#once i find out what i'm expected to do

[mushroompollution]

Do you think you could end the world if it came to that?

....i don't know. i really hope that it. doesn't come down to something like that. the more i learn about the Tragedy, the more it doesn't make sense to me that the previous Glen intended to cause it, but..

i guess we'll find out soon.

[ruvviks]

// oc deep dive.

tagged by; @aztarion and @devilbrakers, thank you so much!!

tagging; @mojaves, @deadrlngers, @ordinarymaine, @claudiawolf, @adelaidedrubman and YOU!

What common/uncommon fear do they have?

Nathan has a lot of fears stemming from his paranoia. Tangible ones such as getting captured or killed by MOBIUS, his friends walking away from him, or someone following him home; as well as more unrealistic ones, such as somehow ending up back in STEM, or getting stuck in a time loop, or a giant sinkhole all the way to the core of the earth opening up right at his feet.

It also happens often enough that certain actions don’t necessarily scare him, but make him uncomfortable or highly on edge (often with good reason); think of someone locking the door of the room he’s in– especially when it’s just them two– or getting too close without warning. He often fears people he gets too close to will end up treating him like the Administrator did, which is why it takes a while for him to let Sebastian get any closer physically, despite warming up to him relatively fast.

A more uncommon fear he has is waking up one morning and having lost one of his senses or his ability to speak. Aside from the mental erosion that had become a growing issue among Union citizens, MOBIUS observed a similar kind of process in its agents who regularly jumped in and out of STEM for general maintenance and the like– presumably caused by the constant changes in brain activity, which more than often led to exactly what Nathan’s fear mentioned above describes. While he was among the agents who worked both in and outside of STEM on the Union environment, he was lucky enough to never suffer the consequences.

Lastly, he is deadly afraid of Anima. Despite not having shown any other symptom of succumbing to the STEM domination process, Nathan would have started seeing her around sometime before Lily vanished– presumably got her attention after some of his escapades in the secret labs in the Marrow– and he has not been able to sleep soundly in STEM ever since. While his fear of her mostly acts up when he’s in a STEM environment, it definitely translates over to the real world as well; during bad mental health episodes he has auditory hallucinations of her, and she makes regular appearances in his nightmares too.

Do they have any pet peeves?

When people are too passive. Nathan can’t stand it when he’s expected to initiate everything, from conversations to taking action, both in a work context (scheduling meetings, deploying new code) as well as personal context (scheduling to hang out, doing household chores). He also doesn’t like having to constantly ask people to do what they’re supposed to do– though this irritation more than often extends a little too far, to things he is expecting of people but never told them about.

Loud and unexpected noises, especially when done on purpose. Fireworks would be a great example of this, and they piss Nathan off no end. He gets snippy when people raise their voice at him for no reason, or when they keep banging their fist on a surface to get others’ attention.

Getting cut off in traffic. Nathan’s road rage is easily awakened and he can get a little drastic with it. His reflexes are fast enough to brake on time to avoid ending up in someone’s trunk, but will in that same breath speed right back up to crash into them on purpose as revenge for pissing him off.

What are three items you can find in their bedroom?

A large ring binder full of old code snippets, notes from various projects he worked on back at MOBIUS, and all his research ranging from neuroscience all the way to electrical engineering. Nathan is a little old-school in that regard– he’d much rather have all his research physically with him than save it all to some online storage platform and risk losing it like that.

A jigsaw puzzle, made entirely out of different pieces that he’s collected over the years (stolen from others’ puzzles, found in various locations, stolen directly from the store, etc). The full piece would total up to nearly 2000 pieces, though it is still missing a large chunk in the center; the result is an abstract piece containing mostly darker colors, though with various bursts of color scattered around like flowers in a field. Nathan isn’t the artistic type, but the project keeps him busy and he considers it a type of self-expression.

The knife he killed his parents with when he was sixteen years old. He’s not entirely sure why he kept it all those years– perhaps to remind himself what got him to where he is now, or because it’s the only thing he still has from that time of his life. Either way, it’s kept safe in the top drawer of his nightstand, easy enough to reach in case someone breaks into his apartment.

What do they notice first in a person?

First: State of mind, overall mood. How approachable do they look; can he afford to lower his guard or does he need to tread with caution, can he get close without worrying about a knife to the stomach or should he keep his distance? Nathan rarely shows immediate interest in someone’s overall personality, he would rather want to know which of their emotions he’s gonna have to deal with during their interaction(s).

Second: Body language. Ties in with the first thing mentioned– cautiously watching for threats, waiting to see if they make a move to touch (or harm) him so he can step out of their range. But it also extends a little further; Nathan tends to mimic others’ body language in conversation to make himself appear more approachable. If someone gestures a lot, he will do the same.

Third: Their smile, if relevant. Smiling is an eye-catching action to him, since he’s not one to quickly do so himself. It’s attractive to him; if someone smiles at him, you’ll be able to catch him staring.

Fourth: Scars, and other (skin) details. Nathan isn’t one to ask about them, of course– but they’ll catch his attention anyway, for a brief moment, since some of them already tell a story on their own even without words.

Fifth: Nervous tics, if relevant. By this point he’s been in conversation long enough to pick up on the little details– a slight thrill or shakiness to their voice, a thumb running over the side of their index finger, a nose twitch. In some cases it eases his mind, knowing the other person isn’t confident in their conversation either; in other cases it sets off alarms in his mind, and makes him wonder if there’s more going on than what they’re showing or telling him.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how high is their pain tolerance?

Physically: 7. While he doesn’t quite look like it, Nathan can take a hit or two. Most of his injuries happen in STEM– though with the way the technology works, the pain is very much real, and in some cases the scars are lasting even in the real world despite the damage having been sustained in STEM. To an extent, Nathan even enjoys the pain; it’s grounding for him, and keeps him from dissociating. When it gets too much to handle he simply drinks it away.

Mentally: 10. Nathan’s life has been a constant downward spiral; sent to a youth detention center after being wrongfully accused of killing his younger sister, and he was bullied relentlessly there, which continued until long after his release both at school and at home. At MOBIUS, he was required to work shifts in their HQ as well as in the Marrow, in the Union STEM environment– he was required to be mentally strong, or he would have already started suffering from mental erosion by long-term STEM exposure after his first few trips in. It takes a lot to break him (or so he likes to believe).

Emotionally: 4. Once you get past all the barriers, Nathan is pretty sensitive. He doesn’t deal well with rejection or misunderstanding, and is prone to assuming things are all his fault the second something goes wrong. It’s easy to upset him, though he won’t easily show; but the damage often takes a while to repair.

Do they go into fight or flight mode when under pressure? (Or freeze or fawn?)

Fight, more than often; though it may appear as flight at first, since Nathan’s favored combat approach is stealth and he will always find cover before doing anything rash. In certain cases, however, he would be more likely to freeze; especially anything related to Anima or an enemy type like her, where fighting is out of the question, and he knows that a single wrong move can mean his demise.

It translates to non-combat situations too– often willing to talk to people but his initial response is to get defensive and close himself off, and if not given a moment to regain himself it can lead to either fighting or freezing; biting back with similar ferocity or shutting down altogether, unable to pick up his rational train of thought in the heat of the moment.

It really depends on the type of confrontation, though; taking his own state of mind and who else is involved into consideration. He’s known to fawn when a situation starts feeling a little too familiar– generally surrounding the abuse he suffered from partially his parents, but mostly the Administrator.

What animal represents them best?

Wolf; bordering on dog motif, but cautiously so, requiring infinite patience and understanding to win his trust. Nathan is loyal and guarding to those he cares about, but he values his freedom– his choices and decisions are his and his alone, and anyone who tries to take that away from him will suffer the necessary consequences.

How would a stranger likely describe them?

Curious, above anything else. Distant, reserved; surprisingly well-spoken, almost technical in his interactions with others as if the whole conversation is pre-programmed in his mind. Nathan isn’t necessarily cold towards others, but people would also not be quick to describe him as kind; though there is a certain warmth to the way he speaks and looks at people, despite the fact he very rarely smiles and isn’t one to quickly compliment someone else.

Appearance-wise, people tend to notice the white strands in his black hair first. They’re clustered at the front of his head, and match with the white hairs in his left eyebrow and the white eyelashes in the outer corner of his left eye. Nathan has very pale and rough skin, patchy but dark facial hair covering up most of his acne (/scarring); and part of the skin around his left eyebrow is lacking pigment, though it’s a little hard to see. He has very pale and bright blue eyes, which can be a little unnerving when staring at them for too long. Many people cannot maintain eye contact with him for very long.

Do they have any hobbies?

Nathan’s career is directly intertwined with his hobbies, and he enjoys working on code even long after cutting ties with MOBIUS. Software development, application optimization– his laptop runs on an operating system that he coded entirely himself, and whenever he has some time to spare he can be found tweaking and optimizing it and adding new features.

To no one’s surprise, he’s a gamer. Shooters, roguelikes, survival horror– he does not play all too often as his schedule often doesn’t allow for it, but he generally doesn’t have a hard time playing on higher difficulties and enjoys the challenge. Nathan has tried his hand at game design and development too, but stopped quickly when he found it too similar to developing the Union environment in STEM.

And last, surprisingly, would be writing. Journaling, some sort of attempt at poetry, or articles he would want to send in to some website or appropriate magazine but never does– a lot of Nathan’s writing is for his eyes alone, but it helps as an outlet, it keeps him grounded. For a while after leaving MOBIUS, he worked on writing tech manuals for various employers to earn some extra cash, which also ties directly into his interests.

[journeyman-tier-fibercraft]

Cardigan S (Pattern | Yarn | Thread)

I have officially cast on for this cardigan! Sleeve #1 (aka Swatch #3). The OG swatch I used size US 8 needles for both the pattern and the ribbing which is exactly what the pattern states but honestly I think my ribbing looks like dogwater. For Sleeve #1 I swapped to a US 6 for the ribbing and then on the increase row swapped back to US 8. The pattern also has you go directly from ribbing into pattern rows but I'm inserting a wrong side stockinette row for that increase/needle size up and we'll see how it looks.

My pocket swatch/Swatch #2/the one mostly covered up by my hand gave both good and bad news. In good news, 26 stitches is wide enough both for my hand and more importantly my cellphone. In bad news, it wants the pockets to only be five inches tall, and that is NOT enough for either my hand or my cellphone. Easy fix esp considering I plan on completely ignoring every single direction on how to make the pockets Except for the actual stitch count. More on that once I get the Second (and hopefully last) yarn I ordered for pockets.

I didn't realize but because of this shiny thread I'm going to have to knit both sleeves and the two front pieces one at a time.... Taking lots of notes for how many rows I do things in to hopefully match them well enough.

[hermitcraftx]

just got a dm abt one of my posts and y'all please don't try and show the hermits (or any minecraft youtuber or content creator for that matter) my posts, i'm uncomfortable with it and don't want any of my posts shown to a cc. if they stumble upon it naturally that's unfortunate but i can live with it since i do maintag a lot (something i REALLY need to stop doing tbh i already know i need to make a tagging system just for my blog that wont clog results) but going out of ur way to show a cc is entirely different and something i am not comfortable with.

no hate to the person at all but even if i wasn't a little silly and weird with it sometimes i wouldn't be comfortable with it, i want my blog to be a purely fandom only space with none of the creators involved <3 please respect this

[wonder-worker]

Any judgement on [Richard III's] reign has to be seen as provisional. The critic of the reign only has to consider how the Tudors would now be regarded if Henry VII lost at Stoke, to realize the dangers of too many assumptions about the intractability of Richard’s problems. But it would be equally unrealistic to ignore Richard’s unpopularity altogether. The fact that he generated opposition among men with little material reason for dissent, and that the disaffection then continued to spread among his own associates, says something about what contemporaries regarded as the acceptable parameters of political behaviour. There is no doubt that Richard’s deposition of his nephews was profoundly shocking. To anyone who did not accept the pre-contract story, which was probably the majority of observers, the usurpation was an act of disloyalty. Gloucester, both as uncle and protector, was bound to uphold his nephew’s interests and his failure to do so was dishonourable. Of all medieval depositions, it was the only one which, with whatever justification, could most easily be seen as an act of naked self-aggrandizement.

It was also the first pre-emptive deposition in English history. This raised enormous problems. Deposition was always a last resort, even when it could be justified by the manifest failings of a corrupt or ineffective regime. How could one sanction its use as a first resort, to remove a king who had not only not done anything wrong but had not yet done anything at all?

— Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service

[chadsuke]

Books Read in 2023:

Delicious in Dungeon Vol. 3 by Ryoko Kui (2016)

Delicious in Dungeon Vol. 4 by Ryoko Kui (2017)

She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat Vol. 2 by Sakaomi Yuzaki (2021)

Crossplay Love: Otaku x Punk Vol. 3 by Toru (2023)

I'm in Love with the Villainess Vol. 1 by Aonoshimo, Inori, & Hanagata (2020)

I'm in Love with the Villainess Vol. 2 by Aonoshimo, Inori, & Hanagata (2021)

I'm in Love with the Villainess Vol. 3 by Aonoshimo, Inori, & Hanagata (2021)

I'm in Love with the Villainess Vol. 4 by Aonoshimo, Inori, & Hanagata (2022)

Midnight Radio by Iolanda Zanfardino (2019)

[ID: Covers of aforementioned books. End ID.]

[disdaidal]

I don't want to brag or sound too optimistic about it, but after three weeks of training at a private college, I think my lessons with this one particular immigrant student (who has serious motivational problems lemme tell ya) are finally starting to get through and there's been improvement.

Only slight improvement so far but I have spotted some, so maybe not all hope is lost yet.

Remains to be seen I guess.

[leatherbookmark]

idk maybe it makes me a child or Someone With Shit Media Literacy, but i feel like when people discuss fictional events that were good or bad writing, they often look to general fiction tropes rather than what makes sense for the individual story? like, oh, well, this is a [genre] story, and in these, it's either X or Y, so it's going to be either X or Y. or: this character technically could count as a [character archetype], so obviously they only have one very predictable ending. what wonderful, emotionally moving writing!

and like. are we writing stories, or producing products that check off all the most common boxes on the Successful [Genre] Story list? this is not to say that you can never kill off your mentors/father figures, or that your protagonist should never fail miserably in this or that point of the story -- sometimes it really is the most fitting and sensible solution! sometimes leaving a character alive would undermine or muddle up the message, if there is one, or it would simply make it more difficult for the writer. and it's fine. but when your reason for this or that writing choice is not "because it makes the most sense" but rather "because that's what happens in other stories", it's, uh, not good writing at all. it's barely any writing, really!

[planetarytransformation]

so many of the transfems i know spent their time pre-transition performing a kind of lifelong exercise in self-deprivation, the goal of which was to find out exactly how little a person needed to live. they starved themselves, dressed carelessly, shunned friends, and hollowed themselves out so as not to be burdens on anyone but themselves.

i see it now, too, in the girls around me. i'll ask if they want care – a home-cooked meal, relaxed company, sex without the expectation of reciprocation – and they say no, no, thank you, i don't need it; what would you like, what do you want, because in their head they're still doing that awful calculus, still training themselves to disappear in the eyes of the people around them.

i don't think i'd have died without transition – not in the conventional sense, at least – but to take that leap, i had to stop thinking of myself as a human experiment in fuel-efficient living and start nurturing the anemic, atrophied flame of desire in my heart. i had to learn to eat well, to exercise, to style myself beautiful, but harder than that, i had to learn to ask the people around me to work on my behalf in order to enrich my life and give me the things i wanted.

and i did it; i learned. and it was agony, but courage is a muscle you can train, and every day i get better at accepting gifts with the hungry gratitude i never learned in my years and years as a sad, scared, lonely boy.

so be patient with the trans girls in your life. better than that: be proactive, attentive, generous; be forceful, if you have to, and learn to distinguish real discomfort from the terrified reflex of self-denial that so many of us once learned to rely on.

and if you are so lucky as to love a trans girl, you must insist upon her. you must insist upon her happiness, her comfort, her pleasure, and her rest, because she may still not yet know how to make those demands for herself. if you can devote any amount of energy to becoming an engine that nurtures the flame of even a single tgirl then there is a place for you in trans heaven, which as far as i'm concerned is the only one worth going to

[yeonban]

Send me a ★ and I’ll bold what applies to your muse.

@antinomos asked: ★ Miwa @ Kokichi 🥺

I like you / I hate you / I dislike you / I love you / You are family / I would take a bullet for you / I would shoot you / I would lie to your face (only to keep her safe) / I would say something cruel to you on purpose / I would say something cruel to you accidentally / I would cheat on you / I would physically hurt you / You annoy me / You amuse me / I’d laugh at you / I’d laugh with you / I’d manipulate you / You scare me / You confuse me / I wish I knew you better / I trust you / I don’t trust you / You inspire me / I consider you an equal / You are beneath me / You’re better than me / I would trust you with my life / I think you’re mean / I think you’re petty / I think you’re childish (which is refreshing in the bleak jujutsu world he's used to) / I think you’re smart / I think you’re stupid / I think you’re a bad person / I think you’re a good person / I’m not sure what kind of person you are / I wish you would listen to me / I want to make you proud / I wish you would notice me / I want to impress you / I would hurt other people for you / I’m not sure how to make you happy / I’m a bad influence on you / You deserve better than me / We make a great team / I’d have a one night stand with you / I’d have a relationship with you / I would marry you / I fantasize about our life together / I would trust you with my most treasured belonging / I would tell you my darkest secrets / You disgust me / You intimidate me / I hope I intimidate you / I’d hug you / I’d let you hug me / I’m scared of losing you / I don’t think you like me / I want to be better for you / I respect you / I don’t respect you / You’re my mentor / You’re my friend / You’re my best friend / I have a crush on you / I could easily watch you die / I’d get drunk with you / I’d party with you / I’d comfort you / I’d prank you / I’d spike your drink / I’d act behind your back (only to keep her safe) / I’d abandon you / I’d hurt you to get what I want / I would choose my happiness over yours / I would choose your happiness over mine / I despise how much I care for you / I need you / I’m dependent on you / I don’t know what I’d do without you / I’m scared of you leaving me / I’d give my life for you / You frustrate me / I’d call for you in a time of need / I would protect you / I’d visit you in hospital / I’d carry you if you were hurt / I’d feel guilty if I hurt you / I’d let you be near me when I am vulnerable / I’d ignore a phone call from you / I’d call you at 3am / I’d break you out of jail / I’d get angry at you / I would shout at you / You’re too loud / You’re too quiet / You’re too sensitive / You can’t take a joke / You embarrass me / I feel nothing for you / You’re reckless / You’re bossy / You bore me / I would ask your advice / I would blame you for something I did / I would cry in your arms / You have the power to hurt me more than anyone else

[archaeren]

How I learned to write smarter, not harder

(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)

A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.

The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.

As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!

Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!

2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)

Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.

Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.

I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.

Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!

This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.

As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.

When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD

People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.

What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!

What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.

You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.

And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.

And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.

If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?

And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD

In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.

Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.

Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)

And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)

[sailorsally]

Unpopular opinion but if you don't enjoy the process you should find a different thing to do.

And I think this is true in general but now I'm talking about it in the context of AI.

If you don't enjoy making art and only care about the end piece and how it'll look and how much traction it"lol get online then making art is not something for you, find something you enjoy from start to finish.

Same goes for writing: if you do not enjoy writing and rewriting and then some more and instead want AI to write for you, being a writer is not something you should pursue.

Sure, not every part of creative process is going to be equally enjoyable but you should get satisfaction from solving the problems along the way and you should get a sense of accomplishment on your way of "making the piece yours" and you should have a sense of ownership once you are done.

None of these things will come from typing in a prompt into chatGPT. And I am sad to see so many people are missing on the opportunity to experience the joy of making something with their own hands and brains.

Just give it a try and if you don't like it don't do it again.

But also don't let the expectations of it coming out perfect ruin the fun you are having while making the thing. Because what if I told you this: having fun while creating is the actual purpose of the creative process, not whatever comes out of it.

[maskedbyghost]

when simon wakes up in a hospital, the last thing you expect is for him to grab your hand, pull you close, and say, “hey, there you are, love.” his voice is so soft, so sure, it leaves you speechless. you stare at him, half in shock, because this is ghost—simon riley, the one person who’s kept every feeling locked up.

“simon, do you… do you remember anything?” you ask, testing the waters.

he blinks, looking at you with confidence. “of course, i remember. you’re my wife.”

you freeze. his wife? this is new, and you’re not sure where he got the idea, but before you can correct him, johnny walks in, taking one look at the two of you and biting back a grin. he leans in, whispering to you, “maybe just… go with it for now, eh?” he’s got that teasing glint in his eye, and something tells you there’s no harm in humoring simon for a bit, if it can be helpful for his recovery.

so, you go along with it. and to your surprise, simon doesn’t act confused—in fact, he’s more open with you than he’s ever been. suddenly, he’s holding your hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world, always looking for you, keeping you close, calling you “love” or “darlin’” in front of everyone. he’s even got that soft smile every time you catch his eye, one that makes it hard to remember this isn’t real.

the team’s amused but supportive, playing along with the whole story. simon keeps asking you little things, like what your favorite meal is, or how you usually spend your days when he’s away, as if filling in gaps in a life he believes you share. you find yourself answering with things that feel so genuine, and the way he listens—focused, attentive—feels more intimate than anything you’ve shared before.

one day, you’re patching up a minor scrape on his hand, and he just watches you, eyes soft, like he’s memorizing every detail. “i don’t know what i’d do without you,” he murmurs, voice barely above a whisper. it’s so genuine, so open, that for a second, you forget it’s all just part of his memory loss.

then, one night, he pulls you close, resting his forehead against yours, eyes serious. “do you ever think about us?” he asks softly, like he’s trying to get at something just out of reach. “how we’d be if things were… different?”

you’re not sure how to answer because there’s no script for this. “sometimes,” you admit, feeling a pang of something deep and unspoken. and for the first time, you’re almost grateful he can’t remember—because maybe, just maybe, it’s the only reason he’s letting himself be this vulnerable with you.

as the days pass, you start catching little glimpses, small things that make you wonder if he knows more than he’s letting on. he catches you watching him once, and instead of asking why, he just gives you this little smile, one that feels like he’s in on the secret. and just when you’re starting to think this is all some kind of twisted dream, he pulls you aside.

“i know i’m supposed to remember,” he whispers, “but i don’t want this to end. not yet.”

it’s in that moment you realize the truth. he’s been aware all along—he’s been pretending just as much as you, holding on to this fragile, temporary illusion because, maybe, he needs it just as much as you do.

--------------------------------------------

hii!! i'm backkk!! send some requests plsss, byee <333

@daydreamerwoah @spicyspicyliving

[ckret2]

who wants a prism break?

So, the Theraprism! The Theraprism sucks, right?

This is like, a good day.

The Theraprism clearly sucks.

Have a one shot of Bill escaping Theraprism with the most desperate escape plan imaginable: reincarnation.

(Warning for, as you might expect, psychiatric hospital abuse.)

####

There are fates worse than death. Like boredom, for instance!

####

Everything was black and numb and silent and cold so so cold but no he could only call it cold if he felt cold and Bill didn't feel coldness there was just the absence of a feeling the absence of heat the absence of light the absence of sound the absence of touch the absence of air.

The absence of everything.

Bill had loved a void once—a micro black hole. Every time they touched it slowly killed him, spaghettified his limbs, drained his energy. His energy was so vast that she never claimed a drop of a drop of a drop of his reserves—but it still hurt like nothing else to be crushed and stretched and ripped and consumed by her event horizon. The pain was wonderful. Being shredded was ecstasy.

This void was the opposite of her. 

He couldn't even feel anything when he tried to scream—without air, he couldn't feel his vocal plates vibrate. He couldn't feel his hands, his face, his eye; he tried to bite himself just to feel something and he couldn't feel his mouth, he tried to rip open his wounds and couldn't find them; why couldn't he see his own light, why couldn't he see his blood, where had he gone, was he gone—

Reality returned like a light bulb being switched on.

The first thing he registered was a shrill sound on the verge of inaudibility; and then the pain in his eye, his sides, his wounds; and then the dull gray light, the hard floor under his knees, the antiseptic stench in the air conditioning.

He stopped screaming. The shrill sound stopped.

"Energetic as always, are we?"

Bill blinked blearily at the Orb of Healing Light hovering before him. He croaked, "I'll regurgitate you."

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that." A glowing translucent clipboard manifested in front of the Orb. "Well, you've gone through this enough times to know the drill! Do you need a moment to recover, or—?"

"No no, I'm fine, I'm fine." Bill slumped forward, trembling hands on the floor, waiting for the vertigo to pass. "I'm fine. Do your thing." He'd rather get the post-Solitary Wellness Void reorientation interview over with.

"Perfect. What's your name?"

"I'm ol' Vinegar Pete."

"No clowning, please."

He sighed loudly. "Bill Cipher."

"Good. Where are you?"

He considered saying hell, but decided he'd used up all the clowning he could risk for one day. He didn't want to go back in. "The Theraprism. Ward 333."

"Very good. When are you?"

"I was gonna ask you," Bill groaned. "How long was I in the hole this time? A million years? Ten million?"

The Orb checked its notes. "Eight minutes."

"Wh—no, no I know that time moves slower out in reality than in the prism. I'm not asking how much time passed in reality, I'm asking how much time passed here."

"Eight minutes," the Orb repeated. "Outside the Theraprism, one third of one second passed."

Bill groaned again and flopped flat on the floor.

"Do you know why you're here?"

"Why are any of us here?" Bill asked the gray linoleum tiles. "Usually because some dumb beast tripped into the booby trap that sets off its reproductive process. How's your species work, you pop outta nebulas, right—?"

"I meant, coming out of the Solitary Wellness Void."

"Oh." Bill tried to remember what his infraction had been this time. "Because I failed to escape."

"Because you tried to escape."

If he'd succeeded, they never could have punished him. "Sure."

"Good, you seem oriented to your surroundings. Let's get you to the nurse and then back to your cell." The nurse? What did he need a nurse for?

He only realized then that he must have succeeded in reopening his wounds in the SWV: the never-quite-healed crack across his exoskeleton was wider, the edges chipped and bent. It hurt. His eye socket hurt too; he tasted blood. With the way his whole body usually ached after leaving the void, he hadn't even noticed.

Through the crack in his exoskeleton, his edges had frayed into fine golden threads. The sight of silvery blood on his hands made him nauseous; he hastily looked away and reminded himself it was only his own. 

####

As Bill wearily followed behind the Orb and two security guards followed behind him, he had to periodically turn to hover sideways to streamline himself. These days he was so weak that he could feel the air resistance pushing back against him when he floated; with his wound reopened, he felt like the air pressure could snap his exoskeleton along the crack and break him in half.

"You're not Emmy," Bill said. "You're, uh..."

"A-AOX4."

"Oxyyy," Bill said weakly. "Heyyy. S'been a while. Usually I get a personal welcome back from the void, why didn't Emmy show? Don't tell me it doesn't see me as a threat anymore!" He'd be offended if it didn't. D-SM5 was the closest thing he had to a nemesis these days. Even if he couldn't beat it, he wanted to think he still irritated the daylights out of it.

"Director SM5 couldn't make it. It's overseeing the preparations for Paingoreous's reincarnation."

"That's today? Good riddance." Paingoreous had started getting sanctimonious the past few hundred group therapy sessions—don't you have any compassion for your victims and it's possible to live a happy life without slaughtering all your enemies first and maybe I should ask for permission before I vivisect my friends' faces—passive, self-defeatist crap like that. Vivisecting your friends and seeing who complained was how you found out who your lame friends were! Now that the wet blanket was leaving, the rest of them could get back to spending their sessions reminiscing about the glory days and trying to set the donuts on fire when the therapist was distracted.

"Yes," A-AOX4 said pointedly, "it is good he gets to leave to go become a productive member of reality. We're all so happy that he's rehabilitated enough to earn a new chance at life." (Bill rolled his eye. A-AOX4 ignored it.) "Wouldn't you like a chance to rejoin reality, Bill?"

More than anything. He'd been in this crystallized brain's perpetual dreamscape for what felt like both a thousand years and a single day—time never passing, an eternal inescapable moment. He'd tried to break out, sneak out, or bargain his way out more times than he could count; sometimes he was locked in the SWV as punishment; and sometimes the staff gently stopped him, confiscated his supplies, and chastised him for the effort—and the reminder that he was as powerless as a child was worse than the void. He'd gone delirious from the boredom, hallucinating screams and burning faces as his mind struggled to stimulate itself (and he'd been medicated for it). He'd so despaired of escaping that he'd looked for a way to burn up the remains of his energy and vanish for good (and he'd been medicated for it). He ached with the need to see the stars again.

But not enough to sell his soul for it. If he took the staff's route—let them break him down, sandblast off his rough edges, erase everything that made him him, and finally physically transform him into some alien creature—then whatever left the Theraprism would no longer be Bill Cipher.

"What, and force you guys to find a new 'unique case'? I wouldn't do that to you! I know how much you love me," Bill said. "Besides, why would I go through all that just so I can reincarnate as a sentient snowflake, or Mi-Go antennae lice, or..."

"A butterfly," A-AOX4 cut in, an edge of impatience creeping into its tone. "Paingoreous has chosen to reincarnate as a butterfly. We all think that's a very productive way to channel his desire to digest his own skin."

"Unless it's one of those blood-drinking butterflies, lame." Bill scoffed. "Wait—hold on, you said butterfly? Like an Earth butterfly?"

They were, of course, not actually speaking an Earth language, but an interdimensional pidgin that borrowed words and grammar from dozens of worlds. When around the Orbs of Healing Light that held half the staff positions, Bill tended to speak a dialect of the pidgin that used flashes of light for 40% of its vocabulary. It was perfectly possible that the word Bill knew as "butterfly" was also used for some alien creature, but—

"Yes, an Earth butterfly. A Vanessa atalanta, to be precise."

Aw, boo. Not even a cool butterfly. "He's reincarnating on Earth?"

"Yes. Many of our patients reincarnate on Earth. As long as you're careful about which region and century you reincarnate into, it's at the top of our recommended list of Goldilocks zones."

There was another phrase that Bill recognized, but this time he was sure his definition was not A-AOX4's definition. "Whaaat do Goldilocks zones have to do with reincarnation."

"You didn't pay attention to the orientation session on our outpatient reincarnation program, did you."

"What! I didn't get an orientation session!" said Bill, who probably didn't remember any such session because he didn't pay attention to it.

"Well—we rank millions of planets and their dimensional parallels based on their potential to help patients reintegrate into reality. We do try to set our patients up for success," A-AOX4 said. "To qualify as a Goldilocks zone, a planet has to meet the Theraprism's rigorous list of criteria: its lifeforms, cultures, laws of physics, and position in interdimensional society must all be conducive to a patient's continued recovery. We want to ensure that our patients' new lives are neither so difficult as to retraumatize them, nor so easy as to let them coast by avoiding continued personal growth, but right in the middle, so that they're emotionally and spiritually challenged without being overwhelmed. The Goldilocks zone: a perfect compromise between two extremes."

"Yeah, sure, sounds great." Bill could feel his eye glazing over in disinterest. Fight it, Cipher.

"Do you miss Earth?"

Bill tilted to glance askance at A-AOX4, and was surprised to see it had turned to focus a spotlight on him. Oh—it thought it had finally found a carrot to dangle in front of him. That was a popular strategy here: they figured out what a patient wanted most, and then used it to coax them into good behavior and "rehabilitation"—better still if they could attach a sense of urgency to it. Don't you want to see your descendants again before the last of them dies out? Don't you want to see your homeworld before its sun swallows it? Don't you want to reconcile with your god before the heat death of your universe?

But Bill had no universe, no homeworld, no family; no lovers or friends or gods that hadn't betrayed him and left him to rot here; and he'd remained smugly steadfast in refusing to give D-SM5 and its minions anything else it could use to get under his chitin. He was proud that he was too broken for even the famed Theraprism to fix him.

A-AOX4 probably thought it had finally found an opening. It might be useful to let it keep thinking that.

"You kidding me? Earth? Pfff! I don't miss that overgrown asteroid one bit!" He waved off the suggestion, and winced when the gesture tugged wrong at his reopened wound. "But hey, you don't study a world for millions of years without finding a few things about it to like. The music's pretty good. And the movies and literature, though if you ask me, they peaked between the first two World Wars. I like trees, evolution did a great job with trees. And humans really went off with the architecture. The pyramids? 10 out of 10. And some of the locals aren't bad, I've got a few exes from Earth."

"Do you? How many exes?"

"Living? Just a hundred forty or fifty," Bill said dismissively. "Earthlings just have those pretty eyes, you know? I'm a sucker for a pretty eye! But outside of that, no, there's nothing on Earth for me."

"I see," A-AOX4 said lightly, and dropped the conversation.

Hook, line, and sinker.

####

The original definition of a "Goldilocks zone" came from astrobiology. The Goldilocks zone was the ring of space around a star in which an orbiting planet could support liquid water and thus water-based life: not too close to the star and too hot, not too far and too cold, but just right. Earth, for instance, orbited Sol in its Goldilocks zone.

It was from this definition that other, more metaphorical definitions of Goldilocks zones emerged. Such as the Theraprism's: a world that was neither too stressful nor too boring for a newly brainwashed—sorry, "cured"—patient. And apparently Earth was in that Goldilocks zone, too.

Which was very interesting to Bill—because in their search for a new home, the Henchmaniacs had come up with their own definition of a Goldilocks zone. For them, it was a dimension close enough to the Nightmare Realm with a thin enough barrier that they could easily punch through it, but not so close and so thin that puncturing the barrier would pop it like a balloon and cause the dimension to immediately prolapse into the Nightmare Realm—which was a problem they'd had before. More than once. They needed a dimension they could easily cut a hole into, but control it, so they could slowly pump the Nightmare Realm's contents in. A barrier neither too vulnerable nor too strong, but just right.

And wouldn't you know it—but Earth happened to be in that Goldilocks zone too. Right next to a point in the dimensional membrane so thin, the Nightmare Realm could almost stretch through and kiss it.

####

Since Bill Cipher was infamously known as the last survivor of a trillion-years-extinct species, and had until recently been capable of instantly repairing himself, there were no medical records on how his anatomy worked. It didn't help that at some point eons ago he'd somehow managed to graft a 3D exoskeleton to his 2D anatomy without breaking his own physics, meaning no one had seen his true body in recorded history. Bill knew how he worked, but refused to offer any hints. So the Theraprism staff had to guess at Bill's medical treatment.

But Bill was still made of energy, and even weakened he could eventually self-repair. So whenever his injury was exacerbated, the nurse tended to just patch up his exoskeleton to keep it stable enough to send him back to his room.

On top of his mysterious anatomy, the staff had no idea how to medicate his physiology. They knew he could be medicated—Bill's personal substance (ab)use experiments were notorious far outside the Nightmare Realm—but they had to treat him like a newly-discovered form of life in figuring out what affected him, how it affected him, and how much it took. He'd been on and off hundreds of drugs as they tried to chemically stabilize a mind for which they had no idea what baseline stability looked like. D-SM5 had told him that between the enormous doses needed to impact his energy-based physiology and the vast variety of drugs he'd been through, Bill's medication regimen was the most expensive in the Theraprism. He took some pride in that.

He had very few things to take pride in anymore. He clung to what meager victories he could.

If Bill got his way, he wouldn't be medicated at all. None of the substances they wanted him on were what he'd call recreational. (Although for a while he had gotten away with not telling the docs that one of his antipsychotics had given him a side-effect of kaleidoscopic hallucinations.) Plus there was the fact that he'd heard rumors that quite a few pharmaceutical execs were good pals with a certain director—not that Bill would name names, of course!—that's his motto, Don't Slander Maliciou5ly!

But when he resisted taking his meds, they could send in the guards to pin him down so a nurse could inject a sedative so strong he wouldn't remember anything that happened for the next few hours to months (hard to tell) until they started tapering it off... and although he'd rather die than admit it, after losing that fight five or six times, even he had to admit to himself it was a lot less scary to just take their rotten drugs. Better to go through his days with his mind dulled and hazy than blacked out altogether.

To retain what little pride he had left, he'd reached a compromise with his jailers.

When the nurse had finished attaching the reinforcing splints around Bill's injury, they grabbed a medication measurement cup, filled it halfway with syrupy eye drops, and double-checked Bill's chart as they dropped thirteen different pills (plus a fourteenth pill for a painkiller) in the cup.

As Bill redressed, he eyed the unappetizing cocktail of antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and things he'd forgotten the purpose of but that probably weren't doing whatever the doctors hoped and definitely weren't doing anything Bill liked. "My straw?"

"Right, right." The nurse handed over one of the wide-diameter disposable white straws they kept on hand for patients who struggled to drink (or, in Bill's case, patients they struggled to get to drink).

Only a tiny fragment of Bill was actually locked up in the Theraprism—like pinching the glowing lure of an anglerfish in a trap while the rest of the fish thrashed outside—and because most of Bill's vast energy was elsewhere, he was nearly powerless. But he still had enough energy to heat up a finger, twist the straw around it, and hold it there until it had melted into a new shape.

The nurse sighed. "Do you have to do that every time? You ruin more straws than you get right."

Imperiously, Bill said, "Leave me to my whimsy." He tugged off the straw when it had cooled down to examine the corkscrew shape he'd made. The wall was a little flattened in one place, but he could pinch it back open. "See? It's perfect!" Cheerfully ignoring the nurse, he stuck the straw in his cup and slurped down his pills like tapioca balls. He tried not to remember what was in them.

A-AOX4 had left Bill with the nurse, but the two mall cops with medical kinks known as Bill's personal guards were still waiting nearby. The nurse's office was next door to the cafeteria—for ease of patients picking up their medications at meal times—in an anteroom that was connected to the rest of the ward by a set of locked double doors. A couple of guards were stationed near those doors at all times, and generally the guards assigned to Bill hung around with them while Bill was in the cafeteria or nurse's office. Bill floated up to them, regarding them with the disinterest of a king ignoring the servants he expected to open doors for him, and continued to ignore them as they escorted him back to his cell, one in front and one behind, while he sipped on his drugged cocktail.

The Dimensional Tyrant Ward was already one of the most heavily-guarded wards in the Theraprism; but to reach the maximum security cells, a patient had to pass several increasingly heavy security checkpoints with increasingly impenetrable security doors. The final door was warded against all magic, unhackable, unbreakable, and so airtight that even without his exoskeleton there was no gap Bill's 2D form could slide through. The doors to each cell—outfitted with tiny one-way mirror portholes, no latches or hinges on the inside—were a little less heavy duty, but packed with just as many failsafes. The Dimensional Tyrant Ward's max security hall had the most advanced security architecture of any psychiatric facility in the multiverse.

Bill had made a trillion year career of trying to break his way through a door nobody wanted him to go through. He could think of seven different ways to get through the doors. Sooner or later he'd find a way out of this place altogether.

A few of the doors had modifications: this one with a metal slab over the porthole to protect passersby from the occupant's petrifying gaze, that one with extra soundproofed padding coating the door. Bill was almost insulted his own door didn't warrant any special modifications.

His favorite door was The Beast's. A comfortingly yellow triangular sign on the door displayed a black symbol of a steak. Red signs above and below read "CAUTION! FEED UNSEASONED MEAT ONLY." "NO SUGAR ALLOWED." The Beast's heavy snuffing was audible through the door; his hot, sickly sweet breath seeped through the slot in the door that had been installed to deliver his food.

Bill's escorts automatically drifted to the far side of the hall to avoid The Beast. Bill, whose first medication was already starting to kick in, zigzagged lazily back and forth across the hall, heedless of how close he came to The Beast's cell.

Bill had never seen this door opened once in all his time incarcerated, and the dust settled on the additional chains and padlocks stretched across the door showed just how long it had been since the last incident. But some of the patients who'd been here longer than Bill still couldn't bring themselves to speak of the last time he'd escaped. Elder eldritch gods shuddered and gibbered nervously at the mention of his name. 

Bill tilted over to try to peer through the food slot at The Beast. A quivering, sickly blue eye stared back at him. Honestly, Bill thought The Beast was adorable.

Outside Bill's door, the guards waited for Bill to finish his medicine, hand over his cup and straw, and open his mouth and lift his eye out of the way so they could check and make sure he'd swallowed them.

And then he was left in his cell.

####

A perfect cube of uniform dull grey tiles supernaturally lit by a uniform dull grey glow, no light source, no shadows; in a max security room in the Maximum Security Wellness Center, patients weren't even trusted around light fixtures. The staff had removed everything Bill had used thus far to commit violence or attempt escape, plus a few more things as punishments for various infractions: journal, paint, pens, books, magazines, puppets (he missed those the most), even the furniture. He'd never earned the privilege of a TV or radio. By now, all he was permitted were black, red, yellow, and blue dry erase markers to draw on his walls—and the red and blue had gone dry; the "Be a TRY-angle!" poster they'd replaced whenever Bill left the room until he gave up and stopped tearing it down; and the clothes on his back. He'd gradually gotten himself banned from every extracurricular and recreational activity the Dimensional Tyrant Ward offered. Whenever he was fresh out of the SWV, when his restrictions were highest, his schedule consisted of mandatory individual therapy, mandatory group therapy, med checks, and the cafeteria.

He spent the vast majority of his time in his cell, sitting curled up alone, day after night after day, barely moving, barely talking, barely eating, waiting for nothing at all.

####

The seamless door swung open and admitted an Orb of Healing Light.

Bill blinked blearily up at the Orb. It was hard to tell how slowly time passed here, but he was sure it couldn't have been more than a couple hours since he'd been returned to his cell: that was when his medications made his mind the foggiest. "Emmyyy. Where ya been? Didn't see you when I came out of the Solitary Dullness Void. Nice of you to, uh..." A second ago he'd had a clever quip about how D-SM5 had clearly dropped by because it missed Bill, but he'd forgotten how to word it.

"Well, I'm here now. I'm flattered you missed me, Mr. Cipher."

Bill blinked heavily. "You turned that around on me," he griped. "Not fair." Ugh, the room was spinning. He flopped on his back.

"A-AOX4 tells me you showed an interest earlier in our outpatient reincarnation program," D-SM5 said. "Since it looks like your schedule is light these days, I thought you might be interested in attending Paingoreous's reincarnation?"

It took him a moment to process the offer. "Really? That's something people can attend?" What was the catch?

"We usually only extend the offer to the departing patient's friends, and—exemplary patients. But... I thought you might benefit from watching the process for yourself. It may encourage you to take a little more interest in your future."

For it to push a possible lead so fast, it really was desperate to find some leverage they could use on Bill. It probably thought of this as a rare opportunity—a patient from Ward 333 wasn't ready for reincarnation every day.

"Wow. I sure am encouraged," Bill said. "You have no idea just how encouraged I am."

####

If an unambitious office building and a utilitarian hospital reluctantly got married out of a vague sense of heteronormative social obligation, had a depressed child, and the fae spirited it away to replace it with an even more depressed changeling child, the child's small intestines would look a lot like the Theraprism's interior hallways: it was windowless, it was labyrinthine, it was beige, and it was grey, and it didn't even care anymore. Monotonous commercial high-traffic carpet alternated with monotonous commercial high-traffic linoleum. The fluorescent lights buzzed just enough to be annoying, but not quite enough that you'd feel justified in snapping and screaming "I've had it!" as you swung a pleather-seated metal chair at the light fixture.

Even though Bill had been languishing in the Theraprism for hours and/or millennia (Bill couldn't tell; he couldn't feel the passage of time), he hardly knew his way around the Dimensional Tyrant Ward, much less the rest of the facility. As D-SM5 led Bill (and six guards) out of Ward 333 and into a lower security zone, he looked for any scant identifiable landmarks and tried to memorize which turns they took by coding the lefts and rights and ups and downs into a mnemonic word. The walk helped wake him from his medication stupor; but his mind never quite felt fully on.

Bill had only briefly glimpsed the Theraprism's reincarnation unit during intake, just one of many rooms he'd been whisked past as he was dragged to Ward 333 screaming and cursing the Axolotl's name. Entering the unit now, it looked like an occult sacrificial altar carved from marble that had been modeled after a 23rd century starship's teleportation platform, contained in a room that looked like a magic planetarium: glowing stars hovered around the dome of the ceiling. Against the back wall in pale pink marble was carved an impossibly long axolotl, swimming in a figure 8 so its vapid smile almost caught the tip of its ribbonlike tail. Bill glowered at it. Backstabber.

He, D-SM5, and the other observers who'd already arrived were in a connected observation room with an enormous, thick window and a sealed door. Next to the window was a large computer console encased in the same marble as the reincarnation altar. That probably controlled the process.

The audience consisted of three aliens who looked a little like Paingoreous might have with his face unpeeled, a few patients and staff Bill recognized, more he didn't, and Jessica with the shining spherical head and the thirteen fingers. Oh boy. If he'd known Jessica would be here he would have tried to polish. Bill straightened his bow tie and smoothed his rumpled orange jumpsuit.

Paingoreous himself was already in the next room, standing on the altar. At the sight of Bill, his exposed facial muscles twitched, as though trying to widen his eyes even though their eyelids were already long gone. "Bill? What are you doing here?"

D-SM5 answered before Bill could blurt out a witty retort. "I invited Mr. Cipher. I thought he would benefit from seeing what he can look forward to once he's improved. I hope you don't mind."

Paingoreous's face immediately smoothed out. "Yes—of course, director, if you say so. I remember how difficult it was in the early days. I'm happy to help my fellow patients in any way I can." Suck up. A dry note entered his voice, "Especially a more troubled patient."

Bill took one of the folding chairs lined up in front of the window and shot back, "I'm about to have one less trouble! Byyye!" (Did Jessica think that was funny? Sometimes she did. He snuck a sideways glance to see if she was laughing. Oh, right—she didn't have a face.)

Paingoreous didn't dignify him with a response. Too good for the likes of Bill, no doubt. Paingoreous wasn't obligated to answer anybody—except the staff, of course.

Bill had never met the real Paingoreous. By the time Bill was committed, the monotony, medication, and mandatory therapy were already well on their way to killing whoever Paing had once been. No way the offensively bland sap leaving now was the same one who'd come in with his face skinned and muscles pinned open.

A technician was already turning on the computer console, running through a whole list of checks as the machine booted up. A hum filled the room as the altar began to softly glow. To all appearances Bill was facing forward, slitted pupil aimed straight at Paingoreous; but his anatomy was built for watching things out of the corner of his eye and his real attention was focused on the reincarnation technician. "So how's reincarnation work in this dump?" Bill asked D-SM5. "I didn't get the orientation."

"Yes you did," D-SM5 said. "I was there."

"Oh yeah? Well, I don't remember seeing you."

D-SM5 sighed. "First, Paingoreous's memories of his current life must be erased, to give him the best fresh start possible and to comply with Earth's soul sanitization regulations."

"Seems like a big waste of time. His head's already empty enough."

One of the Paing-ish aliens a couple seats over shot Bill a dirty look. "That's my son in there."

"Not for much longer, he isn't."

"Be respectful," D-SM5 said warningly.

Bill ignored it. "So once you've scrubbed his brain clean, what then?"

"Then, we reincarnate him. We've already carefully selected his destination and species; except for special circumstances, we generally don't customize the patient's body further, as the program is already set up to divinely design the body most well-suited to the soul about to inhabit it."

"If these bodies are so perfect, why customize them at all?"

"We wouldn't want, say, a recovering pyromaniac to be reborn with pyrokinesis." (Bill felt unfairly targeted.) "Once his species and destination are entered into the program, off he'll go to start his new life as an egg."

"An egg?! Sheesh, wasn't going through childhood once bad enough? I assume his childhood was bad, anyway! Nobody with competent parents ends up like him."

The Paing-ish alien beside Bill bolted out of their seat and lurched aggressively toward Bill. (Ha. Too easy.) The next alien over tugged them back by the arm. Bill was sure he heard a whispered, "Careful, do you know who that..." 

D-SM5 said, "One more crack like that and you're going back to your cell."

"Fiiine. Why can't he skip straight to being a butterfly, though?" What he really wanted to find out was how to skip straight to adulthood.

"For starters, because spontaneous generation has been heavily restricted on Earth since the 15th century, and banned completely outside of special circumstances since the 19th century."

Spontaneous generation. The creation of fully formed life from unliving matter: maggots that emerged from flesh, geese that emerged from barnacles, snakes and crocodiles that wriggled out of the mud of the Nile. He'd always planned to legalize it again when he took over. So if the only reason the Theraprism couldn't do it was because it was banned, then they must have the technology for it, right?

Bill tuned D-SM5 out as it prattled on about the mental health benefits of restarting life and beginner's mind and boring therapeutic psychobabble, and ignored the flashing lights and divine music as Paingoreous's memory, personality, and identity were all wiped clean. He was only interested in what the reincarnation technician was doing. (Although when Bill briefly glanced at Paingoreous, his shape seemed somehow uncertain, as though his molecules had only just walked into the room and promptly forgotten what they'd come in for or who they were supposed to be. Ready to be reshaped into something else.)

The technician opened up the primary reincarnation program, checked a box confirming that the patient's previous incarnation had been erased, and began setting up the specifications for his next incarnation. Choosing the reincarnation world was easy enough: under the drop down menu, the "Goldilocks zone" worlds were sorted first. Earth was sixth on the list. Choosing a dimension was just as easy.

However, choosing the location and time period looked more complicated; rather than searching through a handy list of continents or geological epochs, the technician checked Paingoreous's patient file and typed a couple of long strings of numbers into the blanks for the coordinates and time. They didn't look like any date system or coordinate system Bill was familiar with. How the heck would he work with that?

And selecting the species, to Bill's horror, meant scrolling down a menu ordered by how frequently a species had been selected for reincarnation at this facility. That was insane! The Theraprism always discharged patients as unambitious species where one member was nearly incapable of making a meaningful impact on the local biosphere—anything useful like an octopus or a goat would be buried amongst the literal billions of species that had received zero reincarnations. Couldn't you just start typing the species's name to jump down to—? But no, the Theraprism's keyboard didn't have characters to type human loan words. The technician seemed to be scrolling manually.

That was fine! That was fine. Whatever Bill left as, he wouldn't be it for very long. He wasn't shopping for a makeover; just for an escape pod.

The technician located Vanessa atalanta (147 prior reincarnations) and kept moving, tabbing past a dizzying array of options—sex, size, coloration, visual clarity, caterpillar spine distribution, a whole list of health conditions and mutations the technician skipped—and every box she tabbed past automatically filled in with the word "DEFAULT". How many boxes could be filled in with defaults?

Bill leaned toward D-SM5. "So do you chuck these suckers out anywhere random on the planet or what?"

"Of course not," it said promptly. "What a thought! We take a deep interest in our discharged patients' well-being. We never leave where they spend their next lives at the whim of the computer's randomized decision." 

But they could leave it up to the computer. Still watching sideways as the technician scrolled past an "advanced settings" button without touching it (was that where the spontaneous generation option was hidden?), Bill asked, "Do youalways choose for the patient, or can the patient make requests?"

Dryly, D-SM5 said, "Unless you make some enormous progress, I doubt you'd get clearance to reincarnate anywhere near that town you terrorized, if that's what you're wondering."

"What! Who said I want to visit that crummy valley! All those mountains and trees? Ugh! No, do you know what kind of place I like? The Greater Cairo metropolitan area. Dry! Sandy! Flat!" said Bill, who detested flat landscapes with all his heart. "Covered in pyramids! Sometimes with my face on them! Plus there's the Nile! I love the Nile! I love being in the Nile! I'd spend all my time in the Nile if I could! I've had some loser ex-friends say that living your whole life in the Nile is an unhealthy coping mechanism to avoid addressing problems in your life, but if you ask me they're just jealous of how amazing my life is—"

"Ready for reincarnation," the technician said. "Proceed?"

D-SM5 left its seat, hovering closer to the glass to catch Paingoreous's attention. "Are you ready?"

"Sure," said Paingoreous, who clearly wasn't certain what he was claiming to be ready for.

"Proceed," D-SM5 said. Bill fell silent, paying close attention to how the technician began the reincarnation process.

She clicked a button that said "EXECUTE" (gruesome), clicked through a couple more confirmation screens, and then the faint background hum grew to a rumble and the magical stars glowed brighter. "Ten seconds," she said. "Nine... eight... seven..."

"Hey!" Bill shouted through the glass. "Friendly tip for Earth! Humans love when you fly into their eyeballs! You should do that!"

D-SM5 rounded on Bill, glowing furiously at him. (Maybe it was Bill's imagination, but he thought Jessica looked amused. Worth it.)

The soon-to-be caterpillar formerly known as Paingoreous stared in confusion at Bill. "Okay," he said—and then there was a bright flash of light.

He let out an awful wail of pure soul-rending agony.

When the light faded, he was gone.

The observation room had fallen perfectly silent.

"That's fine," D-SM5 said. "That's—that's normal."

####

Every once in a while, the Theraprism got something right. It was one of the few big government-sponsored "respectable" institutions that didn't make a fuss about how Bill ate. They just let him go to the cafeteria, strip down, unpeel his exoskeleton, and hang out with the photosynthesizers for half an hour or so in the corner under the grow lights. No gasps of horror or screams of outrage—not from the staff anyway; some of the patients took a bit to get used to it when they were new. It was a refreshing change.

On the other hand, even though they were willing to turn a couple lights high enough to melt most mortals' eyeballs when Bill was feeding, he never left feeling truly energized. The grow lights were designed for species with leaves and solar panels; they weren't designed to fuel up a god made of energy. A few bright lightbulbs didn't measure up to raw starlight.

He figured there wasn't any point in complaining. As much as he hated feeling like a gas tank trying to burn a dust mote for fuel, he knew that they knew that long before he even reached 1% of his usual power, he'd be strong enough to vaporize the Theraprism with the snap of a finger.

When he'd had his daily dose of light, he folded shut, redressed, and drifted over to the actual food for dessert. He grabbed a bottle of an allegedly "lemon" nigh-flavorless clear soda—this would do—and hovered toward the exit.

The cafeteria monitor stationed in the door elbowed her way in front of Bill. "Ahem."

"What?"

"You know the rules. No food outside the cafeteria."

"What! This isn't food, it's a soda. Beverages aren't food, everyone knows that." The monitor didn't budge. Bill tried whining. "C'mooon, I got injured in the void today. Look at this!" He gestured demonstratively at his splints. "Look how much pain I'm in!"

The Solitary Wellness Void made this cafeteria monitor uncomfortable. She'd never said so directly, but she tended to turn a blind eye when patients who'd just come out of the SWV were more aggressive than usual or tried to sneak extra desserts. One time when Bill had come out of a week in the SWV, she'd wordlessly slipped him a couple of packets of low-sodium fear sauce, a condiment usually distributed exclusively to the obligate phobophages in the ward. "Besides, it's my birthday! I'm a birthday triangle! You wouldn't deny a birthday triangle a soda, right?"

"Is it really your birthday?"

"Heck if I know. It could be. I don't know it isn't."

She was trying not to smile. "Fine. Just one time. Don't let anyone catch you with it and finish it before you're back in your cell."

"You got it, toots." Bill glided past her.

He slipped from the cafeteria into the nurse's office before his guards could catch sight of his illicit drink. "Hey, bartender! I'm here for my nightcap."

The nurse prepared Bill's evening battery of drugs. He bent his straw into a fun zigzag—honestly it was really more of a sad N shape—slurped down half the eyedrops, and opened his soda to refill his cup.

The nurse looked over at the hiss of the cap opening. "Hey! Hey—"

"It's just soda!" Bill protested. "The cafeteria monitor said it was fine! Besides, what's a little soda gonna do? Nullify all seven of my antipsychotics before I reach my cell?" (Bill had overheard the nurse grumbling to a colleague about the amount of antipsychotics he was on. They thought it was utterly excessive, considering that they'd had no evidence the drugs were doing anything but making him more erratic—which was something, because Bill had seen patients near drooling catatonia from their meds without any of the nurses questioning their current dosage. Conversely, the docs thought Bill's odd biology meant they needed to give him more if they wanted any hope of impacting him.) "Come on. It's not even caffeinated!"

The nurse took the soda bottle to check the ingredient list, then relented. "Fine. I suppose it won't do any harm."

"You're a peach." Bill topped off his cup, poured the rest of the soda over his eye, crushed the bottle, and consumed it too.

"The plastic probably isn't good for you, though."

"I like the way it melts in the back of my throat."

As he drank his medicated soda and got escorted back to his cell, he lazily drifted back and forth in the hall as far as the guards would let him go, dawdling more than usual—he knew they hated it when he dawdled, but they knew he hated spending one second more in his cell than necessary and grudgingly put up with a little lollygagging to keep the peace. But their tolerance ran out in the max security hall as Bill slowed down even further near The Beast's cell. The guard behind Bill pushed him. "Hurry up." 

"Hey!" Bill wobbled off path and stumbled into the wall, spilling some of his drink. "What's your problem!"

"You stopped moving."

"I did not! I'm just taking my time! Enjoying the weather out here."

"Well, take less time."

"Ugh, fine. Didn't realize you had plans I'm keeping you from." Bill rolled his eye and kept moving.

"Hold it!"

Bill froze. He turned around. The guard was pointing at a streak of clear fluid that had spilled from Bill's cup and rolled down the door. His bones frosted over.

"You dropped a pill," the guard said.

Bill's gaze focused on the circular soap-green tablet on the floor. "Are you kidding?! Aren't the other twelve enough?"

"No exceptions, Cipher."

"You don't expect me to eat it off the floor!"

"Do you want to go all the way back to the nurse's office for another?"

Bill groaned in frustration. "Fine!" He snatched it up, wiped it off on the guard's sleeve, and popped it in his mouth. The guard raised a fist; Bill bared his fangs; and after a tense moment, the guard backed down first. The Theraprism had taken nearly every other power from Bill, but it couldn't take his teeth—and though he knew the guards would win any fight, Bill could make it hurt.

They returned him to his room; Bill handed over his cup; they checked to make sure his cup was empty, inspected his mouth, and locked him in.

He hoped they wouldn't notice that half his pills had stuck in the zig-zag bend of the opaque white straw.

He hoped they wouldn't notice The Beast's tongue thrusting through his food slot to lap up the spilled soda that was running down his door and over the bright red "NO SUGAR ALLOWED" sign.

His entire plan hinged on it.

####

Bill was drawing on the wall with his scant art supplies when he felt reality ripple around him, like the wave in a still pool when someone new quietly slides into the water. He looked up from his work. It was happening.

There were several thuds; then a crash; and then the peal of a prison alarm piercing the air. The alarm melted into shrill dolphin-like laughter, and then the frenetic staccato of a hyper speed dance song that threatened to fracture Bill's internal organs. He shuddered as the sound tore at his wound like freezing ice crystals expanding a crack in a boulder.

But he rose into the air and turned to face the door, ready.

Just in time for the door to vanish. The Theraprism melted away like mist in the sunlight—and oh, the sunlight was glorious. The wide open sky pulsed maddening colors so vivid that the faraway rainbows looked monotone in comparison; the land consisted of rolling hills of candy-coated tongues and stomachs and muscles, the paws of enormous buried corpses thrusting up into the sky, the crevasses between burial mounds running with artificially-flavored saliva. It was Bill's kind of place. He wished he had time to hang around.

Before him, orange fur matted with a fine dust of powdery sugar, wild eyes contracted to pinpricks, stood The Beast.

"You did it, you beautiful monster!" Bill shrieked with laughter. "I knew you'd come through!"

The Beast rumbled, "Em deerf evah uoy."

"You're welcome! You can return the favor later! Me, I have somewhere to be." While The Beast was asserting his personal reality on top of the Theraprism's idea of reality, none of the Theraprism's walls or doors existed. Bill wasn't sure exactly how far The Beast's radius of influence extended, except that it was at least far enough to get him out of the maximum security hall—but he had to move now, before the guards rallied to sedate The Beast. Bill slipped a finger into the band of his ankle bracelet and found that under the influence of The Beast's physics, the stiff plastic stretched like a warm rubber band. He tugged it off and tossed it aside. "Seeya, pal!"

But The Beast held up a paw, blocking Bill before he could zip off. "Noob ym tpecca," The Beast said. "Hself ym emusnoc."

"Oooh. Woww." Bill looked at The Beast's candy paw. "Oh, man. Generous offer! You have no idea how tempting it is to take a taste, but I've really gotta get somewhere, and I've gotta be at least sober enough to pull that off..."

"Emusnoc," The Beast insisted. "Hsur ragus eht fo ssendam gnilims citatsce eht ni em nioj. Rehtegot srorroh letsap dna serusaelp kcis hcus wonk lliw ew. Evarg lufituaeb ym ni em htiw tor."

Bill stared again at the paw. The tip of his tongue slipped out beneath his eye to lick hungrily at his waterline. When was the last time he'd been on something that felt good? "Oh, what the heck!" He took The Beast's paw. "I can do this buzzed! How much damage can one little lick do, anyway?"

####

The guard heaved open the maximum security hall's door. The floor was covered in tacky pools of neon candy and removed ankle monitors. "It's just like we feared," the guard shouted into a walkie-talkie, glancing quickly through each cell door's window. "Every single max security patient escaped under The Beast's reality-altering field."

The guard stopped at the sight of neon yellow and orange, peering through the window at the triangle flopped flat on the ground and surrounded by powdery pink sugar.

"Well," the guard said, "all of them except Cipher."

Through the walkie-talkie, D-SM5 tiredly said, "He licked the paw, didn't he."

"Looks like it, boss."

D-SM5 groaned. "All right! Positive thinking! That's the second biggest threat in the ward already accounted for! Silver lining to Mr. Cipher's substance use issues. Assist in securing the others."

####

The good news was that The Beast seemed happy to frolic randomly around the Theraprism rather than head toward the exit, forcing the other escapees to follow along to remain under his reality-altering protection rather than get stranded in small rooms and locked-down halls. The bad news was that his meandering route let him pick up more and more revelers. After an hour, only a third of the max security patients had been re-captured and dragged back to their cells, and twice as many medium security patients had joined the riot. 

A-AOX4 was on hand in the maximum security hall to supervise as the guards brought in super-powered escapees. Most of them came back loopy on either The Beast's toxins or on the sedative that had been injected to keep them calm. A-AOX4 was checking them for awareness of their surroundings—name, where are you, when are you, why are you here—as each one was locked back in their cell.

And each time it passed by Bill's cell, it glanced in, concerned.

Bill had been almost pleasant when he'd come out of the Solitary Wellness Void—maybe after all those sessions in isolation he was finally ready to be more of a team player. And D-SM5 had said that he'd been unusually well-behaved and attentive during the reincarnation. A-AOX4 had hoped their most surly patient was finally opening up. It would be a shame if this incident with The Beast resulted in his new progress backsliding.

Plus, it took a heavy dose of anything to impact Bill at all, much less knock him out cold. He'd already had to go to the nurse earlier today; what if he needed medical attention?

So after locking up the latest subdued prisoner, A-AOX4 said to one of the guards, "Take over monitoring incoming patients. I'm checking on Cipher."

It unlocked the door and hovered into the room. "Cipher?"

No response. He was plastered flat to the floor.

"Bill?" It floated lower to check his condition. 

He was paper.

Paper meticulously colored in with yellow marker and folded into a triangle; scraps of paper colored black, carefully torn into hand and feet shapes, and shoved in the sleeves and pants of his prison uniform.

A-AOX4 lifted up the paper. On the other side was Bill's "Be a TRY-angle!" poster. He'd written across it, "IS THIS TRYING HARD ENOUGH FOR YOU?"

It turned toward the door—and discovered Bill had filled the wall with a drawing of himself making an obscene gesture, with a word bubble that read, "GIVE MY REGARDS TO THE AX! And tell Jessica I said bye xoxo"

It zoomed out into the hallway and grabbed its walkie-talkie. "Director SM5! Cipher's escaped his cell! He left a decoy! He's not with The Beast, we don't know where he is!"

There was a moment of dead air. And then the director growled, "I think I have an idea."

####

Trying to keep his giggles as quiet as possible, Bill looped through the Theraprism's halls, drifting between The Beast's rolling fields of hard candy corpses and the Theraprism's rigid monotone halls. What had he been worried about! Getting hopped up on astralplanar sugar before escaping his cell had been a great idea! It gave him instant shortcuts through half the walls! And he could handle a little buzz like this! He was totally in control of his actions and knew exactly what he—

How long had he been flying the wrong direction? He turned around. Wow was he high, he could barely focus on anything but all the colors. He wondered if The Beast's toxins had any weird interactions with his meds.

He was lucky The Beast had decided to dawdle around the Dimensional Tyrants Ward: here at the far end of the Theraprism, there were no signs of crisis beyond the sealed doors indicating the facility was under lockdown—and once he was outside a high security ward, there were plenty of cracks, gaps, and vents that Bill was thin enough to slide through. He hadn't even seen a guard since he'd left his cell. By the time he reached the reincarnation room, The Beast's landscape was fading out and the sugar crash headache was fading in, but the facility was still on lockdown and no one seemed to be looking for Bill. He slipped beneath the locked door and powered up the console to the reincarnation machine.

He skipped straight to the reincarnation program and checked the box that said, yes, the patient's brain had been washed. He paused when a warning pop-up blocked the screen. The technician hadn't gotten a pop-up. He had to read over the two-sentence warning three times before he understood what he was looking at. The soul sanitization routine hadn't been run recently, was he sure the patient's memory was erased—ugh, yes. He irritably clicked the confirmation and hoped that would be the last of it.

Bill quickly selected Earth and dimension 46'\; he tabbed past the coordinates and date, and they both automatically filled in "DEFAULT." D-SM5 had said the computer would make a "random" decision if you didn't plug in a time and place, but the staff didn't know Earth like Bill did. If he left the time and place up to the whims of fate, then something as weird as a trillion-year-old alien chaos god escaping a criminal insane asylum to spontaneously generate as a fully grown mortal would be sucked straight into the weirdest place and time on Earth. Gravity Falls: August, 2012. Weirdmageddon. He was willing to bet his life on it.

He was betting his life on it.

After that, with any luck, he'd be able to shed his new body like any other puppet and return to his castle in the sky. If for some reason he couldn't get out of it, he'd only need to pull a couple of magic tricks outside a normal mortal's capabilities to catch his past self's attention, find a way to prove his identity—heck, with any luck, they'd be seeing through each other's eyes and that would instantly confirm it—warn his past self about the Pines' treachery, prevent his own death, save Weirdmageddon, restructure the universe in his image, and rule his new party paradise as god-king for all eternity. Easy.

He scrolled down the list of available creatures, looking for something that would be easy to reach the Fearamid and prove his intelligence with—something with vocal cords that could speak eye-bat would be useful, it'd save him a lot of trouble if he could just shout at his sentinels in their own language and startle them into listening—but, to his surprise, the first useful species he found was humans, down amongst the species that had received a single-digit number of reincarnations from the Theraprism. Really, humans? They allowed that?

Over the blaring alarm, a voice made an announcement. He completely tuned it out—and only realized a moment after it ended that he'd heard his own name. They knew he'd escaped.

Bill didn't have time to search for anything better. He selected humanity.

He tabbed past dozens of features he could choose from for his body—default default default default—who cared what the body peed out of, he wasn't keeping the thing long enough to fill its bladder! He clicked open the advanced settings—there, spontaneous generation! He hoped this thing wouldn't drop him on the sidewalk as a baby, but usually when a human suddenly popped into existence, it was an adult sculpted from clay or something, right? He'd be fine! He checked the box for spontaneous generation.

He got another error message. He groaned. He wasn't sober enough for this.

Something about spontaneous generation being banned on Earth after 1859, is he willing to assume the liability if the patient generates after—yeah sure whatever, he clicked yes. Another pop-up prompted him for the digital signature of the person assuming liability. He typed in D-SM5's name.

As soon as he clicked enter, another error message popped up. "What!!"

He flinched at the sound of a muffled pneumatic hiss. Outside, somebody had unlocked the doors to this hallway. The alarm was still blaring; the Theraprism wasn't coming off lockdown. That meant whoever had unlocked the hall was coming for him.

"Focusss." He skimmed the new warning. Something about humans being on a list of species for which spontaneous generation was restricted—what loser had written a law about that! Who cared if a fully-formed, brand-new human popped out of thin air in the middle of town! What about Bill's wants?! He checked another box YES HE'S SURE HE WANTS TO SPONTANEOUSLY GENERATE A HUMAN YOU MONSTER and pounded enter.

Another pop-up. It wanted to know on which god's authority the spontaneous generation had been authorized.

Bill froze. Why did it need to know. Would it check? A machine that could reincarnate a soul was probably also a machine that could shoot off a prayer. Or was Bill supposed to have some kind of divine authorization code? Which gods were even allowed to authorize that kind of thing? He didn't know which stupid legislative body had made this stupid law or what their stupid definition of a god was! Gods weren't even real, they were just stupid, arrogant, stuck-up jerks who were powerful enough to trick people into thinking they were important! Like Bill! What name were they looking for?!

He heard voices in the hallway. He darted over to the door, slid his fingers through the seams around the doorframe to crush the latching mechanism so it couldn't be opened, and darted back. That wouldn't hold them long; he knew from experience that the guards could bust down the doors in these low security wings without much difficulty.

"Bill Cipher!" That was D-SM5. It had come personally? In any other circumstance, he'd be flattered. "Open up immediately!"

"Has that ever worked?" A god, a god, a god... his eye caught on the bas relief at the back of the next room. If there was any god this place would accept orders from... The guards were ramming the door; the bending metal groaned. He typed "THE AXOLOTL" and hit enter.

The button grayed out but the pop-up didn't go away. The screen froze. "What." Bill tried clicking again. The cursor turned into one of those little spinning balls that meant the computer was quietly having a stroke. "No no no no—"

D-SM5 hollered, "You know what the consequences will be if you don't—"

"I'm not listeniiing to yooou!"

"You're only going to hurt yourse—"

Dropping his voice to a demonic boom to drown out the director, Bill recited, "'I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited! People were not—" There was a shriek of tearing metal, and then a bright glow behind Bill as D-SM5 peered through the gap in the door. Bill started talking faster, "'Were not invited they went there they got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island and somehow—'"

The pop-up disappeared. The cursor returned to normal. The box next to spontaneous generation was checked. Bill stared for a split second, then quickly closed out the advanced settings, scrolled to the bottom of the page, and hit "EXECUTE."

Someone blasted the door out of its frame; based on the blinding glow that accompanied the blast, Bill suspected that wasn't one of the guards, but D-SM5 itself. He frantically clicked through the next two confirmations, flung a couple of folding chairs toward D-SM5 and its thugs, and dove beneath the door to the next room. Ten seconds.

"Cancel the reincarnation!" D-SM5 snapped.

A guard ran to the console. (What if they saw where Bill had gone? They could probably guess the planet, but would the computer keep records of his destination, what his new body looked like—) "I don't see a cancel! I don't think—"

"Then get him off the altar!"

Five seconds. Please spawn as an adult and not a baby, please spawn as an adult and not a baby, please— Bill hadn't broken the door between the observation room and the altar; the guards easily unlocked it. "No no no—!"

"Don't let him esc—!"

Three seconds. An impossibly bright light shone down on Bill. He reflexively peeled open his exoskeleton to accept it. LIGHT—oh, he felt even more alive than the time he'd stolen a bottle of stimulants from the nurse station, ground them up, and snorted them off Mrs. Mirrorcube's back. His eye widened, taking in as much free energy as he could—and then he focused his gaze through the window on the console, focusing the infinite light into a laser powerful enough to instantly melt through the window and explode the computer. The guards fell back, trying to shield their tender mortal flesh from the fury of Bill's fire. Enjoy the blisters.

D-SM5 bellowed, "Bill Cipher, you mo—!"

"CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, SUCKA!" He could feel his body ripping apart, cracking open at the wound. It hurt, but not the hurt of dying; it was the euphoric hurt of spaghettification, of being infinitely sucked beyond a beautiful event horizon. Bill's triumphant cackle filled the air—

—and then the room was silent and dark, and Bill was gone.

####

(If you're new here: I posted this as a one shot because I think we could all use a little Bill escaping from Theraprism, yeah? However it's ALSO part of my ongoing Bill-stuck-in-a-human-body fic I'm currently editing for TBOB compatibility. So, if you enjoyed this and want to see where post-reincarnation Bill goes, check out the fic!! And if you DON'T want to read the rest of the fic, I hope you enjoyed the one shot and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

If you do check out the main fic be forewarned it's only 100% TBOB compatible up to chapter 6. After that it is, bizarrely, 98% TBOB compatible, because somehow I accidentally wrote a fic that lines up with the book so well that I'm legit worried people could use TBOB to work out fic spoilers. But I still need to edit the remaining 2%.

If you're NOT new here: hey gang this is the new chapter 6!!! I finished editing this chapter about fifteen minutes before post time so it's not as polished as my usual chapters, but I hope it didn't read that way. Anyway, I look forward to hearing what y'all think!)

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

Heylo my maggotsies... I'm sorry to do this but I have a thing that I really, really need to do (thank you Ash for helping me realise that) but I'm terrified to. so well. I'm going to make one of the posts (Neil reblogged me a couple of days ago so I feel pretty safe making one now since he only lurks by once in two weeks so this is as good a time as it gets to make a post and not expect many notes, yes I'm an overthinker and I'm actually scared of this getting notes).

Sigh. Here goes.

...I'm scared of even typing it.

Nope okay I can do this let's go.

If this post gets 1k notes, I'll look up jobs in design and film making that don't need a college degree.

2k notes, I'll sign up for an Alliance Francaise course so I can have another language on my CV, and I'll find a course that teaches me how to use design software.

5k, I'll look up distance learning alternatives, because just talking about physical college yesterday made me spend the whole morning and afternoon today in and out of nightmares screaming. Fuck.

10k, I'll tell my mum that I can't do the offline college. She's been talking to me about it, but I've been dodging because I'm not well-off and I really need to be earning and idk how to do that without college and I feel so guilty.

15k, I'll officially back out from the college (does that count as dropping out, if it hasn't begun? maybe half. i am a college and a half dropout, my 11th grade self would hate me and my 10th grade self would refuse to believe it).

I don't know what I'll do then. I don't know how to live as trans here in India, I don't know how to earn enough to be able to help my family, I don't know what I'm good at and I'm so fucking terrified. But. I spoke to @random-doctor-on-the-internet last night (I love you Ash you're such a fucking amazing human) and they made me realise that well maybe landing in a hospital with steroids to relieve an allergy attack because of exam stress isn't normal and so.

Well. Here I am. I know I can't do it, but I'm scared to risk everything, it's just not something people do here, dropping out. But also (TW s**cide statistics mentioned below the cut)... And so I've just. Got to do it, got to save myself and say no to college (cue say no to school, kids joke). Somehow be brave enough. And yeah.

To quote a financial express article: "In an alarming situation, a total of 7,62,648 suicides were reported in India between 2018 to 2022, Of this student suicides account for 7.6% at 59,239". Maybe if more people did say fuck you to the system here, that wouldn't be the case. That number could have been 59,240 (aside from everyone who wasn't counted and hushed up), that could have been me, and I don't want to put myself in that situation again. You know? Yeah.

[bi-writes]

hi! i was thinking if you could write an older!boyfriend simon x reader BUT reader is john price's daughter so is kinda of a forbidden and secret relationship !!!! they've been dating for a long time now until john finds out !!!!!

18+

"how is she?"

"doing well, john. but you don't have to worry about her anymore, you know that right? she's not yours to worry about."

"she is mine. i know she's not..." john huffs. "she may not be blood, but she's mine, yeah? so when i ask 'ow she is, you tell me, kate. can we agree on that?"

"sure, john. she's in georgia. her russian got very good. if you want to know my honest opinion, i think she'll be one of my best."

"well...i wouldn't stand for anythin' less."

"john?"

that voice is music to him. he turns, taking his hat off, and he laughs, genuinely, when he sees you. his whole face lights up, and you make your way to him. it's been months since you've seen him in person--even though he makes you send him constant updates about what you're doing and where you are, you find yourself missing this man and the warmth he gives off whenever you are in his proximity.

he's always looked at you so kindly. he's always taken care of you. whenever you pick up the phone, he's always answered.

"'ello, bug."

he crushes you in a warm hug. he puts a hand on the back of your neck and holds you to his chest, and the tension in his shoulders deflates now that he has you with him.

"hi, john. miss me?"

"well...you were the only one with sense in my house."

"you live alone, john."

"aye."

he pours you a hot cup of tea before he makes you tell him all about your new posting. most of it is classified, and you tell him that, but his face lights up when you talk about the new skills you're learning and all the opportunities that kate is giving you. his face scrunches a little when you talk about the more dangerous ops, but john never has the same regard for his own life.

the mess hall gets busy once dinner time rolls around. his men were not expecting you, and that much is clear when they see their captain even enjoying a meal in public and not secluded in his office. you smile at his sergeants, but when your gaze lingers a little longer on the doors, johnny just nudges you with his elbow.

"miss the big guy?"

"what? no."

"he had a long night last night," he wiggles his eyebrows at gaz, who just laughs a little. "i might need to try the whole brooding, scary look LT has got on. attracts the most bonnie things, fuckin' christ."

your plate flies when you stab at your food too hard. the cutlery clatters as it hits the floor, and you jump a little, swallowing.

"are you alright, bug?"

"huh? yeah, oh...yeah, just...fucking clumsy. i...i'm gonna...find the toilet."

the blood is rushing in your ears as you make your way out. you're vibrating, hot inside, and you feel him before you see him, even in your anger.

when he pulls you into the shadow of a nearby supply closet, you swipe the blade out of your boot and hold it up against his throat. even through the mask, the blade bites, and he hisses as you hold him up against the wall there.

"don't fucking touch me," you snarl, and ghost's eyes are bright and alive as he holds his hands up defensively.

"wot--"

"and don't what me," you snap. "actually, don't fucking talk at all, you cheating, manipulative, british piece of shit--"

"look so pretty," he murmurs, tilting his head to the side. "did you do y'r hair, baby?"

"i will kill you."

"'s olright. last thing i see'll be you."

"i'm not fucking kidding, simon!"

he bends a little, tilting his head, and you breathe out through your nose as he leans his forehead against yours.

"reckon ya spoke t'johnny."

you scoff. "told me all about your winnings last night, lieutenant."

"was no winnings, love, don't be so fuckin' naïve." simon swipes at the handle of the blade, curling his gloved fingers around your wrist and forcing it away from him. "y'r just mad cause y'r cunt missed me."

"don't flatter yourself, asshole."

"so if i pull your knickers down right now, y'won't be drippin', swee'eart?"

"that's irrelevant."

"'s not. turn around and bend over."

simon's sorry, so he eats your pussy from behind. he gets down on his knees, and the crack of them satisfies you immensely, up until you feel his mouth between your cheeks, tongue slicking up your folds. you brace yourself against the wall, palms flat against the concrete as he puts two gloved hands against your ass and spreads you wide to fit himself nicely there. he hums, groans, makes you whine as he slurps obscenely into your cunt, laving at the drip of you until the taste of you floods his mouth.

"simon..." you whimper. "tell me i-it's not true."

he presses a wet kiss to your ass, biting it firm.

"'s not true, love. promise."

"fuck your promises," you sniffle. "you're a professional liar."

"tha' 'ow it's gonna be, innit? not gonna trust me? believe me?"

you rest your forehead against the cool wall, and the shadow of him envelopes you when he stands. he grunts a little as he gets to his feet. his big hands squeeze at the curve of your waist, and you close your eyes when you feel his breath against your neck.

"i'm sorry, simon."

"for wot?"

"i just...i like you so much. so much."

"come 'ere," he murmurs in your ear. he pulls your hips back, pressing your ass against his pelvis, and you dig your nails into the wall when you hear his belt buckle and zipper. "my pretty girl. my pretty, pretty girl."

"i missed you s-so much, simon."

"i know, love. quiet now. someone'll hear."

it's not the worst place you've fucked. you've snuck quickies in the rec room. behind the mess hall. met up in filthy gas station toilets, fallen into the backseat of a car in the parking lot of numerous military bases. even once, you deigned to suck his dick in his office, and you had to hide behind his couch when john came in to ask about an op.

john had a rule. his men were off-limits. he should've thought about that before he hired a man straight out of your wet dreams for his stupid fucking task force.

you're weak. and simon is a man.

inevitable.

you're a mile into pound-town when someone interrupts. simon is cock-deep inside of you, pelvis up against your ass, one hand braced around your throat and the other squeezing your ass. your eyes are rolled back into your head, and there's drooling coming out of your mouth. it's hot, disgusting, filthy to let him have you like this, but it's been weeks since you've seen him, and the phone calls aren't enough.

you love talking to him. you love when he talks to you. he'll never be annoying to you, you'll never get tired of him, but the distances hurts. you want simon to be all around you--inside of you, against you, his voice in your ear and his mouth against yours and his warmth your only sheet, but you can't bring yourself to do more than this.

you're too afraid of disappointing people. you're too scared of simon's rejection. if your relationship is nothing but fun, nothing but sex, you can pretend it isn't real, but you're just lying to yourself now.

you babble, and it sounds like love, but then the hallway light blinds you, and familiar blue eyes nearly kill you.

"jesus christ!"

simon puts his body in front of yours to cover you, using a harsh boot to kick the door closed. you squeak, covering your face with your hands, and you groan audibly as simon pants against your back.

"fuck--" you gasp. "oh...fuck, fuck, fuck!"

simon buries his face into the crook of your neck, laughing a little.

"bloody hell," he breathes. "reckon we're fucked, huh, love?"

"it's not funny, simon! we're in so much trouble!"

"well..." he squeezes your throat gently, tilting your head back. "could still finish. no sense in pretendin' now."

"you are not going to come when he's probably waiting for us outside."

"i'm balls deep in my favorite girl," simon mutters. "could come just fine. just say the word."

"you're disgusting."

"mmm..." simon squeezes your hips. "keep talkin'. i like when y'talk t'me like tha'."

"fucking asshole."

"yeah...yeah."

"you stupid, immature, unhinged pain in my ass--"

"fuck."

well.

you're definitely never leaving this room.