#and oops that snippet is way longer than I realized sorry

[bi-buckrights]

WIP Wednesday 🏴‍☠️

Thanks for the tags loves @loserdiaz @wildlife4life @spotsandsocks @thewolvesof1998

I've only made a little progress because I've been sick this week (also not done all my research that I was supposed to finish before I even started but shhhh) but here's a little snippet of the pirate au ✨

First snippet here

The man rounds the desk slowly, not breaking eye contact. Eddie stands frozen in place, unable to look away from those piercing blue eyes, his defenses raised in case he makes any move for a fight.  When he settles beside Eddie, his hand raises to his waist. Eddie moves before he can think. Within a split second, Eddie pulls a dagger from his belt while simultaneously grabbing the man’s wrist to immobilize it behind his back, his dagger pressed against the man’s neck.  The man grunts in surprise, his free hand coming up to grasp Eddie’s arm, as if to try to pull the knife away from himself. Eddie presses the dagger harder against his neck to dissuade him from fighting back - not enough to break the skin unless the man decides to struggle against him.  “Relax, fuck, I was just getting the key for the drawer out my pocket.”  Without loosening his grip, Eddie leans back to look down between them, where he has the man’s arm in his grasp. Sure enough, in his hand is not a knife or a gun, but a set of keys.  Eddie quickly releases him, stepping away to put space between them. “Uh, sorry about that,” Eddie says awkwardly.  The man shakes his arm out, rotating his shoulder forward and backward. “Christ, that fucking hurt.”  “I thought you were reaching for a weapon,” Eddie explains, feeling slightly guilty. Not guilty enough to apologize - he’s not apologizing to a British fucking Officer. 

Tagging @monsterrae1 @rogerzsteven @heartshapedvows @eddiebabygirldiaz @spaceprincessem @bekkachaos @hoodie-buck @hippolotamus @elvensorceress @honestlydarkprincess

[sketchehm]

Would love to hear more about how the dteam & the mafia find out about how horribly guilty Sapnap feels over everything 👀👀

Guh!

I did debate a lot of When and How they find out. And I really didn't have a solid idea and figured it'd be after the whole Q takes Sapnap from them. Like when they're all reunited it'd be like spilling emotions and crying and kisses and hugs and all that

But that's like. Sooo typical(lmao)

Well....I still want all that to happen. But I want all of them to already know Sapnap is feeling that before he's back with them. Them now Knowing how horrible he felt/feels. And nothing they can do about it....out of their reach

And the way they find out? Well. I think Q likes to....brag a little. I think Q would be able to get Sapnap to confess to all the bad he thinks he's done. Manipulating him in a way? Like a...this is how you'll get better, if you tell me all the evil you've done. And Q doesn't. Like. Help Sapnap really. Oops. He's more like....condescending(?) about it...

I imagine it's a Q coaxing Sapnap into a false sense of security. That nothing bad will happen here! But if Sapnap leaves him, it would truly show how much Sapnap hates him. How much Sapnap never truly cared about anyone. Just being selfish for attention. And Sapnap will cling to him saying he's sorry. He won't leave. He doesn't want to betray people anymore. Not his loved ones. Not anymore. Please please he promises. And Q will ask him how did he betray the others. So Q can teach him never to do it again.

And Sapnap will recount it. How he fell in love when he shouldn't have. Delayed his mission. Betraying Dream more and more by doing this. How he revealed his plan in an act of desperation, the final nail in the coffin really..... Q will taunt him some more. How typical of Sapnap to be so selfish again. To want more and more and never be satisfied. Just like how he begged Q to come back all that time ago. Always wanting and never realizing whats in front of him. How Q was right in front of him(how this could have been all avoidable if he joined Q that night).

And Sapnap will feel bad and worse and that this is his punishment. This is what he deserves. And will cling harder onto Q. The only person to ever truly accept him. Who sees all his rotten self in full. Who will love him fully. (It doesn't feel like the warm love he's used to. This one is prickly and hurts, but wraps him just as tight)

But Q still has....buisness with the Team. Will need to leave Sapnap alone(what if he gets sick of Sapnap? What if Q never returns? Alone forever?)

And Q drops snippets of Sapnap’s misery when he's at these meetings. Just how much better he's doing with him now. Taunting and mocking them. How Sapnap is such a clinger and never wants him to leave, always saying how he was ready for all of them to say they hated him and couldn't stand the tension. Would rather run away then deal with the likes of them any longer. Yea, some caring family they must be if they couldn't see the obvious turmoil their precious Sapnap was in.

How their Don tries to buy him back and Q will laugh at the situation. Will say there is something he'd trade for Sapnap(unlike them). But they don't seem to be wanting to hand over a gutted Dream to him anytime soon. So oh well!

They can't kill him cause he's got Sapnap! And they don't know what would happen to Sapnap if Q ends up dead, if he'd be killed before they could even get to him....so it's. Rough.

It's realistically Rich and Farfa who learn about Sapnap's...issues....first(takes everything in them to not snap Q's neck). Though they still don't quite understand why Sapnap would say this to Q of all people, if it's even true. It's not until Farfa brings it up to Dream and George(a whole ordeal in itself). Which. Destroys both of them.

Cause they know about Sapnap's anxiety more than anyone else really. And then they realize they /neglected/ him. They never.....really checked up on him as things were getting better between them and the Team. They just. Figured Sapnap was fine, happy. But the more they think about it. The more a lot of Sapnap's interactions make more sense. A kind of, nervous desperation. Always tensing up at sudden moments, like something. Bad was gonna happen. They knew Sapnap loved them. They learned Sapnap loved Team Mafia.

And with everything that happened to Dream and the betrayals, well, Dream and George knew Sapnap used to be extremely close to Q....They could connect the dots really. That Sapnap loved a traitor and hated himself for it already. But he could live with it. Pretend there was no love since Q was out of sight(out of mind).

Then Dream sent him off to people he was going to betray. And he fell in love with them. Fell in love with the people he was going to destroy, and they loved him so much too....and they were going to have someone they loved be the one to destroy them, just like what had happened to him......... and so he delayed that moment for as long as he could....which led to revealing himself and the plan, exposing Dream and George....and well. They both could figure out what Sapnap felt about that....

And it's all of them realizing, fuck. We....probably should've made sure he was....processing everything fine.......

It's Dream and George asking Farfa how did he find out about this. How are they getting this info about Sapnap??

A very upset Farfa trying to Very Calmly explaing how Q is taunting them. It's a very upset Dream then Very Calmly saying to let him out of the basement now :)

(A very not so happy george trying not to drown in the aura of Very Calm men)

The rest of the mafia members are. Gutted. To say the least. When Sapnap had lost, it also threw them all into despair and confusion. That wasn't so supposed to happen. They need to get him back, now. But. They listen to their Don. Are ever loyal to him. And if their Don said no. Then it's no.

And. They couldn't even be with the other two they've all spent so long trying to bond with. Couldn't weep and cry and ask them about Sapnap, have them all plan how to get him back. Because if their Don won't allow them, surely this ex-Don that they love so very much could help bring Sapnap back. Because they know this ex-Don loves Sapnap just as much as they do.

But they're Forbidden from seeing them. Only Farfa being allowed. Because their Don knows them all too well....

And when they find out about Q's taunts? It's all of them in Rich's office trying to demand they bring Sapnap back home. Yelling and shouting at him that they'll storm the basement themselves and have Dream and George help them if he won't take the charge.

It's Rich booming at them. To compose themselves. And they will cower. Embarrassed. Acting like untrained dogs....

But they'll all sit outside the door of the basement. Whispering to Dream and George. How they didn't know Sapnap would lose. How they miss him so much. They love him so much. And they never want him to doubt that ever again. How they never want him to doubt that they love Dream and George too.

And Dream and George will be on the otherside of the locked door. Listening. Replying. Because they want their Sapnap back. And Dream will say he loves them too. He wished he knew that no one knew Sapnap was going to lose. No one ever told him(he never asked. So many betrayals and just accepted he was fated for another...)

But they love him. And would never betray him. Not with Sapnap at the least.

And George will say something uninterested, asking when they're gonna break down this door so he can see their dumb faces again.

They'll all laugh.

And they'll all weep.

They just want Sapnap back.

(It's a Rich already planning and devising a way to get Sapnap back. Seeing his dogs all whine and cry breaks his heart of course. And he's going to get the one stolen from him back, no matter what)

[purefandomonium]

Another Glitchy Red Snippet

A little sneak peak at my latest fixation work. This is a few more chapters in from what I've posted so far, but I was really proud of it and wanted to share. It's not the whole chapter, just the part I enjoyed the most. If you've read the first 3 parts I posted, you'll know that the GameBoy here was modified to be fully rechargeable and has an awkward microphone attachment added onto it because in this particular situation, Red can't hear outside of the GameBoy. If you haven't read any of it, that last sentence should clear up any confusion. At this point, I might as well just call this a fanfic because it's far exceeded the short story it was supposed to be.

Oops. Anyway:

RED: Maybe I should just show you.

The screen went black then, and she felt a jolt of panic shoot through her as she checked the charger she’d made. It was still plugged in, the wall portion seemed fine…

She needn’t have worried as the screen lit back up again, a bright, unnatural white it shouldn’t have been capable of producing. She had to squint to just to look at it. It almost seemed to spill out of the edges, more a physical substance than something produced by a screen. She watched as colorful pixels—more than the GameBoy should’ve been able to handle—swarmed about the blank space as they arranged themselves into a defined shape.

The form of a black-haired kid in a red and white hat with bright red eyes stared back.

Perhaps kid was the wrong word. Physically, she knew the image before her was supposed to be roughly ten- to eleven-years-old. That’s how it always seemed to be in these games, she’d noticed. Let the child be the hero rather than the adults because it would net more sales among the youth that way. But Red—the real Red— didn’t look like some rambunctious brat with a lot of ambition. He looked tired, worn out, and he held an air of melancholy that looked nothing like the superstar poster boy he was meant to be for the series.

Understandable, given his situation. His appearance matched his experience of being trapped forever in a game he couldn’t stop from happening, being tormented for well over twenty years by players looking to break the game further than it already was.

He looked like a child subjected to unspeakable torture that was forced to grow up.

RED: This is me. This is the real RED.

“…I always thought the game itself was your body,” she mumbled numbly, still in shock at this sudden display of ability.

Red shook his head. Despite the fact he didn’t have a voice, his lips still mouthed the words that appeared on screen.

RED: The cartridge was never my body. It’s just my prison.

“…I’m sorry, Red. I wish I knew how to get you out of there.”

He shrugged. Tilting his head:

RED: You seem to think that would make a difference. Why?

Why? He wouldn’t be so miserable for one thing! “Red, you do realize this proves you’re alive right? Maybe not in the same way as me. You don’t have a living, breathing body, but you have a soul! Or something like it. Besides, isn’t being free what you wanted?” She watched him cast his gaze downwards, head tilting to follow. His hat left an impossible shadow over his eyes so that all she could see was his frown.

RED: I’m not really sure what I want anymore.

RED: At first, I wanted revenge.

RED: Revenge on every single player who’d wronged me. Who warped the game into this unrecognizable mess.

His form flickered, shifting into something dark for a single instant.

RED: I wanted payback on the ones who created me, who created that impostor and left me ABANDONED when I was no longer GOOD ENOUGH.

RED: I WANTED TO KILL THEM ALL.

His face twisted then, teeth bared in a wild snarl. His shoulders raised and the collar of his jacket went nearly all the way up to his hat. Though she couldn’t see them, she knew his hands were tightly clenched. He radiated anger like this, but it soon dissipated. She felt a strong sense of relief when his face went back to normal and realized how quickly her heart was beating.

RED: …But then I realized it wouldn’t make a difference.

RED: I’d still be forgotten and replaced, the only people who would’ve remembered me would be dead…

RED: …It wouldn’t erase the torture I’d experienced.

RED: Getting out would be nice, but where would I even go? What would I do? I don’t even exist in the real world.

RED: As far as anyone’s concerned, I’m just a character in a video game.

Leann was at a loss for words. Was there even an acceptable response to this?

Red didn’t seem to care. He lifted his head and locked eyes with her, somehow knowing how to find them, and gave a small smile.

RED: You’re the only person who’s ever treated me like I matter, so if it’s alright with you…

RED: …I’d like to stick with you a little longer. Maybe I’ll figure things out then.

She simply stared back, blood red eyes boring into her even though that was impossible. What was she supposed to say here? Her heart was still calming down from his prior display of rage.

[firelxdykatara]

not gonna lie I would love to hear more about the drama and infighting that went on in The Vampire Diaries fandom if you have the time (and also want to use that time to give your experience with the fandom, which from the snippets you've told sounds Not Fun so I get it if you don't want to lol)

oh god, there was like, SO MUCH, i just

i really feel like tvd is one of those fandoms that is so hard to describe without a lot of ‘you’d have to have been there’, but it really felt like this huge and all-consuming beast for about five years until the show finally imploded and the fandom basically turned on it en masse. (you ever see that post going around that’s like ‘if you ever want to know what true regret feels like, ask someone who once called tvd their favorite show’? still a mood, all these years later. basically the entire fandom thought the show should have just bowed out with whatever shreds of dignity it had left at the end of season 6, and became more of a hatedom than a fandom for the last two seasons. when you have an entire fandom cheering news of your show’s cancellation, i think that’s a sign you done fucked up, julie.)

first and most infamous, of course, are the ship wars. which are pretty much inevitable in any teen-centered drama, and i really think the CW fucking thrives on them, but it was particularly egregious in TVD’s case because not only was the base premise of the show a love triangle, but the two main romantic leads were brothers that the show constantly pit against one another--in pursuit of elena’s affections, but also because it kept up this insistence on the ‘good brother/bad brother’ dichotomy which stopped making sense after about season 2 (by which time we have found out that the good brother was never as good as he appeared, and the bad brother has been growing and isn’t nearly as bad as he pretends to be)--and the question of which brother ‘deserved’ elena (and no, what elena wanted very rarely factored into these discussions, especially in the team stefan camp because they turned on her when what she wanted was no longer The Good Brother, but i’ll get to that in a bit) was hotly contested.

i’m not kidding when i say the shipping wars were vicious. i started watching tvd shortly after it began to air, which was late 2009, and kept up with it fairly sporadically over the years. i didn’t come onto tumblr until 2011/2012, and by then, the fandom was already pretty much a garbagefire. there were anti ship and anti character blogs, any time something bad happened for one ship the rival ship would invade the tags to gloat about it (seasons 3 and 4 were especially rough, and i’m not gonna pretend delena fans weren’t just as bad about tag invasion and shit, but as that was my side of the road i saw a lot more of the stelena shippers being assholes, which soured my opinion on the ship a long time before i started rewatching and realized the red flags were there from the start), confessions blogs were popular also toxic as fuck (so much fighting happened in the notes of those posts, good gods), and this was right around when twitter’s popularity was on the rise and the line between Celebrity and Fan was thinning, so the fandom was absolutely atrocious to much of the tvd cast and crew.

(some of them deserved a lot of the later backlash, but in the early years a lot of it was ‘how dare you write the story in a way i dont like, you terrible fucking person’, and gods don’t get me started on the dobsley vs nian Thing)

i think what really encapsulates my feelings on the tvd fandom as a whole, though, is the way they (to this DAY) treated elena gilbert, which can be summed up in one meme that gained a lot of traction around season 3 if i remember right: that gif of pam from true blood, with the text altered to read “i’m so OVER elena and her precious doppelganger vagina!”

i swear at one time i had over half the active tvd fan accounts on tumblr blocked, because i got to a point where i would no longer tolerate elena hate, and she was (and still is, in what remains of the fandom; you’ll see a lot of ‘elena was one of the worst things about the show’ takes from ex-fans, too) one of the most widely despised characters in the entire fandom. because she -checks smudged writing on hand- was a traumatized teenage girl who -reads off a crumpled notecard- couldn’t always perfectly sort out her own feelings and -squints at the ceiling- sometimes made mistakes or bad decisions. (except a lot of the fandom also insisted that she was a mary sue who had no character traits or flaws or faults and it was like....make up your fucking minds???? is she a calculating conniving bitch whose somehow manipulating these centuries old vampires to tie them around her little finger or is she a boring flat character with no depth and no flaws??? jfc)

there was this massive double standard, too--like, stefan and damon could fuck whoever they wanted and that was fine, but elena was constantly raked over the coals for the crime of developing romantic feelings for the two men who had become constants in her life and whom she cared for deeply, and oh my GOD the slut shaming that happened when elena slept with damon was fucking wild. (and also happened in canon lmfao. like the show had one of elena’s best friends basically call her diseased on screen for falling in love with someone other than stefan. it was gross and ridiculous and the friend in question was also being a giant hypocrite at the time since she was happily flirting with someone who was directly responsible for the deaths of like four of elena’s loved ones and her own boyfriend’s mother but that’s beside the point) but like elena was called a slut and a bitch and a whore for ‘cheating’ on stefan (she hadn’t, and she had in fact broken up with him on screen the episode earlier) and ‘immediately’ jumping into bed with damon, even though none of them said fucking boo when stefan had one night stands or damon had fuckbuddies or whatever.

shit, caroline didn’t get any of this treatment when she started falling for tyler while dating matt! which isn’t to say i think she should have, just that i think it’s fucking ridiculous that elena was absolutely demonized by the fandom for daring to have feelings for two guys at once and eventually acting on them--despite the fact that the entire premise of the show was a love triangle. it’s not a love triangle if both sides don’t eventually get explored, and the crew had been pretty explicit about the fact that delena was going to happen at some point--but when it did, a huge chunk of the fandom absolutely threw a fit.

and a lot of these elena haters were alleged stelena stans, and i say alleged because they hated her so much for not wanting stefan’s dick anymore that it was clear they were really stefan stans and only wanted stelena to be endgame because they wanted stefan to ‘win’ at the end of the day, because ‘he’s the good brother’ so he deserved elena more.

it was all very gross and very misogynistic and very sex shaming (apparently delena was a ‘shallow’ and ‘superficial’ relationship because they had sex after two years of unrequited feelings slowly becoming requited and then pining for ages on both sides, and because they had a lot of on screen chemistry that the show capitalized on for years so of course they did a lot of making out and shit but it’s not like stelena didn’t have its fair share of making out and sex scenes, stefan was just too much of a coward to let elena top i’d apologize for that joke but i’m really not sorry because it’s true), and when i say it was egged on by the crew, that’s because they refused to let the love triangle die back in season 4 when it should have.

they insisted on stringing stelena fans along, dropping little bread crumbs to keep them invested, like dreams of a future where they were married and revealing that stefan was also a doppelganger and he and elena were descended from a pair of star-crossed lovers (a plot that ultimately went nowhere, to no one’s great surprise), and then fucking like. julie plec turned around and threw nina under the bus after she chose not to extend her contract and pretended that stelena might have happened again if she hadn’t left the show, which....i mean frankly i wouldn’t put it past her, but it would have been shitty writing. then again, she thought having a vampire pregnancy where a uterus was magically transplanted from a witch into a vampire that could somehow......carry the babies to term.... made sense and was a good way to accomodate candice’s RL pregnancy rather than like literally ANYTHING else, soooooo. but anyway julie saying that around like, end of s6 sparked off a new wave of nina hate and elena hate and ship wars bc they SEers took it as ‘confirmation’ that stelena was REALLY meant to be endgame and it was all just a hot fucking mess

another thing is that, while tvd was in its prime before the anti/purity culture shit started picking up any real steam, there was still this pervasive attitude throughout the fandom that if you liked Damon, you were A Bad Person. liking damon was apparently grounds for insults and harassment, and apparently he was The Worst Person on the Show even though literally nothing he does on screen is any worse than shit we know stefan has done (and frankly every other vampire too, but i mention stefan specifically because he was always held up--in the show but especially in the fandom--as the Good Brother while damon was the Bad One, and if you liked damon more then that had to mean your morals were dodgy and you clearly couldn’t appreciate what a heroic and saintly figure dear stefan was and....oops, i’m sorry, my salt keeps leaking -cough-).

meanwhile klaus quickly became a fandom darling despite not even really having much of a redemption arc (on tvd anyway, he just became more ‘affably evil’ as the show went on and more inclined to work with the main characters rather than try to kill them; i have no idea what went on over on his show, though), and like i can 100% appreciate liking villains and not caring that they do dodgy villainous shit, even just liking them bc they’re hot and wanting them to kiss a main character bc they have insanely good chemistry (yes i ship klaroline, no i won’t apologize for it, they could have been Really Great), it’s just really the double standard that gets me.

and all of this, incidentally, required ignoring some truly gross shit stefan was responsible for wrt his relationship with elena, that frankly it has always bothered me never really got addressed in the show. i get why elena herself would never be able to actually call him on it, but the fact is that he stalked her for months after he first saw her and thought she was katherine (meanwhile it only took damon .5 seconds to realize she was someone else entirely, but that’s another topic entirely), and then he deliberately inserted himself into her life because, in his words, ‘i have to know her’. he never gave a thought to how his presence in her life might affect her (or rather, he did, and tormented himself about it in his internal monologue, but never let this actually dissuade him from disrupting her life), and elena would wind up blaming herself for every tragedy that befell her friends and loved ones as a result of getting mixed up in vampire bullshit even though none of it was her fault--she literally blamed herself for existing but most of the fandom didn’t give a fuck about that lmfao--and stefan did shit like find out that she was adopted and then withhold this information from her until she got pissed about another secret he was keeping (her resemblence to katherine) and drop it on her to try and distract her from her very reasonable anger, and like... i should stop before this becomes a whole rant about how much i hate stefan fucking salvatore, but the point is, he did a lot of really sketchy shit he never answered for and elena never really took him to task for, and the fandom just kept eating up his insistence that he was the Good Brother and therefore he deserved to have elena, and if she didn’t want him anymore it was because she was a heinous bitch who didn’t deserve him.

uh.....i think i got off track there. and there’s probably a lot of shit i missed, like i think i was incandescent with rage for most of seasons 5 and 6 so i missed a lot of the interfandom shit cause i was too busy being increasingly pissed off at the show itself, but if nothing else this should give you an idea of how much of a goddamn cesspit the fandom was while the show as in its prime. there’s a reason both the show and the fandom have such a lousy reputation lmfao.

[snt-good-omens]

Good Omens snippets: before the beginning, but a bit later

The first weeks after the Glorious Revolution (really. guys? really? That's what we're calling it? It is? All right, moving on now) were, to put it lightly, unpleasant. The shock of suddenly being cut off from the Almighty's presence, which up until now they all took for granted. The pain of their grace rearranging itself to protect them from the sudden gaping void where her grace used to be; their outer forms  twisting with it. The shock of discovery that they were no longer able use their own bloody names. The absolute and utter confusion that followed, when everyone tried to come up with a name that felt right and wouldn't burn their throats when spoken. (Most of the Fallen weren't very creative and many a fight broke out when two dozen demons tried to claim the same name simply because it started with the same letter as their angelic designation).

Interesting side effects of that, and the radical makeover they all went through, was that, for quite a while, nobody knew who was who. Numerous were the incidents of a demon getting uppity with a vaguely familiar stranger, only to get smacked clear across the room and realize that, oh, oops, former archangel, sorry my lord, my prince, so sorry. (Alternatively, it was getting smacked harder than expected and realize - oh, fellow-ex-archangel, how very much dare you, this is my piece of Hell, fight me!)

And, to top it off, Lightbringer, now going by Satan for reasons only known to himself, was throwing a temper tantrum for the ages. The Hell shook with his pure rage (And his furious roaring rants. And his attempts to physically tear the palce down and get out). Quite a few unlucky demons who ventured too close found themselves rent apart and absorbed into his Disgraces's being. Good for Satan's power level maybe, but not so great on the overall morale. (And disastrous for the extinguished demons, of course, but nobody really cared about that).

Eventually the newly self-titled Princes of Hell stopped squabling among themselves over hierarchy for long enough to stage an intervention (which is to say, they held a screaming match with His Nastiness from a safe distance) which, after much posturing and reminding everyone who's the boss, ended in Satan settling in for a good long sulk; his sullen mood poured over the Hell like thick syrup and spread among the denizens, settling ruffled feathers and replacing the straight up agreession with much calmer medium-level discontentment.

The demon formelrly known as Zakzakiel spent most of that transitional periond curled tighly in a dark hole in the wall, thinking such deep existential thougths as "What?" "How?" and "Guh?", occasionally even reaching coherency of "what am I even doing here?".

Eventually, things calmed down (see aforementioned discontentment).

Eventually, no-longer-Zakzakiel emereged from his hiding spot, looked upon the new world he got to live in, and with innate talent and grace he immediately put his foot in it again (seriously, he didn't even have any feet at the moment, how did he keep doing that?). Well, in this case like this: by slithering up to the person who, he was quite sure of it, was his former immediet superior and asking what he thought was perfectly reasonable question. "Why do we have filing cabinets?" It might have saved him quite a lot of grief to take a moment to contemplate said superiors new title. He didn't take that moment though, and when Almost-Certainly-Ex-Raphael, his ichthyic aspects now etched into his face like scales, looked down at him and hissed "too keep track of things", he carelessly answered: "Yes, keeping track, I get it, very useful thing, keeping track, but why like this? Why do the things the old way? Wasn't the whole point of this mess you didn't like how Upstairs was run?"

Dagon, the Lord of Files, Master of Torments, looked on at him with pure malevolance on his face and smiled. "Zakzakiel, is that you?" he purred, and wow, they weren't kidding when they said that hearing one's former name hurt.   "Oh, I'm sorry," Dagon continued, very clearly not sorry at all, while Definitely-Not-Zakzakiel writhed on the floor in agony. "That was bad form, wasn't it? What were you calling yourself these days, Zeke?" "Blargh," wheezed Not-Zakzakiel-And-Also-Never-A-Zeke. Dagon showed his spiky teeth in what could technically be called a grin (were those steel? How did he not shred his tongue everytime he spoke?) and made a show of checking some files. "No, that one's taken, I'm afraid. So are all other pronouncable B-sounds. Maybe you'd like somehing in C? How about Crawly? Since you're so good at crawling?" "Ngk," said Yeah-I'll-Take-It-Crawly,