#so if you notice any errors

[papayascookie]

So I heard requests are open! Could I possibly have some hcs for madeleine cookie x !gender neutral !age regressor reader x espresso cookie? If you aren't okay with age regression, that's okay!! 🎀🩷

Hi! Sorry this took a bit! I've never written age regression before, but it was interesting to look into! I've, like, read stuff about it before, but writing it was a new experience entirely, especially for two characters I'm not all that into. It was super fun and enlightening, thank you!

... Also got wrapped up in the Sims 4. My bad!

I assume you meant romantic (obviously not specifically for the agere thing, just like in general) so I did write it as such, but it's kept very subtle in case. It's not even the focus, so don't worry. I hope this is okay!

Espresso Cookie x Age Regressor! Reader x Madeleine Cookie

When you started dating Espresso and Madeleine, you’d never even thought about mentioning the whole age regression thing. At least, not at first.

… Maybe you’d just forgotten, until it actually happens, albeit involuntarily. It might happen one day, if you’re overwhelmed or shut down from sensory overload, or as the result of a panic attack.

The two are confused, but still willing to help. It’s not that they’re unaccepting, just a little confused the first time around.

Once everything returns to normal and the dust settles, you realise you’ll likely have to come out about the whole thing. It’s a little scary, and surely they’d…

…. But no! Espresso had already started researching such a thing after the first time. He’s efficient, after all. Madeleine isn’t by any means dumb, but he’s a little bad with social cues I’d like to believe, so Espresso has to clue him in.

So next time it happens, voluntary or involuntary, they’re prepared. When you’re little, Espresso will wrap his cape around you like a blanket. It’s an odd amount of tenderness for him, really. If you’re overwhelmed, he’s likely the one you go to for soothing words and slow hugs.

… Madeleine, on the other hand, is all dramatics and sweeping motions, telling stories and recalling tales. Maybe they’re a bit exaggerated, but with how you laugh and smile and grown visibly warmer at his sweeping motions and funny voices, it’s definitely the right thing.

Like, look at Madeleine and tell me this man wouldn’t be sick at those library things where you read to kids. He’d put on little voices and do huge motions.

If Espresso reads to you, it’s visibly calmer with less dramatics. Like, far less. Probably better for bedtime stories and such, in a way.

Madeleine will spoil you rotten, whether it’s toys or literally anything else you need. Espresso in comparison is a bit more sensitive to your more subtle needs, making sure everything is perfect for you to process your feelings, however big and overwhelming.

For two people with a bit of a ‘rivalry’, albeit a loving one given the nature of your relationship, the two function like a well-oiled machine.

[citricacidprince]

can you draw candy as fiddleford. plz plz plz OuO

Oh believe me I have,,, SO MUCH ART of Candy as Fiddleford she literally drives me wild

Take this massive dump of art of young Candy and Dipper because they made lose my mind in the best way possible 💥💛💥

EDIT: A kind soul named DastardlyWLW decoded all the codes in the replies because I was an idiot who forgot to write down all the codes before I merged my layers, so if you wanna know what the codes all say just look in the replies and thank them for saving my sorry ass 💥💛💥💛💥

[kagooleo]

finally got my fluffyrice keychain tests in! these guys turned out much bigger than I anticipated (and after noticing a very specific error on one of these 😅) but they honestly turned out pretty nice!

[momentomori24]

Keiji is a character that I'm pretty sure every one of us can recognize is an absolute weirdo (ok maybe some are too hard on copium for the "weirdo" part) and sketchy as hell, but thinking about everything he's done it really feels like he's so much shady and ruthless than we give him credit for. So here's me bulletpointing some the moments that I haven't seen too many talk about, a little theory throwing his status into question and addressing the massive elephant in the room that almost everyone refuses to acknowledge. If there's something else you feel I missed or wanted to evaluate on, do leave it in the comments.

[Also, disclaimer: I will be discussing Keiji and Sara in a romantic light near the end of this post, so if that makes you uncomfortable please proceed with caution or skip entirely. This should go without saying but for my own sake I will say it anyway-- No, I do not condone their relationship in real life. No, this is not meant to be "shippy" or endorsement of any kind. This will simply be pointing out their dynamic as another example to prove the whole point of this rant. But if someone else does ship them that's totally fine. Fiction doesn't equal reality and if you harass a real person over fictional characters you will not see the light of heaven. Be civil, please and thank you. My block button is rated E for Everyone and if anyone decides to ignore the warnings and be an asshole I won't hesitate to use it. Thanks for listening. Disclaimer over.]

*Being a murderer.

I feel like I should start with the most obvious and undeniable. I don't think this is debatable to anyone here. Mr. Policeman may have been an accident and kinda confirmed by Midori to have been set up, but he still shot and killed an unarmed man in a moment of panic and recklessness. Even putting that aside, there's no denying that he killed Megumi in cold blood to get out of his debt to her and covered it up to the group to preserve his credibility. Regardless of what you think of Megumi, he has no excuse here. Not only is he one more kill away from being a serial killer, he's the only participant in our group that has actually killed people directly aside from Alice. Another reason why I bring this up is cuz something that completely flew over my head is this:

At the start of the game he had the audacity to complain about not having a partner or someone he knows with him like Sara does as if he didn't literally let Megumi get ripped apart by chains probably not even an hour ago Keiji what the hell--

*Throwing Kanna under the bus repeatedly.

Despite positioning himself as a protector and someone to rely on, he's far from above putting their youngest members in danger. Next to voting for the fourteen year old girl to die, he had the great idea of letting said fourteen year old be the one to babysit their biggest liability. Up to the point where they would stay in the same room both day and night. While I absolutely 100% trust that Sou would never EVER do anything to her, Keiji had no guarantee of that when he send her off. Hell, he literally just got done accusing Sou of setting Joe up to die (which I don't believe almost solely based on the fact that he said it, more on that another time maybe). He knew Sou was bad news, and openly acknowledges how adults can be terrifying, but he did it anyway. The dubiety of throwing the already traumatised little girl to keep watch on what they thought to be the most dangerous adult that had manipulated her once before is not lost on me, and that he didn't take any responsibility for her afterwards isn't lost on me either. To be fair, the Sou and Kanna thing doesn't just fall on him, it falls on everybody (Alice gets a pass because he actually swapped out with Kanna to watch Sou for her), but he was the one with the final say on the matter and who encouraged her to take the role despite Reko's rightful protests. The fact that he also voted for her to die in the Main Game, and is the only adult to do so, doesn’t help his case.

*Attempting to frame Sou knowing Reko was actually responsible.

While you could argue he was trying to cover for her since he knew why she did what she did, trying to pin this act on Sou to cast more doubt on his is extremely shitty. Never mind the blatant corruption and the irony of a supposed man of the law abusing his power to knowingly frame an innocent person (in this situation at least), and him sowing more seeds of confusion and resentment within an already rattled group, and giving Sou legitimate reason to be suspicious of him (and by extension Sara)-- this makes it so difficult to trust him after realising he's done this. Literally every time he accuses someone of being or doing something suspicious (mostly Sou), I always have to think in the back of my head if he’s telling the truth or just telling a blatant lie. He's shown that he's willing to not only lie to cover for himself, but to lie to delegitimize someone else. And Sara never caught onto it (Sou and maybe even Nao likely did tho). She never openly acknowledged it-- No one did. The complete lack of mention of what he did here makes this action quite missable. Hell, I didn't even catch it the first time. Has he done this before? Who else has he lied about? Who else would he lie about? Who else would he knowingly pit against the group? You don't have to wait for that answer, because I will provide an example later. And with "later", I mean now.

*Casting suspicion on Gin before the vote while hiding the fact that he killed Megumi.

While it's not as blatant as with Kanna, there are two instances where Keiji shows a readiness to either put or leave Gin in harm's way. The biggest one for me is in the Main Game. Like, how dare you. That is a furry child, sir. This kid’s like TWELVE. Even though he makes a valid point about calling out suspicious actions to clear them up so we can all trust each other, casting doubt on Gin of all people right there feels pretty screwed to me. This was before the preliminary vote. His words could’ve very well gotten Gin voted for if he couldn’t disclose why he did what he did for whatever reason and therefore being unable to clear himself from suspicion. It’s even more fucked when you realise that Keiji has literally murdered his partner and is currently planning to get Sou killed while giving this whole spiel about doubting others so that we can believe them and pointing the finger at a little kid to make an example to the group. But when Nao, Sou and Sara call him out on his suspicious actions that could rightfully damage his credibility, he tries to shut them down completely. My brother in Christ, you brought it on FIRST (don’t get me wrong I’m very much aware he didn’t really mean the whole “trusting each other” bit but come on dude)--

Speaking about not meaning what he says:

*Letting the group think he’s Ok to vote for knowing he’s the Keymaster.

This kinda got to me because I thought this was Keiji actually being… vulnerable? Accepting the consequences of his actions and allowing them to vote for him in their distrust without protest even tho it could cost him his life, maybe. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t remember a lot of times-- or any times, really-- where Keiji has willing put himself into the line of fire, at this point at least. He always finds a way to keep himself safe, give himself insurance, and I thought that this would be the one time he doesn’t do that. But this feels so ominous looking back knowing that he was the Keymaster the whole time. That our distrust and betrayal and his resignation to it all didn’t matter because he was going to be safe no matter what. That he knowingly allowed us to assume that he was a safe vote because he didn’t want his plan to kill Sou to be ruined, which narrowed down choice of people we can safely vote for even further. That this action is ultimately the reason why Sou and Kanna were our only options to kill off in the end. If he had admitted it there, we could’ve found someone else to vote for so our final options could consist of three people, not two. But he didn’t, and the rest is history. There’s a lot of things he’s done I can’t get over. This one ranks pretty high. The second Main Game is already a huge sore spot for me for obvious reasons; knowing that a lot of the things that happened were due to his inaction where it truly mattered and activity in all the wrong places doesn’t make me fee any better. He didn't say he was a safe vote-- he didn't lie-- but his words carefully omit that voting for him means a total party death, something he should've stated then (and before this, really).

*Leaving Sara with the sacrifice card.

Despite making a big show about “always being by her side” and being her “reliable policeman”, he chose to look away when she was in real danger. He attached himself to her as her right hand man, made her shoulder the responsibility of being the leader, constantly manipulated and flattered her to win her trust and gain her favour-- but when she needed him the most, he basically left her for dead because it was the most beneficial to him. Keep in mind that not only did he know about her getting the sacrifice (he was also the sage so he'd have seen the trade happen), but he had the tokens to help her get rid of it. But those tokens weren’t for her life. They were for his. He used them instead to give himself the Keymaster as insurance for the Main Game (the Keymaster he stole from Sou/Kanna most likely to buy Sara’s trust btw). His desperation for survival outweighed his sense of obligation to keep her safe, and that’s the most subtle yet transparent he’s been about his selfishness. What makes this so much worse is that Keiji is our support character. He’s an ally, and our closest one at that, to the point where Sara burned her hands in a futile attempt to rescue him and signed her life away to save his. And yet his loyalty and protectiveness pale in comparison to other characters. Compare his actions to Sou’s: one of their many parallels and similarities is that both their girls get hit with the sacrifice card. As we’ve established, Keiji was fully aware of Sara being send the sacrifice by Sou, had 50 tokens ready to go and chose to secure his own survival than save her life. Kanna ended up doing it instead, attempting to trade the card off Sara with Sou realising what happened immediately. And what does Sou do? Completely bend over backwards trying to keep her alive. He lied about being the Sacrifice so the others wouldn’t suspect Kanna of having that role, meaning he could try gathering vote for her without anyone seeing his true intentions. He tried to stop her about coming out with the truth of what she had done so she doesn’t sentence herself to death. After everything he did to survive-- after how much he lied, how much he schemed, how much he hurt, and how he had thrown himself away to replace everything that made him Shin with the man that had traumatised him years before the game began to scrape together even the tiniest chance to survive-- he threw it all to the wind and was willing to let it all be in vain if it meant she got to make it out of the Main Game alive. The worst part is that Sou had never intended to make it through that Main Game. He confessed to already knowing that Kanna would choose Sara over him if she truly had the Sacrifice card. Yet he still did what he did all in the hopes that she could win. Because it was all about her survival first, not about them surviving together.

It also gives a different context to Sou's panic and him stumbling over his words trying to come up with any argument to get them to stop. At first I thought that Sou was afraid for his life. Which would make sense-- Keiji and Q-taro set him up to die and seemed pretty adamant on having everyone voting for him to get it all over with. But he was already prepared to die the minute he realised Kanna traded with Sara. So it means it wasn’t his life he was fearing for here-- it was hers. To him, if they voted for him there, it wouldn’t have just been his end but hers too. But we know that Kanna isn’t the one who has the sacrifice. It’s Nao, and considering how the Main Game can end either or both of them dead, I wonder if he regrets not having given up there, not letting Keiji get away with that shitty stunt he pulled knowing it would’ve at least guaranteed her safety than leave her fate in hands of a girl with enough reason to kill her. Ignoring the sounds of my heart shattering into pieces for the 100th time thinking about the Greenblings, it’s so fascinating that our biggest rival and most distrusted member has a greater sense of loyalty and responsibility for his ally than Keiji has for his own. Sou can be a liar and manipulative and selfish, but for how unpredictable he is something I can always trust is his love for those he holds dear (Kanna) and general desire to protect our most vulnerable (Gin). Sou loves Kanna, and so he’s fine with protecting her even if it comes at a price he never wanted to pay. Keiji surely cares about Sara, but unfortunately that is something I can’t say about him-- at least at that time (also the fact that Sou ended up taking more care and responsibility for Kanna despite Keiji having been the one to throw her on him in the first is so ironic).

*Continuously pushing Sara to take on the role of leader.

I think one of Keiji's biggest failures in the game come from his treatment of Sara despite positioning himself as her most reliable ally and her partner. From the very get-go, he was very adamant of making Sara be the one to shoulder the responsibility of the group. He, along with Joe (he didn't do anything wrong here), pushed Sara to be the Challenger during the Russian Roulette, despite Q-taro and Kai being readily available. He made Sara be the one to interrogate the suspicious convict while distancing himself from the situation. And he encourages her to lead them through the Main Game, lets her make the choices that steer them all forward and as a consequence take the fall for them as well. Rather than take on the role himself, or let another adult take it, he places his full trust in her and makes her shoulder everyone's weight so he doesn't have to. And he can see the effect it has on her: having horrific hallucinations due to the immense guilt she feels. But having Sara as their leader gives him a greater shot at survival and helps his credibility, so even though he tries to provide her comfort he still continues to keep her in that role. Again, the high schooler taking responsibility for the adults falls on a lot of the older people here, but Keiji was the one who kickstarted it rather than just go along with it like everyone else had. Gin, Nao, Kanna, Reko and even fucking Sou to an extent all have moments where they take the burden off her and relieve her of that pain she shoulders all the time (or at least try to). I need Keiji to take more responsibility for both the group and for her.

*Pitting Sara and Joe against each other.

This is just another example of the previous point. This isn't as bad, and I could give him the benefit of the doubt that this might have not been intentional, but it's something I want to bring up regardless. I'll be the first to say that Keiji wasn't wrong here. Prying into everyone's votes is a very bad move, especially since no one knew that Mishima would actually die (it was introduced as a practice round, after all). I agree with him, Joe was being rash, but instead of leaving the conversation there, he decided to throw Sara into it to pick a side. Which is... not good. He already won the argument and already had Reko on his side. Bringing in Sara could not only make Joe feel worse and potentially strain their relationship (especially if she rightfully chooses Keiji's side like he was expecting and hoping for), but just puts Sara in the spotlight during something she doesn't want to be part of. While there's a chance he might've done this because he know Joe is more likely to listen to her than him, he should've known better than that. It again makes her take the responsibility of giving the final verdict that would've otherwise gone to him.

*Asking Sara to take responsibility for his life

I've got nothing other that the grown adult swearing his life to the grieving, unstable teenager to take responsibility for while asking her if she'd die along with him is weird as heck. Keiji's said weirder things prior to this, but this one is a different weird. I think Beanieman's post mostly echoes my thoughts on this on, so I'll link it here for this point. This part kinda bothers me:

He shouldn't be encouraging her taking on anymore responsibility than she already is. He knows that the deaths that happened under her leadership haunt her. He knows that she's very much unstable enough already, to the point where he takes baby-steps to avoid triggering her trauma over Joe. He positioned himself as her reliable partner, her rock to lean on (quite literally sometimes). We see first hand how emotionally dependent she is on him. If he died, it would destroy her-- she'd destroy herself over it. He knows this (or should) but he still does it. His disappointment and dismissiveness when she understandably rejects him makes it worse. The guilt of potentially not living up to his expectations is not what she needs.

*Potentially working for Asunaro

This is more ambiguous than everything else here and more a theory than anything but it's been on my mind for a long time that Ranmaru might actually be onto something here. We know that Asunaro has a strong hold on the police. Midori was able to infiltrate the force, and they were able to get rid of Mr. Policeman for looking into the corruption going on, first having Megumi fire him and secondly getting Keiji to kill him by planting false info about the suspect having a gun. Megumi was also able to get Keiji off the hook for murder, which I believe Asunaro had a hand in too (I theorize this might've been her wish). There's also Alice, who was arrested and sent to prison despite the fact that he (legally) didn't kill anyone since Midori was a doll. The police are connected to Asunaro-- by extension Megumi and extending further potentially Keiji.

Something I've seen someone rightfully point out is that neither of the options you're given to say in response to the accusation... actually deny it? Both choices dance around answering directly, which is suspect as fuck. If Keiji truly wasn't with Asunaro, why not shut that theory down immediately? There's no benefit to answering anything but "no" when he's innocent, and he's lied straight to people's faces for less. So why not just debunk it? I think it's cuz there might be some truth to what Ranmaru was saying here. The biggest reason I think this is because despite the fact that Keiji quit the force, he and Megumi were still associating with each other years later. They were kidnapped together and partnered up for their first trial. One missable piece of dialogue is Keiji admitting that he was with his partner-- or rather a "coworker"-- before getting knocked out.

That slip of the tongue and backtracking makes me believe this part to be true. Him switching from "my partner" to "a coworker", which is a lot more distant and impersonal, makes me think it's got to be Megumi. However, I don't believe that Keiji would wanna keep in touch with her after what happened willingly, so I can only imagine that it's due to that debt he has to her. My little game theory here is that after the shooting, the debt he owed her was a forced recruitment into Asunaro. It's the only thing I can imagine he meant by "the worst kind of debt", a debt he'd literally let her die for to get out of. And if this is true, then it could also explain away his instant attachment to Sara, since he'd know beforehand that she's someone he can depend on due to her having the highest chance at survival. Maybe he already knew about her beforehand, one way or the other. We know Hayasaka did (which I think we as a fandom moved on from way too fast btw). Kai and Sou did too. There's always a chance. And unlike Sou's victory rate and Midori's favourite number, it's not zero. One person made a comic about this idea I recommend checking it out, it's tastefully unsettling. But still very much unsetling and uncomfortale. Be warned that it's also Keisara-centred, so if that makes you even more uncomfortable they did the job right you can ignore it. Proceed with caution or don't read if you don't like.

*Being a predator

I have been waiting so long for this one XD For context: a while ago I made a longpost discussing the sanitisation of soushin and this kind of toxic attitudes in fandoms regarding "problematic content" (ships, characters, shows, you name it). In it, I mentioned that it's not only soushin that receives this treatment but a certain other dynamic too. It's not a rainy day, however this has been way overdue and if I don't get this done now I never will.

Something I've seen a lot, and I mean a LOT-LOT is this notion that Keiji acts "like a father" to Sara and that their relationship is a completely platonic father-daughter bond and that he's the resident dad of the group? Like, it's cute, but that's not at all what their relationship is. At all. Not even a little bit. We called Sou and Kanna siblings before the Greenblings reveal. The difference is that not only does half the fandom think this man is gay, but he's only ever been protective and caring and loving without any romantic intentions towards Kanna ever. His title as her brother was deserved, based on the genuine affection and platonic protectiveness similar to that of Alice's. Keiji has made advances tho, on many occasions, and his flirting is repeatedly acknowledged by other characters. Namely Sou and Reko.

(Sou grills him for being a creep every chance he gets I love him XD) But yeah, these are not the type of reactions and comments you receive when being a "father-figure" to the teenager. You get all this when you hit on the teenager. Which he does all the time by calling her "cute" every time she asks something and his "cute little detective", swearing himself to her by saying that "he's always on her side" or something like that, asking her if she'd die alongside him, repeatedly claiming or insinuating that they're on a date, or ""having a moment"" and going to ""take the next step"" when in private (*cough* groomer *cough*)-- you name it, he likely said it. He's a walking-talking ladykiller machine and teenage girls aren't safe, apparently.

(Quick note: The dialogue for the Russian Roulette one is a tad different now. In the new translation he says "cause you're so darn cute" now. I dunno if that makes it sound any less weird, but I felt like putting that out there. What I'm also putting out there is that according to the trivia he calls her cute 8 times throughout the game so. Yeah. *Cough* groomer *COUGH COUGH*)

Like, who tf says this?? Especially that last part 💀 Even if you wanna die on the hill that these are supposed to be "jokes" not to be taken seriously, we should all be able to agree that the (ex)police officer in his late 20s jokingly hitting on the high schooler he follows around is still weirdo behaviour at best and down right despicable at worst. The fandom seeing lowkey predatory/inappropriate behaviour from a figure of authority persistent for almost three entire chapters and dismissing it as "fatherly" and "platonic" is, well, concerning. It's very concerning. If your dad acts like Keiji, you should probably call the police. Unfortunately for Sara, Keiji is the police. And considering this guy got away with manslaughter, I don't think said police would do anything anywho. But yeah-- he uses flattery and flirting to distract her from prodding to much at him while simultaneously aiming to gain favour in her eyes. He showers her with reassurance of his loyalty and affirmation of his deeper attachment towards her and her alone every chance he gets to cement his position as her closest and most trustworthy ally. He insinuates a romantic partnership between them to others to mostly keep her to himself or the two of them alone (he always does that when they're investigating or going to investigate by themselves). There's such an obvious romantic undertone to their relationship and his actions that it going almost completely ignored in the fandom feels weird to me.

I want to make clear that there's nothing wrong with headcanoning Keiji as a father figure to Sara. It's cute. Keiji didn't have a dad himself, and the closest thing to a father figure he had was the man he shot dead. He's a damaged and hardened guy. But Sara's dad is involved with Asunaro and Gin's is an alcoholic, and in a situation where they both need guidence and protection he tries his best to grow and change, fumbling to become that decent father none of them got to have. It's nice, and a wholesome dynamic for our "characters with memorandum counterparts and only non-determined deaths" trio. But that's obviously not what their dynamic is. There's a difference between headcanoning something and erasing canon and the Yttd fandom leans heavily into the latter. Keiji's a creep, he always has been, yet 90% of people I see always portray him as a Mr. Dad Guy or completely sanitise him to hell when him being creepy and unnerving to be around is what made him such a fascinating character. Just like I said with Soushin, the sanitisation to make canon more digestible is one thing: harassing or insulting the people that explore canon is another. I'm gonna take a bullet, derail this rant and say it-- Keisara shippers get so much shit for literally being right it's so infuriating. Keiji does hit on Sara, a lot. He's creepy and weird like that. Him flirting with her isn't a "mistranslation" or a joke or anything like that; his dubious wording and antics are very much intentional. Yet the only people I see actually addressing and acknowledging that without adding fluff is keisara shippers and other ""proshippers"" only for them to get fucking sniped for it I cannot 💀💀 I have yet to meet a single eastern fan who calls this cop "fatherly". This really feels like such a western issue cuz the majority of the japanese fandom agrees that this man's a predator (correct me if i'm wrong but keisara is the most popular ship in the japanese side of the fandom, right?). Then again, eastern fandoms are more chill over there when it comes to separating fiction and reality in general anywho.

*Yeah, I think I'm done with the Keiji slander. Yay. Time to unceremoniously end this.

There's more to say about that, but this is a Keiji post, not another shipping discourse post (although it's hard discussing Keiji's predatory behaviour without bringing it up too). Before I do spiral from the original point, I'm going to try and reach some sort of conclusion here. While I did spent the majority of this post just reading Keiji to filth, and am very salty towards him in particular, this was not just to rake him through mud for my own sanity (tho it's part of it XD). Keiji's character is that he started off as someone who wanted to do the right thing, someone who wanted to be good and moral and protect others by joining the force only to kill all the progress he made along with the person who inspired him to become an officer in the first place. It heavily contrasts the Keiji we have now, a sleazy, unreliable and corrupt ex detective who flirts with underage girls and is willing to resort to the most bankrupt of decisions to save himself. A man that has long lost hope of his wounds healing that he lets them fester and his rot spread onto others. And while I headcanon Keiji to just inherently be a piece of shit, his former self tried his best to be genuinely good before he became so convinced he can never be better that he made peace with his shittiness in the end.

With all this I wanted to highlight some the shadier and bankrupt things he's done that I haven't seen much discussion around and refresh myself on them before the final part. Both so no matter how emotionally dependent and therefore rose-tinted Sara is about the man I don't forget what he's actually like and what he's done while also being able to appreciate how much he's changed for the better. Some of my favourite examples about how he's changed are these:

Before the second Main Game Keiji was willing to let Sara and Kanna die because it was the most beneficial option for him, but in Chapter 3 he takes the on the role of "it" from Kanna and refuses to tag Sara when he thought he was gonna die after failing to beat Midori.

Actually showing more sympathy towards Sou after the Main Game. He was very mean about dismantling his pretence of a cold front to Kanna's death, don't get me wrong, but he showed a lot more consideration and understanding for Sou's feelings and acknowledgement about his active role in it than he ever had beforehand.

He was genuinely fighting for everyone to survive the game, not just himself. While Keiji would prefer everyone making it out safely, he has a tendency to guarantee his own survival first through any means necessary. His plan to corner Midori in the banquet could've cost him his life if it weren't for Q-taro's final stunt, yet he still reassured Sara to save Gin even tho it could've resulted in his execution from Meister potentially finding him guilty of violating the rules.

Him hugging Mai and trying to be more cheerful was cute as heck. I'm sorry but him showing more vulnerability around his allies and being less closed off in a way he hasn't been before is something I'm very head empty about. That he was hugging and interacting with Mai without making any unwanted advances or ladykiller jokes and generally just having a more friendly vibe was nice. It makes his creeping on Sara more unfortunate, but I'll take what I can for now. The bar is in hell.

And that's it, I think. Overall, I hope they do address some of his actions here in the final part or make them have an impact on his and Sara's relationship. Especially that Asunaro part. The person who wished for Sara to join the death game is still unknown and so is Keiji's consent form wish (same goes for the Dummies, Hinako and Megumi), so I'm curious if they're related or not. If he's going to go down an even darker path or redeem himself as much as he can we'll see when the final part drops. He has the potential to go both ways. This is going to be kinda awkward if the next part reveals him to have been a decent guy all along, so hopefully that doesn't happen. Please be morally bankrupt, man. This post didn't end up the way I wanted it to, nor bring up as many points as I would've liked, but I know I won't finish it if I went full perfectionist on it (I already spent months on this writer's block do be a bitch) and it's looking kinda long already. Hopefully it's still decent enough as is right now. I'd like to say that this is my apology for the last longpost I made, but I brought up one of the most controversial and hated ships and traits of Keiji's character and defended them, so maybe I shouldn't 🙃 Anywho, hope you enjoyed and cheerio.

[daydreaming-en-pointe]

it’s nice to have a friend (pt. 1)

Pairing: Hobie Brown (Spider-Punk) x GN!Reader

Type: Mini Fic - Fluff-ish??

Word count: 1.6k

Warnings: Cursing, maybe a little bit ooc Hobie since it’s been months, a few halfhearted attempts at his accent and then I just gave up whoops

A/N: wrote this while having the worst cramps of my life last month and only finished it now 👍 idk I just felt like cussing out the world at that point so that might explain the excessive swearing 😭

Tap tap tap.

You were just about dropping off to sleep when you heard those light knocks on the window. Probably just a clumsy bird.

Tap tap tap tap.

The knocks grew more insistent, more familiar - a pattern of sorts. You heaved a long, mildly annoyed sigh and got up to open the window.

It was not, in fact, an annoying pigeon. It was Spider-Punk in the flesh. Or as you knew him, your absolute dumbass of a best friend.

“It’s 3am in the fucking morning,” You waved your hand at the pitch-darkness outside, giving him the most formidable glare you could muster. “What do you want?”

“Hello, sunshine!” Hobie hopped inside, pulled off his mask, and gave you a completely unfazed grin. “Nice to see you too. Stop glaring at me! What, I can’t see my best friend whenever I want?”

“It is 3am in the fucking morning,” You repeated, pointing helpfully at the clock on your bedside table, though you had to press your lips together to squash a smile. Good grief, did his little cross between a smirk and a smile have to be so contagious?

“But I can’t sleep, and clearly you can’t sleep, and I missed you, so let’s go!”

“You saw me barely six hours ago,” You deadpanned, already pulling yourself to your feet and grabbing your coat from where it lay thrown across the the bedside table. “Drama queen.”

“Me? A drama queen? Nah, I’ll show you drama.” He flopped melodramatically onto the floor, grabbing your ankle and pretending to die. He looked ridiculous, like a lanky stick-bug-fish hybrid that crawled onto land and starting flapping about.

“Hobie, get up!” You gave a little huff, reaching a hand down to yank him upwards. “Okay, fine, let’s go wherever it is you want to go.”

“Yay! Can we go to the roof?”

“Sure, we can take the fire esca- HOBIE WHAT THE FUCK NOT AGAIN!” Before you could even take a step towards your bedroom door, he had grabbed you around the middle and leaped out the window. Your stomach dropped as he let you both plummet almost to the ground before shooting a web to the railing that ran the length of the roof and extended a little bit over. You both shot up like a rocket and he angled you in such a way that your landing would be much gentler than his.

“The next time you do that I’m going to throw up on you,” You warned him once you got the air back in your lungs (after a little bit of wheezing).

“That’s what you said last time. Besides, ‘s like a free amusement park ride! Honestly, I’m so generous, you don’t even have to pay,” He chuckled softly, brushing past you to sit at the edge of the roof.

“Sometimes I don’t even know why I put up with you,” You muttered, carefully navigating around the looser tiles on the roof to go and sit next to him.

The atmosphere was silent, not peaceful exactly but just still for the moment. Factories in the distance were still chugging out thick smog that floated up to join the suffocating clumps in slowly strangling the city. The alleyways were dark save for a few slivers of moonlight that managed to cut through the pitch-blackness of the backstreets.

Perfect time for a philosophical conversation, right?

“Do you ever wish that that spider hadn’t bitten you?”

Hobie looked at you in surprise, his eyebrows raising slightly. He looked back over the city, leaning back on his palms. “Well… sometimes. What I mean is… sometimes I just wish I didn’t have to do this, y’know? But it’s better me than some pig. One of those bastards as Spider-Man would be a fuckin’ nightmare. For everyone who sees through Osborn’s bullshit.”

You nodded, satisfied with his answer. Truth be told, you didn’t understand much of what he said - it was 3am, it had been a long day, and the words just didn’t register in your tired brain. You closed your eyes for a few minutes, leaning on Hobie. It wasn’t very comfortable, since not only did you have to avoid impaling yourself on the small spikes on his vest, but his shoulder was also pretty bony under the fabric.

“Tired?” He turned his head to look down at you, eyes soft and sweet and filled with something you couldn’t quite put a name to right now, perhaps because of the state of your consciousness.

You rolled your eyes, having still not fully pushed away the remaining traces of grumpiness that lingered from your rude awakening. “Thanks to the dumbass who woke me up at some unholy hour.”

“Come on, you know you wouldn’t have slept anyway. At least this way you have some company.”

You opened your mouth to say something back but slowly shut it upon realising that he was right. Absolutely insufferable.

You just snorted and closed your eyes, savouring the moment as best as you can. You loved quiet moments like these, where you could ask anything and get an honest answer instead of having to mince your words — maybe you liked them more than you should, but it was fairly harmless, right?

Marriage could end in divorce, couples could break up, and young love really wasn’t a constant. You couldn’t expect something so intoxicating to retain its magic against the test of time.

So it was better to take that fierce rush of whatever it was that you were feeling and label it as platonic love. Because strong platonic love, when it was returned, was benign and beautiful and all-encompassing, all at once.

“Oi, don’t fall asleep here. Still with me?”

You felt a light touch of ridiculously cold fingers against your forehead and jolted fully awake.

“Asshole,” You complained, batting away his ice blocks for hands. “Have you been sitting and stewing in a fridge for a few hours?”

Hobie snickered at your annoyed frown and chose that moment to break into a grin, reaching into his pockets. “Oh, that reminds me, I made us matching bracelets!”

He held out two bracelets, ridiculously tiny in comparison to his fingers. They were both composed of random beads, staples, half-broken bottle caps and bits of coloured string threaded onto a loop of fishing twine. The loud, mismatched colours practically vibrated off of them in shockwaves like some sort of sonic boom of Hobie-ness.

In short, they were absolutely perfect. There was nothing that he could’ve given you that would remind you more of him. All sleepiness was momentarily forgotten as you took one of them, holding it up to examine it in whatever moonlight managed to cut through the clouds.

You gave him a smile, slipping it onto your wrist carefully. “It’s beautiful, Hobes. Thank you.”

“Ah, we’re back with the nicknames! There it is! Good to know I didn’t actually make a mistake waking you up.” His tone was lighthearted and teasing, but his smile had turned into one of affection as he watched your reaction to his gift.

There it was again. You’d seen it a few times recently, and it had been silently eating at you no matter how much you tried to dismiss it as simple friendship.

Nothing more than a tiny little flash of that puzzling something in his eyes, but something that made you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and not just in a way that someone would feel about their best friend. Something that gave you the courage to finally break free from the voice in your head whispering about everything that could go wrong — although that might have been because of your horrendous lack of sleep and the tiredness that was tinging each of your thoughts with just a little bit of delirium.

Screw keeping it platonic.

“Hobie,” You began, and something in your tone must have sounded different because he trained his eyes on you, his head cocking to the side slightly. You faltered slightly, trying to think of something to say. But before you could find a way to put your exhausted, confused mess of thoughts into words properly, he winced and his face scrunched up in the way it always did whenever his spider-sense went off.

“I’m sorry, I gotta…” Hobie gestured vaguely down at the alleyways, an apology practically written on his face. You nodded, ignoring the hollow pit of disappointment forming in your stomach.

“Yeah, you should go. I’ll… see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” He agreed, already fishing through his vest pockets and digging out his mask. He paused to give you a cheeky grin before slipping the fabric over his face. “Don’t worry, I’ll pick a more pleasant time to drop in.”

“That’s what you said last time!” You called after him as he leaped off the building, disappearing down into the roads winding around, into and throughout the city. You stayed where you were, hugging your knees to your chest as you stared at the ever-shifting skyline. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course something came up right as you had finally mustered up the courage to say something… and yet, it felt as though he was almost expecting it. Like he wanted you to say it.

You scoffed at the absurdity of your train of thought, looping around and around hopefully like a broken clockwork toy. All wishful thinking, perhaps? Then again, maybe not. You pushed yourself to your feet, pushing open the fire escape and beginning to make your way back to your apartment. You almost missed the terrifying rush of adrenaline that accompanied one of Hobie’s daredevil manoeuvres in and out of windows on the fifth floors of buildings. Almost.

You got into bed again and switched off the light, pausing to look out of the still-open window. Oh, well...

You moved to close it, pulling down the pane of glass and latching it at the bottom.

Maybe next time.

@hobiebrownismygod @l0starl @therealloopylupin2099 (not sure if i’m missing anybody else, it’s been a while 😭)

[cultivating-saplings]

In honour of 4/13x15 I'm posting (a very slightly edited version of) the paper I wrote on the Unofficial Homestuck Collection for one of my classes last term. The language/tone is a bit more academic than what I would usually put up on here, but it's exam season so... 

Don’t Turn Your Back on the Body:

The Resurrection of Homestuck After the Death of Flash

Digital media is, broadly speaking, very difficult to preserve. The rapid pace of technological development means that obsolescence and decay present a consistent threat to the availability of natively digital works. Most computers produced in 2023 no longer have built in CD drives, and I feel fairly confident in asserting that none are being produced with floppy disk readers outside of hobbyist spaces. Issues with the accessibility of physically stored digital media can be mitigated (at least for now) by the use of external readers, but the preservation of fully digital media, born and hosted in its entirety on the Internet, is a different beast entirely.

This is, in part, an issue of pure volume; no one organization could ever hope to archive the vast amounts of stuff that the Internet is constantly producing, let alone organize it into a resource that could be used effectively. Like Borges’ cartographers who created “a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire,” to fully archive the Internet would be to replicate it in its entirety. Thus scope becomes a central question of fully digital archiving. 

The Internet Archive, which also operates the Wayback Machine, answers that question with a resounding and all-encompassing ‘yes’ — their stated goal is to “provide Universal Access to All Knowledge,” but even this comes with caveats. The organization freely permits members of the public to upload files to the archive and save pages on the Wayback Machine, but the work carried out by its official volunteers is more curated, and prioritizes webpages which have been identified as particularly important.

The Internet Archive is very effective within its own space, yes, but it has its limits. When the piece of work you are trying to archive is composed of not just static text and images, but longform animations and complex browser-based games, where do you put it? What do you do when the software necessary to access these elements of the work has been taken offline? And what happens if the people who were supposed to safeguard it fail to do so?

These were the issues that the fans of Homestuck faced in 2020 as the impending deactivation of Flash loomed on the horizon.

But first, before I properly explain what the Unofficial Homestuck Collection really is and why it is so effective as a digital archive, let me tell you about Homestuck. 

Frustrated with the poorly implemented official preservation of the comic, and with a lot of free time on his hands, one fan began the Unofficial Homestuck Collection as a personal project during lockdown, during the “depths of 2020.” As the project changed hands and more fans became involved over the following years, its true scope came into focus: the Collection would preserve not only Homestuck itself, in its entirety and with its Flash-dependent pages intact, but also as much of its contextual material as possible, thus making it a prime example of the effectiveness of fan-driven digital archiving and preservation. Because the people who created the Collection are long standing fans of Homestuck, they know which pieces of peripheral material will provide the context the comic demands. The Collection preserves Homestuck as a text in a way that would be impossible in an analogue format, creating an archive both of the work and of the experience of reading it in a serialized format.

Andrew Hussie began* Homestuck on April 13th of 2009, and published it serially on mspaintadventures.com, his personal website at the time, until its conclusion on April 13th, 2016. Prior to beginning Homestuck, Hussie had been publishing short webcomics and pieces of fiction for several years on his older website, Team Special Olympics, since 2004, which had gained him a small but very loyal following. This following was centered mostly around the forum attached to the TSO website, which hosted the first of Hussie’s ‘MS Paint Adventures,�� Jailbreak, in September of 2006. Jailbreak was a short comic which Hussie produced as a collaborative writing game on these forums, in the style of early text adventures.

Beginning with the prompt, “You wake up locked in a deserted jail cell, completely alone. There is nothing at all in your cell, useful or otherwise,” Hussie then wrote the rest of the comic according to the first comment posted after every page. This, perhaps predictably, resulted in a barely coherent mess of a story.

Following the conclusion of Jailbreak after a short 134 pages, Hussie would produce two more comics prior to beginning Homestuck: the unfinished Bard Quest (June-July 2007) and Problem Sleuth (March 2008-April 2009), which was his longest work so far at the time of its conclusion. Problem Sleuth in particular represented a substantial increase in production quality and general coherency over Jailbreak, as Hussie gained experience using the MSPA forums as tools for collaborative storytelling, reigning in the meandering narrative by allowing himself to be more selective about which forum responses he followed.

Hussie would continue this more controlled style of forum collaboration throughout the first three Acts of Homestuck, which followed a much more focused story than any of his prior work, thanks to his decision to use reader input only in specific parts of the comic. In the introduction to the print edition of the first Act, Hussie described his own role during the production of these first Acts as “dungeon master, a game engine responding to input, and an improv comic all in one.” During the process of writing Act 4, Hussie stopped taking prompts from readers entirely, and would construct the rest of the comic ostensibly as its sole author.

‘Okay,’ you might now be thinking, ‘you’ve given me the context, but what the hell is Homestuck? And what’s it about?’ Well, to wildly oversimplify a very complex piece of media, Homestuck is a webcomic about four young online friends who play a video game that causes the end of their universe and grants them the power to create a new one as they see fit. It is a story about growing up and realizing you’ve been forever changed by your experiences, a story about leaving behind the life you knew and constructing a new one. It is also a story about time travel and paradoxes, genetics and cloning, a large number of aliens, a possibly larger number of puppets (at least one of which is sentient), and an unfortunate amount of clowns. 

This story slowly unfolds over the course of 8126 pages, 817,929 words, and 166 animated panels, 95 of which contained some degree of interactivity and all of which total over four hours in length. Most of the comic’s pages consist of a main image, usually a short looping gif, accompanied by a text description or dialogue, which is almost always written in the format and style of online chat-logs between characters. As mentioned previously, however, these simpler gif-and-description pages are interspersed with longer videos, animated in Flash and soundtracked by one of Hussie’s several collaborators.

The first of these animated panels was uploaded a few weeks into Homestuck’s publication — an animated opening title-card for the comic, scored ominously with sounds of howling wind and windchimes. This first Flash panel was relatively simple, but the next would introduce a bespoke soundtrack (“Harlequin” by Mark Hadley), and the third would include simple interactivity. These soundtracked animations and interactive segments increased in scope and complexity over the course of the comic’s run; the final animated page in the comic, “[S] Collide,” comes in at nearly twenty minutes in length, and some of the larger interactive segments can take upwards of two hours to fully explore. 

While some of the later interactive pages were developed in an engine based on HTML5, most of Homestuck would be built using Adobe Flash, and would depend on the program for basic functionality. This would prove disastrous for the comic’s long term preservation. Flash was very popular, and had become ubiquitous by the early 2010s, but it had security issues which were easy to exploit, its range was fairly limited in terms of what kinds of animations it could produce, and, as its most fatal flaw, it couldn’t run on mobile. Thus with the expanding use of smartphones and tablets, Flash became less and less practical as a tool for web developers, and Adobe began slowly preparing to kill it. On December 31st, 2020, Adobe sent Flash off to the farm where it could frolic and play in the digital sunshine, leaving many online communities facing a crisis. How do you preserve a text when its foundations have crumbled?

With Homestuck using Flash in such an integral way, the issue of preservation was an important one. After the finale, Hussie would post some short post-credits stories to Snapchat from October 2016 to August 2017, as well as a longer epilogue in April 2019, before stepping away from any formal involvement with the comic in 2020. In 2018, Hussie had given the distribution rights for Homestuck to VIZ Media, which primarily handled the English-language publication of several manga series, and had left the rights to the IP and the freedom to produce new work to former collaborators. Thus it was VIZ who took on the task of officially preserving Homestuck against the death of Flash.

To say their efforts were unsatisfactory would, I think, be paying them too great a compliment. The complex and highly detailed Flash animations were replaced with embedded YouTube links to low-quality screen-captures of the originals. The hours-long walkaround games were not translated at all, replaced with ‘choose your own adventure’ style pages of text and links. The official version of Homestuck as it currently exists fails to capture a lot of what made the comic work, because it removes a lot of the gamified elements of the comic that are so integral to its storytelling.

There are many snapshots of the website from before the walkaround games were taken down on the Wayback Machine, but the Flash emulator that archive.org uses is very inconsistent, frequently becoming stuck on looping loading screens or failing to process assets correctly. While the dubious preservation of the long Flash animations is a real issue on its own, the lack of any attempt to replicate the format of these longform games represents the loss of something essential to the comic. Homestuck is, throughout the whole of its story, intertwined with the visual and cultural language of video games. The loss of the complex interactivity of these panels fundamentally changes how the reader is permitted to engage with them and, by extension, with Homestuck’s narrative as a whole. The official version of Homestuck that exists online is no longer complete. 

This incredibly poor preservation was the impetus behind the creation of the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. In its most basic form, the Collection is simply a preserved and restored version of Homestuck, intact and in high quality, accessible through a downloadable client, rather than online — reducing the Collection down to this basic description does it a disservice. The Unofficial Homestuck Collection includes not just Homestuck, but all of Hussie’s prior work: Jailbreak, Bard Quest, and Problem Sleuth are in there, but so are the full contents of his first website, Team Special Olympics, alongside archived versions of his now-deleted accounts on various social media platforms, and copies of threads from the MSPA forums that he would later reference in the main comic. The Collection also includes material that Hussie released alongside Homestuck, like the in-fiction blog of one of the main characters, various short comics written by guest authors, and a full episode of an in-universe childrens’ cartoon.

These peripheral materials are interesting and provide context for some of the more obscure references throughout Homestuck, but many of them were not produced until well into the comic’s run, and assume an audience that is caught up with the most recent update, making them dangerously full of spoilers for the unaware new reader. This issue is solved by the appropriately named ‘new reader mode.’ One of a variety of useful accessibility tools included in the Collection, the new reader mode tracks which page a user has reached, and implements a universal spoiler cloak over the whole program, hiding all materials that were released after their most recent page’s publication. This tool is what transforms the Unofficial Homestuck Collection from an archive of a text, into an archive of an experience.

De Kosnik argues that fan-driven archiving serves as a way for fans to mediate their own temporal experience of a text, describing websites hosting fanworks as mechanisms which “maintain the possibility of individuals joining fandoms… long after a media text has ceased to air.” While De Kosnik’s focus is on archives of fanworks and their function in ongoing fan spaces, I would argue that this framework, which centers the impact of serialization on the dynamics of fan communities, fits extremely well when applied to the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. Homestuck was published serially over the course of seven years, accompanied by blog posts, side comics, music, and other pieces of peripheral media that were released in tandem with the comic itself.

Updates were highly anticipated events, and fan communities were structured around them — one user on Tumblr found an unlisted part of the MSPA forums where Hussie posted new pages before they were published, and this “MSPA Prophet” became a fixture of the fandom for their ability to predict when the next update would come. The event that was an update (or upd8, after the typing style of a popular character) was a central aspect of the experience of reading Homestuck during its publication, and it is one that is very difficult to recover now that the comic exists as a static, completed work. The Unofficial Homestuck Collection, through its new reader mode, functions as a solution to that absence. It does more than safeguard the reader against unwanted spoilers: it temporarily transforms Homestuck back into an incomplete text. 

Homestuck makes use of the assumed preexisting knowledge of the reader, and their “intuitive familiarity” with various types of digital media and culture, especially ones which are inherently participatory. The story’s use of narrative motifs and referential easter-eggs allows Homestuck to function, in Hussie’s own words, as “both a story and a puzzle,” but that “There [are] a range of ways to interface with it[…] Failing to grasp everything shouldn’t preclude basic enjoyment, nor is it a symptom of failure by either the reader or the story.” In the most frequent example of repeated symbology in Homestuck, Hussie peppers the text with references to the number ‘413,’ simplified from April 13th, the day the comic began.

The story follows four friends who are all thirteen years old, many of the songs on the comic’s soundtrack are exactly four minutes and thirteen seconds long, and the timestamps on chat-logs show that characters frequently begin important conversations at precisely 4:13, to name just a few of the number’s appearances. The combination of puzzle and story in Homestuck extends beyond these kinds of motifs, however, and into the way Hussie employs referential humour.

Some of these references are fairly easy to catch; in Act 4, one of the main characters is gifted the Warhammer of Zillyhoo — a brightly coloured weapon which originally appeared in Problem Sleuth. Others, however, are much more obscure. The older brother of another main character runs a business creating bizarre, semi-ironic puppet pornography. Most of the audience read this as an absurdist joke about the internet’s love for offputting porn; the subset of fans who had been following Hussie for several years, or those who looked into Hussie’s early activity on the MSPA forums, however, would find themselves with new understanding of a long-running joke. This element of the experience of reading Homestuck is something that the Unofficial Homestuck Collection not only preserves, but makes readily accessible to the comic’s readers in a way that would not have been possible during the comic’s publication.

On a purely theoretical basis, I would argue that the Unofficial Homestuck Collection is valuable not just in the context of contemporary fan activity, but as a potentially valuable resource for future research. Homestuck is a foundational piece of the current cultural landscape, its influences permeating both digital and analog media in subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways.

Undertale, titan of online culture that it is, was created by Toby Fox, who was the composer behind a large amount of the music in Homestuck and was, during the game’s production, living in Andrew Hussie’s basement. Tamsyn Muir, author of the Locked Tomb tetralogy, began her writing career as a prominent figure in the Homestuck fandom on Tumblr and Archive of Our Own. Although the reach of her original work has thoroughly outgrown her fandom roots, Muir includes sly references to Homestuck in several places in her books. Hell, one of the animators working on Bluey, a cartoon aimed at very young children, included references to Homestuck in the backgrounds of episodes they worked on, as easter-eggs for the benefit of parents in the know. All of this is to say that Homestuck has its hooks deep within the culture of the Internet, and its impacts will, I think, be felt for a long time yet.

The Unofficial Homestuck Collection is certainly not immune to digital decay or link rot, but it is resistant to them, since it is hosted on a large and well established website (GitHub), and, once downloaded, can be accessed without an internet connection, and shared freely. For the hypothetical future researcher, the Collection contains resources to mitigate the frustration of trying to hunt down pieces of contextual or peripheral material by packaging them with the text itself — it functions like a sourcebook. 

Bibliography

Bamboshu, and GiovanH. The Unofficial Homestuck Collection. 2020. https://bambosh.dev/unofficial-homestuck-collection/ 

De Kosnik, Abigail. Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10248.001.0001.

Glaser, Tim. “Homestuck as a Game: A Webcomic between Playful Participation, Digital Technostalgia, and Irritating Inventory Systems.” In Comics and Videogames. Edited by Andreas Rauscher, Daniel Stein, and Jan-Noel Thon. 96–112. Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003035466-8.

Hussie, Andrew. Homestuck. MS Paint Adventures, 2009-2016. https://homestuck.com. 

Nakhaie, FS. “Reproduce and Adapt: Homestuck in Print and Digital (Re)Incarnations.” Convergence, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221141961.

Read MS Paint Adventures. “Statistics.” Last modified April 7, 2018. http://readmspa.org/stats/.

Veale, Kevin. “‘Friendship Isn’t an Emotion Fucknuts’: Manipulating Affective Materiality to Shape the Experience of Homestuck’s Story.” Convergence 25, no. 5-6 (2019): 1027–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517714954. 

[winterballads]

🪷 The Lotus Flower in Mysterious Lotus Casebook 🪷

i. Growing Deep Roots

As noted by difeisheng, Li Xiangyi is an image more than he is a person. He’s the “symbol” and “beating heart” of the Sigu sect; “he embodies everything [the sect] stands for” and “has become one with every person he represents” in his role as a leader. As such, one might say he doesn’t exist as an individual who’s allowed the luxury of flawed, fluid humanity. Rather, he’s fixed into an object: a shield protecting those under his care, a mirror reflecting those he’s taken upon himself to be the champion for.  

While a heavy burden to carry, this identity as image is also shown to be brittle, hollow, like a hazy mirage which is more dazzling appearance than substance. Even Fang Duobing introduces Li Xiangyi to Li Lianhua by showing him a painting of his shifu — ink on a page, a person turned into a hero to be worshipped and idolated. 

Li Lianhua, over the ten years that pass after the Great Battle of the East Sea, works to plant and cultivate a new identity in the same way one might grow flowers. Li Lianhua forms deep roots and grows out of the mythical hero’s shell he’d been carrying as Li Xiangyi, thus developing an identity which is solid and grounding in contrast — an identity which involves “walk[ing] within a crowd instead of [soaring] above it.”

This shift from image to person is itself rooted in the lotus mantra (written by Buddhist Layman Pang during the Tang Dynasty) which Li Xiangyi first encounters after monk Wu Liao rescues him:

一念心清净 莲花处处开

The heart attains peace with a single thought; Lotus flowers bloom all around.

Although the exact timeline is left to interpretation, it’s implied that the lotus mantra operates as a catalyst of change for Li Xiangyi and that he changes his name to Li Lianhua after reading it. Now what is it about it that speaks to Li Xiangyi so deeply in that moment? As noted in 《 人間福報 》, the lotus mantra teaches us that a pure heart will result in an open and enlightened mind. One subtle, profound thought rife with compassion is enough for a person to glimpse Buddha in a flower, a leaf, a grain of sand or a speck of dust. In short, “if you can find peace within yourself, then you will find peace everywhere.” Perhaps Li Xiangyi, at his lowest point, finds solace in the prospect of stripping his life down to its very core and searching for purity, wisdom and peace within his troubled heart.    

By renaming himself 莲花/liánhuā lotus flower, Li Lianhua takes his destiny into his own hands; he empowers himself into reshaping his identity and laying down the foundations for the person he wants to become. Similarly to The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity which tells us that “names are the shortest spells in the world,” Li Lianhua’s new name functions as a spell which speaks a new him into existence. It’s a deliberate choice, a conscious attempt at breaking free from the suffocating shell Li Xiangyi was trapped in and become a person of his own choosing. 

The act of (re)naming notably also extends to Li Lianhua’s abode which he dubs 莲花楼 “Lotus Tower.” In addition to this significant choice of name, it’s interesting to note that Li Lianhua starts growing vegetables inside Lotus Tower when he’s left with nothing after his demise at the East Sea and is facing starvation. As such, his home is quite literally a site not only of self-sustenance and survival, but also of growth — a growth which requires hard work, patience and faith and nearly brings Li Lianhua to tears when his hopes are finally rewarded and the seeds he planted begin sprouting. The act of physically planting vegetables and learning to cook those vegetables speaks of a refreshing and grounding simplicity — of something disarmingly vulnerable and human after playing the role of a god-like figure. Li Lianhua has sweat on his brow and hope in his heart; he plants seeds, watches them grow and keeps himself alive by his own hands.

It seems it’s not only Li Lianhus’a home, but also his very person, which steadily grow into a lotus flower. Li Lianhua wears a variety of hairpins directly linked to the lotus, and the colour coding of his garments moves from the red he used to wear as Li Xiangyi to a lighter palette filled with greens and blues — colours which are more obviously linked to nature.

ii. Life Borrowed and Given Away

The lotus, both traditionally and within the drama itself, is closely connected to the theme of rebirth. On a literal level, the exotic lotus flowers of Cai Lian Manor grow directly from the corpses of the victims drowned in the pond, thus embodying life born from death. thawrecka writes in their story that Li Lianhua is “nothing but a lotus nurtured by a walking corpse, a body that doesn’t realise it should already be dead.” On a figurative level, the lotus grows in muddy water but blooms unsullied every morning, thus symbolising rising from a dark place and growing into something beautiful and colourful despite all the odds. The different stages of the lotus’ blooming can be taken to represent the beginning, middle and end of a spiritual path in Buddhism — a parallel to the theme of 趟/tāng taking a journey which underscores the drama in various ways.

Li Lianhua’s journey, more specifically, is that of a lotus being reborn. The soundtrack piece 《 一壶莲花醉 》 “A Pot of Lotus Wine” emphasises this connection in the following lines:

问一句莲花的悲喜 断一柄弃剑入青泥

I ask about the joys and sorrows of the lotus; A broken, abandoned sword is thrown into the mud.

Not only does Li Lianhua keep stressing at different points of the drama that Li Xiangyi is dead and all that is left behind is Li Lianhua; he even breaks his own sword Shaoshi at the end of the story, thereby physically reenacting a process of destruction—death—and rebirth. As Li Lianhua writes in his farewell letter: 

剑断人亡

My sword is broken, and I will be gone.

The significance of Li Lianhua’s action is further intensified here by the fact that the sword in the song is said to be thrown into 泥/ní mud, the site from which a lotus flower grows.

Considering that Shaoshi operates as a device embodying Li Lianhua’s character development throughout the drama, the fact that Li Lianhua decides to break it in the last episode should be taken as a key moment in which he chooses how his own narrative is going to end. Li Lianhua decides to kill for good the glorious image of Li Xiangyi which has become sullied with pain and regret in his heart, so that a simple, fragile peace can begin growing in its place like a lotus flower amidst the mud.

However, the tragedy of Li Lianhua’s narrative is that the rebirth he works to achieve for all these years is not his own to enjoy and never was intended to be. After the Great Battle of the East Sea, as Li Lianhua is reborn from Li Xiangyi and starts planting seeds all around him, he has already accepted that he’s nothing but a ghost, “wandering in the jianghu to close his loose ends and finally [...] vanish without a trace, not even a body left behind.” As mx-myth remarks, even the shift in his garment colours to an overwhelming amount of white as the story progresses makes it clear that he’s resigned to go and has “already started dressing for his own funeral.” 

The lotus flower symbolism permeating the narrative accentuates this bone-deep, unshakable resignation. While imprisoned by Jiao Liqiao, Li Lianhua is full of an aching, bittersweet fatalism when he recites a section of Guan Hanqing’s《 窦娥冤 》“The Injustice to Dou E”:

花有重开日 人无再少年 不须长富贵 安乐是神仙

Flowers will blossom again, But a man can never be young again. Seek not eternal wealth; You only need to be content.

Independently from the original meaning of the lines written by Guan Hanqing, the words seem to take on a sad, wistful quality when spoken with a bitter smile by Li Lianhua. In this scene, while the speaker reflects that rebirth occurs outside of themselves in flowers, they acknowledge that their own reality is one inevitably bound to end in old age and decay. Instead of looking forward to a bright future, the speaker doesn’t express any dreams nor ambitions and is only grateful that they’re alive this minute, this second, without any future prospects awaiting them. Perhaps a similar sentiment is reflected in the following lines from 《 一壶莲花醉 》 “A Pot of Lotus Wine”:

了了心事只 不负众生 而已

After settling my worries,  I just want to live up to all sentient beings.

Li Lianhua’s connection to the lotus flower, in fact, was always meant to be one of non-attachment. While Buddhism believes desire to be the root of all suffering, the lotus symbolises non-attachment due to being “rooted in mud (attachment and desire)” while “its flowers blossom on long stalks unsullied by the mud below.” This explains in part why the lotus is considered pure and noble. For Li Lianhua, this non-attachment takes on sorrowful connotations: it means that he stubbornly refuses to reap the seeds he sows and focuses his purest heart and will into ensuring those around him get to reap them instead. Non-attachment means allowing himself enough (a roof over his head, food on his plate) to survive, but rarely letting himself indulge in the precious luxuries of reciprocated love and care — of carefree joy and thirst for adventure.  

The ten years he lives after his first death at the East Sea are, for him, only borrowed time he didn’t deserve — borrowed time not dedicated to himself, but rather dedicated to others.

In many ways, Li Lianhua’s path effectively goes full-circle by the end of the narrative. When he and Di Feisheng reminisce about the moon they remember from ten years ago, they conclude that today’s moon isn’t any brighter than the one alive in their memory: rather, it remains constant, unchanged, as though the past ten years never existed as anything other than a short pause in the story, a coma, long enough for wrongs to be righted but not  for an already-dead person’s fate to be changed.

It’s interesting and particularly significant that the Styx flower (忘川花, from 忘川 “River of Forgetting” in the original Mandarin) is said throughout the drama to be the only thing capable of saving Li Lianhua’s life. In traditional Chinese culture, the Styx or River of Forgetting is part of the process of reincarnation; only by crossing it (and forgetting everything they’ve ever experienced and everyone they’ve ever loved) can a person finally reincarnate. For Li Lianhua, salvation through rebirth comes at a high cost — a price he’s evidently been ready to pay since the beginning, even if it means turning him into a ghost who must vanish from the story in order for those around him to grow and thrive further.

When Li Lianhua breaks his own sword to allow for rebirth, it’s not himself he’s saving. His sole purpose throughout his journey as Li Lianhua is to use whatever meagre strength he has left, whatever passion and drive are still alive in him, to save the world in any small ways that he can. He becomes a doctor who heals people; he looks for answers and solves mysteries to atone for the sins he thinks he has committed and rectify the mistakes he thinks he has made, so that those he has hurt can finally find peace and comfort.

The most powerful legacy Li Lianhua intends to leave behind by the end of the story has nothing to do with himself and everything to do with the people around him who he never truly admits he loves — the messy, imperfect world that’s caused him so much pain but that he nevertheless insists on saving with everything he has. 

Most strikingly, Li Lianhua chooses—whether consciously or not—to leave the life and future he’s renounced for himself to his companions Fang Duobing and Di Feisheng. The only traces he purposefully leaves behind live in them: in the Yangzhouman coursing through Fang Duobing’s body; the home, dog and recipe book he passes onto him; the worthy opponent he leaves for Di Feisheng to fight in his stead after he’s gone… 

Fang Duobing, by the end of the story, has grown into more than a disciple and a friend to Li Xiangyi/Li Lianhua: he himself has become the lotus flower bringing renewed life after Li Lianhua has left the narrative, thereby taking Li Lianhua’s legacy into a hopeful, vibrant future. As mx-myth mentions in their colour analysis, Fang Duobing notably wears bright pastel tones including a large amount of green/blue — a colour coding which emphasises Fang Duobing’s connection to spring and, by extension, new life and beginnings. “Life will always go on if there’s spring”; and so Fang Duobing’s youth, vitality and optimism can grow in the empty space left behind by Li Lianhua after he fades into the autumn of his life.

While Li Lianhua’s predominantly light colour palette might appear to align him with other characters in the drama who have left the past behind and are looking towards the future, Li Lianhua made peace long ago with the knowledge that he’s destined not to belong in that future. Just as the Lotus Sutra teaches us that “the inner determination of an individual has great transformative power” and “gives ultimate expression to the infinite potential and dignity inherent in each human life,” Li Lianhua focuses all his transformative efforts on creating a future which, despite having no place for him, will be fertile ground for the entire martial arts world to grow deep, healthy roots. In Li Lianhua’s own words:

幼芽生枝 新木长成 武林也一样 这未来如何 谁又能说得清楚呢

The young sprouts and the new trees grow. The martial arts world is the same. What does the future hold? Who can say clearly?

Should we say, then, that Li Lianhua’s story is one of sacrifice, self-renunciation and resignation — of drifting inevitably towards death as a flower carried by a stream? As he disappears on a boat and is asked where he’s going, Li Lianhua gives a response which echoes his first death at the East Sea in a way that feels entirely deliberate:

小舟从此逝， 江海寄余生

From now on I would vanish with my little boat; For the rest of my life on the sea I would float. 

How are we to understand a person being reborn simply so they can pass on that new life to others, and being convinced that their only true value lies in their death?

Perhaps, in spite of it all, we can find some small comfort in the knowledge that, no matter how sorrowful Li Lianhua’s fate, it’s at least one that he chooses — one that he has full control over, even poisoned and robbed of his life force as he is. As the lyrics of 《 一壶莲花醉 》 “A Pot of Lotus Wine” underline, “it’s just a matter of picking an ending that you like.” Perhaps that’s all that truly matters. 

wuxia-vanlifer makes an excellent point when asking: “What would be more tragic? That he never believed he was loved? Or that he did, but vanished anyway?” While I don’t have an answer to offer, there’s one thing I can say. Li Xiangyi, Li Lianhua — they live and die by love. They can’t conceive of themselves as anything other than a sacrificial tool because, for all that they pretend to be aloof and untethered, they actually love others—and the world—in a bone-deep, profound way they’ve never loved themselves. That love is not only the true driving force behind Li Lianhua’s character and the fate he chooses: it’s the beating heart of the entire drama.

“In this life, I have loved and I have been loved. That is enough.”

Shoutout to the following authors and bloggers whose brilliant words and ideas inspire me, as well as this gorgeous video 💖

ao3: @extraordinarilyextreme @thawrecka

tumblr: @difeisheng @extraordinarilyextreme @mx-myth @wuxia-vanlifer @xinyuehui

[moe-broey]

6/11 • Day 3 • Celebration

I Think We Might Be Friends -- Level 40 Convo, featuring my Summoner, Moe! (Uses it/it's pronouns!)

Aka what happens when a mirror reflects a mirror. But like with one of those funhouse mirrors that distort your image. Wouldn't that be fucked up or what

Also also just. Sharena bestie you have me BEWILDERED. I remember so distinctly when I got her 40 convo, waayy back before I had a good read on her character... it struck me, stuck with me for years. I think I finally understand, now, though.

Some close ups of my fave shots!

Also! Coloring this was a last-minute impulse decision, which thankfully paid off! I was sooooo scared though ESP of not making time after. ALL OF THIS TIME. So I took pics beforehand too!

With... kind of inconsistent lighting LMFAO 🧍 I feel like this version has a nice effect too, but! It was important to me to show Moe in full-color, here. Similar, but in opposite directions...

@sharenaweek

[snowangeldotmp3]

i wanted her to look at me;

(or the one where robin can't stop staring at nancy, who can't stop staring at steve and his stupid hair)

(or, a prequel to the rebel robin: surviving the upside down au)

It starts with five words that Robin’s surprised didn’t leave her own mouth. “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.” Robin’s not sure she can survive the rest of the semester like this. Watching Nancy Wheeler, grinning and giggling and batting her lashes at the douchebag that is Steve Harrington.

[thedrotter]

I have a gift for y'all today !!! 😊 Ever wanted to find a line in Re:Kinder in a single place for the sake of reference?? How about multiple chunks of lines. how about all the little variations that arise in the text with it's many endings, item descriptions, text that comes from interacting with the enviroment, and character info from the menu without having to boot up the game and go through it at long minutes!!???

well i sure did😊 Since I do a lot of fanart and think up my own silly theories and thoughts that need me to reference the game lines a lot, i have made a transcript for it for convenience's sake. A weirdly thorough transcript handwritten and proofread by me including all character lines available in-game. And I'm sharing it with you all today for anyone that wants it !!! :3 To use as a reference for creative fanworks or a quick search for a line in-game, whatever you wish to use it for!!

It uses the english translation of the game by vgperson. So naturally all credit for the game lines available in here is to her and Parun who made the game.

I did my best to organize it in a way easy to digest. Do note that I'm still human, and there's still the chance for mistake in it no matter how much I've proofread it, since I'm not even an english native speaker ^^. But I hope it serves you well nonetheless if you wish to use it.

That's my gift for today!!! Not the usual art, but still a project I'm proud of. Enjoy!!! 😊

[not-poignant]

Just a heads up Mephistopheles has red skin. But I’m so happy to see more content with him!

Hi anon!

Okay so two things, firstly you might want to check out the Forbiddem Realms wiki:

And specifically the source which is canonical to 1E:

Mephistopheles has multiple different forms! :D The blue form exists in different spaces and across different campaigns and you can Google right now and find canonical fanart of blue-skin Mephistopheles! Some of those illustrations are hot as fuck, so live your best life :D If you're happy to see content of him, hopefully that includes the blue form as well.

And since Mephistopheles was never actually in Baldur's Gate 3 I get to choose what forms they are because secondly, I highly recommend you read tags and author's notes thoroughly for Palmarosa for the additional reason that:

Is in the tags! And in the Author's Note of the first chapter:

I knew the DND purists would kind of get up in arms about all kinds of things (and...I was right), so I think this is now like the tenth time I've had to remind people to actually read my tags and author's notes! I don't kind of want to remind folks in every chapter that I will do something I like more if I don't like the canon, or what the point of fanfiction is in the first place. But I'm not trying to write more canon anon, I'm writing fanfiction, and the transformative part is the point.

It doesn't matter if his blue skin was in the Wiki or not, I can do what I like in this story, that is, after all, the spirit of DND and creating new campaigns within an existing structure, and that's precisely why Mephistopheles has so many forms in the first place! Heck, I could've made him green :D

There's a lot of things that aren't canon compliant in this story, from Astarion being able to taste food properly, to Mephistopheles being based on 1E instead of later version/s (I mean he's not Molikroth here either), to the House of Hope having many many more rooms than present in the map, and a great deal more besides.

I know that one version of Mephistopheles has red skin, I just like the one with blue more!

[a-r00m-with-a-m00se]

nothing day

[specialshinytrinkets]

The only good the fourth Kikoriki movie has served is proving that Pin is autistic. Fight me

[henriiiii-1001old]

pt two to this

i am weirdly thinking of making this a series who's with me. like i already have a semi plot for this. not sure if i'm gonna make this an au or not, but we'll see

this one also ended up being a lot longer than the other one i think uuuhhh yeah :/ oops

fic/technical spoilers under the cut

(quick warning for mentions of suicide as well as general angst)

The aroma of freshly made coffee scattered around the barren Mandela County police station. Adam sat patiently at the high table near the counter for his own portion as Thatcher poured the brew into two separate mugs. The smaller one was for Thatcher, though he was scared of caffeine suddenly being able to reveal alternates’ true forms. Maybe he could consult his roommate for that.

Thatcher carefully took both mugs over to where Adam sat, placing his cup in front of him softly as to not spill the contents. The last thing he’d want is for Adam to be upset, especially in regards to the previous night. They had slept comfortably in some sleeping bags Thatcher had luckily found in the storage area. Adam had practically begged to sleep next to him, as embarrassed and humiliated he felt as he did, but Thatcher reassured him that he’d be happy to comfort him in any way. The night passed with Thatcher feeling like a new man.

“Good?” Thatcher asked, waiting for a comment of his craft.

“Yeah, definitely better than how my old friend used to make it,” Adam replied. Thatcher noticed his inflection change when he said the word “friend,” and as much as he wanted to pry - and imply - about it he knew this was not the time or place to do so.

“So, you feeling okay?”

Adam tensed before replying. “Sort of. I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again, but… Yeah.”

Thatcher hummed in understanding and nodded. He took a sip of his own creation before swallowing it and sighing in relief. The only sound filling the room after that were quiet sips of coffee and anxious tapping of their mugs. Adam also tugged and rubbed furiously at the blanket he had wrapped around himself for warmth and comfort. Since he had become attached to Thatcher’s touch so quickly, the blanket was just the next best thing so he wouldn’t be too clingy.

“May I, um, ask about last night?” Thatcher worded carefully as to not upset Adam too much. “I-it’s okay if you’re not ready. I just-”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll try to explain to the best of my abilities,” Adam interrupted, trying to seem genuine since emotions had been difficult for him.

“This all kinda started a few days ago. Me and my… colleague, Jonah, were out doing something for a client. We were supposed to stay there for three whole nights, $500 a night. Can you even believe that? Like, who ever would have thought it was some elaborate trap to have you stick yourself in a basement to hear some shit that doesn’t even make sense? Even from your own mouth?”

Thatcher stared at him utterly confused. Adam had only noticed after a few moments of silence.

“Moving on from that since I’m jumping a bit too far ahead, we had a few disagreements on the place; my colleague wanted to leave but I had a sort of connection to the place somehow. I had even gone there once before with Sarah, in which after that whole thing I had to get my colleague as my new ghost hunting partner.”

“And your colleague was Jonah Marshall, was it not?”

Adam went dead silent. Thatcher got his answer from that.

“Understood. Uh, go on if you’re good with that.”

“Yeah… um, well. We kinda got into a huge fight on the second day, in which he brought up my mother and I just. Told him to leave if he really wanted to not be there. And he… did.

"I went down into that fucking basement expecting something amazing to happen. Something like my mom coming back or some shit. Nothing happened. All I got was more questions and a pissy attitude, which led me to just go searching for J- my colleague myself.”

Thatcher eagerly listened as Adam poured everything he had remembered, paying attention to every time his voice faltered and gave way to his true emotions. He even almost mentioned Jonah, which definitely confirmed Thatcher’s suspicions by that point.

“I found him by the car he stole earlier that day. Dead. I was too deep in an angry, nonhuman frenzy that I just took the car and left, not even shedding a proper tear for him.

Sarah and I had a fight about him, leading her to make me make some stupid memorial video for him. I didn’t wanna think about it, I didn’t wanna do it. I felt horrible, and her making me do that only made things worse. And I even logged off for a few hours after that because I just couldn’t handle it.

“And then he showed up.”

Thatcher perked up. Who’s “he” , he thought to himself, ever so curious as to what Adam could be alluding to.

“He… was the one who told me everything. Started rambling off about how he ‘held me in his arms’ or some dumb shit. I didn’t understand at first, but whatever he did to me made me feel so numb and lifeless. I couldn’t move. Not until he said… He…. told me…”

“Hey, you’re okay. If it’s too heavy for you, you can-”

“I’m not the real me.”

Thatcher held his tongue and listened. It was the only thing he could do as he was too far deep. He couldn’t get Adam’s now black eyes off of him, staring directly into his soul it seemed. Adam looked like he didn’t even breathe to speak his next words, staring Thatcher down like prey.

“He told me I was one of them. If Sarah hadn’t cut the bitch off I would have gotten more answers. But someone always has to stand in my way, don’t they, Lieutenant? ”

Thatcher stared into the orbs that occupied Adam’s sockets, frozen in place as panic rose within his body. He couldn’t move; no matter how much the training had taught him to fight, he could never push himself to. He could only pray that Adam didn’t do this all to kill him, that would just be absurd, right?

“Davis?”

A breath was taken that Thatcher didn’t know he needed. He blinked a few times to ground himself to his surroundings once more. He was still staring at Adam, but his eyes had returned to normal. He sighed in relief.

“I-I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me…” Adam began to bury himself in his hands, curl into another ball and cry the embarrassment and shame away.

“No! No, no, no, no you’re okay, kid,” Thatcher quickly tried reassuring him, his body ready to hold Adam again at any time in case he needed a quick cooldown.

“I panicked, I… I didn’t know how to process everything, I tried killing myself in so many ways… None of them FUCKING WORKED!”

Adam’s form began to blur as his skin melted, his eyes and mouth becoming more prominent features on his face. His limbs began to elongate themselves again, and his skin even turned even paler than he already was. Thatcher dashed to the other side of the table, cradling Adam’s torso and head into his own. He softly ran his hands through the alternate’s hair, soothing him the best he could.

“Adam, please don’t be upset with yourself right now. I know you can’t control it, and I understand how painful it must be to have your whole identity stripped from you.”

“HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?! ” Adam screamed, his voice echoing throughout the station’s walls and back into the current room.

“The same night your mother died I almost lost my life to one of those things!”

Adam suddenly grew quiet, whimpers and sniffles being the only sound emitted from him as he slowly looked up at Thatcher.

“Her husband called me, asking for help… I should have known it was a trap. I lost a friend too, the only one I could trust. I left her behind to rot in that fucking house… I wouldn’t doubt she’s still there, waiting to exact her revenge on me.

"I couldn’t tell if I was a person anymore after I encountered that thing in the tunnels below Mandela. It took my face, my voice, my mannerisms, everything , and left me there to suffer. I went home that night feeling stalked, haunted, as I have been for the past 17 fucking years. If anyone on this fucking planet knows how you feel, it’s me. And I’m sorry that it has to be me…”

Neither had any words for the next few minutes, Adam shifting in and out of his human and alternate forms before settling on a mix of both. He wasn’t sure how he ended up like that, but he’d just deal with it later like he did all his problems. Thatcher suddenly carefully dropped his head onto Adam’s head, covering his face in the blonde’s curly hair.

“You knew her… ” Adam whispered, his voice wavering slightly.

“Not really. Barely got to even take her body for examination before I got chased out of that damn house.”

“Do you remember anything else from that night?”

Adam took his turn asking for Thatcher’s suffering as he had already explained his. And Thatcher reluctantly answered, lifting his head out of Adam’s hair before speaking.

“Kinda, I remember first walking into the room and seeing some creepy fucking guy on a TV on the floor before it immediately disappeared. Don’t know what that guy wanted or if he was even real at all.”

Adam’s eyes widened; he recognized the figure Thatcher was talking about. He just needed more info. “Do you remember what he looked like?”

“Not really, uuhh. Short and dark hair, permanent smile on his bastard ugly face, looked kinda creepy.”

“Did he look like some sort of weird entertainment guy?”

Thatcher paused. “…Yeah.”

Adam stared at Thatcher dead in the eyes once more but with a look more recognizable as confusion and concern than disdain. Silence filled the room once more, a common pattern between the pair at this point. Speaking so much they end up oversharing followed by a deafening silence as they process every word that was said. This time, however, neither party knew how to advance the conversation.

“Um, we’ll talk more later. Need more coffee?” Thatcher asked to break the silence, following his question with an awkward but reassuring smile.

Adam nodded and smiled back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Night came as fast as it left, the day being spent through joint work on cases that Thatcher suddenly gained the energy to look into once more, joking around with each other, a few video games in which Thatcher almost always lost, and staying in each other’s general company. After a whole range of emotions displayed by the duo throughout the day, both were spent and needed a nice, long sleep to prepare for the following day.

Adam had once again wanted to sleep next to Thatcher, and Thatcher gladly obliged. He felt that Adam was becoming too dependent on him too quickly, but he didn’t want to upset him at the current moment. Thankfully, the alternate fell asleep almost instantly, being overwhelmed with exhaustion with everything he’s had to deal with the past few days - hell his entire life. Thatcher himself was preparing to shut down for the night as well, making himself comfortable next to Adam and ensuring that Adam was also comfortable in his current position facing Thatcher.

“Wait.”

A voice… An actual voice called to him. It seemed dark and raspy, almost as if it was struggling to breathe.

“What…?” Thatcher squinted his eyes in reaction to the intruder. He darted his eyes around the room somewhat quickly to try and scan the area for any potential threats.

“Follow the static, Thatcher. Or if you’d prefer, the music. We have some things to discuss.”

A recording of a music box suddenly filled Thatcher’s ears, almost hypnotizing him to follow its melody. However, Thatcher quickly grabbed a small pocket knife he always kept handy before venturing out into the darkness, a sense of déjà vu hitting him.

He followed the strange melody to where he believed the source would be: his work computer. He carefully took a seat in the almost uncomfortable office chair as he stared into a blank, static filled screen, something he had only seen on old analog TV’s. He didn’t even notice that the music had faded or that a face had appeared on the screen until it started speaking.

“A song made for the girl lost in a land of wonder and inexplicable magic and absurdity, ruby slippers holding more power than any being in that dimension. A song describing how desperately she wished for a better life no matter that her life had been mundane at worst. A song that my son liked very much,” the voice began as if it were making a speech just for Thatcher to hear. It made him shiver at the thought.

“The slippers were meant to be silver, however, though they would seem dull against the colorful atmosphere of the set. My little boy never cared, his caretakers only put it on once to distract the little one before realizing he was entirely captivated by it. Who knew he would react so much when I played it for him again years later?”

“Who are you? What do you want? Why are you talking so much?” Thatcher inquired, anger rising with each question that slipped off his tongue.

“Simple, Lieutenant. I’m Adam’s father.”

The statement boiled Thatcher’s blood for reasons even he did not understand at the moment. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion and disgust as he tried to search for words. The figure interrupted him before he could try to put together a single cohesive sentence in his mind.

“I’m the one that took him away. Although, it would have been for the greater good anyway. His caretakers never truly loved him, did they?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The man especially became more absent than the woman, though it’s quite ironic that she was meant to leave this plane of existence before him. The boy’s birth was a joint effort, but one must take more blame than the other, of course. It’s only human nature to push blame onto one party rather than accept the truth of reality. Which is quite funny considering-”

“Stop fucking jumping around everywhere and get to the damn point!”

“Ssshhhhh , you don’t want to wake him up now, do you?”

Thatcher went silent, biting his lip furiously before backing down completely. He looked away, malice burning in his eyes.

“Good. I’ve simply come here to warn you about what you’re doing. We’ve kept tabs on him to make sure someone doesn’t interrupt his ascension into reaching his full potential, his assimilation to become one of us .”

Thatcher felt suffocated by the atmosphere, wanting to back away from his monitor while the static kept him snugly in place, urging him to reach closer to it instead. He couldn’t move, and his breath felt hindered when nothing was stopping its regular flow.

“You… you’re the one who told him…” Thatcher choked out, his words careful and choppy.

“Indeed. Perhaps you remember me? It’s been a long while since I have seen your face, Mr. Davis.”

“Stop switching up how you call me, please just stick to one. And yes, I most likely do.”

“Would this give you a reminder, Thatcher?” the figure’s face warped spontaneously, and his voice changed alongside it. It sounded more cheery, more charismatic. It made Thatcher sick to his stomach when he fully realized he truly had been talking to who he thought he was.

“Yes… it does,” Thatcher practically breathed out. “And I hate it.”

“Good! I was worried it wouldn’t. Then something would reeaaally be wrong with you! However,” its face and voice returned to its previous state, “my warning still stands. We do not need people like you ruining his only chance to join us once again. To become a family.”

Thatcher slammed his palms against his work desk, standing up as he fumed with anger. “You are NOT his family! You things don’t care about people!”

“But he isn’t a person. Why would you care for something as dangerous to your kind as he is?”

“He’s not dangerous; he’s confused, he’s scared, he’s hurt. You hurt him, and he clearly hasn’t accepted the thought of being lied to his entire life, suddenly having his identity stripped away from him sending him into a spiral down through the deepest parts of Hell! I care because that’s human nature, you heartless fuck!”

The screen glitched for a mere moment, revealing the face had disappeared. The static still remained, however, sending Thatcher into a slight panic.

A hand had swiped him from behind, bringing him close to an itchy textured body. The hand’s texture alone threatened to slice Thatcher’s throat at any minute, almost puncturing his skin.

“I told you to be quiet, did I not? If you truly do not wish to hurt him, I suggest you shut your mouth before I make you, ” the figure threatened, squeezing the blood flow traveling to Thatcher’s head to make him feel faint very quickly. Thatcher nodded his head frantically.

“If I killed you right here, would it be too similar to your beloved 'guardian angel’s’ death?” it chuckled, the thought amusing it while only confusing Thatcher.

“How do you…”

“I watched the entire encounter. She died right in front of you, you know. The thing that followed you home hid the blood on his hands for 17 whole years. The blood of your angel coughing up the last bit of her life, his hands squeezing so tight her head almost popped out of place, her voice begging for mercy as she watched her murderer transform into you, making her believe you had betrayed her, all of which happened right before your very eyes.”

Thatcher squirmed, he couldn’t take any more of this thing’s rambling. What was worse was that the grip on his neck only became tighter. He began to try and slam his hands into the figure holding him hostage, pleading for it to release him.

“My final point is that if you mess with his head any more than you have, I’ll find a way to work around your necessity to Him and kill you myself.”

Thatcher was released, being pulled down into his seat to let him recover. The chair moved slightly away from the monitor due to the force, and Thatcher’s head was practically spinning without even spinning the chair. He took several deep breaths before the assailant spoke once more, now in front of him and out of the monitor.

“Or maybe you’d consider a compromise?”

Thatcher darted his eyes to the alternate, still slightly in a daze. “What…? Compromise?”

“I won’t have to kill you if you give him up. We’ll go our separate ways, and if He needs you to be in Adam’s presence again then you’ll know. Or maybe…”

The figure began stepping closer to its current victim, careful in not approaching him too quickly for its own liking. Thatcher followed its eyes as the distance between them shortened and shortened. Once it felt it was close enough, it leaned down to Thatcher’s face, revealing itself in full disgusting glory.

“We could raise him together?”

Thatcher’s heart sank. The skin moved in an unsettling manner, making Thatcher’s own skin crawl. The eyes were mismatched completely, one seeming to have popped out of its socket while the other would have been considered more of a lazy eye if Thatcher didn’t feel like he was being stared down by a predator. Its mouth was probably the most disturbing part, moving slightly slower than how it was speaking and sometimes dragging out certain sounds. The words came out so clean from its mouth, and yet it was like its mouth couldn’t keep up. Kind of like Adam when he screamed in agony…

Every part of him was screaming at him to run, to get Adam and take him far away from this county, from this state, from this whole damn country if he had to. But the fear - and the static - kept him in place to his dismay. He was trapped, required at that point to entertain the monster’s ideas.

“What do you mean?” he asked, his voice almost inaudible to how much he was shaking. He cursed internally at himself for that.

“You wouldn’t have to worry about death. You could be able to protect him while also helping him achieve his purpose. You could still be there for him. I could see the hope in your eyes every time he smiled. That’s how I was when I first held him in my arms.”

“But… I don’t understand. What would you want from me?”

“You could become one of us.”

Just from that sentiment, Thatcher realized what it meant: they’d replace him with the demon that followed him home. This thing expected him to be that stupid, huh? Was this also part of the other voice’s test? A test of resilience and intelligence? Part of him didn’t want to know, but he did know his answer to the question he was asked.

“No. To Hell with that,” he asserted, his voice deep and quiet as to heed the alternate’s previous warning. “I know what games you’re playing, and I’m not stupid if that’s what you think of me. You’re gonna have to think twice if you think you can deceive me .”

In that instant, the intruder retreated to the monitor, a look of disappointment trying to settle on its face.

“We’ll see when He puts his plan into play. I shall see you soon. Oh, and tell Adam his dear father, Stanley, says hello. Goodnight, Lieutenant.”

And with that, it was gone. The monitor shut off, the static was gone, and Thatcher was alone. He suddenly became so fatigued from having to rely on the static’s influence to keep him awake now that it disappeared. He slumped into his office chair and fell into a deep slumber, hoping that the voice from before didn’t interrupt his sleep once more.

[sealovinq]

i need friends /gen (slight rant in tags)

[laatmaar]

S/N: RG-300-459-76-44

Okay so this is the first time I have ever written fanfiction for anything, or even just written any story this long, but fallen hero has quite the death grip on my brain. So truly any advice and such is appreciated. Anyway I'm absolutely fascinated by whatever the regenes and the farm has going on, and this is a little piece exploring sidestep's, or rather Matt's, first mission on the farm. I say little but it has a word count of 3K, be warned. Also be warned that this piece contains somebody being murdered, but nothing too extreme or unusual for fallen hero I think.

You stand before a door. This specific door is quite unassuming, it is brown and the dark patterns of shaky vertical lines interrupted with little ovals signal that it is made of wood. Which makes it quite unlike most doors you are acquainted with, but it is normal here. The door looks exactly like the doors you’ve seen in picture books.  Presumably, to hide anything out of the ordinary, anything horrible, insidious, dangerous, behind a passibly normal exterior. In short, Mr. Brown made it look like all the other doors in this hallway. You like this door. 

If all went well Mr. Brown will now be lying dead on the ground behind this door, and the only thing you will have to do is help unit 44 with disposal of the body. It has been a long day and your body feels heavy, there is a strange empty feeling in your stomach. You do not know what you expected of your first mission, but certainly not feeling so… tired. You place your hand on the doorknob. You turn the doorknob. You open the door.

"Oh, thank God!”

Mr. Brown moves toward you more quickly than you were prepared for. He only stops in his tracks when, presumably, the gun that is quite obviously pointed at his head catches his eye again. Mr. Brown is, evidently, not dead. You close your eyes, breathe out. You open your eyes. Unit 44, who you were quite sure should have killed Mr. Brown some five minutes ago according to the mission parameters you memorized over and over and over and over again, moves towards the door. It makes sure its gun never wavers from its target's head and shuts the door behind you. You hear the click of the door being locked.  

“Look I don’t care what goddamn government agency thought it worth to send a goddamn fucking regene to assassinate me or whatever but-”  Mr. Brown grabs your arm, in his thoughts you find only relief, and pulls you towards him “-surely you’re not programmed to kill innocent civilians.” At this he shakes your arm, which you’ve come to understand is actually quite a rude thing to do.

Unit 44’s face is impassive although the corner of its blue lip might’ve moved upward just a tiny bit. Its gun however has not moved at all. It looks you dead in the eye.

In your ear Mr. Brown whispers “Play along with me and we might both get out of this alive.” He leans even closer and unit 44 does not shoot him in the head. It should. “Trust me on this miss,” still whispering  “that thing is not human… blue skin and all that.” Places his hand on your shoulder, his mind churning with possible escape routes, “It’s a fucking ai but it will not kill us if they think it will cause a scandal… I’m sure.” His thoughts imply otherwise. “Just tell it your parents are nearby or something, I mean what are you sixteen.. seventeen?  Your parents must be nearby.”

You open your mouth to ask why unit 44 has not followed standard procedure, do missions normally deviate this much from the norm? You’re not sure you like the idea of that. Why is it that it has not shot Mr. Brown already, even though it had ample opportunity. His fingers are digging into your shoulder in a way that is really becoming uncomfortable and the desperation and fear in his mind make it difficult to think. You are tired. You remember that you should report to your handlers in about 10 minutes and how does unit 44 think it will ever complete the mission in time. You already relayed all information you gathered from Mr. Brown’s houseguests during the party to your handlers. You’ve already done your part, why is it refusing to just do its part. Why do you have to be part of this. However unit 44 says, “Close your mouth.” and you obey.

Unit 44 is after all the senior unit out of the two of you, and the most senior unit on a mission is in charge in the unlikely event that your handlers cannot be reached. You paid attention during the briefing. Your handlers cannot be reached because Mr. Brown went to great lengths to design this room. Sound-proof, signal-proof , everything-proof. A perfect room designed for complete privacy, something Mr. Brown is often in great need of. You have recently learned what the concept of ironic means and you think that it applies now. That this room should be his downfall, or at least was supposed to be if all went according to plan. If unit 44 had paid attention. It had not. You had seen its eyes wander.

“Killing an innocent human being is sure to cause a scandal!” Mr. Brown’s voice is pitched a bit higher than before, his fingers beginning to dig in painfully. That is going to leave a mark.

Now you’re sure, unit 44’s lips turn upwards. You do not know what it finds particularly funny, or where it even learned to smile. Smirk? Its gun aimed around two inches to the left of your face. At Mr. Brown’s mouth. Which is still moving.

“I know her,” he lies, “if she disappears” shaking you, again “her parents will be sure to raise hell! They’re important. Influential.” Those last words he emphasizes. You’ve learned that people will do this if they mean more than what they are actually saying. You however do not see the relevance or deeper meaning of your imaginary parents being important. His thoughts suggest that not even Mr. Brown is entirely sure what he means. He just needs to stay alive, from one second to the next. He knows he won’t be able to overpower the regene planted in front of the door, but.. he’s not dead yet. It is a miracle that he is not dead yet. You agree.  He is sure that you might be the reason why. He can use that. Talk his way out. He has talked his way out of failure and into success his entire life.

Mr. Brown talks and talks and there are still nine minutes remaining. His grip turning painful, and you just wish your pain gate would activate for more mundane matters than life threatening injuries. You need to finish this. Quickly.

You look at unit 44. Its lean body clad in a skin-tight suit and armour, its stance almost relaxed. Not quite, but almost. The heaviest armour is centered around its chest area, all its appendages left unobstructed. Under the armour the skinsuit peeks out, the black fabric making for a nice contrast against the blue skin of its neck. There continuing from the neck and covering its entire face are those patterns you are so familiar with, this time in a lighter blue instead of orange. All traces of what might’ve been a smile gone from its lips. Its eyes are still looking at you, expression once again completely neutral. It nods and lowers its gun just a bit.

“Restrain him,” it orders “on the floor, preferably.”

 You do not stop to question why unit 44 wants Mr. Brown restrained and not dead. Why it won’t just finish this job. Neatly. According to mission protocol. With a bullet, preferably. You do not question it because some irrational part of you is glad that it has lowered the gun. It might have decided to shift it about two inches to the right. Unit 44, you have suspected for some time, is unpredictable. At least the smile has not returned, that you can admit unnerved you.

Most of all you do not question it because you are glad to move. To take that hand from your shoulder and in one swift movement twist it around his back, kick his legs, push him into the ground, put your knee on his back, the other next to his hip, your free hand on his neck holding him down. This is a move you have practiced a hundred times. It is even easier than expected, normally your partners put up much more of a fight.

Mr. Brown lets out a yelp of surprise and pain. His mind is a potent mix of confusion, betrayal and fear. Mostly fear, there is something very wrong with the picture being painted. He has misinterpreted the situation, badly. But… since when did they put regenes in charge of people.

He makes an attempt at opening his mouth to ask, but you press his face into the ground and that gets the message through. He closes his mouth. On his neck your fingertips press down and the skin turns red. Your own shoulder aches and you squeeze, just a bit.

Unit 44 has moved next to you. Its eyes finally leave you and shift a bit to the right, so that it’s not looking down at you but Mr. Brown instead. Gun pointed to the side. It looks like it's contemplating something but its mental defenses are better than Mr. Brown’s and you are still so tired. Then in a move that should not surprise you as much as it does, it kneels next to you. Nothing should surprise you when it comes to unit 44. Still you cannot help the question forming on your lips when it replaces your hand on Mr. Brown’s neck and hands you the gun. “Well,” it says, and nobody should have taught it to smile. It’s misusing the ability entirely, nothing about this situation is funny. “time is running out. Shoot him.”

You feel your shoulders tense and your right shoulder ache. The gun feels slippery in your hands. The temperature in the room has not risen even a degree since you’ve entered it and yet your hands are sweating. An uncomfortable heat spreading through your body as you look at unit 44, that stupid smile still on its face. Its expression still so calm. Your jaw aches with the effort it takes you to not open your mouth and say something. Anything. Scream. You don’t know.

Eight minutes remaining, and approximately a second has passed since unit 44 gave you the order. Mr. Brown’s thoughts are quickly turning from incomprehension to panic. He struggles under your knee and unit 44’s strong hands. Hurting himself. His panic full blown now, and maybe his thoughts are the reason you can’t seem to think straight on this matter. The fact that your hand is trembling without your input. Mr. Brown should have been dead for ten minutes already. His breathing ragged, and he might be crying. “Goddammit you’re human you don’t have to listen to it!” he screams. You shoot.

There is something unpleasant about the way blood drops roll down your face. You’ve experienced many new situations and sensations today. You don’t want to experience anything else ever again. You want to go home. You never want to leave this room.

For the last minute or so unit 44 has been opening different cabinets and drawers in search of something, you don’t particularly care what for. You have been sitting next to a corpse. His eyes still open, staring at you. You stare back, and in the corner of your eyes you see unit 44 approaching. It hands you a packet of wet wipes and makes a gesture at your face. You obediently wipe your face, your makeup coming off. The lipstick has mixed with blood and turned a bright red, it was supposed to be a neutral colour. Presentable, but not attracting attention. While the other units were putting on armour they had dressed you in a nice off colour white dress, now ruined. They had shaved your face and applied all sorts of cosmetics. You don’t know exactly what. They had made what, you gathered from the laughter, were supposed to be jokes. Something about if only they had prettier models and the money they could make. They had sent you off to a party, and you had completed your task. As unit 44 should have completed its.

It is fiddling with the closure of your dress. At your questioning look it shows you some kind of gel. “For your shoulder,” it clarifies. It has gotten the button open and pulls the zipper down. There in contrast to the bruised skin on your shoulder the orange tattoos appear completely unblemished. Nothing ever damages that familiar pattern. You quickly reach out and close Mr. Brown’s eyes. Unit 44 looks at you for a moment, and you feel your face heat up. It has no right to judge you, but it merely smiles. Blue patterns moving.

It puts some of that translucent gel on your shoulder and, far more gently than you think is medically necessary, begins spreading it out. Looking back you should’ve known something like this would happen. You should’ve known because unit 44 had not been paying attention to the briefing. Because it had looked distracted when putting on armour. Because two days before the mission it had not been as efficient as it could’ve been at training. It had hesitated and you had not let it out of your sight since. You should have known because small disobediences lead to bigger disobediences later on. You lean back, just a bit, into her cool fingers. Its cool fingers. Its blue fingers. The same colour your bruise is beginning to take on, and that was not your thought. You feel sick to the stomach, and you are so tired and you never wanted to have anything to do with this in the first place. You did your job, and so you stand up.

You begin trying to zip up your dress, and you must look like an idiot when you can’t reach the zipper. You take Mr. Brown’s jacket from the desk chair and put that over your shoulders instead. A small burst of panic shoots through you. There are only two minutes remaining.

Your first mission is a complete failure, two minutes isn’t enough time. The blood pools beneath Mr. Brown’s head seeping into the wooden flooring. It is splattered on the walls, and on your dress. On your hands. You do not have enough time to clean it all.

Unit 44 makes no attempt to move from where it’s still seated on the floor. It looks relaxed in the way it’s leaning back on its hands looking at you, observing you. It looks resigned, like it does not care about any of this. Does not care about the consequences of not following mission protocols. Does not care about Mr. Brown lying dead on the floor eleven minutes too late. Does not care about you. You suppose its actions have proven that it doesn’t.

Under your gaze unit 44 finally stands up.

“We have one minute,” it states. “Now tell me exactly, what did it feel like?”

For the first time in quite a while you open your mouth and speak.  

It is only in Dr. Morgan’s office in preparation for your second mission that you dare to subtly ask about unit 44. Of course she knows many unit 44’s, 44 being only the last two numbers of a longer serial number, but she seems to understand which one you’re talking about.

“Hmmm, I get why you would be anxious about working with that particular unit again. After that disaster of a mission last time.” You had known it was a disaster, you had not known everybody else thought so too. “That it would wait to kill that Brown figure for so long, and then to do it so messily too.” It had taken the fall, you had suspected as much. “I had already said to Marcus there is something wrong with that unit. He even acknowledged it in that irritating way he always does, but actually listen? No. Never.” 

She is not truly talking to you, merely monologuing to herself and you are an unfortunate victim. This is why you asked her. She likes hearing herself talk, and her colleagues do not like listening. 

“He was all like let’s see where this goes. It would be a shame to have to start over again, blah blah blah. I said the nice thing about regenes is that we get to start over again. Its body is young and we can simply reuse it. Let’s just get it over with, but no. One more mission.” You wonder how many units had heard her complain about this in the days preceding the mission. Whether unit 44 might’ve. “So one disaster of a mission later and now it’s been decommissioned all the same. Marcus still won’t admit I was right though. Asshole.”

Unit 44 is dead. She walks over to you and injects something in your upper right arm. The bruise on your shoulder has healed faster than a normal human bruise would. You’re beginning to miss it.

“Well anyway its chip has been taken apart, and you won’t have to worry about ever working with it again. Sounds good?”

There is something ugly and sour rising in your throat. You force your face in approximation of a gentle smile and nod.

Later when you’re in the dorms lying on your stomach on your bed, you wait and listen. It is deep in the night and you’ve waited very patiently until you’re sure that most of the others are asleep. Or at least that the ones still awake are not paying any attention to you. You’re pretty sure you look convincingly asleep, you have not moved an inch in two hours. Your telepathy is not as strong as others, so you play defense instead.

In your mind you open the door. Step into the room. Lock the door behind you (unit 44 is not there to pick up the slack anymore). Check the room for anything unusual (ignore the body). Feel your own body on the mattress, muscles relaxing. Keep at it for another two hours. Convince yourself you have obtained some fraction of privacy. Some fraction of Mr. Brown’s room, his dead eyes never having left you. Only then, when you’re balancing on the edge of consciousness just about to fall asleep, do you allow yourself to imagine; her blue fingers spread out against your shoulder.