#my monster manual's all the way over there so i can't tell if any of this is legit

[othernaut]

The dungeon ecologist druid would be insufferable in the sewer level. You're just trying to concentrate on breathing through your mouth and keeping your spell components unbefouled, and all the while...

"You know, it's a common misconception that otyughs are inherently hostile. They're territorial, but they'll back down once they sense that their nest isn't threatened. It takes a lot of energy for an otyugh to move around, actually. They prefer picking a spot with plentiful sewage flow and would ideally remain inanimate their entire lives."

"It's weird that we've been seeing so many vargouilles down here. They're infernal creatures, yeah, but they're opportunistic parasitoids and they don't survive well outside of the hellish ecology. Without a constant source of humanoid bodies to kiss, a colony typically dies out within a few weeks. Wonder if the Thieves' Guild has been dumping corpses down here again."

"Oh, hey, don't let your crawling hand familiar back on your shoulder just yet. He's caught rot grubs, I'd say about ten minutes back. Fascinating creatures, really. They're harmless to the undead, but once they sense body heat, they instinctually burrow towards a heartbeat. Just get him to stand still for a minute while I heat up this dagger. You know that most reports of zombification passing through bites are actually mislabeled rot grub infestations?"

"Oh, haha, yeah, don't mind the dire rats, just keep moving. We're in their house right now, they just want to know that we're not moving in. Did you know that there averages seven rats for every person in any given city? Just think: Ten feet under any street it's just solid rats. It's a credit to the Sanitation Guild that they don't come up the privy more often, really."

"A cave fisher! That's a rare one for this environment. They're Underdark creatures - they usually don't like environments with as much noise and flowing water as this. This little guy must be so confused, either that or most of the way to deaf. Try not to snap the filament when you wriggle free. Poor little guy is probably hunting by sense of touch alone."

"You know, you'd be surprised how much cultists contribute to the local ecology. Having a reliable source of heat and light, like devotional candles, can provide crucial energy to the lower level flora which are the backbone of the entire ecosystem. It's easy to think of the cultist as an invasive species, but they're part of the nutrient exchange between the sewer and the surface world. Oh, don't worry about killing them, a den is rarely left uninhabited for long. Look, you can still see the old hate-sigils of the Ravening Darkness! The cycle of nature is a beautiful thing."

"Ooh, that's a carrion crawler! Hold still, I... Ah, guess you don't have much of a choice in the matter. But look on her underside. She's carrying eggs! And quite a large crop of them, at that. These guys are scavengers, actually, they rarely actively hunt, but once those eggs hatch they're going to consume her for nutrients, so she's under a real evolutionary pressure to bulk up as much as she can right now. Once you regain use of your arms, try to aim away from the thorax. The eggs will do just fine if she's already dead a little."

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2024-08-15 continued

(Previous post - current page 610)

Rested up some and back into this now! Rosebot is sounding quite a bit like the Horrorterror-advised Aradia Megido back in Act 5.1 isn't she. Let's get this ball rolling and actually see what sorts of civlization(s) they've brought about. Are we going to meet actual new characters from these races, or will they be played off as unimportant, or given semi-important roles whose actions still emphasize their theoretical hero titles like the carapaces (WV, PM, etc)?

==>

Whoaaa, look at this lanky motherfucker. I don't see hooves, so this has got to be one of Rose's... tentacle hair is more likely than dreadlocks, I'm guessing, but why do those feet look like elf shoes?

DIRK: Do you feel the part? ROSEBOT: It doesn't really matter what I feel. ROSEBOT: We have a job to do, and I'm trying to enjoy myself to the best of my ability while we do it. DIRK: Trying, huh. ROSEBOT: Speaking frankly, I've grown tired of... Rose gestures about the lab, the vats of our ectobiological triumphs and failures, blasé and almost weary in a way I haven't seen from her in a while. It calls to mind the exhaustion she felt before ascending, what must feel like a lifetime for her ago, and rings faintly of mortality in a way that concerns me.

There has to be some part of Rose that knows that what they're doing -- all of this, the abuse of power, doing whatever they want even if it leads to closing the great loop of Paradox Space -- isn't going to end well for her. I think part of her has known things couldn't end well for her as soon as she left Kanaya, so she's just... having what "fun" she can with the time she has left, and the only thing that's kept her diving deep into her work with glee instead of stopping is the REPEATED narrative interventions by Dirk to keep her brainwashed into moving forward without succumbing to her moral doubts. But it can all only continue so long until the weight of her sins is crawling on her back, and that comes with the sense a good Seer of Light would have that she's not going to get away with what she's done lightly, even if she believes she's too far along and too far gone to stop it, too close to their goal.

ROSEBOT: This. ROSEBOT: Fussing over all the tedious minutiae of getting the baby's room ready. ROSEBOT: The prospect of this Contest was entertaining to me for a time, but the longer it drags on, the closer we draw to the due date, the more it... repulses me. ROSEBOT: I'm glad you've agreed that we're basically done tinkering here. I don't think I have much more patience for it. DIRK: I can tell.

Dirk had to smooth over and make her dismiss how repulsed she was at the awful actions they'd proposed to do, OVER AND OVER AND OVER early on until she was practically sadistically gleeful in creating fucked-up monsters, but... now, he really doesn't have to do that much anymore. Rose feels she CHOSE all that she's already done, and the weight of that sin is sufficient that she can't stop anymore because if they DON'T FINISH DOING THIS, then all the immorality of what she's already done would be wasted, would all just be meaningless CRUELTY instead of the meaning that would even partially justify it in the end.

As appropriate when they're basically creating the concept of Sburb from the ground up, and the incredibly harsh cost of an entire civilization that comes with the opportunity to birth new universes from their ashes.

ROSEBOT: I'm also glad you've elected to hear Terezi out vis-a-vis the timeskip and save us the hassle of guiding the Deltritans manually. ROSEBOT: I know it must be hard for you. It'll actually be incredibly easy for me. Just time traveling forward is a no-go; at the frantic rate our pursuers are hurtling towards us, they'd catch up to Deltritus far before it had a chance to birth any sort of civilization at all, and that'd be a mess, especially with us only due to pop in millennia after the fact. We'd probably return to a planet totally unfit for Game candidacy.

I was wondering about that-- if they let their pursuers arrive early into the civilization's existence, the pursuers would have a chance to interfere with those civilizations' development before the game even starts. Heck, as long as Dave Strider is with them and willing, there's a risk they could interfere with the civilization's development even if they somehow wound forward the entire PLANET, which it sounds like he's implying they need to do somehow... what's the solution to make it inevitable in a way so that everything's "already happened" by the time the pursuers arrive and they can't interfere with the session's start?

Localized time travel, while technically possible, tends to get pretty fucked even in the most ideal of circumstances, to say nothing of the fact that it's way outside my wheelhouse as a Heart player. The concept works pretty well for my purposes, though, and as a burgeoning omnipotent narrative god, I can mimic it in a way that's functionally identical. The move here is that I'm going to envelop the local galaxy group in a pocket of my influence and narratively accelerate it via Bullshit so that whatever's going on in here goes on faster, so we can get to the good shit faster, so we can get on with our jobs, and so you gawking voyeurs have more of our lives to guzzle greedily down.

Christ, that's some Lord English sounding levels of temporal control over part of the universe, there! His narrative powers are fucking bonkers.

Why the galaxy group? Why not just the solar system, or even just the planet? My answer to that question is twofold. Firstly, I want the Deltritan societies to have a convincing view of their place in the cosmos, at least locally. What kind of civilization worth its soul-searching salt doesn't look to the night sky with wonder and curiosity in their hearts? It wouldn't do for them to exist in a world where the sun never sank below the horizon, or where the stars didn't dance tellingly across the sky, revealing the kind of hard-hitting secrets only astronomy can. Secondly, I'm showing off. I've been really coming into my own, powers-wise, and it's not just my Heart abilities that have shot up a few exponentially longer echeladders.

He's acting like Andrew Hussie or an equivalent author in the ability to make up an action needed and justify it via whatever excuse needed, like some strange Meteor machinery or the like for creating First Guardians or warping items between post-and-pre-Scratch timelines, or the like. Author powers can be truly terrifying; and author powers also explain how he can ensure that because the entire civilization existed within his narrative influence before the pursuers got there, he can narratively assure that no Dave-based time travel backward interfered, I'm betting.

He still would want his pursuers to arrive in time FOR the session that had already started, because I'm sure that session will in part be the battleground he uses to confront AL (alt!Calliope) and the others and deliver them the defeat his ego demands they face.

ROSEBOT: Dirk? Of course, Rose isn't talking about the mechanics of the timeskip. She's talking about the reasoning behind it, and the lack of precise control over Deltritus' development that will result as a consequence of it. I just figured I'd take the time to address the "how" factor to you all before the fucking pedants among you started making a fuss, acting like I haven't thought all this shit out. Yeah, you. You know who you are. Also, I'm stalling. Uncharacteristic of me, I know. ROSEBOT: Dirk. DIRK: Sorry. DIRK: Got caught up with something.

So Dirk either HAS successfully kept fooling Rose that he doesn't have narrative powers, or Rose is successfully bluffing that she hasn't at LEAST figured out that he's doing some sort of narration or has some influence without knowing the full extent of how it may have affected her... unless part of her STILL deems the final result more important even if she has an inkling that she may have been manipulated.

Why is he stalling, though?

ROSEBOT: Far be it from me to stand between you and your enigmatic somethings. DIRK: You're welcome to stand wherever you like. DIRK: Anyway, no, it isn't that hard for me. DIRK: It'd be fun, but as I keep having to explain to people, I'm willing to compromise on certain points. DIRK: Though I will say it's unfortunate to hear you making them, instead of our complainer on retainer. ROSEBOT: What can I say? ROSEBOT: I don't feel particularly inclined to play house right now. DIRK: Not even with me, huh? ROSEBOT: Not even with you.

You can only keep someone brainwashed into tolerating your company completely for so long when you're so obviously a piece of shit. And as Rose's Seer of Light senses bring her closer to understanding the personal consequences to HER of her actions, potentially -- the ones that were far off in the future when she made her "decision" to help with this operation -- the less she's going to be thrilled about owning it all. And she has VERY complicated Mom-related feelings about playing Mother most likely, even to an entire race. She would rather dodge the responsibility than fuck it up, just like she did with Yiffy. That's part of her existing trauma, most likely.

Also "play house" is a good intentional pun on playing Sburb.

==>

Cool-ass panels of them walking up out of the cave, followed by this gorgeous sunset shot where Rose looks absolutely melancholy:

For a while, neither of us says anything at all. Then, still silent, Rose turns and leaves the lab, a billowing stream of orange. I follow after her, at a respectable distance, and together we leave the mouth of the cave, making our way up the steps carved into the cliffside it now burrows into until finally cresting the plateau, and wordlessly taking a seat together at the edge of the cliff to look out over one of Deltritus' vast and alien oceans. "Wait, what's with the ocean?" you might ask. A while back, it became apparent that while my Deltritan offspring were to be terrestrial, Rose's were going to be aquatic.

That's actually an excellent way to keep the civilizations relatively separate and avoid their intermixing their cultures too much before The Game begins. Also, the Ocean and deep water's unfathomability is deeply tied with the Void, so if this race ends up being the ancestor race of the Horrorterrors, it makes sense that their monstrous progeny could live in the unlimited black strangeness between universes.

Back when I figured we'd have a more active role in their development, it felt appropriate to me that our base of operations should straddle land and sea, existing impartially at the precipice between the two competing worlds.

Yep, as I just said/thought-- keeps the civilizations separate.

I elected to transport (via Bullshit, of course) our humble grotto and the wreck of the Theseus to these cliffs overlooking the sea, that we might watch over our children from a locale more suitably dramatic and liminal than some fucking plain in the middle of nowhere.

The Bullshit he's referring to, the author's ability to handwave, simply means exploiting the fact that things could plausibly have happened offscreen in order to not have to write out the detailed mechanics of (say) the machine that they alchemized/built and used to transportalize their base smoothly to a new location, and can be used to employ all sorts of tactics offscreen... including, potentially dangerously, retroactively set-up countermeasures for whatever someone is about to do to you by simply narratively declaring that you prepared something for it beforehand, sort of like Joseph Joestar in Jojo Part 2. To Rose Lalonde, it'd theoretically be seamless, where she'd have the mechanical justifications that were created offscreen even if Dirk didn't even have to "write" the specifics.

Now, however, the effort (insofar as it was one, which it wasn't) seems to have been mostly in vain. No seagulls cry here, anyway. Rose and I made a lot of other filler-fauna to help our species integrate into the local biosphere while working through our respective game-plans, but I never got around to replicating or approximating seagulls. I guess I'm not gonna bother. It doesn't particularly feel like much of a home, anymore. As we sit side by side, watching the horizon, Rose is even harder to read than usual. I begin to feel the twinge of a vexation that I've been all too aware of over untold trillions of iterations of myself, a dread that's reared its head again recently. The fear that my plan isn't understood, my efforts aren't appreciated. That I'm alone, again.

You were always alone-- you FORCED Rose to understand and fully empathize with your plan, even if parts of her Ultimate Self were callous enough to have that dark capacity within her. And part of you knows that but wants to deny it so you DON'T feel like you're alone again.

I worry that she's slipping away. Growing disinterested in our time together. And I'm not willing to lose her, so as much as it feels like admitting a kind of defeat, I prepare to make her- ROSE: Thank you for taking me with you, Dirk. ...... DIRK: Yeah?

Whoa, holy shit.

So Rose feels like even the sinful meaningful acts she's doing here are worth it, now? But is still depressed? Possibly because she's been led to believe THERE WAS NEVER A PLACE for her back home, or that she'd have led things to ruin there instead of committing their crimes of creation/destruction way out here?

And again, it's showing us that-- whether due to Rose's genuinely built-up feelings, or if she's guessed the truth and is successfully bluffing about not knowing about the narrative abilities-- Dirk doesn't need to brainwash Rosebot anymore to keep her on board with the plan, unfortunately. She's too invested, committed too much of a Great Evil to not want to ensure the results that would make that evil even partially worthwhile. :C

==>

I hate that he "won" like this-- we ALL hate that he "won" like this. Even if it eventually turns out Rose is bluffing or figured it out. But Rose has to get her companionship somewhere, and as the abusive uncle-like figure that he is, he's made himself the only possible source of validation, the only company that could possibly "understand" her anymore. She has no one else left to cling to. :CCC

ROSE: I may be less than enchanted with this stage of the work, but I know it's important. ROSE: It's just straying dangerously close to a lot of things I'm trying not to fixate on right now. ROSE: Wounds that are still fresh, for me as a sum and for the myriad legions of my parts. ROSE: Home. ROSE: Family. ROSE: Petty, little things. ROSE: Personal things. DIRK: Those are important, too. ROSE: Not as important as this is.

Yup, as I guessed earlier, the fact that she's necessarily playing the absent mother figure feels like committing her Mom's sin and her inability to raise Roxy as Alpha Rose all at the same time. Those versions of her are all part of her now, and this is tapping into parts of all those traumas.

ROSE: For all my temporary discomfort with the prospect of settling down on Deltritus and starting what could very loosely be considered a family with you, I want you to know that my heart is in what we're working towards- DIRK: Technically, you don't have a heart. ROSE: Shut up. ROSE: - and that I'm happy to be here with you. ROSE: Not drifting around in a constrictive, small pond, getting caught up in trivialities like politics and celebrity and romance, ROSE: But saving the fucking universe. DIRK: ...

Technically, this all might be "necessary" to save Paradox Space or create it in the first place, rather; but it didn't have to be done this way, done by THEM, and Dirk Strider is the one who demanded arrogantly that HE wished to be responsible for it all, for writing it onscreen, for the trauma it'd cause to be the one who did it and his ambition to be the writer of all Paradox Space as a result, instead of an unknown civilization of frogs offscreen or something as it may have otherwise been. But Rose as an overembracing Ultimate Light Player here ultimately craves importance, and finds it more comfortable than the terrible fears of messing up relationships or even just being looked at as a goddess by Earth C's population, somewhat like Candy Jade expressed she felt earlier. Being a "Hero" and doing something "Important" (Light) is the only way her terrible self-esteem and negative judgment of herself, especially the negative self-judgment Dirk forced her to embrace by brainwashing her down this path, can consider her EXISTENCE worth anything at all. :CCCC

(Also, the Ultimate Rosebot "not having a Heart" is only true in the technical pun sense, since her soul as an Ultimate Self is present at full power within the robot and not fully digitized, with only a tenuous link to her body on life support, so she doesn't necessarily suffer the Auto Responder's disconnectedness with Dirk's broader "Heart"/Soul that allowed it to be malleably transformed into Lil Hal, Arquiusprite, and then Doc Scratch. Meaning that whatever happens to Rosebot, for now, Rosebot is still essentially Rose Lalonde. But if the connection between her main body on life support were ever broken, and Rosebot were LEFT with only the malleable AI algorithms designed to SIMULATE Rose, then... she WOULD be without a Heart, without a specific soul locking her unique personality down, and then would be vulnerable to being molded into something else like the Cueballs or Skaia or the like, possibly...)

Relief pulses through me in an immense wave. Relief and unfathomable, indescribable pride. It's almost paralyzing; I just sit here for a while, grateful for my shades and their ability to protect me from making eye contact with my daughter, who is in this moment as brilliant as the aspect that adorns her hood. I should tell her. DIRK: Well. DIRK: You're welcome. She scoffs at my barebones response, and I'm forced to marvel at her ability to communicate so weightily, conveying such a minutely specific blend of emotion as understanding, affection, acknowledgement, encouragement, admonishment, and so many more, all with the hardware of a literal machine. She's an incredible person.

Dirk DOES care about Rose, quite a lot, but that only makes his abuse of her even MORE fucked up. That's often the case with abusive relationships, especially parental ones.

To my credit, I am also an incredible engineer.

And he takes credit for the molding he's forcibly DONE to her to bring her to this point, to bring out these awful sides of her Ultimate Self willing to actually do this with him, the utter fucking asshole. >:( Which is again, characteristic of an abusive paternal relationship.

At any rate, Rose might be beating my ass on the emotive front, but I'm still capable of articulating myself well enough, and I'd better start soon or I'm going to begin to look like a real fucking dork. DIRK: I don't think there's anyone I'd rather be doing this with than you.

Thanks for at least opening up your feelings a BIT to respond to hers properly, at least, you asshole prick who still deserves to die.

DIRK: The rest of them just don't have it in them right now to understand what it is we're fighting for, here. DIRK: They can't grasp the stakes. DIRK: Even now, they're on their way here, actively trying to stop us from saving them all. DIRK: They'll probably catch us right before our entrance into the Game, actually.

Technically, AL and Dirk share almost the EXACT SAME GOAL here, a desire to close the loop of all Creation in a way that makes sense as a story. The main place they disagree is who should be in charge of it all... AL clearly believes that Dirk SHOULDN'T be in charge and it should be left to propagate on its own once set up, needs to deny him his ambition of becoming the tyrannical forever-author of almost all Paradox Space. But AL has a hard time letting go of control, and as much as she believes Dirk must be stopped, her actions tell the story of someone who may be just as willing to become the Forever Author of Paradox Space HERSELF too.

DIRK: I won't insult you by asking if you're going to be okay when the time comes to face them, demanding answers they won't accept to questions they aren't even asking, because I know that you will. DIRK: So I'm glad to have you with me. DIRK: I'm glad you understand.

Yeah, we always knew this was going to be the play. No appeal or objection their pursuers make isn't going to be met with a "this is more important than you understand" from Rosebot and direct opposition that stops and traps and stalls them (though short of killing them), and any appeals that Dirk has just been "brainwashing" her are going to ring hollow to her ears after all she's truly, herself, invested in this course of action even outside the brainwashing.

This isn't going to be easy to fix.

==>

DIRK: I'm doing this for all of us. I'm doing this for all of us.

The same false justification his iterations like Bro have used to abuse people all of his myriad lives. He cares much more about him (and his) being the one to have DONE it than the fact that it gets done.

Wait, what's this next link? Candy? Who's Big Kahuna-- oh right, Meenah (or one of her codenames she mentioned last time for one of the others)?

(Big Kahuna: Check the door.)

Ah, Karkat's home!

(BIGGEST KAHUNA: Return to base.)

KARKAT: KEPT YOU WAITING, HUH?

Why'd they have to make Solid Karkat here look as sexy as fucking possible in adult form. Oh who are we kidding, of course they fucking had to, and we love it. :D

(Rebellion Commanders: Confer.)

MEENAH: took you long enough bossman

KARKAT: I THOUGHT I ASKED YOU TO STOP CALLING ME THAT WHEN WE'RE ALONE. MEENAH: big bossman KARKAT: NOT BETTER. MEENAH: sweetie-pirate KARKAT: BOSSMAN IT IS. MEENAH: you got it bitch KARKAT: I CAN WORK WITH BITCH.

Hahahahah! These two have a great dynamic. (They're a couple in this timeline right, instead of him and Dave?)

KARKAT: ANYWAY, THINGS ARE RAMPING UP OUT THERE. KARKAT: ARE YOU JUST ABOUT WRAPPED UP? MEENAH: yep MEENAH: its a good thing youre back i just got off a real shipshow of a call with mrs fencesitter and agent short shorts a lil while ago MEENAH: looks like serious shit is about to pop off KARKAT: YEAH, I WAS LISTENING IN.

Fun conversations here, also calling out Roxy for only halfheartedly aiding the rebellion so as not to do much damage to Jane, which Jane in her current state couldn't possibly appreciate as still being any less than betrayal and which likely put even more of a wedge between Roxy and Meenah.

KARKAT: ALSO I'VE ALREADY HAD KIND OF A GAUNTLET OF A FUCKING DAY ALREADY AND I DIDN'T NEED THE PAN-ACHE. KARKAT: I KNEW YOU HAD IT UNDER CONTROL. MEENAH: youre lucky youre breamy as hell when youre out there doin tacticalypso or id have mutinied and kraken over this whole operation for myshellf

Breamy = "Dreamy", right, they're together romantically like I remembered.

(==>)

KARKAT: CONSIDERING NONE OF THE MAJOR PLAYERS HERE HAVE ANY SENSE OF TACT OR SUBTLETY WE'RE GONNA NEED TO MOVE OUT PRONTO. KARKAT: HOPE YOU'RE FIELD-READY, BECAUSE WE'RE GONNA NEED TO B- MEENAH: oh fuck yes MEENAH: dude let me say it KARKAT: YEAH, GO AHEAD.

Let's make this shi(p) happen?

(==>)

MEENAH: bring in the mothafuckin LOBsT-ERs

Excuse me??

(Also, having random war flashbacks of Sniper Lobsters in Elden Ring.)

(LOBsTERs: Assemble.)

*Sigh*

(An hour later...)

Okay THAT shot's pretty cool.

Karkat doing tons of tactical talking and shit...

MEENAH: KARKAT KARKAT: WHAT. MEENAH: krillax KARKAT: NOT REALLY AN IDEAL TIME FOR THAT, ON ACCOUNT OF THE FACT THAT WE'RE PROBABLY HOURS AWAY FROM THE MOST CRITICAL ARMED ENGAGEMENT THE REBELLION IS LIKELY TO SEE. MEENAH: it hasnt been an ideel time for like 6 sweeps MEENAH: you need to take a breatht-stroke KARKAT: ... HAHAHA, WHAT? MEENAH: you know what i mean MEENAH: youve been runnin yourshellf into the fuckin dirt for ages MEENAH: take a you moment KARKAT: MEENAH, THIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE TIME TO TAKE A ME MOMENT. MEENAH: actually in like a day or so were either gonna be tridentumphant and busy as fuck or dead in the water so its like the best possible time all fins considered MEENAH: youve been out on field ops for like a week

Yeah, as a Knight of Blood, Karkat is EXTREMELY unhealthy about not using almost all of his time too diligently on his responsibilities.

MEENAH: maybe i wanna chat with my buoy toy for a lil bit KARKAT: YEAH, ALRIGHT. KARKAT: I DUNNO, FUCK. UH... HOW ARE YOU DOING? MEENAH: how are *you* doin KARKAT: PRETTY FUCKING STRESSED!

Pfffffff

KARKAT: ALSO THIS COVERT-OPS SUIT IS TIGHT AS ALL FUCK. MEENAH: well if its any consolation that may be rough for you but its a pretty great time to be your rear admire-all 38) KARKAT: MUCH OBLIGED. KARKAT: ... KARKAT: SERIOUSLY, MEENAH, I APPRECIATE IT. KARKAT: IT'S BEEN KIND OF A ROUGH... KARKAT: DECADE AND A HALF? KARKAT: BUT THROUGH ALL THE SLOG AND THE SHITTY TIMES AND THE UNCERTAINTY YOU'VE REMAINED REMARKABLY COMMITTED TO THIS. KARKAT: HELPED ME TURN THIS ABSTRACT, FRUSTRATED DREAM INTO A FUNCTIONING FUCKING REALITY. KARKAT: YOU NEVER WAVERED. KARKAT: YOU NEVER FLAKED. KARKAT: YOU STUCK BY ME.

Yeah. Dedication means a whole fucking lot to Karkat, both as a person and as a Blood player. And the fact that Meenah, who flaked out in some ways just to BE here instead of with her (Vriska) girlfrond in the dream bubbles, did a pretty good job of NOT flaking it seems like, especially since this sort of Rebellion effort is exactly her jam. The main risk she might start flaking is if shit ever starts to get peaceful again.

(==>)

She continues to look VERY good. :#|

MEENAH: not like dave huh KARKAT: WOW, STRAIGHT TO THE POINT.

Ah damn, yeah.

MEENAH: i mean hey i figured youd wanna glub about it MEENAH: conchsiderin KARKAT: SO YOU HEARD THE NEWS? MEENAH: yeah i mighta been listenin in on your converseation myshellf MEENAH: along with like half the comms team MEENAH: you left your mic on KARKAT: UN KARKAT: FUCKING KARKAT: BELIEVABLE. MEENAH: its all good MEENAH: actually pretty much everyone ate it up there was like gasps and cheers and occasional applause and shit MEENAH: not shore if youre aware of this but it turns out people fuckin love you KARKAT: WELL COLOR ME GLAD MY OPERATIVES FOUND IT INSPIRING THAT I TOOK CRITICAL TIME OUT OF MY MISSION TO PREVENT THE ENTIRE PLANET FROM BACKSLIDING INTO STAGNANT CONFECTIONARY FASCISM TO YELL AT A HAPLESS DIVORCEE.

Everyone's always cheered for you, my self-depricating dude. You're a rock star.

KARKAT: ANYWAY. KARKAT: YES. KARKAT: NOT LIKE DAVE. MEENAH: how you feelin about that KARKAT: I DON'T KNOW. KARKAT: I THINK MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, JUST FUCKING... KARKAT: DISAPPOINTED. KARKAT: EXHAUSTINGLY, FRUITLESSLY DISAPPOINTED. KARKAT: WE USED TO SPEND SO MUCH TIME TOGETHER TALKING ABOUT HOW TO FIX SHIT, YOU KNOW? KARKAT: SPITBALLING ALL THIS FRIVOLOUS AND/OR GRAVELY SERIOUS CONJECTURE ABOUT WHAT TO FUCKING *DO* WITH OURSELVES AND THE WORLD. KARKAT: AND THEN AS SOON AS IT STARTS REALLY MATTERING, AS SOON AS IT BECOMES CLEAR IT'S TIME TO DO *SOMETHING*, HE JUST WILTS. KARKAT: THEN HE SPENDS YEARS MILLING FECKLESSLY AROUND IN THAT DOMESTIC TORTURE LABYRINTH OF A RELATIONSHIP KARKAT: *MARRIES INTO IT*

Lots to gripe about there, yeah.

KARKAT: AND SUBSEQUENTLY DECIDES THAT NOW'S THE BEST TIME TO PLAY SPIES, PRESUMABLY SO HE CAN CONTINUE TO AVOID HAVING MISERABLE MATRIMONIAL PROCREATIVE SEX. KARKAT: ONLY FOR JADE TO FOLLOW HIM INTO THE CAUSE!

What the fuck??? Not just him not being into sex with Jade, but-- PROCREATIVE sex with Jade? Wouldn't that be impossible for him and her with her dog-ascension-replaced equipment downstairs-- unless we're talking about conceiving with surrogates, which Dave would DEFINITELY FIND any excuse to avoid doing himself, or unless he's trans-masculine, which is a damned popular headcanon for good reason?

KARKAT: WHICH, YOU KNOW, WAS OBJECTIVELY A PRETTY BIG BOON TO THE REBELLION. KARKAT: GOOD FOR MORALE, AND OBVIOUSLY THEY WERE INCREDIBLE FIELD AGENTS. KARKAT: BUT FUCK WAS IT A SAVAGE PAIN IN THE CHUTE. KARKAT: DO YOU REMEMBER THE PERIOD EARLY ON WHERE I HAD TO ASSIGN ANOTHER CLERK TO MISSION CONTROL WHOSE SOLE PURPOSE WAS TO MANAGE THE TWO OF THEM SO THEY KEPT THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY UNTIL THEY FIGURED OUT HOW TO BE EVEN THE SCANTEST APPROXIMATION OF NORMAL AROUND ME? KARKAT: THE FACT THAT IT WAS NECESSARY AT ALL IS STILL FUCKING APPALLING.

Ugh, yeah, I was already pretty much imagining it would have sucked hard in exactly this manner back in those days.

KARKAT: AND THEN FINALLY, *FINALLY*, WE GET HIM SITUATED, HE'S ACTUALLY MANAGING TO CONTRIBUTE TO SOMETHING MEANINGFUL AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME IN WHO EVEN KNOWS HOW LONG.

KARKAT: AND HE JUST FUCKS OFF AND KARKAT: AND DIES. KARKAT: HE JUST CALLS IT THERE. KARKAT: SO KARKAT: DISAPPOINTED. KARKAT: DISAPPOINTED IS HOW I'M FEELING ABOUT THAT.

:'C

KARKAT: BUT- KARKAT: FUCKING- HOLD ON, I NEED TO TAKE THIS.

So what new developments are we discussing now?

(Karkat: Answer urgent comms.)

KARKAT: *WHAT*. SOLLUX: finally he picks up. SOLLUX: hey man. KARKAT: DON'T FUCKING "HEY MAN" ME.

BAHAAHAHAH! His old annoying-ass best bud! Who may or may not be contributing to the war effort with some sick hacking between video games.

SOLLUX: there's like a bazillion m0oks swarming ar0und my crib and none 0f the grubereats dudes are accepting orders right n0w. SOLLUX: probably 0n account 0f your inc0nvenient ass war. SOLLUX: could y0u pick me something up?

SOLLUX READ THE ROOM

KARKAT: MAYBE YOU'D GIVE MORE OF A FUCK ABOUT THE REPRODUCTIVE FUTURE OF OUR SPECIES IF ARADIA WAS EVER ACTUALLY THERE LONG ENOUGH FOR YOU TO GET SOME. MEENAH: ohhh snapper

Wait, so Aradia actually might possibly time travel back in her personal past over to the Black Hole trapped timeline to hang out with Sollux on rare occasions?! Is she capable of crossing back and forth when nobody else can? I highly doubt that-- but Davebot insisted she WAS still seeing someone... is it possible that she's asking to borrow alt!Calliope's powers whenever it strikes her on the rare occasion to go back for a date? No, it doesn't feel like AL would do her that favor... who the fuck is Aradia still dating? A DIFFERENT Sollux? Someone else??? Or does she have a free travel ticket that breaks the rules so hard that the whole Plot Point thing shouldn't even be necessary to break through!?

KARKAT: BETTER GET BACK TO IT, THEN, DON'T LET ME KEEP YOU. KARKAT: I'LL JUST BE OUT HERE FREEDOM FIGHTING AND DEPLETING JANE'S GROUND FORCES SO SHE WON'T HAVE ENOUGH MANPOWER TO STORM THE METEOR AND PUT A SPOON THROUGH YOUR SPINE, OH AND ALSO FERRYING YOU YOUR FUCKING FAST FOOD, I GUESS! KARKAT: GOOD LUCK! KARKAT: HOPE YOU GET A HIGH SCORE! SOLLUX: yeah im kinda in the z0ne right now. KARKAT: AWESOME. SOLLUX: hey kk KARKAT: WHAT. SOLLUX: are we still friends? KARKAT: OBVIOUSLY, DIPSHIT! KARKAT: STAY SAFE, ALRIGHT? KARKAT: ... KARKAT: ... KARKAT: DUDE! SOLLUX: s0rry im still gaming. KARKAT: BYE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SOLLUX: alrighty bro g0od talk.

D'awwww. Same as it ever was between them. :'D

(Rebellion Commanders: Finish up here.)

Oh, the top of the Meteor (memorial) is still buried above ground, to eventually eons in the future become Calliope and Caliborn's home (EDIT: or would have if this wasn't the Candy timeline, I forgot, but the Meat timeline has it as a similar memorial there most likely). Makes sense; it just extends deep ENOUGH underground for Roxy to have described the lab as such after going through the transportalizer.

KARKAT: YEAH, I'M DISAPPOINTED ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING WITH DAVE WENT DOWN. KARKAT: BUT TODAY NEEDS TO BE BIGGER THAN THAT. KARKAT: IT'S NOT PRODUCTIVE FOR ME TO SIT HERE AND WALLOW ABOUT WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN AND WHAT MORE I COULD HAVE DONE FOR ONE PERSON WHEN NOW, MORE THAN EVER, I NEED TO FOCUS ON WHAT COULD BE AND WHO'S WITH ME NOW. KARKAT: WHO I'M DOING ALL OF THIS FOR. KARKAT: WE'VE BUILT SOMETHING AMAZING TOGETHER, AND IF WE CAN HOLD ON JUST A LITTLE BIT LONGER IT'LL HAVE BEEN INCALCULABLY WORTH EVERY OUNCE OF STRUGGLE.

Yeah, said like a true Blood player and great leader.

...Lol at the crew's reactions subsequently.

KARKAT: COMMANDERS HARLEY, MARYAM, AND LALONDE ARE INBOUND, AND NOT LONG AFTER THEY GET HERE THINGS ARE GOING TO GET BATSHIT STUPID! KARKAT: BUT THINGS HAVE BEEN BATSHIT STUPID FOR A LONG, LONG FUCKING TIME, KARKAT: SO LET'S DRAG THAT IMPERIOUS CORPORATE BITCH DOWN FROM HER AIRSHIP AND REINTRODUCE A LITTLE NORMALCY!

Almost time to try and stabilize this whole damn timeline yeah, which may indeed incidentally give them the avenue to win against a more grounded-in-reality Jane Crocker.

(==>)

Quite the intimidating lineup of enemy ships.

MEENAH: target fuckin acquired

(Jane: Educate these fools on the art of war.)

You are in no position to educate anybody, Mrs. Mistress Executive. Dehydrated, grieving, and coming off of a particularly nasty sugar high, Sun Tzu wouldn't even let you substitute at this rate. What would your curriculum even be? Furious Fudge Flinging 101? Because you are completely losing your shit right now.

Hahahahahhaha.

Luckily we have already seen the beginning of these histrionics here.

Yeah, when Jane was yelling for her poison-tasting water boy because her throat's dry and she's ballistic. Jane doesn't exactly have the ROLE as a Maid of Life nor the personal experience to be a master war tactician-- all she's good at is enforcing order and anxiety (due to her Bard of Doom synergy theoretically) and, as a Maid of Life, having tons and tons of power, money and influence to throw at the problem and hope to overwhelm it with sheer might alone. Not much tactical about it.

(==>)

Oh, we're back to the tail end of that conversation! Is Jake going to decide on something he can actually do to *help* stop her here? And of course we're getting further Brain Ghost Dirk perspective.

JAKE: Oh flip. JAKE: Sorry janey i was handling an urgent matter. JAKE: Had to pop down the little boys office to shred some important papers. JANE: What? JAKE: Im spending a penny at the local water closet. JANE: Jake. JAKE: Im in the bathroom. JANE: Oh.

Hahahahah. Classic Jake-anachronisms.

JANE: UGH! JANE: You are always in the bathroom these days!

Doing spy shit, yes.

JAKE: Well my job is to taste test all your water for poison, JAKE: dear. JAKE: Forgive my impertinence but perhaps if you trusted the troops more, we could avoid all of this folderol and i could be promoted to standing by your side? JAKE: Thatd help my besieged bladder, for sure. JANE: Not happening. JAKE: Oh! Of course! JAKE: Silly me.

Jane really never trusted Jake for anything important, even when she WANTED him for a relationship. It's like there was hardly ever a potential timeline where their relationship might actually go well, it seems, unless they both got some seriously miraculous psychotherapy.

JAKE: May i ask... why? JAKE: Not to make a tit of myself here. JAKE: But wouldnt an enemy spy be childs play to spot, seeing as our troops share such similar faces? JAKE: Pretty much the exact same face? JANE: I once thought it an asset too! JANE: How clever I saw myself... JANE: "Hoo hoo! We'll avoid instating a draft by cloning an army!" JANE: "Unprecedented genius!" JANE: "Brand consistency!"

Oh wow, they've been CLONING TROOPS. That makes some degree of sense as a sort of counter for her "concerns" about the rate of troll reproduction, too. Also, she's MAKING LIFE, which seems a good hero title pun.

JANE: Of course, I realize now that if any serviceman developed mutinous, deviant intentions, he could simply slink back into the safety of the crowd.

JANE: The perfect cover for a tiger amongst zebras. JAKE: Grrr... JAKE: Friggin double agents, man. DIRK: (Amazing. Can I get a cherry on top of that?) JAKE: Why i oughta... the very thought! DIRK: (Fuck yes. Marlon Brando in the motherfucking building.) JANE: Exactly. It's horrifying.

Lol.

JANE: Thankfully I have practiced instinct where assassination is concerned. JANE: An instinct that has only sharpened in the wake of... recent tragedies. JANE: I won't be lulled into any such false sense of security this time, that's for sure! JAKE: Is that why the old henhouse has been feeling a bit spacious recently? JANE: I may have a handful or so of men in the brig. JANE: For safekeeping. JANE: They have snacks! A water trough. JANE: All unpoisoned, might I add. JANE: Who gives a toot anyways, we'll be depositing them out onto the battlefield soon enough.

Jane Crocker HAS technically been dealing with assassination attempts since childhood, too.

JAKE: Speaking of the battle... JAKE: What was the pre-established plan, again? JAKE: Just trying to refresh my simple mind on the details. JAKE: Especially the ones that situate our son near The Point. JAKE: I take it we have protocols in place a tad more delicate than simply "bombs away!" JAKE: Right? JANE: Sigh. JANE: Jake, do you remember when I went to the moon?

OH FUCKING HELL YES THAT INSTAGRAM STUFF WAS (at least Candy) CANON SHE'S SENDING IN ROBOT JACK NOIR AND HIS FELT CREW YESSSSSSS I WAS HOPING THEY'D COME BACK!!! It's the only way to make this fight interesting!!

Looks like she's about to recap anyone who missed that instagram compilation of the assassination attempt that teleported her to the moon before it was about to be shot into a crescent shape by the Carapacians as a ridiculous act of godly devotion and then she captured and rounded up the whole New Midnight Crew in collars. Jack Noir is a fearsome and fun adversary to be up against, especially when the presumed Prince of Blood is running with a destructive crew.

(Jane: Start monologuing.)

That's right, I remember, Jack brought a bunch of them back to life to work for him using Die's doll or something. Seems she has enough of a handle of them to not use prison collars on them now.

JAKE: Uuuuuuuuuuuuh. JANE: No? It was a huge deal. JAKE: Was this around the time all those carapacians took a big chunk out of it? JANE: Yes! JANE: You see, prior to that expedition, I'd been cooking up a contingency plan, of sorts. JANE: I put some serious man-hours into it. JANE: If things were to go tines up, our last line of defense is a machine that will emit a guided beam to a location of my choosing.

MOON LASER!!!! I'm getting Dr. McNinja flashbacks (which I'm a fan of if you couldn't tell by the avatar, sorry the site is down.)

DIRK: (A laser?) JAKE: So were destroying The Point now? JANE: No! JANE: No, no, no, no. JANE: Definitely not. JANE: We are *capturing* The Point. JANE: But if we don't... JAKE: Ah. JAKE: Contingency plan. JANE: Contingency plan indeed.

Jane doesn't care what the Rebellion thinks about this being important to the safety/integrity of the entire timeline or whatever, or saving the universe. She wants to win. If she can't have it, nobody can.

JANE: A surgical, precise, and most importantly *unexpected* means of victory, with virtually no crossfire. JAKE: Does that seem... JAKE: Sound? JANE: You know, Jake, you've been giving me the 3rd degree all day. JAKE: Hm? JANE: You're typically content stumbling through life as a soft-headed bimbo, and it's only now of all times you start showing stark, pointed interest in happenings outside of yourself? JANE: I find that odd. JANE: Suspicious even. JAKE: Erm...

He's definitely become more active in trying to figure out how to stop things and gather information as the critical moment approaches, yeah. And Brain Ghost Dirk's resurgence (if he ever left) is likely pushing him too.

JANE: You're thinking, "She's a bad mother," aren't you? DIRK: (Here we go.) JANE: Don't you try to deny it.

Oh pfff, not suspicion but marital fucking discourse. Heheheh.

JANE: I see you, up there on your high horse. JANE: Interrogating me! JANE: As if you have the right! JANE: Just what did *you* do, besides whimper like a kicked dog, as they took our boy away!? JANE: "TAVVY!" JANE: You can fly, you idiot! JANE: You're such a harmless, dunderheaded fucking nonentity that those seditious connivers would have *let* you tail them! DIRK: (Ouch.) JANE: Everything he has, *I've* provided. JANE: Everything he is, *I've* nurtured!

Jake probably trusts "Tavvy" in their hands more than yours, but that's neither something you know nor can accept. And the thing about Jake is that yes, he's a doormat, but Pages in Homestuck often seem to need to be given a long time in flourishing, non-traumatic environments to bloom into anything resembling their true role and power, and Jane has never had the confidence in him to try to build him up instead of spitefully knocking him down.

JAKE: (Criminy, bro, she has a death laser.) JAKE: (Like goldfinger.) JANE: Remember how I willed him out of my body, 3 months premature, because I was so excited to see him? JAKE: (The rebellion isnt prepared for that.) JAKE: (What are they going to do?) DIRK: (Fuck if I know, refract it off Commander Vantas' massive tits?) JAKE: (Were going to lose.)

HOLY SHIT AT THE PART I BOLDED JANE IS ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NUTS, she could have stunted her child's growth just for that selfishness! "Arrested Development" indeed!

Jake looks like he might be gearing to do something actually heroic for once. Like, say... to fly HIMSELF up to the moon and destroy a fucking moon laser.

JANE: You might be a primo actor, English, with that perfect smile and that stupid, sexy fake accent. JANE: But you are not a caring individual. JANE: My Dad... JANE: He had so much love in him that you could feel it when he entered the room. JANE: Across all the iterations of yourself, do you think your children ever felt even a MODICUM of that?

FUCKING OUCH SHE'S GOING FOR THE JUGULAR

JANE: Jade? Terrifying, JANE: I hate even thinking about it. JANE: And I don't doubt for a second that there were more. JANE: How do you imagine they turned out?

That's right, I've only played part 1 but Hiveswap indicates there were other children, with him even using Roxy as babysitter for his frequent absences. The Page of Hope, er... with Hope's phallic and white-blast reproductive symbolic connotations, er... might spread his seed a little wide.

JAKE: (I finally grew the gumption to get off the back foot, and were all going to meet the reaper regardless.) JANE: Let's face it. I held you accountable. JANE: Without me, you'd have left Tavros behind in a peanut factory. JANE: Asphyxiating on the floor, crying "Daddy, where are you! Daddy!" DIRK: (Dude.) JAKE: (JOLLY JESUS FUCKING CHRISTMAS!!!) JANE: What the fresh hell are you mumbling to yourself? JANE: Y- JAKE: WILL YOU SHUT YOUR GODDAMN CAKE HOLE!!!!!!! JANE: !!!!!!

YEAH THAT'S TOO MUCH INSULT FOR EVEN HIM TO TAKE. Even Brain Ghost Dirk is shocked at how low she's going. CHEW HER OUT, ENGLISH!

(==>)

JAKE: Listen to you, lecturing me about parenting and flagellating me with fucking... infanticidal peanut snuff fantasies! JAKE: Tavros isnt even allergic to peanuts anymore! JANE: What?

What?

How...?

(==>)

HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED JAKE HOPED HIM BACK TO LIFE OR SOME SHIT?!?! GAMZEE???

JAKE: Hes been cured since he was thirteen! JANE: How???? JAKE: Gamzee. JAKE: Via some vile cosmic caper or another it is *always* gamzee! JAKE: He found out! JAKE: Started rambling on and on about "how motherfuckin' malicious" it was to see "A dIfFeReNtLy AbLeD bRoThEr MiSsIn' OuT oN tHe NiRvAnA oF tHaT nUtTy MoThErFuCkIn' NeCtAr."

Yeah, Jane being in ANY sort of relationship with Gamzee was a war crime towards her whole family and reality itself.

DIRK: (Why are you doing the voice?) JAKE: "ThErE's WhOlEsOmE, hOlIsTiC hEaLiNg PrOpErTiEs AlL uP aNd StUfFeD iNtO tHe HaRmOnIoUs UnIoN oF pB aNd J." DIRK: (You don't need to do the voice.) JAKE: "WhAt EvEn Is ThIs SuLtRy BiTcH oF a LiFe WiThOuT a LiTtLe PeAnUt BuTtEr JeLlY tImE?" DIRK: (It'd be so sick if you stopped doing the voice.) JAKE: Then he pulled the "OuR dUtY aS sTrOnG mAlE mOtHeRfUcKiN' mOdElS iS tO nUrTuRe AnD gUiDe ThAt LoSt LiTtLe LeGuMe-InToLeRaNt LaMb," card. JAKE: "We StRaIgHt Up GoT tO bE tHe ChAnGe WhAt AlL nObOdY eLsE eVeR gOt DoWn To BeInG iN tHe WoRlD, fOr ThE lItTlE nEgLeCtEd NuGgEtS *wE* aLl WaS." DIRK: (Fuck me, then.)

Jake is invoking Gamzee's spirit Hopeways here, he HAS to do the voice, BG-Dirk. No getting around it.

And yeah, Gamzee would find insane fucking ways to abuse their son and Jane would turn a blind eye to it because of her pointless clown lust, it seems. NO WONDER TAVROS KICKED HIS CORPSE!!!!

JANE: He always felt you two had a common tragic upbringing. JAKE: I know... JAKE: After that, the insane clown started stowing peanuts around the mansion, tricking little tavvy into eating them! JAKE: Poor squirt was thrashing throat-first into anaphylactic shock bi-weekly. JAKE: I epipenned him so many times, i learned needlekind! JAKE: Worried myself as sick as our boy was, just wishing that nutty nightmare would nix. JAKE: Then, wham. JAKE: It did! JAKE: Thank god! JANE: I- JANE: I had no idea. JAKE: Of course you didnt! JAKE: You werent there!

Preach, Jake English!!!!! Preach all over this neglectful asshole bad excuse for a mother who gave Tavros privilege and little else!

JAKE: You might have expelled him into existence with your easy-bake tuna canoe.

SDFJ:DSKLJ EASY BAKE TUNA CANOE ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS JAKE XD

FUCK THAT'S HILARIOUS

JAKE: But i kept him alive! JAKE: I raised him! JAKE: Nelsons knickers, half the time it feels like "uncle" fucking gamzee had more hand in his upbringing than you did! JANE: Oh... my... JANE: I never... took a second to stop and think... JANE: I don't remember when he took his first steps. JANE: Or what his favorite food is. JANE: I didn't even fucking breast feed him! DIRK: (Which is fucking crazy, all things considered.) JANE: I don't... even know what his first word was. JAKE: It was "honk." JANE: Jesus Christ.

Oh my God. She's actually fucking seeing it. Maybe only for a moment, but... she's actually fucking SEEING IT. This is a radical breakthrough.

Ever since the talk between Jade, Rose, and Kanaya back there got SO FUCKING REAL, I should have been suspecting... is the stabilization they're attempting at the Plot Point working RETROACTIVELY to make the entire Candy timeline make more sense, and bringing even people as far out of character as Jane Crocker back closer to reality, radiating its effects somewhat backwards in time and not just forwards? To help people like Jane and Jake and John and such finally BREAK OUT of their respective head fogs and truly see what's been going on around them all this time???

(Canon Roxy over on the pursuit ship might even be helping Callie WRITE HER STORY BETTER than Callie started off doing! That would explain a lot, while possibly even providing a Void pocket to keep the plans they're writing to have it influence the main timeline back invisible to the dueling Authors!)

((ALSO also, if you wanted Candy to be closer to Canon, Gamzee's chucklevoodoo influence and Bard of Rage role would have gone a long way to keeping Jane in a relationship with him and unaware of the abuse of her son.))

Jane looks like she's about to come to terms with something serious, but I'm pretty sure we can't have her reverse herself just yet. Which means something is going to make her even madder-- something is going to blow her up and waste some of what she's finally realizing.

Jake might successfully chew her out, say he's leaving her, hang up and fly out from the ship (not telling her he's off to destroy the Orbital Laser), while Jane contends seriously with her sins as she approaches her climactic battle and provides an opportunity for Roxy to possibly save this version of her later...... but something gives me the feeling that this version of Jane is going to be kept irredeemable, which means that the most efficient way narratively to accomplish that... is for Jake to fuck up here by accidentally revealing he's been working for the enemy. By, for example, yelling at her for threatening to destroy the Plot Point when it's their best hope to save the universe/timeline when she knows HE SHOULDN'T KNOW THAT unless he'd known about The Point before all this. At which point he would HAVE to vamoose in a jiffy to avoid capture, and Jane would be too enraged to fully dwell on her failings in motherhood and relationships just yet. I think in the next couple pages we'll see which happens.

(AND, as I've pointed out repeatedly in the Epilogues and my earlier HS^2 liveblog-- (NO WONDER Jane never resurrected Gamzee even though she FULLY had the power to do so, and held an entire public funeral to appease his followers without revealing that she could have snapped her Lifey fingers and revived him this whole fucking time! She kicked him off the ship in the first place before Vriska killed him after all.)

Please tell me I haven't hit the image limit yet I HAVE to keep reading...

(==>)

JANE: He must hate me. JAKE: Oh, janey... JANE: It's true. JANE: Look at the way he acted during the hostage negotiations. JANE: His life was threatened, and Tavros didn't call out to me once! JANE: Like he... he knew I had other concerns. JAKE: Well, JAKE: You do.

Yeah, Jane never prioritized her family. She debated saving Tavvy mainly for the cameras.

JANE: Do you think I want to? JANE: I wanted this family! JANE: I can't help how much goddamn pressure I'm under! JAKE: Nobody asked you to shoulder any of that. JAKE: ...Dear. JANE: I had to! JANE: The rest of you couldn't be trusted! JANE: None of you even bothered to graduate high school! JANE: While you were all being shut-ins, and self-destructing, and fucking... cavorting!!! I was making public appearances. JANE: Somebody had to represent us, so people wouldn't assume the worst! JANE: They waited 5000 years for us, and for what? To see there was no plan, no reason, that none of their gods were really on their side. JANE: I had to become an adult before ANY of you decided to catch up. JANE: Sigh. JANE: If Tavros never felt any love from me, it's because I barely had anything left to give.

Holy shit, Jane feels the same way as Jade. Trying frantically to live up to the title of Goddess for the planet because she feels OBLIGATED to by her self-esteem, except she took a different route and threw herself into the role permanently at the expense of her family.

JANE: No wonder you both left. JAKE: !!!!!!! JAKE: Er... im not following. JANE: Come on, now, Jakey. When you went to go stay with John. JAKE: Zooks, you knew id skittered away this whole time? JAKE: And you arent mad? JAKE: Why? JANE: Because I love you, you bobo. JANE: I have loved you since I was 13. JANE: Sure, going off the map right after my father died was not the kindest timing. JANE: But you were always going to come back. JANE: And I mastered forgiving you a long time ago.

Whoaaa.

JANE: I even forgave you for Dirk. JAKE: Forgave me for... for being with him? JANE: What? JANE: No, I was always an ally first when it came to that. JANE: What's a... a dalliance between bros, really? DIRK: (Word.)

What is she talking about now? Is she blaming JAKE for Dirk unaliving himself in the Candy timeline???

Okay I'm paranoid about hitting the image limit soon and I'm willing to defer this revelation for JUST a moment, so let me post this now and start immediately writing my third liveblog post of the day. :)

[fourswords]

okay i made some little characterization notes for my four sword heroes meet au. i say "little" but i discovered that there's a 4096-character limit on text blocks on tumblr which i was wholly unaware of before until a message popped up about it. lmao

smithy, hero of the minish (from the minish cap): smithy is energetic & independent, like his game explicitly states him to be & makes him out to be respectively. which makes him great at adventuring but bad at teamwork. is used to and thrives off of doing everything himself because of his game so he can get quietly annoyed if/when one of the others try to do something for him (i.e. kill a monster before he gets there). he's got the worst resting bitch face of them all and the others sometimes poke fun at him for it but he's definitely one of the most outwardly kind of them all. he worries over the others if they're not feeling well and is eager to help them out. his voice is sort of on the quieter side—except if rides on a mine cart or something in which case he has the loudest yelling voice imaginable. he doesn't really think much of knights because of their general uselessness (and stupidity HAHA) in the minish cap so sometimes when knight or light say things about being knights of hyrule he just kind of gives them a little side-eye like "....yeah alright." he loves doing acrobatic stunts that would kill a lesser child and he gets better at them each day. REALLY good at swordfighting because he grew up around them in the forge & grandpa smith was stated to be an extremely good swordsman in his youth so he was giving him pointers from the minute he was old enough to know what a sword was. and he also trained with the eight blademasters scattered around hyrule (swiftblade & his relatives) but in the end he doesn't really like or care about fighting except when he has to do it, so you'll find him turning down invitations to spar more often than not. is the first to just wander off without saying anything and so the other three are forced to come chasing after him. that's how they get places.

four, hero of the four sword (from the four swords manual): four is a relaxed, go-with-the-flow sort of person, but kind of in an obnoxious way where you can tell he acts like that sometimes to purposefully irritate people who may be more of a stickler for rules and planning. he isn't loud, but he certainly isn't quiet—i'd describe it as more "strong" than anything. despite his looseness he DOES know what he's doing and he speaks like it, which is funny because he can go from stealing light's cap off his head and running away (he tried it once with smithy and nearly got his hand taken off because smithy's cap is precious to him) to a fighting stance in a literal split second. he does become the most serious of them all when dealing with something that actually calls for seriousness—vaati, for example. he's very fluid with his movements as well and very hard to hit in a battle or spar because of it. despite this he can't quite pull off gymnastic stunts like smithy can just because he was never really interested in trying but he's definitely better at what he CAN do than knight or light. because all he ever does is travel around (and dodge questions about where he lives/if he has any living family or friends/etc.) he's very good with navigation and figuring out (or just plain Knowing) what's edible and what's inedible. it's a necessary skill considering he travels light and as such usually has to look for food every day instead of like...accumulating it and preserving it to eat later (to the bewilderment of the other three because WHY would you willingly choose to live like that when there's a whole village of people who named you a hero for saving the girls kidnapped by vaati who would probably be more than happy to give you a place to stay. four dodges the question again).

knight, has no hero title (from the four swords game): ah, my favorite little living personification of the charlie brown "i got a rock" scene and the color beige. knight is a jack-of-all-trades with a more even personality to match—he could be accused of never feeling one thing too strongly, which he doesn't really appreciate but eh, what can you do (<-THIS IS WHY). because of this he has a tendency to play mediator if any of the others start getting too deep into an argument. he does have a little streak of playful competitiveness, which usually leads to little races or climbing challenges or other things with light (who is MUCH more competitive). he's usually the one who gets teamed up on by light and four (who like to tease him and/or gang up on him during a spar) but he honestly doesn't mind because he thinks they're funny. if one of the other links were upset then he's their first choice for a person to vent to or just sit with—he's good at listening, even if he feels a bit awkward or bad at offering actual advice unrelated to teamwork or fighting techniques or whatnot (really living up to the "knight" nickname). he's very steadfast. probably has some sort of budding romance going on with his zelda (hilarious to me because her design is so unique and pretty and then he's just: 🧍‍♂️). surprisingly his natural speaking voice is at a decent volume, and he tends to default to a more formal choice of words if he doesn't really know what to say/is stuck with making small talk for some reason—sometimes he'll just be talking normally about normal things but the person he's talking to is left with the impression that they just received an order from a commanding officer. he panicked.

light, hero of light (from the four swords adventures manga): light, is perhaps the one i have to talk about the least because he's got a whole manga about splitting his inner self open for the world to see, with a metric fuckton of dialogue and characterization to boot (smithy also has quite a lot of characterization within his game but it's more obvious with light). he's LOUD he EXCLAIMS things he LOVES TO FIGHT he's SMART he's THE MOST OUTWARDLY EMOTIONAL. and so on and so forth. he's the first to start worrying over the others if he thinks something's wrong and actually does provide a really good listening ear and advice (green) or sparring buddy (blue) or intellectual conversationist (vio) or just a person to be silly and have fun with (red). he's marked by his extreme impulsiveness and willingness to just throw himself headfirst into Situations on a level unmatched by the other three. since he and four are extremely close in age (probably only separated by a few months) they tend to stick around each other more often than not and just Get Into It for funsies (which is fun to me because i don't think four has any friends and light has exactly one close friend in zelda and two newer friends in erune and shadow. and currently he can't roughhouse with shadow because shadow is stuck in his literal shadow. it's enrichment for both of them). which means knight is constantly having to be like "guys c'mon quit roughhousing when you're injured" or something. he likes talking to smithy as well because smithy has a lot of blacksmithing knowledge already stored up in that little head of his and the part of him that vio was formed from thinks it's really interesting. i feel like he would have a lot of respect for four and knight because teamwork seems to come so effortlessly to them and. well. it took him a While to get around to that. his main strength is being a powerhouse that hits like a truck compared to the rest of them. i'm carrying over his peculiar little ability to sense dark world portals from his game because i think it'd be fun. is the only one who fought ganon but thinks that ganon wasn't that big of a deal because it took one (1) blast from the four swords + zelda to seal his ass away whereas vaati literally took shadow killing himself to go down permanently. naturally this makes the others assume that ganon wasn't a big deal as well. links from other games would beg to differ on this topic but unfortunately none of them are here now are they

[satansbastards]

haiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!! ur unwitness protection program thoughts. hand them over

okay get ready im about to launch them at you at mach 10

I don't have much in the way of who the individual members are because we just don't have much to go off of. Will hasn't really told us anything about them besides the fact that the group existed. (my brain just isn't letting me come up with ideas without at least SOME prior information)

I'm trying to go back through all the rolled episodes to see if I missed anything so current thoughts are based solely off of what I've been told and shown through the show itself.

Read more here cause I have a whole ass essay. Sorry not sorry.

Obv major spoilers for Prime Defenders and friends I have so many sad thoughts. Might post more after these ones but this is all the stuff that's been most on my mind about the UPP

We know Deadwood has issues with people going missing, whether or not those dissapearances are paranormal in nature or not. Who's to say? I wanna believe that while the group originally formed as a general way to investigate the spooky stuff going on around town, it ended off as a group of kids trying to find these poor souls who went missing.

I feel like they all absolutely could see spirits and monsters like William said, but in the sense of like, only being able to see out of the corners of their eyes. He mentioned everything being fuzzy and just out of sight, and I've seen stuff like that in like, John Dies at the End where average people can really only see otherworldly stuff from their peripheral vision.

William either had the best vision of the group or was just the best at investigating. Because I DO remember that in the rolled after the session zero Charlie mentioned that William had been out with his whole group and was the only one who saw the light of the wisp and ran off.

Aside from investigating missing people, he's also mentioned that they did investigate abandoned buildings and whatnot. I feel like UPP was trying to figure out just what exactly these monsters and spirits even were. Think like Gravity Falls with those journals cataloging the various creatures around the town. (this is also where the pacific northwest vibes I used to get for Deadwood before you mentioned how much better the Midwest would fit had come from.)

Give me the William Wisp monster manual Charlie you and I both know he would have made one.

Last big thing regarding the group is less of a coherent thought and more of a genuine question I have. How did they split up? I know William left because he felt he was a danger but! Did the UPP split up on good or bad terms with William?

We haven't gotten any sort of confirmation about whether or not they still keep in contact. Nothing, no texts, emails, calls. Not a single thing. Is this by William's choice or did his friends cut contact because they were afraid of him?

His parents likely have next to no knowledge about the supernatural but his friends DID. Are these thoughts William has had about whether or not he's even a person, even still himself, coming directly from him? To an extent I'd still say yes, but a very sinking feeling in my gut tells me he's had a very similar converstion before. With his old friends.

Did they ever talk to him about everything? Did they just not accept that he even COULD be William? They know people go missing a lot and don't come back. They likely knew that William also went missing, if Charlie is still sticking to his original draft for his origin.

How long was Will missing, had they given him up for dead and when he came back they assumed he wasn't the same William they knew? Did the monsters coming after Will only confirm those suspicions?

Did they ever even find a body or did William just "myseriously" reappear some time later? I can't say I even fully blame them for not trusting that if that was the case. As much as it hurts to think about, they were all scared kids and it's really hard to trust your friend who's been missing for god knows how long returning like nothing had happened. In Deadwood? With all these other monsters?

I can be upset about this possibility all I want but at the end of the day, I can see it happening. And understand where they're coming from. I just really wanna know what Will's current relationship with his old friends is. :(

That's all I've got at the moment! Feel free to rant about my thoughts and correct me on anything I misrembered or maybe stuff that was mentioned in the Rolled episodes cause I haven't fully gone through those yet! Thanks for letting me rant about this I love this so much.

[ironmanstan]

hi rohan how did u figure out u were autistic? p much all of my irl friends (who are nearly all autistic, if it's of any relevance) think i am, and i relate to all the diagnostic criteria, but i feel like i "can't" be because i don't know if i did some of the common autistic experiences (practicing facial expressions in the mirror, the feeling that everyone else got a manual on social stuff and you didn't, idk if i get meltdowns, not understanding figurative speech or idioms, etc) and i can't tell if it's because they presented differently in me or if i'm just not autistic. i know i have sensory issues, i know i stick to routines a lot (but i don't get anxious when they're interrupted? i don't like it, but i deal with it), i know my tone of voice is very flat, i know i shut down if i'm in a social situation where i don't know what i'm supposed to do (which doesn't happen often, but it has happened), i know i have intense, specific interests, but i also have adhd so they could just be hyperfixations, i know i relate to hyperlexia, though i don't enough about it to comfortably say i was hyperlexic, i know that, as previously mentioned, nearly all of my friends are autistic (and the ones that aren't are adhd) and so i definitely get along better with nd people than nt ones, i know my brother is autistic, if that's of any relevance, and i took a lot of the tests on embrace-autism and consistently scored past the thresholds, but i don't "feel autistic," i guess? there's a sense of alienation from my peers present, but i've lived in a very white area my entire life so it could just be from that, and i don't know that it's all that intense. i'm generally both easy-going and a bit oblivious, so i'm often "in my own world," plus my episodic memory is absolutely horrid, so i have no clue if i miss social cues. this is getting very long so i'm going to cut this off here, but if you have any advice, it'd be appreciated, and if you guess which one of ur mutuals this is, please give me the guise of anonymity. thank you and so sorry for the absolute monster this ask is

(Dw anon I understand you’re on anon for a reason I would never try to discover your identity <3. [and sorry if you’re one of my mutuals i haven’t responded to dms for ive just been all over the place and busy latelykjhdkfdg])

Hellooo, thank you for the ask! This is a long ask and gonna be a long answer. I also haven’t edited this a whole lot outside of rereading it a few times, and I apologize if I have some very long blocks of text in this but I did my best to break it up, so ig buckle in for that lol. I'm not gonna get too personal bc again public tumblr post but i'll do my best to help ya.

Ig ill start by saying how i figured out i was autistic? And then my opinions on autism and diagnosis criteria of it and it being diagnosed in general bc I have a Lot of thoughts on this, I used to hyperfixate on psychology for a while lmao but I am a teen and I am no expert, I just feel my thoughts on some things alongside my thoughts on my own autism might be relevant here.

Honestly i relate to what you're saying a lot anon, I didn't feel a disconnect between myself and other people for a long time, and even when I did a lot of the time it could be chalked up to racism or being surrounded by people who treated me weirdly for being mixed, or it could be chalked up to me just being a gullible kid, or living in a toxic/abusive household and not knowing how to relate to people who didn't. For years and years I thought "oh this is just how it is."

I think making friends was a real turning point for me, because those were people who acknowledged my weirdness but didn't turn me away because of it. Unsurprisingly, most of my closest friends and partners are/have been neurodivergent in some way, which I think chalks up to me being more comfortable around people who I'm understood by. And me, having autism, ig being less put off by people not conforming to social rules and being "weird" bc that's how i am, and if anything, i think it makes it easier for me to connect to others.

The biggest thing after gaining friends that pushed me into realizing I was autistic, was learning what masking is. Masking is the act of hiding your symptoms and presenting yourself as neurotypical in social situations so as to not alienate yourself and to keep up with a situation that does not accommodate you. A lot of autistic people mask without realizing it, thinking that everybody has to work harder to pick up on social cues, everybody studies social situations even in the most minor of ways, everybody mirrors the people around them to try and keep conversation flowing without issue, everyone has responses to conversations mapped out in their head, almost like a script, everybody jokes constantly because having a reaction of laughter and being seen as quirky and eccentric is better than getting told you're too quiet or you're weird, everybody feels extremely anxious in new social situations because they have no plan for this and don't have a mask prepared.

Right?

Social issues are also present in ADHD but whilst social issues in ADHD stem from a lack of ability to focus on conversation and invest in something that may or may not give the dopamine hit ADHD forces you to seek out, autism is the act of being thrown in water and being told to swim without experience. Some of us remain calm and realize we can float, even if it takes all our stamina, and some of us sink to the bottom, needing help and accommodation to pull us out. Autism is a spectrum and not having some symptoms or presenting them in different ways from other autistic people doesn't always mean you are not autistic.

I think the idea that you must feel a sense of disconnect between yourself and others socially heavily relies on having ties to others in the first place. Someone who has no close friends growing up is not going to be able to weigh this accurately. The other issue is that a lot of the time you never look at yourself and think you are socializing incorrectly because the way you socialize is going to be what you think is normal. I didn't realize my voice can be largely monotonous at times when I forget to mask until my friends pointed it out. Now I know I don't mask my voice when I'm most comfortable. I only fake having a "normal" voice due to being seen as unfeeling, cold/angry, and emotionless by people who do not enjoy my "weirdness".

Figuring out the social differences between yourself and others I think is the hardest thing to weigh. You have to look at yourself very hard and unravel layers of: questioning if you are masking, figuring out who you as a person truly are and how you truly act when you are you're most comfortable, and then questioning if how you act is how society believes most people act, or if you fall on the wayside.

I also think unconsciously, neurotypicals can notice when somebody isn't like them, which leads to a lot of autistic people being bullied or othered or seen as extremely weird whether it be for showing affection "strangely", or emoteing "strangely". For example there's often a sentiment autistic people are either not emotional enough, or overly emotional. Or both, depending on the situation (someone having a meltdown or autistic shutdown and being overly emotional vs that same person in their day-to-day not knowing how to express gratitude outside of a monotonous "thank you"). On the flipside, I think autistic people also sometimes get a sense that neurotypical people are different from us, and if we get this sense, it leads us to over-perform, trying to live up to this same status of baseline ability everybody else seemingly already knows how to get to. We as autistic people do not know how to be neurotypical though, leading some of us to be overly observant of other people's behaviors, even if we interpret them incorrectly. This over-observance alone is something I think most neurotypical people would not do, what reason do they have to study their social partners? A more concrete example of this (which's a little funny to me) is how when I was younger and didn't know how to speak to people online I once lurked in a discord server of people who I'd later become friends with, for a year straight, because it was the first real space where i could actually see other people have conversations and bond, and I could figure out how they did it so I could follow in their footsteps and do the same. This line of actions and thought is where the "born without the same manual everyone else was given" sentiment comes from, though it isn't a required experience.

Even sensory issues aren't a required experience, but a lot of us still have them. Sensory issues, stims, tics, things like dyscalculia and dyslexia, flat affects, general monotony. All comorbidities common with autism but not required. Thank you actually for bringing up hyperlexia bc that was a term I did not know prior to this lmao.

Low and high empathy, two of these common things found in autistic people, are funny. Because the way they are measured is always measured against a neurotypical sense of empathy. Like, with low empathy, it strikes me as similar to loveless aromantics being contrasted against alloromantic people. With loveless aromanticism you have that wedge between yourself and the term “love”, even though you may still care for people and even be affectionate towards them, you do not see “love” as something required or necessary because you experience attachments different to most people or you've been ostracized for feeling love but not in a romantic sense. Empathy in autistic people I feel is similar. Empathy is something I can feel in some ways, in small doses, in specific situations, but I feel a strange disconnect with it. And I think a lot of neurotypical people take this as a sign of coldness, detachment, emotional unavailability, and conveniently forget sympathy exists. Or even just do not process that not having empathy, or sympathy, isn’t a bad thing or something that makes you lack the ability to care about others and want them to be doing well (which leads to the demonization of people with ASPD/sociopathy).

It’s even funnier to me considering this, that a lot of autistic people are aromantic or asexual. I think that fact is less due to us just straight up “not understanding social situations to the point of being aro/ace” because that’s just not how that works. Instead I think it’s similar to how a lot of autistic people are also trans. Because we do not understand social norms we feel less beholden to them, and discovering our neurodivergence means being introspective already, and introspection and being okay with what you find is what’s necessary to discover you’re something most of society will misunderstand. And aro/aceness is something that is both heavily misunderstood, and not widely spoken about. Aro/aceness not only breaks down the social norm of heteronormativity, but also allonormativity.

The difference between hyperfixation and special interests are also something not widely known about, with a lot of people conflating the two. Over time I think I've come to understand the difference, but not every autistic person will agree with me and some may view it as completely different from how I see it, which is perfectly ok, we all have our own views and I'm not against hearing those alternative to my own.

To me, hyperfixations are fixations that are destined to leave eventually, and aren't necessarily part of your identity. I think the confusion usually stems from how a lot of people say spins (special interests) are something lifelong that can fade and pop back up, and are core to your identity, when hyperfixations can mirror this in a way. With hyperfixations, I think any interest you have is in some way going to stick with you forever. You are typically going to look at a show you liked as a kid and still feel some fondness or attachment to it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it will become a core part of your identity. Hyperfixations are also something that people get for different reasons than spins I think. Hyperfixations source from the brain’s need for dopamine, and so it finds something to cling to, getting that hit of dopamine, and then dropping it for the next thing. If the hyperfixation happened to be something in line with your other interests, it makes sense to come back to it or have it crop back up over and over as a fresh hyperfixation.

With autism, I feel spins line up more with how I think autistic people are more likely to kin characters. I think a lot of autistic people struggle with recognizing their autism because even if we are introspective, a lot of the time it’s hard for us to understand what we find in ourselves, especially if we have no tangible example to relate our experiences to. I think this is why a lot of people who kin tend to be autistic, understanding the traits we see in ourselves when they are represented in a character we like makes understanding ourselves that much easier. It also I think makes some of us feel strange seeing other people kin characters we kin, because in a way it loops back around, and we end up feeling personally bonded to or related to that character, since we see ourselves so strongly in them. It’s the same with spins in a way, I feel. The distinction I make with spins is that even if they fade, they will always come back at one point or another, because they are core to my identity. JJBA, I think classifies as a spin for me, between the art style being something I heavily enjoy, comics being something I’m heavily interested in, and the characters being either relatable to me or just causing me immense pain lmao, all these things make it a very core interest of mine where, if you know me, you’ve 100% heard me talk about it at least once. Hyperfixations may leave lasting effects sure but spins I’ve always seen as something core to you, something that relate to who you are as a person and what you enjoy and often stick with you forever because of that, unless somehow you change into an entirely different person or simply grow out of the things that made it a spin for you in the first place.

Routine is also something not necessary to the autistic experience, but I think a lot of people misunderstand what routine means in an autistic context. Routine to most usually means doing things on a schedule, certain things at certain times. To someone with autism though, routine can be a plethora of things. Routine to me is when I, in the back of my head, tell myself that I will work for a few hours and then play games for a few hours so I can keep myself on track and get something done when I am low energy/do not have enough spoons. Routine to me means having rituals and orders in which I do things because I’m used to them and doing something different feels unnecessarily strange and kind of uncomfortable. It means cleaning my room and getting water every time I call somebody because it just makes me feel more comfortable and if I don’t get a chance to do this I feel strange. It means going to the same places in video games constantly because they’re familiar. It means watching the same movies over and over when i feel bored because familiarity, routine, is what I know and what is comfortable. It means getting stressed when I don’t talk to the people I regularly talk to for too long, it means getting stressed when new people or people I don’t usually talk to start messaging me. It means feeling stressed when my cat passes away because now my routine at night has changed, she will not sleep next to me and I do not need to make a space for her by my side (even then, unconsciously I still do sometimes). It means eating the same foods for a week straight because you need something to cling to and nothing else feels right except for this and everything else feels off or bad or just not up to par. It means listening to the same song for a week straight not even for the sensory input anymore but because you need something you know so you don’t need to expect something new. It means planning out calls with friends or outings because not knowing what to expect stresses you out. It’s doing the same things in a stupid way over and over again even if something else is more efficient because doing something else means changing and change is stressful and sometimes harder than whatever you’re already doing.

Routine is something that exists because it helps ground us. Not because all autistic people particularly need to have schedules or something (though some do), but expecting something to happen helps ease us out of the pain change brings with it. It also doesn’t necessarily mean shutting down or melting down when change does happen. Personally, since I also have PTSD which also affects my mood, I’m more likely to get angry, anxious, and frantic, when change happens, whilst someone else might be mildly annoyed, and someone else could be upset to the point of tears. Autism is a spectrum.

Autism also isn't something to be gatekept. Autism has been under-diagnosed in afab people and people of color and largely only been studied in white amab people, leading most autism diagnoses to be delivered with this in mind, making it extremely hard for non-white non-amab people to be officially diagnosed. There's also a large sense of… idk what to call it… purity culture? On tumblr. Which i believe (amongst other tumblr dramas, such as slur discourse and the like) is caused by white people. What I'm talking about is the opinion that doctors know best above all and doing such things as seeking a second opinion or believing what you think, over a doctor, is some heinous crime. Meanwhile black afab people and indigenous people are often medically abused by their doctors, an act steeped in a lot of history people like to forget about. (tw in the link for anti-black racism and details about medical operations and malpractice)

All of this leads to my next point, this artificial difficulty around receiving a diagnosis, and the discrimination that you can go through for having a diagnosis, leads me to believe autism is something that isn't bad to self diagnose. I think self diagnosis often gets the stereotype of being attributed to young teens who want to be quirky, but nobody seriously keeping up with saying they have a disorder is going to fake it for years. Teens have said stupider things and done stupider things than lie about having ADHD on twitter. If autism sounds like something you genuinely have and you do not have the privilege to get diagnosed (bc i didn't even mention the costs for diagnosis) and if recognizing the issues you have and finding coping mechanisms or at least a sense of community would help you reclaim this piece of yourself and help you move forward in your life feeling like you know yourself better, than i think by all means, claim the label. Labels can change, people can be misdiagnosed even officially, it's your life, do not let anyone but yourself dictate how you should see yourself. I hope this helped ^__^ good luck <3

Also, an edit: autism and other neurodivergencies are extremely genetic. If you or a sibling is neurodivergent, chances are one of your parents or grandparents is. Therefore the chance of you also being neurodivergent in some way significantly raises. A lot of the time when a child is diagnosed with ADHD its recommended for their parents to get screened for it because of how likely it is that one of them has it, that stays true for autism, I don't know to what extent however.

[sebastianshaw]

RP Meme from The Lost Boys

I told you to stay off the boardwalk.

Hey, I liked that song.

I don't see any boogeymen or nasty guys.

Wait. That's from my era!

That's the ocean air.

Smells like someone died.

Looks like he's dead. No, he's just a deep sleeper.

If he's dead, can we go back to [PLACE]?

What's wrong with this picture? There's no TV. Have you seen a TV? I haven't seen a TV.

You're the only woman I ever knew who didn't improve her situation by getting divorced.

A big legal war wasn't going to improve anybody's situation.

Ouch. My hair.

Talk about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

We've got some rules around here. Second shelf is

mine. That's where I keep my root beers and my double-thick Oreo cookies. Nobody touches the second shelf but me.

There's another rule around here, and I want you to pay

close attention. Don't touch anything. Everything is exactly where I want it.

There are some bad elements around here.

You're telling me we've moved to the murder capital of the world?

If all the corpses buried around here were to stand up all at once we'd have one hell of a population problem.

I just like to read the TV Guide. Read the TV Guide, you don't need a TV.

I was so worried. Don't run off like that.

We were that age, too, once. Only they dress better.

You have a generous nature. I like that in a person.

So how may I help you this evening? We have it all.

I look that needy, huh?

You're chasing that girl, aren't you?

I'm at the mercy of your sex glands.

Don't you have something better to do than follow me around all night?

Just scoping your civilian wardrobe.

Listen buddy, if you're looking for the diet frozen-yogurt bar, it went out of business last summer.

That's a very serious book, man.

Only five in existence.

Where the hell are you from? Krypton?

Nobody drives this baby but me.

We have to let it warm up a little. Hear that sound? Just like a baby pussycat.

That's as close to town as I like to get.

It's a pretty cool place. If you're a Martian. Or a vampire.

Are you guys sniffing old newsprint or something?

You think you really know what's happening here, don't you? Well, I'll tell you something. You don't know shit buddy.

This is just our cover. We are dedicated to a higher

purpose. We're fighters for Truth Justice, and the American

way.

Think of it more as a survival manual.

There's our number on the back and pray you never need to call us.

I'll pray I never need to call you.

If you want your ear pierced, I'll do it.

I came this close to being called Moon Beam or Moon Child Or something like that.

I can't beat your bike.

You don't have to beat me, [NAME]. You just have to try

and keep up.

Just you! Come on! Just you!

That's what I love about this place. You ask, and then you get.

I can never sleep with the closet door open, either. Not even a crack.

Don't sneak up on people like that!

What, you don't like rice? Tell me [NAME], how could a

billion Chinese people be wrong? Come on!

You're eating maggots. How do they taste?

Sorry about that. No hard feelings, huh?

Drink some of this, [NAME]. Be one of us.

Give me those sunglasses.

You need sunglasses to talk on the phone?

Are you freebasing? Inquiring minds want to know.

Anything in here that might pass for after-shave?

Have a big date tonight, [NAME]?

Lose the earring, [NAME]. It's not you. It's definitely

not you.

All you do is give attitude lately.

Go take your bath.

What did you do to my dog, asshole?

I didn't hurt him. He bit me. This is my blood.

Why did he bite you, huh? What did you do to him?

He was protecting you.

Look at your reflection in the mirror. You're a creature of

the night, [NAME]. Just like out of a comic book.

My own brother/sister/friend/etc, a goddam shit-sucking vampire.

You wait 'til[NAME] finds out!

Just let me talk. Wait a minute! [NAME]!

You did the right thing by calling us.

Does the sunlight freak him out?

He wears sunglasses in the house.

He always had bad breath, though.

He's a vampire all right. Here's what you do.

I can't do that! He's my brother/sister/mother/friend/etc!

You better get yourself a garlic T-shirt, buddy. Or it's

your funeral.

I think we have to have a real long talk about something.

[NAME] help! He's coming to get me!

[NAME], help me! Open up! Help me! [NAME], open the window!

So what are you, the flying nun?

We're gonna work this out. We*re gonna work this out. Trust

me, okay?

I thought I saw something on my window, but I guess I got carried away.

I would like to have a personal life too.

Can I sleep in here with you tonight?

You smell like garlic.

What's happening to me, [NAME]?

I don't know how to help you.

Aren't we friends anymore?

Then let's act like friends. Let's talk.

We could talk about anything you want to talk about.

I have more serious things on my mind than girls and school. Things I'm dealing with.

Looks like I wasn't the only one who got lucky last night.

The dog chased my mom like the Hounds of Hell from Vampires

Everywhere.

We've been aware of some very serious vampire activity in

town for a long time.

[PLACE] has become a haven for the undead.

As a matter of fact, we're almost certain that ghouls and

werewolves occupy high position at City Hall.

Kill your brother/sister/boyfriend/aunt/best friend/etc, you'll feel better!

Look, it says here that if you kill the head vampire all half-vampires will return to normal.

Does he know who the head vampire is?

You'll have to kill him. And if you don't, we will.

Vampire require a daytime protector, a guardian to watch

over them as they sleep. Fierce dogs, the Hounds of Hell,

are often employed for this purpose.

Truth, Justice, The American way triumphs.

Smells good. When do we eat?

Are we gonna have company again?

Well, you are the man of the house and I'm not coming in until you invite me.

He promises to behave if you come back.

I didn't know you were having guests.

Our batting average isn't terrific, is it? Zero for two.

You're so sweet to him.

I don't know what got in to him. He's not like that.

If you ever want to see [NAME] again, you better come with

us now.

Initiation's over, [NAME]. Time to join the club.

Don't kill me, [NAME]. I'm basically a good kid, so just

don't kill me.

Just work with me and I can help you. You'll be okay.

Is she one of them?

You shut the window and lock your door.

She's one of them! And don't tell me it doesn't make her a

bad person, [NAME]!

Yes, and it's my fault. You would've not met me, if I

hadn't liked you. I tried to warn you.

You drank someone's blood? Are you crazy?

We're not them.

Why didn't you kill me last night?

You're supposed to be my first.

What are you doing here? What do you want from me?

Don't kill anybody until we get back to you!

I got connections.

The night crawler. The bloodsucker. El Vampiro.

I don't want you going down there.

Look, this isn't a comic book, [NAME]. These guys are

brutal killers.

Who'd you rather go down in with you? Them or me?

If something happens down there, I won't have the strength

to protect you.

This time I'll protect you.

Even though you're a vampire, you're still my brother/sister/friend/etc

If you try to stop us, or vamp out in any way, I'll stake

you without even thinking twice about it!

Where did you say you met these guys?

Don't you touch her. Stay away from her.

Flies and the undead go together like bullets and guns.

There must be coffins here someplace.

I thought they'd be in coffins.

That's what this cave is. It's one giant coffin.

Right now they're at their most vulnerable. Easy pickings.

Remember. You just have to kill the leader.

We don't know which one he is.

I guess we'll just have to kill them all.

What's that, a little vampire humor? It wasn't funny.

Good night, bloodsucker.

We blew it, man! We lost it!

We unraveled in the face of the enemy!

They pulled a mind-scramble on us!

We don't ride with vampires.

"Burn rubber" does not mean warp speed!

Your dog knows a flesh-eater when he smells one.

The sun goes down. They'll be looking for us.

[PLACE] is crawling with vampires

They're coming to the house as soon as it gets dark!

I'm gonna see [NAME] tonight, and you're trying to ruin it for me.

I don't know what you don't want me to see.

I'm not talking about [NAME]! To hell with [NAME]!

Good. That's just the way we like it.

We've got a date tonight?

They'll be coming for all of us.

It's just old memories coming back.

Why are you so jumpy tonight?

He seemed so sincere, but it's insane.

Tell me. I promise not to laugh. Honest.

I think I should warn you all when a vampire dies, it's never a pretty sight.

Some yell and scream. Some go quietly. Some explode. Some implode. But all will try to take you with them.

Don't go out there! Stop him!

I say we terminate them right now.

You're mine. You killed [NAME]

Try the holy water, dead breath!

I nailed one of them downstairs with a bow and arrow.

We trashed the one that looked like Twisted Sister.

We totally annihilated his night stalkin' ass!

Death to all vampires!

We are awesome monster bashers!

Holy shit! The attack of Eddie Monster!

Stop! Get away from him! Just stay away from him! He's just

a little boy.

You're afraid to face me, [NAME]?

I tried to make you immortal.

You tried to make me a killer!

Stop fighting me, [NAME]. I don't want to kill you. Join us.

It is too late, my blood is in your veins.

Don't let them see me like this.

What happened to your face?

I knew it. You are the head vampire.

You're the secret [NAME] was protecting.

Don't ever invite a vampire into your house, you silly boy/girl/etc.

It renders you powerless.

Has everyone gone crazy? What's the matter with all of you?

It was you I was after, all along, [NAME]

It was all going to be so perfect, [NAME]

Just like one big happy family.

Great. The bloodsucking Brady Bunch.

I still want you, [NAME]. I haven't changed my mind about that.

I didn't invite you this time, [NAME]

Don't you touch my mother/father/son/dog/etc

Don't fight, [NAME]. It's so much better if you don't fight.

How much do you think we should charge them for this?

One thing about living in [PLACE] I never could

stomach--all the damn vampires.

[fluffynin]

I rolled my eye lights as the three humans bickered. When I had Kris tell them to explain the so-called "strengthening" system of these weapons... Well, all three came up with different answers.

Which, with thinking about Kris and I being technically the same being, but so different... Makes sense as we have confirmed all four of us Legendary Heroes come from different Japans, or worlds to be exact.

So why are they saying the other is lying?

"HEY, HEY! CALM DOWN! WE SHOULDN'T FIGHT!" Sansy floated over with Papy, both brothers pulling at the souls of Ren and Motoyasu to seperate the trio.

"yeah. we are kind of up a shit creek without... oh, wrong saying," Papy flinched as he corrected himself.

Huh? Why was... Oh, yeah. My job as the taxi of the River Maze. I wonder if I can still access that place with our current situation. At least if we can get back to the Void, we can vacate any other Gasters who have ended up in there to this world.

Not a fix, but should be way safer than the constant threat of Anomalies trying to eat whatever code they find. Plus, I rather put my trust in other versions of myself than whatever so-called "help" that lousy excuse of a king was gathering. At least if there are other scientists and doctors like Kris and me, we could look into these Waves of Catastrophe properly instead of the half-assed way these humans been doing with summoning who-knows-what and throwing the poor souls into what sounds an all out slaughter.

Which, oddly, looking at my fellow heroes, they are all so young. Sure, techinically I was once human, but I was at least around Kris's age of about 200 years or so, off a few decades since comparing his now Darkner appearance to what he properly is as a magic skeleton. These three never seen the horrors of war. Hell, with the methods they told me... It almost sounds like they never been in a real...

I clapped my hands together and everyone jumped.

"Huh? What?" I yanked on Kris's sleeve to get his attention to my hands

-I think I figured it out.- I signed and opened up the menus.

Each of the humans said they played a game with similar settings to this world. I, myself, love to play MMORPGs and even got pretty well set up in a guild that got pretty good.

Yet, if I use that as a reference, what if the enhancement methods the trio talked about was not of the games they played... But instead it was the best way of enhancement overall for how the world's operating systems worked.

I noticed glitching and a prompt came up with the question if I wanted to adjust my current and only shield: Small Shield

I confirmed and took in a calming breathe.

I was never really good at this, but I've always done it to myself to keep my LOVe at 1. Plus, I currently have a little EXP to spend from the Anomalies I took out before this mess, so it is worth a shot. All I'll lost is EXP which is a win for me either way.

I touched the gem on my shield and felt myself submerged within the depths of its inner being. A huge web of symbols and lines, almost all dulled out. I went to the one that was dimmly glowed more than the others.

I held out my hand with a spark and pushed into the light. The symbol went ablazed and the flames flickered down the lines to other symbols... And branched into new lines and new symbols. I felt a flood of warmth before my senses returned to reality.

"You okay, Iwatani-san?" Itsuki asked.

Ah, right. I always took much longer than Coordinators. A big reason I never did it to others for payment.

Yet, looking through the menus and manual...

Adjustments and transfering of EXP and LOVe to improve stats and such. As well as new branches that demand... Oh, skulls.

Just what is going on with this weird ass world.

Well, let's focus first on my discovery as Adjustments weren't the only thing added to my menu and manual.

"📖⏺" I let the text boxes float up from my mouth.

"Wha?" Motoyasu voiced the confusion on all three humans' faces. Though, even Kris had a high brow arced.

Seriously? We both speak Wingdings and he never spoke shorthand?

"n says the book records?" Papy translated. "o-kay?" The twin skulls looked at each other with worried looks.

Itsuki and Ren, however, had their eyes widened. Itsuki motioned the air and narrowed his eyes. He nearly fell when something happened on the interface only visible to himself and me.

"Oh! The manual records new stuff as we learn it!" Itsuki grinned. "None of us are wrong, but instead all right!"

"But how?" Ren grimanced at his own menus. "I don't get your methods would work to make our weapons stronger." I motioned to Kris.

"Different operating systems, one unit?" Kris asked with decipering my signs. Oh, good. Was a bit worried as our sign lanuages were a bit different with some words.

However, seemed that got the idea across for Motoyasu and Ren.

"So our weapons act like hardware that can take on various software." Ren said as he gotten a glitchy interface. " Wait... Could this be why we can't work together? Our weapons' original systems conflicts with the others?"

"It would explain why we defaulted to different set ups." Motoyasu crossed his arms. "So to make up for not able to work together, we can share our enhancement methods with each other to increase our strength."

I snapped my fingers and did jazz hands with a grin.

"But, what's your method?" I felt the ice in the trio's glares at me.

"We shared ours, yet you haven't said... Oh, right..." They flinched at my double birdie.

"My method is called Adjustment." Kris translated. "It's a bit hard to explain, so it would be easier if you let me do it. I'm not that good, but it should allow the better users of this the means to do it."

"Wait, this isn't a video game mechanic?" Itsuki asked with a raised brow.

"AH! THAT!" Sansy jumped. "YOU REALLY SURE YOU WANNA TRY ADJUSTING THEIR WEAPONS? THEY AREN'T-"

I tapped my shield's gem and signed.

"They are similar enough. I got it to work." Kris crossed his arms. "But what is this Adjustment thing, dear brother." Kris gave me the "Dad Eyes." I felt my throat tightened into a gulp.

-Explain later. Just think of it as the simple version of what turned you from skeleton to human.- Kris's grimance deepened. -I just never thought I could go in reverse. Usually can get the advance method to work with turning human souls into monster kind.-

"I see. So it enhances the soul aspects of the weapons and users." Kris caught the hint and let it go. "It's magic, so it is a little hard to express it in... Human language?" Kris let out a sigh. "At least from our world, magic is usually more expressive than logically explained. Our kind... Our race of humans are the few able to express magic much like other magical races."

"So... You're mages." Ren said with a nod. "Like how VR is common in my world. In a way, it makes since considering Shields were bad in the game I played."

"Wait, the same for you, too?" Motoyasu asked in shock.

"My game also did Shields badly," Itsuki flinched. "Which makes it worse seeing you in a wheelchair, Iwatani-san. It's like you got no straw at all instead of the short straw."

What? I just raised an eyebrow with confusion.

How was being in a wheelchair bad? Hell, these were the best wheels I had in my life! Custom-made and foldable, perfect for someone like me who uses wheels for ease of life.

"ah, right. humans aren't used to n's type." Papy rolled his eyelight.

"I don't get it." Kris huffed. "Doesn't a wheelchair help increase my brother's abilities?"

"Ah, but we will be in combat." Motoyasu gave me a loot of pity. "How can a crippled person-"

Both twins burst into laughter while Kris glared daggers at the three humans. Ah, right, monster kind is used to having to adapt all sorts of ways to help each other living Underground... Especially after the pollution turned the River into the maze twisted with time and space itself.

"What... Oh," Ren went wide eyed. "Right, a mage. When I think how magic is used in the game... Of course a Legendary Hero specializing in magic would focus on defense."

"Huh?" Motoyasu cocked his head.

"Oh, yeah! Pure mages were always weak to close combat. So, instead of having a staff, you have a means of defense as you lob spells at the enemies."

"Wha? Don't cha mean bullets?" Kris snorted. "Spells are a human thing that lack any expression. Bullets are far faster and effect in combat than chanting stupid phrases." Kris snapped his fingers for a bone bullet to appear and he balanced it on the tip of one.

"B-Bullet?" All three asked before they went pale. "Like in... a bullet hell game?"

I guess one could call my magic akin to a magic bullet hell. I sure know the Eighth Fallen probably saw our fights as such.

"Bullet hell?" The skull twins and once skeleton asked with confused dazes.

Me?

I just gave a devish smile.

"👍"

-----------

Trying to get out of the worldbuilding trap with writing linked short fics. This one came from the sketch above and just snowballed into this. Hope it is enjoyable as it was for me to write this.

PS - Correcting some mistakes.

[the-firebird69]

So this guy asked him a batteries outside it's a trumpster how far can you go can you put two batteries on so sure you just getting a hot wire and it really was threatening him to take the battery that's it for a sun supposed to be worried like on the way home hello who the hell knows why there's all these people watching telling this guy is dead out loud in code tell him to get the hell out of here finally the cops rolled around and arrest him for vagrancy cuz he's been sitting out there all morning saying stupid s*** to people they want him to be in that position and that's what they're saying and yeah by the way mac daddy is the one that killed Trump not BG he's being a big a****** to our son is a huge huge moron and a cheapskate I want 30 bucks because he helped him for a minute and said you don't have to pay me at first then change his mind then ran out and his car for 20 minutes and wouldn't let him leave almost got himself run over and my son broke his leg it was a hairline fracture for like 10 years now his like breaks there all the time. And yeah it's cuz he has a retards frontal lobe it's bja they won't do the surgery they won't remove it and let it grow he won't do anything to fix it and he's as nutty as a freaking wood owl and we have to fight him just like these retards we found out and we don't care either you dumb a****** and you're stupid as they are that's good it works great we need to cut the crap stop talking about it and just take their stuff I'm going to stop people like that guy you see him there I remove him until we aren't any so vital and got his wife says you're watching him he said watching him what so I can't remove them you said in the shopping center those are real reasons so whenever he's going to go shopping with to clear them all out of the whole state so we have time and just keep doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it until they're dead and by the way Billy z is the same kind of person he's just a thief Billy zee is worse than you guys are he's stealing all that stuff he's not doing it you got lump in his throat and said I'm sorry but we can't handle this. Trump's bike was good enough for Harley-Davidson he went inside and his quiet he sat down on the stairs and said you were growing a general so he made a Harley-Davidson he makes it with other people but this one is for Harley-Davidson he hasn't done it for ages and ages way back to Indian only mine are changes and here it is so here's a new motorcycle brand new for Harley and it's brand new for the racing circuit and it was our guy and this guy is lying Tommy f let the monsters out to force the ship up and use that his death he said that about and two of those things and a switch for the same wires to the controller it should just be like a couple wires since you're tied in yeah and I don't know where you can put it it won't always on the back but just can't hang up there so he's thinking about it and you try he's going to try and do it with the stock battery and just have someone wire a switch and each one when you switch it will show how much power is on it anyways although it's a little indicator she thought it's a great idea and I'll switch automatically but he likes the idea of manual we like it too cuz it wouldn't actually runs down the switch it so put that as an option but really Trump is like a thief BJ is more so and Tommy f is a general and just a thief and it's very dangerous so you got a little anxious let me see why it's not much of an engineer no.

I'm pretty warrants out of time the f and we suggest you guys do the same that's why I show people I want to show people which party it is it won't bring my stuff to me and you seem like getting stuff he's just like completely unimmune so they're starting to think about it finally

Thor Freya

[jaded-envy]

the experts

Onto chapter two! Thank you for everyone who came to my AMA yesterday - I had a blast and very much appreciated your support. :) As always, you can check out the full story on AO3 or FF.Net - and please be sure to listen along to marshofsleep‘s playlist! You can see both hers and thefishywitchy’s art all together in these posts!

Comments, criticism and reblogs are, as always, highly appreciated. Thank you for reading!

WAYWARD SOULS ACT ONE: PACTS

the experts

"MAKAAAAAAA!" Spirit blubbers as he opens his arms. "My little girl has come home to her papa!"

Maka brushes past him, completely ignoring his look of hurt. "Stein?" she calls, stomping down the hallway. "Stein, where are you?"

"So cruel," Spirit whimpers from where he's crumpled in the doorway. Soul carefully steps around him, nursing his still-aching arm. "You!" he hears him shout and rolls his eyes as the man scrambles upright.

"Stein!" Maka yells again. "Where is he?" she asks, finally acknowledging her father's presence.

"Basement, my darling daughter."

Maka barrels down the stairs, Soul reluctantly in tow. As always, the basement looks like someone set a bomb off in a library - dusty ancient books form precarious towers that Maka expertly weaves around, papers littered with strange languages and symbols flutter in her wake.

"Stein!" Maka bellows as she rounds the corner of the book maze. "We need -"

Stein holds up one long finger. "Yes," he says into the phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder. "Agents Eitri and Gokaho were sent out to investigate the murders that had occurred in your town."

Maka huffs, but wanders over to one of the tables half-buried in books and begins to leaf through them. Soul opts to lean next to the rows of phones, careful of his wound. He reads their labels - "FBI", "CDC", "Animal Control" – and making sure to not disturb the melted silver and empty shotgun shells on the table next to him.

"…I'm sorry, that's classified," Stein drawls, twirling around in his chair. "…That's also classified. That's…yes." He picks at one fingernail idly with a pocketknife. "Perhaps if you had a clearance level high enough -"

Soul's close enough to hear a torrent of angry squawking that pours out of the speaker. Stein winces and holds the phone away from his ear.

"…Yes. Glad to have your cooperation."

Stein hangs up and rubs his temples. "This is why Spirit handles the calls," he mutters to no one in particular. He shakes his head, adjusting his glasses as he focuses on them. "Maka. Soul. What brings you here?" A tilt of his head. “What happened to your arm?”

“A ru-“ Soul begins, before Maka barrels over him.

“We need answers, Stein. And fast. Soul -"

"Makaaaaaa?" Spirit's voice winds around the stacks. "Did you find Stein? Are you hungry? I made sandwiches!"

Soul's stomach chooses that moment to remind everyone, very loudly, that the last thing he ate was a shitty gas station hot dog five hours ago. He looks at Maka, who rolls her eyes. "Go eat," she tells him. "We're gonna be down here a while anyway, and I don't want to hear your whining."

"What about you?" Soul asks her.

"Actually, I'm famished myself," Stein says. He stands up and stretches, cracking his back. "Ever since your call, Spirit has been doing nothing but cleaning and cooking and fussing. I've had to answer the phones and research how to kill a lamia at the same time."

"But this is really important…" Maka says, pouting.

"Come on, Maka," Soul says, taking one of her shoulders and steering her towards the stairs. "Few minutes for eating isn't gonna make a difference."

"We've got a time limit, you know," she grumbles, but allows herself to be led into the hallway.

Soul's mouth is already watering at the smell of melted cheese and crispy bread. Spirit lounges in the doorway, a hopeful look in his eyes. Maka doesn't spare him a glance as she takes a seat next to Stein.

Soul attempts to edge past Spirit, but a hand shoots out and blocks his way. "Nuh uh, not you, not yet," Spirit says, folding his arms.

"Papa," Maka warns.

"Just making sure your partner is being good to you," Spirit simpers. His expression hardens as he glares at Soul. "You haven't tried any funny business with my daughter, have you? Don't think just because you're partners that it means you can take advantage of -"

"Shove off, old man," Soul growls, attempting to push past him.

Spirit grabs his good arm, ignoring Soul’s snarl. "Are you taking care of my little girl?" he demands.

"He traded his soul for my life," Maka replies calmly, digging into her grilled cheese. "So yes."

The blood drains from his face, and Soul ends up having to stabilize Spirit as he swoons. Behind him, Stein lowers his sandwich.

"Perhaps food can come later," he says. 

Just listening to Maka explain Soul's predicament is too much for Spirit, and they end up moving to the living room so he can be dumped onto the couch without Soul constantly needing to grab hold and make sure the man doesn't greet the floorboards face first.

Stein's as quiet and unreadable as ever, still as stone in his armchair. Maka doesn't look at any of them as she relates their encounter with the demon, hiding the waver of her voice with well-timed bites of her sandwich. Soul picks at the food balanced on his lap, and next to him, Spirit slumps against the cushions, not even scolding him for eating on the couch.

"I can't believe it," Spirit whispers. "My little girl…my darling daughter…"

Tone softer than normal, Maka says, "I'm fine, Papa. Soul brought me -"

"You died, sweetheart!" His eyes fix on her face, and there's a glossy sheen to his eyes, one that speaks of old loss and sorrow. "I would hardly call that 'fine'! I told you, I told you over and over, hunting is going to get you killed -"

Her mouth curls. "Just like it got Mama killed?" she asks, overly sweet, and Spirit falters. "Don't worry, Papa. Unlike her, I have a partner that I know I can trust."

Spirit flinches like he's been struck, and even Soul winces at the venom in her words. Maka ignores both of them, lacing her fingers in her lap and looking at Stein. "Moving on, any ideas on what we can do?"

"An arachne, you say." Stein polishes his glasses on his shirt, looking thoughtful. "That does sound familiar…I will have to check the literature, but I believe I may know of the monster you're looking for."

Maka nods. "Good, yes, but what about demon deals? How can we break Soul's?"

Stein rubs his chin. "That will be harder to find out. You've already gone after the demon…Have you read The Munich Manual? I can't remember if there was a passage about demon deals in it…"

"I already checked, and it only went over deals made with black-eyed demons…" She follows him as he gets up and makes his way back into the kitchen.

Soul lets them talk shop, getting up from the couch and setting his plate down on the coffee table. He drifts over to the mantle instead, which overflows with pictures of a younger Maka. He could never get over the shot of her proudly standing over her first ghoul kill with her mom. Most children would be happy with a rabbit.

"Did you really trade your soul for my daughter?" Spirit asks, and Soul jumps at the sudden intrusion on his thoughts.

"Mm." It's not quite a confirmation, but he seems to understand.

"Thank you," he says softly, sincerely. Soul eyes him, but Spirit is too busy staring at younger Maka's bright, beaming face. He reaches out a finger and runs it down the frame of one of the pictures, the weight of loss aging his features. "I worry about her," he confesses, "so much sometimes, but I know I can't…she wouldn’t…" He trails off, looking dejected.

Truth be told, Soul understands Spirit the most out of all of them - dragged into this business by another, more seasoned hunter. Both of them thrust from a world where one's life stretched out in front of them, rife with expectations of jobs and relationships and living to a ripe old age, to an endless parade of nightmarish monsters and small towns and at the end, if one was lucky, a funeral pyre.

"Soul," Maka calls. "We've got a couple of leads," she says as Soul slouches into the kitchen, Spirit in tow. Her mouth is set into a grim line of determination.

"The easier one is this arachne," Stein begins, adjusting his glasses. "According to my research, it's a type of rare monster, known for trapping victims in webs and poisoning them with venom. It eats them, and reproduces itself by biting and turning humans."

Soul pales. "So Wes -"

"It would be unusual for it to keep a victim around for so long," he says. "Unless they had already been turned."

Soul shakes his head. "The demon made it sound like he was being tortured by it."

Stein makes a noncommittal noise. "I have, actually, been hearing rumors of something that could be an arachne in Arkansas. Given how rare they are, if it does turn out to be one, you may be able to gain more information about your brother there."

"Great!" Soul exclaims. "So let's -"

"There's someone in Arizona who's an expert on demons," Maka interrupts him loudly. "A witch. Supposedly they were able to break a deal with demon."

"Yes, unfortunately my research doesn't show anything of use beyond what you've already tried in terms of breaking a demon's deal," Stein says. "However, I did hear rumors of a powerful witch that once subverted a demonic contract. It was quite some time ago, but I think their last location was in Arizona. Perhaps they would be able to help you." He stretches. "In the meantime, I'll continue to look into things. Queen of the Crossroads you said? Spirit will call around, see if anyone knows who that might be."

"Your bed is made up, Maka," Spirit interjects, still avoiding her eyes. "You two can stay the night here, get a fresh start tomorrow morning."

"Fine," Maka says. "But we're leaving at seven. The sooner we get some answers, the better."

Soul goes to follow her as she leaves, but Spirit stops him. "Not so fast, punk," he says, back to his overprotective self. "You're sleeping on the couch." 

Papa is already up and waiting for her when she shuffles into the kitchen early the next morning. Her place at the kitchen island is already set, and she sits, picking up a spoon for the cereal in front of her. Papa slides a glass of juice towards her before turning to attend to the bread baking in the oven.

She takes a sip of apple juice, savoring the tang on her tongue. There's the strange quality to the pre-dawn light that slides in through the tiny window, and the air feels both sharp with lucidity and muzzy with sleep. Papa's features waver between stony anger and frantic distress, though he does his best to smooth his face into some semblance of calm and buries his anxiety in piling her with more and more food.

"Papa, there's enough here to feed an army," she says, watching pile of baked goods grow. "Most of this will go stale before we can eat it."

He snorts. "With your partner's appetite, that's not likely." More cereal and milk appear as she begins to reach the bottom of her bowl, and he says, "I'm sorry I didn't make you waffles or pancakes, I used the last of the eggs yesterday and I didn't have time..."

"It's fine, Papa." She eyes one of the baguettes, and he takes it before she can reach, using the bread knife to slice her off a few pieces.

The bread is still warm when he hands it to her. "Thank you," she says, quieter. "For the food."

"I wanted to make sure you had a good breakfast this morning," and they both ignore his careful phrasing, his avoidance of what comes after.

Soul's made a nest of the blankets on the couch, burying himself in them so only the wild mess of his hair is visible. He snoozes quietly, and she can't help her fond smile as she tiptoes past him to the hall.

She slips into the bathroom to brush her teeth and hair, and when she comes back to her bedroom, Papa is sitting in the desk chair, staring blankly at bookshelf.

She follows his gaze, noting the presence of some of her fiction books, ones she thought long lost, victims to their endless parade of moves. Crude drawings in crayon perch between some of the novels, neatly labeled with her name and age. She focuses on the center one, squinting at it through the dust. She can make out a blob with two pigtails, holding the hands of a taller blob with red hair and another with black hair, and a silver scribble of a spirit on flames above them.

She shakes her head and bends to pick up her backpack. She has no attachment to this place, no matter how much Papa tries to pretend otherwise - the only time she lived in this house was when it still smelled of fresh paint and the only thing in the room was the mattress and a lamp. Everything else is just Papa's attempts to surround himself with the ghosts of the people he drove away.

He blocks her way to her suitcase of books on the other side of the bed. At first, she thinks it's because he's planning on helping her move it out to the car, but a minute passes and he makes no move to pick it up, and she realizes soon what this is going to be about.

"Maka -"

"Don't," she says roughly.

She can tell by the look on his face what he wants to say, to do - how he's fighting the urge to yell and put his foot down, to tear the bags out of the hands and tell her she is forbidden from leaving -

But she knows, too, that he's just as terrified of losing her in other ways beyond the physical - that he knows, like she does, the futility in trying to stop someone from leaving when their mind is made up, how it only ends up hurting the person who stays behind to wait.

He reaches for her, and she takes a step back, gripping the strap of her backpack. She nearly falls into him as he grabs her and crushes her to his chest, arms a tight band around her.

"Please," he whispers, and all of the resentment she keeps burning in the bottom of her heart is drowned in the sorrow and fear laced in his voice. "Please be careful. Please come back."

"I - I will," she's startled into saying. He doesn't let go, and the sharp corners of the books in her bag dig painfully into her back as he grips her tighter. His hand comes up to stroke her hair, and she closes her eyes, feeling like she's five again, Papa's patient hands combing and parting them into pigtails. "It's just a witch, Papa," she says softly. "And I'm only going to talk to him, I'm not even going to fight him."

"I know," he sighs, resting his chin over her head. "I just...you know how I worry, and you already..." He sniffs. "You've already died once. I don't want that to happen again. And we both know what can happen, with witches."

The crackling of the logs echo in her ears, and she can feel the heat of the pyre on her face, drying her tears before they can fall from her eyes.

"I'll be fine," she says firmly, removing his arms. "Soul will be with me," and Papa's face crumples as she turns away.

She grabs the suitcase, stalking back to the hallway, but hesitates before she exits the room.

"I...I'll call," she finds herself saying without looking at him. "After we're done with the witch, I'll - I'll let you know," and she leaves before any more ghosts come to haunt her words. 

The next morning, they're in the jeep, idling in Spirit's and Stein's driveway. Soul drums his fingers on the steering wheel as Maka wrestles with the maps.

"So," Soul says, injecting false cheer into his voice. "How long to Big Flat, Arkansas?"

The map crinkles in Maka's hands. "I'm not sure, Soul," she says testily, "because we're not going there. Prescott, Arizona, however, is only twelve hours away."

"Maka," he tries, "we have no idea if the witch is even there anymore. We don't even know if he has anything useful to say, or even if he won't just blast us to pieces on sight. And I know how you feel about witches -"

"I don't care if it's a witch. I don't care if it's a vampire, or a - a siren - Soul, I don't even fucking care if it's another demon! It's your life on the line here, I don't see why you can't understand that -"

"You know why," he says lowly. Her mouth tightens, and he says, pleading, "Stein's lead on Wes is pretty solid -"

"Wes has been waiting for five years! You, on the other hand, have less than one!"

"The demon said -"

"Fuck the demon!" she spits, and Soul is startled to see the telltale glint of tears on her cheeks.

"Maka-"

"No, Soul," Maka says, cutting him off. "I'm not budging on this. We're going to Arizona and that's final."

Soul's fingers tighten on the steering wheel. He swears loudly, slamming his palms into the wheel, then throws open his door and stomps outside.

Five minutes later, he gets back in the car. "Fine," he says tersely, reaching for his seatbelt. "But if this guy has nothing, if he's not there, we're turning right back around and going after the arachne."

"Fine," Maka says.

He puts the car into gear and backs out of the driveway. The drive to Arizona is silent. 

Soul's hunted enough witches to know that the vast majority are just normal humans with normal lives and nine-to-five jobs spiced up with the occasional spell or ritual.

It's still weird, though, to pull up at what looks like a completely mundane house in the suburbs and realize that behind that white picket fence and bay windows lives someone who can kill with just a well-placed hex bag. He's never really sure what he expects to tip him off - bubbling cauldron next to the Buick? black cats hissing at him from under the gardenias? - but it's definitely not a collection of ceramic garden gnomes. Honestly, he finds it creepier.

Maka knocks forcefully on the door, glaring at the zinnias as she waits for a response. He doesn't bother to ask her what she plans to do when the witch opens the door - they're still not exactly on speaking terms.

The door swings open, and a lovely young woman appears in the doorway. Hair black as ink is pulled back into a high ponytail, and she favors Soul with a small smile, revealing perfectly aligned teeth.

"Hello," she says, in a voice as smooth as her hair. "Can I help you?"

Maka shoves her way in front and crosses her arms. "Listen, we're on borrowed time here, and we just drove fourteen hours nonstop, so I'm going to cut to the chase. Are you the witch that broke a deal with a demon?"

"Maka," Soul hisses.

The woman's face clouds with confusion. "I…I'm sorry?"

Maka snaps her fingers in front of the woman's face. "You. Witch. You know, sold your soul to a demon, got the power to win the lottery and get rid of anyone in your way for that promotion -"

"MAKA!"

Maka drops her hand, and, to her credit, does look a little ashamed.

"Sorry," Soul says, sending Maka a glare. She pretends to ignore it, looking away at one of the gnomes. He intensifies the look, pouring into it all of his frustration at the situation, and Maka eventually sighs and scuffs her foot.

"Sorry," she mutters.

"We were hoping you could help us," Soul says carefully.

The woman looks between the two of them. "I see," she says slowly. Then, miracles of miracles, she backs up, stepping aside and gesturing inwards. "Perhaps you should come inside."

"The hell was that?!" Soul hisses, grabbing Maka's arm as they enter the house. "You go off on me about how we have to save my soul and need to get information from this witch, and the first thing you do is insult her? Way to make friends with people we need help from!"

"I said I was sorry," Maka grumbles. "But she's a witch, you know how they are. How many cases have we taken because some witch got upset that Karen got first place at the garden show and decided to off her? Or because their wife had an affair, so the most obvious thing to do was to behead her?"

"This is why we should have gone to Arkansas -"

"Tea?" interrupts a voice from the kitchen.

Maka opens her mouth, and Soul quickly clamps a hand down on it. "Yes, please," he replies.

"What kind? Do you take sugar or milk?"

The force of Maka's glare is enough to make him wish for hellhounds instead of the death she silently promises him, but Soul didn't get this far by being a coward. "Green tea, if you have it. And no to both, thank you."

There's the click of the stove and clattering comes from the kitchen. Soul slowly unfurls his fingers from Maka's mouth, then quickly stows his hands behind his back.

"Great," Maka complains quietly. "Now we have to search ourselves, our tea, and our chairs for hex bags."

"Oh shut up, Maka, and just drink the damn tea," Soul says irritably, and shoves her into the kitchen.

"I see," the witch, whose name turns out to be Tsubaki, says, pouring them tea. "Hunters. That explains much."

"What do you mean by that?" Maka demands.

"Not many know about witches," Tsubaki replies neutrally. Soul admires her tact.

Maka takes a defiant gulp of her tea, and blinks, surprised. "This is good tea," she says, begrudgingly.

"I'm glad you like it." Tsubaki picks up her own teacup, a gaudy affair of naked pastel cherubs. "Temomi shin cha - it's quite expensive. Poison would dilute the flavor."

Maka's face flushes, and she hides it with an extended sip.

Soul stares down at his own mug – a perfect replica of Chip from Beauty and the Beast - and watches his murky, green-brown reflection. "We've got a…friend," he begins cautiously, "who has landed in some trouble with a demon."

Tsubaki says nothing, but watches him with shrewd eyes.

"They, uh, made a deal. With a crossroads demon. Standard issue deal, though a little…accelerated on the collecting part." He clears his throat. "On the friend's behalf, we summoned the same demon, and asked it to reconsider. It, um, didn't. Or couldn't. Don't know which."

"So how do we break this friend's deal?" Maka asks.

Tsubaki's face falls. "I'm sorry," she says, genuine. "But you can't."

"But…but you broke a deal with a demon!"

"I did." She takes a sip of her tea.

"So break his!" Maka snaps, but Tsubaki's already shaking her head.

"It's not that simple." She gets up from her chair. "Come. I think it will be easier to show you than tell you."

They descend downstairs, and Soul shivers at the sudden chill in the air. It doesn't look that much different from a normal basement, though perhaps a little more tidy - there's a bike in the corner, collections of old books and car supplies on top of a blue bucket, boxes stacked neatly into towers.

"It sounds like you're familiar with the most common way to become a witch," Tsubaki says. "How was it that you expressed it - 'sell your soul for lottery winnings and revenge'?"

Maka says nothing, pretending to be watching her step down the stairs very carefully.

Tsubaki grasps the handle of an unnoticed trapdoor, lifting it up and revealing a short ladder. She begins to climb down, and Maka frowns, peering down; Soul nudges her, and reluctantly, she descends. "In truth,” comes Tsubaki’s voice from the bottom, “there are three different ways of becoming a witch. Receiving your powers from an outside source - a demon - is the most common way. Many choose to study the art of witchcraft, though this takes much longer. And there are a lucky few who, like me, were blessed with the gift at birth."

She leads the way through a surprisingly clean and well-lit underground passageway. "My brother was not so lucky, sadly," she continues. "He coveted the power that so easily came to me. I offered to teach him, to take him on as an apprentice multiple times. But he was too proud, or perhaps too ashamed and hateful of himself, to accept.

"He showed up one day," she says, almost as if to herself. "I hadn't seen him in years, and he just…he looked so different, so gaunt and thin, but I could tell. It was still him. He attacked me. And when it was all said and done, I was still standing, and he was not. But I…" and here she stops to look at them, old doubt and hurt in her eyes.

"Perhaps it was foolish." Tsubaki turns away. "Perhaps I was merely looking for something that wasn't there - simply deluding myself. But my brother…" She hesitates in front of an old door, staring through the wood with unseeing eyes. "He checked under the bed to make sure monsters weren't hiding underneath it when I was little. He put bandages on my hands when I burnt myself making potions. He let me cry on his shoulder when my first girlfriend broke up with me."

She shakes her head. "It's difficult, I suppose, when someone has everything you've dreamed of having, no matter how close they are to you."

"I know the feeling," Soul mutters, feeling a stab of bitter empathy.

Tsubaki smiles at him. "Then you know how it is with siblings, yes? Despite it all, he was still my big brother. I loved him. I looked up to him." She turns the knob and pushes open the door. "And I couldn't let him go to hell."

Dried herbs swing from the ceiling of a tiny room, and small jars line the shelves, each labeled in looping handwriting. Along one wall, a bookshelf groans under the weight of its tomes. An antique writing desk stands opposite of it, pens neatly lined up beneath a thick well-worn notebook. Strange, unfamiliar symbols are everywhere, on the floor, on the walls, on the ceilings, glowing a soft white-blue.

And on a stand in the center, there's a curious-looking bell jar pulsing a dull, dirty gray.

"This is my brother," Tsubaki introduces them. "Masamune." 

"It's a very complicated spell," Tsubaki says, leafing through her spellbook. Maka peers curiously over her shoulder as Soul studies the glass jar.

All this struggle for this, he thinks. For something so small and so fragile. He tries not to think of his own soul, pulsing somewhere within his body.

"So basically, he's in limbo right now?"

"Essentially. Our fight left my brother barely clinging to life. There was nothing I could do to heal him - but I was able to devise a way to capture his soul before it was collected.

"It's been ten years," Tsubaki says, sighing. "Little by little, I've been able to purify it, but I'm afraid it will be a very long time before I can release him and be assured that he'll be free from hell's grip."

"And I only have one," Soul murmurs.

"You're also not dead," Tsubaki points out, unsurprised at his admission. "Pulling a soul from a body generally results in death, and I don't believe the spell works on the living."

"What are these symbols?" Maka asks, gesturing to the jar.

"I'm not sure," Tsubaki replies. "I found them in a very old book, half-rotted and with most of the papers missing. From what I could gather, it was a way to ward off those that would seek to take a soul."

"Like…monsters?"

Tsubaki shrugs. "As I said, the book was in poor shape. Perhaps it's a sort of invisibility spell, one meant to shield the soul's presence from monsters - maybe even reapers."

"Wait, reapers?" Soul asks. "Like…Death? The grim reaper?"

"There's more than one, from what I've read," Maka replies. “If they’re real.”

"That's what my research shows too," Tsubaki agrees. "Speaking of research - although I may not know how to break your deal, I do know more than most about demons and their hierarchy. In fact, I believe I'm one of the few to own some very rare demonology texts - Pseudomonarchia Daemonum comes to mind. Would you like to look at them?"

Maka's eyes shine brighter than stars, but she affects a bored attitude. "Yeah, that might be nice," she says gruffly. Soul rolls his eyes.

"Let's relocate to my study then," Tsubaki says, and gently places her fingertips against the glass jar. "Until later, brother," she says quietly. 

"Crossroads demons are little better than your common black-eyed demon," Tsubaki says, back in the house proper. Her study is as neat and organized as the rest of the house with the exception of the desk, which contains a veritable sea of books and papers. “However, unlike black-eyed demons, they have a boss, so to speak - the King or Queen of the Crossroads."

Maka and Soul share a glance as Tsubaki continues on. "Now in terms of demon hierarchy, this position is actually fairly low; they have none of the special powers and privileges granted to them like the Generals, or the Princes of Hell, or even the white-eyed demons. For most intents and purposes, the King or Queen of Crossroads is just a more powerful common demon. Still, demons in general are almost impossible to kill, so they are a force to be reckoned with."

Tsubaki looks at Soul. "Now, you said your demon refused to break your deal?"

"It said it couldn't," Soul replies, frowning. "And then…it said something about the Queen of the Crossroads."

"Interesting…" Tsubaki arises from her chair, walks over to one of her filing cabinets and begins rifling through the folders. "As you might expect, the King or Queen is technically responsible for all deals made by crossroads demons. It's not common, but not unheard of for them to personally take hold of a contract."

"Do you know who the Queen is?" Maka asks.

"Last I knew, it was Medusa. But that may have changed - demons aren't as united as they may seem when we encounter them in their vessels here. There's constant political infighting, as they vie for higher positions."

"Medusa," Maka muses. "Interesting name."

"She was appointed by the current King of Hell, Asura. Unusual, from what I gather - generally the red eyed demons are left to fight for the position amongst themselves. I'm not surprised she's decided to personally intervene in your contract though. Supposedly she's more…hands-on than her predecessors. Be careful," she says, serious. "Medusa…she held my brother's contract too. She's cunning and clever, and worst of all, ambitious."

"You said demons are almost impossible to kill," Maka says. "Does that mean you know a way?"

Tsubaki shakes her head. "I said almost because I've read texts that suggest there may be certain artifacts out there. And of course, the lore does state that angels are demon counterparts, capable of banishing them permanently."

"But angels don't exist," Maka says, sighing.

"So it seems."

"But," she continues, hopeful, "if we were to kill Medusa, would Soul's deal be broken?"

"It's possible," Tsubaki replies. "But as I said…how?"

And to this, Maka has nothing to say. 

"I'm sorry," Tsubaki says again as they load up the car. "You drove all the way out here, and I was unable to help you."

"That's not true," Maka says, though Soul can hear the strain in her voice as she forces a smile. "We've got a lot more information now." And indeed, beyond the information on Medusa, they now know a lot more about demons and how to hinder them than before. Copies of simpler devil traps and shorter exorcism spells now take up a dozen pages in Maka's notebook, along with Medusa's sigil. Tucked between the front seats is more holy water, along with freshly baked muffins.

"I will talk with the other witches in my coven," Tsubaki promises, and misses, or chooses to ignore, Maka's grimace. "Perhaps they will know more, or know who you can ask. Should you find anything, don't hesitate to contact me. In the meantime, though…I truly hope you can find what you're looking for."

"Me too," says Maka, and they take their leave.

"So?" Soul asks when Tsubaki's cottage can no longer be seen in the rear-view mirror. "Arkansas?"

Maka crosses her arms, stares out the window. "Arkansas," she says finally. "But if I hear even the hint of demonic activity or anything that could remotely involve them, we're turning around immediately."

the crossroads << previous chapter || next chapter >> the blood

[whimsically-ominously-auspice]

Although we have a horrible past

We have respected those that respect us

We have several dedication stones to the US military at our tribal HQ

We aren't afraid of the police.

We will kill them in the past.

So they have feared us.

This is why we have reparations.

But we live fine in Okmulgee. Of course we ran off the National Guard and they abandoned their building. You must see a photo...

But we remain at peace with a mutual respect.

Please I'm black. Fuck you I'm blue.

You guys quiet we all do.

Hey.

Donald Trump really fucked up and he's withholding the stimulus check that comes monthly as punishment.

And i want to kill him for that.

So when he's up there in Tulsa, Arizona, Mississippi and where all else. This upcoming Saturday, Tulsa, you make sure your protest signs say "monthly stimulus checks"

And at our mound. Don't welcome him.

He is punishing our country that we willingly without fighting the system, joined.

I dont want him in our County. Near our land. I want tanks in all access main and back roads to stand in his way from entering our County.

We HAVE to protect Our Land from The "acting" current impeached President Donald Trump.

I command it. No where in the county will he step foot upon our dirt.

He is not welcome in our County.

Tulsa said okay whatever. Im sure he wanted to go visit Okmulgee. But no.

He wants to have human trafficking victims create money for him and then he wants to be in the area of our homes on Juneteenth?

He only leaned about Juneteenth from me! And a complete slap in my face to go to one of my safest places in the world on that day.

No. As a Nation. We cannot allow that man upon our dirt.

He is not worthy the grass blade one can put between two thumbs and make whistle.

Nor our time and energy as a Nation.

So y'all out there. Protest at his rallies. Demand the monthly stimulus checks.

Last time before he was in Tulsa there was a riot..

Do not attack each other. Attack whom deserves to be attacked.

That is not us. That is not Tulsa. Not Okmulgee. Not Broken Arrow. Not McAllister.

Attack whom deserves the attacks.

Be brave. Be courageous.

You represent us who can't be there.

One Tulsa Rally represents all of us around the globe.

So you stomp your feet. Be the Warrior that hides inside you just like the Lost City of Atlantis.

Love each other. Love each other you beautiful babies while a monster comes so close to you.

Love and protect one another.

Don't get kidnapped. Y'all already got $2million at least twice. But kill the kidnappers. He has more. Dont worry. More people will be paid.

Find them. Let them find you. Then wait for a verify. Someone will. They will show you on a phone.

Just follow them. You will be noticed.

The CIA will watch who is marked. They will see a tail, tree will auto dot and alert you're out to do your job. Then the CIA will approach you and arrest them.

That is all i will legally say. What the CIA operative then says is a different story. You will discuss. Any operative has control over manual maneuvers. Meaning, he has limited rules.

As a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation you MUST abide by laws.

That is all I have to say.

Now, Trump will counter strike. He will send round 1 to kidnap. Then a filtration circle to watch the kidnapper in order to protect. Its likely he may add another layer.

My Team will not touch you but a gentle poke or tap. Very quickly and gentle. On the shoulder to wrist area.

If anyone grabs you And you don't know them, you have my permission to violently attack them any way necessary. One of my agents will run over to assist.

If you got it and you're knocking this fucker out for grabbing you, my dude is gonna stand and watch that no one else comes to attack you. Via phone and old fashioned looking around.

If not my guy will get the person away from you. All you have to do is just look around to make sure no one comes to get him.

But an alarm will sound and someone else will go. Tree will pick. This way it's always 2. So

Use your warrior.

Don't touch unless touched. Don't attack unless grabbed or mishandled.

Cause my dude will tap you

Trump will try to put fakes out to trick you.

You will feel evil. Attack it. If it's my guy. Which it won't be he will forgive you. That's his job.

You will get a DNA4U alert from tree if you got a liar trying to lie to you. So have your notification on loud for that special DNA4U tone.

Ain't no one Gonna fuck with us.

Tree has rules he has to follow, too. And money does grow on trees.

As a Nation of the United States of America, we cannot allow a monster to steal our people, attack us at peaceful demonstrations and think he can get away with it.

This bitch is gonna pay us big bucks every single month so WE can pay our bills!!!

This monster will pay.

I didn't order the National Guard to attack people.

He did.

He ordered people to attack people at a rally to protest people attacking people.

That's a monster.

These people are getting shot in the eye.

So let his arrogant ass think he's gonna go all la de dah to my nation's county

I'd blow his fucking brains out if I was there.

So y'all at rallies

Take care of your selves and others

Take care of us at home that can't get out to tell him how it is as close to his face as we can get.

Its on y'all

Instead of hate speech on your protest signs, put demands. We're still stuck with his alien Orange face till January 2021. So let's get shit done for now. Demands for Today and Tomorrow.

Personally I feel it says "you're too dumb to figure out you need to do this to get votes so I'll tell you now" So it's a form of hate speech. But with pathetic politicians, you get something out of it.