#if butters actually does something evil with this power that is

[wannabe-minion-of-chaos]

Hypothetical question

So in one of those timelines where the kids actually have powers, toolshed kinda runs on electricity right? Since if I remember correctly he had power tools actually fused to his body (his species is listed as 'altered human') and those tools probably need electricity to run

And Professor Chaos has some form of electricity manipulation right?

...would Chaos be able to take control over toolshed?

[masterhallmark]

Ugh, I do this so much with so many characters

Phantom Blot x FemReader headcanons

Some of them are gender nuetral

CW: Brief Kidnapping mention

He stumbles upon you while scouting out a place he's planning to rob, and strikes up small talk to avoid suspicion.

Bonus idea: He's having a rare outing with his daughter, who immediately tries to pull an Anya from SpyXFamily and act as a wingman, "Oh, Dad, I want a Mommy...how about her?" "...What?"

He is surprised how smart you were. Not a super genius like himself, but smarter than most of the residents of Mouseton. Surely someone who would be nice to have around... Seems like he's going to be stealing more than he originally planned, because normal dating clearly isn't an option since his mugshot is everywhere. Yeah, you're getting kidnapped in the "nicest" way he can muster.

He tries very hard to win you over once he has you in his lair (and you calm down). He promises fortune, power, fame if you want it, luxuries beyond your wildest dreams, anything else you want to hear. All you have to do is be his. If this doesn't work, he's not afraid to subtly threaten you, too. He is a villain after all.

Should you accept his advances, he does his best to keep you a secret, just as he tried to keep his daughter a secret. He can't risk any other villains using you as a hostage.

He makes a hidden room for you to hide in whenever there are unwanted guests, complete with an emergency exit.

He's charming, acting like a complete gentleman, but you could never fully trust him. You're no fool, you know what he is.

He does genuinely try to spoil you, occasionally stealing a few extra necklaces and letting you pick some before selling the rest on the black market. He'll also steal high-end clothing, and sometimes... he'll actually BUY something.

He doesn't use pet names often, but when he does, he tries to stick to the "blot" theme. "My little spot" is a go to for when he's trying to butter you up. You catch on to this and after a while start to respond to "My little spot" with "What are you up to?"

If he starts calling you his queen or empress, it means he's got a world domination plan going on. These are his world domination specific petnames.

Oh, you'd better be ready to hear all his evil monologues, hear him complain about the other villains, etc. He's been needing someone he can vent to for YEARS.

He won't admit it, but he likes cuddles and other forms of physical affection. He wasn't given nearly enough affection as a child.

Oh, cool! He made robots to do all the chores and...turn into a robot suit for him to use? (Darkenblot reference)

He told his daughter he "saved this princess from a dragon" btw.

His daughter is a sweetheart. You would die for this child. It breaks your heart you have to lie and paint The Blot as the good guy and hide the fact he's actually a criminal mastermind. You don't see her too often since she's in the care of Mrs. Fragmuffin, but The Blot spoils her rotten, snd she starts calling you "Mommy" right away.

[cacao-snorter]

creepypasta headcanons!1!1!!1

Aight here are some creepypasta headcanons cuz im bored

Slenderman

-his tentacles are furry and look like really long cat tails and get puffy and zig zaggy when he’s mad. -He is a father figure to the proxies but not a super good one and typically ends up seeming like an evil boss when he wants to appear as a father figure.

-There are two computers in the whole mansion that are old but work enough to search the internet and play minecraft

-Slenderman usually doesn’t leave the proxies alone when he’s going out for awhile because the one time he did, Jeff and Ben downloaded 69 bites of gay old man 🌽 on his computer and then Clockwork shat on it after. He cried when he got home.

Jeff The Killer

-I headcanon he’s vegan bc he loves animals

-absolute baby with fragile ‘masculinity’

-his friends joke about him being a republican hillbilly because he’s southern. (actually has a very slight accent too.)

-He’s friends with Nina despite knowing that she has a crush on him. He doesn’t mind. -he makes really gay jokes with ben

-Showers like once a month and smells bad. -I headcanon that he’s asexual and fairly androgynous. Doesn’t really know what he’s romantically attracted to, nor does he care.

-Wants to be friends with Jane again but knows he can’t.

-he was high on pain killers when he killed his family and Jane’s family in the same night and continued killing because he thought there would be no going back and now is afraid of drugs.

-edgy 15 year old with offensive tumblr humor

-Toby jokes about him being fat

-His favorite song is sweet dreams.

-was actually friends with Randy, Keith, and Troy. But a massive argument caused them to stop being friends and led to the whole incident.

Ben Drowned

-Doesn’t shower

-100% gay

-Can control the power in the mansion and make the lights turn off or something.

-Surpringly good with technology and doxxes people when he’s mad. He also jokingly threatened to leak Liu’s address which scared Liu half to death.

-Has a best friend trolling trio with Jeff and EJ

-His room smells bad

-owns a worn out gaming chair

Eyeless Jack

-Doesn’t actually like eating kidneys, Chernobog just makes him, but sometimes he fools Chernobog by eating kidney beans

-Gets weirded out when somebody calls him the “son of Chernobog” because he thinks it’s weird and too fancy.

-Listens to rap music

-Tried to become a rapper and used garbage YouTube beats, he made five songs that were all about fingering Otis (Bloody Painter). He also sampled an audio of Jeffrey beatboxing sweet dreams in the background of one of his songs. This same song had kazoo in the bridge

-ex zalgo goon but nobody knows but Slenderman and he’s too scared of what everyone would think if they knew.

-Extremely insecure about his face and always has his mask on. Only people who’ve seen are Jeff and Slenderman.

Ticci Toby

-Asshole with hatchets -joked about being flat earth but now thinks he might actually be flat earth

-besties with Clockwork

-Hates waffles. He hates them so much, he went into a gas station at 9pm, shoplifted a box of frozen waffles, threw them at a group of middle schoolers, and popped a cap in the cashier’s ass when he tried to stop Toby. He actually got his face on the news for this. One time, Lazari poured syrup in the vents and the mansion smelled like waffles for a whole week, Toby had constant headaches while throwing up and crying because he thought the mansion smelled so bad.

-Very quiet and always cooperative, so he’s like Slenderman’s favorite.

-bullies jeff for apparently being fat.

-literally doesn’t sleep

-Around most people he’s his canon self, that is very cold and quiet. Around his friends he’s more fanon Toby, annoying, immature, and has a weird sense of humor.

-encouraged Jeff to go full hillbilly mode and run over Offenderman with a truck.

-smells like cat pee and butter

-Always has an attitude and mad about something.

Bloody Painter

-Listened to all 5 of EJ’s soundtracks. Has the kazoo one on his Spotify playlist.

-Artistic

-Comes off as smart but says the dumbest thing every now and then.

-Scared of potatoes. He thinks they crawl around his room at night.

-Had the weird ice cream cut in middle school.

-Doesn’t wash his hands

Clockwork

-has a very stylish pixie cut.

-people often look at her clock eye to check the time.

-makes up things to be mad about

-has a Barbie doll that Sally gave her that was naked, bald, and didn’t have arms. She twisted its legs backwards and gave it prosthetic tampon arms so that it could sit on her nightstand on all fours. His name is Hector.

-shat on Slenderman’s computer

-besties with Toby. They were actually a couple once but then Clockwork found out she was lesbian and they broke it off. Now they’re best friends and both assholes and say the meanest things to each other as jokes.

-Has freckles all over her face. Like literally everywhere.

-Has vine humor

Nina The Killer

-absolute scene queen

-Jazmin Bean listener

-Has more anger issues than Jeff

-Didn’t kill her family. It was her bullies who killed her family.

-Toby hit her with a shoe and then chased her around the mansion to hit her with the shoe more.

-“I’m not like other girls” mindset.

-actually very sweet when she’s not mad

-dyes the streak in her hair a different color every month

(Part 2?)

[beevean]

I offer another angle to explain why I hate the Lenector subplot: Lenore and N!Hector drag each other down.

And not in that fun "they make each other worse" way, not as people - as characters. The ways they're both badly written influence each other. And it's hard to see where the problem starts: I don't care about Lenore being a manipulative #girlboss because I don't care about N!Hector's fate in S3, and I don't care about N!Hector in S3 because he was watered down to make Lenore look good (as in, a hot #girlboss to masturbate on).

N!Hector is not a character one can root for in S3. And it's not because he's "evil": after all, fans are quick to cheer for N!Isaac when he kills innocents and defiles their corpses for petty reasons. It's because not only N!Isaac is forcibly made to be the coolest strongest most powerful character in the show, but because the dude has at least solid motivations and reacts to events around him. <- writing so peak i'm forced to appreciate the very basics of writing

N!Hector has lost all of that. In S2, there was a conflict between his morbid goal of turning humans into livestock for vampires, and his principles that made him recoil at N!Dracula's actual plan of mass slaughter. He was evil, but he was also lied to by N!Dracula through no fault of his own, and there was an unique dissonance between his terrible goals and his complete lack of malice. It at least made sense that he'd listen to Carmilla, up to a certain point. By then, I still wanted to follow his journey. I wanted to see him grow, I wanted to see him challenged, I wanted to see him learn empathy for humans. (well, I would have wanted to, if I wasn't spoiled lol. you get what I mean)

In S3? What's the point? What does he want? What does he fear? What does he feel?

Characters going through hell and coming out reshaped, for better or for worse, is the bread and butter of fiction. The CV games themselves have put some of their protagonists through the ringer: Leon lost everyone he held dear in one night in LoI, Shanoa discovered she had been groomed to resurrect Dracula in OoE, and Hector himself suffered a lifetime of abuse, watched Rosaly die in front of him, and then discovered that all of that pain was so that he could become Dracula's vessel in CoD. The thing is that, I care about these characters. They have personalities, a past, relationships, and I want them to succeed. I want them to be happy. Their suffering is a tool through which they show what they're made of.

Hell, it's not just the heroes: Isaac in CoD also has gone through hell. I don't want him to succeed because his happiness is tied to Hector's suffering, but at least I feel bad for what he had to endure, and I feel bad that he died even though it was partially due to his actions: he is both a cruel antagonist and a tragic victim whose tragedy is believable but not a full excuse. He's a compelling, fleshed out character, not to mention charismatic because he has one hell of a personality lol.

N!Hector has nothing. The story itself is just making this character suffer, in a humiliated, undignified way... but not to break him and reshape him into something different. It's just torture for the sake of torture. It's to laugh at him, because he's stupid and that's what he gets for being stupid. It's to find him pathetic when Lenore puts him on a leash: the point is not how disgusting she is, the point is that he's a cute puppy, who barely reacts to this humiliation so that you viewer are not distracted from the kink. It's to shake your head when he can barely have an edge in the interrogation with Lenore, even when he could give some more personal answers like "I followed Dracula because he accepted me and gave me a reason to live", because the point is to make him look dumb and easily malleable. It's to facepalm when Lenore tricks him into having sex so that he can be coaxed into pledging loyalty to her, because he can't even see the very blatant way she lies to him - and it's his fault for being so impossibly dumb.

What does he want? He mentions that he wants to be free, but in the same breath he says that he wouldn't be able to survive on his own, so it's not a goal he fully believes in. He still says that he wants to put humans in cages, to which Lenore says "oh it's what we want to do too", so... N!Hector's goal matches with Lenore's? Then where is the conflict? As I said in the past, Lenore didn't need to resort to rape by deception to tie him down: N!Hector already trusted Lenore and would have worked for her, at the very least, especially if she kept pretending to care about him and improving his life conditions gradually. Morally, he hasn't even begun the process of changing - and, of course, he never does. He is stagnating. He's not interesting.

(this isn't even negative character development. For N!Hector, it would have been, for example, convincing himself that everyone deserves to die, and him becoming more violent and bitter towards the people who hurt him. This could have been one of his developments in S4, even if tragic. We don't even get that. The "development" he has is that he let Lenore kill herself instead of forcing her to live like he did with his pets, which is. so fucked up i can't even put it into words.)

Hell, I even realized recently: the fucking ring would have made much more sense if N!Hector actually showed signs of rebellion, because the way she described it, the ring's only purpose is to prevent rebellion, not to force him to work! If the issue was that Striga was considering hiring mercenaries and that would have made N!Hector useless, the ring doesn't solve jackshit about it, because if he wanted to he could have starved himself to death and the ring wouldn't have hurt him! The ring only solves the issue of N!Hector potentially using his Night Creatures to harm or kill the sisters! Which it's a moot point because he has been shown to be nothing but docile after Lenore beat him into submission precisely to make him docile, and he clearly was on his way to be convinced to peacefully work for the council! If he got convinced that he would be living the best life as Styria's Forgemaster, taken care of by Lenore who at least treated him well, not lied to like Dracula did, and doing what he wanted to do which is forging and working to enslave mankind (remember, he shows no growth in this), he wouldn't have hurt anyone! Lenore saw with her eyes how pliant he is, and in S4 she even calls his ill-thought attempt to threaten her "half-hearted at best"! She got the idea to butter N!Hector up to make him trust her and work with them willingly, and not through torture, and it was going all too smoothly - and then she broke that trust by deceiving him and playing with his feelings in a much worse way than Carmilla did, and realistically, N!Hector shouldn't have wanted nothing more to do with her in S4, let alone work for her! But if he was shown having at least signs of aggression, defiancy or doubts, vulnerable to Lenore's "kind" acts but still wary enough of his situation taking too long to be convinced, then the ring would have been a good solution to "tame" him! Lenore raping N!Hector into slavery would have been more justified and not come off as a vile gratuitous OOC act if he had showed a personality!!

i'm calm.

Anyway. My point is, there is no conflict between these two characters, even though Lenore is clearly the real antagonist. The conflict of Styria's story in S3 is watching this snake deliberately play with N!Hector's feelings for no reason other than sadism and a power trip. And the conclusion we're meant to reach is "wow he sure is a dumbass, he deserved to be enslaved".

Unlike in CoD, N!Hector's life is so miserable, and his conditions so suffocating, that I wouldn't have felt anything if N!Isaac actually killed him. Who cares? No one cares about this character. Least of all the writer. I don't care if he succeeds or not, because he has nothing to succeed in; and I don't care if he suffers, because he doesn't even care, and has nothing to live for. It's literary bullying.

So this brings me to Lenore. If Lenore's whole thing in S3 is that she's such an amazing manipulative bitch who gets her way through deceit and subtle abuse, but she's effectively deceiving a bag of meat... I'm not impressed.

Oh, I hate her, because her actions are disgusting and poorly match what she's supposed to be, which is the selfishly kind diplomat who finds power in taking care of lesser creatures. She doesn't come off as her own archetype, because she is too smug, too happy to force herself on N!Hector in a sexual way (the collar, the ring), and her first scene shows she's just like Carmilla in that she easily resorts to excessive violence to prove she's not weak. So, while this is yet another instance of bad writing, in-universe she also comes off a a raging hypocrite (further proved in S4 where the writing and voice acting imply that Lenore sunned herself because she didn't like the idea of being in the same gilded cage she had put N!Hector in, which makes her look cowardly and pathetic). But she's not fun to hate in the same way Isaac is when he forces Hector to watch Rosaly's execution in PtR. She's bullying a shell of a person. She is weaving uncomfortable lies to a manchild who is not even trying to put up a mental protest to her manipulations. Why should I care? She is getting her way so easily, not because she's that good (she's really no better than Carmilla, who in-universe failed) but because N!Hector doesn't have enough personality to challenge her; and if she succeeds, N!Hector would either be okay with it, or if he's not... well, he'd deserve it for being stupid, according to the show's logic.

Lenore in S3 exists solely to further prove the general message of that season: trust is for fools, and fools deserve to be punished. She is a plot device moved around like a puppet to serve that general message, and on top of that her creepy actions are painted as titillating... well, as long as you either want to be dominated by a pretty woman (which explains the great amount of male fans simping for her) or you want to dominate a pretty failure of a man. Which I don't. Because I have no reason to care about N!Hector, let alone find his sexual humiliation hot.

Do you see the problem here? Lenore cannot shine of her own because N!Hector is not written well; but since she only exists to bully him, she doesn't come off well either, despite her concept being brilliant and actually interesting and deserving of being fleshed out more organically without turning her into four characters clumsily stitched together.

And of course, as you have noticed, I have only talked about S3 so far. What's the point of even talking about S4? It completely destroyed everything S3 set up. Lenore has lost everything that made her allegedly cool in that season, being reduced to a whiny brat who feels so alone and unwanted and cries about it to the man she raped by deception. N!Hector mildly sasses her back and listens to her woes, but doesn't seem to care at all about what Lenore did to him, both positive (being put in a giant gilded cage where he can't be killed and being given some sort of authority) and negative (the mocking, deception and rape). They have chemistry now, a positive chemistry made of mutual respect, but it comes out of nowhere and it clashes with their past.

I don't care that now Lenore feels sorry about her life, because she crossed the moral event horizon and now she doesn't get to regress into being a poor little girl who only wanted to do diplomacy 🥺. I don't care that N!Hector freed himself and tricked everyone in the castle, because his "badass" actions were all for the purpose of bringing Dracula back, which is proof that all the suffering he went through was for nothing - he didn't learn that putting humans in a cage was bad, and now he seems to want back the madman who planned to kill everyone out of personal atonement (plus, he only freed himself from working for Carmilla, Striga and Morana: he still chooses to live with Lenore, so effectively still tying himself to the woman who forcibly tied him to her). He's even worse now, he has regressed for no sensible reason: I still don't want him to succeed. And I don't care that N!Hector has found the strength to let Lenore go, a contrast with how he used to resurrect animals to have loyal companions, because I don't even know why he'd grow to love her. The story wants me to believe his love for Lenore is pure and organic, and not the result of breaking from horrible abuse and accepting the scraps of something barely resembling kindness. As if S3 never happened.

And if S3 never happened... why should I care about these characters and that story?

(funnily enough, I could make a similar post about N!Alucard in S3 and S4. I also don't care about his grief, because he was a cunt to N!Trevor and his own similar trauma. I don't care about the Japanese not-twins raping him, because it's so out of nowhere that it only feels like gratuituous shock factor. I don't care about N!Alucard apparently falling down the same path as Dracula, because he gets better after one episode. His story in S3 - well, what little can be considered a story - is also "trust is for fools, and fools gets punished", although at least N!Alucard isn't painted as a dumbass for trusting these two plot devices, and at least he kills them before he can forgive them. but basically my point is that this writing is bad.)

[kerubimcrepin]

Liveblog 4: Oh god this liveblog will have 50+ posts I now realize.

Unlike the previous episode, here, the ever present Schrödinger's city wall is real, though it is still different from the OP.

I could make a joke about all cops being pigs, and the fact that they are literally patrolling the streets in this episode to harass homeless people... but yeah that's exactly what's going on here, no jokes needed.

In 610-ish years, during Waven era, Joris Jurgen, then-regent and ruler of Bonta, will be waging war on the pig people, one that may or may not involve cannibalism on both sides. But for now, he is eepy, 7 years old, and being woken up by them. It's kinda like poetry, you know?

Don't know why, but that's a very good image of Keke. Exhudes a good amount of smugness.

Says the man who will proceed to do it for 600 more years anyway. Get boiled, idiot.

One of the thing's that's very consistent with Jurgen-Crepins is the usage of kicking and jumping in battles. There's a theme here. If they were actually ready and not being beaten up during the OVA, they'd be all over Ush, like fleas.

The thing is that, even if we don't know why Lou left, Kerubim and Luis probably do. Their every conversation is pretty suspect, practically screaming "I know something you don't :)", as many aspects of this show do.

Even if they don't know all the details, they know much more than we ever will.

So, a few tenets of the Lou theorizing:

She left sad, and unlike many other times, without any anger for Kerubim.

She left Luis with him to watch over him.

She also left Luis because he couldn't go with her, but that could mean many things.

She left after Ecaflip City, obviously, and at that time, their relationship seemed the healthiest. (Well, as healthy as it could be.)

Unlike all the other times, Kerubim didn't go searching for her. It seems this separation was final in a way no other was, and there had to be a reason that he didn't go and try to make up. An unsolvable issue.

Both Luis and Kerubim blame Kerubim, and the first one uses this to make the second one angry.

So, what is it that made her leave, and do Luis and Kerubim fully know? I have my own theories, after watching the show around ten or twenty times. They aren't answers, obviously. I don't think we'll ever get an answer from Ankama, ever. But there's no harm in spitballing. However, it'll have to wait.

Get boiled, idiot.

The day I stop talking about how Simone is Joris's cooler aunt, is the day I die. She loves him so much just from one meeting.

Guy who is normal about Crepinlore voice: "Yeah, in the second episode? For breakfast, they're eating croissants, butter, jam, light tea for Kerubim and Simone, and milk for Joris, all of which is a traditional French breakfast. Yeah, when Joris bites it you can see that the croissants have white or yellow filling, which might be cheese, vanilla, or condensed milk—

Yeaaaah, but this isn't as crazy as that time in a future episode where Joris pours chocolate milk into a hot drink which might be tea, hot chocolate, or cocoa. He is insane, you know."

Even as a child, his twisted and evil arc of drinking things through a straw has already started....

The face journeys this man goes on in these series are far more complex than even his twisted fucking cycling path of a character arc, and that's saying something.

Even by age 7 he is utterly deep in the boufbowl brainrot. Sad!

"The woman there didn't even like beer, which is a sign of evil." I love you Kerubim, but you really shouldn't have parental rights.

And yes. He does have parental rights. It's officially on record, even 200-ish years later. I guess that despite losing his back-up lives and developing a new, infinitely more insane parent-child bond, he and Joris never updated their papers to match the legend of Joris being his dad.

Even without meeting her, Joris understands that Lou was a Girlboss. That she scared the life out of his amazing and all-capable papycha. Her sheer power is indescribable, Lou fans stay winning, etc etc,

and yeah I want to boil her into soup too. I hate them both. (I say this with love.)

Anyway how many times do you think Joris has seen Luis commit violences upon Kerubim? Normal household. As was already proven in my 2nd liveblog.

I will hunt Luis for sport.

[marshmallow--shark]

Oh, I love my girlfriend so much. It feels like nicotine everytime we get to have a date together. And what we did on this date, I shall tell you! I showed her Voyager and Ds9 characters and had her nickname them and give first impressions. And now I share her wonderful insights with you lot:

Janeway: Mama Maria, a renowened chef who owns a cooking brand of butter where the bottle is shaped like herself. Became a Star Trek to promote her brand.

Chakotay: Joey-David Hasselhoff, lost his legs in the great star wars as is now very short. Became a Star Trek to pay off his outstanding gambling debts. The marking on his face is a barcode to immediately kill him if he tries to escape.

Kes: Mama Maria's evil twin, not a true Star Trek and just has the visitor's pass. Has the power to return everything to its base components. She is always under attack so she wears an indestructible vest.

Doctor: Uncle Steve, do not trust around children. The blue is a warning and he's very bitter about it. Pretends he's a genius but he's very stupid. He has an ankle bracelet which keeps him from leaving the ship which he bothers everyone about.

Neelix: A criminal mastermind tattoo artist that destroyed his homeworld with a tattoo machine, not a true Star Trek but came along to be amused. Talks like a gangster. I.. don't remember the name she gave him..

Tuvok: Great Value Spock, bought at the store on a discount during a clearance Vulcan sale and they needed a Vulcan to complete their ship. His eyebrows are drawn on.

Paris: Milk toast, the whitest white to ever white. He goes to space church which he himself built and his favourite food is white bread. Just a guy, he has no reason to be here.

Torres: Laquisha, a plant that knows absolutely everything. Does not like Uncle Steve. Goes to space church but because she knows its fake, and the world is actually on a cracker with hummus that will eventually be eaten by the one true space god.

Kim: Mark, a part timer that's just there. He does a bit of everything but he isn't actually good at anything. A temporary Star Trek but eventually he'll quit and follow his dreams to go to space college.

Sisko: Carl, owns a vintage George Foreman grill and makes space hotdogs for everyone on Hotdog Friday. Uses his baldness as a weapon to blind his enemies.

Kira: Karen, a typical Karen who is rude to everyone around her. Complains about being on Ds9 but doesn't do anything about it. Hosts a radio show to sell her trademark cement purses, which she always carries around at all times.

Bashir: Dominic (named by the two of us), participated in the space sex offender shuffle. He is very creepy and no one likes him, don't trust around anyone. No one can stop him. Probably really into bondage.

Odo: Gorp, created by the Kardashians to be a clone but made wrong. Banished for being a failure of a clone. He has no feeling in his left hand and cannot feel pain. His ears are glued on.

Dax: Monica, a furry that believes she is a leopard. Also a sex offender but they forgive her because she's so good at her job. If you see her walking around in a fursuit, let her be. Do not anger her because there will be no escape. Sells pancakes alongside Mama Maria and they are dating.

O'Brien: Loppy, it's his first day! He's so happy to be here, he's having a grand old time. It's always his first day as he is actually a mind parasite that makes everyone believe it is his first day and they will never know how long he's actually been there. Never.

Dukat: Zorath/Zorag (We both forgot it so it changes to something else with a z) -Melty Candle Face, an obsessive yandere Klingon that's very mentally unstable. He was first in love with Dominic until he found he could not be trusted. He targeted Loppy next because its his first day. Currently dating someone else, but it's undetermined who it is.

Garak: From the Shining Jack Nicholson, a scizophrenic who causes problems for everyone. His daily hobby is crawling through the vents and he can show up anywhere at anytime. He is an unpredictable menace that likes to scare the ship.

Mirror Kira: Ds9, the ship itself embodied as a half robot. Abuses her power to sleep with everyone on the station. What happens to the ship happens to her and forces everyone to protect her under the threat of death. She will not hesitate to throw you out of the airlock if you disobey her.

[frostyreturns]

Frosty Ruins Rick And Morty

Rick and Morty is one of those shows that going into this review I’m not really sure how I feel about it. I remember enjoying it when it first came out but I also remember it had a lot of dumb horseshit in it too. I havent watched it in years I think I quit around season 3 when they hired some new writers who made the show gayer and less funny I just remember a steep decline in quality and stopped watching. After that the fanbase turned me off from ever going back despite hearing that the show got better again. This will be my first time watching it in a long time and I’m going back to season 1 episode 9 “Something Ricked This Way Comes” An episode I don’t remember but it’s obviously referencing Ray Bradbury, but I havent yet gotten to that particular book of his yet....but it’s on my list.

Ricks first line of the episode reminds me of one of the things that always made the show annoying to me even back when i thought it was decently good. The pedantic scientism bullshit, the show was like harry potter but for people who followed I fucking love science on facebook... when people were still on facebook. They invoke the name science like it’s their god (because it is) and then just use it to magically deus ex machina every situation and opinion they have. It’s science but for retarded people who don’t want to hear any actual science but just want to blindly accept on faith that science says x so x is true…without even providing or citing any actual science to prove that it does in fact say x. Like here Rick opens the show by saying “scientifically traditions are an idiot thing.” Which is complete and total horsehit there’s lots of studies or “science” that shows tremendous personal and cultural benefit to the observation of traditions…so blanket renouncing tradition without even specifying what the tradition is and not looking at it on a case by case basis is both unscientific and something a retard would say…but the show postures Rick as the smart character who embodies the editorial perspective there to dunk on all the other dumb characters.

The undeserved condescending attitude about science is especially funny when the science on the show is outdated. They try to make Jerry out to be a science denying dipshit for disagreeing with scientists about Pluto being a planet…implying science never changes and can’t be disagreed with…even though it only changed recently in 2006 and has since changed back to being considered a planet again. It must be so sad to invent a character in a show to feel intellectually superior to…and then have that character be proven right. It’s even funnier where it’s the episode where he makes Rick smarter and more powerful than the devil by having him invent magic devices that detect and counteract all the evil needful things items in his shop. Like he has Jerry go on a pluto talk show to declare pluto a planet to hammer home the point that you can’t just go on tv declare something and make it true....and yet that’s exactly what that faggot tyson did. And of course there has to be some anticapitalism message added arbitrarily too, the evil corporations destroying pluto thing was so hamfisted and didn't need to be wedged into the story.

The show is a mixture of some actually decent jokes ruined by pedantic nihilism. Like the moment where he has a robot he designed to pass butter and it realizes passing butter is its only purpose…kind of funny…then Rick ruins it by saying “yeah welcome to the club"…implying all of our lives are equally pointless and devoid of meaning. It's a show at odds with itself both ideologically and comedically.

Also I hate the animation style, it looks cheap and unpleasant and I hate that its been copied a lot.

I’m also not sure why the episode is named after a bradbury book but seems to be more heavily spoofing Needful Things a Stephen King book. But I do remember now that this episode does have one of my favourite lines in a cartoon when Morty tries to chastise Rick for saying retarded and he doubles down and calls the language policing retarded.

Then the show will pretend to be above simple silly humour but will still trot out characters like “King flippy nips” The writers and fans will insist stuff like pickle rick and mr poopy butthole are satire but it’s clearly satire being delivered for a laugh without the irony…they just also want the satisfaction of pretending to be above it. It’s like when people defending that pedo bait movie on netflix were claiming its purpose was to criticize the sexualization of children…but you still have half naked children dancing around for entertainment…so you’re still doing the thing your criticizing. Like fans of the show like to pretend it’s a smarter show than something like family guy…but their big ending joke was just a fist fight where they just walk up and assault people they don’t like for slapstick comedy just like a family guy chicken fight except without the sense of moral superiority…or at least not as much. Like ha ha look I made my character beat up a skinhead and an antigay Christian isn't that such a funny and smart joke...also forget that we earlier made fun of people for virtue signaling it's ok when we do it.

Overall it had its moments and just because it’s not as smart as it pretends to be doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with enjoying some dumb cartoon bullshit. However rewatching it I remember this as being one of the better episodes and it annoyed me too many times to the point I don’t think I’ll be watching anymore of this show.

C needs improvement

[licncourt]

Already obsessed with your evil power couple au, separately they are unhinged, but working together they could be 1000 times worst and I love that for them. Marius as PM thinking he's the puppet master but they're manipulating him. Everyone going on about how weak and human Louis is despite his resurrection by Lestat at the end of Merrick surely making him insanely powerful, but keeping the front up so no one knows of realises till its too late for them. Do you have any details your willing to share?

Sure!! This was actually something I was thinking about like a year ago to play with Prince Lestat era, but then I caught 80s Canon Disease and wrote 140k of that. Anyway, I originally imagined it as a political drama, but I actually don't think I'm capable of that plot-wise. At least not of the rather grand plans I had for weaving webs of intrigue.

I've pivoted away from the plotty version to something more intimate and character driven (shocking I know), but everything else is the same. The inspiration for this whole idea was the conversations around the PL trilogy, how ridiculous establishing a monarchy is in the 21st century, how insanely unethical some of the practices are (fledgling labor, the food dungeon, killing "evildoers"), weird vampire oligarchs, etc.

Generally speaking, this is obviously AR being out of her mind and lacking any self or social awareness, but it made me start thinking about, conceptually, what could be done with this whole mess to make it interesting. If we have a Lestat who has decided he's down with being in this position of power, why not lean into the l'etat c'est moi of it all? Let's make him worse but in a fun way!

Lestat may have shitty self esteem, but he loves attention and adoration and material excess. What he doesn't love is logistics, intense political discourse, meetings, and putting in the hours to actually run a government. Fortunately for him, he's married to someone who does bookkeeping for enrichment and wants to be better than everyone else.

Whimpering, unwilling consort Louis is. An unfortunate yet prevalent phenomenon in fic, but I strongly disagree with that characterization. Louis is nothing if pretentious, detail-oriented, and well-versed in taking full advantage of his positions of superiority. He's a bitch and he likes to micromanage. Unethical business practices are his bread and butter.

What Louis does not like however, are lavish parties, large-scale socializing, and all the people-personing that's required to be a prince. This is the perfect situation though. Lestat was MADE to be a charismatic figurehead. He's extroverted, charming, attractive, well-spoken, and he thrives on engaging those qualities. He and Louis both can fill a role they're great at and genuinely enjoy like two halves of a whole.

I fully believe that there's a distinct possibility of them taking to be In Charge like fish to water and immediately becoming power-hungry monsters that feed off each other's awfulness because they're so in love. Maybe alone they would never think to look for a position like this, the siren call of their potential as a team is strong? After all, they deserve this. Who else could be more qualified? Obviously.

I love how so sweet and devoted and married they are in RoA, but imagine that + they are enthusiastic autocrats. Louis is subtle, he operates under the radar and is perfectly content to spend most of his time in the background taking care of the not-so-glamorous things that need to be done.

Over time he manages to completely consolidate power expand his duties to encompass all sorts of neat things like controlling managing the royal treasury and presiding over supervising legal proceedings to Help Out. Isn't that nice of him? Beautiful AND hard working! Look at him filling in for the prince at meetings, that's so sweet! Oh wow, he's rather competent, isn't he?

Lestat, of course, is the charisma (and the brawn). Half of ruling is image and public goodwill after all. When Louis needs support from the court for something or council approval for court finances to be used, Lestat parades around and kisses hands and charms brains out of the necessary parties until he's secured the bag for his man.

Of course, over time more and more people take notice of...something. Maybe Lestat isn't a matured man of the people justly guided by a council of elders after all? And wait, how come if you really follow the paper trail of all the branches of the court, Louis has final say in everything? Shouldn't that be voted on?

Don't worry though, if someone doesn't find all this business agreeable, well. Maybe it would help to remind them just how strong Lestat is. Maybe the strongest vampire in the world. Isn’t it soooo lucky that he's here? Protecting everyone from danger....?

It's a relief you're on his good side, isn't it?

[egg-emperor]

I'm pro terrible dad Eggman give me all you've got of it please

nothing can pry away the concept that he frowns and scoffs and expresses aversion towards all traditional ways and dynamics of family, just like he does towards natural biological reproduction in the Egg memos. he'd treat all that like boring and a chore and unimpressive when there's way better and cooler things he could be doing with his creations and his time

and that the only form he'll accept is his twisted version of being a diabolical dad with a killing machine robot of a son with Metal, an evil AI like Sage, etc to take pride in them being impressively life-like and for being their genius creator/father and they can all do crime and cause destruction and take over the world (but they don't have any power in ruling alongside him that's his business alone)

and that one of the best parts of it to him is that he doesn't have to take genuine care of them as they don't need to eat and sleep and he can just power them down whenever he wants for a break. he doesn't follow any of the traditions and likes not having genuine responsibility because he's not interested at all and he's too much of a selfish manchild to care genuinely about all that lol

but he'll also sometimes at least perform it for the sake of buttering them up and keeping them loyal and motivated, as I've shared throughout my concepts and actually ended up being along the lines of what he was doing in TMoStH so I'm onto something here. but he's not into it out of genuine love and care and it's really just only for the benefits like everything else in life :P

[north-park]

@jesusinthebathroom SO YEAH where to even start?

My main points are

1) Mysterion is a foil to Prof Chaos in the sense that while Chaos exists because Butters felt like no one loved him NOR treated him decently, his actions and his pain (often caused by his loyalty to others) seriously

Mysterion in similar ways, we don't see Kenny creating Mys but from his character development in the (ra)Coon trilogy we actually see Kenny reaching the same "point" Chaos does

Just like Butters, Kenny wants his pain to be understood and his actions to have an impact, he wants his friends to remember he dies, every day, FOR THEM, that's why he kills himself in front of them 3 TIMES telling them to remember for once, and then he sounds so defeated when the next day they appear and don't say a thing about it, no matter what he does, the people around him won't validate his suffering and give a him a shoulder to cry on, he is cursed to be ignored forever

AND CHAOS IS THE SAME but while Kenny is realistic and know this can't be blamed on anyone and cannot escape his fate, Chaos exists to tell Butters the opposite, he can fight all this, that one day everyone will scream in fear to his sight and see him as the powerful being he truly wants to be

AND speaking of powers it's fundamental to say Kenny is the only human kid in school with superpowers, a set of superpowers he hates and make his life a living hell, his friends only comment on how cool that is accidentally offending Kenny, they cannot even imagine how it feels to be him, he can use these powers for the good cause all his wants but nothing can cancel he wants to be free from it, J2C's PK video say Kenny wants to be the "little one" sometimes and it really drives the point how much Kenny, even as Mysterion aka "strongest form" want to be treated like the kid he is

CONTRAST WITH BUTTERS WHO WANTS THE OPPOSITE FROM HIS VILLAIN PERSONA, he wants to be as someone who is just as evil and ruthless as everyone else can be! He wants to be the BIG guy for once, he's tired to being the "little one" because that only makes him a victim, something to be preyed on and abused, it sucks, Mysterion sees the "little ones" (like his siblings, and arguably himself and his friends) as people worth protecting and keeping safe, Chaos and Mysterion use these personas as way to cope with the almost total lack of agency in their lives, but in extremely drastically different ways, ironically Butters keeps being an idealist, believing that if he tries really hard he can bring destruction anywhere and make this "nightmare" come true (well looking at PC, he's right lol he just hasn't found what NFT are yet) while Kenny remains grounded and starts with the "small things", with his "small" goal to protect his city and its more innocent citizens like her sister and keeping to make her smile, it's about contrast it's about chosing to be the villain or the hero based on how you process your pain and who do you blame for it i'm putting them into my mouth

[isfjmel-phleg]

4 for Rietta, 9 for Delclis, 15 for Rachel, and 29 for Elystan, please?

Rietta: 4. What musical theatre ballad fits them?

I think "Don't Rain on My Parade" fits her eagerness for life, resistance to control, and general FOMO.

Don't tell me not to live Just sit and putter Life's candy and the sun's A ball of butter Don't bring around a cloud To rain on my parade

Don't tell me not to fly I've simply got to If someone takes a spill It's me and not you Who told you you're allowed To rain on my parade?

Delclis: 9. Pick a quote from Avatar: The Last Airbender that describes them.

If Delclis were to be anyone from A:TLA, it would be Professor Zei from "The Library": "Now tell me--what was the primary agricultural product of your people? [...] Oh, truly fascinating. That is one for the journal."

Rachel: 15. What superhero are they most like?

Maybe Secret (Greta Hayes). Not a well-known hero...she's a girl with a tragic background and powers that isolate her from society, but she's taken in by a group of other superpowered young people and develops a particular (rather unhealthy) attachment to one of them. She struggles with feeling alienated and abandoned and worrying about her potential to turn evil, and these insecurities build until a villain takes advantage of this to try to use her for her powers. Her friends--who really do care about her more than she's given them credit for--intervene, and she ultimately chooses to do the right thing and gets a second chance at a normal life.

Rachel's story is very different, but there are some thematic similarities.

Elystan: 29. What do they consider to be their greatest strength? Is this actually their greatest strength, or is there something about themselves they don’t see?

Elystan thinks he's very clever and can outwit anyone, and he clings to that because he doesn't feel at all capable in any other regard. He majorly overestimates this trait though. His actual greatest strength is...does he even have one? His creativity? His interpersonal skills, if he could ever learn to use them properly? I'm really not sure.

[wannabe-minion-of-chaos]

It's five in the morning I haven't slept and I come bearing a Chaos Theory au scenario. Prepare for angst

So hear me out here, hypothetical episode of this fictional show, it starts relatively normal. Chaos and Mysterion are doing their usual back and forth, Chaos and Disarray having some kinda plan and Mysterion trying to stop them, a normal Tuesday.

Until it isn't, a freak accident happens and Chaos accidentally kills Mysterion, idk let's say he accidentally shoved him off a building or something, it can't be anything too gorey

So in this au, Mysterion's powers basically work as they do in tfbw, the only exception being how he's revived. Every time he dies his soul is ejected from his body, becoming basically a ghost, and he has to either wait for his body to heal or completely regenerate to re-enter it and revive himself. And of course everyone would forget him dying as soon as he enters it again.

But back to the plot, Mysterion at first is just sort of annoyed I guess, not really upset at Chaos because who hasn't killed him at this point? And he's just gonna come back anyways so he's just gotta wait which is boring.

That is until he sees Chaos's reaction

Chaos is...not okay, despite all his plotting he never means to KILL Mysterion, hell he enjoys having to fight him, his plans wouldn't be the same without the vigilante coming to try and stop them!! Hell Chaos never means to kill ANYONE, he's a menace not a monster!!

At first he just thinks Mysterion is knocked out, trying to wake him up. Then he panics, realization slowly seeping in on what he's done, Mysterion is dead, he killed Mysterion. Disarray at this point makes his way over saying they have to go before someone finds them, it's very similar to his reaction when Butters froze Cartman in that one episode.

Eventually he's able to guide the now hysterically sobbing Chaos back to their evil lair™ (it's basically the same storage thing in canon just a bit bigger), Chaos is clinging to Mysterion's body like a lifeline, as if letting go would lose him forever.

Mysterion is...shocked to say the least. I mean he didn't expect Chaos to enjoy killing him or something but he's never seen someone care this much when he dies, let alone get genuinely worked up over it. In a way it's relieving someone actually cares but it's still hard to watch, even if this is his arch nemesis feeling this guilt and remorse over killing him. And he can't really do much of anything about it since nobody can see him in this state.

Disarray has no idea how to comfort Chaos at first, barely even being able to process this death himself, before he gets an idea. After convincing Chaos to let go of Mysterion he decides to go full mad scientist mode and try and reanimate him. Much to Mysterion's annoyance. Stop fucking with his body goddamnit he needs to get back into it!!

Throughout the episode Mysterion would keep trying to get back to his body only for it to be conveniently whisked away and he has to go follow it again. Some shenanigans ensue there providing some much needed lightheartedness.

In the end he probably just normally revives causing both Chaos and Disarray to forget, which of course is a bit more impactful to Mysterion given Chaos's reaction and how that's just erased now. But he does know at least someone would care when he dies now so that's a little closure.

If you made it to the end uhh thank you for listening to my sleep deprived rants (and please send me asks about other episode ideas I have so many of these/nf)

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Something beautiful

One week and some change into his presidency, the changeover being a matter of arbitrary administration timing and in fact having occurred already by the time you hear this, Samuel Vimes has appointed a special committee to undertake a study of . . . well, call it artistic expression in Ankh-Morpork generally, and perhaps of the government's relationship to it in particular, but don't let that fool you into thinking he wants a memo making "appropriate recommendations."

Of course, the committee already exists, although it started life as the Moral Standards in Art Committee under Lord Vetinari's reign. In the opinion of several committee members, changing the committee's nomenclature without substantive changes to its purpose amounts to whitewashing history, and to a certain extent they are correct, although in fact as far as the _real_ committee's capacity to make substantiative recommendations it is by now a question whether it could make any worse recommendations than the ones it used to make. And that's a sad thing to say, because there are at least two of the committee members who would say that the committee used to make almost no recommendations at all, what it used to do instead being a process Vetinari once, to the committee's complete confusion, compared to "churning butter." The committee these days does make a few recommendations, now and then, and indeed they make those recommendations _well_, but this is the product of a kind of committee necrophilia in which the committee does not so much ask itself as it in fact is tasked with asking itself: well, do we really want to ask ourselves that question again?

Some of those recommendations are almost never acted on. In the case of Vetinari's comparison, a few are in fact churned. But the few that are acted on generally turn out to be remarkably positive developments, almost as if some divine intervention is being brought to bear on the city's cultural life, and this gives people like Lord Downey a warm feeling. Downey is in fact the chair of the committee. He was chosen by Vetinari in part because he has a background in law and in part because that background is irrelevant to any of the actual tasks that Downey has performed in his tenure at the helm of the MSA, and also because he has the requisite social connections to make people like his decisions about what is or is not a good idea. People like an honest broker; they hate a broker who offers nothing but a raw deal. So Downey is a well-loved individual.

Meanwhile, Ankh-Morpork's Department of Art has been shunted back into a wing of the Opera House, the Winged Monkeys having apparently been discarded by some later director who didn't see their appeal.

It's all so normal. I'm getting the feeling I'm reading a report, one where everything is ok and people are reporting that everything is ok.

And why shouldn't it be? It's not as though Vetinari was an evil tyrant or anything. He was a baron, and even a baron isn't really that powerful, when you get right down to it. Vetinari couldn't even stop the major landowners from trucking in food that contained rat tails. He couldn't do much of anything, really, that some halfway competent despot wouldn't be able to do, because he was a little old man who wasn't much of an anything himself, only a title.

In fact, the reason Vetinari was so popular, was that he had to cede most of the power to the merchants and the guild masters. Those were the people he had to deal with every day. And that was a pretty good thing, because it meant they stayed busy taking care of things.

So the idea that Vetinari would be a tyrannical god-king or even a reasonable king or mayor -- well, that's funny. He was just a little old man who needed his morning coffee or his glass of red wine as much as you or I do, only more so. And he would drink his coffee, and he would order his red wine, and like everyone else who lived in the city, he would watch the walls of Ankh-Morpork and see the city bustling and smoking like a teapot under pressure.

It's not as though anything was going to break the city, not as long as it stayed within its very well-defined parameters. And if it wasn't going to break the city then it wasn't going to disrupt the order of things, which is to say the order of the last few centuries.

The last few centuries! That sounds wrong, doesn't it? Like there's a place where the history goes to die. But that's exactly what Ankh-Morpork is, or has always been. Like a vast old cathedral, built in a period when people still believed in god, but now it's merely a fabled monument, so big that we don't even notice that it's still there. The people who are inside of it are no different from the people who believe in the cathedral, or perhaps even worse, because they think they're something else, like gods or as we say around here, "gods."

They live inside it, and the whole thing is really a game. A game, but a special game, the kind of game you can only play when you're really bored. Ankh-Morpork has all kinds of games. It has a lot of people who specialize in the game of cheating the tax man. It has a lot of people who specialize in the game of monkeying around with big machines. It has a lot of people who specialize in putting people in jail. And then there are the people who specialize in pranks and magic tricks.

They live inside Ankh-Morpork, where the games are, but not outside, where everything else is. One thing that's funny about a city that nobody visits is that it always pretends it has visitors, and one thing that's funny about a game that nobody plays is that it's always actively being played. The city loves and needs the games, and the games pay back with the most important thing that a city needs: a sense of purpose.

People don't play when they know they're being watched. They don't play when everything they do has been done by someone else before. And they don't need to, because it's all been done, right down to the giant redwoods in the industrial district and the swarms of wasps over their doors.

And it's a funny thing to ask whether the games are being played -- not by the people inside the city, but by the people outside it. Because a city is always a place where people live. It's a place they live in, and work in, and visit, and leave, and all the other things you do with a place. Even a city like Ankh-Morpork, which is just a collection of games, has people who live in it, and people who work in it, and in their own ways, people who visit it. Ankh-Morpork doesn't have to be visited -- the city will visit you, or maybe you'll be sent to it, and then you'll know, you'll say, "I'm in Ankh-Morpork."

So a city can have all kinds of people in it, and play all kinds of games, and they all fit right into the game that Ankh-Morpork plays.

And there's one thing about games, they always have rules. Some of them may change, but if you take all the games in Ankh-Morpork, all of the games people play, and look at them all, you'll find that there are common rules that make them what they are.

And if the city is a place where people live, and if its inhabitants are playing a game, and if the game that they're playing has its own rules, then it is, in some fundamental sense, a place of power. Not a lot of power, but some, like the ability to put an end to the games. And it's not as though you could ever do that, is it? No, the very thought would be absurd, as absurd as the thought that there would ever be more than one king or one god or one army.

And it's not as though the people who live in a place like Ankh-Morpork could ever really do anything about that, is it? No, of course not. The people who play the games live in the city, and the city tells the games what to do. The people who live in the city, they make the city real.

[donexmiras]

Alkai 🧍‍♀️

👪 FAMILY - what is their family like? what is your ocs relationship to them? does your oc have any siblings?

👻 GHOST - do they believe in ghosts? what are their "ghostly experiences", if any?

🤥 LYING - are they good liars? do they have tells to show they're lying?

🥞 PANCAKE - what is their comfort breakfast?

🍓 STRAWBERRY - do they eat their fruit & veg? what is their favourite fruit or vegetable?

😨 FEARFUL - when scared, do they go into "flight" or "fight"?

⚾ BASEBALL - can they play sports? what is their best position if they play a team sport? what's their strong suit (speed, power etc.)?

🙈 SEE-NO-EVIL - whats a side of your oc that they don't want to show other people?

🪤 MOUSE TRAP - what will always lure them into certain danger? a loved one in danger? a promise of something they are always searching for?

🌩️ LIGHTNING - are they scared of lightning?

🌠 SHOOTING STAR - if they could make any wish with no repercussions, what wish would they make?

💖 SPARKLING HEART - are they a subtle or a showy lover?

Alrighty here we goooo

👪 - In the pirate au Griosk is their father figure, raised by him and the two are rather close - but additionally in my personal au - Meria, a jewelry shop owner, acts much like a mother figure to them, and additionally a dog tattoo artist named Renny also watches over them, but neither play as active of a roll in their lives (it's different for Altair though)

👻 - They think ghosts are only a human thing, what that means not even they could tell you, but they've never had any proper ghost encounters, they still believe in them though due to stories

🤥 - It depends on the situation, their fins move in a particular way and their smile always seems a little more mischievous - when it isn't a lie they're taking seriously, if it is something that actually matters they'll blatantly avoid eye contact and their smile is strained

🥞 - A pile of pancakes, topped with bacon, a mountain of whipped cream, and loaded with syrup and butter, they'll destroy it before you have time to blink

🍓 - If it's presented as an option yes, their favorite vegetable is mushrooms while their favorite fruit is pears

😨 - They always have the capability of going into fight, but if it were to ever go wrong, well, Alkai doesn't cope well with death especially if they are the cause of it, luckily it would take a lot for them to fight while afraid, so often they choose flight

⚾ - Alkai goes hard on volleyball, and doesn't persay play by the rules- which is to say they'll sometimes use their hook as a bat to spike the ball, but ultimately their strength is their speed

🙈 - They don't like to seem vulnerable around others, which is why they actively avoid confrontation, they don't like anyone knowing they can be more than the goblin they front as, the only exception to this is with a s/o or close friend/family, in which case it becomes the opposite if that's all they see them as

🪤 - If they have something to gain from it then they can easily be coaxed into danger, even if it's as little as something shiny

🌩️ - They're not unless it's really close, if they can feel the bolt rumble the ground their scales flair and they turn into a statue

🌠 - That's a hard question, considering laws and repercussions never stop Alkai anyway, but maybe if someone they loved died and they had the chance to bring them back as they were, that would be their choice

💖 - Subtle majority of the time, they'll leave little gifts around to be found, go out of their way to do things for their partner that they hope they notice, but there are times they actively seek to take their partner on dates and to do romantic gestures, it's a balance

[antigonewinchester]

15x14

JACK: I could use my power. DEAN: No. The amount of power it’d take to get out of those cuffs, that’d be like sending up a flare for Chuck so don’t – don’t do that. JACK: I have a job, a mission! DEAN: Jack, stop. JACK: Do you still think I’m a monster? DEAN: Okay, I’m just going to say this, okay? Just get it out there. Jack. I’m trying, okay? I really am. But what you did, that’s not easy to forget. Now I was angry with you, for a while. And maybe I still am a little bit, okay? But I’m not gonna let some evil Mary Poppins take you out. Do you understand? ... MRS. BUTTERS: I’m not going to fail. Not again! You thought you could destroy us? Destroy our family?! JACK: No. MRS. BUTTERS: I wasn’t there for them before. But now I am going to stop you from hurting them! SAM: No, no, no, no, no, no. Mrs. Butters, don’t. MRS. BUTTERS: Oh, Samuel, you will thank me eventually. SAM: You hurt him, you hurt us. MRS. BUTTERS: No, he’s infected you! I have to keep you safe. SAM: By trying to kill the people we care about? MRS. BUTTERS: I – He’s – He’s a monster! That’s why Mr. Cuthbert said I couldn’t go back to my forest, because of things like that! SAM: No. Mr. Cuthbert used you, okay? He lied to you. Mr. Cuthbert tortured you. DEAN: He could save the world. MRS. BUTTERS: What? DEAN: He can save the world. MRS. BUTTERS: [Disoriented] What? DEAN: That’s why were here, isn’t it? Us, the Men of Letters. That’s the whole mission, is saving the world. He can do exactly that!

[MRS. BUTTERS begins sobbing. The bunker’s power starts up and the lights are restored.] MRS. BUTTERS: I just… I miss them so much.

If the big emotional conflict right now is Jack’s yearning for Sam and Dean (but particularly Dean’s) forgiveness, this ep draws the parallel between Dean and Mrs. Butters, with Mrs. Butters being the unforgiving & violent figure Dean isn’t, at least in this ep.

Dean starts the ep cooking burgers, and Mrs. Butters comes in and her job is to cook, clean, etc.; she was tortured/coerced into protecting her ‘family’ and going after monsters that could hurt them by Cuthbert Sinclair, aka Magnus, who wanted to do the same with Dean in 9x16; Mrs. Butters sees Jack as a monster for Lucifer being his father and for killing Mary, thinking he’ll be a danger to Dean & Sam and needs to die for it, just like Dean was suspicious of Jack to begin with and is still struggling with his anger towards Jack in killing Mary; and in her heart, Mrs. Butters’s intentions were good, so she’s able to be talked down and goes back home at the end, while Dean ends the ep by cooking Jack a birthday cake. Maybe not as good as Mrs. Butters would have made, but made with love all the same.

Since this season is concerned with ‘reality,’ there’s also how Mrs. Butters is creating a kind of false reality of Sam, Dean and Jack, and how Dean is the one who first buys into Mrs. Butters, with Sam being the more skeptical one. Mrs. Butters helps Sam, Dean & Jack celebrate different holidays they’ve never celebrated before & also not on these actual holiday dates; she cooks all their food, does their laundry, sends them off on hunting trips without Sam & Dean having to do any research or work themselves; she gives Jack delicious smoothies that are secretly tamping down on his angelic powers so she can kill him, and it’s only after she tells Dean he has to kill Jack that he wises up to something being wrong. Mrs. Butters herself is also trapped in a false reality, that monsters are keeping her from returning home, back to her forest, instead of her having been tortured & trapped by Magnus into staying at the bunker and working for the MoLs.

[sofiadragon]

Rituals in Harry Potter are almost exclusively in the realm of headcanon. You get a few hints of bits of things, but aside from Voldemort’s resurrection where a potion is brewed and a spell said in a choreographed way, there is very little detail about this entire branch of magic. I think the Unbreakable Vow is also a ritual, just a less involved one, and that seems to be Dark Magic™ as well.

Which, naturally, folds quite well into the idea that Dark Magic is usually done using these rituals. The Unbreakable Vow is Dark because you have to make a threefold promise in a little ritual between three people. Like any tool, I imagine this kind of magic could be used in good ways, but is usually used in evil ones and has A Reputation because of that. Since the simpler spells are easier in all ways, just impermanent, most people don't tend to go through the extra steps to use it unless they really need the more potent version. Why permanently stick anything unless it's your 7th kid's bedroom onto the side of a house? You don't need armor penetrative rounds and a tank-busting sectumsempra to hunt wolf or deer, Severus, why are you so fascinated by things that make you feel so powerful? The expelliarmus works just fine. [That metaphor broke. Repairo!]

There would also be, in any real world with Dark and Light magic, a situation similar to how certain medicines and medical procedures are treated in real life. You got cosmetic surgery from a plastic surgeon? How indulgent! But it's suddenly called reconstructive when a burn victim is having their nose adjusted so that they can feel less self conscious even if it's the exact same procedure done by the exact same guy. Some magic is Dark and that's bad, but then there is dark magic that's just 'you gotta do what you gotta do' kind of taking out the trash.

I actually headcanon that some of the more invasive healing magic is dark, because you are forcing a body to quit its nonsense, abandon its natural state, and be the way you think it should be instead of carrying on with that heart attack or ruptured appendix it thought it ought to have today. Source? My ass [and also Wiccan morality. Asking the world to change from it's natural state for you is a huge deal. No free lunch, the bill will always come due, it better be worth what you are investing.]

It really depends on if you think Dark magic needs an evil or negative mental space the same way a patronus needs happiness. Very few spells require any specific mental state at all, so saying all Dark magic requires malicious intent seems like a big jump to me. Harry may not have instantly cut Draco Malfoy in half with Sectumsempra, but he still cast it well enough to kill without wanting to do any permanent harm. He pushed a button not knowing what it did and instantly regretted it. Bellatrix mocks his Cruciatus curse, but first of all she's not exactly disenclined to lie to Harry since telling him his spell is shit is a good way to manipulate him into not using it on her again and secondly even if the Unforgivable spells require intent that doesn't mean all Dark�� magic does.

To cast the sticking charms that hold the Burrow together did Aurthur have to get angry at his teeny little house, stomp around thinking "fuck this shit" as hard as he can and then stick on a new bedroom the same way Walburga Black probably stuck her portrait to the wall of 12 Grimmauld Place in a fit of spite and anger? Or did it just take a bit of a ritual, and while intent bends spells from their primary purpose in the HP universe it is still a dark spell technically because of how it was cast?

Soft magic system melting like butter under the bright spotlight of our scrutiny.

Leaping desperately to the point before I go off on another wild tangent: Lily probably took some Dark™ Magic ritual that Severus once excitedly showed her and put her whole motherhood into it. Being a mom is something I aspired to [chucks fertility trauma out of the way] and Lily clearly was devoted to her family and would die for her child. With nothing else to do but glare at the spot her husband would be if he wasn't out bodyshaming muggle cops from the back of Sirius' motorcycle when he should be in lockdown (did JKR predict how arrogant people would react to 2020 in that short pottermore story,) she probably dove deep into how to make sure that when and if Voldemort found them, it would be the last mistake he ever made.

All wise men fear: The sea in a storm, a moonless night, and the anger of a good [wo]man.

What did lily do exactly do destroy voldemort? hasn't anyone sacrificed themselves before for someone they loved?

Yeah I feel like the canon explanation doesn't go far enough. If it was that simple I think it would happen more and would've been something Tom would've known about. Especially since lots of people were fighting and in danger during the first reign of Voldemort and during Grindelwald's period of power. So this sort of thing would've happened at least one other time, even if there were several conditions to be met (like Lily specifically not having originally been a target and being offered the chance to live).

We also only have Dumbledore's word for what happened and how it works and even though out of universe we're supposed to take this at face value, in universe we've certainly seen that he can often be wrong (or dishonest).

We know that in the world of Harry Potter blood magic and blood sacrifice can have great power. This seems to be a branch of magic that is less studied and is more associated with dark magic. The ritual Tom uses to create his new body at the end of book 4 is an example of this. And potentially also the ritual he used to create the temporary body he was in for most of book 4 until he could make a better one.

So I wonder if Lily did some kind of blood magic ritual using herself, and potentially even James, as sacrifices to give Harry protection. This could explain why the protection seems to be linked to Harry's blood (which we know to be the case since Voldemort takes Harry's blood to neutralize the protection enough to be able to touch or harm Harry without burning). This could also even explain how insistent she is on trying to get Voldemort to kill her instead, or at least first.

Since Voldemort takes Harry's blood we know that he is aware of and believes in the power of the magic relating to Lily's sacrifice. And yet he still professes to have seen no proof of the power of love. So he, at least, seems to think there is some other explanation for the protection Lily put on Harry other than nebulous love magic.

(Though of course if she was willing to use herself as a blood sacrifice this is still an act of love, even if it isn't literal "love magic" fueled by love; perhaps Dumbledore even understood this and decided to be "creative" with his explanations to Harry, as per usual, because that sounded better than saying Lily protected him with dark magic using herself as a blood sacrifice in a heretofore unknown ritual).

Tom Riddle obviously had a lot of years as a wraith to think about what happened and to try to figure out a solution. And he definitely did figure out something. Because he realized the power would be in Harry's blood and by taking that blood into himself he could imbibe some of it and reduce its effectiveness against him. He understood what happened enough that he was able to come up with and implement a solution that did work for the most part.

And that solution centered around blood.