#which is how i noticed a lava lamp on set

[agendratum]

salang-salang is a beautiful song about how happy you get when your package finally arrives

[nihildenial]

On the Nose by nihil-denial (wc: 1,465)

Pairings: Special Ghoul & Copia's Rats

Rating: Gen

Tags: Fluff, No hurt, Animal love, Copia's rats, Rigatoni the Rat

Summary: Special Ghoul believes he won't enjoy pet-sitting Papa Emeritus IV's twelve pet rats. Perhaps he shouldn't make assumptions that quickly.

It’s difficult to continue daily tasks in a quiet Ministry. Special Ghoul’s routine of sweeping, paperwork, and media management was typically easy because of the flurry of activity that kept distracting him. However, with Papa Emeritus IV, the Ghouls, and Papa Nihil out on tour, Phil was left in charge of most of the ghoul’s daily chores. The Siblings stepped up for a lot of it, much to his relief. 

So, that meant he could keep his normal schedule of document reviewing, instgram and email wrangling, sweeping…and now, rat babysitting. He wasn’t looking forward to starting that task today. Rats were considered pests in New York City, only an hour’s drive from the Ministry. Sure, the Rats song was fun to shoot and the cartoon stickers Copia handed out were cute, but the real animals were probably a mess of dirty vermin that the man has managed to look past to find something adorable in.

He probably would get dirt all in his tunic. 

Special Ghoul straightened his belt and hung his mask by his fascia as he neared Papa Copia’s room. He closed his deep amber eyes and took a deep, settling breath before he pushed through the heavy velvet curtains. 

He feels for the light switch, jumping when it triggers the large lava lamp on the side table. “Fucking hell,” he mutters and continues through the small living area to the bedroom. He switches on the overhead lights and sighs at the large metal structure taking up the entirety of the right wall. 

Special stares at it then looks to where he presumes the Anti-Pope sleeps. It’s a twin mattress on the floor, pushed up against the middle wall. The fire Ghoul knows that the man’s coffers are more than full enough for a nice bedroom set. They’re satan worshippers for fuck’s sake; Special needs to convince the man to put his selfish wants first for once. 

Special sets the several bags of things on the neatly tucked bed. A packet of paper is sitting innocently on the Star Wars pillow. 

He then walks to the floor-to-ceiling cage and comes eye-to-eye with the rodents Copia so dearly loves. Special flips to the first page (it’s a motherfucking table of contents) and then the next, which has a picture and description of each of the twelve pet rats. 

Alfredo

Allegro

Buccatini

Crescendo

Farfalle

Gemelli

Gemini

Legato

Minestra

Opus

Rigatoni

Toccata

A star sticker was placed next to Rigatoni’s picture, designating him as Copia’s ‘heart rat’ or whatever that meant. Phil closes the packet and sets it aside. He toes off his shoes outside of the baby crates that surround the cage and carefully steps inside, trying not to step on any of the toys. 

Squeaks of all pitches meet his ears. He finally looks up to meet the excited gazes of the rats. They’re squirming, jumping, wrestling and going between the many different levels of the cage. A bunch of them gather on the floor nearest his face. There’s little dirt or visible poop on the colorful blankets and dig box. In fact, the longer he stands there, he notices how they use their tiny arms to lick and wash their faces and bodies.

“Why are you all actually cute?” He asks quietly as a pink nose pushes between the thin bars of the enclosure. He boops it gently. “I can’t let Papa know he was right.”

The black and white rodent jumps away from the bars, scurries up onto one of the hanging hammocks, then bounces back to press against the bars. It repeats it when Special touches the pink nose again.

Oh, it wants to play. 

“Okay, okay, let me make sure this is secure before I let all of you out.” He checks the corners of the playpen, fills the thin bowl with water and most of the frozen peas and carrots, then steps back up to the cage. The latch on the bottom area is simple. 

As soon as the doors are open, the rats are eagerly scurrying down the short ramp to the cushioned floor. Copia’s instructions say he can let them go by themselves for a bit, so he steps out to observe them.

Special watches their fuzzy, avocado-shaped bodies move with such a feeling of excitement that he finds himself smiling down at them. Geez, he’s turning soft. 

A large, golden rat pauses in its place at the platter of peas and pellets to stare up at him. It crawls around its packmates and tries to jump onto the playgate. Surprisingly it makes it almost to the top. Special falls to his knees and grabs the rodent to keep it from escaping. 

The animal is squishy, warm, and wiggly. It calms as it relaxes in the radiant warmth of his palm, closing its beady but cute black eyes. According to the papers, this is Rigatoni, a special rat. 

Special ghoul carefully pets the rat’s head with a finger. When the rat relaxes more, he caresses the animal’s pudgy body. 

It’s calming. Special is holding a tiny life in his hands, and is being trusted unconditionally . He’s a scrappy fire ghoul meant to fight in the pits of Hell and this little creature finds something good enough in him to relax. He has to wipe the hot tears from his eyes with the sleeve of his tunic. 

“Hello, Rigatoni,” he croaks. 

The rat opens its eyes and stretches its delicate pink arms and legs, climbing up his arm to sit on his shoulder. 

Special has seen Copia walking around with a few of the rodents like this. Sometimes he even puts a basket on his stupid tricycle for several rats to ride around in. 

More of the rats have finished fishing for peas to hop at the gate to gain his attention. He reaches down and picks up one of the docile black and white ones. Allegro paws at the embroidered ghoul symbols. 

“Yes, I’m a ghoul,” he answers the rat.

He has to put the rat back down when it tries chewing off the patch. “No, no. No nibbling off my patches. I know it was a few of you little shits that did that to Papa’s favorite pants.”

He tries to look at them sternly, but their tiny, curious faces make it extremely difficult. Special reads a few more pages of Copia’s instructions. 

“You guys want some treats?” He says and laughs at the eager frenzy that causes. He presses the rectangular bits of sweet potato, peas, and walnut pieces in the different balls, snuffle mats, and hammocks. 

Rigatoni crawls down his arm to hop back into the playpen to join the search for treats. When he tries to take one of the balls to put more treats in, Toccata grabs it and starts an impromptu tug-of-war. When Phil carefully tosses it in, the grey rat pushes it around with it’s pink nose like a dog. 

-

“Have you seen Special Ghoul?” Sister Gwenyth pokes her head into the Siblings’ communal kitchen.

Brother Ezra shakes his head from where he’s stirring in a large pot. “Not since this morning. He said he was going to feed Papa’s rats.”

She purses her lips and looks to the few other Siblings in the kitchen. All of them give her equally unhelpful answers. She turns and heads back out into the cloister, checking the empty Ghoul crypt once more. She goes back upstairs to the main level and heads towards the papal wing. 

She tries not to think too hard about the empty bedrooms as she passes them. She stops outside the curtain, a line of light spilling from under the doorway. “Phil?” She calls.

When she gets no answer, she cautiously steps inside. The living room is empty, so she moves on.

The bed is filled with the Ghoul’s duffel bag and discarded silver mask. She looks over the edge of the playpen by the open rat cage (not seeing any rats or squeaks, which makes her panic) and sees the most adorable sight.

Special Ghoul, asleep in the middle of the large space, with twelve rats snuggling in the junctions of his neck and on top of his chest. He looks so peaceful, his sharp, charcoal grey features relaxed. The rats on his chest are snuggling under one of his hands, their tails sticking out from his fingers. In the crook of his neck is a bunch of curled up rodent noses pressed against each other and moving with their breaths. 

She has to physically restrain herself from making noise. Gwenyth frantically captures the moment with her phone and sends it to Copia. She checks that all of them are indeed breathing and snaps another picture before leaving them alone. The tax documents can wait until tomorrow.

[becauseimanicequeen]

I have a bunch of small details I've noticed in 4 Minutes so far and I thought I would gather them in a post. I may have detailed theories about some of them, but I'm too lazy to write full posts on every single one. So, here we are.

The small things I've noticed in 4 Minutes:

1.

I know that I've previously written that I believe Great is the patient having the cardiac arrest and is currently having an out-of-body experience (OOBE). But, the bandages on the patient:

They're positioned where Tyme was hurt and shot. It's possible that the patient can be either of them (or someone completely different).

2.

I loved Great's lava lamp from the moment I saw it in the first episode (I had no idea it was a lava lamp when they showed it from above in the trailer).

Lava lamps are symbols of sex and fluid social norms (among other things). Very fitting considering he has visions of him and Tyme having sex in that condo.

3.

And on the topic of Great... If Great had his cardiac arrest at 11:00, and that being the reason he sees 11:00 all the time (as well as 11:01, and now 11:02):

I think it means that he's having his cardiac arrest in the morning (so, 11:00 am). The reason I believe this is because I think his phone is set on the 24-hour clock setting rather than the am/pm thing (which makes me think all his digital clocks are set like this):

So, even though his phone shows 07:13 when Korn drops him off at night, he might've changed his setting after this to see if it stops acting weird (or it's just that all his clocks are inconsistent because he's not compatible with technology due to his cardiac arrest).

If this (Great having a cardiac arrest in the morning) proves to be true and if it has some significance to the show remains to be seen.

4.

Tonkla has an Arctic Monkeys poster, which is similar to the album cover for "Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino". Interesting considering his sugar daddy is now managing the illegal gambling sites in his dad's company.

5.

I have to mention these sunrise and sunset artworks at the hospital as well:

I find these artworks fascinating because sunrises are usually cooler (more blueish) while sunsets are usually warmer (more red/orangeish). But from our perspective, looking at them straight on, the warmer artwork has the sun setting in the west while the cooler artwork has the sun rising in the east.

Additionally, since the eye in left-to-right reading cultures often automatically goes from left to right, it's interesting that the sunset comes first and then the sunrise. Perhaps it's to show that the world is turned upside down now that Great is having these weird experiences. Or perhaps it's to show that the time between the sunset and sunrise will be important for Great and Tyme since Great watches Tyme pass those artworks (from sunset to sunrise) the first time he has visions of them having sex.

6.

This one is based on a wild-ass theory I had of Great and Tyme (and a possible third character) having OOBEs together and currently going through the different types of experiences Den's patients talked about.

When Tyme was in Manee's room in the second episode, there was thunder and lightning. What if that's the weather of his current location in the present timeline (him being shot and dying at that abandoned place in the dark) seeping through into his OOBE?

Additionally, what if the thunder/lightning in the scene with Manee is an indication of Tyme's past experiences seeping through? She talks about debt and losing her son because of it. What if that's what's happened to Tyme in his past as well, and it's seeping through as he now lies dying?

7.

The group chat that's for Great's class is called BA-63. I think the 63 is the year, so that's the year 2563, since the years in Thailand are 543 years ahead of the Gregorian calendar. And that means Great either started studying in 2020 or will graduate in 2020 (I'm not sure how the years in class names are used in Thailand, if the number here even indicates the year).

But, on the documents Nan found in the safe, it says 67 in the column which I think might be dates. That means that the records she finds are from dates during 2024. Once again, time is very interesting in this show (and I have no idea what's going on, lol).

I'm sure I'll find many more details like this as the show continues. We're only 3 episodes in, and I can't wait to see more.

Is it Friday, yet?

[cellarspider]

14/30 Gnosis, and lack thereof

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We return to the movie that could’ve been a contender, Prometheus. In this episode, a two-year-old poisons a man.

I’m not alone in thinking David is the most well-realized character in this movie. Michael Fassbender was given the most space to act through expression and reaction to others and his environment, which helps create an android character that has much more inner life than his human castmates. He also gets what I’d call the Data bonus: android characters can more easily get away with screamingly clunky exposition or explicitly stating the meaning of a scene. You can give them absolute gibberish if you want to, and it sounds perfectly logical when they say it.

[Video description: A small selection of technobabble from Star Trek: The Next Generation, mostly featuring Data.]

David is also the easiest to be sympathetic to, because people keep being assholes to him.

Yes, David has received mysterious orders from a mysterious man who’s still in stasis. It’s Peter Weyland. It’s obviously Peter Weyland, this is why David has the dream-reading helmet thing that felt so out of place at the start of the movie. This is also why Guy Pierce, a 45-year-old, was hired to play an infinity-year-old man. Weyland was going to appear as his ideal self in one of these dream sequences, but it was cut from the movie. So instead, we just have Vickers demanding to know what “he” wants, and the answer is “Try harder”.

Peter Weyland, beginning a trend for the company bearing his name, has an obsession with this alien stuff. …This trend was actually begun by Charles Bishop Weyland in a completely different continuity that also featured ancient alien contact with Earth, but hey, details. This Weyland wants results, damn it, and David gets an excuse to kill one of the crew.

Although it’s not quite that simple. The movie indicates that David can’t go against orders from the company, especially from Weyland. He has to “try harder”, and he’s brought back one of those alien urns that apparently nobody cares to examine but him. 

It’s got a goth lava lamp in it.

While we don’t get much indication David knows why this stuff is dangerous to organic life, I’ll give the movie a very tiny pass: it’s implied that David has figured out how to read the Engineer’s cuneiform script. He decants a droplet of Menacing Black Goo onto his (Weyland-branded) fingertip, and sets off to find a test subject.

Thank god, he chooses Holloway.

I don’t like not liking characters. I don’t generally anticipate seeing someone’s comeuppance, but this movie gets me damn close to that feeling. In the movie’s partial defense, some of this was probably intended. Mainstream American fiction sets a high bar for what a bigot looks like, and Holloway’s been clearing that. I’m less certain the movie knows everyone’s behaving like a bigot, but we’ll get to that eventually. But Holloway? Definitely. 

This creates a fairly interesting scene. One that even reaches towards good. David has the means to kill Holloway. The audience knows this. And we get to watch when he makes the decision to commit to it, and why. And, blessedly, it actually ties into an intentional theme of this movie.

Holloway’s still drunk and miserable–he’d previously muttered that the alien structure on the planet was “just another tomb.”

I, speaking hyperbolically, would consider that grounds enough to off him. He’s an archaeologist who can be sent into a drinking binge by finding a thing made by dead people. An archaeologist. That in itself is such a ridiculous indicator of how unfit this character is for his role.

But no, he wanted to meet his maker, “To get answers.” Sure, lots of people have existential questions they feel are important to them. That is understandable. Even clueless assholes can wonder about that. But it takes an especially hubristic asshole to decide they’re the one worthy of asking someone who might have the answer. 

Did anybody notice they didn’t bring any diplomats or orators on this trip? They didn’t bring any cultural exchange gifts with them when they approached the alien structure? They weren’t treating the Engineers as people, just something to discover.

David, someone else they’re not treating like people, asks Holloway “Why do you think your people made me?”, and the answer he gets is “Because we could.” David is quietly but openly disappointed in that.

This is the whiplash of this movie. We have the biggest bunch of shambolic assholes klutzing around, waiting to get killed off by the plot, and then we have David expressing the horror of Valentinian gnosticism.

In brief, because even the wikipedia page says “The theology [...] is extremely complicated and difficult to follow”, the strain of Christian gnosticism expressed by the 2nd century theologian Valentinus believes that the world was created by an ignorant being. They believed there was a benevolent god out there which was/produced Jesus, but the “demiurge” (lit. “craftsman”) who created the world was not this deity. The demiurge was an imperfect, lesser being, that believed itself to be the supreme god of the universe. In Valentinianism, as with other gnostic schools, to be born into the world was to be trapped within a creation of a creature that was prone to fits of abusive behavior.

Gnostic christianity was, at the time, an attempt to square a number of contradictory ideas: the incredibly influential ideas of Plato on the formation of the universe, the growing theology of the new Christian movement, and the examples of divine wrath and jealousy in Jewish scripture, that were hard to square with what early Christians saw as a less violent deity they wanted to worship. There were probably also some anti-Jewish Egyptian myths thrown in as well, depicting their god as a donkey-headed incarnation of the malevolent deity Set. Some may recognize that particular slander from its deployment against early Christians, including our first-ever depiction of Jesus’ crucifixion: a rude bit of graffiti.

In our time, there’s only one remaining gnostic (non-christian) religion with direct continuity to the period, the Mandaeans. Christian gnosticism was deemed heretical, when one of the many different gospels circulating at the time was selected as orthodox in the 4th century, along with an attendant theology. But it remains a fertile ground for philosophers, fiction-writers, and every once in a while someone reinvents bits of it when they hit upon contradictions in christian thought.

The latter seems to be the case with Ridley Scott. He’s sometimes described as an atheist, but his actual statements on the matter show he’s either casually gnostic or a deist, very much influenced by christian doctrine: 

“If we looked at the whole thing practically speaking, the Big Bang occurred and then we go through this evolution of millions, billions of years where, by coincidence, all the right biological accidents came out the right way. To an extent, that doesn't make sense unless there was a controlling decider or mediator in all of that. So who was that? Or what was that? Are we one big grand experiment in the basic overall blink of the universe, or the galaxy? In which case, who is behind it?”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/films/callingtheshots/ridley_scott.shtml

Tangent: that question came right after he’s quoted as saying “I think there's no originality [in modern films]. I think everyone is stealing from everyone else and going back to the originals. I usually go in for 20 minutes and then get up and leave.” This interview was back in 2006. The next year he’d direct American Gangster (loosely based on a biography), then Body of Lies (Roger Ebert called it "a James Bond plot"), then Robin Hood (it’s Robin Hood), then Prometheus, the movie I only watched because it seemed to be in dialog with a film he directed in 1979. Buddy, if that was your problem, you were part of the problem.

But anyway. We have a director who had stated interest in a christian-influenced cosmogony: he seems to state a belief that we exist because we are supposed to exist, rather than being a random event. This is a movie where he does seem to be trying to do something with that. He is beginning with that premise, and using Alien as the shared language to express it. He doesn’t know why we exist, but he can imagine why we would make someone exist.

Placing that in amongst these characters is bleak to the point of puerility, frankly. Why would we create a being like us? Well, this one asshole doesn’t know.

David, at this point in Prometheus, has already determined that humans are fallible creators. Hell, he’s decided the Engineers were also failable. He, y’know, witnessed how gooey one of their corpses was. But he’s yet to decide on whether humans are just ignorant, trying and failing to be good–as per Valentinus–or if they’re actively malevolent.

The fact that David doesn’t poison Holloway’s drink until just before handing it over does neatly show that he was quietly given a chance to answer that question. Holloway continues to be a jackass and, when asked what he’d do to answer the existential question he wanted to pose to the Engineers, he says he’d do “anything and everything”.

The movie eventually treats Peter Weyland as especially deluded in his self-serving quest to get the Engineers to answer his more selfish questions, but I don’t think his ego was unique in this movie.

On our journey into the movie this time, Prometheus has attempted to grapple with subjects its script hasn’t earned. Next time, it incorporates imagery it hasn’t earned. It’s worse than this scene, but in a far more subtle way.

If you want a neat look on european and middle eastern mysticism from an academic standpoint, Esoterica is a pretty damn good channel, put together by a self-described “dialectical materialist in the tradition of Structural Marxism”. I’ll happily take recommendations on other academic sources aimed at the general audience.

https://youtu.be/7EwRD6SzXws

https://st-takla.org/Feastes-&-Special-Events/Coptic-Nativity-of-Jesus-Christ-Milad-El-Masih/Coptic-Jesus-Incarnation-Christmas-03-Incarnation-of-the-Word-Book.html 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masbuta 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drabsha 

https://www.deviantart.com/pretty--kittie/art/Prometheus-Engineer-407322241 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon_(Gnosticism) 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sethianism

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[hugsandchaos]

Credit to the smart @g1ggl3-c4t for the lava lamp belly idea, it was one of the greatest things I’ve ever read and was immediately compelled to write something about it! It took me longer than I would’ve liked to get everything organized, but it’s done!

I wrote this with the Earthbound AU timeline, just in case you get confused. I think about it so often and yet I have so little stories about it. I hope you like it!

V flipped another page in her book and adjusted the reading light next to her so she could see a bit easier. There were large black curtains next to her, but she couldn’t move in front of the window and open the curtains for light since it was still sunset and she couldn’t allow any heat into the cool room. There was a bit of other light in here, but it wouldn’t be enough. That light was from the shirtless drone laying down next to her, one arm covering his belly and the other laying behind his head. Luckily, V was allowed to bring a reading lamp with her into the otherwise fairly vacant room he occupied, so she was able to read happily while she passed the time with him.

V originally came in to check on him because it was early autumn, which meant that the temperatures were starting to get lower than the previous summer, but N was still overheating quicker than in the winter. James wanted someone to stay with him every now and then throughout the day to make sure that he was alright and be there to help him get oil when he needed it, and V volunteered to do so a few hours before the sun began setting. She was allowed to bring a book, a light, and a blanket with her, but was otherwise told to remain quiet so the nocturnal drone could sleep. The heat also explained why he was currently only wearing pants and not his usual coat. It was surprising, though, that his core ran so fast and produced enough heat for him to need his room to be at a cold temperature constantly. Soon enough, though, when the temperature dropped and her friend woke up, he’d put his coat back on.

The room wasn’t just a little cold without the blanket, it was also fairly empty. There wasn’t much compared to the rest of the manor. The room was shaped sort of like and L flipped upside down, except the “stem” of the letter would be shorter, and used to be an old guest bedroom that just never got upgraded. It consisted of a window with thick black curtains to block out light and heat from the sun outside on the wall furthest to the door, a bed against the right wall near the window, a small nightstand, and a rug that only covered most of the room while the far left of the room was wooden floors and practically zero wall decor. After N was brought to the manor by James, there wasn’t exactly room for him in the worker drones’ current living quarters — a problem he’s trying to fix —, so he was allowed to use this one. Plus, he didn’t have much experience socializing with complete strangers and ended up scaring a bunch of the other workers, so no one complained about this arraignment. Currently, N was laid dawn on his back in the far left part of the room to avoid any heat from the carpet, so V was sitting next to him while reading. Given how quiet it is, she’d most likely notice anything happening to him.

V’s eyes continued to scan the page as her mind visualized what was being written.

“Vesper!!!” Stillness called out. The usually dark and uncaring villain yanked his arms out of Soundwave’s grip and made a dash towards the cage carrying the shark-dog hybrid. Upon hearing his voice, Vesper perked his head up from the tightly curled up ball position he was in to hide himself and searched for the source. Stillness reached his cage in seconds, dropping out and wrapping his arms around it, but then cried out in pain and recoiled from the electric shock. He still knelt in front of the hybrid creature with a mixed look of relief and worry. Vesper opened his mouth and began crying again, both out of fear for his own safety and his superhuman’s safety.”Shh, shh! It’s okay, buddy! I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to get you out!” Stillness said.

Soundwave finally caught up to him and began trying to grab his arms again, but Stillness punched him.”No! Let go of me!” He yelled angrily. Vesper wailed and stood up, snapping his jaws and stomping his front feet anxiously. Sensing his hybrid companion’s stress, Stillness turned around while still trying to wrestle his way out.”Don’t worry, Vesper!” He said.

“What are you doing? Why are you talking to the hybrid like that?” Soundwave asked.

Before V could continue reading, she noticed from her friend next to her and looked up from her book. The five semispheres on N’s head were starting to come on, which was a sign of him wake up. They flickered once or twice before they all blinked at once, showing that the systems they were a part of were up and running, and a pair of closed eyes appeared on N’s screen a second later. He didn’t open his eyes just yet, and instead lifted both his arms up to stretched them. He stretched his legs out too, then rested them in the same position as before. Finally, he opened his eyes and noticed V sitting next to him.”Oh, hi, V! Good evening!” N said, greeting her as if it was actually morning.

A small smile made its way across V’s face as N sat up.”Good evening, N. The sun is still out, so if you want to just stay here, that’s probably a good idea.” She said, pulling the blanket back onto her shoulder right after it started to fall off. It might be warm or a “regular room temperature” for N, but she was cold without the heated blanket.“Oh, okay! Uh, you mind staying though? Just to be around?” He asked. He seemed a little nervous asking, but V couldn’t really tell why. This isn’t the first time he’s requested to simply not be alone, and it wasn’t like staying for the rest of her “shift” would be a bother.“Of course.” V replied. N’s tail thumped lightly against the floor, then he laid back down on his back against the chilly wooden floor.“Thank you.” He said. As he laid back down, he crossed his arms behind his head and close both of his eyes to relax for a bit longer. Instead of going back to her book and continue reading (even though it was getting good and Stillness being a good dad to his shark-dog-pup is so wholesome-), V couldn’t help but wonder if she should ask something that’s been on her mind for a while.

She briefly glanced from the pages down at her friend, specifically at the dimly glowing yellow liquid and slowly moving bubbles in what appeared to be his belly. There were plenty of things that were different in his physical design compared to literally every other drone in the building, from his legs and feet, to his long tail, to his arms, and even his head was a little different! But what confused V the most was his belly. It looked a lot like something that used to be created long ago as night light in children’s bedrooms, or just to look nice. She’s seen the pictures from Tessa and James. His belly resembled something called a “lava lamp”. No, it didn’t have actual lava (as far as she knew). It wasn’t made of glass or plastic, but it was definitely clear. Otherwise, V wouldn’t be able to see the liquid moving around in there. She didn’t understand why his belly was like that, but she also didn’t understand a bunch about him. For a bit, she thought it was a little weird that she was curious about someone’s belly, but then again, she was wondering about why pretty much all of his limbs were built the way they were and N seemed okay with answering those questions. He even told her to ask any questions she had and he’d try to answer them the best he could, so in that moment, V decided that now was the time she was actually going to ask.“Hey, N?” She piped up. N opened both eyes and turned his head to look at her.”Yes?” He answered.

“I hope this doesn’t sound rude,” V removed her right hand from her book and reached out to N’s belly, ”but what’s with the belly?” She asked. She poked and lightly stroked his belly to emphasize her point. The contents inside were disturbed and moved away from her fingers, and whatever was holding it all in was surprisingly squishy and a little bit chilly. At the same time, N started laughing and sat up. V pulled her hand away and looked at him slightly surprised that he had laughed like that. N cleared his throat.“That’s a good question. I’m not entirely sure to be honest, but I think it’s my main acid tank. That’s just a guess, though. The main thing I know is that whatever material they used to made the “case”, or my belly, is incredibly hard to puncture, but pretty flexible, so it makes it a little squishy.” He explained. V couldn’t help but think that didn’t explain why he laughed the way he did. It slightly reminded V of herself or others when they’re-!... V held back a smirk from forming. She closed her book and turned her body to kneel right next to him.“Alright. I have another question.” She said. N noticed the change and raised an eyebrow slightly in confusion.“Okay, go ahead.” He said.

“Does this tickle?” V asked. Without anymore warning, she reached one of her hand over to tickle his belly. It hardly took a second before N started to laugh again, but he didn’t really fight back. Instead, he just let her tickle him.”Pfft- Hahahaha!! Yehehehehes, ahahahaha lohohohohot!! Hahahahahaha!!” He said through his laughter. V’s innocent smile quickly turned into a more mischievous grin.”That’s good, because now I can get back at you for helping J tickle me!” She said.

“Wahahahait, whahahahahahat?! Hahahahahahaha!! Hahahahahahahaha!! Hahahahaha!! Hahahahahaha!!” N cackled and soon began to lightly push at V’s hand, but it wasn’t enough to actually move her hand away. Other than that, he didn’t make much movement to stop the tickling. V made a mental note of this just in case, but then she was right back to focusing in her revenge. Deciding one hand was way too nice, she put her second hand out and momentarily paused to poking and scribbling so she could grab both side of his belly and squeeze.”Wow, it really is kind of squishy.” She said, trying to tease him. N’s laughter briefly went up an octave and grew a little louder when she squeezed him, and his legs lifted up to protect himself, but he was already leaning back and using one of his arms for support.”And it seems to be your “happy button”. Let’s see how many times I can press it.” V said. She began squeezing his belly repeatedly, the cool material used for it squishing easily up her fingers. N threw his head back and his laughter went up an octave again.”Hahahahahahaha!! Hahahahahahahaha!! Nohohohot thehehe behehehehelly!! Hahahahahahaha!!” He said through his laughter. The contents inside his belly moved around as he laughed and V tickled him, the bubbles moving around inside.”Hmm, I think “yes, the belly”. It seems to be the perfect spot! In fact, I think I’ll take my time and draw on it a little.” She said. She then noticed something next to N, on the opposite side where she was. His tail was wagging, and definitely not in the way it does when he’s extremely mad. V slowed down the tickling and removed one of her hands while she used the other to trace shapes such as stars.

N’s laughter died down, but he was definitely giggling a lot from the slow tickling.”Hahahaha! Whahahat ahahare yohou drahahawihihing? Pfft- Hehehehehahahaha! ” He asked. V paused to lay down on her belly and continued tracing, using her free arm to prop her head up and act as if she was drawing on paper. Except she didn’t have a pen.”Oh, just random doodles. Stars, dogs, cats, hearts, lightning bolts, stuff like that. Please stay still so I can focus.” She said. N continued giggling as she traced her fingers on his belly.”Buhuhut ihihihit tihihickles! Hahahahaha!” N said. While V was doing this, she thought about her next move. Should she stop? She decided no, since her torture went on longer than this. So what should she do next? She’s already gotten back at J. What did J do that V could do to get back at N?

That’s when she got the idea.

V carried on the drawing act for a few more minutes before stopping and pretending to stretch like she was about to get up.”I’m a little hungry. Maybe I should get some food.” She said to “herself”. N’s tail slowly stopped wagging and V could’ve sworn he looked a little bit disappointed for a second before smiling.”Okay! I’ll just wait right here.” He said, keeping the last of the lingering giggles in. As V pretended to get up, pulling herself to her knees, N stretched as well and laid back down. Now he was basically asking for it! V seized the chance as he was laying back down and wrapped both arms around his abdomen. Her head now rested in the middle of his belly and he looked a little surprised and confused.”Uh, what are you doing? Aren’t you going to get food? If you wanted a hug before you left, you could’ve asked.” He said, trying not to let his growing nervousness show. He had a guess of what she was doing, but he kept thinking to himself that he could be wrong. V took in a deep breath and lowered her head down to lightly press her face against his belly. N realized that he was right in his guess, but it was too late.

“AAAAAAAIIIIIEEEEHEHEHEHEHAHAHA!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! VEEHEEHEEHEE!!!” N threw his head back and laughed loudly as his tail began wagging again. He lifted his legs and lightly stomped them against the ground as he squirmed from the sudden attack. V had her arms wrapped tightly around him, though, so he was pretty much stuck.”Yeah, I’m getting one of my favorite snacks! Raspberries!” V said before blowing another one against his belly. N let out another howl of laughter and hit the floor with a fist.”OHOHOHO MYHYHY ROHOHOHOBOBOBOBO-GOHOHOHOD, IHIHIHIT TIHIHIHICKLES SOHOHO BAHAHAHAD!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!” He said. He soon felt V’s fingers also begin to dibble and scratch at his sides, which weren’t nearly as bad as the raspberries, but it didn’t really help either. He looked over at V, who had a mischievous, evil grin on her face.”I think I’ll just have a few more.” She said.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wAAAAAAAAIIIIIEEEEHEHEHEHEHAHAHA!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!! NOHOHOHOHOHO!!! IHIHIHI’M SOHOHOHOHORRY!!! PLEHE—AAAAAAAIIIIIEEEEHEHEHEHEHAHAHA!!!” N stomped repeatedly against the ground and one of his hands was hiding part of his face while the other was busy hitting the floor. He laughed hysterically from the raspberries and squirmed around in futile attempts to escape, but V had a good grip on him and wasn’t going to let go until she delivered the third and final raspberry. She waited until he had calmed down a little to catch him off guard.”Okay, you’ve made your POINT — AAAHAHAHAHAHA!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! YOHOHOHUHUHU WIHIHIHIN!!! YOHOHOU WIHIHIHIN!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!” N cackled. V let go and felt pretty proud of herself. N rolled into his side and curled up to protect his belly as his laughter slowly died down to slightly tired breathing, and his tail slowed to a much more subtle wag. V went back to where she was sitting before and picked up her book.“Did you have fun?” She asked.

“No!” N replied. It wasn’t as convincing as he probably would’ve liked, and V thought it was pretty amusing.”Really? Because your tail was wagging the whole time and you never asked me to stop.” She said. She might not see it directly, but she assumed that by the way the wooden floor being ever so slightly more illuminated than before near N’s screen that he was blushing from embarrassment. V covered her mouth to prevent a small laugh from slipping out and embarrassing her friend further, then opened her book to continue reading.

[completeoveranalysis]

[10]

Of course Lava Lamp’s thoughts immediately return to the moment that caused this. How he thinks this is his fault. How he wishes he hadn’t hesitated. 

How there’s literally nothing they’ve been able to figure out in seven years but now he has SECONDS to figure this out or Sakura really is dead forever. 

How the only option he can even think of is reversing time itself - but how incredibly out of reach is even the thought of that? If Nadeshiko can only JUST manage to stop time, and she’s stronger than anyone else in Clow at the moment, what hopes does he have of pulling this off? In a few seconds? With no notice?

I suppose the only option would be to call Yuuko, but could he do that? I think he would have tried that before now if he was able to. Could he call her in seconds? What would the PRICE be to turn back time that far? If Nadeshiko is dying to even PAUSE time briefly, actually turning back the clock seven years?!?!

More than anyone could conceivably imagine surely. 

OH

OH YOU FUCK

THIS WAS ALL A TRAP

THIS WAS A TRAP FROM MOMENT ONE

DID HE NOT EVEN REALLY INTEND TO KILL SAKURA? DID HE JUST SET THE TRAP SINCE HE KNEW LAVA LAMP WAS THERE, AND SLOWLY DROVE HIM INTO DESPERATION KNOWING THAT BY THE TIME IT KILLED SAKURA HE’D BE READY TO TRADE LITERALLY ANYTHING TO EVIL WOLVERINE?

This is how he gets Lava Lamp into the lava lamp then?

Also it’s sad to see that the same trick that Yuuko used earlier (being in a slightly different dimension to not trigger Fai’s curse) must be what Evil Wolverine is using to get around the Time Stop. He’s technically not even in Clow, so he can still reach in and communicate with Lava Lamp even while time is frozen. 

OH I HATE THIS MAN. 

And yet OH THE SMALL TOUCH BETWEEN FAI AND LAVA LAMP EARLIER, BECAUSE FAI WAS THE CLOSEST ONE TO UNDERSTANDING HIM

IN REALITY HE REALLY WAS EXACTLY THE SAME

EVIL WOLVERINE PORTALLED IN INFRONT OF BOTH OF THEM, MURDERED THEIR MOST TREASURED LOVED ONE, AND THEN ASKED THEM BOTH TO SELL THEMSELVES TO REVERSE IT. 

I suppose the only difference was that Nadeshiko was here to freeze time, which is probably the only reason why Sakura didn’t actually straight up die here. And I suppose you could go either way on if this was intentional - if Evil Wolverine didn’t really care either way, or if he set this up specifically for a moment where he knew Nadeshiko would be watching and ready. That’s a pretty huge gamble if so, but we’ve seen his plans go drastically wrong often enough that maybe he was willing to bet Sakura's life on getting this moment to play out right. 

WILD. 

And that’s the last page?

That’s the last page!

HEY I HATE THIS MAN

[whataboutsimple]

|Complex MC:SM|

Command Blocks Edition.

Stories, tales, lies and truths — everything you need to know about the world from Diaries of the Four Discoverers!

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a Mainworld in silence, until four Discoverers appeared.

Alex, the mighty Warrior, they say she was so brave and strong that she single-handedly defeated the very first Wither.

Steve, the an incredible Builder and Leader of the group, there are legends that many abandoned Temples were created by him.

Notch, the brilliant engineer and at the same time a powerful alchemist, many people believe that his researches are the basis of all the adventures.

And finally, the last, fourth with a sad fate is Hero. No one has ever been able to match his mastery of TNT, fire and lava. Rumors says he's s the only one of the team that has never been seen by any hostile mob.

These heroes appeared long before the Mainworld looked like our usual image. A quiet, deserted place with an unlimited number of nasty monsters and peaceful animals. They're the Pioneers of every part of the earth that we know to this day.

No one, and even the Heroes themselves, knows exactly where they came from, but everyone knows the story of the appearance of the entire humanity..

"..One deep, deep night, Hero and I were walking through the desert, intending to find some kind of water source. The battle with the Horde of Cadavers tired Alex out a lot, so Notch prepared several Regeneration Potions for them, using up our last reserves. Hero ranted about this for quite a long time, but didn't refuse to go. To be honest, I was glad of such an outing, because I was the least likely to communicate with the Lord of Chaos from the whole team. In the end, I create, and he destroys.

Hmm, what am I talking about? Oh, right. We then found an abandoned well. One of those that we built many centuries ago, passing through this desert not for the first time. Though it's not what attracted Hero's attention at all, but the Jungle. It looked pretty normal, but wasn't on our maps, which means it was here quite recently, which could not be possible, because by itself no Biome, except for the Mushroom, can spread, which means someone clearly helped these trees grow so much. Quickly taking the right amount of liquid, we headed back to our camp, striving to bring the news to the others.

As usual, Alex's natural curiosity quickly took over in our heated argument, which is why we decided to go out in the morning, and see what was there, and how. Maybe there was someone else in this world, and we just didn't notice? Huh, truly naive thoughts, but what can you do, hope always sparkles in a person's soul.

Indeed, the next morning we set off into this unexplored thicket, driven by curiosity and pierced by fear. At that time, my intuition was still sounding the alarm for us to leave there as soon as possible, but seeing the endless enthusiasm of the others, I shut it's mouth tighter.

In general, I'll keep you, reader, from long stories about our conversations, feelings and thoughts, I will quickly get down to business. We didn'tt find anything extremely unusual there. Nothing but the Temple, which was definitely not built by Me or any of the others. That's what was really exciting, because we rarely had the opportunity to observe structures that were not built by ourselves.

It was quite easy to get inside and note that whoever built this building, they didn't work much on protection, even though they should've. We didn't find anything special there, except for strange glowing blocks. They didn't look like a glowstone, or lamps, or anything else that emits light and is known to us. That's why we decided to take them with us. While Alex and I were putting blocks of red, green, blue, yellow, white and purple shades into a separate backpacks, Notch and Hero were arguing hotly about something. Paying attention to the brothers, Alex and I once again tried to calm them down, but our patience was not enough for a long time.

To be honest, I was surprised by this back then, because until that moment I had never snapped at my friends before.

As it turned out later, the subject of the dispute was some kind of.. a beige block that emits all colors at the same time. Neither Hero nor Notch could decide who would carry it. Alex got angry pretty quickly, deciding to just take this block as soon as possible, but the brothers were faster.

Then I don't remember much, just a white flash, loss of consciousness, headache. When I woke up, I noticed Notch and Hero were missing. It seemed strange to me, because they would never have left either Alex or me injured. I didn't find Alex. As soon as the initial shock passed, I decided that they just headed to the nearest village for the help of the villagers. Picking up my backpack with blue, red and white blocks, I immediately headed there, wanting to catch up with my friends.

And that's when I realized it for the first time: the blast wave caused a sudden surge of strange magic all over the world. At first, I just watched the felled trees or dug mines, the authors of which were not us. And then I noticed the first, new, person. Scared, I just ran away, not really knowing how to react to it. As it turned out later, there were even more of them in the village.

Having found out from the villagers that almost a month had passed since my friends and I left, I was in mild shock. Just three days ago, we went to the desert and visited the Temple yesterday. Could I have been out for a month? I didn't know the answer then, and I don't know it now. But what I do know for sure is that I need to find my friends."

The end of Steve's last post. It was the diaries of all four Discoverers that allowed us to put together all the information about the world before the appearance of ordinary people.

Even if we don't know everything until the end, only in our book "The History before and after: our world" you can read all their Diaries!

——

I hope someone have any questions, because I want to answer to them:)

[animalcrossingshowdown]

I am LOVING the furniture brackets!! If it's not too much work, coule you maybe include what games the items are from/in? (Dw about it if it's too much though, the brackets themselves are probably very time consuming already)

I think maybe it is too much work but I'll list all the ones I know without googling here for you. I'm extremely familiar with NH's and NL's catalogue, and I mostly know which items are new to those games, but the older games I'm less sure about. if you wanna know a specific one, nookipedia is pretty good. I pulled all the images I'm using for the NL items from there

for the stand alone items, all of them except balloon dog, snail clock and lovely phone are available in NH

this isn't true 100% of the time, but here is a gist oh how items have progressed through the games:

the original game was developed for N64, and was ported to gamecube in the west. as a result these items have like 6 polygons and needed to be remade for the jump to DS. I believe most items made it to the DS, but I definitely know of a few that didn't make it (rip lovely stereo).

from DS to Wii, many items were ported directly as they were & use the same models (the ones with round parts were mostly remade though), so most items returned. same thing from Wii to 3DS, the 3DS has a tiny screen so the items could be reused again and most items returned. at this point though you can start to really tell the difference between the new and old furniture, since the new stuff has so much more detail and is generally less boxy

from 3DS to Switch EVERY item had to be remade. NH is an HD game and you can't be using models from 2005. as a result, less than half of the items in NL made it to NH (682 out of 1764) and many that did return look noticeably different

anyways here's a list of the tournament items and sets and where they're from to the best of my knowledge:

Items:

froggy chair - all games

leo sculpture - NH, NL (but it was stone and had glowing eyes in NL)

balloon dog lamp - NL

eggplant cow - definitely NH and NL, idk if it was in other games

dreamy wall rack - NH

throwback skull radio - NH

dried flower garland - NH

rose bed - NH

creepy skeleton - NH, NL, CF

elaborate kimono stand - NH

pergola - NH, but a similar item called "wisteria trellis" was a public work in NL

mom's plushie - NH

greenhouse box - NH, NL

soft serve lamp - I think all games? definitely NH and NL, but I think it's one of those classic forever items

cherry-blossom pond stone - NH

rocket lamp - all games, but it was called lava lamp in every game except NH

snail clock - NL

imperial dining table - NH, but a similar item called lazy-susan table was in NL. not sure if the lazy-susan table was in older games. possibly CF?

decayed tree - NH

lucky cat - all games

ACNH nintendo switch - NH (duh)

spooky cookies - NH

virgo harp - NH, NL, but it was wooden in NL

rescue mannequin - NH

kerropi bridge - NH, NL

tiny library - NH

scattered papers - NH, NL

lily record player - NH, NL

skull rug - NH

mom's cake - NH

star clock - NH

anatomical model - I think all games

moon - I think all games

hyacinth lamp - NH

cancer table - NH, NL, but it was all gold in NL

paper tiger - NH, NL, idk about older games

colorful juice - NH

music box - NH, WW, though it didn't play KK songs in WW, it just had one unique song that it played. I think it was an item for reuniting Katie and Kaitlyn. idk if CF had it too. one of the VERY FEW items that were in previous games to not appear in NL

bathtub with yuzu - NH

plain party lights arch - NH

cinnamoroll sofa - NH, NL

dreamy rabbit - NH

elephant slide - all games

fortune teller set - NH (though NL & CF had the creepy crystal)

cucumber horse - definitely NH and NL, idk if it was in other games

dessert case - NH, NL, maybe CF???

peach chair - NH

starry garland - NH

bonsai shelf - NH

afternoon tea set - NH, NL (NL girlies remember the struggle)

my melody clock - NH, NL

monster statue - NH

hamster cage - all games

wheat field - NH, NL, CF

dragon zodiac figure - NH, NL, CF, but it looked different in NL and CF

lovely phone - all games except NH

toy duck - NH

crescent moon chair - NH

retreo stereo - all games

titan arum - NH

resetti model - I think all games?? I think it's been the groundhog day item in every game. maybe not WW since it didn't have real holidays

rattan towel basket - NH

cherry blossom branches - NH

sets:

I'm gonna skip any "ACNH redesigns" since obviously they're only in ACNH. I don't consider any sets other than the sanrio sets and the mermaid set to be truly the same between NH and NL (all 7 of those sets were new to NL, so NH has NO SETS that are the same from older games)

dreamy - NH

wedding - NH

patchwork classic - NL

spooky - the version in the tournament is only in NH. the old version is in NL, CF and PG

throwback - NH

mush classic - NL, CF, WW

rococo - NL

elegant - NH

diner - NH

flower - NL

glowing moss - NH

ruined - NH

fruit classic - all games except NH

sweets - NL, CF

my melody - NH, NL

cabin - all games except NH

log - NH

green - all games except NH

modern wood - NL

insect - NL

mario - NH, but every game has had some version of a "nintendo set". NH is the only game to only have mario items

motherly - NH

kiddie - every game except NH

ironwood - NH

hello kitty - NH, NL

kerropi - NH, NL

house plants - every game except NH

stars - NH, kinda NL. NL had the zodiac items but they all looked different, while NH made the set more cohesive and added the glowing star items

gorgeous - NL, CF

nordic - NH

alpine - NL (very obviously added to show off the new customization feature)

construction - all games except NH

modern - all games except NH

chess - all games except NH

shell - NH

blue - all games except NH

cherry blossom - NH (but the clock was in NL)

cute - NH

lovely - all games except NH

rattan - NH (redesign of cabana, which is not in this tournament but was in every game except NH)

astro - NL

plaza - NH

fish - NL

moroccan - NH

kiki & lala - NH, NL

harvest - NL, CF, PG

mermaid - NH, NL

gracie - NL, CF

imperial - NH (redesign of exotic, which is not in this tournament but was in every game except NH)

cinnamoroll - NH, NL

regal - every game except NH

sloppy classic - NL

ranch classic - every game except NH

cardboard - NH, but NL also had a cardboard set

robo - every game except NH

classic - every game except NH

antique - NH

card - NL, CF

princess - NL, CF

[transk0vsky]

Do you have any headcanons for Eva and/or Capella? They're some of my favorite of the bound so I would love to hear your thoughts

I’m gonna go with Eva for this since I’ll be honest here i don’t really think about any of the terminates (besides my amazing daughter grace) that often? Anyhow moving on

Starting off with the typical one at this point Eva has bpd! She just reads to me as having it

she tried to wear heels once in her youth tripped and broke her nose after that she’s sworn enemies with heels! You will not catch her dead in heels! Nor will you probably catch her in any kind of shoe actually.

I think the reason aging seems to trouble stems from a fear of being abandon she’s scared that once she loses all her beauty that she’ll won’t be interesting to anyone any longer and they’ll all leave her behind for someone younger and more intriguing.

I also think she was thinking of suicide long long before the events of the game occurred but maybe in more of an ideation way then an active risk to herself. She’s struggling long before the events of the game long before the bachelor ever steps foot in the Stillwater it’s just either nobody noticed or nobody really cared to help.

She had two siblings both sisters, Eva was the middle child

She doesn’t talk much to her family nowadays they didn’t exactly treat her the best when they were in contact and after moving to the town they never put in the same effort she did to keep up the line of communication so one day she just gave up….

In her teens she cut her own bangs and it looked very bad….but she looks back on it with glee Eva doesn’t care if it looked god awful! At least she had fun with it!

She offered to cut both Yulia and Andrey’s hair on Separate Occasions only one of them took her offer and the one that did ended up having to wear a hat for a few months afterwards (I’ll let you decide which)

Eva has a few burn scars on her fingers and hands very small ones but they are there, she got them after accidentally burning herself while cooking…she doesn’t learn from these mistakes it continues to happen.

On that note very clumsy! If you toss something to her there’s a 85% chance she will fail to catch it and if she does catch it she will drop it immediately afterwards (this is based off myself) she also trips over her own feet often especially going up the stairs. She’s going through it.

She knows how to sew! It’s a hobby she picked up during her youth and she still really enjoys doing it from time to time nowadays. However she loses interest in her projects easily and tends to hop from project to project she hasn’t finished any of them in years

In a modern day setting I think Eva would find lava lamps cool and or plasma balls! She’d have one or two in the Stillwater for sure lol. Also those tacky bead curtains you know the ones….fuck maybe she’d also have a waterbed? Hmmm much to think about

She probably has a tattoo or two maybe on her back or ankle? They’d be very small ones though! The artwork for them was probably done by Peter (wouldn’t trust him to like actually do a tattoo however…it might get infected.)

Her favorite animal is a swan don’t have a particular reason for that one just feel like it’d be fitting!

[mxsamwood]

Reset The Ending // A Stanley Parable Fanfic, Stannarator + Angst

Context: The Narrator couldn’t reset the Zending ending for some reason and had to see Stanley slowly dying as he begin losing a lot of blood.

(No idea if this was good or not lmao)

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The game started as usual with Stanley sitting at his desk and the Narrator doing his dialogue. Before Narrator could even finish his dialogue, Stanley stood up from his chair and begin walking away.

The Narrator noticed as he stopped his dialogue and speak up. “Stanley? I haven’t finished my dialogue yet!” Stanley ignored the Narrator as he continued walking. The Narrator was confused by Stanley’s behavior. His expression also looked a bit… Emotionless. As if something was wrong with him.

“Stanley? Are you okay? You seem rather… Tired. Which you shouldn’t be since I accessed to your code that you should be restless.” said the Narrator with a light-hearted tone, even though Stanley didn’t react to it. Stanley was usually silly and more ardor with the story. Well, sometimes.

Stanley stopped in front of two doors right in front of him as the Narrator cleared his throat and continued his script. “As Stanley came to a set of two opened doors, he entered the door on the left.” Stanley ‘decided’ to go through the door on the right, which made the Narrator slightly piqued but he continued with the story anyways.

Stanley kept walking as the Narrator continued with his script. Stanley still didn’t listen to Narrator as he went to the warehouse. The Narrator looked intrigued now on why is here as Stanley went on the lift. Surely he won’t-

Stanley jumped off from the lift as he landed on the other side of the platform. Oh no.. the Narrator knew where this is going and he doesn’t like it. The Narrator spoke up with a worried, along with a stressed tone as Stanley continued to disobey every decision the Narrator made for him.

“Stanley please. Whatever you’re going to do, don’t.” The Narrator didn’t want to go back to that ending again. Not how it suddenly turned into a bitter ending… Stanley still didn’t listen. It’s like he doesn’t know what he’s about to do. As if he was in controlled by a person. Before the Narrator could speak up, Stanley was already at the Zending.

The vibrant lights around the Zending’s wall flow beautifully like a lava lamp as a calm music played. The Narrator stopped for a moment as he looked around the room and gulped quietly. He didn’t want to remember this ending at all but here he is… Stanley begin walking to the door where it leads to the stairs.

The Narrator looked at Stanley and begin to panic as he spoke up with an apprehensive tone. “Stanley please! We both know you don’t want to do this! Why are you doing this ending again?!” Stanley continued ignoring Narrator as he begin going up the stairs.

The Narrator didn’t know what to do at this point. What is he even supposed to do at all? He can’t even stop Stanley from doing it last time… But Narrator still tried. For Stanley. The Narrator begin speaking up with a slight shaky tone in his voice.

“Stanley, please… Why are you back here again? Is it because of the stories? The endings? Or is it… Is it because of me, Stanley?“ Stanley paused as he stood at the edge of the platform, high up from the ground. The Narrator had a spark of hope by Stanley’s sudden stop, which he didn’t complain.

The Narrator waited for Stanley to say something as both of them stayed in an awkward silent for a moment, until Stanley begin to speak up.

[Help.]

Stanley begin jumping off from the platform as the Narrator yelled “NO!” Stanley didn’t die yet. That’s, good. But ‘help’? Why did he say ‘help’? What did Stanley need help with? No, it’s obvious he didn’t want to do it and yet he still does it anyways.

Stanley continued going back up the stairs as Narrator tried to stop Stanley with an anxious tone in his voice. Stanley stood at the edge of the platform and jumped off once again. Just one more time and the game will reset. Right?

As Stanley limped around as he continued walking up the stairs and he was covered in blood now. That shouldn’t even be in the game at all. His bone arm looks like it was dislocated, as if he actually managed to broke his arm. His nose and head was bleeding as it dripped down to the floor.

He was at the edge of the platform again. The Narrator tried to calm himself down as he kept telling himself ‘the game will reset. It’s going to be okay’. But, will it though?

“Stanley… Talk to me. You won’t do it again. No matter how much you want to do it. Don’t. Please, stop it. For me? Please?… Stanley, I..” The Narrator’s voice begin to cracked as he continued looking at Stanley from the hidden cameras.

Stanley stood at the edge for a moment. A moment where everything will change after the last second. There was a tear falling down Stanley’s cheek as his expression still remained emotionless.

[I love you.]

The Narrator’s eyes widened as he heard those three little words from Stanley. Before he could speak, Stanley jumped off from the platform as the Narrator yelled out for Stanley while watched him fall.

His body made a loud thud once he landed on the ground as blood splattered around the floor. Stanley stared at the ceiling as his blood starts coming out from his head, nose and mouth. The Narrator looked at Stanley for a moment before he looked away from Stanley as he begin pressing the reset button.

…

Huh? Nothing happened?

The Narrator pressed the reset button once again. Still, nothing happened. The Narrator begin to panic as he continued to keep pressing the reset button. “Why. Isn’t. This… WORKING?!” He slammed his fist onto his desk, getting frustrated and worried. He decided to meet Stanley face to face, if he has time.

The Narrator quickly appeared right in front of Stanley who was still breathing. Thank god. The Narrator felt relieved as he ran towards Stanley, then sat on the floor beside him, and placed his hand behind Stanley’s neck as he carefully picked him up. He placed his other hand on Stanley’s cheek as he spoke in a panicky tone.

“Stanley! Stanley, can you hear me?.. please speak to me! Wh-why did you do it?! Why… Why can’t I reset the game?…” the Narrator’s voice break and begin to tear up as he noticed his tears falling down onto Stanley’s shirt. The Narrator was confused. He isn’t used to human emotions as tears piled up in his eyes.

“W-what is this?…” the Narrator continued tearing up, not knowing why a clear liquid is coming out of his eyes. He wasn’t fully human after all. He couldn’t understand what’s going on with himself. He felt a sharp pain in his chest as well and Stanley just watched Narrator being confused with human emotions and his feelings.

Stanley slowly raised his unbroken arm and placed his hand on Narrator’s cheek as Narrator’s eyes widened and kept looking at Stanley. Stanley slightly smiled at Narrator. The Narrator kept staring at Stanley as he placed his hand on the back of Stanley’s hand, holding his hand tightly.

[Narrator…]

“… Yes, Stanley?..”

[Raise my head up. I want to look at your face.]

The Narrator didn’t question Stanley as he raised Stanley’s head with blood still dripping down his face while their faces were close to each other. Stanley wiped Narrator’s tears with his thumb as he tried to keep up a warm smile for Narrator while his tears fell down onto Stanley’s cheek.

[Narrator, I…]

They both stared at each other’s eyes as they both slowly leaned closer. Stanley took one more look at Narrator and then kissed Narrator on the lips. Though, the Narrator didn’t understand the situation, he didn’t mind it and let Stanley do his own thing. The Narrator closed his eyes and begin to kiss him back.

After a few seconds, Stanley’s hand let go of Narrator’s cheek as he pulled apart from Narrator’s lips. The Narrator opened his eyes as he looked at Stanley. He begin to panicked and speak in a worried tone.

“S-Stanley?.. Stanley, wake up… This isn’t funny… You were… Fine just a moment again… I… Stanley.. let me.. fix thi-…”

The Narrator woke up as he slightly panted while he stared at the ceiling for a moment. He sat up from his bed and looked around. He was in his room. He looked at the clock on the desk beside him as it says 4:27 AM. The Narrator took a moment to process all of this and realized it wasn’t real.

Stanley had already died after all.

FIN.

[shadowonwater]

Pikmin 4 release trailer thoughts

oh boy oh boy! I've been waiting for more info on Pikmin 4! So I decided to go over my thoughts on the trailer here, I haven't watched any vids yet of other peoples thoughts so these are without contamination (save for already existing speculation videos from before this trailer came out) I'll be rewatching the trailer now.

So far, we see a ship that warps in and flys down to the planet. Something that caught me attention about this trailer is that it appears the group that landed on PNF came to it on purpose. Also they don't appear to have crash landed, which is a surprise because how all other times folks have landed on PNF, they crashed. It's a wonder how this might effect the popular Umibozu theory due to the crash landings being important for that theory.

The idea that these explorers seem to be here on purpose makes one wonder what they are here for. Treasure? Fruit? Some other collectable? Are they just here to explore? To study the planet? What planet are they from? Hocotate? Koppai? A new planet? How did they learn of PNF too?

But moving on, I also noticed that the music they play in the beginning is the sound that plays when Pikmin are marched in Pikmin 1 & 2. This doesn't mean anything, I just think it's cool they included that.

Next we see a bunch of man made things, such as the bench from the first trailer. But most importantly this includes a house! A human house! I hope we get the chance to go in there! The house looks perfectly in tact which is really interesting, are there any humans still around, what would be the ramifications of that? I remember seeing at least one theory some time ago that there's something wrong with the flow of time on that planet. Mostly that theory had pointed out how it's weird that Pikmin 2 had a bunch of human artifacts and 1 and 3 don't, even when 2 depicted some of the same areas as 1. The theory was that 2 was only a bit after humans got wiped out while 1 and 3 were farther in the future. It looks like 4 might be set even farther in the past.

Also it appears that the houses backyard is either the main setting or one of the settings in the game.

Also, Also! Baby Snagrets! They are SO cute!

After this we see the smaller ship drop someone off, this is part of what I mean when I say this landing looks deliberate. This wasn't a crash landing at all.

But anyway we meet our main captain! Clearly the one from the screenshot. There was speculation about whether they were Brittany or a new character, well they're new! It's interesting that their color is red which is usually used by Olimar. Olimar's suit only had red accents though, this suit is fully red. Also the little antenna light is a more saturated red.

I love how much onions look like tomatoes, every game I swear it's more and more like one. It looks very organic! And we still have the vine legs from 3, which I'm happy about. Anyway I just find it funny that they are called onions but they look so much like tomatoes.

Next we see another mixed onion, like in 3. But while 3, and also Hey!Pikmin (I think) had mixed onion that looks like lava lamps, this mixed onion looks like different pieces stuck together, it's a static image. Not sure how to feel about that, it's not a big deal but I liked the lava lamp look. We also have confirmation that the 3 main types are back but we already knew this from the screenshot.

We see several scenes of the main captain walking around, I'm not going to get too into the details here. But this bit of the video starts to really show how the new camera movement is looking, honestly it doesn't look to bad so far. But we'll see how it actually feels when we play the game.

Other things I noticed. There's a kid elephant slide in the background of one shot, I hope we get to slide down it, that'll be cool. Also I see a bridge puzzle, so those are back. Sand walls are also back but the one I see here is much longer than they normally appear, and some sort of gem(?) came out when it was destroyed. Maybe all long walls drop gems? We see a new obstacle, where the pikmin pull on some roots to get a plant out of the way, that's neat. There's also some sort of rock climbing wall? I wonder how it's built, exactly. But the captain can climb up it no issue and so can the Pikmin.

Just after rock climbing I see an enemy I have never seen before. Either it's new or It's in one of the games I haven't played, like maybe Hey!Pikmin. It looks a bit like a bird but it's got a mouth that's like a firery blowhog, mabye it also breaths fire? If it's from Hey!Pikmin it might help confirm if that spinoff is cannon.

We see the pikmin carry a pair of binoculars. It gets collected and is called "treasure" so maybe these new guys are also after treasure? Is it for the same or different reasons as Olimar and Louie? It could also be an upgrade, maybe.

Something I haven't mentioned yet is I've noticed that the courser shows what Pikmin you have selected for when you throw them. I think that's neat but I wonder if we'll have anything like the menu 3 had for that, so that we have an easy way to switch what Pikmin type we have selected.

And here we get to a big new reveal, Ice Pikmin! A new type! When I first saw this vid I wondered if the trailer would show any more new types, it hasn't. Either we only have 1 new type (unlikely considering the pattern), or we'll find out what it is later. They have yellow flowers, similar to the Pikmin 4 logo.

So about Ice Pikmin abilities... first off they can freeze an enemy if it eats them. The freezing affect is similar to bitter spray from 2. Also it's neat that they get eaten for that to activate, similar to White Pikmin, but different enough to be it's own thing. A solid way to balance a powerful ability, I just hope the freezing effect is not to OP.

Another thing, it seems they can survive in water, shallow water at least. They freeze the water and it can be walked on, it appears that they get stuck in the ice though? and can't follow you? I wonder if you can get them unstuck. But ability to just walk over the water is a really powerful one, you can't interact with anything still in the water, that's blue pikmin domain, but you can get over it like wings can, but this time you can bring all your pikmin! I wonder how to know how many ice pikmin you need to freeze water. The captain threw in a whole bunch in the trailer. Maybe the amount thrown in affect the speed in which it freezes?

Then we get another huge reveal, a dog! I suspect this little barker is a hocotatian dog. It does resemble a Bulborb what with the spotted back, being bipedal, the eyes being similar despite not being on stocks, and the mouth also being somewhat similar. I'd say this is a very safe assumption. It's cool that we can finally see what they look like! They are cute! I like that it resembles a Bulborb but still looks like a different distinct creature.

The dog can break through barriers, not sure yet if there are dog exclusive barriers. The dog can also life the amount a purple pikmin can carry, but because it's not a pikmin I wonder what it does when it drags a carcass to the ship does it leave it there for the pikmin for later, is it sold as treasure, or something else? But anyway being able to carry so much weight is real useful!

We also see that we have a crew of 4 characters here, carrying on the tradition of one more captain per game. They are all wearing the same color of suit. I wonder how similar the multitasking in this game is to 3, is it the exact same but with just one more? That we be a lot of keep track of. Or are they going to shack it up and have crewmember(s) who do something different. I wonder who the dog belongs to. The fact that they have a hocotatian dog points to the idea that they might be from hoctotate, but we don't know for sure.

Now getting to another insane power of the dog, it fucking swims! And the pikmin can jump on! Is there a limit to the amount the dog can ferry? What's the point of ice if the dog can swim everybody across? Unless you permanently lose ice pikmin if you use them to freeze water, this can be an alternative. Also there might be strategy involved with who gets the dog for multi-tasking. Also the good boy is named Oatchi, I love them but I hope they aren't too broken.

Next! Caves are back baby! I don't know if they are randomly generated like 2, but they are back! Maybe ice pikmin come from candy pop buds like purple and white? We haven't exactly seen its onion. I wonder if hey are randomly generated or not. There's also mention of finding a castaway.

I wonder if castaways are a regular part of gameplay or a one time story thing. Like how many people are getting stuck on PNF? Is this character important? Are they a new character? Are they old? The suit doesn't really resemble any of the previous suits we've seen before. This just makes me wonder if we are going to see any of the older characters make an appearance.

We also see boss battles! A new long legs to battle! It looks like a disco ball and has wires on its body. I wonder if it has electric attacks. There's also an older boss from pikmin 2 that returns. The really gross Bulborb Queen thing. It's interesting to note that we see the captain riding the dog, along with a bunch of pikmin. Is this a way to keep pikmin safe during battle? I wonder if you can ride the dog anywhere, is it faster than walking?

After this cave section we see the main captain and the dog ride off in the little pod. Where are they going? Why only them? the main ship seems to be staying in place. Maybe it's a more permanent location? Like are they trying to create a settlement or something? That would be an interesting plot to see. The onion of course follows them. but also, why is the onion following them? why not stay in place with the other people?

Then we see something pikmin players have been wanting for a long time, night time levels! really great menacing music, I hope it lives up to the height of how dangerous it's supposed to be. There appears to be some sort of glowing collectable, they look a bit like stars, not sure what they are. The bulborbs eyes beam red, what's the deal with that? It gives real danger vibes though. I wonder how they'll be made more dangerous besides being awake all the time.

Finally the release date! July 21! That's just a couple of days before my birthday! :D It makes it feel like a birthday gift to me, even if it's just a coincidence. It feels very cool~

[preaching-to-the-fire]

Preaching to the Fire (HH Adam x OC)

Chapter 3 - Hellbirth

Masterpost (info, tags, index) | [~2 100 words]

When Adam wakes up, he doesn’t know how long he’s been out. He knows one thing though : he wasn’t naked when he fell asleep.

He sits bolt upright with a jolt and reels as blood rushes back to his head. He presses a palm there and winces: his fingers hit a bump above his forehead. He must’ve taken quite a blow in the head. Lifting a corner of the blanket, he discovers with relief he still has his boxers on, at least. He’d almost find it funny how his first blame, his first shame, is still clinging to him, even now. Eden all over again.

But what he notices most, really, are the large bandages stained with brown spots, taped to his naked chest. For fuck’s sake, he thinks, this is starting to look like the start of a badly-written, thirsty fanfic — and he would know, he’s read all those about him.

He looks around: the same bedroom he was brought in a while ago — hours, days? He can’t tell.

There's a dim light on a night-stand next to him. A lava lamp. Ugh, this place reeks of the 70s. Carpeted floor, red and orange wallpaper walls he can barely see, hidden under layers of posters and shelves crammed full of vinyls. One corner of the room is an outright dumpster, in which he can make out a drumming set, mics, amps, all under years-worth of dust.

He feels weird. Like he’s s ick. But also hungry. No, not hungry, starving . He also feels heavy, so heavy, like he's gained several burgers-worth of weight in his fucking sleep. He gets up.

There are two doors in here. H e walks to open the first one and while doing so notices his wings feel unusually stiff. The door leads to the corridor he remembers from when he first arrived. Actually he can see the lift across the corridor. No hint of anyone's presence, be it the tiny demon he doesn't remember knocking out or the rat-girl who pulled him out of the streets — and into the sewers.

He closes the door and turns around. Fuck, he can't walk a straight line. His wings feel so stiff, it's hard to find his balance this way, not to mention his head feels like it's weighing a ton more than usual. He walks to the other side of the room, where the other door is, and casts a look at the instrumental mess on his way. He notices a few cases that might be guitars'.

The door leads to a bathroom, complete with a bathtub large enough to fit a whole band. But as soon as Adam walks past it, it's before the mirror that he stops.

He probably should be focusing on his many wounds, the fact that he's been all stitched up during his sleep, but to be fair the rest of him is just as alarming, if not more :

His wings. The feathers have blackened, as if burnt, with only golden rims to remind him of their past appearance. He's grown two bulges on each side of his skull that look an awful lot like horns. His ears have grown longer, so much longer and hairier, like that of a bull. His eyes are red. And he realises, the bandages are not just stained brown. They're stained in red blood. His blood.

Despite not responding just moments ago, his wings shiver brutally as he slams his palms on the edge of the sink and lets out a howl. One long crack crosses the mirror.

At the other side of the room, the door bangs open. Valska stands in the door-frame, ready to punch whatever's in sight.

“WHAT’S GOING ON?!”

“WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?!”

Adams stands by the bathroom door, only dressed in boxers, socks and bandages. His black and golden wings rest heavily against each of his shoulders, yet shivering like they want to flap open.

“What the fuck is THIS!" he screams grabbing both his bovine ears. "A--And THIS!!" he continues, now pulling on a wing. "What the-- WHAT THE FUCK!!!"

“Oh, that?”

Valska flattens a clawed hand on her chest, seemingly relieved. "For Freyja's sake, you scared the shit out of me! I thought something was wrong."

She walks up to the bed and puts down a pile of clothes she was holding, while Adam looks at her, horrified.

“Wrong? This isn't wrong enough for you?? What do you call this!!"

The rat demon walks around the bed to face him but keeps their distance, eyeing him, critical.

"Your new hellish form," she says as if it's the most obvious thing in the whole fucking world.

Adam is that close to screaming again. Valska tilts their head and her ears kinda drop.

“Oh maybe I should've brought a cake or something? I haven't celebrated a hellbirth in a while so you must forgive me. Also you killed my chef last night and I can't cook. Man, Pixar are damn liars about rats who can cook."

“Hellbirth-- What the FUCK?” His voice grows dangerously high-pitched. “Why am I like this? How does it stop?"

“Stop?" She tilts her head back up and shakes her head. "It's done already. You can't just stop it. You're a demon now."

Adam lets out a sound that is half a growl and half a laugh. He presses a palm against his forehead and says, low: “I can’t be a demon. I CAN’T be.”

Then he spins around to face them, towering them, having lost all control. Valska takes a step back just in case.

“D’you even KNOW who I am?! WHO made me?” he shouts, not caring about keeping his identity a secret anymore.

Valska brings her hands to her ears, wincing at the noise. “I kno—” But he spins right back around.

“I’m no fucking DEMON. I started mankind! ALL of it! This is all LUCIFER’s fault! That fucking SNAKE and his DUMBASS, rainbow-eating princess—”

“I know—”

“How do I go back to how I was?” he asks spinning back to them.

“… I'm afraid this is quite definitive."

“It CAN’T be.”

Valska snorts. “I can assure you all these years down here have taught me at least this much—”

“You DON’T get it.” His voice is cutting. Helpless, almost. “I am THE man, I was the first human on Earth and first human soul in Heaven, I am on top of everything, the beginning of EVERYTHING, I am--I am—”

His voice cracks.

“But now I'm just..." He glances at the mirror and his scattered reflection: all he sees are red eyes lost in black wings. "I'm hideous."

Valska lets go of her ears and opens her eyes wide in understanding and empathy as she watches the Adam bury his face in his hands. She brings her own before her chest and fidgets before she takes a few steps and rests a claw on his arm.

“Hey. It's alright," they says, their voice soft. Adam looks at her through his fingers. "Most people struggle with their demon form the first few months." She gives him an apologetic smile and shrugs. "But you'll be okay, you'll live. Isn't that the most important?"

Adam doesn't really know what to reply.

“And, hey, if it can help with the dysmorphia…” She hands him the pile of clothes. “Here you go.” On top of the sweatpants and faded t-shirt is--

--his mask.

“Sent my rats to get it.”

And finally it clicks:

“Wait. So you-- you’ve known who I am all along?”

Valska flashes a smile and lifts their chin, obviously proud.

“These rat brains are more developed than what they seem.”

He doesn’t smile. He looks down at the mask then back at them.

“… Why didn’t you kill me?”

She laughs as if she doesn’t quite understand. “You don’t know who I am?” she questions, shaking her head, voice stern, smile threatening him to give her a good answer.

“Uhhh I should?”

Her hair ruffles just a bit.

“Flattering. Nevermind.”

He lifts his mask to his face : half of it, the half Lucifer smashed with a single punch, has been glued back together with yellow glue, but the screen is unresponsive, black and silent instead. The other half is still working.

He looks down at them, wants to say something but they’re already talking:

“I always say, there ain’t nothing a good meal can’t fix.” And they hols a finger up. Then she looks at him. “Should I, uh, order anything for you while you change?”

Adam thinks. He vaguely remembers he’s hungry. He looks down at his mask. Shrugs.

"Alright," she lets out. "Pizza it is then."

She heads for the door and as she's about to cross it, she briefly glances back. The fallen angel seems... unlike himself, to say the least. Her ears drop a little as she realises she has nothing to say to cheer him up. She leaves the room.

Meanwhile, Adam notices small specks of golden blood still stain the rim of his mask. A sick feeling makes his stomach churn.

Outside, walking through the corridors, Valska takes her phone out of one of the pockets of her oversized, black overalls and opens her contacts list. She doesn't have to scroll too long. Not many contacts there.

On the line, her first assistant picks up almost immediately.

“Hi there, Val.”

“Nicolas! Nikulás, my favourite assistant !" they smile, all teeth out in an exaggerated grin. "How's it hanging, luv?"

But Nicolas' voice is stern and definitely not as enthusiastic as theirs.

“Alright what did you do?"

Valska’s smile melts away.

“What! Nikulás, ástin minn, what do you meaaan? I'm just calling to check in on you! Just making sure my favourite person is rocking, as usual!"

“Val. I'm in the middle of supervising a recording session. What. Do you. Want. Or should I ask in Icelandic."

Valska can't keep a grunt from crossing her black-painted lips. She leans against a wall, one arm across her chest and pouts.

“If this is about your guest, we’ve discussed that already. I don't want to have anything to do with it."

“Nooo, it's all fine, he’s fine, everything fine. I don't get why you’re so touchy about this."

“Oh, maybe it’s because when Lilith comes back and she learns of what you're doing, we'll both be in gigantic trouble?"

Now, Valska's face has lost all playfulness. They lift their chin up.

“You worry too much. Besides, Lily isn't here and hasn't been in almost eight years now."

“Look. Peu importe. I don't want to fight over this again. Why are you calling?"

“Could you call the pizza thing for me and have them deliver to the flat?"

She can practically hear him roll his eyes.

“Right away. The usual?"

“Yeah. But! Uh, take another two. No, three. Make 'em complete. Like everything they can put on them."

A sigh.

“Anything else?”

“Could you, err.." starts Valska, ears dropping, tail whipping nervously. "Could you send in another imp? Please? Hæhæ."

“... ANOTHER ONE ?"

“I knoooow but the newbie sorta got, well... uh…"

“What did you do to him this time??!"

Valska's ears tense up and their tail whips the wall. "Nothing! Why would you assume it's me?"

“It's the fourth fucking imp I hire for you in the past two months Valska!"

They wince at their full name.

“Yes well that first imp had it coming.”

“Everyone has different music taste, you stupid rat!"

“She said Karimloo was a better Phantom than Michael Crawford to my fucking face. What was I meant to do??"

On the other end, Nicolas sighs loudly.

“Here's what I'll do. I'll send in another one and if this one doesn't last you at least a full month, you'll have to start hiring your own damn imps yourself."

“You mean call the agency myself and talk to people?" echoes Valska, dumbfounded, offended, hell, outraged even.

“My words exactly."

“Ugh. FINE."

They’re about to hang up on him when--

“How is he?" asks Nicolas, reluctant.

“Who?”

“Wh-- Qu-- The effing leader of the exterminations whom you rescued, who the heck would I be talking about?!"

“Oh. Kinda freaked about his new hellish form. I think."

“Alright," grumbles her first assistant. "Don't drop your guard. If he kills you it's your problem."

And he hangs up on them. Valska looks down at her phone, mouth open in disbelief, teeth growing sharper all of a sudden. "I get to hang up on you, not the other way around, you snail-eating baguette," she mumbles to herself as she walks away.

ástinn minn (is) - my love

peu importe (fr) - whatever

Nicolas (fr) - just don't pronounce the s

Nikulás (is) - nicolaos kinda

[qslovebot]

Rooftop: Peter Maximoff

Summary: AU where you and Peter both go to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters and you never figured out how much he cared about you until he went out of his way to prove it.

Request: peter maximoff sneaking reader out to go get food or boba late at night and they go hang out on top of a building or something and just pure fluff😌

Pairing: Peter x Fem! Reader

Warnings: Food? Mentions of bad mental health

You weren’t doing so great lately. Schoolwork was piling up, your friends were distant, your parents were too far to visit. It was hard to do things alone, but that’s how things were. Even with a roommate, you were alone- they didn’t spend much time in the room, even during night hours.

So you spent hours in your room just trying to catch up on the homework you had acquired over time but found that with the pile sitting there to intimidate and loom, you lacked the motivation. You could hardly do the work for more than twenty-five minutes, but some nights you pushed yourself just so you’d feel good about something. It never felt like an accomplishment because there was always more. It was torment you put on yourself, you were punishing yourself for your mental health destabilizing a little…

The only person at school who saw what was going on was Peter Maximoff. You were friends... kinda. Closer to acquaintances, but you had some classes together, you waved to each other in the hallways. For you it was mostly nothing. He was attractive but you didn’t even think to pursue anything at all. He was… mostly the same way. Maybe a little worse, falling onto the side of romantic ideals, but that was never his intention. Especially not now.

You lay awake, flat on your back in bed in your room alone. No roommate, she was sleeping elsewhere tonight. You stared at the ceiling, trying to let the orange glow of your lava lamp absorb you into it. It wasn’t working. You knew it was past midnight but you weren’t tired, just in bed. Laying alone and sad and numb.

There was a thud on your window, which of course caused you to jump out of your skin. What the fuck was that? You froze in place, waiting to hear anything else and thud, twice this time. Fuck, fuck, fuck-

You turned, just to peer out the window and there was a hand. Whaaaat the fuck? You climbed down from your bunk and looked down, knowing it was a person. You grabbed one of your roommates’ trophies for whatever sport and held it like a weapon. But you caught a glimpse of their face and hair. His face and hair.

You recognized him as Peter Maximoff. Just that one guy you knew but never actually spoke to. What the hell was he doing knocking on your window this late? What was he doing knocking at all? Trusting him through his courtesy of waving in the halls, you opened your window.

“What the hell are you doing?!” You asked. He just seemed glad to have your attention. He climbed the literal ivy on the wall.

“Help me up?“ Was all he said in reply. You were confused, but that was part of what made you extend your hand down to help this guy into your room at a quarter past midnight. “Hey.”

“Hi?” You answered, watching him climb into your room sheepishly. You were only in your sleepwear, a tank top and pyjama pants, so you folded your arms over your chest the moment you set the trophy weapon back down. Peter Maximoff was in your room… what the hell was happening. “Care to explain why you’re thudding on my window this late?”

“I’ve noticed you haven’t been so hot lately. I was thinking maybe I’d make a gesture to kind of… make you feel better? Its actually not really a gesture it’s more a question… for an action.“ He explained, nodding his head. “And in case you didn’t know, I’m Peter.” He held out his hand. He was in your room past midnight, came in through your window, and here he was, introducing himself to you formally. You almost laughed at the oddity of it all.

You shook his hand, “I know you’re Peter. What do you mean by… I’m not doing too hot right now?”

“Oh, yeah, you know. You look sad in class, you’re quieter, and you don’t really wave in the halls much anymore because you’re looking down.” He rocked on his heels while he explained.

He knew something was wrong. He saw it and… he counted on you waving in the halls… that was oddly sweet. “I- I don’t know what to say…”

“I was just wondering if you wanted to get out of here. Just for a bit, you know?“ He shrugged as he asked and you tilted your head for him to explain further. ”How do you feel about milkshakes?” He was hardly letting you even decide if you wanted to go, but that was okay because you wanted to. You weren’t sleeping anyways.

“Best with fries?” You nodded. Peter grinned and without any warning, you were standing outside of a McDonald’s. Oh right, Peter was fast. He let you go and immediately your ankles gave out from the lack of coordination your body lacked. Body not attached to a head. Peter, of course, reflexes just as fast, reached out to steady you before you hit the ground.

“It’ll pass. Most people are fine after a minute or so.” He assured you, smiling in the light of the large letter m. You looked down, realizing that in Peter’s speeding he’s quite literally put you in one of your sweaters. Not only to keep you warm but because you were in your sleepwear still. That was sweet too… “Y/n? What do you want? You don’t need to come inside, there are people in there and I don’t think you like them very much so you can sit here.” He gave a knowing grin.

“Vanilla?” You answered. How peculliar it was that you agreed so fast and Peter was treating you as an old friend. You grinned, sitting down on the curb whilst he went inside. He cared about you, that was obvious, but… why? Why was he the only one who noticed you deteriorating? Someone who you never spoke to, only knew of… cared for you more than anyone else did at the moment. You grinned and put your face in your hands, just feeling it all. Wow.

“Vanilla,” Peter was back already. ”Hey, you okay?”

”Oh yeah,” you smiled, removing your hands from your face so he knew you weren’t upset or anything. "I'll pay you back."

"Don't worry about it," he replied too casually, swaying. There was a sweet breeze that blew your hair around your face and you took the very cold cup from him when he offered. But then in a second more, he had you elsewhere.

“Fuck!” You breathed, trying to steady yourself from the unexpected speed again. Peter kept his one free hand on your waist, just to steady you. You weren’t super aware of it, but you felt it. It was okay, too, you needed some sort of grounding for a second.

He chuckled as you blinked away the dizziness. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I should have warned you.” His hand left your waist and it was when he backed away from right in front of you that you could see where he’d taken you to.

It was still the city, but higher up. An apartment building, maybe, but it was surprisingly quiet and god, the lights. Milkshake in hand you walked over to the edge slowly, just trying to comprehend everything. The slow rushing sound of traffic in the wind and the glowing squares of thousand different lives. That same soft breeze blowing around you, and you wished you had a camera.

“It’s cool, right?” Peter stood next to you. “It’s loud and quiet at the same time and I think it’s cool how each of the windows holds an entirely different life.” You looked over at him, wondering if he’d developed mind-reading too.

”I would probably never leave if day didn’t exist,” you replied. “You notice so much less in proper lighting when it comes to a city.“

Peter nodded and pointed at you with his straw, “Yeah! At night we can figure out who the cheaters are, who is capable of murder, and who the horniest men are, heading to strip clubs and shit.” Broad subjects but truthfully exactly what you were thinking.

”Precisely,” you ate yours with the plastic spoon provided. “How’d you know to go here?”

”I don’t know, it was just high up so that you could get another viewpoint. Maybe if you were up… you wouldn’t be so down?” He shrugged and you looked back at him and he stared back, dark eyes wide and innocent, but not a creepy stare, a content one, with a smile.

“How come you noticed I was down? Why not just go about your day?” You inquired, taking another bite.

“Probably because I’ve had a crush on you since last semester,” he didn’t even hesitate to say his answer and he continued on with his milkshake as if he’d just said the most casual and acceptable thing to say ever. You were blinking again to try and comprehend…

So he liked you. Like that. And he liked you the way you were currently and that was typically not appealing at all. He saw something was wrong because he saw you as yourself, he saw you not smiling because he wanted you to smile. That would be why he counted on your waves in the hall. It would explain why he cared enough to act on it. He was sweet and when he’d touched you earlier you felt something too, but you didn’t know enough yet.

“Oh shit and it’s okay if you don’t like me back,” he made sure you knew it. ”I think you like me a little so I just have to wait for that to grow.” He shrugged that off too and you laughed a breathy and laugh, covering your face with your hands. He was so sure.

”Why?”

“Why what? Why do I like you or why do I think you like me?” He leaned against the edge, just sipping away.

“Both,” you chuckled.

He grinned a gorgeous, dimpled grin. “You know the answers in class and you’re nice to people and… I think you’re kinda hot, to be honest.“ You grinned with him now. “And if you didn’t like me a little would you have even let me in your room?” He had a point. Oh no.

"Fucking hell," you took a full bite of your milkshake, just to think about that. Peter was obviously trying not to laugh, a few chuckles escaping as you stared into the distance blankly. But then you turned back to him, swallowing hard. "Are you sure you like me?"

He nodded immediately, eyes kind and warm. Your hair blew around your face again softly and you found yourself smiling again. "Yep. That aside, though, are you feeling better at all?"

You were. Someone was not only caring about you, but they liked you. Peter liked you... you would have him. Not fully, not yet, but... you still did. "I do feel better, yes, thank you." He grinned back. "It feels good to have someone to talk to again."

"Glad I could be of service." He nodded.

And from there you spoke until some time around 3 am despite school the next day and despite hardly speaking before, you got along like you'd always known each other. Hardly even two feet apart, laughing, talking, joking until you were tired.

He said goodnight with a knowing smirk at your door and he said, "See you tomorrow," with that everyday wave and you waved back, smiling your own smile with a bit of heat to your cheeks. Then he was gone and you crashed in your bed again, smiling to yourself still. You would see him tomorrow.

Requests Open

[vixenpen]

Play Thing (Gamer! Shinsou x Thicc Black Reader)

So in case you don’t remember or didn’t read it, in this AU reader is thicc, nerdy, and Black. And Shinsou is her hot gamer neighbor.

Damn.

That was the first thing you both thought when you saw each other.

You had worn a dress, much to Shinsou’s delight. It popped against your brown skin and hugged your curves like a second skin and he couldn’t wait to watch you walk in it.

Meanwhile, you were getting weak in the knees just looking at Shinsou. You’d never seen him so dressed up. His v-neck shirt hugged a broad chest and he wore a leather jacket with all his piercings in.

You bit your lip when he grinned at you and glanced away.

“You look beautiful, bookworm.”

“Thanks...you too.” As soon as the comment left your lips, your cheeks burned. You wanted to slap yourself.

Shinsou laughed, which only made you more embarrassed until he aimed a fond smile at you.

“Well, thanks. I did it for you.” He winked.

You were certain your face was about to combust.

“C’mon, lets go.” He placed a hand on your waist and guided you to his car, even opening the door for you.

As soon as you saw where Shinsou was taking you, you got excited.

“I haven’t been to an arcade in forever!” You exclaimed.

“Yeah?” Shinsou grinned. “This place is one of my favorites. You’ll love it.”

The arcade was huge and dimly lit with neon colors all around. The beeping, buzzing, and ringing of games going off met your ears, and the mouth watering scent of pizza hit your nose.

“The pizza here is delicious, but you can get whatever you like,” Shinsou explained, “they have a surprisingly decent selection of Italian food and it’s all good.”

“Italian food plus a bunch of people confined to one space playing video games?” You wrinkled your nose.

Shinsou laughed. “It‘s not as bad as you think. The food is pretty light.”

“If you say so,” you replied, flipping through the options. You didn’t even notice the violet eyes gazing at you. “I need light anyway. If I eat anymore cheese I won’t be able to fit into my jeans anymore.”

“That’s not a bad thing in my book.”

Your eyes widened at the suggestive comment. You glanced up at the man, but he was scanning the menu with a sly smile.

“Get whatever you want, bookworm, I’ll cover any jeans related expenses you might accrue in the future.” He looked up at you and winked.

The pizza was one hundred percent worth it and Shinsou was right about how delicious it was.

But when it came time to work off all that pizza on the various vintage games, that’s when things got interesting.

“If you think I’m gonna go easy on you just because you’re cute, you’ve got another thing comin’, bookworm.”

“Oh, I would expect nothing less e-boy. Bring it!”

Shinsou was pleasantly surprised by how well you held your own on the various games. Especially Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Mario Cart. Unfortunately you were no match for him in most other games. Still, the two of you were having fun. Neither of you had stopped smiling since you stepped foot in the arcade, and Shinsou was determined to keep it that way.

“Hey, bookworm, I got something cool to show you.”

“Oh?.”

He smiled. “C’mon.”

Shinsou grabbed your hand and led you up a flight of stairs to a second story. The halls were well lit and there were several random doors lining the walls.

“Shinsou,” you whispered, hugging close to him uneasily, “are we...supposed to be up here?”

He laughed. “It’s fine, this this place is actually owned by a buddy of mine, and he stays in the apartment up here. He’s cool with it.”

“If you say so...”

Shinsou led you to the last door in the hall. It was secured with several locks to which he seemed to have a key to every one. He let the two of you inside.

The room was dimly lit with nano leaf lighting along the walls and lava lamps. There was a cool, comfortable black couch facing a huge flatscreen suspended on the wall and—

“Oh my god, a pool table!” You squealed, running over to the pool table set up on the other side of the room.

Shinsou laughed. “Literally every console imaginable is up here, and you’re drawn to the pool table?” He shook his head.

“Hey, shut up!” You grabbed a pool cue and cued up to shoot the white ball, leaning over. “This is the one thing I can actually beat you in, e-boy.”

Shinsou crept closer, eyes roaming your bent over frame. Damn you looked so good in that clingy little dress. His imagination was running wild looking at that fat ass of yours.

You felt the man’s body heat as he leaned over you, gulping when you felt his lips press against your ear.

“Oh really now?” He whispered in a low tone that rolled down your spine.

“I-um..”

Shinsou placed one hand on your hip and another over the hand holding the cue. His various silver rings were cool against your flushed skin.

“Well, bookworm,” he pressed against you from the back, biting back a moan as his groin pressed against your soft ass. “Your form could use a little work.”

“O-oh? How so?”

“For one thing, you wanna get a little deeper into the stance,” he pressed a hand against your back, bending you lower, “juuust like that.”

His voice is a low hum, and you couldn’t help the soft whimper that slipped out of you.

The sound went straight to his dick which flexed against his jeans. Fuck he wanted to draw out more of those pretty little sounds from you.

He decided to test the waters a bit and pressed his crotch closer to your butt. This time there was no mistaking just how...’excited’ your date was. You bit your lip and boldly pressed back against him.

The man leaned your body up and spun you around, holding you tight against him. The two of you stared at each other wordlessly for a moment before finally finding each other’s lips in a hungry kiss.

For all your shyness, you sure as hell knew how to use that mouth of yours. Your tongue wrestled his with just as much enthusiasm as Shinsou was using on you.

The man grabbed your round hips, hoisting you up on the pool table, strong hands working your dress up your thighs and locking your juicy legs around his trim hips.

He broke away to press kisses against your ear and down your neck and against your neck. Your collarbone. Between your soft breasts.

“Hi-toshii~”

Long fingers danced against your clit teasing at the button as violet eyes gazed at you.

“Say it again, y/n.” He urged. His fingers slipped into your heat one by one making you gasp.

“Ahh! Hitoshiii-fuck.”

“God,” he mumbled against your breasts, nibbling your hardening nipples through the flimsy fabric of the dress. “You’re so fuckin’ sex you know that?”

You could only groan in response.

“I’ve been wanting your fine ass for the longest.” He muttered against your neck. “I wanna hear you moan, y/n,” his lips found your ear. “I want you to scream for me.”

Every nasty word had your pussy clenching needy and desperate around his fingers.

“I want it too, Hitoshi,” you whispered back. You hesitated a bit before letting your hand wander down to his bulge. Fuck it felt so solid through his jeans.

A desperate groan slipped from Shinsou’s lips. The two of you worked in tandem to free his straining dick from his pants, and your eyes widened when they landed on the lengthy member.

He pulled a condom from his back pocket and slipped it on before lining the head of himself against your juicy cunt. He held your gaze and dove in entirely; reveling in how your head snapped back and the breathy scream that escaped you as your tight pussy adjusted to his dick.

Shinsou took his time rolling his hips and feeling you pulse and cream on him as your beautiful moans rang out against his ears.

“Ahh, fuckkk,” he sighed, “shit, y/n, you feel even better than I imagined.” He groaned.

“Mmm! Ahh~” Your arms wrapped around his neck to pull him closer. “Yesss, yes, yes!” You cried out against him.

His dick hit deep inside you, hitting your gspot again and again making you sob out. Pleasure burst through your body with every hit.

“Fuck,” Shinsou whispered. He picked you up easily before leaning you over the pool table exposing that juicy chocolate ass to him. “God~” he sighed. He smacked your ass, loving the way it jiggled. He did it again and again until it stungZ

“Ah! Hitoshi! Stop teasing...” you pouted at him over your shoulder.

The look was adorable and only made him hornier.

He aimed a dangerous smirk down at you.

“Fine, baby,” he slid inside you to the hilt.

“Shiiii!”

“Fuck!” He sighed.

His fingers dug into your soft, thick ass.

“Fuck, fuck, fuu-hhhck!” He practically sobbed, digging deep into your juicy pussy from the back so hard it made squelching sounds that jumped off the walls.

“I been wanting to fuck this fat ass of yours for so fucking long, y/n. You have no idea.”

You could only mumble and moan incoherently in response as you twerked your big butt back against his dick.

“This thick fuckin ass of yours..fuck!” He sighed, hands squeezing your big butt hard and slamming you back to meet his snapping hips.

“Hit-Hitoshiii oh my goddd~” you sobbed back. You moaned and cried out against his assault on your pussy.

The man picked up a thick thigh and propped it up on the pool table. The angle helped him to fuck you harder and deeper.

“Come on, baby,” he groaned, gazing down at your melanated skin, glistening with a sheen of sweat. “Cum on this dick. Cum on this fuckin dick.” He spat aggressively

He fucked you just as aggressively, balls smacking you with every dig of his dick.

A loud scream choked out of you, getting strangled and dying as your orgasm burst over you.

“Aaahhhh~”

“Fuuuuck yes!”

Both of you shook as your orgasms swept you up.

Shinsou leaned down to press a kiss against your cheek.

“My bookworm.” He sighed.

“Well,” you whispered back,

“Well what?” He asked.

“Did fucking this fat ass live up to your expectations?” You giggled, a bit delirious from the fuck fest you had just endured.

Shinsou chuckled. “It was even better.”

[musekicker]

A Burgertron and Frostferatu drabble set in a soulmates mark type au (which i haven not put that much thought into the soulmates mark system I will admit.)

It was not too unusual to find Burgertron grabbing a moment alone. He had moments when he would get reflective about things. He liked to sit under the bench on the second floor just outside that one store that sold lava lamps sometimes. 

Time to time Frostferatu would come across him when Burgertron was having one of those moments. Frostferatu after all would roam the mall, mostly keeping to the shadows as a vampire would. Either way, this was not weird.

What did grab Frostferatu's attention more then anything else was the expression on the burger bots face. He was clearly not feeling his best. Frostferatu had to check on this.

He was a shadow, a thing of silence, as he approached Burgertron from behind.

"Burgertron-" Frostferatu said.

Burgertron instantly yelped and turned his head to see the vampire cupcake.

"Oh! It's you, Frostferatu." Burgertron said.

"Apologies." Frostferatu said, cape on one arm as he bowed. "Frostferatu is not always good at holding back their power to cause fear." 

Burgertron once would had made a somewhat snide comment about the fact that Burgertron had only shown fear because he hadn't noticed Frostferatu. Instead he attempted a laugh.

"Yeah, I guess that would be a chore to control." Burgertron said.

"Frostferatu has noticed that you seem to be bothered by something." Frostferatu said.

Burgertron sighed, nodding.

"Ulf is kind of mad at me." Burgertron said.

"What about?" Frostferatu asked.

Burgertron wasn't sure if he wanted to vent about something so personal. But then, Frostferatu was not one to spread information that was not wished to be shared.

As Frostferatu sat next to Burgertron, the burger bot started to talk once more.

"I told her I don't think she's my soul mate." Burgertron said.

Frostferatu was taken aback from this information. He chose his next words carefully.

"I do not understand. Were you not? You and Ulf have always claimed that you were soul mates." Frostferatu said.

"That's the thing! I thought she was too! For so long I really did. But lately I had been feeling... like maybe we.. we didn't belong together." Burgertron said.

Burgertron didn't quite get back onto the exact reason why he had been questioning his and Ulf's relationship.

"Then I took another look at my soul mate mark. Expecting to see the same thing as I've always see. What else would I see, right? Except... I didn't see what I normally saw. It was a whole different marking."

Frostferatu's eyes went wide.

"They can change?" Frostferatu asked.

"Apparently! I didn't know they could do that either. But it did. And now Ulf is accusing me of tricking her somehow." Burgertron cried.

That sounded like Ulf. She was not exactly the most understanding. Or the most forgiving.

"Do you have any theories on how this change could have happened?" Frosferatu asked.

Burgertron thought a long moment.

"Maybe... maybe I'm a different bot then I was before when I first formed my soul mate mark. And maybe now that I changed, that's why the mark changed." Burgertron said.

"Possible I suppose...have you found the match?" Frostferatu asked.

"Not yet no. After what I'm sure was a break up, that was pretty messy as well. I'm not even sure about looking right now. At least I'm waiting until I don't feel so terrible." Burgertron said.

Frostferatu nodded in understanding. One hand was gripping a part of his right arm. His eyes lost in thought for a moment. Not too long a moment as Burgertron was speaking again,

"I'll eventually look though." Burgertron said.

"You have my dark oath I will not mention any of this to any bot until your ready to share your secrets." Frotferatu said.

Burgertron smiled.

"I think Ulf is probably going to spread it anyways. But thanks for saying that." Burgertron said.

Burgertron stood then, stretching out his arms a moment.

"I should go head back to my squad. Their probably worried about me after witnessing all that." Burgertron said.

Frostferatu nodded.

"You would not want to worry your squad." he agreed.

Burgertron flashed a quick smile in Frostferatu's direction.

"Thanks for the talk." Burgertron said.

Burgertron went the direction leading the the lost and found. Frostferatu watched him leave. With Burgertron out of sight, Frostferatu could only look down at his own soul mate mark under his left sleeve. And wonder.

It would be at least a couple of months before Burgertron and Frostferatu realized that their soul mate marks matched.

[completeoveranalysis]

[1]

Chapter 82 aka Symbolic sad boi hours!

I dearly love the design of the fan, and especially the little string coming off the end that is a perfect match for the one on the end of Lava Lamp’s sword. 

I want to say the flowers might be lotus this time? So could be about attaining enlightenment or spiritual reawakening - mirroring Watanuki’s steps into his final stages of character growth at the end of the story, and maybe even his learning the final bits of his personality that he isn’t currently aware of. Or that’s my rough guess anyway. 

I’m sure the outfit itself has meaning I couldn’t attempt to decipher on my own, but I DO adore that it’s very much got the same type of imagery that Yuuko has been using the last few chapters - with the fabric using a pattern identical to the very real things elsewhere in the frame, but overlapping and just off enough that you notice that it’s an imitation instead. Here it’s the birds, both around Watanuki and on the garment - especially with the one almost in centreframe looking directly at another one, which is just an imperfect mirror image in the fabric (Which in itself is a great callback to the idea of duality and twins, but we’ll set that aside for now). I like the one on his shoulder even more, with the wings of the bird behind him ALMOST looking like it extends into the material of the garment itself, but that too is just an illusion made by the pattern... OR IS IT?

The pattern of the wing even goes OVER the detail on his collar, which it wouldn’t do if it was part of the design of the clothing, but it DOES end where the fabric ends, showing that it really is.

It ALMOST makes it look like the garment is reflective, working like a mirror - but that’s not it either, because the bird’s face isn’t looking directly back, but off in a different direction, and the bird behind Watanuki is not at the right angle to be reflected on the front of his clothes. 

It’s honestly stunning to look at, deliberately misleading with no clear answer that really rises to the surface. It’s all overlapping layers of reality - things that are and aren’t real existing so closely together that they might as well be one and the same, slightly off in places but completely in line with each other in others. Does the difference really even matter, or is it just a matter of perspective? How much of reality itself is just a matter of perspective, and does any of THAT matter either?

I - OOPS

I am having the sudden memory that I might have the colour version of this saved somewhere on my computer. Let’s look for it. 

OH HERE WE GO