#My first time doing neons and glitch effects..

[caged-dreamland]

🔌✨So fuck it, I'll say BYE BYE buzzing melodies And burn through all the LIE LIE copying machines You lose yourself in what you're pretending to be Can we go back to what we had at the start?✨🎶

I love love love the official English cover of Cyberpunk Dead Boy so much that my hand became possessed and drew Nightingale in the style of the MV. This was incredibly fun to do even if it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing!

[spenglersglasses]

❤️‍🔥🎙️SINNERS REJOICE!!!! 🎙️❤️‍🔥

⚠️ FLASH WARNING ⚠️

Here is the next installment of our beloved Radio demon and his Princess of Hell….

A few disclaimers/reminders before we begin!

While I know it is canon that Alastor is asexual, in this fic he has a rare sexual attraction that develops for a certain someone in particular and is NOT aromatic. If this is something that bothers you or if you are not a fan of the Alastor/Charlie ship (Charlastor/RadioBelle) then this is not one for you my fellow smut enjoyers.

If you aren't bothered then be prepared, this will be a wild ride!

Also, when Alastor has moments of "glitching" or that infamous radio cracking to his voice, his speech will look like this (Ĝ͎͍͓͌͠l̡̟̩͍̐̐̕͞ì͓̞̗̜̇̿͝ẗ̼c̬̮̹̔̒́h͚͇́̓ ̙͕̮̣̎͑͛̚s̟͇̽͞p̫͉͆̈e̡͇͉͐̑̊e̻͞c͙͇̆̏h̺̗̭̙̑̓̄͝), I will be making a note of what is being said, so those who have a harder time can understand it, but I thought it was an awesome effect lol.

Anyways here we go for chapter 2!!!!

*Special shoutout to @animatedglittergraphics-n-more for the GLITCH dividers!

Now without further ado!

D̢͙̯̦̙͎̎̽̇̔̾͊̿̚͜͟A̜̱̫̭̽̌̔̄R̫̬͊̈̊͜Ļ̮̗̲̤͎̙̅͒̿͒̿͊͡Í̱̮͑́͢͜͠N͔̗̘͈̲̤̳̉̅̉̀͗̔͠͝ͅG̢̻̱͐́̆͜͠ (Hazbin Hotel)

When Alastor made a deal with Charlie Morningstar, he knew it was a chance for him to ascend the ranks. Now that it's been weeks since the events of the extermination battle, Alastor decides it's time to collect…what he didn't expect was to slowly fall for the Princess of Hell. But hey, a deal's, a deal.

Chapter 2: Back On the Air

Also available HERE on AO3. Haven't started yet? Beginning HERE on AO3!

Eventually will be NSFW below the cut!!

Deep in the Pride ring, the music was blasting. Club Hell 666 was popping, neon lights flashing and packed with demons, whose thirst for all that's debaucherous was at an all-time high. Vaggie had been zoning in and out at the table. Her eyes, fixed on the blinking “Powder your nose” sign. Her thoughts, miles away from their celebrations.

Angel, Husk, and Cherri Bomb doing their best to enjoy the night out. They had all taken a moment before that first taste of liquor to pay their respects to Sir Pentious. Even Cherri was unable to hold back the emotion. As the night went on, things had begun to be less somber. 

The group was enjoying the night out, with the exception of Vaggie who still seemed unable to shake things off. She just stared off, the reflection of the sign burning a permanent image in her eyes as things went on around her. Her attention only grabbed when she saw Angel pull a bag of dope from what seemed like nowhere. Hoping to do a few lines with Cherri at the table. Vaggie, unable to help herself from shooting him a look of disapproval. 

“Listen, I said I would behave—never said I’d be a saint.” Angel huffed, both he and Cherri ready to party the night away.

“You sure didn’t bitch.” Cherry Bomb laughed, playfully punching Angel’s shoulder before doing a line herself. Husk rolled his eyes, turning away when he got a good look at Vaggie. Letting out a sigh as he mustered up the will to ask her about how she was feeling. He could read the best of them, and it had been clear to him for some time that the fallen angel had a lot on her mind.

“What's got you all down in the mouth?” Husk inquired. Vaggie shrugged, acting nonchalant. The old cat knew better, shooting closer to her in his chair so they could hear one another a little easier. “Now you know I ain’t buyin’ that bullshit.”

“Hmph…” Vaggie groaned. Damn bastard always knew too much. “It’s Charlie.” she confessed, after all there was not much use in trying to keep things from Husk. It was only a matter of time before he’d have teased it out himself. 

“Ah—figured it might be.” he sighed, relaxing back more into his chair. “You know, we’ve all been through a lot these last few weeks. Give her some time.” he assured her. Vaggie smiled back at him, taking in a deep breath and exhaling hard. Hoping to let go, even if it was just for the night.  

“You’re right…just I feel like things have been different between us… even before all the stuff with the hotel and Heaven. Just seems like it all exacerbated it.” Vaggie explained, Husk nodding his head. 

“Welp, thing is…” he began. Vaggie looking over to him expecting to receive more comforting or reassuring advice. “Sometimes people change… ain’t much we can do about it. All you need to do is be you. If it’s meant to be, she'll come around.” he reasoned. It was hard to hear it, but Vaggie knew it made a lot of sense. So much had happened between them and there was no going back to how things once were, no matter how hard she might try. 

“Will you two stop yapping and live a little!” Angel yelled across the table. Vaggie, smiling over to Husk who sent her back a wink.

“Why the Hell not!” she cheered, raising her glass and deciding to enjoy herself. Her troubles could wait until morning. 

Charlie’s pacing had all but burned a hole in the rug. Back and forth she transverse the lobby. Charlie’s mind spinning with thoughts of Alastor. What was he up to? Why the special broadcast? 

It was still early in the day and Charlie was alone downstairs. Everyone else seemed to be dead asleep. The gang, having all been out into the late-night hours. Not that Charlie had a clue when they had actually come home. Only sign that they’d returned was Angel’s harness thrown haphazardly in the entryway. 

Charlie was exhausted and had once again not even bothered to return to her room. Instead, it had been another night of sleeping in the parlor. Charlie was beginning to wonder if she was subconsciously trying to widen the distance that had been growing between her and Vaggie. Had anyone else noticed?

While she absolutely still loved her, things between them just weren't the same. Though Charlie couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it happened–it did. She was no longer “in love” with Vaggie. Her heart had changed. Though it both frightened and pained her to think it, her feelings had moved on to another. Someone who no one would have guessed and that she’d never truly have. 

It was a cruel twist of fate. Falling out of love with Vaggie, who had been so loyal and true. Despite all they had been through together Vaggie was always by her side. Why now would she be falling hard and fast in love with the radio demon? She wondered if something in her knew it was happening from that first moment, when he stood in the doorway. Offering up his services to her and the hotel. 

His eyes, his smile—had sent shockwaves through her. Of course, he was being dapper and charming Charlie, that's his schtick, she thought to herself. Wondering if that could really have been enough to win her over? No, it had to have been more than that. There was a vulnerability there. Deep down Alastor had a heart too. His commitment to Charlie and the hotel—to helping all the others. That had proven it—hadn’t it?

“Argh…” Charlie huffed, dropping back down on the sofa. So flustered and head aching. Her hands, coming to rub at her temples. Unable to shake the thoughts of him from her mind when she felt that someone else was nearby. Then feeling the pressure of a small foot across the toe of her shoe.  

“Ope! My bad.” Niffty said, scurrying over Charlie’s foot before incessantly scrubbing down the table. Charlie smiled, Niffty was such a big help, it was nice having her around. She had been the only one who stayed home last night–with the exception of Charlie and Alastor. 

“It’s alright.” Charlie chuckled, watching the vivacious little demoness in her duties.

“Thinking about Alastor again?” she asked, seemingly out of the blue. Charlie’s heart felt like it had stopped mid-pump within her chest. She couldn't believe it. 

“What are you talking about?” she asked, hoping to laugh it off. Niffty stared blankly at her, as if she was confused at why Charlie would ask. 

“Because you have a crush on him. I don’t blame you…he’s such a bad boy!” she smiled, continuing her work as if it was nothing. Charlie felt the heat hit her cheeks. How did she know? Did anyone else know?

“Ha ha… you had me going there. Hey why don’t you check out room 237. I hear there is an issue with the bathtub again.” Charlie suggested, trying her best to hide her embarrassment, when she heard the telltale sound of footfalls on the stairs. 

“Just fixed it again this morning. Good thing I like to stay on top of things.” Alastor mused from the staircase. Approaching the two of them, all while dandily twirling his cane. Even though Charlie had just spent the last few minutes adamantly denying it, her heart once again began pounding away at the sight of him. 

Come on Charlie… hold it together, she said to herself. Alastor came to sit down beside her on the sofa. Using his cane to tap Niffty’s busy little hand, causing her to stop and look over at him. Niffty, blinking her one eye and smiling up at him as he patted the top of her head. 

“Listen my little sprite, why don’t you run along. I have some important matters to discuss with our princess.” Alastor suggested. Niffty nodding and running off like mad up the stairs with his request. Charlie wondered what the relationship between the two of them was, though she dare not ask.  

“Everything alright?” Charlie asked, grooming her ponytail with clammy hands. Alastor was unsure what to make of her nervous disposition. Did she somehow know what he was about to say?

“My dear you seem so discontent… whatever is the matter?” he asked her. Charlie smiled, her lip quivering a bit. She didn’t want him of all people to know what she was really thinking—feeling.

“Just excited for the broadcast today!” Charlie cheered, thrusting her fist in the air. Hoping the fanfare would be enough to help move the conversation along. 

“Ah, yes. Well now that you mention it, I wanted to talk to you about it. You see our scheduled programming very much involves you my dear.” Alastor explained. Charlie’s eyes widening, her head tilting to the side–completely confused.

“Me?” she asked, raising her brows at him. 

“Of course… Who else?” he laughed, just before lifting off the sofa. Walking towards the fireplace. Flames, crackling and popping as Alastor stood before it. HIs infamous smile, glinting in the light as he placed his hands behind his back. 

“Al, what are you ta-talking about? What–what are you asking me?” Charlie stuttered. Alastor spun around and bent down to meet with her eyes. The green light of his power illuminated him as he reached out his hand. Waiting for Charlie to take it. 

“It’s time to pay the pied piper…” He explained, “...we had a deal Charlie and I͙̭͛̚'̙͔̦̭͖̆͊̅̎͡M̗̼̪̙̓̒͗͊̀͟ ̨̦̝͕̥͎̐̆̍̐̄̈́͘͢Ň̡̼̔̇͢O̺̍T ̥̱̮̮̫̐́̇̇͌͆͘͟ͅA̻͔̎̑Ş̪̙͕̮̂̅̏̉̃̅͢K̺̩̩͂͐͡I��̙̗̲̖̯̊́̏͒͗͂͜͡N͔̳̲̮͕͙̩͊̊́͌͊̔͡G͈̫͉̥̲̳̫̔̾̑͒̐̽͘.” Alastor cracked, dials spinning and his voice thicker and more intense than usual. Charlie felt icy running through her veins. Both frightened and intrigued by him though Alastor quickly returned to normal before speaking again as he continued. “Well, I suppose, technically I am asking… for your hand. Your hand in marriage.” the radio demon crooned. 

“Marriage?” was all Charlie could say, staring down at his hand. Feeling like the breath was stolen from within her lungs. “Al, you can’t be serious?” she asked. Wondering to herself if this was some cosmic joke. That while her feelings for him had only grown deeper, she’d be subject to his proposal for nothing but political gain. Alastor having felt nothing for her but as a means to an end. 

“Oh, but I am. Quite as a matter of fact. You marry me and together we become the talk of the town. Alastor and Charlie Morningstar. Princess—and Prince of Hell.”

“What about?” Charlie began, her heart leading before her head could remind her to keep quiet. 

“About what dear…” he asked, waiting impatiently for her to continue, “...go on now, spit it out.”

“About love?”

“Who said anything about love? Love has nothing to do with this. Remember Charlie…Y̱̺̓͞O̳̣̰̐̈́̈́͡ͅU̘̜͐͝ ̡̨͔͍͇̇̓̇̎͋O͇̭̥̫̒̚̚͡W̮̔È̺̞̜͙̍̀͌͟͠ ̙̜͈̮͚̃͌̀͘̚M̡̖̫̺͖͂͗͆̀͡Ȩ̨̛͉̤͚̰̐̆̀͋̑.” he hissed. Charlie swallowed back, reaching out her hand to take his. She had no choice. Alastor quickly grabbed onto her and shook. The deal was now satisfied, Charlie would be set to marry Alastor, or she’d lose her soul to him. 

Alastor was thrilled. His plan, now set in motion and there was nothing the Princess or anyone else could do to stop it. Not even Lucifer himself. He would tell the whole of Hell about their nuptials during the broadcast and soon be in a position to take back his freedom. Though Charlie’s mention of love had him curious. 

Did she love him? Who could ever love a thing like him? He was in the breaking and taking of dreams and souls. Nothing that Charlie was feeling would make him change his mind, would it?

As they’re eyes locked, Alastor’s face was still plastered with a smile. The room flooded over with his eerie essence, the thoughts bubbling up in his mind still at a low simmer. HIs shadow began laughing as it traveled the walls, veve appearing all around them–glowing hot and red. Charlie’s eyes filled with tears. The warm liquid, streaming down her face as she realized what she had done. In helping save her people she may have gone and damned them to a worse fate. 

“Damn, must’ve taken it a bit far last night.” Vaggie groaned, rolling over in bed. Her head pounding from the ferocity of her hangover. All she could remember was the pep talk from Husk and powering back shot after shot as Angel and Cherri egged her on. She decided she’d try to get away with lying in bed all day. That was until she felt the weight of an arm slinging over her shoulder. 

“Good morning sweet thing.” Sev whispered in her ear. His tail swayed softly as a big cheshire cat-like grin spread across his face. He was clearly satisfied with the events of the previous night. Vaggie felt sick to her stomach. Suddenly her memories came rushing back. 

They had run into Sev and his sister Trix at the club. Vaggie doing her best to keep a positive rapport, asked them to join the group. After what could only be described as a gluttonous amount of drinking and partying, she remembered them all returning to the hotel. They had staggered in at almost 3 am. 

On the way through the lobby, Vaggie caught sight of Charlie passed out on the sofa. How beautiful she looked when she was sleeping. How content, Vaggie thought, she was without her around. Vaggie’s emotions, running even higher now with the complication of her inebriated state. She allowed them to get the better of her. Angry at Charlie for having given up on them, she had decided she’d had enough. Following Sev, Husk, and Angel upstairs as the anger continued brewing inside her heart.

She remembered walking down the hall, still seething with pain and anger when she began to notice that Angel had been hanging off Husk’s arm. Hearts, practically dancing in his eyes as the two of them made their way to Angel’s room. She was upset—jealous even. Here Husk and Angel were, finally letting the obvious sexual tension between them flourish, and she was left out in the cold. Alone on yet another night while her so-called girlfriend avoided her.

What did you expect? That she’d wait up all night for you to come home and welcome you back with open arms? She thought to herself. She stopped just at her door, staring a moment at the handle before she took a moment to glance down the hall. Watching as Sev went to unlock the door to his room.  Sev happened to see her watching, waving a moment before sensing something was off. 

He approached her, wanting to say good night when Vaggie grabbed onto his arm. Pulling him towards her. Needy eyes painfully staring into his. The two strangers who desperately wanted to feel, leaning into one another. 

Before she knew it, Vaggie had invited him inside. Allowing him to share her bed. The night spent tangled up in each other's limbs. It was something she would have never done, or even considered, when sober. 

That was it. She remembered it all. Feeling the heavy weight of regret when Sev brushed back a bit of her hair from her face. Pulling Vaggie from her thoughts and forcing her to face the present situation. 

“You, ok?” he asked her, clearly having guessed something was wrong from the look on her face. She was tearful, wincing even. Sev was beginning to feel as if maybe he’d crossed a line, but Vaggie had asked him in. He never forced anything. Still, he figured redemption would be off the table had he not at least tried to take responsibility. “Vaggie—I didn’t mean to—” he continued, Vaggie began curling up tight into a ball. 

“It’s alright Sev… it’s not your fault. I just need you to go.” she sniffled back. Sev pulled Vaggie over to face him. The tears, now falling freely from her eyes.

“I’m sorry. For what it’s worth…” he continued, feeling awful about what had happened. He knew Charlie and Vaggie were in a relationship. Still, he had let his lustful desires get the best of him. 

“Just go!” Vaggie yelled, unable to stop herself from sobbing. Sev did as he was asked. Quickly gathering up his things and heading out the door. Vaggie left alone to deal with the consequences of her actions. All she wanted to do was numb the pain. To stop all the hurt from this thing with Charlie. In doing so, she knew she had ruined everything. 

As if things couldn’t get any worse there was a knock on her door. “I said go the fuck away Sev!” Vaggie yelled, forcing herself up out of bed to go scream at him. Angry that he didn’t seem to be getting the point. When she swung the door open, ready to throw hands, she was met face to face with Charlie. 

Vaggie went pale, staring into Charlie’s doe eyes. Eyes that had clearly been crying themselves. This can’t be happening… not now , Vaggie thought to herself. Charlie took a moment to look down the hall. Noticing Sev disappearing into his room. 

“Uh... Vaggie… why was Sev just leaving your room?” she asked. Vaggie held onto her head. Still wrapped in only a sheet from the events of the night before. Her hangover, having a tight grip as she tried to think of what to say.

“Charlie, I—I don’t know what to say.” Vaggie admitted. Charlie had come to tell her about what had happened with Alastor. To find solace in her girlfriend who at one time was also her best friend. As she saw Sev leaving Vaggie’s room, it was clear to Charlie what had happened, but she needed to hear it from Vaggie. 

“Did you—did you sleep with him?” she asked, the look on Vaggie’s face confessing it all. 

“It was an accident. I was just so upset about things between us… You’ve changed Charlie.” Vaggie cried, realizing how awful she sounded, only after the fact.

“Wrong answer!” Charlie hissed, turning around without shedding a tear. Angry at Vaggie’s betrayal, but even more so that she was to blame.

“That’s not…argh… Charlie I didn’t mean!” Vaggie said as she tried chasing Charlie down the hall.

“It’s over Vaggie. Stay or leave. I don't care, but it's over.” Charlie hissed. Running off as Vaggie stood there in silence. 

Notes:

I͙̭͛̚'̙͔̦̭͖̆͊̅̎͡M̗̼̪̙̓̒͗͊̀͟ ̨̦̝͕̥͎̐̆̍̐̄̈́͘͢Ň̡̼̔̇͢O̺̍T ̥̱̮̮̫̐́̇̇͌͆͘͟ͅA̻͔̎̑Ş̪̙͕̮̂̅̏̉̃̅͢K̺̩̩͂͐͡I̺̙̗̲̖̯̊́̏͒͗͂͜͡N͔̳̲̮͕͙̩͊̊́͌͊̔͡G͈̫͉̥̲̳̫̔̾̑͒̐̽͘- I'm not asking.

Y̱̺̓͞O̳̣̰̐̈́̈́͡ͅU̘̜͐͝ ̡̨͔͍͇̇̓̇̎͋O��͇̭̥̫̒̚͡W̮̔È̺̞̜͙̍̀͌͟͠ ̙̜͈̮͚̃͌̀͘̚M̡̖̫̺͖͂͗͆̀͡Ȩ̨̛͉̤͚̰̐̆̀͋̑- You owe me.

[leota-nexus]

name: ¿? (pronounced "you think about all this way more than I do!") (pronounced "to pronounce it correctly, I'd have to cut out your tongue!") (pronounced "make a noise & see if I respond!") (no pronunciation) (super helpful pronunciation guide audio recording below!* <3)

alias: V

gender: probably not

lifepath: streetkid techie who later got into hacking

favorite ripper: Vik Vektor

favorite fixer: Muamar "El Capitán" Reyes

favorite weapons (no particular order): Bloody Maria, Hypercritical, Comrade's Hammer, Byakko, & Cottonmouth

favorite clothing style: crystaljock bombers & daemon-hunter ballcap

favorite colors: 💣💎😈🔮🧠 (& anything metallic neon synthwave/darkwave)

bonus fun facts:

fan of AssaultBots & MythSploders (2077 versions of BattleBots & MythBusters yes we just made them up but it's absolutely true anyway)

favorite MythSploders quotes include "When in doubt: C4" -Savage Adam & "Jaime wants big boom" -Jaime the CyberWalrus (yes these bonus fun facts were just an elaborate reason to include these quotes yet somehow still important characterization anyway)

*super helpful pronunciation guide audio recording:

(bonus pronunciation description explanation below the cut)

While asking questions about ¿?, I kept thinking of a joke that seemingly would only work in text:

"I'm ¿?"

"Wha- WTF was that?! How do you pronounce that again?!"

"¿?"

"You know what? Nevermind."

Because it's cyberpunk, I kept picturing it as "*opens mouth, tech glitch sound comes out*" until I finally realized I could create that sound!

So, if I may, let me take you on a journey of how my brain works:

First, I looked for a recording of V saying, "I'm V." Simple right? I came up empty. So I went through the character creator, waited for the music to calm the fuck down, & recorded both voices multiple times just in case. Then I took a sample of just "male voice" V & put it through a granular synthesizer where I was able to do this:

That's left (¿) & right (?) audio (dots omitted to minimize sonic overload) each tracing separate paths through the audio "I'm V" at the same time. I was like

"lulz let's hear this chaos!"

"..."

"oh no I love it"

So I hit record, only to realize they're slightly different length lines at slightly different speeds creating this shifting effect over multiple loops. I decided to record a full cycle loop & see if there's a "best" one. Except first, I was curious what it would sound like if I isolated each loop & layered them all on top of each other, like so:

"Oh No I LOVE It"

I panned each loop differently to really emphasize the movement of the sound so if you're listening through headphones, it really does end up sounding like something resembling "¿?"

But I don't want to make final decisions about my partner's character, ya know? Luckily it only took a single listen:

"Yeah, that's how it's officially pronounced. Good luck trying to pronounce that!"

So there you have it! "Good luck!"

(Personally, I just say "your streetkid V" outloud, WAY easier lol)

damn I am fucking OVER typing the words "pronounced" & "pronunciation" @_@

[elvenbeard]

2069

"Is this all there is to this life? Should be recognizin' myself in the mirror better each day, but instead I feel more and more like I'm lookin' at a stranger..."

Vince ran away from home in 2067, aided by Jackie Welles whom he'd met the same year through a fateful coincidence. Jackie and his connections helped him gain independence from his family, and opened doors into a world Vince had so far only seen from far above and far away.

From one environment of buzzing neon lights into the next, although a much less polished one, he ended up in Kabuki. There he stayed for the next two years to come. Drifting from one dissatisfying odd job to the next he tried to build a new life from scratch. In some ways it was a very freeing experience. On file, his birthday was a different one now, aging him up just enough to get his mother off his back. He started HRT, got tattoos he'd always dreamed of, dressed more how he liked without fearing repercussions. He even felt comfortable growing his hair out, dyeing it darker... And soon he began to only introduce himself as "V" to new acquaintances, a nickname and advice given to him by Jackie when they first met.

In other ways though he felt just as out of place in Kabuki as he did in Charter Hill, if not more.

He knew little about life on the streets, was overqualified for what his employers asked of him, and unhappy, underwhelmed with his living situation as a whole. He'd never had to survive on a budget, struggled to make ends meet, or worried about food and rent before. Even Jackie had no solution to these problems - and merc work would never be Vince's style, even if it meant easy money. "Easy" always comes at a price later on...

Eventually, he ended up helping out at a niche tech store with ties to the Tyger Claws. It became the longest job he managed to hold before his pride got the better of him. After many heated arguments with the owner he decided to quit on the spot without much of a Plan B left. He had always done his best to stay away from trouble, gangs in particular, especially after a very unpleasant encounter with the Valentinos two years prior.

Despite his careful attempts to conceal his tracks though, keeping a low profile, and trying to make this new life work out for him somehow, his past began to catch up with him as the Unification War started to threaten Night City itself...

Vince through the years (2/9)

Welcome to more behind the scenes rambles! XD Today: Vince's cyberware and tattoos, of which many were part of him as of 2069 already.

Not too much intense editing required for this set, the lighting in that street is really nice as is with all the neon and stuff! Just off of Kabuki roundabout, where the tech store Vince worked at for the better part of a year was situated.

I did have some fun playing around with some filters for the glitch effect - it's not quite where I want it yet, but I was going for the kind of look V has on surveillance cameras in game, with his identity obscured and such!

During his time in Kabuki he didn't quite have the means that would have allowed for something similar. But still, he was keeping a low profile and taking a lot of not-quite-legal measures to obscure his whereabouts and identity as best as he could to get away from his mother.

Also, this is full headcanon territory and I'm not sure how compatible it is with Cyberpunk lore (I tried to find something online, stumbled upon an extensive cyberware listing from the 2020 rulebook and such)... but my personal headcanon for his piece of neck cyberware is that it's fashionware on the outside, but under the surface it's doing some hormone synthesizing and regulation for his transition. Y'know, a convenient alternative for the array of options we have in our time and age with creams and gels or injections. A one time solution installed in your body that from day one will just do its thing for the rest of your life, basically (with some checkups and upgrades throughout the years obviously).

Also, Viktor got it for him, installed and all, and while they were at it Vince was like "Vik, do you do tattoos, too? I have an idea for something..." and that's basically how he got his demonic grin neck tattoo on the same day xD

Also around that time he would have gotten the wings on his back done:

Very symbolic and a little cliché, but he doesn't give a damn (and he doesn't know it at the time yet, but Kerry will love it xD). The whole "setting himself free" that year in all meanings of the word was very important to him. And by 2069 he'd completed the look with his chin and face tattoos.

The trans-colours cyber-flower on his right shoulder was the first "proper" tattoo he'd ever gotten, shortly before running away from home even. The little, slightly crooked Ursa Major just below it was a stick-and-poke a "friend" did on him even before that, but he never had the heart to get it covered. It's awkwardly positioned and a bit wonky, but he still likes it as a symbol and reminder of his childhood. He had the dots filled in with rainbow colors a little ways down the the line though.

His left shoulder and the chest piece connecting both right and left followed a few years later! We'll get to that :3

[chinzhilla]

i was tagged by @sandushengshou @khaotunq @baek1nho and @chickenstrangers to post my top/favorite creations from each month of 2023! thank you all so much for thinking of me <33

doing this loosely and with director's commentary bc i can never resist

january: my top set is this winteam hugs one. man i struggled so much with maintaining quality while trying to do that yellow to blue gradient coloring down the set. i definitely remembered it as looking worse than it does though, so i was pleasantly surprised to see that no it looks pretty good actually. probably also my favorite from that month since the others are very basic but honorable mention to my chinzhilla set cause i gotta shout out my beloved namesakes

february: top is jimbo the gogurt cat 😻 february was a slow month for me gif-wise so there aren't that many to choose favorites from, but it's probably my eclipse rewatch ep4 for the coloring

march: well uhh march was even slower than february i have two whole posts from that month and they're both eclipse rewatch sets (this was when my old laptop died and i spent like 3-4 weeks without photoshop). top and fav for this month is the eclipse rewatch ep5

april: top is akkayan in the first our skyy 2 trailer and fav is .... akkayan in the second our skyy 2 trailer (the quality of these is so much better how did i manage to make those first gifs look so bad 😅). honorable mention to my coloring in the eclipse rewatch ep8

may: ahh the our skyy 2 days...take me back..... top is every akkayan kiss as it should be. which i think is also my top post on this blog. as it should be. fav is vegas x it's about time (tw for glitch effect/flashing). there's some stuff there that i would go back and change cause i don't think it comes across great in retrospect, but i'm still really pleased with all the technical details

june: top was minoru's heart eyes part 3 (a gif series i WILL come back to shortly - i think the bleak midwinter is the perfect time for an odt rewatch). fav is akk x identity, but god would i go back and redo the typography and layout of the lines/text boxes (iirc i was like. minutes away from missing the deadline on this event so). still very pleased with the blending and what the set actually conveys though

july: oh look another gif series i've put on hold.... top is word of honor rewatch ep1, fav is tied between kp pretty boys (a set which is very pretty itself, if i do say so myself, and was very fun to make) and lomfontien kiss details (truly one of my all time favs on this blog even though it's so simple also everyone please go watch la pluie right now thank you)

august: bombastic side eye: the series takes the cake this month, which was SUCH a fun set to make (as was its spiritual companion, objectifying him to filth, which trailed by only about 30 notes). fav was charn vs wkx quotes. i honestly think i nailed it both conceptually and aesthetically

september: top is the first kanaphan drinking straw cinematic universe which continues to delight me whenever it shows back up in my notifs. fav is tied between cursed sandray parallels (tw glitch) (because it was one of those where as i was making it and inflicting emotional damage on myself, i knew it was going to be delightful inflicting that damage on others, and it was) and sandray x it will come back (mostly for the neon text and its reflection in the first two i just think it looks really good)

october: top was sandray love scene details (tw flashing) which was basically a rip off of my lomfontien kiss one from july but this one was much more successful lol. favorite is only friends x shameful company (tw flashing) (which now i can't look at without thinking of the sign skdjfds). really happy with the cards gif in particular

november: the guynawa kiss won november and they deserved it. my favorite was jim x loss which took me foreverrrr and i redid the last two gifs like three times but it was worth it. also shoutout to my dan x shadow post for all the 'wait there's actual monsterfucking in this show' reactions it elicited

december: top is phayatharn ep1/ep2 parallels and i have to take back what i said about every akkayan kiss being my top post - this one beats it by three notes! which surprised me but i'm glad we're all in this madness together with these two. fav has got to be morkday x come closer (tw flashing) if only for how much i beat my head against a wall over it during the creation process skdjfskj. although i also really love this set of tharn's sexy dream (nsfw) specifically because i added an offset pink layer and i'm OBSESSED with the way it looks with phaya's tattoo

if you read all that.. thank you and also i'm in love with you. anyways it was super fun to look back on everything i made this year! and interesting to realize i'm not nearly as prolific as i thought, especially in the first half of the year. here's to many more gifsets in 2024!!

tagging a few people i don't think have done this yet, apologies if you already have! and as always no pressure

@i-got-the-feels @pharawee @markpakin @difanghua @junghaesin @krystaljungs @firstmix @khaotunqs

[standardquip]

Dysphoria

A video representation of my experience with dysphoria. Made in 2020.

Video:Bakemonogatari, Kizumonogatari, Vision of Escaflowne, Escaflowne (movie), Revolutionary Girl Utena (movie), Neon Genesis Evangelion, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, Devil May Cry (anime), Fullmetal Alchemist, Noragami, Steins;Gate, Blue Exorcist, Guilty Crown, K (TV), Death Note, Death Parade, Akira (movie), Demon Slayer, KARAS, Children of the Sea, Dorohedoro, Psycho Pass, Nisemonogatari, Your Name, Paprika, Perfect Blue, Le Portrait de Petit Cossette, Weathering With You, 5 Centimeters per Second, Charlotte, Attack on Titan, Black Clover, Bleach, Erased, Darwin's Game, Deadman Wonderland, Drifters, Fate Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works, Free!, Sunday Without God, Blood Blockade Battlefront, My Hero Academia, Owari no Seraph, Chivalry of a Failed Knight, Re: Zero, Rozen Maiden, Strike The Blood Third, Sword Art Online, The Rising of the Shield Hero, Macross Frontier Audio:JT Bruce – Hypnic Jerk Premiere Date:2020 Status:Downloadable, Streamable Genre(s):Horror, LGBT+, Other, Artistic Cons/Awards: Anime Weekend Atlanta 2020 PRO Contest: won “Best Technical”, finalist in “Artistic” Agamacon 2021 – Honorable mention “Endless Nightmare” YoumaCon 2021 – “Now in Technicolor!” Award Outside Links:.org

Dysphoria AKA Skeptic’s Hypothesis AKA Multicultural Panic Attack

Started: 12 dec 2019 Finished: 11 aug 2020 Work time: 47hr 58min in premiere 26hr 16min After Effects

General Comments I started out wanting to make a weird/creepy glitch video. But as I started making it it became something way more personal.

The part where I over-explain everything

I joined AWA PRO in 2019 with a video that was completely forgettable (Exposure). I came away from that feeling very weirdly defensive of my editing skills so I set out to make something to prove I could edit. That was the AMV Esoterra, which was largely a shallow, showy piece. Aside from the technicals, it’s also just a type of video I don’t generally make because nostalgia/vibe things don’t interest me much.

While that video was coming along I got the urge to do something edgy, and I have always wanted to do text and glitch effects in a video. I’ve had a love affair with JT Bruce’s “Hypnic Jerk” for several years so worked on cutting it down to something usable (the track is ~10 minutes long). Once that was done I set it aside to make after Esoterra was done, to make sure I finished it before the pro deadline. I didn’t intend to finish Dysphoria for PRO, but I figured if I finished it in time (a big IF) I would submit it in addition to Esoterra.

Once I started on Dysphoria, the time went by so quick. I wanted something that would separate the viewer from reality and just focusing on the song would have been enough. But I got this idea to attach it to something real. And eventually decided to roll with it. It’s weird, because when you look at these 2 videos (Esoterra and Dysphoria) You’d probably think Dysphoria was the gimmicky one, but it’s much closer to my brain than Esoterra is.

I’m not super open about it, but I’m transgender. I also have clinical/major Depression. I wanted Dysphoria to be about the fight you have in your head with yourself on whether or not you want to change, or if what you’re dreaming is really something you want.

During my time in the Navy (2009 – 2012) I was constantly fighting with myself on what I wanted more– transition or to stay in the navy? DADT was repealed shortly after I enlisted, but trans people were still largely unknown and had to be closeted. This video helped me work through some of that, I think. I had a pretty good idea I was trans when I joined, but I wasn’t sure until after boot camp. And once I went on my first deployment things sort of snowballed, and I was constantly weighing the pros and cons of staying in or getting out to transition (Obama’s trans inclusion thing didn’t happen to shortly after I was discharged).

I wanted this video to be relatable to anyone imagining what a mental crisis was like. It was very important to me that it was still “gender dysphoria” but it didn’t beat you over the head with it. I wanted it to be subtle. Something that maybe trans people would get but cis people could still appreciate without feeling like the vid has a specific message. Gender dysphoria can be fairly insiduous. I don’t think many people realize how much it can affect things. It is also easily attributable to other factors, so can be very hard to identify as an issue if you aren’t already 100% sure you’re trans. I guess this video is just relaying feelings, and the general steps/phases/stages you try to work through during a mental crisis or psychological break.

For the text, I watched a lot of AMVs with text in them and I learned that text seemed to work better when you weren’t concerned with reading it. So I made the text hard to read and I used it more as an artistic framing device. Any time the character was feeling the text, I tried to put the text on the character, especially over their face. There are two “worlds” in this vid, one being reality (which is almost always starring a female character), and one being the dream/fantasy. Reality is dim, has washed out colors and hard to read text. Fantasy has easier to read text but it’s usually in another language. It’s also way more raw and emotional, and not the lyrics of the song/track.

And, as especially the case for the first minute, I started out the text being fairly legible but then got more screwed up and harder to read as time progressed. Because in the beginning you think you’ve got things figured out, but the more you think about stuff, the harder it becomes to decide, and the more frustrated you get. Especially true for ~0:28 – 0:34ish, screwing with the text in such a way to be artistic but also to purposefully frustrate you that you cannot read it.

Which introduced an ongoing problem into my video: How do you make things specifically frustrating (especially the later glitches) without it being so frustrating that the video is no longer “good”? That was an ongoing conversation I had with at least 3 different beta testers. Much more about the glitches than the text, because I had very specific visions for the text. In the end, I think I figured it out okay so there is a good balance between “messy” and “not done well”. But that took several tries to get right.

People suffering with mental crises generally feel alone. So I wanted the characters in reality to be relatable but have a barrier between them and the viewer. That being the text, blurs, VHS overlays, etc. I especially tried to pick scenes where the real characters were not looking right at you.

Dream world is brighter, vibrant, hopeful. The characters you see yourself as (the boys) are looking at you, and they’re for the most part cool, badass characters.

The glitches were predominantly hand-made using the very scenes they’re on top of. I did have some presets, but I’d say 80% – 90% of glitches were made from scratch. The presets mostly got used during the elevator scene around 2:13 – 2:17and 2:31 – 2:35. The only other help I had making this were VHS overlays which got peppered in throughout the video.

Despite Esoterra taking more time, I’d consider Dysphoria to be much more technical and difficult to edit. In Esoterra I was playing with, and learning about, flow, composition, and overlays. The time it took to effectively learn and apply those things was immediately used in Dysphoria which surprisingly has a lot of the same core concepts, just utilized differently. Despite them being nearly ideological opposites, I don’t think I would’ve been able to make Dysphoria as good as it is without having the experience of making Esoterra first.

Scene selection was incredibly intentional for every single part, and caused a lot of headache at times due to not finding what I wanted. Because my specific theme was gender dysphoria (and even more specifically, female to male) girls only show up at specific times: – the real world – the very first time the character goes into the dream world “at first it is a plunge into hyper reality” – when the character is actively fighting with themself (the yes / no sections) – after an implied suicide attempt at 1:32, when dream/fantasy start become one.

In the “Yes / no” parts of the video, the boy is always yes, and the girl is always no. That is specific to gender dysphoria, and to FTMs. When you visualize yourself? Is it as a girl or a boy? It was always a boy. But some trans people (myself included) will go through phases where they dream as their real-world (non-transitioned) self. For me, I went through a long period of denial, so would try to force being ok with myself, even though it brought me pain.

So all the scenes with girls in them are painful. The scenes of boys start out cool and confident, but then become trapped and locked away. They get angry and kill the girl around 1:20, which then results in the mental breakdown that follows. The suicide attempt, the male self saving the female self, the overall anger and confusion, and the “crisis” part of the video. The crisis is: Now you know you have to do something. Will you finally accept this part of yourself? Will you finally transition? The overlays at 1:53 signify the decision. Glass breaking, hands parting, and scissors cutting an umbilical cord.

The next section is “Help”. The character finally recognizes that they need help, because they are finally accepting that there is a problem. But just because you recognize there’s a problem doesn’t mean you’re any good at solving it. Therein goes the brief period of survival in the dream with the super clear picture of the man saving the woman. It works in two ways, one at surface gender dysphoria level because it’s a dude being cool, the secondary being that the masculine side is saving the feminine side. “Hey. You don’t have to die. You’re still a part of me. You might be transitioning to male but that doesn’t mean my feminine side disappears.”

The elevator section of the video was one of the first sections I edited, and so it is predominantly just a glitch fest as a way to transition from living in escapism to getting back to reality. It ends at the scene of the girl in bed. For me this symbolizes depression more than anything else. You know you need help, you are constantly thinking about how to get it, but sometimes you just can’t fucking do anything. So we have that scene and then shinji (the boy) appears as a reflection beneath. The video ends with shinji waking up in the hospital and the question “Are you awake?” It’s a throwback to the original video’s premise of a skeptic’s hypothesis… Can never know if you’re dreaming or not. But also a sort of ambiguous ending of never knowing if the character got the help they needed or not. Are they still living in their dream of being a boy? Or did they actually transition and this is reality now?

¯_(ツ)_/¯

So anyway that’s my over-explanation of this video. I put it off for so long, partly because I don’t like revealing this part of myself, and partly because I don’t think it’s right to force my interpretation/message on anyone. But overall decided the pros in putting this essay out there outweighed the cons.

Since I finished this video in August 2019, released it publicly in December, and only now just wrote this explanation at the end of February the following year, I forgot a lot of things maybe I wanted to touch on in between that time. But this is long enough as it is. If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up I guess. Contact info in my profile.

Some things I want to point out just because As mentioned previously, all scene selection was super intentional. But a lot of it goes by so fast and seems kind of random so here’s some things I want to bring attention to lol.

0:02 – there’s an overlay here of more rain (dropping on the camera) and also some faint glowing eyes. I wanted to bring some paranoia into this video but this is the only part that panned out.

Beginning to 0:21 – Your Name was amazing to work with because it had the perfect amount of scenes of girls looking at boys and being sad about it. This establishes the character’s life up to this point as being unhappy with who she is. The scene of her staring in the mirror at the boy and then crying really sets up the whole gender dysphoria framing device without being obvious about it.

0:24 – anthy is a fragmented, bare, vulnerable individual with a trapped and tortured boy prince inside :)

1:20 – metaphor for self injury. Also foreshadowing of some other chest-based scenes. 1:23 – the result of the previous scene. This was the best anime representation I could find for ftm chest surgery. Obviously the scar is all wrong but it was the only chest scar scene I could find that looked kind of believable for what I was going for.

1:24 – 1:32 I synced the tracking dot to the beat lol. Also the text on the bed moves when she lays down on it.

1:57 – 1:59 is all scenes with barriers because the characters are all trapped. The last scene is a first person shot of looking down at boobs, which in context of all the suffering scenes leaning up to it are meant to imply that boobs are bad. Character has massive chest-related dysphoria. It’s a quick callback to the other 2 chest scenes.

2:01 – 2:05 is dilandau!! From Vision of Escaflowne. I won’t explain the scene because it’s a huge spoiler but if you know the anime/character you’ll know why I used it here. :)

Note: the (uncredited) live action footage is a recording of myself.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to my beta testers and our discussions about the intricacies of glitches: Ash, Dr. Derpface, TheLazyDaze

Thank you to Synaethesia for helping me with the VHS overlays.

Thank you to Kriegher for the help with including Hindi as a language.

I also must mention ProstrateConstantly/ZaneWins, whose DESTRUCT vid and making of vid heavily inspired me to make my own glitch vid. And to CrackTheSky’s blog for mentioning DESTRUCT, as I otherwise never would’ve seen it. D E S T R U C T: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=878jSaMBtxw Making of DESTRUCT: CTS’s blog: https://crakthesky.wordpress.com/

Original track of JT Bruce – Hypnic Jerk: https://www.jamendo.com/track/24044/hypnic-jerk?language=en https://open.spotify.com/track/0e3aRWcOl7XqYNWP1ss5AO

I did a large amount of work to the song to make it work- here’s a screencap of my Premiere timeline for the song:

In (approximately) September 2021, JT Bruce commented on the youtube video!

[seventeendeer]

I am Intrigued, so take this as a greenlight to rant

What do you think could be, or what would you want to be explored deeper in Frontiers?

(in reference to this post)

Wellllll, it's not so much that the game lacks depth as much as it lacks coherence, in my opinion!

I think lots of things were meant to be explored in the game that went unused. Let me back up a bit and walk you through my process:

Sonic games are often a bit muddy on details and specifics - however, this usually only extends to plot details, character backstories and character motivations. It's the script that lacks polish, specifically.

However, in most games, the visual language is exceptionally clean-cut and easy to read! Different factions in the story have unique aesthetics (the main cast look like neon-colored 30's cartoon characters, Eggman has red/yellow/black/gray retro practical effects robots and casino/circus motifs, G.U.N. is gray + realistic 2000's tech, etc etc). This makes it really easy to follow the basic plot - we can tell from a glance who the good guys are, who they're fighting and why the conflict matters.

This was all the story context there was for the first couple of games. "Human character kidnaps woodland critters to power large, brightly-colored machines with a combination casino motif, intending to use said machines to destroy natural habitats and establish a theme park-like empire; you play as an animal trying to stop him" is like ... about as clear of a visual design metaphor as you can get. It doesn't get much more on-the-nose.

Even as the stories and conflicts became more convoluted, the games retained the exceptionally clear visual design. Shadow the Hedgehog juggled four different factions (Sonic and friends, Eggman, G.U.N. and the Black Arms) in a wildly disjointed plot - but the excellent visual design meant that no matter how unclear the script was, it was easy to figure out at a glance who you were currently siding with and what role that faction played in the story thematically.

However, the visual language in Sonic Frontiers is all over the place!

Which is why my little pet conspiracy theory is that the plot of Frontiers changed a LOT during development, including so late into development that there was no time or resources left over to tidy up the art direction.

Look at this game's different factions and their associated aesthetics:

- Sonic and friends are the same as ever. Good so far!

- The Ancients are associated with geometrical architecture and the colors blue and white ... except sometimes their tech is also black or gray, and sometimes it glows red.

- The End is usually depicted shooting red lasers, and in the final battle is depicted as a black, moonlike object that glows red. However, during the boss fight, it also sometimes glows blue, and it shoots both blue/white and red/black orbs to attack (though again only red lasers).

- The ruins of Eggman's bases can be found across the islands, and they're perfectly in line with his usual color scheme and clunky, toy-like design style. However, he now appears being assisted by an AI he created, whose avatar is in the form of a little girl with a rounded, moon-like white hairstyle, wearing a plain black dress. No details or design quirks to suggest she was made by Eggman. Toward the end of the game, she begins to flicker in and out of an alternate color scheme ... Blue and white. Huh.

To make matters more confusing, the Ancients have a striking visual resemblance to Sonic himself. The red and black color scheme is normally associated with Shadow. Sage's color palette and glitch effect makes her the spitting image of Infinite from the last game.

Some of these issues can be handwaved - maybe blue and white are supposed to be the colors of positive chaos energy, while black and red are negative chaos energy, Sonic and Shadow each use one or the other more heavily (supported by the different colors of chaos abilities Shadow obtains in his own game), and the Ancients harnessed both.

But then why is The End by default color coded according to negative chaos energy when it spends its entire boss monologue boasting about being a personification of 'order?' Why does Sage look more like a human version of The End, or the wielder of a Phantom Ruby, than an Eggman robot?

One could theorize The End took on properties of Cyberspace due to being trapped there for so long ..? And maybe Sage only took on her current form after entering Cyberspace, causing her physical form to take on characteristics of their tech (blue/white = fueled by positive emotions, black/red = fueled by negative emotions ..?), and her similarities to Infinite and/or the Phantom Ruby is just a coincidence ... Except we actually see her stored on a circular black and red disk before being plugged into Cyberspace in the very first cutscene.

Regardless, those are in-universe explanations.

On a meta-level, I believe Sonic Frontiers is full of ghosts. The visual design tattles on tons of previous drafts of the story. No matter what characters claim in the dialogue in the final version of the game, I think it's pretty clear that where the story ended up is far from where it started.

Here's my personal (extremely unsupported, but fun to think about) theory for how the story's development might have played out behind the scenes:

- The game initially intended to explore the backstory of the Phantom Ruby. The Phantom Ruby would have been a fragment of The End, and Sage would be the Ruby's avatar, with her ultimate goal being to free the rest of herself from Cyberspace and become whole again. Her design was finalized during this draft, which is why she visually calls back to Infinite so heavily (black main color, white hair, right eye hidden, left eye red and yellow), why her head/hair-shape looks like a moon, and why she is constantly plagued by visual glitches that resemble the Ruby's magic. Her being depicted as a little girl would also make sense if The End was initially conceptualized as female/feminine (since it's primarily voiced by a woman, sans the overlay in the boss battle). Sonic games were never big on including more female characters than strictly necessary lol

- At this point, it was decided Sage would pose as Sonic's friend for the majority of the game, potentially using her blue/white form to appear less evil-coded. She may have encouraged him to listen to The End's instructions throughout the game and manipulated him into freeing it for her. It would be at this point Vandalize was chosen as a main theme of the game, as the lyrics would perfectly fit this draft of the story.

- This was the stage in development where The End's boss monologue was initially written (note the very suspicious phrasing of the "I am infinite" bit); I believe at this point Sage would have fused with The End; the monologue is littered with philosophical questions and musings about Sonic's ideals and motives that could very easily have originally been intended to lead into Sage/The End abandoning her initial goals and becoming friends with Sonic for real.

- However, this draft of the story was scrapped when Sega decided Infinite was cringe and it was his turn to go sit in the shame vault with other unused "unpopular" characters like Cream and Cheese (note that Frontiers was first conceptualized right after Forces came out and Infinite initially did get merchandise and references in other Sonic media, but after only a few months, he was completely scrubbed from the franchise, likely due to negative reception). All references to Infinite and the Phantom Ruby were dropped, leaving a lot of gaps in the plot to be filled.

- Since Sonic writers are notorious for scrapping past ideas in order to "get to the core of what Sonic is all about!" (and people were bitching about the Chaos Emeralds not playing a significant role in Forces), I believe the plot surrounding the Ancients and the Chaos Emeralds was added to fill the gaps left over from the first draft of the story with something longtime fans were more likely get hyped about. The End and Sage became entirely new entities unrelated to the Phantom Ruby that just so happened to share its aesthetic because CG models and particle effects are expensive

- Around this point, I theorize there were a lot of rewrites over a short time. The exact backstory of the Ancients and The End is very muddled in the game as it is (the Ancients apparently "burned their souls away to fuel their machines", if The End's boss monologue is to be believed, but this is never mentioned elsewhere, for example). At some point, positive and negative chaos energy was a central part of the plot, hence why the mysterious color coding shows up so distinctively throughout the game, but this was dropped again, leaving us with a lot of bright funny colors that now seem to symbolize fuck-all. The exact dynamics between Sonic, Sage, The End and the Ancients likely also shifted around a lot, though I do think Sage being part of The End and tricking Sonic was kept throughout most of development.

- Someone on the team realized they already did "Sonic makes friends with a mysterious sad girl who betrays him and becomes the final boss, only for her to realize the error of her ways and rekindling their friendship" in Sonic and the Black Knight. Whoops!

- Sega once again got scared they weren't pandering to existing fans enough. What if people thought Sage was cringe just like Infinite? :(

- It was quickly decided the usual main cast should be front and center to the story instead of the new characters; Eggman was made responsible for setting the plot into motion, as well as for Sage's creation, Sage's developing friendship with Sonic was nixed in favor of an arc centered around her coming to view Eggman as a father figure, while Sonic's existing friendships with Tails, Knuckles and Amy were to be explored in more depth.

Obviously this is a lot of speculation and it's very unlikely I got any of the details right, but this is one possible way I see the current messy visual design coming to be the way it is, based on what I know of the usual Sonic development process.

I really like the game the way it is, but it would be extremely interesting to see earlier builds and scripts. This is the most "no, the curtains really are just blue :)" video game of all time.

(or to quote @thenearsightedmicroraptor: "of course the curtains being blue means something! the curtains are blue because Sonic is blue! :)")

Anyway, THANK YOU for coming to my ted talk, I LOVE TALKING ABOUT SONIC FOR A LONG TIME, especially the meta stuff is absolutely fascinating to me. Even Sonic '06 had excellent visual direction despite its rushed development cycle - whatever happened to make Frontiers into the very fun but deeply confusing mess it is now, it can't have been an easy nut to crack for the developers. It's no wonder the optional dialogue for the last level is like 90% patching up plot holes haha

[cognitosclowns]

heres my monthly post wondering if youve noticed any more cool details 😈😈😈 but seriously i love when you point out background stuff

AWE TYSM FRIEND <3 I DO HAVE A FEW LITTLE SCREENSHOTS ACTUALLY

I'm labeling this one Chekhovs Chainsaw smdnsd - we see it in the background-basement-lab-thing all the time but,, it hasn't been used yet!!

smndsmd when they first let AB out I was 1000% sure he was gonna get a chainsaw arm but NOPE SMDNMNSD ITS STILL JUST IN THE BACKGROUND

ANYWAYS, VERY EXCITED TO SEE WHO ENDS UP WIELDING THIS. Or maybe it'll just be some pretty background filler.

IN ANY CASE I FIND IT VERY FUNNY THAT,, REAGAN DECIDED TO KEEP A CHAINSAW RIGHT BESIDE THE MURDEROUS AI. It's smug aura taunts him smndsmd

THERES NO ANAYLSIS HERE I JUST FIND THIS MOMENT SO FUNNY. TEAM WORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK. GET HIM.

there's also a scene before this where Myc just,, fucking HOISTS Rand like a sack of potatoes and it cures my every woe. we could all use a bit more of Rand getting his ass handed to him <3

(SIDE NOTE GIGI'S EARRINGS ARE SHURIKENS AND I THINK THATS SO COOL MSNDMSDN i just,,, she gets a lot of super fun details that are easy so miss. Heart eyes.)

OH THIS ISNT REALLY,, ANYTHING SECRET BUT LOOK AT THE SLIGHT GLITCH EFFECT AROUND THE LIGHTS???

theres so many,, super fun details like that - these thin scribbles of neon colors in the backgrounds, light glitchy effects around lightsources <3333 idk man it just adds to that weird feeling?

ALSO BC YEAH THATS EXACTLY HOW IT FEELS TO LOOK AT THOSE ACCURSED FUCKING LIGHTS SMDNSMD

I SAW THIS IN THE BACKGROUND OF EP 9 WHEN HE HAS A TALK W/ HIS EX-WIFE AND I JUST,,,,,,, :')

From the color coding ,,,, the entire vibe of Glenn and his family I'm gonna assume thats ONE BOY ONE GIRL,, AWE

ALSO gonna assume this is the Daughters drawing? just bc she's the first one after the mum, and kids usually draw their siblings after themselves dsmndsmdn

Maybe fraternal twins? Maybe just siblings born pretty close? Before I'd been assuming the Daughter was like,, a teenager?

Cause 'making his daughter wear all camo so boys can't see her' IS VERY 'dad who's nervous about his daughter doing to highschool' vibes MSNDMSD

BUT THIS SUGGESTS THEYRE,,, PRETTY YOUNG?

OUGHE IDK MAN I JUST WANNA SEE MORE OF THE DOLPHMAN FAMILY <33333333

OKIE THATS IT FOR NOW,, MWA THNX FOR THE LOVELY ASK

[bookwyrminspiration]

your profile picture always reminds me of the magnus archives cover, funnily enough. it’s very cool (and may i ask what the words on your header are?)

Someone once told me that every time they were scrolling through tumblr and saw my pfp they thought I was The Magnus Archives, which I thought was fun. That was also back closer to when I first changed it to this picture so people hadn't acclimated as much yet

And yes you may ask about the words! They're difficult if not impossible to read because I applied a glitch effect over them and intentionally wrote in sloppy cursive in neon green, but it's the beginning of the wings au!!

It's a word for word transcription of chapter one, or at least as much of chapter one I could fit in the space. I just wrote it in until I'd filled the space I wanted to fill.

If you know the words you can kinda fumble your way through it, otherwise it's discernible as words but you can't really read it.

This, for example, reads "It was comical, really, just how quickly their security had crumbled into"

It's from the very top left of my header. If you've read any of the wings au, you may know that it starts "It was comical, really, just how quickly their security had crumbled into unbridled, ravaged chaos." It continues from there throughout the whole header! I squeezed almost 400 words in there, but it's actually spaced so that it ends one word too soon to finish a sentence and I didn't wanna go back and do it all over again when you can't even read it.

But yeah! That's what my header says. Words are very important to me so I went "what words are mine?" and ended up with the wings au. And now I've had this pfp and header for almost a year.

Thanks for asking!

[glitchwallpapers4u]

Introduction:

Name: RoboBubby, (Robo for short)

Other blogs: totsfunkygroovynuggets and totsandnuggsreblogs

Purpose of this blog: I love to make glitched wallpapers so here I am, makin em.

Warnings: there will be a lot of eye strain on this blog so I’ll be using the tags (#tw eye strain), (#tw glitch), (tw glicthes)

Asks/requests:

- Yes, I take asks/requests/commissions for wallpapers.

- Does it cost anything?: No. I do it for free because honestly it’s just a treat to make them in the first place and if you offer money I will not take it. It’s just wallpapers, I don’t need like 20 bucks for that.

- you can either request a wallpaper from me by asking publically on this blog or you could privately contact me.

- if you request for a wallpaper from me as an anon through the asks then I will post it publicly on this blog unless you give me your info on how to contact you.

- when requesting a wallpaper, if your looking for a certain type of glitch makes sure to explain it in detail to me. (I have the list of features attached to this post) And if you want you could show me a reference photo of the kind of glitch you want me to recreate.

- Where to request a wallpaper from me?:

- asks on this blog

- dm’ing me on this blog

- emailing me, (glitchwallpapers4U@gmail.com)

- dm’ing me on discord, (RoboBubby#2720)

Content generated:

- I mostly do logos, (mostly fictional logos). They will not be perfect all the time because I’m not a robot with exact accuracy but this mostly means that they will not always be perfectly symmetrical. But most of the time they are or you could barely notice it.

- I will not create fanart for glitched wallpapers.

- I will not create a glitched wallpaper of a person’s own fanart unless they give me explicit permission to do so.

- Fandoms for wallpapers: I will except any fandom as long as the content you are requesting is sfw. This can include fandoms like IZ, FNAF, Fallout, etc. Though it does not mean I follow these fandoms.

- seriously guys, no nsfw. I don’t do that kinda stuff so keep if pg13 in here.

- although I will do gore to some extent.

- I will occasionally do moving glitches but this is very hard and they will be less animated then you might want. I’m not a wizard, I’m using the app procreate to make these.

- REMEMBER: glitches are very hard to control so it’s very easy for the wallpaper to become unsymmetrical or messy but if I can help it I will try my best not to have this happen.

Features under the undercut btw:

Types of glitches/features:

Bloom:

- shadow and glow: the shadow and the glow can expand and recede to any degree with the expense that their opacity might become lighter.

- neon: this will effect the color of the shape severely but this can be fixed easily by me if you want.

Chromatic Aberration:

- displace: this one is different than perspective because it does not hold a single point as it’s starting point, it can go anywhere. This feature also has a blurr effect which will only affect the new colors.

- perspective: this one is different than displace because it holds a single point as it’s starting point, it can go as far as the point will let it. This feature also has a fall off effect which will change how close the starting point is to the original shape.

Noise:

- Black and colored noise: black static/noise is for TVs and colored is not but don’t let this stop you if you want it to be a certain color.

- regular: this will include 1 color and a few desaturated versions of it.

- Multi: this will include 1 color and a multitude of different colors along with it.

- Scale: the scale can be played with quite a lot, it all depends on what look you’d like for it.

Halftone:

Full color: this one keeps the shape of logos pretty well instead of going too bubbly like the other ones. Though this means it holds back on colors.

Screen print: this one will keep the general shape of logos but it will make them very bubbly. This one does not hold back on colors.

Newspaper: this has the ability to keep the shape of logos but if it gets too big it will start simplifying it into a weird uniform bubbly shape. newspaper automatically changes whatever color to black but this can be fixed if I am dealing with 1 solid color.

Glitches:

Wave: this glitch can go as far as to enter the screen from another side or make very small lines everywhere so it’s not just condensed into one uniform shape. I’d say this is best for tv glitches.

Artifact: this one can be very small and grainy or it can be very large and blocky. I tend to use this one for backgrounds because it covers a lot of ground.

Signal: this one can also be very small and grainy as well as large and blocky but it tends to go off screen a lot and mess up random parts of the canvas. These errors can be fixes but sometimes not. It’s a bit of a roll of the dice but it works for backgrounds and simple logos.

Diverge: this one splits any color into it’s red, green, and blue colors. Sometimes they can blend me make cyan or pink or yellow or they can be the regular old rbg. This 0me can also be very grainy and then very blocky and I tend to make the opacity very light so it acts as line art in a way.

————————————————————

Other features I use on Procreate:

Liquify: push, twirl, pinch, expand, crystallize, edge

Blurrs: perspective, motion, Gaussian

Color adjustment: Color Balance, curves, gradient map, hue-saturation-brightness

[illusionlockarchive]

Cornered: A short Security Breach fanfiction.

Hi!! As a foreword, I wanna say that this fanfic draws ideas from this little theory of mine, so if you’re confused by what is exactly going on between Vanessa and Vanny here, I recommend you check that out first. Happy reading!

content warnings: swearing, death threats, unreality

Vanessa jumped and backed up against the wall, her thumb pressing the elevator button once, twice, five times, maybe ten or twenty five times. Her heart pounded and the sweat that rolled now over her face lit up with the pink neon lights. Her vision blurred as a purple tint filled up her vision like a flood, as if someone had messed with the lights of the entire floor.

Graceful, mocking, flickering rabbits danced around her vision and encircled the woman in a rabbit costume in front of her. Like happy bunnies from a children's cartoon approaching a princess. They wanted her to go to her, of course. It didn't matter if she had a knife, long and sharp, glistening in the low light.

Vanessa squeezed her eyes together, hoping to make it all go away. For a moment she saw herself, as if she were in a movie, just another victim in the way, not enough to be the main character, one that put up a worthy fight, only to die at the knife, cornered, screaming. Maybe she would make a real scandal, raising her voice up high, struggling as much as she could, be the perfect movie cliche.

But she could not. Her eyes shot up again, and the rabbits hopped slowly alongside the woman who approached her, confident and slow. She was paralyzed, unable to even utter out a gasp. Of course, whatever had latched onto her, whatever had been messing with her head and body for these past months, would want her to just sit still like a good little sacrifice, as the true vehicle of this demon's will executed his plan perfectly.

All her resistance, her cries for help, her research on how to break free, for nothing. And the rabbit woman was getting closer. Vanessa gave a last attempt at resistance, shakingly holding her flashlight up, maybe hoping to blind the attacker, or even successfully block the knife, enough for the elevator to finally come up, though she knew, the virus had probably already spread to the goddamn entire building complex somehow.

She dropped it. It was barely even a blink, and she was dropping the flashlight to the side with a resounding clank, a slight bounce on the shiny checkered floor. One of the purple rabbits leaped forward with brighter glee, and a sinister smile. The bunny woman, oh, of course, she stopped for a moment just to tilt her head to the side, Vanessa could tell she was beaming behind the mask.

She squeezed her eyes together again, praying for a last second in which the elevator would open, she thought she would have so many thoughts, but now, her mind felt utterly empty, aside from the sinister grin of a purple rabbit, one she had been seeing in her nightmares for so long already.

The knife landed right next to her head. Vanessa's eyes shot open to see the rabbit staring right back at her, up to her face, so close, pinning her against the wall. She couldn't understand, was the attacker toying with her?

"Why are you making this so difficult, blondie? We're two of the same kind!" The bunny woman finally spoke up. Her voice was just as Vanessa expected it to be, mocking her in a sweet manner.

She drew the knife slowly, raking across the wall, a horrid scraping sound that made Vanessa's heart jump.

"It would be just so easy to give in... you don't even have to do the dirty work, honest!"

"W... what?" Vanessa's breath was shaky, she'd been certainly holding it for a while, and as she released it, it all came out heaving.

"Give in... give in!" The words echoed through her mind. The rabbits were climbing over her now.

"I'm not-" Vanessa swallowed, finally being able to speaking, the could touch of the demon seemed to be lifted for a second. "I'm not going to give in. I never asked for this- if you want to do... whatever it is you're doing, so badly, just kill me now!"

She surprised herself by how bodly and loudly she was speaking, blood boiling. It was the first time she felt she could directly speak to whatever had been tormenting her for so many months, making her lose track of her own actions, messing with her thoughts.

She wanted her voice to be heard one last time.

"I'll be of no use to you now, and I'll never be, so just get rid of me and stop trying to get me on your side for fuck's sake!"

The shouting seemed to be effective in at least getting the rabbit woman to back off, and the bunnies glitched and flickered out of view.

And then the woman... laughed? And began to laugh, and laugh, a giggle that turned into a deranged, uncontrollable fit of laughter, shaking and contorting her whole body. She came to the point of bending over, hands on her knees.

Vanessa just cursed under her breath, that seemed to buy her some time, so could that damn elevator hurry up?

"You, you are so funny, blondie. Acting like you're some sort of hero. Like it'll make a difference." The rabbit woman straightened up now, shooting a scarily piercing glare for someone wearing a smiling rabbit mask. "You and I know he doesn't care what any of us thinks. He'll just keep coming back. History is made by the winners, so why don't we get on their side?"

"Because it's not the right thing to do. How do you live with yourself, knowing that this is what he wants?" Vanessa replied. She lowered her head in defiance, gaze still fixated upwards to the woman. "You've seen it, right? The carnage, the torture, the manipulation, those are the things that he wants. How can you work with someone like that? What could you possibly get from that?"

The rabbit woman scoffed, and examined her knife as if she were looking at her nails, twisting it to reflect the multicolored lights. "You don't, like, know me, and you should stop acting like you care. It's too late for me. He chose me to carry his bigger part, to be the leader of the operation. You were just a backup plan, like all the other attempts."

"Fine." Vanessa glared at her. "Answer me this. When you bring that knife down, when you give the finishing blow, when you'll hear that kid's scream, when his blood gushes out and you can't stop yourself anymore, how will you be feeling?"

"I can look away. I'll close my eyes. I'll be a good vessel, at that time." The woman turned her head, gaze now at a distance that was not in this place or time. There was a softness to her voice. "It'll be like falling asleep for a moment, and waking up in the other."

"You can't be serious. You act like you're so high and mighty, the leader of the fucking bunch, but you clearly don't want to do this." Vanessa gritted her teeth now, glaring. She wanted so desperately for this to big her big break, finally getting through to that ridiculous killer rabbit.

The opposite effect, instead, took place. The woman leaped at her, with a sudden speed and strenght Vanessa thought she may surely die from a heart attack before the blade even pierced her, and she found herself pinned back up against the wall. This time, though, the knife was closer, threatening.

The sinister, wide open smile on the rabbit mask felt even more grim now, illuminate with an eerie glow. The purple lights came back on, as the words filled her mind, rapidly coming and going, like loose streams of thought.

"Die."

"Worthless girl."

"Your attempts will get you nowhere."

"I laugh at you from beyond death."

"Your death will be nothing but a testimony to your incompetence."

Dark rabbits in shades of purple and black danced.

For the second time, however, the blade did not come down.

The rabbit's arm shook, and swerved, but it did not come down. From within the suit, Vanessa could hear, a guttural growl, as if the person inside was fighting with all of her strenght to keep the blade in place.

For what purpose, again, did this torture come to be, Vanessa wondered.

As the two stayed frozen in the moment, the swirl of unwanted thoughts within Vanessa's head grew louder, into a cacophony of unpleasant suggestions, all interrupting each other and drowning themselves out in desperation to be heard.

The blade stood still, save for it shaking a bit along with the rabbit woman's arm.

"She's not the target. She is not your target. Killing her will get us nowhere. She is not my target. This will make it more complicated." The woman spoke, but Vanessa could tell, it wasn't to her. “Please, I’ll prove it to you, this isn’t worth it. I won’t forget what you told me. But she is not the target.”

The elevator's anticlimatic ring was what startled Vanessa, and she fell backwards, right into the inside of it. Scrambling back up, she pressed any button to close it as fast as possible and get away from there, before the rabbit woman could even realize what was happening.

Vanessa rode the adrenaline spike as she escaped her attacker, and her thoughts calmed down and gave way into her very own. She'd be safe, for the moment.

[blaster-aichi]

Cardfight!! Vanguard Extra Story IF 21 things

WHAT A GOOD FUCKING EPISODE

A running theme through the episode: whoever directed the visuals is a godsend.

Initially had wondered if the opening scenes within the first world were going to shine some light on the Tatsunagis’ past. Throwing the viewer into the deep end alongside Suiko was a clever decision, allowing us to feel her confusion all the more effectively.

Also the system for the girls’ ranger world is super-neat. Spin-off when?

Cards continuing their gimmick of being incredibly lethal.

The entirety of the fight with the Vanguard unit was spent thinking of the irony that it and Aichi share goals, so had a brain cell laughing at the suggestion the girls were simply on a filming set and he was the one in costume.

immediately after: Oh. Oh my fuck.

me: don’t do it. don’t do it. brain: Singularity F!

obligatory Long Live the King memeage

The claim that Kourin’ll search for a world Suiko likes smacks of irony given Suiko has her world she likes and has been fighting all along for it. It’s simply a world that Kourin approves of for Suiko to lose herself and how they handled it was stellar.

Just Miwa being cute. That is all.

Can someone inform Aichi that him getting into Vanguard has nothing to do with the Kais abandoning their son?

How dare you say such shit with such a sweet smile.

Curious how the Cardfight Club existed with four members (unless the other three were also signed up but simply not present). This world in particular is peculiar with its presumably aging up Rekka and the sisters not knowing one another to begin with. Not to mention how evidently distant Aichi is; the girls swear loyalty to him, but he minimizes his contact with them. Perhaps it’s to do with it being called the Cardfight Club but when he despises the game, have to wonder why he would choose that rather than anything else when the purpose was just to goof around.

Breaks through the door at a monument to Misaki’s existence.

Assuming she was roped into the surfing of worlds prior to Suiko, left to wonder how many worlds Rekka briefly lived in, and how many appealed to her, but she sacrificed to stay loyal to who she is, and just how difficult it must have been.

Thank you writers for giving SK4 Suiko and Rekka excellent names, rip Sanctuary Knight Ibuki.

Link Joker-hen noises in the distance.

I love this crew. That is all.

Whoever wrote this episode is also a godsend, thank you for giving the Tatsunagis some sisterly love.

Kourin: Aichi hates Vanguard. Also Kourin: [flips her shit at Suiko Riding “one of Aichi’s favourite units”].

I’M CRYING YOURE REFERENCING THE ORIGINAL ANIME? YOU DIRECTLY CONNECTED THE TWO CONTINUITIES ILY.

Rena continuing to lose her shit because this entire scene is so good and the girls’ contrasting feelings about Alfred, Vanguard, everything is so wonderfully portrayed. For bonus points; Suiko’s unit belonging to a clan that Aichi chose and stuck with whereas Kourin’s heralds from one he never played in the manga & reboot continuity and was forced onto him in the original.

Had been wondering for quite some time just how Kourin and Suiko remembered anything related to the Reboot anime, so them providing an answer is immensely appreciated.

Also still loving whoever storyboarded this episode. Also very much loving the touch of Suiko being in focus as she challenges Kourin on her choice while Aichi hovers out of focus in the background; with their respective positions in the season and in comparison to their Outside World lives as well as how Kourin risks to lose them, it’s incredible poignant.

"We move forward”. Rockets back to one of the best scenes in epi 7 that I love so much. The fact that Ibuki and Suiko are the ones to speak of the same sentiment is precious.

At the same time, turning the idea onto Kourin and Aichi, with the added visual of the latter, really brought it home. With OverDress’ new cast, our time with these characters is drawing to a close for a second time and with no guarantee we’ll see them again. It’s incredibly bittersweet, particularly when adding in how the Q4 voice actors showed how torn up they were during the live event shortly prior to G’s airing. We were incredibly lucky to get a second run with these characters, so as the audience carries on forward and part ways with them again, having this particular theme front and centre, we’re essentially in the same position as Kourin.

I love this crew. That is all.

As much as tried to discern the glitched figure, unless it’s whatever’s in/controlling/manipulating/whathaveyou Aichi (it doesn’t look human), a Deletor or something related to Brandt, couldn’t even try to guess, they did a good job of obscuring their identity.

IF 22 preview

Babie boy’s cheek looks bruised. Is he still getting bullied? Were you wandering around somewhere to prolong your mother being faced with another afterschool of being beaten up? My heart. He looks incredibly distrustful of Takuto compared to their previous first meetings.

Zooms in on that Akashic Record in Kourin’s hands. Zooms in on Aichi’s hand on his arm. Were you really beaten up? Point me to them! 9′^’9 — Alternatively, he looks uncomfortable, in the same vein as the photo of himself and Emi in their Miyaji uniforms from epi 7, perhaps Takuto's explaining the truth to him and Aichi just can't process such a world because he's weak and timid and simply doesn't have the strength to imagine it.

How can someone be so ominous without a visible expression? The Biggest Fear.

DID YOU RIP OUT YOURS AND KAI-KUN’S PAGE FROM THE AKASHIC RECORD AND THATS HOW NO-ONE CAN GET THERE?

The placement of the four cards is striking; one distanced from the other three. They may be representative of the Q4 members and how far Aichi has drifted as a result of IF’s premise. Though at the same time, even if unintentional, it could be reflective of the young Aichi, who saw Kai-kun, Ibuki and Miwa playing from afar, never closing the distance himself and allowing that space between them to remain.

I have many questions. First of all: is it next week yet?

SCREAMS IN PSYQUALIA. BUT ALSO. It looks darker compared to usual, particularly in the Reboot continuity. Maybe it’s a sign of it not being quite right? That darker huge reminds me of Leon’s Psyqualia during Asia Circuit, so the possibility springs to mind of Void (seeing as the original continuity has been drawn in directly now) or interference by Brandt. If it’s a shot from the explanation regarding what’s happened to him (INTENSE VIBRATING), it could be whatever worming its way in through his Psyqualia.

Akashic Record-related thoughts:

Suiko:

Suiko’s remembrance of handing Alfred to Aichi in the original continuity opens up a huge possibility that she’s aware of the Tatsunagi sisters’ pasts and fate of that timeline. Though the girls of that world themselves never found out about their missing memories, their counterparts may have learned the truth themselves.

Kourin:

Going along the same line of thought, it gives Kourin a much more sympathetic position in that she’s not only experienced losing her memories once, but learned it to be her fate in more than just this world. When threatened with the possibility of losing a treasured period of her life for a second time, coupled with it being apparently inescapable even in other worlds, it’s a hopeless position she’s been put in, so though her motives may be selfish, it’s difficult not to sympathize with her.

Also a curious thought; Kourin’s alternate worlds for Suiko. Using the Akashic Records to surf between them, there’s the possibility that these are all worlds that exist and continue as such without external interference; other worlds where Aichi hates Vanguard, where Ultra Rare exist in different forms. But Kourin also described her actions as “creating” new worlds, so that begs the question of if she’s nonchalantly creating and erasing entire timelines?

Aichi:

The scrap of paper from the preview could very well be the page detailing his and Kai-kun’s first meeting and whatever force is at work, the figure from the glitch, given the ability to keep the distortion locked by its possession of the page through Aichi. At the same time, it might also explain why deviating from IF World’s narrative had such a detrimental physical effect on Aichi or it could be a result of, being the Tatsunagis are the only ones we’ve seen truly handle the book, interfering with its writings without the authority to do so bit Aichi and he’s suffering the consequences of it.

Why go through all this and for someone he shouldn’t know in this timeline? After he (or rather the force inside of him that intervened when they tried to bring him around and lead him back to the correct worldline) handled Takuto and Kourin, Aichi was able to investigate the Akashic Records and see just how much damage was done to Kai-kun; in the Reboot continuity, in the original continuity, maybe even in continuities we've never known of; Psyqualia, Link Joker, Legion Mate, Neon Messiah, the PsyZombie arc  — he’s learned of them and how much anguish they put someone incredibly dear to him through (and it need not be just him; Ren, Ibuki, Leon, the Ultra Rare girls, Chrono, the list goes on for how many people have been deeply hurt by being connected to the game). So to protect him, that’s why Aichi targeted and hated Vanguard, not something that’s been brewing for years, but something that exploded when keeping him in his IF existence was threatened, allowing for Emi’s insistence that he’s always been a nice boy hold true.

[make-it-mavis]

Homesick (Entry #7)

(cw: alcohol, drugs) <-Previous | Next-> ------------

12/22/87   2:22 PM

Hey.

Somewhere in that foggy timeline, I gave up trying to forget. I just started looking for you. 

I’d firmly made up my mind that I was gonna track you down and whoop your ass for all this. What I’d do after that, I didn’t care to plan -- figured I’d cross that bridge when I got to it. But I’m sure that I wanted to know where you were going, if you were ditching this place. And deep down, I wanted to go with you.

Looking for you was the only thing that made sense to me. It was all I could actually occupy my time with that moved in any understandable direction. So it became paramount.

It wasn’t frantic, or anything, not right away. After all, how far could you have gone? Every game ends somewhere, and I probably know the ins and outs of this arcade better than Litwak himself. If you were anywhere, I could find you. The old cliche occurred to me, “You can run, but you can’t hide.” My boot was going up your ass, and that was final. 

At first, I just checked all our regular game jumping haunts and hiding places. Sweeping small games was easy, almost effortless. Not really many places to hide in Centipede or Donkey Kong. But wider games like Front Line, Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins, Dragon’s Lair, I really had to get organized and methodical with. I’d take a notebook with me, draw a map from the highest point I could fly to, and, you know, chart stuff. Make sure I wouldn’t go in circles.

Staying focused was way harder than it could have been. I’d cut back on drinking since my attempted memory purge, but I still needed it to sleep, and being drunk or hungover really hindered my progress. So, I thought I’d cut the booze out completely, you know, tough it out, whatever. All that happened was, I still felt really sick, and couldn’t sleep again. So I was sick and sluggish anyway. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, huh? I didn’t let it stop me -- slow is better than stopped.

But it seemed like the longer the search went on, the worse that nauseous anger got in my belly. 

It was freakin’ frustrating, okay, and sprites who knew I was looking for you would give me these looks, these Dev-damned looks. Some of them just scowled like they thought I was up to something, and others looked like they thought they were better than me, but were sad about it. It was freakin’ pity, is what it was. And whenever I saw it, I wanted to strangle something adorable. More than that, I wanted to skewer you for making me do this. For taking a swing at my pride like that -- you know how pathetic that must have looked? Oh, here’s Make-it Mavis, coughing like some sob-story orphan, still looking for her obviously dead friend. I actually remember calling your name once or twice, can you believe that?

Fix-it even approached me about it a few times, ‘cause I guess he’d seen or heard or who even cares. Had to keep dodging touches and hugs while he tried to get a heart-to-heart going, as usual, and he said crap like, “This is bad for you, get some rest, stop looking, Mavy, he’s gone.”

It all just made me more determined to prove all those idiots wrong, and to punch you square in the dick.

In an effort to stay awake and speed things up, on top of the Heals I’d already been making good use of, I started taking Boosts. They killed the drowsiness and doubled my progress. All that extra energy really didn’t help with the jumpiness or rage, though. 

Under Boosts’ influence or not, I got into fights, a lot of fights. They were a pretty good outlet. I’d even throw myself into fights that had already started, and there was no shortage of those. Tensions have run high since you left, and violence has really skyrocketed. It’d be a freakin’ party if you hadn’t effectively put me on probation. But the Surge Protector started riding my ass constantly, stopping me almost every time I entered or left a port. Too many times, he’d catch me coming out of a game all roughed up from brawling, and he’d dock me fifty creds. Fifty freakin’ creds. Even if I wasn’t the one at fault.

I was all too aware of the risk of getting caught stealing buffs, despite my proficiency. A buff arrest ain’t pretty. My pupil edits are so convincing, it’s only happened to me twice in my life. But both times, I was put under cabinet arrest. I wasn’t too keen on that happening again, what with freedom being a requirement for finding you, and all that. It’d be hard to get anything done locked up in FFjr. for Devs know how long. So I did give thought to the safer route, for a bit, and tried to find dealers that would speak to me.

But tightened security really made stealing buffs risky for everyone, and all the dealers started charging accordingly, which was over double what I ever charged, back in the day. They seemed in pretty good spirits, though, ‘cause business was plainly booming. Newbies were popping up everywhere, I guess ‘cause everyone was so freaked out, they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for ways to cope. Dealers could charge them whatever they wanted -- not like the newbs knew any better. I’d see the dumb suckers getting caught leaving games high all the time. They’d just let their pupils shine like freakin’ flashing neon signs going, “LOOK AT ME! I’M HIGH AS BALLS!”

And then they’d make the rookie mistake of going too big, too fast, and fry their binary on GC. A few times, sometimes even in plain sight, like on a bench in a terminal, I’d find sprites tweaking out something fierce, obviously pumped full of the stuff. They’d be lying there, wide eyes darting around, pupils like blue headlights, drooling and glitching and twitching and kicking like some wounded animal. It was kinda cool to watch, at the time.

But, needless to say, I steered clear of the stuff myself. It’d be hard to get anything done like that. I couldn’t afford to throw my credits away on things I could get myself, anyway, what with the SP bleeding me dry. The obvious solution to that would be to cash in on the desperate newbies by dealing my own Shields and Lifts again, but, hey! No one wanted to talk to me! 

So, I took the risk, and just relied on the same craftiness that’s kept me alive this long. I stole Boosts and Heals where I found them, and always made sure to get back to my game before crashing. I kind of had this hair-raising feeling about letting my guard down out in the open, with the state the arcade was in. 

I chalked it up to the Boosts making me paranoid.

[roswelldetails]

RNM 2x05 - I'll Stand By You

So just a little note from me, the person behind the season 2 detailing.  I am trying really really hard to keep emotion out of these posts...which is really really hard for me because I'm an inherently emotional person. I'm a glass case of emotion, ready to shatter at any given moment. (#dramatic)  But I want to be true to the intent of this blog and keep my feelings, biases, and, you know, shipping out of this blog.

It was really really hard to do with this episode. Because I straight up ugly cried for like, 45 of the 60 minutes. 😂

So I guess, the point is, I'm proud of myself and sticking to the details here. My regular blog is where I'm doing the emotional flip out thing! 😂

EPISODE SUMMARY:

ACCEPTING REALITY — The discovery of some complications with Max’s (Nathan Dean) pod forces Liz (Jeanine Mason), Michael (Michael Vlamis) and Isobel (Lily Cowles) to confront the possibility that they may not be able to save him. Elsewhere, Maria (Heather Hemmens) and Alex (Tyler Blackburn) make amends. Kimberly McCullough directed the episode written by Alanna Bennett & Jason Gavin (#205). Original airdate 4/13/2020. 

DETAILS:

Max/Isobel/Michael reunite at age 11 according to what Michael tells Alex in 1x10.  So that would make the opening of this episode set in 2002ish.

Michael tells Max and Isobel, "I remember you. I don't know you."

"After nobody adopted me for a year they just stuck me with the name of that trucker who found us."

"I didn't ask you for anything."

This is like the thesis statement of Michael's whole history with Max in the flashbacks.

"Don't pay more than you collect, kid. Passing credit back and forth is a good way to get stuck with somebody forever."

Rosa's art. 

What I can see says: "...what they all told me, but I didn't listen" and "Stand the shelter".

Rosa on her dreams

"I have not had any freaky dreams in weeks. Okay, Max is probably off haunting Isobel now that they're strong enough for their psychic twincest weirdness."

"How long has that been happening?"

"Um, I don't know. It's an old boom box."

"Rosa, have electrical appliances been malfunctioning around you?"

"I really thought it was just a side effect of the handprint."

"If being in the pod introduced a new protein into your system it could have altered your DNA too. You could be developing abilities."

"Liz, look. The handprint is changing.  It's smaller."

"It's fading."

"Tell me this is a good thing."

"I don't think so."

Michael and Liz theorizing on why the pod shorted out:

"The pod's got a charge. It's like a battery powering the preservation process. This one's gone dead."

"Did the generator blow the electromagnetic threshold?"

"I think a surge came from the pod itself. But that pod has lasted almost a century. It shouldn't glitch out."

"Okay, well, then, this one did."

"All right, stop. It doesn't matter why the pod is broken. It just is. So how long does Max have?"

"My theory is that being tethered to Rosa through the mark is what kept Max from going brain-dead, and in turn the stasis process is what kept the mark from fading. So he could be gone by tonight."

"Okay, well, we have three more pods. So let's just put him into another pod."

"No. He's just gonna do it again. I haven't told you everything. I didn't want to scare you. I didn't want to be the one that took the hope away."

"Talk now, Rosa. Right now."

"I was seeing Max in my nightmares months before I told you about it, and he was begging me to stop you. He said that he was in a lot of pain in there."

"That's Noah's pod. Noah told us it was broken. It wasn't keeping him in stasis. He could feel time passing. None of us thought of that."

"We've been doing everything we can to make Max stronger. He pulled his own plug."

Note...as far as we know Isobel was the only one who knew about Noah's pod being broken.  In 1x12 it was before Liz arrived at the house that he told them about the broken pod, so only Max and Isobel heard that part of the story.

Alex on his training. "NSA intelligence cryptology training".

Monitor screen in the secret lab:

Noah's heart is still too weak to transplant. Kyle says it needs at least eight more weeks

"I wrote a paper for a bioethics class on patients in vegetative states who feel pain. Sometimes it's all they feel."

As a non sciencey person, I was wondering if bioethics class was a real thing. Tonight I saw an interview on the news with a UC Berkeley bioethics professor on COVID. So yes, it's a thing.

Alex on Michael that summer post-Rosa's death:

Starting fights with jocks

Broke into the drugstore

Not going to UNM

Hasn't hung out with Max all summer

Got busted for stealing hubcaps (Kyle's hubcaps, we learn later) 

Became a walking bar fight

Was in jail when Alex left to enlist

Michael on Max in 2008:

"It's more than that. And it's less than that. We were friends when we were kids, but now Max reminds me of a bunch of stuff that I'd rather forget. The only thing that we have in common anymore is Isobel."

Max's yearbook had a pencil stuck in the page with Liz and Max's photo in it. (The one we first saw in 1x03).

"Biology Club. Max hated science. He was in that club for four years just to watch your sister chew on the end of her pencil."

Max's mindscape:

First just desert, clouds, and then lightning strikes (destructive energy?)

Liz's antennae -- they disappear from Isobel's hands

Rosa describes it as broken

Crashdown special is Max's favorite "Little Green Man milkshake".

The Crashdown counter is kind of merged with biology lab equipment. 

The juke box is there

The Crashdown booths

Jeep

Neon Crashdown sign

One of those claw drop game machines (from the Crashdown) but it's filled with baked good displays.

The yearbook

Later, everything else is gone except the one Crashdown booth, the Jeep, and the neon sign.

The distorted music they follow to find Max is the Cactus Groove song in the music list...just, messed around with. See @angsty-nerd's post here:

"I'm the hothead. You are the hero. It's always been that way."

"You stole the hubcaps off Kyle Valenti's graduation present. Both his parents are cops. Do you want to end up in jail tonight?". 

👀 Tonight, specifically. 

Michael seemed excited about the job at Foster's Ranch until he found out that Max set it up for him.  Max found out about it from his dad (only like the 2nd or 3rd mention of his dad in the series so far).

"When I got back in town I asked Max why you and your brilliant mind hadn't changed the world yet. He said you didn't care about the world enough to bother changing it. He believed you could."

Max and Isobel in the mindscape:

"You're okay. I could feel something was wrong with you.  Everything felt…"

"Cold. I know."

"You can't be here. It's finally ending.  I can feel it. But I don't know what happens if you're in my head when I die."

"So it's true? You want this?"

"I could feel my connection to the outside world getting stronger, so I snapped. I couldn't take it anymore. I released a surge. You have to let me go, Iz."

"I can't take it anymore."

"Okay."

"I am so sorry."

"I just want to memorize this."

"Okay. Okay.  I need you to tell Liz something."

"You can tell her yourself.  She and Kyle are prepping for surgery.  They're going to use the faulty heart. She just wants to talk to you before you die."

"No. No."

"You won't be suffering. They're just gonna bring you back and then let you go."

"No you have to stop this.  You cannot bring me back under any circumstances."

"Max? What is really going on?"

"I am dangerous.  Whatever Liz is bringing back is not me. It's just some broken shell."

Maria on her mom's computer 

"Her nurse said that for the two weeks before she went missing, when she wasn't trying to escape, she was talking to someone online."

The 21st birthday flashback

Isobel gets Michael to help move Max after getting drunk on tequila.  He passed out in front of the tattoo parlor. It's the same tattoo parlor Michael goes to at the end of the episode.

Max's weird drunken statement.

"The thing is, there has to be there. Okay? There's always three. Until the very end.  I'll show you...What it means is you should be here…'cause it's all broken without three. So we'll figure it out.  You'll find your way back."

👀 Until the very end. Interesting.

On Max becoming a deputy:

"You know he did the whole police academy thing because of you, right? He thinks you're gonna get into the kind of trouble you can't get out of if you don't know someone."

Back in the mindscape:

"I figured it all out. She, there's an energy to suffering, there's an energy to death, and when I heal people, I absorb that energy. So when I resurrected Rosa, I took in ten years of emptiness. So if you resurrect me, you will be bringing back an infection. Don't want… I don't want to come back as a monster. I don't want to hurt anyone that I care about."

"That's what this is about? We've been hurting, Max. We don't work without you."

"You will! You will. You are stronger now than when I died. All of you are. You, Michael, Liz, you will survive this. The three of you. No, you need to stop them, Iz. Now."

"Okay. I love you."

"You too." Isobel disappears.

Max is using pretty similar wording to his drunken rambles in the 21st birthday flashback

We don't see that Max is chained down until this next exchange with Rosa. Isobel didn't see that detail as far as we know.  Didn't hear the chains clanking when they stood and hugged. Only after Isobel left.

"I'm sorry this is happening."

"Isobel is lying. She is buying time.  You know she'll never let me go. But you can feel the darkness too, right? That's why you don't like being in my head. Because you know it's real."

"I didn't want that to be true, but yes."

"I know my sister and I know your sister and they'll never give up. So you have to be the one to stop this surgery, okay? Or I will destroy everything that we love. You have to stop them to save them. Now go.  Please, Rosa. Go."

Isobel explaining to Liz

"When he saved Rosa he absorbed all of that dark energy. He's gonna have to expel it."

"And he's afraid he's gonna kill someone when he does."

"Yeah. So we just need someone stronger than Max to take that hit...if he thinks he needs to protect us he obviously doesn't know how capable we are. Bring him back, Liz. I'll handle the rest."

"I get it now. It's gotta be the three of us."

"He would never pull his plug to end his own suffering. Unless he thought he was saving us from something. And I'm a little sick of his heroic martyr crap."

In case you missed it, Michael did not know that.  At the beginning of the hospital sequence Isobel is telling Liz what she learned in Max's mindscape and says that she hasn't been able to get ahold of Michael.  Michael figured it out on his own. He finally "got it".

The pacemaker:

Isobel with Max at the end… everything is gone except the Jeep. And Bright Eyes playing (the song he and Liz danced to on their first date back in 2008). And then his eyes close and Bright Eyes fades away.

“First thing I remember is the three of us. We woke up terrified and lost. But together. And then all of the sudden I was alone. I got real good at being alone. I had given up on people entirely. And then you found me again. Hell of hero move. You showed up just in time. When you are a kid who nobody loves, kindness is a currency. Friendship doesn’t means jack. Family just lies, and hurts, and leaves. I’ve only ever known love to be temporary. So yeah, I push people away. Every time someone threatens to care about me I test their love until they have to leave. Connection is conditional. Everybody eventually gives up on the guy who refuses to be rescued. But you were the only one who I couldn’t run off. You never believed me when I tried to be something I wasn’t. So this thing in your chest, it might give your heart a pretty solid kick every once in a while. Consider it payback. It’s my hero move, Max. If you wake up, you consider us even, okay? If you wake up, we can be a family.”

Good visual parallels during Michael's speech. Alex and Kyle drinking together during the "and then you found me again". Maria walking up on "the guy who refuses to be rescued"

Max is in the coma for three weeks.  Wakes up at the secret lab (instead of his house, which is where he was previously.  I'm guessing it was a planned wake up because he's no longer plugged into all of the IVs and whatnot.

"I begged you to understand."

"Max, it's gonna be fine."

"No… I told you to let me go. I can feel it inside me."

"It's...it's symmetry, okay? It's just energy for energy.  We can deal with that. Fight it, Max. This isn't you."

"I don't want to hurt you. I need to get out. I need to get away from you, from everyone."

"I can't let you do that."

Max shoves Isobel and runs. When he shoves her there's a slight ringing like the sound they use when the aliens use their powers.  Isobel follows and stops him with her powers.

"I made a promise that if you came back and you weren't Max, and you were actually going to hurt people that I would kill you. I figure, hey, you got to play God. Make life and death decisions all on your own. Well it's my turn now."

MUSIC:

1. Letters To Cleo "Here and Now"

2. Lady Antebellum "Love Don't Live Here"

3. Cactus Groove "Fallin"

4. James Talley "Big Thunder"

8. Ross Copperman "Stars Are On Your Side"

5. Lindsey Ray "Keep You Safe"

6. Tommee Profitt feat. Sam Tinnesz "With you Til The End"

7. Bright Eyes "First Day Of My Life"

The Cactus Groove song is the first song this season that I haven’t been able to find on Spotify… let me know if any of y’all had any luck with it!

[thatboomerkid]

RIFT

RIFT is an obscure Discipline -- rare in the extreme, born of anguish & remorse, sharpened through tear-streaked centuries of nightly struggle against the most obscene appetites -- that allows practitioners of its weird, flagellant art-form to coalesce their Beast into a quasi-living, sentient Umbral Realm bound eternally to their shadow: a sprawling, labyrinthine nightmare-dimension.

Through this monstrous realm, the Damned may walk.

And in this place, other things -- ancient things, titanic, hungry and inhuman -- soar corpse-pale skies lit by rotting, pulsating black stars, and dive through creaking forests of twisted-iron atrocity rising from endless oceans of blood.

Rift is an updated Discipline designed for use with Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition, inspired by content from A World of Darkness (First Edition, 1992).

Brought to you absolutely free to enjoy, to test & to share – as always – by the fine folks of my Patreon.

If you enjoy this content and would like to see more dark, modern horror game-material by the author, the Bloodlines & Black Magic Kickstarter is going on right now.

Hugest of thanks to John Miętus for his invaluable editing-assistance and development during the creation of this fan-content.

image from here

HISTORY

In the long black centuries between the rise of the Baali from their cursed organ-pit and the ascendance of House Tremere to majestic undeath, it is known that Saulot performed innumerable private pilgrimages to far-flung, moonlit realms in an eternal, fruitless search for the enlightened state whispered of as Golconda.

Some occult scholars claim that, in desperation, the Antediluvian sat silently for several decades at the feet of Shinbutsu-shūgō masters, wreathed in holy incense, the toll of tsurigane and a coil of unending thirst: contemplating the infinite sins of his undying lineage, reflecting upon his Heaven-ordained duty to his Progenitor and seeking to divest himself of all worldly attachment.

If so, it is possible that his incalculable and fathomless meditations produced the first echo of what would come to be known in later millennia as Rift.

Whether this is truth or mere fabrication, students of esoteric history trace the first known demonstrations of the Rift Discipline to a nomadic brood of Malkavians calling themselves ‘Gaki’ -- or ‘Hungry Ghosts’ -- who hunted the Silk Road during the 8th century. These wandering, blood-drenched emperors of jade & dust claim to have been taught the technique by a wandering Far-Eastern mystic who bore a shining third eye upon his brow & spoke in koan-like riddles about the Ten-Thousand Hells awaiting the Children of Caine.

The Gaki Bloodline

Rumors persist that a true bloodline of Malkavians -- or Malkavian Antitribu -- eventually emerged from among the far-wandering Gaki coteries, and that the eerie bloodline persists into the modern nights; a minority of Gehenna researchers claim that a cabal of such creatures were active in Tokyo as recently as the 1970s, drifting silently through the long, smog-shrouded neon shadows of that vast metropolis in search of fresh-spilt blood.

If there is any truth to these claims, those of the Gaki Bloodline suffer the full Derangement weakness of their parent clan; in addition, their perceptions are twisted by their hunger: when a Gaki is down to a number of Blood Points lower than her Humanity or Path rating, her world fades into a sinister & ghostly sea of potential victims, immediate physical threats, drifting fog and the whispers of the kumonosu. During this time, she is unable to focus on any other input -- such as traffic lights, the distant sound of gunfire or whether she’s standing in an apartment, on the street or in a fetish-club -- unless she expends a point of Willpower to shake off the unreal cloak of her hallucinations for the remainder of the scene.

The Gaki possess the Bloodline Disciplines of Auspex, Obfuscate and Rift.

Elder members of the Bloodline are known to have traded extensively in ancient nights with far-voyaging Gangrel of the Silk Road, and often possess some combination of Animalism (for use in controlling the Beast), Fortitude (for use in surviving botched Courage rolls when evoking Rift) and Protean (for general use in traveling the winding paths of the world in safety).

Since that time, the Discipline has vanished and resurfaced repeatedly, passed from master to apprentice; in these Final Nights, it is as likely to be practiced by a Nosferatu neonate dwelling in the gutters beneath a methadone clinic as it is to be wielded by a salon of elder Toreador Antitrubu who make an art of their own grandiose self-destruction.

The technique is very quietly forbidden within the Camarilla, as a pair of recurring themes amongst those who practice the art-form are a fondness for Diablerie and a penchant for experimentation in Dark Thaumaturgy ... although knowledge of the art is also -- somewhat surprisingly -- kept in secret among several coteries of particularly puritanical Josian devil-hunters.

REQUIREMENTS

Rift may only be taught by another, more-experienced master of the art-form. It cannot be learned from demons, spirits or other non-Kindred tutors. It cannot be gained at Character Creation nor selected as a Caitiff Discipline or Additional Discipline (pg. 494) unless explicitly approved by the Storyteller.

Once a Kindred has a greater number of dots in Rift than she possesses in any other Discipline, she may thereafter instruct herself in the Discipline through meditation; after this time, she no longer requires a tutor.

A Kindred may only possess a total score in Rift equal to one half the total number of points of Humanity she has lost since her Embrace.

Thus, a Kindred may not gain her first dot of Rift until she has lost at least 2 points of Humanity. If she wishes to gain a second dot in Rift, she must have lost at least 4 points in Humanity.

An elder who wishes to gain her sixth dot in Rift must, therefore, have lost at least 12 points in Humanity over her long, blood-splattered unlife.

In addition, upon gaining her first dot in Rift, the practitioner of this art gains the Nightmares Flaw (pg 485). She gains no bonus points of any kind for accepting this Flaw. If she already possesses Nightmares, the novice practitioner of Rift must instead select another Mental Flaw -- such as Deep Sleeper or Lunacy -- as deemed appropriate by the Storyteller, representative of her new reality: each time she slumbers, she is pulled deep into her own Rift to experience the most grotesque of tortures at the hands of her Beast ... and all its victims.

Note that proficiency in Rift is in no way dependent upon a vampire’s current Humanity total: a vampire with a Humanity of 10 could freely learn & utilize five full dots worth of Rift, so long as she had lost at least 10 points of Humanity at some point in her past.

image from here

PHILOSOPHY

Rift is, fundamentally, about grief & regret.

It is about falling into the Abyss. It is about witnessing yourself lose the grand, shadow-draped chess-match against your own ravening Beast in a slow, ugly war of attrition. It is about shame, sorrow & self-reproach. It is about confronting your own subconscious desire to be punished for your sins, watering this garden with blood, and allowing the tangled forest of self-hatred to grow wild, dark & unchecked. It is about accepting one’s own damnation and the personal hell that comes with it, facing-down your worst fear wrought in a storm of ash & flame, and dying -- torn into a thousand screaming fragments -- over and over and over again.

It is about what awaits you in the dark, whether at the end of another blood-slick night of terror or at the final, jagged end of a squandered immortality.

On the surface, of course, Rift is about bridging the world of flesh to the nightmare realm, dancing along the weirding way between them with a twist of will & blood, flaunting the crude, limited physics of this concrete universe.

And, up to a point, it is that as well.

For these reasons, tutoring a potential student in Rift is prohibitively difficult.

For one, it is near-impossible for an instructor to gauge how much torment their would-be apprentice has already endured. Has this supplicant to the power you wield already begun to feel her soul & sanity crumble, crawling her way back up with broken fingers from the awful precipice of the gaping, blood-slick pit?

Or is she a mere pretender to such evil?

If she has not yet begun to grow her own Rift & populate the personal hell that she will soon steal-into like a thief, how do you tell an apprentice “go now, and commit atrocities, that you might regret them later?”

How do you remind her that the Beast is ever hungry, that it feasts with cold delight in the deep blackness upon those who would seek to dance around it?

Most Kindred simply do not possess the temperament to master Rift, and it is all but unknown among those who walk a Path of Enlightenment.

SYSTEM

Much like Obfuscate, Rift requires no expenditure of Vitae to activate its power. It requires concentration and cannot be used in Frenzy.

In addition, it is -- in theory -- quite a subtle power, with few obvious effects visible to the outside observer.

Any use of Rift automatically causes all mundane and electronic recording equipment within line of sight of the practitioner to glitch-out for a split-second; a video-camera cannot capture an image of hell by training on the Damned, instead recording only a few frames of static & distortion.

However, a practitioner of the Discipline must always first attempt a Courage roll whenever she channels the nightmare of her own private damnation; attempting this roll does not require an action, and the Difficulty of this roll is always equal to 4 + the level of the Discipline power to be activated.

DECLARING INTENT

Whenever a Damned chooses to activate any ability of the Rift discipline, she must specify exactly what level of the Discipline she intends to use. She cannot, for example, activate Step Upon the Nightmare Bridge and then -- once within her Rift -- decide to activate Dance of Unstable Nightmares unless she immediately attempts an additional Courage roll.

If this roll is unsuccessful, one of the following three things occurs:

the ability fails, as the Damned -- at the last moment -- draws back in terror from the eternity of suffering she has built for herself, brick by blazing & razor-wreathed brick.

the Damned may expend a point of Willpower, forcing open the gateway between worlds through sheer desperation.

the roll is a Botch, which has special rules noted below.

If the practitioner chooses to force the power of her Rift upon the unsuspecting world in this way, the effects of her Discipline are Obscene, as noted below.

A practitioner of Rift may always choose to voluntarily fail her Courage roll (no roll required), expend her Willpower and unleash her Rift in a wave of Obscenity, if she so desires.

If the Courage roll is Botched, the practitioner is consumed in a wave of horror & nightmare-flame emanating from the Rift bound to her. This deals a number of levels of Aggravated damage equal to the level of the Discipline power to be activated.

This damage may be soaked as normal (via Fortitude).

This damage is additionally reduced by one level for each religious item or icon the Damned carries; these items are destroyed utterly when the raw power of her unleashed Rift tears through her: silver crosses are deformed into unrecognizable twists of tarnish & rust, wooden prayer-beads blaze for a single moment with unholy fire before being reduced to greasy ash, and earrings emblazoned with the Sacred Heart shatter into splinters of smoking ruin with a bitter scream and a waft of brimstone.

The Damned may carry a total number of such items or icons equal to her Humanity score. These items must be worn or carried for at least 24 hours before they may be sacrificed in this way.

Note that religious items carried by the practitioner of Rift must match the faith (if any) of the Damned: atheist Kindred cannot benefit from them at all, and most creatures cannot gain the benefits of both a Star of David and a Holy Rosary at the same time.

Members of the Gaki Bloodline, famously, were the exception to that rule: true Universal Polytheists, they adorned themselves with sacred items from every culture they encountered, practicing as many good-luck & purification rituals as they could learn in an eternal mania to ward-off evil.

image from here

LEVEL ONE:

Echo of Hells: Upon activating this technique, the practitioner of Rift chooses any one creature who likewise suffers the hunger of an undying Beast; she may communicate silently with that individual for the remainder of the scene.

This creature must be within line-of-sight to the Damned for contact to be established (but see below).

All attempts to communicate with this creature are automatically successful unless the other Damned chooses to block such contact; a Howl of the Devil-Tiger Kuei-jin who speaks only Early Middle Japanese may choose to ignore the alien whispers of a Western undead channeling the screams of her Rift, but their communication otherwise surpasses all language barriers.

If the Damned chooses to communicate with a fellow practitioner of the Rift Discipline who is known intimately to her, this communication may be performed over any distance; she must know the name, face, scent, touch and taste of her partner before communication may be joined in this way.

This technique, at the Storyteller’s discretion, may be used to communicate with creatures including ghouls, as they are subject to Frenzy, as well as Black Spiral Dancers, Nephandi, Formori and Risen but it cannot -- for the most part -- otherwise be used to communicate with mortals.

Obscene: If this technique is unleashed as Obscene, all creatures within ten feet of the chosen target hear a cacophony of discordant & hideous whispers emanating from the target for as long as your communication lasts.

Unlike more potent gifts of this Discipline, mere exposure to this technique is not enough to harm flesh.

LEVEL TWO:

Unveil Damnation: By use of this technique, the practitioner of Rift may draw another into her shadow-realm of eternal agony, if only for a moment, forcing her target to bear witness to the vampire’s private hell ... and to endure, for the space of a mortal heartbeat, its myriad torments.

This is a fully-immersive psychic onslaught: the victim cannot avoid this experience by averting her eyes, nor by covering her ears and screaming, although many creatures will instinctively attempt to do so.

ON THE TEN-THOUSAND HELLS

It is known that each Rift opens upon a different realm of perfect suffering, each uniquely tailored by the Beast of the Damned to accentuate the fear, shame, violence, frustration, guilt, trauma and horror they have endured ... and perpetuated, returned onto them a thousand-fold.

Before a player may gain any levels in the Rift Discipline, she must be able to describe to her Storyteller the basic nature of her particular damnation: one might be a breathtakingly beautiful rain-drenched forest, with a different victim of the Damned crucified upon each tree, through which she is chased in nightmare by the flaming corpses of all those she has Diablerized; another Rift might open into an endless, boiling desert of black sand, pillars of salt, coils of rusted razor-wire and pits of jagged glass shards, watched-over eternally by seven hateful, cataract bio-luminescent spheres roiling across the bruise-colored sky in a chorus of screams.

A Storyteller should work closely with her player to help detail this realm, drawing from the character’s misdeeds, phobias and failures.

This ability functions identically to the Level 2 Presence ability Dread Gaze (see page 194) with the following adjustments:

The Damned rolls Perception + Awareness to determine her success with this ability rather than Charisma + Intimidation.

This is not a Presence ability and is thus not subject to defenses such as Pavis of Foul Presence (pg. 236).

The victim of this technique may immediately attempt a Perception + Empathy roll (Difficulty equal to the practitioner’s current Willpower). If this roll is successful, she gains deep insight into the Nature, Demeanor, psychology and morality of the Rift-practitioner; at Storyteller discretion, this may give the victim an advantage against the Damned in later scenes or allow her to predict the Rift-practitioner’s next move.

Obscene: If this technique is unleashed as Obscene, all creatures within ten feet of the intended target bear witness to the same flash of utter horror ... and are thus subject to the effect of the ability (although the Difficulty to terrify these additional targets is doubled from its base; the Damned rolls Perception + Awareness separately for each target). Each target, as normal, may attempt a Perception + Empathy roll to analyze the tormented inner psyche of the Rift-practitioner.

In addition, the initial target of this ability suffers one level of lethal damage from exposure to such horror; the Difficulty to soak this damage is equal to 2 + the level of the Discipline used (see below).

image from here

LEVEL THREE:

Step Upon the Nightmare Bridge: By use of this technique, the Damned may depart the world and physically enter her own Rift, vanishing as she steps backwards into her own shadow.

The Damned is invisible & intangible while hidden within her Rift, but she may be observed as an eerie, discolored silhouette in empty space by any outside observer scanning the area with Auspex or a similar supernatural perception ability.

She may only carry clothing, keepsakes, one-handed weapons and other small personal items with her when she steps into her Rift in this way; she may not carry other creatures with her, nor anything that requires more than one hand to hold. Any object too large, heavy or bulky to be carried across (subject to Storyteller discretion) is simply dropped at her feet in the world of the living when the Damned steps into her own Rift in this way.

Experienced practitioners of Rift can often instinctively guess what objects are too large to be carried across in this way, and are rarely surprised at being stripped of their held possessions when evoking this technique.

The Damned may choose to leave items within the realm of her private hell and retrieve them later.

At the conclusion of each turn spent in her personal hell, the Damned must succeed at a Courage roll with a Difficulty equal to her Conscience. Upon failing this roll, she returns to the night-lit world of the living. She may always choose to return of her own volition before failing this roll. Returning from her private hell does not require an action.

The Damned is always aware of what occurs directly on the other side of the veil between worlds -- in the space she previously occupied -- and may gaze out of her personal hell to observe the world beyond without any roll.

The Damned always returns to the living world in the same spot from which she departed, stepping back into the space she previously occupied.

Obscene: If this technique is unleashed as Obscene, the depths of the practitioner’s personal hell are briefly visible for all to see as the Damned steps backwards; all creatures who witness the Damned vanish are subject to the Obscene version of the Level 2 Rift ability Unveil Damnation, as above. In addition, the Damned leaves residue from her private hell on all surfaces with which she was in-contact when this technique is activated, potentially marking the floor upon which she stood with foul rain-water, drifts of ashen rust or tiny shards of gore-caked bone, glass and ceramic tile.

The practitioner of Rift may choose a single target within her line of sight when she uses this Unveil Damnation ability to be the initial or “intended” target of the ability. She must stare directly at that single target when this technique is activated.

LEVEL FOUR:

Dance of Unstable Nightmares: When the Damned exits her Rift, she may choose to reappear in any place in the living world that she can see clearly.

Thus, she might return to the world standing atop a building visible from her previous location, but not on the other side of a locked door.

Obscene: As Step Upon the Nightmare Bridge, above, except that the Damned additionally brings residue from her private hell with her when she exits that hideous realm, marking her passage in two places.

LEVEL FIVE:

Call-Forth the Majestic Nightmare: When the Damned enters her Rift, an entity from deep within her Rift is pulled into the night-lit world of the living; this creature immediately occupies the space vacated by the Rift-practitioner.

This entity is the true Beast of the Damned made manifest in flesh. Its specific appearance is left to the player and her Storyteller to decide, although it is always visually identifiable as -- at least in some way -- similar to the Damned who summoned it up from her personal Wheel of Punishment. It also bears an uncanny resemblance to any creature diablerized by the Rift-practitioner.

The entity possesses statistics identical to the Damned, with the following differences:

The entity is always in Frenzy and has a Humanity of 0. If the entity ever leaves Frenzy, it immediately vanishes.

The entity gains all the benefits of Black Metamorphosis (pg 189), Horrid Form (pg. 242), The Form of the Cobra (pg. 210) or a similar physical enhancement effect (such as the Fractura ability of Striga), as chosen by the Storyteller.

The entity is not bound in any way to creatures who hold a Blood Bond over the Damned, nor is it subject to similar emotional restraint or control (as adjudicated by the Storyteller).

The entity will preferentially target anything it sees as a threat to the Damned that created it, and will always attempt to murder anything that attacks it.

Once its safety is secured, the entity turns its abhorrent attentions to the living world. The entity hates the practitioner of Rift who called it forth and seeks to cripple & disfigure all that the Damned holds dear, targeting allies & friends of the Damned if it is able (although it does not attempt to destroy them outright).

In any instance, the entity revels in utter destruction.

When the practitioner of Rift returns to the world, the entity vanishes.

Any blood consumed by the entity is wasted when it vanishes.

Obscene: As Step Upon the Nightmare Bridge, above, except that the nightmare entity constantly drips (or sheds) matter from the depths of the practitioner’s private hell, leaving a trail of horror as it rampages.

------

Cross the Nightmare Bridge: When the Damned chooses to enter her own Rift, as per the Level 3 technique of this Discipline, she may remain within that nightmare realm for an indefinite period of time (no Courage roll required). She must slumber, as normal, when sunlight falls on the living world beyond, and her thirst grows nightly: there is no blood to drink within the confines of her hell.

If the Damned falls into torpor while beyond the borders of her Rift, she falls backwards out of her own shadow and returns physically to the living world.

She is otherwise free to explore the boundless realm of her eternal damnation as she pleases.

Obscene: As Step Upon the Nightmare Bridge, above.

------

DEVELOPER’S NOTE:

Unlike the majority of Disciplines, Rift allows access to two distinct Level 5 powers. Access to these two different abilities is treated identically to Elder Disciplines such as Karmic Sight and Mirror Reflexes (pg. 140-141).

------

image from here

LEVEL SIX:

Distend & Evacuate the Nightmare Hoard: By use of this technique, the Damned may deposit any inanimate object held in-hand into her Rift; the object seemingly vanishes, like a card disappearing in a display of slight-of-hand. Only an object that might be transported via Step Upon the Nightmare Bridge may be relocated into the depths of a private hell in this way.

The Damned may likewise draw-forth any object deposited into her private hell.

Obscene: If this technique is unleashed as Obscene, the item enters or exits the Rift in a wave of unhealthy matter from the depths of nightmare, dripping bits of a private hell into the waking world. An item drawn from the Rift in an Obscene way radiates palpable, toxic waves of this energy, and deals 1 level of Lethal damage to any creature (except the Damned) touching it within the next minute. The Difficulty to soak this damage is equal to 2 + the level of the Discipline used (see below).

-----

Sinister Winds of Unstable Nightmare: By use of this technique, the Damned may choose to deposit any waking-world object held within her private hell in a location she can see. Targeting a particularly specific location with the object -- such as ‘the small space between my opponent’s glasses and his eyes’ -- when the object emerges requires a Perception + Occult roll, Difficulty 7.

Obscene: As Distend & Evacuate the Nightmare Hoard, above.

LEVEL SEVEN:

Covetous Eyes of the Nightmare Thief: By use of this technique, the Damned may deposit any unattended inanimate object within her line of sight into her Rift. Only an object that might be transported via Step Upon the Nightmare Bridge may be relocated into the depths of a private hell in this way.

Obscene: As Distend & Evacuate the Nightmare Hoard, above.

Doorway Out of Hell: By use of this technique, the Damned may establish a permanent physical exit from her Rift into the living world, usable only by her. This portal requires only a moment to establish: the Damned must touch an open, bounded doorway or archway of any kind -- such as a torii gate or a closet door in the home of her ghoul -- and expend a permanent Willpower. The Damned may always choose to exit her Rift through this doorway, rather than returning to the world at the spot she entered her private hell, or at a point in space within line of sight (as per Dance of Unstable Nightmares).

This doorway may not be used to enter the Rift.

The Damned may posses a total number of doorways out of her Rift equal to her Humanity or Path rating. The Damned may dismiss any doorway she has created at any time, from any location, without effort.

Obscene: If this technique is enacted as Obscene, the enchanted doorway leaks hideous drifts of matter & energy from the depths of the practitioner’s personal hell; this miasma marks the area around the doorway, twisting the local environment into something eerie, nightmarish and haunted. Any living creature that dwells within the area surrounding the doorway must succeed at a Willpower roll (Difficulty 7) at the end of each 24 hour period or gain a temporary Derangement; these Derangements stack. All Derangements gained in this way fade when the mortal spends at least 24 hours outside of the environment surrounding the doorway. If this Willpower roll is botched, the Derangement is permanent.

LEVEL EIGHT:

Pull of Nightmare: By use of this technique, the Damned can forcibly draw an unwilling creature into her Rift as she enters; the Damned must first touch the target, requiring a Dexterity + Athletics or Brawl roll if this action is performed in combat. A creature touched by the practitioner when she steps into her own nightmare realm may oppose this pull with a Willpower roll (Difficulty 7); her successes are opposed by the practitioner’s Manipulation + Brawl roll (Difficulty equal to the target’s Humanity or Path rating + 2).

A creature pulled into the practitioner’s Rift in this way is immediately exposed to the effects of a targeted Unveil Damnation; she can attempt to push herself out of the Rift (Willpower roll, Difficulty 6) at the end of each round spent within the nightmare realm. The Difficulty of this Willpower roll decreases by one at the end of each round. If the victim botches a Willpower roll of this type, she gains a permanent Derangement.

The victim is otherwise trapped in a hostile alien environment, alone with the Rift-practitioner. The victim is not aware of what occurs on the other side of the veil between worlds and cannot gaze out of hell to observe the world beyond.

If the Damned chooses to exit her private hell, the victim is immediately shunted back the world of the living. The Damned may choose to deposit the victim in any legal location for her to exit the Rift: she might dump the victim through a Doorway Out of Hell or in any location visible from her current position.

The Damned may choose to exit the Rift in a different location, and she may choose to send her victim back early at any time as a free action.

Obscene: As Step Upon the Nightmare Bridge, above.

Fling Wide the Embrace of Hell: By use of this technique, the Damned may allow a willing entity access to her private hell. She must expend a point of Willpower while touching her ally; the two may then enter her Rift together. A creature pulled into the practitioner’s Rift in this way is immediately exposed to the effects of a targeted Unveil Damnation.

The Damned may choose, when she returns to the living world, to leave her ally behind -- within the Rift -- for any length of time, although the nightmare realm does not contain the necessary resources to sustain life: it lacks potable water and edible food, among other amenities.

A living creature held in the Rift must succeed at a Willpower roll (Difficulty 7) at the end of each 24 hour period or gain a temporary Derangement; these Derangements stack. All Derangements gained in this way fade when the mortal spends at least 24 hours outside of the Rift. If this Willpower roll is botched, the Derangement is instead permanent.

A creature brought into the Rift can only be subsequently removed from the Rift by the Damned who brought her in; the visitor must be touching the Damned when the Rift-practitioner exits back to the living world.

The Damned may have a total number of visitors dwelling within her Rift equal to her Humanity or Path rating.

Obscene: As Step Upon the Nightmare Bridge, above.

image from here

LEVEL NINE:

Imprison Within Eternal Nightmare: Whenever the Damned successfully draws a target into her private hell via Pull of Nightmare, the effect is permanent: the victim does not automatically exit the nightmare-realm when the Damned returns to the world of the living, nor does she receive any additional Willpower rolls to push herself free.

The victim may only exit the Rift when the Damned chooses to release her.

Rumors persist, of course, of powerful rescue-parties successfully invading the Rift of a Methuselah, but these tales are likely just that: mere legend.

The Damned may have a total number of prisoners caught within her Rift equal to her Humanity or Path rating.

Obscene: As Step Upon the Nightmare Bridge, above.

Manifest the Atrocity-Leviathan: The Rift of a true ancient is vast, containing multitudinous continents of horrors, hung like pulsating iridescent tumors in an ever-shifting constellation of depravity, sadism and self-hatred, laced-through with vast coils of razor-wire & city-sized shards of ichor-drenched obsidian.

Things -- unholy and undying things, born under no sane stars, armored and adorned with horrid & fleshy scribbles of frothing-mad blasphemies -- begin to breed in the shadowed places beneath that kaleidoscope of rotting, rust-caked punishment-houses. By means of this technique, such a monstrosity may be briefly loosed upon the living world.

This ability functions identically to Call Forth the Majestic Nightmare except that the entity summoned-up, rather than possessing statistics identical to the Damned, is something more terrible still.

It is left to the Storyteller’s discretion as to what terror of flesh or spirit could possibly prove more dangerous than an insane 4th-Generation vampire backed into a corner, but the Storyteller is advised to use her most wicked imagination in crafting such a cataclysm ... and not to shy away from true cosmic horror.

Obscene: As Step Upon the Nightmare Bridge, above.

Rift is an updated Discipline designed for use with Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition, inspired by content from A World of Darkness (First Edition, 1992).

Brought to you absolutely free to enjoy, to test & to share – as always – by the fine folks of my Patreon.

If you enjoy this content and would like to see more dark, modern horror game-material by the author, the Bloodlines & Black Magic Kickstarter is going on right now.

Hugest of thanks to John Miętus for his invaluable editing-assistance and development during the creation of this fan-content.

[askbittyerror]

Wedding RP part 4

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "...with Campan, we couldn't find a partner for them with an opposing aura. Needed a positivity bab who could find with their negative aura." "We. Came very close to running out of time. After a year, the bonding can't happen, and their magic, and health, become permanently weakened." "...we were lucky enough to run into a young paladin, Dandelion. He agreed to come home with us, with his brother." "..." "Okay, technically his brother stowed away when we tried to leave, but- it worked out."

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 "Then as soon as we get back, mission find grandbaby a partner is a go." Magnus says decisively, the others nodding.(edited)

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "-needs to be less than a year too, though." Bells warns softly, "Lady Dame doesn't generally adopt out bitties that young to anyone."

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 "I'm sure she'll make an exception, this once." Paladin says. "We just need to find the right bitty for that to be feasible."

salty darkness09/27/2020 A soft sound. "We could arrange something with her, then. For the sake of our child." Greylu is quiet for a few moments. "..." He opens the last letter.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 His new spouse lays a light hand against his shoulder- -then. Tries to peek as well.

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 The paper is lined, ripped straight from a notebook. The writing is sloppy, and, at least to Bells, something they have seen once before. It's a handmade coupon, in pencil.

One (1) convenient plot device.  Rip up and say what you want to redeem. Use it well.  -V(edited)

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "..." "..." "Uh. I'll, take that. Please."

salty darkness09/27/2020 "..." Greylu hands it to Bells. "What the fuck is this??"

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 "It was meant for you anyway", appears on the page before quickly being erased.

salty darkness09/27/2020 Greylu makes a vaguely loud noise of fear.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "..." "Lets call it asker stuff, and maybe leave it at that, please? Fourth wall things are, uh, vaguely brain breaking to people not inclined to them." This is the second time they've been left notes by this V...

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 "ASDFFJS wheeze"

salty darkness09/27/2020 Louder noises of concern and definitely fear. [5:51 PM] Very, very scared goop.

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 "Communicating like this was a great idea, I'm having a fucking blast!"

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "...Imma just tuck this away," they stash it in their inventory, before turning back to their beloved. no. no more scaring their hubby.

salty darkness09/27/2020 "..." "Beloved. It was sentient. That was a sentient paper. What the actual fuck was that thing."

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 Paper based pouting. Fresh seems to be glaring at where the note was.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "...it's basically a superpowered m!a. useful for Dame's bitty shop verse. and, no, it was just long distance communication via writing." by a creator. "someone has a sense of humor, and the resources to play with it."

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 Fresh huffs and nuzzles Bells. The other bitties look confused. "...yes. That."

salty darkness09/27/2020 Greylu still looks disturbed. "..." "Is it? Dangerous?"

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 Fresh growls, hiding his face.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "..." They lay a hand against his chest, meeting their husband's gaze. "Think of it as a gift from a mischevious god-type you'll never meet. The gift itself isn't necessarily dangerous. But where it came from? Was already there, and will still be there, gift or no."

salty darkness09/27/2020 "..." Greylu sighs, looking away. "Alright. But if this 'god type' even thinks about harming our children? I'm going to personally see that they suffer for it."

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 In their inventory, the paper giggles.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 They kiss his cheek softly. "Because you're a good father. Now c'mon, enjoy being married beloved."

salty darkness09/27/2020 The married goop nods, moving to kiss back- -and a tendril moves to stab at the paper, despite it being technically not present via the laws of inventories. As you do.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 ...pap. "no, lover." they deny gently. [6:06 PM] "no actively picking fights with gods if we can avoid it."(edited)

salty darkness09/27/2020 "..." "It laughed at me."

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 And it is continuing to do so.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "...beloved? it's a piece of paper. a way to communicate. stabbing it would be about as effective as breaking a phone." "and. It may be useful. sometimes it's better to have such magic on your side."

salty darkness09/27/2020 Greylu is definitely growling. Growly goop. Look at this goop and his anger. "..." "It's very blatantly not on my side."

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "...no." a brief kiss, and a low purr, adding softly, "but I am. okay?"

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 The paper is just having the best time, honestly.

salty darkness09/27/2020 The goop is just having the worst time, honestly. [6:10 PM] "...okay."

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 Much rumbles... happy lich. Soft kiss. "...now. we are really late cutting the cake."

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 Fresh focuses, his neons dimming. The paper huffs, laughs again, and falls silent.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 a pause, and a nuzzle for Fresh, adding, "and thank you for that. I know you really don't like dealing with fourth wall stuff. I'm, not gonna ask if they're always like that? but thank you."

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 "No prob, brah." Fresh smiles weakly, nuzzling them back. "And yeah, thats... thats pretty much his norm."

salty darkness09/27/2020 Greylu looks up at the gathering of people near the cake, barely holding back laughter. "We should head up there, shouldn't we? People are probably getting impatient."

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 A chuckle, nodding. "Probably. Hungry people are grumbly people, after all." "...grumblier than usual, anyway."

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 "Food!" Mercury flings up his arms with a overly happy noise.

salty darkness09/27/2020 "...alright then. Let's go." Greylu hums, walking over to the cake, and the gathering there.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 Bells follows, as well as Blue, who... well, they're just going to focus on cake, because processing the fact that there's another creator interested in the bittyverse? Yeah. That can wait.

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 The bitties, well, they're just along for the ride.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 The cake is, well, about what would likely be expected for the cake at a wedding between a lich and a corrupted guardian. That is to say, chocolate. Several layers of chocolate, with a deceptively bright layer of white buttercreme frosting, hot fudge drizzled over the entire thing in thick dark 'tendrils,' with candied mint leaves and candied blackberries lain in ornamental patterns across the surface. ...the toppers? are obvious. right?

salty darkness09/27/2020 Greylu licks his non-existent lips, a tendril carefully moving to pap the little Bells topper on the head. "...so. Are we cutting this thing, or what?"

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "damn right we are," they murmur, casting a fond look at the cute little Greylu topper. "...let me just remember where I put the cake knife..."

salty darkness09/27/2020 "..." Greylu holds out his hand, and, in a small flash of light, a glowing blue trident poofs into existence. "..." "Improvise?"

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "..." they might grin just a bit. "As long as youve cleaned it since the last time you used it? "Hell yes." What better way to enjoy their wedding cake?

salty darkness09/27/2020 The husband smiles.

Tendrils move to gently pick up the toppers, setting them aside. He brings the trident down- gently- onto the cake, slicing it clearly in two. There is now chocolate all over his perfectly good weapon. Oh well.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "..." there is a trace of mischief in their eye, as they consider reaching for the trident to... help clean it off. with their first taste of cake. no. bad lich. "...nicely done."

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 Mercury may be starry eyed. He wants to learn to do that!

salty darkness09/27/2020 Greylu hums, picking up the toppers. He hands the mini version of himself to Bells, studying their topper for a moment, running a tendril over the new wedding ring on his hand.

"...do I have to cut it into slices for everyone, or-?"

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 "We just need like one slice, like collectively." Magnus says. "Speak for yourself, brah." Fresh grins. "I can eat halfa one on my own."(edited)

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "I think we're mostly supposed to cut our own slices, but- probably a good idea. Then we can sneak slices to our kiddos too."

salty darkness09/27/2020 "Hmm. Okay then." Greylu huffs, cutting a slice out of the lowest layers of the cake. "Can someone get a plate, or-"

There's a small flash of light- and glitches- and the slice is promptly snatched out of Greylu's hands. He yelps, tendrils swiping at the interloper, but the thief is already gone.

"..." "Fuck. There goes the first piece." [9:01 PM] There is the not-so-distant sound of a bluebird being way too smug and proud of himself.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "..." "How I didn't see that coming, I haven't got a clue." They mutter. "Hey, Mercury? Are all my brothers impossibly impressive thieves, or just those two?"

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 "I am absolutely full of crimes!" Mercury giggles.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 Bells stares for a full second, then gestures at Mercury, an exasperated expression on their face. "See? How am I supposed to be annoyed when they're so fricking adorable about it?!"

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 Mercury purrs and nuzzles them.

salty darkness09/27/2020 "Mmm-hmm." Greylu brings his trident down once more, hesitates, glances around... and offers a slice to the bitties. "Just for that, you all get second bite."

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 Bells seems to approve! Blue is hiding their face against the beloved on their shoulder, trying not to laugh. Okay, they're starting to see the resemblance now...

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 The bitties take the plate via a careful amalgamation of tentacles, wings and little hands, tearing off chunks and passing it around with many thank yous.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 Greylu gets a soft kiss on his cheek, as they lich smiles, holding his cake topper close. "Now, want to get enough to share with the kids, and let everyone else fight over what's left?"

salty darkness09/27/2020 Greylu smiles, tilting his head. "Yes. Gladly." He starts cutting up the cake, tendrils flicking back and forth as he works.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "...i love that man." they whisper to Fresh, watching their husband cut the cake. husband. husband. what an enormously amazing word.

salty darkness09/27/2020 Their husband eventually has several carefully-cut slices of cake, darkness curling around to deliver them all around the fields. Luckily, there's still plenty of yummy goodness left. "Done. Beloved? You want a piece?"

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 “Eh, he’s alright.” Fresh chuckles, nuzzling Bells.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "I'd love you. Uh... one. Cake. love to." ...crap. they're blushing again.(edited)

salty darkness09/27/2020 "..." Blushing goop. Blushing goop.exe has crashed. Blushing goop definitely does not know how to respond to this.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 Bells wishes they still had their hood to hide under. That. Was a great thing to say in front if their mom and new dad and Fresh and- "I. Cake. Please."

salty darkness09/27/2020 Greylu stammers, tendrils wagging and twitching back and forth as he fumbles to grab a slice. "I- um- yeah. No problem. Yeah." The largest piece so far- actually, it may just straight-up be the entirety of one of the upper sections of the cake- is handed to Bells.

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 "Reminds me of us." Magnus laughs, nuzzling Blue.

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 Blue? Admittedly trying not to smile. "- guess a taste for nightmares runs in the family." they agree, nuzzling back.

Askbittyerror09/27/2020 Magnus blushes. "Yeah..."

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 Bells accepts the slice... sneaks a quick kiss, and whispers a thank you. ...that is a lot of cake. they're okay with this.

salty darkness09/27/2020 Greylu steps away from the cake, still blushing. "..." A tendril tugs Bells close to him. "Can we talk for a moment? Uh- alone?"

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 a nod, wordless, letting him lead the way... managing to get their blush under control. Sort of. Okay, not at all.

salty darkness09/27/2020 The goop walks a little ways away from Blue and the bitties, leaning down to whisper in Bells' ear. "...when are we having the honeymoon, anyway?"

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "...depends. do you want to wait until we manage to chase everyone out? or find someone to babysit, and sneak out?"

salty darkness09/27/2020 "Mmm.." Greylu huffs. "The first one, personally. I assumed your scientist or our respective siblings were going to watch our children."

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "...that's certainly the hope." they agree. starting to say something else- -they stop. and after a moment, prompt quietly, "how was, Cross doing?"

salty darkness09/27/2020 "..." Greylu looks away. "Fine, mostly. I... didn't tell him, yet. About Twilight."

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "...I just meant about the wedding." They admit, taking his hands... hand, the other occupied with much cake. "I know... us being together, has caused him pain."

salty darkness09/27/2020 "..." "He's okay with it. As long as I'm happy."

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "..." They nuzzle his cheek, and squeeze his hand. "-yeah. he's... good."

salty darkness09/27/2020 "...good.." Greylu is quiet for a moment. "..." "Where are we going for the honeymoon, anyway?"

with-bells-upon09/27/2020 "..." "I haven't a clue, honestly. Im guess you want to stay in your own multiverse though?" September 28, 2020

salty darkness09/28/2020 "...perferably, yes..." An amused sound. "I suppose we could always just have it right here. Probably make good use of... some of our gifts."

with-bells-upon09/28/2020 "...i may have finished rooms for, you know, the kids... and us~" they admit, 'innocently.' "I really should show you while youre here~"

salty darkness09/28/2020 "Oh hell yes~" Greylu pauses, skull dusting blue as he realizes that it's... probably not appropriate to talk like that in semi-public. "Ahem. Uh. Yes. I would love to, spouse."

with-bells-upon09/28/2020 ...ah. yes. their family was sort of, just over- aaaand Fresh. Blue may be trying not to look amused and embarrassed at the same time, not horribly put off by this, but Bells looks like someone caught trying to swipe the last cookie. "...um. I, would like to show... my new husband around a bit. if you wouldn't mind-"

salty darkness09/28/2020 The goopking hides his face in his hands, tendrils curling around himself. He seems... very much flustered and embarrassed.

with-bells-upon09/28/2020 (( @Askbittyerror if bitties want to react))

Askbittyerror09/28/2020 Fresh snorts and nuzzles Bells. "Alright, brah." He opens his wings. "You kids have fun." He gives Greylu a wink then flies back over to Blue. [11:36 AM] Fresh nudges Magnus when he gets back, whispering to him. "YOU KIDS HAVE FUN!" Magnus yells, Fresh immediately descending into hysterics.

salty darkness09/28/2020 This does not improve Greylu's flustered-ness. If anything, it's even worse now.

Askbittyerror09/28/2020 The two gremlins are very proud of themselves.

with-bells-upon09/28/2020 Bright, bright blushing. Bells covers their face with one hand for a few seconds, Huffing as they grab their hubby's hand with the other, and physically draw him away from their family, managing a nearly audibly offered 'plan to, thanks.'

salty darkness09/28/2020 Tendrils curl around Bells' arm as they pull Greylu away, squeezing and clinging all the while. The goop is definitely still blushing.

with-bells-upon09/28/2020 yeah, they just, excuse themself, making a beeline for the nearest exit, and only stopping once they were on the other side. "..." "That's normal, right?"

salty darkness09/28/2020 He leans down, pressing a kiss against his spouse's cheek. "...absolutely not, but I love you anyway."

with-bells-upon09/28/2020 "...that's fair." their smile manages to return a little, as they motion the door shut behind them. "C'mon. Your room is upstairs. Most are."

salty darkness09/28/2020 Greylu fiddles with his ring, nodding as the blush finally fades from his skull. "...I love you. Have I said that enough today? I love you."

with-bells-upon09/28/2020 The lich watches him, a softness to their expression. A light hand lays against his cheek, the one bearing their own wedding band. "You managed that with three words, beloved. When you said, 'Yes. I do.'" They lean in to kiss him softly, adding in a whisper, "but you can tell me a thousand more times, I promise. I won't complain." "...I love you too."

salty darkness09/28/2020 A tendril moves up to brush against the lich's hand, curling around their ring finger. He closes his eyes, pressing back into the kiss with a small, happy purr. "...then I love you. I love you, I love you, and most importantly, I love you~"

with-bells-upon09/28/2020 Happy, happy lich purrs. "Forever, and ever, and ever, I love you~" another soft kiss, and another- - and, then it occurs to them that they're still standing in the stairwell. "...rooms?"

salty darkness09/28/2020 "..." "Do we have to?"

with-bells-upon09/28/2020 "...you, uh, want to... on the stairwell... right outside the wedding party?"

salty darkness09/28/2020 A pause. "..." "Alright, point taken. Rooms it is."

with-bells-upon09/28/2020 A twitch of a smile, and they catch him lightly by a tendril, leading up. "Used to be I could cheat with the stairs, move between a dozen floors eas... but I got rid of those, so we're gonna have to hoof it, beloved."

salty darkness09/28/2020 The tendril curls around their arm, squeezing as he follows. "I don't mind. It means I get to admire you while we go."

with-bells-upon09/28/2020 a rumble of pleased, as they lead the way. it's a good three flights... no.. seven... okay, apparently nine. they don't seem to notice, leaning against him, nuzzling and purring.

salty darkness09/28/2020 Greylu leans back, running his hand along the wall. Blackberry kisses are pressed all along their face, tendrils wrapping around to hug and squeeze and- -whoops. He's tripped and fallen down a few of the stairs. Oh well.

with-bells-upon09/28/2020 "...!" Bells hurries after him, alarmed, and tries to help him yo his feet. A shaky sound, not quite a laugh. "Okay, maybe we should wait until we actually reach the rooms..."

with-bells-upon09/28/2020 Then they freeze, eyes going wide- -look once at Greylu? And teleport away. ...feels like panic-

salty darkness09/28/2020 "..." Greylu pushes himself to his feet, ignoring the buzzing in his pocket. "What-" Then he freezes up, and growls. ...and follows.