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coffinsister · 1 year

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Eeee so I can't pick a favorite between Ashley and Andrew but when I was playing it I definitely saw Ashley as sorta yandere vibes? Like yknow with the girl dying in the box was the primary example, Andrew going along with it too was like 👀 because why would he go along with killing someone unless he was either The Biggest Doormat (which i definitely understand seeing the creator's notes) or he was also vaguely yandere but not acknowledging it. There's a lot of toxicity between them obviously and a lot of trauma (not sure where from aside from whole being locked in the apartment for Hecc knows how long and maybe neglectful parents) but they seem to be reading the same book but they're not the same page if that makes sense. Andrew probably also has some Older Sibling syndrome going on there because he cares about Ashley if reluctantly sometimes and takes responsibility for things, while Ashley makes sense as the younger sibling (as an older sister myself it at least was recognizable with how Andrew was telling Ashley she had to realize what they'd done at the end of the chapter) and with the whole demon thing it made me wonder what the talisman will show Ashley or if there will be more complicated horror with the two of them encountering more cultists or if their parents had something to do with the issue because I definitely agree on the whole sus mom thing

All in all I love how the game gives us enough information to see kind of where it could go but doesn't spoil the plot and the Coffin part of the title definitely gave me 4th wall thoughts similar to Homestuck. The apartment/demon occult based horror is similar to Sally Face too so it just took the gremlins and made me super interested in the story. If i ever write anything i'll definitely send it to you!! I work as a writer off of tumblr for a larp company currently though so my brain is a bit fried but I love this game a lot and it was super interesting to see what was going on in the story 👀

Thank you !!! Don't overheat your brain anymore than necessary to survive in the techno capitalist hellscape singularity we are currently in but if you do find the time to write anything that would be amazing :D

And now to answer everything else:

I love both siblings for their own reasons I really do but I fell in love with Andrew the moment I saw him because brocon tendencies defeat all sorts of common sense immediately for me

Yeah Ashley totally fits into the yandere archetype except she's more real I would say and she's definitely more western than full on anime like

I say she's more real because she's actually shown to struggle a lot with socialization and with her parents and just seems to be rejected by the world around her because of her personality instead of just being a random girl who somehow exists with that behavior and it's okay

Yeah I actually don't really understand Andrew's motivations for going along with stuff all that deeply I always feel like there's something I'm missing with him but mostly I just see it as well he genuinely really cares for his sister and doesn't want to see her in distress and he's super codependent as well and cannot lose and he's a pushover too and finds it easier to go along and blame her for everything instead of standing up to her and risk losing her and then having to confront himself

As Ashley did say she's the only person he can be real with so he can't stand to lose her

I also totally think he's yandere on his own right like maybe yandere wouldn't be the right term for him because he definitely doesn't present himself at first as more approachable like Ashley does but he's still super overprotective of her

Like straight up one of the like 7 times the Rage sprite is used twice are just for the time where Ashley makes the comment about getting pregnant from their neighbor

So yeah they are both yanderes for each other and we love that for them

Personally I see the trauma from them steming from yeah killing that girl that's definitely not something you can just walk off but also from their parents seeming to be very detached and neglectful of them and also from Ashley specifically I see her as somebody who's never managed to have a long lasting relationship of any type with anybody other than Andrew

She expresses that just who she is and her personality makes people turn away from her and that over so much time and starting up from so young can really mess a person up

And then she starts isolating Andrew too and they wind up becoming dependant on each other and no matter what forcing one person to carry the weight that a whole entire social circle should is always going to end up turning toxic ah~ which is what I so love about them I'm just a natural sucker for toxic siblings dynamics

Actually your perspective saying that Ashley fits as a little sister is really interesting to me because I am a little sister I can't really understand how older siblings look at their younger siblings but I can see a lot of how me and my older sister are like in just how they banter and stuff

Like that bit where Andrew is like nope you go get the batteries It was like a Deja Vu for me swear to God

I definitely think the whole prophetic dreams stuff is gonna play a big role in the full game and I'm really looking forwards to the horror potential of it all

I also really enjoy the idea of Ashley being super paranoic all the time about everything she dreams because what if she interprets it wrong what if she doesn't see the right thing what if it ends up getting Andrew hurt and as much as he doesn't want him to be able to live on without her that stems from the fact that she definitely cannot live on without him

One thing I really enjoy about dystopian stories is that they tell you just enough they make you feel like the world was already here before you and you are just watching it at the moment and this game does that so well

I know nothing about Homestuck but everyday I learn something new about it as it seems

And sorry, as you can probably tell, I can talk a whole lot about my special interests jejeje (☍﹏⁰).

#the coffin of andy and leyley #personally i headcanon Ashley as ASPD and Andrew as autistic and they are my favorite codependent cannibal siblings ever #soleil asks #andrew graves #ashley graves #nemlei #this is so clogging up somebody's dash right now

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hoardingpuffin · 5 months

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I am bored so I am gonna rank my DND and other RPG characters I've played thus far from 1 to 10.

Maria the Mafia Bride - 2/10

First ever RPG character I played, and I didn't create her, because that game we all got a randomized character from our GM. Liked the campaign (we were all time travellers from different eras - one other character was a knight from the crusades named Melvin who, through a series of happenstances, ended up wearing one bright red stiletto heel, and another other character was a Dutch ballerina who one-hitted Billy the Kid with her dance skill. Iconic shit), but the character wasn't really my thing.

Jacen, the Troubled Kid - 2/10

This was the second campaign I played and it was sort-of-but-not-really superpowers themed? We all had powers but the universe was kinda weird and nobody really got to do much, especially with our powers? So I kind of never got to explore him in RP and I still am slightly salty about it.

The Nerd - 3/10

I do not remember her name anymore but this was for a Halloween oneshot where we all played American High School archetypes (except for one of our players who chose to be the janitor? Who for some reason hung out with all the teens?). I remember nothing about this oneshot except that everyone was dead at the end and that my character lugged around a huge encyklopedia that she ended up throwing at someone, which I think is neat.

Plush Octopus - 5/10

This was for a super chaotic Toy Story themed oneshot that somehow ended up in bloodshed? I still am not sure how exactly that happened but there was a stint where a toy dragon was being chased into a goldfish tank by the family cat.

Aevetia - 8/10

We played a WoW themed campaign, which was certainly challenging seeing that most of us knew zilch about World of Warcraft. Aevetia was a draenai huntress who was literally incapable of negative emotions, and she was so much fun to play. I think this was the first time I played a character that was somewhat able to hold herself in a battle and I definitely loved that. Plus, first time I felt like we actually had a more roleplay and improv based campaign which is what I prefer over just-combat. She did also get whacked in the face with the Doomhammer twice thanks to another player failing their rolls. Docking points because when playing a character who cannot feel anger that limits a lot of what you can do, plus it was hard to navigate a setting I knew zilch about.

Eiorna the Giant Magpie - 9/10

MY GIRL! I love her so much, I wanna play her again so bad. She's a 7 foot tall avian woman whose wings got burnt off, leaving her with only sceleton remains so she's creepy as hell visually, but her personality is about as intimidating as candy floss. Also she had a bag of shiny stuff she lugged around called The Trashbag and she would occasionally just reach in there and pull out shinies to tie them to her wingbones - oblivious to the fact that that was highkey horrifying to anyone around her. Docking one point because when I played her she was really really ditzy and I think I'd probably revise her a it before playing her again.

Gwyn the Rabbitfolk Barbarian - 8/10

I only played her for one session before the campaign was abandoned but she was so fun! The whole concept of a two foot white fluffy bunny with a slingshot raging in a tavern was fantastic, I wish I could have played her more. Docking points for my choice of making her Scottish (I cannot do a Scottish accent to save my arse and I think she just kept drifting off into Russian somehow).

Bex the Stablemaster - 10/10

My first ever tank, and the first time I ever played a queer character around my friends. This was for a Victorian era vibe Halloween oneshot and Bex was a strong she/they lesbian. Need I say more?

Tancred the Weather Witch - 9/10

This was for like, a sort of Eldritch entity cultist themed oneshot? My character was maybe the only one who actually dealt damage and he was soooo fun. Now, did I essentially steal him from the Charlie Bone series? Yes. But for a oneshot it was fine, plus storm powers >

Zami - 10/10

If Tramp from Lady and the Tramp was a red tiefling who adopted about fifty kids. No notes, love him, he is perfect.

Veera Match - 9/10

My current Star Wars campaign character, a mother who is an ex-empirial soldier who is hunting down the man who killed her wife and stole her force sensitive child. Absolutely adore her but the campaign is just kinda not it. Might very well recycle her at some point though.

Nikolai Ortsev the Vampirist - 7/10

Made him for what was supposed to be a Halloween oneshot set in our GMs homebrew world. Nikolai's a self-obsessed anthropologist who believes he is the one who can singlehandedly unite the vampire and human societies... by becoming a vampire. Listen, he's my vain, slightly stupid gay scientist man and I love him - however I think he would have been better suited for a long-term campaign than a oneshot. We're not through with that story so we'll see where it goes with him.

The Toy Soldier - 10/10

Exactly what it sounds like: I played the Toy Soldier of The Mechanisms for another Halloween oneshot and IT WAS A BLAST. Easily the silliest and yet most damage-dealing character I have played to date. So so much fun. I love it, it's brilliant.

Vikesh Joiko - 10/10

He is my baby - purple tiefling cleric of a light deity, certified pretty boy, looks gorgeous in a ballgown, can and will flirt with any handsome man who seems willing, and his weapon of choice are dual axes. Also he is not above tearing out another tiefling's fangs and wearing them as jewellery when that other person is acting like a major creep. Love him, love him so much.

#dnd #dnd character #dnd campaign #my dnd characters #ttrpg #ttrpg character #the toy soldier #character ranking #pen and paper rpg

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readbyred · 3 years

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Wilbur Cross x Reader

Warnings: cursing, suggestive comments, bad spelling

Everything happened quickly.

Flash!

Bang!

And nothing.

You anticipated something much grander from what appeared to be your death. But this day was more than disappointing from the start so why would your passing be any different?

You woke up, went to see a movie at Cineplex and got trapped in a local mall with a bloodthirsty cult. And now you apparently were dead. You exploded to be exact. But death didn't look like what you expected.

Everything was dark and damp. Wherever you were there wasn't any ‘up’ or ‘down’, ‘far’ or ‘close’. But you had to be somewhere, you still had your senses, slowly coming back after the explosion.

Even if you were dead you didn't feel like it, you couldn't know for sure though. Trying to check, you slowly lifted up your head (or maybe just looked up) and tried to move around. There was no indication of you moving but somehow you knew you were. Not that there was anywhere to move towards, everything was dark, the air felt thick and solid as if it was made of jelly. Not a very pretty comparison but the place was far from nice so it’s a fitting one.

You didn't know how long you were walking but you decided to stop paying attention to details. Your body distorted on the edges, it seemed to blend with the air around you and bend in weird places but every time you focused on it, it stopped. It was hard to tell why you saw it at all given the darkness of the place but that you stopped questioning either. And so, you walked.

Finally, after some time every time, the space around you started gaining shapes. It looked a bit like one of those stroke-simulation photos but instead of frustration it brought you a sense of security.

It wasn't long until you came across a strange light.

It was green and the closer you went the less it looked like a light and the more it gained a… Sort of human form. It had arms with slick fur and big, glowing eyes. It's features were also sort of animalistic but without doubt everything else was human. When it had sensed you it ran, or rather swam away.

Figuring that you were dead either way so there wasn't much else you had to do, you followed the thing further (or deeper) into the strange darkness.

From amongst the shapes stood out one, green and huge. It looked like it could occupy most of the endless space around.

It's gigantic eyes glowed, shining a light at a man and a woman. They were surrounded by the creatures.

Unnoticed, hidden in the thick darkness you crept closer to them. Both seemed slightly distorted but it was nothing compared to the fact that the woman had a bullet hole in her head. She seemed fine, however, other than the fact that she was yelling at her companion, clearly aggravated.

The sound travelled poorly in this place and so you decided to get closer, curious as to what was happening. Was this some sort of purgatory? Or hell? But what would you get into hell for?

Since the mystery woman appeared to be even more dead than you, then this had to be some sort of an afterlife situation.

“I didn't ‘fuck it up’! If Beck Barnes and her consolation prize boyfriend didn't ruin my plan I-” the blonde woman yelled at the taller man. She was facing you but didn't seem to notice a thing.

That's why you decided to creep even closer, crouching behind the man in denim. But when you took another step his head snapped towards you.

He was around your age but looked sick, way more dead than the woman with blood dripping down her temple. His head tilted as he looked down on you with a wicked grin.

“Well well well” he started, with a raspy voice that was familiar “another new face already?”

Even if you wanted to turn back you couldn't, feeling paw-like hands grabbing you and holding in place. You didn't know where those green things came from, you could swear they sat by the woman’s side seconds ago. But now they were making high pitched noises at you and staring with their huge eyes, possibly awaiting a stranger’s command.

“Let's see what we have here” he crouched down, inches from your face, presumably in an attempt to taunt you further. The man seemed to enjoy creeping you out, however, his expression and tone changed drastically a few seconds later as his green eyes took in the details of your face. Much more serious he let out a surprised “(Y/n)?”

“Uhm, who is that, Wiley?” the woman spoke up looking down at you, but not because you were crouched down.

“Leave us alone for a moment, will you, Linda” the man, Wiley, raised his voice rapidly getting back up. The name seemed to be familiar to you, but you never knew anyone with it.

“But-” she whined.

“Out” Wiley barked out, making the woman groan, clearly not intimidating her one bit.

The green creatures however vanished, leaving you alone. It was your chance to run but you didn't want to. Whoever Wiley was, he knew you and he didn't exactly give you bad vibes.

Even the glowing green eyes and his dishevelled state weren't exactly a red flag considering everyone you came across so far was either a fantasy creature or dead.

“Out? This place is fucking endless if you haven't noticed! What am I supposed to do? Stand by Wiggly’s right or left tentacle?!”

“Go find out.” his tone suggested that the conversation was over. With more whining the blonde stomped off, towards the green, glowing thing’s head.

“Did they get to or did you just miss me so much?” he turned to you, gaining back his composure, looking you up and down “Either way! Can't say I'm disappointed…”

“Um, I don't think we know each other” you admitted, now up on your feet.

“Come on! (Y/n)” but his face fell “...fuck”

“What’s wrong?” you asked as if it wasn't you who just got killed and locked in an endless pit of nothingness.

“If it isn't you I swear…” he grumbled furrowing his brows but asked, a bit less intensely “Don’t you remember me? Come on I know you do”

His entire being seemed so inherently evil but he wasn't scaring you so far. In fact you were just growing interested in whatever he had to say the more you two spoke.

“How do you know my name?” unable to affirm his last claim you decided to question him for a change.

“(Y/n) (L/n), raised and born in Hatchetfield, studied in the local community college, from 2001 to 2005 worked as an elementary school teacher” he recited “now the question is - do you know me?”

You frowned searching for any distant memory you could have. You never knew any Wiley but that could be a dead end. And besides how would he know all that about you in the first place?

If his information stopped so far back as 2005 then this could be someone you knew then...

It took you a few seconds to put pieces back together, they told you he was dead after all.

“Wilbur”

“Bingo. Knew you wouldn't forget me, (little lady/pretty mister/sweetheart)” he smirked.

That sparked even more questions but you decided not to ask them all at once. It still bothered you what was your long-dead boyfriend doing in some sort of a purgatory void.

“What is this place? Are we dead?” you finally let out as your past lover grinned enthusiastically.

“Well, (Y/n) we are in the Black and White! A place between all timelines PEIP managed to accidentally open up” he explained proudly, leaning on your shoulder and gesturing towards the space in front of you, for better effect “but I’m not dead! Never been better. Now you on the other hand…”

He made a sound running his finger across his throat but he didn't seem very concerned.

“To be honest you look more dead than me” you rolled your eyes. It was common for you to scold him for not taking enough care of himself, back when you were together. He responded with a sigh.

“Do I, now? Do I? Come on!” he opened his arms and pointed towards himself “Don't tell me you don't like what you see”

Well, he wasn't wrong. He was a mess in every possible definition of the word and you seriously had to ask him about his horrendous outfit but he was the love of your life and you couldn't be happier to be finally reunited.

You still had some questions but not wanting to ruin the moment you just smiled at him rolling your eyes.

“You wish, Cross” still smiling, you walked by him, much less scared to meet others. You looked back, asking him if you two can join the blonde, now talking to the enormous creature.

“Hey, wait up” he caught up with you and trying to be smooth he put his arm around your waist and let it slide down, putting it on your butt “aren't you a naughty one”

And here was, using his old tricks and lines. It didn't matter though, because both of you knew they worked just fine.

BONUS (crack):

Sitting and chatting was nice, and not like there was much more to do in the Black and White. The eldritch god your boyfriend worked under seemed off but not too bad either.

“How come I ended up here though? I never joined any of the cultists” you questioned petting a sniggle laying in your lap.

“Well” started Wiggly before Wilbur could even open is mouth “I-existed-befowe-eawth-did. I-nevew-knew-14-yeaws-could-be-long. But-UwUncle-Wiley-came-hewe-and-stawted-talking-about-his-fwendy-wend-non-stop-and-i-found-out-how-long-it-can-be-OwO! So-i-bwought-his-cUwUsh-home!”

Wilbur did not want to speak on the matter.

Tag list:

@joeycupcakerichter

#black friday starkid #black friday x reader #wilbur cross x reader #x reader

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writing-frenzy · 4 years

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Hollow Knight AU Idea- Other side of the Mirror

okay, so, I like the drabbler I am, saw this post by @catanutella and suddenly I got an amazing, if awful AU idea :D

Let’s set up first.

For the Radiant Children to be born, I imagine a world where, for a certain reason, the Pale King and Radiance actually have to work together. Like, maybe there is a big bad cult, and because I like the subversion of everything in Hollow Knight, maybe it is against a god/goddess of Healing or ‘Purity’. The Radiance has been fighting against them for a long time, but she never seems to be anything but on the defense with them, their planing and power able to outmatch her own. At least, until the Pale King comes into being.

Now, the Pale King has seen the future, he can see the path that can branch if he picks one road or the other, and in the end, the cult has ideas and thoughts he can never agree with. He can see that he would never be able to take them on alone, so with the aid of Unn and the White Lady, he meets with the Radiance and with terms laid down, they all work together to defeat the enemy god. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Once the other is cast out, things get a bit complicated... but they are eventually ironed out, if a bit tense at time with some relations. In the end, the Pale King is able to give minds to the bugs all around them, the Radiance is able to give them all dreams, but in the end, it is up to the bugs themselves to decide who they wish to follow in the end. Hollownest is built and most of the Moths still choose the Radiance, with some going over to the Pale King. This of course causes tension, but it was agreed to let the bugs choose, so there is that.

So yeah, this is the world that the Radiant Children are born into.

Now, i’m going to say this; I think Wyrms have very low birth rates, one of the reasons their species went extinct. The White Lady, being of earth and fertility in my headcannon, is able to still give him a lot of kids. (With no desperate plans and void to enter into the egg) they have a few children, I’m thinking between like 30-50.

So yeah, here is the set up for this idea; of course there will be drama, with fae like gods and court politics and all these still very morally grey characters still being themselves. (I want feral Child Hornet to be born, so maybe it was a term set down in the beginning to get Deepnest’s cooperation, the desire for a strong brood in the future or maybe one or two of the Radiant children gets saved by Herrah, who thinks ‘what about a life for a life? and boom, Hornet gets to exist and her mom won’t be a damn dreamer here.)

Now, here we get to where I want to be.

So, if we were in a comic or story, this would probably follow after a few arcs with subtle and not so subtle foreshadowing. The Cult is making a comeback, they are preparing, and now they are ready.

They have a special weapon with them this time, a mirror called the All-Seer’s Glass, said to show possibilities for what can be, as well as able to power up those who know how to use it. They also are able to somehow trick Grimm, making it to where the Nightmare King can only watch what is to happen, much to his distaste. (He does not care to be commanded or ordered around; the Cult was at least smart enough to not ask him to fight on their side, just that he watch and judge, and not interfere.)

So, i’m going to say a lot of the Radiant Children were kidnapped, from Arlo the oldest to young little Chi. With the Glass, they are all trapped in this mirror like world, where the gods are weakened and the Healing/Pure Cult is mostly in control. Grimm is forced to watch from the side, though through some sneaky antics, he is able to at least help out the kids break their bindings and get out of enemy hands, but is unable to help outside of that.

All the kids are scared; from the strange shadows they see outside their vision in the mirrored walls, to all the fighting, hiding behind their guards or Mother as the Radiance and their Father, along with other strong warriors, fight the monsters before them.

But they are getting worn down; within the mirror realm, they are weakened, and with the Cult able to constantly heal themselves, it seems like no progress is actually being made.

Chi watched on, as their father, who always stood so strong, so tall is beaten back by the enemies, who laugh and sneer in the face of his power. Can’t help but cry out as he see a nasty blow hit Father in one of his wings, the guard protecting the little one stopping them from reaching out.

‘Anyone...’ Chi thinks, tears falling onto their chitin as they watch this terrible battle so different from the stories they read, ‘Anyone, just anyone... please! Please help us...’ those tears ever so slightly blurring their vision, but doing nothing to quiet the cries of their family and friends, from the battle screeching of those fighting.

‘Help my Father..’

Chi can’t help but cry out, jostled as they are by their guard suddenly jumping, trying to get away from one of the Cultist trying to take their precious ward. Hears the louder cries of his siblings, sobs reaching out, distractions on the battlefield that work rather well.

‘Help my brother and sisters!’

(All the while the guard is fighting, forced to put the little one behind them, shadows start to form in the mirrored wall behind little Chi, a form that starts to become clear and clearer as the fight goes on.)

‘Please...’

Chi looks up into those cold, dark eyes of the bug who killed his guard, their nail still stained from their kill as they walk ever so arrogantly forward, the youth easily able to smell how pleased they are. They raise their nail once more, their actions obvious in what they are about to do to stain their nail even further.

‘Help.’

Chi closes their eyes, not able to watch how that deadly nail reaches for them, to end them.

This means their wide eyes flash open when they hear the counter.

Hearing the clashing of nails loud in the sudden silence they seem to be surrounded by, Chi looks up from the ground, watching as a small, grey cloaked bug easily goes toe to toe with the enemy. They are amazingly talented with a nail, performing nail arts Chi has only read about in books. They are even able to perform spells, judging by the soul energy that finally finishes off the foe. It is in this still moment that Chi is able to actually get a good look at the other bug, as they turn to him...

And kinda wishes he didn’t.

From those very familiar horns, the indents inside the tip of them, to the white of their chitin, a pale glow just barely able to be seen, it reminded Chi of one of their sister’s drawings, without any color and unfinished, no life given to it yet.

And yet... it seemed to be living right in front of them, a mirror image of their self in body, if the glass was black and grey that is.

Chi can only watch as this... other tilts their head at the for a bit, the darkness that can only seem to stare at them from their eye holes seeming to deepen the longer they look. Chi can’t help but feel a little relived when the other nods, turning away before they are off into the fight, easily moving within the chaos and madness of it all.

Like they are used to it, at home with it as it were.

So yeah, Little Ghost joins the fight, and the tide is turned greatly. Ghost is a tireless, restless fighting machine who only gets more power with every hit they get. To say that the home team are surprised is a very big understament, as one; this looks like one of the children, and two; why do they feel like death and void??!! Pale King does not like this, White Lady is disturbed, and the Radiance is very uneasy.

Grimm is admittedly stunned as well when a little Grimmchild helps Ghost get a few stubborn enemies, the nightmare fire unaffected in this mirrored realm (almost a bit stronger in fact, hence why they tricked Grimm in the first place).

Ghost is very much giving off the Uncanny Valley vibe, and with me imagining this is a fully looped Ghost (every ending has happened, but because of Ghost’s special ability, he just ends up starting over every time) he gives off an even more creepy pasta child feeling.

Not to mention just how OP he is.

When the fight is won and all is said and done, Ghost can go back home anytime as long as he can get to the abyss... but come on, this is Ghost.

Of course he is going to explore first chance he gets.

(And thus, we now have Ghost running wild in this nice little au. :D oh what havoc he will rein.)

#Hollow Knight #Hollow Knight AU #Other Side of the Mirror HK AU #Radiance HK #Pale King HK #The Knight HK #Little Ghost hk #Grimm HK #just i like the idea of Ghost able to explore a fully alive Hollownest #and lets add drama to all that #Radiant Children AU #I guess?

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steve0discusses · 4 years

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Yugioh S4 Ep16: Rex and Weevil Do Not Understand “Rock Bottom”

Hey guys.

Hey.

So... kind of crazy out there, right?

Well, you know what they say. When life gives you lemons, you watch Netflix.

Anyway, Yugioh is racing down this canyon that should be going up alongside the 101 and through the middle of many cities. Don’t worry about it.

And then I found out the name of a card I haven’t seen yet and wow it’s a name.

I’m really glad that Rex Raptor, dinosaur enthusiast, has just no idea how to name dinosaurs and does so like a 6 year old child. Hornsaurus.

(read more under the cut)

So this episode is mostly about Rex and Weevil’s tragic backstory, and thankfully, it’s really not that tragic. We’ve had SO MANY bizarre and weird backstories under our belt, that to have a completely normal one is just...wild to me. They’re so freakin normal.

And on the way, our train just...

OK Train...anyway, I’ll do my best to show which scenes are flash back and which are not, but like bear with me because it flashes back like every other scene it feels like.

So Rex waxes long about that very short time in which he and Weevil were the best ever duelists in Japan (other than Kaiba, I guess, who they failed to mention in this flashback.)

(I used to have a very soft performance fleece sweater the exact same shade as Weevil’s jacket there, popped collar and everything, with piping outline. Don’t judge me, it was the 00′s, I’m just shocked that Weevil also shopped at Old Navy.)

(However I have no idea what’s going on with Rex’s three layers of clashing outfit styles that he has going on. A turtleneck under a thick button up jacket under an open fringe jacket is so much of a 90′s vibe.)

Up until now, bro has been PRETTY SURE every episode that Rex and Weevil are originally from America. I don’t know how I feel about being so right on the money about this one when the episode outright said that they’re from Japan. I don’t really want to out-Yugioh my brother, because at some point, I’ll accidentally let slip that in writing this blog I have accidentally gained all Yugioh knowledge, just like Noah did that one time when he was stuffed into that brain orb.

Just please don’t don’t ask me how this game works, I still have absolutely no idea.

Weevil and Rex had adoring fans in two-shaded polos exactly just like the type I used to wear in high school. But, their fans all left them the moment Weevil lost one single game against Yugi Muto.

Harsh. But granted, I feel like the people of Domino have rabbit memories and if you aren’t actively in the news every day because your blimp got abducted by sea pirates, then who the hell is EVER going to know who you are?

But youknow, Rex and Weevil are pretty sure that dodging getting murdered by Pegasus was actually their last shot at fame. It’s over forever. They’re done. Done until they beat either Joey or Yugi which...very specific, but, it would make you somewhat famous if you did that by simultaneously destroying the Caltrain.

And Weevil is like gunning for the King of Games title but...apparently no one in this episode wanted to mention to Weevil that the “King of Games” moniker actually went to Raphael?

That he needs to beat Raphael...not Yugi Muto?

Nobody?

Nobody feels like mentioning that neither Yami nor Yugi could possibly still be King of Games and that Weevil has no really good reason to be here? I mean it would save Weevil a lot of time. It would also save me a lot of time. We could just walk off this train and go back to what we were all doing before this happened, but nah, lets keep the lie going, because apparently Yami can’t bear to tell the truth, just like his host.

Waiiiit, isn’t Rebecca the King of Games because she beat Yugi in S1?

It’s the freakin Malfroy/Elder wand, it’ll be important in Ch 40 I’m sure of it. I’m sure they’re not going to just...forget...all of the people that beat Yugi before.

Man. Maybe that’s why Yugi is so hell bent on keeping tabs on Rebecca? Just to youknow...make sure she doesn’t tell anyone that she hella beat him that one time because otherwise Kaiba would have lost his freakin mind (again) that Yugi lost that title basically the same afternoon he came back from Pegasus’ island.

Also Rex and Weevil once charged for headshots and this makes them vile, terrible people for some reason.

Apparently this is a bad practice? I mean if you’re famous enough please charge for head shots, you need to make money between playing cards. Take it from this jaded artist, always sell out so you can save money for when you will absolutely get carpal tunnel.

Whatever. Back to Rex who is certain that he is not famous anymore because he lost to Joey.

S4 and still everyone is certain that Joey is bad at cards. Joey will just never be free from this.

It was beautiful anime food for like ten seconds until he did this. How dare. Literally though, how did he do that? Was that burger made out of potato chips?

Can we talk about what a freakin crime it is I can’t watch my Nick at Night retro shows on Netflix or Hulu? Like hell I’m going to get a third streaming service so I can watch and admire how bad “I Love Lucy” aged. I want to see how incredibly off-putting Fonzie is as an adult. But nah. Not even allowed. You can only watch Cheers.

Cheers. What am I? 65? Cheers wasn’t on Nick at Night. My Mom watched Cheers. Gross.

This show trying to convince me so hard that Rex and Weevils lowest point wasn’t when they were 5 seconds away from being set on fire and having their soul removed by Maxamillion Pegasus.

Like for reals, the lowest point for ANYONE (except for the Ishtars) on this show was when they were trapped on that island, without any camping supplies, surrounded by human skulls, Bakura pre-exorcism, and so many other duelists who were probably going to eat them had the tournament gone 24 more hours than it had.

The island that also had a basement that was entirely full of cultists who absolutely murdered a guy right in front of us.

Like when they finally got out of the island’s huge ass forest, their dinner included a soup filled with Pegasus’ eyes.

I would have gotten pissed on by like 70 stray dogs to get off that island, y’all.

So one of the best things about this blog is I don’t have to worry about the restraint of a.) looking professional b.) the fear of sharing my actual real deal opinion. Everywhere else I post, I can’t share anything. I’ve come to terms with this, and so I hide my hot takes deep, deep within this Yugioh blog and the only people who suspect my art rage are like...y’all in the corner of Tumblr who do not care about what I’m talking about.

++++++++++++THIS IS MY HUGE RANT ABOUT ART POLITICS AND ART BITTERNESS FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS. WE’RE QUARANTINING SO MUCH OVER HERE DUE TO THE VIRUS THAT I AM GOING A LITTLE BIT HOUSE CRAZY+++++++++++++++

But like MAN I need to mention something. Both Joey and Rex are completely off base. Both of them.

Like I’ll be real, because of the sudden extra time I have on my hands, I was originally ranting quite a bit about art culture and stuff and I will admit it was projecting somewhat onto a TV show that was written before the recession and the gig economy basically came and laid a huge dump across the creative industry.

However, I really, really, really don’t like it when people naively say “I’m successful because I did the research, I did the work, and then I got a following despite doing no marketing at all,” LIKE HELL YOU DID, DUDE. And there’s certain places I go where this is the mantra of a hell ton of ppl who don’t believe in luck, and I have to just suck it in because they succeeded at a young age. Because inversely, if anyone doesn’t succeed right away--clearly they don’t work hard enough, right?

I won’t dig into real world stuff because that’s...the real world and the real world is a bummer, but even in the universe of Yugioh there’s this crazy disparity in duelers that the people on the top refuse to acknowledge and the people on the bottom have absolutely no way to cope with so they become insanely bitter about it.

Mai has mentioned that despite all of her hard work and success--because she isn’t the top 4 duelists of Kaiba’s tourney--no one knows who she freakin is. The card industry is so toxic, that even KAIBA dropped out.

And even without Kaiba to compete against anymore, Mai still wasn’t able to get in there to fill that void. The void that also has Marik and Odion in it, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure Marik will never touch a card ever again and might be back to living underground or on a boat in the middle of no-where. And we don’t even need to mention Bakura, right? Bakura who should have also been here to fill the void of fame, but his face probably only comes out fuzzy on camera like people haunted by that girl from the Ring. So we’ll just ignore Bakura, that makes sense, I can accept that canon.

But really...it’s just Joey and Yugi at the top of the crop when there should have been room for at least 4.

So, it’s interesting that the Oricalchos in this situation is the “get me popular quick” drug that will somehow give Rex and Weevil what they need for automatic success because I see people desperately looking for this SO MUCH online. I have seen so many post “This is how I got 100000 followers in 100 days,” and it’s always the same story that isn’t so much about hard work, but more how to game a broken system until all other competitors are invisible. And then there’s the hidden factor about...luck...that really offends people although we all know that it exists.

But just remember I’m not allowed to have this opinion that luck...exists...So if anyone asks, I never said this.

And also...if Rex and Weevil had any support up until now from these kids who have been stuffing them in the trunk for over a dozen episodes, they wouldn’t have done any of this.

So talking as a jaded Millennial, I’m not gonna judge you if you take your Oricalchos, if you know what I mean. Everyone has their reasons, and no one’s too good not to ever do it, lets be real.

+++++++++++++++END OF THIS RANT, WOW, I WANT TO SAY THAT WHILE SLAPPING A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE IN A GENTLE MANNER+++++++++++++

So I realized something. This cliff face is sort of an iconic train, but it’s the wrong train.

This is the Amtrak in the middle of Nevada/Utah, pretty sure. I know that shade of orange. I’ve done the Nevada drive a lot.

And part of the reason I’m even sleuthing into this is because as an artist I like to see where art inspiration comes from. It doesn’t just come from a void--they clearly did research and I just want to find out...how it happened.

So anyway, like I said last time, the Amtrak is in charge of the Caltrain management, although the Caltrain is not part of Amtrak. And so you get similar paint jobs--it’s just that Amtrak has blue topped cars, and the Caltrain cars are typically red. Yugioh safely did red, white and blue, which both cars do, to an extent, being American trains.

It’s possible that they decided to look up scenic trains in California and were like “this one looks neat.” This one is also named the “California Zephyr” which makes it seem super Californian but in actuality it goes from Emeryville, California to Chicago. Only problem is that Emeryville is North of Oakland, and we’re supposed to be taking the train “to the airport” when the airports are in Oakland or San Mateo. This train doesn’t go to the airport. You just drove by the airport.

This train also doesn’t go to Florida. Chicago is North, way north. This train exists to be a slow, scenic train for old tourists who want to sleep in cramped spaces or jaded millennials writing their award winning novel. It has no other purpose.

So, it doesn’t at all match anything story wise...but it looks cool. They would never take this train if the world was going to end, and Rebecca wouldn’t know it exists, but, it looks cool.

But anyway, onward to the next episode. I’ll be kind of bunking in my home for a while since my entire area basically shut down, so maybe I’ll get the next updates done earlier than usual? Maybe even catch up on my backlog? hm. Possibilities.

And if you just got here, this is all the Yugioh recaps in chrono order.

#Yugioh #ygo #Yu-Gi-Oh #recap #photo recap #episode recap #yugi muto #yami #train #joey wheeler #tristan taylor #rex raptor #weevil underwood #S4 #Ep16

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valerianka-97 · 5 years

Text

Twisted, tangled, wicked, sick.

... That is how I felt when I actually finished that article. Heaven help me...

The 12th of July is the beginning of a new era for gothic rock trio from Massachusetts - PVRIS.

Last Friday the band introduced to the world their debut single "Death Of Me" from an upcoming third album. They also released a thrilling music video for the song.

New sound, same energy.

Death Of Me was supposed to be a new rock hit but surprisingly turned out to be the dance hit instead. Many fans were confused, some were in panic that the band switched to another genre, others were slightly shocked. But everyone agreed that the song with the video alongside are something out of this world.

Evolution of sound isn't surprising, the frontwoman Lynn Gunn is known to collaborate with pop and dance artists such as Seven Lions, TBMA and some others, so the electronics that fully replased live instruments is something we could see coming.

Anyways, the band is staying true to themselves, judging by the themes and overall vibe of their new song.

Death Of Me definitely has strong old-PVRIS vibes: the lyrics are still dark and sinister and the video is moody and ominous.

In the song Lynn tells us the story of obsessive love. Obsessive, passionate and dangerous love. Or dedication. It's still a mystery whether she's referring to her love relationship or to something else. Gunn likes to hide things in plane sight, so her love life would've been too easy to refer. The song kinda reminds me of Florence & The machine's Pure Feeling, in which Florence Welch speaks about her dedication to fans and vice versa. The metaphor fits just right to that theory.

Let's speak straightforward here, fans are the best promotion machine of any artist. We can suffocate or let them breath, we can literally be the death of them, because fans are the ones who put an artist on a pedestal and fans can kick them back down. It also reminds me of something else. Something more important and global. But I will leave that thoughts for later in the article.

The music video here is another story but also is an adding to that theory. I'll talk about it more below.

First, let's take a closer look at all the mysteries in the vid.

youtube

The biblical theme is the one we notice first of all, it's very simple, and there is a reason of that obviousness. While fans are building logical connections with the first visual metaphor of the seduction of Eve by the devil in a snake's appearance with the song lyrics and then enjoying passionate sequences and the cult initiation, the most interesting metaphors are carefully hidden. The devil is in the details, guys.

The storyline of the video is built on hidden metaphors. Some of them may or may not be intentional, maybe I just built logical connections where there is none but you surely will find my observations interesting.

The seduction and the forbidden fruit are not the only symbols from the Bible. We can see the new members of cult going through initiation. But have you noticed that all of them are of different races? There are black people, asians and white people. It got to me when I wondered about the symbolism of the pyramid formed by the cultists with our trio in the heart of it - which is also may be symbolic and may represent the three ascendants of Noah (or is it too complicated? It may be unintentional). Here we've got the Tower of Babel metaphor.

Next on - the red aquarium. I've already said in a comment section for the video on YouTube that aquarium represents the falling of Adam and Eve from heaven. It's a small piece but key one, keep that in mind.

Now, remember the line in the song "I'm falling, fading, and seeing angels". This line is not just the reference to Demon Limbs. Everyone has noticed that the band made a colorful music video. And the colors in it were not chosen randomly. The band and everyone in the sequence dressed in white instead of classical culty black wearing. Knowing of the falling from heaven metaphor in the video and connecting it to the line from the song we've got our "angels" Lynn talks about. And that's not all of it.

The Tower of Babel in the Bible is known to represent a kind of an act of rebellion against God. The whole cult sequense symbolizes that at some point. The initiation almost completely recreates the holy communion. This, overall, may represent the creation of the alternative religion as a counterweight to the original one and creating their own kind of heaven on Earth, which for some may look more like hell. But that's, my friends, is parallax. Another reference to song lyrics.

And my favorite metaphor, which is also pretty simple but hidden in plain sight. The whole song with its dark, seductive, even erotic, at some poin, vibes is a hint, not to count pretty obvious visualisations in the video.

Lust. The most pleasant one of all deadly sins. Tangled bodies moving rhythmically to the heartbeat and everyone's in rapture. Passionate, isn't it? I mentioned hell lately on purpose. "One man's hell is another's God, it's all about perspective, a parallax". Lynn Gunn surely knows how to play with words and the visuals.

The storyline starts at the actual end of the music video. Why not the snake sequence? You may ask. In fact, it all begun with a snake and an apple, right?

Like I've said, the colors chosen for the video are not accidental. Red color symbolizes not only passion but also hell. And it is known that Eve was in heaven at the moment of seduction. Which led me to conclusion where the story actually begins. And the pyramid sequence is an actual end (which is to be continued).

The ones, who were fallen and forbidden to come back to heaven gardens for they've sinned, united and built their own garden on Earth and they rule it like God rules heavens.

They've sinned at God's perspective, yet they see it as holy communion from theirs.

Now let's come back to my theory of the song's meaning. Why I think it may be about the fans and something more global.

The first time I've watched and listened to the music video, it kinda reminded me of Britney Spears. Let me explain this absurd. Britney's fame became hell for her in mid-2000's. We all remember that.

That's one piece.

In 2011 Spears released a music video for the song Till The World Ends.

youtube

The sequences in that video at some point are repeated in Death Of Me: it caught my attention the second I've seen tangled bodies in a rhytmic movement. In Britney's video the storyline's mostly situated underground, where everyone is dying of the hell of a heat, and the colors in both videos are similar, also the dance-y vibe in the darkness of the underground kinda the same. That's the piece no2.

And the dance with a snake was Britney's most iconic performance back in 200(5?). That's the 3rd one.

Not only the music video led me here. Lynn's "You're a cold-blooded killer only after dark but I don't mind" also reminded me of Britney's song Criminal.

Yes, that all may be just coincidence, because "why the fck Britney Spears? Nothin' in common".

And that's when the song lyrics come up and make sense of all of it. Again, the line about hell in perspective, the line about a noose around Lynn's neck or a poison, the line about danger. I've thought about Britney Spears because she is the best example of what the pressure of huge responsibility for fanbase and fame in general can do to people. Break them, suffocate and be the death of them.

We know that coincidences are not accidental, not with PVRIS. Lynn's metaphors have always been much deeper than it has seemed, so I guess that's a good and well argumented theory.

And don't you think that it's finished. There's more.

Death Of Me also wasn't chosen to be the debut single by accident. From all written above, the song is a perfect metaphor itself for the band's prevous album. All We Know Of Heaven, All We Need Of Hell. Which makes it a great bridge between what we already know and what is soon to be released. My guess is we're about to find out more about heaven and get something else from hell.

I've done pretty heavy work in analyzing everything, and trust me, it was hell. But I enjoyed every hour of it. Twisted, huh?

P. S. While writing a draft to the article I couldn't decide whose name to place in a metaphor with the snake, so at first I wrote "devil's seduction of Eve/Lynn" and accidentally found this strange reference. EVELYNN. Two names, Eve and Lynn, in one Evelynn. And Lynn as Eve in the video. And Evelynn short names are both Eve and Lynn.. Damn, I confused it even more.

Update:

My brain almost exploded yesterday while writing all this. The article is so loaded with information, so I desided not to mention some symbols. Today, as I had a good night of sleep (after very brutal insomnia issues) I realized that the analysis can't be completed without those little details.

The names puzzle above is one of them but I mannaged to put it somehow anyway.

There are several more things to say about symbolism though. One of the them is obvious and everyone noticed it from the start but not everyone is aware of the meaning of that metaphor.

Not all of us know how to read tarot cards, me included. The representation of a tarot card "Three of Swords" - the knives Lynn, Brian and Alex pierced an apple with.

The card's meaning is a heartbreak, sorrow, grief, pain caused by someone's words or actions. It also has a meaning of emotional release and a reminder that the dark clouds building above your head will disappear and take the pain away with it.

The scene of stabbing the apple by the trio most likely symbolizes their expression of that pain and releasing it the moment the apple is pierced.

There is also a colorful symbol which is not that easy to acknowledge but is also put right in front of our sight. I had this thought since the first time I watched the video but didn't bring much attention to it. I came back to it after looking in to flowers handbook.

The flowers on the table in the music video are white lenagolds. Why lenagolds? Why not roses or lilies?

The christian legends say that lenagolds turned up on Earth with the walking of messiah. The Mother's tears that fallen when Jesus carried his cross turned into lenagolds.

Basic meaning of lenagolds is love and devotion. The definition of white lenagolds is sincerity and purity of feelings, loyalty, gratitude and luck.

Note that the flowers laying on the cult's joint table, which also may symbolize the band's devotion and love for the fanbase.

There is another hidden symbol I noticed but didn't manage to solve. Maybe some of you have thoughts on that?

When the cultists stand in two rows facing one another, at first I thought they carried flowers, this scene was really glimpse, so I played it in slow motion. They carried busts.

Not sure what that means, because I can't see whose busts there are, what I'm sure of is that this scene is related to a short shot of a woman's head with bloody tear streaking. Maybe that also reffers to that legend with lenagolds?

Anyways, thank you for reading! I hope you made it down here and I didn't waste your time

If you liked it, please reblog. Would be much appreciated!

#pvris #pvris cvlt #pvris band #pvris lyrics #this is pvris #death of me #awkohawnoh #analysis #meaning #lynn gunn #alex babinski #brian macdonald #new single #this is cvlt #justin nace #cvlt nation #lyndsey gunnulfsen

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rational-mastermind · 4 years

Text

A/N: Hey!! Everyone wants more Quinnvoyant right? Right?? Well too bad, it’s all I have. And an au! Soulmate au where if you write on yourself, it’ll show up on your Soulmate.

Everyone knew that if you wrote on yourself, it would appear on your soulmate as well. And Chris Quinn was no exception to this. Though, for a long time, there was only cute things like drawings of cats and rainbows and stars. Cute poems. Reminders. It was fine enough when he was a kid but as he got older it was just embarrassing. So he would wear long sleeves and hide the writing as best as he could.

Sometimes he would talk with her, but she was too shy to reveal where she lived or who she was. Which kind of annoyed him. Wasn’t the whole point supposed to be that they would meet?

When they got to high school, they talked less. Life got busy for her. Life was busy enough for him as well. Sometimes they would check in. Sometimes it would be reminders of homework assignments, or notes in class. Just kind of easily forgetting the other can see what they wrote.

Then one day, his skin started getting covered in words, very quickly. Bright red marker showed up all over his arms and hands and it crawled all over his body. The same words over and over and over.

“FREAK”

“PSYCHO”

“CREEP”

“KILL ME”

None too surprisingly, the only place she didn’t write was on her right arm. She was too busy writing, after all.

Chris found a nearby ballpoint pen and began writing.

“Et tu?”

The scribbling suddenly stopped. For a moment he was worried. But then the ink began running off. It looked wet and began to run down his arms.

Tears.

After watching it a moment he began writing himself.

“What happened?”

“Bullies.” was the eventual reply.

“Why?”

“Cause it’s true.”

“Same.”

“What do you mean?”

Chris sighed. He knew he wasn’t like other kids. They would all avoid him, be afraid of him, or talk about him weird just cause he talked about blood and death and demons and stuff that went bump in the night. He wasn’t gothic. Not by a long shot. He just...liked gore. He liked pain. He once got into a fight. One of the kids had a knife.

He couldn’t stop giggling.

There was something so...so thrilling, when he saw the red.

The voices in his head only encouraged it.

“I’m a psychopath.” he wrote.

“I don’t think you are.”

“That makes one of us.”

“Well what makes you so weird?”

“I… hear voices… And… I see things.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But I’m told it’s not-”

“Me too.”

Chris stared at the two simple words. Somehow, it utterly stumped him. He felt...weird. He wasn’t sure why though. But he wasn’t entirely opposed to it.

“What kind of things do you see?” he asked.

“It’s hard to describe. Sometimes it’s people. Sometimes it’s just screaming. Or loud talking. Sometimes it’s colors and random pictures. What about you?”

“More about dogs and demons and the end of the world and shit.”

The rest of the writing on his body started to disappear. She was wiping it off.

“Can we switch brains?”

“Yeah, yours sounds more fun.” he chuckled to himself. After a moment’s thought he ventured forth to ask. “So what do you imagine I’m like?”

“I don’t know. When I try to read you I get this weird image of something dirty and gritty like a horror movie. But at the same time, I also get this...warmth.”

“Warmth?”

“Like a towel out of the dryer. It’s warm and soft and it feels like home. It’s funny... Reading your words…”

Chris felt a bizarre fuzziness grab hold of his brain. The world seemed to darken around him as she continued to write.

“I can almost see you

Christopher Quinn”

Suddenly Chris felt very uneasy and quickly began rinsing off their conversation and scrub the words away. An unsettling chill surrounded him. It was weird. It was creepy. It was...sexy?

Chris then proceeded to dunk his head under the sink and run cold water over him as well.

They stopped talking after that.

Chris got into writing. Finished high school and began making his living.

Then the asylum.

Then the Shadow.

Then the Ministry.

Chris went through so much hell. Of course it had its positives. There was Trilby and kicking demon ass. A good use of his psychotic tendencies. Making the world safe from the Shadow and keeping magic a secret. The people around the Ministry weren’t too bad. Yarrow was a bit...boring. But Jim was fun to mess with. And Claire was fun. There was always something to do, even if that something normally made Trilby roll his eyes.

Then one day, well… It was bound to happen.

Trilby was going to be out of action for a while. A mix up with a vampire left him incapable of going on assignments with Chris. But anyone who ever called Chris a “loose cannon” would recommend that he got someone to tag along in place of Trilby. Someone responsible and level-headed.

Well who better than the absent-minded psychic he was pounding in the off hours?

Yeah they were knocking boots. Nothing to get too attached over. It’s not like Chris got to know her life story or anything. Just letting off a bit of steam whenever they could hook up. All he knew was that she was very very much a psychic. Something he found interesting and she found best kept swept under the rug, much to his own disappointment.

At first she seemed hesitant to go on a mission with him, but after some convincing, and a lot of unusual head shaking and slicing motions from Trilby behind her, she finally agreed.

It was a simple mission. Done and over in a day. Of course it was the traveling that took the longest. It was on the farthest end of Ireland, naturally. It had some cultists and brainwashing and something to do with summoning a pagan deity. Claire was a natural and it was actually kind of fun getting to do work stuff with her.

They were traveling back and Claire was already writing up their required report on a notepad. Chris couldn’t help but notice the way she gnawed on a pencil as she tried to focus. The way her fingers drummed through the air like she was at the computer back at HQ, if not fiddling with her large, round glasses. The way the air around her became still and focused as she accidentally projected her feelings about them. Chris could practically hear the gears grinding away in her brain as she tried to recall every needed detail.

He chuckled to himself and it instantly snapped the tension in the air as her brain derailed.

“What? What’s funny?” she asked, looking up.

“Nothing. Just.. I dunno.” he shrugged. “You’re so focused.”

“Well… I mean..” she shrugged as well. “It gets kinda hard to report faithfully.”

“Eh those pricks in the higher-ups always find flaws in our reports. No matter what.” Chris rolled his eyes.

“Hm. True.” Claire sighed. “But it’s not just them. You go looking through so many different minds, so many different vibes and lives it’s kinda easy to forget what’s happening in the real world. You know?”

“Well.. No. I wouldn’t.” Chris glanced back at her.

“Oh.. yeah, I guess you wouldn’t.”

Chris chuckled again.

“Hey by the way, you were pretty great back there.”

“Hmm.. I wouldn’t say that.” Claire shrugged.

“You kidding me? The way you fucked with that one-”

“Ummm.” Claire interrupted and Chris noticed she looked horribly uncomfortable as she fidgeted with her glasses more. “If.. If it’s all the same Chris.. Can we not talk about...that?”

“Oh.. Right. Sorry. Forget that makes you uneasy.”

“Just…something drilled into me, I guess.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Chris spoke up.

“Hey um.. Can I...ask something?”

“If you wanna know if I can predict the future, the answer is no.” Claire rolled her eyes.

“Damn.” Chris clicked his tongue in disappointment. “....Did you always hate your powers?”

“Mm..” Claire was quiet for a moment before she shrugged and looked out the window of the car. “What was there to like?”

“Um, cause it’s fucking psychic powers.”

“Yeah, exactly.” she sighed. “They always got me in trouble.. It.. Creeps a lot of people out.”

“Come on. It couldn’t have always been that bad-”

“No. It was.” Claire growled, her voice taking on a tone akin to earlier that day, but somehow lacking the same venom behind it. “It was always that bad. It was awful. You’ve no idea.”

“...Well… Like what?”

“....Like earlier.” Claire shrugged. “But.. By accident. I would...hurt them.. And scare them.”

Chris frowned. Claire was normally so bubbly, happy, a bit forgetful, but chipper despite the depressing and horrific nightmare that their livelihood was. He hated seeing her this downtrodden. It was wrong. Like on a fundamental scale, this was just wrong.

“...Did.. Something traumatic happen?” he asked. “Something that made you hate it so much?”

Claire gave a dry chuckle before replying. “I wouldn’t say...traumatic but.. Well.. It did drive a wedge between me and some really important people.”

“Was there a guy?”

“....Yeah…”

Chris felt something grip him. A sudden kind of deep-rooted anger. The kind akin to staring down a vampire or some other unholy abomination. Not counting Trilby, of course.

“Who-”

“Should get some gas. Before the ferry.”

Chris sighed but found a station and pulled over. Clearly she didn’t wanna keep talking. While he was filling up, she went inside to use the bathroom.

“Look over the report. Jot down anything I missed, got it?”

“Yeah..”

Chris felt crummy and stupid and angry. Claire was a great person! Why would anyone hate her for having psychic powers? Okay yeah so she kind of really mentally fucked with that one guy. And yeah okay so maybe she kinda caused another to have an aneurysm. Yeah sure that might’ve been a more common problem when she was a kid and yeah it might’ve been like Stephen King’s Fury, but so?

And it’s not like Chris would’ve hurt this guy…. Much.

He growled and kicked a tire before getting back in the car. He sighed and leaned against the wheel, waiting for Claire to return. That was when he noticed Claire’s notepad left laying on the space between their seats. Oh right.. Reporting.

Chris sighed and grabbed it. He looked over the notes. Everything seemed in order. She left off at the part where cultists were about to start sacrificing the local children but she’ll likely finish jotting down the basic plot when they got back. Chris grabbed the ballpoint pen she had been using and was about to go back and fix her grammar when something caught his eye.

A small doodle Claire had in the corner. It was a cat.

Chris squinted and looked it over carefully. It looked familiar.

Suddenly it dawned on him. He had seen this before.

Chris’ mind started racing, putting all the pieces together. But.. But how could he prove it? And how could he prove it without worrying Claire?

Chris then looked back at the pen in his hand and had a perfect idea.

Meanwhile Claire was hiding in the bathroom. She knew this was a bad idea. She knew this was gonna be horrible! She knew this was gonna happen and she just had to keep playing with fire, didn’t she??

“Stupid stupid stupid!” Claire banged her head on the wall. “Listen! To your! Intuition!!”

Of course she knew who he was. Ever since the first day Trilby introduced him at the STP.

Claire and Trilby were discussing the differences in using iodized salt compared to sea salt, though ultimately, they both knew pink Himalayan was best. But then Claire felt it. A familiar presence.

She suddenly felt an oncoming wave of giddy excitement that made her almost tremble. And a familiar warmth that quickly wrapped around her like a towel fresh out of the dryer.

“Claire? You okay?”

“Think someone’s-”

“Trilby! We gotta go do a thing with cake- Oh. Hey.” Chris had rounded the door to Trilby’s cubicle but stopped short seeing Claire.

“Hey.” Claire waved.

“First of all, never again. Secondly, I never introduced you two, have I? Chris, meet Claire. Claire-”

But she already knew who he was. But a deep anxiety prevented her from saying anything. But after getting to meet him, within all of five minutes she forgot entirely, simply living in the moment. And then she forgot again when they agreed to meet up after work. And she kept forgetting to a point it would’ve felt awkward to start saying anything then and gosh dammit.

‘Claire, why do you do this to yourself??’ she sighed and stepped out of the bathroom. ‘Always have to make everything awkward and weird…youfreak Can’t just remember to freaking speak up and say what’s on your mind?’

Claire only hoped Chris would drop the subject and they could return to their normal status quo. At least she got to see him. At least they got to talk face to face. It was better than what most people could hope for. After all, some people never find their soulmates.

‘But they write every day.’ her unhelpful thoughts reminded her as she returned to the car. ‘When was the last time we wrote to each other?’

She opened the car door and-

“I KNEW IT!!!”

“Aah!”

Claire stumbled back, tripped on her heels and fell backwards onto the pavement.

“What the hell, Chris?!” Claire scolded as she picked herself up.

“Take a look in the mirror!”

She got up and looked at her reflection in the window. She gasped, seeing a rather crude doodle of a cat across her cheek. She looked through the window only to find Chris with a matching mark and a wide grin stretching from ear to ear.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?!” he asked.

Claire stammered, laughed, and ended up crying. Her heart was pounding, she felt scared and worried. Chris’ smile disappeared and he got out of the car and came around to her.

“Hey.. Hey hey hey. Hang on now.” he came over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “What? What is it?”

“I thought you’d hate me.” Claire managed to get out with a hiccup.

“I know.. I’m sorry.. I didn’t hate you. I never did! I just.. You…”

“Scared you.. Like.. I scare everyone.” she sniffled.

“No! You didn’t scare me! I just.. I.. I dunno.” Chris shrugged. “I was a dumb teenager. I didn’t know what I was feeling.. I’m sorry.. I’m so sorry…”

Claire simply shook her head. Chris ran a hand through his hair and thought for a moment.

“...If it’ll make you feel better I could still kick my ass.”

Claire laughed. She choked and then giggled some more and finally started wiping away her tears.

“Please don’t.”

Chris smiled and hugged her tight. She weakly hugged him back.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know..”

After that, they began writing to each other more and more often. Little notes, here and there.

“That was a lot of fun last night.”

“There’s coffee in the breakroom.”

“Fought a ghost. It was gross.”

“Kissed one the other day.”

“I’m stealing the last slice of cake. Don’t tell Trilby.”

It was nice. It was fun. It was one thing that Claire would say was normal about their lives.

“You wanna do something else after work tonight?”

“I got a new cat figurine!”

“Got to see the sunset while on the job. Reminded me of..”

“Hey you’ve been quiet. You okay?”

“Can I tell you something?”

“I love you.”

#chzo mythos #quinnvoyant #chris quinn #claire #soulmate au #my writing #rational writing

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workingonit-currently · 4 years

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Music that reminds me of Oxventurers.

(Part two.)

youtube

Hear me out on this one...Prudence.

Okay..I know none of the crew of the Joyful Damnation have children but I feel like since we’ve had adventures with Cor’s family, Dob’s family and Egberts. (Yes, I’m saying that Out of Order counts.) We might get a look at Prudence’s family, her biological family...if they’re not dead.

I’m not saying we will, I just like to imagine Prudence spitting at her mother while singing this song as a way of saying, ‘You abandoned me, you hated me. You were suppose to be my mother, a mother cares and loves, not abandons in the cave of a hermit cultist who wants to cover the world in SLIME.’

(Can you tell I like musicals and songs that tell a story?)

Yeah..So I get those vibes. Plus it’s a beautiful sing, pity it was in a movie no one watched...

(Same thing as last time, don’t click to keep reading if you don’t want a weird analysis of each and every line of the song because I like analysing text...Darn my lackluster skills in English and ability to look to deep into things.)

‘What would a mother not do for her child, what lengths would a mother not go?’

I like to imagine this refers to her mother abandoning her, a teasing tone as her mother did nothing for her so Prudence is highlighting the fact that she had no mother, no true parents

‘There’s a bond that exists between mother and child, with no end to how strong it can grow.’

Again, taunting, showing how her mother had no bond with her although she should have. It also highlights the fact that Prudence does not form bonds, she never learned how to and only formed one bond, a bond similar to a mother and daughters, with Cthulhu.

‘It’s a promise for life between mother and child, it begins from the moment of birth’

Referancing Prudence being abandoned, pretty much this whole song is her rubbing her abandonment in her mothers face, but also refers to the fact that although Prudence forms no bonds, or tries to, she does still want family, love and affection. She doesn’t want Corazon to abandon her or leave her but she doesn’t know how to cope with those feelings so they end up never being revealed until you get a few drinks in her.

‘And you’re shaken to your soul, with an ache you’ve never known.’

On the top it shows that Prudence knows what her mother should have felt for her, a love, affection and pain having left her in a cave and abandoning her. Prudence knows what her mother should have felt for her but she also knows her mother didn’t feel that, ‘Because she looks like a devil-baby’. But it also refers to Prudence’s new-found bond with the Oxventurers, she actually likes them, she cares for them.

‘And you look into their eyes and find you’re looking in your own.’

I believe this would be a representation of Prudence blaming her mother for everything, her appearance since she thinks her mother is the wicked and evil one for abandoning her but she is the one who looks like a devil, reflecting her mothers evil outwards. Also refers to Prudence finding comfort and family with the Oxventurers, finding in their eyes a pain and loss similar to hers, Dob thinking his family is lost, Merilwen having no family, Egbert being shunned by his family and Cor, with a tale very similar to hers, shunned, abandoned, punished and almost killed by his family. (Both Corazon and Prudence being abandoned for not being like their parents and being something they could not control.)

‘And there’s a pain you can’t imagine, a special kind of torture you can feel.’

Refers to Prudence’s pain of being abandoned but also shows her mother that she should also feel this pain. Also possibly refers to Prudence’s bond with Cthulhu since that was very painful but she just wanted someone.

‘A cut that bleeds from somewhere deep inside you, a past regret you can not heal.’

Prudence shows how painful it was to be abandoned but also states that her mother can not heal the bond between them now, she doesn’t need her mother and her mother can not make up time lost or go back and stop herself abandoning her child. Prudence does wish her mother didn’t abandon her but knows that she does not need her mother, she hates her mother but she is better off without her. She has real family now, real friends.

‘And no one guesses, all the while you’re praying, that screaming little stranger in your arms might just grow up and save you after all.’

The use of stranger refers to a new life but following the narrative also means, I this context, Prudence is a stranger to her mother, her mother was never there and never got to know her, she simply abandoned her devil-child based on her apperance and even now, twenty or something years later they are strangers to each other. This line also refers to Prudence actually saving a lot of lives, maybe unintentionally her mothers but Prudence has saved many people despite her looks, past and current god.

‘Might just grow up and save you after all...’

This is Prudence acknowledging that what her mother did was wrong, she was suppose to love her but instead she abandoned her. Prudence cold have been good, nice and actually live a social life, she has the smarts and the skill but her parents doomed her to this path, Prudence did not choose what path she was on, her parents did. But she will still save her mother and fight for her, defend her and be good if it came down to it. Prudence is telling her mother she is grown up and that if her mothers life was on the line Prudence would fight to keep her alive, she may hate her but Prudence won't kill her, she will save her and rub it in her mothers face that she is not all evil, she is good despite everything.

‘What would a mother not do for her child, what highs would a mother not climb?’

Again mocking but this time Prudence referring to her self, she starts referring to herself more as this song goes on, she’s climbed higher than she though she could, from a free-lance warlock to an Oxventurer who does generally good things. She has become better, more nice and stronger with her new family, being the joint mum of the group with Merilwen as the three idiots can not do anything.

‘There’s a bond that exists between mother and child and it only gets deeper with time.’

Prudnece shows that although she hates that her parents abandoned her, she wants a mother, she wants a family and as years passed she wanted to find her mother, maybe ask her why, every year a little more sadness and a little more longing for her family.

‘It’s a promise for life between mother and child and to break it there’s no greater pain.’

This line refers to what her mother should feel, again, she should not have abanded her cld and because of that abandonment Prudence was put in all sort of pain and hardship, simply because she was abandoned.

‘And you’re shaken to your soul with an ache you can’t erase, like the tears you never cry but still keep scrubbing off your face.’

Refer to what her mother should feel as well as what Prudence does actually feel. She feels sad and emotional but she can’t let her emotions out, she never can and she never will but she still feel broken, abandoned and lonely, unwilling to trust although she’s grown and tried to heal she can never erase the damage her mother has caused or how much pain she is in. It’s always there.

‘Cos there’ a pain you can’t imagine, the type that keeps you wide awake.’

Refers to the many sleepless nights Pru has had, imagining her parents and fighting with both her guilt at being a horrible demon-baby but more importantly trying to contain the anger and sadness at everyone including her parents for not just accepting her and ignoring that she looks like a devil-baby, she wasn’t evil as a baby, they made her evil by forcing her into that role.

‘That somehow turns to bold determination, that you won’t ever make the same mistake.’

Those sleepless nights turned to into her reading, studying and practicing being a warlock, choosing Cthulhu and killing her carer as she becomes determined to be what they think she is, evil but also to find her parents, make them suffer and be great at whatever she wants because she is her own person and she will be the best at whatever she chooses. She won’t abandon her friends, she will be there and she will not make the same mistake her parents made, she will torture and treat everyone just the same and she will not be blinded by her own fear like her parents.

‘And so you vow to feed your little future, assuring that her talents, poise and charm might just grow up and save you after all. Might just grow up and save you after all.’

So Prudence vows to become a master at her spells, be the greatest servant of cthulhu, she vows to be a great and powerful warlock, to be smart and above her fear. She grows confidence in herself, her skills and trust in her power and god. She incures that she can rely on herself and needs nobody else, she teaches herself and becomes her own mother, teaching herself how to do magic, kill, paim and everything she was suppose to learn from her mother.

‘Some dreams die upon the vine, some they never have a chance.’

This refers to her mother, her parents never giving her a chance, simply abndoning her but also refers to how hard she worked at her dream, becoming a warlock, becoming powerful and becoming someone who could take care of themselves.

‘Sweeter than the sweetest wine, that mine becomes the queen of France.’

Prudence thinks how sweet it is that she is exactly what her parents though she was, a devil-child but she also survived, probably something her parents didn’t think woukd happen, and she’s grown into a strong powerful being, something she might never have done if not for abandonment.

‘And it’s relief you can’t imagine, it’s filling every single bone and nerve. To know that you can get out of this hellhole and finally live the life that you deserve.’

Prudence explains how great it was to realise her parents abandoned her, she realised how good it was to get away from hermits and how amazingly perfect it was that everyone was racist towards her, to have her fears realised and to overcome them, cover herself with them and wear her and others fears as a coat. She feels satisfied with her power, being able to look after herself and is able to not blame herself for her past but blame her parents.

‘And as you leave the past you knew would haunt you and all of the regret you didn’t show, might just grow up and save you after all...Might just grow up and save you. Might just grown up and save you after all.’

This refers to Prudence knowing her parents regret abandoning her in some ways and that reget means she can not kill them, only let them live and feel worse now that they see she’s survived and become this. Her own past and regretsnsaving mant lives as she became an Oxventurer and met her true family, going on adventures and possibly saving herself in the process again.

‘What would a mother not do for her child, what lengths would a mother not go. There’s a bond that exists between mother and child..-Ah. But then again, how would you know.’

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dungeoneering102 · 6 years

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Improving Cults

So recently I had a post about how cults should be designed (IMO). I mentioned the four cults present in the D&D module Princes of the Apocalypse and said how those were really bad examples. Due to some interest, I decided to make this post that elaborates on how I have altered those four cults to make them more realistic and interesting.

Why I Dislike the Original PoA Cults

In the original book, the Players are supposed to face off against 4 cults: the Black Earth, Howling Hatred, Crushing Wave, and Eternal Flame. Each of them have a leader (referred to as “prophet”) and work semi-together to summon super powerful creatures called “Princes.” The book also mentions that they all serve the “Elemental Eye.” Here are my problems with this set up:

We don’t ever get told what the Elemental Eye is. It seems to be just a pedestal or an unnamed entity. But it’s never explained.

The cults work together. This makes them all just fade into each other. There’s no drama because now the players are just fighting a large group that happens to have 4 leaders.

The cults all have the same goal but very little distinguishing elements in terms of their philosophy or approach to said goal.

So let’s try to fix this...

Elemental Eye

I hate that this aspect is never explained. It was just so very vague and yet its what commands the four cults. Supposedly, the Eye has given the cults their power and influence. In turn, it will somehow eventually inform the cult leaders on what ritual to conduct to summon their respective Princes. The Eye does this only WHEN the Party kills the first two Prophets. So I changed it all around.

The Eye is a physical thing. It is a stone of great power, supposedly locked within the altar in Fane of the Eye dungeon. In my story, the Eye calls forth the four Prophets, but informs them that it will only choose the STRONGEST among them. This is important and I’ll discuss why below. But now it is a physical thing and once ONE of the Prophets proves themselves powerful enough, the Eye is gifted to this person. All others die upon touching the Eye.

Lastly, to get to the eye, each Prophet has to prove that THEIR cult is the strongest and has the most influence. They do this by getting the most recruits and building beacons across the valley. The beacons are something that you can see in the module’s artbook section, although they’ve been cut from the final game. I re-inserted them as buildings that would be a sign of the cults’ growing in power. Your PCs can stumble onto these as they explore the valley. The cult that proves to be most influential, gets to summon their Prince.

The Cults DO NOT Work Together

Around the Renaissance Era, the Christian church had several divisions. New branches and sects appeared all over Europe, and started fighting over who is the TRUE CHRISTIAN church. They all believed in the same God and Jesus. What was different is how they worshiped these figures. The result was a complex political game fought between these powerful and rich churches over the souls of their followers and the influence over Europe. These conflicts ended with people fleeing Europe, the Catholic Church setting people on fire, and a very powerful shift in the politics of the time.

I think, that’s a pretty interesting story. So why are the cults of PoA just working together, with some minor issues between them? I say cut them the fuck apart. They are four individual cults. They believe in the same deity (the Eye) but go about worshiping it in different ways. They each have their own beliefs and philosophies that conflict with one another, and pit them against each other. Why do we do this? Because 4 DIFFERENT baddies is better than 1 four headed baddie. This conflict between the cults, allows the Players to play a large and complex game of politics, where they play off each of the cults against one another to get them to destroy each other. PCs might ally with one cult, only to get into a big mess and have ANOTHER cult offer them help in return for betraying their former allies. In the end, you get a Game of Thrones level game of politics and alliances.

Unique Cults

Now all of the four cults want the same thing: summon forth their elemental daddy. The problem with this, they might just meld into each other and become very similar. So we have to differentiate them in three ways:

How they present themselves (identity).

What do they believe in (philosophy).

How they act during combat (gameplay).

If you distinguish EACH of these, you get distinctly diverse cults. Below is going to be MY breakdown of how I distinguish each of the Elemental Cults.

Howling Hatred Storm.

Change that fuckin’ name. No one will wanna be a part of a group called “Howling Hatred.” Bad guy groups usually pick actually socially OKAY names, otherwise they won’t get any supporters. Let’s call them “Howling Storm” or “Howling Wind.” ANYTHING else but HATRED!

Identity/Philosophy. The wind is fickle and full of lies. The leader of the cult, one Aerisi Kalinoth, pretends to be a winged elf by creating fake wings using illusions. Their main outpost is filled with cultists who PRETEND to be knights. The whole thing reeks of deception and illusion. So I made that their selling point. Make your dreams a reality is the tag line for this cult. They convince people to join, so that when THEIR Prince is summoned he can blanket the world in an illusive state, where everyone’s best dream will come true. Of course, they will all live in a constant dream state, but it doesn’t matter. People who are depressed enough would be willing to fall into eternal sleep if it is guaranteed to make them and their friends forever happy. This is what Aerisi offers. She appeals to the desperate, the depressed, the lonely. She offers them to live out their dreams in an eternal sleep. Kind of like a suicide cult.

Gameplay. This is very simple. The cultists stay airborne as MUCH as possible. Forcing PCs to fight vertically, instead of horizontally, find cover, find ways to fly up as well, climb high structures, etc.

Black Earth

Personally, the Prophet of this cult is my favorite. So to be fair, I don’t much to change about this cult.

Identity/Philosophy. For this cult I ran with the theme of burial. Marlos Urnrayle, the prophet of Black Earth, sells the burying of your past. Made bad choices in life? Did thing you regret? Forget about it. Bury that past, and on the dirt build your life anew. Atop the ruins of old, rise your new home. This would totally get the attention of past criminals and bandits, whose lives have been ruined by their own crimes. Now they can start anew, in an organization that accepts EVERYONE.

Gameplay. Another easy one. You should describe your cultists as being extra tough and hard to break. Maybe give some of them some earth powers, ripped out of Avatar: the Last Airbender. I let my cultists just call forth pillars and stone walls, while others would swim through earth as if it were water.

Eternal Flame

Identity/Philosophy. Compared to the other cults, this one seemed more combative and militaristic. So I ran with that. Vanifer, the cult’s leader, runs a militia. Again, remember that the valley is without any leadership. She offers leadership. Her message is that she is building the army this valley desperately needs and she intends to bring peace and order to this valley, by force if need be. Her selling point is that she promotes discipline and order. People who lack any purpose, live messy lives, or need some kind of a leader-figure to tell them what to do, would fall into this easily. Think of veterans or troops, who after wartime cannot fall back into normal life as they need someone to order them around.

Gameplay. These guys are on FIYAAAA. Make their armor too hot to touch, make being around them uncomfortable. Allow them to be strategically more intelligent, using maneuvers to flank, surprise, and stun their opponents. This is a military organization, after all.

Crushing Wave

Identity/Philosophy. This cult consists of smugglers and pirates. What do pirates stand for? That’s right, an anti-establishment way of life. So the cult preaches FREEDOM. But absolute freedom. In fact, anarchy. Gar seeks a world that he can drown, where only those deemed strong enough can survive and are thus freed from the shackles of social restrictions. This idea of absolute freedom without authority, of being able to live off your own merit and not having to answer to anyone, is something many would like. People who have been duped by corrupt officials, people who dislike the restrictions of society, or dislike social norms. The Wave offers them all a chance to be free of this.

Gameplay. I got Lovecraft vibes from the cult. his cult is led by Gar Shatterkeel, who almost drowned but heard a voice in the oceans that led him to safety. Borderline Cthulhu-esque. SO, I made them all weird and creepy. They talk strange, they walk strange, they tend to stare. Ultimately, while they all fight for absolute freedom, the irony is that they are being manipulated by a primordial entity that is slowly brainwashing them.

Last Point - Diversity

In the book, all cultists (except the prophets) are human. That’s all fine and dandy but I don’t see why it needs to be so. I recommend you make the cults more diverse in their composition. Elves, dwarves, orcs, dragonborn, whatever you got. Not because YAY DIVERSITY or anything. Just because, I think it makes most sense that cults that fight for influence and power, wouldn’t discriminate based on race or gender. This, in fact, could be a selling point for them. Especially if you have racial tensions in your Fantasy setting.

I hope you all find this breakdown of how I modified the cults helpful. Please remember, that these are not “THE BEST WAY TO PLAY.” These are only the best way I found to play. You might find something that fits your campaigns and players better. Special shoutout to @ravenbane13 (and everyone else who reblogged my last post) for encouraging this piece. I did go a bit longer than I wish, but hey, I hope you find some use in that wall of text.

The Unfair DM

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twitchesandstitches · 5 years

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Three Tides Turning

Odina was, perhaps against her preference, an expert on magical things of all kinds. Academic knowledge, with a lot of firsthand experience, and the joke was that she had approximate knowledge of pretty much any magical thing.

She was very surprised to have Toast, of all people, asking her advice; she was pretty certain the little robot hated her guts, and would in fact have been happy to SEE her guts spread all over the wall. It wasn’t personal, he simply hated every single human to ever exist. It was a democratic sort of loathing, an almost genteel hatred that ignored cred and origin and country and deeds, all in favor of resenting the great teeming mass of humanity and proclaiming them all equally guilty of being absolute bastards.

She’d never asked why he hated her species so much. She had her suspicions. The magic that powered him was fueled by his own hatred and anger, but the special kind that came from pain. Emotion magic had its own flavors, and he reeked of suffering, and in his impassioned rants she heard the echoes of absolute despair so painful the only sensible response was to make it into kindling. He had suffered, and given the reputation of humanity among its mechanical offspring, and the optic that had been torn out of his head, she could guess what KIND of suffering he had endured.

Even at his most sociable and miserably lonely, when he had no choice but to seek out company that might include humans, he tended to avoid her. So seeking her advice out was, well, a really big damn deal!

Toast hunched over on a small overturned table, a little red robot apparently designed for a quadrupedal stance. Here and now he looked a lot like a mechanical dinosaur, but one that was oddly cute. He was just so… small, and compact. His wiry tail lashed around, and his boxy head tilted around, his single remaining eye blinking as he twisted his head around to see her.

Both his arms articulated as he tried to explain himself. One arm was slender and ended in a kind of paw. The other was a massive taloned gauntlet, larger than he was, the obscene mass built around an elemental fire core that fueled his various powers. It made him a truly fearsome heavy hitter, but it also severely hobbled him, and only now did she appreciate just how awkward he moved with it; his claws alone were a painful sight, when all his other movements were fluid, if so jittery you could expect he was impatient to finish moving and making little gestures.

“It’s… it’s my friend,” he managed, and pointed, and some of the things he had been telling her clicked. Ah, she thought in the back of her head.

Looming behind them was a monstrously huge figure, apparently the size of a house, draped in a tent crudely worked into a rough cloak. Atop it was a feral head, snout poking out of a projecting head but still obscured by a massive set of puffy lips.

God, it was so big. No, she was so big. Femininity radiated from it, like the psychic tide you couldn’t help but hammer you with pleasant vibes and sudden surges of hormones, and the desire to… do things. Animal things, rutting and breeding and delighting in the most basest of pleasures...

Odina’s absorbing powers sucked away the worst of it, so that she was a whirlpool of negated essence right there. Her total lack of interest in sex of any kind also provided a defense. The great mother-monster noticed this somehow, and turned to see them. A massive pair of breasts, big enough for Odina to fit inside them, shifted behind the cloak, and were so large they dominated the heft of even this hulking frame.

An aberrant hand, or perhaps a paw, raised its two webbed fingers. Claws longer than Odina’s arm wiggled playfully at her. “Sup, hun,” she rumbled, her voice deep, resonant, like an echo of the primordial sea.

Odina waved back nonchalantly. “Hey, terrifying monster lady.”

The eldritch monster mother - Tiashar was her chosen name, according to Toast, who had made himself an expert on her - chuckled at that. It was hard to make out details with that big cloak she wore; Odina could make out a massive mane of hair, or perhaps feathers, growing down her neck and shoulders and expanding outwards into a huge floor-dragging cloud several times larger even than she was. Some bits of it had become little tentacles, or tongued mouths. There were eyes, many of them, beneath it, but were quite invisible behind the long bangs. She did see a hint of multiple floppy ears, tweaking vaguely in response to stimuli no mortal senses were capable of perceiving.

Most of the exposed body was deep black. The shade differed; upon her face and the smoother parts of her skin, it was the color of ancient tar. On the patches of scales, a blue-black like the deepest parts of the sea. The armored plates on her shoulders, forearms, or the enormous tube that was her tail? It seemed to be even darker than all that, oily and rich. And oh yes, there were patches of other colors here and there; the gills lining her neck and sides were the same magenta as her mane, her huge lips and various other parts were a brilliant green… and in fact green seemed to be a secondary color, as if to offset her other shades.

Pebbly scales, slabs of chitin, features of ten thousand different phylums all mashed together in a strangely ideal form with her, and she suspected that was the key to understanding her. So many things that didn’t seem to belong, but with her, they did.

Presently, she seemed content to now ignore Odina and laid down, cooing at the dirt. Apparently whispering to the bacteria.

“...I’m worried about her, “ Toast said, his smaller hand rubbing its claws against a single digit of his big hand, his normally grouchy expression winding up into something forlorn and distressed. “She’s being so… so weird lately!”

“Weird by what metric.” Odina indicated her vaguely. “This is the same lady who spent half a month living in an attic, eating our garbage cans and screaming at mega-possums.”

It was amazing how Toast instantly shifted into hostility; he flared up, flames exploding around him, and a fireball appeared in his hand. “You talkin’ shit about her!?” he snarled, embers flying from his mouth like spittle.

Odina let herself instinctively eat the magic he was throwing off, but if he noticed his flames dying, he didn’t notice. They just flared up again, and her butt expanded, shelf rising over her waist and her skirt creaking in protest at it slid up, her hips expanding sideways. ‘Do NOT push him,’, she reminded herself, he absolutely would try to kill her instantly if he felt even slightly irritated, regardless of needing her help or not.

It didn’t come easily to her to play nice, but she would do her best. “I’m not making fun. I’m just saying, she’s kinda weird. Like the rest of us?”

He grunted, depowering. The local magical quotient went down, though her backside scale remained embiggened. “Yeah, okay.”

“So what do you MEAN, she’s acting weird?”

“I don’t know. The other day, she’s all calm and serene, hanging around with the men and women that wanna be around her all the time. Y’know, she feeds ‘em, gives ‘em baths in her milk and stuff, sometimes they feed themselves to her and she pops ‘em out as monstery versions of their old selves, but mostly they just… adore her?” He shook his head. “I don’t know, its weird. It's like… she needs it?”

“Sounds like they’re worshiping her,” Odina said vaguely, an idea coming to mind.

“Seems legit.” he tweaked his fingers, popping them off and chewing on them anxiously. “Then the next few weeks, they do none of tat, they just hang out with her and we go exploring? Fighting monsters together? The other folks, they fuse together and stuff, its like its a big adventure party? And it's fine, but then, just a few nights ago, she got hungry. Really hungry.” he looked uncomfortable. “And horny. Like, even more than usual.”

“Sounds like a lot of effort,” Odina said, who regarded all things sexual as an alien endeavor way more trouble than it was worth.

“She just wanted nothing but sex, twenty-four/seven, for almost a solid week! With all of them! And then they let her gobble them up, and now…” he gestured at her. Odina noticed her belly was very ripe, round and projecting outwards. A gravid, super-pregnant belly, with both the offspring sired with them, and the cultist’s reborn souls. “She just did nothing but eat continuously, barely speaking a word. I tried to talk to her and she looked at me like… like she couldn’t remember how.”

He paused.

“She kissed me.” He hugged himself, looking faintly lost, like he couldn’t quite understand how anyone would want to do that to him. “She couldn’t talk anymore, but she was happy to see me.”

“She’s talking now.”

“Yeah, I mean, she’s back on her regular mindset, where she’s being a chill mom and stuff but… shit. She keeps going through these phases and! And! And I’m really freaked out, is something wrong with her, is she sick, is she going to go away and ascend or something!?”

He shook Odina by the neckline desperately. “I can’t deal with that, okay!? How do I help her!?”

She gently but firmly pushed his claws off. “Calm down, she’s okay. She’s just trying to balance herself out. It’s part of what she is, okay?”

Toast stared at her. “Part of… what she is? What, a chimera monster girl?”

“No. You… do know she’s something else altogether? One of those things that…” she gestured vaguely. “Come from Outside?”

He stared blankly.

“The far realms?”

His optic blinked, slowly. “Nuh uh.”

“The parts of the multiverse that exist outside the set that has anything at all to do with mortals or our understanding of reality?”

“I’m drawing a zero here.”

“...The mad things that were here before the gods?”

“Still nothing.”

“...Okay, she’s an eldritch abomination that decided to be like a mortal, okay!?”

He nodded. “Ohh, right. Like that. Got it.”

“...You really get it?”

“Honestly, no.” He shrugged. “Could not give a shit, to be honest.”

She sighed. “It’s like this. Creatures like her tend to develop certain traits in common, because they’re forming minds like ours, but they’re still working in a totally different way. They’re not exactly elder beasts, they’re a little bit like gods, but they’re something a bit in between. And SHE is learning her way around that. Every day, and sometimes backsliding or losing her sense of what she is.”

Toast seemed to understand that, at least. He nodded.

Odina sighed. “Right, okay. So, if she’s like the other sorts of things I’ve heard about, she’s basically formed a mental state made out of three different parts that influence her in different ways.”

“What does this have to do with her being weird?”

“Because these are giving her contradictory urges, and she has no impulse control! She IS her desires!” Odina snapped her fingers, producing a little magical sign that said ‘get it??’. “Firstly, what you probably think is her ‘regular self’ is really just the parts of her mind she’s forced to think like a mortal.” A troubling idea came to her. “Or… what she thinks mortals are like. But she’s so different that even that is just guessing games, and she’s forced her brain into patterns completely unnatural to her, and it's always shifting around and trying to become something else. Because change is what she DOES.”

Toast looked baffled.

Odina tried again. “Look at it like this. When she’s worked out some kind of balance between her natures here, this side of her is the one that probably wins out and makes a happy medium. She wants to please herself and please other people, in moderation; it comes off to us as weird and constantly hungry, but that’s just what happens when godly hungers get curbed. That’s still moderate, by HER standards. The kind of things she doesn’t really get, like abstract causes, and long term stuff; she’s able to deal with those things more easy. She’s able to think more like you can.”

“Okay, I get THAT, at least.” Toast scratched his metal ears sheepishly.

“Now, you probably noticed her gathering people to her. That’s just a function of what she is; she’s a sort of proto-god. Gods want to be worshiped and admired; she needs a cult, and it's her nature to build them. So that's the bit of her that’s the most divine coming out. Probably also why she goes off and fights monsters; she probably sees it as protecting her people.” She paused, thoughtfully. “Or maybe she’s just getting into the ‘guardian kaiju’ vibe. She does have the look.” Another pause. “And getting people to breed with her might also be a god thing; she’s probably compelled to do it, as a function of what she is.”

“And you said something about a beast, earlier?”

“Right, her third nature. That’s the part of her that’s… well, monstrous and ravenous. A beast, nothing but hunger and desire. Not that its bad or evil!” she said hurriedly, noticing Toast’s temper starting to rise on Tiashar’s behalf. “Just… she’s already impulsive, but that part of her is literally nothing but instant gratification and satiating herself! Like…the bit of her that wants to be pleasured and satisfied all the time, that wants to be constnatly gestating monsters and having sex whenever she’s not eating? And then eating them right afterwards, and turning their souls into MORE things to gestate so they can stay with her forever in new bodies. ITs the part of her that runs on instinct and animal hunger, forever.”

He nodded, in a dour sort of way. “Okay, I think I get it. So…” he tried to process it all. “She acts weird because she’s got a whole bunch of competing drives and urges, some of them at odds with each other, constantly changing how she thinks and feels?”

Odina shrugged. “Her actual feelings are probably pretty, uh, consistent. The way she responds to them and acts on them does change, depending on which way her brain is working. Like if she likes someone and she’s pure beast, she probably wants to just jump on them and rut until the sun goes down, and them nuzzle them for a full month. And when she goes full god, she wants to shower them with blessings and love. And if she balances it out and can think properly? Then she just wants a friend, or maybe a tiny spouse. As long as she can hold onto that scale.”

He looked uneasy. “God… and she has to live like that…?”

“I don’t think it bothers her,” Odina said, not sure if she was actually trying to reassure him, or herself. “It’s just the way she sees the world and prioritizes stuff changes. She probably doesn’t really notice her perspective shifting. It’s just part of what she is. The tide turns, because that’s what it does; same thing with her.”

Toast looked troubled. “But..”

“Most eldritch entities, the ones that are making an honest effort to really understand us, wind up something similar. Plenty of them strike up a balance. The trick is them holding onto it.”

Toast wiggled. “So… Mama Tiashar…?”

She noticed, but didn’t say anything about it, his use of the honorific.

A small slip of the tongue, but a big, big deal for someone so miserably spiteful and suspicious of the whole world.

“Nothing’s wrong with her,” Odina said. “Her nature is just to change to different extremes. Sometimes she’ll be wild and ravenous. Sometimes she’ll be weird and think like an old goddess. And sometimes, more often than not, she’ll be like a regular weird mortal thingy. Just depends on the way her tides are turning.”

He whimpered. “But I want her to be happy.”

Odina looked at him, with something she didn’t dare admit might be pity.

It was a hard thing, to find out what love was at this point in his life, and to be afraid to know it.

There was a heavy stomping noise nearby.

Tiashar had stood up and slowly approached. Her massive tail lashed around, her enormous thighs slapped together as she approached, and slowly she leaned down, her head looming over Toast’s body. Her mouth opened, and she whispered softly.

“Toast, buddy,” she said, the words sounding distant and carefully picked. “Something bothering you?”

He shivered, and suddenly hugged her lip. One arm too skinny not to just sink in and instantly vanish, the other a huge and awkward club that started to fall on its own weight. “I’m just worried about you,” he whimpered.

She giggled, and gave him a soft kiss, pulling him right off the ground. She stood up, to her full height, and with another smooching pop, deposited him neatly into her cleavage, where he immediately snuggled up. “Aww, you’re a sweetie, little buddy. Don’t you worry. Mama Tiashar has herself figured out.” She gave her gravid belly a hug. “Be chill, my little dude, and don’t beat yourself up over it.”

“Can’t,” he said shortly. “I just worry a lot about you…”

She chuckled. “I don’t worry about nothin’, and I’m totally chillaxed forever. Try it some time, sweetie. It’s fun.”

She nodded at Odina. “Later, short stuff.”

Odina waved vaguely at her, trying not to instantly butt-bloat up to the size of a building just from being in her presence. “Later.”

Tiashar skipped off, her gargantuan butt jiggling like literally all the gelatin there ever wars, her tail even smacking it possibly by accident, as she cooed gently to the still fretting Toast.

And Odina thought about the tides turning, and how they were fortunate to have wound up with an eldritch horror that seemed perpetually stuck on the ‘be a sweetheart’ side of things, regardless of her current flavor of impulses.

#my writing #fics #my OCs #twitchy!tiashar #twitchy!toast #twitchy!odina #queued

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forestwater87 · 6 years

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The last part of my turned-into-a-monster-far-beyond-my-intention art trade with @doritofalls! Hope you enjoy! :)

Chapter 5

The next time Daniel appeared, Kevin half-expected to see a knife in his hand. Maybe Sister Hannah hovering over his shoulder, telling him that Xemüg would be proud or something.

But he was alone -- paler than usual, with circles under his eyes that looked smudged on by makeup, but alone. “You can’t come to the ascension,” he said.

Kevin smirked, leaning against the doorframe. “Nice to see you too, Dan.”

“This isn’t a joke! You aren’t going to the ascension party.” Normally this was the point where he would’ve shoved past Kevin inside, and there was something sad and unnerving about the way he was just hovering outside, glowing brilliant-white in the trailer-dotted wasteland of his front yard, like a diamond ring dropped in the gutter.

“Let me guess, Sister Hannah said no. I’d be too impure and ruin the vibe.” He’d been expecting something like this, and something cold and leaden rolled off his chest. Kevin had had a couple days to think through his spur-of-the-moment dare -- and to realize that he was perhaps just as insane as this merry band of cultists -- and when the alternative was probably being force-fed poison, he was very relieved to be disinvited to the party.

Daniel didn’t react, his eyes dark and bloodshot and unwavering from his own. “You would,” he said, a few seconds too late, like a poorly dubbed movie. “All your questions and your unclean habits -- your unclean mind -- you ruin everything. I don’t want you there.”

Okay, this was starting to sound like the kind of speech that was usually accompanied by a chainsaw and “the voices in my head made me do it.” Kevin slid his foot back, shifting his weight as subtly as possible to not look like he was running the fuck away. “That’s kinda harsh, don’tcha think?” he asked, only vaguely aware of what he was saying -- infinitely more aware of every twitch and tremor of the (very, very insane) man in front of him.

His fingers fluttered, a movement that would barely have been noticeable if Kevin’s brain wasn’t working so hard it was probably overheating, fans whirring as he tried to take in everything and plan a potential escape -- and oh, devote maybe 2.5% of his attention to the things Daniel was actually saying. “Don’t. Just . . . don’t, Kevin.”

Is that the first time he’s actually used your name? the stupid, useless 2.5% of his brain asked unhelpfully.

“Sure, man. Whatever you want me to do. Or not do. Whatever.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, fingering the switchblade hidden there. He was painfully aware of the fact that the Flower Scouts were inside the trailer, trying futilely to get an ancient monster of an air conditioner to work. (He had no idea where it had come from; the girls had just showed up that afternoon, staggering under its weight. For kids loudly opposed to anything resembling work, it was a hell of a lot of effort to go to.) Chances were good they could take care of themselves; he’d seen them scare off giants with machine guns, and Daniel was only 120 pounds of crazy and seemed unarmed. But goddamn it, they were his responsibility.

And like he’d fucking summoned them . . . “Heyyyyyy, so Erin has an idea,” Sasha called, sticking her head out of the front door. “It involves science or some shit. Are you using the ice in the freezer for anything?”

“What?” He turned around, forgetting about Daniel for a second. “I’m using it for ice, what are you talking about?”

“So like, we can have it?”

“I -- yeah, sure. Go nuts.” She started to disappear back inside and he raised his voice. “Fill the trays back up when you’re done!”

(Christ, he’d become his mother.)

He turned back to Daniel, who was watching him with an expression he couldn’t read, but scared him slightly less than the bubbling anger from a few minutes ago. “So . . .” He rocked back on his heels, sucking at his teeth. He wasn’t really good at ending conversations at the best of times. “Sorry I’m not sparkly enough to deserve your crazy-cult.”

Daniel’s eyes narrowed, but he still didn’t quite look mad. His gaze flicked from Kevin to the trailer, where the girls had somehow coaxed enough bars out of the area’s horrible cell coverage to blast Sleepy Peak’s single Top 40 station and were singing along (badly) to it. “No,” he said finally, shaking his head. “You don’t deserve any of it.”

“They’ve ascended.”

Kevin glanced up; he wasn’t surprised, exactly, by the intrusion — “storming in and declaring something stupid” was a remarkably common way for Daniel to introduce himself — but he did wish it hadn’t happened while he was “gardening” with the Flower Scouts. “Go check on the cookies,” he muttered to them, and while Sasha just stared at him with dark-rimmed eyes, the other two were much easier to persuade, and dragged her away. “What’re you talking about?”

Part of him hoped Daniel’s announcement would end “They’ve ascended, and everything’s fine. Nothing was poisoned, and we all had a good laugh about what a paranoid freak that old Dirty Kevin is.” But the look on his face . . .

“Inside,” Daniel hissed, grabbing Kevin’s wrist and hauling him toward his trailer. “We can’t talk out here.”

“I literally just sent the girls ins — and we’re here.” Rolling his eyes, he tugged Daniel out of the way of Erin, who was balancing a too-large tray of steaming pink cookies. “Looks great. Why don’t you let these cool outside, huh? Take a break and relax in the shade or . . .” It occurred to him that there wasn’t a tree within half a mile of the trailer park. “. . . something.”

“Seriously?” Sasha rolled her eyes. “If you wanna get rid of us, just say.” She glanced up at him and then back to the floor, biting her lip. “Like we wanted to hang in this dump, anyway.”

“No, guys. It’s not like that.” He knelt down, trying to meet the five downcast eyes. “My buddy here’s just really stupid and might’ve done somethin’ that’ll get him arrested, and I don’t want you caught up in that. Be like Mexico all over again, right?”

Sasha looked marginally convinced, which he tended to use as his meter for all three of them, since she had the least amount of stupid going on. “Guess we’ll, like, call Miss Priss, then,” she said dismissively, turning sharply enough that her hair whipped Kevin in the face. “Come on, ladies.”

She paused at the door, turning to eye them over her shoulder. And hell, before he’d met those girls he’d never thought the glare of a prissy little girl could be intimidating, but . . . “Try not to get arrested.” Her eyes flicked up, then down, taking Daniel in before dismissing him with a toss of her head. “Your weird new boyfriend is totally not worth it.”

Kevin heard a quiet, outraged noise behind him, but then the trailer door slammed shut with a clank. Distracted from his irritation, Daniel burst forward, drawing the curtains and fiddling with the door’s cheap padlocks before whirling on him, a look in his eyes that Kevin couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t the fake “golly gee!” salesman spiel, and it wasn’t religious mania . . . but the few times he’d seen Daniel genuinely angry, it was a controlled, icy sort of rage, not this fire blazing behind his eyes.

For a second they just stared at each other. Then Kevin licked his lips — dry, chapped and dry; what else was new? — cleared his throat, and shoved his hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt. “So, uh . . . ascension, huh?”

God, it all felt painfully awkward: Killed any kids lately?

Not like he had a ton of room to talk, but at least the children under his ill-advised care were still alive.

“You were right,” Daniel said, the words coming out all in a rush like he was afraid he’d be interrupted. Or like he was afraid he’d lose his nerve if he slowed down. He was pacing rapidly the length of the trailer, his steps hard enough to slightly rattle the entire camper. “Y-you — all of it — you were right about all of it. It doesn’t make any . . .” He sighed, almost a groan really, and raked his hands through his hair. His fingers drew neat furrows, the fluffy poof of his bangs sproinging back up immediately. “It was all fake,” he murmured finally. “There is no ascension. They made it all up.”

Kevin was aware that his trailer-guest was in the middle of a major existential crisis, but he had customers, and those cookies sold best when fresh out of the oven . . . “Right. Great. Uh, congratulations on all the . . . not being crazy, I guess.”

“It’s gone,” he whispered. His pacing slowed, and for a moment he just stared down at his hands. (Kevin leaned in closer, but they looked like the same pale, well-manicured skeleton hands to him.) “It’s all gone.” Daniel’s head snapped up, his eyes focusing on Kevin with his typical laserlike intensity. But it didn’t feel predatory for once. No, this look was decidedly desperate.

Desperate and hollow, lost hopelessness nestled in the deep, dark lines of his face. And he looked even more like a corpse than usual, skin the color of moon-drenched sand and the cheap fluorescent lights catching in the finger-combed waves of his hair.

Dirty Kevin was no poet, but something flashed across his mind anyway —

( that man is an island and there’s madness lapping at the shore )

— that might’ve been a half-remembered snippet of something he’d read in high school, or something from a dream, or something his brain had conjured up when he was blitzed out of his mind. Whatever it was, it made his skin prickle and go cold.

“What’s all gone, Daniel?”

“The Circle —” He shook his head abruptly, furiously. “The — the cult,” he spat. “There was — a ceremony. An ascension party. I . . . mixed up the drinks. Just to be sure.”

(“Don’t you dare.”)

He didn’t know what to say, but Daniel didn’t seem to need a response. Resuming his pacing, he rubbed his chin with a rough motion, like wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “They . . . ascended. I ascended them.”

His mouth twisted into a cruel smirk, and Kevin had seen that mocking contempt before but never this bitter, and never directed inward.

“No — I killed them.”

(“I don’t want you there.”)

Kevin took an unsteady breath — the first, it felt like, in hours. His fingers were only shaking slightly as he reached for Daniel’s shoulder, and it was almost possible to convince himself it was a holdover from that one bad batch of cookies. “Hey, man, it’s okay —”

(of course it wasn’t okay. Even Kevin wasn’t morally degraded enough to think any of this was okay)

“I murdered them. All of them.” His hands clenched into fists, and while he didn’t jerk away from Kevin’s touch, the vicious look on his face was almost enough to make him pull back himself. “The leaders . . . if they’d all dropped dead except me — if the — initiates hadn’t ‘ascended’ too, they would’ve panicked. Would’ve — called the police.”

Daniel shook his head, his eyes boring into Kevin’s forehead but his gaze a million miles away. Or maybe just a few, just up the road and across an old railyard to a small white house.

A small white house full of bodies.

Calling the police wasn’t sounding like such a bad idea . . .

“There wasn’t enough.”

Kevin jumped; Daniel had been quiet for so long, them both zoning out for who knew how many minutes, that the sound of his voice was startling, a gunshot in the still close air.

He kept talking, not noticing or ignoring the twitch of the hand on his shoulder — still, for some very stupid reason, on his shoulder. “Whatever was in the drinks was enough to kill . . . half the people. Maybe a little more. Mixing all the drinks together with the Elders’ — it wasn’t enough. The poison. It . . . took longer. It took forever.”

Daniel blinked, something like clarity returning to his eyes for a second. He smiled, and it wasn’t the creepy neck-cracking smile that was familiar and, oddly, almost comforting by this point, but a smile that trembled along its edges, a smile shrouded in darkness and shaking from the effort not to collapse into a scream.

Once, Kevin had an ex-girlfriend who said she couldn’t stand to look at him. “Your smile is haunted,” she’d said, standing in the hallway of their apartment — back when he could still afford an apartment. Back when it was still smart to sell out of an apartment. “You have the ghosts of the people you’ve ruined in your eyes.”

He was pretty sure that was complete bullshit, but if any smile had ever been haunted it was this one.

“I had to keep them from screaming,” he said, his voice still soft and breathy and his smile still more than a little unhinged. He let his neck fall to the other side with a sickening crack. “What else could I do?”

Dirty Kevin wasn’t aware of opening his mouth, of taking a deep breath. Of yelling and yelling like his lungs were about to burst.

He wasn’t aware of much of anything except a pair of bright, bright eyes and a poisonous smile.

Then, of nothing at all.

The first thing that came back to Kevin was the smell of cookies.

Then, a furious beeping.

“For fuck’s sake, don’t just stand there! You’re the, like, adult!”

“I’ve never seen one of these in my life!”

That was when he smelled smoke and bolted upright. “Whasgoinon?”

Sasha glanced over, crossing her arms over her chest. “Finally. You’re awake.”

“The trailer’s on fire,” Tabii added helpfully, standing on her tiptoes to see Kevin’s bed from the kitchen; it was really all one big ugly room with a toilet the size of a shoebox, but there were two Flower Scouts and and lot of smoke blocking her view, not to mention . . .

“Dan?”

Daniel coughed, covering his mouth with his arm and stepping away from the oven. “First deal with the beeping.”

Erin tossed her hair, revealing for a split second her one orange eye. “Or, like, the fire.”

Kevin stumbled out of bed, steadying himself against the wall, and hurried over to the kitchen. The damage was minimal, just some very on-fire cookies, and he tried not to think about how much money was smoking up his trailer. “Open the windows,” he said, taking the flaming tray from Tabii, nearly dropping it because he wasn’t wearing oven mitts, and finally letting it crash into the overfilled sink and running the faucet. “None of you know how to turn the alarm off, do you?”

Erin and Tabii shook their heads, while Daniel scoffed and looked away and Sasha snapped, “What do you think?”

Neither did he. “Google it,” he ordered, searching his pants pockets for his phone before realizing someone had put him in pajamas. Another terrible thing to deal with later. Finding it on his bedside table, he considered Daniel for a moment before tossing it to Erin. After an embarrassingly long time of her valley-girl-style coaching, he managed to shut the fucking thing off and collapsed into his armchair, nearly landing on Barbra. As she rubbed her face on his legs and then jumped back up into his lap, he ran a hand over his face, exhausted but far from sleepy, and turned toward his very odd guests. “What are any of you doing here?”

“You’ve been asleep for two days,” Erin said, handing him his phone.

“We told Miss Priss we’re doing extended community service! We even went shopping and everything!” Tabii added.

“Oh, yeah.” Sasha tugged a very familiar piece of plastic from a bag around her wrist and flicked it toward him. “This thing is, like, way out of money.”

Kevin rolled his eyes. If he’d been awake he could’ve told them he hadn’t used a credit card in months. “I’ll pay you back.”

“Nuh-uh, Tabii found some cash in your mattress.” She wrinkled her nose and gave him the most witheringly judgemental stare he’d ever received from a twelve-year-old. “You know, with everything else you’ve got under there.”

“Hey, that shit’s private! And nobody asked you to go snooping in my stuff!” He heard a soft dismissive noise from the other side of the room and pointedly ignored it, keeping his attention on the girls. “You’re too young to know what those are, anyway.”

Tabii brightened. “I’m not! My sister told me --”

“Your sister’s wrong about everything, Tabii,” Erin interrupted.

“Yeah, and what’s with magazines, anyway? I mean, you know the internet exists, right? You’re not, like, that old.”

He opened his mouth to answer that, but his brain caught back up with him. “We’re not having this conversation. Give me back my money!” (So he was a little old-fashioned. There were worse things to be.)

Sasha returned his battered money clip -- which was considerably thinner than he remembered seeing it last -- and the girls sat down around his kitchen table; even if they hadn’t eyed Kevin’s ratty fur-covered couch like it was made of rancid cheese, Daniel had flopped onto it before they could’ve taken a seat anyway. (At least some things didn’t change.) “Anywayyyyy, he keeps trying to make us go --” she jerked her head in Daniel’s direction, hair whipping like a flag, “-- but he won’t leave the house so like, what was he gonna do when you ran out of food?”

“Besides, we thought he might try to kill you like he did all those weird church people!” Tabii said, seemingly completely oblivious to the warning looks the other girls were giving her, or how the air chilled a few degrees as she spoke.

There was a long, tense moment of silence. “Right,” Sasha finally said. “Anyway, we’re gonna, like, go. Since you’re awake now and stuff.” She crossed the room and plucked the money clip from his hand, taking a $20 bill. “For the Uber.”

“We also totally messed around with your phone just totally because we’re bored,” Erin added, leaning over the arm of the chair to prod at his screen. “So like, for totally no reason the police are on speed-dial now? Just like, y’know, because.”

“Have a good night!” Tabii continued to not quite grasp the trailer’s atmosphere, and something appallingly close to affection squeezed his chest. She leaned in close, cupping her hand around her mouth and his ear. “Be careful, Mr. Kevin. My sister says even if you’re gay you can like still get pregnant --”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he cut her off too-loudly from trying not to laugh, putting his hand over her face and shoving her away. “Get back home before you get in trouble.” He watched them leave with exaggerated interest and immediately dropped his head in one hand, telling himself it wasn’t stupid for his face to feel warm because his trailer had very recently been on fire.

It was quiet for a few moments, and Kevin hoped for a second that Daniel would shut up long enough to let him think for a minute or two. He just . . . needed to wrap his mind around everything. The last thing he remembered was Daniel confessing to mass fucking homicide, then apparently he’d been alone with the Flower Scouts for a few days and why had he been hanging around here for a few days? He should be miles away, or in jail, or hell maybe dead in a ditch if this cult was as insane as it’d always seemed, so what in the flying fuck --

There was a quiet snort. “Sweetheart?”

Kevin sighed.

Goddamnit.

He rolled his eyes, lifting his head. “It’s been a weird week,” he began. “Could you just --”

For the first time, he really got a good look at Daniel.

The kid was a fucking mess.

Not by Kevin’s standards, to be sure. His hair was still impeccably styled -- using what kind of product, Kevin had no idea -- and his jeans were as gleamingly white and unwrinkled as ever. But he must’ve borrowed clothes, because the black 2003 Warped Tour T-shirt had definitely come from the back of Kevin’s closet, and so had the cream cardigan he’d shrugged on over it (a gift from his grandmother. Of course Daniel had been drawn to it), and everything was dusted with a thin layer of white cat fur.

Not that his wardrobe was the most startling thing about his appearance.

Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “What are you looking at?”

Kevin’s lips twitched, and he quickly covered his mouth with one hand, glancing over at Barbra before his eyes were inevitably drawn back to Daniel. “Nothing.”

He dragged the wrist of the cardigan across his cheek, like he could wipe away the too-dark stubble. “Stop staring. I hate it, okay? Stop looking at it.”

Kevin nodded slowly, still trying not to laugh. “No, man, it’s . . . really something.” Daniel huffed angrily and glared at the wall while Kevin tried to get ahold of himself, the silence settling into something surprisingly comfortable, like this was just another inexplicable visit. When he thought he could speak again, he took a deep breath and said, “So. The, uh. Hair.”

Daniel didn’t say anything, just eyed him suspiciously.

“Couldn’t talk the girls into buying you some bleach, huh?”

He ran a hand self-consciously through his hair, tugging at where the light brown roots suddenly blazed into platinum blonde. “They don’t like the color,” he muttered.

Kevin did laugh then, shaking his head and enjoying the way a blush flared across Daniel’s cheeks and ears. “Run a tight ship, don’t they?” he said, glancing around the trailer and noticing for the first time how nice it was. Not neater, exactly -- he was actually quite good at keeping things tidy; it was one of the only ways to make a shithole look less like a shithole -- but there were little homey touches here and there: a beer bottle rescued from the garbage and repurposed as a vase, little sprigs of wildflowers scattered throughout the place like tiny religious offerings. “Surprised they didn’t make you shave.”

If possible, Daniel wound even tighter. “You’re out of razors,” he said sullenly. “And in this ridiculous town, children can’t buy them.”

“Makes me wonder why you’re still in this ridiculous town.”

And like that, the familiar atmosphere snapped. Daniel sat up straighter, his entire body tensing like he might bolt. Kevin closed his fingers around the phone in his pocket, taking comfort in the reminder that he had the police on speed-dial.

Well, they were here. Might as well get this over with before he was murdered in his sleep. “Why are you here, anyway? You could be in fucking Cabo right now or something.”

Daniel fidgeted, his gaze on his knees. “There’s nowhere for me to go,” he admitted after a moment. “I can hardly return h -- to the Circle, even if I wanted to.” His face twisted in a bitter mixture of distaste and grief, and Kevin remembered with a start that this was kind of . . . really traumatizing. He’d never done the whole religion thing, but he knew what it was like to have a home suddenly stop being home.

Of course, he didn’t know what it was like to be wanted for mass murder. “But they know where you are, right? You’ve gotta be, like, Xemüg’s Most Wanted now.” Daniel stared at him blankly, and the exhausting task of getting him caught up on something like twenty-five years of pop culture settled over Kevin like a blanket. “Aren’t they gonna come find you? Maybe give you a nice cold glass of poison?”

“What was I supposed to do?” he demanded, putting his hands on his knees and leaning forward, like he was considering getting up.

Kevin shrugged, trying to remain as casual as possible. “Off the top of my head . . . drive the twenty or so miles to the nearest airport, get a one-way ticket to the border, escape into Mexico, dye your hair, and start a low-profile-but-reasonably-lucrative business doing literally anything besides killing kids.”

The look on Daniel’s face was like he’d accidentally swallowed a frog.

“None of that occurred to you, huh?”

He dropped his head in one hand with a groan. “Nothing makes sense anymore.”

“Yeah, not like space toxins and alien wars and all that other totally reasonable cult shit.”

“It had rules!” he snapped, and Kevin flinched. Surprise flickered across Daniel’s face, and for the briefest second something like guilt. Then he settled back against the couch, his expression once again hovering between annoyed and disdainful. “Not like you would get it. You’ve never cared about rules.”

Kevin considered correcting him -- he did have rules, thankyouverymuch, and he stuck by them. The Flower Scouts had never had so much as a crumb of their own supply, had they? -- but decided it wasn’t worth the argument. Not when he was still wrapping his head around the fact that he’d apparently been harboring a felon for the past two days, quite literally unconsciously. “So what’re you gonna do now?” he finally asked, breaking the silence. “That whole Cabo thing is probably out, since I assume your face is all over the news by now. Cops been by yet?” Someone had to have noticed him hanging around; this park was half filled with gossipy old ladies, and Daniel didn’t exactly blend in as much as blindingly draw attention.

Daniel shook his head, looking cowed. Like maybe he’d finally realized what a fucking bad situation he was in.

Good.

Kevin should just call the cops. If Daniel had run for it, if he tried to make a run for it now, he would’ve been happy to protest innocence and give the kid a fighting chance. But if he was too goddamn stupid to even run . . . Christ, he was like a bunny staring down headlights. No survival skills at all.

A bunny with a knife in its teeth.

Kevin ran a hand through his hair, puffing out his cheeks and exhaling loudly. Leaving his phone on the arm of the couch, he wandered over to the kitchen, shuffling through his cabinets to see what he had left in the way of cookie supplies.

(The shelves were filled with food he was pretty sure had never entered his house before: fancy fruits and spices and quinoa, whatever that was. He wasn’t sure whether to smile or wince, looking around at his now very-expensively-stocked kitchen. He was never letting those girls near his cash again, comatose or not.)

“You know anything about cooking?” He cut himself off with a dismissive snort. “Nah, no way I’m letting you anywhere near food. Last thing I need is the whole town dropping dead.” Ignoring the wide-eyed stare he could feel boring into his back, he crouched down in front of the sink, opening a drawer and tugging out a box. “You can’t leave here until we do something about your . . . whole . . . situation,” he continued, waving one hand in Daniel’s general direction. “But I’ve been meaning to start an indoor garden. Friend set me up with a mushroom kit, and --” he shook the box at Daniel for emphasis, “now it’s your project.”

“And what makes you think I want to help you with this . . . business?” Kevin jumped; he hadn’t noticed Daniel’s approach until he was practically hovering over him. Which just brought to mind all sorts of murdery mental images.

Still, he wasn’t going to let himself be bothered. Bunny with a knife, he reminded himself, putting his hands on his knees and pushing himself to his feet. “Nice sneer. Very Snape,” he said, then sighed at Daniel’s confused frown. “Fine, I’ll go to the library, catch you up on the last couple centuries. Anyway, you’ll do it because one,” he held up one finger in Daniel’s face, “you don’t want me to rat you out to the police and I am seriously sticking my neck out for you, so don’t be an ungrateful prick. And two, because you’re not gonna be able to leave this tin can for at least a couple months while shit settles down, and you will be bored as shit.” He shoved the kit into Daniel’s hands, stepping away to . . . well, to do nothing, but it was a good line to walk away on.

And if he also needed a little bit of space between himself and the reformed cultist killing machine, that was only common sense.

“Why are you doing this?” Kevin could count on one hand the number of times Daniel’s voice had approached anything near vulnerable, and something about the way he spoke, through gritted teeth like he was trying to bite back the question but the words clawed out of him anyway, was more pathetic than any frustration or uncertainty or even panic.

Because I’m a sucker for bunnies. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Dan,” he said instead. “I could use some help running my bountiful drug empire, and you could use a place to lie low.” He half turned back, unable to resist a slight smirk. “Simple as that.”

“Nothing about this is simple,” Daniel muttered. He was clutching the mushroom kit to his chest, and spoke down at it.

“Yeah,” Kevin agreed, returning to his chair and plopping down into it. He’d received a text from Sasha, the only one who had a phone and who’d taken the initiative to add herself to his contacts within five minutes of meeting him: ‘still alive?’ “Welcome to Earth, spaceman.”

Daniel’s head snapped up, his mouth opening to make an angry retort, but after a second he closed it, his expression softening almost imperceptibly. He turned and set the mushroom kit next to the sink and turned on the faucet, focusing his attention on the burned cookie tray.

Kevin watched him for a minute, trying to figure out if the slight upturn of his lips was a trick of the light. Finally giving up, he opened up Sasha’s message and tapped out a quick reply:

‘So far.’

#campcamp #camp camp roosterteeth #kevdan #cc daniel #cc dirty kevin #cc kevin #consistent writing style? i don't know her #daniel is way too woobified here #i became what i said i never would #but listen #it's hard to make him likable #and he's just so dumb and pathetic

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darkcloud-kcalifornia · 7 years

Text

Alright, season finale time for My Little Pony. I’ve been trying to avoid spoilers for this one. No idea what’s going to happen. So, let’s see what goes down in “Shadow Play”

* We open on the book that got the ominous sting at the end of the last episode. So yeah, I guess we were in the finale then.

* Huh, a different set of Elements being talked about here. OK, we’ve got Rockhoof as Strength, Flash Magnus as Bravery, Meadowbrook as Healing, Mist Mane as Beauty, Somnambula as Hope, and who I’m guessing is Star Swirl the Bearded as Sorcery. [note to self: look up actual names]

* And apparently they had been gathered together by somepony else to embody their ideals, like the Mane 6 were. Was this Celestia, or somepony else?

* Ooh, the gatherer was a unicorn stallion, but the ancient Elements came to believe he was just wanting to use their power for himself and so they cast him out.

* Then he became Shadow Pony, and the Pillars stood as one against him. They beat him but had to make some kind of sacrifice to do so, and created a seed to carry hope to the future. I wonder, was that seed the origin of the Tree of Harmony? I’m also seeing the emergence of the sun and moon on the sides of where I have it paused right now, so maybe it’s the origins of Celestia and Luna?

* Incidentally, I am loving this lore dump.

* Oh good, Sunburst was smart enough to make a report on this directly to the Alicorn Sisters and the Mane 6. I guess he knows who has to deal with all the destiny crap around here.

* Huh, apparently Celestia never knew what happened to Starswirl, but these were apparently his last words before vanishing.

* OK, so Celestia and Luna were around back then, but young and had only ever met Starswirl.

* Reluctant nerd hoofbump. Also, I like how Celestia doesn’t know much Old Ponish anymore due to disuse. It’s a nice nod to what happens when you don’t use something. I can’t imagine how bad it would be after 1000 years. I’m a bit surprised Luna isn’t more familiar with it though, given how she spent most of the time sealed away. Unless she was fully cognizant of the passage of time during those 1000 years, which is… fairly nightmareish.

* So, more to Old Ponish than she thought, actual other languages being used, or Starswirl just had horrible hornwriting. You decide!

* Ah, sloppy writing. Only readable by somepony who is ever worse at that kind of thing. Anyway, the last stand was at the Temple of Ponhenge at the base of Mt. Foal. …OK, I know they try and fit in horse puns, but “Ponhenge”? Surely they could have done better than that.

* Those ruins look nice and ruiny. Also not much like Stonehenge, which again makes me wonder why they referenced that.

* Be careful what you wish for Twilight. Also, be careful where you place ancient magical tomes.

* Ooooh, ancient holographic display of the final battle. So, sealed away, and the objects each pony carried are somehow related. Well, they’ve got the book, and they know where the mask is at least, so that just leaves the flower, the blindfold, the shield, and the shovel. Gonna be honest, might be hard finding a flower after 1000 years.

* Never underestimate Twilight’s ability to be a nerd.

* Right, so banished to Limbo, but they had to take him there themselves and so got stuck there with him. …Who’s gonna be the idiot to try and get them out and release the Pony of Shadows in the process?

* Twilight! Twilight shall be that idiot! Come over here so I can slap you!

* RD does not like demonstrative models.

* Boo! The Map stepping in to help the search is cheating! Although this might be seen as the Tree of Harmony trying to get its parents back. Kinda touching if you think of it like that.

* Skeptical archeologist is skeptical. Somepony should tell her she’s in a fantasy series.

* Had no idea AJ was that strong. Oh well, Shovel Get!

* Rarity’s problem to overcome is crappy gardening? I can’t say I think much of Mist Mane’s descendant if it never occurred to her to, you know, perform upkeep. Or hire others to do it. Heck, just apply for a government grant if money’s the problem, that place has got to be a historical site, and once you attract tourists you can get money for, you know, upkeep. Flower Get.

* Actually Flash Magnus’ shield being in the Dragon Lands makes quite a bit of sense. It was made to combat dragons after all. Makes sense that either it would accidentally get left behind after an expedition, or stolen by the dragons to keep it from being used.

* Also, neat to see a Spike/RD teamup, even if it’s likely gonna last a minute or two of screentime.

* Ugh, seriously, Garble has it? Somepony just kick that idiot in the face so this can be over with.

* Garble is stupidest dragon. Seriously, he just got outwitted by Rainbow Dash. Well regardless, Shield Get.

* Fluttershy… just help to move the zap bee hive, and didn’t even need to do that to get the mask. She just felt like it. But then arguably her trial was a few episodes ago anyway. Mask Get.

* Pinkie’s trail… was very Pinkie. And that ooze was a lot less dangerous then they made it out to be. Um, Blindfold get?

* How is Starlight the voice of reason with regards to the risk involved in this plan?

* Why didn’t Pinkie wash that thing before bringing it >P

* Oh, gee, Starswirl is horrified that somepony broke the seal what are the odds?

* Way to summon the ancient evil, Twilight.

And there’s the end of episode 1. Time for a stretch and snack I think. Let’s all go to the lobby, let’s all go to the lobby…

* Yeah, having a backup plan in case the ancient evil escaped as well would have been a great idea, Twilight. You still have that slap coming.

* Twilight and Starlight are able to hold the PoS back with a double tech… but can’t stop him from escaping at the speed of dark. Nice going, Twilight.

* On one hoof, having the person you’ve revered all your life give you the dirtiest look for your incompetence must suck. On the other, she really has this coming.

* Heh, Pinkie pointing out all of the other threats they’ve had to save Equestria from is a good one. And I like how Magnus is totally down for teaming up with the modern heroes to beat PoS into submission. But Starswirl is going to be an absolute grumpy gus about this.

* Yay, source of Tree of Harmony, and the Elements, confirmed!

* And now Starswirl is planning on sacrificing the Elements to seal PoS again. Despite the cost to Equestria. Yeah, getting Outer Senshi vibes from this guy. Which is a shame, because all of the other Pillars seem to be perfectly nice and affable ponies willing to work together.

* And Twilight’s search for a different solution… just has keeping the Pillars around while still sacrificing the Elements. And yeah, the Pillars made the elements, but did so over a long incubation period. Try following Starlight’s advice and look for a non-banishment solution, stupid.

* Kinda funny how the heroes are having trouble tracking PoS down because Equestria is a better place, so all of the old dens of darkness are just fine these days.

* Starswirl needs to get his head outta his flank.

* I think some offense was taken.

* Yeah, the narrative is leaning pretty hard against Starswirl and towards Starlight here. Especially with the whole “Once a villain, always a villain” bit.

* Thank you, Starlight, for actually asking what happened all those years ago.

* Huh, Sirens confirmed as series canon. Odd. Mind you I don’t know that much about them as I’ve never watched the movies, but some things are unavoidable knowledge if you hang out online in the fanbase.

* The PoS’s name was Stygian? Man, it’s like his parents wanted him to go supervillain.

* So Stygian gathered them together to fight evil, but got jealous. At one point he stole their artifacts to work some spell or another, but was discovered before actually finishing and was cast out. And when he came back he did so as Dark Death Evil Man. But as Starlight helps to point out, they don’t know what exactly he had been trying to accomplish with his spell, though their guess is stealing their power.

* Yeah, Starlight has had enough of Starswirl’s crap.

* Now I’m wondering who build the temple to the Shadows, as apparently it already existed before Stygian came upon it. Also, never listen to the mythos spoken from the depths of the Earth, dude.

* Oh look, there’s more to the story than meets the eye, who could have guessed.

* Well, Twilight’s been holding the idiot ball all finale thus far, but at least she noticed the pony of Stygian within the Pony of Shadows. Not sure diving in was the right idea though.

* OK, Stygian’s side comes out, he wanted to make copies of their artifacts in the hope it would make him a Pillar and he could join the battles. That’s still something you really need to talk about before you go stealing stuff.

* Rainbow Friendship Lasso Beam go!

* So The Shadows are banished, but Stygian remains. Happy end!

* Aw, Starswirl commenting on how tall Celestia got is cute! And Luna asking not to have to turn in the essays they were supposed to 1000 years ago is just funny.

* Can’t blame the Pillars for wanting to see what’s changed over the course of a millennia. Of course there’s the problem of nopony’s gonna believe who they are.

And that’s the end of the season. It was pretty good all things considered. Although this ending does make one question how things are going to work out with the non-reformed villains. OK, Sombra isn’t likely to be a problem, but he is still awkward in that they killed him all kinds of dead. But the new characters introduced seem decent enough now that we actually get to see them in something other than tales. And I’m still curious about who built the shrine to the Shadows. Evil cultist ponies!

Also, I may not care much about shipping debates and all that, but I can definitely see Rainbow Dash/Flash Magnus being a thing. At the very least they’re certainly chummy with each other.

#tv talk #episode reactions #my little pony friendship is magic #MLP:FiM #mlp s7 e 25 #mlp s7 e26 #shadow play

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the-wonderful-jinx · 7 years

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Jinx Listens And Reacts to TBTP 3x02 :The Musica Mundana”

As always my dudes, there be spoilers, caps locks, unintelligible screaming, and curses towards TMiles. You have been warned.

Now lets get this show on the road!

“Alex brushes up on her mathematics...”

I can safely bet money that Alex Reagan is better at math than me....

“... while getting closer to the inner workings of the mysterious Thomas Warren and Daiva Corporation.”

Alex, sweetheart, darling, light of my life, the last time you went to a meeting with Warren you and Strand nearly got shot if it wasn’t for Coralee rescuing your stupid butts

Oh fuck here we go with the TANIS-esque dialogue, I can feel it in my bones please god release me

WAIT THEY ACTUALLY MET UP?

l o r d

“Alex I’m not some descendant of an ancient line of Templars or Illuminati...”

yeah keep telling yourself that friendo

also, Strand using her first name is giving me life

Wait, Sumon left another message?

wtf are you doing in Instanbul?

idk and idc

ARE WE ACTUALLY GETTING TO THE POINT DIALOGUE AND DIRECTIONS?

Yes go to a foreign country as per the instruction of a Wild Card Player in your podcast, im sure it’ll turn out fine...

Oh hello new Professor-figure that we can ship Alex with :)

Fuck it’s math

IM AN ENGLISH MAJOR GUYS I SUCK AT MATH D:

literally when math is around my mind shuts off

TITLE DROP

I guess you can say this math-talk is all Greek to me

*audience groaning*

NO DONT PLAY THE MUSICA MUNDANA DONT SWEET GOD HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING?!?!

Gotta love those in group schisms that ruin the vibes :P

OH MY GOD ANOTHER MEUNDIES AD

“...100% satisfaction guaranteed”

....

dont make dirty joke out of this dont make a dirty joke out of this dont-

I mean I wouldn’t use Nic as a soundboard but idk you do you honey

Say it with me know yall

SHUT THE FUCK UP TERRY

“Nic was on the road doing something else”

TANIS

“I had a friend looking into Daeva Corp.”

You mean MK

Who the fuck is Shannon Scarletti?

Is this another of Coralee’s alias? Or is this just another rando person?

Wait why the fuck is Howard still getting payment?

Who the hell is getting the money?

Is Strand getting Howard’s money somehow?

Alex please dont go exploring into strange office areas by yourself sweet god are you picking up Nic’s bad habits

Oh the building isn’t abandoned....

“Hurry up before they see you”

excuse you Miss Random Person but who is “they”? Is this “they” Daeva Corp. security? The shadowy government with guns? Assassins with guns?

Oh this is Shannon Scarletti. Nice to meet you.

“She’s tall...”

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST ALEX WE GET IT YOU LOVE TALL PEOPLE SHEESH WOMAN

“...with reddish grey wispy hair”

so.... Alex has a thing for redheads?

Okay I’ll bite

“she was striking, her eyes piercing”

Alex calm your thirst plz

Oh a painter. Cool.

SHANNON HAS DOGS. BLESS.

“Would you like some tea?”

ALEX DONT DRINK THE TEA

OH MY GOD ALEX DID YOU LEARN NOTHING FROM NIC?!

“How’s Richard doing?”

why you asking ma’am?

“He’s pretty good”

.....

I mean I wouldn’t say that Alex but okay

“I can see it in your eyes”

you can see WHAT you can see WHAT in her eyes Miss Scarletti?

“He’s troubled”

oh....

dont mind me, just got baited there a moment....

:’)

“I was Howard Strand’s Watcher”

*pnws boom*

Tea leaves? Well now I have heard everything

“Oh are you searching for something?”

STRAND’S DICK

A GOOD NIGHT’S REST

A FUCKING DOG

why yes Sacrletti Alex is looking for something didnt think one would need tea leaves for that but whatever you do you

“Her face turned white and she ushered me out of her house”

tbh i would've done that earlier considering alex is such a freakin’ danger magnet but I’d rather have Alex than Nic

Hello Random Author Guy that will only be here for this one bit and who’s name I’m going to forget

jesus math cultist nerds are fucking vicious

and i thought history kids were weird

“Pythagoras murdered someone over math?”

men have murdered people for lesser reasons, Alex....

PNWS BOOM

“Its the symbol of Silon’s new school”

and would this symbol happen to be an upside down face with two concentric circles....?

called it

End Notes: I thought this was interesting. The math stuff went over my head, but that’s just because I’m dumb. I can tell some ACTUAL research was done, not just haphazardly tossed in. Paul Bae looks like he’s reigning in Terry Miles. Bless that man’s soul....

#the black tapes podcast #tbtp #tbtp fandom #pnws #jinx listens to tbtp #tbtp spoilers #spoilers

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steve0discusses · 5 years

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Yugioh S2 Ep 46 Part 1: Young Marik Goes to a Craft Fair/Immediately Murders His Own Dad

Ah Yugioh, last episode got pretty weird, and this one, I’m pleased to say, is that much weirder.

We start with Mokuba, who either has a PHD in languages studies, or is just completely full of BS. And, when it comes to the Kaibas, we’ll just never know. It could go either way and I’d absolutely buy it.

Of course, none of this matters since Kaiba is cursed, in case you forgot. His curse is a lot easier than everyone else’s because all he does is vibe with a ancient relic he refuses to think is real and then hallucinate his dead wife he refuses to talk about.

I am still kind of reeling over the fact that Seto’s Previous-Life’s Dead Wife is Blue Eyes is canon. I’m sure they thought turning this card into a person would be simple and fun. It’s still fun, for me, for that room of writers that now has to untangle this mess they just created? Yeah good freakin luck with that.

Also, I forgot something last episode.

Much better. Seto’s catching up, slowly but surely, to Marik.

(read more under the cut)

And I mean...Seto is just low-key unaware that he’s vaguely obsessed with his Great^nth Grandma, right? Like that’s the canon? Nice. I mean there’s a 5000 year difference and she is like a card, so...legally it’s fine, whatever, it’s not like they can ever hook up.

But like...didn’t Seto tear a Blue Eyes completely in half in the first episode? That’s kind of messed up now! Granted, back in Episode 1 the writers probably didn’t know that 1 season later they’d all be sitting around a table and going like “so...what if they were married???”

Like...how weird is it now that Grandpa still has that torn up Blue Eyes?

(I say as if this is a big deal on a show where the canon flagship relationship of Yugi and Tea involves Yugi who is 3 people and Tea who is, as we find out at the end of this episode, also 3 people. Mind you, 2 of those people is just 2 Bakuras, but it’s still an awkward 5-way. Who would they even be kissing if they were kissing? ((JK we all know it would just be Bakura and Bakura)) )

Does Grandpa and Arthur even realize how freakin weird it is that their token of eternal friendship/marriage is literally the dead waifu of that random rich guy over there? That Arthur was like “remember my not-romantic love always, by wifing with this wife who is also my wife. Goodbyyyyyye.”

Was Episode 1 just Kaiba walking in on a three way with his predestined card-ex? Was that how he got so freakin pissed? It actually would make more sense than what actually happened. And like I’m pretty sure that particular Blue Eyes chose Grandpa over Seto so, what even is that? Is that like a divorce or something?

Also, and this is the most important thing about this entire situation, did Pegasus really try like a billion times to resurrect his dead wife unsuccessfully (I hope) but TOTALLY resurrected Kaiba’s dead wife in the process? Like, just by accident he resurrected not just any dead wife’s soul into a playing card but his sworn enemy that Pegasus super tried to murder and destroy that one time? Like damn, that’s some good irony right there.

...it’s a lot to process in a show where like 4 people are also body swapping at the same time.

Anyway, back to this episode, Seto can also read this Ra card. But, I assume he cannot marry it because he and three of the four sides of his Blue Eyes Wife have just changed their status from “It’s complicated” to “It’s still complicated” (the fourth version hanging out with Solomon Muto is still card divorced and living her best life)

Faced with definitive proof that all this is absolutely real, Kaiba never actually graduates from the Denial step to any of the other steps of acceptance.

Neither would I. Neither would I.

Never forget, that him actually accepting any of this makes him a widow to a freakin paper freakin card.

I will say, that my prediction that Kaiba’s relationships, if he ever got into one, wouldn’t last more than 2 minutes apiece came true in the weirdest way possible.

I’m glad we got this lore bomb that will disappear into the Yugioh’s forgotten plot-threads graveyard faster than you can say “and then Bakura put a piece of his soul into the Millennium Puzzle.”

Speaking of,

And so enters our exposition, who decided to actually leave her bedroom and see what else is on this blimp. Took her long enough. If she had come out, I dunno, before Joey dueled, then her brother, Odion would have never been struck by lightning since she could’ve been like “lol guy’s, that’s not Marik” but wtv. Nice to see you, Ishizu. You are late, as usual.

Also, the art team left us a breathtaking still life.

Meanwhile, holed up in this room staring at Mai Valentine for the last 30 minutes on this little aqua cube, Serenity has decided she is done with this BS they keep calling a card game. I guess her vow to be brave and suck it up lasted all of half an hour.

And it was during this complete 12yo meltdown that Ishizu was like “oh, that reminds me, I also have a brother who’s having a complete meltdown” As if this would somehow help Serenity feel any better about being trapped on a blimp with them.

So, Ishizu takes a very long sip of water and starts her very long story about When Marik Truly Went Evil But This Time The Flashback’s For Reals Last Time He Was Kind of Evil But This Time We’re For Serious Telling You Exactly The Moment He Went Cray.

Please admire the nonsense stairs and columns supporting nothing in this image. Nice.

Now before, I knew they lived underground but I kinda figured they left occasionally to get snacks and pick up babies from the side of the road. Apparently it’s only certain people who can do that, so not only has this kid been living underground but he has never seen sunlight.

But here’s my question um--what happened to all the other cultists? Like we’re assuming that we have 5000 years of an underground situation, and if their growth happens geometrically since human beings tend to have multiple children, then there should be like thousands of people down here. Like SO MANY people. Was there some sort of plague? Did all the cultists just keep killing each other as each one went completely mad down here? Like, what’s the story?

I have made so many jokes about Marik being a crafty bastard who knits hats but I kid you not he literally went to the flea market. He has only one hour in the real world and all he wants is to see the Handmade Industry.

Again, Marik would be the hero in any YA dystopian novel, guys. Any of them. Like I’m pretty sure I read three separate books by three separate people in the late 2000′s about underground mole people cults and Marik would have been the hero in every single one of them. Leave it to Yugioh.

Odion decided to stay behind as a lookout rather than go outside in the stinky sunlight, meaning that Marik got to feel a sunburn for the very first time ever as he looked directly into it’s surface.

So I can see the allusion that they wanted to make. That without light you can never see shadow--and that because he literally stepped out into the light, his shadow was finally able to fully manifest itself for the first time.

But...Marik was locked underground, how long could he have realistically lasted before losing his mind just like his Father already has?

And then Marik finds the one relic that truly drives him mad, a discarded magazine. But not that type of magazine. I’m actually not quite sure what type of magazine this would be, TBH. it’s got some REALLY good anime soda on the back, and then pets, and then autos? I don’t know.

This motorcycle had spooky music and everything. Truly the embodiment of evil, a mid-30′s gentleman driving to work with a sensible helmet.

He also saw a TV and confused the hell out of this vase salesman.

And then, no weird episode is truly weird enough without an abrupt visit from Shadi.

So they rush back home to the very obvious cellar door in the middle of the desert that no one except for this cult has ever found.

But, unfortunately, these kids are really, really dumb and so because Shadi told them to go the hell back home, Shadi set in motion the tools needed to send Marik completely off the deep end.

So Shadi is just really really bad at his job or he really wants to watch it burn, I’m thinking probably both.

We get a voice-over from Ishizu that Marik’s father was using the rod on Odion but we don’t actually see much. I think a bunch of this probably got edited out because obviously, abuse is something you can’t really show on kid’s daytime TV, although...they kinda did anyway.

OH.

I mean, he is possessed so like he would act real different but there was absolutely no fighting back on Marik’s part to kill his own Dad. He just straight up went for it. Complete 180 on this character in a matter of time it takes to look at a picture of a motorcycle.

And so, Evil Marik decides it’s time to kill Odion, much like he’s been trying to do in our current timeline, but seeing his older brother snaps Marik out of it, which would have been just real confusing for him. I mean Yugi’s snapped out of his Pharaoh blackouts in strange positions, sure, but this one in particular is like “wow I just killed my Dad.” If he even knows.

Bro was saying he actually didn’t know at this point. Of course my Bro has a lot of spicy Yugioh headcanons and he’s becoming less and less reliable the more we watch. (Bros editorial note: how does one remember what actually happens in this show?)

Why were you even here Shadi!? Just to be judgy and then peace out? Like back in Season Zero it felt like Shadi had a...job. Here he’s just like...watching the show with me. He’s just the most useless millennium item, I swear.

After this sad tale, at least we have Joey to remind us that Marik’s killed 100+ people since then.

So yeah, Marik killed his Dad because he saw a Motorcycle.

Literally killed his Dad because he saw a motorcycle and it awoke a desire in him to leave the nest, and then Odion got beat up because Ishizu was too dumb to ever notice that they had an alarm on the freakin front hole in the ground.

A Motorcycle.

And we can pretty much assume that his Dad’s been threatening to kick out Odion basically forever to get Marik to stay put, right? That this has definately happened before but this time...there was a motorcycle.

Truly evil, motorcycles.

In this show where one guy was literally dueling Yugi while tying him to a bandsaw--those motorcycles though. Pure satan.

Bro just asked me that if Pharaoh’s tomb had free wifi, Would people live there on purpose and I’m just going to leave that there.

Anyway, here’s a link to read these in order from S1 Ep1

#yugioh #yugioh recap #photo recap #s2 ep46 #marik isthar #ishizu isthar #tw abuse #yugi muto #joey wheeler #tristan taylor #seto kaiba #rip seto kaiba's very short and very serious relationship with a paper card #mokuba kaiba #mokuba #serenity wheeler #tea gardner

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