I ALREADY KNOW IT!!!!!!!!!! CAN'T EVEN IMAGINE WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN WHEN FANG ACTUALLY CHOOSES TAN I WILL START LEVITATING

IM SO HAPPY YOU WROTE MORE OF THIS AND THAT YOU'RE PLANNING TO POST IT ON AO3 SO PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE DO LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU DO SO I CAN GIVE IT ALL THE LOVE AND SCREAM ABOUT IT SOME MORE!!!!!!!!!!!

[cutebendy]

Translation for video in post which you reblogged an hour ago

What's wrong?

- IT'S SO MUCH PORN HERE

Why are you exploring my personal files?

- Which personal files?! That's all opened, Johny. It's literally thousands of videos here!

I just wanted to clean my desktop

- What a nightmare! You have the whole collection! Annilingus clockwise, annilingus counterclockwise

Yes, when one way all the time my head starts spinning

- Pervert! Just look here girls with dicks!

Oh my god... Oh my god... Yes, I'm mentally ill. I need help

- There are no girls with dicks! Only men with boobs!

Listen, It's a huge relief. That's good that you catched me, I wanted someone to catch me!

- Johny, now listen to me, that's the last wake-up call. You need to go out and see some women in real life, because that shit is going out of control!

Okay, okay, I'll go out but please don't look there

- Johnny, I'm not joking. If you see a girl, start right there, got me?

Yes, I'll do like you said

- Alright, but this must be destroyed

Why? Let's just delete files

- No, no, no, they can be restored in 2 clicks. We need to crash freaking laptop!

Okay, thank you now i have 18+ post...

I hate what i reblogged... And this post but thank you for translated me. I owe you my life. I don't want minors see this.