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#iz the trial
l-ii-zz · 3 months
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Two seconds before disaster.
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ms-scarletwings · 6 months
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On Defective Irkens
“It is theorized that Tak may also be an Irken defect because-“
“Say guys do you think Skoodge is defective? He did a thing he wasn’t told to do once do you suppose-“
“Service Drone Bob's contempt for the Tallest is extremely abnormal, even for most defective Irkens…”
“Hints of the comms officer being a defective are seen when-“
Ohhh mauling the fan wiki writers grr biting biting thrashing and then turning around to the rest of you before I’m done, you bet, for I have sat and listened for over 12 years of leaps and speculations of this sort and now I’m now one of the ones who gets to have what the cool kids these days call a hot take on the matter.
By the end of this I’M going to bring up and expose who I actually think may be the only other defective Irken(s) in the show besides Zim, whom I’m aghast I haven’t seen anyone suggest before.
But before anything else, I want to front one preassumption center and loud.
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It took me a long time to guess at why very few people can ever seem to get on the same page of what it actually means to call an Irken defective. Implicitly, the bulk of what we are given is that something can be wrong with a member of this species, and Zim is our prime and singular clear example of that. So there’s a ton of trying to find patterns between Zim’s behavior and that of other Irken characters. Weirdly (to me), a lot of people have, in their efforts, chalked the status up to a sense of rebelliousness or insubordination- a defectiveness in the manner of D&D illithids, stomping out disloyal break-aways from the collective hive mind with punitive wrath. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cool concept, and it’s definitely closer to my opinion at least than the comparisons to real life mental disorders or disabilities. Not knocking the comfort or the enthusiasm, obviously.
From my view of the canon, I hope it’s at least apparent to other fans that “defective” isn’t some empirical measurement or status to Irkens. Look at the way they determine the defects from normal society. IRL, if I have a faulty device on my hands, there’s some way out there to tell me in a clear cut fashion if there’s a problem and what exactly it is. If it’s code, it can be scanned and debugged. If it’s mechanical, something can be seen, fixed physically. Most organic health problems are only different in the complexity of the matter, but the entire purpose of medical research is to come close as we can to bridging that gap. In Irk’s people, that line is rapidly becoming one long smear of wet chalk. I’m going on like this because if defective paks were akin to hardware actually being damaged, as Purple had put it, it doesn’t make as much sense that they are neither “fixed” nor given real, concrete diagnostics. The only way we know of that the aliens are tested in a since on this merit is by existence evaluations. And existence evaluations are anything but empirical, impartial events. They’re worlds more political and cultural than clinical.
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Digest the terms we keep seeing all around the concept: Innocent, justice, trial/evaluation, Judgementia, these are terms of judicial courts and moral weight and sentencing. In effective practice,
Irk labels defects by what one does, not by what one is.
Yet, defection is presented as if that’s not the case, and there are reasons for that. Reasons that reinforce the current power structures and promote what its leadership has decided is healthy for the broader society. When Zim was merely re-encoded from invader status to food service work, it was a more secluded evaluation, presumably done on Irk. His only seen witnesses then were the Tallests and the single control brain dishing the judgement. His existence evaluation, on the other hand, rings more similarly to the IRL historical practice of literal “show trials”. Show trials were something that existed way less for the actual crimes of the accused and so much more for their audience, which, show trials are always for an audience. Three main points about them off the Wikipedia cuff:
• Typically, the defendant of such has already been determined to be guilty (oftentimes of completely fabricated transgressions), and the trial serves mostly to make a massive public spectacle and warning of the accused.
• They tend to focus on retributive punishment over correction. The disproportional brutality and lack of mercy is often the point.
• Their goals are propagandistic in nature, and there’s many notable examples to be found in the history of Nazi Germany, the USSR, and in witch trials across the world (because it was never just Salem).
A formality? Well, that much they couldn’t have more brazenly admitted to. Retribution? There’s hardly a more absolute punitive sentence I could craft up over obliteration PLUS Damnatio Memoariae. And as for the degree of spectacle, I will let you make your own observation here.
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Believe it or not, the part where my comparisons along this line end with Existence Evaluations is that their standard for taking place isn’t actually this cartoonishly oppressive one that some fans try to make it out to be. In “The Trial”, Zim was not having his data read for some binary is/is not determination… he was having his experiences and actions interpreted by how much damage he has done against the Armada. He said it himself, that hotseat is reserved for criminals. Likely outright traitors and maniacs. Those who have given cause to alert the brains to a genuine existential threat to their civilization and who have repeatedly failed every opportunity given to redeem themselves.
Defective doesn’t just mean “different” to Irk. We’ve hardly seen an exploration of what the median Irken example even is, because the more we see of any one of these characters, the more they show us their eccentric uniqueness and will. Yes, Irkens are authoritarian; yes they’re over-militarized; yes, they’re a supremacist breed aligned under one ruling military… but listen, they are not literally The Borg, or illithids.
The biggest victims of this government itself are those races it colonizes. Average civilians on the other hand, they get to largely enjoy all the vices and pains and indulgences of hyper-space-capitalism. The height-ocracy may limit their opportunities, but even the lowest drones among them are supposedly hired into their positions in return for wages. Irkens are pretty selfish, but in a rugged individualism sense. It’s a dystopia of atomization instead of collectivization. If everyone had agreed that “defective” had anything to do with arrogance, free will, or an ability to feel one’s sense of self worth, no one would ever be pointing to Skoodge as a possible example. That guy’s the poster boy for what it means to be a “tool” in the derogatory sense. I’m not forgetting that he technically never even left his job. He was fired and more or less forced into hiding, and he’s still not even that perturbed over the whole thing.
Moreover, it also takes some extreme acts of harm to justify such a trial. Real harm- not rebellious attitude or even disrespect to authority. The control brains and the tallests alone get to define that threshold, and neither Tak’s/Zim’s insubordination nor Bob’s audacity concerned them enough for a ticket to Judgementia. In fact, they really don’t seem that bothered at all by deserters and those that abandon their encoded function. Tak is likely to be merely the responsibility of her janitorial squadron, the same way that enforcing Zim’s banishment was the responsibility of his Frylord. Because Irk actually does have standards of justice and layers of bureaucracy to work within when it comes to dealing with true malice. Small fry problems are for the lower rungs of the ladder to handle, until they become a higher priority by necessity. Incompetency alone isn’t a crime, either. The go-to punishment for failure in one function is demotion to a lower position. These are the only Irkens formally not allowed to change jobs, making what they do a kind of communal service or forced labor sentencing. Remember how Tak’s motivation for leaving Dirt wasn’t solely dissatisfaction with the grunt labor? Remember how she kept justifying her actions by the logic of fairness and setting things right? Not to mention how she fully made the Tallest aware of what she was up to and how her plan was well crafted enough to probably work out exactly like she wanted. Tak is utterly as loyal to the empire and competent as any invader. She was genuinely just dealt a shitty hand, and her response to it is at least understandable.
She even went to great lengths to identify and specifically target Zim and to use a planet that otherwise had less than no value to the armada’s operations. She is a great foil to Zim, but I can’t see how she’s any bit defective, only full of rage that she was screwed over by the actions of a real disgrace to their species. Genuinely destructive cases like Zim are an incredible rarity. Such a rarity that I can only guess it took this long for him to go to Judgementia because his degree of dysfunction outright baffles the system. It also would appear that it’s an event of such significance that it can only be set into motion by the command of the ruling Tallest. By murdering a couple of them, and then being a clown show for a couple more, he inadvertently bought himself some time.
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And the crazy thing to remember here is that Zim doesn’t even understand that his actions are an existential threat to the Empire- that he IS a whole supervillain to his planet. This is how effective Irken programming and the education plugs are. They’re supposed to do 99% of the work of setting up the population, even the lowest drones, for not turning out like traitors to their kin in the first place. ALL of them grew up on a steady diet of the same drip-fed propaganda and essentialist ideology as their most militant soldiers. So I can see the logic behind the conclusion that the only explanation for criminals in their society must be outright brain damage or corrupted data… and I’m not gonna lie I do openly headcanon that the latter case is exactly what happened to bad egg Zim.
The limits of only having the one example in him notwithstanding, I’m anything but against theorizing about who else could be “worthy” in the Irken sense to also stand before those brains, playing sweaty advocate for the worth of their continued existence and all. I just don’t see it in Bob, or the Comms officer, or any other invader. Tak, there may be some hypothetical ramp to that end, in her future, but as things are right now, I only see a candidate that has become comfortable right in the control brains’ biggest blind spot of all. See, eggs don’t always have to crack in order to go bad. Sometimes, maybe they just spoil. Sometimes, I believe just the right conditions and time can turn them downright rotten.
Dramatic musical flourish, please.
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I forget whoever said the quote “Power doesn’t corrupt, It just exposes who people really are”, but I’m a huge fan of the fact that they did. In my opinion, it’s less about power itself and more about a complete lack of accountability that allows the weakest and most toxic seeds to really fester in a seat of authority. Indeed, we all know that there is something pathetic, and vapid, and cruel floating around The Massive’s bridge. I am saying I’d call Red defective, but I couldn’t be certain enough with myself to say that Purple’s largely the one carrying a lot of fault. His greatest sin is his negligence and enabling his companion. whoever we can say shoulders more of the blame, they have been running this horror show as a joint unit, so they will both bear the guilt. Without a doubt, these two are terrible- popular maybe, but terrible leaders. Like, more responsible for the near ruin of their home world and species than I can even pin on Zim at this point. By almost every measure once you hold them up to Miyuki’s and Spork’s barely few moments of would-be screen time, they’re the worst Tallests for the Empire we’ve ever known. It’s too bad that they have no one over them we know of to flag them for an existence evaluation, because I am assured that the real orchestrators of the Armada would be disgusted to look over their track records since they took power.
I mean, what can I remember just off the top of my head?
- Full awareness of Zim’s blackout-causing history before the beginning of Operation Impending Doom I and not keeping a close eye on him, removing him from his position, or keeping him away from the homeworld’s WoMDs
- Overseeing the shipment of faulty equipment to Invader Tenn (even if the packages had not been switched, the Megadoomer still had a potentially fatal flaw), and then presumably NOT giving her urgent guidance/assistance to avoid being captured by native hostiles
- Showing an egregious amount of immaturity and frivolity when making logistical decisions, such as the flight path of the Armada or how conquered planets are utilized
- Repeated abuses of their standing, trying to extra-judicially get rid of subjects over the pettiest reasons (if they had the formal authority to just vaporize Skoodge, Bob, OR Zim on the spot, they wouldn’t need to come up with convoluted and indirect methods that they only hope kill said targets)
- Upon Zim returning to them from his banishment: not sending him back to Foodcourtia and not refusing to humor his wishes to larp as an invader
- Oh yeah, also granting Zim at least some invader tech and allowing him to leave Conventia in what I assume is a ship he could have only stolen
- Still not dealing with Zim with extreme prejudice in a timely fashion after the events of Backseat Drivers from Beyond the stars, or investigating enough to find out and deal with prisoner 777
- HAVING WAITED THROUGH ALL OF THE ABOVE BEFORE SENDING FOR ZIM’S EXISTENCE EVALUATION
- Spending the bulk of their reign so far dicking around in space and gorging themselves. Seriously, Red showed us one act of proactive competence… and it was in order to fix a mess that they allowed Zim to get them into. Not to mention, the Resisty got away from that scrap after thoroughly humiliating their flagship.
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Red, and by extension, Purple, are the almighty, Tallest threats to the entire Irken project of galactic conquest, as much as Zim would have loved all the credit in the universe. By what they’ve done, and who they are. He might be damaged, but them? There’s some defective moral character if I’ve ever seen.
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forgan-forge · 1 year
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Go listen to Venus ambassador by Bryan scary!! This part of the song is literally the trial!
Child x irken DNI
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sapphorror · 3 months
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Short Moderate Length List of Small(ish) Things I Appreciate About The Wettening
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Dib being conspicuously absent from the opening pan of the classroom, only to cartoon-teleport into existence at Zim’s desk the second Zim starts expressing mild apprehension at the sight of unfamiliar weather. This kid spends his time just hanging around staring at Zim, waiting for him to show the slightest sign of discomfort, confusion, or unease in order to immediately taunt him about it—and the surrounding chaos, if anything, is just an opportunity to come watch even more closely. We all already knew this, but it still kills me to see it in action.
Also, he’s animated popping up from below, and like… were we meant to interpret this as him just chilling underneath Zim’s desk? No, absolutely not—but is it funny (and, to add to the hilarity, miraculously somehow not completely unbelievable within the context of the show) to imagine that he was? Yes. Yes it is.
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Zim confidently walking out into a downpour he has already confirmed to be acidic just because Dib implicitly dared him to—no one’s looking, Dib hasn’t even said anything or made a claim against his humanity, Zim just can’t stand to give Dib the satisfaction of seeing him vulnerable or afraid of something (which backfires pretty spectacularly, since I’m pretty sure ‘writhing on the ground shrieking in indescribable agony’ is a significantly worse look in terms of appearing vulnerable, but all’s well that ends in Victory For Zim, I guess).
Also Zim's little baffled gesture right beforehand like he's silently asking Dib to confirm he's not hallucinating the rain dance (he does not receive an answer)
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Gaz presumably seeing Zim sneaking up behind her brother, saying nothing and making no reaction that’ll tip Dib off… only to immediately be made to regret her choices when she gets caught in another splash. Shows her for trusting Zim to be at least a little bit cool about tormenting Dib (honestly, we see her exact fitting justice on Dib at the end of the episode, but I cannot imagine she wasn't still planning to do something equally petty to Zim).
The faucet drip scene and the underlying awareness that this is just what Zim and Dib do to each other during class. Every day. It is, in fact, probably one of the least disruptive forms their constant warfare takes on a routine basis. Suddenly I understand a little bit of why their entire class hates them.
Also Dib’s happy face while he's terrorizing Zim into a shell-shocked stupor is absurdly cute and heartwarming. If I cropped that picture no one would ever guess what he's smiling about. This kid? A sadist? Impossible.
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“I don’t even feel good about winning this one,” and it's said with his hands clasped together, practically vibrating with glee, his expression vaguely reminiscent of a teenager in the throes of hormonal infatuation (the hypothetical object in this case not so much being Zim himself as a personified abstraction of Zim’s suffering). If someone hit him with the Return of Keef happy goo in this exact moment, I am completely certain it would kill him. His statement is only true insofar that a more accurate term for his current state of being would probably be euphoric.  I take back everything I’ve ever said about Zim being unreasonable in this episode—he was merciful.
Also this face the moment Zim gets up and starts threatening him. Zim still isn't even all that intimidating at the moment, but Dib knows he just fucked up. Maybe he's getting flashbacks to Dark Harvest.
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Dib’s ridiculous water balloon device. Seriously. I feel like it gets (reasonably) overshadowed by the sheer absurdity of Zim’s entire operation, but it really is so amazingly stupid and pointless in a way that is… not dissimilar to the ultimate Irken water balloon. Not only is it really not necessary for the task it's meant to accomplish, it's actively detrimental in that it slows Dib down, blatantly telegraphs his attacks, and reduces accuracy by a significant degree. The only actual benefits I can think of would be the exponential increase in force and range and the instant accessibility of a water supply—the former of which is totally unnecessary in this scenario and the latter being possible to accomplish with a much simpler device (or even just… a water tank). To summarize, it is an incredibly impressive feat of both skill and creativity in design that is also completely and utterly useless! Which is just the perfect demonstration of what I mean when I say Dib really does share nearly all of Zim’s flaws, just to a less obviously ridiculous degree—he comes off just calm and clever enough to pass as moderately reasonable  at a glance, and in some ways, that makes him more of a potential flight risk than Zim. At least that's a lunatic you see coming. 
Irkens are collapsible, apparently
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goodluckdetective · 4 months
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I’m playing BG3 and remembering how much I love monks as a battlefield control class. Enemy far away? I got speed for that. Arrow coming from afar? Deflect missiles, bitch. Boss is a mage who keeps teleporting everywhere? Stunning strike, get fucked.
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mrmosseater · 1 year
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THE TRIAL
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this unfinished episode has ruined me OUYGHHH if it was fully animated or the show just Wasn't cancelled i'd probably be .... worse . (VERY POSITIVE .)
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letdibtravel · 3 months
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Hello! Love your edits! ^^ Can you put dib on trial in ace attorney?
On trial, Ace Attorney
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ALSO THANK YOU WTF?? 😭😭
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lincolnlogsnfrogs · 6 months
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little guy i drew last night :33
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ionroir · 1 year
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S UR VI V E
[ID: Traditional fanart featuring Zim from Invader Zim. He is shown from the side, and is suspended in the air by a tube connecting to his PAK, He is hunched into himself awkwardly and shaking, with a wild, scared look in his one visible eye. Below Zim is a round platform with the Irken symbol on it. There are two symmetrical jagged blue lines on whether side of him, mimicking electricity, running vertically down the page. They lines spark out where they are parallel to Zim’s PAK. The background is black, with several small white movement lines. Faintly, in red, are various lines about deleting data and secure connections, which fade I to several error messages. /End ID]
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sycoraxophone · 1 year
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i find it kinda interesting how in the trial flashbacks, zim would frequently talk about how he's going to rule irk one day and how it needs his leadership and stuff, but we hardly ever see that kind of talk in the show.
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post OID 1 (and maybe because of it?) He's definitely as self-absorbed as always, but you don't really ever see him question irk's leadership or its system really.
and when he breaks the rules, he doesn't disagree with them, he just thinks of each circumstance involving him as the exception.
idk what point i'm trying to make here just something ive been turning around in my brain like a rotisserie chicken
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ms-scarletwings · 8 months
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This canonical size comparison between Zim and Lard Nar tho
Which gets even funnier after I realized Lard was roughly the shortest Vortian on that sheet
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lem-argentum · 1 year
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have free time between classes hi every1.. <33
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tacophonez · 2 years
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btw drv3 iz so hard wtf ;-;
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goodluckdetective · 2 years
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I’ve been trying to write up a post explaining the misinformation storm around the Heard and Depp case but thankfully Michael Hobbes stepped in and did it far better than I ever could. Please give it a read especially if you think Depp’s win was justice. You’re being manipulated and while this might not change your mind, I hope it will at least make you see why people are so upset regarding this outcome.
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short-and-ugly · 2 years
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what even would be my url, if not constantly changing to match my fixations?
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mundoperla · 1 year
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Hello iz me, I thought of another request sorry sdvhf- Some killers reactions to finding a gn survivor in the middle of a trial asleep? Just passed the fuck out in the back seat of a truck in the cornfield map- Or asleep in a locker or the corner of a room, waiting for a teammate to come back, something like that
(No established relationships, for both of the requests I sent!… yet) 👀
If you could include Frank again because..👉🏻👈🏻, but aside from that, any other killers you want to write hcs for! :D Thank you again!
i see frank? i fold like a samsung galaxy z flip 4
𝘿𝘽𝘿 𝙆𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙗𝙚𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙨𝙡𝙚𝙚𝙥 𝙙𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖 𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙡
u see the title babes G/N reader x Killers🤭
— killer(s) included;; frank morrison & danny johnson bc i had no clue who else to add🧍‍♂️
‼️tw(s);; none!
° 𐐪𐑂 ♡ 𐐪𐑂 ₒ 𐐪𐑂 ♡ 𐐪𐑂 °
𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖐 𝕸𝖔𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖘𝖔𝖓—𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕷𝖊𝖌𝖎𝖔𝖓
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✿.。༅ He was confused to say the least. Had survivors tried hiding inside and under the cars before? absolutely, but he had never encountered one sleeping in one.
✿.。༅ What is he even supposed to do in this situation??? He could drag you out by your ankles and toss you onto a hook, easy kill, but you looked so peaceful.
✿.。༅ Frank doesn’t blame you for deciding to pass out during the trial, he gets exhausted during them and after too.
✿.。༅ He’s a killer not a monster 🙄
✿.。༅ Ultimately you’re left alone, he’d feel guilty waking you up, he doubts the anxious pre-trial periods don’t help much with relaxation either. Coldwind farm wasn’t any better — but at least there were some spots that you could lay your head for a minute.
✿.。༅Frank will make sure not to make any noise around the car you’re in as to not disturb you, he’ll kill one of your friends far away or steer chases away from the vehicle.
✿.。༅ Internally he worries if the car is too hot in there for you, it was a very warm and sunny setting you guys were in so of course he was anxious that you’d overheat in there.
 ✿.。༅ Despite his worries, you were still peacefully sleeping.
✿.。༅ If you’re lucky he might sit near the truck you’re resting in while the match continues, he’ll wait for you to get up so he can take you to an exit.
✿.。༅ You can give him hell about him actually being ‘soft’ & he’ll threaten to yank you out of the vehicle next time he finds you and then toss you on the rustiest hook he can find, but he never does.
• • •
𝕯𝖆𝖓𝖓𝖞 𝕵𝖔𝖍𝖓𝖘𝖔𝖓—𝕲𝖍𝖔𝖘𝖙𝖋𝖆𝖈𝖊
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✿.。༅ Oh hey
✿.。༅ Danny finds you sleeping in one of the old houses in Haddonfield, he was looking for someone else but you were a much more pleasant surprise!
✿.。༅ Unfortunately unlike Frank, he’s yanking you up and throwing you on a hook😪
✿.。༅ He’ll catch you again in another house sleeping after he gets rid of the rest of your team, he’s confused now.
✿.。༅ You’re quite literally in a life or death situation yet you’re choosing to sleep?? Surely you’d want to leave just like everyone else, so why were you just clocking out???
✿.。༅ Of course he’s thinking of killing you right here, but this time he decides to let you have some peace before he kills you.
✿.。༅ What does he do instead? Lay down on the floor next to you! He could’ve just went to the next room over and lay on the mattress but he wanted to still be as close to you as possible.
✿.。༅ You’re unable to see because of the mask, but he’s looking at you from the side. He sees how you manage to keep yourself together before the games even begin and now he sees you relaxing once you’ve been thrown into one.
✿.。༅ Thats pretty damn cool to him, he’s slaughtered your friends countless times but you were still somehow calm.
✿.。༅ Maybe he’ll let you sleep some more, hatch is right downstairs so he’ll let you leave this time.
• • •
WEEWOOOWEEEWOOOOWEEEEWOOO
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