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journey-to-the-attic · 1 month

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3rd anni FINALE: brothers / paws n claws

ao3 link

note: based loosely on the pop quiz of the same name, though with the requested change of levi being a snake rather than a giraffe - and since that was different, i decided to do something new with ik as well (this is what that random animal poll was for). this one's a proper long one, so i'm deeply sorry if the keep reading bar ever breaks

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You'd normally think that an event that makes Luke flee the House of Lamentation, tearfully shouting, “I’ll go get help!” must be some kind of catastrophe. Well, it still might shape up to be - but I'm hopeful that it won't. Right now, it's a situation at most.

Said situation can be summarised with one sentence: there was something wrong with the cake. This is vague enough to be misleading, though, so I’ll elaborate: there was a potion in the cake, and it made Beel grow fluffy ears and a tail, then shortly thereafter started doing the same thing to everyone else.

‘Fluffy ears and a tail’ might not sound too bad, but Luke wouldn’t have run like that if that was all. Beel has rapidly developed a mouthful of sharp teeth, a bone-shakingly powerful roar, and a sudden, even more pronounced taste for meat. Raw meat, specifically, because that is what lions eat. It'd be cool if it wasn’t for the fact that we had been the nearest sources of raw meat when the hunger first hit.

The only thing to do, really, was run and hide. And that probably wouldn’t even have worked (Beel is also now even faster and stronger than usual) if Mammon hadn’t suddenly sprouted new striped features of his own and pounced on him in return. Things just sort of went crazy after that.

I haven’t been able to keep track of them all, but knowing their track record, everyone else has probably been hit with the curse, too. Asmo definitely has, at least - I know that because it happened while he was rushing me to the safety of his room's two locks.

“It’s weird that the potion changed your clothes as well,” I say, trying to figure out whether that’s a dress or a really long blouse as he pushes me in. “Isn’t it?”

Asmo doesn’t answer for a moment - he turns the key, then peers fretfully through the peephole. After a moment, he hisses, “That doesn’t matter, does it? You know Mammon’s a tiger? There—”

There’s a knock on the door, and Asmo skitters backwards. After a moment, there’s another, mellower knock, then a plaintive, “Hello?”

Though it sounds closer to a ‘he-wo?’. Asmo frowns. “Levi? Why do you sound like that?”

There’s a shuffle. “I goh— got fangth. It’th… wha’ever, can I come in?”

Asmo doesn’t move for a moment, but relents quickly. Levi sidles in, head turning from side to side, tail dragging in behind him. It’s longer and thinner than in demon form, and iridescent green instead of deep grey - his pupils look narrower, too, and there are dark markings along his cheeks.

“Whoa!” I hadn’t gotten a good look at him when he first started transforming. “You’re a snake!”

“I notithed,” He says unhappily. He has fangs now - long, curved ones that keep catching on his bottom lip. “It’th a nigh’mare. Theeth teeth…”

“Are they retractable?”

“I’unno…” He scrunches his face in concentration. The fangs suddenly swing up into the back of his mouth. “...oh! Yes! Finally!”

“When did you switch?” I ask as he opens and closes his mouth several times with relish. “Asmo went a few minutes ago, I think he’s a panda… it looked like it hurt.”

He makes a popping sound, then releases a long sigh. “Eh - not really? It’s more like everything gets really hot and itchy for a bit. Isn’t anything happening to you?”

I look down at myself. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“Guess the potion only works on demons. Lucky…” Levi rubs his arms, then abruptly dives into Asmo’s bed. “Brr! Why’s it so cold in here?”

“Snakes are cold-blooded, right? So you need to get heat from somewhere else.” I lean over and plant my hands on his cheeks. “Is that nice?”

“Ooh… yeah…” He blinks at me. “Hrm. Everything looks so weird. It’s, like… fuzzy.”

I squint at his face. Wait - those aren’t markings after all. “Oh! You’ve got heat pits! You’re, like, seeing temperature. That’s so cool.”

Asmo looks as well, then recoils, hands flying to his mouth. “Eww! There’s holes in your face!”

“As if you don’t have a nose,” Levi snaps, but reaches self-consciously to cover his cheeks anyway. “...ugh. I’m still cold.”

I’m not large enough to be an effective heater - what we really need is either a heat lamp, or the sun, neither of which Asmo has in his room. He resorts to dragging Levi to his bathtub instead, and lighting candles in a circle around him. It looks like we’re using him for a nefarious ritual, but it seems to provide Levi with a little relief.

“It’s like I can see them way clearer than everything else,” Levi says, squinting, then covers his nose. “And they smell super strong. You know I’ve got venom now, too? I got some on the carpet and it started, like, dissolving.”

So the potion definitely isn’t just a cosmetic thing. I glance at Asmo. “Do you feel any different?”

“Hmm. Maybe?” He stretches, and for the first time his sleeves fall down enough for me to see his hands. The pads of his fingers look thicker, and his nails look more like claws. “Like, I kinda wanna go to sleep, I guess.”

He leans forward on the edge of the bathtub, then fumbles and slips down into a heap. “Ooh. Gosh, this whole thing is weird. How do you think everyone’s doing?”

“It might not have even worked on Lucifer.” Those candles really do smell strong. It’s making my nose tickle. “What animal do you th— achoo!”

I can tell something’s changed as soon as I open my eyes again, but Levi’s yelp and jerk backwards (dangerously close to the candles) confirms it. I look down. Those definitely aren’t the clothes I was wearing a minute ago.

“Oh,” I say, defeated. “So the potion did work on me.”

“You’ve got a tail!” Asmo squeals, trying several times to scramble to his feet before succeeding, and immediately reaching for me. “And your ears!”

“Whoa whoa whoa—” I think I can empathise with Hyde when Aunt Lisa rushes him now. “Wait, wait, wait— put me down for a sec—”

Asmo (somewhat unwillingly) releases me, and I hurry to the mirror. White ears, a bushy red tail, distinct markings across my cheeks… am I wearing gloves? No - that’s straight-up a paw. It’s alien trying to move my fingers and watching the claws flex instead.

…my right hand is still normal, though. That one is just wearing a sort of glove. It’s like the potion got mad about not being able to do anything to the prosthetic and doubled its effects on the intact one.

I lift my paw as if to swipe at the mirror, then bare my teeth at it. “Rarrgh!”

Behind me, Levi’s reflection soundlessly pretends to get shot in the heart and collapses backwards into the tub. Asmo isn’t nearly so quiet - he squeals again, twice as loud this time.

I give him a moment to compose himself, then turn and announce, “I think I’m a red panda.”

“Ooh! So we’re matching?!” He slides over and sets his head on the crown of my head, then brandishes his own claws at the mirror as well. “Oh, we need to get pictures. Or film some videos! We can’t let this go to waste!”

“Hey, hey, slow down.” Levi emerges from the tub again. “What about everyone else? If the potion even works on humans, then Lucifer’s probably…”

“Oh, yeah! We totally need pictures of him, too.”

“That’s not the point—”

Levi pauses to yawn, but it’s nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before. He just keeps going, wider than should really be possible. His fangs click out, and the entire roof of his mouth seems to turn inside out for a moment - then everything realigns, and his jaw swings shut again.

“What?” He asks after a moment. Asmo is staring at him in horror - and I with fascination.

“What happened to your bones?” Asmo asks in a hush.

“That was so cool,” I say with the same intonation. “And gross.”

“...you don’t sound like that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not.”

“That potion really is crazy,” Asmo whispers. He looks haunted. “Should that stuff really be allowed? What’s Solomon doing in that lab? Am I gonna start doing that?”

“You’re fine, Asmo,” I reassure, patting him on the arm - he latches onto me like a stress blanket. “Pandas don’t do that.”

“You promise?” He asks tearfully.

“Promise.” I think of all the videos I’ve seen over the years. “And everyone loves pandas, anyway. They’re super cute.”

Levi crosses his arms over the edge of the bathtub and rests his chin atop them, then heaves a melancholic sigh. “And everyone’s scared of snakes ‘cause they think they’re gross.”

“Oh, don’t be a spoilsport,” Asmo scolds - though, to be fair, that’s easy for him to say. “We don’t think snakes are gross.”

“Uh, yes you do. You went ew about my heat pits.”

“That’s not the same thing!”

“I love snakes,” I declare. “Anyway, every animal’s kind of gross sometimes. You should watch Planet Earth.”

All while we’re saying this, I’m beginning to worry a little about the others. Levi’s the only reptile so far - if we’re lucky, that’s the furthest up the evolutionary tree anyone else has gone, but if we’re unlucky, one of them could be a fish. If the potion’s capable of giving Levi heat pits and the bone structure to actually unhinge his jaw, there’s no reason it couldn’t give someone gills.

I wonder how the potion decides what it’s going to turn us into. Levi being a snake makes sense… but Beel being a lion and Asmo a giant panda feel more arbitrary. (Though I couldn’t imagine what it’d look like if they turned into a fly and a scorpion.) And I don’t know why I’m a red panda, either.

“I think I’m gonna go look for Beel,” I decide after a while. He’s probably sated himself at least a little by now - he knows where the fridge is. “You guys stay here.”

“You think we’re gonna send you to the lions?” Levi asks in disbelief, and starts attempting to get out of the tub. “No dice! You’re staying here, where it’s safe. I’ll go check on Beel.”

“You have to stay here, though - you’re cold-blooded now, remember?” I push him back down, which takes surprisingly little effort. “So you have to keep warm.”

“Come on, d’you really think these candles are doing anything for me? They’re tiny.”

Now that he mentions it… “Hmm. Maybe we should run you a hot bath.”

“You want me to take a bath while you go talk to a lion?”

“He’s right, hon.” Asmo interjects. “We’re not the ones who need protecting.”

“Come on, we do this every time something—” I sigh loudly and try to compose myself. “—okay, look, you know you never win this fight. Nothing’s happened to me before. And it's just Beel, anyway.”

They exchange a look. After a moment, Levi huffs. “Fine - but you’d better not do anything stupid, alright?! I’ve seen this go wrong in way too many shows!”

“And if it looks like trouble, you’re coming straight back here,” Asmo adds. “Or I’ll cry. I mean it.”

I sigh, but smile at him anyway. “Sure, Asmo. Take a nap or something.”

It’s finally business as usual. We have an impromptu team handshake - which is nice, that’s never happened before - and then I let myself out into the hall, and into the figurative jungle.

It’s eerily quiet out here. Or it is for a moment, at least, because then something crashes in the kitchen.

I can take a guess at who it is. I hurry downstairs - I feel more agile, somehow. I don’t think my feet are paws as well, but these boots definitely look like them. I’d thought having a tail would feel stranger, but the sensation seems to have settled in seamlessly. It feels as if it’s been there the whole time.

Beel, just as I’d thought, has his head in the fridge when I get there. I can hear glass clinking and plastic crinkling. Several containers are already lying empty on the table. The only real difference between this and his usual fridge raids is that he’s gone exclusively for the raw meat.

I’ve never seen him get food poisoning, but that doesn’t mean he can’t. Well, maybe the potion gave him a lion’s stomach too... “Uh - Beel?”

He makes a sound of surprise that isn’t that different from a cat’s ‘mrrp’ - just a lot deeper - and pulls back from the fridge with startling swiftness. There’s a scrap of something pink hanging out of his mouth.

“...are you having fun?” I ask after a moment. Ignoring all new features, his demeanour looks about the same. Maybe his eyes are more dilated than usual.

He makes a rumbling sound at the base of his throat and swallows the rest of the scrap in his mouth, slamming the fridge shut with his elbow and moving to the sink. He cups his hands under the faucet and drinks deeply - every move is poised and purposeful. Then he closes his eyes and shakes himself all over, like a wet dog.

When he opens his eyes, they look normal again. I can’t say the same for the rest of him - his hair is longer and poofier, as if in imitation of a mane, and there’s fur around his neck that makes him look almost twice as large as usual.

“You switched, too?” He asks after a moment. I catch a glimpse of sharp, bloodstained canines, and recoil before I can stop myself. “...hm? Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah, peachy.” Do red pandas’ tails fall between their legs when they’re nervous, too? I feel like mine’s trying to do that. “What about you? Do you like being a lion?”

“I don’t like… liking all this,” He says after a moment, gesturing at all the empty boxes. I try not to think too hard about the image they conjure. “I mean, it’s way better when it’s cooked. You can put all sorts of different stuff on it to make it tasty. But it’s the only thing I feel like eating right now.”

“Well, that’s how a lion eats.”

Beel looks at me for a moment. Then, unprompted, he reaches up and scratches my fluffy new ears. I feel my shoulders fall. “Hey. It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I hadn’t even noticed myself tensing up. It’s not like I thought he ever would, but… actually, I can’t tell if those were the red panda’s survival instincts, or my own. I’m fairly sure the latter hasn’t been working for a while.

“Yeah, I know,” I sigh after a moment, sitting down with him. Using my tail as a cushion, I can’t feel the chill of the kitchen tiles at all. “I just… I dunno. Do you know what happened to everyone else?

He thinks for a moment, then looks a little alarmed. “Uh— I think I was chasing Satan for a while. He was moving all fast and funny, and I just— I don’t know. It felt like I had to grab him. I don’t think I caught him, but…”

“We’d better see, just in case,” I conclude, getting up. “I need to check on everyone, anyway. Asmo’s with Levi already…”

“Belphie went to the observatory,” Beel says thoughtfully, following me out of the kitchen. “And I haven’t seen Lucifer since we split up. He looked like he was gonna follow you and Asmo, but then…”

“Did it look like he transformed?”

“Uhh…” He looks mildly guilty. “I don’t know. I stopped thinking straight. Mammon bit me, and then I was chasing him instead…”

“He bit you?” I saw Mammon jumping at him, but I didn’t think he’d gone that far.

“Yeah. Pretty hard, actually. It only hurt for a bit, though.” Beel points to his shoulder. “I think he thought I’d go after you first, so he was trying to chase me off. I don’t know where he went after that…”

I sigh. “Well, he’s got to be somewhere in the house. Let’s go find Belphie first.”

“Mmm? Sure.” He pauses to yawn. It isn’t quite as spectacular as Levi’s, but it’s impressive all the same. The teeth are still a little unsettling. “Be careful. I don’t know what he turned into.”

He rubs my ears again, then moves away with long, languid steps, tail trailing lazily behind him. My own tail swishes anxiously for a moment before I steel myself and follow him.

It turns out Belphie didn’t even make it into the observatory - he got into the music room, then apparently couldn’t be bothered to walk any further past the divider and just curled up under the piano. Beel very nearly stands on an extended arm before he seems to smell his presence.

“Belphie?” He crouches down and reaches for the thick brown tail he’s using as a blanket. “Wake u—”

As soon as his hand closes around the fur, Belphie’s entire body goes rigid - the underside of the piano presses his ears flat against his head as he rolls out from under it and flips upright in an instant, poised as if to pounce. It’s all so quick, all so alarmingly sudden, that my entire body tenses, jerks backwards, and I find myself with both hands raised high in the air.

I don’t know what I expected to do, only that I had to make myself look as large as possible. Belphie - eyes wide open in a way that they almost never are immediately after waking - looks at me for a moment, then laughs so loudly that Beel jumps back this time.

“Where’ve you been?” He asks, grinning. His teeth aren’t nearly as pointy as Beel’s, but his smile is a lot more devious. “Hey, I’m just messing with you.”

“Uh huh,” I say, trying not to look too scared. For some reason, I can’t bring myself to bring my hands down. I just look like I’ve long since surrendered. “I knew that.”

Belphie snickers. His tail curves up behind him, ears swivelling to the side of his head. “C’mon, relax. Let’s play a game.”

On the last word, he hops just a bit forward, and I take a great big step back. Beel glances between us, then commands, looking mildly concerned, “Be nice, Belphie.”

“I am being nice,” Belphie says with a sniff, baring his teeth at me again. The longer I look at his grin, though, the more it begins to look playful. “Hey. Hey!”

He darts forward again, but this time I’m ready for him - I pounce straight at his chest, knocking him within an inch of smacking his head on the piano, then quickly get up and scurry to the other side of the room. Belphie springs straight back to his feet and rushes so swiftly at me that there’s little I can do before he scoops me up with deceivingly gentle hands and tosses me a fair distance across the room.

A ‘fair distance’, however, is not long enough to prevent me from running straight back at him (for some reason, my hands end up in the air again) and bowling into his knees to knock him over. He lets out a sound between a yelp, a yip and a laugh, tumbling back onto his stomach and forgoing even getting back to his feet before he charges again.

“Wait—” Beel’s head swings back and forth until he’s blinking from the whiplash. “You two, come on—”

Belphie swipes at my feet at the same time that I seize his hood, sending us both back to the ground in a tangled heap. I recover first and unpin myself from beneath his unexpectedly heavy limbs, and register Beel standing over us - without stopping to wonder if it’s a good idea, I reach up, hook my claws into the fur around his shoulders, and scramble up him like a tree.

He only wobbles for a moment before balancing himself again. I adjust myself onto his back, then peer triumphantly down at Belphie through his mane.

“That’s cheating,” He complains, sitting up. “C’mon, are you really doing this?”

“You started it.” I muffle through Beel’s mane.

“What? You literally jumped at me first.”

“You’re bigger than me, so it doesn’t count.”

Beel makes a deep, rumbling sound that I’ll take as one of amusement. Hmm. I’m a lot closer to his ears from here.

Belphie yawns and flicks his tail about, then wraps his arms around it like it’s a toy. “Whatever. Bet you’re only getting away with it ‘cause you’re cute. Right, Beel?”

Beel lifts his hands innocently. Meanwhile, keeping my right hand latched to his mane, I reach up with my left to touch his ears. “I’m just standing. I can’t control what IK does.”

“Uh, yes you can. You can literally just pick her up. Any time.”

Beel’s fur is softer than I was expecting, but still coarser than any dog I’ve ever pet. I turn around to look at his tail. It’s sort of similar to Belphie’s usual demon tail - sleek along most of its length, but with a big fluffy bit at the end. He’s holding it too far down for me to reach from here, but if I twist a little more…

“Whoops—” Turns out I twisted too far. My claws detach, and I rapidly start slipping down his back.

Belphie’s eyes flash up. As smoothly as if he’d anticipated it, he ducks forward and cushions the landing with his tail - then draws in a breath through his teeth and scrunches his face up. “Oww. That hurt.”

“No one told you to do that,” I counter, but hurriedly shuffle off anyway.

“And let you break your tail? I don’t think so.” He reaches over before I can get far enough away and squishes my cheeks inward, then puts on a voice that he reserves for his most infuriating bits. “You gotta be careful, you’re just a little baby. Look at your cute little ears. What are you meant to be?”

“Not telling you!” I try to wrestle my face out of his hands, but he’s a lot better at this game than either Beel or I am. “Hey! I’m gonna bite you if you don’t stop!”

“Fine,” He sighs with unnecessarily gloom, and acquiesces. “You’re so mean to me. Well, do you know what I’m meant to be?”

I fold my arms and regard him for a moment. It’s not as obvious as the others have been so far. “I dunno. A weasel?”

He gives me a look. “Be nice.”

“I am being nice. What’s your problem with weasels?” I lean forward and pick up his tail at the tip. It’s heavier than it looks. “...well, your ears are the wrong shape, anyway. Um… you could be a hyena. Do a laugh?”

“Ha ha ha.”

“A proper one.”

“That is my proper one.”

“What do you think, Beel?”

He starts. He doesn't seem to have been paying attention - just watching us with a warm look on his face. “Uh— a cow?”

“A cow?” Belphie repeats incredulously. “Have you ever seen a cow? You just want steak, don’t you?”

Beel’s face says ‘guilty as charged’. I prop myself up on my knees and start ruffling Belphie’s ears without permission. They feel like they could be extra-big cat ears.

“I think you’re some kind of desert fox,” I announce. “Try barking.”

He looks offended. “No way.”

“I command you to—”

“I think it’s time for Beel to have a snack,” He says loudly, and gets to his feet. “We’re going now.”

“It’d be easier if you just do it on your own,” I say persuasively, following behind as Beel gets unceremoniously pushed out of the room. “It’s less embarrassing. It’s on your terms.”

“I’m not barking!” He insists, moving a little faster, as if that will stop me from speaking. “Make Lucifer do it. Wolves are way closer to dogs.”

“I d— oh, so the potion did work on him?” My attention is successfully shifted. “Where did he go?”

“I dunno, I wasn’t looking— where are you going?”

I’m already in the other room when I realise I was meant to answer that question, but it doesn’t matter that much. There are only so many places to be in the House of Lamentation, and Lucifer’s pretty predictable. He might well have gone back to his office to do his work for the day.

I look into the common room just in case, which is empty - but, rather suspiciously, there’s a lot of grey fur stuck to the cushions in Lucifer’s usual spot. The common room has a pretty distinct mix of scents to it, and Lucifer’s is strong enough that he can’t have left too long ago.

I’m not sure I enjoy having such strong senses. It’s easier not to pay attention to it all when I’m in the middle of something else, but it’s overwhelming as soon as I stop and try to dissect everything.

I sit down for a moment, close my eyes, and listen carefully to the silence. There’s some distant clanking and conversation from the kitchen, but other than that it’s just quiet…

…the weird thing is that we all still have our normal ears, on top of the new animal ones. I can’t tell which ones are doing the work.

Garden, a voice in the back of my head suddenly supplies, and I open my eyes again. I don’t think I even heard anything - not consciously, anyway - but it feels like the right thing to do.

And apparently it is. Lucifer is sitting out on the grass and doing absolutely nothing.

Which is quite suspicious, really. But all I can think about is how he doesn’t seem to have heard the door open, and that it would be really funny if I snuck up on him.

I take a slow, careful step onto the lawn. He doesn’t give any indication that he’s noticed anything. Maybe he can’t hear me over the rustling of his own tail swiping idly through the grass. I think this is about as close as I can get away with. Can I jump that far? Only one way to find out.

I crouch back and adjust myself. Then, using the soft grass as a springboard, I launch myself ever-so-gently at his shoulders and grab him by the head.

Lucifer doesn’t scream - I wouldn’t have expected him to, and if he had, I’d have been very alarmed. But he does let out a loud, gruff ‘heurgh!’ and nearly topple straight over, which is about as good as you get with him.

“Hey,” I announce, into his regular ear, then lean up and do the same into the wolf ones, just in case. “Hey!”

“Yes, I can hear you,” He sighs, catching himself on a hand and trying to act stern. (His tail is wagging.) “And what do you think you’re doing?”

“Dunno.” I lean forward until I’m just about hanging over his shoulder. Lucifer has to switch from hunching forward to tilting back to keep balance. “What’re you doing?”

He’s quiet for a moment. I get the feeling that he doesn’t know, either. “Keeping watch.”

“Watch on what?” The only thing in front of us is a big hedge and some flowers. “There’s nothing here.”

“Hmm,” He says, which isn’t an answer. “Shouldn’t you be inside?”

“Well, I was looking for you—” I tip further forward still, and at this point Lucifer seems to decide that it’d be more prudent to just lie back, so that I’m lying on my front instead of attempting to fall head-first into the grass. “—oof— ‘cause I didn’t think the potion would work on you. And I wanted to see what you were like.”

“You wanted to see me do something embarrassing,” He concludes, and waves off my defensive ‘nooo’. “I didn’t think it would work on you, either. What are you, exactly?”

“Red panda.” I reach across his chest and poke at one of the straps running down his shirt. “Wow. Your suspenders are kind of ugly.”

There’s a short, sharp exhale, and then he remembers to be offended. “I didn’t choose them.”

“Well, I was saying - it’s weird that the potion knows how to make clothes, isn’t it? I mean, it’s adding bones and everything…”

“Which is exactly why I’d like to question Solomon about what he put in it,” He says, and now he does sound genuinely severe. “He’s lucky it hasn’t done any damage. I don’t know how Luke managed to bake it into a cake.”

The tip of his tail - the rest of it is trapped under his back - has started lashing angrily at the grass. I wonder if scratching his ears would help calm him down, or just make him madder.

“It’s not his fault,” I say in what I hope is a persuasive voice. Maybe it’d help if I sounded more pitiful. “And I helped him bake it, too.”

He gives me a look. “You’re the one I’m most worried about. A human body shouldn’t be able to handle the same kind of magical stress as a demon, and it wasn’t exactly comfortable when I transformed. Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

“Funny story, actually. I just sneezed and then it happened.”

“You just sneezed,” He repeats.

“Didn’t feel a thing,” I confirm. “Anyway, it’s cool, isn’t it? Like - Levi has heat pits now.”

“We still don’t know how long this is going to last,” He says, but he does look less tense. “...well, you might as well have fun with it.”

“Do you feel like howling at all?” I ask, looking up at the moon. I mean, I know it’s not actually a thing, but even so… “Actually, do you feel any different? Like… is the wolf within talking?”

“You make it sound more dramatic than it is,” Lucifer says with another little exhale. “But yes.”

“What’s it saying?”

“To hunt, mostly. Feed the family, or something along those lines. But we’ve been grocery-shopping this week already - and I’m not sure what I’d hunt even if I listened. What about your… ‘panda within’, then?”

It’s nice that he’s playing along. “Mmm… I think I really wanna climb up something.”

“Something up high?” He gently pushes my head off his shoulder and gestures to the end of the garden. “Will that do?”

It’s not the tallest tree in the Devildom, but to someone of my stature it’s an intimidating enough height that I’d probably feel a little dizzy at the top - which is perfect. I hadn’t realised how much I wanted to do this until Lucifer pointed it out, but I’m moving before I can even stop to think about it.

There’s something liberating about this new agility. Scaling the trunk comes about as second nature as taking stairs - so smoothly that it feels like the air is parting around rather than rushing against me. It’s only once I’m crouched contentedly on the highest sturdy branch I can find that I notice Lucifer standing at the base of the tree, ears pricked and eagle-eyed in apparent trepidation.

The bark is rough, but for some reason it doesn’t bother me at all. I lie forward with a leisurely sweep of my tail and give him a winning smile.

He huffs. “Proud of yourself, are you?”

“Yup.” It’d be better if this was an apple tree - then I could pick one and toss it down to him, and it’d be extra cool.

Alas, the tree just has regular leaves. Which… look kind of tasty, actually. It’s not like I have access to bamboo down here, so this might be the next best thing.

“Don’t,” Lucifer warns. I can only assume that I was wearing a Beel expression. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I’m not doing anything,” I insist, then pause. Something’s just sped past one of the windows upstairs. “...huh? Was that Mammon?”

I can hear Lucifer’s tail swishing agitatedly as I edge closer to the end of the branch to get a closer look. A moment later, another blur goes by.

“He’s just running. Okay—” I quickly unlatch from the branch and drop down, landing neatly in Lucifer’s arms. “—I’m gonna go check on him.”

“Was a warning too much to ask for?” He asks, as if he hadn’t reached up as soon as I let go. “Alright, but be careful. He’s… energetic.”

“You aren’t coming?”

“In a moment,” He says, and an odd look comes over his face. “I might have a walk. I need to…”

I feel like ‘patrol’ might be the word he’s looking for, but Lucifer seems pretty adamant that he’s the boss of the wolf and not the other way around, so I won’t tease him. He sends me back to the house with a nod, then sets off - turning his head first, then the rest of his body, tail pointing out behind him.

I’m expecting to hear the thunder of feet as soon as I get inside, but apparently tigers are lighter-footed than I’d thought. I barely even sense Mammon approaching until he suddenly springs out from around the corner, coming within less than an inch of slamming tie-first into my face before yelping and jerking away.

At the same time, as if struck by invisible lightning, I half-twist and half-leap backwards, hands flying above my head again, and it’s only a moment after the weird, chattering sound that I realise I was the one making it. Mammon skitters several feet away, eyes wide with alarm, then catches himself on the wall and realises what’s going on.

“Whoa whoa whoa!” He holds out his hands in supplication. “Chill, it’s just me!”

I blink at him, mildly out of breath, then say, “I knew that.”

“...are ya gonna put your hands down, then?”

“Yeah.”

He waits. It takes a little effort, but I manage to regain control of my limbs and bring my arms back down to my side.

Mammon cocks his head to the side. His tail goes from pointing down to up, and begins to move idly from side-to-side as he sets his hands on his hips.

“Didn’t scare ya that bad, did I?” He steps closer, then motions for me to look up. “C’mere, lemme get a look at ya.”

“Why were you doing upstairs?” I ask as he pokes at the new markings on my cheeks, then leans back and tilts his head from side to side, squinting at me. “I saw you in the window.”

“Runnin’,” He says after a moment’s thought, squashing both my ears flat against my head. “I kinda… bit Beel. I was sorta worried I’d start bitin’ everyone else, so I was tryin’ to blow off steam. Actually, I was takin’ laps around the garden first, but Lucifer said it was makin’ his head hurt.”

“So you came back in?”

“Well, I did wanna start runnin’ faster,” He admits. “Like, I was there first. But then he growled at me. Figured it wasn’t worth pissing him off after that.”

He swipes a hand across his face, then sighs. “Man. I’m beat. Let’s just find somewhere to chill.”

“Aren’t you hungry at all?” I ask, following him back to the common room. “You were running for ages. Tigers eat a lot even when they’re just sleeping all day.”

“Eh, I’ll manage,” He yawns, slumping onto the sofa cushions and turning onto his side, like a leisurely cat. “‘Sides, I’m pretty sure Beel cleaned out the fridge. And it ain’t like there’s anything to hunt around here.”

“Ooh— actually, do you want a fun fact? Tigers kill their prey by biting onto their throats until they suffocate.”

Mammon lifts his head and gives me a look. “That’s a fun fact?”

“A lot of people think they maul them to death. Well, they can, but the throat thing’s easier. ‘Cause it saves energy.” He looks uneasy, so I try to comfort him by adding, “It’s just what they do. Tiger’s gotta eat.”

“Tiger’s gotta eat,” He repeats, but his face stays creased. “Okay, now tell me something nice.”

“Alright.” I sit down on the carpet in front of him. “Every tiger has a unique pattern. So these are your special Mammon stripes! They’re the same under the fur, too, so you’d still have them even if you were completely bald.”

“Ha! Reckon I could pull it off?”

“Uh... I dunno, your head’s pretty big.”

He smacks me on the arm. “I told ya to tell me somethin’ nice.”

“I’m not going to lie - that’s the nice part. If you did go bald, Levi wouldn’t stop calling you an egghead for a week.”

“Ain’t that mean someone’s smart, too? Hey, I could live with that.”

“But your head would be so shiny. And an eagle might think it was a rock and drop a tortoise on it.”

He snorts incredulously. “Yeah, ‘cause that happens all the time to bald people.”

“It’s happened at least once,” I assert. “Historically. According to one guy two thousand years ago. The bald guy died, by the way.”

“Be a hell of a way to go.” He twists up, so that his chest faces the ceiling, and folds his arms with a deep sigh. “Fine. Guess I’ll hold back, just for you.”

His tail lolls over the edge of the sofa as he closes his eyes. I watch it for a while, glancing periodically up at his ostensibly absent expression, then reach out to catch it.

Like a spider on a string, it flicks backwards, and goes to lying barely an inch away. I try again, then again, then again, and yet it keeps bouncing away, as if it can sense the movement. No matter how fast I move, it’s always just a little faster.

I refuse to give up. I keep batting at it with mounting frustration, switching from quick jabs to slow, careful ambushes before finally turning a glare to Mammon’s face - and belatedly notice that his eyes are fully open again.

We look at each other for a moment. Then I realise that he’s not paying attention, and instinct takes over. Before he can react, I seize his tail and - for some reason I can’t fathom - bite it.

But I suppose I can’t have bitten it very hard, because Mammon usually makes it very loudly known if someone so much as pinches him. This time, he just stares at me. Then he starts laughing.

“Hahaha, oh man—” He reaches forward and gives both my ears an aggressive, adoring rumple, declaring, “Aren’t ya sweet? You havin’ fun with that? Hahahaha!”

“Quit it,” I mumble, pushing his tail away from me with perhaps an unnecessary amount of force, then decide on a whim to climb up onto the sofa with him. “Move up.”

“Oof!” He ends up squished against the back, but I’m too embarrassed to care. “Sheesh, give a guy some breathing room.”

“No,” I muffle into a cushion. “Die.”

“Fine, then. Have it your way.” He burrows one arm under me, then uses that as leverage to make himself some more room. I bury my face in my hands and pretend not to hear his pleased chuffing. “Wanna tell us a bedtime story?”

I peek up at him through a gap in my fingers. “...all the stories Dad told me about tigers end in the tiger dying.”

“Oh, don’t tell me, lemme guess—” He snickers. “—some little red thing tries to eat its tail and—”

Before he can finish, my hands shoot up and tug both of his tiger ears down. This time he does yelp. “Oi! Okay, okay, you win—”

“I don’t even know why I did that,” I grumble, letting go and shielding my face once more.

He chuffs again, pinching my nose with just enough force to be annoying. “Yeah, well, it was funny. Don’t even worry about it. Y’know Levi used to bite my arm whenever he got excited? Man, that was ages ago…”

“You shouldn’t let him bite you now - he’s got snake venom. You’ll get necrosis and your arm’ll fall off.”

“That bad? Yikes.” He yawns, then abruptly tucks me under his chin like a glorified teddy bear. “Good thing you’re gonna guard me, right?”

“I can’t do anything when I’m stuck here,” I complain - knocking my head affectionately into his at the same time, like a hypocrite. “I can’t die valiantly in battle if you don’t let me go.”

“Against a snake? Nah, leave it. That’s not even a cool thing to fight.”

“How dare you say that about Saint Patrick…”

The conversation continues in that vein for a little longer - until Mammon finally runs out of energy to keep coming up with responses, and instead starts responding with a series of low, growling hums. He dozes off soon after that. Considering how long he was sprinting around for, I’m impressed he managed to stay awake for that long.

I’d like to stay with him for a while, but I don’t feel sleepy at all, and it’s also getting kind of warm. I carefully wriggle my way out, then stand up and survey the scene. I reckon I’ll build a few cushions around him, like a fort, and that way he’ll be extra safe…

Once I’m done with that, I decide to go wandering again. Satan’s the only one I haven’t seen so far, and I can’t tell if the ongoing silence from him forebodes well or poorly.

The first place to check is, as usual, the library, which is empty at first glance. Then I catch a pair of vivid green eyes staring at me - a large demon-shaped cat tucked neatly into a high-up gap in the bookshelf.

“...why are you in there?” I ask, even though I know the answer from Hyde, and it’s just that he can, and wants to be.

Satan stays there for a moment, then slips out, landing softly on all fours, and sits gracefully back on his haunches. I’d be worried about the lack of response if it wasn’t for his tail pointed straight up behind him, waving slowly like a happy flag.

“Hello,” He says, perfectly serene.

“Hey.” I give him a knowing look, which he ignores. He’s not fooling anyone who knows him even a little - let alone me. “Are you having fun being a cat?”

“You would not believe,” He replies, and at this point the giddiness starts to seep into his voice. He leans forward a little. “Come here. Scratch my ears.”

There’s a weirdly intense look on his face. I wrinkle my nose at him. “What?”

“Scratch my ears,” He says again, as if it was the instruction that was the problem.

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

“Not if you’re gonna be weird about it—”

“I can purr now,” He says impatiently. “Come on, come on, I’ll show you.”

“Okay, okay—” I bend down a little and give the base of his ears a rub. They’re sleeker than Hyde’s - more intact, too. “Is that good?”

He shuts his eyes, ducking his head so that I get the angle correctly. A familiar sound starts up, even louder and deeper than I’m used to, like a little motor in his chest.

It’s hypnotic. I kneel down beside him, and in turn he starts dipping his head even lower, until it looks like he’s contorted in a funny yoga pose. Eventually he just gives up on supporting himself and flops over onto his side with a content little smile.

A voice in the back of my head comments that this must all look incredibly strange. The voice in the front of my head replies that it’s really cute, so it doesn’t matter.

I mess around with one of his ears and turn it inside out. He doesn’t seem to notice, but the ear itself starts twitching restlessly, as if trying to reverse itself. “What’ve you been up to? What else can you do?”

(It’s kind of hard not to start baby-talking him, but I’m not sure he’d forgive me if I did.)

“Well, Lucifer left his office unlocked, so I went in and got some fur on his chair,” He says triumphantly, opening his eyes for long enough to offer a slow, happy blink. “Then I just took a nap. Sleeping as a cat is much nicer than sleeping as a demon. No wonder they always look so happy.”

There’s no way Satan didn’t spend at least a little time just basking in the bliss of his feline transformation, but I won't force him to admit that. I pick up one of his hands and turn it over. Like Asmo, they look mostly the same, but with little pads on the ends of his long fingers.

Satan yawns, then slowly sits up again. “What are you looking at?”

“Trying to see if your hands do the…” I press down between his knuckles, and his nails do indeed seem to protract. “Whoa! I wonder how that works?”

He looks down, then lets out a shallow gasp and wrenches his hand out of mine, reversing the positions so that he’s holding my left hand instead. His ears are pointed straight up - I imagine a pair of whiskers fanning out from his cheeks.

“You’ve got paws,” He whispers in awe.

“Paw,” I correct, showing him the right one. “This is just a glove. I don’t think the potion works on prosthetic stuff.”

“Interesting..." He frowns. “I wonder if we have any textbooks about this kind of thing.”

I know he prefers spellwork over brewing, which I’ve heard Professor Baal vocally complaining about in the staff room before, so this is a good sign for them. After a moment, though, the scholarly look on Satan’s face vanishes again, and now he’s wearing the same expression he watches kitten videos with.

He tweaks my nose, then starts combing his fingers methodically through the hair I messed up on the sofa earlier, beginning to purr again. I’m suddenly put in mind of those videos of cats grooming each other.

He shifts to better reach the back of my head, and I hear a quiet chime. I look down. There’s a bell tied around his tail.

Weird choice of accessory. It’s not attached very securely - just loosely looped around with a strong string. Satan pauses as I detach the bell, then lift it up and give it a jingle.

I open my mouth to say something, then realise that, based on his expression, he won’t hear a word of it. Satan’s completely frozen in place, eyes fixed on the bell. His now-unadorned tail swishes restlessly behind him.

Holding my breath, I jingle the bell again. The pupils of his eyes expand until there’s barely any green left in them, and he crouches back unconsciously. I think he’s actually trembling a little in anticipation.

I give it one last shake, then toss it away. Satan follows it with a sharp turn of his head - then, wiggling as if to calibrate, pounces at it like— well, like a cat at a mouse.

As soon as he lands beside it, his hand strikes the edge at just the right angle to send it spinning away, and this time he doesn’t even try to adjust before leaping at it again, then again - head held close to the ground, digging his claws into the carpet to keep himself from skidding and then getting them stuck when he tries to keep going. Each time, the bell seems to evade his grasp, right up until he lunges for it a little too rapidly and runs head-first into the wall.

“Oh no—” I’d been covering my mouth to stop myself from laughing, but now it’s more out of shock - I hurry to prop him back up as Satan stares at the ceiling, dazed. “—are you okay?”

He blinks deliriously for a moment, then gives himself a shake and flushes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine—”

He hurriedly gets back to his feet and, for want of something to do, starts flattening the fur on his ears. The bell lies, discarded, a few feet away. His eyes keep darting back to it again.

After a moment, deciding that he doesn’t seem like he has a concussion, I get up to retrieve it. Satan watches me in close anticipation as I toss it in my hand for a moment, then roll it over to him.

His hand shoots out and slams it to the ground. Then he smacks it my way again, and without thinking I dive to the side to catch it.

With each pass, he gets a little more boisterous, and the bell starts moving in wilder, faster directions, criss-crossing all over the library, passed back and forth with barely enough respite to actually jingle. I bounce this way, Satan bounds that way - knocking into furniture so frequently and loudly that it’s not really a surprise when someone comes to see what’s going on.

The door opens, and Satan stops himself short. He sits up straight, replacing his playful expression with a completely serious one, and Levi eyes us both suspiciously.

“What were you doing?” He asks after a moment.

“Nothing,” lies Satan, getting up. His eyes dart down to the bell again, and he discreetly kicks it away. “What’re you doing here?”

He scratches his head. “Well, Asmo got hungry. And I didn’t wanna just sit around in his room.”

“Are you still cold?” I ask. He shrugs.

“I think I’m getting used to it,” He says, coming further into the room. “I mean, it’s still chilly, but it’s like… outside chilly.”

“That’s good. Oh, have you tried eating anything yet? Do you reckon you could swallow stuff whole like Gerald does?”

He grimaces. “Do I have to? That sounds gross. Do we even have anything big enough?”

“Uhh… a big loaf of bread, maybe…?”

Satan, listening to this with interest, glances to the side and spots Levi’s long snake tail, and abruptly shoots into the air - so high that it looks as if a helicopter took off with a rope tied around him. Levi yelps and dives to hide; a moment later, Satan lands on his feet, a good ten feet away from where he started.

Levi peeks warily out from behind the armchair. “What was that?”

Satan clears his throat and refuses to make contact. “Ahem - do you hear people in the common room? Let’s go to the common room.”

The common room is a lot busier than it was since I left it. The twins have arrived, and the scene looks like Mammon’s swapped personalities with Belphie - while the latter is playing a chase game with Beel around the sofa, he has his head propped up on a cushion, blinking reproachfully at them for disturbing him.

Asmo shows up soon after we do, throwing himself into the seat next to me with a metric armful of some leafy vegetable that I can only assume is the Devildom equivalent of celery. He offers me a stick and keeps crunching loudly throughout Levi and Satan’s bickering, cheeks perpetually full like a hamster.

With everyone else gathered here, it’s not long before Lucifer slips in as well, and immediately gets dragged into Belphie’s game with Beel. Lucifer waits until he’s tuckered himself out (which doesn’t take long, because it’s Belphie), to finally call a family meeting of some kind so that everyone can get their bearings.

Though there isn’t much to say - we're all more or less settled into ourselves now, so it’s just a matter of getting used to everyone else. That doesn’t take long, either, and soon enough, certain demons start getting bored. Within the hour, they’re all running around the house again like excited puppies.

…I say ‘they’, but that includes me. Levi’s the one who opts to stay sitting calmly by the fireplace. Belphie keeps collapsing in the middle of the hallway for a five minute nap before he gets up to join in again, and Lucifer has to try to keep up with us to make sure we don’t start breaking everything.

Such is the commotion that no one hears the knock on the door, which Luke left unlocked when he fled. That also means that no one thinks to stop Mammon when he makes to use it as a launchpad - Solomon steps inside and immediately gets bowled over, sending the carefully corked bottle in his hand flying. Behind him, Luke lets out a short squeak and covers his eyes, but it lands safely on the carpet, its momentum carrying it down the hall.

And then it comes to a stop by Satan’s feet.

He stares at the bottle, eyes dilated. His tail flicks restlessly.

“Satan,” Lucifer starts, ears pricked in caution - none of us are close enough to grab the bottle to safety. “Don’t—”

Satan reaches down and bats the bottle cleanly into the wall. It smashes it into about a million smithereens. The rest of us watch the violet potion inside drain into the carpet.

“You know,” Solomon says, cross, “Sometimes you bring this on yourselves.”

#3rd anni event #writing #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #jtta ik #finally done!! woohoo!!!!

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sluggybunny · 9 days

Text

I like to do these so I can look back and realize people actually like my original content. Real ego boost, sorry

Under the cut is more lore. Winner of the poll gets NSFW alphabet written for them. Anyone who actually reads this I’ll give you a award for handling my bad writing

SATURN

My beloved lying. Born and raised in the streets yet she holds no loyalty. Her mother left when she was very young and she always wondered why and kept searching

Through a series of unfortunate events, one involving having cyber ware installed i her head without her knowledge,Saturn had a brief stint as a BLT junkie. Using that word strongly. She doesn’t remember anything from those years. Only movies.

Her magical awakening changed that and fried parts of her brain. She’s free and after her revenge spree was done, she took to the shadows.

Her story is one about lies and abandonment. Her mother abandoned the clan and then abandoned Saturn. Saturn will always be left behind, no one can really love Saturn. She tricks herself into thinking that’s fine. It goes back to the movies. The roles we play.

She is incapable of normal fear. The only time she felt fear is when a certain someone said those three little wordszz

Kalatran

Kalatran is a mystery. Do you know about earthdawn? If not, it’s ok. We’d be here all day if I tried to explain.

He sacrificed everything for his people and for himself. His family are dead because of his own ambitions and his inability to truly recognize it has lead to a very cracked and dangerous person.

He’s paranoia and power hungry. The hunger comes from fear. Everything comes from fear. He’s so far into what he’s doing that confronting it is impossible. He can’t because there’s no justification for all the death and pain he’s cause for… what? He doesn’t remember anymore. Everything he remembers is gone. What does he remember besides himself?

Hush

Nobody likes Hush. Most hate him. And he knows it. They hate him because he’s better (he tells himself) they hate him because of envy (he tells himself) if he makes him as hateable as possible then he can hide the real flaws he’s insecure about.

Hush’s worst fear is failure. And in a way he has failed and is a failure. He’s lost on what to do now. All this time, all these years, his Identity and shield he’s built up has become nothing. Who is Hush?

Keys

Everyone likes Keys, I think. We love old men. And he’s divorced! He is someone who believes he’s irredeemable and awful. He lives within every day, so close to wanting to and it all.

What keeps him going is he just needs to protect. He can’t help it, it’s his nature. He wants to protect and love so badly. But believe it can’t happen, he’s too rotten and evil. But he can. He loves deeply for many things in life and especially the few friends he has left.

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itsbenedict · 5 days

Text

From the beginning | Previously | Coin standings | 60/70 | 39/39

You decide to double up and head to the holy tower, where you might find more gifts waiting for you from the butterfly cloud. And while you're there, you can install the WIFI ACCESS POINT up in the governor's office and take a look at some files.

Nothing crazy happening this time! You're just gonna get a menu of shop items and a slate of hallucinations.

Hey, here they come now!

BIONIC MINTER (40)

RELINER STAFF (30)

HACK IN NIL (22)

OW, PANIC! ICE FISTS! (12)

A COUCH FÉVER (10)

BILATERAL SIZINGS (9)

A SNARE WORM (3)

NOBLE BELT TUT (2)

STOPWATCH FARE (2)

BEAT USER (1)

The FILIAL TWINS go ahead and INSTALL WIFI for you, and you've got a backdoor right into the governor's private network! Spicy. The files in there, though... are tough to make heads or tails of. There's...

A medal awarded to something- whatever it is, IT PREVENTED ROOK POWER EXTRUSION by stopping someone or something from juicing chess pieces for magical strength.

Some juice, which contains a tiny molecule that's way more regal than the other juice molecules. Plus it's a lady molecule, who's in charge. Hurry! ACCESS QUEENLIEST JUICE ION, PRONTO!

A tiny robot body is doing some sort of alchemy. TIN RUNT COCOCTS A QUART O' CACTI, which is one of the harder-to-drink beverages available. Spiky.

The guy writing this fanfic squirts you with a little mister bottle, like you use for produce. Hey! SPRITZ? REPENT, WRY ED COOLHAXX! But I'll never repent. Sorry, not sorry.

Cleanliness is next to godliness, but what's next to molasses? To find out, we're asking God. Join in on this NEXT TO MOLASSES SACRAMENT and you too can learn the secrets of the universe!

(These files are long and dense and well-encrypted! The top two poll options will be explored for next update's base hunger spend.)

To be continued | 60/70 | 37/37

#lost in hearts #re: speculation in the notes of last update: not *everything* in datasouls proper is an anagram #but maybe i should make them be for consistency's sake #shackle of ignorance doesn't decrypt to anything iirc but i should come up with something #rejected poll title: FRIGHTEN POOH'S SOUL. good but risks offending Disney or Xi Jinping

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blueberry-bubbles130 · 1 month

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For the Darkblade poll I haven't answered yet but:

Do you think adding Adrien and his dynamics will diminish the Felix&Chloé interactions, or will his interactions enrich them both? Also-will having to track all the dynamics drive you up a tree? 🤣

Sorry this is so long because to answer your question having to track all dynamics are driving me up a tree a little! They all end up linking and it’s how I end up with massive blocks of text explainations. but I don’t think it will diminish the interactions of Chloe and Felix. I think it’ll add more, because of their different circumstances.

I’ve not mentioned it but in the au, Marinette, Adrien, Ayla and Nino reveal their identities to each other. Marinette chooses it just in case something bad happens so the other holders can know where to the get other miraculous. Kagami finds out because she becomes the new permanent bee holder. And Chloe finds out their identities because of an element of her cursed power.

Because of Chloe’s growing breakdowns due to her power and finding out Adrien is Chat Noir, Felix decides to share the burden with her. she’s a sister to him and hates to see her so upset, going as far to become an accessory to murder for her. They’ve got a relationship like Len and Rin in the Daughter and Servant of Evil songs. Though with Felix being overly serious and Chloe having to act like a porcelain doll so she doesn’t cause problems with her power. It’s beginning to make it harder for both of them.

By adding Adrien it helps for Chloe and Felix to have a more positive sibling and makes the burden a little less on them, as he’ll find out about it all. He can be himself around them and make jokes. It makes it like when they were little kids again. They can have these brief moments of just being happy and carefree before having to go back to the responsibilities they hold, that they shouldn’t have to. It helps them all not to crack under the pressure. And because he has the miraculous of destruction he can help Chloe in trying to avoid being destructive with her power.

He gets to be more active in defeating Gabriel as well. He can just rant about how much he’s starting to hate Gabriel to both of them and they’ll fully understand. Felix has all the evidence of Gabriel’s long history of abuse and assault towards Audrey as well. In fact Adrien’s actually the one to connect the dots and realise Gabriel’s Hawkmoth because he has information about Gabriel’s behaviour and just how similar it is to Hawkmoth’s.

It makes it a little easier on Kagami as well. Because Chloe has some issues when getting used to her new powers and hunger. She forgets to compel one of her dad’s political colleagues when she eats him when he was akumatised. So he remembers her, and ends up obsessing over her to try and kill her. He ends up trying to use Audrey and Andre as leverage against her because he does recognise she’s very emotionally attached to them. So Kagami when she’s transformed goes and checks on Chloe’s parents occasionally to make sure they’re okay, and not almost being kidnapped by a crazed politician, or died yet. So Adrien as Chat Noir can go and help her with that. Then when Gabriel gets akumatised after the Darkblade Arc, Kagami can fight Gabriel with the sword. And Adrien can go rescue Audrey for Chloe.

Plus it’s going to be fun during the many time travel shenanigans they all have. Like just Chloe, Felix, Adrien and Kagami wandering around Ancient Rome for a little to check out a banquet. Getting to see historical figures and see battles. Chloe gets to go out and indulge in her passion for history. Kagami gets to spend time outside with her friends and girlfriend. And Felix and Adrien get to make stupid jokes.

I hope this all makes sense.

#my asks #asks #answered asks #blueberry responds #chloe bourgeois #felix fathom #felix agreste #adrien agreste #unworldly compulsion and consumption #unworldly compulsion and consumption au

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mightbeorphanedidk · 6 months

Note

Hi!!! I fuckin love your works. Saw you got banned LMAO what did you do

Are there any new fics to be written, or are you still working on those WIPs you mentioned

LMAO Thank you sm! <3 I had a little oopsy daisy with the moderation and my posting privileges have been revoked until the 24th of April.

Edit: can't reply to you guys either so sorry about that 😭😭

I am still working on those requests and WIPs, but I do have a few smaller ideas that I have planned! I was actually going to ask you all which to do first, so I know what's in high demand when I get back. I'm writing these in the order that they're in on my megadraft so.

1. Epilogue for "Sex Sells," The Moth Cries As He Runs From The Rampant Deer: I'll just be explaining what happened to Val after getting his ass kicked, with a bonus news report about the incident. Nothing too snazzy.

2. Story about languages in the hotel (unnamed): I heard a hc floating around that in Hell, everyone speaks their native language (So Charlie Latin, Alastor Creole French, Angel Italian), but there's a sort of translator to remove language barriers. This fic is a sickfic as well, in which not ONLY does the illness make you speak your first language, it has you blurt out the truth of what you think without second thought. Everyone at the hotel is fallen victim to it.

3. Sleepy times yayyyy: Literally just a 5+1 fic. 5 times Alastor is tasked with putting everyone to bed, 1 time he's being put to bed.

4. Hunger fic: Charlie deals with a difficult client, but ends up giving them a room. Everyone hates him, so Alastor decides to do something. Charlie doesn't exactly approve of Alastor’s snack and bans him from eating anything that Charlie doesn't give him herself. Alastor now deals with hunger, locked away in his room, until he finally snaps and goes against the princess. Charlie tries to fix her mess, Alastor goes full-on predator animal mode, and everyone else is just along for the ride. Heavily angsty, and relies on the hc that Alastor's hunger is only satiated by sinner flesh.

5. Radiosilence psychological fic: Something greatly weakens Alastor and Vox finds out. He uses it against him, kidnapping the deer, and melds his brain while he's weak. A slowburn(?) Fic of Alastor’s mindset, while in Vox’s captivity, going from "I need to get out of here and kill him" to "I can't live without him" each time Vox puts him under hypnosis. No g(rape) but very messed up. Also, predicted to be the length of the Angel AU i wrote.

6. Nightmare fic: So Lucifer uses his funky magic to project Alastor’s dreams onto a screen. Don't ask me how. Instead of cheesy romances or cliche power-possessing dreams, Lucifer sees something much, much more messed up. And damn, he regrets it so much.

7. Non-consensual drugging fic: Another torture fic. Lilith injects Alastor with a drug that makes him see everyone around him as someone he loves. This was in attempt to get him more attached (and ergo more obedient) to her but it backfires when he manages to escape to the hotel just as she inserts it. Ensue Alastor freaking out about why his mother is staring at him from the bar but also in the kitchen and simultaneously coming down from the stairs, when in reality, everyone’s just going about their days.

This might not have made sense, so sorry about that. I'll put up a little poll for you guys to pick which you're more excited for. That way, I'll work on it and make sure I post that first when I get back. :)

"Author pick what YOU wanna write!!" i wanna write all of tjem and idk which to prioritise. You guys pick first.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin alastor #ao3 stuff #archive of our own #fanfiction #one sided radiostatic #hazbin vox #chapter updates #customer service at its finest

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chorusofkhonshu · 1 year

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The Lady's powers and the Halfway Point

So while listening to the final episode again, for like the hundredth time it finally clicked. Since the 3rd episode where the Ferryman uttered the words "Two flows from one, and here, is made whole again". A part of her in Nowhere and the rest of her in the original world. As the episodes go on she's becoming more and more aware of being in the Halfway Point, dreams starting in a dark place before the actual location reveals itself. I don't actually think Noone was ever actually "in" Nowhere, I think maybe she's just been in the Halfway Point this entire time. It's the only reason I can think up for the dreams being manipulated slight, as I referenced in my previous post.

I'll stop myself before I go off on a tangent, but ultimately by the end Noone is fully aware in the Halfway Point after going there mid dream. The black mist all around her that she describes as "only the mist spreading its fingers so that I can see myself, as if rebuilding me piece by piece" then also near the end "smokey fingers are mixing with the blinking eyes and the moon is opening up, swirling all around. I feel like me again." Then the words that Noone speaks from then on all have an echo almost, not really a echo, but like two of her are speaking. She was split up, from 1 to 2, and now 2 back into one but this time on the other side, all fixed. Now onto Six. You all know the story. At the end of LN 2, Six was split into two basically by the Thin Man, giving way to Shadow Six, leading to her hunger, which led her to the Maw and then the Lady, ultimately leading to her gaining the Lady's power and fixing herself. A black mist swirling around her as she is finally fixed. Basically up until this point no one has really ever known the origin of the Lady's power that seems to jump from successor to successor. What if it originates from the Halfway Point? What if specific kids that see the Ferryman are Lady candidates with power hiding inside of them until they become the next Lady, to not arouse suspicion from other entities in Nowhere. "Why is it still here? That Darkness? That's the secret, it hides in this place, my body knew all along." And with each succession that power is stacking (like MHA One for All). Each Lady having been to the Halfway Point and the Eyes in the void liking what they see, and Six is the culmination of that growing power. This is of course all conjecture and what if, but if true, that power could do so much more than what we've seen Six do with it. She had no trouble making her way out of the Maw. That power fixed her, it could probably fix others. Maybe even Mono, but that is me being overly optimistic. I used to see a lot of polls of who would win. Thin Man versus Lady or Mono versus Six. For the most part the Lady's powers have always been seen as magic, and I'm sorry to say that is just not going to cut it when up against powers like the Thin Man that bend time and space, the very rules of its world. But now? If the Lady's powers do originate from the Halfway Point, a place outside the rules of Nowhere, which would mean it might not even follow the fundamental rules of Nowhere, a power that might even be stacking and growing. Yeah that defiantly sounds like something that could go against the Transmission. Of course, that's only if, every time Mono defeats the Thin Man, his own static remains stack with Mono's, could be. I don't know. The Transmission might not even be a power that can grow, it could be the type where its stats are super high but there will be no growth, I do have an idea for how it could grow its control, notice i said control and not power, but thats for next post.

#ln3 #little nightmares #the sounds of nightmares #little nightmares theory #am i doing this right?#noone #mono #little nightmare mono #tson noone #tson #tson otto #little nightmares six #ln six #six little nightmares #six ln #six

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gayest-classiclit · 1 year

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i think i'm closing the deathmatch here. submissions have kind of slowed so i think it's fair

this is a long post, so there's a cut!

i have since decided to have some new tagteams!

jesus and judas from ye bible

mina harker from dracula is going to tagteam with jonathan as they are a power couple. this mean she is safe from elimination

daisy and gatsby thegreatgatsby are tagteaming also. i think the gatsby fandom is very potent

dorian gray and basil hallward from dorian gray

kuragin siblings are also a tagteam. i would also add ippolit had he been submitted but alas :(

and here are the bitches we are saying farewell to, potentially:

(don't they have cannons in the hunger games when a guy dies? pretend those are going off i guess)

ebony definitely out of the tournament! my condolences person who submitted her, she is in fact Not Classic Lit. the poll with moby dick for funsies will come shortly

don juan also out of the tournament. this is fair as i think he's more well known for plays and operas and stuff. idk the only thing i know about him is the references in les mis musical and phantom of the opera

laura and lizzie from goblin market are out also. i do not have a comment for them sorry :(

heathcliff wutheringheights and rochester janeeyre. hilarious because they seem like the same guy in different fonts to me <- has read neither of them

it is with a heavy heart that i have to kick captain beatty fahrenheit451 out of the tournament despite his being a bias pick. go off king you had a good run (i was going to use a picture of a fire truck for him too D:)

i've been told that victor frankenstein already won at least another sexyperson tournament???? so he is out

with that i THINK we have 63 contestants. i get one more bias pick hopefully and then we have a full bracket

#classic lit sexyperson bracket #weather update /ref

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tommybaholland · 3 years

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top bnha characters + their favorite movie with female leads to watch with their s/o

featuring: midoriya, bakugo, todoroki, kirishima, kaminari, jiro, shinso, amajiki, hado, and dabi

here are the top 10 bnha characters based on the interest poll from last month, again listed in no particular order. obviously i haven’t seen every female (character) led movie ever made but hopefully these are accurate enough! enjoy. x

midoriya -> captain marvel: he’s a huge fan of superhero movies in general, but captain marvel is his favorite female character from the mcu. not only does she have great humor but he feels like he can relate to her as well. her powers were given to her and are somewhat similar to his. she struggles with her own humanity and has several flaws but he finds comfort in the fact that that doesn’t mean she won’t be a great hero.

bakugo -> the hunger games: he likes the general concept of an annual fight to the death that is celebrated across a society annually. obviously he thinks that he would win if he were a chosen tribute. he hates peeta, actually he hates how the first movie ends and thinks cato should’ve won. then you ask him what he would do if you were also in the games with him which leaves him stumped but he believes he could think of something more creative.

todoroki -> howl’s moving castle: we’ve established that he’s a studio ghibli buff and while there are a lot of female protagonists in those movies, the story of this particular one hits different for him. the idea of finding a long-lost love is beautiful and heartwarming. he likes to think that he met you somewhere in his past and had finally found you again, giving him a chance to say, “there you are, sweetheart. sorry, i’m late. i’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

kirishima -> little women: he doesn’t really understand why they’re called ‘little women’ despite it being mentioned in the movie but he’s up for reading the book after watching for the first time. he cries his eyes out at jo’s monologue about her yearning to be loved every time. the first time you watched it together he decided to confess his love for you all over again and that he never wants you to feel lonely again.

kaminari -> the house bunny: it’s not hard to guess why he likes this movie so much. it’s irreverent, got good one-liners in it, and features playboy bunnies. you like to tease him by shielding his eyes away from the visually mature scenes that he’s always so eager to see. he’s also very fascinated by american college life and dreams of throwing a super epic party except everyone has a quirk so it’ll be ten times more lit. whenever you go out to dinner together and there’s mahi mahi on the menu, you’ll recite shelley’s infamous line and it never fails to make him laugh.

jiro -> juno: good soundtrack, deadpan humor, elliot page, and really heartfelt; what more could you ask for?? this is a movie that you two like to revisit every now and then simply because it was the first movie you watched together as a couple. she likes to tease you by saying that your relationship is like juno and paulie, in which you are paulie. it’s funny but you both agree that there are similarities between you two and the characters so it’s just more reason to love each other.

shinso -> ocean’s 8: next to horror movies, he also really enjoys films with complicated heists, something that makes you feel so satisfied when you find out how it all works. you think it’s ironic yet admirable that he likes watching movies involving seemingly impossible heists when he has a power that gives him instant gratification. he’s flattered by your observation but will counter by saying that he’ll be smart enough to stop heists like these as a hero.

amajiki -> mulan: it’s entertaining, fun, and empowering. he feels inspired by the bravery of mulan to fight in a war but he also likes when you sing the songs to him. you once asked him what he would do or say if you wanted to go fight in war if he was not able to. he cannot lie and said that he’d worry like crazy about you even though you have great strength and ability but he’d never stop you from doing what you think is right and worth fighting for because he already knows that you would do the same for him.

hado -> aquamarine: she seems like she liked to play mermaids when she was younger so this is the movie for her. she thinks it’s interesting that eighth graders present themselves as masters of love. nonetheless, she enjoys the overall message that love can be found everywhere. she always makes you dance with her during the island in the sun scene. she talks about going on a trip with you to australia where they shot the movie so you can play mermaids together.

dabi -> jennifer’s body: he used to find it dumb and pointless but honestly, he thinks the make out scene between needy and jennifer is pretty hot. one time you asked him what he would do if you died and was possessed to eat men and he tells you that he probably wouldn’t taste too good. however, he likes to playfully bite your neck and tell you that you’re delicious.

welcome back to bnha night! what requests do you have..

special thanks to the wonderful patrons for supporting this blog:

Lina Leveque | Syd

for exclusive nsfw writing and extras, join me on Patreon!

#mha x reader #bnha x reader #midoriya x reader #bakugo x reader #todoroki x reader #kirishima x reader #kaminari x reader #shinso x reader #jiro x reader #amajiki x reader #hado x reader #dabi x reader #tommybaholland

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softlunars · 5 years

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grateful.

60 things ; things you said that made me feel real & things you said with my lips on your neck. — han jisung ; stray kids.

vampire au — human!jisung x vampire!reader

requested: [yes!]

so we’re really obsessed w supernatural aus rn,,,

being a vampire was hard. not being able to see your reflection, having to avoid garlic like it’s the plague, and if you want to go out in the sun, you need to drown yourself in 100 spf sunscreen.

being a vampire was hard. being a vampire that refused to drink from humans was outright hell.

you were born into a clan that had sworn off human blood thousands of years ago. your parents taught you efficient ways to incapacitate animals of all kinds, the best times to catch specific animals, how often to feed and how many creatures to catch to sate your thirst.

vampires who lived off animal’s blood were, more or less, the laughing stock of the community. your clan became the most frequent butt of all jokes; having the longest lineage that fed exclusively on animals, several other clans couldn’t help but mock your ancestors. “how stupid of them, to willingly weaken their descendants by forcing their children to feed on little rats.” the amount of times you almost fought your elders because of their insulting your clan was endless.

it was common knowledge among the whole supernatural community that animal-dependent vampires were at the bottom of their species’ totem poll. compared to the majority of human-dependent vampires, animal-dependent ones were significantly weaker, slower. they held all the same abilities as their stronger counterpart, but lacked the same power behind them.

you never considered that a bad thing, per se. in your eyes, refusing to drink the blood of humans made your clan stronger in some ways. for instance, your family was able to survive for a longer time without any kind of feeding; your “superior” counterparts, you noticed, could barely last more than a month without feeding. your clan could last much longer — four months at the very most.

along with that, you were significantly more tolerant of the various life around you — supernatural and human alike. you didn’t really know if it was because you drank animal blood or not, but you still held that fact in high esteem. maybe the human feeders were stronger in several aspects, but at least your clan didn’t shit on everything around them.

one night, that aspect you prided yourself on made itself fully known to you.

it was a calm night; the stars above you sparkled as a hello, the moon was full and more radiant than usual, and the breeze that gently touched your face brought you peace.

you’d left your family’s common area minutes earlier, informing them that you’d be in the woods hunting. when you reached the woods, though, you decided to lay down on the plush grass beneath your feet and admire the sky. night time was the only opportunity for you to go outside without the risk of burning down to a pile of ashes. needless to say, you leaped at this chance whenever it appeared.

you were laying down, eyes closed, letting the soft sounds of the branches above carry you away when a louder rustle overtook your hearing.

honestly, you were ready to fight whatever ruined your short moment of serenity. it was so nice, for christ’s sake!

you propped yourself up on your elbows, facing the direction the rustling came from. your eyes squinted as a shadow started to appear; you were fully expecting a deer or something similar. a shock ran through your body as the shadow took the shape of a person.

their scent reached your nose. they were a human. their features gradually took shape as they neared the spot you laid. you could clearly make out the human now — the swell of his cheeks, his doe-like eyes, the gentle slope of his nose and the upturn of his lips. your gaze wandered to assemble the rest of him in your head. you took note of his somewhat shorter stature, his crooked fingers that pushed leaves and branches away from his face.

he was damn near the cutest human you’ve ever seen. he was even cuter when he jumped from shock as his eyes laid on you. a breathy chuckle escaped your lips as you pushed yourself into a sitting position. “sorry, i scared you there, didn’t i?”

it took awhile for the man in front of you to respond. you could see the gears turning in his mind, debating whether to just book it or keep you company. he decided on the latter.

“y—yeah, just a little bit. i didn’t expect anyone to be here this late, so…” his voice trailed off, the wind taking it away into the night. you smiled and pat the empty space next to you. “wanna join me?”

that night, you talked to the mystery person — you learned his name was jisung — until the sun set the horizon ablaze. you quickly apologized to him before taking off. you felt his eyes follow you as you ran away — the dismay burning holes into your back. your own disappointment rolled around your stomach.

you made your visits to the forest more frequently, trying to catch jisung again the way he had you. it seemed he had the same determination, as on the night you came back, jisung was already sat on the ground, his eyes trained on you as you emerged from the bush. a smile immediately appeared on his face when you waved a “hello.”

your relationship with him quickly blossomed into something stronger as the nightly escapades continued. you told him why you were in the woods when he first met you, and it came as a great surprise when jisung did nothing but nod. a perplexed expression must have been evident on your face, as the boy laughed before pressing a kiss to your cheek. “it doesn’t matter to me, (y/n). you’re still you, regardless of the sharp fangs in your mouth and inability to stand in the sun.”

you could almost feel your dead heart resurrect.

the first time jisung witnessed you start to go into shock from a lack of feeding was three months after you met. you were staying at his apartment for the night, a movie night in store for the two of you.

a pillow fort stood proud in the living room, waiting to be occupied, when you felt your skin begin to boil. you immediately knew what was wrong.

you hadn’t fed for quite some time; the last instance you could recall was two weeks before you met jisung. you could see the concern take hold of his features as you began to pace around his house. he reached out a hand to place on your shoulder, and it scared you how much restraint you had to place on yourself to not grab his wrist and drain out all of his blood.

you sprinted out, making your way toward the woods before you lost control over yourself. you felt bad — of course you felt bad. you felt like complete and utter shit, actually. the fact you almost broke your clan’s tradition — attempting to drink from your boyfriend, nonetheless — haunted you for weeks after. if it hadn’t been for jisung’s persistence, you would have left the boy in the dark for the rest of his life.

you became more subdued around your boyfriend, careful not to let any signs of hunger show around him. you couldn’t. not after you were so ready to jump at his neck and deprive him of every last drop of blood in his body. you were scared. the possibility that you’d jump at jisung if you began to hunger for blood haunted you every second you were around him.

jisung had invited you over earlier in the day, asking if you’d like to relax at his house. you jumped at the opportunity without a second thought. spending time with your boyfriend made up for all the centuries you lived before him, bored out of your mind due to loneliness.

when night arrived and you knocked on jisung’s door, you didn’t expect anything, besides the red Netflix screen lighting up the living room and a couple hundred blankets thrown on the couch.

so when you walked in and followed your boyfriend to sit on the couch, you weren’t expecting him to reach over and pull you close to him.

and you were definitely not expecting him to tell you; “you can drink from me, if you want.” when he heard your breath hitch, jisung was quick to try and explain himself.

“you just— you’ve been jumpy for a bit now, and i’m almost positive it’s because you haven’t fed from anything for a while. so— uh— you can feed from me.”

you vehemently refused his offer; drinking blood from a human, especially your boyfriend, seemed wrong in every single way. you couldn’t risk it — losing control over yourself and taking too much blood than jisung could handle.

your boyfriend wouldn’t stop, though. he was persistent in offering his blood to you the entire duration of your stay.

“why are you so insistent on me feeding off you, ‘sung?” you genuinely didn’t have a clue as to why he kept pushing this on you; he knew you fed off animals. he knew your clan hasn’t fed from a human in centuries. so why did he continue to insist?

“because! you’re restricting yourself from properly feeding because of me. just because you’re a vampire and i’m a human doesn’t mean i can’t worry about you.”

“so just drink my blood, dammit. you need to watch over yourself too.”

if you had blood circulating through your veins, you were almost certain your face would beat the red of a fire truck. it never occurred to you that jisung worried over your feeding habits — especially over how little you allowed yourself to take, even from animals. the fact he noticed made you feel alive. it made you feel as if you still had a beating heart within your chest.

you felt human.

jisung noticed your restrictions dissipate at his words. the widest smile you’ve ever seen from him formed on his face as he sat down on the couch. he tapped his thigh repeatedly until you situated yourself in his lap.

a flash of burning white crossed your sight as you faced jisung, letting yourself lean closer to his neck. as your fangs protruded, ready to pierce your boyfriend’s jugular, hesitation took hold of you once more.

“are you sure about this, ‘sungie?” you felt him shiver as your fangs scratched against his neck. his heartbeat was loud, filling your head the longer you let your lips linger on his neck.

“i wouldn’t have offered if i wasn’t sure, love.”

you took a deep breath. “tell me if it hurts too much.” at that, you let your fangs sink into jisung’s neck. you heard a sharp hiss leave his lips, almost making you retract from his vein on the spot. one of his hands started to run through your hair as soon as you began to pull away. “you’re okay, love. i’m okay.”

you closed your eyes, letting the iron taste of your boyfriend’s blood flood your senses. it was different. extremely different from feeding off the animals you were used to.

as you felt your desperation for blood fade away, you let yourself detach from jisung’s neck, kissing the puncture wounds you left on him as you lifted your head to look at him.

his eyes were slightly hazy, but the smile he gave you as he planted a kiss on your lips reassured you. jisung was okay.

“thank you.” your voice came out as a whisper, almost a simple exhale into the silence around you. “of course, baby. i’d do anything for you.”

a smile formed on your lips. leaning in, you closed the distance between you and jisung, savoring the feeling of his soft lips against yours.

you were the luckiest vampire to have ever existed.

suck on that, you ancient pricks.

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crowbean · 6 years

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LOL. IM BLAMING YEW @sasusakusss for roping me into this (WELL it’s not like you can foresee my uppity dumbass of zero self-control would write a tangent like that. so, it was entirely my fault. but you’re the trigger.)

Respond to this post

http://sunagakurenosato.tumblr.com/post/178178386806/crowbean-sasusakusss-fineillsignup

@sunagakurenosato

Here, lets talk in my post. Because i feel bad enough for the OP for writing a tangent, when their post is about Yamato.

First Diclaimer : I’m not justifying child abuse with war (I know you didn’t accuse me of that. But just to be safe, tumblr is full of bored people who wants a villain)

Second Disclaimer : I just put it there for anyone who’s so frustrated about “HOW SUCH AN EVIL COULD GETAWAY WITH THIS= MUST BE BAD WRITING”. I put out that reference, to show that bad writing could accidentally be a reflection of our world hence a starting point for a story with real questions. I admit, it was my mistake to put it out there without framing what I meant and it could be misunderstood as me justifying something so inhuman.

1. To answer your first paragraph (and possibily the last parts??) :

I mean you did wrote “They were secretly given immunity. Secretly. Because it wasn’t right. Because the United States of America wanted to keep that information to themselves and prevent other countries (Soviet Union) from accessing this information.” So are you saying the “means” : that is letting someone who commit such atrocities go scot free. Is justified by the “end” : getting useful information?(which by the way, you really have no basis to say if the US, at that time, just took that information to safeguard it and not to use it to hurt more people for the sake of “fighting the reds”) *i digress, but this kinda show my point how it raises quite a question*

I put that part of reality there because it’s one of those things that makes you think if “justice” is only there out of the convenience for the powerful? I know it’s stupid of me to think about that kind question for a kids show. But I felt like audience grew up. We all grew up to realize 90% of what Naruto preached is a lie although with a golden heart. And I just want that ideal to be dissected and upgraded. Even though i currently don’t know how, but that’s why I put that reference there. So maybe a smarter, better writer out there could look at that part of reality and churn out some light of “how do we retain ourselves in such a world?” through this fiction that has a parallel scenario of that reference, which is orochimaru’s freedom.

+ I’m sorry that im not making it clear that I see the War crime immunity as a VERY VERY wrong thing. That threw me into an existential crisis when I watched the documentary, I felt hungered to concoct a “light” through the bad show that has been imprinted into my childhood.

2. About gaara and sunagakure :

My memory is hazy about gaara vs the two goons, but all I remember is he dramatically fight on air when every suna ninja is watching in awe, drooling, doing nothing, because their president is flying, only to fucking try to help gaara when he already fainted, with canons. Creating a useless dramatic firework scene as he was kidnapped.

Okay, fine. You favour the “Why” than the execution, fair enough. The scene’s stupid but it does “redempt” gaara in a way. I get it.

And also the talk no jutsu part… like I said, the message has its heart on the right place. But you have to admit that’s weak writing, especially in these times when we are surrounded by so many depressed people, who do lesser things than “gaara”, that cannot be “talked out” from their illness. But it does could be interpreted as “people who’s mentally ill needs friendship” and okay fine, i could stretch that.

I did wrote “Debatably shit since then” because that part that i deem “weak writing” is one of the part where Kishimoto’s writing is starting to wobble. a telling sign it could go worse in the end. which it did.

3. About Yamato :

Now.. the ending is the Tumble after that long long wobble Kishimoto has had since the end of part one. Well I don’t know what you can get out of that, maybe I could stretch it like into “people change->orochimaru dun wrong things to help people this time UWU”. + “yamato’s sense of duty”+other bullshit? It’s not the first time audience have stretch kishi’s weak writing into something meaningful. I’m not here to debate if you can or can’t justify that. but we know there’s a slew of people out there that would go to hell and back to justify why Orochimaru deserves redemption (Which, I don’t think he deserves, because.. in my standards, even Gaara redemption should be death, a 13 year old that considers murder as self-expression is just long gone (but no, he’s too hot for death, -popularity polls disapprove))

Look..I’m just tired of how people would go to such lengths to justify some characters, when the some other character they despise could also be justified if subjected into the same mental gymnastics.

I’m just tired of people still ranting about the ending when people with any senses all agreed that Kishimoto dun goofed. He goofed because the inhuman standards Shonen Jump put upon their mangakas, he goofed after drawing/writing/composing/world-building to produce every single week, he goofed after giving half of his life to the manga only to have time for a honeymoon after the series ended, he Goofed and the fandom just kept throwing salt into that wound.

I just put that reference there, in the hopes that people could just stop complaining about a HUMAN ERROR on Kishimoto’s part (a human error that SP danced with) and either just fucking Ignore it (in favour of better kids show out there) or just turn it into a story one would want to ponder (which I was, in a way, trying to do and share one of the reference I used)

“But there is no examination of things in that scenario, as far as I know (which could be wrong cuz I haven’t been updated), which I believe is important in effective story telling. The why is important. The story can be about wholly problematic things– but if the point it’s getting to is good, reasonable, logical, believable, the audience can be okay with that.”

I’m sorry, I don’t really understand this paragraph?? But I hope I already answered you on my point one

ALso im sorry if i misunderstood what you are saying. I’m sorry if i was digressing too much?? I felt what i wrote is relevant currently, but i often got it wrong :,). im also sorry if im being redundant. I double checked my writing, but there’s a possibility that i wrote something wrong.

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thefabulousfulcrum · 7 years

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Are You Ready To Consider That Capitalism Is The Real Problem?

Before you say no, take a moment to really ask yourself whether it’s the system that’s best suited to build our future society.

via FastCompany

BY JASON HICKEL AND MARTIN KIRK

n February, college sophomore Trevor Hill stood up during a televised town hall meeting in New York and posed a simple question to Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives. He cited a study by Harvard University showing that 51% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 no longer support the system of capitalism, and asked whether the Democrats could embrace this fast-changing reality and stake out a clearer contrast to right-wing economics.

Pelosi was visibly taken aback. “I thank you for your question,” she said, “but I’m sorry to say we’re capitalists, and that’s just the way it is.”

The footage went viral. It was powerful because of the clear contrast it set up. Trevor Hill is no hardened left-winger. He’s just your average millennial—bright, informed, curious about the world, and eager to imagine a better one. But Pelosi, a figurehead of establishment politics, refused to–or was just unable to–entertain his challenge to the status quo.

It’s not only young voters who feel this way. A YouGov poll in 2015 found that 64% of Britons believe that capitalism is unfair, that it makes inequality worse. Even in the U.S., it’s as high as 55%. In Germany, a solid 77% are skeptical of capitalism. Meanwhile, a full three-quarters of people in major capitalist economies believe that big businesses are basically corrupt.

Why do people feel this way? Probably not because they deny the abundant material benefits of modern life that many are able to enjoy. Or because they want to travel back in time and live in the U.S.S.R. It’s because they realize—either consciously or at some gut level—that there’s something fundamentally flawed about a system that has a prime directive to churn nature and humans into capital, and do it more and more each year, regardless of the costs to human well-being and to the environment we depend on.

Because let’s be clear: That’s what capitalism is, at its root. That is the sum total of the plan. We can see this embodied in the imperative to grow GDP, everywhere, year on year, at a compound rate, even though we know that GDP growth, on its own, does nothing to reduce poverty or to make people happier or healthier. Global GDP has grown 630% since 1980, and in that same time, by some measures, inequality, poverty, and hunger have all risen.

We also see this plan in the idea that corporations have a fiduciary duty to grow their stock value for the sake of shareholder returns, which prevents even well-meaning CEO’s from voluntarily doing anything good—like increasing wages or reducing pollution—that might compromise their bottom line. Once we realize this, we can start connecting the dots between our different struggles. There are people in the U.S. fighting against the Keystone pipeline. There are people in Britain fighting against the privatization of the National Health Service. There are people in India fighting against corporate land grabs. There are people in Brazil fighting against the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. There are people in China fighting against poverty wages. These are all noble and important movements in their own right. But by focusing on all these symptoms we risk missing the underlying cause. And the cause is capitalism. It’s time to name the thing.

What’s so exciting about our present moment is that people are starting to do exactly that. And they are hungry for something different. For some, this means socialism. That YouGov poll showed that Americans under the age of 30 tend to have a more favorable view of socialism than they do of capitalism, which is surprising given the sheer scale of the propaganda out there designed to convince people that socialism is evil. But millennials aren’t bogged down by these dusty old binaries. For them the matter is simple: They can see that capitalism isn’t working for the majority of humanity, and they’re ready to invent something better.

What might a better world look like? There are a million ideas out there. We can start by changing how we understand and measure progress. As Robert Kennedy famously said, GDP “does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play . . . it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

We can change that. People want health care and education to be social goods, not market commodities, so we can choose to put public goods back in public hands. People want the fruits of production and the yields of our generous planet to benefit everyone, rather than being siphoned up by the super-rich, so we can change tax laws and introduce potentially transformative measures like a universal basic income. People want to live in balance with the environment on which we all depend for our survival; so we can adopt regenerative agricultural solutions and even choose, as Ecuador did in 2008, to recognize in law, at the level of the nation’s constitution, that nature has “the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles.”

Measures like these could dethrone capitalism’s prime directive and replace it with a more balanced logic, that recognizes the many factors required for a healthy and thriving civilization. If done systematically enough, they could consign one-dimensional capitalism to the dustbin of history.

None of this is actually radical. Our leaders will tell us that these ideas are not feasible, but what is not feasible is the assumption that we can carry on with the status quo. If we keep pounding on the wedge of inequality and chewing through our living planet, the whole thing is going to implode. The choice is stark, and it seems people are waking up to it in large numbers: Either we evolve into a future beyond capitalism, or we won’t have a future at all.

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legit-scam-review · 6 years

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How Maduro’s Petro Plan Failed to Bail Out the Country

Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro was sworn in for a second term on Jan. 10, amid tremendous hyperinflation, long-lasting political and economic crisis, and strict sanctions imposed by its former partner and oil purchaser: the United States.

Since Maduro first took office in 2013, Venezuela has faced several brutal riots, including the “Mother of All Marches” in 2017 and the Caracas helicopter attack in the same year, and the current crisis is very likely to be the last for the regime. We decided to look into the last six years for Venezuela and the fate of the Petro — a national cryptocurrency that was founded to save the agonizing economy, but eventually caused even more resentment.

The legacy of Hugo Chavez

Hugo Chavez, a seemingly irreplaceable Venezuelan leader, who was in power since 1999, passed away after a long battle with cancer in March, 2013. A committed socialist and revolutionary, Chavez was held in high esteem and loved by Venezuelans for his continuous attempts to eliminate poverty and inequality. Thousands of citizens attending his funeral in an overcrowded Caracas, bearing witness to that fact.

According to the stats unveiled by the Guardian, between 1999 and 2009, the Venezuelan government has managed to reduce unemployment from 14.5 percent to 7.6 percent, increase GDP per capita from $4,105 to $10,810, and drop the extreme poverty rate from 23.4 percent to 8.5 percent. The indigenous peoples of Venezuela — who form somewhere around 2 percent of the country’s population — were among those who benefited most from Chavez’s presidency. While he was in charge, Venezuela shifted toward protecting their rights and granting them fundamental freedoms.

Nonetheless, instead of reforming the Venezuelan economy that has always been dependent on oil, Chavez decided to proclaim an “economic war” and accused “the bourgeoisie owners” of local farms, supermarkets and mills of concealing food in order to destabilize his government.

Maduro’s Guerra: From socialism to an usurpation of power

When Maduro entered office in 2013, he inherited one of the most shaky economies in the whole South American region.

As of data provided by an online stats and market research website Statista, the average inflation rate in 2012 — the year preceding to Maduro’s presidency — was around 21 percent. Despite the fact that the year was relatively stable for Maduro’s administration, his actions only drove Venezuela closer to the brink of the abyss.

In fact, during Maduro’s first year, his government continued Chavez’s economic war, blaming wealthy businessmen of hoarding goods and pushing up prices. The policy was supported by Venezuelan lawmakers, who gave Maduro special decree powers in order to enforce price control in November, 2013. Still, by the end of 2013, the average inflation rate had climbed up to 43.5 percent.

But the real crisis emerged in 2014, when crude oil prices lost almost 40 percent in just six months. Maduro’s government first saw mass protests led by the Democratic Unity Roundtable (or MUD in Spanish). The participants of the marches that started February, 2014 accused officials of corruption, shortages and failure to prevent inflation. As the clashes between protesters and the Venezuelan army became more and more violent — with over 40 people reportedly being killed in just two months — Maduro’s supporters faced accusations of excessive use of force, while many demanded the resignation of the president himself.

By 2015, the average inflation rate got close to 68.5 percent, while Maduro yet again blamed unscrupulous businesses for shortages and price hikes. In addition to that, Venezuela’s GDP that year shrank to 3.9 percent, as of data provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In December, 2015, the Democratic Unity Roundtable won the congressional elections and became the largest group in the National Assembly, Venezuela’s unicameral parliament. The opposition soon focused on holding a referendum that would force Maduro to leave his post amid the inflation that has more than doubled in 2015, reaching 111 percent. However, the Supreme Court backed Maduro, cut the Assembly’s power, and the decision on referendum has been stuck in bureaucracy. The Venezuelan parliament then voted to begin impeachment proceedings against Maduro for violating democracy and urged the army to disobey the government in late October 2016.

In 2016, Maduro’s presidency was first labeled as a dictatorship. For instance, following a new twist in the political crisis, Forbes posted a story entitled “Sorry bond lords, Venezuela is a dictatorship now,” while the Guardian came up with an article called “Let’s call Venezuela what it is under Maduro: a dictatorship” later that year. Also in 2016, a chilling poll conducted by several local universities showed that Venezuelans barely consumed the 2,000 recommended daily calories needed, and 75 percent of citizens had lost around 19 pounds that year due to the crisis.

In 2017, the high court finally took all the power from the National Assembly, practically dissolving the body, which was considered a coup by the opposition. The decision sparked outrage in all segments of society, exhausted by long-term shortages, hyperinflation and even hunger. Starting in April, numerous marches broke out in Venezuela, once in a while brutally suppressed by government forces. The Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict calculated that the country saw over 6,000 manifestations from April until late July, with more than 160 people killed in clashes.

In the summer, a member of the forensic police, Oscar Perez, stole a police helicopter, flew it to the center of Venezuelan capital, dropped grenades on the Supreme Court, and fired several shots at the Ministry of the Interior. Perez, dubbed a “terrorist” by Maduro, managed to flee the city, and headed an armed resistance until he was killed during an army raid in January, 2018.

In July, Maduro finally created the Constituent Assembly — a body set up to draft and adopt a new constitution in order to provide stability and cease the protests, according to the president. The measure was heavily criticized both by the European Union, South American trading body Mercosur, the Organization of American States — which includes both the United States and Mexico. The latter tightened sanctions against Maduro, who was accused of holding “sham” elections.

In the meantime, the opposition conducted a long-awaited unofficial referendum against Maduro, with 7 million Venezuelans reportedly participating in it. According to the calculations, 98 percent of voters did not want a new constitution.

Venezuela approached 2018 with growing geopolitical tension, the ongoing violation of rights and freedoms, along with a mass exodus of Venezuelans — since 2014 more than 2 million locals left the country. The average inflation rate in 2017 surpassed 1,000 percent, and the GDP lost 14 percent, as per the IMF. Nonetheless, Maduro appeared to have a trick up his sleeve.

Petro takes the field

Maduro first mentioned the Petro, a Venezuelan cryptocurrency reportedly backed by oil, late in December, 2017. The leader claimed that crypto, which is not controlled by any government, could help Venezuela to shore up its struggling economy and to circumvent U.S. sanctions. In January, 2018, the Petro’s rate was tied to one barrel of oil, and the issuance of the first 100 million coins was ordered. Initially, the industry treated the measure as a first-ever “bitcoinization” of a sovereign state.

Throughout 2018, the national cryptocurrency set to stop the hyperinflation was actively promoted by the government. On an international level, Maduro asked 10 countries in the Bolivarian Alliance — including Cuba — to support his initiative. Later that year, he claimed that the Petro will be used for international commercial transactions, although he avoided mentioning the countries that agreed to accept the oil-backed currency.

In addition to this, the oil-rich country was reportedly going to present the Petro to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 2019, as a unit of account. Maduro even offered the Petro to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Nonetheless, Moscow, which had always been supportive of Venezuela’s domestic policies both by diplomacy and investments, refused to accept the Petro as a unit of account.

Meanwhile, within the country, the Petro was actively used as a tool against poverty, social injustice and hyperinflation. Venezuela launched the creation of the Petro-funded crypto bank for youth initiatives, which claimed to use the Petro to fund housing for homeless, obliged citizens to pay passport fees in oil-backed currency, and — prior to the official launch of coin’s circulation — made it a unit of account for salaries, goods and services.

But the experts studying the Petro were far from optimistic. An alarming Reuter’s report — dubbed “In Venezuela, new cryptocurrency is nowhere to be found” — was published in late August. In it, the news agency stated that the Petro was not currently traded on any of the major global crypto exchanges. Moreover, the journalists doubted that it was actually backed with Venezuelan oil. The report claimed that Atapirire — an area that Maduro defined as an actual petroleum center for backing the coin — didn’t indicate any recent activity. “There is no sign of that petro here,” locals told the agency. The former Oil Minister, Rafael Ramirez, expressed his opinion writing that “the Petro […] only exists in the government’s imagination.”

U.S. tech media outlet Wired also spoke to local and South American experts. Jorge Farias, the CEO of Venezuelan startup Cryptobuyer, revealed the state-owned currency was, in fact, backed by national oil company PDVSA, which had $45 billion in debt and showed no signs of any trading activity. Roger Benites, the CEO of Lima-based crypto exchange BitInka, called the Petro a “smoke curtain” to conceal Maduro’s failure to reanimate the national fiat currency by devaluating it. Corre Innovation’s Dickie Armour shared his stance, dubbing the Petro a “stunt.”

By the time the Petro was finally launched in November, following a series of delays, both Venezuelans and experts doubted its real value and, overall, existence. While crypto enthusiasts studied the Petro’s white paper and came to a conclusion that it blatantly copied some parts of Dash’s documentation available in the GitHub repository, Maduro was forced to increase the Petro’s value from 3,600 to 9,000 bolivars in the midst of ongoing inflation.

Since the pension bonuses were converted into Petro, the country faced another protest, this time led by seniors who did not believe in the oil-backed coin. “I don’t want Petro, I want my cash,” said one of the protesters.

Despite all the efforts, by the end of 2018m the Petro was still “nowhere to be found” — the coin was not listed by any of the major exchanges, nor was it accepted by any of country’s allies. Venezuelas economy kept drowning, as the inflation rate, according to the most conservative estimates by IMF, climbed up to 1.37 million percent by the end of the year. The opposition, though, provided much more gloomy data — 1.7 million percent in 2018, which, in fact, converted Venezuela into one of the three countries with the highest inflation rates in history.

The grand finale: Maduro vs. Guaido

In May, 2018, Maduro was re-elected for his second six-year term during a vote that had shown the lowest turnout — equalling 40 percent — since Venezuela’s democracy was restored in 1958. As the two main candidates opposing Maduro, Henri Falcon and Javier Bertucci, rejected the results and reported critical irregularities, the disgraced National Assembly also denied the results, calling them an “electoral farce.”

The EU pointed out that the election did not comply with the minimum international standards for a credible process, and mentioned vote buying and suppression of the opposition. The Lima group — established in 2017 by countries including Argentina, Canada and Brazil in order to combat crisis in Venezuela — also rejected the results of the vote. Finally, the U.S. called the election an “insult to democracy” and a “fraud foretold.” On the other hand, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Syria supported Maduro and congratulated him on his re-election.

In August, 2018, an alleged drone attack reportedly happened in the center of Caracas, where Maduro, at that time, was addressing the Bolivarian National Guard. The official version states that two drones carrying explosives detonated close to Maduro and other officials attending the parade. The president himself claimed to survive the assassination attempt, conducted by terrorists. He promised to punish the people behind the attack, and blamed the U.S. and Colombia for helping the terrorists. However, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton and the Colombian government consequently denied any involvement in the incident.

Several arrests were made within a week, while the opposition claimed that the accusations — as well as the attack itself — were planned in advance. According to firefighters at the scene questioned by the Associated Press, the incident itself might actually have been a gas tank explosion inside a nearby apartment.

This January, Maduro was sworn in for a second term against all odds. But this time, Venezuela does not seem to follow a peaceful scenario. As people flooded the streets of Caracas the following day, Juan Guaido — a 35-year-old leader of the opposition presented by the National Assembly — proclaimed himself the Venezuelan president in front of a crowd. He was immediately supported by U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration, while many other countries soon followed his decision.

As of press time, Guaido is supported by Canada, the vast majority of Latin American countries and the United Kingdom, while the EU and Mexico have called for dialogue, and China and Russia accuse him of an attempted coup. Maduro has recently broke diplomatic ties with the U.S., giving the embassy staff 72 hours to leave the country. However, Guaido insists that Venezuela will continue to re-establish constitutional order, along with maintaining dialogue with other countries.

The future of Venezuela might be in the army’s hands now. The country’s defence minister, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, is now supporting Maduro as the legitimate president, and Russia urges the U.S. not to intervene in the conflict. However, things may change at any time.

Throughout a year of continuous protests and growing tension, neither Venezuela nor Maduro seem to pull anything good out of the whole Petro project. Even Guaido, who is quite optimistic about cryptocurrencies, believes that the Petro is nothing but a scam. And while Maduro’s country is on fire, the president himself has completely given up on his oil-backed coin. What he desperately needs now is the most traditional asset in the world, gold. However, the golden bars worth around $1.7 billion are stuck in the Bank of England, which does not support the current regime. A similar fate awaits an additional $6.3 billion in foreign reserves held by the Venezuelan central bank, and there is no blockchain in the world that could help Maduro get that back.