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sp0o0kylights · 10 months

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Part Five Part Two / Part Six YOU ARE HERE. / Part Seven

A03

"No come back here and hug me dammit!"

"I told you it'd be funny." Gareth stage whispered to Steve the following Monday, as Eddie proceeded to cause his usual amount of chaos in the lunchroom.

Tiff just shook her head.

"Come on, just do it and then tell everyone I'm better!" Eddie shrieked again, loud enough to be heard across the school. Possibly into the parking lot, given the winces and glares their peers tossed Eddie's way.

Jeff had his own head in his hands having been Eddie's prior cuddle victim and still suffering the consequences from it.

"I hate you." He groaned, and every single person knew he was talking to Gareth. "I cannot believe you told him his stupid hugs didn't even compare to Steve's. He almost broke my back this morning!"

Which wasn't an understatement--Gareth himself had dodged his best friend's aggressive hugs only by bolting to his first class, then acting like a ninja as he snuck about all day.

He'd even dropped to the floor and army-crawled at one point.

Now he stayed close to Steve, blatantly using the jock as a meat shield.

"Anyone have any ideas on how we can get him to chill out?" Stewart asked, from where he'd taken refuge under the lunch table.

Their second eldest member put up with many things, but drew the line at bodily injury by overly affectionate metalhead.

"Same as always." Jeff grumbled, making sure Gareth saw his glare. "We wait him out."

"Tiff!" Eddie whined, whirling around, hands reaching out for her.

"You touch me Munson and I'll burn the trigonometry notes I promised you." Tiffany threatened without looking up from her book.

"Fine." Eddie wheeled right back around. "Graaaaant-!"

"This could take days!" Stewart complained, acting like a man caged. "I can't wait much longer!"

'Dramatic, the whole lot of them.' Gareth thought fondly, knowing he was just as bad.

"Okay. Seriously, how are we fixing this?" Jeff said sourly, as Grant once again picked Eddie up by his jacket and bodily threw him as far away as he could.

Like an eldritch being from a B horror movie, Eddie simply bounced back up and came for him again.

"His issue is that he thinks I'm the better cuddler, right? Nothing else?" Steve said thoughtfully.

"Yes." Groaned the other four in unison, as Grant laid a hand on Eddie's forehead, the latter pinwheeling his arms like a cartoon character.

Steve nodded once, before his face morphed into something devastatingly smug. "Yeah we're screwed."

Jeff switched targets from Gareth to glare at Steve instead. "Really Harrington?"

"I'm back to Harrington now? Jeff, man, you wound me." Steve faked a gasp, putting a hand over his heart.

It made Gareth grin, if only because Steve wouldn't have done that a month ago. "God I love when you're a bitch."

Steve looked over at him and winked.

"Just for that, we should make you cuddle with him." Stewart grumbled. "Tell him he can decide for himself who's better!"

Which of course killed the playful look on Steve's face.

Two pairs of shoes proceeded to kick at Stewart (who dodged Jeff's only to be nailed by Tiffany's far more tactical aim.)

Except when Gareth though about it, it actually wasn't a half-bad idea.

If one pitched it right.

"You know," Gareth said slowly, a plan forming. It was half-baked, but it'd work. "--you could end this pretty easily if you did. You have the power."

"Are we being serious right now?" Jeff grumped. "This does not feel like we're being serious."

Gareth ignore him.

"You up for one last cuddle, Sir Carrington?" He asked, playfully.

He got a flat look in return. "You've got to be kidding me. You're seriously suggesting the solution here is for me and Eddie to cuddle."

"I am indeed." Gareth said with a grin. "So long as it's an absolutely terrible cuddle."

That got an interesting reaction.

"Good luck, I'm an amazing cuddler." Steve huffed, offended--and it looked like he actually believed it.

A curiosity, considering even with everyone announcing themselves before touching him he still got jumpy.

"Then pretend." Gareth wheedled. "You don't even have to do it for that long. Sneeze in his ear and he'll be done for."

He got a few grossed out looks for that, but it was worth it all to see Steve growing more comfortable with the idea.

"If I were to do anything of the sort I wouldn't sneeze in his ear." The jock retorted, but he looked contemplative.

"I'm sure you could come up with something else. " Gareth suggested, and gave his best, award winning smile as he said it. "You're creative when cornered."

No ulterior motives here, no sir!

"I know what you're doing, Gareth." Steve said, calling him out immediately. "But I might be convinced to take a hit for the team--for a price. My reputation would be on the line."

"What do you want?" Stewart asked immediately, more than a little desperate as Eddie carried on in the background.

"Well..." Steve trailed off, slowly meeting each and every one of them in the eye. "what are you offering?"

"You know what?" Jeff said, putting his head back in his hands. " Just for that, you and Gareth both are on my shit list."

"I'll bake you those marble brownies you wanted and get right back off it." Steve said, the smug air only growing as Jeff sighed loudly.

"Name your price, Harrington." Stewart said, talking over Jeff's second, overly dramatic sigh. "You want some D&D treasure, or an item for your character? You got it. You want a fucking," He paused, eyes scrunching up in thought. "--new basketball? Or whatever sport ball you're into right now?"

"Not even close." Steve told him.

Jeff sighed a third time, loud and obnoxious.

"Why does this always fall down to me?" Tiff asked the ceiling, as though God himself might respond back with the answer. She tilted her head back down, aiming to make eye contact with Steve. "You're in Rucker's class right? I'll write your poly-sci paper. Highest grade I will guarantee is a B, and that is because it would be suspicious if you looked like you suddenly had strong, A-grade opinions on current, geopolitical policies."

Steve snapped and pointed towards her. "Sold!" He called, mimicking an auctioneer.

Smooth as butter, he turned towards Hurricane Eddie. "Hey Munson!"

In two seconds the jock had summoned that cocky persona of his, wearing a smarmy smile like a cloak. It was getting easier and easier to tell which "bitchy Steve" was the real one and which one was a total front.

(Tiffany had decided the man was a mean girl at his core and honestly, the label stuck.

But Mean Girl Steve was a hell of a lot different than King Steve--or any of the other overly confident swaggering personas Steve adopted like a second skin.)

For for all the preparation he'd had, was still rigid most of the time Gareth had occupied his lap, only relaxing when the younger boy had gotten Eddie so wound up their eldest friend couldn't form coherent sentences.

Now, as Steve strode over and issued the challenge of a cuddle off during the next Hellfire game, he was already less stiff.

Eddie had that effect on people. Particularly ones who had crushes on him.

"This is the stupidest thing I've ever been involved in." Tiffany complained.

"Is it Tiff? Is it really?" Jeff challenged as he finally sat up.

"She's definitely forgetting the purple griffin incident." Grant said, completely ignoring what was going down on the other end of the table as he took advantage of Eddie being distracted to make his escape.

"Fine." Tiff conceded before anyone could list anything else off, "But it's at least in the top five."

"This Friday, Harrington." Eddie announced loudly then, fire in his eyes and a finger in Steve's face. "Me and you. It is on."

"Hope you're ready to lose." Steve taunted.

It was hilarious as it was ridiculous.

Which meant of course, that dumb shit had to get in the way of it.

xXx

Steve backslid the next morning.

Worse, he kept backsliding, growing worse throughout the week until the person left looked a whole lot like the guy they’d dragged to their table all those months ago.

He sat silently next to Eddie during lunch, only speaking if asked a direct question, all banter and playful bitchiness gone.

He avoided Hellfire’s members in the hallway, Stewart reporting he had been uncharacteristically silent during their one shared class.

Most damning?

He’d flinched when Eddie had done their dumb little “shoulder bumping” routine.

Which officially meant that ghost Steve was back.

(“I didn’t realize how Steve was our little ray of sunshine and positivity until he stopped being it.” Tiff complained, idly spinning a pencil in the library. “Worse, I didn’t think I’d miss it.”

Gareth, who definitely wasn’t skipping again, agreed wholeheartedly.)

Not even Eddie's antics got a smile out of Steve. He really tried too, to the point where Gareth was starting to worry his best friend was going to do something dramatic just to get a little chuckle.

Steve at least, picked up on the fact he was freaking out all of Hellfire when Grant started to get blunt with his questions.

A part of Gareth (the part that appreciated Grant’s bluntness, instead of the rest of him, that wanted to duck and cover in case it made things worse) was curious if this would finally get Steve to open up; but instead it just made things worse.

Within two direct “No really dude, what's wrong?” ’s, Steve retired the haunted act and instead brought the downright freaky return of one Hawkins' jock's doing a real good job at pretending he was okay.

Pity for him this wasn't Tommy H or the rest of the public Steve was trying to fool.

This was a group of people who tended to be hyper aware of things, ranging from their surroundings to their people. (And then went on to play, as Steve regularly teased them, “one giant math game about it.”)

Not a single one of them was fooled by the act, or the evasive answers Steve pulled out of his ass when the rest of them all, individually, in their own way, tried to figure out if their newest member was okay or just having a few bad days.

"He told me he wasn't feeling good." Jeff said, worrying his lip with his teeth when they all finally convened together after school to discuss it.

"Are we choosing to buy that?" Tiffany asked, one eyebrow raised in a challenge. "He's been off since Tuesday. It's Thursday."

Grant huffed an agreement, arms crossed over his chest.

"Devils advocate, people are typically sick for more than one day." Stewart pointed out. "Dudes probably got allergies or something, it is the end of May."

"It's not allergies." Gareth said flatly.

Allergies usually came with symptoms like coughing and sneezing.

They did not come with vacant stares and falling over one's feet when their friends said hello in the hallway.

"Well clearly he doesn't want to talk about it so maybe he'll just…work himself out of whatever it is." Jeff reasoned. "I don't know if we should really push him about it."

"And miss out on another week's worth of baking?" Stewart bemoaned, as if Steve's lack of treats was the sole reason they were concerned.

Tiff swiped at him with her paperback.

Interestingly, Eddie had yet to say much on the matter. Everyone knew he was just as worried. The guy was a secret teddy bear, and they all still knew to warn him if a dog so much as got hurt in a movie. Worse, Steve was one of his "sheepies" as he so lovingly called them all, and was notoriously defensive of Hellfire as a whole.

Gareth had been eyeing him throughout their little gathering, watching as his best friend tapped his foot anxiously.

The guy seemed lost in his own head and while it wasn't completely unusual, it too, was odd behavior.

Gareth squinted at him, making eye contact and asking if he was alright with the kind of subtle facial expressions only best friends could pull.

Eddie didn't respond, but instead, looked away.

'That's a no.' Gareth thought, as the conversation around them wound down, without anyone coming up with any solid plans on what they were going to do about the Steve situation.

This is exactly how he ended up following Eddie home.

"Inviting ourselves over I see." The elder teen muttered out of the corner of his mouth as Gareth chased him to his van, hopping into the passenger seat instead of heading for his bicycle.

"It's a good night for a smoke sess." Gareth responded casually.

"You hate smoking weed." Eddie returned with a snort. "You prefer edibles."

"Just think of what we could do with Harrington's baking skills." Gareth replied wistfully--but made sure to watch his friend.

There it was. The slightest of weird expressions, flitting over Eddie's face like a shadow before he hid it back into whatever cage it escaped from.

"You're worried." Gareth guessed. Not like that was a hard one.

"Aren't we all, Gare-Bear?" Eddie returned, eyes never leaving the road.

He pretended like he couldn't feel Gareth scanning him, taking in the too tense shoulders and the shuttered, guarded look on his face.

"You know something." Gareth guessed after a moment.

The declaration made his best friend flinch, hands squeezing tight on the wheel.

'Got you.'

"Are you going to spill or do I have to blackmail it out of you?"

"Please Gary you have nothing you could blackmail me with." Eddie challenged with a snort. "I am shameless."

A challenge that could not be ignored, if only because Gareth wanted to remind him who had had the upper hand since Steve had crashed into Hellfire.

"Really? So you wouldn't mind if I show Steve those photos of the time we dressed up as a Barbie “ken doll” band for Jeff’s sister’s birthday? You know, the one were you were wearing that pink boa and the star glasses--”

A hand shot out, clapping Gareth over the mouth.

"Thank you, I got it!" Eddie said, voice an octave higher than normal. "Why do you still even have that!?"

"My mom." Gareth managed to get out, even if it was horribly muffled between Eddie's bony fingers.

"Curse that woman's thirst for nostalgia and scrapbooks." Eddie hissed, as if his mom was some grand villain.

"You love her crafts, you ass." Gareth rolled his eyes, wiping his mouth when Eddie finally removed his hand. "Now spill."

"I'm not sure this is what's causing it." The elder cautioned after a pause just long enough to be dramatic. "But rumor has it his parents are home."

"You think they're why he's acting all…" Gareth trailed off, unsure of what to compare Steve to and not wanting to say a kicked dog.

Eddie hummed in agreement. "Every time I walk into Steve's house, the place starts off feeling like a living tomb. There’s got to be a reason for that, and the only one I can think of is that his parents want that. The tomby-ness."

Gareth leaned back in his seat, contemplating. Turned the idea of Steve's mysterious parents over in his head, comparing it to how the guy's house did have a sort of museum quietness to it.

It wasn't that the place was huge, or even that Steve was typically its solo occupant beyond the occasional weekends one or both of his parents "popped in."

It was the perfectness of it.

How on any given day a photographer could show up to take pictures and the place would be camera ready.

A sort of--trophy house.

He went on to tell his best friend this.

"It’s like a shrine to their success." Eddie added an hour later, when they'd resettled onto his couch, trying to break down just what exactly about Steve's house made it so weird.

They'd shared a beer each--some gross kind that a cat couldn't have gotten buzzed off of, and Gareth had just finished helping Eddie select their chosen flower to roll when an awkward sound erupted throughout the trailer.

If Gareth knew any better, he'd say it almost sounded like someone was knocking on the shitty aluminum door.

Couldn't be though, because he'd never in his life heard someone knock--Eddie's uncle Wayne had a key, and every member of Hellfire was aware that the window in Eddie's room had a broken lock.

To get it open you just had to push at it from a specific angle, and with a few tugs it'd come right up for you.

The noise came again, this time a little louder.

Gareth looked to Eddie, and found his friend holding all the weed.

Understanding flashed between them, and Gareth stood up to answer the door as Eddie magically made the drugs disappear.

Thankfully, it wasn't the cops.

"Hey." Steve said, standing awkwardly on Eddie's porch, looking like he desperately wanted inside but wasn't sure he'd be allowed in. "Eddie said I could just come over if I needed to…?"

He trailed off, awkwardly miming smoking with his fingers.

Gareth couldn't hold in the snort.

"You're in luck man, because I just finished rolling a few." He said, stepping back to let their wayward jock in.

"Hey Stevie." Eddie drawled, now in the process of making the weed reappear. "Come in, have a seat, take a puff."

Rather than sit on the admittedly small couch, Steve chose instead to drop his ass to the floor, leaving the open spot above him to Gareth. He waited until the younger was seated before he leaned back, broad shoulders brushing both his friends legs as he relaxed.

Eddie’s hand twitched, as though he wanted to run it through Steve’s hair and thought better of it.

(Knowing him as Gareth did, that was very likely exactly what the weird little movement of his was.)

“You wanna tell us what’s goin’ on?” Eddie said softly, long after all three of them had an inhale of the joint Eddie had lit, sitting in relaxed silence. "Cause you've been pretty down, Stevie."

"Yeah." Steve agreed hollowly. "Sorry."

Eddie nudged his leg with a foot, then offered him the blunt again. "Don't apologize man, we can't all be sunshine and rainbows."

“You’d be surprised at how many people expect an apology for just that.” Steve muttered.

Gareth traded careful looks over Steve’s head, Eddie turning back and resolutely plowing on.

“You don’t have to, but talking tends to make people feel better.”

“Does it?” Steve asked, before taking a slow, measured inhale of the joint.

Idly he added; "Gareth you can't roll for shit."

"Fuck you dude!" The younger teen exclaimed, instantly offended, but knew a redirect when he saw one. "You try rolling them then!" He snatched the joint out of Steve's hands, huffing audibly.

It was an offer. If Steve didn't want to take the opening Eddie had given him, he could instead take the out Gareth had given.

The option reminded him of Alice in Wonderland (Gareth’s actual favorite movie, even if he tells everyone else it's The Empire Strikes Back)

Specifically when Alice was lost, standing before a split path and asking advice from the Cheshire Cat.

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" Alice asks.

The Cheshire Cat spins its head, smiling its smile as it answers;“ That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."

Steve proved himself to be a stronger man that Gareth had given him credit for, and took the harder path.

"My parents are home." He said, eyes glued to the TV in front of him, as if that would make the conversation easier.

Perhaps it did.

Eddie to his credit, didn't treat the declaration as anything important. "Yeah? They bring you something nice back from New York?"

"Florida this time and no."

Steve fussed with a thread on his sweater for a moment, a single yellow thread unspooling from the end. It looked like he’d been tugging at it a lot, a small imperfection on an otherwise expensive looking piece of clothing.

"Apparently I've been such a disappointment they're demanding I get a job." He began again. "They want me to learn the realities of hard work."

Gareth traded puzzled glances with Eddie.

Steve had never shied from hard work.

Everyone had heard the story of how he’d won over every coach in Hawkins' High’s favor. It was practically school legend, since he was the first freshmen to take up and finish some bullshit exercise challenge they hosted every year.

The guy even had a herd of some of the most obnoxious children he looked after, without pay.

There was no way the source of whatever was eating at him was a summer job.

Or perhaps, not just a summer job.

"Summer jobs fucking suck, but I hear that new mall’s finally finished.” Gareth said hesitantly. “You could probably get in somewhere there before you head off to college.”

"I'm not going to college. Didn't get into any." Steve said flatly.

Ah-ha.

"I only applied to the one Nancy made me." He added, still refusing to look at either of them. "Couldn't bring myself to apply to any of the others."

Which--odd, but it wasn't the oddest thing ever. Some people just didn't like school, or traditional learning methods.

No matter how much Gareth's counselor insisted otherwise.

"My dad found that out too." Steve said after a moment.

"College isn't the fucking answer to life." Gareth continued. "There's plenty of other things you can do."

Eddie’s head cocked, like a dog who’d been presented with a puzzle.

Steve shrugged. "That's not my issue with it, but the old man thinks it is. He keeps insisting that the free rides are over now." His voice kicked into a deep mockery of his fathers at the end, the condescending tone coming through loud and clear. “Thinks I'm here to screw my girlfriend and party my life away. Wouldn't hear me about not wanting to go to college, at all. Definitely didn't care that I broke up with Nancy." The last part was muttered, almost said more to himself and for himself than it was for them.

Eddie’s head tilted the other way.

"Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do?" Gareth asked. He figured it they knew, they might be at least able to help.

He got a shrug in response.

Gareth was about to open his mouth--probably to put his foot in it, but hell if Steve wanted help brainstorming what he did want to do with his life, or at least get positive support from someone who wasn't a rich asshole, it might as well start here.

Eddie beat him to the punch though, because as usual, Eddie was able to track the weird unspoken thing that no one else could pick up on.

"It's the kids, isn't it?" Eddie asked softly. Reverently. "You don't want to leave Hawkins, because of the kids."

Steve took another sip of beer, waving off the joint Gareth offered him. For someone who'd come to smoke he'd barely touched it or the beer, but then no one here would push.

It was pretty obvious, (to Gareth anyway) that the weed had been a flimsy excuse to begin with.

"When those damn kids started trying to trap the--dogs." Steve started, correcting his slip so smoothly Gareth almost didn't pick up that he'd intended to say something else. “I was the only damn adult they could find.”

Steve gave up fiddling with his sweater to tug angrily at his beer tab, twisting and pulling at it.

"They had figured out where the dogs would be. Had an entire meat bucket they wanted to use as bait and but I was the only damn person to try and at least wrangle the little shits. You wanna know how they found me?" He picked up steam now, and Eddie couldn't even be satisfied that he'd managed to hit the nail on the head because clearly whatever was happening here was the actual thing Steve needed to get off his chest.

"Football practice?" Gareth asked mostly to fill in the tension-filled pause, and then ducked from the swat Eddie aimed his way.

Steve blew out a harsh, mocking breath.

"Dustin found me on the way to Nancy's house, where I was planning on apologizing. Had flowers and everything."

Oh.

Steve's tone said a hell of a lot more than that, the raw emotion making Gareth's own stomach roll.

A careful glance showed an equally punched-out expression on Eddie's face, the metalhead having physically reared back like Steve's words had struck him.

"What were you apologizing for?" He asked, recovering faster than Gareth could.

"Honestly man? I don't know." Steve laughed then, a harsh little disbelieving noise. "I just knew Nancy had said--well she said some shit while drunk, and wasn't able to say some shit sober, and I realized after that maybe I--I rushed her or something you know?"

He ran a hand through his hair, a self soothing behavior. "Or that I did, fuck I don't know. She's Nancy Wheeler, she's smarter than me by a longshot, so if she was mad, than I figured I must be at fault." Steve shrugged, like that was a fact of life.

Eddie interrupted immediately. "She's not smarter than you."

"I--what?"

"Nancy isn't smarter than you.' Eddie repeated firmly. "She's booksmart, Stevie. School smart. Nancy Wheeler absolutely owns tests and papers and things you need to study for, and she’s a hell of a researcher--but she's not people smart."

"What?" Steve repeated incredulously and there Gareth caught a flash of bitchy Steve.

The real one, who'd been shoved aside by the apathetic version.

"Have you ever seen that girl get fixated on something? She's tenacious, gets her teeth in and won't let go.” Eddie snapped his teeth, shaking his head while growling like a dog.

Gareth rolled his eyes, but a ghost of a smile graced Steve’s face.

“But she hasn't figured out how that hurts people yet. She's caught up in getting the results. She's not intentionally unkind, she's just--a little out of touch." Eddie flopped back against the couch, making a grabby gesture for the joint Gareth now held. “People like you--”

Here, he poked Steve in the chest, before reaching past him to wave his hand obnoxiously in Gareth’s face for the joint (and get smacked at for the effort) “are people smart.”

"That's not--no." Steve protested head jerking from Eddie's fingers to Eddie's face, but it was weak, his eyes wide as saucers.

"Yes.” Eddie mocked, but it was in jest, proven by the easy, soft smile he gave Steve. “You said it yourself. The kids go to you, man. They go to you even now, when Nancy or Jonathan could be driving them all over town. You get people; how they work, how they tick, what makes them happy or sad, and people are drawn to you because of that.”

“Jonathan drives.” Steve muttered in disagreement.

“And yet we all witnessed the clown car act when all those kids came out of your backseat two weekends ago.” Eddie refuted. “You’re just as smart as Nancy is, Steve. Just in a different way.”

Steve frowned.

“My parents don’t see it like that.”

“Your parents can get fucked, Sweetheart.”

That was pushing it, but Steve didn't comment on the nickname. Never commented on any nicknames Eddie came up with, beyond the occasional eye roll.

Which is right about when the phone rang.

They all glanced towards it, then down at their respective watches.

It was well past midnight.

"Think that's Wayne?" Gareth asked, eyebrows raising as Eddie stood to answer the phone.

His friend just shrugged, before picking up.

"Munson Mortuary, you stab em we slab em." He chirped as he pressed the phone to his ear.

"Tiffy-Taffy isn't it kinda late for--whoa." Eddies easy smile flipped, back going ramrod straight. "Slow down, what happened?" And oh, shit, that was Eddie's "somethings wrong and I'm going to fix it" voice.

Gareth sat up, making sure the joint Eddie had put down was out as he stared worriedly at Eddie.

"Okay. Gareth and Steve are with me, we're all coming." Eddie finished, prompting Steve to also sit up. "Stay there and for the love of God, tell Stewart not to touch anything else."

"What happened." Steve and Gareth demanded as one.

It'd be funny if the look on Eddie's face wasn't so serious.

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to break my promise about not going to the lab, Steve." He said, a hand going to tug anxiously at his hair.

"What?" Steve said, immediately on the defensive.

Then; "Why?"

"Because all our darling friends went to the Hawkin's lab without us. Apparently they ran into some kids on the way and now Stewart's stuck in a hole."

“All of them?” Gareth questioned, because sure, yeah he could see Stewart doing it. Could see Grant and even Jeff really, but Tiffany? Out exploring an abandoned lab that had killed people?

On a school night?

"She's gonna give us the full story when we get there, she called from the nearest payphone. Had some kid who kept interrupting her so she just gave me the basics, but apparently Stewart is really stuck, and for some reason the damn kids won't let anyone try to get him from some other door. They keep saying it's not safe or some shit." Eddie's anxious tugging grew as he moved to snatch up his wallet and keys, walking and talking as it were.

Gareth had expected a reaction out of Steve then, but what he hadn't expected was Steve to surge to his feet in a near panic.

"Kids!?" He shouted, eyes wide and frantic.

Eddie flinched, but Gareth knew immediately what the jock was thinking.

"You don't think they're your feral pack of kids--do you?" He asked.

"It's always them so yes, yes I do." Steve snarled and for the first time that week, the guy looked alive.

Gareth just wished it was under better circumstances.

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arotechno · 3 years

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Jughead (2015), Issues 9-11: Discussion and Commentary

This brings us to the first arc written by Ryan North, who saw that the aroace Jughead train had left the station and simply could not resist tagging along for the ride. If you’ve followed anything about Jughead as a character at all, then you’ve probably seen many screenshots from these three issues before. It’s the Sabrina arc (that’s right, as in the teenage witch)!

I have a lot of analysis at the end of this one, so buckle up!

The gang ends up at Pop’s, as usual, where Jughead meets the shop’s new mascot, a talking burger lady. Jughead is, unsurprisingly, thrown off his game by this. After all, burgers are his one true love, but girls? He doesn’t really have an interest in them. It’s a confusing moment for him, and when his friends witness this, well… they assume he’s got a crush on her.

This is an iconic page in the “aro Jughead” canon. Here we have Betty trying really hard to be a good friend and doing what in her mind is the best for him, trying to help him through what she and the others perceive as his first crush. Jughead, meanwhile, is diving headfirst into a spiral of confusion (and later, discomfort) at the idea of having any sort of interest in another person.

I want to give my utmost respect to Ryan North for explicitly having Jughead say that he doesn’t get crushes. It’s not the only time that North does this during this arc, and I think it makes all the difference between making this awkward and relatable rather than making it seem like Jughead is being stripped of or “cured” of being aro.

Betty pushes Jughead to talk to Sabrina (the burger lady—it’s Sabrina), and after a while of running into each other day in and day out as Jughead frequents Pop’s on a regular basis, they strike up a friendship. Jughead has gotten what he wanted—to be friends with the cool burger lady—and he seems genuinely satisfied.

…But unfortunately, things do not go as planned for Jughead. The next time they see each other, Sabrina asks Jughead out. And Jughead, in true stereotypical oblivious aro fashion, agrees, without realizing until it is much, much too late that what he has just agreed to is a date. Like, a real date.

If you think about it, Jughead has probably never been asked on a real date before. And this is something I ABSOLUTELY would have done (and may still do today, if I’m completely honest with myself) as a teenager. Jughead’s immediate regret is so palpable here, and so relatable to me as an aromantic.

In his panic, Jughead turns to his friends for help. They are… not helpful. They’re trying to be helpful, sure, but whereas Jughead doesn’t really seem to want to go through with this at all, his friends are more set on giving him romantic advice (with varying degrees of usefulness). Jughead really has to go out of his way to defend himself and insists on multiple occasions that he thinks the girl in the burger costume is cool and interesting, but that he doesn’t like-like her, he doesn’t even really know her!

Unfortunately for Jughead, he ends up going on the date. And who does he call for help? His only other openly queer friend (I say openly because let’s be real with ourselves, none of those kids are cishet), Kevin Keller.

And okay, this scene with Kevin is genuinely kind of funny. You get the impression that Kevin has had a lot of practice dealing with straight bullshit, and that he’s more than a little disappointed that Jughead’s “big emergency” turned out to be something this totally mundane and not worth his time.

Ultimately, Kevin is also super not helpful, even after Jughead steals his phone in an attempt to get him to come to the table and diffuse the awkward situation Jughead has found himself in. So Jughead resorts to what I can only assume is plan Z, which is to call Archie for backup.

Only semi-related, I really love the way Ryan North writes conversations between these two. It just feels really genuine and believable. And anyway, I don’t know what Jughead was expecting, but resident himbo Archie Andrews is of no help to him, and only ends up making things a hell of a lot worse.

This leads to Sabrina rushing off to the bathroom and casting multiple spells to try to get Jughead to at least play along, if not outright fall in love with her, all of which fail spectacularly and only end up making her far angrier with him. I don’t blame her for being upset—the date was a total disaster, and right at the moment Jughead was about to be honest with her, Archie showed up and made things worse. Sabrina storms out, and vows that she’ll get revenge on Jughead for this, somehow.

All of Sabrina’s subsequent spells on Jughead also backfire. She tries to make him fail his classes, and he passes with flying colors; she tries to make him spend the whole day with resident asshole Reggie, but he ends up befriending him against all odds. She even ends up unleashing a giant eldritch horror by accident, and—well, that’s not important.

In the end, Jughead decides to make things right. He never meant to hurt Sabrina, and she seems to be in a tough spot, having just moved to town, so he brings her some food as a peace offering and explains what really happened. And Sabrina is… surprisingly receptive, in fact more receptive than Jughead’s friends were when he came to them for help, despite the fact that this is something they should already understand about him. Being upset with Jughead wasn’t doing her any favors, so Sabrina already seems to be at peace with what happened and is more than willing to forgive him and be his friend despite all that transpired between them.

This is a really great scene. There’s a nuance to it—the way Jughead acted on their date was unfair, both to Sabrina and to himself. He needed to be honest from the beginning, but instead, he just kept trying to escape. At the same time, Sabrina gets it, and it wasn’t very cool of her to try to use magic to get what she wanted, either (not that Jughead knows she did that).

Jughead helps Sabrina re-enroll in her old school and quit her job at Pop’s to move back in with her aunts, so that she can live out the rest of her teenage years the way she’s supposed to. Afterwards, Sabrina and Jughead both seem really happy, and thus volume two ends on a positive, quiet note.

I really like this arc, for the reasons I’ve already stated and more. It’s funny and awkward and endearing (I say that a lot about this series, don’t I?), and it portrays a realistic and relatable aromantic problem without it being aboutaromanticism. It’s more about Jughead being honest about his feelings and making a new friend than about Jughead being aro, even though that contextualizes the situation. A great deal of the series is about that—Jughead being honest with himself and others. In the first arc, it’s Jughead shaking off a persona of apathy. In the second, it’s Jughead being honest with Archie about their friendship and the way Archie’s behavior has been making him feel. Here, it’s about Jughead being honest about who he is at his core, and accepting it about himself—and Sabrina accepts it, too, no questions asked. Even if he never says “I’m aromantic,” the sentiment is there plain as day, and it’s a refreshing beat for the story to land on.

That said, I do have a bone to pick with this arc. There’s a line in the sand here between Zdarsky and North. In the last arc, we saw Zdarsky portray that really subtle but meaningful interaction between Archie and Jughead, in which Archie seems not only keenly aware of Jughead being aromantic—even without the word—but also tacitly supportive of him, such that he knows immediately when he’s crossed a line. Here, we see Ryan North take a bit of a step back from that, such that Archie may be aware of Jughead’s orientation but seems way too quick to assume all that’s changed the moment there’s even a sliver of possibility that Jughead has a crush. That’s the reality of having different writers stepping in to interpret the same characters in loosely connected stories like this, but it still bothers me. I prefer Zdarsky’s style of storytelling in general, but in particular I also prefer his portrayal of Archie, as much as Ryan North’s on-the-nose aro moments and undying love for Reggie make me very happy. As a whole, nobody ever stops to ask Jughead what he wants, they only tell him what they think Sabrina wants. Jughead says so himself:

I suppose one could make the argument that Jughead’s friends, or even Jughead himself, are only really aware of the asexual bit (if at all—for all we know Veronica and Reggie have no idea, for example) and that’s why they don’t only never mention aromanticism but also sometimes seem ignorant of it. It’s possible that the aro side of Jughead’s orientation is still something he doesn’t have the words for, despite it being a truth he knows about himself, and in fact I think that would have been an interesting angle to take, had this series continued beyond 15 issues. But what I have an issue with isn’t so much the fact that Jughead’s friends are unhelpful (because let’s be real, sadly a lot of us have been there), but the fact that never are they asked to apologize for pushing him to do something he so clearly didn’t want to do. Whether he or they know he’s aromantic or not, he was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of going on this date—and not just due to a lack of experience. I would have liked it had Archie, or Betty, or Kevin apologized, or even once asked him what he really wanted. Betty comes the closest, by talking it out with him in the first place, but even she still earnestly pushes him to go through with the date anyway.

Anyway, there are two arcs left for me to discuss, and frankly I’m not as enthused by either of them as I was for these past three, for a variety of reasons. The Ryan North train continues for one more arc, and then it’s on to Mark Waid and Ian Flynn’s big finish. Those two updates might come a little slower. Until then, I was going to include a compilation of Jughead looking uncomfortable, but I've only got one image slot left thanks to tumblr, so instead I leave you with this:

Same, Jughead. Huge same.

#mr. north i promise i respect you #techno's jughead reread #aro #aromantic #aro jughead #ace jughead #aroace jughead #jughead #jughead jones #jughead comics #op #long post

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five-rivers · 3 years

Note

So first, I just want to say that I love Mortified, especially the arcs involving Ereshkigal and Innana. The whole thing is absolutely incredible, and I'm always thrilled to see an update. Second, I was rather hoping to offer you a prompt I've had swirling about my head. What if there is some sort of research facility exploring "that which is unknown and previously thought to be impossible" (i.e. magic but they don't call it that because people don't really know about magic and ghosts in this AU) and Danny's class is invited to go on a field trip there. At first, everything is normal, but just after the class leaves the researchers realize that their instruments show that some sort of Eldritch Horror is nearby and they start freaking out, but it's just Danny. I don't know where else this would go though.

Mr. Lancer chewed on the end of his pen. It was a disgusting habit, he knew, but he could never quite get himself to kick it, especially when he had a problem to confront.

Said problem was, presently, that enough of his students had expressed an interest in careers in ectology and paranormal science that he really had to give them a relevant field trip. Unfortunately, there were very few reputable options for such a field trip. The Fentons were unsafe, Axion Labs refused to give tours, the GIW were essentially a government sponsored hate group. Most other ‘ghost hunting agencies’ were outright scams.

But there had to be something nearby. Or at least in the state. Maybe not something that explicitly or solely dealt with ghosts, but something.

Maybe...

Oh!

He shifted to sit straighter in his chair. That would work. He started typing an email.

“We got a what?” repeated Johannsson.

“A field trip request,” repeated Deer.

“Like... from a school?” asked Johannsson, cautiously.

“A high school,” confirmed Deer, sounding rather stunned.

“Do they... know what we do here?”

“Evidently,” said Deer.

“Like, they know we research magic and telepathy and stuff.”

“Yes.”

“And astral projection, higher-dimensional beings, alternate universes, that kind of thing? Fringe science?”

“He says the junior class is interested in the ‘paranormal sciences.’”

“Wow,” said Johannsson, finally bringing his coffee up to his mouth and sipping at it cautiously. “Where,” he started, “where are they from?”

“Um,” said Deer, peering at her computer screen. “Casper High. One sec.” She started typing. “It’s in Amity Park? Do you think it’s a joke?”

“Ah,” said Johannsson. “No, that tracks, actually, if it’s Amity Park. We’ve got some weird readings on file from there, if you look it up.”

“It’s close,” said Deer. “If we get readings, why don’t we have a presence there?”

“Another agency called dibs first,” said Johannsson. “We have enough trouble. No need to step on toes.”

Deer looked up at Johannsson incredulously. “We fight eldritch abominations from the edge of reality,” she said. “Is the boss really worried about stepping on toes?”

“Hey, that’s how we get funding,” said Johannsson, shrugging. “We don’t want to end up like MKUltra.”

“MKUltra was a scam, Steve. And also mostly illegal.”

“Yeah?”

Deer shrugged. “Anyway, should I send this on, or...?”

“Yeah, go ahead. The boss will probably get a kick out of it, if nothing else.”

“I would not have told the boss about this if I knew I’d be the one babysitting a bunch of teenagers,” said Deer through a clenched smile. She jerked on the hem of her blouse, not used to the more formal clothes she was wearing on this momentous occasion.

“Yeah,” said Johannsson, “but it isn’t like we get a lot of people coming into this profession for this profession. And they’re kids. So be nice.”

“I’m always nice,” grumbled Deer.

“Well, look like it,” said Johannsson, elbowing her. He caught sight of the yellow school bus. “Here they come now.”

They waited until most of the students had gotten off the bus to approach.

“Hi,” said Johannsson, “you must be Mr. Lancer.”

“That’s me,” said the rather frazzled-looking teacher. “Come on kids, let’s get settled down. Listen to our guides. Let them introduce themselves.”

“Yeah, hey,” said Johannsson, waving. “Welcome to the Edge Institute, where we study that which is unknown and often thought to be impossible.”

“Hi,” said Deer, frowning at one group of students in particular. Johannsson followed her eyes.

The trio in question didn’t seem particularly out of the ordinary. Except... Well, there was a reason Deer worked here.

“I’m Steve Johannsson,” he said, getting back on track. “This is Sylvia Deer. We mostly work in report processing and assessment, but that brings us into contact with all our other departments, so we’re more than suited to show you around.”

Sylvia put her thumbs up. “Yep,” she said.

“Most of what we work with isn’t terribly dangerous, however, there are exceptions to that rule, and we have some classified projects, so don’t wander off. Stay within view of us at all times.”

“What if we need to use the bathroom?” asked a student.

“Well, that’s different,” admitted Johannsson. “We’ve got a couple scheduled stops, so make sure you go at those times. Other than that, don’t go through any doors we don’t open for you and don’t touch anything without asking first. Got it?”

There was a soft murmur of assent.

“Come on, kids,” said Mr. Lancer, clapping, “he asked a question.”

The murmur became slightly more unanimous.

“Right,” said Deer. She jerked her head towards the building. “Let’s go.”

“Anyway,” said Johannsson, “this is reception, which is the only part of the building freely open to the general public. If you do need to go to the bathroom, they’re right there. We’re going to hang out here for a few minutes, get everyone taken care of.”

Most of the students made their way to the restrooms immediately, however, that one trio stayed put.

“Hey,” said the smallest of the group, “do you guys hear that?”

“Hear what?” asked Johannsson.

“Um,” said the boy, slightly rocking forward on the balls of his feet, “there’s, like, an alarm or a siren going off? It’s really faint, but is everything okay?”

“We’d get a text,” said Deer. “Not to mention an announcement on the PA system.”

“And the radios,” said Johannsson, tapping his.

“Right,” said Deer, nodding. “Maybe you have tinnitus or something?”

“Isn’t that recurrent, though?” asked Johannsson. “He’d know if he had it.”

“I do not have tinnitus,” said the boy, firmly. “I really think there’s an alarm going off. Or maybe someone has a mosquito ringtone. Gosh, I hate those...”

Johannsson glanced at Deer and noted that she, once again, was staring at the children rather intensely. Mostly at the boy, but that made sense since he was the one speaking.

“Danny has good hearing,” said the girl, who was decked out in an array of gothic and mystic symbols. One which, on closer inspection, would probably be fairly effective at passive protection.

Johannsson wondered if that was the result of research, intuition, or sheer luck.

Perhaps that was why Deer was looking at them like that?

“Maybe I’m just imagining it,” said Danny, shaking his head. “Let’s go to the bathrooms. There’s probably a line by now.”

Once the kids were gone, and Johannsson and Deer were more or less alone in the entry hall, Johannsson turned to Deer. “Think we should call Detection?”

“Yeah,” said Deer, pulling out her phone. “There’s something not right, here.”

“Maybe he’s a sensitive?” suggested Johannsson. “He could be picking up a project.”

“Or maybe he’s like you and he’ll break every piece of tech invented in the last twenty-five years as soon as he touches it. Or he was cursed by a goddess, like Vicky in Containment. Or maybe he just has tinnitus and is in denial. I still don’t like this.” She finished dialing Detection and brought the phone to her ear. “Hey, I-” She pulled the phone away, glared at it and cautiously brought it back. “What’s going on? An incursion? Then why aren’t we on lockdown?”

Johannsson’s blood ran cold. “An incursion? How big?”

Deer held up a hand. “That doesn’t- You know we can’t detect everything! It doesn’t matter if nothing else gets triggered, the protocol is lockdown until we can determine- If you had done your job, the kids would still be on the damn bus!”

At this point, Deer’s shouts had drawn the attention and worry of Mr. Lancer and several of the students who had emerged from the bathrooms.

“Is everything alright?” asked the man.

Johannsson glanced at Deer. “No,” he decided, just before the security shutters slammed down and the emergency lighting came on. “I’m really sorry,” he said, “but it seems like some of our colleagues were overly excited about your tour and didn’t, er, follow proper procedure following a, uh, event. So-”

The PA system stuttered into life. “Attention. A level seven entity has been detected. All nonessential personnel, please proceed to the nearest shelter. Repeat-”

“Seven?” echoed Johannsson, starting to sweat. “Seven?”

“It’s probably a false alarm,” said Deer, putting away her phone and smiling in the way only people who feel very ill do. “None of the other incursion detectors went off. No radiation associated with dimensional breaks or anything. We should still get everyone to a shelter. Maybe you can round up everyone from the bathrooms?”

“Right,” said Mr. Lancer, who was enviably calm.

“Is an entity like a ghost or something?” asked one of the kids, who clearly weren’t grasping the gravity of the situation. “How strong is a seven?”

Level seven entities couldn’t be described in terms of strength alone. They were eldritch, uncaring gods that tore at the fabric of reality with their very presence, creatures that had no business being on the material plane. They shed bright magic and dark science in their wake, leaving those unfortunate enough to see them grappling with madness that was not.

He really wanted to know what was happening in Amity Park (ghosts?) that made these people so blasé about the alarms, flashing lights, and security shutters.

Wait a second.

He unclipped his radio from his belt. “This is Johannsson, calling detection. Can you describe the signal to me? Over.”

The radio crackled. “Slowly rising over the last thirty minutes, peaking and plateauing in the last ten. Why? Do you have something? Over.”

The bus had arrived ten minutes ago. Johannsson closed his eyes. “Maybe. Will inform. Over and out.”

He looked over at the bathroom where Danny and his two friends were emerging. Danny had his hands pressed over his ears. Whenever the overhead lights flashed off, the boys eyes reflected green. Just for a second.

Yeah. Johannsson had something. The question was, what was he going to do about it?

#danny phantom #not quite your prompt but...#close?#ask #answer #prompt #prompt fill

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sunnysviolin · 3 years

Note

Sometimes, when sunny visits kels house for a sleepover, (or just anyones house except for basils) the host would always wake up to:

A missing sunny (who is most likely in some weird ass place like the roof)

A sunny that it staring at you from the foot of the bed or beside it

A sunny that stares from the doorway (he stares alot)

A sunny that is playing bo en my time at an unreasonable hour but at a reasonable volume (or vise versa)

Alright so a different nonnie also sent me “How many times do you think sunny scares people by staring at them from the foot of the bed / beside them when they wake up?” So I’m....combining these two XD Also if you guys like....resend things can you say they’re a resend LOL bc if I have another Cho double take situation I’m going to backflip into the sun. Also don’t resend more than twice (i’m gonna be putting that in my bio bc....yeah don’t do it makes me anxious D:)

Okay mini housekeeping thing aside! This got long it’s under a read more because it’s long, but it’s full of shenanigans, sleepovers, and our local fave cryptid Sunny

I’m going to focus this in on post-canon, because I think that Sunny’s ultimate cryptid energy flows forth in his teen years. Also I really want to include the hooligans in on this (I’m...love them)

So pre-canon Sunny and Mari’s house was the go to location for their group of six. They were almost always there, but there was some unspoken rules.

You called before you came over (Only Kel didn’t follow this rule, but he always knocked and waited patiently at the door) and you had to be invited to stay for dinner. If not you went home when Sunny’s mom called a fifteen minute warning before dinner. There was also no arguing within the house. If there was an issue that needed to be addressed, Mari and Sunny’s parents would immediately send everyone home.

Post-canon Mari is gone and the house has been sold. Hero and Kel’s house becomes the go to hang out house after that. Their house is nearly night and day to Mari and Sunny’s

Mari and Sunny’s house was always neat and tidy and very quiet. Their parents generally left the TV off and didn’t use the radio, so unless one of the two children were making noise, everything would be silent. Kel and Hero’s house is in constant motion and activity. Sally is usually either babbling or screaming, music is always playing on the radio, and their main form of communication is friendly yelling at one another. Kel and Hero’s house also has an open door policy- anyone can walk in at anytime and they all know where the spare keys are hidden.

Post-canon I see a quick friendship building between Aubrey’s gang and Basil Sunny and Kel. Hero enjoys them all, but it’s not really his scene now that he’s spent a year or so at college. He will get brought along for some adventures, and he’s always up for hanging around the house with them, but when it gets to be a bigger group he prefers to just let them have fun.

When it’s just his four kids, Hero is always a part of the group though.

OKAY ALL OF THAT BUILDUP ASIDE LETS GET TO THE ACTUAL POINT OF THIS ASK

So this is when school is in session and Hero is back at college. Kel tells Aubrey that Sunny is coming up for the long weekend, and they should all do a sleepover at his house like old times. She agrees and they arrange it with Basil. Kim overhears their plans and she has FOMO so she arranges herself to be there when they tell Basil

Normally Kel makes it a point to try and include Aubrey’s friends (who are slowly just becoming friends) but this time he just pretends she isn’t there and tells Basil to come right after school and they can drive together to get Sunny.

Kim weedles it out of Aubrey later that day when they’re alone in gym class. The reason that they didn’t immediately invite her and the others? Sunny is apparently weird at night

Kim fires back that Sunny is always a little weird, but Aubrey is being fully serious. Unfortunately all that does is make Kim more curious. She goes to find Kel afterward and half asks/half demands an invitation to the sleepover. Kel seems a little awkward about her involving herself, but he agrees that she and the others can join in if they like.

Aubrey and the others arrive

Kim soon finds out that Aubrey was 100% right. Sunny is...weird at night.

At around 10:00 pm, Sunny disappears. Basila nd Aubrey went into the kitchen to make popcorn, and Kel was busy fiddling with the TV to get the movie to start. When he turns back to the couch, he asks where Sunny is. They realize Sunny has vanished.

Aubrey and Basil come in with the bowls of snacks, and Kel asks them if they’ve seen Sunny. Basil says to check the roof.

The roof. The hooligans all laugh (Basil is a sweet kid when you get to know him, but his nerves make even his jokes strange) The other three don’t laugh. In fact Kel gets up and goes to the door.

The hooligans follow out bewildered, and Sunny is o n t h e r o o f. CASUALLY. JUST THERE PETTING AN ORANGE CAT WHO IS LOUNGING PURRING NEXT TO HIM. AND KEL AND AUBREY AND BASIL DONT REACT??? Kel just waves?? and Sunny waves back???

“We’re gonna watch Insidious now, I know you haven’t seen that one before. Wanna come in?” “Kay” “Do you want to bring your cat in with you? I’ll put Hector on his leash” “Yes please”

Then the three just walk back and tell the hooligans to follow them in. Sunny got himself up so Sunny can get himself down.

It’s only the beginning of the madness. Sunny walks in holding the still purring orange cat and settles himself down in his specific corner of the couch (They were prewarned not to sit in Sunny’s spot) Aubrey cuts Kim off before she can ask about the roof, and starts the movie. Kim looks over at the cat, and it locks eyes on her, hissing.

The movie begins and Sunny will randomly speak but only to say when a character is going to die/be scared. Right before it happens. Every single time. Didn’t Kel say before that he hadn’t seen this movie?? It doesn’t matter Sunny keeps going

A ghost. A ghost. Lost in an alternate dimension by shamanic journey. It’s bizarre. The cat continues to purr a rusty old engine noise in Sunny’s lap, periodically looking at one of the hooligans and hissing, choosing a different one every time. Who’s cat is that????

They finish the movie and start to play board games. They pick monopoly and decide to divvy up into teams. Kim immediately claims Aubrey, Vance decides to go with Kel and Kel grabs Mikhael to create a trio. Charlie and Sunny silently sit beside each other, and everyone assumes that makes them a team. Angel pulls Basil to his side and they’re prepped to play the game.

Kim likes to consider herself a pretty good monopoly player, and Aubrey is a whiz with money and numbers, so she assumes they have this in the bag.

She did not account for the Sunny factor.

Sunny stares her down through the entire time. Kim is sure he doesn’t blink. She forgets to bid on auctions for properties and gives him extra rent money. They go bankrupt first, and Sunny turns his eye onto Kel who just laughs and gives Sunny finger guns. Sunny finger guns back (his face still a blank slate) and proceeds to also take all of Kel’s money.

They go to bed shortly after, and Kim is relieved. Nothing also weird can happen. Now she just has to sleep.

She wakes up in the middle of the night and adjust her position, turning over to face the other side of teh room. Four shining eyes stare back at her, catching the dim light from the kitchen. Kim shakily grabs her phone and turns on the flashlight, whirling around to see Sunny staring at her, his orange cat on top of his head.

She wakes all the rest of them with her shriek of terror. The group of four quickly settle to sleep once more, even Sunny crashing down next to Aubrey and Basil. hissing cat caught firmly in his arms.

She and the other hooligans stay up for a bit, frantically whispering about the oddness of the situation. They resolve to leave early in the morning, and to distance themselves as much as they can from...whatever Sunny is. They’re certainly glad he doesn’t go to their school anymore.

The next morning, the group of four wake up before the hooligans and cook a big breakfast. They put the phone on speaker and chat with Hero as they do so, catching up on his latest college stories. Bo en is playing from the cd player in the corner of the kitchen, kept low so as not to wake the others.

The hooligans creep downstairs and peer inside. The scene is shockingly...normal.

Sunny is still carrying his cat, but now Kel is feeding it tiny bits of bacon and it is stretching out of Sunny’s arms to reach the next delicious morsel. He’s chatting with Hero over the phone, speaking in full long sentences which is a rarity for Sunny. He even laughs quietly at a joke Hero tells.

Kim tries to translate the horror she felt last night into this morning, but it’s not there. Sunny doesn’t seem like an eldritch horror during the day. Just another teenager happy to be with people he enjoys.

Hero hangs up shortly after, and the group of four settle back into a placid silence. Aubrey breaks it by turning to the others

“I know it was weird, but I’m glad that they came for last night.” the three boys agree, and Sunny leans against the counter near Aubrey so she can scratch one hand under his cat’s neck while still flipping pancakes. When he speaks, his voice is near silent, but they all hear it anyway.

“They’re nice. They didn’t treat me different.”

The hooligans share a look and simultaneously agree to stay for breakfast.

#omori #omori headcanons #omori headcanon #omori sunny #omori basil #omori kel #omori aubrey #omori hero #mentioned lol #omori kim #omori scooter gang #hooligans #omori hooligans #cryptid sunny

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docholligay · 3 years

Text

WHAT I AM BETWEEN FOR PITCH ME

These are the ones I’m struggling to decide between:

Picnic at Hanging Rock (preferably 2018 miniseries version but the 1975 movie will do): Posh girls boarding school in colonial Australia attempts to apply a veneer of gentility to both its students and faculty, but English manners ring pale and hollow when faced with the untamed mystery of the Outback and the cruelty of the class system. The headmistress is a con artist, the teachers are fleeing scandal, and the girls are inconveniences put out of the way. The disappearance of three students is the first crack that slowly shatters the mirage. Were all the lies self-serving, or was there a genuine kinship? When will the bodies be found? What happened on Hanging Rock?

God I love class shit so much, and con artistry! I can’t believe I haven’t seen this or read it.

Webcomic Unsounded: A world of horrors ranging from the human of greed, nationalism, and zealotry to the eldritch of monsters and dimensions that devour souls. Yet there's a thread of hope. "Courage redeems this world." You can't rely on gods to right injustice. They (theoretically) made this cruel world, after all. The world can only be healed by the actions of the people who inhabit it, and everyone has the chance and ability to make that choice. You can't choose once and claim righteousness, though. You must choose over and over again, and live with the consequences of every choice you make.

I think the reasons I would love this are fairly obvious, and if it is half as good as it sounds I’m sure I would enjoy it immensely. Only thing stopping me is I don’t really have any clue how to liveblog a webcomic.

Lonesome Dove. 1989. miniseries. Robert Duvall plays a Texas Ranger in the days when "the Old West" was coming to a close. Him and cattle herders plan on riding from Texas to Montana for one last adventure. Drama ensues. (sidenote) Apparently my grandfather watched reruns of this show on repeat for months, when it first came out.

I FUCKING LOVE LONESOME DOVE. Jill walked down the aisle to the theme from Lonesome Dove at our wedding. Lonesome Dove is not my FAVORITE Western novel, but it is in fact the best Western novel written thus far in literary history. Gus and Call’s friendship is one of the best-written things I’ve ever experienced. What stops me here? It feels like cheating. I know Lonesome Dove. I OWN Lonesome Dove. i love Lonesome Dove.

But I do want to give a bonus “I laughed aloud” to these two:

Cloak and Dagger - look let's just find out if Tandy mugs a rich fuck or not

Sailor Moon, Episode 97: This episode has a many thing we all know you'd enjoy, but the main thing is: Michiru Kaioh bullying a 14 year old at the community pool, and it just happens to be Ami Mizuno! I'd say reliving such a wonderful event is a great birthday present!

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songfell-ut · 4 years

Text

Happy birthday to:

@venelona! I set out to prove that I could do a gift on time, and even if time zones have come between us, it’s totally the 4th right now for me, dammit. So here you go, stolen directly from your conversation on @lailosh‘s server and based of course on these comics.

(Omfg, I told my daughter I was happy I finished a birthday gift on time and now she’s nattering to her class on Zoom about how today is her mom’s friend’s birthday and the teacher is asking if we’re doing anything)

Anyway

The bedroom was quiet. Not too quiet—the air conditioner hummed and traffic noises filtered in from the busy street outside, as usual. It was just the quiet of an early-evening bedroom with no one in it yet, sleeping or playing on their phone or doing you-know-what…

…Not that the room’s usual occupant ever did much know-what. In fact, she never did any of it. He definitely would’ve noticed. He noticed everything.

For example, he knew the moment the sun’s last rays finally died out and warm, sweet darkness began sinking into the room, pooling under her bed and creating the ideal space for someone – something – like him to emerge.

Nightmare permitted himself a tiny grin, letting his tentacles writhe in anticipation. He’d been resting and gathering his power for over a month, building enough strength to invade the waking world. Let her think he’d grown tired of trying to reach her again after…after that, her shocking indecency, showing him all that soft warm naked skin and touching him with no he had to focus

Yes. She probably thought she’d won and driven him off with her horrible wiles! Well, what would she say when he came for her—no, when he completely platonically attacked her in her own world, where she thought she was safe? There was nowhere to run from him in her nightmares, but she could always wake up. Here, though…

Nightmare took the magical equivalent of a deep breath, running his tentacles along the barrier between his world and the reality inhabited by humans. It was a delicate process, but he used the barest touch of power to find the barrier’s weak spot, nudge the folds of subspace aside and insert his tentacles one at a why did this feel so inappropriate time, until he was through!

The space under her bed was…not spacious. In fact, if he hadn’t been so viscous, Nightmare could well have found himself stuck. It was enough to make him contemplate giving up and slipping back into his own world, where an eldritch being could stretch properly and not think terrible, untoward things from something as innocuous as penetrating into her wo—

No! As a being of infinite cosmic horror who fed on the suffering of lesser creatures, Nightmare had no intention of backing out now…not the least because he couldn’t back up any further without hitting the wall. What kind of pathetically undersized dwelling was this?

At least he knew her routine, and that she’d be in here soon enough: she was doing the dishes, and then it was time for her shower. Should he strike while she was rummaging in her closet for her favorite cotton robe, the one with the stupid pink flowers? Or lie in wait until she came in afterward, threw her towel off, and eventually got into her pajamas? …Assuming she bothered wearing any. He never watched that part, no matter how much he…well…

Nightmare squeezed his eye shut. Things would be different after tonight, he vowed. Once he’d given her another glimpse of real terror, she’d never taunt him again! He would unleash his most hideous abominations upon his not-scantily-clad victim, and her fear would make him strong enough to finally see—

—a set of dainty black paws wandering in through the half-open door. The skeletal creature froze, slipping a little further back under the bed. Since when did Frisk have a damned cat? And where was it going?! Surely the beast wasn’t stupid enough to approach him?

The cat took a few hesitant steps, then stopped and growled under its breath, tail lashing. Good! Let it make all the noise it wanted. If it got close enough to grab, he’d—

Nightmare was so busy thinking of ways to make the cat sorry for existing that he didn’t notice one of his tentacles eagerly creeping out from under the bed, reaching to grab the little animal…until the cat’s paw went whapwhapwhap and smacked him with needle-sharp claws. “Oww!” he snarled. “You…!”

The kitchen was just down the hall; to his alarm, Frisk had turned the water off. “Nero?” she called. Her footsteps drifted toward the bedroom, and Nightmare crammed himself back against the wall. “Ne—geez!” she yelped as the cat came rocketing out of her room. “What’s wrong with you?” the young woman demanded, her voice trailing after him. “Come back here and answer me, you little…!”

That was too close. Nightmare breathed a sigh of relief, and considered reaching across the room to shut the door; his powers of telekinesis had all but vanished as his…other talents developed. But no, she was an intelligent young lady, and she’d wonder why it was suddenly closed. Besides, the substance coating his limbs would leave telltale greenish-black traces. He just had to hope she wouldn’t notice the flecks of it on the carpet that had been whacked off—that had been forcibly removed by the cat clawing his tentacle.

So the skeletal abomination settled himself to wait, very patiently, as befitted a creature of his age and magical stature. He was always happy to pass the time devising new tortures to inflict upon his victims. Frisk never failed to disappoint him, provided she had clothes on, and once he’d had his way with—once he was finished platonically terrorizing her, she’d never say any ridiculous things about naked or marriage ever again!

Only a minute later, Frisk came back down the hall. “I know, Mom,” she was saying, presumably on the phone. The hall light came on; Nightmare steeled himself for the bedroom light, but to his intense relief, she went to the bathroom instead. “Yeah, I’m gonna go to bed early tonight. I’ve got new contacts, and they’re giving me a headache.” There was a rummage through her medicine cabinet, then some vaguely cloth-sounding noises. “Of course Nero’s doing fine. He just got his wet food, and…he’s already heading to the litter box again. Goody.” Sigh. “Are you guys having fun on your amazing cruise that you wouldn’t take me on?”

Ah. That explained the cat’s presence. And it was also excellent nightmare fuel: he could make her see her parents out on the ocean, having a wonderful time until, say, the walls of the ship split open and grew teeth to begin devouring the passengers, or some kind of disease started spreading that made people turn inside out…Frisk was always susceptible to body horror. Oh, yes, he knew how he could take advantage of her. …Platonically!

“Thanks, Mom,” she said loudly, breaking in on his definitely-not-filthy thoughts. “Have fun. Love you.” He heard her set something down in the kitchen, then sigh, padding back down the hall.

Nightmare settled down to wait again, only to flinch at the sound of sudden, rapid footsteps: Frisk burst into her room and leapt onto her bed with a little “Whee!” The mattress flattened beneath her weight, mashing into his skull; he cursed silently in the tongues of a thousand mortal worlds as Frisk flopped onto her back. “Oh, man, what a day,” she muttered. “Stupid contacts.” Yawn. “Don’t care about the shower, do it in the mornin’…”

That was…remarkably cute, Nightmare thought, then tried to un-think it as she rolled onto her side, relieving some of the pressure. If only they were in his realm! Her mind would be an open book, and he could effortlessly seize her subconscious and steer it in any direction he chose. In this world, he had to wait till her breathing slowed, then grip the carpet and glide out from under the bed on a layer of the noxious stuff coating his body.

Once his torso was free, he silently eased his legs out and rose to his knees. His tentacles quivered with eagerness as he started to turn toward the b—

“Gotcha!”

…If Nightmare had had any friends, and one of them had asked him the likelihood of his next victim not just taking him by surprise, but grabbing him by the neck with rubber kitchen gloves? He would have laughed, and then killed them, because they were clearly insane and he didn’t have any friends.

But by all that was unholy, his theoretical dead friend was not insane. Instead of giving Frisk a (perfectly chaste) glimpse into her own personal Hell, Nightmare found himself being scruffed like an indignant kitten and hauled toward the light switch; instead of latching onto her and ripping her flesh from her bones, his tentacles had just enough time to form a protective seal over his eye before the room was flooded with foul, searing light.

“Oh my God, shut up!” Frisk shouted over his wails of pain. “It’s just one lightbulb!” She shouldered the door open and began dragging him down the hall. “You’re not melting or anything! But if you want to, go for it—it’d probably be an improvement!”

“How dare you!” The eldritch skeleton flailed with both arms and kicked at random, to no avail. “Release me now!”

“Why?” she snapped. Nightmare made another series of agonized noises as she pulled him all the way into the brightly lit bathroom. “I’m not letting you go till you apologize and we get everything cleaned up!” She slammed the door shut and locked it for emphasis. “Got it?!”

He still couldn’t bring himself to uncover his eye. “How? How did you know—”

“The cat had a bunch of gross slime all over his paw! Who do I know that gets gunk everywhere and smells like a hot dumpster? Gee, let me think!” Frisk still had an iron grip on his neck, fingers digging between the vertebrae. With her other rubber-gloved hand, she banged open the linen closet and began pulling things out, piling them on the toilet lid. “I had to scrub it off him so he wouldn’t eat it and die or something. So then I thought to myself, Wow, Self! I already had to wash one dumb thing I didn’t want here! Why not go for a double?”

The implication hit him as she yanked a knob and started the shower full-blast. “You wouldn’t dare,” he hissed.

Frisk stopped dead. For a moment, Nightmare entertained hopes of mustering enough strength to break loose and reach the light switch. When one tentacle eased free, though, she pivoted until he was fully facing the vanity lights, holding firm as he writhed in agony. It felt like miniature suns burning into his slime and bone…

…but only for a moment. The next thing he knew, Frisk had turned him away again, leaning over to shield him from the light. “Believe it or not, I don’t like hurting you,” she said severely. “But you’re in my world now, literally, and you’re not Mr. Big Scary Hentai Monster. You’re more like a vampire in a crappy horror game—all I have to do is turn the lights on. So, you’d better behave. Got it?” Her grip somehow tightened. “Here we go. Hold your breath!”

Nightmare didn’t have time to request any further details, because she was already ripping back the shower curtain and stepping into the tub with him, holding him under the water as she pulled the curtain shut. “There! I’ve been wanting to do this for a while,” she said cheerfully, patting his topmost tentacle. “Doesn’t that feel nice?”

It did not feel nice. The hot water felt like…like…it was bad and he hated it. Yes. It was terrible, and not oddly pleasant or soothing once he got used to it, not at all like being massaged by a thousand tiny hands. In fact, he hated it so much that he relaxed, telling himself he was tricking her into dropping her guard.

Behind him, Frisk hummed in satisfaction and reached out of the curtain. Nightmare’s tentacles began to loosen almost imperceptibly, but constricted again as the human tapped on them. “Hold still. I don’t even know if this stuff hurts when it gets in your eyes…well, eye. But like I said, I don’t get off on torturing people.” Something – probably a bottle – made a sploot sound as she squeezed it. “You just smell really bad.”

Nightmare couldn’t help flinching at the first cold, rough touch of the shower loofa. “I do not ‘get off’ on it,” he informed her. “I can’t help what I am, can I?”

“Hmmm. Yeah,” she said absently. “Yeah, you absolutely can. At least, you can control what you do.” A strange floral scent filled the room as she began a brisk, gentle scrub-down, removing most of his protective slime; he unconsciously folded his legs to sit forward more comfortably, letting her angle the showerhead so that more water streamed over him. “Would you die if you went too long without scaring the crap out of someone?”

The skeletal monster had to suppress a shudder as her fingers slipped between two of the tentacles. No one had touched him like this in…ever, or at least as far back as he could remember. “Probably,” he muttered, telling himself to calm down. It was perfectly innocent, just a wretched human daring to lay hands on him, earning the most terrible punishment imaginable— “Would you die if you went for too long without eating?” he added.

Scrub. Scrub. “Well, duh. But if I want a burger, I don’t sneak into the cow’s house to taunt it first.”

Nightmare did shudder this time as her hand glided over the same spot over and over again, leaving a very sensitive layer of ectoplasmic flesh. His tentacles were stirring with interest, and the more firmly he told them to stop it, the more they all wanted to be washed. One was actually angling itself to let her rub it harder. “I…fine! Just hurry it up.”

“Aww, see? It’s not so bad,” she chirped. The tentacle stretched luxuriously, and Nightmare fought to keep another one from rising to demand the same treatment. “At this rate, you’ll be nice and clean in just a few hours!”

Hours?! He did his best to open his eye, raising one hand to protect him from the light. “You’re joking. Right?” She made an indifferent noise, and he tried to grab at the loofa with his other hand. “Let me do it, then!”

“Nope,” said Frisk, giving the shower curtain a threatening nudge with her elbow; he twitched as the light flickered around its edge. “Just relax, okay? Let your loving wife take care of you~”

He felt his entire skull flush bright green. “You are not my wife!”

The human made a pouty sound. “How can you say that, honey? After all we’ve been through together!” The scrubbing intensified. “I know you wanted more romance. Is that why you came all the way here to see me?” The scrubbing paused. “How did you get into the real world, anyway?” she asked, much more seriously.

Nightmare willed more of his tentacles to peel themselves off his skull, and to behave themselves. “With magic. Don’t waste my time with stupid questions.” The light was just a bit dimmer in here through the shower curtain – enough for the pain to start receding – and he needed to adjust to it; no point formulating an escape plan if he couldn’t see what he was doing.

Frisk slowly removed her grip from around his neck. “Okay, then. I see how it is.” She heaved a sigh, then picked up the bottle again.

This was his chance—Frisk was distracted, with both hands occupied, and his vision was clear. Nightmare grinned in silent malice, flexing his bony fingers as they lay in his lap. Most of his power was still depleted from entering this world, but he had more physical strength in one tentacle than ten mortal men. And this was one slim, soft, pliant young woman! He could take her—he could overpower her with virtually no effort!

It would be ridiculously simple: turn around, grab her, and force her to turn the lights off, for starters. Then they could talk about how she had treated him like a misbehaving cat, and—

She chose that moment to drop the body wash and make him jump. “Crap! Sorry,” Frisk said.

The monster made what he hoped was an agreeable noise and picked up the bottle, which was pretty slippery. “Here,” he murmured. “If you’re going to—”

Without warning, Nightmare sprang to his feet and whirled around, backing the startled human against the shower wall. “Now,” he snarled, “you daaaaaaaaaaaaaugh”

Frisk watched, disbelieving, as the dripping-wet monstrosity jerked backward, arms flung up to shield his eye, as though she had turned a spotlight on him and also thrown some holy water. “I was wondering if you’d noticed,” she remarked. “Did you think I was actually talking with my mom that whole time? I just didn’t want you to know I was taking my clothes off.”

“Why?!” he nearly shrieked. “Why would you do that?”

“‘Cause I didn’t want them to get gunked up! That stuff doesn’t look like it washes out. You’d better help me get it off the carpet, by the way.” Frisk chuckled, and that teasing note crept back into her voice, the one he’d heard so many times in his own nightmares: “If I lose my security deposit, it’ll be your fault. How do you plan to compensate me for that, I wonder~”

Nightmare couldn’t speak; he just emitted a stream of “Y-y-y-y-y—”

“Yyyes, I’m naked,” she agreed, retrieving the bottle. Almost against his will, Nightmare’s eye cracked open in time to watch her set down the loofa, peel the gloves off, goop some body wash onto her hand, and begin blithely rubbing it over her skin. “No offense, but I don’t want you all over me yet.”

The monster’s eye bulged so hard that Frisk snorted. “I meant this, dummy!” She indicated the slimy loofa, and leered at him. “What did you think I meant?”

It was tempting to throw himself out of the shower and hope for death’s sweet embrace, but to his steadily increasing horror, the skeleton couldn’t move his feet. As his gaze swept unwillingly up and down her body, the way her skin glistened as her hands squeezed and stroked it, Nightmare’s desire to grab her shifted…and his tentacles agreed.

Frisk was opening her mouth to say something when one appendage snaked up and began petting her shoulder, which was somehow even warmer and smoother than it looked. “Whoa,” she remarked, looking from it to him and back with wide eyes. To his dismay, her mouth quirked a little. “What happened to romance, Nightmare? Didn’t you want to dance in the moonlight, eat Peking duck, or whatever?”

“I’m n-not—” Nightmare tugged at the errant tentacle, first with his hand, then his magic. To his very dismay, Frisk was reaching up to poke at it, giggling as it brushed her cheek. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded of the world at large.

As if mocking him, another tentacle lurched at the young woman, making him stagger forward till he had to catch himself with his hands on either side of her. Frozen in place, Nightmare unwillingly watched a few errant suds trickle down her neck, sliding merrily off her collarbone and along the side of her breast before continuing to the brave new worlds beyond—

“Um,” said Frisk, still sounding more amused than perturbed. Her eyes met his, then flicked to her left meaningfully.

Aaaand of course another tentacle had slid around her wrist and along her arm. “Oh, my,” she said, bemused. Nightmare’s soul did a backflip as the young woman moved forward, the tentacles drawing her closer, till her breasts were nearly touching his soaking-wet jacket. “Are you actually coming on to me, or—eep!”

That was probably due to yet another tentacle worming around behind her and running up and down her back, eliciting a little moan. The skeleton wanted desperately to wrench himself free, or at least tell her to be quiet, but…

Frisk was flushed, her breath coming quick and shallow. Nightmare watched her hands come up to rest on his ribcage, picking off bits of slime. “What now?” she murmured.

Nightmare wanted to tell her that she’d won, and please go put on clothes now so he could leave and never come back. He also wanted to tell her that this wasn’t how he’d envisioned their next encounter, or that young women in his day knew better than to trap extradimensional beings in the shower with them; he wanted to be very stern about doing this kind of thing the right way, because she deserved the right way, not…this.

He wanted to stop himself as his fingers rose to brush her damp hair off her face and his skull drooped to rest on her bare shoulder…but he didn’t.

He didn’t want to give up and let his tentacles wind around Frisk to pull her against him, or to put his arms around her, encasing her entire body. But he did.

“Nightmare?” Frisk whispered.

It wasn’t romantic. But if she didn’t care—

Nightmare summoned his scant reserves of magic, and raised his hand long enough to snap his fingers.

The lights went out.

Not long afterward – just a few days after her parents got back and collected Nero, with only a few inquiries as to what that smell was – Frisk went on a shopping trip that raised several eyebrows: she bought several shower curtain liners, a dozen bottles each of Amber Sunrise and Moonlit Jasmine body wash, every single Stain Stick on the shelf, and a steam cleaner.

If that wasn’t strange enough, her neighbors soon started complaining about odd noises in the middle of the night, and at least one of them made rude remarks about how she had to be hoarding trash or something. When the landlord came in for an inspection, though, all he saw was a scrupulously clean apartment with a faint, lingering odor that he couldn’t identify.

It was hard not to see a heap of folded plastic in the corner of her room, but there were no bloodstains – or recent unsolved murders that he knew of – and anything else she chose to use it for was none of his business; Frisk accepted his admonishment to keep it down, whatever it was, and promised to maintain her new cleaning schedule.

Her neighbors didn’t hear much of anything after that. There was nowhere to run from him in her nightmares, but that was fine—she was in no hurry to wake up. After all, she wasn’t the one who’d been caught, was she?

#happy berfdeh #fluff #it was a choice between spicy and punctual #i know what i need to work on and spice ain't the problem

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felswritingfire · 4 years

Text

Hey, everyone!

Have some housamo dad hcs that no one asked for! This guys kind of a monster (7978 big) so it goes under the read more. I just,,,, I really like domestic parent hcs ajlskfjlksdj

I kept the kids older years vague and just kept to biological gender because I didn’t want to complicate anything, if that makes sense, just give a little personality to the kiddo/kiddos but mostly focus on the dads, you know? Anyway Enjoy!

(Also so much thanks to @summonerscenarios for helping me with some of these and reading the beta, much love!!)

(Reader is gender neutral btw)

Arsalan

OIL DAD- OIL DAD-

He’d probs have one and then ask for two more- a weird lion thing you know? So, under the assumption that you’re A) down to give birth to three or B) end up adopting three kiddos, he’d most likely end up with two girls (both a year apart from each other) and a boy (who’s three years younger than the middle girl, making him the youngest and gentlest out of his sisters)

He honestly has a bit of a “Oh shit” moment when you guys gain a kid by either a series of events or you getting pregnant, he’s lowkey freaking out

He’s never had a kid before, I mean, sure, he’s been a role model to young people for a long time, but it’s not like he’s had to raise them from when they were in diapers; and honestly, he has this vague wondering if he’s even too old to be a dad- but then she looks into his eyes and it’s like all his worries wash away and then he’s thinking out loud: “if one can do this to me, Y/N, what do you think five more would do?”

You’ve never seen him so happy and you’re almost sad when you have to shut him down. Almost. “We’re not having six children, Arsalan.”

“Ok, what about two more then?” “Arsalan.”

Jokes on you, Y/N, you have two more.

He’s super involved with all of the babies, like, there isn’t a time where Arsalan isn’t seen with them when they’re babies, since the girls are older than their brother, they were with their papa while he was with their baby brother- btw, despite them being four and three respectively, they still loved him to death- and there wasn’t a time when he wasn’t holding or touching them when they were babies

OH! He doesn’t wear any oil when he’s holding them! Since he almost shit a brick one of the times he was holding your oldest girl because he almost dropped her. His hands were so fucking oily because he just finished a riviting round of ✨Turkish Oil Wrestling✨, that he ended up flailing with her like a melted stick of butter in his hands until he managed to get her into the crook of his arm (she was giggling the entire time). Never again. He learned his lesson the first (and last) time.

Btw, you weren’t there for that, but if he ever looks at you with guilty eyes you know why

He hates diaper duty with a passion and will vehemently try to get out of it. Though, he’ll do it if you really can’t and he’ll silently accept his fate, even the girls will steer clear when he has to change their brother’s diaper. A lonely soldier left to his fate

He baby talks to them when they’re babies, like, straight up, every one of the kids gets baby talked

No and’s, if’s, or but’s. They get the baby talk

The girls help you guys out a lot with their little brother, or at least they try their best and that’s all that matters. It’s actually really heartwarming??? They’re so attached to this little bundle in your arms, they love him so much

The two girls weren’t fussy babies, but they were very curious, and they kept that curiosity for their entire lives, so they would get into a lot of things that would cause you and Arslan to panic, while their brother was a little angel, he was very quiet and he rarely cried. Though, he didn’t like when you or Arsalan were away for too long, this was a problem for when you guys needed a babysitter for them, not with the girls though, oh no, they love everyone in the Aoyama Guild, especially Maria and Gabriel (the middle one might have a crush on her, but who knows 💅💅). But your guys’ little boy is a whole other story. He’ll start crying and none of them can calm him down, their only saving grace is surprisingly Nyarl. Which Arsalan dislikes with an immense passion

He’s so afraid Nyal’s going to feed his kids to some eldritch horror or teach them bad habits- *GASP* WHAT HAPPENS IF HE TEACHES HIS LITTLE BOY HOW TO SAY FUCK??? OH NO-

He has entrusted the girls with keeping Nyarl in check and the hyena actually listens to them (of course Maria or Zab is there to keep him in check too, they just don’t let the girls know that they’re actually the ones giving Nyarl The Look behind them)

When they’re toddlers, Arsalan starts teaching them strategy and starts wrestling with them so that they can know how to defend themselves with different fighting techniques

You know that thing that papa lions do where they’ll feign getting hurt when their cubs bite them to build their confidence??? Yeah, he does that with the little ones. The girls are all proud of themselves each time they manage to “beat” their papa, but your little boy is devastated the first time it happened because he thought he actually hurt Papa Arsalan and he started crying and was too afraid to touch anyone for a good two days before Arsalan managed to convince him that he was perfectly fine and the way for him not to hurt someone is to embrace his strength and learn how to use it for good! Luckly, your little boy accepts the answer and goes over and gives his papa a big hug and Arsalan gives him a big ol’ kiss on the forehead

You still have the video- it’s cute- you’re never getting rid of it

Arsalan definitely takes them to the guild and everyone LOVES THEM

The girls get along best with the angels, the more aggressive ones specifically while your little boy gets along best with the healers of the guild; they listen to all of the stories that anyone is willing to share with them and they LIVE FOR THEM

They all swear up and down that they’re gonna join the Aoyama guild when they get older and protect their dad and Arsalan tears up

They MEET (officially) ZABANIYYA AND YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN MORE STARSTRUCK CHILDREN IN YOU LIFE (He met them when they were babies, but he was always too busy to actually swing by and say hello to the little ones frequently)

They think he’s so cool and he feels a little awkward around them, but he’s accepted his fate as Uncle Zab

By the time they hit their tween years, Arsalan is more in his element, he’s an amazing listener, and coupled with the fact that his advice is some A++ shit, his kids feel at ease telling him their woes. Also he’s always open with his affection so if they need a hug, he’s there for that too!

The girls, at this time, are much more similar to Arsalan, their brother on the other hand is very shy, so they take it upon themselves to act as “bodyguards” for their little brother

Your guys’ kids in general are pretty independent, so they’re pretty self aware of themselves; Arsalan made sure of that, especially since he was in the mindset of “making capable kings and queens”- he was a king after all

The girls would go into sports, something like volleyball or softball, while your boy would take up a lot of writing/medical classes in high- if he has the opportunity, he’d probably go into a philosophy class

Your guys’ oldest girl has a bit of a problem with butting heads with people, she’s opinionated and backs them up with facts, she knows what she believes in and will defend it, so she’ll get into the occasional fight

Your middle girl is your social butterfly and gets along with everybody; she’s super sweet, but she has a temper and strong sense of justice which gets her into trouble every now and then

They both team up to take care of their little brother, it’s actually really cute to watch them

Your boy is the peace keeper of the group; he’s very passive and fights with his words rather than his fists, but he really wants to go into the medical field

HAVE FUN DEALING WITH THE FACT THAT THEY ALL GET INTO SHIT LIKE THEIR DAD. You and Arsalan had to go and convince the Tycoons not to hang your oldest by her toes because she punched Ophion straight in the jaw and suplexed Lucifuge (Hakuman was having an amazing time- the other two were not)

When they graduate, Arsalan doesn’t cry, but it’s still super evident that he’s proud of his kids, each one gets a huge ass bear (lion) hug that squeezes the breath out of them

He may be a little shocked at first, but he takes it in stride like everything else in his life; he marvels at the way that your guys’ kiddos grow up so fast. Honestly, having a family was one of the best experiences of his life.

Ifrit

I like to imagine that Ifirt would end up with more than one kid with you, being that if you can actually have a baby/babies or if you guys adopt, he’ll want one right after the other, but only if you’re comfortable with that.

We’re going with the route that you’re comfy with having/adopting at least two children:

He’d probs end up having two little boys that are two years apart.

When you guys bring home your first little boy, Ifrit is a mess of tears and snot and he gives you the wettest and biggest smooch he possibly can on your lips. He’s always wanted a big family (but he was afraid he would never be able to really start one because of his debt until you came along and, thanks to your more skeptical nature and eye for seeing through scams, he finally got financially stable!) and now it’s the start of one and he’s so excited!

SPOILER ALERT, HIS KIDS ARE EXACTLY LIKE HIM.

They are rambunctious little babies and are loud just like their father; I’m so sorry.

Speaking of loud- Ifrit does not help with the volume- if anything, he amplifies them; riling up the boys when he plays with them.

When he does play with the boys, he’s super soft about it with them. He’ll go down easily for them and play dead when they play any sort of game that includes a big scary monster.

The first time he did play dead, his boys started crying and then he started crying after he couldn’t get them to calm down because he was overwhelmed with so much emotion for accidentally making his kids cry- you walked in on the three of them, with groceries lining your arms, cuddled up together on the floor crying their hearts out.

IFRIT DRESSES UP HIS BABIES IN MATCHING OUTFITS TO HIM-THEY’RE LITTLE ROCKSTAR BABIES

IT’S SOFT SHIT

YOUR EYES? BLESSED

YOUR HEART? STOLEN

IFRIT? BEST DAD

UM, HAVE YOU EVER REALIZED THAT IFRIT HAS A TAIL???? (because I sure as hell didn’t, but no surprise there I’m blind-) YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS:

BABIES KOALA CLINGING TO HIS TAIL

LIKE, CAN YOU IMAGINE THEM JUST HOLDING ON WHILE HE TIDIES UP THE HOUSE WHILE THEY’RE GIGGLING AND TEETHING ON THE SPIKES OF HIS TAIL????

He was a tad nervous when they first started doing this because he realized that he’s a pretty loud and expressive person, so he didn’t want to accidentally knock one of the boys off when he was super excited or he got angry; after you assured him that he was in fact, not going to hurt the boys, he started letting them cling to his tail. And, hey, you were right. He has never once knocked the boys off since, despite his excitable nature, his tail keeps relatively still when he feels the boys on there

Speaking of tails, if any of the boys ends up having tails or horns or fangs like him (especially if they’re biologically his and they get hit with all three), he’ll have you guys invest in a lot of… chew toys for dogs and scratching posts for cats

“Why are we getting dog toys for our kid again, Ifrit?” “One fucking word, babe, growing pains” “That’s two words-” “YOU GET WHAT I MEAN.”

Um, I’m so sorry if you wanted your kid’s first words to be “mama/papa/nano” (I read on reddit that’s a gender neutral term for parent, but like, real talk, if you have any other ones, just hit me up and tell me! I love learning new stuff in the LGBTQ+ community!) you ain’t gonna get it chief. It’s gonna be a cuss word because, let’s be frank Ifrit’s got a potty mouth from Hell (me too, man) and it isn’t going away anytime soon

So your kids are most likely gonna be cussing like sailors by the time they get into middle school/high school

Ifrit is a pretty great multitasker in general, the other bonus is that he’s not afraid to change diapers, so when the boys were babies he was always ready to go when you needed a break

Just let him slap a clothing pin or shove a couple tissues up his nose and he is ready to go, babe

The kids usually cling to him, though, I feel the younger of the two would cling to you more so than Papa Ifrit, while the older one is attached to Ifrit: he copies everything that Ifrit does and is basically a carbon copy of him personality wise

It was kinda hard to convince them to let you guys go out for date night, but they’re super attached to Ebisu and Fenrir, and then Auntie Benten comes and tuckers them out since she has the same amount of energy as the little balls of chaos. So you guys usually call on them to come and watch the babies; once in a while Ahab and Aegir will join and the boys L O V E THEM (you two are honestly a little jealous tbh)

Ebisu is in charge though. Ebisu is always in charge

He’s a little lost in the tween years, but he figures it out pretty fast, luckily, your kids are pretty easy going and simple minded like Ifrit, albeit more aware of their surroundings since you beat it into their heads since you and Ifrit wanted to avoid some punks taking advantage of your kiddos, so they’re pretty straightforward in their thinking- though, your older boy has a hard time handling his emotions, while the younger boy has a hard time expressing his emotions, so you both have to take your time with them and talk it through with them and see how they’re feeling and to understand their problems. Which really isn’t that big of a problem for Ifrit, he’s a good listener and it’s easy for the boys to express themselves around him because, hey, he gets it. He usually let’s his anger control his decision so, he gets it, man

ONE THING THAT HAS ALWAYS CALMED HIS KIDS DOWN IS IFRIT’S FIRE TRICKS AND THIS STICKS WITH THEM THROUGHOUT THEIR LIVES

THEY LIVE FOR THAT SHIT

One thing that Ifrit never taught them, and you don’t know where they got it from, if they have horns, they’ll headbutt each other

This has lead to Ifrit, more than once, having to come and untangle their horns, due to the fact that he’s the only one who knows how horns work, because they got locked together, especially if they have Ifrit’s horns (also thank you Juno for giving me this headcanon, I love you-)

If you two ever hear frustrated yelling, you know exactly what’s happening and Ifrit sighs as he gets up while yelling, “again?”

Teenage years are actually quite chill, the boys don’t really go through that phase where nothing feels right or they’re embarrassed of their parents- they’re comfy in their skin and Ifrit and you provide a solid and understanding home for them, so they actually have the tendency to brag about you guys to other people- especially your oldest

What does cause a lot of problems, even when they were little, is fighting

The boys tend to throw themselves head first into fights because A) they have their papa’s temper and B) they can’t stand bullies

So they kinda act as the designated “Protectors of the Weak” if you will and usually it doesn’t end in a fight, their sheer volume and confidence usually makes people back off pretty quick, and if they’re biologically Ifrit’s, then, like, they also have the height and build along with them- or if they were adopted and they had big ass parents, it goes either way

But when they get into a fight- they throw down H A R D. T O G E T H E R

So, once in a while you two get calls to come and pick up the boys, since they got into another skirmish again with that Billy kid-

Honestly, the first time it happened, Ifrit was pissed because, what the fuck you two? And then he got their side of the story (because of course he would, he’s a GOOD DAD) and he was like, “WELL, FUCK, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BE MAD NOW??” So instead, he goes and gets them ice cream every time they get into a fight because he knows your boys would never start a fight unless absolutely necessary. Also they beat up a bunch of bullies HOW THE FUCK IS HE NOT PROUD? HE RAISED THEM RIGHT

This might be one of the only serious arguments you ever have if you’re against the boys fighting at all (but like, I wouldn’t, they beat up bullies. FUCK BULLIES)

When your sons graduate from High school, Ifrit will cry at each of their ceremonies. Full blown sobbing- he’s so proud of his boys and he’s so ready to see what they make of themselves.

Ifrit dad rating: 10/10, he’s amazing, please let him be a dad; he’s really matured from his younger days, especially now that he has kids. Being in a family with you has really made his life complete

Ophion

Ophion, to no one’s surprise, has a lot of experience under his belt. At least we would presume, but plot twist: this dragon is used to dealing with older creations rather than little baby ones. Not to say he doesn’t have any experience with babies, he’s just… used to his kids being independent on their own. It’s a luxury when you got an egg that pops out Wyvern children who are fully developed left and right

He is totally down for babies tho, please, he actually really likes kids a lot and, when he was the older version of himself, he’d try to covertly play with them out in public if he’s with the Tycoons for whatever reason (they knew. They fucking knew what he did, none of them told him jack shit because Hakuman does the same exact thing and Lucifuge thinks his buddy is adorable when he plays with the babies, so like shit he’s gonna say anything. And Licht holds onto this as blackmail, just in case Ophion decides to really piss him off), younger Ophion gives zero shits about playing with babies in front of the Tycoons. He loves hearing babies laugh, so he’ll make some cool ass light tricks and babies and toddlers alike are in awe

Also, he has this tendency to try to give kids life advice and teach them philosophy that their little heads just do not comprehend, but they think he’s the coolest thing to ever exist so they just nod along and pretend they understand (he knows they don’t he just thinks they’re adorable

He’d try to convince you to have a horde of children; it’s up to you to talk him down because, holy shit, Ophion we are not repopulating a planet. That’s a lot of kids to take care of-

You manage to talk him down to having two and seeing how it goes from there

Plot twist y’all end up with four children: split even boys and girls

Ok, so, I apologize but I’m gonna be drifting away from the gender neutral territory for a hot minute because, like, Juno pointed this out:

Giving birth to Ophion’s baby would be a nightmare: Ophion is a big dude, if I remember right he’s 6’10”, that’s huge if you didn’t know, can you imagine how big that baby is gonna be inside of you???? And the other thing- if they have any draconic characteristics then, like, have fun pushing out a baby with wings, my dude. So it’s either: pray that the little guy is baby baby sized or C-Section

Which is fine- you have options, so that works out great! Double bonus, you never have to worry about medical bills because Ophion is fucking LOADED; TRIPLE BONUS, SINCE OPHION IS LOADED YOU WOULD BE PAMPARED HALF TO DEATH AFTER THE ENTIRE DEBACLE

SPEAKING OF LOADED, your babies have all of the best shit ever since they were born into a rich family.

I’m talking about gucci onesies all the plushies they can imagine

Now, you might be thinking: shit. That means I have to be the tough parent.

Not necessarily

Ophion is particular about how he wants his kids to be raised up: he wants them to be smart and aware, not spoiled and useless. He honestly expects some sort of perfection out of them since, you know, the whole mindset of: well, they’re my children. Of course they have to be perfect

Which, no, bad Ophion. We don’t hold our children to unrealistic standards in this house, it’s up to you to knock him off his high horse. The good part is that he’ll listen to you and actually reflect on his expectations for his kids, he’ll even work on taking said expectations down a couple of notches which is great.

You’ll probs still have to remind him once in a while, but he’s pretty good at chilling the fuck out when he needs to

Your kids go in the order of girl, boy, girl, boy; all of them a year or two apart, because of course

The first baby was a very rambunctious baby and Ophion threatened to chuck her out the window more than once- IN THE MOST LOVING WAY HE POSSIBLY COULD, I SWEAR- when she’d wake up crying in the middle of the night, because then he’d come and get her and she’d immediately start giggling and trying to grab his finger

He could never stay mad her and he’d end up staying up and rocking her until she fell back asleep

The crib was barely used for your guys’ second and third baby- they were both easy babies for the most part, only really making a peep when they were away from one of you. Your boy was quite attached to you while the second girl was attached to Ophion; but your oldest girl and boy’s rooms weren’t really used until they each turned five respectively because they’d just climb into bed with you guys and set their younger sibling in between them- these were some of Ophion’s favorite moments tbh. It was so soft and gentle, it soothes his soul when he thinks about it

Your youngest was another rambunctious baby, not in the sense that he cried a lot, but in the sense that he was very… He had a knack for getting into things that shouldn’t have been possible

Like, you, Ophion, and your eldest daughter almost shit when you found your baby boy on top of the counter; no one put him there- you set him down for two minutes- but there he was, giggling as he crawled all over the polished countertops

Also, PS: each of the babies has their own designated “nanny Wyvern” that takes care of them, but they’re more like, just huge ass guard dogs because they’ll try to make the babies a bottle of milk and it just… it does not work out so well, because sharp claws and microwaves don’t mix as you’ve come to learn

All the wyvern’s love your kids to death tho, they’d die for them. Nobody touches the babies unless they want to get fucking mauled to death by a thousand basically siblings

Each of the babies has gone with him on business meetings with the Tycoons, not that he was very thrilled- Ophion is quite the possessive dragon when it comes to his family- but you needed the load off, especially when you guys have four kids running around? Yeah. He isn’t gonna let you deal with that responsibility alone.

So he brings them and the Tycoons were a little hesitant about the kids at first because, I mean, they’re Ophion’s kids, they have to be prideful little shits right?

Lucky for them, you keep what Ophion rubs off on his kids in check- especially the pride shit

So, turns out, that your kids are really sweet, maybe a little too confident, but sweet to everyone, and, surprisingly, Ophion’s kinda stickler for manners so they know how to behave themselves

BUT HOLY SHIT DO THEY LOVE GYUMAO????

YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHY OR HOW- BUT THE KIDS ARE LIKE???? COW MAN IS BEST MAN

Ophion is lowkey pissed about it because those are his babies, fuck you, Gyumao

But you’re jumping for joy because um? Babysitter who is legit big enough to handle all of the kiddos in one room???? YES PLEASE

The second oldest really likes Lucifuge and will ask if he can comb his hair and Luci always says yes and convinces the kids to call him Uncle Luci; Ophion also hates this

Hakumen is honorary Auntie, they love her to death, especially the two youngest ones, and she likes to spoil them to piss of Ophion

The youngest really likes Licht and Melusine (all the kids are in agreement that Mel is super pretty and the oldest always asks her if she can hold her tail)

When your kids become toddlers, they’re all curious little things and like to hang around Papa and watch what he’s doing

They’ll try to mimic him, so you’ve walked into a room and witnessed Ophion standing there looking over Tokyo majestically with a wine glass in his hand and all four of your kiddos lined up next to him trying to mimic him, all with their own respective juice cups (youngest to oldest, all trying to look like their papa??? It’s some soft shit and I will forever love Juno for adding and making this scene even cuter)

IF- IF HIS KIDS HAVE WINGS- WATCHING HIM TEACH THEM HOW TO FLY IS THE MOST WHOLESOME THING?????

He’s got a surprising amount of patience with them, so if they're scared to jump off the top of the couch, he’ll reassure them that he’s there and he would never, ever let them fall- and when they do jump? He catches them and praises them for being so brave and it’s just- *cries*

He’ll also take them out on flies so they can get used to the feeling of the wind on their faces and under their wings; they all get super excited if he does a cool twist in the air with them or something like that

The wyverns are usually out and about with them too, so they get two comfort buddies for the price of one fly!

Like with Ifrit, this dude has a tail, so the kiddos will grab onto it, and if they have tails, they’ll make a train of them holding onto each other’s tails as Ophion walks around the house or the Tower- everyone almost dies, because???? That shit cute.

You have so many photos of them doing this

Once your youngest girl fell asleep on his tail while he walked around and you almost died

When they hit their tween years, since they are confident kiddos, especially your two eldest, they have a tendency to push back with Ophion. And Ophion really doesn’t mind?

He views it as them developing a true identity for themselves, but if they ever cross a line, pray for the kiddos, because he will put the fear of a god in them. He’s very scary angry

It’s even scarier because he doesn’t lift a finger, it’s just a look. A hard, narrowed, disappointed look. It shuts them up real fast

They don’t fight with you though. They’d never fight with you lmao they love you too much

Your two youngest are relatively easy because they don’t have as dominating personalities as their big sister and brother do. So they’ll still stick close to Ophion and listen to what he has to say

You’re eldest ones have an easier time talking to you about their problems while the little ones go to their papa

Though from time to time they’ll talk to the Wyvern that they grew up closest to and rant to them, all the while said Wyvern is squawking and cooing at them in understanding

In their teenage years, they’ve been humbled a bit by their experiences, so they’re not as.... Over the top. They’re still dramatic tho

Honestly, they’d probs all go into theater. AND THEY’D BE INCREDIBLY GOOD AT IT

And Ophion would obviously brag about this because of course his offspring are amazing at anything they do

Your oldest girl is probably going to play a sport, probably swimming unless she has wings then she’d most likely play something like Lacrosse; you’re eldest boy would probably really into fashion because of Lucifuge so he’d take any fashion classes he could get his hands on; your youngest girl would be into business, courtesy of Auntie Haku and Uncle GyuGyu; and your youngest would most likely stick to theater and the arts; he fell in love with acting and I have this hc that Ophion is really into art in his spare time (especially since, hello- Old Greek God, where do you think they learned it from???) so he runs with the talent he has and just floors it

They all end up kinda, lowkey, running the school, their personalities just cause them to be natural leaders

When they finally graduate highschool, Ophion, if they can’t fly, will take them in his arms after the ceremony and they’ll fly around Tokyo just talking about everything and anything; if they can fly they’re doing the same thing, just instead they’re both doing kick ass tricks in the air! Either way, Ophion is proud and there’s the Wyvern they were closest to crying and nuzzling them because their basically little sib is all grown up

Ophion would kill for a big family with you and he’s such a good papa??? He’s naturally a good dad, it’s a little freaky- but he has so much fun raising this family. He holds all the memories he’s had with you and them close to his heart

Tadatomo

Tadatomo and you would probably have one baby in general, a little girl who’s very bubbly- though if you wanted a bigger family, Tada isn’t opposed to the idea

I feel like with Tada the baby, if you have the ability to have children- Hell, even if you don’t have the ability to have a child- you two still probably end up with having a surprise kiddo: they probably wind up being placed in front of your guys’ door by some random person-

Long story short, he freaks out

He definitely doesn’t know how to take care of a baby- he can barely take care of himself- Y/N, what does he do? Please-

It takes a lot of google searching, Youtube videos and phone calls to get Tada to calm down about the baby

After he gathers his bearings, he actually steps up to the plate pretty easily

Except for diapers, I’m so sorry, but you’re on your own for diapers. He’ll get you the stuff and everything, but, he just,,, He can not handle the smell

You guys don’t ever get a crib, if anything someone else gets you said crib (probably Mori) but you guys never use it because Tada places the baby between the both of you when you two go to sleep and, since he’s such a light sleeper, he’s usually the one to tell when she needs something before she even makes a peep

Not that I think she makes a lot of noise in the first place aside for her laughing- she’s just a happy and easy baby in general

Btw, Tada totally shed a tear when she laughed for the first time, he’ll never admit it but she gives him so much L I F E

He lets her play with his ears/tail, doesn’t matter if she pulls on them (which she doesn’t, she’s a gentle baby) no matter what time or place. He could be threatening someone with a knife and she’d be playing with his ears and everyone is like????? That’s kinda cute????

He binge watches Naruto with his baby despite them not knowing what the fuck is going on and even gets them an Uchiha onsie because obviously Sasuke and Itachi are the bast characters in Naruto and no, he doesn’t take constructive criticism, thank you very much

He probably tries to convince you to name her after Tsunade, it’s up to you if

you’re willing to go with it

(you’re kid probs has a hardcore anime phase in middles school and Tada and Shino NEVER LET HER LIVE IT DOWN)

For someone who was terrified of babies at first, he takes baby proofing the house/apartement very seriously; you’ll honestly have to stop him- he’s going crazy:

“Tada, for the last time, you don’t need to sand down the corners of the wall.” “But what if she runs into it?” “Tadatomo Inuyama, if you don’t put down that sander, I will have your head.”

You’ll sometimes wake up in the middle of the night just to find your baby isn’t there, it almost gave you a heart attack the first time because, I mean, HOLY SHIT WHERE’S YOUR BABY???

But when you look over and see Tada resting with her by the window and humming/singing her a little lullaby- your heart has never been more ready to burst in your life

Moritaka and Shino are the main babysitters, she absolutely adores Mori to death and Tada feels a sense of betrayal everytime she clings to him

Moritaka has so many mixed emotions about it because on one hand: !!! My favorite basically niece! But on the other hand, Tadatomo has been glaring at the back of his head for the past 30 minutes, please, help him-

Shino also spoils her a teeny bit and Mori and Tada will stare at him with wide eyes, like, “dad, WHERE’S MY HUG???”

He starts her training early, because you know he wants his little girl to be able to take care of herself if he isn’t there to protect her, which, that’s not gonna happen, Tada will kill an entire city, don’t test him (also Mori and Shino and you’ll be there and like, nobody wants to open that can of fucking worms)

She’s clumsy at first, but she’s a really fast learner and he cannot be more proud when she starts to pick up stuff, he almost starts crying but, again, denies it if you try to bring it up

If she ends up having fangs of any kind, he will, like Ifrit, invest in chew toys as well, because have you seen puppies when they teeth??? It’s chaos, you will lose so much furniture that way, let me tell you

She develops a really good sense of balance, so it’s a fight to get her to stop breaking into the snack cupboard when she wants a treat; she’ll give it up without a fight, but she will break in again if you don’t watch it

She’s a pretty big ball of sunshine so she makes a lot of friends and invites them over; they all think Tada’s super scary because he’s glowering at them, if you tell them that that’s just how his face is, he’ll be mildly offended, but then you also throw in the fact that he’s a super cool ninja and then the kids are all over the poor transient

He’s in heaven, but he won’t tell you that. Your guys’ daughter is all too happy to tell you guys all about how people think she has the coolest parents in school

Despite him teaching her how to fight, he’s a bit of a helicopter parent, especially when her tween/teenage years roll around

She’s a pretty easy kid in her tween years too, though Tada has a heart attack when puberty hits her and Aunt Ruby comes a knocking and he calls up Shino of all people to explain it to her, which he does, you’re honestly a little shocked when you get home and you see Shino with a whole powerpoint slide explaining in excruciating detail what a period is to your horrified daughter and your, as equally horrified, husband

He gets her everything she needs or asks you to get it if he can’t BECAUSE YOU GUYS ARE GOOD PARENTS

Tadatomo isn’t the best with emotions so he’s shit with advice, but he’s a really good listener. So, sometimes your kid will just info dump to him about everything that’s bothering her

When she starts getting into the dating scene Tada HATES IT

He’s always glowering at the partner she brought home because he already hates them, he wants them to go away. She’s his little Shinobi- DON’T TOUCH HIS LITTLE SHINOBI-

You have to be the one to calm him down tbh because he will kill a child with zero hesitation

Her teenage years are also pretty easy, she’s a rather laid back and optimistic kid and she has a solid relationship with both you and her papa so she doesn’t really have a lot of negative emotions inside of her

And if she ever gets angry or anything, you know Tada installed a gym in your guys’ home, so she’ll punch the punching bag or work out her emotions

Tada will join her if she’s feeling up for it

She’s most likely into sports and Tada and you go to all of her games; Tada cheers the loudest but he will DENY IT

When she graduates from high school, Tada will openly cry. He’s super proud of his little girl and she’s a step closer to being an adult, she most likely got a scholarship for whatever sport she was most excited for and a dozen other little scholarships as well. Tadatomo will give her a big ol’ hug and tell her how proud he is of her, honestly, you’re probs gonna cry too

He is another excellent papa, who would give the world to his kid- he’s honestly so happy that you’re with him because he feels like he would never be able to take care of her as good without you

Xolotl

XOLOTL WOULD BE AN AMAZING DAD I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL

I feel that he’d have one child, maybe two, but definitely one; a little boy

It’s most likely you who brings up the idea of having a kid with him; and he is both a nervous wreck and an excited mess because A) Oh! A baby! And you want to have one with him??? WHY??? And B) OH! A BABY! I LOVE BABIES AND I LOVE YOU

He’s a pretty gentle soul, so when you bring home the baby, Xolotl gets the kid to go out like a light every time he starts crying

It relieves both you and Lotl, but definitely Lotl, like, the poor guy always has a mini heart attack when his baby is crying

The baby is a bit of a fussy baby so, he tends to cry if he feels like he isn’t getting enough attention or he wants to be held

Lotl is super attuned to your kids’ emotions?? Like, to a freaky degree, he can tell just what your baby wants

He records all milestones in your babies life and you know it’s him because you can hear his sniffles in the background

IF (and most likely) YOUR BABY’S FIRST WORD IS DADA, XOL WILL FUCKING LOSE HIS SHIT

“Y/N! Y/N! Our baby said ‘dada’! Our baby said ‘dada’!” “Yes, Xol, that’s great! Don’t cry on the camera though, please-” *Incomprehensible blubbering ensues*

He’ll actually take the baby with him to work if you’re too busy to watch him or if you can’t find anyone to watch him

AKA: Maria is super busy and can’t watch the baby, which kills her inside because she loves the baby and Xolotl, as much as he loves Garmr, isn’t about to trust him with his baby’s life because that is… a very foolish decision to make, unfortunately

Hakuman got mad at him the first time for this and started yelling at him when the baby started to cry, her maternal instincts kicked in and she was on it; like she snatched him out of his little baby carrier and cradled him, cooing at the baby until he calmed down and then she gave him back to his papa, who was mildly miffed for once in his life, thank you very much (his fur was standing on end, he was ready to throw down with the mistress). She even apologized for taking your guys’ baby without permission and startling him- don’t get her wrong, she was still very much against the idea of Xol bringing his baby to work. It can, afterall, be a very dangerous place, especially the casino, but what could you do? Obviously this little baby needed a place to stay and what better place than with his papa, her top bodyguard, and of course the one and only her!

She ends up convincing him to bring the baby a vast majority of the time he comes around now, she’ll have him take him into meetings she has with the Tycoons and they get nothing done. NOTHING. They’re all too busy playing with the baby. He has a tendency to get really antsy when Ophion comes near his baby, fighting the urge to snap at him, but he learned that Ophion just really likes kids and holding them. Though he did make the jab that you and him would’ve made much cuter children and Hakuman was terrified of Xolotl in that moment because he almost lost his shit

When the baby becomes a toddler, Lotl is much more confident and experienced, but he’s still nervous, your little boy is still very attached to his papa despite this

When he meets new people that he doesn’t know very well, he’ll hide behind your’s or Xolotl’s leg and peek out at them

It’s really, really cute???? Lotl almost starts crying

SPEAKING OF CRYING, your little munchkin cries a lot

But Lotl never yells at him for it or anything, he just kneels down and rests his hands on his shoulders and asks what’s wrong, more often than not, your kiddo just gets nervous and starts crying, not loud and obnoxious, but those silent tears of stress. But then he gets a big ol’ hug from papa/you and he’s alright

He likes to try and copy what Lotl does so he’ll pretend he has a tie and fix it whenever Papa Lotl does and he almost screamed when he caught your kiddo mimicking him

He’ll also steal Lotl’s glasses once in a while and wear them, pretending to be a kick ass agent like his dad

LOTL MADE HIM A MATCHING BRACELET TO HIM AND I SHIT YOU NOT WHEN I SAY: THIS BOY NEVER TAKES IT OFF, EVEN WHEN HE’S A TEENAGER THAT STAYS NO MATTER WHAT

Lotl gave it to him when it was his first day of school and told him that papa put some of his and mama/papa/nano’s bravery in it so he’d always have some of his own- and he just- AHHH-

As your little boy grows up, he develops a bit more of a bite than his dad has, so he’ll try to defend you guys from anyone if they try to say anything about his dad crying and hitting on you, they have one pissed off toddler on their hands and he fucking bites, it doesn’t matter if he has the fangs or not, he’ll bite someone

(You guys honestly don’t know where he learned that from-*looks at Garmr*)

When he hits his tween years, the boy is an anxious mess, but he’s not afraid to cry about it, he’s learned that crying is perfectly fine from his papa and it’s actually super healthy to get rid of all that pent up emotion, so you bet your ass when I say: your little boy knows a lot of healthy coping methods, which is awesome

It actually helps his transition through puberty a lot

Real talk, he almost shits himself when he speaks and he realizes how deep his fucking voice is, even Lotl is freaked out. But then he gets real proud of it and so does Lotl and it’s a cute father-son moment

If he ever gets to be the same size of Lotl, he’ll still get plenty of head pats from his papa

His teenage years are pretty smooth sailing aside from him being a tad anxious and socially awkward about things, but he’ll get through it! With the power of support and him having a safe place to explore himself he’ll learn healthy coping mechanisms to handle his anxiety!

Though if he ever does get really emotionally constipated or it just becomes too much, he’ll go to Lotl or you and ask if you can hug him and he’ll just cry and let it all go, rambling into your shirt, you can barely make out the words, but still nodding along with what he’s saying- it really helps

He has a first job already in the bag: at the water park that Hakuman runs! Because like hell was he gonna work at the casino as a first job, over Lotl’s, your’s and Hakuman’s dead bodies. It really helps his social anxiety and he learns that he actually really likes to interact with people (also everyone loves him over there because he’s such a gigantic teddy bear)

He’s probably super into art and Lotl gets him everything art related that he can get his hands on, he really wants to support his kiddo

Lotl and you go to every gallery that your son’s art features in and it’s always great because that’s where you get to see him shine the most

When your guys’ son graduates from high school with a fully paid scholarship to his dream art school for his portfolio, you're all crying. You’re all so proud of your guys’ little boy

Having a kid was really good for Xolotl- having a family was really good for him; it helped build his confidence and become more secure with himself. He only wished his brother could be here to see his nephew, but this was fine, he could probably see him know and see how good of a dad Lotl was

Bonus HC for Lotl: he’d be, hands down, one of the best characters to be a single parent. Change my mind

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rsadelle · 3 years

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The best books I read in 2020

I read 167 books in 2020, which is a little more than one and a half times as many as I read in 2019. (I had a crisis of counting at one point when I read a string of novellas, but ultimately came down on the side of if I can check out the ebook from the library as a single volume, then it counts as a book for the purposes of my list.) Only ten of those are books I reread, which is a fairly low reread number/percentage for me. The large number of books I read this year made it extra difficult to narrow down a small number of the best ones, which is why this list is longer than in previous years. It is, in fact, long enough that I have put it behind a cut to spare your dash.

Top 11 fiction books/series I read for the first time in 2020

Bread Alone trilogy (Bread Alone, The Baker's Apprentice, and Baker's Blues) by Judith Ryan Hendricks - I so enjoyed this trilogy about bread baking and figuring out your life and building a home/community and love. I read it at the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone was baking bread, and it was one of those things I was sad to finish because I didn't want to leave the characters.

Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson - I have read a lot of suburban housewife with a secret books over the last couple of years. This was an excellent example of the genre with the good use of a thematic motif and a second secret reveal after you learn what you think is the biggest secret. Content notes: I had to skim a few chapters because of the large amount of weight and disordered eating content (which is relevant to the character), and there is sexual abuse of a young teenager by an adult as part of the story.

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin - This was such an interesting concept and done so well. It was one of the most popular books my sci fi book club read this year, and the New Yorker in our group said it was her favorite New York book ever. The most disappointing part of this book is that it's the first book in a trilogy and the other books haven't been published yet. Content notes: eldritch horror and realistic racism.

The Sci-Regency Series (My Fair Captain, The Englor Affair, My Regelence Rake, Diplomatic Relations, and My Highland Laird) by J.L. Langley - The delightfully ludicrous premise of this series is that there is a gay Regency society in space, which makes for some really fun romances. I've loved this series for over a decade, and I was thrilled to reread the first three books before reading the two new books that came out this summer. I recommend reading the novels in order, as there is an overarching plot involving the Intergalactic Navy that is interesting and ongoing without overshadowing the romances. Content note: these are on the erotica end of the romance spectrum, which means they have very explicit sex scenes. I wrote a lot more about this series in a Yuletide promo post comment.

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo - I was so sad to finish this book! I have read a lot of commercial/literary fiction about families in the past few years, and this might be my favorite. I found the characters really compelling and enjoyed seeing their differing perspectives. I didn't want to leave this family.

Throne of Glass series (Throne of Glass, Crown of Midnight, Heir of Fire, Queen of Shadows, Empire of Storms, Tower of Dawn, and Kingdom of Ash) by Sarah J. Maas - This YA fantasy series shouldn't work given its constant escalation, and yet, somehow it does. I greatly enjoyed it, and I cried more than once at the last book. This is a series where I recommend not reading anything about future books until you've read all the books before them so you can enjoy the continual reveals. These are very much genre novels, and if you don't like the genre, these books will not be for you. Content note: there is a lot of genre-typical violence.

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai - I admit that I was mildly skeptical about this book given that what I knew about it was that it was a story about the AIDS epidemic where one of the two timelines is about a woman trying to reconnect with her daughter, but I ended up loving it. The two alternating timelines fit together beautifully, and I thought it did a good job of not eliding the horror of the AIDS epidemic experienced by the gay community in favor of the straight woman's experience. I do remain skeptical of how many awards it won; while it was a genuinely excellent book, I also know that awards bodies love dead queer people.

We Set the Dark on Fire and We Unleash the Merciless Storm by Tehlor Kay Mejia - I loved this YA dystopianish (more cultural class divide than apocalypse or singular villain in control) duology about queer women falling in love while working toward revolution. The world building was good, the plot was good, and the romance was good.

Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather - This novella about an order of nuns who travel through space in an organic slug-like spaceship was absolutely wonderful. It deals with issues of faith, purpose, central control, and doing what you can to make the world a better place.

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson - I loved this YA novel in a sort of Regency-ish setting about a girl who grew up in a library full of magic books and her dealings with some sorcerers, complete with a romance. Content note: attempted mental coercion and institutionalization.

The Wren Hunt and The Wickerlight by Mary Watson - This is a YA duology about rival druid groups in modern day Ireland. I found both books totally compelling with interesting druid politics and magic. It was also really interesting how well we get to see the worst of both sides of the rival druid groups in the two different books.

Top 5 books/series I read and then thought about a lot in 2020

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher - A friend recommended the author to me. This particularly book is a supernatural horror novel I don't necessarily recommend. However, I have continued to think about elements of it since I read it. (Before you @ me about the author's other work, this was the third of her books I read and the other two were in the more beloved fantasy novel genre.)

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal - I actually didn't like this book that much. We read it for a book club, and it had an interesting concept that wasn't super well executed. However, I have thought about elements of it a lot since then, particularly in comparison to some of the other sci fi I encountered this year.

Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir - I don't know how much "I actively thought about these a lot" describes my actual experience of having read these, but given their popularity and the number of conversations I had about them, I can't omit them from this post entirely. I liked the first one once I figured out what kind of story it actually was, had absolutely no idea what was happening at any point in the second one, and discovered with both of them that I have a much more limited vocabulary than I thought, at least when it comes to death-related words. I am invested enough that I will read the third book when it comes out, but probably won't read any more of the author's work beyond that. If you want to know more about what I thought, I wrote a very spoilery post about them.

The Sixth World (Trail of Lightning and Storm of Locusts) by Rebecca Roanhorse - This is a pair of novels set in a post-apocalyptic world where there's a magically/divinely-erected wall around Dinétah (the Navajo lands). The worldbuilding and characters are so interesting, and it's a series where some of the details stuck with me and I would randomly think of them. I'm looking forward to reading one of her other books in a few months for my sci fi book club.

Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics by Mirabai Starr - This was one of two books about women mystics I read and disliked this year, and the more disappointing of the two as I'd heard an interview with the author that I found interesting. I continued to think about this one a lot in an angry, "and another thing!" way, which did help me articulate more of the things I dislike about new age-ish framing of "feminine" wisdom/divinity/knowledge.

Top 3 non-fiction books I read in 2020

The Vagina Bible: The vulva and the vagina - separating the myth from the medicine by Dr. Jen Gunter - This is probably better as a reference work than as a straight read-through, but it was interesting enough to read straight through. The book is deeply rooted in science and facts, and she has a whole chapter on "Vaginas and Vulvas in Transition" specifically about anatomy for trans people.

Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life - in Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There) by Sarah Hurwitz - This is a useful, contemporary introduction to Judaism from someone who shares a lot of my values. The first half is an introduction to Jewish thought, while the second half focuses more on spirituality and practice. The book is part general introduction and part spiritual memoir. I found it deeply inspirational and I added it to a wish list of books I want to own copies of (I read it as a library ebook) because I would like to both reread it in hardcopy where I can easily flip back and forth and use it as a resource for further study and reading.

You Can Draw in 30 Days by Mark Kistler - You may remember that I wrote more about this when I originally finished reading the book. I found it a gentle, funny, helpful book to teach you the basics of drawing.

The 2 authors I read the most in 2020

Jennifer Lynne Barnes - I read fifteen of her books in three weeks in January, when I was still working full time, and a sixteenth after it was published later in the year. Her books are fast-read YA novels that are deeply engaging and generally have some sort of mystery element to them which may or may not involve family secrets. She has a tendency to write variations of the same characters, which meant that I enjoyed mentally mapping the characters from various books onto characters from other books. Also, her werewolf trilogy does one of my favorite werewolf story things that you almost never see (but it doesn't happen until the end of the first book, so I won't spoil it by telling you what it is). Many of her books involve violence, so heed the summaries or email/message me if you want some content notes.

Laura Lippman - I read nineteen of her books this year, eighteen novels and a non-fiction essay collection. She's an excellent mystery writer with a distinctive voice. The time I read four of her books in four days, I found myself thinking in her style. Even if I hadn't otherwise enjoyed My Life As A Villainess, her essay collection, it would have been worth reading just for the kicker on "The Thirty-First Stocking." Content note: her novels frequently involve violence or its aftermath.

#books #book rec

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soyouareandrewdobson · 4 years

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Doing something for fun: RPGs about broken anuses.

As promised, after the abomination that was the Sam arc, I am now going to write random posts about more positive/fun things. However, I also decided to add a little twist to them and correlate them in some way thematically to Dobson. E.g. by reviewing a game/show that does all the things Dobson hates/obsesses about/or fails at right.

And my first entry in that regard is related to a videogame that came out a couple of years ago, based on a tv show Dobson claims to hate. South Park: The fractured but whole.

Seeing how the game is 3+ years old at this time and there have been tons of reviews & walkthroughs showing how good and fun the game is, I do not really want to cover the plot and all the things that make it great in detail. Lets just say you can really feel that Parker and Stone were heavily involved in the writing of the game, as it is filled to the brim with references to the show and the typical satirical humor of it, that in parts manages to cross the line even further for me than the show. Right from the start you get a very dark but smart social joke and commentary out of the way, when as you set up your characters looks and the difficulty of the game, it is the tone of your skin that decides how hard the game gets. Meaning if you play as a black person, you are having a very hard time. It is not too preachy, just an acknowledgment that yes, in American society, blacks can have it harder compared to white people. Especially when living in a town like South Park, where social standing is pretty low and the police force is inherently corrupt and racist, doing something so outrageously to black people, I do not want to spoil it. Let’s just say it ends in a better Lovecraft joke than any of the shit SJWs did in light of censoring Call of Cthulhu board rpgs.

The overall plot is simple: While last time the kids played fantasy and things escalated quickly as they do in South Park, this time they play superheroes, with two fractions having formed: Coon and Friends vs the Freedom Pals and things escalating just as quickly. What starts off as the hunt for a missing cat to earn a 100$ reward Cartman wants to use to start a multi billion dollar movie franchise just like Marvel, turns soon into the player and his friends having to fight a real crime conspiracy thought up by one of South Park’s most nefarious characters, which also involves genetic mutations, time travel and eldritch horrors. Thankfully you, the “New Kid” from the last game, even after losing all your previous powers thanks to no one playing fantasy anymore, gain new superhero powers, make friends with the South Park kids again and even learn new fart techniques by none other than Morgan Freeman, that help you out along the way. All while also slowly revealing more about your backstory hinted on in the previous game and the tragedy of your dad having had intercourse with your mother.

Being a South Park and RPG fan for years, I wanted to play this game for quite some time, but only managed to do so recently. And even if I spoiled myself massively over time with cutscenes and major battles online, this game is still fun (thanks in part also to the fact I watched the cutscenes years ago and by now forgot a lot of them). The turn based battle system is way more interesting than last time by also depending on you positioning the characters on the field in a strategy based RPG style, there are lots of classes to choose and powers to combine (I myself going for elementalist, assassin, plantmancer and blaster currently) and you have a ton of allies in the game. The original cast of the four main boys, Jimmy and Butters has expanded significantly in this game with characters such as SUPER CRAIG, Clyde as the blood sucking MOSQUITO, Token as TUPPERWARE and Wendy as the social media huntress CALL GIRL (yes, that is her name) and they all are fun to interact and play with, with each one having their own unique sets of moves and finishers once again. Even outside of the battle, thanks to the writing, there are always great lines from them to get when interacting or taking missions from them. I especially came to love Tweek and Craig, who are not just decent fighters (Tweek in particular is a great elementalist) , but in this game are also now a couple ever since that yaoi episode from South Park. Helping them reconcile after a bad break up over the course of the game just feels surprisingly nice, mostly because unlike other LGBT celebrating media out there (Korra and She Ra e.g.) none of the characters crosses some sort of moral line where you question why they deserve to be together (Hello, Catra), it is not heavily handed garbage fishing for brownie points and it is obvious through dialogue and actions they care for each other, even if they are at first going through a bad break up as only South Park could ridiculously portray it.

Overall, the game is also surprisingly “inclusive” and socially relevant without being preachy about it, if you ask me. From the aforementioned skin color thing, to LGBT representation via Tweek and Craig, the police being involved in a plot that especially nowadays is sadly more relevant than ever (mind you, I do not believe that in real life all cops are bad, but in my opinion bad eggs on both sides certainly led to the current situation in the US and that is all I say) to the fact you can over the course of the game decide not just if you are playing as a boy or a girl, but even something in-between, a cis-/transgendered person and decide your race, religion as well as to whom you are sexually attracted to. Granted, I barely see how it has any bearing on the game’s plot, but I appreciate the following things: a) the inclusion of the possibility to decide on those factors itself, making creating your character even more fun (a basic right others demand for certain games nowadays in all the wrong ways) and b) that the game does not make the biggest of deals about it. See, I am under the impression that often times the most progressive and inclusive thing is to just let the story and personality of a character speak for itself, instead of the fact that it also identifies by a specific gender, sexuality, race or other allignment. In fact focusing on those things on a character only is something I consider ”positive stereotyping”, which for me is just racism in the opposite direction. And if you no think I am going off track here and need to be beaten up by someone who genuinely has some grip on pc culture, don’t worry. This game features PC Principal actually doing an ok job teaching you about microaggressions in his typical PC Principal manner, which in itself becomes a relevant move in future battles and is hilarious to watch. Speaking of the new kid, putting things like your chance to gender identify yourself with it in more detail (which you can also adjust again later on in game if you feel like it) aside, for a silent protagonist he/she/it can have a nice level of debt to it, if you look too much into it.

Not only does it have a funny backstory explaining its fart and social media powers, there are recurring scenes of the kid’s parents being on each others throat and the kid just silently eating dinner for the night that genuinely feel sad and create sympathy in our little FartLord to the point you just want the kid to go out there, have an adventure and hopefully find a way to change its parents for good, cause it is obvious they love the kiddo, but damn do they need to cut off the substance abuse.

Storywise you get something out of this game that is way more entertaining and hilarious than the last two seasons of the show combined (FUCK the season of 2019) and game content wise you are also rewarded with a lot of shit, just for exploring the town. Be it you finding hidden yaoi fanart that earns you money, your allies helping you solve puzzles that reward you with exp and new costumes to further customize your outfit, making new friends on Coonstagram by taking selfies with all the major and minor characters of the town, helping Big Gay Al finding his missing cats, stumbling upon Memberberries, forging new artifacts to increase your strength, finding summons… all stuff that helps you not just gain exp and become stronger, but also makes you enjoy going through South Park outside of the main story content. In fact I spend a majority of my first twelve hours in this game only wrapping up the prologue missions and first two chapter of the game, while otherwise talking with as many people in town as possible, exploring the stores and houses, doing side missions etc. just for the fun of interacting with the characters and the world they are part of.

Now, how does all of that relate to Dobson?

Well lets see…

Game based on something he hates that has however rightfully more success than he ever deserves, with lots of political commentary and satire for years in its humor? Check.

Game itself having more of that commentary done right then Dobson in his own comics and story attempts? Check

LGBT representation via Tweek and Craig as well as Big Gay Al that does not feel too stereotypical despite Al himself being extremely stereotypical in design? Check

Some pretty decent/hilarious female characters in the game once you know them? (again, Call Girl and Classi, who fucks the L out of the A-S-S) Check.

Being a style of game he hates for no apparent reason, but executed well (RPGs)? Check

Thematically focused on superheroes, a trend he is obsessed about, but here both appreciating while also poking good fun at common tropes of it and the marketing of the MCU, in doing so just highlighting how much of a mindless consumer Dobson is? Check

Being a game where you can also play as any gender and race and its not turned into a “groundbreaking” industry changing feature pandering to minorities that in the eyes of corporations are just a market to exploit, not people? Check

Heck, if Dobson was not a biased idiot, the game would be perfect for him. It even panders to his toilet fetish in videogames.

Kid you not: a mini game in the game itself features the possibility to go to every toilet in town and shit in it. The process of defecation itself being a rhythm game and you earning exp from it once you took enough dumps. And considering Dobson once spend hours in Skyrim looking for outhouses, that sounds right up Dobson’s back alley.

Bottom line, this game is fun. If you like South Park, superheroes and RPGs, this game is perfect for you. And seeing how it has been a few years since it came out, I think it should be possible to get a cheap copy of it somewhere. Go on, play it. But always remember: Never fart on another dude’s balls. It is just not the polite thing to do.

#so you are a cartoonist #Andrew Dobson #syac #south park #the fractured but whole #super heroes #rpg

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hermitcraftheadcanons · 4 years

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To Do List:

What's up, my Herd of Nerds?

Anyway, as you can tell, tomorrow is AU Sunday. But, because it's one after a 'my input' one, it's a follower input AU day! Yay!

So, send me your AUs and I'll put all of em in a hat to pick one randomly. The winner is picked and posted and we'll all try and make headcanons about your AU.

Done:

Zombie Apocalypse AU :: (https://hermitcraftheadcanons.tumblr.com/post/618314308275863552/zombie-apocalypse-au-masterpost)

Pirate AU ::

Currently In The Raffle:

-Toy Story AU.

-Ever After High/Descendants/Vaguely 'nex gen priness' AU.

-Eldritch Horror AU :: Or if that's a bit too out there, a more normal Monster AU. I don't care, but in my heart, I know Cleo is some kind of eldritch horror. Zombie is far too easy.

-Eldritch Monster AU! Hermits are all Lovecraftian horrors who all individually decided that they wanted to pretend to be normal and are all trying to hide their otherworldliness. I also feel like Mumbo or X or someone as the one actually "normal" player on the server would work well. Most hermits don't know that everyone else isn't normal either, but some find out about friends maybe.

-Rabid Debate Club AU :: Random weird au idea where it's basic hs/uni au but like two of them try to start a debate club, then invite some friends just so there's enough people; cut to like two months later, it's all the hermits just fighting over whether or not pineapple should go on pizza or not lol it isn't very good i'm sorry but ya know rabid debate club AU.

-Animal/shapeshifting AU :: (Suggested Twice.) Every hermit can shapeshift into one token animal. (If it's something like "dog," they can only turn into one breed and color of dog, EXAMPLE: doc can shift into a black sable belgian malinois, but not anything else.)

-Wedding Planners AU :: Hermits work in various unrelated businesses such as a bakery, flower shop, etc., but see each other semi-often bc they're semi-often called upon to work together by another hermit's wedding planning business (obvs if you couldn't tell i know absolutely nothing abt wedding planning & businesses n shit lol but it's the /concept/ of it yannknow)

-Avatar: The Last Air Bender AU. (Suggested Thrice.)

-Fusion AU :: (Also suggested by Anon.) (Suggested Twice.) What if Hermits could fuse with each other? (Viva and Jumbo fused into MumboJumbo.)

-SCP AU :: The hermits have spooky powers and are kept locked up bc of it (or they have to keep the world safe from monsters and cursed objects!)

-RPG AU :: I feel like someone already thought of that but I am just wondering about it lately :p -🍋

-Adventure Time AU :: The hermits live in a post-apocalyptic world and the Lich (bad guy) is making everything decay. They need to gather all the gems (belt colours) to unlock the Enchiridion (a book) and have one wish each granted from Prismo (multiverse wish granting dude) before the Lich does. Only 4 elements can enter the multiverse: Slime (The Lich & Jevin), Redstone (Tango or Mumbo?), Ice (Stress), and Dirt (Grian, much to his dismay). Only the elementals can see the book. Grian's the protagonist with his sidekick Scar. He originally started collecting the belts because they were shiny but eventually decided to read the book and find out what they were for when Scar said he didn't see it. Doc, False, and Iskall are major obstacles because they don't believe the book exists.</p>

-Total Drama Island AU.

-Magical Girl AU :: Zedaph's the lead magical girl and rounds up a bunch of other magical girl hermits.

-Pokeman AU :: What are the Hermit's roles in this world? Who's the Champion, Elite Four. Are they scientists? Trainers? Do they compete in competitions, do they specialize in types? Who's everyone's starter? Has anyone encountered any legendaries?

-College AU

-High School AU

-Wizard101 AU :: I (🦊) recently got this AU idea and recently started going off somewhere with it in terms of writing, but, like, Hermitcraft meets Wizard101. Tons and tons of magical shenanigans, monster hunting, and idk what else.

-Magic AU

-My Hero Academia AU :: Headcanons can be about which hermits would have what quirks and occupations based on them.

-So I'm writing an AU where there's a second game of Demise but 5 years later. So far the first 2 hermits (Joe and Xisuma) have died, and their dead forms are cracked with an arrow in his chest (Xisuma) and cyborg (Joe). So since it's Saturday, I'm looking for what some skins would look for.

-City AU :: I mean this is really just a normal everyday AU.

-School AU.

-Terraria-Minecraft Fusion AU :: Who chooses what class? what events do each hermit prefer? how to they deal with the world infections? preferred biomes? Favourite NPCS? It has potentiallllll.

-70s/80s Teen Horror AU :: (like Stranger Things, Carreie, The Lost Boys, Halloween, etc.) -🦇

-Demi-God AU :: Sort of like percy jackson (everyone being the children of different gods from all different cultures.)

-Supernatural AU

-Marching Band AU :: Xisuma is the band major and all the show music is the remixes. I need to come up with some ideas for uniforms. Outfits and flags for the colorguard too.

-Different Eras AU :: (Suggested Twice.) All the hermits are from different time periods or eras. Like Wels is from the mediveal/dark era, Mumbo is from 1890-1920's, Iskall is from 2030, TFC is from 2020(?), Cleo is from 2130, etc!!! Like the mobs/animals became feused with humans, is when the mob players came from.

-Star Trek AU :: Like maybe they could be on one ship and each have different roles like engineers or doctors? I don’t know if this has been suggested but hope you enjoy! - 🐦

-House Mates AU :: ApartmentAU but scaled down?

-Atlantis AU :: (Could be merged with Mermaid AU???)

-Fighting Game AU :: Some influences would be Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Ultra Instinct, that kind of stuff.

-Time loop AU :: The hermits each have to deal with their own time loop.

(All those above in red are from our community's lovely Anons!)

-Superhero/superpower AU :: They each have a unique power/powerset that is in some way connected to their personality. (ie Mumbo *could* control electricity because of his love of redstone) Some Hermits may even choose to be "villains" and prank their other servermates. If you need power ideas, I've got a couple. (12u3ie)

-Daycare AU :: The recap peeps are the caretakers :P (-@tikauniverse.)

-Incredibly Long Cross Country Train Ride AU :: they all are in the same train car, telling stories of where they’re going, backstories.)

-Stuck In An Airport AU :: pretty similar to train au but they can be going diff places.

-Doctors AU :: they’re all doctors working at the same hospital.)

-Circus AU (Also suggested by an Anon.) (Suggested Twice.)

-Spy AU (Also suggested by @shadeswiftdraws.) (Suggested Twice.)

-Runaways AU :: The hermits are all teenagers who have run away from home, they all live on the streets until TFC takes them in. Head canons can be about backstories, living on the streets, or when they’re with TFC.

-Criminals and Police Officers AU

(-@lookitsspacekween)

-Dancer AU :: I mean, I already got a list kind of planned out, but headcanons for why specific styles are chosen would be appreciated! :) (usedtobelucythefallenangel)

-Broadway/Musicals Hermits AU :: The hermits are all casts of various musicals and when this newly-built theater opens up they all fight for which musical gets to play in it first (they have a riff-off maybe?) musicals mainly included are Hamilton, BMC, DEH, SiX, Beetlejuice, etc (feel free to add more!) (-@heyitsroby.)

-DnD AU (Also suggested by Anon.) (Suggested twice.)

-Mermaid AU :: In honor of the end of Mermay

-Space exploration AU :: There could be different ships, command centers, aliens.... Maybe someone could even get stranded/crash on a new planet? Who knows, could be fun.

-Paranormal/ghost hunter AU :: A couple Hermits could be the ghost hunters going to haunted locations to prove/disprove their hauntedness, others could be camera crew, owners of haunted buildings, or even the ghosts themselves.

-Camping/Vacation AU.

-Summer Cottage AU :: They all spend summers/weekends along the same shoreline and do different summer activities together. Outdoor fun and shenanigans!

-Space AU :: like star trek or similar.

-I would say evil clone au but I think that's pretty much the entire Hermitcraft tumblr right now lol. (Suggested twice.)

(-@shadeswiftdraws.)

-Magic AU :: Magic exists and all the hermits have powers. They can also summon a weapon but what that weapon is depends on the hermit. I'm thinking it'll take place in a sort-of Demise 2 in S7 with a big war. So far I've got: Grian - Cloning himself to his different personas (each has a different power). Xisuma - Making barriers, teleporting, and transforming into different mobs. Scar - Making mutant plants & boosting other hermits' attack & health. (-@datsaltyperson.)

-Demon AU :: Something enters the overworld and turns into a supernatural style-demon through Dimentional Distortion. Who gets posessed first, who goes crazy, and who actually kills it? Honestly I think that, if anything, Tango would know how to gank it, for obvious reasons. (-@fireflower-dusk.)

-High Street AU :: Everyone owns a different shop on the same street or some run a shop together (-@violets-arepurple.)

-Cat AU :: Either they're were always cats, or Hels turned everyone, including himself, into a cat, and they have to survive and overcome challenges in the Season 7 world. An example of a challenge would be Cub's a Sand Cat(the cats that always look like kittens no matter how old they are and live in deserts), and everyone's not sure if he can actually swim, so they have to find a way for him to get around without involving water. (-@scp10000.)

-How about a secret AU.. Every hermit has their big secrets and when Grian joined. He doesn't really know anything about those secrets even till season 7. Not many hermits talked to him in S6 anyway.. Mumbo was the closest to him so they would have regular chats For Iskall is mostly business related things Grian wants to know why so he set out on a quest to force the others to at least talk to him so he wouldn't be lonely. (-@babylightstudentbiscuit.)

-Hermit Family AU :: Xisuma is very busy dad but when he isnt busy the kids and younger hermits annoying the hell out of him. Grian once asked to use Xisuma's computer and crashed the whole thing trying to download illegal gamesites and get money off the internet. Mumbo and his trains run through the entire house and Xisuma trips on them daily. (-@gamerutx.)

-College AU!! But they are not students. THEY ARE THE TEACHERS (-@ivi-prism.)

Ones I planned to do anyway but Hermitblr Hivemind and all that:

Battle of The Bands AU: i believe u once mentioned a bands/ battle of the bands au... thats my jam... (Anon.)

#hcraft #hermitcraftheadcanons #raffle day #notaheadcanon #masterpost #au to do list

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gay-robot · 4 years

Text

heres the entire plot of homestuck explained mostly

the story takes place over 4 (technically 5 counting the end) alternate universes, and starts in the 3rd one, but it makes more sense if we start from the beginning chronologically.

a race of humanoids called trolls who are basically just humans with grey skin, orange horns, multicolored blood, and varying degrees of psychic powers exist on a planet called beforus. things are relatively uneventful, until the abdicated heiress to an empire, meenah, discovers The Game(tm) on the moon.

the game, otherwise known as sburb (or sgrub to the trolls) exists to propagate the universe; a successful session of it creates a new universe entirely. it involves a server player manipulating the real environment of a client player to bring them into a type of pocket dimension called the medium aka the session aka the incipisphere whatever, point is, you get there. the client can then, from that dimension, host the server of another client and bring them into the same session, and so on; the trolls sessions have 12 players, and human sessions have 4. each player has their own ‘land’, a small planet vaguely themed around them with a unique poorly defined quest, but that doesnt come up too much so dont worry about it immediately. each player also has a unique mythological role consisting of a class and an aspect; there are 12 of each for a total of 144 possible combinations, for instance john egbert is the heir of breath. this not only defines their abilities, but also their personality and role in the story.

each session has a few constants: a ‘planet’ in the center called skaia, which is a bright ball of just sky, with clouds that show you visions of the future; at the center of it is the battlefield, a chessboard which gets bigger and more complicated as things go on. a session will also always contain prospit, a yellow planet that orbits close to skaia, and a purple planet called derse that orbits far away from it. in a game session, prospit and derse are at war, with derse seeking to destroy skaia and the battlefield by sending an asteroid belt into it; coincidentally, this also destroys the home planet of the players, as many asteroids are teleported into reality. in the sessions weve seen so far these asteroids also are used to paradoxically send baby versions of the players and their ancestors back in time but that isnt too important right now. each player has an alternate self called a dream self, which exists on one of the two planets (but doesnt have any bearing on their morality or allegiance, just personality). dream selves, along with the session itself, always exist alongside the normal universe before the game even begins, and under certain conditions your normal self will, when asleep, awake as your dream self and vice versa. in addition, a player who dies can be revived, but only as their dream self.

back to the plot; the beforus trolls aren’t very good at the game; in fact, they fail and spend a few years not being able to do anything until they discover a way to reset both their game and the universe itself, which will retroactively swap them with their ancestors as players and do some other things as well. they should logically not even exist anymore, but due to some shenanigans that happen in the 2nd universe, they exist as ghosts in a sort of afterlife formed by dreaming players whose dream selves are dead or missing. overall, only two of these 12 trolls are actually important to the plot, meenah and aranea.

this brings us to the second universe; beforus is now called alternia, and it is a considerably more violent and horrific place, with troll society being murderous as pretty much a standard. as you can imagine literally everyone is traumatized by this. the first 12 trolls to get introduced in the comic come from this timeline, and include funny lawyer girl terezi. there’s also a considerable amount of infighting, most of which is vriskas fault. she comes up later.

the 2nd troll session is considerably more successful than the 1st, and finishes the game creating a universe, though this new universe contains a “small” defect due to negligence on the part of the players. before the trolls can enter their new universe, however, they are unexpectedly attacked by an angry teleporting chess dog with wings and a katana, who murders all their dream selves and blows up prospit and derse. the trolls go into hiding on a meteor, where they learn that this strange murderous furry came from a session inside their new universe. they elect to constantly harass the players of this session. also around the time of furrymans rampage, a girl named feferi convinces some eldritch creatures to create the aforementioned afterlife, while another girl named aradia who was briefly a robot comes back to life as a god tier and freezes furrydude in place. a god tier player is someone who has died in a particular way and as a result been revived with conditional immortality (if they die they are immediately revived UNLESS their death was either heroic, or just ie they were a piece of shit), powers based on their class and aspect, and a new outfit also based on their class and aspect. meenah in the first universe did this, as did vriska in the 2nd, though only because aradia beat the shit out of her for being awful. speaking of which she murders her childhood friend who she has abused and tormented for years because thats just how vriska is.

this brings us to the start of homestuck, the comic. there are four kids at the moment: john egbert, an overall lovable dumbass who is the first to enter, rose lalonde, a goth lesbian obsessed with wizards and psychology, dave strider, funny sunglasses memelord and horrifically abused swordsman, and jade harley, the prophetic scientist heiress of an old colonialist who was raised by a magic dog. through some difficulties they enter their session, and things IMMEDIATELY start going wrong. they just barely get everyone into the session before earth is ruined, and before that can even happen, the aforementioned murder furry is created when a bureaucrat named jack noir kills the black queen and steals her magic ring. a different jack noir was also present in the troll session, this one became a mobster named spades slick. (yes, that stupid fucking intermission was actually important). this happened because like the players, several ingame npcs also are brought to the dying planet, after it gets fucked by rocks. these include, on earth, WV aka the mayor, PM who will be important later, and two other jackasses who arent important. PM is cool because shes a mailman who fights through the fucking legions of hell to deliver a package to john and then later receives a copy of jack noirs magic ring and proceeds to chase him across the void for 3 years and finally beats the shit out of him. love her. anyway;

like the 1st universe, the kids are informed by a creepy man who talks in white text on a white background like a fucking tool that they cant succeed and will have to reset their session, though with coordination from the trolls, they have a plan to survive it. they also plan to use a very large bomb created as part of that defect i mentioned before to blow up something called the green sun, which is where jack noirs magic furry powers come from. this will also coincidentally kill spooky white man who has a cueball for a head and release an eldritch horror known as lord english into the timeline. meanwhile in the troll session, a clown troll named gamzee is driven into a rage by a video of the insane clown posse sent to him by dave and murders several of the less relevant characters because hes a piece of shit. also meanwhile a troll named eridan ALSO kills some people including someone named kanaya who is a lesbian vampire with a chainsaw who eventually marries rose. kanaya then cuts eridan in half because she Is Too Fucking Angry To Die. love her. ALSO ALSO meanwhile vriska is about to fly off and expose their hiding place to jack noir, but is killed by her childhood friend terezi. she dies for good because its considered a just death. anyway back in the kid session, things go awry and its revealed that white bread tricked them, as the bomb actually CREATES the green sun retroactively. also, because of the properties of the green sun and where the bomb was set off, the two kids who set off the bomb, dave and rose, meet up with the remaining trolls outside of the kid session. meanwhile jade fucking dies to a bomb made of shaving cream but is revived as a god tier and for unrelated reasons also fused with her magical dog. dave and rose also ascend to god tier as they died when a massive fucking sun spawned on top of them. john was already god tier due to some shenanigans by vriska earlier. basically everyone has their signature look now.

jade uses her new god tier abilities to shrink down every planet in their session including the battlefield, before bringing herself, john, and an alternate timeline dave onto a battleship and literally fucking launching it through the fourth wall into Poorly Defined Author Space which is technically on the moon of alternia. andrew hussie is here. as they leave the session before its reset, they stay alive, same with rose and dave. also meanwhile with rose and dave, one of the surviving trolls, sollux, uses his psychic powers to launch the meteor towards the newly reset session at relativistic speeds (all sessions TECHNICALLY exist in the same dimension? its weird), while jade does the same with her battleship.

thus begins the 4th timeline/universe. shit only gets stupider from here, consider taking a short break.

ok, ready?

the new universe is shown off, with the new kids; jane crocker, an average young woman who stands to inherit the betty crocker company which in this timeline is like amazon (shes an alternate version of johns grandmother); roxy lalonde, who is literally the best character in homestuck (alt. rose’s mom); jake english, a dumbass who lives on a deserted island, speaks in horribly inaccurate british slang and dual wields pistols (alt. jade’s grandfather); and dirk strider, a canonically gay nerd with pointy anime sunglasses and a sword who builds robots and canonically watches mlp so like fucking make of that what you will (alt. dave’s abusive brother). their entry into their session is different; their session is called a void session, and is inherently unwinnable because of retroactive time bullshit, and for related reasons, the meteors that would destroy earth are never sent. you may ask “well how did the kids get there then?” to which the answer is when the reset happened the destination of the kids guardians was switched to be this new session. doesn’t that mean the guardians never existed, you say? stop thinking.

anyway janes entry into the session coincedes with betty crocker revealing herself to be a hostile alien empress who slowly takes over the earth with the help of the insane clown posse and guy fieri. she’s also the alternate version of meenah, who in the alternia timeline was the empress and also kind of a horrible person. shes here because of nonsense involving lord english, who she works for but hates. in fact, theres an interesting side effect to this; dirk and roxy actually live 400 years in the future from jane and jake, from after betty crocker aka the condesce killed everyone and flooded the planet. they still enter the same session, through dirk doing some stupid shit and controlling both his dream self and his actual self at the same time and moving everyone around.

there’s a long period of absolutely nothing happening in the 4th session while the trolls and kids travel to it, and during this were introduced to two characters; calliope and caliborn. theyre brother and sister, and are part of another race called cherubs who look like green skeletons and which share a body with each other and fight for control of it. caliborn is the fucking worst and actually becomes lord english eventually, while calliope is a nice down to earth person who makes fan characters and cosplays a troll. they also technically exist in a... 5th, separate universe, on a dead earth?? which is probably the future earth from the ending? i dunno it makes no fucking sense.

anyway calliope dies due to some plotting but death means fucking nothing in this story so shes off hidden in the afterlife. the meteor group and the battleship group pass through this afterlife like physically several times during their journey through the void and meet many of the dead trolls, including dead vriska, meenah, and aranea, who come up with a plan to lure lord english, who is currently destroying reality and murdering ghosts, to a place where they can hit him with a magic ghost weapon. they find it, and john touches it out of curiosity, whereupon he gains weird powers that let him travel ANYWHERE in canon at any time, though he cant really control it. during his random zaps around he beats the shit out of caliborn which is cool and good. partway through, aranea leaves and uses a magic ring to come back to life JUST as the two groups arrive at the new session and the 4 new kids ascend to god tier, at which point everything goes wrong all at once.

through a contrived series of events, jade and jane are mind controlled by the condesce, and a long fight scene ensues where jake unleashes his true power and then dies, aranea tries to usurp the condesce but fails miserably, and basically fucking everyone but john and roxy die horribly, planets are smashed into each other, the session is falling apart due to interference from caliborn who has limited control over the narrative for some reason; its not good.

fortunately, john in theory has the ability to fix this by retconning events in a particular way. he has no idea how to though, until a dying terezi headbutts him, writes instructions on a blindfold in her own blood, and then dies, falling into a chalk outline of her own corpse she drew immediately beforehand because shes fucking metal. john also, during this time, uses his new powers to move his planet out of the session into a white void apparently outside everything. as a consequence of this, in an alternate timeline his planet explodes and roxy dies, though in THIS weird space, he and roxy are still alive.

following terezis instructions, john changes some subtle things in the past, before ultimately preventing her from killing vriska by knocking vriska out. this, surprisingly, actually has a positive effect; vriska has powerful mind control abilities that allow her to put jane and jade to sleep upon arrival and prevent the bad timeline from happening, but she also mellows out a bit and keeps everyone from losing their minds during the journey, while also forming a plan to fight the condesce that works out pretty well. the person she murdered gets revived as well, though she still treats him like shit so im not giving her points for that.

john and roxy arrive from the bad timeline with johns planet, and roxy uses the magic ring to bring the dead calliope back to life. also around this time calliope meets an alternate version of herself who killed caliborn in her timeline and is spooky and mysterious and super fucking powerful and will be able to help kill lord english, so thats cool.

some nice, genuine heart to hearts happen between the characters as they get set up for the final battle, at which point it happens, in a 20 minute flash. the condesce gets defeated, lord english's influence is cut out from the session, and the new universe is created; its actually a pretty happy ending.

and THAT is the end of homestuck.

#homestuck

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death-himself · 4 years

Text

Hidden in Shadows—Remus’s Story (pt. 1)

Summary: What has Remus been doing all this time? And who let him take care of eldritch abomination children?

Word Count: 1,511

Warnings: Body Horror, Homelessness, Angst

Part 2 (AO3 Link)

Failure. What an absolute failure. The darkness wasn’t sure what to do with its creation anymore. Its creation, who had decided to go by the name “Virgil”—and what a human thing it was to want to go by such a name—was going against everything it had taught him to do. He was too weak to kill, too weak to take souls, too weak to do anything.

He acted too human.

It watched as the young monster hid in the corner of a human child’s room, bobbing his head back and forth as if listening to his own music, using a small scrap of paper and a pencil to doodle. It had been a year since the darkness had let him out of the shadows. A whole year had passed, and no souls had been taken.

No matter how much the darkness tried to guide its creation into doing what he was made for, nothing happened. He was a disgusting failure of a monster. So, something else would have to do. And so the darkness began the process all over again, feeding its hatred for humanity and desire for their destruction into a new being.

Another five year wait was ahead of it.

Remus huffed as he pulled his coat tighter around himself. Well, he had expected this to happen eventually. Granted, he had expected his mom to beat the shit out of him, but not actually kick him out. Didn’t know she would do both.

He didn’t really have any friends to turn to; he had met them all online and the closest, his boyfriend, lived a state away. He huddled down into an alleyway in a relatively safe part of town.

Where could he go? He remembered back when his dad was alive and still with his mom there was this uncle that mom had absolutely refused to let come over. Maybe Remus could try to find him?

He shook that thought out of his head immediately. If his uncle was anything like the rest of his family, he wouldn’t want Remus around, either.

He shrugged off his backpack, hid behind a dumpster, and pushed the bag under his head. Maybe he could start making his way to Emile tomorrow. Or at least call him and see if there was anything he could do.

With that thought in mind, he took a deep, steady breath, shut his eyes, and went to sleep.

Remus awoke to a sharp pain in his chest. He opened his mouth to yell, but nothing came out. He forced his eyes open, his vision blurry. What looked to be a ball of light was slowly emerging from his chest.

Remus turned his gaze up slightly to see a hand with needle-like fingers hovering above the ball. The hand was attached to a long, gangly limb, which was attached to a horrifically bony figure, which was attached to a face. The first thing Remus thought when he saw that face was Oh wow, that’s disgusting.

The left side of the creature’s face appeared to be rotting, skin torn up and seeming to bleed a black substance that dripped onto Remus’s shirt. Its eye sockets seemed to be completely hollow, with sadistic glowing toxic yellow irises coming from somewhere inside them. Its lips were split into an unnaturally wide grin that only seemed to grow wider as the glowing ball was pulled more and more out of his chest.

It was horrifying. Remus loved it. With whatever strength he had left in his body, he punched the creature in the rotting side of its face. It reeled back, howling in pain as black liquid fell from its eyes. The ball of light immediately went back into Remus’s chest, and his strength returned.

He leapt to his feet, watching as the creature continued to howl and cry. It was in pain. He noticed the shadows seem to pull closer to the creature and he quickly pulled out his flashlight, turning it on with even louder protests from the zombie-like thing.

“Go away!” It yelled. “Leave me alone!” The voice caused Remus to pause. Holy fuck it has the voice of a child. Remus looked over its body again. It looked like a five year old boy’s dead body had been pulled and stretched into a roughly five-foot tall thing.

He watched the shadows swirl unnaturally at the edge of his light. It wanted to get to the kid, maybe to heal him. But Remus had a bad feeling in his gut as he watched it; he could almost feel its ill-intent.

He kept the light on the kid as he pulled bandages from his bag, then cautiously walked over. The kid was still clearly in pain, maybe the rotting side of his face was a lot more sensitive than normal skin.

Realizing he’d need both hands, Remus put the end of the flashlight in his mouth and gently laid a hand on the kid’s shoulder.

The kid shrieked, smacking his hand away and curling in tighter around himself. “I’m not gonna punch you again, calm down!” With the flashlight in his mouth he was barely understandable, but he got the message across.

“Liar. Humans are liars.” The kid muttered.

“Well, can’t argue with that. Humans are pieces of shit, and I don’t wanna be one of those Not All Humans types of guys. We’re all pretty terrible.” He noticed none of what he said seemed to elicit a reaction from the kid. But, at least he wasn’t screaming anymore.

Remus sat behind the kid, taking the flashlight out of his mouth and tossing it between his hands. “I don’t think I’m the worst human. I mean, I can definitely list at least a hundred people worse than me. There’s Jared from my math class—it’s always a Jared—there’s Bryce, Lucas, those are just three examples and those are just people I know personally. Then there’s also some celebrities like—”

“Is there a point to what you’re saying?”

“No, not really. How’s your face feeling?” The kid looked over his shoulder at Remus, eying him for a moment before looking away.

“It still hurts.” Remus hummed, grabbing a bandaid. “Alrighty, then come here. I got just the thing.”

The kid hesitantly sat up and turned to Remus, looking him up and down cautiously, before creeping closer. Once the creature was close enough for Remus to treat, he took the bandaid and stuck it onto a healthy patch of skin, as close to the area he had punched as he could get. The kid blinked and skittered back in alarm.

“Presto changeo, and you’re healed!” The kid ran his fingers across the bandaid, eyebrows furrowed.

“Really?”

“Nah, it’s this thing called the placebo effect, works great on little kids. I didn’t punch you hard enough to cause any real damage so,” Remus shrugged, “a bandaid works just fine.” He wasn’t sure if the kid had any idea what the placebo effect was, but it seemed to be a decent enough explanation to him.

“...Thank you.” Remus hummed.

“You got any parents to take care of you?”

“Parents?”

“Oh, that’s a no.” Remus went to lie down next to the dumpster, then pat the concrete next to him. “Go ahead and stay here. I’m sure whatever the hell those weird shadows you came out of are are bad news.”

“The darkness takes care of me! It’d never hurt me!”

“Well, then do whatever you want. I won’t stop you.” Remus turned to face away from the kid, closing his eyes and listening closely.

The kid looked into the darkest part of the alley, ready to allow the shadows to bring him home.

But that’s when he felt something angry and frustrated within the darkness. He gulped, slowly backing away towards the human he had just met. He gave himself only a moment to think, before lying down next to Remus and holding tightly onto the back of his shirt.

Remus smiled triumphantly to himself and turned around to look at the kid. “Guess you’re staying with me, then?” The kid clung onto Remus’s shirt, not meeting his eyes as he nodded.

Remus ruffled the kid’s hair. “Well, then it’s good to meet ya. I’m Remus. What’s your name?” The kid glanced up, confused. “Do you have a name?”

“I don’t think so.” Remus hummed in thought. “Mind if I give you a name?”

“Okay.”

“I shall now call you...Ballsack.”

“No.”

“Lil Shit?”

“No.”

“Asshole!”

“I don’t like your names.”

“Alright, alright, fair enough. You can name yourself.” The kid went silent for a moment. Remus checked his phone, seeing just how late it was.

“Actually...let’s save that for tomorrow. Sleep on it, and all that.” He ruffled the kid’s hair again, closing his eyes. A few moments later he heard a quiet huff from the kid, and he closed his eyes as well.

Remus was now the father of a five year old demon thing at the age of fifteen. It was just like in his fanfiction.

#sanders sides #hidden in shadows #remus sanders #janus sanders #monster!janus #bogeyman!janus #you can consider him either #kid!janus #body horror tw #angst tw

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legendsgates · 5 years

Text

Underrated SCP List

I’ve decided to create an updated list of my favorite relatively-unknown skips, as well as other articles I think more people should know about. I’m leaving out the more popular ones like 682 or 049, since it’s easy to find and get info about those. These are SCPs that, tragically, tend to get overlooked.

Normal SCPs

SCP-001 (Dr Mann’s Proposal) The real juicy stuff here isn’t in the file itself, it’s in the attached O5-clearance document. And good lord, the implications give me chills.

SCP-001 (S Andrew Swann’s Proposal) It’s us.

SCP-370 (A Key) Don’t look. Don’t look. DON’T LOOK.

SCP-408 (Illusory Butterflies) The booooterflies! Kondraki’s best friends :3

SCP-413 (Endless Garage) SCPs can play pranks too.

SCP-447 (Ball of Green Slime) Could also be named ‘Too Bad We Can’t Market This’. I would recommend reading the experiment log.

SCP-504 (Critical Tomatoes) You know the trope where bad actors and comedians get tomatoes thrown at them? Well...

SCP-507 (Reluctant Dimension Hopper) Poor 507! He hasn’t been the same since he came back from 99P-UT1-24J. Or 952-7YD-ABBA, for that matter. Read the log!

SCP-597 (The Mother of Them All) This one is either incredibly unsettling, weirdly soothing to think about, or a godawful mixture of both.

SCP-632 (Intrusive Arachnid Thoughts) Arachnophobe’s Worst Nightmare. Don’t read if you’re scared of spiders.

SCP-743 (A Chocolate Fountain) …At least they get a good meal first?

SCP-939 (With Many Voices) Thorough and creepy. Especially 939-101! I can’t tell whether I should be scared or pitying. Do not read if people getting eaten freaks you out, and don’t read the ‘scp-939 reproduction’ page if decapitation (or internal parasites, possibly) is a squick.

SCP-1155 (Predatory Street Art) I would like to see who would win between this and 173.

SCP-1171 (Humans Go Home) To borrow the words of tumblr user @arctic-chameleonus... my thembro Beauremont got fucking catfished.

SCP-1459 (The Puppy Machine) Once you get past the inherent horror of the scenario, the test log is actually pretty damn funny. Or maybe I’m just nuts.

SCP-1545 (Larry the Loving Llama) Guys, stop calling him by all those different names - his name’s Larry.

SCP-1730 (What Happened to Site-13?) This one is a long, horrifying read - and it’s absolutely breathtaking. If you have time to kill and a taste for human corruption at its worst, come take a look!

SCP-2316 (Field Trip) You do not recognize the bodies in the water.

SCP-2357 (The Perfect SCP) The resignation letter of a Foundation employee... who specialized in memes and infohazards. If you’re not familiar with the Foundation-standard usage of those words, this is an easy and fun article to get a taste.

●●|●●●●●|●●|●

SCP-2662 (cthulhu f'UCK OFF!) I feel so bad for them, they just want to be left a l o n e

SCP-2703 (For a Good Time Call) She’s so friendly and helpful, stop screaming when she appears! You were the one who called her and she just wants to help you have a good time!

SCP-3008 (A Perfectly Normal, Regular Old IKEA) It’s an IKEA - a totally normal, nonanomalous one. Not sure why it’s on the site.

SCP-3636 (World's Greatest Jukebox) Please screen the title and lyrics very closely before you try to play anything. And don’t even touch anything on the blacklist.

Joke SCPs

SCP-006-J / SCP-006-CU-EX (WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING / Cuddly Cwawies) BUGS! Read that in whatever inflection you desire.

SCP-048-J (Negative Probability Phrase) I swear, if you jinx us-

SCP-076-J (IN OWN WORDS) Totally not Able, fellow meat-slaves!

SCP-666-J (Dr. Gerald's Driving Skills) OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH FUCK OH GOD OH GO

SCP-900-J (Modern Major Keter-Class) i’m sorry I can’t do this one justice

SCP-1543-J (The Sun Launcher) When in doubt, toss it into the sun.

Group-of-Interest Format

The Serpent’s Hand

A Love Letter to a Lady Mantis - and its sequel, A Wedding Gift for a Lady Mantis! An adorable romance. Don’t read if you’re scared of bugs.

Hello, I am an Eldritch Horror - You'll want to familiarize yourself with SCP-426 (I am a Toaster) first, but this adds a whole new depth to the SCP’s lore.

KoI Format - God is a fish.

Shark-Punching Center

SPC-001, Uncle Nicolini's Proposal... Maybe. (It's Lonely At The Top, says the article third from the top.) Once something becomes too easy it’s not even worth doing anymore, right?

SPC-172-J (”Sword Sharks?!”, Never Bring a Fist to a Spear Fight) Y’all need to update your shark-identification guide, stat. And maybe don’t punch it right where the horn is. However, I must say I like your style of protocol naming.

Story

A Lesson in Power - Broken Masquerade canon. A gun is only so intimidating when you work with SCPs.

Ethical? - Broken Masquerade canon. There’s going to be a change in the Foundation’s hierarchy, now that they’re forced into the light.

Ethics Committee Orientation - Isn’t the Ethics Committee, like, a myth?

Tales of the Ethics Committee: The Foundation Eats Babies - How do you choose who lives and who dies? To quote Agent Strauss, “We’re a bit beyond trolley problems here.”

Termination_Order - How to execute someone who can turn you into spaghetti with a thought. This one gets dark - warning for rape mentions.

Transcript of Dr. Clef's seminar, "Reality Benders and You: How to Survive When Existence Doesn't." - Fucking Clef. That asshole.

Exceptional Cases Which Do Not Quite Fit Into Any Of The Aforementioned Categories

Abundance - this story is actually on the Wanderer’s Library site and doesn’t mention the foundation, but the slowly-growing unease turning to gradual horrified and/or disgusted understanding would make some scp articles proud.

The Ship In A Bottle Hub - Please. Please read it. At least the intro - it will show exactly what to expect.

[Edit: most recent addition to this post can be found here]

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unfortunate-stranger-losers · 4 years

Photo

All Those Things They Couldn’t Say - A Runaway Baudelaires AU

{ao3} {tumblr} {masterlist}

Chapter Twenty-Three - Quigley goes on the Lam

They planned out their route as soon as Quigley had stopped crying. When he calmed down, Inky returned and led Beatrice to Monty’s chocolate stash, which she quickly gave to Quigley when they went down to the eerily empty Reptile Room. Beatrice spread out the map Quigley had previously marked on the table, placing a few lamps on either end to keep it open, and then she traced multiple possible paths to Prufrock. She had a very distinct frown when she was concentrating, one that Klaus and Sunny also shared. Bertrand watched her carefully, occasionally glancing at the chair Quigley had curled up in, though the boy also peered over, watching Beatrice mess with the map with a sort of fascination.

“I think our quickest route, assuming the children are at Prufrock- it should only take them a day or two by bus to get there from Paltryville, where we assume they were last, and it took us about a week to get here, so they should be at the school already. Considering how much gas is left in the car, we should have about two days straight before it gives out, so Quigley can stay in the backseat and we can switch who’s driving. We’ll abandon the car instead of filling up on gas- people will notice the stolen car. After that it’s a week’s walk to the school, but we can cut that time in half if we use public transportation to hit this city, this city, and this one. It may take longer depending on if we can find a place to sleep or if we have to walk all night, and if Olaf catches up to us, we’ll take two days to divert him by traveling in this direction. It’s not a short trip by any means, but it’s the fastest way to our children.”

“Sounds good.” Bertrand nodded.

“Wow.” Quigley said. “You know the city layout that well? Public transportation isn’t even marked on this one.”

“Well, you learn a thing or two after being raised in a cult and then stuck on the run for fifteen years.” Beatrice smirked. “Quigley, pack as much food as you can so we don’t have to stop for it on our drive. Bertrand, let’s find new bags to store supplies in, there should be some around here somewhere. Then we head out.”

Quigley met them outside, tilting his head curiously as the adults did their best to hug a snake. Inky gave them cuddles with its head, then hissed and slithered away.

“What’s that about?” he asked, moving over.

Beatrice smiled sadly. “Inky has somewhere it wants to be, so it’s going to catch up to us later.”

“It’ll find us. That is a smart baby eldritch horror.” Bertrand said.

“Well, I got the snac- sorry, baby what?”

“You got the food?” Beatrice asked.

“Uh, yeah.” Quigley shrugged and slid open his bag, rifling through it. “Almond bags, granola bars, whatever was still nonperishable in the house basically. And then I shoved all the water bottles that could fit.”

“Good thinking.” Beatrice said.

“I got some books, too!” Quigley added, showing them a stack he had under his arm. “For the ride. I can read them out loud if you guys want, to keep us entertained. I used to do that on roadtrips with my siblings.”

“Thank you, Quigley, but that’ll just tire you out.” Bertrand smiled, taking some books from him so he could swing his bag back over his shoulder. “We can explain some things to you on the drive. VFD, the Snickets-”

“Our kids.” Beatrice added. “And you can tell us about your family.”

“Yeah.” Quigley paused, and then smiled. “I’m seeing my siblings again!”

“Hell yeah you are!” Beatrice said, holding up a hand for a high-five, an opportunity Quigley quickly took. “Let’s get in the car.”

Quigley smiled and ran to the backdoor, jumping in and dropping his bag on the ground beside him. He hesitated, though, as Beatrice and Bertrand got in the front seat, his hand hovering over the door handle.

“You guys are safe, right? You’re not gonna kidnap me?”

Beatrice and Bertrand shared an incredulous look, and Bertrand said, “You only thought to ask this now?”

“Father used to say I have the opposite of trust issues. I trust a lot.”

“Ah.” Bertrand sighed, then turned back. “No, we won’t kidnap you. In fact, soon as we find your siblings, we are finding you a safe, permanent place to live away from all this bullshit.”

“Promise?”

As Beatrice started the car, Bertrand leaned his hand back and took Quigley’s, shaking it slightly. “Promise, kid.”

“Good.” Quigley shut the door, and then said, “I suspected you were trustworthy, anyway. You’re very well-read.”

“Oh, God.”

The first day of driving, Quigley was mostly quiet. He pulled out a purple commonplace book to take notes in, only now and again asking a question while they talked. Every so often he’d throw in a trick question to try and figure out if they were lying, but thankfully they were pretty honest with him, so he relaxed quite a bit. He ended up passing out a few hours into the drive, apparently not having done much sleeping the last few days. Beatrice and Bertrand parked every few hours to swap who was driving and who was sleeping, and once Quigley fell asleep, they kinda stopped chatting. Not much to talk about. Not anything that wouldn’t make them feel worse.

When Quigley awoke, they pulled over at a gym to freshen up, and then took off again. Quigley started talking, then. About his siblings. It sounded like Klaus would be good friends with Duncan, you said he was into research? Duncan’s an aspiring journalist, he’s amazing. He’d love Isadora, too, she’s really into poetry. They could talk about that together.

When he talked about his parents, his voice fell, and he curled up a little, muttering about how they used to travel a lot- now he understood it was VFD, and now he wasn’t sure if he liked that- but when they were home they spent all their time with their children.

“They were… great.” Quigley muttered, trying not to cry.

After a pause, Beatrice, who wasn’t driving, turned and put her hand over Quigley’s. “You must miss them very much.”

“Yeah.” Quigley nodded, and he shook slightly. Jacques hadn’t said that to him, hadn’t mentioned his parents after saying he knew them. “Did you… know them well?”

“Only a little, I’ll admit.” Beatrice said. “We saw each other in class. Went on a couple missions. But… I know they were good people, Quigley. Wonderful people. And…” she patted his hand again. “We’re honored to help their children any way we can.”

Quigley smiled. “What… what did you guys do?”

“Once we went to Paltryville, we were in a large group.” she said. “We nearly burnt the town down but we stopped the fire so technically we were the heroes in that situation.”

“I got hypnotized.” Bertrand said.

“Hypnosis?” Quigley bounced slightly, leaning forwards. “You didn’t tell me that! What’s it like?”

Beatrice shot Bertrand a concerned glance, and he sighed as he turned a bend in the road. “Wish I could tell you. But you’re kinda… amnesiac during it.”

“Wow.” Quigley said, fascinated.

Beatrice smiled, bit her lip, and said, “Your Mother trained crows, right?”

“Carrier birds. She loved them.” Quigley smiled. “We all kinda absorbed the basics just by listening to her.”

“Did we tell you I trained bats?”

“No!” Quigley bounced again, pulling out his commonplace book and flipping to a new page. “How different is it from birds?”

“Well, they sleep in the day, usually.” Beatrice said. “They’re nocturnal.”

“So were you when you were younger.” Bertrand said.

Beatrice laughed and punched him on the shoulder.

When they ran out of gas on the second day, night was already starting to fall. They managed to ditch the car at the edge of a town, and Beatrice helped Quigley shoulder his bag before they made their way through, passing building after building. Finally they found a hotel, and Bertrand went in while Beatrice and Quigley waited outside. When he came out, Quigley said, “Did you get a room?”

“No, of course not, we don’t have cash.” Bertrand said. “But I managed to scope out which rooms are empty. We’re gonna break into one of those, come on.”

Quigley jumped, and then stuttered, “Um- okay?”

“Higher floor is less likely to get sold late at night.” Beatrice said. “We can climb in through a window.”

“Um-” Quigley began.

“Room 315.” Bertrand said. “Quigley, get in there and make it to the stairwell, wait outside 315 until we open the door. Don’t go with anyone else.”

Quigley nodded. “What if you get caught?”

Beatrice and Bertrand shared a sad look, and then she said, “We won’t. Go on in.”

Quigley nodded, quickly scampering into the building. He kept his head low, trying to remain unnoticed by the other people milling about the lobby. He found the stairs quick and raced up, playing with his hair to calm his nerves- it had gotten a bit longer than he normally kept it, but he was fine with that. He actually kinda liked it. Now he could see why Isadora was so excited to have longer hair instead of matching her brothers. It was fun.

He made it to the third floor and pushed the stairwell door open, cautiously creeping down the hall, jumping when he heard noises from other rooms. His mind drifted to the idea of them getting caught, of people grabbing and shouting at them that they shouldn’t be here, getting handed over to the police…

He stopped outside of Room 315 and started playing with his hair again. That would distract him, at least. The soothing, swishing feeling… it was so nice. God, he needed to grow it out a bit more. Maybe to the shoulders. That’d be nice without getting distracting. If it was too long it’d fall in his face and he wasn’t sure how he’d keep it out.

He jumped as the door in front of him started to rattle, and stepped back as it swung open. Bertrand smiled down at him, put a finger to his mouth, and then gestured for him to come in. Quigley beamed and skipped in, watching as Beatrice shut the window, tossing her hair back like it was no big deal.

“Can you show me how to do that?” Quigley asked, as soon as Bertrand shut the door.

“When we have the time, yeah.” Beatrice nodded. “We’ll sleep here and set out in the morning. We’ve got a long walk but if we can get to the bus station by tomorrow night we can sleep as it drives.”

“I’m good at walking. We’ll be fine.” Quigley said. He moved to a bed, bouncing slightly on the mattress.

“Will you be alright?” Bertrand asked. He dimmed the lights some more, as Beatrice sat by the window to start their first watch.

“Sure.” Quigley said. He hesitated, and then said, “Just wake me up in an hour or so, I can keep watch.”

“Oh, honey, no.” Beatrice shook her head, smiling. “We’re used to this. You get your sleep, okay?”

“But I’m on the run with you now.”

“No,” Bertrand said quickly, “We’re just getting you to your siblings. You go to sleep, okay? Get some rest.”

“I want to help.”

“You can help by getting rest. We’ve got a long walk.” Bertrand reminded him, sitting on the other bed and smiling at him. “Goodnight, kid.”

“...okay.”

Quigley ended up crawling into bed, but after several minutes of laying there, he found he wasn’t able to calm down enough to rest. His head felt a bit bleary- that feeling when you’re tired but still can’t sleep. That was normal, right?

So he rolled over and said, “I can’t sleep. Can’t I just… stay up with you guys?”

Bertrand and Beatrice sighed, and Bertrand moved over to Quigley, sitting beside his bed. “What do you normally do to fall asleep?”

Quigley shrugged. “Nothing, really. I don’t sleep a lot.”

“Insomnia?”

“I think so, yeah.”

Bertrand smiled and glanced over at Beatrice, who nodded at him, before turning back. “When my kids were younger, I’d just recite poetry when they were too nervous to go to sleep.”

Quigley frowned at him. “Yeah but I’m thirteen, I’m not a baby.”

“It might help. Sometimes it’s easier to fall asleep with something in the background- music, recitation, calming noises, that stuff.”

“We don’t have music,” Beatrice said, hugging her knees and smiling, “But we do have my husband and his wonderful extensive knowledge of John Godfrey Saxe.”

Quigley hesitated. “Sometimes Isadora would read poetry til we passed out. I guess it might work. If you’re okay with it.”

“Sure.” Bertrand laughed. “My kids think it’s embarrassing so I usually just do it with Sunny. What do you know about John Godfrey Saxe?”

“A bit, from Isadora.” Quigley said, before grabbing a pillow and hugging it. “She’s a poet like you, I think I mentioned?”

“Yeah.” Bertrand nodded. “I can’t wait to meet her. We’ll talk your ears off.”

“I can’t wait.”

Bertrand smiled, and then sat against the dresser, resting his arm on his knee. “Well, The Blind Men and the Elephant. And you try to sleep, okay?”

“I’ll do my best.”

Bertrand looked over to Beatrice, who just beamed at him and waited.

“It was six men of Indoostan, To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind.”

Despite his insomnia, Quigley was asleep by the final verse, exhaustion pulling him again. Bertrand stood up, making sure to tuck the boy in and ensure he was actually sleeping and not just pretending. He smiled and said, “That always worked on Klaus.”

“And my singing worked on Violet.” Beatrice sighed. “We’ll try that with him next, I guess.”

Bertrand sat on the other bed, glancing cautiously at his wife. “Should we have even taken him with us?”

Beatrice didn’t meet his eye. “If we didn’t, he’d either be abandoned in that house or taken to VFD. Either way, he’d be fucked.”

“If Olaf catches up to us-”

“He won’t.”

Bertrand sighed and moved to sit beside his wife on the windowsill. He reached over and took her hand, and played with her fingers for a bit. She smiled and relaxed against the wall, leaning her head on her shoulder.

“If he does,” Bertrand said seriously, “We’ll have him run. Pretend he doesn’t know us.”

“Pretend we don’t know him. So Olaf has no interest.”

“That way at least he won’t be…”

They were silent again. Then Bertrand hesitantly pulled his wife’s sleeve back and ran his hand over a dark bruise. Beatrice didn’t move, but she did shiver slightly.

“I never thought he-”

“There’s a lot we never thought he could do.” Beatrice whispered. “A lot we never thought we could do.”

Bertrand moved his hand back to hers, and squeezed it. “Bea… it still doesn’t give him the right to-”

“I know.”

Bertrand shut his eyes. “The things he did-”

“I know.”

“The things he said-” He clenched her palm again, and she leaned forwards, using her free hand to cup his face.

“We won’t let any of it happen.” she said, but Bertrand could feel her trembling. “Not to our babies. Not to anyone.”

“Beatrice…” he slid his hand to her arm again, and then said, his voice breaking, “If- if he goes near Violet-”

“He won’t.” Beatrice said certainly, that fire lighting behind her eyes again. “We’ll kill him.”

“That’s what scares me, Bea. I- I never thought he could- he would even think-”

Beatrice sighed. “Time flies by, and carries away our tender caresses for ever. Time flies far from this happy oasis and does not return.”

“We are not sure of sorrow, and joy was never sure.” Bertrand replied. “Today will die tomorrow, time stoops to no man’s lure.”

“Farewell past, happy dreams of days gone by. The roses in my cheeks already are faded.”

“Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf.”

They looked at each other, and then Beatrice leaned further, giving her husband a soft, comforting kiss.

#asoue #asoue au #asoue netflix #a series of unfortunate events #runaway baudelaires au #all those things they couldn't say #mine #asoue fanfiction #my fanfic

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thetravelerwrites · 5 years

Text

Blue: The Dry Run

Rating: General Audiences Additional Tags: Monster Lover, Gender Neutral Reader, Asexual, Agender Demon, Demon Friend, Reader-Insert, SFW Words: 2135

Blue is anxious about going out among people openly for the first time, so their partner suggests a trial to help them feel less nervous: a petting zoo.

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“But what if they don’t like me?”

You sighed at Blue in exasperation. You were trying to convince them to come with you to one of your classes. Your young students often dealt with feelings of being different in a world that didn’t understand them, and you knew Blue understood that feeling very well.

“You’re blue and fuzzy, hon, they’ll love you. You’re like a giant teddy bear.”

“What if they’re frightened? I’m a demon, a creature, a… a thing. Won’t they be scared of me?”

“Of course not. You haven’t been out in hundreds of years, Blue. The world is a different place now. All kinds of creatures walk among humans these days. You’re not the only non-human out there. A handful of my kids are half-human. Orcs, werewolves, dragons, nagas, even other demons. Hell, my boss’s assistant is an incubus, for fuck’s sake. Openly! Like everyone knows he’s an incubus; he doesn’t even try to hide it. Everyone has to have a job these days, you know. And I think the kids would really like you.”

They were sitting scrunched up on the bed, twisting their tail in their lower pair of hands and looked down at themselves. “But… I’m naked.”

You folded your arms and smirked at them. “Now your grasping at straws, Blue,” You said. You turned and looked into your closet. “But if it’ll make you feel better…” You riffled through the rack with your lips pursed. “Hmm…you’re too tall for most of my clothes…” You said. “Oh, here we go.” You pulled out a long, pale pink sundress with yellow flowers. “My sister left this last time she stayed over. I’ve been meaning to send it back to her, but…”

You bid Blue to stand, and they stood up straight. You’re glad you made the decision to move to an apartment with vaulted ceilings so that they could stand at their full height. Their constant crouching was painful, even for you.

You put the dress up to their long, spindly body and considered it. “I think this would look good with your coloring,” You said. “It’s supposed to be ankle length, but I think it’ll be just over your knee. Would this make you feel better?”

They shrugged noncommittally.

You sighed. “Look, why don’t we try a dry run?”

“Dry run?”

“Yeah. Just go out. Nothing big. Maybe the petting zoo.”

“Petting zoo?”

“Yeah, it’s full of cuddly animals you get to play with.”

They gave you a flat expression. “I know what a petting zoo is, my love.”

You laughed. “I take my class there all the time. It’s great for trauma relief. The proprietor is a friend of mine, I can get her to let us in on the weekend.”

“What purpose would that serve?”

“You can play with the animals. Animals are a great judge of character. If they’re not scared of you, then the kids, who are old enough to be reasoned with, won’t be either. Come on, please? It’ll be like our first real date. We’ve never actually had one, for all the time we’ve been together. Please?”

You pressed your hands together as if praying and pouted a little. Blue squatted and sighed, taking the dress and pulling it over their head. Luckily, both sets of arms fit through the armholes. They looked silly and adorable in it.

“If it’s for you…” They signed reluctantly. “But I can’t promise I’ll enjoy it.”

“If you don’t, we’ll come home and I’ll never bring it up again. I want you to be comfortable, but I also think you’d really enjoy yourself.” You took their face in your hands and gently kissed where their nose would have been, if they had one. “There’s no reason to hide, Blue. This world is as much yours as it is mine and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have everything you want from it.”

“I have you. What else could I want?”

You smiled and hugged them. “I love you too. But…” You sighed. “You’re immortal. Or, at least, you’ll live much longer than me. I want you to have something after… after I’m gone. I don’t want you to disappear again.”

They couldn’t argue with that, as much as they disliked the thought. They had been summoned to protect others before you, and had lost them all long ago. Despite never having revealed themselves to any of their prior charges, Blue always felt the losses deeply and had receded to the void after their deaths, waiting to be summoned again. Blue believed their only purpose for existing was to protect, but you were hoping to give them more than that this go round. They were more to you than a bodyguard or a guardian, they were part of your soul now. You loved them.

Blue couldn’t kiss you, as they had no mouth, but they nuzzled their face to your neck before pulling back and signing, “Okay. I’ll go.”

“You’ll love it. I promise.” You said, running a finger down the middle of their face. They did that strange smile that only involved their eyes.

That Saturday, late in the evening, you had made arrangements with your friend Lizzie for her to open the petting zoo for you simply so she could meet the elusive Blue you were always going on about. She admitted to you that she kind of thought you had made them up.

It was nearly midnight when you managed to get Blue, wearing the sundress, out of the front door. You promised to take all the back ways, so that they would be seen by as few people as possible. You assured them that it wasn’t necessary, that no one would scream or run from them, but they were still wary.

“Don’t look so worried, honey,” You told them, taking them by the hand and pulling them down the sidewalk in the dark just outside of the light of the streetlamps. “It’ll be fine.”

Blue allowed themselves to be lead by their hand, skulking behind you with their eyes darting to and fro.

“Lizzie is very nice, I promise. I’ve already told her all about you, so she knows what to expect,” You said.

“I doubt that,” Blue said.

“Blue, her husband is an onikuma and her best friend since childhood is a horned forest guardian. She’s really not going to be all that surprised by you.”

Blue shrugged and continued to follow you.

You walked up the steps of the community center and ignored the front door. All the lights were off except for the annex building where the petting zoo was kept in back. You skipped a little and pulled Blue forward, as they had stopped when they saw the light ahead.

“Come on!” You said excitedly. If they could have groaned, they would have.

Silhouetted against the open door was your friend, Lizzie, waving an arm over her head in enthusiasm.

Blue faltered in their steps, but you used your momentum to carry them forward. Blue was very strong despite the preternatural thinness of their body and extremities; if they really wanted to wrench themselves from your grasp, they absolutely could have. The fact that while reluctant, they were still complying, spoke to the level of trust they had placed in you. You hoped you weren’t betraying that trust.

“Hey, guys!” Lizzie called. Blue tensed but didn’t retreat.

“Hey, Lizzie!” You said in return, rushing up the stairs to give her a hug. You looked back and saw Blue lingering just outside of the light. “Blue, come on, she’s not going to bite you.”

“Unless you ask nicely,” Lizzie said with a grin.

Blue came forward slowly, fidgeting with their tail nervously.

“Wow, so this is Blue, huh?” Lizzie said, taking a few steps forward and putting out a hand. Blue eyed her warily, but took her hand in one of theirs and shook delicately. “I really did think you made them up, you know,” Lizzie added to me.

“Told you so,” I said.

“Yeah, you did,” Lizzie said, smiling brightly at Blue.

“Nice to meet you,” Blue signed after you nudged them.

“You, too,” Lizzie replied. “Well, ready to pet some animals?”

Blue nodded, the cascade of their hair shivering as they did so, and They followed you and Lizzie into the building.

Inside there was a miniature pony, a few pigs, a llama, some lambs, a goat, and a pen full of little rabbits.

“Ooh! Look, Blue! Bunnies!” You said, pulling them toward the pen. Picking one up, you set it in Blue’s upper pair of hands. Blue cradled it carefully, waiting for it to fight them or freak out, but it didn’t. It simply sat placidly in Blue’s grasp, nose twitching.

You took one of Blue’s lower hands and pulled it up, showing them how to stroke the bunny. When you let go, Blue continued on their own.

“See? Not so bad, right?”

Blue didn’t answer, just scratched the bunny behind its ear. They then knelt down and put their hand out, and the other bunnies came over and sniffed it curiously.

“Here,” Lizzie said, holding a cabbage in her hands and breaking off some of the leaves for Blue to feed to the rabbits. Blue took the leaves and held them out, and the bunnies flocked to them, much to their delight. Blue then sat cross-legged in the pen, surrounded by rabbits as if they were the bunny messiah.

“Cute dress Blue’s wearing,” Lizzie said in an undertone after you had retreated to give Blue some space.

“Yeah, it was my sister’s. I just forgot to give it back.”

“So, Blue’s a girl?”

“Nope.”

“A boy?”

“Neither,” You replied.

Lizzie scrunched up her face in confusion. “Well, I know you call them ‘they’ and all,” She said. “But… what have they got going on… you know… downstairs?”

“They’re an eldritch horror borne of the void, Lizzie, they don’t need to have anything ‘going on downstairs,’” You told her in a sniffy tone. “Besides, the only person who needs to be concerned about that is them.”

“Well, you’re together, aren’t you? Wouldn’t it concern you, too?”

“I’m a sex-repulsed asexual, Lizzie; it doesn’t make a difference to me what they may or may not have… physically. Blue is what they are and they don’t need to be anything else. It’s not complicated; they’re happy, I’m happy, and that’s what matters.”

Lizzie shrugged. “If you say so.”

Blue sprung up to their feet and trotted over to you, a small procession of bunnies following in their wake, and they smiled their eye-smile. They still had a rabbit on their shoulder.

“I want to pet the horse now,” they said.

It took another three trips to the petting zoo before Blue decided they felt confident enough to greet your class. You had also experimented with different articles of clothing, but Blue decided they liked the sundresses best. It allowed for freer movement, and they liked the way the fabric fell around their body. Halter top dresses worked best with their four arms.

While going to put away Blue’s new clothes, you hand touched a bag that you had stowed away in the closest nearly a year ago, the one with the bits of the bunny, Blue’s vessel.

“Whoa,” You said, holding it if for them to see. “I’d forgotten about this. Why did you rip this to pieces?”

“To get out,” They said. “Demons are physically trapped within the confines of their vessels. We literally have to ‘break’ free of them. I had no reason to do so before that night, but when I couldn’t discern why you were so distressed, I freed myself to try and comfort you better, though I seemed to have had the opposite effect.”

“Aw,” You said, hugging them around the middle. They’re lower set of arms wrapped around your waist while the upper pair settled on your shoulders. “It’s all good now. You’re a huge comfort to me, Blue.” You pulled up and looked at their face, frowning slightly. “I do wonder what you get out of staying with me, though.”

“I get love,” they said with their eye-smile. “That’s all I need.” They’d brushed their forehead against yours affectionately and you kissed their face.

The next day, Blue picked out the white sundress with the roses on it, their favorite, and shyly accompanied you to the school. They walked scrunched up at first, but when they saw other creatures, like demons, orcs, and beast-people, walking among humans, they straightened out a little and seemed a bit more eager.

When you got to the school, you introduced Blue to your colleagues, who greeted them warmly, which was surprising to Blue.

Outside your first class, you turned to Blue.

“Ready?”

They smiled and nodded.

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Thanks for reading!

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#Exophilia #Demon #Asexual #Gender Neutral Reader #Reader Insert #Petting Zoo #SFW #My Writing #Blue #Interspecies Romance #Asexual Romance #Agender

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