#trash collector my beloved

[void-speaks]

Sigh... I'm never going to end up saving a reasonable amount of money by this point.

So today, I succumbed to the urge to play the Heilwald Loophole and got it.

It's even more of an amazing experience when you play it yourself.

The puzzle with the Ominous Voice (which I've just from the start assumed was the previous chief doctor) was a bit confusing, because multiple oaths were broken by the same people. Like with chief Sauer. I at first assumed he was oath 3, which I think is the one about sympathy and kindness over drugs and scalpels (not exact wording) because of how rude he is, but at the same time it's also oath 4, the one about preventing disease, because... well, eating the fucking flesh soup will give you like 800 diseases for sure. Same with nurse Heideltraut, she could be both of us as well because of how unsanitary the sickward is and because of what the voice says about her. Wolfram is just... ass. I don't understand how he also breaks the oath of preventing disease (putting aside the sexual assault theory) and if I had not known the answer, I would've had to guess by process of elimination. Everyone else is easy to figure out. That was the experience with that puzzle for me, at least.

Also btw I am a proud Trash Collector stan that is the best character in the entire game and btw he (I'm assuming he? Maybe not) IS FREAKY TALL. LIKE we already have to look up at him quite a lot and that mf is SLOUCHING.

And I'm also mad in love with everything else in this game including like the meaning of it all which I'm not going to get into because I think it may be obvious? And I don't really wanna be the guy who acts like he's smart for noticing the obvious themes of a source...

So yeah, cool game, 10/10, definitely recommend.

[louscurls]

my dumbass crack headcanon is that tommy finds out buck is a huge collector of antique and vintage Halloween decorations (also Christmas ones) and is obsessive about keeping them in pristine condition. something (gas or carbon monoxide leak maybe?) has him hallucinating his vintage decorations have come to life and tommy needs to rescue him before he trashes his beloved collection. all the while buck is crying that his collection was stolen. and that is what weirds tommy out but also amuses him.

[thepaintedsable]

Uh oh, who let me into a fandom again? Who left the niche within a niche door open??? Y’all should know better.

@sm-baby’s Carnival AU for The Amazing Digital Circus grabbed me by the bootstraps with??? Inspiration??? Not only have I dodged most fandoms and the motivation to draw fanart (not that I don’t want to show support; just no ideas in the noggin), but I genuinely don’t think I’ve sat down and put a non-ironic, genuine OC for a media I like on paper since my Warrior Cats/Creepypasta era. This AU didn’t just get me to sit down and make an OC that fits with the original media, but one that fits with their derivative. I saw other people doing it and it looked like so much fuunnn.

First, have standard TADC version! Either that or a player.

This is Tuus! They’re mainly based on the beanie baby dragon to fit that sweet sweet 90s theme, but generally a mixture of beloved childhood toys I have sitting on my shelf. She’s scruffy, worn, and kinda dirty looking and that’s on purpose. She’s bottom heavy, and I wanted her wings to give off the texture of that basically-plastic shiny fabric you used to see on a lot of toys.

No mouth, but a randomly appearing lizard tongue. For fun.

Tuus deals with the circus by sleeping. A lot. Too much. If you don’t need to sleep, then you don’t need to be awake. If she’s doing to be trapped in a digital hell, she might as well be catching up on her naps. And she will sleep in the worst places. Time for a digital feast? She’s on the table. Caine wants to have an adventure in the lake? Girl is at the bottom. Sleeping with the fishes fr fr. And you need to find her one day? Nowhere to be seen, probably on the roof.

It’s playing on the whole big, lazy, sleeping dragon thing that used to be in a lot of children stories I remember. But also how well loved childhood toys seem to pop up and disappear, there when you aren’t looking but gone when you are. Her name also means “Your” or “Thy.” Your dragon.

BUT AT THE CARNIVAL?

What amusement park is complete without a gift shop? What game doesn’t have a place to buy goofy digital goods? Tuus is the big lady in charge of the gift place of the Carnival! Her room is what should have been a shop of sorts, to buy whatever products that darned company would have tried to push. Cosmetics, virtual toys, digital snacks, whatever. But, uh, I don’t think anyone told them dragons don’t like to…. share. Becoming sentient did wonders for the attitude. You should be just fine if you don’t make too much noise, though! She’s a lazy lizard, and often sleeps sprawled around the place. I imagine the level would be set up like a maze, or a labyrinth. Isles and isles of things, with peaks of a tail or smoke every now and again. Toys, clothing, and even random things that shouldn’t be in there just trash the path. It’s your job not to step on anything! It’s different each time, though (a speed runner’s nightmare). One level you might get lucky and have a straight shot with a sleeping dragon, the next there might be so many things it’s physically impossible to reach any exit at all. Potentially can get out of trouble with some digital coin™, but you’ll have to have found enough hidden in the room to forgive each “damaged item.”

Here she is much, MUCH larger and far cleaner. An oversized display never meant to be bought. A collectors item far too expensive for a child. Think “I used to be a beloved toy and now I’ve been forgotten, even forgetting myself, and this is how I cope” favor VS “I have never known the touch of a person and have been trapped on this shelf only to be abandoned and have the personality of an unsocialized dog” flavor.

She has no mouth, but she bites.

I want to draw more of her :) She’s a goof.

[liesonthefloordramatically]

you know that I continue to be feral for news of hualian fake dating and also I'll tell it right this time I swear.... but if you'd prefer a different one, oldseph character study?

(ask game over here)

Rowan, you are very sweet, so, guess what, you get snippets of all three.

Hualian fake dating: I feel like pretty much every bit from this that's viewable is in fact something you have already seen, but here we go anyway. At least half of this fic is Hua Cheng Going Through It because he's in a fake dating fic while Xie Lian has the entire TV Tropes page for fake dating pulled up in his mind at all times. I love Xie Lian and I love writing him from an outside perspective even more. He's so frickin' weird.

“I’m sorry if I’m prying,” Xie Lian says, not breaking eye contact, “but...I know what it’s like to be lonely.  I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”  He smiles, a half-hearted, lopsided jerk of his mouth.  Xie Lian smiles so much, but so often his smiles are there to make him look harmless–a quiet, gentle, ever-smiling trash collector.  Someone easy to overlook.  Someone not worth the effort.   “I’m sorry that gege is lonely,” Hua Cheng says, because it’s easier than addressing the rest of it. Xie Lian’s gaze drops again.  “I’m not lonely anymore,” he says, and maybe there’s real happiness behind his small smile this time.  “I have you, don’t I?” Hua Cheng’s throat works, but no words come out. “And Shi Qingxuan,” Xie Lian continues, oblivious to Hua Cheng’s floundering.  “And Fu Yao and Nan Feng.  And Lang Ying and Ban Yue!  I have so many new friends.” “Good,” Hua Cheng says, far too fervently.  “Everyone should love gege.” Xie Lian looks up again, that strangely penetrating gaze.  “Mm,” he says, and then very quickly changes tacks.  “And you have your beloved.” Hua Cheng’s too aware of the proprietor furiously wiping the table behind them long after it should have been spotless.  “You are my beloved,” he says, and if his voice trembles, he can blame it on stage fright. There’s no blush this time, strangely–just Xie Lian watching him, just Xie Lian’s thoughts hidden behind his unreadable face.  Then, an apologetic smile–and Hua Cheng can see the performance now, the moment when Xie Lian chooses to make himself small and harmless.  “Right,” Xie Lian says.  “Ah, where is my head tonight?”

I'll tell it right this time I swear: the premise of this fic is simply "can I craft a fic that is custom-engineered in a lab to make Rowan lose it." (Slightly more serious explanation: it's a fic about grief and memory and iterative storytelling. there's a lot going on here, don't worry about it.)

You don't answer. You haven’t had to explain yourself to anyone yet. Lucy understood--or she understood enough not to ask. You were grateful, at the time, too scraped raw by Gyro’s loss to even be able to imagine retelling it. Maybe that’s why there are no words when you reach for them. Maybe you just haven’t had enough practice sketching the hole Gyro left behind. (Maybe it’s none of their fucking business.)

Oldseph fic: fun fact: I think I started this one before I started writing linear time is fake. when I say it takes forever for the words to coalesce I am really not kidding. the number of things in this one that are me going "I've connected the dots" about things that literally no one cares about is wild, but please have the opening of the fic (complete with my incomplete sentence because this is how my process works).

The morning after they’ve made it back to Japan, Joseph rolls out of bed (literally rolls, because the bed is on the floor, which is insane and he hates) with a crick in his neck.  It’s not surprising--as his grandson loves reminding him, he is old, and the bed is on the floor for some unfathomable reason and plane rides have always wreaked havoc on his body, even when he hasn’t literally wrecked them. If you kept up with your hamon practice, this wouldn’t happen, a voice inside his head nags, and he stubbornly ignores it, as he always does.  He could [whatever], but hard work and routine are near the top of the list of things Joseph can do without.  Still, sometimes hamon can be useful, especially when he needs to get a crick out of his neck. Joseph makes sure his posture is more or less correct.  He takes a deep breath.  For a moment, it feels like all his blood is running backward through his veins, and then a moment later the pain spreads from his chest to his torso all the way to his fingers and toes.  It’s indescribable--like liquid fire, like his skin is going to blister and slough off.  Joseph’s breathing stutters, his energy shuddering out of his grasp, and just as suddenly as it started, it’s over, and he just feels like he’s been sunburned from the inside out. The morning after they’ve made it back to Japan, Joseph discovers that being pumped full of vampire blood has some unintended consequences.

[jeffdominguez]

GROWING UP IN THE ‘BURG Trade, Commerce, and Tradition on the Sacramento River

Probably the first thing a person has to figure out when he moves to Clarksburg (other than where he’s going to live) is where he’s going to buy his groceries. For a town with a population overestimated at 366, you’d think that a single general store would be more than enough to ensure that the cupboards of the local denizens were always well stocked. Still, Clarksburg inexplicably offered TWO options in the way of shopping: Lawlor’s Market and Holland Market.

Lawlor’s stood proudly at the top of the levee on South River Road, overlooking the Sacramento River to its front side and the gentle ‘burg to its back. To its north side, it hugged Netherlands Road, for all practical purposes Clarksburg’s main street. After all, both the library and the high school were located on that particular drag, along with the Community Church and the Delta triangle, an odd triangular patch of land formed naturally by Netherlands, Park Avenue, and North School Street. Lawlor’s was finished in bright white stucco and trimmed in dollar green, and it had two swinging front doors, not unlike classic saloon doors, save for the fact that Lawlor’s doors were full length, extending from the floor to top of the door frame.

Beyond that, I can’t tell you much about Lawlor’s, because we were a loyal Holland Market family, and honestly, I don’t believe I ever spent a single cent at Lawlor’s. Absolutely nothing against Stu Lawlor, its proud owner. His son, Stan, was a senior at Delta High school when I was a freshman. Both were exceedingly amiable and undeniably decent guys, but we shopped at Holland Market. As Tessio famously explains in The Godfather, it was nothing personal, just business.

At the base of the levee where Lawlor’s stood, just as Netherlands Road flattened out, there was Holland Market. If you had a decent arm, you could stand behind the phone booth on the side porch of Lawlor’s and hit Holland Market with a rock. Not that anyone would ever throw a rock at Holland Market, but the two stores were oddly situated close enough to one another to do so. Holland Market’s shopkeepers, George and Bud McDonald, were beloved and active community members of Clarksburg. In addition to his duties running the front of the store, George was also the Chief of the town’s Volunteer Fire Department. His brother, Bud, drove a bus for the high school and grammar school every day before the first bell rang and after the last, but his primary occupation was as the store’s butcher.

When you had trash you wanted to burn, you headed into Holland Market and took a peek over the doorway of the butcher shop in back, at a sign marked “BURN” on one side and “NO BURN” on the other. It hung by a string on a nail, and George flipped it to the appropriate side every day, depending on prevailing wind conditions, I suppose. My grandparents—who raised me from birth—planned most of our weekends around the burning of our garbage. We didn’t dare leave a trash pile smoldering unattended in order to go call on friends or relatives or enjoy a meal out at, say, Freeport Café or Alma’s in Walnut Grove.

In Clarksburg, homes such as ours, situated on the outskirts of town were spread far apart, because they sat on huge plots of farmland, and the municipality wasn’t large enough to employ a garbage truck and crew to perform curbside pickup. Eventually, Tammy Camarillo’s dad got the idea to buy a used garbage truck and give it a go as a private commercial trash collector. Despite being based in the town of Hood, a few miles down, and across, the river, his business took off quite nicely. It seemed that people were willing to pay a substantial fee for having their garbage whisked away, and Mr. Camarillo’s idea met with great success. He was able to establish a big enough empire for his daughters to fight bitterly over when he sadly passed many years later.

Decades after leaving Clarksburg to attend college and, eventually, work, in Sacramento, it occurred to me that it was an odd thing to have two general stores in such close proximity to one another in a small town, and I gave some thought to how their business was divided. The division was actually fairly obvious all along, though it was never stated out loud or overtly pointed out at the time. It was mainly the more affluent crowd in the community who frequented Lawlor’s, prosperous farmers and the families of wealthy businessmen who purchased homes in the country to get away from the traffic and bustle of city life in the state capital. Curiously, that particular class of folks was somehow predisposed to patronage at Lawlor’s, and it became a bit of a status symbol to confine your shopping to that particular general store.

Meanwhile, down the hill at Holland Market, the clientele was comprised of the common man, the employees of local ranches, manual laborers, migrant farmworkers, and families of more modest means. The market was finished in white lap siding with bright red trim, a somehow homier contrast to Lawlor’s elevation. George devoted himself to stocking shelves, ringing folks up at the cash register behind the front counter, greeting incoming customers. His brother, Bud, was the store butcher, and he kept the glass case in the back stocked with amazing cuts of beef and pork, thick chops and steaks, mounds of freshly ground beef, fat sausages that seemed on the verge of bursting through their casings. There was also a sandwich counter in the back, where you could order a salami, ham, or bologna sandwich with or without cheese.

The options for your sandwiches were not nearly as exhaustive as those of the modern-day supermarket deli departments, with your choice of bread, Dijon or honey mustard, banana peppers, pickles, olives, etc. The sandwiches at Holland Market were all made on regular Rainbow Bread loaf slices, with plain mustard and mayo—you didn’t even get to choose your type of cheese, just whether or not it was included—but they were somehow the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten. Perhaps it was because they were heartily consumed after a morning of summer football practice or endless hours of horseplay in the pool down at the high school, but those sandwiches remain a cherished culinary memory of my youth.

I used to be able to go in back at Holland Market, order a sandwich, grab a Pop-O soda in the flavor of my choice (usually root beer or grape), a bag of chips, and a candy bar, and take my haul up to the front counter, where, after George tallied my total, I would say, “Put it on my tab, George!” At which point, he would pull out a small binder with alphabetized dividers from behind the counter, open it to the “D” section, and write my total down. I’d sign the new entry and be on my way.

Grandpa would head into the store at the end of every month and square my bill with George. At dinner on those nights, the topic would inevitably arise. “Hey,” Grandpa would say to me, “I paid your bill at George's today. It was twenty-three dollars! What are you eating, gold?!” Grandma would shush him, explaining that a growing boy needed his nutrition (soda pop and candy bars included, obviously). After all, they didn’t want me wandering around town hungry, a horrible feeling that, sadly, was no stranger to either of them when they were my age…

While Lawlor’s may have held the tactical advantage of location, Holland Market was a wonder of comprehensive inventory. The store was small in square footage compared to the supermarkets in town, but George somehow managed to stock anything anyone might possibly need. To this day, I don’t know how he did it. Sure there were sacks of flour, and butter, and milk, all the staples, but did they have baking powder? Of course they did. It might not have been Grandma’s preferred brand, Clabber Girl, but George always had a few cans of Calumet on the shelf. He always had, it seemed, a few cans of everything.

Stumping George became a bit of a game for us, and I was often sent to the market to retrieve the oddest items. Thumbtacks? George had them. Diced olives? No problem. Spray starch? Here’s a can! Dry yeast, clothespins, birthday candles… check, check, check. You could even buy a pack of four-ought fish hooks or a pair of pruning shears at Holland Market. Why drive all the way into town when George had everything you needed in the comfort of our home?

Every year, around late May or June, George would post a flyer on the big bulletin board on the front porch of his store, next to the ice case: entry forms for the annual 4th of July Parade, organized by the Clarksburg Volunteer Fire Department. Whichever of your friends happened to be with you when the forms were first noticed on the board, he would be your parade partner that particular year. We’d decorate our bicycles with red, white, and blue streamers, our skateboards, our go-carts, our dogs, and take our place in the lineup.

The streets comprising the only logical parade route in the neighborhood would be lined with locals ready to enjoy the spectacle. The turnout every year was overwhelming, with decorated tractors and combines, fancy hotrods, the local Boy Scout Troop 83, the Delta High School Marching Band—nearly as many participants in the parade as there were enthusiastic spectators lined along the streets of Clarksburg, waving flags, clapping, and whistling.

George led the procession each year in an old relic firetruck on a 1925 Model T frame, owned by the department. It was kept by his crew in auto show quality, all spit shiny red and brass, and George had a small hose hooked up to the tank in back with a hand trigger nozzle. His driver would weave from side to side of the street along the parade route, and George would throw candy to the crowd from the front passenger seat and squirt a lucky spectator here and there to the delight of those who managed to remain dry. Clarksburg being a small town, the parade route was not very long, and recognizing that everyone, spectators and participants alike, went through a lot of trouble to prepare for the event, once George completed the lap around the block, it was not uncommon for him to continue on a second, and sometimes third, lap, just in case anyone had missed anything the first time around.

One year, I noticed that my bicycle tire had somehow flattened along the route, so I simply peddled over to Updegraff’s Chevron station up on the levee road, aired up, and returned to my place in the lineup which had somehow managed to muddle through in my temporary absence. Following the proceedings, the entire town headed over to the Volunteer Fire Department, where the crew would pass out popsicles to anyone who wanted one, and the winners in the various categories among all the entrants would be announced. I never won a trophy, but, just being alive and involved in the festivities, sitting there on my decorated bike with my buddies, sucking on a two-stick double pop in the July heat, my dog, Henry, at my feet, made me feel like the luckiest kid in the world.

And, honestly, I was.

[susie-dreemurr]

Character ask thingy : Belos & the collector, Pauline from dead endia

Belos

He’s a very good villain and I appreciate his writing and depth! however. I cannot like characters who are child abusers I do not care how much depth he has. His past (pre-murdering his brother) could have made me more sympathetic to him, but he had 400 years to change, to realize how wrong he was about witches and his brother, yet he stuck to his ways. He made this grave, all he has to do now is lie on it.

Collector

To the surprise of no one, my beloved blorbo is the first one where I get a bingo! I love them so much I cannot articulate but OUGHHH OUGHHHHH…….he’s a godly kid who was probably never taught any morals because everyone is just so unqualified to deal w him and his powers and life expectancy causes him to see the people (the ones who aren’t his “friends”) as nothing more than toys to play with, ants you can throw water at just to see what happens. Skulls are just an addition to the collection. But, despite his nasty streak, he’s still a lonely kid who was put into fantasy solitary confinement for thousands of years, and his only contact for the last few hundred years was the biggest manipulator in the cast.

He’s so desperate to leave this awful prison and he can’t reflect doesn’t understand that what he was doing was wrong and not, in fact, a fun game. These kinds of situations never teach anyone anything, except make them worse, and that’s not even getting into them being in Philip’s basement for like 300 years. Everyone they’ve met in the show so far has lied and used them for their powers, being it with bad or good intentions, and it’s so sad. He’s also very intimidating precisely because of his obliviousness to the reality of what he does. Okay I can’t go into everything but OUGHHHH

Pauline

Usually, I don’t really connect with the a hundred (98 at best) percent evil villains, as I’m more of a sympathetic baddie kinda gal, but Pauline really got to me. The foreshadowing to her mystery is great, I was really invested in it first watching, and her presence as a villain was well-done…for the most part.

As much as I may like Dead End, it trashed her character to present other threats, without giving her defeat a chance to shine, just leaving her arc without a real resolution, even when she gets her domestication arc. But she’s also the funniest fucking character in the cast fr. Her thing with Barbohra makes me very mentally ill but that’s more on the barbohra side of things. Pretty sure I made a post about that before.

[cos-luna]

Hi, it's me again! I just got to say this, Cos but Strahd is a Yandere for Luna-? 👀Like Luna (somehow) has Tatyana's soul/the actual reincarnation of her.

What do you think?

Not going to deny that Luna has experienced this kind of behavior before in one of her past ships. One with another OC that I co-own with one of my close friends. The OC is named Viktor and I have totally written him in DnD Luna's backstory as her ex-fiancée. And she has had another man named Midas in her life that was possessive and infatuated with her beauty. So sadly for my girl Luna, she would be familiar with that kind of obsessive behavior.

Luna is a hopeless romantic which is how Viktor ended up getting so close to her before she saw his true nature. So Strahd could pull the same cards, surprisingly Strahd and Viktor have a lot of parallels. Both cold, charming men, rich, surrounded by death, powerful magic users, being tragically shunned by their family. (Emo??? /j) So Luna could fall for Strahd and feel nostalgia in a twisted way. Giving herself a 'second chance' to try and change a cursed man.

As much as *I* am a simp for awful trash (fictional) characters, Luna is not and would not be so smitten for the "Yandere" behavior for long. Just for a few reasons: ((CoS Spoilers))

Being an Air Genasi, Luna values her freedom if he tried to collect her like Midas or became curly obsessives over her like Viktor, she would turn on him. It really depends on how he plays his own cards. I kind of have a hidden counter on how "corrupted" Luna is during the campaign seeing as Strahd is a collector of beautiful and talented people. So Luna could be one such person anyway with her silver tongue, cunning, manipulation, and of course beauty. He would have to offer her something other than money or power, she has been humbled by her upbringing, so Love or Home is the next best thing.

If she did end up with the soul of Tatyana, her value of finding a HOME would be tragic and something Strahd could leverage over Luna. But also there would be a few key things that would peev her off right away that Strahd could defiantly do. Cause despite her kindness, she is still very prideful and would get almost instantly annoyed of a "dead name" so to speak being used instead of her own.

If Strahd dare to keep calling her Tatyana, I would RP it as Luna becoming so enraged by Strahd, hating him for what he did to her beloved almost like she temporarily becomes possessed with Tatyana's emotions and memories. Before snapping back and being confused and apologetic cause she is a polite person. Again this could work in favor or against Luna, it could confirm her to be Tatanaya but at the same time doom Strahd to not actually get what he wants.

Again, I like to keep it possible that Luna could be corrupted if Strahd plays his cards right. He could totally get Luna, she isn't pure good in this campaign. I made her Chaotic Natural with good morals as a base (Light).

But yeee. "Yandere" Strahd has been something I have talked about with friends and other DMs XD I would worry for my girl a lot if that happened.

[im-da-bronx]

@eli-void Hoo boy let me tell you

There are many different styles of sculpture, from marble to bronze cast to soft sculpture. Art dolls are a fun overlap between toys (whose main target demographic are children) and one-of-a-kind sculptures (aimed more for adults). It’s a way for adults to take a beloved childhood hobby and appreciate and reimagine it from a more mature perspective.

Adults don’t play with toys the same way that children do, they don’t need that safe space to explore topics and interactions that they haven’t encountered yet, because they have real world experience that they can pull from in new or unexpected circumstances. Thus, most adults prefer collectible items- items they can appreciate and enjoy, that are more delicate than children’s toys because they’re not meant to be handled as often.

This is where reborns come in.

Sometime in the 90’s, doll collectors started wanting more and more realistic looking dolls. This led doll artists to buy baby dolls and “rebirth” them, stripping and repainting them to be much more realistic than the original purchased doll. These became hugely popular in the art doll community, which then led to an even more niche community within it.

Once the knowledge of the existence of reborn dolls hit mainstream society, it became controversial. Some people thought that realistic looking baby dolls were creepy, some thought that people who collected realistic dolls were mentally ill, and some thought they were childish for still playing with dolls. The truth is, there are two main subsets of reborn collectors: the majority are those who simply appreciate and collect dolls, no matter what they look like. The minority, and the side that got the most attention from the media, are those who collect reborn dolls as therapy tools, mostly for trauma associated with miscarriage or child loss.

Once mainstream society knew about them, people-mostly parents of young children-wanted to buy them for their daughters who wanted dolls that looked like real babies.

Here’s where my pet peeve comes in.

These people didn’t want one-of-a-kind or limited edition collector’s items. They wanted toys. They weren’t willing to fork over hundreds or thousands of dollars to get a doll their child would trash. They wanted something cheaper.

Scammers took advantage of this.

They began stealing pictures of one-of-a-kind custom dolls from doll artists’ websites and reposting them to other sites with drastically reduced prices. Customers would see a picture of a commissioned doll that sold for $3000 and thought they’d be able to buy it for only $150. Of course, they didn’t realize it was a scam, because they thought that reborns were just expensive toys, not art pieces and collector’s items.

Over the years, reborn doll collectors and artists learned about the scams and fraud, and have tried to warn people who are truly interested in collecting real reborns, as well as well meaning parents who get upset when they think they’re purchasing a beautiful baby doll for their child for Christmas, and they open the box and it’s a cheap plastic doll that looks nothing like the picture. But enough people are still purchasing the scam dolls, because it’s still an issue. Look on Amazon. None of those reborn dolls are actually what you get. All of the photos are stolen.

Anyway, there’s the context for the drama.

If it’s not truly one-of-a-kind or collectors edition, if it’s not hand painted, if you don’t know the name of the artist (and you should know, good collectors and resellers should be able to tell you the kit name and the finished piece name and the artist), if it’s obviously a cheap knockoff or it just looks like a pricier, American-girl-doll-level-quality baby doll, then it’s not a reborn. It’s just a fancy baby doll.

This might be very nitpicky and niche, but I don’t like it when people say “look at this reborn doll” and then the doll isn’t realistic or is obviously an inexpensive doll.

Like, I have absolutely nothing against people who prefer reasonably priced dolls, not everyone can afford limited edition reborns, they get super pricy!! And non-realistic dolls can be super cute and fun too! And that’s not even getting into the fraud that is rampant in the reborn community, where people steal images from legitimate artists and use them to sell cheap ripoffs to make money, so customers think they’re buying a doll that looks $1000 for only $150, and then getting a really shitty doll.

But if the doll doesn’t make you do a double take, then babe, that’s just a baby doll. No offense, it is probably adorable and it’s wonderful that it makes you happy, but it’s just a baby doll.

In the same way a whiffle ball is not a major league official baseball, most baby dolls- even if they’re labeled as such- are probably not a reborn.

[nighttimepixels]

TALK TO US ABOUT MASS EFFECT I HAVE BEEN AN INSANE MASS EFFECT/SHAKARIAN TRASH PERSON SINCE 20-FUCKING-11 AND LEMME TELL YOU THOSE FEELINGS HAVENOT TARNISHED A SINGLE FRACTION IN THOSE TEN YEARS OH MY GOOOOOOODDDSSSS!!!!!!!

I DEMAND A PLAY-BY-PLAY UP TO THE MINUTE OF YOUR REACTIONS TO EVERYTHING!!!!

you are so valid and I totally see why everyone I've ever mentioned it to loves the hell out of it

aksdjlsdfj I meannnn if you want to hear my rambling about it then hell yeah

Okay, gonna put this below the cut to save everyone else XD also- since I'm not leaving this Mass Effect obsession anytime soon, if you're not interested in seeing occasional posts about it, please feel free to block the tag "night plays ME"~

(mild spoilers ahead??)

((also for real I mean it when I say this is rambling as hell lol, apologies and no stress if absolute no one reads all this))

OKAY SO Mass Effect 1-

Stars help me, I was honestly hooked right from the start?? Like even in Legendary Edition (the combined trilogy just re-released in one "can play it on one system + minor improvements", for anyone who doesn't know) where it's smoothed out, of course it's obvious that ME1 is a decade old... but the foundation for these relationships are all there and gods I love them already.

Like - Kaiden right off the top is a delightful good fightin lad, what the hell. I've heard that he's viewed as 'bland' by a good portion of the fan community but I dunno, he's a delight and even more complex by the time 2 rolls around and you encounter him on Horizon, it was honestly Ashley I was way more meh about - mostly because before you can learn about her family history/etc, she comes off as hella xenophobic and I was immediately offended for my growing space family that she didn't like/trust all the aliens around, pfff.

(she gets redeemed a bit through further actions/evolving thoughts, but I thought in retrospect it was a bummer that they didn't flip the order there, give her a chance to be liked before the complicating factor of being so rude about aliens >:c that then she could grow from... ah well. Apparently she has a good arc but uh, let's just say I chose Kaiden at the "key junction" in the latter part of the game so I won't be seeing anymore of Ashley uh... anytime soon, haha.)

Garrus??? Is??????? The ABSOLUTE best???????????

I liked him from the start, I'm always a bit of a sucker for a rogue-detective "the system won't bring this bastard to justice, so I've got to" type and all their moral shadiness XD But he just gets better, honestly, and where I'm at in ME2 (right before the Reaper IFF mission, as of typing this, with everyone's loyalty!) I am only digging myself deeper into this hole-

-*wheezing* okay anyways -

Wrex is AMAZING I love fightin' middle-aged krogan bastard, gods. Liara is great too, I'm a sucker for a wlw relationship (playing fem!Shepard, so) - buuuut I'll admit she's a bit more one-note in ME1. Last week while I was still on ME1 I remember hearing (while trying to dodge spoilers) that her arc is really good, though. I think they leaned a little hard on the 'innocent but sexy' sterteotype on her (so despite the yikes aspect of a few of the things I've learned in ME2, lol, I actually really like the complexity that's been added to her character.)

Saved Liara first, so by the time I got to Noveria and had the standoff with Benezia there was the chance to have emotions over Liara having to face her TwT and of course, I made the questionable but quality decision to free Queen Rachni heheh. no ragrets

More than a blow-by-blow of my choices though I totally wanna take the chance to say that even in the mild jankiness of ME1 (goddammit, the Mako.... please..... please just go up this impossible cliff I just want to resource hunt-) the way that the lore, both obvious/key to main plot and the lesser/filler/background/world-building kinds... I just love it. It incorporates it well, you can go ham in the codex learning more, or just dive into the basics - it's clearly a complex galaxy (and they do an even better job in 2 of fleshing it out further), and it never really felt overwhelming. It was pretty natural figuring it all out-!

Plus the interesting implications of resource hunting amongst the sapient races, and the little side missions you better bet I did every one of- there's so much rich depth in the story if you do 'em!! (And that lead with that Keeper side mission...? Looking back, damn, clever foreshadowing-!!!)

And oh my gods, Ilios??? hell yeah. I loved that mission so much, especially having Garrus & Kaiden with me when talking to the hologram/computer, and more than anything, that last sprint in the Mako trying to get to the jump before it closed-???

yeet the boi-

Also mannn I love a good setpiece, and having to go up the side of the elevator, space-side?? such a cool setup!!

Plus it felt good having been Paragon enough (as simple as the good v bad vibe system is, I don't hate it, lol) to avoid one of the Saren fights, ngl. And the er, "second fight" with Sovereign-Saren.... hell yeah

... I'll admit I had to double check my choice re whether to save the Council. I did in the end, but I swear, sometimes the way they phrase things I'm like ".... okay but Garrus is right, defeating Sovereign is more important than these few leaders??????" woops. Listen, priorities, is all I'm saying..... (￣ヮ￣|||)ゞ

'Course later they emphasize (in ME2) that there were 10,000 people on that same ship and I was like well I wouldn't have second guessed if I'd known that, I mean c'mon-

Also I did indeed romance Liara in this one, so I got that scene ;Dc But,,,, I also knew by the end that I was totally gonna romance Garrus in 2 since he's an option then finally,,,,, lemme tell you the guilt as I waffled over whether to romance Liara bc of it. hahaha.

Aaaaand Mass Effect 2-

So I'm only up to right before the Reaper IFF Mission, so I don't know the ending, etc etc lol. That said, I've just finished every side mission I've found with the exception of the Shadowbroker Quest and the Arrival Quest (I've heard the latter basically leads into ME3, and the former is best either right before the Omega 4 jump or in postgame).

So from the start - fuck yeah fuck yeah what a high adrenaline start Shepard noooooo but also yes save Joker aH-

The motion comic too hot damn nice job

I loved this setup, seriously - especially forcing Shep into this situation, having to work with/for Cerberus, and the compelling reasoning given behind "why" they do what they do (I especially found it a good point that the Salarians have the Task Force, the Asaris the Commandos, the Turians the- etc... like, true, when you put it like that, having a similar group advancing human interests/solving human interstellar problems is pretty reasonable...). That said, I love too that it really isn't shied away from how Cerberus is nonetheless fucked up - or its at least done fucked up stuff.

Listen, I still think some messed up stuff is gonna be revealed in 2's endgame......... after that Horizon mission and the Collector's ship???? TIM I SEE YOU YOU SHADY MF-

aaanyways lol...

I'm so so glad on a gameplay level they nixed the Mako style exploration. A few Hammerhead missions are fine and a lot more focused than the slippery ass navigation in that glorified ATV, pfff. The probes are a neat way of getting after similar resources - and more importantly, having good levels and some good hubs (the Zakera Wards, Omega, Ilium, etc) is way way more fun than having a more 'sprawling' space that is.... a lot of empty nonsense, lol.

Then there's the fact that we get Joker right off the bat and you can interact with him so much - and him and EDI??? Get out gods I love them. Kasumi is so right when she says they sound like a bickering old married couple lol. I have a terrible feeling that some shit is gonna happen with EDI..... but I don't think she's evil as-is, at least.

Side-eying the hell out of those "access forbidden" parts of her that she doesn't even know.... and the fact that her AI core has a locked door access................... something's gonna happen gdi LEAVE OUR ADOPTED AI ALONE.

(Also Joker pls stop fracturing your thumb on the mute button)

Also please save me there are so many hot aliens in this game,,,,, the xeno/monsterfuckers really comin' through strong in the sequels............... doin' the lord's work........................................

In general, I love how many levels ME stepped up in two with complexity and interwoven narratives!! Like, to the point it'd be almost a drag to replay ME1, even though it was fun going through it (if occasionally a bit tedious with the cookie cutter rando planet science/mine facilities, lol). Like, just from how fun and interesting ME2 is, mostly! more of all the pre-introduced races, plus new ones, plus more filling in of intragalactic politics, and more interesting implications of all these space-faring races mixing....

Also gods WREX and his planet holy shit,,,,, fuckin' hell yeah my man get their shit together and also adopt Grunt yes good-

And Mordin??? My singing semi-evil scientist best friend forced to confront his choices more than he thought he ever would have???? With some of the best ongoing general report chatter of all the companions??

(when I tell you I choked on my coffee when I talked to him after confirming romance choice w/ Garrus and that 'pamphlet' and 'anaphalactic shot if ingesting-' kajsldkfjsldfjk)

Like, fuck, the fact that they actually dive into the mixed morality and horrors of the genophage, and you can confront Mordin on it, for good reason, yet he still stands his ground, until finally some bits of his loyalty mission seem to... affect him, and I'm guessing might set up things for 3 with him? Unsure, but either way, damn, the fact that they start to dig into it...

And Taliiiii my beloved forbidden alien wife TwT her loyalty mission was SO GOOD. I love how varied they all are?? Getting to defend her and discover what she'd unwittingly been a part of-!!

Zaeed is a bastard but tbh I love that he is and that he's unapologetic in him - and Kasumi omg, best thief. A heist?? Gods, yes- I love our couch lounge chats XD

Samara is..... illegally.......... she's an illegally powerful and beautiful and eloquent MILF...........................

(.... listen I'm sapphic as hell and I'm kicking my own ass for picking her up last aksjdlfksjdfl - but her loyalty mission, damn. And seeing how there's this interesting cultural subset, and the struggle with the Asari in that they unquestioningly accept/respect justicars, but also know that the impact outside their culture is a diplomacy nightmare waiting to happen-)

,.,,,,,T,,, Thane,,,,,

I am weak for morally implicated murder dads okay?? And that voice??? His mannerisms?????? How you first see him, and that prayer after assassinating her...???????? And his history/his people's history with the hanar, gods I love how messy it is, it feels so much more real!

Also Jack is a mess and I love her (and want to get her some therapy, omg), and her and Miranda nearly duking it out after you've done both their loyalty missions??? so good and makes a lot of sense-! Honestly I would love more interactions between teammates on the ship, but there's already so much the devs had to balance I can't blame 'em for minimizing, heh. But suffice to say I also love Miranda and Jacob, even if I'm softest for my alien crew XD Hell yeah Jacob, we'll get loud and spill drinks on the citadel indeed TwT

.... I could write a whole essay on how much I love Garrus oTL Perhaps because he and Tali are the throughlines from 1 on your 2 crew, I have some of the strongest feelings about them... but genuinely, he was one of my favorite companions in the first game, and how you find him as Archangel in two? Getting to help him fight his way out after he's gone nearly 48 hours straight fighting off three gangs alone, jfc. His vengeance quest and what can happen there.... That line? fuck me, that line -

It's so much easier to see the world in black and white. Grey? I don't know what to do with gray...

How DARE you come for my heart like this, devs holy shit

(also, some other choice faves so far from the series from him include We can disobey suicidal orders?? and This wasn't in my training manual... [in 1, if you have him with you @ th Thorian fight] and his whole.... pop the heat sink - in his romance ;Dc)

asdasdfksadjfkl like I said I can write an essay on him PFFF suffice to say I'm very looking forward to his romance scene and where things go in 3

But yeah gods I'm just gonna keep rambling if I'm not careful lol. Gods I don't even know what to talk about it's all so good and while I can understand people roasting the obviousness of Paragon V Renegade (v neutral) choices/alignments, I think they do a pretty damn good job in 2 of pushing it further - to the point that there were some times that I accidentally got renegade points and I wasn't that mad, haha. There's so much fun in the interactions that I just have a good time anyways~

I have so many thoughts about TIM (The Illusive Man) and Cerberus.... theories evolving galore............... and like, what the hell!! Omega 4 going to the center of the galaxy is such a cool twist, goddamn - though my heart still breaks at losing Kaiden (his line if you haven't romanced him?? about feeling like he lost a limb when he lost you??? holy shit.... but I also can't blame him for not trusting Cerberus to the point of it affecting his ability to trust Shepard... like fuck Shep go after himmmm) I'm really excited to see where that goes since he comes back in 3, and what the fuck happens with Cerberus bc while I love the fact that obviously there are a lot of people in it for the right reasons, doing good work, there are those that are doing the opposite, and I have a very bad feeling about where TIM will end up landing....

All that said though I need to do the Reaper IFF mission (where I'm lightly spoiled as to getting That Boy, but not how/what happens to make it so - just that it's apparently wise to have all your side missions done before getting him...) and the actual Omega 4 jump. So we'll see what happens and what I think about it from there heheh!

.... major kudos and genuine props if you made it here to the end, I am so sorry for not editing on condensing all this, and appreciate you so much ;w;

[melodiesofblueroses]

Star Boy (Yoosung x Reader) Pt.2

★ ━ 𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙙 𝘾𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩: 3.2k

Part 1

Part 3

Part 4

Bonus: Alternate ending

        It was a rather cloudy night on this particular evening, and Yoosung was engaging in entertaining himself by reading human literature. He had apparently picked up some “shoujo manga,” whatever that was. The young star boy hated to admit it, but amongst the cliche and cheesy romance tropes within these illustrated books, Yoosung found some joy when reading them. Whether it was the sickeningly sweet romance that drove wild fantasies or his imaginations running amok, Yoosung knew for certain that he desperately sought out a relationship. Maybe it stemmed from the many years of lonely nights he had spent putting up stars in the night sky, wondering whether his whole life would be just the same tiring action. It was quite sad in a sense, being so desperate to seek out a relationship. He just wanted any form of affection really. It was embarrassing and brought a bit of shame upon the blonde. Another thing that did embarrass the star boy was the fact that he thought of (MC) whenever the idea of a romantic relationship crossed his mind. Gosh, why couldn’t he get her off of his mind? Was he that into her? Maybe hormones? He was a celestial body for goodness sake, what hormones could he possibly have? Ugh, he had been reading too many human books, hadn’t he?

        There she sat though, in the same spot as always, atop the bright white of the moon. His heart beat a bit faster, remembering the other night where she had told him her name. (MC). Ah, such a sweet name. It flowed easily and was quite comfortable to say. 

        ���(MC),” he whispered to himself, a small smile present after. Oh how much he longed to talk to her again. God, snap out of it Yoosung! She’s only talked to you once, and you get butterflies in your stomach from such a tiny interaction! Besides, she probably doesn’t think of you that way! You’re such a tiny celestial being in the grand scheme of things, easily replaceable and unnoticed by everyone. All the other beings talk about the sun, the galaxies, and the planets, the most beloved of them all. A lone star boy doesn’t make a big difference for they just dot the skies in order to allow the other celestial bodies to shine as bright as these stars. 

        Yet, (MC)’s words from that night stuck to him. Did he really have an important role? Did the humans down below really enjoy his work? Do they really kiss and share intimate moments with one another under these stars? For a few moments in his entire career, Yoosung felt important. He felt needed in these vast skies. Why, Yoosung was the one that created the backdrop of the sky, even if it allowed the other beings to shine even brighter. Yoosung was needed in this universe! That (MC) sure had a way with words, making Yoosung feel proud of his job. 

        “Yoosung, is that you?” It was that sickly sweet voice again. To others, it might’ve been a bit too much. Maybe it was quite a bit squeaky, or maybe it was just a tinge too irritating, but that voice was a melody to Yoosung’s ears. Why, it’s (MC) of course, the one Yoosung didn’t want to admit that he had fallen for. 

        “(MC)!” He called out in excitement. “Why aren’t you atop of the moon? You know you can’t abandon your position, or else you’ll get shunned by society!” How adorable of Yoosung to look after (MC). “I’ve finished my duty for tonight, but you are just getting started. The night is still young, and the moon needs its maiden to watch over it.” The last part was a bit embarrassing for inexperienced little Yoosung to say, but it was quite worth it as he saw the cutest little blush on (MC).

        “Don’t worry, I just set out on a little walk. Besides, my job is to care for and look after the moon. The moon will keep on shining brightly even without me.” Her eyes glistened when she spoke about her job, which she was quite proud of; to have the honor of guarding the moon at night, when all of its beauty was cast onto the land below, it was quite a respectable position. Yoosung could only dream of that respect for star boys went unnoticed in the society of the celestial beings. “But, thank you for caring. I admit, not many have really looked my way, instead dismissing my job as too easy and unworthy of being a celestial being.”

        “But that’s far from the truth!” Yoosung proclaimed a bit too loudly. “The moon is so important to both the Earth and humans. Why, don’t you control the waves of the four oceans? You also create spectacular eclipses for the humans down below. How could anyone think of saying that your job isn’t important!”

        “Ah, Yoosung,” she giggled. “Thank you so much for your words. They really do mean a lot to me. As I said before, no one really cares for me.” Yoosung blushed a bit from her words. He didn’t really think that he did all that much, but if (MC) was happy, then so was he. “But, since I’ve stumbled onto you here,” she continued, “why don’t you come with me to the moon and continue chatting there?”

                                                               ~

        It was the first time Yoosung had step foot onto the moon, and honestly, it was nothing like what he had expected. From what he had picked up, the moon was a rather rocky and dull surface. Everything was rather monotonous and filled with craters. It wasn’t the ideal place to be. But, God, all those excerpts were completely off. The moon was one of the most spectacular things Yoosung had seen. Of course, the physical descriptions he had heard were correct, but the experience was something else entirely. 

        The stars surrounding the moon shone with such brilliance and almost acted like a spotlight that it put the moon in. The moon was visible from every surface on the Earth, even behind the clouds that tried to cover up the moon. The light prevailed, and it brought a whole new perspective to Yoosung. God, it was his stars that gave a spotlight to the moon. It was his stars that allowed the moon to shine in all its glory. Yes, his stars may have been the backdrops, but it created a gorgeous scenery that perfectly paired with the moon. 

        Atop the moon, where (MC) usually sat to gaze down below, was a dainty table, decorated with bits of stardust that Yoosung suspected was gifted to (MC) by another being. On the white table sat two cups of tea. (MC) had invited him for some tea! What a dream come true this was for him. He would have the honor to chat the night away with his crush while drinking a beverage the humans so highly valued. 

        “How long have you been a star boy?” (MC) started off the conversation, eyes fixated on the figure that lay before her. This was a first for Yoosung. Someone was truly interested in his work, captivated by his presence. Of course, their last encounter wasn’t taken into account. Yoosung had cried in front of this darling, and he tried to forget that. The first time they had actually spoken was when Yoosung was having a bit of a crisis. Perfect. However, second impressions can just be as important as the first, right? 

        “Twenty or so years, I’m quite new at this as you can tell.” Yoosung tried his hardest to avoid her gazing eyes. He could get lost in them, and quite frankly, it was a bit intimidating. Were people really like this when they listened intently to one another? 

        “Really? I couldn’t tell since your work is impeccable. The orientation of these stars and the way they dot the skies; I’ve seen many star boys, but no one comes close to this level. Your depictions of the constellations and the timing of them are also perfect. I can tell you’ve studied up quite a bit on these stars.” God, why did she have to compliment him like that? Did she like to see Yoosung as a blushing mess? Maybe it was to boost his confidence since she knew he wasn’t as proud of his job as he could be. 

        “T-Thank you,” he replied. This was already off to a cringy start. Wonderful. Was this story going in the direction of a cliché romance story where every interaction led to blushing messes? Well, hopefully, the author knows what she’s doing. “What about you? How long have you been a moon girl?”

        “Hmm, well, it’s been around a decade or so I believe. I’m still quite new you see. I’ve been a stardust collector for most of my time out in these vast skies.” She paused to take a sip of her tea. “I’ve always been in such a low-class position, just trailing behind those of importance. It was what I was best at, I believe. I never really uttered a word and just followed those beings that made ‘shooting stars’ and meteors, gathering the stardust that was left behind.” (MC) then made a sweeping motion to the table they were seated at. “This is where I got these starbits and stardust. I couldn’t bear to throw such beauties away, so I always collected and stored them somewhere in my room where I spent the sunny days in. I believed that such beauty would be a shame to be discarded.

        “Thus, I was mocked a lot of the time, by subordinates and those who I thought cared for me. ‘What a silly girl to collect such trash and debris’ they all said, sneering and looking down with such shame and disgust.”

        “But aren’t the starbits and stardust the ones that help decorate the night sky?” Yoosung interrupted, quite taken aback at her story. “If they weren’t so beautiful, then what would their purpose in the night sky be? Didn’t the universe put them there in order to decorate the empty sky? How could they say such a thing?”

        (MC) giggled at his innocence. It was a nice change of pace, always being supported no matter what your opinions on certain topics were. Yoosung was a ball of light in her world full of ridicule. “For a moment, I fell for their lies and deception. I truly thought that I was a naive and stupid little girl who didn’t know a thing about the night sky. After all, I was just a lowly servant to those who created masterpieces in the night sky, such as star showers and meteors. I couldn’t begin to understand the true nature of the night sky.

        “That was until I met Hyun. Oh! I don’t think you know him.” Yoosung thought that name sounded familiar, then remembered it was that fellow who was a bit too praising of his own looks. And he had the nerve to call Yoosung naive! Yoosung scrunched up his face a bit at the remembrance of such a fellow, and (MC) caught on to that. 

        “I see you’ve met Hyun. Yes, he can be a bit overbearing at times, but he was the only one that truly believed in me at the time. I remember when I was assigned to pick up the stardust and bits he left in his path. In our first meeting, he flirted with me. God, how tasteless he could be.” She stopped to giggle at the thought. “But he was always kind to me and treated me as if I was his equal. He never once looked down at me. 

        “One night, I decided to confide in him, reveal to him all of these negative thoughts that were swarming me. He was quite the listener, which took me by surprise. But he gave me such good advice, and bit by bit, he began to help me build my confidence. ‘Don’t listen to those who put you down,’ he once said. ‘You love to collect the stardust, and that’s beyond adorable. If you enjoy it, then why care what anyone else thinks? You live your life the way you want to.’”

        “Besides that, there was this one quote that stuck with me ever since, and I always look back on it. ‘What other people think only lasts a second...but how you consider yourself lasts forever.’”

        Yoosung was quite taken aback by (MC)’s past. He always thought that everyone loved such a sweet angel like her. And that jerk Hyun helped build her confidence? That was certainly uncalled for, at least in Yoosung’s eyes. He didn’t really know Hyun all too well, but his first impression was something else. To be fair, Yoosung’s first impression to (MC) was him crying about how humans didn’t appreciate his work (which is quite alright. Our dear Yoosung just doesn’t know how to be too confident just yet). He wasn’t really one to say anything. 

        “So it was Hyun that helped you out? I always thought that you were so confident and proud of your job! You were so helpful to me last time, and I truly do appreciate you! I can’t believe that there were people who tried to belittle you. That’s so awful!” Yoosung pouted after his little rant. He couldn’t really think of anyone in his life who tried to belittle him. Sure Yoosung wasn’t confident in his work, but no one tried to bring him down. Everyone around him was so supportive of him getting a job as a star boy. He couldn’t imagine a situation such as that of (MC). “But, how did you end up as a moon girl if you started out collecting stardust?” 

        “Apparently, Jihyun, the sun of our solar system, really liked my dedication to my job and basically promoted me to moon girl. Of course, all that hate and negativity came back, and I almost faltered once again, but Hyun was with me this time. He always supported me and basically applauded me for getting a promotion. To be honest, as corny as it sounds, I don’t know where I would be without him. He was one of the first people to ever support me, and I’m so happy to know a guy like him.”

                                                             ~

        The nightly moon chats became a routine for our star boy and moon girl. Every night, once Yoosung finished his duties as quickly as possible, he would make his way over to the moon, chatting the rest of the night away with (MC). Yoosung would like to think that the two of them grew closer due to this ordeal, often sharing intimate secrets and childhood stories. It was quite peculiar, two strangers bonding over similar experiences. Maybe it was due to the fact that (MC) had first seen Yoosung in quite a vulnerable state. Maybe (MC) just felt comfortable around Yoosung. Whatever it was, Yoosung was pleased to finally have someone by his side. The passing nights were continually growing lonelier, and (MC) was an escape from his duties and the society in which they were apart. 

        One night, when the sun was just over the horizon, about to give the spotlight over to the sun in order for it to shine, Yoosung came up with an idea. It was directly after one of his nightly chats with (MC), one where Yoosung finally realized his true feelings. He loved (MC). Now, he always knew that he had a crush on her, ever since he first saw her elegant form, but that was different. He thought that it was just a tiny crush, a fleeting feeling. Perhaps he was just a bit too lonely and started imagining what a relationship would be like. 

        But after endless nights of talking to her, Yoosung realized what his feelings meant. He realized why his heartbeat just a bit faster whenever she was around, what those butterflies in his stomach were, and why he could imagine a future with her. Yoosung truly loved and cared for (MC). She was his escape from reality, from his duties as a star boy, from his frustrations and struggles. (MC) was always there for Yoosung, ready to listen to any vents and give advice. What an angel she truly was. And now, Yoosung wants to do the same for her. He wants to be there for her, similar to how Hyun was always there for (MC). You could say that it was a tinge of jealousy, but Yoosung would rather believe that it was because he truly loved (MC) and wanted her to live a comfortable life. 

        Therefore, he came up with an idea. Yoosung would give (MC) a gift, maybe confess his love for her in the process. Whatever it was, Yoosung wanted to get across to her that he cared for her and would always be there for her. But the problem was, what would a good gift be? He knew that it had to signify his intentions, but he couldn’t quite think of anything. Mm, maybe a piece of a meteor? Nah, what if that reminded her of her past job. Stardust? She already had plenty. Ugh, this was quite difficult. 

He spent the entirety of the next night thinking of a suitable gift for (MC), sitting atop a fluffy cloud that floated throughout the sky. Yoosung had a good idea of what (MC) enjoyed. Maybe he could find a way to harvest some dried flowers from the humans down below. The problem with that, however, is that it was forbidden to go near the human surface. Everything known about humans had been recorded by the ancestors of the celestial beings, those daring enough to go and blend within human society, thus providing many forms of human literature that any celestial being may choose to read. And Yoosung didn’t know of any rebels that could sneak into the human world. Well, that idea was crossed out.

        Maybe he could gift her a book from his shoujo manga collection. But did she like shoujo manga? Ugh, another idea crossed off. He should’ve asked her beforehand. Mm, what else would (MC) possibly like. Maybe he could draw her something. After all, don’t handmade gifts signify that one cares for an individual. The only problem with that is Yoosung wasn’t much of an artist, and he didn’t really know anyone that would willingly draw him a portrait or something. 

        After dwelling on many ideas, Yoosung came up with the perfect gift. Yes, this gift would get across his message to (MC), plus, it would also signify that Yoosung would always be by her side. It was perfect. Now, he just had to start on it. Alright, his plan had gone into action. Yoosung was feeling a bit jittery. Would she even like this gift? Well, he hoped so because that was the only thing he could think of right now. 

        However, there was a bigger problem dwelling on the surface that Yoosung had completely forgotten about. Yoosung had neglected his duties that night, instead using his time to think of a gift for (MC). That cloudy night, Yoosung had forgotten to put up the stars in the sky.

[peanutsandbitterstep]

Sandalphon and the 4 Relics

GBF Fanfiction

Modern Fantasy AU; i took the Relics from RWBY but this isn’t set in the RWBY universe, don’t worry about it

Characters: Sandalphon, Djeeta, Johann, Catherine (with an alias)

Summary: After months of searching, Sandalphon had finally tracked the four Relics to a wealthy art collector by the name of Cohen. With that, he was one step closer to resurrecting Lucifer and making up for his past mistakes. Now, it was just a matter of taking it.

On the surface, the security to the mansion was nothing special. There was the front gate and he could see two guards at the door. Bypassing that would be simple enough and Sandalphon was confident in his ability to handle things if it turned into a fight.

What was a little daunting was the sheer size of the house. He had no idea where the Relics were being kept and there was so much space to cover. As soon as it got dark, he should waste no time breaking in and starting the search.

“That’s not going to work, you know.”

Sandalphon whirled around, hand going to his sword. But instead of an enemy, it was… “You!“

The Singularity was standing a few feet away with that familiar grin she always had when she was teasing him.

Scowling, he said, “You don’t even know what my plan is.“

“Is it to sneak in tonight to search for the Relics, use Ain Soph Eur to smash through the additional wards, and then make a break for it?”

“A-additional wards?”

“Uh, yeah? These are one-of-a-kind artifacts and the guy can shell out the money for some high-quality ones.” Putting one hand on her hip, she asked, “You don’t even know where in the house the Relics are, huh?”

“How…?“

“Because I know you? And your usual tactic is to blast through things with as much power as you need to. But lucky for you, we have a plan, so you can just join us!”

“Me? Work with you?”

“Why not? It went well last time. Also, we’ve put weeks of work into this and I really need you to not mess up our plans.” She put out her hand. “So what do you say?”

Sandalphon narrowed his eyes, considering. It would be wiser to join forces with people who actually had made preparations. And he was still in enough debt that getting in her way without cause would be unthinkable. “What is your aim? Why are you after the Relics?”

Dropping her hand, the Singularity’s mood palpably darkened. “I need the Crown of Choice. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to get it.”

If that was her goal, then there was no reason for conflict. “Very well, I will assist you with your plan.”

Smiling once again, she grabbed his hand and firmly shook it. “Great! Looking forward to our partnership or whatever. I’ll introduce you to the others.”

In a car whose ownership the Singularity was suspiciously evasive about, the two of them picked up dinner from some takeout place and then drove to a small tan house in a residential area.

“I found our bodyguard!” the Singularity announced after she closed the front door.

The inside of the house was far messier than the outside had suggested. The couch, which had been pulled out into a bed, was unmade. Clothes were haphazardly thrown on a desk. The kitchen table was strewn with debris and what looked like a half-made mock sword. The Singularity cleared a space on the table and directed him to put the bag of takeout down, while she rummaged around one of the drawers. He could see that the sink was full and the counter also cluttered with trash. As he slowly unpacked the food, a woman with pink hair and a man with gray hair entered. Noticeably not with them were the girl in blue or the dragon.

“This is our bodyguard?” the woman asked, looking him up and down.

“Yep. Don’t worry, he’s tougher than he looks,” the Singularity said, coming back with spoons. “Hey, whose turn is it to do dishes?”

“Sorry, I’ll do them sometime tonight,” the man said, grabbing a paper plate and beginning to pile on food.

“By the way, which Relic do you want?” the Singularity asked. “You know what I want and Johann here called dibs on the Lamp of Knowledge.”

“If he’s also seeking knowledge, I don’t mind sharing,” the one that was apparently Johann said. “Or collaborating if our research overlaps. Nice to meet you, by the way. I’m the primary magic-user for this mission.”

“…right,” Sandalphon said. “I’m after the Staff of Creation.”

“Okay,” the woman said, sitting down with her own plate. “I’m Victoria, the planner and the one taking the lead. So who are you and what can you do?”

For a moment, Sandalphon weighs the benefits of lying. As the instigator of an apocalypse, surely they would reject his inclusion on this mission. But he also hadn’t prepared anything and being caught would reflect even more poorly.

“He helped out our crew when someone’s mad science experiment almost killed us,” the Singularity said, jumping to sit on the counter.

“That isn’t–“

“He also complimented my hands the second time we met.”

“That isn’t what happened!” Sandalphon snapped, feeling his face heat up as he spun around to face her.

The Singularity cackled. “Well how else would you describe it?”

Deciding that expending time or energy on that argument would be a waste, Sandalphon turned his back on her to face the others. If they kicked him out, so be it; in fact, he might even prefer that at the moment. “My name is Sandalphon–”

“Really?” Johann looked to the Singularity for confirmation. Whatever she did seemed to excite him and he said, “That means you have first-hand knowledge about–“

“Business first, Johann,” Victoria said and Johann scowled. “What fighting style do you have and what abilities?”

Suddenly feeling the weight of scrutiny again, Sandalphon summoned his metaphysical swords. “I can use these at the same time as my physical sword, meaning I can perform multiple attacks in a short span of time. It also makes counterattacks relatively simple.”

“He’s also more resilient than he should be,” the Singularity added. “He took a giant attack from Avatar to the face and I thought he died right there. And, I mean, he wasn’t fine, but he was very much not dead.”

Sandalphon remembered that, flying to meet an attack that seemed like a crimson sun. For a brief moment, it was as though he was being crushed, bones groaning and organs about to rupture. He’d had enough presence of mind to lash out with Ecliptica and get some minor payback, before hitting the ground.

Shaking off that memory, he said, “If I charge up enough energy, I can summon beams of light to hit my target.”

“I see,” Victoria said, resting her chin on laced fingers. “Are you good at waiting?”

He wanted to laugh bitterly at that. “Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll make adjustments to the plan and let you know tomorrow.”

“You should eat,” the Singularity said.

One shopping trip and a few hours later, Sandalphon wondered what his life had become as he was lying down in Johann’s room.

(“If he takes the spare bed in your room, do you promise you won’t keep him up all night asking questions?” the Singularity had asked.

The response had not been reassuring, but so far, he had been quiet.)

He had no real context for any of it, but the past quarter of a day felt very… mortal. Was this what normal life was like for them?

This whole undertaking of asking primals for information about the Relics was outside his realm of expertise, but it was still part of his purpose as the surrogate Supreme Primarch who needed to make things right. He was entirely out of his depth with whatever this thing the Singularity had dragged him into was. 

His thoughts were broken when Johann inhaled and the air practically seemed to vibrate with anticipation. Sandalphon resisted the urge to bury his face in his pillow and groan.

“Can I ask just one question?”

“Fine. Just one question,” Sandalphon growled and immediately regretted it when Johann launched into a spiel about different texts’ interpretation of Estalucia.

“…so I was wondering if you had any insight about whether it’s a real place or purely metaphorical.”

“Unfortunately, I was not privy to that information. I doubt even Lucifer knew.”

“Do you think–“

“I meant it when I said only one question.”

The room settled into disappointed silence for a moment. “You’re mentioned too, you know.”

Sandalphon pondered how much bodily harm he could get away with doing.

“From a text written around the 500s. It says you’re the ‘beloved of the Supreme Primarch.’”

“It says I’m what?” Sandalphon sat up, feeling like his head was spinning.

“That’s just a rough translation,” Johann continued, as though Sandalphon hadn’t said anything, “but the point is that people will always remember you as someone Lucifer cares about.”

“Why do they care?” Sandalphon demanded, voice suddenly raspy. “What does it matter to them who I was?”

“That’s just part of being a person,” Johann said. “We care about who people are to each other. And the fact that someone wrote it down means someone thought it was important.”

“Why are we talking about this?”

Johann didn’t answer immediately but when he did, his voice was the most serious it had been the entire conversation. “Because I think you should know that even as it’s your job to watch, we’re also looking back.”

“Is that supposed to be a threat?”

“No. Just a statement of fact. I’ve noticed that those with a long lives tend to forget that, both in a lonely way and an irresponsible way. You’re welcome to take it either way or have your own interpretation of it.”

A sharp rap at the door interrupted what Sandalphon was going to say.

“I’m going to sleep!” Johann called defensively.

“Could they hear what we were saying?” Sandalphon asked, horrified.

“No, just that we were talking. Good night.”

It took Sandalphon’s mind a while to settle. He’d never thought about what mortals would write about primals, not really. And that wasn’t particularly how he wanted to be known. What was written about Lucifer? Had he known all those eyes were on him?

He wasn’t aware of falling asleep, but Johann getting up roused him. The clock indicated that it was 8:30. He mentally went over yesterday’s events to make sure he knew what was going on before also getting out of bed.

The Singularity was still asleep on the couch bed. Victoria was awake at the table, working on a laptop. A completed Sword of Destruction was beside her, which Johann was looking over.

Victoria held a few pieces of paper out to him. “This is the layout of the mansion. Memorize it. We plan on striking tomorrow, since that’s when Cohen will go on a business trip.”

The floor plan was neat and clearly labeled with the exits. The Relics were stored in the basement.

“Did you have a plan on how to get out of the city?” Victoria asked.

“Flying.”

“On a plane or with your wings?”

“As long as you’re sure you won’t be caught, fine.”

Johann put down the sword and walked over to the coffee maker, filling up the mug beneath. Noticing Sandalphon watching, he held it out, asking, “Would you like some?”

“I wouldn’t,” Victoria warned as Sandalphon took it and studied the contents.

It seemed like normal coffee. He wasn’t expecting anything amazing, but it was at least worth a taste. Carefully, Sandalphon took a sip and resisted the urge to spit it out.

“I told you,” Victoria said in a sing-song voice. “Johann’s standards are terrible.”

“Rude.” Johann pouted and filled up another mug. Drinking from it, he said, “I think it tastes perfectly fine.”

“Is it bully Johann time already?” the Singularity asked, yawning as she joined them.

“I don’t like this game.”

“Then maybe you should have better taste,” Victoria said, chuckling. “Everyone eat breakfast. We’ll have our team meeting after.”

The plans were impressive for its thoroughness, with back-ups and contingencies for everything. Sandalphon had gone into battles with only a fraction of the preparation done here.

His part was relatively simple: stand at the entrance to the basement and deal with things violently if that’s what was called for.

“If everything goes smoothly, you’ll have a boring night,” Victoria said. “But they usually don’t, so remember that our goal is to get out with the Relics without being caught or our identities discovered. Are the forgeries finished?”

“Yep,” the Singularity said.

“Good. Then the team meeting is adjourned. You and Johann don’t have anymore tasks until tomorrow. Sandy, look over this.”

“Sand–“

The Singularity clapped him on the shoulder. “Have fun, Sandy,” she said, before running off.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why not? It’s a perfectly adequate nickname,” Victoria said. “Now pay attention, this is important.”

An hour later and Sandalphon’s head felt stuffed with information about law enforcement and the layout of the city. He rubbed his temples as he squinted at the description of Cohen’s security force.

“You should take a break,” Victoria said.

“I’m fine.”

Victoria put her hand on the papers to block the words from view. “Take a break. You’re no good to us if you burn yourself out right now. I doubt Djeeta will be lucky enough to come across another friend who’ll be our bodyguard.”

“We aren’t friends.”

“Oh? Then why are you here?” There was a hint of something steel in those words that made Sandalphon look at her sharply.

“Excuse me?”

“With your power, you could charge into Cohen’s home right now and get what you want. So why haven’t you?”

“I… just think discretion would be wiser,” he said in a terribly unconvincing way, considering that it was true.

“Hm, I do admire a man that knows how to hold back,” Victoria mused.

What kind of conversation am I having right now? Sandalphon thought, but didn’t know how to verbalize.

“But if you and Djeeta really aren’t friends, then I need your confirmation that you’re all in on this plan. If you tell me you want out now, I won’t hold it against you.”

So far, he had spent most of his time feeling aggravated or confused. Of course he wanted to get away from these people as soon as possible and go back to traveling. But that didn’t mean he was just going to quit. “I’m going to see this through.”

Victoria nodded, pleased. “Good.”

Sandalphon wondered if her promise to not hold a grudge had been a lie. There’d be no purpose in asking, though, not after he’d just confirmed his commitment.

It was early in the evening when the Singularity ran up to Victoria, phone in hand.

“Chat Noir uploaded,” the Singularity said.

“He what?!” Victoria shouted, grabbing the phone.

Curious, Sandalphon looked over her shoulder to see what was happening. It was a thirty second video, announcing Chat Noir’s intention to steal the Eye of Jupiter, whatever that meant.

“That son of a–! If he had any pride as a thief, he wouldn’t perform these theatrics.” Victoria tapped on the edge of the phone, thinking. “Change of plans, we’re stealing the relics tonight.”

“Tonight?” the Singularity said.

“I’m not risking Cohen getting spooked and deciding to upgrade his security.” Victoria handed the phone back and pulled up a train schedule. “Tell Johann.”

The Singularity ran to the hallway, shouting the announcement.

“Tonight?! I need to return my library books!” There was a bang, probably from the bathroom door being flung open, and then sound of Johann running to the bedroom.

“You can dry your hair first!”

“It’ll dry on the way,” Johann said and was out the front door.

“Sandy, can you do the dishes?” the Singularity asked as she started to strip the sheets from the couch bed. “Use the gloves above the sink.”

Glancing at him, Victoria began, “Do you know how–“

“Yes, I know how,” he said, rolling his eyes and standing.

The next few hours passed in a whirlwind of packing and destroying anything incriminating. Victoria did a final sweep of the house while the rest of them waited in the car.

“Legend has it that the Relics could be used to call its creators back from their journey,” Johann said. “Have you ever met them?”

“No.” The Brothers of Light and Darkness had been long gone by the time Sandalphon had first set foot in the mortal realm. He hadn’t come across them in his travels either.

“That’s good. Don’t need to add another crisis on top of everything else,” the Singularity said.

Victoria joined them in the car. “Let’s go.”

The Singularity parked about a block away.

“Remember, Cohen will be in the house, so make as little noise as possible. And don’t kill him, no matter what.” At that last part, Victoria gave Johann a meaningful look.

“I promise I won’t kill him,” Johann said.

“Good luck! Be careful,” the Singularity said.

Almost there, Lucifer, Sandalphon thought as he followed the other two.

They entered through a window on the bottom floor and crept through the dark house to the basement. As instructed, Sandalphon waited at the top of the steps, just out of sight, so he could keep a lookout.

The first one they got was the Sword of Destruction. As soon as the wards were down, Sandalphon felt its power, confirming its authenticity, even as Johann made the ‘ok’ sign.

With that, Johann placed the forgery in place and began redoing the wards, while Victoria worked on getting the Crown of Choice. Sandalphon shifted from one foot to the other, watching the shadows move and listening for approaching footsteps.

An hour and then another half passed before they were finished. No danger arose and the escape from the house was similarly uneventful.

“We got them. Drive,” Victoria said as soon as they were in the car. 

The Singularity’s knuckles were white as she gripped the steering wheel. “All right!”

Johann’s laugh was giddy, bordering on disbelief. “Did we do it?”

“Not until we’re out of the city,” Victoria said, putting the crown in the Singularity’s bag. “Don’t let your guard down.”

Sandalphon and the Singularity were dropped off near the train station. Victoria would be taking Johann to another station to go in another direction before heading on her own with the car.

The Singularity threw her arms around Victoria, whose face turned bright red. “You’re the best.”

Coughing to regain her composure, Victoria said, “Naturally. Stay safe on your way back.”

“You too.”

Johann was similarly embraced.

“Make sure you stay out of trouble.”

“Are you sure you–“

“Yes, I’ll be fine.”

The Singularity waved at them as they drove away. Sandalphon turned the Staff of Creation disguised as an ordinary walking stick in his hands. He felt energized as the power hummed against his palms.

Grinning at him, the Singularity said, “Glad everything went smoothly. Thanks for all your help.”

Sandalphon considered what he should say. He could just leave now. He did not have to get involved with the Singularity’s problems. “Where’s the girl in blue? And the dragon? Weren’t you inseparable?”

Djeeta’s smile faded and she looked away. “I’m going to meet them now.” Checking the time, she said, “I need to go. Say hi to Lucifer for me.”

Manifesting his wings, Sandalphon reached up and plucked a feather from his wings, holding it out to her. “You can tell him that yourself. After I get him back, I’ll find you. And I’ll help you if you need it.”

She stared at it and then up at him, uncertain.

“You have a train to catch,” he snapped. “Hurry up and take it.”

“Fine.” She grabbed it and began to run off, calling over her shoulder. “I’ll see you around.”

Sandalphon only watched her for a second and then spread his wings and took flight.

A/N: This got a little out-of-hand; I thought this was going to be quick. Instead, the word count doubled and I was stuck with too many ideas that could not work with Sandalphon as the main focus. I hope you enjoyed it anyway. Please forgive the deficiencies.

[spicyshreddedpautato]

DRRM

The best thing about living in the province is that life here is very simple. It’s not as grand as the busy streets and the towering buildings of big cities but its where you find peace.

My beloved Masbate never fails to amaze me with what it has to offer. After being struck by Typhoon Tisoy, the people in it have pushed past this disaster to show the world their beautiful hearts.

I’ve lived all my life in the provincial capital of Masbate but it was my first time to truly see beyond the comforts of the streets that I grew up in. Barangay Nursery has in it so many wonderful people who despite all the harshness of life remains hopeful of tomorrow.

Photo taken from the official facbook page of Barangay Nursery.

Situated near the sea, Purok 8 of Barangay Nursery is usually affected by storm surges brought about by strong winds blowing towards its border. This results in thousands of pesos worth of damages to infrastructure every time a storm hits Masbate. The houses in Puroks 1, 2 and 8 are mostly made up of light materials which can easily be blown of by the wind. 

Aside from it being made of wood, the houses are also placed very near each other. This causes fire to spread rapidly in these areas. They also are located in alleys wherein vehicles can’t pass making it harder for the firemen to put out the 

fire.

Purok 8 is also on top of a swamp. Many of the houses here do not have bathrooms. This poses a risk on the health of the residents as their urine and feces are flushed out on the swamp. Many insects, such as cockroaches and mosquitoes, and rats thrive in this area. 

There are also a lot of low hanging wires found all throughout the barangay. There are also wires that have been cut wherein the electrical end is hanging out. This poses a threat to people as they may be electrocuted.

According to Ma’am Ariane Gonzales, the secretary of barangay Nursery, the biggest problem that the community is facing right now would be the proper segregation of wastes. She said that this causes problems to the barangay as non-segregated wastes are not collected by the garbage collectors and are usually just left lying around. Stray dogs usually rummage through the trashes which cause the garbage to be scattered.

When heavy rain comes, most of those are carried off by water to nearby drainage which causes clogging. Canals in turn overflow and cause flooding.

In terms of disaster preparedness Ma’am Ariane said that the barangay has a huge fund reserved for when unfortunate events come. They also stationed leaders per purok to guide the residents in times of trouble. They also conduct drills to equip the residents on what to do if disasters come. Unfortunately, not all of the people in the barangay participate in the event. Most are busy and can’t attend while others are just apathetic. This act of indifference towards community events lead to ignorance on the proper way to act in a given incident.

While we can’t do anything about the attitude of the people, we can choose a certain portion of the barangay and train them to respond to hazardous events. Information on basic practices to do during emergencies such as duck, cover, and hold should be disseminated.

They can also hire people to segregate wastes like what other barangays around the city are doing. This will ensure that all the trash generated by the community will be collected by the garbage collectors. They should also opt in placing canal covers so that people will not fall over the sewers.

Similarly, our country is also not very prepared whenever disasters come. Our infrastructures are not strong enough to withstand the strong rumble of the earth whenever an earthquake strikes. Better policies on how we can overcome the impacts of disasters should be made.

I strongly believe that disasters are not natural and its impacts are always reducible. We become vulnerable to disasters because we are incapacitated. We are not doing what we should do because we do not know what to do.

Being able to do the DRRM kwentuhan and the community walk, I realized the importance of disaster preparedness. A lot of the stuffs that we have to do to make ourselves have the capacity to overcome disasters may seem inconvenient but if we look at its long-term contribution, we can say that it is an investment.

Our children and elderlies are those most prone to suffer the impacts of bad events.  We need to strongly address the issue about the disasters in our country. Lives are at stake whenever hazards strike a vulnerable community. Those people whose lives have been claimed by disasters aren’t just numbers that flash on our television screens to remind us that we need to strengthen our policies on disaster preparedness; they had dreams that could have been accomplished if they had the capacity to rise above it.

We shouldn’t just let the government take all the weight of preparing the nation; we should also do our parts in our very own community. We should use our voices to educate those who are ignorant. Simple and little as it seem but this act increases the capacity of a community against disasters.

[i-am-thedragon]

Repairs

Here’s a DHMIS fanfic I wrote back in March 2016, but never uploaded for whatever reason. I recently rediscovered it and I’m posting it now, because I’m on a bit of a DHMIS kick and I honestly miss being active in the fandom. I considered editing some bits of this fanfic, but I decided to leave it as is in all its “my pretentious 2016 writing style” glory. Also note (to those unfamiliar with my fanfics) that I referred to the characters as Red(Redmond), Donnie, and Crowe at the time, before their names were confirmed(?) as being ‘Red Guy’, ‘Yellow Guy’, and ‘Duck’.

Story description: After the events of DHMIS 4, our three beloved protagonists are left with an aggressive (but slowly dying) computer they do not know what to do with. But of course, one puppet’s trash is another’s high-value collector’s treasure. 6331 words, mild mentions of gore.

Without further delay, here is Repairs.

Donnie stood silently in the hall, pouting at a seemingly inconspicuous closed door. The door led into the games room, in which the board games, the laptop, and other knick-knacks were kept. The child let out a whine as he slouched forward unhappily, his orange nose almost touching the door.

His attention turned to the sound of approaching footsteps from the end of the hall. It was his friend Crowe, peering at him with curiosity.

“What’s the matter?” The green-feathered duck asked. “Why in the world are you staring at that door?”

He had a feeling, however, that he already knew the answer.

“I wanna play Money Win.” Donnie grumbled, scuffing his foot dejectedly on the ground. “But the scary computer’s in there.”

“Oh, he’s not that scary.” Crowe responded with a chuckle. “He’s just a box of gadgetry, all made up of buttons and wires!”

“Well if you’re not scared of him, why don’t you get the Money Win game for me!” Donnie retorted somewhat defensively. “…Please?”

The smile was wiped from Crowe’s beak as he thought about actually going in there. He didn’t want to admit it, but Colin the Computer did unnerve him. The ‘games room incident’ had only occurred a couple of days earlier, and that room had been an unpleasant place to be ever since. Whenever someone went in there Colin would act up, making strange noises and asking increasingly nonsensical questions like “Did you drink a orange today?” or “How many egg are you?”, and growing unpredictable and aggressive. Still, it wasn’t like he could get hurt in there, right? Colin was just a bunch of buttons, wires, and circuits after all.

“Alright, fine!” Crowe huffed. “But I get first turn when we start playing!”

 Crowe tried to hide his hesitation as he turned the door knob and pushed the door open. The games room stood before him, in its usual presentable state. On the table in the center, however, stood that computer, gazing back at him with gritted teeth and that square-eyed stare. Traces of a mysterious dirty-yellow liquid trickled from his eyes and mouth. Colin began emitting a low-quality whining noise upon being noticed. Crowe gulped as he stepped inside. Lucky for him at least, the board game he was after was on top of the shelf right near the doorway, so he wouldn’t have to pass Colin to get to it. Not so fortunately, it was far too high for him to reach.

“I’m sorry, Donnie, you’ll have to ask Red to get it.” Crowe spoke, shaking his head.

Donnie simply gave a sad nod and walked away, leaving Crowe alone. The bird’s attention wandered to the desk at the other end of the room, on which sat a quill and ink. One of his beloved possessions! Oh how he’d missed it those past few days. Crowe wanted it back… But he had to make it past Colin first. Surely that wouldn’t be a problem, or so he hoped. With slow, steady steps, he paced past the table. When he glanced at the computer watching over him ominously, the two locked in a gaze. It seemed Colin’s stare was growing more malevolent and his voice increasing in pitch and volume with each passing moment, until he finally snapped.

“WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT MEEEEEEEEEE-“

Crowe nearly jumped right out of his feathers before turning and bolting out of the games room, slamming the door shut behind him.

 At that moment, Red and Donnie entered the hallway, stopping when they noticed how panicked their friend looked.

“It’s the computer, isn’t it?” Red sighed.

“Well, I uh, I got a little startled, that’s all!” Crowe squeaked shakily with a sheepish grin.

Donnie folded his arms with an ‘I told you so’ smirk as Red pondered what to do.

“I think he’s dying anyway.” Red decided with a shrug. “Just leave him ‘til he stops moving and making noises.”

“So… No Money Win?” Donnie asked.

“Not yet.”

 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

 A few days passed and Red simply couldn’t handle it. He hardly cared about that creepy computer anymore, he needed his laptop. He longed for that pristine screen, those data-filled files, that sweet, sweet, internet connection. Colin could scream and flail all he wanted, Red was getting that laptop back.

Upon opening the door, Red was greeted by a warbled screeching as Colin flailed his cord-like arms around. That nasty yellowish substance was still leaking from the computer’s eyes and mouth, staining the tablecloth. Red knew that Colin hated him the most, and was particularly aggressive in his presence.

The long-haired figure ignored the screeching and flailing, turning to a nearby shelf and gently removing a closed laptop from the top of it. What a superior piece of technology it was. While he was there, Red also collected Crowe’s quill and ink from the desk and the Money Win game from atop the shelf. He would come for the rest later. Colin’s screeching tried to form itself into words, but all that came out was an enraged digital mess.

After pushing the games room door shut with his foot, Red trudged into the living room and placed the board game on the book shelf.

“I wonder if Donnie will notice it’s there when he comes back into the living room.” Crowe chuckled, watching Red from his rocking chair. “He’s in his bedroom playing with his toys at the moment.”

“Oh, I got this for you.” Red stated, turning around and holding out the quill and ink.

The duck sprung from his chair and darted over gleefully, taking his beloved possession with a smile.

“Ah, thank you so much!” He exclaimed. “I heard that nasty computer screaming bloody murder while you were in there. Golly, that must have been frightening!”

“Not really, it’s not like he can do much other than that anymore.” Red replied with a shrug. “Give him a few more days and he’ll be pretty much dead. Anyway, I got our laptop back, too. I really need to check my emails.”

 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

 A few further days passed. Although he rarely admitted it, the deep web was one of Red’s favourite places to explore. That’s where a lot of the stranger sites were. He wasn’t into the completely depraved and grotesque content, of course, but by now he was mostly desensitised to it anyway. Red mostly came across websites made by people with unique obsessions; the kind of people with entire websites dedicated to rocking chairs and video segments of themselves describing and analysing every chair in their collection.

It was one of those sort of sites Red had come across that evening, one made by someone with a deep fascination with old computers. He shook his head as he scrolled down, wondering how anyone could deal with so much painfully outdated technology. Whoever this person was, they possessed not only a large collection of those vintage machines, but just about every manual or advertisement piece relating to them. Clicking on a page for any of this person’s computers would lead to long page with in-depth descriptions of its history, functions, maintenance, and so on. Perhaps it wasn’t so much how frighteningly comprehensive the site was that made Red just a little uncomfortable, but rather the sight of all those old, outdated computers. They all reminded him so much of Colin. Still, credit due where credit was due, he was impressed with the effort the owner of this site had put into it.

Red was thinking of logging off for the evening when he came across something that made his heart jump. On a web page detailing the few vintage computers not in the site owner’s possession, there was an advertisement with an all too familiar face on it.

“It’s that darn thing in the games room…” Red muttered quietly to himself, taking a sip from his mug of coffee.

The advertisement, scanned from some old magazine or newspaper, featured that blocky machine with those square eyes and gritted teeth.

The Smart Boy Industries ALL NEW Computery Guy!

The pinnacle of modern technology! Comes with Doors ∞ pre-installed!

Can count at incredible speeds, tell the time with pinpoint accuracy, and remember personal info!

All thanks to Smart Boy Industries’ patented DIGITAL MIND!

Now Red was both disturbed and curious. He wanted to know more about the digital beast terrorising the games room. Luckily, this deep-web site didn’t fail to deliver.

I’ve been wanting to get my paws on one of these beauties for ages, but I don’t think it’ll happen. I’ve searched far and wide all over the web, but no-one’s selling one! I wouldn’t blame them, really. Can you believe only 50 of them were ever made? They were discontinued pretty quickly after their release on June 19, 1985 and became a real rarity. Chances are most, if not all of them, have either been thrown out or simply stopped working by now. The Computery Guy line was incredibly controversial due to the inclusion of the ‘digital mind’- A piece of REAL brain or brain-like tissue that was supposed to make the computer smarter and more functional. I can see how that raised a lot of ethical issues. In fact, three months after the release of the Computery Guy they were banned in 19 countries. Smart Boy Industries took a huge hit from the controversy, they almost got shut down entirely! I am fairly sure they’re still around, but much smaller and they don’t make computers anymore. I heard they do make printers and other electronics now, though. Anyway, here are some of the Computery Guy’s unique functions…

Red didn’t read beyond that point. That computer was a rarity? Possibly the last unit of the model! That wasn’t what surprised him the most, though. Colin essentially had a real brain. That might have explained some of his odd behaviour.

 “Red, may I use the laptop briefly when you’re done with it?” Spoke Crowe from nearby, startling Red. “There’s an old song with a title that escapes me at the moment. I was hoping I might find the answer online.”

“Sure.” Replied Red. “But first, you should take a look at this.”

He swiveled the laptop around and showed it to his friend. Crowe looked at the screen with disgust at first, then the same morbid curiosity Red had felt before.

“I’m surprised anyone would want one of those.” The bird scoffed. “Though I suppose ours isn’t exactly… Functioning properly.”

“I wonder what the computer was like in his better days.” Red thought aloud with a shrug.

“Where did you find this anyway?” Crowe asked. “Have you been exploring the deep web again? I heard it’s a dangerous place.”

“Relax, Crowe, it’s just a site about old computers.”

“How much do you think this person would pay us for our Computery Guy?”

Red did a double-take upon hearing that question.

“You think we should sell him to whoever owns this site?”

“Yes. Well, we need to get him off our hands somehow. And surely you know by now that disposing of computers and other electronics in landfill is terrible for the environment! Besides, if this mysterious person is that much of an avid enthusiast for vintage computers, we should get quite a bit in return.”

Red dwelled on the idea for a silent moment or two. Receiving Colin could make this person’s day, or possibly ruin it, too. Either way, they’d probably pay big money for him. Unfortunately, it seemed the Computery Guy in the games room was in his final days anyway. While a non-functional model might still be worth something, he probably wouldn’t be worth a whole lot.

“Alright Crowe.” Red decided. “I’ll see if I can contact this person tomorrow. Whoever they are they need to know what they’re getting into, first.”

 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

 Hello. My name is Redmond. I was browsing your vintage computer website the other day and I saw you had interest in the Smart Boy Industries’ ‘Computery Guy’. It looks like you haven’t updated your site for quite a long time, but I was wondering if you were still interested in owning one. My friends and I have one in our games room we’ve been meaning to get rid of, and we were thinking you might be interested in buying it. Unfortunately, the computer is pretty broken at this point. Please respond if you’re interested.

-Redmond

Red sent the email to the contact address given on that deep-web site. He hoped he would get a reply within the following week or two, but if not, then so be it. It was worth a shot regardless. He ended up receiving a reply early the next day.

Hello Redmond! I’m Pillars Cloudfoot. I’m very excited about your offer! I’ve yet to make contact with someone owning a Computery Guy, let alone someone offering to sell theirs! Wow!

Which one is he? Someone on one of my forums told me they all have a unique name- Caleb, Curtis, Clyde, Carl, Chris, Connor, Colin, Cameron, Craig, Colby, Clarence, Calvin, Corby, and Claude, to name a few.

Don’t worry about him being broken, I’d imagine they all kicked the bucket a couple decades ago. Even if I can’t find a way to repair him I’ll be glad just to have him in my collection. All I ask is that you show me a photo first, just so I know you’re being legitimate about this. Don’t take it personally, there are just too many scammers out there, y’know?

-Mx. Cloudfoot

 Red was pleased with the response he received. This ‘Pillars’ seemed like a pretty decent person, and they were certainly happy about the offer. When Red stepped into the games room with his laptop in his hands, Colin began emitting a low, droning whine comparable to a toy with a low battery. Other than that, though, he didn’t do anything. He simply sat in place, his jaw hanging open and his eyes filled with malice despite his drooping eyelids.

“Be quiet, you won’t have to deal with us too much longer.” Red said as he turned the laptop to face the computer.

He clicked a button and took a photo of Colin using the laptop’s in-built webcam. The image quality wasn’t too great but it was good enough, and it saved Red having to get the camera and go searching for the USB cord to connect it to the laptop.

Looking at the photo he’d just taken, and then back at Colin, he realised just how much of a nasty condition the computer was in. Remnants of a strange yellowish fluid had dried in his mouth and eyes, and in pools beneath him, and his face seemed stuck in a weary but vicious scream. The grainy quality of the photo didn’t help. Red had a feeling Pillars wouldn’t appreciate that.

 Thanks for responding to my offer. I’ve attached a photo of the Computery Guy- His name is Colin- and as you can probably tell he’s not in such good shape. I should point out that he wasn’t originally ours, he appeared in our house less than a fortnight ago out of nowhere and was actually mostly functional at the time. We’ve no idea where he came from or who owned him before us. All we can tell is that Colin was really aggressive and kind of rude, too. He managed to scare all three of us. That’s why we’re selling him. I hope that doesn’t put you off buying him, Pillars. It’s not like he can really do anything now anyway. I’ll try to get that dried fluid cleaned up, too. I don’t know what it is, though.

-Redmond

A response came only several hours later.

Yikes! I see what you mean! Good grief, poor Colin!

Actually, you have me very curious and a bit concerned. If what you say is true, Colin’s been functioning for almost three decades! Incredible! But you said he was aggressive? How so? From what I know the Computery Guys were never meant to be aggressive or disobedient in any circumstances. That’s really strange. Now that he’s dead you can’t run diagnostics, but I think you should take a look at his digital mind anyway. Just see if anything looks abnormal.

In case you don’t know how, here’s how to get the digital mind out:

Press the green, red, and blue button on the back of the monitor simultaneously, hold for six seconds, and then turn the knob beside it until you hear a click. That should eject the digital mind cartridge. You can open the cartridge to inspect the digital mind but I highly recommend not leaving it open for too long. It’s bad to expose the digital mind for too long. Then slide the cartridge back in when you’re done.

I’ve also attached a couple of scans uploaded to one of my forums. You’ll probably need to take some bits apart to properly clean Colin so these couple of pages from the manual should detail how to do that. Apparently Smart Boy Industries knew the Computery Guys were prone to small leakages around the eyes and mouth, but I don’t know how yours got THAT bad.

-Mx. Cloudfoot

Cleaning all that bizarre dried gunk off Colin would give Red something to do over the weekend. Maybe Donnie and Crowe would help, though he wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t want to. Heck, even he was hesitant about touching Colin again.

 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

 Donnie peeked his head through the doorway timidly, gripping at the door frame with his fingers. He watched as his two best friends sat themselves down around the table with a toolbox, the laptop, and some rags and cleaning supplies. The child nervously eyed the subject of interest, the now lifeless computer in the center of the table. Colin was still in the same state as when Red last saw him, only quieter. His jaw still hung agape, his eyelids droopy and his cord-like arms limp. That residue around his eyes and mouth only made his appearance more morbid.

Red began by placing one hand on top of Colin and firmly grasping the computer’s jaw with the other. With a pull and a slight jiggle, the jaw detached and Red handed it over to Crowe. Without a word, Crowe began cleaning Colin’s jaw, scrubbing away the mysterious yellow residue from between the teeth. Red pulled a screwdriver from his toolbox and began unscrewing the frame around Colin’s monitor. That part needed to be removed so Red could properly clean around Colin’s eyes.

Donnie watched on with cautious curiosity. Even if he wasn’t as afraid of the computer as he had been before, he still didn’t want to be in the same room as him. Besides, cleaning dirty computer parts didn’t sound like much fun anyway. It was rather interesting to watch, though.

 Red and Crowe finished cleaning Colin more quickly than they had anticipated. Red had expected those strange leaks to have from a bit deeper within Colin, yet neither he nor Crowe had any luck finding the source of it. It was if the substance had just appeared at the computer’s eyes and mouth. As red screwed the frame of Colin’s monitor back on, Crowe spoke.

“Weren’t you advised to check the digital mind?” He reminded.

“I was about to get to that, actually.” Red answered.

Red placed the screwdriver back into the toolbox and turned Colin around. As told by both Pillars and the instruction manual scans, there were three buttons- a red one, a green one, and a blue one- and a knob beside it, among other things. As instructed, Red held down the three buttons simultaneously and waited.

One… Two… Three… Four… Five… Six!

He then gently turned the knob beside the buttons until a loud click broke the silence. A small compartment had ejected itself slightly from the back of Colin. Red carefully pulled out a box-shaped cartridge about the size of the palm of his hand. It felt… Sticky. When Red turned the cartridge over to investigate, he found traces of dark crimson residue built up on the underside. He sighed as he thought about how he’d have to clean that too, but in the meantime he needed to check what was inside the cartridge. Without wasting any more time, Red opened up the cartridge, and he and Crowe peered inside.

 What they saw was not what they expected. Inside the cartridge was a small piece of brain-like matter covered in crimson slime. It had broken, frayed wires protruding from it and a cluster of off-colour boil-like growths on the front of it.

“Oh, that’s… Something.” Crowe remarked uneasily. “Well, you know what Pillars said, you ought to put that back. All this exposure won’t do it any good.”

“Hang on, can you take a photo of it with the laptop first?” Red asked. “I’m not sure if this is right, I should really show it to Pillars and ask for their opinion.”

He had reason to feel that something wasn’t right, too. The digital mind he held looked nothing like the one depicted in the instruction manual scans. Even if the one in the manual was only a stylised interpretation, it looked a lot less off than Colin’s.

Red held the open digital mind cartridge in front of the laptop’s webcam as Crowe took a photo. Then the cartridge was closed and Red began to clean that build-up off the bottom of it.

 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

 Thanks for the manual scans, they helped a lot. Pillars, I’ve cleaned Colin out and I took a look at his digital mind. I attached a photo of what I saw. I get the feeling something’s a bit off about it, but that could be just to do with age. Do you think that might be why Colin acted aggressively? When we found him he was singing, but he interrupted a lot and wasn’t a good listener. He kept asking a load of really irrelevant questions and completely flipped out when I hit his keyboard. There was also some stuff involving warped reality, existential crises, and my head exploding, but I won’t go into detail. Anyway, I thought I’d make sure you knew fully of Colin’s condition before we negotiated a selling price.

-Red

 …Oh boy. Redmond, that digital mind is an absolute wreck. Now, I’d expected the Computery Guys’ digital minds to deteriorate over time, but this looks like more than time-related deterioration. Looking at this photo you sent me, I wonder if Colin’s previous owner took Colin’s digital mind out of its cartridge, poked it with their unwashed fingers, threw it at a wall, and spat on it. Heck, that wouldn’t explain half of what I’m seeing.

Redmond, don’t even put that back into Colin. If you already have, consider taking it out and throwing it out. Heck, if I were you I might even burn it. Yikes, it’s no wonder he was acting up.

Well seeing as though the digital mind is a no-go, there won’t be any way for me to fully repair Colin. No big deal, though, as long as I have the rest of him in my collection I’ll be happy enough. What a shame though, with proper maintenance Colin could still be functioning today. There’s no way of getting a replacement digital mind now. Smart Boy industries apparently offered replacements at the time, though.

Also, I ought to mention that I’ll be gone for a week. My birthday’s coming up and I’m going on a little holiday with some family, so I won’t be able to keep in contact after today. Until then, all the best to you and your friends!

-Mx. Cloudfoot

 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

 Even though it was of no loss to him, Red couldn't help but feel somewhat disappointed by the turn of events. It did seem like quite a shame that he had to give his online acquaintance a dead computer that could never be fully repaired, even if they were happy to accept it. Still, anything to get Colin off his hands and out of the house was good enough. Not that Colin had been a threat in the slightest since he stopped functioning, mind you. All Red and his friends could do until Pillars returned to the web was wait.

Red tapped his foot lightly to an imaginary rhythm as he channel-surfed from his green armchair. Crowe was outside with Donnie lighting a bonfire in the backyard, so they could 'properly dispose of' Colin's old digital mind. Red wondered if perhaps he should’ve be out there with them, making sure they didn't burn down the yard and half the countryside with it, but Crowe insisted he had everything under control. As Red contemplated the current situation, he gave a heavy sigh. Not a saddened or frustrated sigh, but an 'oh well, what'll one do about it' sigh.

“Are you okay, Red?” A voice suddenly spoke, startling Red.

Donnie must have heard the sigh, as he now stood at the other side of the living room with his head tilted in curiosity. Red hadn't even heard him re-enter the house.

“Yeah.” Red replied with a shrug. “It's just a bit of a shame we don't have a digital mind for Colin, that's all.”

Donnie couldn't quite comprehend why Red would want to but a brain back into that nasty broken computer. Colin was far better off without one! Without a digital mind he couldn't frighten anyone or ask too many strange questions. However, the boy had trust in his friends above all else, so Red surely had a good reason for what he wanted.

“Why don't you just get another one?” Donnie asked innocently.

“They stopped making ‘Computery Guys’ a long, long time ago.” Red explained, scratching his head. “Back then Smart Boy Industries probably had replacements, but there's no reason for them to still have any if no-one's using Computery Guys anymore.”

Donnie nodded in acceptance of the explanation, but his brow was scrunched up in doubt as he pondered it. People were still using the Computery Guy! He and his friends were, at least. What reason did Smart Boy Industries have to not keep the replacement digital minds around, just in case?

“Anyway, how's the bonfire going?” Red asked, interrupting Donnie's train of thought.

“Good!” The boy replied. “But I think Crowe needs your help. He's having trouble getting the computer brain to melt like it should.”

Red switched off the television and stood up from his armchair, figuring whatever was going on out there was probably much more entertaining than the re-run rubbish being passed off as television. Watching the tall, hairy figure leave the living room, Donnie thought of a plan. A rather simple one, but a plan that wouldn't hurt to try- Though there was the risk of losing his pocket money for nothing.

 Donnie tore a piece of paper out of one of his empty scrapbooks and grabbed a green crayon. He thought for a moment about what to write, before putting the crayon to the paper and beginning his message.

Dear smart boy industrees

My name is Donnie and me and my friends have a computer guy. his name is Colin. his brain was broken and he needs a new one. May we please have a new computer brain for Colin?

From Donnie Gribbleston

The boy held up his letter and looked over it with a smile and a nod. He was sure this would do just fine, he just needed to figure out where to send it. 'Smart Boy Industries', he'd heard Red and Crowe mention a few times. Where had Donnie heard that name before, or rather, seen it? The printer, of course! The games room printer had 'Smart Boy Industries' written on the label on the back of it. He'd discovered that when he'd accidentally locked himself in the games room several months back and needed something to pass the time. He'd spent hours investigating the room's most easily overlooked details, before realising the games room door didn't even have a lock.

 However, despite his naivety and childlike foolishness, Donnie could be quite clever when he needed to be. After fixing a spelling error in his letter, he took the unoccupied laptop from the living room and opened it up. Searching up 'Smart Boy Industries' wielded a variety of results, such as the company's sketchy history, the range of products they didn't offer, and about a dozen product recall articles. One result, however, was the one Donnie was looking for. It was the company's website, and on it was a list of operating locations. Taking a note of the address of the nearest location, he closed up his work and put the laptop back in its resting spot before continuing with his plan. After shoving the creased scrapbook paper and a pocketful of pocket money into an empty envelope, the boy scrawled the address, along with his own, onto the back of it and headed outside.

 Crowe poked impatiently at the cartridge with a stick as flames flared up around it. Nasty crimson goo leaked from it, producing a horrible smell in the heat of the bonfire.

“It just won't burn!” The duck growled, smacking the offending object repeatedly with the stick in frustration.

“It's been in there for too long.” Red replied casually. “Maybe we should just call it quits and bury it, or throw it into the ocean.”

Just then, Donnie walked by with his bicycle, but his two friends didn't pay him too much mind.

“I'm just going to go post something.” He stated. “I'll be back soon!”

Red nodded and continued watching Crowe roll the digital mind around in the bonfire, inspecting it for any signs of fire damage.

 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

 A few days later, a package arrived at the friends' front door. It was fairly small and had arrived entirely unexpected to Crowe, who had found it on the doormat. He cautiously picked it up in his feathered hands and inspected it, wondering what could possibly be inside, and from whom it had come. When he found the name of the sender, his eyes widened in a mixture of surprise and mild fear.

“Red?” Crowe called out. “Red, I think you should see this!”

Sensing a slight urgency in his friend's tone, Red made it to the front door fairly quickly, where he saw the duck holding a small package in his hands.

“Oh, who's it from?” Red asked, unperturbed.

“Smart Boy Industries!” Crowe replied.

Now Red could see why the duck seemed a little bit worried. Red had only recently been involved with anything relating to the company, and he wouldn't have thought they had even known about it, let alone cared. Perhaps they had caught wind of the attempted revival of perhaps the last remaining Computery Guy, and it was enough to elicit a response from them. He just hoped this package wasn't a bomb, or anything else malicious. Stranger still was who, specifically, the package was addressed to.

 “Donnie?” Red called out.

“Yeah?” The child's voice called back from another room in the house.

“There's something here addressed to you, some sort of package. What have you been doing?”

There was no verbal answer from Donnie, only the quick pattering of footsteps as he hurried over to the scene. When he saw the package, his face lit up with excitement.

“It worked!” He exclaimed. “It’s here!”

“What’s here?” Crowe asked sternly. “You haven’t been using Red’s credit card again, have you?”

Donnie snatched the package from Crowe’s hands and tore it open before the duck could protest. From the tightly-wrapped cardboard box he produced a styrofoam casing, and from the styrofoam casing he pulled out a very familiar-looking beige cartridge.

“Wait, is that…?” Red asked, his eyes wide in disbelief. “I thought we threw that into the ocean.”

“No, it’s a new one!” Donnie corrected.

“What?” Crowe squawked. “How did you get Smart Boy Industries to mail you a digital mind?!”

“I asked nicely.” Donnie replied with an innocent smile. “And I gave them my pocket money.”

“Never mind that.” Red spoke. “I just want to know if they actually sent us the real thing, or they’re just humouring us.”

 The games room door gently creaked open, revealing the somewhat familiar scene of Colin’s lifeless form resting upon the table. As lifeless as he was, that mild aura of unease remained. Red approached the computer with the cartridge in his hands, but hesitated to insert it. The cartridge looked just like the one he had pulled out of Colin several days back, but it seemed so much… Cleaner. There were no leaks or sticky residue. With noticeable apprehension, Red gently pulled the lid of the cartridge open, allowing himself and his friends to peer inside.

The contents of the cartridge were very different to what they had seen before. While Colin’s digital mind had been a mess of wires, boils, and mysterious fluids, this one was clean. It was simply a small pink brain-like mass wrapped in a teal wireframe. It was a real digital mind, just like the one Red had seen in those instruction manuals.

Red clicked the cartridge shut again, heeding Pillars Cloudfoot’s advice not to expose it for too long. Without another word, he inserted it into the back of Colin, where the previous digital mind had once resided, and turned to his friends.

“Well, I guess Pillars will be happy to hear that we-“

In the middle of the sentence, Colin abruptly began emitting a cheery chiptune song that nearly startled the three friends out of their skins. Red jumped back from the table, fearing the computer would grow aggressive once again.

However, once the cheery tune ended, Colin did not yell, or even speak. He opened and closed his eyes and mouth a few times, lifting his cord-like limbs and then resting them at his sides. His eyes shifted back and forth, observing the surroundings, before resting on Red and his friends.

 “Hello!” Colin greeted. “Thank you for choosing the Smart Boy Industries Computery Guy. My name is Colin, and I will be your guide into the digital world, a place of information and fun for the whole family! Before we begin, please enter your name. Then I will tell you some more about myself, and we can continue your registration of the Smart Boy Industries Computery Guy.”

Red, Donnie, and Crowe exchanged frightened glances. They hadn’t expected Colin to come to life again! Though they hadn’t expected him to reset, either. The computer that had once loathed and terrorised them was now happily introducing himself like a new acquaintance.

“Redmond Spaghett.” Red answered nervously.

“Hello, Edmond Spaghetti!” Colin greeted. “Is this name correct?”

“Wait, wh- No. It’s not.”

“Please repeat your name, or use my keyboard to type it in.” Colin suggested, pointing his blocky hand at the keyboard rested in front of him.

Red reached forward, hovering his furry hand over Colin’s colourful keys. The computer’s eyes were locked onto the hand, watching, waiting for him to begin typing. Red, however, decided not to risk it. Colin might have been reset, but he wasn’t ready to trust him again just yet.

“Redmond Great News Spaghett.” Red repeated clearly.

“Hello Edward Great News Smith!” Colin greeted again. “Is this name correct?”

“Yeah, Cloudfoot’s going to have a riot with this one.” Red muttered, turning to his friends.

“Great! Would you like to save this information before we continue, Mr Smith?” Colin asked.

Red shook his head and sighed at Colin’s misinterpretation of his words. He thought about responding once again, but he stopped himself, seeming lost in thought. After a lengthy moment of contemplation, Red spoke again.

“Actually, you don’t belong to me, or ‘Edward Smith’.” Red stated, reaching his arm around to the back of Colin

“I’m sorry, I do not understand.” Colin responded. “Please repeat your response, yes or no, or type ‘yes’ or ‘no’ with my keyb-“

Colin’s arms fell limp and his eyelids shut as Red pressed his power button. Now the computer was just as lifeless as he had been mere minutes ago, but functional.

 Crowe watched skeptically as Red slowly and shakily lowered Colin into the large cardboard box.

“I don’t understand.” The bird stated, scratching his head. “Mx. Cloudfoot would’ve paid goodness knows how much money for this… Thing, and you’re simply going to give it to them?”

“Yeah.” Red responded bluntly. “For good karma. Maybe if we do something kind we’ll get some peace from the you-know-what for a while. That, and I don’t want to wait for Pillars to get back, then go through all the price negotiations and whatever, to get rid of Colin.”

Crowe folded his arms and rolled his eyes as Donnie rocked back and forth restlessly beside him.

“I guess it’ll be a birthday present for them.” Red continued, filling the empty space around the computer with styrofoam beads. “I might throw a few birthday candles into the box too. Anyway, this has all just gotten too strange for me. I wanna get it over and done with, payment or no payment. For all I know Colin could still be, well, Colin, and I’m not the kind of person who makes people pay for things that are out to cause pain. Unlike whoever sold us that clock in the living room.”

Red sealed the box up and began labelling it with the address given on Pillars Cloudfoot’s website. As Donnie grew bored and left the room, Crowe hung his head somewhat dejectedly.

“You know what, Red?” He began with a sigh. “I think I might miss the old Colin a little. Sure, he may have been aggressive and incoherent at times, but he had personality, and that’s not something one gets from computers very often.”

Red finished packing and labelling the computer and turned to face the duck.

“Shut up, Crowe.”

[mariascolombialitblog]

5 Non-Fiction Books

New of kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

THIS ASTONISHING BOOK by the Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez chronicles the 1990 kidnappings of ten Colombian man and women--all journalists but one--by the Medellín drug boss Pablo Escobar. The carefully orchestrated abductions were Escobar's attempt to extort from the government its assurance that he, and other narcotics traffickers, would not be extradited to the United States if they were to surrender.

(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16251.News_of_a_Kidnapping#)

2. There Are No Dead Here: A Story Of Murder and Denial In Colombia by Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno

There Are No Dead Here is the harrowing story of three ordinary Colombians who risked everything to reveal the collusion between the new mafia and much of the country's military and political establishment

(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35397811-there-are-no-dead-here?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=2zuMDXqTHL&rank=1#)

3. Even Silence Has An End: My Six Years Of Captivity In The Colombia Jungle by Ingrid BetanCourt

In the midst of her campaign for the Colombian presidency in 2002, Ingrid Betancourt traveled into a military-controlled region, where she was abducted by the FARC, a brutal terrorist guerrilla organization in conflict with the government. She would spend the next six and a half years captive in the depths of the Colombian jungle.

(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7882576-even-silence-has-an-end?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=3CGG6QkXFG&rank=1)

4. Digging For Words: José Alberto Gutiérrez and the Library He Built by Angela Burke Kunkel 

In the city of Bogata, in the barrio of La Nueva Gloria, there live two Joses. One is a boy who dreams of Saturdays-- that's the day he gets to visit Paradise, the library. The second Jose is a garbage collector. From dusk until dawn, he scans the sidewalks as he drives, squinting in the dim light, searching household trash for hidden treasure . . . books! Some are stacked in neat piles, as if waiting for Jose. Others take a bit more digging. Ever since he found his first book, Anna Karenina, years earlier, he's been collecting books

(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51375720-digging-for-words?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=AqVzkut9Ym&rank=2)

5. Living To tell The Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Living to Tell the Tale spans Marquez's life from his birth in 1927 through the beginning of his career as a writer to the moment in the 1950s when he proposed to the woman who would become his wife. It is a tale of people, places and events as they occur to him: family, work, politics, books and music, his beloved Colombia, parts of his history until now undisclosed and incidents that would later appear, transmuted and transposed in his fiction. 

(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4392.Living_to_Tell_the_Tale?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Bn4NDm7sGF&rank=1)

[futuresandpasts]

Futures & Pasts | MRR #421

As seen in Maximum Rocknroll #421 (June 2018): coming full circle from my very first column which also featured Melbourne’s foremost Fall freaks the Shifters, plus some crucial ‘80s post-punk reissues via Louisville + New Zealand & the new Northwest DIY crash-pop cassette wave. 

I wrote about the debut cassette from Melbourne’s the SHIFTERS in the very first column that I did for MRR three years ago, which gives me all sorts of complicated and confusing feelings about the passage of time. And as evidence that sometimes it takes awhile for historical wrongs to be righted, that criminally limited tape is now finally available in its entirety as an LP on the new French label Future Folklore, following the two songs that resurfaced on the Creggan Shops 7” courtesy of It Takes Two back in 2016. The SHIFTERS’ stark, repetitive minimalism and shambolic charms always owed more than a little bit to the FALL in their early years, and revisiting the material from the cassette now just a few months after Mark E. Smith’s passing only reinforces the psychic connection between the lackadaisical post-punk twang in “Captain Hindsight” and the cracked melodies of something like the FALL’s “Your Heart Out” from the Dragnet era. “Creggan Shops” is as close to a contemporary successor to those brilliant first two MEKONS singles as I’ve come across, from the tense interplay between the melodica and a creaky violin, to the scritch-scratch guitar, to the nonchalantly harmonized dual vocals, all sounding like they’re perpetually on the verge of coming undone. There’s way more at play here than blatant UK DIY worship, though—it’s not a huge jump from the homespun, pastoral pop of ‘80s Australian DIY legends like the PARTICLES and the CANNANES to the SHIFTERS’ raggedly melodic “Colour Me In,” and “The American Attitude to the Law” sprawls into a lengthy VELVET UNDERGROUND-addled haze, if only LOU REED had written songs referencing “drinking cough syrup to fall asleep” instead of heroin. One of the best releases of 2015 when it first came out on cassette, and this vinyl version is definitely going to be tough to top in 2018. (Future Folklore, futurefolklorerecords.bandcamp.com)

YOUR FOOD were an early ‘80s quartet from Louisville, Kentucky whose off-kilter, stripped-down art-punk mirrored the similarly self-styled approach of other DIY groups from that era who existed outside of major cities. Their only proper recorded output, 1983’s self-released Poke It With A Stick LP, was just reissued by Drag City at the behest of fellow Louisvillian David Grubbs (formerly of SQUIRREL BAIT and BASTRO, among others), and it’s pretty essential stuff for anyone interested in the chapter of American weirdo post-punk that took shape just before “college rock” became the dominant underground cultural force in the mid-to-late ‘80s. “Leave” and “New Pop” both layer simple, endlessly repeated basslines, obliquely narrated vocals, and trebly stabs of guitar into spartan drones that share the jaggedly danceable sensibility of what was happening a couple of hours to the south in Athens, Georgia with bands like the METHOD ACTORS or PYLON, even though YOUR FOOD were way more likely to switch up to a frantic, thrashy punk fit at a moment’s notice (see the last thirty or so seconds of the otherwise choppy and COME ON-esque “Cool/Cowtown”). There’s a sharp-cornered, chaotic shamble to “Here” that isn’t too far removed from RED KRAYOLA’s late ‘70s post-punk incarnation, and there’s even some touches of UK DIY-style naive jangle in “Corners” before it collapses into noisy abstract guitar squall mid-song. Totally freewheeling and ramshackle bent-punk bliss! I’ve seen a few references to the fact that MRR “refused” to review the LP when it originally came out, so hopefully I’m doing some small justice to Poke It With A Stick here 35 years later. (Drag City, dragcity.com)

I’m most certainly a card-carrying member of the Flying Nun fan club, but I’m also always really happy to see some renewed attention being given to some of the darker and more obscure corners of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s New Zealand underground, beyond the Flying Nun roster and the bands typically associated with the whole storied Dunedin sound. NOCTURNAL PROJECTIONS have often (and rather unfairly) been termed the Kiwi JOY DIVISION thanks to the combination of some deeply propulsive basslines and Peter Jefferies’ dramatically icy baritone vocals, but you could just as easily connect the dots between their take on bleak and razor-edged post-punk and what dozens of other UK-based bands like the SOUND or the CHAMELEONS were doing more or less concurrently. The two 12” EPs and one single that they released before splitting up in 1983 have been impossibly difficult to track down for quite a while (at non-collector scum prices, at least), and the consolation prize has been a selection of songs from those releases that made it onto a 1995 CD-only collection called Nerve Ends in Power Lines, plus a handful of roughly recorded 1981 demos that were excavated for 1998’s Worldview 7”. After all of the recent vinyl reissue campaigns focused on long out-of-print records by some of the most beloved New Zealand groups (who generally happened to be backed by Flying Nun in their day), NOCTURNAL PROJECTIONS have been long overdue for a similarly comprehensive treatment, so endless appreciation is due to Dais Records for stepping up to remedy that situation with the new Complete Studio Recordings anthology, collecting every song from the three original releases on one remastered LP. Even at their darkest and most desperate, like on the sinister, industrial-decay clang of “Another Year,” NOCTURNAL PROJECTIONS never slipped into the sort of over-the-top goth pretensions that were de rigueur in the age of 4AD’s ascendency, and vocal delivery aside, the slashing and anthemic “In Purgatory” honestly has more in common with MISSION OF BURMA or HÜSKER DÜ than, say, BAUHAUS. Highest possible recommendation, and an excellent counterpart to Superior Viaduct’s recent reissues of Peter and Graeme Jefferies’ more avant-garde/experimental post-NOCTURNAL PROJECTIONS project THIS KIND OF PUNISHMENT. (Dais Records, nocturnalprojections.bandcamp.com)

TRASH ROMEO are a very new duo from here in Portland featuring two people who have been in most of my favorite local bands over the last couple of years, including GOLDEN HOUR, the BEDROOMS, and CONDITIONER. Everything about their debut cassette Moving in the Summer brings to mind the pre-internet, early-to-mid ‘90s romance of mail-ordering singles from paper catalogs and building up imagined realities of geographically-centered scenes that you’d only ever read about. Alex and Danny both rotate between guitar, drums, and vocals, crafting sparse crash-pop with a hint of basement punk snarl that picks up a few loose threads from the parallel riot grrrl-adjacent musical universes of Olympia and Washington D.C. The haunting opener  “Cheryl Blossom” juxtaposes delicate-yet-tangled melodies with some darkly angular AUTOCLAVE/SLANT 6 flashes, and sugary sweet TIGER TRAP-style harmonies are at the center of “Night Terror,” while “Teen Vogue” recalls the raw, minimalist lo-fi punk of EXCUSE 17 or even KICKING GIANT at their most raucous. Simple, direct, and deeply personal anthems for loners and outcasts everywhere. TRASH ROMEO definitely make me feel a major nostalgia for some of the formative reference points in my young teenage musical upbringing in the 1990s, but it never seems like they’re simply reproducing specific cultural signifiers from the past in a modern context—in 2018, you could say it’s the difference between posting digital scans of pages from an 1992 issue of Sassy magazine on your blog, or choosing to make your own zine with only a typewriter, a glue stick and a photocopier at your disposal. Also worth mentioning: their first show was their tour kick-off show and they were the only band that played it, which just might be one of the most amazing and punkest moves I’ve encountered in a long time. (trashromeo.bandcamp.com)

[the-outer-topic]

About this blog

Please keep reading, I promise it’s funny.

 At least I tried to be!

(names withheld to protect the witnesses, some editing done)

(originally submitted to notpulpcovers.com back in 2014, but meant for all the owners of blogs that post stuff I like) 

Greetings and long letter from a fellow collector

Hello!

This is a very long letter of appreciation for the wonderful job you do in this site. No, I regret to tell you in advance that I am not sending you a cheque as a token of appreciation, so you can delete this message now and read no further. However, if you have trouble sleeping or have two hours to spare with nothing better to do, like watching the paint dry, read on. Allow me to introduce myself, I am a connoisseur of art and a man of taste. The quality of said art and taste may be debatable, quesitonable even. By the way, I am not an American nor a native English speaker, but come from Spain, if you are American, that’s in Europe, not south of Mexico, Google maps is your friend. So please forgive any spelling and grammar errors and be thankful I don’t grate your ears with my horrible accent. Over the last few years I started collecting, retouching and posting in forums military and battle paintings to use as wallpapers and screensavers. If for no other reason that I had lot of time in front of the screen and I wanted to stare at something else than the dull Windows background. Oh, and because since I got married I couldn’t have naked girls on the screen anymore like normal guys do. Everybody needs a hobby. Until I find one, collecting and photochopping paintings for desktop will do. At some point I got a bit jaded of the monotony of images of war, death, destruction and the implements of it,  so for a change I started collecting images of art I like and find cool. So I turned to the hobbies of the age most mentally retarded of my life, that is my teenage and wasted youth years, and added to my art galleries the themes of roleplaying games, fantasy illustrations and computer games from the 1980s box art. Then I dug deeper and started with the genre of movie posters: the more lurid and trashy the better. adventure, sci fiction, horror, action, sexploitation.. etc. But my craving for bad art eye porn wasn’t satisfied. I wanted more, more! So one day in the bookshop I came across a book about the “Men’s adventure” magazine covers. A Taschen brick, coffee table size. Since it was too big to conceal, even under my trenchcoat, and was on discount sale, I bought it. I hit bottom with that one. I loved the pulp art. Being a World War Number Two freak, I specially enjoyed the Nazi and BDSM themes. That probably is Too Much Information… relax, I am kidding. In fact I was repelled by those covers. I like the whole “damsel in distress” theme, but trivialization of Nazi attrocities and the outright sadism of those covers were quite sick. One thing is being kinky, being sick and twisted is another entirely different thing. What was wrong with the American people who bought that? In the same way never liked gore movies. Anyway, the rest of the pulp covers I loved. Such great art technique! And such gorgeous women they had in the 50s and 60s, curvy and with slim waists! (just like my beloved wife). But there was a problem, the pics were either too small, or couldn’t get decent wallpapers of the full size covers because the book was a bitch to scan, being so heavy and thick, and I loathe taking a razor to it. So having hit bottom, I started to dig. I searched the internet for pulp covers of those masters. And found your site. From somebody that shares the same obsessive compulsive collecting disorder, I have to tell you that I can fully appreciate the work, no, the labour of love involved in finding all these wonderful pieces of art, collecting them, and sharing them. I spent days, weeks going through the archives downloading images I liked. Frankly, a lot of the images are rubbish, but what to one is trash, to somebody else may be a treasure, so please keep posting indiscriminately, we all have our own tastes. You probably don’t share my unhealthy obsession with sharp things or things that spit hot pieces of metal and things that go boom. I spent days arranging the images you posted, retouching them for better fit or improvement, and making collections for them. I use an old Webshots desktop application, wich was responsible for this  obsession with wallpapers. The sotfware allowed downloads of pretty photographs for wallpaper, and you could add your own images. It’s dated but it works, and allows me to manage my collections much better and has better settings than simply use Windows default screensaver. So thanks to you, my wallpaper galleries have now about 3 Gigabytes in size, numbering eight thousand images in several dozen cathegories. As I said the pulp covers are a welcome break from the images of tanks, airplanes, warships, soldiers and battles. It’s not just the pleasure of viewing the images when I am taking  a break, I switch on the screen saver and watch the paintings cycle on the screen for a few seconds, it’s just that the search for suitable images became an end to itself, I get a thrill when after hours of tedious internet search I stumble upon a source of good images. A gallery like this is a godsend. We are not worthy! Come to think of it, if you are a god, then I would have to send you some offering more suitable than a mere cheque, but I am afraid that sacrificial virgins are in short supply nowadays. In addition to the images you supply, the links you provide to other insane collectors like ourselves are very valuable. I bookmarked the 80s and 90s stuff site, and the Back in the Dungeon gallery. Even if the pics in itself are not good enough, they give a lead for finding other artists images. Over the years of posting war paintings at forums I have become frustrated and bitter about the lack of recognition and appreciation from people. Seems only a few freaks have the artistic sensibility (or the shared bad taste) to appreciate them. I got very few rewards in return for my effort to disseminate these paintings. I thought that after so much effort, it would be a waste that those images would die with me, and I want to share them with more people than just a couple close friends. Well, there really a lot of people interested in this stuff, judging by the thousand of views the paintings threads have. I was bitter that forum admins didn’t thank me for my contribution, but I no longer care about that. What kept me going was the encouragement and appreciation from some people that enjoyed my postings and thanked me. But alas, those faitfhul were few and far in between. Most people just click on the thread, download image and say nothing. No comments, not even a simple “thank you” message or “I liked this one”. Ungrateful bastards. So eventually I got fed up and burned up with forums. I only got aggravation from them and no respect. And some subjects are exhausted after retrieving and posting every painting of that theme, from museum galleries to book scans to box art. I had only kept going for the past couple years by inertia, and because the forum served as a backup of my images. I have lost a lot of work a few times due to computer crashes, despite precautions and periodic backups. Now that imageshack killed my old accounts, I have given up totally in messageboards. Their loss not mine. All this self pitying bitching and moaning is just to tell that if you ever feel unappreciated or get frustrated with posting the images in your blog, I know how you feel and want to know how much I value and appreciate your effort in this blog, and how thankful I am that you gathered all these pieces of art and preserved them for fellow enthusiasts and future generations. With every cool painting you posted that I liked, you gave me a little pleasure and made my life a little happier, and for that, I give you a big heartfelt thank you. I am sure I am not the only one that feels the same. Your example is also inspiring. I had posted my images in forums because it was easier. It never occurred to me that you could do a blog on illustration. I thought it was too much work, but everybody is doing it, so I can too. Once more, thanks again for your effort, and I hope this letter made you smile and feel good. Very best regards.

PS

If you wonder about the name of this blog is because it’s an off topic gallery of  all the paintings that I like and are not war paintings. And “outer”, because is a nod to sci-fi B-movies that had the “from outer space” in the title

My main gallery:

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pinturasdeguerra