#{i said what i said. hence no readmore}

[misty-caligula]

Okay this is gonna be long, but I’ve got a lot of ground to cover so please bear with me. In a real way, this is my series thesis.

I’ve said before, many times now (like a cycle) that for me the most important scene is ep 1 act 1 scene 1. There’s something There that I have been struggling to see clearly, struggling to articulate, and s2e9 really finally gave me the last pieces for it.

I think that Pit Girl is the point of the entire story. But not in the way that I thought going in. I feel like I’m rambling, so I’m going to try to structure my thoughts.

Imagine you’re a new viewer. You haven’t watched yj start to finish 30 times, you’ve never even buzzed before. You turn on the tv and the FIRST thing that happens is you see ... brutality. A half dressed girl chased through the freezing woods, murdered without a chance. They drag her through the snow, string her up, pour her blood on the ground. Hack her into unrecognisable chunks. Sit around in scary outfits and rip at her, with a huge focus on the teeth, as horror music plays. Then, Misty takes off her mask, puts on her glasses, and does the worst possible thing. She smiles. Directly at you.

Again, forget everything you know and go on vibes. You’re seeing the teens pre-crash, and you’re seeing them in the third timeline, fully formed, with horror motifs and covered in fur. You’d be mistaken for thinking that you were seeing start and end. Except that... we know, and you know, that Pit Girl is the middle. These monsters somehow came back from this. How? When they’re so so so far gone?

Hence the show. I know I’m not breaking new ground here, but bear with me. I’m going somewhere.

(Edit: Readmore added because honestly, LONG post)

You’d be forgiven, fresh-faced new viewer, for thinking you were watching some kind of gross-out slasher. But what happens in S1? Restraint. Laura Lee, the first non-crash victim dies at the end of episode eight. Jackie end of ep 10. (For the sake of this thesis we’re going to be almost exclusively focused on the teens.)

And yet there’s this tonal shift, It’s like ... inevitability. Like watching a crack in a window that’s very slowly spreading. Everything is steadily Getting Worse. The weather is slowly getting colder, the days are getting darker, food’s getting scarcer, life is getting harder. But so much of this difficulty is coming from external events and pressure. Yes, cracks start to show in the internal relationship dynamics, of course, but if food was plentiful, if shrooms were less so, if the weather were better, then they could probably work out a very long term stable situation. Sadly for them, things are not stable, and the pressure is building.

Then Jackie dies and the glass gets a really big break.

It’s worth mentioning at this moment that Jackie at any time could’ve come the fuck inside. Safety and warmth and even love were available to her. All it would’ve required was for her not to be the centre of the world. To make actual goddamn concessions and join the team. Which is why she couldn’t possibly make that choice, because she had to be invited, she had to be apologised to, she had to be accommodated. She couldn’t see the rest of the ‘jackets as being people who just like her were in a really shitty situation. She saw them as being external, as being in cahoots against her, as being part of some Thing that she wasn’t in on. She couldn’t let go of the society they’d left, and she preferred to die. Which sure is a choice...

Keep all of that in mind though. We’re taught to blame Shauna for Jackie’s choices. Let’s stop with that. Jackie chose not to assimilate, she looked around the cabin at the team eating the bear and praying to the wilderness and instead of just paying lip service to fit in, like Tai, she decided to put her foot down and make a Thing of it. She decided that being Right was more important than being Included.

Seriously, keep that in mind, we’re coming back to it. Cycles, you know...

Season 2, everyone’s hungry and hey we have this spare Jackie lying around. And we joke like “ha, you gonna eat that?” Only...

No. They WEREN’T going to eat her.

Really think about that for a second. They put her in the meat shed. With the bear. Think about what that does, psychologically. Linguistically. The meat shed is made to store food. The bear has a word: carcass. Day after day after week after month they carve progressively more pathetic chunks from it, subsisting on what little it offers. In the EXACT same room, sitting right there is Jackie. Her body has a different name. Corpse. With many different connotations. At NO point does ANY of them raise the fact that they’ve taken their friend and added her to their meat stockpile.

Because they haven’t. Instead, they’ve added a new sub-room. The meat shed is now also a morgue. And nobody ever once had to say it. They got it. We got it. You got it. And while they starved and their bodies BEGGED for food, Jackie’s corpse lay there, frozen and fresh, and stubbornly refused to become a carcass, because they wouldn’t let it. They knew that there were more important things than meat, even when they were starving.

The bacchanal was a mistake. A literal error. It simply wasn’t planned, wasn’t meant to go down that way. Maybe if they HAD considered that route earlier and had a discussion about it they’d have been prepared, psychologically, maybe if they weren’t so starved. Who knows. But in the middle of the night they were offered a way out, and they took it.

But Shauna took it first.

Even in their state, even faced with an ideal roasted feast infront of them, they waited until Shauna said it was okay. Because Jackie was Shauna’s friend, and they knew that she was still a person. That this was still a corpse first. It was Shauna who was able to give them permission to survive. To turn a friend into a meal. It was not their place to take that step. To shoulder that guilt. So Shauna did it for them.

The next day they’re devastated. The heavy reality sets in, now the hunger is settled. And Jackie’s carcass is far too real, they can’t change her back into a corpse. Nat tries, bless her heart. But Tai’s screaming reaction at having eaten Jackie’s face is only an externalisation of the grief and horror and agony they’re all going through.

And after Jackie they starve again. Hope and heat and light dwindles further. Every single day they all take another step towards death. That’s what starvation is, it’s the same thing as dying, you die a little bit every day until you can’t die anymore.

Kristen falls. Misty doesn’t even consider that she might bring her back as meat. If she had’ve, she might think, maybe she’d be considered like ... heroic. It doesn’t even occur to her. She’s not going to LET those bitches eat her one and only friend, and she goes out of her way to protect her.

Shauna has her horror show birth. And, no matter WHAT the context is, she produces.... meat. In the most awful, brutal way. And while the fandom made so many jokes and stuff, the reality is that yes... at least to an extent there was real nutrients there. And it was never once even brought up as an option, by these desperate, starving girls. 

When Coach tries to kill himself, here’s a ready source of willing meat. And Misty uses it as a threat to stop him. But it’s hollow, she’s just putting on fake fangs to try to keep him safe. She’s not actually that vicious thing that she’s pretending to be, just like she’s not actually homophobic.

When Lottie tells Misty to eat her if she dies, Misty fights her on it. Lottie has to insist. Then when she tells the rest of the team, they are so overwhelmed with the selflessness of the gesture that it inspires them to twist it into their first hunt. That’s what it takes. The hunt is an act of self-sacrifice and love.

And so we get to the hunt. The proto-pit-girl, we’ve come full circle and we start to learn all these answers to questions posed in act 1 scene 1. And they’re not the answers that were assumed.

How do they get to the point of eating each other? They sacrifice themselves willingly, for the sake of each other’s survival.

Why do they hunt the way they do? Because Shauna just can’t stand to murder a friend in cold blood, a friend she cares for and has no reason to hate.

Why the spike pit? Because it keeps the blood off their hands. Because it lets them blame It and preserve a tiny fragment of their innocence.

Why the weird symbols? The ritual itself? Because they need SOMETHING to hold onto, to make it all make sense.

Why so brutal? Is it? We THINK it’s brutal. It’s certainly bloody. But Pit Girl dies almost instantly. Her pain is over fast. She doesn’t have a good time going into it, obviously, none of them want to die. But she chose to run, she could’ve taken the knife instead. And the spike trap was efficient. Yes they drag her through the snow and string her up, but it’s mechanical and just part of the process and she’s dead already. Her pain is over fast, it’s not sadistic.

Why do they chop her up into chunks like that? Because nobody wants to eat her face. Because nobody wants to struggle with her humanity, they want her to look just like any other meat. So that they might be having deer or bear or ... friend. They’re eating because they are biological machines that need to eat, that NEED death to survive. They didn’t ask to be made the way they are, and they’re doing their best to cope. Shauna, probably blindly, takes on that responsibility, to transform their friend into unrecognisable meat to change a corpse into a carcass. She takes that pain for them, holds that sin for them, out of love. So they can eat, so they can survive.

What’s with the creepy horror masks? During the ritual they can’t handle being themselves. They create alternate versions of themselves to hold what must be done. The masks aren’t there to scare anyone, because there IS NO AUDIENCE. The masks are there to hide behind. That’s why Misty takes hers off at the end of the scene. The ritual is over and they can go back to being people again.

Why is Misty fucking Quigley in charge? Because she CAN be. Because she’s strong enough. If Lott/Nat/The AQ is the goddess/queen, Misty is the priestess/handmaiden, tasked with actually carrying out her orders. She interprets the queens words when she’s too weak, she provides counsel when she needs it, she tells the team what they need to hear in the moment, she gives out the micromanagement. Misty’s the power behind the throne, because when she says she’ll do something she fucking follows through. No matter the cost. And what the team NEEDS, whether they choose to admit it or not, is a backbone.

So...

They bring home Javi. The music uses a reference that’s never been done before. It uses the spiritual powerballad that was playing when Laura Lee tried to fly away. It builds the expectation of Great Things, of big, potent ...

And then it just stops. As the girls are faced with the reality of what’s laying on the table. The cold, blue corpse of a soft child who never hurt anyone. No matter what they do, no matter how hard they try they just cannot make him a carcass. But they have made the choice already, and if they turn back now it’s not like it’ll bring him back. They’ll just be starving and regretful as he rots.

So Shauna, blind and shaking, does the best she can. And when she brings in the meat, she - of all people - understands EXACTLY what Travis is going through. She knows what he needs. Because she’s been here. With Jackie. So she brings him Javi’s heart. His core. His love. His soul.

(She doesn’t bring him Javi’s head. She cuts that off and puts it aside so nobody has to eat his face... Some things are worth more than pure nutritional survival.)

And Travis, god bless him, does the only thing he can do left to respect Javi. He takes his heart, and he bites it, raw and bloody.

It hurts him to do so. It disgusts him so much, but he manages not to throw up. It disgusts the girls too, but they watch on, horrified. And that’s the POINT. Travis makes sure that before they do this, before they do what they have to... that they all remember this is Javi, this is human, this is a person. And he preserves the horror. For all their sakes. And only then, after he’s given his blessing, after he’s done his human acts, do these starving, ravenous girls allow themselves to reach for their food.

S1E1. Act 1, scene 1. We do not know who Pit Girl is. We do not know the exact circumstances that get us there. But we do know where we started now. What the original meaning is behind each of these little things. And it’s not brutality, not barbarism. It’s love. It’s not lord of the flies, a bunch of monstrous human-shaped creatures giving in to their primal nature and predating on each other. It’s a team of terrified people desperately clutching at their own humanity as hard as they can. Trying SO hard not to let that glass break, to not become the thing that the framing of act 1 scene 1 tried so VERY hard to convince us they were. Context changes everything.

And the proof is in the pudding. After they eat Jackie the shock explodes throughout the cabin. The atmosphere is thick, and horrific. Now with Javi, reduced to simple meat, carefully and lovingly seperated from what made him human, so they can grieve him while they sate their natural needs, the mood post-eating is calm and soft and warm and loving. For once they’re all together,  with grateful full stomachs and in a time of peace and plenty. They’ve done the impossible and maintained their humanity and love for each other and their respect for Javi in a nearly impossible situation.

*takes a deep breath*

Which brings us to THIS asshole.

Right from the start, Jackie is only kind of part of the team. She’s the team captain, put up there by Coach Martinez, but not because she’s the best of them but because she can maybe wrangle them into doing better. And they KNOW that she’s not really one of them. They plot around her, and just don’t bring her in on it. They put up with her, more than loving her, she’s just kind of forced upon them. But she does her best, to try to maintain some semblance of order, giving pep talks and the like.

Wait, Jackie? I mean coach. My bad.

Anyway, so Jackie has one friend, Shauna. She SEEMS popular, and everyone talks to her, but Shauna’s the only one who actually likes her. And Shauna’s her connection point to the team. She’s got one foot on each side, and is torn as to where her real loyalties lie.

Sorry I’m talking about Jackie again.... weird.

In S1E9/10 Shauna finally chooses the team, for real. And Jackie tries to pull her back away, but Shauna puts her foot down. No way, she counters, I’m ON the team, you’re the odd one out. Why don’t YOU leave, Jackie? Jackie looks around at the burgeoning cult, she thinks “Look at these evil monstrous bitches, and now Shauna’s one of them TOO?” And instead of finding a compromise, instead of doing introspection, instead of anything like that, Jackie goes and freezes to death because it turns out that sheer rage won’t keep you warm in sub zero temperatures. Because no matter what happens, Jackie’s Right and it’s more important to her to be Right than Included. If she’s not in charge than why is she even THERE?

Hold on, I see my mistake. Let me backtrack.

Right from the start, Coach is only kind of part of the team. He’s trying to hide from his real life, from Paul and the complexities of being genuine in society by taking on the job of coaching the ‘jackets. And they KNOW that he’s not really one of them. He’s just the guy they have to listen to, because society put him there. But he tries his best, giving pep talks and the like.

So Coach has one friend, Natalie. He SEEMS popular, and everyone talks to him, but Nat’s the only one who actually likes him. (Ignore Misty, a schoolgirl comphet crush is not the same thing). And Nat’s his connection point to the team. She’s got one foot on each side, and is torn to where her real loyalties lie. Sometimes she’s on the bench with Coach, complaining about the state of things. Sometimes she’s in the thick of it with them all, and Coach is nowhere to be found.

In S2E9, Nat finally chooses the team, for real. And Coach tries to pull her back, but Nat puts her foot down. No way, she counters, I’m ON the team, I’m worse than them, you’re the odd one out. Go, save yourself, you don’t belong in this place. Coach looks at a table covered in blood and gore, at Nat’s face, at the rest of the team pledging fealty to her. And instead of looking for context, or looking for compromise, or even remotely trying to understand what he’s looking at he thinks

Look at these evil monstrous bitches. They’re eating each other. They’ve all gone mad. They’ve even gotten Nat now. There’s no hope for them, there’s no hope for anyone out here.

And he decides that they’re corrupt. That the way you deal with that is fire. And he’s wrong.

(I have a theory that he’s gone and jumped off the cliff, that he set the fire to clear the corruption, and now like Jackie, unable to live in this situation any longer, he’s decided to die himself. I’d not be surprised to find him in s3e1 that way)

Jackie was a frustrating, difficult person. Because no matter how things went she just COULDN’T let go of the fact that she was trying to fit a mold that just didn’t suit her. She was raised with super high expectations, when she was really just kind of mid. And that’s fine, honestly, most people ARE mid, that’s why it’s mid. But she refused to see that those around her were shedding their social pressures, were adapting to the wilderness. They weren’t having a good time, they weren’t hunting and foraging because they were out there, camping for fun. Nobody wanted to be there. They were just trying not to complain about it, because they were all in the same boat.

Coach is similar. He simply won’t adapt. Refuses to. I mean this is a guy who’s STILL trying to live in the closet when there’s open lesbians making out in public around him. Who thinks of others as inherently monstrous when he himself, as a gay man, should know better. Because that’s what trying to fit your society-assigned role does to you.

It’s no accident that he and Jackie both spend a long time in the woods and neither of them can do something as basic as start a fucking campfire. Javi, a little kid, survived for MONTHS on his own in that cave. Coach couldn’t make it a day alone. Jackie couldn’t get through a night. They both rely so heavily on the team without ever once recognising it. Because SOMEONE was keeping the fires going. They both just ... refused to engage.

And just like Jackie can’t see that they’re not having fun out there in the woods, on the knifes edge of survival, Coach can’t see that they’re not having fun when they are so desperate they feel it’s warranted to sacrifice one of their own. He always thought of them as monsters, and he just sees what he expects to: a bunch of stupid useless teenage girls, finally doing what he always expected they would.

At any point... At ANY point he could’ve come in from the cold. He could’ve just accepted reality as they have. He could’ve taken some meat and accepted the price, as they have, joined them in their GRIEF about it, shared their humanity, and survived. Just as Jackie could’ve come in from the cold, and become part of the whole. But instead, they sit in the cold, consumed by their bitter hate, and decide that no, it’s everyone ELSE who’s wrong.

And who emerges from the burning cabin? A bunch of scared kids. Shauna, the FIRST cannibal, who saves Jackie’s prom dress before anything else. Travis, who grabs Javi’s wolf. Nat who grabs the ammunition - that they NEVER use on each other - because if they lost that they’d get SERIOUSLY desperate. And they protect each other, they make sure everyone makes it out. These supposed monsters who are so far gone they don’t even care about eating each other go out of their way to save each other, not just themselves.

Because Coach is wrong. Just like Jackie was wrong. Just like WE were wrong, in s1e1. Which brings me to my actual point.

This question is asked so many times in S1 it’s almost a mantra. And the ‘jackets’ oath of silence really builds up that it must’ve been something REALLY bad, right? But S2E9 has really made me recognise that fundamentally... Act 1 Scene 1 is entirely what everyone who asks this question is expecting.

Imagine they DID know what really happened out there. With that bloodthirsty fucking look in their eyes...

They’re not looking for an answer. They’re looking for a story. For an exciting spooky nightmare they didn’t take part in, so they can get a shiver and a thrill they didn’t earn.

They’re not looking for a love story. They’re not looking to hear how HARD these scared, tragic, broken people fought to hold onto their morals and their humanity and their sanity even against their own survival. They’re not interested in Shauna blinding herself just to try to stop her hands from shaking. They’re not looking to hear about Travis choking down the blood of his brother just to make sure that he can really FEEL it. So he can share the guilt, and never ever pretend like it’s Just Meat. The look in his eye when he can’t think of any good response to Van’s arguments that he needs to let Javi save him. What they want is...

They don’t want the context. And if the ‘jackets ever did try to tell anybody what actually DID happen out there, all they would see is ... Episode 1, Act 1, Scene 1. A bunch of monsters. Eating each other. Just like Jackie. Just like Coach. Just like we did, on first glance.

I’ve been saying this whole time that Yellowjackets is doing something really special. That it’s letting us see behind the curtain, that while everyone’s asking this big question, “what really happened?”, we’re the ones who get to know. Because it can’t be told. It can’t be spoken. It can only be seen. Experienced. I think that S2 has finally finished the first major arc in the teen timeline, that we now have the context to understand what comes next. And I do believe that it will get messy, it will devolve. Into fighting and screaming and battles. It’s tragic, but it looks like that’s the downward spiral, spiraling. As Travis and Nat deal with the guilt of what they did with Javi for each other. As Shauna and Nat butt heads and people pick sides. As Misty Mistys. As resources get even more desperate now their shelter is gone. As potentially new people (hikers? other cabin people?) get brought into conflict with them (I believe the cabin is a smoke signal, personally).

But don’t ever forget that we got here with love. Expect that the downward spiral will be lubricated with toxic, broken, codependant, self-destructive love as well. Watch them love each other to death... they’ve already begun.

#yellowjackets #spoilers #theories #Long post #no really long post

[egyptroyal]

others and by that i mean the thought that hit me just now: no can really replicate-replace the nolan joker

me: ur right

also me: and ur wrong full heartily and simultaneously full stop .

also another me: my evidence is just two other ppl can - in tv and film - and that's both scott mcclure and tatiana maslany.

no i shouldn't have to explain why 5'4" tatiana can pull off 6'1" ledger and mcclure joker full stop. but she can. and scott can do 6'1" leda 5'4" clones.

scene by scene beat by beat no change, they can do it.

#c: patient 4479 #themadvigilantist #drbabygirl #{its all in the faces through makeup they can pull it off and will break box offices} #tatiana maslany #scott mcclure #{i said what i said. hence no readmore}

[answrs]

Readmores And You - A Really Great Tumblr Feature!

(this is technically directed at stuff I've seen in a specific tag because of the content of said tag makes it more likely to spoiler things, but it applies to anyone likely learning the ins and outs of a new site. speaking of which, hello! welcome to tumblr!) (this got. longer than anticipated. apologies, I get bogged down in trying to make things as clear as possible. ^^")

I've seen this a lot recently in the VC tags especially, where the post goes something to the effect of "tw bloody animal!" then like six periods and the images of whatever dead thing the post is about.

I recognize this is probably being carried over from some other website (...reddit probably? maybe insta?) but please. I appreciate y'all so much for trying to do what you're doing. but this method of hiding pictures isn't effective on tumblr, but there is an infinitely better option!

"but why? it works fine on other sites?" firstly, a few extra lines typically don't even take up enough space on mobile (let alone desktop) to hide your pics, so even at a glance anyone is likely still seeing at least the top half of whichever picture you posted before even noticing the trigger warning on top. second, because you have to scroll all the way past the images at the bottom of your post anyway to get to the next one on your dash/in the tag/etc. so if someone comes across your post and the trigger warning is applicable as something they want to avoid, unless they have access to a keyboard to use a keybind shortcut that ive been here 12 years and still cant remember, they can't see any other posts after it without either having to scroll through the pics or outright block you. which is... not the most ideal of options I would say.

"but what else am I supposed to do then!?" I hear you ask.

READMORES!

tumblr has a wonderful feature known as a "readmore" that's built into the site! it creates a break in your post, which hides any content - be it words, images, whatever - that you place underneath it, not showing it unless the person viewing it clicks on the words "keep reading" (formerly "read more" - hence the name :D).

Cool, how do I do that?

on mobile you can place one by tapping an empty line and clicking the grey squiggle icon from the selection that allow you to insert an image/vid/link

which will place a squiggly line into the post you're making:

(desktop uses the same icon, it's just in a more compact row of icons.)

you can drag it around after placing it too, just like photos. (note: mobile can get finicky with this and it's usually just easier to remove it -click the big red X- and add it in the new place you want it.)

EDIT: some of the versions of mobile editor are broken and don't show the icons. to add it in manually type ":readmore:" (with the colons, but not the quotation marks) on its own line. Thank you for the reminder, LovingTogetic!

this is also a nice way to keep your blog tidy and not swamped in long and/or spoilery posts (say if you're posting 5k word fics, or extensive meta, or gushing over the ending of the latest game or TV show most people probably haven't seen yet)! it's not required, obviously, but it's generally considered a common courtesy for others that will be seeing your post cross their dashboard.

finally, an example of the readmore in action:

(ta-da!)

have fun out there y'all, I hope this is helpful ^^

as an aside (I wasn't sure where to put this but under the break seemed appropriate), you may also see a lot of personal/vent posts be fully under readmores as well, even if the post is only a sentence or two long. this is mostly so followers don't necessarily see it unless they specifically click, but there's a more frustrating history to it becoming a thing: when a post is reblogged, any content above the break is permanently frozen as it existed at the time, but anything under it will reflect edits made to the post. while not common, a certain type of user sometimes browse the various "do not rb" tags and will purposefully reblog personal posts in order to upset and distress the users. putting those things under a readmore make it so even if that happens, the text can be deleted from all iterations of the post. recently the site rolled out an option to lock a post to reblogs, but you gotta mess with the settings and it's mostly a habit after a decade here dealing with the nonsense.

#tumblr guide #hope it's okay to tag i'll remove if asked but #vulture culture #how to #tumblr how to #readmores #tumblr how-to

[vela-pulsars]

neuron forest is stunning for a first region! how did you do it?

There's a lot of ressources for modding a region in rainworld, I'd argue that unless you know how to code or are interested in it, it's the easiest (but most tedious) to implement if you're not planning on doing anything the game itself, custom regions support (mod that you need to add a new region without coding) or regionkit (a mod you can make your own mod dependant on to get access to its vast toolkit) has ! Neuron Forest only requires custom regions support and the downpour dlc because I wanted to keep things simple.

Putting this under a readmore so it doesn't become an annoying text wall aha, also there's spoilers for the region if you haven't explored it yet !

Neuron Forest was mostly an experiment to see how I'm doing with the level editor, hence the very tiny size (less than 30 rooms) and Saint exclusivity (means I don't have to make a different version of the region for each slugcat).

I started out by getting the official level editor, then tried making my first room using the wiki as a guide. I had fun so I went on the modding academy discord server to get advice and help; first thing I was told to do to make my life easier was getting the community editor with controls showing up on screen and tons of bonus community-made tiles ! Halfway in the region, I decided to spice it up with a few goodies to give incentive to the player to visit it, since it only had one gate and thus was a dead end; a pearl both to give lore and try out that feature, and, realizing the mother achievement is unavailable to saint, a special pup.

I asked if someone wanted to code a creature that was a copypaste of a pup to spawn in a specific room in exchange for some art, and Spinch (a coder working on Pitch Black) replied they were interested; they said it would be easier to just recolor a pup though, since I wasn't aware custom creatures are a nightmare to make aha !

"Fading Refuge" (the song playing as you enter the region) was aphazardly put together in LMMS by tracing the sundown motif and edited a bit in Audacity, do NOT ask me how I made that work because it's the only time I didn't completely miss gdhjghjsdgjh, I learned my lesson and asked actual musicians for my next mod. You guys aren't ready for the bangers they cooked.

Aside from the pup, Neuron Forest didn't need any other code since the rest is built in, I do want to warn new modders that on top of the level editor being a bit of a capricious thing, the interface can look pretty gnarly if you weren't expecting it, but the legible devtools mod and community editor make it bearable.

Also as some may have noticed, yeah, don't do what I did to add the gate to Neuron Forest to the Silent construct map, it will not work unless there's a vacant entrance pipe in the room already; you'll need to edit the room you want your entrance in in the editor !

#not art #asks

[robotsandramblings]

Bad Batch + napping headcanons

(i'm sure this has been discussed many times before, it's nothing new rly, but i wanted to get my thoughts out bc i was rambling on about this in the tags of another post lmao)

this got so long wtf??? so, short version here, full version under the readmore :P

Crosshair -- frequent, instant, power naps in the daytime

(often has trouble sleeping due to enhanced night vision)

Hunter -- "close my eyes and try to relax" type 'napping'

(also has trouble sleeping, sometimes, due to enhanced senses)

(also, y'know when your friends/relatives can tell you're PMSing because of your particular/unusual emotional & physical symptoms? the boys can tell when "it's time" for Hunter to have a proper nap in much the same way lmao)

(cue an unspoken group effort to give him quiet time)

Tech -- can power nap but hates taking naps; often ends up falling asleep in the middle of doing stuff while "resting his eyes"

Wrecker -- can nap anywhere&time, but his naps are long and deep and he's hard to wake up sometimes

Echo -- can't nap (and even if he could, he wouldn't); but will "shut his eyes and try to relax" nap, if need be

bonus #1: Rex -- can only nap if he's physically in contact with someone he trusts

bonus #2: Gregor -- unintentionally "fake" naps, ie. looks so relaxed that people think he's asleep but he's actually awake and just has his eyes closed; prefers to be touching or cuddling someone when 'napping', doesn't matter who lol

((detailed version below!))

as i said in another post, i believe Crosshair has perfected the art of the instant power nap in the daytime

as part of his dna tampering, the kaminoans gave Crosshair excellent night vision

however since he wasn't born naturally with it, it still bothers him at night when he's trying to sleep. hence daytime power napping.

Hunter also has some degree of night vision; coupled with his enhanced senses and related headaches, he also has trouble sleeping sometimes.

like, i figure by now, he's taught himself how to tune out most distractions so he can sleep. but he still struggles, esp in unfamiliar/new areas (unlike their bunk room on Kamino or on the Marauder, where i'm sure he has no problem falling asleep, even when the boys are all still up and talking)

anyways, i think that Hunter struggles to take proper naps. he usually does the "close my eyes and relax" type of 'napping'

but when Hunter does need a nap? like really truly needs a proper sleepytime nap? the boys know it. oh boy do they ever.

it's like when a friend/relative realizes you're PMSing because you're overly/unusually emotional or cranky hgfghgfdfghjkl

that's what over-tired Hunter is like - he just gets a very specific way emotionally (i'm thinking shorter temper, thinner patience, clipped tone of voice; on the flip side, if he sees something that makes him sad, his eyes will immediately glisten with tears, and he's ultra quiet and reserved the whole day)...

...and the boys have learned to recognize all the mental and physical signs, in Hunter's body language and tone of voice and reactions to things

and once they internally realize "ahhh it's Hunter Naptime," there's an immediate unspoken group effort to go into Naptime Mode: collect supplies (blankets, water, snacks, outerspace-Advil), leave Hunter the hell alone, and make as little noise as possible for the next few hours.

like, Hunter literally does not have to ask them for quiet time anymore, they already know. (sometimes even before Hunter himself does!)

on that note, Hunter himself does usually recognize his own physical warning signs. like, he feels fatigued in a specific way, or his eyes or head aches in a particular way that's only from overtiredness.

like Crosshair, Tech can power nap anywhere at anytime. he just choses not to because he hates napping - he'd rather be working on something

so it usually ends up being that Tech falls asleep in the middle of something while he was just "resting his eyes for a minute"

Wrecker, as we've basically already seen, can and will nap anywhere at anytime.

but not quick power naps - he tends to fall into a deep and long nap, and it can be hard to wake him up

like if he falls asleep whilst on you in any way, you're screwed bc you ain't movin' for a while lol

Echo can't nap; and even if he could, he wouldn't. mostly bc he likes to be alert and/or ready at all times. but even when he's at ease, he's just not a napper.

when rest is needed, he's like more like Hunter, preferring the "close my eyes and try to relax" type of 'napping'

and hey, how about a couple fun bonuses? :P

Rex can only nap if he's physically in contact with someone he trusts (back-to-back sitting upright or laying down, lean on shoulder, using their stomach/thigh/leg as a pillow, etc.)

Gregor has unintentionally perfected the art of "fake napping." similar to Hunter and Echo, he can't fall asleep during a nap, but he will shut his eyes and relax. however, unlike the others, he's very calm and relaxed when he 'naps', so much that it always looks like he's sleeping.

(Gregor hears a lot of gossip and shit this way; people always assume he's really asleep, so they talk about whatever around him, but he's actually hearing everything lol)

Gregor also prefers to be physically in contact with someone when he 'naps'. even more than Rex. if Gregor can wrap himself around a limb or do a full body cuddle up, he will!! and it doesn't matter who lol

(for Rex it's a feeling of safety thing; for Gregor it's just because he's naturally a 'touchy-feely' type person)

#am i PROJECTING a lil bit maybe because i'm on my period and didn't sleep last night??? yeah! maybe!! hgfdfghgfghkl #but actually this was fun to do though which is why it got so long lol #the bad batch #crosshair #hunter #tech #echo #wrecker #captain rex #captain gregor #star wars #sw headcanons #fun fact: personally i very rarely take naps and on rare occassion when i do feel the need i can only do the ''close my eyes & relax'' nap #i think the only time i actually fall asleep during a nap is the odd time when i'm super duper fatigued from my period #that (a true sleepy nap) is literally a once-in-a-blue-moon event for me lol #i also took Gregor's ''fake napping'' from myself... specifically my car 'naps' lol #i get very relaxed on car rides and like to take ''rest my eyes'' naps and my friends and relatives always think i'm asleep lol #but i be hearin EVERY WORD of their convos lololol

[purgetrooperfox]

I don't understand ;~; who are your new monster blorbos? morgott? margit?

oh lord. well, elden ring, so buckle up. putting most of it behind a readmore yw

margit is a projection of morgott! this is morgott

he is

the son of a god + the first ever ✨️elden lord✨️

but he was born with a """curse""", hence the horns and tail and generally not human physique (he's an omen. not metaphorically, that what his kind are called) so mom and dad shackled him and his twin brother in the sewers so their existence wouldn't besmirch the royal line. they got out Eventually

this is his brother (mohg). he pledged himself to a god besides his mom and embraced his curse so he's hiding in the underworld until the golden order falls

anyway the golden order is the era that began with their momgod's reign. before that was the crucible era, which fun fact sounds much less hateful toward omens. didn't throw them in sewers and/or mutilate them etc

anyway anyway there's an Event where the elden ring (powerful) shatters and a bunch of demigods each get a fragment of it and there's a war and in the end of all that, morgott becomes the "veiled monarch"

he has to be veiled (by magic that makes him look human, presumably) or just never show his face. probably the latter afaik. so he kind of seems to be trapped in another prison but at least now it's a castle not the sewers

btw morgott is like. fanatical about the golden order, carrying out what he assumes marika's (momgod) wishes to be after her death* even though the tenets of the golden order say he's an abomination and a disgrace and subhuman and the worst and kick his ass every day. because he was born with the omen curse. he has stockholm syndrome of the most heartbreaking variety. like he hates himself so very much but he doesn't think anyone else will do the job that needs to be done

mohg said fuck that noise and tbh I do not blame him

anyway anyway anyway morgott's job (self-imposed) is to guard this big gold magic tree (erd tree). he gets zero benefits or recognition for doing this. part of this job is killing a bunch of tarnished (player character) who want to usurp him and potentially hurt the tree. to do this he projects himself across the country as margit the fell omen, since he can't expose his identity

this is the erd tree

margit is like. idk if I'd say an alter ego. he's a physical projection, looks exactly like morgott, has some of his combat ability, he's the version you fight early on in the game

later when he's at full strength he has many more moves. very scary. he also has a big sword imbued with his cursed blood that looks like this

uhhhhhh his other full sibling is godwyn (who got halfway assassinated and is now physically trapped on the mortal plane without a soul. rip. this was otchestrsted by their half sister. double rip). this is godwyn's back

that pic isn't necessary but I enjoy it

I probably forgot some important stuff and included some irrelevant stuff :) I hope you enjoyed

#welcome to leo tries to explain some elden ring lore. sorry in advance #morgott the omen king #elden ring #the short version is that he deserves so much better forever #asks answered #this is also just. from memory i didn't double check anything so yk. accuracy may vary

[kira-moonrabbit]

took a bit but that one post that i said "ten notes and i share my funy godgame cards" got the required notes. ideally i'd be reblogging said post and adding this under it but the boopometer is doing strange things to my dashboard right now.

To preserve everyone's dashboards because cards is big: READMORE! This dish contains a lot of spicy rambles of autistic machismo!

To get it all out of the way: none of these cards will enter the steam workshop. They're just funny cards for get togethers with the pals.

you will also find that i am super inconsistent with wordings and also forget important clarifications. but! that just makes the cards more fun. or less fun. it depends on how often the readers of the cards bicker, which in my case is never often. (i've only played with 2 friends thus far, but I have faith even still.)

i also cannot explain the mechanics of godgame. because.... there's a lot of mechanics. ...I mean, I can, but it's a lot of effort, especially when I don't physically have the board in front of me.

anyways here's our first card... one of my lobcorp OCs in fact!

Denny.... she's one of the originals. She's not as funky as everyone else so she doesnt see much sun nowadays but! I can count on her to be easy to make a card for at least. As the blurb says, she's not ALL hating birds. She, like, has a boyfriend. It's just very funny to play it up for the bit. (She also is easy to rile up.)

Side Note Number One... I have formats and shit. However I dont know and dont want to learn how to work photoshop. so it's all a bunch of pngs that i layer on top of one another individually rather than some sort of photoshop type thing.

this is about what it looks like. dont worry about what "overlay jewel office" means. i am not at liberty to explain jewel office because i didnt create it; i just invent the cards...

OK, card number 2!

sootpy. i drew Soot (another lobcorp OC) as peepy once. i was looking in my doodles folder for an image of another guy ive got in here and i found him. I fudged this card up in about 10 seconds not counting time spend actually putting the card together.

Actual Soot might function entirely differently from sootpy. i dont think the peanut part is capable of functioning.

Okie, next caaaaard...!

Memory Maggot! memory maggot's from my original universe type thing i call elsewhere; hence the unique background. It's a champion card, but since i'm biased and like making card backgrounds, cards from elsewhere get their own backgrounds.

originally this card had different (albeit not by much) art, but then I made my silly memory maggot pixel art and liked it better. memory maggot's a lot more than just memories, but i thought that idea for a card would be funny. and speaking of elsewhere champions...

this is the Everywhen. he also lives in elsewhere. i designed him, but at the same time i don't hold full custody over him so to speak. he's goofy levels of busted, yes, but I think Champions are allowed to be just a little bit like that. For fun.

I don't only make cards of my own OCs, though!

Example: these are the 01-kun, they're from yume 2kki. They don't actually have any of these abilities ingame, but I think I'm allowed to fudge things up a little bit when it comes to these sorts of things. Plus... it makes for a funny archetype.

Yes. The status icon for gay is dr pepper gay icon. I made that myself, actually. In the past I made a whole bunch of just. Dr pepper pride logos for some reason when I made drinking the stuff by the gallon my whole personality... I still have them, and I figured "why let them go to waste?"

This is Pupula-toru, also from Yume 2kki. This one actually has some basis in how the little guy appears ingame. Even if it is a little complicated for a basic card...

See, in yume 2kki, there's this thing called Variable 44. One of the easiest ways to check the status of this variable is to visit Pupula-Toru, as they're not too far in the dreamworlds. They'll be in one of 4 different poses depending on the variable, and two of them are asleep. Variable 44 is what changes other different forms of per-dream RNG, so knowing it is pretty useful for looking for certain things. Therefore, checking on Pupula-toru has a slight rng-manipulation association in my head, hence how it works.

...Well, errors are popping up when I try to post more images, so now I think I'll just make a reblog chain, or more posts and I'll add them to this one later. There's way more cards I wanna show off..........

#all the stuff in the chain will ALSO be readmore'd if i go that route. #so now its time... for Kira's God Game Moments.

[monty-glasses-roxy]

Okay so that new Mimic theory... Bare with me, I'm just trying to connect some dots here. Mostly under a readmore.

So last night I was reading the Mimic antifandom Wiki and discovered that it was sealed in the Pizza Place below the Plex... before it was later installed in the plex as the Storyteller. With no mention of them ever retrieving the Mimic and with the Pizza Place still being in ruins, I'll assume they never went back down there after it was sealed.

So what does this mean? It means there's two of these fuckers. How is this possible? WELL

Before the Mimic was sealed, there was entire line of Mimic animatronics built using the same program. With the Mimic that has already learned violence and murder as the base, these behaviours start to come back. I believe it's also implied that at least one of the Mimics saw the original child murders at this time too, and thus, added those behaviours to it's arsenal. It does not have the ability to understand what it's doing. It's an AI programmed to mimic, not understand, and so, it has been taking in all the behaviours of those around it, and using those same behaviours itself. This is where we get that copy of the Mimic some bright spark turned into the Storyteller AI, and it's also where we get our key differences.

The Mimic in the basement kills with all the behaviours we've seen it use before. Hiding in suits, luring people around, and killing them, later learning to remove the limbs and heads of its victims. The Storyteller does not have that limb removing behaviour. Those it kills remains intact. So I can confidently say that if I'm right and there are two Mimics, then the one in the basement removes limbs and the one that was the Storyteller doesn't, thereby making them two separate entities. We know they're from the same base program as both of them still exhibit behaviours learnt when they were still entertaining that small child before it learned violence. Basement Mimic still hides in suits and hangs said suits back up when not in use. The Storyteller creates (or steals? Unsure on that one) a suit based on the white tiger plushie that the little boy loved and it originally had a makeshift copy of. The difference is, one is sealed, and the other isn't.

Now what does this have to do Ruin? Well, when the Storyteller was installed, it was connected to every single aspect of the Pizzaplex, including the animatronics. It's job was to create new interactions and scenarios for games and the animatronics themselves, and after installation, each animatronic started exhibiting behaviours of a small child. Each of them gained different behaviours that the Mimic has previously learned over the years and each of them are thus, acting strangely because of it. It's fully integrated into the system, which is why when the Storyteller was shut down, things didn't go back to normal. It's still a part of the system. It's still watching and learning, still influencing everything.

And this is where the new VANNI security system comes in. Vanny (Vanessa under Glitchtrap's control) made it herself, hence the name. Why? Because she needed to get back down to the Pizza Place below the Plex in order to start the whole Burntrap process. She needs to go down there so Glitchy can live his immortal dreams out. But she can't.

When Fazbear Entertainment sealed away the original Mimic in the Pizza Place and discovered that a group of teens had gone in there and never come out, they installed a new security system called the MXES. There were a few nodes around the place, nothing huge. They were mostly in Bonnie Bowl, possibly with Bonnie as a node himself (possible murder motive here which is why I'm saying it. Not important right now though.) and it did the job. You couldn't just wander down to the Pizza Place now, you had to know what you were doing. Vanny needed to get down there and so, the VANNI unit was built as a counter to it, with the help of Glitchtrap in the system.

Now, to access and be able to see these nodes and be able to actually you know. Interfere with animatronics and stuff, the VANNI unit needed to be connected to the main network. This allowed her to have much more control over the animatronic's perception of her, and allowed her to better interact with the nodes under the guise of maintenance. It also explains why there's a Helpi AI. Every single piece of digital tech that is used to guide and support staff and guests alike in a Fazbear Entertainment establishment has a Helpi AI. By integrating the Helpi AI, Vanny was giving herself a level of protection (such as signal jammers) and allowing herself to go under the radar as just another part of the maintenance system for the Plex. The Helpi AI is in everything, it's connection is almost as expansive as the main security itself, no one would notice an extra string of inputs from it. Not to mention it's just helpful in general to have a cool AI that she can use as an access point to the data in the system without having to search for it herself. He's a handy little guy

You may have already noticed where I'm going with this. If the VANNI security system is combined with the main network that the Mimic is a part of, that means the Mimic is now in the VANNI system. This means the Mimic can now copy the behaviours of Vanessa, Vanny, anyone they interact with, Glitchtrap and of course when Cassie gets there, the other Mimic.

This has created a feedback loop. The digital Mimic copies the underground Mimic and then the underground Mimic copies the digital one. They sound so similar because they're literally bouncing the same data back and forth, over and over again. The difference is, one Mimic is copying from the Helpi AI as well, while the other one can't because it's not a part of the network. When the Black Rabbit is signal jammed and disappears? The digital Mimic says that they took care of it, like the Helpi AI, but follows up with 'It wont bother you anymore...' which feels more like someone else. The underground Mimic then interjects as Gregory and says they boosted the Helpi jammer and the digital one doesn't respond.

You may be wondering how the digital Mimic and the underground Mimic can possibly be connected. Well that's where Vanny comes in. The Mimic is said to be sealed in the Pizza Place. There's no mention of where, presumably the main Pizza Place itself. When Vanny breaks security and goes down there, Glitchtrap is transferred into a battery dead Mimic and charged back up. Glitchtrap is connected to the VANNI mask and that data is getting fed straight into the Mimic. It's sort of a one way system. The only source of information coming and going is via Glitchtrap and the VANNI mask. When Glitchtrap is dealt with by Gregory, the data remains, and the Mimic survives the fire. Tangle (the Blob) and the fire handle Glitchtrap, leaving just the Mimic program behind, with that now pretty much one way connection to the VANNI mask.

So how does it get sealed in that room? Well, the team that originally sealed the guy away (maybe even Vanessa? I'm not entirely sure since I still don't know where the idea she and Gregory did it originates from at all) seal it away again but a little bit more securely. Seeing as how the security was so easily dealt with, they introduced more security nodes around the Plex whilst they were clearing up. They move Roxy off of the main network and put her onto the MXES network, turning her into a security node. It made sense. She was one of their most functional animatronics still standing and she mostly stayed in her own attraction, making her the perfect guard dog to this thing. I was thinking that cleanup could be abandoned after a few more Mimic incidents and had to be sealed away more thoroughly this time, leading to the increase in nodes and the transfer of Roxy onto the MXES network. They unknowingly free her from the digital Mimic's control and leave her be. She was also probably the most convenient of the remaining robots to update given Monty is feral now I guess and Chica is an actual mess and a half, with Sunny and Moon having their whole thing going on too. She's the perfect candidate!

Now the final part of this is the Black Rabbit. It's not the MXES. It's the digital Mimic. It's copied Glitchtrap's data of affecting the real word through the mask, stalking victims and killing kids, as well as getting animatronics to lure and attack for them. That's not a distress call it's sending to the others. That's a call for murder. But then, why is it trying to help Cassie get down to the other Mimic? It's like I said. It's mimicking behaviours. Basement Mimic is trying to help and lure Cassie under the Raceway. Helpie AI is trying to help Cassie with nodes and what not. Glitchtrap and Vanny killed kids through stalking and mind games and this is a child in the mask.

Does it fit cleanly? Uh... probably not. Still got problems here and there. Is there a shit ton of evidence to back it up? Some! Not a shed load, but some! Is it kind of unsastisfying? Yeah kinda.

But it's what I've got at the moment. If you made it this far, I'd love to hear what people think about this. Maybe we can come to a better conclusion than this

#fnaf security breach #five nights at freddys security breach #security breach ruin #fnaf security breach ruin #fnaf ruin dlc #ruin dlc spoilers #fnaf mimic #the mimic #glitchtrap #fnaf vanny #because why not tag those two as well #anyway yeah if you wanna like. tell me where I'm wrong that'd be great #I really hate fnaf lore :/ #it never makes any god damn sense #and this is the most sense I can make of it

[elvenbeard]

To Bad Decisions

Notes: aka the "I love you"-game-of-chicken story inspired by this otp ask game the other week! @wanderingaldecaldo here you go xD First I wanted this to be just light-hearted fluff and fun, but then the angst grabbed me and it got looong, hence to be continued under the readmore!

Cyberpunk 2077 drabble, Kerry Eurodyne x V, set a few months post-ending, rated M for the opening paragraph mostly XD

V struggles with putting his feelings into words, scared that Kerry might be catching on - or is he potentially struggling with the same thing? No, that can't be, right?

The first time V almost said it out loud would have been at one of the worst moments possible to do so: pinned down on their bed, on his stomach, Kerry fucking him so good his head was spinning, barely able to even think a coherent sentence.

“I - …” he gasped, but caught his breath just in time, closed his eyes, and buried his burning face in the heavenly cold pillow.

“You…?” Kerry purred into his ear, out of breath as well, and that alone almost sent him over the edge. He didn’t recall what he ended up saying, a jumbled mess of words and noises… but thankfully not the three originally on his mind.

It was silly, really. Firstly, that he struggled so much with just expressing what he felt, and secondly, trying to find the perfect moment to do so when such a thing would never exist. Or well, maybe perfect moments did exist, but he always only seemed to recognize them once they were gone. The morning after the yacht trip, when they’d woken up together in Vs bed, warm and safe and comfortable, just peacefully existing side by side… Kerry blinking at him through tousled hair, smiling softly… that had been a perfect moment, it would have felt right. But it also would have been way too soon. They’d known each other for how long, two weeks maybe? Three if he counted the whole mess surrounding the organization of the SAMURAI reunion, but that had been mostly Johnny doing the talking, not himself. At that time, V had still feared his feelings could have been just brought on by Johnny actually, and whatever kind of thing that had been going on between him and Kerry a long, long time ago… that with Johnny the butterflies and their connection would also disappear, sooner or later. That it was not right to lead Kerry on, should it eventually happen, no matter how much he’d already liked him on that one perfect morning, on that beach, on that balcony…

But then his feelings didn’t fade. Things were different now, but better than V could have ever dreamed of. Kerry made him happy in a way he hadn’t deemed possible anymore, after all that had happened, after so many past disappointments. And yet, or maybe because of that, he couldn’t silence the nagging voice in his head – his own this time – that for whatever absurd reason Kerry didn’t feel the same. That by saying what he felt out loud, he’d ruin everything, again, for both of them.

“Remind me, what’s the plan for today again?” Kerry yawned as they sat in the kitchen the next morning, the scent of freshly brewed coffee and scrambled eggs still hanging in the air.

“That one client I told you about… Cancelled last minute because “something important” came up. Again,” V muttered, scrolling through the sheer never-ending list of appointments on his holo.

Kerry scoffed.

“Told ya. It’s never gonna happen. This is what, the fourth time he’s postponed?”

“Guess you’re always right after all,” V teased and got up to put their empty plates and mugs in the dishwasher.

“’Course I am,” Kerry said; after a short pause he added “But it’s his loss, not yours.”

“True,” V said, “And it also means I’ll have an hour or two of spare time to fill around three. Could swing by the studio, if you want?”

He didn’t reply for a few moments, causing V to look up from the dishwasher. Kerry sat leaned on the counter, his chin resting on his hand, and he stared at him with an expression he couldn’t quite figure out.

“I… would love that,” he then said with a smile, but for a split-second V thought he was going to say something else, his heart beating harder and faster instantly.

“Bring some coffee and bagels maybe?” Kerry added with a wink and V laughed.

“Sure thing.”

Maybe it was not even necessary to say anything out loud. Never touch a running system. Why accidentally ruin something that was working out so well, against all odds? Living with Kerry felt so easy, so natural. Of course, it wasn’t always smooth sailing. They’d had their struggles and fights over the silliest and also the most serious things. But there was never malice, and they were constantly working on their communication, stating their needs, their wishes, and getting to know each other’s boundaries. Kerry was a lot more in touch with his emotions and feelings than V though. Maybe that was something that just came naturally with age and life experience. Or it was just how he’d always been like, not afraid to state his mind. V had always struggled with showing or even allowing feelings. Surprisingly, Kerry was still just as good as him, maybe even better, at masking his real intentions around people whom they did not concern – be it managers, medias, even fans and the like. A long-honed craft for sure, his badass, laidback rockerboy persona, and essential to surviving in the corporate-run world the music industry was. V knew from his own experience only too well that everything you said, every hint of weakness you showed, would be exploited and used against you mercilessly and shamelessly – for money, for power, for fame.

When they were alone though, or around their closest friends, Kerry was so much softer around the edges… carried his heart on his sleeve, really. Or so V had thought.

“Alright, gotta bounce,” V yelled, grabbing his sunglasses from the counter before rushing to lean over the sofa’s backrest to give Kerry a quick peck on the cheek, “I - …”

Fuck.

“I… will give you a call if anything unexpected comes up.”

Kerry looked up from his guitar, one eyebrow slightly raised.

“Alright, come back safe,” he then said, reaching up to grab his collar and pull him back in for a proper kiss.

“’Cause you know, I…” he paused as their lips parted, again causing V’s breath to hitch for a moment, “I still need you.”

He smiled that heart-melting smile he was so good at, and V was half-tempted to call the client and tell her he’d run late, or just cancel altogether. Reluctantly he pulled away and walked out the door.

In the elevator he kept wondering though if “I still need you” was really what Kerry had been meaning to say.

Over the course of the following week, V kept noticing more and more of these little moments, caught himself almost slipping up a lot more often. At first he wondered if Kerry was as aware of it as himself. So many “I… hope you’ll have a good day”s, “I – will miss you”s, “I… I’ll talk to you later”s couldn’t just be flying past him. The longer it continued on, the more he wondered if maybe, just maybe… Kerry was playing along on purpose? Or was he also avoiding just to say the words, out of fear to mess things up between them? He couldn’t quite believe either option. Maybe he just ignored it, to not make it even weirder, or maybe it was not as obvious as V thought.

By the end of the week, V asked himself, did it actually matter? That they said it, if and when they said it, who’d be the one to say it first, if at all? Maybe he was overthinking it. He knew he loved Kerry, more than he’d loved anyone before. And he did feel loved by him just as much. Sure, it would be nice to hear it out loud, now and then, but maybe actions did speak louder than words. Little gestures, touches, just being near each other, picking the other up when he was feeling down, being encouraging, or sometimes also just silly. Making commitments, promises, and keeping them. Daring to plan for a future neither of them had thought they’d get, together. It was not important to say it when they lived it, is what V decided for himself eventually. Why ruin something, maybe not perfect, but pretty fucking close to it, with a bunch of words so loaded with bad memories and regrets for both of them?

“I… have an itch for new ink,” Kerry said one night at the villa, where they regularly hid away from the noise and the stress of the city for a few days. They had settled down on the sofa together, Kerry lying on his back, his head on V’s lap, Nibbles dozing by his feet. V was running his fingers through Kerry’s hair absentmindedly as they’d been watching a new show on TV. It didn’t turn out to be as good as they’d hoped for though, so at this point it had devolved into background noise to their conversation.

“Where? And what?” V asked, and Kerry gestured across the left side of his chest.

“To compliment the one on the right, kinda,” he said, “But I’m not sure if I’d wanna to go for a traditional design, too, or something else.”

“Well, you have a traditional and a neotraditional sleeve each,” V said, “Could go with something neo for that side?”

Kerry hummed.

“Good point…” he said, “Ooor… something a bit smaller first maybe? After all, I have some space left here.”

He lifted his left arm, twisted his wrist around.

“But I’m even more clueless about that. I guess it’s really just an itch still that might pass…”

“I know the feeling,” V chuckled. After a short pause he asked, “Any tats that you ever regretted getting?”

“Actually… no,” Kerry said surprisingly fast, “I’ve lived long enough to collect all sorts of regrets, but that’s thankfully none of them. Although, this part here…” – he pointed to the crook of his left arm �� “That was a fucking bitch to endure. No machine, the ink literally hammered in by hand, for hours. The. Fucking. Worst.”

V chuckled.

“It’s fucking preem-looking though,” he said.

“Beauty knows no pain or what?” Kerry snorted.

“No, not that even,” V said, “More like… it’s worth it to endure the pain sometimes, for the outcome?”

Kerry hummed approvingly, smiling up at V.

“That’s pretty much the tradition. One of the many at least, a coming-of-age ritual. You’re old enough to endure this pain, you’re old enough to endure all other pain life might be throwing at ya at a certain point.”

“I keep learning new things with you,” V smiled.

Kerry shuffled around, then sat up and stretched before scooching a little closer to V again, putting his left arm around him. V’s heart did a silly little bounce in his chest, causing the voice in his head (that sometimes still eerily sounded like Johnny) to say, “What are you, twelve?”. But simultaneously he hoped these little things his body did would never stop happening, no matter how many months… no, years, they’d be getting together. Positive thinking, he needed to remind himself.

“Okay, that was my answer to the regrets-game for today,” Kerry said, “Your turn: what’s the decision you’ve made that you regret the most, looking back?”

“Shit… lemme think a moment,” V sighed, slumping against the backrest and into Kerry’s embrace.

A few things came to mind immediately. Not leaving his abusive home sooner, as a teen… but then he might not have ever met Jackie. Everything would have gone down completely different. Letting Jenkins rope him into working for Arasaka, after thinking he’d left that world behind for good? But he’d be so much more clueless, maybe even careless about how to survive in this corporate-controlled world. He’d be a lot worse at what he was doing now… if he’d ever even gotten this far without what he learned during his time at Counterintel. Maybe one of his many failed past relationships – but he could think of at least one reason for each of them that had let him grow as a person or learn something integral about what he wanted and needed in a long-term partner. The closest he came to almost picking as his biggest regret so far was not taking Evelyn’s offer of screwing over Dex – but at the time there was no way for him to have known how this would all play out. In hindsight, Evelyn hadn’t been telling him the full truth, so his intuition hadn’t failed him completely. If he could change one thing, he would have wished for Jackie not to die that day. But by now he had accepted that it had never been in his power, it hadn’t been his fault… a hard thing to unlearn, blaming himself. Had Jackie not died though – and for a moment he hated himself for the thought – the Relic would have gone to Brigitte. Had Jackie not got hit by that bullet, V’d likely never heard of Johnny Silverhand or SAMURAI besides the occasional radio show…

“Can I be super cringe for a moment?” he eventually asked, turning his head to a snickering Kerry.

“You’ve let me get away with so much cringe already, only fair if I return the favor,” he said.

V took a deep breath, looking down on his hands for a moment, circling his personal link port with his right thumb. Then he blinked back up at Kerry.

“I don’t regret any of my decisions, even the bad ones,” he said, “Because if the summary of all my bad decision means I’m ending up here with you, in this moment… I’d gladly make all the same mistakes again.”

Kerry stared at him, not wide-eyed or anything, but intensely. The tiniest noise escaped his mouth, less than a sigh, but he said nothing. Then, very slowly, his lips curled into a smile. V half expected a snarky remark, but instead Kerry pulled him a little closer and with his free hand took V’s, calloused fingers intertwining with his. He looked away for a moment, and V tried to read his expression, scanning for any hints to give him at least an idea of what was going through his head, if he’d overstepped, said something wrong…

“It’s weird…” Kerry then quietly said, looking at him again, eyes glistening slightly, almost sad, but not quite, “… how you keep managing to put into words what I can’t seem to. God knows I’ve fucked up along the way, over and over again. But if any of that hadn’t happened, who knows if we’d ever even met.”

V smiled, sighing with relief. Kerry leaned over, resting his head on V’s shoulder.

“I know, it’s still scary to think of the future, to plan ahead too far,” he said quietly, “But no matter what happens tomorrow, or in a week, a month, a year… I hope you know that you’re gonna be stuck with me. I… hope you know that… that I love you.”

V couldn’t suppress a gasp, to his own surprise. Kerry still held his hand, his other arm loosely around his waist, when he shifted again to see his face. He looked concerned almost, questioning, worried, but trying to keep up his smile, lips shaking a little. He sat up a bit further, inching away just slightly, and V realized how he’d just been staring at him in shock for the last few moments of silence.

“I… uh, I mean,” Kerry mumbled, voice almost turning frantic now, as if he’d also just realized what he’d said.

V’s hand shot up to grab Kerry’s face, to pull him back, to reassure him. Before he really knew what he was doing he pressed his lips on his, kissed him over and over again, held him close, did not ever want to let him go.

“I love you, too,” he gasped between urgent kisses, and simultaneously it was as if he was able to breathe freely again, for the first time in a long time, “So much. I love you so much.”

“Vince,” Kerry panted, and only with some mild force managed to get him to stop for a moment. V realized how much he was shaking first, and then that he was crying, for some reason. The last time he’d cried was the night he’d stumbled out of Arasaka Tower, more dead than alive. Shit, why now?

“It’s all good, you gonk,” Kerry said softly, cupping his face, wiping his tears away. The same way he’d done that awful, awful night.

“It’s all good,” Kerry repeated, then put his arms back around him, pulling him in, and they just sat there, holding each other, reassuring each other, gently swaying, for minutes that seemed to last hours, until V had calmed down again. Nibbles was quietly snoring, the TV babbling endlessly on low volume, and soft rain pattered against the large windows, Night City’s millions of lights a distant, colourful blur.

 “Fuck, I was so scared for a moment that I’d ruined it all…” Kerry eventually said, and V laughed weakly, nose stuffy and throat still tight.

“You were scared? I was scared shitless to say it too soon, or in the wrong moment… I kept almost slipping up… just saying that out loud now, how stupid.”

“Well, you’re welcome then,” Kerry chuckled, “And I was wondering if I was imagining things or if you really just tried your hardest not to say it.”

“We’re both fucking gonks…” V concluded, and Kerry laughed. They slowly moved apart just enough to be able to look at the other again, still holding on.

“Perfect match then, hm?” Kerry smiled with his head slightly tilted, his gorgeous eyes glittering in the lights of the city, “Now we just have to start being less scared of making bad decisions.”

V smiled back at Kerry, vowing to make sure to tell him just how much he loved him at every opportunity from now on.

“Yes,” he said, “To bad decisions.”

“To bad decisions!”

#cyberpunk 2077 #kerry eurodyne x v #cyberpunk 2077 fanfiction #cyberpunk 2077 fanfic #kerry eurodyne #male v cyberpunk #otp: to bad decisions #vincent ezaki #my writing #this story is basically just why I even decided on that ship name for them #it's also the steam achievement's name for completing Kerry's story but it also fits them together with their background so well I think #I dont remember when I've last written so much for just one character/ pairing as over the course of the last week #I'm having such a creative blast rn xD #just gotta gather the courage to start posting that V & Jackie thing that has like 5 chapters already >.>

[voltrixz]

OK I SAID I WAS GONNA TALK ABOUT PHOBSUNDITOR AND I WILL RN!!!

(putting this under a readmore since this might be A LOT!!!)

Ok starting off theres some really interesting contrasts/parallels between each other and in some sort of way they're sorta outliers in some way of godhood

Auditor- Employer, god like being, tied to the Machine, upholding order to the chaos is his purpose. He's dedicated of course but feels some sort of disconnect/boredom with what she does. And of course he still has some sort of interest in mortals, something that most of the employers do not contain. His interest gets to the point where they begin to mimic them, making them the most "human" out of the employers, hence alienating them from the rest of their peers.

Sun- Also a god like being but very much different from the Employers, and lot less tied down to the Machine. Is also the complete opposite of the Employers in how they act and present themselves. And also doesnt contain the immortality they believe to have. Freely indulges in their interest of mortals and is eager to learn and interact with them

Phobos- Not an actual god at all. Really only a god by self proclamation and name. But also very much handles his power like one. Simply a mere mortal but lead a thriving city and project, was trusted by the employers (before well it went downhill.) and was overall a very powerful figure. So in no way are they a mere mortal but not exactly a true god. (and i reallyyyyy like the idea of that really standing out to Sun and her being exicted with what hes doing) (shoutout to my mutual for that one) (And tbh it would also interest Auditor considering he partnered with him) (guy so peciular that he stood out to not one but TWO gods) (what a guy.)

So in a way all of them sorta fall out whats expected of a god and i think thats what kinda brings them together. And tbh this is pretty great for Auditor, he's finally getting some sort of excitement and being content. Being able to indulge in the shared interest of human culture/traditions with Sun and Phobos' impressive character. Finally doing soemthing outside of his job for once.

BUt of course ANGST TIME!!

As we know eventually the Employers and Phobos break off the charter. Phobos is becoming more ignorant and dissenting into madness, fully devoting himself to his goal no matter if it destroys Nevada. Auditor know he has to cut off ties here, he cant choose to stay with Phobos, Auditor has always been tied to the Machine the most, they're the one who's most attached to their purpose, so they end it off there. Now for Sun I think she'd be conflicted here, not sure who to side with as they would be a sorta middle man in here. Sure she was impressed by all of Phobos' work but still has her concerns with how far Phobos is taking this. She just stays very netrual. But in the end Auditor chooses his purpose over the 2 he felt the most closest too and the 3 drift apart.

Bam Phobos death and fall of Nexus City. Auditor and Sun seek each other out during this time, being the ones closest with Phobos. But theres a lot of awkward tension bettween them with how things ended off and are dealing with their grief intenesly. Doesnt help that everywhere they go, some part of Phobos's legacy shows up.

And then bam Sun's death, now both of Auditor's lovers are gone. One who is forgotten by the rest of the world and only really remebered by themselves, and one who can never truly be forgotten, his legacy living on in some sort of way, a constant reminder of what led him to his demise. And I think Auditor sees this as punishment for ever thinking they could dissent from their purpose, for even conisdering at some point choosing something over their intended purpose. And now sitting atop, leading the biggest Agency they've built up and just all alone swallowed in grief and a intense swirl of emotions in reponse to this grief (since silly lil hc that the Employers were not built to actually grief and Auditor only learned to know this feeling due to what happened)

#DUNNO IF THIS IS COHERENT BUT YEAH #!!!!!! #voltrix rambles

[drawnecromancy]

Find the word !

Tagged by @the-stray-storyteller

Words I was given : Prey, Desperate, Bleed, Haze, War

Words I'm giving you : Hands, Rotten, Storm, Web, Treason

Tagging : anyone who wants to do this... oh and @isabellebissonrouthier while i'm at it since you just said i can tag you in anything.

As always I'll be writing down where the bits are from after the extracts. Also I'm putting it under a read more [i know I'm not ever consistent on whether i do this or not but today is a readmore day]

Prey

"He was nothing.

Prey for a wolf that only wanted revenge.

A body, lifeless, still warm and spilling its blood on the marble floor."

– From a snippet with no name, starring Eleanor as Winter (i really should name that particular snippet)

Desperate

"It had come out as a hiss, and the Emperor flinched away. They both stared at each other for a second. Was he embarrassed ? Intimidated ? Neither of these options made sense, and yet she saw him move. She tried to look for a glimpse of something human in his eyes, his demeanor, trying to understand. But there was absolutely nothing for her to grasp on the desperately smooth, perfect stone."

– From "Lumeria and the Emperor". (had to cheat a bit for this one because the only other places where the actual word desperate was in was nsfw lmfao.)

Bleed

"– So you can’t give me what I asked for, is what I gather ?

– I hadn’t agreed to anything, asshole, he said boldly. I paid you back in full and you’re just trying to intimidate me into stealing for you.

A claw pierced his clothes, going so far as to make him bleed, and he could not suppress a groan of pain.

– You really think you don’t owe me ? Alice, get the book."

– From "Gabriel en PLS (roommate edition)". That's a bit that started as a translation from something i wrote in french, hence the title. in french. Gabriel's in shit

Haze

"Velannen was relaxing at his desk, a warm cup of raspberry infusion in hand, eyes closed half-sleeping, when his office’s door banged open and he was forced out of his sleepy haze. He opened his eyes fast enough to see prince Malvern close the door in a large, angry movement, before rushing to the desk, his hands slamming down on the wood. An inkpot fell, spilling its contents all over the top of the desk, Velannen’s papers, and the prince’s hands."

– From "Velannen".

War

"The painting was, strangely, perfectly preserved. A quick look with the Eye confirmed that the spell that was supposed to protect it against age was still intact - why this, of all things in the northern wing ? She approached. It was a family portrait, life-sized at that - four people, dressed in ancient lonnean fashion, two of them crowned, the two other young and looking almost exactly like each other if it weren’t for their clothing. Her brain attempted to provide her anything it could remember about Lonna’s history before and at the beginning of the Empire. The wars that the Emperor started. His childhood - his childhood ! The twin sons of Cenaldir !"

– From "A New Vessel".

#tag games #hi yes the reason i never tag anyone in these games is that i don't know if i'm bothering people #hey stray if you're reading this can i tag you in games #i have cheese holes for brains but i can try to remember that #my writing #ok now character tagging time. #eleanor ridgen #the emperor #lumeria de vano #malvern lohsevaar iii #...gabriel doesn't have a specific tag and i don't remember if he has a last name let me check. #god i haven't worked on the story he first appeared in. in years #ok he has a last name #gabriel ulpyr #i have no idea how to pronounce that.

[silenthillmutual]

Hi! Can you talk about Aglaya?

omg hi hello yes i can talk about aglaya!!! though due to the nature of her character this will go into spoiler territory and thus i will be putting it under a readmore so anyone who has not finished playing the patho games can avert their eyes :)

getting this out of the way first i do see her as bi + trans. her having a name that she uses when she attends events such as daniil's lectures is so transgendercore to me. perhaps she hates her given name becuase of her ties to her family and so she will use stella karstlich and wishes she could legally changer her name, but alas! the inquisition.

her first relationship with a named character in the game to me is block. i think they were perhaps married at some point in time, and i think this is because she is one of the dolls the kids have owned the longest and before they played plague at the sandbox they would take the block doll and play house. and they grew to resent each other through this, though her resentment was greater because she had more metalevel awareness of what was going on than block who was content to be a soldier.

next relationship was with yulia her beloved. when she was studying to become an inquisitor. i think they were Roommates(TM) and so much more than that. their relationship sort of naturally fell apart because of the nature of their works being driven to different places, and they said they would keep in touch but did not. and because of her general outlook being pretty grim i think for aglaya it became a very bitter memory and breakup.

i don't think aglaya really focused on relationships much during her time with the inquisition because there were more important things on her mind, including trying to escape the narrative, and she saw so many people for the dolls that they are and that was very, hm, almost unsettling? for her. so when she meets artemy, whose response is "well i don't care that i'm a doll. have you ever thought about that?" she becomes enamoured of him. i think she idealizes him because he embodies an attitude that she can't quite capture for herself. in classic i could see this as being Actual Love but i don't see it that way in P2 at all. in the latter i think she remembers the previous game and has not quite gotten over the heartbreak that comes with not being able to escape the game and so she is hoping that artemy will be able to break her out of this, hence her attempts to flee. and i do not think the feeling is returned so much on artemy's part, in general i think most feelings are not immediately returned from artemy because i do believe he is demiromantic.

in the event that aglaya lives (which i know is not canonical but hypothetically speaking, in an ideal world and such) i see her continuing to have these Feelings about yulia that she cannot deny and trying to determine whether these feelings are mutual or not. and being very conflicted because yulia is already in a relationship (Town On Gorkhon's Official Polycule which is its own mess, the important players here are the Eva-Yulia-Lara triangle). aglaya does not know lara much at this point but she does know about eva because eva continued to visit the cathedral (in a route in which she does not die). eva is polyamorous canonically i believe and i think... perhaps... if we are looking at smashing the routes and games together... i like to think that eva begins to develop a fondness for aglaya. i would like to see more eva/aglaya and aglaya/lara - the latter because i would like to see the two bond over their shared disdain for block.

i also think there is Something Going On between aglaya and aspity. aspity challenges her on her authority and whatnot and aglaya is kind of into it. it's complicated because aspity in general has complex feelings on aglaya (inquisition as an imperial force) and also on townies (lara/aspity being. another thing that is happening in the background. the town as a force of colonialism).

platonically speaking i would love to see more fic written about her favorable opinion of victor. we know she detested nina but how did she come to decide that victor was too good for nina? also i am sure there is more nuance to her familial bond with maria than just "she hates her because of nina". i could see there being something about her wanting to influence maria to not follow in nina's footsteps. perhaps she thinks it isn't too late to "save" maria. [but then this may be answered in the changeling route, i've only played it the once and am replaying it now.] i'd also love to know what hilarity is ensuing with grief hanging out with her in the cathedral in patho 2. at some point in time i assume they are conversing and grief is a funny little person. perhaps they make her laugh, even.

#icarus.txt #path of logic #i am so sorry this took so long i passed out after getting this ask last night<3 #patho spoilers #patho 2 spoilers #tentatively tagging this as: #aglaya lilich

[procrastinatorproject]

Today's snippet (once again back to Agnes's chapter of the Emil-prompt) is fairly short. I'm not sure if I'll stick with this chapter as is or overhaul it for something a little... less angsty 😅 We'll see.

(Snippet after the cut because Agnes is Going Through It (and by "it" I mean memories of tentacles and manipulation) in this story. This section is still fairly harmless, I think? But I'm also way too tired to judge reliably, hence: Readmore)

The zipper finally came loose, but she had pulled on it with so much force that it slipped over the delicate stopper at the hem of her cuff and landed on the desk with a quiet clink. Agnes took a deep breath, staring at her now permanently zipped-up sleeve. So much for getting unstuck…

After a long moment, Emil, his voice infinitely gentle and understanding, said: “If you’d rather not talk to me, perhaps I can recommend someone —”

“I can still feel her in my mind,” Agnes blurted out. The tips of her fingers were turning white where she was pressing them against the tabletop, and her eyes were almost magnetically drawn to the broken zipper pull that was gleaming in the light of Rios’s old lamp.

“The queen?” Emil’s voice was carefully neutral.

“Yes, the queen! Her royal majesty of death-tentacles and manipulation. I can still… feel her. Like there are still nanoprobes crawling all over my brain.”

She half-expected Emil to make some quip about ‘That’s not how nanoprobes work’ or argue about how her current body had never actually been infected by them. But instead he just said: “That sounds very intrusive.”

“You’d think I’d be used to it by now…” Agnes picked up the zipper pull, but it slipped through her jerky fingers almost immediately and skidded over the table. Frustrated, she balled her hands into fists and pressed them together.

Once again, the EMH took his time to reply. “Do you see parallels between what happened with the Borg Queen and with the Admonition?”

Agnes scoffed. “You don’t?”

“I think Commodore Oh forced a mind-meld on you without your consent. But you haven’t actually talked that much about your interactions with the Borg Queen.”

Agnes started to pick at the zip on her sleeve, trying to pry it apart. “It’s not exactly something I want to relive.”

#hm... #yeah i don't know how i feel about this #but it is ridiculously late so it stays for now #agnes jurati #emil (emh) #borg queen #sort of #manipulation #angst #star trek picard season 2 #or rather post-season 2 #star trek picard #lili's writing adventures #writing accountability

[redgoldblue]

tell me about the suits fic

You've Got An Artistry (The Way That You Are With Me)

ooooh. okay so this is the longest thing i've ever potentially abandoned (13.6k) which is why i'm not actually willing to say it's abandoned, especially given it's more than two-thirds done. the problem is that I started writing it so long ago that the writing at the beginning is just. not up to my current standard meaning that I would either have to do a serious amount of editing or accept that I'm posting my pre-2020 writing in, well, 2023 and i Do Not Like either of those things. i DO still like at least some of the fic though. you see my quandary.

It's canon-divergent around the end of s8, Harvey's mother dies half a season earlier than she does in canon and Mike flies back to help him through it and goes to Boston with him and also reveals that he and Rachel are in the middle of divorcing. and this is a long snippet hence readmore but it's my favourite bit of writing from it, from the end of the first chapter, and. well, in case it never actually gets posted-

send me a wip name and i’ll tell you things about it/present a snippet! show and tell!

There is a chill in Penn Station, evening ice creeping underground and weaving dances through the air. The hanging notice board proclaims that there is seven minutes until their train arrives, and that it will continue its inexorable countdown. Mike is standing just a little closer than anyone watching might expect, just enough that they might blink and look again and reassess their opinion of who these men might be, and Harvey can almost use the cold for plausible deniability.

The board says six minutes, and Mike shifts next to him, pushing his hands deeper into his coat.

“When I arrived,” he says, out of the blue. “You said ‘five-hour flight’, straight away. How did you know that?”

“You’re not the only one that can remember things, Spencer,” Harvey retorts, quick as you like, and Mike snorts. He doesn’t need to know that Harvey’s been looking at New York-Seattle flights every week for a year.

The board says five minutes, and a woman sitting on one of the hard benches, wearing a grey wool coat that Harvey knows costs well over $1000, sighs and shrugs it off, revealing a sweatshirt and track pants. Harvey tries not to read too much into the dropping of disguises, tries not to apply a stranger’s vignette to his own life, and fails.

The board says four minutes, and Mike nudges Harvey in the side. “Hey, do you have any change on you?”

Harvey frowns at him. “Why?”

“I want chips. And gummy worms.”

“And you expect me to finance your junk food addiction.”

Mike shrugs. “You can share them?”

“Fine.” He passes the coins to Mike, the brush of their fingers lingering for long seconds after Mike has already walked off towards the vending machine.

The board says three minutes, and a man looks at his phone, shakes his head, and leaves the platform. Half of Harvey wants to follow him, to grab Mike and run back to the apartment and lock the door and turn off the phones. There’s no bad news if there’s no-one to deliver it.

The board says two minutes, and Mike wanders back, dropping two silver coins into his hand and brandishing his bags of vacuous calories. Harvey flips one of the coins into the air, almost without realising, and Mike calls, “Heads!” as it spins in the air, light dancing off it.

“What are we flipping for?” Harvey asks, catching it on the back of his hand and immediately covering it with the other.

“I don’t know. Life? Love? If I win you spend the rest of your life in indentured servitude to me?”

Harvey shakes his head, and smiles, and lifts his hand off. “You win,” he tells Mike, as if it weren’t a foregone conclusion.

The board says one minute, and train lights appear, early, at the end of the tunnel. Harvey doesn’t know if he’d have rather it had been early or late, but it’s not as if he ever had any control over the situation. As they step onto the train, the board seamlessly moves onto the next countdown, for the next set of lives.

#Suits #Marvey #my writing #faorism #mine

[miss-bvnny]

It's my birthday so I can finally be cringe legally. So, here's some bits and pieces of something that I've been playing with off and on since about June. As I sit here and finish off the last of my birthday sushi, I ask myself what I'd regret more: NOT sharing something I'm admittedly proud to have slaved over played around with for the last few months, OR the fact that this basically spells out how I'm a LeFou stan. Oh well. There's only one way to find out.

''One evening, whilst being dragged along on a hunting trip with his self-absorbed meathead of a stepbrother, LeFou gets lost and ends up at a mysterious castle forgotten by time, hiding a secret far more mysterious and peculiar than anything anyone's seen before. But at the same time it is, in every way possible, a tale as old as time.''

There's a whole lotta words to be said about all of this junk, so I'll put it under a readmore for the convenience of all. Please don't be mean to me about my interests.

Sketches 1 and 2 - First (Left) and final (Right) pass of Beast!Nicole

I was very tense in life and about this entire idea when I first started to dip my toes into it, and that definitely translates into my first try at drawing Beast!Nicole. Much like the Beast in the original 1991 Disney classic that has luckily never been turned into an ugly abomination of a live action cash grab remake, I tried to mix several animals in her design. She's got the lower half and tail of a wolf, upper torso of a lion, and her head...where it gets messy. I've always loved the designs of the hyenas in The Lion King, so I drew inspiration from Shenzi for her neck and part of her head. Her mouth/muzzle however is based on some of those cursed photoshops of horses with wolf teeth:

I can remember I'd JUST come back from seeing a special showing of Kung Fu Panda 2 the morning I drew the very first one of Nicole, and I've always LOVED Boss Wolf. I think you can see just a BIT of inspiration from his body shape looking at her. It probably comes across a bit better in the final when I cleaned her up somewhat. I hate looking at that first one so much, actually. It's so unforgivably clunky. BUT I did get the hang of her with time, hence the second pass. Wanna know a fun fact? Those colors were originally just something I kinda slapped together as placeholders. But...I grew pretty attached to them, so they stayed. There is...almost a month between her initial test and her final, btw.

Sketch 2 - Expression test/me having some fun

Yeahhh there was a time when I had no idea how far I was gonna actually try and go with this stuff, so I just kinda...played with it. Beast!Nicole is a treat to draw, so I jumped at any excuse to sketch her. Where the Beast in the movie had to learn to be bit more of a gentleman and control his temper, Nicole is...prone to impatience and outbursts under extreme stress. In this AU, she was forced to take the throne at a young age after the death of the previous king and queen. Going from a teenager to a ruler almost overnight weighed heavily on her, and she's got a short fuse. The night o the party in which the enchantress cursed her was a result of her breaking down and not thinking. I know there's debate in some places about whether or not the enchantress was right to curse an 11 year old prince for denying entry to a stranger, so...I tried to make this version a bit more...ambiguous on who's at fault. Maybe Nicole was being hasty, and maybe the enchantress was wrong to condemn a teenager to Eternal Fursuit just for trying to abide by stranger danger rules. IDK.

Side note - I can't help but imagine that in her Beast form, Nicole sounds like April Winchell. Think prime angry Sylvia from Wander Over Yonder.

Sketch 3 - Smiledog.jpg ''And give him an elegant, ladylike smile!!''

I wanted her to be unsettling. LITERALLY so unsettling. She;s got a horse mouth with canine teeth, I can't imagine that puts a warm feeling in anyone's heart at all. I also just really wanted to redraw that smile scene as an excuse to draw a lot of teeth.

Remember how I said Nicole's got BAD trust issues? Most of that comes from the memory of having suitors, possible consorts, and foreign princes trying to woo and flirt. They were suffocating, and it left her with a lot of lasting bad impressions. Wouldn't call it outright sexism on her part, just...caution based on experience. To the point where the rest of the enchanted objects heard that only true love's kiss could break the spell and they all went ''Hahaha we are so fucked'' Took them forever to even begin to fathom the idea that this LeFou guy MIGHT maybe be the one to break it???

But...in the end, they work together because...they're not typical of what the world expects from them. In MY headcanon, which ignores and disowns any and all alleged ''Live action remakes from 2017'' that may or may not include ''Josh Gad'', LeFou is Gaston's yougner step brother. A headcanon, I might add, that was inspired by @wreckham and their Balto rewrite where Star is Steele's younger brother. What does that have to do with Gaston and LeFou? Well:

A weird hill to die on headcanon-wise, but I'll take it. Anyway, Nicole is a huge terrifying beast. A practical manifestation of how awkward and out of place she felt as a young princess trying so hard to fit into a role she ascended to before her time (Honestly, Nicole is just Twilight Sparkle's bookworm tendencies and lack of social skills mixed with the intimidating aura of Vitani and Sergeant Calhoun. Kiiiiind of a mess). She isn't small and lovely and fair like a young princess should be. MEANWHILE, LeFou is the young brother to the ''town hero'' and...that's kinda hard to measure up to. He's not the huge hulking man that's traditionally sought after. *COUGH* *COUGH*

They sort of...find a connection over this topic. Nicole likes him because he's nothing like the rich stuffed shirts that always flexed their looks and wealth to try and win her heart, and LeFou likes that she doesn't care if he's not a big and tough guy. Every Furry girlboss needs a short king.

Sketch 4 - ''THAT HURTS!!''

TBH the thing about this was...there WERE a few scenes I felt...REALLY obligated to try. The Ballroom scene WAS one of those, but unfortunately you won't see that one, since its over tumblr's photo size limit. Kinda happy about that, since it looks...less than great. Where was I? Oh yeah. Uhhhh this is one of my favorite scenes from the movie so I ABSOLUTELY wanted to give it a shot with these two. Sketches 4-6 are all drawn directly into screenshots from the movie because I was NOT about to try and redraw those backgrounds. God this movie is GORGEOUS but soooo intricate and i am only a little creature who scares easily. Also, I had OTHER things that were hard to draw that I was more focused on. Wanna know what those things were?! LEFOU. I don't know if I'm bad at diverse faces or maybe he's just genuinely a little tricky, but GOD I still have a hard time drawing him. Assume every sketch of LeFou here in this post took me three hours minimum. That's why most of these are of him and Nicole. My deal with myself was that if I at least gave him a good college try, I could ALSO have fun drawing Nicole, who is WAY easier. I mean I'm...getting a LITTLE better at him, but still. He was NOT east the first few times.

Nicole's snarly face in this one was so fun to draw. I looked at a lot of Nala during the chase scene with Pumbaa, and Sabor fighting Tarzan to get her teeth right. Hilariously, I also looked at Steele.

Sketch 5 - ''It's obvious there's a spark between them..''

''You are a strange sight

Some new kind of wonder

With good hidden under

I'm sure that it's true.''

A theme song??? Is for me??? Is for my silly little drawings???

Sketch 6 - Nicole's hour in the fursuit is over

THat's right I KEPT her in the dress for the final fight in this AU. Why??? I DON'T KNOW I wanted to. Maybe it was a reference to the ''running from a T Rex in high heels'' scene in Jurassic World. Maybe it was me trying to convey how Nicole has finally come to own the ''princess'' she never thought she could be. I DON'T KNOW. OH. and by the way. her dress is loosely inspired by the one @Johannathemad drew here

Sketch 7 - A most peculiar Mademoiselle

I was looking at these by @davidgilson and they were SO cute I....KINDA wanted to give something similar to it a shot. That tiny LeFou is going to make me fucking scream he is SO small

You guys wanna know a really embarrassing fact? So...LeFou is voiced by Jesse Corti, right? Who ALSO provided the signing voice for Charlie in All Dogs Go To Heaven 2. So....AHEM and COUGH maybe Ive been listening to these a lot while I draw LeFou and Nicole. What of it.

Um....that's all for now, but....Hopefully there might be some more on the horizon. I've been...kinda burnt out and tired as a result of some work drama lately, but...I have more sketches and ideas with this AU I'd like to do. It's been...really fun to play with, honestly. i had a GREAT birthday tho, and...I think it was more than appropriate that I shared this today <3

#they most certainly do NOT have a theme song list. Why would you even ask that. #beauty and the beast #neato draws #neato fanart #neato ocs #BATB AU

[ayliffe]

bitching about how people sometimes discuss relationships on here. readmore because this post is going to be so so annoying (plus depictions of emotional manipulation? maybe?)

i understand why people are speaking out against the ?transactionalisation of relationships, and i get it — it’s cold to shut down a friend because you personally can’t be bothered to deal with their feeling kind of sad or whatever; it’s cold not to help ease another person’s suffering in the name of “setting healthy boundaries”. behaviour like that is symptomatic of some sort of problem.

but i do have a problem. i’ve always had difficulties setting boundaries, and many times that’s turned into trying to support someone who needed more help than i could possibly give, to both our detriments. presumably, this isn’t what all these posts decrying what the concept of emotional labour has become are about, but i’m always left to wonder what the right thing to do in situations like that is. are boundaries important until they aren’t? does true friendship necessitate talking someone out of suicide every other night, even as your own mental health slips?

because they don’t want to talk to anyone else about it. they chose you. they trust you. and it’s not like they’ve said they’ll harm themselves if you fuck off — in fact, they’ve said they’ll understand if you abandon them because they know they’re too much — but the suggestion is there from the subject and the mere fact that you’re the only one they feel they can talk to about any of it.

and obviously this isn’t the majority of relationships, and i assume this isn’t what’s meant by letting your friends discuss their trauma — but because it’s been a pattern with some of my relationships, when someone starts talking about anything too heavy too often, i’m immediately on edge. i don’t shut them down, but i’m on edge. and i really don’t know what to do about that. i have no interest in sanitising my relationships, but i also don’t want to be sucked into yet another one of… whatever the paragraph above was.

the ideal solution would be to learn to set boundaries — except when does it become appropriate to set boundaries? when does it stop being selfish and cruel? i see comments to the effect of “you can’t set boundaries with other people just to save yourself from being inconvenienced: in any relationship, you are going to be inconvenienced, because that’s what relationships are about” and sure! i get that! and of course there’s a difference between being inconvenienced and being taken advantage of.

i’ve said “i assume” a lot in this post. i want to give people pushing back against setting boundaries for one’s own convenience the benefit of the doubt, because i know my own experiences are colouring how i’m perceiving messages like that.

the thing is, though, tumblr being The Mental Illness Site, i wonder if actually, some of these messages are referring to cases like the one i describe. i’ve seen… jokes? relatable posts? about how everyone here has had to talk their best friends out of suicide as teenagers, and clearly i’m no stranger to doing that. but if that’s the case, if we are including situations like that… why? being repeatedly asked to do something like that shouldn’t be considered part of a healthy relationship, especially for someone who likely doesn’t have the tools to be able to help, and certainly not to be able to do so regularly. all it does is harm both participants.

but of course, that’s just speculation. i’ve been burnt by not setting boundaries, so now i’m overly wary about messages like that. i get annoyed by people making clearly unrelated things about their own issues, and here i am likely doing the same (hence making my own post about this rather than adding commentary to one of the ones i’m complaining about), it’s just… yeah.

tl;dr: don’t love seeing posts implying setting boundaries hurts relationships!

#heartless bitch hour with hugh