#well here's a thousand words on this

[last-hourglass]

FINALLY, THE LAST HOURGLASS FUTURE MIKEY TIME LOOP FIC HAS ARRIVED!!!

Thanks to the cruel machinations of the Krang, Michelangelo loses two big brothers at once; one to corruption, and one to grief. It just takes one of them a little longer to catch up to his twin, but he always follows. Always. Mikey knows this, because he has lived too many versions of Donnie and Leo's deaths to keep track anymore.

[shutthedord]

So, I saw some of you talking about how Blaseball is now impossible to get into because the game/experience/cultural event is gone.

May I introduce: the Spies Debriefings

(specifically, the Spies Debriefings starting from February 2021, when I started running things)

(or you can check out the Greatest Hits if you don't want to backread a whole entire blog)

The Debriefings are/were a daily liveblog of Blaseball. Under the pen name Agent O, I was their head writer and editor starting at Season 12/February 2021. Originally starting in season 6 it was a simple daily recap - but from the end of the Grand Siesta onwards I helped document not just the game events, but also the way the fandom was responding to it. I have been told this is basically a Let's Play: Blaseball, and I even mostly agree.

It doesn't replace the live experience, obviously. It is written from the perspective of one team. And in hindsight, there were some significant inaccuracies. But it was written as a way to make sure that people could follow the game without having to be glued to Discord 24/7, and in so doing, it also became a record of the fandom experience in a way nothing else will ever be.

[desceros]

I feel like Donnie would be mush for his teeny, itty bitty little baby girl.

someone has been peeking in my google drive again i see....

yeah i think he (rise donnie specifically since that's the papatello i'm working on) would be one of those dads who has a big talk about how he's so strict, about the intense regiment he has his kid on to maximize their development, and he's always the most annoying piece of shit at the PTA meeting. flex brag flex brag

but then his little toddler comes up to him on wobbly legs and puts her hands on his calf, tapping at him for his attention and looks up at him with paint all over her face from where she got into the art supplies at the back of the classroom and made a huge ass mess, and he just melts at her crooked little grin (bc dad is the favorite) and is completely incapable of chastising her in any shape or form

that changes when she grows up and starts to act so much like him that he HAS to be firmer with her. the first time he has to put her in time out they both ugly cry a lot

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

yeehaw just wrote over 3k and i can't publish Any of it without miles of fantasy au context

[ranticore]

having had some posts get a lot of notes recently i'm trying this new thing where i put a massive series of paragraphs under every art post so that they don't travel so far. it's not a bad thing to get a bunch of notes (ofc) but i want full context to be there as well. this is the context blog after all, my other blog is the contextless one

[bedforddanes75]

i just think you deserve eternal happiness actually. funny and actually nice. u are jesus. anyway No pls i AM AFRAID u are simply too cool and i cant deal

[joelletwo]

[two for smalling] [trying to remind myself i know who this guy is bc i only associate him w screamer now. um. for reasons] omg his gogo boots. hell yeah. wanna intentionally retroify this guys design to show that hes lost a couple millennia* of contemporary culture from being caveman frozen

[thegeminisage]

perpetual chicken and egg question are you not writing fanfiction because you're depressed or are you depressed because you're not writing fanfiction. write fanfiction and find out today

[ratatatastic]

"And that season (2023-24 season; Florida Panthers) what sticks out to me, obviously 20 point season but December 23, 2023 against the Vegas Golden Knights... Merry Christmas, Kolesar! I'm gonna grab ya, I'm gonna feed ya a quick right, and you're done-zo! TKO! How ya doin'? This guy is like 6 foot 6 or 6 foot 7, maybe 6'8? I don't know, let's put him at 7 feet tall, you're 5'9, dude! You're fuckin'—you're a dawg, babey! Just walk us through that though, that's a big fella." "Yeah, he's big and he's tough for sure! So it's obviously not easy to go into something like that. That was, kind-of, a little bit, settling last year's score. He was the one who hit Tkachuk and, you know, ultimately took him out of the rest of the round... We kind-of chat a little bit at the start of that game, and he asked me, 'Well, it's the new year, like that happened last year—why didn't you do something last year?' and I told him I was in a cast, my thumb was broken all playoff-long...I couldn't fight. He's like, 'Oh? Alright, let's—I'll fight ya then.' You know, whatever happened, happened. You know, obviously, Chucky comes over right after, and—That was a big win for our team this year."

The Buzz Pod | 8.7.24 (x)(x)

oh my god theyre david and goliathing him...adding more height every second...

"Earlier [Kolesar] said, you know, 'You kind-of missed your chance last season. You should've fought me then.' I told him I was in a cast—not really too much I can do about it. He was, obviously, understanding and gave me my shot there. I told Locky to take it because I'm not jumpin' in there!"

florida panthers @ vegas golden knights postgame interview | 12.24.23 (x)

the lore grows...it deepens...

[mantisgodsdomain]

3,4,15 for any member of team snakemouth!

...how about all three?

(for this ask game)

3. Obscure headcanon

For Kabbu, though we may have noted this before, we think that the North is quite firmly considered a patch of Deadland - and its inhabitants, as a result, tend to be very, very strange from the perspective of the rest of the world. For Kabbu, specifically, this means a variety of things, both biologically and culturally - though Northern beetles are a lot more common in Bugaria, deadlands in general come with a very high rate of mutation and a very high rate of death, and that means a high rate of superstition both in things that actively impact survival and in things that do not - as well as the simple fact that a constantly-changing set of genetics means that what a northern beetle is like is often very, very open to change.

Kabbu is an example of a burrower - a subspecies of sorts primarily identified by claws designed, very specifically, for digging. His claws grow into a sort of broad shovel shape and tend to be much sturdier than an equivalent beetle's - getting underground in moments in soft ground isn't really an exaggeration! Though he can dig through harder ground, it takes time and effort, and he can't go at it with the sheer speed of softer soil - technically, he could burrow through solid rock given enough time, but it would be both hard and extremely painful. It's a trait that's heavily prized in the North for its ability to create shelter and safety - beetles dominate the North's underground, and there's nothing that can really pose a threat to them. Tunnels are safety, and it really surprises and disorients him when things underground attack him, because back home that just kind of doesn't happen unless it's Another Beetle specifically targeting you.

In terms of more social things, he has a lot of trouble getting used to the concept of mimics. This is mostly due to the fact that mimics as a whole don't really... exist in the north, at least not in the means of gaining benefit from mimicking anything else. If you can talk to them as any other awakened bug, they're usually exactly what they say they are, and species mimicking normal geological features and plants haven't found any success, unless you're willing to get extremely generous with describing the snow-bank camouflage of a Northern Silk Moth's topcoat.

Though sand wasps or "white bees" still exist, the thing they're mimicking no longer exists in the same area. Any Hive that once was in the North is long dead, overly-large groups of bugs tend to die out quickly thanks to the handful of large predators that may decide the benefits outweigh the consequences when enough tasty beetles gather in the same place, and when the enemy you're dealing with is both too heavily armoured to be really deterred by most weaponry and capable and intelligent enough to stalk your group through the snow until the cost outweighs the benefit of eating you... well, the sort of small groups generally sent to start a new colony of social bugs really don't stand a chance.

It is, occasionally, very hard to get used to the fact that southern silk moths only grow a few heads taller than him. He's used to them presenting a lot more of a threat.

For Leif... we think he's completely, 100% blind. His eyes are frozen over due to quirk of his biology - the thing about his integration that makes him a failure, specifically. With any of the Snakemouth cordyceps, they do not naturally transfer the immunity to their own magic that any other variety of mage would have, and so need to alter their hosts in order to get the appropriate biology across. With Leif, that protection is not sufficient to protect the host, much less to preserve valuable organs - eyes, especially, are fragile, after all. The cold he naturally generates exceeds the host adaptations he provides, resulting in, even beyond the blindness, unusually brittle chitin, extremely stiff and easy-to-damage tissue, organic food processing efficiency appropriate for a bug currently freezing to death...

Well, you get the idea. Functionally, if alive, a host body would be in a state of perpetual hypothermia, prone to breaking down over time and needing persistent repair that his strain of cordyceps cannot provide, as any repair he could offer that's not within his host's natural healing capabilities requires manually breaking down and reconstructing any parts, which... is inconvenient at best. As he is, he gets around most of these issues by simply replacing his host body's soft tissue with cordyceps, but that has its own issues, mainly in making him look and move incredibly uncanny. Injuries take a very long time to repair, relatively, though the less tissue damage is done the easier it is to fix - being cleanly sliced in two, for example, might be easier to handle than any sort of crushing damage. As far as his eyes go... eyes of any sort are delicate, and the slightest damage can permanently blind someone. Any of Snakemouth Den's cordyceps tend to go blind anyways as the fungus burrows into ocular nerves - if anything, this is better for hiding, since the frost over his eyeballs conceals any mycelium in the eyes themselves. In theory, it can be repaired... in practice, it would be far too much of a pain for work that will be undone the moment he overtaxes his ice magic again.

...also, he doesn't really care. Sight is not the most important sense a moth has and his scent and ability to sense pheromones is fine, along with a general sensitivity to things like vibrations in the air. More than fine, even, since he's now kind of hybridized with both Ant and Bee and the number of pheromones he's sensitive enough to sense has shot through the roof. This on top of the "magic sense" he has means he has absolutely no trouble getting around, though reading books requires more or less sticking an antenna or fungal tendril over them and parsing out where the ink is by scent and texture. He full-on didn't notice he was blind until after the cordyceps reveal.

For Vi, while this might be one we've mentioned before, we headcanon that she's got a bit of minor mutation throwing her antenna... maybe 2% more towards a non-social relative, which gears her just slightly more towards being able to detect "foreign" scents - predators, prey, and any pollen or nectar in the area. Unfortunately, this slight shift in what scents she's made to pick up comes with a reduced sensitivity to pheromones and pheromone communication within the hive, along with loss of the general innate understanding that an average bee would have of how she's meant to "fit in" to a structure that utterly cripples her communication and social life in the hive.

It's minor enough of a mutation that she's never been flagged - she's a mutation of a social bee, not a normal variant of a solitary - but she smells weird, and she doesn't pick up on pheromones quite enough, and the variation in signals she puts off means that she both fails the communication to get across what she might need and fumbles the communication conveyed back to her about what she should do. Subtle things build up over time, and within the Hive, the negatives far outweigh the benefits - the Hive is only built with bees that fit to a standard in mind, and even minor deviations can get you dragged far, far behind.

This is getting very long so, uhh. Here's a cut. Everything else is below it. We enjoy getting very long-winded. There's a lot in here.

15. Worst thing they’ve ever done

Well, this one will depend on if it's "in general" or "by their standards". Putting any sort of objective moral judgement on just about anything is ridiculously difficult, especially with how values vary by culture or individual.

There is no such thing as objective worst, and we absolutely don't guarantee these would line up with your idea of worse, and so we'll offer two options here - what we believe they would think of first if posed with the question, and an alternative answer that would likely crop up.

For Kabbu, his own response would be easy - abandoning his teammates to The Beast. It haunts him to this day - really, what sort of beetle abandons their swarm to a fate like that? If he was a little faster, a little braver, a little less of a coward - but no. He abandoned those he was meant to care most for, and they died because of it.

For the other...

There are some things that are necessary, to survive somewhere as harsh as the Deadlands. Not everyone can be saved. Not everything can be helped. Not everyone can be taken in. Tradition and law is the heart and soul of the North - rules that everyone must comply to, if not for the sake of themselves, than for the sake of those they may interact with. To break a law, for any reason, is to be shunned by the community, most likely to your eventual death.

She broke a law. It could have been for understandable reasons, or not - it doesn't matter. She put the community at risk, and for that, she couldn't stay. She was put out in the cold, despite her pleading to the contrary. She was allowed to beg and plead and bang on the door, and yet, it meant nothing. The beast she would have lead to them caught up, eventually. He would still believe it was justified.

For Leif, his first response would be... exactly what you expect of him, really. The body he took without a care. The life he stole. He might vary on whether it's the action of stealing it or the lies he's told with that body, but the answer would be the same.

For the one he wouldn't think of... He could have spoken up. He didn't. He met their eye, slated for execution on crimes that he could parlay them on if he implicated himself, and he said nothing.

The look on their face still haunts him sometimes. It hurts more now that he's two, rather than one. It's what was needed to protect his family.

For Vi... a fault in a machine. The instructions were boring, and confusing, and hard to read. She tried to do whatever she thought might work, instead of following the manual. There was an injury. Then another one. It was her fault, really, for rigging it wrong, but she was tired and angry and she argued instead of just sucking it up and fixing it when confronted on it, and it went unfixed for days more. A minor fault can very well lead to deaths, and though this one didn't, it came close - one more inch, a slightly looser bolt, and it would have cracked a bug's shell clean open. It's a miracle it turned out as well as it did. It's a miracle that no one connected it to her enough, even when it was fixed. Someone else was punished, and she was old enough to know not to step forward - she's not stupid, after all.

The guilt still haunts her. The "what-if". The possibility of it. If someone died of her own stupid negligence, if she made someone else take the fall - she would let them, really, her sense of self-preservation isn't that bad, but she's not sure she could live with it after.

With the one she wouldn't think of personally... considering the background she's got, the journey to the Ant Kingdom, and the fact that it's already stated she took jobs before canon? We think there's a fairly good chance that Vi's off jobs got... shady. It's not like she has much in the way of morals when it comes to money, and "will do just about anything for enough cash" is a decent market. If you're willing to forsake your morals, you can get more money than your heart desires - at the cost of just a bit of risk, at that!

She doesn't think about it, really. It wasn't something she needed to think about. They were threatening her, they were a risk to her team, they were the price she had to pay to eat, the specifics of what happened don't matter much at this point. Put in the position again, would she choose their life, or hers? It doesn't matter. They're dead, anyways. She should know. She was the one to take the payment for it.

4. Favorite line?

We're copy-pasting these straight from the game! These Direct Quotes are all sourced from @aquilamage's Bug Fables Transcript project, which we highly recommend checking out! It's an excellent resource for double-checking dialogue without having to replay the game first, and a repository for just about all the dialogue in the game (provided it wasn't taken out by previous patches, of course).

We will be honest: there's a lot of dialogue in this game. This might not be our absolute favorites, as a result of a general poor memory as well as Too Much Game. Also, we have blatant favoritism towards Vi in all ways. Most of these are favorite interactions, rather than anything else, so...

For Leif:

Kabbu: Leif. If you need to take a break, let us know. Vi will carry you. Vi: That is not happening. Leif: Oh, the fatigue, it kicks in... Vi: I said it's not happening!

...and for Vi, we're fond of this dialogue, specifically because the first time we encountered it we misread "exploring" as "exploding".

Leif: Science looks like a lot of hard work. Vi: It's like uh...the thinking version of exploring!

But of course, our favorite Vi Dialogue as well as our personal favorite dialogue in the game in general would be the Bee Guard overworld spy.

Leif: Vi, you're the only Bee explorer, right? Vi: Huh? Uh, yeah! That I know of... Leif: We've been thinking it's a bit weird, to see so many Bee guards, but only one explorer... Vi: Look, they're not guards because they want to or anything, okay? Vi: They were born to be guards, so they guard. That's it. Kabbu: That's a bit somber... Vi: ...That's just how the Hive is sometimes.

"I'm allergic to bouncers" is a close second, of course. In terms of story implications, we pull on her Jaune interactions and especially the point just after getting kicked out of the studio for the first time during Jaune's request, but that's... it's less we "like" it, per se, and more that the implications are fun to toy with. In terms of the actual dialogue, it just... makes us feel sad. Sad, [], and maybe a bit angry on her behalf. We've been there more than we care to admit, after all.

We... wouldn't wish something similar on anyone. And no matter how good the good gets with Jaune, it still can't really outweigh the fact that the bad starts ticking boxes about emotional abuse in a way that makes relationships like Mothiva & Zasp that more people are willing to try and call out pale in comparison. We probably need to finish that essay some time...

Anyways, we like it when Kabbu gets mad enough to yell at people.

Kabbu: This is ridiculous! You realize you could be dooming us all!? Kabbu: What if the Termite King loses trust in the Queen!? Kabbu: What if you lose to the Wasp King without our help!? Kabbu: Have you gone completely, utterly insane!? Have you lost all intelligence! Mothiva: Yikes. You're overthinking this WAY too much. Mothiva: The Ant Kingdom's way better in our hands than with you LOSERS. Kabbu: We have SAVED YOUR LIFE BEFORE, you WITCH!

[gummiix]

Tell me in the tags what u answered + why you think that is if you want! (age range or generation data would also be interesting)

[dark-elf-writes]

Working on Venomous Naruto again and my heart is telling me to write a heart wrenching oneshot of all the people Orochimaru has actually opened himself up to over the years and how all of them die or leave except for his kids. But like … I don’t have the full idea of it just bits and pieces and ughhhh

[creationsabyss]

Anemoia (How Long Will You Reach For The Ghosts Of Distant Stars?)

They could see the stars tonight, bright splatters of light across the shadows of the sky. They don't really know why they decided to come out here, so far from the comfort of their little cottage, but they don't want to return, not yet at least. Wrapped in their cloak, they nestle themselves into the trunk of an old, hollowed out tree as they crane their neck upwards. The stars flicker and blink down at them, almost as if they were waving a hello. A ridiculous thought they don't mind entertaining as they raise their own hand to wave back. Maybe they are a bit of a fool, but they never claimed to be wise in the first place.

This reminds them of dreams they could have sworn they had forgotten, the wisps of names and faces that linger on their tongue even as the memories faded from their mind. They could almost feel the leathery skin underneath their fingertips, the sharp edges of scales too big. The blooming feeling of awe as feather and fur alike curl around their shoulders. Even the whistling winds, rustling through leaves and grass, remind them of the songs they used to sing, the lyrics long forgotten. Not quite unexpectedly, it hurts. Aching something fierce and bold in their chest, that forces tears to well in their eyes. Logically, they know it's silly to cry over something they can barely remember, over something that the world doesn't remember existing. At least, not in this life.

But they don't swallow down the sob that leaves their throat nor wipe away the iridescent tears that fall from their eyes. They don't mind the chill that seeps into their chest as their tears soak through the thin fabric of their shirt, far too busy watching the stars drift across the skies. They think, at first, only distantly, that they can see the twisting shapes of long serpentine bodies and billowing wings. They swear they can hear the timber of voices overlapped, the shadows of all too human bodies that they should know but can't quite remember. They wonder if they can miss people that don't exist.

They wonder if these memories are what drives them away from the people, the connections, of this earth. Star child, they remember their grandmother whispering to them in the late hours of the night. You are loved, they remember her murmuring to them every day from then on. They remember clinging to her feeble form as she spun tales of mystical beasts and stories of man made gods. Rivers to a lake, spiraling into the deep caverns underneath, hoarding knowledge underneath their silence. They wonder if there was some truth to her tales after all.

Star child, that name, title they suppose, has haunted them throughout their entire life. They wonder if it is why they can taste lightning on their tongue even when the skies are clear, if it is why they can feel the brittle-snap of thunder between their teeth. They wonder if it is why frost cradles their skin even when hearth-warm fire curls in their chest, the duality often leaving them sick and bedridden. Wildfires spark to life, just shy of burning and charring the vulnerable flesh of their heart. That coil around their ribcage and rumble as though the earth was quaking under a cat's quiet purr. All the while, ice forms at the base of their throat, encircling their arms like sharp shackles. They don't mind the chill, even when it hurts to speak. They welcome the frost and the cold, wrapping themselves in snow to stave off the constant heat.

They suppose it is, just like the winds that push for them to wander the world. A wanderlust unseen in their family, where others root themselves into the soil, they take to the skies. Following where the breeze and the gales blow them, the peaks of snow-capped mountains and the depths of oceans. Their body is not meant for travel, frail from the war that wages inside them. But it's not as if they could stop. They ache for the road, to chase after the stars as if they could someday reach up to pluck them from the skies. Their only real companion over the years, the feel of coiled bodies in the palm of their hand and the sound of an echoing roar in their ears.

Sometimes, they still expect a tail to curl itself around their legs even though the creature that tail is connected to only resides in their dreams. They still turn and expect to see the divine tipped claws of monsters, to have to tip their head back to speak to looming shadows of those they should know and still somewhat do, even if they haven't met them yet. Their disappointment when all that greets them is silence and emptiness is often crushing and immeasurable, inconsolable grief that drapes across their shoulders like a dark veil. Those days, they spend their time inside, away from the sun and the stars, away from the gaze of the people that stare and stare. They spend those days painting and writing, over and over, trying to capture the faces and forms of their companions they so desperately want to remember.

But it never looks quite right. Something is always wrong, always off. Failure is a bitter thing to swallow, it tastes of bile and blood and tainted honor. It is the shattering of pride, the sting of human hubris that leads them to bury their half written journals and messily sketched paintings. It is what forces them to grip the few pieces of their memories close, cradling their dreams like the most precious of treasures. Long fluttering scarves and cloaks, flowing fabrics that hide the invisible pouches of chiming bells and glimmering scales. Though they carry little on their journey, they can't help but feel an anchor's weight on their shoulders, Atlas heavy. A worthwhile price for the imaginary companions that drive away the loneliness, even if they do still want to feel the steady heartbeat underneath their hands.

Star child, they muse to themselves, it grows more fitting by the year. Stardust in their veins and the world at their fingertips, it is only a matter of time before they will be cradled in the careful coils of their once lost companions, one way or another.

@n0tamused

[gingerbreadmonsters]

oh this is going to be......... a problem actually

[vyunok-obyknovenniy]

[marclef]

how about fake’s old concepts and beta stuff

https://youtu.be/TFLXJqwKiwQ?si=1bAJD3bjxLpdM6j5

ooooouh part of me is sad that the old mansion level concept from the beta never made it in, but hey, at least it lead to Fake Peppino becoming the memorable boss we know and love today ❤

but man. i freaking love his concept art sketches. it's both a blessing and a curse that we don't get Eldritch Horror goopy boy ingame, like yeah it'd be terrifying but i think my boy should be allowed to go a bit feral sometimes y'know?? as a treat! he deserves it ❤❤❤

it is, however, a crime that we never get this sprite ingame though.