#its such a dumb thing to overlook

[slytherinbookwyrm]

Thinking about our cows.

OUR COWS

[ganondoodle]

okay i typed this in a reply but i need to say this more detailed here too, the way totk dealt with horses (and stables) is bad and worse than botw imo (yes i can rant about that too, these weird choices are in every little spot in totk, its almost impressive)

in a game that lets you build cars and stupid flying maschines, towers that shoot you into the stratosphere AND teleporting points all over the place, the chance is already low that you use a horse- though i would be one of them bc i love horses and hate building and didnt find it fun at all-

(also i almost never used any parts i had with me bc you cant put them back and your dumb vehicles despawn as soon as you dont look at them- also a negative thing about that system that reinforces the feeling of actually using it being more punishing than rewarding with the added bonus of the good ol saving your health potions forever problem)

-and something i DID like was that you can have more horses and the ... one.. new color (the lil spots but only AFTER you do that one quest in the spy post)

the stable points seemed like a neat idea, but like so many things, are utterly cheatable, imo the system should have only given you a point when you visit a new stable, so you actually have to go around and visit them all

(also .. add new stables, like mini ones or sth that dont offer beds- you dont need that anyway- so you have more places in which you can get them ... why did they remove some of them anyway, shouldn there be MORE now that the land is supposedly healing/being repaired? especially the one next to the big canyon, its so empty there it would have the perfect place for sth like a new settlement or a big boss arena but no its more empty than it was before, why?? and then putting yet another repeating annoying quest there in that weirld empty place?? i just dont get it)

letting you farm points by sleeping at a stable or bringing in a horse gives you LESS incentive to actually go around the world bc you can just farm it there

(and if that was done so youd 'discover' the malanya talks to you in your sleep 'secret' ... that is literally told to you, and if its bc you dont want to force players to go around and find every stable to get all those rewards ... why do you have 140 or whatver caves then with the majority of them being the literal same thing over and over ... to make people actually use the sleeping thing there? .. why, who uses that anyway, and farming points by sleeping there .. what the hell does that add? AND THEN the stupid sleep over tickets, probably the most nothign reward ever, dont count?? i dont think i ever used one- it just all doesnt make any sense, everything plays against each other)

the upgrading system for your horse is .. once again, a neat idea horribly executed, you have to go find malanya to upgrade them, and similarly stupidly like the fairies, they only tell you what food you need for what upgrade when you are there .. or when you are sleeping in the special tm bed at a stable, randomly, one food, bc the quantity changes too

which is just so ??????????? let me go and do a quest that rewards you with a lil booklet in which you can look up what an upgrade costs, or let the stables have that, either as a list or in the menu when selecting a horse or something?? (also why the hell is malanya in a different spot anyway, like, it feels like a modder just plopped them over there, their og spot is just empty now - except for yet again a stupid filler quest for .. another big horse and a yaaaaaaaaays crystal shrine quest- ... the spot is even still called spring of the horse god .... its so stupid, just like the fairy shuffling around, like you really couldnt think of a better way to reuse that concept other than to ... move it to a different spot in the same map and map level???? and not change anything in their og spot except idk, put a hole in the map ... for one of them like .. its like they moved them around last minute just to have the semblance of things being 'changed' with no regard what makes a change actually feel like one and what just feels like, pick up thing, click on random spot on map, drop thing- its like that for the fairies and shrines too, its so dumb and .. feels disrepectful to botw and how much thought seemed to have went into these spots that were clearly built about those things)

and like it couldnt get WORSE, they cut off the paths that horses follow automatically with one of those miasma buttholes (sorry its just a hole cut into the map, it doesnt even look like miasma burst through, it just .. cut out) a monster camp (that RESPAWNS, i thought those camps you clear with a quest would stay clear, but that would make sense, so of course it respawns and you can do the frame rate killer quest over and over yippieee) or otherwise like, with a big rock or a broken bridge-

and there is NO WAY to create a new path or fix or move anything in a game ABOUT BUILDING supposedly, like you needed more reasons to never use a horse????? i liked jsut hopping on and letting them follow a path and chill looking at the landscape, you cant do this here, and you cant even excuse it with 'its bc of the theme' as in, stuff is destroyed bc calamity 1.5 or whatever bc nothing in the game makes it feel like theres anything actually at stake, but the real crime is to make it not be fixable. WHY??? link moves entire buildings with ease but cant move one freaking rock that fell into a river?????? you swing around logs like a club but cant fix a bridge so your horse can get over it??????????????????????????????

[quarter-lif3crisis]

[ckret2]

Chapter 39 of human Bill Cipher is SURE he's about to escape being the Mystery Shack's prisoner:

Ford's confronted with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, he's a little bit too obsessed with Bill.

And meanwhile, Bill has found a way to reach his loyal cultists... if he can find somebody willing to help him make contact.

He thinks Ford is the perfect target.

Maybe, just maybe, the obsession goes both ways.

(warning for an incident of self-harm via burning, and depersonalization and/or dysphoria (depending on how you interpret it) re: Bill feeling even worse about his body than usual.)

####

Soos, Stan, and Ford had stayed up half the night trying to generate enough NowUSeeitNowUDontium to prevent it from vanishing the moment one of them lost (or gained) focus. They'd eventually given up and stayed the night in Northwest Manor. Soos had texted Melody around midnight, and she'd immediately replied (which alarmed Ford, but Soos assured him she was used to those hours) and agreed, with some trepidation, to spend the night by herself in the shack so that the kids wouldn't be alone all night with Bill. She'd texted a half hour later to report that the bathroom was a disaster, but the kids had reassured her it was just some werewolf thing, so, not a big deal.

Ford had thought getting to spend a night without Bill under the same roof would be a relief. Instead, he found his sleep was even worse. He kept worrying about what Bill might get up to so far away and out of sight, where Ford couldn't do anything to stop him. Surely, by nighttime, Bill had to have noticed that the only humans he'd seen all day were the kids? Would he consider Melody any kind of threat, no veteran to combating Gravity Falls' weirdness?

It figured that the dream demon would find a way to disrupt Ford's sleep when he wasn't even there.

####

Ford had given up on sleep around two in the morning and gone wandering until he stumbled across a den with walls covered in bookcases, massive windows overlooking the forest below, and a pair of richly upholstered armchairs turned to gaze out the windows. He drifted between the chairs to one of the windows. It was the kind of personal library he'd dreamed of accepting esteemed guests in, back when he'd fantasized about one day being rich and famous. He suspected the Northwests had never read a book in this room.

Ford had been staring out at the still night and the dark pines for several minutes when he heard the creak of a door and soft footsteps behind him. He whirled around, raising a weapon. "Back, you spectral fiend!"

"Whoa! Easy, Sixer!" Stan held up a hand defensively. "It's just me!" He lowered his hand. "Why are you holding up a dinner plate?"

"Er—sorry." Ford sheepishly tucked the silver dish under his arm again. "I'm sure I saw a ghost earlier. I thought it prudent to arm myself."

Stan muttered, "This place sure is creepy enough for it."

"Mm. It's built on more than its fair share of bones." Ford returned to gazing out the window, hands clasped behind his back. "I'm sorry today was a failure. When I'm staring right at an experiment on which the fate of the entire universe depends, it's hard not to think about it."

"Eh, I wasn't doing too hot either," Stan admitted, joining Ford at the window. "There's only so many times you can hear Soos whisper 'Think about the miniature particle accelerator' in your ears on a loop before you zone out and start thinking about fishing season."

Ford huffed. "Maybe we should have switched places."

"Yeah, probably. I retired from thinking about science after I got your dumb portal running, and once you get your head stuck on something you can't stop thinking about it."

Ford laughed wryly. "Unfortunately accurate."

There was a moment of silence; and then Stan said cautiously, "Speaking of you getting your head stuck on something..."

Ford didn't like that tone. "Hm?"

"I was, uh... doing some light reading..." He held up Ford's journal.

A jolt of anger and fear shot through Ford. "Give me—" He snatched the journal back.

It wasn't until it was in his hands that he registered the absurdity of his own action; for the past year, he'd given Stan free access to Journal 5. He'd used it to document their travels and discoveries as a reference for them both; he'd even asked Stan to contribute a couple of entries. Based on a prior precedent of seven months, Stan had every right to look at Journal 5. Revoking that access now was... Well, it didn't look good.

Stan didn't immediately say anything. Ford supposed his own actions said enough. He tucked the journal under his arm with the silver dish.

Stan cleared his throat. "I think we're a little past the 'superhero nemesis' thing."

"It's not a problem," Ford said tersely.

"Not a prob—? Ford, you're letting him consume your life."

"He's consumed all our lives. The kids haven't been able to invite anyone over, Melody all but runs to her car after work, you ended up in a showdown with fae nobility—"

"It was just the tooth fairy!"

"Do you know how important a fairy has to be to claim dominion over all teeth?"

"Forget about the fairy!" Stan waved off the whole fairy topic with one hand. "Look, I'm not the one who's dedicated half a journal to talking about him!"

"You don't keep a journal, Stanley—"

"That's not the point!"

"—I'm just saying, if you did keep a journal, I think he'd have come up on more than a few pages—"

"But like this?" Stan gestured toward Ford's journal. "This is turning into an obsession. And not one of your normal obsessions."

The back of Ford's neck heated up. He wanted to argue that he had to obsess over Bill if he hoped to find a way to kill him—but Stan already knew that Ford had passed off that project to Fiddleford weeks ago. "How can I be 'obsessed' with somebody I barely even see? I'm avoiding Bill like my life depends on it! I talk to him less than Mrs. Ramirez does!"

"And you're using avoiding him as an excuse to obsess over him even more in private!" Stan gestured again, angrily, at Ford's journal. (Ford defensively tucked it further under his arm.) "You're acting like a stalker, Sixer. Not that I care about him, but, I'm starting to worry about your head."

"A st—?! I'm a scientist, he's a scientific curiosity! I'm documenting him! I document plenty of things!"

"Not like this, you don't."

"There's a lot to document!"

"Including spending a whole page trying to figure out—how to draw his—?!" Stan gestured furiously toward his boxers.

Ford pointed at him severely. "You were just as curious as I was to find out how a giant eyeball and a sentient triangle make that work, don't pretend you weren't."

Stan grimaced. "Okay, fine, I'll give you that one. But writing a full entry about his posture?"

"He's not only an alien being in a human body but a two-dimensional creature in a three-dimensional body, how he moves and gestures could tell us about how an utterly unfamiliar species perceived space! Nearly all his gestures adhere to an invisible coronal plane, that betrays worlds of information about his original anatomy. Do you know that elbow thing he does when he walks—"

"Ford. You're using your great-niece to get drawings of his childhood bedroom."

Ford raised a finger. "That's—" Ford lowered his finger. Ford sat in a nearby armchair, put his chin in his hands, and stared into space. "What am I doing."

Stan patted his shoulder.

Ford slid his journal and the dish out from under his arm and settled them in his lap. He stared at the cover, then thumbed through the pages. It was obvious when they'd returned to Gravity Falls; the drawings of Atlanteans, were-rats, shorelines, and boats immediately gave way to page after page of staring slit-pupiled eyes.

"It's just... Bill is an ancient being, many times older than our universe, and the last surviving specimen of his own bizarre species. As both an anomaly and a source of esoteric knowledge, he's an invaluable subject of study. He's going to die soon, and he should die, but... between now and then, I don't want to pass up the last ever opportunity to study him."

Stan sank down into the chair opposite Ford. "You're listening to yourself, right?" He didn't sound angry anymore, just worried. "This is a guy who tried to kill us. He isn't a 'specimen' you can add to your collection of weird stuff, you know that, right?"

"I know, I know." That was exactly why it was so important—why it seemed so important—to capture Bill in words and pictures before it was too late. (It was funny, Ford thought, how Stan's very first conversation with Bill had been a murder, and yet he was the one who talked about Bill like he was just some guy; while Ford had spent so many years obsessively trying to find out who Bill was that he'd almost forgotten he was a person instead of a terrible idea.)

"When execution day comes and you think you haven't dug up enough of his history, what'll you do? Give him a stay of execution until he's dictated his memoirs to you?"

"No," Ford said immediately. "No, of course not. I'm just taking advantage of the opportunity to learn what I can, while I can. It's no different from your 'shopping trip' at the mall—"

"Hey!" Stan pointed a finger at Ford. "Watch it! That was strictly business! It's not like I'm attached to the guy—"

"I didn't mean anything by it! I just meant—as long as we're stuck with Bill, make him useful, and—and to heck with him after that. Right?" Like Stan had said about the scratch cards: why throw away free money just because of the source? "He'd do the same to us."

Stan hesitated. "And you're sure that when the time comes, you'll be ready to pull the trigger?"

"I know I will. It won't be the first time. I'm just glad that this time I'll be able to aim at his own head."

"Hm." Stan didn't look convinced.

Ford sighed. "But, if I think I'll waver—I'll hand you the gun."

"Is that a promise?"

"Yes, yes, of course. I promise."

But he knew he didn't need to.

####

Soos drove the tired gang home just past dawn, early enough for him to open the Mystery Shack on schedule.

"Soon as we get home, I'm going back to sleep," Stan muttered crankily. Ford—eyes shut, leaning against the window—nodded in agreement. Stan yawned, "And there'd better not be any nasty surprises at the shack."

####

Bill sat sleeping in his attic window seat, knees to his chest, leaning against the window, ear pressed to the glass.

Outside, Stan wailed, "My car!"

Bill's eyes snapped open. He smiled.

He ran to the kids' room, knocked on the door—"Hey, the bigger Pines are back!"—and bolted for the stairs.

####

Soos got the door open at the exact same time Bill stumbled off the stairs and collided with the living room doorframe. Bill grabbed the doorframe just long enough to steady himself, and then bounded over to the door, shoved Soos and Ford aside, and leaned out onto the porch. "HIYA, STAN!"

Stan whipped around to face Bill. "YOU!" He gestured furiously at the wizard graffiti on his car. "WHAT did you DO to my CAR!"

"Do you like it?"

Stan let out an inarticulate scream of rage.

"Oh, you love it!"

"You massacred it! I've had this car forty-five years! I've done things in this car I can't say! And it's never, never been so—so—violated!"

Grinning ear to ear, Bill said, "What do you think of the girl wizard?"

"The what?!" Stan circled the car. He screamed again.

"Uh-huh?"

"Why does she have a beard!"

"Go on," Bill said gleefully, "tell me what you think! I want the full review!"

"This," Stan said, "is the most ugly, hideous, terrible—"

Bill glanced back at a sound on the stairs. "Oh, hey Mabel! Get over here!" He gestured proudly as Mabel joined him in the doorway. "And here's the artistic mastermind herself!"

Stan choked on his words. "—b... beautiful, stunning, museum-worthy work of art I've ever seen."

Mabel beamed. "It's not finished yet, we ran out of some colors! I was going to add a dragon on the hood!"

Stan's face went white. "No no, it's... perfect the way it is. Don't—don't change a thing."

"Really? You're sure? I don't mind!"

"Really." Looking slightly nauseous, Stan said, "I love it just like this, pumpkin."

Mabel squealed and ran outside to give him a big hug.

Bill was fighting back silent laughter so hard he almost fell down.

####

"...And I still haven't found any sign of the Nightwigglers," Dipper said, sighing dejectedly and dropping his journal on the counter next to the cash register. "So, I dunno, maybe I should give up on this one and move on."

Wendy was sitting back with her feet kicked up on the counter, but she straightened a bit to look at Dipper's journal. She skimmed the news article he'd paperclipped to one page. "Oh, I heard about this," she said. "The cops talked to me about the first burglary. I was in the thrift shop that day."

"Oh, yeah?" Dipper pointed at the picture next to the article. "Did you see anything like this?"

Wendy's eyes widened. "No—but I think one of my brothers did."

"Wait, really?"

"Yeah, he was talking about it a couple nights ago. He said it was like an armless white thing wearing pants that went up to its face. We all thought he got spooked by a deer butt or something and made up the whole story. Then dad said we should drop it and told us we should stay in at night."

"That's when they come out! At night!" Dipper laughed excitedly. "Do you think your dad knows something?"

"Pfff, not if he can help it." Wendy pulled her feet off the counter and checked the clock. "I could show you the start of the trail my brother was on. It's like ten minutes by bike and the next big tour bus isn't getting here for half an hour, wanna sneak out?"

"Are you serious?! Of course!"

"Just promise you won't tell Gus if we find something. We've been making fun of him for days and I don't want to  admit he was right." Wendy laughed. "Let me grab somebody to cover."

"I'll get my bike!" Dipper was already headed out the door. "I've been looking for a lead for days! I dug through half the dumpsters in town searching for their nests..." The door swung shut behind him.

Wendy ducked into the living room. "Hey Goldie."

"Yello?" He was sitting cross legged on the couch watching TV.

"I've gotta do something with Dipper, do you mind covering for a little bit? Just twenty, thirty minutes."

His gaze flickered to the TV, then back to Wendy's face. "Sure! Anything for you, cool girl."

Wendy had a brief, eerie sense of déjà vu. She shook it off. "I'm not interrupting anything good, am I?" She nodded at the TV.

"Naaah, it's one of those terrible specials about pyramid conspiracies." He shook a cider can, "I'm taking a sip every time they mention Fishmasons or 'ancient dinosaur-worshiping civilization.'"

"Dude. You'll be wasted before the first commercial break."

"Really, you're saving me from myself." He set the can on the TV and followed Wendy into the gift shop. (As he did, Bill checked to see if he had anything on under his hoodie. No? The Pines didn't want him to be seen in public in his hoodie; they thought it would make him "too obvious." He rolled up the sleeves to hide some of the brick pattern and surreptitiously tucked the hood and the bow tie drawstrings into the collar.)

As she headed out the door, Wendy repeated, "Just twenty minutes! Thirty tops. I'll get back before the next tour bus, promise."

"No problem!" He waved her off.

"I owe you one!"

Bill made a note of that.

He looked around the gift shop—any readily-obvious mischief he could get up to? He grabbed an 8-ball cane and took it to the counter. And then he took the stool behind the register, propped his chin in his hand, gazed toward the living room, and resumed watching TV through the wall and backwards. He didn't miss hearing the conspiracy talk—he was sure it was actively making him stupider—but credit where credit was due; they made those CGI pyramid models really hot.

A cutaway of one pyramid showed its internal tunnels and chambers. Bill bit his lower lip. Oh yeah. That's what he came here for.

Several minutes went by. The door opened and a lone tourist crept in, a middle-aged woman with a sun-damaged tan. Bill straightened up and switched his eye patch over to hide his bleeding eye. "Heya! Next tour's in..." He checked the clock, how long until the next bus? "About fifteen minutes."

The woman nodded and quietly started circling the gift shop.

Bill glanced toward the living room, decided he'd better not start damaging his other eye too, mentally cursed the tourist, and pulled out one of Wendy's magazines to read. "Let me know if you need anything."

The tourist spent several minutes making a slow circuit of the room, and then crept up to the cash register. Bill looked up with a smile, didn't see any souvenirs in her hands, and asked, "Can I help you?"

Hesitantly, the woman said, "The sun sets a deep blood red."

Bill's eye flew wide open, his heart leaped into his throat, and his breath hitched. His gaze roved over her exposed skin until he spied a tattoo on her right arm: four triangles stacked atop each other, starting with an equilateral and each getting shorter and more obtuse as they descended, until they'd reduced completely and a single horizontal line underlined all four triangles. This wasn't quite the happiest he'd ever been to see the symbol of a devastatingly self-destructive high-control cult, but it was close. "Oh! Oh, this is—" He rubbed his temples, squeezing his eye shut. "I know this. I rhymed 'red' with 'pyramid.' Why do I give everyone a different code. 'But rises gold over the pyramid'—something like that, right?" Bill gave the woman a pleading look. "I'm close enough that you can tell I know what you're talking about!"

A look of relief washed over her face. "You know him." Voice low, she asked, "Is it safe to talk?"

Knew him? He was him. But he couldn't claim that without proving it—what would convince her?—telling her something that only he knew?—great, but what? Her face was vaguely familiar—he thought he might've given her a visionary dream once—but he had so many little worshipers and they were so unimportant, most of them blurred together.

So all he could do was say, "It's not safe. Everyone here is an enemy."

She nodded sharply. "Where can we meet?"

Bill paused. "We can't. I'm... trapped."

Her brows creased with worry. "They're keeping you prisoner?"

"Afraid so."

"I could get the police—"

"Everyone," Bill repeated, "is an enemy."

She paused, processing that. Bill's gaze flickered to the clock. Wendy said twenty minutes, thirty tops. She'd been gone twenty-two minutes. "Someone's coming any minute."

"Right." The cultist grabbed Wendy's magazine, tore a corner off a page, and grabbed a pen.

"How did you find me?" Bill asked. Of all the tourist traps in all the tiny towns in all the world, how had she come in hereand walked right up to him? 

"We were told a devotee was here," she said. "Someone sent the address and phone number to the Bahamian art studio."

Bill's mind spun. How? Who the heck would know to do that? The only person who knew he was here who'd come anywhere close to any of Bill's other worshipers was...

Ford? No. Did he?

The cultist shoved the paper in his hand and turned to leave.

Bill grabbed her arm. "Stay out of Gravity Falls," he commanded. "But stay close. Don't go back to Death Valley." Between the sun damage and the tattoo, she had to be one of his Death Valley girls. She looked like their usual prey: disaffected middle class white woman, probably had a dead end job and a mediocre husband and a useless degree from a liberal arts college. Maybe being able to guess where she came from would impress her.

It did. She stopped and turned back and looked at him in amazement—and then looked at him, staring hard at his eye. "You're... hosting him, aren't you?" Her voice fell to a whisper. "No. Are you...?"

"You got me." He smiled wryly—behold him, electric god bound in flesh, how low he's fallen, but at least he still has his good humor, doesn't he? "I always said you had great intuition." (It was a safe bet. He usually told the ladies that they had great intuition. Most of them ate that up, and the ones that didn't were often a little too savvy to sucker.)

It worked. She inhaled sharply. "You are," she breathed. "I knew you'd be a woman. Oh, Mary's a fool." She said this like she'd just won some years-old argument Bill had missed.

Mary, as in Mary-whom-Bill-had-put-in-charge-of-the-Death-Valley-compound Mary? Ha. She was getting on in years; maybe Bill could start a schism, that sounded fun. He opened his mouth to say something about Mary having great leadership but waning clarity of vision—

—when the cultist leaned across the counter, grabbed his collar, and pulled him into a kiss.

Okay. All right. She was one of those cultists. Got it. Got it got it got it. Wow. Definitely a "mediocre husband" convert, those were easy to seduce away with a little warmth and affection—nothing obvious, but get them infatuated with the idea of an unattainable incorporeal ideal lover and they'd chase him to the ends of the earth. Maybe a lesbian in denial that Bill had decided to push further into denial, if her assumption about Bill's gender was anything to go by. He tried to remember what he'd told this one.

He leaned into the kiss.

He'd done this before—in dreams, in puppets—he didn't prefer humans, but he could handle them well enough and earthlings had such pretty eyes. And this body he was stuck in made such insistent demands; a surge of human hormones washed over his brain so powerfully it made him dizzy. She broke the kiss to murmur, "Cipher, my lord—" and he took the opportunity to kiss her eyelid and lie, "I knew if anyone could find me, it would be you." He wished he remembered her name. She tugged his face back down to her lips. She was so eager. Cipher, my lord. Oh, it felt good to be revered again—

The door opened. "Um?"

If Bill had had one ounce of his power, he would have killed Wendy on the spot.

Instead, he seized his cultist's hands, ripped them off his hoodie, and shoved her away. "Whoa, lady! What do you think this is, a kissing booth?!" He laughed angrily. "We don't offer that kind of service here! Either get out, or—or buy a souvenir already!" He pointed at Wendy. "From her. Not from me."

Shocked, the cultist turned toward where Bill was pointing; and then turned back, understanding in her eyes.

Wendy raised her hands defensively, grimacing. "Yeah, no, I'm not serving you either. Just... get outta here."

The cultist met Bill's gaze for just a moment, then walked quickly out the door without a word.

Bill shouted after her, "And do not come back!" and quietly mourned as, for the second time in as many weeks, he had to watch helplessly as he sent away his only hope of getting any action/rescue.

"I am so, so sorry," Wendy said. "I leave for like ten minutes and you get one of the nightmare customers."

How Bill loved nightmares. "Twenty-five minutes, but who's counting."

"Psh, shut up." Wendy reclaimed her post behind the counter. "I think she's been here before, she looks kinda familiar. You okay?"

Bill hoped nobody else in town would recognize her. "I think I'll live after some mouthwash. Terrible breath." He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Hey, remember when you said you owe me one? You really owe me."

####

All his cultist had written for him was a phone number. Bill slid his stolen journal from its window hiding spot and copied the number down in two-tone dots and dashes. Plaintext transcriptions were usually tricky, given the vast difference between the language Bill wrote in and the languages humans used—but numbers, at least, were easy. Everyone had numbers.

And then he stared at the scrap of paper, reading the numbers over and over, until he was sure he'd memorized them, just in case he ever lost the journal.

And then he ate the paper.

And then he stacked the two cushions of his makeshift bed on top of each other, planted his face in them, and screamed.

Cipher, my lord. It had felt so, so, so good to be revered again.

His organs twisted with touch-hunger and loneliness.

####

Out in the Bahamas, along the southwest edge of the Bermuda Triangle, were two nut job hermits from Miami. Bill had convinced them that the only way they could purge their sins and purify their souls was by sculpting and selling golden avatars of God into which they could pour their guilt, and they had to keep doing it until they no longer felt guilty (and they would never not feel guilty; they needed so much therapy that Bill had ensured they'd never get). And then he'd convinced them that God's true face was an Eye of Providence in a top hat and bow tie.

Over the years he'd lost a little control over those two—in their desperation to be free of sin, they'd also started sculpting avatars to as many gods as they could find and selling them en masse to afford more art supplies—but hey, as long as his face was still mixed in with the rest, fine. Honestly, he was surprised those nuts weren't dead yet.

Somebody in this house had sent his location to them. And in a moment of what Bill imagined was stunning mental clarity, they had passed on that information to the single least dysfunctional pocket of Bill's top cult in the continental United States. Maybe when Bill was back at full power, he'd drop by the hermits' dreams to tell them they'd finally achieved absolution and could rest. Their decades of out-of-control scrupulosity would probably prevent them from believing him, but hey, he could say he'd tried. He washed his hands of all responsibility over them and their mental illnesses that he'd knowingly deliberately exacerbated for his own benefit. Not his problem.

But the question he came back to, over and over, was who had talked to them.

Bill needed to reach his Death Valley cultist. He needed a phone. Every phone in this house was well-guarded. No one would let him touch one... except, perhaps, whoever had sent the SOS on his behalf.

The only person who made sense was Stanford. Bill didn't think he'd ever told Ford about the nutty sculptors; but in the eighties he had given him the mailing addresses of some niche art dealers who would sell tapestries and statues of an obscure one-eyed god to collectors who could appreciate what they were looking at. Maybe Ford had gotten back in contact with them? Maybe he'd told them where Bill was, and they'd passed the information to the Bahamas?

Maybe Ford's feelings weren't quite so cold toward Bill as he'd been pretending.

Bill liked that idea a lot.

Maybe Bill's birthday gift had swung Ford back around to the side of reason—reminded him just how good he'd had it under a muse and mentor willing to teach him anything his nerdy little heart desired. Or maybe he'd always wanted to come back, and had just needed Bill to say it first.

He probably only pretended he hated Bill because they were surrounded by enemies—everyone in the house thought Ford was looking for a way to destroy Bill, what would happen if they knew the truth?

But the truth was there. Bill could almost seize it in his hands. All those moments where they almost talked like they were friends again, before Ford had to stop himself and leave. That one beautiful little word: jealous. And of course, there was the whole thing with the glass pyramid and the "Mysteries" that Ford had passed on—

—to Mabel.

There was another possibility.

As much as Bill would love if it was Ford, Mabel was the only person in the house who acted like she actually wanted Bill alive. Whatever "Mysteries" Ford was teaching her had something to do with Bill, the pyramid made that obvious. Maybe his lessons included the contact information of everyone else Ford knew who knew Bill? Maybe she'd taken it upon herself to call for help?

It was thin. And it was still dependent upon Ford harboring a secret loyalty to Bill that he was passing on to his great-niece. But that was where things stood: Ford was the only person in the house who definitely knew how to reach Bill's followers, but Mabel was the only person in the house who definitely might want to.

And he had to make completely sure of which one of them it was before he asked for a favor.

####

Ford had missed dinner again.

Fiddleford had sent Ford home with a pile of math. All the calculations he'd done to get the miniature particle accelerator to produce Dontium. By his reckoning, that there jar should've filled with Dontium faster than greased lightning; he just plumb can't understand why it trickled in like cold molasses. (His words.) He'd asked Ford to check his work, see if he'd missed something.

Ford was more than happy to help. It was a much-needed intellectual challenge that didn't involve Bill's underhanded birthday gift. Something that would let him feel like he was making progress. And it was comfortingly familiar. He and Fiddleford had spent weeks checking and re-checking each other's math in the lead up to the portal test, before they knew what a horror they were building.

As soon as Ford had gotten home, he'd put Fiddleford's papers in his underground study before going back to bed. Bill had already admitted he could glimpse the future, although Ford wasn't sure how far; and Ford was growing convinced that Bill's ability to perceive "higher dimensions" let him see through walls like they weren't there. He'd begun keeping Journal 5 and other sensitive materials down in his study at all times, hoping that the distance and layers of dirt and rock would keep Bill from peering in.

And when he'd dragged himself out of bed around noon—an embarrassingly late hour to get up, but he had been awake most of the night—he'd grabbed a quick breakfast/lunch, brewed a pot of coffee to take with him, and gone below to get to work.

He'd only worked seven or eight hours with a couple of reluctant breaks in the middle before his head began pounding too hard for him to ignore. He'd been neglecting his exercise regimen the past few weeks, and his back and neck were letting him know. In his thirties, he'd been able to work fourteen hours days and still want to keep going—and that was even before he'd handed his body over to Bill so he could keep working around the clock. He wasn't as young as he used to be.

He dragged himself upstairs after sunset, when the last ambient light from the sky still faintly glowed through the windows. He could make something quick and simple for dinner, go to bed early, and get up early to continue working. He pushed through the door to the dark living room—

"Hello!"

"Gah!" Ford jumped. "You. What are you doing here?"

Bill was leaning next to the door, a dim silhouette with his elbow on the wall and cheek in his hand. Even in the dark, Ford was sure he could see Bill's wicked grin at his reaction. "I happen to live here."

Ford let out an irritated huff. "Whatever you're up to, I don't have time to deal with it. Find someone else to bother." He pushed past Bill and headed toward the kitchen.

It would have been too much to expect Bill not to follow him, wouldn't it? "Aw, c'mon, don't be like that! Would it kill you to act like you're happy to see me?"

"Probably."

Bill's laugh made Ford's shoulders raise up around his ears. Maybe that was the source of his neck pain.

Bill shadowed him into the kitchen and leaned on the table, watching while Ford rummaged through the fridge. "But seriously, Sixer—who are you trying to impress by giving me the cold shoulder? I'm the only one here. You could afford to treat me like a person for two minutes." When Ford slammed the fridge door, Bill smacked it with the tip of an 8-ball cane. "Hey, have my food privileges been revoked? Give me a turn."

How long had Bill had a weapon? Ford snatched the cane from him, but opened the fridge and left it. "I don't consider you a person. I consider you an incalculably destructive force of pure, brutal chaos." He cracked three eggs in a skillet and opened a cabinet for one of the stove knobs they kept stored where Bill couldn't reach them.

"Flattering!" Bill started pulling out his usual nauseating array of condiments: today was sauerkraut, maraschino cherries, mustard, ranch dressing, and barbecue sauce. (Why did he eat like that? Did his species usually subsist on a mostly liquid diet? Was it the flavors—?) "Hey, make me mac 'n' cheese, wouldja?"

"No."

"Fine. Leave the burner on when you're done, I'll make it myself."

"You're not allowed to use the stove."

"Then how about I sit here drinking mustard while you enjoy a hot meal." Bill waved three eggs at Ford. "At least make me eggs too. Zero extra effort on your part. I'll even crack them for you if you want."

Ford gave Bill a dark look; but he supposed, as one of the people who had agreed that Bill wasn't allowed to cook, he was in no position to complain about Bill begging him to cook on his behalf. He snatched the eggs out of Bill's hand. "How do you want them."

"I haven't eaten enough chicken eggs to have a preference. Whatever you'll complain least about doing."

Poorly scrambled eggs it was. Ford shut the fridge and returned to the stove.

Bill sat on the table and crossed his legs in lotus position while he waited. "But really, what do you get out of pretending you can't stand me! We both know it's an act."

Ford gave him a tired, sour look. "Even for you, you sound delusional."

"I know you don't really hate me."

"I could write an entire dissertation and earn another Ph.D. on the topic of how much I hate you."

Ford hated how excited Bill looked by that. "Would you?"

"No! Why would I waste that much time thinking about you?"

"It seems to me like you're already doing that."

The hair on the back of Ford's neck prickled. Surely Bill just meant Ford's research into how to kill him; but his mind flashed to the miniature grimoire he'd spent all his time poring over—the blueprints of Bill's childhood home—the face he'd absent-mindedly drawn in his journal in the middle of the night and quickly scribbled out. Could Bill still see through that face? Had Ford remembered to blind Bill's eye on the blueprints? What about the eyes drawn in his human faces? Did Bill know about Ford's other studies? What did it matter—nothing Ford was doing was wrong. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Bill's smile slowly widened. "Sure you don't. You might hate me to my face, but behind my back you're as obsessed with me as ever. You might as well lean into it."

You're using avoiding him as an excuse to obsess over him even more in private. "I am not..." Wasn't he? You're acting like a stalker, Sixer.

"Oh, Fordsy, come on." Bill uncrossed his legs, slid off the table, and was across the room faster than Ford had expected. Ford instinctively took a step back and bumped into the oven; Bill reached past him to lean a hand against the edge of the stove, inches from touching him. "You're not hiding it half as well as you think you are. Did you think I wouldn't notice?" He smirked up at Ford, exposed eye wide and eager, utterly fascinated with him. "And bringing Mabel in on it? I'll have to admit, that surprised me. Can't say I disapprove, though."

Ford couldn't tell if the heat on the back of his neck was from Bill's accusations or the stove. "I beg your pardon?" What was he talking about—their conversation in Portland? The blueprints of Bill's home? (Using his great-niece to spy on Bill, lord, what was Ford doing?)

"Quit messing around! The Mysteries, Stanford. You think I don't know I'm the star of that show?" He poked the center of Ford's chest, "There's no way you joined a cult, you're not enough of a team player! What'd you do? Invent your own cult of one? Mixed a little of what I taught you, a little of whatever you learned out in the multiverse? I know you were asking around about me." Bill chuckled. "You want to keep your little rituals private, fine—I think it's cute, really—just tell me one thing I've been dying to know: how much have you told the kid?"

Ford stared at Bill.

Then he laughed in his face. "You really bought that?"

Bill's smile immediately vanished. "What?"

Ford shoved Bill's hands away. "There are no 'Mysteries.' It was a joke."

Bill stepped back, staring at Ford, brows furrowed. "A...? No," he said. "She's got that glass pyramid—"

"She wanted it because it was pretty," Ford said. "I gave her one since I was throwing them all out."

"That's the stupidest story I've ever heard. Then why would she have brought up the Mysteries!"

"Because," Ford said, "I told her, if you asked about the pyramid, she should make up something to confuse you."

Bill's mouth was open, but no words came out. His face had rapidly turned red. Several emotions flashed across his face in quick succession, from shock to confusion to humiliation to a rage so deep it almost looked like disgust. For a moment, from how Bill's fingers were curling like claws, Ford was sure Bill was about to attack him.

But then he clenched his jaw, backed off, leaned on the table, jammed his fists down against the tabletop, and glared at the floor.

Ford turned back to the stove, grinning to himself. Some of the eggs had burned slightly. Those were Bill's now. "What's the matter? Did you forget that humans can lie?"

Bill didn't reply.

"I'm surprised you didn't expect it. I seem to remember we got you with an impressive whopper last year—"

"Shut up."

"Now you don't want to talk?"

"Now you do?"

Good point; he didn't. If he'd finally rendered Bill speechless, he should enjoy it while he could.

He'd have to thank Mabel later for inventing the Mysteries. Sometimes that girl could be genius.

Ford turned off the burner, put the stove knob away, and dumped the eggs onto two plates. He didn't even bother to keep track of which plate had the burned eggs.

He shot a quick, exasperated look at Bill—he'd sat on top of the table again—and dropped a plate next to him. "Here." He grabbed a bag of bread and looked around for the toaster.

Behind him, voice trembling but low and dangerous, Bill said, "Don't look at me like that."

Ford glanced back warily. "Like what?"

Bill violently shoved off the table. There was an awful squeal of sliding furniture. Before Ford could react, Bill was in his face, grabbing him by his turtleneck, dragging him in, forcing him to look up at Bill.

Ford's peripheral vision was filled with gold. They were so close their noses nearly touched.

"Like you don't remember who I am!" Bill stared down with wide-eyed seething rage. "Your muse!" His voice cracked, "Your god!"

Ford stared up at Bill, speechless.

Then he looked down.

Bill was standing on a chair to make himself taller than Ford.

Ford ripped Bill's hands off his sweater. "You were never, ever my god."

Bill stumbled off the chair, catching himself hard on the edge of the table to keep from falling completely. "That's not true!" He heaved himself back onto his feet with a wince. "You worshiped me—"

"I admired you!" Ford jabbed a finger at Bill's chest. "I respected you! I—I even idolized you, but I never worshiped you!"

Bill jabbed a finger back, "You're splitting hairs! You practically turned your study into a temple to me—tapestries, rugs, statues—"

"Because you said it would help me reach you!"

"And it did! That's what shrines are for, genius!"

"It wasn't a shrine! Not to me."

"You're kidding me! All the money you dropped on that gold-plated statue and you expect me to believe that wasn't an act of worship—"

"Do not. Remind me. How much. That stupid statue cost."

"If you didn't build a shrine for worship then what in the world did you build it for!"

"Friendship!" Ford took a shaky breath in. "I thought... I honestly thought you—you—were my best friend." The air in the room trembled with heat. They were standing too close to each other. Ford refused to be the one to back up.

"I was," Bill said. "I still could be if you'd stop being a moron."

Ford laughed in disbelief. "Which is it, were you my god or my friend?!"

"They're not mutually exclusive—!"

"You can't keep your story straight for THIRTY SECONDS!"

"Don't you call me a LIAR, after EVERYTHING I taught you—!"

"In all the years I've known you I don't think you've told me the truth ONCE—!"

Stan flipped on the lights.

They froze and stared at him. They had their hands around each other's throats. Bill had a foot planted on Ford's stomach like he was trying to get a foothold to climb him. They were both covered in egg.

Stan said, "Could you do this in the morning?"

Ford said, "Sure."

Bill said, "He started it."

"I st—?! You started all of this thirty years ago—"

"Guys," Stan said tiredly.

With some effort, Ford unpeeled his hands from Bill's neck.

To his surprise, Bill voluntarily let go as well. Ford snatched up what was left of his plate of eggs, took the loaf of bread—he had lighters, he could toast it downstairs—and left the kitchen, turning the light off as he went.

Stan was waiting out in the entryway. "Heading to bed?"

"No." Ford shoveled a forkful of eggs in his mouth. "Going to be up late." He was too angry to sleep. He could eat, take a painkiller for his headache, and keep working.

"More research?"

"No. Calculations."

Stan's shoulders slumped; but all he said was, "Suit yourself. Don't stay up too late."

Ford glanced back once into the kitchen. Bill wasn't moving. He sat slumped in a chair, elbows on his knees. He'd pulled on his hood. Its eye stared at Ford.

Ford wasn't about to pity Bill over a performative display of angst. He'd fallen for that already.

He returned to his study and mathematics.

####

Bill stared at his plate of eggs. He mechanically pushed them around on the plate until they formed a perfect equilateral triangle. He scooped out an empty white eye in the middle.

He stood, snatched up the plate, and smashed it on the floor.

They thought he was stupid. They thought he couldn't use a stove if it didn't have knobs, as if he was a child! The humans made it easy for themselves to think of him as a child when they treated him like one, "baby-proof the doors" and "no sharp objects" and "don't talk to strangers." He could show them.

He grabbed the stem where one of the knobs had been removed, and twisted. He heard the hiss of gas under the burner. Everyone was asleep. He could fill the house with gas. It would only take a little push to make a spark and set the entire shack ablaze. In the dark room, he could see the first glimpse of future flames flickering yellow-orange in the periphery of his foresight. No one would survive. Who's your god now, smart guy? He'd rise like a phoenix from his own corpse and he'd tear this town apart.

Where was Mabel?

Was she home tonight?

Bill turned off the gas.

He pushed up his sleeve and pressed the fleshy part of his forearm onto the still-hot burner. The pain burned away his jumbled anger so he could think clearly.

Who cared how the nutty sculptors had gotten Bill's address? He was making good progress on lucid dreaming; maybe he'd astral projected across the country to call for help and forgotten it when he woke up. He'd probably saved himself without even remembering it. It didn't matter. The important thing was that they'd received the message; and now, Bill had friends on the outside. Friends who were on his side.

If he could ever contact them again.

Bill would find a way. He didn't need Ford's help. "Never worshiped you." Ha.

He needed fresh air. Even if it wasn't safe to escape yet, he needed to breathe. He carried himself backward through doorway into the gift shop, pulled aside the curtain hiding the ladder to the roof—

The trap door was shut. He stared up in despair.

He shot a glare toward the vending machine, and angrily crossed back into the living room.

The air was so stuffy inside the shack. "Never worshiped you." Liar. If it wasn't worship then what was it?

Bill took himself upstairs. Hunger gnawed at his stomach. He lay on his makeshift bed curled up around himself, arms wrapped tight across his stomach, his burn pressed hard against a layer of knit yarn, thighs pulled up against his arms. It was a wholly alien position. It felt unnatural and bizarre. This body had curled like this of its own volition. It seemed like the only thing that briefly smothered the ache of emptiness and the hormonal inferno screaming loneliness through every vein. The loneliness wasn't his. He wasn't lonely. This body was. 

Cipher, my lord.

He hated this body.

He ached to be revered again.

####

It was two in the morning. Ford sat at his desk, pages and pages of math scattered before him, glasses off, hand rubbing his eyes.

He didn't want to be checking a mountain of math like a human calculator. He wanted to be studying strange magic and researching new anomalies. He wanted to be digging through Bill's grimoire.

He wanted to be awed again.

####

(I've been waiting to write/draw Bill screaming his grief over not being worshiped since literally April. I hope y'all enjoyed! This is one of my favorite chapters so far, I'd love to hear what y'all think!!)

[yameoto]

scumbag fuck but i swear that she’s not

she's so good to me, and nobody else

supernatural!au quinn masterpost

big sis. roadhead. barfight. somno.

“yeah, well maybe i don’t want to spend my life hunting monsters til' i'm fucking eighty, quinn!” quinn gives you the most unimpressed look of her life, because seriously? the two of you aren't living til' you're eighty, anyways. “yeah, well tough shit, baby sis.” she jerks the wheel just a little sharper than she should, like a fucking ass. "you run away again and i'll tie your tight-ass up and cram you in the boot, you hear me?"

backstory

▸ born in a supremely episcopalian, puritan household, LUCY QUINN FABRAY is the first daughter of russell fabray, famous preacherman in the deep south. when her mother, judy fabray, bursts into flames at the hands of a devil, above the cot of her baby sister, russell turns back to the hunting life, for good; taking his two girls' along with him.

▸ quinn's baby sister was dropped off on the fabray's doorstep when quinn was 4. russell believes she was ‘sent by the angels’, and the second coming of jesus.

▸ russell's cover as a travelling preacherman, and the long nature of certain hunts, meant he often left his girls’ to live alone for long stretches of time. for most of their lives, quinn has taken sole responsibility of the care of her baby sister. cooking, cleaning, the whole nines. from the moment russell thrust the infant into quinn’s arms as they fled from the fire, quinn has formed her entire identity around being her baby sisters’ protector.

“but daaaddd..” quinn can't help it. the baby is swaddled up in cloth, eyes blinking guilessely up at her, because apparently she's its ‘big sister.’ it’s been quiet since it came 'home’. a good girl. almost too good, her mom says. and yeah, okay. maybe it really is a gift from the angels. quinn doesn’t know what it has to do with sunday school, but she knows one thing; she’s jealous. she wants to be cooed over and coddled and called sent by the heavens like she used to do (but the way her dad says it this time sounds different. like he means it more, or something). besides, she doesn’t want to share her toys with a stupid new baby. “lucy, enough. good girls don’t whinge. say something nice, or don’t say it at all.” quinn opens her mouth to protest, before deflating on the stern look on her father's face. “i guess it’s kinda cute.” quinn huffs, blowing air out of rosy cheeks, golden curls framing her face like she’s been ripped right from some old romantic painting of a cherub. quinn reaches out, gingerly prodding the baby’s cheek. it makes an indistinct babbling sound, little arms reaching upwards. “looks like she likes you, honey.” comes russell’s deep rumble, overlooking the scene, expression unreadable. “really?” quinn perks up, because the prospect of being the only one this dumb baby likes makes it a little less dumb in her books—before she catches herself. crosses her arms. “well, i don’t care.” except she’s crawled over to sit beside the baby’s cot anyways. she asks, eventually “..can i hold her, daddy?”

▸ quinn has hunted from an early age, russell bringing her out on hunts to ‘watch’ as early as six years old, in order to familiarise his child with the supernatural in order to better protect herself and her younger sister better. quinn was 12 years old when allowed on her first, proper hunt. russell never allowed them to hunt individually, even in early adulthood.

▸ russell fabray originally never intended for his daughters to hunt, as he wanted to keep them ‘pure’ as possible. quinn, however, snuck into her fathers’ car when he was going out for a hunt one too many times (with her oblivious baby sister towed along, of course).

▸ for long, long hunts, russell would drop his children off a motel or at a fellow hunters’ house for extended periods, in which they would be enrolled at the local school for 1-6 months. quinn flourished, adopting the head bitch role like a second skin. even took up cheerleading. quinn enjoyed these brief stints of normalcy (and gratuitous popularity) though she would never admit it.

"hi, baby sis.” quinn gives you a fond hair ruffle as she passes you by, and you swat her wrist away, scowling at the retreating form of your older sister. you're just glad she didn't pinch your cheek or anything. that would be lame. though, what's totally lamer, is the slackjawed look your potential new friend is giving you right now. “your sister is quinn fabray?” the girl gapes. “the quinn fabray?” you stare back, uncomprehending. “um. last time i checked. yeah?” “instant head bitch, prom queen shoein, second coming of jesus, quinn fabray? because, like, everybody’s been waiting for chiara’s epic downfall, ‘cause everyone knows she’s a hypocrite and also a major slut, and then your sister strutted in the lunchroom on her first day and—“ you tuned out five seconds ago. is this a dream? this feels like a dream. the two of you have only been in town for four months! you didn’t know quinn was fucking notorious, or something. most demons’ or talkative monsters just dub you as those fabray brats and are done with that. this is entirely uncharted waters for eighth-grade you. you take one glance back, because you’ve got to be missing something. in your head, you’re thinking more like; too-lazy-to-clean-the-toothpaste-tube-and-lets-it-harden-into-something-disgustingly-crusty quinn fabray? takes-five-years-in-the-shower-and-uses-all-the-last-body-wash-and-fills-it-up-with-water-before-it’s-your-turn quinn fabray? your annoying, overprotective, (admittedly badass) older sister, quinn fabray? you've seen her, sure. sashaying down the hallways, blonde hair tight in a highpony, in a cheerleading uniform—which was so fucking weird the first time and you don't think you'll ever get used to it. not because you've never seen quinn in skimpy clothing before (whenever dad needs her to charm the wits out of some sorry sucker), but never like this. never, so.. normal. even if she's got this glint in her eyes that you recognise when she's facing off bloody wendigos; except its period 3 bell in some bumfuck town in the middle of ohio. it suits her, you think; normal. like she has eyes at the back of her head or something, midway down the hallway, quinn turns around and meets your gaze. her mouth changes, from that sweet, sweet smile disguising the devil underneath you've seen her wear nowadays, into that warm, fond grin she reserves only for you, with a flash of her canines and a subtle wink she learned when the two of you would play pranks on dad, in the early years. you shoot her a brazen middle finger for her troubles, and she just throws her head back and laughs, airy and breathy and carefree. you suppress the instinctive urge to return it with a grin, as you both go opposite ways, new spring in both steps. the quinn fabray. yeah, right. that's just your big sister.

▸ when quinn was 22, her baby sister got into stanford on full scholarship, abandoning the hunting life for a normal one. this led to a huge blow-up argument which escalated until they both went radio silent, for two years. stems from their intense sibling codependency, and the fact quinn, as her ‘protector’, derived all meaning from caring for her sister—and thus didn’t know what the hell she was good for, without her. this is the same reason quinn keeps to hunting. even beyond the whole, family first, ‘it’s in your blood’ schtick. there is nothing else that she knows.

facts.

▸ quinn's episcopolian upbringing means she has extensive biblical knowledge, especially due to being so exposed to her father. she is family-first, always.

▸ quinn wears a cross necklace around her neck that she never takes off, as her baby sister gifted it to her, on one of many christmases spent just the two of them, when russell left them alone for two weeks in a motel room.

▸ quinn had lingering faith in god, though moreso for it represented her idyllic childhood and a time in which she lived in relative normalcy. she is now a heretic. not a skeptic, a heretic.

“i thought you were saving this for dad..?” quinn, 12 mumbles, sleepily lifting her head from the shitty motel couch. she frowns, as you, 8, crawl up on the cushions to face her. your form is illuminated by the christmas lights she stole from the house down the street, while you were sleeping. “dad’s not here. you are,” you point out, as if it’s as simple as that. maybe it is. “i warded it. kinda.” your brows knit, sitting cross-legged in front of her as you hold up the necklace, shifting as if embarrassed. “i dunno. i jus' followed a few things i saw when i was snooping through dad’s journal. they probably don’t work, but..” they don't. she knows, just from running a finger over the silver emblem of the cross, that it's virtually useless. she couldn't give less of a fuck. instead, she turns, hands gathering up her hair and pushing it upwards, exposing the pale expanse of her nape. "put it on for me?" she asks, after a moments' silence, not even scolding you for, first of all; looking at dad's journal (big nono). secondly; trying your hand at an ancient, potentially town-levleling rite you can't even read properly because you wanted to give her a christmas present. who does that? (her baby sister, that's who. and the thought swells quinn with pride and a curshing wave of love, even though she knows she should be a good big sister and tell you off). except, she can't. not when your fingers so cautious, so soft—unweathered by the callouses of hunting life, the grooves of clutching a knife to your chest, unfamiliar with the cold metal of a trigger guard. she savours your softness. drinks it in, in a way she already knows is greedy but she can't help it, and in the moment you finish clumsily clasping it around her neck, she turns and flings her arms around you and tucks you close to her chest. nose burrowing into the familiar, earthy scent of your sweatdamp locks and promises to mom and to god that'll she'll take care of you for as long as she fucking lives. "i'm never taking it off, ever. i swear, lil' sis." "..never ever?" "never fucking ever."

▸ since losing her faith, quinn wears the cross necklace inverted. it is symbolic of her devotion—not to god—but to her sister.

▸ nobody calls quinn ���lucy’ except for her father. this is because judy named her, and he clutches onto his wife through quinn. quinn goes by her middle name for the same reason.

▸ russell used to keep quinn's hair long as a child, for the same reason that she reminded him of judy, and preserve his eldests' semblance of innocence. quinn now regularly hacks it off to various lengths for practicality's sake.

OVERARCHING PLOT CONTEXT (SPN S1-5): follows the canon trajectory of spn seasons 1-5. angels/demons working together in order to break the seals, free lucifer and jumpstart the apocalypse. quinn is the vessel for michael, and her baby sister is the vessel for lucifer.

her baby sister was not sent by the angels, but was in fact delivered by azazel, the same demon who killed their mother. russell fabray, rather than being a voice/prophet of god, he has been obliviously consorting with devils, disguised as angels, who have been using him and his children to bring about the apocalypse.

to be finished.

[cellsshapedlikestars]

ok so I don't get involved in fandom drama, but I saw a post that got me thinking about one of my favorite jonsa moments in the books that I feel like is a bit overlooked?

I'm putting it under a cut because my thoughts are scattered and possibly confusing but whatever lol

so I found the post on my for you tab (why do i even go in there?) and it was about how Sansa is super classist for this part: Sansa sighed as she stitched. "Poor Jon," she said. "He gets jealous because he's a bastard."

(Don't worry, the poster did point out that all the Starks are classist to some degree, but Sansa is the most, and how Arya just thinks of him as her brother. gotta love people who try to bury their Sansa hate lol. like there was no other point to the post. it didn't even make me mad cause it was just kind of a dumb, very surface level take that was clearly just meant to point out how Sansa's such a meanie)

now, if you follow me, you probably know that I'm not someone who reads a ton of metas or even believes jonsa will be canon, but if it is, I think this is such an underrated moment.

Because Sansa sees him in a way none of her other siblings do, because she doesn't think of him as her true brother.

Arya thinks of Jon as her brother. For her, she and Jon are the same, but they aren't, and she doesn't see that - because she's 9 years old and for her, Jon is an outsider like her, and that relationship is such a safe space for her. (ugh I actually love the Jon & Arya relationship I really don't get to write it enough because I do tend to focus more on Sansa's relationship with Arya). Anyway, Arya doesn't really understand the implications of Jon being a bastard. Like, that isn't going to change for him, except in a very extreme circumstance. But she will always be trueborn. (we're taking gender out of the equation here, which is its own beast that has been talked about a ton so I won't go into it)

Arya is blinded by her love and adoration of Jon. Robb doesn't see it at all because why would he even consider it? (and even if he did, we don't see it cause there's no Robb POV). Bran and Rickon are probably too young to think about. But Sansa sees Jon for who he is, and what she says is a fact. Is it a nice thing to say? Maybe not, but it is 100% true, and she's clearly emotionally intelligent enough to see his circumstances and understand how that effects his actions.

I think that's why I found the post so funny, cause I'm like - and? Jon IS a jealous bastard. He spends the entire Winterfell feast being soooooo salty about Joffrey and Myrcella and Tommen and even Robb (radiant Sansa gets a pass tho) even though there's literally no other reason for it. He spends the rest of the books trying so hard to suppress how much he wants to be Lord of Winterfell. He loves Robb, but he's jealous of Robb, and he struggles a lot with that and feels guilty for wanting what Robb has.

Anyway, this is one of my fav jonsa foreshadowings (if it ever becomes canon) because to me, it just means that Sansa can see through his bullshit better than a lot of other people. And I like the idea of that, that she sees him.

meanwhile Jon's just over there like "yeah yeah yeah, Sansa's radiant, but have you seen how insipid Myrcella is??"

[o-sunny-day]

Oh right. The other one.

CW: Undertale rant/analysis

Ive played Undertale- hundreds of times. and lately ive reflected on how the game is supposed to make you feel IN THE MOMENT- since ive kinda forgotten a lot of that. Because of the aforementioned ✨“hundreds of times”✨

Everything ofc still feels just as captivating, but nothings surprising because im not playing it from the perspective of someone who has absolutely no idea whats going to happen next. Sometimes I overlook and forget how the little details are supposed to make you feel/think about the characters. Like how Undyne is implied to be an abusive boss. After you get to know her, then replay, you hear how Papyrus talks about her at first, and see their interaction as you enter Waterfall, and you completely understand!

But BEFORE- youre like “oooohhh she’s threatening him-“

On this topic, I rewatched some playthroughs, and saw their first reactions to geno papyrus death, and I realized. that this room placement. IS SO COOL!!!!

Normally its like- yep! I just befriended/beat papyrus, time to continue on my way- oo hi sans! sure, ill go to Grillbys with you! Even on replays, you’re not really excepting him in any room hes in, im just like “oh yep, theres the man.”

But when you kill Papyrus for the first time, usually on a geno route. That same thing kicks in. You’re not predicting him to be there cause youre focused on the room youre in currently, but when you GET THERE youre like “oh yeah and thats where Sans is” but he’s NOT THERE and you stop for a millisecond and go “oh, no yeah, that makes sense.”

…the silence doesn’t help either.

Its worse that he’s all over the underground too, not just in the start of Waterfall. Even not seeing him in front of the mtt resort is just a slap in the face 😭

If youve gotten to the phase of killing people on purpose to see what will happen, youve also gotten to the phase of KNOWING theres gonna be consequences, so Sans not being there shoudnt hit as hard as it does BUT IT DOES (at least for me)

The typical reactions to Monster death in general that you cant avoid are Undyne and Sans’ speeches, and neutral run phonecalls. DIALOGUE. things that appear because of what you did. But with Sans its not what he does or says (up until the judgment hall) its what he doesn’t do.

He doesn’t bother to show up, to say anything to you because what is there to say??? Ignoring how personal it is for a sec- Sans knows this isnt your first time playing, but doesn’t comment on it (much). Right now he still believes the anomaly just wants to be happy, so gives the benefit of the doubt.

That is until you kill the dude that is impossible to kill on accident, or argue in self defense.

Now Sans knows the anomaly just wants to know what will happen. Doesn’t care if its bad or not, they’re just curious, so theres no point.

STILL he wants them to reset and do something ELSE so he halfway pleads with them in the judgment hall to rethink what they’ve done. The fact that he asks an answerable question feels important to me, like hes searching for something, ANY reason. But maybe hes trying to make you see that- there was no reason. Youre DUMB and you should RESET because- WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THIS????

What I also find really powerful even on replays, is the silence after he drops lines like this. Especially the judgment hall question. Sometimes I do sit there and soak in the silence like- “jesus. Yeah, why DID i do that?”

My main point of this entire thing is, I LOVE this game, I LOVE Papyrus and his impact on the game even when he isnt there, and I wish I could play it for the first time again, and fall in love with it all over again, but alas, hitting myself with a rock to screw up my memory only works 17% of the time,

so im happy enough sticking with changing my perspective, and taking a moment to remember what it felt like to accidentally kill toriel and realize your actions have consequences, to beat Undyne the Undying, to hug Asriel, to hear that Undertale was getting a “sequel”, and to hear that dreaded line, “Then why did you kill my brother.” all for the first time again.

[plusvanity]

Finally someone who dislikes Hellhammer lol I feel like CRAZY when talking with other people about Mayhem and they all love him so so so much! It's just insane. He has a massive ego and is a shitty person with shitty opinions but somehow he gets a pass. Also sometime ago I read an interview where he was asked if he misses Pelle/Øystein and if in his opinion there would be a place for them in Mayhem as of now and he said that he does not miss them at all (besides, he laughed at Øystein's mother at the phone when he learned about his death he just pisses me off so bad ong) but he was also like. No there is no place for them at all because we changed a lot and it was good for Mayhem that they are gone. THE SHEER AUDACITY IS INSANE! Did he forget so casually WHO FOUNDED MAYHEM and gave him a place in there? Who was influential in the early BM scene? Please. Mayhem is not even all this great stuff atp, when Øystein had hold of the group, it was all... unique in its own way, very atmospheric, he got the gist. Don't even get me started on that hag of Necrobutcher. The only person that speaks kindly of Øystein is Attila. Also, Mayhem should have ended with Øystein's death in my opinion. Pure madness

I was never fond of Jan, to be honest.

I can definitely recognize his talent as a drummer. He is, in fact, one of the best of not the best drummer in Black Metal history. But this is the only good thing about him because his personality is very insufferable.

It's not just the overly inflated ego that he displays, but he comes across as a 'bully' somehow. I won't judge him by his interests in drugs and drinking because he wanted to have fun, live the rock and roll life, whatever, but I can't overlook how Øystein complained about him messing up gigs because he was too intoxicated to play, or how he neglected their rehearsals. He seems very careless, very insensitive, and overall very untrustworthy.

What pissed me the most was the way that (I suspect) he treated Pelle while he was alive. Pelle wasn't shy to call Jan a 'fat, stupid drummer' in one of his letters, expressing how he preferred Faust (if I remember correctly) in the band instead. Now, the impression that this comment gives me is that Jan must've done something to piss Pelle off. Maybe something repeatedly, like unsavory jokes. Because, for me, Pelle's insult seems very sincere and personal. I am very sure that there are things that must've happened (arguments and stuff) that we will never know about, and all we can do is to try to fill the gaps with speculations about what really happened within the band. This is why I feel like Jan has 'bully' traits.

Another important aspect that bothers me to no end is how Jan was, in fact, the last person who saw and talked with Pelle. You can tell from the way he explained the incident he seemed very cold and detached about it. Pelle seemed 'happier' than ever before, telling him about his knife while he knew what Pelle could do shows how disinterested he was in his friend's well-being. And I get it that everybody was young and dumb and no one had the resources to help Pelle, but it's common sense to ask 'Hey, what are you going to do with that knife?'. Even Jørn had more common sense than this man, but I digress.

Another interesting thing about Jan is how Varg talked about him. Him and Fenriz (and Faust) are the only ones who he doesn't consider 'rats'. I get it that Jan was an extreme-right sympathizer, and that drove Varg to talk more nicely about him, but I believe that apart from their common political affinity, their personality are quite similar. It's not just a say that 'dark personalities attract one another', it's actually true. Jan seems to have some empathy issues, in my opinion, and it's very common for people in cluster B to use substances or alcohol to either numb their feelings or to 'feel something'.

I'm not insinuating anything, I'm just laying some interesting facts and observations that I have.

And then, of course, he said the worst thing possible for the sake of publicity. He said that he was in the room while Pelle took his own life, which is an aberration. But he can tell anything to the fans, right? He's alive to 'tell the story', right?

And him laughing in the phone about Øystein's death is yet another indicator that he might have some real issues with empathy.

I believe him when he says he doesn't miss Pelle or Øystein because they probably mean too little for him, but he likes talking about his dead bandmates, doesn't he?

I don't like him for these reasons and many more.

It is unfortunate and infuriating how these people talk anything but the truth nowadays and they get to pass with a lot of obvious lies just because they're famous.

[perfectly-m1saligned]

K!nktober 14/15

Following @dreamlandcreations prompt list. Day 14: face sitting. Day 15: overstimulation; begging. You can find all my stories on my Wattpas as well. Toodles!

(NSFW: MDNI!! Reader's discretion is advised)

Simon Riley x reader

(Boyfriend!Simon)

cw: loser Simon is obsessed with you, oral (f receiving) (a lot), multiple orgams

word count: 2053

a/n:  I am very sorry about skipping some days, but i'm already as late as it is with updating, and the prompts don't really align with my style T-T

It had been a petty fight, really, a stupid disagreement over an even more stupid thing, but the fact that it had happened right before Simon left for his mission had been even more painful. He didn’t apologise, didn’t hold you that night, making you feel so alone, and left in the early morning without a word. Simon wasn’t good with feelings and confrontation, and he had felt like a downright bastard to leave like that, and guilt had eaten at him during the whole mission.

The only thing that kept him alive was the ardent desire to come back home to you, apologise for his dumb, childish actions, to hold you, and tell you that he loved you, to ask for your forgiveness, and worship you like the goddess you were. He had always been a goner for you, his walls crumbling beneath a touch of your hand, a warm caress, able to melt the ice that encased his poor heart.

The moment he was back at base, he asked Kyle to drive him home, reluctantly accepting his unceasing teasing as he told him to stop by a flower shop, asking for a bouquet of wildflowers, so big he had to stack it in the backseat with his duffle bag. It would’ve been a thousand times worse if he had asked Johnny, and he probably would’ve strangled the cheeky git before he was able to get him home.

You’d had three whole weeks to ruminate over the fight, over-analysing every single word spoken, every little detail of his body language, paranoia setting its roots so deep within the darkest confines of your mind, you had simply convinced yourself he was going to break up with you when he would come back.

It did, in fact, come as a surprise when you opened the door and his whole face was hidden behind a gigantic bouquet of colourful wildflowers, his big brown eyes peeking above the petals, looking down at you like a kicked puppy. It was always endearing to see your 6’4” beast of a man boyfriend acting like a little kid around you.

“Simon-” you whispered, your lips parted in a small ‘o’ as he simply stood there, your heart feeling like it was going to burst at any moment. You gently accepted the flowers, seeing how his arms limply went to his sides, awkwardly lingering by the door. “Oh, I am so glad you’re okay.”

The relief of seeing him alive and well was greater than whatever petty grudge you held, the arm that wasn’t holding the flowers wrapping around his midriff, and you buried your face in his chest, inhaling the familiar, comforting scent. “y/n…” he murmured, his nose in your hair as his arms came to encircle your waist, holding you impossibly close to him. “I am so sorry, so, so fucking sorry. I was an idiot, i didn’t even say goodbye-”

“Shhh, shh, don’t.” You mumbled into his chest, shaking your head. You pulled away, your hand grabbing at the hem of his shirt, gently tugging at it as you led him inside the house. Your small apartment that overlooked the city, your little slice of heaven that held so many memories, some good some bad, but it was filled with love all the same. He gently waddled after you, closing the door behind himself and following you into the living room. You put the bouquet on the table, then beckoned Simon to sit on the couch.

He obeyed immediately, silently sitting down onto the plush cushion. You walked right in between his spread thighs, feeling his hands coming up the side of your thighs, settling on your hips. “I missed you,” he whispered, resting his chin against your stomach, looking up at you with his deep brown eyes. “I felt terrible this whole time, I just wanted to come home and…apologise to you properly.”

Your heart felt a hundred times lighter now, the weeks of paranoia slipping away as he looked genuinely sorry. You let your fingers run through the messy blonde locks. “You’re okay,” I said just as softly. “We were both idiots, I recognise that now. That fight shouldn’t have happened in the first place. So I should apologise, too.” Simon shook his head, burying his face into your stomach, a sound similar to a purr rumbling in his throat, reverberating against your tummy. “It was my fault, y/n. I left without even saying goodbye, you…you probably hated me for the past three weeks.” - Well, he wasn’t wrong. - “But I should’ve never given you a reason to doubt me, or to resent me. Please, y/n, let me make it up to you.”

He looked so eager, clinging onto you with that expectant look in his eyes, wanting nothing more than to be granted your forgiveness, the only thing that mattered to him. “Please.” He whispered again. “Please what?” You asked, gently tugging at his hair, forcing him to look up at you. “Let me touch you, baby. Please,” he pleaded, already sounding breathless. “You felt bad because of me, now I need to make you feel good, it’s…it’s the least I can do.” He started to trace a trail down your stomach with the tip of his nose, stopping just an inch shy of the waistband of your sweatpants, sighing against the fabric of your t-shirt. “Can I?”

When Simon acted desperate, it was the hottest thing ever, turning you on in a way nothing else could. It made you feel love, worshipped, because in his eyes, you were his one and only goddess. “Oh, Simon..” you cooed, and he looked up at you with a hopeful smile. “...you think you deserve it?”

He groaned, his hands balling up into fists around your pants, only bunching up the fabric. “B-Baby…fuck…” he breathed out, looking helpless. “Don’t do this to me, I need you. Need to feel you-” You moved his hand away when he started to let it creep under your t-shirt. “You look pathetic. You think I’ll just forgive you like that?” You asked, giving his hair a quick, sharp tug. He hissed, but the noise that left his chest sounded more like a moan. You had already forgiven him the moment he saw him carrying the flowers, but he loved being submissive for you as much as you loved holding this kind of control over him.

“y/n, I’m begging you, seriously, I-” He released a shaky breath, hands trembling as he kept himself from tearing the pants off you. “Please, I’ve missed you so fucking much. These weeks away from you were torture, please. I just…just a taste, I’m begging.” He could feel your arousal wafting up to his nose, and he inhaled deeply, relishing in your sweet scent. “Just a taste, I-I need you, I need you so fucking much.”

He was already painfully hard, his erection straining in his cargo pants, cock throbbing and oozing precum onto his boxer briefs. He could’ve come just by your rejection alone, getting so restless and overwhelmed he could’ve made a mess on his own, without you even touching him. And that, was just the hottest fucking thing ever. The way he would bend at your will, growing desperate for you, for just a crumb of your attention, for all he wanted was to make you feel good.

“Fine,” you eventually relented, feigning annoyance, when you were actually just as eager as he was. His eyes lit up, and he wasted no time, starting to pepper kisses over your stomach, his fingers already tugging at your pants, sliding them down, along with your damp panties. He growled at the sight of the wet spot on the fabric, his mouth starting to salivate upon seeing the slick that covered your folds, as if already tasting it. “Come here,” he whispered huskily, ignoring your perplexed expression as he took your hand and guided you to the other side of the couch. Only then you realised he was moving with you, coming to lay down over the cushions, a cheeky grin tugging at his lips. “Please, y/n,” he begged again. “I need to taste you.”

Sitting on his face always felt weird, the improbable thought of accidentally suffocating him always lurking in the back of your mind, arising some scepticism in you every time. But then you remembered he probably wouldn’t be asking if he wasn’t built like a fucking unit. Peeling your t-shirt off as well, Simon simply admired you in awe, your body the most ethereal and precious thing he had ever laid his eyes - and hands - on.

He patiently waited there, looking like a kid on Christmas morning the moment you put your legs on either side of his head, caging his face between your thighs. “Is this-” you couldn’t even get the words out that his hands were on your hips, bringing you down until you were fully sat on his face. A guttural groan reverberated right through you as his lips latched onto your weeping cunt. A flick of his tongue between your folds coaxed a loud moan, your back arching as your eyes rolled into your skull.

“S-Simon-” you whimpered, a hand curled around the backrest of the couch, the other tangled in his messy hair. He looked like he was having a bloody good time, feasting on you like a man starved. He hadn’t seen you or heard from you for three whole weeks, and this time away from you, knowing you were upset because of him, made him realise just how much he truly loved you.

“Mhm,” he hummed against you. “Let me make you feel good.” His nose pushed against your hooded clit, stealing a sweet moan from you, his hands caressing the plane of your stomach, your hips, the curve of your ass. “Fuck…that’s so…f-fuck, so good-”

His tongue teased your entrance, before insertion itself inside of you, a loud groan of pleasure filling the room as you came undone from that alone, the orgasm rippling throughout you with an unexpected force, your thighs violently shaking. You feared you could accidentally crush him, but you coming only seemed to spur him on, since he didn’t let go of you as his name fell from your lips in a string of breathless pleas, his relentless tongue lapping up at your arousal, letting the juices from your cunt coat his whole face.

“N-No…too much, Si…too much!” You cried out softly, trying to lift your hips away, but his strong hands kept you still, long fingers digging into the supple flesh of your thighs. “We’re done when I say I’m done, y/n.” He suddenly growled, the rumble in his throat sending waves of pleasure straight to your core. It was overwhelming, really, the overstimulation robbing you of the ability to string a sentence, or even forming a coherent thought, only moans and babbling noises escaping your mouth as you braced yourself to the backrest of the couch.

Heat pooled in your belly even faster this time, Simon’s tongue circling your clit, placing open mouthed kisses along your pretty pussy, drinking your juices like it was his last meal. Another orgasm hit, the second wave somehow more intense than the first, your entire body quaking as the raw pleasure coursed through you, screaming his name, tugging at his hair, tear-brimmed eyes squeezed shut. By the time you had rode out your high, you were having a hard time remembering your name, trying to bring your heartbeat back to a normal level, chest heaving, leg still shaky.

Simon was extra careful when he felt you almost giving out from above, manoeuvring you so he could slip from underneath you, chuckling softly as you curled up in a ball onto the cushion, your body twitching ever so often as it recovered. He simply looked at you for a while, chest swelling with pride, knowing he had made you feel this good.

Gently, he picked you up, your body pliable in his arms as he effortlessly carried you towards the bedroom, gently putting you down on the bed and tucking you in. You were almost letting the drowsiness take over. “Where are you going?” You mumbled groggily looking at him with half-lidded eyes. He simply smiled.

“Takin’ a shower, love,” he whispered, hovering over you to place a chaste kiss on your forehead. “Don’t fall asleep, I’m coming back to give you the rest when I’m done.” 

•This is an original work of fiction, please do not translate or share on this or any other platforms without credit•

[scarletwritesshit]

⭐Boothill x F!Reader ⭐ Silver Stars

You kept looking up at Penacony’s sky. You knew that none of this was real, and that your physical body was safely resting in the Reveire back in reality, but that didn’t make the experience feel any more fake.

Boothill noticed you frequently looking up at the sky. On occasion, he would have to drag you out of the way of others or nudge you away from accidentally walking directly into a lamp post. He didn’t mind it, but his kindness did not come without a few "muddle fudgers.” You couldn’t help it. Penacony’s sky was simply too marvelous for you to ignore.

"Lass, ya better watch where you’re goin’, otherwise, one of these days you’re gonna trip and fall," Boothill said. "Don’t want ya bustin’ up your pretty face."

"Oh, sorry," you said, "It’s quite difficult to simply glaze by such a view.”

"Well if ya wanted to go stargazin’, why didn’t ya tell me so? Ain’t that a lot easier than wanderin’ around like some dumb dog?"

"I guess, but where are we going to find anywhere in Penacony to stargaze in solitude?"

Boothill thought for a moment. "I mean there’s them back-alley routes that eventually lead up to some pretty quiet and wide open spots. Ain’t gonna find no one up there seein’ how everyone else is too busy indulging in their own little fantasy lands."

"Do you even know where any of these spots are?"

"That’s what a GPS is for, hun. Not like any of them are very difficult to find in the first place, just gotta do a little walkin’."

Boothill grabbed you by the arm and started dragging you down a back-alley path. He had quite the tight grip, perhaps out of negligence for how strong his artificial body was. Your feet were practically smoking from the friction as he dragged you along. Eventually, you gave up trying to keep up with his pace and allowed yourself to skid along, until he stopped at a rather high spot overlooking the dreamy metropolis of the Golden Hour.

"Told ya I knew what I was doin’," he said, with a wink.

"Next time, could you be just a little bit gentler? My shoes were practically sparking a fire back there," you said.

"Shoulda told me something, lass. Could’ve picked ya up and thrown ya over my shoulder."

"Is it too late to take you up on that offer?"

"For now, yeah, ‘cuz we’re already here. But it ain’t off the table for later. For now, take a seat, lass."

Boothill sat down on the concrete, and invited you to sit next to him by patting the ground. You sat down next to him and looked up, admiring the grand view of Penacony’s stars blanketing above your head and beyond what can be seen past the guardrail. You looked all around, even leaning backwards to take in as much as the starry sky as you possibly could. Boothill wrapped his arm around your lower back to steady you so that you did not collapse onto the concrete.

"Wouldn’t it be easier if ya laid your bum down on my lap?" Boothill suggested. "If ya can deal with my cold metal thighs, it’ll be a heck of a lot easier to look at them stars than twisting ya spine all over the dang place."

Accepting Boothill’s offer, you laid down on his thighs, positioning your head so that you could rest between them comfortably. They were rather firm and solid, but the fabric of his pants cushioned them a little. Boothill was right about the stars being far more easily viewed from laying down. The only thing that really got in your way were the tuffs of his hair visible out of the corner of your eyes, but it was a minor inconvenience that you truthfully didn’t mind. He reached down to gently stroke the side of your face, but stopped himself.

"Sorry if I ain’t that comfortable," he said.

"No, its fine. I quite like it here," you said, grabbing his hand and gently placing it onto your cheek.

The metal of Boothill's fingers were quite cold from Penacony’s everlasting nighttime air. Curiously enough, it had the strangest sense of human warmth to it.

"You don’t gotta to pretend for me, partner. I know it ain’t the same as the feeling of another human."

"But this feeling is from you. Not just any person, flesh and blood or otherwise. That’s more important.”

"This hunk 'o crud ain’t anything like the me I once was. It’s turned me into a sad excuse of a person if I’ve ever seen one."

"I don’t mind. Really"

"Well I do," he said, gently running his finger alongside your cheek, "all I got to offer as a sad excuse of comfort is a heaping pile of metal."

"I get the feeling you don’t particularly enjoy being a cyborg."

"What gave that away? It’s gotta be up there with one of the worst things that had ever happened to me. Shame that not even the sweetest dreams can grant me a sense of normalcy."

"...Boothill, if a shooting star could grant a wish, would you wish for your human body back?"

Boothill went silent for a moment, and sighed. "No. I couldn’t There’s somethin’ far more valuable than my own humanity that I wish I could bring back."

"...You’re talking about her, aren’t you?"

"Right on target, partner. Even if I could bring ‘er back, I ain’t got a father's body to provide any warmth with. It’s cruel to do a little lady so dirty like that."

"She would think you’re the coolest, honestly."

"Maybe. Still can’t help but feel like I ain’t really there for ‘er with this lump of snot for a body. Probably a father’s guilt speakin’."

Boothill speaking more softly about himself for once put your body at ease, in addition to being rested comfortably in his lap. If it were possible in this dream, you felt as if you could drift off to sleep.

"Cyborg or not, you’ll always be Boothill to me," you said.

"Thank ya kindly, lass. Your words mean a whole lot to a little ol’ bucket of scrap like me. And I do apologize for dullin’ ya mood. Ya did say you wanted to stargaze, not listen to a rusty lad yap for Aeons know how long."

"No worries. I find this kind of talk kinda soothing."

"I can tell. Ya look like you’re gonna doze off on me."

"If it were feasible in a dream, then I would."

Boothill had become comfortable enough to entrust such a deeply hidden repressed feeling to you. In turn, you too felt much more at ease in his presence, knowing he was comfortable enough for such a thing. Beneath the stars, it was as if Penacony's sky was soothing the troubles of both of your golden hearts.

Your eyes began to feel heavy.

"I ain’t gonna bug ya if ya want a lil’ bit of shut-eye," Boothill said. "Stars are meant for sleepin’ under, after all."

He gently began to run his fingers through your hair, feeling as much as his cold metallic fingers would allow him to.

No use fighting back perhaps one of the first peaceful nights you two have shared in a while.

You closed your eyes.

[utilitycaster]

Unpopular opinion: parts of the cr fandom are really dismissive/ reductive of Travis’s characters. It feels like it’s due to Travis being seen as THE cis het man of the group, and by extension his characters must be heteronormative and bad, despite the fact that you could have queer interpretations of his characters. At the very least, Travis’s characters explore masculinity and the different ways it might look. It’s like the people who are all “ew men are gross and shitty” and act like that’s an absolutely normal reaction to a man just existing.

So this is another one in that I agree with the initial statement, but I'm actually not sure re: the reasoning why. I think it's possible but I could not tell you for sure.

I used to, again, think this was people carrying through Campaign 1 elements well beyond the point where C1 had ended, and so Grog having an intelligence of 6 was being applied to Travis; and this definitely does come through to an extent when people treat Fjord (objectively as smart as Beau without her circlet) as stupid or act shocked that Chetney is the brains of Bells Hells or that he can play a Cerrit, Fjord, or Nathaniel. However, again, I think this is one of those opinions that pops up among people who weren't around for Campaign 1 (or early enough in C2 to be exposed to it regularly) so I don't know if that's the case anymore. It could still be - it could be that Approved Fandom Opinions get passed down even when the logic behind them has long since been lost; that's a really common thing in institutional memory. But I can't say for sure.

I also have in the past credited it to, as you said, people assuming his characters are the cishet guys and then writing them off. That's still possible - I've seen both Fjord and Chetney called "token straight" despite considerable evidence of bisexuality, and they also paradoxically are both commonly headcanoned as trans while still getting called "token straight," which sort of ties into a post I would need to find from someone else from quite some time ago about which cast members are granted agency by the fandom in their choices vs. which are assumed to be the victims of circumstance. And I do think that there are people in fandom who have decided men are icky or whatever, and I used to think this came from a place of bigotry and a slide towards t*rf ideology but I now do genuinely think it's just idiots who don't grant interiority to characters outside their own limited understanding.

But I think it's also useful to consider a few things, most of which I've brought up before:

Travis is extremely offline. He is not here to entertain your headcanons; he has been politely but openly dismissive of some (imo, really fucking dumb) fanon/fan theories. I think the cast frequently talks about how it's their table, and I think that's valid and correct, but Travis is one of the players who lives it the most. He is playing this game with his friends, and he'd like it to be a good story, but if you don't like it, he is not here to make you like it. I think that really fucks with the parasocial connections some people desire with the cast.

Travis's characters tend to examine masculinity as a performance but also the general performance of the self, and the fact that you cannot in the end control how you are perceived entirely, and I think that really unsettles people who have equated presentation with reality and are again, looking for external validation of the self.

Travis can play it big but he's often extremely subtle, especially with his more serious characters, and he's not as easily quotable out of context as some others at the table. I think because he is a lot more naturalistic than dramatic at times (Chetney notwithstanding) and isn't as pithy and quotable in his characters as many of Taliesin's PCs are, and a lot of the strength is in the delivery, he gets overlooked despite being very good with words on the fly.

And finally: this would be a whole post on its own but people are still very foolishly wed to this idea that pressing the big red button in D&D is Wild and Chaotic and haha Big ADHD Man when it's actually how you play D&D if you're not a coward; the button is where the story is stored, and a lot of Travis's strength is that he is extremely good at understanding what the GM wants and supporting it with sufficient grace that it's only visible if you know what you're fucking doing.

[victoriadallonfan]

Actually, do you have any advice on writing action scenes?

So You Want to Write An Action Scene!

Alright, so first things first: Action scenes work just like any other scene.

There's been some unfortunate ideas tossed around that action scenes can be ignored or overlooked, and that they don't contribute to the story regardless of medium.

I think a lot of the time, this is because there has been an association between "action scene" and "schlock" or "slop" in terms of trying to fill in time or "dumbing down" stuff for an audience.

In reality, action scenes are just scenes that can be used in many different ways to help a creator mold the story and sell their vision to the audience.

In this instance, lets focus on the written form of action scenes.

NOTE: This advice is NOT rules. They are simply meant to assist, not to control. Disregard, modify, and use to your liking for whatever works best!

Consider the simplest action scene: A man walks down the street.

Transitional Action Scene: This type of action scene is used simply to transition from one moment to another. Simple shorthand for wanting to move along!

The man walked down the street, heading home.

I walked down the street, heading home.

Spectacle Action Scene: This type of action scene is great if you want to engross a reader into understanding the physical limits/pace/details of the character/setting!

The man walked down the street, feeling the soles of his grav boots adhere to the metal tiles as the material curved up and to the side in an arc, allowing the speeding holo-carriage to fly past without incident. The air of the supersonic passing buffeted his helmet, minor alerts to his oxygen storage popping up alongside his suit pressure regulators.

I walked down the street, feeling the soles of my grav boots adhere to the metal tiles as the material curved up and to the side in an arc, allowing the speeding holo-carriage to fly past me without incident. The air of the supersonic passing buffeted my helmet, minor alerts to my oxygen storage popping up alongside the suit pressure regulators.

Emphatic Action Scene: This type of action scene is more personal, digging into the thoughts behind each moment and movement of the character and their environment! Great way to tie in plot threads, symbology, or messages!

The man walked down the street, every foot fall radiating like thunder in his mind, the looming doom he was marching towards as his home awaited him at the end. An executioner patiently expecting its next death row meal.

I walked down the street, every foot fall radiating like thunder in my mind, the looming doom I was marching towards as my home awaited me at the end. An executioner patiently expecting its next death row meal.

How you blend, dismiss, fuse any of these means is up to you! But I hope this helps with a simplified example of what you can do with an action scene!

[002yb]

Besides bottom!Jason and Robin!Jason, what are your favorite jaydick headcanons/tropes/AUs/scenarios? Mine are sparring as foreplay, Bruce POV and/or worried-about Bruce's-reaction-drama, and unconventional soulmate marks (ex: Jason's death and/or resurrection cause the marks to disappear prematurely, come in late, etc.)

Anon's favorite tropes are so lovely and quality, yessss!! As for me, huh. Put on the spot, my mind goes blank. (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)⁄ This isn't a comprehensive list, but they're the things that initially come to mind!

Tropes

Prerelationship!! Specifically when the interest is apparent but Dick and Jason are caught in that will-they-won't-they phase. Where the flirting is about plausible deniability. Where there's no expectation, only butterflies. Playful taunts, cheeky challenges; banter (with sharp tongues, biting wit, etc etc). Where Dick feels giddy and young with a silly pep to his step and Jason bites back smiles, bashful and soft.

Unsaid Romance!!! Where it's all about the longing and the lingering; the almost. This playing into an undercurrent of self-worth issues, of not wanting to ruin each other because Dick/Jason think of themselves as poison. So they keep each other just out of reach although they're both caught in each others' gravity. Wanting, but not taking (because it's all too gentle and neither of them have ever been anything soft). In a similar vein, starcrossed lovers.

Worship Blinds, Devotion Corrupts!! Where Jason overlooks many of Dick's faults (he's always been good about writing off red flags) and Dick, whether intentionally or not, moves his line/boundary for Jason.

Subverted Expectations!! Where Dick is surprised whenever Jason loses that sharp edge of his and lets himself be soft and Jason loses his footing when Dick becomes cruel in his passions.

AUs

WtMBU

Renegade AUs

Mob wifey!Jason AUs

Monstrous!Dick Grayson AUs

Nightwing/Civilian!Jason

Scenarios

Rooftop chases. Where Jason instigates and Dick pursues. Where Dick steals Jason out of the skies and they tumble across roofs until one of them is pinned. And it's intimate; it's electric, but there's no talking, no kiss to break the moment. Just hovering and a smirk before they take off to chase each other again.

Flirting banter over family comms. Where Jason insists its not flirting, Dick plays dumb, and the family is wildly exasperated at the shenanigans.

Roughhousing. Where it's foreplay playfighting or fighting fighting but always ends up with someone pinned and liking it.

Headcanons

Top!Dick, bottom!Jason

Competent!Dick and competent!Jason coexisting in time and space and being at a level where a fight can go either way but they kind of like it when the other wins or surprises them by playing dirty

Dick loves the chase and Jason loves being chased

Alternatively: Dick needs to be challenged sometimes and Jason is both challenging and a challenger

Jason's first crush is Dick Grayson. Said crush persists even after death and Jason is truly exasperated with himself over it.

Out of all the Robins, Dick has always connected most with Jason. Because Jason is the hurt child [that Dick was/is] that Dick shunned, the ugly parts of himself that Dick denies. Just Jason representing vulnerability and freedom that Dick is too scared to take or accept. Jason will never be Dick's soulmate because Jason has always been his twin flame; they're of the same soul

Dick is genuinely shameless; he can't be embarrassed/flustered - Jason tries and ends up embarrassing himself

Something something Dick being more monster than man. Jason being one of the few to see this. It's something he actively encourages, but passively soothes because something something Dick = hope, Jason = humanity.

[azu1as]

dumb rotmhs fanfic idea: one hundred years after his death, tang bo reincarnates as the son of a wealthy merchant family in shaolin.

—basically, a tangcheong reincarnation ficlet set during the shaolin tournament arc 👍

»—————————–✄

Part 1 2 3

the zheng family was the leader of a wealthy merchant guild in shaolin. while they were not on the same level as the hwang, they were still influential enough for rumors to run amok.

And rumors always circled their eldest son.

zheng bo was as much of an enigma to his family as he was to those within their village. he had always been a quiet child but, one day, something happened that /changed/ the then five-year old.

the zheng family's son cried tears upon tears. he was absolutely inconsolable. his small body shook, overcome with emotions so heavy that his entire body was painfully heaving.

and when he woke up, eyes bloodshot and distant, it was as if the childhood spark in his eyes disappeared along with his tears the previous night.

off-handedly, his father noted the history book that was dropped haphazardly on the floor. several of its pages were scrunched up terribly.

the zheng partiarch mistook it as his son's desire to learn martial arts, but quickly learned the opposite as his son glared at the instructor with so much vitriol it was poisonous.

no matter how many instructors he sent his son's way, he all turned them back—uncaring whether they were decades-long martial artists, instructors of renowned ones, or teachers from the shaolin sect itself. if anything the latter worsened zheng bo's mood to the nth degree.

ashamedly and with deep regret, both the zheng patriarch and matriarch had to give up on their son as they realized the teaching him how to inherit their merchant guild was a futile endeavor. zheng bo would rather stay cooped up in his room in complete silence.

the zheng family had three more children after their eldest yet none of their births affected the dark veil of mourning that shadowed their eldest brother.

A veil that no one could ever seem to lift.

other families often asked after him, most in hopes of marrying off their daughters, but the zheng matriarch stiffly laughed them off.

they had tried once to set a play date with another merchant family's daughter, but it ended up with her in tears and vomiting with an upset stomach. the same occured with the next and third ones.

they catch zheng bo slip a vial with an unknown substance back into his sleeve and understood the lengths he would go to avoid such a thing from happening again.

many years go by and their second son inherited their family's merchant guild, much to the confusion of many.

it stirred up interest in zheng bo. rumors went around about his inability to perform his duties as the eldest son; some said that he was actually a bastard which was why he was overlooked.

former servants and workers from the zheng family whispered about the eldest son's madness and how his mania could not be cured by even the best of doctors and healers.

but as with all rumors and public interest, it died down when no new information sprung forth.

zheng bo was simply a crazy son who was better kept within the walls of the zheng estate than be let out for fear of what his madness would lead him to do.

when the shaolin tournament began with warriors and fighters from the ten great sects and other notable families, the zheng patriarch tried to urge zheng bo to attend and simply watch the battles with the rest of the family.

zheng bo scoffed at him.

their second son placed a comforting hand on his father's shoulders and suggested that they just let him be, "the winner has already been decided. i'm sure eldest brother would end up bored."

but the world had a funny sense of irony.

mount hua was the competition's dark horse. they were nigh unstoppable, flicking away their opponent's swords with absolute ease and twisiting around them as if they were falling petals themselves. it was an unexpected but amazing start to the competition.

as the finals approached, discussion about the upcoming fight between mount hua's divine dragon and shaolin's hye yeon run rampant outside of shaolin's walls. inside the zheng estate, no one could stop talking about the unexpected showing from what should have been a fallen sect.

tang bo, by chance, overheard the praises heeped on mount hua's divine dragon who had beaten everyone he had faced undeniably and soundly.

a part of him felt guilty that he had been too overwhelmed by his own grief and pain to even step out and check on his family and hyung's sect—especially after what he had learned about the aftermath of the battle against the demonic sect one hundred year ago.

so felt a strong wave of relief at the knowledge that mount hua had regained its footing somehow and that it was doing well enough to receive awed praise.

he felt imensely grateful towards whoever this divine dragon was because he seemed to the center of mount hua's revival.

tang bo idly wondered if chung myung was berating him in the afterlife. he asked him to take care of tang bo's family, but couldn't offer the same for his sect, he imagined that the other man would just exaggeratedly roll his eyes and tell him to start doing better then, you bastard.

and so tang bo, for the first time in a decade, knowingly chose to leave his room and approach his second-life father first.

thirty years was a long enough period to mourn, even if his heart still aches with regret.

but tang bo supposed supporting mount hua's divine dragon in the finals was a start.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Forget about how the characters' intellegence drops with here lies, I just realized that the Lila-Cerise stuff could have ended as soon as she started to model with Adrien. Like... hello? Stylists are an essential part for modeling? So, like, her wig should have been discovered? But then again... its a "kids show", so things must be "simple" like Simpleman...

Alright, Miraculous is supposed to be a kids show, I get it. But I wonder if there is a limit on when that is reason enough for excusing how the writing went? Or how the logic and common sense are ignored? Penny for your thoughts?

It's a fair point, but not one that I wouldn't call a slam dunk. I could buy that she told her stylist some bs like that she got lice while on a charity trip, cut her hair, and now has to wear a wig while the hair grows back. So long as it's a human-hair wig, you can style it the same way that you style hair that's growing on your head. The only issue would be if Lila's hair needed to be cut for a specific shoot, but maybe she has backup wigs! For this to out her or cause suspicion, Nathalie, Adrien, or Gabriel would need to overhear the wig talk and be concerned about it.

I will say that it is amusing how she just pulled off that wig like it was no big deal. That implies that she was taking a major risk because the wig was not properly secured! It could easily fly off during an akuma attack or gym! Maybe that's why she sat out when they were playing soccer? At the same time, this one is definitely a nitpick and not something I'd actually hold against the show. I get why they did the quick change instead of showing her properly removing the wig. It's more dramatic that way! I wouldn't even hold this against a more serious show.

Final verdict: I don't think the wig is a major issue re Lila not being outed. If anything, it's yet another case of an overlooked opportunity for foreshadowing the multiple identity reveal because holy shit did that need a better setup. It's so dumb and comes out of nowhere! If you're going to have her wear a wig, why not have someone notice the wig and let her spout some bs about why she wears it? The gullible-is-our-middle-name class would buy it in a heartbeat while the audience would be clued in that Lila obviously wears a wig for some other reason since she lies every time she opens her mouth.

[godbirdart]

You don’t have to answer this question as it’s probably dumb to ask…but do you know what platform(s) would be a good starting point? Particularly for original content rather then fanart? I heard deviantart is a good place where alot of ppl got there start on but there’s lots of art thrives and such.

don't even worry, it's not dumb at all! it's hard to gauge where to Begin in the vast hellscape that is the online world. i do get this question [and some adjacent questions] often so please allow me to use your ask as an excuse to post a few of my site rankings for various art things!!

for reference, these are the sites I'll be addressing because i have used them at some point within the last year. please note: my information on Cohost and Itaku specifically may be out of date as I haven't used them in a long while. naturally, this is all solely my perspective. i run both a furry/original content account and an anime/fanart account on most of these sites and run them reasonably independently from one another. these rankings are based on how well each account fares on each site.

I will be talking about Patreon and Ko-Fi as if people will only be posting paywalled content there. you Can publicly post on both sites, but for the sake of this post i'm only going to treat them as paywalled sites since well, that's kind of their purpose.

POSTING ART IN GENERAL

the A-tier list sites here are the ones that are most practical, with a decent member presence and little to no algorithms impairing your reach. the only sites here with any sort of algorithm are tumblr and deviantart, but i feel they don't ruin your reach that much.

B-tier list is mostly centered around popularity. there are massive audiences on both masto and twitter. twitter can be really good if you're posting certain content. mastodon has countless instances [read: servers / subdomains, however you want to call them] that can help narrow down an audience and like-minded people. for example, i use mastodon.art whereas many furries may use meow.social. you Can be discovered by people on other servers than yours.

C-tier has been sorted in accordance to audience. this is solely in my experience, but not a lot of new people are flocking to cohost and itaku. we also just hate facebook in this house and i will never give a facebook products a high rating.

F-tier: if you are a new or growing artist, putting your art behind a paywall or making it a chat platform exclusive thing can really hinder your growth. you can still do this of course, but you won't get as many eyes on your work as you would on a public gallery. threads is there solely due to privacy issues that Cannot be overlooked. i will not recommend it.

POSTING ORIGINAL CONTENT / CHARACTERS / NON-FANWORKS

here's how i'd grade these sites for posting Original content, characters, stories, etc. your best sites will likely be furaffinity, deviantart, and tumblr. i've put these three here for their tag use, discoverability, and audience presence. tumblr can be a little glitchy with its tags, but they DO function.

A-tier is entirely centered around audience presence. these sites are great for showing off your work, but they don't have the same population as the S-tier. mastodon can be good as the quieter instances give you more discoverability. bluesky has been THRIVING when it comes to the furry community as of late [i'm personally on there daily] - the only reason i don't put it as S-tier is because it's invite-only AND you need to rely on your work being found through the Feeds feature if you aren't an already established artist.

B-tier: useful, but population may hinder your growth. toyhouse is GREAT for posting your original characters and stories, but it is invite-only and not necessarily gallery-focused [it can be USED for a gallery, but it's not the main purpose]. you can also post stories and lore to toyhouse. discord and telegram are Good, but again it can be hard to gain an audience through sites that require invites.

C-tier: it is DIFFICULT to grow on paywalled sites with original content. cohost [to my knowledge] has been stagnating with the release of bluesky.

F-tier: threads sucks, the end.

POSTING FANWORK, FANFIC, FANDOM CONTENT IN GENERAL

S-tier here is sorted because of audience presence. while twitter does suck, i'm finding a LOT of success there with fanart. tumblr is The fandom site of course. furaffinity is great for a surprising range of fanart that isn't exclusive to furry, and deviantart's Groups feature is still going strong which can give you that extra exposure.

A-tier is: fans Go here, but the population or algorithm can make things tricky. instagram is good for fanwork but the algorithm and the speed that things are posted there can make discoverability an uphill battle. patreon; if you make comics or art with fan characters [especially 18+ content lmao] you can grow pretty rapidly there. patreon, like any other paywalled site, should be a secondary site and not your Primary posting location. artfol and pillowfort are still growing. pillowfort has a Communities feature - sort of like deviantart groups - that you can submit your art to which gives you that extra exposure. artfol is just a nice gallery site and the tagging system is,, decent enough. a little confusing because the tag system looks up keywords in posts and titles First, you have to tab over to hashtag searching specifically.

B-tier: invite only and audience reach. again, bluesky relies on your art to be picked up in Feeds, as there's currently no tag search. inkblot is growing but has a decent audience. ko-fi isn't as known as patreon for exclusive content but it's still a good site. mastodon has tagging that makes discoverability easier, but mastodon and its many servers can make things confusing for some people. itaku's not as commonly used so it may be harder to gain new eyes there once you establish yourself.

C-tier: posting fanart to these sites Can Work. toyhouse focuses on posting and sorting original characters, so treating it as a gallery site won't get your far fast. it isn't impossible to grow as an artist there, but the site isn't intended for fanart posting. i cannot say much on cohost here. telegram and discord, again, it's harder for people to discover you out of the blue unless you mention your server / channel on another site.

F-tier: fuck threads.

lastly, to address thieves,

thieves are gonna be everywhere. i'm sorry to say, but there will always be shitty people. i recommend the following:

watermark your art. not in the corner, don't just sign in one spot, place a Huge translucent watermark over the WHOLE art. i recommend making it a colour gradient too instead of one solid colour or greyscale.

also: sign your goddamned art! put your username on there!

post a low resolution when sharing online. less than 1200px wide or tall. 72dpi. JPEG format. keep the high res privately for yourself.

add a subtle noise filter over your art. it doesn't have to be high opacity, and it'll make your art a little grainy, but it's good for fucking with AI bots and ruining any print quality potential.

i hope this offers some insight! if you have a different experience on these sites, please feel free to add your testimonial in the replies or reblogs! not every artist is going to have the same experience and growth rate.