#riot ghoul comic

[rock-and-roll-hell]

September 6, 1976

Destroyer Tour

Varsity Stadium - Toronto, Ontario, Canada

A minor “riot” occurred at this show as fans rushed the entrance for the general admission seating trampling some fellow fans. Musical issues occur at the end of “Hotter than Hell” and Ace calls someone an “asshole” during the intro to “Black Diamond,” making for an entertaining show.

KIϟϟ also received their Canadian platinum award for “Destroyer” from Quality Records

 "KIϟϟ, its first-rate sound system turned up to the mega-decibel level, its creepy stage setting looking like something out of a Stan Lee gothic horror comic, and it’s special effects department working overtime. KIϟϟ’ show is a collection of disparate elements which, when thrown together, combine to overwhelm you. Guitars explode. Cannons go off. Strands of lights flicker. And there are assorted explosions as the band’s four members prance and strut like comic-book ghouls. And does it matter if none of this has anything to do with what the band’s singing about? That despite all the gore, the band’s lyrics dwell on having a good time and the joys of rock? Not at all. But, then again, in an army, especially the KIϟϟ Army, one isn’t meant to think. One is meant to take orders“ (Toronto Star, 9/7/76).

#kisstory #kiss #1976 #destroyer #ace frehley #peter criss #paul stanley #gene simmons #kiss band #kiss army #the spaceman #the catman #the starchild #the demon

[little-devil-town]

Little Devil Town | Masterpost

ello! my name is Bee [@cryptic-bee], and I'm the author/illustrator behind Little Devil Town :D

this post will contain everything you need to know about the comic before getting into it, as well as links to episodes/ref sheets/etc below the cut!

be warned, it is just a fuck ton of links and reading-

also!! this little dude (its name is Boo!) will be hidden in every episode! can you find it? :]

Before I get into it-

Pink equals Links you can click on

Blue equals Important Terms relevant to the comic

that is all :]

》 Tags 《

#Little Devil Town — General posting tag

#Little Devil Town [comic] — Posts involving specifically the comic, like episodes/mini comics/etc

#Little Devil Art — Art by Bee having to do with the characters/lore/etc

#beebo speaks — Beebo posts

》 Important Links 《

| FAQ Post |

| UnVale World Link |

| Instagram Link | Webtoon Link |

》 Episodes 《

Season One

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |

| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |

Season Two

》 Reference Sheets 《

| Height Chart(s) |

Dollhouse

| Lucid Alavor [+ Ghoul] | Puppet | Stitch | Dolly |

Oxyne's Abnormal Circus

| Oxyne Sophia Averys | Ainsley Ramirez |

| Tiny | Button |

Alsifur's Mythics Shop & Stage Tricks

| Vanny Alsifur | Moss Alsifur |

The Jury

| Merlin Blake | Cosmos |

| Roman Allister | Kanary Flower | Seren Copper |

Pre-Dollhouse

| Annabelle Lee | Daisy Curtis | Magnolia White |

| Wilbur Alavor | Leanna Alavor |

》 Summary 《

A necromantic souleater, a living puppet, an arsonist, and a shapeshifter. What could possibly go wrong?

They're not exactly the dream team, but Dollhouse Inc do what they can to scrape by in this strange little Devil Town - even if that includes a bit of murder on the side.

》 Trigger Warnings 《

Violence/Blood/Gore

Cursing

Manipulation/Mentioned toxic relationships

Murder/Death

Implied/mentions of abuse

Implied/mentions of SA/CSA

Implied/mentions of suicide attempts

Implied/mentions of self-harm

》 General Info 《

The story will take place in a fictional city called Devil Town set somewhere in the US.

Some terms are tossed around a lot that I've gotten questions about in the past, which I will explain in this section!!

Unnaturals - Unnaturals are classified as anyone with abilities/powers, or just simply aren't Human. Most of the LDT cast consists of Unnaturals, for example: The main 4, Button, etc. There are thousands of different kinds of Unnaturals, all with their own abilities. Some abilities overlap, like Arsonists [ex. Stitch] and Flare Elementals [ex. Vanny], but are considered to be separate categories depending on strength over their ability [While Stitch is only able to summon flames, Vanny is also able to control existing flames and direct them far easier than Stitch can]

Banned Unnaturals - This is a list of certain Unnaturals and their abilities that The Jury have deemed too dangerous to be allowed in the public. The list ranges from abilities that can get you arrested for being shown off to abilities that will get you publicly executed as a reminder of what will happen if you don't obey. The current Jury aren't too fond of that last option, some members wanting to remove it completely and rewrite the laws, but are unable to as it's the only thing preventing people against Unnaturals from having a full on riot and destroying what little Devil Town has.

Cursed Unnaturals - A category of Unnaturals that don't occur genetically/naturally [hehe]. Instead it's a forceful ability cast upon someone, and something they, in most cases, cannot control. This isn't limited to Unnaturals, some humans can also be cursed - thus making them classified as an Unnatural once cursed.

Souls - The very life essence of a person, Human or Unnatural. A person, in most cases, cannot live without their soul. It's what makes them who they are, their very being in a form of hidden light that only Unnaturals with abilities linked to souls can see.

Hosts - A person's body, what souls will link onto to create life.

Souleaters - Souleaters are considered part of the Cursed category of Unnaturals, a curse that makes the recipient require the souls of people to stay in control of their hosts. They have two states: The Dormant state, where they've been successful in consuming souls and keeping control. And the Starvation state, a monstrous form hellbent on consuming as many souls as possible - though reaching this state means the souls they take will never be enough, because as far as anybody knows, a Souleater cannot return from their Starvation. They are on the Banned Unnaturals list under the Execution section.

》 Groups/Group Roles 《

Dollhouse Inc

Dollhouse consists of Lucid, Puppet, Stitch, and Dolly [and Ghoul but. she's a cat. so-]. They work alongside OAC Afterhours, aka Oxyne's secret mercenary side business. Lucid provides new souls in the form of Living Dolls for Oxyne to convert into clowns when the old ones fail, and Oxyne pays for the warehouse Dollhouse currently lives in.

While Lucid is considered the “Leader” of the group, there's not actually a specified order amongst them - they can do what they like, they just tend to look to Lucid for guidance on missions.

Oxyne's Abnormal Circus

OAC consists of Oxyne, Ainsley, Tiny, and Button, along with various other background circus characters. The circus was a project Oxyne started with the help of Vanny and Merlin to bring attention to the wondrous side of Unnaturals and their abilities, making her a very prominent figure in Devil Town.

Roles

Oxyne - Ringleader, Oxyne is the mastermind behind the Circus. She's completely in control, both because she's the boss and because she can literally mind control her troop if she wants.

Ainsley: Fire breather/Acrobat, Ainsley is both Oxyne's right hand and one of the most well known acts of the Circus. They do various tricks involving flames along with flinging herself through the air and various flaming hoops to wow their audience. Sometimes Stitch will join in to help Ainsley with their act, providing the fire she uses.

Tiny: Strongman, pretty sure this one speaks for itself. Tiny likes to show off just how much that big ass hook arm of his can handle, often testing his limits on stage of how powerful it really is and taking audience suggestions for what materials he can or can't slice through [spoiler: most of the time he can]

Button: Contortionist/Clown, being a Living Doll allows Button to twist and bend in inhuman ways that is both amusing and slightly horrifying to witness in the ring - but the audience enjoys themselves anyway. It also performs as the lead clown when those acts are going on.

Alsifur's Mythics Shop & Stage Tricks

AMSST consists of Vanny and Moss only, selling various mystical items having to do with Unnaturals and such. Kinda like a magic store but with actual magic in it. It was the first thing Vanny was able to do after being freed from her family, and she's very proud of her business. She also offers personal lessons to young Unnaturals struggling with control of their abilities, Dolly being one of her primary students.

The Jury

The Jury consists of Merlin, Roman, Kanary, Seren, and [despite never being seen by the public] Cosmos. They act as the elected leaders of Devil Town, keeping the city in check and making sure things stay peaceful between Humans and Unnaturals. They're also the ones that uphold the Banned Unnaturals list as a way to keep the peace between the two, restricting which Unnaturals can publicly use their abilities, which will be arrested if they do, and which will be executed if found.

》 Backstories 《

| Puppet's Origins | Stitch's Origins | Dolly's Origins |

》 Voice Claims 《

I don't have any yet smile

feel free to suggest some if you have any ideas tho :D

#Little Devil Town #masterpost #webcomic #beebo speaks

[lvdygrim]

hello, hello! eva here ( finally ) with an intro for mimi, the twin of song han-jae. do feel free to like for plotting and i hope to write with you all soon!

what’s that scent? the smell of BLOOMING AMARYLLIS IN MORNING MIST, SIGHS OF FORBIDDEN LONGING, and WISPS OF WARM TEA which would explain the appearance of SONG SEON-MI. continental records indicate they are known as PERSEPHONE, a TWENTY-NINE year old ASSOCIATE. they have the unique ability of BIOCHEMISTRY MANIPULATION. they were specifically selected for enrollment for the GREAT TROJAN WAR, where they INCITED INTERNATIONAL RIOTS AND WAR-PROVOKING VIOLENCE WHILE FORCING THE WORLD TO BEAR WITNESS TO A SERIES OF RIVAL MAFIA ORGIES FOR TEN DAYS STRAIGHT. they can be BLASPHEMOUS and SPITEFUL, but also ENDEARING and INSPIRED. we wish them well in their business to come.

in spirit: tokyo ghoul — kamishiro rize, one piece — boa hancock, dc comics — poison ivy, lupin iii — mine fujiko, bakemonogatari — senjougahara hitagi, mythology — eris, schitt’s creek — alexis rose

abilities in detail

ON THE JOB

both in her actual job and criminal work, mimi tends to operate with a veil of calm confidence, able to glide through life pursuing her goals with a certainty most would find concerning. as a consequence of such cockiness, she tends to bulldoze into things with little worry for repercussions and does so with all the finesse and elegance expected of someone far less hotheaded than she. all that said, however, most of her assurance might arise from the amount of research and detail she’s typically armed with, as a majority of her line of work lies in espionage and the capacity to gather information others might be less aware of. her abilities permit her opportunities to operate covertly in the criminal atmosphere, and her kills easily reflect this — and the thrill she might find in performing such tasks.

OFF THE CLOCK

first and foremost, mimi is a drunkard. and while at one point in her youth, her drinking might have been accompanied by copious amount of partying, this seems to have died down significantly and now mostly includes art shows, various lovers, and a fair bit of traveling around. when she finds herself without the company of would-be loves, she’s spending occasions with her twin and his side of the family. or merely lounging someplace and harassing simon.

FAVORITES

favorite creatures: snakes, bumblebees

favorite colors: garnet, turquoise

favorite flowers: casablanca lilies, lilies of the valley

favorite natural scenery: the sea

favorite locations: most of europe, anything with an island

favorite habits: smoking, drinking, art collecting

favorite items: bones, jewelry

#mhq;intro #x — intro #tw sex mention

[medea10]

My Review of Grand Blue

How did I get into this anime? Well, I heard there were some good reviews about this particular title. It was one of those animes I probably should have watched in summer 2018, but more than likely I was watching some sequel no one remembers.

Iori Kitahara just moved to an ocean-front town to live with his uncle since he lives near Izu University (a school Iori was accepted into). His uncle owns a scuba diving shop that serves as a local hangout for members of the school’s diving club. Little does Iori know that this is a local hangout to get FUCKING SHIT-FACED!!!

I am not making this up. These members drink like it’s going out of business. And usually these drinking binges end up with blackouts and public nudity. In Iori’s case, he got so black-out drunk that he woke up in front of his new university’s courtyard…on the first day of school…only wearing his boxers! I’m beginning to see why Amazon put out an advisory at the beginning of each episode about drinking responsibly. But aside from drinking with a bunch of meat-head senpais, there’s also diving. Yeah, club activity is actually diving into the ocean.

So let’s dive into this college-leveled, binge-drinking club as we meet some interesting characters like, a raging otaku (Kouhei), Iori’s cousin with “Permanent Resting Bitch-face Syndrome” (Chisa), a girl who should get a makeup tutorial on Youtube (Aina), two meat-head senpais (Bukki and Tokki), Drinky McStripsItAll (Azusa), and Chisa’s “loving” older sister (Nanaka).

BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: So this is an Anime Prime exclusive, so I doubt I’d be hearing a dub to this any time soon. The sub has quite the line-up of seiyuus including that upcomer I’ve been raving about all 2019, Yuuma Uchida. But a lot of well-known folks like Kana Asumi and Hiroki Yasumoto (who can literally play anything at this point) shine in this anime. Here’s what you might recognize these folks from.

*Iori is played by Yuuma Uchida (Kyo on Fruits Basket 2019, Uenoyama on Given, Chika on Kono Oto Tomare, Sun on Oresuki, Ash on Banana Fish, and Shirazu on Tokyo Ghoul :re)

*Kouhei is played by Ryouhei Kimura (known for Hinata on Angel Beats, Hachiken on Silver Spoon, Takizawa on Eden of the East, Judar on Magi, Taishi on Tokyo Ghoul, and Hiyori on Free!)

*Chisa is played by Chika Anzai (known for Mina on Attack on Titan)

*Aina is played by Kana Asumi (known for Taneshima on Working!!, Ran on Shugo Chara, Kazakiri on Index, Yuno on Hidamari Sketch, Nagisa on Madoka Magica: Rebellion, and Tachibana on Nisekoi)

FAVORITE CHARACTER: I’m gonna say that after watching all 12 episodes; Aina (a.k.a. Cakey) grew on me. Horrible caked-on make-up aside, let’s be real here.

I think it’s because of the development we see with her ever since she was introduced early in the series. We see a girl trying her damndest to fit in with the tennis club only for it to blow up in her face (literally when we’re talking about all that makeup that’s “caked” on her face). Yeah, these guys treated Aina like garbage! But after joining the diving club, we see her be herself and slowly trust those around her. I think it’s more of this character resonating with me in some sad aspect, but I too feel the pain of trying to fit in or not wanting to let anyone down. Anyways, Cakey is my girl!

Poor dear, I feel your pain.

SHIPPING: So Iori is now a college lad and getting smashed eight ways from Sunday. And I’m sure he’s going to have his own picks of the ladies when he isn’t drinking with an otaku and a bunch of meat-heads.

…Or he can get freaky with his blood cousin!

*eyeball twitch*

ANYWAYS, Chisa has made her point clear with the disgusted face she makes whenever she’s around Iori. But in anime terms, we know that she has that classic tsundere syndrome. So when someone like Aina comes into the picture and Iori sticks up for her, jealousy arrives like a fucking A-bomb! Despite Chisa announcing to a wide, public setting that Iori was her boyfriend (while he was passed-out drunk), nothing too scandalous happened with this. It was just so she could keep creepy boys away. Honestly, I really have no problem if Chisa and Iori hook up. It’s actually better than Chisa being with someone who has an unhealthy obsession with her.

I don’t want to say Nanaka has a thing for her baby sister, but this is getting too borderline Yuru Yuri that I have to say something about it.

I’m pretty sure Aina might be a contender after all Iori has done for her throughout the series. It’s just that she can’t stand all that binge-drinking and getting buck-naked at any moment.

And then there’s wild card Azusa! She’s a flirt! What else can I say about her? She teases Iori every chance she gets. Hell, near the finale she tantalized Iori in sex. Wasn’t sure if she was kidding or if she really meant it! However she did shove a leek up Iori’s ass, but that’s because he was sick.

I swear this is normal behavior.

By the end of the series, we really didn’t get much in terms of full-on hookups. Many misunderstandings have occurred involving word-play. Iori, Kouhei, and their band of geeky friends are still virgins (though one of them came very close to sealing the deal). One of the meat-heads has a girlfriend (did not see that one coming). But on a positive note, Chisa and Iori’s friendship has been pretty steady. I wonder how long that’ll last!

ANIMATION: I gotta say it, the facial expressions on these characters were a laugh-riot. It wasn’t like this was pathetically sad that I have to laugh at it. But more of how expressive these characters got when they have to express hatred or disgust! This is more for comical expense and I happened to like it. It’s like with the anime Prison School, all the facial expressions worked in their favor. This, while out of place some of the time, never fails to make me laugh.

ANIME REFERENCE: While shopping for gear for an upcoming diving expedition, Kouhei came across two suits that would make any old-school otaku squeal.

The suits of Rei Ayanami and Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion in diving suit form. And Kouhei got Chisa and Aina to try them on!

ENDING: At the end of episode 9, the diving club is heading to Okinawa for a special trip that is promised we will never forget. They made sure of that when the anime gives us a two-minute preview of what to look forward to in these final three episodes. Just be warned a lot of things mentioned really didn’t happen. It almost felt like one of those gag previews Gintama is notorious for.

Well Iori, Kouhei, and Aina are going to attempt at getting their divers license so that they can go even further down the ocean. It seemed like all three were doing pretty well when it came to the basics of diving underwater. However, it was quickly noticed by Nanaka that Iori was having trouble keeping water out of his goggles and that could result in immediate failure. So Iori practices all night (with help from Chisa and Aina). However, Iori ended up in some trouble when a patrolling policeman comes upon him in the pool. And Iori spent the rest of the night in the water because he was naked.

Because I’d be concerned if he wasn’t naked!

Well, the next morning, he caught a cold. Then dumbass thinks it’s a good idea to get rid of a cold by drinking vodka.

Because I’d be concerned if he wasn’t drinking!

And as a result he ended up missing his chance for obtaining his diving license. Kouhei and Aina were able to get their licenses. So the big diving expedition of Okinawa is about to commence and Iori has to sit this one out. But he remains hopeful to one day dive with his friends in Okinawa. After all that, the group travels to another spot and get fucking hammered. You all see the theme to this series, right?

But the last few episodes gave us a few moments involving Kouhei and Aina. Kouhei ended up stumbling into this group on accident (much like Iori), but discovered how much fun he had (aside from getting drunk as a skunk night after night). As for Aina, she learned that despite the diving club being full of a bunch of drunken meat-heads, these people care about her (unlike the previous club she belonged to).

So it was a memorable trip.

This was absolutely NOT what I expected when I picked up this anime. I notice Grand Blue being taken place in a cute ocean town and thought it would be just as cute as Tsuritama. But it turned out to be the anime equivelant of Animal House. I can easily tell you that my college years were NOTHING LIKE THIS.

Despite going to school in a state where the drunk-driving rate is sky-high, I did not witness any strange anomalies like arriving on campus and seeing a bunch of drunk, naked lads sprawled across the courtyard.

Now then, I do feel like this series could have focused a little more on diving and oceanography. It felt like the majority of the series involved characters binge-drinking, meat-heads fighting with tennis club members, more binge-drinking, sad geeks never getting laid, studying for a German test where you only get 20%, and drinking more than Sterling Archer. Not so much on the ocean like I would have hoped. And even though Iori gets the short-end of the stick in almost every episode, I do feel bad that he couldn’t join the rest of the club under water in the finale. That felt a little disheartening, but that’s just me. Short answer, I like this anime! If you’re in for a good laugh and are not turned off by all the drinking and nudity, I say go for it.

For what it’s worth, it’s a silly adventure I can see myself rewatching one or two more times. And if you’re interested in watching, Amazon Prime has all 12 episodes available for streaming.

Okay, this was quite the trip! Let’s pick our next Amazon/Netflix/Crunchyroll exclusive anime!

Think Zootopia, but set in high school.

Beastars!

Great choice as I even heard good things from celebrities who don’t normally watch anime.

#anime review #grand blue #grand blue dreaming #iori kitahara #chisa kotegawa #nanaka kotegawa #aina yoshiwara #shinji tokita #azusa hamaoka #kouhei imamura

[ngame989]

“Change” - TGG SVTFOE Fanfic Collection Ch. 3

Writing: @ngame989​​

Art: @toxicpsychox​​ (make sure to follow him for bonus pics from the story!)

Editing: @bmc-nightfury​​, @seddm​​

Alternate fic links - FFnet, AO3

Summary: Star, Marco, Tom, and Janna celebrate Earthni's first Halloween and get a taste of what life's like for the rest of its inhabitants.

Comic Page

Masterpost

See below for the text, hope you enjoy! Sorry for the delay, we’ll be back in a few days with the comic page!

Flying was one of the most exhilarating feelings for Marco Diaz. He flung his arms out to the side, letting the wind ripple around and through his hair, his face, and the open front of his hoodie. With a world this beautiful and vast, who even needs the hoodie, anyway? It’s just weighing him down, preventing him from truly feeling as free as he knows he can be. He shifted positions, dramatically discarding the hoodie and feeling the crisp autumn air on his upper body through only the thin grey t-shirt. Suddenly it struck him: how exactly was he flying without Nach-

“Pfffthbtbt, Marco, what the heck?!? You got hoodie stuck in my teeth!”

Marco tried to glance at the familiar voice that interrupted his thoughts, but he was blinded by the sun gleaming in the purple sky. His arms instinctively were brought up to shield his vision. Wait, Marco realized, hadn’t he been holding on to something? Panic set in, both at the feeling of losing something important and at not even being able to recall what it was. It was uncanny, the moments he’d just experienced felt as vague and distant as anything he’d experienced in the Neverzone...

The view of the stunning Earthni landscape beneath him was obscured by a massive dangling ribbon in front of him, disrupting his contemplation. It was utterly tantalizing, almost demanding his attention. He shifted positions, reaching forward as far as he could to catch it, tugging the ribbon to his body and wrapping himself up in it, nestling deeper into his fabric cocoon and feeling briefly at ease. Wait, where exactly was he again? Something felt off, but the unnerving thought dissipated entirely once more at the soft touch on his head. Two large fingers tousled his hair to and fro, giving him a sense of contentment he didn’t know was possible. A glance skyward revealed the face of a giant Star Butterfly towering over him with a soft smile as she pet his head in the safety of a pocket sewn into her narwhal dress. Did that dress even have a pocket? And how was he here? Why was Star so big? As his mind sluggishly tried to work out what wasn’t gelling about the whole situation, his gaze followed their ribbon higher and higher until it finally reached the red balloon guiding them through the sky.

“OK, Marco, payback time!” she shouted with glee, flicking her head and whipping a tuft of flowing golden hair directly into his face.

“Bleh, Star, your hair… ptooey, Star, your hair is in my mouth… Get it out… Star? Star! Star!”

…

His eyes snapped open, senses on high alert, rapidly regaining his full cognitive faculties. He felt a light sheet draped on top of him; he was in bed, in his pajamas, with no hoodie or jeans in sight. Something large was still wrapped in his arms, but this time there was a warmth and softness that invited him to snuggle in deeper. The last thing he noticed is that his face was still completely buried in blonde tresses, and it all clicked.

“Thanks Roy, these goblin dogs zzz are absolutely zzz deliiiiiicioooouuus zzzzzzzzz”

“Star...”

“Why yes, I would like to try strawberry-flavored zzzzzzz”

“Staaaaaaar… wake up. It’s almost...” He tried and failed to peek around the veritable curtain in his face. “I don’t actually know what time it is, but we should still get up, today’s the day!”

“Totally, totally, totally, just 5 more minutes, Marco… 5 more hours…”

Marco sighed and lifted his head, freeing his face from the hairific onslaught and sighing into the crook of her neck. The leftover hint of strawberry shampoo danced through his nose, infatuating him as he pulled Star closer and felt the silky fabric of her gown softly graze his hands. She laughed and cast aside her favorite teal pillow with a heart she had been holding, gripping his arms instead, both enjoying each other’s company and affection - a fairly common occurrence these days.

Three months of this kind of paradise. Well, close to it, anyway; that first night on Earthni had been a one-off incident at the time, but it still hadn’t been long until unintentional movie marathon naps became slightly less unintentional and eventually moved to the comfort of one of their beds altogether, allowing them to spend nights in each other’s arms and sleep in at their leisure. And why not? They had all the time in the world. Marco was technically done with high school, and Star certainly wasn’t that upset that there wasn’t a fully integrated school system for Earthni quite yet. Besides, formalized education wasn’t much of a thing on Mewni anyway, and she wasn’t a “foreign exchange student” bound by Echo Creek’s norms anymore in this new world of theirs. They’d answered a few questions to the public about the Cleaving and spent a bit of time in the limelight, of course, but otherwise they were finally free of the burdens that had been on their shoulders for most of the time they’d known each other. It was the summer vacation they’d longed for, even though the season had passed them by long ago.

Suddenly, a knock at his door interrupted their bliss. “Star, Marco! Lunch is almost ready!” Angie sing-songed through his door. That woke both of them up - not because his mother had caught them innocently canoodling the night away, as that boat had sailed a while ago with a fairly predictable acceptance (though not without some teasing), but because lunch? How long had they slept in? Star bumped into Marco’s forehead when she bolted upright, startling him so much that he backed up off the bed into a heap on the floor.

“Marco! Gosh, Marco, I’m sorry-”

“M’okay,” he groaned, letting her help him uncrumple his body and stand up straight. They scrambled around the room to gather the discarded boxes of Sugar Seeds from the night before and shared their usual quick good morning kiss before splitting off to get ready for the big day ahead of them. Ten minutes later, Star emerged from her room with one of her older dresses, sky blue with two belts minus the fuzzy leg warmers, and skipped over to the stairs to slide down the railing into the dining room where Marco was already seated. Angie brought turkey sandwiches on the table.

“Good morning, you two. Sleep well?”

“We were up waaaay too late marathoning the new season of Fiesta de la Noche. I think it was the Sugar Seeds, please never buy the ‘Oops! All Corn Syrup!’ flavor again.” Marco winced at the lingering stomach pain.

“It’s sugar made from corn, why would you ever think I wouldn’t buy it?” Star scolded, adding some table sugar from the shaker the Diazes had repurposed for Star (leading to a few accidentally ruined dinners in the first week) to the fruit salad on the plate.

He playfully rolled his eyes and dug into his meal. “So, mom, where’s dad?” he mumbled out between bites.

“BOO!” No one even flinched at Rafael’s entrance from the back door.

Marco groaned. “Dad, are you trying to scare everyone again this year?”

“Haha, no, Marco. Last year I thought, ‘Why go for scary when nothing could ever top a hungering spirit almost devouring your loved ones, sending you into a manic frenzy?’ But then a lightbulb struck me on the head: I can simply bring joy and happiness instead of reopening the wounds of the most traumatic night of my life, haha!” Marco vacantly boggled at his father for a few silent moments, trying and failing to find any possible words in response, but there was no need as Rafael spoke up again. “Oh, and River is helping too!”

As if on cue, Star’s dad barreled through the back door dripping sweat. “I’m a riot with the youngsters, this will be a blast! Rafael, my good man, thank you so much for inviting me to participate in your culture’s festivities. Now how far would you like the catapult to fire the children?”

Rafael nervously chuckled as he lead River out the back door; the families got along swimmingly, but it was clear that neither had fully adjusted to every idiosyncrasy of the other. Marco and Star, having just finished the last of their lunches, followed out the back door and gaped at the spectacle. A giant corn maze occupied at least half of the massive property the Diazes now occupied, catapults of varying sizes had been built with landing pads, a few carnival-looking booths stocked with buckets of candy were set up with games Marco didn’t even recognize, and it was all topped off with decorative ghouls and skeletons scattered all around. The teens’ eyes bugged out of their heads as they processed the scene. How the heck did they sleep through the assembly of all of this? An instantly recognizable revving sound approached from the side; Marco’s eyes lit up as he ran over and gave his favorite dragon-cycle a big hug.

“Oh, Boo-Boo, good to see you!” he cooed, affectionately stroking her scaly head while she purred. A few weeks ago, she spotted him by chance in Monstertown while they were helping Eclipsa finish up some new housing, and after a tearful reunion the Diazes (who were a bit apprehensive upon finally learning what a dragon-cycle actually was) had built a stable in their backyard for her. She came and went as she pleased, but was more than happy to ride with Marco like they always had, occasionally with Star in tow.

Rafael approached and tentatively patted her on the head once, which caused her to defensively nuzzle into Marco. “By the way, Nachos asked if she could help us tonight with the Halloween chicanery and maybe give the kids some little joyrides… if that is OK with you.”

“Aww, that’s so sweet of you, girl!” Marco cooed. River hollered excitedly at Star and Rafael to show them his latest contraption, leaving Marco alone with his companion. His warm gaze turned steely in an instant as he knelt to the ground, looking directly into pink reptilian pupils of his dearest dragon-cycle.

“Thanks for doing this for me, Nachos, I owe you one. Remember the plan, OK? Keep an eye on them and keep everyone in one piece. You have my number if anything goes wrong, right?” She matched his serious demeanor and nodded sternly, at which he softened and kissed her on the forehead before scratching that spot on her neck that she always enjoyed. “I can always count on you, girl.” He stood up quickly to prevent any suspicion when he heard Star chatting to their dads as they approached the house once more.

“OK, dad, try not to have too much fun tonight. Last Halloween I was here, everyone almost got eaten.”

“No promises, sweetie!”

Star waved goodbye with a cheery grin before turning to Marco, eyes widening while maintaining the grin for an exaggeratedly concerned effect. Marco snickered and took her hand, heading back inside the house for their next mission. With all the shenanigans going on tonight, everyone decided it was best for Mariposa to not be in the house, so Star had volunteered to take her with them tonight, which meant she’d need a costume. The pair split apart to gather their supplies for the task. Star took a quick peek into the nursery and found Marco’s angel of a baby sister fast asleep in her crib, fortunately not disturbed by all the happenings around the house. Star went into Marco’s room and cleared off the floor for them to work, mere seconds before a big ball of purple fluff barged through the door.

“Can you believe that girl at the fabric store?” the bundle scoffed, revealing itself to be Marco after unceremoniously dumping piles of fabric and sewing supplies on the ground. “How can you not tell the difference between lavender and heliotrope? It’s so obvious! Even with the swatches from Turdina I’m still not sure if these are the right colors, and I will not settle for anything less than perfection for my little Turdinita-”

“OK, Marco,” Star huffed out. Like everything he did, it was still cute when he entered diva mode, but it was still near the top of the annoyance list. She rolled her eyes and grabbed him by the shirt, pulling him downwards and pecking him on the lips - mostly to shut him up - before putting a finger on his chest and pushing him onto his bottom in front of her. “Let’s get this done, OK? I know that you and Tom are gonna take, like, an hour on the makeup for your costumes.”

“Our trial run clocked in at 44 minutes sharp,” he retorted with a smirk, laying the sewing pattern out to start arranging the fabric. Minutes turned to hours as they toiled away, carefully picking out the colors and textures from the vast selection of cloth Marco had procured. Star was no slouch at the craft - she had decorated Marco’s cape by hand, after all - but every time she glanced over at Marco pouring his entire self into every thread and sequin, she couldn’t help but smile.

Marco carefully balanced a pin between his teeth, holding it up to make sure the design was coming together, then put it down to see Star dreamily staring at him. “Uh, Star? Is something up?”

“N-nothing,” she stammered in response, preparing the accessories for the finishing touches.

“Hey, I just realized… you still haven’t even told me what your costume is yet!” He handed the fabric over to her to begin cleaning up the massive mess of scrap around his person.

“I did tell you it’s a surprise, and I’m sticking to that! You and Tom went all gung-ho on the whole ‘bullfighting’ thing from the beginning. A girl’s gotta have her secrets, Diaz!”

“OK, OK,” he held up his hands in surrender, “I’m sure it will be amazing. Anyway, how does the dress look?”

Star scooted over beside him and held up the frilly purple outfit in front of them, flipping it over and around to get the full view. “Looks like a job well done to me!”

Marco’s eyes glistened at the sight. This whole thing had been his idea, wanting to make his baby sister’s first Halloween something special even if she wouldn’t remember it (there would be ample photographic evidence, his parents would make sure of that). But in some way it was also his way of commemorating his old life and what they’d left behind. Although Star had perhaps been the most dramatically affected by the Cleaving, losing the magic she’d known all her life, he had his own friends and adventures across the multiverse too. Earthni was special in its own unique way, and he certainly wouldn’t trade it for anything, but he didn’t want to forget the parts of his life he’d left behind. Shutting his eyelids and taking a deep breath and feeling a bit of moisture squeeze out, he wrapped an arm around Star, pulling her into his side. “Thanks for helping me with this, you didn’t have to-”

“Marco, you know I’d do anything for Mariposa. And it’s fun just spending time making stuff together!”

“We are pretty good at this, aren’t we?”

“Eh, I’d give it a passing grade.” Marco and Star jumped to their feet striking a tag team battle pose in the direction of the unforeseen intruder... and found Janna sitting on Marco’s bed, surfing something on her phone which was rested on Star’s pillow without so much as looking at them in acknowledgment.

“Janna!?” Marco asked incredulously. “Wait, shouldn’t you be in school?”

“I told them I was half-demon after the whole Severing Stone thing and they ate that riiiight up, so I’m exempt from human school now.” He could do nothing but blink in disbelief. “Anyway, on my way over I saw your dads with both their shirts off for some reason and I really didn’t feel like dealing with that so I just snuck in through the window. Oh, and I brought Meteora, too.”

“Wait, what? Where is she then?”

“On your head.”

Marco looked up and saw Meteora clinging to the ceiling before staring directly down at him and dive bombing, taking them both to the floor and giggling at his expense. Star helped him up and took the baby from him, calming her relatively easily by virtue of not being Marco Diaz.

“OK, but Eclipsa didn’t tell us about this! Why do you even have her?”

“Look, guys, it’s not a huge deal. She needed some help this morning and your parents told her you two were ‘busy’,” she said, holding up the pillow in one hand with the air quotes, “so she called me instead. Some monsters were, I dunno, worried about Halloween a bit or something and Eclipsa was dealing with that but still wanted Meteora to go trick or treating.”

“So you’re saying that Eclipsa wants Mariposa to bring her back a lot of chocolate.”

“Bingo.”

Star pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. “OK, fine, whatever. What’s this about being worried about Halloween?”

Janna shrugged her shoulders impassionately. “The whole schtick of Halloween is using the idea of monsters to try and scare people, and they’re a bunch of monsters who don’t want to be seen as scary.” She stood up and tossed her phone up and down a few times before slotting it into her pocket and finally addressing Star and Marco directly. “Whole thing’s a load of crud if you ask me, I’m totally down with monstery quirks. Plus you wouldn’t have to worry about costumes! Like, look at the munchkin there, she’s got pointed ears and a tail. It’s already better than anything I ever went trick-or-treating in.”

Meteora briefly stirred, as if picking up on the talk about her, and Star motioned everyone to the door with her head. The trio moved into the nursery quietly to put Meteora in the guest crib they kept around for her frequent visits, then went downstairs to continue their conversation.

“I mean… it can’t be that big of a deal, right? Costume parties were a thing on Mewni, too, and not everyone who showed up was a Mewman. I doubt it will be perfect, but everyone’s been getting along pretty well so far!” Star said with some emphatic hand-waving.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Marco responded. Admittedly, Marco wasn’t entirely sure. The residents of Echo Creek were generally pretty accepting, in his own experience, but it was never a certainty. Tensions could linger for a while unseen, and one could never know exactly when they’d boil over. But being with Star had taught him a lot about trying to see the best in the world, and he found himself able to share the overall feeling of optimism.

“Plus, I don’t think any kids are gonna climb all the stairs to the Temple,” Janna chimed in from the couch.

“That too,” Marco replied without looking away from Star. “It’s our first big holiday together, and- and I just want this night to be about us having a blast with all our friends and getting a whole truckload of candy!” he yelled triumphantly, taking Star’s hand. Her shining ocean pools focused entirely on him and blazed with the same determination he had.

“I’d tell you two to get a room, but...”

Marco’s eyes went wide as he blushed, causing Star to finally end their moment of emotional vulnerability with a contagious laugh (and light blush of her own) that Marco quickly joined. Once it subsided, Star took Marco’s other hand in hers. “Yeah, you’re right. Hopefully nothing too unexpected hap-”

The front door violent opened with a burst of flame and smoke entering through. Marco shrieked and leapt in fright, being caught and cradled by Star. What could possibly have done such a thing?

“Hey guys, how’s it hanging?”

Oh. That’s what. “Hey Tom,” Marco sighed out, hopping down from Star’s arms as the smoke cleared from his dramatic entrance and Tom closed the door behind him.

“Am I, uh, interrupting something?”

“Marco got freaked out when you burst open the door,” Janna ever-so-helpfully provided.

Tom raised an eyebrow at Marco judgmentally. “You’ve lived with Star for years, come on, dude.”

“I’m not on guard for it when she’s directly next to me!” he cried defensively with his voice cracking, extending his arms in her direction to punctuate his statement. “Anyway, Tom, you ready for the big night?”

“You know I am,” the half-demon responded, meeting Marco in the center of the room for a high-five. “Alright, we should get costumes ready. We’ll be in Marco’s room if you need us.” As they ascended the stairs, Marco caught Janna making some sort of comment about to Star about “stealing your man” - he shouldn’t have expected much different. As soon as they got into his room, he went into his closet to gather all their costume pieces as Tom shut the door. “I can’t believe you humans basically have a giant costume party once a year where everyone gets candy. I could probably, like, just walk around like normal and it would still count. That’s too cool.”

Marco sat them both down on his bed and began to wipe his face off. “Eh, it’s pretty tame usually. Two years ago, Star and Janna summoned a ghost that ate everyone and my dad had to wrestle it to get everyone back. The inside of his belly smelled like licorice, it was awful. But it was an interesting Halloween.”

“Hungry Larry?” Marco assented while beginning the first layer of foundation. Tom laughed and held Marco’s arms at bay while he regained his composure. “Not a demon curse, but I’m familiar. Of course it was those two. OK, man, you can’t tell me funny stories like that, we’ve gotta get this done and we don’t need any distractions.” Marco nodded, always happy to see someone share his dedication to the craft. Foundation, then outlines, then filling in with white… the process stretched on for minutes as the basic design became evident. He sat back to observe it from multiple angles. While Marco switched brushes to begin the detailing, Tom spoke up once more. “I’ll be honest, man, I was kinda surprised about this. Figured you and Star would do a couple costume or something.”

“This idea was too good to pass up, though. Plus, I thought it’d be cool to do something like this with you! I mean, you are one of my best friends,” Marco rubbed the back of his neck, realizing too late that he had had a bit of white face paint on his hand.

“Well, it’s super cool, so thanks.”

Once Marco put the finishing touches on, he held up a mirror for Tom. The reflection showed his face transformed into a skull with ornate patterns everywhere. When Marco had come up with the idea for bullfighting costumes, Tom had been pretty disturbed by the fact that the bulls were killed. Marco had to admit it was pretty cruel, but after learning about Día de los Muertos, Tom suggested an Underworld-themed bullfight (where the bulls were already dead). Tom offered a fist-bump which Marco proudly accepted, and then the two switched places to begin the process all over again.

As Tom reached over to grab the makeup, his eyes lingered on the pillow with a heart at the head of Marco’s bed. His eyes darted back and forth between the pillow, all three eyes widening. Marco followed his train of thought and- oh no. “Tom, it’s not what you think-”

Tom raised his hands defensively. “Dude, I won’t judge.”

Marco sighed. What did he do to deserve this all in one day? “It’s not like that- OK, it’s not like that that, just… yeah.”

Minutes ticked on in silence while the steps were redone on Marco’s own face. Foundation, white paint, highlights… It was only when Tom got to the final ornate decals that Tom spoke back up again after sketching the outline on Marco’s face. “For the record, I know we haven’t really talked about it much but when I told you I was cool with you two getting together, I wasn’t just bottling stuff up or anything, OK? Yeah, breakups suck, but I’m pretty sure after a day or so my mom was taking it harder than me,” he chuckled with a toothy grin. “I know we haven’t, like, talked about it much since then, but you two are perfect for each other. I’m happy that you’re happy, dude, and more importantly I’m happy with myself too.” Words stopped once more as Tom focused to finish the pattern, showing Marco his own face in the mirror much to his delight. Everything came together flawlessly, and even faster than they’d anticipated. Marco breathed a sigh of relief at still managing to accomplish everything they needed to before trick-or-treating officially began. Part of that relief, he had to admit, was due to Tom’s words as well. Of course he didn’t think Tom resented him or anything, but knowing that they weren’t just “cool” but completely free of any potential past baggage felt like a weight off his shoulders. Marco leaned in and gave Tom a one-armed hug, clapping him on the back. “I take it you’re happy with the makeup job?” Tom joked.

“Well, your contouring is flawless. But it was mostly for the other stuff.”

“Anytime, man,” Tom responded, punching his shoulder lightly with a smile.

“Alright, costume time.”

***

“Star, seriously, do I have to do this?”

“Trick-or-treating starts in a few minutes, so too late nooo-oow!” Star sing-songed, bouncing over to the top of the stairs. “Are you boys down there?”

“Yeah,” she heard both Tom and Marco reply from the living room downstairs.

“Alright, Janna, it’s showtime!” Star grabbed her hesitant friend by the wrist and practically dragged her down the stairs. “Introduciiiiiiiing… Starberry!” She twirled in place once for effect, showing off her full body strawberry suit complete with themed headband and boots, then pulled Janna out from behind her, who had her hand on her forehead. “And Janna Banana!” She’d begrudgingly put on the main banana costume but had vehemently declined to wear the rest of the ensemble Star had picked out for her, sticking with her normal outfit instead, which Star was willing to accept.

Marco and Tom stared wide-eyed for a moment, turning to each other, then the girls, then to each other again, then back to the girls, mouths agape.

“How… what… wuh…” they both stammered incoherently, before bursting into raucous laughter, holding onto each other just to stay standing.

“God this is stupid,” Janna grumbled under her breath.

Star waited until they were done before explaining herself. “OK, so remember that night at D&D where Janna bet me I couldn’t beat the cyclops horde and I did?”

“You were only able to do that because you, and I quote, ‘rolled for cuteness check’ so they’d adopt you instead and Ferguson allowed it for some reason.”

“Well, maybe it’s because my character is incredibly cute!”

“Your character is just an elvish Marco.”

“Exactly. Anyway, since you guys were already doing your own thing for Halloween, I thought Janna and I would, too! Fruit Friends!” Star shrilled, hugging Janna and wiggling her back and forth.

“Let’s just get this over with.”

“Well, you both look great,” Marco giggled, walking over and flicking the strawberries on Star’s headband. “Where did you get this?”

“Dad helped me make it. He’s surprisingly good at arts and crafts. You two look pretty nice yourself.”

“Thanks. Tom wouldn’t wear the rest of the costume, though, but it’s still OK.”

“I’m not wearing a full body fursuit, Marco. But I can definitely do that thing bulls do in cartoons,” he coolly smirked, before blowing a puff of smoke with a bit of flame from his nostrils. Tom had a large nose ring and a bushy tip on top of his tail, but otherwise was wearing a pretty standard dark jacket on top of a maroon button-up shirt with dark slacks.

Star turned back to her boyfriend, looking his flashy getup up and down. “You look pretty nice yourself, Diaz,” she crooned playfully. “Although you missed out on the opportunity to be Mango Diaz for the night, bub.” The skull-themed makeup was absolutely divine, as she expected from the boys - they were frankly better at it than her. The ornate gold decorations all over the jacket and high-waisted pants looked sharp on top of the red base, and she was never one to complain about a nice white dress shirt and black tie, either. “Heh, I don’t want to mess up the makeup but-”

Marco cut her off with a brief kiss, taking her by pleasant surprise, and when her eyes fluttered back open he gave her a half-lidded stare and a smug grin. “Don’t worry, we used sealer.”

Janna moaned at the couple and slumped onto the couch. “Let’s just go get candy already.”

“Are you kids leaving soon?” Rafael poked him head out from the kitchen, making a comical “oh” face upon seeing all the costumes. “Darling, come look at how wonderful these costumes are!”

Angie quickly joined with the babies in tow, oohing and aahing over all the outfits. “Let’s get a quick picture before you leave, shall we?” The babies crawled over to the teens as they struck a pose for the camera. Her best friends - well, besides Ponyhead, who had blown them off for a special edition of her show tonight - all together having fun on holidays? It was exactly the life she’d been wanting for herself for a while. Stump Day was the last time they’d done anything like that, and even then it was riddled with strife and tension, but it filled her with a genuine warmth to know this would be the norm now. Or maybe that was just the not-that-breathable costume. Tom let out a yelp when Mariposa tugged on his tail, clapping in glee at the response.

“Guess that’s our signal to go,” he said in a strained voice, scooping up Mariposa and handing her to Marco who had just put on his baby carrier before she could pull at the nose ring. Meteora, meanwhile, seemed content to nest in the leaves of her strawberry outfit. They all grabbed their bags and headed out the door.

The night started off fairly uneventful; they collected candy going door to door, and most of the Echo Creek residents were quite impressed by the costumes and especially by Tom’s pyrotechnics. They passed a few monster families wandering around - her favorite was a centipede-looking monster that had an elaborate assembly of dolls mounted onto her body to make it look like a bunch of humans in a conga line. Once they had stopped at every house in the immediate neighborhood, their bags were fairly full already, so they decided to take some time and go explore looking for decorations for a while before stuffing their bags to capacity too early. The group headed towards some of the more blended areas of the merged town (still colloquially referred to as Echo Creek by most of the population) to see how all the different groups were celebrating the spooky festivities. Star and Marco were walking hand-in-hand with the babies in their care, just taking in the sights and enjoying the company, while Tom and Janna were chatting beside Marco.

“Janna, I’m telling you, that isn’t a real thing!”

“C’mon now Tom, I have three different necronomicons that reference it.”

“Grandpa Relicor goes on for hours about curses at every single family dinner and he’s never mentioned anything that could turn a human inside out.”

“Maybe he’s keeping it for himself. Did you ever think of that?”

“I’m sorry that I don’t think about turning humans inside out all that often! Look, we can just head to his library sometime and- wait, hold on. Star, isn’t this where we got kidnapped that one time?”

Star snapped out of her daze and looked around; they were in the old monster village! Star had been so busy during the last stretch of her time on Mewni that she hadn’t even gotten to visit it once some of the monster families came back, and Buff Frog had come over to visit them a few times on Earthni but she hadn’t been sure exactly where his home was. She motioned for the group to follow her while she looked for the right hut… There! They walked up to the door and knocked.

“Go away! We do not want any!”

“Buff Frog, it’s me!”

The door flung open and Star was immediately swept up into a giant bear hug. “Star Butterfly, my little sweet potato! It has been so long! Come in, all of you. What brings you to my home, and why are dressed like weird red plant with many eyes?”

“It’s Halloween, we’re trick-or-treating!”

“What is this ‘Halloween’ of which you speak?”

This caught Star off-guard. It had been posted all over town and in the newspapers, hadn’t it? After all, there were plenty of monsters she’d seen celebrating tonight already.

“Um, well, it’s an Earth holiday where people put on costumes and walk around to other people’s houses, and those other people give them candy!”

“Ah, so that explains mysterious children at door all night. I hide in home. Many not seem happy when I am not giving them things. This also why tadpoles go with friends wearing peculiar clothing. I understand all now.”

“Out of curiosity, Buff Frog, why didn’t you know?”

“I am needing help to read fancy Earth papers, text too small for eyes. Children try to show me this ‘internal net’ of yours for video, but I do not like. They teenagers now, do not talk to old man about life,” he sighed mournfully. “Is OK. We begin Halloween now. Who want swamp grass? Is favorite treat, but I happily give to my good friends.”

“Thanks Buff Frog, but uh, I think we’re good,” Marco said, making a quick face of disgust.

“Whatwuzzat?” Tom mumbled through a mouthful of swamp grass while eagerly taking more from Buff Frog into his bag.

Another knock came to Buff Frog’s door. His face lit up in joy. “This must be trick-or-treat! I try your custom now.” He went over to the door and opened it, arms spread wide with a gigantic smile on his face. “Happy Halloween! I am so glad to have fresh-faced child at door and be part of holiday cheer. What your costume supposed to-”

“Ugh, whatever. You have any candy or what?” Star sharply turned her attention in that direction at the familiar voice.

“Jeremy?” Marco cried out, his voice cracking.

Star and Marco poked their heads around the side of Buff Frog at the familiar voice. Jeremy Birnbaum, in the shrill, diminutive flesh. Of the many people Star had met during her time on Earth, he was one of the few that she would’ve been perfectly fine with never seeing again, and she knew Marco hated him far more than she did. He was wearing a karate outfit with his name embroidered in multiple places on the fabric.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Marco Diaz. What are you doing out in a dump like this? Oh, wait, that makes perfect sense!” he cackled.

“Don’t listen to him, Buff Frog,” Marco shouted, still fixing his angry gaze on the child. “He’s just a sad, mean little turd.”

“Look, Marco, I get it. You did one big thing and had your 15 minutes of fame and you think you’re hot stuff. But all you really did was make this town even lamer and bring a bunch of weirdo losers here. Whatever, I’m out of here. By the way, those wing things on your head are wimpy, old man. Anyway, later, nerds.”

As he was walking away, he antagonized a few groups of monster teenagers that were wandering around. Star’s face felt like it was on fire. She started charging out the door to give the twerp a piece of her mind, but a large hand gripped her shoulders and held her back.

“Star… is not worth it.”

“Yeah,” Tom added, hands in his pockets. “For the record, I’ve seen a lot of demons with wings way wimpier than yours.” Buff Frog laughed sadly.

Star clenched her fists in and out, knowing they were right. After taking a deep breath, she plopped down onto the floor, resting her cheeks on her hands and sighing. Since the Cleaving, it seemed like everyone had been getting along so well, and problems had been out of sight for so long that she’d gotten complacent. Even after the subject came up earlier today, she really hadn’t believed that anything bad would happen. Had she just been delusional for assuming that things were really better? Could more of this happen? Would more of this happen? She’d done everything in her power, including giving up that very power, to fix the problems and prejudices she saw in society. On some level, she knew she shouldn’t be too bothered by this - it was just Jeremy, after all - but it was just sinking in how far away they still were from the world she wanted to see.

After another minute stewing in her negative emotions, two large hands hefted her back to her feet, and she found herself staring directly into big yellow eyes at a distance where she could see every individual wrinkle under them. “Star, is OK. Those like mean boy exist, but it not so bad. I am used to it. Is better than Mewni. No one try to shove us off cliff yet,” he laughed. “Besides, mean boy not wrong. This place is dump. Children not do chores. Teenagers. Now go, I am not needing you being sad. Get candy with friends and adorable babies,” he said sternly.

“OK. Well, tell Katrina and all the others that we said hi,” Star hesitantly spoke. He was right, she supposed, but something about it still wasn’t sitting right with her. Marco took her hand with the smile he always gave her when trying to ease her worries and the group headed for the door.

“Star, karate boy, take good care of each other. Friends and babies too. You are both like tadpole to me. All will work out, da.”

The group said their goodbyes and headed out. “You feeling alright?” Marco inquired after they’d made their way out of the monster village, .

“I- yeah, I’m fine. Just stinks to see something like that after a while of things being really good.”

He squeezed her hand reassuringly. “I know a house that gives out homemade candy bars made from Sugar Seeds. Ferguson ate four of them one year and was sick for two weeks. Wanna go?”

Star was grateful for the change in subject, and turned to see his soothing chocolate gaze roving her face. He was always right at her side knowing how to lift her spirits, whether it be out of the deepest depths or from the mountaintops into the clouds. Maybe it was just best to push the issue out of her mind for n-

“I hate to interrupt the moment,” Tom stuck his head between them, forcing them to split apart to not get smacked by his horns, “but you might want to check this out.” He pointed a block in front of them to a group of kids frantically scrambling away from something with purpose, looking back over their shoulders every few seconds. Star and Marco locked eyes briefly once more and ran over towards them with the others just behind. Interestingly, Star noted, there were humans, Mewmans, and monsters alike in the group. The moment they drew near, one of the kids just pointed around a large building nearby without a word before continuing their mad dash.

Even Janna seemed interested now, raising an eyebrow along with the others before jogging towards the source of the commotion. They rounded the corner and were greeted with…

“Ludo’s castle?” Star and Marco said simultaneously. “Ludo’s here?”

“They’re still doing that thing?” Tom mouthed to Janna in the periphery of Star’s vision.

Now that she thought about it, there was a dim recollection of Ludo’s voice in her mind from the fateful day of the Cleaving, but her entire being had been so focused on the portal that it had barely registered at the time. How they hadn’t stumbled upon it in the past few months, though, was beyond her. OK, maybe it had something to do with them spending their first few dragon-cycle joyrides focused more on each other than what was below them, but in her defense, how was she supposed to focus on anything else with Marco in his adorkably handsome rough-and-tumble rider outfit? A non-heart-shaped spot of pink tinged her cheeks, and she shook off the thought by striding towards the castle, with Marco jerking forward as a result.

Janna’s eyes lit up at the eerie glow of the torches and the medieval trellises all along the walls. “Finally, my kind of Halloween.” She leaped forward to ring the doorbell.

Before anyone could react, a large net descended on them, capturing them and hoisting them up into the air. They all instinctively tried to break it, and found it impossibly strong. The door opened and they were hoisted into the and carried inside. Star tried to get her bearings but struggled to adjust her position given the bulky fruit costume. Eventually they were set back down in a large room. Star was finally able to crane her head enough to see the back of a large stone throne with two giant horns.

A shrill, familiar cackle erupted from the occupant of the throne. Suspicions confirmed, at least. “Hello, children. You have been trapped in my clutches! By the power invested in me on this Hallow’s Ween, I declare you… trick-and-treated!” Everyone remained still for a second, holding their breath to see what Ludo would do next. “Trick-and-treated!” he called out again. His voice dropped to a whisper, but Ludo was bad at whispering. “Dennis, that’s when you turn the chair!”

“Oh, right, sorry big brother!”

The stone throne swiveled around to reveal Ludo in the same clown costume Star remembered from the seance years ago. Spider and Bird, who Star now realized had been the ones to trap and carry them, emerged from the shadows to flank the sides of the throne. Right as the net dropped, Star felt her costume get pelted with something light. She picked up a small bag that had landed next to her face; it was labeled “Gold’N Crispz”.

“Ludo, what are you doing?” she finally called out.

“Wait, Star Butterfly? Is that really you? Help them up, help them up quickly now!” Spider, Bird, and a tall Kappa Star didn’t recognize helped Marco and Tom up first, who in turn assisted with Star and Janna. Ludo ran over and leaped up into a confused Marco’s arms, giving him a big hug and doing the same to Star a moment later. “I’ve missed you both so much!”

“We, um, missed you too, Ludo?” Marco unsurely stammered out.

“Oh, Marco, you’re alive! I thought you were actually a skeleton for a moment there!”

Star cleared her throat to get his attention once more. “So, uh, Ludo… we saw some kids running away screaming from here before.”

“Trick-and-treating hasn’t been going so well, they all call me ‘ugly hairy clown’ and flee. Ah well, more chips for me! But help yourselves, you two!”

“Uh, Star?” Tom spoke up. “Where’s Meteora?” Wait, what? She was gone? Star had felt her pulling on the leaves just a few minutes ago. She glanced over to Mariposa, who was still strapped into Marco’s carrier comfortably, seemingly unaffected by recent events. She groaned in frustration; the night had already had enough problems, why did this have to happen?

“There!” Marco shouted, pointing to the half-monster baby who had started crawling all along the gloomy walls of the castle. She rounded a corner out of sight.

“I got this,” Janna said. “This is my kind of place.” She jogged as fast as her costume would let her into the corridor Meteora disappeared into.

“I have zero clue who any of you are,” Tom added, pointing finger guns at Ludo and his friends, “but you guys seem like you have some catching up to do, so I’m just gonna go too.” He followed after Janna, tailed by the taller Kappa who Star presumed was Dennis who was breathlessly shouting warnings about various things in the castle.

“Well, your friends seem fun!” Ludo spouted out, bouncing on his feet. He led them into a room decorated like a lounge and jumped up onto one of the armchairs, motioning Star and Marco to do the same. “Come, sit! Would you care for another game of cha-rahds?” He gasped suddenly, pointing at Marco’s chest with a comically excited grin. “You two had a baby! That’s so nice! What’s her naaaaaame?”

Star and Marco’s faces both flushed. “She’s not ours, she’s my sister!”

“Potato, tomato,” he waved his hand at them dismissively. “I’m so happy for you both!”

“Anyyyyway,” Star drawled, eager to change the subject, “You rebuilt your castle, huh? It looks…” She spotted some sludge dripping down one of the walls nearby. “...nice!”

“Yes, it’s been quite an emotional journey this past year. I floated through space for a while - I think I hallucinated you with six arms at one point!” Star raised a finger and began to open her mouth, but Marco quickly grabbed pushed it back down. He probably had the right idea. “Then I lived a dreadful life with mother and father for a while, and then my wonderful little brother who I love so very much helped me see that I didn’t need them anymore by dunking a basketball, and we ended back up here! I guess that’s about it.”

“That’s… uh, glad to hear you’re doing well?” Star asked hesitantly. It was nice to see him not constantly attacking them or plotting to steal from them, but he was still an incredibly strange creature that Star could never quite get a read on. “How’s Earthni been treating you?”

“What’s an Earthni?” He blinked a few times, still innocently grinning.

“Earth and Mewni fused a few months ago,” Star dumbfoundedly responded.

“So that’s why the sky went all pretty and purpley, and why that milkshake stand I always went to right after I failed at getting your wand appeared right next to us. Speaking of which, how is that wand of yours?” He leaned forward in his seat expectantly.

“It’s, um, gone,” Marco said.

Ludo’s brow furrowed. “Well why don’t you go find it?”

“He means gone gone.” Star added. “We destroyed its source.”

“Whaaaaaaat? So no more magic at all? No more wand?” His beady pupils suddenly contracted to tiny dots in the center of his bulbous yellow eyeballs, voice dropping to a whisper. “...no more wand. No more wand. No more wand! I’m free, I’m- I’m free!” He stood up on the chair, jumping up and down and spinning around looking the happiest they’d ever seen him. “My brain, it doesn’t stop scheming and plotting for ways to steal the wand. It’s been lingering in the back of my mind for so long, but I don’t want it there. This is such a relief!”

Star felt a pang of sympathy for her ex-enemy. His mind was largely still an enigma, but he was struggling to put a past he wasn’t proud of behind him in his own way - something she was quite familiar with. She popped open a bag of chips and inspected them carefully, still a bit concerned about whatever food Ludo might deem worthy of giving out. Much to her surprise, they were actually just standard potato chips - fairly good ones, at that, and she was pretty hungry, having been too preoccupied to even dig in to her candy haul so far. Ludo remained in his happy reverie, babbling to himself while she munched and crunched down all the chips. Was that really all there were in it? Stupid packaging. She rustled the bag a bit, hearing it echo through the room. How could a bag be so loud? When the noise persisted, she realized it was actually footsteps. The three stood up and found Tom, Janna, and Dennis, all with scratches and scrapes and scuffs on their skin and clothing, panting heavily with Meteora fast asleep sucking her thumb in Tom’s arms.

“That baby is a nightmare!” Dennis squeaked out, his nasally voice only accentuated by his breathlessness. “She fought off Spider and Bird-”

“Yes, yes, we’ve all had a lovely evening, Dennis. But get this: the wand is gone! I’m free! Star, Marco, it’s been wonderful to see you again, we must catch up more some other time! Quickly, we must go tell Fudo and Tudo and Kudo and Zudo and Menudo and-”

Star, Marco, and the others had managed to make it the whole way off the castle property and out of earshot before Ludo was done with his list of names.

“Sooooo… what happened to-”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Janna tersely stated, as if the experience had made her a changed person. “Let’s just go take Meteora back home.” She took a step forward and winced

Tom snapped his fingers and a pillar of flame erupted in the street behind them, fading away seconds later to reveal his souped up Underworld carriage. “I can’t portal everywhere anymore but I can at least do that. Hop in.”

“What a gentleman,” Janna grumbled, tossing herself face-first onto the long plush seats within.

Star looked at the carriage, then looked up to Marco and knew they were on the same page as usual. They weren’t quite ready for Halloween to end yet. “We’ll make our own way back.”

“Suit yourself,” Tom shrugged, following Janna into the carriage before taking off for the night.

Marco’s hand found Star’s once more as they started to meander back in the general direction of home. “Well, that was an unexpected visit.”

“Yeah… glad to see Ludo’s doing well, though. It kinda gives me hope for Earthni, y’know?”

“Hmm?”

Star gazed up at the last vestiges of the sun in the sky. The sunsets on Earthni were becoming a constant positive in her life, always reminding her of the best the world had to offer. Of Marco, of peace, of the promise of a happy life ahead of them. “If Ludo, the guy who spent basically every waking second of his life for my entire first year here trying to steal my wand, can dig deep down and learn and grow from it… maybe we don’t just have to accept that some people are going to be mean idiots. It’s never gonna be perfect, but maybe there’s at least some hope that anyone can change.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Except Jeremy. He might be one of the hopeless ones,” she joked, jabbing an elbow into Marco’s side causing them both to giggle profusely. “Weeeeeell, we should probably get home soon. This little angel is on a one-way trip to Snoozeville.” She gave a feather-light boop to Mariposa’s nose.

“...should we still stop for those Sugar Seed bars?”

She sighed in contentment and leaned against his arm. “You know me too well, Diaz.”

#starco #svtfoe #star vs the forces of evil #tgg svtfoe #fanfic

[magicpotionniveous]

Pre-Lawsuit Ghost’s Tour Rider

On June 12, 2017  John Jurgensen of the Wall Street Journal posted a surreal outsider’s report on the Ghost lawsuit, for once not based on joppe’s translations. 

The WSJ is behind a pay wall and requires some juggling to access so here’s the highlight followed by the remainder of the article:

“Don’t put any fast food under our noses,” the band tells venues. 

...a list of requests sent to concert venues, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, included Ghost’s demands for cold cuts, beer and room-temperature bottled water. The band stipulated that bananas remain bagged in the catering area due to “a very severe banana allergy” among the traveling crew.

At each tour stop, they asked for six local postcards plus stamps (“YES WE REALLY WANT THESE”), along with good chocolate (“NOT HERSHEY!”) and quality food. “You are what you eat and in this regard we want to stay healthy,” Ghost noted in a dossier sent to venues.

When band members weren’t on stage or discussing evolutions in Ghost’s devilish mythology, they grappled with the earthly concerns of road life. In the cramped confines of the tour bus, sleeping schedules conflicted, recalls Mr. Persner. Debates about which restaurants to eat at were common.

From the beginning:

Ghost, a Swedish heavy-metal band, built a cult following over a decade using demonic pageantry and rhyming lyrics like “hypnotizing horns of ram” and “paralyzing pentagram.”

Band members perform in eerie masks and keep their identities secret, adding to the group’s mystique.

It all worked like a charm—until a recent lawsuit unmasked the satanic musicians as a bunch of earthly beings. In court papers and other documents, band members discuss such pedestrian matters as salaries, tour buses, laundry arrangements and how concert venues should prepare the bananas in their backstage spread.

“Don’t put any fast food under our noses,” the band tells venues.

In a realm where celebrities market their personal lives as much as their music, Ghost’s anonymity was an anomaly that fans flocked to. The band’s lead singer, Papa Emeritus, pairs skeletal face makeup with a pope hat bearing an inverted cross.

He performs while flanked by musicians known as Nameless Ghouls who wear silver-horned, mouth-less masks. Without revealing their faces, the band walked the red carpet at last year’s Grammys and accepted an award with Papa proclaiming that “a nightmare has turned into a dream.”

Four Nameless Ghouls are now suing Papa—a 36-year-old whose real name is Tobias Forge —in a Swedish court. They have accused him of financially shortchanging them and reneging on an agreement to make them partners and distribute the band’s profits equally.

The suit identified all the band’s members and has divided fans world-wide. Some have pored over the court documents and soaked up the behind-the-scenes details, while others resent the revelations for ruining Ghost’s spooky image. The dispute “really messed up the whole mythos of the band,” one fan complained online. “The lawsuit reduces them all to boring, flawed people.”

Kathleen Higgins of Halifax, Canada, a pet-store manager whose husband plays in a Ghost tribute band, avoided news of the lawsuit online and said she was bummed out by the band’s money squabbles and mundane affairs. “It’s like watching a Broadway show. When I saw ‘Phantom of the Opera’ as a child I wasn’t interested in who the actors were or what they ate for breakfast,” she said.

In character, Papa is a sort of occult sect leader who leads audiences in chants of “Belial, Behemoth, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Satanas, Lucifer,” incantations in the song “Year Zero.” But ahead of the band’s 2013 American tour, the front man was especially excited about Ghost’s transportation upgrade.

“It will be a real tour bus on the U.S. bit!” Mr. Forge wrote to the band in an email included in the suit. “Had we taken the van we would [have] gotten a minimal profit, but not sufficiently large for us to endure a month in the van.”

During concerts around that time, the band churned through songs such as “Death Knell” and “Satan Prayer.” At one point, Papa handed out unconsecrated communion wafers and sang about the stench of “dead human sacrifices.”

Afterwards, one of the Nameless Ghouls was tasked with cleaning the band’s gamey vestments in his apartment building’s communal washing machine in Sweden.

“It was like getting the whole football team’s dirty wash,” Martin Persner, the former Ghoul, said in an interview. Minutes from a band meeting included with court documents noted him raising concerns about the dank wardrobe situation and asking if it was possible to do laundry at the concert venues. Mr. Persner, a longtime Ghost guitarist who left the band last year, didn’t join the other Ghouls in filing suit.

As Ghost ascended in popularity in recent years, its concerts—known to fans as “rituals”—became more elaborate, featuring faux stained glass and burning incense. A confetti cannon shot fake money with Papa’s scowling face printed next to the number 666. Friends and audience members recruited as “sisters of sin” dressed up as nuns to administer the ersatz communion.

Backstage protocol was more basic. A list of requests sent to concert venues, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, included Ghost’s demands for cold cuts, beer and room-temperature bottled water. The band stipulated that bananas remain bagged in the catering area due to “a very severe banana allergy” among the traveling crew.

At each tour stop, they asked for six local postcards plus stamps (“YES WE REALLY WANT THESE”), along with good chocolate (“NOT HERSHEY!”) and quality food. “You are what you eat and in this regard we want to stay healthy,” Ghost noted in a dossier sent to venues.

When band members weren’t on stage or discussing evolutions in Ghost’s devilish mythology, they grappled with the earthly concerns of road life. In the cramped confines of the tour bus, sleeping schedules conflicted, recalls Mr. Persner. Debates about which restaurants to eat at were common.

The ultimate behind-the-scenes clashes, however, were about money. Mr. Forge’s legal response to the Ghouls’ suit, filed last week, describes showdowns over the band’s salaries, and claims the Ghouls were never more than musicians for hire. Their lawsuit “destroyed the mystery” of Ghost, Mr. Forge said, and their anonymity made them replaceable. He didn’t respond to requests for comment for this article.

Papa Emeritus recently debuted a new set of Nameless Ghouls, with no announcement to fans. The band launched a U.S. tour earlier this month.

The former Ghouls who filed suit declined interview requests. In a statement released in April, they accused Mr. Forge of “unabashed dishonesty, greed, and darkness. Not the darkness of which Ghost sings, but a darkness that pushes a person to betray his best friends when fame and fortune appear within reach.”

Martin Persner reveals himself as a former Ghoul.

Ghost’s anonymity is a throwback to the 1970s, when groups like Kiss shrouded themselves in sinister mystery. Pre-Wikipedia, fans had to piece together group lore by poring over music magazines, album liner notes and urban legends.

To be sure, some inquisitive and savvy Ghost fans were able to ferret out details about the musicians before they were exposed in the suit. But for the band, concealing their everyday identities was just a way to amp up the theater. The goal was to fuel rumors and “to create something larger than five dudes. Like comic book characters,” said Mr. Persner, who went public separately in a YouTube reveal meant to promote his own band, Magna Carta Cartel.

Being shrouded in a cloak and mask had practical advantages, too. “There was never a bad hair day,” said Mr. Persner.

-- Neanda Salvaterra contributed to this article.

Write to John Jurgensen at [email protected]

Appeared in the June 13, 2017, print edition as 'This Satanic Band Demands Better Work Conditions.'

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/hell-on-earth-satanic-band-files-suit-citing-dreary-work-conditions-1497282380

The comments are a riot as well.

#ghost #the band ghost #ghost bc #a nameless ghoul #martin persner

[shellheadtmarc]

| BASIC INFO

MCU-based.

On October 23, 2077, the Great War finally ended.  The nukes were launched, the vaults were shut well below their maximum capacity, and civilization as we know it ended in nuclear hellfire.  

The Avenger otherwise known as Iron Man, Tony Stark, was in NYC when the bombs dropped.  Instead of finding shelter in a vault, or following through with one of the many contingency plans put in place for just that occurrence, he instead tried to do what he could in the aftermath, where a city full of panicky people rioted and looted after so long of rationing and not enough, trying his best to help keep some kind of order, to prevent those left behind after the vaults closed turning on each other in the worst possible way.

The years kept passing, and while some people became ghouls with the exposure to the massive amounts of radiation and FEV present in everything, and most died, tests run by he and JARVIS confirmed his initial suspicions,that the arc reactor was keeping him alive in more ways than one.  And in the end, there ended up being nothing for him to do but wait until the worst of the radiation had passed, bide his time, tinker, and keep an eye out for the first of the vaults to start opening.

Two hundred and some change later, the Brotherhood of Steel, on their way to the Commonwealth, crawl past New York in the Prydwen, and Tony, having adapted to wasteland living and doing his best to initiate and oversee rebuilding efforts (and, in the controlled environment of the NYC wasteland, succeeding to a degree), does what any rational, cagey, paranoid wastelander would do:  He suits up and follows them into Boston.  Any Hindenburg 2.0 like that with an amassment of vertibirds and power armored personnel isn’t knocking on the door to borrow a cup of sugar, and he’s heard enough rumors about factions in both DC and Boston with passing traders that he figures New York will have to look after New York for a little while (or...JARVIS will have to help New York look after New York, same difference), while he goes and pokes his nose in the Commonwealth’s business.

He touches down north of Fort Hagen (around the abandoned chapel) after the Brotherhood of Steel arrive and set up base at Boston’s old airport, and from Fort Hagen he’ll start his own investigations into the BOS, the Railroad, the Minutemen, and the Institute.

| APPEARANCE

Tony’s a far cry from five hundred dollar haircuts and bespoke suits these days; the wasteland is rough, and he’s had to get rough back.  Function takes precedence over fashion, and while he still cleans up fairly well, you’ll never see him like that.  His typical uniform is no different than the rest of the wasteland’s, ranging from old flannel and threadbare denim to mechanic coveralls and worn tank tops, all of which are thin enough to let his arc reactor shine through them like a beacon.  

Physically, his entire silhouette has changed:  He’s probably a lot healthier than the average scavver, simply because he is and was born before the war and due to the arc reactor isn’t prone to some of the genetic troubles and illnesses that plague the wasteland.  However, due to the nature of living in the wasteland, where fighting for your life is very often literal, his musculature has changed, and he’s leaner than he was before the war.  His face, too, especially shows that, as his cheeks have hollowed out considerably, and he looks entirely more gaunt these days.

His hair runs in two directions:  Either he’ll take scissors to it himself (and he’s gotten good at giving himself a trim in an approximation of the hairstyles he’d favored before the war, even if they tend to fall flat with no hair product being available these days) when he has the time, or he lets it grow until he can’t stand it any longer.  When it’s longer, he has a habit of pinning it back with bobby pins, which works out just fine for him, because he’s never without one if he needs to pick a lock.

More often than not, he can’t be bothered with his trademark laser-precision facial hair, because shaving takes time these days, and clean water is a resource that can’t be wasted on frivolous pursuits when it’s needed for drinking and cooking.  Instead, while he sometimes is seen shaping it back up every so often, he tends to let it grow as it will (and he does do his best to tame it, but, again - who has the time to worry about things like developing beard oil and balm when there’s so much else to be done that’s more important?), or he shaves completely and the process starts all over again.  Having trademark facial hair is just one of the many quirks he’s had to let go of in the name of survival.

He’s carrying more obvious scars, other than those around the arc reactor.  All those blows to the face and years getting his face banged around in the suit have finally taken their toll, and he’s got a scar that runs the curve of his left brow bone and eye socket, as well as an arch over the bridge of his nose and a permanent one from having his lip split open so many multiple times.  He’s usually sporting a black eye or fat lip, because he still runs his mouth, and running from a fight is no longer an option.  You should see the other guy, honestly.

| FEV ENHANCEMENT

Tony has never been shy about the idea that physical enhancement is as much part of the game of being Iron Man as the suit is.  After all, it’s only a suit, and response times can only be so fast, when there’s always going to be a delay between thought and getting the suit to follow that thought.  So, much in the vein of the 616 run for Extremis enhancement, Tony’s...Tinkered on himself.  Mostly, stumbling across the same strain of FEV developed in the Institute was sheer luck, and it took years for him to decide it was the route he wanted to go, with innumerable simulations and alternatives ran and checked before he made that leap.

To be clear:  He’s not a super mutant, much as 616 Tony was not a true Extremis enhancile.  He took the structure of FEV, broke it apart, cut out the parts he didn’t want, added parts he did, and put it all back together before using himself as a guinea pig to see if it’d work.  And work it has.  He’s a little stronger, yes, but not in a way that matters.  He heals a little faster.  He regrew himself new organs.  But much like with Extremis, he forced it to do what he wanted it to do, which was rewire himself from the inside out, and now when he says ‘the suit and I are one’ he means that.  Literally.  He wires himself directly into it when needed, and the most crucial components of it hide out in the hollows of his bones.

More importantly, however, he’s only reinforced the length of his lifespan, and upped his metabolism, so now he runs on the hot end of the spectrum.  He’s a great bed buddy now in the middle of winter.

Another side effect of the FEV use and rewiring himself includes:  Low level technomancy.  He can literally interface with some machinery within reason and hack it with his brain.  Useful, when you’re up against a bunch of haywire robots and want to turn the tide in your favor by hacking a few but can’t stop shooting and ducking behind things long enough to do it the old fashioned way.  It’s limited, though, and not something he necessarily makes a lot of use of unless absolutely necessary.  

| WASTELAND SPECIAL

The Wasteland Special is the new FEV-based suit.  Well.  “New” is relative.  Years were spent putting together the perfect one size fits all suit suited for the wasteland and its dangers, as well as combining it with Tony’s FEV enhancements so that he has it at a moment’s notice in the chance a super mutant behemoth decides to induct him into the wasteland space program.

It has an assortment of functions, and while it has a connection to JARVIS, unlike his earlier suits it doesn’t require JARVIS to run its systems, as that’s all done with Tony being directly connected to it himself.  JARVIS is, for all practical purposes, more a partner in this venture, and tends to watch Tony’s six.

He doesn’t use it often, and that should be heavily stressed.  Iron Man, for all practical purposes, is something from the past.  What there remains of him existing before the war - which isn’t much - includes some comic illustrations that show the classic Marvel red and gold (that Fallout aesthetic, you know) not anything like what his suits actually looked like.  If he does pull out the Wasteland Special, it means things are bad.  Or he’s off for a stroll through the Glowing Sea.  A or B.  It can also be used piecemeal, much like most of the Iron Man suits.  Jet boots for this, gauntlets for that, he’ll do that far more often than the whole shebang, because he likes perching on overpasses that no longer connect to Boston’s highway system to feel tall.  Or get a layout of the land.  It varies with his mood and whims.  Traveling alone at night, that’s typically how he likes to camp, anyway.

For relevant visuals on how it works, see the Extremis run in 2008 Invincible Iron Man and the MCU’s Avengers: Infinity War.  It’s a long term solution to the problem of lacking resources, since building suits for every function is no longer a possibility.  Yes, it’s still red and gold and lights up in a way that pleases him.  His hall of armors is looking a bit bare, because outdated and outmoded suits were broken down for components to build it. 

| QUIRKS / HABITS / VOCABULARY

First things first:  If you expect Disney dialogue options here, you won’t find them.  Tony’s around wastelanders; he lives like them, he talks with them, he’s friends with them.  These days his dialogue is as peppered with casual profanity as anyone else’s, because it just seeps in without you realizing it.  He was never squeaky clean before, but the wasteland is a whole other ballgame in that respect.

While he’s fairly adapted at this point, his habit of making references to things has never stopped.  Unfortunately, unless you’re as much of a prewar relic as he is, or are remarkably knowledgeable about the prewar world, they tend to not make a lot of sense.  It’s okay, he makes himself laugh and that’s what’s important.  Too, he swaps terms for things interchangeably.  A brahmin might be a brahmin in one sentence, and he’ll turn around and call it a cow in the next.  People eventually stop, usually, trying to correct him, because he says what he says and he’s standing by it.  Yes, he knows brahmin are probably significantly different than a cow now.  Still tastes like hamburger.

He will not, under any circumstances, eat Fancy Lads.  He will starve before he eats one, he will throw them in the Charles; if he ever even picks up a box he finds scavving, it’s because he’s going to trade them when he gets to a settlement.  He thinks they’re horrid.  Anything else in the wasteland he can mostly choke down as long he doesn’t think about what he’s eating too hard, including things like bug meats.

Realistically, there’s a lot more littering the wasteland that just what’s shown in game.  This includes instant coffee, without a doubt, and it means Tony is 100% caffeine-powered 120% of the time.  He hoards it.  He’ll trade for it.  And he only shares it with people he actually cares about, because it’s more valuable than gold at this point.

If he’s traveling with someone by foot he will not travel at night.  The arc reactor is something of a curse and a blessing at this point, because while sure, it keeps him alive, it’s bright, and when all your clothes are threadbare there’s nothing short of wasting resources to cover it.  It means at night Tony’s chest becomes a glowing target, and not only does it put himself at risk from raiders and super mutants and everything else that lurks in the wasteland, it puts the other person at risk, as well.  That’s not something he’s willing to do if it can at all be helped.  He has to be pressed for time or have something more important than the safety of two people on his mind to keep going once the sun hits the horizon.  Alone, he can and will just...Fly to wherever he needs to go.

There are even less people left in the world he’ll take things from directly.  All others must place things on a surface and let him pick it up himself.  This actually has practical applications at this point, with how loosey goosey morality is in the wasteland, which is something Tony really never saw coming, but it makes a peeve a blessing.  His own morality has had to join that loose interpretation of ‘good’, as well, because there are groups in all wastelands who will shoot first, loot your corpse later, and having a staunch ‘I will not kill’ attitude will leave you dead.

He’s got something of a traveling handyman vibe in the Commonwealth, where he moves from settlement to settlement because he’s busy collecting info on the various machinations of the different groups present, he’s interested in the state of things, he starts setting up his own settlements to put under Minutemen care once he decides they’re good eggs, and because he’s genuinely curious, and if something needs to be repaired or done while he’s in those settlements, he will.  He doesn’t take caps for the work.  Tony’s carrying a lot of guilt, about not being able to have much of an influence in stopping the war, and because of that, any money he takes from people he sees as needing it more is blood money.  He will, at most, accept slim supplies, like water or food or a stimpak or two; just enough in the way of things to get him to the next place he’s going.

With that, he’s really good at scavenging for what he needs.  He had to get that way being on his own in NYC for so long until it was safe enough for people to start trickling back in.

He can always be found with a pocketful of fuses and wire and electrical tape, and various other things he usually has on his person are a small tube of wonderglue, a few pencils and pens, and small pocket-sized grid moleskine missing its bookmark and band (he uses a paperclip as a bookmark and a rubber band to hold it closed, and it’s full of cramped writing because he makes every page count), and other odds and ends.  

| AS A COMPANION

Tony does not work via FO4 game mechanics, which sadly needs to be pointed out.  He’s got agency and his own shit to do, and while he might roll with someone for a while because it’s nice to have someone to talk to and it’s nice to have someone to watch his back, there are definitely times he splits off to do his own thing.  Sometimes he gives warning, sometimes he doesn’t.  Regardless of if he does or doesn’t, Tony’s sole purpose isn’t to crawl up the sosu’s ass and stay there.  He breaks the trope of his entire existence being centered around them.  He came to the Commonwealth with a purpose, and he’s going to complete that purpose.  Sometimes that means heading in a different direction than the sosu, and you know, that’s just life, as far as he’s concerned.

He’s also not a companion for every sosu.  Institute and BOS aligned people will find him standoffish and...Well.  Honestly, kind of mean, once he gets an idea of what those two factions are all about.  Siding with the Institute won’t necessarily lock him out as a companion - that’s determined by how canon divergent of a sosu a person is.  The same goes for the BOS.  However, if at any point the Railroad is wiped out, Tony’s gone.  He’s gone, and whoever did it should probably start looking over their shoulder.  Expressing sentiments that ghouls, synths, and super mutants deserve death, despite being sentient beings with free will and the ability to reason and form their own opinions will also see him bouncing.  He won’t come after you in that case for being an asshole, but he’ll be sure to spread the word.

What.  No one ever said Tony Stark wasn’t petty as fuck.

AS A HUGE BIG NEON SIGN FLASHING NOTE:  In the event that MacCready was not picked up by the sosu and taken as a companion, and has not been romanced or had his affinity quest completed, Tony is going to directly default to his relationship with @gwinnetts‘s MacCready.  This isn’t set in absolute stone, Tony’s not unwooable as a companion, but it’s gotta be hashed out.  The reasoning is:  If MacCready hasn’t been picked up as a companion by the sosu, Tony will fairly early on in his time in the Commonwealth end up hiring him himself (for information, not as a mercenary) and there is a major rewrite of MacCready’s quest in play there.  This can be changed with plotting, but the key word there is that we plot it out.  Otherwise Tony and Mac are an item and them’s the breaks.

AS A SECONDARY FLASHY NOTE:  If Strong has not been picked up as a companion by the sosu, Tony will also end up going to Trinity Tower to check out the message and will end up taking Strong on and running through his quest for the milk of human kindness with him.  In the default, natural course of this verse, Tony and Strong will make their way to Saugus together (sans Mac - Tony makes a home and settlement of the town within Fort Hagen military base, and if someone were to go looking, that’s probably where Mac can be found, if not Fiddler’s Green or wherever else he wants to go, he’s got his own free will and things to do, he and Tony aren’t necessarily attached at the hip) and there Tony’s ends up getting fucked up by the Forged.  Strong’s the one that drags his ass out of there, and delivers him to either the Slog or Finch Farm until he can be moved somewhere with better medical facilities.  The reason for this is Tony’s a little too slow  on the uptake at Saugus and ends up losing an eye and suffering burns to his face (and neck).  Eventually he’ll show up with at modified synth-esque replacement that he’ll call a stopgap until he can work up something better.  You’ll never lose him in the dark again, between the arc reactor and the new glowy eye.

Tony has a lot to do, so again, he’s not a companion for everyone.  Someone that needs to keep their companions close and wants them all in one place will find Tony incredibly frustrating, because he can respect the sosu completely and still not deviate from his own to do list and goals.  And if they happen to recognize him (since they’re both prewar relics and he was pretty famous - you might have heard of him?) that shouldn’t come as any surprise whatsoever.

| SETTLEMENTS

Tony, whether he hooks up with the sosu or not, once he allies with the Minutemen will absolutely put any settlements he’s put together under their oversight.  It’s a case of he finds a spot that would be good farm land, would be easily defensible, has a lot of resources - something that catches his eye about it - and he’ll spend some time there, getting it set up for habitation and later be the guy you call to get things fixed, but will also put an emphasis on teaching others how to do what he’s doing, because the plan is not to stay in the Commonwealth (he will, he just doesn’t know that yet).

In the main version of this verse, Tony doesn’t touch vanilla settlements unless there are some a sosu hasn’t done anything with.  Those he does touch can include:

Croup Manor (pretty non-negotiable if @rahasyamay’s stephen is also in play - stephen lives there) Egret Tours Marina (Either way he’ll poke around there - it ties into his and Mac’s relationship) Finch Farm Greygarden Greentop Nursery Hangman’s Alley Jamaica Plain Murkwater Construction Site Outpost Zimonja Nordhagen Beach (he’ll hang around here anyway to keep an eye on the BOS) Oberland Station Starlight Drive In Taffington Boathouse Abernathy Farm (shared with @gwinnetts’s Zetta if she’s in play) Sunshine Tidings Co-Op  (shared with @gwinnetts​’s Zetta if she’s in play it’s their vacation home)

Otherwise, he has his own set of settlements, which may include the following:

Fort Hagen (he...literally lives there and it’s where his main lab is) Fiddler’s Green Trailer Estates (actually considered just an extension of Fort Hagen) Natick Power Substation Ryder Rentals Tucker Town (and the overpass - near the rotting mansion) Sanctuary Saloon (tucked in the swamps near Sanctuary) Reeb Marina Norwood Depot (far south a safe distance east from the Glowing Sea) Evan’s Way (near Diamond City) Gunner’s Plaza / GNN Building Wattz Electronics Prospekt Hill Chestnut Hillocks Reservoir Mystic Pines Rest Home Malden (from the Slocum’s Joe HQ, to Medtek, to outside of town) Concord (from the church down the hill, also the large parking lot below the museum into the woods) Andrew Station (to prevent more raiders from moving in) Quincy (shared with @gwinnetts‘s Zetta if she’s in play) South Suffolk Charter School Neponset Park Walden Pond (to keep raiders out) ArcJet (the area surrounding the building) Several piers on the east side of Boston Quincy Lighthouse USS Riptide (to prevent more raiders moving in) Salem (to keep the mirelurks under control)

And anywhere else that catches his eye.  To keep this from being twenty miles longer than it already is, each settlement might get its own post, and questions are always welcomed!

| OTHER FACTIONS

Part of Tony’s to-do list in the Commonwealth is checking out the other groups in play, and he forms fairly strong opinions about each one.

Minutemen:  He stans.  Preston Garvey is an angel and Tony Stark will not even contemplate hearing otherwise.  He’s not a joiner, but he does ally himself with them and put the settlements he founds himself under their rounds, and makes himself available to them as needed.  Once they get back on their feet, he definitely trusts them to do the right thing, and will advocate they move themselves into a more police force role in the Commonwealth after the main quest endgame.  If any Rhodey is in play with a sosu that isn’t interested in being General, will nudge Rhodey gently in that direction.  (”Gently”, about as subtle as a bag of hammers, honestly.)

Railroad:  They’re doing good work.  Again, not a joiner, and their focus is very narrow and they’re going to make themselves obsolete (which is a great endgame, but expanding to be more helpful to the Commonwealth as a whole after endgame is better) and he can and will do tourist work for them as needed.  He’s not interested in actually becoming a heavy, or anything of that nature.  

Brotherhood of Steel:  He doesn’t like the looks of them right off - they’ve got that stupid airship and vertibirds and their power armor and laser weapons - and he likes them even less when he hears about what they’re doing and how they treat non-humans.  He’s not outright hostile, not unless they give him a reason to be, but he doesn’t encourage them to hang around his own settlements.  He also won’t shed any tears if a sosu sides with the Railroad and destroys them during Rockets’ Red Glare.

Institute:  Not a fan.  Actually, not a fan is a huge understatement.  At first, he’s willing to admit that maybe there’s a little hysteria in the Commonwealth concerning them?  But after literally witnessing replacements trying to take place, getting firsthand accounts - in some cases being invited into the Institute itself to make him less of a “problem” (that’s the joke) - and seeing the paranoia and fear concerning them all over the place, plus the treatment of synths like things rather than people, he’s not here for it.  It’s why he’s an endgame faction for storming them.

Gunners:  His first full day in the Commonwealth he gets jumped by an outpost of Gunners, and that’s what sets him on his path to meeting MacCready.  He doesn’t get them - the really are wound too tight - and there’s very little reasoning for them.  A person can’t even accidentally stumble across them without getting punched full of holes, and after he learns what happened in Quincy, it’s safe to say he is absolutely not their biggest fan.

Children of Atom:  He thinks they’re a little weird, a little misguided, a little kooky, but if they’re not actually hurting anyone - or, you know, brainwashing kids and exposing them to large doses of radiation - and it’s all consenting adults...Well.  Live and let live.

Nuka-World Raiders:  Yeah, do you even need to ask?

| AS AN ENDGAME FACTION

For the truly intrepid and canon-divergent sosu, Tony can be used as their endgame faction, right by himself.  Not that he can take out the Institute on his lonesome with nothing but a suit, that’s just silly.  But he does have the Iron Legion, bolstered by a ground force built from reclaimed gen 1 and 2 synths and spare suits of power armor that run on an ai hivemind.  This is an option for the sosu who’s managed to convince Tony they aren’t an asshole and are going to do right by the people of the Commonwealth, and who wants to minimize human and gen 3 synth casualties.  Tony can be given the designs for the teleportation device and the chip from the courser and get them into the Institute, and he can be the one that the sosu storms the Institute with, if running with any ending other than the Institute’s.

| M.O.E.

MOE is the very first synth Tony rebuilds and reprograms as part of his expansion of the Iron Legion.  Originally he was a limited test run - something of a code debugger - but while the ai MOE is using is buggy, it works.  He learns, he’s self-aware, and he’s conscious, so Tony’s made the decision to keep him online, because otherwise pulling the plug would feel something like murder, as far as he’s concerned.

MOE mostly hangs out in Fort Hagen - his parameters keep him there after he managed to wander off one day and got attacked by feral ghouls and lost his lower jaw, so to keep him safe, he can travel from Fiddler’s Green all the way up to the radio transmitting dishes past Tony’s house, and no farther.  Mostly he can be found tromping between Tony’s house and lab, and he’s a frequent fixture in doing chores such as sweeping and putting away dishes.  MOE himself is picking up most of his cues in behavior from Tony, so there are definitely times he mimicks him well enough to be a little unnerving.  He’s stubborn, very fixated on doing things himself for himself and learning himself and refusing help when offered it.  He’s also a bit tunnel-visioned, getting absorbed in the tasks he determines for himself and can and has barreled people over pulling up rugs to sweep  or walking down the street to the lab in the actual fort.  

He talks!  He’s not a silent robot with  no personality.  He can and will talk and once started is entirely hard to shut up again.  There’s always a million questions once he’s determined someone is trustworthy because he is new, his consciousness is new, and he’s learning.  

He can be a bit startling to see at first, with no lower jaw and the fact that Tony never cosmetically altered him to look less murdery, like the rest of the Iron Legion, but he’s a gentle skeleton robot who has particular ideas about the way certain household chores should be done, and can and will go behind Tony and “fix” things if he thinks Tony hasn’t done them correctly.

#⚛ (program: fo4 companion) / here i am the only living boy in new york #long post #long post for ts #// god this got long #// y'all been warned #// one day i'll even write up the settlement posts #// but it will not be this day

[nickghouliano]

Coldest Day Rattle your bones, the winter went cold. A tyrant, monster, and witch hunted by vigilante of the old. Justice burns. Future projects coming soon 2022 . . . #comic #comics #oc #occharacter #winter #paranormal #horror #crime #witchcraft #serialkiller #silviusbrabo #giantslayer #justice #chicago #magic #occult #scifi #supervillain #snow #blizzard #crime #character #mystery #madness #cold #ghost #ghoul #noir #surreal #survival #riot https://www.instagram.com/p/CYApULGr0CE/?utm_medium=tumblr

#comic #comics #oc #occharacter #winter #paranormal #horror #crime #witchcraft #serialkiller #silviusbrabo #giantslayer #justice #chicago #magic #occult #scifi #supervillain #snow #blizzard #character #mystery #madness #cold #ghost #ghoul #noir #surreal #survival #riot

[theliterateape]

I Like to Watch | The Walking Dead

by Don Hall

I have this great idea. At the end of Return of the King, following the battle to destroy Sauron, we follow Aragorn and Gandalf as they continue battle lesser evils in Middle Earth. You know, maybe like a Balrog with delusions of grandeur or an evil faction of dwarves. In the meantime, Sauron, instead of being destroyed, is held captive and we get to know him a little better. Maybe we extend the saga to show his backstory and exactly how he became evil?

Hell, we could milk the battles for years!

No?

How about this: a The Princess Bride follow-up wherein Count Rugen survives the sword fight between he and Inigo. Then, later, the two form a bond and travel the countryside looking wrongs to right.

NO?!

OK: After Luke Skywalker kills the Emperor and we spend three prequels on the backstories of both Vader (as a kid) and the Emperor (as a Senator), we jump forward in time. There is a new threat with a bad guy not quite as bad as Vader because he's so openly conflicted and kinda horny for the female Luke. Then, when things come to a head at the third sequel, we bring back the Emperor so we can kill him AGAIN!!

No. You're right. That is a shitty idea.

At the (long) tail-end of the pandemic, the rest of the 10th season of The Walking Dead resumed airing and I found myself undeniably un-inspired. I didn't really care much for The Whisperers and after they bumped Rick Grimes off and then carted him away on a helicopter, the show sort of fizzled. I couldn't figure out what was missing (besides Rick) so I decided to go back to the beginning and watch the whole thing again.

The zombie trope goes back a ways into horror history. The concept of the dead re-animating and going for our living throats has elements of the Golem, aspects of Frankenstein's Monster, and a historical basis in the slavery practices of the French in Haiti.

The zombie archetype, as it appeared in Haiti and mirrored the inhumanity that existed there from 1625 to around 1800, was a projection of the African slaves’ relentless misery and subjugation. Haitian slaves believed that dying would release them back to lan guinée, literally Guinea, or Africa in general, a kind of afterlife where they could be free. Though suicide was common among slaves, those who took their own lives wouldn’t be allowed to return to lan guinée. Instead, they’d be condemned to skulk the Hispaniola plantations for eternity, an undead slave at once denied their own bodies and yet trapped inside them—a soulless zombie.

In 1968, George Romero shot (on a budget of $114,000) what was originally entitled Night of the Flesh Eaters and later renamed Night of the Living Dead. He didn't refer to his walking dead as "zombies" but as "ghouls." 

The grainy black and white film was far more than a gruesome horror flick—it was an allegory for the protests of both the Vietnam War and the riots of those fighting for Civil Rights. Later, his sequel of sorts, Dawn of the Dead, is another social satire disguised as gore flick with the zombies (he now called them zombies) acting as stand-ins for the suburban consumerist ethos. 1985's Day of the Dead is an allegory about the mindless authoritarianism of the military. Land of the Dead was a satire of class division; Diary of the Dead spoofed the age of blogging and YouTube.

What were the zombies? How did they come to be? Romero gives us a comet. A cosmic incident with no more explanation. This gives the satirical representation the foreground.

Along came more zombie apocalypse movies: Re-animator, Dead Alive, 28 Days Later. Certainly a lot more including Night of the Creeps and Zombie. In 2004, we get Zach Snyder's brilliant re-make of Dawn of the Dead. This list of the undead had as much in common with the classic atomic monsters as they did the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park—these ghouls were created by man. These were the inevitable result of humankind's hubris and god-complex. We created the end of the world and now must make sense of our creation.

In 2003, Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore co-created a long-running comic series published by Image Comics: The Walking Dead. In 2010, AMC picked up the comic for a television series of the same name and what set these zombies apart from the previous strain is that one didn't have to be bitten in order to turn. These zombies represented a natural human-wide disease that re-animated anyone who died. Like a bizarre metaphor for Purgatory, becoming undead was inevitable for all living people. This created a completely different dynamic for those surviving.

Which brings us up to speed.

I was hooked to TWD for the first four seasons. The conclusion of the Governor arc was satisfying and everything about the prison was exceptional but I was exhausted by the time they arrived at Terminus. The thing became taxing to follow and I believe I'd hit my limit. I dropped away until I was talking to a friend who loved the show and she told me that Negan was the best villain she'd ever seen.

I rejoined the Grimes Gang with Season 5. Terminus cannibals. Again, I got sucked in. The tragic end of Bob. The back-and-forth conflict of Gabriel. The whole Beth in the hospital with the corrupt cops was weak but that may have been because I don't find Beth remotely interesting. Then we get to Alexandria and the dynamic between the people so blind to the world that they're having cocktail parties and the group who have endured almost comical loss and tragedy makes for some excellent storytelling.

Then came Season 6, episode 4 He's Not Here. 

Both loosely connected to the journey of our merry band yet set completely apart, this standalone episode finds us with Morgan (the extraordinary Lennie James) being brought back from the insanity he's afflicted with by Eastman (an equally wonderful John Carroll Lynch). Eastman slowly brings Morgan back from the edge.

A psychiatrist, Eastman tells the story of his prison practice. He explains that he has worked with over 800 incarcerated patients and only one was irredeemably evil. He tells him of that patient, Crighton Dallas Wilton. While a model prisoner in the eyes of the prison staff, Eastman saw Wilton for what he was, an evil, manipulative psychopath. When the time for Wilton's parole came up, Eastman was the one to interview him and it was here that Wilton realized that Eastman had seen through his facade and attempted to kill him. 

Later, we find out exactly how evil Wilton was and how Eastman came to be who he is in this apocalyptic world.

This episode is beautifully done and, upon re-watching the whole thing all over again, stands out for one important aspect. Eastman tells us that in this world of heroes and villains surrounded by the undead, there is only one truly evil person to watch out for.

The Governor isn't evil. He's an asshole. An authoritarian. He's also insane from grief which has driven him to become a villain. He's no more or less brutal in many ways than Rick. The Terminus cannibals are likewise justified in their choices as sickening and horrifying as they may be.

Eastman is warning us of true evil on the horizon.

That evil is Negan.

From the moment we see him (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his barbed wire bat, Lucille, he is the embodiment of gleeful malevolence. He is brutal and he fucking loves it. He kills both Abraham and Glenn with such casual smug pleasure that the fact that he just offed a beloved character who has been on the journey since the second episode of the entire franchise only hurts more.

Negan is the anti-Rick. No conflict within himself, convinced that he is righteous in his path with so little regard for even his own Saviors (his 'relationship' to Dwight is a thing of remarkable cruelty). It isn't even the body count (both the Governor and the Terminus gang kill more onscreen) but his enjoyment in brutalizing people, teasing them into submission, then gutting them on the street is Hannibal Lecter territory.

Negan is the one truly evil man Eastman warns us about.

In my marathon from the start, I realized sometime during Season 8—I had no interest in seeing any more following Negan's defeat. Having seen the episodes before, I didn't want to see the character redeemed. I didn't want him to be at all relatable. I wanted Rick to kill him and for a sense of closure.

Now take a peek at Season 8. The writers wrote the end of the series in this one. The alliance of Alexandria, The Hilltop, and The Kingdom against The Saviors. Eugene finds his safe place and Gabriel struggles to redeem himself. Fucking Carl dies! Rick beats Negan one-on-one in a field and cuts his throat with a piece of stained glass. FINIS. OVER. DONE, for chrissakes.

Carl's death means nothing if the ending isn't peace. I'll be honest, the first time I watched Carl die, I didn't much care. He wasn't a heavy weight character in my mind. The second time, I bawled like a baby because, in a few weeks, I watched him go from scared kid in the camp when Rick (presumed dead) strolls in to the young man sparring with Negan. Carl's vision of Rick's future is the end. Except for the Negan part. FUCK THAT. Negan doesn't get to survive.uck that

Rick cuts his throat. He doesn't instruct Sadiq to save him. Negan dies. Maggie gets her revenge. Rick makes his "a better world" speech. Cut to black.

HBO’s Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, The Leftovers. All could have continued following their obvious and arguably brilliant endings but they didn’t. Game of Thrones could’ve just stopped as soon as the Night King is defeated but they couldn’t help themselves and tarnished the legacy of one of the most watched television series in history. I loved Lost all the way up until they explained everything poorly.

I get it. AMC needs the cash cow. Lots of people employed so they just have to continue the tale but, man, when you get to an ending that good, walk away.

#I Like to Watch #The Walking Dead

[nitsuki-baka]

Exit game - Secret Santa ‘17

Happy Christmas to all of you, but especially to @j-and-a. This fic is for you! Hope you like it. You can also find it on ao3. 

Hugs and kisses from your secret santa Nikki ( ˘ ³˘)♥

Exit game

If someone were to ask Kaneki to list the things that he wanted the least to happen, he would have made one and underlined this specific situation. From all the punishments that he had taken for the past week, scratch that, for his whole life, this one topped all of them.

Kaneki had woken up from what he only could remember as a state of paralysation, but at the same time he was sitting on the first row of experiencing the damage being done on Tokyo. After his awakening, he wasn’t given a lot of time to get a glimpse of the people applauding for him, to see Hinami, or Tsukiyama, or Banjou, or… or even Touka for the last time before being taken away with force by the CCG, getting locked up and being instructed to wait for his trial.

A week later, Kaneki was sentenced to death.

It wasn’t like he had expected to be treated any different after becoming a mass murderer. No alleviations for him for being called a hero. Those who still called him a hero had to wait for some more years before their opinion would be worth anything. It didn’t matter anyway, because at the end of the day, Kaneki still had hundreds of innocent deaths to his name. All he deserved was to die and rot away.

Yet, Kaneki did not wish to die, despite of having begged for the sweet salvation in the past. But to be able to slump down on a couch, get lost in one of his novels with a steaming mug of coffee and forget about time. To only get back to earth when his eyes started to hurt without the sunlight helping him recognising the words. To go to bed and think about his plans for the upcoming day, maybe having a drink with Hinami or something silly like that. To be able to do that all for one, last time, that would make Kaneki stop wishing for death. That was all he ever fought for. A quiet day.

He hated it that he had messed that up for himself so badly. Kaneki hated himself for it.

Only, apparently death wasn’t the worst that he could get. If the CCG had let him choose between being chained down a chair and torturing him until his body would give up on him or this, Kaneki would have chosen the first one.

It started with the door of his private room opening for the time since he had learned about his fate.

‘’It’s visiting hour. And this time you actually got visitors.’’

Kaneki sat up from where he was lying on the bed, his heart stopping when he recognised the faces of the people standing in the doorway. The little Saiko and Urie were blocking part of the light that slipped through the doorway.

This was the worst. Being seen as the ugly truth that he was and had tried so hard to hide, that was. Kaneki wanted to run away, crawl into the deepest hole and never have to look at anyone’s face again.

‘’Maman…’’

Yet, as much as he tried, he just couldn’t ignore her crying for recognition. Kaneki looked up, straight into the eyes of the shaking girl who was doing her best to stand tall. He was so proud of her. Of them, for still coming here, even if it was to beat him to pulp.

‘’You’re gonna leave us for real now?’’

The old Sasaki was twitching to take his kids in his arms and comfort them. Kaneki wasn’t sure if he was still the right person to do so. But he still did.

His offered embrace was taken, Saiko folding her short arms around Kaneki, breaking the act of braveness. It took a little effort to put a hand on her head and stroke her hair softly. ‘’Yes, I am.’’ A high pitched sob came out.

‘’I don’t wanna lose my maman.’’

It hurt. That was why living was a curse. That was why this was the worst. Even if he was on the edge of the end, he was still living and breathing now. Still hurting over little girls and other people that he didn’t want to say goodbye to. He was shaking with her when he felt Urie’s presence coming closer.

‘’I know.’’

The rest of the visit was short-lived, and Kaneki was alone all over again, or so he thought.

‘’Are the troops safe?’’

‘’Yes. We are working on finding residence for everyone to reduce the chance of riots breaking out in public.’’

‘’No one is set for trial?’’

‘’No, that was one of the conditions your people asked for before agreeing on working together with the CCG.’’

‘’That’s… good.’’

‘’Sure it is.’’

Kaneki’s second round of visitors brought less of a heart attack, yet had the same shock level. He didn’t understand how Amon Koutarou could have gotten permission to visit (it were probably the same people who had kept the ’We will not slaughter all the ghouls after this’ promise alive), and Mado Akira, well, they didn’t part with the best words, did they?

It felt almost comical to Kaneki. The whole visit was about practical stuff: News from the outside world, how Tokyo was working on getting back to the normal life, how the people he had promised to protect had ended up, and more non-romantic stuff. To be working when he was living his last moments, it made Kaneki laugh. How to take life by its throat at the last moment and show it that you had not given up yet.  

Amon lead most of the conversation, Akira only let her voice out once. Somewhere at the end, when the two were ready to leave, she looked Kaneki into the eye as she would do with Sasaki. Everyone who had visited yet had come to see Sasaki, not Kaneki. How disappointed must they have been.

‘’Are you going to be okay?’’

She was letting go of her own student. Akira was telling him to walk on his own from now on.

Kaneki huffed out a small sound that could have been a laugh.

‘’Surely I will.’’

There was nothing else then counting down the days until he would be met with his death day. How could he be counting down? He hadn’t seen daylight ever since being locked up, so there was no way the Kaneki could keep track on the days passing. Maybe he was counting minutes, but then how would he remember how many times he had reached sixty to start all over again? It was at least better then thinking about all the people that couldn’t come here and all the goodbyes he still had to say. Soon, it would be

It was the night before his death penalty, that Kaneki was woken up from his daze by immense vibrations that shook his whole room. An earthquake would have been the most logical assumption, but it was not the case.

Kaneki was scared. The whole world was falling apart, and he would be buried under all of it before he was even dead. He wanted to scream for help, but stopped himself when he thought about how everyone had probably already left the building if this was an earthquake. Also, who would save someone who had a dead flag on his name?

It took Kaneki some seconds to realise it was awfully quiet again. Relief relaxed his muscles. He wasn’t dead yet. It was over, yet Kaneki couldn’t help but crawl to the nearest corner and make himself as small as possible.

He cried when the second shock came with a horrible boom. That made Kaneki think for a moment. Did earthquakes sound like… explosions? Could a epicentre change that quickly, because he was so sure that this one felt so much closer than the last one.

Then he heard the sound of doors being kicked open. Kaneki turned towards his door and light seeped into his room together with a lot of dust. Kaneki almost smiled because he thought he was saved, because the idea that people would still want to save him from whatever was happening made him feel utter happiness.

‘’Kaneki.’’

A voice that sounded like it had been recorded with a device that had had its best time was constantly calling his name. Kaneki wanted to say something back, but he was interrupted by another explosion, this time more far away.

‘’Kaneki, where are you?’’

Clouds piled up in the room, and it felt suffocating. It was enough for Kaneki to push himself up and follow the sound of the voice. He had nothing to lose.

His orientation was a mess. Kaneki didn’t know where he was and the person had stopped calling. He felt a sob pushing up his throat, and he let it. Crying out of pure frustration, he stayed where he was. More ugly noises escaped his mouth. He was all alone again, with the ground shaking and a hellish peep in his ears that gave him a headache. Kaneki was only able to handle so many incentives.

Two arms hooked under Kaneki’s armpits before he was able to hit the ground. Kaneki let himself lean into the stranger’s support, looking up to try to give the person a face. He startled a bit by how close the other was.

The lower half was covered with a scarf, but Kaneki could see the rest of the face all to clearly. Kaneki gave an easy smile. He must be dead by now.

‘’Kaneki, can you hear me?’’

Very slowly, the arms went around his back to lift him up. Another explosion went off.

‘’Shit. We’re behind schedule, Kaneki. We’ve got to go, like, right now.’’

Kaneki was being pulled towards what was probably the doorway. He wasn’t trying to resist. Not when he was being dragged down the dark halls or when they were climbing stairs to get to the outside world. He was dead and he knew for sure, because that was the only place possible where he could ever see Hide again.

The terrain was as good as empty, except for two young boys who ran over the hardened roads to the exit. Hiding in the shadows, keeping low when having to go over open areas, it made Kaneki twitch in excitement. To him, this was like a careless act of playing Capture the flag. Adrenaline pumping through his veins for no reason, and the worst thing that could happen was if they got caught and tagged before they could reach their goal.

No one was in their way. Hide took a hold of Kaneki’s hand when the latter began to slow down. They sped up and went through the gates, turned left and made their way out of the facility’s terrain around the walls of the Cochlea. They ran and ran, industrial landscapes changing into meadows and mountains as far as they could see, asphalt giving place to uneven muddy roads. They kept running until Kaneki started to stumble over his own feet.

Hide stopped and turned around to give Kaneki some extra support and not fall down. ‘’Ho there buddy. I think we took too much from you.’’ He let Kaneki go again and shrugged off his backpack, squatting down and zipping the bag open as he put it in front of him.

Kaneki stared down as Hide was searching for something in that bag. The blonde made a sound of victory when he took out some black hoodie, jeans, and shoes. He handed them over to Kaneki with an apologizing look. ‘’I honestly forgot to take socks with me. Sorry man.’’

Taking what was given to him, Kaneki turned around when Hide did it too. He was thankful for the soft temperature that April brought. It was somewhere around midnight, and the sky was clear from clouds, but the air didn’t feel uncomfortably cold on his naked skin while he changed from his clothes he wore in Cochlea to a more casual wear.

‘’Keep the hoodie on your head. You’re like a lighthouse without.’’ Hide stood close as he carefully put the hood over Kaneki’s head, teasingly pulling it over his eyes at the end. He took his bag from the ground and with Kaneki behind him, they continued their walk.

It was mostly silent, neither spoke and the only sound that could be heard was the wind whistling every now and then. Kaneki didn’t feel the need to ask where they were going or if there was even a specific destination. It would break the vibe of not having sweat over anything. Kaneki felt better than he had in years, maybe the best he ever had. Just strolling behind his friend, not worrying about consequences that would come with doing nothing.

After a while, the unending road was disturbed by train rails crossing it. Hide stopped walking. Kaneki did the same. ‘’We can rest a bit ‘till the our train comes, and that’s in about…’’ Kaneki couldn’t see it clearly since Hide wasn’t facing him, but he got the idea that he was checking his watch, ’’twelve minutes.’’ Hide plumped down and sat down in the soil. Kaneki did the same, leaving a small distance between them.

‘’So we’re taking a train.’’ There was no station to be seen, so did that mean they were going to jump one? It wasn’t a first time, but this one got a different context than the previous one. It excited Kaneki.

‘’Yes. It will bring us to the Yokohama harbour.’’ They had been there once, for their school trip somewhere in middle school if Kaneki remembered correctly. The weather was bad and Hide had almost fallen into the water when he thought it was a good idea to walk close to the edge of the boulevard while gusts of wind were being harsh. To think back to a day in his past and not feeling down afterwards felt freeing in a way.

‘’Why Yokohama?’’ If that scarf wasn’t in the way, Kaneki would have seen Hide’s smile for the first time in years. The way his eyes crinkled that Kaneki knew so well gave it away. ‘’Because that’s the place that will take us to the land of opportunity.’’

With widened eyes, Kaneki stared at his friend. ‘’America?’’ The nod made it official, and like so many firsts that this night had brought, Kaneki started to laugh. The idea was so silly, something he would never have considered taking seriously if this were real.

‘’Uh, Kaneki?’’ Hide gave him a confused look, so when Kaneki was able to breath normally again, he took Hide’s uncertainties away. He smiled the biggest he could. ‘’Yes, let’s go.’’

Hide sighed out of relief. He must have thought Kaneki was making fun of his idea. ‘’You know, I thought I would have to put much more effort into convincing you to come along, but you’re acting abnormally calm.’’ Hide stood up again. It must almost be time to go. ‘’Did they drug you or somethin’?’’

‘’Ha, no. It just doesn’t matter anymore.’’ Kaneki gazed at the stars. Absorbing, they were, just like the boy in front of him. Kaneki adored him and these moments he could still spend with him. ‘’Since I’m already dead.’’

Eased smiles turned into frowns. ‘’What… what are you saying Kaneki?’’ Everything changed so fast that Kaneki couldn’t understand. The tension that was so unwelcome, yet so familiar, returned. ‘’I’m dead.’’

Panic came next when Hide looked him straight into the eye. It must be his mind playing games with him. ‘’I died back at Cochlea when there was an earthquake, or something,’’ Kaneki stuttered, ‘’I’m dead and because of that I’m able to see you, Hide.’’

‘’Okay Kaneki, don’t go nuts on me, but this all,’’ Hide spread his arms and gestured around him, ‘’is real, and you have to believe it. I’m still alive, and so are you.’’

‘’No… it can’t be.’’ But the whole idea of being dead seemed so much more illogical now. He had experienced almost-death situations in the past, and those felt like dreams. He wasn’t feeling that at all.

But if he was still alive, then that meant that he had just escaped his death, was a fugitive, and that Hide who was standing before him wasn’t dead. Kaneki wasn’t dead and that meant that he would still have to continue living.

‘’Hide, that’s not true.’’ Kaneki shook his head violently as his voice broke together with himself. ‘’You’re lying. You’re dead because I killed you!’’ He couldn’t handle it anymore. Every single time when he thought he was done, all his problems would come back and beat him up all over again.

Hide took his wrists before Kaneki could rip out his hair. He made him look up, and to Kaneki’s most ugly nightmares, Hide had taken off his scarf.

‘’Kaneki, please calm down and listen to me.’’ Hide tried to quiet Kaneki’s erratic breathing, with little success. ‘’You didn’t kill me, or hurt me against my will. I chose this myself and I knew the consequences.’’ He took a hold of Kaneki’s face, smiled as much as his face could manage.

‘’Now the most important thing is to get on that train and get the hell out of here.’’ Kaneki pulled himself out of Hide’s hold. ‘’I’m not going on that train, Hide.’’ Stunned, Hide looked at him as if he just had gone mad.

‘’I don’t- How fucking stubborn can you be?’’

The sound of an incoming train, somewhere far away. Hide was losing his nerve. Kaneki made no movements. ‘’If I’m still walking around in this poisonous world, then I should go back to my people since I left them, and they need me-‘’

‘’The last thing they need now is you, Kaneki.’’

‘’That’s not true!’’ Hide was wrong. All Kaneki had were the ghouls, to defend them and to protect them.

‘’You’ll only be a danger since you’re face is everywhere over Tokyo.’’

‘’But where else can I go if they don’t even want me?!’’ Kaneki sobbed. Hide was being so cruel, because he knew that the other was pointing out the truth, but who had given him the right to shove it into his face?

It was probably he himself begging for a hit.

Hide drastically turned around, seeing a freight train appearing. ‘’You can be with me, Ken. Just get on that fucking train!’’

The plan to escape this world seemed farther away than earlier. ‘’How are you so sure that this all is going to work out Hide?!’’ Kaneki tried to shout over the noise the train made. It made him sound futile.

Hide started running with the train, hopping on and holding himself steady by grabbing the handle of the door. He opened it after fumbling with the lock. Kaneki saw Hide disappear into the boxcar, and he began to run. He didn’t want to left alone.

When he reached the car, Hide held out his hand, yet Kaneki hesitated. There was something holding him back. Unsureness. Hide saw it too.

‘’I don’t know if this will work out. Hell, we could be dead in a week, but why not giving it a try?’’

Hide was not wholly convinced of himself either, and that was the push Kaneki needed to take Hide’s hand.

‘’Fuck you Hide.’’ Kaneki pushed himself away from Hide when he got into the car. He felt played, forced to open up and spill everything. Hide wasn’t fair.

Hide said nothing back, walked to the opposite side from Kaneki, sat down against the wall and watched Kaneki cry out.

After some time, Kaneki got tired from all the mixed feelings making a mess of his head. He let himself fall back against the wall, his legs spread before him. He noticed Hide staring at him, and he looked back, but chose not to jab at the other.

Anger was making his heart burst, together with relief and worry. He hated Hide for having control over him, even when he had disappeared on Kaneki and played dead. It was the same for his relief, as Hide was still alive, which meant he never killed his friend. He had still hurt him, the nasty scarred tissue that Hide had desperately trying to hide under his mask told him that. And still, Hide was willing to get into unknown waters with him. That was a bliss.

Kaneki was only scared to death that, now Hide wasn’t dead, there was a chance to see him get hurt all over again. Was it by himself or someone else, it didn’t matter.

‘’Did Kosaka-san make it out alive?’’ Kaneki didn’t know if Hide was familiar with the name, but it wasn’t like he was asking him directly. Just filling the silence with his thoughts.

‘’She wasn’t where she should have been the last time someone checked. Also, while you were in full attack, apparently Kuroiwa ran for it. At least that’s what I’ve heard.’’ Hide broke their stare-session and looked outside. The moon gave off a white light that shined through the opening of the car.

One good thing Kaneki was able to do. Touka must be happy if she knew about it. Now Kaneki wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t. He didn’t even get to say goodbye to her.

‘’Hey,’’ Hide interrupted him before Kaneki could get too deep into his thoughts, ‘’You might hate me, and I can totally get that, but let’s start all over again and… be friends. Let’s forget for a bit.’’

Kaneki saw that Hide was tired too. He must’ve left behind people too to do this. People he cared about. People Kaneki didn’t know because they’re the ones who comforted Hide when he himself wasn’t there to do it. Stupid to think that he was the only one suffering under this.

‘’Yes, let’s forget.’’

The tension subsided, and Kaneki felt himself relax against the wall, eyelids fluttering close. Hide didn’t let him, though.

‘’I don’t know about you, but it’s getting a little cold now we’re not walking.’’ Kaneki lifted up his head to see Hide gazing at a corner.

Let’s forget, is what Hide was heavily implying here. He wanted the hatred gone and a new beginning to settle in.

Without much more thought after that, Kaneki crawled up to the other side, where Hide was. He lay himself on Hide’s chest and both of them lower down, using the backpack as a pillow. Their legs tangled and Hide gave a satisfied sigh.

Kaneki didn’t close his eyes just yet. He looked outside and thought about the people who were going further away by the passing second.

‘’Do you think everyone will be alright?’’

‘’They are now somewhere on the line where they have the chance to unite both sides, so I think they’ll do fine.’’

‘’And if they don’t, will I be at fault?’’

Hide laughed. ‘’No one will blame you for setting up a whole revolution. You were the start of it. It’s not a problem to hand the work over and let someone else finish it.’’

An arm folded around his shoulders. ‘’Have some faith, Ken.’’

‘’I really tried Hide,’’ Kaneki sobbed, ‘’I tried so hard to make everyone happy. But did I do enough?’’ Hide’s thumb brushed away his tears, and Kaneki knew he was still listening. ‘’Was I able to make them happy? Will I make them sad by leaving them?’’ Nonetheless, he was leaving his wife and child. Would Touka tell their kid that his or her father was a coward who had made untruthful promises?

‘’That’s a tough one.’’ Hide took a deep breath, fingers gliding through Kaneki’s hair. ‘’I think they will be sad for some time, but if they hear that you were able to beat death again, I’m sure they’ll be proud of it.’’

‘’Really?’’

‘’Really.’’

If someone were to ask Kaneki to list the things that he wanted the least to happen, he would have made one and underlined this specific situation. From all the punishments that he had taken, this one was the worst. The guilt poisoning his body, leaving behind what could have been a family he never had, friends he had made through the years, kids he had let go. Yet, it was also a new beginning, which was also something Kaneki never had.

He still had a lot of questions for Hide, but for now he let it be. No problems would get in their way when they were heading towards Yokohama, and there, both of them would start anew.  

It was terrifying, and Kaneki hated Hide for pulling him with him. It was a new adventure, and how scary the unknown it could be, Kaneki knew that his friend would be beside him. That’s what made him love Hide.

fin

#tgsecretsanta2017 #j-and-a #hidekane #tg #kaneki ken #nagachika hideyoshi #nikki writes #had a lot of fun writing this

[porcelain-rob0t]

marnie riot ghoul

my silly goofy Irish vampire

#riot ghoul comic #oc #original character #riot ghoul #dearg due #vampire #irish mythology

[rock-and-roll-hell]

September 6, 1976

Destroyer Tour

Varsity Stadium - Toronto, Ontario, Canada

A minor "riot" occurred at this show as fans rushed the entrance for the general admission seating trampling some fellow fans. Musical issues occur at the end of "Hotter than Hell" and Ace calls someone an "asshole" during the intro to "Black Diamond," making for an entertaining show.

KIϟϟ also received their Canadian platinum award for "Destroyer" from Quality Records

 "KIϟϟ, its first-rate sound system turned up to the mega-decibel level, its creepy stage setting looking like something out of a Stan Lee gothic horror comic, and it's special effects department working overtime. KIϟϟ' show is a collection of disparate elements which, when thrown together, combine to overwhelm you. Guitars explode. Cannons go off. Strands of lights flicker. And there are assorted explosions as the band's four members prance and strut like comic-book ghouls. And does it matter if none of this has anything to do with what the band's singing about? That despite all the gore, the band's lyrics dwell on having a good time and the joys of rock? Not at all. But, then again, in an army, especially the KIϟϟ Army, one isn't meant to think. One is meant to take orders" (Toronto Star, 9/7/76).

#kisstory #kiss #1976 #destroyer #ace frehley #paul stanley #peter criss #gene simmons #kiss band #kiss army #the spaceman #the starchild #the catman #the demon

[dominoed-daredoll]

My Barbara Gordon Timeline

Batman and Robin’s Ascension

1.       “Hi Diddle Riddle”/”Stuck in the Middle”

2.       “Fine Feathered Finks” / “The Penguin’s a Jinx”

3.       “The Joker is Wild” / “Batman is Riled”

4.       “Instant Freeze” / “Rats Like Cheese”

5.       “Zelda the Great” / “A Death Worse than Fate”

6.       “A Riddle a Day Keeps the Riddler Away”/ “When the Rat’s Away the Mice Will Play”

7.       “The Thirteenth Hat” / “Batman Stands Pat”

8.       “The Joker Goes to School” / “He Meets His Match, the Grisly Ghoul”

9.       “True or False Face” / “Holy Rat Race”

10.   “The Purr-fect Crime” / “Better Luck Next Time”

11.   “The Penguin Goes Straight” / “Not Yet He Ain’t”

12.   “The Ring of Wax” / “Give ’em the Axe”

13.   “The Joker Trumps an Ace” / “Batman Sets the Pace”

14.   “The Curse of Tut” / “The Pharaoh’s in a Rut”

15.   “The Bookworm Turns” / “While Gotham City Burns”

16.   “Death in Slow Motion” / “The Riddler’s False Notion”

17.   “Fine Finny Fiends”/”Batman Makes the Scenes”

18.   “Shoot a Crooked Arrow” / “Walk the Straight and Narrow”

19.   “Hot Off the Griddle” / “The Cat and the Fiddle”

20.   “The Minstrel’s Shakedown” / “Barbecued Batman?”

21.   “The Spell of Tut” / “Tut’s Case is Shut”

22.   “The Greatest Mother of Them All” / “Ma Parker”

23.   “The Clock King’s Crazy Crimes” / “The Clock King Gets Crowned”

24.   “An Egg Grows in Gotham” / “The Yegg Foes in Gotham”

25.   “Mirth from Above”/”The Riddler's Ruse”**

26.   “The Devil’s Fingers” / “The Dead Ringers”

27.   “Hizzoner the Penguin” / “Dizzoner the Penguin”

28.   “Green Ice” / “Deep Freeze”

29.   “The Impractical Joker” / “The Joker’s Provokers”

30.   “Marsha, Queen of Diamonds” / “Marsha’s Scheme of Diamonds”

31.   “Come Back, Shame!” / “It’s How You Play the Game”

32.   “Mr. Freeze Breaks the Ice”/”Batman Doesn't Play Nice”**

33.   “The Penguin’s Nest” / “The Bird’s Last Jest”

34.   “The Cat’s Meow” / “The Bat’s Kow Tow”

35.   “The Puzzles are Coming” / “The Duo is Slumming”

36.   “Emperor Penguin”**

37.   “The Sandman Cometh” / “The Catwoman Goeth”

38.   “The Contaminated Cowl” / “The Mad Hatter Runs Afoul”

39.   “The Zodiac Crimes” / “The Joker’s Hard Times” / “The Penguin Declines”

40.   “That Darn Catwoman” / “Scat! Darn Catwoman”

41.   “Penguin is a Girl’s Best Friend” / “Penguin Sets a Trend” / “Penguin’s Disastrous End”

42.   “King Tut Barges In”/”Bat in Time Again”**

43.   “Batman’s Anniversary” / “A Riddling Controversy”

44.   “The Joker’s Last Laugh” / “The Joker’s Epitaph”

45.   “Catwoman Goes to College” / “Batman Displays His Knowledge”

46.   “The Conqueror Bookworm”/”The Inevitable Jail-Term”**

47.   “The Queen of Diamonds' Big Heist”/”Batman Makes Marsha Pay the Price”**

48.   “A Piece of the Action” / “Batman’s Satisfaction”

49.   “The Joker's Layoff Riot”**

50.   “King Tut’s Coup” / “Batman’s Waterloo”

51.   “To Be or Not To Be”**

52.   “Scrambled Eggs”**

53.   “A Stand Up Guy”**

54.   “The Sandman Says Good Night”/”Batman Sleeps Tight”**

55.   “The Osiris Virus”/”Batman in/on Papyrus”**

56.   “The Sheriff of Crime”**

57.   “Black Widow Strikes Again” / “Caught in the Spider’s Den”

58.   “Showdown with Shame!”**

59.   “Pop Goes the Joker” / “Flop Goes the Joker”

60.   “Ice Spy” / “The Duo Defy”

61.   “Don't Change that Bat Channel”/”The Bat Host with the Most”**

62.   “The Butler Did It!”**

63.   “The Penguin Turns the Tables”/”Batman Shows He's Able”**

64.   “The Joker Sees Red”/”Batman Hunts the Dead”**

65.   “Hunt the Croc Down”**

66.   “On the Wrong Track”/”The Heroes Fight Back”**

67.   “An Unlikely Pair”/”The Treacherous Snare”**

68.   “The Duo Sticks Together”/”The End of Crime's Tether”**

69.   “The BatRobot Takes Flight”/”Bat-Villains Unite”**

70.   “Caught in the Widow's Web”**

71.   “The Quagmire of Clayface”**

72.   “The Groovy Grave of Solomon Grundy”**

73.   “Diamond Disaster!”/”Batman Moves Faster!”**

74.   “Scarecrow Comes to Town”**

Batgirl’s Arrival

1.       “Enter Batgirl, Exit Penguin

2.       “Ring Around the Riddler”

3.       “The Wail of the Siren”

4.       “The Sport of Penguins”/”A Horse of Another Color”

5.       “The Joker's Big Show”/”Gotham Goes HoHoHo”/”The Dynamic Duo & Batgirl Say Hello!”**

6.       “Catwoman Comes About!”**

7.       “The Unkindest Tut of All”

8.       “The Tail of the Tiger Topaz”**

9.       “Louie the Lilac”

10.   “The Ogg Couple”

11.   “The Ogg and I”/”How to Hatch a Dinosaur”

12.   “Surf's Up! Joker's Under!”

13.   ���The Londinium Larcenies”/”The Foggiest Notion”/”The Bloody Tower”

14.   “Catwoman's Dressed to Kill”

15.   “The Funny Feline Felonies”/”The Joke's on Catwoman”

16.   “Louie's Lethal Lilac Time”

17.   “Penguin's Clean Sweep”

18.   “The Kissing Cossack”**#

19.   “The Great Escape”/” The Great Train Robbery”

20.   “Bats, Books and Crazy Crooks”**

21.   “Chandell's Chanteuse”**#

22.   “I'll Be a Mummy's Uncle”

23.   “The Joker's Flying Saucer”

24.   “The Entrancing Dr. Cassandra”

25.   “Minerva, Mayhem and Millionaires”

26.   “The Hatter Takes the Crown”/”A Chase in London Town”**#

27.   “The Clock King Strikes”**#

28.   “The Garden of Death”/”Batman's Final Breath?”**

29.   “Cleopatra's Reign”**

30.   “The Villain of Vapor Street”/”Foggy Bats Can't Be Beat”**#

31.   “Night of the Harlequin”**#

32.   “Bad Men”**

33.   “Bane Enters the Ring”/”Batman Does His Thing”

34.   “Poison Ivy's Deadly Kiss”/”Batman's Aim Must Not Miss!”**#

35.   “Eggolution: Egghead Unbound!”/”Batman's Rebound”**#

36.   “The Batman Affair”**

(It was sometime after this case that she was unmasked by King Tut and had to come clean about her identity to the Batfamily and her father, as well as dye her hair red to further protect her identity.  It was also around this time that she formally broke off her pseudo-relationship with Bruce Wayne.)

37.   “Gotham Academy First and Second Semester”

38.   “Wonder Woman ’77 meets Batman ‘66”**

(It was sometime after this case that the Joker and Catwoman sabotaged her motorcycle and exposed her to the radiation from the sparkplug, burning her legs beyond all hope of healing and confining her to a wheelchair.  Out of a desire to continue helping the Batfamily, she becomes Oracle.)

**--Comic storylines from the 2013 Batman 66 line and various crossovers

#--Batgirl not present in this episode after her debut

#I Wonder Who She Really Is (Headcanons)

[recentanimenews]

Monthly Manga Review Index: March 2017

This month, I’m launching a new feature: the Monthly Manga Review Index. My motivation is simple. When I started writing ten years ago, link-bloggers such as Brigid Alverson, Tom Spurgeon, and Dirk Deppey played a big role in helping me find a readership. In the spirit of paying it forward, therefore, I’d like to shine a light on the good work that my fellow manga critics are doing at personal blogs, big corporate websites, newspapers, and everything in between.

Since it would be a fool’s errand to aim for comprehensive coverage, my goal is to compile a list of thoughtful essays that focus on new releases, classic titles, and buzzworthy series. I’ve divided the list into four broad categories: From the Top (reviews of new and new-ish print series), Digital Debuts (new digital-only titles), Ongoing Series, and From the Vault (a catch-all term for complete series or OOP titles). I’ve deliberately avoided labels such as “seinen” and “shojo,” as those descriptors are less useful for indicating whether a title is of interest to American readers. Additionally, I’ve chosen a review of the month to draw special attention to outstanding manga criticism.

Have a suggestion for improving the organization of this list? Want to recommend a great writer whose work should be featured here? Leave a comment below!

REVIEW OF THE MONTH: THE GIRL FROM THE OTHER SIDE

Anime UK News may not be on your radar, but this website has more to offer than just a lively set of forums; it’s also a great destination for manga reviews. This month, Sarah, the site’s editor, posted an achingly good essay about The Girl From the Other Side: Siúil, a Rún. I finished her review with an acute sense of envy — I wish I’d written that! — as well as a deep appreciation for her description of Nagabe’s elegant, distinctive artwork. Go, read!

FROM THE TOP: NEW AND RECENT DEBUTS

Anonymous Noise, Vol. 1 (Rebecca Silverman, Anime News Network)

Anonymous Noise, Vol. 1 (Sean Gaffney, A Case Suitable for Treatment)

Anonymous Noise, Vol. 1 (Keith Hendricks, NerdSpan)

Anonymous Noise, Vol. 1 (Amelia Cook, Otaku USA)

Anonymous Noise, Vol. 1 (Anna N, The Manga Report)

Anonymous Noise, Vol. 2 (Anna N, The Manga Report)

Big Order, Vol. 1 (Dil, Taykobon)

Blame! Master Edition (Jason Thompson, Otaku USA)

Bungo Stray Dogs, Vol. 1 (Keith Hendricks, NerdSpan)

The Case Study of Vanitas, Vols. 1-3 (Shaenon Garrity, Otaku USA)

Clockwork Planet, Vol. 1 (Ian Wolf, Anime UK News)

Clockwork Planet, Vol. 1 (Sean Gaffney, A Case Suitable for Treatment)

Clockwork Planet, Vol. 1 (Robert McCarthy, Otaku USA)

Clockwork Planet, Vol. 1 (Michael, Taykobon)

Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 1 (Nick Smith, ICv2)

Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 1 (Helen, The OASG)

Dragons Rioting, Vols. 1-2 (Shaenon Garrity, Otaku USA)

Erased, Vol. 1 (Rebecca Silverman, Anime News Network)

Erased, Vol. 1 (Demelza, Anime UK News)

Erased, Vol. 1 (Sean Gaffney, A Case Suitable for Treatment)

Erased, Vol. 1 (Nick Smith, ICv2)

Fire Force!, Vol. 1 (J. Caleb Mozzocco, Good Comics for Kids)

The Ghost in the Shell: Deluxe Edition (Ian Wolf, Anime UK News)

The Ghost in the Shell: Deluxe Edition (Brigid Alverson, B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog)

The Ghost in the Shell: Deluxe Edition (Ken H., Sequential Ink)

The Ghost in the Shell: Deluxe Edition (Mark Thomas, The Fandom Post)

The Ghost in the Shell Human-Error Processor: Deluxe Edition (Mark Thomas, The Fandom Post)

The Ghost in the Shell Man-Machine Interface: Deluxe Edition (Mark Thomas, The Fandom Post)

Hana & Hina After School, Vol. 1 (Sean Gaffney, A Case Suitable for Treatment)

Ichi-F: A Worker’s Graphic Memoir of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (Brigid Alverson, B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog)

Ichi-F: A Worker’s Graphic Memoir of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (Ash Brown, Experiments in Manga)

Ichi-F: A Worker’s Graphic Memoir of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (Amelia Cook, Otaku USA)

The Isolator, Vol. 1 (Matt, Taykobon)

Kase-san and Morning Glories (Sean Gaffney, A Case Suitable for Treatment)

Kindred Spirits on the Roof: The Complete Collection (Erica Friedman, Okazu)

Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl, Vol. 1 (Rebecca Silverman, Anime News Network)

Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl, Vol. 1 (Sean Gaffney, A Case Suitable for Treatment)

Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl, Vol. 1 (DJ Horn, The Fandom Post)

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages (Evan Minto, Otaku USA)

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Vol. 1 (Rebecca Silverman, Anime News Network)

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Vol. 1 (Ash Brown, Experiments in Manga)

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Vol. 1 (Ollie Barder, Forbes)

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Vol. 1 (J. Caleb Mozzocco, Good Comics for Kids)

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Vol. 1 (Nick Smith, ICv2)

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Vol. 1 (Evan Minto, Otaku USA)

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Vol. 1 (Demelza, Anime UK News)

Magia the Ninth, Vols. 1-2 (Rebecca Silverman, Anime News Network)

Revolutionary Girl Utena Deluxe Box Set (Amelia Cook, Otaku USA)

Smokin’ Parade, Vol. 1 (L.B. Bryant, ICv2)

Species Domain, Vol. 1 (Rebecca Silverman, Anime News Network)

Spirits & Cat Ears, Vol. 1 (Rebecca Silverman, Anime News Network)

Spirits & Cat Ears, Vol. 1 (Sean Gaffney, A Case Suitable for Treatment)

DIGITAL DEBUTS

Ace of the Diamond, Vol. 1 (Kory Cerjak, The Fandom Post)

All-Rounder Meguru, Vol. 1 (Matt, Taykobon)

Chihayafuru, Vol. 1 (Michelle Smith, Soliloquy in Blue)

The Full-Time Wife Escapist, Vol. 1 (Sean Gaffney, A Case Suitable for Treatment)

Gleam, Vol. 1 (Krystallina, The OASG)

House of the Sun, Vol. 1 (Matt, Taykobon)

Liquor & Cigarette (Allison Ziebka, Bloom Reviews)

Nodame Cantabile, Vol. 1 (Gabe Peralta, The Fandom Post)

Space Brothers, Vol. 1 (Gregory Smith, The Fandom Post)

Tokyo Tarareba Girls, Vol. 1 (Michelle Smith, Soliloquy in Blue)

Tokyo Tarareba Girls, Vol. 1 (Matt, Taykobon)

Wave, Listen to Me!, Vols. 1-2 (Michelle Smith, Soliloquy in Blue)

ONGOING SERIES

Akagame ga KILL! Zero, Vol. 5 (Krystallina, The OASG)

Akuma no Riddle, Vol. 4 (Erica Friedman, Okazu)

Behind the Scenes!!, Vol. 3 (Johanna Draper Carlson, Comics Worth Reading)

Case Closed, Vol. 61 (Kate O’Neil, The Fandom Post)

Food Wars!! Shokugeki no Soma, Vol. 16 (Johanna Draper Carlson, Comics Worth Reading)

Forget Me Not, Vol. 7 (Matt, Taykobon)

Fruits Basket Collector’s Edition, Vol. 11 (Sean Gaffney, A Case Suitable for Treatment)

Horimiya (Allison Ziebka, Bloom Reviews)

Horimiya, Vol. 6 (Helen, The OASG)

Horimiya, Vol. 6 (Matt, Taykobon)

Hunter x Hunter, Vol. 33 (Austin Price, Otaku USA)

Karneval (Zina H., Comics Alliance)

Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-Kun, Vol. 6 (Gabe Peralta, The Fandom Post)

My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong As I Expected @ Comic, Vol. 4 (Keith Hendricks, NerdSpan)

One Piece, Vols. 7-9 (Renay Williams, B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog)

One Piece, Vols. 10-12 (Renay Williams, B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog)

One Piece, Vols. 13-15 (Joel Cunningham, B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog)

The Seven Deadly Sins, Vol. 12 (Richard Gutierrez, The Fandom Post)

The Seven Deadly Sins, Vol. 13 (Richard Gutierrez, The Fandom Post)

The Seven Deadly Sins, Vol. 14 (Richard Gutierrez, The Fandom Post)

Skip Beat!, Vol. 38 (Sean Gaffney, A Case Suitable for Treatment)

Skip Beat!, Vol. 38 (Anna N., The Manga Report)

Tokyo Ghoul, Vol. 11 (Keith Hendricks, NerdSpan)

Until Death Do Us Part, Vol. 13 (Kate O’Neil, The Fandom Post)

Vinland Saga, Vol. 8 (Ken H., Sequential Ink)

Welcome to the Ballroom, Vol. 3 (Matt, Taykobon)

What Did You Eat Yesterday?, Vol. 11 (Terry Hong, Book Dragon)

FROM THE VAULT

Aventura, Vol. 1 (Greg Hackman, The Fandom Post)

Aventura, Vol. 2 (Greg Hackman, The Fandom Post)

From Eroica With Love (Vrai Kaiser, Anime Feminist)

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Megan R., The Manga Test Drive)

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Allen Kesinger, No Flying No Tights)

Neo-Parasyte F (DJ Horn, The Fandom Post)

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Megan R., The Manga Test Drive)

Senran Kagura: Skirting Shadows (Megan R., The Manga Test Drive)

Shindo (Claire Napier, Women Write About Comics)

Tomie (Mark Thomas, The Fandom Post)

World War Blue (Megan R. The Manga Test Drive)

REVIEWED THIS MONTH AT THE MANGA CRITIC

Anonymous Noise, Vol. 1

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Vol. 1

Dissolving Classroom

Ne Ne Ne, Chapters 1-4

By: Katherine Dacey

#Anime #News #Manga Bookshelf

[em-kuhn-blog]

WC Application!

ADMIN USE ONLY


These questions only need yes or no answers. They’re not commitments if you say yes, simply organizational tools. 
Are you interested in finding critique groups/partners? Sure 
Are you interested in being a beta-reader? Yup 
Are you open to being tagged in writing questionnaires/asks/games? Ye fam!! 
Are you open to being messaged to talk about writing? YES OK. 
Are you open to being tagged to participate in writing discussions? Yes yes yes 
Would you like to participate in Writeblr by Region? Yessir 
Would you like to participate in the Translation Corner? Nah 
If so, which languages would you like to be listed under? N/A

Short Profile:


Preferred Nickname: keyds, tho if that’s not your style, Kathryn or any derivative or Staples 
Country/Region: Alabama, USA 
Languages: English 
Preferred Writing Type: Prose, but I’m thinking about branching out into poetry and screenplays, and if the opportunity to team up with an artist came up, I’d be open to doing comics, too. I’d try any medium if the opportunity arose. 
Preferred Genre(s) to Write: Literary, SF/F, New Adult; I’m partial to tragedy and psychological and queer stuff 
Preferred Genre(s) to Read: the above, plus Nonfiction and educational stuff, some YA, comedy, some thrillers, and classics 
Favorite Book(s) and Author(s): The Things They Carried, Never Let Me Go, Pride and Prejudice, The Catcher in the Rye, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, A Song of Ice and Fire, Harry Potter, currently reading Egghead by Bo Burnham 
Favorite Music Genre(s)/Artists(s): Raleigh Ritchie, Pariisin Kevät, Sakanaction, amazarashi, illion/RADWIMPS, People in the Box, TK from Ling Tosite Sigure, Stromae, Billie Martin, M83, Twenty One Pilots, MIKA, These Brittle Bones, Oh Wonder, Hotpantz, Kero Kero Bonito, Bon Iver, oh god stop me…




Favorite Fandom(s):


Movies: Harry Potter, Star Trek (lil bit) 
TV Shows: The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra, Voltron (LD) 
Anime: Yuuri!!! on ICE, Haikyuu!! (tho less so now than in the past), Fullmetal Alchemist, Shingeki no Kyojin, Monster, whatever’s current (Zankyou no Terror, Barakamon, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso, Death Parade, Boku dake ga Inai Machi, 91 Days, etc when they were airing) 
Comics: Tokyo Ghoul, Shimanami Tasogare, Hidamari ga Kikoeru, Koe no Katachi, Birdmen, SnK, HQ!!, Peter Panzerfaust, Check, Please!, Griefer Belt, Rock & Riot, Flowerpot. I recently found Kemono Jihen, looks like it may be cool. 
Video Games: Lifeline/Green Series!! Oxenfree! Phone games count, right? 
Hobbies/interests other than writing: *gestures above*, oh and memes. Politics, linguistics, arts, humanities, and sciences, history–I’m saying I like learning lol. Also Japanese.

Extended Profile:




Personality 
Zodiac Sign: Taurus 
—Does it match your personality? Depends on the interpretation, I guess. I hate a lot of zodiac posts tho, bc we’re always portrayed as stubborn, lazy eating machines which?? What if, for example, a Taurus with an eating disorder? Hmm… 
MBTI Type: INTP/J 
—Does it match your personality well? To the extent that can be measured by MBTI, yes. 
Introvert or Extrovert? Haha, good one. Introvert.

Writing Habits 
Number/Names of WIPs: Countless short stories, one unnamed novel WIP (sci-fi, if only bc it’s set in the future in space lol), plus one named one: Statue of a Boxer 
Favorite book about writing: I tend to read articles instead.
Planner, Pantser or Plantser? Plantser 
Favorite Outlining Method: Whatever suits the story (length, genre, style, tone, etc). I also tend to use multiple methods, particularly if I’m dealing with nonlinear events. 
Do you write on a schedule or sporadically? Sporadically. I’d like to change that. 
Any creativity rituals that you use: Still developing those.

Your Writing Community 
Tumblr: therealstaples (main), lock-and-keyds (shiny new writing blog) 
Current writing/creative communities you participate in: 
NaNoWriMo Community Name (if applicable): keyds 
Wattpad Community Name (if applicable): N/A 
fanfiction.net or AO3 Community Name (if applicable): N/A 
DeviantArt Community Name (if applicable): N/A 
Patreon Community Name (if applicable): N/A

#wcprofiles #writeblr #em kuhn #long post #lmao sry i'm wordy ✌🏼 #shiiiiiit there was a typo #19 days and 91 days are not the same thing lol

[descarted]

TAGGED BY: @vamytas !    thank you for the tag.  .  .   i love talking about characters.

CURRENTLY PLAYING:  too many TOO MANY but let me introduce you the ones i’m more or less active on right now. . .    i’ve got more but most of them are old. starting with wod !

MIO LUCA SCORTESE PUTANESCA                    (  aggressive giovanni ghoul who is a lot more bark than he’s bite.   also owns a dog.   or used to own one.  ) SAMUEL DOUGAN                    (  obvs dougan who’s 2 hip 2 b square or something.  .  .    and pays a lot of attention to his looks.    i mean he should as a proper yuppie.    survives by all means necessary which i guess you gotta if you want to survivve as a sabbat ghoul.  .  .   also has a pierced nipple jfyi  ) STANLEY PIZER alias LARRY HARVEY                 (  my first vtm character i think.  .  .   named himself after multiple real people from history which is so inconspicuous.  .  .     nosferatu ancilla who is strongly disconnected from the nosferatu clan in general and rather sticks to a certain ventrue’s heel .   .   .    hates kent for siring his  EX WIFE  ) NAUGHTY DOG                      (  fallout headhuntress.  .  .    doesn't at all get the attention she deserves,    is extremely trigger-happy and has a really hardcore zero tolerance policy for bullshit going on  )             FOLK J. CARPENTER                     (  CANADIAN COWBOY from around 1850.  .  .    or something like that because i haven’t really decided yet.   surprisingly softspoken and all around a bit of a.  .  .   misfit ?   even though he was intended to be your standard cool cowboy.  .   .    but i just can’t do cool.   ) RAZ                     (  dystopian scifi conman.  .  .   or maybe just conman.  .  .   and scifi idk.   wanted him to be suave and smooth but ended up being the most antisocial character i’ve got lmao.  .  .   he’s so. .  .   hostile.  but i love conmen tbh.  initially star wars based !  ) RAYLAN HEYES                   (  an.  .  .  ARTIST with a punk rock history who started off being his riot girrrl’s groupie after moving from mississippi to new york.    now he’s back and he hates america even more than i do.    if ray was vtm he’d probably be a toreador.    )

 WANT TO / WILL BE PLAYING:

LAVELLE DELARGE                  ( i talked about him in dougan’s little drabble about his domitor’s pack.  .  .    i had so much fun writing him i might as well play him. . .    or introduce him as an npc with more in-depth story. . .    i mean look at him that’s art  ) 

 HAVE PLAYED:  

 (  CANON  )    the riddler                       (  batman.  .  .     listen... i love eddie.    i luv.   i love riddles too  ) ;   the batman                      (  batman.  .  .   for like, five seconds  ) ;   michael kaufmann                         (  silent hill 1 & silent hill shattered memories.  .   .   harvey keitel fc.  .  . probably the most fun i’ve had with any canon character,    ever.  .  .   dank psychology and some hardocre cynicism.  .  .  he was basically a drug-pusher in the first game and a therapist in the new one.  .  .     i combined both and threw some of the town cult into it because he was  a member in the first.  .   .  ) ;   john constantine                        (  hellblazer & movie.  .  .    mostly movie based tho because i didn’t read much of the comics back then.  .   .     get a load of that keanu  ) ; paul denton                       (  deus ex game.  .   .    mostly bc rollin’s had a jc denton.  .  .   and i love brothers.  .  .  paul died in our playthrough btw we thought he had too bc the game was so old  ) ; richie gecko                      (  from dusk till dawn movie.  .  .    AGAIN bc brothers and this means i used quentin as a fc i can’t believe it  ) ; franky four fingers                      (  snatch movie.    listen.    i know this movie isn’t perfect but i love benicio del toro and the movie was great and he was so handsome and i love gambling characters ok.  .  .    )  (  OC  )  now listen up i love ocs more than anything which means i’ve got a whole menagerie of them.  .  .   but i’ll try to keep it simple omf.  so i’ll only mention the wod characters i remember from here.  .  .   they didn’t survive for very long but they are somewhere in my heart.   new and improved hopefully.  lester cosgrove                      (  tzimisce  anchilla  who sired his sister who literally surpassed him within like a year in everything sabbat and rank related. .  .   who then sired her son to upset her but only got himself a new annoying childe.  .  .   also lowkey still stuck somewhere in 1750 or sth.   .   .  i based him on ‘weird science’ from oingo boingo so u get the idea lmao  ) ;  ???                     (   brujah anti bc his gf was sabbat.  .  .  nowadays i’d prolly go for toreador bc look at that boy.  .  .   all these old characters wow  ) ;  darcy ???                     (   VENTRUE OF COURSE.  .  .   kent’s rival tbh.  .   . he was prince of lancashire and perfectly unfit for diplomacy.  .  .   but he didn’t have to be apt at it.  .  .   he’d just vote to behead you but he was a total embarrassment,    social skill equaling zero.   also hates kent for leading his soon-to-be-wife astray and siring her IN HIS DOMAIN.  he then had her killed but unfortunately kent got away 2 bad.  )

 WILL / WOULD PLAY AGAIN: ??? maybe one of my old ocs.   not any canons.  .  .    might re-introduce some older character as npcs for my current / new ones !

#LINKS are for pictures and blog links... it pays to look at the pictures TRUST ME #anyways thank a ton for the tag this was super fun to do... i have CHARACTERS aplenty... #your pam and my eddie coulda been besties.... idk think about it #as you can see rollins and i usually make characters that have somethign to do with each other... #anyways a wall of text for everyone's readingpleasure #/// long post #/// image links