#i can explain why but that's a bit of a tangent for this post

[3verythingiknowaboutlove]

the limit does not exist!

how spencer helps college!reader understand a little calculus and therefore understand how he loves her.

MDNI | smut word count: 1931 warnings & tags & stuff: fem reader, fingering, oral sex (f receiving), lil bit of overstim hehe, pure unbridled affection, LOVE, FLUFF, hugging, reader cries, this was in fact meant to be written for spence's birthday... sorry about that school is kicking my butt lets just pretend it's october! author's note: this one is for my folks who HATE their calculus class and want spencer reid to give them head instead <3 maybe this can help you romanticize it a bit. i think this is classified as self indulgent…like REALLY self indulgent… hah... anyway i hope you enjoy! let me know your thoughts if u have any, i loveeeee you!! have a great day my hands are shaking posting this smut is so scary!!!!!

You sat in bed, staring down your notebook, eyes narrowed. Limits stared back at you. You were just about at your own limit, if you were being honest. 

Your brain, however sharp and witty it may be, is absolutely not one designed for calculus. A literary analysis essay? Done in half an hour. In depth scientific research project? Easiest months of your life. But there’s something about finding the instantaneous rate of change of a curve at one point in time by finding the slope of a tangent line that hasn't clicked yet. 

A slew of other papers- notes, practice worksheets printed from obscure websites, and formulas- surround you, a sea of unfinished thoughts from the past month of the semester.

You bite on the end of your pen, the little hope you had for a good grade in this class slipping further and further away with each passing moment, like the last ember dying in the remains of a fire.

What you really wanted to be doing was celebrating Spencer’s birthday with him right now. A chocolate cake lay on the kitchen counter and pasta simmers on the stove, but you and your boyfriend had agreed to do a solid hour of work before the celebrations ensued.

You were never particularly strong willed when it came to following through on such agreements.

“Teach me calculus,” you say, a very impressive three minutes later, flopping down on the couch. Your head makes its way to its forever resting spot, Spencer’s lap. He raises his eyebrows slightly, thumb reaching out to trace over the slope of your nose. His eyes flit between you and the file to the side of him. 

“I thought we agreed on an hour.”

“Yeah. But it wouldn’t be a very productive hour if I didn’t know how to do what I have to do. And I missed you.” 

He sighs quietly, closing the file next to him. 

“What do you not understand?” You smile at that, loving how quickly you won.

“Related rates. Like, conceptually.” 

Spencer hums in response.

“It’s October. You’re not even supposed to know related rates yet.”

“Fine. Then let's open presents,” you respond, smiley. His eyebrows get impossibly higher, hand stroking your cheek delicately.

“No. I want our night to be a little more stress free when we celebrate, okay? How about you think about that lovely cake you made for me. What if I decided to squash it so that the diameter would get bigger, going from…let’s say, 20 centimeters to 26 centimeters in 3 seconds, and the height would get smal-”

“That wouldn't be nice. It took me like four hours,” you interrupt, grumbling. He cracks a smile.

“For the sake of the example, let's say I was an awful boyfriend and really wanted to ruin all the hard work you put in for me.”

You roll your eyes.

“Hey,” he says, hand moving down to touch your jaw softly. “Don’t do that. Don’t be difficult. I’m helping you.”

“Sorry. I guess I need you to zoom out a little. I don’t really get why I’m learning this as a whole.” Spencer’s eyes pore into yours, staring down at you adoringly for a small moment as he comes up with an answer.

“Calculus helps us begin to explain the unexplainable by harnessing what we can,” Spencer says simply. “Einstein once said that, ‘Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas,’ which makes it simple in practice, but I actually like to think about it as the opposite philosophically. Trying to find logic in the more poetic ideas.”

You cuddle deeper in his lap.

“Think he would agree with that?” you ask. “I do answer to Einstein before you, unfortunately.” Spencer bends down to kiss your hair.

“I think so. He also had a really nice quote where he remarked that, ‘Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.’ He said, ‘How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.’”

Spencer takes a deep breath.

“Math doesn’t explain how I love you. It can’t. But I love the fact that it tries to. It kinda makes you wanna learn it as best you can.”

You process that for a long second and nod. He keeps talking.

… 

Presents get opened, and cake gets eaten before dinner. Of course.

You’re now in bed, on top of the covers, forcing Spencer to give you a fashion show of the new sweater vest and tie you got him. He turns to you after putting it on, and you beam. 

“I really like it. You look great. Do you like it?” you ask. He nods, smiling back at you.

“I’m gonna wear it to work tomorrow.” 

You beckon for Spencer to come closer, sitting up in bed. Your hands go out to the tie, tugging at the knot softly. He stares down at you until eventually interrupting your motions with a slow kiss, hands cupping your face.

“You’re so pretty,” he mutters.

He pulls away and finishes what you started, folding the tie neatly and setting it in the drawer. Then comes the vest, and soon enough, he’s just in his boxers.

“You’re the pretty one,” you say quietly. “Come to bed.” He crawls on next to you, tugging you into his arms. “Happy birthday, Spence. I love you.” He dips his forehead to your shoulder.

“I love you.”

Before you know it, he’s shifted on top of you, moving down. Fast. You blink, hard, trying to rid your head of the hazy endorphins as you register what he’s doing.

“What? No, I was gonna do that. It’s your birthday. You don’t have to,” you protest.

“But I really, really want to, darling girl,” he murmurs back, kissing your knee and softly pushing it to the side.

You fluster and Spencer just looks at you, fingers tracing shapes on your waist, waiting for you to be ready. 

“Well. Um. Okay. If you insist. I can’t really deny the birthday boy.” Your voice is small, and a little giddy smile grows on your face. Of course Spencer Reid would want to give you head on his birthday. 

He smiles a little against the bare skin of your hip where your top meets your shorts. Then he meets your eyes. 

“You know you can, though, right?” he asks, voice a little more serious. You reach out to touch his hair softly. 

“Yeah. I know.”

Fingers hook your shorts, gently pulling them down. He presses a kiss to your thigh, and then he suddenly looks down at it. 

“Soft,” he murmurs, like he’s making a mental note. He presses another, and another, incrementally going closer and closer to your soaked through underwear. His eyebrows scrunch when he sees the wet spot. “All this from a few kisses?” 

You blush, unable to respond. 

Spencer’s fingers hook a centimeter of your underwear. “These?” he checks.

“Yes, please,” you manage. He tugs them down, silently noticing the slickness of your sex, and exhales shakily.

“How many times on average does it take for a guy to call you pretty on a given day before you get annoyed?” he murmurs, soft smile playing on his face. You smile too, head cloudy from his words, but it immediately drops when his lips press directly against your pulsing clit, kissing it softly.

“Fuck,” you say (Spencer would argue moan) softly (loudly). You let out a content sigh, and he moves to suckle it, actions becoming less and less delicate. 

It’s not harsh, but incessant. Spencer knows what you can take. He knows exactly what you can take. You’re both quiet for a bit, save for your breathy moans. 

“Spencer,” you say softly, ripping you both out of your individually hazy and dirty and distracted minds. “You’re too far away.” He looks up to you, face parallel to your aching core, hair beautifully messy and mouth glistening.

After a second, he grabs your hips, gently pushing you up against the pillows so you’re propped up at a better angle. He then shifts his body up wordlessly so he’s more above you, dipping his head down to give you a soft kiss. You taste yourself, tongue darting out to lick your lips.

His hand takes over where his mouth was, sliding in between your folds with a practiced ease. Spencer looks down at you, eyes wide and flitting between yours, searching for a reaction.

You reach out and wrap your arms around him, holding him close. “Holy shit, I love you,” you murmur.

His fingers lightly graze your clit again before one slides into you. “Angel,” he breathes out, so quietly. “I love you too. This okay? Are you okay?”

You nod feverishly and lift your hips to meet his hand, always in a perpetual state of wanting more, to be closer. Your bodies are melded so close together, barely giving him room to push his hand into you. He doesn’t even bother to ask you to use your words or keep your hips down, like he might on a regular night.

He pulls his head back to watch as he pushes another finger into you, stretching you just a little. “There we go. You always feel like heaven around me.”

Your eyes flit up to his face as he says those words, now having a little more room to observe him. You focus on the slope of his nose and curve of his mouth. 

“You’re so perfect,” you say quietly, adoringly, before you even realize it was true.

You blink at that thought. Spencer Reid is perfect, despite whatever universal odds deeming that impossible.

Those graphs, those formulas, now laying discarded & crumpled on the ground. They click, a little bit. You understand why Albert Einstein wanted to spend his life developing theories of relativity.

This is how Spencer sees you? What he was talking about earlier?

This is how he sees you?

The thought is almost too much.

Spencer sees your face, and not knowing what's going on in your head, slides down his free hand from your cheek to your carotid, feeling your racing pulse. “Take a deep breath for me, okay? You're about to come, huh?”

You inhale and are met with peace. Then your orgasm hits you like a wave. You clench hard around his fingers, and he just watches it happen, fascinated. “Baby,” he coos softly at you.

It wasn’t just your sensitivity he’s currently maximizing on or the little kisses he dips down to leave on your neck that sealed the deal, but the very thought that you could be loved in a way that is so perfectly impossible.

You exhale breathily as Spencer pushes you through the last trails of your climax, fingers not caring one bit that you just had your world tilted on its axis. 

“Spencer. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod,” you say eventually, overstimulated.

“You’re okay. Did so good.” he murmurs, fingers slipping out of you. 

His thumb brushes your cheek, wiping away a tear you didn't even realize was dripping down.

“Don’t cry, you always cry. It’s my birthday. Don’t cry on my birthday,” he whispers soothingly, affection lacing his voice.

“I’m not.” 

Another one falls. 

You reach and press out that perpetual little slope between his eyebrows with your thumb, gentle, like you might break him. “I’m not crying.”

Spencer lets you lie.

[savanir]

The Consequences

The comforting ticking of clocks fills the air, Danny cannot help himself but look at the many gigantic gears working in tandem each time that he pays Clockwork’s tower a visit.

“Alright, I’m here” Danny waves the green post it note around.

“Good,” Clockwork appears and gestures to an open door, “there is something I wish to show you, come”

Danny follows Clockwork into the room that appears to be an infinitely stretching hallway both left and right from him with the two of them in what he must assume must be the middle.

The young ghost takes a moment to process this and comes to the conclusion that this is just typical Infinite Realms ghost bullshit because clearly, logically, this is impossible.

There is a line on the hallway wall.

“Okay, what am I looking at”

“Time”

Danny takes a long deep breath of air before exaggeratingly rolling his eyes and giving Clockwork bombastic side eye, which the guy very rudely ignores.

“can you please be a little less vague Clockwork…”

the older ghost who has shifted into the appearance of a child grins at him, “very well, this line represents here, you could say it’s ‘my’ time.” a line which would sound ominous as hell if it were said by anyone other than the Ancient of Time itself.

“Did you call me here to tell me more about yourself” Danny quickly looks from Clockwork to the very important line and then quickly back to Clockwork  “is this a bonding thing, are we ghost bonding? Do you show this to all your favorite ghosts?”

“Daniel” Clockwork has shifted to his elderly form.

Danny rubs the back of his neck, "It's really cool- in a way. I kinda do feel like there is more to it though.” It’s also a little underwhelming, just a infinitely stretching dark grey stone hallway with a line on the wall, He’d expect Clockworks time to be… well… okay, so he’s got no clue what he was expecting Clockwork’s time to look like but it wasn’t this.

One thing is for sure though, Danny is no longer thinking about touching the Time Line.

“you would be correct,” Clockwork has shifted to his adult form, “let’s get back on track, the reason why I am showing you this is this discoloration over here” Clockwork gestures where to look with his staff.

“the blackish bit?”

“Correct, this is what I like to call missing time” Clockwork huffs, “I used to not mind it, but times have changed” he’s got the young king to be to worry about now.

Danny is somewhat startled while taking a closer look at the small black bit of the time line, “you’re missing time!? … please do not ask me to go find it for you”

Clockwork chuckles, “no there is no need, I know quite well where it is.” then it’s not actually missing is it?

“alright uh… I’ll just ask- What happens when you’re missing time, do you just… black out? orrrr, like, just what’s going on here”

Child Clockwork starts to explain, “During that period the Infinite Realms will move without me.”

Adult Clockwork continues, “from what I have learned of these events in the past it’s safe to say something will soon happen in this section of the realms, something big and dangerous, the tower is protected against these events- by going into a form of stasis.”

Elderly Clockwork finishes, “like I said, in the past this was of no concern of mine, the tower functions as intended, preserving me and time itself as it should, but I worry for you Daniel.”

“I’ve called you here to warn you, mayhap you could find out what this danger is, not to prevent it, but to ensure you yourself will not get hurt.” preventing it is sadly no longer possible. with the dark coloration on the wall the event happening is all but set in stone.

“can’t you look forward to see what it is? or maybe give me a hint or something?”

“sadly not, for me the time is wholly missing, in the sense that it will happen, and so in a way has already happened, which means-” Danny quickly waves his arm around to prevent Clockwork from going into a time tangent and give him a legendary headache, “-which means you will not be able to help me now, or during, or after. I understand.” the boy then sighs, “I’ll look into it I guess”

“Be careful” Clockwork says gravely in his adult form.

Danny nods, and deep in his core he can feel the unspoken please.

—✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*---*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧—

The young halfa really does try to figure out what might happen, what might be wrong, but it is incredibly hard when you have no clues what so ever.

Time passes, life goes on as usual- as it always does.

And then it starts.

Ripples go through the realms, an oppressive pressure building up. minor shades and blob ghosts scatter darting in every direction as long as it’s away from the perceived threat.

Not long after that there is strange crackling and rumbling, artifacts start behaving weirdly, powering up rapidly.

Walker’s prison becomes a fortress that he’s quickly losing control over locking everything and anything down tight.

Both Skulker’s and Undergrowth’s domains life grows rapidly. And although Undergrowth doesn’t mind Skulker certainly does, his jungle is his hunting playground, not the other way around! And that wouldn’t even be that much of a problem if his suit wasn’t completely on the fritz.

Desiree hides herself away deeply in her haunt, frightful of her own powers going absolutely haywire with every wish she grants, usually she enjoys the chaos- but this is rapidly getting out of hand.

Clockwork manages to catch Pariah’s keep going into its own magical automated lockdown before his tower does the same in its own way.

More and more ghosts decide to evacuate away from this corner of the realms, opting to temporarily stay somewhere else and return once whatever this mess is is over.

While all that is going on in the realms outside in the realm of the living Danny still has no clue what’s going on but his powers are freaking out more and more and he’s very glad that there are no ghost attacks because he’s not sure what will happen if he actually has to put some power in his abilities.

For now he’s simply not using them, instead deciding that while this is going on he’s just a regular living human boy with no special gifts, and you know, maybe it’ll all just blow over on its own and settle down.

So far any attempts on Team Phantom’s end to figure out what the hell is going on in the realms has led to nothing. They can obviously detect the surges of power slamming through the zone but they can’t find the origin. 

The best they have got so far is that whatever it is has something to do with leylines. a suggestion brought up by Sam after Tucker mapped out some of the ripples and Sam recognized some of the shapes from her occult witchy books.

This sadly didn’t answer much and honestly only made Danny go, “This better not be some culty bullshit then”

and Tucker hissing, “bro don’t jinx it!”

When it all comes to a head it was just a normal average school day. After hearing them all out Jazz decided that the best course of action was to lock the doors of the portal just in case, and look further into ley lines later that day.

English class had a little outing planned, the whole class went on a short trip out of the city and into the forest for a special assignment.

Mr Lancer told them to find a scenery there that would inspire them, take a picture, and then write three pieces about it of various word counts, this was to teach them about word use and what not. Just regular shit, Danny wasn’t paying that much attention.

while trudging around in the woods, trying to avoid Dash and Kwan and find something to photograph does he feel it. It’s like his entire skeleton freezes over, a thin layer of frost over his entire insides that shatters right after.

Tucker yelps, “Danny what the hell was that!?”

Danny slaps his hands over his mouth, “I think that was my ghost sense? but like insane?”

“what”

Then a small portal opens and a tiny green blur speeds out and crashes right into Danny’s chest.

Danny can’t help but catch whatever it is and he quickly identifies it as Cujo when he can take a proper look.

The poor thing is shivering and whining and abrasions on his paws quickly clue the gang in that the little dog is hurt.

“Jezus, what happened to him?” asks Sam looking worried for the little guy.

Cujo whines and burrows down Danny’s jacket and into Danny's shirt, by now the A listers as well as Valerie have noticed something weird is going on. 

once Valerie recognizes the puppy butt going down Danny’s shirt does she shout, “that vile beast! Let me at them! Don’t worry Danny I have something that will deal with that thing real fast, just stand still!”

Sam immediately jumps in front of Danny to shield him and Cujo.

“Uhm, that’s a puppy,” says Paulina derisively while Star next to her starts to coo as Cujo’s small head pops up from Danny’s neckline, snuggled in fully and clearly content to be and stay right where he is.

"Sooooo cute!” Star just wants to snuggle it, if only all ghosts were adorable little animals, then the whole ghost thing all the time wouldn’t be nearly so annoying.

“That thing is evil,” Valerie fumes.

“It’s a fucking puppy, Gray. What the hell is your damage” Paulina and Valerie viciously verbally tear into each other and Sam hates to admit it but she’s really glad for Paulina’s redirection of Val’s ire.

because she’s right, Cujo is just a puppy.

Mr. Lancer shows up noticing the commotion and increasing volume of Valerie and Paulina’s now borderline screaming match to put an end to all that.

And it’s right then, right when everyone is fully distracted that a flash happens in the distance quickly followed by a tremor through that they can feel in the ground.

Then the sound reaches them, a loud boom and right after dark clouds quickly rise up in the distance where the flash originated.

All of it happens incredibly fast but right after Mr. Lancer wastes no time to round them all up and head back to the meeting point

“Holy shit that came from Amity”

“Did the town blow up?!”

“I’m texting my parents”

"Hi? mom? Are you okay? yeah? what the fuck happened!?”

dread pools in Danny’s stomach, it grows heavier as he gets no response, it does not lift even slightly through Mr. Lancer’s general reassurances to the whole class, holding Cujo tightly to his chest helps a little, but the frantic feeling keeps surging through his body as the whole class gets into the bus to head back home.

Back in Amity it’s just chaos, police sirens, fire fighters, people out on the street, for once there are no ghost warnings blaring and it’s all the stranger for it, all the more worrying.

This isn’t a ghost attack, this is a normal explosion, and it’s so much worse because of it.

Everyone is used to ghost attacks, they aren’t used to normal explosions.

Once back in Amity things get a bit blurry for Danny, he vaguely remembers school, there was a lot of rushing of people, he vividly remembers constantly trying to contact his parents and Jazz and being incredibly worried and frustrated that they aren’t responding to anything.

He very clearly remembers that Mr. Lancer was there through all of it, when everyone else got picked up, Danny remembers both Sam and Tucker not wanting to leave him and go with their parents, but he’d… well there wasn’t really…

things stopped making sense when the police showed up specifically for him. 

After that it was all just one big dark smear.

—✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*---*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧—

The street is pulverized, his house and those adjacent to it are reduced to rubble.

The other buildings are badly damaged enough that the people have to be relocated until repairs are completed and they are confirmed to be safe, for the ones closest to the explosion there is a high likelihood that the structural integrity is compromised. 

They might need to be torn down as well if that’s the case.

All the windows are smashed in a very wide radius around the initial point of the explosion, overall the scene looks like… like something out of a war documentary.

Danny doesn’t get to see much of that though, he’s put in a meeting room, or office, with some things to snack on and water to drink, both untouched, and Cujo in his lap.

The basement exploded, well, the lab or even more specifically, the portal exploded. But the local authorities don’t know about all that stuff so for them right now it’s just the basement.

And seeing as there is honestly nothing left, it's very possible that they are never going to realize there was a gateway to the realm of the dead under that house in the first place.

His mom and dad are… gone, as well as Jazz, she was most likely upstairs- studying.

Danny swallows and holds Cujo closer, nobody has bothered him about the ghost dog, everyone is just treating the little guy like a regular dog, Danny would appreciate it if he wasn’t completely numb.

He’s trying very hard to just keep it all together and not start spiraling cause this is all very painfully familiar, explosion, death, they are contacting Vlad, it’s taking really long.

But from this point forward he’s going to have to do everything in his power to not slip, this is it. He can’t afford- Cause Clockwork isn’t availa- is that it? 

Is all this caused by the mess in the realms!?

Now Danny has to fight the thoughts that he should have done more, taken it more seriously, researched harder, he’d gotten an on time proper and clear warning for fucks sake! Why didn’t he- Why didn’t he-!?

But he did didn’t he? There was basically nothing to go off of, he tried really hard with the tools that he had and he had been making progress, it just wasn’t enough, he didn’t- couldn’t figure it out on time, and-

Why is it taking so damn long to contact Vlad and get this nightmare fully going he wants out of this room it’s getting suffocating!

The door opens, the nice sounding lady regretfully informs him that there seems to be more bad news, she brings it very gently and carefully, most likely trying to not re traumatize him again.

But it comes down to this, Vlad’s estate has blown up as well and nobody knows where he is, they haven’t found, ahem, him yet.

Danny swallows, that’s not how this is supposed to go.

“You think Vlad is dead?” he stammers out.

“We-” she starts clearly thinking very hard about how to word this, “Right now he’s considered missing, I’m afraid that any attempts to reach him hasn’t been answered but search and rescue-”

Danny blinks, he knows Vlad’s phone just has reception in the zone, and something as a portal explosion wouldn’t take him out, the guy should be chomping at the bit to come and get him. So he’s… incapacitated.

“-however, in the meantime the Foley’s have generously accepted to temporarily take you in, I have heard you are good friends with their son Tucker so-”

Danny perks up a little, and Cujo sleepily snuffles before settling in again, “that sounds good, as much as anything can sound good right about now”

The lady tries to hide her wince and gives him a pitying smile instead, both suck.

The next thing Danny knows he’s wrapped up in a tight hug by his best friend.

“You’ll get through this man, we’re here for you, Sam is in spirit here with us right now, if you’re very quiet you can hear her furious yelling at her parents to let her go so she can hug you too”

Danny gives him a watery laugh, “thanks, I just- fuck”

“yeah… yeah”

it’s bad, but it’s not like that time with Nasty Burger, he’s still got Sam and Tucker, Mr. Lancer too, who is certainly not stopping checking in with Danny either.

And Vlad is missing.

—✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*---*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧—

The zone is a mess, it’s also devoid of life, more than usual, devoid of unlife might be a better way to put it? 

Suddenly tracing the point where this mess came from is a lot easier, Sam came with the idea that the one or ones or thing or whatever that started all this probably did something to hide what they were doing.

They go past Clockworks tower, still encased in a perfect time still bubble, seeing none of the outer gears move even an inch is rather unnerving.

eventually they reach a gigantic neon green flaming crack in reality, or at least that’s what it looks like. 

with Cujo’s aid they move back into the living world somewhat to the right of the reality tear.

It turns out that on the living side of things the tear is a big erupting neon green magma spewing volcano.

By Danny’s estimates the green is ecto adjacent but feels horrible wrong.

“so this volcano was connected to the realms somehow and when it erupted…” Sam shivers, “so natural disaster?”

Tucker looks from his PDA trying to make sense of the ecto energy readings and the still spewing volcano, “there is no seismic activity here, that volcano was dead, something triggered it”

“or someone” hisses Danny, “I’ll have a closer look around as Phantom, do not hesitate to contact me if you see someone or something” 

Sam and Tucker both agree and Danny transforms and heads into the volcano.

the place is… weird, there are ruins, and some ritualistic areas, there is a huge mostly destroyed pool where new debris occasionally still falls into, causing a new explosion, Danny takes a few samples of the stuff in the pool to investigate later, cause even though it’s the same toxic green it’s clearly different from the stuff the volcano is spewing into the air.

Then he makes a quick sweep through the underground caverns and stumbles upon a sight he was not expecting.

Unconscious Vlad. Though upon closer inspection it’s revealed to Danny he’s very cold and stiff, so properly dead Vlad. 

The idea is… ridiculous.

So is that it then? Vlad found some neat new place to fuck around with shit he shouldn’t and he found out in the most explosive way possible, and now there is some manner of ecto volcano or whatever, though probably not cause it just doesn’t feel like ecto… But anyway it all exploded in Vlad’s face and he died and caused another Pariah Dark level event through the Realms and somehow managed to also kill Danny’s parents and Jazz while he was at it.

Danny lifts Vlad’s corpse up and takes him with him to Sam and Tucker. Whatever happened down there happened, but Vlad’s corpse doesn’t deserve to just be left there to rot, just like Danny’s parents and Jazz, he didn’t deserve to die (fully).

Sam and Tucker startle violently when he carefully lays his body down nearby.

“Ancients! is he-” Sam takes a hesitating step forward

“I don’t sense anything from him anymore, like, there is supposed to be something there and there just isn’t so…”

“fucking hell” Tucker wipes a head over his face, “can we- I would really like to go home now, I think I’ve gotten enough of this place”

The trio agrees and after some back and forth they have decided that Danny will put Vlad’s corpse in a not yet combed through section of his estate. Search and rescue will find his body, and then… uhhh…

“I worry about everything after that when we get there, alright?” Danny says, and that’s that.

It feels… wrong, but none of them can come up with a better plan so…

It’s not long the next day that the same nice lady contacts Danny about Vlad.

Danny was expecting that. 

What he wasn’t expecting was that eventually in that conversation a whole new bomb got dropped on him.

Because apparently Vlad has registered him as his heir, as in like heir to Dalv.co

And heir to a lot of money.

Time passes, the world is in magical chaos, the Justice League is solving it. Danny isn’t involved in any of it. 

He just had a funeral and is now looking at the graves of his parents and his sister, and a little bit over there is Vlad.

Cujo is still with him, the little guy seems to have decided that he’s just not going anywhere without Danny so he has a dog now, he’s always wanted a dog.

There is a man a respectful distance behind him, apparently that’s Vlad’s butler, his butler now, since when did Vlad have a butler? Danny cannot remember there being a butler the last time he was forced to go to Vlad’s creepy mansion.

It’s starting to rain.

“Master Daniel,” oh no, he’s going to have to put an end to that right away.

Danny turns and takes a step to the guy, “please call me Danny”

“time stop”

Danny startles as everything around him stops moving, rain drops freezing in place.

The butler in front of him now looks a lot like Clockwork.

“First I want to give you my condolences, I am very sorry for your loss Danny” Clockwork looks well and truly remorseful, he’s genuine. There is a tiny part of Danny that instantly wants to rage and scream at him about the unfairness of it all. But Clockwork cannot do anything, not this time.

“And secondly,” he changes back into the very regular human butler appearance, “I’ll be around to aid you along this new path”

Danny blinks.

oh, well, okay then.

Clockwork introduces himself as Conrad W. Kronus and makes it very clear that to everyone that matters he’s always existed. 

There will be no need to worry about any paperwork or whatever, from here on out Danny will get to stay at the other estate Vlad got in Amity so he could do his Major work more easily and he’ll get to live there with his butler and his dog.

That way he can finish school in Amity Park comfortably.

There is of course still the matter of Dalv.co to worry about but Clockwork reassures him that he doesn’t have to think about any of that just yet and to focus on grieving properly instead.

He says all that while driving them home in one of Vlad’s fancy cars, Danny didn’t think the old ghost would know how to drive at all…

It’s when they arrive and Cujo jumps out of his arms to explore his new home while Clockwork goes about his own maybe butlery duties while Danny kind of just stands in the main living room that a sudden realization comes to him.

“oh- this is… I’m like Bruce Wayne now”

[cursed-cube]

So a common headcanon/theory I’ve seen floating around is that when Okarun shifts into his yokai form, the personality shift he undergoes is representative of a “truer” inner self. I can see the line of logic that led to this, but the more thought I’ve put into it, the less I’ve agreed with the premise. And I’ve put so much thought into it at this point that it’s had to become its own whole post separated from the analysis it was originally a part of, so strap in.

Disclaimer: if this is your personal headcanon, I’m not here to try to prove you wrong or make you change your mind, I’m more so discussing this from the theory side of things and what I think will happen as the manga continues. Also slight manga spoilers for up to chapter 172 !!

So as the theory goes, the personality that comes out when Okarun’s transformed is a more genuine version of himself, where his yokai form removes his anxieties and allows him to act more confidently and openly show the depression and pessimism that’s lived in him the whole time. On a surface level this tracks, as being in this form does make him more confident, blunt, and he completely drops the formal way he speaks to people, going so far as to adopt a cute nickname for Momo.

I don’t think this fully makes sense for a number of reasons, though. Firstly is that throughout all 175 chapters that are currently out, I can’t recall any moments where Okarun ever acts in a way that would hint at his real inner workings reflecting the personality and behavior that come out when he is transformed. I could have missed something, of course, but when so much of Momo and Okarun’s relationship is built on them being their genuine selves around the other (more on that in this great video I saw), I’m inclined to believe that there isn’t going to be another shoe to drop nearly 200 chapters in.

To explain my other reasoning, I’m going to have to go into a little bit of a side tangent about Aira, and first I want to establish why I think comparing Okarun to her in this instance makes sense. So up until the cursed diorama arc, the only character that really has comparable yokai related powers to Okarun is Aira. They acquire these powers in different ways, and Seiko says Okarun has Turbo Granny’s “spiritual power”, whereas Acro-Silky says she gave Aira her “aura.” Given the contexts of the scenes these are said in I would assume they are meant to be two different concepts, however it’s not ever explicitly stated or shown how the difference there affects them or their yokai abilities, so I am treating them as functionally the same thing for this analysis. Regardless, the similarity between them seems to be that in one way or another, they have been left with the spiritual energy of their respective yokai, which allows them to transform in very similar ways. Their transformations affect them both physically in making them taller and stronger, as well as their personalities, with Okraun becoming less formal overall, and Aira becoming more formal in the way she addresses people.

Even though they are affected by their transformations in very similar ways, I haven’t seen any kind of headcanon or theory that the way Aira behaves while transformed is how she truly is or feels, which makes perfect sense considering her first character arc. From when she’s introduced, she’s shown to have a dynamic with Momo, Okarun, and her other peers at school, where even before she’s able to use Acro-Silky’s abilities, she’s pretty two faced. In chapter 51, Momo even says, “There’s our Aira!” when she and Okarun pull Aira away from her class and she immediately shifts to her more snarky attitude towards Momo. The manga makes it quite clear that the way she acts at school, and on occasion towards Okarun, is an act, and that her genuine personality is a little nasty and rude (which she is loved for! By other characters and audience members of taste). And with that established, of course no one put that much emphasis on how her behavior changes when she’s using Acro-Silky’s powers. She’s still the same person, her mannerisms and the way she speaks are just altered slightly, which is also pretty much how I feel about Okarun’s yokai form.

That being said, I don’t want to fully dismiss that the shifted personality could mean something, and in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if Okarun did still have some repressed feelings and pessimism from his time growing up without any friends, but at the current point in the story I’m not sure if I could see that being shown explicitly tied to his yokai form. As of chapter 165, Okarun gets his final ball back, and as per his end of the deal, he returned Turbo Granny’s spiritual power to her, and she left with them and hasn’t made an appearance since. Okarun no longer has access to his yokai form, but at this point he’s surrounded by friends, he’s confessed his feelings to Momo, and he’s even grown physically strong enough to hold his own in a fight without any powers. As far as what we’ve been shown, Okarun has developed and his life has changed so much that he doesn’t really have any of those reasons to be a pessimistic downer that he had before the events of the series. Not to say he has no reasons to be sad, of course, we still haven’t been given even a hint of what his family and home life is like, and I expect something will happen with that eventually. But with where the story has gone so far, I don’t see this theory being true or narratively compelling.

TLDR: There’s not much evidence going for this theory, and several things against it, so I personally don’t see it going anywhere in the canon series. The way Okarun acts and the feelings he expresses in his yokai form could still potentially mean something, so I won't completely dismiss it, but with where the story is currently I don’t think this theory being true would add much or be a compelling element of the plot.

[tinfoil-jones]

Gravity Falls: For Your Own Good, Ch. 4

Summary: A few years after moving to Gravity Falls and having his lab built, Stanford Pines happens upon his estranged twin brother, Stanley. He mentally prepared himself to be suffocated by his brothers neediness all over again - what he wasn't prepared for was Stanley walking right past him like he didn't even notice him.

Rating: M for language, violence, and adult implications

Preface: Dialogue only, but some actions will be annotated for clarity. Cross-Posted on AO3 Here

First - Prev - Next

CH.4

"If we’re going to get to the pit of this peach we gotta get some variables outta the way first. I need a scan of his brain and yours. While conscious.”

“Mine as well?”

“You said he’s your identical twin - he should be genetically the same as you. We can use a scan of your brain as a comparison to see if there’s physical damage on the organ itself, because brain damage is the most common cause of amnesia.”

“I do have the technology available for an in-depth scan, but… ”

 “But what?”

“It’s in the shape of a ray gun, but like a traditional MRI whoever is getting scanned has to stay completely still.”

“I don’t s’pose in the time it took me to go into town and get supplies, you managed to reconcile with him?”

“Reconcile? He’s still convinced I’m a mad scientist out to harvest his organs, 'or worse turn him over to the IRS'- don’t ask about that second part. If I point anything gun-shaped at him, he’ll freak out.”

“Can’t say I blame him…”

“Hush, Fiddleford. There’s an easy way we can get him to hold still.”

“Stanford- Stanford put the tranquilizing doohickey away. We both know that concoction of yours wasn’t formulated with humans in mind. Surely you have less caustic means of sedation.”

---

“Stanford, anyone can tell that bottle’s been tampered with.”

“I have a theory that this persona of his is so self-destructive he’ll still drink it.”

“Y’know, this bottled water tastes suspiciously like two crushed Ambien tablets.” 

*Stan keeps drinking it anyways*  

“I am impressed, but I also hate that your theory was correct.”

*Ford undeafens the cell*

“Stanley, if you think there’s zolpidem in that, why are you still drinking it?”

“You think two Ambien is enough to take me down? Guess again, I’ve used this stuff to cut coke. You’re gonna have to try harder than that, PhD.” 

“Hmm, so we should have used Coca-Cola instead of water…”

“That ain’t what he meant by- how did you survive by yourself out here?”

---

“Hello there …Stan?”

“Sup babe.”

“Don’t call me that. I was wondering - you’re so handsome already, but it’d surely tickle my fancy a bit more if you put on this here necktie.”

“Hell no.”

“Do you not know how to tie one? I’d be happy to-.”

“I know how to tie a tie, specs. But I’ll never wear a necktie ever again. Not after Colombia… I still can’t shave that part of my jaw without nightmares.”

“I beg your pardon?”

---

“I couldn’t convince him to put the mind control tie on.”

“Fiddleford, why are you staring a thousand yards away?”

“He was explaining to me his time in Colombian prison, then he went on a tangent about necklaces and now I don’t think I can change a tire without thinking about it ever again.”

“... Interesting. We’re not resorting to the tranq gun yet?”

“This is your own brother you’re talking about.” 

“There’s only one thing we can do. The only thing that will 99.99% work on my brother. I didn’t think it would have to come to this so soon. But it’s our only unharmful option left.”

---

“Stanley.”

“Doc.”

“I will give you twenty dollars if you stay still for thirty whole seconds.”

“On one hand this is a set up… On the other hand, I’ve done worse for twenty dollars.”

“You what ?”

“Ten bucks up front.”

To be continued...

[starberry-cupcake]

I'm back! Thank you so much for your patience and your kind messages and comments ♥ you are so nice about my silly ramblings, I appreciate it a lot.

previously, on harrowsoup the ninth:

this happened

also I posted this and this as previews and this is the whole tag

currently, chapters 23-26:

"an atmosphere of greater unease had settled over the mithraeum"

aka the emperor's bolthole

btw, no kidding, harrow, I hadn't noticed the unease

so, harrow asks around about the herald situation

I have another deck with dragon heralds but I'm not gonna go on a card tangent this time (you're welcome)

everyone gives terrible and useless descriptions

emperor johnny boy says "Whenever they come I am bundled off to a sealed sanctum at the heart of the Mitrhaeum, so that their insanity can't touch me"

asshole coward awful man

harrobean is trying to ask why emperor asshat is so sure about her having to die and if there's no way she can make it

emperor johnny says yandere twin isn't that good at being a lyctor yet, even if she's surprising and that if he was still giving silly names, he'd name her "Saint of Awe"

harrow thinks "that had not quite suited Naberius"

get perpetually owned, chad

harrow also mentions not being able to remember things well

YOU THINK, HARROW?

"it was as though your brain had formed a scab over everything that had happened to you"

I don't think that scab is healing well

emperor johnny insists on the rapier

idk why they all insist on the rapier

gideon and camilla didn't like it and were the fucking best cavaliers ever

ARE, THEY ARE THE BEST CAVALIERS EVER

PRESENT TENSE

but anyway, at this point, it could very well be emperor johnbro has aesthetic demands

not like he'll explain anything

harrowbean sees not!dulcinea's door closed, which isn't usual

she second guesses a bit because she can't always trust what she sees and she remembers crux saying "you saw what you saw, Lady, and the only thing you control now is your reaction thereto"

I didn't like that old man, but that's pretty cool of him to say

harrow opens the door and sees this

alleged gideon the first aka ortus tells harrow to go away very calmly and in a way that is too nice for him, apparently

harrow is upset at the display in front of her salad and goes to complain to yandere twin

which is a terrible place to complain at because she's both into gossip and into kink

if you want someone to take this seriously, that's the last place to go to

"at least you know who's been moving her—so to speak"

this is what we get combining yandere twin and chad

I've used that gif twice for her already

I forgive her, though, because she says "god is a dickhead" and she's right

she also asks harrow to try to remember why emperor john god has given her the sword

and establishes that harrow previously did something to her jaw so that she couldn't tell her

that's going in the 3d model

CHAPTER 24

apparently people are being less mean to harrowbean because they're already mourning her

harrow says that alleged gideon the first aka ortus has the name ortus because "it was just a banal and uncomfortable coincidence, as though he'd carried the name of a dead childhood pet"

she believes that the name must have caught on in the ninth because anastasia must have like brought it in and named people after her pal

I think he's named gideon

and that our gideon is named after him because of direct relationship of some capacity, maybe to someone involved

I considered the mom, but it's uncertain

in any case, he has to die

so, harrow puts a lot of wards and safety things in her room

kind of like this

home alone styling it

but apparently alleged gideon the first aka ortus can bypass wards

much like the sleeper/waker

much like not!dulcinea

wards are basically pointless, I guess, at this point

so he goes into her bathroom when she's bathing because here in the emperor's bolthole, everyone's a disrespectful asshole

harrowbean says he's "a thanergy void" and "the ultimate nemesis of a bone adept"

he tries to kill her while she's looking like this

I want to give this child some cocoa and play a comfort movie for her, like "the bone collector"

she ended up using the teeth she lost in the fight as projectiles in his eyes and got him to leave

she ended up bloody, unmoving, wet, naked and collapsed on the ground to which yandere twin live reacted to and left

she could have given her a hand

or an arm

she decided alleged gideon had to die and ice cube barbie aka probably annabel lee agreed

when gideon was among us, there was not enough time for her to throw hands at people and here there's so many people she could be throwing hands at and she's not here to do so

camilla too, but camilla threw hands at martita in a way that was legendary enough

CHAPTER 25

harrow goes with the chisme to dr reverend professor emperor john

she says "I swear by the Locked Tomb"

to which he replies "I wouldn't swear by that in this instance"

which I sure hope doesn't mean anything nasty with my girl ice cube barbie annabel lee because I'm gonna kill this man

she might not be entirely alive (maybe she is, maybe she's just suspended or something) but she deserves better than this piece of work

then he says "well, that's unfortunate"

this man really knows how to handle a situation, huh

emperor john says that it's pretty unlikely that alleged gideon the first aka ortus was doing the dirty with not!dulcinea because he never showed interest before and is "legendarily unamorous"

that's another tshirt I need

I need that one and the witch one immediately

also, now we've got a problem

not just because my telenovela about how this man might or might not be related to our gideon got more convoluted

but also because if alleged gideon is aroace, I'm gonna have to stan

I don't make the rules over here, I have to stand by my people

I have a conflict of interest now

emperor john also says "you must think us all a depraved set of immortal criminals"

I mean yes, I do, but not because of sexy times with zombies

I'm not here to judge the sexytimes of necromancers and whatever they do in their spare time

I don't know the intricacies of consent with ghosts or whatever, I can't be imparting judgment

it's not that, emperor john

it's because you're unpleasant war criminals who are killing planets for fun

well, the war criminal part I don't have hard evidence on rn but the situation doesn't seem to be in the favor of these people

I feel like when this man talks about the overall situation I'm getting a speech from emperor palpatine

emperor reverend john asks harrow, who has been awake for 25 years, to go to sleep

yeah, sure, she should go to sleep and wait for this guy to come by and try to kill her for the millionth time

meanwhile, harrowbean keeps collecting hours without sleep like

she makes, at the request of emperor camp counselor john, soup for everyone

I don't remember if it was here or before and I forgot but, this is extremely important

they mentioned cassiopeia being the one who cooked before

cassiopeia the same one with the ceramics collection, if I'm remembering correctly

cassiopeia who was also from the sixth, I think

camilla's house

she's checking every single one of my boxes like a sniper

why isn't she here, we're stuck with the grumpy one and the senior chad

ANYWAY, at the mention of harrow cooking I thought, immediately, "that's an awesome way to kill this guy"

I was picturing more like a poison type situation, although I didn't know how that could be achieved

something like this

but I should have known poison was too subtle for harrowcita

like I established back when protozoa's head was found in her closet, subtle isn't harrow's style

so it was more like this

basically, harrow sectioned her tibia to put some in the soup and then she could necrobend it so that it attacked from the inside

if I'm getting it right

insane plan and I love it

emperor john shadyman says "ten thousand years since I've eaten human being, Harrow, and I didn't really want an encore."

were they snacking on people during the Resurrection???

did they kill people by making lunch?????

???????????????????????????????????????????

"you think we're bad because we have sexy times with ghoulies?? uwu" that's the least of my concerns johnny john man

harrow then breaks down and asks straight to his face WHY THE FUCK MUST SHE SUFFER LIKE THIS

she calls herself a nonsense

the only nonsense here is what this emperor man speaks

she tells him she hasn't slept in six days

for a sleep deprived plan, it was excellent tbh

emperor man over here asks yandere twin to take her to sleep

and then stays with mercygirl to whom he says it's insane that harrow could do what she did and how did mercygirl miss that

this is the situation, as I have previously established

augustine looks at harrow "as if he had seen the ghost of someone he did not particularly like"

alleged gideon the first aka ortus salutes her on her way out

he doesn't even have heartburn

CHAPTER 26

we're back on gideon-less canaan house because it's time for more people to die

in ways that make 0 sense at all for what we know so far

regina george twin is pushed to her death by mayonnaise uncle

sounds fake to me

like, come on

regina george twin can probably murder that feeble guy on sight

we saw her spar with gideon, she wanted to be the cav that chad ended up being

she might not be a necro but she can stand her ground in a physical fight

mayonnaise uncle without duracell bunny nephew is like a sweaty guy on an anime con complaining about girls ruining everything while buying a maid figurine

she can take him

anyway, he does that and he says to her "and somewhere out there, may all the blood of your blood suffer even a fraction of what I have suffered"

now, this is weird

is he talking about yandere twin?

he wants revenge because yandere twin obliterated him?

is yandere twin "out there"?

I'd say this might be limbo BUT CAMILLA ISN'T DEAD

harrow is going to him and he says "she has not remembered her end" "is this how it happens then?"

and then he yeeted himself into space

that's what I wanted to do with not!dulcinea all along

so, yeah, well, this canaan business is getting more complicated now that it's not just people being shot

people are throwing themselves and others into space

and the memories of harrow in the emperor's bolthole aren't completely lining up with these

and mayonnaise uncle seemed to have been more aware of things than others around here?? or maybe just more forthcoming??? in that cryptic otaku way of his

also, no camilla at all still

Things are heating up in the emperor's bolthole, hope to come back soon with another one and thanks for the patience, hope it was worth it.

[thewebcomicsreview]

So, Gunwild, the writer of Cassiopeia Quinn, made a comment on that post about webcomics turning into illustrated prose

gunwildversuseverything said: I was hoping this would prompt a discussion about formats and expression, but no, it’s about artist versus writer workloads and “amount of story” being reduced to equations and word counts and update schedules. Figures.

And you know what, it's a good point. So instead of getting into the Artist vs Writers debate for the millionth time, let's take a look at how you, and artist and/or writer, can get a story told on the internet. For the sake of this discussion, lets assume you don't have any actual preference for a given medium that might influence you, you just want to know what's right for your story and will learn whatever skills you need.

TRADITIONAL WEBCOMIC

Comics are the most visual-heavy medium that a solo project can realistically do. This has several business advantages (pictures do better on social media), but it's also a good fit for stories with a bunch of things that are interesting to look at. Cassiopeia Quinn is a story heavily featuring weird alien races, cool spaceships, and attractive young women with extraordinarily casual dress codes. These are visual things! And visual things can be conveyed super quickly and subtly using visuals. Imagine just the "Cassiopeia doesn't wear pants" gimmick, if this was written out. If Cassiopeia gets a description of her appearance the first time she shows up in chapter one and then it's kind of glossed over, the reader would forget. If every time Cassiopeia entered a scene Gunwild had to go

Cassiopeia sauntered up to the motorcycle rack. Her own rack was barely contained by a dangling strip of black fabric, visible through an open orange jacket. Black elbow-high sleeves, covering her hands, matched her thigh-high stockings, separated from her black panties by her thigh pouch.

Somehow it's a lot less cute when it's written out like this, huh? And it also takes way longer to read that then it does to just look at her on the page, which increases the chance your readers might get bored. Comics are the medium that takes the most time to make and also the least time to read, which makes readers a lot more likely to put up with exposition or a plot tangent that doesn't really connect with them. Even if your comic has bits that don't grip your readers, they can grip themselves if you show them interesting bits.

The main downside of comics is the "equations and update schedules" part. They take a looooooong time to make, even compared to everything else. It's also got issues with how people read it. A comic that looks good on a desktop often looks too small on a phone.

TEXT UNDER A PANEL

This style is so strongly associated with Homestuck that a lot of people who weren't making explicitly Homestuck-themed comics seem to have been scared off it. But it's a perfectly cromulent format. It reads well on both desktop and mobile, and lets you use art for all your visuals while using text for dialogue and character thoughts. It's not, however, the best fit for every story. Because each panel is separate, it can be hard to make an exciting action scene this way, which is part of why this format is also associated with special animated pages (I mean, besides "Homestuck did it"). The panels don't really flow into each other, and there's a constant switching between looking and reading.

ILLUSTRATED PROSE

Distinguished from the Text Under a Panel Style mostly by the ratio of text to art, without a hard line demarcating the distinction between them. This style also reads well in desktop and mobile. Well, it should, but a lot of webcomics who switch to this style tend to stay in their webcomic format, meaning it's a picture of text that doesn't resize legibly, grumble grumble. I don't....I don't know if I need to explain the concept of "text" to people. You know what words are, and if you don't there's nothing I can say to explain it.

VISUAL NOVEL

I'm not going to claim to be a visual novel expert, but the main advantages are that it's the most art-efficient medium of any of these (because you can flat-out reuse art), the main disadvantages are that you'll usually need music, it's maybe not as well suited to long monologues, and most importantly that it's not a good method for drip-feed three-day-a-week updates. You kind of have to release the entire thing all at once, or at least in large episodes.

ALL OF THE ABOVE

A comic like Out-of-Placers is mostly traditional, but uses illustrated prose for lore updates. Prequel is text-under-a-panel but not always, and of course Homestuck is the absolute king of format switching, even ignoring the animations. The upside is that you can use the best format for any given scene, and that you're constantly keeping your readers on their toes. The downside (besides having to learn to do all this shit) is that you kind of have to commit to the bit and get your readers on board early with the idea that you're going to just be doing whatever this week. It's also harder to take full advantage of any one medium if you're constantly switching them up

I'm sure I'm forgetting about two hundred formats, but what are the biggest ones I'm missing?

[luniviravosshipper]

I really want to be supportive of the creators of this show. I really want to hype up the release of this new season. TDP has a bit of smaller fanbase than most shows like it and I want to show and share my love for it as much as I can. I especially don’t want to seem too negative or critical of minor details and flaws within the new season the day it gets out.

But honestly… I know I might still need to sit with my thoughts for a little bit longer so I can properly digest them, but I have so many thoughts overall on how they wrote Viren’s arc that I feel the need to share. And let me just say, plain and simply, I was not a fan.

I just have… so many mixed feelings regarding it.

Look. I understand why they made certain choices. I think it’d be really interesting to go back and analyze those choices. And obviously they had specific intentions in mind by making those choices. But do I still agree with those choices? No. I’m just going to put that there bluntly. I do not.

And, before anyone makes assumptions, no, I’m not complaining about him not being redeemed or forgiven. That’s not the part that rubs me off the wrong way.

Sure, I have other criticisms too for the season, but I feel like I can wait to share those. But with Viren, I’m kind of actually trying to resist the urge to post a whole tangent listing my complaints with how his arc was handled. I might be a little bit biased because he is my most favorite character in the entire series, but I also think that he plays a crucial role in the show as he used to be one of the main antagonists and there’s a lot of reasons I can think of how they could’ve handled his character arc in a way that would have honored his role more.

But mainly, I’m just wondering if anyone else shares this sentiment or a similar one? I don’t know if my takes on Viren’s arc will turn out to be controversial or not.

I might actually make an elaborate post explaining my thoughts on his arc more coherently later. Again though, I still need to process and evaluate my views on it for me to finalize any of my opinions.

[tree-obsession]

Gold and Red Text in Penacony

So, for some reason, I have decided to torture myself by creating a theory that will likely have some plot relevance??? but not totally sure. it has popped up a bunch of times and seems to confuse a lot of people, so I'm just putting together what I know! feel free to tell me if I missed something, as I haven't done many of the side quests yet...

Anyway, spoiler warning for 2.0 trailblaze mission and possibly some of the side quests?? idk proceed with caution! I don't read many leaks so I doubt there's spoilers for that but tell me right away if there are any!

Alright, so the first time we see different-colored text in this mission is during Acheron's first meeting with the Trailblazer. According to this twitter thread (credits to user mobnermal, NOT me) Acheron's dialogue will change, depending on the gender of the tb and how we respond to her queries. She also says towards the end of the convo something along the lines of "It feels like multiple different versions of you were talking to me, saying a different thing each time".

So, I'm not entirely sure why she's lying, or even if she's doing it intetionally. It does seem like there's some aspect of "different possibilities within the Dreamscape" happening- almost like the Dreamscape itself is changing the tb's answers/Acheron's questions. But again, we'll get a bit into the dreamscape later.

2. Aventurine's final convo with the tb, and then Black Swan later.

My screenshots were failing me so hard in this quest lol.

Anyway, as far as I know, these two are the only ones in this mission who use gold text. It's mostly used to highlight the word "truth", and according to the wiki and playthroughs I have watched this dialogue doesn't change- only Acheron's red seems inconsistent. I find it interesting Black Swan put quotations around it, and I have no idea what this could imply. I assume she knows something we and Aventurine don't about Robin's death, which seems to be what they were referring to during this part.

As to how that "upends everything"... I don't know what the implications of her death are. It's implied by the npc who raised Robin (can't find any screenshots- I didn't take any, but it's dialogue from an npc in the Golden Hour) and Sunday and Robin's dialogue in the very beginning- the one where they were "shades"- that Robin's voice may have some special quality that could mind-control/ brainwash people to some extent. This is a bit of a tangent, but may point out why the gold test is so important- the new Harmony trace mats match Robin's design very well, and are part of the Order. The Order's- Ena's- symbol is an eyeball, which can be found in a lot of places on Penacony, but most importantly Sunday's clothes. Judging from what we know of Sunday's control-freak-esque personality (sorry dude ):) it's possible he or someone else in The Family is using Robin's potential powers to brainwash the people of different factions. If you choose the alternate ending, everything wraps up a bit too nicely, and nobody seems to want to leave Penacony after that. Tb never finds out about Robin's death in that ending, either. There's a lot of implications there that I don't want to get into for this post, but basically- The Family is orchestrating something, probs pinned the blame on the IPC in the bad ending (since otherwise why would hoyo tell us that?) and then brainwashed everyone to never leave. Why? No idea! But it does explain why Robin's "truth" (in quotations, because Black Swan's dialogue does imply Robin's not dead) is so important to the plot.

That was a bit of a tangent, lol. Going back to the first sc, I find it interesting Aventurine is the one to tell us this, and if we're going with the idea that gold=truth, that just tells us Acheron's most certainly an Emanator, no matter what the Dreamscape does. Why they choose to have Aventurine reveal this, especially with the first instance of golden text- that's still up in the air. However, something I want to throw in is that there was a theory floating around Twitter comparing his eyes to the eye behind Ena in their official art. They are identical- even the gold outline on Ena's eye matches his eyeliner. Since it's implied in his conversation with Sparkle his eyes are a defining feature of his race, Sigonian, and that their civilization has been taken over (I'm not clear on details) or fallen apart somehow- akin to how civilizations under Ena's rule fell apart after their death- there may be some relation. Also, Aventurine was sent to Penacony specifically, which Topaz questioned- this may be why Diamond sent him. It implies a lot of plot relevance for him later, certainly!

3. The really, really ominous text you can get from a side quest.

If you go to the Reverie(Dreamscape) VIP lounge teleport beacon and head to the wall, you find a broken Clockie surrounded by purple bubbles. If you haven't done this quest yet- do it now, I really can't explain all this! search up a guide- there's a couple good ones on youtube. you do get a sticker!

anyway, some screenshots of the tape's text (cw for slight gore, explosions, screams, overall very ominous and vague tour-guidey stuff):

sorry for the text overlap lol, this was very inconveniently sized for screenshots.

anyway, yeah! possibly the most unnerving thing in the game so far (aside from those lost text stickers...). but, as you can tell, I'm gonna focus on the gold and red text. fair warning, I don't really know what to make of this, but I think there's some connection...

first, gold. this is, if we go off what I previously thought, the "truth". My current theory is that this gold is true of within or outside dreamscape- in other words, the dreamscape cannot alter that thing in the gold text. It's there, regardless of how the dreamscape screws other things up. The "truth" in the dreamscape isn't necessarily reliable, since dreamscape seems to fuck with everything, but gold is apparently truth, so we're sticking to that. That means that bloodshed, mind-opening (?), and pressure-releasing (???) is... true? It's kind of interesting- the other things in gold we've seen are statements with meaning, and this... kinda isn't. However, it could imply this is actually what's happening in the Dreamscape. Some kind of deranged, creepy thing that the dreamscape/ the Family is doing while everyone else is on this cool-looking vacation. I have no idea why that line, of all the lines, is gold, but it's certainly not something someone trying to make Penacony look good would say! That's all I know.

Not much I know about why the red one, specifically, is red either. Are the instruments/music fake? That's certainly a recurring motif in Penacony, between bands in the Golden Hour and Robin being a songstress, plus Ena's "Beyond the Sky Choir", their exclusive faction, which fell apart upon their death. Something about Ena being swallowed by XIpe will certainly be brought up later, I'm almost totally sure. It's also interesting it gets cut off by static, without even finishing the statement(I think). I have no idea what to make of these- I just needed to point out the similarities between this tape and the dialogue.

Also, the tape itself is suspicious. According to Woolesley, there are multiple, appearing all over the Reverie (Dreamscape) and sometimes even messing with the Dreamscape.

First of all, why the hell is he telling us this very classified-sounding info? Also, he literally might pop up next to you- it's inevitable that you give him the tape at some point, really showing how The Family is cracking down on these.

Also, who's making these tapes? Why are they leaving them around the Dreamscape if they know it'll be taken? What's with these side effects/corrupting? And what's the relation between the tapes, Acheron, and Aventurine/Black Swan- are those things revealed in the tapes things only those three are aware of, or care to tell tb? It's really weird, especially since they're apparently in Clockie statues? Also, why tapes even- the tapes themselves seem corrupted(or censored?) weirdly, judging from the lines, and also just... why would anyone make these? Someone against the Family presumably wouldn't do rebellion in such a way, and someone within would have no reason to create this at all- is the Dreamscape itself making it? it's the only thing using both red and gold text...

there's probably some connection to Clockie, since that's who is most likely talking in the tape... and that's the statue we found it in too. Clockie is sus in a whole host of ways- don't even get me started, but I'm not sure how they relate to this theory just yet.

I have no idea. The tape is super creepy, but things probably will clear up a bit in 2.1!

tldr/clarification(sry for rambling so much): red text = lie/subjective/ easily changeable, to the dreamscape at least

gold text= "truth", dreamscape is unable to change it(?)

ena probs will have some lore relevance along with Robin, who seems to be the center of this "truth" for the moment

the bizarre tape is very mysterious and questionable, with nothing solid that we know about it- however, it uses both red and gold text, which automatically makes it suspicious even beyond what it's saying directly

what the hell is the family cooking up? i don't know, but it's probably not good! (for us, at least)

thank you for reading this lightly-proofread, very rambling theory/speculation- you are an angel for making it this long!

edit: so number one- I've added a reblog to this post- plz check it out, it has some other details from the Chadwick quest. and also, there's this Youtube video that mentions the red text in the beginning! It has a very similar idea to mine, but the thing it mentions is not an option I made (I accepted Acheron right away lol, so I didn't grab this detail). And the entire vid is pretty cool, so you should see it!

[nothingenoughao3]

huge fan of Dreams in the Necromancer House! Phenomenal in general, but to be specific, I was very impressed with the pacing and structure of the fic. apologies if you’ve talked about this before, but how DO you structure your longer works? is there a specific outlining process you rely on? I ask because, while I technically *understand* the three act structure, I don’t like “get it.” I can feel when something is paced well but I don’t understand why or how, if that makes sense (and of course as a disclaimer I do understand that there are only guidelines, not hard and fast rules). Anyway, just super interested in your process and would love hear anything you have to say about it! ❤️

Well, first off, thank you for reading that whole damn story! I'm grateful to hear that you enjoyed it, and are curious about how it came to be.

I'd like to note, for people who read this and are not you, that I don't do Read More cuts anymore. I lost a ton of writing on my former blog because the name changed and the Read More links all broke forever. There may be spoilers for "Dreams in the Necromancer House" in this post, although not for the ending! Please keep in mind before you interact with this post! I am immune to spoiler damage but not everyone has this super power.

I had a specific split genre of story in mind. Pacing is strongly affected by what kind of story it is. What's acceptable levels of character-building in a drama will come across as unbearable time-wasting bullshit in a thriller. You can not explain the intricacies of the plot in some styles of horror, and it's more effective that way, but you generally must take the time to explain these things in a mystery, and so on.

"Dreams" is a cosmic horror/romance. Cosmic horror as a genre is driven by plot and relies on extremely vivid world-building (which is why so many of Lovecraft's narrators don't have names--they aren't necessary!). Romance as a genre is driven by character and relies on extremely vivid descriptors of those characters and their immediate physical reality (their bodies, their homes, etc). These seem like they'd contradict each other, but they augment each other if handled correctly.

So, chapter 9 is structured like this:

Dan talks to Matthews and pulls the Moby-Dick prank. Plot-driven, but with a bit of comedy to lighten the overall tone of the story, which has gotten pretty dark.

Matthews consults with Asenath, Derby and Clarke. Entirely plot-driven scene meant to remind the audience of the stakes.

Dan and Herbert get ready for the party, and The Shaving Scene plays out. Character-driven scene, light on plot and heavy on romantic elements.

Dan realizes why Herbert's sneaking off during the parties. Seems like it's plot-driven, but the emphasis on physicality, location descriptors, and the like reveal that this is another character-driven tangent.

Breaking it down like this, we can see that 1 and 2 are cosmic horror-themed, and 3 and 4 are romance-themed. The first half of the chapter provides the reader with a ton of necessary information while sprinkling in Danbert-flavored treats as a reward. The second half is more explicitly about Dan and Herbert's relationship, while continuing to establish what little set-up is still needed for the big opener of the next chapter.

The Shaving Scene is extremely light on plot, and it would be cut from the story if it were a pure cosmic horror tale. But for this kind of split genre, the scene was vital. It gives readers a chance to get to know Herbert and Dan a little better, fall more in love with them (if that's even possible), and incidentally, because it's NOT plot-related, it builds anticipation for the next big plot point at the party. If I've done it right, readers are constantly aware that Dan and Herbert are preparing to go to the party/revelry, that this is a Big Deal, and the reader's going to be worried despite the flirting that things are going to go Very Badly For Them. Then, as Scene 4 plays out, the reader's tricked into thinking the Very Bad Thing is just another relationship misunderstanding--only for Dan's "... oh, boy" to confirm that the Very Bad Things are going to be Very Much Part Of The Plot.

I think readers are smart and can pick up on cues, even if those cues are sometimes absorbed subconsciously (I've done this myself!). I feel like when I'm writing a scene where Dan's cooking food and there's a lot of descriptions of the incidentals in the kitchen, how the weather's been, how heavily he's been smoking, that readers will learn at a certain point that these are cues for "This is a romantic/character-driven part of the story". And if the scene begins with, or features, a ton of flashbacks and history that give it a broader scope that spans decades, then this is probably a cosmic horror scene. (Note that a LOT of Armitage and Asenath's scenes take this approach, and that gives them a different feel from how Dan and Herbert's romantic scenes are framed.)

Also, it was necessary to ease folks into this kind of structure. I feel like the opening four chapters were pretty much about establishing the world I wanted the characters to inhabit--introducing many of the important new cast members, establishing a timeline, bringing in elements that seem small but become hugely important later, etc. At that point, the romantic elements were very light and suggestive and past-tense. The first sex scene in ch. 4 was, primarily, there to let everyone know that yes this is going to be One Of Those Fics where they do in fact bang, they just aren't right now. And it ends with Dan having the same kind of emotional response I wanted from the reader: wistful and sad that they aren't together anymore, unsure of how it's going to be fixed.

(Not to get too parenthetical, but there are many meta-jokes like this in my writing. Like, uh. You know how Dan sometimes is like "I'd rather think about X than Y?" He's leaning on the fourth wall and acknowledging that the story is about to switch from cosmic horror to romance, or vice versa. Now you know.)

After those first few chapters, though, you can pick the story apart and see how romance starts to intrude more on the cosmic horror structure. Ch. 5 is primarily about The Plot, but then there's that bit with Herbert and Dan arguing about the chores and the cat. Ch. 6 opens with Dan talking about Herbert and their dynamic, has a bit about the plot again, and then veers into a long flashback regarding their breakup sex. The end scene with Armitage is comparatively brief. Ch. 7 has some plot elements, but we're getting into heavily character- and relationship-driven subplots interacting with the main plot.

At that point, building suspense becomes easier! If I want to delay the discovery of some element of the mystery, I can throw Herbert and Dan into an argument. And if I want to stop them from getting along too well just yet, I can throw more cosmic trauma their way. And if the story goes full throttle on cosmic horror (like in chs. 10 and 14), then I can throw in elements that raise the stakes by reminding people of the romance--Dan praying to Herbert for help, Herbert admitting that Dan is the cause of all of his insomnia. Those reminders hit so much harder when they're a surprise raising-of-the-stakes.

Now, you may be like "But how do you know when to switch around the structure?" and the answer is vibes.

More specifically, this is why I think writers tell other aspiring writers that they must read stuff in the genre they want to write. Do that and you'll pick up on the vibes of the genre: how much space you're expected to take up on characters, world, plot, theme, and so forth. I can generally rattle off how one should structure a lot of the fiction I'm interested in writing because I read a ton of that shit.

And if you don't have the time for that, I strongly recommend watching movies in the genre you want to write. For example, "Re-Animator" is almost perfectly divided into thirds. The first 35 minutes are character- and world-building and establishing of initial stakes; the middle 40 minutes dramatically raise the stakes and line up all the previously-established elements; and the last 30 minutes is all climax, all the time. The end of the film feels inevitable as it plays out, especially the last scene: there is no other way it could have gone, because nothing has been wasted--everything the movie put down in the beginning, it picked up in the end. That's good stuff, even if we like to laugh at the goofy shit, like Jeff Combs wearing a cat backpack.

The first things I wrote to completion were not short stories or novels, but plays--so I'd also suggest that you could consider a different act structure entirely for your stories, if the three-act structure doesn't feel intuitive for you. The five-act structure worked well enough for Shakespeare. Ancient Greek plays didn't really have acts. You just wrote another play if you wanted to continue the story over another 24 hours! Stuff like the three-act structure are tools, and if the tool doesn't work for you, there are other one available.

I have talked in another ask about how I do outlines and research and references. I relied on the structure of a lot of movies, TV shows, short stories (many of which were not Lovecraft), and board games to inform "Dreams", so for me, drawing pacing ideas from other storytelling styles has worked out pretty well.

It's very late where I am and I'm not entirely sure I've answered your question, and I'm sorry about that. If you have any other questions or need me to clarify something, feel free to send another ask! I appreciate you letting me know that "Dreams" meant something to you.

[autisticlalna]

Stuck in Limbo: a follow-up

this was originally gonna be a reblog of the original Stuck in Limbo explanation post but then it got long and went on a tangent. for the love of god please help me

so... about Limbo.

or, a bit more specifically, about Olm.

this is part of Olm's backstory in Avid Adventures. as you can see from the timestamp, we've known about this for a few months now, but i've kinda filed it away as something to keep an eye out for future AA episodes.

and then Avid's episode 12 dropped, and among the rampant speculation and analysis was a single message that simultaneously tied things together and flipped them on its head:

to summarize: Limbo is where Olm was born, and where Olm was supposed to never leave. they completely consumed it, leaving nothing but emptiness and themself, until someone made the mistake of opening a portal into Limbo and setting them free upon the rest of the universe.

cc!Avid confirmed already that Olm has been toying with sbk!Avid and that the "laws of Incendium" that required Avid to kill the Dark Lord and be banished to Limbo were made up (as explained in the original post), but this fully locks it in. Olm dunked Avid into their home universe for safekeeping and left him to wander for a thousand years until making the deal.

this raises questions. is Avid trapped? Olm was trapped until they were freed by an external force, and they were able to send out part of Avid. are they lying again, or is it actually impossible to escape Limbo without outside intervention? how are people (besides Avid, who was put there on purpose) falling into Limbo "problematic", and what is Olm trying to hide? i'm... gonna have to get into that in another post, i think.

because speaking of tying Avid Adventures and Skyblock Kingdoms together, though, there's one last way for Avid to completely blindside us with a single message.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE HELP ME

for further context: for the first 7 episodes of Avid Adventures, Avid was an enderman.

it wasn't until he broke Olm's curse on Vilethorn that something changed:

"We beat Vilethorn, we cured Rosewood, the mansion is back and beautiful! But something feels... different. Like, when I was down there, I feel like when I cured the curse, something... changed in me too. Like a piece of me... was left behind. And I... can't seem to put my finger on it."

but... that's not the end of it. Avid Adventures has two storylines: the Light Path, where you fight against Olm, and the Dark Path, where you join him instead. that clip is from the Light Path, but when Avid tests out Vilethorn's Dark Path, something strange happens:

"I'm not gonna lie, I feel... kinda bad. If I were to play my own map... I don't think I would do Dark Path. So... This one's for you evil people, I guess! Well at least it can't get any worse, let's get on outta here, looks like we completed the Curse of Vilethorn, and... what's in the reward bag. Oh, gosh. Is it Usim's head? Now I feel even worse! I mean-- [annoyed] Oh, gosh. Enderman again. Well, you guys, it looks like I'm gonna have to run Vilethorn as a good guy in order to get set back to normal, but I will take care of that off camera."

so the implication here is that Avid's humanity is directly tied to Olm's curse, somehow. but... why would that happen in Limbo? it's very brief and happens while Olm is yanking out the soul chunk that becomes sbk!Avid, and honestly i figured it was just a general indication of Olm's influence seeing as that's also their eye color while they're possessing their current vessel:

but... maybe that's the same thing. firstly because Olm's eyes changed during that same scene to what can be assumed to be their "original" eye color based off of what we've seen in AA, but also because we've seen what happens when Olm assumes direct control over our lovable adventurer.

Avid: What-- What-- Uh-- Hello? Who- who put all the blocks here?! Olm: You did. Avid: I put... I did this?! Olm: Yes. Avid: What-- I don't-- remember-- Olm: And you did well. Now... Make. The. Boss. Avid: Uh, guys... Something feels, uh... diff- different. Olm: Don't let them know. Avid: Okay, uh, let's... [cheerful] And guys--!

i don't know what this means for the part of Avid still in Limbo, but it's probably not anything good.

this was going to be a footnote with the main part of the post being "yeah so uh Limbo is Olm's home dimension. what the heck" but uh. the implications are implications-ing and i'm gonna lose it.

(...it is at this point that i reveal that i helped make the half-enderman skin because the entire "aa!Avid was an enderman" thing lives in my head rent-free. and then that skin got actually used.)

[becauseimanicequeen]

Ming and Joe's Colors in My Stand-In, Part 1: Overview

Part 2: Black and Blue

Part 3: Red and Green

Part 4: Yellow/Gold

Part 5: Brown

Part 6: Random Color Moments

I received an ask a couple of days ago asking me about Joe and Ming's colors (which is something I've been thinking about for a while) and decided to answer that question in a separate post. So, here I am.

I have a feeling I'll have a lot to say about this (because looking at the colors in QLs I love (and I love My Stand-In) is such a nerdy thing for me), so I'm sure I'll break this up into parts. I'll start by looking into what color/colors Joe and Ming are (which I'll do in this post) and then, when I've come to my conclusion about that, I'll dive deeper into their symbolism and meanings in separate posts.

Let's dive in!

My first impression, without having looked very deeply into this, is that Joe is mostly green while Ming is surrounded by/wearing a lot of black.

However, I also feel like they are both bi-colored because I believe Joe is also yellow/gold or blue (or both?) while Ming is also red. And, if this turns out to be possible, then I have them in contrasting colors and I will be screaming about that when I get to it in another post.

Since this is such a nerdy thing for me that I love to explore, I will rewatch every episode we have available now (at double speed because I'm only focusing on the colors and Joe and Ming). So, I'll be back with images and thoughts in a couple of hours.

*speeding through 7 episodes of My Stand-In*

I'm back! That was an interesting experience. (It might've been a second for you, it's two days later for me, lol.) Anyway...

I feel like I got a better sense of Ming and Joe, and I was a bit surprised that my ideas were mainly pretty good.

Before I figure out my thoughts in this post (because writing them down is how I come to conclusions about things I'm unsure about), I want to mention the colors first.

Based on my rewatch:

Ming is black and red.

Joe is blue and green.

Yellow/gold is significant to both.

Brown also has some significance (and this is where I get into nerdy territory with color theory).

(Btw, artists can discuss pink into eternity, but for the sake of simplicity in my posts, I will treat pink as the lightened value of red. So, when I mention red-ish in my posts, this is what I'm referring to. Also, since secondary colors (like orange) sometimes are hard to separate from the primary colors they're created from, because they can include a lot more of one of them, I will sometimes use yellow-ish to refer to yellow hues that might verge towards orange.)

Also, I think it's important to note my approach to Joe before I dive in. I will treat Joe 1.0 and Joe 2.0 as the same person when it comes to the colors unless stated otherwise. I might get into a tangent if I notice that the colors are different depending on the different Joes. But, unless I do, Joe is just Joe (whether 1.0 or 2.0).

Now, let's start with Ming because I feel like he's the most straightforward out of the two.

Ming is definitely associated with black.

He's often surrounded by/wearing black and it fits his moody brooder very well (I'll get into this more in another post in this series).

But Ming is also red.

Red flag jokes aside, the red goes very well with his fiery, passionate, dominant personality.

When it comes to Joe, I feel like green is the most obvious one of his colors.

Green is a color found in nature and it suits the more "grounded" parts of his personality (again, I will develop the symbolism and meanings of the colors in regards to Joe and Ming in other posts in this series).

(That Joe and Ming are green and red means that they use contrasting colors, which is also something I will yell about in another post in this series.)

Then we have blue, which I was a bit unsure about going into my rewatch. However, I feel like it has solidified a bit more since my rewatch, and I'll explain why.

The blue is usually quite subtle around Joe even though it is there. The thing that solidified Joe being blue for me was that Ming is seen surrounded by it a lot the deeper he falls/has fallen for Joe (and let's not forget the blue watch Joe gave Ming).

The blue fits Joe well as he's both caring, loyal, and sad.

I feel like this is pretty accurate and straightforward, so far. So, let's get into more complex territory.

Let's start with yellow/gold, which is a very prominent color in this series together with green and black.

I previously stated in this post that I feel like yellow/gold is significant to both Ming and Joe, and that's because they share this color.

Joe 1.0's home bathes in warm yellow/gold/yellow-ish light, which means he's constantly surrounded by it. It's part of his home, his color palette, his life.

The same goes for Ming, as his family home includes golden details. Also, I feel like the light aspect of things (which I will write more about in a separate post) also has to do with this moment where he has his queer awakening seeing Joe's back on that billboard.

Let's forget that Ming thought it was Tong and just look at those colors. Joe is surrounded by that warm yellow/gold/yellow-ish light, which latches onto Ming out of his devotion and desire for that back.

Ming and Joe both had some aspects of the yellow/gold color before they met, but it deepened the more time they spent together (especially for Ming).

In Ming's case, it started as that little light in the background when he met Tong, became more evident the moment he met Joe, until he's bathing in it every single day in his condo.

That's how affected he was by Joe.

I will probably dive deeper into how Joe is the light in Ming's life and how Ming was the light in Joe's life in another post in this series, but I wanted to mention it here as well. And it's very evident in Ming's case considering how his new place looks so much like Joe's with all that yellow/gold light.

This is the color they share. The color Ming used to mend the broken mugs that represented their life together, their connection, and their relationship.

Honestly, so far, these are the colors I'm most sure about because they show up all the time. And call me crazy if you want (I'm giving you permission to in this particular case), but I'm pretty sure this image sums it all up:

Look at the blue-ish ferris wheel, the green plant, the black sky, the two dots of red light (right underneath the right lamp), and the yellow/gold lamp. That's Ming and Joe's individual colors plus the yellow/gold they both have. Both of their colors are summed up in this one image, which leads into a scene where Joe tells Ming that Ming has made his dream come true while Ming agrees to move in with Joe.

Go on, call me crazy.

And my crazy doesn't stop there. Because then we have brown, which can become a bit complex.

Since I've already used up the image limit (why tumblr, why do you only let me have 30 images per post? This visual artist needs visual aids in her posts, damn it!) I will have to do this part without visual aids. However, I will develop the use of brown in a separate post in this series, which will include images as well.

Anyway...

Let me first get into some brief color theory, because it matters to my view of how they use brown in My Stand-In.

There are two ways that I usually mix brown when painting. The first one (and the simplest) is to mix orange and black. This is pretty interesting considering some of the yellow/gold light that often surrounds both Joe and Ming sometimes verge into the orange (which is why I call it yellow-ish). Mixing that with Ming's black gives us brown.

The other way I usually mix brown hues is by mixing the primary colors: yellow, red, and blue. Does that sound familiar? Yellow is the color they share, red is Ming, and blue is Joe.

So, in my color-deranged mind, brown happens when Ming and Joe's colors are mixed together. And, in Joe and Ming's case, I've noticed that brown has two opposite effects. It either shows up when they feel the most grounded and relaxed or when things become "too much" between them. (I will develop this in a separate post.)

Some of their more explosive scenes actually include brown, but since my image limit is reached, I can't show examples of any of those right now, so I'll leave that for the post where I'll focus on the use of brown in My Stand-In.

Now that I've established all this (which will be the focus of my other posts in this series), it's time to move on to the next part.

Part 2: Black and Blue

Part 3: Red and Green

Part 4: Yellow/Gold

Part 5: Brown

Part 6: Random Color Moments

[elemom]

@legofreak33 Thank you for ordering the Autism Deluxe Special!

Here’s why I think Zane Julien is Nuclear Powered

(Contains spoilers for 2011 ninjago seasons 1-3)

(I also have not finished the show so i might be missing some details)

A singular object that has seemingly infinite energy

Infinite energy is impossible, but there’s something that comes pretty close - radioactive materials. Since they are *literally* emitting energy and can do so for thousands of years, radioactive objects are basically the closest thing to an “object that acts as an infinite energy source” you can get.

Blue Light

It’s blue. It glows.

Now I couldn’t find a specific element that glows blue AND could be used in nuclear energy, as the only one I know of is cesium chloride. HOWEVER. I don’t need a specific element in order to prove my point here.

Cherenkov radiation.

Cherenkov radiation occurs when charged particles (say, an electron) moves faster than light. IRL this is only possible in a medium wherein photons themselves are slowed, such as water, but in the realm of make believe anything is possible. Even if we DO have real world physics in play, it’s totally possible that the energy core just has water inside it along with everything else (the core’s Blue DOES have a bit of movement after all!)

Critical Mass and Going Boom

This is where it gets too easy. They literally say it can reach “critical mass” IN THE SHOW. THEIR WORDS. NOT MINE.

If you aren’t familiar, critical mass is basically a point where there is enough material (a certain *mass*) in one area to cause a chain reaction: An atom releases a radioactive particle, which hits another atom, causing it to release another radioactive particle. Now we have two radioactive particles. They keep hitting other atoms. And so on and so forth. (Strangely, the show seems to reference critical mass as running *out* of energy, which is the literal exact opposite of what it actually is, so i’m opting to ignore that.)

So how does this apply to Zane and the references to a critical mass in the show? I personally like to believe that his “critical mass” was caused by *using too much power at once.* Kinda. There’s probably a control mechanism with neutron absorbers inside the core, so maybe the critical mass was caused by him retracting said absorbers, thus causing a chain reaction. (also as a tangent, titanium is apparently a decent neutron absorber! perhaps the real titanium ninja was the friends we made along the way)

Oh, and by the way. Nuclear objects reaching criticality are known to glow blue.

Pic related.

Difference between this and the core glow would be based on the types of particles, with the former being charged particles in a medium and the latter being neutrons. I think. Idk im a biologist not a nuclear physicist i dont go here i just autism about it

discussion section

So yeah! Dr. Julien just created a tiny nuclear reactor to make his son go. Sure. Fuck it. Who Gives A Shit

Anyway i think that’s all i have!!! This obviously isn’t all encompassing (how did Nya survive holding a piece of the core? Why was the explosion all icy and not like, anything else? How does Zane not kill everybody he meets?) but those can all be explained away in the name of “i have had a special interest in nuclear energy since i was a very small child and nobody can take this away from me.” like maybe people are fine because he just has really good shielding. Or maybe Nya is fine because girls are immune to radiation (totally true fact)

Thanks for reading! Take this piece of uranium ore as thanks for reading this entire post. 🪨

[pap03]

Okay so I originally wrote this on Discord so apologies for any jank

But I need to get out my mega LOVE theory for Deltarune somehow, and Discord is the only place I've wrote it down lol

Anyways what got me going was this here difference in stats

Both being a post-Snowgrave Kris, just one from the Light World and the other from the Dark World

And this discrepancy would be strange right? If both LV's stood for the same thing

Which I'd why I claim that they do not

Rather that the LV in the Light World still refers to the LOVE of UT

While the LV in the Dark Worlds stands more properly for a "Level" a way of gauging the amount of Experience the Fun Gang have

Doubly true as the Dark World stats measure nowhere "EXP" aka "Execution Points"

From what I can tell Level only goes up upon reaching certain HP values, as Noelle goes from Level 1 to Level 2 in the Dark World

Since Noelle "Levels up" upon finishing just one act of violence in the Dark World

So I think it'll be possible later on to Level up early if you're violent enough

Sorta opposite of how it worked in UT, where you needed to LOVE up to get HP

In Dark Worlds you need to get your HP up to Level up

But that’s a bit of a tangent; continuing on

With the ground rules laid out that LV and LV can exist synchronously the next thought in my ramblings was that I need some proof that Noelle will continue to be our main Puppet, to explain why this LV theory should be relevant

And on that front, I got several bits

Easiest for me to lay out here is that the Survey taker at the beginning of ch 1 has special dialogue if you name yourself after a majority of the party members

This includes: Kris, Susie, and Noelle

All 4 share the same reaction

Secondarily Noelle lays out herself in the hospital that she's gonna figure out what's going on with Kris, which means to me that she'll keep coming around Kris, even despite the coercion into murder

And lastly, Noelle’s crush on Susie has so much unmissable screentime that Chekov would shit his grave if there were no resolution to it

This established leaves the first 2 core tenents of my theory

1. LOVE exists

2. Noelle will be the sole Snowgraver as the game progresses

For the sake of it, let's tackle the ramifications of both of these in order, as 1 heavily leans into 2

1. LOVE as we know it in Undertale exists in some way form or fashion in Deltarune

Natural questions that raises

- Do Darkners count for EXP? Yes, I'd say so, given the inverse effect on how Levels contribute to HP compared to how Undertale's LOVE and HP work, and the fact Noelle gains HP faster than the rest of the Party when they commit violence I'd argue there's a secondary element increasing her vitality, that being her LOVE increasing

- If LOVE exists why isn't Noelle a complete psycho killer in the Light World? Because that's not how LOVE works, by sans's admission LV contributes to making it easier to hurt others, and easier to distance yourself, but never expresses that it creates a want to kill, although that does seem to be a side effect which I'll get into next section

Mechanics of LOVE across Undertale and Deltarune:

For most people who've played a neutral run of Undertale, you'll be remiss to note anything going on as you gain LV. As much as I love Frisk as the blank slate of a protagonist that they are, their lack of emotions makes it hard to tell what exact the differences are between an LV 3 individual and an LV 7 one, differences sans can tell, but we can't really

So then we have to look elsewhere, mainly the Genocide run and comparing characters who may have killed in UT to their murderless counterparts in Deltarune

- Early LV's 1-6

At this point a person has killed a bit, but is also where the effects of each individual LV is the most noticeable, as sans has unique dialog for every LV here

What this tells me is that your first kills change you the most compared to later kills

Also during this LV range we see Frisk start their way through Snowdin in a Geno run, where they skip puzzles without our input, and are generally quieter than even before

I call this part of the LV grind "Getting Colder" for many reasons, partially for the pun, but also how we see Frisk act much more distant, aka cold, towards their surroundings and walk through situations, giving of an energy of "I don't care, let me through"

Considering this is also the LV's you'd end the game at for killing just Toriel or Undyne (two impassable bosses without killing or their special sparing method) that general sentiment persists

For the sake of it, I also reference Gerson and Asgore, Gerson was in the War of Humans and Monsters and has intimate knowledge about human combat and abilities, and while it's canon that no human casualties were suffered through the whole War, I would not be surprised if Gerson had to put down a fellow monster or two during the chaos after the Barrier was first erected. Yet despite that idea, Gerson is still just a bubbly, slightly traumatized, old man in Waterfall telling me that you can work past Early LVs. Yet there's also Asgore, as of the time of me writing this the only character who has canonically (and confirmed to) taken the life of anything, and as of our time encountering him, he's distantly removed from the act he's doing, which is another murder. However I must mention that there's a lot of shit there for Asgore compared to Deltarune's Asgore that could lead to the state he's in beyond LOVE so take that with a grain of salt

- Middle LV's 7-14

This is where an interesting switch occurs, specifically at LV 9 but the larger grouping together sorta encompasses it all. This is where Frisk (yes Frisk I'll elaborate if I have to) begins to enjoy the act of killing, smiling before every encounter, and even reveling in the fear of others, such as when Frisk intimidates Monster Kid just before the Undying fight

Now above I talk about how wanting to kill isn't a symptom of LV, and I still believe that

While this seems to be contradicting evidence to that claim I don't think so, as I think it's around this point that one becomes so distant that the act of killing someone else doesn't invoke any feeling of remorse anymore

Where Frisk's enjoyment is derived from is their "Determination" as at the point they're smiling they've killed every monster they could find up to this point, so they're happy to "finish what they started" and also why the Smile goes away if you abort Geno at this point forward as that goal of eradication is gone

- High LV's 15-19

This is the grouping we know the least about, as the majority of these are Geno exclusive, CORE/Hotland exclusives no less which at this point the whole Underground is on lockdown so any unique traits from here are lost in translation, from best we can tell, anything shy of all kills isn't labeled as "True Evil" by MTT and LV 17 is labeled as "Bad at being evil" by sans

So perhaps there's some room for redemption at this point? Idk, sans doesn't think so at LV 19, but it's an interesting thought

- LV 20

This one gets a special mention just because of how everything goes down

The Mercy Button is gone

Frisk is able to make inputs without Player input

And at this LV it's possible to summon the Demon, a manifestation of the evils you caused and power you gained by pushing this world to its limits that quite literally has the power to attack the game box Undertale is played in

This demon is the single most powerful being we've encountered inside of UT/DR outside of maybe Asriel

Now, with everything LOVE-related established we can also use it as a symptom list to diagnose Noelle at where she's at and take a rough estimate as to how much LOVE a single Snowgrave run would allow for

And well, I won't run yall through the numbers so to speak but she's solidly in the Early LV's

She still has remorse for the deaths she did cause

But she's also able to distance herself from her actions there, could be grief but her interactions with her father on Snowgrave compared to a Main Route shows to me that she's a little more reserved, which also falls in line with Early LV symptoms

So what does that leave?

Well, as someone pointed out to me before, Noelle has some violent tendencies

They're reserved, but come out when say, Berdly also has a crush on Susie, or if it's encouraged (see what this whole post is about lol)

See also the theory that the damage at the beginning of the Cyber World was caused by Noelle, not Queen, and there's reason to see where things may go as Noelle breaches into the Middle LV's

I see her, like Frisk, enjoying the slaughter as things continue on

So to conclude my little LOVE Theory I see the rest of Deltarune going as such

1 more route of us manipulating Noelle into killing, she'll be far more resistive, but I know we'll break through, with the boss of that area that she kills (secret boss or another Lightner) the last we'll see of Noelle she'll have cracked a smile

Then from there on she'll easy, fights will break out just from her instigation, or from others more heroic trying to get in her way

By the end I think we'll have to fight her, and she'll kick our asses

Or we'll have to fight Kris

It's hard to know that far ahead

But using LOVE alone, that's how I see things going

Thanks for reading if you did! Feel free to comment and discuss or ask me questions through my ask box. Hope you enjoyed my transcribed madness lol

[differentsublimephantom]

Hey y’all! I thought I should make a post explaining my AU and what’s happened to Ezra/Scribblecop in it, just because why not? So here is a messy timeline of events! This is a weird hodgepodge of info dumping, and fanfiction, so you have been warned.

PS!! This is heavily based on an amazing ((and sadly unfinished)) gcbc fanfic I’ve read, and I would’ve asked the og writer permission to use this storyline in my AU, but they have , since deleted their socials (other than discord), and when I looked them up on discord they had fully disappeared. Here is the fic in question, I encourage that you read it before you read this!

So full credit for the basic plot goes to them, and I’ve made a few tweaks and fleshed out the story more here and there, but I felt I had to give explicit credit to them for the ideas. (and Ezra as a name for scribble cop!)

So. Takos Tuesday has happened. Gc and bc are still recovering, and trying to make amends for the trouble they caused. They are no longer switching using the two faces, instead they now have clip-on sunglasses to switch between GC and bc. Emmet and the other masterbuilders crew have assembled a team of volunteers (including gc and bc) to help rebuild and repair the city!

Emmet has even gotten them out of trouble with the law a bit- giving them a deal that says they won’t have to go to jail, if they get mandated therapy, and 18 or so months of volunteering/service. They still have to go to court, but they both agree it’s better than being arrested. Gc and bc agree happily, and keep going to the volunteer meetings.

(Btw, president business has the same deal given to him. Emmet says it’s in the name of fairness. Baby boy has good intentions, but he is kinda naïve.)

Things are going great! Until they aren’t.

(Btw in my AU president business is an AWFUL person. I know that in canon he has a bit of a redemption arc, and in some rp blogs on here he is not the worst person, but in this universe he feels no real remorse for the things he did. *yet*.)

President business also attends the volunteer meetings, although he is always late by half an hour or more, and doesn’t seem to care. And one day he sits right next to GcBc.

(Okay, another side tangent! In the og fic I was inspired by, gcbc and ez have DID. I do not have DID. So I am very nervous to write a character with DID, because I’d hate to offend someone. That being said, I’m going to face my fears of hurting someone’s feelings, and try my best, so if I get anything horribly wrong IM SO SORRY, PLEASE CORRECT ME.)

At this point in time Ezra has not fully made himself know to gcbc. He didn’t really exist before takos Tuesday (because as I understand it, personalities/alters can sorta just appear after a traumatic enough experience? It’s just that DID can only start in people younger than 9ish?) so gcbc have no idea he’s now sharing a body with them.

Ezra was “created” (or whatever youd call it) by the traumatic event where Gc got his face erased, and essentially got put into a coma.

Because of this, president business is a trigger for Ezra, and when he sees him, he automatically comes to the front/is in control.

But GCBC DONT KNOW THAT YET. So, when business comes into a meeting (late as per usual) and sits down right next to gcbc, Ezra (who everyone thinks is GC btw!!) starts giving him a death glare. This prompts business to start teasing and messing with “GC”, and causes “GC” to lash out verbally back.

Lucy is having none of their sh*t, so she breaks them up, but when the actual GC comes into a meeting the next week, he gets pulled aside and asked by Metalbeard to either grow up and stop messing with business, or leave the meetings, and GC says that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Metalbeard doesn’t believe him, but let’s him off with a harsh warning.

(yeah, I know that sounds harsh, but the masterbuilders are kinda mean at the start, and get a redemption later.).

Time skip because after that nothing seems to happen, business isn’t sitting right next to the cops, so the problem seems to be solved! Gcbc visit their parents, who are recovering in the hospital (pa copp had his leg amputated btw) (inspo for that from this fic.)

Poor GC and bc seem to be disassociating more often, and things seem to be moving around their house that the both swear they didn’t move, but they just brush it off, because they’re both doing too well at the moment to worry about it.

Ezra is, of course, the one moving stuff, and the one who was fighting with business, but after the warning from Metalbeard, he quiets down. The next time he takes over, he finds a journal in their apartment. It’s an old one, before Vitruvius’ prophecy kinda old, and it just has some back-and-fourth messages from GC and bc when they were fronting alone, years before they worked for octan.

He decides to write something in it, and a day later GC and bc find it, and are UNDERSTANDABLY VERY CONFUSED. But they don’t know what else to do, so they just write back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hello. Is anyone reading this?”

“Yep! who is this??”

Two days later they get a reply:

“I don’t know.”

“Well who is writing this then?”

“I don’t know. Someone.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that was that. They tried to get more of a response, but the mysterious writer stopped replying.

Ezra, I’m reality, was having an existential crisis, (You would to if you didn’t know who you were!), and was very worried when, two days to the court date he found out that they had to appear in court.

Why was he worried? 1. The poor guy doesn’t know why he has to go to court/what he did, 2. Business is going to be there, 3. He’s worried that the mandatory therapist will try to “cure him” by getting rid of him. Ezra is going through it in this fic.

Anyways, one more meeting happens before the court date, and as per usual, business is being an asshat. He decides to cause trouble. One more time he decides to mess with “GC” Ezra, and surprisingly, ez doesn’t react. Doesn’t respond. He’s too busy planning Business’ death.

Not kidding! Ezra tried to kill business. Just like the masterbuilders though, he has his redemption arc too. But for now… Ezra goes to business’ new, much smaller, office, the night before the court date. The old octan tower is mostly dismantled, and in ruins. Slowly being cleaned up, and taken away, piece by piece.

Ezra, pretending to be GC, gets business to come down to the front desk, where he explains to at he’s “tired of being a goody two shoes” and wants to run off with business. He doesn’t though, but business doesn’t know that. So he eagerly says yes.

Cut to the abandoned octan tower. “GC” says he wants to pick some stuff up before they flee the country, and business agrees, foolishly following him inside. Here’s where Ezra’s plan gets a bit.. not thought out on his part (ah yes, phantom, blame it on your characters not your writing!👍🏾)

Once business is inside, Ezra goes up to the buildings controls centre, it’s a very high tech place, so he can just press a button and lock all the doors in the building. No exit means no where to run. He finds an old blaster that still works, and sets fire to a few things with it: the emergency exit, the car they used to get there (through the emergency exits door, before he shoots that), and the controls centre itself.

Business may be a bad guy, but he’s certainly not stupid. He very quickly and correctly deduces what’s going on, and tries desperately to find a way out. (During all this, the masterbuilders have heard that business is apparently missing, and so is gcbc, so they visit the office building, and some other places to try and figure out what’s going on.)

This all culminates in Business disarming Ezra, and shooting him in the left leg. Ezra manages to outrun business long enough to make him temporarily loose his trail, and hides in the relic room. Business finds him, and Ezra admits defeat. Relics all around them, and Ezra backed into the desk at the back wall, sitting on the floor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Just kill me.”

“What?”

“Just kill me! I know you want to, and you know there’s no way out of this anyways, so what’s the point?”

“…”

Business shrugs and picks up the sceptre.

“NO!- NO. Please. Not with that. Not with THAT! Use the blaster!!”

Ezra pleads. Business is in total shock. After all those years of working with GC and bc, business learned a little bit about how they work, and while pondering the situation, something clicks in his mind.

“…I’m… not.. talking to good cop, OR bad cop, right now… am I?”

“Took you long enough.” Ezra spits.

“Well who are you?”

“I’d rather you just kill me.”

“I’d rather know who I’m killing first.”

“….. I’m not fully sure who I am.” Ezra chokes on a stifled sob.

“Well what’s your name?”

“…I wanted it to be “Ezra” but now I’m not so sure about that..”

“Why not?..”

“It means protector.. and I dunno if you’ve noticed, but so far I’ve done a sh*t job o’ that.”

Business chuckles.

“Well, I think Ezra suits you.”

“Thanks.”

Silence. Then Business speaks again.

“This- All of this. It’s my fault isn’t it?”

“No kidding.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Okay? Why should I care? Am I supposed to forgive you?

“Well… isn’t that how it works?”

Ezra laughs tiredly. This psycho doesn’t even know how an apology works? Yeah, that tracks.

“No! No! That’s- of course that’s not how it works. You think that just because you say a few words, shake a few hands, and “pinkie swear you won’t do it ever again” that’s supposed to make things BETTER?!” Ezra screams. Business doesn’t reply, only snaps his head up to look at him, in response.

“You destroyed hundreds- no, THOUSANDS of lives, FORCED US to kill hundreds of innocent people, put my brother or whoever he is- IN A COMA. And after all that, you just say “sorry”? You are a sociopath. A crazy, irresponsible, cruel, evil, sociopath.”

Business simply stands there for a moment, Taking in Ezra’s words.

“….I’m not gonna kill you y’know.”

“Why not? It’d be better than jail for attempted murder.”

“Well…… you deserve better than this. I’m not killing you.”

“Fine! Let the fire and smoke kill us then.”

“Well we could try and get out of here?”

“Nope, I blocked the exits.”

“A window might work.”

“You shot my leg, I couldn’t land.”

“Well-“

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Masterbuilders to the rescue!!!!!! They finally figured out what was happening, and where they formerly evil pair (trio?) were. One spaceship building sequence later (thanks Benny) and they were off to the hospital for gcbc’s leg and to give business a check up.

On the very awkward ride over, business explained the very little info he had figured out, about Ezra and everything. The builders were confused, but nodded and smiled, thinking that business was talking crazy. Ezra had passed out due to the blood loss.

At the hospital, when gc and bc wake up, they are quite confused. Why was there a gunsh*t in their leg? And why were they here? And why were all the masterbuilders here? And why was Business here? A lot of understandable questions. Unfortunately for gcbc, Lucy didn’t think so.

Lucy is (like everyone except Business) going to get her redemption arc, but you can’t write a story without something driving the plot so..

Lucy thinks that gcbc were completely faking when they told Metalbeard they didn’t confront Business at the meeting, and that this is the same situation. As far as she knows, the only people in gcbcs body are GC and bc, and she’s not even sure if they are really two different people and not one who acts differently sometimes (go easy on her, she’s just very uneducated on personality disorders and stuff)

Lucy very loudly voices this, that she thinks they are faking and using the “we’re not the same person” thing as an excuse to do dumb stuff, just as Gcbc’s parents walk in.

Gc takes over, and (as calmly as he can) explains why Lucy is VERY WRONG and gives a 3ish minute crash course on DID to the builders. Then asks them to get the hell out of their hospital room. After a talk with their parents, they go home with them. (ma and pa live fairly close to gcbc, and are now both discharged from the hospital.).

The copp family happily goes home, and gcbc are sitting on their old bed, in their childhood room. After some conversation between GC and bc, they hear another voice in their head. Ezra says he’s sorry, and admits he definitely didn’t think that through, and GC and bc comfort him a bit.

Later in the morning (it’s morning now, because the incident that just happened, happened at night), Ma cop says she made some breakfast, and the boys leave their room. Pa is sitting at the dining table with a laminated piece of paper, a blank piece of paper, and an old mug filled with pens and pencils.

Ezra, Good Cop, and Bad Cop (who are all co-fronting at this point, aka their are all sharing control), sit down, and GC and bc instantly recognize the laminated paper.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gc: “Oh my goodness. Is that?-“

“Yes it is! Found it in my office.”

Bc: “Good lord, dad, you had that thing laminated?”

“For to the memories! Besides, it’s comin in handy now isn’t it?”

Ez: “Um…. What is that?”

“Oh- it’s just something the boys did when they were younger.”

At that moment, Ma (who had been listening to the conversation), walked in and answered the question Pa technically hadn’t.

“When the boys were younger, me an’ Pa were both very busy working all the time. And while Daniel was only ever alone for about 10 minutes before one of us came home from a shift- ten minutes was all my awful sister, their aunt, needed to call cps on me. They got put in a very awful foster home while me and Pa fought tooth-and-nail to get them back, and that’s when they got Dissociative Identity Disorder.. The poor dears were only seven at the time..” Ma paused to let him catch up, then continued.

“When they got back home to us, and after their diagnosis, they decided in order to get to know each other, they would both write down questions for one another, and us, on that piece of paper, and then we’d reply to them. Daniel uses the black pen, Danny blue, Pa green, and me red.“

Ezra nodded, taking in the information.

“So that’s when they split?”

“Yep. Went into the situation with one son, came out of it with two!” Pa joked.

“And although the ordeal was unfortunate, we are a bit thankful for it. I couldn’t imagine not having Danny here today!”

Ezra thought some more.

“So, Daniel came first then? Like- he was the host so to speak?”

“Yep!” The parents replied in unison.

“Er… and, who is Daniel again?”

Ezra got his answer in the form of four answers, all at the same time.

“Me. I’m Daniel.”

Gc: “You’ll have probably heard him be called Bad Cop. He’s very nice though buddy!”

Ma: “One of our sons. The “Bad One”.”

Pa: “That’s Bad Cop, lad. Danny is Good Cop.”

“Ah. Okay..” Everything was quiet for a moment, and then Ma spoke up.

“So, er, whom do we have the pleasure of speaking to?”

“…Ezra.”

“Well, welcome to the copp family Ezra.” Pa said.

“Thank you… uh, not to sound rude or anything but.. you guys don’t… hate me..Y’know, for the attempted murder thing..?” Ezra said cautiously. Both cops glanced at each other, and then back at Ezra. They looked like they had just seen a puppy get killed.

“Oh heavens no, dear!! We both know it’s hard to deal with. Poor Danny was very mixed up when he first “woke up”.” Ma looked very reassuring, and suddenly Ezra got the urge to hug her. But he didn’t.

“So…” pa starts.

“D’you want to do the questions thing?”

Ezra, Danny, and Daniel respond with an enthusiastic yes, with Ezra assigning himself an orange pen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As promised, this story has a happy ending. After Lucy’s mistake in the hospital, Benny (who has hyper fixated on different disorders including did, and knows a bunch about it) was very disappointed in the group, and gave them all a big infodump about it.

After the whole ordeal came out to the judge, the court date got pushed back. So, two weeks of recovering, and family bonding later, the cops entered the court room.

(I’ve written all of this in ONE DAY and am getting kinda tired of writing, so imma make the rest of the story pretty quick)

Good cop, bad cop, and Ezra thankfully don’t get in trouble for trying to kill business. The court figured that because Ezra didn’t actually SUCCEED in killing him, they’d just call it a lesson in karma for lord business and leave it at that.

(Yes I know that’s very inaccurate to what would happen irl, but this is a fanfiction based on a ten year old movie about LEGOS so I’m not exactly going for accuracy here.)

Lord/President Business is sent to jail instead of mandated therapy, partly because he agreed to run away with gcbc (the masterbuilders got video evidence from the office’s security camera) and partly because idk man I’m tired and because I said so.

After they get their sentences or whatever, the masterbuilders all come to apologize to gcbcsc, Lucy and Metalbeard especially. Benny invites the cops out for lunch with the masterbuilders (slight coppernaughts??) and they say yes. More apologies are said at lunch, for takos Tuesday, and for not being more supportive of the cops during the meetings and stuff like that, and all of them agree to start over as friends, and both parties agree to try and make amends for the past.

The end!

See? I told you this had a happy ending! Sorry this got rushed at the end, and I’m also sorry if this is hard to read/unclear? I tried. Also, if you made it this far: HOLY CRAP THANK YOU FOR READING ALL OF THIS. I DEFINITELY WROTE TOO MUCH. But who cares!!!

Anyways, I’m gonna take a nap now. Bye!

[ravenofazarath2]

I have some honestly, absolutely unhinged Thoughts™️ on Niko’s whole situation that I just have to share. This is gonna be full of assumptions, mental gymnastics, and logical fallacies, and by the end, you'll probably think I look like this

This post ended up way longer than I planned, and I'm not even sure if it makes ay sense, but just hang with me.

Why is Niko in Port Townsend?

I don’t know about anyone else (and this could be because I’ve never been to the PNW), but I feel like it’s kind of random that Niko’s mom would send her daughter to a boarding school in a small town two plane rides and a ferry ride away. Wouldn’t you want your daughter in a more populated, easier to get to place? I know there’s bigger towns and cities. Based on Niko’s love for fashion, the family seems to be fairly well off, so it doesn’t seem like a money issue.

There’s only two explanations I can think of:

Niko’s mother cares so little about her, she wanted her as far away as possible.

There’s a reason Niko’s mom chose Port Townsend.

Now, I get it. That first one is super depressing. We don’t want to think about it at all. Who could hate sweet, little Niko? Thankfully, I feel like this one can easily be disproven.

Source

If Niko’s mom wanted her as far away as possible, why has she sent Niko so many letters? She clearly wants to have a relationship, to communicate. It just doesn’t line up with wanting your daughter out of sight, out of mind.

So that leaves the second: There’s a reason Niko’s mom chose Port Townsend.

Of course, this reason could be offscreen, unknown, unimportant.

Unless...

Oh, look, a tangent!

Most of the fandom thinks the Principal has something to do with Niko, whether she’s her mother or Niko herself. Personally, I’m in the she’s her mother camp. This post has a very great explanation on it. Plus, I just don’t see this show going timey-wimey.

This would make Niko half-supernatural. (and before anyone asks: No, I do not have an explanation why Niko couldn't see the boys before her near-death experience since she's already supernatural)

Instead of exploring what this means for the story (for now), I want to explore the assumptions inferences we can make about Niko's father.

*Pulls out a few papers and push pins*

Did Niko's father know?

The Principal seems to be the head of the Lost & Found Department, a department that's currently stretched entirely too thin by the excess of death caused by overpopulation. That lady's overworked. And considering her job, it's very likely near impossible to also keep up a charade of being a normal human to the person you're married to. So he'd have to know.

Let's make a teensy tiny assumption that Niko's father is also a supernatural being.

Besides, how would a human and the eternal being in charge of collecting dead children have ever met?

*starts drawing connections with red string*

This may seem like an exquisite floor routine that would win an Olympic gold in mental gymnastics, but I can absolutely explain this.

Let's look at what Niko viewed as the most important advice her father ever gave her:

Source

On the surface, it's just innocent advice. After all, dandelions are symbol of resilience. And the dandelion sprites were just an accident. There's no way anyone could have known Niko would have been infected with them.

But if her father was a supernatural being, he likely would have known about dandelion sprites. He intentionally wanted to put Niko in danger if she needed a little bravery. How could a father, who we can only assume was a great one when looking at how much grief Niko feels over his new absence in her life, do this to his daughter?

Could the dandelion sprites be a part of it?

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If Niko's father knew that Niko would likely be jumped by dandelion sprites if she went traipsing around looking for courage, it isn't too far of a leap to see that the sprites might actually be in some way related to that courage.

We can actually get a bit of a glimpse of this connection when we look at Niko's death.

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I'll come back to the symbolism in just a bit.

After the shock not only the characters, but us viewers felt as well, Crystal, Edwin, and Charles discover that the sprites have left. Each one of us likely thought they just dipped out when we first saw this.

Of course, the last scene of the series shows us that's not true.

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One possible reason they go with her is because she was nice to them. “The good you do comes back around” and all. But the sprites are such assholes, it’s hard to believe they’d care about that (though I absolutely do).

Then perhaps it has to do with the way Niko died. She stepped in front of Esther’s magic to save Crystal. She sacrificed herself, gave up her life in exchange for her friend’s. Is there a more courageous way to die?

But how does the girl who’s so scared of death, she goes looking for courage in the first place into the girl who looks death in the face and says, “Take me instead.”? And what does that have to do with the sprites being there at the end?

Niko’s in need of some courage, so she goes looking for dandelions, like her father’s always told her to do, and she picks up the dandelion sprites. Because of course Niko was able to sweet talk her way through destiny or to Destiny? to end up with the exact people who can save her at the exact right time.

Niko, being Niko, decides to keep the sprites to teach them to be nice. Because they are mean. Their comments bite, they tear. They dig into her core. Tell her that she’s not a good friend, she deserves to be alone and abandoned, all because she’s scared. All because she’s not courageous.

But Niko knew better, deep down. So she did the most courageous thing she could think of. She died for someone she loved. She became courageous in order to prove the sprites wrong.

Because the sprites played a role in Niko’s arc to courage, (was that their purpose?) they’re now tied to her. Whether that’s willing or not is yet to be seen.

Back to Niko’s dad. If this is indeed the purpose of the dandelion sprites, then it’s likely her dad knew this and knew it would help Niko when she needed it most. We’re ignoring the fact that, if so, he set her up to be bullied for now

But what does this have to do with absolutely anything I’ve said?

*sprays paint on the wall*

Because it’s a clue to who Niko’s dad is, and I think we’ve met him.

Who do we know who’s an immortal being who has had different faces, says cryptic shit that leads to character arcs, shares so much kindness it comes around for his daughter’s friends, and would most definitely wear funny socks?

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Before you chain me up, let me finish.

It’s implied that there’s a lot of mystery surrounding Niko’s father’s death and afterlife. Her father being Kashi could explain this.

But why is Niko in Port Townsend?

Yes, I have finally come full circle. Niko is in Port Townsend because her father is Kashi. Obviously the Principal would know this. And maybe she knew he was just hanging out in Angie’s belly.

Perhaps the reason the Principal sent Niko to a remote small town that was difficult to get to is because she wanted her to be close to her father.

*takes a drag of a lit cigarette*

[klenda-v]

Your posts have shifted my attention towards mother of ultra

O I only just now learned how to check my inbox OOPS—

Ultra Mother’s a fantastic character to fixate on for me because we get highly specific details about her and can kinda stitch together stuff about her! For instance:

-(POSSIBLY OUTDATED) family trees in magazines say Marie has (at least) two sisters: one is Seven’s mom, the other marries Jack and has a kid with him!

That in itself I think is really interesting; Ultra Mother is (now) 140K years old and Jack is 17K, so I assume Mother just has a way younger sister, which is cool! I like thinking of Mother as a much older sister, like siblings who are a decade or more older than their baby sibling. Idk, there’s just room for fun headcanons there!

-Ultra Mother’s family are, according to UGF2, the generations guardians of the Holy Sword of the Land of Light.

I think I’ve talked about it before, but it implies really interesting stuff about Ultra Mother (then called Marie)’s status within the culture—if her family is guarding something considered holy by the culture, are they themselves consecrated in some way?

I do think it’s telling that (while it’s hard to tell if this is supposed to be their first meeting, they’re infuriatingly vague on that), it looks to me like Ken’s surprised Marie has this, and she has to explain to him that it’s been passed down in her family. That suggests to me that Marie wasn’t publicly associated with the Ultimate Blade. I like the headcanon that Marie’s family guarded it in secret, keeping it safe for such a time as this, but I have no idea.

This is me leaning a bit more into headcanon territory, but I like the idea that Marie had a high social standing, and being keepers of the Holy Sword was a secret they kept until Empera’s attack. I feel like her being high-status was a reason Belial took an interest in her as a potential partner; he wanted the clout that came with her, rather than actually feeling anything romantic toward her. Again though, I have strong feelings about Belial’s early character so lemme stop tangent-ing and get back to mom—

- the stageshow Love or Peace, which is one of my favorite pieces of Ultra Parent media possibly ever. It’s got an incredibly sparse cast of like…three actual characters, and the main character is definitely Ultra Father, but Ultra Mother truly shows why she’s so darn perfect to lead the Garrison, why she’s a perfect match for Ultra Father, how much they care about each other, how their bond with each other is so deeply rooted in their beliefs and ideals…it’s so good. The YT recording doesn’t have subs, but here’s a written adaptation of the show in English!

Anyway I love Ultra Mother a lot and I’m glad you’re interested in her!