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five-rivers · 8 months ago

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Cracked Clay Cup Chapter 15

@greatbigolhampuckjustforme

“Only one left,” said Danny, uneasily. Working by the process of elimination… If any of the people on this list were his actual, biological parents, as Frostbite had feared, then it was these two.

Jazz, obviously, wasn’t his mother. He’d known that from basically the moment they’d met. Vlad, Frostbite, and Pandora had confirmed that fact, and their stories had matched too well with each other for them to be lying. Unless, of course, the whole trial was a lie and they were all working together, and Danny was hesitant to go down that path.

The Observants, too, could be crossed off with ease. The Observants were public and impersonal enough that Danny had remembered them despite his amnesia. He’d never heard of them having children. And their behavior during his trial… well. Maybe they’d behave that way around their actual children, but Danny doubted it.

Vlad hadn’t even claimed to be his father. Of course, he’d also heavily implied that Danny’s biological parents were dead. So there was that. He was also a liar. So there was that. But, again, Danny didn’t think Vlad was his actual parent. The Dairy King would have told him if he was.

Frostbite and Pandora had also denied any blood relationship with him, although they still both wanted him to pick them. Pandora did, at least. Frostbite had seemed more lukewarm about it. Maybe even cool, to use a pun. Not that Frostbite disliked Danny. He was participating in this to help Danny. Just… Yeah.

Then there was the trio, which, um. Yeah. Definitely not.

So. If his parents were actually involved, and not dead, then they had to be these two. Unless Pandora or Frostbite or Vlad was lying about not being his parent, which he didn’t think any of them would do, because that would be counterproductive. Wouldn’t it?

Double-think made his head hurt.

“Yes,” said Clockwork. “Only Jack and Maddie Fenton are left. Then, when you have seen them, you must make your decision.”

“And I can choose anyone?”

“Yes. You may choose anyone you wish to choose.”

“Hm,” said Danny. He spread himself out over the couch and dropped the file folder on the coffee table. “Anyone, anyone?”

“That is the policy, to ensure that children are placed appropriately.”

“So, like, if I decided I wanted to go with the Dairy King but not Vlad…?”

“That is a possibility,” said Clockwork. “As in, you could choose for Dairy King alone to have custody of you, with the understanding that Vlad would likely still be a significant part of his social circle and afterlife.”

“Huh,” said Danny. “What if I picked, like, Ember?”

“You could do that.”

“But you wouldn’t recommend it, huh?”

“My recommendation is immaterial,” said Clockwork. “I am a neutral party.”

“Yeah, but I can still ask you questions. What if I want your opinion?”

“I am not allowed to give it.”

“Right,” said Danny. He looked over the file. “You know, they have, like, the least stuff on their little cheat sheet out of anyone. Except the Observants. Theirs was really… lackluster.”

“Indeed?” said Clockwork, with just the faintest inflection at the end to turn it into a question instead of an agreement.

“Mhm.” Jack and Maddie, no listed last name, didn’t have much written on their page of the file. Apparently they liked making cookies, stargazing, needlepoint, sewing, and… that was it. Nothing about jobs, titles, other interests, other things they enjoyed. Nothing.

The stargazing was a good point, though. Danny was pretty sure he liked stargazing. If only he’d had a chance to do it… Ugh. Being stuck inside was getting more and more annoying.

Distressing.

Almost as distressing as Frostbite thinking that Danny’s biological parents were abusive.

“You said before, everyone is, like, vetted? So they won’t be… dangerous?”

“That is correct.”

“But the Observants still were allowed to do whatever it was they were trying to do.”

“Unfortunately, persons who possess authority will on occasion use that authority to put themselves in even more positions of authority.”

“Except you can’t tell me any of your opinions.”

“Correct,” said Clockwork.

“You’re funny.”

“Not many would say that.”

“That’s because you’re really– really oblique about it.”

“Perhaps.”

Danny sighed. “I should just go right away, shouldn’t I? I should stop agonizing about this.”

“It is up to you, Daniel.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

Danny made no move to get off the couch. “What are you doing over there, anyway?”

Clockwork twisted his hands around to show Danny a net of white string. “I’ve taken up lacemaking.”

“Ugh, see, I’ve been wasting so much of your time that you’ve picked up a new hobby. That’s crazy.”

“I wouldn’t say that it’s new,” said Clockwork. “Lace has been around for a long time.”

“New to you, then. Like, your original hobby is making clocks, right?”

“I also enjoy candlemaking and gardening. But this,” Clockwork held up the lace, “was always within my plans.”

“Uh huh,” said Danny.

“It is almost time for lunch. You could stay until then.”

“See? I’ve wasted the whole morning. I came back last night. And that was a day trip.” He sighed. “What would lunch be?”

“I was planning on fried rice, using the remaining rice from last night.”

“I thought you’d made a lot of rice that time,” said Danny. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

Jack and Maddie’s house was… Well, it looked like it had been a normal house. The entryway was done up with plain tile, and opened up into a high-ceilinged living room. Danny could see a set of stairs leading up one side of the living room to the second floor, where there were a number of doors. On the ground floor, there was an open doorway leading into a kitchen.

That was all fine. However, the walls, ceiling, and floors all looked like they’d been torn apart and put together again. Sometimes with proper tools like plaster and drywall, and sometimes with cardboard and duct tape. There were dark squares and ovals where picture frames may have hung. He could see an electrical outlet that had been pulled out of the wall and hastily put back in, without all the wires fitting. Near his elbow were the remains of what looked like a doorbell. Bits of insulation hung out of gaps between the original walls and the repairs.

It wasn’t quite as strange or as messy overall as Ember, Skulker, and Technus’s place, but the contrast was… weird. Everyone else was obviously trying to put their best foot forward and had cleaned up or acquired a whole new house. This… this was not that.

At least, he hoped it wasn’t. Because if this was their best, then what was their usual?

He turned his attention to the two humans who had been waiting for him to arrive. They were human. The man was tall and broad, with dark hair. He was wearing overalls over an orange button up. His sleeves were rolled up, and he was scratching at a rash on his arm. The woman was slim and much shorter, her auburn hair cut in a chin-length bob. She had a pale blue blouse on, and dark jeans.

He caught their eyes, one after another.

“Hi,” said the woman, in a wavering voice. “Welcome home, Danny.”

“Um,” said Danny, “hi. Are you Maddie? The file didn’t really say which one of you was which… or really anything about yourselves…?”

“Yes,” said Maddie, with a painful smile. She looked like she was about to cry. “I’m Maddie, this is Jack. We’re so happy to have you here. So happy.” She took his hands in hers and squeezed them.

“Okay?” He looked around. “So… You’re remodeling?”

“Yes,” said Maddie. “We’re sorry about that, but all of this came as such a surprise.”

“A big surprise, son,” said Jack. His voice sounded rough, like he’d been crying. “All of the important things are done, though! Everything’s safe! Just not very pretty, that’s all. Just looks different.”

“Like you,” said Maddie, quickly. “Not that that’s a bad thing, is it? We’re very– The ears and the tail– Those are new but not bad. This is just like that.”

Danny nodded, hesitantly. “Right. That’s cool. So, um.” He looked around the entryway again. “Show me around?”

“Right, right,” said Maddie. “Of course.”

“Sorry about that!” said Jack. “It’s just that you grew up here and all. You don’t remember that, but it’s hard for us to remember it. To remember that you, er, don’t remember.” Jack patted Danny’s shoulder gingerly.

“Yes,” said Maddie. “We’ll– We’ll do the main floor first, then the bedrooms upstairs.”

The tour of the ground floor went much as expected. He saw the living room, a number of closets (which looked like they’d been ransacked), the garage (suspiciously empty), a bathroom (strangely untouched), a dining room (dusty), and the kitchen.

His initial impression of the kitchen matched his impression of the house in general. Normal, but hastily altered. There was a long strip of torn-up wall near the refrigerator. The microwave was brand new to the point that the box it came in was still sitting next to it. There was a door-sized patch of new wall that matched up with scratches on the floor that strongly suggested the patch had been a door up until fairly recently.

This… this was suspicious. Should he ask about it? Play dumb?

“Now, up to the rooms!” said Jack, sweeping Danny out of the kitchen.

“Usually,” said Maddie, “your sister Jazz would be here, but right now she’s away, so it’s just the three of us.”

“Why?”

“Why what, Danno?” asked Jack.

“Why is she away?”

“College,” said Maddie, quickly. “She’s a couple years older than you are, so she’s away at college. The two of you were very close, though.”

“Best friends!” shouted Jack from his position at the top of the stairs.

Well, there was that confirmation. Jazz was definitely his sister.

… Jazz actually looked a lot like Maddie, so that was also a point in favor of Maddie and Jack being his actual parents. Which, uh. Did being shady run in the family? Did he come off like this to other people? He hoped not.

“Which one was her room?” asked Danny.

“This one,” said Jack. Then he pointed towards a room two doors down. “And this is yours! You two shared the bathroom, but she’s not here, so it’s all yours, too!”

“Cool,” said Danny. He slipped past Jack to the door and opened it.

The walls and ceiling of the room were a pale blue gray, glow in the dark stars just barely visible in contrast. Posters for bands and spaceships were taped to the wall, some of them in better repair than others. There was a dresser with a drawer sticking part way out, the sleeve of a shirt stopping it from fully closing. Model rockets, most of them clumsily made, sat on shelves beside other knick-knacks. A corkboard on the wall had schoolwork, ribbons, and a few crumpled tickets to movies and concerts pinned on it. A scooter and telescope were propped up in one corner.

“They had us take down your photographs,” said Maddie. “But we left everything else the way it was. Except for cleaning.”

“Something about being biased! As if knowing things is going to make you biased! Maybe if we’d known–”

“Jack, honey,” said Maddie. “Not the time.”

“Oh, right, sorry, son.”

Danny nodded, then stepped in to walk a circuit of the room. This room, more than any of the others he had stayed in, felt lived in. Like it was a home.

But he couldn’t forget Frostbite’s warning. Or the chaos downstairs.

“So, um,” said Danny, before he could wimp out. He held the pocketwatch in one hand. Just in case. “In the kitchen, you have a door covered up. What’s with that?”

“Uh, nothing,” said Jack.

“Just an unfinished basement,” said Maddie, her smile going brittle and fake. “That’s all. It wasn’t– It wasn’t safe down there. For children. It wasn’t built right. So we decided to just cover it up. To show that we’re prepared to keep you safe.”

There was a mad science lab down there, wasn’t there?

What if that was where he had died?

Danny swallowed and pasted on a smile. “Cool. So… what do we do together?”

They stared blankly at him.

“You know, for fun? Or hanging out?”

“We used to stargaze together a lot,” said Maddie.

“And we’d go fishing!” boomed Jack.

“Yeah, but we can’t really do either of those, right? We’re stuck inside.”

“That’s true… But we do have our movies, don’t we? And some games.”

“Righto!” said Jack. “I’ll go get the stuff!”

The movie they had finally settled on was a space documentary. Watching it was nice, even if the popcorn was a little burnt.

Watching Jack and Maddie try to cook dinner afterward, though… They seemed to keep reaching for things that weren’t there, or bumping into each other, like they expected there to be more room, or, well. The food looked presentable enough, but there was a mess. A big one.

Still, the macaroni and cheese looked and smelled fine.

“One of your favorites!” said Jack, proudly. “After this, we’ll have some fudge!” He served Danny a scoop bigger than his head, then took a big ceramic mug from the cabinet and filled it with soda.

Danny mentally shrugged and picked up his fork. If he couldn’t eat it, he couldn’t eat it.

“So,” he said, after eating a few bites, “how did the whole ghost thing happen?”

“Pardon?” asked Maddie, looking a little pale.

“Well, my situation is a bit weird, isn’t it? I was just wondering if you knew how it happened.”

“No,” said Maddie. “I’m afraid not. It’s a mystery to us, too. Like we said, we were surprised by all of… this.”

That was weird. If Jazz knew, shouldn’t they know, too?

Or maybe they just didn’t want to tell him.

He fiddled idly with the mug. There were clumsy, childish stars and moons painted on its side.

“Do you like it?” asked Maddie. “You painted that. We went to one of those pottery places for Jazz’s seventh birthday. You were both so young back then…”

“I did?” asked Danny.

“You did,” said Maddie. “If you look at the bottom, you’ll see your initials.”

Danny held the cup up over his head and looked at the bottom. The letters DJF were painted on the bottom.

“What do the J and F stand for?”

“James Fenton,” said Maddie. “James was Jack’s father’s name.”

“And Fenton?”

“Our name. Our family name.”

“Huh,” said Danny. He set the mug back down, but kept his fingers looped around the handle of the mug. It was… grounding, somehow, to touch something from his childhood, from his past. “Do you know why this, um, trial was started?” He took another bite of the macaroni and cheese so he had something to do with his other hand.

“No,” said Maddie, quickly.

“Maddie…”

“We don’t.”

Alright, then.

It was suddenly very hard to swallow.

“We don’t know. We don’t know why any of this happened. But we’re so glad you’re with us again. We’re so glad this is almost over.”

“I know!” shouted Jack, suddenly, making Danny, already tense, jerk sideways in alarm. “When this is over, we can go back to that place and make another–”

Danny had still been holding the mug, and when he flinched, he took the mug with him. He fumbled it briefly before it hit the ground, interrupting whatever Jack was saying and plashing soda everywhere.

“Oops,” said Danny, stricken. “Sorry. I’m really sorry, um.” He had telekinesis. Why couldn’t he just–

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” said Jack, kneeling and picking up the pieces.

“I can do that,” said Danny. “You don’t have to–”

“No, no, I’ve got it,” said Jack. “We’ll just put it right back together! A little superglue and it’ll be as right as rain.”

“I’ve got the mop. You just stay there and eat, okay, Danny?”

That was, like, the exact opposite of what he wanted to do. He wanted to do something to help, but something about the situation held him paralyzed.

“Yeah!” said Jack, rinsing the shards in the kitchen sink. “We just need some glue, then we’ll put it right!”

“Make sure it dries first,” said Maddie, maneuvering a large mop.

“Oh, right!”

He put the pieces on a dishtowel and began to pat them off. Danny, slowly, reluctantly, began to eat again.

“What were you saying before, Jack?”

“Oh, I was thinking that we could go back to that pottery place after all this. Make a few new pieces. It looks like we’ll need it, huh? What do you think, Danny?”

“Um, it sound like it could be fun?”

“Then it’s a plan! We’ll have to rope Jazz in, too, when she’s back in town!”

Speaking of Jazz… Danny had to wonder why she was competing separately from these two. She definitely wasn’t at college, after all. Was it because of what Frostbite had said? Or some other rule of the trial that Clockwork hadn’t mentioned? Or just a strategy to give the family two chances?

He had no idea how to ask those questions.

But then… maybe there was something in Jazz’s room? Or even in his room.

“Want to help me put this back together?” asked Jack. “I’ve got to go find my tools, so if you could just arrange them…”

“You both need to eat first,” said Maddie, “before our food gets cold.”

“Right you are, Maddie!”

Danny had, somehow, lost most of his appetite, but he ate anyway, knowing that if he didn’t he’d be hungry later. When he estimated he’d eaten enough, he pushed aside his plate and went over to the shards of the mug.

It had broken unevenly, which meant that it would be easier to figure out what went where. He started sorting the pieces, and as he did so, he felt himself start to calm down again.

Jack ruffled his hair when he was about halfway through, making Danny freeze, his ears canting backwards.

“I’ve got the super glue!” he said before sitting back down at the table.

They worked together to put the mug back together after that, stars reemerging from scattered shards. It was… peaceful. Sort of like watching Clockwork work in his workroom. Eventually, the mug was, more or less, together, although the cracks were still very visible.

“There we go! Just like a puzzle, huh? How’d you like working with your old man again?”

“It was good,” said Danny.

“Yeah, it was good,” said Jack, beaming. “Maybe I’ll show you how to h– Ahem. I’ll show you how to knit next! I do love knitting. And needlepoint. Fiber art is great, Danny. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“That sounds nice,” said Danny, smiling. Then he yawned.

“Oh, wow, you’ve got some fangs in there! That’s new.” He cleared his throat. “It’s getting pretty late, though, isn’t it? You should get into bed. You’ve had a long day!”

Danny wasn’t sure how long the day had been, but he was tired. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

“We have your toothbrush and everything up in your bathroom,” said Maddie.

“Thanks,” said Danny. “I’ll go up, then?”

“Wait!” shouted Jack, making Danny jump again. “The fudge! Can’t go to bed without fudge!”

“I’m actually pretty full…”

“Nonsense! There’s always room for fudge.”

So, they ate fudge, and then Danny went upstairs to the bathroom.

As promised, there was a toothbrush, floss, and a hairbrush already set out. There was a cabinet set into the mirror, and another under the sink.

He hesitated for a moment before opening the one over the sink. There was a bottle of aspirin and a few boxes of bandaids, but it was otherwise empty. Next, he looked under the sink. Mostly, there were cleaning supplies. But there was also a large first aid box. It had a bright green stain on one corner.

Danny sucked in his lips, then pulled it out and started to look through it as he sat on the closed lid of the toilet. It looked like it had been used frequently. Most of the refillables were mostly empty.

What had happened that he’d used so much of this? Because it had to be him. No one else living here would have left an ectoplasm stain on the lid.

Frostbite’s claim was looking more and more plausible the more he learned.

He closed the lid and put the box away. He was going to give the Fentons the benefit of the doubt until he got actual evidence one way or another. Frostbite had said that he’d never actually met them. So.

Jazz’s room. While he was still mostly awake. It was getting late.

He walked through the wall into the room next door. Jazz’s room was… less empty than he would have expected, given that she had her own house. But it looked like someone had moved out of the room in an awful hurry. More of the drawers in the dresser were opened than closed, clothing was strewn over the bed, the chair had been knocked over, the desktop computer tower had been opened up and the hard drive removed.

Danny searched the room, but didn’t find anything but a note in Jazz’s handwriting, something about reminding him of a school assignment. Everything else was just… clothing, books, his sister’s knick-knacks. Nothing important.

Defeated, he went back to his room, curled up in his bed, and went to sleep under the fake stars.

Danny was going to give the Fentons a week, just like he’d given everyone else, unless they did something really unbelievable or dangerous, like the Observants, or forgot to feed him or something. He’d already decided that, and he’d stick to it, even if they were being sketchy.

So, he stuck with Maddie’s frantic baking, and Jack interrupting himself whenever he, apparently accidentally, mentioned engineering or science. He let it go when they dodged his questions about what they did for a living. He knitted with Jack, and watched documentaries and movies, and helped Maddie make lunch and breakfast, and slowly started working through the comics he’d found in his room. He listened to Jack as he monologued about this and that and letting the broken mug ‘set.’ He helped with the ‘remodel’ as much as he could, and looked for clues about what, exactly, Jack and Maddie had removed.

He also searched his own room, but the Observants, or whoever had prepared the trial, had been very thorough when making sure there was no direct physical evidence of Danny having ever lived here. Not only were there no pictures, the schoolwork on the walls was old enough that Danny couldn’t say if the handwriting really was his, and it wasn’t like he’d found a journal or anything anywhere. There was just a feeling.

What he didn’t do, though, was look through the walled-off door in the kitchen.

If there was a mad science lab anywhere, it was there. And if a mad science lab was here, it was probably where he had died. He… Didn’t really want to see that. He wasn’t sure he could see that and stay… reasonable… with Jack and Maddie.

But… he had to know.

So, just the day before he’d ‘scheduled’ himself to leave, he stood in front of that patch of wall and stepped through.

It was predictably dark. But Danny had both good night vision and the ability to create balls of light, so he called one up.

The basement wasn’t unfinished. It was, in fact, a mad science lab.

He hated being right.

It wasn’t just a mad science lab, though. It was a half destroyed mad science lab. Shelves had been knocked over, machines had been partially disassembled. One area in particular looked as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it and then dumped ectoplasm and something gross and brown on it. He couldn’t even tell what some of that stuff was.

And then there was the inactive portal.

Danny floated towards it, despite remembering Vlad’s warning about his portal. It looked almost exactly the same. Maybe a little less shiny, but still…

He yanked himself away from it, not liking how it seemed to grab his attention, and floated over to where filing cabinets had spilled over. He grabbed a piece of paper at random and read it. Then he read it again. Finally, he dropped it back onto the pile.

Jack and Maddie made their money inventing weapons. Good to know.

He floated over to the particularly wrecked area. Was this the result of a weapons test? That would make sense… sort of… so much of this was just meaningless without context, and he couldn’t get context.

There were papers here, too, in a binder half embedded in one wall. Danny pulled it free easily and started to read it.

When he realized what he was reading, he almost dropped the binder. This was– But it had to be for an animal, a dangerous animal they were hunting, or– There were animal ghosts. Frostbite even had the skins and furs of a few.

Danny’s hands were shaking. He wasn’t sweating. Ghost form was good for more than his looks. But he was shaking. And his tail had fluffed out to its fullest extent.

His eyes wandered down the pages, shying away from the worse things, until, finally, he reached a name.

It was his.

Phantom.

He turned to the last page, skipping most of the binder, and read–

This time, he did drop the binder, and he gagged, too. No. No, that didn’t happen to him. He flew backwards, over the bloody mess that had– He ran into one of the walls, and an alarm started up, a broken thing, clearly not working quite right.

Danny fled up the stairs, through the shut, metallic door, through the hasty drywall and into the kitchen. The kitchen, where the alarm was also blaring, and Jack and Maddie were walking through the door in matching bathrobes.

“Were– Were you in the lab?” asked Jack, uncertainly.

“You,” said Danny, struggling to get the words out. “You–”

“Are you hurt?” asked Maddie, reaching for him. “Do you–”

“No!” shouted Danny. “Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me!”

She backed off, immediately, raising her hands so he could see them. He hated that it did make him feel better.

“Danny,” she said. “Danny, I don’t know what you saw–”

“I saw what you did. You hunted me down like– like an animal. You tried to– to–” Danny sagged against the counter, one hand clutching the pocketwatch. He should just hit the button. He should hit the button now. But part of him needed to know why.

“It was a mistake,” said Jack.

“A mistake? You didn’t do that by mistake. You can’t just trip and then do that. There’s planning there, and preparation–”

“No, no,” said Maddie, “not– We didn’t know it was you. You didn’t look like yourself–”

“I don’t look like myself now, are you going to do it again?”

“No,” said both Jack and Maddie, vehemently.

“But you would’ve done it to someone else, is that it?”

“That’s,” said Jack. “Not anymore. Not anymore, son. We’ve made mistakes. We were wrong about so, so many things, but we’re trying. We’re trying, and we never wanted to do anything that would hurt you.”

“We’re trying to make amends,” said Maddie.

“By hiding this?” demanded Danny. “By pretending you didn’t do it?”

“Only because this is our only chance,” she said. “It’s our only chance, and you didn’t even remember. What good would apologizing have done?”

“More good than this. Why did you even do it?”

“We’re scientists,” said Maddie.

“We just wanted to know how ghosts work,” said Jack. “But we’ve sworn all of it off, forever. We even took out the anti-ghost security system! We don’t want to have anything to do with something that hurt you.”

“You hurt me.”

“Please, Danny, you have every right to be angry with us,” said Maddie, “but give this family a chance. We know it’s our fault that things turned out the way they did, but… We’re sorry. We’re sorry, and we love you, and we want to fix this, and doesn’t that count for something?”

“We want to be a family again,” said Jack, openly crying. “We want to show you what that’s like. What it would be like, now that we know. You are our family, Danny.”

“Family,” repeated Danny, suddenly feeling cold, as if all the ice in his core had built to an unbearable level.

He turned around, towards the counter, eyes flicking back and forth until he found what he was looking for.

Danny picked the repaired mug up off the kitchen counter. “This cup,” he said. “It’s like this cup.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jack.

“Please,” said Maddie. “We know that what we did was wrong, and we want to– We just wanted to move past it. We want to be a family again, Danny. We always just wanted you to be safe.”

Danny shook his head and turned the sink on. He put the cup under it and filled it with water. That done, he turned off the sink and he set the cup on the counter. It leaked, horribly. Some of the cracks leaked slowly, seeping water. Some, near the bottom, spurted.

“It’s still a cup,” said Danny. “But you can’t really use it like one anymore, can you? It’s not– It’s probably not even safe to use anymore, is it? With the glue, and the cracks.”

“But it’s still something you made,” said Jack. “It’s still something important, isn’t it? It’s worth saving, for the memories.”

“Maybe,” said Danny. “But you still can’t use it to drink. You, um. You have to get another cup.” He wiped tears from his eyes. “You can remember it, and it can be good to remember it, but it won’t work anymore. It can’t be fixed.”

He turned back to them.

“Please, Danny,” said Jack. “Don’t go. We love you.”

Danny gave them a tiny, pained smile, then said, “Goodbye.”

#danny phantom #phic #phic phight

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 2 years ago

Note

Interaction with the Hunt family: "Um, I have a question. Are you guys aliens who are planning world domination and if yes, is Rook your leader?"

(no, idk why i wrote this prompt either.)

[If you want to see a silly theory on the Hunt siblings and some doodles of them, check out this post!]

I still stand by my opinion that the Hunt family is a bunch of international spies and/or assassins or something wild like that 😂

Family means Nobody is Left Behind or Forgotten.

Uncanny.

That was the only way you could describe the Hunts.

Rook and his five siblings—brothers and sisters—squished up against one another on one of Pomefiore’s lounge sofas. Seated so close like this, the similarities between their faces were even more pronounced.

Between them and the parents, they all boasted the same sharp eyes, the same flaxen locks, and the same deceptively willowy physiques. It was as though Rook had been refracted in seven different sizes and styles of dress. One Rook for each dorm, Ramshackle included.

Mrs. Hunt chuckled at your question, her eyes immediately sliding over to her husband. She said something in a tongue unknown to you. It earned tittering from her children, and a mysterious smile from Rook.

He caught your curious stare and held it. "Maman lauds your unique sense of humor, Trickster!"

You wondered if she had actually said, "They're onto us." Everything personal seemed to be half truths and avoidance with Rook—and even those that shared his blood.

“Mother speaks many languages,” one of the Hunt siblings offered. Which one it was, you couldn’t tell. “We all do.”

“Right. As part of your intergalactic plan to conquer Twisted Wonderland.”

Mr. Hunt grinned broadly, as if containing a laugh himself. “Us, aliens bent on world domination? No, nothing of the sort. We’re a perfectly normal family, I assure you.”

It was a familiar deflection, you realized, straight from Trey’s book. “I’m just an ordinary high school boy.”

"I don't know if I entirely believe you, sir," you said slowly. “I don’t know if I believe any of you.”

Mr. Hunt’s forest green eyes twinkled with amusement. “Then we should confess to our treason now. Perhaps law enforcement will be so merciful as to grant us lighter sentences for turning ourselves in.”

The Hunts all bursted out into peals of laughter. They clung onto one another for support, hooting and hollering as they doubled over on the sofa.

“Papa thinks himself a comedian!”

Was that really a joke though? You squinted hard at the group. “… Excuse me, but let me be more direct. What exactly do you guys do for a living? I heard you have villas with warp pads in many countries, and that’s super sus—”

"Such interesting school friends you have, Rook,” Mrs. Hunt mused.

“Yes, very interesting indeed,” her husband agreed.

“Very interesting! So very interesting,” the Hunt siblings chorused.

“Ooh la la~ It seems you’ve captured the attention of the entire famille,” Rook chirped, leaning forward in his seat. “Fufufu. I’m certain they’d love to hear more about your curious mind and the imaginative impossibilities it crafts.”

#Rook Hunt #twst #twisted wonderland #twst interactions #twisted wonderland interactions #disney twisted wonderland #Reader #self insert #NRC Family Day #twst scenarios #twst imagines #twisted wonderland imagines #twisted wonderland scenarios

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imgonzoingrightnow · 2 months ago

Text

I’ve unlocked the secret bonus the nanny episodes. (I found out the Russian version of the nanny has an additional 25 episodes and a season 7 and I translated the season 7 episodes synopsis. Furthermore I’m transcribing and translating um.. at least one episode)

Here are the episodes synopsis for all 40 season 7 episodes. And a guide on the names and stuff.

Constantine - Niles

Zhanna - CC

Maxim - Maxwell

Vika - Fran

Shatalins- Sheffields

Denis - Brighton

Masha - Maggie

Ksyusha - Gracie

Baba Nadia - Yetta

Prutkovsky- Morty I think idk

Galya- Val

Liubov Grigorievna-

Season 7 episodes (some exist in original show)

1: According to urban planning plans, the Shatalins' house is subject to demolition. Vika took up the housing issue. However, none of the houses viewed suits the newly-made Mrs. Shatalina. Vladimir Vladimirovich Prutkovsky unexpectedly manages to solve the outcome of the struggle for real estate.

2: According to urban planning plans, the Shatalins' house is subject to demolition. Vika took up the housing issue. However, none of the houses viewed suits the newly-made Mrs. Shatalina. Vladimir Vladimirovich Prutkovsky unexpectedly manages to solve the outcome of the struggle for real estate.

3: Shatalin Jr. fights there and admits that he wants to follow in his father's footsteps. But Denis will have to wait with his production career and first go... to the Suvorov school. Zhanna has a new suitor.

4: Vicky's noisy behavior at the moment of intimacy with Maxim becomes the cause of their quarrel. Shatalin will still have to reconsider his conservative views. To achieve cooperation with a famous American playwright, Maxim just needs to become more uninhibited.

5: To appear at a meeting with school friends accompanied by a young handsome man, Zhanna turns to an escort agency. Extremely upset Konstantin tells Vika about everything. Together they find a way out of a situation that is offensive to him.

6: For several months Maxim has not been able to find a sponsor for his new production. Vika suffers from his inattention. Having fallen under the influence of Prutkovsky, Maxim became a fan of gambling and restaurants. What will make Shatalina return to his old life?

7: A neighbor, the mother of a prodigy boy Moti, comes to visit Vika. Motya demonstrates talents in all areas at the same time: from playing chess and musical instruments to acrobatics. Vika decides to start developing Shatalin's children immediately. Denis and Masha manage to turn away, but Ksyusha is forced to learn to play the cello. Moreover, the insatiable Vika makes Ksyusha a participant in the television contest of young talents, where she fails with a bang...

8: Denis came on vacation from the Suvorovsky school and asks his father to let him and his friends go to St. Petersburg. Maxim refuses. Vika intervenes, but also gets a refusal. Denis touches Vika: he says that his father does not take her opinion into account, and that she is still just a nanny. Baba Nadia and Prutkovsky advise Vika to get her way by refusing Maxim to have sex. But in the bedroom, seeing Maxim, Vika can't stand it herself and pounces on him. The next day, Vika hires a new nanny, and she, on Konstantin's advice, goes to the club for a prestigious party. But there she finds neither friends nor a decent occupation. In her absence, children have questions in which only she can help. The new nanny, feeling unnecessary, quits. In the evening, Maxim confesses to Vika that he loves her both as a wife and as a nanny.

9: Maxim believes that Vika allows children too much, moreover, she defends Maxim's interests. Masha brings her boyfriend Mikhail to visit. Maxim is conservative, Vika is on the contrary. There is a quarrel. By night, the passions had subsided. But the next day Maxim finds out that Masha decided to move in with Misha and, what is even more outrageous, Vika allowed her to do so. A storm eruped. Vika went to see her dad for advice. Dad's advice helped. The family is together again. Moral foundations have not been violated.

10: Vika receives a long-awaited invitation to the party of Rublev's wives. There she finds out that it's not enough to be just the wife of a rich man. A woman must necessarily have her own business: a club, an art gallery or a restaurant. Vika decides to open a restaurant. Maxim gives her money for premises and promotion. Finally, the restaurant is ready to receive the first visitors. But there are no visitors. To attract the public, Vika will repurpose her establishment into a Peruvian restaurant. But the exotic doesn't attract customers. Zhanna invites restaurant critics to write positive reviews about the restaurant. Zhanna's sudden benevolence alarms Vika. And not for nothing! However, Zhanna's cunning eventually turns into a benefit...

11: Things are not going well at Vicky's restaurant, and the workforce, consisting mainly of Viki's relatives and friends, goes on strike. And at this time, Maxim comes up with the idea to stage the musical "Bremen Town Musicians" in the style of "chanson" and invite the star of this specific genre - Sergei Kylo to the main role. As a result, the musical fails. Sergei Kylo's "Roop", which financed the production, is dissatisfied and demands a refund. Shatalin's life is under threat. But Vika finds a way out, and the musical, which failed on the theater stage, with great success called "Bremen Tourers" begins to go on the stage of restaurants!…

12: There was a disappearance in the theater where Maxim stages the musical. To find the thief, Zhanna gets Maxim's permission to rumage through the biographies of employees. And he finds out that Vika never graduated from school, and Konstantin has a criminal record. In order to improve her reputation and get a certificate, Vika goes to the senior class of the school where Masha studies. Vic's school is the center of attention. She has a lot of friends and suitors. And she spends all her free time with them. She really likes going back to school. What about Masha? She's not in their company. None of her former friends pay attention to her. And Masha is doing homework alone. The passing of the laboratory chemistry workshop is approaching. Will Vika hand it in?

13: Maxim and Zhanna are preparing a new comedy production with the role of a butler. And Konstantin really wants to play this role. But Maxim is categorically against the fact that the family participates in his productions. Zhanna still persuades Maxim to listen to Konstantin. Why does she need it? To once again rejoice over him. Konstantin fails at the audition. Konstantin and Vika are indignant, they consider it unfair. They have an idea to deceive and make fun of Maxim and Zhanna. Vika, having changed into a man, successfully passes the audition for the role of a butler. And he is already going to take off his wig and beard, but after hearing words of delight from the producers, promises of a bright future and the amount of fees, he decides to wait.

14: His university friend, a lucky businessman Vlad Sablin, came to Maxim. They get drunk all evening, and the next day Maxim goes on a business trip urgently. Vlad comes to the house and tells Vika that Maxim hastily forgot to write him a check for half a million dollars. Vika writes a check, Zhanna objects. On the same day, Vika and Zhanna find out that Vlad is all in debt. Zhanna rubs her hands - finally Vika is thrown out of the house. Vika goes to Vlad's house in despair. Vlad is ready to return the money, but an inner voice tells Vika that he should be given a chance. Meanwhile, Konstantin receives a letter about the inheritance. He will inherit the title and estate. Konstantin became proud, stopped working, started shopping expensive. Later it turns out that there are plenty of other applicants for the title, and the estate is unprofitable.

15: Vika continues to revolve in the company of Rublev wives and look for a decent occupation. Now she announces that she is going to open an art gallery. From her neighbors, Vika finds out that it is now fashionable to discover new names among the gallery workers. Vika makes everyone at home to demonstrate their painting skills. The result does not please Vika and she turns to a professional artist. But the situation there is no better. As a result, Maxim's youthful drawings are demonstrated at the opening of the gallery. But the fire alarm goes off and the pictures are flooded with water...

16: Maxim wants to involve one of the stars, Sergei Kurnosov, in his production. Meanwhile, journalist Makar Polivalov writes an unpleasant article about the upcoming production. They say that all famous actors refused to participate in it. But if Kurnosov reads this article, he can also refuse. Maxim finds the strength to restrainedly ask Polivalov on the phone to change his mind and not write such articles anymore. At this moment, Vika bursts into the office, grabs the phone, is rude to Polivalova and hangs up. The next day, an article appears that completely discredits Maxim's plans. In it, Polivalov operates with information that was known only to the household. Vika and Konstantin suspect Zhanna's suitor. To report this, Vika again bursts into Maxim's office, where he is just going to sign a contract with Kurnosov. Maxim asks her to come out, but Vika, seeing Kurnosov, asks for an autograph. And just on the newspaper with an article that Kurnosov shouldn't have seen.

17: Vika dreams of a status car. Maxim is ready to buy her a car on condition that Vika gets a license. Vika offers Maxim to just buy her a license, as all her acquaintances do. But Maxim is categorically against it. Then Vika buys the license herself, but tells Maxim that she honestly passed all the exams. Maxim wants to check for himself how Vika drives the car. Vicky has only a few days to prepare and hand over Maxim driving. She takes night driving lessons from Konstantin. Maxim, who doesn't know why Vika runs away to the butler at night, starts to get jealous...

18: It seems to Vika that her relationship with Maxim has lost its former novelty. Maxim has completely earned money, pays little attention to her, sex has become commonplace. The children and Konstantin leave for the weekend, Vika and Maxim stay home alone. Vika wants to use this chance to light the fire of love and voluptuousness again. But it turns out to be not so easy.

19: At night, a Labrador dog is found in the Shatalins' yard. Ksyusha is delighted and wants to keep her. Vika follows her lead. Maxim is categorically against it and asks everyone to actively join the search for the owner. Zhanna notices that the dog looks like Koni, the Prime Minister's dog. After Zhanna's call, his friend from the Prime Minister's security has no doubts. What luck! Now they will meet the prime minister. But grandma Nadia disappoints everyone - the prime minister has a bitch, and this is the cable. Masha finds a photo of Nikolai Baskov's dog on the Internet. And the night guest looks a lot like him. Maybe his master is Baskov?

20: Maxim is waiting for a visit from his old friend from Paris - Countess Tarnovskaya. Vika is convinced that the Countess is an old woman. But it turns out that the countess is Maxim's childhood friend and his age. Appearing in the Shatalins' house, she begins to seduce Maxim. Vika is jealous and buys herself a fake family tree, according to which the Prutkovskys are an ancient Polish noble family. It comes to the fact that Vika is presented to the Moscow noble assembly. Dad, who appeared at the wrong time, involuntarily contributes to the exposition of Wiki. Maxim saves the situation.

21: Vika is watching the new neighbors. It seems to her that they are Chinese spies. Vika connects Galya to the spy. They get their hands on a parcel addressed to the neighbors. Opening the parcel, Galya and Vika find warm socks and lard in it. They decide that it is through lard that the neighboring spies get important information. To "split" them, Vika invites neighbors to visit. Here she tries to give her neighbor a drink, but the neighbor doesn't let her do it. Cunning questions also do not bring results. Galya starts entertaining the neighbors alone, while Vika does a search in the neighbor's house. Galya dances in front of the neighbors, sings, shows the shadow theater... At this time Maxim returns. After that, all misunderstandings are resolved. The fact is that the neighbors behaved so intensely with Vika only because of her strange behavior they considered Vika a spy...

22: Konstantin suffers because Zhanna doesn't pay attention to him. To interest her, Konstantin composes a story about the fact that he has a twin brother, with whom they were separated in early childhood. Now this brother is a major American producer. Having glued his mustache, Konstantin portrays his own brother and even has success with Zhanna. It comes to the point that Konstantin begins to be jealous of Jeanne for himself, that is, his fictional brother. He leads Zhanna to a restaurant, where the deception is revealed.

23: Vika takes Galya with her to the next meeting of Rublev's wives to look better against her background. At this meeting, Vika criticizes the book, the author of which is the Rublev lady present here, writing under a pseudonym. She offers Vika to write at least one book herself. Vika agrees. But her personal literary talents are clearly lacking and Vika turns to a professional - an unemployed writer Kolbaskin for help. Meanwhile, Galya is becoming an increasingly popular figure in a social party and even displacing Vika from there...

24: Maxim is extremely unhappy with what the press writes about Viki's scandalous antics. And he advises her to behave more cautiously and not to undermine his image. The family returns from a picnic and discovers that they forgot their dad in the forest. After a while, he appears all in soot. He says he extinguished a forest fire alone. No one believes him. But the next day TV correspondents come to the Shatalin's house and invite Prutkovsky to the TV show to tell about his feat. A very good moment to raise Vicky's image. Vika persuades her father to say that they extinguished the fire together and goes to the studio with him.

25: Maxim trusts Vika to organize the presentation of the new musical. Zhanna is convinced that Vika will not be able to cope. And if anything, Zhanna will help her not to cope. Vika and Galya surprisingly quickly find a room, musicians - everything so that the presentation takes place at the highest level. But Vika accidentally leaves her mobile phone in the living room. The administrator is calling her. Zhanna takes the phone. The administrator asks to confirm the order by five o'clock, otherwise he will cancel everything. Zhanna promises that she will certainly give Vika all the information. He writes a note to Vika in incomprehensible handwriting and hides it under a pile of papers so that Vika can't notice it right away. The presentation is under threat of disruption.

26: It seems to Gala that she is being chased by a maniac. And Vicky's credit card is running out of money. Maxim doesn't want to tell Vika the code from his safe, because he's sure that Vika will forget it. Vika swears that she will be able to remember the code. Maxim names the combination of numbers, and says that there will be a gift for Vicky in the safe. She will have to get this gift for dinner. But Vika forgets the code. In order not to embarrass himself in front of Maxim, Vika decides to break into the safe. Prutkovsky recommends Vika to contact their relative - a professional bear cub named Grizzly. He blows up the safe and instead of Vic's gift he finds only a burnt fragment of something unknown…

27: Vika meets her old acquaintance Katya, who is now known as Evelina Gimenei, a specialist in family relations and author of books on this topic. Vika persuades Maxim to take a training course on strengthening marriage. But it turns out that these activities are a way to get as much money as possible from trusting couples...

28: Zhanna is having a charity ball. Arriving there, Maxim finds out that he is declared "the prettiest bachelor of show business", and every dance with him brings a decent amount to the fund. When the news about it reaches Vicky, she breaks her head and rushes to the ball.

29: Maxim and Zhanna are going to fly to Paris on business, and Vika wins a voucher "Honey Weekend in the Cleopatra Cave" - a former pioneer camp, and now an elite holiday home. Many Wikin acquaintances have already visited this place and were satisfied. Maxim and Zhanna's trip to Paris is disrupted. Maxim goes with Vika to the "Cleopatra's Cave", where instead of the promised exotics, they are waiting for a completely "Soviet" service and stupid contests. And Zhanna remains to find out with Konstantin: which of them was more often "threwn" in her personal life.

30: The old chair that Maxim got from his great-grandmother turned out to belong to Prince Dolgoruky himself. Maxim gives a chair to the museum in the hope of becoming a member of its board of trustees. The solemn ceremony of his acceptance as a member of the trusteeship The council should take place in a few days. Ksyusha breaks Vika to go to the museum and look at her great-grandmother's chair. In the museum, Vika is photographed next to an armchair, accidentally drops a massive candlestick and it smashes the chair to pieces.

31: Vika and Maxim are invited to the wedding of Vikina's cousin. But Maxim's plans suddenly change. Together with Zhanna, he flies to Jurmala for a competition of young performers. In Jurmala, it turns out that all the hotels are overcrowded and one of the rooms they booked was occupied by Alla Pugacheva. Maxim and Zhanna will have to spend the night in the same room. It's about the night. Maxim and Zhanna decide who will sleep where. At this moment, jealous Vika climbs out from under the bed. And immediately an equally jealous Konstantin appears from the closet. Now they will have to spend the night in one room for four. And who stayed at home with the children then?

32: The Shatalins have new neighbors, the Kuskov family couple. He is an oil oligarch, she is a famous ballerina in the past. And also their daughter Juliet is the heiress to the oil and gas throne. Ksyusha comes to her house with Juliet and Konstantin treats the girls with his signature pancakes. Juliet is delighted. Vika dreams of getting to know such status neighbors better. She sneaks to their housewarming party and even invites the Kuskovs to her place. Vika is aware that the Kuskovs annually arrange a yacht trip for their friends and want to get into this circle. The Kuskovs really invite you to take part in the cruise, but not Maxim's Vikui, but... Konstantin. Konstantin also receives a tempting offer to work as a butler for the Kuskovs.

33: Vika has nothing to do. The children are already adults and do without it. Konstantin does all the housework. At this time, a bell rings in the Shatalins' house. The little girl got the wrong number. She says mom forgot to pick her up from school. Vika rushes to the rescue and brings the girl to her place. When it turns out that today is the girl's birthday, Vika arranges a real holiday for her: with a chic cake, a clown, pony riding and even an elephant. In the midst of the holiday, Maxim appears and has found the girl's mother. It turns out that the girl's birthday was a few months ago, and these calls from school to an unfamiliar number are just a way to have an interesting time, since the girl's mother is in business and is at work all the time. Nevertheless, Vika and the girl break up as friends.

34: Vika dreams of getting into the prestigious Rublev fitness club, which is run by a handsome man from glossy magazines Tony Prince. And here's a lucky case - his car suddenly catches fire right in front of the Shatalins' house and Konstantin saves his idol. But the money lying in the glove box can't be saved. Tony saved this money for filming a methodical film about fitness. Vika decides to produce this movie. Maxim agrees after some hesitation. Vika and Tony become business partners. But then Vika notices that Tony shows no business interest in her at all.

35: Galya broke up with another suitor and is now in a deep depression. She moves to Vika's house, and in a couple of days all the household members moan from her whining and whims. Maxim demands that Vika kick out Galya. But Vika feels sorry for her friend and leaves the house with her. Maxim regrets that he behaved so heartlessly. And the enterprising Prutkovsky lures considerable sums from Maxim - allegedly in order to persuade Vika to return. In the end, everything falls into place. Galya is brought out of depression by the shawarma seller, and Maxim and Vika are together again.

36: Maxim's musical should go on tour to St. Petersburg. But the trip is on the verge of collapse, since the star of the musical, actress Olga Bobkova, can't go. Vika manages to find out the reason for the refusal - the star has a small son who has no one to leave with. No nanny can stand talking to a little bully for more than a day. Vika decides to shake up the old and work as a nanny. The actress is ready to go on tour. She brings her son to the Shatalins' house and it turns out that this "baby" is already sixteen years old! At the same time, he behaves like a six-year-old child. However, Vika shows a remarkable pedagogical talent and in two days the boy is literally unrecognizable!..

37: Konstantin decides to sell Maxim a play written by his friend and become a co-producer of the production. And all this in order to get rich and attract Zhanna's attention. But Maxim reacted to it coldly. Vika advises Konstantin to just confess his feelings to Zhanna. Konstantin believes that he can't do it until he gets rich. Then Vika offers Konstantin her help in staging the play. They pretend to be Maxim and Zhanna and start the production. A devastating article appears in the yellow press, which lists all their mistakes and miscalculations. This is a serious blow to the image of the Shatalin agency. Vika plays a scene of despair in front of Max and reports failure. Maxim is correcting the situation. After the successful premiere, Konstantin proposes to Zhanna.

38: Vika and the doctors were wrong - there was no pregnancy. It's just that Vika ate too far. Vika and Maxim decide to correct this mistake and conceive a child. Dad believes that Max's sperm at his age are no longer so active and advises Vika to turn to the Chinese doctor Fu. Vika buys the necessary roots from Dr. Fu to increase sperm activity and a whole box of special almond cookies for mutual attraction. Vika and Max don't get out of bed. Vika constantly checks whether she is pregnant with the help of a test. By chance, the cookie gets to Konstantin and Zhanna and a passion flares up between them.

39: Vika still wants a baby and is worried that she can't get pregnant. It seems to Maxim that it has turned into an obsession. He offers Vika to get distracted, go to the ski resort, where he was invited, among others, by the Prime Minister of Russia himself. Vika is delighted - she will get acquainted with the Prime Minister himself. Before the gala dinner, Maxim is afraid that Vika will blunt out something. However, at dinner, the premiere liked Vicky's immediacy so much that he invited Vic to go skiing with him a few days later. Maxim, on the contrary, he sheditated, carried all sorts of nonsense, which is why after the meeting he began to worry even more. Maxim teaches Vik to go skiing. Suddenly, Vika can't resist and rolls down at great speed. Maxim is behind her. As a result, they find themselves waist-deep in snow in a crevice. Afraid of freezing, they warm each other with love. A few days later, when there are only a few hours left before the walk with the prime minister, Vika finds out that she is pregnant. And he is in a hurry not to the prime minister, but to Maxim, to "the main man in his life".

#the nanny #choonanigans #niles the butler #cc babcock #fran fine #maxwell sheffield #Important note Maxwell and Fran get married at the end of SEASON 6

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unhingedmarvelandclassicwhobuff · 3 months ago

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If there’s anything we can agree on, it’s that Wanda maximoff was majorly screwed over in terms of character writing

Absolutely. As much as I adore Wanda, I paradoxically don't think any of her appearances were done well.

Age of Ultron comes pretty close by actually letting her nobility shine through and letting her call out Tony, but it falls short by not making it crystal-clear that she was never loyal to Hydra, and by not showing her react to what she indirectly caused in Johannesburg.

I feel like I shouldn't have to explain why I hate what's done with her in Civil War, but I'll do it anyway:

- the movie and the audience alike blame her for the casualties in Lagos instead of, y'know, the Hydra agent who actually set off the bomb - she isn't allowed to speak up when Tony starts condescendingly going "um, you all need to understand that people die in carnage 🤓" as if her fucking brother wasn't murdered by his creation, nor is she allowed to have any opinion at all on the document that will legally declare her a sub-human - Despite the movie trying to say she'd have to think about signing the Accords rather than instantly saying no like she really would, Tony goes over her head and kicks her off the Avengers roster and imprisons her so Ross can have an easier time getting her when he decides that she needs to be disposed of because it's now legal to do that to an Enhanced that you so much as suspect might be a threat. - For some reason people think SHE'S the one in the wrong when she subdues Vision (which literally makes her cry) in order to escape from Tony. - She gets blamed by the movie itself for Rhodey's injury (Vision saying he was "distracted" when he fired. What else could that mean?), most likely in order to make you think "serves that bitch right" when Tony sees her being tortured on the Raft and has zero reaction.

Infinity War probably comes the closest to being a good depiction of her, despite the fact that the Russo Brothers either couldn't care less about her, or outright dislike her for daring to have beef with Tony, who they worship. With that being said, her horrible sacrifice and subsequent nullification of it, as torturous as it is to watch, is legitimately good storytelling. Now if only the movie didn't try with zero irony to say that Thanos murdering Gamora was the same thing.

Her two minutes in Endgame are... fine, I guess. Her absolutely wiping the floor with Thanos is cool, but it's emotionally hollow because it's not the Thanos that took Vision from her. Also, the scene has been ruined for me by the official YouTube clip being flooded with comments going "OMG, this was such a great passing of the torch between the two biggest MCU villains." Like, fuck you! I guess I'm grateful that the laughably tone-deaf scene where everyone kneels before Tony's corpse was cut, because he directly harmed many of the people there, Wanda most of all. And then she never gets to learn that Tony's insistence against rewinding time is the reason Vision is gone for good.

WandaVision is supposed to be her big time in the spotlight. And it is... but it's still not worthy of her. Setting aside how annoying it was that no one was interested in Wanda at all while the show was being released and were only interested in how the series could be used as a vehicle to introduce stuff like mutants, the series made a massive error in prioritizing audience intrigue over character consistency. What do I mean by that? Well, pure and simple, the Wanda Maximoff I know and love would never, and I mean NEVER, be complicit in the enslavement and torture of 4,000 people (many of whom are children). And the show itself seems to agree with me, as the final few episodes make it crystal-clear she had no idea how this started or what the Hex was doing to anyone. There's just one problem with that; the majority of the show was implying she knew she was in full control (all those time resets, her throwing Monica out, her whole argument with Vision, her expanding the Hex). Clearly these moments were meant to keep the audience guessing as to what was really happening, but the result was Wanda being insanely out of character, and the show itself highlights that. So yeah, if Elizabeth Olsen wasn't so proud of the show, I would write it off completely despite how much I loved certain parts of it (mostly just the final two episodes for actually letting her be the hero she really is).

I have no kind words whatsoever for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Fuck that movie. And fuck Marvel for letting Sam Raimi and Michael Waldron turn Wanda into a one-note slasher villain and making her many many haters feel validated. The fact that it was sheer incompetence that led to this and not open malice is honestly even worse, because that's how little this character is valued.

So yeah, while I love everything about Wanda as a person, she's way too good for any of the projects she appears in, and if I had my way I'd pluck her out of the MCU and put her in a universe where she can truly be loved and valued like she deserves to be (with her permission of course).

#wanda maximoff #pro wanda maximoff #anti ca:cw #anti endgame #anti multiverse of madness #fuck multiverse of madness #wall of text #unhinged rant

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whitebookposts · 2 years ago

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Um question

during one of my “endlessly scrolling through tumblr looking at people’s opinions on Sky lore” nights I noticed one of your posts about a Valley Priestess? Several other people had drawn/talked about Valley Priestess and I am incredibly confused as to who she is

*RUNS FULL SPEED AT YOU *GRABS YOU OH MY DEAR FRIEND YOU HAVE **NO** IDEA WHAT YOU HAVE JUST AWAKENED. PRIESTESS IS MY FAVORITE CHARACTER EVER AND MY HYPERFIXATED ASS WILL TALK ABOUT HER JUST GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY.

SIT DOWN FELLA THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG ONE.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

Let's go back in time, circa 2017-2018, when Sky was still in development, and was yet to hit the shelves. During that time, TGC presented their pre-release concepts of what was back then known as Sky: Light Awaits, at CAFA GAME ART 2018 exhibition, held at Cetral Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China from september 8 to October 7. In that exhibition, TGC presented the crowd with a bunch of concept art, story directions and ideas, and some world-building of their upcoming game. If you are interested in seeing the exhibits TGC put up, you can check those links:

1. Layout 2. World overview 3. Storyline 4. World Map 5. Character Designs 6. Level designs 7. Interaction and customization 8. Journey comparison 9. Bits and pieces

However, for the specifc question you asked, we need to focus on number 3. Storyline. More specifically, this bit right here:

You see this? Right here? "Descendants summon and challenge and ancient (priestess)" YUP, THERE SHE IS, RIGHT HERE!! That is one of the first, and frankly, the last times she gets officially mentioned. Why? Because she was replaced by the Valley twins. That is also why the twins share one name: Samekh, because they used to be one elder, to whom this name belonged. How do we know this? Because in the concept art where the twins start to appear, they are both labeled Samekh... Just like in this very little and crunchy concept art:

You see her? In the corner?

There she is! As we can see, this singular figure is also labeled Samekh. And since we know that Samekh is the name of the valley elders and the singular Valley elder for the Priestess, we can conclude this is a concept art of her :) if you want to know more about elders' names, you can always check out Grandpa's (@grapeless-seeds) very neat doc right here!

Now, you may be asking: "If she is just a scraped elder that was already replaced by other elders, how did she resurface again?" That is a very good question! And it has a VERY long and VERY interesting history behind it.

Despite her being in the concept art, not many acknowledged her existence, moreover being anyway related to the current Valley elders. Even though many asked themselves the question "Why were there two Valley elders, and why are they so much younger than the rest of them?", a big part of the fandom agreed on the headcanon that the twins were simply two parts of one being who got split. And so, Priestess laid dormant in the discarded concept art. But things were about to change.

Let's jump into the future, circa 2020-2021, when the fandom's love for lore and elders was at it's height. Theories were flowing left and right, and as you know, Sky lore enjoyers often dig through countless concept art for crumbs of lore we usually don't get in the game. And one of said concepts through which a certain group of people dug through was the concept of Priestess. Unconciouslly, her image rooted itself in the minds of elder lore enthusiasts.

In 2020, Grandpa, who was a pretty influential Sky artist and theorist on Skyblr and the western Sky fandom, posted this headcanon on her twitter:

This, as far as I'm aware, was one of the first instances of the idea that not only the twins aren't just two halves of one being, but that they are actually children of an elder long gone: the Priestess.

Soon enough after it, a sketch by @artificial-radiance Was posted on Skyblr, featuring this idea yet again.

While the headcanon was still really obscure, it did manage to trickle down into the hearts of some very passionate (and lowkey insane) people, like me. I mean, How could it not! It was a perfect setup for drama, mystery, and the "dead mom" trope! It could finally give a much spicier explanation for the twins being younger than the rest of the elders than the "split theory" we knew beforehand. And a few more fan arts and headcanons started showing up, here are some examples:

(two old sketches by me, inspired by artificial radiance)

(a short comic by @dogedepan also inspired by artificial radiance)

As you can see, back then the design for her was really close to the single concept art piece we had - a hooded silhouette with not a lot of unique features.

The awareness of Priestess and the idea of her being the mother of the current Valley elders rooted itself stronger. But you know what really made it bloom?

Eldertwt.

Eldertwt was a joke roleplay a bunch of sky fans started on Twitter dot com, where each created a profile after an elder or a Sky spirit, interacting and making a bunch of shenanigans. The whole thing was filled with deez nuts and gay jokes, and it really didn't seem to be going anywhere serious...

Until, Grandpa, yet again, dropped a priestess bomb. In a, surprisingly, heartwrenching Eldertwt storyline (no I'm serious, you HAD to be there when it went down), Grandpa introduced Priestess again, finally forever basing Priestess as an existing character and the mother of the twins. With Grandpa drawing her in her style, a change in the way she was drawn was done

(credit to @grapeless-seeds)

And many who proceeded to draw her for Eldertwt based on Grandpa's design really hammered it down. Here are some examples

(credit to @dogedepan)

(credit to @fiomeras)

(credit to @krillcandles)

(credit to @thatskymoz)

As you can see, Priestess went from a hooded silhouette in a crunchy concept art into a full-fledged character with hair, face, and personality. With Priestess stopped being an obscured piece of concept art, she found her way into the hearts of many.

Before long, the simple little headcanon grew into a full-fledged fanon, with fanart, theories, ships, and fanfics being produced with priestess as a character in them. And honestly? This perhaps was one of the most favorite things I got to experience in Sky fandom. How a bunch of strangers came together and out of pure love and interest took a piece of concept art and a little text that never made it past development, and turned it into a full, recognizable character. And yes, this fanon might not be the most popular, and most people still go by the "split elder" theory for twins. But Priestess is THERE. She is no longer a forgotten and discarded piece of art. She is a character who holds importance to many, including me.

And you might say "Well, isn't it silly, to turn a character that doesn't even exist in the final game into a full-fledged fanon?" And you would be right, it is silly. But it's fun. And in a game like Sky, where most of what we know is through concept art, is it really a stretch to give importance to a piece of it?

Besides... Once you learn about Priestess...

You start to notice that perhaps, she isn't gone from the game entirely 😉

Anyway, I hope I answered your question! SOryy for making this SO long, it's just I love this character so so so so much, AND the history behind her is fascinating!!!

#sky: cotl #sky: children of the light #sky cotl #sky children of the light #thatskygame #that sky game #sky: the more you know #sky lore #thatskygame lore #priestess my beloved #sky priestess #valley elders #valley of triumph #valley twins #samekh #priestess samekh

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juniperpyre · 1 month ago

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💖💚💙💕

💖: What is your biggest unpopular opinion about the series?

i don't get the draco love. he bores me. yes i think harry was bisexually obsessed with him, but that makes harry's character more interesting, not draco's.

to quote sirius, 'he should have died!' rather than y'know break death eaters into the school full of children

💚: What does everyone else get wrong about your favorite character?

i almost never see anyone talk about the abuse sirius faced in a way that is both logical and compelling. being at grimmauld place clearly puts him deep in depression and his mother's portrait is hateful and verbally abusive.

so like people often potray this super dramatic abuse where his parents were beating his ass day in day out, telling him he's a pos, and sirius was rebelling from day one. i just don't think that sirius would completely not share any of that with harry, knowing that harry is being abused. he would know better than anyone it would make harry feel better

sirius leaves because he hated his family's pure-blood mania. he also notes that his parents frequently said regulus was the better son. i think if they hit him beyond what was socially acceptable for the time he might've mentioned it here. a simple "my mother made it known with a good slicing charm" and a dark laugh.

i imagine sirius being parentified since he had to alter his behavior to keep his parents emotionally regulated. he wouldn't do it as often as regulus, but growing up with that norm would make it impossible to not internalize at all.

i have a short fic during his 4th year that explores this. i think he fought with his parents about politics and rules and the repressed lives they all lived. i also think he shared a lot in common with his mom, but that's total hc territory.

so idk where i'm going with this but yea writing abuse is hard ig

💙: Which character is not as hot as everyone else seems to think?

regulus black. maybe james? the way I imainge james is attractive to me, but the way harry is described I feel like neither of them are universally considered super hot (which I assume sirius would be). I think their personalities/the way they carry themselves probably does it. also the men I find attractive are not um the heterosexual ideal.

💕: What is an unpopular ship that you like?

i'm not sure what's unpopular. i have written some of the only fics with fabian/lily and narcissa/amelia and i do really like those pairings. prongsfoot gets hated on and in some ways it's starting to make more sense to me than wolfstar.

i loved wolfstar from like middle school and i see the chemistry. they have explored each other's bodies. but sirius is obsessed with james in a way he's not with remus. plus it's more tragic if lily was james' first choice and james was sirius' first choice and sirius (or james. or even lily!) was remus' first choice. and james was lily's first choice she gets everything she wants <3

#m #ask #plecotusauritus #sirius black #hp meta

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argentinpantsuit · 10 months ago

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What kills me about Bruce is that he never really tries to make up with his children after abusing them ( no i will not debate that he is an abusive parent) or if they argue. He just lets it consume him and throws himself into his work without bothering to try and understand their point of view or even just talk to them and communicate at all at the core thats why his relationship with them is sooo fraught .

He has a severe lack of emotional competency and he is a WRECK when it comes communication Its like his .. worst nemesis All of his relationships are unnecessarily over complicated because he is such a nightmare to try and have a conversation with after . He cannot communicate effectively at ALL .

His priority towards The Mission above all means he only really clarifies his emotions when CRUCIAL. Which he has interesting opinions on what classifies as “crucial ” which isn’t usually the times when he needs to talk to people because of his aforementioned lack of emotional competency so he never understands he actually needs to like Fucking talk .

Like when he argues with his children . The thing is he never tries to see their emotions as well as his own . He never tries to dig deeper he takes statements at face value never back up what he says UNLESS it’s about crime fighting he never apologises really or tries very hard to fix it .

Bruce suffers a clinical lack of emotional understanding so it ends up with him never trying to see how people feel or understand why they acted like that like if it is outside of crime fighting because he is so obnoxiously bad at picking up or acknowledging problems. ( probably because how he solves all his emotional problems are by .. not he just ignores it and eventually has to give in because someone Babs , Dick , Tim , ALFRED tell him that he can’t do that shit forever)

This isn’t to say that Bruce is a bad person he saves hundreds all the time he is an exceptionally good person sacrificing his entire life ( and um those of people who care about him) and all he has ever had even the love of others he pushes away in pursuit of the mission. But at his core he is a bad father or just a bad person to care about. Because he doesn’t care about himself only the again THE DAMN MISSION.

Literally everything comes second place to the dedication of that crusade . A good fantastic person at his heart a failure at being a person in any and all interpersonal relationships 😭.

But it’s frustrating because he could so easily become a better person but because of the the cyclic nature of comics and the whole “he must be grim all the time ” even though YOU KNOW he could co exist as a hardened dark urban warrior AND a good father and other shit but alasss i feel like the one plot i have always wanted more than any other batman comic is him moving on from the unholy obsession with the mission help him to be a balanced person and live with emotional turmoil in an actually healthy way . Pftt like that’ll happen

Ah well nice to dream

#ok this is mostly my opinions but I digress #dc #dc comics #bruce is so emotionally constipated and draining that its kinda impossible for him to be a healthy parent #bruce wayne #batman

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cool-cowboy · 1 year ago

Text

Summary:

In which Leon is the priest of your church, a very kind and noble man, who you, against the church’s (and your shitty husband’s) wishes have grown quite fond of, confession being one of the few times you get to relish the one on one attention. Little do you know, your godly priest has been having some not so godly thoughts about you as well.

I have literally no idea. Leon in a sweet caring kind of way, but kinda out of character, since he's a 1600's priest and speaks hopefully like one. A bit of a historical thing, the idea popped into my head and I did some research, and found out it used to be pretty common for married women to enjoy their confessions, often falling for the men on the other side of the wall.

Tags:

Alternate Universe - Medieval, Catholicism, Catholic Guilt, Adultery, Confessional Sex, sex in the confession booth, Dominant Leon S. Kennedy, Dirty Talk, Clothed Sex, Priests, Priest Leon S. Kennedy, Oral Sex, Rough Oral Sex, Making Out, Semi-Public Sex, Eye Contact, Penis In Vagina Sex, Come Shot, Skirts

Blurb:

“You find me godly?”

“Perfectly… Though you are the cause of many other's sins, so perhaps you are sinful…”

Text:

“Bless me father, for I have sinned. My last confession was Wednesday.” He’s staring at me, in his usual way, open and accepting, ready to hear all about my wrong-doings, one of them a cardinal sin, no less. I’m not sure what it is, why he has such a draw, roping me in and making me forget my teachings over and over, his looks and person much too sinful for such a godly man. “I was rude, I spoke unkind words to Stephan. I refused him… When, um, when he-”

“There is no judgment here, only forgiveness. There’s no need to be nervous.” I nod, not looking at him, embarrassed to be confessing yet another tiff with my husband, sure the father is tired of hearing about my disrespect. He reaches through the little door, something he’s not supposed to do, but often does, getting my attention or soothing me down after a particularly nasty sin is disclosed, something that only causes further sin, the feel of his kind hands always forcing some further than friendly thoughts into my mind, never fessed up in my confessions, which is probably my biggest offense to god to date. He makes me look at him, tilts my head up by my chin, stares at me in his quiet, sweet way, soft eyes always able to draw out my deepest secrets without much prompt. “Tell me.” He always seems more interested to hear about my transgressions toward my husband, for why I don’t know, but it’s better than the harsh judgement of my childhood priest, anyways, so I try not to dwell too much.

“He wanted to… Bed me. I refused… It’s my duty to bear children, but I- He isn’t… I hate him.” The truth, something I’ve been toeing the line of for a while, only confessing the passing sins rather than my most heinous one, but he’s known all along, doesn’t seem surprised at all when I meet his eyes, maybe a little amused, but I don’t believe that, he has no reason to be, only reason to assign me a hefty penance.

“I see… That is… Quite the confession. Don’t look so fearful, miss, you know I’m a believer in earning your keep, and it doesn’t seem Mr. Belman is trying his best to do so.” My throat’s dry, my swallow barely making it down, his eyes on my making me sweat, my skirts making me feel a little faint, claustrophobic in the small booth. “A bad man does not deserve a woman as godly as you, at least I don’t see him as fit.” He’s not meant to give his opinion, only fact, that or prompt me to better help me lay my secrets out to him, but he always tries to make me feel better, in a way, for the wrongs I’ve committed, well aware of my repentance, and my desire to do better.

“You find me godly?” I’m really not, most ladies who attend the mass are a whole lot more godly than me, almost perfect Catholics. He smiles, soft and kind, making me sin all over again, though I’m unsure what I can do to keep from sinning in this way, my thoughts not easily controlled, especially for him, a man no woman has ever had the pleasure of pleasing, a man who’s devoted his whole being to serving the lord, but still manages to be entirely enticing, his unattainableness adding a sinful edge to his allure.

“Perfectly… Though you are the cause of many other's sins, so perhaps you are sinful…” He’s amused, and I’m confused, not an idea what he means by that. I stare at him, not incredibly eager to get on with my confession, more than willing to let him keep talking as long as he likes. “You’re an object of many’s affections, miss, and envy as well…” He’s going against his oath, speaking of other’s sins outside their own confessions, giving me a shred of all that he knows, offering it up with a relaxed expression, watching me, assumedly waiting on me to continue telling him, but I’m not ready yet, need a little longer, a few more moments of his soft stare before I tell him, tear down the image he’s painted of me in his head, desecrate his idea of me.

“Father..? Who do you confess to?” He smiles, only a little, amused for some secret reason, his gaze a little hazy, his hands smoothing down the front of his robe, the sound of him clearing his throat a little loud in the small space.

“Myself, I suppose… Though there’s something I find more suitable to confess to you.” My brows draw down, unsure why he’d have anything to confess to me, if he’s able to repent and move on without any type of formal confession, but I wait patiently, not wanting to sin again by disrespecting the father. He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, just stares at me with his head tilted a little to one side, his gaze hazy, his smile barely pulling at one side of his lips, his face close to mine, just on the other side of the little confessional door, his breath warm on my skin. “Forgive me miss, for I have sinned.” He watches me, signing a cross over his chest, a little slow, the anticipation making me feel feverish, wet palms wiped on the front of my skirts while I wait, not bringing my eyes from him, wary to miss a second of his terribly enticing gaze. “I have committed the sin of lust. My craving for you is ungodly, and I have performed self-pleasing adultery to the mere thought of you too many times to count.” I have not a single clue what to say, just stay perfectly still, feeling sick at the pleased feeling burning my skin, flaming and not at all what I should feel in response to his reveal.

“Father, I-”

“I am sorry for this and all my sins.” He doesn’t seem sorry, more confused, staring at me in a way that makes me near fainting, all heat and intensity, trying to unravel his own desires. “You may continue.” I swallow, looking down at my hands, now much too afraid to tell him, to reciprocate his lust, unable to do anything about it, aware I’m bound to Stephan, and he is never to be wed.

“I told a lie.” It isn’t something I usually need to confess, I’m not even sure why I did it, needlessly covering up my actions to keep Stephan as far from figuring out my adulterous thoughts as possible, though he’d never suspect a tryst between the father and I. “I told Stephan I was going to the market on Wednesday, when I came to see you.” I let my eyes come up, flitting from my lap to his hands, clasped over his lap, up to his face, seeming a little pleased, adding to my unease, his feelings now out in the open, glad to be a subject of sin for me as well, I suppose. The others are being noisy, the church overly full today, the last session before Christmas, eager to be forgiven.

“Why did you lie?” I look back down, unwilling to look at him when I tell him, give him the satisfaction of reciprocated lustful feelings and actions.

“I didn’t want him to become suspicious.” He hums, ducking down a little to draw my eyes back up, looking at me pleasedly, not at all bashful in the way he should be, never the one to be shy, always so open, even now, after he’s told me about his self-pleasing to me.

“Suspicious?” He’s enjoying himself, too casual to be questioning me about what has become so glaringly obvious, backing me into a figurative corner and forcing it out of me, something he’s entirely too good at, receiving confession after confession and helping numerous work through their own minds.

“I have committed the sin of lust.” He’s looking at me, not that I can see, my eyes cast down at his hands, listening to the sounds of people mulling about outside, stretching out the quiet between us to steel myself for what I say next. “I’ve been having impure thoughts about you, father. Please forgive me.” He hums, one of his hands lifting up out of my view, this whole thing making me feel sick from guilt, adulterous behavior one of the few things I never thought would be something I’d have to speak to him about.

“Is that all?” I nod, finally looking at him, his eyes always on me, never showing me any less attention, offering up his services in maybe a little less selfless of a way than I used to suspect. “Then I assume it’s time to assign your penance…” He runs his hand down over his lap, his other in the space of the little window, gripped over the little ledge there, crossing over into my space, the hand on his lap drawing back up slowly, his eyes a little cloudy, dazed, almost. “I have to say… The lord will forgive you, no matter the sin, miss, you’re saved.” It seems almost like a suggestion, though maybe I’m just imagining it, hoping for something I really and truly shouldn’t, something the opposite of righteous, one of the most evil and depraved wants possible. “Perhaps… Indulgence is our solution.” He stares at me, unmoving, giving me the choice, offering something so enticing, so terrible in nature I’d be damned to accept, looking at me in such a bold way after uttering something so forward.

“Father… Are you suggesting..?” He’s touching me, running rough fingers over the side of my jaw, our faces close, closer now that he’s leaning toward the little window, all of him seeming larger, more masculine than I would usually find him, his comfort fading into a simmering nervousness as I wait on his reply.

“I’ve satisfied myself in your name countless times, miss, and not once has it settled the need, not even diminished it, only choked it down until I can’t keep it at bay any longer. I am a man of God, but with all my devotion you’re the one and only thing I’ve ever found myself helpless to resist.” My breathing’s gone uneven, his hands on my face and in his lap, stroking softly, both soothing me and indulging in his desire, a soldier of God, succumbing to the same earthly pleasures as me. “Our penance. Finding a way to dispel this need, holding ourselves accountable for time spent lost in the other, returning that time to our father, pleading his forgiveness for our frailties.” He’s leaning close, face nearly passing the frame of the window, eyes cast down at my lips, his parted and slick, all of him so very enticing, especially like this, so far gone he can’t even deny himself this, and neither can I, my lips flush with his the next second, sealing my fate, an adulterer and a sinner, depraved and dirty and lustful, all for him.

The kiss is nothing like what I’ve come to expect, separate from the necessary, rushed kisses of my husband, this kiss searing, sending a wave of heat over me, the passion of it making me faint, all the want I’ve been keeping quiet to myself passing between us, his hand slipping back and into my hair, keeping me close, our indiscretion between only us and God, a sin kept quiet, the act horrible, but so satisfying I have no reason to believe God would be against me indulging.

“Father…” We’re both breathing heavy, lost in the admittance and act of sin, his hair messier than I’ve ever seen it, his lips rosy and shiny with shared saliva. “The others are waiting…” He sighs, drawing me back in by his grip on my hair, speaking in his quiet, comforting way half an inch from my lips.

“And they will.” He gives me no time to offer a response, goes back to pressing warm, careful kisses to my lips, his pace a little faster, his breathing shaky as mine, the booth heating up from labored breaths, muggy and heavy with shared desire. “Lord… You’re… Truly breathtaking… A temptress… My own personal test…” He pulls back, letting go of me, standing himself up, face hidden behind the wood above the window, his waist a little below my eye level, his robes hanging heavy, a reminder of his promise to the lord, now broken. “I’ve failed our father… But I will not fail you… Sink to the floor, miss, show me your devotion to your penance.” I meet his command, slipping off the bench and onto my knees, a little unsure, not quite understanding why I’d be on the floor if he intends to take me. “I’ll tend to you shortly, miss, just- for now… I need a bit of preparation.” He shuffles his robes out of the way, exposing himself to me, his manhood larger than I thought possible, more than twice the size of my husband’s, and I wonder how it’ll fit, if it can. “Take me inside your mouth, miss. Close your perfect lips around me and let me feel what I've long awaited.” He’s holding onto himself, waiting for me to comply while running his hand up and down, his body revealed to me for the first time, unexpectedly muscular, legs and some of his midsection bare for my greedy eyes.

I close my lips over him, only the first inch, unsure what he wants me to do, his hand leaving its place to stroke across my jaw, back into my hair, gripping what slips between his fingers, his hand pulling me in, sliding himself inside my mouth, a small pleasured sound passing his lips sending an odd sensation through me, some sickly hot satisfaction. He’s leaning his free arm on the wood above me, his head downturned, his eyes hidden from my view by the wood of the booth, his mouth gaping in pleasure, his chest heaving beneath his robes, cross around his neck swinging as he moves against me, a reminder of our frailty, our unworthiness of God’s image.

“Ah- You’re… This feeling is… Lord forgive me… For I will sin again…” His teeth are gritted, his hand pulling me in a little closer, my throat tightening around him startling me, his pleasured noise deep and pleasant when I press my hands to his thighs to get a breath, sputtering embarrassingly, his hand smoothing my hair helping me calm back down. “Forgive me… I got carried away…” He’s ducked down to look at me, seeming perturbed, stroking at my hair, his cross drawing my eyes before I look back up at him, slipping my fingers up the underside of his manhood, watching him, his pleasured noise sending a searing shock down to my privates, my mouth closing back around him, moving on my own, humming when he allows it, just keeps his hand on the back of my head, guiding me, his head rested back on his forearm, my eyes on the lower half of his face, the portion I can see, his expression looking pained from the pleasure, teeth ground tight, jaw clenched with stress, my hand running over his exposed stomach making him flinch, his length twitching between my lips. “Wicked girl… You’re-hah- ruining me… Turned me into a damned-!” He pulls me back, my lips leaving him with an obscene amount of saliva, smeared over him and connecting him back to my lips, his hand slipping forward to tilt my head up toward him, his eyes back in my view, looking down at me, his thumb stroking the mess on my lips. "I won’t let this end until I’ve shown you all that a lover can be, miss. Surely this isn’t what you’ve sought after… I can offer you more… you need only relax and let me show you…” He wraps his fingers over my bicep, pulling me gently up until I stand before him, his hand pushing me gently back to seated on the little bench, his fingers finding my upper legs through layers of skirts, running slowly up, giving me an awful sense of yearning, the feeling pleasurably painful, sickening, his cross swinging at eye level while he's doubled over reminding me I should be ashamed to be satisfied in any way from something so heinous.

“Father, what’re you-” He drags me, fingers tight on my legs, pulling me until my hips rest on the six inches of wood separating my space and his, my upper body laid on the bench, propped on my elbows, only a couple inches lower than the window.

“You’ve bewitched me, truly… Made me insatiable… My lust for you is painful, forcing me to succumb to your allure time and time again… Now you’ll see what you’ve done to me, feel the craving- the need I have for you, firsthand…” He sinks to his knees, keeping his eyes on my face, my elbows digging into the wood a little uncomfortable, but the look in his eyes keeps me from breaking my gaze from his, watching him as he pushes up on my skirts, leaving them pooled at my waist, my undergarments unobscured, his hand making its way back down to grip to my ankle, his skin scalding hot against me, lifting until my leg is in line with his lips, his head turned to the side to press his lips to my inner ankle, his gaze on me as he trails his way up, leaving saliva along his path up the inside of my leg, the whole display more pleasurable than probably anything I’ve ever experienced. “I know how to please you… I’ll be sure to satisfy your ungodly desires… Leave you so perfectly complacent you’ll never let anyone else bed you…” He finishes his kissing, pausing with his lips pressed to my lower thigh, easing my foot down on the bench just behind him, my knee bent, his hand moving to my other ankle, easing it up to repeat the process, drawing it out, kissing unbearably slow, looking at me in a lustful, entirely sinful way.

“Father? It’s… There are people outside… Shouldn’t we… Hurry this along?” He smiles, eyes creasing in such a beautiful way, his hand guiding my foot to rest on his other side, his head between them, shoulders just below my knees.

“Impatient woman… Confess it.” He lets his hands slide up the outsides of my legs, fingers pausing on the waist of my undergarments, his eyes peering at me, intense and masculine, commanding in his calm, even-toned way. I’m having trouble keeping my breathing even, the anticipation of his promise hanging heavy, blanketing the cramped space, the people milling about outside the booth making me wary to be caught.

“I have committed the sin of impatience. I don’t want to wait, forgive me.” He smiles, pulling down, exposing me to him, pulling my legs back one after the other to rid me of the pesky clothing, his eyes cast down once he’s finished, his expression clouded and lustful, his chest heaving, eyes a little low as he takes me in, bare before him, willing and ready to commit a cardinal sin for him.

“You’re forgiven… Now I must confess…” He leans forward, hands sliding up the back of my thighs before gripping to my skin, both of us clammed up from the suffocating heat of the space, his warm breath against me making me shiver. “I have committed the sin of envy… Stephan is the luckiest man in history… To have a woman as phenomenal as you… I’m truly envious, in utter disbelief he has not a clue how incredibly beautiful you look when you enjoy yourself…” He presses a finger against me, startling me, all of this foreign, his thumb trailing up wetness that usually comes much later, once Stephan is nearly done, his slippery finger pressing a couple inches above my entrance making me flinch, the feeling shocking, pleasant in a tight, unexpected fashion. “Ah… Perfection… I wasn’t sure… But that monk really did figure out the secrets of women…” I have no idea what he’s speaking about, all I know is this pleasure is foreign, tight and nearly too much, his thumb rubbing softly up and down as he watches me, seeming pleased to confirm I can feel in this way. “I was told a woman can achieve the same type of euphoria as men… I hope I’m well-equipped enough to give you at least one climax… I’ll try my best, miss, in God’s name.” I’m trembling, the feeling building into something far more than what it began, a sickening tension, my muscles wound tight, teeth gnashed and head leaned back onto the wall, his thumb pulling away releasing the tension building, his look amused.

“What’s… Why..?” He laughs, fanning hot air against me, his lips pressing to the place his thumb just left, his smile widening when I gasp and squirm, bag hands on my thighs holding me still as he uses his tongue, letting out a soft pleasured noise at the flavor, or the action, I’m not entirely sure.

“Forgive me… I couldn’t go without a taste… My god… You’re the most divine thing I’ve ever laid eyes on… the most raw and formidable temptation I’ve ever had the pleasure of letting ruin me…” He’s rubbing me again, pressure more firm than before, sure of himself, the satisfying tension coming back quicker than before, my eyes on him, the sight of him with my wetness smeared over his skin drawing a pleasured noise from deep in my chest, my breathing more frantic than I can ever remember, my legs trembling lightly from his ministrations, his gaze holding mine, his skin a rosy pink, lips flushed red. “You are my ultimate desire… An itch that has been gnawing, working away at me… Tearing me away from the lord… luring me into a pleasant trap…” I’m barely registering his low words, drawled with his cheek pressed to my skin, the tight pleasure clouding my mind, blanketing me in the feeling. “You’re nearly there… So beautiful… Keep your eyes on me… Face what you’ve done… Given into lust… Taken me down your depraved path as well… Don’t fret, your sins are forgiven… So get on with it, show me how blasphemous you are… deriving pleasure from being bedded, let this be for your pleasure and that alone… There, that’s it, you’re doing so well, trembling so beautifully, making those sweet sounds for me…” The feeling peaks, my body convulsing, drawing in on itself, the pleasure hot and tight, all of me clenched tight, his fingers pausing, my eyes barely open to heed his order, looking into his eyes, his expression pleased and lax. “I could never receive enough of this… Watching you come undone before me, my actions giving you this much pleasure…” I feel droopy when I come down, slumped on the bench, legs lax and open around his head, his expression entirely pleased, glad. “Let me inside.” He pulls me, and I let him, stood up in front of him after a few seconds, waiting on him to sink inside, my skirts and his robes making it seem nearly impossible, but he doesn’t make any move to bury himself inside, only meets my lips in a searing kiss, his body flush against mine, pressing me into the wall of the booth, my body feeling overly hot, both of us sweating, his face shiny with perspiration and my mess he’s neglected to wipe away.

“Father… Please… I’ve already confessed my impatience.” He laughs, low and sinful, the softened pleasure coming back, my body ready for him, likely more ready than ever before. He pulls up on my skirts, though they’re getting in the way, bunched up to my waist when he gives me a look, pressing my hand overtop my lower abdomen to hold them up, his hand gripping his manhood, pressing toward my entrance, rubbing lightly at that pleasurable spot, my low pleased noise muffled in the chest of his robe, his cross pressed cold to my overheating cheek.

“I wouldn’t like to hurt you… express any discomfort, miss, I’ll move slowly…” He pushes, pressing slowly inside, the feeling a little like the sting of antiseptic, his length and girth well over what I’m used to, but not painful, the wetness he caused allowing him to slip inside without incident, pressing tight inside, the full feeling filling some carnal, animalistic desire. “I’ll spill it outside… I won’t desecrate you too harshly…” He pulls back, pressing back inside equally slow, his hand sliding down to clasp around the inner side of my knee, drawing it up to parallel with my hip, his eyes on mine as he moves, slow, passionate and careful in a perfectly unexplainable way, the pleasing feeling of his eyes on mine prompting me to let my head lean back onto the wood, gazing up at him in a way that is surely embarrassingly wanton, but he doesn’t mind, just tucks his chin, gazing down at the place we’re connected, brows drawing together as a low rumble rips through his chest. “Is this… Are you in-hah- pain?” I shake my head, holding up my skirts a little higher, my other hand trapped between my chest and his stomach, gripped tight to his robes. “Confess… Bare your sins to the-ah lord-!” He speeds up his movement, the sound of skin hitting skin tearing pleased noises out of the both of us, his grip going a little tighter on my knee, his eyes holding mine captive, staring at me in an obscene fashion, pained and pleasured and anguished and adoring all at once.

“I-ah- I’m committing the-hah- the sin of-! Adultery-! I-hnn- I couldn’t resist the- the father… Please-ah- please forgive-! Me-!” Speaking isn’t all that easy, his manhood hitting the deepest parts of me, only a little painful, mostly pleasing, his thumb moving back to that spot making me keen, my face pressed to his chest until it passes, his movement gaining a steady, quick rhythm, his thumb moving in time with his hips, his breathing labored and shaky.

“Forgive us-Nnh- for we have sinned… Miss-ah-! I will now-hah- close the-Hnn-!” He ducks his head down, face pressed to the crook of my neck, his body shaking against me, mine against him, all of us ruined, torn apart from the need burning inside, a desire satiated only by action. “God the- the father of mercies-hah- Through-Nnh-! The death and resurrection of his son-ah- son-! As recon-hah-ciled by the-hnn- the uh-Nnh-!” He’s losing himself, and his teachings, mind too full of lust to recall his closing prayer, his hips pressing to mine in an almost animalistic fashion, rutting with the force of a needy dog, his head pulled back to look at me, his expression sinfully beautiful, all of him wet with sweat, red, his eyes low, held open by his need to see himself ruin me, make me into something just as terribly and fully depraved as him. “You really are-hah- the perfect temptation-nnh- In a world full of sinners we’re-ngh- only two of millions… If this costs me my spot in heaven so- so be it, this is my own-Nnh-! personal heaven, buried inside and gazing into your eyes-!…” He’s panting, and so am I, both of us near the inevitable high, shaking and releasing low noises into the space between us, our gazes locked, the eye contact offering a passion and sickening tension, spurring me closer, his thumb moving with harsh pressure, sending me near insanity, his quick thrusts driving me up the wall, his low words rushed and raspy, groaned out and whiny, nearly sounding pleading, his expression gone fearful, distraught at his own pleasure. “The world to- himself and sent the- the-nnh-!” He leans his head back, eyes closing and a loud groan ripping out of him, the sight drawing a decidedly needy noise out of me, my eyes trailing down to his cross, just in front of my face, bouncing agonist his chest, condemning me, my transgression seen and judged by God. “Damnit-! Sent to us- for the-ah- forgiveness ‘f sins-! Through the minis-ah- may god give-nnh-! May god give us pardon- yes-ah- and peace-nnh- I-ah-ab-oh- absolve-!” He slows down, both of us coming down from the near climax, his eyes coming back to me, forehead pressed to mine, his hips working in more of and arc like motion, the feeling of him dragging inside tearing an overly wanton sound from me, his eyes watching me as he draws this out, keeps us both teetering, giving himself a moment to finish his broken prayer. “I absolve you of your-ah- sins, and myself of- of mine…” He takes a few more seconds, pressing inside slowly, keeping his eyes on mine, bright blue shadowed by his hair, messy and sweaty, before he speeds back up, sinking inside over and over again at a pace that seems inhuman, his body impossibly tight to mine, the feeling of nearness coming back, my release denied now back to ruin me, leave evidence of my sin. “In the-ah- name of the- the father-! And of-hah- the-nnh- son and the-! The-ah- holy-hnn-! Spirit!” I’m squeezing him, my body almost uncontrollable when I clench and shake from pleasure, head tilted back and my eyes on his as he pulls out, leaving me empty, his seed spilled over the front of my thigh, trails dripping and soaking my skin, his release enticingly sensual to watch, a raw kind of experience, my mind hazy and full of him, watching him until he’s done, my leg returned to standing, his hands gently smoothing my skirt over both our messes. “Amen.”

“Amen.”

#religous themes #catholic #confession #leon kennedy x reader #leon kennedy smut #leon s kennedy #church sex #preist leon s kennedy

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melissa-titanium · 5 months ago

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i and b for theee ask post mayhaps if i may

twirls hair in fingers smiles

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

oh my god ok okw ait. imgonna do the second for mp100, md and ln cause those are my main girls right now .

I - honestly?>?? um. a little bit for every fandom ive been in. but twitter has caused me the most grief LOL.....

id have to say homestuck first cause the homestuck fandom is just. fucking RAMPANT with people who mischaracterize.

murder drones second for the same reason but ... it's smaller so its more manageable. there's always going to be bad apples in fandom space no matter what you do unfortunately.

that is exactly why my first mission once i get into an interest is to scope out the coolest people in a fandom and get them to be my mutual. there are a bunch of people who have yet to follow back but. i am persistent. if i have you in my sights you better believe we're gonna be buddies.

for murder drones i think this was mainly ...

@ / electronix-arts @ / 400terahertz @ / randygrim @ / jamieenthusiast @ / ghoulinfuschia @ / yorkistarbomb @.t1rkras rip tirkras :( I JUST CLOSED THE TAB WITH MY LIST IN IT FUCK. ITS OKAY GUYS IF I FOLLOWED YOU THAT MEANS I THOIGHT YOU WERE AWESOME IM SORRY IF YOURE MISSING FROM THIS LIST. BAWLS. also theres a lot of other people on twitter who r cool and i hope they come to tumblr because we all know what twitters like LOLLLLLLL.....

for mob psycho. off the top of my head???

@ / bugcatcherkit @ / metukika @ / bonk-boink @ / bizarre-blues @ / percycoolguy @ my wonderful mutual bloodpopdreams on twitter. queen get out of there @ and... YOU!!!

I WAS SO FUCKING HPYED WHEN YOU FOLLOWED ME BACK U HAVE NOOOOO FUCKING IDEA.

B - ok. fuck. ok. for mp?? RITERU. breach of trust & suitablyskippys one fake relationship fic made me go absolutely fucking insane over them.

breach of trust already on its own is an INCREDIBLE fic but seeing how teru & ritsus dynamic developed without mobs influence was... so so so interesting. and suitablyskippy is just a fucking awesome writer no questions asked so their fic made me love it even more LOL.

also. i might sound insane for this one because its literally one of the most popular fucking ships but. terumob ? like. ok . i know. but i didnt interact with the fandom until after i finished the damn show & didnt pick up on ANY of the undertones of their interactions so it came out of complete left field to me as the most popular ship.

my immediate thought was oh its going to be a johndave situation or something where ekurei was the most popular but then serirei took its place. but i was completely fucking wrong LOL.

BUT YEAH im not insane over terumob but i think they r funny if done right :))

FOR MD... um. genuinely nothing. LOL. the fandom has done a shit ass job of convincing me to like ANY pairings, platonic or otherwise. in fact its steered me away from alot of them.

i genuinely liked nuzi until seeing a lot of the discourse around it LOL...

to be fair i am not a big shipper. i see romantic relationships from a purely analytical point of view because a) autism, and b) aroace.

BUT IN SHORT...i don't HATE all murder drones pairings, i just like to see them through my own personalized lens without any fandom influence :)

LITTLE NIGHTMARES IS DIFFERENT CAUSE. LIKE. ??? ROMANCE?? DUDE HALF OF THE CHARACTERS ARE CHILDREN AND THE OTHER HALF ARE MONSTERS TRYING TO EAT THEM. THE KIDS ARE TOO BUSY TRYING TO SURVIVE AND NOT STARVE TO DEATH AND THE ADULTS/MONSTERS ARE TOO BUSY TRYING TO K I L L T H E C H I L D RE N . AINT GOT NO TIME FOR ROMANCE !!!!!!!!! BUT in terms of platonic pairings. the fandom didnt really change my opinion on any BUT im in the middle of reading a reaaaally good fic that expands on flashlight girl's character (called flicker in this fic,) and explores the idea of runaway kid & six having a dynamic. it's super fun & INCREDIBLY well written and im very sad for when i finish reading it cause its unfinished and was last updated in 2022 </3

WHEW this was long HELPPPPPPPP. THANK YOU FOR SENDING THIS ASK IM GIGLGIGN <3333

#ASKS #MEL ROARS

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james-fun-in-the-sunderland · 9 months ago

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Mob Psycho 100 for fandom! And Amy from Sonic for character~

omg hello thank u niru c:

obligatory link back to the original ask game

Mob Psycho 100

sorry that alot of these repeat and probably arent like insane thoughts, i was only big into mp100 when i was like 16 and finished the anime like a year ago 😭

Favorite character: Serizawa c: hes a 6w5 so legally i must enjoy him but also i just like him ... he has curly hair and is cool OH AND TOME !!!! shes fun :) i dont fully remember my interesting thoughts on her but i enjoy her and how she works for reigen post canon. i think her weird girl charms get to me

Least Favorite character: uhhhh probably mogami or shous dad... theyre both just annoying like whateverrr stop being a dumb adult stop beefing with 15 year olds losers...

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): 1.... serirei?? is that the ship name. serizawa and reigen. basically canon ? 2. mobteru again basically canon 3. . um . theres not much ships i really have with this show so idk if i can do 5 but i can at least do three bc i think tome and mezato is cute :) i briefly became obsessed w them for a bit after season 2 .... i think the ship of the two claw guys . the like sword one and the other guy is pretty cool...

Character I find most attractive: serizawa. who would have guessed.

Character I would marry: nobody everyone here has many red flags also theyre 90% children

Character I would be best friends with: if i was a teenager there is a non zero chance i genuinely would be besties with tome but also maybe slightly find her annoying. but also maybe i would become besties with mob. in normal life none of them bc i would never talk to children or the adults in the show

A random thought: i think reigen is one of the last tumblr sexymen before that term really became used as meaning: character im sick of seeing so much of... but also i could be wrong. also can everyone stop drawing serizawa with straight hair ... i know they do in the manga/anime but if he had curly hair before they cut and washed him then it wouldnt go away. thats not how hair works and i should know as ive lived with it for like years.

An unpopular opinion: mogami arc wasnt that good, stop using it as an excuse to be weird abt child characters plsss

My canon OTP: nothing is canon :/ so

Non-canon OTP: serirei as i said above ☝

Most badass character: mob :] hes cool and awesom... but also i do think

Pairing I am not a fan of: idk if its bc i dont remember much but i cant see shou and ritsu as much more than besties but also obvs im not at all a fan of the . weirdly large amount of reigen and mob stuff like whats wrong with you all im killing you . i also just dont care too too much about ships between teenage characters so many of the ships in the fandom are like yea thats alright, also can see them as just besties, u kno?

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): i didnt realize how little there was of serizawa in the manga or the anime .. i feel like he had more when i first read it ???? anyway he should be there more .

Favourite friendship: i think mob and reigen are fun as friends :) especially as they grow older, i think the dynamic would be fun. also teru and ritsu are fun when theyre together. worlds most dramatic 12 year olds.

amy will b under the cut

amy rose :)

How I feel about this character: I like her !!! i feel like shes not talked about much outside of ships which is a shame because i feel like if people came together on her character (this includes people writing canon) then there could be a compelling character here that wouldnt deny her roots or just stay the same sort of trope she used to be. I cant deny i do enjoy that they occassionally dip into her little interest in tarot :) its nice to see that trait remembered.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: sonic of course, shadow, blaze a bit?, metal sonic anddd... yea thats it

My non-romantic OTP for this character: i think her with silver or knuckles is always fun :) idk why i think its because they bounce off of each other well. equal levels of no braincells happening here at least with silver. and with knuckles i feel like they could have a fun brother sister dynamic.

My unpopular opinion about this character: what is the popular opinion on her .... idk ill just use this as more of me talking about her character in general. i wish people would use her abandonment issues more, or at least like integrate that into her character since i think its a trait that shows up a bit in the little visual novel and in sonic frontiers and i think that makes sense as a trait for her

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: if she was ever playable again . I HAVENT played the sonic frontiers dlc but i think giving her a little spin off game ala the princess peach games would be fun. maybe then her team from sonic heros can be used again and i could like care about big and cream outside of them being sparingly used in canon .. and big not just being a joke ... also i just want more development for herrr im always begging for development or character in this series i know its for children but plsss also i wish they would like actually like .. fully deal with her whole thing with sonic... it feels like they wanna pretend her obsession just never happened and wasnt like the main thing with her character before they basically turned her into sally acorn.

My OTP: honestly ive really come around on amy x metal sonic :) i think mainly bc i cant see her with sonic at all (<- sonadow truther) and also i think it could be interesting if i thought about it more deeply

My OT3: amy x sonic x blaze i know i just said i cant see her with sonic but this is the exception, if i had to have an ot3 it would be this .. otherwise idk if i would have one.

#mp100 #sonic the hedgehog #amy rose #long post #rev lore #thank u niru ^-^ !!

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cartoonus-maximus · 1 month ago

Text

Notes and Observations on FNAF TFTP Vol 6: "Nexie"

So, um… I'm not gonna sugarcoat this, guys. I hated this volume. I spent most of it being either bored or irritated.

This is the first cover art from this series that I didn't like. It's so bland and un-creative, and it's not even story accurate! I can't find anything positive to say about it! DX

I'm sorry if I come across as a hater. I don't mean to, but so many stories of this series are so frustrating to me, and I can't find it in myself to speak very positively about stories that I'm not enjoying. Like, you enjoy these, that's great for you, but I was straight up not having a good time, my guys.

These are my notes and observations made while listening to the audiobook, which I borrowed from my local library. Fair warning: there will be spoilers. If you want the whole experience for yourself, you should skip this and go read/listen to the book yourself first.

Here are my observations on the other books in the series, if you are interested.

In this volume, we learn more about the Mimic, and that's an important part of this franchise these days. So let's get into it.

"Nexie"

In this story we're introduced to a line of Fazbear products called "Buddytronics," a line of expensive animatronic toys that are sold by parts and assembled in front of the customers in a manner akin to "Build-a-Bear" stores. Buddytronics are highly customizable, and can be made to resemble existing Freddy Fazbear animatronic characters, generic humanoid dolls, or generic stuffed animals, or some combination thereof. They're generally somewhere between 2 and 3 feet tall (about 2/3 of a meter to a full meter) and have robotic parts, allowing them to walk and move their arms. They also come with simple computer chips and voice boxes, which allow them to listen to their owners and observe actions, which they can then mimic or otherwise respond to in simple ways. They're marketed as companion toys, acting as both playthings and friends for small children.

This story centers around Astrid Erikson, a 9-year-old girl who comes from a family of Swedish immigrants. Astrid lives with her father and grandfather (her "Farfar"), who both work as carpenters. Her family is extremely old-fashioned, and don't value anything they can't make with their own hands, and don't value any aspect of modern society; her father also seems to have a very "women and children are to be seen and not heard" sort of attitude, and can be very judgemental in a way that Astrid finds stifling.

Astrid's mother ran away to become a model, a career that Astrid's father and his family "didn't approve of." Astrid feels that her mother abandoned her, choosing an "undesirable" career over her own daughter, and it results in Astrid feeling that she isn't lovable; she thinks her mother must value physical beauty over all other traits, since she left to pursue a career in the beauty industry, and she wonders if her mother would have stayed if Astrid had only been more beautiful. (Astrid's conflicting feelings about her mother come up a lot in this story. It's also worth noting that most Astrid's knowledge about her mother comes from her father, who is a very unreliable source of information, picking and choosing what he wants to share about the woman who left him with the daughter he keeps dangerously sheltered.)

The Buddytronics are very popular among the other kids at Astrid's school. In an attempt to fit in, Astrid decides to get a Buddytronic of her own. Since she knows her father would never buy one for her, she's been saving up her allowance for awhile in order to get one, but, since Buddytronics are about $1000 each, it's taking her a long time to save up.

Unlike her father, Astrid's Farfar is more open to Astrid's opinions and interests, and regularly indulges her with trips to the local Pizzaplex, where they eat pizza and play games in the arcade. (He compares the Pizzaplex to a carnival he went to as a kid, which I thought was an interesting detail.) For Astrid's birthday, her Farfar decides to take her to the Pizzaplex to buy her a Buddytronic, citing that he wants to give her a birthday gift that he knows she wants, even if he personally doesn't understand it.

When Astrid and her Farfar go to the Pizzaplex on her birthday, things a lot more hectic than usual. There's some weird feedback on the intercom system, filling the air with a high-pitched squeal. All of the lights in the building are blinking off-and-on, a glitch that seems to start from the Storyteller tree and is working its way across the Pizzaplex. Other pieces of machinery seem to be glitching, and several Pizzaplex employees are bustling around, shutting down glitching rides and closing off boutique stores, seemingly trying to close the Pizzaplex early because of these severe glitches.

The employees at the Buddytronic boutique are closing up, but Farfar convinces them to let Astrid build a Buddytronic for her birthday. Astrid picks out the parts to make a feminine doll with pale skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, and wearing a blue dress and a straw hat, wanting the doll to look like either herself or her absent mother. She names the doll Lexie (possibly after her mother? We're not told the significance of the name).

All of the doll parts to build Lexie are put into the assembly machine, but the machine malfunctions, and the doll's parts are assembled in the wrong places, resulting in a doll with wonky, bugged out eyes, a snarling mouth, arms sticking straight out of its torso, legs that are the wrong size for the body, and the hair sticking straight out from being rooted in strange places on the head. When the doll is turned on, she introduces herself as "Nexie," showing that her personality chip was misprogrammed, and she speaks with a flat, monotone voice, indicating that her voice box is wrong as well.

When Nexie infodumps a bunch of facts about the history of the name "Astrid," the Pizzaplex employees express confusion; clearly the Buddytronics aren't supposed to come with that much information in their programming.

Despite how wrong the doll came out, Astrid decides to keep and love her anyway, not wanting to abandon her creation in the same way her mother did.

The next day, Astrid takes Nexie to school with her, since all the other kids have been bringing their Buddytronics to school with them for weeks already. But this doesn't help her fit in with the other kids, who all have Buddytronics that look like pretty dolls, cute teddy bears, and mini versions of Fazbear characters like Circus Baby, Funtime Foxy, and DJ Music Man -- instead, having Nexie with her just gives her classmates something else to bully her about, as they make fun of how ugly Astrid's new doll is and even steal Nexie from her to play keep-away with. When Astrid tries to defend herself and Nexie, she's the one who gets in trouble.

I'm not going to spend much time talking about any of Astrid's bullies/classmates, because they're mainly just generic mean kids. They show up a lot throughout this story and they're really obnoxious. The most "important" of this bunch is a boy named Remy, who acts as a second POV character, and it's mostly through his eyes that we see Astrid's time at school.

I'm really annoyed by how the author of this story (Andrea Waggener) portrays the bullies. She tries to give them backstories, and tries to explain to the audience why these kids bully Astrid, but instead of focusing on the real reason (Astrid comes from an immigrant family and dresses and speaks very differently from the rest of her class, and the kids don't like how different she is from them), the author leans into tropes like "the bully acts like that at school because he's a victim of domestic abuse / she's neglected at home" and the dreaded "he's mean to her because he likes her." I hate these tropes with a burning passion, and I don't think they should be used in children's media anymore, since they can be internalized by their impressionable audience and lead to their audience members getting harmed later in life.

In short, there are several segments in this story that involve Astrid's bullies, and I hate how they were written, and most of them aren't worth talking about anyway, so I'm not going to say much about them. Just know that they exist.

At home, Astrid apologizes to Nexie for all the mean comments she received from the other kids at school, and Nexie listens and tries to comfort her owner. Nexie is self-aware enough to know that her parts are the wrong sizes and in the wrong places, and she asks if Astrid could "fix her," with the comment "Everyone would like me if I were not ugly." She and Astrid spend the next few days talking about what specifically would need to be replaced, and what parts would be needed.

Throughout these parts, Astrid tries to explain to Nexie that a beautiful personality is more important than physical beauty, but Nexie is skeptical about this. She reminds Astrid that her name means "divine beauty," and that Astrid herself is expected to be beautiful, and just generally preys on Astrid's insecurities. (I just wanna remind you that Astrid is 9-years-old. The real horror of this story is that our 'insecure about appearance' character hasn't even gone through puberty yet. Like, she's a literal child, guys! She shouldn't give a flying flip what she looks like! DX )

There's this creepy section where Nexie tells Astrid that her endoskeleton is wrong, and that they're going to need an entirely new endoskeleton to really fix her. When Astrid asks how they would transfer Nexie's outer layer of skin and hair onto a new endoskeleton, Nexie reveals that she's been carrying scissors around for awhile, and she pulls them out of her dress pocket and promptly degloves her own hand with the statement "See? Skin can be taken off and put on something new."

Astrid still brings Nexie to school with her, and the two are subjected to more bullying. Some of the girls call Astrid "as ugly as her doll" and suggest that she needs to be completely getted and remodeled like an old house. Not caring about the opinion of some mean classmates but caring deeply about her appearance, Astrid internalizes these comments; when Nexie looks at a database of what "attractive" girls look like and starts listing physical features off, Astrid realizes she doesn't have any of those features and it feeds into her insecurity.

During this segment, Nexie tells Astrid that she has access to a database full of "pictures of pretty girls." She doesn't clarify what this means. Is she connected to internet, and looking at some random beauty article online? Does she have some really weird files downloaded on her personality chip? What is going on here?

Nexie sees one of the mean girls trip Astrid in the school hallway. Apparently having learned this move from a single observation, Nexie later trips another of the mean girls while the kids and their Buddytronics are moving between classes. They're walking down the stairs when she trips her, and the girl falls over the railing. Some of the surrounding kids manage to grab her before she falls, and she's pulled back to safety.

Astrid knows it was Nexie who tripped the other girl, but the idea of it is to much for her, and she can't even bring herself to think too hard about it or really acknowledge it. Secondary POV character Remy also saw that it was Nexie who tripped the girl, but he doesn't say anything, literally threatened into silence by Nexie, the doll sneering and winking at him.

Astrid's Farfar buys her a new Buddytronic doll as a surprise, so she doesn't have to carry Nexie around with her. This doll introduces herself as Lexie, and resembles the original design that Astrid had in mind for her doll. The new Lexie and original Nexie dolls stand next to each other in silence for a moment, but then Nexie attacks Lexie, literally biting into the other doll's face and using her teeth to skin Lexie alive. Astrid screams in horror at the plastic carnage, Lexie wails and writhes as she's torn to shreds, and Nexie ignores both of them, focusing on tearing out Lexie's CPU and crushing it in her hands. When Astrid tries to reason with Nexie, pointing out that they could have used Lexie's parts to repair Nexie, Nexie dismisses her, saying that Lexie's parts aren't what they need.

Astrid learns that the Buddytronic parts are built in one of the basement levels of the Pizzaplex, but aren't available for purchase by customers unless as part of a complete Buddytronic. Nexie tries to needle Astrid into breaking into the robotics lab to steal the parts.

Unwilling to break in anywhere and steal parts, Astrid gives up on the idea of fixing Nexie. But, the next day, Nexie kills one of Astrid's bullies by throwing the boy directly in front of a speeding car, and the boy's bones are shattered on impact. Horrified, Astrid decides to get the parts for Nexie, believing that it's the only way to keep the doll from killing anyone. She gets Farfar to take her to the Pizzaplex after school and manages to steal an employee's key card so she can access the basement robotics lab.

Later that evening, Astrid sneaks out of the house with Nexie, and they use the stolen key card to get into the Pizzaplex. They avoid being seen by any night guards or security cameras, and they make it to the basement robotics lab without getting caught. Nexie points out all the parts they'll need, and Astrid gets to work, and the two spend several hours hard at work in this lab.

Later at school (either the next day or a few days later, depending on which sentence you choose to read during this segment; I don't think these stories are properly edited), the other kids in class are horrified when Astrid enters the room, carrying Nexie on her hip. Nexie looks the same as ever, but Astrid is now freakishly tall, and her skin has been cut apart and resewn together, stretched out over a body much bigger than hers used to be. She resembles Frankenstein's monster in all the worst ways, deathly pale and stitched together strangely.

Nexie grins smugly at all the screaming kids, looking for all the world like a satisfied predator. Astrid hugs Nexie close and says "Perfect now."

And that's it. That's how the story ends.

This story was really frustrating for me. I actually stopped the audiobook and walked away from it multiple times, that's how frustrating it was.

A big part of the problem was that, due to the recycled content, I found most of this story to be really boring. Andrea tries really hard with this story to recreate both the Fazbear Frights story "To Be Beautiful" and the Blumhouse movie "M3gan" … and frankly, imo, fails. It makes sense that we would get a story trying to recreate parts of both of those, since:

"To Be Beautiful" is a FNAF fan favorite because of it's placement in the first volume of a series and because it introduces Eleanor, who is a fan favorite character; it's fine as a story, and it at least mostly makes narrative sense.

"M3gan" is a movie that lands in the horror genre in a similar way to how FNAF fits in, and, imo, is a very simple and basic script that is elevated by the excellent work of the actors and the affect team, with most of its charm coming from the portrayal of the characters themselves.

Both tell very different stories, but have a lot of similar elements, and both center around an evil AI-run doll and a young girl who the doll befriends and preys upon.

I understand the point of the exercise -- recreating aspects of existing stories -- but, as someone who's already seen "M3gan" and already read "To Be Beautiful," this story ended up being very boring, since it only recycles parts from those prior stories and doesn't do anything to build on them.

(Also, for those who don't know, I have an exhaustive list of fears and phobias, which include large dolls, dolls that walk and talk, evil sentient dolls, and dolls that look wrong or have manufacturing defects. Nexie checks off all these boxes and should have been terrifying to me in particular, but instead I was bored or angry for most of this story. What a complete miss!)

There was of course also the portrayal of the school bullies, which I've already talked about and don't want to get back into (but I kinda want to throw hands with Andrea by this point in the series). And then there was the ending, which comes completely out of left field and doesn't make a lot of sense. While there had been some subtle foreshadowing tossed in every once in awhile, there really wasn't enough for the story ending to make any sense with the rest of the story, and it ends up feeling like a random, horrific ending that was just tacked on at the end.

(The audio version of this story is just over 2 hours long, and that's 2 hours I could have spent doing literally anything else. Ugh.)

But, as far as potential lore goes, I think it's worth noting that 1) Nexie is built in the exact same Pizzaplex where the Storyteller tree is, and she's also built during a time where the Storyteller/Mimic is malfunctioning. The story implies that this leads to Nexie having a copy of the Mimic AI downloaded into her personality chip, which leads to 2), that Nexie is portrayed throughout the story as watching people and mimicking their actions later on, a trait that she clearly shares with the Mimic. I don't have any concrete thoughts about these parallels atm, but I think it's worth noodling around with.

Yeah, that's all I got for "Nexie" right now. Let's move on to the next one.

"Drowning"

This story centers around a friend group of teenage girls named Kara, Francine, and Lola. The girls have won a prize from a contest, and the prize is a free day at the local Pizzaplex, so the girls are spending their day going on various rides and trying out different entertainment booths.

The girls try out a new VR attraction at the Pizzaplex called "the VR Resort." This attraction brings customers into a small room where first they are scanned by a laser, uploading a digital copy of their body into the VR computer system. Once this is done, the customers are shown to a soft seat with straps on it, which they are strapped into for safety purposes (so they don't accidentally hurt themselves while in VR). They are then given a VR helmet, and putting it on takes them into a VR landscape or experience chosen from a premade list. One of the big draws for the VR Resort is that time moves differently in the VR experiences than it does in real life, allowing the customers to feel like they're enjoying the experience for an hour or longer when they're only actually in the experience for a few minutes.

When it's the girls' turn, they opt to try an experience called "Coaster City." Once they enter it, they find themselves walking around an idealized amusement park, with lots of fun rides available to them, lots of amusement park snacks to try, and no lines to wait through. The experience is over before the girls are ready for it to end, and they are surprised to find that only a few minutes passed.

There are monitors around the outside of the main room of the VR Resort, and they show different clips of what the different available experiences are. As the girls leave, they pass a few of these screens, and Kara looks at one depicting a water park. She thinks she sees the shadow of a person in the pool, but then the screen flips to another clip, and she decides she was just seeing things.

The girls go on a few others rides and play some games around the Pizzaplex. At some point, Kara sneaks away from her friends, slipping back to the VR Resort; she wanted to try it out again, but the other two weren't interested in repeat rides, so Kara decides to go back to the VR Resort by herself.

Back at the VR Resort, Kara chats up Zach, the attraction attendant who's about her age. She flirts with him a little bit, and Zach lets her into the off-limits part of the attraction, showing her all the monitors and controls that the attendants are in charge of and how they work. He shows her how to set the time for the VR experience, telling her that, but inputting different time amounts on the controls, he and his coworkers can control how long the customer feels like they're in the virtual world, with preset time slots ranging from a few minutes to an hour. He says that if an employee doesn't set a time, the customer could feel like they're trapped in the virtual world forever.

We learn that the VR system keeps the scans of customer's bodies and faces in the system all day; they are automatically deleted at the end of each day.

He also introduces her to "hyper time," which is an extra service that the customer can request, but it costs extra. It's literally giving the customer a shot of adrenaline, so they're keyed up during the entire virtual experience.

Kara is an adrenaline junkie, and she convinces Zach to get her set up in the VR Resort for free, with both "hyper time" and an extended virtual time period, giving her about an hour to explore the experience of her choice, the water park. Zach turns the sign on the VR Resort to "closed," so he and Kara will be alone inside, and gets Kara set up in the seat. He goes back to the control booth and starts to key in all of the instructions, but gets distracted when his manager calls him, and he's forced to rush through the VR settings before running off to cover another employee at Monty's Gator Golf; it's made clear to the audience that he fails to set a time on Kara's experience, and that he leaves her completely alone in the booth when he's the only one who knows she's there.

Kara has a lot of fun in the virtual water park, jumping and splashing around in various styles of pools and climbing to the top of towering water slides. She explores around the virtual water park, which is broken into different sections, with each section designed around a different theme, including a jungle section, a donut shop, an alien landscape, and even a pizza parlor. Kara's body thrums with adrenaline and fear, and she revels in it, loving every second. Things take a turn when she feels something in the water brush against her leg, and she catches sight of black hair. It makes Kara wonder if there's a mermaid in the pool as part of theme, or if the VR program has glitched in some way and is trying to project the digital copy of another customer for some reason.

In the jungle section, Kara encounters a virtual parrot, which is a prop for the section but behaves much like a real bird. Like real birds, the parrot mimics the sound of her speaking, repeating "hello!" after she addresses it. The parrot mimics her a few times, then says "Don't leave me here alone," something Kara hasn't said out loud (but is a phrase that carries personal significance to Kara, as we'll explore later).

When Kara finally gets a look at the other person that seems to be in the pool with her, she sees what looks like a girl around her age, floating at the bottom of the pool like a drowned victim. Instinctively, Kara looks around for a lifeguard or an adult who can help, only to remember she's the only one there. She ends up jumping into the pool to try to pull the girl out, but, as soon as she touches her, the girl's eyes open, and she tries to hold Kara at the bottom of the pool, as though trying to drown her. Kara kicks her and escapes to the surface, where she has to take a few minutes to regain her breath, as she genuinely feels like she was held underwater for too long.

Kara tries to call out to Zach to turn the experience off, but gets no response. She tries to reconnect to her physical body, which she knows is still sitting in the booth back in reality, but she can't feel it, and feels like her mind and body have been forcibly separated.

We learn more about Kara as she's forced to relive her most traumatic memories while she's trapped in this VR landscape. We learn that she's broken her arm before, and that she's fought with her parents, and, most importantly, that as a little kid she witnessed her older cousin suffer a terrible injury after falling out of a tree, a sight that scared her so much at the time that she ran away, temporarily leaving her cousin all alone; unable to process her horror at the time, Kara blamed herself for her cousin's injuries, and she still feels responsible all these years later.

In addition to feeling bad for leaving her cousin alone in that moment, Kara also has a deep set fear about her family and friends abandoning her, afraid of being left alone. The drowned girl seems to be prodding at these particular insecurities by repeatedly begging for help and pleading with Kara not to leave her alone.

After awhile, Kara feels like she's been in here for hours, and she feels really tired and thirsty. Any time she's not paying attention, the girl in the pool tries to grab and drown her. The girl's appearance also changes from time to time, her body taking on different states of decay and looking more or less like a drowned victim. Sometimes she even looks a little bit like Kara's cousin.

Kara wonders if helping the drowned girl is part of a secret game in the VR attraction, like how some video games will have a special "save the princess" minigame hidden in it. With that in mind, and with the girls looking and sounding more and more like Kara's cousin all the time, Kara decides to stop running from the girl and try to help her.

She follows the girl's voice to a hidden location in the water park, which resembles a normal, suburban house that's been abandoned and left to rot. The inside of the house has been flooded, with walls and floors and furniture pieces all ruined by water damage and covered by rot and mildew. Kara sees a family portrait depicting a little girl with black hair sitting between her mother and father, but their faces have all been rubbed out. A broken music box can be heard playing from inside what used to be a girl's bedroom, and Kara follows the sound to find a music box shaped like a carousel ride, and surrounded by unintelligible child's drawings.

Kara follows the girl's voice to a bathroom, where she sees an old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub overflowing with water. When she approaches it, she sees the girl from the pool laying submerged inside the tub. Kara reaches in carefully to try to help the girl out of the tub, but the girl grabs onto her and pulls her into the water. The abandoned house fades away, and Kara finds herself in the water park pool once again.

After escaping being drowned by the computer system again, Kara is trapped inside a maze of mirrors. Some of the mirrors show her images of her current appearance -- soaked, frazzled, pale, exhausted, and terrified -- while others show her visions of her own fears, showing her scenes of her family and friends being happy that they don't have to deal with her anymore. Kara knows the images aren't real, no matter how upsetting they may be, and she gets angry with the VR program for intentionally messing with her feelings in such a personal way. She punches through a wall of mirrors and escapes the maze, but gets badly cut up in the process.

As the girl from the pool follows Kara, the lights of the VR world flicker off and on. (Now where have we seen that before?) Kara tries to climb up one of the water slides to get away from the girl, and the girl calls after her; the girl has changed appearances again, and she now resembles a grown woman, with black teeth and bulging green veins under her grey skin, and her voice no longer sounds frightened, taking on a predatorial, sinister tone.

Kara slips and falls to the ground, much the way she remembers her cousin falling. She hits the ground hard and both her legs break on impact. She screams and begs and cries as the girl from the pool approaches her, but is unable to fight back, and ends up being pulled into the water and down into the darkness.

Back in reality, Francine and Lola have realized that their ride home is waiting for them in the parking lot, and they try to call Kara on her phone to come meet up with them. When Kara doesn't answer, they go to the information desk to ask an employee to call for Kara over the intercom. They spot Zach before too long and recognize him from the VR Resort, and they ask him if Kara went back to it - when he tells them he left Kara at the VR Resort 20 minutes ago, the two girls start interrogating him, and drag him back to the resort with them to look for their friend.

Arriving back at the VR Resort, the three teens see that the monitor that should be displaying Kara's experience is blank and full of static. Zach realizes that he didn't set a time for the experience and that he didn't turn off "hyper time," so Kara probably received several shots of adrenaline beyond what she originally asked for. Zach doesn't share any of this information with the two girls, awkwardly playing it off like Kara's experience just ran a little over time and everything is fine. He shuts everything off and opens the customer room, revealing Kara's body sitting completely still in the VR chair.

Francine and Lola rush to their friend, yelling at her about how worried they've been and how she should have told them where she was going and how their ride home is waiting outside, but Kara doesn't answer. When Zach removes the VR helmet from Kara's head, revealing her face, Francine and Lola scream in horror. Kara's body doesn't move, resembling a corpse more than her usual self, and her eyes are frozen staring fearfully at nothing.

I enjoyed this story a lot more than "Nexie." In fact, I think it might be my favorite of these stories that was written by Kelly Para. It's a very straightforward story, which I appreciated: a girl tries to use some VR equipment at Freddy's and the whole thing goes horrible wrong. It's a storyline we've seen often enough you'd think I'd be bored of it, but I wasn't bored at all during this one.

Once again, this monster in this story is very Mimic-like. We see the drowned girl cause the lights to flicker off and on, a trait that Mimic animatronic exhibits in the epilogues. We also see her mimic images and actions from Kara's memories, and specifically preying on Kara's memory of her cousin falling out of a tree, changing herself to look or sound like the cousin in ways that often lure Kara closer to her, manipulating Kara with the visage of a person she cares about and wants to help. To that end in particular, the drowned girl reminded me a lot of how Glitchtrap lures in the player of the VR game, "Help Wanted."

I also found it interesting that Kara specifically wonders if the drowned girl is a "princess she needs to save." In a lot of the recent FNAF games there are versions of a minigame called "Princess Quest," and these games usually pop up in relation to a character becoming trapped in VR, or being attacked by another entity in VR, or both. It's not much of a connection, but it's certainly there.

So, we've had a few characters that feel like stand-ins for the Mimic, so now it's time to get to the real thing.

"The Mimic"

(Quick! Where's that Dawko Mimic meme? I can't think about "THE MIMIC!" without it.)

This story is contains two parts. The first part centers around Edwin Murray, our good buddy from "the Storyteller," but before the events of that story takes place. We spend a lot of time with Edwin and his son, David, who is still alive at this point.

(I don't really like learning about Edwin's life in this backwards way. We were introduced to him years after he lost his family and then we see his death, but now we're learning about his past, and I wish it was the other way around. It feels like being given spoilers for a story -- if I know how it ends, why should I care about how we got there?)

We learn about Edwin's life out of order, so I'm going to do my best to keep it in order for these notes.

As a child, Edwin likes to take appliances apart to see how they work and try to put them back together. Over the years, he continued to be interested in engineering and building machines, and even created and patented his own inventions as a young adult. His most lucrative invention was a robotic vacuum cleaner, which was a popular fad product for a little bit.

(Isn't there a vacuum character in the Trash and the Gang bunch? Related, or coincidence?)

Edwin got married to a woman named Fiona, and they bought an old house together to renovate, along with an old lace factory that Edwin intends to repurpose into the new headquarters for his robotics company. (It's specifically called out that their home has an old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub, which is a weird detail to include and the second time in this volume of stories that this exact item has been referred to.)

Fiona becomes pregnant and both she and Edwin are very excited about the prospect of starting a family together. But then Fiona dies in childbirth, leaving Edwin to raise their son alone. He names their son David, and tries to be a good father to the boy, but struggles with grief, depression, and other mental problems as he tries to run a small company and raise a baby by himself. This results in him making some bad decisions and his company goes under.

Edwin's company is bought out by Fazbear's, who are interested in his robotic designs for use in their own projects. As part of the buy out, Edwin comes to work for Fazbear Entertainment.

Edwin stops living in the house that he and his wife bought, and moves into the old factory that he operates in. He brings David to live in the old factory with him, and renovates a section of the factory's second floor into an apartment area. The rest of the factory is still filled with old pieces of machinery and whatever dust and mildew was already there when Edwin originally bought it, since he never finished cleaning it out. Edwin tries sending David to daycare once, but David tells the adults there that he lives in an old factory, and Edwin almost gets CPS called on him; he freaks out about the idea of losing his son, and he doesn't send David to daycare, preschool, or any similar program, and he doesn't hire babysitters, so it's just him taking care of David 24/7 alone while also trying to work. (So, y'know… a totally healthy set-up for a great living situation. 🙄)

Details we're given about David include that he looks like his mom (and shares no physical characteristics with Edwin), that he carries a stuffed tiger everywhere with him (named "Tiger"), and that he loves chocolate chip ice cream.

During the story, Edwin is currently working on a very special project for Fazbear's. He's been given a large collection of character costumes from older iterations of Fazbear's productions (costumes that human employees/actors would have worn), and his job is to build endoskeletons to put in the costumes, transforming the costumes into fully functional animatronics. Some of the character costumes are familiar to the audience, described in ways that sound like recognizable characters from the franchise, while others are brand new, never before seen in the franchise. At the beginning of the story he's working on Chica, who is the 18th in the line of animatronics that he's been working on. Later in the story we'll also see him working on Foxy, Monty, a previously unseen "yellow dog" character (possibly a Sparky reference?), and Bonnie.

When David gets bored and keeps interrupting his father's work, Edwin does what any normal parent would do and build a robotic babysitter to keep David occupied. He builds a robot with a head, torso, and two arms, but no legs, and fills out the robot's face with leftover doll eyes and a set of novelty toy chattering teeth. He programs the robot to observe people and mimic their actions, labeling this program 'mimic1' while he works on it. Once it's finished, he introduces David to his new playmate, "Mimic."

Edwin brings Mimic online, and the robot immediately imprints on David and starts mimicking the boy. Over the following weeks, we see David teach Mimic how to play patty-cake, how to play dress-up and put on costumes, and how to draw with crayon. Edwin gives David a new pack of construction paper and crayons one day, and checks in later to see David and Mimic doodling on the paper, seemingly "writing" in their own language that Edwin thinks resembles hieroglyphics. (This is interesting since there are a few strange codes scattered around the Pizzaplex in the "Security Breach" and "Ruin" games, and their structure is similar to how David's play language is described.)

Mimic learns speech quickly, and can understand simple questions that are directed at it, and can nod or shake its head in response. It doesn't have to ability to speak, so David teaches the robot to pantomime certain words and phrases.

Since David carries his stuffed buddy Tiger everywhere with him, Mimic starts mimicking the motion, curling one of its arms as though carrying its own stuffed animal. This leads to David collecting bits and pieces of the old lace that's still scattered around on the factory floor, shaping it into a makeshift tiger for Mimic to carry. While he doesn't like David messing around with the old fabric pieces, Edwin can't help but praise both the boy and the robot for their ingenuity.

While most of Mimic's lessons in how to perform tasks come from David and are centered around the idea of play, the robot also observes when Edwin does chores around the apartment, learning to put food away in the fridge and how to fold or hang laundry. Being a robot with limited intelligence, Mimic doesn't understand the actual purpose behind these actions, with the concepts of food spoiling or clothes wrinkling being lost on it, but it can perform the actions themselves pretty well.

But things aren't always smooth sailing, and sometimes Mimic is witness to actions it should never mimic. Edwin overworks himself and often gets angry at David for (*checks notes*) behaving like a bored child who's been essentially trapped in an unsafe building. When David expresses frustration about not being able to play outside, or complains about being hungry, or makes a mess, or just generally acts like a kid, sometimes Edwin gets mad and yells at the boy. And, sometimes, he doesn't just yell, but also shakes or pushes David. David is never badly hurt physically during these times, but it makes him cry a lot, and it's certainly not a healthy environment for either father or son. (But especially not for the son, who is literally 4 and has no way of understanding why Daddy would grab and shake him like that.) Luckily, Mimic never mimics any of these actions, although we aren't told why it doesn't.

One morning Edwin calls David for breakfast, only to find David missing. He realizes the factory's front door is open, and that David must have decides to go play outside, directly disobeying Edwin's instructions. He rushes out the door to find David and makes it outside just in time to see his son chasing a rubber ball out onto the highway, where the boy is struck and killed by an oncoming vehicle.

(I'm having flashbacks to both "the Cliffs" and "Friendly Face." The vehicle that hits David is even a white van, which only further cements my assumption that "the Cliffs" was an early attempt at telling the Mimic's story.)

After witnessing the horrific death of his son, Edwin enters a fugue state, going through the motions of eating and sleeping all while his mind is lost in despair. He sort of "wakes up" after two weeks have gone by, and he finds he can't remember the last 14-ish days at all. Still in this broken state, Edwin wanders onto the factory floor and into the section where his workshop is set up. He tries to return to work as usual, but finds himself unable to focus on or complete any tasks.

Mimic has been spending the last two weeks following Edwin around when the man was awake, or sitting quietly in Edwin's workshop when the man's asleep. The robot doesn't seem to know what to do without David, and wanders just as aimlessly as Edwin does. Mimic is sitting in the workshop when Edwin returns to it, and tries to communicate with its creator through pantomime. The gestures remind Edwin of David and he loses it, grabbing and nearby tool and attacking Mimic, beating up the robot in his anger and grief. Mimic is soon reduced to a pile of scrap pieces, wrecked beyond use and almost beyond recognition; its remains remind Edwin of what his son looked like after being hit by that van, and the parallel makes him break down into wails and tears on his workshop floor, collapsing beside Mimic's remains as he cries.

And with that, we're finished with the first part of this story, and now we're moving on to the second part. This second part takes place an undisclosed period of time later, and centers around a group of Fazbear employees.

These new guys are a group of techs named Dominic, Harry, and Glen. They're sent to Edwin's old factory to clean up and collect some of his old work, as Edwin has been missing for a few months now and Fazbear's needs to have their property moved to another location.

(We're not told why Edwin is missing. Like, did he just completely snap and go off the grid for awhile after the events of part one of this story? Are we picking up after his death/disappearance in "the Storyteller?" When are we with this?)

For some reason, the factory only has one door, and that door swings shut and locks behind the techs as soon as they enter the building. They don't notice this at first.

As the techs look around the factory, gauging the scale of the job before they get started, they first notice a garment rack sitting on the factory floor, where some old costumes of Fazbear characters are hanging. Dominic easily recognizes characters like Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy, but he also notes some "bright pink and green jester costumes." He also sees the fake tiger plush that Mimic used to carry, the bundle of old lace sitting on the floor near these costumes, but he doesn't know what it is.

"Why were all the windows covered with nailed-into-place plywood, both inside and out?"

The three techs head deeper into the old factory, and find Edwin's living apartment on the second floor. All of Edwin's personal belongings (including those of his deceased wife and son) have been boxed up and damaged by time and water. Dominic can smell rotting meat in the kitchen area, and he assumes that there's a dead rat or food that Edwin abandoned in there.

The trio of techs spread out across the factory as they look around. Dominic finds company issued items of other Fazbear techs, and he realizes his team isn't the first to be given this particular assignment. In a duffel bag he finds a tape recorder, issued by Fazbear's, with a half-used tape already loaded in it. When he listens to the tape, he hears the voice of another tech, who complains that he and his coworker are trapped inside the factory, citing that the entrance door locks from the outside for some reason.

The man on the tape details the steps he and coworker have through on this job, with this detailed recording being a part of the job itself. This tape guy explains that he and his partner found some of the animatronic endoskeletons that Edwin had been working on, and they ran diagnostics on them to determine their levels of functionality, after which they cleaned them up and finished or repaired them as needed. He also says that they found another endoskeleton, different from the rest and "more advanced," but in a terrible state of disrepair and missing legs. They fixed this mystery endo up with spare parts and gave it legs, and now it's operational again. The recordings end after this.

Dominic meets up with his coworkers again on the factory floor. (And it's worth noting that there are no animatronics or endoskeletons here at this point.) They notice that they're locked in, and that one of the jester costumes is missing, and they become very uncomfortable very quickly.

Against their better judgements, the guys end up following the scent of rotting meat into Edwin's kitchen. There's a pool of blood on the floor in front of the refrigerator, and, when they open it, they find the remains of a man. He's wearing a Fazbear technician uniform and his body has been broken and twisted around in order to fit inside the fridge. The man's throat has been garroted to the point where he was "nearly decapitated."

Realizing that the dead man is one of the prior technician team, the trio look for his partner. They find his remains hanging on a clothing rod in Edwin's closet, a metal rod forced through the man's rib cage and then bent into the shape of a clothes hanger, and he's been hung up like a set of clothes. The man's abdomen has also been cut open, and his organs are hanging out of the opening.

The men are stalked and attacked by what they think is another man at first. The stalker is wearing the missing jester costume, causing it to resemble a "bright pink and yellow [jester]… with a wide, leering grin." Whoever or whatever this jester is, it slices Harry's head open, killing him instantly, and then starts "pulling his brain out the top of his skull" "like a bear pulling honey from a beehive." (What a mental image!)

Glen and Dominic try to flee and find weapons in order to defend themselves against this apparent "serial killer." After they haven't seen the killer for awhile, the two men hesitantly leave their hiding place, and they see the discarded, blood-soaked jester costume on the ground. The figure appears again, but is now wearing a mushroom costume.

"… A fuchsia and white mushroom costume, with gaping, dark eyes and an 'o'-shaped, cavernous mouth." (What in the FNAFWorld kinda character is that?)

The mushroom-wearing figure grabs Glen and slams him head-first into a wall, crushing the man's head and spine in the span of a single second. Dominic has the realization that this isn't a man that's been killing his coworkers, but rather a machine, or more specifically a "costume-wearing killing machine."

Dominic avoids his fate briefly but not for long. When next he and the unknown killer come face-to-face with each other, the killer is now wearing a "grey-ish purple" lion costume. The killer slams Dominic face-first to the floor and then forces its hand through Dominic's solar plexus and up his throat, "grab[bing] his trachea from the inside." Dominic dies in extreme pain as he is literally torn inside out.

So obviously, this story is meant to be the origin story for the Mimic itself, telling us that the Mimic was built to mimic the world around it, but wasn't programmed with any true intelligence. The Mimic understands how to perform movements (folding laundry, putting food away, putting on costumes, etc.) but it doesn't understand the purpose for those movements, or what the end result of those actions should be (so if "putting food away" results in killing a man, the Mimic doesn't understand why that's the wrong result).

I have no idea when the second part of this story takes place in relation to "the Storyteller," and that really bothers me. I mean, the techs tell us that Edwin has been missing for months, which could indicate that this segment takes place after "the Storyteller," since that story ends with Edwin being trapped inside the Storyteller tree. But, if that were the case, then the Mimic wouldn't still be in the factory, since the Mimic was installed inside the Storyteller tree.

Now, the epilogue for this volume suggests that there are more then one physical Mimic animatronics (spoilers, I know, but we'll get to that later -- just bear with me for a sec), so I suppose it's possible that the Mimic in the Storyteller tree is a separate animatronic that was only modeled after Edwin's original Mimic. But I think the Storyteller Mimic is meant to be the original Mimic, given how Edwin behaves around it in that story. But at any rate, it's certainly food for thought, and something to noodle around later.

Speaking of noodling, I'm personally really interested in Edwin's son being named David and how the boy is portrayed in this story. There's been talk in the theorist community this year about Dave/David potentially being the name of the Crying Child from FNAF4 (aka my son) and it's a theory that I think holds merit. In this story we see a young boy named David who carried a stuffed animal everywhere with himself and consider that stuffed animal his friend, who dies as a child due to the negligence of his guardian, and whose father works as a Fazbear's engineer. I'm not saying it cements anything, but the parallels are there and they're worth noting.

Epilogue:

Kelly finishes repairing the radio, and she hears a voice crying for help over the airwaves. She and Lucia identify it as the Mimic, using the same voice from earlier; it sounds like a young boy, and claims to be trapped somewhere in the Pizzaplex. The two girls decides to ignore it and seem to give up on using the radio after this.

Lucia has found an old notebook filled with notes and drawings from one of the original engineers who designed and built the earliest animatronics at Fazbear's. It's from this notebook that she learns that there was a whole line of Mimic animatronics, which were designed to watch and learn from the human performers, learning to mimic specific show routines. The notes say that one of the Mimic endoskeletons witnessed something outside of the usual performances and then started recreating this unusual action, and apparently that's enough for the whole line of Mimic endos to be discontinued and deactivated.

(The implication here being that one of the Mimics witness a crime, possibly a murder, and started acting violently.) (Lucia also thinks it's this particular Mimic that is the one pursuing them, but she doesn't explain why she thinks that.)

Jace returns to the girls alone, and they realize that Adrien is dead. The Mimic attacks them, the kids are temporarily separated as they run. Lucia loses a chunk of her hair and scalp to the attacking Mimic, but survives.

The kids regroup and come up with a plan to trap the Mimic. Jace volunteers to act as bait in a last-ditch effort to impress Lucia. The plan is to trap the Mimic in a room, and then Jace will escape through the vents, which the Mimic won't follow him into. Jace kisses Lucia ("firm and long and passionate") before the girls leave to set the trap and he leaves to spring it.

Jace catches the Mimic's attention, the robot now wearing a yellow cat costume (seriously, where are these costumes coming from?). He successfully lures the Mimic into the trap and hears the girls lock and block the monster inside, trapping it in a way it shouldn't be able to break out from. Jace starts to crawl through the air duct to get back to safer ground, but the duct breaks under him, dumping him backward toward the Mimic. The Mimic grabs him by the ankles and pulls him out of the vent, and quickly pulls off his arms and head.

From their place of apparent safety, Lucia and Kelly listen to Jace's dying screams.

I am intrigued by the implication that there was a *line* of Mimic endoskeletons at some point. And it might also explain what we were seeing in that earlier story.

But that's it for this volume, and I have nothing else to say about it. (Other than I'm glad to be done with it! Ugh!)

#five nights at freddy's #tales from the pizzaplex #a brief analysis #my thoughts and theory noodles #my tftp analysis #this is probably going to be the last one of the year guys #I'll still do the last 2 but probably not before 2025 #we'll see

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