#it's way too accurate

[starwarrior18]

.........

Starscream be like:

[zillychu]

everyone sh. shutd up im cooking smthn

[darishima]

made a chart of the straw hats' skin tones with the colors being screencapped directly from the episodes, to show how much they've lightened. this is more than just an "artstyle change" or "design evolution" or "just the timeskip" this is blatant racism/colorism. it's fucking ridiculous and i don't understand how toei is continuously getting away with it please reblog btw, i think this is something people should see

[starry-bi-sky]

don't you want to be a cult leader? - danyal al ghul au

this is mostly a joke post but i thought it was funny and had to share so--

his first mistake was, obviously, inheriting his father's inability to see an injustice and stand still. -- actually, danyal's first mistake was his lair being so big. a mountainous island with a large temple in the center resembling his old home in Nanda Parbat? With sprawling foliage and rivers and streams and waterfalls galore? What was he going to do with all that space? Let it go to waste? He had plants there! Native trees of the ghost zone growing from the soil! He couldn't let it all be left unchecked!

So naturally after helping a fellow teenage assassin ghost -- who he later learns is named Akihiko, -- from Walker of all people, he sent them over to hang low at his lair until it was safe enough for them to wander around the Zone. Walker couldn't get through Danyal's astrofield if his life depended on it, and trust him -- he's tried. Danny was clearing out debris from his stupid transport vans for weeks.

Honestly it wasn't so bad, he and Aki really quickly became fast friends and Danny loves having a sparring partner close to his level again -- he hasn't had this much fun fighting since he left the League. Aki was very dedicated and levelheaded, the both of them clicked really well because of it.

Nonono, the real trouble began after Danyal met some long-passed League members and allowed them to come join his island as well. Apparently they had made a few enemies of the zone, and maybe Danyal still felt some loyalty to the League. He couldn't just let them be left to rot. Their zealotry could be overlooked so long as they kept it contained and helped him take care of his island.

And it.. snowballs from there? He meets a teen squire aptly calling himself Ambroise -- whether that was his living name or not is yet to be seen -- who died during feudal france, who is just about as dramatic and passionate as every french stereotype makes them out to be. He calls Danyal "my moon and great muse" -- which is both flattering and little uncomfortable, but Danyal's grown up in the League as the Grandson of the Demon Head, he is used to mild worship. he passes it off as nothing more, nothing less. -- and while his energy is overwhelming on the worst of days, he helps Danny draw out of his shell more in ways that Sam and Tucker still struggle with.

Him and Aki butt heads a lot, but the two seem to hold the other in at least some positive regard, so Danny doesn't worry too much about them fighting while he's gone. It only becomes a mild issue when Aki also begins calling Danny "my moon". It's a little sweet, so Danyal brushes it off.

Then he takes in a troupe of ghosts some time after he defeats Pariah Dark and they begin calling him "great one" just as the yetis do in the far frozen. This is where he meets the twins -- a pair of sibling ghosts who call themselves Trixie and Missy (short for Trick and Mislead) -- who aren't quite as passionate as Ambroise but more energetic than Aki. Eventually they also start calling Danyal "my moon" and attach themselves to his hip, even within the living. They like to hide in his shadow and cause trouble for the rest of the students. He makes sure they don't hurt anyone.

He's pretty sure Aki is jealous, same with Ambroise, but he can't be too certain other than the fact that they become much more lingering (re: clingy) whenever he visits the island.. Something he's trying to do much more often these days due to the increasing amount of people living there now. Since when did he become so popular?

Then there's Pēnelópeia from the Greater Athens, who ran away from home and joined his Island after he ran into her while she was being chased by Skulker -- and he's pretty sure the reason was because of her chimeric appearance. Her strange eyes and mismatched wings and lion's tail and talons. She assimilates into his friend group very easily, she gets along well with Ambroise and Trixie and Danny usually finds the three of them climbing the trees to pluck the most fruit from the top. They can fly and he knows it, but they prefer to climb.

Then finally there's silent poet Akkara who comes from ancient mesopotamia, who gets along most with Aki -- which is no surprise there considering their similar personality dispositions. he watches Aki and Danyal fight each other and leaves comments on this or that that he notices. He writes Danyal poems on clay tablets and leaves them by his room.

They're one big mismatched group of outcasts, and Danny's got the other ghosts on his island to tend to, because they're living on his island and he wants to be hospitable even if he struggles with that. But he spends the most of his time with them.

Sam and Tucker are making fun of him. Tucker jokingly tells him 'careful Danny, at this rate you're gonna start a cult'. Danny really wishes he had taken that joke more seriously.

He just. keeps. collecting people. Wayward souls lost in the zone, looking for shelter or refuge from something or other -- whether that be another hostile ghost, or a past afterlife, or just a purpose. Danyal finds them, he takes them in, offers them a place on his island until they are ready to leave. Many seldom do. He's not complaining -- he has the space, and it feels like it's only ever growing.

His close friends, his "inner circle" as he's heard the others call them, keep insistently calling him "my moon". He starts calling them his stars, because then it only feels fair. They're his stars, this is his constellation. It becomes a thing; little star halos begin forming behind their heads, picking them out from the rest. He loves them so much, it's hard to place. Sam and Tucker are also his stars, but they reside in the living realm, they're his tie to Life. Meanwhile, his friends here know what it's like to be dead, and sometimes its nice to relate.

Those living on his island keep calling him "Great One" and he's beginning to notice zealotry in their care for his island. He really, deeply appreciates it. His close friends gain nicknames -- as his stars, it's only natural for him to pick them out from the cluster in the skies. Akihiko, his Sirius and bright star. Trix and Missy, Castor and Pollux, the twins and troublemakers. Ambroise, his zealous Antares and close friend. Penelopeia, chimeric and loyal Vega. And Akkara, his Arcturus and strength.

It's ridiculous how long it takes for him to notice; he is, of course, a deadly trained assassin. He is meant to be observant -- and normally he is! But somehow this becomes a blind spot. One that becomes too big to be dealt with by the time he realizes it.

He should've noticed when Aki, his Sirius, stood beside him one day while Danyal looked over his island and saw the sprawling spirits carrying on about their afterlife and bowing to him as they saw him, and said: "I looked down into the depths when I met you; I couldn't measure it." They aren't one for flowing prose, it took him so off guard he was silent for over a minute before he finally spoke.

Danyal should've recognized devotion for what it is, and yet he didn't. He should've recognized it when Antares began spouting praises about him, crowing about his radiance and resplendence to the heavens. He just brushed it off as Ambroise being Ambroise. He should've recognized it when Trix and Missy nearly broke Dash's leg after he knocked Danyal's books out of his hands, he excused it as them being protective. Of them coming from times where such violence may have been customary -- after all, that's what he used to be like. What he was still like, sometimes, when his emotions nearly got the better of him.

He should've noticed it when the people living on his island followed his word like gospel, looked at him like he hung the stars in the sky. When his friends gifted him a shawl with the moon phases delicately embroidered into it, with silver, shimmering thread and moving stars lovingly stitched into it. Their constellations seen clear as day in the dark fabric. When he found small shrines dedicated to him -- but they lacked any image of him beyond stones carved to look like moons, so he ignored it. When the religious imagery began popping up.

He really, really should've noticed it when a bunch of cultists accidentally summoned Antares, and Antares had turned to him when he arrived and called them heretics. But he was so centered on the fact that they had kidnapped one of his stars, that he hadn't paid much attention to what Ambroise had said.

Sages say that faith is blind, they should also say faith in you is even blinder.

It really only hits him one afternoon while he's sitting in Sam's room studying with Tucker, Missy and Trixie lounging at his feet, Aki sat on his right, Penelopeia braiding his hair, Ambroise draped against him, and Akkara lurking over him. Its one of the rare few times they're all in one room together.

It hits him like a bolt of lightning. He looks up from his textbook. "Oh Ancients," he says in no amounting shock. Everyone looks up to him.

"I've become my grandfather."

[eleictro]

ANEMO

The spirit of wind and freedom! Personal identity is often very important to Anemo users; It is either something they are constantly grappling with, or something they are very determined to hold onto above all else. Sometimes both. It’s hard to sway an Anemo user from what they believe about who they are—even if this belief about themselves isn’t the most positive one. They often feel shaped by change, in a way that gives many Anemo users a quiet feeling of grief or mourning beneath the surface—because what changes in their lives isn’t always in their control. A lot of them can come off as eccentric, oddly specific about certain things, or downright chaotic—because they struggle to comfortably exist or do things in the ways everyone else seems to be doing them. This can make them feel alienated and isolated from others at times, but it’d do them good to remember there are people out there who are able and willing to understand them, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

HI… I MADE A GENSHIN QUIZ… You guys should take it and tell me what you got

[motherofoompaloompas]

Please vote ❤️

[hungry-joe]

[cait-sith]

Day 13: Eat

[inkskinned]

he says i hate everyone except you and that is addictive and that is kind of romantic and beautiful because you're young and you're kind of a sarcastic asshole too and you don't like bad boys, per say, but you don't really like good ones either. and you like that you were the exception, it felt like winning.

except life is not a romance book, and he was kind of being honest. he doesn't learn to be nice to your friends. he only tolerates your family. you have to beg him to come with you to birthday parties, he complains the whole time. you want to go on a date but - people are often there, wherever you're going. he's just so angry. about everything, is the thing. in the romance book, doesn't he eventually soften? can't you teach him, through your own sense of whimsy and comfort?

at first - you know introverts often need smaller friend groups, and honestly, you're fine staying at home too. you like the small, tidy life you occupy. you're not going to punish him for his personality type.

except: he really does hate everyone but you. which means he doesn't get along with his therapist. which means he has no one to talk to except for you. which means you take care of him constantly, since he otherwise has no one. which means you sometimes have to apologize for him. which means he keeps you home from seeing your friends because he hates them. you're the single exception.

about a decade from this experience, you'll type into google: how to know if a relationship is codependent.

he wraps an arm around you. i hate everyone except you. these days, you're learning what he's actually confessing is i have very little practice being kind.

[sansculottides]

pisses me off to no end when people on reddit or whatever complain that the show wouldve been better off without the tuunbaq.....did we watch the same show? the tuunbaq is everything, it held everything together. the tuunbaq is the main transformative element of the terror. the tuunbaq elevates the text beyond mere historical fact and lets it say something about the expedition's broader context of imperialism. it hunted the british men who were trampling on its home as a mere stopover, a side casualty, to finding the northwest passage (for, you know, "trade with china" after britain beat china into submission after the imperialist opium war). silna couldnt complete a proper ritual with it because of the british men - just as british colonizers have historically intruded and disrupted the practice of indigenous culture. and in the end the tuunbaq dies, after all the injuries it's taken from the british over the course of 10 episodes and finally chokes to death on the worst of them. because there's no escaping the reality of colonial history, and there is especially no fantastical escape for the colonizer. there's no proper way for us to move forward otherwise.

good historical fiction doesnt have to limit itself to accuracy - it needs empathy to draw out meanings in history using literary craft. thats what the tuunbaq means to me.... if you wanted a straight depiction of historical record, just go watch a documentary.. TUUNBAQ DENIERS DNI

[eye-merely-jest]

hrrghgghbmnnmm x-men evolution nightcrawler….

i actually didn't care for him when i first started watching evo 'cause i thought him annoying as shit but now that is PRECISELY why i'm obsessed with him. Weird Kid™ kurt is just such an endearing concept and it's like he's just like me and I FUCKING LOVE THIS GUY SO MUCH

[ckret2]

Above: Bill showing off the messed up things he can make the Nightmare Realm do.

Below: Bill literally an hour later.

Here, have a fic. In which the gods try to figure out what to do about the new omnicidal chaos god who would rather destroy reality than politely exit Dimension Zero so they can arrest him for burning down multiple dimensions.

This is part 7 of a ???9-ish??? part plot about the Axolotl meeting this friendly harmless innocent little triangle in the wake of the Euclidean Massacre and then getting repeatedly slapped in the face with all the atrocities Bill's committed. If you want to read and/or look at the pretty art on the other parts, here's one, two, three, four, five, and six.

####

There was fresh fear amongst the many gods crowded around the site where Dimension 2 Delta had once stood.

The perimeter around Dimension Zero's turbulent border had pulled back dramatically, leaving a barren no man's land between the police cordon and the triangle's territory.

The fires in the 1D and 2D universes, for a moment so close to doused, had returned with a vengeance—and by the sound of some chatter amongst the Apocalyptic Threat Task Force agents, they suspected it was a literal vengeance. The storm cloud heading the ATTF operations had needed to personally visit the burning dimensions again—see which previously contained fires had reignited or jumped their firelines, and see which new fires had broken out so that it could redistribute the available firefighting forces appropriately.

The Time Giant had gone along to inspect the damage and figure out which dimensions could be repaired—provided they ever stopped the fires—and which would ultimately needed to be rebuilt.

And anyone who wasn't actively engaged in trying to control the fires was still trying to process the newest crisis: the leader of the mortals who'd fallen into Dimension Zero wasn't a fellow mortal victim, but an out-of-control new god with the power to move and burn entire universes who didn't seem to understand that he was about to destroy all of reality, himself included.

VENDOR had finally run out of excuses to avoid the media, and was now reluctantly holding an impromptu press conference with the reporters on the scene—and THEY looked so miserable the Axolotl nearly felt bad for THEM. He overheard THEM blurt out, probably far louder than intended, "I will not be remembered as the god who was in charge of the emergency response efforts that got the entire multiverse destroyed!" and he wondered whether VENDOR remembered either that THEY weren't in charge or that, if the multiverse were destroyed, THEY wouldn't be remembered at all. No one would be.

From the conversations he overheard, the Axolotl got the impression that no one, even the most senior ATTF agents on the scene, had ever dealt with a threat to the multiverse this dire. No one knew what to do about the triangle—least of all the Axolotl, who was only here because everybody still hadn't realized that he wasn't supposed to be.

So while everyone else was arguing, privately panicking, or actually doing something useful, he was floating at the cordon holding people away from Dimension Zero.

####

There were a few stars and rocky bodies on the wrong side of the cordon. The triangle's sun—the star that had once shone down on his 2D world before it burned down (before he burned it down)—was still out there. Once again, it was falling toward Dimension Zero.

He glanced around to see if anyone was watching, then swooped under the cordon, scooped up the sun, and carried it back to the safe zone. He opened a portal to his tank, slid the star inside, then shook out his forefeet and inspected the burns on the soft skin. He'd been playing with a lot of fire today.

"Axolotl!"

The Axolotl looked up. He wasn't surprised by the familiar sight of his Oracle's soul emerging from the aether—she'd already come by once—but he was frustrated by it. One more person he had to protect in this mess.

"Something happened—"

"I know." He quickly curled around her, doing his best to shield her from the other gods in case any of the nearby arguments escalated—or the triangle decided to lash out at the third dimension again. "You shouldn't be here now. It isn't safe."

Of course, she ignored him. She wouldn't be the kind of person he picked as one of his Oracles if she weren't the kind of person who ignored gods' warnings. "Our seers heard the whole sky scream in pain, and then saw a vast eye—"

"Over there." He lifted his tail out of the way just enough to let her see the border of Dimension Zero.

No matter where you looked at Dimension Zero, that golden fleck of light seemed to twinkle in the center of your field of vision. The Oracle squinted. "The little flat yellow creature?"

"He was bigger earlier."

"What happened?"

"A showdown with the cops."

The Oracle paused as she tried to reconcile that with the seers' apocalyptic vision. "Who won?"

"He did."

"Good." And she wouldn't have been the kind of person the Axolotl picked for his Oracles if she didn't say that, either.

On most days, he'd agree with her. But after seeing what the triangle could do—knowing what he would do... The cops weren't the answer, but he had to be stopped somehow.

(He could feel the triangle's eye on them. Was he listening to them now?)

"He's shaped like a triangle. Is he connected to the blind seer's final vision?"

The seer who'd seen the sky burn and collapse into a blinding triangular light. "He is. He's the last survivor of the first dimension to burn. His people called him the Magister Mentium; he was a seer to his people, too." It tore the Axolotl's heart to say more than that—but he wouldn't mislead his Oracle. "Somehow, he started the fire."

Before the Oracle could ask him how, a faint voice yelled, "Hey!"

They turned toward Dimension Zero. The triangle was on the border, looking straight at them. He shouted again, "Hey! You with the pink freak!"

"What?"

"How many fingers do you have!"

She gave her four arms a puzzled look. "Twenty!"

"Wow!" The triangle sounded genuinely impressed. "What do you use 'em all for?!"

"Normal finger things?" She asked, "Why's your hat so skinny?"

"What hat?"

She paused. "Never mind!" She turned back to the Axolotl and whispered, "Is the hat part of his body?"

"I don't think so. He didn't have it the last time I saw him."

She kept trying to look at the triangle until the Axolotl curled around her to stop her staring. "That's the seer who's destroying universes?"

He wanted to make excuses for the triangle. He wanted to defend him. "Yes."

She was silent a moment before asking the question she'd really come for: "Is my world in danger?"

"Not yet. Not directly. But... if he isn't stopped, it eventually will be," the Axolotl said. "He's fallen into the center of the multiverse and is trying to build a kingdom there. If he fails, it will collapse and kill him; but if he succeeds, it will destabilize and kill all of reality."

"Wh—?!" She gave him a look of disbelief. "But—that doesn't make any sense! He loses either way!"

"I know."

"So why is he endangering everyone for nothing?!"

"I don't know."

"I'm going to find out."

"Wait—!"

The Oracle's astral projection could be very slippery when she wanted; she was already past the Axolotl and flying toward Dimension Zero. "Hey! Magister Mentium! I want a word with you!"

"Don't cross the border between dimensions!" The Axolotl clutched the police tape in both forefeet as he watched.

After five minutes of shouting and death threats, the Oracle flew back to the Axolotl.

"I think he's stupid," she said.

He smiled sadly. "I fear it's something much worse than that."

He had the skin-crawling feeling that the triangle was staring at him. He forced himself not to turn and find out for sure.

####

The Time Giant was the first to return from the frontlines of the fire. She joined the Axolotl next to the police tape, muttered something about needing to pick up some "stuff" from "a couple centuries ago," snapped out a length of time tape, and returned three seconds later in a different shirt with sleeves rolled up and carrying a folding table, a bundle of blueprints, and an energy drink. She unfolded the table in the void, spread out her blueprints on it, chugged her drink, hunched over the table, and ignored the rest of the universe.

The Oracle gazed up at the Time Giant and instantly fell in love. The Axolotl politely pretended he didn't notice.

VENDOR was the second to float over—slumped forward, lights dim, looking like THEY were returning from a war zone rather than a press conference. Heaving a weary sigh, THEY positioned THEMSELF next to the cordon with the Axolotl and Time Giant; which was the point at which the Axolotl realized he'd accidentally formed a club of people who didn't want to be in charge of this mess but were. "Any change?" 

The Time Giant grunted distractedly. The Axolotl said, "No." The Oracle said, "I accidentally taught the triangle an obscene gesture." 

VENDOR turned toward Dimension Zero.

The triangle sprouted two extra arms and gleefully pantomimed something filthy.

VENDOR turned away from Dimension Zero and sighed even more heavily.

When the storm cloud drifted over, VENDOR said, "Go away unless you have good news." The arrogance had drained out of THEIR voice; what little pomposity THEY had left was a thin mask over exhausted fear. (The Axolotl could sympathize; he felt the same dread weighing low in the pit of his stomach.)

Before the storm cloud had left to check on the other dimensions, it had still been hailing in fear; by now, it had whipped itself up into a furious blizzard. It had to stay back from the group to keep from freezing them too, and even at that frost still crept across VENDOR's glass and the Axolotl had to shield the Oracle from the cold. "Well," it said stiffly, trying to rein in its rage and sounding even colder as a consequence. "Almost all the new fires have already been contained. I'll say one thing for that—" It paused as it mentally glided over what was no doubt a long and creative list of insults, "—guy; at least he's making an effort to be more careful of where he kicks the neighboring dimensions so the damage doesn't spread as fast." It sighed a chilly, angry gust of wind. "Unfortunately, he's gotten more aggressive about kidnapping mortals from other dimensions. He's narrowed his focus, but he's kicking ten times harder."

"That wasn't very good good news," VENDOR whined.

"Sorry. Fresh out," the cloud said. "Fact is, if we don't stop him, we're toast."

Nobody was surprised by that. VENDOR asked, "How much time do we have?" THEY turned to the Time Giant.

While VENDOR had gotten pathetic and the cloud was seething with barely-restrained rage, the Time Giant had only grown more stoic. Her face was set in a stony mask; her jaw was tight enough that she could bite an airplane clean in half. Since she'd come back, she hadn't glanced up from the stack of blueprints she'd retrieved.

It took her a moment to realize the question was directed toward her. She jerked her head up as if ready to snap at whoever had interrupted her; but caught herself as she processed the question. "Uhh, pffff..." She squinted toward the horizon of time, face scrunched up to expose her teeth. "If we get the fires put out? Few years. Couple decades at the outside. Reckon it's more than enough time to jury rig something that'll keep reality propped up while we get in a construction crew to set up a new Big Bang, no problem."

The Axolotl whispered reassuringly to the Oracle, "A couple of decades to us is over a thousand of your people's generations."

"A couple of decades," VENDOR muttered, voice rough, a few stray moons rattling around behind THEIR product dispenser door. "This multiverse was built to last an eternity. To think it could be destabilized enough to collapse within a couple of decades, all because of one..." THEY fell silent. They could all feel the steady staring eye watching them from deep within Dimension Zero.

The cloud said, "And if he doesn't let us stop all the fires?"

She pursed her lips, brows knit tightly. "If the fires keep spreading and that triangle keeps destabilizing things, the whole thing could collapse in a week tops."

"That's still a few years for your people," the Axolotl told the Oracle optimistically.

She swatted his paw. "Aren't you powerful enough to, just—stop him? You're gods." They must have seemed undefeatable to her—living beings the size of mountains and vast world-moving machines and forces of nature. That was how the gods always looked to mortals.

But unfortunately, when you got right down to it, they weren't much more than weirdly big people.

VENDOR muttered, "Well, I don't have the authority to call in the kind of reinforcements that can take that thing down." (More cautious now that THEY realized this wasn't a threat THEY could effortlessly crush in THEIR gears, weren't THEY.)

The cloud said, "The Apocalyptic Threat Task Force can make that call in any situation that poses a credible threat to multiversal safety and security, but..." It asked the Axolotl and Time Giant, "Just how strong do you think he is?"

"Could be omnipotent," the Time Giant said. "Wouldn't be surprised."

The Axolotl reluctantly nodded in agreement. "He doesn't understand what he's doing yet, but he's already manipulating the fabric of reality with his bare hands."

VENDOR made a tiny noise like a malfunctioning motor at that.

Grimly, the cloud said, "I could put in a call to HQ. We have a few higher dimensional types on call. Creator gods and the like. They're probably the only ones who'd stand a chance against an omnipotent god that can make a whole universe do a barrel roll. But if we aren't sure we could win the fight, and fast..."

The assembled group of gods cast a nervous look at the gaping hole into Dimension Zero.

The triangle, smaller than one of the Axolotl's fingertips, stared back from the border. He solemnly spread his arms wide. "You wanna go? Come at me."

They did not want to go. They turned away.

"Bad idea," the Time Giant said. "If the laws of physics are unstable, even the strongest god wouldn't have an advantage. It'd be like putting the fastest sprinter in the multiverse on a racetrack without gravity. And since he's the one running the physics, he could practically hand himself a win."

"And on top of that, any fight down there risks knocking the multiverse down," the cloud said. "It's too dangerous. We can't risk attacking him."

"We'll just have to hope he doesn't attack us first," VENDOR muttered.

The Axolotl's stomach flipped. He knew something they didn't. "Actually, I... don't think he can."

All attention was on him. VENDOR said, "Please tell me you have some actual good news."

"I don't know." He wasn't sure whether it would make any difference. All he knew was that he felt like he was betraying the triangle. He lowered his voice to what for him passed as a whisper. "But, I think... I think his power is limited to the borders of his realm." As he said it, he knew he was telling the truth. Some beings got like that when they were old enough; they could just feel when something was right. "He can't impact anything that isn't touching his dimension. He's essentially harmless to the rest of the multiverse. The only real threat is... well." He gestured helplessly at the frothing chaos. "The fact that the dimension is like that."

Voice hushed, the cloud said slowly, "Hold on. So... he's trapped in the crawlspace beneath reality."

"No—he's trapped in the 'dream realm' he's built inside the crawlspace. He can drag the realm out with him, but... we saw what happens when he does that." They'd all heard how existence had howled in pain. They'd seen how even the triangle had been scared enough to stop.

"So we have no hope of fighting him in his bunker—but if we drag him across the threshold... the fight's over." THEY turned to the two cops THEY'd been leading around all day.

The crab and burning wheels tried very hard to look like they hadn't noticed the conversation at all. 

VENDOR and the cloud exchanged a frustrated glance. Sarcastically, the cloud muttered, "Yeah. Easy."

The Axolotl said, "I'm not even sure we can drag him out of his bunker. I don't know if he won't leave, or physically can't leave—just that his power stops at his borders."

VENDOR sighed, "So we're back where we started."

The Time Giant smacked her mess of blueprints, making the other gods start. "No we aren't! If his influence can't spread outside his dimension, then I've got a fix." She held up a thick binder. "It's a fiddly chrono-construction technique to shore up brittle dimensions. It can work as a stopgap measure to stop him from destabilizing any more dimensions." She looked at VENDOR. "It'll make a lot of extra work for the urban planning committee."

VENDOR's lights flickered off. The Axolotl could see the numbers on THEIR digital display as THEY slowly counted to ten. Then THEY turned their lights back on and said, with an air of forced calm, "All right. I don't think there is any getting out of this without extra work. Tell me the idea."

"Right now, all our dimensions are connected adjacent to each other—corner to corner and edge to edge. It's simple that way. But, if we restructure the dimensions parallel to each other, we can use the pressure of the outside dimensions to press in on the crawlspace and keep its contents in place. It's gonna be a mess. Forget about the Dimension 1, Dimension 2, Dimension 3 system we have right now; by the end of this we're gonna have Dimension 143 and Dimension M and Dimension 6.5 and Dimension -17 and imaginary number dimensions and quadratic dimensions..." She shrugged helplessly. "But if we can't get this bozo out, it might be our only option."

"Parallel universes? It sounds ridiculous." VENDOR let out a low moan of pain, "We'll have to restructure the whole multiverse."

"Yup. Probably."

"Everything's so nice and tidy now. A perfectly arranged planned community. Nice, straight, gridlike dimensions..."

"Parallel dimensions do have some potential benefits over adjacent dimensions," the Time Giant offered comfortingly. "Easier interdimensional travel—"

VENDOR grumbled, "Oh, I know, I know, Municipalitron's been pushing to experiment with parallel dimensions for the past two hundred billion years. He won't shut up about how it would benefit mass transit."

The cloud said, "All I care about is the multiverse surviving long enough to worry about mass transit."

The time giant said, "The biggest downside is that once we've completely closed up the crawlspace, when that dimension he's set up inevitably collapses, there's no easy way to get back all that energy and dark matter. If we ever decide to rip open a rift big enough to drain it out, it could take trillions of years if we don't want the flood to destroy the receiving universe. We might never clear out the rubble. But on the other hand, if it's sealed up well enough, it won't matter if the ruins are left to rot."

"What about the hostages?" the Axolotl asked. "Won't that trap everyone inside?"

"We'll have to leave manhole covers and maintenance shafts, obviously. Until the fabric of reality's finished unraveling, we'll have a chance to get them out," the Time Giant said. "Even that 'Magister' can leave if he decides to surrender himself. Assuming he's willing to leave his construction project behind."

If he could leave it.

VENDOR let a heavy whoosh out THEIR vents. "Balls. Very well, submit your proposal to the committee. I'll vouch for it. But I won't like it." THEY muttered, "Municipalitron's never going to let me live this down."

The storm aimed its sunbeam at the Time Giant. "Can't start construction as long as he's still starting fires and picking fights, though—can we? Unless you can build new dimensions on top of an active inferno?"

"N—Hold on." She squinted toward the future to check. "Nope. Though once I get down a fireproof foundation, we won't need to worry about it anymore. Got a trick called timeline splitting: you reformat a dimension so that the timelines fork infinitely, any time a choice is made. If he tries to burn 'em, they split: one timeline he burned and one he didn't. He'll just add more timelines and thicken the foundation every time he tries to attack the neighbors."

Horrified, VENDOR said, "I've been trying to pass an ordinance to ban timeline splitting for an eon."

"Has it passed yet?" the storm asked.

"No!"

"Great. Then that's our plan," the storm said. "We just need somebody to talk him down long enough to put out the fires and get the fireproof foundation in place." Its sunbeam turned toward the Time Giant. "Maybe if someone explains the stakes to him—?"

She shook her head, expression flat. "I'm a civil engineer, not a hostage negotiator. If he didn't get it the first time I laid it out to him, he ain't gonna get it the second time."

VENDOR asked the cloud, "Isn't the Apocalyptic Threat Task Force trained in talking down apocalyptic threats?"

"Yes, but no," the storm cloud said.

"What does that mean! Just... go up to that thing"—THEY tilted toward Dimension Zero—"and keep him calm."

"Are you kidding? I'm not suicidal!"

"This is your job, you're an apoc cop!"

"Apoc agent!" It raised its voice, "And talking down threats is not my speciality! I was sent because we thought this was a structural issue, not an actively malevolent entity!"

"Hey!" the triangle shouted. "Who are you calling malevolent?! Hey! Hey! Look me in the eye and say that again, I'll kick your base! I'm the most benevolent entity you've ever met!"

They wordlessly avoided eye contact with the triangle, scooted another solar system farther away from Dimension Zero, and lowered their voices again. 

The storm cloud asked VENDOR, "Shouldn't this be your department? We're dealing with the possible genesis of a new god, and his first act was destroying a dimension and destabilizing reality. Sounds like politics to me."

Delicately, the Axolotl said, "I don't think THEY're the best choice."

"I'm certainly not. I handle the urban planning committee's budgeting," VENDOR said. "I deal with accountants, not terrorists! The only reason I'm here is to provide planets for those flat refugees, and I am sick of being at every humanitarian crisis in the multiverse just because I vend planets—"

The Axolotl had taken all of VENDOR that he could. He rounded on THEM, snarling, "Why are you even in politics, if it's not to help mortals? Is that not why you accepted the title of 'god'?" He flared his gills and his eyes glowed in rage. "Because it's why I did! I wish there was more I could do to help! And you, you can do more than anyone, and you're complaining about it?!"

VENDOR jerked back from the Axolotl. For a moment, the whole group was stunned silent. The Axolotl's eyes stopped glowing. He had to fight the urge to shrink back self-consciously from their staring. His Oracle patted his side comfortingly.

And then VENDOR's lights brightened. "You know how to talk to mortals like that. This triangle is just like the omnicidal monsters you represent every day." THEIR camera whirred as THEY sized him up. "If you want to help more, then why don't you?"

Ah. The Axolotl paused to swallow his anger. 

He glanced down at his Oracle, who had been hiding in his shadow as she took notes and attempted to surreptitiously ogle the Time Giant. He said, "I think..."

She nodded. "I'll wake up." And then she faded out as her spirit sank back down to a lower plane.

The Axolotl tried to avoid looking at VENDOR—how could someone without a face look so smug?—and focused on the Time Giant. "What do you need me to get him to do?"

####

Biologically there was really no such thing as a god, in the same way that botanically there is really no such thing as a vegetable. Tomatoes are fruits; spinach is a leaf; carrots are roots; broccoli is an unfinished flower. The word "vegetable" just indicates the cultural role a plant performs in the kitchen.

The word "god" indicated the cultural role an entity performed in cosmology: a god was anything that people considered powerful enough to be worth worshiping.

A trillion trillion priests and philosophers and theologians and politicians had attempted to pin down a firm definition—but any definition was only ever valid to the worshipers who agreed it was right. The simple truth was that a being who had created a universe could be called a god, and a particularly impressive tree could be called a god, and a con artist who used clever stage magic to convince people he could teleport and raise the dead could be called a god, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to prove than any one of them "really" was or wasn't a god, no trait that universally separated the false gods from the true. If other gods thought you were a god, or if enough mortals worshiped you that the other gods had to bow to public pressure, that meant you were a god. 

Different beings honored with the title "god" handled it in different ways. Some, unsurprisingly, developed a god complex. Some picked up debilitating scrupulosity in an effort to be perfect enough to be worthy of their people's worship, and their people developed scrupulosity in an effort to live up to their god's perfect example, and so it went in a vicious cycle until somebody finally got therapy. Some printed their titles on the party invitation flyers they tossed out on busy streets. For the Axolotl's part, he thought it was a useful designation to help with networking, but mostly it was a pain that meant he was put up on a pedestal for doing his job.

The Axolotl was a god of justice. Not the god of justice, but one. He held dominion over an abstract concept; over millions and billions of years, his words and decisions slowly, inexorably altered the idea of "justice" on a multiversal scale. Mercy, retribution, punishment, rehabilitation, equity, equality, fairness, and righteousness were like multicolored clays he could twist, squish, sculpt, and blend in his wet little salamandrine grip, permanently altering what those ideas meant to the mortals they affected.

Which was to say: he was a lawyer.

He was also known as a god of rebirth. Which was to say: he specialized in afterlife law. Before going into law he'd only been a psychopomp, but after having to escort too many despairing souls to afterlives he felt were too severe for their sins, he'd decided he wanted a say in where he took his souls. For a while, he helped clients get their charges reduced so they were eligible for a higher-tier reincarnation, or got their purgatorial sentences reduced. Though for a long time he'd steered away from damnation cases. He didn't always win—and those ones were too depressing to lose.

And then he'd thought he should be doing more. It wasn't enough for him to help his clients get the best option available under the system to which they were subjected; he wanted to change the system. He'd started pursuing bigger cases.

Now, he had a reputation.

For the past few centuries, he'd been working on a damnation case. He was defending a supervillain who'd developed a weapon that could slice open the fabric of spacetime so severely it could rip clean into another dimension—a mortal who'd committed an interdimensional crime against reality. The villain had died in the jurisdiction of an afterlife that had legalized eternal damnation.

Case law had long established that, unless other arrangements had been made premortem, the dead were to be sent to—in order—the afterlife of their birth, their death, or their choice, provided that the afterlife in question accepted them; and that they would be judged and sentenced by that afterlife's laws.

But if this villain had been extradited to his home world, the heaviest sentence he could have faced was a thousand years purgatory with an option for early reincarnation for good behavior after a hundred years.

So the jurisdiction he'd died in had summoned up some bureaucratic red tape to dismiss his native afterlife's extradition request, and he'd been sentenced where he'd died. Crimes against reality were often handled differently from regular sins; and the gods of vengeance in the domain where he'd died would love to see the courts declare that the gods who'd brought down a criminal against reality could call dibs on punishing him, rather than hand him back to his motherland. They hoped they would get away with it just for lack of anyone protesting the move. After all, everyone involved would much prefer that a mortal wicked enough to damage spacetime and obliterate multiple populated planets receive eternal punishment.

Everyone involved except the Axolotl. 

Taking this case hadn't made him many friends. He didn't care; he had his principles. Let an interplanetary supervillain be dragged away to a foreign afterlife just so that he can be forced into damnation, and next it'll be a planetary dictator; let a dictator be dragged away, and next it'll be a murderer; and next it'll be a burglar; and next it'll be a jaywalker that a psychopomp has a personal grudge against. If the Axolotl could establish that even the most undeserving mortal imaginable still deserved the right to be sentenced in his home afterlife, then he could ensure that everyone less evil received the same right.

If he had anything to say about it, in two or three trillion years he'd see eternal punishment outlawed completely; but until then, he was not going to sit idly by and let this flagrant abuse of interdimensional law become the new meaning of justice! He would get that supervillain out of eternal damnation, personally escort him to his native afterlife, and see him reincarnated on his own home world; and mark his words, he would rain so much bureaucratic hell on the judges and psychopomps that had let this abuse of justice take place—he would wreak such vengeance upon the vengeance gods who had tried to claim his client—that no god would dare keep a soul from its rightful afterlife ever again, or he wasn't the Axolotl!

All of which was to say:

Yes, unfortunately. This triangle was like the omnicidal monsters he represented every day.

And so he was appointed hostage negotiator.

####

(Thanks for reading!! If the art lured you in and this is the first chapter you read, this is part 7 of a probably-9-part fic about the Axolotl in the immediate aftermath of the Euclidean Massacre. I'll be posting one chapter a week, Fridays 5pm CST, so stick around if you wanna watch the Axolotl almost fucking die.

It's ALSO chapter 67 of an ongoing post-canon post-TBOB very-reluctantly-human Bill fic. So if you wanna read more of me writing Bill, check it out. If you're not sold on the idea of a human Bill fic, I've also got a one-shot about normal triangle Bill escaping the Theraprism if you wanna read that.

If this is NOT your first time here and you already knew all of the above: okay THIS is now probably the least cosmic-horrifying chapter of this arc. Which is a necessary interlude, because NEXT CHAPTER is the big climax woohoo!

Even if not much horrifying happens this chapter, I like the worldbuilding in it. The section on what being a god of justice means to the Axolotl was one of the first things I wrote for this arc.)

[unicornmanfish]

It's that one panel. Y'know.

Memes

[stillgotscars]

did seeing the cowboy boots and butterflies on the debut merch just make anyone else even more excited for debut tv

[onebizarrekai]

totally regular, non-bad boys in secret life (sessions 1-3)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji Goes To Lotus Pier AU: Part 4: Deranged Bedfellows

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.5)