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tigergendermoved · 5 months

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I don't like DDLC'S MC very much on a very petty level but I still wish there was more fic or meta speculation about him. I'm not interested in him as a character, though, because he's barely a character. Literally by the game's standards, he has no inherent "character file." He is the SCRIPT, if anything. All of his thoughts and actions occur within the little text bubble at the bottom of the screen, and so do the characters'. He barely appears in CGs, has no body sprite, and it is through his observations and his thoughts and his call to make choices that the game progresses.

I think that specific trait of MC is fascinating, especially given how deep reaching Monika's manipulation is. During Act 1 he is active, he is talkative, he has a definitive (and yet inconsistent, based on which girl(s) you're speaking to) personality. He has thoughts about just about everything going on. And yet in Act 2 he is reduced to dust. He stops having any kind of commentary and he almost never remarks upon the horrible occurrences around him unless prompted or unless it is something that could plausibly happen in the realm of reality, like Yuri abandoning him for 10 minutes and Natsuki collapsing on him. But even then he's still significantly muted. Yuri and Natsuki have a horrible fight and the only kind of response he tries to throw out is co-opted by Monika. He witness Yuri declare her love for him and talk about how she would love to pull his skin open and crawl inside of him and the only thing he has to say is "yes" or "no" when she asks if he likes her back. And then he physically cannot move or speak or react because the world is so far gone that Yuri's death has damaged him, the script, so much that all he hears is gibberish coming from her lifeless mouth.

And like... that's neat to me. I like that by the end of Act 2 the script is so off the rails and so far gone from reality that MC can no longer really function as a person, because the script is barely functioning. He stops reacting to anything happening around him and most of the conversations he has are just the girls talking at him. Monika has to literally rewrite the script and force Yuri and Natsuki to say things to further her agenda or keep the scene rolling. MC had a clear and very human response to Sayori's death because it was a plausible but horrible (and not forced) event that could happen naturally. Yuri's death was so jarring and away from the scope of the natural order of his world that MC (and Yuri, by extension) can only sit frozen and broken until Natsuki and Monika show up to force new progress.

Like Monika's effect on the girls has been talked to death and it is an interesting topic but I also think what she unintentionally did to the POV character of the game is also something neat. It really adds to the feeling of the world in DDLC being hollow. The MC is a half-character who can only react in incredibly predictable ways, and when the world stops being predictable, he stops being anything more than a walking camera for Monika to speak into.

#ddlc #this isnt even really a character analysis this is just my vague jumbled thoughts on this guy #ive always found mc interesting even if he irritates me #when i was bored and a middle schooler i used to imagine this self insert of mine in his place #what choices would she make if she knew the ddlc world was a farce? what choices would she make if she didnt?#would she be beholden to the game structure and choices written in the game's script?#could she change anything? how would she feel if she knew the girls in a context where they were her normal friends?#these scenarios were of course some random shit i thought about to make PE less awful #but it made me think of how horrible and strange it would be in mc's position #and subsequently how mc himself kind of never gets the chance to BE in his own position in a way #he is fully beholden to the whims of monika and whatever the girls around him are doing at all times in act 2 #even in act 1 his personality and motivations fluctuates constantly depending on which girl u are talking to #mc is the script and the script is mc. he never had a chance to change anything and neither did you #the only way you can do anything in that world is to be a character a .chr a person. and mc is not a person in any meaningful sense #on the topic of 'hey wouldnt it be fucked up to actually experience ddlc as a Thinking Person'#'to your eternity' (anonymous author) on ao3 specifically chapter 1 of it is a cool fic based on that thought #anyways. i know mc mostly just shuts up because it would be lame if every time yuri's eyes bug out he's like 'jeepers creepers!!!'#but i think his dwindling presence makes him an interesting non-character ❤️#doki doki literature club

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littlewigglers · 6 months

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Do you plan on getting any non millipede friends

I do! I’d love to get some more isopods and raise some beetles from larva again. I’d also LOVE to get back into fish keeping my faves are bettas, shrimps, corydoras and kuhli loaches! Maybe a snake or gecko further down the line? But those are what I know the least about and would be most hesitant to get as I want any creatures I get to have the best care I can give them.

I’d say the only creatures on my never list are spiders, roaches, centipede, anything else that moves overly fast or has a bad bite/is venomous/poisonous. Probably turtles too just due to their life spans.

But millipedes and isopods are what I’m able to keep right now as I’d have to get some new tanks for anything else, as well as all the research I’d need to do to be comfortable keeping them.

Oh also I do have two cats I just don’t post about them here, and I plan to possibly get a third next year but we’ll see :3

#bug babbles #I’m pretty much up to keep anything once #but I’m also very aware of myself and I get excited about new things and then often get board about 4 months later #which is when I was fine getting isopods and millipedes as I thought ‘we’ll bugs only live like a year right #so even if I lost interest I’d only need to care for them a few months more I know now that some millipedes can 10 years but that’s alright #as Millipedes have become a key interest of mine so I feel comfortable getting more long lived species and more in general #for fish it’s just the money investment of all the stuff and then the time it takes to set up a planted tank as I just love them more than #fake plants I’ve done it twice before successfully and probably failed about the last 4 times #so I’ve not gotten to the actual grtting fish part yet due to that #I know I could fork out £200 and get the tank and fish tomorrow but that’s not what I want I want a planted tank so it’ll be on going #as for why no spiders my dad used to catch them and out them in my bed as a kid for years so I just can’t handle them as an adult #he thought it was funny and would toughen me up it sadly only made me nearly cry anytime I see one now #for roaches I’m just not interested #centipedes can have a nasty bite so I’d like to avoid them and anything that moves fast reminds me of spiders so it’s a no go

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jessamine-rose · 6 months

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/obey me! vent/

#jessamine rambles #before i start. pls keep in mind that this is fully subjective and could just be a 'me' problem. i just want to get this off my chest #ngl i've been contemplating on whether i want to stop playing obey me. both the og game and nightbringer #idk i've been playing the game since its first month and while it's given me a lot of joy + memories + chances to befriend other ppl. i'm #pretty burned out. not to mention TIRED of my consistent disappointment with the game #the main story.....where do i start?? i actually enjoyed s1-s3 despite my qualms with the fillers and pacing but s4 disappointed me. i was #rlly looking forward to simeon's storyline and the new characters but ultimately. the devs tried to squeeze too many things into one season #not to mention that there is a notable difference in how the characters are written. i.e. beel's hunger and asmo's beauty #being watered down to running gags instead of the complexities explored in the old dg stories and chara songs #gameplay-wise. i was there when the devs raised the rewards price of the event urs and removed the demon ssrs completely #but nightbringer was the last straw for me. the amount of time it takes to grind for two games. knowing that the og app has essentially bee #abandoned by the devs?? not to mention that while the plot is interesting. i haven't touched the main story ever since the coma arc #i will give credit to the devs for improving the event stories by choosing to focus on 1-2 demons. but it has always felt like a quantity >#quality situation. esp if i were to compare it to my other fandoms #it also doesn't help that i'm currently at a point of my life where i'm questioning if i could use my time on obm for better things #seeing how the game is giving me less reasons to believe it is worth my time #idk this may also be a short-term phase since i DID get back into twst after a long hiatus and i recently got into whb #which btw has felt like a breath of fresh air despite my frustrations with the bugs and current gacha #but yeahhhh........as much as i love the obm characters and fanfics. i'm just tired #at this point i feel like the only reason why i still play the game is due to the nostalgia and so i don't waste the years of grinding #aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #this is what i get for being the type of player who only plays a few games so they can rlly dedicate their time and passion to it #that's all

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coquelicoq · 11 months

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i completely solved a cryptic crossword for the first time the other day! this is huge for me because i've always been so annoyed by them lol. but i kinda get it now, it is very satisfying to figure them out.

that said, there are several answers where i still do not totally understand the clues. if anyone who is familiar with cryptics (sometimes just called "crosswords" outside of the US) wants to help me out, i'd be very interested to hear your take!

this cryptic was in the 2022 puzzle mania edition of the nyt (released at the very end of the year), so if you are planning to solve it and haven't yet, i guess don't read this? lol. since i waited five months to do it i feel like that will apply to no one, but just in case.

i realized after drafting this post that the answer key is available online (here), but it did not actually answer my questions in every case, so i've kept my original text but added the answer key answer after each one in case it makes more sense to you than it does to me.

13A. Has misgivings about deception to an auditor (4): RUES. so "has misgivings about" is the definition of "rues". but i don't know what "deception to an auditor" is doing. could it have something to do with the fact that "rues" is a homonym and anagram of "ruse", a kind of deception? but i still can't figure out what "to an auditor" is for.

the answer key gives "homophone ruse" for this, so i guess i was right about the deception part, but i still don't get the auditor thing.

14A. A con almost grabs actor's awards left unbalanced (10): ASYMMETRIC. so EMMYS is hidden backwards in "asymmetric", which takes care of "actor's awards" and "left", and "asymmetric" means "unbalanced", i guess. so that leaves "A con almost grabs", along with the A and TRIC of the answer. i can't figure out how to make those relate to each other.

answer key says "a(symmE)trick – k (rev. Emmys)". fuck does that mean?? why are we subtracting the k? and i'm still not really sure what the con is there for?

26A. Concentrate for spare and strike (5): THINK. "concentrate" is the definition of "think". what is the "for spare and strike" doing??

answer key: "thin + K". okay i see how thin = spare but wherefore this K? does K stand for strike in baseball? that sounds vaguely familiar...

28A. African country returned Los Angeles family inheritance (7): SENEGAL. senegal is an african country, and it's also an anagram of angeles. i'm guessing the "returned" is a clue for the anagram? but what is "family inheritance" for? oh wait, senegal backwards is LA genes!! but then is it just a coincidence that "angeles" anagrams to "senegal", or is that indicated in the clue somewhere???

answer key: "rev. L.A. + genes". okay so it does sound like angeles being an anagram of senegal is a coincidence, or at least not covered in the clue?? seems like a missed opportunity but what do i know.

5D. Largely moderate Arizona city (5): TEMPE. tempe is a city in arizona. what's "largely moderate" doing here?

answer key: "temper – r". am i to understand that this is saying moderate = temper and the "largely" part of the clue is telling me to keep most but not all of "temper"?

#the big-ass american crossword was not that interesting i'm sorry to say. the actual solving was too easy and the logistics were #very annoying. it was so huge (four newspaper pages & almost 800 answers) i had to do it on the floor #which was uncomfortable #and looking up each clue in the list took so long because there were so many #i was interested to see how long it would take so i timed myself and it took me 2h04 (though it felt like it took 10 hours #based on how sore my neck and back and legs were lol)#and i could have finished in under 2 hours but i didn't realize that i didn't have to do anything special with the super mega words #in order to solve the crossword. like i figured out what the words were but putting them together according to the instructions #is only necessary for solving the metapuzzle and so could be done separately. so i wasted a few minutes trying to do that #the other puzzles were p cool except the word search bugged me for reasons that were mostly the fault of my own poor planning #but psy is a one-named singer!! so technically there were 8 one-named singers not 7!!!#i actually haven't solved the metapuzzle final answer yet #i have all but one of the letters but then they have to be put in order and i have no ideas for what the order is supposed to be #cruciverbs #my posts #but anyway very exciting that i solved a cryptic for the first time! maybe now i can get past my mental block about them

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sonknuxadow · 1 month

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I believe that IF Silver IS a descendent of Sonic/Shadow/Amy/anyone else, he's a descendent via adoption because the only Sonic character that I accept having kids is Vanilla.

honestly part of the reason im not a fan of the ideas of silver being a descendant of other characters we already know is because i just dont see why its necessary for them to be related ..? idk i just dont think anything that could be gained from him being shadows kid or sonics descendant or whatever is worth losing part of whats already compelling about silver and also making things super confusing. plus none of the pairings of already existing characters people have suggested as silvers bio parents make any sense, usually because its impossible from a timeline perspective but also because theyre always picking characters who would NOT have kids either in general or with the specific people theyre being paired with

#i also just kinda have a hard time imagining most sonic characters who arent already parents (so. most of them) wanting to be parents #it just does not feel right to me #i guess part of it could be an age thing . being a parent is an Adult thing and most sonic characters are not adults #so imagining them doings things that only adults do by in universe standards just feels strange and foreign to me #even though these scenarios would obviously take place a couple decades into the future #but also even when specifically thinking about it through the lens of ''would this character want to be a parent when theyre older''#the answer is usually no or idk #because there are a lot of characters where it just doesnt feel like it fits them?#sonic and rouge are a couple characters i can name off the top of my head who i know for sure would not have kids.#shadow im not so sure about either. yet he is the most common choice for silvers bio parent. pain #thing about shadow and silver is i think a timeline where shadow is actually around to meet little silver and is like #a mentor/older brother/guardian figure of sorts does kinda have potential to be interesting but i dont really want that to be made canon #but shadow straight up being his dad? idk man. not really into that. shadow being his biological dad? ABSOLUTELY not into that .#people having the present version of shadow whos a teenager barely older than silver being a dad to him?? weird as hell. no #asks #also part of what bugs me about the shadow as silvers dad stuff is people pretending its anything more than a baseless headcanon #like im not saying all headcanons have to have proof behind them but people act like the shadow as silvers dad thing #is an actual plausible theory that could be true and has tons of evidence? when it really doesnt ??#i feel the need to specify that im not trying to police what people do or aynthing just sharing my opinions

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hella1975 · 1 year

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I'm watching the hunger games with people who's opinions I don't agree with HELP they literally don't get the implications of children murdering eachother like I do

(hella I've been reminded of you all day lol this is my 2nd ask about my day kfmsks)

that's genuinely so sweet i dont think you realise how much i appreciate things like this

oh bleugh i hate it when people just dont get a piece of media and ur just kinda sat there trying not to rant like 'you're all missing the fucking POINT'

#and the hunger games too? id be furious #something similar happened to me recently #okay so im very ashamed by this considering the fuss i kicked up about it but i CANNOT resist a show with dragons in it #so i eventually pirated all of house of the dragon and low and behold #youd have some of the most detailed worldbuilding ever and beautiful dragons and a ginormous budget for a fantasty world #and youd be enjoying it and then BOOM violence against women for literally no reason #it bugs the fuckkkk out of me but at least hotd has HUGE wlw undertones and the two main characters are actually women #and are COMPLEX? im not giving any compliments for this bc it's just not good enough but still it wasnt as awful as it has been #(*Looks at game of thrones*)#AND ANYWAY there's this woman in it called alicent hightower when i tell you i will defend her with my LIFE #and it's the typical 'female character made strong due to the trauma inflicted upon her by men'#and she is literally torn from her closest female friendship (love interest?) BECAUSE of men #and it becomes the ENTIRE FUCKING PLOT OF THE SHOW god it bugs me anyway #and it's made me superrrrrrrr protective of her bc not only do i adore her but she deserves so much better #like she's supposed to be the villain and the fandom are so thick that they treat her that way but im just like alicent get behind me #AND MY SISTER SAID SHE HATES HER #LIKE WE WERE TALKING ABOUT THE SHOW AND MY SISTER JUST OUTRIGHT SAID SHE HATES ALICENT #I WAS LIKE NO YOU STUPID BITCH THIS IS WHAT THE MEN WANT ARE YOU JOKING YOU'RE FEEDING INTO IT #and i didnt know how to EXPLAIN to her why she was so wrong so im just there like why am i always right about everything #and everyone else is always so stupid why why why god im not you're strongest soldier #so yeah <3 #ask

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brittlebutch · 5 months

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going two layers deep in a fantasy to 1) a world where the bird trading cards from that make some noise prompt are real and then 2) world where they have insect trading cards of the same variety

#N posts stuff #‘i’ll trade you three acorn weevils for your sappho underwing’ type shit #my parents have been pushing me to think about going back to school for a different bachelors or perhaps a masters #i like bugs a lot but i also can never quite tell if i’m ‘smart enough’ or interested in the right things for a entomology degree #always default back to the internal acknowledgement that my interest is a lot more Visual than intellectual #so no degree. but then the thought pattern always leads back into ‘it would be So nice to have a bunch of insect cards that you could sort #and collect and rearrange and all’ such a thing isn’t real i think #but actually it could be if i wanted it to be actually; i do really enjoy drawing/painting insects #only i haven’t done any art in goddamn Months there’s been a gray void in that area of my brain instead #but hey maybe one day i guess ; but first i’d have to finish this painting one of my brothers asked for Months and Months ago oops #you might realize that we lost the thread on getting a second degree entirely. i usually do; it’s hard to feel like it’s worth the effort #and all the alterations to my schedule when my first degree turned out essentially useless lmao.#so that just makes me want to go a layer deeper in the fantasy to a world where i could learn just to learn instead of needing to be #some vague and esoteric notion of ‘employable’. alas.

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andthebeanstalk · 1 year

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Watching the Junji Ito Maniac episode "Mold", and as far as I can tell so far, it looks like it's based on the visceral terror of real life black mold taking over your house until you can afford to fix it or move

and frankly literally nothing else scary needs to happen this is the scariest story he's ever written

#if there is an episode about this show just based on the concept of bed bugs and literally nothing supernatural occurs #it will hands down be the scariest episode of television I've ever seen.#I'd rather find literally anything else in my bed then real life bed bugs again. I was going to say I would rather find a monster in my bed #but as a monsterfucker I feel like this goes without saying #I'd rather find the thing from John Carpenter's The Thing in my bed than normal bed bugs #junji ito #junji ito maniac #original #and from what I've heard about black mold it's not only a serious biohazard but extremely difficult to get out of a house #I paused to write this because I got spooked by the concept of mold - literally nothing has happened yet except for a guy going 'gross!!'#but it is one of those rare nights where staying up later than usual is not in my worst interest #I have a silly show set up to watch after this like a spookiness rip cord #friends if you ever come home to your house and it's covered in unidentifiable mold you need to get out of there until it's checked out #ESPECIALLY if the family you leased it to was drawn by junji Ito #listen I know it's a metaphor for the human mind probably but holy crap dude you got to move #well the good news is the mold was probably just a baby #like a horrific physical manifestation of a baby clinging to every surface of the house and devouring everything in it #no joke that is way less scary than the concept of actual black mold XD I was like oh thank fuck it's magic #oh fuck yeah now it's Library demon time #oh how the memories of the past do haunt us eh buddies?#Jesus fucking Christ does this guy know how to draw a scary scary scary face #oh how I would have hated him as a child #oh how I long to possess his strange and horrible powers of art now

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peridots-pixiwolf · 1 year

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ah. seems the special interest i've now had for 23 months, the only one that still consumes a portion of my mind at all times, just turned six today, and not a single one of the several lists I have to keep track of such anniversaries bothered to warn me of this early enough that I could actually draw something for it in time

#HAPPY BIRTHDAY HK. I WILL TRY TO DRAW SOMETHING FOR YOU BUT I HAVE A BUNCH OF OTHER STUFF GOING ON!!!#it's something dear to my heart...played it two years ago and i still like it a lot!! it's stuck with me is what i guess i mean #peridots-nonsense #hollow knight #that should be all but it's not. ough. hk is one of those games i wish i could play for the first time again...#it was such a wonderful experience and i still love its characters so much...#don't post about it much anymore considering how many other fandoms/worlds i have to draw for now #but. yeah #it's also what gave me my love for bugs!!! and that's such an integral part of me now that i can't imagine what would've happened #had i never played it. (spoiler alert i actually would've played bug fables instead! it was an interesting thing to learn that so many #hk fans liked bf too. i learned of bftes first because my mom pointed it out (once again this was before i even liked arthropods!!#coincidences!!) but i ended up buying hk months before bf because my best friend (and now partner...) liked it)#lol it's only Technically feb24 in my time zone i just have a bad sleep schedule. i still have time but art's a long process for me #anyway. goodbye dear tag-wanderer! you should play hollow knight if you're not already here for that :]#WAIT I ALSO GOTTA WATCH THE JAYROCK/N STREAM TODAY...slash tomorrow but yk

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aquilamage · 1 year

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keep thinking about this fic over and over in my head so putting it up. little bit of just having fun, little bit of projection, little bit of headcanons Featuring leif and vi and my love of their interactions. human fables au because I was specifically thinking about them and hair.

Vi would never, ever admit it out loud (not after she’d fought tooth and nail for a shift, against Kabbu’s protests that she was “still growing” and whatever, and still only been allowed half of one, always at the beginning of the night), but keeping watch was boring. It had hardly been any time at all and she was already halfway towards clawing at the walls of the little recess they’d camped out in. And it wasn’t going to get much better because nothing ever happened.

So she was experimenting with her beemerang (the new feature was great, but ooh, once she got that new password she was going to have words with Shades). Right now it was trying to get a feel for stopping it midair when she tossed it up.

The bonus of doing that now was that no one else was there to see when she messed up. Especially the time she got smacked in the face and hissed a word that would have made Kabbu gasp.

She’d just recovered from that enough to start looking for where her beemerang had fallen when she heard a shuffling in the direction of the camp.

Energy surging, she dashed over, only to find it was only Leif turning over in their sleeping bag. She groaned. “Figures.”

But when she finally found the beemerang (in some tall grass) and got back to her original lookout spot, Leif was tossing around more, mumbling something in their sleep. Which was none of her business. And she would have kept on ignoring it until they stopped or her shift was over, but the noise was starting to get on her nerves, quiet enough you couldn’t really hear it, but loud enough you knew it was there.

So she got up and walked to stand over Leif. She watched them for another minute in case they decided to pick just then to stop.

No such luck. With a heavy sigh, Vi prodded them in the side with her foot.

Vi couldn’t say exactly what happened in the ensuing moments, except that there was some yelling and flailing on both their ends, ending with her on the ground with both legs frozen (one just past the knee, the other almost to the hip) and Leif crouched forward as well they could while still in the sleeping bag, another spell dancing on their fingertips.

Their mutual staredown was broken by a soft noise they both immediately looked toward. Kabbu shifted, sleepily mumbled something, and then settled back to sleep.

Leif gave an extended, heavy sigh, and curled up into themself.

“You’re welcome,” Vi grumbled, scrabbling around for a rock to start chipping away at the ice.

They didn’t react until the first sharp crack, whereupon they stared for a second before moving over and starting on her other leg.

“This would be a lot easier if you could actually control the ice once you make it.” She’d said it for the sake of saying it, no real heat behind it – she still meant it as much as the first time, during a practice incident, but wasn’t feeling it the same. Still, she’d expected them to snip back with something (last time, xe’d replied that when xe found the source of xyr powers, xe would bring that up).

So when they didn’t respond at all, she knew something was wrong. Ugh. “Do you need to- to talk about it, or whatever?”

They just made a noncommittal noise, so she slapped their arm.

The ambient temperature dropped as they glared at her. “What was that for?”

“I’m trying to help, and you’re...I don’t know, but you’re not paying attention!” She tried to yank her foot the rest of the way out, only to slam her ankle against a piece of it. “Get me out of here so I can wake Kabbu up.”

“That’s not…” They hesitated. “We don’t need to bother him about this.” They combed a hand through their hair. “Just...a bad dream, less than pleasant memories.”

When she was free, Vi walked unsteadily to a rock high enough for her to sit and kick her legs out, sticking her hands under her arms to warm them.

After a few minutes, she noticed that while Leif had gotten back into their sleeping bag, they were sitting up against the wall, both hands playing with their hair. She would give one more effort, and then they were on their own. “You should probably go back to sleep.”

They sighed. “At the moment, it would only become a repeat of our previous state, which we’re not exactly interested in.”

“...Okay.” She turned back to the lot of nothing happening outside their camp.

The back of her neck prickled, and though she tried to ignore it, eventually she had to turn and face Leif’s watching her. “What?”

They looked down. “May we ask a favor?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“Would you do our hair for us?”

“What?...Why?” They couldn’t do it themself? It looked fine, anyway.

“We used to ask M-” Leif froze, going quiet for a long time before saying, hoarsely, “We find it soothing.”

She stared at them.

“You don’t have to if you don’t-”

“No, that’s- I just- ...soothing?” As a child, she’d thrown fits when anyone so much as adjusted flyaways. Even as she grew up, haircuts had been an ordeal of tensing her whole body to stay still and hold in a scream while she endured the sensation.

“Yes?”

Weird, but whatever, she guessed. “Bring my sleeping bag over with you.”

She folded it over into a cushion on the ground as Leif sat in front of her. Taking the brush, she started.

Barely any time after, they reached back and stopped her. “Is that really how you brush your hair?”

“Uh, yeah?” She just did whatever to make sure it looked decent and didn’t have knots.

They sighed. “Try like this.”

She copied as best she could, and they didn’t correct her, so it must be okay at least. Even at a glance, it was impossible to miss how much hair Leif had, going almost all the way down their back, but seeing was still different from handling it. For one, it wasn’t as heavy as she’d expected, from her own thick hair as baseline. But still, even without any snarls or anything to work out, it took a while to brush the whole of it.

She definitely took it slower than needed, but it was something to do, and much more tolerable on this end. Besides, once she’d started properly, Leif had relaxed dramatically.

When she did finish, they stayed still for a little longer, took a slow, deep breath, and said, “Thank you.”

Vi shrugged, then remembered they couldn’t see her. “Sure.”

Another soft lull.

“Would it be too much to assume you know how to braid?”

She huffed. She’d never really done one, but how hard could it be?

...Apparently quite a bit, she realized after a while. She knew it was three pieces, and then you wrapped them around each other, so she’d gotten that far. But then she’d started to think it was too loose, and then she’d tried a different pattern, and somewhere in there she ended up with a fourth section of hair. Now she was just trying to undo the whole thing and failing spectacularly at even that.

Her tugs must have gotten rougher, because Leif turned to look over their shoulder. “What are you doing?”

With a groan, she flopped onto the ground. “I don’t actually know how to braid, okay?”

They pulled their hair to the front so they could see it better and burst out laughing.

“Shut up!” Pressing her hands over her eyes, she kicked at them. “It’s not that bad!”

“No, it’s worse,” they gasped. “We don’t think we could do this if we tried.”

“Fight me.”

“We’ll pass.”

She kicked them again, although not as hard.

When Vi finally sat up, they’d worked out the worst of it. “Do you want to learn how to actually braid?”

“You’re just offering so you can bother me into doing it for you later.”

They shrugged, smirking.

“Yeah. Teach me.”

---

Leif rolled out of the inn bed and stumbled through the dark toward the bathroom. Groggily, she noted the faint light under the closed door. As she raised a hand to knock, she heard a litany of muttered curses, clearly in Vi’s voice.

She knocked.

A yelp, the sound of something falling. “What?”

Resting his head against the door with a clunk, Leif said, “Does your crisis require you to stay in there?”

“Wha- I’m not- Back off and mind your own business!”

“We would but we have to pee.”

“Ugh!” A lot of shuffling and a couple more curses later, Vi opened the door, a towel draped over her head and shoulders, and shoved past him.

When he was done, he found her sitting on the edge of her bed, pulling the towel tight around her head as she stared at the door. As soon as he opened it, she tried to dash back in.

But Leif stayed in the doorway, blocking her. “What did you do to your hair?”

“Nothing.” She ducked down to crawl between her legs.

He let Vi, and used the opportunity to yank the towel off her head.

Barely stifling a shriek, she tried to shove him back into the bedroom.

But he just dropped his weight, leaning against her. When she stumbled back, he pulled the door closed behind them.

She’d hastily replaced the towel, and was glaring up at him.

Yeah, she didn’t want to do this either, but something was up, and she couldn’t tell if it was Vi’s natural stubborn reticence about even tiny stuff, or an actual issue. “We can do this the easy way and you talk to me, or the hard way, where I go wake Kabbu up.”

Somehow her glare managed to intensify even more. As they stared each other down, Leif noticed her eyes were red, skin around them a little blotchy.

After long enough that she was about to go for Kabbu, Vi spoke up. “I was cutting my hair and I messed up a little, and I didn’t want you to see because it looks stupid and you’d be joking about it for the next month.” Crossing her arms, she huffed. “There. Now get out.”

A whole month? No, that wasn’t the important part right now. “Why were you cutting your hair in the middle of the night?”

“Hey! I’ve been cutting my own hair since-” She stiffened, then went back to even more shouty. “for a while now. I know what I’m doing!”

The rhetort ‘and yet you managed to mess up on it’ came so easily it almost flowed right from his brain to his tongue before he even knew it had formed. But he stopped himself. That was only going to put her on more of a defensive. “We didn’t mean it like that. Why now?”

Vi narrowed her eyes, but responded. “It was getting long, and I didn’t have the chance to do it the past couple days with camping out, and then we said about getting an early start, so I wanted to get it done while I had a chance.” As she spoke, she became increasingly worked up, until she was flailing her arms as she added, “Why do you even care?”

Because she was his friend. Maybe not to the most common meaning, and certainly not as mushy as Kabbu meant it when he said it, but. She’d stuck with them when it really counted, and despite all of her other talk of seeking a reward for the slightest help, hadn’t spoken a word like that when he’d made his request or since. She’d been supportive, comforting even over the past few days as he processed the revelations about...about his family.

And over the past few days, he and Kabbu had watched her become more withdrawn and irritable the closer they got to the Bee Kingdom. It didn’t seem likely to be a coincidence this was happening the night they’d arrived on the outskirts. She was his friend, and he was going to help her whether she liked it or not.

She leaned back against the door. “First of all, we’re extremely nosy. And, despite everything, we do give a shit about you.” The curse got the tiniest huff of amusement out of Vi. Kabbu still had a thing about watching their language around her, but the way Leif figured it, she was seventeen and had been on her own for who knew how long, interacting with some...questionable figures (if this “Shades” she’d mentioned but refused to elaborate on was anything like they seemed). Besides, she wasn’t using anything she hadn’t already heard Vi use.

Vi didn’t snap about it, but neither did she say anything else even after a bit of time.

“Do you feel confident fixing your hair on your own?”

“I’m not going to a hair place,” Vi spat.

So, no. “Well, we’re not going to let you embarrass us by going out looking like a disaster, so something has to get done about it.” Softening minutely, he added, “We also have some experience with this. If you let us help, we promise not to tease you about how it looks.”

She eyed him, then finally yanked the towel off, throwing it in his face.

Her hair was bad. Before, it had been halfway between her chin and shoulders, a single unstyled length, often teetering on the edge of acceptably neat. Now...it varied in length from hardly any shorter in bits of the back to a section in the front left side that was maybe a couple inches, the rest with no pattern to it.

There was really only one way for that to have happened, and thinking about it made Leif want to throw her scissors out the window, wrap her in a blanket until she couldn’t move, and sandwich her between himself and Kabbu until she told them what was going on. The ferocity of it scared him a little.

Instead, Leif sat on the floor, sighing dramatically and putting her head in her hands to disguise any outward reaction she might have had and to give herself a moment to calm down and think about what to actually do. “...What were you attempting to get it to look like?”

Vi gave her a look that said she was at least a fraction as on to her as she was Vi. “At first I was just gonna make it shorter, like usual.” She made a motion at about the height of her earlobe. “But I remembered I don’t actually like how that looks…” she ducked her head “or feels, either. I just wanted it to be shorter, now, and…” She didn’t move for almost a minute before she whispered, “I don’t know.”

Cautiously, Leif scooted around until she was next to Vi, brushing shoulders. “How short would make you happy with it?”

She stared at him, razor-sharp. “Are you fucking with me?”

“No?”

“What if I said I wanted to shave my head?” Still glaring.

Leif shrugged. “It’s your hair, although I’d insist you let someone else do it this time. Do you?”

Her eyes went wide. Then, she abruptly turned her head away. “...No. But I know I want most of this” she grabbed a handful of hair and tugged on it “gone.”

“But not an exact style?”

She shook her head.

Leif thought for a moment. “How much creative liberty do you trust us with?”

In response, she turned just enough to narrow her eyes at him.

“If you really hate it, we’ll buy you lunch for three days.”

“A week.”

“...Fine.” She got up, stepping towards the door. “Don’t do anything else to it until we come back.”

“What? Where are you going?”

She leaned on the doorknob. “Are we correct in assuming you don’t have hair clippers?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Then we’re going to that all-hours store and hoping they have some, or we’ll have to change our plans or wait until morning.”

They did, fortunately, and she got back in something like a reasonable amount of time. From there, she dragged the desk chair into the bathroom in front of the sink and sat Vi down in it.

As she was getting things set up, Vi handed her a pair of regular scissors.

“What?” Her mind went blank, thrown.

“You still gotta cut it down the regular way first, right?”

“Yes, but-” Horror dawned. “You’ve been using these to cut your hair?”

“What else would I use?”

“Hair scissors?!”

She stared at him through the mirror. “That’s a thing?”

Leif sat down for a minute. When he’d settled, he put away Vi’s scissors and took out the ones from the set.

He started by assessing the damage. Fortunately, there wasn’t much he’d actually have to work around, given the dramatic length change. But as he was pinning a section, he realized something and paused. “What’s the matter? Is something pulling too hard?”

“No. It’s fine.” Vi was tensed as if in pain, eyes squeezed shut. “Just. Keep going.”

Then Leif remembered her reaction to them asking her to do their hair a few days ago. Ah. “Here.” He forced the scissors into her hand. “Shorter hairstyles mean cutting more often, and we don’t want to get stuck doing it for you every single time. So we’re going to show you.”

He did finish the sectioning off, showing her where he was doing it, but then he let her loose with the scissors on the rest. When told she should take it down to about an inch, she went about it with a glee that was infectious.

After that, she got the clippers, explaining how they worked. She did one little section herself so Vi could see, and then put her hand on top of Vi’s to guide, talking her through getting the trickier spots and angles, and where to step so the line between this and the pinned length wouldn’t be jagged.

“How do you know all this stuff anyway?” Vi asked when they’d taken a break (she’d complained about her hand getting numb, and Leif had to agree).

“We did try this, once. It turned out not to be what we wanted, but there was also a point where we had it partially short with the rest long.”

When they finished with the clippers, Leif took out the pins and guided her through scissor-trimming the rest.

Vi had watched the whole process happen, so Leif figured if she had any complaints she would have already voiced them. Loudly. Still, after he’d taken the towel off her shoulders and rubbed a clean side over her head to get rid of more of the loose hairs, he told her to give it a final look-over.

“We picked something where you can use product to style the longer part, but it looks fine if you don’t,” he said as he swept up the hair from the floor as best he could. There was a lot of it, but at least most of it was larger pieces. He was going to have to remember to leave a good tip for the housekeeper. “So you’ll have to let us know if you want to get some. But does it at least look acceptable for now?”

Silence. Leif looked up, and realized she was staring into the mirror, frozen. With a sigh, she tossed the hair in the garbage and stood. “What, did we really do that horrible-”

And then she saw Vi’s expression.

Her eyes were wide, staring at her reflection, mouth ever so slightly open. With both hands, she combed through the ‘longer’ portion on top. A smile, and a single tear ran down her face.

“So it’s good?”

She flinched away from Leif, apparently just remembering she was there. “It’s fine.” She tried to shrug it off, but her voice was far too choked up to manage it. (Not to mention the way her eyes softened as she rubbed at the buzzed portion at the back). One of her breaths caught, and she scowled. “You’re still buying me lunch.”

Leif smirked. “You’re welcome.”

#an aquila original #my writing #vi bug fables #leif bug fables #bug fables #fanfiction #also I wrote this before I got anywhere in chapter 3 so there's a few details I would probably have done different if I wrote it later #only thing I actually edited was that initially leif told vi if she didn't like the cut she could shove them in the river #and given the later bits about both their traumas around water that was just plain completely not gonna work for me anymore #only other minor thing would be I've been considering if Vi would actually know how to braid because occasionally jaune let her do hers #I've also been working on an alternate version of the second part. but not because I don't agree with how it went anymore #but because there's a second interesting to me option where they do go to a hair place and I wanna amuse myself with it

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