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legobiwan · 6 months

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Whumptober Salvage: Episode 1

I obviously did not do Whumptober this year as my October schedule was INSANE. Now that I have a good percentage of my life back, I want to make up for this, as I have some cool ideas and I need the challenge of writing on a schedule.

I can't guarantee that I can produce something every day, but I'm damn well going to try. Caveat that these shorts (ha, "shorts," they said, laughing) will be less polished than my usual work (much less edited, if at all), as I'm using this as an exercise to get my writing back in shape before tackling my larger projects.

Today's theme: Forced to Choose

Today's author commentary: This was supposed to be a short. It ended up just over 2,000 words.

Warnings: Major character death

~~~~~~~~~~~

Bleck is dead.

They’re out of options, out of time. The last gambit with the Pure Hearts was just enough to break through Super Dimentio’s shield, to make him vulnerable to attack. (It, not him, Mario reminds himself as he bounds forward, executing a messy somersault that delivers him a mere breath from the angry slam of a gargantuan boot that would see him flattened in an instant).

It was a bizarre piece of irony that the loyalty of Bleck’s minions could resurrect the Pure Hearts for one last encore performance, that the same people who attempted multiple times to kill Mario and his friends, the ones who ushered in the end of all worlds without a second thought, the ones who corrupted his little brother -

If they live through this, they’ll get no thanks from his mouth.

But that’s a thought for later, for when the dust had settled and the worlds remained standing. (The worlds would remain standing. Mario won’t let it end any other way).

Mario sprints towards a rectangular pillar, kick stepping his way to the top. He’s certain to plant a foot directly into the grotesque likeness of Dimentio’s smiling mask as he clambers upwards, landing on the narrow platform just in time to hit the decks as another one of Super Dimentio’s missiles flies over his head.

Too close, he thinks, shoving himself upright on trembling legs.

They need to end this now. Peach is waving her parasol, trying to attract the attention of the enormous creature as Bowser booms from behind, ricocheting from platform to platform until he’s near enough to unleash a torrid stream of fire aimed at the back of Super Dimentio’s head.

It’s enough to send the creature staggering, if that’s what the spastic, jutting movements of the sickly elongated neck could be called. But Bowser’s retreat is too sluggish, the Koopa not quick enough to avoid the retaliatory swing of an iron foot to the gut that sends him hurtling across the blank room, Bowser crashing into the far wall with a thunderous roar.

There’s no time to think, the small opening possibly their last hope of survival. Mario acts on years of well-honed instinct as he summons Carrie and Cudge in quick succession, riding the little boxy platform straight into Super Dimentio’s face, rearing back with Cudge to deliver a devastating blow to the bridge of the gigantic monster’s nose.

The resulting shriek is like a thousand sharpened nails being drawn down a chalkboard, a screeching static that melts with the creature in real time, feet dissolving into bubbling, swirling puddles of acid, legs less collapsing than imploding, a house of skeletal cards upended, each joint falling to the ground with a hollow bounce.

A line of tiny, fire breathing molecules eat their way up two-toned smock and white ruffles, leaving a disembodied neck and head to float freely over the empty floor for a long second before the creature’s head comes smashing down to earth with a horrid splat, the force of the collision cracking the monster’s jaw in two, the upper portion of the head now unhinged from its base, the gaping maw open at a wide, unnatural angle.

Mario slides to the edge of a crumbling platform, the echoes of Dimentio’s mask now wiped from the edifice. Gingerly, he hops to the floor, limping through the smoke-shrouded scene to join the Princess and Bowser, who are keeping a safe distance from the now-malformed mockery of his brother’s face.

“Is…is it over?” Peach asks, wheezy. She puts a hand on Mario’s shoulder. He’s not certain if it’s a gesture of comfort or evidence of the toll the battle has taken on her. “Did we -”

“Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

Terrors seizes in Mario’s chest as the decapitated head of his brother laughs, the unhinged jaw popping and creaking with each pulsating syllable. Peach’s grip tightens on Mario’s shoulder, her fingers digging into sore, bruised flesh as she lets out a horrified gasp. Behind him, Mario can feel the heat rising from Bowser’s fiery exhalations, the Koopa grinding his fangs together as he lets loose a dangerous, guttural growl.

“You think this is the end?” Dimentio’s voice bounces off every surface of the high-ceilinged room in a nightmarish symphony of sing-song mockery. “This isn’t finished. The Count is dead. And there is only one means of escape.”

The jaw detaches even further, the upper piece of the head bending back with a tortured squeal of viscera and metal. There’s a low rumbling, the earth beginning to tremble beneath Mario’s feet. All at once, the head of Super Dimentio lets out a rusted, phlegmatic bark that seems to emanate from the invisible depths of a diseased chest, and with it, expels a soft, human-like object in a spray of gooey, greenish fluid.

Mario’s heart stops in his chest. “Luigi,” he whispers, breaking free of Peach’s iron grip to sprint towards the prone form of his brother.

Please be alive. You have to be alive. Oh my God, please. I’ll do anything.

Relief floods past spiky adrenaline as Luigi begins to stir, Mario covering the last distance between the two of them by sliding on his knees across the smooth, marble floors, coming to rest at his brother’s side.

“Luigi?” He’s pawing at his brother’s chest, his legs, his face, Mario doesn’t know what he’s looking for or what he's even doing aside from trying to account for all the little bits and pieces that make up his brother, to hold Luigi together by sheer force of will, as if he were a broken vase just waiting to fall to apart.

“Mario?” His brother’s grey-green eyes focus on his own, the dreamy, half-hypnotized look now melted away in favor of sharpened anxiety. Luigi grabs Mario’s hands in his own, using his brother to leverage himself up to a sitting position.

“Mario, what happened? Where are we, why am I - “

The words die in Luigi’s throat as his gaze lands on his own bloated, distorted image, jaw jackknifed away from the upper part of his skull, blackened moustache now seeping with a gooey phlegm streaked with crimson, the wide, unblinking eyes criss-crossed in impossible directions.

The ground trembles again, this time with enough violence to send a set of pillars toppling into a pile of broken concrete, the linear shapes and angles of Bleck’s castle seeping trails of pustulent white down the dark walls of the chamber.

“Oh my God,” Luigi rasps, shuddering.

“Ciao, Luigi,” the bodiless voice of Dimentio greets.

Luigi squeezes his eyes shut, grabbing at the sides of his head with both hands. “No. No, no, no. This can’t be real. It didn’t happen. None of it happened. You can’t be real!” he screams, bringing down a shower of debris from the cracked ceiling.

“Careful, mon ami,” Dimentio chides with a small chuckle. “This reality seems to be contingent on your mood.”

Mario wraps a protective arm around his little brother. “It’s over, Dimentio. You lost.”

“Is it, though?” The mouth of the monster has stopped moving, frozen in a gaping expression of demented awe. Only the eyes remain animated, dark, swirling irises pinballing off the walls of jaundiced sclera in a chaotic polyrhythm.

“One last surprise! Ah ha ha ha ha. I may be dead but the Chaos Heart is not. A piece of it lives on, and while it does, nothing can stop the end of all worlds!”

A thunderous crackle booms from outside the castle, the room, reality itself teetering to the side as chunks of marble and plaster cascade to the floor, revealing an open wound in the ceiling through which the violet eye of the Void swirls, tempestuous.

Luigi grips his brother’s shoulders, his voice high with panic. “Mario, what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to stop this, Luigi,” Mario grits. “Right here. Right now.” He turns towards the head of Super Dimentio. Black skin is peeling from its cheeks, an ear dangling to the side by a single string of flesh. “Alright you bastard. You’re obviously done for. Where’s the last part of the Chaos Heart?”

“Where else?” Dimentio laughs, the teeth of the monster now crumbling to dust one by one. “Inside its perfect vessel. Just as it was foretold in the Dark Prognosticus.”

Reality phases in and out of a sickening double, a photographic negative overlaid with a collapsing present. Peach and Bowser scramble over to join Mario and his brother, Bowser shielding the brothers from the worst of the falling detritus with his shell, Peach unfurling her parasol, situating it as best she can over both her and Bowser’s forms.

“Whatever it is, Red,” he growls, “we gotta do it fast.”

Mario nods. “What’s the vessel?” he yells over the rising clangor, pushing his brother further into Bowser’s protective embrace.

“You mean who is the vessel,” Dimentio cackles through half a disintegrating face. “It’s quite simple. Destroy the man in green.”

The man in…

Denial tears through Mario’s chest.

“Liar!” he screams, jumping to his feet, oblivious to the hailstorm of matter pelting his body. “You’re a fucking liar!”

There’s no answer to be had, the last physical remnants of Dimentio carried off by the whirling Void, the space the head had occupied now a congealed puddle of tarry emerald.

“Shit!” Mario yells, leaping out of the way of a massive piece of scaffolding. Something grabs at the straps of his overalls, pulling him under one of the last standing arches, bright, fuchsia lightning setting the room afire with a violent crackle.

“Lou, what are you doing?” Mario demands, shoving his brother further into the shadowy alcove. “You could have been killed!”

His brother is silent, gaze fixed on the ashen floor. Outside, the tumult crescendos to a booming, percussive explosion, rattling the very foundations of the castle. Small wisps of violet are beginning to reach down from the heavens, each eddy scraping a few more atoms of reality with it.

Luigi locks eyes with his brother, biting his lip.

“Mario - “

“No.” He knows what his brother is about to say. What he’s going to ask Mario to do. He grabs his brother by the back of the neck, pushing their foreheads together. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Mario.” His brother cups either side of his face, a movement so gentle Mario thinks he might cry. “I remember it all. Everything. Let me - “ Luigi’s voice cracks. “I need to make it right.”

Something awful crawls up Mario’s throat, a tight, squeezing thing wrapping vice-like fingers round his vocal cords.

“It wasn’t your fault, Lou,” he manages to force out through a tangle of emotion.

Luigi gives a small sob. “I still did it, though.”

A low moan sounds from the sky, a deep, bass drone not voiced by any creature of this existence, as if it were the fundamental tone of all of reality.

Mario slides his face into the crook of his brother’s shoulder. “I just got you back,” he croaks, wet. “I can’t - I can’t - “

“You can’t let the world end because of me,” Luigi says, petting the back of his brother’s head before gently guiding Mario to meet him eye to eye.

“Let me be the hero for once.” Luigi gives a watery smile. “I’ve got this one,” he says, giving Mario’s cheek a fond pat before turning to walk into the maelstrom.

Mario stands frozen as he watches his brother walk away, his thoughts and emotions encased in a sticky amber, his body either unwilling or unable to put a stop to what is happening. As his brother reaches the edge of the threshold between safety and annihilation, he pauses to look over his shoulder.

“I love you, bro,” Luigi says.

All Mario can do is give a simple wave back.

It will have to be enough.

Luigi huffs out a small laugh, waving back in kind. “Ciao, Mario.”

His brother disappears into the rainbow-hued whirlwind, the world coalescing into a single point of darkness.

#hello there #writing #the eternal struggle #luigi #mario #bowser #peach #dimentio #major character death #spm au ending #the sad au where dimentio is just a LITTLE more sadistic than he is in the game #lightly edited writing #you've been warned #also my prompts are a mix of the this whumptober and some alternates #aka i'm doing what i want hahahahha

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rainymoodlet · 11 months

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ladies of the wastes — the vault dweller, the lone wanderer, the courier, the sole survivor ☢️

#ts4 #ts4 screenshots #ts4 cas #ts4 edit #ts4 fallout #ts4 LAZINESS kdfhds #aka very lightly edited shots of my ladies bc my hyperfixations have been jumping around like mad - expect some kmik tzrs bc the stress of #dialogue is making me very avoidant :)))#but yes!!! these are my ladiesss of all my playthroughs! i refuse to play these games as a man dfjhdsk except for nukaworld gage deserved #a boyfriend #from the top!!!#virna saint (32) savior of vault 13 and subsequent outcast who boinked set for info and is living it up with the super mutants #eva howard (19) turned the wrong way out of vault 101 and made it to megaton two weeks after wandering around #she travels with jericho and rex #vivan leer (27) my beloved courier and my favorite character of all time - gladly blew up the sierra madre to get back to her soulmate raul #and rita nazarov (41) who is dating nick valentine bc of COURSE SHE IS and whose sole (ha) goal is finding her son and kicking kellogg's as #she doesn't like the institute but she loves her synths and her railroad name is 'whisper'#i have clear vivian bias here but she's genuinely my favorite sooo #sorry these are TRASH i am so lazy fdjhfsjdk #im very stressed abt the conversations in the next few kmik scenes so i'm... avoiding them bc i suck :))))#but there will be more soon!#sorry im wasting a blog notif on my dumb sims sdkfhsdkfj #THEY ALL BASICALLY HAVE THE SAME FACE IM SORRY I HAVE ONE BASE BARBIE I EDIT

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tevura · 6 months

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He's sooo babygirl

#bg3 #astarion #im considering like lightly editing screenshots before i post them...... like some hard edges r like bad. like in the last image especially #also i cant rlly rely on reshade to provide like excellent quality... like its good as a base but i need to like tweak it a bit

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ablizmal · 5 months

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watari’s internally all like “why doesn’t L ever get out and get to know other people?” when he didn’t do SHIT about L avoiding socializing with others when he was a kid.

fucker just watched L and didn’t interfere or help at ALL except when it came to molding L into the justice system’s greatest weapon

#lizzie screams #cherry cola chaos #i’m using ‘‘justice’’ very lightly here (i hate the government)#i really wanna tag said fucker in question but i know there’ll be some people who go ‘‘it’s not that deep’’ and ‘‘watari isn’t a terrible #person. you’re the only making him like this’’ and it’s like. yeah i’m making this. but isn’t it so much more literarily interesting this #way?? hmm??? do you not like intriguing mental occupations??? (i’m too tired to find a better way to say that)#edit: EHHHHHHHHH fuck it #death note #watari #quillsh wammy

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elite-amarys · 2 months

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Unix training status update: It seems it is able to change the color display of its neon displays. They were in the midst of a very intense play session with Rollo when this was captured, so I have theorized that this is an indication of mood. In this case, I would confidently say the pink display is indicative of excitement or an otherwise heightened state.

I will continue to monitor the color display more closely moving forward. I believe it only changes in response to extreme moods, and seems likely that it will stay within the red section of the color spectrum. Regardless, this is a fascinating development. I am hopeful that it means Unix is truly starting to relax and trust myself and the team, even despite the time off I had to take to recover.

#pkmn irl #iron tread lightly #//one day I'll actually take some photos of iron treads in game. Until then you'll take my poorly edited photos and LIKE them/j

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fvneraljag · 2 years

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guys it’s bug summoning

i went back to my 2019 theoryposting and realized they've planned this for a WHILE. but bridging the bug stuff with the exterminator stuff has me buzzing. swarming if you will. —>

july 22, 2019: gerard posts this photo with the caption "Bug summoning"

gerard also changes bio to "bug summoning"

aug 29, 2019; sept 7, 2019; sept 24, 2019:

gerard posts pictures of spiders

sept 4, 2019: frank also posts picture of a spider

I'm unsure of whether frank's post was related, but it pinged me in 2019 to theorize the idea of them summoning or resurrecting the danger days spider. note also that september is when they contacted the angel statue photographer to organize the return picture, so we KNOW they were thinking about symbols, cryptic easter eggs, etc, ahead of the oct 31 return

time goes on and they use lots of witch sigil symbolism, etc, so there is less talk about bug symbols. however, the idea of “a summoning” and resurrection is a throughline theme

fast forward to now. gerard just dressed up in an exterminator outfit — please see this post by @loveshack

exterminating the killjoys, of course, was a huge part of the danger days concept

why use the exterminator costume? b/c mcr is brought back from decay and yet also destroying what was left, maybe? also fits in with their ethos of always, always changing things up between eras yet being self-referential.

the extermination concept fits with the end of all things. the symbolism of bugs, rats, rot, flies, etc.

for more on that please check out this album theory from @girlgerard

plus lyrics like

to me the “altar” is a potential reference to the “may death never stop you” cover

they stumbled through their last crusade (bamboozle performance) — and wonder whether they’ll welcome their extinction in the morning rays (a vigil, on birds and glass)

while they want to lay in the foundations of decay, they found that they needed to come back (“get up coward”). we are the swarming, calling for them to return. as mikey said, it worked.

our swarming/calling them back is maybe best seen in “a summoning” where we are shown a hotel buella muerte keychain with today’s date — which wasn’t the original mk date but *is* the anniversary of their final concert before breaking up. it could totally be a coincidence that they brought out the costume on this anniversary but def is interesting!

tldr: it’s all making sense now

#plz reblog or add if y’all have stuff I worked hard on this <333 #my chemical romance #mcr #theories #AHHH #blood suit look #lightly edited this post after some folks pointed out the mk date got postponed and likely we shouldn’t read as much into it

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finallygaycoldones · 6 months

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Tanner “I used to share a bed with my best boy friend in hs” Smallant versus Cj “I’ve already kissed enough boys” Ya aka unstoppable force meets immovable object and they’re both kissing

#JOKES JOKES but…they compell me #it’s a little crazy how often Cj was just sprinkle in some *~lightly fruity~* energy in his tweets but nowhere else??#meanwhile anytime someone even slightly suggests Tanner isn’t straight he LEAPS to clarify…and then tells a story like this #if I weren’t brain dead when it came to editing I could make such a powerful ‘Sus CJ moments comp’ like he’s a king for that tbh #poketuber brain rot #ceej 🥴#smanthony 👅#CallJant #LOOK @its-stupidhours I’m using the ship name!!!! thank you for giving me a permatag that will actually reach ppl 🙏🏻

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ready-set-shenanigans · 3 months

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A sorta half ref for sterling (+ a closer look for the eyes, cuz im happy how it turned out)

I cant believe i forgot his freckles oTL

#mattie arts #oc: sterling #*head in hands* its too late to go edit it in cuz trying to save it again was already a pain to leap thru #but his freckles are mostly under his eyes and upper bridge of his nose. theres a lil on the outer of his eyes too tho #and some patches around his shoulders/ lightly around his neck #smh on forgetting a big detail but there was a lot going on while i was drawing

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outw4rd · 9 months

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guess who just found out about wind singing!!!!!!!!! i have never felt so in tune with the world.

#this is some rough improv that was lightly eq'd and i edited out a portion that sounded like shit really poorly #musicman me #music #wind singing #guitar #outward.avi #art #fav

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moregraceful · 10 months

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My taste in THC is your face | Men's Hockey RPF | Rated M | 1.8k | Adam Raška/Tristen Robins

The first time it happens, they are crossfaded after the Halloween party, collapsed against each other on their shitty too-small couch, and watching the female Ghostbusters.

One thing abt me, I'm ALWAYS gonna find a way to put someone on Caltrain. (They do not have sex on Caltrain.)

On AO3.

#unfortunate birdcage fanfictions #i posted this and went to bed and immediately forgot i posted it until i checked my ao3 email today lol #they're stupid. they're SO stupid. but they love each other #lightly edited from what i posted here...mainly fixed some sentence structure and leaned into the montana pain

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stinkrascal · 11 months

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Gah those who say simblr are dead should go and consume the hundreds of posts by storytellers or game players and get excited or attached so they can look forward to updates. It’s unfair that because new content isn’t being continually uploaded daily it’s deemed as dead. There’s also so many people who post text updates about their days or lives. There’s so much more life in this community besides a new edit being dropped daily to look at! Or go find new blogs! Get out of your comfort zone guys! This community also has waves of activeness and quietness which is normal for the summer time. (Sorry, I’m not ranting at you, I’m hoping that maybe people will realize that this is nothing new and to stop worrying themselves over it.)

i totally agree anon! tbh i do have sympathy for those who say this, because i totally remember having this same concern in earnest years ago when simblr first had a massive dropoff from the activity i was used to seeing in 2018. but it's kinda funny now, after so many years have passed and people are still saying the same things about how simblr is dying when it very obviously hasn't died yet haha. this is just the level of activity it's been at for a while now, but that doesn't mean it's dying, it's just being maintained at a different rate than it was back at simblr's peak activity (which again imo i'd say that was around 2018). there's always people posting on some corner of simblr about something, whether that's story posts, gameplays, edits, or even just answering asks or making text posts abt their days. you just gotta explore your options and follow as many simblrs as you can yk!! it's unreasonable to assume ppl are gonna post "content" every day (remember that this is just our hobby and not a full time job lol), but the community is still definitely here nevertheless

#jade answers #anonymous #i mean simblr is MY full time job but that is another story #back in the day when editing wasn't as huge of a thing and ppl mostly just posted lightly edited gameplay pics #it was a lot easier to maintain consistent activity bc everyone was constantly posting stuff bc it takes 2 seconds to make the posts #but now there's more focus on storytelling (not everywhere but in a lot of places on simblr) so steps r more involved #and it takes longer to roll out one post #plus we're all just getting older and a lot of us have new responsibilities that we didn't have in the golden age of simblr lol #but that doesn't mean it's dead! new ppl will always come up #and some oldies will always be around. *waves* hi that's me

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