#this was probably more than you expected

[lead-to-light]

I know it’s generally only a Unified Territories thing, but does anyone else in the Restoration celebrate Thanksgiving.”?

“We don't celebrate thanksgiving over here but we do have our own version called Stump Day,” Lanolin explained.

“And lore-masters Knuckles and Lanolin are here to explain it all to you!” Knuckles shouted, scaring the hell out of Lanolin.

“GAAH! Where did you come from?!” She shouted.

“The Master Emerald but we're not here to talk about that we're here to talk about Stump Day,” he said very matter of factly. “I'll start explaining the origins of it.”

“I clearly don't have a say in this so I'll just play along,” Lanolin chuckled tiredly.

Knuckles began, “The story is so old that there's a bunch of different versions of it and no one can really agree what's the true one so we'll just do our best to explain it all to you. A long time ago there was a village that was centered around a tremendous tree stump. It was so massive it could be used not only as a giant banquet table but also a stage. How the tree was felled in the first place is a whole separate myth that we won't be getting into. Anyway, the people of this village always near end of fall would have a great feast from the harvest atop the stump. but one day when they were all preparing the goods there was a series of catastrophes they each and every one of them suffered ruining the food they had prepared. Like one guy tripped and dropped his entire cart of tomatoes down a cliff, one guy was foiled by a bunch of ravenous flickeys that ate all his corn and there was a guy who got struck by lightning so he couldn't finish his baking. Everyone has their own versions of what each person in this village went through. Some people only list a few, some people can recount all of them but no one version is the same for every person. Some say all this misfortune was caused by nefarious spirits. Maybe they offended some deity. Or maybe it was just pure terrible coincidental bad luck. Again, it depends on who's telling the story. As they all sat down glum about their terrible luck they still brought what they could to the table unleavened bread, a handful of tomatoes, some dried fruit, again depending on who's telling the story,” Knuckles pointed at his fellow lore-master.

Now Lanolin took over with a smile, “The next part though is the part everyone can agree on. For a moment there was silence but then all at once they all started laughing. The pure terrible luck was so terrible that it circled back to being hilarious. They laughed and laughed and laughed and they began eating and celebrating. Finding joy in their misfortune but also the fortune they have to know each other. They sang and ate and with so little food on the stump they were able to dance atop it. But then something miraculous happened and you guessed it this next part depends on who you ask because there are a bunch of different versions of it. One story goes that some spirit or deity saw their joy and their misfortune and decided to give them a brand new feast. Some stories say it's Light Gaia, some say Arcadia, some say it was some spirit with too many eyes and too many hands called Wandagood which I thought for sure was just the Wandering God but then there's an old Mazuri story about something called Wandagood who sounds very different so somebody either traveled there or there was there just a loss of translation or was it the name got garbled over time and we'll never know for sure because two hundred some years ago some marauding assholes burned down half the country erasing all the records THAT WOULD'VE EXPLAINED IT!”

Knuckles looked on in concern as the sheep caught her breath, “You good?”

She sighed, “Yeah I'm fine, lemme continue. A much less supernatural rendition of the story is that a caravan of wealthy merchants were traveling by and heard the commotion. They came over and asked them why they were celebrating over so little. The villagers told them the whole story and the merchants were so moved that they sold their stocked goods to them at extremely cheap prices and decided to help make this small no name village into a great city. Depending on who you ask this either became Central City, Emerald City, Sunset City or Seaside City. Honestly every major city lays claim to the story and sometimes take it way too seriously. I somehow doubt this story more than a supernatural ones because if there's one thing I know about rich people is that they suddenly don't get a chance of heart and make their new home in the middle of nowhere. But what we know for sure is that the story traveled far and wide across mobian lands and here we are. In short, Stump Day is where we celebrate the positive attitude of making the best of a bad situation and give thanks for what we have.”

“Oh but where is it celebrated Lore-Master Lanolin,” Knuckles asked with a wink.

Smiling at his antics, she continued, “It's less popular in cities but everywhere else everyone celebrates when it comes around. Some people even have their own stump they keep.”

This was something Knuckles didn't know, “They do?”

“Yeah but it's more ceremonial. I mean there's no way everyone can keep a giant stump like they do in the story. Some people take the stump very seriously. My uncle told me a story about how one guy burnt someone else's stump and the ground swallowed them whole right then and there. He said the gods were angry at what he did so he was punished. only much later in life did I learn that the area where it happened was an area known for sinkholes so I'm not sure if I was the gods or not,” she said.

Knuckles rubbed his chin, “Weird, I heard a similar story only instead of sinking through the ground, the guy just spontaneously combusted right then and there. But yeah it's not something you wanna, you know, stress test.”

She nodded with a grimace, “For sure, especially the kind of world we live in.”

“What does your family do?” he asked.

With a far away nostalgic look, Lanolin went down memory lane, “Every year there was some sort of fight in my family about whether to serve meat or not. Everyone on my dad’s side of the family didn't want to serve meat as they believed it was offensive, sacrilegious even, to Arcadia. In their version of the story, Arcadia made a massive bounty of fruits, vegetables and mushrooms appear on the stump after seeing their joy. But my mom and only my mom thought that was silly and we should use any kind of bounty the land gives us. If that seems uneven it really wasn't it, my mom had the stubbornness of twenty people. Some years my mom would come out on top and then some years my dad's side of the family would come out on top. It really depended on who got sick of the fighting sooner,” she finished with a smile.

Knuckles held up his hands in surprise, “Woah back up I didn't know people still worshiped Arcadia?”

She nodded, “Oh yeah sure it's more of a rural thing but we even still celebrate the Spring festival. Hell, the medal you win for winning the flower contest has her face on it which again some people find sacrilegious.”

“Huh neat……so what are your plans for Stump Day? Same as usual?” Knuckles asked, unaware of the minefield he just walked into.

Suddenly looking very uncomfortable, Lanolin looked away before speaking, “Uh no not really there has been some changes in my family and the only person I can really talk to is my uncle.”

Knuckles, despite his reputation of being thick headed, was able to read through the lines and sympathy swelled within him, “You know if you want, you and everyone else can come over to my island on Stump Day. I do have a giant stump we can use. You can even bring your uncle if you want.”

Lanolin couldn't be more moved by his offer, “I……I would like that very much. Thank you Knuckles.”

He smiled and put a comforting hand on her shoulder, “It's no problem, after all the day is all about making the best of a bad situation.”

[muirmarie]

jim being canonically the shortest one of the triumvirate is genuinely so important to me lmao, like yesssssss, let that beefy babe be shorter than both his boyfriends!!!!

[egophiliac]

@enderfore replied to your post “What do you think of Rook's savanaclaw card? <333”:

Chenya pic where???? I can barely see anything in that room there so much going on, rooks such a lil freak (affectionatr)

​he's under the row of flags on Neige's side of the room, next to the big Neige poster with the yellow background (look just to the right of the hand holding the apple)! he's REAL little; once you know he's there you can kind of see him in-game, but I only noticed him in the first place because I took a screenshot and was having fun zooming in on all the details!

I think that's either Hop or Snick and Dominic on either side of Neige, but if the others are meant to be anyone in particular I don't recognize 'em. though I do love all the absolutely terrifying implications of Rook having this. was this some kind of officially-published merchandise (and if so, why) or did Rook like...go hunting through the RSA trash to find this random student lineup just because it included Neige, and has had it hanging proudly on the wall ever since. (I mean, he definitely did do this, I don't know why I'm asking. the real question is why he hasn't cut out little pictures of his own face and stuck them over everyone else's yet.)

there is seriously SO MUCH in this room. how did Rook manage to keep this hidden for three years. also, somebody give this background artist a raise immediately.

[unpersoniverse]

Skén:nen sá:sewh

as promised, here's Precious boy™ getting kissed by Precious wife™ because he deserves all the love in the world :cc

translation: Get home safe

[tubbytarchia]

gg buddy am I right (ethubs doodle that I don't know what to do with)

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

not enough discussion about the gavins' complicated relationship with feminine-coded/beauty products, i don't think.

[beneathsilverstars]

coffee shop au siffrin... their old cloak doesn't fit them anymore, so it stays safe at home and he just puts the safety pins on whatever else he's wearing!

[lilithofpenandbook]

Something about Dumbledore being so hard on Snape

Dumbledore being scornful of Snape even when Snape was on his knees

Dumbledore emphasising that Snape made a mistake and must pay for it

Dumbledore who kept reminding Snape of his mistake even when he was grieving Lily

Dumbledore who didn't just let Snape change sides, he needed Snape to change his heart

Dumbledore who made the same mistakes as Snape and has been living in guilt ever since

Dumbledore who realised Snape was following in his footsteps

Dumbledore who may have started out thinking of Snape as cowardly or selfish but soon grew to trust him

Dumbledore who gave Snape half truths because if worst came to worst then Voldemort would have all the information right on his arm

Dumbledore who trusted Snape enough to not lie to him about the fact that he wasn't telling him everything even though he knew Snape resented it

Dumbledore who trusted Snape so much he knew that even if Snape resented him he would not betray him

Dumbledore who left everything he worked for in Snape's hands knowing it would be safe

Dumbledore who asked Snape to be the one to kill him, not just to save Draco's soul but for his own sake

Dumbledore who chose to die but only at the hands of someone he had grown to love

Dumbledore who once saw Snape as a desperate selfish boy that disgusted him

Dumbledore who made Snape his heir

Dumbledore who made Snape his.

[asocialasshole]

Dp x Dc crossover promt

What if GIW was created by Justice League

to answer the never ending calls for help?

I mean, it would be more believable then JL just ignoring it, right? (Black out, blocked off and isolated Amity park - no complaints, you’re doing great sweetie)

Maybe they’re different than what is seen in the show, but what if? They’d definitely hide their actual goals, and try to set the narrative, benefiting them. Maybe while they were formed, the government somehow affected the recruitment and its legal purpose (idk how to word it any other way, bear with me here), so GIW doesn’t turn out how JL expected?

Like, the main thing is the League knows about the problem and thinks it’s being handled, completely blinded by the GIW doing everything to JL from paying more than a glance towards Amity park. Possibly even gently swayed by the GIW , who’re being careful to give just enough info to make JL to draw their own conclusions, but not too much to alert the League of their less then moral goals and methods

[spoilers-ahead]

okay!! now that it’s not 2am for me, i’m going to post my selkie!jason todd hc’s straight up au apparently! 

(uh. this was supposed to just be a list of hc’s but i got slightly,,,, carried away)

his selkie skin looks like an oversized red hoodie in his human form, and is just warm enough to help him survive new england winters.

when the summer heat becomes unbearable, he slings the hoodie around his waist

alternatively, he just coasts it out underwater. perks of living in a coastal city!

willis todd was a selkie. he used to tell jason stories of what it was like to swim through the big, wide ocean. of how freeing it felt. how different it is, from the smoggy, heavy air of gotham --- different, but both theirs, in their own right.

but to be honest, jason doesn’t remember much about the stories he was told, or really, anything about willis --- he had been in and out of blackgate for most of jason’s life, working for two-face to try and make ends meet, before dying. 

what jason mostly remembers, are the warnings. don’t let anybody know you’re a selkie. don’t let anybody find your skin. they will find it, and they will use it to control you. even decades later, jason would still remember those warnings. 

catherine is the one who teaches him how to swim, who helps him trial-and-error his way into putting his skin on, and learn how to make the transition seamless. 

after she dies, jason spends three months as a seal, to just... exist. forget.   

although jason technically lives on the streets, whenever he can;t find food, whenever he can’t find somewhere warm to sleep, whenever just being human becomes too unbearable, he spends the night as a seal. he ends up spending more time in the ocean, than on land.

that’s not to say he’s very good at being a seal --- he barely knows how to swim, has to learn how to fish the hard way. 

when bruce finds jason stealing his car tires, he marvels over how nice jason’s hoodie is, soft and fluffy even after all of jason’s time on the streets, especially given the condition jason is in, ribs showing from malnutrition, and the worn and raggedy shape of the rest of his stuff.

jason is skittish when he goes to live in the manor, even after a few weeks. he always adopts an expression particularly similar to a cornered wild animal around alfred in particular, alfred, who keeps on trying to take his hoodie away, purportedly to wash it.

alfred eventually gives up on trying to force jason to wash it --- he figures that as jason becomes more comfortable living at the manor, he’ll wind up telling them why he’s so protective over that hoodie, and they can work something out then. 

whenever wayne manor overwhelms jason with how big and how decadently expensive all the decor is, jason runs away, run to the ocean. 

jason doesn’t actually end up telling alfred and bruce that he’s a selkie --- bruce just has a ridiculous amount of motion alarms, which are triggered every time jason ran off. he had followed jason the third night, and saw him transform. 

bruce doesn’t tell jason that he knows, assuming that jason kept this a secret because he didn’t fully trust either of them. he would later learn that he was right in this assumption (a rare win for bruce in terms of emotional awareness)

except jason doesn’t fully trust either of them, even after a few months. bruce impulsively decides to do a few things --- a) tell jason about batman and robin and his crime-fighting secret identity, and b) tell jason he already knows about him being a selkie. 

jason is absolutely bamboozled by the fact that bruce knows, and yet hasn’t tried to take his hoodie to control him, or to stop him from playing in the ocean for a few hours. 

in fact, (under alfred’s encouragement) bruce offers to take him to the ocean during the day, so he can get “a proper night’s rest that a growing young boy such as himself would need”

jason remembers what his father told him, to never trust anyone, never let his guard down. but bruce has known about jason being a selkie for so long, and he didn’t take his hoodie or try anything. of course he can trust bruce. 

and when he tries on the robin costume for the first time, it fits perfectly. just like his hoodie, his second skin. it fits just like magic. 

oh, it’s a little loose in some places, the legacy of dick fucking grayson a little heavy sometimes, but he’ll grow into it. he’ll make himself, if he has to. 

also, jason finds the fact that even though he’s a friggin’ selkie, his callsign is a bird (a robin, no less) incredibly ironic and funny 

being a selkie is actually so useful for vigilantehood. the amount of people who talk freely, openly, and loudly about their drug smuggling plans near the ports is quite frankly, ridiculous.

honestly, towards the end of his robin years, jason remains genuinely surprised nobody catches on to him or his tactics yet. bruce is very proud.  

even though jason is safe, has been safe for three years, and trusts bruce with his life, his skin, and everything, old habits are hard to break. so he has his hoodie on when he goes to find sheila. 

and anyways, he wants to see if sheila is a selkie too. he’s taking biology right now, and they’re learning about punnett squares. jason’s never met another selkie before, other than willis who he barely remembers. there’s a possibility that sheila knows something, anything, so he has to try. 

sheila gets a glint in her eyes when jason mentions that he’s a selkie, tells him that while she’s not one herself, she’s familiar with the myth. she has long suspected that willis was a selkie, she tells him, and she’s glad to have confirmation. 

jason positively vibrates with excitement, can’t wait to ask, to pester his mother (mother!) with questions upon questions until. 

until. 

sheila doesn’t do anything after she gives him to the joker. she just smokes and smokes. and she doesn’t tell the joker about his hoodie, despite how it would have been much easier for the joker to destroy him that way. much more painful too.  

small mercies, he supposes, in between hacking coughs that brings blood bubbling up his lips. 

after he dies, his hoodie is ripped and in tatters from the crowbar, with burns along the edges from the bomb. bruce has to carefully peel it off his body. 

when jason was alive, his magic kept the hoodie in perfect condition, always. even when the rest of him was covered head-to-toe in mud, or dripping sludge from the nasty gotham sewers. 

bruce stares at the same hoodie, blood-soaked and mangled, so incredibly dissonant from how he remembered it on jason, when he was bright, whole, and alive. 

he can’t stand it. the hoodie that was so precious to jason, that was jason, at the core of him, in this state. dirty and ripped and devoid of the magic jason had exuded. 

in a moment of desperation, late at night, bruce asks alfred to teach him how to sew. he doesn’t dare to practice on jason’s beloved hoodie --- instead, he starts with the suits in his closet, grabbing the first one he sees, regardless of price. rips a hole and sews it back together over and over until he perfects his technique. 

and then he washes the fabric gently, using baby fabric cleanser and scrubbing for hours upon hours until the last traces of the deep-set brown stain from jason’s blood washes down the drain.

he painstakingly sews the scraps of fabric back together with a red thread, carefully sourced to match the hoodie to try and make it flow seamlessly like it used to. 

it doesn’t work, not exactly. despite his best efforts, the creases bruce had carefully sewn together are prominent and thick like scars, littering the  soft fabric.

so he gives up. he hangs it over the grandfather clock entrance to the cave in his study. brings it with him every time he visits jason’s grave, because he doesn’t ever want to keep jason’s hoodie away from him, but he also can’t bear for it to get ruined. 

dick visits him. a rare occurrence, these days. 

dick yells at him, as he is wont to do. 

these days, it feels like they spend more time angry at each other than not. dick says that this isn’t right. isn’t fair to anybody, not to alfred, not to himself, definitely not to jason. he rants, jason deserves to be remembered as he was in life, not frozen in death. 

perhaps he is right. bruce is not unaware of the state of violent, cutting stasis he is in, this putrefaction of his life. and he is certainly not unaware of how it is affecting the people around him. dick. alfred. the neighbor’s kid, the one who wants to be robin.   

bruce tries. not for himself, but for tim. for alfred, for dick. even for stephanie brown, who sometimes, when she smirks just right, or says something with just the right twang, he swears he can see jason in her. 

he still can’t bear to put the hoodie away, because jason deserved better than to be forgotten, so he folds it gently and places it in his closet instead. 

he also can’t bear to look at it for very long, so he forces himself to every single day. 

it’s different from the glass case that houses robin’s tattered suit in the cave --- that, is a reminder of how he failed robin. this, this is salt in a constant, stabbing, festering would, reminding him of how he failed his son. 

it was stephanie, that eventually helped him figure out what to do with the hoodie. when she was young, young enough to cry at ripped pants and skinned knees, young enough that her mother hadn’t touched the drugs yet, her mother would dry up her tears, give her a hug and a kiss on the forehead, before patching her pants up. 

what not many people know, is that before crystal brown set her mind on becoming a nurse, she wanted to be an artist, first. and so she grabs her old set of embroidery needles, and stitched little designs. dogs and cats. stars and planets. tools and gadgets. 

bruce doesn’t react, doesn’t even move, even as stephanie finishes her story. she hangs there awkwardly for a second, stares up at jason’s suit, waiting for him to respond, before shuffling towards the exit of the cave. 

thank you, spoiler, bruce manages to croak out. 

ah, yeah, she says, shrugging lightly while slouching in on herself, any time, boss. she walks out, and bruce watches her go from the reflection on the darkened computer. 

that night, he takes out jason’s hoodie, smooths it out, grabs his threads, and stitches. 

he stitches on constellations, argo navis, for jason’s namesake in the greek myths he had loved so much. a tiny seal, playing with beach balls. little books, with quotes on the sides. a robin, big and bold. 

he tries to make it as true to jason as possible, not just in death and in bruce’s memories, but as he was in life.

jason wakes up abruptly.  

he wakes up in a coffin, cold, alone, and with a gaping hole in his chest. getting dipped in the lazarus pit only made it worse, only made him all the more aware of what he was missing, all the more conscious of it. 

he doesn’t bother trying to learn how to swim with two arms and two legs, instead of two fins and a tail. it doesn’t feel the same. it only reminds him of what he’s lost. 

sometimes, on sleepless nights that happen more often than not, he wonders what would have happened if he still had a hoodie, still could swim. 

if he still was robin. 

and he doesn’t have access to the cave anymore, or to the titan’s tower, or the watchtower, and his memory of the past is still patchy and shitty in some places. 

so in a burst of impulsivity fueled by the person he no longer is, he prints out photos of robin’s costume from the internet and recreates it on his own. 

if his skin is gone, then fine. fine! he’s perfectly perfunctorily aware that nothing about this resurrection of his is natural. if he doesn’t think too much about it, he’ll be alright. his hoodie, his skin, that was something he was born with, a birthright that died with him. 

but robin, robin was something that he helped shape. robin was something that he worked for, changed himself for. 

and the makeshift robin suit --- it doesn’t fit him, not anymore. no, it feels wrong, like a child playing with their parent’s suit. or --- he realizes, perhaps more accurately, like an adult realizing they no longer fit in their favorite clothes. 

and --- and --- what was the point of it all? what was the point, of trying to make bruce proud of him, of getting dick’s approval, of trying to futilely save people over and over again from the same gallery of supervillains who keep on escaping from prison?!

and what was the point of carving out a space for himself if the joker was just going to beat him out of it, and if tim drake was going to insert himself in the hole he left behind?

and then the next thing he knows he’s in titan’s tower hitting tim drake over and over again because who let him? who let him take jason’s role as a son, as a brother, as a hero? how dare he?

but when he’s slit tim’s throat and torn the ‘R’ off his chest, jason doesn’t feel any better. the robin suit still doesn’t fit. his hoodie’s still gone. 

he’s starting to think it never will, not again. 

sometimes, when he gets tired enough to let his mind wander, he wonders what happened to his suit. 

he’s pretty sure he died with it, so either the hoodie is with the joker, batman, or... gone entirely. (it’s not like they found willis’ skin after he died. maybe selkie skins just disappear in a cloud of sea foam once they die, or some little mermaid shit like that)

it’s a cold comfort, that nobody can manipulate him now. nobody can control him --- not even batman. 

(bruce had thought about it. when he first had his suspicious regarding who the red hood was, before he knew there was any trace of the son he once had left. he thought about using the hoodie, using jason’s selkie skin to coerce him, at least to stop murdering people, to stop hurting their family.) 

(he would never go that far, in retrospect, or at least, he doesn’t think he could ever. to do that to jason, betray his trust so thoroughly and completely... but it would be a lie to say that he didn’t consider it.)

bruce reflects on this as jason reveals himself, the joker tied up at his feet with a gun pressed to his head, and venom spitting from his son’s mouth.  

but when he lifts the batarang to hit jason’s gun, or wrist, or anything that’ll force him to drop the gun, he realizes that his hands are shaking. 

and when he throws the batarang, he knows a millisecond after he’s let go, that he’s miscalculated the ricochet. 

so when jason escapes that night, bruce knows he’s fucked up. 

jason goes off the maps, completely. bruce doesn’t know where he is, if he’s safe, if he even made it out of the explosion that night. 

it takes weeks. weeks for bruce to track jason down, from meticulously documenting the dropped threads of where the red hood was pulling strings in the gotham underworld behind the scenes, to tracking security cameras with facial recognition. 

once bruce manages find where he’s staying, make sure he’s safe, he knows what he wants to do. and, he knows what he needs to do. 

jason gets a package in the mail, five weeks after his disasterous meeting with batman and the joker. unmarked, unsigned, no return address. 

when jason opens the box gingerly and carefully, he holds on to his skin for the first time in years. and then, and then, and then --- something right slots into place. his fingers brushed gently over the tiny spotted seal he knows he used to look like, the books he remembered ranting to bruce about for hours on end. 

the robin, on the top left, over his heart, big enough to have changed him, yet small enough to not define him. 

it’s not perfect. it doesn’t even fix anything, not entirely. he still fights with bruce most times he sees him, tries to punch dick in the face, steadfastly ignores tim and steph the entire time. 

but it’s something. it’s something, and the next time nightwing, batman, spoiler, and robin fight a gang on the docks, the red hood gives them a helping hand before jumping back into the ocean and swimming away.

fin!

wow this got long

[xxplastic-cubexx]

was watching apocalypse with my brother and once the cerebro scene popped up he was like 'charles has a helmet like erik, only instead of keeping people out, he tries to reach out and connect with others' like guys i need to bash him with a rock

[tmpttion]

pink taehyun for @wtungsten <3

[cybertron-smash-or-pass]

G1 Warpath

[beebfreeb]

Hiya! I'd like to ask how do you do your ms paint art? Do you first make the outlines and then colours, or perhaps vice versa? I really adore your ms paint art and would love to know the process (for practice purposes:))

Depends! My two strategies, featuring Cactus Gunman of Gregory Horror Show fame:

I often just color right on top of my sketches when I'm being silly + designing characters + just trying to figure out what something looks like (and tend to use this to fiddle with details and colors) It's usually quicker for me to end up with something that I'm happy with.

Most of the time when I bother to do separate, cleaner line art, it's because I'm making a graphic for my website. LOL. I think it feels a little more cartoonish-silly, which is usually what I'm going for when I decide to do this. It's also a bit harder to make large changes to whatever I'm drawing, so I'm usually working off of a messier thing I've already made.

(Technically, I no longer use MS Paint and instead use Aseprite due to becoming a Linux user, but nothing has really changed about the way I draw + all of this can be done in MS Paint just fine.)

[charmac]

Unspoken tension ahead of Charlie Work, a wound left open in Family Fight

The Production Order (the order in which the episodes are written) always seems of some value to me in Sunny, but 10 I find especially substantial. With half of the scripts of the season written by RCG, 4 are back-to-back (with their 5th one, Psycho Pete, being 2nd in order).

The run begins after The Gang Spies like U.S. Going off that into Charlie Work, as opposed to into that off Charlie Work, paints a very different narrative for the timeline.

We leave the reveal that Mac and Dennis are jerking off together into an episode that starts with high tension between Mac and Dennis. Dennis is frustrated that Mac isn't being direct, won't look him in the eyes, he's avoidant, timid. That's interesting, because Mac isn't usually any of those things, he's direct and abrupt and loud. Off 9, fully establishing Mac is gay, juxtaposing his closeted behaviour to Country Mac's openness, 10 focuses hard on the fact that Mac's confidence is continually battered as he refuses to step out of the closet. The Gang is tired of it, but Dennis is frustrated. His words maybe cut even deeper than the scratch, "Come to me like a man. Talk about being tough all the time, can't even look me in the eyes."

We leave CW and go into Family Fight, written right after, also by RCG. This episode has big focus on Dennis' obsession with public perception of himself, and the Gang. Though he can initially handle masking his demeanor, his tone of voice, what he can't mask are his words. He's smiling, he's 'joking', but there's deep truth in what he’s saying. He's frustrated, though his frustration in the moment is intended for Frank, Mac feels it directed at him. There's a fresh wound between them, because Mac fully understands what his feelings for Dennis are now, and that’s irreparably shifted their dynamic.

Misses the Boat is the last RCG-written episode of the season. From Charlie Work, where we’re kinda first faced with the fact that Mac is now overly-concerned with how Dennis perceives him, to Family Fight, where Dennis' masks slip completely and he has a public breakdown, they both veer hard to straighten themselves. Mac, very quite literally, goes straight, and Dennis resolves that he needs to cut ties to get back to being ‘cool’, he’s going to be a cool guy who has a cool car and hangs out with a babe and is cool.

But what we learn in Misses the Boat is that how they think the world views them, or should view them based on how they believe they present, isn’t who they are. They can’t actually function well in these situations. Dennis, untethered, somehow can’t control his rage as well as he can when he *is tethered* to the Gang. Mac, well, he isn’t straight, and he realises pretending to be into women is miserable.

Dennis gives him the offer: Do you want to go back? (To not addressing it, to a standstill.) And Mac quickly, excitedly takes it. Looping back to where they are in Charlie Work, back to where they settle for too long: Mac, absorbed in himself, clawing for approval from Dennis, and Dennis lashing out, tired of telling Mac what to do.

And I think this is why I love 10 more than anything, it finally addresses the issue the audience knows. With Charlie, Dee, and Frank, too. They’re going nowhere, spiraling in circles because they refuse to address the roots of their issues, and Misses the Boat makes them, themselves, fully aware of that fact. They’re miserable together, but they’re worse off alone. And they go into 11 and beyond knowing this, and all kind of resenting each other for it, until 14. Where they acknowledge it again, and decide they’re going to keep playing the game even though it’s set.

[belliesandburps]

Would you be willing to do dialogue for Epel?

(Surprisingly, I got quite a few Epel requests, so I'm gonna blend them all into this one like Ruggie and Jack.)

Burping in public (Around dormmates)

(blushes and covers mouth) "Ah...! E-Excuse me...!!"

(goes wide-eyed and clamps mouth shut) "......S-S-Sorry, dorm leader..."

(smiles nervously) "...T-That was because of a potion, I swear..."

(covers his mouth) "Oh, g-goodness! Pardon me, that was...(feels another burp coming, but swallows it down and grimaces)...mph...(palms his chest)...p-pardon me..."

(pushes a fist to his mouth) "Mph, sorry...my stomach has been bothering me all day..."

(looks around nervously) "...You won't tell Vil about that, right...?"

Burping in public (Around friends)

"Whew! (pats his stomach) That was a GOOD one!"

"Oof! Sweet tarnation! They ain't gettin' any quieter, haha!"

"Damn, that felt good!"

(grins) "Let's see ya top THAT!"

Woooo boy... (rubs his stomach) Ah may'uh wolfed down mah lunch a lil too dang fast, heh..."

"Pfft, that was weak, hol' up... (gulps down more and more air until he can't take anymore, then lets out a MUCH louder and longer belch that ends with him sighing) Haaaaaahhhhh...whew...THAT'S more like it..."

Burping for the first time around friends

(grins) "What? Didn't think I could let a monster like that rip?"

"Hehe, I know, 'so dainty and proper, probably doesn't even KNOW how to burp,' right?"

(smirks and daintily covers his mouth) "Hehe, ex-CUSE me...where'd my manners go all'uh the sudden?"

(sighs boorishly and pats his belly shamelessly) "Haaaahhhh...WHEW! Heh, sorry 'bout-uUrp-that, mph...shouldn't'uh had lunch before studyin' with Vil. Ah been stuck 'round him fer hours so I had t'hold that one in all dang day..."

(smirks cockily) "Pfft, that was nothin'. Check THIS out...(takes in several gulps of air, puts his hand on his stomach as it fills up with the excess air, then pushes down firmly and lets rip a HUGE burp, before sighing with relief and patting his belly)"

(grins and folds his arms behind his head carefree) "Heh, pretty loud, ain't they? Back home, I could out-burp anybody foolhardy 'nuff t'try and take me on...(grins more impishly)...still can..."

Burping after chugging a soda

"Oof...oh man, think ah done guzzled that one a lil fast...OOOOUUUUURRRRRP!!!! Guhhh..."

"Gaaaahhh...haha! Did y'all HEAR that?! Hot DAMN!"

(blushes and smile sheepishly) "H-Heh, s'cuse me...guess ah was kinda thirsty..."

"Woo dang...! (rubs his stomach firmly) So bubbly...bruUuUuUuph...BWWWOOOOURRRAAAAAAAPH!!!!! Phew...! (pats his belly)"

"Haahhh...(palms his chest) That's the stuff right there..."

(grins cheekily) "Hehe, imagine if VIL heard that one...(smile dips)...actually, let's not..."

Burping after stuffing himself

"Gruuuoooohhhh man...(rubs his bulging belly up and down)...feels like ah'm gonna BURST..."

"Haaahhh...(pats his rounded gut contently)...ain't had pies that good in ages..."

"Whew...that was a biggun, ain't it...(gropes his overstuffed middle and gives it a light jostle)...an' right now, so am I, heh..."

(huffs and hits his chest to knock loose another fierce burp) "Gaahhhh...sorry, when I'm THIS dang bloated, all that there gas gets kinda stuck..."

(sighs contently and holds his belly with both hands) "Haaaahhhhhh...felt my gut shake like crazy with that one..."

(gives a hiccup and a dainty afterburp before flopping onto his back; his large belly jutting up over him) "...Urgh...s-so...dang...ffFUUUUUUUULL...!!!"

Burping to kink-tease

"Ah, heh, s'cuse me...ain't very gentlemanly, huh?"

(smirks) "Hehe, ya like that? Don'tchu worry...(rubs his stomach teasingly)...loooooots more where that came from..."

"Pfft, that gets yer goat goin', does it? Well, good thing fer you that I'm a burpin' machine, hehe."

"You want bigger? (grins cockily) Ya came t'the right guy...(swallows more and more air, holding his stomach as it fills up with the excess oxygen, and then grips it tightly as a MASSIVE belch blasts past his maw and leaves him moaning)...hhhhhaaaaaaaahhhh...toldja I'm the champ."

"Hehe, sorry, did that rile ya up a lil too much? (quickly gulps down a sharp but single gulp of air and immediately burps it back up) There, that was smaller, so it oughta be easier fer ya, right?"

"Ahhhh, hehe...y'know, I dunno what I love more. Burpin' or watchin' you get all hot'n bothered every time I do..."

Nauseous burps

(quickly covers mouth) "Urrf...oOohh, that one hurt..."

(holds his churning stomach) "...Guhh...sorry, dorm leadeEUurp!! (quickly covers mouth) Oh no..."

(clamps mouth shut and burps heavily behind his fist) "Mph...ohhhh man...(rubs his belly slowly)...my gut's burblin' like grandma's gumbo..."

(rubs his stomach up and down) "Urgh...there's so much gas in my gut...(swallows down air)...BRRRAAAAAAAPH!!! Guh...BLLUUUUUOOORRRRUUUP!!!! Ugh...just keeps comin'..."

(slumps forward and clutches his knees) "...Uuuuugh...hoooo man...ah feel another burp just brewin' but...definitely feel somethin' else brewin' too..."

(goes green and covers his mouth) "...Mph...somethin' definitely came up with that one...hrrrMMMmph! BBBRRRRRMMMPH!!! (hugs his stomach and goes wide-eyed as he rushes to the bathroom)"